“DORRANCE!” repeated Frederic, after his betrothed, when she rehearsed
to him in their moonlight promenade upon the piazza the leading
incidents of her brother's wooing. “She lives near Boston, you say, and
her mother is a widow?”
“Yes. What have you ever heard about her?”
“Nothing whatever. I was startled by the name--but very foolishly! I
once knew a family of Dorrances--New Yorkers--but the father, a retired
naval officer, was alive, and all the daughters were married. The
youngest of them would be, by this time, much older than you judge the
original of the miniature to be.”
“She is not more than twenty-two, at the most,” Mabel was sure.
Frederic's hurried articulation and abstracted manner excited her
curiosity, and unrestrained by Winston's curb, it was not “quiescent.”
The thought was spoken so soon as it was formed.
“There was something unpleasant in your intercourse with them, then? or
something objectionable in the people themselves? Could they have been
relatives of this widow and her daughter? The name is not a common one
to my ears.”
“Nor to mine; yet we have no proof to sustain your supposition. I should
be very sorry--”
He stopped.
Mabel studied his perturbed countenance with augmented uneasiness.
“Was not the family respectable?”
“Perfectly, my shrewd little catechist!” seeming to shake off an
uncomfortable incubus, as he laughed down at her serious face. “They
vaunted themselves upon the antiquity of their line, and were more
liberal in allusions to departed grandeur than was quite well-bred. When
I knew them they were not wealthy, or in what they would have called
'society.' Indeed, the mother kept a private boarding-house near
the law-school I attended. There were several sons--very decent,
enterprising fellows. But one lived at home, and a daughter, the wife of
a lieutenant in the navy, whom I never saw. I boarded with them for six
months, or thereabout.”
“You never saw the daughter! How was that?”
“I must have expressed myself awkwardly if I conveyed any such idea. I
did not meet the seafaring husband who was off upon a long cruise.
The wife I met constantly--knew very well. You need not look at me so
intently, love, as if you feared that some dark mystery lurked behind
this matter-of-fact recital. If I do not tell you every event of my
former life, it is not because it was vile. I could not sustain
the light of your innocent eyes if I had ever been guilty of aught
dishonorable or criminal. But even the follies and mistakes of a young
man's early career are not fit themes for your ears. And I was no wiser,
no more wary, than other youths of the same age; was apt to believe that
fair which was only specious, and that I might play, uninjured, with
edged tools. Nor had I seen you then, my treasure--my snow-drop of
purity! Mabel! do you know how solemn a thing it is to be loved and
trusted by a man, as I love and confide in you? It terrifies me when I
think of the absoluteness of my dependence upon your fidelity--of how
rich I am in having you--how poor, wretched, and miserable I should be
without you. I shall not draw a free breath until you are mine beyond
the chance of recall.”
“Nobody else wants me!” breathed Mabel in his ear, nestling within
the arm that enfolded and held her tightly in the corner of the
piazza shaded by the creeper. “The danger of losing me is not imminent
to-night, at all events,” she resumed, presently, with a touch of the
sportiveness that lent her manner an airy charm in lighter talk than
that which had engrossed her for the past hour.
The evening was warm and still to sultriness, and the moonlight,
filtered into pensive pallor through a low-lying haze, yet sufficed to
show how confidingly Imogene leaned upon her attendant in sauntering
down the long main alley of the garden. Rosa was at the piano in the
parlor, singing to the enamored Alfred. Mrs. Sutton had withdrawn to
her own room to ruminate upon the astounding disclosure of her nephew's
engagement, while Winston bent over his study-table busy with the
interrupted letter his aunt had seen in his portfolio.
“There is no one here who has the leisure or the disposition to contest
your rights, you perceive,” said Mabel, running through a laughing
summary of their companions' occupations.
“Betrothals are epidemic in this household and neighborhood,” Winston
was writing. “There are no fewer than three pairs of turtles cooing down
stairs as I pen this to you, my bird of paradise. The case that next to
mine--to ours--commands my interest is that of my sister. I came home to
learn that the little Mabel I used to hold on my knee had entered into
an engagement--conditional upon my sanction--with that traditional
tricky personage, a Philadelphia lawyer--Mr. Frederic Chilton, at the
door of whose manifold perfections, as set forth by my loquacious aunt,
you may lay the blame of this delayed epistle. I know nothing of this
aspirant to the dignity of brotherhood with myself, saving the facts
that he is tolerably good looking, claims to be the scion of an old
Maryland family, and that self-conceit is apparently his predominant
quality.”
“What is that?” asked Frederic, halting before the windows, of the
drawing-room, as a wild, sorrowful strain, like the wail of a breaking
heart, arose upon the waveless air.
Rosa was a vocalist of note in her circle, and she had never rendered
anything with more effect than she did the song to which even the
preoccupied strollers among the garden borders stayed their steps to
listen. Through the open casement Mabel and her lover could see the face
of the musician, slightly uplifted toward the moonlight; her eyes, dark
and dreamy, as under the cloud of many years of weary waiting and final
hopelessness. Her articulation was always pure, but the passionate
emphasis of every word constrained the breathless attention of her
audience to the close of the simple lay:
“Thy name was once the magic spell
By which my thoughts were bound;
And burning dreams of light and love
Were wakened by the sound.
My heart beat quick when stranger-tongues,
With idle praise or blame,
Awoke its deepest thrill of joy
To tremble at thy name.
“Long years, long years have passed away,
And altered is thy brow;
And we who met so fondly once
Must meet as strangers now.
The friends of yore come 'round me still,
But talk no more of thee,
'Twere idle e'en to wish it now,
For what art thou to me?”
“Yet still thy name--thy blessed name!
My lonely bosom fills,
Like an echo that hath lost itself
Among the distant hills,
That still, with melancholy note,
Keeps faintly lingering on,
When the joyous sound that woke it first
Is gone--forever gone!”
“A neat conceit that last verse, and the music is a fair imitation of a
dying bugle-echo!” said Winston Aylett to himself, resuming the writing
he had suspended for a minute. “That girl should take to the stage. If
one did not know better, her eyes and singing together would delude him
into the idea that she had a heart. Honest Alfred evidently believes
that she has, and that the patient labor of love will win it for
himself. Bah!”
Frederic and Mabel retired noiselessly from their post of observation,
as “honest Alfred” made a motion to take in his the hand lying prone and
passive upon the finger-board. They exchanged a smile, significant and
tender, in withdrawing.
“We understand the signs of the times,” whispered Frederic, at the upper
turn of their promenade. “Heaven bless all true lovers under the sun!”
“Don't!” said Rosa, vehemently, snatching away her hand from her
suitor's hold. “Leave me alone! If you touch me again I shall scream!
I think you were made up without nerves, either in the heart or in the
brain--if you have any!”
Before the aghast Alfred rallied from the recoil occasioned by her
gesture and words, her feet were pattering over the oaken hall and
staircase in rapid retreat to her chamber.
“You are really happy, then?” queried Mabel. “Quite content?”
“Did I not tell you awhile ago that I was not satisfied?” returned
Chilton. “Two months since I should, in anticipation of this hour, have
declared that it would be fraught with unalloyed rapture. I was
happier yesterday than I am to-day. It is not merely that we must part
to-morrow, or that your brother's precautionary measures and disapproval
of what has passed between us have acted like a shower-bath to the
fervor of my newly born hopes. I am willing that my life should be
subjected to the utmost rigor of his researches, and another month, at
farthest, will reunite us. Nor do I believe in presentiments. I am more
inclined to attribute the uneasiness that has hovered over me all the
day to physical causes. We will call it a mild splenetic case, induced
by the sultry weather, and the very slow on coming of the storm presaged
by your dewless roses.”
He laughed naturally and pleasantly. Having confessed to what he
regarded as a ridiculous succumbing of his buoyant spirit to atmospheric
influences, he shook off the nightmare as if it had never sat upon him.
Mabel was grave still.
“There is something weirdly oppressive in the night,” she said, in a
low, awed tone. “But the burden you describe has weighed me down since
morning. While Rosa was singing, I felt suddenly removed from you by a
horrid gulf. What if all this should be the preparation to us for some
impending danger?”
“Sweet! these are unwholesome vapors of the imagination. Nothing can be
a disaster that leaves us to one another,” was the text of Frederic's
fond soothing; and by the time Mrs. Sutton descended from her chamber of
meditation, to remind Imogene that the seeds of ague and fever lurked in
the river-fogs, the couple from the piazza came into the lighted parlor,
all smiles and animation, wondering, jocosely, what had become of the
recent occupants of the apartment.
Neither reappeared until breakfast-time next morning. Rosa was like
freshly-poured champagne, in sweet and sparkle. Alfred, rueful and limp,
as if the dripping clouds that verified Mabel's prediction had
soaked him all night. He was dry and comfortable--to carry out the
figure--within twenty minutes after his beloved fluttered, like a tame
canary, into the chair next his own--in five more, was more truly her
slave, living in, and upon her smiles--adoring her very caprices as he
had never admired another woman's virtues--than he had been prior to the
brief, but tempestuous scene over night. She was the life of the
party assembled in the dining-room. Imogene had caught cold, walking
bareheaded in the evening air, and Tom condoled with her upon her
influenza and sore-throat too sincerely to do justice to the rest of
his friends and his breakfast. Mr. Aylett was never talkative, and his
unvarying, soulless politeness to all produced the conserving effect
upon chill and low spirits that the atmosphere of a refrigerator does
upon whatever is placed within it. Mrs. Sutton's motherly heart was
yearning pityingly over the lovers who were soon to be sundered, while
Mabel's essay at cheerful equanimity imposed upon nobody's credulity.
Frederic comported himself like a man--the more courageously because
the host's cold eye was upon him, and he surmised that sighs and
sentimentality would meet very scant indulgence in that quarter.
Moreover, he was not so unreasonable as to descry insupportable
hardships in this parting. By agreement with Mr. Aylett and his sister,
he was, if all went prosperously, to revisit Ridgeley at the end of six
weeks, when his design was to entreat his betrothed to name the wedding
day. The prospect might well support him under the present trial. He
bore Rosa's badinage gallantly, tossing back sprightly and telling
rejoinders that called forth the smiling applause of the auditors, and
commanded her respectful recognition of him as a foeman worthy of her
steel.
“Nine o'clock,” said Winston, at length, consulting his watch, and
pushing back his chair. “The carriage will be at the door in fifteen
minutes, Mr. Chilton. The road is heavy this morning, and the stage
passes the village at ten.”
“I shall be ready,” responded Frederic. “I am sorry your carriage and
coachman must be exposed to the rain.”
“That is nothing. They are used to it. I never alter my plan of travel
on account of the weather, how ever severe the storm. This warm rain can
hurt nobody.”
“It is pouring hard,” remarked Mrs. Button, solicitously. “And that
stage is wretchedly uncomfortable in the best weather. I wish you
could be persuaded to stay with us until it clears off, Mr. Chilton,
and”--making a bold push--“I am sure my nephew concurs in my desire.”
“Mr. Chilton should require no verbal assurance of my hospitable
feelings toward him and my other guests,” said Mr. Aylett,
frigidly--smooth as ice-cream. “If I forbear to press him to prolong his
stay, it is in reflection of the golden law laid down for the direction
of hosts--'Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.'”
“You are both very kind, but I must go,” Frederic replied, concisely
and civilly, following Mabel into the parlor, whither the other visitors
were fabled to have repaired. As he had guessed, his betrothed was the
only person there; the quartette having dispersed with kindly tact, for
which he gave them due credit.
“Don't think hardly of me, dear,” he began, seating himself beside her
on the sofa.
“Allow me to offer you a few of the finest cigars I have enjoyed for
many years,” said Mr. Aylett, entering in season to check Frederic's
movement to encircle Mabel's drooping form with his arm. “You smoke, I
believe? You may have an opportunity of indulging in this solace in
an empty stage. At least, there is little probability that you will be
denied the luxury by the presence of lady passengers. I procured those
in Havana, last winter. In case you should like them well enough to
order some for yourself, I will give you the address of the merchant
from whom I purchased them.”
He wrote a line upon a card, as he might sign a beggar's petition--with
a supercilious parade of benevolence--and passed it to the other, who
accepted it with a phrase of acknowledgment neither hearty nor grateful.
Then the master of the house paced the floor with a slow, regular step,
his hands behind him; his countenance placidly ruminative, his
thoughts apparently engaged with anything rather than the pain upon the
corner-sofa, whose leave-taking he had mercilessly marred. Frederic dumb
and furious; Mabel equally dumb and amazed to alarm, knowing as she
did that her brother's actions were never purposeless, sat still, their
hands clasped stealthily amid the folds of Mabel's dress; their eyes
saying the dear and passionate things forbidden to their tongues.
Neither would feign indifference, or attempt a lame dialogue upon other
topics than those that filled their minds. Mr. Aylett was not one to pay
outward heed to hints when he chose to ignore them. He kept up his walk
until the carriage was driven around to the front door, informed the
parting guest that it awaited his commands, likewise that he would
need all the time that remained to him if he hoped to catch the
stage; without leaving the room, called to a servant to bring down Mr.
Chilton's baggage, and did not lose sight of his sister's lover until
the last farewell was said, and Frederic bestowed inside the vehicle.
There was nothing offensively officious or malicious in all this.
Having declared as an incontrovertible dogma, that a ward could form no
engagement without the formal sanction of her legal guardian, he saw fit
to put the seal upon the decision at this, their adieu, in a manner they
were not likely to forget. An hour's harangue would not have imbued them
with the sense of his authority, his determination to exercise it, and
their impotency to resist it, as did this practical lesson.
Mrs. Sutton could scarcely restrain her tearful remonstrances against
what was, to her perception, an act of arbitrary and wanton cruelty, and
other spectators had their views upon the subject.
“Very inconsiderate in Aylett! I wonder how he would like the same game
to be played upon himself!” commented Alfred, aside, to his Dulcinea.
Her lip curled in disdainful amusement.
“As if he had ever done an inconsiderate thing since he put off long
clothes! There is method in all this, if we were clever enough to fathom
it.”
Within herself, she determined that she would solve the enigma before
she was a week older.
Frederic cast one hasty, eager look at the portico, as the carriage
turned out of the yard. Mabel stood in the foreground, her figure framed
by the climbing roses drooping over the front steps. She was very pale,
and, forgetful for the moment of the observation of the bystanders,
leaned slightly forward, her eyes strained upon the carriage-window--one
hand laid upon her heart, the other resting against the pillar nearest
her, as for support. She waved her handkerchief, in response to his
smile and lifted hat, and simultaneously with this interchange of adieux
her brother took her by the arm.
“You are getting wet there, Mabel! Come into the house! It is well I
have come back to look after you!”