“THAT is a new appearance.”
“Who can she be?”
“Unique--is she not?” were queries bandied from one to another of the
various parties of guests scattered through the extensive parlors of the
most fashionable of Washington hotels, at the entrance of a company
of five or six late arrivals. All the persons composing it were well
dressed, and had the carriage of people of means and breeding. Beyond
this there was nothing noteworthy about any of them, excepting the
youngest of the three ladies of what seemed to be a family group. When
they stopped for consultation upon their plans for this, their first
evening in the capital, directly beneath the central chandelier of the
largest drawing-room, she stood, unintentionally, perhaps, upon the
outside of the little circle, and not exerting herself to feign interest
in the parley, sought amusement in a keen, but polite survey of the
assembly, apparently in no wise disconcerted at the volley of glances
she encountered in return.
If she were always in the same looks she wore just now, she must have
been pretty well inured to batteries of admiration by this date in
her sunny life. She was below the medium of woman's stature, round and
pliant in form and limbs; in complexion dark as a gypsy but with a
clear skin that let the rise and fall of the blood beneath be marked
as distinctly as in that of the fairest blonde. Her eyes were brown
or black, it was hard to say which, so changeful were their lights
and shades; and her other features, however unclassic in mould, if
criticised separately, taken as a whole, formed a picture of surpassing
fascination. If her eyes and cleft chin meant mischief, her mouth
engaged to make amends by smiles and seductive words, more sweet
than honey, because their flavor would never clog upon him who tasted
thereof. Her attire was striking--it would have been bizarre upon any
other lady in the room, but it enhanced the small stranger's beauty.
A black robe--India silk or silk grenadine, or some other light and
lustrous material--was bespangled with butterflies, gilded, green, and
crimson, the many folds of the skirt flowing to the carpet in a
train designed to add to apparent height, and, in front, allowing an
enchanting glimpse of a tiny slipper, high in the instep, and tapering
prettily toward the toe. In her hair were glints of a curiously-wrought
chain, wound under and among the bandeaux; on her wrists, plump and
dimpled as a baby's, more chain-work of the like precious metal, ending
in tinkling fringe that swung, glittering, to and fro, with the restless
motion of the elfin hands, she never ceased to clasp and chafe and fret
one with the other, while she thus stood and awaited the decision of her
companions. But instead of detracting from the charm of her appearance,
the seemingly unconscious gesture only heightened it. It was the
overflow of the exuberant vitality that throbbed redly in her cheeks,
flashed in her eye, and made buoyant her step.
“What an artless sprite it is!” said one old gentleman, who had stared
at her from the instant of her entrance, in mute enjoyment, to the great
amusement of his more knowing nephews.
“All but the artless!” rejoined one of the sophisticated youngsters.
“She is gotten up too well for that. Ten to one she is an experienced
stager, who calculates to a nicety the capabilities of every twist of
her silky hair and twinkle of an eyelash. Hallo! that IS gushing--nicely
done, if it isn't almost equal to the genuine thing, in fact.”
The ambiguous compliment was provoked by a change of scene and a new
actor, that opened other optics than his lazy ones to their extremest
extent. A gentleman had come in alone and quietly--a tall, manly
personage, whose serious countenance had just time to soften into a
smile of recognition before the black-robed fairy flew up to him--both
hands extended--her face one glad sunbeam of surprise and welcome.
“YOU here!” she exclaimed, in a low, thrilling tone, shedding into his
the unclouded rays of her glorious eyes, while one of her hands lingered
in his friendly hold. “This is almost too good to be true! When did you
come? How long are you going to stay? and what did you come for? Yours
is the only familiar physiognomy I have beheld since our arrival, and
my eyes were becoming ravenous for a sight of remembered things. Which
reminds me”--coloring bewitchingly, with an odd mixture of mirth and
chagrin in smile and voice--“that I have been getting up quite a little
show on my own account, forgetful of les regles, and I suppose
the horrified lookers-on think of les moeurs. May I atone for my
inadvertence by presenting you, in good and regular form, to my somewhat
shocked, but very respectable, relatives? Did you know that I was
in Congress this year--that is, Mr. Mason, my aunt's husband, is an
Honorable, and I am here with them?”
The gentleman gave her his arm, and they strolled leisurely in the
direction of the party she had deserted so unceremoniously.
“I did not know it, but I am glad to learn that you are to make a
long visit to the city. I have business that may detain me here for a
week--perhaps a fort-night,” was his answer to the first question she
suffered him thus to honor.
Then the introduction to Mr. and Mrs. Mason, their married daughter,
Mrs. Cunningham, and her husband, was performed. The Member's wife was
a portly, good-natured Virginia matron, whose ruling desire to make all
about her comfortable as herself, sometimes led to contretemps that were
trying to the subjects of her kindness, and would have been distressing
to her, had she ever, by any chance, guessed what she had done.
She opened the social game now, by saying, agreeably: “Your name is not
a strange one to us, Mr. Chilton. We have often heard you spoken of in
the most affectionate terms by our friends, but not near neighbors, the
Ayletts, of Ridgeley,----county. Is it long since you met or heard from
them?”
“Some months, madam. I hope they were in their usual health when you
last saw them?”
Receiving her affirmative reply with a courteous bow, and the assurance
that he was “happy to hear it,” Mr. Chilton turned to Rosa, and engaged
her in conversation upon divers popular topics of the day, all of which
she was careful should conduct them in the opposite direction from
Ridgeley, and his affectionate intimates, the Ayletts. He appreciated
and was grateful for her tact and delicacy. Her unaffected pleasure at
meeting him had been as pleasant as it was unlooked-for, aware as he
was, from Mabel's letter immediately preceding the rapture of their
engagement, that Rosa must have been staying with her when it occurred.
The slander that had blackened him in the esteem of his betrothed had,
he naturally supposed, injured his reputation beyond hope of retrieval
with her acquaintances. Rosa, her bosom companion, could not but have
heard the whole history, yet met him with undiminished cordiality, as a
valued friend. Either the Ayletts had been unnaturally discreet, or the
faith of the interesting girl in his integrity was firmer and better
worth preserving than he had imagined in the past. Perhaps, too, since
he was but mortal man, although one whose heritage in the school of
experience had been of the sternest, he was not entirely insensible
to the privilege of promenading the long suite of apartments with the
prettiest girl of the season hanging upon his arm, and granting her
undivided attention to all that he said, indifferent to, or unmindful
of, the flattering notice she attracted.
Over and above all these recommendations to his peculiar regard was her
association with the happy days of his early love. Not an intonation,
not a look of hers, but reminded him of Ridgeley and of Mabel. It was a
perilous indulgence--this recurrence to a dream he had vowed to forget,
but the temptation had befallen him suddenly, and he surrendered himself
to the intoxication.
Yes! she was going to the President's levee that evening, Rosa said.
A sort of raree-show--was it not? with the Chief Magistrate for head
mountebank. He was worse off in one respect than the poorest cottager
in the nation he was commonly reported to govern, inasmuch as he had
not the right to invite whom he pleased to his house, and when the mob
overran his premises he must treat all with equal affability. She pitied
his wife! She would rather, if the choice were offered her, be one of
the revolving wax dummies used in shop-windows for showing the latest
style of evening costume and hair-dressing--for the dolls had no wits of
their own to begin with, and were not expected to say clever things, as
the President's consort was, after she had lost hers in the crush of the
aforesaid mob, who eyed her freely as an appendage to their chattel, the
man they had bought by their votes, and put in the highest seat in the
Republic. No! she was not provided with an escort to the White House.
She did not know three people in Washington beside her relatives, and,
looking forward to creeping into the palatial East Room at her uncle's
back, or in the shadow of her cousin's husband, the vision of enjoyment
had not been exactly enrapturing--BUT, her companion's proposal to join
their party and help elbow the crowd away from her, lent a different
coloring to the horizon.
BUT--again--flushing prettily--was he certain that the expedition would
not bore him? Doubtless he had had some other engagement in prospect
for the evening, before he stumbled over her. He ought to know her well
enough not to disguise his real wishes by gallant phrases.
“I have never been otherwise than sincere with you,” Frederic said,
honestly; “I had thought of going to the levee alone, as a possible
method of whiling away an idle evening. If you will allow me to
accompany you thither, I shall be gratified--shall derive actual
pleasure from the motley scene. It will not be the only time you and I
have studied varieties of physiognomy and character in a mixed assembly.
Do you recollect the hops at the Rockbridge Alum Springs?”
“I do,” replied Rosa, laconically and very soberly.
He thought she suppressed a sigh in saying it. She was a warm-hearted
little creature with all her vagaries, and he was less inclined to
reject her unobtrusive sympathy than if a more sedate or prudent person
had proffered it.
It was certain he could not have selected a more entertaining associate
for that evening. She amused him in spite of the painful recollections
revived by their intercourse. She did not pass unobserved in the dense
crowd that packed the lower floor of the White House. Her face, all glee
and sparkle, the varied music of her soft Southern tongue, her becoming
attire--were, in turn, the subject of eulogistic comment among the
most distinguished connoisseurs present. It was not probable that these
should all be unheard by her cavalier, or that he should listen to them
with profound indifference.
He was astonished, therefore, when she protested that she had had
“enough of it,” and proposed that they should extricate themselves from
the press and go home. It was contrary to the commonly received tenets
of his sex respecting the insatiable nature of feminine vanity, that she
should weary so soon of adulation which would have rendered a light head
dizzy. Mrs. Mason was not ready to leave the halls of mirth. She had
met scores of old friends, and was having a “nice, sociable time” in a
corner, while Mrs. Cunningham had “not begun to enjoy herself, looking
at the queer people and the superb dresses.”
Of course, they had no objection to their wilful relative doing as she
liked, but did not conceal their amazement at her bad taste.
“Take the carriage, dear! You'll find it around out there somewhere,”
drawled the easy-tempered aunt. “And let Thomas come back for us. He
will be in time an hour from this.”
“Would it be an unpardonable infraction of etiquette if we were to walk
home?” questioned Rosa of Mr. Chilton, when they were out of Mr. Mason's
hearing. “The night is very mild.”
“But your feet. Are they not too lightly shod for the pavement?”
“I left a pair of thick gaiters in the dressing-room, which I wore in
the carriage.”
“Then I will be answerable for the breach of etiquette, should it ever
be found out,” was the reply, and Rosa disappeared into the tiring-room
to equip herself for the walk.
It was a lovely night for December--moonlighted and bland as October,
and neither manifested a disposition to accelerate the saunter into
which they had fallen at their first step beyond the portico. Rosa
dropped her rattling tone, and began to talk seriously and sensibly of
the scene they had left, the flatness of fashionable society after the
freshness of novelty had passed from it, and her preference for home
life and tried friends.
“Yet I always rate these the more truly after a peep at a different
sphere,” she said. “Our Old Virginia country-house is never so dear and
fair at any other time as when I return to it after playing at fine lady
abroad for a month or six weeks. I used to fret at the monotony of my
daily existence; think my simple pleasures tame. I am thankful that I
go back to them, as I grow older, as one does to pure, cold water, after
drinking strong wine.”
“You are blessed in having this fountain to which you may resort in your
heart-drought,” answered Frederic, sadly. “The gods do not often deny
the gift of home and domestic affections to woman. It is an exception
to a universal rule when a man who has reached thirty without building
a nest for himself, has a pleasant shelter spared, or offered to him
elsewhere.”
“Yet you would weary, in a week, of the indolent, aimless life led by
most of our youthful heirs expectant and apparent,” returned Rosa. “I
remember once telling you how I envied you for having work and a career.
I was youthful then myself--and foolish as immature.”
“I recollect!” and there was no more talk for several squares.
Rosa was getting alarmed at the thought of her temerity in reverting to
this incident in their former intercourse, and meditating the expediency
of entering upon an apology, which might, after all, augment, rather
than correct the mischief she had done, when Frederic accosted her as if
there had been no hiatus in the dialogue.
“I recollect!” he repeated, just as before. “It was upon the back piazza
at Ridgeley, after breakfast on that warm September morning, when the
air was a silvery haze, and there was no dew upon the roses. I, too,
have grown older--I trust, wiser and stronger since I talked so largely
of my career--what I hoped to be and to do. When did you see her--Miss
Aylett,” abruptly, and with a total change of manner.
“The Rubicon is forded,” thought Rosa, complacently, the while her
compassion for him was sincere and strong. “He can never shut his heart
inexorably against me after this.”
Aloud, she replied after an instant's hesitation designed to prepare him
for what was to follow--“I was with Mabel for several days last May. We
have not met since.”
“She is alive--and well?” he asked, anxiously.
An inexplicable something in her manner warned him that all was not
right.
“She is--or was, when I last heard news of her; we do not correspond.
She does not live at Ridgeley now.”
There she stopped, before adding the apex to the nicely graduated
climax.
“Not live with her brother! I do not understand.”
“Have you not heard of her marriage?”
“No!”
He did not reel or tremble, but she felt that the bolt had pierced a
vital part, and wisely forbore to offer consolation he could not hear.
But when he would have parted with her at the door of her uncle's
parlor, she saw how deadly pale he was, and put her hands into his,
beseechingly.
“Come in! I cannot let you go until you have said that you forgive me!”
There were tears in her eyes, and in her coaxing accents, and he yielded
to the gentle face that sought to lead him into the room. It was fearful
agony that contracted his forehead and lips when he would have spoken
reassuringly, and they were drops of genuine commiseration that drenched
the girl's cheeks while she listened.
“I have nothing to forgive you! You have been all kindness and
consideration--I ought not to have asked questions, but I believed
myself when I boasted of my strength. I thought the bitterness of the
heart's death had passed. Now, I know I never despaired before! Great
Heavens! how I loved that woman! and this is the end!”
He walked to the other side of the room.
Rosa durst not follow him even with her eyes. She sat, her face
concealed by her handkerchief, weeping many tears for him--more for
herself, until she heard his step close beside her, and he seated
himself upon her sofa.
“Rosa! dear friend! my sympathizing little sister! I shall not readily
gain my own pardon for having distressed you so sorely. When you can do
it with comparative ease to yourself, I want you to tell me one or
two things more, and then we will never allude to irreparable bygones
again.”
“I am ready!” removing her soaked cambric, and forcing a fluttering
smile that might show how composed she was; “don't think of me! I was
only grieved for your sake, and sorry because I had unwittingly hurt
you. I was in hopes--I imagined--”
“That I had ontlived my disappointment? You said, that same September
day, that women hid their green wounds in sewing rooms and oratories.
Mine should have been cauterized long ago, by other and harsher means,
you think. It seldom bleeds--but tonight, I had not time to ward off the
point of the knife and it touched a raw spot. Don't let me frighten you!
now that the worst is upon me, I must be calmer presently. You were
at Ridgeley, in September, a year since, when she who was then Miss
Aylett”--compelling himself to the articulation of the sentence that
signified the later change--“received her brother's command to reject
me?”
“I was.”
“He would never tell me upon what evil report his prohibition was based.
He was more communicative with his sister, I suppose?”
And Rosa, following the example of other women--and men--who vaunt their
principles more highly than she did hers, made a frank disclosure of
part of the truth and held her tongue as to the rest.
“I couldn't help seeing that something was wrong, for Mabel, who, up to
the receipt of her brother's letter and one from you that came by the
same mail, had been very cheerful and talkative, suddenly grew more
serious and reserved than was her habit at any time; but she told me
nothing whatever, never mentioned your name again in my hearing. Mrs.
Sutton did hint to me her fear that Mr. Aylett had heard something
prejudicial to your character, which had greatly displeased him and
shocked Mabel, but even she was unaccountably reticent. Intense as was
my anxiety to learn the particulars of the story, and upon what evidence
they were induced to believe it, I dared not press my inquiry into what
it was plain they intended to guard as a family secret.”
His reply was just what she had foreseen and guarded against.
“It would have been a kind and worthy deed, had you written to warn me
of my danger, and advised me to make my defence in person. As it was,
I was thrown off roughly and pitilessly--my demand upon the brother
for the particulars of the accusation against me--my appeal to the
sister--loving and earnest as words could make it--for permission to
visit her and learn from her own lips that she trusted or disowned me,
were alike disregarded. Mr. Aylett's response was a second letter, more
coldly insulting than the first--hers, the return of my last, after she
had opened and read it, then the surrender of my gifts, letters, notes,
everything that could remind her that we had ever met and loved.
Mrs. Sutton, too, my father's old and firm friend, deserted me in my
extremity. And she must have been acquainted with the character and
extent of the charges preferred against me. I had hoped better things
from her, if only because I bear her dead husband's name. Did she never
speak in your hearing of writing to me?”
“She did--but said, in the next breath, that it would be useless, since
the minds of the others were fully made up. I knew she thought Winston
arbitrary, and Mabel credulous; but she was afraid to interfere. As for
myself, what could I have told you that you had not already heard? I
could only hope that the cloud was not heavy, and would soon blow over.
From the hour in which it cast the first shadow upon her, Mabel was
estranged from me--the decline of our intimacy commenced. The Ayletts
take pride in keeping their own counsel. Winston, who never liked me,
and whom I detested, was as confidential with me in this affair as my
old playfellow and school-mate. Believe me when I declare that if my
intercession could have availed aught with her, I would have run the
risk of her displeasure and Winston's anathemas by offering it.”
“I do believe you! Nor need you expatiate to me upon the obduracy of the
Aylett pride. Surely, no one living has more reason than I to comprehend
how unreasoning and implacable I find it is. I looked for injustice at
Winston Aylett's hands. I read him truly in our only private interview.
Insolent, vain, despotic--wedded to his dogmas, and intolerant of
others' opinion, he disliked me because I refused to play the obedient
vassal to his will and requirements; stood upright as one man should in
the presence of a brother-mortal, instead of cringing at his lordship's
footstool. But he was powerless to do more than annoy me without his
sister's co-operation.”
“She stood in great, almost slavish, awe of him,” urged Rosa, in
extenuation of Mabel's infidelity.
“Aye!” savagely. “And love was not strong enough to cast out fear! She
was justifiable if she hesitated to entrust herself and her happiness
to the keeping of one she had known but two months. It was prudent--not
false--in her to weigh, to the finest grain, the evidence furnished by
her brother to prove my unfitness to be her husband. But having done
all this, she should have remembered that I had rights also. It was
infamous, cowardly, cruel beyond degree, to cast her vote against
me without giving me a chance of self-exculpation. Her hand--not
his--struck the dagger into my back!”
Again Rosa's fingers involuntarily (?) stole into his, to recall him to
a knowledge of where he was, and there were fresh tears, ready to fall
from her gazelle eyes, when his agitation began to subside.
“My poor child!” he said, penitently. “I am behaving like a madman, you
like a pitying angel! We will have no more scenes, and you must oblige
me by forgetting this one, as fast as may be. From to-night Mabel Aylett
is to me as if she had never been. To nobody except yourself have
I betrayed the secret of my hurt. After this, when you think of it,
believe that it is a hurt no longer.”
Rosa “had out” her fit of crying when he went away, betaking herself to
her chamber and locking the door that her aunt might not surprise her
while the traces of tears disfigured her cheeks. But she was anything
but broken-hearted, and only slightly sore in spirit in the retrospect
of what had ensued upon her communication to the discarded lover. He
had, indeed, given more evidence of his unconquered passion for Mabel
than she had expected. His undisguised pleasure in renewed companionship
with herself; his excellent spirits during the greater part of the
evening; his unembarrassed reply to her aunt's malapropos observation,
and fluent chat upon other themes, had misled her into the hope that
the ungenerous and uncivil conduct of the Ayletts had disgusted
and alienated him from sister, no less than from brother. It was
a disappointment to discover that it cost him a terrible effort to
pronounce Mabel's name, while the abrupt intelligence of her marriage
had distracted him to incoherent ravings, which had nearly amounted to
curses upon the authors of his pain.
“And all for a woman who could bring herself, after being engaged
to Frederic Chilton, to marry that dolt of a Dorrance!” she said,
indignantly. “I wonder if he would have been consoled or chagrined had
I painted the portrait of the man who had superseded him. It is as well
that I did not make the experiment. He would be magnanimous enough when
he cooled down--which he will do by to-morrow morning--to pity her, and
that is next to the last thing I want him to do. Thank goodness! the
denouement is over, and the topic an interdicted one from this time
forth. Now for the verification or refutation of the saying that a heart
is most easily caught in the rebound. There was some jargon we
learned at school about the angle of incidence being equal to that of
reflection. You see, my dearly beloved self,” nodding with returning
sauciness at her image in the mirror before which she was combing
her hair, “I undertake this business in the spirit of philosophical
investigation.”
She needed to keep her courage up by these and the like whimsical
conceits, when the forenoon of the next day passed away without a
glimpse of Mr. Chilton. He had not yet left his card for the Masons, nor
called to inquire after her health, when the summons sounded to the five
o'clock dinner. A horrible apprehension seized and devoured her heart
by the time the dessert was brought on, and there were no signs of his
appearance. He had, ashamed to meet her after last night's exposure of
his weakness, or dreading the power of the reminiscences the sight of
her would awaken, left the city without coming to say “Farewell.” That
is, she had driven him from her forever!
The room went around with her in a dizzy waltz, as the notion crossed
her brain.
“The sight and smell of all these sweets make me sick, Aunt Mary,” she
said, rising from the table. “My head aches awfully! May I go to my room
and lie down?”
“Try some of this nice lemon-ice, my love!” prescribed the plump matron.
“The acid will set you all straight. No? You don't think you are going
to have a chill, do you? Father!” nudging her husband who was burying
his spoon in a Charlotte Russe, “this dear child doesn't want any
dessert. Won't you pilot her through the crowd?”
“Only to the door, uncle! Then come back to your dinner!” Rosa made
answer to his disconcerted stare. “I can find my way to my chamber
without help.”
She could have done it, had she been in possession of her accustomed
faculties. But between the harrowing suspicion that engrossed her mind
and the nervous moisture that gathered in her eyes with each step,
she mounted a story too high, and did not perceive her blunder until,
happening to think that her apartment must lie somewhere in the region
she had gained, she consulted the numbers upon the adjacent doors, and
saw that she had wandered a hundred rooms out of her way, She stopped
short to consider which of the corridors, stretching in gas-lit vistas
on either hand, would conduct her soonest to the desired haven, when
a gentleman emerging from a chamber close by stepped directly upon her
train.