GIRDING ON THE HARNESS.
Later that same morning a gentleman calling upon Mistress Katie Archdale
was told that he would find her with friends in the garden. Walking
through the paths with a leisurely step which the impatience of his mood
chafed against, he came upon a picture that he never forgot.
Great stretches of sunshine lay on the garden and in it brilliant beds
of flowers glowed with their richest lights, poppies folded their
gorgeous robes closely about them, Arab fashion, to keep out the heat;
hollyhocks stood in their stateliness flecked with changing shadows from
the aspen tree near by. Beds of tiger lilies, pinks, larkspur,
sweetwilliams, canterbury bells, primroses, gillyflowers, lobelia,
bloomed in a luxuriance that the methodical box which bordered them
could not restrain. But the garden was by no means a blaze of sunshine,
for ash trees, maples, elms, and varieties of the pine were there.
Trumpet-vines climbed on the wall, and overtopping that, caught at
trellises prepared to receive them, and formed screens of shadows that
flickered in every breeze and changed their places with the changing
sun. But it was only with a passing glance that the visitor saw these
things, his eyes were fixed upon an arbor at the end of the garden; it
was covered with clematis, while two great elms met overhead at its
entrance and shaded the path to it for a little distance. Under these
elms stood a group of young people. He was unannounced, and had
opportunity without being himself perceived, to scan this little group
as he went forward. His expression varied with each member of it, but
showed an interest of some sort in each. Now it was full of passionate
delight; then it changed as his look fell upon a tall young man with
dark eyes and a bearing that in its most gracious moments seemed unable
to lose a touch of haughtiness, but whose face now was alive with a
restful joy. The gazer, as he perceived this happiness, so wanting in
himself, scowled with a bitter hate and looked instantly toward another
of the party, this time with an expression of triumph. At the fourth and
last member of the group his glance though scowling, was contemptuous;
but the receiver was as unconscious of contempt as he felt undeserving
of it. From him the gazer's eyes returned to the person at whom he had
first looked. She was standing on the step of the arbor, an end of the
clematis vine swaying lightly back and forth over her head, and almost
touching her bright hair which was now towered high in the fashion of
the day. She was holding a spray of the vine in her hand. She had
fastened one end in the hair of a young lady who stood beside her, and
was now bringing the other about her neck, arranging the leaves and
flowers with skilful touches. Three men, including the new-comer,
watched her pretty air of absorption, and the deftness of her taper
fingers, the sweep of her dark lashes on her cheek as from the height of
her step she looked down at her companion, the curves of her beautiful
mouth that at the moment was daintly holding a pin with which the end of
the spray was to be fastened upon the front of the other's white dress.
It was certainly effective there. Yet none of the three men noticed
this, or saw that between the two girls the question as to beauty was a
question of time, that while the one face was blooming now in the
perfection of its charm, the charm of the other was still in its calyx.
The adorner intuitively felt something of this. Perhaps she was not the
less fond of her friend that the charms she saw in her were not patent
to everybody. Bring her forward as much as she might, Katie felt that
Elizabeth Royal would never be a rival. She even shrank from this kind
of prominence into which Katie's play was bringing her now. She had been
taken in hand at unawares and showed an impatience that if the other
were not quick, would oblige her to leave the work unfinished.
"There," cried Katie, at last giving the leaves a final pat of
arrangement, "that looks well, don't you think so, Master Waldo?"
"Good morning, Mistress Archdale," broke in a voice before Waldo could
answer. "And you, Mistress Royal," bowing low to her. "After our late
hours last night, permit me to felicitate you upon your good health this
morning, and--" he was about to add, "your charming appearance," but
something in the girl's eyes as she looked full at him held back the
words, and for a moment ruffled his smooth assurance. But as he
recovered himself and turned to salute the gentlemen, the smile on his
lips had triumph through its vexation.
"My proud lady, keep your pride a little longer," he said to himself.
And as he bowed to Stephen Archdale with a dignity as great as Stephen's
own, he was thinking: "My morning in that hot office has not been in
vain. I know your weak point now, my lofty fellow, and it is there that
I will undermine you. You detest business, indeed! John Archdale feels
that with his only son in England studying for the ministry he needs a
son-in-law in partnership with him. The thousands which I have been
putting into his business this morning are well spent, they make me
welcome here. Yes, your uncle needs me, Stephen Archdale, for your
clever papa is not always brotherly in his treatment, he has more than
once brought heavy losses upon the younger firm. It's a part of my
pleasure in prospect that now I shall be able to checkmate him in such
schemes, perhaps to bring back a little of the loss upon the shoulders
of his heir. Ah, I am safer from you than you dream." He turned to
Waldo, and as the two men bowed, they looked at one another steadily.
Each was remembering their conversation the night before over some
Bordeaux in Waldo's room, for they were staying at the same inn and
often spent an hour together. They had drunk sparingly, but, just
returned from their sail, each was filled with Katie Archdale's beauty,
and each had spoken out his purpose plainly, Waldo with an assurance
that, if it savored a little of conceit, was full of manliness, the
other with a half-smothered fierceness of passion that argued danger to
every obstacle in its way.
"You've come at the very right moment, Master Harwin," broke in Katie's
unconscious voice, and she smiled graciously, as she had a habit of
doing at everybody; "We were talking about you not two minutes ago."
"Then I am just in time to save my character."
"Don't be too sure about that," returned Miss Royal.
Waldo laughed, and Katie exchanged glances with him, and smiled
mischievously.
"No, don't be too sure; it will depend upon whether you say 'yes,' or
'no,' to my question. We were wondering something about you."
Harwin's heart sank, though he returned her smile and her glance with
interest. For there were questions she might ask which would
inconvenience him, but they should not embarrass him.
"We were wondering," pursued Katie, "if you had ever been presented.
Have you?"
As the sun breaks out from a heavy cloud, the light returned to Harwin's
blue eyes.
"Yes," he said, "four years ago. I went to court with my uncle, Sir
Rydal Harwin, and his majesty was gracious enough to nod in answer to my
profound reverence."
"It was a very brilliant scene, I am sure, and very interesting."
"Deeply interesting," returned Harwin with all the traditional respect
of an Englishman for his sovereign. Archdale's lip curled a trifle at
what seemed to him obsequiousness, but Harwin was not looking at him.
"Stephen has been," pursued Katie, "and he says it was very fine, but
for all that he does not seem to care at all about it. He says he would
rather go off for a day's hunting any time. The ladies looked charming,
he said, and the gentlemen magnificent; but he was bored to death, for
all that."
"In order to appreciate it fully," returned Archdale, "it would be
necessary that one should be majesty." He straightened himself as he
spoke, and looked at Harwin with such gravity that the latter, meeting
the light of his eyes, was puzzled whether this was jest or earnest,
until Miss Royal's laugh relieved his uncertainty. Katie laid her hand
on the speaker's arm and shook it lightly.
"You told me I should be sure to enjoy it," she said. "Now, what do you
mean?"
"Ah! but you would be queen," said Harwin, "queen in your own right, a
divine right of beauty that no one can resist."
Katie looked at him, disposed for a moment to be angry, but her love of
admiration could not resist the worship of his eyes, and the lips
prepared to pout curved into a smile not less bewitching that the
brightness of anger was still in her cheeks. Archdale and Waldo turned
indignant glances on the speaker, but it was manifestly absurd to resent
a speech that pleased the object of it, and that each secretly felt
would not have sounded ill if he had made it himself. Elizabeth looked
from Katie to Harwin with eyes that endorsed his assertion, and as the
latter read her expression his scornful wonder in the boat returned.
"Why are we all standing outside in the heat?" cried the hostess. "Let
us go into the arbor, there is plenty of room to move about there, we
have had a dozen together in it many a time." She passed in under the
arch as she spoke, and the others followed her. There in her own way
which was not so very witty or wise, and yet was very charming, she held
her little court, and the three men who had been in love with her at the
beginning of the hour were still more in love at the end of it. And
Elizabeth who watched her with an admiration as deep as their's, if more
tranquil, did not wonder that it was so. Katie did not forget her, nor
did the gentlemen, or at least two of them, forget to be courteous, but
if she had known what became of the spray of clematis which being in the
way as she turned her head, she had soon unfastened and let slip to the
ground, she would not have wondered, nor would she have cared. If she
had seen Archdale's heel crush it unheedingly as he passed out of the
arbor, the beat of her pulses would never have varied.