"My dear Hubert," said Mrs. Vane, "if you cannot see what is the matter
with Enid, you must be blind indeed!"
"Why should I see what is the matter with her more than anybody else?"
asked Hubert, who was moving restlessly from place to place, now halting
before the window of his sister's sitting-room, now plucking a leaf from
one of the flowering plants in a gilded _etagere_, now teasing the white
cockatoo in its fine cage, or stirring up the spaniel with the tip of
his boot. All the teasing was good-naturedly done, and provoked no
rancour in the mind of bird or beast; but it showed an unwonted
excitement of feeling on his part, and was observed by his sister with a
slightly ironical smile.
"If you will sit still for a little while, I will tell you perhaps," she
said; "but, so long as you stray round the room in that aimless manner,
I shall keep my communications to myself."
"I beg your pardon; I did not know that I was disturbing you. Well,"
said Hubert, seating himself resolutely in a chair near her own, and
devoting his attention apparently to the dissection of a spray of
scented geranium-leaf, "tell me what is the matter, and I will listen
discreetly. I am really concerned about Enid; she is neither well nor
happy."
"Did she tell you so?"
"It is easy to be seen that she is not well," said Hubert, a very slight
smile curving his lips under the heavy dark moustache as he looked down
at the leaf which he was twisting in his hand; "and I think her
unhappiness is quite as obvious. What is it, Flossy? You ought to know.
You are the girl's chaperon, adviser, friend, or whatever you like to
call it; you stand in the place----"
He stopped abruptly. He forgot sometimes that ghastly story of his
sister's earlier life; sometimes it came back to him with hideous
distinctness. At that moment he did not like to say to Flossy, "You
stand in her mother's place." And yet it was the truth. Had it been for
Enid's good or harm, he suddenly wondered, that Florence had become the
General's wife?
"I understand what you mean," said Flossy quite sweetly, though there
was no very amiable look in her velvety-brown eyes. "I assure you that I
should be very glad to make more of a friend of Enid if she would allow
me; but she does not like me."
"Instinct!" thought Hubert involuntarily, but he did not say it aloud.
With the extraordinary quickness, however, which Florence occasionally
showed, she divined the purport of his reflection almost at once.
"You think, no doubt, that it is natural," she said; "but I do not agree
with you. Enid has no great penetration; she has never been able to read
my character--which, after all, is not so bad as you imagine."
"I do not imagine anything about it; I do not think it bad," Hubert
interposed rather hurriedly. "You have changed very much. But have we
not agreed to let old histories alone?"
"I did not intend to revive them. I meant only to assure you that Enid
has met with the tenderest care and guidance from me--as far, at least,
as it lay in me to give it to her, and whenever she would accept it."
"You make two very important reservations."
"I know I do, but I cannot help it. I was never devotedly fond of
children, and I was once Enid's governess. I do not think that she ever
forgets that fact."
"Well, come to the point," said Hubert, rather impatiently. "What is the
matter with her now?"
Florence laughed softly, and eyed him over her fan. She always used a
fan, even in the depth of winter--and indeed her boudoir was so
luxuriously warm and fragrant that it did not there seem out of place.
She was wearing a loose tea-gown of peacock-blue plush over a satin
petticoat of the palest rose-color--a daring combination which she had
managed to harmonise extremely well--and the fan which she now held to
her mouth was of pale rose-colored feathers. As Hubert looked at her and
waited for his answer, he was struck by two things--first by the
choiceness and beauty of her surroundings, and secondly by the fatigued
expression of her eyes, which were set in hollows of purple shadows, and
almost veiled by lids which had the faintly reddened tint which comes of
wakefulness at night.
"I shall next ask what is the matter with you," he said. "You really do
not look well, Florence!"
"Do I not?" She laid down her fan, took up a hand-glass set in silver
from a table at her side, and studied her face in the mirror for a few
seconds with some intentness. "You are right," she said, when she put it
down; "I am growing hatefully old and haggard and ugly. What can one do?
Would a winter in the South give me back my good looks, do you think?
Perhaps I had better consult a doctor when I go up to town. I am not so
old yet that I need lose all my 'beauty,' as people used to call it, am
I?"
"Why do you care so much?" Hubert asked. He fancied that there was
something deeper in her anxiety than the mere vanity of a pretty woman
whose youth was fast fleeting away.
"Why does every woman care? For my husband's sake, of course," she
answered, with a slight laugh, but a look of carking care and pain in
her haggard eyes. "If I leave off looking pretty and bright, how am I to
know that he will care for me any longer? And, if not----"
"If not! You are a mystery to me, Florence; you never professed before
to trouble yourself about your husband's love."
"If I am a mystery, you are a perfect baby, my dear boy--I might almost
say a perfect fool--in some respects. If he ceases to love me, he--don't
you know that he may still leave me penniless? I had no settlements."
Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she said the words.
"Is that it?" said Hubert coldly. "I did not give you credit for so much
worldly wisdom, Flossy. If that is your view of the case, I wonder that
you do not pay a little more attention to the General's wishes
sometimes. I have seen you treat him with very little consideration."
"He is so wearisome! One cannot always be on one's good behavior,"
Flossy murmured; "and, as long as one looks nice and gives him a word or
two now and then, just to keep him in good-humor----"
"So long, you think, he will be kind to you? Florence, you do not
understand the General's really noble nature. He is incapable of
unkindness to any living soul--least of all capable of it to you, whom
he loves so dearly. Do try to appreciate him a little more! He is
devoted to you, both as his wife and as the mother of his child." He
could not tell why she turned her head aside with a sharp gesture of
annoyance.
"The child--always the child!" she exclaimed. "I wish I had never had a
child at all!"
"We are straying from the point," said her brother coldly; "and we can
do no good by discussing your relations with your husband. I want to
know--as you say you can tell me--why Enid looks so ill."
Flossy took up her fan and began to examine the tips of the feathers.
"There is only one reason," she said slowly, "why a girl ever looks like
that. Only one thing turns a girl of seventeen into a drooping,
die-away, lackadaisical creature, such as Enid is just now."
"Speak kindly of her, at any rate," said Hubert. "She is a woman like
yourself, and there is only one interpretation to be put upon your
words."
"Naturally. You, as a novelist, dramatist, and poet, must know it well
enough," said his sister calmly. "Well, remember that you have insisted
on my telling you. Enid is in love. That is all. Nothing to make such a
fuss about it, is it?"
Hubert was silent for a minute or two. His brow was contracted, as if
with vexation or deep thought. Then he said abruptly--
"I suppose it's that good-looking parson in the village. There's no
other man whom she seems to know so well. I cannot say that you have
taken very great care of her, Florence."
"Are you really blind, or are you pretending?" said Mrs. Vane, looking
at him with calm curiosity, "You are not quite such a fool as you make
yourself out to be, are you? My dear Hubert, are you not aware that you
are a singularly handsome and attractive man, and that you have laid
siege to the poor child's heart ever since your first arrival here last
autumn?"
Hubert started from his seat as if he had been stung.
"Impossible!" he cried.
"Not at all impossible. She has seen few men in her short life--she has
been very carefully guarded, in spite of your sneer at my want of
caution--and the attentions of a man like yourself were quite new to
her. What could you expect?"
"Attentions!" groaned Hubert. "I never paid her any attentions, save as
a cousin and a friend."
"Exactly; but she did not understand."
There was a short silence. He stood with his arm on the mantelpiece,
looking through the window at the snow-covered landscape outside. His
face had turned pale, and his lips were firmly set. Presently he said,
in a low tone--
"You must be mistaken. Surely she can never have let you know what her
feelings are on such a point? You say that she does not confide in you.
How can you know?"
"There are other ways of reading a girl's heart as well as a man's
coarse way of having everything in black and white," said Flossy
composedly. "I am sure of it. She is in love with you, and that is why
she looks so ill."
"It must not be! You must let her know--gently, but decidedly--that I am
not the man for her--that there is an unsurmountable barrier between
us."
"What is it? Are you married already?"
"Florence"--there was a sound of anguish in his voice, "how could I
marry a girl whose father I----"
"Hush, hush! For mercy's sake, be quiet! You should never say such
things--never think them even. Walls have ears sometimes, and spoken
words cannot be recalled. Never say that, even to me. At the same time,
I do not see the obstacle."
"Florence! Well, I might expect it from you. You have married Sydney
Vane's brother!"
She did not wince. She sat steadily regarding him over the tips of her
rose-colored feather fan.
"And you," she said, "will marry Sydney Vane's daughter."
"God keep me from committing such a sin!"
"Hubert, this is mere sentimental folly," said his sister, with some
earnestness.
"We have both made up our minds that the past is dead--why do you at
every moment rake up its ashes?"
"It is in some ways unfortunate that Enid should have chosen to love
you; but, as the matter stands, I cannot see that you have any other
choice than to marry her."
"What on earth makes you say so?"
"I thought that you would go through a good deal of unpleasantness for
the sake of saving her from trouble. You have said as much."
"I have no right to save her from anything. She must forget me."
"That is sheer nonsense--cowardly nonsense too!" said Mrs. Vane. "If
Enid were on the brink of a precipice, would you hesitate to draw her
back? I tell you that she is breaking her heart for you, and that, if
you are free to marry, and not inordinately selfish, your only way out
of the difficulty is to marry her."
"She would get over it."
"No; she would die as her mother died--of a broken heart."
"You can speak so calmly, remembering who killed her mother--for what
you and I are responsible!"
"Look, Hubert--if you cannot speak calmly yourself, you had better not
speak at all. You seem to think that I am cold and callous. I suppose I
am; and yet I am more anxious in this matter to keep Enid from grief and
pain than you seem to be. I do not like to see her looking pale and
sad. I would do anything within my power to help her, and I thought--I
thought that you would do the same. It seems that you shrink from the
task."
"It is so horrible--so unnatural! How can I ask her to be mine--I, with
my hands stained----"
"Hush! I will not have you say those words! We both know--if we are to
speak of the past--that it was an honorable contest enough--a fair
fight--a meeting such as no man of honor could refuse. You would have
fallen if he had not. It is purely morbid, this brooding over the
consequences of your actions. Everybody who knew the circumstances would
have said that you were in the right. I say it myself, although at my
own cost. To marry Enid now because she loves you will be the only way
you can take to repair the harm that was done in the past and to shield
her for the future."
It was not often that Florence spoke so long or so energetically; and
Hubert, in spite of his revolt of feeling at the prospect held out to
him, was impressed by her words. After a few moments' silence, he sat
down again and began to argue the matter with her from every possible
point of view. He told her it was probable that Enid did not know her
own mind; that she would be miserable if she married a man who could not
love her; that the whole world would cry shame on him if it ever learned
the circumstances of her father's death; that Enid herself would be the
first to reproach him, and would indeed bitterly hate him if she ever
knew.
"If she ever knew--if the world ever knew!" said Florence scornfully.
Hitherto she had been very quiet and let her brother say his say. "As if
she or the world were ever going to know! There is no way in which the
truth can be known unless one of us tells it; and I ask you, is that a
thing that either of us is very likely to do? It would mean social ruin
for us--utter and irretrievable ruin! If we only hold our tongues, Enid
and the world will never know."
"That is true," he answered moodily; and then he sat so long in one
position, with his arms crossed on his breast; and his eyes fixed on
vacancy, that Florence asked him with some curiosity of what he was
thinking.
"I was wondering," he said, "whether that poor wretch Westwood found his
undeserved punishment more galling than I sometimes find the bonds of
secrecy and falsehood and dishonor that bind me now. He at any rate has
gained his freedom; but I am in bondage still. I have my sentence--a
life sentence--to work out."
"He is free now, certainly," Florence answered, with an odd intonation
of her voice; "so I do not think that you need trouble yourself about
him. Think of Enid rather, and of her needs."
"Free? Yes--he is dead," said Hubert quickly, replying to something in
her tone rather than to her words. "He died as I told you--some time
ago."
"You read it in the newspaper?"
"Yes."
"And you never saw that next day the report of his death was
contradicted?"
"Florence, what do you mean?"
"You went away from England just then with a mind at ease, did you not?
But I was here, with nothing to do but to think and brood and read; and
I read more than that. There were two men named Westwood at Portland,
and the one who died--as was stated in next day's paper--was not the one
we knew."
"And he is in prison all this time? Don't you see that that makes my
guilt the worse--brings back all the intolerable burden, renders it
simply impossible that I should ever make an innocent girl happy?" His
voice was hoarse, and the veins upon his forehead stood out like knotted
cords.
"Sit down," said Flossy calmly, "and listen to me. I have an odd story
to tell you. The man of whom we speak managed to do what scarcely
another convict has done in recent times--he escaped. He nearly killed
the warder in his flight, but not quite--so that counts for nothing. It
is rumored that he reached America, where he is living contentedly in
the backwoods. I can show you the newspaper account of his escape. I
thought," she added a little cynically, "that it might relieve your mind
to hear of it; but it does not seem to do so. I fancied that you would
be glad. Would you rather that he were dead?"
"No, no; Heaven knows that I rejoice in his escape!" cried her brother,
sitting down again with his forehead bowed upon his clasped hands and
his elbows on his knees. "I have blood-guiltiness enough already upon my
soul. Glad? I am so glad, Florence, that I can almost dare to thank God
that Westwood is alive and has escaped. I--I shall never escape!"