CONFIDENCES AND COMMUNINGS
Irene had not passed a very pleasant evening and was in a bad humor, and
as we entered the house she complained loudly of the condition of her
organdie, which she declared spoiled with the dew, beside having a big
spot of mud upon it.
“I had no business to sit there so long in that damp, poky place. I am
chilled through, and Mr. Travers was just as uncomfortable as I was and
wanted to get away.”
Neither of us answered her, and she said no more until she was in her
room, divesting herself of her limp organdie and wet boots.
“Well!” she began, a little sharply, and Rena, from her room, answered:
“Well?”
Then there was silence until Irene had unbuttoned her boots and kicked
them off across the floor, when she continued:
“What did you think of him?”
After a moment Rena replied:
“It is evident he is not a ladies’ man, but he is a gentleman.”
“He may be a gentleman, but is the most awkward specimen I ever saw,”
Irene rejoined. “Think how he sat in the parlor, with his neck bent
forward in that dreadful chair, and his feet sprawled out in front of
him.”
“That was the fault of the chair,” Rena said, and Irene replied:
“Why didn’t he take another? I tried to have him, and not make such a
spectacle of himself, acting as if looking for some place in which to
hide every time I spoke to him! I call him a muff, a stone, on whom I
could not make the least impression. Small talk! He don’t know the
meaning of the words, and I never spent a more stupid time than I did
sitting there in the woods, trying to make him talk.”
Rena was bathing her face as she listened to this tirade and did not at
once reply. She was rather happy than otherwise. She had made up with
Tom, who had put himself on the same plane with herself in deception,
and Tom’s good opinion was everything to her. He was her dear old Tom
again, although it did not seem to her she could use that term as freely
as she once had done. She could say it to herself and think it, but
there had come over her a change removing Tom from her in one way and
bringing him nearer to her in another, and the change had been brought
about by contrasting him with Reginald Travers. She had watched the
latter very closely. Nothing had escaped her, and while saying to
herself, “I never could have loved him,” she had mentally made excuses
for what seemed shy and awkward in him, and had felt a pity for him that
he was being deceived, and a contempt for herself for deceiving him.
“Tom was right; he is not the man to be tricked,” she thought, while the
peculiar relation in which she stood to him made her wish to defend him
against Irene’s attacks.
“He is certainly a gentleman,” she repeated. “Not as handsome as Tom, of
course; few men are; but still good-looking. Naturally he would be
nervous under the circumstances. He will appear better by and by, and I
really do not dislike him as I thought I should, but I wish that horrid
will had never been made, or being made that I had been left out of it
or you put in my place.”
“I!” and Irene spoke scornfully. “Haven’t I told you that I made no more
impression upon him than if he had been a stone? He was all the time
wanting to get up and run away when we were sitting under the pines. He
did show some concern when I stood by the well. I wish I had thrown
myself in. I would if I had been sure of not being drowned. I am not
quite ready yet to go after Nannie.”
Why Irene should be in such a temper Rena could not understand. For
herself it did not matter what Mr. Travers was, or how he appeared. He
could never be anything to her. She had settled that before she saw him,
and the conviction had been strengthened when she walked and sat with
Tom in the moonlight. There was but one man in the world for her and
that was Tom, she thought, as she bade Irene good-night, and left the
young lady stalking about her room like a restless spirit. She did not
think as badly of Reginald as she had pretended, and had ridiculed him
to Rena with a view to disenchant her should she by any chance fancy
him. He was bashful and awkward in many respects, and seemingly wholly
impervious to her charms, and that irritated her. “But I’ll conquer yet,
I am resolved,” she said to herself as she sat down in her dressing-gown
by the open window and looked across the fields to the hill or plateau
on which the McPherson house stood. She could see its tower and chimneys
and roof and felt sure it was a palace compared with the house in
Claremont, with its ceilings so low that she could almost touch them as
she walked. How she hated it, with all its dull routine of duties, its
sweeping and dusting and dish-washing three times every day, and its
terrible Monday’s wash, and Tuesday’s ironing, and Wednesday’s baking.
“Ugh!” she said, going over with the list which her hard-worked mother
was left so often to struggle with alone, while she was enjoying herself
in Europe and elsewhere. “I’ll get out of it, and through Mr. Travers,
if possible, no matter how cold and stiff he is, and proud. I wonder
what he would say if he knew I had once been a factory bug! It was
horrid—the time I worked there—up in the cold wintry mornings before
light—and hurrying for fear I should be late and docked—I am worthy of a
better position and I will have it, too—and this proud Reginald Travers
shall yet make love to me or my name is not Irene.”
Just what the probability was of Reginald’s ever owning the McPherson
place she was not quite sure. That part of the will was a little hazy in
her mind, except the fact that in any event Mr. Travers was to have ten
thousand dollars of old Sandy’s money. “That is something with what he
already has,” she said, “and he is worth trying for. He was not pleased
with me and would a great deal rather have talked with Rena. I saw it
and felt it, but I’ll make him care for me, or at least go so far in his
attentions that when he learns his mistake and how much I am interested,
he will have too much honor to give me up, especially as there is no
hope of Rena. I was rather too forward, perhaps, to-night, to suit his
prudish views. Hereafter Barkis will not be quite as _willin’_. I’ll try
Rena’s kittenish ways, though it will be something like a cat aping the
pranks of its offspring.”
She laughed as she thought this, and then, conscious that she was
growing cold, she cast a last look at the tower and roof of the
McPherson place, and kissing her hand to it said softly:
“Good-night, my dear. Sleep well. You will find an Irene _à la Rena_
next time we meet.”
“Did you speak?” Rena asked, rousing up, and Irene replied:
“I said ‘good-night, my dear,’ that’s all.”
“Good-night,” Rena answered, drowsily, while Irene crept to bed and fell
asleep with the thought in her mind: “This is the chance of my life and
I shall improve it.”
Meanwhile at the McPherson place there were half confidences exchanged
between the young men and secret communings on the part of both. There
had been comparative silence on the way home, Reginald keeping in
advance of Tom, who tried in vain to keep up.
“Looks as if he were running away from somebody,” Tom thought, and once
he called out: “Don’t go so fast. There’s nobody behind you but me.”
Rex did not answer, but kept on until they reached the house, when he
went at once to his room. Tom stayed outside and lighting a cigar sat
down upon the piazza to enjoy the beauty of the night and think of
Rena’s eyes as they looked at him under the pines and feel in fancy the
touch of her fingers as she brushed his sleeve and picked a pine-needle
from his neck.
“I believe she is coming to time,” he thought, “and if it were not for
this infernal will business she’d soon be where I could speak again. But
I know Rena. She’s got it in her little wilful head that she must study
Rex, or some such nonsense. Then there is this confounded farce with
Irene posing as Rena, and Rena as Irene, and I looking on and
compounding a felony and beginning not to care after all my high and
mighty protests against it. I don’t believe I want to break it up now,
for, by George! Rex would go in strong for Rena, if he knew she was the
one. I saw his eyes shine two or three times when she was talking, while
Irene never moved him any more than a fly moves an elephant when it
lights on him. I know what she is up to. She means to make him so much
in love that when he finds his mistake he’ll stick to her, as he would,
if he were half-way interested and thought she cared. That’s Rex. Poor
Rex, I shall have to go down on my knees to him yet. I wonder if he has
gone to bed.”
Going to the door of Rex’s room he knocked and then entered
unceremoniously. Rex was standing with his back to him removing his coat
and vest and did not at once look round.
“I won’t keep you up more than a minute,” Tom said, “I just wanted to
know what you thought of the girls. You hurried home so fast I couldn’t
ask you. Isn’t Irene a stunner?”
“Why, yes,” Reginald replied, putting on the vest he had just taken off.
“She nearly took my wits away. I never had many, you know, and I believe
I was more stupid than usual to-night. Why, I didn’t know anything when
Miss Burdick’s eyes were on me, and it was worse with the little one,
Rena you call her. I caught her looking at me a great deal. Why did she,
I wonder, do you know?”
Tom laughed and said:
“A cat may look at a king. Perhaps Rena admired you. Irene did, I am
sure. I saw it in her eyes. They are very handsome.”
“Yes,” Rex said, “very handsome and sharp to see through a fellow and I
never felt so small in my life, or appeared so badly as to-night,
sitting in that abominable chair in that hot room, and again under the
pines on a damp board. I could not be myself. Did Rena notice it, or say
anything about it?”
“Upon my word he is getting a good deal rattled,” Tom thought, as Rex
removed his vest a second time and began to put it on again wrong side
out. “See here,” he said, “something has made bad work with what few
brains you have. You’d better go to bed. No, Rena said nothing about
you. Why should she? Good-night.”
“Good-night,” Rex responded, then added hastily, “eh, Tom——”
“Well, what is it? Hurry up. I’m half asleep,” Tom answered, with a
feeling that Rex was about to speak of the will, in which case he felt
that he should tell the truth at all hazards.
Just for a minute it had crossed Rex’s mind to make Tom his confidant,
and had he been encouraged he might have done so. But Tom’s answer was
not inviting, and he replied:
“Nothing—that is, nothing much; it will keep. Good-night again.”
He closed the door upon Tom, and long after that young man was asleep
and dreaming of Rena, he sat by his window, looking across the fields in
the direction of Mrs. Parks’ house, just as Irene was looking across the
fields toward the McPherson place. He had been anxious to see the girl
selected for him by Sandy McPherson and had determined to like her, if
possible. In fact he had a kind of morbid idea that it was his duty to
like her, if she seemed to care for him. There had been no doubt in his
mind as to which was the one. The will had said distinctly Irene
Burdick, not Rena, and he had accepted Irene without questioning, or a
thought that he was mistaken. Tom had prepared him somewhat for Irene’s
beauty, but not altogether. He had seen a great many pretty girls north
and south, but never one like her. She had thought him shy and
indifferent, and he was all that, but nothing about her had escaped him,
and her face and figure came up distinctly before him as he sat by his
window, coatless and half undressed, but never thinking of the wind
which was blowing up from the sea.
“She is superb,” he thought. “Perfect in form and feature, a little too
tall, with too much hair on the top of her head. Splendid hair, though.
I wonder how she would look with it down. She carries herself like a
queen, and there is no one in Richmond to compare with her, but there
was something somewhere, I don’t know what, which rasped—yes, that’s the
word—rasped my nerves like a file. Now the little one rested me and I
rather liked meeting her eyes, which are more like Nannie’s than Miss
Irene’s. I believe I could—no, I don’t believe I could, either. I was
never cut out to marry any one, never meant to, and don’t know as I mean
to now. I don’t want to, and I won’t be driven into it, either, just for
money, though that is a consideration, for I have not a very large bank
account and should like a little more, and if this girl should happen to
fancy me, I shall try my best to reciprocate. She did look grand,
standing on that well curb, with her arm raised like the goddess of
Liberty. She is beautiful and the next time I see her I shall try and be
more like Tom, who well might look happy, with no bewildering will to
worry him, and the little one beside him.”
When an idea or name was lodged in Reginald’s mind it generally stayed
there. Rena was the little one as compared with Irene, and his last
conscious thought as he went shivering to bed was of the little one
whose eyes were like Nannie’s.