What act of Legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy?--CARLYLE.
While Eugene Grandon's anger is at white heat he goes to Madame
Lepelletier and taxes her with betrayed trust. He knows very well that
Marcia could not long keep such a tidbit to herself. Laura is away, and
his mother never has repeated the tale, though to him she has bemoaned
his short-sightedness, the more since the fortune has been certain.
Madame is surprised, dignified, and puts down the young man with the
steel hand in the velvet glove; explaining that Marcia had it from some
other source. There really is nothing detrimental in it to Mrs.
Grandon. A handsome young man of good family may be selected without
insult to _any_ young woman, and to decline a lady you never saw cannot
reflect on the _personale_ of the one under consideration. It seems
rather silly at this late hour to take umbrage.
Eugene cools a little, and admits to himself there is nothing in it
that ought to make Violet miserable, especially since he has confessed
that he would be only too glad to marry her now; and as for the
accusation of flirting, he can soon put an end to that by being sweet
on Lucia Brade for a week or two. But he really _does_ care for Violet,
and no one shall offer her any insult with impunity. He means to go at
Marcia when opportunity offers. Ah! can it be her husband who gave her
the delectable information?
Violet goes to her room and reads her letter, that is tender with the
thought of return, and yet it does not move her. Floyd Grandon is fond
of her; he pitied her desolate condition long ago, and since he did not
need her fortune he took her simply to shield her from trouble and
perplexity. She remembers his grave, fatherly conduct through all that
time; his tenderness was not that of a lover, his consideration sprang
from pity. Yet why was she satisfied then and so crushed now?
Ah! she has eaten of the tree of knowledge; she has grown wise in
love's lore. She has been dreaming that she has had the love, when it
is only a semblance, a counterfeit; not a base one, but still it has
not the genuine ring. He did not esteem her so much at first but that
he could offer her to another, and therein lies the bitter sting to
her. It is not because Eugene cared so little. How could he regard a
stranger he had not seen, if he who had seen her did not care, whose
kindness was so tinctured with indifference? Even if he had wanted her
fortune, she thinks she could forgive it more easily.
She sends word down-stairs presently that there need be no lunch, but
she will have a cup of tea. She throws herself on the bed and shivers
as if it were midwinter. To-night, why even now, he is on his way home;
to-morrow morning she ought to give him a glad welcome. She will be
glad, but not with the light-hearted joy of yesterday; that can never
be hers again. It seems as if she had been tramping along the
sea-shore, gathering at intervals choice pearls for a gift, and now,
when she has them, no friend stands with outstretched hands to take,
and all her labor has been vain. She is so tired, so tired! Her little
hands drop down heavily and the pearls fall out, that is all.
She does not go over to the cottage until quite late, and walks
hurriedly, that it may bring some color to her pale cheeks. Cecil and
Elsie Latimer have come to meet her, and upbraid her for being so
tardy. They have swung in the hammock, they have run and danced and
played, and now Denise has the most magnificent supper on the great
porch outside the kitchen door. But if _she_ could have danced and
ran and played with them!
Mrs. Latimer has a cordial welcome, and Eugene makes his appearance. To
do the young man justice, he is utterly fascinating to the small host.
Violet watches him with a curiously grateful emotion. There is nothing
for her to do, he does it all.
"You are in a new character to-night," declares Mrs. Latimer. "It never
seemed to me that entertaining children was your forte."
"I think you have all undervalued me," he answers, with plaintive
audacity, while a merry light shines in his dark eyes. He _is_ very
handsome, and so jolly and joyous that the children are convulsed with
laughter. They lure him down in the garden afterward for a game of
romps.
"How Eugene Grandon has changed!" says Mrs. Latimer. "He was extremely
moody when Madame Lepelletier first fenced him out a little," and she
smiles. "How odd that so many young men should take their first fancy
to a woman older than themselves!"
"Do they?" says Violet, simply. Somehow she cannot get back to the
world wherein she dwelt yesterday.
"Yes, I have seen numberless instances. Sometimes it makes a good
friendship for after life, but I fancy it will not in this case.
Indeed, I do not believe a man could have a friendship with her, for
there is no middle ground. It is admiration and love. She is the most
fascinating woman I have ever met, and always makes me think of the
queens of the old French _salons_."
Violet answers briefly to the talk. "She is thinking of her husband,"
ruminates Mrs. Latimer. "She is very much in love with him, which is a
good thing, seeing that the young man is disenchanted, and ready to lay
his homage at the feet of another."
It is quite dusk when they start for home. Cecil nestles close to
Violet, who kisses her tenderly. The child's love is above suspicion or
doubt, and very grateful to her aching heart.
"You see," exclaims Eugene, as he hands her out, "that I have begun a
new _rôle_. I love you so sincerely that no idle gossip shall touch you
through me."
The tears come into her eyes for the first time. She longs to cling to
him, to weep as one might on the shoulder of a brother.
The drawing-room is lighted up, and there are two figures within.
"Oh, you are come at last!" says the rather tart voice of Mrs. Grandon,
who has telegraphed to Briggs to meet her at the early evening train,
finding that she has made some earlier connections on her journey. "I
was amazed to find every one away. Ah, my dear Eugene! Cecil, how do
you do?" And she stoops to kiss the child.
"Mrs. Latimer gave a nursery tea-party," explains Eugene, "or garden
party, was it not?"
"Here is my old friend, Mrs. Wilbur," she says. "Tomorrow Mrs. Dayre
and her daughter will be here. Is not Floyd home yet?"
Violet answers the last as she is introduced to Mrs. Wilbur, a pleasant
old lady with a rosy face surrounded by silvery curls.
"What a lovely child!" exclaims Mrs. Wilbur. "Why, she looks something
as Gertrude used, and I thought Gertrude a perfect blond fairy. Have
you not a kiss for me, my dear?"
Cecil is amiable as an angel, won by the mellow, persuasive voice.
Violet excuses herself as soon as possible. She has a headache and does
look deathly pale. Eugene makes himself supremely entertaining, to the
great delight of his mother. It is so new a phase for him to do
anything with direct reference to another person's happiness or
well-being, that he feels comfortably virtuous and heroic. No one shall
make Violet suffer for his sake. What an awful blunder it was _not_ to
marry her, for, after all, Floyd is not really in love with her!
Violet cannot sleep. A strange impulse haunts her, a desire to escape
from the chain, to fly to the bounds of the earth, to bury herself out
of sight, to give up, worsted and discomfited, for there can be no
fight. There is no enemy to attack. It is kindest, tenderest friend who
has offered her a stone for bread, when she did not know the
difference. She recalls her old talks with Denise concerning a wife's
duty and obedience and respect. Ah, how could she have been so
ignorant, or having been blind, why should she see now? That old life
was satisfactory! She never dreamed of anything beyond. But she has
seen the fine gold of love offered upon the altar. John Latimer is no
better, finer, or nobler man than Floyd Grandon, and yet he loves his
wife with so tender a passion that Violet's life looks like prison and
starvation beside it. If she dared go to Floyd Grandon and ask for a
little love! Did he give it all to that regal woman long ago, and does
the ghost of the strangled passion stand between?
She tosses wearily, and is not much refreshed when morning dawns.
Fortunately it is a busy day. Mrs. Dayre, who is a rather youngish
widow of ample means, and who spent her early days at Westbrook, a sort
of elder contemporary of the Grandons and Miss Stanwood, is to come
with her young and pretty daughter, and take her mother with them to
the West. Eugene goes to the station, and finds Miss Bertie Dayre a
very stylish young woman, with an abundance of blond hair, creamy skin,
white teeth, and a dazzling smile. She has been a year in society, the
kind that has made an old campaigner of her already. She is not exactly
fast, but she dallies on the seductive verge and picks out the
daintiest bits of slang. She is seventeen, but looks mature as twenty;
her mother is thirty-six, and could discount the six years easily.
Violet has made friends with Mrs. Wilbur, who finds her old-fashioned
simplicity charming. She helps to receive the new guests, not as much
startled by Miss Dayre as she would have been six months ago. The world
is so different outside of convent walls that it seems sometimes as if
she were in a play, acting a part.
In the midst of this Floyd Grandon arrives. Cecil captures him in
wildest delight. Violet is glad to meet him first before all these
people; alas for love when it longs for no secrecy! She colors and a
sweet light glows in her face, she cannot unlearn her lesson all at
once. Then she is quiet, lady-like, composed. Floyd watches her with a
curious sensation. It is a new air of being mistress, of having a
responsibility.
There certainly is a very gay week at Grandon Park. Bertie Dayre stirs
people into exciting life. She is vivacious, exuberant, has wonderful
vitality, and is never still a moment. Eugene has no need to devote
himself to Miss Brade, he cannot even attend to Miss Bertie's pressing
needs, and Floyd is called in to fill empty spaces. All men seem
created with a manifest purpose of adding to her steady enjoyment.
"I think you were very short-sighted to marry so young," says Miss
Dayre, calmly, to Violet, as they are driving out one morning. "What
kind of a life are you going to have? It seems almost as if your
greatest duty was to be a sort of nursery governess to the child, who
is a marvel of beauty. How extremely fond her father is of her! Now _I_
should be jealous."
She utters this with a calm assumption of authority bordering on
experience. Indeed, Bertie Dayre impresses you with the certainty that
she _does_ know a great deal, the outcome of her confident belief in
her own shrewd, far-sighted eyes.
"But _I_ love Cecil very much," returns Violet, so earnestly that
Bertie stares.
"There are some women to whom children are more than the husband,"
announces this wise young woman. "I should want to have the highest
regard for my husband. In fact, I mean never to marry until I can find
a soul the exact counterpart of mine. Marriages are too hurried,--too
many minor considerations are taken into account, home, money,
position, protection, and all that,--but I suppose every girl cannot
order her own life. I shall be able to."
Violet smiles dreamily, yet there is infinite sadness in it. If she
could have ordered her life, she would have married Floyd Grandon and
made the same mistake fate has made for her. Even now she would rather
be the object of his kindly, indifferent tenderness than the wife of
any other. Eugene's brilliance and spirited devotion do not touch her
in any depth of sentiment, and yet he is so kind, so thoughtful for
her, she sees it in so many ways.
All this whirl of gayety has had its effect everywhere. Marcia has come
down with unblenching audacity to welcome her mother and take the
measure of the new situation. Floyd is very cordial,--then Violet has
not gone to him with complaints. Marcia is one of those people on whom
generosity and the higher types of virtue are completely thrown away.
She is full of clever devices that she sets down as intuitions or the
ready reading of character. Violet speaks quietly and resents nothing,
therefore she is quite sure the young wife's conscience will not allow
her to. Conscience is a great factor in the make-up of other people,
but her own seems of a gossamer quality. Indeed, she feels rather
aggrieved that her _coup de main_ has wrought so little disaster.
"But it will make her more careful how she goes on with Eugene," she
comments to herself. Only Eugene seems not to have the slightest desire
to go on with her, and that is another cause of elation.
Floyd Grandon is somewhat puzzled about his wife. He has come to
understand the shy deference of manner, the frank friendliness, too,
has nothing perplexing in it, but this unsmiling gravity, this gracious
repose, amuse at first, then amaze a little. It is as if she has been
taking lessons of some society woman, and he could almost accuse
madame. She is very gentle and sweet. What is it he misses?
After all, he has not studied women to any great extent, his days have
been so filled up with other matters, only she has hitherto appeared so
transparent. She has liked him, but she has not been passionately in
love, and he has never felt entirely certain that he desired it. Why,
then, is he not satisfied?
Oddly enough, he has heard about the waltzing from Eugene, who desires
to put it in its true light. It occurs one evening when he and Miss
Dayre have been spinning and floating and whirling through drawing-room
and hall, while Violet plays with fingers that seem bewitched and shake
out showers of delicious melody. They have paused to take breath.
"Do you not waltz?" asks Bertie of Floyd, with a dazzling lure in her
eyes.
"Oh, yes!" answers Eugene for him. "He and Mrs. Grandon waltz divinely
together, but take them apart and I warn you the charm will be gone. I
tried it a few evenings ago at my sister's, with Mrs. Grandon, and it
was a wretched, spiritless failure. I wish there was some one else to
play, and you could see them."
Floyd bites his lips, and wonders if Eugene is paying back a
mortification.
"Oh, mamma will play," exclaims Bertie, with alacrity. "She is
wonderfully good at such music, though Mrs. Grandon plays in exquisite
time. Mamma."
"Don't trouble her," entreats Floyd.
Bertie is resolute, Mrs. Dayre obliging, and comes in from her balcony
seat.
"Violet," says Mr. Grandon, "will you waltz awhile? Mrs. Dayre has
kindly offered to play."
"I am not tired," answers Violet, in that curious, breathless tone
which is almost a refusal.
"But I want you to," declares Bertie. "Mr. Eugene has so roused my
curiosity."
Floyd takes her hand with a certain sense of mastery, and she yields.
It is not the glad, joyous alacrity she has heretofore evinced.
Eugene's half-confession, made with a feeling of honor that rarely
attacks the young man, has failed of its mission. Some sense of fine
adjustment is wanting.
Mrs. Dayre strikes into a florid whirl that would answer for a peasant
picnic under the trees.
"Not that," says Eugene. "Some of those lovely, undulating movements.
Oh, there is that Beautiful Blue Danube----"
"Which they waltzed when they came out of the ark," laughs Bertie, "but
it is lovely."
The strain touches Violet. The great animating hope for joy has dropped
out of her life, but youth is left, and youth cannot help being moved.
Mrs. Dayre plays with an enchanting softness, and they float up and
down as in some tranced sea.
"She waltzes fairly," comments Miss Dayre, "only she should be taller.
I should like to waltz with him myself."
"They are a sort of Darby and Joan couple," says Eugene, evasively,
"and his dancing days are about over."
"What a--mistake!" and Bertie laughs brightly. "Why, he is magnificent.
Do you know I had a rather queer fancy about him; you expect literary
men to be--well, grave and severe. The idea of his marrying a child
like that! Why did he do it?"
"Because he loved her," replies the young man, with unblushing
mendacity.
"Literary men and the clergy always do perpetrate matrimony in a
curious manner. Do they go out much?" inclining her head toward the two
floating at the other end of the room.
"Oh, to dinners and that sort of thing!" indifferently. "She is very
sweet and has lovely eyes, but she is not the kind of person that I
should think would attract him."
"What is it--the 'impossible that always happens'?" quotes Eugene, and
as they come nearer Miss Dayre has the grace to be silent.
Floyd Grandon feels that some enthusiasm is missing, the divine flavor
has gone out of it. Violet is so gentle, so quiet and unstirred by what
only a little while ago carried her captive into an enchanted realm.
"Are you tired?" he asks, presently.
"Oh, no!"
She makes no motion for a release, and they go on. Indeed, it has a
kind of pungent bitter-sweet elusiveness for her, almost as if she
might come up with the lost happiness. "It is all there is, and she
must make herself content," she is saying over and over. She has
dreamed a wild, impossible dream.
Bertie Dayre is fond of conquests in strange lands. Even Violet comes
to be amused at the frank bids she makes for Floyd's favor, but he
seems not to see, to take them with the grave courtesy that is a part
of his usual demeanor. Yet the preference has this effect upon him, to
make him wish that another would try some delicate allurements. He is
in a mood to be won to love, and Violet is fatally blind not to see
that her day has come and take advantage of it.
From this point the summer festivities go straight on. There are guests
at Madame Lepelletier's and a series of charming entertainments. The
Brades have a houseful, and Lucia is followed by a train of adorers;
but what does it all avail, since Mordecai sits stubbornly at the gate?
Violet comes to have a strange, secret sympathy with the girl who
cannot be content and choose among what is offered.
Madame Lepelletier is no less a queen here than she was in the city;
indeed, the glories may be greater, more intense, from being
circumscribed. The Latimers and the Grandons are frequent guests and
meet people whom it is a delight to know; and Lucia decides there is no
such lawn tennis anywhere, no such enchanting little suppers and
dances. Eugene is rather resentful at first, but no one can hold out
long against madame, and she finds a new way to please him,--to offer a
little delicate incense at Violet's shrine. To her there is something
in the way these two young people avoid any pronounced attention. Is it
indicative of a secret understanding between them? If it has reached
that point, she can guess at the subtle temptation for both. Certainly
Floyd Grandon evinces no symptoms of any change in his regard; indeed,
he does not seem quite so _éprise_ as some weeks ago, and there _is_ a
mysterious alteration in Violet. She watches warily; she has seen so
many of these small episodes. This will hardly culminate in a scandal,
for Floyd Grandon is too well-bred, but some day Eugene will speak and
Violet's eyes will be opened and she will hate Floyd Grandon for having
bound her in chains before she had tasted the sweets of liberty.
It is true Floyd Grandon is rather absent and engrossed. There are many
cares weighing upon him, and there seems one chance of turning over the
business so successfully that his very desire and hope beget a feverish
fear. Two manufacturers of large means and established reputation see
in the coming success of Grandon & Co. a rival with whom it will be
impossible to cope. Their new methods are beyond all excellent, and
there is such a cheapening of process that for a while, at least,
profits will be simply enormous. Shall they take the fortune at its
high tide? Mr. Haviland has gone to Europe, and on the success of some
projects there, the answer will depend. Mr. Murray is in correspondence
with him and with Mr. Grandon, and since Floyd hopes so much, he grows
nervous and uneasy, except when he loses himself in his beloved work or
spends a quiet evening with John Latimer. He has so little time for the
speculations or the endearments of love, that Violet drops into a soft
and twilight background. She has everything; she is coming to be
admired and treated with the respect due her position. Cecil and she
are inseparables, and with all her fondness she does not spoil Cecil or
allow her to become the terror of the household.