WHAT IS LOVE?
A week went by, a week of mingled delight and torture for Nina. She
had never, outside novels, participated in entertainments as fine as
those to which she was taken. The theatre was a revelation, the shops
a long drawn out pleasure, and calls, tea-drinkings, dinner-parties,
and drives into the country kept her in an almost continual state of
enchanted and suppressed enjoyment. But yet she was not perfectly
happy. Her pleasant hours were interspersed with melancholy ones.
One day Lady Forrest, casting down her mouse-coloured eyes in her
unobtrusive fashion, murmured, “I think I will give a dinner-party the
day after to-morrow, my dear. A young man of very distinguished family
for whom my husband has been investing money is in the city. Would you
like me to invite your husband? It will be quite a small affair.”
Nina’s heart leaped for joy; but she merely said, “Thank you, Lady
Forrest, I wish you would ask him to come.”
Two evenings later she flung open her wardrobe, dismissed the maid Lady
Forrest had sent to help her dress, and threw every gown she possessed
on the bed. Which should it be? There was a great deal in dress, these
Englishwomen told her. A becoming gown had been known to decide the
fate of a kingdom. What about that pretty green thing that ’Steban had
bought for her in Boston? The lace frills were certainly becoming. She
tried it on, then dashed it on a chair. Fie! the trying thing! She
looked positively hideous. Well, there was a dove-coloured silk open at
the throat. It would be a crime to put on a high-necked dress in this
household; though it was a fortunate thing that Mamma Danvers could not
see her. She would be shocked to death.
In half an hour she was red in the face, her teeth were worrying her
under lip, and she was half-crying from vexation. Nothing suited her,
nothing fitted. Everything was trying to her complexion, rasping to her
nerves.
The maid knocked at her door, and she irritably called, “Come in.”
“I would better assist you, ma’am,” the newcomer observed, civilly;
“dinner will be served in ten minutes. Lady Forrest has long since gone
down.”
“Put on that,” said Nina, desperately, and she indicated a sprigged and
washed white muslin frock.
“That, ma’am?” said the woman, in faint surprise.
“Yes,” said the girl, choking back a sigh. “It is a Rubicon Meadows
frock,--the place I come from. My husband is coming. I think he would
like to see me in it.”
“Would you just try this, ma’am, first,” and the woman laid her hand on
a white silk production of an American dressmaker’s skill.
“That! it is too plain and it makes me tall and hideous and like a
ghost!” exclaimed the girl.
“Will you just try it?” coaxed the woman. “Your colour is rising.”
Nina’s refractoriness ceased, and she resignedly bent her head. In
a trice the woman’s deft fingers had fastened the gown in the back,
arranged the chiffon, bib-like draperies in front, and straightened out
the folds of the soft, clinging skirt.
“Now your slippers, ma’am,” and she deftly clasped them on Nina’s tiny
feet. “And just one look in the mirror,” and she turned a watchful eye
toward the clock.
“All in white,” and Nina slowly twirled before her cheval-glass. “It
is not as bad as I thought it would be.”
The woman discreetly held her peace, and began tidying the room. The
girl, ordinarily only pretty, was a beauty this evening. Something had
animated her, and made her cheeks burn and her eyes glow. Now she was
running back. What had she forgotten--her handkerchief? and the maid
hastily opened a drawer.
No, not a handkerchief, for she was waving a morsel of lace in her
hand. “I want to thank you for helping me dress, Mrs. Morris,” she
said, graciously.
“Beg pardon, ma’am, but you’ll be late if you don’t go down,” said
the woman, who, as a well-trained English domestic, knew better than
to allow this youthful American married lady to beguile her into any
familiarity with her superiors.
However, she was secretly gratified by the flattering prefix tacked to
her usually abbreviated name, and she slipped into the hall to see the
young American lady enter the drawing-room.
She was shaking hands in the hall with a rather stout, thick-set man of
middle age,--a dark, reserved-looking man who must be her husband. “A
wonder he does not kiss her,” soliloquised the woman, “since they are
alone.”
But he did not kiss her, and the girl hurriedly preceded him into the
drawing-room, from whence Morris presently saw the company come arm in
arm on their way to the dining-room.
Mrs. Fordyce was not with her husband. She was escorted by a barrister
well-known to the house. The guest of honour, the honourable Arthur
Gravesham, fourth son of the Earl of Greenfell, was in front with Lady
Forrest. He was not much to look at, and with a yawn the woman went to
her sewing. This was not a grand dinner-party. The gowns were not worth
noticing, and as for that black-moustached husband of the girl she had
just dressed, he was in an evening suit at least three years old in
cut. No gentleman wore lapels of that shape now.
Nina’s head was swimming, yet outwardly she was an iceberg. She
wondered whether her husband was admiring her. Did he see how quickly
and how completely she had acquired the reserved, distinguished air of
the Englishwomen about her? How little she spoke, and in what a low,
sweet voice. How mincingly she ate, and with what tiny, tiny mouthfuls;
and at dessert she would show him that she could quite well cut an
apple with a knife and fork, instead of gnawing it with her pearly
teeth.
To her chagrin, he was not devouring her with his eyes. Something had
happened. Something had come between them since they parted. He was not
unkind nor unloving, he was simply absent-minded; and he was fighting
against it with all his might; and she keenly watched him as he strove
to throw off his burden of thought, whatever it was, and devote himself
to the young lady that he had taken in to dinner.
She was an English girl, a neighbour of the Forrests, and Nina had had
some previous acquaintance with her.
“’Steban calls me a doll,” she indignantly reflected; “the doll is
beside him. I know more in ten minutes than that girl does in a year;
and she is ten months older than I am. I guess she must have been
brought up on pap. He seems to like to hear her talk. He is quite
thawing. Yes, indeed, I admire the English climate immensely,” and
she turned to the barrister who was addressing her. “It keeps one so
interested. You never know what is going to happen. It is like the
servant question in America. One discusses it all the time.”
There were no apples for dessert, and by the time the other fruit
provided had reached the table, Nina was in a high state of irritation.
She had an additional cause to bring it on; for, coupled with her
husband’s neglect, was his strange indifference to an insult that was
being offered him.
She, too, had noticed that his coat was not of the latest cut. Then he
was neither a professional man nor a rich man; and the men surrounding
them were either the one or the other, or both, or of aristocratic
connection like Mr. Gravesham. With considerable keenness, and great
personal displeasure, she had been ferreting into the question of class
distinctions, hitherto an unknown subject to her. She hated the system.
One person was as good as another in her estimation; and this talk
of law, medicine, the army, and the church, as being the only walks
in life for gentlemen, made her sick. Certainly these cold-hearted
patricians about the table regarded her husband as lower in rank than
themselves. They also had a well-bred way of observing her that she did
not like. And her husband did not resent his supposed inferiority. It
made her blood boil that he should be so meek. She wished that he would
dash his napkin on the table, and rush from the house. And now some one
was actually calling him by his last name. This was too much for flesh
and blood to bear, and her bright eyes and sharp ears immediately went
to locate the clear-spoken and oft-recurring “Fordyce!”
It was that odious son of an earl. He had engaged her husband in a
discussion of some points connected with yachting. Well, she would give
him a lesson; and she immediately lost her superb manner and became
lively and animated.
Her neighbours regarded her with indulgence. She was an American
girl, far more variable and vivacious than an English one. Far more
entertaining, the young barrister confided to his inmost soul. If this
dainty, laughing creature were not married, he himself might be tempted
to try his luck. Might he--he would do nothing precipitately. But
hold--what was the dainty creature saying?
She was addressing the Honourable Arthur Gravesham, actually addressing
him across the table in a most familiar and disrespectful manner; and
he held his breath to hear.
Nina’s exasperation had reached its last stage. She did not know that
Mr. Gravesham had a fixed habit of mentioning the names of persons with
whom he conversed; and that his satisfaction at finding her husband’s
views with regard to the size and build of yachts entirely coincided
with his own was exhibiting itself in a more and more frequent use of
his name.
Nina’s watchful eye never left him, and during one of the dignified
pauses of his conversation she fixed him with a deceitfully gentle and
supplicating stare, and said, distinctly, “Gravesham, please pass me
the preserved ginger.”
The young barrister was not the only one whose attention turned
in dismay upon her. Sir Hervey opened and shut his mouth like an
overheated fish, and as for the Honourable Arthur Gravesham, he settled
his glasses more firmly on the bridge of his aristocratic nose, and
said, feebly, “I beg your pardon.”
“I said, Gravesham, please pass the preserved ginger,” she repeated,
in a distinct voice, and allowing a mild and inquiring gaze to wander
around the table as if to ask why all these people had suddenly become
interested in her.
Only Lady Forrest was smiling her quiet smile as she watched her.
Sir Hervey had become cool enough to gasp, in an explanatory way,
“Hem--hem--Mrs. Fordyce, American--not used to our customs.”
Nina immediately addressed him, “Have I said anything wrong, Forrest?”
He grew redder and more inclined to choke and splutter. What a
fortunate thing that the servants had left the room. “You forget the
handles to our names, that is all. It is ‘Mr. Gravesham’ and ‘Sir
Hervey,’ not ‘Gravesham’ and ‘Forrest.’”
“Oh, thank you,” said Nina, with infantine grace. “I heard Mr.
Gravesham calling my husband by his last name, and I thought it was the
custom here. It is not American, I assure you. We call everybody at
home ‘Mr.’--even the butcher. I am sure I apologise to you both. I will
not offend again, _Mr._ Gravesham and _Sir_ Hervey!” and with a slight
and most becoming confusion she quietly continued her dinner.
Mr. Gravesham was sulky and would talk no more, and Sir Hervey was
discomposed and a little trifle discontented with his usual favourite;
but no one else took the occurrence to heart. Lady Forrest was talking
amiably and obliviously to her neighbours, and at last Captain
Fordyce’s attention was concentrated on the bowed head of his young
wife. She had effectually roused him from his abstraction,--the dear
little rude, jealous thing. After dinner he would have a settlement
with her, and in his old satisfaction he threw his burden of black care
from him, and followed her with his eyes as she left the room with the
other ladies.
Where was she? He was one of the first men to leave the dining-room,
but she was neither in the drawing-room nor in the conservatory. “I
think I saw her going into the garden,” murmured Lady Forrest. “You
will find a wrap in the hall. You would do well to take it to her.”
Captain Fordyce strolled out into the garden. It was not a large one,
and she was certainly not in it. He walked to and fro. Then placing
himself in full view of the drawing-room windows so that she could come
to him if she chose to do so, he sat down on a seat and with a weary
“Heigh ho!” took out a cigar.
“Heigh ho, here we go, over the sea to the land of the free,” echoed a
bantering voice above him.
He looked up. There among the spreading branches of a resplendent
copper beech overhead was his wife. She was at her old trick of
climbing trees. And in that hundred dollar gown, and his mind lately
drawn to pecuniary matters again grew burdened.
However, it would not do to let her see his anxiety, so he said,
quietly: “Why did you go up there, Nina?”
“Because I was afraid you would scold me,” she said, with mock
solemnity.
“What about?”
“About chivying the noble son of an earl.”
“You were not polite.”
“Then let him give you your proper title,” she said, hotly. “He doesn’t
like to be called by his last name.”
“They don’t mean anything by it here,” said her husband, wearily.
“Different countries, different customs. Whenever I carry grandees on
the _Merrimac_ they call me by my surname.”
“They won’t do it when I am about,” she said, with decision. “You are
as good as anybody. What is the matter with you this evening?”
“Nothing,” he said, with assumed animation.
“Yes, there is. You’ve had bad news of some kind.”
“Did I show it?” he asked, with chagrin.
“Oh, no, not very much, but I knew.”
His face softened. “It’s nothing, Nina.”
“You’ve fallen in love with some other woman.”
“Good heavens, no--yes, I mean, I have.”
“You’ve lost some money.”
He lighted his cigar, began smoking it, and not until teased and
worried by questions rained on him from above did he ejaculate,
“Suppose I have. There’s my salary.”
“How much did you lose?”
“Come down from that tree, Nina. Somebody might come out from the house
and you would be remarked.”
“This is a very nice country,” she returned, cheerfully and
irrelevantly.
“I am glad you like it.”
“That is a fine house,” she said, waving her hand toward the stone
erection beyond them. “It is a pleasant thing to have a butler and
footmen and plenty of maids.”
He grunted something inaudible, and stared up pityingly at the white
cloud among the glowing leaves above him.
“And to know how to pour out tea so nicely and properly, and talk about
the theatres and the royal family, and the news from the Continent, and
our American cousins, and never do anything wrong or think anything
improper, and be admired and sought after, and love everybody and have
everybody love you.”
He smoked on in grim silence, until she asked, tenderly, “Captain
Fordyce, can you ever build me a house like that?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, derisively.
“Can you give me a carriage lined with gray cushions, with a clock in
it, and a hand-glass, and cunning little footstools?”
He would not answer her.
“And a palace in a park like the Earl of Somebody or Other’s over
across the river?” and she waved her hand toward the Mersey.
“And heaps of fine gowns,” she continued, “silks, and satins, and
velvets trimmed with pearls and diamonds and rubies? And I want to be
presented at Court and have a house in London.”
“You are modest in your wishes,” he said, between his closed teeth.
She laid her cheek against the tree trunk, and whispered, “How much
money did you lose, ’Steban?”
“I lost a trifle that I had laid up for old age.”
“Whose old age?”
“Yours.”
“What about your own?”
“I shall not have any. All our family die young.”
She raised her head to the sky, but could not see it for the thick
green thatch above her. “’Steban,” she said, in silvery tones, “men
aren’t like women, are they?”
“Not much.”
“If I were a woman in love and had lost money, I would still think of
the man I was fond of; but when you think of your business, I fly
right out of your mind.”
“Women would be a heap better off if they didn’t stew so much over
their love affairs.”
She was dropping purplish brown leaves on him one by one. When a
large-sized one took the ashes off the end of his cigar, she laughed
gaily, and in a heart-whole fashion, and said, “’Steban, I believe
you’ve lost every cent of money you’ve saved.”
“No, I haven’t,” he growled.
“How much have you left?”
“It’s that confounded McGray in New York,” he said, in abrupt and
deep-seated resentment. “He’s absconded. I trusted him--thought he
was a sure thing on investments. I can’t watch the markets from the
Atlantic. There will be a lot of our line out by him.”
“Poor captains!” murmured Nina. Then bending low down on her branch,
she said, pleadingly:
“’Steban, tell me all about it.”
“You would not understand. I have said all I am going to say.”
She straightened herself suddenly, and exclaimed, with a martyr-like
air, “I have done nothing, yet I must suffer!”
He smoked on, sulking over his losses, yet consoled slightly by the
presence of his wood-nymph in the tree overhead. Now she was leaning
down again, hanging on by her hands and feet like a monkey, and
dropping her light head to within a short distance of him. And what
was she whispering with such delicate softness and grace? Something
more about the money, and he threw away the stump of his cigar and
ejaculated a prosaic “Hey?”
“’Steban,” she whispered again, “what is love?”
He was not in a condition of mind to expatiate on the beauties of the
ardent attraction of one human being for another. Recognising this, she
went on, in the same low voice: “You’re nothing but a plain, every-day,
commonplace sort of man. There’s no poetry in your nature, never was,
and never will be. _I_ will tell you what love is;” and moving farther
out on the limb that she had chosen for her resting-place, she lightly
jogged up and down, and began a joyful monologue.
“This is love. You are a girl not very old, not very young. You fall in
love with a man. Some one else wants to marry you--a good many other
persons want to marry you. You look at this one; you say, ‘No, my dear
sir, you won’t do. You must have long arms and a short temper, and a
bronze face and black eyes like shoe buttons. That light hair and
that curly moustache won’t do; and to make you perfect, you must have
a tiny, a very tiny, bald spot in the middle of your head. And you
must be hateful and snappish sometimes, not always sweet and pleasant,
because then I would get tired of you. And you must be poor and have to
work hard just like a dog, because that will keep you out of mischief.
And you mustn’t live in a grand house. No, no, sir, you are too rich.
I could never take care of all that grand furniture. House-cleaning
would quite upset me; and I hate fine clothes and white kid gloves. It
would frighten me to own all those things; and I just detest sitting
up straight and keeping my lips pursed up in a smile. I would rather
have meadows, nice big meadows to run over, or the deck of a ship--’
’Steban, what are you doing?” and she ceased her singsong revelation
and her swinging at the same time, and glared down at him.
“I am coming up,” he said, casting an apprehensive glance at the house
as he balanced himself on the back of the seat. “I suppose I am a fool
for it, but you are a regular, possessed little magnet.”
“Have you forgotten about your money?” she asked, exhibiting two rows
of gleeful white teeth.
“Confound the money,” he responded, stoutly.
She laughed long and delightedly, but in the midst of her amusement
deliberately kept ascending higher and higher, never allowing her
laughter to prevent her from searching out sure places for her feet.
Her husband kept his eye on her, yet did not caution her. She was as
sure-footed as one of his sailor lads. Now she was singing to him:
“‘Husband, husband, cease your strife,
Nor longer idly rave, sir;
Though I am your wedded wife,
Yet I am not your slave, sir.’
“Go on!” she exclaimed, when she had finished.
“I can’t,” he said, shortly. “Nina, stop there. I won’t have you climb
farther.”
“Men in books always know the next verse,” she said, unheedingly:
“‘One of two must still obey,
Nancy, Nancy;
Is it man or woman, say,
My spouse Nancy?’
“It’s man, always man,” she tittered. “When I was married I didn’t say,
love, honour, and obey. I said love, honour, and sway--and, ’Steban,
you must be swayed. Stay where you are,” and she tossed off a white
kid slipper that, to her delight, struck him on the shoulder before it
went leaping down to the grass.
“Nina,” he said, commandingly, “did you mean all that just now; or is
it only your condemned nonsense?”
She ran her arm around a branch, and waggishly put her two hands up
to her mouth after the manner of a speaking-trumpet. “Officer of the
watch,--go ask that damsel if she loves me. If so, well, always well.
If not, cast her in the hold and let her in irons repent her folly.”
“You do love me,” he muttered. “You shall go home with me to-night. You
have come to your senses at last.”
“The man I love has golden hair,” she chanted from the tree-top;
“if you meet him anywhere, tell him I send a loving kiss, a hearty,
hearty prayer that he will come and see me soon, and with me tread the
heavenly mead of love’s sweet visions fair. A sailor dark, with purpose
fell, does strive to tear me from my love, my buxom love with golden
hair.”
Captain Fordyce cautiously took a step up, uttering an expletive under
his breath, as he heard a warning rip in the region of his knee.
“‘You’ll rend your attire
If you come higher!’”
sang the girl, saucily.
“‘Better go back,
There’s a tailor on your track,
And you haven’t got a cent to pay him with,’”
she continued. Then she put her head on one side and watched him.
’Steban’s troubles were over. He had seated himself crosswise on one
of the stout arms of the tree, and was giving himself up to a beatific
survey of the white silk foot above him. Then he waxed sentimental.
“Nina,” he said, delightedly, “you have found out that you love me--you
love me.”
“There are courts in the temple of love,” she said, with sudden
gravity. “I have only entered the outermost one.”
“Did you make that up?” he asked, rapturously. “Is it original?”
“What does it matter whether it grew in my mind or another person’s?”
“Darling!” he ejaculated, foolishly; and he tried to seize the
slipperless foot dangling within a yard of him.
Seemingly within his reach, it was immediately withdrawn.
He sat for a few minutes in ecstatic silence; then he began to beg
her to descend. For fully ten minutes he lavished on her flattery,
endearing words, and offers of gifts, dear to feminine hearts, that he
would bestow on her in return for the very smallest, fleetest, most
evanescent thing in the shape of a caress.
She stared unheedingly up at the sky, and when he brought his eloquent
words to a close, she said, “I see a boat in the moon. It is waiting
for a bad sailor who has broken his word for the first time in his
life.”
Captain Fordyce hastily pulled out his watch and a match-case. Yes, his
boat was at the landing-stage waiting to take him to the _Merrimac_.
“I must go,” he said, hurriedly. “When shall I come for you, Nina?”
“The man in the moon says haste is folly, delay is wisdom, and to take
a leap in the dark is a sure landing in the midst of difficulties.”
“There will be plenty of light, Nina,” he pleaded. “Come, now, say good
night to Lady Forrest and come home with me.”
“No, thank you, Mr. Lantern,” she replied, decidedly.
“It’s confoundedly lonely on the _Merrimac_,” he went on. “I miss my
little girl till I am half-dead for the sight of her. I am lonely,
lonely--” and he dwelt on the word that he thought had power to afflict
her.
“Lonely,” she repeated, with a shiver of delight, “most beautiful word
in the American language, for it implies future consolation. Put your
cheek against the tree trunk.”
He obeyed her, trying at the same time to roll his eyes upward. The
experiment was not a success, and she exclaimed, “Look at me, you
foolish man. It will slip down to you.”
She was kissing the trunk in tender intoxication. “Give him this if you
meet him, my love with golden hair. Tell him I will come to him when I
get my diamond slippers and my chariot of silver. But they have to be
made to order, and they are not ready yet--’Steban, I don’t want to be
impolite, but you had really better be getting home.”
He gave her one last, long, lingering look and slipped down the trunk.
“Good-bye--till I see you again--farewell--adieu,” she called after
him, “_au revoir_, heaven bless you--_auf wiedersehen_;” but he strode
away without a backward glance.