WITHERLEE.
The next day the announcement of the marriage appeared in the newspapers,
and falling soft as a rose-leaf on the tail of that great Chicken Little,
Society, Society ran round clucking as if the sky had fallen. Great was
the sensation—especially among the score or so of lovers who for a long
time had been vainly endeavoring to get sufficiently intimate with Muriel
to make their love manifest, and whose fate was now sealed.
Not having been invited to the wedding, Society expected the cards to
arrive inviting it to the conventional reception. But Society hearing
presently, through some intimate friends of the family, that Muriel and
her husband had decided to dispense with conventionalities, took it
kindly, as just what might have been expected of that lady, and began to
pour in a stream of congratulatory callers at the house in Temple street.
Among the callers, the startled and enraged Atkinses were missing, which
was melancholy. Amidst the family wrath, Horatio kept contemptuously
cool, remarking, like the fine young American he was, that a social
mesalliance always brought its own punishment, as she (Muriel) would find
to her sorrow; while Thomas, on all occasions, when the subject of the
marriage came up in conversation, observed, that that’s what comes of
letting girls have too much head, be Jove!
Great was the sensation the next morning when Muriel and Harrington
appeared at Captain Fisher’s, announcing their espousals, and great was
the joy, and immense the satisfaction.
Greater than all or anything was the large and lustrous happiness of the
wedded lovers. The deep change that had come upon their lives gave them a
new and statelier beauty. So might have looked the beautiful and tall Sir
Walter, and so the fair Elizabeth Throgmorton, his bright Elizabethan
flower of wifely womanhood, in their happiest hour of wedded love.
At home in Temple street the day after their wedding, in the new and
fresh enjoyment of a marriage whose perfect nobleness might have
gladdened the pure soul of Swedenborg, they laid their little plans for
the future. It was first agreed that Harrington should permit himself a
vacation, free from the toil of study, in this the golden crescent of
their eternal honeymoon. It was next resolved that Harrington should keep
his house in Chambers street, and live there when he so chose. Both he
and Muriel thought that married people are too intimate with each other,
see too much of each other, push too far and frequently into the sacred
privacy which Nature sets around the individual soul, and so lose the
charm of freshness which is at once the crowning delight and most potent
safeguard of love. If, in married life, they thought, familiarity does
not breed contempt, it commonly breeds a sort of humdrum unappreciating
indifference which makes the wedded lovers seem less beautiful and noble
to each other than in the matin prime of their early passion. And as
Muriel and Harrington designed to be lovers forevermore, they resolved
to maintain the relations which make love ever magical and ever new.
Counting himself fortunate, therefore, that he had a house of his own to
retire to in those golden-valleyed intervals which Nature prescribes to
checquer and enhance the tender and holy beauty of the mountain land of
love, and sadly wishing that his fortune might be shared by all, as it
might in a nobler order of society, Harrington agreed with Muriel, and
she with him, to use their new freedom of intercourse wisely, he spending
his studious days as heretofore in his own house, she passing her happy
life as in her maidenhood in hers, both coming together whenever their
souls drew, or their duties bade, freely, attractively, in mutual
ministration and communion, living for each other and for the world’s
great family of souls.
The next thing that came under discussion was a proposition from Muriel
to settle half her fortune on her husband, which Harrington would not
listen to on any condition. It was finally compromised, amidst much
gaiety, by his agreeing to let no want of his go untold, and to always
accept from her whatever money he needed, instead of interrupting his
studies with compositions to supply his deficiencies. Which bargain
Muriel closed with a frolic threat of banishment from her presence if she
ever discovered him infringing the terms of the compact, until he made
atonement by accepting a double sum for his disobedience.
Other matters talked of, and the business conference ended, they were
sitting together in the library, when Wentworth arrived, handsome as
usual, and full of gay greetings. Presently Emily came in from a shopping
excursion, and sat with them.
“And why is Raffaello out of his studio this morning?” she said, in a gay
tone, to Wentworth.
“Well,” he returned, “fact is, I couldn’t paint for thinking of our
recent blind-man’s buff game. Now, look here, friends, let’s have a grand
confession. Here we are together, and what I want to know is this: How
is it that we four people, of tolerably good wits, contrived in our love
affairs to be so mistaken in regard to each other? Grant Witherlee’s
share in the matter, and our own duplicity—that is, yours and mine, Emily
dear—but after all, is it not singular that we didn’t see through it?”
They sat pensively smiling, with their eyes bent upon the floor, while
he, smiling also, with his brilliant teeth displayed, looked at them.
“Just think,” he continued. “Just think of the slightness of the evidence
which set every Jack of us against his true Jill, and every Jill against
her true Jack. Such evidence wouldn’t have misled us if any other
matter but love was involved. How is this? Now, Emily, perhaps it’s not
wonderful that you should have thought that I loved Muriel, for who
wouldn’t love her? but how could you for a moment imagine that she—so
manifestly my superior every way, so evidently made for a nobler man than
I am—could possibly love me?”
“I don’t know,” naively replied Emily, while Muriel and Harrington,
coloring at the compliment Wentworth so frankly paid them, laughed
amusedly. “It was very foolish in me, I’m sure, and it seems like a
strange dream.”
“Good,” continued Wentworth. “The next question is, how could I imagine
that Harrington, with his heaven-fated wife before his eyes, could
possibly love my Emily? And that I don’t know either, and can’t explain,
except on the theory that I’m a complete fool, which I’m not.”
They all laughed merrily, Wentworth louder than any.
“And you, Muriel,” he pursued. “How could you imagine for a moment that
Harrington loved anybody but you? Both of you in constant communion, in
the fullest, and broadest, and closest sympathy with each other, how
could you think that he loved Emily better than you?”
“Why, Richard,” returned Muriel, with bewitching gaiety, “since this is
the hour of confession, let me confess that I don’t know.”
Wentworth laughed uproariously, and the rest joined him in his mirth.
“Well, Harrington,” he continued, in a minute, “you now. It’s not
singular, of course, that you should have thought I loved Muriel; but in
the name of all the gods at once, how could you think that she loved me?
Where was your insight, Harrington?”
“Well, Richard,” said Harrington, jocosely, “this whole matter may be
solved on the theory that we are not the wisest people in the world.”
“No, John, that won’t do,” returned Wentworth, “we’re not the wisest, but
we’re wise enough not to be made fools of in anything but a love affair.”
“Well then, let us concede our wisdom,” replied Harrington, in the same
jocose vein, “and solve the whole riddle with that deep maxim of my
beloved Verulam, ‘Love is the folly of the wise.’”
“Good! I rest there,” said Wentworth, laughing. “Yes, my Lord Bacon,
you’re right, love is the folly of the wise.”
“But it is the highest wisdom, too,” observed Muriel.
“Of course,” replied Harrington. “Verulam would be the last to gainsay
that. I understand him to only mean that the mortal reason most exempt
from the clouds of the other passions, is subject to the obscurations
of this. It is one side of his tribute to the potency of love, and all
human experience justifies it. Particularly ours,” he jestingly added.
At this moment a tap was heard at the library door. It was Patrick, who,
all in smiles for the new-married couple, announced that Mr. Witherlee
was in the parlor below.
“Jupiter!” exclaimed Wentworth. “Let’s have him up here, and give him a
rowing.”
“Yes, do,” said Emily nervously. “Let’s hear what he has to say for
himself.”
Muriel looked dubiously at Harrington.
“I really think,” said Harrington, in answer to her look, “that Fernando
ought to have a lesson on the danger and folly of such detraction and
mischief-making as he practises. It would be salutary.”
“Well then—but, Richard, you must promise me that you won’t get angry at
Mr. Witherlee—that you’ll talk to him calmly,” said Muriel.
“Oh, indeed I will!” declared Wentworth, rubbing his hands gleefully, and
all alive with eagerness. “Only have him up here. I promise sacredly that
I’ll be as gentle as a sucking dove.”
“And you, Emily, you must engage to be calm,” said Muriel.
“Oh, I’ll be calm. I despise him too much to be anything but calm,”
returned Emily with an air of indolent scorn.
“Very well. Patrick, show Mr. Witherlee up here,” said Muriel.
Patrick bowed, and departed.
“Now for a scene!” cried the gleeful Wentworth. “His impudence won’t get
him out of this scrape.”
“Take care, Richard,” remarked Harrington, “for in my opinion you’ll find
it difficult to convict him of any misconduct.”
“We’ll see!” exclaimed Wentworth with a confident air.
Presently the door opened, and the good Fernando came in, bowing low with
an almost cringe in his courtesy, and smiling with his usual constrained
smile of elegance. He was very fashionably dressed, and looked, as he
commonly did, handsome.
“Good morning,” he said with courteous _empressement_, as he came bowing
forward. “All together, as usual.”
“Yes, all together,” said Harrington, good-naturedly, giving him his hand
as he spoke, and taking no notice of the covert sneer which lurked rather
in the tone of his last remark than in the words.
Muriel also gave him her hand, Wentworth his rather distantly, though he
smiled, and Emily bent her head with a sumptuous negative politeness,
without rising from her chair.
In a minute or so, the good Fernando was seated, and gazing at them with
opaque glittering eyes which restlessly flickered and seemed not so much
to look at them, as toward them. He began to feel, magnetically, that
there was something mysterious and menacing in their manner, and his
plump, colorless, morbid face grew marble-cool and immobile, with the
lips a little parted and rigid, as the lips usually are when there is an
attempt at the concealment of emotion or purpose.
“Well, Fernando, have you heard the news,” said Wentworth, alluding to
Harrington and Muriel’s marriage.
“No,” drawled Witherlee, with a face discharged of all expression. “What
is it?”
“Haven’t you seen the papers this morning?” said Wentworth.
“No; I rose rather late this morning,” was the equable answer, “and
didn’t breakfast at home. I went down to Parker’s and had a lunch with a
bottle of Sotairne, and it never occurred to me to glance at the paper.
What is the news?”
Wentworth paused a moment, conscious that Witherlee had not heard of the
marriage, and filled with an amused disgust, especially at the affected
drawl with which the young fop had pronounced the word Sauterne, and
generally at his ostentatious and unnecessary mention of his epicurean
breakfast.
“The news is,” replied Wentworth, changing his intention, “that Emily and
I are engaged to be married in October.”
Witherlee looked at him for a moment with his eyes more opaque, his lips
more rigid, his face more expressionless than before, and slightly
lifted his handsome eyebrows; then smiled with immense cordiality.
“I am _very_ glad to hear it,” he exclaimed, with tender _empressement_,
“very glad indeed. But you surprise me. I hadn’t the remotest idea that
such a thing would happen”—
“And you didn’t mean it should, if you could help it,” interrupted Emily,
with bland tranquillity.
Witherlee looked at her with an astonishment so admirably counterfeited,
that she almost thought it genuine, and her heart faltered in its
purpose. Wentworth, with a strong disposition to laugh, bit his lip,
and looked at the floor. Muriel wore an air of sunny laziness, and
Harrington, sitting a little apart, kept his searching blue eyes fixed
intently on Witherlee’s countenance, unnoticed by him.
“Why, Emily,” said Fernando, slowly, after a long pause, “what do you
mean! If I could help it? Why how could I hinder it, even if I wished to?
How could I be supposed to know anything about it?”
“You knew Richard and I loved each other,” stammered Emily, losing her
self-possession as she thought how intangible was all her evidence
against her colloquist. “You knew it, and you tried to prejudice me
against him.”
“I knew it?” repeated Fernando. “Miss Ames, you must pardon me for saying
it—but you are very unjust to me.” And he assumed an injured air, which
was really touching. “It is utterly impossible that I could have known
it, for neither you nor Wentworth, nor anybody, ever told me. As for
prejudicing him, I do not know what you refer to—but if you mean our
conversation one evening more than a week ago, you must permit me to
observe that that is only a proof that I knew nothing whatever of this
matter. For if I had, is it likely that I would be so foolish as to
injure myself in your good opinion by saying anything against a man you
loved? Even if I were ungenerous enough to do so, would I be so unwise? I
am sorry, very sorry that you can think so meanly of my good sense, not
to speak of anything higher.”
He said it all so mildly, so sadly, with such an injured air, that
Emily was confounded, and felt unable to deny the apparent justice of
his plausible plea. Yet a desperate sense that he had tampered with her
feelings, and maligned her lover, still lingered in her mind.
“It may be as you say, Fernando,” she faltered, “but at any rate, you
know that you made remarks affecting Richard’s character, which could not
but make me think hardly of him.”
“What did I say?” inquired Fernando, lifting his eyebrows in utter
astonishment.
Emily, at that moment, could not for the life of her recall a single
disparaging sentence. All the delicate poisoned phrases which had
interspersed his lavish praise of Wentworth, were as invisible to the eye
of her mind, as would be the deadly fragrance of some exquisite poisonous
flower.
“Did I not speak of Mr. Wentworth in the warmest terms?” he demanded.
“Did I not pay the warmest tributes to his character and talents?”
“I admit that you did,” replied Emily, painfully coloring; “but you,
nevertheless, contrived to throw a shadow on his constancy and purity as
a lover, and what could have been worse to me who loved him?”
“I contrived!” exclaimed Fernando, lifting his head with an air of proud
and disdainful injured innocence, which Harrington and Muriel alone saw
was theatrically assumed and overdone. “I contrived! Miss Ames, I might
answer this charge with simple silence, and conscious of its untruth,
might bear it as a gentlemen should bear all injuries, with forgiveness.
But, since you were so unfortunate as to receive a wrong impression from
remarks which were made only in candor, and which were not intended to
injure any one, let me say this: Did you not yourself ask me to tell you
candidly what I thought of Mr. Wentworth?”
“I own I did,” replied poor Emily, wishing she had not said a word, and
sorry that she had so rashly blamed the good Fernando for what was, she
thought, her own fault after all.
“And when you asked me that, in the mutual confidence of friendship,”
pursued Witherlee, “can you blame me for having answered you with the
candor you requested?”
Emily, with the tears very near her eyes, and her face glowing, was
silent.
“If I had imagined what your feelings for Mr. Wentworth were,” continued
Witherlee, with touching mildness, “I would never have uttered anything
but praise of him, though you asked it ever so much. But I never even
suspected that. As for throwing a shadow on Mr. Wentworth’s constancy, I
never did it. I simply said, believing it to be true, and I’m very sorry
if it’s not true, that he had had a great many love affairs, and fell in
love easily, and got out of it lightly, and so forth; but I’m sure that’s
nothing uncommon with a handsome young man whom all the young ladies are
after, and no blame to anybody.”
Wentworth colored up to the roots of his hair at the latter part of this
speech, which the good Fernando delivered with a nonchalant, jocose air,
very different from the wicked significance of manner with which, in
speaking the words he avowed, and others of the same nature, he had given
Emily to understand that her lover was a gay Lothario.
“You’re mistaken, Fernando,” stammered Wentworth, “if you think I ever
fell seriously in love with any woman, and outlived it. I’ve had my fancy
touched by a number of pretty girls, it is true, and I’ve been uncommonly
amiable to them, no doubt, but they always disappointed me when I came to
know them a little, and there never was any heart-injury done anywhere.”
“I never supposed or said there was,” replied Fernando, coolly. “It is
Emily’s misfortune to have exaggerated the simple meaning of what I did
say, and what you, Richard, have confirmed. As for throwing any suspicion
on Wentworth’s moral character, Emily, I do not know what you can mean,
and I must ask you to explain, for this is the most serious part of the
whole misapprehension.”
“You made no charge of that nature against Richard,” said Emily terribly
embarrassed, “but you told me of that young lady’s betrayal—I forget her
name—by young Whittemore, and dwelt on the insidiousness of his addresses
to women in such a way, that I thought you were thinking of Richard, or
withholding something similar you knew of him, and—Oh, I have acted like
a fool!” she passionately exclaimed, dashing away the tears which sprang
to her eyes.
Witherlee saw his triumph with an exulting heart, while his face was,
save for a little dejection, perfectly immobile.
“I am very, very sorry,” he remarked in a slow, kind voice. “It is
unaccountable to me that you should connect my narration, which was
simply true, with Mr. Wentworth. I never heard of anything so singular.”
“Let it go, Fernando,” said Emily, “and do forgive”—
“What is the young lady’s name of whom you speak in connection with Mr.
Whittemore, Fernando?” interrupted Muriel, with an air of phlegm which
she had caught from Harrington, who occasionally wore it. Muriel put the
question, at once because she wanted to know, and because she was anxious
to save Emily from the disgrace of asking Witherlee’s forgiveness, when,
as she saw, he had only adroitly juggled away his subtle slanders.
“Why it’s Susan Hollingsworth,” returned Witherlee, “you know her.”
“That pretty Susan Hollingsworth!” exclaimed Muriel. “To be sure I know
her. But I hadn’t heard of this. How strange that I had not!”
“It is, certainly,” replied Witherlee, lifting his eyebrows, “for it’s
town talk, and Miss Hollingsworth’s position in society is perfectly
ruined. She’s taboo forever. I was at a party last night at Mrs.
Binghampton’s and you should have heard the way the ladies cut her up.
It was a treat to hear it”—and Witherlee laughed with his turtle-husky
chuckle. “That young Mr. Mill undertook to defend her, and it was
perfectly ludicrous to see the scrape he got himself into. Miss Bean
wanted to know instantly if he was going to come out in favor of
Mormonism, and Mill was completely dumb-foundered, and covered with
disgrace in a moment.” And again Witherlee laughed with his turtle-husky
chuckle.
“Have you seen Susan lately?” asked Muriel, abstractedly, with a face of
sadness.
“No, I haven’t called there since I heard of this affair,” replied
Witherlee with a sort of stolid importance. “The Hollingsworths have been
sent to Coventry, and no decent person visits them.”
Muriel colored, but very slightly, and only for a moment.
“_I_ shall visit them,” she said, quietly, “and I would have visited them
before if I had heard of this. What is more, Susan is as good a girl as
ever breathed, and I shall make it a point to invite her to come and
spend a month at my house.”
Witherlee looked perfectly immobile, but secretly stung by the rebuke
Muriel’s words conveyed to him, he felt the necessity of defending his
attitude toward the Hollingsworths.
“I should be glad to still visit Miss Hollingsworth, if I could
conscientiously,” he said, with an air of cold and lofty virtue. “But
when a young lady lets herself be led astray by an _ignis fatuus_ light,
from the paths of Christian morality”—
The generous color flashed to the calm face of Muriel, and her golden
eyes glowed on him so suddenly that he stopped in the middle of his
sentence.
“Fernando Witherlee,” said she, in a slow and steady voice, and with a
dignity that abashed even him, “if there is anything that could make me
despise a fellow-creature, it would be such a speech as you have just
made. _Ignis fatuus_ light! I answer you with Robert Burns, and I accept
it in a profounder sense than he did, that even the light that leads
astray is light from Heaven. Christian morality! Who was the friend
even of the Magdalen?—who was the friend and companion of publicans and
sinners—the taboo men and women of old Jerusalem? Oh, shame upon you! A
poor girl loving with the whole fervor of the sacred nature God gave her,
guilty, at the most, only of a too absolute confidence in the traitor she
had cast her heart upon, deceived now and abandoned, and suffering not
only from her own private anguish, the greatest a human heart can know,
but from the insolent and infamous scorn of society—and it is at such
a time that you can have the soul to avoid her! And worse—you can tell
the cruel treatment she receives from her sex and laugh. Those graceless
women—but I may well spare my indignation at the inhuman way women
treat any of their number who have fallen from what they call virtue.
Shut out by the impudent assumptions of mankind from public life—shut
out from that experience which widens the understanding, and thus, as
the statesman said, corrects the heart—theirs may well be twilight
judgments! Well may they have constricted minds and narrow souls, with
life’s best culture denied them! Treated as vassals, theirs are vassals’
vices. But you—a man! And society! Society whose mutual voice should peal
consolation and encouragement to this poor forlorn one, howling her off
into social exile, and, were she poor, to a life of shame—howling her
self-respect, her very womanhood out of her. Oh, what can I say of such
a society! No matter. You can do as you think best; but I, for one, will
never taboo Susan Hollingsworth, and she shall visit me if I can persuade
her”
Wincing secretly under this rebuke, which Muriel uttered calmly, but
with impressive energy, Witherlee sat in silence, with his opaque eyes
fixed on vacancy, and his handsome eyebrows lifted very high. Harrington,
without taking his gaze from him, expressed his gratification at what
Muriel had said by laying his large hand over hers, as it rested on
the arm of her chair. Emily sat with a dazed look, and her lover was
biting his lip all through the episode, to suppress any signs of the
satisfaction he felt at Witherlee’s discomfiture.
“My sentiments exactly, Muriel,” said Wentworth. “But now, Fernando,
to resume. You appear to have cleared yourself of any blame in the
construction Emily put upon your words, and so far so good. But there are
some other things I want to talk with you about.”
“Proceed,” said Witherlee, coolly. “Though I really think Emily ought to
be permitted to make the apologies she was about to make to me for so
grievous an injury to my feelings as I have sustained.”
It is utterly impossible to describe the exquisite titillation of insult
which, despite his subdued manner, these words of Witherlee conveyed.
Wentworth reddened like fire instantly, and was only checked in a
tremendous retort by a glance from the quiet eye of Muriel. But poor
Emily, filled with contrition, started and colored, and was about to pour
forth a profuse apology, when—
“Pardon me, Fernando,” broke in the calm, deep voice of Harrington, “but
let me suggest that Miss Ames’ apologies will be in better place when
you are entirely clear from the accusations connected with her, which
Wentworth has to bring against you.”
Witherlee turned very pale, though he showed no other signs of emotion,
and fixed his impassible eyes on Harrington’s, but unable, with all his
stone opacity of outlook, to sustain their broad blue gaze, he carelessly
lifted his eyebrows and looked away. Emily, meanwhile, having noticed
Harrington’s determined face, suddenly felt a suspicion that all was not
so clear with Fernando as it seemed, and resolved to say nothing till she
saw the end.
“What I have to say, Fernando, is this,” began Wentworth, having choked
down his rage into smiling calm. “It seems to me that on one occasion, at
least, you did make mischief, if you’ll excuse the word, between Emily
and me. You said something that prevented Emily from giving me a bunch of
violets last Tuesday morning.”
“I did not,” returned Witherlee, coolly. “I simply made a playful remark
to Emily—the most innocent remark imaginable—which I’m perfectly willing
to repeat now.”
“Nevertheless,” said Wentworth, “your innocent remark, or the manner in
which you made it, incensed Emily against me.”
“Am I to blame for her misapprehensions, Richard?” mildly asked Fernando.
“You are aware now that Emily was in an unusually sensitive state of
mind at that time. You see how she mistook the sense of other things I
said, and yet you yourself have admitted that I am blameless in respect
to those. Why, then, may she not have mistaken the sense of the playful
remark I made about the flowers, and if so, why do you hold me to an
account for it?”
Wentworth could not get over this. He was fairly checked in the very
outset. The devil take it, he said to himself, I believe that Emily and I
have been to blame after all!
“I was as much astonished as you were, Richard, at Emily’s conduct about
the violets,” continued Fernando. “But I never imagined till this moment,
that she was influenced by my remark. How could I? I thought she was rude
to you, and I felt sorry. You must remember that I expressed my friendly
regret to you at the time. Surely, I wouldn’t have done that, if I had
instigated her to offend you.”
“Well, well,” said Wentworth, hastily, “I pass that. I own that Emily was
in a mood to misunderstand things; but see here. There were things you
said to me in the fencing-school that morning which, to my shame, made me
think unkindly of Harrington. Now”—
“Pardon me, Richard,” interrupted Witherlee, with an air of great
concern, “but this is the unkindest thing yet, and I do not understand
what has got into you people’s minds this morning. Now, what in the world
did I ever say to you against Harrington? Just tell me candidly—were not
you at that time incensed with Harrington for something or other—I don’t
know what?”
“I own I was,” replied Wentworth, twirling his moustache and blushing.
“Very well. And did I ever express anything more than sympathy with you
in your irritation?” demanded Witherlee.
“Well, I admit,” replied Wentworth, “that what you said was in the
form of sympathy with me. But then it led me to think more hardly of
Harrington than I would have done.”
Witherlee laughed as if his throat was full of turtle at this.
“You’ll excuse me for laughing, Wentworth,” he remarked, “but this is
exceedingly absurd. Here were you in a state of nervous resentment at
Harrington, and because your fiery temper took my kindly-meant attempts
at consolation as fresh fuel, you blame me! Now I put it to you, as a
reasonable man, was I to blame because you wrong-headedly twisted my
consolations against your friend?”
Wentworth colored deeply, and did not answer. The deuce take it, he
thought: I am making myself ridiculous in all this: the fact is, I was in
such a miserably jealous and irritable state, that, as he says, I turned
everything topsy-turvy.
“Ah, me!” sighed Witherlee, sadly lifting his eyebrows, as one who thus
expressed that this was the fate of friendship, loyalty, virtue of all
sorts, in this wicked, wicked, wicked world.
“Well, Fernando,” said Wentworth, “I’m truly sorry—but stay, there’s
another thing, and that’s not so easily explained. John Todd told me of a
talk you had with Bagasse that same morning, about us four.”
Wentworth paused to look at Witherlee, expecting to see him start and
change color at this. Nothing of the sort. Witherlee’s eyebrows were up,
and his eyes were their opaquest, and his face was perfectly discharged
of all expression. But in his soul was the first shock of alarm, for
he had not counted on his conversation with Bagasse being reported to
Wentworth.
“Well,” said he, imperturbably, “what did John Todd say? You will first
allow me to observe that it is not very creditable in him to have played
the eavesdropper on a private conversation. And you will pardon me for
remarking, Richard, that had I been in your place, my sense of honor
would not have permitted me to listen to any gossip from him.”
Wentworth blushed deeply. Gallant, honorable fellow that he was, he
half-mistrusted that he had not done right in letting John Todd make his
report, and what Witherlee said, certainly seemed in the most punctilious
spirit of chivalry. Witherlee, meanwhile, satisfied with having dealt
Wentworth’s case a telling blow at the outset, rested in injured
innocence, nervously impatient in spirit at the same time, to have the
worst over with.
“I won’t excuse myself, Fernando,” said Wentworth, hurriedly. “But here
is what the boy told me. In the first place, you mentioned the names of
these two ladies to Bagasse. Now, that was not decorous”—
“Why not?” demanded Witherlee. “Just consider that what I said to Bagasse
was in the confidence of familiar friendship, and the proof is, that
Bagasse himself never spread it abroad—only that sneak of a boy.”
“Familiar friendship with Bagasse!” exclaimed Wentworth, amazed. “I did
not imagine you would be so intimate with the old fellow.”
“And why not?” demanded Witherlee, with an air of noble disdain. “A
gallant old soldier of the Empire—a brave old Frenchman, who wears
the cross of the Legion! Do you think I’m such a snob as to shun his
friendship because he’s poor and plebeian, and all that? Indeed, no!
Bagasse and I,” he added, lying desperately, “are on very intimate terms,
and I therefore felt justified in talking freely to him—which I wouldn’t
have done if I had noticed the presence of that reptile of a boy.”
“Well,” said Wentworth, beginning to despair, “but that does not excuse
your making fun of my dress, or of”—
“It’s not true,” interrupted Witherlee. “I simply said, jestingly, that
you looked bizarre with your long curls and your Rubens hat, and so you
do. But it was harmless joking enough, I’m sure.”
“I don’t think, at anyrate, it was harmless joking for you to jeer
at Harrington’s coat, and say he looked like a ragpicker,” remarked
Wentworth.
“Well, if I ever heard of such malice and misrepresentation as that
little serpent has been guilty of!” exclaimed Fernando, with virtuous
indignation. “I never said anything of the sort. I simply remarked that
Emily looked all the more gorgeous in contrast to the plain attire
of Harrington, which was the simple truth. And as for the rest, my
remark was that if she was dressed like a ragpicker, she would still be
beautiful. Upon my word, I will chastise that boy the next time I see
him!”
Wentworth looked perfectly confounded as Witherlee, with an air of
indisputable veracity, told these bold lies.
“By Jupiter!” he exclaimed, “Johnny must have mistaken what you said,
Fernando, with a vengeance! Well—but see here, you certainly gave
Bagasse to understand that Harrington and I were in love with Muriel
and Emily. Since you are a friend of his, I won’t blame you for what
you say you said in confidence; but still that doesn’t excuse you for
saying contemptuously that Muriel would as soon marry a man out of the
alms-house as Harrington, and scornfully calling attention, as you did
in that connection, to Harrington’s apparel. You must have said that,
for Johnny told me circumstantially what Bagasse said in reply, and he
seemed to remember that better than what you had said. And by the way,
your representing that John and I were these ladies’ lovers, doesn’t
square with your assertion just now to Emily, that you had no idea of
any feeling between her and me. By Jupiter, Fernando!” cried Wentworth
at this point, elated to think that he had really caught Witherlee in a
contradiction, “you can’t make that square!”
“Mr. Wentworth,” replied Fernando with dignified severity, “you go too
far when you impugn my veracity, and you are perfectly reckless in your
assertions. I told Emily that I had no idea there was any feeling between
you two, and I told her the truth.”
“Who did you think I had a feeling for?” demanded Wentworth.
“Since you force me to say, I thought it was Muriel—and Harrington can
bear me witness,” said Witherlee, severely.
“Yes,” said Harrington, laconically. “Fernando told me so.”
“Now, then!” exclaimed Witherlee, triumphantly, “where doesn’t it square?”
Wentworth looked completely flabbergasted, as the sailors say, and
colored painfully.
“As for the rest,” pursued Witherlee, “it is just one tissue of
misstatements. I never told Bagasse you and Harrington were in love with
these ladies. On the contrary, when he got the notion into his head,
I scouted it, as your own statement shows, for I did not wish him to
believe what, though I supposed it, I did not absolutely _know_ was the
case. It is true that in endeavoring to convey to Bagasse that there
was no foundation for his belief, I did say, rather splenetically,
for his pertinacity irritated me, that it was just as likely Muriel
would wed a man out of the poor-house as Harrington. But I protest
against the construction of those words which would make it seem that I
compared Harrington to a pauper, or insulted him in any way. I was only
endeavoring to indicate the distance between his social position and
Muriel’s. You must bear in mind that I was talking to an illiterate man
and a foreigner, and I only adapted my language to his illiteracy and to
his imperfect knowledge of English, and used coarser terms than I would
to a different person, which explains my use of that phrase, and the
allusion to Harrington’s plain coat. All I meant, and all I would have
said to a person of culture, was that Muriel would not marry beneath her
station.”
“You were right, Fernando,” said Muriel, coldly. “I never would, and
Harrington knows it.”
“So I thought,” complacently replied Witherlee, thinking, oddly enough,
that she concurred with him. “I knew that you and Harrington were only
friends.”
“But this Bagasse, I am told, thought it would not be beneath me to
marry Harrington,” remarked Muriel, with an air of contemptuous hauteur
which Witherlee had never seen her wear before, and which surprised him.
Whew! he thought, Harrington is catching it now for his presumption with
a vengeance! I wouldn’t sit there, and have that said to my face, for
anything.
“Why yes,” he replied, glancing at Harrington, who sat with his face
buried in his hand, and what was visible of it so red that Witherlee
thought he was smitten with agonizing shame, as he was, but it was for
Witherlee. “Yes, Bagasse went into a fit of eloquence about it, and told
what he would do if he was ‘vair fine ladee,’ and thought Harrington
loved him.” And Witherlee laughed turtle-husky at the reminiscence,
without any more regard for Harrington’s feelings than if he were a post.
“Well, Wentworth, are you satisfied?” asked Muriel, quietly.
Wentworth, who had gone off into deep abstraction, and lost the
conversation between Muriel and Witherlee (which would have convulsed
him, and which had sorely tried Emily’s power to suppress her mirth),
started and colored.
“Why, yes,” he replied, “I am bound to own that Fernando’s explanation
puts a different look upon the matter, though I think he did wrong
to speak to Bagasse in such terms of Harrington, and I think he owes
Harrington an apology for language at the best too ungentlemanly—I must
say it, Fernando—to be passed over in silence. There is no excuse for it.
It was shameful.”
“Do you really think so, Richard?” said Muriel, with such a contemptuous
tone and expression that Wentworth turned red, and stared at her,
wondering what she could mean; while Emily moved away to the window, and
hid herself behind a curtain, that she might give some vent to her agony
of mirth.
“Well, Fernando,” said Muriel, after a pause, “what do you think about
making Mr. Harrington an apology?”
Witherlee, emboldened to intense insolence by his monstrously silly
supposition that Muriel was showering contempt on her lover, curved a
supercilious lip and curled a contumelious nose to that extent, that the
fiery Wentworth positively ached to knock him down.
“I do not think about it at all,” drawled the good Fernando.
“Very well,” said Muriel, holding Wentworth with her eye. “Now, Fernando,
since we are explaining things, let me ask you how you came to say that
you saw Wentworth and I one afternoon more than a week ago, folded in
each other’s arms in the parlor, and kissing each other?”
Muriel’s tactics were capital. By diverting his mind from the main
subject of conversation, she had thrown him completely off his guard, and
then suddenly sprung this question upon him. Fernando positively changed
color, and then turned deadly pale. If a bomb-shell had quietly fallen
into his lap, with the fuze just fizzing into the powder, he could not
have been much more astounded.
There was a pause, in which Emily came gliding back to her seat, all
alive with curiosity at this unexpected turn in affairs, while Wentworth
stared blankly, and Harrington sat with his face buried in his hand,
watching Witherlee, as the marine phrase has it, out of the tail of his
eye.
“Well, Fernando, you turn red, and then you turn pale,” remarked Muriel,
quietly. “What do those two colors mean?”
“They mean astonishment,” said Witherlee, recovering his self-possession
instantly, and looking at her with his most brazen face, conscious that
the tug of war had come, and with an antagonist of another sort than
Wentworth or Emily.
Oho, thought Muriel, surveying his admirably dissimulated face. I wonder
if I’m going to lose this move. Let’s see.
“You don’t mean to deny that I did see you in such a position with
Wentworth?” said Witherlee.
“Most assuredly,” was Muriel’s quiet reply.
“Most inevitably,” said Wentworth, like an Irish echo.
“Why, this is perfectly unaccountable,” murmured Witherlee, with superbly
acted astonishment. “I certainly did see you both, as I told Mr.
Harrington in a rash moment, which I can never too much regret. I was
entering the parlor when I saw you, and drew back instantly. I came in
again in a minute, and Emily had just entered the room, through the door
leading from the conservatory.”
“It can’t be,” said Muriel.
“Can’t possibly be,” said the Irish echo, ineffably delighted at
Witherlee’s fix.
“But how could I be mistaken,” persisted Witherlee. “There you evidently
were, both of you, in that position. You, Muriel, had on the lilac dress
you so often wear. It was the first thing I saw, and I knew you by it
instantly.”
“Utterly impossible,” said Muriel.
“Tee-totally impossible,” said the gleeful echo.
Witherlee was silent, and gazed at them with admirable dubiety, wishing
in his heart that they would only say more, for with these brief denials,
he found it difficult to gracefully gain the point he was driving at.
“It was I you saw, Fernando; I had on a lilac dress that evening,” said
the innocent Emily, blushing.
Muriel winced, for her game was weakened by this avowal, which had
brought up the point Fernando was waiting for, and which she did not mean
he should have. Fernando, meanwhile, was delighted, for he saw his clear
way out.
“You had on a lilac dress that evening!” he said, with an air of
surprise, to Emily. “Well, I declare I didn’t notice it. But how does
that alter the matter? Oh, I see!” he exclaimed, his face lighting.
“It was the lilac dress misled me, for you wore your lilac dress that
evening, Muriel. That’s it. My eye caught sight of the dress, and
I mistook you for Emily, and retreated before my eye could rectify
the error. What an unlucky blunder! I’m very, very sorry. But in the
confusion of the moment, I was naturally deceived. Well, well! Muriel, I
humbly beg your pardon, not only for having mentioned what I thought I
saw to Mr. Harrington—but you won’t blame me for that, for it foolishly
came out in the heat of conversation—but for this unfortunate mistake of
mine. It was natural, under the circumstances, but it is not the less
humiliating. Say that you forgive me, now, do!”
“Oh, well, Fernando,” she replied, nonchalantly laughing, “I must,
of course, give weight to your plea of its naturalness under the
circumstances. Still, you perceive it was a rather awkward blunder, and
it ought to make you more careful for the future.”
“Indeed, it will—I’ll be very careful not to make such a mistake again,”
said Fernando, laughing turtle, and quite exhilarated by his lucky escape.
“That’s right,” said Muriel, gaily. “For such a mistake, Fernando,
might break up our long acquaintance. At all events,” she pursued, with
a laugh, “it might prevent your being honored with such a theatrical
reception as I gave you that evening.”
“Theatrical?” said he, smiling; “what do you mean?”
“Why, don’t you remember,” she lightly responded, “how suddenly I struck
an attitude, and held out the bunch of flowers to you?”
“Yes, indeed,” replied the jocund Witherlee. “I had forgotten it, but I
remember it now. Just as I came in at one door, and you”—
He paused blankly, but he was in the trap, and there was no escape now.
“And I came in at the other,” continued Muriel, finishing his sentence.
He gazed at her, pale, with opaquest eyes; she at him, with clear eyes
aglow, and a solemn look upon her countenance. Wentworth and Emily stared
at both of them, not comprehending the point at all.
“And now, Fernando,” said Muriel, calmly, “the question for you to answer
is—How could you think you saw me with Wentworth, when you saw me come in
from the conservatory, holding out the bunch of flowers to you?”
A posing question! There was a long pause, in which Witherlee kept his
rigid face fixed upon her. Then, unable to bear her clear gaze, he meanly
trembled, and his head fell.
“Ah!” said Wentworth, in a low voice, “catch the first! A decided catch.
Fernando, my boy, we have you in a pure and simple lie.”
At this terrible speech, Witherlee lifted his livid and rigid face
with a forlorn attempt at dignity, but he could not sustain it. His
glittering and unsteady eyes flickered away from the open and gallant
countenance of Wentworth; from Emily, gazing at him with lustrous scorn;
from Muriel, looking at him with solemn pity; from Harrington, sitting
with his head bowed in his hand, and fell. He could not bear to look at
them. Mischief-makers, like other criminals, usually mix folly with their
crime, and in the commission of their wickedness, commonly leave the clue
to its discovery. Thus had Witherlee done. And now he was found out. To
tattle and lie and slander was nothing to him; but to be discovered, was
death.
“Fernando,” said Emily, with indignant composure, “this wicked falsehood
you have told makes it impossible to believe a word you have said. I do
not now credit a single syllable of your explanation—not one.”
At the sound of her voice, Witherlee seemed to recover a little
self-possession, for he turned quickly to her, though his unsteady eyes
did not rest upon her face.
“You have no right to say that,” he replied in a querulous and tremulous
voice, “no right whatever. I am willing to own my fault, but it is not
fair to argue from one fault to another. I have told you the truth, and
you saw its reasonableness, and acquitted me of blame. It is not fair to
take it back, not at all fair.”
He rose to his feet with a look of received injury, which even then
touched Emily, and made her hesitate in her verdict. But at that moment
Harrington left his chair, and came toward him with tears flowing from
his eyes. Witherlee cowered at the sight of this solemn and compassionate
emotion, and his head fell. In that moment he remembered the hard and
cruel insult he had so lately flung upon the man before him, and he
trembled in an agony of shame.
“Fernando,” said Harrington, calmly and tenderly, “I pity you from the
bottom of my heart. I could almost die with pity for you. Do not, I beg
of you, do not degrade your soul by persisting in what you know to be
falsehoods. You know you are not telling Emily the truth now, and you
know there is not a word of truth in all you have told her.”
“I do not see what right you have to say that, Harrington,” faltered
Witherlee.
“Fernando!” exclaimed Harrington, solemnly, “Alas, alas! you poor fellow,
I do not blame you! there is some virtue still in this forlorn attempt
to clothe the nakedness of your falsehood in the semblance of truth. But
it is useless, and it only does your nature a more grievous harm. Do you
not see that you have already confessed all? You have admitted that you
knew it was Emily and Wentworth you saw together. You knew, therefore,
that they were lovers. How can you say then, that in your conversation
with Emily that very evening, you did not know of their feeling for each
other? How can you say that you did not know your terrible dispraise of
Wentworth, so artfully clothed in praise, would shock and grieve the
woman who loved him? How can you say you did not know your story of
Susan Hollingsworth would throw its shadow on the thoughts with which
you had filled Emily? How can you say you thought your aggravating word
a week later over the violets, was harmless? Ah, Fernando! how could
you so coldly and cruelly drop this subtle poison into the hearts of
two lovers? You gave Richard and Emily hours of terrible suffering. You
nearly alienated them from each other—you almost murdered their love. How
could you do it? You knew they loved each other—you knew I loved Muriel;
and yet you wantonly saddened my heart by virtually telling me that
Wentworth and Muriel were betrothed. At the same time when you knew that
Emily loved Wentworth, you gave Captain Fisher to understand that she
was engaged to me. Fernando, you are entirely discovered. Your talk with
Bagasse is just as transparent, and just as disgraceful to your better
nature, as all the rest. Alas, alas! I can only pity you!”
The deep voice was gentle, and tears still flowed from the calm eyes.
Emily sat with her handkerchief to her face, touched by the majestic
sorrow of Harrington into compassion, and weeping silently. Muriel had
covered her eyes with her hand. Wentworth stood with folded arms, his
face pale, and fixed on Witherlee. Witherlee, completely unmasked even to
himself, stood with bowed head, livid and trembling, and there was a long
pause.
“Harrington,” faltered the poor rogue, in a weak, querulous voice, “I am
very sorry—I am indeed. I know I’ve done wrong—very wrong, and I’m sorry.
I feel very miserable. I haven’t a friend in the world now, and I know I
don’t deserve to have. But I hope you’ll forgive me, Harrington, though I
did you harm. I didn’t quite mean”—
His faltering voice broke, and apparently unconscious of any but the
presence of the young man before him, he sunk his head a little lower,
and stood trembling.
“Forgive you!” exclaimed Harrington, in a voice so sudden and sonorous
that Witherlee started, and fell a pace away. “Fernando, give me your
hand!”
Tremblingly, as Harrington strode straight up to him, with a frank
outstretched arm, Witherlee put his nerveless hand in his, looked up for
an instant into the masculine and noble face, dropped his head and burst
into tears.
A surge of emotion overswept them all, and for a minute there was no
sound but the thick sobs of Witherlee.
“Fernando,” said Harrington, solemnly, clasping his hand, and putting his
arm tenderly around him, “let the past be with the past, and live nobler
for the future. See: your repentance cancels all, and lifts you into
better life. You are not friendless—not forsaken. We are your friends,
all of us, and we will stand by you. Forgive you? I do with all my soul,
fully, heartily, cordially.”
“And I, too, Fernando,” cried Muriel, bounding up, and gliding swiftly
toward him, with humid eyes and outstretched hand. “Well I may, for
you did me the greatest service ever done to me, and I owe you much
gratitude.”
“I don’t understand,” faltered poor Witherlee, trembling all over, and
smiling, with an effort, a thin, gelid, arctic smile through his abject
tears, as he tremulously shook her hand.
“You introduced me, three years ago, to Harrington,” she smilingly
replied, “and now he is my husband. We were married yesterday.”
Fernando stopped trembling, and lifted his handsome eyebrows a hair’s
breadth, with something of his old manner, then fell a-trembling again,
and tried to smile.
“I am very glad to hear this,” he wanly faltered, “very glad indeed. I
wish you much happiness. If you’ll please to excuse me, I’ll—I’ll take my
leave.”
He bowed with the ghost of his former affected elegance of manner, and
gelidly smiling, backed toward the door.
“Hold on, Fernando,” exclaimed Wentworth, flying over to him. “Tip us
your flipper, my boy. There isn’t a speck of me that’s not friendly
to you—not a speck. Come and see me as often as you can—that’s a good
fellow.”
And Wentworth, smiling, shook his hand up and down with great cordiality,
as he rattled off this address.
“And I, Fernando,” said Emily, with her slow, ambrosial smile, sweeping
over to him as she spoke, and also taking his hand, “I am more your
friend than I have ever been. I felt terribly at what you said, but I
don’t now, so let it all go. Come to see me soon, won’t you?”
“Thank you. You are both very kind,” faltered Witherlee.
“Let us see you as often as you can, Fernando,” said Harrington, shaking
hands with him.
“Yes, do, Fernando,” said Muriel, also giving him her hand. “Let us
forget all this, and when we next meet, let it be happily.”
He bowed, with his face full of forlorn emotion, and backing to the door,
bowed himself out of the room. They stood in silence. Presently they
heard the shutting of the street-door. He was gone.
“Good!” exclaimed Wentworth, with a deep respiration. “Fernando’s cured
for life!”
“I believe he is,” murmured Muriel. “But he almost missed his salvation,
poor fellow!”
“That he did,” replied Wentworth. “He got clear of Emily, and he got
clear of me. I never saw anything like it. But you nailed him, Muriel,
and Harrington finished him.”
“Ah, me!” said Harrington, with a deep sigh, “it was an awful lesson to
give a fellow-being. But it was for his good. Yes, he will be a better
man for the future.”
Emily sat in silence, wiping the fast-springing tears from her eyes.
“I wonder how he will look when we next see him,” said Wentworth,
musingly. “And I wonder how soon he will call here after this”—
“Nay,” interrupted Muriel, her drooping hands clasped before her, and her
head bowed in pensive reverie, “he will never call here again.”
She was right. He never did—but once.