Mamie Trimm was one of those young girls of whom it is most difficult to
give a true impression by describing them in the ordinary way. To say
that her height was so many feet and so many inches—fewer inches than
the average—that her hair was very fair, her eyes grey, her nose small,
her mouth large, her complexion clear, her figure well proportioned, to
say all this is to say nothing at all. A passport, in the days of
passports, would have said as much, and the description would have just
sufficed to point out Mamie Trimm if she had found herself in a company
of tall women with black hair, large features and imposing presence. It
would have been easier for a man to find her amongst a bevy of girls of
her age, if he had been told that she possessed a charm of her own,
which nobody could define. It would help him in his search, to be
informed that she looked very delicate, but was not so in reality, that
her figure was not only well proportioned, but was very exceptionally
perfect and graceful, and that, but for her well-set grey eyes and her
transparent complexion, her face could never have been called pretty.
All these points may have combined to produce the aforesaid
individuality that was especially hers. Little is known, I believe, of
that fair young girl of whom Charles Lamb wrote to Landor—“Rose Aylmer
has a charm that I cannot explain.” Mamie Trimm was George Wood’s Rose
Aylmer.
He had known her all her life and there was between them that sort of
intimacy which cannot exist at all unless it has begun in childhood. The
patronising superiority of the schoolboy has found a foil in the
clinging admiration of the little girl who is only half his age. The
budding vanity of the young student has delighted in “explaining things”
to the slim maiden of fourteen who believes all his words and worships
all his ideas, the struggling, striving, hardworking beginner has found
comfort in the unfailing friendship and devotion of the accomplished
young woman whom he still thinks of as a child, and treats as a sister,
not realising that the difference between fourteen and seven is one
thing, while that between five or six and twenty, and eighteen or
nineteen is quite another.
When a friendship of that kind has begun in childish years it is not
easily broken, even though the subsequent intercourse be occasionally
interrupted. Of late, indeed, Constance Fearing had taken, and more than
taken Mamie’s place in George’s life. He had seen his cousin constantly
of course, but she had felt that he was not to her what he had been,
that something she could not understand had come between them, and that
she had been deprived of something that had given her pleasure. On the
other hand, it was precisely at this time that she had made her first
appearance in society and her life had been all at once made very full
of new interests and new amusements. She had been received into the
bosom of social institutions with enthusiasm, she had held her own with
tact, she had danced at every ball, had received offers of marriage
about once in three months, had refused them all systematically and was,
on the whole, in the very prime of an American girl’s social career. If
her head had been turned by much admiration, she had concealed the fact
very well, and the expression of her attractive face had not changed for
the worse after two years of uninterrupted gaiety. She was still as
innocently fond of George as she had been when a little girl and if the
exigencies of continual amusement had deprived her of some of his
companionship, she looked upon the circumstance with all the fatalism of
the very young and the very happy, as a matter to be regretted when she
had time for regrets, but inevitable and predestined. Her regrets,
indeed, had not troubled her much until very lately, when George’s
growing reputation had begun to draw him into the current of society.
She had seen then for the first time that there was another person,
somewhat older than herself, in whose company he delighted as he had
never delighted in her own, and her dormant jealousy had been almost
awakened by the sight. It seemed to her that she had always had a prior
right and claim upon her cousin’s attention and conversation, and she
did not like to find her right contested, especially by one so well able
to maintain her conquests against all comers as was Constance Fearing.
In her innocence, she had more than once complained to her mother that
George neglected her, but hitherto her observations on the subject had
received no sympathy from Mrs. Sherrington Trimm. Totty had no idea of
allowing her only child to marry a penniless man of genius, and though,
as has been set forth in the early part of this history she felt it
incumbent upon her to do something for George, and encouraged his
visits, she took care that he should meet Mamie as rarely as possible in
her own house. As for Sherrington Trimm himself, he cared for none of
these things. If Mamie loved George, she was welcome to marry him, if
she did not there would be no hearts broken. George might come and go in
his house and be welcome.
Mamie Trimm’s undefinable charm doubtless covered a multitude of
defects. She was of course very well educated, in the sense in which
that elastic term is generally applied to all young girls of her class.
It would be more true to say that she, like most of her associates, had
been expensively educated. Nothing had been omitted which, according to
popular social belief can contribute to the production of a refined and
accomplished feminine mind. She had been taught at great pains a number
of subjects of which she remembered little, but of which the transient
knowledge had contributed something to the formation of her taste. She
had been instructed in the French language with a care perhaps not
always bestowed upon the subject in France, and the result was that she
could read novels written in that tongue and, under great pressure of
necessity, could converse tolerably in it, though the composition of the
shortest note plunged her into a despair that would have been comic had
it been less real. She possessed a shadowy acquaintance with German and
knew a score of Italian words. In the department of music, seven years
of study had given her some facility in playing simple dance music, and
she was able to accompany a song tolerably, provided the movement were
not too fast. On the other hand she danced to perfection, rode well and
played a very fair game of lawn-tennis, and she got even more credit for
these accomplishments than she deserved because her naturally
transparent complexion and rather thin face had always made the world
believe that her health was not strong.
In character she was neither very sincere, nor by any means
unscrupulous. Her conscience was in a very natural state, considering
her surroundings, and she represented very fairly the combination of her
mother’s worldly disposition with her father’s cheerful, generous and
loyal nature. She was far too much in love with life to be morbid, and
far too sensible to invent imaginary trials. She had never thought of
examining herself, any more than she would have thought of pulling off a
butterfly’s wings to see how they were fastened to its body. Her
simplicity of ideas was dashed with a sprinkling of sentimentality which
was natural enough at her age, but of which she felt so much ashamed
that she hid it jealously from her father and mother and only showed a
little of it to her most intimate friend when she had danced a little
too long or suspected herself of having nearly accepted an offer of
marriage. It was indeed with her, rather a quality than a weakness, for
it sometimes made her feel that life did not consist entirely in
waltzing a dozen miles every night and in talking over the race the next
morning. The only visible signs of this harmless sentimentality were to
be found in a secret drawer of her desk and took the shape of two or
three dried flowers, a scrap of ribband and a dance programme in which
the same initials were scrawled several times. She did not open the
drawer at dead of night and kiss the flowers, nor hold the faded ribband
to her hair, nor bedew the crumpled little bit of illuminated cardboard
with her warm tears. On the contrary she rarely unlocked the receptacle
unless it were to add some new memento to the collection, and on such
occasions the principal reason why she did not summarily eject the
representatives of older memories was that she felt a sort of
good-natured pity for them, as though they had been living things and
might be hurt by being thrown away. Her dainty room contained, indeed
more than one object given her by George Wood, from a collection of
picture-books that bore the marks of age and rough usage, to her first
tennis racquet, now battered and half unstrung, and from that to a
pretty toilet-clock set in chiselled silver which her cousin had given
her on her last birthday, as a sort of peace-offering for his neglect.
It never would have entered her head, however, to hide anything she had
received from him in the secret drawer. There was no sentimentality
about her feelings for him, and if there was a sentiment it was of the
better and stronger sort. She felt that she had a right to like George,
and that his gifts had a right to be seen. Once or twice, of late, when
she had been watching him through the greater part of an evening while
he talked earnestly with Constance Fearing, Mamie had felt an itching in
her fingers to take everything he had given her and to throw all into
the street together; but she had always been glad on the next day that
she had not yielded to the destructive impulse, and she had once dreamed
that, having carried out her dire intention George had picked up the
various articles in the street and had brought them back to her, neatly
packed in a basket, with a sardonic smile on his grave face. Since then,
she had thought more of Constance than of George’s old picture-books,
the worn-out racquet, or the clock.
Mamie bore no malice against him, however, though she was beginning to
dislike the name of Fearing in a way that surprised herself. If George
talked to her at a party, she was always herself, graceful, winning and
happy; if he came to see her, the same words of welcome rose to her lips
and the same soft colour flashed through the alabaster of her cheek, a
colour which, as her mother thought, should not have come so easily for
one who was already so dear. The careful Totty heard love’s light tread
afar off and caught the gleam of his weapons before it was yet day, her
maternal anxiety had been stirred, and the devotion of the social
tigress to her marriageable young had been roused almost to the point of
self-sacrifice. Indeed, she had more than once interrupted some pleasant
conversation of her own, in order to draw Mamie away from George, and
more than once she had stayed at home when Mamie was tired with the
dancing of the previous night lest in her absence George’s evil genius
should lead him to the house. Fortunately for her, no one had given her
more constant and valuable assistance than George himself, which was the
reason why Totty had not ceased to like him. Had he, on his part seemed
as glad to be with Mamie, as Mamie to be with him, the claws of the
tigress would have fastened upon him with sudden and terrible ferocity
and would have accompanied him to the front door. There would now in all
likelihood be a change in the tigress’s view of the matter, and what had
until lately seemed one of George’s best recommendations, would soon be
regarded in the light of a serious defect. The position of the invader
had been very much changed since the day on which Totty Trimm had been
left alone in the strong room for a quarter of an hour, and had brought
away with her the last will and testament of Thomas Craik.
If George had ever in his life felt anything approaching to love for
Mamie, he could not have failed to notice that Totty had done all in her
power to keep the two apart during the past three years, in other words
since Mamie had been of a marriageable age. But it had always been a
matter of supreme indifference to him whether he were left alone with
her or not, and to-day it had not struck him that Totty had never before
proposed that he should go and spend an hour with her daughter when
there was nobody about. Totty herself, if her heart had not been
bursting with an anticipated triumph, would have been more cautious, and
would have thought twice before making her suggestion with so much
frankness. In the moment of her meeting with him and guessing the truth
so many possibilities had suggested themselves to her that she had not
found time to reflect, and she had for an instant entertained the idea
of returning immediately from Washington Square to her own home, in
order to find George there and perform the part of the skilful and
interested consoler. A very little consideration showed her that this
would be an unwise course to pursue, and she had adopted a plan
infinitely more diplomatic, of which the results will be seen and
appreciated before long. In the meantime George Wood was seated beside
Mamie and her flowers, listening to her talk, answering her remarks
rather vaguely, and wondering why he was alive, and since he was alive,
why he was in that particular place.
“You look tired, George,” said the young girl, studying his face. “You
look almost ill.”
“Do I? I am all right. I have been doing a lot of work lately. And you,
Mamie—what is the matter? Your mother told me just now that you had a
bad cold. I hope it is nothing serious.”
“Oh, it is nothing. I wanted to read your book, and I did not want to
make visits, and I had just enough of a cold to make a good excuse. A
cold is so useful sometimes—it is just the same thing that your writing
is to you. Everybody believes it is inevitable, and then one can do as
one pleases. But you really do look dreadfully. Have some tea—with a
stick in it as papa calls it.”
Mamie laughed a little at her own use of the slang term, though her eyes
showed that she was really made anxious by George’s appearance.
“Thank you,” he answered. “I do not want anything, but I am very tired,
and when your mother told me you were all alone at home I thought it
would do me good to come and stay with you a little while, if you would
talk to me.”
“I am so glad you came. I have not seen much of you, lately.” There was
a ring of regret in her voice.
“You have been so gay. How can I get at you when you are racing through
society all the year round from morning till night?”
“Oh, it is not that, George, and you know it is not! We have often been
in the same gay places together, and you hardly ever come near me,
though I would much rather talk with you than with all the other men.”
“No you would not—and if you would, you are such a raving success, as
they call it, this year, that you are always surrounded—unless you are
sitting in corners with the pinks of desirability whose very
shoe-strings are a cut above the ‘likes o’ me.’ When are you going to
marry, Mamie?”
“When somebody asks me, sir—she said,” laughed the young girl.
“Who is somebody?”
“I do not know,” answered Mamie with an infinitesimal sigh. “People have
asked me, you know,” she added with another laugh, “any number of them.”
“But not the particular somebody who haunts your dreams?” asked George.
“He has not even begun to haunt me yet. You do, though. I dreamed of you
the other night.”
“You? How odd! What did you dream about me?”
“Such a funny dream!” said Mamie, leaning forward and smelling the roses
beside her. It struck George as strange that the colour from the dark
red petals should be thrown up into her face by the rays of the sun,
though he knew something of the laws of incidence and reflection.
“I dreamed,” continued Mamie, still holding the roses, “that I was very
angry with you. Then I took all the things you ever gave me, the
picture-books, and the broken doll, and the old racquet and the clock—by
the by, it goes beautifully—and I threw them all out of my window into
the street. And, of course, you were passing just at that moment, and
you brought them all into the house in a basket, nicely done up in pink
paper, and handed them back to me with that horrid smile you have when
you are going to say something perfectly hateful.”
“And then, what happened?” inquired George, who was amused in spite of
himself.
“Oh, nothing. I suppose I woke just then. I laughed over it the next
morning.”
“But what made you so angry with me?”
“Nothing—that is—the usual thing. The way you always behave to me at
parties.”
George looked at her in silence for a second, before he spoke again.
“Do you mean to say that you really care,” he asked, “whether I talk to
you at parties, or not?”
“Of course I care!” exclaimed the young girl. “What a question!”
“I am sure I cannot see why. I am not a very amusing person. But since
you would like me to talk to you, I will, as much as you please.”
“It is too late now,” answered Mamie, laying down the roses she had held
so long. “Everything is over, or will be in a day or two, and you will
not get a chance unless you come and stay with us this summer. Why do
you never come and stay with us? I have often wondered.”
“I was never asked,” said George indifferently. “I could not well come
without an invitation. And besides, I have generally been very busy in
the summer.”
“Did they never ask you?” inquired Mamie in evident surprise. “Mamma
must have forgotten it.”
“I daresay,” George replied, rather dreamily. His thoughts were
wandering from the conversation.
“She shall, this time,” said Mamie with considerable emphasis. Then
there was silence for some moments.
George did not know what she was thinking and cared very little to
inquire. He was conscious that the surroundings in which he found
himself were soothing to his humour, that Mamie’s harmless talk was
pleasant to his ear, and that if he had gone anywhere else on that
afternoon, he might have committed some act of folly which would have
had serious consequences. He was neither able nor anxious to understand
his own state, since, whatever it might be, he desired to escape from
it, and he was grateful for all external circumstances which helped his
forgetfulness. He was no doubt conscious that it would be out of the
question to recover from such a shock as he had received without passing
through much suffering on his way to ultimate consolation. But he had
been stunned and overcome by what had happened. The first passion of
almost uncontrollable anger that swept over his nature had left him dull
and almost apathetic for the time, bruised and willing to accept
thankfully any peace that he could find.
Presently, Mamie turned the conversation to his books and talked
enthusiastically of his success. She had read what he had written with
greater care and understanding than he had expected of her, and she
quoted whole passages from his novels, puzzling him sometimes with her
questions, but pleasing him in spite of himself by her sincere and
admiring appreciation. At last he rose to leave her.
“I wish you would stay,” she said regretfully. But he shook his head.
“Why not stay the rest of the afternoon?” she suggested. “We are not
going out this evening and you could dine with us, just as you are.”
This was altogether more than George wanted. He did not care to meet
Totty again on that day.
“Then come again soon,” said Mamie. “I have enjoyed it so much—and we
are not going out of town for another fortnight.”
“But you may not have another cold, Mamie,” George observed.
“Oh, I will always have a cold, if you will come and sit with me,”
answered the young girl.
When George was once more in the street, he stared about him as though
not knowing where he was. Then, when the full force of his
disappointment struck him for the second time, he found it hard to
believe that he had been spending an hour in careless conversation with
his cousin. He looked at his watch mechanically, and saw that it was
late in the afternoon. It was as though a dream had separated him from
his last interview with Constance Fearing. Of that, at least, he had
forgotten nothing; not a word of what she had said, or of what he had
answered, had escaped his memory, every syllable was burned into the
page of his day. Then came the great question, which had not suggested
itself at first. Why had all this happened? What hidden reason was there
in obedience to which Constance had so suddenly cast him off? Had she
weakly yielded to Grace’s influence? He had little faith in Grace’s
assurance that she had been silent, nor in Constance’s confirmation of
the statement. And Constance was weak. He had often suspected it, and
had even wondered whether she would withstand the pressure brought to
bear upon her and against himself. Yet her weakness alone did not
explain what she had done. It had needed strength of some sort to face
him, to tell him to his face what she had first told him through her
sister’s words. But her weakness had shown itself even then. She had
wept and hidden her face and cried out that he was breaking her heart,
when she was breaking his. George ground his heel upon the pavement.
Her heart, indeed! She had none. She was but a compound of nerves,
prettiness and vanity, and he had believed her the noblest, bravest and
best of women. He had lavished upon her with his lips and in his books
such language as would have honoured a goddess, and she had turned out
to be only a weak shallow-hearted girl, ready to break an honest man’s
heart, because she did not know her own mind. He cursed his ignorance of
human nature and of woman’s love, as he strode along the street toward
his own home. Yet, rave as he would, he could not hate her, he could not
get rid of the sharp pain that told him he had lost what he held most
dear and was widowed of what he had loved best.
When he was at home and in his own room he became apathetic again. He
had never known himself subject to such sudden changes of humour and at
first he vaguely imagined that he was going to be ill, and that his
nerves would break down. His father had not yet come home from the walk
which was a part of his regular mode of life. George sat in his deep old
easy-chair by the corner of his table and wondered whether all men who
were disappointed in love felt it as he did. He tried to smoke and then
gave it up in disgust. He rose from his seat and attempted to arrange
the papers that lay in heaps about the place where he wrote, but his
fingers trembled oddly and he felt alternately hot and cold. He opened a
book and tried to read, but the effort to concentrate his attention was
maddening. He felt as though he must be stifled in the little room that
had always seemed a haven of rest before, and yet he did not know where
to go. He threw open the window and stood looking at the rows of windows
just visible above the brick wall at the back of the road. The shadows
were deepening below and the sky above was already stained with the glow
of evening. The prospect was not beautiful, but the cool air that fanned
his face was pleasant to his senses, and he remained standing a long
time, so long indeed that the stars began to shine overhead before he
drew back and returned to his seat. Far down in his sensitive character
there was a passionate love of all that is beautiful in the outer world.
He hid it from every one, for some reason which he could not explain,
but he occasionally let it show itself in his writings and the passages
in which he had written of nature as it affected him, had not failed to
be noticed for their peculiar grace and tenderness of execution. Since
he had begun to write books all nature had become associated with
Constance. He had often wondered what the connecting link could be, but
had found no answer to the question. A star in the evening sky, a ray of
moonlight upon rippling water, the glow of the sunset over drifted snow,
the winnowed light of summer’s afternoon beneath old trees, the scent of
roses wet with dew, the sweet smell of country lanes when a shower had
passed by—all these things acted like a charm upon him to raise the
vision of Constance before his eyes. To-night he could not bear to look
at the bright planet that was shining in that strip of exquisitely soft
sky above the hard brick buildings.
That evening he sat with his father, a rather rare occurrence since he
had gone so much into the world. The old gentleman had looked often at
him during their meal but had said nothing about the careworn look of
exhaustion that he saw in his son’s face. It was nearly ten o’clock when
Jonah Wood laid down his book by his side and raised his eyes. George
had been trying to read also, and during the last half-hour he had
almost succeeded.
“What is the matter with you, George?” asked his father.
George let his book fall upon his knee and stared at the lamp for a few
seconds. He did not want sympathy from his father nor from any one else,
but as he supposed that he would be unable to conceal his nervousness
and ill temper for a long time to come, and as his father was the person
who would suffer the consequences of both, he thought it better to speak
out.
“I do not think there is anything the matter with my bodily condition,”
he answered at last. “I am afraid I am bad company, and shall be for a
few days. This afternoon, Miss Fearing refused to marry me. I loved her.
That is what is the matter, father.”
Jonah Wood uncrossed his legs and crossed them again in the opposite way
rather suddenly, which was his especial manner when he was very much
surprised. Mechanically, he took up his book again, and held it before
his eyes. Then his answer came at last in a rather indistinct voice.
“I am sorry to hear that, George. I had thought she was a nice girl. But
you are well out of it. I never did think much of women, anyhow, except
your dear mother.”
So far as words went, that was all the consolation George got from his
father; but he knew better than to suppose that the old gentleman would
waste language in condolence, whatever he might feel. That he felt
something, and that strongly, was quite evident from the fact that
although he conscientiously held his book before his eyes during the
half-hour that followed, he never once turned over the page.
George rested little that night, and when at last he was sound asleep in
the broad daylight, he was awakened by a knock at the door and a voice
calling him. On looking out a note was handed to him, addressed in Totty
Trimm’s brisk, slanting, ladylike writing. He was told that an answer
was expected and that the messenger was waiting.
“Dear George,” Totty wrote, “I cannot tell you how amazed and distressed
I am. I do hope there is not a word of truth in it, and that you will
write me so at once. It is all over New York that Conny Fearing has
jilted you in the most abominable way! Of course we all knew that you
had been engaged ever so long. If it is true, she is a cruel, heartless,
horrid girl, and she never deserved you. Do write, and do come and see
me this afternoon. I shall not go out at all for fear of missing you. I
am so, so sorry! In haste.—Your affectionate
TOTTY.”
George swore a great oath, then and there. He had not mentioned the
subject to any one but his father, so that either Constance or Grace
must have told what had happened.
That the story really was “all over New York,” as Totty expressed it, he
found out very soon.