“Dear George,” said Totty, one evening near the end of May, “I hate the
idea of going away and leaving you here in the heat!”
“So do I,” answered George, thoughtfully, as he turned in his chair and
looked at his cousin’s face.
“I am sure you will fall ill. There will be nobody to take care of you,
no place where you can drop in to dinner when you feel inclined, and
where you can do just as you like. And yet—you see how Mamie is looking!
I cannot conscientiously keep her here any longer.”
“Good heavens, Totty, you must not think of it! You do not mean to say
you have been waiting here only on my account?”
Totty Trimm hesitated, withdrew one tiny foot, of which the point had
projected beyond the skirt of her tea-gown, and then put out the other
and looked at it curiously. They were both so small and pointed that
George could not have told which was the right and which the left. She
hesitated because she had not anticipated the question. George was not
like other men. He would not be flattered by merely being informed that
the whole Sherrington Trimm establishment had been kept up a month
beyond the usual time, on a war footing, as it were, for his sole and
express benefit. Most men would be pleased at being considered of enough
importance to be told such a thing, though they might not believe the
statement altogether. It was necessary that George should know that
Totty was speaking the truth, if she answered his question directly. She
hesitated and looked at the point of her little slipper.
“What does it matter?” she asked, suddenly, looking up and smiling at
him affectionately.
It was very well done. The strongest asseverations could not have
expressed more clearly her readiness to sacrifice everything she could
to his comfort. George was touched.
“You have been very good to me, Totty. I cannot thank you enough.” He
took her hand and pressed it warmly.
“What is the use of having friends unless they will stand by you?” she
asked, returning the pressure, while her face grew grave and sad.
Since she had written her first note after his disappointment, she had
never referred to his troubles. He had answered her on that occasion as
he answered every one, by saying that there had never been any
engagement, and he had marvelled at her exceeding tact in avoiding the
subject ever since. Her reference to it now, however, seemed natural,
and did not hurt him.
“You have been more than a friend to me,” he answered. “I feel as though
you were my sister—only, if you were, I suppose I should be less
grateful.”
“No, you would not,” said Totty with a smile of genuine pleasure
produced of course by the success of her operations. “Do you want to do
something to please me? Something to show your gratitude?”
“Whatever I can——”
“Come and spend the summer with us—no, I do not mean you to make a visit
of a month or six weeks. Pack up all your belongings, come down with us
and be one of the family, till we are ready to come back to town. Make
your headquarters with us, write your book, go away and make visits for
a week when you like, but consider that our house is your home. Will
you?”
“But, Totty, you would be sick of the sight of me——” Visions of an
enchanted existence by the river rose before George’s eyes. He was to
some extent intellectually demoralised, and every agreeable prospect in
the future resolved itself into the thought of mental rest superinduced
by boundless luxury and material comfort.
“What an idea!” exclaimed Totty indignantly. “Besides, if you knew how
interested I am in making the proposal, you would see that you would be
conferring a favour instead of accepting one.”
She laughed softly when she had finished the sentence, thinking how very
true her words were.
“I cannot understand how,” George answered. “Please explain. I really
cannot see how I shall be conferring a favour by eating your wonderful
dinners and drinking that champagne of Sherry’s.”
Totty laughed again.
“I wish you would finish it! It would be ever so much better for his
liver, if you would.”
She wondered what George would think if he knew that a fresh supply of
that particular brand of brut was already on its way from France,
ordered in the hope that he might accept the invitation she was now
pressing upon him.
“And as for the cook,” she continued, “he will do nothing unless there
is a man in the party. That is it, George. I have told you now. Dear
Sherry is not coming back until the autumn, and Mamie and I feel
dreadfully unprotected down there all by ourselves. Please, please come
and take care of us. I knew you would come—oh, I am so glad! It is such
a relief to feel that you will be with us!”
As indeed it was, since if George was under Totty’s personal supervision
there would be no chance of his returning to his former allegiance to
Constance. George himself saw that her reasons were not serious, and
considering the previous conversation and its earnest tone, he thought
that he saw through Totty’s playfulness and kindly wish to do a very
friendly action.
“I will tell you what I will do,” he said. “I will come for a month——”
“No—I will not have you for a month, nor for two months—the whole summer
or nothing.”
So George at last consented, and left town two or three days later with
Mrs. Sherrington Trimm and her daughter. He had felt that in some way he
was acting weakly, and that he had yielded too easily to his cousin’s
invitation, but if he had been in any doubt about her sincere desire to
keep him during the whole season, his anxiety was removed when as soon
as he was established in his new quarters Totty immediately began to
talk of plans for the months before them, in all of which George played
a principal part, and Mamie took it for granted that there was to be no
separation until they should all go back to New York together. During
the first few days George allowed himself to be utterly idle and let the
hours pass with an indifference to all thought which he had never known
before.
He had been transported into a sort of fairyland, of which he had
enjoyed occasional glimpses at other times, but which he had never had
an opportunity of knowing intimately. It was unlike anything in his
experience. Even the journey had not reminded him of other journeys, for
it had been performed in that luxurious privacy which is dear to the
refined American. Mr. Craik’s yacht was permanently at his sister’s
disposal, and on the morning appointed for the departure she and Mamie
and George had driven down to the pier at their leisure and had gone on
board. It had been but a step from the perfectly appointed house in the
city to the equally perfect dwelling on the water, and only one step
more from the snowy deck of the yacht to the flower garden before the
country mansion on the banks of the great river. Everything had been
ready for them, on board and on shore, and George could not realise when
the journey was over that he had been carried over a distance which he
formerly only traversed in the heat and dust of a noisy train, or on the
crowded deck of a river steamboat. He had passed the hot hours sitting
under the cool shade of a double awning, in the most comfortable of
chairs beside Mamie Trimm and opposite to her mother. There had been no
noise, no tramping of sailors, no blowing of whistles, no shouting of
orders. From time to time, indeed, he caught a glimpse of the captain’s
feet as he paced the bridge, but that was all. At mid-day a servant had
appeared and Totty had glanced at him, glanced at the table beside her
and nodded. Immediately luncheon had been served and George had
recognised the touch of the master in the two or three delicacies he had
tasted, and had found in his glass wine of the famous brand which was
said to have caused Sherry Trimm’s sufferings. He had divided with Mamie
a priceless peach, which had no natural right to be ripe on the last day
of May, and Totty had selected for him a little bunch of muscat grapes
such as he might not have eaten in the south before September. George
tasted the ambrosia and swallowed the nectar, and enjoyed the beautiful
scenery, the two pretty faces and the pleasant voices in his ear,
thinking, perhaps, of the old times when after a desperate morning’s
work at reviewing trash, he had sat down to a luncheon of cold meat,
pickles and tea. The thought of the contrast made the present more
delightful.
The spell was not broken, and Totty’s country-house prolonged without
interruption the series of exquisite sensations which had been
intermittent during the last month in New York. If Totty had intended to
play the part of the tempter instead of being the chief comforter, she
could not have done it with a more diabolical skill. She believed that a
man could always be more easily attacked by the senses than by his
intelligence, and she put every principle of her belief into her acts.
She partly knew, and partly guessed, the manner of George’s former life,
the absence of luxury, the monotony of an existence in which common
necessities were always provided for in the same way, without stint but
without variety. Her art consisted in creating contrasts of unlike
perfections, so that the senses, unable to decide between the amount of
pleasure experienced yesterday, enjoyed to-day and anticipated
to-morrow, should be kept in a constant state of suspended judgment. She
had practised this system with her husband and it had often succeeded in
persuading him to let her have her own way, and she practised it
continually for her own personal satisfaction, as being the only means
of extracting all possible enjoyment from her existence.
George fell under the charm without even making an effort to resist it.
Why, he asked himself dreamily, should he resist anything that was good
in itself and harmless in its consequences? His life had all at once
fallen in pleasant places. Should he disappoint Totty and give Mamie
pain by a sudden determination to break up all their plans and return to
the heat of the city? He could work here as well as anywhere else,
better if there was any truth in the theory that the mind should be more
active when the body is subject to no pain or inconvenience. A deal of
asceticism had been forced upon him since he had been seventeen years
old, and he believed that a surfeit of luxuries would do him no harm
now. He would get tired of it all, no doubt, and would be very glad to
go back to his more simple existence.
Totty, however, was far too accomplished an Epicurean to allow her
patient a surfeit of anything. She watched him more narrowly than he
supposed and was ready with a change, not when she saw signs of fatigue
in his manner, his face or his appetite, but before that, as soon as she
had seen that he was pleased. She was playing a great game and her
attention never relaxed. There was a fortune at stake of which he
himself did not dream, and of which even she did not know the extent.
She had everything in her favour. The coast was clear, for Sherrington
was in Europe. The final scene was prepared, since Mamie was already in
love with George. She herself was a past master of scene-shifting and
her theatre was well provided with properties of every description. All
that was necessary was that the hero should take a fancy to the heroine.
But the very fact that it all looked so easy aroused Totty’s anxiety.
She said to herself that what appeared to be most simple was often, in
reality, most difficult, and she warned herself to be careful and
diffident of success.
Fortunately Mamie was all she could desire her to be. She did not
believe in beauty as a means of attracting a disappointed man. Beauty
could only draw his mind into making comparisons, and comparisons must
revive recollection and reawaken regret. She had more faith in Mamie’s
subtle charm of manner, voice and motion than she would have had in all
the faultless perfections of classic features, queenly stature and royal
carriage. That charm of hers, gave her an individuality of her own, such
as Constance Fearing had never possessed, unlike anything that George
had ever noticed in other girls or women. Doubtless he might have too
much of that, too, as well as of other things, but Totty was even more
cautious of the effects she produced with Mamie than of those she
brought about by her minute attention to the management of her house.
And here her greatest skill appeared, for she had to play a game of
three-sided duplicity. She had to please George, without wearying him,
to regulate the intercourse between the two so as to suit her own ends,
and to invent reasons for making Mamie behave as she desired that she
should without communicating to the girl a word of her intentions. If
George appeared to have been enjoying especially a quiet conversation
with Mamie, he must be prevented from talking to her again alone for at
least twenty-four hours, and even then he must be allowed to please
himself in the matter. This was not easy, for Mamie was by this time
blindly in love with him, and if she were not watched would be foolish
enough to bore him by her frequent presence at his side. To keep her
away from him long enough to make him want her company needed much
diplomacy. If George went out for a turn in the garden, and if Mamie
joined him without an invitation, Totty could not pursue the pair in
order to protect George from being bored. Hitherto also, Mamie had made
no confidences to her mother and did not seem inclined to make any.
Manifestly, if an accident could happen by which Mamie could be brought
to betray herself to her careful parent, great advantages would ensue.
The careful parent would then appear as the firm and skilful ally of the
love-lorn daughter, the two would act in concert and great results might
be effected. Totty was not only really fond of George, in her own way,
but it would not have suited her that a hair of his head should be
injured. Nevertheless, she nourished all sorts of malicious hopes
against him at this stage. She wished that he might be thrown from his
horse and brought home unhurt but insensible, or that he might upset his
boat on the river under Mamie’s eyes—in short that something might
happen to him which should give Mamie a shock and throw her into her
mother’s arms.
Providence, however, did not come to Totty’s assistance and she was
thrown upon her own resources, aided in some small degree by an
extraneous circumstance. The marriage of John Bond and Grace Fearing had
been talked of for a long time, and Totty one morning learned that it
was to take place immediately. She could not guess why they had chosen
to be married in the very middle of the summer, when all their friends
were out of town, and she had no inclination to go to the wedding, which
was to be conducted without any great gathering or display of festivity.
John Bond, as being Sherrington Trimm’s partner and an old friend of
Totty’s, urged her of course to come down to town for the occasion and
to bring Mamie, but the heat was intense, and as there would be nothing
to see and no one present with whom she would care to talk, and nothing
good to eat, and, on the whole, nothing whatever to do except to grin
and look pleased, Totty made up her mind that she would have nothing to
do with the affair, beyond sending Grace an expensive present. There
were no regular invitations sent out, and George received no notice of
what was happening. Totty, however, did not lose the opportunity of
talking to Mamie about it all, with a view to sounding her views upon
matrimony in general and upon her own future in particular.
“Johnnie Bond is such a fine fellow!” said Totty to her daughter, when
they had been talking for some time.
Mamie admitted that he was a very fine fellow, indeed.
“Tell me, Mamie,” said her mother, assuming a tone at once cheerful and
confidential, “is not Johnnie Bond very nearly your ideal of what a
husband ought to be?”
“Not in the least!” answered the young girl promptly. Totty looked very
much surprised.
“No? Why, Mamie, I thought you always liked him so much!”
“So I do, in a way. But he is not at all in my style, mamma.”
“What is your style, as you call it?” Totty seemed intensely interested
as she paused for an answer. Mamie blushed, and looked down at a piece
of work she was holding.
“Well—to begin with,” she said, speaking quickly, “Mr. Bond is
three-quarters lawyer and one-quarter idiot. At least I believe so. And
all the rest of him is boating and tennis and—everything one does, you
know—sport and all that. I never heard him make an intelligent remark in
his life, though papa says he is as clever as they make them, for a
lawyer of course. You know what I mean, mamma. He is one of those
dreadfully earnest young men, who do everything with a purpose, as if it
meant money, and they meant to get it. Oh, I could not bear to marry one
of them! They are all exactly alike—so many steam engines turned out by
the same maker!”
“Dear me, Mamie!” laughed Mrs. Trimm. “What very decided opinions you
have!”
“I suppose Grace Fearing has decided opinions, too, in the opposite
direction, or she would not have married him. I never can understand
her, either, with those great dark eyes and that determined
expression—she looks like a girl out of a novel, and I believe there is
no more romance about her than there is in a hat-stand! There cannot be,
if she likes Master Johnnie Bond—and there is no reason why she should
marry him unless she does like him, is there?”
“None that I can see, but that is a very good one—good enough for any
one, I should think. You would not care for Johnnie Bond, but you may
care for some one else. You have not told me what your ideal would be
like.”
“Where is the use? You ought to know, mamma, without being told.”
“Of course I ought, child—only I am so stupid. Would he be dark or
fair?”
“Dark,” answered the young girl, bending over her work.
“And clever, I suppose? Of course. And slender, and romantic to look
at?”
“Oh, don’t, mamma! Talk about something else.”
“Why? I am not sure that we might not agree about the ideal.”
“No!” exclaimed Mamie with a little half scornful laugh. “We should
never agree about him, because I would like him poor.”
“You can afford to marry a poor man, if you please,” said Totty,
thoughtfully. “But would you not be afraid that he loved your money
better than yourself?”
“No indeed! I should love him, and then—I should believe in him, of
course.”
“Then I do not see why you should not marry your ideal after all, my
dear. Come, darling—we both know whom we are talking about. Why not say
it to each other? I would help you then. I am almost as fond of him as
you are.”
Mamie blushed quickly and then turned pale. She looked suspiciously at
her mother.
“You are not in earnest, mamma,” she said, after a short pause.
“Indeed I am, child,” answered Mrs. Trimm, meeting her gaze fearlessly.
“Do you think that I have not known it for a long time? And do you think
I would have brought him here if I had not been perfectly willing that
you should marry him?”
The young girl suddenly sprang up and threw her arms round her mother’s
neck.
“Oh mamma, mamma! This is too good! Too good! Too good!”
“Dear child!” exclaimed Totty, kissing her affectionately. “Is not your
happiness always the first thing in my mind? Would I not sacrifice
everything for that?”
“Yes—you are so sweet and dear. I know you would,” said Mamie, sitting
down beside her and resting her head upon her mother’s plump little
shoulder. “But you see—I thought that nobody knew, because we have
always been together so much. And then I thought you would think what
you just said, about the money, you know. But it is not true—I mean it
would not be true. He would never care for that.”
“No,” answered Totty, almost forgetting herself. “I should think not! I
mean—with his character—he is so honourable and fair—like your papa in
that. But Mamie, darling, do you think he——?”
Totty stopped, conveying the rest of her question by means of an
inquiringly sympathetic smile. Mamie shook her head a little sadly, and
looked down.
“I am afraid he never will,” she said, in a low voice. “And yet he
should, for I—oh mother! I love him so—you will never know!”
She buried her face and her blushes in her hands upon her mother’s
shoulder. Totty patted her head affectionately and kissed her curls
several times in a very motherly way. Her own face was suffused with
smiles for she felt that she had done a very good day’s work, and was
surprised to think that it had been accomplished so easily. The fact was
that Mamie was only too ready to speak of what filled her whole life,
and had more than once been on the point of telling her mother all she
felt. She had supposed, however, that she knew the ways of her mother’s
wisdom, and that George’s poverty would always be an insuperable
obstacle. She did not now in the least understand why Totty made so
light of the question of money, and even in her great happiness at
finding such ready sympathy she thought it very strange that she should
have so completely mistaken her mother’s character.
From that day, however, there was a tacit understanding between the two.
Mamie was in that singular and not altogether dignified position in
which a woman finds herself when she loves a man and has determined to
win him, though she is not loved in return. There are doubtless many
young women in the world who, whether for love or for interest, have
wooed and won their present husbands, though the latter have never found
it out, and would not believe it if it were told to them. Mamie differed
from most of these, however, in that she was as modest as she was
loving, and in her real distrust of her own advantages, which defect, or
quality, was perhaps at the root of her peculiar charm. She knew that
she was not beautiful, and she believed that beauty was a woman’s
strongest weapon. She had yet to learn that the way to men’s hearts is
not always through their eyes.
After her confession to her mother she began to discover the value of
that ingenious lady’s experience and tact. At first, indeed, she felt a
modest hesitation in coolly doing what she was told, as a means of
winning George’s heart, but she soon found out that her mother was
always right and that she herself was generally wrong.
“There is only one way of doing things,” said Totty, one day, “and that
is the right way. There is only one thing that a man really hates, and
that is, being bored. And men are very easily bored, my dear. A man
likes to have everything done for him in the most perfect way, but it
spoils his enjoyment to feel that it is done especially for him and for
nobody else. If you are afraid he will catch cold, do not run after him
with his hat, as though he were an invalid. That is only an example,
Mamie. Men have an immense body of tradition to sustain, and they do it
by keeping up appearances as well as they can. All men are supposed to
be brave, strong, honourable, enduring and generous. They are supposed
never to feel hot when we do, nor to catch cold when we should. It is a
part of their stage character never to be afraid of anything, and many
of them are far more timid than we are. I do not mean to say that dear
George has not all the qualities a man ought to have. Certainly not. He
is quite the finest fellow I ever knew. But he does not want you to
notice the fact. He wants you to take it for granted, just as much as
little Tippy Skiffington does, who is afraid of a mouse and would not
touch a dog that had no muzzle on for all he is worth, which is saying a
great deal. Dear George would not like it to be supposed that he cares
for terrapin and dry champagne any more than for pork and beans—and yet
the dear fellow is keenly alive to the difference. He does not want it
to be thought he could ever be bored by you or me, but he knows that we
know that he might be, and he expects us to use tact and to leave him
alone sometimes, even for a whole day. He will be much more glad to see
us the next time we meet him and will show it by giving himself much
more trouble to be agreeable. It is not true that if you run away men
will follow you. They are far too lazy for that. You must come to them,
but not too often. What they most want is amusement, and between their
amusements, to be allowed to do exactly what their high and mighty
intellects suggest to them, without comment. Never ask a man where he
has been, what he has seen, nor what he has heard. If he has anything to
tell, he will tell you, and if he has not you only humiliate him by
discovering the emptiness of his thoughts. Always ask his opinion. If he
has none himself, he knows somebody who has, no matter what the subject
may be. The difference between men and women is very simple, my dear.
Women look greater fools than they are, and men are greater fools than
they look—except in the things they know how to do and do well.”
“George is not a fool about anything!” said Mamie indignantly. She had
been listening with considerable interest to her mother’s homily.
“George, my dear,” answered Totty, “is very foolish not to be in love
with you at the present moment. Or, if he is, he is very foolish to hide
it.”
“I wish you would not talk like that, mamma! I am not half good enough
for him.”
Nevertheless Mamie consulted her mother and was guided by her. George
would ride—should she accept his proposal and go with him or not? A
word, a glance decided the matter for her, and George was none the
wiser. He could not help thinking, however, that Mamie was becoming an
extremely tactful young person, as well as a most agreeable companion.
One day he could not resist his inclination to tell her so.
“How clever you are, Mamie!” he exclaimed after a pause in the
conversation.
“I? Clever?” The girl’s face expressed her innocent astonishment at the
compliment.
“Yes. You are a most charming person to live with. How in the world did
you know that I wanted to be alone yesterday, and that I wanted you to
come with me to-day?” George laughed. “Do I not always ask you to come
with me in precisely the same tone? Do I not always look as though I
wanted you to come? How do you always know?”
Mamie was conscious that she blushed even more than she usually did when
she was momentarily embarrassed. Indeed, the blush had two distinct
causes on the present occasion. She had at first been delighted by the
compliment he had paid her, and then, immediately afterwards, when he
explained what he meant, she had felt her shame burning in her face. On
the previous day, as on the present afternoon, she had blindly followed
her mother’s advice, given by an almost imperceptible motion of the head
and eyes that had indicated a negation on the first occasion and assent
on the second. She was silent now, and could find no words with which to
answer his question.
“How do you do it?” he asked again, wondering at her embarrassment, and
slackening the pace at which he rowed, for they were in a boat together
towards sunset.
Mamie’s eyes suddenly filled with hot tears and she hid her face with
her small hands.
“Why, Mamie dear, what is it?” George asked, resting on his oars and
leaning forward.
“O George,” she sobbed, “if you only knew!”