It happened one evening, a few days later on, that Margaret found
herself once more _tête-à-tête_ with Louis Gaston. General and Mrs.
Gaston had gone to a dinner, from which Margaret was not sorry to be
excused.
It was a cold and rainy evening in December, and the drawing-room, with
its rich drapery and soft, deep Persian carpeting, was delightfully
comfortable and warm, the wind, as it whistled and blustered outside,
adding to this effect. The bright lights which hung from the ceiling,
together with the glowing fire in the grate, shed a perfect wealth of
warmth and radiance around, and brought out the delicious fragrance of
the fresh flowers, which filled a china bowl on a distant table. Louis,
as on the former occasion, bent over the table, just within the library
door, with his back toward the drawing-room, and Margaret, as before,
sat in the deep arm-chair before the fire.
“This is the lucky chance that I’ve been waiting for,” said Gaston,
turning to look at Margaret, as she settled herself with her book. “It
is such a bad evening that I think we may hope for an immunity from
visitors, and in a few minutes I shall lay by my work and come and try
some new music I’ve provided, if you agree.”
“I shall be charmed,” said Margaret, with ready acquiescence. “I feel
just in the humor for it. I utterly repel the proposition, however, if
you are going to sit up all night in consequence.”
“I will not, I assure you. It is not necessary, in the least. I’ll just
finish off a small bit that I am engaged on at present, and then put
the rest by until to-morrow.”
He returned to his work, and Margaret to her reading, and for a few
moments the silence was unbroken, save by the sound of the wind and
rain outside, and the soft little noises made by Louis with his pencil
and rule.
Suddenly the door-bell rang, and, as before, they looked at each other
regretfully. Louis was about to make the same proposition that his
companion had responded to so promptly on the former occasion, but a
look at Margaret’s face checked him. An instinct which she scarcely
understood herself, made it impossible for her to do a thing like that
now. The fact that she was conscious of feeling a strong liking for
Louis, restrained her from giving such a proof of it as this would be.
“I am sorry to give up the music,” she said simply, as Thomas went by
to the door, unchallenged. “There is still room to hope that it is a
call that will not concern us.”
For a moment this seemed likely, as there was a short colloquy with
Thomas at the door before the visitor was admitted, and even after that
he lingered to remove his overcoat and rubbers in the hall, with a
deliberation that implied a degree of familiarity that Margaret could
not identify as belonging to any visitor at the house whom she had yet
met.
The next moment, as Louis Gaston and herself were both watching the
door-way, Major King appeared, tall, gaunt, and awkward, but eminently
self-possessed.
His loosely hung, impractically tall figure was clad in the inevitable
shiny black “best clothes,” that poor Margaret knew so well, even to
the cut of the long frock-coat, with its flapping tails behind and
its bagging, unhindered fronts, between which was displayed, through
a premeditated opening in the vest, a modicum of white shirt-front,
interrupted for an inch or so by the fastening of the upper buttons,
only to reveal itself in more generous expansiveness higher up upon the
Major’s manly bosom.
Margaret’s quick eye at once perceived the incongruity of the whole
situation, and warned her of the necessity of effort on the part of all
to reconcile and overcome it. She went forward and received Major King
with the perfect politeness which was as natural to her as breathing,
and then turned to present Mr. Gaston, who, with the folding-doors of
the library opened wide, was quite as if he were in the same room.
Gaston’s aspect, at the first glance she gave him, was absolutely
startling to her. His whole bearing had changed. He had risen from his
seat and turned toward the drawing-room, and was standing by the table,
very erect and still. The expression of his face was repellant to the
last degree, the brows were contracted in a slight but perceptible
frown, and the lips were shut with a firm severity.
Margaret, as she mechanically named the two men to each other,
could not help drawing a swift mental contrast between the gaunt
Southerner, whose features were, in reality, the handsomer of the
two, and the Northern man, in his quiet evening dress, and wondering
why the latter looked so greatly the superior. Mr. Gaston’s attitude,
despite its stiffness, was dignified and impressive, and Major King’s,
notwithstanding its ease, was slouching and ungainly.
But the most significant point of contrast came when each man, after
his kind, acknowledged the introduction.
“Glad to meet you, sir,” said Major King, in loud, reverberating tones,
and made a motion forward, as if to extend his hand. This impulse was
repressed, however, by the short, supercilious bow with which the other
responded, pronouncing the two words, “Good-evening,” with a chilling
and clear-cut utterance that formed the strongest possible contrast to
the stranger’s bluff and off-hand style of address. Margaret observed
that he did not pronounce Major King’s name at all.
The young girl watched this interchange of greetings with a rush of
conflicting emotions. Indignation, shame, astonishment and real pain
fought for the predominance; but above all, she was conscious of an
instinct which made her feel that the Southern man’s side was her side.
Mr. Gaston, as soon as the introduction was over, resumed his seat
at the library-table, and went on with his work, turning his back
squarely toward the drawing-room, an action which made it impossible
for Major King to fail to realize that he was being intentionally and
deliberately slighted. How galling this knowledge must be to a Southern
man Margaret well knew, and she felt all her sympathies enlisted for
Major King. With the keenest anxiety she watched to see what his course
would be.
With a slight flushing of the cheek and a dark flashing of the eye,
the tall Southerner seated himself in a delicate little gilt chair,
which he proceeded to tip backward, until his heavy weight caused the
slight wood-work to creak ominously. Then, in response to a brilliant
leader respecting the weather, thrown out by poor Margaret in her
extremity, he launched into a fluent and somewhat irrelevant strain
of conversation, which soon made it evident that he could go alone.
His voice, alas! was loud and self-asserting, and his whole manner so
arrogant and ill-bred that Margaret felt her spirit of partisanship
growing fainter and fainter. One thing alone was clear to her, and
that was her own course. She heard Major King with polite attention,
and answered his remarks, when his fluency would permit, with entire
courtesy. But Margaret was on the rack the whole time as he talked on,
loud, familiar, and irritating. Louis Gaston, seated just within the
library door, heard every word--as indeed he must have been deaf not
to do--and Margaret fancied she could detect an expression of angry
superciliousness in the very attitude of the well-set shoulders and the
inclination of the close-cropped head.
The minutes came and went, until they mounted up to hours, and still
Major King sat and talked and laughed and told jokes with a ghastly
hilarity, which his companion found it frightfully hard to respond to.
Nine o’clock struck--ten, eleven, and still he did not go! It could not
be that he was enjoying himself, for the poor girl felt that he was
secretly as uncomfortable as herself, and, besides, he could never
have had a less entertaining companion. She forced herself to attend,
while he was giving an account of a play he had seen the night before,
which must have been lame and impotent enough in the first instance,
but which in the rehash was intolerable. She even tried to laugh when
he came to the amusing parts, which he always indicated by laughing
loudly himself. But it was torture to her.
All things have an end, however, an indisputable proposition with which
Margaret had buoyed herself up repeatedly during this trying visit,
and at last Major King rose to go. He was not going to be browbeaten
into a hasty retreat, however. Not he! He would take his time about
it, and by way of a parting assertion of ease, he took up a handsome
book from the table, and after reading the title aloud, with a jocular
air and a somewhat defective pronunciation, he tossed it down so
carelessly that the beautiful _edition de luxe_ fell to the floor, with
its delicate leaves crushed open beneath its heavy cover. He made no
effort to recover it, until he saw Margaret stooping to do so, when he
hastily picked it up, and flung rather than placed it on the table.
When Margaret had shaken hands with him, and said good-night, with no
tinge of abatement of the courtesy which had characterized her conduct
throughout, she looked toward the library and saw that Mr. Gaston had
risen and turned toward them, bowing to Major King with exactly the
same motion and expression as that with which he had acknowledged their
introduction. There was one difference, however. The little frigid bow
was given in perfect silence, and not one word of farewell was spoken.
Major King responded by a short, defiant nod, and a flashing glance
which might have surprised the other, had he allowed his gaze to rest
upon the visitor’s face long enough to perceive it.
There was a necessary delay in the hall over the rubbers and overcoat,
which it seemed to Margaret that he put on with elaborate slowness, and
then, at last, the front door closed behind Major King with a loud,
contemptuous bang.
The ordeal was over, but it left poor Margaret with a heavy heart; she
felt disgusted with everything and everybody.
“There’s not a pin to choose between them,” she was saying to herself,
“only Mr. Gaston was the host, and Mr. Gaston is the more enlightened
man, and therefore more bound to know better.”
She was too angry to look at Louis, and was leaving the room with a
quiet “good-night,” when the young man arrested her by saying, in a
tone of undisguised indignation:
“Twenty minutes past eleven o’clock; and a first visit too! This is
intolerable!”
Margaret looked straight into his eyes, with a steady glance of scorn,
that she made no effort to disguise.
“I dare say Major King was unaware of the lateness of the hour,” she
said, in a cool, high tone. “Good-night, Mr. Gaston.”
And she walked quietly out of the room, and mounted the stairs to her
own apartment, angrier than she had been yet.
She closed the door behind her, turned the gas on full, and stretched
herself out at her whole length on the lounge, clasping her hands under
her head. Her thoughts were too confused to be formulated, but the one
that predominated over all the rest was that she could never like Louis
Gaston again. She had the feeling that would have made her wish to
fight him had she been a man.
Major King’s conduct had been in the highest degree reprehensible, but
he had been led on to it by the slights the other offered him. And
then, too, she had a keen perception of what Major King’s opportunities
had probably been. He belonged to the class of impoverished Southerners
who had lost everything by the war, and had probably spent most of the
years of his manhood in a small village, living in a style that formed
a strong contrast to the affluence of his youth. His bearing, during
this trying evening, she attributed much to ignorance and much to
the stinging sense of failure and defeat, which the war had left on
so many Southern men. Added to all this, there must have been a keen
indignation at the unjustness and insolence with which he was treated
by a man from whom he had a right to expect common civility at least.
But with Louis Gaston it was different. He could not plead the excuse
of isolation and ignorance. He was a cultivated man of the world, who
had all the advantages of education, travel, and wealth; and, more than
all, his offence was heinous, in a Southern mind, because it had been
committed against the stranger within the gates.
“Nothing can ever wipe it out,” she muttered to herself; “the longer
one thinks of it the worse it grows. There are half-a-dozen palliations
for Major King, but for Mr. Gaston there is not one. I am certain that
Major King, in spite of it all, would have been incapable of treating
his worst enemy so. What a mortifying, humiliating experience!”
And, with a gesture of disgust, Miss Trevennon rose and walked to the
dressing-table, beginning slowly to unfasten her little ornaments, in
preparation for the night’s rest, which, in her perturbed state of
mind, was very long in coming to her.
Louis Gaston, meanwhile, left to his own reflections, grew conscious of
the fact that he was feeling very uncomfortable. The sensation was not
by any means a new one. He had harbored it, uninterruptedly, for the
past three hours, but it had undergone a change in kind and degree. He
was relieved from the intolerable infliction of Major King’s presence,
but unrest in another form had entered his breast; and though its
nature was less tangible and aggressive, it somehow seemed to strike
deeper.
He could not be blind to the fact that he had offended Margaret, whose
conduct during the evening had really puzzled him as much as his had
puzzled her. How could she bear to be pleasant and civil to a man like
that? It made him angry to think of the fellow’s daring even to speak
to her, and he assured himself that he had been perfectly right to
pursue a course which would free her from such an obnoxious intrusion
in future. And yet, under it all, there was a glimmering, disturbing
little consciousness that he had somehow been in the wrong. It was the
first time in his life that he had had occasion to distrust his social
methods, and he would not quite own to such a state of mind now. There
was, moreover, another feeling at work within his breast, which caused
him to determine that he would make some concessions, if necessary, to
reinstate himself in this young lady’s regard. It was a thing which
he knew he had heretofore enjoyed, and he felt a strong reluctance to
giving it up.
Neither were Louis Gaston’s slumbers as serene and tranquil as usual
that night. He made some effort to return to his work, but he found it
impossible to fix his attention on it, and so retired to bed to wait
for the sleep that was so strangely long in coming.