Having assisted, humbly and admiringly, at Mrs. Gaston’s elaborate
dinner-toilet that evening, Margaret followed the gracefully cloaked
and hooded figure down the stairs and out to the door-steps, when she
said a gay good-bye to her cousin and General Gaston, and turned and
entered the house. She had been informed that Louis Gaston also had
an engagement, and so she had the not unwelcome prospect of a quiet
evening to herself. There were some things that she wanted leisure to
think out, calmly and deliberately, and as the drawing-room looked very
warm and inviting she turned toward it, and had sunk into her favorite
chair before the fire, when she perceived, for the first time, that the
library doors were thrown open and that Louis Gaston was sitting there
at work. The sight was an irritating one. His very attitude and the set
of his firm, strong shoulders, recalled vividly her discomfiture of
the previous evening, and roused all the quick indignation she had felt
then. She was about to withdraw at once, in the hope that he might not
have perceived her entrance, when he turned suddenly, and, seeing her,
rose and came forward, his face wearing its pleasantest smile, and his
manner at its easiest and friendliest.
“Well, Cousin Margaret,” he said, “and so they’ve left you behind!
But I can assure you, you needn’t regret it. The party is an old-fogy
affair, which will be long and tedious. There’s some glory to be got
out of it, I dare say, but I’ll wager there isn’t much pleasure.”
Margaret heard him deliver himself of these affable observations with
intense indignation. “Cousin Margaret” indeed! Did he presume to
suppose for an instant, that he could atone for the indignity he had
offered her, and the positive pain he had caused her, by a few careless
words of flattery and a caressing tone of voice?
“I shouldn’t have cared to go with them in the least,” she answered
coldly. “I am used to quiet. Cousin Eugenia said you had an engagement.”
“So I have; but that can be postponed, as also, I suppose, may be
your meditations,” answered Louis, feeling a keener zest in the
accomplishment of this reconciliation with Margaret since he saw it was
likely to cost him some pains. “Suppose now you and I run off to the
theatre. There’s a pretty little play on the boards, and we’ll take our
chances for a seat.”
“Thank you, I don’t care to go out this evening,” responded Margaret,
in the same voice.
There was a moment’s silence, which might have lasted longer, but for
some symptoms of flight on the part of Miss Trevennon, which the young
man saw and determined to thwart.
“I am afraid,” he began, speaking with some hesitation, “that I was so
unfortunate as to offend you in some way last night, when your edifying
visitor was here----”
“Please don’t refer to that episode, unless you mean to apologize
for what you did,” Margaret interrupted him, with an inflection of
controlled indignation. “Your laughing at him now does not mend
matters.”
The young man’s whole expression changed. This was really a little too
much.
“Apologize!” he said quickly, a dark frown gathering. “You are under
some remarkable delusion, Miss Trevennon, if you think I acknowledge
it to be a case for an apology. It was a most presumptuous intrusion,
and as such I was compelled to resent it, on your account as well as my
own.”
“Don’t let me be considered in the matter, I beg,” said Margaret, with
a little touch of scorn. “I wish no such deed as that to be done in my
name.”
“May I ask,” said Gaston, in a keen, distinct voice, “whether your
championship of this gentleman is due to an admiration and endorsement
of his manner and conduct, or to the more comprehensive fact of his
being a Southerner? You Southerners are very clannish, I’ve been told.”
Margaret had always held herself to be superior to sectional
prejudices, but there was something in his manner, as he said this,
that infuriated her.
“We Southerners,” she answered, feeling a thrill of pride in
identifying herself with the race that, by his looks and tones, he was
so scornfully contemning, “are not only a clannish people, but also a
courteous one, and the very last and least of our number is incapable
of forgetting the sacred law of hospitality to a guest.”
Undoubtedly Miss Trevennon had forgotten herself, but it was only for
a moment. She had said more than she meant to say, and she checked
herself with an effort, and added hastily:
“I much prefer not to pursue this subject, Mr. Gaston. We will drop it
just here, if you please.”
The fact that Mr. Gaston bowed calmly, and quietly returned to his
work, by no means proved that he was in reality either calm or quiet.
It was only by a great effort of self-control that he forced himself to
be silent, for both the words and tones that this young lady had used
were stingingly provoking. But what affected him most was the stunning
presumptuousness of the whole thing. That this ignorant Southern girl,
who had passed most of her life in a little insulated village, should
venture to set him right on a point which affected his bearing as a
man of the world, was infuriating. He mentally assured himself that
his conduct toward the fellow, King, had been exactly what it should
have been, and, moreover, he determined to take occasion to show Miss
Trevennon that he neither regretted nor desired to apologize for it.
He felt eager for an opportunity to do this, and all his accustomed
prejudices and habits of mind grew deeper and stronger.
For a few moments longer they kept their places in perfect silence,
Margaret in her seat before the fire and Gaston at the writing-table,
when suddenly the door-bell rang. Neither moved nor spoke, and a few
minutes later Thomas announced a gentleman to see Miss Trevennon.
“Alan Decourcy!” exclaimed Margaret, springing to her feet, in excited
surprise, as the gentleman approached. “Why, Alan, this is unexpected!”
Mr. Decourcy came nearer, and taking both her hands in his, pressed
them cordially.
“It would be ungrateful of me not to recognize my cousin Margaret, in
this tall young lady,” he said, looking at her with obvious admiration
in his calm, gray eyes, “and yet it is only by an effort that I can do
so.”
At this instant Margaret remembered Louis, whom, in the confusion of
this meeting, she had quite forgotten. She turned toward him, naming
the two men to each other, and to her consternation she saw that he
had risen, and was standing erect, with exactly the same repellant
expression and attitude which he had assumed in greeting Major King
the evening before. With the same frigid manner he acknowledged the
present introduction, and after that little icy bow, he seated himself
at his writing and turned his back, as before.
Mr. Decourcy, meantime, had taken a chair, from which Mr. Gaston’s
attitude was perfectly evident to him, but he showed quite as little
concern thereat as Major King had done. And yet what a different thing
was this form of self-possession! Mr. Decourcy’s low-toned sentences
were uttered with a polished accent that told, as plainly as all the
words in the dictionary could have done, that he was a man of finished
good-breeding. He treated Margaret with an affectionate deference that
she could not fail to find extremely pleasing; inquired for Mr. and
Mrs. Trevennon, and said he was determined to go down to see the old
home and friends before the winter was over; told Margaret he was glad
she had verified his predictions by growing tall and straight; asked if
they still called her Daisy at home, and whether it would be accounted
presumptuous for him to do so; said very little indeed of himself and
his travels, and at the end of about fifteen minutes rose to take leave.
Margaret quietly replied to all his questions, and when he held out his
hand to say good-bye, she made no motion to detain him, by word or sign.
“I am going back to Baltimore in a day or two,” he said, “and shall
hardly see you again, but I hope you will allow me to arrange for a
visit from you to my sister, to take place very soon. When she writes
to you on the subject, as she will do at once, do let her find you
willing to co-operate with her.”
While Margaret was uttering a hearty assent to this plan, Louis Gaston,
who had, of course, heard all that had passed, was rapidly casting
about in his mind as to how he should rescue himself from an odious
position. There was now no more time to deliberate. He must act; and
accordingly he came forward, with a return to his usual manner, which
Margaret had once thought so good, and said frankly:
“I happened to have an important bit of work on hand, Mr. Decourcy,
which it was necessary for me to finish in haste. I have been obliged,
therefore, to forego the pleasure of making your acquaintance, but I
hope you will give me your address that I may call upon you.”
“Thank you, I am at the Arlington for a day or two,” responded
Decourcy, with his polished politeness of tone and manner, in which
Margaret felt such a pride at the moment.
“It is quite early,” Louis went on, “and my brother and sister have
deserted Miss Trevennon for a dinner. Will you not remain and spend the
evening with her?”
Alan Decourcy possessed to perfection the manner which George Eliot
describes as “that controlled self-consciousness which is the expensive
substitute for simplicity,” and it was apparently with the most perfect
naturalness that he pleaded another engagement and took leave,
with compliments and regards to General and Mrs. Gaston. The price
this young man had paid for this manner was some years of studious
observance of what he considered the best models at home and abroad,
and his efforts had been eminently successful. It imposed upon Margaret
completely, and charming though she saw her cousin to be, she would
have said that his manners were as unstudied as a child’s.
Louis Gaston, on his part, considered the matter more understandingly.
He recognized in this cousin of Miss Trevennon a polished man of the
world. The type was familiar enough to him, but he knew that this was
an exquisite specimen of it, and the very fineness of Mr. Decourcy’s
breeding made his own recent bearing seem more monstrously at fault. He
felt very anxious to set himself right with Miss Trevennon at once, but
almost before he had time to consider the means of doing this she had
said good-night and gone up stairs.
He stood where she had left him, abstracted and ill at ease. What a
power this girl had of making him feel uncomfortable; for it was not
Decourcy’s censure and disapprobation that he deprecated half so much
as Margaret’s. Again there came into his breast that new, strange
feeling of self-distrust. He shook it off with a sigh, tired of
self-communing and reflection, and anxious to act. He felt his present
position unendurable.
Accordingly, he rang for Thomas and sent him to ask Miss Trevennon if
he could speak to her for a few minutes. Thomas carried the message,
and presently returned to say that Miss Trevennon would come down.
When she entered the room, soon after, she looked so stately, and met
his eyes with such a cold glance, that a less determined man might have
faltered. He was very much in earnest, however, and so he said at once:
“I ventured to trouble you to return, Miss Trevennon, in order that I
might apologize to you for what I acknowledge to have been an act of
rudeness. I am exceedingly sorry for it, and I ask your pardon.”
“You have it, of course, Mr. Gaston. An offence acknowledged and
regretted is necessarily forgiven. I want you to tell me explicitly,
however, what act you refer to.”
“I feel myself to have acted unwarrantably, indeed rudely, in my manner
of receiving your cousin. I was angry at the time, and I forgot myself.
I have done what little I could to atone for it to Mr. Decourcy, but I
felt that I owed you an apology, because in acting thus toward a guest
of yours I was guilty of a rudeness to you.”
Margaret was silent; but how she burned to speak!
“Am I forgiven?” said Gaston, after a little pause, for the first time
smiling a little, and speaking in the clear, sweet tones that she had
lately thought the pleasantest in the world. If she thought so still,
she denied it to her own heart.
“I need hardly say, Mr. Gaston,” she answered, forcing back a sigh,
“that as far as I am concerned, you have quite atoned for your
treatment of my cousin.”
“Then am I reinstated in your favor, great Queen Margaret, and will you
give me your royal hand upon it?”
He extended his hand, but Margaret quickly clasped hers with its
fellow, and dropped them in front of her, while she slowly shook her
head. There was none of the bright _naïveté_ so natural to her, in this
action; she looked thoughtful and very grave.
The young man felt his pulses quicken; he resolved that she should make
friends with him, cost what it might. It had become of the very first
importance to him that he should be reinstated in that place in her
regard which he knew that he had once held, and which he now felt to be
so priceless a treasure.
“I am still unforgiven, I see,” he said; “but you will at least tell me
what is my offence that I may seek to expiate it.”
Margaret raised her candid eyes to his and looked at him a moment with
a strange expression; doubt, disappointment and glimmering hope were
mingled in it.
“Shall I be frank with you?” she said, speaking from a sudden impulse.
“I should like to, if I dared.”
“I shall be distressed if you are not,” he said, almost eagerly. “I beg
you to say freely what you have in your mind.”
She did not speak at once, but sank into a chair, with a long-drawn
respiration that might mean either sadness or relief. When Gaston
had brought another chair and placed it close beside her and seated
himself, she looked up and met his gaze. In the eyes of both there was
the eagerness of youth--in the girl’s a hesitating wistfulness, in
the man’s a subdued fire, somewhat strange to them. He was conscious
of being deeply stirred, and if he had spoken first his words would
probably have betrayed this, but it was Margaret who broke the silence,
in tones that were calm and steady, and a little sad.
“Mr. Gaston,” she said, turning her eyes away from his face and looking
into the fire, “it wouldn’t be worth while, I think, for me to pretend
to feel the same toward you, after what has happened; it would be only
pretence. Twenty-four hours ago I should have said you were the young
man of all my acquaintance whom I felt to be the truest gentleman. I
would not say this to your face now, except that it is quite passed.”
“I am glad that you have said it--most glad that it was ever so,” he
said, with a hurried ardor; “but it is a great height to fall from. And
have I indeed fallen?”
“Yes,” replied Margaret, not smiling at all, but speaking very gravely.
“You began to fall the moment Major King came into this room last
night, and you have been falling ever since, as I have gone over it all
in my mind. You reached the bottom when my cousin came in this evening,
and the shock was so great that it caused a slight rebound; but I don’t
suppose that signifies much.”
If the girl’s eyes had not been fixed upon the fire she would probably
have checked her speech at the sight of the expression which settled
upon her companion’s face the moment Major King’s name was mentioned.
But she did not see it, and was therefore unprepared for the hard, cold
tone in which his next words were uttered.
“I have felt and acknowledged my fault, where your cousin was
concerned,” he said. “Mr. Decourcy is a gentleman, and nothing but the
fact of my being preoccupied with the resentment I felt at certain
words of yours at the time, would have caused me to act toward him
as I did. This explains, but does not justify my conduct, which I
have acknowledged to be unjustifiable. But in the other case, Miss
Trevennon, I must maintain that I acted rightly.”
“If that is your feeling about it,” Margaret said, “I think this
conversation had better end here.”
“Why, Miss Trevennon?” he asked, a little defiantly. “I see no reason
why it should.”
“Because its object, as I suppose, has been to bring about an
understanding between us; and since you have defined your sentiments,
it is clear to me that we could no more come to understand each other
than if you spoke Sanscrit and I spoke French.”
“I believe you are mistaken,” he said. “I have a feeling that our
positions are not so widely different as they may appear to be. Don’t
refuse to listen to me, Miss Trevennon; that would be unjust, and you
are not an unjust woman.”
It was a wonderful proof of the hold she had laid upon him that he
took such trouble to exonerate himself in her eyes, and he felt it so
himself, but he no longer denied the fact that Miss Trevennon’s good
opinion was a matter of vast importance to him. The little impulses of
anger which her severe words now and then called forth, were always
short lived. One glance at the lovely face and figure near him was
generally enough to banish them, and now, as he treated himself to a
long look at the fair countenance, with its sweet downcast eyes and
slightly saddened mouth, the impossibility of quarrelling with this
exquisite creature presented itself so strongly, that he grew suddenly
so friendly and at ease, that he was able to assume a tone that was
pleasant, and almost gay, as he said:
“Now, Miss Trevennon, honor bright! You know perfectly well that you
don’t like that man one bit better than I do.”
“I don’t like him at all. I yield that point at once, but I fail to
see how that affects the matter. Children and savages regulate their
manners according to their tastes and fancies, but I had always
supposed that well-bred men and women had a habit of good-breeding that
outside objects could not affect.”
“A gentleman’s house is his castle, Miss Trevennon,” said Gaston, with
a return to his former tone and manner; “and it is one of the plainest
and most sacred of his duties to see that the ladies of his household
are protected from all improper contact. In my brother’s absence I
stood in the position of the gentleman of the house, and I did right to
adopt a line of conduct which would save you from a like intrusion in
future. I owed it to you to do so.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Margaret, waving her hand with a pretty
little motion of scornful rejection. “You allowed your consideration
for me to constrain you too far. I have led a free, unrestricted life,
and am accustomed to contact with those who come and go. No man has a
finer feeling as to what is fitting for the ladies of his family than
my father, but though I should live to reach old age, I shall never see
him pay so great a price for my immunity from doubtful association as
an act of rudeness to any one whomsoever.”
“I’ll tell you what it is, Miss Trevennon,” said Gaston, speaking
rather warmly, “if you lived in Washington, you would see things
differently. There’s no end to the pushing impertinence of the people
who hang about a city--this one especially, and a gentleman does not
like to have his friends in danger of meeting these obnoxious creatures
at his house. It looks very queer, and people think so, too.”
“Is a gentleman’s position, then, so easily impeached? Now I should
have thought that, with your name and prestige, you might weather a
good many queer appearances. An annoyance of this sort would not be
likely to happen often. That it is an annoyance, I do not deny; but I
think there must be a better way of preventing such things than the one
you adopted. And oh, Mr. Gaston, while we are on this subject, I wonder
how you can ignore one point, the agony that you caused me!”
“That _I_ caused you, Miss Trevennon? It is hard, indeed, to lay at my
door the discomfiture you endured last evening.”
“I think it was the most wretched evening I ever passed,” said
Margaret, “and it was only your conduct that made it so.”
“My conduct? Now you _are_ unjust!”
“Not at all,” said Margaret. “I am not so wholly uninured to the
necessity of sometimes hearing annoyances, as to be made miserable by
having to talk for several hours with a man I do not like. You will
never believe it, of course, but I do not think Major King is a man
who lacks good feeling, the essence and soul of politeness. He belongs
to a type that I know very well. He is an ignorant man and a very
self-opinionated one, and he has been so long in need of association
with his superiors that he has begun to think that he has none. He
does not know the world, and is therefore unaware of the fact, that
a man who holds the position of a gentleman may be guilty of many
lapses without losing that position. I spoke just now of its being
rather a light tenure, but, in some ways, it is very strong, it seems.
I have said I do not like Major King, but I believe it is a mistake
to call him vulgar. He is foolish and conceited, because he has had
very slender opportunities to learn better. But oh, Mr. Gaston, how
different with you! It is impossible not to draw the contrast. You know
the world. You have studied and travelled. You are clever, cultivated
and accomplished, and to what end? It has all resulted in an act which
yesterday I would have wagered my right hand you were incapable of.”
She spoke with real feeling in her voice, and Gaston caught this
inflection, and the sound of it quickened his blood. His ideas and
emotions were strangely confused. He felt that he ought to be angry and
resentful, but he was conscious only of being contrite.
“I have said too much. I have spoken far too freely,” said Margaret,
breaking in upon his reflections. “I meant to be quite silent, but when
you urged me to speak I forgot myself. I am sorry.”
“Don’t be,” the young man answered gently; “the fact that these are
your opinions entitles them at least to my respect. But there is one
thing I must mention before we drop this subject. I cannot be satisfied
to allow you to retain the idea that I was accountable for the
discomfiture you endured yesterday evening. You must know that I would
joyfully shield you from all vexations and annoyances.”
“No,” said Margaret gently, shaking her head; “it was you, and not
Major King, who made those hours so wretched to me. You made no effort
to conceal the fact that you were outraged and indignant, and what
could be clearer than that I had been the means of bringing this deeply
resented annoyance upon you? If you had thought of me, you must have
seen that.”
“I thought of you continually. It was chiefly upon your account that I
resented the intrusion. It matters little to a man whom he happens to
rub against, but it pains me deeply that a lady--that _you_ should not
be screened from such intercourse.”
In spite of herself, Margaret was touched by this. A hundred times,
since she had known him, she had seen Louis Gaston give evidence of an
exquisite feeling of deference to women, and she could readily believe
that he had been influenced on this occasion partly by consideration
for herself; and while she resented the means used she did justice to
the motive.
“It is much better that we have talked of this,” she said presently. “I
do thank you for having that feeling about me. You could not know it
was not needed. I will try to forget it all.”
“But you will not succeed,” he said; “your tone convinces me of that. I
wish we understood each other better, Miss Trevennon, and I do not yet
give up the hope that in time we may.”
He drew out his watch and looked at it, saying in tones that showed him
to be in a serious mood:
“I have an appointment to see a man on business, and I must go and keep
it. I shall probably be late coming in, and shall hardly see you again,
so I’ll say good-night.”
As he spoke, he turned and went into the hall, and a moment later
Margaret heard the front door close behind him.
As she slowly mounted the stairs to her room, she remembered that
he had not asked her again to shake hands with him, in token of a
re-establishment of the old relationship between them, and, on the
whole, she did not regret it. It was as well that he should know that
he was not restored to his former place in her regard. Her faith in him
had been terribly shaken, and it seemed impossible he could ever be to
her again the man she had once thought him.