One beautiful morning towards the last of November three skiffs were
making their way up a tide-water creek which led into Patricio towards
its southern end. The little boats were each propelled by one person,
who stood erect facing the prow, and using, now on one side, now on the
other, a single light paddle; the stream, though deep, was not wide
enough to allow the use of two oars, and it wound and doubled so
tortuously upon itself that the easiest way to guide it was to stand up
and paddle in the Indian fashion. At the stern of each boat, seated on
the bottom on cushions, leaning back in the shade of a white parasol,
was a lady; Margaret Harold, Garda Thorne, Mrs. Lucian Spenser.
Mr. Moore was propelling the boat in which Mrs. Spenser was reclining;
Lucian's skiff held Garda; Torres had the honor of piloting Mrs. Harold.
The skiffs were advancing together, though in single file, and the
voyagers talked.
"How delightful it is that one never has to speak loud here!" said
Margaret; "the air is so still that the voice carries--all out-doors is
like a room. I believe it's our high skies at the North, as much as the
clatter of our towns, that make us all public speakers from our
cradles."
"I don't agree with you; that is, I don't if you mean that you prefer
the southern articulation," said Mrs. Spenser.
"Yet I'm sure you prefer mine, Rosalie," said her husband, laughing.
"You're not a real southerner, Lucian."
"Oh yes, I am. But even if I'm not, here's Miss Thorne; she certainly
is."
"Miss Thorne is Spanish," answered Mrs. Spenser, briefly; "she doesn't
come under the term southerner, as I use it, at all; she is Spanish--and
she speaks, too, like a New-Englander." Then feeling, perhaps, that this
statement had been rather dry, she turned her head and gave Garda a
little bow and smile.
"You have described it exactly," said Garda, who was letting the tips of
her fingers trail in the water over the skiff's low side. "Try this,
Margaret; it makes you feel as if you were swimming."
"The southern pronunciation," went on Mrs. Spenser, in a general way,
"_I_ do not admire." (She spoke as though combating somebody.) "And they
have, too, such a curious habit, especially the women, of talking about
their State. 'We Carolinians,' 'We Virginians,' they keep saying; and
when they are excited, they will call themselves all sorts of
names--'daughters of Georgia,' for instance. Imagine northern women
speaking of themselves seriously (and the southern women are as serious
as possible about it) as 'We daughters of Connecticut,' 'We daughters of
Nebraska.' We care about as much, and think about as much of the
especial State we happen to live in, as the county."
"The more's the pity, then," said Lucian. "That State-feeling you
criticise, Rosalie, is patriotism."
"The northern women are quite as patriotic, I think," said Margaret.
"But it's for their country as a whole, not for the State. And for their
country as a whole, Mrs. Spenser, haven't you heard them use fine
language, occasionally? I have; 'Columbia,' and the 'Starry Mother,' the
'Home of the Free,' and so forth."
Margaret had made remarks of this sort a good many times since the
arrival of Lucian and his wife, three weeks before; she compared them in
her own mind to the cushions in bags of netting which sailors are
accustomed to let down by ropes over a ship's side as she enters port,
to prevent too close a grazing against other ships. Not that Lucian and
his wife quarrelled, a quarrel requires two persons, and Lucian
quarrelled with no one; he had possessed a charming disposition when he
first visited Gracias, he possessed a charming disposition still. Nor
did it appear that his wife thought otherwise, or that she wished to
quarrel with him; on the contrary, any woman could have detected
immediately that she adored him, that she had but the one desire,
namely, to please him; her very irritations--and they were many--came
from the depth of this desire.
She was a tall woman, rather heavy in figure, though not ill made; she
had a dark complexion, a good deal of color, thick low-growing dark
hair, heavy eyebrows that almost met, very white teeth, and fairly good,
though rather thick, features. With more animation and a happier
expression--an occasional smile, for instance, which would have revealed
the white teeth--she might have passed as handsome in a certain way. As
it was, she was a woman who walked with an inelastic tread, her eyes had
a watchful expression, her brow was often lowering; her rather long
upper lip came down moodily, projecting slightly over the under one,
which was not quite so full. She had stout white hand, with square
fingers. Her large shoulders stooped forward a little. She was always
too richly dressed.
When Rosalie Bogardus had insisted upon marrying Lucian Spenser the
winter before, all her relatives had shaken their heads; they were
shaking them still. The sign of negation had signified that, to their
minds, Lucian was a fortune-hunter. Not that they had meant to insinuate
that Miss Bogardus had not sufficient personal charm to attract for
herself; on the contrary, they all thought Rosalie a "handsome woman;"
but the fact still remained that she had a good deal of money, while the
young engineer had not one cent--a condition of things which they could
have pardoned, perhaps, if he had shown any activity of mind in relation
to obtaining the lacking coin. But here was where Lucian, so active
(unnecessarily) in many other matters, seemed to them singularly inert.
The truth of the case was not what the relatives supposed; money had had
nothing to do with this marriage, and love had had everything.
Rosalie had been a silent, rather dull-looking girl, with a brooding
dark eye which had a spark slumbering at the back of it; she had a
deep-seated pride which never found its outlet in speech, and she had
led always a completely repressed life among her relatives, who were
kind enough in their way, but who did not in the least understand her.
The girl had the misfortune to be an orphan. Her disposition was
reserved, jealous in the extreme; but, as is often the case with
reserved women, there was an ocean of pent-up tenderness surging below,
which made her sombre and unhappy; for indiscriminate friendship she had
no taste, while as to the more intimate ones, she had always found
herself forced, sooner or later, to share them with some one else, and
the pain her jealousies had given her upon these occasions had been so
keen that she had learned to abstain from them entirely; it was easier
to live quite alone. When, therefore, at last she believed that she was
loved, loved for herself, these long-repressed feelings burst forth;
like the released spirit of the magician's vial, they expanded and
filled her whole life, they could never be put back in their prison
again.
Five years before, Miss Bogardus had met Lucian Spenser at the White
Mountains. For a number of weeks they had been thrown together almost
daily in excursions and mountain walks, and the young engineer, with his
easy, happy temper, his wit and his kindness, had seemed to her the most
agreeable person she had ever met. There happened to be no one else
there at the moment whom Lucian cared to talk to; still, it was really
his good qualities rather than this mere accident of there being no one
else that led him on. For he had divined the unhappiness under the
pride, he could not resist the charity (as well as the small
entertainment to himself, perhaps, in the absence of other diversions)
of drawing a smile from that dark reserved face, a look of interest from
those moody eyes; yes, it even gave him pleasure to put some animation
into that inert figure, so that the step grew almost light beside his.
For Lucian had endless theories about the possible good points of the
people he met; he was constantly saying of plain women that if they
would only be a little more this or a little less that, they would be
positively handsome. And he fully believed in these possibilities;
perhaps that was one of the reasons why he was so agreeable; it is such
a charming talent--the divining the best there is in everybody. At any
rate, he was so genuinely kind-hearted, so proselytingly so, if the
phrase may be used, that it gave him real pleasure to make people happy,
even if it were only for the moment. Of possible reactions he never
thought, because he never had reactions himself; if one thing had come
to an end, was it not always easy to find another? Easy for him.
He cared nothing about Miss Bogardus's money, as in reality he cared
nothing for Miss Bogardus herself. But when the weeks of their mountain
life were over, Miss Bogardus found that she was caring for him, though
(as he would have honestly and earnestly maintained if he had known it)
he had never in the least tried to make her. He had only tried to make
her happier; but with Rosalie Bogardus that was the same thing, she had
passed, owing to him, the one interesting summer of her dull rich life.
She did not know that she could be so light-hearted, she did not know
that any one could be; she had had the vague idea that all persons must
go more or less unsatisfied, and that this was the reason why so many
women (if they had not children to bring up) took to good works and
charitable societies, and so many men to horses and wine. Her life had
been extremely dull because the people she lived with and those she saw
frequently (as has been said, she had never been a woman who made many
acquaintances) were all dull; and she had not had among them even the
secondary importance which money often bestows, because they were all
rich themselves. In addition, there were in the same circle younger
cousins much handsomer than she had ever been. The summer she had first
met Lucian she was twenty-seven years old; her relatives had become
accustomed to the unexciting round of her life--at home in the winter,
at the mountains in the summer; a few concerts, some good works; they
looked for nothing new from her; she was "only Rosalie" to them. She had
every comfort, of course, every luxury; it never occurred to their minds
that she might like also a taste of the leading _role_ for a time, a
taste of life at first hand; families are very apt to make this mistake
regarding the left-over sisters and daughters whom they shelter so
carefully, perhaps, but also so monotonously, under their protecting
wing.
That summer Lucian was twenty-three; but, tall, handsome, and in one way
very mature, he had looked quite as old as he did now, five years later.
He was always sunny, always amusing; he had not been in the least afraid
of her, of her age, her moodiness, or her money, but had joked with her
and complimented her with an ease which had at first disconcerted her
almost painfully. He had noticed and criticised her reserve; he had
discovered and praised her one little talent, a contralto voice of
smallest possible compass, but some sweetness in a limited range of old
English songs; he had teased her to make him a pocket pin-cushion, and
then when her unaccustomed hands had painfully fashioned one (on her own
behalf she never touched a needle), he had made all manner of sport of
it and of her. He had helped her dry-shod over brooks (unexpectedly she
had a pretty foot), standing ankle-deep in water himself; he had gone
miles for some dark red roses, because one of them would "look so well"
(as it did) in her hair; he had laughed at her books, and made her feel,
though without the least approach to saying so, that she was ignorant;
made her realize, simply through her own quickened sense of comparison,
that she, Rosalie Bogardus, who belonged among the "best people," and
who had enjoyed what is vaguely but opulently summed up as "every
advantage," was yet an uncultivated and even a stupid sort of person, by
the side of a certain young idler, one who had no background whatever
(so her relatives would have said), no connections, no ambitions or
industry of the tangible sort, and no money; no appreciable baggage, in
short, with which to go through life, save a graceful little talent for
painting in water-colors, and the most delightful disposition in the
world. Her relatives would have added--an immense assurance. But Rosalie
did not call it that; to her it seemed courage--courage indomitable, was
the term in her mind.
She over-estimated this trait in Lucian, as she did one or two other
traits; he himself would never have dreamed of being so brave as she
supposed him to be. He was brave enough, physically he had never known a
fear; but that it was indomitable courage which made him smile so
light-heartedly in the face of fortunes so modest--that it was a
splendid defiance--this was where the slow, silent, passionate-hearted
Rosalie was entirely mistaken. It was temperament more than anything
else. But it was natural that she should fall into this error, brought
up as she had been among people who were immovably set in all their
ideas, proud of their mediocrity (they called it conservatism), who had
inherited their wealth through several generations, and who, while
close and careful in all their ways, enemies to everything in the least
like extravagance, were yet fully of the opinion that respectability as
well as happiness depended upon an unassailable foundation of fixed
income; having always lived in this atmosphere, and possessing small
talent for remarking anything outside of her own narrow little world, it
was impossible for Rosalie Bogardus to grasp at once a plan of life
which differed so widely from the only one she knew. She could not
conceive the idea at first of a person like Lucian living on with
contented enjoyment, day after day, without any fortune, any hope of
inheriting one, or any effort towards obtaining one. She knew people, of
course, who had no fortunes; but if young, as he was, they were all
engaged in either planning for them, waiting for them, or working for
them, with more or less eagerness and energy. Lucian appeared to be
neither waiting nor working, and the only plan he had with regard to
such matters was to go back to the office of the company that employed
him (because he must), when his summer should be ended; so long as he
was earning his mere living from year to year (not a difficult task, as
he had no very extravagant tastes, and only himself to provide for), he
seemed to think that he was doing sufficiently well as regarded material
things--always to him subordinate: a state of mind which Rosalie's
relatives, if they had known it, would have deemed either a negligence
that was almost criminal, or downright idiocy, one or the other. Rosalie
herself, not conceiving such an unambitious creed in a nature so rich,
idealized what she did not understand. She dressed up this lack of
energetic acquisitiveness, and made of it fortitude; in her long
reveries she grew at last to think of it in unspoken words which, if
written down, would have been almost poetry.
But though she thus idealized his bravery, she did not have to idealize
his kindness; that had been real. He had not cared about her money, she
had divined that; what he did had been done for herself alone. When,
therefore, they met again, as they did in the winter, the acquaintance
continued to grow because she fostered it; she had had time to think
everything over, to realize what it would be to live without it, during
the four months that had passed since they parted. Lucian, responsive
and delightful as ever, and never so conceited (this is what he would
have called it) as to bring that pretentious thing, conscience, into
such a simple matter as this, lent himself, as it were, to her liking
for the time being, whenever he happened to see her. With him it was a
temporary and even a local interest, and he supposed it to be the same
on her side; when he thought of the part of the city in which she lived,
he thought of her: "Second Avenue--oh yes, Miss Bogardus;" but he did
not think of it or of her for days together, he was a man who had a
thousand interests, who roamed in many and widely differing fields.
Meanwhile Miss Bogardus thought of him without ceasing; she lived upon
his visits, going over in her own mind the last one, and all that he had
said, or failed to say, upon that occasion, until he had come again; she
dwelt upon every look and gesture, and made the woman's usual mistake of
giving a significance to little acts and phrases which they were very
far from having. Lucian did not in the least realize that he was the
subject of so much reverie; nor did he in the least realize the
absorbed, concentrated nature with which he had to do. His life moved on
with its usual evenness; for three-quarters of the day he occupied
himself in a third-story office, then he sallied forth to see what the
remaining hours held for him in the way of entertainment. It is but just
to say that generally they held an abundance; other people liked him
besides Rosalie Bogardus, he was a man who, from first to last, was dear
to very many. About once in so often he went to see his friend of the
summer; he no longer thought of her as a person who needed his help
especially; but he knew that a visit pleased her, and, when other things
were not over-amusing, he would go for a while and give her that
trifling pleasure. He never dreamed that it was a great one.
Long afterwards the character of Lucian Spenser was summed up as follows
by a man of his own age who had a taste for collecting and classifying
characteristics; he even ventured to think such collections almost as
interesting as old china. "He was the most delightful and lovable fellow
I have ever known; and a great many persons thought so besides myself.
But he never was hampered with, he never took, a grain of
responsibility in his whole life. This not from selfishness, or any
particular plan for evading it; he simply never thought about _that_ at
all."
This was true. Even in the case of so serious a thing as his marriage,
the responsibility was all assumed by Rosalie.
How she came to have the idea that he loved her, she herself alone could
have told. Probably she was deceived by his manner, which was often
intangibly lover-like simply through the genius for kindness that
possessed him; or by the tones which his voice fell into now and then
when he was with any woman he liked, even in a small degree. All this
was general, for women in general; but poor concentrated Rosalie, who
seldom saw him with other women, thought that it was for one. However
her belief had been obtained, it was a sincere one; and she accounted
for his silence by saying to herself that he would not speak on account
of her fortune. Here again she completely misjudged him; southerner as
he was, Lucian's thoughts did not dwell upon money; southerner as he
was, too, twenty fortunes would not have kept him from the woman he
loved. But, once convinced in her own heart, Rosalie no longer fought
against her love for him--why should she? It was the one bright spot of
her life. It was possible, after all, then, for life to be happy!
She worshipped every glance of his eye, every word that he spoke; it was
pathetic to see the adoration which that repressed nature was lavishing
upon a nature so different from its own. But no one saw the adoration
save Lucian, she concealed it from all the world besides. For a long
time even he did not see it--he was so accustomed to being liked. When
suddenly he did become aware of it (long after the evil was done), he
left her and left New York. There had never been a word of explanation
between them.
Rosalie did not yield; she knew her own heart, she knew that she loved
him, she believed that he loved her; she trusted to time. And meanwhile
she kept up the acquaintance.
Here, again, Lucian's invincible habit of kindness kept him from telling
her the truth, his invincible habit of not taking responsibility made
him avoid the responsibility of telling her. He, too, trusted to time.
And there was time enough, certainly; that is, it would have been enough
for any one but Rosalie Bogardus. Five years passed, five years of all
the torture intermixed with delight which a woman who loves goes
through. Now and then they met, and she always wrote to him; she tried
to write lightly, as she knew he liked that; she anathematized herself
for taking everything in such a ponderous way. She composed long letters
about books, about Spanish and Italian, both of which she was studying,
about music, and about pictures; she went to see every picture she could
hear of, because he painted, not realizing, poor soul, that those who
paint themselves, especially those who paint "a little," do not as a
general rule care much for pictures, or at least care only for those of
a few of their immediate contemporaries, that interest being principally
curiosity. Who fill the great galleries of Europe day after day? Who are
the people that go again and again? Almost without exception the people
who do not paint; for the people who do, it is noticed that one or two
visits amply suffice.
But nature will out--at least some natures will. At the end of these
five years of a fictitious existence Rosalie Bogardus fell seriously
ill; her life was threatened. Then she wrote three trembling lines to
Lucian, at Gracias-a-Dios. Her one wish now was to marry him, in order
to be able to leave him her fortune; she did not allude to this, but she
said that she was probably dying, and hoped to see him soon. Lucian,
kind as always, hurried north to Washington, where she was staying with
some friends--much more independent now, as regarded her relatives, than
she had been before the growth of her love. He married her; it was as
well that he had been perfectly sincere, when he did so, in not thinking
about her money, because her money did not come to him; she did not die,
but improved rapidly; in two months she was well.
Mrs. Lucian Spenser, as has been said, was not a quick or a clever
woman, but she had the clairvoyance of love. A year had not passed since
her marriage; but it does not take a year for a wife to discover that
her husband is not, and never has been, in love with her, and this wife
had no longer any illusions on that subject. Lucian's manner towards her
was invariably gentle, his temper was always sweet; she could say to
herself, miserably enough, but truthfully too, that he did not in the
least dislike her. If she had known it, this was something, as things
stood. But she did not know it; how should she, without a grain of
experience, and with her passionate nature, comprehend and endure the
necessity, as well as the great wisdom, of holding on simply to the fact
that she was his wife, and that no one on earth could rout her from that
position, and that in time his heart might come round to her? She did
know, however, she had learned, that such love as their marriage was to
have at present must be supplied principally by herself, and she had
accustomed her mind to accept this idea; if she was ever discontented,
she had only to recall the dreary void of her life before she knew him,
and she was reconciled. But while she was still arranging her existence
upon these foundations, a new element rose; her jealousy was excited,
and it was the strongest passion she had. She discovered that Lucian was
very apt to be more or less in love with every attractive woman, every
lovely young girl, he happened to meet. True, it was only a temporary
absorption; but it was real enough while it lasted. To this the jealous
wife could not accustom herself, this she found herself unable to take
"lightly." All the moodiness came back to her eyes, she grew suspicious
and sharp; such good looks as she had were obscured, in her unhappiness
she seemed larger and more round-shouldered than ever.
She was too proud to appeal to her husband, to tell him that he was
torturing her. So they lived on. He was wholly unconscious of the extent
of her sufferings, though he knew that she had a jealous nature; he felt
that he was a good husband, he had really married her more to please her
than to please himself; she had not so much as one unkind word, one
unkind look, with which to reproach him. He never neglected her, she
could not say that he did. She did not say it; her only wish was that he
would neglect some other persons. She preferred this condition of
things, however, racked though she often was, to any open discussions
between them, any explanations; her instinct warned her that
explanations might be worse than the reality. A woman who loves is
capable of any cowardice; or is it--any courage?
Margaret's little conversational cushion had brought to Mrs. Spenser's
mind the thought that she had perhaps been speaking acrimoniously. She
did not mean to be acrimonious; but she was not a southerner, as Lucian
was, by birth at least, and he was making a great deal of this southern
origin of his whenever he was with Garda Thorne. He was with her every
day; true, his wife was present, and other persons; and Garda herself
was engaged to Mrs. Rutherford's nephew, Evert Winthrop, who had gone
north for three weeks or so on business just before they came. But there
might be fifty wives and five hundred other persons present, poor
Rosalie thought, Lucian would look at that beautiful girl and talk to
that beautiful girl, engaged or not engaged, whenever he pleased. She
accused him in her heart of not having told her that there was any such
person in Gracias. But the truth was (and she knew it) that, as she had
never been able to respond with sympathy to allusions on his part to
such acquaintances, much less to any recitals concerning them, he had
learned (as he had not a grain of malice) not to make them. As for
Gracias, she herself had proposed their coming there; she had not cared
to spend the winter in New York or Washington, and see her husband
cajoled by society; she had never loved society, and now she hated it;
Lucian's content was not in the least dependent upon it, fortunately. He
had described this little Florida town to her with a good deal of
amusing decoration, she had thought that she should like to see it for
herself; in her painstaking, devoted way she had studied the sketches he
had made while there until she was much better acquainted with them than
he was himself. There had been no sketch of Garda Thorne, no sketch in
words or water-colors; but perhaps if her jealousies had been less
evident, there might have been. She knew that her jealousies were a
weakness. That did not make them any the less hard to bear; it was, each
separate time, as if Lucian and the person he was for the moment
admiring were engaged in stabbing her to the heart; only, in some
miraculous way, she lived on.
On the present occasion she said no more about southern patriotism, but
gazed in silence at the near shores as the skiffs glided round the next
bend. They were in a wide salt-marsh, a flat reedy sea; the horizon
line, unbroken by so much as a bush, formed an even circle round them.
It was high tide, the myriad little channels were full, the whole marsh
was afloat; the breeze fanning their faces had a strong salty odor, the
sedges along shore were stiff with brine. Tall herons waded about, or,
poised on one leg among the reeds, gazed at them, as they passed, with
high-shouldered indifference; now and then a gray bird rose from the
green as they approached, and with a whir of wings sped away before
them, sounding his peculiar wild cry. The blue seemed to come down and
rest on the edge of the marsh all round them, like the top of a tent; it
was like sailing through a picture of which they could always see
(though they never reached it) the frame.
The stream they were following was not one of the marsh channels; it was
a tide-water creek which penetrated several miles into Patricio, and
after a while they came to the solid land.
"The odor of Florida--I perceive it," said Lucian; "the odor of a
pitch-pine fire! And I don't know any odor I like better." The stream
wound on, the banks grew higher, palmettoes began to appear; they all
leaned forward a little in the golden air, they formed the most graceful
groups of curiosity. At length as the skiffs turned the last bend, a
house came into sight. It was a ruin.
But the pitch-pine fire was there, all the same; it had been made on the
ground behind a small out-building. This out-building had preserved
three of its sides and the framework of its roof; the roof had been
completed by a thatch of palmetto, the vanished facade had been gayly
replaced by a couple of red calico counterpanes suspended from the
thatch. Here lived a family of "poor whites"--father, mother, and six
children; their drawing-room was the green space before the kitchen;
their bedchambers were behind the calico facade; their kitchen was an
iron pot, at this moment suspended over the fragrant fire. The father
had just come home in his roughly made cart, drawn by the most wizened
of ponies, with a bear which he had killed in a neighboring swamp; the
elder boys were bringing up fish from their dug-out in the creek; the
mother, her baby on her arm, lifted her bed-quilt wall to smile
hospitably upon the visitors. They did not own the land, these people;
they were not even tenants; they were squatters, and mere temporary
squatters at that. They had nothing in the world beyond the few poor
possessions their cart could hold; they were all brown and well, and
apparently perfectly happy.
"They look contented," said Margaret, as, after accepting the
hospitalities of the place, which the family hastened to offer--the best
in their power--a clean gourd with water from the mansion's old well, a
look at the bear, the baby, and the pet alligator of tender years
confined in a pen near by, they took their way along an old road leading
down the island towards the south.
"They _are_ contented," said Lucian. "For one thing, they are never
cold; poor people can stand a great deal when winter is taken out of
their lives. Here, too, they can almost get their food for the
asking--certainly for the hunting and fishing. Yes, yes: if I had to be
very poor--if _we_ had to be very poor, Rosalie--I should say, with all
my heart, let it be in Florida!"
These sallies of Lucian's fancy were always rather hard for his wife;
she admired them, of course--she admired everything Lucian said; but she
could not see any reasonable connection between their life, under any
emergencies that could come to it, and the life of people who lived
behind a facade of counterpane, who caught bears, and ate them from an
iron pot. However, there must be one, since Lucian saw it; she smiled
assent, therefore, and did her best to answer warmly, "Oh _yes_, in
Florida!"
"But I suppose they have very little chance to improve here--to rise,"
began Margaret.
"I don't want them to rise," said Lucian, in his light way; "too much
'rising,' in my opinion, is the bane of our American life. The ladder's
free to all, or rather the elevator; and we spend our lives, the whole
American nation, in elevators."
Rosalie fully agreed with her husband here. This was a subject upon
which she had definite opinions. She thought that every one should be as
charitable as possible, and she herself lived up to this belief by
giving away a generous sum in charity every year. Her ideas were
liberal; she thought that "the poor" should have plenty of soup and
blankets in the winter, as well as coals (somehow, in charity, it seemed
more natural to say "coals"); there should be a Christmas-tree for every
Sunday-school, with a useful present for each child; she would have
liked, had it been possible, to reintroduce May-poles on May-day;
May-day would come at the North about the last of June. She had a
dislike for the free-school system; she thought school-girls should not
have heels to their shoes; she thought there should be a property
qualification attached to the suffrage. She looked at Torres, who was by
her side, wondering if he would understand these ideas if she should
explain them; and she thought that perhaps he might. She was doing her
best, as Lucian's wife--she had been doing it ever since she arrived in
Gracias--to discover the "gold mine" which he saw in this young man; so
far (as she had but little sense of humor) she had not succeeded. Once
she asked Lucian what it was that he found so amusing in the Cuban.
"Oh, well, he has so many fixed ideas, you know," Lucian answered.
His wife said nothing, she, too, had fixed ideas; she could not see,
though she tried to, humbly enough, how any one could help having them.
Torres could now speak a little English; but as Rosalie could talk in
Spanish in a slow, measured sort of way, their conversations, which were
never lively, were carried on in the last-named language; it was
understood in Gracias that they were "great friends."
Torres had been brought from his retirement by Lucian. Lucian, who told
everybody that he delighted in him, had gone down to the Giron
plantation to find him on the very day of his arrival in Gracias; and
Torres, yielding to his friend's entreaties, had consented to appear
again in "society."
In his own estimation, the Cuban had never swerved from his original
posture, of waiting. He had not believed one word of his aunt's story of
Garda's engagement; women were credulous where betrothals were
concerned; they were, indeed, congenitally weak in all such matters.
Manuel--a masculine mind though unregulated--was still absent, engaged
in seeing the world (at Key West); but he had been able to obtain a
good deal of consolation from the society of the Senor Ruiz, who had not
credited the ridiculous tale any more than he himself had.
He had first heard of the senor's disbelief through Madam Giron; he
immediately went over to Patricio to pay his respects to him. Since then
he had paid his respects regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays, just
before sundown. The two never alluded to the story when they were
together, they would have considered it ill-bred to speak familiarly of
such private matters. True, the Senor Ruiz, having been confined for a
long time to his arm-chair, had grown a little lax in the strict
practice of etiquette, and it may have been that he would have enjoyed
just a trifle of conversation upon the rumor in question. But Torres was
firm, Torres kept him up to the mark; the subject had never once been
put into actual words, though the Senor Ruiz skirted all round it,
talking now about Winthrop, now about East Angels, now about the
detention of the northern party all summer, owing to the long illness of
Mrs. Rutherford, "that majestic and distinguished lady."
The Senor Ruiz had had time to skirt round every subject, he knew,
Torres having paid his biweekly respects regularly now for eight long
months. Torres said that there was much "hidden congeniality" between
them; on the Senor Ruiz's side the congeniality was extremely well
hidden, so much so, indeed, that he had never been able to discover it.
But on Torres' side it was veritable, he had found that he could think
of Garda with especial comfort over there on quiet Patricio, in the
presence of a masculine mind so much resembling his own; and think of
her he did by the hour, answering with a bow and brief word or two now
and then the long despairing monologues of the Senor Ruiz, who, impelled
by his Spanish politeness to keep up the conversation, was often driven
into frenzy (concealed) by the length of time during which his visitor
remained seated opposite to him, stiff as a wooden statue, and almost
equally silent.
Because the poor senor could not move his legs very easily, Torres (on
much the same principle which induces people to elevate their voices
when speaking to a foreigner, as though he were deaf) always sat very
near him, so that their knees were not more than two inches apart. This
also enraged the Senor Ruiz, and on more than one occasion, when
fingering the cane which always stood beside him, he had come near to
bringing it down with violence upon the offending joints; the
unconscious Adolfo little knew how near he had come to a bone-breaking
occurrence of that sort.
"Two years," Torres was in the habit of saying to himself during these
Patricio meditations; "they were safe enough in putting off the
verification of their impossible gossip until then." The matter stood
arranged in his mind as follows: Mr. Wintup was an old man, he was older
than they knew; he was probably nearly forty. It was a pastime for him,
at that dull age, to amuse himself for a while with the _role_ of
father. And he filled it well, Torres had no fault to find with him
here; to the Cuban, Winthrop's manner fully took its place in the class
"parental;" it was at once too familiar and too devoid of ardor to
answer in the least to his idea of what the manner of "a suitor" should
be. The most rigid and distant respect covering every word and look, as
the winter snow covers Vesuvius; but underneath, all the same, the gleam
of the raging hidden fires below--that was his idea of the "manner."
Owing to the strange lack of discrimination sometimes to be observed in
Fate, Garda had had a northern mother (an estimable woman in herself, of
course); on account of this accident, she had been intrusted for a while
to these strangers. But this would come to an end; these northerners
would go away; they would return to their remote homes and Gracias would
know them no more. Garda, of course, would never consent to go with
them; it was but reasonable to suppose, therefore (they being amiable
people), that they would be pleased to see her make a fit Alliance
before their departure; and there was but one that could be called fit.
It was not improbable, indeed, that the whole had been planned as a test
of his own qualities; they wished to see whether he had equanimity,
endurance. One had to forgive them their ignorance--the doubting whether
or not he possessed these qualities--as one had to forgive them many
other things; they should see, at any rate, how triumphantly he should
issue from their trial.
He now walked down the old road with his usual circumspect gait; he was
with Lucian's wife, whom he always treated with the respect due to an
elderly lady.
Lucian was first, with Garda; he had gathered for her some sprays of
wild blossoms, and these she was combining in various ways as she
walked. She scarcely spoke. But her silence seemed only part of a
supreme indolent content.
Mrs. Spenser was behind with Torres--close behind. Margaret, too, did
not linger; Mr. Moore, who was with her, would have preferred, perhaps,
a less direct advance, a few light expeditions into the neighboring
thickets, for instance; he carried his butterfly pole, and looked about
him scrutinizingly. They were going in search of an old tomb, which
Lucian was to sketch. It was a mysterious old tomb, no one had any idea
who lay there; the ruined mansion they had passed had its own little
burial-ground, standing in a circle of trees like the one at East
Angels; but this old tomb was alone in the woods, isolated and
unaccounted for; there was no trace of a house or any former cultivation
near. Its four stone sides were standing, but the top slab was gone, and
from within--there was no mound--grew a cedar known to be so ancient
that it threw back the lifetime of the person who lay beneath to
unrecorded days; for he must have been placed at rest there before the
old tree, as a baby sapling, had raised its miniature head above the
ground.
They had advanced about a mile, when Mrs. Spenser stopped, she found
herself unable to go farther; she made her confession with curt speech
and extreme reluctance. They all looked at her and saw her fatigue; that
made her more curt still. But it could not be helped; she was flushed in
an even dark red hue all over her face from the edge of her hair to her
throat; she was breathing quickly; her hands shook. The heat had
affected her; she was always affected by the heat, and it was a warm
day; she had never been in the habit of walking far.
"You must not go another step, Rosalie," said Lucian, who had come back
to her; "the others can go on, and I will wait here with you. When you
are quite rested we will go slowly back to the shore; there will still
be time, I presume, for me to get in my sketch."
But Rosalie never could bear to give her husband trouble. "I will wait
here," she said, "but you need not. Please go with the others, as you
first intended; you will find me here on your way back."
"I shall stay with you," repeated Lucian.
She looked so tired that they all busied themselves in preparing a seat
for her; they made it of the light mantles which the ladies had been
carrying over their arms, spreading them on the ground under a large
tree where there was a circle of shade. Here she sat down, leaning
against the tree's trunk. "If you don't go on with the others, Lucian, I
shall be perfectly wretched," she said. "There's nothing in the world
the matter with me; you have seen me in this way before, and you know it
is nothing--I have only lost my breath."
"Yes, I know it's nothing," Lucian answered, kindly. "But I cannot leave
you here alone, Rosalie; don't ask it."
Mr. Moore, who had been standing with his hands patiently folded over
his butterfly pole, now had an inspiration; it was that he himself
should remain with "Cousin Rosalie." "I have no talent for sketching,"
he said, looking round upon them; "really none whatever, I assure you;
thus it will be no deprivation. And I _have_ observed some interesting
butterflies in this neighborhood, which I should like to obtain, if
possible."
"Why shouldn't we all desert Mr. Spenser?" said Margaret. "I have no
doubt his sketch will be much more picturesque than the reality. It's
very warm; I don't think any of us (those not inspired by artistic
intentions) care to go farther."
Mrs. Spenser watched her husband's face, she was afraid he would not be
pleased. But under no circumstances was Lucian ever ill-natured. He now
made all manner of sport of their laziness, singling out Torres
especially as the target for his wit. Torres grinned--Lucian was the
only person who could bring out that grin; then he repressed his
unseemly mirth by passing his hand over his face, the thumb on one side,
all the fingers on the other, and letting them move downward and come
together at the chin, thus closing in the grin on the way. Restored to
his usual demeanor, he bowed and was ready for whatever should be the
ladies' pleasure. Their pleasure, after Lucian's departure, was simply
to recline under the large tree; Mr. Moore had already begun his search
in the neighboring thickets, and was winding in and out, now in sight,
now gone again, with alert step and hopeful eye.
The three ladies sat idly perforating the ground with the tips of their
closed parasols. "What are we going to do to amuse ourselves?" said
Garda.
"You think a good deal of your amusement, don't you, Miss Thorne?" said
Rosalie. She spoke in rather an acid tone; Lucian, too, thought a good
deal of his amusement.
But Garcia never noticed Rosalie's intonations; acid or not, they never
seemed to reach her. "Yes; I hate to be just dull, you know," she
answered, frankly. "I'd much rather be asleep."
Torres was standing at the edge of their circle of shade in his usual
taut attitude.
"Oh, Mr. Torres, do either sit down or lie down," urged Garda; "it tires
me to look at you! If you won't do either, then go and lean against a
tree."
Torres looked about him with serious eyes. There was a tree at a little
distance which had no low branches; he went over and placed himself
close to it, his back on a line with the trunk, but without touching it.
"You're not leaning," said Garda. "Lean back! Lean!"
Thus adjured, Torres stiffly put his head back far enough to graze the
bark. But the rest of his person stood clear.
"Oh, how _funny_ you always are!" said Garda, breaking into a peal of
laughter.
Torres did not stir. He was very happy to furnish amusement for the
senorita, inscrutable as the nature of it might be; it never occurred to
Torres that his attitudes were peculiar.
But Garda was now seized with another idea, which was that they should
lunch where they were, instead of at the shore; it was much prettier
here, as the shore was sandy; the squatter's boys would be delighted to
bring the baskets. Torres, no longer required to make a Daphne of
himself, was detached from the bark and sent upon this errand, he was to
convoy back baskets and boys; obedient as ever, he departed. And then
Garda relapsed into silence; after a while she put her head down on
Margaret's lap, as if she were going to try the condition that was
better than being "just dull, you know." It was true that they were a
little dull. Mr. Moore had entirely disappeared; Rosalie was never very
scintillant; Garda was apparently asleep; Margaret, whatever her gifts
might have been, could not very well be brilliant all alone. After a
while Garda suddenly opened her eyes, took up her hat, and rose.
"I think I will go down, after all, and join Mr. Spenser," she said. "I
like to watch him sketch so much; I'll bring him back in an hour or so."
Rosalie's eyes flashed. But she controlled herself. "Aren't you afraid
of the heat?" she asked.
"Don't go, Garda," said Margaret. "It's very warm."
"You forget, you two, that I was born here, and like the heat," said
Garda, looking for her gloves.
"Surely it cannot be safe for you to go alone," pursued Rosalie. "We are
very far from--from everything here."
"It's safe all about Gracias," answered Garda. "And we're not very far
from Lucian at least; I shall find him at the end of the path, it goes
only there."
It was a simple slip of the tongue; she had talked so constantly of him,
and always as "Lucian," to Margaret and Winthrop the winter before, that
it was natural for her to use the name. She would never have dreamed of
using it merely to vex Mrs. Spenser; to begin with, she would not have
taken the trouble for Mrs. Spenser, not even the trouble to vex her.
"I fear Lucian, as you call him, will hardly appreciate your kindness,"
responded Rosalie, stiffly. "He is fond of sketching by himself; and
especially, when he has once begun, he cannot bear to be interrupted."
"I shall not interrupt him," said Garda. "I hardly think he calls _me_
an interruption."
She spoke carelessly; her carelessness about it increased Mrs. Spenser's
inward indignation.
"Do you sanction this wild-goose chase, Mrs. Harold?" she said, turning
to Margaret, with a stiff little laugh.
"No, no; Garda is not really going, I think," Margaret answered.
"Yes, Margaret, this time I am," said Garda's undisturbed voice.
Mrs. Spenser waited a moment. Then she rose. "We will all go," she said,
with a good deal of dignity; "I could not feel easy, and I don't think
Mrs. Harold could, to have you go alone, Miss Thorne."
"I don't know what there is to be afraid of--unless you mean poor
Lucian," said Garda, laughing.
Mrs. Spenser rested her hands upon her arms with a firm pressure, the
right hand on the top of the left arm, the left hand under the right arm
as a support. In this pose (which gave her a majestic appearance) she
left the shade, and walked towards the path.
"I'm afraid you will suffer from the heat," said Garda, guilelessly. It
really was guileless--a guileless indifference; but to a large, dark,
easily flushed woman it sounded much like malice.
They had gone but a short distance when Garda's prophecy came true; the
deep red hue re-appeared, it was even darker than before. Margaret was
alarmed. "Do go back to the shade," she urged.
Mrs. Spenser, who had stopped for a moment, glanced at her strangely. "I
am perfectly well," she answered, in a husky whisper.
Margaret looked at Garda, who was standing at a little distance,
waiting. The girl, who was much amused by this scene, mutely laughed and
shook her head; evidently she would not yield.
"I will go on with Garda," Margaret said; "but I beg you not to attempt
it, Mrs. Spenser."
"Oh, if _you_ are going," murmured Rosalie, her eyes still shining
strangely from her copper-colored face.
"Yes, I am going," answered Margaret, with decision.
Rosalie said something about its being "much better," as the road was
"so lonely;" and then, turning, she made her way back to the tree.
"It's not like you, Garda, to be so wilful," said Margaret, when was out
of hearing.
"Why, yes, it is. _Your_ will is nice and beautiful, so I don't come
into conflict with it; hers isn't, so I do. _I_ don't weigh one hundred
and eighty pounds, and _I_ don't mind the heat; why, then, should I sit
under a tree forever because she has to?"
"I wish you would sit under it to oblige me."
"It isn't to oblige you, it's to oblige Mrs. Rosalie; I can't possibly
take the trouble to oblige Mrs. Rosalie. You don't really mind the sun
any more than I do, you slim fair thing! it's all pretence. Let red
people sit under trees; you and I will go on." She put her arm round
Margaret and drew her forward. "Don't be vexed with me; you know I love
you better than anything else on earth."
"Yet never wish to please me."
"Yes, I do. But I please you as I am. Is that impertinent?"
"Yes," said Margaret, gravely.
"It's your fault, then; you've spoiled me. When have you done one thing
or said one thing through all this long summer which was not
extraordinarily kind? Nobody in the world, Margaret, has ever dreamed of
being as devoted to me as you have been. And if that's impertinent
too--the saying so--I can't help it; it's true."
Margaret made no reply to this statement, which had been made without
the least vanity; it had been made, indeed, with a detached impartiality
which was remarkable, as though the girl had been speaking of some one
else.
Rosalie watched their two figures go down the path out of sight. A few
minutes later Mr. Moore made a brief appearance, flying with extended
pole across the glade like a man possessed. But he had seen that she was
alone, and he therefore returned, after he had not succeeded in catching
his prey; he sat down beside her, and asked her if she had read the
Westover Manuscript.
Margaret and Garda reached the path's end--it ended in a wood--and found
Lucian sketching.
"Ah-h-h! curiosity!" he said, as they came up.
"Yes," answered Garda, seating herself on the ground beside him, and, as
usual, taking off her hat; "I never was so curious in my life. Show me
your sketch, please."
He held it towards her.
She looked at him as he bent from his camp-stool, she did not appear to
be so curious as her previous statement had seemed to indicate. She
smiled and fell into her old silence again as he returned to his work,
that silence of tranquil enjoyment, leaving Margaret to carry on the
conversation, in case she should wish for conversation.
Apparently Margaret wished for it. She, too, was resting in the shade;
she spoke of various things--of the white bird they had seen sitting on
its nest, which had been constructed across the whole top of a small
tree, so that the white-bosomed mother sat enthroned amid the green; of
the song of the mocking-birds, which had made a greater impression upon
her than anything in Florida; and so on.
"Excuse my straying answers," said Lucian, after a while. "However,
painting is not so bad as solitaire; did you ever have the felicity of
conversing with a friend (generally a lady) while a third person is
engaged at the same table with that interesting game? Your lady listens
to you with apparent attention, you are led on, perhaps, to talk your
best, when suddenly, as you least expect it, her hand gives a swoop down
on her friend's spread-out cards, she moves one of them quickly, with a
'There!' or else an inarticulate little murmur of triumph over his
heedlessness, and then transfers her gaze back to you again, with an
innocent candor which seems to say that it has never been abstracted. I
don't know anything pleasanter than conversation under such
circumstances."
Margaret laughed. "Come, Garda, let us go and have a nearer look." For
Lucian had placed himself at some distance from the tomb; he was giving
a view of it at the end of a forest vista.
But Garda did not care for a nearer look. She had seen the old tomb many
times.
"Let us make a wreath for it, then, while Mr. Spenser is sketching. So
that it can feel that for once--"
"It's too old to feel," said Garda.
Margaret gathered a quantity of a glossy-leaved vine which was growing
over some bushes near. "I shall make a wreath, even if you don't," she
said. And she sat down and began her task.
"I think this will do," said Lucian, after another ten minutes,
surveying his work. "I can finish it up at home."
Margaret threw down her vines, and began to help him collect his
scattered possessions.
"Don't go yet; it's so lovely here," said Garda. "Make a second sketch
for me."
"I will copy you one from this," he answered.
"No, I want one made especially for me, even if it's only a beginning;
and I want it made here."
"But we really ought to be going back, Garda," said Margaret.
"I _never_ want to go back," Garda declared. She laughed as she said it.
But she looked at Lucian with the same serene content; it was very
infectious, he sank down on his camp-stool, and began again.
Margaret stood a moment as if uncertain. Then she sat down beside Garda,
and went on with her wreath.
"How perfectly still it is here!" said Lucian. "Florida's a very still
land, there are no hot sounds any more than cold ones; what's your idea
of the hottest sound you know, Mrs. Harold?"
Margaret considered. "The sound--coming in through your closed green
blinds on a warm summer afternoon when you want to sleep--of a
stone-mason chipping away on a large block of stone somewhere, out in
the hot sun."
"Good! Do you know the peculiar odor made by summer rain on those same
green blinds you speak of? Dusty ones?"
"They needn't be dusty. Yes, I know it well."
"I'm afraid you're an observer; I hope you don't turn the talent towards
nature?"
"Why not?"
"Because people who observe nature don't observe their fellow-man; the
more devoted you are to rocks and trees, and zoophytes and moths, the
less you care for human beings; bless you! didn't you know that? You get
to thinking of them in general, lumping them as 'humanity.' But you
always think of the zoophytes in minutest particulars."
"Never mind sketching the tomb; sketch me," said Garda.
Margaret and Lucian looked up; she appeared to have heard nothing that
they had been saying, she was sitting with her hands clasped round one
knee, her head thrown back.
"Sketch you?" Lucian repeated.
"Yes," she answered. "Please begin at once."
"In that attitude?"
"You may choose your attitude."
"Oh, if I may choose!" he said, springing up. He stood for a moment
looking at her as she sat there. Unrepressed admiration of her beauty
shone in his eyes.
"I didn't know you could paint portraits, Mr. Spenser," remarked
Margaret.
"I can now; at least I shall try," he answered, with enthusiasm. "Will
you give me all the sittings I want, Miss Thorne?"
"Yes. This is the first."
"To-morrow--" began Margaret.
"Do you want me to keep this position?" said Garda.
"Yes--no. It shall be an American Poussin--'I too have been in' Florida!
Come over to the tomb, please." In his eagerness he put out his hands,
took hers, and assisted her to rise; they went to the tomb. Here he
placed her in two or three different positions; but was satisfied with
none of them.
Margaret had made no further objections. She followed them slowly. Then
her manner changed, she gave her assistance and advice. "She should be
carrying flowers, I think," she suggested.
"Yes; branches of blossoms--I see them," said Lucian.
"But as for the attitude--perhaps we had better leave it to her. Suppose
yourself, Garda, to be particularly happy--"
"I'm happy now," said the girl. She had seated herself on the old tomb's
edge, and folded her hands.
"Well, more joyous, then."
"I'm joyous."
"I shall never finish my legend if you interrupt me so," said Margaret,
putting her hand on Garda's shoulder. "Listen; you are on your way home
from an Arcadian revel, with some shepherds who are playing on their
pipes, when you come suddenly upon an old tomb in the forest. No one
knows who lies there; you stop a moment to make out the inscription,
which is barely legible, and it tells you, 'I too lived in--'"
"Florida!" said Lucian.
"I am to do that?" asked Garda, looking at him.
He nodded. She went back, took Margaret's nearly finished wreath and all
the rest of the gathered vines, and returning to the tomb, one arm
loaded with them, the long sprays falling over her dress, she laid her
other hand on Lucian's shoulder, and drawing him near the old stones,
clung to him a little as if half afraid, bending her head at the same
time as though reading the inscription which was supposed to be written
there. The attitude was extremely graceful, a half-shrinking,
half-fascinated curiosity. "This it?" she asked.
"Not the least in the world! What has Mr. Spenser to do with it?" said
Margaret.
"He's the Arcadian shepherds."
"Let me place you." And Margaret drew her away.
Garda yielded passively. Nothing could have been sweeter than the
expression of her face when Margaret had at length satisfied herself as
regarded position. The girl stood behind the tomb, which rose a little
higher than her knees; she rested one hand on its gray edge, holding the
wreath on her other arm, which was pressed against her breast.
"You ought to be looking down," said Margaret.
But Garda did not look down.
"She is supposed to have read the inscription, and to be musing over
it," suggested Lucian.
He fell to work immediately.
"We have been here an hour and a half, and we promised to be back in an
hour--remember that, Mr. Spenser," said Margaret, who had seated herself
near him.
"The bare outlines," murmured Lucian.
He did not appear to wish to speak. As for Garda, she looked as though
she should never speak again; she looked like a picture more than a real
presence--a picture, but not of nineteenth-century painting. She did not
stir, her eyes were full of a wonderful light. After a while it seemed
to oppress Margaret--this glowing vision beside the gray tomb in the
still wood. She rose and went to Lucian, watching him work, she began to
talk. "It's fortunate that you have already sketched the tomb," she
said; "you can use that sketch for the details."
He did not reply, Garda's softly fixed eyes seemed to hold him bound.
Margaret looked at her watch; then she went to Garda, took the wreath
from her, and, putting her arm in hers, led her back towards the path.
"I am obliged to use force," she said. "The sitting is declared over."
"Till the next, then," said Garda to Lucian.
As he began to pack up his sketching materials, Margaret went back and
hung her wreath upon the old stones. "In some future world, that shade
will come and thank me," she said.
Then they left the wood, and started down the path on their way back to
the shore.
They found Mrs. Spenser with both complexion and temper improved; her
greatest wish always was to hide her jealousies from Lucian, and this
time she succeeded. Mr. Moore had made a fire at a distance, and boiled
their coffee; he was now engaged in grilling their cold meat by spearing
each slice with the freshly peeled end of one of the long stiff
leaf-stalks of the saw-palmetto. These impromptu toasting-forks of his,
four feet in height, he had stuck in the ground in an even circle all
round the fire, their heads bending slightly towards the flame; when one
side of the range of slices was browned, he deftly turned each slice
with a fork, so as to give the other side its share.
Torres had made no attempts as regarded grilling and boiling, he and
Rosalie had spent the time in conversation. Rosalie had, in fact,
detained him, when, after bringing the boys and baskets safely to her
glade, he had looked meditatively down the road which led to the old
tomb. "What do you think of the Alhambra?" she asked, quickly.
The Alhambra and the Inquisition were her two Spanish topics.
"I have not thought of it," Torres mildly replied.
"Well, the Inquisition, then; what do you think of the Inquisition? I am
sure you must have studied the subject, and I wish you would give me
your _real_ opinion." (She was determined to keep him from following
Garda.)
Torres reflected a moment. "It would take some time," he observed, with
another glance down the road.
"The more the better," said Rosalie. This sounded effusive; and as she
was so loyal to Lucian that everything she did was scrupulously
conformed to that feeling, from the way she wore her bonnet to the
colors she selected for her gloves, she added, immediately and rather
coldly, "It is a subject in which I have been interested for years."
Torres looked at her with gloom. He wished that she had not been
interested in it so long, or else that she could be interested longer,
carrying it over into the future. The present he yearned for; he wanted
to follow that road.
But Rosalie sat there inflexible as Fate; and he was chivalrous to all
women, the old as well as the young. He noticed that she was very
strongly buttoned into her dress. And then he gave her the opinion she
asked for; he was still giving it when the sketching party returned.
Lucian was in gayest spirits. He seized the coffee-pot. "No one should
be trusted to pour out coffee," he said, "but a genuine lover of the
beverage. See the people pour out who are not real coffee-drinkers
themselves; they pour stingily, reluctantly; they give you cold coffee,
or coffee half milk, or cups half full; they cannot understand how you
can wish for more. Coffee doesn't agree with them very well; they find
it, therefore, difficult to believe--in fact they never do believe--that
it should really agree with you. It may have been all talked over in the
family circle, and a fair generosity on the part of the non-loving
pourer guaranteed; but I tell you that in spite of guarantees, she
_will_ scrimp."
Mr. Moore, a delicate pink flush on his cheeks, now came up with his
grilled slices, which proved to be excellent.
"My cousin, you are a wonderful person," said Lucian.
Mr. Moore made a little disclaiming murmur in his throat; "Er-um,
er-um," he said, waving his hand in a deprecatory way.
"--But you ought to have been a Frenchman," pursued Lucian.
Mr. Moore opened his eyes.
"Because then your goodness would have been so resplendent, my cousin.
As it is, it shines on an American background, and eight-tenths of
native-born Americans are good men."
"Yes, we have, I think, a high standard of morality," said Mr. Moore,
with approbation.
"And also a high standard of splendor," continued Lucian; "we are, I am
sure, the most splendid nation in the world. Some years ago, my cousin,
a clergyman at the West was addressing his congregation on a bright
Sunday morning; he was in the habit of speaking without notes, and of
preaching what are called practical sermons. Wishing to give an example
of appropriate Christian simplicity, he began a sentence as follows:
'For instance, my friends, none of you would think of coming to the
house of the Lord in'--here he saw a glitter from diamond ear-rings in
several directions--'of coming to the house of the Lord, I say,
in'--here he caught the gleam from a number of breastpins--'in'--here
two or three hands, from which the gloves had been removed, stirring by
chance, sent back to him rays from wrists as well as fingers--'in
_tiaras_ of diamonds, my friends,' he concluded at last, desperately.
His congregation had on there, before his eyes, every other known
arrangement of the stone."
Mr. Moore smiled slightly--just enough not to be disagreeable; then he
turned the conversation. Mr. Moore was strong at that; he thought it a
great moral engine, and had often wondered (to Penelope) that it was not
employed oftener. For instance, in difficult cases: if violent language
were being used in one's presence--turn the conversation; in family
quarrels and disagreements--the same; in political discussions of a
heated nature--surely there could be no method so simple or so
efficacious.
It proved efficacious now in the face of Lucian's frivolity. "Our next
course will consist of oysters," he remarked.
"Where are they?" demanded Lucian, hungrily.
"For the present concealed; I conjectured that the sight of two fires
might prove oppressive. The arrangements, however, have been well made;
they are in progress behind that far thicket, and the sons of the
squatter are in charge."
The sons of the squatter being summoned by what Mr. Moore called
"yodeling," a pastoral cry which he sounded forth unexpectedly and
wildly between his two hands, brought the hot rocks to the company by
the simple process of tumbling them into a piece of sackcloth and
dragging them over the ground. They were really rocks, fragments broken
off, studded with small oysters; many parts of the lagoon were lined
with these miniature peaks. Mr. Moore produced oyster-knives; and, with
the best conscience in the world, they added another to the shell-heaps
of Florida for the labors of future antiquarians.
And then, presently, they embarked. The sun was sinking; they floated
away from the squatter's camp, down the winding creek between the
leaning palmettoes, across the salt-marsh, over which the crows were now
flying in a long line, and out upon the sunset-tinted lagoon. The
_Emperadora_ was waiting for them; it was moonlight when they reached
home.