Winthrop had literally made no answer to Garda's speech; he only looked
at her.
After a moment the girl went on, gently enough: "If I don't care about
you, I think I ought to tell you; you will feel more free. Don't you
think it is better that I should tell you?"
"Certainly; if it is true."
After her first greeting, Garda had moved away a step or two; she now
stood leaning back against the firm little trunk of one of the
orange-trees, playing with a small spray of the bright leaves as she
talked. At this answer of his, her gentleness turned to exasperation.
"If it is true! And why shouldn't it be true?--do you think it
impossible for anybody to stop caring for you? _I_ have stopped, and
very completely. I care no more for you now than I do for that twig."
And she tossed it away with a little gesture of disdain.
Winthrop's eyes followed the motion. But he did not speak.
"_Still_ don't you believe it?" she asked, in surprise; "you look as
though you didn't. I think that rude."
"On the contrary, it seems to me that my being slow to believe it,
Garda, is the best honor I can pay you."
"Oh, how could I ever have liked you!--how disagreeable you can be when
you try!" Tears shone in her eyes. "Everybody in the world seems to tell
lies but me," she went on, hotly. "And everybody else seems to prefer
it. You yourself would like it a great deal better, and think it nicer
in me, if I should tell lies now, pretend that this was the beginning of
a change instead of the end, make it more gradual. Whereas I tell you
simply the truth; and then you are angry."
"I am not angry."
"You are ever so much surprised, then, and that's worse. I call it
almost insulting for you to be so much surprised by what seems to me
perfectly natural. Have you never heard of people's changing? That is
what has happened to me--I have changed. And I tell you the truth about
it, just as I told you the truth when it was different--when I cared for
you. For I did care for you once, ever so much; didn't you believe it?
Didn't you _know_ that I cared for you that night on the barren?"
A red rose in Winthrop's cheeks. After a moment he answered, humbly
enough, "Yes, I thought you did."
"Of course you thought I did. And why? Because I _did_; that night, and
for some time afterwards, I adored you, Evert. But I don't see why you
should color up about it; wasn't it natural that I should be delighted
to be engaged to you when I adored you? and isn't it just as natural
that I should wish to break it off when I don't? You can't want me to
_pretend_ to care for you when it's all over?"
"No, no," said Winthrop, his eyes turning from her.
"I do believe you are embarrassed," said Garda, reverting to her usual
good temper again. Then she broke into smiles. "You ought to thank me,
for, really, you never cared for me at all." She leaned back against her
tree again, and folded her arms. "I dare you to tell me that you ever
really cared for me, even when I cared so much for you," she continued,
in smiling challenge. "What you would answer if you spoke the truth (as
I do), would be--'I did my duty, Garda.' As though I wanted duty! You
ought to fall down on your knees in the sand this moment and thank me
for releasing you; for you are much too honorable ever to have released
yourself, you are the soul of honor. Just supposing we had been
married--that we were married now--where should we be? I should have got
over caring for you, probably (you see I have got over it without being
married), and you never did really care for me at all; I think we've had
a lucky escape."
"Perhaps we have," Winthrop answered.
"No 'perhaps,' it's a certainty. And yet," she went on, slowly, looking
at him with musing eyes, "it might have had a different termination. For
I adored you, and you could perhaps have kept it along if you had tried.
But you never did try, the only thing you tried to do was to 'mould'
me; you made me read things, or, if you didn't, you wanted to; you have
treated me always as if I were a child. You have had an idea of me from
the first (I don't know where you got it) that wasn't like me, what I
really am, in the very least. And you never found out your mistake
because you never took the trouble to study me, myself; you only studied
your Idea. Your Idea was lovely, of course," pursued the girl, laughing;
"so much the worse for me, I suppose, that I am not like her. Your Idea
would have been willing to be moulded; and she would have read
everything you suggested; and then in due course of time--_when she
should be at least eighteen_"--interpolated the girl, with another burst
of laughter, "she would have gratefully thanked you for admitting her to
the privileges of being 'grown up.' Why--you didn't even want me to care
for you as much as I did, because your Idea wouldn't have cared so much
for anybody, of course, 'when she was only sixteen.'"
Winthrop flushed fiercely, as her mocking eyes met his, full of mirth.
Then he controlled himself, and stopped where he was; he did not answer
her.
"You are the best man in the world," said Garda, coming towards him and
abandoning her raillery. "With your views (though I think them all
wrong, you know), you could say the most dreadful things to me; yet you
won't, because--because I'm a woman. You engaged yourself to me in the
first place because you thought I cared for you (I did, then); and now,
when I tease you because you have made the mistake of not understanding
me--of having, that is, a higher idea of me than I deserve--you don't
answer back and tell me that, or anything else that would be true and
horrid. That's very good of you. I _wish_ I could have gone on caring
for you! But I don't, I can't; isn't it a pity?" She spoke with perfect
sincerity.
Winthrop burst into a laugh.
"Don't laugh in that way," Garda went on; "I assure you I know perfectly
that--that the person I care for now isn't what you are in many ways.
But if I do care for him (as I cared for you once--you know what that
was) shouldn't I be true to it and say so?"
"The--the person?" said Winthrop, looking at her inquiringly, a new
expression coming into his face.
"Yes, Lucian, of course."
"Lucian!"
"Oh, very well, if you take _that_ tone! And after I have said, too,
that I knew he wasn't as--that he wasn't like you. It seems to me that I
have been very honest."
"Very," replied Winthrop. Then his voice changed, it grew at once more
serious and more gentle. "I hardly know, Garda, how to take what you
say, I don't think you know what you are saying. You stand there and
tell me that you care so much for Lucian Spenser--a married man--"
"He isn't married now," said Garda.
Winthrop gave her a look which made her rush towards him. "I didn't mean
it--that is, I didn't mean that I was thinking about Rosalie's death; I
wasn't thinking about that at all, I have never thought about Rosalie.
Very likely I shall not see Lucian for ever and ever so long, and very
likely he won't care for me when I do. He has never given the least sign
that he cared--don't think that." And, clasping her hands round his
wrist, she looked up in his face in earnest appeal. "Nothing has ever
been said between us--not one word; it is only how _I_ have felt."
"Whom are you defending now?" asked Winthrop, as coldly as a man may
when a girl so beautiful is clinging to him pleadingly.
"Lucian," responded Garda, promptly.
The mention of his name seemed to give her thoughts a new direction;
disengaging herself, she came round to stand in front of her companion
in order to have a good position while she told her story. "Don't you
remember that I began caring for Lucian first of all? you must remember
that? Then I got over it. Next I cared for you. Then, when he came back,
I began to care for him again--you have no idea how delightful he is!"
she said, breaking off for a moment, and giving him a frank smile.
"Well, I should have told you all about it long ago, only Margaret
wouldn't let me; she has made me promise her twice, and faithfully, not
to tell you. You see, Margaret thinks you care for me; therefore it
would hurt you to know it. I have told her over and over again that you
don't care at all, and that I don't care any longer for you. But it
doesn't make any difference, she can't understand it; she thinks that if
I cared once, it must last still; because that is the kind that Margaret
is herself; if _she_ cared, it _would_ last. So she can't believe that I
have really changed, she thinks (isn't it funny?) that I am mistaken
about myself, that I don't know my own mind. And then, too, to change
from you to Lucian--_that_ she could never understand in a thousand
years."
Winthrop had had his hands deep in the pockets of his morning-coat
during this history. He stood looking steadily down, perhaps to keep her
from seeing his expression.
But she divined it. "You needn't have such a stern face, I am sure
everybody's very good to _you_. Here I've released you from an
engagement you didn't desire, and Margaret, the sweetest woman in the
world, cares so much for your feelings--what she supposes them to
be--that she has done her best to hold me to you just because she thinks
_you_ would mind. Of course, too, on my own account a little--because
she thinks it would be well for me to marry you, that it would be safe.
Well, you know you _are_ safe, Evert." And the rippling laugh broke
forth again, meeting this time decided anger in Winthrop's gray eyes as
he raised them to meet hers.
"There, you needn't crush me," Garda resumed. "And you needn't mind me,
either me, or my laughing. For, of course, I know that if I could have
cared for you, that is, gone on caring, and if in the end you could have
cared for me, it would have been better for me than anything that could
possibly happen; you ought not to be angry with a girl who tells you
that?" And taking his arm, she looked up in his face very sweetly. "But
the trouble was that you didn't care for me, you don't now. Yet you kept
to your engagement, you took me and made the best of me; and I think
that was very good. Well, it's over now." She had kept his arm, and now
she began to stroll down the aisle towards the rose-garden. "There's
something else I want to speak to you about, now that we've got through
with our own affairs; and that's Margaret. Why have you such a wrong
idea of her?--she is so noble as well as so sweet. She promised my
mother to be like a sister to me; but, Heaven knows, few real sisters
would have been as patient as she has been. I have never seen any one
that could approach her. I didn't know a woman could be like that--so
unchangeable and true. For we are not true to each other--women, I mean;
that is, not when we care for somebody. Then we pretend, we pretend
awfully; we tell things, or keep them back, or tell only half, just as
we choose; and we always think that we have a perfect right to do it.
But Margaret's different, Margaret's _wonderful_. Yet none of you, her
nearest relatives, do her the least justice; it is left to _me_ to
appreciate her. Leaving Mrs. Rutherford out, this is more stupidity than
I can account for in _you_."
"Men are all stupid, of course," Winthrop answered.
"What makes all she has done for me the more remarkable," Garda went on,
not heeding his tone, "is the fact that she doesn't really like me, she
cannot, I am so different. Yet she goes on being good to me just the
same."
Winthrop made an impatient movement. "Suppose we don't talk any more
about Mrs. Harold," he said.
"I must talk about her, when I love her and trust her more than
anything."
"Don't trust her too much."
She drew her arm from his, indignantly. "One night she came way down the
live-oak avenue after me, with only slippers on her poor little feet, to
keep me from going out in the fog with Lucian--sailing, I mean. What do
you think of that?"
"I don't think anything."
"Yes, you do; your face shows that you do."
"My face shows, perhaps, what I think of the extraordinary duplicity of
women," said Winthrop.
"Duplicity? Do you call it duplicity for me to be telling you every
single thing I think and feel, as I have done to-day?"
"I was speaking of Mrs. Harold."
"Duplicity and Margaret!" exclaimed Garda.
They had reached the end of the orange aisle, and she no longer had his
arm. "I can't discuss her with you, Garda," he said. And he went out
into the sunshine beyond.
But Garda followed him. She came round, placed her hands on his
shoulders, and pushed him with soft violence back into the shade. "Why
do you speak so of her? you _shall_ tell me. Why shouldn't I trust her?
But I do and I will in spite of you!"
"Do you mean to marry that man, Garda?" asked Winthrop, at last, as she
stood there holding him, her eyes on his, thinking of her no longer as
the young girl of his fancy, but as the woman.
"I don't know," answered Garda, her tone altering; "perhaps he won't
care for me."
"But if he should care?"
"Oh!" murmured the girl, the most lovely, rapturous smile lighting up
her face.
Winthrop contemplated her for a moment. "Very well, then, I think I
ought to tell you: she cares for Lucian herself."
Garda's hands dropped. "It isn't possible that you believe that--that
you _have_ believed it! Margaret care for Lucian! She doesn't care a
straw for him, and since _I_ have begun to care for him again, I verily
believe that she has detested him; he knows it too. Margaret care for
him! What are you thinking of? _I_ care, not Margaret; I've done nothing
but try to be with him, and meet him, and I've seen him more times than
she knows. Why--it gave her that fever just because she had to do
something for him; that last afternoon before he went away (I promised
her I wouldn't tell you; but I don't care, I shall), I had asked Lucian
to meet me at the pool in the south-eastern woods, and then I thought
that I should rather see him at the house after all, and so I started a
little earlier, and was on my way to Madam Giron's, when I came upon
Margaret. I had to tell her, because she wanted me to go home with her
and of course I couldn't. And then, suddenly, we saw Dr. Kirby coming,
and I knew it must be for me--he had found out in some way my plan--and
I knew, too, that it would be dreadful if he should meet Lucian; I was
sure he would shoot him! And I was going to run over and warn
Lucian--there was just time--when Margaret said she would do it, and
that _I_ had better go back up the path and stop the Doctor, keep him
away from there entirely, if possible, which was, of course, much the
best plan. So I did. And she went to Madam Giron's. And I am convinced
that it was the cause of her illness--it was so disagreeable to her to
be mixed up in _anything_ connected with Lucian."
Garda had poured out this narrative with all the eloquence of the warm
affection she had for her friend. Now she stopped. "She doesn't like
Lucian because she doesn't understand him," she said. Then she repented.
"No, it isn't that, he isn't the person for _her_. Lucian will do for
me; but not for Margaret." And she looked at Winthrop with one of her
sudden comprehending glances, clear as a beam of light.
But he did not respond to this. "When you met her that afternoon, Garda,
where was she?" he asked; he seemed to be thrusting Garda and her
affairs aside now.
"I told you; in the south-eastern woods."
"Yes. But where?"
"In the eastern path, at the end of that long straight stretch beyond
the pool--just before you get to the bend."
"And then?"
"Then I went back up the path to meet the Doctor. And Margaret went down
the path and across the field to Madam Giron's."
At this instant appeared Celestine. She had gone to the entrance of the
aisle which was nearest the house, and looked in; then, seeing that they
were at the far end, she had left it and come round on the outside.
For something forbade Celestine to walk down that long vista alone. They
would probably hear her and turn; and then there would be the necessity
of approaching them for fully five minutes step by step, with the
consciousness that they were looking; she could not stare back at them,
and yet neither could she look all the time at the sand at her
feet--which would be dizzying. Celestine always took care of her dignity
in this way; she had a fixed regard for herself as a decent Vermont
woman; you could see that in the self-respecting way in which her large
neat shoes lifted themselves and came down again when she walked.
"Mrs. Rutherford would like to see you, Mr. Evert, if you please; she
isn't so well, she says."
"Nothing serious, Minerva, I hope?"
"I guess there's no occasion to be scairt, Mr. Evert. But she wants
you."
"I will come immediately."
Celestine disappeared.
Garda and Winthrop turned back towards the house through the orange
aisle.
"Mrs. Rutherford has never known, has she, that we have been engaged?"
asked Garda.
"No."
"There is no need that she should ever know, then; she isn't fond of me
as it is, and she would detest me forever if she knew there had been a
chance of my becoming in reality her niece. I don't want to trouble her
any longer with even my unseen presence; I want to go away."
"Where?"
"It doesn't make much difference where. It is only that I am restless,
and as I have never been restless before, I thought that perhaps if I
should go away for a while, it would stop."
"Yes, you wish to see the world," said Winthrop, vaguely. His mind was
not upon Garda now.
"I don't care for 'the world,'" the girl responded. "_I_ only care for
the people in it."
Then, in answer to a glance of his as his attention came back to her,
"No, I am not going after Lucian," she said; "don't think that. I am
almost sure that Lucian will go abroad now; he was always talking about
it,--saying that he longed to spend a summer in Venice, and paint
everything there. No--but I think I might go to Charleston--the Doctor
could take me; he has a cousin there, Mrs. Lowndes; I could stay with
her. Margaret will oppose it. But the Doctor is my guardian too, you
know; and I hope _you_ will take my part. Of course I should rather go
with Margaret anywhere, if she could only go; but she cannot, you know
Mrs. Rutherford would never let her. So she will feel called
upon--Margaret--to oppose it."
They had now come to the end of the aisle. "Promise me to take my part,"
said Garda. Then, perceiving that his attention had left her again, "See
what I am reduced to!" she confided to the last orange-tree.
Winthrop brought himself back. "I don't see any reason why you shouldn't
go to Charleston if the Doctor will take you," he said; "you must speak
to him about it."
"Well, I won't keep you; I see you want to go.--All the same, you know,
I liked you," she called after him as he went out in the sunshine.
He glanced back, smiling.
But Garda looked perfectly serious. She stood there framed in the light
green shade; "I should like _ever_ so much to go back to the time when I
first cared for you!" she said, regretfully.
Winthrop found Mrs. Rutherford much excited. Betty, tearful and
distressed, met him outside the door, and in whispered words confessed
that she had inadvertently betrayed the fact of his engagement, to dear
Katrina; "I can't imagine, though, why she should feel about it as she
does--as though it was something terrible," concluded the friend,
plucking up a little spirit at the end of her confession, and wiping her
eyes.
"She won't feel so long," said Winthrop,--"you can take comfort from
that; my engagement is broken."
"BROKEN?"
"Yes; by Garda herself, ten minutes ago." And leaving Betty to digest
this new intelligence, he went in to see his aunt.
His aunt had had herself put into an arm-chair: an arm-chair was more
impressive than a bed. "I feel very ill, Evert," she began, in a faint
voice; "I never could have believed that you would deceive me in this
way."
"Let me undeceive you, then. My engagement--for I presume it is that you
are thinking of--is broken."
"Did _you_ break it, Evert?" pursued Aunt Katrina, still in affliction.
"No, Miss Thorne broke it. Ten minutes ago."
"A forward minx!" said the lady, veering suddenly to heat.
"It is done, at any rate. I suppose you are glad."
"Of course I am glad. But I should be gladder still if I thought I
should never see her face again!"
"That is apropos--she is anxious to go to Charleston."
"Let her go," said Aunt Katrina, with majesty.
"She is afraid Margaret will object."
"_I_ shall object if she stays! But oh, Evert, how could you have been
caught in such a trap as that, by a perfectly unknown, shallow,
mercenary girl?"
"Unknown--for the present, yes; shallow--I am not prepared to say; but
mercenary? If she were mercenary, would she have let me off? Would she
have broken the engagement herself, as she did ten minutes ago?"
"I wish you wouldn't keep repeating that 'ten minutes,'" said Aunt
Katrina, irritably. "Who cares for ten minutes? I wish it were ten
years." Then her mind reverted to Garda. "She has some plan," she said.
"I don't think she plans. And now that this trouble is off your mind, my
dear aunt, will you excuse me if I leave you? I have still only just
arrived, and I was up at dawn. Shall I send Celestine to you?"
"Celestine is busy; she is refolding some lace--Flemish church."
"Your Betty, then."
"My Betty has behaved in the most _traitorous_ way."
"When she was the one to tell you?"
"She should have told me long before."
"Why she, more than any of the rest of us?" asked Winthrop, rising.
"Because _she_ must have made a superhuman effort not to; because _she_
must have fairly kept herself in a strait-jacket to prevent it--in a
strait-jacket night and day; for eight long months has Elizabeth Gwinnet
done that!"
"Don't you think, then, that you ought to have some pity for her?"
suggested Winthrop.
He went out. And then Betty, who was sitting, dazed and dejected, on the
edge of a chair outside the door, hurried in, handkerchief in hand, to
make her peace with dearest Kate, her long limp black skirt (all Betty's
skirts were long) trailing in an eager, humble way behind her.
Winthrop had said that he wished to go to his room. The way to it was
not through the drawing-room; yet he found himself in the latter
apartment.
Margaret sat there near one of the windows sewing, sewing with that
even motion of hand, and absorbed gaze bent on the long seam, which he
had told himself more than once that he detested. The heavy wooden
shutter was slightly open, so that a beam of light entered and shone
across her hair; the rest of the room was in shadow.
Winthrop came towards her; he had closed the door upon entering. She
gave him her hand, and they exchanged a few words of formal
greeting--inquiry and reply about his journey and kindred matters.
"Garda has broken her engagement to me; I presume you know it," he said.
"I knew she intended to do it."
"She tells me that you have tried to dissuade her?"
"Yes; I thought she did not, perhaps, fully know her own mind."
"We must give up the idea that she is a child," he said. "We have been
mistaken, probably, about that all along."
Margaret sewed on without answering.
"You are very loyal to her; you don't let me see that you agree with
me."
"I didn't suppose that you meant any disparagement, when you said it."
"She tells me that she doesn't care for me any more." He took a book
from the table beside him, and looked absently at its title. "We must
allow that she has a great facility as regards change."
"She has a great honesty."
Winthrop sat down--until now he had been standing; he threw aside the
book. "You certainly can't approve of it," he said,--"such a
disposition?"
He did not pay much heed to what he was saying, he was absorbed in the
problem before him; face to face with Margaret, he was asking himself,
and with more inward tumult than ever, why she had been so willing to
have him think of her, as, after what he had seen, he must think? During
his two weeks of absence--the evening before on that long pier in the
rain--he had felt a hot anger against her for the unconcern with which
she was treating him. But now that he knew the real history of that last
afternoon, now that he knew that it was Garda who had planned the
meeting with Lucian, Garda, not Margaret, who had been on her way to
that solitary house, the problem was more strangely haunting even than
before. She had saved Garda from compromising herself in the eyes of the
man to whom she was engaged--yes; but she had done it at the expense of
compromising herself, Garda, meanwhile, remaining ignorant of the
greatness of the sacrifice, since she did not know, as Margaret did,
that he, Winthrop, was sitting there in the wood beyond the bend.
Certainly it was an immense thing for one woman to have done for
another; you might say, indeed, that there was nothing greater that a
woman could do.
Then came again the galling thought that Margaret had not found the task
so difficult, simply because she was indifferent as to what his opinion
of her might be; _she_ knew that she had not been in any sense of the
word to blame--that was enough for her; what he knew, or thought he
knew, troubled her little.
But no, that could not be. Margaret Harold was a proud woman--you could
see that, quiet as she was, in every delicate line of her face; it was
not natural, therefore, that she should willingly rest in the eyes of
any one under such an imputation as that. Surely, now that Garda had, of
her own accord, broken off her engagement, and confessed (only Garda
never "confessed," she merely told) that her old liking for Lucian had
risen again, surely _now_ Margaret would throw off the false character
that rested upon her, would hasten to do so, would be glad to do so;
there was no necessity to shield Garda further. She had made the girl
promise not to tell him the real version of the events of that last
afternoon; didn't this mean that, if the circumstances should ever
change so that it was possible to give the real version, she wished to
give it to him herself? The circumstances had changed; and now, wouldn't
she take advantage of it? Wouldn't she be glad to explain, at last, the
reasons that took her to Madam Giron's that day? Of course she supposed
that still he did not know; it would not occur to her that Garda might
break her promise.
But still her hand came and went above the white seam. And still she
said nothing.
He waited a long time--as long as it was possible to sit there without
speaking. Then he went back to his last remark--which she had not
answered; annoyed by her silence, he went from bad to worse. "I shall be
surprised if you approve of it;--you have such a regard for
appearances."
She colored. "I am not very successful in preserving them then, even if
I have a regard."
"Oh, you don't mind _me_," answered Winthrop, in a tone which in spite
of himself was openly bitter.
She looked up, he could see that she was much moved. "We must do
everything we can for Garda now," she said, rather incoherently, her
eyes returning to her work.
"You have done altogether too much for her as it is; I don't think you
need trouble yourself so constantly about Garda, you might think for a
moment of your other friends."
He was absolutely pleading--he could scarcely believe it of himself. But
he wanted so to have her set him right! He wanted her to do it of her
own accord--show that she was glad to be able to do it at last. There
was no longer any question of saving Garda; Garda had, in her own eyes
at least, saved herself. He waited for his answer.
She had given him a frightened glance as he spoke, the expression of his
face seemed to take her by surprise, and break down her self-possession.
She rose, murmuring something about being obliged to go.
"You are sure you have nothing to say to me, Margaret?" he asked, as she
went towards the door.
"Say? What do you mean?"
"I am giving you a chance to explain, I long to have you explain. I find
myself unable to believe--" He stopped. Then he began again. "I am sure
there is some solution--If I have not always liked your course in other
matters, at least I have never thought _this_ of you. You know what I
witnessed that afternoon, as I sat there in the woods; one word will be
enough--tell me what I must think of it--and of you." He was trying her
to the utmost now.
A painful red flush had darkened her face, but, except for that, she did
not flinch. "You must think what you please," she answered.
Then she escaped; she had opened the door, and now she went rapidly down
the hall towards her own room.
He stood gazing. If he had not known she was innocent, he should have
set down her tone to defiance; it was exactly the sort of low-voiced
defiance which he had expected from her when he had supposed--what he
_had_ supposed.
But his suppositions had been entirely false. Did she still wish him to
believe that they were true!
It appeared so.