THE VAN BUREN SET
Captain Markham's carryall, which Jake, the hired man, had brushed up
wonderfully for the occasion, had gone over to West Chicopee after the
party from Boston--Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, with Frank, and his betrothed,
Miss Nettie Hudson, from Philadelphia. Others had been invited from the
city, but one after another their regrets had come to Ethelyn, who would
gladly have excused the entire set, Aunt Van Buren, Frank and all,
though she confessed to herself a great deal of curiosity with regard to
Miss Nettie, whom she had never seen; neither had she met Frank since
the dissolution of their engagement, for though she had been in Boston,
where most of her dresses were made, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren had wisely
arranged that Frank should be absent from home. She was herself not
willing to risk a meeting between him and Ethelyn until matters were too
well adjusted to admit of a change, for Frank had more than once shown
signs of rebellion. He was in a more quiescent state now, having made up
his mind that what could not be cured must be endured, and as he had
sensibility enough to feel very keenly the awkwardness of meeting
Ethelyn under present circumstances, and as Miss Nettie was really very
fond of him, and he, after a fashion, was fond of her, he was in the
best of spirits when he stepped from the train at West Chicopee and
handed his mother and Nettie into the spacious carryall of which he had
made fun as a country ark, while they rode slowly toward Aunt Barbara
Bigelow's. Everything was in readiness for them. The large north chamber
was aired and swept and dusted, and only little bars of light came
through the closed shutters, and the room looked very cool and nice,
with its fresh muslin curtains looped back with blue, its carpet of the
same cool shade, its pretty chestnut furniture, its snowbank of a bed,
and the tasteful bouquets which Ethelyn had arranged--Ethelyn, who
lingered longer in this room than the other one across the hall, the
bridal chamber, where the ribbons which held the curtains were white,
and the polished marble of the bureau and washstand, sent a shiver
through her veins whenever she looked in there. She was in her own cozy
chamber now, and the silken hair, which in the early morning had been
twisted under her net, was bound in heavy braids about her head, while a
pearl comb held it in its place, and a half-opened rose was fastened
just behind her ear. She had hesitated some time in her choice of a
dress, vacillating between a pale buff, which Frank had always admired,
and a delicate blue muslin, in which Judge Markham had once said she
looked so pretty. The blue had won the day, for Ethelyn felt that she
owed some concession to the man whose kind note she had treated so
cavalierly that morning, and so she wore the blue for him, feeling glad
of the faint, sick feeling which kept the blood from rushing too hotly
to her face, and made her fairer and paler than her wont. She knew that
she was very handsome when her toilet was made, and that was one secret
of the assurance with which she went forward to meet Nettie Hudson when
at last the carryall stopped before the gate.
Mrs. Dr. Van Buren was tired, and hot, and dusty, and as she was always
a little cross when in this condition, she merely kissed Ethelyn once,
and shaking hands with Aunt Barbara, went directly to the north chamber,
asking that a cup of tea might be made for her dinner instead of the
coffee whose fragrant odor met her olfactories as she stepped into the
house. First, however, she introduced Nettie, who after glancing at
Ethelyn, turned her eyes wonderingly upon Frank, thinking his greeting
of his cousin rather more demonstrative than was exactly becoming even
if they were cousins, and had been, as Mrs. Dr. Van Buren affirmed, just
like brother and sister. That was no reason why Frank should have wound
his arm around her waist, and kept it there, while he kissed her twice,
and brought such a bright color to her cheeks. Miss Nettie cared just
enough for Frank Van Buren to be jealous of him. She wanted all his
attentions herself, and so the little blonde was in something of a pet
as she followed on into the house, and twisted her hat strings into a
hard knot, which Frank had to disentangle for her, just as he had to
kiss away the wrinkle which had gathered on her forehead. She was a
beautiful little creature, scarcely larger than a child of twelve, with
a pleading, helpless look in her large, blue eyes which seemed to be
saying: "Look at me; speak to me, won't you?--notice me a little."
She was just the one to be made a tool of; and Ethelyn readily saw that
she had been as clay in Mrs. Van Buren's skillful hands.
"Pretty, very pretty, but decidedly a nonentity and a baby," was
Ethelyn's mental comment, and she felt something like contempt for
Frank, who, after loving and leaning on her, could so easily turn to
weak little Nettie Hudson.
At the sight of Frank and the sound of his voice, she had felt all the
olden feeling rushing back to her heart; but when, after Nettie had
followed Mrs. Van Buren to her chamber, and she stood for a moment alone
with him, he felt constrained to say something, and stammered out, "It's
deuced mean, Ethie, to serve you so, and mother ought to be indicted. I
hope you don't care much," all her pride and womanliness was roused and
she answered promptly: "Of course, I don't care; do you think I would
wish to marry Judge Markham if I were not all over that childish affair?
You have not seen him yet. He is a splendid man."
Ethelyn felt better after paying this tribute to Richard Markham, and
she liked him better, too, now that she had spoken for him, but Frank's
reply, "Yes, mother told me so, but said there was a good deal of your
Westernism about him yet," jarred on her feelings as she plucked the
roses growing at the end of the piazza and crushed them, thorns and all,
in her hands, feeling the smart less than the dull, heavy throbbing at
her heart. Frank did not seem to her just as he used to be; he was the
same polished dandy as of old, and just as careful to perform every
little act of gallantry, but the something lacking which she had always
felt to a certain extent was more perceptible now, and to herself she
accused him of having degenerated since he had passed from her
influence. She never dreamed of charging it to her interviews with Judge
Markham, whose topics of conversation were so widely different from
Frank's. She was not generous enough to concede anything in his favor,
though she felt glad that Frank was not quite the same he had been--it
would make the evening bridal before her easier to bear; and Ethelyn's
eyes were brighter and her smiles more frequent as she sat down to
dinner and answered Mrs. Van Buren's question: "Where is the Judge that
he does not dine with us?"
"Sick, is he?" Mrs. Van Buren said, when told of his headache, while
Frank remarked, "Sick of his bargain, maybe," laughing loudly at his own
joke, while the others laughed in unison; and so the dinner passed off
without that stiffness which Ethelyn had so much dreaded.
After it was over, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren felt better, and began to talk of
the "Judge," and to ask if Ethelyn knew whether they would board or keep
house in Washington the coming winter. Ethelyn did not know. She had
never mentioned Washington to Richard Markham, and he had never guessed
how much that prospective season at the capital had to do with her
decision. That it would be hers to enjoy she had no shadow of doubt, but
as she felt then she did not particularly care to keep up a household
for the sake of entertaining her aunt, and possibly Frank and his wife,
so she replied that she presumed "they should board, as it would be the
short session--if he was re-elected they might consider the house."
"There may be a still higher honor in store for him than a re-election,"
Mrs. Van Buren said, and then proceeded to speak of a letter which she
had received from a lady in Camden, who had once lived in Boston, and
who had written congratulating her old friend upon her niece's good
fortune. "There was no young man more popular in that section of the
country than Judge Markham," she said, "and there had been serious talk
of nominating him for governor. Some, however, thought him too young,
and so they were waiting for a few years when he would undoubtedly be
elected to the highest office in the State."
This piece of intelligence had greatly increased Mrs. Van Buren's
respect for the lady-elect of Iowa's future governor, and she gave the
item of news with a great deal of satisfaction, but did not tell that
her correspondent had added, "It is a pity, though, that he does not
know more of the usages of good society. Ethelyn is so refined and
sensitive that she will be often shocked, no doubt, with the manners of
the husband and his family."
This clause had troubled Mrs. Dr. Van Buren. She really liked Ethelyn,
and now that she was out of Frank's way she liked her very much, and
would do a good deal to serve her. She did not wish her to be unhappy,
as she feared she might be from the sundry rumors which had reached her
concerning that home out West, whither she was going. So, when, after
dinner, they were alone for a few moments, she endeavored to impress
upon her niece the importance of having an establishment of her own as
soon as possible.
"It is not well for sons' wives to live with the mother," she said. "She
did not mean that Nettie should live with her; and Ethelyn should at
once insist upon a separate home; then, if she should see any little
thing in her husband's manners which needed correcting, she could do it
so much better away from his mother. I do not say that there is anything
wrong in his manners," she continued, as she saw how painfully red
Ethelyn was getting, "but it is quite natural there should be, living
West as he does. You cannot expect prairie people to be as refined as
Bostonians are; but you must polish him, dear. You know how; you have
had Frank for a model so long; and even if he does not improve, people
overlook a great deal in a member of Congress, and will overlook more in
a governor, so don't feel badly, darling," and Mrs. Van Buren kissed
tenderly the poor girl, before whom all the dreary loneliness of the
future had arisen like a mountain, and whose heart even at that late
hour would fain have drawn back if possible.
But when, by the way of soothing her, Mrs. Van Buren talked of the
winter in Washington, and the honors which would always be accorded to
her as the wife of an M.C., and then dwelt upon the possibility of her
one day writing herself governor's lady, Ethelyn's girlish ambition was
roused, and her vanity flattered, so that the chances were that even
Frank would have been put aside for the future greatness, had he been
offered to her.
It was five o'clock now, in the afternoon, nearly time for the bridal
toilet to commence, and Mrs. Van Buren began to wonder "why the Judge
had not appeared." He was better of his headache and up and around, the
maid had reported, when at four she brought over the remainder of Mrs.
Captain Markham's silver, which had not been sent in the morning, and
then went back for extra napkins. There was no need to tell Ethelyn that
"he was up and around," for she had known it ever since a certain
shutter had been opened, and a man in his shirt-sleeves had appeared
before the window and thrown water from the wash bowl upon the lilac
bushes below. Ethelyn knew very well that old Mrs. Markham's servants
were spoiled, that her domestic arrangements were not of the best kind,
and that probably there was no receptacle for the dirty water except the
ground; but she did not consider this, or reflect that aside from all
other considerations the act was wholly like a man; she only thought it
like him, Judge Markham, and feelings of shame and mortification, such
as no woman likes to entertain with regard to her husband, began to rise
and swell in her heart. In the excitement of her toilet, however, she
forgot everything, even the ceremony for which she was dressing, and
which came to her with a shiver when a bridesmaid announced that Captain
Markham's carriage had just left his yard with a gentleman in it.
Judge Markham was on his way to his bridal.