WASHINGTON
Richard had not been very happy in Washington. He led too quiet and
secluded a life, his companions said, advising him to go out more, and
jocosely telling him that he was pining for his young wife and growing
quite an old man. When Melinda Jones came, Richard brightened a little,
for there was always a sense of comfort and rest in Melinda's presence,
and Richard spent much of his leisure in her society, accompanying her
to concerts and occasionally to a levee, and taking pains to show her
whatever he thought would interest her. It was pleasant to have a lady
with him sometimes, and he wished so much it had been practicable for
Ethelyn to have come. "Poor Ethie," he called her to himself, pitying
her because, vain man that he was, he thought her so lonely without him.
This was at first, and before he had received in reply to his letter
that dreadful blank, which sent such a chill to his heart, making him
cold, and faint, and sick, as he began to realize what it was in a
woman's power to do. He had occasionally thought of Ethelyn's threat,
not to write him a line, and felt very uncomfortable as he recalled the
expression of her eyes when she made it. But he did not believe she was
in earnest. She surely could not hold out against the letter he wrote,
telling how he missed her every moment, and how, if it had been at all
advisable, he would have taken her with him. He did not know Ethelyn,
and so was not prepared for the bitter disappointment in store for him
when the dainty little envelope was put into his hand. It was her
handwriting--so much he knew; and there lingered about the missive faint
traces of the sweet perfume he remembered as pervading everything she
wore or used. Ethelyn had not kept her vow; and with a throb of joy
Richard tore open the envelope and removed the delicate tinted sheet
inside. But the hand of the strong man shook and his heart grew heavy as
lead when he turned the sheet thrice over, seeking in vain for some line
or word, or syllable or sign. But there was none. Ethelyn had kept her
vow, and Richard felt for a moment as if all the world were as
completely a blank as that bit of gilt-edged paper he crumpled so
helplessly in his hand. Anon, however, hope whispered that she would
write next time; she could not hold out thus all winter; and so Richard
wrote again with the same success, until at last he expected nothing,
and people said of him that he was growing old, while even Melinda
noticed his altered appearance, and how fast his brown hair was turning
gray. Melinda was in one sense his good angel. She brought him news from
home and Ethelyn, telling for one thing of Ethie's offer to teach her
music during the winter; and for another, of Ethie's long drives upon
the prairie, sometimes with James, sometimes with John, but oftenest
with Andy, to whom she seemed to cling as to a very dear brother.
This news did Richard good, showing a better side of Ethie's character
than the one presented to him. She was not cold and proud to the family
at home; even his mother, who wrote to him once or twice, spoke kindly
of her, while James warmly applauded her, and Andy wrote a letter,
wonderful in composition, and full of nothing but Ethelyn, who made
their home so pleasant with her music, and songs, and pretty face. There
was some comfort in this^ and so Richard bore his burden in silence, and
no one ever dreamed that the letters he received with tolerable
regularity were only blank, fulfillments of a hasty vow.
With Christmas came the Van Buren set from Boston--Aunt Sophia, with
Frank, and his girlish bride, who soon became a belle, flirting with
every man who offered his attentions, while Frank was in no way behind
in his flirtations with the other sex. Plain, matter-of-fact Melinda
Jones was among the first to claim his notice after he learned that she
was niece of the man who drove such splendid blacks and kept so handsome
a suite of rooms at Willard's; but Melinda was more than his match, and
snubbed him so unmercifully that he gave her up, and sneered at her as
"that old-maidish girl from the West." Mrs. Dr. Van Buren had been
profuse in her inquiries after Ethelyn, and loud in her regrets at her
absence. She had also tried to patronize both Richard and Melinda,
taking the latter with her to the theater and to a reception, and trying
to cultivate her for the sake of poor Ethie, who was obliged to
associate with her and people like her. Melinda, however, did not need
Mrs. Van Buren's patronage. Her uncle was a man of wealth and mark, who
stood high in Washington, where he had been before. His niece could not
lack attention, and ere the season was over the two rival belles at
Washington were Mrs. Frank Van Buren, from Boston, and Miss Melinda
Jones, from Iowa.
But prosperity did not spoil Melinda, and James Markham's chances were
quite as good when, dressed in pink silk, with camelias in her hair, she
entertained some half-dozen judges and M.C.'s as when in brown delaine
and magenta ribbons she danced a quadrille at some "quilting bee out
West." She saw the difference, however, between men of cultivation and
those who had none, and began to understand the cause of Ethelyn's cold,
proud looks when surrounded by Richard's family. She began also silently
to watch and criticise Richard, comparing him with other men of equal
brain, and thinking how, if she were his wife, she would go to work to
correct his manners. Possibly, too, thoughts of James, in his blue frock
and cowhide boots, occasionally intruded themselves upon her mind; but
if so, they did not greatly disturb her equanimity, for, let what might
happen, Melinda felt herself equal to the emergency--whether it were to
put down Frank Van Buren and the whole race of impudent puppies like
him, or polish rough James Markham if need be. How she hated Frank Van
Buren when she saw his neglect of his young wife, whose money was all he
seemed to care for; and how utterly she loathed and despised him after
the night, when, at a party given by one of Washington's magnates, he
stood beside her for half an hour and talked confidently to her of
Ethelyn, whom, he hinted, he could have married if he would.
"Why didn't you, then?" and Melinda turned sharply upon him, with a look
in her black eyes which made him wince as he replied: "Family
interference--must have money, you know! But, zounds! don't I pity
her!--tied to that clown, whom--"
Frank did not finish the sentence, for Melinda's eyes fairly blazed with
anger as she cut him short with "Excuse me, Mr. Van Buren; I can't
listen to such abuse of one whom I esteem as highly as I do Judge
Markham. Why, sir, he is head and shoulders above you, in sense and
intellect and everything which makes a man," and with a haughty bow,
Melinda swept away, leaving the shamefaced Frank alone in his
discomfiture.
"I'd like to kick myself if I could, though I told nothing but the
truth. Ethie did want me confoundedly, and I would have married her if
she hadn't been poor as a church mouse," Frank muttered to himself,
standing in the deep recess of the window, and all unconscious that just
outside upon the balcony was a silent, motionless form, which had heard
every word of his conversation with Melinda, and his soliloquy
afterward.
Richard Markham had come to this party just to please Melinda, but he
did not enjoy it. If Ethie had been there he might; but he could not
forget the blank that day received, or the letter from James, which said
that Ethelyn was not looking as well as usual, and had the morning
previously asked him to turn back before they had ridden more than two
miles. He could not be happy with that upon his mind, and so he stole
from the gay scene out upon the balcony, where he stood watching the
quiet stars and thinking of Ethelyn, when his ear had caught by the
mention of her name.
He had not thought before who the couple were standing so near to him,
but he knew now it was Melinda and Frank Van Buren, and became an
involuntary listener to the conversation which ensued. There was a
clenching of his fist, a shutting together of his teeth, and an impulse
to knock the boasting Frank Van Buren down; and then, as the past
flashed before him, with the thought that possibly Frank spoke the truth
and Ethelyn had loved him, there swept over him such a sense of anguish
and desolation that he forgot all else in his own wretchedness. It had
never occurred to him that Ethelyn married him while all the time she
loved another--that perhaps she loved that other still--and the very
possibility of it drove him nearly wild.
He was missed from the party, but no one could tell when he left, for no
one saw him as he sprang down into the garden, and taking refuge in the
paths where the shades were the deepest, escaped unobserved into the
street, and so back to his own room, where he went over all the past
and recalled every little act of affection on Ethelyn's part, weighed it
in the balance with proofs that she did not care for him and never had.
So much did Richard love his wife and so anxious was he to find her
guiltless that he magnified every virtue and excused every error until
the verdict rendered was in her favor, and Frank alone was the
delinquent--Frank, the vain, conceited coxcomb, who thought because a
woman was civil to him that she must needs wish to marry him; Frank, the
wretch who had presumed to pity his cousin, and called her husband a
clown! How Richard's fingers tingled with a desire to thrash the
insulting rascal; and how, in spite of the verdict, his heart ached with
a dull, heavy fear lest it might be true in part, that Ethie had once
felt for Frank something deeper than what girls usually feel for their
first cousins.
"And supposing she has?" Richard's generous nature asked. "Supposing she
did love this Frank once on a time well enough to marry him? She surely
was all over that love before she promised to be my wife, else she had
not promised; and so the only point where she is at fault was in
concealing from me the fact that she had loved another first. I was
honest with her. I told her of Abigail, and it was very hard to do it,
for I felt that the proud girl's spirit rebelled against such as Abigail
was years ago. It would have been so easy, then, for Ethelyn to have
confessed to me, if she had a confession to make; though how she could
ever care for such a jackanapes as that baboon of a Frank is more than I
can tell."
Richard was waxing warm against Frank Van Buren, whom he despised so
heartily that he put upon his shoulders all the blame concerning
Ethelyn, if blame there were. He would so like to think her innocent,
and he tried so hard to do it, that he succeeded in part, though
frequently as the days passed on, and he sat at his post in the House,
listening to some tiresome speech, or took his solitary walk toward
Arlington Heights, a pang of something like jealousy and dread that all
had not been open and fair between himself and his wife cut like a
knife through his heart, and almost stopped his breath. The short
session was wearing to a close, and he was glad of it, for he longed to
be home again with Ethelyn, even if he were doomed to meet the same
coldness which those terrible blanks had brought him. Anything was
preferable to the life he led, and though he grew pale as ashes and his
limbs quivered like a reed when, toward the latter part of February, he
received a telegram to come home at once, as Ethelyn was very sick, he
hailed the news as a message of deliverance, whereby he could escape
from hated Washington a few days sooner. He hardly knew when or how the
idea occurred to him that Aunt Barbara's presence would be more
acceptable in that house, where he guessed what had happened; but occur
to him it did; and Aunt Barbara, sitting by her winter fire and thinking
of Ethelyn, was startled terribly by the missive which bade her join
Richard Markham at Albany, on the morrow, and go with him to Iowa, where
Ethie lay so ill. A pilgrimage to Mecca would scarcely have looked more
formidable to the good woman than this sudden trip to Iowa; but where
her duty was concerned she did not hesitate, and when at noon of the
next day the New York train came up the river, the first thing Richard
saw as he walked rapidly toward the Central Depot at Albany was Aunt
Barbara's bonnet protruding from the car window and Aunt Barbara's hand
making frantic passes and gestures to attract his notice.