MRS. DR. VAN BUREN
She was always tossing up just when she was not wanted, Ethie used to
say in the olden days, when she saw the great lady alighting at the gate
in time to interfere with and spoil some favorite project arranged for
the day, and she certainly felt it, if she did not say it, when, on the
morning following her arrival in Chicopee she heard Betty exclaim, "If
there ain't Miss Van Buren! I wonder what sent her here!"
Ethie wondered so, too, and drawing the blanket closer around her
shoulders (for she had taken advantage of her fatigue and languor to lie
very late in bed) she wished her aunt had stayed in Boston, for a little
time at least.
It had been very delightful, waking up in the dear old room and seeing
Betty's kind face bending over her--Betty, who had heard of her young
mistress' return with a gush of glad tears, and then at once bethought
herself as to what there was nice for the wanderer to eat. Just as she
used to do when Ethie was a young lady at home, Betty had carried her
pan of coals and kindlings into the chamber where Ethie was lying, and
kneeling on the hearth had made the cheerfulest of fires, while Ethie,
with half-closed eyes, watched her dreamily, thinking how nice it was to
be cared for again, and conscious only of a vague feeling of delicious
rest and quiet, which grew almost into positive happiness as she counted
the days it would take for Aunt Barbara's letter to go to Iowa and for
Richard to answer it in person, as he surely would if all which Aunt
Barbara had said was true.
Ethie did not quite know if she loved him. She had thought of him so
much during the last two years, and now, when he seemed so near, she
longed to see him again--to hear his voice and look into his eyes. They
were handsome eyes as she remembered them; kindly and pleasant, too--at
least they had been so to her, save on that dreadful night, the memory
of which always made her shiver and grow faint. It seemed a dream now--a
far-off, unhappy dream--which she would fain forget just as she wanted
Richard to forget her foibles and give her another chance. She had
bidden Aunt Barbara write to say she was there, and so after the
tempting breakfast, which had been served in her room, and which she had
eaten sitting up in bed, because Betty insisted that it should be
so--and she was glad to be petted and humored and made into a
comfortable invalid--Aunt Barbara brought her writing materials into the
room, and bidding Ethie lie still and rest herself, began the letter
to Richard.
But only the date and name were written, when Betty, coming in with a
few geranium leaves and a white fuchsia which she had purloined from her
mistress' house plants, announced Mrs. Van Buren's arrival, and the
pleasant morning was at an end. Mrs. Dr. Van Buren had come up from
Boston to borrow money from her sister for the liquidation of certain
debts contracted by her son, and which she had not the ready means to
meet. Aunt Barbara had accommodated her once or twice before, saying to
her as she signed the check, "That money in the bank was put there for
Ethie, but no one knows if she will ever need it, so it may as well do
somebody some good."
It had done good by relieving Mrs. Van Buren of a load of harassing
care, for money was not as plenty with her as formerly, and now she
wanted more. She was looking rather old and worn, and her cloak was last
year's fashion, but good enough for Chicopee, she reflected, as she
hurried into the house and stamped the muddy, melting snow from
her feet.
Utter amazement seemed the prevailing sensation in her mind when she
learned that Ethelyn had returned, and then her selfishness began to
suggest that possibly Barbara's funds, saved for Ethie, might not now be
as accessible for Frank. She was glad, though, to see her niece, but
professed herself shocked at her altered appearance.
"Upon my word, I would not have recognized you," she said, sitting down
upon the bed and looking Ethie fully in the face.
Aunt Barbara, thinking her sister might like to have Ethie alone for a
little, had purposely left the room, and so Mrs. Van Buren was free to
say what she pleased. She had felt a good deal of irritation toward
Ethie for some time past. In fact, ever since Richard became governor,
she had blamed her niece for running away from the honor which might
have been hers. As aunt to the governor's lady, she, too, would have
come in for a share of the éclat; and so, as she smoothed out the folds
of her stone-colored merino, she felt as if she had been sorely
aggrieved by that thin, white-faced woman, who really did not greatly
resemble the rosy, bright-faced Ethelyn to whom Frank Van Buren had once
talked love among the Chicopee hills.
"No, I don't believe I should have known you," Mrs. Van Buren continued.
"What have you been about to fade you so?"
Few women like to hear that they have faded, even if they know it to be
true, and Ethie's cheek flushed a little as she asked, with a smile, "Am
I really such a fright?"
"Why, no, not a fright! No one with the Bigelow features can ever be
that. But you are changed; and so I am sure Richard would think. He
liked beautiful girls. You know he has been governor?"
Ethie nodded, and Mrs. Van Buren continued: "You lost a great deal,
Ethelyn, when you went away; and I must say that, though, of course, you
had great provocation, you did a very foolish thing leaving your husband
as you did, and involving us all, to a certain extent, in disgrace."
It was the first direct intimation Ethie had received that her family
had suffered from mortification on her account. She had felt that they
must, and knew that she deserved some censure; but as kind Aunt Barbara
had withheld it, she was not quite willing to hear it from Mrs. Van
Buren, and for an instant her eyes flashed, and a hot reply trembled on
her lips; but she restrained herself and merely said: "I am sorry if I
disgraced you, Aunt Sophia. I was very unhappy at the time,"
"Certainly; I understand that, but the world does not; and if it did, it
forgot all when your husband became governor. He was greatly honored and
esteemed, I hear from a friend who spent a few weeks at Des Moines, and
everybody was so sorry for him."
"Did they talk of me?" Ethie asked, repenting the next minute that she
had been at all curious in the matter.
Mrs. Van Buren, bent upon annoying her, replied, "Some, yes; and knowing
the governor as they did, it is natural they should blame you more than
him. There was a rumor of his getting a divorce, but my friends did not
believe it and neither do I, though divorces are easy to get out West.
Have you written to him? Are you not 'most afraid he will think you came
back because he has been governor?"
"Aunt Sophia!" and Ethie looked very much like her former self, as she
started from her pillow and confronted her interlocutor. "He cannot
think so. I never knew he had been governor until I heard it from Aunt
Barbara last night. I came back for no honors, no object. My work was
taken from me; I had nothing more to do, and I was so tired, and sick,
and weary, and longed so much for home. Don't begrudge it to me, Aunt
Sophia, that I came to see Aunt Barbara once more. I won't stay long in
anybody's way; and if--if he likes, Richard--can--get--that--divorce--as
soon as he pleases."
The last came gaspingly, and showed the real state of Ethie's feelings.
In all the five long years of her absence the possibility that Richard
would seek to separate himself from her had never crossed her mind. She
had looked upon his love for her as something too strong to be
shaken--as the great rock in whose shadow she could rest whenever she
so desired. At first, when the tide of angry passion was raging at her
heart, she had said she never should desire it, that her strength was
sufficient to stand alone against the world; but as the weary weeks and
months crept on, and her anger had had time to cool, and she had learned
better to know the meaning of "standing alone in the world," and
thoughts of Richard's many acts of love and kindness kept recurring to
her mind, she had come gradually to see that the one object in the
future to which she was looking forward was a return to Aunt Barbara and
a possible reconciliation with her husband. The first she had achieved,
and the second seemed so close within her grasp, a thing so easy of
success, that in her secret heart she had exulted that, after all, she
was not to be more sorely punished than she had been--that she could not
have been so very much in fault, or Providence would have placed greater
obstacles in the way of restoration to all that now seemed desirable.
But Ethie's path back to peace and quiet was not to be free from thorns,
and for a few minutes she writhed in pain, as she thought how possible,
and even probable, it was that Richard should seek to be free from one
who had troubled him so much. Life looked very dreary to Ethelyn that
moment--drearier than it ever had before--but she was far too proud to
betray her real feelings to her aunt, who, touched by the look of
anguish on her niece's face, began to change her tactics, and say how
glad she was to have her darling back under any circumstances, and so
she presumed Richard would be. She knew he would, in fact; and if she
were Ethie, she should write to him at once, apprising him of her
return, but not making too many concessions.--Men could not bear them,
and it was better always to hold a stiff rein, or there was danger of a
collision. She might as well have talked to the winds, for all that
Ethie heard or cared. She was thinking of Richard, and the possibility
that she might not be welcome to him now. If so, nothing could tempt her
to intrude herself upon him. At all events, she would not make the first
advances. She would let Richard find out that she was there through some
other source than Aunt Barbara, who should not now write the letter. It
would look too much like begging him to take her back. This was Ethie's
decision, from which she could not be moved; and when, next day, Mrs.
Van Buren went back to Boston with the check for $1,000 which Aunt
Barbara had given her, she was pledged not to communicate with Richard
Markham in any way, while Aunt Barbara was held to the same promise.
"He will find it out somehow. I prefer that he should act unbiased by
anything we can do," Ethelyn said to Aunt Barbara. "He might feel
obliged to come if you wrote to him that I was here, and if he came, the
sight of me so changed might shock him as it did Aunt Van Buren. She
verily thought me a fright," and Ethie tried to smile as she recalled
her Aunt Sophia's evident surprise at her looks.
The change troubled Ethie more than she cared to confess. Nor did the
villagers' remarks, when they came in to see her, tend to soothe her
ruffled feelings. Pale, and thin, and languid, she moved about the house
and yard like a mere shadow of her former self, having, or seeming to
have, no object in life, and worrying Aunt Barbara so greatly that the
good woman began at last seriously to inquire what was best to do.
Suddenly, like an inspiration, there came to her a thought of Clifton,
the famous water-cure in Western New York, where health, both of body
and soul, had been found by so many thousands. And Ethie caught eagerly
at the proposition, accepting it on one condition--she would not go
there as Mrs. Markham, where the name might be recognized. She had been
Miss Bigelow abroad, she would be Miss Bigelow again; and so Aunt
Barbara yielded, mentally asking pardon for the deception to which she
felt she was a party, and when, two weeks after, the clerk at Clifton
water-cure looked over his list to see what rooms were engaged, and to
whom, he found "Miss Adelaide Bigelow, of Massachusetts," put down for
No. 101, while "Governor Markham of Iowa," was down for No. 102.