To make you acquainted by sight with young Chloris: she was a tall
girl, a trifle meagre in outline, but not disagreeably so; she had
light reddish-brown hair, and a sprinkling of freckles on a peachy
skin, and those eyes with dead-leaf spots in them; altogether an air
of openness and intelligent goodness that had quickly thrown the newly
introduced off the question--was she pretty? But she was pretty, too,
at her hours.
On this day she had shut out the sun by means of the green Venetian
blinds, and her room, like a submerged crystal chamber, was full of a
watery light; she herself, white clothed, made a fair green-shadowy
nymph in the dim green atmosphere.
This was her first hour of complete conscious content. So rich was she
in content that she had set herself to perusing a volume of the driest
essays, a present for a diligent girl graduate.
This sense of life unfolding like a normal flower and becoming the
perfection of a rose was too much for the grateful heart to contemplate
at its ease; some great demonstration towards God must follow on
such contemplation. And Chloris in her security putting it off until
bedtime, sat reading about the discipline of the will, the happy blood
all the while keeping up in her veins a pleasant undercurrent babbling
of other matters. Two hours more and the summer sun would be reaching
its glorious haven, the cool flow in with the darkness, and time take
up again that sweet scanning of the lines of her idyl....
After reading the same passage some seven times, Chloris let her book
lie a moment in her lap. How marvellous, how simple, how natural,
how exquisite! Truly like the coming up of a flower. First, they
were children together, fair-dealing, unquarrelsome playmates;
then, schoolboy and schoolgirl, always good unsentimental friends;
and finally, time, passing over them, slowly turned them to lovers;
for this, no question, was whither they were tending: quiet,
undemonstrative, unjealous, faithful, devoted lovers, presently married
people, and by and by, God pleasing, tenants of one same grave. And
this sweetness in the heart, this best of all earthly goods, God
granted it to the humblest of his creatures! Why, then, were so many
dissatisfied with this dear earth? Why were some on it interested in
the discipline of the will? Ah, this summer, so endearingly begun, to
be ended so--and Chloris, in a confusion of bliss, almost as if to give
herself a countenance towards herself, took up her book again, finding
moonlight and wild azaleas and whippoorwills between the lines, a
dappled, singing shingle, a golden beach, velvet winds from over sea.
The sunshine crept off the window-square; a sadness instantly invaded
the room; Chloris jumped up to open the blinds. Time to dress! Then
she did her hair as painstakingly as ably, put on a just-ironed white
gown with a violet figure, and stood at the glass weighing the question
of a velvet band around the neck. A fateful sound already was dawning
on the distance outside, but she did not as yet hear it. Too hot! She
tossed the velvet ribbon in the top bureau-drawer so unconcernedly
as if not, at that moment, the Parcæ had been tangling the skein of
her life, and wondered idly if any one describing her would call her
pretty. She thought, in conscience, not; but of a charming appearance,
she hoped any one would.
At this point penetrated to her brain a sound of voices out on the road
beyond the lawn and the hedge. She looked between the curtains.
Two ladies, unknown to her, were slowly sauntering past in the
direction of the beach; one, near middle age, in a darkish gown; the
other, young, in light colors of a distinctly fashionable tone; this
latter carried over her shoulder a very large, fluffy, and, as it
showed even at this distance, inexpressibly costly parasol. She turned
her face a moment on the ancient vine-overclambered country-house, from
one window of which peeped Chloris, looked it up and down and across,
and turned away, making, Chloris supposed, some comment upon it to her
companion.
When they had disappeared from sight, Chloris, still at the window,
musing on that face seen a moment, heard a leisurely jingling, and saw
pass at a walking pace an empty shining carriage, drawn by two superb
bays, driven by a man in livery.
"It must be their turn-out," she concluded her wondering. "Who can they
be but the people that were to move into the Beauregard cottage?"
Then, as there was time to spare before tea, she sat down in the
window. Shortly, was a lively jingling, a trampling, and the shining
carriage bowled swiftly by on its way back from the beach; on its
cushions, two ladies under a broad lacy parasol; a mighty cloud of dust
running after it, never to over-take.
Almost at the same moment Chloris saw Him, half the subject of her
idyl, coming across the lawn.
She went to meet him.
"Who are the arrivals?" she asked at once.
And here was pronounced, for the first time before Chloris, the name of
Cytherea.
"Cytherea, Damon? Who is Cytherea? Where does she come from? Do you
know her?"
"Very slightly," answered the young man; "I have met her in town. She
had told me she thought of coming here for the summer, but I supposed
it was conversation. I had completely forgotten, until I saw her this
afternoon. She is entranced with everything! You can never see our poky
little old place in its true light: you must get a description of it
from her, Chloris. She will find it deadly dull before the end of a
week; but for the moment she imagines quiet to be all she wants. She
has been working like a slave at doing the proper thing in town."
"She has brought her style with her, I see."
"They are inseparable. She arrived yesterday on the late train, and you
should see the change already in the Beauregard."
"You have been there, then?"
"Just a moment. They called to me from the veranda. They were having
tea. Fancy their bringing down a grand-piano!"
"Does she play much?"
"I don't know. Very probably. She looks as if she might."
"Oh, no, Damon! There you mistake. She looks as if she mightn't. She is
very pretty, but I will vouch for it she can't play--"
"Perhaps the cousin is the pianist. We shall see. I said you would call
on them this evening."
"I, Damon? The instant they arrive? Why did you say that? Why should I
call before they have had time to breathe?"
"Do you mind? I am so sorry. They asked me to come, and I half
promised. It is likely to be somewhat slow for them here if we stand on
ceremony. You will like them, I am sure."
"You are sure? No doubt I shall. But to-night seems
rather--instantaneous, if you don't mind. You will excuse me to them,
and I will wait till they get a little more settled."
"Settled! They have brought down an army of servants. The house looks
as if they had lived in it for a month."
"Make what excuse for me you please, then."
"You won't come, Chloris?"
"I think not. Not this evening. Go by yourself, and tell me all the
great changes to-morrow. She will be much better pleased to see you
than me, anyway."
"Why do you say that?"
"Her face, my dear boy! She can't play the piano, to speak of, and she
greatly prefers men to women."
"Perhaps you do her an injustice--"
"Have I said anything disparaging? I signalled two virtues, I think.
You don't really mind my not going, Damon? I had intended to write
letters this evening, and mend table-cloths and read to father."
When, shortly after tea, Damon had gone, Chloris tried to return
herself into a truthful person by reading an hour to her father,
and adding a dozen stitches to a delicate darn, and writing a note,
which, when finished, she tore up. In order, as far as possible, with
her conscience, she seated herself at the piano, a poor, tin-voiced
instrument, tired of the sea-air. No one so well as Chloris, accustomed
to its senile vagaries, could make the worn thing discourse music; her
greatest successes on it were old-time compositions written in the day
of spinet and harpsichord, minuets with a sprinkling of grace-notes,
things not sonorous or profound. To-night, playing for no one's praise,
she plunged haphazard into the melodies most sympathetic at the
moment, stormy and subtle, melancholy and intricate and modern. It was
Chloris's one proud gift, this effectiveness at the piano.
Her father and his elderly sisters took themselves off to bed on the
stroke of ten. Chloris remained on the adjustable stool, relieved at
their going. She took up her playing again, without trying now to keep
her eyes dry.
The sweet, hot air of the day, cooling, was turned to dew outside;
something of the same kind seemed taking place within herself--and
the dew was tears. Why had she been so curiously uplifted that day,
so at rest concerning every point in life, so sure of one thing at
least? Nothing was changed, yet she saw no reason now for blessing
this summer, golden hour for hour, and looking to it for the greatest,
serenest happiness. Damon? What was Damon to her, or she to Damon? He
had never in so many words made love to her, and she had never felt
the first pang of wonder or disappointment at this. They had walked,
rowed, ridden together. What of it? They should do these things again
a hundred times, probably. What of that? What had she been dreaming,
erewhile? Or was this the dream, this bad one? Something splendid and
shining and purple had gone gray.
While continuing mechanically to play, she looked through the open
window into the summer night. It was rightfully her moon, that honeyed
bright moon outside; her balm-breathing night; it was her silver sea
yonder out of sight; they were her odorous pine-needle paths in the
sighing grove--and she was robbed of them. And the sense of it gave
her a seething in the heart, the like of which sensation she had never
dreamed existed: as if a painful separation of all the atoms in it one
from the other, as well as the stern conviction of being--oh, the novel
idea!--a fool.
"I won't have it!" she muttered, emphatically, without knowing
definitely what she meant, and struck an angry discord.
Through her playing reached her suddenly that merry harness-jingle of
the afternoon, approaching, passing, fading away.
"There they go--to the beach for the second time to-day--to look at the
ocean by light of the moon."
When in little less than an hour she heard the breaking again, on the
quiet air, of the fatuous silvery jingle, she let her playing fall to a
mere musical murmur, and listened, acutely, burning all the while with
shame.
"Go slowly, Humphrey," she caught, in a rich, sweet voice; "I want to
listen to the music."
"She plays really wonderfully. I have never heard playing I preferred
to hers," came in a well-known deeper voice, at which Chloris's cheeks
waxed hotter still. She pressed her foot on the pedal and shut herself
within a wall of dinning, buzzing sound.
When she had lifted it, and risen, the road was empty, the night
silent, but for the crickets and the distant surf, as the grave.
* * * * *
Several days passed, each bringing Chloris its very natural request
from Damon that she would go with him to pay her respects to the new
neighbors; but with a perversity that surprised herself more livelily
than him, she daily found a bad reason for putting off the duty. This
hindered the progress of the idyl; for Damon had a delicate conscience
where these strangers were concerned; he would not see them bored in a
latitude whose honor, as an earlier inhabitant, he appeared to have at
heart.
And presently the atmosphere of the whole country-side seemed qualified
by the presence of this Cytherea. It seemed to Chloris one could not
escape the effect of her, without taking to the deepest of the woods.
She was like an unstopped jar of some powerful essence; the little
country world was redolent of her.
Before the time Chloris had at last rigidly fixed for a formal visit
came a message from Cytherea inviting her. Hard as she sought to
discover a reason for misliking the dainty note, she could find none;
it was irreproachable, and Chloris dressed herself for the occasion
with a divided mind, the preponderant part of which was finally
comfort: she should at least grapple now with a reality.
She came to Cytherea's house at evening under Damon's escort. As one
approached it among the trees it looked rather more like one's idea of
an Eastern temple than a sea-coast cottage. The veranda was behung
with colored paper moons, glowing subduedly among the vines; soft light
streamed through lace from the changed interior.
Excitement took Chloris from herself. Now the great adversary was
welcoming her; and Chloris, at the touch of a warm, soft hand, said
to herself, "What bugbear have I been frightening myself with?" and
found ease and ability to converse, and release from that sense of
disadvantage that had ridden her helpless heart like a nightmare.
This atmosphere of the great world that went with Cytherea, how
awakening, how satisfying after all, to the mind! Not the smallness
of envy, thought Chloris, should keep her from giving it its due, or
getting her benefit from it. In the distance and abstract she had hated
it; but entered into, seen close, how unconscious, how inoffensive,
nay, genial, it proved! What a great good, too, this wealth that
permitted such distinction in luxury! Country girl as she was, it
seemed to Chloris she was breathing her native air.
At Cytherea's prayer she sat down at the piano, and to her own surprise
played better than usual. When she had done, she begged the hostess to
play. She forgot how she had declared that Cytherea's face showed no
soul for music.
She was surprised to hear the lady say, "I play hardly at all." She
sincerely now could not believe it.
"Ah, well!" laughed Cytherea; and good-naturedly she pushed a chair to
the piano, and appeared preparing to begin.
Chloris looked on in some wonder. Cytherea seated herself half away
from the keyboard, one nonchalant arm over the back of her chair,
her curly forehead on her hand; and, the first to smile at her own
affectation, played an elaborate waltz, very languidly, with her left
hand.
Impossible for the eyes to leave her a moment while she performed
her pretty trick; and ably enough she performed it, with an adorable
cream-white hand.
Chloris seemed to be slowly returning to consciousness. What perfection
was here! Nature had given this creature everything. Criticism of her
could only pass current under the stamp of envy. That gracious dark
beauty, that warm radiance! And sparkle, and charm--with winningness,
dignity, rarity, variousness!
Chloris looked over at Damon; and the image of his fascinated face, as,
a fond forgotten smile on his lips, he followed with his dark dog-eyes
each movement of Cytherea's, affected her as a drop of poison let into
her blood. She seemed to herself growing aged and haggard, even as she
sat there, the dancing measure beating on her ear. Her hands lay cold
in the lap of her best gown--modest made-over gown of pale purplish
silk that she wore with a lace bertha of past fashion, once her poor
mother's. "What is the use of trying to contend with a thing like
that?" her heart asked, dully.
An acuter pain pierced it when, the waltz played out, the laugh
following it laughed out, and conversation resumed, she realized the
faintest possible shade of disregard in Cytherea for the observations
made by Damon. Cytherea prized her, Chloris's, utterances distinctly
more; her, she seemed, from all her manner, to be honoring; him, for
some reason, she held a trifle cheap. This seemed to Chloris just a
little more unendurable than all the rest. And the dear boy, who,
totally ignorant of the effect he produced, was in such high spirits,
was so anxious to please, so cheerfully making a mantle in the mud of
himself for the beauty to tread upon.
At last it was over; Chloris lay in her own bed in the pale summer
darkness, and felt she was the heart of the created world, and this
pain man's old inheritance; it seemed the very essence of her being
which was distilled slowly from her eyes.
* * * * *
On the day following, Chloris punctually sought Cytherea, for
appreciation must be shown the cordiality of the beauty. That was a
question apart from others: one is just and polite before anything
else. A person overhearing the chatting and laughing of that afternoon
in Cytherea's room would have thought certainly he listened to a pair
of heart friends. The greater expense of admiration between the two
women seemed of a truth to be borne by Cytherea. Chloris must look
herself mentally over in astonishment at this value set on her by so
great a judge. After the examination she felt foolish and humble. She
felt profoundly how, all being different, she too could have worshipped
Cytherea.
And now she must be concerned in every sort of rural festivity
organized by Damon for Cytherea's amusement; she must see the rival's
first effect of being mildly bored by Damon's whole-souled dedication
turn into an effect of indulgence, daily tinged with increased liking;
for who in nature could fail to do final justice to one so simple, so
sincere as Damon--Damon, with his dear, clear, curiously gentle Roman
face and curly hair?
"The heat does not seem to agree with you this summer, child," one of
the aunts concluded her kindly meant scrutiny of Chloris's face; and
the girl's heart tightened with affright.
She stood that day before the glass, and, leaning her elbows on the
bureau, seriously examined the tinted shadow. "All is of no use,"
she said. "The more I care, the more I must look like that. Does it
not seem a little strange that the more one loves the less lovely
one should become? And a little hard, too, perhaps, oh, you, my God,
with all respect, who have arranged these little matters?" And tired,
discouraged Chloris began weakly to laugh aloud, though she was alone;
and watched the grimacing of her own reflection with a sort of brutal
contemptuousness. "Oh, you sickening object!" she exclaimed, and hid
the delicate, nervous, tell-tale face in her hands. "This cannot go
on!" she raved. "Human flesh cannot endure it--and I cannot alter it.
All must soon see how it is with me. I can barely keep a hold on my
temper now. I must get away. Damon shall court her; she shall bloom
and smile at her ease for him. Welcome to each other--both! I shall be
where I cannot see it. I refused to visit Fidele in her mountain home.
I had a use already--God help me!--for every hour of the summer. I
will write to say I repent. Then Damon, Cytherea, sing duets out in
the canoe by moonlight; find clover-leaves for each other. I shall be
scouring the mountain in search of healing herbs, and I do not doubt
but, God helping, I shall find them. It is not in nature that a torture
like this should last!"
And Chloris, when next she appeared before the public eye, looked
almost triumphant. And when her leave had been taken of all, and the
swift air of change was blowing against her brow, her heart felt so
strangely sound and quiet that she almost laughed, asking herself, "Why
am I going away? I am recovered merely at the notion of it. Had I but
known, I could have remained like a little heroine, and stood it out."
But the hours passing broke down and carried off more and more all
the gallant props of pride and resolution, and at last Chloris sat
in the galloping car, a drooping runaway, who looked steadily out of
the window, and saw the flying scene through tears. Contemptible,
countrified Chloris, with her freckles and inferior clothes, and so
ordinary notions of conduct and taste, running away from comparison
with the peerless Cytherea; taking her envy and weakness out of sight
till she got strength to disguise them.
Now the scenery, which she had not been seeing, became more lonely and
wild; the first low hills, heavy and slow in the general nimbleness of
things, shifted themselves with an amiable clumsiness till they had
closed in Chloris with her train; waking her suddenly, with a faintly
happy sense of diversion from immediate suffering, to the feeling
of being a child again visiting strange countries. Then wheeled and
tumbled themselves about and came to meet her the little hills' big
brothers, the mountains, with velvety sides, and rocky, rosy summits.
A weight for no reason seemed to melt away from Chloris's chest as
she looked up at them, and thought of living among them now for many
a day--the distinguished, sage, cool, sturdily benevolent ones, so
high above, so far from, the world she knew, down on the hot-colored,
populous plain.
Here she was at last, where she must alight; in a high, pure,
crystal-clear atmosphere, at a little lost place, wildly green to eyes
used to the sun-burned shore, forgotten of all the world but this train
that remembered it for a second twice a day.
And here was Fidele! It seemed to Chloris she had not half known, until
this moment, how fond she was of Fidele. Tears sprang to her eyes on
meeting the familiar eyes, and she embraced her old school friend with
an impulse of overflowing gratitude. She felt like a storm-beaten lamb
come to some sort of shelter at last.
After the first moment's frantic clutch the two friends stood apart,
holding hands, and looking each other fondly and frankly over, with
wide, moved smiles. Fidele, seeing Chloris's eyes, wondered why tears
had not come to her, too; and compared her own nature unfavorably
with her friend's rich nature; and at this thought of her friend's
deep, sweet nature, behold! tears were come in her affectionate eyes,
too. Then both girls fell to giggling like schoolgirls, from mere
association of this meeting with other meetings; and in a moment were
talking lightly and inconsecutively, in an involuntary imitation of
old days; and Fidele had taken her friend's arm tightly under her own,
intertwined their fingers, and was dragging her along at a hop-and-skip
pace.
"What a godsend you are to me!" she exclaimed, rapturously. "There
is not a soul in this forsaken place to whom one can talk like a
Christian. Oh, but we are slow! Oh, but we are primitive! Oh, but we
are simple!--"
"What air it is!" Chloris breathed, profoundly. "How sweet! I never
dreamed such green!--My dear, this is Paradise!"
"The air is good enough. The grass is certainly green. But oh, the
people are green too! But now you are here, we will change all this,
dear. What a holiday! You will inspire us. We will rise up, and look
into our closets, and fetch out wherewith to make a good impression
on the stranger. You bring the very air of civilization with you in
your clothes and hair. Where did you get it, Chlo--the general air, you
know? How ravishingly you do your hair! And that little hat! Now, who
in the world but you would have a hat like that? Oh, you rare darling!
Do you know you are greatly improved? You are thinner, but it suits
you. You always were a beauty, you know. Yes, you were! But you have
acquired so much besides--such an interesting air--yes, you have!--so
much expression. No one could see you without--gospel truth, Chlo! But,
yes--I will--I will hold my tongue. Did you bring your music at least,
for there is a piano, such as it is. Thank Heaven! You shall make their
capture with song. They shall grovel. You know, dear, I am not really
so silly as I seem; your arriving has turned my head. I always did
adore you, but it is even better than I remembered."
Chloris that night, alone at last, tried to readjust herself, to get
back through this new experience her self of yesterday. The morning
of her starting from home, but sixteen hours removed, seemed withdrawn
into a much remoter past; a screen of glittering, crumbling, changing
color was arisen between herself and it. She interrogated her breast
curiously for that pain lately grown so familiar, forgotten for the
first time only in these last hours; her breast did not answer by at
once producing it. She goaded it tentatively with a sharp memory or
two; it responded sluggishly--a divinely restful torpor was possessing
it. She knelt by the window, and looked out at the still, strong, black
mountains; instinctively she wafted profound thanks to their rude
majesties. Far, far away in her dream at this moment, in an infinitely
small, sun-warmed, murmuring plain, moved two tiny figures: the great
Damon, who erewhile filled the entire horizon of her life, and the
great Cytherea, who interposed her fair shape between her and the sun,
shutting off the light of life--two tiny black figures, in a far-off,
sunshiny place it fatigued her to think of. Only the mountains were
big and important; and this cool, rough bedchamber was fifteen by
twelve; only Fidele and herself and the people seen for the first time
this evening were life-size and real.
Stretching her tired limbs in the bed, that had nothing to-night in
common with the rack, feeling natural sleep creep over her as it had
long not done, she remembered with a vague joy that she was young; she
divined a time ahead--perhaps not so far ahead either--when life would
become possible again.
She felt as if cosily tucked in and kept warm by the sense of Fidele's
affectionate appreciation, and the evident admiration of her friends,
called in even on this first evening to greet her. It was good. It
restored one's lost self-confidence.
The last thought Chloris was conscious of was not for Damon this
once, but Demetrius. (Demetrius, I said. The reader here revolts.
Chloris, Cytherea, a Chloe apparently still to come, and Fidele, Damon,
Demetrius! Are these names to pass off on the discriminating reader in
a tale that has nothing to do with the times of Theocritus or Addison?
I confess it, I would have deceived. The persons in this story knew
themselves by none of the names I have set down. They had been given
at the font, and had by chance and inheritance come into, names that
represented them far less well. Who can assume to fitly name a babe in
arms? With a pure purpose I rechristened them. If you could know what,
for instance, was the real name of Cytherea--But enough.)
On the next morning arises Chloris, constating with thankfulness that
no more than the night before is her heart bleeding at every pore.
Filled with a venerable feminine desire to still increase the favorable
impression she is sure she has made on the inhabitants of this high
hamlet, she does her hair more than ever engagingly, puts on her
crispest white gown with the lavender ribbons, and her broad straw hat
with roses--the hat Damon had praised in the early part of the season.
Something stirs in her sleeping bosom at the remembrance; she pauses
in her task of pinning it on; the green-gray eyes with the brown spots
grow fixed upon a vision, small as if seen through the wrong end of
the opera-glass: On a shining shore, two little figures setting out
in a sail-boat--only two, for the cousin has pleaded the disagreeable
effect on her of the motion of the sea. Chloris sits down discouraged,
feeling the blood drop from her face, and her heart present her with
as finished a pain as ever. "It really matters so very little," she
murmurs, firmly restraining from wringing her hands; "I only--only
should like to know how long this kind of thing may be supposed to
last!"
Chloris and Fidele loiter about the garden full of morning sunshine,
snipping off wet sweet-peas and roses, and reminding each other of
things. Then, to please Chloris, they go for a stroll. Chloris is eager
for a little climb. Heated and pleasantly tired, they come to the top
of an eminence and sit down under the only clump of trees, in company
of the unbudging horned cows, who know their claim is good, for they
got there first. Fidele, leaning against a tree-trunk, fans herself
more and more fitfully with her hat, and presently slumbers. Chloris,
with her head in Fidele's lap, can never weary of looking off over the
faint-hued valley which the shadows of clouds softly overstray. In this
delicious bodily relaxation after hill-climbing in the sun, strange
peace inundates her soul, and she entertains a superstition that it is
flowing out to her from the mountains, and lies luxuriously, letting
herself be done good to. "They know the secret of peace," she muses
in her manner of a girl. "They cannot speak, but the effect of their
knowledge radiates from them, and reaches us. The end of all--of all is
peace. All works towards it incessantly, as one sees nature do towards
harmony. Through these battles, to peace. Why can one not remember it
down on the plain?" Now a cloud obscures the sun that gropes through
it with long golden fingers; Chloris, dreaming, ponders half wistfully
what it would be to remain here always, begin life anew, never return
where one had suffered so much, and was surely so little missed!
On their way home the girls meet Demetrius in his chaise, on his
rounds. He reins in, and leans out of the leathern hood; with arms
alink the girls stand in the white road below, in a great bath of
light. They converse a moment; Chloris's lifted face, with the stamp on
it still of her high thinking on the hill-top, is like a flushed pearl
under her rose-laden hat.
"You must let me show you the country," says Demetrius, before driving
on.
When he is gone, Chloris and Fidele naturally fall to talking of him.
"How is it," says Chloris, "that a man so superior has attained his age
and is merely a doctor in a place like this?"
"My dear, we have our ailments like the rest. You don't grudge us a
good doctor? He was born here, and after a good number of years down
in the haunts of men came back in a natural sort of way. His father
left him property up here. He is not ambitious; he has an abundance of
money. He practises more or less for the love of it, and something to
do. He is our most presentable man, and I want you to appreciate our
good points in him. He adores music; the piano I spoke of is his. He
has invited us up there; as soon as you feel inclined we will go."
When, in a few days, Chloris consented to go, one-half the curious
population went with her, to hear her play.
The stiff farm-house parlor, closed nine-tenths of the year, had
been made to breathe out its musty ice-house atmosphere; lighted and
garnished and filled with guests, it scarcely recognized itself.
Demetrius leaned on the instrument while Chloris played, his untrimmed
head dreamily drooping, his eyes half closed, like a lazy cat's in
the sunshine, when a hand is stroking it the right way. When she had
finished, and all lifted their hands and praised and questioned her,
he turned away with a sigh, saying nothing; and yet both knew that the
truest music-lover of all was he; and when she played again it was
chiefly with the thought of him as an audience.
"What an air of intelligence your hands have when you play," he said,
later. "But it is the same when you are crocheting, or just drumming on
the chair-arm. They look as if they could talk, and utter such wise and
witty things."
A very friendly understanding was almost at once established between
them; after which, he being such a sensible, direct, humorous man, well
on towards middle age, and Fidele urging it, it seemed but proper to
accept the offered seat in his chaise and see the country to the best
advantage.
They travelled many leagues behind his mare; they reached many points
of vantage from which to look off at the view. Their conversation was
half laughter; yet Chloris felt a serene security in the awe she knew
she inspired.
In the country doctor's company, such was his effect on her and hers
on him, Chloris felt always sweetly young, and unusually well-dressed,
unusually beautiful and brilliant--as well as experienced in the ways
of the world, and possessed of a strong and complicated character.
With all this, something of an impostor.
After many rides, many conversations, the light about Demetrius was
insensibly changed, and offered him under a different aspect. What
genuine kindliness in his rather heavy yet well-featured face! what a
good, sane, comprehensive intelligence under his shaggy hair! and under
his country-made waistcoat a heart suspected to be tender and faithful!
If he had done little, risen little, circumstances were more to blame
than will; and it pierced through his mockery of himself sometimes that
he was not all satisfied now with his condition; ambition that had
slumbered gave signs of waking. And he was still young enough to mould
his fate to a different shape.
Chloris, regarding him, as she told herself, merely in the light of a
specimen in which to study human nature, concluded that the woman who
intrusted her happiness to Demetrius, at least in the event of her
being a superior creature, would be in the main a very fortunate one.
Nothing to fear in this man from inconstancy; no account to make with
the inflammable imagination of youth; the gracious, condescending woman
would get unbounded gratitude from his humility for every little favor
shown. Her life would be so peaceful, so guarded from all trouble that
care can keep at bay, so surrounded with delicate consideration.
So the herds-grass purpled and was mown; the mustard yellowed, and its
yellow vanished; and the apple began to redden. Then Demetrius, with a
little help from everybody, gave a party--a party the like of which had
not been given in the sleepy place since his sister's marriage a dozen
years before; but this Chloris from afar, as Fidele had foretold, was
inspiring the natives.
And undoubtedly she was the queen of the party. To see her was to know
as much. She wore a grand gown of pale purplish silk, with a real lace
bertha (the talk of the place for nine days after), and white flowers
pricked into the shiny structure of her hair.
There was hired music, and dancing on the waxed kitchen-floor, and an
opportunity never surpassed in the annals of the neighborhood to get
enough of good things to eat.
Towards the end, when one-half the simple revellers were gone, and the
musicians were silenced with feeding, and the night air breathed in at
the open windows with a feel of great lateness in it, came a petition
to Chloris to play a piece on the piano.
After various laughing negatives, yielding, Chloris, whose eyes
were lightsome and dancing to-night, pushed away the stool, and,
substituting for it a chair, sat a little sideways in this, with one
arm over the back; and, a curious little smile playing on her lips,
propped her ruffled head with its wilted flowers on her right hand;
and, while the country innocents exchanged wondering glances, with her
nimble left hand, amply sufficient to the task alone, began playing a
waltz--a sweet, dreamy waltz.
When they were at last home, and Fidele, half undressed, had come in
to chat a moment with her friend, she asked, "Did you enjoy yourself,
dearie?"
"Immensely!" said Chloris. "How nice they all are to me! What dear,
kind things they are! By the way, though, there was something I wanted
to ask. Who is that dark-haired, plump young woman, with black bugle
eyes, and a skin like red-and-white paper--quite passable-looking, if
she did not look so sulky?"
"What did she wear?"
"Something pretentious but unbecoming. It had a lot of bead-trimming.
Now, speaking of how nice every one and everything was, I except that
girl's manner. _She_ was positively rude. I did not know how to take
it. I have met her before, with all the others, and passed her on the
road, bowing my best; but we have never more than exchanged a word or
two, so I can have done nothing to offend her."
Fidele was laughing.
"Who is she?" asked Chloris.
"That is Chloe," replied Fidele.
"Chloe?"
"You mustn't mind her rudeness, dearie. She is really a good sort of
creature. But she is no doubt sorely tried."
"What tries her? Why do you laugh?"
"Demetrius! He was a shade partial to her before you came--not enough
to cause comment in any place but this. And, even here, not enough to
lay himself open to blame. It is a pity, though, that she can't keep
her feelings hidden, and must vent her spite on you. Silly thing! I
have no patience with that kind of girl."
Chloris's fingers became absent among the hair they were braiding. She
looked into the lamp-flame with a vacant expression.
Fidele plied the brush in her tangled locks, and went on chatting.
Suddenly Chloris, who for some time had not spoken, laughed.
"What is it, dear?" asked Fidele, looking up at her friend, where she
stood still staring in the lamp-flame. "Have I said anything funny?"
"No, it was nothing you said. I was thinking--my mind travelled from
one thing to another--you know how it jumps about--and I had to laugh,
before I knew, at a stupid old circumstance--"
"What circumstance?"
"Oh, nothing, dear--a thing we learned in school, in French, a
fable--never mind!"
"A fable! My dear Chloris, how interesting! What fable?"
"I can't quote it. I have forgotten my French. It was about a hare--a
hare who ran away in terror of a bull, and in his flight came to a
swamp where the frogs were just as much afraid of him. Wouldn't it be
interesting to know the rest? What the hare did, whether he put on his
fiercest outside, and tried to make the frogs quake in their little wet
boots?"
"What nonsense, you dear idiot! Ask Demetrius! He will give his
best consideration to the frog question, and be impressed with its
profoundness, while Chloe wears bead trimming and grows sage-color.
Good-night, dear. I am dreadfully sleepy."
"I mean you shall take me to call on Chloe some day soon. Now that I
see her face with a different idea of her, it is a nice face! Poor
child! I could never settle down contentedly under the notion that
some one disliked me; could you? Even a dog! I have had such a happy,
peaceful time here, in this dear little place, I want every one to feel
kindly towards me when I leave."
"You speak as if I were going to let you go, Chloris."
"Oh, my dearest, I don't want to talk of it. I have put off talking of
it, day after day, yet you must know that I can only stay a very little
longer. Think of it! I came for a month, and I have stayed--how long is
it? And father must be getting lonesome; and he so seldom writes, and
then tells me little or nothing. And everything must be needing me--"
"You extraordinary girl!" exclaimed Fidele, now very wide awake; "I
swear I absolutely do not understand you! What do you mean? First you
seem--you seem--and then--and then suddenly--"
Fidele could not get out her words, for Chloris's hand was across her
lips.
"Hush!" she pleaded, quite earnestly. "Say nothing about it! When a
thing has been spoken it seems to exist! You don't understand--I don't
understand either. Who is consistent? Who knows what he wants? Who
knows ever what he is doing? How many creatures we crush just walking
across the grass! A path opens ahead, we take it blindly, not knowing
whither it leads. With good reason we say we grope in the dark. Let us
have the grace, then, when a moment's illumination is granted us, to
go by its light. You don't know what I mean; I scarcely know myself.
But don't try to keep me, dear! Remain at my side every minute that
is left of my stay here; see me to the train without the shadow of an
adventure--and I will love you all my life!"
And a few days later the train that had brought Chloris picked her
up again, all flushed with Fidele's last kisses, and flew with her
homeward.
She looked out of the window with other eyes than those she had first
turned upon the mountains. Yet tears were in them, too, as she said,
"Good-bye, dears! Your little sister leaves you, made quite well again.
But never will she cease to love you. You shall be always in her
dreams. And she will come back one day. When God sends her sorrows she
will take refuge again with you."
All through the first hours of being rushed along across the brilliant
fading land, that she looked at, scarcely seeing, she retained a sense
of exaltation. She seemed to herself as a sword after the proofs
of furnace and ice-brook. She could have laughed to think of the
philosopher that was going home in place of the pallid victim of an
almost pathological sensibility.
The mountains were dwindling to little hills; the latter-year sun was
too barely bright: a crude earth-color and a sombre green took place
of the angelic vague green and blue and pink of the dewier, earlier
period. The plain was opening with its more trivial detail. Chloris's
mind descended to its level, and projected itself with a limited
emotion into the circumstances of the approaching home-coming. She felt
prepared to endure whatever awaited her with grace and dignity; she
felt sure, indeed, that she should feel very little. "I have learned
the secret of life," she said to herself; "I have weighed and measured
everything."
At this same moment an elderly gentleman who had a daughter was
thinking how touchingly young and inexperienced his fellow-traveller
looked; in his old heart he felt sorry for her, somehow, for being so
young.
"I have weighed and measured everything," she said. "God is real, God
lasts, and the love of Him. Human passion passes away. One might almost
say that it does not exist. It is like a physical pain: it tortures,
you try to locate it, you fix your mind upon the presumed seat of
it--it is not there, there is no pain; and presently, when you are
well, you cannot call up a remembrance of the sensation. I feel fitted
to write a book on this subject. I thought I could never endure my life
without Damon--dear, dear Damon! Yet I live and am improved in health.
And, blinded by I shall never be able to explain what mist, I was
beginning to adapt my mind to the thought of life with Demetrius, whom
I pictured out of all proportion happy and grateful to me. Why more
grateful than another? Thank God I was delivered from committing such
a blunder! Ah, if I could teach Chloe all that I have learned! But she
does not need it; she gets what she wants, for beyond a doubt Demetrius
in time goes back to her. I--I am armed now at every point. I have a
defence against every circumstance. The secret is: Nothing matters, but
God above. And, knowing this, I mean to be very sweet to all at home,
more thoughtful of every one, more generous of all myself--"
She was running between familiar orchards and fields; the image of
reaching home became very present, and a sweetness pervaded her rising
excitement at the thought of touching so soon the home-hands. The
mountains were thrown back to the horizon of her mind. Between the
sandy hummocks, beyond the level salt meadows which she had left green
and found russet, she caught glimpses of a great sapphire line. She
began looking eagerly for the farm-house that meant she was within
a minute of her journey's end. It flashed past. She gathered up her
things; she came out on the platform, and with a joyous heart looked
for her father's gray face and his hand extended to help her down.
He was not there, and she got off the train alone, half-conscious of a
dog-cart not far, with a horse behaving as a horse should not at the
locomotive. The superbly indifferent iron monster puffed off, dragging
after it its train; the indignant horse quieted down. She heard her
name called; the voice was the man's in the dog-cart, it was Damon's.
The philosopher hurried towards him with an insanely beating heart, an
uplifted, greeting, beaming face.
He helped her in, and his trickle of answers met her stream of
questions, and her stream of answers his trickle of questions, as they
jogged, tilting along between the dusty roadsides. The warm flood of
her home-coming sensations subsided a little, and she turned to look at
him, to take a fond inventory of his face--dear old faithful friend, so
kind to fetch her himself! Her heart tightened. What was gone wrong
with Damon?--Damon, whom she had been picturing so happy, and was just
rousing her spirit to question casually concerning Cytherea. Even at
that moment they were approaching her dwelling, when the question,
if she could make her voice right, not too indifferent, nor yet too
interested, would seem so in place.
The grass on the lawn was long and uneven, constellated with twinkling
autumn dandelions; the windows were shuttered, the veranda was empty,
the chimney smokeless; a forgotten hammock rope, blackened and twisted
by the rain, swung from a branch in front of the deserted house,
thumping faintly against the tree-trunk. Chloris turned her lengthened
face towards Damon; he lifted to hers a pair of very miserable eyes,
and said, in an unresonant voice, "You should have got back in time for
the cattle-fair. It was better than usual this year. Cookson's little
mare took a prize."
"You don't mean it!" faltered Chloris, and looking straight ahead set
her lips hard, to keep down an impetuous flood of hatred for Cytherea.
She saw the propriety of continuing to talk; but she could not keep her
mind on it. Damon's powers of conversation, too, had failed him. He
kept a stolid face to the horse's head; and they drove in silence to
her door, where, alighting, she was swallowed in a sea of affectionate
fatherly and auntly embraces.
"I may stay to tea, mayn't I?" asked Damon, dully, from his corner,
where he seemed sitting in the cold.
Chloris gave him a place beside herself, and treated him like a sick,
beloved child; but so tactfully, he could know only that it soothed.
She let him lie on the sofa, afterwards, while she played, and the
others slept in the upper chambers.
She played with upturned face, pale and gentle and full of
understanding; her eyebrows lifted, her eyes very large and kind. She
would have thought that Damon slept, but that now and again he sighed.
When at last she stopped to look for something among her music, to go
on with, he got up and came to the piano-side. "I am so glad you have
got back," he said, from all his heart; "you are such a brick. Good
Lord, how I have missed you--"
He turned away and went aimlessly to the window, and stood looking out.
"I suppose it is time I went," he said. "But I hate to go home! I don't
know what is come to me, I can't sleep these nights."
Chloris had gone to the window, too, and stood beside him, her
indulgent young face, that wore a world-old expression, turned on the
dimly glimmering white petunia-beds outside.
"Would you--won't you come out for a little stroll, Chloris? Run for
your shawl, there is a dear girl, and let us go over to the beach. It
isn't really late, and I am so restless, and I don't want to go alone,
and it is so stuffy in my room at home."
Chloris, without a word of demur, took her wrap and followed him. They
walked side by side in silence; the sense they must have in common
of the beauty of the night might at first take lieu of conversation;
when that sense must be outworn, they still thought their thoughts in
silence. Chloris knew the relief it is not to pretend; Damon thought
only of himself in this hour.
It was she, after a while, that led--tall, slender figure a step ahead
of him, walking swiftly, with a sort of intrepidity. With his head a
little bowed, his hands behind him, he followed.
She led him to the beach, and without regard for time or fitness of
things, farther and farther along the smooth sands, away from home;
then, by a long loop, back to the homeward road, as if with the
determination to tire him out. She herself was conscious of no fatigue.
She felt like a spirit; her uplifted eyes seemed so expanded that they
could take in all the radiant firmament.
At last, as if awaking, he stopped and vaguely looked about, saying, "I
am ready to drop! Good Lord, how far have you been taking me? Let us
sit down a moment and rest."
They were not far from home, on the edge of a familiar pine-grove that
ran down to the lapping inland sea. She sank on the dry pine-needles;
he dropped beside her, and, tearing off his cap, unquestioningly laid
his head in her lap.
"Does it ache?" she asked, softly.
"Yes," he murmured. "Rub it."
She passed her hand with a measured motion across his forehead, pushing
up the heavy hair. She felt his face for an instant press closer to her
knees; volumes of gratitude seemed expressed in the impulsive movement.
She continued her stroking with a quiet, sisterly hand, her swelling
heart suddenly choking her. She had him back, that she knew beyond a
doubt. Broken, disillusioned, his heart seared by the image of another,
he was hers, as he lay there thinking of that other. Hers to help, to
heal, to make love her as much as she loved him. And a flood of human
passion, the sensation she had decided--God forgive her!--disposed of
forever, surged in her. Her eyes brimmed over with happy tears. Why
should there be any feeling of bitterness mixed in a feeling so sweet?
Why should the hurt to one's vanity be remembered in such a situation?
Why not be finally glad to give more than one received, offer something
whole for something broken, bless beyond all desert? No--no--that other
could never have loved him so! Fate had meant well by him in putting
her out of reach; this sorrow of his should pass away and be as if it
had never been. Chloris felt in herself such inexhaustible wells of
tenderness and patience, she knew hers was the good title; she knew she
could be sufficient--make Damon forget. Her heart sang a song of praise
and victory, while her hand smoothed his forehead with the fancy that
it brushed away the image of Cytherea, fatal line by line.
Ineffable fatigue drew her down from high serene thoughts to thoughts
nearer earth. She ached; waves of unnatural sensation swept through
her, but she would not move. The weight of his dear head was better
than ease.
While she took patience till he should be ready to rise and go sensibly
home to bed, a whimsical image formed in her brain: Herself, and
to one side of her, a little higher, Cytherea, and to the other, a
little lower, Chloe--and beyond Chloe, in the descending line, some
poor woman, not pretty or winning at all, to whom Chloe must appear
a half-divinity; and above Cytherea, in the ascending line, another
fairer than she, for, when all was said, there must be in this world
women even fairer than the great Cytherea, of whom she, perchance,
lying awake in her queenly bed, would think with anguish, confessing
herself helpless to struggle. Poor Cytherea, then, in her turn! Chloris
framed a sincere wish for her continued happiness, and that in the
event of despised love God should grant her to become a philosopher.
And her imagination went on feebly, whimsically, weaving. Still another
fairer still creature above Cytherea's victress--still another at the
other end, to whom the envier of Chloe should be an object of envy--and
so on, till the chain seemed to extend from the seraphs down to the
last of the most degraded race, and take a slightly humorous aspect.
"It pleases the powers to be merry," thought Chloris, and was conscious
of no irreverence in the conceit.
"Wake up, Chloris!" came Damon's voice, sounding more as it had used to
sound, before he was so grown-up, and had untoward things happen to him
in his sentiments.
"I have not been asleep!" she said, sheepishly, "except below my knees."
"I won't contradict you, but when I struck a light you were nodding and
smiling away to yourself like a little China mandarin. Have you any
idea of the time it is? Well, I won't enlighten you. What a crazy thing
we have been doing! Come, dear, let me help you up. I hope to Heaven
you haven't taken cold. Hello, can't you walk straight? What a brute I
am! Take my arm--"
And laughing weakly and wearily, they set out staggering across the dim
stubble-field that separated them from home.
"Dear old Chloris!" Damon murmured, pressing her arm to his side.
"Best girl in the universe! You can never think what a comfort it is to
have you home again. I feel more like myself. I think that to-night I
shall sleep."
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THE END
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