The first few months of Una's stay in her husband's home passed quietly
and uneventfully. Fortunately for all concerned, Bryant's wife went off
to spend the summer at Long Branch with her mother and sister. In the
generosity of her heart, she took Bryant with her, so the household
that was left was very quiet and peaceable.
The girls took their summer vacation from study, and Maud worked on
her novel, Edith at her picture. In the school-room Mrs. Wilson and
Una diligently climbed the ladder of knowledge through the long summer
mornings. In the afternoons the four ladies took long country rides,
and in the short evenings there were dinner and Eliot. They had music
always to enliven them, and very often neighbors and friends dropped in
and made the time pass agreeably. Often Eliot, who, as a newspaper man,
had tickets to concerts, lectures, readings, and plays, took them out
to pleasant entertainments. He managed, too, to buy Una a little brown
pony to ride, and she had some charming morning canters by the side of
her husband, who made the carriage-horse do service on his own behalf.
Sylvie Van Zandt would have said it was a humdrum life, but Eliot and
Una thoroughly enjoyed it. Nay, to her it seemed an elysium, this
bright home, with its kind, friendly faces and gentle words, so unlike
her life with Mme. Lorraine.
Una had learned to read and write with perfect facility and surprising
ease, and passed on to higher studies. Of French she already had some
knowledge--indeed, as much as she had of English, having spoken either
at will in her New Orleans home--so this language was very easy to
acquire now. For music she developed a talent equal to that of her
husband, and he was delighted to find that she had a sweet, low alto
voice that blended in perfect harmony with his own.
She began to read poetry and novels now, and their strange sweetness
thrilled her very soul. She learned that wonderful word, Love, and some
of its subtler meanings. It grew to be the theme of her thoughts and
dreams, although in the exquisite shyness that offset her child-like
frankness she never even named the word to Eliot.
But, for all that, she began to comprehend its mystic meaning, and to
say to herself, with deep tenderness:
"It is what Eliot feels for me and I for him."
Yet this blind young lover-husband said to himself sometimes,
discontentedly:
"She is very bright over other lessons, but very slow learning the one
I am trying to teach her so patiently every day."
Every day she grew more beautiful and graceful under the clever tuition
of Mrs. Wilson, who delighted in her task of forming the unformed girl.
They spent happy hours over the piano together, patient ones over books
and blackboards.
For several months she never even heard the words "A Little Nobody,"
under which she had chafed so often at Mme. Lorraine's. Life began to
have a new, sweet meaning, whose key-note was love.
She was so sorry when Eliot went away with his friendly hand-clasp in
the morning, so glad when he returned in the evening. Sometimes she
said to herself that she would not have minded kissing him now, as Maud
and Edith did every morning; but, since the day when she promised to
marry him, and then rejected his kiss, he had never offered another.
"I should not care for a cold, duty kiss," he thought. "I will wait for
her love and her kisses together."
In the meantime, he worked very hard at his literary duties, trying
to double the moderate salary he had enjoyed before his marriage,
that his sisters might not feel the change. The pony had been quite an
extravagance, but he had heard her express a timid wish for one, and by
some severe self-denial in the matter of coats and cigars, had managed
to gratify her wish. But he did not chafe against the silent sacrifices
he made for her sake. Each one only made the dark-eyed girl dearer to
his heart, and the memory of that last day in madame's prison always
made him shudder and long to clasp her passionately to his heart.
On his strong white arm there was a slight scar made by the wound of a
pocket-knife. He often looked at it when alone, and said to himself:
"To that little scar my darling owes her life."
But Una, all unconscious of the debt, still sweetly ignorant of his
blindness, went on with her studies, and her music, and her poetry
reading, making him the hero of all in her silent, adoring fashion.
There was one thing that touched and pleased him.
She had not forgotten one of the many songs with which he had beguiled
the dreariness of their imprisonment, and she had insisted on learning
each one. The two that she liked best were "The Warrior Bold" and "Two
Little Lives." Mrs. Wilson and the girls noticed that she had a fashion
of humming over one little verse very often to herself:
"It was a lark that sung in the heaven,
While all the world stood still to hear,
Many a maiden looked from her knitting,
And in her heart there crept a tear.
Down came the lark and sung to the daisy,
Sung to it only songs of love,
Till in the twilight slumbered the daisy,
Turning its sweet face to heaven above."
She never said to her young husband now, as she had said that time
in their prison, "You are the lark and I the little daisy," but she
thought it all the more, and the fanciful thought pleased her well.
Maud and Edith, who had first taken Una's part out of generous loyalty
to their brother, now began to like their sister-in-law more for her
own sake.
At first they said: "It is not so bad as we feared at first. She is
learning very fast, and she is really very good and very pretty. And
even although she is of obscure origin, she is a Van Zandt now, and
that is enough."
Maud used to read her whole chapters of the wonderful novel, and when
Una's color rose and her eyes sparkled with mirth or feeling, the young
authoress was delighted. She took it as a tribute to her genius, and
was cheered and encouraged in her delightful work. Edith, on her part,
appropriated the girl for a model, and made her pose for her benefit
every day in the little studio at the top of the house. At last the two
girls unanimously voted her a decided acquisition.
"It is very fortunate Eliot had to marry her. She is a darling, and I
can see that they are beginning to fall in love with each other," said
Edith.
"I am so glad that it will turn out a love-match after all," Maud
replied, with enthusiasm.
The days came and went, and brought the early, bleak New England
autumn. It was time for Sylvie to come home, but Bryant came alone. His
wife had gone to New York with her family to stay for the beginning of
the social season. Every one but her husband was secretly pleased when
she stayed until after the New-Year festivities. Maud and Edith were
quite sure that they had got along more happily without her, although
they were too polite to hint such a thing to Bryant.
At last she came in the middle of January. Ida Hayes, her sister, a
younger edition of herself, came with her, and straightway the halcyon
days of Una came to an end.
Sylvie came to her room that evening, when she was putting on her
simple blue silk dress for dinner, with an air of importance and
anxiety.
"Have you come to your senses yet--you two?" she demanded, brusquely.
"If you have, I shall be glad, for I do so want these rooms for Ida."
Una, with her laces all awry, looked up blankly.
"I--don't--think--I understand," she answered.
"Pshaw! I mean, do you use the same suite of rooms as your husband?"
The pretty, wondering face did not change its color, the dark eyes only
looked amazed.
"Of course not," Una said, and Sylvie's red lips curled.
"Of course not!" she mimicked, sneeringly. "Why, you silly child, you
talk very strangely. Bryant and I share the same suite of rooms, do we
not? All husbands and wives do who love each other."