you among the other girls, I might not have given you more than a
passing glance; but I thought you were married, and the thrill of
disappointment had as much pleasure as pain, for I felt I could have
loved. But you were not married, only engaged. What's an engagement? It
may mean everything or nothing. For the life of me I could not help
trying how much it meant to you. What must the man be, I thought, as I
sat by you on the stairs, whom this girl loves? He should be a hero, and
yet, as such things go, he's just as likely to be a noodle. You
laughed--I could have sworn you knew what I was thinking."
"Yes! I remember. I was thinking how nicely you would do for a model for
my Ponsonby," Lily said. Their eyes met for a moment with a swift flash
of intelligence, but the light in hers was quenched with hot, unshed
tears.
"No laugh ever sounded more fancy free! I felt as if you challenged me;
and if he had been here I would have taken up the challenge--he or I,
once for all. But he was alone and far away, and I could not take his
place. Why did I meet you on the pond, then? why did I come here
to-night? Because I wanted to see if I could not go a little further
with you. I wanted something to remember, a look, a tone, a word, that
ought not to have been given to any man but your promised husband;
something I could not have asked if I had hoped to be your husband. My
magnanimity toward Ponsonby, you see, did not go the length of behaving
to his future wife with the respect I would show my own."
"You have shown how much you despise me," said Lily, springing to her
feet, her hot tears dried with hotter anger, but her face white again.
"That might have been spared me. I suppose you think I deserve it. Very
well, I do, and you need not stay to argue the matter. Go!"
"Go! Why I should be a fool to go now, and you would be--well, we will
call it mistaken--to let me. After we have got as far as we have, it
would be absurd to suppose we can go back again. We know each other now
better than nine tenths of the couples who have been married a year. I
don't ask you to say you love me now; I am very sure you can, and I know
I can love you--infinitely----"
"Oh, but--but you said you would not take his place--Mr. Ponsonby's. Can
you let everyone think you capable of such an act of meanness? And if
you could not respect me as your wife, how can you expect others to? Can
we appear to act in a way to deserve contempt without despising each
other?"
"There will be a good deal that is unpleasant about it, no doubt; but
everyone's life has some unpleasantness. It would be worse to let a
dream, even a dream of honor, come between us and our future. You made a
mistake and underestimated its consequences, but it would be foolish to
lose the substance of happiness because we have lost the shadow. We will
live it down together and be glad it is no worse."
"But I have been so wrong, so very wrong--I have too many faults ever to
make anyone happy."
"Of course you have faults, but I know the worst of them and can put up
with them. I have plenty of my own which you may be finding out by this
time. I am very domineering--you will have to promise to obey me, and I
shall keep you to it; and then I can, under provocation, be furiously
jealous."
"You are not jealous of Jack Allston?" she whispered.
"Jealous of old Jack? Oh, no! I shall keep my jealousy for poor Mr.
Ponsonby."
Society had been so often agitated by Lily Carey's affairs that it took
with comparative coolness the tidings that she was to be married to
Arend Van Voorst in six weeks. Miss Morgan said she supposed Lily was
tired of "engagements," and wanted to be married this time. Her niece
Emmeline shed tears over "poor Mr. Ponsonby," and refused to act as
bridesmaid at his rival's nuptials; and in spite of her aunt's scoldings
and Lily's entreaties, and all the temptations of the bridesmaids' pearl
"lily" brooches and nosegays of Easter lilies, arranged a visit to her
cousins in Philadelphia to avoid being present. Miss Thorne had no such
scruples, and it is to her the world owes a lively account of the
wedding; how it was fixed at so early a date lest "poor Mr. Ponsonby"
should hurry over to forbid the banns, and how terribly nervous Lily
seemed lest he might, in spite of the absolute impossibility, and though
Ponsonby, true gentleman to the last, never troubled her then or after.
"Poor Mr. Van Voorst, I should say!" exclaimed Mrs. Jack Allston. "I am
sure he is the one to be pitied. But do tell me all the presents that
have come in, for Jack says that I must give them something handsome
after such a present as he gave me when we were married."
Mrs. Van Voorst received the tidings of her son's approaching marriage
rather doubtfully. "Yes--the Careys were a very nice family; she knew
Mrs. Carey was an Arlington, and her mother a Berkeley, and his
mother--but--Miss Carey was very handsome, she had heard--with the
Berkeley style of beauty and the Arlington manner, but--but--she did not
mind their being Unitarians, for many of the very best people were, in
Boston, but--but--but--indeed, my dear Arend, I have heard a good deal
about her that I do not altogether like. I hope it may not be
true--about her keeping Jack Allston hanging on for years, as
_pis-aller_ to that young Englishman she was engaged to all the
while--and finally throwing him over--and now she has thrown over this
Mr. Ponsonby too!"
"Will you do just one thing for me, dear mother," asked her son; "will
you forget all you have _heard_ about Lily, and judge her by what you
_see_?"
Mrs. Van Voorst had never refused Arend anything in his life, and could
not now. By what magic Lily, in their very first interview, won over the
good lady is not known, but afterwards no mother-in-law's heart could
have withstood the splendid son and heir with which she enriched the Van
Voorst line. The young Van Voorsts were allowed by all their friends to
be much happier than they deserved to be. Long after the gossip over
their marriage had ceased, and it was an old story even to them, Arend
was still in love with his wife. Lily was interesting; she had that
quality or combination of qualities, impossible to analyse, which wins
love where beauty fails, and keeps it when goodness tires. Her own
happiness was more simple in its elements. She was better off than most
women, and knew it--the last, the crowning gift, so often lacking to the
fortunate of earth. She thought her husband much too good for her,
though she never told him so. Nay, sometimes when she was a little
fretted by his exacting disposition, for Arend was a strict martinet in
all social and household matters and, as he had said, would be minded,
she would sometimes more or less jestingly tell him that perhaps after
all she had made a mistake in not keeping faith with "poor Mr.
Ponsonby."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
MODERN VENGEANCE
"Well, Lucy, I must say I never saw anything go off more delightfully!"
"It would hardly fail to, with such interesting people," said Mrs. Henry
Wilson.
"Why, every one said they thought it would be most difficult to manage;
a sort of half-public thing, you know, to entertain those delegates or
whatever they call them; they said it was well you had it, for no one
else could possibly have made it go so well."
"I have no doubt most of them could, if they had all the help I
had--from you, especially! I only wish I could have made it a dinner,
instead of a lunch; but Henry is so very busy, just now, and I dared not
attempt a dinner without him."
"Oh, my dear!" said her mother-in-law, "a doctor's time is always so
occupied; they all know that. And dear Henry, of course, is more
occupied than most."
"Perhaps it is as well," said the younger lady, "that they could come by
daylight, as it is so far out of town; Medford is pretty, even in
winter."
"Oh, yes! so they all said. Lady Bayswater thinks it is the prettiest
suburb of Boston she has yet seen; and she admired the house, too, and
you, and everything. 'Mrs. Wilson,' she said to me, 'your charming
daughter-in-law is the prettiest American woman I have seen yet.'" And
Mrs. Wilson, senior, a little elderly woman, to whom even her rich
mourning dress could not impart dignity, jerked her heavy black
Astrachan cape upon her shoulders, and tied its wide ribbons in a
fluttering, one-sided way.
"She is very kind."
"And they all said so many things--I can't remember them."
"I am glad if they were pleased," said Mrs. Henry Wilson, rousing
herself; "to tell the truth, I have not been able to think much of the
lunch, or how it went off."
"Why, dear Henry is well, isn't he?"
"Yes, as well as usual, but a good deal troubled about----"
"Oh, the poor little Talbot boy! how is he?"
"I do not know. Henry, of course, gives no opinion; but I am afraid it
is a very serious case. Membranous croup always is alarming, you know."
"Yes, indeed! sad--very sad; and their only boy, too, now. To be sure,
if any one can save him, dear Henry can; but then, what with losing the
other, and so much sickness as they have had, and Mabel expecting again,
I really don't see how they are to get along," said Mrs. Wilson, fussing
with her pocket handkerchief.
"It is very hard," assented her daughter-in-law, with a sigh.
"I do pity poor Eugene. What can a man do? I saw all those children
paddling in the wet snow only last week; very likely that brought it on.
If I had let mine do so when they were little, I should have expected
them to have croup, and diphtheria, and everything else. I would not
mention it to any one but you, but I do think Mabel has always been very
careless of her children."
"Poor Mabel!" said Mrs. Henry Wilson, with a look of angelic compassion.
"Remember how many cares and troubles she has had, and all her own
ill-health. We all make mistakes sometimes in the care of our children,
with the very best intentions. I let Harry play out in that very snow. I
feared then that you might not approve; but you were not here, and he
was so eager!"
"Oh, but, my dear, you always look after Harry so well! Those Talbot
children had no rubbers on; and then, Harry is so much stronger than
his father was. I do think your management most successful. I only wish
poor Eugene had a wife like you." And as her hearer was silent: "I must
go. Darling Harry is still at gymnasium, isn't he? and I suppose it is
no use waiting for dear Henry, now. My love to them both; and do come
round when you can, dear, won't you?" And after a little more fuss in
looking for her muff and letting down her veil, and a prolonged series
of embraces of her daughter-in-law, she departed.
Young Mrs. Wilson, left alone, sat down in front of a glowing fire to
review her day; but earlier memories appealed so much more powerfully,
that in another moment she was reviewing her whole past life--an
indulgence she rarely allowed herself.
If the poet in the country churchyard was struck with the thought of
greatness that had perished unknown for lack of opportunity, how doubly
he might have pointed his moral with renown missed by being of the wrong
sex. In clear perception of her ends, and resistless pursuit of them,
Lucy Morton had not been inferior in her sphere to Napoleon in his; and
if, after all, she was not so clever as she thought herself, why,
neither was he. To begin with, she was born in a _cul-de-sac_ ending at
a cow pasture. But what is that to genius? "This lane," she thought,
"shall never hem me in"; and from earliest childhood she struggled to
grow out of it, like a creeper out of a hole, catching at every aid.
She was early left an orphan, and lived with her grandfather, a
well-to-do retired grocer, and her grandmother, and a maiden aunt. There
was one other house in the lane, and in it lived a great-aunt, widow of
the grocer's brother and partner, and a maiden first cousin once
removed. They were a contented family, and liked the seclusion of their
place of abode, which was clean and quiet, and where the old gentleman
could prune his trees, and prick out his lettuces unobserved. He read
the daily paper, and took a nap after his early dinner. The women made
their own clothes, and dusted their parlours, and washed their dishes,
and as the _cul-de-sac_ was loathed of servants, they often had the
opportunity of doing all their own work, which they found a pleasant
excitement, and in their secret souls preferred. They belonged to the
Unitarian church, which marked them as slightly superior to the reigning
grocer, who went to the "Orthodox meeting," but did not give them the
social intercourse they would have found in churches of inferior
pretensions. The elite of Medford, in those early days, was chiefly
Unitarian, and it respected the Mortons, who gave generously of their
time and money whenever they were asked. Its men spoke highly of "old
Morton," and were civil to him at town and parish meetings; and its
women would bow pleasantly to his female relatives after service and
speak to them at sewing circles; and would inquire after the rest of the
family when they could remember who they were. More, the Mortons did not
ask or wish. They knew enough people on whom to make formal calls, gave
or went to about six tea-parties a year, and exchanged visits with
cousins who lived in Braintree.
Lucy was sent to the public school, and taught sewing and housework at
home. She proved an apt pupil at both, and showed no discontent with her
daily routine. She was early allowed to sit up to tea, even when company
came; and had she asked to bring home any little girl in her school to
play with her, her grandmother would not have objected. But she did not
ask, nor was she ever seen with her schoolmates in the shady, rural
Medford roads.
Perhaps she might have pined for companions of her own age, but that
fortune had provided her with some near by. At the entrance of the lane
where she lived, but fronting on a wider thoroughfare, was the house of
Mrs. Wilson, a widow of good means and family, who filled less than her
proper space among her own connections, for she went out but little,
being engrossed with the care and education of her two delicate little
boys to a degree which rendered her fatiguing as a companion--the
poorness of their physical constitutions, and the excellence of their
moral natures, being her one unending theme. They were not strong enough
for the most private of schools, and were too good to be exposed to its
temptations, and always had a governess at home.
"Henny" and "Cocky" Wilson--their names were Henry and Cockburn, and
their light red hair, combed into scanty crests on top of their heads,
had suggested these soubriquets--were the amusement of their mother's
contemporaries, and the scorn of their own. A hundred tales were told of
them: as, how when Mrs. Wilson first came home from abroad, where she
had lived long after her husband's death there, she brought her boys to
Sunday-school, with the audible request to the superintendent that as
they were such good little children, they might, if possible, be placed
among those of similar, if not equal, qualities; thereby provoking the
whole school for the next month to a riotous behaviour which poor Mr.
Milliken found it difficult to subdue.
Mrs. Wilson's friends made some efforts to induce their boys to be
friendly with hers, with the result that one July evening, Eugene
Talbot, a bright-eyed, curly-haired little dare-devil, who led the
revels, patronisingly invited them to join a swimming party after dark
in the reservoir which supplied Medford with water--one of those
illegal, delicious sprees which to look back on stirs the blood of age.
Henny and Cocky gave no answer till they had gone, as in duty bound, to
consult their mother, who replied: "My dears, I think this would be a
very uncomfortable amusement. Should you not enjoy much more taking a
bath in our own bathroom, with plenty of soap and hot-water?" It
required a great effort of self-control on Eugene's part not to knock
the heads of the two together when they reported their mother's opinion
to him _verbatim_; but he had the feeling that it would be as mean to
hit one of the Wilsons as to hit a girl, and he only sent them to
Coventry, where they grew up, apparently careless. They were content at
home, and they could now and then play with Lucy Morton, who had
contrived to make their acquaintance through the garden fence, and who,
though three years younger than Cocky, the youngest, was quite as
advanced in every way.
When Mrs. Richard Reed, the social leader of the town, tired of taking
her children into Boston to Papanti's dancing-class, prevailed upon the
great man to come out and open one in Medford, she could not be
over-particular in her selection of applicants, the requisite number
being hard to make up; but when she opened a note signed, "Sarah C.
Morton," asking admission for the writer's granddaughter, she paused
doubtfully. "It is a queerly written note, but it looks like a lady's
somehow," she said, consulting her privy council.
"Oh, that is old Mrs. Morton, who comes to our church, don't you know?
They are very respectable, quiet people. I don't believe there's any
harm in the little girl," said adviser number one.
"She is a pretty, well-behaved child. I have noticed her at
Sunday-school," added councillor number two.
"She is a sweet little thing," said Mrs. Wilson, who was present, though
not esteemed of any use in the matter. "My dear boys sometimes play with
her, and are so fond of her, and they would not like any little girl who
was not nice."
"Oh, well, she can come!" said Mrs. Reed, dashing off a hasty consenting
line, and thinking, "She will do to dance with Henny and Cocky; none of
the other girls will care to, I imagine, and I don't want to hurt the
old lady's feelings. What can have made her think of asking?"
It will easily be guessed that Miss Lucy had been the instigator of
this daring move. She had begun by asking her grandfather, who never
refused her anything, and backed by his sanction had succeeded in
persuading her grandmother, who wrote an occasional letter, but who
hardly knew what a note was, to sit down and write one to Mrs. Reed. So
to the dancing-school she went, alone; for neither grandmother, aunts,
nor cousin ever dreamed of accompanying her. But she felt no fears. She
was a pretty little girl, and took to dancing as a duck to water; but
she did not presume on the popularity these qualities might have won her
with the older boys, but patiently devoted herself to Henny and Cocky
and the younger fry, whom Mr. Papanti was only too glad to consign to
her skilful pilotage. Their mothers approved of her, especially after
she had asked Mrs. Reed, with many blushes, "if she might not sit near
her, when she was not dancing?" "I have to come alone," she added shyly,
"for my dear grandmamma is so old, you know, and my aunt is far from
strong." Both of these women could have done a good day's washing, and
slept soundly for nine hours after it; but of this Mrs. Reed knew
nothing, and pronounced Lucy a charming child, with such sweet manners,
took her home when it rained, and asked her to her next juvenile party.
It was an easy step from this to Lucy Morton at one-and-twenty, where
her quick backward glance next lighted, the popular favourite of the
best "set" of girls in Medford, and extending her easy flight beyond
under the drilling chaperonage of their mammas. She pleased all she met
of whatever age or sex, though to more dangerous distinctions she made
no pretensions. She had early learned the great secret of popularity, so
rarely understood at any age, that people do not want to admire
you--they want you to admire them. No one called Lucy Morton a beauty;
but it was wonderful how many beauties were numbered among her intimate
friends, how many compliments they received, what hosts of admirers they
had, and how brilliant, clever, and full of promise were these admirers.
Indeed, after a dance or a talk with Miss Morton, the young men could
not help thinking so themselves.
As for Lucy, she was early consigned by public opinion to one or other
of the Wilsons. Henny and Cocky had miraculously survived their mother's
coddling and clucking, and had kept alive through college and
professional training, though looking as if it had been a hard struggle.
Henny had, at the period on which his wife was now dwelling, returned
from his medical studies at Vienna, while Cocky still lingered in Paris
studying architecture.
There was very little opening for Dr. Henry Wilson in his native town;
but his mother would have been wretched had he gone anywhere else. He
set up an office in her house, and his friends said it was a good thing
he had money enough to live on, for really none of them could be
expected to call him in. He practised among the poor, who seemed to like
him; but of course they could not afford to be particular.
He would be a very good match for Lucy Morton, if not for any girl of
his own circle. They lived close by each other and had always been
intimate; and she was such a sweet, amiable girl, just the one to put up
with Mrs. Wilson's tiresome ways! If her relations were scarcely up to
the Wilson claims, at least they were quiet and harmless, and would
probably leave her a little money.
With such reasoning did all the neighbouring matrons allay their
anxieties as to their favourite's future. Their daughters dissented. The
latter had gradually come to perceive that Lucy had no intentions of the
kind. Not one of them but thought her justified in looking higher, and
not one envious or grudging comment was spoken or even thought when they
began to regard her as destined for Eugene Talbot--not even by those,
and they were many, who themselves cherished a budding preference for
Eugene, a flirt in a harmless, careless way. Everyone allowed that his
attentions this time were serious. How naturally, how irresistibly, the
pleasing conviction stole upon Lucy's own heart!
Mrs. Wilson, a wife of many years, here sprang to her feet, with her
heart beating hard, and her cheeks flushing scarlet with shame. So would
they flush on her death-bed, if the remembrance of that time came to
disturb her then--the only time when her prudence had for once failed,
the only time when she had trusted any one but herself, when she had
really, truly, been so sure that Eugene Talbot loved her, that she had
let others see she thought so. She had disclaimed, indeed, all knowledge
of his devotion, but she had disclaimed it with a blushing cheek and
conscious smile, like a little--little--oh, _what_ a little fool!
There was no open wound to her pride to resent. He had never spoken out
plainly, and no mere attentions from an emperor would have won a
premature response from Miss Morton; nor was it possible for her to
betray her preference to anyone else. How she found out, as early and as
surely as she did, that his hour for speaking was never to come, was
marvellous even to herself; but she was clairvoyant, so to speak, so
fully did she extract from those who surrounded her all they knew, and
much they did not know. Before Eugene's engagement to Mabel Andrews was
a fixed fact, before Mabel herself knew it was to come, she did, and
took her measures accordingly.
One terrible, long afternoon she spent in her own room behind closed
shutters, seeing even then, in the darkness, Eugene, proud and handsome,
breathing words of love in the Andrews's beautiful blossoming garden
among all the flowers of May, while a glow of rapturous surprise lighted
up Mabel's sweet, impassive face. It might have been some consolation to
another girl to know her own superiority, and to feel sure that Eugene
was marrying the amiable, refined, utterly commonplace Miss Andrews with
the view to the push her highly placed relatives could, and doubtless
would, give him in his business; but the knowledge only added a sting to
Lucy's sufferings. She bore them silently, tasting their full
bitterness, and then left the room, the very little bit of girlishness
in her composition gone forever, but still ready to draw from life the
gratifications proper to maturer years. She could imagine that revenge
might not lose its taste with time, and she had already some faint
conception of the form hers might take.