THE CLASH
WHEN Robert returned Rosalie to her place near Mrs. Nixon, a number of
men who had experienced a clinching of their admiration by the view of
her dancing, hastened to approach.
Many of the same people came to the inn, season after season, and
Irving knew most of them. Some were Harvard men known to Robert as
well, and he at last being alive to Helen’s situation, the group around
the two girls soon became extremely animated. Amidst the strife of
tongues Irving made his way to Rosalie.
“This is ours?” he said.
As they moved away, she spoke: “I hope I sha’n’t offend any one. I
haven’t the least idea what I’ve promised to do.”
In a sort of dream she started in the dance. This was Fairport. In
fifteen minutes she could be standing in Mrs. Pogram’s kitchen, where
the clock ticked loud above the oilcloth shelf, and Loomis Brown
counted the silver she had washed.
What a gulf had lain between this inn, with its airily dressed girls
and their cavaliers, and the chill, dusky room where at dawn she had
made Loomis’s coffee before he took the early train to Portland. Her
hand tightened on Irving’s arm while she recalled the amorous advances
of Mrs. Pogram’s brother, and his change, after her repulsion, to anger
and a mean revenge.
A long, inaudible breath came quivering to her lips as she glided on
under her partner’s perfect guidance. Rosalie loved dancing as only the
artistic nature can love it, and the rising and falling waves of music
went to her brain like wine.
“Cruel Betsy! Wise Betsy!” she thought.
“Do you remember,” said Irving, “the last time I held you like this?”
“I’m afraid I’m very dull,” she replied. “Did we dance together in some
previous incarnation?”
“Don’t you wish to remember, Rosalie?”
“Indeed I do,” she rejoined brightly. “Your dancing couldn’t be
improved.”
Irving kept silence. He was entirely aware that he was beginning
exactly as Betsy had implored him not to do; but he began to suspect
shrewdly that Betsy’s lecture was a shield which had two sides, and
that one of them had been presented to this girl. Hadn’t his mentor
said that Rosalie—and the latter’s totally changed manner—
“Betsy will end by making a conceited ass out of me,” he reflected,
with the relief human nature finds in discovering some one else to
blame for its discomfort.
The dance over, he took his partner out on the veranda, where couples
were promenading in the damp coolness. He found some chairs in a remote
corner.
“These are tolerably dry,” he said. “Shall we sit here?”
“I mustn’t,” she answered.
“Why not? Too cold?”
“Not for me, but too damp for my gown.”
Irving glanced over it in the dusk. “I have an idea that that is
something pretty fine,” he said. “I want to see the black one.”
Rosalie colored. “Shame on Betsy!” she said, laughing. “Has she told
everybody?”
“No one but me, you may be sure. Betsy knows that I am so perfectly
trustworthy, she tells me everything. Did she ever give me a character
to you?”
“Yes—No—I don’t know. Let’s go into the house, Mr. Bruce. This gown
must last me for years, and _years_.”
Irving obediently led the girl within doors, where, in a corner of the
hall, in lieu of palms, were set Christmas trees in tubs. Into a seat
behind these he ushered her.
“I’m afraid my next partner can’t find me here,” she said doubtfully.
“We have the next together.”
“Oh, I don’t think so, Mr. Bruce!”
“I know it, Rosalie. I wonder why I venture to call you Rosalie.”
As he spoke Irving took up her fan and began to use it as he gazed at
her girlish profile.
“I don’t know,” she returned, a little pulse beating in her throat. “I
think, myself, Miss Vincent would sound better.”
“Ah, Betsy!” thought Irving, closing his teeth. “I’ll pay you for this.”
“What need of formality between sworn friends?” he asked.
“I’m starting out on a new life, Mr. Bruce,” she said, turning and
looking at him with a direct gaze.
She seemed to him enchanting. He knew, better than she, that she was
starting out in a new life; and he begrudged it, strangely. He knew her
to be all unconscious as yet of her own charm and power. He dreaded
the opening of those clear eyes that as yet were so modest—the windows
through which one perceived her innocence. While he was justly angry
with Betsy for rousing unthought-of suspicion and caution, he could not
deny the justice of her sympathy.
He met the blue gaze with a smile that set the pulse to beating faster.
“You don’t intend to forget old friends for new, do you?” he asked.
“‘There is no friend like the old friend, who has shared our morning
days,’
you know. This little audience was enthusiastic over you, and audiences
always will be; but—
“‘Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold,’
remember.”
“It’s unkind to laugh at me,” returned the girl, with surprising heat.
“You know I have no thought of fame.”
“Rosalie, Rosalie!” he exclaimed and seized her hand protectingly. “I’m
not laughing at you. I believe you could have fame if you wish and
work; but somehow I don’t want the people to have a right to gaze at
you, and listen, and applaud.”
A strange film came over her eyes as she still looked at him. It was as
if she withdrew herself as she took her hand away.
“I suppose,” she said, “that people who have always had their own way
are subject to such fancies.”
“Betsy said that to you!” he exclaimed, acutely.
She shook her head but did not speak.
“Betsy knows nothing of our compact.” He leaned toward her, and she
shrank, but kept her golden head proudly lifted. “Betsy knows nothing
of the moment when we stood above the eagles and knew what in life was—
“‘the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.’
Why do I call you Rosalie? Because it means _you_. It is one of the
‘sweets’ that came to me then—”
“Mr. Bruce,” the girl interrupted him, “Betsy _does_ know nothing of
it; but if she did, Betsy is something more than clever, she is wise.
She probably doesn’t read Emerson, but if she did, it would be her
own thought that she would put into his words: ‘Our friendships hurry
to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of
wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart.’” The
speaker took a firm hold on the sweet voice that threatened to break.
“That morning was a time of wine and dreams. I’ve always been a child.
I’ve always dreamed dreams; but to-night I am awake, I am starting out
in real life, with my eyes open.” Those eyes had been downcast, but now
she lifted them again to her companion’s flushed face. “I shall be very
glad if you help me—and not hinder.”
“The tough fibre of the human heart,” repeated Irving.
“Yes,” returned the girl. “It is a slow growth,—but it holds.”
A black-coated biped hovering before the Christmas trees, now
retreating and now advancing undecidedly, heard his name with relief.
“Is that you, Mr. Ames?” asked Rosalie, rising with decision. The young
man addressed doubled around the end of the grove with eager agility.
“I didn’t intend to hide,” laughed the girl.
Irving rose also, and when the two had gone, sank back on the seat,
playing absently with the fan he still held.
His thoughts were busy, and his teeth tightly closed.
“What do I want, anyway?” he reflected. “Which is Betsy: a meddlesome
busybody, or a guardian angel? I’ll take no chances on the angel
proposition. She’s a busybody. I’ll see her to-morrow.”
Irving shook his head threateningly, and a sudden nervous twist of his
strong fingers broke a couple of sticks of the pretty fan. He frowned
in dismay, and fitted them together in the futile manner inseparable
from the occasion.
“Must last her years and years,” he reflected. “Well, it’s up to me
to get her another fan, that’s evident.” And with a clearing of the
countenance as if this consideration presented distinct consolation,
he rose and wandered out of the arbor. “I wonder where Madama is,” he
reflected. She had not come into his mind since her refusal of his
request drove him to Mrs. Nixon. “How am I to revive her interest in
Rosalie?” he wondered as he moved down the hall.
As soon as Mrs. Bruce had made her perfunctory acknowledgment to
Rosalie, she slipped from Robert’s side, unnoticed by a culprit
absorbed in his own misdemeanors, and with one glance after Irving and
Mrs. Nixon, who were returning to the other end of the room, she moved
into the hall, and up the stairs of the inn.
She made no effort to curb the hot resentment that possessed her in
every fibre. Her one desire was to reach the cause of her suffering,
and wreak her sense of outrage upon her.
It was half an hour after Captain Salter’s departure, and Betsy was
smiling to herself as she wound the living-room clock. Her thoughts
were with Rosalie; confident of the girl’s success, yet half-frightened
by the chance of fortune which had united the Yellowstone party to
witness her début. She imagined the scene in the spacious living-room
of the hotel. Had the rain not fallen, she had meant to ask Hiram to
take her over there, that she might look in through the windows and see
the dear child standing, the cynosure of all eyes, even if she could
not hear her voice.
She felt certain of Mr. Derwent’s satisfaction in her. As a contraband
guest at the Canyon Hotel, Rosalie had recited for him in her room, and
to-night Betsy’s heart swelled in the realization that he was seeing
the first fruits of his generosity.
Doubts of Mrs. Bruce’s approval did sweep occasionally, like filmy
clouds, across the clear happiness of her mind; but the importance of
Rosalie’s good fortune was paramount, and Betsy was able to sweep them
away.
Suddenly she heard the sound of wheels stopping before the gate. She
glanced at the clock.
“So early?” she thought. “They can’t be comin’ home now.”
In a minute more some one ran up the steps, and Mrs. Bruce, in a long
light wrap, a chiffon scarf falling from her elaborately dressed hair,
came swiftly into the room.
Betsy met the flashing eyes in dismay. She hurried to meet her.
“Mercy! Mrs. Bruce—” she said, nerving herself for some disaster. “How
white you are! Has something happened? Or are you ill?”
With her care-taking impulse Betsy tried to remove her mistress’s
wrap, but the lady twitched away from her. She had been nursing her
wrath to keep it warm, and it was very warm indeed; but something in
Betsy’s presence, in the gaze of those honest eyes, threatened to make
the enormity of the latter’s offense shrink. Mrs. Bruce was obliged
to remember the attitude of Irving’s head as he walked away with
Mrs. Nixon, careless of her own opinions or feelings, forgetful of
her,—utterly forgetful of her for the first time in her remembrance.
Her narrow mind, tenacious of its two idols,—her own importance and her
boy,—suffered intensely.
“Stand away from me!” she cried; and Betsy, too dumfounded to move,
stared mutely while the vials of Mrs. Bruce’s wrath began to pour out.
“We have been too kind to you. You forget your place. What right had
you to do such a thing as to place Rosalie Vincent where she must be
accepted as a companion by people of our class? What right had you to
interfere so with the pleasure of our summer? Ask yourself why you
told me nothing about it. You will say, if you are honest, that it was
because you knew I would not approve. I have done everything for the
Vincent girl that has been done. I had a right to be consulted, at
least. But you, forgetting that you were my servant, went on, managing
to ruin our summer, spending, like a fool, your long years’ savings to
bring that girl east, and dress her unsuitably, leaving me, and putting
me to inconvenience in order to do so, going entirely out of your
sphere, and making yourself a special providence. You think yourself so
clever! Clever Betsy, indeed! Your head is turned. It is largely our
fault!”
She paused, panting. Betsy stood in the same spot, but her anxious face
had settled into lines of stony stillness. Only her eyes kept fixed on
Mrs. Bruce’s face.
“Speak!” cried the latter, hysterically. “How did you dare do this
thing?”
There was another space of silence, then Betsy did speak.
“Is there anything more you want to say about it, Mrs. Bruce?”
The lady shrugged her shoulders angrily, and moving to the divan
dropped off her downy wrap.
“I suppose nothing that I can say will pierce through your
self-conceit; but I am willing to have any explanation you have to
offer. You think you’ve outwitted everybody, and you’ve succeeded in
getting your own way; but it’s nothing to be proud of, Betsy—and old
age will be coming upon you, and you’ll think of that money a good many
times, I can tell you.”
She paused again, and looking up found Betsy’s grave eyes following
her. There was another short silence, then Betsy spoke.
“Mrs. Bruce, when you are thinkin’ this evenin’ over, as you will,
there’s just one thing I’ll ask you to remember. It’s an old sayin’ out
o’ the far east: ‘Of the unspoken word you are master. The spoken word
is master o’ you.’ Good-night.”
With this Betsy walked out of the room without one backward look, and
Mrs. Bruce stood, baffled, and trembling with her own excitement.
Alone, she sank on the divan with her face buried in the pillows.
It was quite within the range of possibility that at this moment Irving
was dancing with Rosalie Vincent, and did not even observe her own
absence from the room.
She sobbed, stifling the sound in the pillows lest Betsy should hear
and return to her assistance, believing her to be repentant. It was
like Betsy to refuse to answer her; to treat her like a child; to
throw upon her, by her manner, the blame of all that occurred. It was
infuriating; unbearable. Her breath came in spasms, and she fought for
her self-control.