A BULL TERRIER.
After this Prudence said she would not stay in St. Augustine another
day; she affirmed that the place was hateful to her. She said she
expected to find Rodney with a dagger stuck through him, if he left
her for a moment.
Lawrence listened calmly to all this. The two were on the
water-battery of the old fort again, and he was smoking. It was the
week following the expedition to Matanzas.
Prudence looked pale and very charming in a white suit that fitted
as her clothes always fitted. Lawrence once told her, with a
suspicion of bitterness in his tone, that if she were to be led out
to execution she would not pray, she would only ask if her gown were
becoming, and was her hair right?
"Where do you want to go?" he inquired.
"I don't care."
"That means you do care."
He reached forward, and knocked the ash from his cigar against a
stone. To-day his face was almost colorless, and his eyes were hard;
and the dreadful thing about his eyes was that when they were turned
upon his wife they did not change.
As for Prudence, she would have said that her heart was like lead.
She dared not soften her voice when she addressed her husband, lest
he might turn savagely upon her, though his manner now was as gentle
and cold as a flake of snow. She glanced at him shyly, and was
inwardly irritated that she should feel timid. She did not wish to
be afraid of anything. One is not comfortable when one is afraid.
And she was admiring him also; and she wished to tell him of that
admiration, and hang upon him, and smile, and caress him.
"No," she said, at last, in response to his words; "it means exactly
what I say."
"Since when have you meant what you say?"
He turned his cool, veiled eyes upon her, scanning her
interrogatively.
She plucked up courage, and replied, lightly:
"Oh, I've always had seasons of meaning what I say."
"Indeed! But how is one to know when it is the season for truth?"
He spoke carelessly, as if he had no interest in the reply, whatever
it should be. He puffed out a cloud of smoke and watched it float
away.
Prudence drew her light mantle closely about her. She would not press
her hands together beneath it, though she was tempted to do so.
She had expected an explanation, storm, tears, renewed tenderness.
Surely he could not be tired of her so soon.
She did not answer his question, but apparently he did not notice
this.
"Rodney, let us go away," she said, earnestly. "I hoped Mr. Meramble
would go, but, since he stays, I can't endure my anxiety about you. I
can't--I can't!"
Her voice grew unsteady. She looked at her husband entreatingly;
tears gathered in her eyes.
"I am sorry to have you suffer from anxiety on my account," he
responded, courteously; "but I think we will remain here. Augustine
is a small place, I know, but it will hold Mr. Meramble and me."
"Please go!"
She moved a little nearer. A faint flush came to his face.
"Sorry to refuse you, Prudence, but you ought to see that after
having flung Meramble into the water I can't run away as if I were
afraid of him. Still, we don't fight duels nowadays, you know."
"But sometimes folks kill some other folks," she returned.
Lawrence shrugged his shoulders and said nothing.
"And Mr. Meramble's smile is so very glittering; it makes my backbone
cold," Prudence went on; "and when he looks at you I feel like
screaming."
"I wouldn't scream, if I were you," Lawrence remarked.
"I sha'n't, if I can help it; but I'm sure the time will come when I
can't help it."
"In that case I'll call you insane and put you into an asylum."
Lawrence spoke these words so calmly that his wife shivered again,
though she knew he was jesting. The glance she gave him now was not
pleasant.
She turned towards the river and gazed at it, while her companion
smoked. Already it seemed months since the other day when he and she
had sat there and she had made him look at her with love.
"I'm nearly certain that it has leaked out that Mr. Meramble didn't
fall into the water," said Prudence, after a silence. "I suppose
somebody must have been looking through a glass at us. People are
always looking through a glass at the ocean and telling each other
what they see. That man will do something, I tell you. He isn't
smiling in such a shining way for nothing."
"Very well; let us wait and see what he does. We shall have thus some
interest in life left to us; that will be something for which to be
grateful to your friend."
"My friend!"
"Certainly; and he may thank you for his ducking."
Lawrence again puffed out a cloud of smoke and watched it dissipate
in the blue air. But his wife refrained from speaking.
A few more days passed. On one of them Prudence remarked that they
had made a great mistake in leaving Europe; in Europe they wouldn't
have met Mr. Meramble.
"It might as well be Meramble as another; it was sure to be
somebody," Lawrence returned.
That afternoon a great many of the winter residents attended a tennis
match. Of course Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence were there; so was Meramble;
and just as the game was over this latter gentleman suddenly appeared
near Lawrence, who was in the midst of a group of men and women.
Meramble's face was crimson, and he was smiling. People looked at him
curiously as he made his way among them. He carried a dog-whip in
his hand; but then there was a bull-terrier at his heels, following
closely, his red eyes watching his master.
"How do you do, Mr. Lawrence?" Meramble asked.
His voice was a trifle loud; but Lawrence spoke very low as he
answered, distinctly, "How do you do, Mr. Meramble?"
"Never was better in my life, thanks. I owe you one. Sometimes I have
a fancy to pay my debts--as now."
There was quite a theatrical air about the man as he spoke; indeed,
his appearance usually savored of the melodrama.
"Ah! That so?" said Lawrence, calmly. He was thinking, "That fellow
knows that people know I flung him in."
He had barely time to finish this thought when Meramble started
forward and swung his dog-whip square across Lawrence's face.
Lawrence felt a stinging blindness that confused him and made
him reel for the instant. And he could not gather himself before
something else had come upon him. Meramble's dog was at his throat;
the brute had fastened himself there and was swinging by his hold.
There was a rush, a shouting, a scramble of several men forward to
get the dog off.
Meramble stood back and looked on; he was still smiling with a
glitter of black eyes and white teeth.
Somebody got hold of the dog's legs. But somebody else was nearer
still, and in the utter confusion in Lawrence's senses he yet heard a
voice say, sharply, "No! no! His throat! His throat!"
And all the time he himself was trying to find the dog's throat; but
he was like a man whose hands would not obey him. The stroke so near
his eyes had cut like a knife, and his brain was still reeling from
it, and from the onset of the dog.
But he thought he recognized the voice crying out thus; and,
curiously, in the hurrying blackness of the moment he was aware that
he inhaled the odor of iris.
It was really but a second before he knew that his wife's fingers,
strong and unflinching, were choking the beast from him. He heard him
panting, then he heard the gurgle in the dog's throat; the teeth had
to let go.
The terrier dropped to the ground, and was caught up by some
masculine grasp and flung somewhere.
Lawrence blindly opened his arms and gathered his wife unto them. She
lay trembling on his breast.
Some irrepressible in the crowd uttered a cheer for Mrs. Lawrence;
the cheer was taken up, and every man there, save two, roared lustily
in another "cheer for Mrs. Lawrence."
In the midst of it all, Lawrence, holding Prudence, heard her
whisper, with her lips on his face:
"My dearest!"
In that instant his heart gave a glorious bound of ecstatic happiness.
Immediately she withdrew from his arms; somebody went off for a
physician, for Lawrence's throat was torn and bleeding; somebody else
offered an arm to him to assist him back to the hotel. There was a
babel of talk and exclamation, and in the midst of it Meramble, still
almost purple in the face, and still smiling, walked away.
When he was well clear of the crowd this gentleman paused and looked
about him. Then he whistled a long-drawn-out note. A moment after
this note had died on the air a black and white bull-terrier with red
eyes, and with some drops of blood on his muzzle and chest, came at
a slow sling trot from some place unseen and ranged at his master's
heels. Then dog and man walked out of sight, and I think out of the
pages of this chronicle.
Lawrence's lacerated throat kept him in his room for some days. He
lay on a lounge and tried to listen to Prudence as she read or talked
to him. She was very sweet and very lovely. Lawrence felt the old
charm of her presence, her smile, and her voice; he thrilled as he
recalled over and over again her voice, and her words, and her act
when the dog was at his throat.
But all the time, notwithstanding everything, there was with him
the dull memory of her wantonly broken promise about her behavior
to Meramble. He could remember too vividly her face as she had been
talking with Meramble on the veranda of the old house at Matanzas.
When this remembrance was at its keenest, it was only by great
self-restraint that Lawrence refrained from starting up and shouting
out a curse for the woman who could do such a thing. But she loved
him? The old, dreadful question; she loved him? Even now, in the
midst of smiles and tears and kisses, she could make him believe her.
For the first three days Prudence was devotedly attentive; she
scarcely left his side, and her devotion was plainly spontaneous.
A slight fever had set in, though the wounded throat was doing as
well as such a hurt could do. Prudence began to grow listless in the
very slightest degree.
Lawrence made her leave him and go down into the court, where a party
were heard laughing and talking. After she had gone, with painful
intentness he listened for her voice.
Ah! there it was. He raised himself on his elbow. Yes, honey sweet,
gay, seductive, suggestive. He listened, his wounded throat throbbing
as he did so. It was not that he desired to know what she said, it
was only her tones that he must hear. And he groaned as he heard them.
He wished he might be able to understand her. He was not the first
man who has wished to be able to understand a woman.
As Lawrence sank again on his couch, another day came back to his
mind,--that day when he had been lying in his room at Savin Hill and
had heard Prudence laugh outside.
Then he had been going to marry Carolyn Ffolliott. Then--he groaned
again and moved uneasily.
It was terrible for a man like Lawrence to have one spot in his life
which he dared not touch. He winced every time he came near that
place in his mind. He wished that it might be covered up, encysted
like some morbid growth in the body, and not remain so atrociously
alive. As a man runs away from some place where he knows he will be
hurt, so Lawrence's mind always ran away from the thought of Carolyn.
Yet somehow, within the last few weeks, he could not help thinking of
her.
He had stopped his ears against any news from Savin Hill. He even
shrank from looking too closely at a Boston newspaper, lest he should
see the name of Ffolliott.
Not a week ago Prudence had silently put before him a paper with her
finger on a paragraph. This was the paragraph:
"At a reception lately given by Mrs. Letitia Ffolliott at her
residence on Commonwealth Avenue, among the prominent guests
was Lord Maxwell. His lordship came to the States some months
ago, bringing an invalid wife. His friends will learn with
regret that Lady Maxwell has since died. We understand that
Lord Maxwell will remain in Boston for some weeks."
Lawrence's lip curled as he read these lines, and Mrs. Lawrence
laughed.
"His lordship!" she exclaimed, and laughed again.
"How the fair women will smile upon him!" cynically remarked
Lawrence; and he added, "Well, he hasn't a teaspoonful of brains,
but he has his title."
"Yes," said Prudence, "and now he has the brewer's money without the
brewer's daughter. Perhaps he will marry Carolyn Ffolliott."
Having sent this shaft, Prudence refrained from looking to see if it
went home.
Lawrence said quietly that he did not believe Carolyn would marry a
man she did not love; but then, she might love Maxwell.
And here the subject had dropped; but neither of these two forgot it.
Lawrence grew very restless during those days when he was confined to
his room at the hotel. The lacerated wound induced some fever, but
still he was doing as well as possible. After the first, Prudence
did not stay with him. She could bravely attack a dog in his behalf,
but it appeared that she could not stop in a sick-room. Lawrence
urged her to go, and, after a due amount of reluctance, she went.
Her husband had plenty of time to think; he could not always thrust
remembrance from him. He seemed to himself to be a very poor kind
of a being. Where were his hopes for a career of usefulness and
dignity in the world? Were they all lost for a woman's smile? And his
self-respect? Had he bartered the peace of years for the rapture of
moments?
And Prudence was getting tired of him. It was impossible any longer
to doubt that fact; as impossible as it was to doubt that other fact
that she had once had a passion for him which she was willing to
indulge when she could not marry an English nobleman. She greatly
preferred him, Lawrence. Here Lawrence uttered a very grim-sounding
word.
In spite of himself, Lawrence did a great amount of thinking in those
days, when he did not mean to think at all, and when he could often
hear, in court or veranda, his wife's gay laugh mingling with the
plash of fountains and the murmur of music.
But she said she was greatly bored, that it was hard to wait until
Rodney could get out again.
The second time she said this, Lawrence responded by saying that as
soon as he was able they would go North.
"What! before spring?" she asked, in surprise, and with a hint of
indignation.
"Yes, before spring. I've been idle long enough. You've forgotten
that I'm a lawyer. I had just begun to have a little success. I'll
put on harness again."
Prudence glanced at him with an elevation of eyebrow; she was wise
in her way, and she knew that now was one of the times when it would
do no good for her to plead.
Thinking over the matter afterwards, Prudence decided that it would,
after all, be more interesting to go North.