"Well, _I_ might have sent her forever, and all the result would have
been the switch singing about my own shoulders, probably."
"That is because she knows you would never use it. As for me,--Hazel has
a good memory."
Éloise gave a half-imperceptible shiver and frown; but, clearing her
brow, said,--
"If Hazel had my accounts here, they would tame her. I will put all my
malcontents through a course of mathematics. You do so well everywhere
else, Mrs. Arles, that I've half the mind to ask you to advise me here.
Little Arlesian, come over into Macedonia!"
"What is the matter?"
"Oh, it's only an inversion of the old problem, If the ton of coal cost
ten dollars, what will the cord of wood come to? Now, if one bale"--
"But coal doesn't cost ten dollars," replied Mrs. Arles, with admirable
simplicity.
"Now, if one bale of Sea-Island"--
"Oh, my dear, I know nothing at all about it. Pray, don't ask me."
"Well," said Éloise, after a moment's wondering pause, in which she had
taken time to reflect that Mrs. Arles's corner of the estate was carried
on faultlessly, "it is too bad to vex you with my matters, when you have
as much as you can do in the house, yourself,"--and relapsed into what
she called her Pythagorean errors.
"Did you know," said Mrs. Arles, after a half-hour's silence, "that
Marlboro' has returned?"
"Marlboro'?" repeated Éloise, hesitatingly.
"Marlboro' of Blue Bluffs."
"Oh, yes. And five's eleven. No," said Éloise, absently and with half a
sigh. "I've never seen him, you know,--he's been in Kamtschatka and the
Moon so long. How did you know?"
"Hazel told me. Hazel wants to marry his Vane."
"His what?"
"Not his weathercock. Vane, his butler."
"That is why she behaved so. Dancing quicksilver. Then, perhaps, he'll
buy her. What a relief it would be!"
"Marlboro' is a master!" said Mrs. Arles, emphatically.
There was a good deal in the ensuing pause. For Éloise, in her single
year, had not half learned the neighborhood's gossip.
"A cruel man. Then it's not to be thought of. We shall have to buy Vane.
Though how it's to be done"--
"I didn't say he was a cruel man. He wouldn't think of interfering with
an ordinance of his overseers. I esteem his thoroughness. He has ideas.
But I might have said that he is a remarkable man."
"There'll be some pulling of caps soon, Hazel said to-day, in her
gibberish. I couldn't think what she meant."
"Blue Bluffs is a place to be mistress of. He's a woman-hater, though,
Mr. Marlboro',--believes in no woman capable of resisting him when he
flings the handkerchief, should he choose, but believes in none worth
choosing."
"We shall have to invite him here, Mrs. Arles," said Éloise,
mischievously, "and show him that there are two of us."
"That would never do!"
"Oh, I didn't mean so. Of course, I didn't mean so. How could I see any
one else sitting in"--And there were tears in her eyes and on her
trembling tones.
"My dear," said Mrs. Arles, "I am afraid, _apropos_ of nothing at all,
that you have isolated yourself from all society for too long a time
already."
Just here Hazel entered and replenished the hearth, stopping half-way,
with her armful of brush, to coquet an instant in the mirror, and adjust
the scarlet love-knot in her curls.
"There's a carriage coming up the avenue, Miss," said she, demurely.
"One of the boys"--
"What one?" asked Mrs. Arles.
"Vane," answered Hazel,--carmine staining her pretty olive cheek. "He
ran before it."
"Who can it be, at this hour?" said Éloise, half rising, with the pen in
her hand, and looking at Mrs. Arles, who did not stir.
As she spoke, there was a bustle in the hall, a slamming door, a voice
of command, the door opened, and a stranger stood among them, surveying
the long antique room with its diamonded windows flickering in every
pane, and the quaint hearth, whose leaping, crackling, fragrant blaze
lighted the sombre little person sitting beside it, and sparkled on the
half-bending form of that strange dark-haired girl, with her aquamarine
eyes bent full on his. He was wrapped, from head to foot, in a great
sweeping brigand's cloak, and a black, wide-brimmed hat, that had for an
instant slouched its shadow down his face, hung now in his gloved hand.
Dropping cloak and hat upon a chair with an invisible motion, he
advanced, an air of surprise lifting the heavy eyebrows so that they
strongly accented the contrast in hue between the lower half of his
face, tanned with wind and sun, and the wide, low brow, smooth as marble
itself, and above which swept one great wave of dark-brown hair.
Altogether, it was an odd, fiery impression that he made,--whether from
that golden-brown tint of skin that always seems full of slumbering
light, or from the teeth that flashed so beneath the _triste_ moustache
whenever the haughty lips parted and unbent their curve, or whether it
were a habit the eyes seemed to have of accompanying all his thoughts
with a play of flame.
"Really," said he,--and it may have been a subtile inner musical trait
of his tone that took everybody's will captive,--"I was not
aware"--making a long step into the room, with a certain lordly bearing,
yet almost at a loss to whom he should address himself. "I am Earl St.
George Erne. May I inquire"--
"My name is Éloise Changarnier," said its owner, drawing herself up, it
being incumbent on her to receive him.
He bowed, and advanced.
"Mrs. Arles, then, I presume,--my cousin Disbrowe Erne's cousin. I
expected to find you here."
Mrs. Arles, after a hurried acknowledgment, slipped over to Éloise.
"I have heard your father speak of him," she murmured. "They had
business-relations. He is Mr. Erne's legal heir, in default of
sufficient testament, I believe. He must have come to claim the
property."
"He!" said Éloise, with sublime scorn. "The property is mine! My father
left such commands!"
"But he can have no other reason for being here. Strange the lawyer
didn't write! He is certainly at home again."
"I have not had time to open the mail to-day; it lies in the hall.
Hazel! the mail-bag."
And directly afterward its contents were before her.
She hurriedly shifted and reshifted the letters of factors and agents,
and broke the seal of one, while Earl St. George Erne deliberately
warmed his long white hands at the blaze, and, supposing Éloise
Changarnier to be a guest of the lonely Mrs. Arles, wondered with some
angry amusement at her singular deportment.
Mrs. Arles was right. The letter in Éloise's hand, which had been
intended to reach her earlier, was from their old lawyer, but lately
returned from England. In it he informed her that the scrap of paper on
the authority of which she had assumed control of the property was
worthless,--and that not only was Earl St. George Erne the heir of his
cousin, but that some three years previously he had lent that cousin a
sum of money sufficient to cover much more than the whole value of The
Rim, taking in payment only promissory notes, whose indorser was since
insolvent. This sum--as Mr. Erne the elder had been already unfortunate
in several rash speculations--had been applied towards lifting a heavy
mortgage, and instituting improvements that would enable the farm soon
to repay the debt in yearly instalments. Added to this was the fact that
Earl St. George Erne, who had passed many years away from home upon
Congressional duties, had lately met with a severe reverse himself, and
had now nothing in the world except this lucky inheritance from his
cousin, and into this he had been inducted by all legal forms. This had
transpired during the lawyer's absence, (that person wrote,) as
otherwise some provision might have been made for Miss Changarnier,--and
not being able to meet with Mr. St. George Erne, he had learned the
facts from others. Meantime she would see, that, even if her father left
to her all he died possessed of, he died possessed of nothing.
The idea that anybody should dare to controvert her father's will flared
for a moment behind Éloise's facial mask, and illumined every feature.
Then her eye fell upon the mass of papers with the inextricable
confusion of their figures. An exquisitely ludicrous sense of
retributive justice seized her, heightened, perhaps, by some surprise
and nervous excitement; she fairly laughed,--a little, low bubble of a
laugh,--swept her letters into her apron, and, with the end of it
hanging over her arm, stepped towards Mr. St. George, and offered him
her hand. He thought she was a crazy girl. But there was the hand; he
took it, and, looking at her a moment, forgot to drop it,--an error
which she rectified.
"It seems, then, that you are the owner of The Rim," said she. "I had
been dreaming myself to be that very unfortunate person,--a nightmare
from which you wake me. The steward will show you over it to-morrow. You
will find your exchequer in the escritoire-drawer in the cabinet across
the hall. You will find the papers and accounts on that table, and I
wish you joy of them!"
So saying, after her succinct statement, she vanished.
Mrs. Arles lingered a moment to wind up her tatting. St. George, who
had at first stood like a golden bronze cast immovably in an irate
surprise, then shook his shoulders, and stepped towards the table and
carelessly parted the papers.
"Remarkable manuscript," said he, as if just then he could find nothing
else to say. "Plainer than type. A purely American hand. Is it that of
the young lady?"
"Miss Changarnier? Yes."
"She was apparent heiress?"
"Yes."
"What does she expect to become of her?"
"How can I tell?"
"You can conjecture."
"She has not yet begun to consider, herself, you see."
"She has other property?"
"None."
"Ah! A fine thing, usurping!"
Mrs. Arles did not reply.