IT took two or three days for Pembroke to recover from his fatigue
and excitement. Perhaps he did not hasten his complete recuperation.
It was surely pleasanter to come down to a twelve o’clock breakfast,
served piping hot by Petrarch, with Olivia to pour his coffee for him,
with that morning freshness which is so becoming to a woman, than the
loneliness of Malvern, with poor Miles’ sad face and pathetic effort
to forget himself and the wreck of his boyish life. Cave had taken the
boy to his cabin in the pine woods to stay some days, so that there
was nothing to call Pembroke back home. Miles was happier than for a
long time. Cave spoke to him with a certain bracing encouragement that
Olivia’s pitiful sympathy and his brother’s sharp distress lacked.
There was more of the salt of common sense in what Cave said than
in Olivia’s unspoken consolation, which much as it charmed the boy,
sometimes left him sadder than it found him. She was so sorry for him
that she could not always disguise it.
So a few days went on, and Pembroke began to find Olivia every hour
pleasanter, more winning--until one night in his own room, after Olivia
had played to him half the evening and had read to him the other half,
he took himself to task. In the first place, he did not want to marry
at all then. He had a great many things to do first. Then, there was a
serious obstacle in the way, even had all the rest been smoothed out.
The Pembroke fortune, such as it was, was on its last legs. With the
negroes gone, and the land frightfully reduced in value, there was
only a slender competence left--and those two years in Paris had cost
a pretty penny. Only during the last few weeks Pembroke had waked up
to the true condition of affairs. Miles must be provided for, and upon
a scale more suited to Pembroke’s tastes than his resources. Then,
there remained for the elder brother, nothing. He had not thought of
this when he borrowed money at a high interest so merrily while he was
in Paris--but as he was every day awaking to his manlier self, this
had come home to him in its true light. He was not a man to ask any
woman to share poverty with him. To have brought a woman down, as his
wife, from a state of former luxury, would have been a misery too keen.
Rather would he have died--for false as well as true pride had great
share in him. Therefore, he thought, as he sat in his room smoking, it
would be better that he did not get his wings scorched. It was to his
credit that he did not allow any supposition that Olivia cared for him
to enter into his calculation.
“Sweet Olivia,” he thought to himself, “some luckier man will win you.
I shall be ten years too late,”--and then he sighed, and presently
began to whistle cheerfully. But one thing was sure. He would never
marry Elise Koller. Even though his eyes were opened now to the fact
that he was virtually a ruined man, there was no longer any chance that
the baser part of him would succumb to that temptation.
It was pleasant--especially the Colonel’s jolly company, to say nothing
of Petrarch’s, who highly approved of Pembroke, and remarked as he
industriously brushed his clothes on the last night, “I clar, Marse
French, you sutny do favor yo’ par. I ’member de time he made that
argyument when Marse Jack Thornton, he mos’ kilt Marse Spott Randolph
on ’count o’ Miss Tilly Corbin. We had ole wuks dat time. ’Twuz when
me an’ Marse was co’tin’ missis. I tell yo’ par, ‘A eye fur a eye,’ ‘a
toof fur a toof, an’ I will resist de cripplers, say de Lord.’ Marster
an’ me went to de cote house ter hear him. I tho’t ’bout it de yether
night, when de white folks was a crowdin’ ’roun’ an’ shakin’ yo’ han’
an’ clappin’ you on de back. Arter you went up st’yars, Miss Livy, she
come an’ say to me, ‘Petrarch, did you hear de speech?’ I say, ‘Lord,
honey, dat I did. You jes’ oughter seen de folks whoopin’ an’ hollerin’
and Marse French he stannin’ up, lookin’ handsome like he mar’--you
aint forgit yo’ mar, has you, Marse French?”
“No,” said Pembroke.
“I reklecks her when she warn’t no older ’n Miss Livy. She was kinder
light on her feet like Miss Livy, and she had dem shinin’ eyes, an dat
ar way Miss Livy got o’ larfin’ at yer. She an’ mistis’ was mighty
good frien’s, jes’ like you par an’ marse, an’ David an’ Jonadab. Dey
use ter come here an’ stay a week--yo’ mar come in de kerridge wid Miss
’Lizbeth an’ Marse Miles, an’ yaller Betsy--she was a likely nigger,
but a dretful sinner,--an’ you on a little pony ridin’ by yo’ par’s
side. Lordy how you did useter tease Miss Livy an’ dem chillen! Some
times you mek Miss Livy cry--an’ cry, an’ de tears wuz like de waters
o’ Babylon.”
“What a brute I must have been! Why didn’t you or yellow Betsy get me a
lathering?”
“Hi, Marse French, boys is boys. Dey c’yarn help bein’ troublesome an’
dirty an’ teasin’. Gord done made ’em so. ‘My people is rambunctious,’
He say, an’ I ain’t never seen no boys ’cept what was dirty an’
tormentin’.”
At last, Pembroke felt he had no excuse for remaining longer at
Isleham, and besides, he was seriously afraid of falling in love with
Olivia. So he took his way back to Malvern.
While at Isleham, he had got one or two cocked-hatted notes from Madame
Koller. But on reaching home he found that one arrived with great
regularity every morning and occasionally during the day beside. The
tenor of all was the same. Why did he not come to see his friend. She
was so lonely. The country was _triste_ at best. Pembroke felt very
like asking her if the country was so triste then why did she not go
away. But he was a gentleman as well as a man, and was patient with
women even in their follies.
At last, when he could put it off no longer--as indeed he had no
tangible reason for not going to see Madame Koller--he went. She
received him in her little sitting-room, adapting at the time one of
her prettiest poses for his benefit. She had heard of his triumph
and was full of pretty congratulations--but in some way, she could
not strike the note of praise that would harmonize. She didn’t know
anything about professional men. She had lived in Europe long enough
to get the notion that it was rather vulgar to work for pay--not that
Pembroke got any pay in this case. But if Pembroke had married her,
that weather-beaten sign “Attorney-at-Law” would have come down from
his office in the village, and the office itself would have lost its
tenant--so she thought.
Pembroke always felt a delicacy in asking her to sing, but Madame
Koller often volunteered to do it, knowing Pembroke’s passionate
fondness for music, and feeling that truly on that ground they were
in sympathy. Olivia Berkeley’s finished and charming playing pleased
and soothed him, but it was nothing to the deep delight that Madame
Koller’s music gave him--for when she sat down to the piano and
playing her own accompaniments sang to him in her fervid way, it
simply enchanted him--and Madame Koller knew it. Although he was
exasperatingly cool under the whole battery of her smiles and glances,
yet when she sang to him, he abandoned himself to the magic of a voice.
While she seated herself at the piano and began to sing, Pembroke,
stretched out in a vast chair, glanced sidewise at her. She did not
mouth and grimace in singing as many women do. She opened her wide,
handsome mouth, and seemed only to be calmly smiling, while her voice
soared like a bird. She had, in short, no amateurish tricks.
Her profile, with its masses of yellow hair, was imposing. She was no
mere slip of a girl. When she had sung to him for the best part of an
hour she thought the time had come for her reward. So she went back to
her place on the sofa near the fire and posed beautifully. Pembroke
almost groaned. The singing was delicious enough, but the sentimental
hair-splitting had long since palled--and besides, the lady was too
much in earnest.
“You remained several days, did you not, at the Colonel’s?”
“Yes,” said Pembroke, cheerfully, and thinking gloomily how very like a
matrimonial lecture was the ensuing conversation. These interviews with
Madame Koller always disinclined him extremely to giving any woman the
power to ask him searching questions. Only, he did not believe Olivia
Berkeley was an inquisitive woman--she was quite clever enough to find
out what she wished to know without asking questions.
The only remark Madame Koller made in reply was, “Ah,”--and lapsed into
silence, but the silence did not last long.
“Olivia must have been very charming.”
“Immensely,” answered Pembroke, with much heartiness, and wishing
Madame Koller would sing again. He hardly knew which was the more
exasperating, Madame Koller’s tone to him in speaking of Olivia, or
Olivia’s tone in speaking of Madame Koller.
“Olivia is so excessively tame,” said she, after a pause. “So cold--so
self-contained.”
“I don’t think she lacks spirit, though,” responded Pembroke, with
the easy air of a man discussing the most trivial subject, although
he swore mentally at Madame Koller for introducing the subject. “Miss
Berkeley has the reticence of a gentlewoman. But by heaven! I wouldn’t
like to arouse that spirit of hers.”
Madame Koller sighed. It was a real and genuine sigh. She was thinking
how hard and strange it was that she was not permitted by fate to be
either a complete gentlewoman or a complete artist. She had learned in
her student days, and in that brief and brilliant artistic period, to
be reticent about her money matters, but that was all. She saw even in
her Aunt Sally Peyton, whom she regarded as an interfering old person,
without any style whatever, a certain air of security in what she said
and did--a calm indifference to her world--that Madame Koller was keen
enough to know marked the gentlewoman--which she, Elise Koller, who had
ten times the advantages, and had twenty times the knowledge of the
world that old Mrs. Peyton had, was never quite sure--there just was a
little uncertainty--ah, it was very little, but it made a great deal of
difference.
“America seems queer enough to me now,” she said presently.
“Very likely,” answered Pembroke. “You have remained here much longer
already than I expected.”
Madame Koller at this fixed her eyes upon Pembroke in a way that made
him wince. A blush, too, showed through his dark skin.
“Can you--can you--say _that_ to me?” she cried.
Like any other man under the same circumstances, Pembroke remained
perfectly silent--because it is a well-known fact that when a woman
takes the initiative in tender speeches, the man, if he be a man, is at
once silenced. But Madame Koller was fluent.
“I know what you think of me,” she said. This surprised Pembroke, who
really did not know what he thought of her. “You think me the weakest
woman in the world. But I have been strong. While my husband lived,
heaven knows what I endured. He was the cruelest creature God ever
made.”
Pembroke thought it was the same old story of continental husbands
and wives. He had once known a marchese who made no secret that he
occasionally beat his marchesa. But Madame Koller almost made him smile
at the grotesqueness of what she told him, although it was real enough
to her to make her weep in the telling.
“He was always ill--or imagining himself ill. He took medicine until
he nearly drove me crazy with his bottles and plasters. He lived in a
bath chair when he was as well able to walk about as I was--and I was
chained to that bath chair. Everything made him ill--even my singing.
He would not let me sing--only think of it--think of it.”
Madame Koller glanced at Pembroke through her tears. He had stood up
and was saying something vague but comforting. The late Mr. Koller was
indeed a dreadful reminiscence.
“Banish that time as far as you can,” he said. “The present is yours.”
“Is it?” she said. “Now I will say to you that black as that past is,
it is not so black as this present. Now I endure torments far greater
than any I felt then.”
Pembroke’s strong jaw was set resolutely. He felt rising tumultuously
within him that masculine pity that has wrecked many men. He would not,
if he could help it, prove false to himself with this woman, in spite
of her tears and her voice.
“What have you to say to me?” she demanded, after a pause.
“This,” answered Pembroke, with much outward boldness. “That your
coming here is an unsuccessful experiment. The same things that made
this country life distasteful to you in your childhood even, make it
distasteful now. This is not your native atmosphere. You will never be
anything but morbid and wretched here. This country life is like death
to you--and almost like death to me.”
“Then why--why--”
“Why do I stand it? Because I must. Because as a man, I must. Here is
my work, my duty, my manhood. Don’t be surprised to hear me talk this
way. You haven’t heard me speak of these things before--but still they
govern me some--more of late than they used to do. There is a good
deal here that is melancholy enough to me--but I would be a poltroon
if I started out to make life amusing. You see, I have considerable
ambition--and that impels me to work.”
Madame Koller surveyed him keenly. By degrees the fire of resentment
rose in her eyes. She was angered at his coolness, at his calm
reasoning. Prudence in love is commonly regarded as a beggarly virtue
by women.
“After all,” she said, “what are you to me? Nothing but a whim, a
caprice. But had you spoken to me a year ago as you do now, I should
not be here.”
Pembroke remembered with a blush some slight love-making episodes, and
her tone stung him.
“I can play the rascal if you like,” he said, angrily. “I can pretend
to feel what I don’t feel, but I warn you, I shan’t be a pleasant
rascal. If ever I take to villainy I shall probably take to drink and
gambling too.”
Madame Koller sat down discontentedly on the sofa. When Pembroke had
arrived that afternoon her intention had been to determine one thing
or another--for life at The Beeches could not be endured much longer.
It mattered little what old Madame Schmidt said, but her cousin,
Ahlberg, was getting restive and threatened to leave her--and she was
mortally afraid of being left in America alone. But what progress
had she made? None. And suppose Pembroke were to leave that house
her lover, would it not be the greatest act of folly she had ever
committed?--and she had had her follies. And so she was tossed hither
and thither by prudence and feeling, and condemning her own weakness,
yet tamely submitted to it.
Meanwhile, Pembroke had decided for himself. This thing could go on no
longer. He felt at that moment as if he had had enough of love-making
to last him for the next ten years. And besides, he had withstood
enough to make him feel that he did not care to withstand any more. So
he picked up his hat with an air of great determination.
“I must leave you,” he said. “Elise, you have given me many happy
hours, but it would be ruin for us to become either more or less than
friends.”
Madame Koller had thought herself thoroughly prepared for this, which
her own sense told her was literally true. But suddenly, without a
moment’s warning, without her own volition, and almost without her
knowledge, she burst into violent weeping. Was it for this she had come
the interminable distance--that she had suffered horrors of loneliness
and ennui? Alas, for her!
Pembroke was appalled. Apparently all was to do over again, but there
was no longer any room for weakness. His mind was made up and could not
be unmade. He only stood silent, therefore, biting his lip, while his
face grew crimson.
For the first time in his life he hailed Ahlberg as a relief--for at
that moment Ahlberg appeared on the threshold. Madame Koller pulled
herself together as quickly as she had given way.
“Ah, Louis, you are welcome. Do not go yet,” to Pembroke.
Pembroke did not take the hint. He went immediately.