IT takes a long time for a country neighborhood to recover from a
sensation. Three or four years after Madame Koller, or Eliza Peyton
had disappeared along with her mother and Ahlberg, people were still
discussing her wonderful ways. Mr. Cole was paying his court mildly to
Olivia Berkeley, but in his heart of hearts he had not forgotten his
blonde enslaver. The Colonel was the same Colonel--his shirt-ruffle
rushed out of his bosom as impetuously as of old. He continued to
hate the Hibbses. Dashaway had been turned out to grass, but another
screw continued to carry the Colonel’s colors to defeat on the county
race track. Olivia, too, had grown older, and a great deal prettier.
A chisel called the emotions, is always at work upon the human
countenance--a face naturally humane and expressive grows more so, year
by year.
It is not to be expected that she was very happy in that time. Life
in the country, varied by short visits to watering places in the
summer and occasionally to cities in the winter, is dull at best for a
girl grown up in the whirl of civilization. There came a time--after
Pembroke, taking Miles with him had gone to Washington, when life began
to look very black to Olivia Berkeley’s eyes. She suffered for want of
an object in life. She loved her father very much, but that cheerful,
healthful and robustious old person hardly supplied the craving to love
and tend which is innate in every woman’s heart. It is at this point in
their development that women of inferior nature begin to deteriorate.
Not so with Olivia Berkeley. Life puzzled and displeased her. She found
herself full of energy, with many gifts and accomplishments, condemned
in the flower of her youth to the dull routine of a provincial life in
the country. She could not understand it--neither could she sit down in
hopeless resignation and accept it. She bestirred herself. Books there
were in plenty at Isleham--the piano was an inestimable comforter. She
weathered the storm of ennui in this manner, and came to possess a
certain content--to control the outward signs of inward restlessness.
Meanwhile she read and studied feverishly, foolishly imagining that
knowing a great number of facts would make her happy. Of course it did
not--but it made her less unhappy.
As for Pembroke, the fate which had fallen hard on Olivia Berkeley had
fondly favored him. He was not only elected to Congress, but he became
something of a man after he got there. The House of Representatives
is a peculiar body--peculiarly unfavorable to age, and peculiarly
favorable to youth. Pembroke, still smarting under his mortification,
concluded to dismiss thoughts of any woman from his mind for the
present, and devote himself to the work before him. With that view,
he scanned closely his environment when he went to Washington. He saw
that as a young member he was not expected to say anything. This left
him more leisure to study his duties. He aspired to be a lawyer--always
a lawyer. He found himself appointed to a committee--and his fellow
members on it very soon found that the quiet young man from Virginia
was liable to be well informed on the legal questions which the House
and the committees are constantly wrangling over. Every man on that
committee became convinced that the quiet young man would some day make
his mark. This was enough to give him a good footing in the House.
His colleagues saw that election after election, the young man was
returned, apparently without effort on his part, for Pembroke was not
a demagogue, and nothing on earth would have induced him to go into a
rough and tumble election campaign. At last it got so that on the few
occasions when he rose in his place, he had no trouble in catching the
Speaker’s eye. He was wise enough not to be betrayed by his gift of
oratory into speech-making--a thing the House will not tolerate from a
young member. He had naturally a beautiful and penetrating voice and
much grace and dignity in speaking. These were enough without risking
making himself ridiculous by a premature display as an orator. He
sometimes thrilled when the great battles were being fought before his
eyes--it was in the reconstruction time--and longed for the day which
he felt would come when he might go down among the captains and the
shouting, but he had the genius of waiting. Then he was a pleasant man
at dinner--and his four years army service had given him a soldierly
frankness and directness. He lived with Miles in a simple and quiet
way in Washington. He did not go out much, as indeed he had no time.
He became quite cynical to himself about women. The pretty girls from
New York were quite captivated with the young man from Virginia. They
wanted to know all about his lovely old place, especially one charming
bud, Miss de Peyster.
“Come and see it,” Pembroke would answer good-naturedly. “Half the
house was burned up by our friends, the enemy--the other half is
habitable.”
“And haven’t you miles and miles of fields and forests, like an English
nobleman?” the gay creature asked.
“Oh yes. Miles and miles. The taxes eat up the crops, and the crops eat
up the land.”
“How nice,” cried the daughter of the Knickerbockers. “How much more
romantic it is to have a broken down old family mansion and thousands
of acres of land, than to be a stockbroker or a real estate man--and
then to have gone through the whole war--and to have been promoted on
the field--”
Pembroke smiled rather dolefully. His ruined home, his mortgaged acres,
Miles’ life-long trouble, his four years of marching and starving and
fighting, did not appear like romantic incidents in life, but as cruel
blows of fate to him.
But Helena de Peyster was a pleasant girl, and her mother was gentle,
amiable, and well-bred. They had one of the gayest and most charming
houses in Washington, and entertained half the diplomatic corps at
dinner during every week. They would gladly have had Pembroke oftener.
He came in to quiet dinners with them, assumed a fatherly air with
Helena, and liked them cordially. They were good to Miles too, who
sometimes went to them timidly on rainy afternoons when he would not be
likely to find anybody else.
So went the world with Pembroke for some years until one evening, going
to his modest lodgings, he found a letter with Colonel Berkeley’s big
red seal on it awaiting him.
He and Miles dined--then Pembroke, over the wine, opened the Colonel’s
billet. It was brief.
“MY DEAR BOY,--Olivia and I are coming to Washington to spend the
winter. I have not been to the cursed town since the winter before the
war, when Wigfall was in the Senate, and Floyd was Secretary of War.
John B. Floyd was one of the greatest men the State of Virginia ever
produced. Now, I want to go to a decent tavern--but Olivia, who is a
girl of spirit, won’t do it. She insists on having a furnished house,
and I’ve engaged one through an agent. Don’t suppose it will suit,
but Olivia swears it will. We’ll be up in the course of a week or
two, and will let you know. Damme if I expect to find a gentleman in
public life--always excepting yourself, my dear boy. I inclose you our
address. Olivia desires her regards to you and her particular love to
Miles, also mine.
“Sincerely, your friend,
“TH. BERKELEY.”
“That’s pleasant news,” said Miles.
“Very pleasant,” replied Pembroke, without smiling in the least. He
was glad to see the Colonel, but he was still sore about Olivia.
Whenever he had been at home, the same friendly intercourse had gone on
as before--but there was always an invisible restraint between them.
Colonel Berkeley had noticed it, and at last ventured to question
Olivia about it--when that young woman had turned on her father and
cowed him by a look of her eye. There were some liberties the Colonel
could not take with his daughter.
Promptly, the Colonel and Olivia arrived.
The house, which was after the conventional pattern of the Washington
furnished house of those days, struck a chill to Colonel Berkeley’s
heart.
“My love,” he said, disconsolately, looking at the dull grates in the
two square drawing-rooms, “I’m afraid I’ll lose all my domestic virtues
around this miserable travesty of a hearth.”
“Just wait, papa,” answered Olivia, with one of her encouraging smiles.
“I knew how it would be. Wait until some of those big boxes are
unpacked that you swore so about.”
When the boxes were unpacked, they were found to contain the old
fashioned brass andirons and fenders that had shone upon the cheerful
hearths at Isleham for many years. Olivia in a trice, had the grates
out and managed to have a wood fire sparkling where once they were.
Then she produced a great porcelain lamp they had brought from
France with them, and some tall silver candlesticks and candelabra,
which vastly improved the mantels, and she re-arranged the tasteless
furniture and bric-à-brac with such skill that she cheated herself as
well as others into believing them pretty.
It was rather an effort to Pembroke, his first visit. He would not take
Miles with him lest he should seem to fear to go alone. It was now five
years past. Naturally they had met often, but in some way, this meeting
impressed him differently. He had at last waked up to the fact that he
could not forget Olivia Berkeley. It angered him against himself--and
so it was in rather an unamiable mood that he left the House early, and
took his way through a drizzling rain to the Berkeleys’. When he rung
the bell, Petrarch’s familiar black face greeted him.
“Hi, howdy, Marse French. It do my heart good ter see you. Ole Marse,
I spec he everlastin’ cuss when he fin’ out you been here an’ he ain’t
home. Miss Livy, she in de settin’ room.”
“And how are you all getting on here?” asked Pembroke, as Petrarch
officiously helped him off with his great-coat.
“Tollerbul, tollerbul, sir. Old marse, he mighty orkard sometimes. He
swar an’ takes de Lord’s name in vain, spite o’ de commandment ‘Doan
never you swar at all.’ I try ter make him behave hisse’f ter de
policemens an’ sech, but he quile all de time he gwine long de street.”
He ushered Pembroke through the drawing-room, into a little room
beyond. On a sofa drawn up to the wood fire, sat Olivia, making a
pretty home-like picture, in the half light, contrasted with the dreary
drawing-room beyond, and the dismal drizzle outside.
They had not met for nearly two years. The session of Congress had
lasted almost through the year, and when he had been in the county
last, Olivia was away in the mountains. He noticed instantly that
she was very, very pretty, but her beauty had taken a graver and
more womanly cast. Oh, the elaborate ease, to cover the overpowering
awkwardness of those former tête-à-tête meetings! Pembroke felt this
acutely when he first saw her--but it vanished strangely at the moment
that Olivia held out her little hand and spoke to him. Her voice, her
manner, were pleasantly natural. It carried him back to the old days
when he was gradually slipping into love with her. How grateful and
soothing had been her native charm as an escape from Madame Koller’s
exaggerated heroics!
“Papa will be sorry to miss you,” she said pointing him to the easiest
chair, and putting her feet comfortably on a footstool.
“Do you think you’ll like it?” asked Pembroke.
“That’s just what I was going to ask you.”
“You mustn’t ask me. You know Congressmen are received in society only
on sufferance. I exist on the borders as it were, and am permitted to
dwell there in spite of, not because I am a Congressman.”
Olivia smiled and nodded her head.
“I know how it is,” she said, “I’ve heard.”
“Now what do you want to do first?”
“I think,” said Olivia, propping her rounded chin on her hand, “I
should like to go to a ball. I have not been to a real ball for six
years--not since we left Paris. You may be surprised at this frivolity
in one of my years--you know I am getting out of my twenties awfully
fast--but it is still a fact.”
“Your age is certainly imposing. There is a superb ball to be given at
the Russian Legation next week--the Minister is a new man--just come. I
received a card, and I can get one for you and your father through one
of the secretaries of legation who is my friend.”
Pembroke produced a handsome invitation card, bearing the name of the
Russian Minister and Madame Volkonsky.
Olivia’s eyes sparkled. She loved balls as the normal girl always does.
“And I shall go out to-morrow morning and buy a ball gown. Shall I have
white tulle and water lilies, or peach-blow satin?”
“White, by all means,” answered Pembroke, gravely. “I like to see women
in white.”
“A white gown,” continued Olivia, reflectively, “is always safest.”
“I suppose, you will go to balls all the time after this one. It will
be like the first taste of blood to a tiger.”
“Yes, after a long period of--what do you call it--graminivorous
diet. By the way, some friends of yours came to see me to-day. The De
Peysters.”
“Yes, I like them very much. Helena is a charming little thing.”
“Delightful girl,” echoed Olivia, with much more emphasis than the
subject required.
Pembroke had only intended to pay an ordinary afternoon call, but it
was so unexpectedly pleasant sitting there with Olivia that the fall of
night and the Colonel’s return both took him unawares. The Colonel was
delighted to see him.
“This is pleasant,” cried he, standing with his broad back to the
fire, and stroking his white mustache. “I brought my riding horse up,
and Olivia’s, too, and I sent Petrarch around this morning to make
a permanent arrangement. The rogue of a livery man asked me such a
stupendous price that I was forced to send him word I didn’t desire
board for myself and my daughter included with the horses. Ah, times
are changed--times are changed! Sad lot of you in public life now,
begad.”
“Very sad lot, sir.”
“If we could only get back to Old Hickory in the White House, and the
mail twice a week from New York, brought in the stage coach--”
“And Old Hickory’s _penchant_ for Mrs. Eaton, and half the Congress
getting tight at the White House New Year’s Day. We ought to have it
all.”
“Yes--yes--Zounds, sir, we ought to have it all!”
Then there was the ball to talk about, and presently, Pembroke
declining the Colonel’s hearty invitation to stay and dine off whatever
miserable fare a city market afforded, and try some port he had brought
from Virginia, knowing there was nothing fit to drink to be had in
Washington, he left. Olivia’s invitation to stay was rather faint--had
it been heartier, perhaps he might have remained. As it was, he went
home, and surprised Miles by coming in whistling jovially.