Mrs. Averill had been absent a week, on a visit to friends in the
country, before Constance saw her again.
Constance, standing at the gate, watched her for a moment as she moved
among her flowers in the front garden. The old lady, turning, smiled a
glad welcome for the face on which the joy of youth and love and perfect
health were plain to see. “Ah, for shame!” she cried, looking over the
box row, “prying at an old lady alone with her flowers. Come in, my
dear; I forgive you. If you knew what I was saying to my flowers you
would like it; I was really thinking of you. There are flowers which
always remind me of certain people. Oh, no; I won’t tell you what I was
thinking.”
“Then,” said Constance, gaily, “I shall be equally cruel and not tell
you what delightful things were in my mind.”
“Let us trust that they were complimentary.”
She was so pretty and so sweetly gracious, with her underlying, pathetic
expression of abiding sorrow, that Constance felt tempted to say: “What
a beautiful old lady you are! I wonder what I shall be like if I live as
long.” She limited herself to saying: “Yes, they were as—well, as
complimentary as you could desire.”
“Thank you, my dear. That is saying a great deal. I suppose we never
outlive our vanity. Come in; it is too hot for you here.”
“No, there is shade enough. How is the general?”
“Very well, for him. He is never very strong. Just now he is worried
because of what your husband told him of Mr. Greyhurst’s visit, and that
miserable business of the club. You overheard it, he said. The general
blames himself, and, of course, did not mean to say a word about it to
Mr. Trescot. He does not think that Mr. Greyhurst did anything to
influence the vote.”
“Perhaps not; but I don’t like and I don’t trust that man.”
“I do not like him either, my dear. But we do hope that neither of you
will think that the old officers here have any other than good-will to
your husband. Mr. Greyhurst is a very strange man. He was divorced from
his wife, who died eighteen months ago. During the war he put her money
into Confederate securities. We have all found them rather insecure”;
and she smiled.
“Yes; so I have heard,” said Constance.
“At one time he was on General Hill’s staff, but he was constantly
quarreling, and the general says he was too impulsive and resentful to
be a good officer.”
“I wish some one else had the case,” said Constance.
“Well, my child, no one could quarrel with your husband, and, after all,
the general will be the senior counsel.”
Constance bent over and kissed the little old lady, saying: “Thank you;
you always comfort me; and then—oh!”
Greyhurst was leaning over the paling fence.
“Good evening,” he said. “May I come in? What good luck you have with
flowers! I see Mrs. Trescot’s every day as I go by. I fancy they grow
best for the ladies. I see that you have Coffin working for you. He can
hardly know much about flowers.”
“Oh, I am teaching him; he wanted work, and I am glad to help him.”
“A lazy, worthless vagabond, Mrs. Trescot, I fear; one of the squatters.
I am surprised he would work for Mr. Trescot after the way he talks.
These squatters are pretty saucy.”
“He is my gardener, not Mr. Trescot’s; and as yet my husband has made no
objection.” She was quietly amused at Coffin’s diplomacy.
Mrs. Averill, a little puzzled, looked up from the flowers she was
pruning.
“Well,” returned Greyhurst, “that is a comfortable view of the
situation.”
“It is very useful,” said Mrs. Trescot, “in married life for husband and
wife to know how to hold their tongues.”
“Quite true, my dear,” said Mrs. Averill, still a little in the dark.
“Therefore, when Coffin abuses my husband I shall say: ‘Are the
geraniums doing well?’ ‘Best in town, ma’am.’ Then I shall say: ‘Coffin,
I forgive you.’”
Greyhurst was not quite up to the light give and take of mere chat, to
which Constance was trained. Mrs. Averill saw in it a tactful effort to
reduce a serious question to a harmless level. The man felt himself
chaffed, and said: “You will find him out.”
“Not in work-hours,” she laughed. “Punctuality is my one virtue. That I
insist on, even in a husband.”
“Will you not come in?” said Mrs. Averill, not liking the man’s
ill-repressed look of embarrassed annoyance.
“No,” he said; “I retreat under fire. I must go. Mrs. Trescot is too
sharp for a poor old Confederate; I shall retire before worse comes.”
“That was what we did not do in the war, Mr. Greyhurst,” said Mrs.
Averill, gaily.
“I protest,” said Constance, “against considering me as an enemy.”
“Oh,” he returned, “after all, it is generally the man who retreats. I
ask for terms of honorable surrender.”
Mrs. Averill said, smiling, “You may march out with colors flying, and
here they are,” giving him a rose.
“And Mrs. Trescot’s?” he asked.
“I never give roses out of other people’s gardens, and just now there
are none in mine.”
He took off his hat, saying: “I am usually too late, or too early. That
is the fate of some of us. May I hope to be more fortunate when your
roses appear?”
“Perhaps, if you are very, very good,” she cried, relenting, and
disposed against her feelings to send him away in a good humor.
“Thank you,” he said, not ill pleased; and setting Mrs. Averill’s rose
in his buttonhole, left them alone.
“My dear Constance, were you not rather hard on that man?”
“No; he was insolent, and he meant to be; and I know he lied about
Coffin. Tom is a man who might kill you, but he would never work for a
man and lie about him. Heaven knows what he said to Mr. Greyhurst. He
owes him a grudge.”
“Yes, my dear; but it is worse than no use to make a man like John
Greyhurst angry. It is really a poor kind of triumph. You had better
have appeared not to notice what he said.”
“I could not help it. The man is unpleasant to me.”
“Best not to show it. Come in and let us talk over our plans. Do you
want to stop in Washington on your way North?”
As Constance walked homeward she acknowledged to herself that she had
been unwise, and knew as by instinct that a very little graciousness to
this man would have better served her husband. She smiled, as she went
down the dusty street, at her certainty that she could bring the man to
her feet like a fawning spaniel. She read with natural readiness the
eager eyes of this ungoverned personality. Then she saw in her mind the
fine lines of Trescot’s face, and thought of the restraint and patience
with which he refrained from urging upon her opinions which she felt
with intense feeling were their only ground of difference. The manners
of a man to his wife are a final test of conduct; and again she smiled,
as though at some fresh discovery, and the joy of its tender
recognition.
She was now a well-known figure in the town. Many persons acknowledged
her greeting. She went into two or three shops, helped a little child up
some steps, and left with every one a pleasing sense of liberal
cheerfulness, and of that charm of manner which made her somewhat
startling beauty a contribution to the joys of life.
As she came out of a shop she met Coffin.
“Well,” she said, “Tom, how is your brother-in-law?”
“He’s failing, ma’am.”
“Is there anything you need for him?”
“Yes, ma’am; I was going to ask you something. He says would you come
and read out of the Bible to him? We can’t any of us read well.”
She hesitated, and then said quickly, “Yes, I will come; but cannot his
wife read?”
“Yes; but not like you can; it’s you he wants.”
“I will come. Have you seen Mr. Greyhurst lately?”
“Yes; and I reckon I fooled him well.”
“You abused my husband,” she said merrily.
“Who told you that? I did—I did.”
“Mr. Greyhurst.”
“Well, he is a fool. He just swallowed it all like them big catfish
grabs a bait. Well, you’ll come soon? He ain’t going to live long.”
“I will come; I shall be there to-morrow.”
As Tom left her, she wondered why she had said she would read to the
man. In fact, she had no ready excuse for denying so simple a request.
Not far from her home she was aware of Greyhurst. He met her and turned
back, walking beside her.
“Mrs. Trescot,” he said quietly, “I was rude to you; I desire to ask
your pardon.”
“Indeed,” she returned sweetly, “we were both, I fear, a little cross.”
“Thank you; that is more than a pardon.” Pausing a moment, he added
gravely: “I have had, madam, a rather sad and disappointing life, and I
suppose it has soured me. Are you ever sorry for things you do?”
Constance was less amazed at the odd turn his talk had taken than a man
would have been, for men say easily to women things they never could say
to those of their own sex.
“Yes, I am sorry every day,” she returned.
“I was hasty in what I said to Mr. Trescot the other night. I fear that
you overheard us, and I wish now to assure you that I did not blackball
him at the club.”
“I wonder,” thought she, “if that be true.” Her temper was rising, but
she said coldly: “The whole matter is unimportant—entirely unimportant.”
“Not to me, madam, not to me; but Mr. Trescot has a way of being—”
“Stop, Mr. Greyhurst,” she said; “you forget yourself. We are going to
quarrel again. It seems to me that you have an extraordinary gift of
saying disagreeable things.”
“That is true. My life is one long story of regrets. I—there is no one I
should be less willing to annoy than you.”
He turned his dark eyes on her as he spoke, for now they were at her
gate, and she had stopped.
“I am sure of that,” she said.
Very strange to her was this strong man, big and athletic, with ardent
eyes and sudden familiarities, and impulsive speech and childlike
regrets.
She gave him her hand, saying good-by, but did not ask him to come in.
To her surprise, he bent over it, raised it to his lips and kissed it,
and lifting his hat, went on his way.
“Well,” she said, “next to Uncle Rufus, that is the most singular man I
ever met. I wonder if he is quite sound in mind.” She gave a queer
little glance at the hand he had kissed. Among the older gentlemen of
Creole descent it was not rare to see this pretty usage. But this man
she had not seen over a half-dozen times, and it was out of doors. She
went in, wisely resolving to say nothing, and much inclined to avoid
Greyhurst in future.