As he walked down the sea-wall to his hotel after the Grant reception,
Walter Willoughby said to himself that Mrs. Chase's coldness was the
very thing he desired, the thing he had been hoping for, devoutly, for
more than two years. The assertion was true. But though he had hoped, he
had hardly expected that her indifference would have become so complete.
If he did not exactly enjoy it, it had at least the advantage of leaving
him perfectly free. For purposes of his own (purposes which had nothing
to do with her), he had found it convenient to come to Florida this
winter. And now that St. Augustine was reached, these same private
purposes made him desire to remain there rather longer than he had at
first intended. After the Grant reception he told himself with relief
that there was now no reason, "no reason on earth," why he should not
stay as long as it suited him to do so. He therefore remained. He joined
in the amusements of the little winter-colony, the riding, driving,
sailing, walking, and fishing parties that filled the lovely days. Under
these conditions two weeks went by. Horace Chase had not as yet
returned; he was engaged in one of those bold enterprises of a
speculative nature which he called "a little operation;" occasionally
he planned and carried through one of these campaigns alone.
On the last night of this second week Ruth came into her sister's room.
It was one o'clock, but Dolly was awake; the moonlight, penetrating the
dark curtains, showed her who it was. "Is that you, Ruth?"
"Yes," Ruth answered. "Dolly, I want to go away."
Dolly raised herself, quickly. "Whenever you like," she answered. "We
can go to-morrow morning by the first train; they can pack one trunk,
and the rest can be sent after us. I shall be quite well enough to go."
For Dolly had been in bed all day, suffering severely; it was the only
day for two weeks which she had not spent, hour by hour, with her
sister. "You will have had a telegram from Mr. Chase," she went on; "we
can say that as explanation."
Ruth turned away. She left the details to her sister.
"Oh, don't go off and shut yourself up. Stay here with me," pleaded
Dolly, entreatingly.
"I'd rather be alone," Ruth began. But her voice broke. "No, I'm afraid!
I _will_ stay here. But you mustn't talk to me, Dolly."
"Not a word," Dolly responded; "if you will tell me, first, where you
have been?"
"Oh, only at Andalusia, as you know," Ruth answered, in the same
exhausted tone. "It isn't very late; every one stayed till after
twelve. And I came home as I went; that is, with Colonel and Mrs.
Atherton; they left me just now at the door."
"Alone?"
"No; with Walter Willoughby. But he did not come in; he only stood there
on the steps with me for a moment; that's all." While Ruth was saying
this, she had taken off her hat and gloves; then, in the dim light,
Dolly saw her sink down on the divan, and lie there, motionless. The
elder sister crept towards her on the outside of the bed (for the divan
was across its foot), and covered her carefully with a warm shawl; then,
faithful to her promise, she returned to her place in silence. And
neither of them spoke again.
On the divan Ruth was not fighting a battle; she had given up, she was
fleeing.
When, two years before, absorbed in her love for Walter, she had
insisted upon that long, solitary voyage northward from Charleston, so
that she could give herself up uninterruptedly to her own thoughts,
alone with them and the blue sea, the tidings which had met her at New
York as she landed--the tidings of her brother's death--had come upon
her almost like a blinding shaft of lightning. It was as if she, too,
had died. And she found her life again only partially, as she went
southward in the rushing trains, as she crossed the mountains in the
wagon, and arrived by night at dimly lighted L'Hommedieu. Sleepless
through both journeys--the voyage northward and the return by
land--worn out by the intense emotions which, in turn, had swept over
her, she had reached her mother's door at last so exhausted that her
vital powers had sunk low. Then it was that the gentle care of the man
who knew nothing of the truth had saved her--saved her from the
dangerous tension of her own excitement, and, later, from a death-like
faintness which, if prolonged, would have been her end. For when she
beheld the changed, drawn, unconscious face of her mother, that "mother"
who had seemed to her as much a fixed part of her life as her own
breath, her heart had failed her, failed not merely in the common
meaning of the phrase, but actually; its pulsations grew so weak that a
great dread seized her--the instinctive shrinking of her whole young
being from the touch of death. In her terror, she had fled to her
husband, she had taken refuge in his boundless kindness. "Oh, I am
dying, Horace; I _must_ be dying! Save me!" was her frightened cry.
For she was essentially feminine. In her character, the womanhood, the
sweet, pure, physical womanhood, had a strong part; it had not been
refined away by over-development of the mental powers, or reduced to a
subordinate position by ascetic surroundings. It remained, therefore,
what nature had made it. And it gave her a great charm. But its presence
left small place for the more masculine qualities, for stoical fortitude
and courage; she could not face fear; she could not stand alone; and
she had always, besides, the need to be cherished and protected, to be
held dear, very dear.
This return to her husband was sincere as far as it carried her. From
one point of view, it might be said that she had never left him. For her
love for Walter had contained no plan; and her girlish affection for
Horace Chase remained what it always had been, though the deeper
feelings were now awake underneath.
Time passed; the days grew slowly to months, and the months at last
became a long year, and then two. Little by little she fell back into
her old ways; she laughed at Dolly's sallies, she talked and jested with
her husband. She sometimes asked herself whether those buried feelings
would ever rise and take possession of her again. But Walter remained
absent--that was the thing that saved her. A personal presence was with
her always a powerful influence. But an absence was equally powerful in
its quieting effect; it produced temporarily more or less oblivion. She
had never been able to live on memories. And she had a great desire at
all times to be happy. And, therefore, to a certain degree, she did
become happy again; she amused herself with fair success at Newport and
New York.
And then Walter had re-entered the circle of her life. And by a fatality
this had come to her at St. Augustine. On the morning of the day of the
Grant reception, she had suddenly learned that he was in town. And she
knew (it came like a wave over her) that she dreaded the meeting.
There had been no spoken confidences between the sisters. But Dolly had
instantly extended all the protection that was in her power, and even
more; for she had braved the displeasure of her brother-in-law by
maintaining that his wife was ill, and that she (Dolly) knew more of the
illness than he did. And then, suddenly, this elder sister was put in
the wrong. For Ruth herself appeared, declaring gayly that she was well,
perfectly well. The gayety was assumed. But the declaration that she was
well was a truthful one; she was not only well, but her heart was
beating with excitement. For the idea had taken possession of her that
this was the very opportunity she needed to prove to herself (and to
Dolly also) that she was changed, that she was calm and indifferent. And
it would be a triumph also to show this indifference to Walter. Her
acts, her words, her every intonation should make this clear to him;
delightfully, coldly, brilliantly clear!
Yet, into this very courage had come, as an opposing force, that vague
premonition which had made her suddenly begin to sing "The Stirrup Cup."
But a mood of renewed gayety had followed; she had entered the
improvised ball-room with pulses beating high, sure that all was well.
Before the evening was over she knew that all was ill; she knew that at
the bottom of everything what had made her go thither was simply the
desire to see Walter Willoughby once more.
When, a few days later, her husband told her that he was going north,
with one of her sudden impulses she said, "Take me with you." He had not
consented. And she knew that she was glad that he had not. Certain tones
of his voice, however, when he spoke of his pride in her, had touched
her deeply; into her remembrance came the thought of all he had done for
her mother, all he had done for Jared, and she strengthened herself
anew: she would go through with it and he should know nothing; he should
remain proud of her always, always.
But this was not a woman who could go on unmoved seeing daily the man
she loved; those buried feelings rose again to the surface, and she was
powerless to resist them. All she could do (and this required a constant
effort) was to keep her cold manner unaltered.
Walter, meanwhile, was not paying much heed to Mrs. Chase. At the Grant
reception, he had been piqued by her sarcasms; he had smarted under the
surprise which her laughing coolness and gayety gave him. But this
vexation soon faded; it was, after all, nothing compared with the great
desire which he had at this particular moment to find himself entirely
free from entanglements of that nature. He was therefore glad of her
coldness. He continued to see her often; in that small society they
could not help but meet. And occasionally he asked himself if there was
nothing underneath this glittering frost? No least little scrap left of
her feeling of two years before? But, engrossed as he was with his own
projects, this curiosity remained dormant until suddenly these projects
went astray; they encountered an obstacle which for the time being made
it impossible for him to pursue them further. This happened at the end
of his second week in St. Augustine. Foiled, and more or less irritated,
and having also for the moment nothing else to do, he felt in the mood
to solace himself a little with the temporary entertainment of finding
out (of course in ways that would be unobserved by others) whether there
was or was not anything left of the caprice which the millionaire's
pretty wife had certainly felt for him when he was in Florida before.
For that was his idea of it--a caprice. He saw only one side of Ruth's
nature; to him she seemed a thoughtless, spoiled young creature, highly
impressionable, but all on the surface; no feeling would last long with
her or be very deep, though for the moment it might carry her away.
What he did was so little, during this process of finding out, and what
he said was so even less, that if related it would not have made a
narrative, it would have been nothing to tell. But the woman he was
studying was now like a harp: the lightest touch of his hand on the
strings drew out the music. And when, therefore, upon that last night,
taking advantage of the few moments he had with her alone at her door,
after her friends from the Barracks had passed on--when he then said a
word or two, to her it was fatal. His phrase meant in reality nothing;
it was tentative only. But Ruth had no suspicion of this; her own love
was direct, uncomplicated, and overmastering; she supposed that his was
the same. She looked at him dumbly; then she turned, entering the house
with rapid step and hurrying up the stairs, leaving the sleepy servant
who came forward to meet her to close the door. Fatal had his words been
to her; fatally sweet!
The two sisters left St. Augustine the next morning; in the evening they
were far down the St. John's River on their way to Savannah. They sat
together near the bow of the steamer, watching in silence the windings
of the magnificent stream; the moonlight was so bright that they could
see the silvery long-moss draping the live-oaks on shore, and, in the
tops of signal cypresses, bare and gaunt, the huge nests of the
fish-hawks, like fortifications.
"Poor Chase! covering her with diamonds, and giving her everything;
while _I_ can turn her round my finger!" Walter said to himself when he
heard they had gone.
On the day of his wife's departure--that sudden departure from St.
Augustine of which he as yet knew nothing, Horace Chase, in Chicago, was
bringing to a close his "little operation"; by six o'clock, four
long-headed men had discovered that they had been tremendously
out-generalled. Later in the evening, three of these men happened to be
standing together in a corridor of one of the Chicago hotels, when the
successful operator, who was staying in the house, came by chance
through the same brightly lighted passage-way.
"I guess you think, Chase, that you've got the laugh on us," said one of
the group. "But just wait a month or two; we'll make you walk!"
"Oh, the devil!" answered Chase, passing on.
"He's as hard as flint!" said the second of the discomfited trio, who,
depressed by his losses (which to him meant ruin), had a lump in his
throat. "There isn't such a thing as an ounce of feeling in Horace
Chase's _whole_ composition, damn him!"