After debating the matter for ten years or so, John Hertford had made
up his mind to adopt St. Petersburg as a place of residence, and was
now on his way back to New York, to order his affairs to that end.
He was not rich, but then he was not extravagant, and his moderate
income was more than sufficient for the wants of a man who had no one
dependent on him, and who had entirely made up his mind not to marry.
He had been in love more than once in his life, and yet, ardent as his
feelings had been for the objects who aroused that emotion in him, he
had never had quite the feeling to make him long to call any woman
his wife. The truth was owned to himself in his secret heart--that
word “wife” possessed for him a significance which involved so much
that he had often wondered, in early youth, if he could ever actually
find, in one personality, all the qualities of mind and heart and
person which he looked for. In maturer years, he had quite satisfied
himself that the idea was absurd. So he abandoned his youthful dreams,
without any great ado, especially as he had found that life had certain
positive compensations for their loss. He made up his mind, however,
that he could not accept less than his ideal in marriage, and so,
with more or less contentment, he had shaped his life to the demands
and dimensions of a bachelor existence, and was looking forward with
pleasure to the more deliberate and satisfactory settlement of himself
and his belongings at the brilliant capital on his return. He was not
indolent, and his taste for art, music and literature gave him plenty
of occupation to diversify the life of social pleasure in the midst
of which he had cast his lines. He was a very popular man, and yet
one could hardly tell exactly why it was that men and women, and even
children, liked him so. His face was strong and interesting rather
than handsome, and his figure active and powerful rather than elegant.
He had no especial charms of manner, except a supremely winning trait
of gentleness, which would have made the eternal happiness of his
wife--had there been such a being!
He was not looking forward with much pleasure to his visit to his
native country, and had bound himself by the severest obligations to
be back in a very short time; and now, on the first day out on his
ocean voyage, he found himself wishing that the trip to New York was
over, and that he was going back. There would be so many changes among
his old friends--so many reminders of the painful fact that youth was
passing--a thing he could ignore much better in Russia than in his own
land!
He was, like many people whose attachments are warm when made, rather
averse to making new acquaintances, from the fact that the ones already
possessed kept his faculty of affection sufficiently employed. So, when
he glanced over the passenger-list, it was rather satisfactory than
otherwise to see there was no name he knew. He had plenty of books with
him, and expected to find his time sufficiently occupied in reading,
and in escaping from the bores by whom men crossing the ocean are apt
to be beset.
It was early in December, and the weather was raw and cold. Hertford
was well protected against it, however, and spent much of his time on
deck. On the afternoon of the second day out, he had been comfortably
settled for some time, absorbed in his book, when, amid the confused
sounds of water and machinery and human speech, he heard some words
spoken so near him that they compelled the recognition of his
consciousness.
“It seems that’s her aunt, and not her mother,” the voice said: and
glancing up, Hertford saw two women, who had placed themselves very
near him and were evidently discussing some third party of travellers.
“I heard the beautiful girl call her ‘Auntie,’ as I passed. I call
the old one the ‘Rich Lady,’ until I can find out her name, because
she’s so high and mighty and magnificent. They’ve got a foreign maid
and man-servant with them, and more furs and rugs and foot-warmers and
luxuries than any one on the ship. I want you to watch the Rich Lady
when she speaks to those servants. I’ve heard her call them both by
name, and they had foreign names unfamiliar to me; but I told someone
yesterday evening that, as well as I could make out, she called the
maid ‘Minion,’ and the man ‘Varlet’--perhaps her manner helped me a
little to this understanding of her words.”
The speaker and her companion both laughed, and Hertford, amused,
too, followed the direction of their eyes, and soon identified the
two persons under discussion. It was certainly true that they were
surrounded by a greater evidence of magnificence in their travelling
paraphernalia than any one else he had seen. Their deck-chairs,
cushions, rugs, and superb furs made them seem almost unnecessarily
luxurious. The older of the two had her large and bony frame stretched
out at length on her deck-chair, and her harsh profile, with its
thin, aquiline nose and thick, whitish eyebrows was thrown out in
high relief against the dark-red cloak worn by her companion, whose
head was enveloped in its pointed hood. The girl’s face was turned
seaward, so that Hertford could not get a glimpse of it. But just
as he had seen, in spite of heavy coverings, that the older woman’s
figure was angular and thin, so he could see, in the younger one’s,
suggestions of youthful vigor and loveliness. He was conscious of being
interested by the mere pose of her head and turn of her throat. Her
red cloak was gathered in at the neck by an infinite number of fine,
flat little plaits that broke into free and graceful folds about her
shoulders, and covered her arms and hands. Hertford had given no more
than a passing glance to the faces of the two women whose conversation
he had overheard, and a glance was enough to satisfy him also as to
the appearance of the girl’s companion; but for several moments he
kept his eyes furtively upon the muffled figure and head of the girl
herself. As he was looking, a more violent lurch than any that had
preceded it tipped the vessel so far on its side that a great wave,
which was advancing, broke over the deck and deluged everyone with the
heavy salt water. In an instant it had receded, leaving the floor of
the deck a running stream, and the water standing in little puddles on
rugs and cloaks, and wherever it had found a hollow to fill. Most of
the passengers laughed good-humoredly, and took it as a joke, while
the deck-stewards were brushing them off and mopping up the water.
Hertford sat up and shook himself with a smile, and as he did so, he
heard his nearest neighbor say:
“Oh, _do_ look at the Rich Lady!”
She had drawn herself upward in her chair, the picture of angry
protest, and as the assiduous steward hurried to her assistance, she
said, indignantly:
“Well! Are we likely to have much more of this?” Quite as if she had
put up with as much from the ocean as she proposed to stand!
As the humor of the thing flashed upon Hertford, he glanced at the
figure beyond, which had also taken an upright position, and he saw the
very loveliest girl-face that he had ever set his eyes on. He not only
saw it, but he exchanged with it a glance of sympathetic amusement,
which, somehow, seemed to do the work of an acquaintanceship of weeks.
If, as George Eliot so profoundly says, “A difference of taste in jokes
is a great strain on the affections,” the reverse is equally true; and
a sense of liking sprang into being in both of the individuals whose
eyes met in that momentary smiling glance. In an instant they looked
away from each other. And now the two foreign servants came hurrying
up with towels and brushes. Hertford could not distinctly make out the
hurried French sentences which the old lady addressed to them, but
he soon comprehended the attitude which had suggested the names of
“Minion” and “Varlet” to his bright little neighbor.
It soon appeared that it was the Rich Lady’s will to go below, and she
got to her feet, shaking herself free from her furs, and motioning her
niece to follow her. The girl rose obediently, and as the maid came to
her assistance, Hertford noticed the gentle and amiable way in which
she spoke to the servant, in strong contrast to the manner of the older
woman. She, however, responded very submissively to her aunt’s wish,
although he thought it possible that she would have preferred to stay.
As she passed very near to Hertford she did not look toward him, and
so he could venture to look at her. Her profile was exquisite, and her
very manner of walking and holding her wraps was full of charm for
him. When she was almost out of sight, he obeyed the strong impulse
which prompted him to follow, and, leaving all his belongings, he did
so, keeping them in sight until they had disappeared into one of the
_cabines-de-luxe_, the number of which he easily ascertained. Then he
went to the saloon, where he looked at the passenger-list. The names
opposite the number of that state-room were: _Mrs. Etheridge and Miss
Sheldon; valet et femme-de-chambre_.
He returned to his seat on deck, but his book had lost its interest.
There was something in the glance of that girl’s eyes which was
enthralling. It crowded everything else out of his mind. He sat there
thinking for a long time; and he felt it a real satisfaction when, at
last, from some deep recess of his memory he recalled a rhyme which
represented to him exactly his present state of mind. He said it to
himself, under his breath:
“But if Maud were all that she seemed,
And her smile had all that I dreamed,
Then the world were not so bitter
But a smile could make it sweet.”
In the days that followed, Hertford became more completely absorbed in
watching this young girl, and wondering and imagining about her, than
he had ever been in anything in his life. He never saw her except at a
distance, and even then he guarded his looks carefully. The two ladies
seemed to have no acquaintances on board, and if they had had, it would
have done him no good, for he knew no one to introduce him. Besides, he
was not sure he wanted to be introduced. There was more room for the
indulgence of dreams as things were now.
And he did indulge himself in dreams, without restriction. The more
he saw of the beautiful young creature, the more adorable she seemed
to him. He never met her suddenly, or even caught sight of her red
cloak at a distance, that he did not feel a sudden stilling of his
heartbeats, followed by thick throbbings that made his next few
breaths difficult. Sometimes he would meet her taking exercise on
the deck with her aunt, and sometimes she was on the arm of a French
maid. Hertford noticed that when the latter was her companion she had
generally a gayer and freer air, and he could see that there were the
kindest feelings of sympathy and good-will between the two, in spite
of their different spheres of life. The woman did not look as if she
could have answered to the name of “Minion,” in this companionship!
When, however, the young girl was with her aunt, Hertford often saw
a look of constraint, and even sadness, on her face. This set him to
conjecturing, and gave him a fear that she might be dependent upon
this rich and exacting relative, and perhaps a victim to her tyrannies
and caprices. The mere suggestion of it stirred in his heart depths of
tenderness whose very existence was a surprise to him.
One afternoon, during the last days of the voyage, Hertford had been
sitting a long time silently thinking. His thoughts were always on one
subject now--the girl who, at this moment, sat in one of the long row
of chairs, made fast against the rolling of the vessel. There were,
perhaps, half a dozen people between them, but, although he had not
looked toward her since he sat down, he had no consciousness of any
human existence about him but hers. He felt, moreover, in his inmost
soul, that she had a consciousness of him. He was sure that an electric
current of sympathy communicated from his heart to hers. There was
nothing whatever external to encourage him in his belief--not a look
nor a sign, but it was a thing stronger than either. And whenever he
did meet her eyes, which was rarely, what was it that gave him that
inevitable little shock, if it were not a meeting of such currents?
Of course, his might be the positive and hers the negative, but he
absolutely believed she felt it, too.
As he sat there, watching the cold flutter of the dingy white canvas
that covered the life-boat, made fast in front of him, and which was
shaken into strong ripples by the winter wind, making a crackling
little noise, he liked to think that they both saw and heard the same
things, and he longed to ask her if the ridiculous little cannon, with
its canvas cover, did not remind her of a child on all fours, under a
table-cloth, playing _bogy_. Why couldn’t he have a little innocent
talk with her? The restrictions imposed by society seemed to him most
absurd.
He became aware that the people between him and the object of his
thoughts were, one by one, going away. At last, a man and a woman
sitting next to him got up and went below, and now, with a quickening
of the heart, he realised that the being nearest him, across that row
of empty chairs, was the girl whose image had now out-crowded every
other from his heart. The maid was on the other side of her, but they
were both quite silent. Presently he ventured to turn his head and look
toward her. Only her pure profile was in view, but he felt that she saw
with her averted eyes that he was looking at her. Her rounded cheek
seemed to return his gaze, and he was almost certain that it reddened.
Of course, he might be mistaken in thinking that she had any
consciousness of his existence. He had no real evidence of the fact,
but the unreal was enough for him. He was always frank, in dealing with
himself, though often the reverse of it, in interpreting himself to
others. For instance, he had always carefully concealed the fact that
he was, by nature, sentimental and romantic; but he knew it of himself
absolutely. He was not at all surprised to find himself, now, in love
with a woman to whom he had never spoken. It had always belonged to his
old ideal of himself that he should love at first sight, if he ever
loved at all, in the real sense. This girl--if her nature and character
corresponded to her personality--was absolutely all that he ever
dreamed of; and he had not a fear that, in knowing her, he should find
himself disappointed. Indeed, what he felt was, that he absolutely knew
her already. It gave him a slight twinge of regret to think she must be
so many years younger than himself--it must be ten or twelve, for she
could not be over twenty-two or twenty-three. But then she was a being
with whom he might renew his youth--indeed, she had already called into
fiery life all the most ardent impulses of his earliest manhood. He
had made up his mind now that he would make it his first business, on
landing, to get himself formally introduced to her. He had satisfied
himself, by marks on their luggage, that their destination was New
York, so he knew he was not in danger of losing sight of them. They
were sure to belong to his own world, and he knew he could easily make
their acquaintance. As he sat there, so near her that by a slight turn
of the head he could see her, he felt impatient at the formalities
and delays which must be gone through with, before he could go to her
boldly and ask her to leave the irksome thraldom of her life with her
rich, old aunt, and be his wife. That was exactly what he had to say to
her, with as little circumlocution and delay as possible. His mind had
never been more definitely made up about anything in his life. It was
decidedly pleasing to him to think of her as poor, even though she had
the surroundings of riches and luxury. Still, how different to be in
the really independent position in which he could place her!
A little thing had happened one day during the voyage, that had touched
and pleased him intensely. A poor man had died in the steerage, and
a subscription paper was sent around to raise money for his family.
When Hertford took it, he ran his eye rather eagerly down the column
of names and figures and saw: “Mrs. Etheridge, $100.00,” and under it,
“Miss Shelton, $1.00.” It went to his heart that she had had so little
to give, but had not on that account refrained from giving what she
could. “Shelton,” he kept saying over and over to himself, trying in
vain to remember if he had ever known any one of the name. He knew the
name of Etheridge as belonging to a rich and influential family in New
York, but could recall no definite acquaintance even with them.
There was a lovely winter sunset that evening, and Hertford felt it a
delight that his eyes took in the same scene as hers, and felt that the
same emotions were aroused by it in both their hearts. When, at last,
she spoke to the maid and rose to go below, he boldly resolved to make
a move at the same time, and so he walked the length of the deck behind
her, and followed her through the door. It was a delight to him even to
catch the tones of her voice as she spoke to the maid. As they turned
away in opposite directions, their looks just met. How was it possible,
he asked himself, that he could feel what he did from the touch of her
eyes, and she feel nothing? He did not believe it!
The next day they landed at New York, and he saw her met by friends
whose ardent feeling showed how lovingly welcome she was. They whisked
her away in a handsome carriage whose liveried servants, as Hertford
observed, showed far more pleasure in their faces at welcoming the
young lady, than her august and stately aunt.
Hertford was accorded a cordial welcome by his old friends, and the
first thing he found himself called upon to do was to attend a large
ball. He felt disinclined for it, but the possibility of seeing the
lovely face that haunted every sleeping and waking minute made him
consent. One of his former circle of friends insisted on taking him,
and as they drove through the streets, he confided to Hertford the
fact that he was in love, and that he expected to see at this ball the
object of his affection, who, it appeared, was a rich and charming
widow. The former of these attributes was intimated very delicately,
but the whole thing seemed to Hertford, in his present romantic state
of mind, revoltingly vulgar. How impossible it would be to confide to
his companion the feeling that possessed his heart! Any allusion to
the money struck him as being unpardonable--and he simply could not
understand a man’s finding it possible to be in love with a widow.
He thought of the lovely maiden on whom his heart was fixed, and the
mere memory of her fresh young beauty made his pulses quicken. But
he forced himself to appear interested, and wished his companion all
success and happiness.
“The success would certainly secure the happiness,” was the answer,
“but the trouble is there are a dozen fellows, besides me, trying to
marry her, and she declares she will marry no one.”
As they got out of the carriage Hertford dismissed the subject from his
mind. He had not yet got himself up to the point of making definite
inquiries about the lady of his love, and it seemed to him now
impossible even to make a confidant of a man whose nature could permit
him to talk about being in love with a rich widow!
As the two men walked about the rooms together, each was conscious of
being on the watch, but Hertford, for his part, gave no sign. He met a
few old acquaintances who remembered him still, but the place was very
barren and irksome to him, in spite of its magnificent display, when
suddenly his companion gave his arm a jerk and said: “There she is!”
But Hertford, too, had caught sight of something that made his heart
thump suffocatingly. A few paces from him was a tall, imposing, angular
figure with a familiar Roman profile, and at her side was the adorable
being he had so worshippingly enshrined in his heart, looking so
beautiful in her white ball-dress that his eyes were dazzled with the
delight of this vision. Again, as her eyes met his, he felt that their
spirits had touched. Out of the delicious confusion caused by that
glance, he was roused by the consciousness that he was being formally
introduced.
“My friend Mr. Hertford, Miss Shelton--and Mrs. Etheridge.”
At the mention of the former name, the tall and sharp-faced lady made
him a gracious, if angular, acknowledgment; at the mention of the
latter, the beautiful young creature in white looked up into his face
and gave him a frank and lovely smile. She seemed even to half-extend
her hand, and was beginning to speak, when Hertford, bewildered,
stunned, and only dimly conscious of what he was doing, made a hurried
bow, and with some excuse, moved rapidly away.
With a numbed consciousness, and a bewilderment that scarcely allowed
him to realize the objects before his eyes, he somehow got through the
rooms and out into the street, and, finally, into his own room at the
hotel. There he locked himself in, and, without turning up the light,
threw himself upon his face on the bed. After ten minutes of such
fierce unhappiness as he had never known before, he got up, turned on
the light, and looked at his dishevelled figure in the glass. “Have I
been crying?” he said to himself, seeing that his cheeks were flushed,
his eyes red, and his face dampened either by tears, or by the sweat of
pain. With his nature, romantic, sensitive, the blow was a terrible one.
He sat down in a chair, thrust his fingers into his short locks, and
rested his elbows on his knees. With the feeling in him that he could
not give up this woman, even for this, he began to struggle with his
disappointment. At first, it seemed intolerable that she had once
belonged to another man--and he had to adjust his whole being to these
changed conditions. He realized far more deeply than ever, how he had
fixed his very soul upon her, and he resolved to go on and win her,
if he could. He forced himself to realize the fact that she had loved
another man, and had suffered for his sake the pangs of widowhood. It
was some consolation to him to see that she had outlived them, and he
was glad that youth and nature had asserted themselves and enabled her
to regain her interest in life. No, he could not give her up, without
her own refusal to be his wife. The fact that she had money, too, was
intensely unpleasant to him. It was she--Mrs. Etheridge--who had given
the hundred dollars to the poor man, and her arrogant-looking aunt,
Miss Shelton, who had given the one dollar! The money was the girl’s,
then--and she was the “Rich Lady,” after all! He could not get used to
the idea.
But he had fought out the fight and choked down his disappointment, by
the time the ball broke up, and Tom Kennedy, puzzled by his friend’s
strange conduct, came in search of him.
When Hertford, in his disordered evening-dress, admitted him in answer
to his knock, he was able to make up some excuse about having felt a
sudden vertigo in the heated room, etc., and to carry it off with some
likeness to truth.
“By Jove! I don’t believe she half liked your leaving--the lovely
widow, I mean! (There’s but one _she_ to me now!) And it seems you had
crossed on the steamer together without being acquainted! It’s a wonder
she even noticed you--but she did--and she asked three or four times
where you were gone. I begin to be reconciled to your going back so
soon, old man. She takes more interest in you than I exactly fancy.”
Hertford let him run on with this flippant sort of talk, for the sake
of the information he let drop now and then. He discovered that the
haughty individual who acted as her chaperon was in reality a poor
relation, dependent on her bounty; though, as Kennedy said, she owed
everything to this aunt, who had made this rich match for her, and had
married her to a husband who died in a year, leaving her a millionaire.
This made Hertford wince with pain. The whole interview was frightfully
trying, and he was relieved to be alone at last.
He passed a sleepless night, and a restless, impatient morning. In the
afternoon he inquired his way to Mrs. Etheridge’s house, and rang the
bell, sending in his card for the two ladies. Miss Shelton, it turned
out, was not at home, but after a few minutes spent in a magnificent
drawing-room, down the long vista of which he could see into other
superb apartments beyond, the young widow came to him.
Hertford was so entirely sure that they understood each other, that
it was all he could do to keep from asking her, then and there, to be
his wife. The restrictions of conventionality prevailed, however, and
they kept to mere friendly discussion of the events of the voyage, and
such things. It was so free and delightful, however, this long talk,
that he stayed on and on, and when he rose to go, and she gave him her
hand, he dared to hold it a second longer than was necessary, and to
feel that the touch conveyed a message to her heart. It is certain that
she blushed, as he looked down at her, and that the blush made her a
hundred times more bewitching to his heart and senses than before.
The magnificence of the grand hall that he crossed in leaving her, and
the suggestions of great wealth that he saw on every side, grated upon
him, but, as he walked away from her presence, he was too blissfully
in love for that to matter much. He felt perfectly certain, in spite
of the odious idea suggested by his friend’s coarse way of putting
things, that the marriage had been a love-match; for it was absolutely
impossible that the divinely good, and sweet, and modest creature from
whom he had just parted, ever could have married from any motive but
love. He even got up a sort of emotion of pity for the dead man, when
he thought of what had been lost to him, and yet he felt any dealing of
fate to be merciful, which opened to him the only chance of supreme and
ideal happiness, which his life had ever offered.
He spent the next day with lawyers, absorbed in business affairs. In
the evening he went to the theater, where he saw the woman he loved
surrounded by a gay party. But she looked at him, as he passed, with a
look that thrilled to his heart’s core, and all through the play he was
happy in the sense that she thought of him, and even furtively watched
him. Coming out, he met Tom Kennedy, who walked along the street with
him, beginning at once to speak of Mrs. Etheridge. Hertford, with a
certain reluctance, asked some question about Mr. Etheridge. He felt
jealous of the man, and at the same time, sorry for him. He inquired
how long he had been dead.
“O, three years, or such a matter. She’s only just come back into the
gay world. No one can say she did not play her part with propriety. It
was even more than could have been expected from a girl of twenty, to
go into such long retirement for a husband four times her age.”
“What!” said Hertford, in a low, contained voice, swerving a little in
his gait, but otherwise apparently calm.
“O, he must have been well on to eighty, I should think,” replied the
other, “though his wretched old body was cosmetized and bolstered up
with the utmost care to the last. By the way--you saw him! Don’t you
remember our laughing at the decrepit old dandy at the races that day
when Hotspur won?--the old fellow who tried so hard to give a cheer,
but couldn’t get up the voice, and who incessantly ‘wrestled with his
false teeth,’ as I remember you put it? That was Etheridge. Don’t you
remember him?”
“Yes,” said Hertford, coldly, “I remember him distinctly.”
A moment later, he had excused himself and returned to his hotel.
The next day, and the day after, he applied himself very closely to
business, and was so successful in getting through with it, that he
caught the same steamer on its return trip, and started back to St.
Petersburg.
He had been gone a month, perhaps, when Mrs. Etheridge, who had been
little seen by her friends, either in society, or at her own house,
said abruptly one day to Tom Kennedy, to whom she had not been at home
once since Hertford’s departure:
“Mr. Hertford once lived in New York--did he not?”
“O, yes--born and raised here,” was the off-hand response.
“Do you know,” she said, facing him unswervingly, though her cheeks
reddened, “do you know whether he ever saw my--I mean Mr. Etheridge?
Did he know him?”
“No--he never knew him, I’m sure, but he saw him once at the races. I
was reminding him of it the last evening I saw him. But why do you ask?”
“I merely wondered if they ever met,” she answered, carelessly. “I
never heard my husband speak of him.” She said the word out boldly this
time.
“No--I fancy not,” said Kennedy. “They were not friends at all. In
fact, Hertford had no idea he was the man you had married, until I told
him.”
Kennedy was a little dull, and he wondered now, why in the world she
was interesting herself in such a trivial matter.
He had joined Mrs. Etheridge on the street, and he walked home with
her. When they reached her handsome residence, and the doors were
thrown open, she did not ask him to come in, but said good-bye rather
abruptly. She crossed the magnificent hall and walked with a firm step
up the grand staircase. Then, entering her own splendid apartment, she
locked herself in and stood silent a few moments. Then she spoke aloud,
safe from being heard in that lofty vastness.
“That was the man I could have loved,” she said, “the man I do love!
And I might have married him!”
In a second, she added, in a tone grown thick and indistinct with tears:
“And he loves me, too! I know he does--or did, until he knew!”
She stretched out her arms, with her hands clenched hard, and saw
herself reflected from every side in splendidly-framed mirrors, which
gave back her image, from head to feet, in her elegant French costume.
They showed her, too, the innumerable beauties of her luxurious rooms,
hung with satin and carpeted with velvet.
She gave a cry of horror, and shut out the vision with her hands. Her
birthright was gone, and this was her mess of pottage!