"I LIVE, HOW LONG I TROW NOT."
One might well have supposed that the period of final destruction had
come on that eventful day. Wind, fire, and sea all combined to make it a
memorable one. For, while Lance and the De Vines were going through
their adventures in Elbow-Crook Swamp, the incoming tides, fomented by
the winds, not only swept away the paltry planking that joined Aunty
Losh's headland to the main shore, but also proceeded to crunch up and
dissolve a large portion of her real estate.
The freakish inroads of the sea on the North Carolina coast are scarcely
subjects for exaggeration, because they themselves outdo fancy. The
ocean thereabouts has an occasional fit of map-making. Not content with
changing the soundings as it pleases, it sometimes closes up an old
inlet, at a single mad flurry, or insists upon opening a new avenue in
any place that may suit its convenience. And so, at this particular
crisis, having thundered at the outer gates and found no admission, it
sent a heavy tide into the Sound, and played havoc there. The green
waters, ordinarily manageable enough, converted themselves into
cataracts. They heaved, frothed, billowed and raged, until Aunty Losh's
demesne, once an innocent promontory, became a very perilous and
uncomfortable island.
The watery ditch turned into a rushing tide-way; then it became a deep
channel; and lastly it widened into an angry reach of turbulent waves,
which could be crossed only by boat. All this transformation, be it
remembered, was accomplished in a few hours.
Meanwhile, Aunty Losh and Jessie cowered in the little cabin on the
dwindling territory, and expected every moment to be swallowed up by the
surges that lashed so wildly around them.
But the retreating coachman had known what he was about. He had gone at
once to Hunting Quarters, where he had found Adela, who was herself
distracted with anxiety for Sylv, and therefore in a perfect mood for
venturing upon the wildest scheme of rescue that could be imagined. It
so chanced that the dug-out was harbored in a cove which the girl could
reach. The rude sloop clung there, thumping heavily on the bottom, and
lurching now and then against the shore, with an impact that would have
smashed any other sort of craft at short notice. But this was precisely
what she was made for, and so she endured the strain.
Adela prepared to take her out to the now isolated cabin, and bring off
the inmates. Old Reefe remonstrated. He said it was certain death to go;
that no boat could live in such a wind on a short, shallow sea; and that
his daughter must wait until the storm abated.
"No," cried Adela; "I am going, whether it's death or not! How do you
know what will happen to them out there if I wait? The cabin itself may
be swept away, and poor old aunty in it. Then, Dennie is there, and--and
perhaps Sylv." For one instant, as she uttered this name, her voice
sank. "If they had any boat, 'twould be another thing. But they're cut
off--they can't help themselves--and I'm going."
The brave girl hardly believed that she could make the trip in safety,
but she thanked her stars that Dennie had brought her up to handle a
tiller--and the rest she left to Providence.
The water was swashing up close to the door of the little hut, and Aunty
Losh and Jessie sat within, holding on to each other in silence when,
through the deep, prolonged roar of the tempest, they fancied that they
heard a shout--a woman's shout. Simultaneously with it there came a
thud, like the dropping of some heavy weight upon the ground just
outside of the house. "Lord be praised!" Aunty Losh exclaimed, "Thar
ain't nothin' could do that ar but the ole dug-out. Open the do', Miss
Jessie."
Jessie considered this as a command to invite dissolution into their
fragile shelter; but she obeyed.
In a few moments they were on board the sloop, bouncing and reeling
through the violent waves. By this time Colonel Floyd, having also
received the alarm, reached the spot on horseback. Waiting with old
Reefe on the shore, he noted every motion of the plunging sail, which
was let out barely enough to give the dug-out headway. Adela stood at
the helm, strong and masterful as a man, but with a quick, feminine eye
for every chance or change of the terrific gale, and with a touch that
responded instantly to her observation. She ignored her two passengers
absolutely.
But when, after several escapes from foundering and a weary battle of
tacking from one point to another, the sloop rounded, with her heavy
prow, into the cove and touched the land, the girl dropped down in the
stern, exhausted.
There had been no time for delay or inquiry, and indeed it would have
been impossible to talk in the over-powering bluster of the storm, while
fighting a way through it; but Adela had been very much astonished both
by Jessie's presence at the cabin, and by the absence of Dennie. She now
tried to learn from Aunty Losh what had become of him; but the poor old
woman's mind was in such confusion from fright and from the suddenness
of her rescue that she could not furnish much enlightenment. As for
Jessie, she had gone to the headland without any knowledge of Lance's
actual whereabouts, but thinking it probable that her lover would go
there, since she had heard something vaguely about his arrangements with
Sylv. It was now noon, and the suspense in which she remained about
Lance, joined to Adela's fearful dread concerning Sylv, would not permit
them to rest. The colonel, who had been thrown into a wild excitement by
the failure both of his daughter and of Lance to return to the house,
hugged Jessie close to his heart with silent prayers of thanksgiving,
and wrung Adela's hand with gratitude, while the tears ran down his
cheeks. The carriage had followed him with fresh horses, bringing dry
wraps, food, and restoratives; and the colonel insisted that the best
thing to be done was for the three women to get in and go at once to the
manor with him.
Meanwhile Sylv and Lance, helping the disabled Dennie between them, had
arrived at the house, and were taking care of the sufferer.
I need not detail the recitals and explanations that followed. I will
say only that Jessie treated Adela like a sister that day, and ever
afterward. It was strange, mysterious, yet beautiful, to Lance's eyes,
to see them together; one of them the latest offspring of Gertrude
Wylde, rescued from oblivion--coaxed back, as it were, from the forest
shadows and the red race to her own race and kin--the other a descendant
of Gertrude's cousin, to-day rescued by her kinswoman from the engulfing
waters of the Sound. The whims and prejudices that had hampered Jessie
before were now totally dissolved; and Lance's dream was realized, after
all. The wild thought which had crossed his mind, of devoting his life
to Adela, proved to be simply a perversion of the ardent desire which he
had felt, that she ought to be included somehow in the lines of
relationship and love prescribed by her ancestry. His allegiance to
Jessie, never really shaken, was perfect and enduring. But these results
would never have come about had not the actors in the curious drama
remained, through all their troubles, sound and sincere of heart. They
had, every one, risen somewhat higher than they were when their
relations began. Each had advanced in his or her own way. Sylv strove
upward by means of intellectual effort and by will; Dennie attained to
as lofty a standard of conduct through the working out of instinct and
passion. But in whatever manner they had proceeded, all were true.
The wild storm went down that night, though the rolling sea and the
curling breakers of the Sound continued to heave for hours, throwing out
in the darkness broad lines and crests of phosphorescence that made them
look like fluid white fire. Then the rain came, in torrents; and it was
well that it came, for the danger to the inflammable pine-plantations,
from the conflagration in Elbow Crook, had become alarming. Not even the
sullen fierceness of that furnace--in which the swamp-woods, with all
their intricacies of flickering boughs, like some gigantic red coral
work, were melting down--could withstand the providential rain-streams.
The fire faded away as if by magic; and the next day, when Hedson went
out, with scores of other gazers, to look at the expanse of charred
_debris_ where the wood had been, he remarked tersely (but in an
undertone) to Lance: "That property is now worth just one hundred
percent more for our purpose than it was day before yesterday. The
clearing has been done free of charge."
By the middle of the summer the county awoke to the fact that a
syndicate of Northern capitalists had purchased the tract and were going
to develop it into a prodigious vegetable garden. The reed-pulp
paper-mill went up; there was an immense quantity of ditching and
levelling carried on in the swamp. Little houses began to make their
appearance; now dwellers came to live in them; and a school and church
were found to be necessary. There is now a flourishing community in that
place; and while Lance, I am glad to say, has made a good deal of money,
his pleasure has grown largely from the knowledge that he has brought
about improvements which others also enjoy. Sylv acts as his chief
adviser and confidential agent.
Dennie's accident left him somewhat lame, but he has still found it
possible to be of service in some of Lance's undertakings. He prefers,
however, to retain a degree of independence by living on the island with
Aunty Losh, and following more or less his old employment in a superior
dug-out schooner, which has replaced the sloop. On the island he has
remained ever since the marriage of Sylv and Adela and their
installation in a pretty house which was built for them, near enough to
the manor to make it convenient for the children of Jessie and Adela to
meet often when they shall grow a little older.
One slight question came up, I must admit, as to who had the best right
to appropriate the old Wharton Hall motto. Sylv acknowledged that it
belonged primarily to Lance, by inheritance from Guy Wharton; but, then,
had it not been handed down to Adela as well? The point was settled
without dispute; for Sylv's house was built before Lance was ready to
remodel the manor, and when the plans were submitted to Lance he
proposed--with Jessie's permission--that he should be allowed to
contribute as his gift a tablet for the hall, on which were to be shown
(not cut in, but raised in bold relief) the lines beginning
"I live, how long I trow not."
Dennie has no new house and no old motto. I cannot suppose that he is
altogether a contented man; but I believe he is happy in having taken
the right course.
"My old heart do ache for ye, Dennie," said Aunty Losh to him, about the
time of the wedding. "There ain't much on't left at my time o' life; but
what there be of heart in me do ache, for sure. But ye done right, boy.
'Tain't no use tryin' to drive a woman. It's mighty like when ye tryin'
to make a passel o' hens come into the house; and ye chase 'em up and
say, 'Shoo!' and gits 'em a'most to the do'; and then they jist run
straight past it. No; ye can't drive a woman, Dennie, if she's sot her
mind ag'in it. That's what."
Dennie looked up from the tackle he was mending, and smiled. "Wal,
aunty," he said, "you and me make out to git along pretty squar'
together, don't we? I don't want for to drive ye, and ye can't look to
drive me, neither. _I_ don't complain."
The last three words will do for his motto; and they make a sufficiently
honorable one.
MAJOR BARRINGTON'S MARRIAGE.
I.
Major Barrington before the acquisition of his military title was a
rather shapely gentleman, with a fine, carrot-tinted complexion and
strong, reddish whiskers, corresponding well with it, and branching out
on either side of his chin with a valiant air.
Nor did his appearance greatly alter, immediately after passing from the
condition of plain citizen to that of a defender of his country. His
chin (which was shaven, and had a pretty little dent in the bottom of
it) came for a time more prominently before the public, being carried
somewhat higher in the air; but otherwise you would hardly have known
what a great man he was.
It happened thus: The War of the Rebellion had been going on for about a
year, and Mr. Zadoc S. Barrington was a boarder in the respectable but
shabby mansion of one Mrs. Douce, in East Thirtieth Street, New York--a
short, pale, dusty-looking woman, who had under her threadbare wing a
maiden relative, Natalia by name. Natalia was alternately visitor and
boarder, according as her slender income gave out or held out, and the
consequence of this variable status was an equally variable disposition
on the part of the aunt toward the niece. Mrs. Douce had naturally a dry
heat of temper, which was possibly the source of that pulverous look
about the face already noticed; and it was only by turning on periodical
smiles, like the spray from a watering-cart, that she was able to allay
the gritty particles of her irritability in the presence of paying
boarders. It was to be expected, therefore, that during Natalia's
impecunious seasons her aunt should relapse into unmitigated dustiness,
and puff her discontent, so to speak, in dreary little gusts at the
forlorn maiden.
Being forlorn, was it strange that Natalia should look to Barrington for
sympathy? Not at all. By degrees he thus came--without any movement on
his own part--to take an important place in her daily experience. A
variety of little hopes and illusions, of which her life had been pretty
well divested before, and which she alone could not have revived, sprung
up spontaneously under the most casual glance of Zadoc S. For example,
though she had no appetite for Mrs. Douce's feeble dinners, she could
get up a fictitious enjoyment of them by looking at the robust
Barrington, whose bold coloring and hearty appearance deceived her as to
the real measure of his relish for that dreary cookery.
Barrington was not dangerously youthful, but neither was Natalia.
Financially he was not prosperous, but she was decidedly not so. Heaven
only knows how, during the years of his residence in New York, he had
contrived to subsist. It was not on any scientific principle of survival
that he persisted; but rather on the principle of the fallen sparrow.
Still, he was a portly sparrow, and must have needed a good deal to keep
him on his feet. But he remained on his feet--he never soared. And yet,
such as he was, Natalia--let us confess it with a becoming amount of
maiden timidity--yes, Natalia had begun to love him.
II.
But she did not tell her love. She let concealment feed upon her
cheek--which, to be accurate, was not damask, but rather of the quality
of sarsnet. However, before her appearance had had time to suffer by
this process, an unexpected proceeding on the part of Barrington led her
to reveal her sentiment--to surprise and, one might say, surround him.
Did capture follow? Let us see.
At this period his affairs were very low. He was a prospective patentee,
a filer of caveats for little inventions, which no one could have been
hired to infringe, the most ingenious point of which was their perfect
adaptability for not making money. He was also by turns an agent for
books, subscription engravings, sewing-machines, and what not. He did
everything but succeed. Finally he conceived the idea of a new vegetable
lamp-oil that could be made from floating oily matter to be found in any
swamp. He had made close computation of the swampy land in the whole
State of New York, which could be bought for a trifle, and turned into
sources of boundless wealth. For a time he fed the flame of hope with
this visionary fluid; but a serious lamp explosion, resulting from one
of his experiments, deprived him at once of half his whiskers and all
his expectations. There was indeed one resource left him, the nature of
which we may discover presently; but he hesitated to avail himself of
it, because it might compromise his independence. In fact, a certain
steady effort to be a man and to keep his self-respect, in spite of his
many failures, was Barrington's finest trait, and always gave me a
liking for him, notwithstanding his weakness.
By the time his singed whiskers had regained their pristine vigor, and
when the war had passed through its first year, there drove up to Mrs.
Douce's door, one day, an express wagon with a trunk in it. The
startling thing about this was that the trunk (which was made of
sole-leather) was quite new, and had painted on it, with terrific
distinctness, this legend:
CAPT. Z. S. BARRINGTON, U. S. A.
The painted end of the trunk happened to be nearest the house. Now, Mrs.
Douce was at that very moment in her reception-room on the ground
floor--a sort of little bin or wine-cooler of a room, where (having
nothing better to cool) she kept callers, and sometimes herself--and
from there she spied the appalling arrival. She did not know, which was
the fact, that Barrington, tired of his sparrow's life on the pavements
of the metropolis, had been in correspondence with friends at
Washington, who had secured him the promise of a commission on his
applying for it. He had not at once made such application, but had gone
off with much high beating of the heart, and ordered the trunk, as a
preliminary, feeling perhaps that the final step would be easier to take
after committing himself thus far.
Mrs. Douce, I say, not knowing this, opened the door for the expressman
in a great flurry of excitement. "Now, indeed," thought she,
melodramatically, "I begin to feel what war is!"
Then she ran up-stairs herself, to inform Barrington that the trunk had
come. But he was equal to the emergency. With an unshaken demeanor the
hero rose from the table at which he had been conducting a busy and
wholly useless correspondence, and looked at Mrs. Douce with a
magnificent calm, which gave her a strange sensation of having
penetrated some great general's headquarters. Then he proceeded
down-stairs to parley with the expressman, who for a moment seemed to
take the place of a flag-of-truce bearer, or some kind of military
ambassador.
As Barrington descended he heard Natalia in the drawing-room conducting
to its close an extensive piece of music, with a copious rumbling of low
notes and a twittering of high ones, which was apparently reluctant to
be brought to a close at all. The sound touched his heart, somehow; but
he went on. It also touched Mrs. Douce, who had followed; but she did
_not_ go on.
III.
She stopped in the narrow passage, just by a niche containing a tall and
bilious-complexioned alabaster vase, with scraggly arms, which had
always impressed her as giving the house a great advantage over other
boarding-houses. (That vase, by the way, had levied its tax in many a
bill.) But now it seemed gloomily symbolic; everything had begun to seem
unnatural and suggestive since that trunk appeared. She fancied the vase
was like a "storied urn," containing the ashes of some valiant warrior
who should no more wield the humble breakfast-knife at her devastated
table. Overcome with emotion, she passed on and pushed open the
drawing-room door.
"Natalia," she exclaimed, impressively, "guess what has happened!" As
the expressman, with fate-like footsteps, tramped up-stairs, carrying
the trunk on his shoulder, Barrington, who came after him, noticed that
the rumbling and twittering of the piano had ceased, and that his
landlady had disappeared. The two women were, in fact, conversing in
agitated whispers on the other side of the closed parlor door.
"Well, never did I think to lose _him_!" exclaimed Mrs. Douce.
"Poor aunt!" said Natalia; "and so late in the season, too."
"It isn't that so much," interrupted the other, severely; "but it hurts
me that he should have been so sudden and so secret."
"Perhaps he thought we--" Natalia paused, and blushed. "But why _should_
he think we'd urge him to stay?"
"Hark! is he coming down again?" said her aunt. No; it was merely the
expressman. He thumped his way down to the street door. They heard the
wagon drive off, and for a moment afterward they held their breath, as
if a battle had been raging near them, and the heavy current of the
fight had now swept by, leaving them in suspense, lest it should return.
Then the dignified step of Barrington resounded on the staircase. He
came to the door, and opened it. "I ought," he began, stepping in with a
smile, "to explain matters a little."
Mrs. Douce's mood was like that of elderly matrons at the wedding of a
young friend. She hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. "Oh," she
returned, in the breathless, short-of-supplies manner usual with her in
awkward situations, "oh--no--explanation is needed, Mr. Barrington!"
and, after a short pause, simpering, "I'm sure."
Natalia, meanwhile, stood in a shrinking, drooping attitude near the
battered rosewood piece of furniture from which she had been drawing
music, and looked a good deal like one of those young ladies in old
colored prints who devote themselves to standing mournfully under
weeping willows, among headstones.
"Well, you see," proceeded Barrington, who took Mrs. Douce's denial at
its worth, "I didn't say anything, because--well, it wasn't quite
settled."
"Then you're not _sure_ of going to the war?" Natalia burst forth, with
pathetic eagerness. (Barrington noticed that her heightened color was
becoming to her.)
"Sure?" answered he, cruelly; "oh, yes; humanly speaking, I suppose it's
sure enough. I--good gracious!--I only--"
These incoherent phrases were drawn out by the effect his statement had
produced. Natalia's eyelids fell at his words. She was trying to repress
a tendency to sob. By the time the hero had discovered this a tear had
found its way into sight beneath her eyelashes.
"There!" cried Mrs. Douce, sternly. "Any one might have known it. _We_
aren't made of sole-leather, Mr. Barrington. [He said to himself it was
lucky she had told him this.] Common humanity and friendship ought to
have shown you what this suddenness would lead to."
"I can't help it," murmured her niece, referring to the tears now
hurrying down her face, and misled by the matron's angry tone and her
own confusion into the idea that _she_ was being scolded. (She was at
this time without money.)
"Of course you can't, dear," said the aunt, soothingly. "As if any one
with any considerateness, or average humanity, I may say, would suppose
you could! I am not the woman to blame you for giving way under the
circumstances, Natalia. It only shows you've got a heart, while _some_
people--Mr. Barrington, excuse me, but I must speak out." However, she
didn't speak out any further, but wound up with: "Anyway, it can't be
worse than it is [though nobody had intimated that it could be]. You've
decided to leave me. Well, that's what I must expect, I suppose." And
she dropped into a chair, and patted her thumbs together, as if there
were some crushing sarcasm in the action, which satisfied her wounded
feelings.
Barrington succumbed to remorse. Besides, Natalia's unhappiness aroused
his sympathy, and he became angry--without knowing whether he had a
right to be so--at Mrs. Douce's taking the part of a comforter. He
fancied he could do this even better than she. "Of course," he said,
stiffly, "I don't expect to leave you without compensation for not
giving notice. I shall pay you for two or three weeks extra."
He felt a dreadful sinking of the pocket as he spoke; but dignity
required the sacrifice. The landlady did not respond for an instant; her
eyes wandered about with a pained, prophetic air. "What have I done,"
she cried, "to bring this upon me? Mr. Barrington, have I ever asked you
more than we agreed upon? _Have_ I treated my family meanly? You have
been in this house two years, and I know you can't point to anything.
What have I done to be insulted so?" she demanded of the faded
window-curtains.
A moment of silence followed this outburst; then she swept out of the
room, with a thin rustle of her black dress, and left the prospective
captain and Natalia alone.
IV.
Miss Douce put away her handkerchief in a business-like manner, and
looked at Barrington with soft appeal. "Ah, why didn't you tell?"
"Tell? My dear Miss Douce, I had no idea--"
"Thoughtless man, not to foresee!"
"I didn't suppose your aunt would be so much annoyed."
"Oh, I didn't mean _that_!" said Natalia, growing judiciously pettish.
"What then?"
"Not _her_," said the maiden, significantly.
"Really, Miss Douce," said Barrington, "you have surprised me--I had no
idea--"
"Don't, for pity's sake, tell me again that you had no idea!" exclaimed
Natalia.
"I beg your pardon, I meant to say something."
"What good can it do to say anything, when you have done your best to
break our hearts?" she demanded. And here she brought out the
handkerchief again, and began to look dangerously tearful.
"Goodness!" said the unfortunate man. "I'm sure I didn't mean to. I
would a good deal rather stay at home than have you feel this way."
"You have caused me great suffering, whether you meant to or not,"
declared Miss Douce, with a quaver in her voice. Then, replying to his
devotion: "Will you give up going, to prove your words? Will you stay at
home?"
Barrington felt the glory upon his horizon beginning to fade. He braced
himself by a chair with one hand; with the other he took Natalia's. "Do
you ask this as a personal favor?" he said.
Miss Douce was weeping slightly again. "I don't want you to go," she
answered, shyly, turning away her head. "Yes, for my sake, stay!"
At this crisis Rawsden, one of the junior boarders, who had just
returned from business and had been met at the reception-bin by Mrs.
Douce with news of the dread trunk, passed up-stairs and caught a
glimpse of the tableau, from the hall. "Aha," he muttered (for he was a
cynical youth)--"Hector and Andromache!" And then he glided on and up to
his remote chamber.
Zadoc S. still hesitated a moment. "I shall not go immediately, in any
case," he said, gently. "I shall be here some days yet."
"But why go at all?" urged the Andromache. "Is it irrevocable?"
"No," he answered, unguardedly. "I--I haven't got my commission yet. I'm
only expecting it."
There was a sudden revulsion of feeling on this announcement. Barrington
became aware that his position was not so heroic as it had been, and
Natalia began to blush violently at having betrayed her feelings on a
sham emergency. But, as it happened, neither of them thought of getting
out of the trouble by laughing.
"You see, now, why I kept it to myself," he proceeded, awkwardly, after
some delay.
Miss Douce had released her hand, and now rose abruptly. "Oh, yes," she
said; "I suppose it was all very foolish of me--but--you will forgive
me?"
"I assure you, I feel honored," cried Zadoc, warmly, "by your
solicitude. And, if I dared--if you would allow me--"
Let me here confess that I haven't the slightest notion what Barrington,
in that moment of impulse, was going to say. But explanation is made
unnecessary by the fact that Miss Douce didn't allow him to finish.
"Don't say any more," she begged. "It is too painful. I must go and find
my aunt, Mr. Barrington, to tell her there's a hope of your staying. For
if your commission _shouldn't_ come--"
"I should wait, of course," he responded, captivated by her glance.
Naturally, after this, he went up to the room which Mrs. Douce's fancy
had transformed into a headquarters, and wrote to his Washington friends
not to get the commission. Of course, too, Mrs. Douce came gently
rapping at his door, in the evening, with a face as solemn as an
obituary notice, and with his bill in her pocket, whereon she had
obediently registered the item of compensatory payment, which she had so
scornfully rejected in the afternoon. Quite of course he said, with
dignity: "You may leave the bill, but I have decided not to go." And
then, by sequence, she affirmed--her face irradiated with joy--that she
had brought the bill very reluctantly, in the first place, and, if he
would excuse her, she thought she would _not_ leave it.
As a further matter of course, Miss Natalia, being informed of the
abandonment of warlike measures, pretended not to care anything about
the episode, and to feel that it was rather an impertinence than
otherwise to bring it to her notice.
On the other hand, little Rawsden had been cracking his joke about
Hector, etc., to a Miss Sneef, a rather pretty young boarder, whom he
honored by confiding to her his more successful sarcasms; and, when she
imparted to him, next day, the news of Barrington's capitulation, he had
the presence of mind to smile pallidly and look as if he had known all
about it from an early period of his existence. Without changing his
tone, he muttered, dryly: "Antony and Cleopatra!"
V.
The two parties most concerned said nothing about it to each other for
days. But the interval was not unemployed. Mrs. Douce, having now
discovered her niece's inclination (if she had not known it before), was
allured by a calculation, based on the fact that Barrington had always
managed to pay his bills, and on the hope that if Natalia were to become
Mrs. Barrington two permanent paying boarders might be secured, with
possibly, in time, a half price besides. "One of these days, after all,"
she said to Barrington, whom she took an early opportunity of seeing
alone, "you will be going off and leaving me, I fear."
"Oh, no," said he; "I've really given up the war!"
"But there are other things than war."
"Other things to carry me away, do you mean? Or other disasters?"
"Well, not exactly disasters," said Mrs. Douce, hastily; "I mean
marriage."
"You don't call that a disaster, then?" Barrington inquired, wickedly.
"But what on earth has put this into your head?"
"It's much easier to get into my head than war. If you could think of
such an unnatural thing as going to war, you might easily decide to
marry," was the landlady's equivocal conclusion.
"What, I?" exclaimed Barrington, trying not to grow red, but doing so.
"I see I've made you suspicious."
At this juncture a faint ghostly voice was heard rising from the
basement, where the cook had long been buried, to the third-story
banister, where they were talking. "Mrs. Douce, Mrs. Douce!" And Mrs.
Douce, giving him an arch look, observed, with a dry laugh: "I don't
know what you're plotting." Then she obeyed the voice.
Whether this talk was the cause, or whether it was owing to the interest
which Miss Natalia Douce's behavior with regard to the military trunk
excited, Barrington's attention was more closely directed to her now,
and he observed in her from day to day a deepening melancholy. She
became listless, and fell into reveries. She played more than usual on
the piano in the dowdy parlor, behind the bilious-looking but
aristocratic vase; but there was less rumbling and twittering in her
music than formerly, and there were more pensive strains. She played
"Make me no Gaudy Chaplet" and nocturnes by sundry composers; she sang
"The Three Fishers." All this was the more interesting, in that there
was no apparent personal application in the music she choose, since no
one had insisted upon her accepting a gaudy chaplet, and she was not
wedded as yet to a fisherman. But one evening Barrington, coming down a
few minutes before dinner, entered the parlor as she was wrenching from
the key-board the last phrases of a funeral march in the "Songs without
Words." He listened attentively until she had finished; then, after a
moment's reflection, called out from the arm-chair he had taken: "But
why do you play such mournful things, nowadays, Miss Natalia, especially
before dinner? No wonder you have no appetite."
Natalia didn't answer, but got up in silence and made for the door. On
the way, however, she turned toward him with a look of indignation and a
terrible flash of the eye. The next instant she was gone. She did not
appear at dinner.
"What do you suppose is the matter with your niece?" Barrington blandly
asked the aunt, at table. "I made a casual remark about her playing,
just now, and she left the room without a word."
Mrs. Douce did not answer the question until the next day, when she came
to Barrington's room. "I've found out all about it, now," she said. "The
idea of asking me what was the matter, when you had been speaking to her
in that way!"
"Good Lord!" cried Harrington, nettled. "What way? It was innocent
enough; and I really don't like those tunes."
"After all that has happened!" continued the landlady, casting up her
eyes.
"Well, _what_ has happened?" he demanded.
"Why, your thinking of going to the war--and--and Natalia's feeling
badly, and--well, you understand, though I can't explain myself, you've
put me out so with your abruptness."
"It's always my abruptness or my suddenness," complained Barrington.
"No; I _don't_ understand you."
Mrs. Douce's dusty face hardened and dried till it became a very desert
of physiognomy. "Well," she said, "you are not a boy, and I--well, I am
old enough, I suppose," with a catch of the breath, "to be your mother.
So we may as well speak plainly. You see that Natalia is deeply
interested in you; you consented for her sake to give up going to the
front; and now you coolly abandon her. Not content with that, you begin
to taunt her with her melancholy. I little expected this, Mr.
Barrington. I little expected it."
"Oh, you're unjust!" said Zadoc S.
"At least, you'll admit you've wounded her feelings and ought to
apologize," was the rejoinder.
"Perhaps so," he confessed, feeling sorry for Natalia.
"Go and see her," urged his landlady, gently, though still with
something of the desert atmosphere in her voice. "Speak to her about
it."
"I will."
"But, remember there's only one thing can make your conduct consistent
and restore her happiness."
"You mean," said Barrington, exploring the dent in his chin with his
forefinger--"you mean, propose?" Then, as if this were quite out of the
question, he shook his head vigorously, smiling. "Of course not that;
but I don't see what else you can mean."
"Nothing else," said the voice of the desert.
"It's impossible," he rejoined, quietly.
"You _must_," responded the voice.
Then Barrington delivered a crushing blow. "I have promised to marry
some one else," he said, with great composure.
To Mrs. Douce's gasping, broken, indignant queries he replied that the
lady's name was Magill, and that she was a widow possessed of ample
means. There had long been an understanding between them, he declared,
but he had been unwilling to marry without an independent property of
his own. Unable to acquire this, he had hoped at least to gain
distinction in the army. That hope he had sacrificed out of pure
sympathy for Miss Natalia Douce's distress; and now he had concluded to
marry without further delay.
VI.
I pass over the period of internal convulsion in the Douce hearts,
widowed and maiden, which followed Barrington's disclosure. For a time
their disconcertment was so obvious that Rawsden had it all his own way
in making contemptuous remarks about them to Miss Sneef; and to judge
from the conversation of these two singular young people, you would have
supposed that nothing could give them such exquisite delight as to prove
that all human beings are unspeakably false and absurd, and that if they
could but have succeeded in showing each other--Miss Sneef on her part,
and Rawsden on his--how they two were the falsest and absurdest of all,
their happiness would have been complete.
But Natalia soon rallied from the shock of Barrington's engagement to
Mrs. Magill, at least far enough to begin an exasperating warfare of
innuendo, which, though it stabbed her own heart as well, brought a balm
of revenge to her own wounds, but left Barrington quivering under the
petty blows. She made frequent allusions to that neglected trunk
belonging to the non-existent Captain Barrington, U.S.A.; affected to
believe that he kept in it a complete set of defunct accoutrements,
which she begged him to put on some time and show to the "family;" and
in general taunted him most unfairly with his abandonment of his whilom
noble resolve to seek the martial field.
Before long the entire "family" of boarders had joined more or less
actively in this guerilla attack; and the worst of it was, that they
always kept just beyond the pseudo-captain's range. He couldn't retort
upon them without losing his dignity. At last he hit upon a masterly
defence. One day he said to Natalia, carelessly, at the table: "Oh, as
to my uniform that you've been asking about, I'll show it to you
to-night! I am going to drill."
The effect was gratifying. Natalia grew pale at the thought that her
cruel sneers had actually driven Barrington (whom she continued to adore
in spite of his desertion) back to the cannon's mouth, so to speak. The
other boarders were also deeply impressed, in their several degrees.
These emotions were considerably modified, yet not wholly effaced, when
the military aspirant finally appeared in his trappings; for he did not
wear the United States uniform. He was clothed in the splendors of a
militia major. He revealed to the little group of fellow-boarders, who
had assembled with a sort of hushed solemnity to inspect him, that for
some time he had been getting up a new, independent cavalry company, of
which he was now the commander.
"And you're all organized?" asked one gentleman, gazing at the major as
if he were an entire company in himself.
"Yes; first drill to-night," said Barrington, with a business-like air,
lighting a cigar, and looking quite terrific.
"Thought a company was commanded by a captain, and not a major,"
observed Rawsden, rescuing himself from a secret feeling almost of
admiration, and becoming cynical again, just in time to retain the
approval of Miss Sneef, who gave him a sagacious glance.
"Yes, that's the common way," said the officer, with superior
indifference; "but in consideration of my zeal and expense in getting up
the company, which is very large, I rank as Major of the National Guard
of the State." Then, with striking precision, he executed a brilliant
retreat from the parlor, slammed the street-door, as he went out below,
with a report like a cannon, and left the awe-struck boarders to spend a
miserably peaceful evening, in a state of deep humility, while he reaped
the first honors of his new career.
VII.
There was much question among them as to where he had got the money for
this great undertaking; but Mrs. Douce shrewdly suspected that the
widow's gold had something to do with it. She was right. Mrs. Magill's
money had gilded the major's uniform and the spurs whereby he was now
hoping to leap into the saddle of fame.
Still, there was no immediate sign of the threatened marriage for some
time after this. Barrington took part in sundry parades, and he and his
company were freely mentioned in the papers. But the widow remained so
entirely in the background that Natalia almost believed she was a myth;
and there was no change in Zadoc's military life, except that the
letters U. S. A. on the trunk were replaced with N. Y. S. N. G. Then
came the tremendous day when Barrington's cavalry were ordered out, with
other militia, to resit the rebel invasion of Pennsylvania. I will spare
the reader the hardships of that campaign. It is enough that the gallant
major should have undergone them; and, to tell the truth, he was not
slow to make the most thereof. He never went into a fight, and hardly so
much as heard the snapping of a cap or the drawing of a sabre while his
company was at the front; for they were kept marching and
counter-marching, for strategic purposes, guarding supply-trains or
small batches of prisoners; but he was a hero, for all that, when he
returned. He had been obliged to forego shaving during his fortnight's
absence, and this gave him a suitably battered and realistic look. I'm
sorry to say he was in no hurry about shaving after he came back. He
deliberately made capital of that stubby growth on his chin and upper
lip, and it lent great effect to his tales of suffering with mud and
rains, and beds of hard wood in barns, and to the agony he expressed at
not having met the craven foe.
Rawsden and Miss Sneef attempted to turn these narratives to ridicule,
but the effort failed signally. Barrington was a success. He had always
been trying to be one, on some solid basis or other. Now he had become
so on no basis at all.
VIII.
Mrs. Magill was satisfied with her investment, but she wished now to
make it permanent. In short, she thought in time that the major should
fulfil his promise of marriage. It is scarcely necessary to say that,
meanwhile, his resplendent military renown had redoubled his
fascinations for the pensive Natalia; and that maiden's faithful
admiration and devout sympathy with him in the dangers to which he had
lately been exposed had begun to make an impression on his simple,
pompous and sanguine middle-aged heart. In all this time the two women
who divided his affections and interests had not once met. Being charged
with their rival influences, it almost seemed as if the major, while
uniting them in his mind, had possessed a sort of chemical power of
keeping them apart. But now he became extremely anxious to bring them
into each other's society. The pretext he found was that of private
theatricals. He proposed to Mrs. Magill that an entertainment in this
line should be gotten up at the drill-room of the company, which was a
sort of riding-school arena, easily transformed into a theatre. She
consented at length, but only on the understanding that this was to be
Barrington's last grand frolic before settling down to married life.
"Yes," said Barrington, in vague terms; "I sha'n't want to remain single
any longer." But he was a good deal alarmed to find himself wondering,
at that very moment, which lady it was that he intended to marry.
Mrs. Magill and Natalia were made acquainted, and among them the three
soon completed their plans for the performance. The piece selected was
Boucicault's farce, "Wanted--a Widow." The major had pressed Mrs. Magill
to take a part, but, with a becoming distaste for publicity, she
declined, and Natalia was induced to play in her stead. Considering the
title of the farce, the widow's abstention was certainly judicious; but
I think she would have been better pleased to see Natalia in the role of
Lady Blanche Mountjoy, rather than that of the successful widow, Mrs.
Lovebird. Lady Blanche was taken by Miss Sneef, who, being young and
pretty, yet withal sceptical by nature, made a success of the part. Mrs.
Magill, whose eyes began to survey Natalia in the appalling light of a
rival, after the first interview, took care to be present at all the
rehearsals, as you may believe; and a little real drama, for which no
rehearsal was needed, began to move within the fictitious one.
IX.
Mrs. Magill was a short and rather fleshy person, with a bland
countenance, in which the experiences of her forty years--good and bad
alike--had agreed to get under shelter of a placid and non-committal
tinge of pink, there to make what pretence they could of not being
experiences at all. There was the same discreet, uncommunicative look
about her hair, which she wore stamped down along her forehead, with the
severe simplicity of a butter-pat. Natalia's face, on the contrary,
showed whatever she had been through. Thus, the widow and the unmarried
woman trenched on each other's provinces, and promptly took a dislike
one to another.
The farce in hand, as all my readers may not remember, turns upon the
fact that _Henry Revel_ (Barrington), having been jilted by a lady who
became _Mrs. Lovebird_, has taken to reckless courses, and finally
becomes a heavy debtor, in hiding from the sheriff. In this dilemma he
gayly advertises for a rich widow, "with immediate possessions," and his
whereabouts thus come to the knowledge of _Amy Lovebird_, now widowed,
who deserted him originally only to marry a rich man who could save her
father from ruin. She seeks Harry at once, in order to explain and to
draw him back to herself. When he receives her response to his
advertisement, however, pride and resentment make him unwilling to
profit by her wealth. Meanwhile, _Amy's_ friend, _Lady Blanche_, plans a
stratagem to test him, so that it may appear whether he receives his
former flame's advances out of mercenary policy, or with the old-time
affection. She persuades Amy to appear before him as if in great
poverty, while she herself (_Lady Blanche_) writes him a letter, stating
her fortune and a fictitious age, and requesting a meeting to consider
the matrimonial project. When Harry meets Amy and hears this made-up
story of her poverty, although his early love remains unabated, he
decides to see the other widow, Lady Blanche, whose letter he has just
received, to marry her, and to use the money thus acquired for the
relief of _Mrs. Lovebird_. This decision, of course, makes him appear
for a time false to _Amy_; and the motive of the piece is, accordingly,
that of the hero's struggle between the powers of love and of money.
Since he finally marries _Mrs. Lovebird_, the superficial moral of the
play was favorable to Mrs. Magill, considered with reference to
Barrington's vacillations, because the major's affair with her antedated
the first springing up of a sentiment for Natalia, and, moreover, she
was rich. So the widow had no fear as to the moral influence of the
drama upon his mind. But the deeper lesson of this amusing composition
is that of fidelity to love without money; so, as a matter of fact, it
had a powerful effect in attaching the major to Natalia. At first he
thought little about it. But, as the rehearsals went on, he found that
theatricals, being an art, and having the magic of art, sometimes give
one a strange, new interest in the real person, exhibited under subtly
novel circumstances; and he began to think it would be pleasant to
follow up his imaginary devotion to Natalia with a real passion.
X.
In proportion as this feeling of the major's grew, Mrs. Magill tired of
seeing him perpetually going through the farce with Natalia, and coming
out as her tried and trusted lover. She resolved to hasten the date of
the performance, perhaps also hoping, furtively, that Natalia wouldn't
be ready, and would therefore fail disgracefully.
On his part, Barrington, to whom the new partiality for Natalia had made
the rehearsals increasingly pleasant, found also that the conflict
between this and his promise to Mrs. Magill brought in an element of
painfulness. He became exceedingly blue, and even treated the widow
morosely.
"Zadie," said she, one evening, as they walked home from the drill-room,
"what ails you? I thought you were going to get so much amusement out of
these theatricals."
"I wish I'd never gone into them!" he answered, gloomily.
"How unkind to say that, after the condition we made about them!" This
allusion didn't improve his temper.
"I don't forget my promise, though I _am_ sorry," he said, dubiously.
"Sorry about the promise, you mean?" asked the widow, with an archness
that failed for want of a street-lamp to light it up.
"You wouldn't like it if I should says yes," he retorted.
"Oh, if you're sorry," she exclaimed, haughtily, "we'll give up
the"--here the major became attentive and eager--"the theatricals
altogether!" she concluded.
"The theatricals," muttered he, disappointed; "I thought you were going
to say--But no! We'll play the farce out, and, when it's done, we'll
have the wedding. Does that satisfy you?"
"It's very wrong of you to talk of it that way," said Mrs. Magill, too
sagacious to lose her temper. "But I know you'll regret it." And so,
holding him firmly by the arm, she carried him off to the door, where
they parted.
XI.
At length, the evening of the performance came, and all the independent
cavalry, and their friends, assembled to look at it. Rawsden was
unusually cynical that day, and came near disabling Miss Sneef for her
part by the number and variety of his pessimistic remarks. But this was
due merely to his own inward trepidation on her behalf; and it was with
a strange whirl of by no means cynical emotion, raging underneath his
calm dress-coat and well-starched shirt-bosom, that he left her at the
dressing-room, and took his own place in the audience. As for
Barrington, the contradiction of moods into which he had fallen excited
him to great energy, and he consequently achieved a brilliant success in
the first part of the piece. Mrs. Magill sat refulgent and
diamond-flashing in her place, drinking in the praise of the major,
which was murmured on all sides; these bright moments compensated her
for all the pain of the rehearsals. But between the first and second
scenes the curtain fell, to allow the arranging of a new "set." The
shadow of that descending curtain was destined to darken seriously the
widow's fair prospect.
Just as the audience were getting impatient for the second scene, an
audible disturbance arose on the stage, in the midst of which the green
cloth was rolled up, revealing a pictured street. No one "came on,"
however; and as a moment elapsed, and the disturbance increased, Mrs.
Magill suspected something wrong. Then Natalia burst out on the
astonished spectators, through the right entrance, with a distracted
air, crying out, with apparent unconsciousness of the lifted curtain,
"What! Major Barrington has cut his head open? Where?"
Some of the audience began to laugh, several ladies screamed, and the
cavalrymen were divided between a wish to comfort their frightened
guests and the duty of running to their commander's aid, when Barrington
appeared from the sides, moving mechanically, and with a distinct wound
on his forehead. At this sight Natalia, who had but half crossed the
stage, paused, screamed sharply and spread out her hands, seeking
support. Meanwhile the stage-manager had got the curtain started down,
and it dropped silently upon the unexpected tableaux.
By the time it had touched the boards Mrs. Douce had reached the
dressing-room. She now stood leaning over her niece, who had fainted,
and was lying in a chair. Mrs. Magill, being of inferior velocity, was
much longer in making her way to the stage through the crowd of excited
people now hurrying to and fro. A hack had already been ordered for
Barrington, who was sitting behind the street in Lady Blanche's
drawing-room, with his head bound up, and looking rather pale. The hero
of a hundred failures, he had at last managed to get a genuine hurt.
"Oh, horrible, horrible!" cried Mrs. Magill. "Speak to me, Zadie; how
did it happen? Can no one tell me?"
"We were just getting up Lady Blanche's chandelier in great style,"
exclaimed the manager, "when Major Barrington came along, and--"
"No more, no more, for mercy's sake!" entreated the widow, with a
shudder.
"Yes," continued the manager, with severe accuracy; "he hit his head
against it."
"Mrs. Douce," cried Mrs. Magill, "run out and get my things for me--at
once--please."
"I'm sorry," said the landlady, rather sharply, "but I can't leave
Natalia." Here some one came forward, and said the hack had arrived.
"You see," protested the widow, "I _must_ have my things." But Mrs.
Douce devoted herself to Natalia, obliviously.
Barrington had by this time been got on his feet, and was walking slowly
toward the stage-door, the arm of a fellow-officer under his own.
"Major," cried the exasperated widow, "stop!" And, as she spoke, she
stepped in front of him.
Barrington did stop; but he looked feebly peevish, and in a tone of
disgust said, plainly, "Do let me alone, can't you?" There could be no
doubt as to his words.
The conflict over his remains, which seemed likely a moment before to
become obstinate received a check in this utterance from, as it were,
the very dead. Mrs. Magill fell back in horror, and the major was
triumphantly borne away with Natalia.
XII.
The farce was never finished; but the assembled company set about the
dance which had been planned to succeed it. Rawsden and Miss Sneef
enjoyed this very much, in their superior way, and, in fact, the
breakdown of the histrionic effort made those youthful misanthropists
thoroughly hilarious. The events of the next few days, after the "caving
in" of the Major's head (as Rawsden described it), furnished him with
still further material for entertainment.
Mrs. Magill resumed the field early the next morning, seeking to visit
her poor major. This Mrs. Douce prevented her from doing by powerful and
imaginative descriptions of Barrington's condition, and citations from
medical authority.
Mrs. Magill then proposed to hire a room in the house. But Mrs. Douce
solemnly averred she had no room to spare. Still, the next day Mrs.
Magill came, with a carriage full of things, including light bedding, to
occupy the enemy's country, and declared she would bivouac in the
parlor.
"But the parlor belongs to my boarders," said Mrs. Douce. "Use of parlor
included, those are the terms."
"Then I'll take the reception-room."
"The door is very narrow," said Mrs. Douce, scrutinizing the massive
form of the invader so insinuatingly as to make the non-committal pink
in Mrs. Magill's cheeks give place to an angry red.
Mrs. Magill turned, and called out of the open door to the
carriage-driver to bring in the bedding, etc. "Recollect," she said,
severely, to Mrs. Douce, "he is my husband that is to be."
The landlady looked inquiringly at the driver, and then, as if
correcting her impression, said: "Oh, the major? That makes no
difference. Those things shall not come in! Besides, it isn't at all
certain that he is."
"Not certain? How can you dare?"
"He says so himself."
"Then he's out of his mind," said Mrs. Magill, calmly.
"He was," replied Mrs. Douce.
"I won't converse with you," said Mrs. Magill.
"Then please order your man not to bring in those things."
But Mrs. Magill refusing, "_I_ will tell him," announced Mrs. Douce,
stepping out to do so.
Mrs. Magill, with great presence of mind, instantly shut the spring-lock
door and began to walk up-stairs. There was a furious rattling at the
door-handle, from the outside, followed by violent ringing. But no one
came to open, until the widow had gained the first landing. Mrs. Douce,
being admitted at last, swiftly mounted after her. It was a fearful
chase; but there was no way of heading off the intruder now.
They went up another flight. But Mrs. Douce over-reached her opponent by
calling out, in a loud voice: "You can't see him, Mrs. Magill! _Mrs.
Magill!_ Mrs. Magill!"
Immediately after this they heard the lock working in Barrington's door.
The major was safe in his intrenchments.
Nothing daunted, however, Mrs. Magill strode forward and knocked. There
was no answer except a slight cough, probably caused by the officer's
sudden exertion in locking his door. "Major," said the widow, in a
gentle tone, "do you hear me?" Echoless silence received her words. She
began again, with a considerably increased alertness of voice: "Major!
Are you engaged or not?"
"Very much so," answered Zadoc from within, and with a startlingly
robust and comfortable voice for an invalid.
"I mean, to me," explained Mrs. Magill, with annoyance. "Mrs. Douce,
here, has the face to declare that you are not. I wish the question
answered in her presence. Are you engaged to be married?"
"I am sorry not to be able to open the door," responded the evasive
Barrington. "It fatigues me to talk in this way, so I hope you'll be
satisfied with my answering this one question."
"Well," said the widow, more affably, "say you are--"
"I _are_ engaged to be married," promptly struck in the major, with
untimely jocoseness.
"_Am_, you mean," Mrs. Magill corrected. But silence had resumed its
reign on the other side of the door.
"Very well, that will do," she concluded, somewhat as a prose Portia
finishing a cross-examination in a modern law-court might have done. She
shot upon Mrs. Douce a glance of scorn, saying, "I shall come again
to-morrow," and then proudly departed.
XIII.
But she did not come on the morrow. Barrington sent her a note, which
effectually prevented her doing so.
"Dear madam," it said, "our remarkable--not exactly interview, but
conversation, this morning, may have misled you. My reference to an
engagement of marriage was to another than the one you had in mind--in
point of fact, my very recent engagement to marry Miss Natalia Douce.
"You will pardon the mental reservation in my reply, when you reflect
that I made it out of regard to your feelings. Those feelings I am sorry
to disturb in any way, and I believe you will see that it is the truest
consideration for them that leads me to give up the design we once
cherished. Our understanding, too, was that when the farce was finished
we would marry. The farce was never finished; the condition was not
fulfilled; and therefore our agreement is dissolved. I have just sent in
my resignation to the company, and shall dispose of the horse according
as you may desire. The uniform I will retain (since it would not fit any
one else), as also the respect for you, which has long been entertained
by
"Your friend,
"ZADOC S. HARRINGTON."
To this note the major never got any reply. In due time, therefore, his
marriage with Natalia, being unimpeded, took place very quietly, and,
after going off for a small wedding journey, the husband and wife came
back to a pair of Mrs. Douce's small rooms, and began to live in them.
Yes; this corpulent, middle-aged sparrow of a major had decided in favor
of idealism--prosaic though the form in which it was presented to
him--as against money and ease without honest affection. He threw aside
the only success he had ever achieved, which was due to the opulent
siren, Mrs. Magill, and fell back to his old shabby independence, with a
poverty-stricken little wife to share it. I don't say it was good
political economy; I dare say it was very bad sociology; and perhaps I
ought to show how some dire catastrophe came upon him in consequence.
The only obstacle in the way is, that it didn't. He remained reasonably
happy ever after.
By this it is not to be understood that he prospered materially. As a
matter of fact, he had a terribly hard time. There were the old
struggles, the old uncertainties of fortune to be faced, with new
anxieties added. His own opinions and his wife's were at times far from
being in unison.
After a time, too, he found himself a father; and, though I don't doubt
his little infant girl brought him compensations, he grew visibly older.
His once courageous complexion, which I have described as carrot-tinted,
lapsed slowly toward the hue of turnips when in a boiled state;
and--melancholy change!--his dainty martial chin, with the dent in the
bottom of it, was hidden by a practical red beard, while his hair became
proportionately thin on top of his head. If Mrs. Magill cared for
revenge she probably took it now, in the contemplation of his hard
career and the alterations in his appearance. He felt this a little, I
know; for, as we were walking together one day near Worth's monument, he
suddenly changed our course, with a hasty, "May as well go this way;"
and I perceived the wealthy widow coming toward us.
We were not quick enough to escape her, and Barrington winced at her
expression. Yet I am equally certain that he never regretted his choice.
Luckily for Rawsden's slight remaining toleration of mankind, he left
Mrs. Douce's before the baby was added to the other household ornaments.
Now that I think of it, Miss Sneef had previously left the house, and
Rawsden's critical mood grew upon him so rapidly that he, too, found a
change necessary. In fact, he followed Miss Sneef.
Yet he continued to bestow a share of his amused contempt upon Mr. and
Mrs. Barrington from a distance.
"Barrington got a taste for the drama that time," he once said to me,
recalling the private theatricals, "and he keeps it up well. I think his
piece will have a long run."
"What piece?"
"_The Ex-Bachelor and his Baby!_" said the little wretch. "A
tragic-comedy--by the whole strength of the company."
I think I should have kicked Rawsden for this, but that something in his
manner hinted an inconsistent envy of the major. And he presently went
on to say that as for Miss Sneef and himself, although not believing at
all in the necessity of sentiment and all that sort of thing, they had
concluded--since they didn't seem to be able as yet to get tired of each
other--that they would try marriage, and see what that would do for
them.
Such was the distorted little tribute of this _nil admirari_ youth to
the element of real manliness he could not fail to see in Barrington's
marriage.
"BAD PEPPERS."
I.
"You see, I want to strike down to Bad Peppers."
These words were pronounced by the third person at my right on the
bench. The bench, it must be explained, was covered with red velvet, and
situated in the cabin of a steamer. And the steamer was the _Weser_,
bound for Bremen.
I could not imagine at the moment what "Bad Peppers" meant; and the
remark--uttered at our first dinner on board--came out with such
ludicrous distinctness, in the midst of the clatter at table, that I
made haste to observe the individual from whom it proceeded. I beheld a
rough but impressive head, with cheeks of a settled red, and beetling
grizzly hair, looking out over the board in a dogged, half-perplexed,
but good-humored way, though the owner of the head was evidently
unconscious that he had said anything open to comment. He was a man, I
should say, of forty-six; but as I looked at him now in the glare of the
skylight above, the simplicity and frankness in his face were so marked,
that I could not help imagining the short gray curls turned to golden
brown, and feeling the momentary pity that comes over one in looking at
an elderly person who reminds one of childhood, yet is hopelessly far
removed from it. I felt a little sorry for a man with this kind of a
face attempting so large a task as crossing the ocean to Europe, and I
was a little amused at the idea, too.
He was talking earnestly to my handsome friend Fearloe, who sat on this
side of him; but I observed that he was watched with a certain
patronizing scrutiny by a young German opposite.
"Yes, you see I couldn't get rid of this rheumatism anywhere," he
continued, "and so I took a friend's advice and started for Europe. They
say that Bad Peppers will fix up the worst case you ever saw better than
any amount of medicine. Anyway, I'm going to try it."
Peppers as a cure for rheumatism! What could he mean? And if this was to
be the remedy, why go to Europe to try it? But he proceeded:
"And that's the reason, you see, why I want to strike right down to Bad
Peppers."
The mystery began to grow less opaque. Possibly he might mean by "strike
down" that he wished to reduce his diet to the article in question; but
I thought it more likely that Bad Peppers was a place which he had made
his objective point. I determined to ask Fearloe at the earliest
opportunity, and therefore drew him away as soon as dinner was over.
"Who is your new acquaintance?" I inquired.
"He reports himself as Steven Steavens, a wholesale grocer from
Philadelphia."
"And he's going to Europe to cure his rheumatism? Europe ought to be
flattered, certainly," said I; and I am afraid we both laughed rather
scornfully at our unsuspecting fellow-traveller, who was pacing another
part of the deck with a fierce meerschaum pipe in his mouth. "But tell
me what he means by this Bad Peppers. Is it a place? I'm sure I never
heard of one by that name."
"Of course," said Fearloe, "it's a place, but that isn't the right name.
He means a resort of some note for invalids in the canton of St. Gall,
Switzerland--Bad Pfeiffers, or Pfeiffers's Baths--south of the Lake of
Constance, and near the Rhine: a very picturesque spot, too."
"You've been there, then?"
"Yes," answered Fearloe, who, I may remark by the way, had been nearly
everywhere--out of America. He was one of those Yankees of the later
generations who are born with a genius for belying their own
nationality. When he was in England, the English would actually claim
him for one of themselves, in the face of positive denial from his own
countrymen; though I must do him the justice to say that he made no
merit of this, and never allowed newspaper paragraphs to be written
about it. In France he was frequently taken for a Frenchman; and in
Italy his fine statuesque features and rich dark beard, with the aid of
a good Roman accent, might easily cause him to pass for a descendant of
one of the old patrician families. In consequence he was very apt to be
looked upon as a foreigner during his occasional flights through his
native land, and possessed accordingly a remarkable power over the
hearts of sundry republican young women; for women love to pay homage to
a judicious male superiority, and this is the reason the daughters of
our nation delight in foreign manners, which assume that grandeur of the
male that most Americans are too polite and timid to assert. These
things being so, I do not wonder that Fearloe was a little conceited on
one point--his success in impressing the female heart.
"You speak so well of the place," I continued, after a pause, "that I've
a great mind to 'strike down' there myself. Do you advise it?"
"By all means, Middleby, after you've seen the Exposition. Paris will be
hot, and you will need a change of some sort."
"I hope it won't be a change to rheumatism," I replied, with another
laugh. I had not noticed that Steavens had come nearer to us as I spoke;
but the word "rheumatism" seemed to attract him, and roused the only
association with the Old World which he as yet enjoyed.
"You gentlemen have been to Europe before?" he said, advancing, and
taking me in with a half-inquiring nod, as if my acquaintance with so
foreign-looking a person as Fearloe was sufficient guarantee of my
experience in travelling. "Now I would consider it a favor, gentlemen,
if you would come down with me to the smoking-room. We can have a little
something to drink, and then we can talk this thing over."
Fearloe smiled condescendingly.
"This thing?" inquired I (perhaps not with the utmost respect, since his
sentence struck me as rather too informal for the very beginning of a
chance acquaintance). "You mean the Bad--"
"The whole of it," broke in Mr. Steavens. "The European continent--Bad
Peppers, Paris, and all the rest of it. You've been there, and know just
what a fellow ought to see and do, and now I'm away from my store, I've
got a little time to sit down and think over what _I_'ll do. So, if you
don't object, gentlemen--"
"Not at all," Fearloe hastened to assure him, being always ready for
novel encounters.
"I can't tell you anything about Pfeiffers's Baths," said I, trying to
be companionable too, "for I never heard of them before; but whatever I
do know is at your service."
As we moved toward the gangway the grocer turned to Fearloe, and asked,
in an undertone, "What does he call it? Feiffers? That ain't right, is
it? My friend that set me on going there, he said Peppers. I thought,
first off, he meant they put red peppers in the water when you bathe;
but he said no, it was the name of the man that started the place, he
guessed."
"You can pronounce it either way," said Fearloe, magnanimously.
"Well, I prefer Peppers," declared Steavens, with an air of relief. "But
it's kind of queer, now, that your friend, Mr. What's-his-name--"
"Middleby," I suggested, claiming my place in the colloquy.
"--Middleby," he continued, without embarrassment, transferring the
remark to me. "Ain't it queer, Mr. Middleby, that you never heard of the
place? I thought everybody knew about Bad Peppers."
I was foolish enough to be irritated at this presumption on the part of
the child-like grocer, and had a great mind to hint that he preferred a
wrong pronunciation of the name because peppers were in the line of his
business; but I contented myself with saying that I thought there were
places in Europe a good deal better known than the baths.
In the smoking-room we found the young German who had cast his critical
eye upon Steavens at dinner. He introduced himself as Herr Scharlach,
and in order to make matters clear, he drew from his pocket a printed
list of the passengers, which had been distributed just before we
sailed, on which he put a cross against each of our names and his own,
as he had already done with several others in the catalogue. He was a
young man somewhere in the thirties, with a clear blue eye that gleamed
like a sword, a high forehead, and a soft complexion deepened by
tropical sunburn. He could have been identified as a German anywhere,
from the air he had of holding a balance of power in all earthly
affairs; and when he checked off our names, I couldn't help thinking
that he was collecting data for use in some future military campaign, or
else for a biographical dictionary of the whole human race.
"Ain't from Philadelphia, are you?" queried Steavens, in a friendly
tone, implying that the other probably _was_ from that city. "We have a
good many Germans there."
"No," said Scharlach, "Brazil." After which he lit a cigarette he had
been rolling in his thin fingers, and puffed smoke from his nostrils in
such a way as to suggest that any aperture for confidential conversation
was permanently closed.
"Now here," said our confiding acquaintance, after we had pledged one
another in several mild beverages suited to a first day out on the briny
deep--"here's a list of places my friend made out that I want to kind of
take in on my way to the springs and back." And he produced from his
pocketbook a narrow crumpled white paper, on which were pencilled the
weighty names of Paris, Rome, Madrid, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Dresden,
Antwerp, Heidelberg, and Munich. I give them in the order in which they
occurred. "I suppose that's all right, ain't it?" he concluded, glancing
at each of us in turn, as if the success of his tour depended on our
good opinion.
"Why, yes," said Fearloe, "the places are all right, but you'll have to
travel a good deal to include them all. I don't see how you're to get at
them on the way to the baths."
"Oh, of course I shall have to branch off a little; but then the
distances over there don't compare with ours," returned Mr. Steavens,
hopefully.
"I'm not so sure of that," rejoined my friend, with a malicious air of
there being some slight room for doubt. "Your first jaunt, from Paris to
Rome, will be five hundred miles--five times as far as from Philadelphia
to New York. After that you must count at least a thousand to Madrid, a
thousand more from there to Vienna, and then twelve hundred, or over, to
St. Petersburg." Steavens almost turned pale. He hastily set down the
glass which he was carrying to his lips. "Besides," continued Fearloe,
"you can't go to Rome at all before winter."
"Hold on!" cried the other, looking as if the sense of solid reality
were slipping away from him. "Has anybody got a map here? Let's settle
one thing at a time. You know what I want to do first is to strike down
to Bad Peppers. I'd like to settle just how that stands."
Scharlach immediately went to his state-room, and returned promptly with
a large and perfect map of the Continent, showing all the railroads and
post-roads. Seeing this, I was tempted to make some sarcastic remark
about his thorough German equipment; but I remembered Sedan, and
shuddered. He was soon busily engaged in tracing out certain lines of
travel with his long pink finger, the nail of which was whitish, and
edged with black--according strangely with the Prussian national colors.
I thought Scharlach took a peculiar interest in Pfeiffers, and seemed
oddly familiar with it. He furnished our fellow-passenger with full
details about the place; how it was situated on the Tamina River--which
Steavens, with a friendly reminiscence of New York politics, instantly
transformed into "Tammany" River; how the mountains were piled around
its wild gorge seven or eight thousand feet high; how the healing waters
flow only in summer, and are brought to the hotel by an aqueduct; and so
on. All this seemed to reassure the rheumatic grocer very much; and
having got "Peppers" definitely fixed in his mind again, and becoming
familiar with the map, he once more grew self-confident about his list
of cities, and nothing could avail to dissuade him from adhering to the
exact order in which his unknown adviser had jotted them down. So, for
the time, we abandoned the attempt.
There is hardly a circle more merciless in its criticisms than a body of
first-cabin passengers on one of the European steamers; and Steavens
soon became an object of amusement to most of us. His simplicity,
openness, and perfectly good-humored, almost joyous, ignorance, made him
an easy prey. But he proved to be a "good sailor," and was very gallant
toward the ladies. The strangest part of it was that they rather liked
him, and took his side against our covert ridicule. I suppose I must
admit that this, instead of altering our opinions concerning him, only
added a slight bitterness to a spirit of fun which would otherwise have
been quite innocent; and we got into a way of looking at him with
sarcastic hostility. When I say "we" I refer more particularly to
Fearloe, the German, Scharlach, and myself, who, having been thrown with
him more than the others on the first day of the voyage, regarded him as
a sort of comic exhibition under our special supervision.
This rather absurd bond of union between us led to some degree of
intimacy with Scharlach, who disclosed--greatly to the enhancement of
our interest in Steavens's journey--that he, likewise, was going to
Pfeiffers. His errand, moreover, was a romantic one. Five years before
he had fallen in love with the orphaned niece of a rich merchant in
Berlin; but feeling his cause to be hopeless, at least as regarded the
girl's uncle, so long as he had nothing but his personal appearance and
a very elaborate education to support his suit, Scharlach had preferred
to retain the hold of friendship while starting out to better his
condition; and accordingly he had never made a positive declaration of
his passion, but had gone to Brazil, where he succeeded in gaining a
moderately handsome fortune. His friends had kept him informed of
Fraeulein Raslaff's movements. As yet she had not married, from which he
augured hopefully for his future; but her uncle had become an invalid,
and they were now about resorting to Pfeiffers for his health, whither
Scharlach, of course, purposed following them, in order to learn his
fate.
He requested us urgently to say nothing about this to any of our
fellow-voyagers, and we even kept the secret of his destination from
Steavens. But that could not prevent Fearloe and myself from privately
talking over Scharlach's prospects a little. My own opinion was that
such cool self-possession as his course showed might not impress a woman
so favorably as it did us, and I said I was by no means sure that
Scharlach would win, after all. Fearloe did not agree with me here, and
stroked his beard with an air of restrained certainty as he replied: "I
see, Middleby, you fancy that women want something more startling
romantic than that. But they are very practical, too; and I think you'll
find Miss Raslaff will appreciate such sensible devotion as this of our
Brazilian emigrant." As I have said, Fearloe knew the effect he could
produce on women, and was proud of it; and when he uttered this remark
it was plain that he thought he had settled the question.
II.
As I left the steamer at Southampton, and went up to London for a few
days, I parted with Steavens before the voyage was completed. It was
nearly a week later that I met Fearloe again, in Paris. We went together
to dine at a neat little two-franc place in the Rue St. Honore, which we
had formerly haunted, and during dinner he suddenly asked, with a
roguish look, "Who do you think I saw yesterday?--Steavens!" And Fearloe
here bent his head, bathing his beard in laughter. "Do you know, he has
been in Paris three days and hasn't gone near the Exposition?"
"Well, that shows a healthy independence," said I. "Is he studying the
Louvre?"
"No," was the answer; "he has discovered something far more important
than the Louvre or the Exposition--something which seems to reward him
for the whole trip."
"What can that be?" I queried, rather blankly.
"He has discovered," said Fearloe, "that _Paris is the place to buy
shirts in_!"
This, it appeared, was the topic which had engrossed Steavens's mind
when Fearloe met him. The erratic man, after reaching Bremen, had
abruptly decided to come over to the French capital, which he might have
done much more easily and cheaply from Southampton; and the result of
this expensive detour had been a kind of shirt-intoxication. "You've no
idea," added Fearloe, "how neatly he has gotten himself up. He really is
making progress. And the magnificence of the fellow! Why, he says he
shall merely take a single run through the Exposition, and leave all the
rest of Paris till after he has been to Pfeiffers."
"Fearloe," I said, with a measure of solemnity, "don't scoff at a man
like that. I never before have met an American with quite so much
originality in his treatment of Europe. He must be a genius."
Nevertheless, we continued to laugh at him, with that superiority of
being less naif and independent than he which so oddly seems to us a
desirable thing nowadays. And if any one at that time had hinted that
Steven Steavens, with his want of reserve and complete indifference to
what is known as culture, possessed qualities of character more to be
admired than our own, we should not have taken the trouble even to smile
at the critic.
I did not happen to meet Steavens while in Paris; but in August I
finally acted on Fearloe's chance hint aboard ship, and went to
Pfeiffers myself, where I found not only our enthusiast in shirts, but
also Scharlach and Miss Raslaff, together with that young lady's uncle,
a shrivelled little old man, who had the air of being put away to keep
in his thick white hair and whiskers, like a dried beetle in
cotton-wool. To the rest of us indeed, the old gentleman was of no more
account than a beetle, and appeared to have as little influence on the
lives around him as an insect might. But, as a matter of fact, though he
was so nearly dead, and scarcely stirred a limb, he clutched three lives
in his faded fingers, and held them fast there--his niece's life,
Scharlach's life, and Steavens's life. For I was not long in discovering
that my rheumatic pilgrim had fallen in love with Fraeulein Raslaff
almost at first sight. He himself took good care that I should not
remain blind to the fact. He drew me aside, and poured his tale into my
ear, though with somewhat more reserve than he had shown on the steamer
in discussing his plans of travel.
"How long has this been going on?" I inquired, as we walked together up
and down the hotel terrace overlooking the wild and picturesque valley.
"Three weeks and a half," he answered. "It's a short time, and it
_seems_ like a short time. I've read in the story papers that when a
man's in love, a few days seem to him like years, and so forth. But I
don't believe it. I know exactly how long I've been here, and yet
there's no doubt about it, I'm in love with that young lady, and am
going to make her my wife if I can. The story papers are wrong, and I'm
right."
I couldn't help reflecting that this was the same independence I had
praised to Fearloe. "The man has the faculty of knowing exactly what
he's about," thought I, "and that goes a good way toward securing
success." Yet it seemed preposterous that he should have the least
chance with a woman so far removed from him by tastes and traditions as
Fraeulein Raslaff. I said to him merely, "Have you spoken to her?"
"I've tried to feel my way," was his reply. "But that uncle of
hers--he's an old potato-bug, sir. He's _worse_ than a potato-bug. I
don't know what to call him. He won't let any one come near her, and yet
he don't seem to take any pleasure in her himself. He looks just about
dead, but I tell you it's only shamming; the minute another man talks to
Miss Raslaff, he wakes up; it puts life into him, and he flies around
sharp. This is a good country to operate in, though; he can't take the
walks we do with parties sometimes--up to Solitude, and the Belvedere,
and around. I'd just like to see him in the gorge once; _that_ would
finish him."
The gorge was a very peculiar and rather perilous cavern, higher up in
the valley through which the Tamina runs.
"Then it's only the uncle that troubles you?" I queried. "You don't feel
afraid of Scharlach?"
Steavens paused, looking anxious for an instant. Then the child-like
expression which I had marked on my first glimpse of him came out
strongly again. "Do you think he'd be mean enough to stand in my way?"
he asked.
"But suppose you are standing in his?" I returned.
Steavens apparently considered this an unnatural view to take.
"Scharlach can get along by himself all right," he asserted. "He might
be disappointed, and it wouldn't ruin him. But me--why, take me, and
what am I without _her_?" I must admit that this humbleness touched me
with its pathos, and I began to range myself on Steavens's side. Then he
concluded, without any pathos at all, "Well, I've got as good a right to
try as he has, any way, and I'm bound to win in the end."
At length, wishing to soften a possible disappointment, I thought I
ought to toll him how long Scharlach had been hoping to gain Miss
Raslaff's heart. The information startled him considerably; but after a
few moments' silence he struck me on the shoulder, and exclaimed, "Well,
here we are! He's rich and I'm rich; let her choose between us for
something else. If he hadn't made any money out there, I'd say to him,
'Here, my man, I've got the best of you, so I'll stand by, and you can
just walk in and try your chances first.' But seeing we're neck and neck
on that, I don't know that there's anything to do but go ahead."
And go ahead he assuredly did from that hour. He astounded the old uncle
by remonstrating with him directly against his supervision of Miss
Raslaff. "It ain't fair," he said. "You don't know how to manage things
in this country. I don't say a woman ought to vote; but anyway she ought
to have a right to listen to a man when he wants to tell her what he
thinks of her. Do you suppose I could tell _you_?" (With a glance by no
means politic in its contempt at the desiccated little figure before
him.) "And how am I to talk to her about it when you are around?"
The result of this attack, which he made in my presence, was a violent
outbreak from the old man; and the next day Steavens was asked to meet
Miss Raslaff and her uncle in their _salon_, to receive from the young
woman herself a confirmation of her uncle's objection to receiving any
attentions from him. The girl was pale, but composed and very beautiful.
I could not make out whether or not she had taken any fancy to my
brusque compatriot, but she acted her part firmly. When at last she
said, in pure English, "My uncle is right; you must not seek my
acquaintance any more--more ardently; let us be quite as we were
before," I declare so sweet a suspicion of a blush came over her checks,
and her voice died away so delicately, like a soft echo heard among the
very hills around us, that I almost fell in love with her myself. A
great change instantly came over Steavens. All his jauntiness, his
unreserve, his child-like confidence, were extinguished at a blow. After
a moment he collected his voice, and said, with great gentleness, "Miss
Raslaff, I will never do anything you ask me not to, so far as speaking
is concerned; but that won't prevent my thinking about you just as much
as ever, and I shall keep just as near the place where you stay as I
can."
This was the end of the interview, and I thought my countryman had the
best of it. He was very melancholy, though, while I remained at the
baths; and the savage beauty of the place--the rough stream roaring out
of the cavern against whose walls of black calcareous rock, glittering
here and there with feldspar, the faint Alpine rose bloomed pensively,
the shaggy heights above the hotel, and the glimpses of snowy peaks in
the distance--was not suited to restore his cheer. One day we went into
the gorge, with its rocky walls rising two or three hundred feet, and
gradually closing together above, where a bridge of planks cornered into
the solid stone runs for a distance of six thousand paces to the
springs, slippery all the way from the flying river-foam. It was gloomy
and depressing as a scene from the _Inferno_, and bad for a rheumatic
patient, as I reminded Steavens; but he shook his head mournfully, and
said he didn't care. What was worse was the danger of missing a foothold
on the wet and mossy planks, and so being precipitated into the wild
stream beneath; and I breathed more easily when we came out safely
again. But it struck me that this would be a fearful place for two angry
rivals, such as Steavens and Scharlach now were, to meet in.
It so happened that Scharlach that very day came to me with _his_ tale
of despair. Thinking the field was his own, after Steavens's
discomfiture, he had formally proposed for Miss Raslaff's hand, and had
been rejected. He could not understand it. He had addressed the young
lady with her uncle's permission, and she had refused him. I gathered
from what he said that he had pressed his claim as a matter of right,
that he considered himself to have bought her love by long patience and
the accumulation of a competence, and had put forward this theory with
undue bluntness; for he confessed that she had dismissed him with a cold
anger and disdain that left no hope. We were sitting on the great stone
steps hewn in the height above the hotel as he told me this. "No," he
cried, springing to his feet, at the end, in a sort of fury. "If she had
shown heat of temper, I might have kept up hope. But she petrified me
with her contempt. I am no better than these rocks." He ground his teeth
as he spoke, looking down at the hostelry, sunk at a fearful depth below
us. Then he seized a heavy stone from the earth, and flung it down the
steep, madly crying, "Yes, I am stone now, and there goes my heart
rolling down to crush you!" It stopped before it had gone far; but the
frenzied action was enough to show that the man had lost his balance.
The pent-up force of years, so well controlled till now, had broken
forth at a bound, and was carrying him away. "And it was that fool from
America, that friend of yours," he added, fiercely, turning upon me all
at once, as if I were an enemy--"it was he that did this. It is because
he is a novelty, and because her uncle opposes it, that she has taken a
fancy to him, and thrown aside the man who was a slave to her for eight
years. That's it, I am sure. Take him away! Take your American away!"
I need not say that I did not obey this command; but I did take myself
away. The truth is, the situation was getting altogether too serious for
my liking. Yet, after I had gone, I felt an incessant curiosity to know
how the affair had resulted. I heard nothing more for some time, until I
came across an acquaintance during the winter, who had met Steavens in
Paris again. This gentleman was telling me how Steavens had been to Rome
early in the winter, and now went about complaining that it was a very
dirty, one-horse town, which couldn't compare with Philadelphia. He also
reported Steavens as gaining some notoriety for his romantic attachment
to a young German lady, whom I had no difficulty in recognizing as
Fraeulein Raslaff. It appeared, therefore, that he had as yet made no
headway; but I indulged in a sense of approval when I learned that he
was studying hard, to enlarge his education and his knowledge of
European things. Still, my acquaintance described him as a man who could
never become anything but an American. He had taken the baths under the
necessity of improving his health; he was trying to take European
manners, in the same way, for the sake of improving his chances with
Fraeulein Raslaff. Yet he remained immutably hostile to everything
foreign, and to prolong his stay abroad was, therefore, the strongest
sort of devotion he could have shown.
III.
Fearloe knew nothing of these events, having gone to Egypt for the
winter. But more than a year afterward, when I had been at home for some
time, I was one day telling a lady at a dinner party something about
Steavens's eccentricities and absurdities, when she exclaimed: "Oh, I
have heard of that man before! Your friend Mr. Fearloe was telling me
about him."
I was decidedly annoyed by this, because I had frequently made an
anecdote of Steavens with great effect, and now here was Fearloe
spoiling my fun by telling it in advance. Of course I had confined
myself to narrating the rheumatic pilgrim's strange plan of travel, his
excitement about Parisian shirts, and his unique view of Rome--things
which invariably proved highly amusing--and said nothing of his romance.
I now questioned my companion at dinner, to see if I could learn
anything more about that part of his history, but I could get no
information on that subject. My irritation continued all the evening,
for it is no slight matter when a man who painfully hoards materials for
small conversation, and uses them frequently, finds an insidious friend
depriving him of them. But I had an ample revenge upon Fearloe
afterward, as you shall see. When I next saw him, which was some months
later, he had an experience to recount which certainly put him at my
mercy. I will tell it in his own words.
"I was staying at North Conway for a few days, late in July, and there
was a most beautiful woman there. I hardly know whether to call her girl
or woman, Middleby, there was such an immortal freshness about her face
and figure, combined with a reflective sadness that showed she had had
more than a girl's experiences. She dressed in black; it was a cool thin
black, that looked--perhaps on account of the calm, sweet face above
it--more airy and summer-like than the most studied of the country
costumes worn by other ladies at the hotel; and she wore bracelets and a
pin of Irish bog-stone set in ebony, that harmonized deliciously with
her personality. You know how that sort of stone sparkles, like a
clouded diamond. Well, there was something about its dim, shrouded flash
that was just like the mystery in her pale face with its surroundings of
black. It struck into me very deep, and excited a desire to pierce the
mystery, to find out what her face meant, and what was at her heart--and
perhaps to place myself in the heart, too. I'll own it frankly. You know
I'm not susceptible, though I've generally made my way pretty well with
the ladies." (Here a flash of Fearloe's old self-complacence on this
point came to light, but quickly died out again.) "I have always cared
more for foreign women, though, than for our own; and this girl or woman
was a German, so I was doubly taken with her. Her name was set down on
the register as--Well, I won't tell you what the name was, just at
present, but it was registered in such a way that I couldn't tell
whether she was maid, wife, or widow. I fixed on the last, in my own
mind, from her wearing black. There was no one with her; none of the
people in the hotel, with whom I talked, knew anything about her. There
could be no question that she was rich; but that was all I could find
out concerning her.