Greatly perturbed, Fanny returned to the circle of gossips. They had
not recommenced their game, but were standing about, and leaning
upon the billiard-table, busily rehearsing the late scene,
accentuating their animated periods by tapping the floor with the
cues, and rapping the board with the ivory balls. All except Hester,
who sat still upon her lounge, twirled her rings, and looked sulky.
Selina was foremost and loudest in apologetic exclamations--being as
candid in regret as she had been in censure.
"Do you know I never _thought_ of his being a relation of Mr. Wyllys
until just as I spoke of it? That is like my blundering tongue!
There is no half-way house of meditation between the brain and it.
We are ruined! you and I especially, Nettie, and Sue is almost as
badly off. Jessie will tell Mr. Wyllys, and he will report us all to
his cousin, and won't there be a row?"
"Why should you care?" said Hester, sharply. "If the man is away off
in Germany, he can't quarrel with you."
"But he is coming back next Fall! I should sink into the earth if he
were to ask me any questions about what I have said. He has always
been so gentle and pleasant with me! I felt quite proud of his good
opinion."
"You had very little to be proud of, I should say!" retorted Miss
Sanford, losing command of her tongue and temper entirely, as the
discussion proceeded. "Thank Heaven! I am not dependent upon such
contemptible trifles for my peace of mind! I wouldn't recognize Roy
Fordham on the street, or anywhere else; would cut him dead were he
to enter this room at this very minute. As for Miss Kirke, I care
less than nothing for her, or her opinion. If she chooses to play
the spy upon a confidential conversation between _ladies_, and carry
tales to gentlemen, she may, and welcome. I never could abide her
from the first instant I ever saw her. I do hate tattlers and
backbiters! But let her do her worst! I flatter myself that _I_, at
least, am above her reach!"
"I should be very uneasy and unhappy, if I believed that the
substance of our conversation would ever reach Mr. Fordham's ears,"
rejoined Fanny, very gravely. "But Mr. Wyllys is no mischief-maker.
Nor, for that matter, is Jessie Kirke. My principal regret is that
we have wounded her; for I do not think a reputation so nobly earned
as Mr. Fordham's has been, will suffer from our idle chatter. It is
founded upon a rock. As to Jessie's playing the spy, Hester, she had
no reason to believe the communication you made was confidential."
"She never opened her lips while I was talking! just stood off
there, pretending to be busy with the billiard balls, and
_listened_," said Hester, hotly, "If that wasn't mean and
dishonorable, I don't know what is!"
"I am inclined to think it would have been well had the rest of us
done likewise!" smiled Fanny, willing to give a jocose turn to the
circumstance. "Since we cannot help our blunder, we will try to
forget it."
But Hester had a troublesome bee in her bonnet. She looked more and
more discomposed.
"What makes you all think that this Kirke girl will blab to Mr.
Wyllys? What has she to do with him, more than any of you here?"
"What's he to Hecuba, or Hecuba to him!" quoted Fanny, theatrically,
bent upon covering her cousin's coarseness of speech and manner.
"They are old friends, and he is intimate at Dr. Baxter's, where she
is staying. As I said, however, the least of my apprehensions is
that she will stir up strife between us and Mr. Fordham."
She chalked her cue carefully, as if it were her chief concern at
present.
"Is he addressing her?" demanded Hester, with increasing interest.
"I don't know. Selina! will you play on my side?"
"In a minute!" The volatile Bradley was off at a tangent. "I don't
begin to believe that he means to offer himself to her, whatever
wiseacres may say. It is well known that he is not a marrying man.
He brings out girls that have the making of belles in them. It is a
sort of hobby with him--a mission he has. This done, he stands back
serenely, and lets other men marry them. He is a universal lover of
the sex, and upon occasions like those I have named--a benefactor.
Some of our most elegant matrons and handsomest young ladies were
his _protegees_. His sanction of their charms made them the fashion.
It is odd, but true."
Hester smiled, laid her head on her left shoulder, and peeped at an
opposite mirror.
"It would be a sin were you Hamilton girls to let him marry this
girl. You don't half appreciate him. I have met so many
distinguished and gallant men, that I call myself a tolerable judge
of true breeding and polished manners. And I can inform you that in
a large, gay city such as that I live in, he would be a _star_!
might have almost any girl he wanted. The idea of his throwing
himself away upon a poor minister's daughter is just perfectly
nonsensical. I have too good an opinion of his common-sense and his
taste, to believe it for a second. He can't but know that he could
look ever so much higher. What there is about this Miss Kirke that
you all admire, I can't see, for the life of me. She couldn't carry
it, in our place, with such a bold hand, as she does here. She would
be put _down_ at once and forever!"
"Jessie Kirke is my friend, Hester, and was but just now my guest,"
said Fanny, firmly. "Excuse me for saying that I cannot hear her
spoken of unkindly in this house. She is a lady--born and bred. Papa
says her family were people of rank in this country, before ours was
ever heard of. I am not an aristocrat, but if I were I should rather
belong to what Dr. Holmes calls the 'Brahmin caste', in America,
than to any other. Jessie Kirke comes of an educated race, and the
refinement of educated generations shows itself in every motion and
word. I do not affirm that she will--that she would, if he offered
himself, marry Mr. Wyllys. I do say that he would do well to win
her for his wife. And I suspect he does not need to be told this."
The sun was an hour high as Jessie descended the granite steps of
Judge Provost's mansion. The college buildings lay to her right,
upon rising ground, separated by a shallow valley from the hill
crowned by the Provost house and grounds. Instead of taking the
street that would conduct her to Dr. Baxter's door, she turned
sharply to the left, and began another and steeper ascent. There
were few residences in this quarter of the town, and these were
gentlemen's villas, separated by large gardens. She did not look up
at the windows of the scattered dwellings in passing, although more
than one acquaintance watched, from one and another of these, the
straight, slender figure that held on its rapid course without sway
or falter. In the plainest garb, she was conspicuous for her
carriage and peculiar style of beauty. This afternoon she looked
like a young forest princess in her dark green dress, and tunic
trimmed with fur, the black velvet cap and sweeping green feather.
She had thought of Hester Sanford's colorless countenance and
Parisian costumes as she made ready for the call upon Fanny, laughed
to herself at the image that smiled back upon her from the mirror,
knowing how far handsomer, even more "stylish" (Hester's pet word!)
she was in her simple robes. She thought more of such things now
than ever before. Her enjoyment in general company was no longer the
gratification of a young girl's frank vanity--often as guileless and
freely uttered as a child's. The desire to be at her best looks, to
attract and to hold the admiration of those whom she met abroad, had
ceased to be simple and positive. There was in it the baser element
of competition. She would be beautiful and brilliant because
others--Hester Sanford in particular--were homely and silly. The
feeling had grown upon her insidiously--so stealthily she could not
tell when she forbore to laugh, good-naturedly, at the heiress'
absurdities; to declare openly to Mr. Baxter and Orrin that she had
conceived an antipathy to her before she had known her three hours,
or three minutes,--that association with her invariably provoked her
into an indescribable but intolerable state of discomfort, analogous
to that a cat is supposed to feel when her fur is turned the wrong
way. But she disliked the woman intensely now when she hardly ever
named her to others.
There were many reasons for this. As proud in her way as Hester was
vain-glorious in hers, it galled her continually that she must
appear--even for Fanny's and decency's sake--to submit to the
insufferable impertinence of one who was her peer in nothing save
the accident of riches. She would give her no apparent advantage;
would not put it into her power to boast that she had driven her out
of the arena where she--Hester--believed that she reigned queen of
Fashion, if not of Love and Beauty,--or she would have avoided her
whenever she could. It seemed to her that the more dignified course
was to overlook her--her spiteful innuendoes, her pompous
condescensions, and brainless boastings--with the sublime
indifference of one whose thoughts were set upon worthier and more
comely objects; to mete out to the heiress scrupulously such show of
regard as she would vouchsafe a peevish, painted gad-fly hissing
about her ears and eyes.
The gad-fly had stung her out of her seeming of haughty
carelessness, and since she could not crush or even touch it, she
was fleeing before it, as for her life. The figure occurred to her
as she climbed a third hill--one she had never crossed before
without pausing on the summit to look back over the town--a view Roy
had commended to her admiration in one of his letters. She did not
stop now, or turn her head, but almost ran down the other side, her
teeth clinched, and a dry aching in the throat that ought to have
been relieved by tears, yet was not to be. She met no one in her
walk. The day was still, and very cold; the hills beyond the
ice-bound river were strongly defined against a pale orange sky into
which the color seemed to be frozen, so unvarying was it, as the sun
rolled horizonward. She had passed the region of paved sidewalks,
but the ground rang like stone under her tread; her breath was
frosty vapor as soon as it left her lips. She did not think how much
colder it would be in the open country road on the other side of the
bridge. She would not feel it when she got there. Two wood wagons,
each with a team of four horses, were coming across the bridge,
abreast, and she stepped aside to let them pass. The drivers were
walking behind their loads, swinging their arms and stamping to keep
up the circulation of the congealing blood in their limbs. The
roadsters tramped in a cloud of steam from their nostrils, about
which fine icicles clung to their shaggy hair. They had thick
woollen shields over their breasts, fur collars upon their
shoulders.
"Men are tender in their mercies to the brute creation!" thought the
young lady at whom the men looked with respectful but evident
approbation, in going by. "When it comes to women, their pity fails
them!"
She was doing more than escaping the malignant tongue that had
blackened the fair fame of her betrothed. She despised Hester
Sanford's intellect and inventive talents so heartily that she
should have laughed to scorn the tale to which she had hearkened;
dissected the ill-formed mass of contradictions, and boldly refuted
her statements by a comparison of their incongruities. Three months
earlier she would have covered the traducer with confusion, and
rightly punished her gloating audience by standing forth as the
defender of Roy's honor and truth, and proudly announcing the nature
of the bond between them. She was incapable of such an attempt now.
Like a cowed hound, she had crouched in a corner and suffered the
outrage to him who was her other self--the gallant gentleman, whose
name she was to bear some day--lifted neither tongue nor finger to
save that name from obloquy. Not even to amiable Fanny (how much
braver than her craven self!) had she been able to say--"This man is
to be my husband! Who strikes him, wounds and makes an enemy of me!"
Why was this?
She stopped midway across the bridge; leaned over the parapet with
locked hands and rigid features; stared down upon the shining black
ice--still not feeling the cold--and tried to answer the question
thrust upon her.
Why had she made no fight to save the character of him for whom she
had once declared herself willing to die?
"How _dared_ they?" she had muttered between her teeth, in leaving
Judge Provost's portico. On the bridge she spoke again--a hoarse
whisper it hurt her throat to sibillate.
"If this be true!" she said, letting her clasped hands fall upon the
stone wall.
There was a livid bruise on both, when she removed her gloves that
evening, but she had not felt it when it was dealt.
Had then her belief in her lover's integrity succumbed to the weight
of the first doubt cast upon it, in her presence? Were her faith and
her love made of such flimsy stuff as to be torn into wretched rags
by a single gale? If these were ever well-founded, must not the
inroads of distrust have been gradual in order to be effectual? Had
suspicion and forebodings visited her before to-day? been harbored,
but not recognized? If so, what were the grounds for doubts and
fears?
"_If_ it be true--" she repeated, with a desolate moan--"there is no
help for me in earth or in heaven! I can never trust or love again!"
Some one was coming on behind her with quick steps, which echoed
loudly on the icy planks, and she walked on hastily. Her first
unwise impulse was to increase her speed in the hope of getting away
from the intruder, whoever he might be. But finding, on reaching the
opposite shore, that he gained on her, she slackened her pace to let
him pass. She would be the sooner alone and unobserved if she
allowed him to go on. It was only a chance wayfarer, of course, but
she would shun all eyes, idle or searching, while her brain was in
such a whirl, her heart rent and quaking. She detected nothing
familiar in the footfall, but she did remark, with a sense of
irritation, that it was more deliberate in nearing her. Did the
unseen pursuer mean to dog her?
Annoyance was exchanged momentarily for active alarm; the angry
blood welled to her face and head in one mighty throb, as a hand
touched her elbow, before her persecutor had breath to accost her.
It was Orrin Wyllys' voice that said, laughingly, "Is it Atalanta,
or swift Camilla scouring the plain, whom I have chased for the last
ten minutes? What are you running away from?"
"The Furies!"