During the next few weeks Bertha did not appear as well as usual. The
changes Tredennis had seen in her became more marked. She lost color and
roundness, and now and then was forced to show signs of fatigue which
were not habitual with her. She made no alteration in her mode of life,
however. When Tredennis called in the evening the parlor was always
full, and she was always vivaciously occupied with her guests. Chief
among her attractions was counted her pet pretence of being interested
in politics. It was not a very serious pretence, but, being managed
deftly and with a sense of its dramatic value, animated many an hour
which might otherwise have been dull, in view of the social material
which occasionally fell into her hands.
"What should I do," Tredennis heard her say once, "if I knew nothing of
politics? There are times when they are my only salvation. What should I
have done last night with the new member from Arkansas if I had not
remembered that he was interested in the passage of the Currency Bill?
He is an excellent, solid, sensible creature; we are frivolous, aimless
beings compared with him. It is such men as he who do everything worth
doing and being done, but he is purely a politician, and he has spent
his life in a small provincial town, where he has been a most important
person, and he cares as much for the doings of society and discussions
of new novels and pictures as I do for the linseed-oil market--if there
is a linseed-oil market. When I began to ask him modest questions about
his bill, his face brightened at once, and he became a self-respecting
and well-informed person,--at ease with himself and with me, and quite
forgot his coat and his large boots, which had been slowly and
painfully dawning upon him a few moments before when he contrasted them
with Mr. Arbuthnot's silk attire. My very mistakes were a pleasure to
him, as they gave him an opportunity to say several things very well
worth remembering. He could not have told whether I was well or ill
dressed, but he detected my flimsiness in argument in a moment, and gave
me more information in half an hour than you scoffers could have given
me in a week, and"--with much modesty of demeanor--"he mentioned to
Senator Vaughan, in the course of the evening, that I was a most
intelligent woman."
Arbuthnot and Richard burst into the laughter which was always her
applause upon such occasions.
"You!" commented Arbuthnot. "You are Herodias' daughter, dancing for the
head of John the Baptist. You are always dancing in a quiet and
effective way for somebody's head. Whose would you like next? How does
mine strike you?"
"Thank you," said Bertha. "Would you really give it to me if I danced
for you in my ablest manner; and how do you think it would look on a
charger?"
There was more than one hard-worked politician who, after a day of
exciting debate or wearisome battling with windmills, found relief and
entertainment in the pretty parlors. Some of those who came had known
Bertha in her girlhood and were friends of her father, and with these it
was the fashion to encourage her to political argument, and affect the
deepest confidence in her statements, with a view to drawing forth all
her resources. These resources were varied and numerous, and marked by a
charming feminine daring and superiority to ordinary logic which were
the delights of the senatorial mind.
"Why should I endeavor to convince you by being logical?" she said. "You
have logic--at least we hope so--all day, and sometimes all night, in
the Senate and the House, and even then you are not convinced of
things. It is not logic which governs you, but a majority. And that is
what one should aspire to, after all,--not to be in the right, but to be
in the majority. And I am sure one's arguments are much more
untrammelled and brilliant for being illogical. And if I convince you
without logic, I win a victory worth having. It is like the triumph of
an ugly woman who is called a beauty. If I am pretty and you say so, it
is simply as if you said, 'white is white, blackness is dark'; but if I
am not pretty, and am ingenious enough to persuade you that I am--there
is a triumph to be proud of!"
It was nonsense, but it was often sparkling nonsense, whose very
lightness was its charm, and the rooms were rarely ever so gay and full
of laughter as when there was among the guests a sprinkling of men no
longer young, who had come there to forget that they were jaded, or
secretly anxious, or bitterly disappointed.
"It pleases me to dance before some of them," Bertha said to Arbuthnot.
"I like to think I make them forget things for a little while. If I can
do nothing greater and wiser, let me employ my one small accomplishment
to the best advantage, and do my harmless best to be both graceful and
agile. No one can persuade me that it can be a pleasant thing to engage
in a hand-to-hand conflict from three to eight months in the year, and
to sit day after day placidly endeavoring to confront men who differ
with you on every point, and who count the fact among their virtues, and
glory in it, and watch you and listen to you, with the single object of
seizing an opportunity to prove in public that you are an imbecile or a
falsifier, or a happy combination of both. When I reflect upon my own
feelings," she added, with delightful _naïveté_, "when people are stupid
and ill-mannered enough to differ with me, I am filled with the deepest
sympathy for the entire political body. There is nothing so perfectly
exasperating as to know people are differing with you, and I know there
is nothing so wearing to the mind."
An exciting debate in the Senate was occupying public attention at this
time, and to her other duties and entertainments she added that of
following it in its course. She spent an hour or so at the Capitol every
day, read the newspapers, and collected evidence and information with an
unflagging industry which would have been worthy of admiration if it had
been inspired by any serious intention. But she made no pretence of
seriousness of intention. She returned home from such visits with
derisive little arguments jotted down in her note-book and little
sketches of senatorial profiles adorning its pages, and entertained a
select audience with them in the evening,--an audience which not
infrequently included the political dignitaries themselves. Her manner
would have been a mystery to Tredennis if he had not remembered the
professor's words of warning, and even with their memory in his mind he
was often at a loss. There was a restless eagerness to be amused in all
she did, and he felt that, after all, she was privately less successful
in her efforts than she seemed. He was, at least, relieved to find that
he had but little to do in the role assigned him. When Arbuthnot
appeared again, he had entirely recovered his equilibrium, and was
unemotional, self-possessed, occasionally flippant, plainly cherishing,
at no time, any intention of regarding himself seriously. He did not
sing his "Serenade" again, and, when he sang at all, committed himself
to no outreaching warmth of feeling. He rarely spoke to Bertha alone,
and the old tendency to airy derision of each other's weaknesses
reasserted itself. Only once Tredennis heard him address her with any
degree of seriousness, and this was in reference to her visits to the
Senate. There had been an all-night session, and it had been her whim to
take part in it to the extent of sitting up until after midnight, and
she had returned home more tired than she was willing to confess.
Arbuthnot--who, with Richard, Tredennis, and a newspaper friend, had
been her companions in the dissipation--remonstrated with her after the
little supper they had on their arrival at the house.
Bertha had left the table, and was half reclining against a pile of
cushions on the sofa, and Arbuthnot followed her, and spoke in a
somewhat lowered voice.
"You are making a mistake in doing such things," he said. "Why will you
keep it up? It's all nonsense. You don't care for it really. It is only
one of your caprices. You have not a particle of serious interest in
it."
"I have as much serious interest in it as I have in anything else," she
answered. "More, indeed. Do you suppose I was not interested when
Senator Ayres got up to-night to be immeasurably superior by the hour?
It elevated my mental plane, and gave me food for reflection. It filled
me with a burning desire to be immeasurably superior, too. Is he always
immeasurably superior? Could he keep it up, do you suppose, in the bosom
of his family,--when he is putting salt on his eggs at breakfast, for
instance, and thinks no one is looking? When he tries on a new hat, does
he do it with a lofty air of scorn, and does he fall asleep and have the
nightmare with coldly contemptuous condescension? I don't mind
mentioning to you that it is one of my favorite moods to be immeasurably
superior. It is such a good way when you cannot get what you want; it
disposes of your antagonists so simply and makes you feel so deserving;
but I never could keep it up,--but that may be owing to weakness of
character, and the fact that I am only an unworthy imitator and lack the
vigor to convince myself of my own genuineness. Oh! I assure you, I was
very much interested indeed."
"Well," said Arbuthnot, "I might have expected you would say something
of this kind. It is your little way of evading matters. You have a knack
at it."
Bertha looked down at the footstool on which her small shoe rested, and
then up at him with a quiet face.
"Yes, it is my little way," she answered. "I suppose I might count it
among my few small accomplishments. But don't you think it is as good a
way as any,--particularly if it is the only way you have?"
"It is as good a way as any," replied Arbuthnot, with the calmness of a
sensible person addressing an attractive but obstinate child. "But you
know it will not prevent my saying again what I said at first. You are
very foolish to tire yourself out for nothing, and you will regret it
when it is too late."
"Yes," answered Bertha, "if I regret it I shall naturally regret it when
it is too late. Did you ever hear of any one's regretting a thing too
early, or just in time? That is what regret means--that one is too
late."
Arbuthnot sat down near her.
"If you want to talk in that style," he remarked, in the most impartial
manner, "I am entirely in the mood to listen, now I have expressed my
opinion. It isn't worth much as _my_ opinion, but it is worth something
as the truth, and I am not afraid you will forget it, but, in the
meantime, until Mrs. Dacre is in the mood to be escorted home, you can
pander to my lower nature by showing me the sketches you made of Senator
Ayres and the Speaker, and the gentleman from Iowa who was afraid to
fall asleep."
The next morning, calling with a newspaper she had wanted, Tredennis,
being handed into the room in which Bertha usually spent her mornings at
home, found her lying upon a sofa, and, as she did not hear him enter,
he had the opportunity to stand for a few seconds and look at her.
While he did so she opened her eyes languidly and saw him, and the
thought which held his mind for the moment sprang to his lips and
uttered itself.
"I do not think you know," he said, "how pale you are."
"I do not want to know," she answered, with a rather tired little
smile, "if it is unbecoming, and I am sure it is. But I will ask you to
excuse my getting up."
He entirely passed over the first part of her reply, as she had noticed
he had a habit of passing in silence many of her speeches, though she
had not been able to decide why he did so.
"You said," he went on, "that when the season was over you intended to
rest. Have you been doing it lately?"
"Yes," she answered, with entirely unembarrassed readiness. "I have been
very quiet indeed."
At this he was silent for a moment again, and during the pause she lay
and looked at him with an expression of curious interest--trying to make
up her mind whether he did not reply because he felt himself not
sufficiently ready of speech to meet her upon her own ground, or whether
his silence was a negative sign of disapprobation.
"I am never tired when anything is going on," she said, at last.
"That is the worst of it," he replied.
"Oh, no--the best of it," she said, and then she looked away from him
across the room, and added, in a tone altogether different, "One does
not want too much time on one's hands."
Once or twice before he had seen this slight, unconscious change fall
upon her, and, without comprehending, had been sharply moved by it, but
she always recovered herself quickly, and she did so now.
"I tried it once," she said, "and it did not agree with me, and since
then I have occupied myself. As Richard says, 'one must have an object,'
and mine is to occupy myself."
"You accomplish your end, at least," he remarked.
"Yes," she answered. "I congratulate myself upon that. Upon the whole I
do not know any one who is more fortunate than I am. No other life would
suit me half so well as the one I lead. I am fond of gayety, and
change, and freedom, and I have all three. Richard is amiable, the
children are like him, and there is nothing to interfere with my having
my own way, and amusing myself as I please. I should be thoroughly
unhappy if I could not have my own way; to have it invariably is one of
my laudable ambitions, and as I always get it you see I have reason for
being charmed with my lot."
"You are very fortunate," he said.
"I am more than fortunate," she answered. Then she broke into a little
laugh. "It is rather odd," she said, "that just before you came in I was
lying thinking of the time you were in Washington before, and there came
back to me something I said to you the night you gave me the
heliotrope."
"Was it," said Tredennis, "what you said to me about being happy?"
"What!" she said. "You remember it? I scarcely thought that you would
remember it."
"Yes," said Tredennis, "I remember it."
"I could not bear the thought of not being happy," she went on. "It had
never occurred to me that such a thing was a possibility until you said
something which suggested it to me. I recollect how it startled me. It
was such a new idea."
She stopped and lay for a moment silent.
"And this morning?" suggested Tredennis.
"This morning," she answered, rather slowly, though smiling as she
spoke, "this morning, as I said, I decided that I had been very
fortunate."
"Then," he said, "you _have_ been happy."
"If I had not been," she answered, "it would have been very curious. I
have never been interfered with in the least."
"That is happiness, indeed," said Tredennis.
Just now he was reflecting upon the fact that all their conversations
took the same turn and ended in the same way. It mattered little how
they began; in all cases she showed the same aptitude for making her
subject an entirely inconsequent source of amusement. Experience was
teaching him that he need expect nothing else. And, even as he was
thinking this, he heard her laugh faintly again.
"Shall I tell you what I see in your face," she said,--"what I see
oftener than anything else?"
"I should be glad to know," he replied.
"I see that you are thinking that I am very much changed, and that it is
not for the better."
He paused a moment before he answered her, and when he did so he spoke
with his eyes fixed on the floor, and slowly:
"You are not the Bertha I used to know," he said. "But that I should
have allowed myself to expect it shows simply that I am a dull,
unprogressive fellow."
"It shows that you are very amiable and sanguine," she said. "I should
have been even more fortunate than it has been my fate to be if I had
not changed in ten years. Think of the good fortune of having stood
still so long,--of having grown no older, no wiser. No," in a lower
voice, "I am not the Bertha you used to know."
But the next instant, almost as soon as she had uttered the words, she
lifted her eyes with the daring little smile in them.
"But I am very well preserved," she said. "I am really very well
preserved. I am scarcely wrinkled at all, and I manage to conceal the
ravages of time. And, considering my years, I am quite active. I danced
every dance at the Ashworths' ball, with the kindly assistance of Mr.
Arbuthnot and his friends. There were _débutantes_ in the room who did
not dance half as often. The young are not what they were in my
generation,--though probably the expiring energies of advanced age are
flaming in the socket and"--
She stopped suddenly, letting her hands drop at her sides. "No," she
said again, "I--I am not the Bertha you used to know--and this morning I
am--tired enough to be obliged to admit it."
Tredennis took a quick step toward her; the hot blood showed itself
under his dark skin. What he had repressed in the last months got the
better of him so far that he had no time to reflect that his stern,
almost denunciatory, air could scarcely be ranked among ordinary
conventionalities, and that an ordinarily conventional expression of
interest might have been more reasonably expected from him than a
display of emotion, denunciatory or otherwise.
"Can you expect anything else?" he said. "Is your life a natural one? Is
it a natural and healthy thing that every hour of it should contain its
own excitement, and that you should not know what simple, normal rest
means? Who could be blind to the change which has taken place in you
during the last few weeks? Last night you were so tired and unstrung
that your hand trembled when you lifted your glass to your lips.
Arbuthnot told you then it was a mistake; I tell you now that it is
worse,--it is madness and crime."
He had not thought of what effect he would produce,--his words were his
indignant masculine protest against her pallor and weakness, and the
pain he had borne in silence for so long. It seemed, however, that he
had startled her singularly. She rose from her reclining posture slowly
and sat upright, and her hands trembled more than they had done the
night before.
"Why," she faltered, "why are you so angry?"
"That," he returned bitterly, "means that I have no right to be angry,
of course! Well, I am willing to admit it,--I have no right. I am taking
a liberty. I don't even suggest that you are making a mistake,--as Mr.
Arbuthnot did; I am rough with you, and say something worse."
"Yes," she admitted, "you are very rough with me." And she sat a few
moments, looking down at the floor, her little hands trembling on her
lap. But presently she moved again. She pushed one of the cushions up in
the sofa-arm and laid her cheek against it, with a half-sigh of
weariness relieved and a half-smile.
"Go on!" she said. "After all,--since I have reflected,--I think I don't
dislike it. New things always please me,--for a little while,--and this
is new. No one ever spoke to me so before. I wonder whether it was
because I did not really deserve it or because people were afraid?"
Tredennis stopped in the walk he had begun and wheeled sharply about,
fronting her with his disproportionately stern gaze.
"Do you want to know why _I_ do it?" he demanded. "I think--since I have
reflected--that it is for the sake of--of the other Bertha."
There was a slight pause.
"Of the other Bertha," she said after it, in a low, unsteady tone. "Of
the Bertha who thought it an impossibility that she should be anything
but happy."
He had not been prepared for her replies before, but he was startled by
what she did now. She left her seat with a sudden, almost impassioned,
action; the cushion fell upon the floor. She put her hand upon the
mantel, as if to support herself.
"Why did you say that?" she exclaimed. "I do not like it! I do not like
to be reminded that it is so long since--since I was worth liking. I
suppose that is what it means. Why should you seem to accuse me when you
say you speak for the sake of the other Bertha? Am I so bad? You have
lived a quiet life because you liked it best; I did not chance to like
it best, and so I have been gay. I go out a great deal and am fond of
the world, but do I neglect my children and treat my husband badly?
Richard is very happy, and Jack and Janey and Meg enjoy themselves and
are very fond of me. If I was careless of them, and ill-tempered to
Richard, and made my home unhappy, you might accuse me. It is the most
mysterious thing to me, but I always feel as if I was defending myself
against you, even when you only look at me and do not speak at all.
It--it is a curious position! I do not understand it, and I do not like
it!"
Her sudden change of mood was a revelation to Tredennis. He began to
realize what he had dimly felt from the first, that her mental attitude
toward him was one of half-conscious defiance of his very thought of
her. He had not known why he had felt at times that his mere presence
prompted her to present her worldly, mocking little philosophies in
their most incontrovertible and daring form, and that it was her whim to
make the worst of herself and her theories for his benefit. He accused
himself angrily in secret of overestimating his importance in her eyes,
and had reiterated impatiently that there was no reason why she should
be at all specially aware of his existence when he was near her, and it
had been one of his grievances against himself that, in spite of this,
every time they met he had felt the same thing, and had resented and
been puzzled by it.
But he had never before seen her look as she looked now. One of his
private sources of wonder had been the perfect self-control which
restrained her from exhibiting anything approaching a shadow of real
feeling upon any subject. He had seen her under circumstances which
would have betrayed nine women out of ten into some slight display of
irritation, and she had always maintained the airy serenity of demeanor
which deprived all persons and incidents of any weight whatever when
they assumed the form of obstacles, and her practicable little smile and
calm impartiality of manner had never failed her. He had heard her
confess that it was her chief weakness to pride herself upon her quiet
adroitness in avoiding all things unpleasant or emotional, and upon her
faithfulness to her resolve not to permit herself to be disturbed.
"I have seen people who enjoyed their emotions," she had said, "but I
never enjoyed mine, even when I was very young. I definitely disliked
them. I am too self-conscious to give myself up to them simply. If I had
one, I should think about it and analyze it and its effects upon me. I
should be saying all the time, 'Now I am hot--now I am cold'; and when
it was over I should be tired, not only of the feeling itself, but of
taking my own temperature."
And now she stood before him for the instant a new creature,--weaker and
stronger than he had dreamed it possible she could be,--her eyes bright
with some strange feeling, a spot of color burning on each pale cheek.
He was so bewildered and impressed that he was slow to speak, and, when
he began, felt himself at so severe a disadvantage that his
consciousness of it gave his voice a rigid sound.
"I do not think," he began, "that I know what to say"--
Bertha stopped him.
"There is no need that you should say anything," she interrupted. "You
cannot say anything which will disapprove of me more than your
expression does. And it is not you who should defend yourself, but I.
But you were always severe. I remember I felt that when I was only a
child, and knew that you saw all that was frivolous in me. I was
frivolous then as I am now. I suppose I have a light nature,--but I do
not like to be reminded of it. After all, no one is harmed but myself,
and it would be charity in you to let me go my flippant way and not
despise me too much."
"Bertha," he answered, "it is not for me to say that I do not despise
you."
He stood with his arms folded and looked down at her steadily. It was
very easy for her to place him at a disadvantage. He knew nothing of
feminine ways and means, and his very masculine strength and largeness
were against him. If she gave him a wound he could not strike back, or
would not; and in her last speech she had given him more wounds than
one, and they were rankling in his great breast fiercely. And yet
despite this it was not she who came off entirely victor. After meeting
his gaze with undeniable steadiness for a few seconds, she turned away.
"I told you," she remarked with a persistence which was its own
betrayer, "that--it was not necessary for you to say anything." The next
moment an impatient laugh broke from her. She held up her unsteady hand
that he might see it.
"Look!" she said. "Why should I quarrel with you when you are right,
after all? It is certainly time that I should rest when I am so absurdly
unstrung as this. And my very mood itself is a proof that something
should be done with me. For a minute or so I have actually been out of
temper, or something humiliatingly like it. And I pride myself upon my
temper, you know, and upon the fact that I never lose it,--or have not
any to lose. I must be worn out when a few perfectly truthful speeches
will make me bad-tempered. Not that I object to it on moral grounds, but
it wounds my vanity to lose control of myself. And now I have reached my
vanity I am quite safe. I will leave for Fortress Monroe to-morrow."
"It would be better if you went to a quieter place," he said.
"Thank you," she answered. "I think it will be quiet enough,--if I take
the children, and avoid the ball-room, and am very decorous."
There seemed but little more for him to say. She changed the subject by
taking from the table the paper he had brought her, and beginning to
discuss its contents.
"Richard asked me to read the editorial and the letter from the
Washington correspondent," she said. "He is more interested in the
matter than I ever knew him to be in anything of the kind before. He is
actually making it one of his objects, and flatters me by wanting to
know my opinions and wishing me to share his enthusiasm." She sat down
to the table, with the paper open before her and her hands lying clasped
upon it.
"Have you read it?" she asked. "Is it very clever? Can I understand it?
Richard is so amiably sure I can."
"It is well done," replied Tredennis, "and you will certainly understand
it."
"I am glad of that," she said, and sat still a moment, with eyes
lowered. Then she spoke, rather suddenly. "Richard is very good to me,"
she said. "I ought to be very grateful to him. It is just like him to
feel that what I think of such things is worth hearing. That is his
affectionate, generous way. Of what value could my shallow little
fancies be?--and yet I think he really believes they should carry
weight. It is the most delightful flattery in the world."
"It is your good fortune," said Tredennis, "to be able to say things
well and with effect."
"What!" she said, with a half-smile, "are you going to flatter me, too?"
"No," he answered, grimly, "I am not going to flatter you."
"You would find it a very good way," she answered. "We should get along
much better, I assure you. Perhaps that is really what I have been
resenting so long--that you show no facility for making amiable
speeches."
"I am afraid my facility lies in the opposite direction," he returned.
"I have recovered my equilibrium sufficiently not to admit that," she
said.
When he went away, as he did shortly after, she followed him to the door
of the room.
"Was I very bad-tempered?" she said, softly. "If I was, suppose you
forgive me before you go away--for the sake of the other Bertha."
He took the hand she offered him, and looked down at it as it lay upon
his big brown palm. It was feverish and still a little unsteady, though
her manner was calm enough.
"There is nothing to forgive," he answered. "If there was--this
Bertha"--He checked himself, and ended abruptly. "I don't share your
gift," he said. "I said my say as bluntly and offensively as possible, I
suppose, and you had a right to be angry. It was all the worse done
because I was in earnest."
"So was I--for a moment," she said; "that was the trouble."
And that was the end of it, though even when he dropped her hand and
turned away, he was aware of her slender figure standing in the
door-way, and of a faint, inexplicable shadow in the eyes that followed
him.
He went back to his quarters bitterly out of humor with himself.
"A nice fellow I am to talk to women!" he said. "I have not lived the
life to fit me for it. Military command makes a man authoritative. What
right had I to seem to assume control over her? She's not used to that
kind of thing, even from those who might be supposed to have the right
to do it. Some one ought to have the right--though that has gone out of
fashion, too, I suppose." Something like a groan burst from him as he
laid his forehead upon his hands, resting his elbows on the table before
him. "If a man loved her well enough," he said, "he might do it and
never hurt her; but if she loved him perhaps there would be no need of
it."
He had passed through many such brief spasms of resentful misery of
late, and he was beginning to acknowledge to himself that each one was
stronger than the last. He had contended his ground with steady
persistence and with stubborn condemnation of his own weakness, but he
had lost it, inch by inch, until there were times when he felt his
foothold more insecure than he could have believed possible a year ago.
"Why should I think of myself as a man who has lost something?" he was
wont to say to himself, bitterly and impatiently. "I had won nothing,
and might never have won it. I had what would have been opportunity
enough for a quicker temperament. It is nothing but sentiment."
And, even as he said it, there would come back to him some tone of
Bertha's voice, some pretty natural turn of her head or figure as she
sat or stood in the parlor with her small court around her; and, slight
as the memory might be, the sudden leap of his pulses had more power
than his argument.
It was these trifles and their habit of haunting him which were harder
to combat than all the rest. His life had been so little affected by
femininity that hers had a peculiarly persistent influence upon him. He
noted in her things he might have seen in scores of other women, but
half fancied belonged specially to herself. The sweep and fall of her
dress, the perfume she used, the soft ruffles of lace she was given to
wearing,--each of her little whims of adornment had its distinct effect,
and seemed, in some mysterious way, to have been made her own, and to be
shared with no other being. Other women wore flowers; but what flowers
had ever haunted him as he had been haunted by the knot of heliotrope
and violets he had seen her tuck carelessly into the belt of her dress
one day? He had remembered them with a start again and again, and each
time they had bloomed and breathed their soft scent afresh.
"It is all sentiment," he persisted. "There would be nothing new in it
to--to that fellow Arbuthnot, for instance; but it is new to me, and I
can't get rid of it, somehow."
He had heard in his past stories of men who cherished as treasures for a
lifetime a ribbon or a flower, and had passed them by in undisturbed
composure as incidents belonging only to the realms of wild romance;
but he had never in the course of his existence felt anything so keen as
the inconsequent thrill which was the result of his drawing suddenly
from his pocket one night, on his return to his quarters after a romp
with the children, a small, soft, long-wristed glove which it had been
Master Jack's pleasure to hide there.
He had carried it sternly back the next morning and returned it to
Bertha, but the act cost him an effort; it had been like a living
presence in his room the night before, and he had slept less well
because of it.
He had used his very susceptibility to these influences as an argument
against his feeling.
"There is nothing substantial in it," he had said,--"nothing but what a
man should find it easy to live down. It is the folly of a boy,
intoxicated by the color of a girl's cheek and the curl of her hair. An
old fellow, who any day may find a sprinkling of gray in his scalp-lock,
should know better than to ponder over a pretty gown and--a bunch of
flowers; and yet how one remembers them!"
And to-day it was the little things, as usual, almost as much as the
great ones. The memory of the small, bright room, with its air of
belonging to Bertha, and being furnished by Bertha, and strewed with
appendages of Bertha; the slight figure, in its white morning dress,
lying upon the sofa or standing between the folding-doors; the soft,
full knot of her hair as he saw it when she turned her head proudly away
from him,--what trifles they were! And yet if the room had been another,
and the pretty dress not white, and the soft hair coiled differently,
everything might have had another effect, and he might have been in
another mood,--or so he fancied.
But he gave himself little leisure for the indulgence of his fancies,
and he made his usual effort to crush them down and undervalue them. His
groan was followed by a bitter laugh.
"It is the old story," he said. "I please myself by fancying that what
would please me would make her happier. Arbuthnot would know better.
Control would not suit her, even the gentlest. She has had her own way
too long. She is a small, slight creature, but it has been her lot to
rule all her life, in a small, slight creature's way. It is the natural
sentimentality of an obstinate, big-boned fellow to fancy she would
thrive under it. She would know better herself. She would laugh the
thought to scorn, and be wise in doing it."