Instead of making his way home at once Arbuthnot turned up the side of
the street on which the Amorys' house stood. As he reached the house the
door was opened, and a man came out and walked down the steps. He was a
man with a large frame, a darkly florid complexion, and heavily handsome
features. As he passed Arbuthnot he gave him a glance and a rather
grudging bow, which expressed candidly exactly the amount of pleasure he
derived from encountering him.
Bertha was in the parlor alone. When Arbuthnot entered he found her
standing in the middle of the room, looking down at the roses on her
gayly painted fan, and evidently not seeing them.
"Well," he began, by way of greeting, "I hope you have been enjoying
yourself--with your senators."
She looked up, and made a quick, eager little movement toward him, as if
she was more glad to see him than usual.
"Ah!" she exclaimed. "I believe I was wishing you would come."
"Thank you," he said; "but the compliment would be greater if you were
sure of it."
"I think I am sure of it, now you are here," she answered, "though I
don't know at all why I wanted you--unless it was to tell you that I
have not been enjoying myself in the least--with my senators."
"I am delighted to hear it," he replied. "Nothing could please me
better. They are always too numerous, and lately one is continually
meeting them on the steps and being scowled at."
She shut her fan quickly, with a slight frown.
"Why scowled at?" she said. "That would be absurd enough."
"Absurd or not," he laughed, "it is true."
But, notwithstanding his laugh, there was no change in her face he did
not see.
They had seated themselves by this time, and Bertha was looking at her
fan again, and opening and shutting it slowly.
"They are not my senators," she said. "They are Richard's, and--I am
getting a little tired of them, though I should not like to tell him so.
When it is warm, as it is to-day, I am very tired of them."
"I should not think it at all improbable," remarked Arbuthnot, dryly.
"It has struck me that it would be necessary for the mercury to be
several degrees below zero before you would find the one who went out
just now, for instance, especially exhilarating."
"He is not exhilarating at all," she said. "Richard likes him," she
added, a moment afterward. "I don't know exactly why, but he really
seems to admire him. They are quite intimate. I think the acquaintance
began through some law business he gave him in connection with the
Westoria lands. I have tried to like him on Richard's account. You must
remember," she said, with a smile, "I first tried to like you on
Richard's account."
"I hope you succeeded better than you will with Planefield," he said.
"I might succeed with him if I persevered long enough," she answered.
"The difficulty lies in the perseverance. Richard says I would make a
good lobbyist, but I am sure I should not. I could not be persistently
amiable and entertaining to people who tired me."
"Don't deplore your deficiencies until it becomes necessary for you to
enter the profession," said Arbuthnot. "I don't like to hear you speak
of it," he added, with a touch of sharpness.
"I don't deplore them," said Bertha. "And it is only one of my little
jokes. But, if the fortunes of the Westoria lands depended on me, I am
afraid they would be a dismal failure."
"As they don't depend on you," he remarked, "doesn't it occur to you
that you might as well leave them to Senator Planefield? I must confess
it has presented itself to me in that light."
"It is rather odd," she said, in a tone of reflection, "that though I
have nothing whatever to do with them, they actually seem to have
detained me in town for the last two weeks."
"It is quite time you went away," said Arbuthnot.
"I know that," she answered. "And I feel it more every day."
She raised her eyes suddenly to his.
"Laurence," she said, "I am not well. Don't tell Richard, but I think I
am not well at all. I--I am restless and nervous--and--and morbid. I am
actually morbid. Things trouble me which never troubled me before.
Sometimes I lose all respect for myself. You know I always was rather
proud of my self-control. I am not quite as proud of it as I used to be.
About two weeks ago I--I positively lost my temper."
He did not laugh, as she had been half-afraid he would. His manner was
rather quiet; on the contrary--it was as if what she said struck him as
being worth listening to with some degree of serious attention, though
his reply was not exactly serious.
"I hope you had sufficient reason," he said.
"No," she answered. "I had no reason at all, which makes it all the more
humiliating. I think I have been rather irritable for a month or two. I
have allowed myself to--to be disturbed by things which were really of
no consequence, and I have taken offence at things and--and--resented
trifles, and it was the merest trifle which made me lose my temper--yes,
actually lose my temper, and say what I did not intend to say, in the
most open and abject manner. What could be more abject than to say
things you did not intend to say? You know I never was given to that
kind of thing."
"No," he responded, "it cannot be said that you were."
"It was so--so revolting to me after it was over," she went on, "that it
seemed to make me more weak-minded than ever. When you once give way to
your emotions it is all going down-hill--you do it again and again. I
never did it before, but I have been on the verge of doing it two or
three times since."
"Don't go any farther than the verge," he said.
"I don't intend to," she answered. "I don't like even the verge. I
resent it with all my strength. I should like to invent some kind of
horrible torture to pay myself for--for what I did."
He was watching her very closely, but she was not aware of it. She had
arrested his attention completely enough by this time, and the fact made
itself evident in his intent and rather startled expression.
"I hope it was nothing very serious," he said.
"It was serious enough for me," she replied. "Nobody else was hurt, but
it was serious enough for me--the mere knowing that for a few minutes I
had lost my hold on myself. I didn't like it--I didn't like it!"
There was an intensity in her manner, in her voice, in her face, in her
very figure itself, which was curiously disproportionate to her words.
She leaned forward a little, and laid her small, clenched hand upon her
knee.
"In all my life," she said, slowly,--"in all my life, I have never had a
feeling which was as strong as myself. I have been that fortunate. I
have been angry, but never so angry that I could not seem perfectly
still and calm; I have been happy, but never so happy that I could not
have hidden it if I chose; I have been unhappy--for a moment or so--but
never so unhappy that I had the horrible anguish of being found out. I
am not capable of strong, real emotions, I am too shallow and--and
light. I have been light all my life, and I _will_ be light until the
end.
"Only the children could make me suffer, really," she said after
it,--"only the children, and all women are like that. Through Janey, or
Jack, or Meg, my heart could be torn in two, if they were in pain, or
badly treated, or taken from me,--that is nothing but common nature; but
nothing else could hurt me so that I should cry out--nothing and
nobody--not even Richard!"
She stopped herself, and opened her fan again.
"There!" she exclaimed. "Why did I say so much then, and say it so
vehemently, as if it was of consequence? Nothing is of
consequence--nothing, nothing!" And she laughed, and rose and began to
take up and set down again some trifles on the mantel.
Arbuthnot still watched her.
"No," he said, "you are quite right; nothing is of consequence really,
and the sooner one learns that, the better for one's peace of mind. The
worst pain you could have to bear could not last you more than a few
score years, and you would get used to it in that time; the greatest
happiness you could yearn for would not last any longer, and you would
get tired of it in time, too."
"Tired of it!" she echoed. "One could tire of anything in threescore
years and ten. How tired one must be of one's self before it is
over--how tired! how tired!" and she threw up her hands in a sudden,
desperate gesture.
"No," he answered, in a tone whose level coolness was a forcible
contrast to her own. "Not necessarily, if one doesn't expect too much.
If we take things for what they are worth, and don't let ourselves be
deceived by them, there is plenty of rational entertainment to be had by
the way. We mayn't like it quite as well as what we set out with
expecting, but we can manage to subsist upon it. I hope I am logical. I
know I am not eloquent." He said it bitterly.
"No," she returned, without looking at him, "you are not eloquent,
perhaps, but you are speaking the truth--and I like to hear it. I want
to hear it. It is good for me. It is always good for people to hear the
truth; the bare, unvarnished, unadorned truth. Go on."
"If I go on," he said, still bitterly, "I shall begin to drag myself in,
and I don't care to do it. It is natural that I should feel the
temptation. I never knew the man yet who could talk in this strain and
not drag himself in."
"Drag yourself in as much as you like," she said, even fiercely, "and be
an example to me."
"I should be example enough if I said all I could," he replied. "Am _I_
a happy man?"
She turned, and for a moment they looked into each other's eyes; his
were stern, hard, and miserable.
"No," she cried out, "you are not. No one is happy in the world!" And
she dropped her face upon her hands as she leaned upon the mantel.
"I might have been happier if I had begun right, I suppose," he said.
"Begun!" she repeated. "Does any one ever begin right? One ought to
begin at the end and go backward, and then one might make something of
it all."
"I didn't make much of it," he said. "I was not as wise as you. I began
with emotions, and follies, and fires,--and the rest of it, and the
enjoyment I derived from them was scarcely what I anticipated it would
be. The emotions didn't last, and the follies didn't pay, and the fires
burnt out--and that was the worst of all. And they always do--and that
is worse still. It is in the nature of things. Look at that grate,"
pointing to it. "It looked different a week ago, when we had a rainy
night and sat around it. We could have burned ourselves at it then if we
had been feeble-minded enough to try it; we couldn't do it now; and yet
a few days ago it was hot enough. The fire has burned out, and even the
ashes are gone."
She stooped down, picked up her fan, and reseated herself upon the
sofa. She did not look quite like herself,--her face was very pale but
for the two red spots Tredennis had seen on her cheeks when her display
of feeling had startled him; but all at once a change had taken place in
her manner. There was a sort of deadly stillness in it.
"We are a long way from my temper," she said,--"a long way."
"Yes," he replied, "about as far as we could get in the space of time
allowed us; and we have been a trifle emotional."
"And it was my fault," she continued. "Isn't it time I went somewhere
cool and bracing? I think you must admit it is."
"Yes," he said, "it is time. Take my advice, and go."
"I'll go," she said, steadily, "the day after to-morrow. And I'll not go
to Fortress Monroe. I'll go into the mountains of Virginia,--to a
farm-house I know of, where one has forests, and silence, and
nature--and nothing else. I'll take the children, and live out-of-doors
with them, and read to them, and talk to them, and sew for them when I
want anything to do. I always was happy and natural when I was sewing
and doing things for them. I like it. Living in that simple, natural
way, and having the children with me, will rest and cure me if anything
will on earth; the children always--the children"--
She stopped and sat perfectly still; her voice had broken, and she had
turned her face a little away.
Arbuthnot got up. He stood a moment, as he always did before going, but
he did not look directly at her, though he did not seem to avoid her in
his glance.
"It is the best thing you can do," he said,--"the very best thing. You
will be thoroughly rested when you come home, and that is what you need.
I will go now; I hear Richard, and I want to speak to him alone."
And by the time the door opened and Richard stood on the threshold, he
had reached him and turned him around, throwing his arm boyishly over
his shoulder.
"You are just in time," he said. "Take me into the museum, or the
library. I want to have a confidential chat with you."
And they went out together.