The following day Richard presented himself to Tredennis in the morning,
looking a little disturbed, and scarcely in such excellent spirits as
usual.
"Bertha and the children are going away to-morrow," he said. "And if you
have no other engagement you are to come and dine with us this evening
and say good-by."
"I have no other engagement," Tredennis answered. "I shall be glad to
come. They are really going to Fortress Monroe to-morrow?"
Richard threw himself into a chair with a rather discontented air. "They
are not going to Fortress Monroe at all," he said. "They are going to
bury themselves in the mountains of Virginia. It is a queer fancy of
Bertha's. I think she is making a mistake. She won't like it, really,
when she tries it."
"If she needs rest," said Tredennis, "certainly the mountains of
Virginia"--
"The mountains of Virginia," interrupted Richard, "were not made for
Bertha. She will tire of them in a week. I wish she would not go!" he
said, with the faintest possible touch of petulance.
"You will miss her very much, of course," said Tredennis.
"Oh, yes, I shall miss her. I always miss her--and I shall miss her
specially just now."
"Just now?" said Tredennis.
"Oh," said Richard, straightening himself somewhat and clearing his
slightly knitted brow, "I was only thinking of two or three plans which
had half-formed themselves in my mind. I was looking at it from a
selfish point of view, which I had no right to do. I suppose things
might wait--until she comes back."
"Are you going with her?" said Tredennis.
"I!" exclaimed Richard. "No, I could not do that. My business would not
allow of it. I have more than usual on hand just now. I shall run down
to see them once a week, if possible. I must confess," with a laugh,
"that I could not make up my mind to three months of it. Bertha knows
that."
Taking all things into consideration, he bore the prospect of his
approaching loneliness very well. He soon began to speak of other
matters, and before he took his departure had quite recovered his usual
gayety. As he talked Tredennis regarded him with some curiosity.
"He has a fortunate temperament," he was thinking. "He would have been
happy if she had remained, but he is not unhappy because she goes. There
are men who would take it less lightly--though, after all, he is the one
to be envied."
Tredennis did not feel that he himself was greatly to be envied. He had
said that she ought to go, and had been anxious and unhappy because she
had not gone; but now that she was going he was scarcely happier. There
were things he should miss every day. As he remembered them, he knew he
had not allowed himself to admit what their value had been to him. The
very fact that they had not been better friends made it harder. From the
first he had been aware that a barrier stood between them, and in the
interview which had revealed to him something of its nature he had
received some sharp wounds.
"There was truth in what she said," he had often pondered since, "though
she put it in a woman's way. I have resented what she has said and done,
often enough, and have contrasted it bitterly with what I
remembered--God knows why! I had no right to do it, and it was all
folly; but I did it, and made myself wretched through it--and she saw
the folly, and not the wretchedness."
But now that her presence would no longer color and animate the familiar
rooms he realized what their emptiness would be. He could not endure the
thought of what it would be to go into them for the first time and sit
alone with Richard,--no bright figure moving before them, or sitting in
its chair by the table, or the window, or the hearth. The absence of the
very things which had angered and disturbed him would leave a blank. It
would actually be a wretchedness to see no longer that she often chose
to be flippant, and mocked for mere mocking's sake.
"What!" he said, savagely, "am I beginning to care for her very faults?
Then it is best that she should go."
But his savageness was not against Bertha, but against himself and his
weakness.
When he arrived at the house in the evening he found Bertha in the
parlor, with Jack and Janey, who were to be allowed to share the
farewell dinner.
As she advanced to meet him with a child on either side, he was struck
by certain changes which he observed in her dress and manner. She wore a
dark, simple gown, her hair was dressed a trifle more closely and
plainly than usual, and there was no color about her. When she gave him
her hand, and stood with the other resting on Jack's shoulder, her eyes
uplifted to his own, he was bewildered by a feeling that he was suddenly
brought face to face with a creature quite strange to him. He could not
have said that she was actually cold and reserved, but there was that in
the quiet of her manner which suggested both reserve and coldness.
"I have allowed the children to stay downstairs," she said, "and they
are to dine with us if they will be good. They wished very much to see
as much of you as possible--as it will be some time before they
return--and I think they will be quiet."
"If you will seat one on each side of me," said Tredennis, "I will keep
them quiet."
"You are very kind," she answered, "but I should scarcely like to do
that."
And then she returned to her seat by the window, and he sat opposite her
on the end of a sofa, with Janey leaning against his knee.
"You are not going to Fortress Monroe?" he said.
"No," she replied; "I am going to the Virginia mountains."
"I should think that would be better," he said, putting an arm around
Janey.
"I thought so," she answered, "upon reflection. I am not as strong as I
should be, and I think I dislike ill-health even more than most people
do."
She held Jack's hand, and spoke in a quiet tone of common things,--of
her plans for the summer, of the children, of Richard; and Tredennis
listened like a man in a dream, missing the color and vivacity from her
manner as he had known he should miss her presence from the rooms when
she was gone.
"Tell Uncle Philip something of what we are going to do," she said to
Jack. "Tell him about the hammocks, and the spades we are to dig with,
and the books. We are to live out of doors and enjoy ourselves
immensely," she added, with a faint smile.
"Mamma is going to play with us every day," said Jack, triumphantly.
"And we are going to lie in our hammocks while she reads to us and tells
us stories."
"And there will be no parties and no company," added Janey. "Only we are
to be the company."
"And Jack is to take care of me," said Bertha, "because I am growing
old, and he is so big."
Jack regarded her dubiously.
"You haven't any wrinkles," he said.
"Yes, I have, Jack," she answered; "but they don't show." And a little
laugh broke from her, and she let her cheek rest against his dark
love-locks for a moment in a light caress.
Glancing up at the colonel's face at this juncture, Janey found cause in
it for serious dissatisfaction. She raised her hand, and drew a small
forefinger across his forehead.
"Uncle Philip," she said, "you are bad again. The black marks have come
back, and you are quite ugly; and you promised you would try not to let
them come any more."
"I beg your pardon, Janey," he answered, and then turned to Bertha. "She
does not like my black face," he said, "and no wonder. I am rather an
unfortunate fellow to have my faults branded upon me so plainly that
even a child can see them."
There was a touch of bitterness in the words, and in his manner of
uttering them. Bertha answered him in a soft, level voice.
"You are severe upon yourself," she said. "It is much safer to be severe
upon other people."
It was rather cruel, but she did not object to being cruel. There come
to most women moments when to be cruel is their only refuge against
themselves and others; and such a moment had come to her.
In looking back upon the evening, when it was over, the feeling that it
had been unreal was stronger in Tredennis's mind than any other. It was
all unreal from beginning to end,--the half-hour before dinner, when
Arbuthnot and Richard and the professor came in, and Bertha stood near
her father's chair and talked to him, and Tredennis, holding Janey on
his knee and trying to answer her remarks lucidly, was aware only of the
presence of the dark, slender figure near him, and the strange quiet of
the low voice; the dinner itself, during which Richard was in the most
attractive mood, and the professor was rather silent, and Arbuthnot's
vivacity was a little fitful at first and afterward seemed to recover
itself and rise to the occasion; while Bertha, with Jack on one hand
and Janey on the other, cared for their wants and answered Richard's
sallies, and aided him in them, and yet was not herself at all, but a
new being.
"And you think," said the professor, later in the evening, when they had
returned to the parlors,--"you think that you will like the quiet of the
mountains?"
"I think it will be good for me," she answered, "and the children will
like it."
"She will not like it at all," said Richard. "She will abhor it in ten
days, and she will rush off to Fortress Monroe, and dance every night to
make up for her temporary mental aberration."
"No, she will not," said Arbuthnot. "She has made preparations to enjoy
her seclusion in its dramatic aspects. She is going to retire from the
world in the character of a graceful anchorite, and she has already
begun to dress the part. She is going to be simple and serious, and a
trifle severe; and it even now expresses itself in the lines and color
of her gown."
She turned toward him, with the sudden gleam of some new expression in
her eyes.
"How well you understand me!" she said. "No one else would have
understood me so well. I never can deceive you, at least. Yes, you are
quite right. I am going to enjoy the thing dramatically. I don't want to
go, but as I feel it discreet I intend to amuse myself, and make the
best of it. I am going to play at being maternal and amiable, and even
domesticated. I have a costume for it, as I have one for bathing and
dining and making calls. This," she said, touching her dress, "is part
of it. Upstairs I have a little mob-cap and an apron, and a work-basket
to carry on my arm. They are not unbecoming, either. Shall I run up into
the nursery and put them on, and show them to you? Then you can be sure
that I comprehend the part."
"Have you a mob-cap and an apron?" asked Richard. "Have you, really?"
"Yes, really," she answered. "Don't you remember that I told you that
it was my dresses that were of consequence, and not myself? Shall I go
and put them on?"
Her tone was soft no longer; it was a little hard, and so was the look
which half hid itself behind the brightness of the eyes she turned
toward him.
"Yes," he answered. "Put them on, and let us see them."
She turned round and went out of the room, and Arbuthnot followed her
with a rather anxious glance. The professor stirred his tea as usual,
and Tredennis turned his attention to Janey, while Richard laughed.
"I have no doubt she has all three," he said. "And they will be well
worth seeing."
They were worth seeing. In a few minutes she returned,--the little
work-basket on her arm, the mob-cap upon her head, the apron around her
waist, and a plain square of white muslin crossed upon her bosom. She
stopped in the door-way, and made a courtesy.
"There ought to be a curtain, and somebody ought to ring it up," she
said. "Enter the domestic virtues."
And she came and stood before them, her eyes shining still, and her head
erect, but--perhaps through the rather severe black and white of her
costume--seeming to have a shade less color than before.
"I did not make them for this occasion," she said. "They have appeared
before. You don't remember them, Richard, but I had them when Jack was a
baby--and a novelty. I tried being maternal then."
"Why, yes," said Richard, "to be sure I remember them,--and very
becoming they were, too."
"Oh, yes," she answered. "I knew they were becoming!"
She turned and fronted Tredennis.
"I hope they are becoming now," she said, and made her little courtesy
again.
"They are very becoming," he answered, looking at her steadily. "I like
them better than--the silks and brocades."
"Thank you," she said. "I thought you would--or I would not have put
them on. Jack and Janey, come and stand on each side of me while I sit
down. I have always congratulated myself that you were becoming. This is
what we shall be constrained to do when we are in Virginia, only we
shall not have the incentive of being looked at."
"We will make up a party," said Richard, "and come down once a week to
look at you. Planefield would enjoy it, I am sure."
"Thank you," said Bertha. "And I will always bring out the work-basket,
with a lace-collar for Meg in it. Lace-collars are more becoming than
small aprons or stocking-mending. Do you remember the little shirt Mrs.
Rawdon Crawley was making for her boy, and which was always produced
when she was in virtuous company? Poor Rawdon was quite a big boy, and
very much too large for it, by the time it was finished. I wonder if Meg
will be grown up before she gets her collar."
She produced a needle, threaded it, and took a few stitches, bending her
head over her task with a serious air.
"Does it look as if I had done it before?" she said. "I hope it does. I
really have, you know. Once I sewed on a button for Richard."
But she did not sew many minutes. Soon she laid her work down in the
basket.
"There!" she said, "that is enough! I have made my impression, and that
is all I care for--or I _should_ have made my impression if you had been
strangers. If you had not known me you would have had time to say to one
another: 'What a simple, affectionate little creature she must be! After
all, there is nothing which becomes a woman so well as to sit at her
work in that quiet, natural way, with her children about her!' Come,
Jack and Janey, it is time for you to say good-night, and let me make a
pretty exit with you, in my mob-cap and apron."
She took them away, and remained upstairs with them until they were in
bed. When she came back she did not bring the work-basket, but she had
not taken off the cap and handkerchief. She held an open letter in her
hand, and went to Richard and sat down by him. Her manner had changed
again entirely. It was as if she had left upstairs something more than
the work-basket.
"Richard," she said, "I did not tell you I had had a letter from Agnes
Sylvestre."
"From Agnes Sylvestre!" he exclaimed. "Why, no, you didn't! But it is
good news. Laurence, you must remember Agnes Sylvestre!"
"Perfectly," was the answer. "She was not the kind of person you
forget."
"She was a beautiful creature," said Richard, "and I always regretted
that we lost sight of her as we did after her marriage. Where is she
now, Bertha?"
"When she wrote she was at Castellamare. She went abroad, you know,
immediately after her husband's death."
"He was not the nicest fellow in the world,--that Sylvestre," said
Richard. "He was not the man for a woman like that to marry. I wonder if
she did not find out that she had made a mistake?"
"If she did," said Bertha, "she bore it very well, and it has been all
over for more than two years."
She turned suddenly to Tredennis.
"Did not you once tell me"--she began.
"Yes," he replied. "I met her in Chicago, and Mr. Sylvestre was with
her."
"It must have been two or three weeks before his death," said Bertha.
"He died quite suddenly, and they were in Chicago at the time. Do you
remember how she looked, and if you liked her?--but of course you liked
her."
"I saw her only for a short time," he answered. "We talked principally
of you. She was very handsome, and had a sweet voice and large, calm
eyes."
Bertha was silent a moment.
"Yes," she said next, "she has beautiful eyes. They are large and clear,
like a child's, but they are not childish eyes. She sees a great deal
with them. I think there was never anything more effective than a way
she has of looking at you quietly and directly for a few seconds,
without saying anything at all."
"You wonder what she is thinking of," said Arbuthnot. "And you hope she
is thinking of yourself, and are inclined to believe she is, when there
are ten chances to one that she is not at all."
"But she generally is," said Bertha. "The trouble is that perhaps she is
not thinking exactly what you would like best, though she will never
tell you so, and you would not discover it from her manner. She had an
adorable manner; it is soft and well-bred, but she never wastes
herself."
"I remember," said Tredennis, "that I thought her very attractive."
Bertha turned more directly toward him.
"She is exactly what you would like," she said,--"exactly. When I said
just now that her way of looking at people was effective, I used the
worst possible word, and did her an injustice. She is never
effective--in that way. To be effective, it seems to me, you must apply
yourself. Agnes Sylvestre never applies herself. Trifles do not amuse
her as they amuse me. I entertain myself with my whims and with all
sorts of people; she has no whims, and cares only for the people she is
fond of. If she were here to-night she would look calmly at my mob-cap
and apron, and wonder what I meant by them, and what mental process I
had gone through to reach the point of finding it worth while to wear
them."
"Oh," said Arbuthnot, "I should not think she was slow at following
mental processes."
"No," answered Bertha, "I did not mean that. She would reason clearly
enough, after she had looked at me a few moments and asked herself the
question. But in talking of her I am forgetting to tell you that she is
coming home, and will spend next winter in Washington."
"Congratulate yourself, Laurence," said Richard. "We may all
congratulate ourselves. It will be something more to live for."
"As to congratulating myself," said Arbuthnot, "I should have no
objection to devoting the remainder of the evening to it, but I am
afraid"--
"Of what?" demanded Bertha.
"Oh," he answered, "she will see through _me_ with her calm eyes; and,
as you say, she never wastes herself."
"No," said Bertha, "she never wastes herself. And, after all, it is
Colonel Tredennis who has most reason to congratulate himself. He has
not thrown away his time. I am obliged to admit that she once said to me
of you, 'Why does he throw away his time? Does he never think at all?'
Yes, it is Colonel Tredennis who must be congratulated."
It was chiefly of Agnes Sylvestre they talked during the rest of the
evening.
"She is a person who says very little of herself," was Bertha's comment,
"but there is a great deal to say of her."
And so there seemed to be. There were anecdotes to be related of her,
the charm of her beauty and manner was to be analyzed, and all of her
attributes were found worth touching upon.
It was Tredennis who took his departure first. When he rose to go,
Bertha, who was talking to Arbuthnot, did not at first observe his
movement, and when he approached her she turned with an involuntary
start.
"You--are going now?" she said.
"Yes," he answered. "I wish you a pleasant summer and all the rest you
require."
She stood up and gave him her hand.
"Thank you," she replied. "I shall be sure to have the rest."
It scarcely seemed more than the ordinary conventional parting for the
night; to Tredennis it seemed something less. There were only a few
words more, and he dropped her hand and went out of the room.
He had certainly felt that this was the last, and only a powerful effort
of will held in check a feeling whose strength he would have been loath
to acknowledge.
"Such things are always a wrench," he said, mentally. "I never bore them
well."
And he had barely said it when he heard Bertha cross the parlor quickly
and pass through the door. He had bent to take up a paper he had left on
the hat-stand, and when he turned she was close to him.
Something in her look was so unusual that he recognized it with an
inward start. Her eyes were a little dilated, and her breath came with
soft quickness, as if she had moved rapidly and impulsively. She put out
both her hands with a simple, sudden gesture, and with an action as
simple and unpremeditated he took them and held them in his own.
"I came," she said, "to say good-by again. All at once I seemed to--to
realize that it would be months before I--we saw you again. And so many
things happen, and--" She stopped a second, but went on after it. "When
I come back," she said, "I shall be well and strong, and like a new
person. Say good-by to this person;" and a smile came and went as she
said it.
"A moment ago," he answered, "I was telling myself that good-byes were
hard upon me."
"They--they are not easy," she said.
This, at least, was not easy for him. Her hands were trembling in his
clasp. The thought came to him that perhaps some agitation she wished to
hide had driven her from the room within, and she had come to him for
momentary refuge because he was near. She looked up at him for a second
with a touch of desperation in her eyes, and then he saw her get over
it, and she spoke.
"Jack and Janey will miss you very much," she said. "You have been very
kind to them. I think--it is your way to be good to every one."
"My opportunities of being good have been limited," he said. "If--if one
should present itself,"--and he held her hands a little closer,--"you
won't let me miss my chance, will you? There is no reason for my saying
so much, of course, but--but you will try to remember that I am here and
always ready to come when I am called."
"Yes," she said, "I think you would come if I called you. And I thank
you very much. And good-by--good-by."
And she drew her hands away and stood with them hanging clasped before
her, as if she meant to steady them, and so she stood until he was gone.
He was breathing quickly himself when he reached the street.
"Yes," he said, "the professor was right. It is Arbuthnot--it is
Arbuthnot."