The room which Mrs. Sylvestre occupied in her friend's house was a very
pretty one. It had been one of Mrs. Amory's caprices at the time she had
fitted it up, and she had amused herself with it for two or three
months, arranging it at her leisure, reflecting upon it, and making
additions to its charms every day as soon as they suggested themselves
to her.
"It is to be a purely feminine apartment," she had said to Richard and
Arbuthnot. "And I have a sentiment about it. When it is complete you
shall go and stand outside the door and look in, but nothing would
induce me to allow you to cross the threshold."
When this moment had arrived, and they had been admitted to the private
view from the corridor, they had evidently been somewhat impressed.
"It is very pretty," Mr. Arbuthnot had remarked, with amiable tolerance;
"but I don't approve of it. Its object is plainly to pamper and foster
those tendencies of the feminine temperament which are most prominent
and least desirable. Nothing could be more apparent than its intention
to pander to a taste for luxury and self-indulgence, combined in the
most shameless manner with vanity and lightness of mind. It will be
becoming to the frivolous creatures, and will exalt and inflate them to
that extent that they will spend the greater portion of their time in
it, utterly ignoring the superior opportunities for cultivating and
improving their minds they might enjoy downstairs on occasions when
Richard remains at home, and my own multifarious duties permit me to
drop in. It strikes me as offering a premium to feminine depravity and
crime."
"That expresses it exactly," agreed Richard.
Arbuthnot turned him round.
"Will you," he said, "kindly give your attention to the length and
position of that mirror, and the peculiar advantages to be derived from
the fact that the light falls upon it from that particular point, and
that its effects are softened by the lace draperies and suggestions of
pink and blue? The pink and blue idea is merely of a piece with all the
rest, and is prompted by the artfulness of the serpent. If it had been
all pink the blondes would have suffered, and if it had been all blue
the brunettes would have felt that they were not at their best; this
ineffably wily combination, however, truckles to either, and intimates
that each combines the attractions of both. Take me away, Richard; it is
not for the ingenuous and serious mind to view such spectacles as these.
Take me away,--first, however, making a mental inventory of the entirely
debasing sofas and chairs and the flagrant and openly sentimental nature
of the pictures, all depicting or insinuating the drivelling imbecility
and slavery of man,--'The Huguenot Lovers,' you observe, 'The Black
Brunswicker,' and others of like nature."
Mrs. Sylvestre had thought the room very pretty indeed when she had
first taken possession of it, and its prettiness and comfort impressed
her anew when, the excitement of the New Year's day at last at an end,
she retired to it for the night.
When she found herself within the closed doors she did not go to bed at
once. Too many impressions had been crowded into the last ten hours to
have left her in an entirely reposeful condition of mind and body, and,
though of too calm a temperament for actual excitement, she was still
not inclined to sleep.
So, having partly undressed and thrown on a loose wrap, she turned down
the light and went to the fire. It was an open wood-fire, and burned
cheerily behind a brass fender; a large rug of white fur was spread upon
the hearth before it; a low, broad sofa, luxurious with cushions, was
drawn up at one side of it, and upon the rug, at the other, stood a
deep easy-chair. It was this chair she took, and, having taken it, she
glanced up at an oval mirror which was among the ornaments on the
opposite wall. In it she saw reflected that portion of the room which
seemed to have arranged itself about her own graceful figure,--the faint
pinks and blues, the flowered drapery, the puffed and padded furniture,
and the hundred and one entirely feminine devices of ornamentation; and
she was faintly aware that an expression less thoughtful than the one
she wore would have been more in keeping with her surroundings.
"I look too serious to harmonize," she said. "If Bertha were here she
would detect the incongruity and deplore it."
But she was in a thoughtful mood, which was not an uncommon experience
with her, and the faint smile the words gave rise to died away as she
turned to the fire again. What she thought of as she sat and looked into
it, it would have been difficult to tell; but there was evidence that
she was mentally well occupied in the fact that she sat entirely still
and gazed at its flickering flame for nearly half an hour. She would not
have moved then, perhaps, if she had not been roused from her reverie by
a sound at the door,--a low knock, and a voice speaking to her.
"Agnes!" it said. "Agnes!"
She knew it at once as Bertha's, and rose to reply to the summons almost
as if she had expected or even waited for it. When she unlocked the
door, and opened it, Bertha was standing on the threshold. She had
partly undressed, too. She had laid aside the red dress, and put on a
long white _negligée_, bordered with white fur; there was no color about
her, and it made her look cold. Perhaps she was cold, for Agnes thought
she seemed to shiver a little.
"May I come in?" she asked. "I know it is very inconsiderate, but I had
a sort of conviction that you would not be asleep."
"I was not thinking of going to sleep yet," said Agnes. "I am glad you
have come."
Bertha entered, and, the door being closed, crossed the room to the
fire. She did not take a chair, but sat down upon the hearth-rug.
"This is very feminine," she said, "and we ought to be in bed; but the
day would not be complete without it."
Then she turned toward Agnes.
"You must have a great deal to think of to-night," she said.
Agnes Sylvestre looked at the fire.
"Yes," she answered, "I have a great deal to think of."
"Are they things you like to think of?"
"Some of them--not all."
"It must be a curious experience," said Bertha, "to find yourself here
again after so many years--with all your life changed for you."
Mrs. Sylvestre did not reply.
"You have not been here," Bertha continued, "since you went away on your
wedding journey. You were nineteen or twenty then,--only a girl."
"I was young," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "but I was rather mature for my
years. I did not feel as if I was exactly a girl."
Then she added, in a lower voice:
"I had experienced something which had ripened me."
"You mean," said Bertha, "that you knew what love was."
She had not intended to say the words, and their abrupt directness
grated upon her as she spoke; but she could not have avoided uttering
them.
Mrs. Sylvestre paused a moment.
"The experience I passed through," she said, "did not belong to my age.
It was not a girl's feelings. I think it came too soon."
"You had two alternatives to choose from," said Bertha,--"that it
should come too soon or too late."
Mrs. Sylvestre paused again.
"You do not think," she said, "that it ever comes to any one at the
right time?"
Bertha had been sitting with her hands folded about her knee. She
unclasped and clasped them with a sharply vehement movement.
"It is a false thing from beginning to end," she said. "I do not believe
in it."
"Ah," said Mrs. Sylvestre, softly, "I believe it. I wish I did not."
"What is there to be gained by it?" said Bertha; "a feeling that is not
to be reasoned about or controlled; a miserable, feverish emotion you
cannot understand, and can only resent and struggle against blindly.
When you let it conquer you, how can you respect yourself or the object
of it? What do women love men for? Who knows? It is like madness! All
you can say is, 'I love him. He is life or death to me.' It is so
unreasoning--so unreasoning."
She stopped suddenly, as if all at once she became conscious that her
companion was looking at herself instead of at the fire.
"You love a man generally," said Mrs. Sylvestre, in her tenderly
modulated voice,--"at least I have thought so,--because he is the one
human creature who is capable of causing you the greatest amount of
suffering. I don't know of any other reason, and I have thought of it a
great deal."
"It is a good reason," said Bertha,--"a good reason."
Then she laughed.
"This is just a little tragic, isn't it?" she said. "What a delightfully
emotional condition we must be in to have reached tragedy in less than
five minutes, and entirely without intention! I did not come to be
tragic; I came to be analytical. I want you to tell me carefully how we
strike you."
"We?" said Mrs. Sylvestre.
Bertha touched herself on the breast.
"We," she said,--"I, Richard, Laurence Arbuthnot, Colonel Tredennis,
Senator Planefield, the two hundred men callers,--Washington, in short.
How does Washington strike you, now that you have come to it again?"
"Won't you give me two weeks to reflect upon it?" said Agnes.
"No. I want impressions, not reflections. Is it all very much changed?"
"I am very much changed," was the reply.
"And we?" said Bertha. "Suppose--suppose you begin with Laurence
Arbuthnot."
"I do not think I could. He is not one of the persons I have
remembered."
"Agnes," said Bertha, "only wait with patience for one of those
occasions when you feel it necessary to efface him, and then tell him
that, in exactly that tone of voice, and he will in that instant
secretly atone for the crimes of a lifetime. He won't wince, and he will
probably reply in the most brilliant and impersonal manner; but,
figuratively speaking, you will have reduced him to powder and cast him
to the breeze."
"We shall not be sufficiently intimate to render such a thing possible,"
said Mrs. Sylvestre. "One must be intimate with a man to be angry enough
with him to wish to avenge one's self."
Bertha smiled.
"You don't like him," she said. "Poor Larry!"
"On the contrary," was her friend's reply. "But it would not occur to me
to 'begin with him,' as you suggested just now."
"With whom, then," said Bertha, "would you begin."
Her guest gave a moment to reflection, during which Bertha regarded her
intently.
"If I were going to begin at all," she said, rather slowly, "I think it
would be with Colonel Tredennis."
There was a moment of silence, and then Bertha spoke, in a somewhat
cold and rigid voice,
"What do you like about him?" she asked.
"I think I like everything."
"If you were any one else," said Bertha, "I should say that you simply
like his size. I think that is generally it. Women invariably fall
victims to men who are big and a little lumbering. They like to persuade
themselves that they are overawed and subjected. I never understood it
myself. Big men never pleased me very much--they are so apt to tread on
you."
"I like his eyes," said Agnes, apparently reflecting aloud; "they are
very kind. And I like his voice"--
"It is rather too deep," remarked Bertha, "and sometimes I am a little
afraid it will degenerate into a growl, though I have never heard it do
so yet."
Mrs. Sylvestre went on:
"When he bends his head a little and looks down at you as you talk," she
said, "he is very nice. He is really thinking of you and regarding you
seriously. I do not think he is given to trifling."
"No," returned Bertha; "I do not think he is given to anything special
but being massive. That is what you are thinking,--that he is massive."
"There is no denying," said her friend, "that that is one of the things
I like."
"Ah!" said Bertha, "you find the rest of us very flippant and trivial.
_That_ is how we strike you!"
A fatigued little sigh escaped her lips.
"After all," she said, "it is true. And we have obliged ourselves to be
trivial for so long that we are incapable of seriousness.
Sometimes--generally toward Lent, after I have been out a great deal--I
wonder if the other would not be interesting for a change; but, at the
same time, I know I could not be serious if I tried."
"Your seriousness will be deeper," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "when you
accomplish it without trying."
She was serious herself as she spoke, but her seriousness was extremely
gentle. She looked at Bertha even tenderly, and her clear eyes were very
expressive.
"We are both changed since we met here last," she said, with simple
directness, "and it is only natural that what we have lived through
should have affected us differently. We are of very different
temperaments. You were always more vivid and intense than I, and
suffering--if you had suffered"--
Her soft voice faltered a little, and she paused. Bertha turned and
looked her unflinchingly in the face.
"I--have not suffered," she said.
Agnes spoke as simply as before.
"I have," she said.
Bertha turned sharply away.
"I was afraid so," was her response.
"If we are to be as near to each other as I hope," Agnes continued, "it
would be useless for me to try to conceal from you the one thing which
has made me what I am. The effort to hide it would always stand between
us and our confidence in each other. It is much simpler to let you know
the truth."
She put her hands up to her face an instant, and Bertha broke the
silence with a curiously incisive question.
"Was he very cruel to you?"
Agnes withdrew her hands, and if her shadow of a smile had not been so
infinitely sad, it would have been bitter.
"He could not help it," she said; "and when I was calm enough to reason
I knew he was not to blame for my imagination. It was all over in a few
months, and he would have been quite content to bear what followed
philosophically. When the worst came to the worst, he told me that he
had known it could not last, because such things never did; but that he
had also known that, even after the inevitable termination, I should
always please him and display good taste. He had lived through so much,
and I had known so little. I only spoke openly to him once,--one awful
day, and after that I scarcely know what happened to me for months. I
asked him to let me go away alone, and I went to the sea-side. Since
then the sound of the sea has been a terror to me, and yet there are
times when I long to hear it. I used to tell myself that, on one of
those days when I sat on the sand and looked at the sea, I died, and
that I have never really lived since. Something happened to me--I don't
know what. It was one brilliant morning, when the sun beat on the blue
water and the white sand, and everything was a dazzling glare. I sat on
the beach for hours without moving, and when I got up and walked away I
remember hearing myself saying, 'I have left you behind,--I have left
you behind,--I shall never see you again.' I was ill for several days
afterward, and when I recovered I seemed to have become a new creature.
When my husband came I was able to meet him so calmly that I think it
was even a kind of shock to him."
"And that was the end?" said Bertha.
"Yes, that was the end--for me."
"And for him?"
"Once or twice afterward it interested him to try experiments with me,
and when they failed he was not pleased."
"Were you never afraid," said Bertha, "that they would not fail?"
"No. There is nothing so final as the ending of such a feeling. There is
nothing to come after it, because it has taken everything with
it,--passion, bitterness, sorrow,--even regret. I never wished that it
might return after the day I spoke of. I have thought if, by stretching
forth my hand, I could have brought it all back just as it was at first,
I should not have wished to do it. It had been too much."
"It is a false thing," said Bertha,--"a false thing, and there must
always be some such end to it."
Agnes Sylvestre was silent again, and because of her silence Bertha
repeated her words with feverish eagerness.
"It must always end so," she said.
"_You_ know that--you _must_ know it."
"I am only one person," was the characteristic answer. "And I do not
know. I do not want to know. I only want quiet now. I have learned
enough."
"Agnes," said Bertha, "that is very pathetic."
"Yes," Agnes answered. "I know it is pathetic, when I allow myself to
think of it." And for the first time her voice broke a little, and was
all the sweeter for the break in it. But it was over in a moment, and
she spoke as she had spoken before.
"But I did not mean to be pathetic," she said. "I only wanted to tell
you the entire truth, so that there should be nothing between us, and
nothing to avoid. There can be nothing now. You know of me all that is
past, and you can guess what is to come."
"No, I cannot do that," said Bertha.
Agnes smiled.
"It is very easy," she responded. "I shall have a pretty house, and I
shall amuse myself by buying new or old things for it, and by moving the
furniture. I shall give so much thought to it that after a while it will
be quite celebrated, in a small way, and Miss Jessup will refer to it as
'unique.' Mrs. Merriam will be with me, and I shall have my reception
day, and perhaps my 'evening,' and I shall see as many of the charming
people who come to Washington as is possible. You will be very good to
me, and come to see me often, and--so I hope will Mr. Arbuthnot, and
Colonel Tredennis"--
"Agnes," interposed Bertha, with an oddly hard manner, "if they do, one
or both of them will fall in love with you."
"If it is either," responded Mrs. Sylvestre, serenely, "I hope it will
be Mr. Arbuthnot, as he would have less difficulty in recovering."
"You think," said Bertha, "that nothing could ever touch you
again,--nothing?"
"Think!" was the response; "my safety lies in the fact that I do not
think of it at all. If I were twenty I might do so, and everything would
be different. Life is very short. It is not long enough to run risks in.
I shall not trifle with what is left to me."
"Oh," cried Bertha, "how calm you are--how calm you are!"
"Yes," she answered, "I am calm now."
But she put her hands up to her face again for an instant, and her
eyelashes were wet when she withdrew them.
"It was a horribly dangerous thing," she said, brokenly. "There were so
many temptations; the temptation to find excitement in avenging myself
on others was strongest of all. I suppose it is the natural savage
impulse. There were times when I longed to be cruel. And then I began to
think--and there seemed so much suffering in life--and everything seemed
so pitiful. And I could not bear the thought of it." And she ended with
the sob of a child.
"It is very womanish to cry," she whispered, "and I did not mean to do
it, but--you look at me so." And she laid her cheek against the
cushioned back of her chair, and, for a little while, was more pathetic
in her silence than she could have been in any words she might have
uttered. It was true that Bertha had looked at her. There were no tears
in her own eyes. Her feeling was one of obstinate resistance to all
emotion in herself; but she did not resent her friend's; on the
contrary, she felt a strange enjoyment of it.
"Don't stop crying because I am here," she said. "I like to see you do
it."
Mrs. Sylvestre recovered herself at once. She sat up, smiling a little.
There were no disfiguring traces of her emotion on her fair face.
"Thank you," she answered; "but I do not like it myself so much, and I
have not done it before for a long time."
It was, perhaps, because Mr. Arbuthnot presented himself as an entirely
safe topic, with no tendency whatever to develop the sensibilities, that
she chose him as the subject of her next remarks.
"I do not see much change in your friend," she observed.
"If you mean Laurence," Bertha replied, "I dare say not. He does not
allow things to happen to him. He knows better."
"And he has done nothing whatever during the last seven years?"
"He has been to a great many parties," said Bertha, "and he has read a
book or so, and sung several songs."
"I hope he has sung them well," was her friend's comment.
"It always depends upon his mood," Bertha returned; "but there have been
times when he has sung them very well indeed."
"It can scarcely have been a great tax to have done it occasionally,"
said Mrs. Sylvestre; "but I should always be rather inclined to think it
was the result of chance, and not effort. Still"--with a sudden
conscientious scruple brought about by her recollection of the fact that
these marks of disapproval had not expressed themselves in her manner
earlier in the day--"still he is very agreeable, one cannot deny that."
"It is always safe not to attempt to deny it, even if you feel
inclined," was Bertha's comment, "because, if you do, he will inevitably
prove to you that you were in the wrong before he has done with you."
"He did one thing I rather liked," her companion proceeded. "He was very
nice--in that peculiar, impartial way of his--to a boy"--
"The boy who came with the Bartletts?" Bertha interposed. "I saw him,
and was positively unhappy about him, because I could not attend to
him. Did he take him in hand?" she asked, brightening visibly. "I knew
he would, if he noticed him particularly. It was just like him to do
it."
"I saw him first," Mrs. Sylvestre explained; "but I am afraid I should
not have been equal to the occasion if Mr. Arbuthnot had not assisted
me. It certainly surprised me that he should do it. He knew the
Bartletts, and had met the boy's sister, and in the most wonderful, yet
the most uneffusive and natural, way he utilized his material until the
boy felt himself quite at home, and not out of place at all. One of the
nicest things was the way in which he talked about Whippleville,--the
boy came from Whippleville. He seemed to give it a kind of interest and
importance, and even picturesqueness. He did not pretend to have been
there; but he knew something of the country, which is pretty, and he was
very clever in saying neither too much nor too little. Of course that
was nice."
"Colonel Tredennis could not have done it," said Bertha.
Agnes paused. She felt there was something of truth in the statement,
but she was reluctant to admit it.
"Why not?" she inquired.
"By reason of the very thing which is his attraction for you,--because
he is too massive to be adroit."
Agnes was silent.
"Was it not Colonel Tredennis who went to Virginia when your little girl
was ill?" she asked, in a few moments.
"Yes," was Bertha's response. "He came because Richard was away and papa
was ill."
"It was Janey who told me of it," said Agnes, quietly. "And she made a
very pretty story of it, in her childish way. She said that he carried
her up and down the room when she was tired, and that when her head
ached he helped her not to cry. He must be very gentle. I like to think
of it. It is very picturesque; the idea of that great soldierly fellow
nursing a frail little creature, and making her pain easier to bear. Do
you know, I find myself imagining that I know how he looked."
Bertha sat perfectly still. She, too, knew how he had looked. But there
was no reason, she told herself, for the sudden horrible revulsion of
feeling which rushed upon her with the remembrance. A little while
before, when Agnes had told her story, there had been a reason why she
should be threatened by her emotions; but now it was different,--now
that there was, so to speak, no pathos in the air; now that they were
merely talking of commonplace, unemotional things. But she remembered so
well; if she could have forced herself to forget for one instant she
might have overcome the passion of unreasoning anguish which seized her;
but it was no use, and as she made the effort Agnes sat and watched her,
a strange questioning dawning slowly in her eyes.
"He looked--very large"--
She stopped short, and her hands clutched each other hard and close. A
wild thought of getting up and leaving the room came to her, and then
she knew it was too late.
A light flickered up from the wood-fire and fell upon her face as she
slowly turned it to Agnes.
For an instant Agnes simply looked at her, then she uttered a
terror-stricken exclamation.
"Bertha!" she cried.
"Well," said Bertha; "well!" But at her next breath she began to
tremble, and left her place on the hearth and stood up, trembling still.
"I am tired out," she said. "I must go away. I ought not to have come
here."
But Agnes rose and went to her, laying her hand on her arm. She had
grown pale herself, and there was a thrill of almost passionate feeling
in her words when she spoke.
"No," she said. "You were right to come. _This_ is the place for you."
She drew her down upon the sofa and held both her hands.
"Do you think I would let you go now," she said, "until you had told me
everything? Do you think I did not know there was something you were
struggling with? When I told you of my own unhappiness, it was because I
hoped it would help you to speak. If you had not known that I had
suffered you could not have told me. You _must_ tell me now. What
barrier could there be between us,--two women who have--who have been
hurt, and who should know how to be true to each other?"
Bertha slipped from her grasp and fell upon her knees by the sofa,
covering her face.
"Agnes," she panted, "I never thought of this--I don't know how it has
come about. I never meant to speak. Almost the worst of it all is that
my power over myself is gone, and that it has even come to this,--that I
am speaking when I meant to be silent. Don't look at me! I don't know
what it all means! All my life has been so different--it is so unlike
me--that I say to myself it cannot be true. Perhaps it is not. I have
never believed in such things. I don't think I believe now; I don't know
what it means, I say, or whether it will last, and if it is not only a
sort of illness that I shall get better of. I am trying with all my
strength to believe that, and to get better; but while it lasts"--
"Go on," said Agnes, in a hushed voice.
Bertha threw out her hands and wrung them, the pretty baubles she had
not removed when she undressed jingling on her wrists.
"It is worse for me than for any one else," she cried. "Worse, worse! It
is not fair. I was not prepared for it. I was so sure it was not true; I
can't understand it. But, whether it is true or not, while it lasts,
Agnes, while it lasts"--And she hid her face again and the bangles and
serpents of silver and gold jingled more merrily than ever.
"You think," said Agnes, "that you will get over it?"
"Get over it!" she cried. "How often do you suppose I have said to
myself that I _must_ get over it? How many thousand times? I _must_ get
over it. Is it a thing to trifle with and be sentimental over? It is a
degradation. I don't spare myself. No one could say to me more than I
say to myself. I cannot spare it, and I must get over it; but I don't--I
don't--I don't. And sometimes the horrible thought comes to me that it
is a thing you can't get over, and it drives me mad, but--but"--
"But what?" said Agnes.
Her hands dropped away from her face.
"If I tell you this," she said, breathlessly, "you will despise me. I
think I am going to tell it to you that you _may_ despise me. The
torture of it will be a sort of penance. When the thought comes to me
that I _may_ get over it, that it will go out of my life in time, and be
lost forever, then I know that, compared to that, all the rest is
nothing--nothing; and that I could bear it for an eternity, the anguish
and the shame and the bitterness, if only it might not be taken away."
"Oh!" cried Agnes, "I can believe it! I can believe it!"
"You can believe it?" said Bertha, fiercely. "You? Yes. But I--I
cannot!"
For some minutes after this Agnes did not speak. She sat still and
looked down at Bertha's cowering figure. There came back to her, with
terrible distinctness, times when she herself must have looked so,--only
she had always been alone,--and there mingled with the deep feeling of
the moment a far-away pity for her own helpless youth and despair.
"Will you tell me," she said, at last, "how it began?"
She was struck, when Bertha lifted her face from its cushions, by the
change which had come upon her. All traces of intense and passionate
feeling were gone; it was as if her weeping had swept them away, and
left only a weariness, which made her look pathetically young and
helpless. As she watched her Agnes wondered if she had ever looked up at
Tredennis with such eyes.
"I think," she said, "that it was long before I knew. If I had not been
so young and so thoughtless I think I should have known that I began to
care for him before he went away the first time. But I was very young,
and he was so quiet. There was one day, when he brought me some
heliotrope, when I wondered why I liked the quiet things he said; and
after he went away I used to wonder, in a sort of fitful way, what he
was doing. And the first time I found myself face to face with a trouble
I thought of him, and wished for him, without knowing why. I even began
a letter to him; but I was too timid to send it."
"Oh, if you had sent it!" Agnes exclaimed, involuntarily.
"Yes--if I had sent it! But I did not. Perhaps it would not have made
much difference if I had, only when I told him of it"--
"You told him of it?" said Agnes.
"Yes--in Virginia. All the wrong I have done, all the indulgence I have
allowed myself, is the wrong I did and the indulgence I allowed myself
in Virginia. There were days in Virginia when I suppose I was bad
enough"--
"Tell me that afterward," said Agnes. "I want to know how you reached
it."
"I reached it," answered Bertha, "in this way: the thing that was my
first trouble grew until it was too strong for me--or I was too weak for
it. It was my own fault. Perhaps I ought to have known, but I did not. I
don't think that I have let any one but myself suffer for my mistake. I
couldn't do that. When I found out what a mistake it was, I told myself
that it was mine, and that I must abide by it. And in time I thought I
had grown quite hard, and I amused myself, and said that nothing
mattered; and I did not believe in emotion, and thought I enjoyed living
on the surface. I disliked to hear stories of any strong feeling. I
tried to avoid reading them, and I was always glad when I heard clever
worldly speeches made. I liked Laurence first, because he said such
clever, cold-blooded things. He was at his worst when I first knew him.
He had lost all his money, and some one had been false to him, and he
believed nothing."
"I did not know," said Agnes, "that _he_ had a story." And then she
added, a trifle hurriedly, "But it does not matter."
"It mattered to him," said Bertha. "And we all have a story--even poor
Larry--and even I--even I!"
Then she went on again.
"There was one thing," she said, "that I told myself oftener than
anything else, and that was that I was not unhappy. I was always saying
that and giving myself reasons. When my dresses were becoming, and I
went out a great deal, and people seemed to admire me, I used to say,
'How few women are as happy! How many things I have to make me happy!'
and when a horrible moment of leisure came, and I could not bear it, I
would say, 'How tired I must be to feel as I do; and what nonsense it
is!' The one thing Richard has liked most in me has been that I have not
given way to my moods, and have always reasoned about them. Ah! Agnes,
if I had been happier I might have given way to them just a little
sometimes, and have been less tired. If I were to die now I know what
they would remember of me: that I laughed a great deal, and made the
house gay."
She went on without tears.
"I think," she said, "that I never felt so sure of myself as I did last
winter,--so sure that I had lived past things and was quite safe. It was
a very gay season, and there were several people here who amused me and
made things seem brilliant and enjoyable. When I was not going out the
parlors were always crowded with clever men and women; and when I did go
out I danced and talked and interested myself more than I had ever
seemed to do before. I shall never forget the inauguration ball.
Laurence and Richard were both with me, and I danced every dance, and
had the most brilliant night. I don't think one expects to be actually
brilliant at an inauguration ball, but that night I think we were, and
when we were going away we turned to look back, and Laurence said, 'What
a night it has been! We couldn't possibly have had such a night if we
had tried. I wonder if we shall ever have such a night again'; and I
said, 'Scores of them, I haven't a doubt'; but that was the last night
of all."
"The last night of all?" repeated Agnes.
"There have been no more nights at all like it, and no more days. The
next night but one the Winter Gardners gave a party, and I was there.
Laurence brought me some roses and heliotrope, and I carried them; and I
remember how the scent of the heliotrope reminded me of the night I sat
and talked to Philip Tredennis by the fire. It came back all the more
strongly because I had heard from papa of his return. I was not glad
that he had come to Washington, and I did not care to see him. He seemed
to belong to a time I wanted to forget. I did not know he was to be at
the Gardners' until he came in, and I looked up and saw him at the door.
You know how he looks when he comes into a room,--so tall, and strong,
and different from all the rest. Does he look different from all the
rest, Agnes--or is it only that I think so?"
"He is different," said Agnes. "Even I could see that."
"Oh!" said Bertha, despairingly, "I don't know what it is that makes it
so; but sometimes I have thought that, perhaps, when first men were on
earth they were like that,--strong and earnest, and simple and
brave,--never trifling with themselves or others, and always ready to be
tender with those who suffer or are weak. If you only knew the stories
we have heard of his courage and determination and endurance! I do not
think he ever remembers them himself; but how can the rest of us forget!
"The first thought I had when I saw him was that it was odd that the
mere sight of him should startle me so. And then I watched him pass
through the crowds, and tried to make a paltry satirical comment to
myself upon his size and his grave face. And then, against my will, I
began to wonder what he would do when he saw me, and if he would see
what had happened to me since he had given me the flowers for my first
party; and I wished he had stayed away--and I began to feel tired--and
just then he turned and saw me."
She paused and sank into a wearied sitting posture, resting her cheek
against the sofa cushion.
"It seems so long ago--so long ago," she said; "and yet it is not one
short year since."
She went on almost monotonously.
"He saw the change in me,--I knew that,--though he did not know what it
meant. I suppose he thought the bad side of me had developed instead of
the good, because the bad had predominated in the first place."
"He never thought that," Agnes interposed. "Never!"
"Don't you think so?" said Bertha. "Well, it was not my fault if he
didn't. I don't know whether it was natural or not that I should always
make the worst of myself before him; but I always did. I did not want
him to come to the house; but Richard brought him again and again, until
he had been so often that there must have been some serious reasons if
he had stayed away. And then--and then"--
"What then?" said Agnes.
She made a gesture of passionate impatience.
"Oh, I don't know," she said, "I don't know! I began to be restless and
unhappy. I did not care for going out, and I dared not stay at home.
When I was alone I used to sit and think of that first winter, and
compare myself with the Bertha who lived then as if she had been another
creature,--some one I had been fond of, and who had died in some sad,
unexpected way while she was very young. I used to be angry because I
found myself so easily moved,--things touched me which had never touched
me before; and one day, as I was singing a little German song of
farewell,--that poor little, piteous '_Auf Wiedersehn_' we all
know,--suddenly my voice broke, and I gave a helpless sob, and the tears
streamed down my cheeks. It filled me with terror. I have never been a
crying woman, and I have rather disliked people who cried. When I cried
I knew that some terrible change had come upon me, and I hated myself
for it. I told myself I was ill, and I said I would go away; but Richard
wished me to remain. And every day it was worse and worse. And when I
was angry with myself I revenged myself on the person I should have
spared. When I said things of myself which were false he had a way of
looking at me as if he was simply waiting to hear what I would say next,
and I never knew whether he believed me or not, and I resented that more
than all the rest."
She broke off for an instant, and then began again hurriedly.
"Why should I make such a long story of it?" she said. "I could not tell
it all, nor the half of it, if I talked until to-morrow. If I had been
given to sentiments and emotions I could not have deceived myself so
long as I did, that is all. I have known women who have had experiences
and sentiments all their lives, one after another. I used to know
girls, when I was a girl, who were always passing through some
sentimental adventure; but I was not like that, and I never understood
them. But I think it is better to be so than to live unmoved so long
that you feel you are quite safe, and then to waken up to face the
feeling of a lifetime all at once. It is better to take it by
instalments. If I had been more experienced I should have been safer.
But I deceived myself, and called what I suffered by every name but the
right one. I said it was resentment and wounded vanity and weakness; but
it was not--it was not. There was one person who knew it was not, though
he let me call it what I pleased"--
"He?" said Agnes.
"It was Laurence Arbuthnot who knew. He had been wretched himself once,
and while he laughed at me and talked nonsense, he cared enough for me
to watch me and understand."
"It would never have occurred to me," remarked Agnes, "to say he did not
care for you. I think he cares for you very much."
"Yes, he cares for me," said Bertha, "and I can see now that he was
kinder to me than I knew. He stood between me and many a miserable
moment, and warded off things I could not have warded off myself. I
think he hoped at first that I would get over it. It was he who helped
me to make up my mind to go away. It seemed the best thing, but it would
have been better if I had not gone."
"Better?" Agnes repeated.
"There was a Fate in it," she said. "Everything was against me. When I
said good-by to--to the person I wished to escape from--though I did not
admit to myself then that it was from him I wished to escape--when I
said good-by, I thought it was almost the same thing as saying good-by
forever. I had always told myself that I was too superficial to be
troubled by anything long, and that I could always forget anything I
was determined to put behind me. I had done it before, and I fancied I
could do it then, and that when I came back in the winter I should have
got over my moods, and be stronger physically, and not be emotional any
more. I meant to take the children and give them every hour of my days,
and live out-of-doors in a simple, natural way, until I was well. I
always called it getting well. But when he came to say good-by--it was
very hard. It was so hard that I was terrified again. He spent the
evening with us, and the hours slipped away--slipped away, and every
time the clock struck my heart beat so fast that, at last, instead of
beating, it seemed only to tremble and make me weak. And at last he got
up to go; and I could not believe that it was true, that he was really
going, until he went out of the door. And then so much seemed to go with
him, and we had only said a few commonplace words--and it was the
last--last time. And it all rushed upon me, and my heart leaped in my
side, and--and I went to him. There was no other way. And, O Agnes"--
"I know--I know!" said Agnes, brokenly. "But--try not to do that! It is
the worst thing you can do--to cry so."
"He did not know why I came," Bertha said. "I don't know what he
thought. I don't know what I said. He looked pale and startled at first,
and then he took my hand in both his and spoke to me. I have seen him
hold Janey's hand so--as if he could not be gentle enough. And he said
it was always hard to say good-by, and would I remember--and his voice
was quite unsteady--would I remember that if I should ever need any help
he was ready to be called. I had treated him badly and coldly that very
evening, but it was as if he forgot it. And I forgot, too, and for just
one little moment we were near each other, and there was nothing in our
hearts but sadness and kindness, as if we had been friends who had the
right to be sad at parting. And we said good-by again--and he went
away.
"I fought very hard in those next two months, and I was very determined.
I never allowed myself time to think in the daytime. I played with the
children and read to them and walked with them, and when night came I
used to be tired out; but I did not sleep. I laid awake trying to force
my thoughts back, and when morning broke it seemed as if all my strength
was spent. And I did not get well. And, when it all seemed at the worst,
suddenly Janey was taken ill, and I thought she would die, and I was all
alone, and I sent for papa"--
She broke off with the ghost of a bitter little laugh.
"I have heard a great deal said about fate," she went on. "Perhaps it
was fate; I don't know. I don't care now--it doesn't matter. That very
day papa was ill himself, and Philip Tredennis came to me--Philip
Tredennis!"
"Oh!" cried Agnes, "it was very cruel!"
"Was it cruel?" said Bertha. "It was something. Perhaps it would do to
call it cruel. I had been up with Janey for two or three nights. She had
suffered a great deal for a little creature, and I was worn out with
seeing her pain and not being able to help it. I was expecting the
doctor from Washington, and when she fell asleep at last I went to the
window to listen, so that I might go down and keep the dogs quiet if he
came. It was one of those still, white moonlight nights--the most
beautiful night. After a while I fancied I heard the far-away hoof-beat
of a horse on the road, and I ran down. The dogs knew me, and seemed to
understand I wished them to be quiet when I spoke to them. As the noise
came nearer I went down to the gate. I was trembling with eagerness and
anxiety, and I spoke before I reached it. I was sure it was Doctor
Malcolm; but it was some one larger and taller, and the figure came out
into the moonlight, and I was looking up at Philip Tredennis!"
Agnes laid her hand on her arm.
"Wait a moment before you go on," she said. "Give yourself time."
"No," said Bertha, hurrying, "I will go on to the end. Agnes, I have
never lied to myself since that minute--never once. Where would have
been the use? I thought he was forty miles away, and there he stood, and
the terror, and joy, and anguish of seeing him swept everything else
away, and I broke down. I don't know what he felt and thought. There was
one strange moment when he stood quite close to me and touched my
shoulder with his strong, kind hand. He seemed overwhelmed by what I
did, and his voice was only a whisper. There seemed no one in all the
world but ourselves, and when I lifted my face from the gate I knew what
all I had suffered meant. As he talked to me afterward I was saying over
to myself, as if it was a lesson I was learning, 'You are mad with joy
just because this man is near you. All your pain has gone away.
Everything is as it was before, but you don't care--you don't care.' I
said that because I wished to make it sound as wicked as I could. But it
was of no use. I have even thought since then that if he had been a bad
man, thinking of himself, I might have been saved that night by finding
it out. But he was not thinking of himself--only of me. He came, not for
his own sake, but for mine and Janey's. He came to help us and stand by
us and care for us; to do any common, simple service for us, as well as
any great one. We were not to think of him; he was to think of us. And
he sent me away upstairs to sleep, and walked outside below the window
all night. And I slept like a child. I should not have slept if it had
been any one else, but it seemed as if he had brought strength and
quietness with him, and I need not stay awake, because everything was so
safe. That has been his power over me from the first--that he rested
me. Sometimes I have been so tired of the feverish, restless way we have
of continually amusing ourselves, as if we dare not stop, and of
reasoning and wondering and arguing to no end. We are all introspection
and retrospection, and we call it being analytical and clever. If it is
being clever, then we are too clever. One gets so tired of it; one
wishes one could stop thinking and know less--or more. He was not like
that, and he rested me. That was it. He made life seem more simple.
"Well, he rested me then, and, though I made one effort to send him
away, I knew he would not go, and I did not try very hard. I did not
want him to go. So when he refused to be sent away, an obstinate feeling
came over me, and I said to myself that I would not do or say one unkind
thing to him while he was there. I would be as gentle and natural with
him as if--as if he had been some slight, paltry creature who was
nothing, and less than nothing, to me. I should have been amiable enough
to such a man if I had been indebted to him for such service."
"Ah!" sighed Agnes, "but it could not end there!"
"End!" said Bertha. "There is no end, there never will be! Do you think
I do not see the bitter truth? One may call it what one likes, and make
it as pathetic and as tragic and hopeless as words can paint it, but it
is only the old, miserable, undignified story of a woman who is married,
and who cares for a man who is not her husband. Nothing can be worse
than that. It is a curious thing, isn't it, that somehow one always
feels as if the woman must be bad?"
Agnes Sylvestre laid a hand on her again without speaking.
"I suppose I was bad in those days," Bertha continued. "I did not feel
as if I was--though I dare say that only makes it worse. I deliberately
let myself be happy. I let him be kind to me. I tried to amuse and
please him. Janey got well, and the days were beautiful. I did all he
wished me to do, and he was as good to me as he was to Janey. When you
spoke of his being so gentle it brought everything back to me in a
rush,--his voice, and his look, and his touch. There are so many people
who, when they touch you, seem to take something from you; he always
seemed to give you something,--protection, and sympathy, and generous
help. He had none of the gallant tricks of other men, and he was often a
little shy and restrained, but the night he held my hand in both his,
and the moment he touched my shoulder, when I broke down so at the gate,
I could not forget if I tried."
"But, perhaps," said Agnes, sadly, "you had better try."
Bertha looked up at her.
"When I have tried for a whole year," she said, "I will tell you what
success I have had."
"Oh!" Agnes cried, desperately, "it will take more than a year."
"I have thought it might," said Bertha; "perhaps it may take even two."
The fire gave a fitful leap of flame, and she turned to look at it.
"The fire is going out," she said, "and I have almost finished. Do you
care to hear the rest? You have been very patient to listen so long."
"Go on," Agnes said.
"Well, much as I indulged myself then I knew where I must stop, and I
never really forgot that I was going to stop at a certain point. I said
that I would be happy just so long as he was there, and that when we
parted that would be the end of it. I even laid out my plans, and the
night before he was to go away--in the evening, after the long,
beautiful day was over--I said things to him which I meant should make
him distrust me. The shallowest man on earth will hate you if you make
him think you are shallow, and capable of trifling as he does himself.
The less a man intends to remember you the more he intends you shall
remember him. It will be his religious belief that women should be
true,--some one should be true, you know, and it is easier to let it be
the woman. What I tried to suggest that night was that my treatment of
him had only been a caprice,--that what he had seen of me in Washington
had been the real side of my life, and that he would see it again and
need not be surprised."
"O Bertha!" her friend cried. "O Bertha!"
And she threw both arms about her with an intensely feminine swiftness
and expressiveness.
"Yes," said Bertha, "it was not easy. I never tried anything quite so
difficult before, and perhaps I did not do it well, for--he would not
believe me."
There was quite a long pause, in which she leaned against Agnes,
breathing quickly.
"I think that is really the end," she said at last. "It seems rather
abrupt, but there is very little more. He is a great deal stronger than
I am, and he is too true himself to believe lies at the first telling.
One must tell them to him obstinately and often. I shall have to be
persistent and consistent too."
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Agnes. "What are you thinking of doing?"
"There will be a great deal to be done," she answered,--"a great deal.
There is only one thing which will make him throw me aside"--
"Throw you aside--you?"
"Yes. I have always been very proud,--it was the worst of my faults that
I was so deadly proud,--but I want him to throw me aside--me! Surely one
could not care for a man when he was tired and did not want one any
more. That _must_ end it. And there is something else. I don't know--I
am not sure--I could not trust myself--but there have been times when I
thought that he was beginning to care too--whether he knew it or not. I
don't judge him by the other men I have known, but sometimes there was
such a look in his eyes that it made me tremble with fear and joy. And
he shall not spoil his life for me. It would be a poor thing that he
should give all he might give--to Bertha Amory. He had better give it
to--to you, Agnes," she said, with a little tightening grasp.
"I do not want it," said Agnes, calmly. "I have done with such things,
and he is not the man to change."
"He must," said Bertha, "in time--if I am very unflinching and clever.
They always said I was clever, you know, and that I had wonderful
control over myself. But I shall have to be very clever. The only thing
which will make him throw me aside is the firm belief that I am worth
nothing,--the belief that I am false, and shallow, and selfish, and as
wicked as such a slight creature can be. Let me hide the little that is
good in me, and show him always, day by day, what is bad. There is
enough of that, and in the end he must get tired of me, and show me that
he has done with me forever."
"You cannot do it," said Agnes, breathlessly.
"I cannot do it for long, I know that; but I can do it for a while, and
then I will make Richard let me go away--to Europe. I have asked him
before, but he seemed so anxious to keep me--I cannot tell why--and I
have never opposed or disobeyed him. I try to be a good wife in such
things as that. I ought to be a good wife in something. Just now he has
some reason for wishing me to remain here. He does not always tell me
his reasons. But perhaps in the spring he will not object to my going,
and one can always spend a year or so abroad; and when he joins us, as
he will afterward, he will be sure to be fascinated, and in the end we
might stay away for years, and if we ever come back all will be over,
and--and I shall be forgotten."
She withdrew herself from her friend's arms, and rose to her feet.
"I shall be forgotten--forgotten!" she said. "Oh! how can I be! How can
such pain pass away and end in nothing! Just while everything is at the
worst, it is not easy to remember that one only counts for one, after
all, and that a life is such a little thing. It seems so much to one's
self. And yet what does it matter that Bertha Amory's life went all
wrong, and was only a bubble that was tossed away and broken? There are
such millions and millions of people that it means nothing, only to
Bertha Amory, and it cannot mean anything to her very long. Only just
while it lasts--and before one gets used to--to the torture of it"--
She turned away and crossed the room to the window, drawing aside the
curtain.
"There is a little streak of light in the East," she said. "It is the
day, and you have not slept at all."
Agnes went to her, and they stood and looked at it together,--a faint,
thin line of gray tinged with palest yellow.
"To-morrow has come," said Bertha. "And we must begin the New Year
properly. I must make up my visiting-book and arrange my lists.
Don't--don't call any one, Agnes--it is only--faintness." And with the
little protesting smile on her lips she sank to the floor.
Agnes knelt down at her side, and began to loosen her wrapper at the
throat and chafe her hands.
"Yes, it is only faintness," she said, in a low voice; "but if it were
something more you would be saved a great deal."