On the long sunny piazza of the Hygeia Mrs. Brinkley and Miss Van Hook
sat and talked in a community of interest which they had not discovered
during the summer before at Campobello, and with an equality of hearing
which the sound of the waves washing almost at their feet established
between them. In this pleasant noise Miss Van Hook heard as well as any
one, and Mrs. Brinkley gradually realised that it was the trouble of
having to lift her voice that had kept her from cultivating a very
agreeable acquaintance before. The ladies sat in a secluded corner,
wearing light wraps that they had often found comfortable at Campobello
in August, and from time to time attested to each other their
astonishment that they needed no more at Old Point in early April.
They did this not only as a just tribute to the amiable climate, but as
a relief from the topic which had been absorbing them, and to which they
constantly returned.
“No,” said Mrs. Brinkley, with a sort of finality, “I think it is the
best thing that could possibly have happened to him. He is bearing it in
a very manly way, but I fancy he has felt it deeply, poor fellow. He's
never been in Boston since, and I don't believe he'd come here if he'd
any idea how many Boston people there were in the hotel--we swarm! It
would be very painful to him.”
“Yes,” said Miss Van Hook, “young people seem to feel those things.”
“Of course he's going to get over it. That's what young people do too.
At his age he can't help being caught with every pretty face and every
pretty figure, even in the midst of his woe, and it's only a question
of time till he seizes some pretty hand and gets drawn out of it
altogether.”
“I think that would be the case with my niece, too,” said Miss Van Hook,
“if she wasn't kept in it by a sense of loyalty. I don't believe she
really dares much for Lieutenant Willing any more; but he sees no
society where he's stationed, of course, and his constancy is a--a
rebuke and a--a--an incentive to her. They were engaged a long time ago
just after he left West Point--and we've always been in hopes that
he would be removed to some post where he could meet other ladies and
become interested in some one else. But he never has, and so the affair
remains. It's most undesirable they should marry, and in the meantime
she won't break it off, and it's spoiling her chances in life.”
“It is too bad,” sighed Mrs. Brinkley, “but of course you can do
nothing. I see that.”
“No, we can do nothing. We have tried everything. I used to think it was
because she was so dull there at Yonkers with her family, and brooded
upon the one idea all the time, that she could not get over it; and at
first it did seem when she came to me that she would get over it. She
is very fond of gaiety--of young men's society, and she's had plenty
of little flirtations that didn't mean anything, and never amounted to
anything. Every now and then a letter would come from the wilds where he
was stationed, and spoil it all. She seemed to feel a sort of chivalrous
obligation because he was so far off and helpless and lonely.”
“Yes, I understand,” said Mrs. Brinkley. “What a pity she couldn't be
made to feel that that didn't deepen the obligation at all.”
“I've tried to make her,” said Miss Van Hook, “and I've been everywhere
with her. One winter we were up the Nile, and another in Nice, and last
winter we were in Rome. She met young men everywhere, and had offers
upon offers; but it was of no use. She remained just the same, and till
she met Mr. Mavering in Washington I don't believe--”
Miss Van Hook stopped, and Mrs. Brinkley said, “And yet she always
seemed to me particularly practical and level-headed--as the men say.”
“So she is. But she is really very romantic about some things; and when
it comes to a matter of that kind, girls are about all alike, don't you
think?”
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Brinkley hopelessly, and both ladies looked out over
the water, where the waves came rolling in one after another to waste
themselves on the shore as futilely as if they had been lives.
In the evening Miss Anderson got two letters from the clerk, at the hour
when the ladies all flocked to his desk with the eagerness for letters
which is so engaging in them. One she pulled open and glanced at with
a sort of impassioned indifference; the other she read in one intense
moment, and then ran it into her pocket, and with her hand still on it
hurried vividly flushing to her room, and read and read it again with
constantly mounting emotion.
“WORMLEY's HOTEL, Washington, April 7, 188-.
“DEAR MISS ANDERSON,--I have been acting on your parting advice to look
out for that Mr. Lafflin of mine, and I have discovered that he is an
unmitigated scamp. Consequently there is nothing more to keep me in
Washington, and I should now like your advice about coming to Fortress
Monroe. Do you find it malarial? On the boat your aunt asked me to come,
but you said nothing about it, and I was left to suppose that you did
not think it would agree with me. Do you still think so? or what do you
think? I know you think it was uncalled for and in extremely bad taste
for me to tell you what I did the other day; and I have thought so too.
There is only one thing that could justify it--that is, I think it might
justify it--if you thought so. But I do not feel sure that you would
like to know it, or, if you knew it, would like it. I've been rather
slow coming to the conclusion myself, and perhaps it's only the
beginning of the end; and not the conclusion--if there is such a
difference. But the question now is whether I may come and tell you what
I think it is--justify myself, or make things worse than they are now.
I don't know that they can be worse, but I think I should like to try. I
think your presence would inspire me.
“Washington is a wilderness since Miss--Van Hook left. It is not a
howling wilderness simply because it has not enough left in it to howl;
but it has all the other merits of a wilderness.
“Yours sincerely,
“D. F. MAVERING.”
After a second perusal of this note, Miss Anderson recurred to the other
letter which she had neglected for it, and read it with eyes from which
the tears slowly fell upon it. Then she sat a long time at her table
with both letters before her, and did not move, except to take her
handkerchief out of her pocket and dry her eyes, from which the tears
began at once to drip again. At last she started forward, and caught pen
and paper toward her, biting her lip and frowning as if to keep herself
firm, and she said to the central figure in the photograph case which
stood at the back of the table, “I will, I will! You are a man, anyway.”
She sat down, and by a series of impulses she wrote a letter, with which
she gave herself no pause till she put it in the clerk's hands, to whom
she ran downstairs with it, kicking her skirt into wild whirls as she
ran, and catching her foot in it and stumbling.
“Will it go--go to-night?” she demanded tragically.
“Just in time,” said the clerk, without looking up, and apparently not
thinking that her tone betrayed any unusual amount of emotion in a lady
posting a letter; he was used to intensity on such occasions.