IN WHICH EUPHRASIA TAKES A HAND
Austen had not forgotten his promise to Euphrasia, and he had gone to
Hanover Street many times since his sojourn at Mr. Jabe Jenney's. Usually
these visits had taken place in the middle of the day, when Euphrasia,
with gentle but determined insistence, had made him sit down before some
morsel which she had prepared against his coming, and which he had not
the heart to refuse. In answer to his inquiries about Hilary, she would
toss her head and reply, disdainfully, that he was as comfortable as he
should be. For Euphrasia had her own strict ideas of justice, and to her
mind Hilary's suffering was deserved. That suffering was all the more
terrible because it was silent, but Euphrasia was a stern woman. To know
that he missed Austen, to feel that Hilary was being justly punished for
his treatment of her idol, for his callous neglect and lack of
realization of the blessings of his life--these were Euphrasia's grim
compensations.
At times, even, she had experienced a strange rejoicing that she had
promised Austen to remain with his father, for thus it had been given her
to be the daily witness of a retribution for which she had longed during
many years. Nor did she strive to hide her feelings. Their intercourse,
never voluminous, had shrunk to the barest necessities for the use of
speech; but Hilary, ever since the night of his son's departure, had read
in the face of his housekeeper a knowledge of his suffering, an
exultation a thousand times more maddening than the little reproaches of
language would have been. He avoided her more than ever, and must many
times have regretted bitterly the fact that he had betrayed himself to
her. As for Euphrasia, she had no notion of disclosing Hilary's torture
to his son. She was determined that the victory, when it came, should be
Austen's, and the surrender Hilary's.
"He manages to eat his meals, and gets along as common," she would reply.
"He only thinks of himself and that railroad."
But Austen read between the lines.
"Poor old Judge," he would answer; "it's because he's made that way,
Phrasie. He can't help it, any more than I can help flinging law-books on
the floor and running off to the country to have a good time. You know as
well as I do that he hasn't had much joy out of life; that he'd like to
be different, only he doesn't know how."
"I can't see that it takes much knowledge to treat a wife and son like
human beings," Euphrasia retorted; "that's only common humanity. For a
man that goes to meetin' twice a week, you'd have thought he'd have
learned something by this time out of the New Testament. He's prayed
enough in his life, goodness knows!"
Now Euphrasia's ordinarily sharp eyes were sharpened an hundred fold by
affection; and of late, at odd moments during his visits, Austen had
surprised them fixed on him with a penetration that troubled him.
"You don't seem to fancy the tarts as much as you used to," she would
remark. "Time was when you'd eat three and four at a sittin'."
"Phrasie, one of your persistent fallacies is, that I'm still a boy."
"You ain't yourself," said Euphrasia, ignoring this pleasantry, "and you
ain't been yourself for some months. I've seen it. I haven't brought you
up for nothing. If he's troubling you, don't you worry a mite. He ain't
worth it. He eats better than you do."
"I'm not worrying much about that," Austen answered, smiling. "The Judge
and I will patch it up before long--I'm sure. He's worried now over these
people who are making trouble for his railroad."
"I wish railroads had never been invented," cried Euphrasia. "It seems to
me they bring nothing but trouble. My mother used to get along pretty
well in a stage-coach."
One evening in September, when the summer days were rapidly growing
shorter and the mists rose earlier in the valley of the Blue, Austen, who
had stayed late at the office preparing a case, ate his supper at the
Ripton House. As he sat in the big dining room, which was almost empty,
the sense of loneliness which he had experienced so often of late came
over him, and he thought of Euphrasia. His father, he knew, had gone to
Kingston for the night, and so he drove up Hanover Street and hitched
Pepper to the stone post before the door. Euphrasia, according to an
invariable custom, would be knitting in the kitchen at this hour; and at
the sight of him in the window, she dropped her work with a little,
joyful cry.
"I was just thinking of you!" she said, in a low voice of tenderness
which many people would not have recognized as Euphrasia's; as though her
thoughts of him were the errant ones of odd moments! "I'm so glad you
come. It's lonesome here of evenings, Austen."
He entered silently and sat down beside her, in a Windsor chair which had
belonged to some remote Austen of bygone days.
"You don't have as good things to eat up at Mis' Jenney's as I give you,"
she remarked. "Not that you appear to care much for eatables any more.
Austen, are you feeling poorly?"
"I can dig more potatoes in a day than any other man in Ripton," he
declared.
"You'd ought to get married," said Euphrasia, abruptly. "I've told you
that before, but you never seem to pay any attention to what I say."
"Why haven't you tried it, Phrasie?" he retorted.
He was not prepared for what followed. Euphrasia did not answer at once,
but presently her knitting dropped to her lap, and she sat staring at the
old clock on the kitchen shelf.
"He never asked me," she said, simply.
Austen was silent. The answer seemed to recall, with infinite pathos,
Euphrasia's long-lost youth, and he had not thought of youth as a quality
which could ever have pertained to her. She must have been young once,
and fresh, and full of hope for herself; she must have known, long ago,
something of what he now felt, something of the joy and pain, something
of the inexpressible, never ceasing yearning for the fulfilment of a
desire that dwarfed all others. Euphrasia had been denied that
fulfilment. And he--would he, too, be denied it?
Out of Euphrasia's eyes, as she gazed at the mantel-shelf, shone the
light of undying fires within--fires which at a touch could blaze forth
after endless years, transforming the wrinkled face, softening the
sterner lines of character. And suddenly there was a new bond between the
two. So used are the young to the acceptance of the sacrifice of the old
that they lose sight of that sacrifice. But Austen saw now, in a flash,
the years of Euphrasia's self-denial, the years of memories, the years of
regrets for that which might have been.
"Phrasie," he said, laying a hand on hers, which rested on the arm of the
chair, I was only joking, you know."
"I know, I know," Euphrasia answered hastily, and turned and looked into
his face searchingly. Her eyes were undimmed, and the light was still in
them which revealed a soul of which he had had no previous knowledge.
"I know you was, dear. I never told that to a living being except your
mother. He's dead now--he never knew. But I told her--I couldn't help it.
She had a way of drawing things out of you, and you just couldn't resist.
I'll never forget that day she came in here and looked at me and took my
hand--same as you have it now. She wasn't married then. I'll never forget
the sound of her voice as she said, 'Euphrasia, tell me about it.'" (Here
Euphrasia's own voice trembled.) "I told her, just as I'm telling
you,--because I couldn't help it. Folks, had to tell her things."
She turned her hand and clasped his tightly with her own thin fingers.
"And oh, Austen," she cried, "I want so that you should be happy! She was
so unhappy, it doesn't seem right that you should be, too."
"I shall be, Phrasie," he said; "you mustn't worry about that."
For a while the only sound in the room was the ticking of the old clock
with the quaint, coloured picture on its panel. And then, with a movement
which, strangely, was an acute reminder of a way Victoria had, Euphrasia
turned and searched his face once more.
"You're not happy," she said.
He could not put this aside--nor did he wish to. Her own confidence had
been so simple, so fine, so sure of his sympathy, that he felt it would
be unworthy to equivocate; the confessions of the self-reliant are sacred
things. Yes, and there had been times when he had longed to unburden
himself; but he had had no intimate on this plane, and despite the great
sympathy between them--that Euphrasia might understand had never occurred
to him. She had read his secret.
In that instant Euphrasia, with the instinct which love lends to her sex,
had gone farther; indignation seized her--and the blame fell upon the
woman. Austen's words, unconsciously, were an answer to her thoughts.
"It isn't anybody's fault but my own," he said.
Euphrasia's lips were tightly closed. Long ago the idol of her youth had
faded into the substance of which dreams are made--to be recalled by
dreams alone; another worship had filled her heart, and Austen Vane had
become--for her--the fulness and the very meaning of life itself; one to
be admired of all men, to be desired of all women. Visions of Austen's
courtship had at times risen in her mind, although Euphrasia would not
have called it a courtship. When the time came, Austen would confer; and
so sure of his judgment was Euphrasia that she was prepared to take the
recipient of the priceless gift into her arms. And now! Was it possible
that a woman lived who would even hesitate? Curiosity seized Euphrasia
with the intensity of a passion. Who was this woman? When and where had
he seen her? Ripton could not have produced her--for it was
characteristic of Euphrasia that no girl of her acquaintance was worthy
to be raised to such a height; Austen's wife would be an unknown of ideal
appearance and attainments. Hence indignation rocked Euphrasia, and
doubts swayed her. In this alone she had been an idealist, but she might
have known that good men were a prey to the unworthy of the opposite sex.
She glanced at Austen's face, and he smiled at her gently, as though he
divined something of her thoughts.
"If it isn't your fault, that you're not happy, then the matter's easily
mended," she said.
He shook his head at her, as though in reproof.
"Was yours--easily mended?" he asked.
Euphrasia was silent a moment.
"He never knew," she repeated, in a low voice.
"Well, Phrasie, it looks very much as if we were in the same boat," he
said.
Euphrasia's heart gave a bound.
"Then you haven't spoke!" she cried; "I knew you hadn't. I--I was a
woman--but sometimes I've thought I'd ought to have given him some sign.
You're a man, Austen; thank God for it, you're a man. If a man loves a
woman, he's only got to tell her so."
"It isn't as simple as that," he answered.
Euphrasia gave him a startled glance.
"She ain't married?" she exclaimed.
"No," he said, and laughed in spite of himself.
Euphrasia breathed again. For Sarah Austen had had a morality of her own,
and on occasions had given expression to extreme views.
"She's not playin' with you?" was Euphrasia's next question, and her tone
boded ill to any young person who would indulge in these tactics with
Austen.
He shook his head again, and smiled at her vehemence.
"No, she's not playing with me--she isn't that kind. I'd like to tell
you, but I can't--I can't. It was only because you guessed that I said
anything about it." He disengaged his hand, and rose, and patted her on
the cheek. "I suppose I had to tell somebody," he said, "and you seemed,
somehow, to be the right person, Phrasie."
Euphrasia rose abruptly and looked up intently into his face. He thought
it strange afterwards, as he drove along the dark roads, that she had not
answered him.
Even though the matter were on the knees of the gods, Euphrasia would
have taken it thence, if she could. Nor did Austen know that she shared
with him, that night, his waking hours.
The next morning Mr. Thomas Gaylord, the younger, was making his way
towards the office of the Gaylord Lumber Company, conveniently situated
on Willow Street, near the railroad. Young Tom was in a particularly
jovial frame of mind, despite the fact that he had arrived in Ripton, on
the night express, as early as five o'clock in the morning. He had been
touring the State ostensibly on lumber business, but young Tom had a
large and varied personal as well as commercial acquaintance, and he had
the inestimable happiness of being regarded as an honest man, while his
rough and genial qualities made him beloved. For these reasons and others
of a more material nature, suggestions from Mr. Thomas Gaylord were apt
to be well received--and Tom had been making suggestions.
Early as he was at his office--the office-boy was sprinkling the floor
--young Tom had a visitor who was earlier still. Pausing in the doorway,
Mr. Gaylord beheld with astonishment a prim, elderly lady in a stiff,
black dress sitting upright on the edge of a capacious oak chair which
seemed itself rather discomfited by what it contained,--for its
hospitality had hitherto been extended to visitors of a very different
sort.
"Well, upon my soul," cried young Tom, "if it isn't Euphrasia!"
"Yes, it's me," said Euphrasia; "I've been to market, and I had a notion
to see you before I went home."
Mr. Gaylord took the office-boy lightly by the collar of his coat and
lifted him, sprinkling can and all, out of the doorway and closed the
door. Then he drew his revolving chair close to Euphrasia, and sat down.
They were old friends, and more than once in a youth far from model Tom
had experienced certain physical reproof at her hands, for which he bore
no ill-will. There was anxiety on his face as he asked:--"There hasn't
been any accident, has there, Euphrasia?"
"No," she said.
"No new row?" inquired Tom.
"No," said Euphrasia. She was a direct person, as we know, but true
descendants of the Puritans believe in the decency of preliminaries, and
here was certainly an affair not to be plunged into. Euphrasia was a
spinster in the strictest sense of that formidable and highly descriptive
term, and she intended ultimately to discuss with Tom a subject of which
she was supposed by tradition to be wholly ignorant, the mere mention of
which still brought warmth to her cheeks. Such a delicate matter should
surely be led up to delicately. In the meanwhile Tom was mystified.
"Well, I'm mighty glad to see you, anyhow," he said heartily. "It was
fond of you to call, Euphrasia. I can't offer you a cigar."
"I should think not," said Euphrasia.
Tom reddened. He still retained for her some of his youthful awe.
"I can't do the honours of hospitality as I'd wish to," he went on; "I
can't give you anything like the pies you used to give me."
"You stole most of 'em," said Euphrasia.
"I guess that's so," said young Tom, laughing, "but I'll never taste pies
like 'em again as long as I live. Do you know, Euphrasia, there were two
reasons why those were the best pies I ever ate?"
"What were they?" she asked, apparently unmoved.
"First," said Tom, "because you made 'em, and second, because they were
stolen."
Truly, young Tom had a way with women, had he only been aware of it.
"I never took much stock in stolen things," said Euphrasia.
"It's because you never were tempted with such pie as that," replied the
audacious Mr. Gaylord.
"You're gettin' almighty stout," said Euphrasia.
As we see her this morning, could she indeed ever have had a love affair?
"I don't have to use my legs as much as I once did," said Tom. And this
remark brought to an end the first phase of this conversation,--brought
to an end, apparently, all conversation whatsoever. Tom racked his brain
for a new topic, opened his roll-top desk, drummed on it, looked up at
the ceiling and whistled softly, and then turned and faced again the
imperturbable Euphrasia.
"Euphrasia," he said, you're not exactly a politician, I believe."
"Well," said Euphrasia, "I've be'n maligned a good many times, but nobody
ever went that far."
Mr. Gaylord shook with laughter.
"Then I guess there's no harm in confiding political secrets to you," he
said. "I've been around the State some this week, talking to people I
know, and I believe if your Austen wasn't so obstinate, we could make him
governor."
"Obstinate?" ejaculated Euphrasia.
"Yes," said Tom, with a twinkle in his eye, "obstinate. He doesn't seem
to want something that most men would give their souls for."
"And why should he dirty himself with politics?" she demanded. "In the
years I've lived with Hilary Vane I've seen enough of politicians,
goodness knows. I never want to see another."
"If Austen was governor, we'd change some of that. But mind, Euphrasia,
this is a secret," said Tom, raising a warning finger. "If Austen hears
about it now, the jig's up."
Euphrasia considered and thawed a little.
"They don't often have governors that young, do they?" she asked.
"No," said Tom, forcibly, "they don't. And so far as I know, they haven't
had such a governor for years as Austen would make. But he won't push
himself. You know, Euphrasia, I have always believed that he will be
President some day."
Euphrasia received this somewhat startling prediction complacently. She
had no doubt of its accuracy, but the enunciation of it raised young Tom
in her estimation, and incidentally brought her nearer her topic.
"Austen ain't himself lately," she remarked.
"I knew that he didn't get along with Hilary," said Tom, sympathetically,
beginning to realize now that Euphrasia had come to talk about her idol.
"It's Hilary doesn't get along with him," she retorted indignantly. "He's
responsible--not Austen. Of all the narrow, pig-headed, selfish men the
Lord ever created, Hilary Vane's the worst. It's Hilary drove him out of
his mother's house to live with strangers. It's Austen that comes around
to inquire for his father--Hilary never has a word to say about Austen."
A trace of colour actually rose under Euphrasia's sallow skin, and she
cast her eyes downward. "You've known him a good while, haven't you,
Tom?"
"All my life," said Tom, mystified again, "all my life. And I, think more
of him than of anybody else in the world."
"I calculated as much," she said; "that's why I came." She hesitated.
Artful Euphrasia! We will let the ingenuous Mr. Gaylord be the first to
mention this delicate matter, if possible. "Goodness knows, it ain't
Hilary I came to talk about. I had a notion that you'd know if anything
else was troubling Austen."
"Why," said Tom, "there can't be any business troubles outside of those
Hilary's mixed up in. Austen doesn't spend any money to speak of, except
what he gives away, and he's practically chief counsel for our company."
Euphrasia was silent a moment.
"I suppose there's nothing else that could bother him," she remarked. She
had never held Tom Gaylord's powers of comprehension in high estimation,
and the estimate had not risen during this visit. But she had undervalued
him; even Tom could rise to an inspiration--when the sources of all other
inspirations were eliminated.
"Why," he exclaimed, with a masculine lack of delicacy, "he may be in
love--"
"That's struck you, has it?" said Euphrasia.
But Tom appeared to be thinking; he was, in truth, engaged in collecting
his cumulative evidence: Austen's sleigh-ride at the capital, which he
had discovered; his talk with Victoria after her fall, when she had
betrayed an interest in Austen which Tom had thought entirely natural;
and finally Victoria's appearance at Mr. Crewe's rally in Ripton. Young
Mr. Gaylord had not had a great deal of experience in affairs of the
heart, and he was himself aware that his diagnosis in such a matter would
not carry much weight. He had conceived a tremendous admiration for
Victoria, which had been shaken a little by the suspicion that she might
be intending to marry Mr. Crewe. Tom Gaylord saw no reason why Austen
Vane should not marry Mr. Flint's daughter if he chose--or any other
man's daughter; partaking, in this respect, somewhat of Euphrasia's view.
As for Austen himself, Tom had seen no symptoms; but then, he reflected,
he would not be likely to see any. However, he perceived the object now
of Euphrasia's visit, and began to take the liveliest interest in it.
"So you think Austen's in love?" he demanded.
Euphrasia sat up straighter, if anything.
"I didn't say anything of the kind," she returned.
"He wouldn't tell me, you know," said Tom; "I can only guess at it."
"And the--lady?" said Euphrasia, craftily.
"I'm up a tree there, too. All I know is that he took her sleigh-riding
one afternoon at the capital, and wouldn't tell me who he was going to
take. And then she fell off her horse down at East Tunbridge Station--"
"Fell off her horse!" echoed Euphrasia, an accident comparable in her
mind to falling off a roof. What manner of young woman was this who fell
off horses?
"She wasn't hurt," Tom continued, "and she rode the beast home. He was a
wild one, I can tell you, and she's got pluck. That's the first time I
ever met her, although I had often seen her and thought she was a stunner
to look at. She talked as if she took an interest in Austen."
An exact portrayal of Euphrasia's feelings at this description of the
object of Austen's affections is almost impossible. A young woman who was
a stunner, who rode wild horses and fell off them and rode them again,
was beyond the pale not only of Euphrasia's experience but of her
imagination likewise. And this hoyden had talked as though she took an
interest in Austen! Euphrasia was speechless.
"The next time I saw her," said Tom, "was when she came down here to
listen to Humphrey Crewe's attacks on the railroad. I thought that was a
sort of a queer thing for Flint's daughter to do, but Austen didn't seem
to look at it that way. He talked to her after the show was over."
At this point Euphrasia could contain herself no longer, and in her
excitement she slipped off the edge of the chair and on to her feet.
"Flint's daughter?" she cried; "Augustus P. Flint's daughter?"
Tom looked at her in amazement.
"Didn't you know who it was?" he stammered. But Euphrasia was not
listening.
"I've seen her," she was saying; "I've seen her ridin' through Ripton in
that little red wagon, drivin' herself, with a coachman perched up beside
her. Flint's daughter!" Euphrasia became speechless once more, the
complications opened up being too vast for intelligent comment.
Euphrasia, however, grasped some of the problems which Austen had had to
face. Moreover, she had learned what she had come for, and the obvious
thing to do now was to go home and reflect. So, without further ceremony,
she walked to the door and opened it, and turned again with her hand on
the knob. "Look here, Tom Gaylord," she said, "if you tell Austen I was
here, I'll never forgive you. I don't believe you've got any more sense
than to do it."
And with these words she took her departure, ere the amazed Mr. Gaylord
had time to show her out. Half an hour elapsed before he opened his
letters.
When she arrived home in Hanover Street it was nine o'clock--an hour well
on in the day for Euphrasia. Unlocking the kitchen door, she gave a
glance at the stove to assure herself that it had not been misbehaving,
and went into the passage on her way up-stairs to take off her gown
before sitting down to reflect upon the astonishing thing she had heard.
Habit had so crystallized in Euphrasia that no news, however amazing,
could have shaken it. But in the passage she paused; an unwonted, or
rather untimely, sound reached her ears, a sound which came from the
front of the house--and at nine o'clock in the morning! Had Austen been
at home, Euphrasia would have thought nothing of it. In her remembrance
Hilary Vane, whether he returned from a journey or not, had never been
inside the house at that hour on a week-day; and, unlike the gentleman in
"La Vie de Boheme," Euphrasia did not have to be reminded of the Sabbath.
Perhaps Austen had returned! Or perhaps it was a burglar! Euphrasia,
undaunted, ran through the darkened front hall to where the graceful
banister ended in a curve at the foot of the stairs, and there, on the
bottom step, sat a man with his head in his hands. Euphrasia shrieked. He
looked up, and she saw that it was Hilary Vane. She would have shrieked,
anyway.
"What in the world's the matter with you?" she cried.
"I--I stumbled coming down the stairs," he said.
"But what are you doing at home in the middle of the morning?" she
demanded.
He did not answer her. The subdued light which crept under the porch and
came in through the fan shaped window over the door fell on his face.
"Are you sick?" said Euphrasia. In all her life she had never seen him
look like that.
He shook his head, but did not attempt to rise. A Hilary Vane without
vigour!
"No," he said, "no. I just came up here from the train to--get somethin'
I'd left in my room."
"A likely story!" said Euphrasia. "You've never done that in thirty
years. You're sick, and I'm a-going for the doctor."
She put her hand to his forehead, but he thrust it away and got to his
feet, although in the effort he compressed his lips and winced.
"You stay where you are," he said; "I tell you I'm not sick, and I'm
going down to the square. Let, the doctors alone--I haven't got any use
for 'em."
He walked to the door, opened it, and went out and slammed it in her
face. By the time she had got it open again--a crack--he had reached the
sidewalk, and was apparently in full possession of his powers and
faculties.