There are days in spring wherein advance seems as passive as is the
progress of a log down the race of a spring freshet. Then there are
other days wherein it seems that every mote must feel to the full its
sentient life, and its swelling towards development or fulfilment. On
a day like the latter, everything and everybody bestirs. The dust
motes spin in whirling columns, the gnats dance for their lives their
dance of death before the wayfarer. The gardeners and the
grave-diggers turn up the earth with energy, making the clods fly
like water. The rich play, or work that they may play, as do the
poor. Everybody is up and wide awake and doing. The earth and the
habitations thereof are rubbed, cleaned, and swept, or skylarked
over; the boy plays with his marbles on the sidewalk or whoops over
the fields; the housewives fling wide open their house windows, and
the dust of the winter flies out like smoke; the tradesmen set out
their new wares to public view, the bees make honey, the birds repeat
their world-old nesting songs, the cocks crow straight through the
day; nothing stops till the sun sets, and even then it is hard for
such an ardent clock of life to quite run down.
It was that spirit of unrest which had sent the two ladies out making
calls. There was not one where, if the womenkind were at home at all
and not afield, but they had been possessed of the spring activity,
until they reached the Ranger place, where the new-comers to
Banbridge lived. The Ranger place was, in some respects the most
imposing house in Banbridge. It stood well back from the road, in
grounds which deserved the name. They were extensive, dotted with
stately groups of spruces and pines, and there was in the rear of the
house a pond with a rustic bridge, fringed with willows, which gave
the place its name, "Willow Lake." The house had formerly been owned
by two maiden women with much sentiment, the sisters of the present
owner. The place was "Willow Lake." The pond was the "Willow Mere,"
in defiance of the name of the place. The little rustic bridge was
the "Bridge of Sighs," for some obscure reason, perhaps buried in the
sentimental past of the sisters. And the little hollow which was
profusely sprinkled with violets in the spring was "Idlewild." It was
in "Idlewild" that the new family, perverse to the spirit of the day,
idled when the callers drove up the road in the best coach.
There was in the little violet-sprinkled hollow a small building with
many peaks as to its roof, and diamond-paned windows which had been
fitted out with colored glass in a hideous checker-work of orange and
crimson and blue, which the departed sisters had called, none but
themselves knew why, "The Temple." On the south side grew a rose-bush
of the kind which flourished most easily in the village, taking most
kindly to the soil. It was an ordinary kind of rose. The sisters had
called it an eglantine, but it was not an eglantine. They had been
very fond, when the weather permitted, of sitting in this edifice
with their work. The place was fitted up with a rustic table and two
quite uncomfortable rustic chairs, particularly uncomfortable for the
sisters, who were of a thin habit of body.
When James Ranger, who was himself not a man of sentiment, showed the
new aspirant for the renting of the place this fantastic building, he
spoke of it with a species of apology.
"My sisters had this built," said he, "and it cost considerable," for
he did not wish to disparage the money value of anything.
When the family were established in their new home, one of the first
things which they did--they signifying Mrs. Carroll, Miss Anna
Carroll, the daughters Miss Ina and Miss Charlotte Carroll, and the
son Edward Carroll, called Eddy by the family--was to march in a body
upon the little "Temple," and, armed with stones, proceed with shouts
of merriment to smash out every spear of the crimson and orange and
blue glass in the windows. They then demolished the rustic furniture
and made of that a noble bonfire. Mrs. Carroll had indeed wondered,
between fits of laughter, in her sweet drawl, if they ought to
destroy the furniture, as it could not be said, strictly speaking, to
belong to them to destroy, but she was promptly vetoed by all the
others in merry chorus.
"They are too hideous to live," said Ina; "they ought to be burned.
It is our plain duty to burn them."
Therefore they burned them, and brought out some of the parlor chairs
to replace them. Then Eddy was sent to Rosenstein's, the village
dry-goods store of Banbridge, for yards of green mosquito netting,
which, the Carroll credit being newly established with a blare of
trumpets, he purchased. Then they had tacked up the green mosquito
netting over the window and door gaps, for they had forcibly wrenched
the ornate door from its hinges and added it to the bonfire, and the
temple of the Muses stood in a film of gently undulating green under
the green willows, and was rather a thing of beauty.
The Carrolls loved to pass away the time in that retreat veiled with
cloudy green, through which they could see the dull glimmer of the
pond, like an old shield of silver, reflecting the waving garlands of
the willows, which at that time of year were as beautiful as trees of
heaven, having effects of waving lines of liquid green light, and the
charming violet-blue turf around them.
The afternoon of the call all the female members of the Carroll
family were out there. Captain Carroll was in the City, and Eddy,
who, being a boy, was more susceptible to the lash of atmospheric
influence, had gone fishing.
"I wonder why Eddy likes to go fishing," said Mrs. Carroll, in her
sweet drawl. "Eddy never caught anything."
"You don't have a very high opinion of your son's powers as a
fisherman, Amy," said Ina, and they all laughed. The Carrolls were an
easy-to-laugh family, and always seemed to find delicious humor in
one another's remarks.
"Amy never thinks any of us can catch anything," said Charlotte, the
younger daughter, and they all laughed again.
Mrs. Carroll was always Amy in her family. Never did one of her
children address her as a parent.
They were a charming group in the little, green, gloomy place, each
with the strongest possible family likeness to the others. They were
as much alike as the roses on one bush; all were, although not tall,
long, and slim of body, and childishly round of face, with delicate
coloring; all had pathetic dark eyes and soft lengths of dark hair.
Mrs. Carroll and her husband's sister, although not nearly related
(Mrs. Carroll had married her many-times-removed cousin), resembled
each other as if they had been sisters of one family, and the
children resembled their mother. The only difference among any of
them was a slight difference of expression that existed mostly in the
youngest girl, Charlotte. There were occasions when Charlotte
Carroll's expression of soft and pathetic wistfulness and pleading
could change to an expression of defiance, almost fierceness.
Her mother often told her that she resembled in disposition her
paternal grandmother, who had been a woman of high temper, albeit a
great beauty.
"Charlotte, dear, you are just like your grandmother, dear Arthur's
mother, who was the worst-tempered and loveliest woman in Kentucky,"
Mrs. Carroll often remarked. She scarcely sounded the _t_ in
Kentucky, since she also was of the South, where the languid air
tends to produce elisions. The Carrolls came originally from
Kentucky, and had lived there until after the births of the two
daughters. When they were scarcely more than infants, Arthur Carroll
had experienced the petty and individual, but none the less real,
cataclysm of experience which comes to most men sooner or later. It
is the earthquake of a unit, infinitesimal, but entirely complete of
its kind, and possibly as far-reaching in its thread of consequences.
Arthur Carroll had had his palmy days, when he was working with great
profits, and, as he believed, with entire righteousness and regard to
his fellow-men, a coal-mine in the Kentucky mountains. He had
inherited it from his father, as the larger part of his patrimony.
When most of the property had been dissipated, at the time of the
civil war, the elder Carroll, who was broken by years and reverses,
used often to speak of this unimproved property of his, to his son
Arthur, who was a young boy at the time. Anna, who was a mere baby,
was the only other child.
"When you are a man, Arthur," he was fond of remarking--"when you are
a man, you must hire some money, sell what little is left here, if
necessary, and work that coal-mine. I always meant to do it myself,
and reckon I should have, if that damned war had not taken the money
and the strength out of the old man. But when you are a man, Arthur,
you must work that mine, and you must build up what the war has torn
down. You can buy back and restore, Arthur, and if the South should
get back her rights by that time, as she may, why, then, you can
stock up the old place again, and go on as your father did."
The old man, who was gouty and full of weary chills of body and mind,
used to sit in the sun and dream, to his faint solace, until Arthur
was a grown man and through college, and Anna a young girl at school
near by. The little that had been left, with the bare exception of
the home estate, the plantation, and the mine, had been sold to pay
for Arthur's education. Arthur had been out of college only one
summer when his father died. His mother, whose proud spirit had
fretted the flesh from her bones and drunk up her very blood with
futile rage and repining, had died during the war. Then Arthur, who
had control of everything, as his sister's guardian, set to work to
carry out his father's cherished dream with regard to the coal-mine.
He sold every foot of the estate to a neighboring planter, an old
friend of his father's, at a sacrifice, with a condition attached
that he should have the option of buying it back for cash, at an
advanced price, at the end of five years. The purchaser, who was a
shrewd sort, of Scotch descent, curiously grafted on to an impetuous,
hot-blooded Southern growth, looked at the slim young fellow with his
expression of ingenuous almost fatuous confidence in his
leading-strings of fate, and considered that he was safe enough and
had made a good bargain. He too had suffered from the war, in more
ways than one. He had come out of the strife shorn in his fleece of
worldly wealth and mutilated as to his body. He limped stiffly on a
wooden leg, and his fine buildings had gone up in fire and smoke. But
during the years since the war he had retrieved his fortunes. People
said he was worth more than before; everything he had handled had
prospered. He was one of those men whose very touch seems to multiply
possessions. He was a much younger man than Arthur's father, and
robust at the time of his death. He explained to Arthur that he was
doing him an incalculable service in purchasing his patrimonial
estate, when he announced his decision so to do, after taking several
weeks to conceal his alacrity.
"It is not everybodee would take a propertee, with such a condeetion
attached, Arthur, boy," he said. He had at times a touch of the
Scotch in his accent. His father had been straight from the old
country when he married the planter's daughter. "Not everybodee, with
such a condeetion," he repeated, and the boy innocently believed him.
He had been used, ever since he was a child and could remember
anything, to seeing a good deal of the man. The Southern wife had
died early and the man had been lonely and given to frequent friendly
meetings with Mr. Carroll, who had valued him.
"He's the right sort, Arthur," he had often told the boy; "you can
depend on him. He has given his gold and his flesh and blood for the
South, although he came on one side of another race and might have
sided against us. He's the right sort."
So the Scotch-Southern planter had been one of the bearers at the old
Carroll's funeral, and the son, when he had formulated his business
schemes, had gone to this friend with them, and with his proposal for
the sale of the Carroll property. The boy, who was honorable to the
finish, had been loath to ask, in the then reduced state of the
property, for a loan on mortgage to the extent which he would
require; therefore he proposed this conditional sale as offering
rather better, or at least more evident, security, and he regarded it
in his own mind as practically amounting to the same thing. He was as
sure of his being able to purchase back his own, should he secure the
necessary funds, as he would have been of paying up the mortgage. The
advance price would about twice cover the interest at a goodly rate,
had the affair been conducted on the mortgage basis. Arthur himself
had proposed that, and "I will of course pay for any improvements you
may have made in the mean time," he said. There was nothing in the
least mean or ungenerous about Arthur Carroll. He meant, on the
whole, rather more squarely to his fellow-men than to himself.
Then with the money obtained from the sale of his patrimony he went
to work on his coal-mine. A very trifle of a beginning had been made
on it before the war, so he had not actually to break the first
ground. The previous owner had died bankrupt from lack of capital,
and his minor daughter had inherited it. It was from the minor
daughter that the elder Carroll had purchased it, partly with a view
to assisting the child, who had been left penniless except for the
mine, at the death of her father, who was of a distant branch of
Carroll's own family. With the proceeds of the sale the girl was
supported and educated; then she lost the remainder through the
dishonesty of her guardian. That was the year after young Carroll
began to work the mine. Then he married her. She was a beautiful
girl, and helpless as a flower. He married her without a cent to
support her except the old coal-mine, and he worked as hard and
bravely as a man could. And he prospered, to the utter amazement of
everybody who watched him, and who had prophesied failure from the
start. In four years he was looked upon with respect. People said he
was fast getting rich. He went to the man who had bought the Carroll
place, at the end of the four years, with the money in his hand and
proposed purchasing it. He had not a doubt, such was his trust in the
friendliness of the man, that he would gladly consent and pat him on
the back with fatherly affection for his success; but, to his
amazement, he was refused, although still under the guise of the
purest philanthropy.
"No, Arthur, boy," he said. "It is best for you to keep the money in
your business awhile longer. It will not do, in a big undertaking
like a mine, for you to be creepled. No, Arthur, boy, wait until the
next year is up. It is for your good."
In vain Arthur offered an advance upon the original advance price.
"No, Arthur, boy," he repeated.
"No, Arthur, boy," he continued to repeat. "It is not wise for you to
be creepled in your business."
Arthur protested that he would not be crippled, but with no avail. He
went away disappointed, and yet with his faith unshaken. He did not
know what transpired later on, that negotiations which would
materially enhance the value of the property were being carried on
with a railroad by the planter, who was himself one of the railroad
directors.
About six months after Arthur's attempt to purchase back his
ancestral acres, and while he was at high tide of a small prosperity,
this same man came to him with a proposal for him to furnish on
contract a large quantity of coal to this same railroad. Arthur
jumped at the chance. The contract was drawn up by a lawyer in the
nearest town and signed. Arthur, trusting blindly to the honesty and
good-will of everybody, had hurried for his train without seeing more
than that the stipulated rates had been properly mentioned in the
contract. His wife was ill; in fact, Charlotte was only a few days
old, and he was anxious and eager to be home. There had been no
strikes at that period in that vicinity, and indeed comparatively few
in the whole country. Arthur would almost as soon have thought of
guarding in his contract against an earthquake; but the strike clause
was left out, and there was a strike. In consequence he was unable to
fill the contract without ruin, and he was therefore ruined. In the
end the old friend of his father, who had purchased his patrimony,
remained in undisputed possession of it, with an additional value of
several thousands from the passage of the railroad through one end of
the plantation, and had, besides, the mine. Arthur had sold the mine
at a nominal price to pay his debts, to a third party who represented
this man. He had been left actually penniless with a wife and two
babies to support, but as his pocket became empty his very soul had
seemed to become full to overflowing with the rage and bitterness of
his worldly experience. He had learned that the man whom he had
trusted had instigated the strike; he learned about the railroad
deal. One night he went to his plantation with a shot-gun. He
approached the house which had formerly been his own home, where the
man was living then. He fully intended to shoot him. He had not a
doubt but he should do it, and he had always considered that he
should have carried out his purpose had not an old horse which the
man had purchased with the estate, and which was loose on the lawn,
from some reason or other, whinnied eagerly, and sidled up to him,
and thrust her nose over his shoulder. He had been used, when a boy,
to feed her sugar, and she remembered. Arthur went away through the
soft Southern moonlight without shooting the man. Somehow it was
because of the horse, and he never knew why it was. The old childish
innocence and happiness seemed to flood over him in a light of spirit
which dimmed the moonlight and swept away the will for murder from
his soul. But the bitterness and the hate of the man who had wronged
him never left him. The next day he went North, and the man in
possession breathed more easily, for he had had secret misgivings.
"You had better look out," another man had said to him. "You have
trodden on the toes of a tiger when you have trodden on the toes of a
Carroll. Sooner or later you will have to pay for it."
No one in the little Kentucky village knew what had become of Arthur
Carroll for some time, with the exception of an aunt of Mrs.
Carroll's, who was possessed of some property and who lived there.
She knew, but she told nothing, probably because she had a fierce
pride of family. After years the Carroll girls, Ina and Charlotte,
had come back to their father's birthplace and attended a small
school some three miles distant from the village, a select young
ladies' establishment at which their mother had been educated, and
they had visited rather often at their great-aunt Catherine's. After
they had finished school, the great-aunt had paid the bills, although
nobody knew it, not even the elderly sisters who kept the school,
since the aunt lied and stated that Captain Carroll had sent the
money. Arthur Carroll was called captain then, and nobody knew why,
least of all Carroll himself. Suddenly he had been called captain,
and after making a disclaimer or two at first, he had let it go; it
was a minor dishonesty, and forced upon him in a measure. The old
aunt calmly stated that he had joined the army, been rapidly
promoted, and had resigned. People laughed a little, but not to her
face. Besides, she had stated that Arthur was a very rich man, and
much thought of among the Yankees, and nobody was in a position to
disprove that. Certainly when the feminine Carrolls visited in the
old place, their appearance carried out the theory of riches. They
were very well dressed, and they looked well fed, with that placid,
assured air which usually comes only from the sense of possession.
The feminine Carrolls had been speaking of this old aunt that spring
day as they sat idly in the little green-curtained temple beside the
pond. They had indulged in a few low, utterly gentle, and unmalicious
laughs of reminiscence at some of her eccentricities; then they had
agreed that she was a good old soul, and said no more of her, but
gazed with languorous delight at the spring scene misty with green
and rose and gold like the smoke of some celestial fire.
Through the emerald dazzle of the trailing willow-boughs could be
seen a small, blooming apple-tree, and a bush full of yellow flowers.
Miss Anna Carroll and Ina held books in their laps, but they never
looked in them. They were all very well dressed and they wore quite a
number of fine jewels on their hands and at their necks, particularly
Mrs. Carroll. Her stones, though only of the semi-precious kind, were
very beautiful, amethysts which had belonged to a many-times-removed
creole grandmother of hers, and the workmanship of whose fine setting
dated back to France, and there was a tradition of royal ownership.
Mrs. Carroll had a bracelet, a ring, a brooch, and a necklace. The
stones, although deeply tinted, showed pink now instead of purple. In
fact, they seemed to match the soft, rose-tinted India silk which she
wore.
"Amy's amethysts match colors like chamellons," said Ina. "Look how
pink they are."
"Lovely," said Charlotte, gazing admiringly. "The next time I go to a
dance, you promised I should wear the necklace, Amy, dear."
"You will not go to a dance for a long time in Banbridge, sweet, I
fear," said Mrs. Carroll, with loving commiseration.
"Somebody will call soon, and we shall be asked to something," said
Charlotte, with conviction.
"Nobody has called yet," Ina said.
"We have only been here three weeks," said Miss Anna Carroll, who was
a beautiful woman, and, but for a certain stateliness of carriage,
might have seemed but little older than her elder niece.
"Somebody may be calling this afternoon," said Ina, "and the maid has
gone out, and we should not know they called."
"Oh, let them leave their cards," said Mrs. Carroll, easily. "That is
the only way to receive calls, and make them. If one could only know
when people would be out, but not have them know you knew,
always--that would be lovely--and if one only knew when they were
coming, so one could always be out--that would be lovelier still."
Mrs. Carroll had a disjointed way of speaking when she essayed a long
speech, that had almost an infantile effect.
"Amy, how very ungracious of you, dear," said Miss Anna Carroll. "You
know you always love people when you really do meet them."
"Oh yes," replied Amy, "I know I love them."
Meantime, Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Van Dorn were ringing the door-bell of
the Carroll house. They rang the bell and waited, and nobody came.
"Did you ring the bell?" asked Mrs. Van Dorn, anxiously.
"I thought I did. I pressed the button very hard."
"I didn't hear it. I think you had better ring again."
Mrs. Lee obediently pressed the bell again, and then both ladies
heard distinctly the far-away tinkle in the depths of the house.
"I heard that," said Mrs. Lee.
"Yes, so did I. It rang that time."
Then the ladies waited again.
"Suppose you ring again," said Mrs. Van Dorn, and Mrs. Lee rang
again. Then they waited again, straining their ears for the slightest
sound in the house.
"I am afraid they are out," said Mrs. Van Dorn.
"So am I. It is such a lovely afternoon."
Mrs. Van Dorn, after they had waited a short time, put out her hand
with a decisive motion, and rang the bell yet again.
"I'm going to make sure they are not at home," said she, "for I don't
know when I shall get out calling again, and I always feel as if it
was my duty to call on new-comers in the village pretty soon after
they move in."
Then they waited again, but no one came. Once Mrs. Lee started and
said she was sure she heard some one coming, but it was only the
rumble of a train at a station two miles away.
"Shall we leave our cards?" said Mrs. Lee. "I don't suppose there is
much use in waiting any longer, or ringing again."
Mrs. Van Dorn, who had been staring intently at the door, looked
quickly at her companion with a curious expression. Her face had
flushed.
"What is it?" asked Mrs. Lee. "You don't suppose any one is in there
and not coming to the door?" Mrs. Lee had a somewhat suspicious
nature.
"No; I don't think there is a soul in that house, but--"
"But what?"
"Nothing, only--"
"Only what?"
"Why, don't you see what they have done?"
"I am afraid I don't quite know what you mean," Mrs. Lee returned, in
a puzzled way. It was quite evident that Mrs. Van Dorn wished her to
grasp something which her own mind had mastered, that she wished it
without further explanation, and Mrs. Lee felt bewilderedly
apologetic that she could not comply.
"Don't you see that they have gone off and left the front door
unlocked?" said Mrs. Van Dorn, with inflections of embarrassment,
eagerness, and impatience. If she and Mrs. Lee had been, as of yore,
school-children together, she would certainly have said, "You ninny!"
to finish.
"Why!" returned Mrs. Lee, with a sort of gasp. She saw then that the
front door was not only unlocked, but slightly ajar. "Do you suppose
they really are not at home?" she whispered.
"Of course they are not at home."
"Would they go away and leave the front door unlocked?"
"They have."
"They might be in the back part of the house, and not have heard the
bell," Mrs. Lee said, with a curious tone, as if she replied to some
unspoken suggestion.
"I know this house as well as I do my own. You know how much I used
to be here when the Ranger girls were alive. There is not a room in
this house where anybody with ears can't hear the bell."
Still, Mrs. Van Dorn spoke in that curiously ashamed and indignant
voice. Mrs. Lee contradicted her no further.
"Well, I suppose you must be right," said she. "There can't be
anybody at home; but it is strange they went off and did not even
shut the front door."
"I don't know what the Ranger girls would have said, if they knew it.
They would have had a fit at the bare idea of going away for ever so
short a time, and leaving the house and furniture alone and the door
unlocked."
"Their furniture is here now, I suppose?"
"Yes, I suppose so--some of it, anyway, but I don't know how much
furniture these people bought, of course."
"Mr. Lee said he heard they had such magnificent things."
"I heard so, but you hear a good deal that isn't so in Banbridge!"
"That is true. I suppose you knew the house and the Ranger girls'
furniture so well that you could tell at a glance what was new and
what wasn't?"
"Yes, I could."
As with one impulse both women turned and peered through a green maze
of trees and bushes at Samson Rawdy, several yards distant.
"Can you see him?" whispered Mrs. Lee.
"Yes. I think he's asleep. He is sitting with his head all bent over."
"He is--not--looking?"
"No."
Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Van Dorn regarded each other. Both looked at once
ashamed and defiant before the other, then into each pair of eyes
leaped a light of guilty understanding and perfect sympathy. There
are some natures for whom curiosity is one of the master passions,
and the desire for knowledge of the affairs of others can become a
lust, and Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Van Dorn were of the number. Mrs. Van
Dorn gave her head in her best calling-bonnet a toss, and the
violets, which were none too securely fastened, nodded loosely; then
she thrust her chin forward, she sniffed like a hunting-hound on the
scent, pushed open the front-door, and entered, with Mrs. Lee
following. As Mrs. Van Dorn entered, the violets on her bonnet became
quite detached and fell softly to the floor of the porch, but neither
of the ladies noticed.
Mrs. Lee, in particular, had led a monotonous life, and she had a
small but intense spirit which could have weathered extremes. Now her
faculties seemed to give a leap; she was afraid, but there was
distinct rapture in her fear. She had not been so actively happy
since she was a child and had been left at home with the measles one
Sunday when the rest of the family had gone to church, and she had
run away and gone wading in the brook, at the imminent risk not only
of condign punishment, but of the measles striking in. She felt now
just as then, as if something terrible and mysterious were striking
in, and she fairly smacked her soul over it.
Mrs. Lee no longer shrank; she stood up straight; she also thrust her
chin forward; her nose sharpened, her blue eyes contracted under her
light brows. She even forgot her role of obligation, and did not give
Mrs. Van Dorn the precedence; she actually pushed before her. Mrs.
Van Dorn had closed the front door very softly, and they stood in a
long, narrow hall, with an obsolete tapestry carpet, and
large-figured gold and white paper revealing its gleaming scrolls in
stray patches of light. Mrs. Lee went close to an old-fashioned
black-walnut hat-tree, the one article of furniture besides a chair
in the hall.
"Was this theirs?" she whispered to Mrs. Van Dorn.
Mrs. Van Dorn nodded.
Mrs. Lee deliberately removed the nice white kid glove from her right
hand, and extending one small taper forefinger, rubbed it over the
surface of the black-walnut tree; then she pointed meaningly at the
piece of furniture, which plainly, even in the half-light, disclosed
an unhousewifely streak. She also showed the dusty forefinger to the
other lady, and they both nodded with intense enjoyment.
Then Mrs. Lee folded her silk skirts tightly around her and lifted
them high above her starched white petticoat lest she contaminate
them in such an untidy house; Mrs. Van Dorn followed her example, and
they tiptoed into the double parlors. They were furnished, for the
most part, with the pieces dating back to the building of the house,
in one of the ugliest eras of the country, both in architecture and
furniture. The ceilings in these rather small square rooms were so
lofty that one was giddy with staring at the elaborate cornices and
the plaster centrepieces. The mantels were all of massively carved
marble, the windows were few and narrow, the doors multitudinous, and
lofty enough for giants. The parlor floor was carpeted with tapestry
in enormous designs of crimson roses, in deliriums of arabesques,
though there were a few very good Eastern rugs. The furniture was
black-walnut, upholstered in crimson plush; the tables had marble
tops; the hangings were lace under heavily fringed crimson
lambrequins dependent from massive gilt mouldings. There were a
bronze clock and a whatnot and a few gilt-framed oil-paintings of the
conventional landscape type, contemporary with the furniture in
American best parlors. Still, there were a few things in the room
which directly excited comment on the part of the visitors. Mrs. Lee
pointed at some bronzes on the shelf.
"Those are theirs, aren't they?" said she.
"Yes, the Ranger girls had some very handsome Royal Worcester vases.
I guess James Ranger saw to it that those weren't left here."
Mrs. Van Dorn eyed the bronzes with outward respect, but she did not
admire them. Banbridge ladies, as a rule, unless they posed, did not
admire bronzes. She also viewed with some disapproval a number of
exquisite little Chinese ivory carvings on the whatnot. "Those are
theirs," said she. "The Ranger girls had some handsome bound books
and a silver card-receiver, and a bust of Clytie on top of the
whatnot. I suppose these are very expensive; I have always heard so.
I never priced any, but it always seemed to me that they hardly
showed the money."
"I suppose they have afternoon tea," said Mrs. Lee, regarding a
charming little inlaid tea-table, decked with Dresden.
"Perhaps so," replied Mrs. Van Dorn, doubtfully. "But I have noticed
that when tea-tables are so handsome, folks don't use them. They are
more for show. That cloth is beautiful."
"There is a tea-stain on it," declared Mrs. Lee, pointing
triumphantly.
"That is so," assented Mrs. Van Dorn. "They must use it." She looked
hard at the stain on the tea-cloth. "It's a pity to get tea on such a
cloth as that," said she. "It will never come out."
"Oh, I don't believe that will trouble them much," said Mrs. Lee,
with soft maliciousness. She indicated with the pointed toe of her
best calling-shoe, a hole in the corner of the resplendent Eastern
rug.
"Oh," returned Mrs. Van Dorn.
"I know it is considered desirable to have these Oriental things
worn," said Mrs. Lee, "but there is no sense in letting an expensive
rug like this wear out, and no good house-keeper would."
"Well, I agree with you," said Mrs. Van Dorn.
Presently they passed on to the other rooms. They made a long halt in
the dining-room.
"That must be their solid silver," said Mrs. Van Dorn, regarding
rather an ostentatious display on the sideboard.
"The idea of going away and leaving all that silver, and the doors
unlocked!" said Mrs. Lee.
"Evidently they are people so accustomed to rich things that they
don't think of such risks," said Mrs. Van Dorn, with a curious effect
of smacking her lips over possessions of her own, instead of her
neighbors. She in reality spoke from the heights of a small but solid
silver service, and a noble supply of spoons, and Mrs. Lee knew it.
"I suppose they must have perfectly beautiful table-linen," remarked
Mrs. Lee, with a wistful glance at the sideboard-drawers.
"Yes, I suppose so," assented Mrs. Van Dorn, with a half-sigh. Her
eyes also on the closed drawers of the sideboard, were melancholy,
but there was a line which neither woman could pass. They could pry
about another woman's house in her absence, but they shrank from
opening her drawers and investigating her closets. They respected all
that was covered from plain sight. Up-stairs it was the same. Things
were strewn about rather carelessly, therefore they saw more than
they would otherwise have done, but the closet-doors and the
bureau-drawers happened to be closed, and those were inviolate.
"If all their clothes are as nice as these, they must have wardrobes
nicer than any ever seen in Banbridge," said Mrs. Lee, fingering
delicately a lace-trimmed petticoat flung over a chair in one of the
bedrooms. "This is real lace, don't you think so, Mrs. Van Dorn?"
"I don't think. I know," replied Mrs. Van Dorn. "They must have
elegant wardrobes, and they must be very wealthy people. They--"
Suddenly Mrs. Van Dorn cut her remarks short. She turned quite pale
and clutched at her companion's silk-clad arm. "Hush!" she whispered.
"What was that?"
Mrs. Lee, herself ashy white, looked at her. Both had distinctly
heard a noise. Now they heard it again. The sound was that of
footsteps, evidently those of a man, in the lower hall.
"What shall we do? Oh, what shall we do?" said Mrs. Lee, in a thin
whisper. She trembled so that she could scarcely stand.
Mrs. Van Dorn, trying to speak, only chattered. She clutched Mrs. Lee
harder.
"Is there a back staircase? Oh, is there?" whispered Mrs. Lee. "Is
there?" The odor of a cigar stole softly through the house. "I can
smell his cigar," whispered Mrs. Lee, in an agony.
Mrs. Van Dorn pulled herself together. She nodded, and began pulling
Mrs. Lee towards the door.
"Oh," panted Mrs. Lee, "anything except being caught up-stairs in
their bedrooms! They might think--anything."
"Hurry!" hissed Mrs. Van Dorn. They could hear the footsteps very
distinctly, and the cigar-smoke made them want to cough. Holding
their silk skirts like twisted ropes around them so they should not
rustle, still clinging closely one to the other, the two women began
slowly moving, inch by inch, through the upper hall, towards the back
stairs. These they descended in safety, and emerged on the lower hall.
They were looking for a rear door, with the view of a stealthy egress
and a skirting of the bushes on the lawn unobserved until they should
gain the shelter of the carriage, when there was a movement at their
backs, and a voice observed, "Good-afternoon, ladies," and they
turned, and there was Captain Arthur Carroll. He was a man possibly
well over forty, possibly older than that, but his face was as smooth
as a boy's, and he was a man of great stature, with nevertheless a
boyish cant to his shoulders. Captain Arthur Carroll was a very
handsome man, with a viking sort of beauty. He was faultlessly
dressed in one of the lightest of spring suits and a fancy waistcoat,
and he held quite gracefully the knot of violets which had fallen
from Mrs. Van Dorn's bonnet.
The two stood before him, gasping, coloring, trembling. For both of
them it was horrible. All their lives they had been women who had
held up their heads high in point of respectability and more. None
was above them in Banbridge, no shame of wrong-doing or folly had
ever been known by either of them, and now both their finely bonneted
heads were in the dust. They stood before this handsome, courteously
smiling gentleman and were conscious of a very nakedness of spirit.
Their lust of curiosity was laid bare, they were caught in the act.
Mrs. Van Dorn opened her mouth, she tried to speak, but she only made
a strange, croaking sound. Her face was now flaming. But Mrs. Lee was
pale, and she stood rather unsteadily.
Arthur Carroll at first looked merely bewildered. "Aren't the ladies
at home?" said he. "Have you seen the ladies?" He glanced at Mrs. Van
Dorn's deflowered bonnet, and extended the bunch of violets. "Yours,
I think," he said. Mrs. Van Dorn took them with an idiotic
expression, and he asked again if they had seen the ladies.
The spectacle of two elderly, well-dressed females of Banbridge
quaking before him in this wise, and of their sudden appearance in
his house, was a mystery too great to be grasped at once even by a
clever man, and he was certainly a clever man. So he stared for a
second, while the two remained standing before him, holding their
card-cases in their shaking, white-gloved fingers, and Mrs. Van Dorn
with the violets; then suddenly an expression of the most delighted
comprehension and amusement overspread his face.
"Oh," he said, politely, with a great flourish, as it were of
deference, "the ladies are not in. They will be exceedingly sorry to
have missed your call. But will you not come in and sit down?"
Mrs. Van Dorn gained voice enough to gasp that she thought they must
go. Captain Carroll stood back, and the two women, pressing closely
together, tottered through the hall towards the front door.
Captain Carroll followed, beaming with delighted malice. "I hope you
will call again, when the ladies are home," he said to Mrs. Van Dorn,
whom he recognized as the leader.
She made an inarticulate attempt at "Thank you." She was making for
the door, like a scared hare to the entrance of its cover.
"But I have not your names, ladies, that I may inform Mrs. Carroll
who has called?" said Captain Carroll, in his stingingly polite voice.
Both women looked over their shrinking shoulders at him at that.
Suddenly the hideous consequences of it all, the afterclap, sounded
in their ears. That was the end of their fair fame in Banbridge, in
their world. Life for them was over. Their faces, good, motherly,
elderly village faces, after all, were pitiful; the shame in them was
a shame to see, so ignominious was it. They stood convicted of such a
mean fault, that the shame was the meaner also.
Suddenly Mr. Carroll's face changed. It became broadly comprehensive,
so generously lenient that it was fairly grand. A certain gentleness
also was evident, his voice was kind.
"Never mind, ladies," said Arthur Carroll. "There is really very
little use in your telling me your names, because my memory is so
bad. I remember neither names nor faces. If I should meet you on the
street, and should fail to recognize you on that account, I trust
that you will pardon me. And--" said Captain Carroll, "on that
account, I will not say anything about your call to the ladies of my
family; I should be sure to get it all wrong. We will wait, and trust
that you will find them at home the next time you call.
Good-afternoon, ladies." Captain Carroll had further mercy. He
allowed the ladies to leave the house unattended and to dive
desperately into the waiting coach.
"Home at once," Mrs. Van Dorn cried, hoarsely, to Samson Rawdy,
waking from his nap in some bewilderment.
Captain Carroll was standing on the porch with a compound look of
kindest pity and mirth on his face when the Carroll ladies came
strolling round that way from the pond. He kissed them all, as was
his wont; then he laughed out inconsequently.
"What are you laughing at, dear?" asked Amy.
"At my thoughts, sweetheart."
"What are your thoughts, daddy?" asked Charlotte.
"Thoughts I shall never tell anybody, honey," he replied, with
another laugh. And Captain Arthur Carroll never did tell.