A DRAMA WITH TWO SPECTATORS.
The words of Bott lingered obstinately in Maud Matchin's mind. She gave herself no rest from dwelling on them. Her imagination was full, day after day, of glowing pictures of herself and Farnham in tete-e-tete; she would seek in a thousand ways to tell her love—but she could never quite arrange her avowal in a satisfactory manner. Long before she came to the decisive words which were to kindle his heart to flame in the imaginary dialogue, he would himself take fire by spontaneous combustion, and, falling on his knees, would offer his hand, his heart, and his fortune to her in words taken from "The Earl's Daughter" or the "Heir of Ashby."
"Oh, pshaw! that's the way it ought to be," she would say to herself. "But if he won't—I wonder whether I ever could have the brass to do it? I don't know why I shouldn't. We are both human. Bott wouldn't have said that if there was nothing in it, and he's a mighty smart man."
The night usually gave her courage. Gazing into her glass, she saw enough to inspire her with an idea of her own invincibility; and after she had grown warm in bed she would doze away, resolving with a stout heart that she would try her fate in the morning. But when day came, the enterprise no longer seemed so simple. Her scanty wardrobe struck her with cowardice as she surveyed it. The broad daylight made everything in the house seem poor and shabby. When she went down-stairs, her heart sank within her as she entered the kitchen to help her mother, and when she sat with the family at the breakfast-table, she had no faith left in her dreams of the rosy midnight. This alternation of feeling bred in her, in the course of a few days, a sort of fever, which lent a singular beauty to her face, and a petulant tang to her speech. She rose one morning, after a sleepless night, in a state of anger and excitement in which she had little difficulty in charging upon Farnham all responsibility for her trouble of mind.
"I won't stand it any longer," she said aloud in her chamber. "I shall go to him this day and have it out. I shall ask him what he means by treating me so."
She sat down by her bureau and began to crimp her hair with grim resolution. Her mother came and knocked at her door. "I'm not coming to breakfast, I've got a headache," she said, and added to herself, "I sha'n't go down and get the smell of bacon on me this morning."
She continued her work of personal adornment for two hours, going several times over her whole modest arsenal of finery before she was ready for the fray. She then went down in her street costume, and made a hasty meal of bread and butter, standing by the pantry. Her mother came in and found her there.
"Why, Mattie, how's your head?"
"I'm going to take a walk and see what that will do."
As she walked rapidly out of Dean Street, the great clock of the cathedral was striking the hour of nine.
"Goodness!" she exclaimed, "that's too early to call on a gentleman. What shall I do?"
She concluded to spend the time of waiting in the library, and walked rapidly in that direction, the fresh air flushing her cheeks, and blowing the frizzed hair prettily about her temples. She went straight to the reference rooms, and sat down to read a magazine. The girl who had prompted her to apply for a place was there on duty. She gave a little cry of delight when she saw Maud, and said:
"I was just crazy to see you. I have got a great secret for you. I'm engaged!"
The girls kissed each other with giggles and little screams, and the young woman told who he was—in the lightning-rod business in Kalamazoo, and doing very well; they were to be married almost immediately.
"You never saw such a fellow, he just won't wait;" and consequently her place in the library would be vacant. "Now, you must have it, Maud! I haven't told a soul. Even the Doctor don't know it yet."
Maud left the library and walked up the avenue with an easier mind. She had an excuse for her visit now, and need not broach, unless she liked, the tremendous subject that made her turn hot and cold to think of. She went rustling up the wide thoroughfare at a quick pace; but before arriving at Farnham's, moved by a momentary whim, she turned down a side street leading to Bishop's Lane. She said to herself, "I will go in by that little gate once, if I never do again." As she drew near, she thought, "I hope Sam isn't there."
Sam was there, just finishing his work upon the greenhouse. Farnham was there also; he had come down to inspect the job, and he and Sleeny were chatting near the gate as Maud opened it and came in. Farnham stepped forward to meet her. The unexpected rencounter made her shy, and she neither spoke to Sam nor looked toward him, which filled him with a dull jealousy.
"Could I have a few moments' conversation with you, sir?" she asked, with stiff formality.
"Certainly," said Farnham, smiling. "Shall we go into the house?"
"Thank you, sir," she rejoined, severely decorous. They walked up the garden-path together, and Sam looked after them with an unquiet heart.
She was walking beside Farnham with a stately step, in spite of the scabbard-like narrowness of the dress she wore. She was nearly as tall as he, and as graceful as a young pine blown to and fro by soft winds. The carpenter, with his heart heavy with love and longing, felt a bitter sense that she was too fine for him. They passed into the house, and he turned to his work with a sigh, often dropping his busy hands and looking toward the house with a dumb questioning in his eyes. After a half hour which seemed endless to him, they reappeared and walked slowly down the lawn. There was trouble and agitation in the girl's face, and Farnham was serious also. As they came by the rose-house, Maud paused and looked up with a sorrowful smile and a question. Farnham nodded, and they walked to the open door of the long, low building. He led the way in, and Maud, looking hastily around, closed the door behind them.
"He's goin' to give her some more of them roses," said Sam, explaining the matter to himself. But he worked for some time with his blond beard on his shoulder in his impatience to see them come out. At last, he could resist no longer. He knew a point where he could look through the glass and see whatever was taking place among the roses. He walked swiftly across the turf to that point. He looked in and saw Maud, whose back was turned toward him, talking as if she were pleading for her life, while Farnham listened with a clouded brow. Sleeny stood staring with stupid wonder while Maud laid her hand upon Farnham's shoulder. At that moment he heard footsteps on the gravel walk at some distance from him, and he looked up and saw Mrs. Belding approaching. Confused at his attitude of espionage, he walked away from his post, and, as he passed her, Mrs. Belding asked him if he knew where Mr. Farnham was.
"Yes," he answered, "he's in there. Walk right in;" and in the midst of his trouble of spirit he could hardly help chuckling at his own cleverness as he walked, in his amazement, back to the conservatory.
While she was in the house, Maud had confined herself to the subject of the vacancy in the library. She rushed at it, as a hunter at a hedge, to get away from the other matter which had tormented her for a week. When she found herself alone with Farnham she saw that it would be "horrid" to say what she had so long been rehearsing. "Now I can get that place, if you will help me. No earthly soul knows anything about it, and Minnie said she would give me a good chance before she let it out."
Farnham tried to show her the difficulties in the way. He was led by her eagerness into a more detailed account of his differences with the rest of the board than he had ever given to any one, a fuller narrative than was perhaps consistent with entire prudence. Whenever he paused, she would insist with a woman's disconcerting directness:
"But they don't know anything about it this time—they can't combine on anybody. You can certainly get one of them."
Farnham still argued against her sanguine hopes, till he at last affected her own spirits, and she grew silent and despondent. As she rose to go, he also took his hat to return to the garden, where he had left Sleeny, and they walked over the lawn together. As they approached the rose-house, she thought of her former visit and asked to repeat it. The warm breath of the flowers saluted her as she crossed the threshold, bringing so vivid a reminiscence of the enchantment of that other day, that there came with it a sudden and poignant desire to try there, in that bewitched atmosphere, the desperate experiment which would decide her fate. There was no longer any struggle in her mind. She could not, for her life, have kept silent now. She walked slowly beside him to the place where the pots of roses stood ranged on their frames, filling the air with dense fragrance. Her hands were icy cold and quick flushes passed through her, while her face reddened and paled like a horizon smitten by heat-lightning in a sultry night of summer. She looked at the moist brick pavement at her feet, her eyelids seemed too heavy to lift, and the long lashes nearly touched her cheeks.
"What sort will you have?" said Farnham, reaching for the gardener's shears.
"Never mind the roses," she said, in a dry voice which she hardly recognized as her own. "I have something to say to you."
He turned and looked at her with surprise. She raised her eyes to his with a great effort, and then, blushing fiery red, she said, in a clear, low voice, "I love you."
Like many another daughter and son of Eve, she was startled at the effect of these momentous words upon herself. Of all forms of speech these three words are the most powerful, the most wonderworking upon the being who utters them. It was the first time they had ever passed her lips, and they exalted and inebriated her. She was suddenly set free from the bashful constraint which had held her, and with a leaping pulse and free tongue she poured out her heart to the astonished and scandalized young man.
"Yes, I love you. You think it's horrid that I should say so, don't you? But I don't care, I love you. I loved you the first time I saw you, though you made me so angry about my glasses. But you were my master, and I knew it, and I never put them on again. And I thought of you day and night, and I longed for the day to come when I might see you once more, and I was glad when I did not get that place, so that I could come again and see you and talk with you. I can tell you over again every word you ever said to me. You were not like other men. You are the first real man I ever knew. I was silly and wild when I wanted to be your secretary. Of course, that wouldn't do. If I am not to be your wife, I must never see you again; you know that, don't you?" and, carried away by her own reckless words, she laid her hand on his shoulder. His frown of amazement and displeasure shook her composure somewhat. She turned pale and trembled, her eyes fell, and it seemed for an instant as if she would sink to the floor at his feet. He put his arm around her, to keep her from falling and pressed her closely to him. She threw her head back upon his shoulder and lifted her face to him. He looked down on her, and the frown passed from his brow as he surveyed her flushed cheeks, her red full lips parted in breathless eagerness; her dark eyes were wide open, the iris flecked with golden sparks and the white as clear and blue-tinged as in the eyes of a vigorous infant; her head lay on his shoulder in perfect content, and she put up her mouth to him as simply and as sure of a response as a pretty child. He was entirely aware of the ridiculousness of his position, but he stooped and kissed her.
Her work seemed all done; but her satisfaction lasted only a second. Her face broke into happy smiles.
"You do love me, do you not?" she asked.
"I certainly do not," he answered; and at that instant the door opened and Mrs. Belding saw this pretty group of apparent lovers on a rich background of Jacqueminot roses.
Startled more at the words of Farnham than at the entry of Mrs. Belding, Maud had started up, like Vivien, "stiff as a viper frozen." Her first thought was whether she had crushed her hat on his shoulder, and her hands flew instinctively to her head-gear. She then walked tempestuously past the astonished lady out into the garden and brushed roughly by Sleeny, who tried to detain her.
"Hold your tongue, Sam! I hate you and all men"; and with this general denunciation, she passed out of the place, flaming with rage and shame.
Mrs. Belding stood for a moment speechless, and then resorted to the use of that hard-worked and useful monosyllable,
"Well!" with a sharp, falling inflection.
"Well!" returned Farnham, with an easy, rising accent; and then both of them relieved the strained situation with a laugh.
"Come, now," said the good-natured woman, "I am a sort of guardian of yours. Give an account of yourself."
"That is easily given," said Farnham. "A young woman, whose name I hardly know, came to me in the garden this morning to ask for help to get some lady-like work to do. After discussing that subject threadbare, she came in here for a rose, and, apropos of nothing, made me a declaration and a proposal of honorable wedlock, dans toutes les formes."
"The forms were evident as I entered," said Mrs. Belding, dryly.
"I could not let her drop on the damp floor," said Farnham, who was astonished to find himself positively blushing under the amused scrutiny of his mother-confessor. "Consider, if you please, my dear madam, that this is the first offer I have ever received, and I was naturally somewhat awkward about declining it. We shall learn better manners as we go along."
"You did decline, then?" said Mrs. Belding, easily persuaded of the substantial truth of the story, and naturally inclined, as is the way of woman, to the man's side. Then, laughing at Arthur's discomfiture, she added, "I was about to congratulate you."
"I deserve only your commiseration."
"I must look about and dispose of you in some way. You are evidently too rich and too fascinating. But I came over to-day to ask you what I ought to do about my Lake View farm. I have two offers for it; if I had but one, I would take either—well, you know what I mean;" and the conversation became practical. After that matter was disposed of, she said, with a keen side-glance at Farnham, "That was a very pretty girl. I hope you will not be exposed to such another attack; I might not be so near the next time."
"That danger, thanks to you, is over; Mademoiselle will never return," he answered, with an air of conviction.
Mrs. Belding went home with no impression left of the scene she had witnessed but one of amusement. She thought of it only as "a good joke on Arthur Farnham." She kept chuckling to herself over it all day, and if she had had any especial gossip in the town, she would have put on her hat and hurried off to tell it. But she was a woman who lived very much at home, and, in fact, cared little for tattling. She was several times on the point of sharing the fun of it with her daughter, but was prevented by an instinctive feeling that it was hardly the sort of story to tell a young girl about a personal acquaintance. So she restrained herself, though the solitary enjoyment of it irritated her.
They were sitting on the wide porch which ran around two sides of the house just as twilight was falling. The air was full of drowsy calls and twitters from the grass and the trees. The two ladies had been sitting ever since dinner, enjoying the warm air of the early summer, talking very little, and dropping often into long and contented silences. Mrs. Belding had condescended to grenadine in consideration of the weather, and so looked less funereal than usual. Alice was dressed in a soft and vapory fabric of creamy bunting, in the midst of which her long figure lay reclined in an easy chair of Japanese bamboo; she might have posed for a statue of graceful and luxurious repose. There was light enough from the rising moon and the risen stars to show the clear beauty of her face and the yellow lustre of her hair; and her mother cast upon her from time to time a glance of pride and fondness, as if she were a recovered treasure to which the attraction of novelty had just been added anew.
"They say she looks as I did at her age," thought the candid lady; "but they must flatter me. My nose was never so straight as that: her nose is Belding all over. I wonder whom she will care about here? Mr. Furrey is a nice young man, but she is hardly polite to him. There he is now."
The young man came briskly up the walk, and ran up the steps so quickly that he tripped on the last one and dropped his hat. He cleverly recovered it, however, and made very elaborate bows to both the ladies, hoping that he found them quite well. Mrs. Belding bustled about to give him a chair, at which Alice knitted her pretty brows a little. She had scarcely moved her eyelashes to greet her visitor; but when Mrs. Belding placed a light chair near her daughter and invited Mr. Furrey to take it, the young lady rose from her reclining attitude and sat bolt upright with a look of freezing dignity. The youth was not at all abashed, but took his seat, with his hat held lightly by the brim in both hands. He was elegantly dressed, in as faithful and reverent an imitation as home talent could produce of the costume of the gentlemen who that year were driving coaches in New York. His collar was as stiff as tin; he had a white scarf, with an elaborate pin constructed of whips and spurs and horseshoes. He wore dog-skin gloves, very tight and red. His hair was parted in the middle with rigorous impartiality and shed rather rank fragrance on the night. He began conversation with an easy air, in which there was something of pleasurable excitement mixed.
"I come to receive your congratulations, ladies!"
"What, you are engaged?" said Mrs. Belding, and even the placid face of Miss Alice brightened with a look of pleased inquiry.
"Oh, dear, no; how could you think so?" he protested, with an arch look at Alice which turned her to marble again. "I mean I have this day been appointed assistant cashier of our bank!" Napoleon, informing Madame de Beauharnais [* - Perhaps Josephine told Napoleon herself, but I think she was clever enough to let him imagine he owed the appointment to his merits.] that he was to command the army of Italy, probably made less ado about it.
Mrs. Belding made haste to murmur her congratulations. "Very gratifying, I am sure,—at your age;" to which Alice responded like a chorus, but without any initiative warmth, "Very gratifying, I am sure."
Furrey went on at some length to detail all the circumstances of the event: how Mr. Lathers, the president of the bank, had sent for him, and how he complimented him; how he had asked him where he learned to write such a good hand; and how he had replied that it came sort of natural to him to write well, that he could make the American eagle with pen and ink before he was fifteen, all but the tail-feathers, and how he discovered a year later that the tail-feathers had to be made by holding the pen between the first and second fingers; with much more to the like innocent purpose, to which Mrs. Belding listened with nods and murmurs of approval. This was all the amiable young man needed to encourage him to indefinite prattle. He told them all about the men in the bank, their habits and their loves and their personal relations to him, and how he seemed somehow to be a general favorite among them all. Miss Alice sat very still and straight in her chair, with an occasional smile when the laughter of Mr. Furrey seemed to require it, but with her eyes turned to the moonlit night in vagrant reverie, and her mind in those distant and sacred regions where we cannot follow the minds of pure and happy girls.
"Now, you would hardly understand, if I did not tell you," said Mr. Furrey, "how it is that I have gained the confidence——"
At this moment Alice, who had been glancing over Mr. Furrey's shoulder for a moment with a look of interest in her eyes, which he thought was the legitimate result of his entertaining story, cried:
"Why, there comes Mr. Farnham, mamma."
"So it is," said her mother. "I suppose he wants to see me. Don't move, Mr. Furrey. Mr. Farnham and I will go into the house."
"By no means," said that gentleman, who by this time had mounted the steps. "I was sitting all alone on my porch and saw by the moon that yours was inhabited; and so I came over to improve my mind and manners in your society."
"I will get a chair for you," said Mrs. Belding.
"No, thank you; this balustrade will bear my weight, and my ashes will drop harmless on the flower-bed, if you will let me finish my cigar." And he seated himself between the chair of Furrey and the willow fabric in which Alice had resumed her place. This addition to the company was not at all to the taste of the assistant cashier, who soon took his leave, shaking hands with the ladies, with his best bow.
"After all, I do prefer a chair," said Farnham, getting down from his balustrade, and throwing away his cigar.
He sat with his back to the moonlight. On his left was Alice, who, as soon as Furrey took his departure, settled back in her willow chair in her former attitude of graceful ease. On the right was Mrs. Belding, in her thin, cool dress of gauzy black. Farnham looked from one to the other as they talked, and that curious exercise, so common to young men in such circumstances, went through his mind. He tried to fancy how Mrs. Belding looked at nineteen, and how Miss Belding would look at fifty, and the thought gave him singular pleasure. His eyes rested with satisfaction on the kindly and handsome face of the widow, her fine shoulders and arms, and comfortable form, and then, turning to the pure and exquisite features of the tall girl, who was smiling so freshly and honestly on him, his mind leaped forward through corning years, and he said to himself: "What a wealth of the woman there is there—for somebody." An aggressive feeling of disapproval of young Furrey took possession of him, and he said, sharply:
"What a very agreeable young man Mr. Furrey is?"
Mrs. Belding assented, and Miss Alice laughed heartily, and his mind was set at rest for the moment.
They passed a long time together. At first Mrs. Belding and Arthur "made the expenses" of the conversation; but she soon dropped away, and Alice, under the influence of the night and the moonlight and Farnham's frank and gentle provocation, soon found herself talking with as much freedom and energy as if it were a girls' breakfast. With far more, indeed,—for nature takes care of such matters, and no girl can talk to another as she can to a man, under favoring stars. The conversation finally took a personal turn, and Alice, to her own amazement, began to talk of her life at school, and with sweet and loving earnestness sang the praises of Madame de Veaudrey.
"I wish you could know her," she said to Farnham, with a sudden impulse of sympathy. He was listening to her intently, and enjoying her eager, ingenuous speech as much as her superb beauty, as the moon shone full on her young face, so vital and so pure at once, and played, as if glad of the privilege, about the curved lips, the flashing teeth, the soft eyes under their long lashes, and the hair over the white forehead, gleaming as crisply brilliant as fine-spun wire of gold.
"By her fruits I know her, and I admire her very much," he said, and was sorry for it the moment afterward, for it checked the course of the young girl's enthusiasm and brought a slight blush to her cheek.
"I ought to have known better," he said to himself with real penitence, "than to utter a stupid commonplace to such a girl when she was talking so earnestly." And he tried to make amends, and succeeded in winning back her attention and her slow unconscious smiles by talking to her of things a thousand miles away. The moon was silvering the tops of the linden-trees at the gates before they thought of the flight of time, and they had quite forgotten the presence of Mrs. Belding when her audible repose broke in upon their talk. They looked at each other, and burst into a frank laugh, full of confidence and comradeship, which the good lady heard in her dreams and waked, saying, "What are you laughing at? I did not catch that last witticism."
The young people rose from their chairs. "I can't repeat my own mots," said Arthur: "Miss Belding will tell you."
"Indeed I shall not," replied Alice. "It was not one of his best, mamma."
She gave him her hand as he said "Good-night," and it lay in his firm grasp a moment without reserve or tremor.
"You are a queer girl, Alice," said Mrs. Belding, as they walked into the drawing-room through the open window. "You put on your stiffest company manners for Mr. Furrey, and you seem entirely at ease with Mr. Farnham, who is much older and cleverer, and is noted for his sarcastic criticisms."
"I do not know why it is, mamma, but I do feel very much at home with Mr. Farnham, and I do not want Mr. Furrey to feel at home with me."
Upon this, Mrs. Belding laughed aloud. Alice turned in surprise, and her mother said, "It is too good to keep. I must tell you. It is such a joke on Arthur;" and, sitting in a low arm-chair, while Alice stood before her leaning upon the back of another, she told the whole story of the scene of the morning in the rose-house. She gave it in the fullest detail, interrupting herself here and there for soft cachinnations, unmindful of the stern, unsmiling silence with which her daughter listened.
She finished, with a loud nourish of merriment, and then asked: "Did you ever hear anything so funny in your life?"
The young lady was turning white and red in an ominous manner, and was biting her nether lip. Her answer to her mother's question was swift and brief:
"I never heard anything so horrid," and she moved majestically away without another word.
Mrs. Belding sat for a moment abashed. "There!" she said to herself, "I knew very well I ought not to tell her. But it was too good to keep, and I had nobody else to tell." She went to bed, feeling rather ill-used. As she passed her daughter's door, she said, "Good-night, Alice!" and a voice riot quite so sweet as usual replied, "Good-night, mamma," but the door was not opened.
Alice turned down her light and sat upon a cushioned seat in the embrasure of her open window. She looked up at the stars, which swam and glittered in her angry eyes. With trembling lips and clinched hands she communed with herself. "Why, why, why did mamma tell me that horrid story? To think there should be such women in the world! To take such a liberty with him, of all men! She could not have done it without some encouragement—and he could not have encouraged her. He is not that kind of a vulgar flirt at all. But what do I know about men? They may all be—but I did not think—what business have I thinking about it? I had better go to bed. I have spent all the evening talking to a man who—Oh! I wish mamma had not told me that wretched story. I shall never speak to him again. It is a pity, too, for we are such near neighbors, and he is so nice, if he were not—But I don't care how nice he is, she has spoiled him. I wonder who she was. Pretty, was she? I don't believe a word of it—some bold-faced, brazen creature. Oh! I shall hate myself if I cry;" but that was past praying for, and she closed her lattice and went to bed for fear the stars should witness her unwelcome tears.