The Gold of Chickaree Part 72

Hazel hesitated to answer, and Annabella went on.?'I don't know whether you know?Mme. Lasalle has got one of her friends to give him an office; and he is going out next month as consul to Lisbon. If only he could be got off without her, then, you see, we should be safe.'

'She would follow.'

'No, I don't think she would; she would not dare. Phinny is not bold, in that way. Could you do anything with him, do you think?'

The accent of forlorn anxiety was touching from the usually so imperturbable sister. She watched Wych Hazel's face and words now.

It was a very mixed question. _Could_ she??truth to say, she felt uncertain. Yet perhaps.?But _might_ she? Would the attempt be permitted, if Rollo knew? Was it breaking faith to try without his knowledge? Or were there cases when she might lawfully and secretly follow her own judgment against his? and was this one?

Hazel folded her hands over her "yes."

'Don't talk to me, please,' she said. 'I must think.'

Again the carriage rolled on with stillness inside. The grey air outside grew almost tangible, it seemed so thick. Very fine snow crystals were beginning to flicker down, but I think neither of the ladies remarked it. Meanwhile the wheels of the carriage were no longer rattling over paving stones; the streets and houses of the city were left behind; a grey country, with houses scattered over it and trees here and there standing, desolate and drear enough, was to be seen from the carriage windows; but Wych Hazel hardly saw it. At last the houses began again to stand apparently in some regular order and took a more comfortable air; gardens and trees and shrubbery lay between the houses and around them; then suddenly the carriage turned round a corner and presently stopped.

Wych Hazel saw a small dwelling house of very humble pretensions, but neat-looking, and with a small courtyard in front; and now perceived by the signs that she was in a village. 'Where have you brought me?' she said.

'O, Fort Was.h.i.+ngton?didn't I tell you? Mrs. Rhodes lives here.

She is quite respectable.'

The snow was not yet falling, except in those fine isolated crystals.

But the branches of the trees that overshadowed the house were beginning to sway hither and thither as if the wind were rising, and a warning moan of the breeze came through the tree-tops. The ladies went in at a little gate in the paling fence, and were admitted immediately into the house by a neat elderly woman. A little entry- way received them, having a door on each hand. Wych Hazel was ushered into the room on the right, while Annabella disappeared with the woman into the other opposite.

It looked dreary enough, for Josephine Charteris's hiding-place.

Respectable it was, to be sure. There was a gay ingrain carpet, a little table set out with photographs of Mrs. Rhodes's friends and relations, living and dead; around the walls hung a great number of other pictures in cut walnut frames and resting on brackets of the same. A large one of Abraham Lincoln held the first place among these, and another engraving of a racehorse challenged attention, with a large map of North America and the portrait of Jenny Lind.

Hazel felt as if she could not have borne the whole together for one half hour, if she had been there on her own account. In a few minutes Josephine came in. She was not different from what Hazel had been accustomed to see her; not excited, not disturbed. Her dress was rich, and a little careless; in both respects not unlike Josephine. She received her visiter cordially enough.

'You are the only person I would see,' she said. 'How did you know where I was? I have come here for rest. You know there _is_ no rest as long as people know you are in town; it is nothing but go, go, night and day. And here one has really a breath of country air. I have brought a carriage load of books with me?all the new novels I could find; and I just lie abed and read all day. Dreadfully useless, isn't it?' she went on, with a laugh; 'but you know I never pretended to be anything else. Don't you think that is the great point? not to pretend to be what you are not?'

'Well, why do you then?' said Wych Hazel.

'I??I don't. I think it's no use. People see through pretences. I only pretend enough just to keep up appearances. Didn't I always tell you exactly what I thought? I don't tell everybody.'

'Do you suppose I believe that you came here for the express purpose of being snowed up,?outside of theatres and Germans, and other necessaries of life?'

'That is just what I want,' said Josephine. 'I wish it would snow?

five feet deep. I would like nothing better than to be snowed up. I would like to be desiccated?like a man I was reading of yesterday; he's in a French novel. Do you know, he was _desiccated;_ he was a convict, you see, and the men of science could try their experiments upon him; and they desiccated him and laid him by; and he was forgotten, and years pa.s.sed, and everything changed in the world, and his children grew up, and his friends died?if he had any friends; and people forgot what this preparation was; and they cut off a bit of his ear to try under the microscope whether it was an animal's skin or what it was. And afterwards the skin was put in water and he came to life again?

that was all he wanted, you know, like a rose of Jericho. I wish I could be desiccated and kept awhile, till everybody was dead that I know, and then come to life again.'

'What would be the pleasure of that?' said Hazel, watching her.

'I should never see Charteris any more. I suppose I shock you?but what's the use of pretending? He's away in Albany now; and as soon as he went, I ran. You see, it isn't at all a bad sort of a place here. Little rooms, to be sure, but there's n.o.body in them but me; and Rhodes is a capital cook, and she pets me, and I like to be petted. And I have my own way here, and down in 40th street I can't. With all the world outside the house, and a husband inside, there is no place to breathe. I enjoy it here ever so much, and I don't want to go back, ever! Don't you want to run away too, by this time?'

'Then it is a real scheme, deep-laid and serious,' said Wych Hazel.

'Not the whim Mr. Nightingale calls it?'

'Mr. Nightingale!' said Josephine, her face changing and darkening. 'What does he say of me? Has he spoken to you about me? He doesn't know anything.'

'About anything.?No. And never by any chance speaks the truth about the few things he does know. He said that Mr. Charteris had gone to Albany, and that Mrs. Charteris had the pretty whim to follow him. "Touching," I think he called it.' The disdain in the girl's voice was incomparable.

'That will do,' said Josephine. 'It's n.o.body's business whether I am in Albany or not. Never mind him; talk to me. Why haven't I seen you anywhere all winter? Does Dane Rollo want you to stay at home, now he is married? like Charteris?'

'I am married too,' said Wych Hazel with a flash of her old self. 'So take care what you say about him. Josephine, did _you_ tell that man you were going to Albany?'

'Nonsense!' said Josephine laughing. 'I believe you are afraid to answer. I know you used to like to have your own way. Did I tell Stuart? No. What should I tell him for? I didn't tell him I was going to Albany, because I wasn't. I was coming here; and that wasn't worth telling a fib about. I came here to do what I like; and I just do it from morning to night. I suppose you are learning to do what you don't like. How does it feel?'

'I did not believe one word he said, all the time!' said Hazel, coolly ignoring the insinuations. 'Why should Stuart Nightingale invent falsehoods to cover the movements of Josephine Charteris?'

'Just as well as for anything else,' said Josephine laughing. 'I'm much obliged to him for the attention, I'm sure. But you don't answer, Hazel. I want to know how you and Dane get on together, after all your fine theories? Dane Rollo was as lordly a man as I ever saw, with all his easy ways; and you never were one to give up your liberty. I suppose you won't confess. Now I am more honest.'

Wych Hazel answered with a laugh,?fresh and gladsome and sweet,?more convincing than a hundred words. But she was grave again instantly. She left her chair and bringing a cus.h.i.+on to Josephine's feet sat down there, leaned her arms on her friend's lap and looked straight up into her face.

'Josephine,' she said, 'I am very, very much troubled about you.'

Josephine did not answer this. She looked at Hazel, and then her look wandered to somewhat else; undeclarative, withdrawn into herself.

'Josephine, you cannot have what does not belong to you, any more in men than in money. And if you try to give away what belongs to somebody else, n.o.body but a wretch will take it.'

'You are going to give me a moral lecture, because I came to Mrs.

Rhodes on a spree?' said Josephine, with a superficial kind of little laugh. 'Isn't my time my own while Mr. Charteris is away?'

'No, it is not. Not to spend in a way that wrongs him. And you are not your own, wherever he is.'

'You think I am a man's property just because I am married to him!

I don't. I think the man and the woman are equal, and both of them are free. It is only among savages that women are slaves.'

Hazel let that pa.s.s. Keeping her folded hands on Josephine's lap, she looked down, thinking.

'What sort of life have you led with Mr. Charteris so far?' she said, not raising her eyes. 'Can you picture it for me?'

'Picture it!'?Josephine put up her lip, and then she laughed with seeming amus.e.m.e.nt. 'Did you ever see two chickens pulling at the two ends of a worm? That's about it. John pulled one way, and I pulled the other. Pleasant picture, isn't it? But that sort of thing can't last forever.'

'No,' said Wych Hazel looking suddenly up,?'but this _does_. A life ignored by all respectable people; a name spurned with the foot and scorned on the tongue. A dark spot, which only forgetfulness can hide,?and which n.o.body ever forgets! That other sort of thing does end, Josephine, with death, or with patient endeavour; but _this_ thing, never!'

'You talk'?said Josephine pouting. Then she suddenly broke out, with her eyes full upon Hazel's face. 'Don't you think, if you had never been happy in your life, you would like to try just for a little how it feels?'

'Yes,' said Wych Hazel, 'but you are going to try misery;?and not for a little.'

'I am not trying misery here,' said the girl with a shrug of her shoulders. 'I tell you, it's jolly. How did you know where to find me?'

'There is a fair view, quite often, from the place where one step towards it plunges you down thousands of feet. When you are left alone in Lisbon?and dare not come home to America?_then_ you will learn what misery is.'

Josephine started a little, and for once her colour stirred. Words did not come readily. When they came, they were a somewhat haughty enquiry what Hazel meant?

'Just what I say,' Hazel answered quietly.

'Did you come here to say it?'

'Yes.'

'That's Annabella. Well,?I don't care. You know about it. You know I can't live with Charteris.'