At Last Part 17

"You really must forgive me!" said Frederic, as she twitched her face away again at the laugh he could not suppress. "But sadness and you should not be thought of in the same week. Honestly, now! is not the inimitable fabric you sported for five minutes last night, at the bottom of what appears to you a fathomless abyss of woe? Have you tried the efficacy of rational consolation in the thought of how many more parties there will be this winter to which you can wear it? The Secretary of State is to give one in ten days, which is to be the sensation of the season. That of to-night is, in comparison, as a caucus to a general convention."

"I shall never put on the hateful thing again. If Julia Cunningham chooses to bedizen herself in it, she is welcome to it--flounces and all. Yet I did like it! I had hoped--but no matter what! You had better be going, Mr. Chilton. Aunt and the rest of them went three-quarters of an hour ago."

"Does a dress go out of fas.h.i.+on in so short a time?" persisted innocent Frederic, bent upon mitigating her sorrow. "If my memory serves me aright, I have seen ladies wear the same ball-dress several times in the same winter."

"You will never see this on me," snapped Rosa, her eyes ominously fiery again. "Did you hear me advise you of the lateness of the hour?"

"Suppose I decline appearing at all in the festal scene?" said the gentleman. "I shall not be missed. I will just run down and dismiss the carriage--then, with your permission, will return and spend the evening here."

Her cheeks looked as if they had been touched with wet vermilion, when he resumed his place near her, and the folds of the handkerchief in her hand hung more limply.

"I ought not to allow this sacrifice!" she faltered gratefully. "Because I have the vapors, I have no right to keep you within reach of the infection. It is shamefully, wickedly selfis.h.!.+"

"It is no such thing!" he contradicted. "If you would know the truth, I was, myself, averse to attending this 'crush.' But for your indisposition, I should hail with unmixed pleasure the chance that releases me from the obligation to form a part of the throng. It is far more in consonance with my feelings to pa.s.s this, our last evening together, as we have spent so many others, in quiet talk at this fireside. I had not supposed it possible that I could ever feel so much at home in a hotel--a Was.h.i.+ngton caravansary especially--as I have within the last three weeks. Do you know, or have you not burdened your memory with such unimportant memoranda as the fact, that I must set my face Philadelphia-ward to-morrow?"

"I had not dreamed that the time was so near at hand--it seemed such a little while since the evening of our arrival--until I happened, last night, after you left us, to take up Mrs. Rogers' invitation-card for this evening. THEN, I recollected!"

Her listless resignation had in it something piteous, and the lever of compa.s.sion impelled him to further efforts of cheer.

"I have to thank you for all the enjoyment of my visit to this, heretofore to me, dismal city. If you should ever visit Philadelphia--as I earnestly hope you will--you must acquaint me with your whereabouts immediately upon your arrival. I should be sorry to think that our friends.h.i.+p is to end here and now."

"As well here and now, as anywhere and at any time!" returned Rosa, yet more resignedly. "And the end must come, sooner or later. This was what I was saying over to myself when you came in. I am a fool--a baby--to mind it!" angrily das.h.i.+ng away the obtrusive brine from her mournful eyelids. "I WISH you would leave me alone for a few minutes, Mr.

Chilton, until I can behave myself!"

For a second it seemed that her companion would take her at her word, so puzzled and troubled was his countenance, and he moved slightly, as about to obey the petulant behest; then sat still.

"I have found no fault in your behavior!" he said, too coolly to please Rosa's notion.

"I know you despise me!" she burst forth, chokingly. "I believe I am hysterical, and the more I rail at my stupidity and folly, the more unmanageable my nerves--if it is my nerves that are out of order--become. But I have been so happy, so content and grateful, lately! And everything will be so different after--after TO-MORROW!"

Her voice had failed to a sobbing whisper, and the diaphanous cambric veiled her bowed face.

Frederic Chilton did not stir a finger or attempt to speak for a full minute, but in that minute he thought a volume, felt acutely.

This, then, was what he had been doing in his hours of relaxation from the business which had occupied his mind to the banishment of nearly every other consideration; that had driven into comparative obscurity the old gnawing grief which had incorporated itself with his being! The intimacy with a beautiful, sprightly girl had been a holiday diversion to him after arduous brain-labor, recreation sought conscientiously and systematically, that his mental powers might be clearer and fresher for the next day's toil in court and among perplexing records; in hunting up t.i.tles and disputed property, and proving their validity. He had gained the cause that had brought him to the capital, and cost him so much fatigue and anxiety, and was proud of his success. But what of this other piece of work? Would not the most cold-blooded flirt, who ever prated of fidelity, when he meant betrayal and desertion, blush to father this business? And she, poor, guileless lamb, must bear the pain, the mortification, perhaps the contumely, which ought to be his in seven-fold measure!

"Stay, Rosa!" he said, huskily, when she attempted to rise. "Do not leave me yet. I may not be altogether so unworthy, so basely callous as I have given you reason to suppose. Can it be that I have misconstrued what you have said, or do you really care that our separation is so near? I had not thought of this."

"I understand." She lowered her flag of distress and confronted him sorrowfully, not in resentment. "You believed me incapable of deep and lasting feeling; saw in me no more than the world does, a giddy coquette, feather-haired and shallow-hearted. Be it so. Perhaps it is best that you should not be undeceived. Such injustice and prejudice are the penalties a woman must suffer who wears a tinsel cloak over her finer affections--admits but few, sometimes but one, to her sanctum sanctorum. The gus.h.i.+ng, loving, extensively-loving cla.s.s fare better.

You have been very kind and attentive to me in my strangerhood here, Mr. Chilton. I must always revert to your conduct with grat.i.tude. By the way"--a hysterical laugh breaking into her dignified acknowledgment of benefits received--"that is the same, in substance, that you said to me a while ago, isn't it? So we are even--owe each other nothing."

"Except to love one another." The solemn accents hushed her reckless prattle. "Rosa, can you learn this lesson?"

She had shrunk down--sunk is not the word to convey an idea of the prostration of strength, the collapse of resolution, expressed by the figure cowering in the deep chair, its face upborne and hidden by the shaking hands. They were cold as ice, Frederic felt, when he would have drawn them aside.

"We will have no foolish reserves, my child. Much, if not all, the happiness of our future lives may depend upon our perfect sincerity now.

You do not require to be told how poor is the offering of my heart.

You are the only person who has ever entered into the secret of its emptiness and desolation; seen blight, where there should be bloom; ashes, where flame should glow. But such as it is, it is yours, if you will have it. If you are willing to trust yourself with me, I will cherish as I now honor you, truly and forever; leave no means untried that can add to your happiness. Dare you make the venture?"

Her unstudied caress was beautiful and pathetic in its lowliness of humility and earnest affection--too earnest for the commonplace outlet of words. It was to slip to her knees at his feet, and kiss his hand, then lay her cheek upon it, as some dumb, devoted thing might do.

Then she was lifted into his arms, and kissed with a fervor she mistook for awakening pa.s.sion, and her heart bounded more madly in the belief that her victory was complete, that he would henceforward be hers in feeling as in name.

Yet the words breathed into her ear as her head rested upon his bosom might have taught her the fallacy of her conviction and her hopes.

"My n.o.ble, faithful girl! What have I to offer you in payment for all this?"

"I ask nothing, except the right to be with, and to serve you!"

responded Rosa.

And she thought she spoke the whole truth for once.

CHAPTER XII. -- AUNT RACHEL WAXES UNCHARITABLE.

"A SLY, artful, treacherous jade?" articulated Mrs. Sutton, energetically. "I have no patience with her. And they say she is so overjoyed at her conquest that she trumpets the engagement everywhere.

Such shameless carrying on I never heard of. If she ever crosses my path I shall treat her to some wholesome truths."

"What good would that do, aunt?" asked Mabel Dorrance, without raising her head from her sewing. "And what has she done that should incense you or any one else against her? She was free to choose a husband, and we have no right to cavil at her choice. I hope she will be very happy. I used to love her--we loved each other very fondly once. There are some excellent traits in Rosa's character, and when she is once married she will be less volatile."

"Don't you believe it. Her flightiness and insincerity are ingrain! I believed in her once myself--she had such beguiling ways, it was hard to disapprove of anything she said or did. But I was secretly aware, all the time, that there was a radical defect in her composition. A woman who has been engaged, or as good as engaged, to six or eight different men, cannot retain much purity of mind or strength of affection. I heard you tell her yourself once that such unscrupulous flirtation and bandying of hearts were profane touches that rubbed the down from the peach."

"That was the extravagant talk of a silly, romantic girl," replied Mabel, with a smile that changed to a sigh before the sentence was finished. "I was somewhat given to lecturing other people, in those days, upon subjects of which I knew little or nothing. Nine men out of ten care little how roughly the peach has been rubbed, provided the flavor is not injured to their taste. It is only once in a great while that you meet with one whose palate is so nice that he can detect the difference between fruit that has been hawked through the market and that just picked from the tree. First love is a myth at which rational people laugh."

"Perhaps so," said Mrs. Sutton dubiously.

In view of the circ.u.mstances of Mabel's marriage, she felt that it behooved her to be circ.u.mspect in condemnation of transferred affections.

"But that does not alter the fact of Rosa Tazewell's infamous behavior to Alfred Branch and others of her beaux. Isn't the poor fellow drinking himself into his grave, all through his disappointment? And here she is going to be as honored a wife as if she had never perjured herself, or ruined an honest, loving man's prospects for life!"

Mabel went on with her work, and did not reply.

"I have had uncomfortable suspicions about certain pa.s.sages in her intercourse with us, since I heard this news," continued Mrs. Sutton, edging her chair toward her niece, and dropping her voice. "I am afraid I can date the beginning of her cruelty to Alfred back to that September she spent here--to the latter part of it, I mean. Little scenes come to my memory that caused me trifling uneasiness then. I shall never forget, for instance, how she eyed you, the morning Winston came home so unexpectedly."

And she described the incident recorded in the latter part of our opening chapter.

"Can it be," she pursued, "that she had even then designs upon the man she is about to marry? She knew all the circ.u.mstances of the trouble that ensued, and if disposed to be meddlesome, she had the means at her command."

"I told her nothing," said Mabel briefly.

"But she pumped me pretty effectually," confessed the aunt shamefacedly.

"I thought there could be no harm in giving her a synopsis of the case--she being your intimate friend."

Another gleam of pensive amus.e.m.e.nt crossed Mabel's face. She knew too well the nature of her aunt's "synopsis" to doubt that Rosa was conversant with every phase of the affair, concerning which her own lips had been so sternly sealed.

"You have nothing with which to reproach yourself," she said, tranquilly. "She marries with her eyes open."