Kitobni o'qish: «A Red Wallflower», sahifa 19

CHAPTER XXXIII
BETTY

It was summer again, and on the broad grassy street of Seaforth the sunshine poured in its full power. The place lay silent under the heat of mid-day; not a breath stirred the leaves of the big elms, and no passing wheels stirred the dust of the roadway, which was ready to rise at any provocation. It was very dry, and very hot. Yet at Seaforth those two facts, though proclaimed from everybody's mouth, must be understood with a qualification. The heat and the dryness were not as elsewhere. So near the sea as the town was, a continual freshness came from thence in vapours and cool airs, and mitigated what in other places was found oppressive. However, the Seaforth people said it was oppressive too; and things are so relative in the affairs of life that I do not know if they were more contented than their neighbours. But everybody said the heat was fine for the hay; and as most of the inhabitants had more or less of that crop to get in, they criticised the weather only at times when they were thinking of it in some other connection.

At Mrs. Dallas's there was no criticism of anything. In the large comfortable rooms, where windows were all open, and blinds tempering the too ardent light, and cool mats on the floors, and chintz furniture looked light and summery, there was an atmosphere of pure enjoyment and expectation, for Pitt was coming home again, and his mother was looking for him with every day. She was sitting now awaiting him; no one could tell at what hour he might arrive; and his mother's face was beautiful with hope. She was her old self; not changed at all by the four or five years of Pitt's absence; as handsome and as young and as stately as ever. She made no demonstration now; did not worry either herself or others with questions and speculations and hopes and fears respecting her son's coming; yet you could see on her fine face, if you were clever at reading faces, the lines of pride and joy, and now and then a quiver of tenderness. It was seen by one who was sitting with her, whose interest and curiosity it involuntarily moved.

This second person was a younger lady. Indeed a young lady, not by comparison, but absolutely. A very attractive person too. She had an exceedingly good figure, which the trying dress of those times showed in its full beauty. Woe to the lady then whose shoulders were not straight, or the lines of her figure not flowing, or the proportions of it not satisfactory. Every ungracefulness must have shown its full deformity, with no possibility of disguise; every angle must have been aggravated, and every untoward movement made doubly fatal. But the dress only set off and developed the beauty that could bear it. And the lady sitting with Mrs. Dallas neither feared nor had need to fear criticism. Something of that fact appeared in her graceful posture and in the brow of habitual superiority, and in the look of the eyes that were now and then lifted from her work to her companion. The eyes were beautiful, and they were also queenly; at least their calm fearlessness was not due to absence of self-consciousness. She was a pretty picture to see. The low-cut dress and fearfully short waist revealed a white skin and a finely-moulded bust and shoulders. The very scant and clinging robe was of fine white muslin, with a narrow dainty border of embroidery at the bottom; and a scarf of the same was thrown round her shoulders. The round white arms were bare, the little tufty white sleeves making a pretty break between them and the soft shoulders; and the little hands were busy with a strip of embroidery, which looked as if it might be destined for the ornamentation of another similar dress. The lady's face was delicate, intelligent, and attractive, rather than beautiful; her eyes, however, as I said, were fine; and over her head and upon her neck curled ringlets of black, lustrous hair.

'You think he will be here to-day?' she said, breaking the familiar silence that had reigned for a while. She had caught one of Mrs. Dallas's glances towards the window.

'He may be here any day. It is impossible to tell. He would come before his letter.'

'You are very fond of him, I can see. What made you send him away from you? England is so far off!'

Mrs. Dallas hesitated; put up the end of her knitting-needle under her cap, and gently moved it up and down in meditative fashion.

'We wanted him to be an Englishman, Betty.'

'Why, Mrs. Dallas? Is he not going to live in America?'

'Probably.'

'Then why make an Englishman of him? That will make him discontented with things here.'

'I hope not. He was not changed enough for that when he was here last.

Pitt does not change.'

'He must be an extraordinary character!' said the young lady, with a glance at Pitt's mother. 'Dear Mrs. Dallas, how am I to understand that?'

'Pitt does not change,' repeated the other.

'But one ought to change. That is a dreadful sort of people, that go on straight over the heads of circumstances, just because they laid out the road there before the circumstances arose. I have seen such people. They tread down everything in their way.'

'Pitt does not change,' Mrs. Dallas said again. Her companion thought she said it with a certain satisfied confidence. And perhaps it was true; but the moment after Mrs. Dallas remembered that if the proposition were universal it might be inconvenient.

'At least he is hard to change,' she went on; 'therefore his father and I wished him to be educated in the old country, and to form his notions according to the standard of things there. I think a republic is very demoralizing.'

'Is the standard of morals lower here?' inquired the younger lady, demurely.

'I am not speaking of morals, in the usual sense. Of course, that —

But there is a little too much freedom here. And besides, – I wanted

Pitt to be a true Church of England man.'

'Isn't he that?'

'Oh yes, I have no doubt he is now; but he had formed some associations I was afraid of. With my son's peculiar character, I thought there might be danger. I rely on you, Betty,' said Mrs. Dallas, smiling, 'to remove the last vestige.'

The young lady gave a glance of quick, keen curiosity and understanding, in which sparkled a little amusement. 'What can I do?' she asked demurely.

'Bewitch him, as you do everybody.'

'Bewitch him, and hand him over to you!' she remarked.

'No,' said Mrs. Dallas; 'not necessarily. You must see him, before you can know what you would like to do with him.'

'Do I understand, then? He is supposed to be in some danger of lapsing from the true faith' —

'Oh, no, my dear! I did not say that. I meant only, if he had stayed in

America. It seems to me there is a general loosening of all bonds here.

Boys and girls do their own way.'

'Was it only the general spirit of the air, Mrs. Dallas, or was it a particular influence, that you feared?'

'Well – both,' said Mrs. Dallas, again applying her knitting-needle under her cap.

The younger lady was silent a few minutes; going on with her embroidery.

'This is getting to be very interesting,' she remarked.

'It is very interesting to me,' replied the mother, with a thoughtful look. 'For, as I told you, Pitt is a very fast friend, and persistent in all his likings and dislikings. Here he had none but the company of dissenters; and I did not want him to get in with people of that persuasion.'

'Is there much society about here? I fancied not.'

'No society, for him. Country people – farmers – people of that stamp.

Nothing else.'

'I should have thought, dear Mrs. Dallas, that you would have been quite a sufficient counteraction to temptation from such a source?'

Mrs. Dallas hesitated. 'Boys will be boys,' she said.

'But he is not a boy now?'

'He is twenty-four.'

'Not a boy, certainly. But do you know, that is an age when men are very hard to manage? It is easier earlier, or later.'

'Not difficult to you at any time,' said the other flatteringly.

The conversation dropped there; at least there came an interval of quiet working on the young lady's part, and of rather listless knitting on the part of the mother, whose eyes went wistfully to the window without seeing anything. And this lasted till a step was heard at the front door. Mrs. Dallas let fall her needles and her yarn and rose hurriedly, crying out, 'That is not Mr. Dallas!' and so speaking, rushed into the hall.

There was a little bustle, a smothered word or two, and then a significant silence; which lasted long enough to let the watcher left behind in the drawing-room conclude on the very deep relations subsisting between mother and son. Steps were heard moving at length, but they moved and stopped; there was lingering, and slow progress; and words were spoken, broken questions from Mrs. Dallas and brief responses in a stronger voice that was low-pitched and pleasant. The figures appeared in the doorway at last, but even there lingered still. The mother and son were looking into one another's faces and speaking those absorbed little utterances of first meeting which are insignificant enough, if they were not weighted with such a burden of feeling. Miss Betty, sitting at her embroidery, cast successive rapid glances of curiosity and interest at the new-comer. His voice had already made her pulses quicken a little, for the tone of it touched her fancy. The first glance showed him tall and straight; the second caught a smile which was both merry and sweet; a third saw that the level brows expressed character; and then the two people turned their faces towards her and came into the room, and Mrs. Dallas presented her son.

The young lady rose and made a reverence, according to the more stately and more elegant fashion of the day. The gentleman's obeisance was profound in its demonstration of respect. Immediately after, however, he turned to his mother again; a look of affectionate joy shining upon her out of his eyes and smile.

'Two years!' she was exclaiming. 'Pitt, how you have changed!'

'Have I? I think not much.'

'No, in one way not much. I see you are your old self. But two years have made you older.'

'So they should.'

'Somehow I had not expected it,' said the mother, passing her hand across her eyes with a gesture a little as if there were tears in them. 'I thought I should see my boy again – and he is gone.'

'Not at all!' said Pitt, laughing. 'Mistaken, mother. There is all of him here that there ever was. The difference is, that now there is something more.'

'What?' she asked.

'A little more experience – a little more knowledge – let us hope, a little more wisdom.'

'There is more than that,' said the mother, looking at him fondly.

'What?'

'It is the difference I might have looked for,' she said, 'only, somehow, I had not looked for it.' And the swift passage of her hand across her eyes gave again the same testimony of a few minutes before. Her son rose hereupon and proposed to withdraw to his room; and as his mother accompanied him, Miss Betty noticed how his arm was thrown round her and he was bending to her and talking to her as they went. Miss Betty stitched away busily, thoughts keeping time with her needle, for some time thereafter. Yet she did not quite know what she was thinking of. There was a little stir in her mind, which was so unaccustomed that it was delightful; it was also vague, and its provoking elements were not clearly discernible. The young lady was conscious of a certain pleasant thrill in the view of the task to which she had been invited. It promised her possible difficulty, for even in the few short minutes just passed she had gained an inkling that Mrs. Dallas's words might be true, and Pitt not precisely a man that you could turn over your finger. It threatened her possible danger, which she did not admit; nevertheless the stinging sense of it made itself felt and pricked the pleasure into livelier existence. This was something out of the ordinary. This was a man not just cut after the common work-a-day pattern. Miss Betty recalled involuntarily one trait after another that had fastened on her memory. Eyes of bright intelligence and hidden power, a very frank smile, and especially with all that, the great tenderness which had been shown in every word and look to his mother. The good breeding and ease of manner Miss Betty had seen before; this other trait was something new; and perhaps she was conscious of a little pull it gave at her heartstrings. This was not the manner she had seen at home, where her father had treated her mother as a sort of queen-consort certainly, – co-regent of the house; but where they had lived upon terms of mutual diplomatic respect; and her brothers, if they cared much for anybody but Number One, gave small proof of the fact. What a brother this man would be! what a – something else! Miss Betty sheered off a little from just this idea; not that she was averse to it, or that she had not often entertained it; indeed, she had entertained it not two hours ago about Pitt himself; but the presence of the man and the recognition of what was in him had stirred in her a kindred delicacy which was innate, as in every true woman, although her way of life and some of her associates had not fostered it. Betty Frere was a true woman, originally; alas, she was also now a woman of the world; also, she was poor, and to make a good marriage she had known for some years was very desirable for her. What a very good marriage this would be! Poor girl, she could not help the thought now, and she must not be judged hardly for it. It was in the air she breathed, and that all her associates breathed. Betty had not been in a hurry to get married, having small doubt of her power to do it in any case that pleased her; now, somehow, she was suddenly confronted by a doubt of her power.

I am pulling out the threads of what was to Betty only a web of very confused pattern; she did not try to unravel it. Her consciousness of just two things was clear: the pleasant stimulus of the task set before her, and a little sharp premonition of its danger. She dismissed that. She could perform the task and detach Pitt from any imaginary ties that his mother was afraid of, without herself thereby becoming entangled. It would be a game of uncommon interest and entertainment, and a piece of benevolence too. But Betty's pulses, as I said, were quickened a little.

CHAPTER XXXIV
HOLIDAYS

She did not see her new acquaintance again till they met at the supper-table. She behaved herself then in an extremely well-bred way; was dignified and reserved and quiet; hardly said anything, as with a nice recognition that her words were not wanted; scarce ever seemed to look at the new arrival, of whom, nevertheless, not a word nor a look escaped her; and was simply an elegant quiet figure at the table, so lovely to look at that words from her seemed to be superfluous. Whether the stranger saw it, or whether he missed anything, there was no sign. He seemed to be provokingly and exclusively occupied with his father and mother; hardly, she thought, giving to herself all the attention which is due from a gentleman to a lady. Yet he fulfilled his duties in that regard, albeit only as one does it to whom they are a matter of course. Betty listened attentively to everything that was said, while she was to all appearance indifferently busied with her supper.

But the conversation ran, as it is wont to run at such times, when hearts long absent have found each other again, and fling trifles about, knowing that their stores of treasure must wait for a quieter time to be unpacked. They talked of weather and crops and Pitt's voyage, and the neighbours, and the changes in the village, and the improvements about the place; not as if any of these things were much cared for; they were bubbles floating on their cups of joy. Questions asked and questions answered, as if in the pleasure of speaking to one another again the subject of their words did not matter; or as if the supreme content of the moment could spare a little benevolence even for these outside things. At last a question was asked which made Betty prick up her ears; this must have been due to something indefinable in the tone of the speakers, for the words were nothing.

'Have you heard anything of the Gainsboroughs?'

'No.'

It was the elder Dallas who answered.

'What has become of them?'

'I am not in condition to tell.'

'Have you written to them?'

'No, not since the last time; and that was a good while ago.'

'Then you do not know how things are with them, of course. I do not see how you have let them drop out of knowledge so. They were not exactly people to lose sight of.'

'Why not, when they went out of sight?'

'You do not even know, sir, whether Colonel Gainsborough is still living?'

'How should I? But he was as likely to live as any other man.'

'He did not think so.'

'For which very reason he would probably live longer than many other men. There is nothing like a hypochondriack for tough holding out.'

'Well, I must search New York for them this time, until I find them.'

'What possible occasion, Pitt?' said his mother, with a tone of uneasiness which Betty noted.

'Duty, mamma, and also pleasure. But duty is imperative.'

'I do not see the duty. You tried to look them up the last time you were here, and failed.'

'I shall not fail this time.'

'If it depended on your will,' remarked his father coolly. 'But I think the probability is that they have gone back to England, and are consequently no longer in New York.'

'What are the grounds of that probability?'

'When last I heard from the colonel, he was proposing the question of reconciliation with his family. And as I have heard no more from him since then, I think the likeliest thing is that he has made up his quarrel and gone home.'

'I can easily determine that question by looking over the shipping lists.'

'Perhaps not,' said Mr. Dallas, rubbing his chin. 'If he has gone, I think it will have been under another name. The one he bore here was, I suspect, assumed.'

'What for?' demanded Pitt somewhat sharply.

'Reasons of family pride, no doubt. That is enough to make men do foolisher things.'

'It would be difficult to find a foolisher thing to do,' replied his son. But then the conversation turned. It had given Miss Betty something to think of. She drew her own conclusions without asking anybody. And in some indefinite, inscrutable way it stimulated and confirmed her desire for the game Mrs. Dallas had begged her to play. Human hearts are certainly strange things. What were the Gainsboroughs to Miss Betty Frere? Nothing in the world, half an hour before; now? Now there was a vague suspicion of an enemy somewhere; a scent of rivalry in the air; an immediate rising of partisanship. Were these the people of whom Mrs. Dallas was afraid? against whom she craved help? She should have help. Was it not even a meritorious thing, to withdraw a young man from untoward influences, and keep him in the path marked out by his mother?

Miss Frere scented a battle like Job's war-horse. In spirit, that is; outwardly, nothing could show less signs of war. She was equal to Pitt, in her seeming careless apartness; the difference was, that with her itwas seeming, and with him reality. She lost not a word; she failed not to observe and regard every movement; she knew, without being seen to look, just what his play of feature and various expressions were; all the while she was calmly embroidering, or idly gazing out of the window, or skilfully playing chess with Mr. Dallas, whom she inevitably beat.

Pitt, the while, his mother thought (and so thought the young lady herself), was provokingly careless of her attractions. He was going hither and thither; over the farm with his father; about the village, to see the changes and look up his old acquaintances; often, too, busy in his room where he had been wont to spend so many hours in the old time. He was graver than he used to be; with the manner of a man, and a thoughtful one; he showed not the least inclination to amuse himself with his mother's elegant visitor. Mrs. Dallas became as nearly fidgety as it was in her nature to be.

'What do you think of my young friend?' she asked Pitt when he had been a day or two at home.

'The lady? She is a very satisfactory person, to the eye.'

'To the eye!'

'It is only my eyes, you will remember, mother, that know anything about her.'

'That is your fault. Why do you let it be true?'

'Very naturally, I have had something else to think of.'

'But she is a guest in the house, and you really seem to forget it,

Pitt. Can't you take her for a drive?'

'Where shall I take her?'

'Where? There is all the country to choose from. What a question! You never used to be at a loss, as I remember, in old times, when you went driving about with that little protegée of yours.'

It was very imprudent of Mrs. Dallas, and she knew it immediately, and was beyond measure vexed with herself. But the subject was started.

'Poor Esther!' said Pitt thoughtfully. 'Mamma, I can't understand how you and my father should have lost sight of those people so.'

'They went out of our way.'

'But you sometimes go to New York.'

'Passing through, to Washington. I could not have time to search for people whose address I did not know.'

'I cannot understand why you did not know it. They were not the sort of people to be left to themselves. A hypochondriack father, who thought he was dying, and a young girl just growing up to need a kind mother's care, which she had not. I would give more than I can tell you to find her again!'

'What could you possibly do for her, Pitt? You, reading law and living in chambers in the Temple, – in London, – and she a grown young woman by this time, and living in New York. No doubt her father is quite equal to taking care of her.'

Pitt made no reply. His mother repeated her question. 'What could you do for her?'

She was looking at him keenly, and did not at all like a faint smile which hovered for a second upon his lips.

'That is a secondary question,' he said. 'The primary is, Where is she?

I must go and find out.'

'Your father thinks they have gone back to England. It would just be lost labour, Pitt.'

'Not if I found that was true.'

'What could you do for them, if you could discover them?'

'Mother, that would depend on what condition they were in. I made a promise once to Colonel Gainsborough to look after his daughter.'

'A very extraordinary promise for him to ask or for you to give, seeing you were but a boy at the time.'

'Somewhat extraordinary, perhaps. However, that is nothing to the matter.'

There was a little vexed pause, and then Mrs. Dallas said:

'In the meanwhile, instead of busying yourself with far-away claims which are no claims, what do you think of paying a little attention to a guest in your own house?'

Pitt lifted his head and seemed to prick up his ears.

'Miss Frere? You wish me to take her to drive? I am willing, mamma.'

'Insensible boy! You ought to be very glad of the privilege.'

'I would rather take you, mother.'

The drive accordingly was proposed that very day; did not, however, come off. It was too hot, Miss Frere said.

She was sitting in the broad verandah at the back of the house, which looked out over the garden. It was an orderly wilderness of cherry trees and apple trees and plum trees, raspberry vines and gooseberry bushes; with marigolds and four o'clocks and love-in-a-puzzle and hollyhocks and daisies and larkspur, and a great many more sweet and homely growths that nobody makes any account of nowadays. Sunlight just now lay glowing upon it, and made the shade of the verandah doubly pleasant, the verandah being further shaded by honeysuckle and trumpet creeper which wreathed round the pillars and stretched up to the eaves, and the scent of the honeysuckle was mingled with the smell of roses which came up from the garden. In this sweet and bowery place Miss Frere was sitting when she declared it was too hot to drive. She was in an India garden chair, and had her embroidery as usual in her hand. She always had something in her hand. Pitt lingered, languidly contemplating the picture she made.

'It is hot,' he assented.

'When it is hot I keep myself quiet,' she went on. 'You seem to be of another mind.'

'I make no difference for the weather.'

'Don't you? What energy! Then you are always at work?'

'Who said so?'

'I said so, as an inference. When the weather has been cool enough to allow me to take notice, I have noticed that you were busy about something. You tell me now that weather makes no difference.'

'Life is too short to allow weather to cut it shorter,' said Pitt, throwing himself down on a mat. 'I think I have observed that you too always have some work in hand whenever I have seen you.'

'My work amounts to nothing,' said the young lady. 'At least you would say so, I presume.'

'What is it?'

Miss Betty displayed her roll of muslin, on the free portion of which an elegant line of embroidery was slowly growing, multiplying and reproducing its white buds and leaves and twining shoots. Pitt regarded it with an unenlightened eye.

'I am as wise as I was before,' he said.

'Why, look here,' said the young lady, with a slight movement of her little foot calling his attention to the edge of her skirt, where a somewhat similar line of embroidery was visible. 'I am making a border for another gown.'

Pitt's eye went from the one embroidery to the other; he said nothing.

'You are not complimentary,' said Miss Frere.

'I am not yet sure that there is anything to compliment.'

The young lady gave him a full view of her fine eyes for half a second, or perhaps it was only that they took a good look at him.

'Don't you see,' she said, 'that it is economy, and thrift, and all the household virtues? Not having the money to buy trimming, I am manufacturing it.'

'And the gown must be trimmed?'

'Unquestionably! You would not like it so well if it were not.'

'That is possible. The question remains' —

'What question?'

'Whether Life is not worth more than a bit of trimming.'

'Life!' echoed the young lady a little scornfully. 'An hour now and then is not Life.'

'It is the stuff of which Life is made.'

'What is Life good for?'

'That is precisely the weightiest question that can occupy the mind of a philosopher!'

'Are you a philosopher, Mr. Dallas!'

'In so far as a philosopher means a lover of knowledge. A philosopher who has attained unto knowledge, I am not; – that sort of knowledge.'

'You have been studying it?'

'I have been studying it for years.'

'What Life is good for?' said the young lady, with again a lift of her eyes which expressed a little disdain and a little impatience. But she saw Pitt's face with a thoughtful earnestness upon it; he was not watching her eyes, as he ought to have been. Her somewhat petulant words he answered simply.

'What question of more moment can there be? I am here, a human creature with such and such powers and capacities; I am here for so many years, not numerous; what is the best thing I can do with them and myself?'

'Get all the good out of them you can.'

'Certainly! but you observe that is no answer to my question of "how."'

'Good is pleasure, isn't it?'

'Is it?'

'I think so.'

'Make pleasure lasting, and perhaps I should agree with you. But how can you do that?'

'You cannot do it, that ever I heard. It is not in the nature of things.'

'Then what is the good of pleasure when it is over, and you have given your life for it?'

'Well, if pleasure won't do, take greatness, then.'

'What sort of greatness?' Pitt asked in the same tone. It was the tone of one who had gone over the ground.

'Any sort will do, I suppose,' said Miss Frere, with half a laugh. 'The thing is, I believe, to be great, no matter how. I never had that ambition myself; but that is the idea, isn't it?'

'What is it worth, supposing it gained?'

'People seem to think it is worth a good deal, by the efforts they make and the things they undergo for it.'

'Yes,' said Pitt thoughtfully; 'they pay a great price, and they have their reward. And, I say, what is it worth?'

'Why, Mr. Dallas,' said the young lady, throwing up her head, 'it is worth a great deal – all it costs. To be noble, to be distinguished, to be great and remembered in the world, – what is a worthy ambition, if that is not?'

'That is the general opinion; but what is it worth, when all is done?

Name any great man you think of as specially great' —

'Napoleon Buonaparte,' said the young lady immediately.

'Do not name him,' said Pitt. 'He wore a brilliant crown, but he got it out of the dirt of low passions and cold-hearted selfishness. His name will be remembered, but as a splendid example of wickedness. Name some other.'

'Name one yourself,' said Betty. 'I have succeeded so ill.'

'Name them all,' said Pitt. 'Take all the conquerors, from Rameses the Great down to our time; take all the statesmen, from Moses and onward. Take Apelles, at the head of a long list of wonderful painters; philosophers, from Socrates to Francis Bacon; discoverers and inventors, from the man who first made musical instruments, in the lifetime of Adam our forefather, to Watt and the steam engine. Take any or all of them; we are very glad they lived and worked, we are the better for remembering them; but I ask you, what are they the better for it?'

This appeal, which was evidently meant in deep earnest, moved the mind of the young lady with so great astonishment that she looked at Pitt as at a lusus naturae. But he was quite serious and simply matter of fact in his way of putting things. He looked at her, waiting for an answer, but got none.

'We speak of Alexander, and praise him to the skies, him of Macedon, I mean. What is that, do you think, to Alexander now?'

'If it is nothing to him, then what is the use of being great?' said

Miss Frere in her bewilderment.

'You are coming back to my question.'

There ensued a pause, during which the stitches of embroidery were taken slowly.

'What do you intend to do with your life, Mr. Dallas, since pleasure and fame are ruled out?' the young lady asked.

'You see, that decision waits on the previous question,' he answered.