An Original Belle Part 21

"Miss Vosburgh," he continued, hesitatingly, "when I first entered this room I did not understand your true worth and superiority, but a sense of these has been growing on me from that hour to this.

Perhaps I was not as sincere as I--I--should have been, and you were too clever not to know it. Will you listen to me patiently?"

Again she bowed, and lower this time to conceal a slight smile of triumph.

Encouraged, he proceeded: "Now that I have learned to know you well, I wish you to know me better,--to know all about me. My father was a Northern man with strong Northern traits; my mother, a Southern woman with equally strong Southern traits. I have been educated chiefly abroad. Is it strange, then, that I cannot feel exactly as you do, or as some of your friends do?"

"As we once agreed, Mr. Merwyn, each must choose his own course for life."

"I am glad you have reminded me of that, for I am choosing for life and not for the next ten months or ten years. As I said, then, all this present hurly-burly will soon pa.s.s away." Her face darkened, but in his embarra.s.sment and preoccupation he did not perceive it.

"I have inherited a very large property, and my mother's affairs are such that I must act wisely, if not always as she would wish."

"May I ask what Mrs. Merwyn would prefer?"

"I am prepared to be perfectly frank about myself," he replied, hesitatingly, "but--"

"Pardon me. It is immaterial."

"I have a perfect right to judge and act for myself," resumed Merwyn, with some emphasis.

"Thank you. I should remember that."

The words were spoken in a low tone and almost as if in soliloquy, and her face seemed to grow colder and more impa.s.sive if possible.

With something approaching dismay Merwyn had observed that the announcement of his large fortune had had no softening influence on the girl's manner, and he thought, "Truly, this is the most dreary and business-like wooing that I ever imagined!"

But he had gone too far to recede, and his embarra.s.sment was beginning to pa.s.s into something like indignation that he and all he could offer were so little appreciated.

Restraining this feeling, he went on, gravely and gently: "You once intimated that I was young, Miss Vosburgh, yet the circ.u.mstances and responsibilities of my lot have led me to think more, perhaps, than others of my age, and to look beyond the present hour. I regard the property left me by my father as a trust, and I have learned to-day that I can greatly increase and probably double it. It is my intention, after taking my mother and sisters abroad, to return to New York and to enter cautiously into business under the guidance of my legal adviser, who is a man of great sagacity. Now, as you know, I have said from the first that it is natural for you to feel deeply in regard to the events of the day; but I look beyond all this turmoil, distraction, and pa.s.sion, which will be as temporary as it is violent. I am thinking for you as truly as for myself. Pardon me for saying it; I am sure I am in a better condition of mind to think for you than you are to judge for yourself.

I can give you the highest social position, and make your future a certainty. From causes I can well understand the pa.s.sion of the hour has been swaying you--"

She rose, and by an emphatic gesture stopped him, and there was a fire in the blue eyes that had been so cold before. She appeared to have grown inches as she stood before him and said, in tones of concentrated scorn: "You are indeed young, yet you speak the calculating words of one so old as to have lost every impulse of youth. Do you know where my father is at this moment?"

"No," he faltered.

"He is taking part, at the risk of his life, in this temporary hurly-burly, as you caricature it. It is he who is swaying me, and the memory of the brave men whom you have met here and to whom you fancied yourself superior. Did not that honored father exist, or those brave friends, I feel within my soul that I have womanhood enough to recognize and feel my country's need in this supreme hour of her peril. You thoughtful beyond your years?--you think for me?

What did you think of me the first evening you spent here? What were your thoughts as you came again and again? To what am I indebted for this honor, but the fact that you could only beguile a summer's ennui by a pa.s.sing flirtation which would leave me you little cared where, after you had joined your aristocratic friends abroad? Now your plans have changed, and, after much deliberation, you have come to lift me to the highest position! Never dream that I can descend to your position!"

He was fairly trembling with anger and mortification, and she was about to leave the apartment.

"Stay!" he said, pa.s.sing his hand across his brow as if to brush away confusion of mind; "I have not given you reason for such contempt, and it is most unreasonable."

"Why is it unreasonable?" she asked, her scornful self-control pa.s.sing into something like pa.s.sion. "I will speak no more of the insult of your earlier motives towards me, now that you think you can afford to marry me. In your young egotism you may think a girl forgets and forgives such a thing easily if bribed by a fortune. I will let all that be as if it were not, and meet you on the ground of what is, at this present hour. I despise you because you have no more mind or manhood--take it as you will--than to think that this struggle for national life and liberty is a mere pa.s.sing fracas of politicians. Do you think I will tamely permit you to call my n.o.ble father little better than a fool? He has explained to me what this war means--he, of twice your age, and with a mind as large as his manhood and courage. You have a.s.sumed to be his superior, also, as well as that of Mr. Lane and Mr. Strahan, who are about to peril life in the 'hurly-burly.' What are your paltry thousands to me? Should I ever love, I will love a MAN; and had I your s.e.x and half your inches, I should this hour be in Virginia, instead of defending those I love and honor against your implied aspersions.

Had you your mother's sentiments I should at least respect you, although she has no right to be here enjoying the protection of a government that she would destroy."

He was as pale as she had become flushed, and again he pa.s.sed his hand over his brow confusedly and almost helplessly. "It is all like a horrid dream," he muttered.

"Mr. Merwyn, you have brought this on yourself," she said, more calmly. "You have sought to wrong me in my own home. Your words and manner have ever been an insult to the cause for which my father may die--O G.o.d!" she exclaimed, with a cry of agony--"for which he may now be dead! Go, go," she added, with a strong repellent gesture. "We have nothing in common: you measure everything with the inch-rule of self."

As if pierced to the very soul he sprung forward and seized her hand with almost crushing force, as he cried: "No, I measure everything hereafter by the breadth of your woman's soul. You shall not cast me off in contempt. If you do you are not a woman,--you are a fanatic, worse than my mother;" and he rushed from the house like one distraught.

Panting, trembling, frightened by a volcanic outburst such as she had never dreamed of, Marian sunk on a lounge, sobbing like a child.

CHAPTER XVI.

AWAKENED AT LAST.

IT may well be imagined that Mrs. Vosburgh was not far distant during the momentous interview described in the last chapter, and, as Merwyn rushed from the house as if pursued by the furies, she appeared at once on the scene, full of curiosity and dismay.

Exclamations, questionings, elicited little from Marian. The strain of the long, eventful day had been too great, and the young girl, who might have been taken as a type of incensed womanhood a few moments before, now had scarcely better resources than such remedies as Mrs. Vosburgh's matronly experience knew how to apply. Few remain long on mountain-tops, physical or metaphorical, and deep valleys lie all around them. Little else could be done for the poor girl than to bring the oblivion of sleep, and let kindly Nature nurse her child back to a more healthful condition of body and mind.

But it would be long before Willard Merwyn would be amenable to the gentle offices of nature. Simpson, the footman, flirting desperately with the pretty waitress in the kitchen below, heard his master's swift, heavy step on the veranda, and hastened out only in time to clamber into his seat as Merwyn drove furiously away in the rain and darkness. Every moment the trembling lackey expected they would all go to-wreck and ruin, but the sagacious animals were given their heads, and speedily made their way home.

The man took the reeking steeds to the stable, and Merwyn disappeared.

He did not enter the house, for he felt that he would stifle there, and the thought of meeting his mother was intolerable. Therefore, he stole away to a secluded avenue, and strode back and forth under the dripping trees, oblivious, in his fierce perturbation, of outward discomfort.

Mrs. Merwyn waited in vain for him to enter, then questioned the attendant.

"Faix, mum, I know nothin' at all. Mr. Willard druv home loike one possessed, and got out at the door, and that's the last oi've seen uv 'im."

The lady received the significant tidings with mingled anxiety and satisfaction. Two things were evident. He had become more interested in Miss Vosburgh than he had admitted, and she, by strange good fortune, had refused him.

"It was a piece of folly that had to come in some form, I suppose,"

she soliloquized, "although I did not think Willard anything like so sure to perpetrate it as most young men. Well, the girl has saved me not a little trouble, for, of course, I should have been compelled to break the thing up;" and she sat down to watch and wait. She waited so long that anxiety decidedly got the better of her satisfaction.

Meanwhile the object of her thoughts was pa.s.sing through an experience of which he had never dreamed. In one brief hour his complacency, pride, and philosophy of life had been torn to tatters. He saw himself as Marian saw him, and he groaned aloud in his loathing and humiliation. He looked back upon his superior airs as ridiculous, and now felt that he would rather be a private in Strahan's company than the scorned and rejected wretch that he was. The pa.s.sionate nature inherited from his mother was stirred to its depths. Even the traits which he believed to be derived from his father, and which the calculating lawyer had commended, had secured the young girl's most withering contempt; and he saw how she contrasted him with her father and Mr. Lane,--yes, even with little Strahan. In her bitter words he heard the verdict of the young men with whom he had a.s.sociated, and of the community. Throughout the summer he had dwelt apart, wrapped in his own self-sufficiency and fancied superiority. His views had been of gradual growth, and he had come to regard them as infallible, especially when stamped with the approval of his father's old friend; but the scathing words, yet ringing in his ears, showed him that brave, conscientious manhood was infinitely more than his wealth and birth. As if by a revelation from heaven he saw that he had been measuring everything with the little rule of self, and in consequence he had become so mean and small that a generous-hearted girl had shrunk from him in loathing.

Then in bitter anger and resentment he remembered how he was trammelled by his oath to his mother. It seemed to him that his life was blighted by this pledge and a false education. There was no path to her side who would love and honor only a MAN.

At last the mere physical manifestations of pa.s.sion and excitement began to pa.s.s away, and he felt that he was acting almost like one insane as he entered the house.

Mrs. Merwyn met him, but he said, hoa.r.s.ely, "I cannot talk with you to-night."

"Willard, be rational. You are wet through. You will catch your death in these clothes."

"Nothing would suit me better, as I feel now;" and he broke away.

He was so haggard when he came down late the next morning that his mother could not have believed such a change possible in so short a time. "It is going to be more serious than I thought," was her mental comment as she poured him out a cup of coffee.

It was indeed; for after drinking the coffee in silence, he looked frowningly out of the window for a time; then said abruptly to the waiter, "Leave the room."