At Last Part 10

"Take care, my dear brother! you will pinch me!" those near heard her say, and she twisted the golden circlet that the clasp might be uppermost.

Rosa's alert ear caught the hurried murmur which succeeded, and was m.u.f.fled, so to speak, by her affectionate smile of grat.i.tude.

"What were you about to say? Will you never learn prudence?"

"The dove has talons, then?" mused the eavesdropper, "But what was he in danger of revealing?"

If the interdicted revelation had connection, close or remote, with the famous quartette club, he kept well away from it after this reminder, beginning, when he resumed his seat, to discourse upon the comparative excellence of wood and coal fires, of open chimney-places and stoves.

Mrs. Aylett smiled an engaging and regretful "au revoir" to the circle, and pa.s.sed on to look after the comfort and pleasure of her elder visitors, and Rosa soon discovered that her awakened curiosity would be in no wise appeased by listening to the steady, pattering drone of Mr. Dorrance's oration. Oratorical he was to a degree that excited the secret amus.e.m.e.nt of the facile Southern youths about him. With them, the art of light conversation had been a study from boyhood, the topics suitable for and pleasing to ladies' ears carefully culled and adroitly handled. To amuse and entertain was their main object. Erudite dissertations upon science and literature; abstruse arguments--whatever resembled a moral thesis, a political, religious, or philosophical lecture met with the sure ban of ridicule from them, as from the fair whose devoted cavaliers they were. If they laughed, when it was safe and not impolitic to do so, at the ponderous elocution of the Northern barrister, they marvelled exceedingly more at Mabel's indulgence of his attentions. That a girl, who, in virtue of her snug fortune and attractive face, her blood and her breeding, might, as they put it, have the "pick of the county," if she wanted a husband, should lend a willing ear to the pompous plat.i.tudes, the heavy rolling periods of this alien to her native State--a man without grace of manner or beauty--in their nomenclature, "a solemn prig," defied all ingenuity of explanation, was an increasing wonder outlasting the prescribed nine days. He rode with the ill a.s.surance of one who, accustomed to the sawdust floor, treadmill round, and enclosing walls of a city riding-school, was bewildered by the unequal roads and free air of the breezy country. He talked learnedly of hunting, quoting written authorities upon this or that point, of whom the unenlightened Virginians had never heard, much less read; equipped himself for the sport in a bewildering a.r.s.enal of new-fangled guns, game-bags, shot-pouches, and powder-horns, with numerous belts, diagonal, perpendicular, and horizontal, and in the field carried his gun a la Winkle; never, by any happy accident, brought down his bird, but was continually outraging sporting rules by firing out of time, and flushing coveys prematurely by unseasonable talking and precipitate strides in advance of his disgusted companions.

Yet he was not a fool. In the discussion of graver matters--politics, law, and history--that arose in the smoking-room, he was not to be put down by more fluent tongues; demolished sophistry by solid reasoning, impregnable a.s.sertions, and an array of facts that might be prolix, but was always formidable--in short, sustained fully the character ascribed to him by his brother-in-law, of a "thoroughly sensible fellow."

"No genius, I allow!" Mr. Aylett would add, in speaking of his wife's bantling among his compatriots, "but a man whose industry and sound practical knowledge of every branch of his profession will make for him the fortune and name genius rarely wins."

With the younger ladies, his society was, it is superfluous to observe, at the lowest premium civility and native kindliness of disposition would permit them to declare by the nameless and innumerable methods in which the dear creatures are proficient. To Rosa Tazewell he could not be anything better than a target for the arrows of her satire, or the whetstone, upon the unyielding surface of which she sharpened them. But she showed her prudential foresight in never laughing at him when out of his sight, and in Mabel's. At long ago as the night of Mr. Aylett's wedding-party at Ridgeley, her sharp eyes had seen, or she fancied they did, that the hum-drum groomsman was mightily captivated by the daughter of the house, and she had divined that Mrs. Aylett's clever ruses for throwing the two together were the outworks of her design for uniting, by a double bond, the houses of Dorrance and Aylett. She knew, furthermore, that Herbert Dorrance had travelled with the Ridgeley family for three weeks in October, and that he had now been domesticated at the homestead for ten days. Mrs. Aylett's show of fondness for him was laughable, considering what an uninteresting specimen of masculinity he was; but the handsome dame was too worldly-wise, too sage a judge of quid pro quo, to entice him to waste so much of the time he was addicted to announcing was money to him, for the sake of a good so intangible as sisterly sentimentality.

Unless there were some substantial and remunerative ulterior object to be gained by his tarrying in the neighborhood, cunning Rosa believed that "dear Bertie" would have been packed off to Buffalo, or whatever outlandish place he lived in, so soon as the bridal festivities were over, and not showed his straw-colored whiskers again in Virginia in three years, at least, instead of running down to the plantation every three months.

"If such an ingredient as the compound, double-distilled essence of flatness is to be infused into the wa.s.sail-cup, it is he who will supply it!" thought the spicy damsel, with a bewitching shrug of the plump shoulder nearest him, while engaged in a lively play of words with a gentleman on her other hand. "What can possess Mabel to encourage him systematically in her decorous style, pa.s.ses my powers of divination.

Maybe she means to use him as a poultice for her bruised heart. In that case, insipidity would be no objection."

Mabel had not the air of one whose heart is bruised or torn. That she had gained in queenliness within the past year was not evidence of austerity or the callousness that ensues upon the healing of a wound.

The Ayletts were a stately race, and the few who, while she was in her teens, had carped at her lack of pride because of her disposition to choose friends from the walks of life lower than her own, and criticised as unbecoming the playful familiarity that caused underlings and plebeians--the publicans and sinners of the aristocrat's creed--to worship the ground on which she trod--the censors in the court of etiquette conferred upon her altered demeanor the patent of their approbation, averring, for the thousandth time, that good blood would a.s.sert itself in the long run and bring forth the respectable fruits of refinement, self-appreciation, and condescension. The change had come over her by perceptible, but not violent, stages of progression, dating--Mrs. Sutton saw with pain; Rosa, with enforced respect--from the sunset hour in which she had read her brother's sentence of condemnation upon her then betrothed, now estranged, lover. After that one evening, she had not striven to conceal herself and her hurt in solitude. Neither had she borrowed from desperation a brazen helmet to hide the forehead the cruel letter had, for a brief s.p.a.ce, laid low in the dust of anguished humiliation.

If a whisper of her disappointment and the attendant incidents crept through the ranks of her a.s.sociates, it died away for want of confirmation in her clear level-lidded eyes, elastic footfall and the willingness and frequency with which she appeared and played her part in the various scenes of gayety that made the winter succeeding her brother's marriage one long to be remembered by the pleasure-seekers of the vicinity. She had not disdained the a.s.sistance of her sister-in-law's judgment and experience in the choice of the dresses that were to grace these merry-makings, and, thanks to her own naturally excellent taste, now tacitly disputed the palm of elegant attire with that lady. Her Christmas costume, which, in many others of her age, would have been objected to by critical fashionists, as old-maidish and grave, yet set off her pale complexion--none of the Ayletts were rosy after they reached man's or woman's estate--and heightened her distingue bearing into regal grace. Yet it was only a heavy black silk, rich and glossy as satin, cut, as was then the universal rule of evening dress, tolerably low in the neck, with short sleeves; bunches of pomegranate-blossoms and buds for breast and shoulder-knots, and among the cla.s.sic braids of her dark hair a half-wreath of the same.

She had the valuable gift of sitting still without stiffness, and not fidgetting with fan, bouquet, or hand-kerchief, as she listened or talked. Rosa's mercurial temperament betrayed itself, every instant, in the bird-like turn of her small head, the fluttering or chafing of her brown fingers, and not unfrequently by an impatient stamp, or other movement of her foot that exposed fairy toe and instep. Contemplation of the one rested and refreshed the observer; of the other, amused and excited him. Mr. Dorrance's phlegmatic nature found supreme content in dwelling upon the incarnation of patrician tranquillity at his right hand, and he regarded the actions of his frisky would-be tormentor very much as a placid, well-gorged salmon would survey, from his bed of ease upon the bottom of a stream, the gyrations of a painted dragon fly overhead.

A lull in the general conversation--the reaction after a hearty laugh at a happy repartee--gave others besides Mabel the opportunity of profiting by his learned remarks.

"But does not that seem to you a short-sighted policy," he was urging upon his auditor, with the a.s.sistance of a thumb and forefinger of one hand, joined as upon a pinch of snuff, and tapping the centre of the other palm; "does not that appear inexcusable profligacy of extravagance, which fells and consumes whole surface forests of magnificent trees--virgin growth--(I use the term as it is usually applied, although, philosophically considered, it is inaccurate) giants, which centuries will not replace, instead of seeking beneath the superficial covering of mould, nourishing these, for the exhaustless riches, carboniferous remains of antediluvian woods, hidden in the bowels of your mountains, and underlying your worn-out fields?"

Rosa was shaking with internal laughter--she would give no escape except through her dancing eyes.

Indeed, Mr. Dorrance's was the only staid countenance there, as Mabel said, pleasantly, moving her chair beyond the bounds of the ring, "I, for one, find the combustion of the upper forest growth too powerful, just at this instant. This is a genuine Christmas-storm--is it not?

Listen to the wind?"

In the stillness enjoined by her gesture, the growl of the blast in the chimney and in the grove; the groaning, tapping, and creaking of the tree branches; the pelting sleet and the rattle of cas.e.m.e.nts all over the house brought to the least imaginative a picture of out-door desolation and fireside comfort that prolonged the hush of attention.

Tom Barksdale's pretty wife slipped her hand covertly into his tight grasp, and their smile was of mutual congratulation that they were brightly and warmly housed and together. Rosa, preternaturally grave and quiet, lapsed into a profound study of the mountain of red-hot embers.

Several young ladies shuddered audibly, as well as visibly, and were rea.s.sured by a whispered word, or the slightest conceivable movement of their gallants' chairs nearer their own.

"I think we have the grandest storms at Ridgeley that visit our continent," resumed Mabel thoughtfully. "I suppose because the house stands so high. The wind never sounds to me anywhere else as it does here on winter nights."

Yielding to the weird attraction of the scene invoked by her fancy, she arose and walked to the window at the eastern extremity of the hall, pulling aside the curtain that she might peer into the wild darkness.

The crimson light of the burning logs and the lamp rays threw a strongly defined shadow of her figure upon the piazza floor, distinct as that projected by a solar microscope upon a sheeted wall; sent long, searching rays into the misty fall of the snow, past the spot from which she had her last glimpse of Frederic Chilton, so many, many months agone, showing the black outline of the gate where he had looked back to lift his hat to her.

What was there in the wintry night and thick tempest to recall the warmth and odor of that moist September morning, the smell of the dripping roses overhead, the balmy humidity of every breath she drew?

What in her present companion that reminded her of the loving clasp that had thrilled her heart into palpitation? the earnest depth of the eyes that held hers during the one sharp, yet sweet moment of parting--eyes that pledged the fealty of her lover's soul, and demanded hers then and forever? His conscience might have been sullied by crimes more heinous than those charged upon him by her brother and his friends; he might--he HAD--let her go easily, as one resigns his careless hold upon a paltry, unprized toy; but when her hand had rested thus in his, and his pa.s.sionate regards penetrated her soul, he loved her, alone and entirely! She would fold this conviction to her torpid heart for a little while before she turned herself away finally from the memories of that love-summer and battle-autumn of her existence. If it aroused in the chilled thing some slight pangs of sentiency, it would do her no hurt to realize through these that it had once been alive.

She saw a shadow approaching to join itself to hers upon the whitened floor without, before Mr. Dorrance interrupted her reverie by words.

"The fury of the tempest you admire proves its paternity," he said, with a manifest effort at lightness. "It emanates from the vast magazines of frost, snow, and wintry wind that lie far to the north-east even of my home, and THAT is in a region you would think drear and inhospitable after the more clement airs of of your native State."

"We have very cold weather in Virginia sometimes," returned Mabel, still scanning the sentinel gate-posts, and the pyramidal arbor-vitae trees flanking them.

Her gaze was a mournful farewell, but she neglected none of the amenities of hospitality. She was used to talking commonplaces.

"We feel it all the more, too, on account of the mildness of the greater part of the winter," she subjoined.

"Allow me!" said the other, looping back the curtain she had until now held in her hand. "Whereas our systems are braced by a more uniform temperature to endure the severity of our frosts, and high, keen blasts."

"I suppose so," a.s.sented Mabel, mechanically, and unconscious as himself that meaning glances were stolen at them from the fireside circle, while the hum and conversation was continuous and louder, for the good-natured intent on the speakers' part to afford the supposed lovers the chance of carrying on their dialogue unheard.

"But our houses are very comfortable--often very beautiful," Mr.

Dorrance persevered, keeping to the scent of his game, as a trained pointer scours a stubble-field, narrowing his beat at every circuit; "and the hearts of those who live in them are warm and constant. It is not always true that

"'The cold in clime are cold in blood; Their love can scarce deserve the name.

"I have thought sometimes that that feeling is strongest and most enduring, the demonstration of which is guarded and infrequent, as the deepest portion of the channel is the most quiet."

If his philosophical and scientific talk were heavy and solid, his poetry and metaphors were ponderous and labored. Yet Mabel listened to him now, neither facing nor avoiding him, looking down at her hands, laid, one above the other, upon the window-sill, the image of maidenly and courteous attention.

Why should she affect diffidence, or seek to escape what she had foreseen for weeks, and made no effort to ward off? She had come to the conclusion in October that Herbert Dorrance would, when the forms he considered indispensable to regular courtship had been gone through with, ask her to marry him, and coolly taken her resolution to accept him. This morning, on the reception of a handsome Christmas gift from him, and discovering in his actions something more pointed than his customary punctilious devoirs, and in his didacticism the outermost of the closing circle of pursuit she had furthermore concluded that his happy thought was to celebrate the festal season by his betrothment. She was quite ready for the declaration, which, she antic.i.p.ated, would be pompous and formal. She would have excused him from "doing" the poetical part of it; but, since it was on the programme, it was not her province to interfere.

"I am no enthusiast," he next averred,--Rosa would have said, very unnecessarily--"the tricks of sighing lovers are beyond--or beneath--my imitation. I could not 'write a sonnet to my mistress' eyebrow,' or move her to tearful pity by sounding declarations of my adoration of her peerless charms, and my anguish at the bare imagination of the possibility that these would ever be another's. But, so far as the earnest affection and sincere esteem of an honest man can satisfy the requirements of a good woman's heart, yours shall be filled, Mabel, if you will be my wife. I have admired you from the first day of our meeting. For six months I have been truly attached to you, and seriously meditated this declaration. Your brother is satisfied with the exhibit I have made of my affairs and my prospects, and sanctions my addresses.

I can maintain you more than comfortably, and it shall be one of the princ.i.p.al aims of my life to consult your welfare in all my plans for my own advancement. I have been settled in the large and flourishing city of Albany about seven years, and--ignoring the trammels of mock humility, let me say to you--have, within that period, gained to a flattering extent the confidence of the most respectable portion of the community; have built up an excellent and growing business connection, and secured the entree of the best society there. These are the pecuniary and social aspects of the alliance I propose for your consideration. Through my sister, and by means of the intimate a.s.sociation into which her marriage with your brother has drawn you and myself, you have been enabled, within the twelvemonth that has elapsed since our introduction, one to the other, to learn whatever you wished to know with respect to my personal character, my tastes, temper, and habits. It has given me heartfelt pleasure to discover that these are, in the main, a.n.a.logous to your own. I have built upon this similarity--or harmony would be the better word--sanguine hopes of our future happiness, should you see your way clear to accept my proffered hand, consent to link your future with mine."

"I beg to lay the 'ouse in Walcot Square, the business and myself, before Miss Summerson, for her acceptance," said magnanimous Mr. Guppy, thus clinching his declaration that "the image he had supposed was eradicated from his 'art was NOT eradicated."

It was more in keeping with Rosa's character than Mabel's to recollect the comic scene in the book they had read together lately, but the latter did remember it at this instant, and despite the momentous issues involved in her immediate action, was strongly tempted to laugh in her wooer's solemn face.

Then--so abrupt and fearful are the transitions from the extremes of one emotion to another--arose before her another picture. As in a dissolving view, she beheld herself walking with Frederic Chilton in the moonlighted alleys of the garden; midsummer flowers blooming to the right and left, her head drooping, in shy happiness, as the lily-bell bows to shed its freight of dew; his face glowing with the ardor of verbal confession of that he had already sought to express by letter--heard his fervent, pleading murmur, "Mabel! look up, my darling!

and tell me again that you will not send me away beggared and starving.

I cannot yet believe in the reality of my bliss!"

These were the love-words of an "enthusiast"--these---

The vision vanished at the short, hard breath, she drew in unclasping her locked hands, and lifting her grave, tranquil eyes to the level of her suitor's.

"I will follow your example in repudiating spurious sentiment, Mr.

Dorrance. I believe you to be a good, true man and that the attachment you profess for me is sincere. I believe, moreover, that my chances of securing real peace of mind will be fairer, should I commit myself to your guardianship, than if I were to surrender my affections to the keeping of one whose vows were more impa.s.sioned, who, professing to adore me as a divinity, should yet be dest.i.tute of your high moral principle and stainless honor. When I was younger and more rash in judgment and feeling, I was led into a sad mistake by the evidence of eye, ear, and a girl's imagination. I ought to tell you this, if you have not already heard the story. I will not deceive you into the persuasion that I can ever feel for you, or any other man, the love, or what I thought was love, I knew in the few brief weeks of my early betrothal. But you must know how that ended, and I have no desire to repeat the mad experiment of risking my earthly all upon one throw of fate. If friendship--if esteem, and the resolve to show myself a worthy recipient of your generous confidence--will content you, all else shall be as you wish."

In her determination to be candid, to leave him in no uncertainty as to her actual sentiments, she had concerted a response but a degree less stilted than his proposal. She would have been ashamed of it had he appeared less gratified.

His dull eyes brightened; his face flushed and beamed with unfeigned delight, and in his transport he said the most natural and graceful thing that ever escaped him during his wooing.

"I am content! The second love of Mabel Aylett must ever be more to me than the first of any other woman!"