At Last Part 9

"No good could have come of that!" returned he coldly. "When an amputation is to be performed, wise people submit to it without useless preliminaries. The exchange of farewells in this case would be inexpedient in the highest degree. You would compromise yourself by continued acknowledgment of this fellow's acquaintance. My will is that you and the world should forget, as soon as it can be done, that you ever saw or heard of him. The connection was degrading."

"Don't abuse him, brother! Let the knowledge that we are parted forever, satisfy your resentment. Since he has not appealed to me from your verdict, I am left to suppose that, upon second thoughts, he has resolved to acquiesce in your will. I do not blame him for the change of purpose." Still impa.s.sive in feature and voice, still not withdrawing her fixed gaze from that one point upon the floor. "He, too, has pride, and it matches yours. I do not say mine. I question, sometimes, if I have any."

"If your conjecture be correct, you cannot object to return the letters you have already received from him," said Winston, pressing on to the conclusion of a disagreeable business. "Since you are not likely to add to your stock of these valuables, you do not care to retain them, I suppose? I believe the rule is total surrender of souvenirs when a rupture is p.r.o.nounced hopeless."

"I shall keep them a week longer!"

She a.s.signed no reason for the resolution, and her manner, without being sullen, aggravated her brother into wrath, the effusion of which was a withering sneer.

"Your hope in his repentance is creditable to the strength--or weakness--of woman's love. But have your way. The ill.u.s.trious record of his former life is a powerful argument in favor of clemency. In a week, then!"

He nodded dismissal, wheeled his chair around to the table, dipped a pen in the standish, and pulled an account-book toward him.

He was surprised and not pleased, nevertheless, that Mabel retired without other reply than a simple "Good-night," said without temper, or any evidence of excitement. A month before, a milder sarcasm, the lightest breath of reproof, would have brought her to his feet in a paroxysm of tears, to implore pardon for her contumacy, and to promise obedience for all time to come. She was getting beyond his control the while she offered no open resistance to his government. Was sorrowful shame, or her infatuation for the adventurer he cursed in his heart by his G.o.ds, the influence that was petrifying her into this unlovely caricature of her once bright and affectionate self?

She presented herself, unsummoned, in his study at the expiration of the period she had designated, a pacquet in her hand, neatly done up and sealed.

"I will trouble you to direct it," was all she said, as she laid it before him.

"This is done of your own free will--remember!" he said, impressively.

"In after years, should you be so unreasonable as to regret it, there must be no misconception on the subject between us. If you wish, at this, the eleventh hour, to draw back, I shall not oppose you."

"You will write the address, then, if you please!" was Mabel's reply, showing him the surface intended for it.

Then she left him.

"A sensible girl, after all! a genuine Aylett, in will and stoicism!"

commented the master of the situation, beginning in his round, legible characters, the inscription he hoped never to trace again. "So endeth her first lesson in Cupid's manual!"

He never knew that Mrs. Sutton had bolstered the Aylett will and stoicism into stanchness at this closing scene. In a fit of despondency, she had that morning imparted to Mabel the fact that she had written to Frederic, ten days before, and had no answer, although she had besought an immediate one.

"I have expected him confidently every day for a week," she lamented. "I didn't suppose he would stay at Ridgeley, after what has happened; but there's the hotel in the village, and, as I told him, he could accomplish more by an hour's talk with you than by fifty letters. It is very mysterious--his continued silence! He always appeared so frank and reasonable. Nothing else like it has ever occurred in my experience--and I have had a great deal, my dear!"

"I am sorry you wrote, aunt," replied Mabel, sorrowfully dignified.

"Sorry you have subjected yourself to unnecessary mortification. I am past feeling it for myself. We cannot longer doubt that Mr. Chilton desires to hold no further communication with any of us."

Within the hour she made up the pacquet and carried it to her brother.

CHAPTER VII. -- Wa.s.sAIL.

ALMOST sixteen months had pa.s.sed since the dewless September morning, when Mabel had gathered roses in the garden walks, and her brother's return had shaken the dew with the bloom from her young heart. It was the evening of Christmas-day, and the tide of wa.s.sail, the blaze of yule, were high at Ridgeley. Without, the fall of snow that had commenced at sundown, was waxing heavier and the wind fiercer. In-doors, fires roared and crackled upon every hearth; there was a stir of busy or merry life in every room. About the s.p.a.cious fire-place in the "baronial" hall was a wide semicircle of young people, and before that in the parlor, a cl.u.s.ter of elders, whose graver talk was enlivened, from time to time, by the peals of laughter that tossed into jubilant surf the stream of the juniors' converse.

Nearest the mantel, on the left wing of the line, sat the three months'

bride, Imogene Barksdale, placid, dove-eyed, and smiling as of yore, very comely with her expression of satisfied prettiness n.o.body called vanity, and bedecked in her "second day's dress" of azure silk and her bridal ornaments. Her husband hovered on the outside of the ring, now pulling the floating curls of a girl-cousin (every third girl in the country was his cousin, once, twice, or thrice-removed, and none resented the liberties he, as a married man, was pleased to take), anon whispering in the ear of a bashful maiden interrogatories as to her latest admirer or rumored engagement; oftenest leaning upon the back of his wife's chair, a listener to what was going on, his hand lightly touching her lace-veiled shoulders, until her head gradually inclined against his arm. They were a loving couple, and not shy of testifying their consent to the world.

"They remind me irresistibly of a pair of plump babies sucking at opposite ends of a stick of sugar candy!" Rosa Tazewell said aside to the hostess, as the latter paused beside her on her way through the hall to the parlor.

"The candy is very sweet!" replied Mrs. Aylett, charitably, but laughing at the conceit--the low, musical laugh that was at once girlish in its gleefulness, yet perfectly well-bred.

Mr. Aylett heard it from his stand on the parlor-rug, and sent a quick glance in that direction. It was slow in returning to the group surrounding him. He had married a beautiful woman--so said everybody--and a fascinating, as even everybody's wife did not dispute.

In his sight, she was simply and entirely worthy of the distinction he had bestowed upon her; an adornment to Ridgeley and his name. From their wedding-day, his deportment toward her had been the same as it was to-night--attentive, but never officious; deferential, yet far removed from servility; a manner that, without approximating uxoriousness, yet impressed the spectator with the conviction that she was with him first and dearest among women; a partner of whom, if that were possible, he was more proud than fond--and of the depth and reality of his affection there could be no question.

She declined to seat herself in the circle, although warmly importuned by her guests thus to add brilliancy to their joyous party, yet remained standing near Rosa, interested and amused by the running fire of compliment and badinage that went to make up the hilarious confusion. If the family record had been consulted, the truth that she had counted her thirty-second summer would have astonished her husband, with her new neighbors. Apparently she was not over twenty-five. Her chestnut hair was a marvel for brightness and profusion, her broad brow smooth and white, her figure, as Winston had described it to his sister, rounded, even to voluptuousness, yet supple as it had been at fifteen. In her cheeks, too, the blushes fluctuated readily and softly, and when she smiled, her teeth showed like those of a little child in size and purity. Her voice matched her beauty well, never loud, always melodious, with a peculiar, gliding, legato movement of the graceful sentences, for the pleasing effect of which she was indebted partly to Nature, and much more to Art. She appeared on this evening in a green silk dress, matronly in shade and general style, but not devoid of coquettish arrangement in the square corsage, the opening of which was filled with foam-like puffs of thulle, threatening, when her bust heaved in mirth or animated speech, to overflow the sheeny boundaries. A chaplet of ivy-leaves encircled her head, and trailed upon one shoulder; her bracelets were heavy, chased gold without gems of any kind; a single diamond glittered--a point of prismatic light at her throat. Her wedding-ring was her only other ornament.

"Very sweet, I grant you, and very flavorless," returned Rosa. "And alarmingly apt to turn sour upon the stomach. I had rather be fed upon pepper lozenges."

"You should have been born in the Spice Islands," said the hostess, tapping the dark cheek with her fore finger. "But we could not spare you from our wa.s.sail-cup to-night, my dear Lady Pimento!"

She bent slightly, that the flattery might reach no other ear. She may not have known that Rosa's Creole skin was at a wretched disadvantage, as seen against the green silk background; but others noticed it, and thought how few complexions were comparable to the wearer's. She had the faculty of converting into a foil nearly every woman who approached her.

"Thank you! So I am pimento, am I?" queried Rosa, pertly. "And each of us is to personate some condiment--sweet, ardent, or aromatic--in the exhilarating draught! Which shall Mr. Harrison here be?

"'Cinnamon or ginger, nutmeg or cloves?'"

"That is a line of a college drinking-song!"

The speaker was a young man of eight-and-twenty; who sat between Rosa and Mabel, and whose attentions to the latter were marked. Of medium height, with sandy hair and whiskers, high cheek-bones, that gave a Gaelic cast to his physiognomy; which was remarkable for nothing in particular when at rest, and followed somewhat tardily the operations of his mind when he talked, he would probably have been the least likely person present to rivet a stranger's notice but for the circ.u.mstance that he played shadow to the host's sister and was Mrs. Aylett's brother. With regard to the feeling entertained by the former of those ladies for him, there were many and diverse opinions, but his sister's partiality was unequivocally exhibited. Of her three brothers, this--the youngest, the least handsome, and the only bachelor--was her favorite.

She took pains to apprise his fellow-guests of this interesting fact by petting him openly, and exerting her fullest artifices to bring him out in becoming colors.

"It is," she answered him now, admiringly. "What a memory you have, my dear Herbert! Now I am never positive with whom to credit a quotation.

I recollect, since you have spoken, that your famous quartette-club used to render that with much eclat, and how it was encored at the brilliant private concert you gave in behalf of some popular charity or other."

Thus encouraged, Mr. Dorrance proceeded to enlarge the fragment:

"Nose, nose, jolly red nose!

Where got you that jolly red nose?

Nutmeg and ginger, cinnamon and cloves, These gave me this jolly red nose.'

"You did not quote the third line correctly, Miss Tazewell."

"Never having been a college baccha.n.a.lian, I am excusable for the inaccuracy," she retorted. "I did not even know where I picked up the foolish bit. Having ascertained the origin to be of doubtful respectability, I shall never use it again."

"My sister has alluded to our quartette-club," pursued Mr. Dorrance, turning from the caustic beauty to Mabel, without noticing the impertinent thrust. "It was the most successful thing of the kind I ever knew of, being composed of thoroughly-trained musicians--amateurs, of course--and practising nothing but cla.s.sic music, the productions of the best masters. There is something both instructive and elevating in such an a.s.sociation."

"Especially when the theme of their consideration is the 'Jolly Red Nose,'" interposed the wicked minx at his other elbow.

Two giddy girls t.i.ttered, unawed by Mrs. Aylett's proximity and her brother's owl-like stare at his critic.

"You may not be aware, Miss Tazewell, that the lyric to which you have reference is celebrated, both for its antiquity, and the pleasing harmonies that must ever commend it to the taste of the true lover of music; although I allow that to a disciple of the modern and more flimsy school of this glorious art, it may seem puerile and ridiculous," he remarked, in grandiose patronage. Then, again to Mabel, "There were four of us--as I said--all students. What is it, Clara?"

"I have dropped my bracelet upon the floor, between you and Miss Tazewell," stooping to shake out Rosa's full skirts from which the trinket fell with a clinking sound.

Three gentlemen darted forward to pick it up, but her husband noted approvingly that while she accepted it graciously from the lucky finder, and thanked the others for their kindly interest in the fate of her "bauble," she held out her arm to her brother, that he might clasp it again in its place. Affable always, winning whomsoever she chose to admiration of her personal and mental endowments, she never departed from matronly decorum. The company agreed silently, or in guarded asides, that she was charming. No tongue--even the most reckless or venomous--ever lisped the dread word, levity, in connection with her name.