Ethelyn's Mistake Part 1

Ethelyn's Mistake.

by Mary Jane Holmes.

CHAPTER I

ETHELYN

There was a sweet odor of clover blossoms in the early morning air, and the dew stood in great drops upon the summer flowers, and dropped from the foliage of the elm trees which skirted the village common. There was a cloud of mist upon the meadows, and the windings of the river could be distinctly traced by the white fog which curled above it. But the fog and the mists were rolling away as the warm June sun came over the eastern hills, and here and there signs of life were visible in the little New England town of Chicopee, where our story opens. The mechanics who worked in the large shoe-shop halfway down Cottage Row had been up an hour or more, while the hissing of the steam which carried the huge manufactory had been heard since the first robin peeped from its nest in the alders down by the running brook; but higher up, on Bellevue Street, where the old inhabitants lived, everything was quiet, and the loamy road, moist and damp with the dews of the previous night, was as yet unbroken by the foot of man or rut of pa.s.sing wheel.

The people who lived there, the Mumfords, and the Beechers, and the Grangers, and the Thorns, did not strictly belong to the working cla.s.s.

They held stocks in railroads, and mortgages on farms, and so could afford to sleep after the shrill whistle from the manufactory had wakened the echoes of the distant hills and sounded across the waters of Pordunk Pond. Only one dwelling here showed signs of life, and that the large square building, shaded in front with elms and ornamented at the side with a luxuriant queen of the prairie, whose blossoms were turning their blushing faces to the rising sun. This was the Bigelow house, the joint property of Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, nee Sophia Bigelow, who lived in Boston, and her sister, Miss Barbara Bigelow, the quaintest and kindest-hearted woman who ever bore the sobriquet of an old maid, and was aunt to everybody. She was awake long before the whistle sounded across the river and along the meadow lands, where some of the workmen lived, and just as the robin, whose nest for four summers had been under the eaves where neither boy nor cat could reach it, brought the first worm to its clamorous young, she pushed the fringed curtain from her open window, and with her broad frilled cap still on her head, stood for a moment looking out upon the morning as it crept up the eastern sky.

"She will have a nice day for her wedding. May her future life be as fair," Aunt Barbara whispered softly, then kneeling before the window with her head bowed upon the sill, she prayed earnestly for G.o.d's blessing on the bridal to take place that night beneath her roof, and upon the young girl who had been both a care and a comfort since the Christmas morning eighteen years before, when her half-sister Julia had come home to die, bringing with her the little Ethelyn, then but two years old.

Aunt Barbara's prayers were always to the point. She said what she had to say in the fewest possible words, wasting no time in repet.i.tion, and on this occasion she was briefer than usual, for the good woman had many things upon her mind this morning. First, there was Betty to rouse and get into a state of locomotion, a good half hour's work, as Aunt Barbara knew from a three years' experience. There was the "sponge" put to rise the previous night. She must see if that had risen, and with her own hands mold the snowy breakfast rolls which Ethelyn liked so much. There were the chambers to be inspected a second time, to ascertain if everything was in its place, and dinner to be prepared for the "Van Buren set" expected up from Boston, while last, though far from least, there was Ethelyn herself to waken when the clock should chime the hour of six, and this was a pleasure which good Aunt Barbara would not for the world have foregone. Every morning for the last sixteen years, when Ethelyn was at home, she had gone to the pleasant, airy chamber where her darling slept, and bending over her had kissed her fair, glowing cheek, and so called her back from the dreamless slumber which otherwise might have been prolonged to an indefinite time, for Ethelyn did not believe in the maxim, "Early to bed and early to rise," and always begged for a little more indulgence, even after the brown eyes unclosed and flashed forth a responsive greeting to the motherly face bending above them.

This morning, however, it was not needful that Aunt Barbara should waken her, for long before the robin sang, or the white-fringed curtain had been pushed aside from Aunt Barbara's window, she was awake, and the brown eyes, which had in them a strange expression for a bride's eyes to wear, had scanned the eastern horizon wistfully, aye, drearily it may be, to see if it were morning, and when the clock in the kitchen struck four, the quivering lip had whispered, oh, so sadly, "Sixteen hours more, only sixteen," and with a little shiver the bed-clothes had been drawn more closely around the plump shoulders, and the troubled face had nestled down among the pillows to smother the sigh which never ought to have come from a maiden's lips upon her wedding day. The chamber of the bride-elect was a pleasant one, large and airy and high, with windows looking out upon the Chicopee hills, and from which Ethelyn had many a time watched the fading of the purplish twilight as, girl-like, she speculated upon the future and wondered what it might have in store for her. One leaf of the great book had been turned and lay open to her view, but she shrank away from what was written there, and wished so much that the record were otherwise. Upon the walls of Ethelyn's chamber many pictures were hung, some in water colors, which she had done herself in the happy schooldays which now seemed so far away, and some in oil, mementos also of those days. Pictures, too, there were of people, one of dear Aunt Barbara, whose kindly face was the first to smile on Ethelyn when she woke, and whose patient, watchful eyes seemed to keep guard over her while she slept. Besides Aunt Barbara's picture there was another one, a fair, boyish face, with a look not wholly unlike Ethelyn, herself, save that it lacked the firmness and decision which were so apparent in the proud curve of her lip and the flash of her brown eyes. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, with something feminine in every feature, it seemed preposterous that the original could ever make a young girl's heart ache as Ethelyn Grant's was aching that June morning, when, taking the small oval frame from the wall, she kissed it pa.s.sionately, and then thrust it away into the bureau drawer, which held other relics than the oval frame. It was, in fact, the grave of Ethelyn's buried hopes--the tomb she had sworn never to unlock again; but now, as her fingers lingered a moment amid the mementos of the years when, in her girlish ignorance, she had been so happy, she felt her resolution giving way, and sitting down upon the floor, with her long hair unfastened and falling loosely about her, she bowed her head over buried treasures, and dropped into their grave the bitterest tears she had ever shed. Then, as there swept over her some better impulse, whispering of the wrong she was doing to her promised husband, she said:

"I will not leave them here to madden me again some other day. I will burn them, every one."

There were matches within her reach, while the little fireplace was not far away, and, sitting just where she was, Ethelyn Grant burned one after another, letters and notes, some directed in schoolboy style, and others showing a manlier hand, as the dates grew more recent and the envelopes bore a more modern and fashionable look. Over one, the freshest and the last, Ethelyn lingered a moment, her eyes growing dark with pa.s.sion, and her lips twitching nervously as she read:

"BOSTON, April--

"Dear Ethie: I reckon mother is right, after all. She generally is, you know, so we may as well be resigned, and believe it wicked for cousins to marry each other. Of course I can never like Nettie as I have liked you, and I feel a twinge every time I remember the dear old times. But what must be must, and there's no use fretting. Do you remember old Colonel Markham's nephew from out West--the one who wore the short pants and the rusty c.r.a.pe on his hat when he visited his uncle, in Chicopee, some years ago? I mean the chap who helped you over the fence the time you stole the colonel's apples. He has become a member of Congress, and quite a big gun for the West, at least, mother thinks. He called on her to-day with a message from Mrs. Woodhull, but I did not see him. He goes up to Chicopee to-morrow, I believe. He is looking for a wife, they say, and mother thinks it would be a good match for you, as you could go to Washington next winter and queen it over them all. But don't, Ethie, don't for thunder's sake! It fairly makes me faint to think of you belonging to another, even though you may never belong to me. Yours always, Frank."

There was a dark, defiant look in Ethelyn's face as she applied the match to this letter, and then watched it blacken and crisp upon the hearth. How well she remembered the day when she received it--the dark, dismal April day, when the rain which dropped so fast from the leaden clouds, seemed weeping for her, who could not weep then, so complete was her humiliation, so utter her desolation. That was not quite three months ago, and so much had happened since then as the result of that M.C.'s visit to Chicopee. He was there again, this morning, an inmate of the great yellow house, with the large, old-fashioned bra.s.s knocker, and, by just putting aside her curtain, Ethelyn could see the very window of the chamber where he slept. But Ethelyn had other matters in hand, and if she thought at all of that window whose shutters were rarely opened except when Colonel Markham had, as now, an honored guest, it was with a faint shudder of terror, and she went on destroying mementos which were only a mockery of the past. One little note, the first ever received from Frank, after a, memorable morning in the huckleberry hills, she could not burn. It was only a line, and, if read by a stranger, would convey no particular meaning; so she laid it aside with the lock of light, soft hair, which clung to her fingers with a kind of caressing touch, and brought to her hot eyelids a mist which cooled their feverish heat. And now nothing remained of the treasures but a tiny tortoise-sh.e.l.l box, where, in its bed of pink cotton, lay a little ring, with "Ethie" marked upon it. It was too small for the finger it once encircled, for Ethel was but a child when first she wore it. Her hands were larger; plumper, now, and it would not pa.s.s the second joint of her finger, though she exerted all her strength to push it on, taking a kind of savage delight in the pain it caused her, and feeling that she was thus revenging herself on someone, she hardly knew or cared whom. At last, however, with a quick, jerking motion she drew it off, and covering her face with her hands, moaned bitterly:

"It hurts! it hurts! just as the bonds hurt which are closing around my heart. Oh! Frank, Frank, it was cruel to serve me so."

There was a step in the hall below. Aunt Barbara was coming to waken Ethelyn, and, with a spring, the young girl bounded to her feet, swept her hands twice across her face, and, shedding back from her forehead her wealth of bright brown hair, laughingly confronted the good woman, who, in the same breath, expressed her surprise that her niece was once up without being called, and her wonder at the peculiar odor pervading the apartment.

"Smells if all the old newspapers in the barrel up garret had been burnt at once," she said; but the fireplace, which lay in shadow, told no tales, and Aunt Barbara never suspected the pain tugging at the heart of the girl, whose cheeks glowed with an unnatural red as she dashed hot water over neck, and arms, and face, playfully plashing a few large drops upon her aunt's white ap.r.o.n, and asking if there was not an old adage, "Blessed is the bride the sun shines on." "If so, I must be greatly blessed," she said, pushing open the eastern shutter, and letting in a flood of yellow sunlight.

"The day bids fair to be a scorcher. I hope it will grow cool this evening. A crowded party is so terrible when one feels hot and uncomfortable, and the millers and horn-bugs come in so thickly, and I always get so red in the face. Please, auntie, you twist up my hair in a flat knot--no matter how. I don't seem to have any strength in my arms this morning, and my head is all in a whirl. It must be the weather,"

and, with a long, panting breath, Ethelyn sank, half fainting, into a chair, while her frightened aunt ran for water, and camphor, and cologne, hoping Ethelyn was not coming down with fever, or any other dire complaint, on this her wedding day.

"It is the weather, most likely, and the awful amount of sewing you've done these last few weeks," said Aunt Barbara; and Ethelyn suffered her to think so, though she herself had a far different theory with regard to that almost fainting fit, which served as an excuse for her unusual pallor, for her listless apathy, and her want of appet.i.te, even for the flaky rolls, and the delicious strawberries, and thick, yellow cream which Aunt Barbara put before her.

She was not hungry, she said, as she turned over the berries with her spoon, and pecked at the snowy rolls. By and by she might want something, perhaps, and then Betty would make her a slice of toast to stay her stomach till the late dinner they were to have on Aunt Van Buren's account--that lady always professing to be greatly shocked at the early dinners in Chicopee, and generally managing, during her visits home, to change entirely the ways and customs of Aunt Barbara Bigelow's well-ordered household.

"I wish she was not coming, or anybody else. Getting married is a bore!"

Ethelyn exclaimed, while Aunt Barbara looked curiously enough at her, wondering, for the first time, if the girl's heart were really in this marriage, which for weeks had been agitating the feminine portion of Chicopee, and for which so great preparations had been made.

Wholly honest and truthful and sincere herself, Aunt Barbara seldom suspected wrong in others, and so when Ethelyn, one April night, after a drive around the road which encircles Pordunk Pond, came to her and said, "Congratulate me, auntie, I am to be Mrs. Judge Markham," she had believed all was well, and that as sister Sophia Van Buren, of Boston, had so often averred, there was not, nor ever had been, anything serious between dandyish Frank, Mrs. Van Buren's only son, who parted his curly hair in the middle, and the high-spirited, impulsive Ethelyn, whose eyes shone like stars as she told of her engagement, and whose hand was icy cold as she held it up to the lamp-light to show the large diamond which flashed from the fourth finger as proof of what she said. The stone itself was of the first water, but the setting was old, so old that a connoisseur in such matters might wonder why Judge Markham had chosen such a ring as the seal of his betrothal. Ethelyn knew why, and the softest, kindliest feeling she had experienced for her promised husband was awakened when he told her of the fair young sister whose name was Daisy, and who for many years had slept on the Western prairie beneath the blossoms whose name she bore. This young girl, loving G.o.d with all her soul, loved too all the beautiful things he had made, and rejoiced in them as so much given her to enjoy. Brought up in the far West, where the tastes of the people were simpler than those of our Eastern neighbors, it was strange, he said, how strong a pa.s.sion she possessed for gems and precious stones, especially the diamond. To have for her own a ring like one she once saw upon a grand Chicago lady was her great ambition, and knowing this the brother h.o.a.rded carefully his own earnings, until enough was saved to buy the coveted ring, which he brought to his young sister on her fourteenth birthday. But death even then had cast its shadow around her, and the slender fingers soon grew too small for the ring, which she nevertheless kept constantly by her, admiring its brilliancy, and flashing it in the sunlight for the sake of the rainbow hues it gave. And when, at last, she lay dying in her brother's arms, with her golden head upon his breast, she had given back the ring, and said, "I am going, Richard, where there are far more beautiful things than this: 'for eye hath not seen, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things prepared for those who love Him,' and I do love Him, brother, oh! so much, and feel His arms around me now as sensibly as I feel yours. His will stay after yours are removed, and I am done with earth; but keep the ring, Brother d.i.c.k, and when in after years you love some pure young girl as well as you love me, only different--some girl who will prize such things, and is worthy of it--give it to her, and tell her it was Daisy's; tell her for me, and that I bade her love you, as you deserve to be loved."

All this Richard Markham had said to Ethelyn as they stood for a few minutes upon the beach of the pond, with its waters breaking softly upon the sands at their feet, and the young spring moon shining down upon them like Daisy's eyes, as the brother described them when they last looked on him. There was a picture of Daisy in their best room at home, an oil painting made by a traveling artist, Richard said, and some day Ethelyn would see it, for she had promised to be his wife, and the engagement ring--Daisy's ring--was on her finger, sparkling in the moonbeam, just as it used to sparkle when the dead girl held it in the light. It was a superb diamond--even Frank, with all his fastidiousness, would admit that, Ethelyn thought, her mind more, alas! on Frank and his opinion than on what her lover was saying to her, of his believing that she was pure and good as Daisy could have desired, that Daisy would approve his choice, if she only knew, as perhaps she did; he could not help feeling that she was there with them, looking into their hearts--that the silvery light resting so calmly on the silent water was the halo of her invisible presence blessing their betrothal. This was a good deal for Richard Markham to say, for he was not given to poetry, or sentiment, or imagery, but Ethelyn's face and Ethelyn's eyes had played strange antics with the staid, matter-of-fact man of Western Iowa, and stirred his blood as it had never been stirred before. He did fancy his angel-sister was there; but when he said so to Ethelyn she started with a shiver, and asked to be driven home, for she did not care to have even dead eyes looking into her heart, where the fires of pa.s.sion were surging and swelling, like some hidden volcano, struggling to be free.

She knew she was doing wrong--knew she was not the pure maiden whom Daisy would have chosen--was not worthy to be the bride of Daisy's brother; but she must do something or die, and as she did not care to die, she pledged her hand with no heart in it, and hushing the voice of conscience clamoring so loudly against what she was doing, walked back across the yellow sand, beneath the spring moonlight, to where the carriage waited, and, in comparative silence, was driven to Aunt Barbara's gate.

This was the history of the ring, and here, as well as elsewhere, we may tell Ethelyn's history up to the time when, on her bridal day, she sat with Aunt Barbara at the breakfast table, idly playing with her spoon and occasionally sipping the fragrant coffee. The child of Aunt Barbara's half-sister, she inherited none of the so-called Bigelow estate which had come to the two daughters, Aunt Barbara and Aunt Sophia, from their mother's family. But the Bigelow blood of which Aunt Sophy Van Buren was so proud was in her veins, and so to this aunt she was an object of interest, and even value, though not enough so to warrant that lady in taking her for her own when, eighteen years before our story opens, her mother, Mrs. Julia Bigelow Grant, had died. This task devolved on Aunt Barbara, whose great motherly heart opened at once to the little orphan who had never felt a mother's loss, so faithful and true had Aunt Barbara been to her trust. Partly because she did not wish to seem more selfish than her sister, and partly because she really liked the bright, handsome child who made Aunt Barbara's home so cheery, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren of Boston, insisted upon superintending the little Ethelyn's education, and so, when only twelve years of age, Ethelyn was taken from the old brick house under the elms, which Mrs. Dr. Van Buren of Boston despised as the "district school where Tom, d.i.c.k, and Harry congregated," and transplanted to the highly select and very expensive school taught by Madame--, in plain sight of Beacon Street and Boston Common. And so, as Ethelyn increased in stature, she grew also in wisdom and knowledge, both of books and manners, and the style of the great world around her. Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's house was the resort both of the fashionable and literary people, with a sprinkling of the religious, for the great lady affected everything which could effect her interest.

Naturally generous, her name was conspicuous on all subscription lists and charitable a.s.sociations, while the lady herself owned a pew in---- Church, where she was a regular attendant, together with her only son, Frank, who was taught to kneel and respond in the right places and bow in the creed, and then, after church, required to give a synopsis of the sermon, by way of proving that his mind had not been running off after the dancing school he attended during the week, under his mother's watchful supervision. Mrs. Van Buren meant to be a model mother, and bring up her boy as a model man, and so she gave him every possible advantage of books and teachers, while far in the future floated the possibility that she might some day reign at the White House, not as the President's wife--this could not be, she knew, for the man who had made her Mrs. Dr. Van Buren of Boston slept in the shadow of a very tall monument out at Mount Auburn, and the turf was growing fresh and green over his head. So if she went to Washington, as she fondly hoped she might, it would be as the President's mother; but when examination after examination found Frank at the foot of his cla.s.s, and teacher after teacher said he could not learn, she gave up the presidential chair, and contenting herself with a seat in Congress, asked that great pains should be taken to bring out the talent for debate and speech-making which she was sure Frank possessed; but when even this failed, and nineteen times out of twenty Frank could get no farther than "My name is Norval, on the Grampian Hills," she yielded the M.C. too, and set herself to make him a gentleman, polished, refined, and cultivated--one, in short, who was au fait with all that fashionable society required; and here she succeeded better. Frank was perfectly at home on the dancing floor or in the saloons of gaiety, or the establishment of a fashionable tailor, so that when Ethelyn, at twelve, went down to Boston, she found her tall, slender, light-haired cousin of sixteen a perfect dandy, with a capability and a disposition to criticise and laugh at whatever there was of gaucherie in her country manners and country dress. In some things the two were of mutual benefit to each other. Ethelyn, who could conquer any lesson however difficult, helped thick-headed, indolent Frank in his studies, translating his hard pa.s.sages in Virgil, working out his problems in mathematics, and even writing, or at least revising and correcting, his compositions, while he in return gave her lessons in etiquette as practiced by the Boston girls, teaching her how to polka a waltz gracefully, so he would not be ashamed to introduce her as his cousin, he said, at the children's parties which they attended together. It was not strange that Frank Van Buren should admire a girl as bright and piquant and pretty as his cousin Ethelyn, but it was strange that she should idolize him, bearing patiently with all his criticisms, trying hard to please him, and feeling more than repaid for her exertions by a word of praise or commendation from her exacting teacher, who, viewing her at first as a poor relation, was inclined to be exacting, if not overbearing, in his demands. But as time pa.s.sed on all this was changed, and the well-developed girl of fifteen, whom so many noticed and admired, would no longer be patronized by the young man Frank, who, finding himself in danger of being snubbed, as he termed Ethelyn's grand way of putting him down, suddenly awoke to the fact that he loved his high-spirited cousin, and he told her so one hazy day, when they were in Chicopee, and had wandered up to a ledge of rocks in the huckleberry hills which overlooked the town.

"They might as well make a sure thing of it," he said, in his off-hand way. "If she liked him and he liked her, they would clinch the bargain at once, even if they were so young." And so, when they went down the hill back to the shadow of the elm trees, where Mrs. Dr. Van Buren sat cooling herself and reading "Vanity Fair," there was a tiny ring on Ethelyn's finger, and she had pledged herself to be Frank's wife some day in the future.

Frank had promised to tell his mother, for Ethelyn would have no concealment; and so, holding up her hand and pointing to the ring, he said, more in jest than earnest:

"Look, mother, Ethie and I are engaged. If you have any objections, state them now, or ever after hold your peace."

He did not think proper to explain either to his mother or Ethie that this was his second serious entanglement, and that the ring had been bought before for a pretty milliner girl, at least six years his senior, whose acquaintance he had made at Nahant the summer previous, and whom he had forgotten when he learned that to her taste his mother was indebted for the stylish bonnet she sported every season. Frank generally had some love affair in hand--it was a part of his nature; and as he was not always careful in his choice, the mother had occasionally felt a twinge of fear lest, after all her care, some terrible mesalliance should be thrust upon her by her susceptible son. So she listened graciously to the news of his betrothal--nay, she was pleased with it, as for the time being it would divert his mind and keep him out of mischief. That he would eventually marry Ethelyn was impossible, for his bride must be rich; but Ethelyn answered the purpose now, and could easily be disposed of when other and better game appeared. So the scheming woman smiled, and said "it was not well for cousins to marry and even if it were, they were both too young to know their minds, and would do well to keep their engagement a secret for a time," and then returned to Becky Sharp, while Frank went to sleep upon the lounge, and Ethelyn stole off upstairs to dream over her happiness, which was as real to her as such a thing could well be to an impulsive, womanly girl of fifteen summers. She, at least, was in earnest, and as time pa.s.sed on Frank seemed to be in earnest, too, devoting himself wholly to his cousin, whose influence over him was so great that he was fast becoming what Aunt Barbara called a man, while his mother began again to have visions of a seat in Congress, and brilliant speeches, which would find their way to Boston and be read and admired in the circles in which she moved.

And so the days and years wore on until Frank was a man of twenty-four--a third-rate pract.i.tioner, too, whose sign, "Frank Van Buren, Attorney-at-law," etc., looked very fresh and respectable in front of the office on Washington Street, and Frank himself began to have thoughts of claiming Ethelyn's promise and having a home of his own. He would not live with his mother, he said; it was more independent to be alone; and then, from some things he had discovered in his bride-elect, he had an uneasy feeling that possibly the brown of Ethelyn's eyes might not wholly harmonize with the gray of his mother's, "for Ethie was s.p.u.n.ky as the old Nick," he argued with himself, while "for perversity and self-conceit his mother could not be beaten." It was better they should keep up two households, his mother seeing to both, and if need be, supplying the wants of both. To do Frank justice, he had some very correct notions with regard to domestic happiness, and had he been poor and dependent upon his own exertions he might have been an average husband; at least he would have gotten on well with Ethelyn, whose stronger nature would have upheld his and been like a supporting prop to a feeble timber. As it was, he drew many pleasing pictures of the home which was to be his and Ethie's. Now it was in the city, near to his mother's and Mrs. General Tophevie, his mother's intimate friend, whose house was the open sesame to the creme de la creme of Boston society; but oftener it was a rose-embowered cottage, of easy access to the city, where he could have Ethie all to himself when his day's labor was over, and where the skies would not be brighter than Ethie's eyes as she welcomed him home at night, leaning over the gate in the pale buff muslin he liked so much, with rosebuds in her hair.

He had seen her thus so often in fancy, that the picture had become a reality, and refused to be erased at once from the mental canvas, when, in January, Miss Nettie Hudson, niece to Mrs. General Tophevie, came from Philadelphia, and at once took prestige of everything on the strength of the one hundred thousand dollars of which she was sole heiress. The Hudson blood was a mixture of blacksmith's and shoemaker's, and peddler's too, it was said; but that was far back in the past. The Hudsons of the present day scarcely knew whether peddler were spelled with two d's or one. They bought their shoes at the most fashionable shops, and could, if they chose, have their horses shod with gold, and so the handsome Nettie reigned supreme as belle. The moment Mrs. Dr. Van Buren saw her, she recognized her daughter-in-law, the future Mrs.

Frank, and Ethie's fate was sealed. There had been times when Mrs. Dr.

Van Buren thought it possible that Ethelyn might, after all, be the most favored of women, the wife of her son. These times were at Saratoga, and Newport, and Nahant, where Ethelyn Grant was more sought after than any young lady there, and where the proud woman herself took pride in talking of "my niece," hinting once, when Ethelyn's star was at its height, of a childish affaire du coeur between the young lady and her son, and insinuating that it might yet amount to something. She changed her mind when Nettie came with her one hundred thousand dollars, and showed a willingness to be admired by Frank. That childish affaire du coeur was a very childish affair, indeed; she never gave it a moment's thought herself--she greatly doubted if Frank had ever been in earnest, and if Ethelyn had led him into an entanglement, she would not, of course, hold him to his promise if he wished to be released. He must have a rich wife to support him in his refined tastes and luxurious habits, for her own fortune was not so great as many supposed. She might need it all herself, as she was far from being old, and then again it was wicked for cousins to marry each other. It did not matter if the mothers were only half-sisters; there was the same blood in the veins of each, and it would not do at all, even if Ethelyn's affections were enlisted, which Mrs. Van Buren greatly doubted.

This was what Mrs. Dr. Van Buren said to Ethelyn, after a stormy interview with Frank, who had at first sworn roundly that he would not give Ethie up, then had thanked his mother not to meddle with his business, then bidden her "go to thunder," and finally, between a cry and a blubber, said he should always like Ethie best if he married a hundred Netties. This was in the morning, and the afternoon train had carried Mrs. Dr. Van Buren to Chicopee, where Ethelyn's glowing face flashed a bright welcome when she came, but was white and pallid as the face of a corpse when the voluminous skirts of Mrs. Van Buren's poplin dress pa.s.sed through the gate next day and disappeared in the direction of the depot. Aunt Barbara was not at home--she had gone to visit a friend in Albany; and so Ethelyn met and fought with her pain alone, stifling it as best she could, and succeeding so well that Aunt Barbara, on her return, never suspected the fierce storm which Ethelyn had pa.s.sed through during her absence, or dreamed how anxiously the young girl watched and waited for some word from Frank which should say that he was ready to defy his mother, and abide by his first promise. But no such letter came, and at last, when she could bear the suspense no longer, Ethelyn wrote herself to her recreant lover, asking if it were really so that hereafter their lives lay apart from each other. If such was his wish, she was content, she said, and Frank Van Buren, who could not detect the air of superb scorn which breathed in every line of that letter, felt somehow aggrieved that "Ethie should take it so easy," and relieved too, that with her he should have no trouble, as he had antic.i.p.ated. He was getting used to Nettie, and getting to like her, too, for her manner toward him was far more agreeable than Ethie's brusque way of manifesting her impatience at his lack of manliness. It was inexplicable how Ethie could care for one so greatly her inferior, both mentally and physically, but it would seem that she loved him all the more for the very weakness which made her nature a necessity of his, and the bitterest pang she had ever felt came with the answer which Frank sent back to her letter, and which the reader has seen.

It was all over now, settled, finished, and two days after she hunted up Aunt Barbara's spectacles for her, and then sat very quiet while the old lady read Aunt Sophia's letter, announcing Frank's engagement with Miss Nettie Hudson, of Philadelphia. Aunt Barbara knew of Ethelyn's engagement with Frank, but like her sister at the time of its occurrence, she had esteemed it mere child's play. Later, however, as she saw how they clung to each other, she had thought it possible that something might come of it, but as Ethelyn was wholly reticent on that subject, it had never been mentioned between them. When, however, the news of Frank's second engagement came, Aunt Barbara looked over her spectacles straight at the girl, who, for any sign she gave, might have been a block of marble, so rigid was every muscle of her face, and even the tone of her voice as she said:

"I am glad Aunt Sophia is suited. Frank will be pleased with anything."

"She does not care for him and I am glad, for he is not half smart enough for her," was Aunt Barbara's mental comment, as she laid the letter by for a second reading, and then told her niece, as the last item of news, that old Captain Markham's nephew had come, and they were making a great ado over him now that he was a member of Congress, and a Judge, too. They had asked the Howells and Grangers and the Carters there to tea for the next day, she said, adding that she and Ethelyn were also invited. "They want to be polite to him," old Mrs. Markham said. Aunt Barbara continued, "but for my part, if I were he, I should not care much for politeness that comes so late. I remember when he was here ten years ago, on such a matter, and they fairly acted as if they were ashamed of him then; but t.i.tles make a difference. He's an Honorable now, and the old Captain is mighty proud of him."

What Aunt Barbara had said was strictly true, for there had been a time when proud old Captain Markham ignored his brother's family living on the far prairies of the West; but when the eldest son, Richard, called for him, had become a growing man, as boys out West are apt to do, rising from justice of the peace to a member of the State Legislature, then to a judgeship, and finally to a seat in Congress, and all before he was quite thirty-two, the Captain's tactics changed, and a most cordial letter, addressed to "My dear nephew," and signed "Your affectionate uncle," was sent to Washington, urging a visit from the young man ere he returned to Iowa.

And that was how Richard Markham, M.C., came to be in Chicopee at the precise time when Ethelyn's heart was bleeding at every pore, and ready to seize upon any new excitement which would divert it from its pain.

She remembered well the time he had once before visited Chicopee. She was a little girl of ten, fleeing across the meadow-land from a maddened cow, when a tall, athletic young man had come to her rescue, standing between her and danger, helping her over the fence, picking up the ap.r.o.n full of apples which she had been purloining from the Captain's orchard, and even pinning together a huge rent made in her dress by catching it upon a protruding splint as she sprang to the ground. She was too much frightened to know whether he had been wholly graceful in his endeavors to serve her, and too thankful for her escape to think that possibly her torn dress was the result of his rather awkward handling. She remembered only the dark, handsome face which bent so near to hers, the brown, curly head actually b.u.mping against her own, as he stooped to gather the stolen apples. She remembered, too, the kindly voice which asked if "her aunt would scold," while the large, red hands pinned together the unsightly seam, and she liked the Westerner, as the people of Chicopee called the stranger who had recently come among them. Frank was in Chicopee then, fishing on the river, when her mishaps occurred; and once after that, when walking with him, she had met Richard Markham, who bowed modestly and pa.s.sed on, never taking his hands from his pockets where they were planted so firmly, and never touching his hat as Frank said a gentleman would have done.

"Isn't he handsome?" Ethelyn had asked, and Frank had answered, "Looks well enough, though anybody with half an eye would know he was a codger from the West. His pants are a great deal too short; and look at his coat--at least three years behind the fashion; and such a hat, with that rusty old band of c.r.a.pe around it. Wonder if he is in mourning for his grandmother. Oh, my! we boys would hoot him in Boston. He's what I call a gawky."

That settled it with Ethelyn. If fourteen-year-old Frank Van Buren, whose pants and coats and neckties and hats were always the latest make, said that Richard Markham was a gawky, he was one, and henceforth during his stay in Chicopee, the Western young man was regarded by Ethelyn with a feeling akin to pity for his benighted condition. Aunt Barbara's pew was very near to Captain Markham's, and Richard, who was not much of a churchman, and as often as any way lounged upon the faded damask curtains, instead of standing up, often met Ethelyn's brown eyes fixed curiously upon him, but never dreamed that she regarded him as a species of heathen, whom it would be a pious act to Christianize. Richard rarely thought of himself at all, or if he did, it was with a feeling that he "was well enough "; that if his mother and "the neighbors" were satisfied with him, as he knew they were, he ought to be satisfied with himself. So he had no suspicion of the severe criticism pa.s.sed upon him by the little girl who read the service so womanly, he thought, eating caraway and lozenges between times, and whose face he carried in memory back to his prairie home, a.s.sociating her always with the graceful dark-brown heifer bearing so strong a resemblance to the cow which had so frightened Ethelyn on the day of his first introduction to her.

But he forgot her in the excitement which followed, when he began to grow rapidly, as only Western men can grow, and we doubt if she had been in his mind for years until her name was mentioned by Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, who saw in him a most eligible match for her niece. He was well connected--own nephew to Captain Markham, and first cousin to Mrs.

Senator Woodhull, of New York, who kept a suite of servants for herself and husband, and had the finest turn-out in the Park. Yes, he would do nicely for Ethelyn and by way of quieting her conscience, which kept whispering that she had not been altogether just to her niece, Mrs. Dr.

Van Buren packed her trunk and took the train for Chicopee the very day of Mrs. Captain Markham's tea party.

Ethelyn was going, and she looked very pretty in her dark-green silk, with the bit of soft, rich lace at the throat and the scarlet ribbon in her hair. She was not dressed for effect. She cared very little, in fact, what impression she made upon the Western Judge, though she did wonder if, as a Judge, he was much improved from the raw young man whom Frank had called a "gawky." He was standing with his elbow upon the mantel talking to Susie Granger, when Ethelyn entered Mrs. Markham's parlor; one foot was carelessly crossed over the other, so that only the toe of the boot touched the carpet, while his hand grasped his large handkerchief rather awkwardly. He was not at ease with the ladies; he had never been very much accustomed to their society. He did not know what to say to them, and Susie's saucy black eyes and sprightly manner evidently embarra.s.sed and abashed him. That vocabulary of small talk so prevalent in society, and a limited knowledge of which is rather necessary to one's getting on well with everybody, were unknown to him, and he was casting about for some way to escape from his companion, when Ethelyn was introduced, and his mind went back to the stolen apples and the torn dress which he had pinned together.

Judge Markham was a tall, finely formed man, with deep hazel eyes, which could be very stern or very soft in their expression, just as his mood happened to be. But the chief attraction of his face was his smile, which changed his entire expression, making him very handsome, as Ethelyn thought, when he stood for a moment holding her hand between both his broad palms and chatting familiarly with her as with an old acquaintance. He could talk to her better than to Susie Granger, for Ethie, though neither very deep nor learned, was fond of books and tolerably well versed in the current literature of the day. Besides that, she had a faculty of seeming to know more than she really did and so the impression left upon the Judge's mind, when the little party was over and he had returned from escorting Ethelyn to her door, was that Miss Grant was far superior to any girl he had ever met since Daisy died, and like the Judge in Whittier's "Maud Muller," he whistled s.n.a.t.c.hes of an old love tune he had not whistled in years, as he went slowly back to his uncle's, and thought strange thoughts for him, the grave old bachelor who had said he should never marry. He was not looking for a wife, as rumor intimated, but he dreamed of Ethelyn Grant that night, and called upon her the next day, and the next, until the village began to gossip, and Mrs. Dr. Van Buren was in an ecstasy of delight, talking openly of the delightful time her niece would have in Washington the next winter, and predicting for her a brilliant career as reigning belle, and even hinting the possibility of her taking a house so as to entertain her Boston friends.

And Ethelyn herself had many and varied feelings on the subject, the strangest of which was a perverse desire to let Frank know that she did not care--that her heart was not broken by his desertion, and that there were those who prized her even if he did not. She had criticised Judge Markham very severely. She had weighed him in the balance with Frank, and found him sadly, wanting in all those little points which she considered as marks of culture and good breeding. He was not a ladies'

man; he was even worse than that, for he was sometimes positively rude and ungentlemanly, as she thought, when he would open a gate or a door and pa.s.s through it first himself instead of holding it deferentially for her, as Frank would have done. He did not know how to swing his cane, or touch his hat, or even bow as Frank Van Buren did; while the cut of his coat, if not six, was at least two years behind the times, and he did not seem to know it either. All these things Ethelyn wrote against him; but the account was more than balanced by the seat in Congress, the antic.i.p.ated winter in Washington, the great wealth he was said to possess, the high estimation in which she knew he was held, and the keen pang of disappointment from which she was suffering. This last really did the most to turn the scale in Richard's favor, for, like many a poor, deluded girl, she fancied that marrying another was the surest way to forget a past which it was not pleasant to remember. She respected Judge Markham highly, and knew that in everything pertaining to a n.o.ble manhood he was worth a dozen Franks, even if he never had been to dancing school, and did not obsequiously pick up the handkerchief which she purposely dropped to see what he would do. And so, when Aunt Sophia had gone back to the city, and Judge Markham was in a few days to return to his Western home, she rode with him around the Pond, and when she came back the dead Daisy's ring was upon her finger and she was a promised wife. A dozen times since then she had been tempted to write to Richard Markham, asking to be released from her engagement; for, bad as she has thus far appeared to the reader, there were many n.o.ble traits in her character, and she shrank from wronging the man of whom she knew she was not worthy.

But the deference paid her as Mrs. Judge Markham-elect, the delight of Aunt Sophia, the approbation of Aunt Barbara, the letter of congratulation sent her by Mrs. Senator Woodhull, Richard's cousin, and more than all, Frank's discomfiture, as evinced by the complaining note he sent her, prevailed to keep her to her promise, and the bridegroom, when he came in June to claim her hand, little guessed how heavy was the heart which lay in the bosom of the young girl so pa.s.sively suffering his caresses, but whose lips never moved in response to the kiss he pressed upon them.

She was very shy, he thought--more so, even, than when he saw her last; but he loved her just as well, and never suspected that, when on the first evening of his arrival he sat with his arm around her, wondering a little what made her so silent, she was burning with mortification because the coat he wore was the very same she had criticised last spring, hoping in her heart of hearts that long before he came to her again it might find its proper place, either in the sewing society or with some Jewish vender of old clothes. Yet here it was again, and her head was resting against it, while her heart beat almost audibly, and her voice was even petulant in its tone as she answered her lover's questions. Ethelyn was making a terrible mistake, and she knew it, hating herself for her duplicity, and vaguely hoping that something would happen to save her from the fate she so much dreaded. But nothing did happen, and it was now too late to retract herself. The bridal trousseau was prepared under Mrs. Van Buren's supervision, the bridal guests were bidden, the bridal tour was planned, the bridegroom had arrived, and she would keep her word if she died in the attempt.