Ethelyn's Mistake Part 2

The next three days pa.s.sed rapidly, bringing at last the eventful one for which all others were made, it seemed to him, as he looked out upon the early, dewy morning, thinking how pleasant it was there in that quiet New England town, and trying to fight back the unwelcome headache which finally drove him back to his bed, from which he wrote the little note to Ethelyn, who might think strange at his non-appearance when he had been accustomed to go to her immediately after breakfast. He never dreamed of the relief it was to her not to have him come, as he lay flushed and heated upon his pillow, the veins upon his forehead swelling with their pressure of hot blood, and his ear strained to catch the first sound of the servant's returning step. Ethelyn would either come herself to see him, or send some cheerful message, he was sure.

How, then, was he disappointed to find his own note returned, with the a.s.surance that "it did not matter, as he would only be in the way."

Several times he read it over, trying to extract some comfort from it, and finding it at last in the fact that Ethelyn had a headache, too.

This was the reason for her seeming indifference; and in wishing himself able to go to her, Richard forgot in part his own pain, and fell into a quiet sleep, which did him untold good. It was three o'clock when at last he rose, knowing pretty well all that had been doing during the hours of his seclusion in the darkened room. The "Van Buren set" had come, and he overheard Mrs. Markham's Esther saying to Aunt Barbara's Betsy, when she came for the silver cake-basket, that "Mr. Frank seemed in mighty fine spirits, considering all the flirtations he used to have with Miss Ethelyn."

This was the first intimation Richard had received of a flirtation, and even now it did not strike him unpleasantly. They were cousins, he reflected, and as such had undoubtedly been very familiar with each other. It was natural, and nothing for which he need care. He did not care, either, as he deliberately began to make his wedding toilet, thinking himself, when it was completed, that he was looking unusually well in the entire new suit which his cousin, Mrs. Woodhull, had insisted upon his getting in New York, when on his way home in April he had gone that way and told her of his approaching marriage. It was a splendid suit, made after the most approved style, and costing a sum which he had kept secret from his mother, who, nevertheless, guessed somewhere near the truth, and thought the Olney tailor would have suited him quite as well at a quarter the price, or even Mrs. Jones, who, having been a tailoress when a young girl in Vermont, still kept up her profession to a limited extent, retaining her "press-board" and "goose,"

and the mammoth shears which had cut Richard's linen coat after a Chicago pattern of not the most recent date Richard thought very little about his personal appearance--too little, in fact--but he felt a glow of satisfaction now as he contemplated himself in the gla.s.s, feeling only that Ethelyn would be pleased to see him thus.

And Ethelyn was pleased. She had half expected the old coat of she did not know how many years' make, and there was a fierce pang of pain in her heart as she imagined Frank's cool criticisms, and saw, in fancy, the contrast between the two men. So when Judge Markham alighted at the gate, and from her window she took in at a glance his tout ensemble, the revulsion of feeling was so great that the glad tears sprang to her eyes, and a brighter, happier look broke over her face than had been there for many weeks. She was not present when Frank was introduced to him; but when next she met her cousin, he said to her, in his usual off-hand way, "I say, Ethie, he is pretty well got up for a Westerner.

But for his eyes and teeth I should never have known him for the chap who wore short pants and stove-pipe hat with the b.u.t.ternut-colored c.r.a.pe. Who was he in mourning for anyway?"

It was too bad to be reminded of Abigail Jones, just as she was beginning to feel more comfortable; but Ethelyn bore it very well, and laughingly answered, "For his sweetheart, I dare say," her cheeks flushing very red as Frank whispered slyly, "You are even, then, on that score."

No man of any delicacy of feeling or true refinement would have made this allusion to the past, with his first love within a few hours of her bridal, and his own betrothed standing near. But Frank had neither delicacy of feeling nor genuine refinement, and he even felt a secret gratification in seeing the blood mount to Ethelyn's cheeks as he thus referred to the past.

CHAPTER IV

THE BRIDAL

There was a great deal of sincere and tender interest in Richard's manner when, in reply to his inquiries for Ethelyn's headache, Aunt Barbara told him of the almost fainting fit in the morning and her belief that Ethelyn was not as strong this summer as she used to be.

"The mountain air will do her good, I trust," casting wistful glances up the stairs and toward the door of the chamber, where girlish voices were heard, Nettie Hudson and Susie Granger chatting gayly and uttering exclamations of delight as they arranged and adjusted Ethelyn's bridal robes.

Once during the period of his judgeship Richard had attended a large and fashionable bridal party, but when, on his return to Olney, Melinda Jones questioned him with regard to the dresses of the bride and the guests, he found himself utterly unable to give either fabric, fashion, or even color, so little attention had he given to the subject. He never noticed such things, he said, but he believed some of the dresses were made of something flimsy, for he could see through them, and he knew they were very long, for he had stepped on some half dozen. And this was all the information the inquisitive Melinda could obtain. Dress was of little consequence, he thought, so it was clean and whole.

This was his theory; but when, as the twilight deepened on the Chicopee hills, and the lamps were lighted in Aunt Barbara's parlors, and old Captain Markham began to wonder "why the plague the folks did not come,"

as he stalked up and down the piazza in all the pride and pomposity of one who felt himself to all intents and purposes the village aristocrat, and when the mysterious door of Ethie's room, which had been closed so long, was opened, and the bridegroom told that he might go in, he started in surprise at the beautiful tableau presented to his view as he stepped across the threshold. As was natural, he fancied that never before had he seen three young girls so perfectly beautiful as the three before him--Ethie, and Susie, and Nettie.

As a matter of course, he gave the preference to Ethelyn, who was very, very lovely in her bridal robes, with the orange wreath resting like a coronet upon her marble brow. There were pearls upon her fair neck and pearls upon her arms, the gift of Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, who had waited till the very last, hoping the Judge would have forethought enough to buy them himself. But the Judge had not. He knew something of diamonds, for they had been Daisy's favorites; but pearls were novelties to him, and Ethelyn's pale cheeks would have burned crimson had she known that he was thinking "how becoming those white beads were to her."

Poor, ignorant Richard! He will know more by and by of what const.i.tutes a fashionable lady's toilet; but now he is in blissful ignorance of minutiae, and sees only the tout ensemble, which he p.r.o.nounces perfect.

He was half afraid of her, though, she seemed so cold, so pa.s.sive, so silent, and when in the same breath Susie Granger asks if he ever saw anyone so lovely as Ethelyn and bids him kiss her quick, he starts and hesitates, and finally kisses Susie instead. He might, perhaps, have done the same with Ethelyn if she had not stepped backward to avoid it, her long train sweeping across the hearth where that morning she had knelt in such utter desolation, and where now was lying a bit of blackened paper, which the housemaid's broom had not found when, early in the day, the room was swept and dusted. So Ethelyn's white satin brushed against the gossamer thing, which floated upward for a moment, and then settled back upon the heavy, shining folds. It was Richard who saw it first, and Richard's hand which brushed away the skeleton of Frank's letter from the skirts of his bride, leaving a soiled, yellowish stain, which Susie Granger loudly deplored, while Ethelyn only drew her drapery around her, saying coldly, that "it did not matter in the least.

She would as soon have it there as not."

It was meet, she thought, that the purity of her bridal garments should be tarnished; for was not her heart all stained, and black, and crisp with cruel deception? That little incident, however, affected her strangely, bringing back so vividly the scene on the ledge of rocks beneath the New England laurels, where Frank had sat beside her and poured words of boyish pa.s.sion into her ear. There was for a moment a pitiful look of anguish in her eyes as they went out into the summer night toward the huckleberry hills, where lay that ledge of ma.s.sy rock, and then come back to the realities about her. Frank saw the look of pain, and it awoke in his own breast an answering throb as he wondered if, after all, Ethie would not have preferred that he were standing by her instead of the grave Judge, fitting on his gloves with an awkwardness which said that such articles were comparative strangers to his large, red hands.

It was time now to go down. The guests had all arrived, the clergyman was waiting, and Captain Markham had grown very red in the face with his impatience, which his wife tried in vain to quiet. If at this last moment there arose in Ethelyn's bosom any wild impulse to break away from the dreadful scene, and rush out into the darkness which lay so softly upon the hills, she put it aside, with the thought, "too late now--forever too late"; and taking the arm which Richard offered her, she went mechanically down the staircase into the large parlor where the wedding guests were a.s.sembled. Surely, surely, she did not know what she was doing, or realize the solemn words: "I charge and require you both, as ye shall answer at the great day, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it, for be ye well a.s.sured," and so forth. She did not even hear them; for the numb, dead feeling which crept over her, chilling her blood, and making her hand, which Richard took in his while he fitted the wedding ring, so cold and clammy to the touch, that Richard felt tempted to hold and chafe it in his own warm, broad palms; but that was not in accordance with the ceremony, and so he let it fall, wondering that Ethelyn could be so cold when the sweat was standing in great drops upon his own face, and moistening his wavy hair, which cl.u.s.tered in short, thick curls around his brow, making him look so handsome, as more than one maiden thought, envying Ethelyn her good fortune, and marveling at the pallor of her lips and the rigidity of her form.

The ceremony was ended, and Ethelyn Grant was Mrs. Richard Markham; but the new name brought no blushes to her cheek, nor yet the kiss her husband gave her, nor the congratulations of the guests, nor Aunt Barbara's tears, which dropped upon the forehead of her darling as the good woman bent over her and thought how she had lost her; but when Frank Van Buren stooped down to touch her lips the sluggish blood quickened and a thrill went through and through her veins, sending the bright color to her cheeks, which burned as with a hectic flush. Frank saw the power he held, but to his credit he did not then exult; he only felt that it was finished, that Ethie was gone past his recall; and for the first time in his life he experienced a genuine pang of desolation, such as he had never felt before, and he fought hard to master his emotions while he watched the bride receiving the bridal guests. Another than Frank was watching her, too--Mrs. Dr. Van Buren--who at one time feared lest Ethelyn should faint, and who, as soon as an opportunity offered, whispered to her niece, "Do, Ethie, put some animation in your manner or people will think you an unwilling bride."

For a moment a gleam of anger flashed from the eyes which looked unflinchingly into Mrs. Van Buren's, and the pale lips quivered with pa.s.sion. But Ethelyn had too much pride to admit of her letting the people know what she was suffering, and so with great effort she rallied her fainting spirits, and twice ere the evening was at a close her merry laugh was heard even above Susie Granger's, as a knot of her gay companions gathered round her with their merry jokes and gay repartees.

Susie Granger was in her happiest mood, and her lively spirits seemed to pervade the whole party. Now that he knew her better, Richard was more at ease with her, and returned her playful sallies until even Ethelyn wondered to see him so funny. He never once forgot her, however, as was evinced by the loving glances he bent upon her, and by his hovering constantly at her side, as if afraid to lose her.

Once, when they were standing together and Frank was near to them, Richard laid his hand upon Ethelyn's shoulder which the cut of the wedding dress left bare. It was a very beautiful neck--white, and plump, and soft--and Richard's hand pressed somewhat heavily; but with a shiver Ethelyn drew herself away, and Frank, who was watching her, fancied he saw the flesh creep backward from the touch. Perhaps it was a feeling of pity, and perhaps it was a mean desire to test his own influence over her, which prompted him carelessly to take her hand to inspect the wedding-ring. It was only her hand, but as Frank held it in his own, he felt it growing warm and flushed, while the color deepened on Ethelyn's cheeks, and then died suddenly away at Frank's characteristic remark, spoken for her ear alone, "You feel like thunder, Ethie, and so do I."

The speech did Ethelyn good. No matter how she felt, it was not Frank's place to speak to her thus. She was now a wife, and she meant to be true to her marriage vow, both in look and deed; so, with an impatient gesture, she flung aside Frank's hand, repelling him fiercely with the reply, "You are mistaken, sir--at least, so far as I am concerned."

After that she stayed more with Richard, and once, of her own accord, she put her arm in his and stood half leaning against him with both hands clasped together, while he held the bouquet which Mrs. Senator Woodhull had sent by express from New York. It is true that Richard smelled and breathed upon the flowers oftener than was desirable; and once Ethelyn saw him extracting leaves from the very choicest blossoms; but on the whole he did very well, considering that it was the first time he had ever held a lady's bouquet in such an expensive holder.

As Ethelyn had predicted, the evening was hot and sultry; but the bugs and beetles and millers she had dreaded did not come in to annoy her, and when, as the clock struck twelve, the company dispersed, they were sincere in their a.s.sertions of having pa.s.sed a delightful evening, and many were the good wishes expressed for Mrs. Judge Markham's happiness as the guests took their way to their respective homes.

An hour later and the lights had disappeared from Miss Barbara Bigelow's windows, and the summer stars looked down upon the quiet house where that strange bridal had been.

CHAPTER V

THE HONEYMOON

From Mrs. Senator Woodhull's elegant house--where Mrs. Judge Markham had been petted, and flattered, and caressed, and Mr. Judge Markham had been adroitly tutored and trained without the least effect--the newly wedded pair went on to Quebec and Montreal, and thence to the White Mountains, where Ethelyn's handsome traveling dress was ruined and Richard's linen coat, so obnoxious to his bride, was torn past repair and laid away in one of Ethelyn's trunks, with the remark that "Mother could mend it for Andy, who always took his brother's cast-off clothes." The hair trunk had been left in Chicopee, and so Ethelyn had not that to vex her.

Noticed everywhere, and admired by all whom she met, the first part of her wedding trip was not as irksome as she had feared it might be.

Pleased, as a boy, with his young bride, Richard was all attention, and Ethelyn had only to express a wish to have it gratified, so that casual lookers-on would have p.r.o.nounced her supremely happy. And Ethelyn's heart did not ache one-half so hard as on that terrible day of her bridal. In the railway car, on the crowded steamboat, or at the large hotels, where all were entire strangers, she forgot to watch and criticise her husband, and if any dereliction from etiquette did occur, he yielded so readily to her suggestion that to him seemed an easy task.

The habits of years, however, are not so easily broken, and by the time Saratoga was reached, Richard's patience began to give way beneath Ethelyn's multifarious exactions and the ennui consequent upon his traveling about so long. Still he did pretty well for him, growing very red in the face with his efforts to draw on gloves a size too small, and feeling excessively hot and uncomfortable in his coat, which he wore even in the retirement of his own room, where he desired so much to indulge in the cool luxury of shirt-sleeves--a suggestion which Ethelyn heard with horror, openly exclaiming against the glaring vulgarity, and asking, a little contemptuously, if that were the way he had been accustomed to do at home.

"Why, yes," he answered. "Out West upon the prairies we go in for comfort, and don't mind so small a matter as shirt-sleeves on a sweltering August day."

"Please do not use such expressions as sweltering and go in--they do not sound well," Ethelyn rejoined. "And now I think of it, I wish you would talk more to the ladies in the parlor. You hardly spoke to Mrs. Cameron last evening, and she directed most of her conversation to you, too. I was afraid she would either think that you were rude, or else that you did not know what to say."

"She hit it right, if she came to the latter conclusion," Richard said, good-humoredly, "for the fact is, Ethie, I don't know what to say to such women as she. I am not a ladies' man, and it's no use trying to make me over. You can't teach old dogs new tricks."

Ethie fairly groaned as she clasped her bracelets upon her arms and shook down the folds of her blue silk; then after a moment she continued: "You can talk to me, and why not to others?"

"You are my wife, Ethie, and I love you, which makes a heap of difference," Richard said, and winding his arms around Ethie's waist he drew her face toward his own and kissed it affectionately.

They had been three days at Saratoga when this little scene occurred and their room was one of those miserable little apartments in the Ainsworth block which look out upon nothing but a patch of weeds and the rear of a church. Ethelyn did not like it at all, and liked it the less because she felt that to some extent her husband was to blame. He ought to have written and engaged rooms beforehand--Aunt Van Buren always did, and Mrs. Col. Tophevie, and everybody who understood the ins and outs of fashionable life. But Richard did not understand them. He believed in taking what was offered to him without making a fuss, he said. He had never been to Saratoga before, and he secretly hoped he should never come again, for he did not enjoy those close, hot rooms and worm-eaten furniture any better than Ethelyn did, but he accepted it with a better grace, saying, when he first entered it, that "he could put up with 'most anything, though to be sure it was hotter than an oven."

His mode of expressing himself had never suited Ethelyn. Particular, and even elegant in her choice of language, it grated upon her sensitive ear, and forgetting that she had all her life heard similar expressions in Chicopee, she charged it to the West, and Iowa was blamed for the faults of her son more than she deserved. At Saratoga, where they met many of her acquaintances, all of whom were anxious to see the fastidious Ethelyn's husband, it seemed to her that he was more remiss than ever in those little things which make up the finished gentleman, while his peculiar expressions sometimes made every nerve quiver with pain. The consequence of this was that Ethelyn became a very little cross, as Richard thought, though she had never so openly attacked him as on that day, the third after their arrival, when to her horror he took off his coat, preparatory to a little comfort, while she was dressing for dinner. At Ethelyn's request, however, he put it on again, saying as he did so, that he was "sweating like a butcher," which remark called out his wife's contemptuous inquiries concerning his habits at home. Richard was still too much in love with his young wife to feel very greatly irritated. In word and deed she had done her duty toward him thus far, and he had nothing to complain of. It is true she was very quiet and pa.s.sive, and undemonstrative, never giving him back any caress as he had seen wives do. But then he was not very demonstrative himself, and so he excused it the more readily in her, and loved her all the same. It amused him that a girl of twenty should presume to criticise him, a man of thirty-two, a Judge, and a member of Congress, to whom the Olney people paid such deference, and he bore with her at first just as a mother would bear with the little child which a.s.sumed a superiority over her.

This afternoon, however, when she said so much to him, he was conscious of a very little irritation, for he was naturally high-spirited. But he put the feeling down, and gayly kissed his six-weeks bride, who, touched with his forbearance, kissed him back again, and suffered him to hold her cool face a moment between his hot, moist hands, while he bent over her.

She did respect him in spite of his vulgarism; nor was she unconscious of the position which, as his wife, she held. It was very pleasant to hear people say of her when she pa.s.sed by:

"That is Mrs. Judge Markham, of Iowa--her husband is a member of Congress."

Very pleasant, too, to meet with his friends, other M. C.'s, who paid her deference on his account. Had they stayed away from Saratoga all might have been well; but alas, they were there, and so was all of Ethelyn's world--the Tophevies, the Hales, the Hungerfords and Van Burens, with Nettie Hudson, opening her great blue eyes at Richard's mistakes and asking Frank in Ethelyn's hearing, "if that Judge Markham's manners were not a little outre."

They certainly were outre, there was no denying it, and Ethelyn's blood tingled to her finger tips as she wondered if it would always be so. It is a pitiable thing for a wife to blush for her husband, to watch constantly lest he depart from those little points of etiquette which women catch intuitively, but which some of our most learned men fail to learn in a lifetime. And here they greatly err, for no man, however well versed he may be in science and literature, is well educated, or well balanced, or excusable, if he neglects the little things which good breeding and common politeness require of him, and Richard was somewhat to be blamed. It did not follow because his faults had never been pointed out to him that they did not exist, or that others did not observe them besides his wife. Ethelyn, to be sure, was more deeply interested than anyone else, and felt his mistakes more keenly, while at the same time she was over-fastidious, and had not the happiest faculty for correcting him. She did not love him well enough to be very careful of wounding him, but the patience and good humor with which he received her reprimand that hot August afternoon, when the thermometer was one hundred in the shade, and any man would have been excusable for retorting upon his wife who lectured him, awoke a throb of something nearer akin to love than anything she had felt since the night when she stood upon the sandy beach and heard the story of Daisy.

Richard was going to do better. He would wear his coat all the time, both day and night, if Ethelyn said so, He would not lean his elbow on the table while waiting for dessert, as he had more than once been guilty of doing; he would not help himself to a dish before pa.s.sing it to the ladies near him; he would talk to Mrs. Cameron in the evening, and would try not to be so absorbed in his own thoughts as to pay no attention when Mrs. Tophevie was addressing herself directly to him; he would laugh in the right place, and, when spoken to, would answer in something besides monosyllables; he would try to keep his hands out of his pockets and his handkerchief out of his hand, or at least he would not "snap it," as Ethie said he had done on the first evening of his arrival at Saratoga. In short, he promised a complete reformation, even saying that if Ethelyn would select some person who was an fait in those matters in which he was so remiss, he would watch and copy that man to the letter. Would she name someone? And Ethelyn named her cousin Frank, while Richard felt a flush of something like resentment that he should be required to imitate a person whom in his secret heart he despised as dandyish, and weak, and silly, and "namby-pamby," as he would probably have expressed it if he had not forsworn slang phrases of every kind.

But Richard had pledged his word, and meant to keep it; and so it was to all appearances a very happy and loving couple which, when the dinner gong sounded, walked into the dining room with Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's set, Ethelyn's handsome blue silk sweeping far behind her, and her white bare arm just touching the coat-sleeve of her husband, who was not insensible to the impression made by the beautiful woman at his side.

There were no lectures that night, for Richard had done his best, talking at least twenty times with both Mrs. Cameron and Mrs. Colonel Tophevie, whom he found more agreeable than he had supposed. Then he had held Ethelyn's white cloak upon his arm, and stood patiently against the wall, while up at the United States she danced set after set--first, the Lancers, with young Lieutenant Gray, then a polka with John Tophevie, and lastly, a waltz with Frank Van Buren, who whirled his fair partner about the room with a velocity which made Richard dizzy and awoke sundry thoughts not wholly complimentary to that doubtful dance, the waltz.

Richard did not dance himself, at least not latterly. In his younger days, when he and Abigail Jones attended the quilting-frolics together and the "paring bees," he had with other young men, tried his feet at Scotch reels, French fours, "The Cheat," and the "Twin Sisters," with occasionally a cotillion, but he was not accomplished in the art. Even the Olney girls called him awkward, preferring almost anyone else for a partner, and so he abandoned the floor and cultivated his head rather than his heels. He liked to see dancing, and at first it was rather pleasant watching Ethelyn's lithe figure gliding gracefully through the intricate movements of the Lancers; but when it came to the waltz, he was not so sure about it, and he wondered if it were necessary for Frank Van Buren to clasp her as tightly about the waist as he did, or for her to lean so languidly upon his shoulder.