Mr. Claghorn's Daughter Part 14

Had Tabitha Cone seen the gracious manner of the speaker she would have been as surprised as was the lady herself. But in the presence of this beautiful face, the evident honesty of the narration of the tale she had heard, the underlying sadness beneath the serene expression, it would have needed a harder nature than Miss Claghorn's to be anything but gracious. But she flushed with self-reproach when Natalie touched upon what she had for the moment completely forgotten.

"But," exclaimed Natalie, "I have not answered the question in your letter. The matter of religion, I was led to believe, would be to you most important. It is to so many; the Marquise, Pre Martin, Mrs.

Leon--have all been grieved--I am an infidel."

The coolness with which this statement was made shocked her auditor even more than the fact. The perplexed smile upon the girl's face; the yearning look, that seemed to recognize something wanting in her, some faculty absent which left her without a clew to the cause of the successive shocks emanating from her--these things, if only dimly appreciated by Miss Claghorn, were sufficiently apparent to make her feel as though a weight had fallen upon her heart. "Oh, my child, that is an awful thing to say!" she exclaimed.

The way the words were uttered showed that all the tenderness, long hidden, of the speaker's nature was suddenly called to life. No exhortation ever heard by Natalie had so affected her as this outburst of a hard old woman. She seized the other's hand, murmuring, "Dear Aunt!" She pitied, even while she envied, the victim of superst.i.tion, as the G.o.d-fearing woman pitied the errant soul. Neither understood the source of the other's emotion, but they met in complete sympathy. The elder woman pressed the hand that had grasped her own, and leaning toward her grand-niece, kissed her affectionately. What old and long-dried springs of feeling were awakened in the withered breast as the oldest descendant of the Puritan preacher yearned over the youngest of the line? Who shall tell? Perhaps the barren motherhood of the ancient spinster was stirred for once; perhaps the never-known craving for a mother's love moved the younger one. For a time both were silent.

"Come to me to-day, at once," whispered Miss Achsah, blushing, had she known it, and quivering strangely.

The heartiness of the invitation troubled the visitor, whose answer was less gracious than a chief characteristic required. "I will come to-day," she answered. "Let it be understood as a visit only." Then she went out, and in the lumbering carriage was driven back to Hampton.

Miss Claghorn watched her from the window. Gradually she was recovering herself and secretly feeling mightily ashamed, yet pleased, too. Tabitha came in.

"Well?" she asked.

"Well," echoed Miss Claghorn, acidly.

"What are you going to do?"

"Pray," replied the lady, as she ascended the stairs.

"Must have forgot it this morning," was Miss Cone's mental comment.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHEREAT CYNICS AND MATRONS MAY SMILE INCREDULOUS.

When Natalie returned, Leonard was occupying his old seat in the Square, a different man from the man she had met in the earlier morning. He had been shocked, grieved, even terrified, and above all ashamed; yet joy mingled with his grief, and his consciousness of new manhood was not without its glory; and, withal, his breast was filled with a flood of tremulous tenderness for the woman, and a longing for her forgiveness.

His emotions were sufficiently confusing to be vexing, and he had striven to give the matter a jaunty aspect. Young men will be young men, even when students of divinity, and he had heard more than one tale of kisses. He had not much liked such tales, nor the bragging and a.s.sumption of their tellers; still, a few hours since, he would have seen no great offense in kissing a pretty woman; but a few hours since he had not known anything about the matter. He was sure now that the rakes of his college days, the boasters and conquerors, had been as ignorant as he. Otherwise they could not have told of their deeds; the thing he had done he could tell no man.

And so, though he had but kissed a woman, he felt that kissing a woman was a wonderful thing; and he failed in the attempt to look upon the matter airily, as of a little affair that would have in the future a flavor of roguishness. It was not a matter to be treated lightly; his grief and the stabs of conscience were too sharp for that--yet he had no remorse. He was not minded to repeat the act; he had fled from such repet.i.tion, and he would not repeat it; neither would he regret it. It should be a memory, a secret for hidden shame, for hidden pride, for grief, for joy.

He intercepted Natalie as she descended from the carriage, and, in a brief interview in the hotel parlor, learned of her intention to return at once to Miss Claghorn. The carriage was waiting, there was no reason for delaying her departure; there was nothing to do but to call the maid, and he dispatched a servant to do that. He volunteered to see to the immediate transmission of the luggage of the travelers to Easthampton, and made thereof an excuse for leaving before the maid reappeared; and when once without the hotel door, and on his way to the station, he breathed a sigh as of one relieved of a load.

Some days pa.s.sed and Leonard had not appeared at Easthampton. One morning he received the following note from Paula:

"Dear Leonard--I suppose you are very busy in these last days of the term, and we all excuse your neglect of us. I shall be at the Hampton station on Thursday, having promised to see Natalie's maid (who don't speak English) on the evening train for New York. Perhaps you can meet me and return with me to dinner. Cousin Alice hopes you will."

He was careful not to find Paula until the train had gone, and he had a.s.sured himself that Berthe was among the pa.s.sengers. Then he appeared.

"Why, Leonard," exclaimed Paula, "have you been ill?" The tone was full of concern. He shrank as if he had been struck.

"No," he said; "a little anxious--troubled."

"Over your freckled, gawky, thickshod theologues; what a pity you're not in the Church!"

This kind of outburst on the part of the speaker usually made Leonard laugh. To-night his laugh sounded hollow. "I suppose your Episcopalian students wear kids and use face powder," he said.

"There's no harm in kid gloves; inner vileness----"

"Is very bad, Paula; we'll not discuss it."

They walked across the Square, on the other side of which she had left the carriage. She looked up to his face to seek an explanation of the irritation discoverable in his tone; she noted that his hat was drawn down over his eyes in a way very unusual. They walked on in silence.

"You will come with me?" she asked, when they had reached the carriage.

"Not to-night. You are right, I am not very well; it is nothing, I will come out this week. Has Natalie discharged her maid?"

"Not for any fault. Mrs. Leon was very glad to get Berthe, and as Natalie is situated----"

"I see. I hope she is comfortable with Cousin Achsah."

"They hit it off astonishingly well. The fact is, n.o.body could help loving Natalie--I am surprised that you have not been to see her."

"I know I have seemed negligent. I have a good excuse. Where, in New York, does Mrs. Leon live?"

"At the Fifth Avenue Hotel," she replied, wondering at the question.

"Well," he said, after a pause, and treating her answer as though, like his question, it was of no real interest. "I must not keep you here. You don't mind going home alone?"

"I should be glad of your company; aside from that, I don't mind."

"Then, good-bye," touching her hand for an instant. "Make my excuses to Mrs. Joe; I have been really very busy. Home, James." He closed the carriage door and walked rapidly away, leaving Paula vexed, to sink back in the soft seat and to wonder.

He walked across the Square to the region of shops and entered a large grocery store--at this time of day, deserted. "Could you give me a bill for fifty dollars?" he asked of the cashier.

"I believe I can, Professor," replied the official, drawing one from the desk, and exchanging it for the smaller bills handed him by Leonard, who thanked him and went out. That night he enclosed the single bill in an envelope, and addressed it to Mademoiselle Berthe, in care of Mrs. Leon.

As he could have told no man why he had done this, so he could not tell himself why. Cynics and matrons may smile incredulous, but the kiss he had given and received had wrought an upheaval in this man's soul. He who defers his kissing until he has reached maturity has much to learn, and if the learning comes in a sudden burst of light in still and quiet chambers, that have until now been dark, the man may well be dazzled.

He did not think her sordid. He hoped she would understand that he sent her that which he believed would be of use to her. But when, a week later, he received a little box and found within it an exquisite pin, which he, unlearned in such matters, still knew must have cost a large part of the sum he had sent her, he was pleased, and a thrill pa.s.sed through him. Like him, she would remember, nor in her mind would there be any thought but one of tenderness for a day that could never come again. It would be a fair memory that would trouble him no more, but would remain forever fair, of her who had opened to him the portals of a new and beautiful world.

CHAPTER XIV.

IN THE WHITE HOUSE, A DAMSEL OR THE DEVIL--WHICH?

When Paula had said to Leonard that Natalie and Miss Claghorn "hit it off astonishingly well," she had fairly indicated the harmonious relations prevailing at the White House, as well as the general astonishment that the elder lady had so graciously received a religious outcast. It was true that Miss Achsah's innate benevolence was habitually shrouded in uncompromising orthodoxy, a tough and non-diaphanous texture, not easily penetrable by futile concern for souls preordained to eternal death; but Natalie was of her own blood, one of a long line of elect; furthermore, she had not been seduced by the blandishments of the Great Serpent, but had cast her lot, where it truly belonged, among Claghorns; and, finally, the oldest bearer of that name was doubtless influenced by the fact that the girl was motherless and friendless, and that she herself, paying the penalty of independence, was, except as to Tabitha Cone, with whom she lived in strife, alone.

Miss Cone also approved of the visitor. This had been originally an accident. Like the rest of the little world interested, Tabitha had supposed that Miss Claghorn's reception of a foreign and atheistical daughter of Beverley Claghorn would be as ungracious as was compatible with humanity; wherefore Tabitha had been prepared, for her part, to be extremely affable, foreseeing, with joy, many a battle with her benefactress wherein she would have an ally; but, taken unawares, by the time she had grasped the unexpected situation, she had become too sincere in her admiration to change her role. She chose, however, to announce an estimate of Natalie's character differing from that of Miss Claghorn. "She's a Beverley down to her shins," was Miss Cone's verdict.

"As much of a Beverley as you are a Claghorn," was Miss Achsah's tart rejoinder.