Mr. Claghorn's Daughter Part 21

Thus Mark's action rendered his mother happy, for, notwithstanding her sanguine disposition, she had often suffered misgivings. At times, during her son's frequent absences, her fears had risen high, and with each return home she watched him, narrowly scrutinizing his belongings, even going so far as to rummage among his letters, to discover if there existed any ground for fear. Her anxieties stilled and their object once more under the maternal eye, she was willing, since she must be, that he be deliberate in falling in love. She knew men thoroughly, so she believed, having known one a little, and was persuaded that the older he grew, the more certain was Mark to appreciate that highest womanly attribute so plainly discernible in Paula--pliancy. To man, so Mrs. Joe believed, that was the supreme excellence in woman. And there had been in Paula's reception of Mark's caress a certain coyness, becoming in itself, and which had lent an air of tenderness to the little scene.

Paula had cast her eyes downward in that modest confusion proper to maidens and inviting to men; doubtless Mark would be glad to repeat a homage so engagingly received.

None of these rosy inferences were shared by Paula. During Mark's last sojourn at Stormpoint, which had been immediately after leaving France and constant intercourse with the household of Beverley Claghorn, she had made her own observations and drawn her own conclusions. Whatever the reason for Mark's action, she knew it portended nothing for her, and if she had received his fraternal kiss in some confusion, it was because she dreaded the possibility of sorrow in store for him, a sorrow connected with a secret confided to her within a few hours.

"Now that you are home again, Mark," said his mother, "I want your promise not to run away."

"You know men, mother; if I make a promise, I shall inevitably want to break it."

"But you wouldn't."

"Better not tempt the weak. Isn't that so, Paula?"

"Better not be weak."

"I am serious, Mark," said Mrs. Joe. "You must consider the future; you should plan a career."

"I have no intention of running away; certainly not to-night."

"Nor any night, I hope."

"You know," he said with some hesitation, "it is possible I may have to go to California."

"Nonsense! What is Benton paid for? I need you. We ought to select a city home, and I want your taste, your judgment."

"My dear mother, the city home will be yours. Why haven't you chosen one long since?"

"As if I would without consulting you!"

He smiled, but forebore to remind her that he had not been consulted with regard to Stormpoint. "Whatever is your taste is mine," he said.

"These gilded cages are for pretty birds like you and Paula; as for me----"

"That's nonsense. I am willing to keep your nest warm, but----"

"If I were to consult my own taste, I would re-erect old Eliphalet's cabin and be a hermit."

"Mark, you actually hurt me----"

"My dear mother, you know I'm joking. About this house, then. New York, I suppose, is the place for good Californians."

"It would be pleasanter; but it might be policy to remain in the State."

He looked at her in wonder. "Why?" he asked.

"It was merely an idea," she replied, blushing, and secretly grieved that he did not understand. But it was no time to enter into those plans which were the fruit of many consultations with Mr. Hacket. "It's getting late; good-night, my dear boy. I know you'll try to please me."

She kissed him, and, with Paula, left the room.

Left alone, he paced up and down the long room, nervously biting a cigar which he forgot to light. He knew he would be unable to pa.s.s in sleep the hours that must elapse before he could see Natalie. He was filled with forebodings; the vague fears which had tempted him to send an absurd telegraphic message to Natalie had troubled him since he had first recognized their presence and had grown in strength with each new day. He was unaware that presentiments and feelings "in the bones," once supposed to be the laughable delusions of old ladies and nervous younger ones, were now being regarded with respectful attention as a part of the things undreamed of in Horatio's philosophy; and, taking his att.i.tude after the old fashion, he had reasoned with that being which man calls "himself," and, for the edification of "himself," had shown to that personage the childishness of indulging in vague and ungrounded fears.

But without success. Philosophers have discovered that which old ladies always knew, that all explanations of the wherefore of these mental vagaries are unsatisfactory as long as the vagaries persist; and while they do, they vex the wise and foolish alike.

His musings were disturbed by the entrance of Paula, clad in a ravishing tea-gown, a dainty fragment of humanity. "Mark," she said, "what is the matter?" for she had been quick to notice and had been startled by the gloom of his face.

"Tired, Paula," and he smiled. Somehow Paula always made him smile.

"If I were tired, I would go to bed," she observed with a faint touch of sarcasm. "I won't advise bed to you, for I know that you do not credit me with much sense."

"Yet it is plain that you have more than I, since you have indicated the sensible course," he answered pleasantly. "That should be placing you in high esteem, since we all think well of ourselves."

"Forgive me," she said with real sorrow for her petulance, for which she perhaps could have given no reason; "but I have seen that you were troubled----"

"And like a dear little sister you overflow with sympathy. Was there ever anybody kinder or better than you? But the real fact is that I am simply tired--yet not sleepy."

"Well"--she sighed wistfully--"you will feel rested to-morrow. I came down to give you this from Natalie," handing him a note. "I would have waited until morning, but I----"

"Did right, as you always do," he answered, kissing her cheek and saying good-night, and thus dismissing her, with an evident eagerness to read the note, not lost upon Paula, and which left her no alternative but to leave him.

He opened the envelope and read:

"Dear Mark--Your letter came this morning, and I have just learned that you will be home to-night. I cannot express to you how glad I shall be to see you again. Before we meet in the presence of others, I hope to see you alone. Your letter, dear Mark, evidently delayed by being addressed in Mr. Winter's care, has cost me some tears, both of joy and sorrow. I am impatient to see you, for it seems to me that to you, before to any other, except to Paula (who would have known by intuition), I should disclose the happiness that has come to me in my engagement to Leonard. It is but two days old, and except to Paula, is known only to ourselves. Dear Mark, it has not been easy to write these few lines. I wish I could express in them how sincerely I honor and love you, and how I wish for your happiness. I have commenced to pray, and the first time I knelt to heaven I prayed for you; and so long as I shall continue to pray--and I think that will be always now--I shall not forget to beg that you be made happy. I hope you will wander no more, but be oftener with those that love you and who need you more than you perhaps know; and as I shall live either in Hampton or Easthampton, and as I must ever regard you as one of my earliest and my best friend, I hope we shall see each other often.

"NATALIE."

"Oh, Mark, your happiness is at Stormpoint. No one is better, more loving, or more lovable than she."

The letter stunned him. He might, had he known women as well as he (being young) believed he did--he might have read the truth in every line. He might have seen that were he to rouse his energies and plead his cause, he could win it, even yet. He might have heard the unconscious cry for rescue from an engagement contracted before his letter had reached her; he might have seen, in the pains she had taken to tell him that such was the case, his excuse and hers for a.s.serting his rights against Leonard. These things were plain enough; perhaps the writer had intended that they should be; not consciously, indeed; but from that inner being who is part of all of us, the desperate hope of the girl's heart had not been hidden as she wrote, nor was her pen entirely uncontrolled by it.

But the postscript obscured his vision. He laughed contemptuously and thought, as men will think, "It is thus that woman estimates love. She is sorry for me, and suggests that the consolation I may need I shall find in Paula!" He did not recognize that in the postscript was the real dishonesty of the letter; that it was the salve to the conscience of the writer, believing that in the letter itself she had said too much, whereas she had said too little for the perception of a man in the haze of jealousy. Such gleams of truth as might otherwise have been visible to Mark could not penetrate that dishonest veiling of the woman's heart.

CHAPTER XXI.

A MAN ABOUT TO MEET A MAID.

One may approach the White House by way of the High Street of Easthampton, of which thoroughfare the dwelling in question is a conspicuous ornament; but for such as prefer a more secluded road, a gra.s.sy lane behind the houses affords direct access to Miss Claghorn's garden.

Mark chose the lane. Since, in obedience to Natalie's request, he must see her, he hoped to find her in the garden, where there would be less danger of interruption.

The birds twittered in the trees, joyous in the new day; the dew glimmered on the gra.s.s-blades; the scent of flowers from adjacent gardens perfumed the fresh air of a perfect summer morning. On such a morning a man about to meet a maid should have trod the earth lightly.

But Mark lingered as he walked, reluctant to hear his fate p.r.o.nounced by lips which he longed to kiss, but could never kiss; lips, therefore, it were better not to see. Yet, since he had been summoned, he must go on; and because of the summons there were moments when he still, if faintly, hoped. Hope dies hard; and, notwithstanding the forebodings which had vexed him ever since he had written the letter (for which writing he had since cursed his folly), there had been times when hope had risen high, and, as he even now a.s.sured himself, not without reason. If he had been self-deceived, it had not been from the complacency of the c.o.xcomb.

Surely she had loved him, or had been willing to love, had that been permitted her.

In arguing thus he was not reasoning unfairly. He had been unintentionally deceived by the philosopher, Beverley Claghorn, who had permitted the intercourse between his daughter and this young man, partly from carelessness, more because he approved of a cousinly friendship of which one of the partakers was able to gratify a n.o.ble sentiment by an addition to the dowry of the other. It had been by pointing out this ability that he had a.s.suaged the misgivings of the Marquise; at the same time so solemnly reiterating his loyalty to the treaty with that lady, that when Mark's disclosure came it had been impossible for him to receive it otherwise than he had done--by a regretful rejection. He had been astounded by the avowal, for he had noted no sighs, no posturing, no eloquent apostrophes or melting glances from this suitor who approached him with a tale of love, having never displayed a visible sign of the tender pa.s.sion. M. Claghorn's observation of lovers had long been confined to one variety. He forgot that Anglo-Saxon swains are less p.r.o.ne to languish in public than their brothers of Gaul. Had Adolphe de Fleury been in Paris there would have been more frequent flowers, scented billets, rapt gazes, rolling eyes and eloquential phrases; all offered for the general appreciation as much as for the lady of his love. In the absence of these familiar evidences of ardor, the philosopher was, in his own eyes, acquitted of responsibility for the surprising fact which Mark had imparted to him.

For, how could he suspect a legitimate pa.s.sion in a youth who had yet to sow his wild oats, and one with the capacity for acquiring an unlimited field for that delightful, if futile, and generally expensive, husbandry? No man of Mark's years could be so wise--or so foolish. That was, as the philosopher viewed human nature, not in such nature. The case was different with Adolphe de Fleury, compelled by circ.u.mstances to seize the most attractive dowry that fell in his way; and even that gallant but impecunious soldier was, doubtless, cultivating a modest crop as sedulously as circ.u.mstances permitted.

Thus had Mark been the victim of a philosophic mode of thought and had bowed to that which he had supposed would be the filial, as it had been the paternal, decision; saying good-bye, sadly, doubtless, but without betrayal of that which he believed would not be gladly heard, nor could be honorably disclosed.

The ocean lay between him and the woman that he loved before he fully realized how much must be henceforth lacking in his life, and when repentance was too late he repented that he had taken the philosopher's word for a fact of which he now sometimes doubted the existence. Many memories whispered that she, too, had loved. No word of hers had told him this; but love is not always told in words--and then he would accuse himself of the folly of permitting vain longings to control his judgment. Nevertheless, when, while still at Stormpoint, he had heard of the sudden death of Beverley Claghorn, he had resolved to do that which before he had omitted, to appeal to Natalie herself, when, most inopportunely, there came a letter from the Marquise to Mrs. Joe; a letter which informed the relatives of the deceased that the death of the father would hasten, rather than r.e.t.a.r.d, the marriage of the daughter, who had already taken up her residence with the writer of the epistle, in accordance with the wish of her father. Not long after the receipt of that letter Mark had started for Russia, leaving France unvisited.