CHAPTER V. KING COPHETUA'S WIFE. "Only a word, and it was I who said it, I WAS Neil's friend-God knows that I was his friend-and loved him too well, even though in my disloyal heart loving his wife a thousand times as much, to see him lose the respect of the strangers in the house, and become a gibe and jeer for them. I was exasperated, too, at the way in which he spoke to me, and still I was helpless. That evening when he came in to dress for dinner, he came with a smile and a pleasant word, and I was content to forget the angry words he had thrown at me in the afternoon. But after dinner we went to the Beldons' parlor, where Mrs. Beldon was alone. We sat for an hour, and then I said: "Neil, come, I want you to go out with me." A quick glance from Mrs. Beldon's bright eyes at my face, and she saw through my flimsy trick. ball-room, plainly clad in mask and domino of black satin. As I stood looking at the bright crowd a hand was slipped through my arm, and I turned quickly to find a Marie Antoinette standing beside me. "Mrs. Beldon, why have you come to me?" "Hush! come to my rooms in five minutes, please; I must and will see you alone." And five minutes later I stood, still masked, in the parlor. Mrs. Beldon was there with shining eyes and flushed cheeks. Her mask lay on the floor, and as I bent to pick it up she set her foot in its jeweled French slipper on the satin trifle. "Do not stoop for me, Mr. Eldridge. You do not like me: you have never liked me; and why? I certainly have done more than is my wont to make you my friend, and to give you an opportunity for finding out the best that is in me; but utter disapproval of me is written on your face at all times, and you could not, even if you cared to, I think, keep a certain glance of supercilious contempt out of your eyes when you look at "No, Mr. Barras, I want you here with me. me." "Will you come?" I thundered savagely. No, thank you, I will stay with Mrs. Beldon." "Then go to the devil, both of you!" and I left the room with a new rage making my heart beat fast and loud. The next morning Mrs. Beldon, when we met, did not recognize me, and I could not blame her; yet I was glad that I had uttered the ungentlemanlike words, and glad that she knew my feelings. Neil avoided me all day long; and so matters went until an evening when there was to be a masked party. I helped Neil into the shape-dress of a harlequin (under which his great muscles showed with a curve and swell that would have delighted a sculptor of the Phidian age); then an hour later I descended to the You shall tell me why this is !" It was not an easy thing to do, to tell this woman what I had to tell her, and had I been the only one concerned, I should not have spoken the truth-should have turned off the whole matter with a polite society lie. But it was the last chance, perhaps, to help the man I loved; and I nerved myself to the task, slowly taking off my mask, and loosening the domino to make time for myself. "Be seated, please." And Mrs. Beldon graciously pointed to a chair; but I preferred to stand before her, as she half sat, half reclined on the sofa. "You asked me a direct question, Mrs. Beldon, and deserve and shall have as direct an answer. "You say that I do not like you. We will let that pass for the present, if you are willing; although I can and must say that, until not my incautious outburst the other evening, I have never knowingly been rude to a woman in my life. Let me go to the root of the trouble that is on my heart. You are flirting with a man who is my friend, and whom I respect and love. The whole social circle in which we move here is commenting upon the matter, and giving it harder names than a simple flirtation warrants. You can not help amusing yourself with men; it is a part of your nature: but Neil Barras does or will not-understand this. He thinks you are in earnest, appreciates to the full your beauty and grace, and is falling down before you in an admiration that is rapidly changing into a stronger, warmer feeling. He has a wife who loves and treasures the merest trifle that his hand has touched. I ask you for the sake of his wife, if not for his and your own good, to stop where you are. What is one man more or less in the train of your admirers? You cannot grasp Neil's nature, nor comprehend him in any way. He is not like other men, but takes all things for granted and as real. What profit is his enslavement to you?" Mrs. Beldon rose from the sofa and walked back and forth across the parlor. At last she stood facing me. "Do you realize how you have insulted me? Do you know that you have spoken to me as no man ever dared speak to me before? If you are a friend to Mr. Barras, and to his wife as well, you should have had sufficient tact to approach me in a different manner. Mr. Barras is nothing to me, but I deny your right to interfere, and I shall carry on this flirtation-as you call it-to what extent I please. You have lost your cause by your awkwardness; and take my advice in this: the next time you fancy yourself called to interfere in a matter of this kind, be more gentle, more lenient, or you may, as now, arouse all the obstinacy of a woman's nature, and find—as you will find-that it is a hard thing to combat against. "I am satisfied, and you may go. We will not know each other in future, if you please. Good evening." And I found myself outside the door, with that mocking face and brilliant figure shining out of the brightly lighted room. I turned away with a sigh. Surely I had done my awkward best to help Neil; was I to blame that I had failed? I retired to my own room before the party had broken up, lighted my pipe, and was sitting thinking-thinking hard-when Neil came into the chamber. He made a magnificent subject for artist or sculptor as he stood there before me, every muscle showing through the tight costume that he wore, and his face animated with suppressed and excited feeling. "You have been meddling with what does not concern you, Frank. I fail to see wherein my comings and goings need trouble your conscience—or whatever it is that is troubled by what I am doing here. I have found a friend, and am enjoying her society. Her husband looks on and finds no fault. A few old-maid gossips in the hotel, who have no better way of occupying their waste time than to discuss those who are younger and therefore capable of appreciating life more than they, do perhaps canvass what I have done. I expected better of you than that you should join their ranks. If I were a dissipated man-about-town, it would be different; but you as my friend have never before had cause to cavil at my ways, and have not now, except such cause as your poetical imagination affords. "Let me tell you this: it was never well to oppose me; suspicion or watching always drove me, even when a child, to do what I would not have thought to do if let alone; and I am not changed in disposition since I was a child." "No, I can readily believe that," I answered. "It is not my conscience but my heart that is troubled, Neil. True, I have no right to advise or caution you; if I am interfering with what does not concern me, it is not because anything that you may do will make or mar my life. It is for your sake, and yours only, that I plead-yes, and for the sake of your wife; but I can say no more. I will not quarrel with you, and no more harsh words shall pass between us: I leave all to your own heart; it has been so warm and generous to me, I cannot believe that it will set you to deliberately ruin the life of the woman you promised to love and honor." Neil threw himself down upon the floor before me, while I relighted my pipe to cover the nervousness that I felt was showing in my face and hands; for the hands are such subtle betrayers of nervous expression, that they need occupation to conceal what they would specially tell. I had said my say, and would leave my friend to work out his own moral problem; and yet there were few things I would not have done or said if they could have had the effect my heart desired. When the morning mail came in, there was another letter from Madge—a repetition of what she had said before, and of what I had said. There was a note of bitterness running through the written words, too, that stung and troubled Neil, I saw; but he said very little about it to me, yet I noticed that he kept away from Mrs. Beldon, and went out by himself for a walk, from which he did not return until dinner-time. After dinner he came to me and drew me into a retired corner of the smoking-room. "Frank, I must go home. Madge feels unpleasantly about my staying here, and I must go home to her. But I do not like to go and face her as she is feeling now about this matter. It is hard for me to explain such things at any time: it will be harder now when there is really so little to explain, and so much that she may imagine if she cares to be suspicious, as you see she already is. What shall I do? I wish"-and he turned his face away a trifle and lowered his eyes-"I wish that you could see her first and ease her mind before I go home." I pitied himpitied him for his weakness; but I was friend enough to the man to suppress the indignant exclamation that rose to my lips, and after a minute I said: "Very well; to-morrow will be Saturday. I will leave for Boston in the morning, and go to see your wife on Sunday, if you will give me your word that you will surely start on Monday for home. Will you?" The face that he turned towards me was red, his eyes had tears in them, and I could see that, beneath a trifling shamefacedness, he felt relieved. "Yes, I will go home on Monday, Frank. God bless you, boy! It will be better so, I am sure; you do not know how much better for both Madge and me. I am so obstinate, it is so hard for me to talk of things that I do or do not do this will be the better way, I know." So I went back to Boston the next day. As Neil left me in the train he said, with my hand held tight in his: "Forgive me the uneasiness that I have caused you, Frank, and forget as much of all this affair as you can. I have been in the wrong, perhaps; but I believe that there is a devil in me sometimes when I am so unyielding, sowhatever you please to call it." And then he went, and the train bore me on toward Boston and my friend's wife. A hard task had been set me, to go to this woman and smooth the way for her husband's return to her. She was not a virago, a female tyrant, whom I had to talk with (it might have been easier for me if she had been), but a woman whose only fault, if it were a fault, was that she loved the man to whom she was married. And I stood in her presence on the following day very awkwardly, and wishing very heartily that I had not come. "You have come home, Frank, and Neil not with you? I did not think he would stab me like this?" And she sat down before the fire and looked into the glowing coals with tears rolling over her cheeks. "Let us be practical and sensible, Madge," I answered. "Neil did not mean to wound you; and I am only a few hours ahead of him at the most, for he will be here to-morrow." "Why did he not come back with you? A few hours more in the society of Mrs. Beldon was, I suppose, the inducement for him to remain." "There, let us drop that at once, or else talk it all over and out before he does come. For surely it will be the better way to have ter. no words with your husband about the matHe is coming home, and that will probably be the end of his intimacy with Mrs. Beldon. Do not, if you wish to hold him closely to you, let him see that you are jealous or suspicious. The lighter the chains lie about his neck, the more firmly they will keep him at your side. He boasted to me last summer that his wife never 'nagged' him, and I am sure that it will not pay to begin now." "Nag' him! Is it 'nagging' a man to find fault that he turns from his faithful wife to a married woman who can be nothing to him that is loyal and honorable? Is it 'nagging' to sit here, as I have done, with such a pain about the heart that I had to press my hand hard against it in order to endure the anguish; to go to the piano and try to sing, and break down because of the tears that choked me? You are a man, Frank Eldridge, and cannot understand a woman. To you I seem to be making a mountain out of a mole-hill, an occasion for great grief out of a trivial incident. O, yes! I know how true you have in your friendship been to Neil and me: but you are a man, and can no more easily comprehend the workings of a woman's heart than you can understand the pitiful sorrow that some of the stories you write bring to the sentimental school-girl who reads and cries over them—a pitiful sorrow, I say, because, after all, she must one day come to realize that it was but seeing her own future, her woman's lot, drawn out by a cunning hand and set before her. I believe, certainly, that you would have saved me from this experience, and thank you for your goodness; but, Frank, I do not think that I can ever be rid of this new, hard feeling that is come to me. My husband brought it to me, and he should be the last to blame if it reaches even to him and brings him hurt." "But, Madge, listen. For your own good and peace do not let Neil see that this feeling has sprung up in your soul. God in heaven knows that I did not come to you willingly; that I stand here pleading for belief and confidence in Neil, not for my sake, but for yours, my two friends. I am a selfish man, and care much for the bits of fame and comfort that I am able to reach out and grasp for myself; I do not like to come in contact with the woes and distresses of other persons, and I fight shy of all unpleasant things: but I should be sorrier than I can make you understand if I let anything go undone that could prevent a barrier rising up between you and Neil; and for that reason I have come as I have, not to be intrusive, for nothing but to assure you that your husband is coming back to you as pure and heart-whole as he went away, and to ask you to sacrifice your pride and the anger that has magnified its cause by unremitting thought, and to meet Neil as though nothing had happened; and all will be well." Then I went away, and the next day Neil came home. CHAPTER VI. "Bon voyage, comrade, for we drift apart, You know how warmly the sun shines down on the sidewalk of Park Street in the middle of the afternoon; how bright the light is that comes streaming across the snow-covered Common, making the bare branches of the trees stand out in all their skeleton meagerness, and showing up so plainly the English sparrows which flit from twig to twig that you could count them, if you had the time and patience to spare: yes, and even resting almost tenderly on the straight and unadorned envelope that hides the Brewer fountain from the storms and cold winds of winter. You have seen the water go slipping and gurgling in narrow rivulets down the hill from the melting snow that lies heaped in grimy hillocks on Beacon Street, and perhaps have noticed how often an old man stands on the sun-warmed bricks and holds out a bunch-a large, odorous, nodding bunch of roses with long, leaf-covered stems to the passers-by. At any rate, you have seen that small old Italian woman with her rounded back, and her seamy, furrowed face that is puckered up into more wrinkles than many human faces come to have, who sits on a camp-stool and grinds forth from an antique hand-organ strains that are so faint you scarce can hear them, unless you stand still and bend your ear down to the instrument. You know the street and its frequenters, do you not? I was passing down the hill toward Tremont Street one afternoon, ten days or so after coming from New York. The old woman ground out a few brisk but weak and cracked chords from her hand-organ, and I felt rather than saw the dark frown that followed me because I did not take my lazy hand from my overcoat pocket and drop a coin into the battered cigar-box on the top of her unmusical means of livelihood. The old man held his roses toward me, and they were so sweet and summer-like in the afternoon sunlight, that I stopped and bought a handful for the mere pleasure that lay in seeing the fragrant, lovely things. And a little farther on a lady tripped on the step of the carriage from which she was descending, and fell heavily against my It was Adam Jaquith's mother, one of those stately, delicate old ladies who seem to have somehow caught up all the grace and refinement that a youth passed in the most cultured society can give, and to have carried it on into their later years, adding thereto a charm that nothing but delightful old age can give: an indefinable breath of attractiveness that is as elusive yet as decisive as a melody or a perfume. She was about to go into a picture gallery when our abrupt meeting occurred, and I went in with her. The slight accident of her fall had made her a trifle nervous, and she sat down in a chair to rest before one of those bright pictures by Appleton Brown, a painting that was like a morsel of spring-time taken bodily out of its season, and hung up on the wall, with all its melting and marvelous VOL. I.-32. greens, the airy, changeful blue of its sky, and the apple-blossoms seeming to tremble in a light breeze that had blown open half the door to a rickety old barn where the straight, unshadowed shaft of sunlight shone on the floor with its wisps of scattered hay, among which a solitary hen was slowly wandering about. I laid my roses in Mrs. Jaquith's lap and stood leaning against her chair. "Ah, Mr. Eldridge! between this picture and the roses I feel quite as if I had shaken off all knowledge of winter, and was living for the moment right in the beauty of spring. I came into Boston only yesterday, and already your cold sea-air has struck terror to my heart and lungs. I hardly ever dare to come East at this time of the year, but Adam had business here, and I so much wanted to see a few of my friends in the city that I mustered up courage to take the trip. "I sent my card to you this morning, and we were quite sure you would come around to the hotel to-night. I shall be in town a very few days, and my son has promised that I shall go to your house, for I have a desire to see the pretty things that I am told you have gathered about you, and the little 'den' that must be peopled by all the fanciful images you have created in it. old lady, and so quite free to lay aside the formalities of social etiquette, you know, and to call upon young gentlemen-if they kindly permit me the privilege." "Indeed, I shall be grateful to you if you and Adam will come to my lonely house, which seems so dreary and barren to me since my mother went away that I shrink from inviting visitors, fearing it may be as dismal and lonely for them as for me. I will call upon you this evening; and will you be kind enough to hold yourself and Adam bound to me for a tea-party to-morrow? A small tea-party, you understand, just a homelike coming together; for I never entertain but in a homely way, and when my friends are friends amongst themselves, and quite unstudied and unfettered in their sociability. Will you consider yourselves engaged to me?" |