Floyd bites his lips, and wonders if Eugene is paying back a mortification.
"Oh, mamma will play," exclaims Bertie, with alacrity. "She is wonderfully good at such music, though Mrs. Grandon plays in exquisite time. Mamma."
"Don"t trouble her," entreats Floyd.
Bertie is resolute, Mrs. Dayre obliging, and comes in from her balcony seat.
"Violet," says Mr. Grandon, "will you waltz awhile? Mrs. Dayre has kindly offered to play."
"I am not tired," answers Violet, in that curious, breathless tone which is almost a refusal.
"But I want you to," declares Bertie. "Mr. Eugene has so roused my curiosity."
Floyd takes her hand with a certain sense of mastery, and she yields.
It is not the glad, joyous alacrity she has heretofore evinced.
Eugene"s half-confession, made with a feeling of honor that rarely attacks the young man, has failed of its mission. Some sense of fine adjustment is wanting.
Mrs. Dayre strikes into a florid whirl that would answer for a peasant picnic under the trees.
"Not that," says Eugene. "Some of those lovely, undulating movements.
Oh, there is that Beautiful Blue Danube----"
"Which they waltzed when they came out of the ark," laughs Bertie, "but it is lovely."
The strain touches Violet. The great animating hope for joy has dropped out of her life, but youth is left, and youth cannot help being moved.
Mrs. Dayre plays with an enchanting softness, and they float up and down as in some tranced sea.
"She waltzes fairly," comments Miss Dayre, "only she should be taller.
I should like to waltz with him myself."
"They are a sort of Darby and Joan couple," says Eugene, evasively, "and his dancing days are about over."
"What a--mistake!" and Bertie laughs brightly. "Why, he is magnificent.
Do you know I had a rather queer fancy about him; you expect literary men to be--well, grave and severe. The idea of his marrying a child like that! Why did he do it?"
"Because he loved her," replies the young man, with unblushing mendacity.
"Literary men and the clergy always do perpetrate matrimony in a curious manner. Do they go out much?" inclining her head toward the two floating at the other end of the room.
"Oh, to dinners and that sort of thing!" indifferently. "She is very sweet and has lovely eyes, but she is not the kind of person that I should think would attract him."
"What is it--the "impossible that always happens"?" quotes Eugene, and as they come nearer Miss Dayre has the grace to be silent.
Floyd Grandon feels that some enthusiasm is missing, the divine flavor has gone out of it. Violet is so gentle, so quiet and unstirred by what only a little while ago carried her captive into an enchanted realm.
"Are you tired?" he asks, presently.
"Oh, no!"
She makes no motion for a release, and they go on. Indeed, it has a kind of pungent bitter-sweet elusiveness for her, almost as if she might come up with the lost happiness. "It is all there is, and she must make herself content," she is saying over and over. She has dreamed a wild, impossible dream.
Bertie Dayre is fond of conquests in strange lands. Even Violet comes to be amused at the frank bids she makes for Floyd"s favor, but he seems not to see, to take them with the grave courtesy that is a part of his usual demeanor. Yet the preference has this effect upon him, to make him wish that another would try some delicate allurements. He is in a mood to be won to love, and Violet is fatally blind not to see that her day has come and take advantage of it.
From this point the summer festivities go straight on. There are guests at Madame Lepelletier"s and a series of charming entertainments. The Brades have a houseful, and Lucia is followed by a train of adorers; but what does it all avail, since Mordecai sits stubbornly at the gate?
Violet comes to have a strange, secret sympathy with the girl who cannot be content and choose among what is offered.
Madame Lepelletier is no less a queen here than she was in the city; indeed, the glories may be greater, more intense, from being circ.u.mscribed. The Latimers and the Grandons are frequent guests and meet people whom it is a delight to know; and Lucia decides there is no such lawn tennis anywhere, no such enchanting little suppers and dances. Eugene is rather resentful at first, but no one can hold out long against madame, and she finds a new way to please him,--to offer a little delicate incense at Violet"s shrine. To her there is something in the way these two young people avoid any p.r.o.nounced attention. Is it indicative of a secret understanding between them? If it has reached that point, she can guess at the subtle temptation for both. Certainly Floyd Grandon evinces no symptoms of any change in his regard; indeed, he does not seem quite so _eprise_ as some weeks ago, and there _is_ a mysterious alteration in Violet. She watches warily; she has seen so many of these small episodes. This will hardly culminate in a scandal, for Floyd Grandon is too well-bred, but some day Eugene will speak and Violet"s eyes will be opened and she will hate Floyd Grandon for having bound her in chains before she had tasted the sweets of liberty.
It is true Floyd Grandon is rather absent and engrossed. There are many cares weighing upon him, and there seems one chance of turning over the business so successfully that his very desire and hope beget a feverish fear. Two manufacturers of large means and established reputation see in the coming success of Grandon & Co. a rival with whom it will be impossible to cope. Their new methods are beyond all excellent, and there is such a cheapening of process that for a while, at least, profits will be simply enormous. Shall they take the fortune at its high tide? Mr. Haviland has gone to Europe, and on the success of some projects there, the answer will depend. Mr. Murray is in correspondence with him and with Mr. Grandon, and since Floyd hopes so much, he grows nervous and uneasy, except when he loses himself in his beloved work or spends a quiet evening with John Latimer. He has so little time for the speculations or the endearments of love, that Violet drops into a soft and twilight background. She has everything; she is coming to be admired and treated with the respect due her position. Cecil and she are inseparables, and with all her fondness she does not spoil Cecil or allow her to become the terror of the household.
CHAPTER XXV.
"I watched the distance as it grew, And loved you better than you knew."
"Violet," Floyd Grandon says, one morning, "I have invited two guests who will come to-day, a Mr. Murray and his daughter. She is a very pretty young girl and fond of society. I think we had better plan some entertainments. What would you like--a garden party? I want to render Grandon Park attractive to Miss Murray."
"Is she like Miss Dayre?" asks Violet, gravely.
"She is a pretty girl with the usual fair hair," and he smiles. "No, I fancy she is not like Miss Dayre, and yet I thought Bertie Dayre oddly entertaining. Miss Murray is fond of dancing. The evening I was there she was full of delight about a German. I don"t know but you ought to pay some attention to that," he adds, with a touch of solicitude.
"It is very fascinating," she makes answer. "You know we are invited to Madame Lepelletier"s German on Thursday evening."
"I really had forgotten. Why, it is the very thing. I shall go down and get an invitation for Miss Murray, and bespeak madame"s favor. They will reach here about two, I think, and must have some lunch. Mother will take charge of that. When Miss Murray is rested you can take her out driving. We might have some kind of gathering on Friday evening."
Violet wonders why so much is to be done for Miss Murray"s entertainment, and she shrinks a little at having it on her hands. But Eugene, who has been off on a brief expedition, will return to-morrow, and he can a.s.sist her.
Floyd meanwhile saunters out to the hall and takes his hat, with a little kindly nod to Violet, who sits by the window with a book. There has been a quiet week, from various causes, and now the whirl is to begin again. She has not so much heart in it as youth ought to have or her eighteen years would rightly warrant, and she turns idly again to her page. At times some of Bertie Dayre"s comments come back to her with a kind of electric shiver. Is she anything to her husband beyond a pet and tenderly guarded child like Cecil? a companion for her, rather than for her husband. Could Madame Lepelletier have been more to him?
Ah, she could, and Violet knows it in the depths of her soul. It is a bitter and humiliating knowledge. Madame has the exquisite art of filling her house with attractive people, of harmonizing, of giving satisfaction, of rendering her guests at home with herself, of charming grave men and wise scholars, as well as gay young girls. It is true Violet has married him, but was not Floyd Grandon"s regard brought about by a pique, an opportunity to retaliate the wrong once done to him? What if there were moments when he regretted it?
He goes down the handsome avenue lined with maples, remembering the old times with Aunt Marcia and all the changes, and recalling Miss Stanwood, as he seldom has until Mrs. Dayre talked her over. He can see the tall, slender, dignified girl, just as he can call up the young student with his head full of plans, none of which came to pa.s.s, none of which he would care for now. His life has changed and broadened like the old place, and when this business is fairly off his hands there will be new paths of delight opening before him. He will take Violet away somewhere,--to Europe, perhaps, when Gertrude and the professor go. She is such a simple child, she needs training and experience and years. Youth is sweet, but it is not the time of ripeness.
Madame Lepelletier is on the shaded porch, sitting in a hammock; a scarlet cushion embroidered with yellow jasmine supports her head and shoulders, and her daintily slippered feet rest on a soft Persian rug.
"Ah," she says, holding out her hand, but she does not rise, and he has to bend over to take it. "Sit here," and she reaches out to the willow chair, "unless you would prefer going within. I am living out of doors, taking in the summer fragrance and warmth for the coming winter."
"O provident woman!" and he laughs, as he seats himself beside her.
She makes such a lovely picture here in the waving green gloom, with specks of sunshine filtered about, the cushion being the one brilliant ma.s.s of color that seems to throw up her shining black hair and dusky, large-lidded eyes. There is a suggestion of affluent orientalism that attracts strongly.
"Well, are blessings so numerous that one can throw them aside broadcast? Do we not need such visions as these to take us through the ice and snow and gray skies of a stinging winter day?"
"With your house at eighty degrees and tropical plants in every corner?"
"You are resolved not to approve of my laying up treasure. I breathe delight with every waft of fragrance, and though you may not believe it, the natural has a charm for me. I have been slowly studying it for a year. Is it a symptom of second childhood,--this love of olden pleasures, this longing to retrace?" and she raises her slow-moving eyes, letting them rest a moment on his face.