A strange, dozing peace had settled over me; though I thought of them often, it was as one thinks of persons and scenes infinitely removed, with which he has no logical connection, only a veiled, softened interest. Margarita seemed, against the background of the moist, pearly English autumn, like some gorgeous and unbelievable tropical bird, shooting, all orange and indigo, across a grey cloud. It was impossible that I, a quiet chess-player sitting opposite his friend, the impractical student of Eastern Religions, could have to do with such a vivid anomaly as she must always be. It was unlikely that the silent, moody man strolling for hours through mist-filled English lanes, pipe in mouth, dog at heels should ever run athwart that lovely troubler of man"s mind, that babyish woman, that all-too-well-ripened child.
My Christmas holidays were quietly pa.s.sed with the Oriental Professor in his tiny Surrey cottage, where he and his dear old sister, a quaint little vignette of a woman, forgot the world among her pansy beds. She was not visible at that time, however, owing to a teasing influenza which kept her in bed, and our hostess was her trained nurse, a quiet, capable little American, with a firm hand-grip and kind brown eyes, already set in fine, watchful wrinkles. She rarely spoke, except in the obvious commonplaces of courtesy, and our days were wonderfully still. The Professor taught me Persian, in a desultory way, and chess most rigorously, for he was hard put to it for an opponent even partly worthy of his prodigious skill. He was a member of all the most select societies of learning in the world, an Egyptologist of such standing that his p.r.o.nouncements in that field were practically final, a man called before kings to determine the worth of their national treasures and curiosities--and his greatest pride was that he had beaten the hitherto unmatched mechanical chess-player in public contest and had been invited to settle absolutely the nicest problems in a chess magazine!
I dwell with a curious fondness upon this placid interval in my life.
I supposed myself honestly settled, grown old, grateful for the rest and oblivion my father"s old university gave me so generously. When I thought of the feverish, break-neck journey I had planned, of the hot and doubtful reliefs and distractions I had promised myself that day when the lawyers" letter had dropped half read on my knees and I had sniffed my freedom first, I wondered. But, truly, it is all written, and the hour had not yet struck, that was all!
CHAPTER XVI
MARGARITA COMES TO TOWN
[FROM SUE PAYNTER]
WASHINGTON SQUARE,
Oct. 16, 188--
JERRY DEAR:
First about the will--how splendid it was! Nothing could have pleased Roger more, I am sure--he told me with that queer, little whimsical grimace of his that it cleared his conscience to feel he was leaving you _something_! What a personality he has, and how, in his quiet una.s.suming way, he impresses it on us!
I hear that Sarah made a great fuss about the will, but was advised by Mr. Sears to stop--and stopped! With Madame B. I am of course anathema--I have not heard from her since. The bank, _bien entendu_, is of the past, and you, I hear, are in the far West. How you will revel in the freedom and how good it must have been to kick off the ball and chain! If anyone can be trusted not to abuse leisure, it is you, dear Jerry--you won"t appear so culpable, as a poor American always does, somehow, under such circ.u.mstances. Even I feel unjustifiably idle now, so I have taken up some of Mr.
Elder"s fads--what a fine, manly sort of fellow he is!--and may be seen, _moi qui vous parle_, teaching sight-reading to a boy"s glee-club!
But of course you are impatiently waiting for me to turn to Margarita and leave this silly chatter about my egotistic self. _Eh bien_, she is marvellous. For half an hour I hated her, but I couldn"t hold out any longer. I have never even imagined such a person. What a pose that would be if any actress were clever enough to avail herself of the un-paralleled opportunities it would give her! Of course I thought it _was_ a pose, at first--I simply couldn"t believe in her. But equally of course no woman could deceive another woman very long at that, and she is one to conquer both s.e.xes. When she put her hand in mine and asked if I was going to buy her some dresses on Broadway, I had to kiss her.
I got very little, just enough for absolute necessity, and gave her a letter to my woman in Paris and another to one I could only afford occasionally, and told her to obey them and take what they gave her. She understood and promised not to buy what happened to strike her--this was necessary, for she begged piteously for a rose pink satin street dress and a yellow velvet opera cloak to wear on the boat! We had a terrible struggle over a corset--she screamed when the _corsetiere_ and I got her into one and slapped the poor woman in the face. It took all my diplomacy to cover the affair and I doubt if I could have done it, really, if Margarita herself had not suddenly begun to cry like a frightened baby and begged pardon so sincerely that the woman was melted and ended by offering her sister as a maid!
The girl had the best of references, and as she must have someone and Elise has travelled extensively and seems very tactful, she is now (I trust) adjusting the elastic girdle her sister finally induced Margarita to wear.
I took her to my Sixth Avenue shoe place, and she was so ravished with a pair of pale blue satin _mules_ I got her that she actually leaned down and kissed the clerk who was kneeling before her! Fortunately we were in a private room and he was the cleverest possible young Irishman, who winked gravely at me and took it as naturally as possible--he thought she was not responsible, you see, and a.s.sured me that he had an aunt in the old country who was just that way!
What a beautiful voice she has--have you ever heard it drop a perfect minor third? But what a strange, strange wife for Roger, of all men! I suppose she is the first thoroughly unconventional person he was ever closely connected with--in one way _you_ would seem more natural with her--I suppose because you are more adaptable than Roger. With him, everybody must adapt. Will she! _Voila l"affaire!_ I should say that the young woman would be likely to have great influence over other people"s lives, herself. If she and Roger ever clash--! Ah, well, _advienne que pourra_, it"s done.
I gave her for a wedding present that lovely little old daguerreotype of Roger at three years old. It was in an old leather frame, you know, and I had it taken out and put into a little band of steel pearls and hung on a small dark red velvet standard. No one could fail to know him from it--I think it is the most wonderful child portrait I ever saw. He seems to have always had that straight, steady look. There is a tiny curl of yellow baby hair in the back, which amused her very much. That is the only one of him at that age, you know--his mother gave it to me when we were engaged, and I always kept it.
I am forgetting to tell you about our visit to the Convent, and you must hear it. I love the old place and often go up there to see Mary, when things grow a little too unbearable.
She is wonderful--so placid and bright, so somehow just like herself, when you expect something different! Why did she do it, I wonder? I was one of her best friends, and I never knew. Her great executive ability is having its reward, they tell me, and she is likely to be Mother Superior some day.
I had told her about Margarita and she was deeply interested in her, though the terrible state of the child"s soul naturally alarmed her. When I told her that her sister-in-law had never been in a church, nor seen one, unless she had noticed those we pa.s.sed in New York, she crossed herself hastily and such a look of real, heartfelt pain pa.s.sed over her face!
Well, I got my charge safely up there, and everything interested her tremendously from the very beginning. It was the intermission _demi-heure_ of the morning and the girls were all munching their _gouter_ and playing about on the gra.s.s. I explained to her why they all wore the same black uniform, and why the honour girls, "_les tres-biens_," wore the broad blue sashes under their arms, and why the Sisters kept on their white headdresses in the house, and why the girls all made their little _reverence_ when Mother Bradley came out to meet us. She kissed Margarita so sweetly and held her in her arms a moment--I don"t think Roger quite realised how his att.i.tude hurts her: it is the only almost unjust thing I ever knew him to do. In the halls there is a great statue of Christ blessing the children, and Margarita stopped and stared at it several minutes, while we watched her. She seemed so rapt that Mary took my hand excitedly and whispered to me not to disturb her for the world, but wait for what she would say. After a while she turned to me.
"Why has that woman a beard, Sue?" she asked cheerfully.
Imagine my feelings! I did not dare look at Mary.
We went all through the school-rooms and she was most curious about the globes and blackboards and pianos. We stopped at the door of a tiny music room, and I smiled, as I always do, at the pretty little picture. The young girl with her Gretchen braids of yellow hair, straight-backed in front of the piano, the nervous, grey-haired little music master watchfully posted behind her, beating time, and in the corner the calm-faced Sister, pink-cheeked under her spreading cap, knitting, with constantly moving lips. The music rooms are so wee that the group seemed like a gracefully posed _genre_ picture. Before we knew what she was about, Margarita had slipped in behind the music master and brought both hands down with a crash on the keys, so that the Chopin Prelude ended abruptly in an hysterical wail and the young lady half fell off the stool--only half, for Margarita pushed her the rest of the way, I regret to say.
Fortunately Mary was able to get us out of it, but I fear there was no more Prelude that day! Why will women play Chopin, by the way? I never heard one who could--Aus der Ohe is masculine enough, heaven knows, but even that amount of talent doesn"t seem to accomplish it. Do you remember Frederick"s diatribes on the subject? He used to say that Congress should forbid Chopin to women, on pain of life imprisonment.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MARGARITA STOPPED AND STARED AT IT SEVERAL MINUTES]
But you must hear the end of the visit. We went into Mary"s room--perfectly bare, you know, with a great crucifix on the wall and below it, part of the woodwork, a little cup for holy water. As soon as she entered the room Margarita paused, and gave a sort of gasp--her hand, which I held tight in mine, grew cold as ice. She moved over slowly to the crucifix, with her eyes glued to it--she seemed utterly unconscious of us, or where she was; she stood directly under the crucifix, with Mary and me on either side of her shaking with excitement, and then she put out her hand in a wavering, unsteady way, like a blind person, dipped her fingers in the empty bowl and began to cross herself! She touched her forehead quickly, then moved her hand slowly down her chest, fumbled toward one side, then drew a long breath and stared at us, winking like a baby.
"I wish I had some food, Sue," she said, and actually yawned and stretched her arms, like a plow-boy, in our faces. "I think this room makes me hungry. Are you not hungry, Mary?"
Now, Jerry, what do you make of that? She cannot have seen a crucifix, can she? Nor anyone crossing themselves? She acted like a woman walking in her sleep. If I lived in Boston and were interested in that sort of thing I could swear that she had been a nun in her last incarnation!
Mary is, of course, much wrought up, and is going to set the whole convent praying for her, I believe. I told Roger about it, but you know what he is--it sounded rather silly as soon as I had it begun. He pointed out that there were plenty of chances for her to have seen the Sisters crossing themselves before crucifixes, and other sensible explanations. But really and truly, Jerry, I was with her every minute, and she did what she had not seen done.
What do you think of it?
Yours always,
SUE PAYNTER.
PART FIVE
IN WHICH THE BROOK BECOMES A RIVER AND FLOWS BY GREAT CITIES
Now sit thee down, my bride, and spin, And fold thy hair more wifely yet, The church hath purged our love from sin, Now art thou joined to homely kin, The salten sea thou must forget.
_Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._
CHAPTER XVII
OUR PEARL BATHES IN SEINE WATER
BLEEKS, LITTLE ARCHES, SURREY,
January 2nd, 188--
MY DEAR MR. JERROLDS:
You will be surprised, doubtless, to hear from an old woman who is _perfectly unknown_ to you in all probability, but if your mother is still living she will remember Agatha Upgrove and the cups of tea and dishes of innocent scandal she shared with her, when you were rolling in a perambulator. I write to you instead of to her in order to find out if she is living, in fact, and to renew at sixty-two the friendship of _twenty-six_! You may well wonder at such a sudden impulse after thirty years, almost, of silence, and if you will pardon a garrulous old woman"s epistolary ramblings, I will tell you, for you are at the bottom of it.
My grandniece was summoned hastily to Paris a month ago, to act as bridesmaid to a young school friend, and as no one else could well be spared at that time to go with the child, I offered myself. I am an experienced traveller and even at _my_ age think far less of a trip across the Channel than most of my relatives do of one to India, with which, by the way, I am also familiar. It was when my husband"s (and your father"s) regiment was ordered to India that your mother and I met. You came very near being born there, did you know it?
But the regiment was recalled, and we came back _delighted_, for neither of us liked it. Major Upgrove died of dysentery a year later, and my widowhood and your father"s absence in Africa at that time drew your mother and me very close together. One wonders that _such_ intimacies should ever fade, but I have seen it _too often_ to regard it as anything but natural, alas! It was my son, Captain Arthur Upgrove of the ----th Hussars, who taught you to walk--I can see you now, with the lappets of your worked muslin cap flying in the wind, and _such_ a serious expression!