"I see," he said, "it"s an extraordinary situation, isn"t it?"
Another pause, and he added with his eyes carefully off Roger"s face:
"This housekeeper, now--you don"t think it"s possible----"
"No, I don"t," Roger interrupted shortly. "Both she and the father have told Margarita that she resembled her mother, and that her mother was very good and very beautiful, but that she was not named after her. She died when the child was born, and Hester was with them then.
Besides, her father used to correct her for using expressions of Hester"s and forbade her to hold her knife and fork as Hester did, and things of that sort. She never ate with them, either. Margarita says that Hester loved her father but was always afraid of him."
Caliban had the table cleared now, and Tip and I stared into our reflections in the beautiful, shining mahogany where our plates had been. I suppose the same thing was in both our minds. What a strange marriage for a Bradley! What an incongruous effect, in steady old Roger"s life! When one considered all the Jacksons and Sea.r.s.es and Cabots he might have married--there was one particular red-cheeked, big-waisted Cabot girl that old Madam Bradley had long and openly favoured--one could but gasp at the present situation. A surnameless Miranda, whose only possessions were a chest of money, a few pieces of old mahogany and a brindled hound!
"I haven"t seen the young lady yet, you know, Roger," Tip reminded him gently at last, and Roger, coming out of his abstraction with a quick smile, stepped to the foot of the stairs and called, "Margarita!
Margarita! _Viens, cherie!_"
She came, hesitating from stair to stair as a child does, and I caught my breath when I saw her--as I have always done whenever she appeared in a new and different dress. For she had taken off the faded jersey and put on a longer, more womanly frock of some sort of clear blue print. It was faded, too, and much washed, evidently, but its dull, soft tone and simple, scant lines only threw out the more strongly her rich colouring and strong, supple figure. The body of it crossed on itself simply in front, like an old-time kerchief, leaving her throat bare to the little hollow at the base of it; around her waist was a belt of square silver plates heavily chased, linked together with delicate silver links. Her long braids were bound around her beautiful round head, and this fashion of hair-dressing, with its cla.s.sic parting, brought out the purity of her features and the coin-like regularity of them. I saw at once that she was older than I had thought her on the beach: I had not given her twenty then.
Roger took her hand and led her into the room.
"This is Margarita," he said simply, but his face told all he did not say, and I thanked heaven that neither Elder nor I had been foolish enough to attempt what we should probably have called reasoning with him.
"Is this the man that will marry us?" she inquired gravely, taking his offered hand with a lovely, free gesture.
"Roger is going to give me the pleasure of making him so happy, yes,"
said Tip, very cordially, I thought, and with more grace than I had believed him capable of. But she did not even smile at him, and it was rather startling, because she had smiled at me, and I hadn"t known her long enough to understand that she had absolutely none of the perfunctory motions of lips and eyes that we learn so soon and so unconsciously in this cynical old world. When Margarita didn"t feel moved to smile, she didn"t, that was all, just as she didn"t pretend to look grave at the death of the only woman she had ever known in her life. She had never learned the game, you see.
"I should like it better if you did it," she said to me, and an idiotic joy filled every crease of my heart.
"He can"t do it, dear," Roger said gently, "only Mr. Elder can," and the look of appeal he turned on Tip would have touched a harder heart than that dear fellow"s.
"You see, old man," he murmured apologetically, "she says just exactly what she thinks, with no frills--she doesn"t understand yet...."
And good old Tip smiled back at him and said he understood, if Margarita didn"t, and perhaps she would be willing to make his acquaintance a little and walk out on the beach with him?
"I want to be your friend, too, Miss Margarita, as well as Roger"s,"
he ended.
"I will walk with you if Jerry comes too," she said placidly, and so we all laughed--I somewhat unsteadily--and Tip and I took her for a walk.
And right here I must stop and mention a very interesting thing.
Though she saw him often after that, for the intimacy renewed there after so many years never has waned since, and he has woven himself strangely and wholesomely into all our lives, Margarita never cared for Tip. For a long time I did not see why, and always attributed his extraordinary invulnerability to her charm to her lack of interest in him, but suddenly one day it came to me (in my bath, I remember; I squeezed a lot of soap into my eye till I thought I should go blind) and I realised all at once what a fool I had been. She did not care for him just _because_ he did not surrender to her. He was the only man but one that ever had anything to do with her, so far as I know, who was not, in one degree or another, in love with her. He admitted her beauty and charm, he admired her talent, he respected her frankness--but he never was the least little bit in love with her, and except for J--n S----t, who failed to make a great picture of her, for the same reason, I believe, he is the only man I know who ever had the opportunity, of whom that can be said.
And from the moment their eyes met, Margarita saw this (or felt it, rather, for she had not had sufficient practice in reading people at that time to be able to see it) and--he simply did not exist for her.
For I must admit it: it was her own particular fault, that. And I must hasten to add that I loved her the more for it. She _was_ heartless in a situation of that sort. It would be folly to deny it. It was as much a part of her enchanting personality, and as little a defect in my indulgent eyes, as the three tiny moles under her chin (true _grains de beaute_) or her utter refusal to affect an interest in people"s affairs or to eat the insides of her rolls and bread-slices. All faults, doubtless--but who would have or love a faultless woman? Not I, at any rate, for I loved her and love her and shall love her till my heart is a handful of dust, and she was far from faultless, my Margarita.
And yet, characteristically enough, it was to Tip that she turned in what was without any doubt the great decision of her life, and Tip that influenced her to it. She knew whom to go to well enough, and she knew that he was the one person qualified to give her absolutely unprejudiced counsel. Oh, yes! she knew. Just as the beasts make for the root or herb or flower that will cure them, she went to him, with an instinct as true as theirs. And I, G.o.d forgive me, was a tiny bit jealous of him for that! Men are made of curious clay, my masters, and it"s a mad world indeed.
After we came back from our walk, during which she and I talked, and Tip listened quietly, he moved toward Roger and I left Margarita fondling the dog and joined him.
"She is a lovely creature, Roger," he said thoughtfully. "I don"t want for a moment to meddle, but on the chance that you haven"t thought of it, may I suggest one thing?"
"Fire ahead," said Roger. He had changed his clothes, and appeared in his accustomed business suit; its neat creases and quiet colour made him again the responsible, unromantic lawyer I had known, and took away the last vestige of dramatic oddity from the situation. It all seemed natural and sober enough.
"Had you thought of taking her to your mother and marrying her there, Roger?" Tip went on quietly. "Supposing she were to adopt her, even--you could arrange all that easily--then there would be no awkwardness. As it is, it might be made a little uncomfortable ... it isn"t as if you were a n.o.body, you know, old man, and you don"t know her name, you see, and ..."
I will own that this struck me as an extremely practical plan for a moment, and I looked hopefully at Roger. But he shook his head.
"I see what you mean, Tip," said he, "but it"s impossible. I wish it weren"t. I thought of it, of course. But there are reasons why it won"t do. I won"t attempt to deny that this will be a blow to my mother. I know her too well to consider for a moment the possibility of her helping me in this way. She--she is very proud and--and she has her own ideas.... My cousin, too--Oh, Lord!" he concluded suddenly, "Jerry"ll tell you it wouldn"t work."
Of course it wouldn"t. In one flash I saw that dark, determined house on the Back Bay, Madam Bradley"s cold, bloodless face and Sarah"s malicious eyes probing, probing Margarita"s crystal unconsciousness.
It seemed to me suddenly that Roger"s mother might not, and that Sarah certainly would not, forgive this business. I saw his mother in a series of retrospective flashes, as I had been seeing her for twenty-five years: each time a little more impersonal, a little more withdrawn, a little less tolerant. I remembered the quiet, bitter quarrel with the president of the university to which he would naturally have gone, and its result of sending him to Yale, the first of his name to desert Harvard, to the amazement and horror of his kinsfolk. I remembered the cold resentment that followed his decision to go to work in New York, based very sensibly, I thought, on the impossibility of submission to his uncle"s great firm--the head of the family--and the inadvisability of working in Boston under his disfavour. I remembered the banishment of his younger sister on her displeasing marriage (the old lady actually read her out of the family with bell and book) and the poor woman"s subsequent social death and bitter decline of health and spirit. I remembered the sad death of his second sister, and the stony philosophy of her impenetrable mother. I remembered the eldest daughter, a brilliant beauty, whose career might have brushed the skirts of actual royalty, and whose mysterious renouncement of every triumph and joy possible to woman (one would suppose) and sudden conversion and retirement to a Roman Catholic order convulsed Boston for a long nine days and broke Madam Bradley"s heart so that she never smiled again--and never, it was whispered, forgave the G.o.d who had allowed such a shipwreck. That she loved Roger, I must believe; that she was proud of him and looked upon him with a sort of stern, fanatical loyalty as the head of her family, I knew. But I could not see her adopting, or even tolerating, Margarita with the unknown name. No, it wouldn"t do. And I told Tip so very decidedly.
"But if you wanted to take her to my mother, Roger," I ventured, seeing, in fancy, the dear woman cooing over Roger"s mysterious, romantic beauty (she adored him and would, moreover, have adopted a chambermaid if I had begged her to), "it could be arranged, I know...."
"Thank you, Jerry," he interrupted shortly, "but it must be now. I can"t have anything happen. Any slip----" I saw his hands clench, and I knew why. Whether Tip knew, I couldn"t tell; he never indicated it, then or ever after, good fellow. But he wasn"t a fool. "_Melez-vous de c"qui vous regarde!_" as we used to say at Vevay, and Tip minded his business well.
"That"s all right," he said quickly, "I only thought I"d mention it.
How about the license in this state?"
They talked a little in low tones, and I looked at Margarita and thought of the odd chances of life, and how we are hurried past this and that and stranded on the other, and skim the rapids sometimes, to be wrecked later in clear shallows, perhaps.
"If you are ready, then?" said Tip, and we all moved across the beach and found ourselves standing on a great, smooth rock that would be cut off in a full high tide, with Caliban, clean and quiet and pathetically attentive, behind us, and with him a curiously familiar stranger, very neatly dressed, with tired eyes. As we grouped ourselves there and Tip pulled a tiny book from his pocket I recollected this stranger"s face--it was the telegraph operator!
Roger, who forgot nothing, had brought him over for the other witness.
"Dearly beloved," said Tip in a clear, deep voice, and I woke with a start and realised that old Roger was being married. Margarita, in her graceful, faded blue gown, gazed curiously at him, one hand in Roger"s; the noon sun streamed down on us from a cloudless, turquoise sky; the little waves ran up the points of rocks, broke, and fell away musically.
To appreciate those quaint sentences of the marriage service, you must hear them out under the heavens, alone, with no bridesmaids, no voice that breathed o"er Eden, no flowers but the great handful of flaming nasturtiums Roger had put in her hands (no maiden lilies grew on that rock!) and a quiet man dressed just as other men are dressed, with only the consciousness of his calling to separate him from the rest of us. They held their own, those quaint old phrases, I a.s.sure you! But it was then I learned to respect them.
Nevertheless, Roger _had_ forgotten something.
"Where"s the ring?" the telegraph operator motioned to me with his lips. His tired eyes expressed a mild interest. I saw Roger"s lips purse; for a moment his eyes left Margarita"s face and I knew that he had just remembered it. I looked down vaguely, and my eyes fell upon the worn, thin band on my little finger--my mother"s mother"s wedding-ring. In one of those lightning flashes of memory I saw myself, a lad again, starting for college, and my mother putting it on my finger.
"She was the best woman, I believe, that ever lived, Jerry--I took it when she died. I want you to wear it, and perhaps you will think--oh, my darling! I know it is hard to be a good man, but will you try?"
My dear, dear mother! I think I tried--I hope so.
I slipped it from my finger--I had taken it off sometimes, but never for so good a reason--and pressed it into Roger"s hand. He accepted it as unconsciously as if it had come from heaven--and it was my ring that married Margarita.
CHAPTER XII
I LEAVE EDEN
[Ill.u.s.tration: I SEEM TO SEE ... A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN A BLUE DRESS SITTING UNDER A FRUIT TREE]
Clear as I am on a thousand little points that concern my first meeting with Margarita, my mind is a perfect blank when I try to recall the events of the next half hour. We must, of course, have left the rock, for I have a dim recollection of drinking healths in that dear old room and signing our names to something. But on what order we left it, of what we spoke, if we spoke at all, and how we at last found ourselves alone, I do not know. And yet it seems to me that some one--was it I?--discussed remedies for insomnia with some one else, and that some third person a.s.sured us that nothing but a complete change of scene could be of any lasting benefit. And my reason a.s.sures me that Tip and I and the telegraph operator must have been these three, for I seem to see, as if through a dim haze, a beautiful woman in a blue dress sitting under a fruit tree, with a dog"s head in her lap, a flaming handful of nasturtiums in her belt, and a man lying at her feet, with his hand in hers and his eyes fixed on her face. This could hardly have been Roger, one would think, for Roger was not a demonstrative man, and certainly not likely to have been so under these circ.u.mstances ... and yet, if not Roger, who could it have been?