"He has imagination, you see," Maurice suggested, smiling.
"Now you are sneering, Mr. Wynne. I shall talk to the man on the other side."
She was good as her word, and left Maurice to devote himself to the lady on his right. He had the American adaptability, and a couple of months had sufficed to make him reasonably at ease at a dinner. The continuous delight he felt in his freedom, moreover, inspired him with an inclination to be frank and communicative, so that if he did not talk like the conventional man of the world, he managed not to sit silent. His neighbor to-night was Mrs. Thayer Kent, and he chatted easily with her about the West, where for a couple of years she had been living on a ranch. Something in Mrs. Kent"s talk reminded him of Berenice, and he sighed inwardly that the latter"s mourning prevented her from going out. As if the thought had been spoken aloud, Mrs.
Wilson recalled herself to his attention by saying in his ear:--
"It is such a pity Berenice Morison isn"t here. Have you seen her since the Mardi Gras ball?"
"Yes," he answered, turning quickly, and vexed to feel himself flush.
"I saw her yesterday at the consecration."
"Did you go? How immoral! I stayed at home and gave a luncheon for Marion Delega.s.s."
"So I heard; but everybody hadn"t such a moral thing as that to do."
"Oh, no; very likely not. By the way, you have never apologized for deserting me in the middle of the service that night."
"I had to take care of that girl. She fainted."
"Oh, you did? Who was she? What did you do with her? However, I don"t care. It"s none of my business. I wonder, though, what sort of a story you"d have told Berenice if she"d been there."
Wynne was too confused to answer this sally, although he wanted to say something about the cruelty of taking him into the ball-room. His confusion increased Mrs. Wilson"s amus.e.m.e.nt.
"I think I should like to be in at the death," she said. "She is coming down to stay with me next week. Come down and make love to her. I won"t tell about the girl you carried out of church in your arms."
More and more disconcerted and self-conscious, Maurice could only stammer that Mrs. Wilson flattered him if she supposed that Miss Morison would tolerate any love-making on his part.
"You are adorable when you blush like that," was the reply which he got. "I have almost a mind to set you to make love to me. However, that wouldn"t be fair. I will take it out in seeing you and her. You must surely come down."
Maurice regarded the invitation as merely part of Mrs. Wilson"s badinage, but in due time it was formally repeated by note. He opened the letter at the breakfast table, and was advised by his cousin to accept.
"Mrs. Wilson," she commented, "is like a banjo, more exciting than refined, but she isn"t bad-hearted. She has the old Boston blood and traditions behind her."
"They are sometimes rather far behind," interpolated Mr. Staggchase dryly. "She wasn"t a Beauchester, you know. However, she has her ancestors safe in their graves so that they can"t escape her."
Mrs. Staggchase smiled good-naturedly at the little fling at her own family pretensions.
"You are wicked this morning, Fred," was her reply. "Elsie is something of a sport on the ancestral tree; but she is worth visiting. Berenice Morison is going down there sometime soon. Perhaps she will be there with you, Maurice."
"I thought," Mr. Staggchase observed, "that old Mrs. Morison didn"t approve of Mrs. Wilson."
"n.o.body approves of Elsie," was Mrs. Staggchase"s calm reply. "I"m sure I don"t; but after all she is a sort of cousin of Berenice, and she can"t very well refuse to visit her. Really, there is nothing bad about Elsie. She is startling, and she certainly does things which are bad form. That"s half of it because she married as she did."
Nothing more was said, and Maurice kept his own counsel in regard to the fact that he knew that Miss Morison was to be his fellow-guest. He was full of wild hopes. He reproached himself that he was wrong to forget that Berenice was rich and he was poor; yet not for all his reproaches could he keep himself from feeling Mrs. Wilson had not seemed to see any insurmountable obstacle to his wooing; that she had appeared rather to be ready to help his suit. He must not, of course, try to win Berenice; yet he was going to Mrs. Wilson"s to meet her, to be with her, to revel in the delicious pleasure of hoping, of fearing, of loving.
The house of the Wilsons at Beverly Farms was on a bluff overlooking the sea. It was reached by a long avenue winding through pines mingled with birches and rowan trees; and stood in a clearing where all the day and all the night the sound of the waves on the cliff answered the whispering of the wind in the pine-tops. The broad piazzas of the house looked out over the sea, and gave views of the islands off sh.o.r.e, the ever-changing water, the beautiful curves of the sea marge, now high with defiant rocks, and now falling into sandy beaches. A level lawn, velvety and green, stretched from the house to the edge of the cliff, with here and there a rustic seat or a century plant stiff and arrogant in its lonely exile from warmer climes.
On this piazza Maurice found himself, just before dinner on the evening of his arrival, walking up and down with Berenice. It was still cool enough to make the exercise grateful.
"It is so delightful to have the weather warm enough to be out of doors without being all bundled up," she said, looking over the sea, cold green and gray in the declining light.
"The water doesn"t look very warm," Maurice responded, following her gaze.
"No, it isn"t exactly summer yet," she replied lightly. "Do you know,"
she added, turning to meet his eyes, "I can"t help thinking how different this is from the last time we were together away from Boston."
"When we were at Brookfield?"
"Yes."
"It is different; more different to me than you can have any idea of.
Then I was a cog in a machine; now I am my own master."
They walked to the end of the piazza, turned, and came down again. They were facing the light now, and her face shone with the pale glow of the declining day. In her black dress, with a soft shawl thrown about her, she was dazzling; and Maurice found it difficult not to take her in his arms then and there.
"It must have been a strange feeling," she observed thoughtfully, "to know that you were not master of your own movements, but had to do as you were told, whether you approved of it or not."
"Strange," he echoed, a sense of slavery coming over him which was far stronger than anything he had felt while the bondage lasted, "it was intolerable!"
"Yet you endured it?" she returned, regarding him curiously.
"Yes, I endured it. In the first place, I thought that it was my duty; and in the second, it was not so hard until I had seen"--
"Well, until you had seen?"--
"Until I had seen you, I was going to say."
Berenice flushed, and tossed her head.
"You have caught a pretty trick of paying compliments, Mr. Wynne."
"No," he answered with gravity, "I have only the mistaken temerity to say the truth."
She regarded him with a mocking light in her deep, velvety eyes.
"And is it the truth that you have given up your religion because you have seen me?"
Maurice wondered afterward how he looked when she sped this shaft, for he saw her shrink and pale. She even stammered some sort of an apology; but he did not heed it. Although he was sure that he should sooner or later have come to the same conclusion whether he had met Berenice or not, he knew in his secret heart that there was in her words some savor at least of truth. He felt their bitterness to his heart"s core, and could only stand speechless, reproaching her with his glance. If they were true it was cruel for her to say them. He regarded her a moment, and then turned toward the long French window by which they had come out of the house. Berenice recovered herself instantly, and behaved as if nothing had occurred to mar the serenity of their talk.
"Yes," she said in an even voice, "you are right. It is becoming too cold to stay out here."
He held open the window for her, and she swept past him with a soft rustle and a faint breath of perfume. He did not follow, but drew the window to behind her and continued his promenade alone until he was summoned to dinner. All his glorious air-castles had fallen in ruins about his feet, and he rated himself as a fool for having come to Beverly Farms to meet this girl who evidently flouted him.
The result of this conversation was to bring Maurice to the resolution to return to town. All the doubts which had been in his mind arose like ghosts ill exorcised, more tangible and more insistent than ever. He realized that he had come here fully persuaded in his secret heart that Miss Morison must love him, and with the hope of winning some proof of it. Now he a.s.sured himself that she did not care for him and that he had been a fool to indulge in a dream so absurd. The obstacles which lay between them presented themselves to him in a dismal array. He decided that she could have no respect for him, or she could not have thrown at him the implication that he had apostatized from selfish motives. With all the awful solemnity with which a man deeply in love examines trifles, he recalled her looks and words, deciding that he was to her nothing more than the b.u.t.t of her light contempt; and secretly wondering when and where he should see her again, he decided to leave her forever.
He announced his determination next morning to his hostess. As he could not well give the real reason for his decision, and had no experience in social finesse, he came off badly when asked why he had come to this sudden decision. He could not equivocate; and when Mrs. Wilson asked him point-blank if Berenice had been treating him badly, he could only take refuge in the reply that it was not for him to criticise what Miss Morison chose to do. He persisted in his resolution to return to Boston, feeling obstinately that he could not with dignity remain where he was while Berenice was there. A man of the world would at once have seen the folly of such a course, but Maurice was not a man of the world.
"Well," Mrs. Wilson said, after she had argued with him a little, "you have retained the clerical obstinacy, whatever else you"ve given up. I am not in the habit of pressing my guests to stay if they are tired of my society. If you choose to go, of course you will go."