University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
STINGING BEES.

“Beatrice, it's just struck twelve, and
don't you think we'd better call 'em out to
luncheon?” whispered Miss Barstow, drawing
her niece into her own chamber, at the moment
deserted, although the bed was piled up
with outer garments, and a small baby slumbered
peacefully in a basket upon the hearth.

“Why, aren't we going to have dinner
pretty soon?” asked Beatrice, stooping to
touch the velvety cheek of the little sleeper
with her lips.

“Dinner! Why, Trix, have you forgotten?
We are going to give them luncheon now, and
by and by, about five o'clock, when it gets too
dark to quilt, and the gentlemen come, we're
going to have dinner and supper all in
one.”

“Oh! yes, I remember, aunty. They must
have some tea with their luncheon, mustn't
they? Old ladies always like tea when they
are at work, I notice.”

“Yes, they will have tea, and coffee, and
bread, and butter, and cake, and cheese, and
apple-tarts,” said Miss Rachel, checking off
each article upon her fingers. “And I want
you to carry round the cream and sugar on
that little silver waiter that brother Israel
gave me last New-Year's, and just see that
every body is getting enough to eat, and sort
of urge them to take more, or something else,
you know. Some people always say no the
first time, and mean yes all the while.”

“I know it, aunty. Yes, I will see that
they are all properly urged. Where shall I
find the salver?” asked Beatrice, smiling
roguishly at her aunt's directions.

“It's in the buttery, with the silver cream-pot
and sugar-bowl on it, all ready. You
needn't put any napkin over the waiter, Beatrice.
I am going to carry in a little hot dinner
to grandpa and grandma in the east room,
because they hate to be put out of their ways
you know, and I suppose Mr. Monckton will
eat with them. I'm afraid he's dreadful lonesome,
Beatrice.”

“Not a bit, aunty. He is having the nicest
time you can imagine, with grandfather and
the old records. I peeped in there just now.”

“I dare say you did,” said Miss Rachel
grimly, touching her niece's rosy cheek with
her forefinger. “Well, Trix, I think he is as
nice a man as I have seen for a great while.
I like him ever so much.”

“So do I, aunty; but don't go to building
air castles with me for Chatelaine; although
it is natural enough that your thoughts should
run on matrimony.”

“You saucy girl—” began Miss Rachel;
but Beatrice with a merry laugh was already
running down stairs to look for the silver
salver.

Long afterward, both she and her aunt remembered
that merry laugh and that light-hearted
audacity, and wondered that no
shadow of the clouds sweeping across that
brilliant sky should have warned them of its
coming.

The luncheon was served, and Beatrice, flitting
from group to group, the pretty salver,
with its cream-ewer and sugar-basin, in her
hand, and her face bright with cordial interest
in those whose wants she supplied, presented
a more attractive picture to the eyes of a
reasonable man than even Beatrice in all the
luxury of her gala robes, and the plenitude
of her social power.

So thought at least Mr. Monckton, standing
unobserved in the hall of the old house, sipping
his coffee, and watching the groups in
the various rooms with the attentive eye of a
practiced observer. As Beatrice approached,
he, wishing her to remain unconscious of his
presence, lest she should lose the simple
earnestness which charmed him so much in
her present manner, seated himself quietly
behind a group of thick-set matrons close at
hand, and so became most unintentionally
auditor of their conversation.

“Zilpah says she's real comfortable,” pursued
Zilpah's sister-in-law. “They don't have
no great variety, nor no company, and it's so
seldom that they any of them go out of the
woods, that she hadn't had a chance to write
before, since they got there; and I don't believe
she'd have written now, only she wanted
to tell about some things that Marston Brent
gave her when he broke up here, and she left
them with Samooel to sell for her, and I suppose

she thought it was time to hear from
them. She was always dreadful sharp after
money, Zilpah was, and that's a complaint
folks don't get better of as they get older.”

“Marston Brent and his folks thought a
sight of Zilpah,” said another matron meditatively.

“Yes, and she of them. She has a lot to
say about Marston in her letter. He's going
to be married.”

“Is? Why, who to, up there in the woods?”

“Well, a girl that's living with him someway
now. Zilpah don't say much about it;
only that evenings, they all sit round, and he
teaches Comfort all sorts of things. Zilpah
says that nobody here needn't think he's feeling
any way bad about what's past and gone,
for she never see a man more taken up in a
girl than he is in this Comfort, and they'll be
married soon.”

“He's got over the breaking off with—”

“S—h! here she is,” whispered another
voice; and between the portly forms of the
matrons, Monckton saw the glitter of the silver
salver, and heard a low voice saying:

“Will you have some more sugar or cream,
ladies?”

It was not five minutes since he had heard
that voice so free, so sweet, so ringing with
innocent mirth, and hardly his own eyes or
ears could persuade him that this was the
same. He stole a look at Beatrice, more careful
now than before not to let her perceive
him. Yes, face as well as voice had met a
change so great as to be almost incredible.
Those blanched cheeks—those lips, straight,
hard, and colorless—those eyes, vacant, yet
burning—that constrained, mechanical manner!
Ah! was this the light-hearted Beatrice
he had stolen away from his appointed place
to admire?

And then he fell to speculating upon the
sudden change. The talk of those women—it
must be that; and this Marston Brent was
the man she had loved, and from whom she
had been separated. A lover's quarrel, which
she had thought some day to reconcile, and
now he loved another woman! And she, so
proud, so sensitive, so—yes, she was jealous
in her friendship, as their late difference
proved; and still more would she be jealous
in her love—not meanly jealous, not desiring
to harm or wound either faithless lover or
successful rival, but disdaining a divided
reign, resigning all without a struggle the
moment a struggle became necessary. This
was the temper of the woman whom Monckton
read as easily as that morning he had
read the old Saxon Bible brought from England
by her ancestor.

Passing quietly behind the matrons, and
out of the room, he waited in the hall until
she should come out, meaning he knew not
what, but to comfort her in some way. Presently
she came; and even Monckton, practiced
societist as he was, stood confounded before
her. The change wrought by those idle
words was not more absolute than this—so
different from both the other moods; and who
but he, who knew the whole, could have distinguished
between the girlish glee of the
first and the practiced persiflage of the present
manner?

He looked at her curiously. Yes, her eyes
were bright, her lips smiling, her cheeks
flushed, her tone gay and unconcerned, and
the slight pallor about her mouth and the
slighter tremor of the jesting voice were so
faintly marked that no observer less acute
than he could have distinguished them.

“And she could hardly forgive me for the
transparent lie told in self-defence. That is
woman,” said he softly to himself. Beatrice
paused before him.

“Why, Mr. Monckton! A drone among
the bees! Aren't you afraid of being stung
to death?”

“Not while the queen-bee is my friend,”
said Monckton significantly, and making a
show of helping himself from the salver, he
detained her long enough to see that the allusion
had shaken somewhat her desperate mood.

“I am glad that we were reconciled last
night,” said she, suffering her face to fall for
one moment into an expression of such piteous
suffering that all the manhood of Monckton's
heart was stirred.

“So am I. I want to see you alone, when
all these people are gone,” said he.

“For what?”

“I will tell you then. Nothing that will
trouble or annoy you—be sure of that.”

“Sure? I am sure of nothing now.” And
with this one cry, wrung from the sharp
agony of her heart by his sympathetic tone,
Beatrice passed quickly on.