University of Virginia Library

31. CHAPTER XXXI.
A DISAGREEABLE SURPRISE.

The day before the wedding, arrived Mr.
Israel Barstow, and was received with sober
joy by his parents, with fluttering cordiality
by the bride-elect, and with a feverish eagerness
by Beatrice, who, with the instinctive
desire most of us have felt to hide our sorrows
in a crowd, was longing to return to her
city home.

Uncle Israel received all these demonstrations
gratefully, and yet in a strangely preöccupied
manner very different from his usual hearty
fashion, and so marked that each of his friends
noticed and put a different construction upon
it—his father fearing that his business had become
involved; his mother watching for symptoms
of illness; Rachel concluding that her
own marriage had reäwakened some long-past
tender memories; and Beatrice dreading lest
he had learned Mr. Monckton's rejection.

But when at the stroke of nine o'clock, the
old-people prepared to retire, and their son
dutifully rose to bid them good-night, the
mystery was suddenly solved.

“Before you go, father and mother,” said
Mr. Israel Barstow in a strangely confused
voice, “I should like to tell you something—
something which I hope you will like to know,
or at least not take unkindly. The fact is,
that I'm going to be married too.”

“You married! Why, Israel Barstow,
what do you mean? What sort of a girl have
you picked out at last?” exclaimed the mother;
and Rachel added approvingly:

“`Better late than never;' and you're not so
much older than I, Israel.”

“Who is it, uncle?” asked Beatrice, with a
sudden terror seizing upon her heart.

“Some one you know, and can't but like, after
all the time you've been together. Mrs.
Charlton, Beatrice,” said Mr. Barstow, growing
very red in the face, and avoiding his niece's
grieved and astonished eyes.

“A Southern woman!” exclaimed the Puritan
father.

“A widow!” ejaculated his wife.

“A regular fashionable!” added Miss
Rachel; while Beatrice, without remark, removed
her hand from her uncle's arm and
turned away.

“Well, you, each of you, seem to find a
separate fault, and none of you any thing
pleasant to say,” remarked the lover rather
bitterly.

“I hope you have judged wisely for yourself,
son, and I trust that your future life will
be made a happy one,” said the father mildly.
“This is a matter in which every mature man
should judge for himself. I shall be glad to
see the woman you have selected as your wife
whenever you see fit to bring her here; and
now I will wish you a good-night.”

“Of course we shall be glad to see her, and
if she makes you a good wife, she shan't complain
that her husband's folks don't notice her
enough. Why didn't you bring her down
with you this time, Israel?”

“Thank you, father and mother. I know
you will like her when you see her; but I
thought it would be better to come some quiet
time after the wedding,” said Israel, with an
air of relief at having gotten over the announcement.
“You see we shall not make

such a parade as Rachel and the doctor are
doing. We are to be married quietly in
church some morning, slip away to Washington
for a few weeks, and then settle down at
home. Well, good-night. You're not off too,
Rachel?”

“Yes, I have to help mother a little about
undressing, but I will be back in a minute,”
said Miss Barstow; and closing the door, she
left her brother alone with his niece, who for
the first time in her life felt embarrassed in
his presence. The constraint was mutual,
but Mr. Barstow was the first to overcome it.

“Trix,” said he, approaching her as she
leaned upon the high back of her grandfather's
chair and stared dreamily into the fire,
“you seem out of spirits about something.
I hope it is not because your friend is going
to become your aunt.”

“O Uncle Israel! don't!” exclaimed the girl
with involuntary dismay.

“Don't what, child?”

“Don't speak of Mrs. Charlton as my
aunt.”

“But she will be. Of course your uncle's
wife will be your aunt, and I don't take it
kindly of you, Beatrice, to show this dislike
to a step that I am sure will add so much to
my happiness, as well as to that of a very
charming and very lovely woman.”

“Of course, uncle, I have no right to show
or to feel disapproval of your action. Only I
was so —”

“Well, so what?” asked Mr. Barstow a little
harshly.

“Shocked, I was going to say,” murmured
his niece.

“That is a strange word to use about such
an affair. Pray what is there so shocking in
it?”

“Do not be angry with me, uncle—I have
not been well since I was here, and I am tired
and nervous. Don't mind what I say at all.”

And Beatrice, crossing her arms upon the
chair-back, leaned her head upon them, and
wondered bitterly if so desolate a creature as
herself lived.

The expression of the drooping figure was
more eloquent than speech, and went straight
to the kindly heart of Mr. Israel Barstow, already
tingling with a little remorse, as he remembered
his openly avowed intention of
adopting Beatrice as his daughter and heiress.

“Come, come, my little girl,” said he, tenderly
drawing her to his embrace, and
smoothing with a familiar gesture the beautiful
hair he had so often praised. “You are
not to suppose this makes any change to you.
My house is your house, and I shall insist upon
you making a home of it; and as for money, why
I fancy there will be enough for all of us, both
now and by and by. Nothing will be changed
from what it has been, except that you will be
nearer and dearer to both of us. She told me
to give her love to you, and I have a little note
in my pocket that I was to hand you after you
had heard the news.”

“After I had been prepared,” thought Beatrice,
and then casting the bitter feeling resolutely
behind her, she put her arms about her
uncle's neck and kissed him tenderly.

“Dear Uncle Israel,” said she, “unless you
wish to make me feel like the most ungrateful
and degraded creature in the world, never
talk so to me again. Did you, could you think
that I remembered money, or that I was afraid
I should not have all that I ever enjoyed in
your house? I do not deserve, I never have
deserved your kindness, but at least I am not
ungrateful.”

“Nor I either, Trix, and it's I that am the
debtor. But you'll come home with me, won't
you, dear? The fact is, I am a little lonely
after all our pleasant times, and miss you
sorely. Of course, June has not been with us
since you left, and the house seems dull
enough.”

“Certainly I will come, if you need me, uncle.
Mrs. Charlton will not return until after
—after you are married, I suppose.”

“No, oh! no. She is terribly rigid on all
points of propriety, you know.”

“Yes,” replied Beatrice faintly

“We are proposing to be married quite
soon—in fact, next Thursday, the day after I
get home from here, and we start upon our
tour the same day,” said Mr. Barstow, a little
nervously; “and I should be very glad to have
you go with us, Trixie, but—”

“Oh! no, uncle,” interposed Beatrice hastily,
“that would be quite out of the question.
Don't think of it!”

“Well, so June said,” replied Mr. Barstow
innocently. “And I suppose it might be a
little odd; but then, you know, we are not very
young, or very romantic, either of us, and I
thought it would be pleasant— However, if
you will stay quietly in Midas Avenue with
Mrs. Grey, and just overlook a little some new
furnishing and decorating that is to be done

in our absence, I can't tell you how much
obliged I shall be. Besides, Trix, you must
remember these turtle-doves here will want
their nest to themselves, and we shall both of
us be better out of the way than in it after
to-morrow.”

Beatrice did not reply. The bitter waters
in which she seemed sinking closed her lips,
and had she unclosed them it would be to
say:

“Yes, you make your home no home for
me, and in the same moment remind me that
I am no longer needed or wanted in the only
other home open to me.”

But she did not say it, and before Mr. Barstow
could pursue the subject, Miss Rachel
entered, her momentary annoyance at her
brother's marriage past, and her tongue voluble
with questions, information, sly jests at
her own and his late romance, and all the
pleasant flutter natural to a bride upon her
marriage eve, and a secluded woman in possession
of an exciting piece of news.