University of Virginia Library

39. CHAPTER XXXIX.
A COUNCIL OF WAR.

“Madame begs that you will come up to
her dressing-room, if it is not too much fatigue,”
said the soubrette; and Mrs. Chappelleford,
with a silent inclination of the head,
followed to the suite of apartments that had
once been her own, and were now Mrs. Barstow's.
That lady, standing en grande toilette
between two mirrors, watched a little anxiously
the first expression of her guest's face in entering
the room, and felt a thrill of satisfaction
at its cordial approval.

“You look magnificently, Juanita. Nothing
can be better for you than black velvet
and diamonds.”

“I am so glad you think me properly
dressed. Fresh from Paris as you are, we all
must look to you as an authority.”

“I pray that you will do no such thing, for
I am the least reliable of women in such
matters. I have such a habit of altering and
adapting every thing, that I am no guide at
all in the way of fashion.”

And Mrs. Chappelleford, suffering the loose
fur-lined wrap she wore to drop into the hands
of Pauline, stood forth the living personification
of one of those rich, dusky old pictures
before which we stand for hours, silently
praying the mocking lips to open, the fathomless
eyes to return our imploring gaze, the
dead canvas to give up the story and the
passion it half reveals, yet half conceals.

Such a picture, full of the romance and
mystery of the past, mingled with the gracious
and graceful womanhood of to-day, looked
Beatrice, standing so serenely unconscious in
her quaintly fashioned robe of violet silk, soft
and lustreless, the ivory whiteness of her
neck and arms heightened by the yellow hue
of the old point-lace shading them, her beautiful
hair coiffed in a style all her own and
Titian's, and ornamented with sapphires of
inestimable value, for they had been wrought

in the unremembered years to deck perhaps
an empress, perhaps some simpler yet nobler
woman, and then had returned to the bosom
of the earth to wait through centuries, until
they again should see the light of day, and
again serve as beauty's foil.

Mrs. Barstow looked at her guest with
envy and dismay, thinly veiled by admiration.

“My dearest Beatrice! How odd, and how
thoroughly charming! Where did you get
that dress?”

“I bought the silk in Constantinople, and it
was made in Naples. Do you like it?” asked
Beatrice simply.

“It is lovely. But the fashion is so odd!
Are they wearing those square necks in Paris
now?”

“I don't know, I am sure. It is a fashion
I am fond of, and I have all my evening
dresses made in that way. I believe I was
guilty of a little plagiarism in this, and gave
the modiste a sketch to work by, which I had
taken from a picture in the Pitti. Don't expose
my presumption, will you?”

“I shall be very good if I refrain, for every
thing and every body in my rooms will be
thrown into the shadow by that toilette and
that wearer,” said Mrs. Barstow with a constrained
smile.

“How sorry I should be to believe you, for
it is so vulgar to be conspicuous,” said Beatrice
with unaffected dismay. “And I have
been away so long that I dare say I may have
grown too bizarre in my style. Shall I throw
a shawl over this dress?”

“Nonsense, my dear. No, indeed,” said the
hostess with a magnanimous effort greatly to
her credit. “Is it your fault that you are
charming? But now, sit down a moment,
please, I have something to say to you, something
very serious.”

With a look of some surprise, Beatrice took
the offered chair, and fixed her clear eyes
upon the face of her hostess, who continued
with some embarrassment:

“It is a subject upon which we spoke once
before, and did not agree very well, but I
know you will be willing to help me, when I
really need help.”

“Certainly, Juanita, if I can.”

“Mr. Monckton was with me yesterday,”
pursued Mrs. Barstow with a visible effort,
“and he told me very strange news. You remember
Major Strangford, Beatrice?”

“I remember what you told me of him just
before your marriage with my uncle.”

“Well, my dear, do but fancy that this
man is not dead, that he recovered from his
fever, heard of my marriage, and took it so
to heart that he actually married again for
spite, and now has absolutely come home, is
in town at this moment, and intends calling
here to-day.”

“Intends calling here?”

“Exactly, and with the avowed purpose of
annoying and confusing me. He confessed
as much to Monckton, who with real kindness
came to warn me. Now, Beatrice, what
can I do?”

“It is a very painful situation, certainly,”
said Beatrice gravely. “And I do not see
any thing that you can do except to assert
your position as a wife and a matron with
quiet dignity, and by showing Major Strangford
that the past is really past to you: make
it impossible for him to annoy you by bringing
it up.”

“Ah! but, Beatrice, suppose it is not really
past,” exclaimed Juanita, clasping her hands
in an agitated manner, while her very lips
turned white.

“I do not understand you,” said Beatrice,
raising her eyes to the other's face with a look
of shame and surprise. “You cannot mean
that you still cherish any feeling of love for
this man, and are afraid of betraying it?”

“But remember, Beatrice, all that he has
been to me; remember how much he has suffered
on my account; remember the weakness
of a woman's heart.”

“I remember only, Mrs. Barstow, that you
are my uncle's trusted wife, that you assumed
that position quite of your own wish—I may
say, by your own effort, and that the only tolerable
excuse you found at that time for not
revealing the whole truth to your future husband
was that it was a matter of the past altogether,
and that with Major Strangford had
died all possibility of your swerving from the
affection you professed for my uncle. But if
you intend to say that, in finding this man
alive, you find that you still love him, and
dread to see him on that account, and are
asking me to help and shield you in this disgraceful
position, all I can say is, that I am
very much surprised at your selection of a
confidante, and that I shall return immediately
home.”

She rose as she spoke, and stood upright

before the cowed and trembling woman, who,
looking up at her majestic figure, and face
severe and beautiful as that of an offended
Diana, felt a sudden sickening at the heart, in
recognizing a height to which she might
never hope to climb, which she had never
even imagined until that moment.

She caught at the soft, shining drapery
flowing around the stately figure, and fell upon
her knees before it.

“O Beatrice, Beatrice! I am a poor, weak,
simple woman! Help me, save me while
there is yet time.”

Beatrice stooped in an instant, and took
both the clinging hands in hers, a great pity
softening the disdainful lines of her face, and
her eyes filling with tears.

“Don't do that, Juanita,” said she in a low
voice. “Get up, I implore you. Indeed, I
will help you, if I can—or rather I will help
you to help yourself, for it is you who must
do the work, after all. There, let us sit quietly
down again, and consider the matter. Major
Strangford is coming here to-day professedly
to annoy and embarrass you. That proves
him no gentleman to begin with, and proves,
too, that his feeling toward you is more one
of enmity than good-will. It seems to me
that you are not called upon to treat such a
person with much ceremony. Why do you
not tell the servant to refuse you to him?”

“That would be almost impossible on New-Year's
Day, when gentlemen come in such
numbers, and altogether as it were. They do
not give their names very often.”

“Well, then, if we cannot keep him out,
let us consider how to deal with him after he
is in,” said Beatrice almost gayly; for, like
most proud and sensitive persons, she felt the
humiliation she had inflicted more keenly
than even the sufferer herself.

“And, after all,” continued she, “it is
better that you should see this person once,
to convince yourself how indifferent you have
become to him. We all change so rapidly
that it is very seldom we find ourselves in the
same position to any other person after a separation
of years. We have to begin actually
a new acquaintance, if we wish to renew
broken ties, and it is ten chances to one but
we find our new friend entirely a different
person from our old one, and altogether uncongenial
to our new selves. But one can
avoid this shock by refraining from remaking
the acquaintance, and just laying away the
past memory in one's cabinet of curious antiques,
properly numbered and classified;
and, after all, a cabinet of minerals or shells,
or even butterflies, is better worth collecting.”

“You are talking to yourself now, instead
of to me,” said Juanita, half petulantly, and
Beatrice colored to the waves of her shining
hair.

“That is true,” said she frankly. “I too
married from unworthy motives, and I too
had memories to subdue, but I replaced them
so thoroughly with other and better things
that they soon ceased to trouble me, and it is
now far beyond the power of man to revive
them.”

“And you would not be afraid to meet that
old lover of yours, ever so suddenly, or ever
so unreservedly?” asked Juanita curiously.

“I could not meet him so suddenly as to
make me forget our mutual position, and as
for unreserve, it seems to me that every wife
should live in an atmosphere of reserve,
within which no man can penetrate,” said
Beatrice so gravely that Juanita could not
pursue the subject.

“Well, what are we to do in this matter?”
asked she, after a moment of awkward silence.

“Why, since you are prepared for the attack,
it seems to me to have lost all its danger,” replied
Beatrice. “You will, I suppose, receive
Major Strangford precisely as you would any
other gentleman; forget, if you can, that you
ever knew him more intimately than you do
to-day, and let him perceive that you acknowledge
no secret understanding whatever between
you.”

“I shall turn him over to you, Beatrice.
You can make him understand better than I
that he is not welcome here. I am, after all,
the hostess, and must not be rude, you know.”

“There is not the slightest occasion for
rudeness,” said Beatrice a little impatiently.
“Your proper manner toward this man is polite
formality, verging on indifference. Rudeness
would be almost as objectionable as
emotion. Let him see that you have no feeling
of any sort toward him. Nothing will
discourage him like that.”

“But if you have an opportunity, I wish
you would let him see that you know all
about him, and that you mean to stand between
me and harm.”

“O Juanita! it is you who must feel and
show that such harm as this cannot come

near you. You must not depend upon me or
any one, or you will certainly be disappointed
in the end.”

“Hark! There is the bell. We must go
down,” exclaimed Mrs. Barstow, giving one
slow, comprehensive glance at her figure in
the mirror, and then sweeping out of the
room, sadly followed by Beatrice.