University of Virginia Library

32. CHAPTER XXXII.
MRS. CHARLTON'S SECRET.

The next morning, after her return to town,
Mr. Barstow accompanied his niece in a formal
call upon Mrs. Charlton.

Beatrice, who had nervously dreaded this
visit—more, however, upon Juanita's account
than her own—smiled at her own tremors before
the first five minutes were over. Mrs.
Charlton's perfect breeding answered the exigencies
of the occasion better even than sincerity,
which involves emotion, and opens the
way for awkward situations—edge-tools not
to be handled without serious risk to the fingers
of the handler. But awkwardness, absurdities,
embarrassment, were unknown ingredients
in any of Juanita Charlton's combinations,
and this interview, apparently so
natural and free from all constraint, had been
the subject of her deepest thought from the
moment it had been announced by Mr. Barstow's
hastily-pencilled note.

Toward Beatrice her manner was precisely
what it had been before they separated—kind,
familiar, a little protecting and indulgent, as
far removed from fondness as from formality,
and with no shade of consciousness that any
new relation existed or was about to exist
between them. Toward Mr. Barstow she was,
perhaps, a little more familiar than formerly,
and there might be perceived a slight tone of
deference and of dependence upon his judgment
and opinion, not to be noticed before;
and yet, as Beatrice acknowledged to herself,
the keenest satirist could have found no room
for a sneer, either in the manner she adopted
upon her own part or the manner she permitted
upon that of the mature adorer, who evidently
only waited her sanction to display his passion
in the most decided manner.

At the end of half an hour, Beatrice rose to
take leave with a feeling blended of admiration
and gratitude toward the woman whose
social talent had rendered easy, and even pleasant,
an interview that might have been so exceedingly
disagreeable.

But, in parting, Mrs. Charlton slightly detained
her future niece, while, with a smiling
gesture, she intimated to her lover that he was
to proceed down-stairs alone.

“I want to see you, Beatrice. I have a
message for you.”

“From whom?”

“No matter just yet. Will you wait now,
or call again after you set down your uncle?
I will go for a little drive with you, if you will
take me.”

“Certainly,” said Beatrice, smiling at
thought of how soon carriage and horses
would be Mrs. Charlton's own; and then she
hurried down-stairs, only anxious just then to
part from her companion, and almost forgetting
to wonder what the mysterious message
could be.

“Now, Trix, you may take me down-town,
if you don't dislike the drive, and then go
home, or wherever you choose,” said Mr.
Barstow, handing his niece into the carriage
with the ceremonious politeness natural to
him.

“Yes, uncle, we will drive down-town, certainly;
and then Mrs. Charlton asked me to
come back and take her out for a little. She
has something to say to me,” said Beatrice,
determined to become entangled in no concealments.

“Has she? Poor girl, I suppose she thinks
you are not reconciled to the marriage, and
she wants to explain a little. You'll be kind
and gentle with her, won't you, Trix?”

“I will try, uncle,” said Beatrice demurely,
and almost laughed aloud at the idea of Mrs.
Charlton's needing indulgence and encouragement
at her hands, or feeling any desire to
apologize for her course.

An hour later, Mr. Barstow's handsome carriage

[ILLUSTRATION]

"The Grandarc Hotel."

[Description: 454EAF. Page 085. In-line image of a Main Street, with tall buildings on both sides, American flags flying proudly, and horse-drawn carriages going up and down. A newspaper boy and his dog run through the front of the picture.] again stopped at the private entrance of
the Grandarc Hotel; and, in answer to Miss
Wansted's card, Mrs. Charlton came rustling
down the stairs, elegantly dressed, and with
a contented smile upon her lips, presenting
the picture of a fresh and care free woman, in
the prime of her life and her beauty.

Beatrice looked at her more kindly than she
yet had done, and while she seated herself beside
her, said almost affectionately:

“How well you look, Juanita, and how
happy! I am so glad if you really love my
kind, good uncle.”

“I shall make him happy, do not be afraid,
Trix; although, confess you have been horribly
frightened,” laughed Mrs. Charlton; and
Beatrice, vexed at feeling the blood burn
guiltily in her cheeks, could not reply.

Mrs. Charlton pursued the subject no further,
but occupied herself in arranging her
draperies for some moments. Then she said
abruptly:

“Yes, Beatrice, I have a message for you,
and a package, and I promised Mr. Monckton
that I would tell you something.”

“Mr. Monckton!” echoed Beatrice.

“Yes; he came to see me after you refused
him.”

“Did he tell you that?” interrupted Beatrice.

“No, dear, not precisely; but I inferred it
from what he said, and he did not attempt to
deny it.”

“You should not have tried to surprise me
into acknowledging your inference, however,”
said Beatrice indignantly.

“Do you think so? Well, he came to see
me, and was inclined to revenge the affront he
had received from you upon me, because he
said the annoyance you experienced, in finding
that he and I kept a secret from you, was the
primary cause of a quarrel, or a misunderstanding
rather, which had separated you.
Then he said that he was going abroad directly.
The fact is, my dear, the man has a perpetual
motion inside him somewhere, and
nothing would have kept him long; but he
said that he was going, and might never return—should
not for a very long time, at any
rate; and he thought I owed it to him to set
him right with you after he was gone—on
the principle of `De mortuis nil nisi bonum,'
you know—and after a while I consented.
But, Beatrice, you must promise me, upon
your sacred word of honor, that you will never
repeat what I am going to tell you to any living
soul.”

“It is not necessary to promise so solemnly
—I am no tale-bearer,” said Beatrice rather
contemptuously.

“We none of us know what we are until
we are tempted. A remark trite perhaps, but
none the less true,” said Mrs. Charlton sententiously.
“And what I am going to tell you
is, as somebody said of his head, not valuable
to the world at large, but very important to the
owner. So, promise.”

“Very well. I promise not to betray your
confidence,” said Beatrice coldly.

And Juanita looked at her with a malicious
smile as she replied:

“Remember, you have promised, and I hold
you to it through every thing—so here is my
story:

“While Mr. Charlton lived, I met my first
love.”

“Excuse me. You mean to say that Mr.
Charlton was your first love?” asked Beatrice,
a little perplexed.

“Not at all,” replied her companion with
admirable coolness. “What I mean to say is,
that about six months after I became Mrs.
Charlton I met Major Strangford, an officer in
the United States army, and that he was my

first love. Now, Beatrice, it is by no wish of
my own that I am telling you this story. Had
you been a confiding, simple-hearted woman,
who would have accepted Mr. Monckton's assurance
that the mystery between him and
myself was nothing to you, I should have
been spared the necessity of telling and you
of hearing any thing farther; but since your
own suspicious and Mr. Monckton's doctrine
of compensation have forced this issue upon
us both, let us accept it manfully, and with as
few womanish complications of deceit, spite,
and malice as possible; which episodical
piece of advice please take in reply to the
contemptuous smile and look of indignant
virtue with which you have already favored
me, and which I beg may not be repeated.”

“I can turn my face away if its expression
annoys you,” said Beatrice quietly.

“Try, instead, to cultivate a wider scope of
moral vision, and look beyond the blue laws
in which you have been bred,” retorted Mrs.
Charlton. “However, the story is to be told,
and I shall fulfil my compact with Mr. Monckton,
however you receive the communication:
Major Strangford and I then fell in love at
first sight, if you will pardon the platitude—
which in this case, however, was any thing
but a platitude, for in both our hearts throbbed
the fiery blood of the South, and both our
temperaments were of the vivid and sympathetic
order which recognizes destiny at a
glance, and follows its dictates with blind
confidence. But crime is a stupidity, and loss
of social position is worse than annihilation.
We recognized this truth, and separated. A
few months later, he married; his heart of
fire and brain of quicksilver were incapable
of quiet inaction, and he could not wait. A
year later, I was a widow. He heard of it,
and travelled a thousand miles from his distant
frontier post to see me. Fancy that
meeting! No, you cannot fancy it; it is not
in you to imagine the fury of remorse, despair,
hopelessness, which raged in both our
hearts. That one short day eat the pith out
of my life and killed him, although we neither
of us felt then the full force of the ruin that
had come upon us. We parted once more,
but now more hopefully than the first time,
for we both believed that the volcano force of
our passion must conquer every obstacle, and
that could we but wait, fate would once more
grant us the possibility of bliss.”

“That is to say, that Major Strangford's
wife might die, as Mr. Charlton had already
died,” said Beatrice, her face resolutely turned
from her companion.

“Yes, if you choose to put it so coarsely.
Too restless to remain at his post, the Major
resigned his commission, and went abroad
with the woman he had married. She had
always been delicate in health, and now
showed symptoms of a decline. The Major
was a man of high-toned Southern honor,
and he omitted no measure for her recovery
—”

“She probably had discovered his relations
with you,” suggested Beatrice in the same
resolutely calm voice.

“Very possibly,” replied Mrs. Charlton with
composure. “At any rate, she sickened, and
the Major's constant letters to me spoke always
of her failing health. They went to the
East, and after that I knew nothing, for his
letters failed to reach me. I became desperate
with anxiety; and the necessity of concealing
my anxiety—for it was this very last winter,
while I was here with you—and the appearance
of gayety, at least, must be kept up, or I
did not earn the home your uncle was giving
me.

“Then came the night when you found
Mr. Monckton speaking to me, and your mad
jealousy forced on this explanation. He
brought me a package and a letter—just a few
lines, but oh! what wealth would buy them
from me? For, in the interior of Persia, his
wife had died; he had buried her, and was
hastening home to me, when a sudden fatal
sickness seized him. He knew it was fatal
from the first, and he wrote with his dying
hand those lines to me, and another note to
Mr. Monckton, an old friend, or rather travelling
companion, who knew all our sad story,
although a stranger to me. He sent him the
amulet which I had hung around his neck at
our last parting, and the letter, bidding him
break the news to me gently, and to shield
me from observation and suspicion. He would
not send to me directly, because he feared to
compromise me. You saw Monckton hang
the amulet around my neck, and thought it
was a love-token—so it was, so it is, and shall
go with me to my grave; but it is a token of a
love in which neither he nor you have any
part—a love that defies death, as it has already
defied life, and exists to-day in all the
fervor, all the omnipotence of its earliest
maturity.”

“And you have engaged to marry my uncle!”
exclaimed Beatrice, turning her horror-stricken
and indignant face full upon the
speaker.

Mrs. Charlton shrugged her shoulders.

“Why not?” asked she. “I give him all
he asks or can appreciate—my society, my
beauty, my social position; he does not expect
love, and I shall not fail in the duty and
attention of a wife toward him. It is his right
by purchase.”

“Have you, or will you tell him this story?”

“Did you ever know me to commit a stupidity?”

“If you do not, I will.”

“You promised me that you would not, if
you will take the trouble to remember.”

“Oh! but this is infamous! You cannot
do it!”

“We shall see. But what do you mean,
after all? Where is the infamy?” asked Mrs.
Charlton patiently.

“Where? Why in marrying one man with
your heart filled with love for another; in deceiving
and insulting so grossly a generous
heart that has given itself to you, believing
that it received yours in return.”

And Beatrice, trembling, pale, almost choking
with emotion, fixed ler clear eyes upon
Mrs. Charlton's unflinching face.

The latter smiled disdainfully.

“Your argument is apt. Mr. Barstow has
paid the price of a heart—and has a right to
expect a heart—for that is the law of trade, and
he is a trader. But I am no defrauder; Mr
Barstow will receive at my hands all, and more
than all that he has bargained for. I have told
him that the fire and passion of love were not
to be expected from him to me, or me to him; I
have promised him the affection, duty, and respect
of a wife, and I will give them to him.
What right have you or any one to interfere?”

“No right, perhaps, and yet I must speak.
How can I see this go on, and keep silence?”
exclaimed Beatrice in great agitation. Mrs.
Charlton looked at her unmoved.

“Again, I say, I do not understand your
horror, or your desire to annoy and bore your
uncle with this story,” said sle. “Major
Strangford is dead, and the memory I retain
of him lies too far below the surface to be
reached by any plummet in Mr. Barstow's
hand. Let it sink out of your sight also, and
forget what I have said to-day, as I shall certainly
appear to forget it myself.”

Beatrice looked at her doubtfully.

“Do you still wear this amulet he sent
you?” asked she.

“Certainly.”

“And will continue to do so after you are
married?”

“Until I die.”

“That in itself is enough to condemn you,
for it shows that you intend to perpetuate the
memory you affect to bury. Can you retain
the gift, and forget the giver?”

“I never announced the slightest intention
of forgetting the giver,” said Mrs. Charlton
coldly. “I only said that his memory would
remain buried in my heart.”

“With his epitaph blazoned upon your
bosom,” said Beatrice bitterly.

“You become epigrammatic, which shows
that you are losing your temper,” said Mrs.
Charlton.

Beatrice looked at her in astonishment.
“How can a woman speak of a life-long love,
and yet be utterly heartless?” asked she, half
aloud.

“Love is a passion, and what you call heart
is emotion, prejudice, weakness. The two are
seldom united,” said Juanita, in precisely the
tone of good-humored patience with which
she had hitherto instructed Beatrice in the
science of society. But this conversation, and
perhaps her own experience of the last week,
had changed the neophyte to an adept, and
she answered coldly:

“Our theories differ so essentially upon
most points, that it is not best for either to try
to convert the other. The only question we
have to solve at present is, what action you
will adopt toward my uncle.”

“I have already solved that question,” said
Mrs. Charlton in the same tone. “I shall
marry your uncle, and I shall behave toward
him with kindness and propriety. He will be
very happy, and never miss what he never
had, or expected to have, or could comprehend,
if it were given him. The revelation you
would make to him, in the way you would
make it, would nearly destroy his present happiness,
and give him no other. As for the
rest, `let the dead past bury its dead,' and let
you and I be good friends, and harmonious
companions, as it is our mutual interest to be.
And, above all things, Beatrice, never refer by
word or look, or silence, to this conversation
between us two. Close the chamber I have
shown you, lock the door and let the ivy

grow over it—or, if you like it better, hide it
behind the French flowers, the spangles, the
gaslight, and drop-curtain of society. At any
rate, forget it.”

“Why did you ever show me this chamber?”

“I promised Mr. Monckton that I would do
so!”

“How did he extort this promise?”

“Extort?”

“Excuse me. How did he persuade you to
make it?”

“Excuse me in turn, but I never promised
that I would tell that, and I do not intend to
do so.”

“It is not my affair, certainly,” said Beatrice,
pulling the check rein, and through
the speaking-tube giving James directions to
return to the Grandarc Hotel.

“But here is something which is your
affair,” said Mrs. Charlton, drawing from beneath
her muff and placing in Beatrice's
hand a packet, closely sealed, and addressed
to herself.

“Mr. Monckton left it with me to give you
after this conversation,” said she. “And now
tell me if this chilly spring weather is not detestable?”

Beatrice bowed her head, and Mrs. Charlton
kept up a cheerful monologue, until, at the
door of her hotel, she alighted with the remark
that she had enjoyed her drive exceedingly.