University of Virginia Library

38. CHAPTER XXXVIII.
A GHOST.

“Mr. Monckton! Is it possible? This is
indeed a delightful surprise.”

“I may echo the delight, but not the surprise,
for that would have been in finding
Mrs. Barstow less charming than I left Mrs.
Charlton,” said the traveller, touching the
finger-tips extended to him, and bowing profoundly.

“Still a courtier,” said the lady, lightly
laughing as she glanced toward a chair and
resumed her own.

“No satire, pray. Remember that I am but
just off a journey, and more than usually
powerless in your hands.”

“You have but just arrived in town?”

“Or in the country either. I landed upon
republican soil just four days ago.”

“After an absence of—how long?”

“Four years.”

“And you have explored during that time
how large a proportion of the habitable
globe?”

“Ah! one's ideas of habitable become so
vague in the course of extended travel that I
cannot answer your question, especially in
comparing this apartment with the hut of my
friend Eric Jakell, the Icelander, where I
spent a week last summer.”

And Mr. Monckton suffered his eyes to wander
admiringly through the elegant drawing-room,
its charms, like those of its mistress,
heightened by the softened and tinted light
alone suffered to enter the heavily shaded
windows.

Mrs. Barstow noted the glance, and felt an
added kindliness toward so delicate an appreciator
of the taste displayed in her surroundings.

“It is a pity you should waste four years
upon the Eric Jakells of the world when so
many of your more civilized friends are wishing
for your society,” said she, with a smile so
becoming that Mr. Monckton, doing a little
sum in mental arithmetic, decided that eight
and thirty must be the grand climacteric of
woman's beauty.

“I did not spend all my time in Iceland,”
said he slowly. “I travelled in various quarters
of the globe beside, and met many persons
whom I knew.”

“The Chappellefords, for instance,” said
Mrs. Barstow with a slightly malicious smile.
“Beatrice told me that they met you in London,
quite by accident.”

“Yes,” said Monckton gravely. “But a
very happy accident for me, as I enjoyed their
society exceedingly during the few days I was
able to remain with them.”

The reserve of his manner checked the jest
Mrs. Barstow wished to utter upon the subject
of Beatrice, and she asked instead:

“Did you share Mr. Chappelleford's triumphs
among the English savans?”

“Not at all. The Oriental Club were hospitable
enough to give me a chair, and I belong
to the Travellers', but otherwise I saw
nothing of society. I was only passing
through London on my way to Scotland. But
Mrs. Chappelleford's success was even greater
than her husband's.”

“Indeed—in what direction?” asked Mrs.
Barstow coldly.

“As a belle esprit, almost a bas bleu. In
fact, had she been less beautiful, less elegant,
older, and more stereotyped, she might have
been consigned to the ranks of learned women,
and lost to the general society which
eagerly claimed her.”

“Indeed! I did not know she had become
such a paragon. I shall be quite afraid of her
when I find time to appreciate her.”

“Pray, do not delay that period, for I assure
you that you are losing a great deal,” said Mr.
Monckton, smiling ever so little. “You have
not seen much of your friends then since
their return?” added he directly.

“No; they only came in the last steamer,
the one just before yours, by the way, and I
have hardly found time for a call, and to see
them once at dinner. They will be here to-morrow
evening, however, at a little gathering
in their honor, and I trust we shall have
the pleasure of welcoming Mr. Monckton also.
Mr. Barstow will be most happy to call upon
you in the morning, although, you know, society
is not his favorite occupation.”

“Thanks—I shall be most happy. Mr. Barstow
is quite well, I hope.”

“Oh! quite, and just as devoted to business
as ever. I hardly see him except at dinner,
for he is not fond of going out, and I am un
able to avoid so many engagements that they
quite absorb me.”

She raised her eyes with such an air of pathetic
protest against her fate, that Monckton
would certainly have laughed had he not been
absorbed at the moment in contriving an
opening for the one thing he had entered that
house to say.

“I dare say you are thinking that Mrs.
Monckton shall be more domestic,” continued
the lady with an arch smile; and the traveller
replied in the same tone:

“ `Bachelors' wives,' you know, are perfect,
and I am afraid I never shall have any other.
But you were asking of my travels, Mrs.
Barstow. Among other places, I visited Persia
again.”

“Indeed!” and Mrs. Barstow turned pale
beneath the nuance of rouge upon her cheek;
but recovering herself by a rapid and violent
effort, she boldly picked up the gage which she
imagined thrown down to her.

“Then I dare say you heard further news
of an old friend, Major Strangford,” said she
carelessly.

“Yes, Mrs. Barstow, very singular, very
startling news,” said Monckton earnestly.

“What is it, pray? He was always original.”

“This time extremely so, for after dispatching
a letter and parcel which I transmitted to
you four years ago, he recovered from the fever
supposed to be fatal, and in the course of
several months resumed the use both of his
body and mind, which, as I understand, had
been nearly equally affected by his illness.”

“He recovered!” gasped Mrs. Barstow, too
deeply agitated now for concealment.

“Yes, and was about to proceed upon his
journey homeward, when, in looking over a
file of American newspapers at some consulate
upon the route, he met with the announcement
of your marriage. It was a great shock
to him, as he had formed his own plans with
regard to your future. You will excuse this
freedom, I trust, as both you and Major Strangford
have honored me with your confidence
in times past.”

“Yes, yes: go on, please!”

“The Major was, as I have said, much
shocked, and also very angry, and in the first
heat of his emotions, he did a very foolish
thing.”

“Shot himself?”

“Oh! no, much worse than that: married

himself to a woman for whom he never pretended
to care, and whose devotion to him
only serves to render his indifference more apparent.
She was an English widow, very rich
and very vulgar; he met her somewhere in
Italy—Naples, I think—and they were married
in ten days from their first introduction.”

“I thought you said you met him in Persia.”

“No; I only mentioned Persia by way of introducing
this subject. I met them in Paris.”

Mr. Monckton paused, and Mrs. Barstow
sat for a moment, her face covered with her
hand, then raised it, pale and haughty, to
say:

“Your account of my former friend is interesting,
Mr. Monckton, for one never ceases
to feel an interest in the fate of one's intimate
associates, but as I shall probably never meet
or hear again of either Major or Mrs. Strangford,
the news is hardly as important as you
seem to think.”

“Pardon, madam,” said the traveller coldly.
“It is precisely because it is important that I
have intruded it upon you. Major and Mrs.
Strangford were passengers with me in the
Phœnix, and I know that it is his intention to
call upon you to-morrow—which is New-Year's
day, you will remember—in hopes of giving
you as painful a shock as he experienced in
hearing of your marriage. I know this, for
he told me.”

“And you came here to warn me! That is
real kindness, real friendship, Mr. Monckton,”
and Mrs. Barstow, rising, offered her white and
jewelled hand to her guest with more sincerity
of feeling than she had experienced before
in many years.

“You repay my slight service a hundred-fold,”
said Monckton, returning the cordial
pressure of the hand he held. “But you will
remember you did me a service long ago, and
although I never have thanked you, I felt none
the less grateful.”

“That was simple justice,” said Mrs. Barstow
with a very becoming air of proud rectitude,
and a convenient oblivion of the garnets.
“And although the confession caused
a breach between Mrs. Chappelleford and myself,
not yet healed, I have never regretted
making it.”

“Thank you. And you will be ready for
Major Strangford?”

“I shall be ready, and will even ask him to
waive all ceremony and bring his wife to me
to morrow evening,” said Mrs. Barstow with a
smile of honeyed malice.

“Ah! I see that forewarned is forearmed
in this case, and I need interfere no further,”
said Mr. Monckton, taking his leave.

Going down the stairs, he proposed to himself
this little problem, and left it unsolved:

“Which is meaner, for a man to stand by
and see a woman ill used, or to turn traitor to
another man?”