 | XIII.
ORDEAL. A chance acquaintance |  |
13. XIII.
ORDEAL.
THEY had not planned to go anywhere
that day; but after church they found
themselves with the loveliest afternoon
of their stay at Quebec to be passed somehow,
and it was a pity to pass it indoors, the colonel
said at their early dinner. They canvassed the
attractions of the different drives out of town, and
they decided upon that to Lorette. The Ellisons
had already been there, but Mr. Arbuton had not,
and it was from a dim motive of politeness towards
him that Mrs. Ellison chose the excursion; though
this did not prevent her from wondering aloud
afterward, from time to time, why she had chosen
it. He was restless and absent, and answered at
random when points of the debate were referred to
him, but he eagerly assented to the conclusion,
and was in haste to set out.
The road to Lorette is through St. John's Gate,
down into the outlying meadows and rye-fields,
where, crossing and recrossing the swift St. Charles,
it finally rises at Lorette above the level of the
and the scattering cottages upon it have
not the well-to-do prettiness, the operatic repair,
of stone-built Beauport. But they are charming,
nevertheless, and the people seem to be remoter
from modern influences. Peasant-girls, in purple
gowns and broad straw hats, and not the fashions
of the year before last, now and then appeared
to our acquaintance; near one ancient cottage an
old man, in the true habitant's red woollen cap
with a long fall, leaned over the bars of his gate
and smoked a short pipe.
By and by they came to Jeune-Lorette, an
almost ideally pretty hamlet, bordering the road
on either hand with galleried and balconied little
houses, from which the people bowed to them as they
passed, and piously enclosing in its midst the village
church and churchyard. They soon after reached
Lorette itself, which they might easily have known
for an Indian town by its unkempt air, and the
irregular attitudes in which the shabby cabins
lounged along the lanes that wandered through it,
even if the Ellisons had not known it already, or
if they had not been welcomed by a pomp of
Indian boys and girls of all shades of darkness.
The girls had bead-wrought moccasins and workbags
to sell, and the boys bore bows and arrows
shoot! Put-up-pennies! shoot-the-pennies! Grand
shoot!” When they recognized the colonel, as
they did after the party had dismounted in front
of the church, they renewed these cries with
greater vehemence.
“Now, Richard,” implored his wife, you 're not
going to let those little pests go through all that
shooting performance again?”
“I must. It is expected of me whenever I come
to Lorette; and I would never be the man to neglect
an ancient observance of this kind.” The colonel
stuck a copper into the hard sand as he spoke, and a
small storm of arrows hurtled around it. Presently
it flew into the air, and a fair-faced, blue-eyed boy
picked it up: he won most of the succeeding coins.
“There 's an aborigine of pure blood,” remarked
the colonel; “his ancestors came from Normandy
two hundred years ago. That 's the reason he
uses the bow so much better than these coffee-colored
impostors.”
They went into the chapel, which stands on the
site of the ancient church burnt not long ago. It
is small, and it is bare and rude inside, with only
the commonest ornamentation about the altar, on
one side of which was the painted wooden statue
of a nun, on the other that of a priest, — slight
so much for the hopeless race that lingers and
wastes at Lorette in incurable squalor and wildness.
They are Christians after their fashion, this
poor remnant of the mighty Huron nation converted
by the Jesuits and crushed by the Iroquois
in the far-western wilderness; but whatever they
are at heart, they are still savage in countenance,
and these boys had faces of wolves and foxes.
They followed their visitors into the church, where
there was only an old woman praying to a picture,
beneath which hung a votive hand and foot, and
a few young Huron suppliants with very sleek hair,
whose wandering devotions seemed directed now
at the strangers, and now at the wooden effigy
of the House of St. Ann borne by two gilt angels
above the high-altar. There was no service, and
the visitors soon quitted the chapel amid the
clamors of the boys outside. Some young girls, in
the dress of our period, were promenading up and
down the road with their arms about each other
and their eyes alert for the effect upon spectators.
From one of the village lanes came swaggering
towards the visitors a figure of aggressive fashion,
— a very buckish young fellow, with a heavy black
mustache and black eyes, who wore a jaunty round
hat, blue checked trousers, a white vest, and a
his breast; in his hand he swung a light cane.
“That is the son of the chief, Paul Picot,” whispered
the driver.
“Excuse me,” said the colonel, instantly; and
the young gentleman nodded. “Can you tell me
if we could see the chief to-day?”
“O yes!” answered the notary in English, “my
father is chief. You can see him”; and passed on
with a somewhat supercilious air.
The colonel, in his first hours at Quebec, had
bought at a bazaar of Indian wares the photograph
of an Indian warrior in a splendor of factitious
savage panoply. It was called “The Last of the
Hurons,” and the colonel now avenged himself for
the curtness of M. Picot by styling him “The Next
to the Last of the Hurons.”
“Well,” said Fanny, who had a wife's willingness
to see her husband occasionally snubbed, “I
don't know why you asked him. I 'm sure nobody
wants to see that old chief and his wretched bead
trumpery again.”
“My dear,” answered the colonel, “wherever
Americans go, they like to be presented at court.
Mr. Arbuton, here, I 've no doubt has been introduced
to the crowned heads of the Old World, and
longs to pay his respects to the sovereign of Lorette.
I come to Lorette. The coldness of the heir-apparent
shall not repel me.”
The colonel led the way up the principal lane of
the village. Some of the cabins were ineffectually
whitewashed, but none of them were so uncleanly
within as the outside prophesied. At the doors and
windows sat women and young girls working moccasins;
here and there stood a well-fed mother of a
family with an infant Huron in her arms. They all
showed the traces of white blood, as did the little
ones who trooped after the strangers and demanded
charity as clamorously as so many Italians; only
a few faces were of a clear dark, as if stained by
walnut-juice, and it was plain that the Hurons were
fading, if not dying out. They responded with a
queer mixture of French liveliness and savage stolidity
to the colonel's jocose advances. Great lean
dogs lounged about the thresholds; they and the
women and children were alone visible; there were
no men. None of the houses were fenced, save the
chief's; this stood behind a neat grass plot, across
which, at the moment our travellers came up, two
youngish women were trailing in long morning-gowns
and eye-glasses. The chief's house was a
handsome cottage, papered and carpeted, with a
huge stove in the parlor, where also stood a table
A full-bodied elderly man with quick, black eyes
and a tranquil, dark face stood near it; he wore a
half-military coat with brass buttons, and was the
chief Picot. At sight of the colonel he smiled
slightly and gave his hand in welcome. Then he sold
such of his wares as the colonel wanted, rather discouraging
than inviting purchase. He talked, upon
some urgency, of his people, who, he said, numbered
three hundred, and were a few of them farmers,
but were mostly hunters, and, in the service of the
officers of the garrison, spent the winter in the
chase. He spoke fair English, but reluctantly, and
he seemed glad to have his guests go, who were
indeed willing enough to leave him.
Mr. Arbuton especially was willing, for he had
been longing to find himself alone with Kitty, of
which he saw no hope while the idling about the
village lasted.
The colonel bought an insane watch-pocket for
une dolleur from a pretty little girl as they returned
through the village; but he forbade the boys any
more archery at his expense, with “Pas de grand
shoot, now, mes enfans! — Friends,” he added to
his own party, “we have the Falls of Lorette and
the better part of the afternoon still before us;
how shall we employ them?”
Mrs. Ellison and Kitty did not know, and Mr.
Arbuton did not know, as they sauntered down
past the chapel, to the stone mill that feeds its
industry from the beauty of the fall. The cascade,
with two or three successive leaps above the road,
plunges headlong down a steep crescent-shaped
slope, and hides its foamy whiteness in the dark-foliaged
ravine below. It is a wonder of graceful
motion, of iridescent lights and delicious shadows;
a shape of loveliness that seems instinct with a
conscious life. Its beauty, like that of all natural
marvels on our continent, is on a generous scale;
and now the spectators, after viewing it from the
mill, passed for a different prospect of it to the
other shore, and there the colonel and Fanny
wandered a little farther down the glen, leaving
Kitty with Mr. Arbuton. The affair between them
was in such a puzzling phase, that there was as
much reason for as against this: nobody could
do anything, not even openly recognize it. Besides,
it was somehow very interesting to Kitty to be
there alone with him, and she thought that if all
were well, and he and she were really engaged, the
sense of recent betrothal could be nowhere else
half so sweet as in that wild and lovely place. She
began to imagine a bliss so divine, that it would
have been strange if she had not begun to desire
thrill that she suffered him to touch upon what
was first in both their minds.
“I thought you had agreed not to talk of that
again for the present,” she feebly protested.
“No; I was not forbidden to tell you I loved
you; I only consented to wait for my answer;
but now I shall break my promise. I cannot wait.
I think the conditions you make dishonor me,”
said Mr. Arbuton, with an impetuosity that fascinated
her.
“O, how can you say such a thing as that?” she
asked, liking him for his resentment of conditions
that he found humiliating, while her heart leaped
remorseful to her lips for having imposed them.
“You know very well why I wanted to delay; and
you know that — that — if — I had done anything
to wound you, I never could forgive myself.”
“But you doubted me, all the same,” he rejoined.
“Did I? I thought it was myself that I
doubted.” She was stricken with sudden misgiving
as to what had seemed so well; her words
tended rapidly she could not tell whither.
“But why do you doubt yourself?”
“I — I don't know.”
“No,” he said bitterly, “for it 's really me that
seen in me that makes you believe anything could
change me towards you,” he added with a kind of
humbleness that touched her. “I could have borne
to think that I was not worthy of you.”
“Not worthy of me! I never dreamed of such a
thing.”
“But to have you suspect me of such meanness
—”
“O Mr. Arbuton!”
— “As you hinted yesterday, is a disgrace that
I ought not to bear. I have thought of it all
night; and I must have my answer now, whatever
it is.”
She did not speak; for every word that she had
uttered had only served to close escape behind her.
She did not know what to do; she looked up at
him for help. He said with an accent of meekness
pathetic from him, “Why must you still
doubt me?”
“I don't,” she scarcely more than breathed.
“Then you are mine, now, without waiting, and
forever,” he cried; and caught her to him in a
swift embrace.
She only said, “Oh!” in a tone of gentle reproach,
yet clung to him a helpless moment as for
rescue from himself. She looked at him in blank
which his pulses wildly exulted; then a burning
flush dyed her face, and tears came into her eyes.
“O, I hope you 'll never be sorry,” she said; and
then, “Do let us go,” for she had no distinct
desire save for movement, for escape from that
place.
Her heart had been surprised, she hardly knew
how; but at his kiss a novel tenderness had leaped
to life in it. She suffered him to put her hand
upon his arm, and then she began to feel a strange
pride in his being tall and handsome, and hers.
But she kept thinking as they walked, “I hope
he 'll never be sorry,” and she said it again, half in
jest. He pressed her hand against his heart, and
met her look with one of protest and reassurance,
that presently melted into something sweeter yet.
He said, “What beautiful eyes you have! I noticed
the long lashes when I saw you on the Saguenay
boat, and I could n't get away from them.”
“O please, don't speak of that dreadful time!”
cried Kitty.
“No? Why not?”
“O because! I think it was such a bold kind
of accident my taking your arm by mistake; and
the whole next day has always been a perfect
horror to me.”
He looked at her in questioning amaze.
“I think I was very pert with you all day, —
and I don't think I 'm pert naturally, — taking
you up about the landscape, and twitting you
about the Saguenay scenery and legends, you
know. But I thought you were trying to put me
down, — you are rather down-putting at times, —
and I admired you, and I could n't bear it.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Arbuton. He dimly recollected,
as if it had been in some former state of existence,
that there were things he had not approved in
Kitty that day, but now he met her penitence
with a smile and another pressure of the hand.
“Well, then,” he said, “if you don't like to recall
that time, let 's go back of it to the day I met you
on Goat Island Bridge at Niagara.”
“O, did you see me there? I thought you
did n't; but I saw you. You had on a blue
cravat,” she answered; and he returned with as
much the air of coherency as if really continuing
the same train of thought, “You won't think it
necessary to visit Boston, now, I suppose,” and he
smiled triumphantly upon her. “I fancy that I
have now a better right to introduce you there
than your South End friends.”
Kitty smiled, too. “I 'm willing to wait. But
don't you think you ought to see Eriecreek before
there 's anything serious, till you 've seen me at
home.”
They had been going, for no reason that they
knew, back to the country inn near which you purchase
admittance to a certain view of the falls, and
now they sat down on the piazza, somewhat apart
from other people who were there, as Mr. Arbuton
said, “O, I shall visit Eriecreek soon enough. But
I shall not come to put myself or you to the proof.
I don't ask to see you at home before claiming you
forever.”
Kitty murmured, “Ah! you are more generous
than I was.”
“I doubt it.”
“O yes, you are. But I wonder if you 'll be
able to find Eriecreek.”
“Is it on the map?”
“It 's on the county map; and so is Uncle
Jack's lot on it, and a picture of his house, for that
matter. They 'll all be standing on the piazza
— something like this one — when you come up.
You 'll know Uncle Jack by his big gray beard,
and his bushy eyebrows, and his boots, which
he won't have blacked, and his Leghorn hat,
which we can't get him to change. The girls will
be there with him, — Virginia all red and heated
the family mending in her hand, — and they 'll
both come running down the walk to welcome you.
How will you like it?”
Mr. Arbuton suspected the gross caricature of
this picture, and smiled securely at it. “I shall
like it well enough,” he said, “if you run down
with them. Where shall you be?”
“I forgot. I shall be up stairs in my room,
peeping through the window-blinds, to see how you
take it. Then I shall come down, and receive you
with dignity in the parlor, but after supper you 'll
have to excuse me while I help with the dishes.
Uncle Jack will talk to you. He 'll talk to you
about Boston. He 's much fonder of Boston than
you are, even.” And here Kitty broke off with a
laugh, thinking what a very different Boston her
Uncle Jack's was from Mr. Arbuton's, and maliciously
diverted with what she conceived of their
mutual bewilderment in trying to get some common
stand-point. He had risen from his chair, and
was now standing a few paces from her, looking
toward the fall, as if by looking he might delay
the coming of the colonel and Fanny.
She checked her merriment a moment to take
note of two ladies who were coming up the path
towards the porch where she was sitting. Mr.
the steps, and turned slowly and languidly to survery
the company. But at sight of Mr. Arbuton,
one of them advanced directly toward him, with
exclamations of surprise and pleasure, and he with
a stupefied face and a mechanical movement turned
to meet her.
She was a lady of more than middle age, dressed
with certain personal audacities of color and shape,
rather than overdressed, and she thrust forward,
in expression of her amazement, a very small hand,
wonderfully well gloved; her manner was full of
the anxiety of a woman who had fought hard for
a high place in society, and yet suggested a latent
hatred of people who, in yielding to her, had
made success bitter and humiliating.
Her companion was a young and very handsome
girl, exquisitely dressed, and just so far within the
fashion as to show her already a mistress of style.
But it was not the vivid New York stylishness. A
peculiar restraint of line, an effect of lady-like concession
to the ruling mode, a temperance of ornament,
marked the whole array, and stamped it
with the unmistakable character of Boston. Her
clear tints of lip and cheek and eye were incomparable;
her blond hair gave weight to the poise
of her delicate head by its rich and decent masses.
angelic expression of extremely nice young fellow
blending with a subtle maidenly charm. She indicated
her surprise at seeing Mr. Arbuton by
pressing the point of her sun-umbrella somewhat
nervously upon the floor, and blushing a very little.
Then she gave him her hand with friendly
frankness, and smiled dazzlingly upon him, while
the elder hailed him with effusive assertion of
familiar acquaintance, heaping him with greetings
and flatteries and cries of pleasure.
“O dear!” sighed Kitty, “these are old friends
of his; and will I have to know them? Perhaps
it 's best to begin at once, though,” she
thought.
But he made no movement toward her where
she sat. The ladies began to walk up and down,
and he with them. As they passed her, he did
not seem to see her.
The ladies said they were waiting for their carriage,
which they had left at a certain point when
they went to look at the fall, and had ordered to
take them up at the inn. They talked about people
and things that Kitty had never beard of.
“Have you seen the Trailings since you left
Newport?” asked the elder woman.
“No,” said Mr. Arbuton.
“Perhaps you 'll be surprised then — or perhaps
you won't — to hear that we parted with
them on the top of Mount Washington, Thursday.
And the Mayflowers are at the Glen House. The
mountains are horribly full. But what are you to
do! Now the Continent” — she spoke as if the
English Channel divided it from us — “is so common,
you can't run over there any more.”
Whenever they walked towards Kitty, this woman,
whose quick eye had detected Mr. Arbuton
at her side as she came up to the inn, bent upon
the young girl's face a stare of insolent curiosity,
yet with a front of such impassive coldness
that to another she might not have seemed aware
of her presence. Kitty shuddered at the thought
of being made acquainted with her; then she remembered,
“Why, how stupid I am! Of course
a gentleman can't introduce ladies; and the only
thing for him to do is to excuse himself to them
as soon as he can without rudeness, and come back
to me.” But none the less she felt helpless and
deserted. Though ordinarily so brave, she was so
beaten down by that look, that for a glance of not
unkindly interest that the young lady gave her she
was abjectly grateful. She admired her, and fancied
that she could easily be friends with such a girl as
that, if they met fairly. She wondered that she
society cannot really make distinctions between
fine and coarse, and could not have given her a
reason for their association.
Still the three walked up and down before Kitty,
and still she made his peace with herself, thinking,
“He is embarrassed; he can't come to me at once;
but he will, of course.”
The elder of his companions talked on in her
loud voice of this thing and that, of her summer,
and of the people she had met, and of their places
and yachts and horses, and all the splendors of
their keeping, — talk which Kitty's aching sense
sometimes caught by fragments, and sometimes in
full. The lady used a slang of deprecation and
apology for having come to such a queer resort as
Quebec, and raised her brows when Mr. Arbuton
reluctantly owned how long he had been there.
“Ah, ah!” she said briskly, bringing the group
to a stand-still while she spoke, “one does n't stay
in a slow Canadian city a whole month for love of
the place. Come, Mr. Arbuton, is she English or
French?”
Kitty's heart beat thickly, and she whispered to
herself, “O, now! — now surely he must do something.”
“Or perhaps,” continued his tormentor, “she 's
— some pretty companion of voyage.”
Mr. Arbuton gave a kind of start at this, like
one thrilled for an instant with a sublime impulse.
He cast a quick, stealthy look at Kitty, and then
as suddenly withdrew his glance. What had happened
to her who was usually dressed so prettily?
Alas! true to her resolution, Kitty had again refused
Fanny's dresses that morning, and had faithfully
put on her own travelling-suit, — the suit
which Rachel had made her, and which had
seemed so very well at Eriecreek that they had
called Uncle Jack in to admire it when it was
tried on. Now she knew that it looked countrified,
and its unstylishness struck in upon her, and
made her feel countrified in soul. “Yes,” she owned,
as she met Mr. Arbuton's glance, “I 'm nothing
but an awkward milkmaid beside that young lady.”
This was unjust to herself; but truly it was never
in her present figure that he had intended to show
her to his world, which he had been sincere enough
in contemning for her sake while away from it.
Confronted with good society in these ladies, its
delegates, he doubtless felt, as never before, the
vastness of his self-sacrifice, the difficulty of his
enterprise, and it would not have been so strange if
just then she should have appeared to him through
that which love had illumined. She saw whatever
purpose toward herself was in his eyes, flicker and
die out as they fell from hers. Then she sat alone
while they three walked up and down, up and
down, and the skirts of the ladies brushed her
garments in passing.
“O, where can Dick and Fanny be?” she silently
bemoaned herself, “and why don't they
come and save me from these dreadful people?”
She sat in a stony quiet while they talked on,
she thought, forever. Their voices sounded in her
ears like voices heard in a dream, their laughter
had a nightmare cruelty. Yet she was resolved
to be just to Mr. Arbuton, she was determined
not meanly to condemn him; she confessed to
herself, with a glimmer of her wonted humor, that
her dress must be an ordeal of peculiar anguish to
him, and she half blamed herself for her conscientiousness
in wearing it. If she had conceived of
any such chance as this, she would perhaps, she
thought, have worn Fanny's grenadine.
She glanced again at the group which was now
receding from her. “Ah!” the elder of the
ladies said, again halting the others midway of
the piazza's length, “there 's the carriage at last!
But what is that stupid animal stopping for? O,
take us up at the bridge! Provoking! But it 's
no use; we may as well go to him at once; it 's
plain he is n't coming to us. Mr. Arbuton, will
you see us on board?”
“Who — I? Yes, certainly,” he answered absently,
and for the second time he cast a furtive
look at Kitty, who had half started to her feet in
expectation of his coming to her before he went, —
a look of appeal, or deprecation, or reassurance, as
she chose to interpret it, but after all a look only.
She sank back in blank rejection of his look,
and so remained motionless as he led the way
from the porch with a quick and anxious step.
Since those people came he had not openly recognized
her presence, and now he had left her without
a word. She could not believe what she could
not but divine, and she was powerless to stir as
the three moved down the road towards the carriage.
Then she felt the tears spring to her eyes;
she flung down her veil, and, swept on by a storm
of grief and pride and pain, she hurried, ran,
towards the grounds about the falls. She thrust
aside the boy who took money at the gate. “I
have no money,” she said fiercely; “I 'm going to
look for my friends; they 're in here.”
But Dick and Fanny were not to be seen.
them, she beheld Mr. Arbuton, who had missed her
on his return to the inn, coming with a frightened
face to look for her. She had hoped somehow
never to see him again in the world; but since it
was to be, she stood still and waited his approach
in a strange composure; while he drew nearer,
thinking how yesterday he had silenced her prophetic
doubt of him: “I have one answer to all
this; I love you.” Her faltering words, verified
so fatally soon, recalled themselves to him with
intolerable accusation. And what should he say
now? If possibly, — if by some miracle, — she
might not have seen what he feared she must!
One glance that he dared give her taught him
better; and while she waited for him to speak, he
could not lure any of the phrases, of which the air
seemed full, to serve him.
“I wonder you came back to me,” she said after
an eternal moment.
“Came back?” he echoed, vacantly.
“You seemed to have forgotten my existence!”
Of course the whole wrong, if any wrong had
been done to her, was tacit, and much might be
said to prove that she felt needlessly aggrieved,
and that he could not have acted otherwise than
an embarrassing position to him.
“Why, what have I done,” he began, “what
makes you think.... For heaven's sake listen
to me!” he cried; and then, while she turned a
mute attentive face to him, he stood silent as before,
like one who has lost his thought, and strives
to recall what he was going to say. “What sense,
— what use,” he resumed at last, as if continuing
the course of some previous argument, “would
there have been in making a display of our acquaintance
before them? I did not suppose at
first that they saw us together.”.... But here
he broke off, and, indeed, his explanation had but
a mean effect when put into words. “I did not
expect them to stay. I thought they would go
away every moment; and then at last it was too
late to manage the affair without seeming to force
it.” This was better; and he paused again, for
some sign of acquiescence from Kitty, and caught
her eye fixed on his face in what seemed contemptuous
wonder. His own eyes fell, and ran uneasily
over her dress before he lifted them and began once
more, as if freshly inspired: “I could have wished
you to be known to my friends with every advantage
on your side,” and this had such a magnanimous
sound that he took courage; “and you ought
never could have meant you a slight. If you had
known more of the world, — if your social experience
had been greater you would have seen....
Oh!” he cried, desperately, “is there nothing you
have to say to me?”
“No,” said Kitty, simply, but with a languid
quiet, and shrinking from speech as from an added
pang. “You have been telling me that you were
ashamed of me in this dress before those people.
But I knew that already. What do you want me
to do?”
“If you give me time, I can make everything
clear to you.”
“But now you don't deny it.”
“Deny what? I — ”
But here the whole fabric of Mr. Arbuton's defence
toppled to the ground. He was a man of
scrupulous truth, not accustomed to deceive himself
or others. He had been ashamed of her, he
could not deny it, not to keep the love that was
now dearer to him than life. He saw it with
paralyzing clearness; and, as an inexorable fact
that confounded quite as much as it dismayed
him, he perceived that throughout that ignoble
scene she had been the gentle person and he the
vulgar one. How could it have happened with a
seemed to have been only the helpless sport of a
sinister chance.
But now he must act; it could not go so, it
was too horrible a thing to let stand confessed. A
hundred protests thronged to his lips, but he
refused utterance to them all as worse even than
silence; and so, still meaning to speak, he could
not speak. He could only stand and wait while it
wrung his heart to see her trembling, grieving
lips.
His own aspect was so lamentable, that she half
pitied him, half respected him for his truth's sake.
“You were right; I think it won't be necessary
for me to go to Boston,” she said with a dim smile.
“Good by. It 's all been a dreadful, dreadful
mistake.”
It was like him, even in that humiliation, not to
have thought of losing her, not to have dreamed
but that he could somehow repair his error, and
she would yet willingly be his. “O no, no, no,”
he cried, starting forward, “don't say that! It
can't be, it must n't be! You are angry now, but I
know you 'll see it differently. Don't be so quick
with me, with yourself. I will do anything, say
anything, you like.”
The tears stood in her eyes; but they were cruel
make it worse. You can't undo what 's been done,
and that 's only a little part of what could n't be
undone. The best way is for us to part; it 's the
only way.”
“No, there are all the ways in the world besides!
Wait — think! — I implore you not to be
so — precipitate.”
The unfortunate word incensed her the more;
it intimated that she was ignorantly throwing too
much away. “I am not rash now, but I was very
rash half an hour ago. I shall not change my
mind again. O,” she cried, giving way, “it is n't
what you 've done, but what you are and what I
am, that 's the great trouble! I could easily forgive
what 's happened, — if you asked it; but I
could n't alter both our whole lives, or make myself
over again, and you could n't change yourself.
Perhaps you would try, and I know that I would,
but it would be a wretched failure and disappointment
as long as we lived. I 've learnt a great deal
since I first saw those people.” And in truth he
felt as if the young girl whom he had been meaning
to lift to a higher level than her own at his side
had somehow suddenly grown beyond him; and his
heart sank. “It 's foolish to try to argue such a
thing, but it 's true; and you must let me go.”
“I can't let you go,” he said in such a way, that
she longed at least to part kindly with him.
“You can make it hard for me,” she answered,
“but the end will be the same.”
“I won't make it hard for you, then,” he returned,
after a pause, in which he grew paler and
she stood with a wan face plucking the red leaves
from a low bough that stretched itself towards her.
He turned and walked away some steps; then
he came suddenly back. “I wish to express my
regret,” he began formally, and with his old air of
doing what was required of him as a gentleman,
“that I should have unintentionally done anything
to wound —”
“O, better not speak of that,” interrupted Kitty
with bitterness, “it 's all over now.” And the
final tinge of superiority in his manner made her
give him a little stab of dismissal. “Good by.
I see my cousins coming.”
She stood and watched him walk away, the sunlight
playing on his figure through the mantling
leaves, till he passed out of the grove.
“The cataract roared with a seven-fold tumult
in her ears, and danced before her eyes. All
things swam together, as in her blurred sight her
cousins came wavering towards her.
“Where is Mr. Arbuton?” asked Mrs. Ellison.
Kitty threw her arms about the neck of that
foolish woman, whose loving heart she could not
doubt, and clung sobbing to her. “Gone,” she
said; and Mrs. Ellison, wise for once, asked
no more.
She had the whole story that evening, without
asking; and whilst she raged, she approved of
Kitty, and covered her with praises and condolences.
“Why, of course, Fanny, I did n't care for knowing
those people. What should I want to know them for?
But what hurt me was that he should so postpone
me to them, and ignore me before them, and leave
me without a word, then, when I ought to have been
everything in the world to him and first of all.
I believe things came to me while I sat there, as
they do to drowning people, all at once, and I saw
the whole affair more distinctly than ever I did.
We were too far apart in what we had been and what
we believed in and respected, ever to grow really
together. And if he gave me the highest position
in the world, I should have only that. He never
could like the people who had been good to me,
and whom I loved so dearly, and he only could like
me as far as he could estrange me from them. If
he could coolly put me aside now, how would it be
afterwards with the rest, and with me too? That 's
getting splendidly married is as good as being true
to the love that came long before, and honestly
living your own life out, without fear or trembling,
whatever it is. So perhaps,” said Kitty, with a
fresh burst of tears, “you need n't condole with
me so much, Fanny. Perhaps if you had seen
him, you would have thought he was the one to be
pitied. I pitied him, though he was so cruel.
When he first turned to meet them, you 'd have
thought he was a man sentenced to death, or
under some dreadful spell or other; and while he
was walking up and down listening to that horrible
comical old woman, — the young lady did n't
talk much, — and trying to make straight answers
to her, and to look as if I did n't exist, it was the
most ridiculous thing in the world.”
“How queer you are, Kitty!”
“Yes; but you need n't think I did n't feel it.
I seemed to be like two persons sitting there, one
in agony, and one just coolly watching it. But
O,” she broke out again while Fanny held her
closer in her arms, “how could he have done it,
how could he have acted so towards me; and just
after I had begun to think him so generous and
noble! It seems too dreadful to be true.” And
with this Kitty kissed her cousin and they had a
and Kitty dried her eyes, and bade Fanny a brave
good-night, and went off to weep again, upon her
pillow.
But before that, she called Fanny to her door,
and with a smile breaking through the trouble of
her face, she asked, “How do you suppose he got
back? I never thought of it before.”
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Ellison with profound disgust,
“I hope he had to walk back. But I 'm afraid
there were only too many chances for him to ride.
I dare say he could get a calash at the hotel
there.”
Kitty had not spoken a word of reproach to
Fanny for her part in promoting this hapless
affair; and when the latter, returning to her own
room, found the colonel there, she told him the
story and then began to discern that she was not
without credit for Kitty's fortunate escape, as she
called it.
“Yes,” said the colonel, “under exactly similar
circumstances she 'll know just what to expect another
time, if that 's any comfort.”
“It 's a great comfort,” retorted Mrs. Ellison;
“you can't find out what the world is, too soon, I
can tell you; and if I had n't manœuvred a little
to bring them together, Kitty might have gone off
a misfortune that would have been!”
“Horrible.”
“And now, she 'll not have a single regret for
him.”
“I should think not,” said the colonel; and he
spoke in a tone of such dejection, that it went to
his wife's heart more than any reproach of Kitty's
could have done. “You 're all right, and nobody
blames you, Fanny; but if you think it 's well for
such a girl as Kitty to find out that a man who
has had the best that the world can give, and has
really some fine qualities of his own, can be such a
poor devil, after all, then I don't. She may be
the wiser for it, but you know she won't be the
happier.”
“O don't, Dick, don't speak seriously! It 's so
dreadful from you. If you feel so about it, why
don't you do something.”
“O yes, there 's a fine opening. We know,
because we know ever so much more, how the case
really is; but the way it seems to stand is, that
Kitty could n't bear to have him show civility to
his friends, and ran away, and then would n't give
him a chance to explain. Besides, what could I
do under any circumstances?”
“Well, Dick, of course you 're right, and I wish
really believe Kitty 's glad to be out of it.”
“What?” thundered the colonel.
“I think Kitty 's secretly relieved to have it all
over. But you need n't stun me.”
“You do?” The colonel paused as if to gain
force enough for a reply. But after waiting, nothing
whatever came to him, and he wound up his
watch.
“To be sure,” added Mrs. Ellison thoughtfully,
after a pause, “she 's giving up a great deal; and
she 'll probably never have such another chance as
long as she lives.”
“I hope she won't,” said the colonel.
“O, you need n't pretend that a high position
and the social advantages he could have given her
are to be despised.”
“No, you heartless worldling; and neither are
peace of mind, and self-respect, and whole feelings,
and your little joke.”
“O, you — you sickly sentimentalist!”
“That 's what they used to call us in the good
old abolition days,” laughed the colonel; and the
two being quite alone, they made their peace with
a kiss, and were as happy for the moment as if
they had thereby assuaged Kitty's grief and mortification.
“Besides, Fanny,” continued the colonel,
“though I 'm not much on religion, I believe
these things are ordered.”
“Don't be blasphemous, Colonel Ellison!” cried
his wife, who represented the church if not religion
in her family. “As if Providence had anything to
do with love-affairs!”
“Well, I won't; but I will say that if Kitty
turned her back on Mr. Arbuton and the social
advantages he could offer her, it 's a sign she was
n't fit for them. And, poor thing, if she does n't
know how much she 's lost, why she has the less
to grieve over. If she thinks she could n't be
happy with a husband who would keep her snubbed
and frightened after he lifted her from her lowly
sphere, and would tremble whenever she met any
of his own sort, of course it may be a sad mistake,
but it can't be helped. She must go back to
Eriecreek, and try to worry along without him.
Perhaps she 'll work out her destiny some other
way.”
| XIII.
ORDEAL. A chance acquaintance | |