University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
THE VAN BUREN SET.

COLONEL MARKHAM'S carryall, which Jake, the
hired man, had brushed up for the occasion, had
gone over to West Chicopee after the party from
Boston,—Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, with Frank and his betrothed,
Miss Nettie Hudson, from Philadelphia. Others had been
invited from the city, but one after another their regrets
had come to Ethelyn, who would gladly have excused the
entire set, Aunt Van Buren, Frank and all, though she confessed
to herself a great deal of curiosity with regard to
Miss Nettie, whom she had never seen; neither had she met
Frank since the dissolution of their engagement, for though
she had been in Boston, where most of her dresses were
made, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren had wisely arranged that Frank
should be absent from home. She was not willing to risk
a meeting between him and Ethelyn until matters were too
well adjusted to admit of a change, for Frank had more
than once shown signs of rebellion. He was in a more
quiescent state now, having made up his mind that what
could not be cured must be endured; and as he had not
sensibility enough to feel very keenly the awkwardness of
meeting Ethelyn under present circumstances, and as Miss
Nettie was really very fond of him, and he, after a fashion,

was fond of her, he was in the best of spirits when he stepped
from the train at West Chicopee and handed his
mother and Nettie into the spacious carryall, of which he
made fun as a country ark, while they rode slowly toward
Aunt Barbara Bigelow's.

Everything was in readiness for them. The large north
chamber was aired, and swept, and dusted, and only little
bars of light came through the closed shutters, and the room
looked very cool and nice with its fresh muslin curtains
looped back with blue, its carpet of the same cool shade,
its pretty chestnut furniture, its snow-bank of a bed, and the
tasteful bouquets which Ethelyn had arranged,—Ethelyn,
who lingered longer in this room than the other one across
the hall, the bridal chamber, where the ribbons which held
the curtains were white, and the polished marble of the
bureau and washstand sent a shiver through her veins
whenever she looked in there. She was in her own cozy
chamber now, and the silken hair, which in the early
morning had been twisted under her net, was bound in
heavy braids about her head, while a pearl comb held it in
its place, and a half-opened rose was fastened just behind
her ear. She had hesitated in her choice of a dress, vacillating
between a pale buff, which Frank had always admired,
and a delicate blue muslin, in which Judge Markham had
once said she looked so pretty. The blue had won the day,
for Ethelyn felt that she owed some concession to the man
whose kind note she had treated so cavalierly that morning,
and so she wore the blue for him, feeling glad of the faint,
sick feeling which kept the blood from rushing too hotly to
her face, and made her paler and fairer than her wont. She
knew she was very handsome when her toilet was made,
and that was one secret of the assurance with which she

went forward to meet Nettie Hudson when at last the
carryall stopped before the gate.

Mrs. Dr. Van Buren was tired, and hot, and dusty, and
as she was always a little cross when in this condition, she
merely kissed Ethelyn once, and, shaking hands with
Aunt Barbara, went directly to the north chamber, asking
that a cup of tea might be made for her dinner instead of
the coffee, whose fragrant odor met her olfactories as she
stepped into the house. First, however, she introduced
Miss Nettie, who, after glancing at Ethelyn, turned her
eyes wonderingly upon Frank, thinking his greeting of
his cousin rather more demonstrative than was exactly becoming,
even if they were cousins, and had been, as Mrs.
Dr. Van Buren affirmed, just like brother and sister.
That was no reason why Frank should have wound his
arm around her waist, and kept it there, while he kissed
her twice, and brought such a bright color to her cheeks.
Miss Nettie cared just enough for Frank Van Buren to be
jealous of him. She wanted all his attentions herself, and
so the little blonde was in something of a pet as she followed
on into the house, and twisted her hat-strings into a
hard knot, which Frank had to disentangle for her, just as he
had to kiss away the wrinkle which had gathered on her
forehead. She was a beautiful little creature, with a pleading,
helpless look in her large blue eyes which seemed to
be saying, “Look at me; speak to me, won't you?—notice
me a little.”

She was just the one to be made a tool of; and Ethelyn
readily saw that she had been as clay in Mrs. Van Buren's
skilful hands.

“Pretty, but decidedly a nonentity and a baby,” was
Ethelyn's mental comment, and she felt something like

contempt for Frank, who, after loving and leaning on her,
could so easily turn to weak little Nettie Hudson.

At the sight of Frank, and the sound of his voice, she
had felt all the olden feeling rushing back to her heart; but
when, after Nettie had followed Mrs. Van Buren to her
chamber, and she stood for a moment alone with him, he
felt constrained to say something, and stammered out,
“It's deuced mean, Ethie, to serve you so, and mother
ought to be indicted. I hope you don't care much,” all
her pride and womanliness was roused, and she answered
promptly, “Of course I don't care; do you think I would
marry Judge Markham if I were not all over that childish
affair? You have not seen him yet. He is a splendid
man.”

Ethelyn felt better after paying this tribute to Richard
Markham, and she liked him better, too, now that she had
spoken for him, but Frank's reply, “Yes, mother told me
so, but said there was a good deal of your Westernism about
him yet,” jarred on her feelings as she plucked the roses
growing at the end of the piazza and crushed them, thorns
and all, in her hands, feeling the smart less than the dull,
heavy throbbing at her heart. Frank did not seem to her
just as he used to; he was the same polished dandy as of
old, and just as careful to perform every little act of gallantry,
but the something lacking which she had always
felt to a certain extent was more perceptible now, and to
herself she accused him of having degenerated since he
had passed from her influence. She never dreamed
of charging it to her interviews with Judge Markham,
whose topics of conversation were so widely different from
Frank's. She was not generous enough then to concede
anything in his favor, though she felt glad that Frank was

not quite the same he had been,—it would make the evening
trial before her easier to bear; and Ethelyn's eyes were
brighter and her smiles more frequent as she sat down to
dinner and answered Mrs. Van Buren's question, “Where
is the Judge that he does not dine with us?”

“Sick, is he?” Mrs. Van Buren said when told of his
headache, while Frank remarked, “Sick of his bargain,
maybe,” laughing loudly at his own joke, while the others
laughed in unison; and so the dinner passed off without
that stiffness which Ethelyn had so much dreaded.

After it was over, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren felt better, and
began to talk of the “Judge,” and to ask if Ethelyn knew
whether they would board or keep house in Washington
the coming winter? Ethelyn did not know. She had
never mentioned Washington to Richard Markham, and he
had never guessed how much that prospective season at the
Capital had to do with her decision. That it would be
hers to enjoy she had no shadow of doubt, but as she felt
then she did not particularly care to keep up a household
for the sake of entertaining her aunt, and possibly Frank
and wife, so she replied that she presumed “they should
board, as it would be the short session,—if he was re-elected
they might consider the house.”

“There may be a still higher honor in store for him
than a re-election,” Mrs. Van Buren said, and then she proceeded
to speak of a letter which she had received from a
lady in Camden, who had once lived in Boston, and who
had written congratulating her old friend upon her niece's
good fortune. “There was no young man more popular
in that section of the country than Judge Markham,” she
said, “and there had been talk of nominating him for
Governor. Some, however, thought him too young, and

so they were waiting for a few years, when he would undoubtedly
be elected to the highest office in the State.”

This piece of intelligence had greatly increased Mrs. Van
Buren's respect for the lady-elect of Iowa's future Governor,
and she gave the item of news with a great deal of satisfaction,
but did not tell that her correspondent had added,
“It is a pity, though, that he does not know more of the
usages of good society. Ethelyn is so refined and sensitive
that she will be often shocked, no doubt, with the manners
of her husband and his family.”

This clause had troubled Mrs. Dr. Van Buren. She
liked Ethelyn, and now that she was out of Frank's way
she liked her very much, and would do a good deal to serve
her. She did not wish her to be unhappy, as she feared
she might be, from sundry rumors which had reached her
concerning that home out West, whither she was going.
So, when, after dinner, they were alone for a few moments,
she endeavored to impress upon her niece the importance
of having an establishment of her own as soon as possible.

“It was not well for sons' wives to live with the
mother,” she said. “She did not mean that Nettie
should live with her; and Ethelyn should at once insist
upon a separate home; then, if she should see any little
thing in her husband's manners which needed correcting,
she could do it so much better away from his mother. I
do not say that there is anything wrong in his manners,”
she continued, as she saw how painfully red Ethelyn was
getting, “but it is quite natural there should be, living
where he does. You cannot expect prairie people to be
as refined as Bostonians are; but you must polish him,
dear. You know how; you have had Frank for a model
so long; and even if he does not improve, people overlook

a great deal in a member of Congress, and will overlook
more in a Governor, so don't feel badly, darling,” and
Mrs. Van Buren kissed the poor girl before whom all
the dreary loneliness of the future had arisen like a
mountain, and whose heart even at that late hour would
have drawn back if possible.

But when, by way of soothing her, Mrs. Van Buren
talked of the winter in Washington, and the honors which
would always be accorded to her as the wife of an M.C.,
and then dwelt upon the possibility of her one day writing
herself the Governor's lady, Ethelyn's girlish ambition
was roused, and her vanity flattered, so that the chances
were that even Frank would have been put aside for the
future greatness, had he been offered to her then.

It was five o'clock in the afternoon, nearly time for the
bridal toilet to commence, and Mrs. Van Buren began to
wonder “why the Judge had not appeared.” He was better
of his headache and up and around, the maid had
reported when at four she brought over the remainder
of Mrs. Colonel Markham's silver, which had not been sent
in the morning, and then went back for extra napkins.
There was no need to tell Ethelyn that “he was up and
around,” for she had known it ever since a certain shutter
had been opened, and a man in his shirt-sleeves had appeared
before the window and thrown water from the
wash-bowl upon the lilac bushes below. Ethelyn knew
very well that old Mrs. Markham's servants were spoiled,
that her domestic arrangements were not of the best kind,
and that probably there was no receptacle for the dirty
water except the ground; but she did not consider this,
or reflect that aside from all other considerations the act
was wholly like a man; she only thought it like him,

Judge Markham, and feelings of shame and mortification,
such as no woman likes to entertain with regard to her husband,
began to rise and swell in her heart. In the excitement
of her toilet, however, she forgot everything, even the ceremony
for which she was dressing, and which came to her
with a shiver when a bridesmaid announced that Colonel
Markham's carriage had just left his yard with a gentleman
in it.

Judge Markham was on his way to his bridal.