University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.
WASHINGTON.

RICHARD had not been happy in Washington. He
led too quiet and secluded a life, his companions
said, and they advised him to go out more, jocosely
telling him that he was pining for his young wife and
growing quite an old man. When Melinda Jones came,
Richard brightened a little, for there was always a sense of
comfort and rest in Melinda's presence, and Richard spent
much of his leisure in her society, accompanying her to

concerts and occasionally to a levee, and taking pains to
show her whatever he thought would interest her. It was
pleasant to have a lady with him sometimes, and he wished
so much it had been practicable for Ethelyn to have come.
“Poor Ethie,” he called her to himself, pitying her because,
vain man that he was, he thought her so lonely without
him. This was at first, and before he had received
that dreadful blank, which sent such a chill to his heart,
making him cold, and faint, and sick, as he began to realize
what it was in a woman's power to do. He had occasionally
thought of Ethelyn's threat, not to write him a line,
and felt very uncomfortable as he recalled the expression
of her eyes when she made it. But he did not believe she
was in earnest. She surely could not hold out against the
letter he wrote, telling how he missed her every moment,
and how, if it had been at all advisable, he would have
taken her with him. He did not know Ethelyn, and was
not prepared for the disappointment in store for him when
the dainty little envelope was put into his hand. It was
her handwriting,—so much he knew; and there lingered
about the missive faint traces of the sweet perfume he remembered
as pervading everything she wore or used. Ethelyn
had not kept her vow; and with a throb of joy Richard
tore open the envelope and removed the delicate tinted
sheet inside. But the hand of the strong man shook, and
his heart grew heavy as lead, when he turned the sheet
thrice over, seeking in vain for some line or word, or syllable
or sign. But there was none, and Richard felt for a
moment as if all the world were as completely a blank as
that bit of gilt-edged paper he crumpled so helplessly in his
hand. Anon, however, hope whispered that she would
write next time; she could not hold out thus all winter;
and so Richard wrote again and again with the same success,
until at last he expected nothing, and people said of
him that he was growing old, while even Melinda noticed
his altered appearance, and how fast his brown hair was
turning gray. Melinda was in one sense his good angel.
She brought him news from home and Ethelyn, telling for
one thing of Ethie's offer to teach her music during the
winter; and for another, of Ethie's long drives upon the
prairie, sometimes with James, and sometimes with John,
but oftenest with Andy, to whom she seemed to cling as to
a very dear brother.

This news did Richard good, showing a better side of
Ethie's character than the one presented to him. She was
not cold and proud to the family at home; even his mother,
who wrote to him once or twice, spoke kindly of her, while
James warmly applauded her, and Andy wrote a letter,
wonderful in composition, and full of nothing but Ethelyn,
who made their home so pleasant with her music, and songs,
and pretty face. There was some comfort in this, and so
Richard bore his burden in silence, and no one ever dreamed
that the letters he received with tolerable regularity were
only blank, fulfilments of a hasty vow.

With Christmas came the Van Buren set from Boston,
—Aunt Sophie, with Frank and his girlish bride, who soon
became a belle, and flirted with every man who offered his
attentions, while Frank was in no ways behind in his flirtations
with the other sex. Plain, matter-of-fact Melinda Jones
was among the first to claim his notice after he learned that
she was niece of the man who drove such splendid blacks
and kept so handsome a suite of rooms at Willard's; but
Melinda was more than his match, and snubbed him so unmercifully
that he gave her up, and sneered at her as “that

old-maidish girl from out West.” Mrs. Dr. Van Buren
had been profuse in her inquiries after Ethelyn, and loud
in her regrets at her absence. She had also tried to patronize
both Richard and Melinda, taking the latter with her
to the theatre and to a reception, and trying to cultivate
her for the sake of poor Ethie, who was obliged to associate
with her, and people like her. Melinda, however, did not
need Mrs. Van Buren's patronage. Her uncle was a man
of wealth and mark, who stood high in Washington, where
he had been before. His niece could not lack attention,
and ere the season was over the two rival belles at Washington
were Mrs. Frank Van Buren, from Boston, and Miss
Melinda Jones, from Iowa.

But prosperity did not spoil Melinda, and James Markham's
chances were quite as good when, dressed in pink silk,
with camelias in her hair, she entertained some half dozen
judges and M.C.'s, as when in brown delaine and Magenta
ribbons she danced a quadrille at some “quilting bee out
West.” She saw the difference, however, between men of
cultivation and those who had none, and began to understand
the cause of Ethelyn's cold, proud looks when surrounded
by Richard's family. She began also silently to
watch and criticise Richard, comparing him with other men
of equal brain, and thinking how, if she were his wife, she
would go to work to correct his manners. Possibly, too,
thoughts of James, in his blue frock and cowhide boots,
occasionally intruded themselves upon her mind; but if so,
they did not greatly disturb her equanimity, for, let what
might happen, Melinda felt herself equal to the emergency,
—whether it were to put down Frank Van Buren and the
whole race of impudent puppies like him, or polish rough
James Markham if need be. How she hated Frank Van

Buren when she saw his neglect of his young wife, whose
money was all he seemed to care for; and how utterly she
loathed and despised him after the night when, at a party
given by one of Washington's magnates, he stood beside
her for half an hour and talked confidentially to her of
Ethelyn, whom, he hinted, he could have married if he would.

“Why didn't you, then?” and Melinda turned sharply
upon him, with a look in her black eyes which made him
wince as he replied, “Family interference,—must have money,
you know. But, zounds! don't I pity her!—tied to
that clown, whom—”

Frank did not finish the sentence, for Melinda's eyes
fairly blazed with anger as she cut him short with “Excuse
me, Mr. Van Buren; I can't listen to such abuse of one
whom I esteem as highly as I do Judge Markham. Why,
sir, he is head and shoulders above you, in sense and
intellect and everything which makes a man;” and with a
haughty bow Melinda swept away, leaving the shame-faced
Frank alone in his discomfiture.

“I'd like to kick myself if I could, though I told nothing
but the truth. Ethie did want me confoundedly, and I
would have married her if she hadn't been poor as a
church mouse,” Frank muttered to himself, standing in the
deep recess of the window, and all unconscious that just
outside upon the balcony was a motionless form which had
heard every word of his conversation with Melinda, and his
soliloquy afterward.

Richard Markham had come to this party to please Melinda,
but he did not enjoy it. If Ethie had been there,
he might; but he could not forget the blank that day received,
or the letter from James, which said that Ethelyn
was not looking as well as usual, and had the morning previous

asked him to turn back before they had ridden more
than two miles. He could not be happy with that upon
his mind, and so he stole from the gay scene out upon the
balcony, where he stood watching the quiet stars and thinking
of Ethelyn, when his ear was caught by the mention
of her name.

He had not thought before who the couple were standing
so near to him, but he knew now it was Melinda and
Frank Van Buren, and became an involuntary listener to
the conversation which ensued. There was a clenching of
his fist, a shutting together of his teeth, and an impulse to
knock the boasting Frank Van Buren down; and then, as
the past flashed before him, with the thought that possibly
Frank spoke the truth and Ethelyn had loved him, there
swept over him such a sense of anguish and desolation that
he forgot all else in his own wretchedness. It had never
occurred to him that Ethelyn married him while all the
time she loved another,—that perhaps she loved that other
still,—and the very possibility of it drove him nearly wild.

He was missed from the party, but no one could tell
when he left, for no one saw him as he sprang down into
the garden, and taking refuge in the paths where the shadows
were the deepest, escaped unobserved into the street,
and back to his own room, where he went over all the past
and recalled every little act of affection on Ethelyn's part,
and weighed it in the balance with proofs that she did not
care for him and never had. So much did Richard love his
wife, and so anxious was he to find her guiltless, that he magnified
every virtue and excused every error until the verdict
rendered was in her favor, and Frank alone was the delinquent,—Frank,
the vain, conceited coxcomb, who thought
because a woman was civil to him that she must needs wish

to marry him; Frank, the wretch who had presumed to
pity his cousin, and called her husband a clown! How
Richard's fingers tingled with a desire to thrash the insulting
rascal; and how, in spite of the verdict, his heart ached
with a dull, heavy fear lest it might be true that Ethie had
once felt for Frank something deeper than what girls usually
feel for their first cousins.

“And supposing she has?” Richard's generous nature
asked. “Supposing she did love Frank once on a time
well enough to marry him? She surely was all over that
love before she promised to be my wife, else she had not
promised; and so the only point where she is at fault is in
concealing from me the fact that she had loved another
first. I was honest with her. I told her of Abigail, and
it was very hard to do it, for I felt that the proud girl's
spirit rebelled against such as Abigail was years ago. It
would have been so easy, then, for Ethelyn to have confessed
to me, if she had a confession to make; though how
she could ever care for such a jackanapes as that baboon
of a Frank is more than I can tell.”

Richard was waxing warm against Frank Van Buren,
whom he despised so heartily that he put upon his shoulders
all the blame concerning Ethelyn, if blame there were.
He would so like to think her innocent, and he tried so
hard to do it that he succeeded in part; though frequently,
as the days passed on, and he sat at his post in the House,
listening to some tiresome speech, or took his solitary
walk, a pang of something like fear that all had not been
open and fair between himself and his wife would cut like
a knife through his heart, and almost stop his breath. The
short session was wearing to a close, and he was glad of it,
for he longed to be home again with Ethelyn, even if he

were doomed to meet the same coldness which those terrible
blanks had brought him. Anything was preferable
to the life he led; and though he grew pale as ashes when,
toward the latter part of February, he received a telegram
to come home at once, as Ethelyn was very sick, he hailed
the news as a message of deliverance whereby he could
escape from Washington a few days sooner. He hardly
knew when or how the idea occurred to him that Aunt
Barbara's presence would be more than acceptable to
Ethelyn now; but occur to him it did; and Aunt Barbara,
sitting by her winter fire and thinking of Ethelyn, was
startled terribly by the missive which bade her join Richard
Markham at Albany, on the morrow, and go with him to
Iowa, where Ethie lay so ill. A pilgrimage to Mecca would
scarcely have looked more formidable to the good woman
than this sudden trip to Iowa; but where her duty was
concerned she did not hesitate; and when at noon of the
next day the New York train came up the river, the first
thing Richard saw, as he walked rapidly toward the Central
Depot at Albany, was Aunt Barbara's bonnet protruding
from the car window, and Aunt Barbara's hand making
frantic passes and gestures to attract his notice.