University of Virginia Library

31. CHAPTER XXXI.
MRS. DR. VAN BUREN.

SHE was always tossing up just when she was not
wanted, Ethie used to say in the olden days,
when she saw the great lady alighting at the
gate in time to interfere with and spoil some favorite project
arranged for the day, and she certainly felt it, if she
did not say it, when, on the morning following her arrival
in Chicopee, she heard Betty exclaim, “If there ain't
Miss Van Buren! I wonder what sent her here!”

Ethie wondered so, too, and drawing the blanket closer
around her shoulders (for she had taken advantage of her
fatigue and languor to lie very late in bed) she wished her
aunt had stayed in Boston, for a little time at least.
It had been very delightful, waking up in the dear old
room and seeing Betty's kind face bending over her,—
Betty, who had heard of her young mistress's return with
a gush of glad tears, and then at once bethought herself as
to what there was nice for the wanderer to eat. Just as she
used to do when Ethie was a young lady at home, Betty
had carried her pan of coals and kindlings into the chamber
where Ethie was lying, and kneeling on the hearth had
made the brightest of fires, while Ethie, with half closed
lids, watched her dreamily, thinking how nice it was to be
cared for again, and conscious only of a vague feeling of
delicious rest and quiet, which grew almost into positive
happiness as she counted the days it would take for Aunt

Barbara's letter to go to Iowa and for Richard to answer
it in person, as he surely would do if all which Aunt Barbara
had said was true.

Ethie was not quite sure that she loved him even now,
but she had thought of him so much during the last two
years, and now, when he was so near, she longed to see
him again,—to hear his voice and look into his eyes.
They were handsome eyes, as she remembered them;
kindly and pleasant, too,—at least they had been so to her,
save on that dreadful night, the memory of which always
made her shiver and grow faint. It seemed a dream now,
—a far-off, unhappy dream,—which she would fain forget
just as she wanted Richard to forget her foibles and give
her another chance. She had bidden Aunt Barbara write
to say that she was there, and so after the tempting breakfast,
which had been served in her room, and which she
had eaten sitting up in bed, because Betty insisted that it
should be so,—and she was glad to be petted and humored
and made into a comfortable invalid,—Aunt Barbara
brought her writing materials into the room, and bidding
Eithie lie still and rest herself, began the letter to
Richard.

But only the date and name were written, when Betty,
coming in with a few geranium leaves and a white fuchsia
which she had purloined from her mistress's house plants,
announced Mrs. Van Buren's arrival, and the pleasant
morning was at an end. Mrs. Dr. Van Buren had come up
from Boston to borrow money from her sister for the liquidation
of certain debts contracted by her son, and which
she had not the ready means to meet. Aunt Barbara had
accommodated her once or twice before, saying to her as
she signed the check, “That money in the bank was put

there for Ethie, but no one knows if she will ever need it,
so it may as well do somebody some good.”

It had done good by relieving Mrs. Van Buren of a load
of harassing care, for money was not as plenty with her as formerly,
and now she wanted more. She was looking rather
old and worn, and her cloak was last year's fashion, but
good enough for Chicopee, she reflected, as she hurried into
the house and stamped the muddy, melting snow from her
feet.

Utter amazement seemed the prevailing sensation in her
mind when she learned that Ethelyn had returned, and
then her selfishness began to suggest that possibly Barbara's
funds, saved for Ethie, might not now be as accessible for
Frank. She was glad, though, to see her niece, but professed
herself terribly shocked at her altered appearance.

“Upon my word, I would not have recognized you,”
she said, sitting down upon the bed and looking Ethie
fully in the face.

Aunt Barbara, thinking her sister might like to have
Ethie alone for a little, had purposely left the room, and so
Mrs. Van Buren was free to say what she pleased. She
had felt a good deal irritated toward Ethie for some time
past. In fact, ever since Richard became Governor, she
had blamed her niece for running away from the honor
which might have been hers. As aunt to the Governor's
lady, she, too, would have come in for a share of the éclat:
and so, as she smoothed out the folds of her stone-colored
merino, she felt as if she had been sorely aggrieved by that
thin, white-faced woman, who really did not greatly resemble
the rosy, bright faced Ethelyn to whom Frank Van
Buren had once talked love among the Chicopee hills.

“No, I don't believe I should have known you,” Mrs.
Van Buren continued. “What have you been about to
fade you so?”

Few women like to hear that they have faded, even if
they know it to be true, and Ethie's cheek flushed a little
as she asked, with a smile, “Am I really such a
fright?”

“Why, no, not a fright! No one with the Bigelow features
can ever be that. But you are changed; and I am
sure Richard would think so too. You know he has been
Governor?”

Ethie nodded, and Mrs. Van Buren continued: “You
lost a great deal, Ethelyn, when you went away; and I
must say that, though of course you had much provocation,
you did a very foolish thing to leave your husband as you
did, and involve us all, to a certain extent, in disgrace.”

It was the first direct intimation Ethie had received that
her family had suffered from mortification on her account.
She had felt that they must, and knew that she deserved
some censure; but as kind Aunt Barbara had withheld it,
she was not willing to hear it from Mrs. Van Buren, and
for an instant her eyes flashed, and a hot reply trembled on
her lips; but she restrained herself, and merely said, “I
am sorry if I disgraced you, Aunt Sophie. I was very unhappy
at the time.”

“Certainly; I understand that, but the world does not;
and if it did, it forgot all when your husband became
Governor. He was greatly honored and esteemed, I hear
from a friend who spent a few weeks at Des Moines, and
everybody was so sorry for him.”

“Did they talk of me?” Ethie asked, repenting the next
minute that she had been at all curious in the matter.

Mrs. Van Buren, bent upon annoying her, replied,
“Some, yes; and knowing the Governor as they did, it is
natural they should blame you more than him. There was
a rumor of his getting a divorce, but my friend did not believe
it, and neither do I, though divorces are easy to get
out West. Have you written to him? Are you not most
afraid he will think you came back because he has been
Governor?”

“Aunt Sophie!” and Ethie looked very much like her
former self, as she started from her pillow and confronted
her interlocutor. “He cannot think so. I never knew he
had been Governor until I heard it from Aunt Barbara last
night. I came back for no honors, no object. My work
was taken from me; I had nothing more to do, and I was
so tired, and sick, and weary, and longed so much for home.
Don't begrudge it to me, Aunt Sophie, that I came to see
Aunt Barbara once more. I won't stay long in anybody's
way; and if—if he likes, Richard—can—get—that—divorce—as
soon as he pleases.”

The last came gaspingly, and showed the real state of
Ethie's feelings. In all the five long years of her absence
the possibility that Richard would seek to separate himself
from her had never crossed her mind. She had looked
upon his love for her as something too strong to be shaken,
—as the great rock in whose shadow she could rest whenever
she so desired. At first, when the tide of angry passions
was raging at her heart, she had said she never should
desire it, that her strength was sufficient to stand alone
against the world; but as the weary weeks and months
crept on, and her anger had time to cool, and she had learned
better to know the meaning of “standing alone in the
world,” and thoughts of Richard's many acts of love and

kindness kept recurring to her mind, she had come gradually
to see that the one object in the future to which she was
looking forward was to return to Aunt Barbara and a possible
reconciliation with her husband. The first she had
achieved, and the second seemed so close within her grasp,
that in her secret heart she had exulted that, after all, she
was not to be more sorely punished than she had been,—
that she could not have been so very much in fault, or Providence
would have placed greater obstacles in the way of
her restoration to all that now seemed desirable. But
Ethie's path back to peace and quiet was not to be free
from thorns, and for a few minutes she writhed in pain, as
she thought how possible, and even probable, it was that
Richard should seek to be free from one who had troubled
him so much. Life looked very dreary to Ethelyn that
moment,—drearier than it ever had before,—but she was
too proud to betray her real feelings to her aunt, who,
touched by the look of anguish on her niece's face, began
to change her tactics, and say how glad she was to have
her back under any circumstances, and she presumed Richard
would be too. She knew he would, in fact; and if she
were Ethie, she should write to him at once, apprising him
of her return, but not making too many concessions. Men
could not bear them, and it was better always to hold a
stiff rein, or there was danger of a collision. She might as
well have talked to the winds, for all that Ethie heard or
cared. She was thinking of Richard, and the possibility that
she might not be welcome to him now. If so, nothing could
tempt her to intrude herself upon him. At all events, she
would not make the first advances. She would let Richard
find out that she was there through some other source than
Aunt Barbara, who should not now write the letter. It
would look too much like begging him to take her back.
This was Ethie's decision, from which she could not be
moved; and when, next day, Mrs. Van Buren went back
to Boston with the check for $1,000, which Aunt Barbara
had given her, she was pledged not to communicate with
Richard Markham in any way, while Aunt Barbara was held
to the same promise.

“He will find it out some time. I prefer that he should
act unbiassed by anything we can do,” Ethelyn said to
Aunt Barbara. “He might feel obliged to come if you
wrote to him that I was here, and if he came, the sight of
me so changed might shock him as it did Aunt Van Buren.
She verily thought me a fright,” and Ethie tried to smile
as she recalled her Aunt Sophie's evident surprise at her
looks.

The change troubled Ethie more than she cared to confess.
Nor did the villagers' remarks, when they came in to
see her, tend to soothe her ruffled feelings. Pale, and thin,
and languid, she moved about the house and yard like a
mere shadow of her former self, having, or seeming to have,
no object in life, and worrying Aunt Barbara so greatly
that the good woman began at last seriously to inquire
what was best to do. Suddenly, like an inspiration, there
came to her a thought of Clifton, the famous water-cure in
Western New York, where health, both of body and soul,
had been found by so many thousands. And Ethie caught
eagerly at the proposition, accepting it on one condition,—
she would not go there as Mrs. Markham, where the name
might be recognized. She had been Miss Bigelow abroad,
she would be Miss Bigelow again; and so Aunt Barbara
yielded, mentally asking pardon for the deception to which
she felt she was a party; and when, two weeks after, the

clerk at Clifton water-cure looked over his list to see what
rooms were engaged, and to whom, he found “Miss Adelaide
Bigelow, of Mass.,” put down for No. 101, while
“Governor Markham, of Iowa,” was down for No. 102.