University of Virginia Library

6. VI.

There was a world of work out of doors for
the master of Beaudesfords. A thousand things
were in arrears. Though Mrs. Stanhope had
done the best a woman could, her dominion ended,
to all essential purpose, with McRoy in the flower-garden:
her arms were not long enough to reach
the limits of the great estate, nor strong enough
to hold it in subjection. Beaudesfords and Gaston
spent day after day in dismissing and engaging,
superintending, ordering, and seeing the
orders executed. Catherine, wearied with travel
apparently, kept her room in great measure.
Mrs. Stanhope's managing ways held all in order
about her; while her lively, handsome face, and
Rose's bewitching little liberties, and Caroline's
languor and exactions, made the drawing-room
scenes any thing but tiresome. Still, there was
a great vacuum where Catherine should have
been. Beaudesfords too, when under the roof,

divided his time between her place of abode and
that of the others — the others who had countless
things to say and hear — in an unsatisfactory
manner. And so, when at last it had been
decided that Gaston was to remain, and after one
or two weeks had given her rest, and afforded no
earthly reason for her longer absence, one day
again Catherine took up her sceptre, and began
to reign through her prime-ministers.

There was a low fire on the wide hearth, that
filled a small portion of the spacious drawing-room
with a rich and ruddy half-light: the rest
of it was remote in twilight and shadows. But,
just as the door swung open, a long frolicking
flame darted into life and shot up the chimney in a
flash that sent its ray straight to the spot where
Catherine stood, surveying the group by the fireside,
a revelation of light herself. The two men
looked up together; and if she were not photographed
upon their memories for ever, as she delayed
that instant, it is because no photography
has any means of perpetuating such color and
such brilliance. She was in dinner-dress, wearing
a heavy gold-colored fabric full of lustre and
sweeping from her in broad folds, and a knot of
vivid scarlet geraniums was at her breast. With

her pale, gold-colored hair, with the sudden bloom
upon her cheeks, with her wide and shining eyes,
she seemed the very answering spirit of the flame
that had just shot up to the outside freedom of
stars and night. There was that about Catherine
always reminding Beaudesfords of light. Gaston
and Beaudesfords both sprang to meet her; but
Gaston paused after the first motion, and it was
the other who led her to her seat and brought the
cushion for her feet. If Beaudesfords had shown
one atom less devotion, had demanded something,
refused something, not so lavishly have given all,
— for a woman loves a master, not a slave!

“Well, Mistress Beaudesfords,” exclaimed
Rose, “welcome home! If you 're a good girl,
you may stay: you may sit at the head of your
own table!”

“Many thanks,” replied Catherine, slowly. “I
shall not deprive Mamma of her seat.”

“Mamma likes it, though,” said Rose. “It is
a remnant of authority. If we are naughty, she
cuts off our soup.”

“I 'm sure, Catherine,” cried Mrs. Stanhope,
“I shall never think of taking your place in your
house.”

“As you please, Mamma,” she answered, with

the air of one speaking on a disagreeable topic.
“It is so troublesome for you.”

“Yes, yes, Mamma Stanhope,” exclaimed
Beaudesfords, who would perhaps have liked to
see his wife the mistress of his house, but who
would not have her troubled even to humor his
fondest wish. “She is too worn and tired yet, — by
and by, perhaps!” And he turned to Catherine
his smiling, asking face.

It was a little thing, that matter of Catherine's
seat at table, giving the housekeeper her orders,
and overlooking her accounts; but it involved a
greater one. To have assumed her place at once,
that would have been a sheltering rampart; to
have directed the affairs of her household, it
would have impressed upon her the fact that it
was her household, the fact of how it became hers;
to have been the mistress in Beaudesfords would
have given emphasis to its master. But she
shrank from all that, as if she had no right either
to the burden or the honor. “By and by, perhaps!”
repeated Beaudesfords. “By and by,”
she answered wearily, and dropped her fan into
her lap. But Beaudesfords was content: with
him, so much was always the promise of more.
It was enough just to see her there. The stream

of small talk rippled from the others, the fire
sparkled, he hovered here and there, restless as
some winged thing, now bending over Catherine,
now sparring for a turn with Gaston, now wondering
if dinner would never be served. Rose
joined in the sparring; Caroline, even, had her
sofa wheeled up that she might lose none of the
hour's enjoyment. As for Catherine, she said
nothing; she seldom said any more; she was one
of those persons whose reticence is eloquence, having,
besides, a language of lip and cheek and eye,
of hand and breath; she listened to the utterance
of a philosopher or of a fool, and understood both,
be it said; in truth, it was her comprehensiveness
that, when one was habituated to her beauty,
impressed the most; too thoroughly womanly to
originate, she received every thing; and whether
it were through some clear understanding, or
some fine instinct, or on a common ground of
perfectly developed humanity, the speaker always
felt that not a syllable was lost upon his listener.
When she did open her lips, her words carried
weight. Thus with Beaudesfords, well wont to
her ways, other women's speech indeed might be
silver, but Catherine's silence was golden.

Gaston sat with the bright tongs in his hand,

stooping forward, and building up an edifice of
the falling coals, watching the life run through
them and die; and then dinner was softly announced,
and Beaudesfords called Gaston to
Catherine, and himself led Mamma Stanhope to
the contested seat. But that touch of Catherine's
hand upon his arm was so light that Gaston could
not feel it: the next moment it was withdrawn,
and she had taken her chair. By some ill-will
of circumstance, Mamma Stanhope failed to call
Gaston to her own right hand: he sat at Catherine's,
and the order of things was established.

“I don't know why it is,” said Beaudesfords,
when they were again in the drawing-room, and
sipping their coffee, “but, faultless as I used to
think things were in this lodge, they never seem
one half so home-like as in your charming cottage,
Mamma Stanhope.”

“That is because there are none of our little
rooms, where, in turning round, you tipped over
the centre-table, and put an elbow through the
mirror,” said Rose. “How can you be at home
in these great parlors, with their alcoves and
suites that may hold a thousand ambuscades?”

“Why fear ambuscades with a soldier beside
you?”

“And then the music,” complained Caroline.
“It spreads into thin air.”

“So?” said Beaudesfords. “Let us see.
Catherine, if you would sing” —

To his surprise she rose at once. Gaston had
just given his cup to the servant, and was standing
before her, leaning one arm on the mantel:
perhaps she did not care to dwell on the sight.
Ere he could offer to conduct her, a scale ran up
the keys of the piano: she had seated herself and
commenced playing.

“Frost-bitten,” said Beaudesfords. “The tones
tinkle like icicles, as they fall from your fingers.”
He lay in the great cushions of a lounge, their
soft carnation lending his face a flush, and deepening
the tint of his yellow curls. Catherine
looked at him a moment, and thought of some of
the richly colored canvases she had stood before
in Europe. His head was something superb:
it had the look of some Capitolean god's; such
youth and beauty had a kind of majesty next to
immortal majesty. Then, the piano facing down
the room, she raised her glance, and Gaston still
stood against the mantel, surveying her with his
darkening eyes, — the plain face with its scar, its
ruggedness, its gloom. And the other went out
of her mind like a star in the night.

“The voice! The voice!” cried Beaudesfords.

“I have none to-night,” said Catherine, after a
little while, as if she had just understood what
he had said.

“Not for this?” was spoken beside her, and
Gaston's arm, reaching forward, set a sheet of
music on the rack. “You sang it on the night
that we dropped down the river from Beaudesfords.
Do you remember?”

“I remember,” said Catherine. It was the
first sentence, save in brief greetings, they had
exchanged since that night. And for the second
time the color overspread her face, beheld by
Beaudesfords. He rose on one arm, and watched
her as she sang, as her voice soared, — of a sudden
inspired by bitter strength, and penetrating
every heart with the wild sweetness of its inmost
tones.

Beaudesfords rose from the lounge, and began
to pace up and down the drawing-room. “Why
do you sing such songs as those?” he said, as
she still turned over the music, and when Gaston
had strolled out to smoke his cigar on the veranda.
“They are the merest nonsense. It must
have been a love-lorn lassie who implored after
that fashion. My wife,” — his voice always loved
to linger over that word, — “sing to me

And he woke her in the night to know if that
silly song had any meaning for her, if she would
never find her happiness in loving him truly, if
she had indeed rather die than live his wife.

“You are very good to me, Beaudesfords,”
said Catherine, unconsciously adopting the words
of the wife of Auld Robin Gray. “Do not fret

yourself imagining vain things. Are we not
friends. Do I not bear your name? Be content,
dear Beaudesfords.” She laid her hand
upon his eyes, and lest the soft and seldom touch
should leave him he neither stirred nor spoke till
sleep took up the tale in one long happy dream.