University of Virginia Library

9. IX.

A feverish dream in the gray of the morning;
and then the day broke, the clear and crystalline
day, with calm and peace on all the outer earth,
with cheer and good-will at all its hearths. Joyous
salutations floated to Catherine before she
left her rooms: daylight, that shuts the world
in upon itself and robs it of all large outlook
into heaven, shut Catherine in as well upon the
moment that was passing.

“No church to-day!” cried Rose. “The
Beaudesfords teams are going out to break the
roads, — the heavy drags. And Beaudesfords
says we may all go with them. Such sport!”

“All but me,” moaned Caroline, who had entered
her appearance at an earlier hour than
usual that morning, roused by the gay stir and
bustle of the house.

“No, indeed, Caroline! I shall not go,” said
Catherine.

While she spoke, she saw the train of horses,
shaking off the music of their peals of bells,
the great dray-horses for which the Beaudesfords
place was famous, trampling past the window,
with the sledges that they drew well heaped with
rugs and skins. Beaudesfords had taken the
reins from the teamsters; and Gaston, looming in
the light, rode the leader, — a wild and powerful
creature, little accustomed to harness or to bridle.

“No, no, Catherine!” cried Beaudesfords, as
she followed the others to the door, with an end
of her breakfast-scarf thrown across her hair.
“I cannot trust you on such a break-neck expedition!
It is one of Rose's freaks, — Rose and
Gaston's. She would chill to death: would she
not, Gaston?”

“Cold withers japonicas,” said Gaston, but
without looking up, while he curbed his prancing
beast.

“I did not think of it, dear Beaudesfords,” she
answered.

Beaudesfords, standing aside while his guests
were crowding on the teams, flung his reins loose
one moment, sprang up the steps, and, as if gently
forcing her within, seized both her hands and
kissed them, and flew down again. She felt the

pressure on those hands long after all the madcaps
were out of sight.

“I 'm sure I don't see the use of your staying
at home with me,” exclaimed Caroline, “if you're
going to roam the house in this way, like an
unquiet spirit.”

“Shall I read to you, Caroline dear?” her
sister asked.

“As if Susette couldn't read to me! No: I
want you to sit still and talk. I want to know
what you think about Rose and Gaston. How he
follows her with his eyes! Mamma says it 's a
sick whimsey. Do you think it is, Catherine?
Beaudesfords has always promised Rose a handsome
portion; so they can afford it. I like it.
Though of course that 's no matter! I like Major
Gaston: he 's one of the Satanic sort, — run
you through, and make nothing of it; the Festus
lovers, though, that Rose says do not cut up into
good husbands. I wonder nobody ever thinks of
my marrying.”

Caroline was complaining to the empty air.
Catherine had moved away from her as a ship
sails, — moved down the long suite from the
breakfast-room, and out, and away.

“Well, I declare,” groaned Caroline, lying on

Catherine's sofa, eating Catherine's dainties, and
sipping Catherine's coffee, “Catherine takes no
more interest in her family than if such people
didn't exist on the face of the earth!”

Rose and Gaston! Rose and Gaston! Beaudesfords
had spoken of them; so Caroline had.
Rose and Gaston! Catherine kept repeating the
phrase as a bell tolls on the wind. The thought
of its association bewildered her. She held her
head in both hands as she went up and down
her own room. What was the pomp of that
place to her now? She never noticed it, — the
place for which Beaudesfords had ransacked
Europe, — its satin flutings and Venice lace, its
paintings on sheets of gold and blocks of lapislazuli,
its vase that some Etrurian woman had
heaped with flowers three thousand years ago, its
tiny water-clock that had measured the hours once
for some Roman woman perhaps as wretched as
herself: she neither saw nor remembered any of
it. One thought only ruled her, — a tent in the
desert would have answered just as well to think
that thought in. If only Gaston loved another
woman, how much more easily she might tread the
path before her. But she knew better! she knew
better. And Gaston had no right to Rose, —

too ignoble, too unworthy: if he were a good
man, he would not now be here. He never should
possess her! Then came over her the quick doubt
lest she deceived herself by a mere sophism, and
were simply barring him about from escape, fearful
of Rose or any other woman.

As still she paced the place, when some hours
had elapsed, there came the rush of the sledges
and their bells, the trampling of the great dray-horses,
the chorus of gleeful voices. Catherine
fell on her knees behind the window-curtain and
looked out. She had all at once grown guilty
enough to need the shelter of those clinging folds.
It was Gaston only at whom she gazed, — Gaston,
whose restive horse plunged and swerved
and reared in his long loose traces, while the
rider seemed a part of him, and pulled him up
till, poised in the air and outlined upon the
dazzling snow, both horse and rider might have
been hewn from black marble. Her eyes grew
to him, and gazed and gazed. What was the
force of this man? What made it? Where
lurked it? Not beauty, for Beaudesfords had
that; not goodness, for Beaudesfords' life was a
sacrifice to others. His identity — himself —
only himself — Gaston! She forgot the concealment

of the curtain, bending forward, following
him. He looked up, and for one moment, bold
and steady, caught and kept those wild and eager
eyes. Then she sank upon the floor, and, her
face hidden in her loosened hair, grovelled out
of sight.

What time had passed, impossible to say. She
stirred at the sound of Beaudesfords' foot and
voice, as he approached in search of her. He
was singing the hymn that they had heard in
church not many days before, — absently forgetting
it was no festival song. He had a full, rich
tenor voice, that at other times it was a pleasure
to hear echoing through those long and lofty halls
in its clear, golden strains; but now each note
pierced her ears like a stab: —

He sauntered through the gallery, looking at
the handsome, honest faces of the old Beaudesfords

portraits that lined the wall, repeating and
dwelling on the last verse, unmindful what it was.
But as for Catherine, listening to him, she arose;
and it was like a human being transformed to
some vile shape of elf or newt that the advance
of morning touches with a sunbeam and sets free.
She seemed to grow a loftier stature as she stood.

“I am not vile!” she cried. “I will not live
in this bondage to sin. I will blot out this man
— this Gaston. I will conquer, or I will die!”

As Beaudesfords entered, and she faced him,
shaking out all her fallen locks of palest gold,
her cheeks vivid, her eyes flashing, she looked
— more than she had ever looked before — like
the spirit of some great rose full-blossomed in the
noon. He stood still, almost transfixed with the
sight of her beauty, that blazed so upon him.
And, while he gazed, the voluptuous color faded,
and left the cheeks white, and only the eyes shone
out, so full of purpose and endeavor that they
were like the stars of heaven. And, while he
gazed, he thought he heard her murmur again
those words, — unconscious that she spoke, —

“I will conquer, or I will die!”