University of Virginia Library

16. XVI.

Every one within the walls of the great house
of Beaudesfords felt now some ferment going on
there: with the unconscious as well as with the
conscious ones a strange agitation seemed to be
everywhere present. Hearts beat and temples
fluttered, and all alike had that sensation of presentiment
which we feel in beginning to dread
the neighborhood of some unknown evil.

It was not Gaston now that wrought out problems,
but Beaudesfords, who, watchful as a lynx,
was constantly putting two and two together: as
if by some clairvoyant sympathy, he heard, he
felt, he saw every thing; no tone, no glance, escaped
him. One thing alone escaped, — the fact
that Catherine desired of him the support and
protection he had sworn to afford her, desired
him to save her. But Beaudesfords was mortal,
and bitter things began to work within him and
bring his better nature to naught.

Catherine had seen now, with the positive
assurance of one who comes face to face with
a terrible consequence, that Gaston must go, —
if rest, if any feeble goodness, if Beaudesfords,
if life were hers, Gaston must go. Meanwhile,
Gaston seemed to have changed rôles with Beaudesfords:
it was he who had become restless, and
almost gay, and irresolute withal, as the other
never was; for still that determination of his
hung on the cloud like a bow of promise, and
because he meant to go he regarded himself as
magnanimous as if he had already gone.

They were out-doors in the mild May weather
almost constantly. Mrs. Stanhope, desrious never
to grow so old as to be excluded from her
children's pleasures, sent carpet and sewing-chair
out on the green grass-plot. Even Caroline had
a heap of afghans and cushions spread on the
wicker garden-seats, where, after the sun was
high, she reclined in elegant valetudinarianism,
and fretted because Catherine and Beaudesfords
were so stupid as to have no company in such an
Italian season; while Rose and Catherine followed
McRoy through the aisles and avenues,
trimming and training, the one delighted, the
other soothed, by helping bud and blossom to
burst out freely into such happy sunshine.

Rose came up the garden one of these pleasant
afternoons, followed by an artistic vagabond, who,
wayfaring from town to town, had stopped at
Beaudesfords to beg for a repast. She made him
leave his basket of rude images in the path while
she should take him round to Mrs. Grey, to be
refreshed in the housekeeper's hospitable domain,
and then came back herself to lift the cover from
the basket and explore its contents.

“I always had a fancy for this sort of thing,”
said Rose, “and so had my lady Beaudesfords
when she was plain Catherine. Caroline, now,
was too grand: she would none of them” —

“Give her parian or give her death,” said
Gaston.

“But give me parian or give me plaster. Yes:
to tell a secret, when Catherine and I have been
in bliss over the sumptuousness of our parlor,
decorated by a cream-colored Dante, price twenty
cents, standing on a bracket, first painted green
and then smeared with yellow-dust as a true and
original bronze, then Caroline, with malice afore-thought,
has been known deliberately to smash
the said Dante, and to wish she could do it
again!”

“I 'm sure I did!” said Caroline, with a

flicker of energy. “They were always nonsensical
caricatures, false to art, and only true to
poverty, which I detest!”

“Maybe,” said Rose. “But Catherine and I
love them. Catherine's own room here is half
full of them. Do you know, Mrs. Beaudesfords,
that sometimes you put me in mind of that Neapolitan
beggar-girl who married a prince, and ate
so little at table that they watched her, and found
she secreted many and various crusts about herself,
and when she entered her closet divided
these crusts among the empty chairs and lounges
there, and then humbly went round the room on
her knees and begged of each chair and table its
crust, and retiring into a corner with her gains
munched away upon them to the tune of a hearty
appetite?”

“Were poverty and Stanhope Cottage so much
sweeter than the present?” asked Beaudesfords,
with sudden rudeness, and in so sharp a tone
that every one had turned.

“Not poverty,” said Catherine. “But Stanhope
Cottage was always sweet, though never so
sweet as Beaudesfords has been.”

“And is not!”

“Dear Beaudesfords,” she answered gently, but

courageously, “perhaps there is something wrong
here, some unnatural element just now, or else
we should all be so happy in this heavenly place,
being alive and well, and with such beautiful
weather.” And she went back to lopping her
roses; while Beaudesfords repeated her words,
“Some unnatural element” — and strolled down
the path, his chin upon his breast.

“Beaudesfords is dyspeptic,” said Gaston. “I
have seen the time myself when an apple-dumpling
changed the face of creation.”

Rose sprang down the path after him at the
words, and brought him back with her to inspect
the basket. “It is absurd to say you have dyspepsia,”
she cried. “Don't you dare to be ill!
There is enough fever round already. The houses
down in the Great Wood are all reeking with
typhus.”

“My poor boy,” said Mrs. Stanhope, with more
motherliness than she was accustomed to exhibit,
and putting her hands in his curls as he knelt
with Rose, “I am a little worried about you now.
I am afraid you are not well.”

“Don't agitate yourself about me, Mamma
Stanhope,” he answered, with a quick change of
manner, taking her hand and kissing it. “You

are far too good to me. I never had a mother
of my own. But you are dearer than a dozen.
What a kind and wise little woman! But, for
all that, you have made some mistakes in your
life.”

“Come, come!” cried Rose: “will Catherine
suffer you to sentimentalize over Mamma Stanhope
in this way? A man cannot marry his
grandmother! Lose yourself in these treasures,
my friend. Shakespeare for a dime; Cæsar at
half the money. Such is fame! What a feast
of plaster and flow of pennies this would have
been for us once, Catherine, when it cost us such
arguments to decide how to spend our allowance
of fourpence-ha'penny, and an image-boy was a
messenger of the gods! Look at this Madonna;
and here is Rachel herself. Think of the priceless
Phèdre for two shillings!”

“The chiefest pose in all the `slim Hebrew's'
repertory for two shillings,” repeated Gaston,
looking over their shoulders.

“And dear at any money!” cried Beaudesfords,
rising. “Tell me the value of any representation
of perjury and passion! Are unfaithful
wives so rare that they should be preserved and
sealed like flies in amber? What was Phèdre?

A woman possessed by supernatural evil, as another
woman was possessed by seven devils. Possessed
by Venus, maddened by Venus — her sole
claim that she is the ideal and apotheosis of every
woman that has been, that is, that ever will be
false to the husband to whom she pledged her
faith!” As he spoke, he flung down the little
image that he had held, and with his foot crushed
it to fragments, then gathered up the fragments
at a stroke and tossed them into the little lake,
the wind of their motion whistling by Catherine's
face as she sat upon the edgestone that bounded
its border in that portion, while sharpening her
knife, and not once glancing aside or up. Gaston
saw the dull, determined look settling over her
features, as the waters flashed to meet the broken
fragments; and Beaudesfords saw it too, and
stood and stayed to survey it a long, scornful
moment. She slowly raised her eyes, aware of
his: he might have read in them her indignant
protest, her asseverance of truthful endeavor,
her prayer for help, but he saw there only a
defiant declaration.

“Well, my friends,” continued Beaudesfords,
directly, before they had well taken breath after
his outbreak, “tell Mrs. Grey to pay our wayfarer

for my spoliation; and, as we have had enough
of heroics, I think I will go and explore into the
nature of this fever-district that Rose tells us
about.”

“Now, for pity's sake, do be careful, Beaudesfords!”
cried Caroline. “Don't be bringing
home the infection, and having us all down with
the disease!”

“Entertain no fears,” said Beaudesfords. “Do
you want I should promise you that, henceforth, I
will myself monopolize all the ill things, as heretofore
I have monopolized all the good things, of
this life?”

Hope departed from Catherine as she heard
Beaudesfords saying these taunting things. She
had been asking herself on that same afternoon,
if, since she could do no better, it were not
even best to go to him herself, to say to him:
“My friend, a year ago we were so happy together!
I reverenced you, my affection grew
with the days. Now a fatal influence overshadows
us: not a passion, since I will not yield to it; not
a love, since I despise it, since I detest myself and
its object equally. To-day it seems that all is lost
but honor. Yet you, by taking me away, can
save to me peace, happiness, reason.” Possibly

she would not have shaped her cry in any such
grandiloquent phrase; but that would have been
its meaning; and he, perhaps, at any other time,
would have received it kindly, since he had married
her knowing love was absent, accepting then
her own terms, and feeling not the full right to
complain if his mistake worked woe. But now,
when there had been made such a revolution of
all the old sweetness in his nature, while he was
in this vindictive and savage mood, she, not
wholly innocent, dared not appeal to him: she
feared him, and would have abased herself in the
dust before him, uncertain if he would not trample
upon her.