Part 39 (1/2)
”Why did you not go with us this morning?” he said at last, sitting down by the table.
”I didn't want to.”
”That is a very good reason; but I think you would have done better to have thwarted your inclination for once. There are two reasons why it would have been wiser to have gone.”
”What is one?” I demanded.
”One is that your staying looked unamiable, and as if you could not take a joke.”
”Well, it only looked as I felt. I was unamiable, and I didn't like the joke. What is the other?”
”The other, I am pretty sure to make you angry by giving, but I must risk that. Your refusing to go looked very much as if you preferred another tete-a-tete, to the society of us all.”
”I cannot see that,” I said, looking up flushed and angry. ”When I supposed that I was the only member of the party who intended to stay at home, I cannot see how it could be inferred that I remained from any such motive.”
”I, for one, had no doubt of it.”
”You are kind!” I cried. ”It is pleasant to feel I am always sure of one, at least, to put the kindest construction on what I do.”
”Is my niece accounting for her willfulness in staying at home this morning?” said the slow, soft voice of Mrs. Churchill, that crept into my senses like a subtle poison, and silenced the angry words on my lips.
”Are you not penitent, _ma chere_,” she said, approaching me, and laying her cold hand lightly on my hair. ”Do you not begin to see how unwise such tempers are? How often must I entreat you, my love, to be less hasty and suspicious and self-willed? Though I am not discouraged with these childish faults, Mr. Rutledge,” turning to him apologetically, ”I own they are somewhat trying. Ever since that unlucky night at the Academy of Music, I have felt”----
”Aunt Edith!” I exclaimed, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, averting my head from her touch and springing up. ”Aunt Edith, that time has never been mentioned between us since you gave me my reprimand. I cannot understand why you bring it up now, and before a stranger!”
”Mr. Rutledge can hardly be called a stranger,” she began.
”If not so to you, remember he is to me,” I interrupted.
”However that may be,” she went on, ”he was unluckily the witness of that evening's errors. He saw the self-will and temper that you took no pains to conceal, and the love of admiration that led you to a most unaccountable act of imprudence.”
”I should think,” I returned, trembling with pa.s.sion, ”that that time would have no more pleasant memories for you than me. I should think we might agree not to stir among its ashes. There may be some smoldering remorse alive in them yet!”
For a moment, my aunt's face grew white, and her eye faltered and sunk; angry as I was, I bitterly repented the stab I had given her. Then she raised her eyes and fixed them on my face with a stern and freezing look. I don't know what she said; it was too cruel to listen to. I don't know what I answered; would that it had no record anywhere!
From that date, there was no disguise between aunt and niece of the sentiments they had mutually inspired. The flimsy gauze that reserve and decorum had raised between them was torn to fragments before that storm, and henceforth there was no pretence of an affection that had never existed. Two natures more utterly discordant and unsympathetic could not well be imagined. There was nothing but some frail bands of duty and convenience, that had kept up the mask of sympathy so far, and then and there they were snapped irrevocably; and the mask fell p.r.o.ne upon the ground and was trampled under foot.
They had better have turned me houseless into the street than have turned me out of their hearts in this way; in one case, I could have sought another shelter, and won myself another home. In this, I was driven out, burning with anger and stung with injustice, from every heart I had had a right to seek a home in, and before me lay a cold and inhospitable world. Was the outcast or the world to blame for the inevitable result? The outcast, no doubt; outcasts always are.
”Look--look, Josephine!” cried Grace, bursting into the library, where most of the party were a.s.sembled that evening. Josephine, with her foot on the sofa, being the nucleus. ”Ella, and Phil, and I have just come from rowing on the lake, and see what we found, up by the pine trees at the other end of the lake, floating on the water.”
”What is it?” said Josephine, languidly; ”a water-lily?”
”Water-lilies used to be white when I studied botany, Joseph, and this, you may observe, is purple.”
”And morning-glories, when I studied botany,” said Phil, ”did not grow on lakes, but in gardens. Now, as this was discovered on the water, the question naturally arises, how, by whom, and under what circ.u.mstances, did it get there?”
”And putting this and that together,” said Ella Wynkar, ”we think that the young lady who had morning-glories in her dress this morning, must have taken a row on the lake, instead of a walk on the terrace.”