Volume Ii Part 12 (1/2)
”You said, Maida, that you intended to come instead of answering my letter--that you started?”
”I did. I was at Narwhal Junction waiting for the train, when I met a very old friend on the platform--going to Clam Beach, just as I was coming away. I could not resist going back with my old friend, it was so long since we had met. And after that, the matter of the sociology cla.s.s escaped my memory.”
”Very strange. Is Clam Beach a scene of such rackety dissipation that people forget their private affairs? I had inferred from your descriptions that it was quite retired--a place to rest in.”
”My friend and I had not met for years. The meeting engrossed me.”
Miss Rolph glanced in Maida's face, one sharp short glance, like an inquisitive bird, and with the flicker of a smile which did not spread beyond the corner of her mouth, inquired--
”And did--she?--your friend, take as engrossing an interest in you, my dear? Such friends.h.i.+ps are rare, as well as precious.”
”I did not say 'she,' Miss Rolph. It was a gentleman.”
”I imagined as much, my dear; but you were so hampered by your noun of epicene gender, that I thought it best to be rid of it.”
Maida blushed. ”Oh, Miss Rolph! What will you think of me?--of my fitness as a pioneer in Woman's cause?”
”Think, my dear? That you are a woman like the rest of us. This was a feature in your nature that seemed missing. The absence of a universal weakness does not necessarily argue strength. It may arise from insensibility, and merely show an incomplete nature. I think better of you, perhaps. Go on.”
”I had known him long ago. My first situation, when I began to teach, was in his uncle's house. He was a student at Harvard, but spent his vacations at home with us. His cousins were mere children; his uncle and aunt had their own affairs; I was his sole companion. He taught me much. It was a happy time. We were both young, fresh and hopeful, and--well---- He is the only young man I ever saw much of. He expected to make his fortune right away, and we---- But I cannot speak of it....
”That was ten years ago. We corresponded--for the first year or so.
After that we lost sight of one another. I came to Montpelier; he--was making his fortune. He recognised me on the platform at Narwhal Junction. I was so pleased to find that he remembered me. He asked if I was married, and he told me that he was not. He went back with me to Clam Beach--or so I thought. Perhaps I ought to put it the other way, and say that it was I who went with him; but at any rate we went together, and we were together there all the time. He knew n.o.body but myself, and he did not care to make acquaintances, it seemed; and he stayed on, though at first he had spoken of leaving in two days.
And so it appeared to me--is there not some excuse for me, Miss Rolph?--that we were taking up our intimacy just where we had laid it down before.”
”Ah!” said Miss Rolph. The bird-like look of the philosophic investigator had left her features now, and she was listening with genuine interest. She had still a heart, away down deep below her theories and professional fads, and there was perennial interest for her in a kindness between man and woman; which may have been unworthy of her position, but was as salt to preserve her nature sound and wholesome.
”What is his name, my dear? One follows a story so much better for knowing the names.”
”Roe--Gilbert Roe. Has it not a pleasant sound?”
Miss Rolph's eyelids quivered in a momentary start. Then she looked down into her lap, compressing her lips, and making as if she would show no sign till all was told.
”He stayed on more than a week. He is there now, I daresay. He was with me constantly--sat beside me at table. People said it was a sure case, and congratulated me; and I--well--what else could I think? I believed them. Looking back now, with my insight cleared by what came after, I am bound to own that he said nothing in all that time. When I tried to hark back to the community of feeling that had subsisted between us long ago, he disregarded and pa.s.sed it by. I am not accusing him of behaving badly, remember. It is my own foolish credulity alone which I have to blame; and oh, Miss Rolph, what humiliation it has brought on me! It hunted me away home here. I dared not, for shame, go back to Clam Beach, even to bring away my things.”
”I do not follow.”
”We went one day--it was yesterday, but it seems like years since, for the gulf of misery I have waded across since then. There was a clam-bake at Blue Fish Creek, and we were there. Everybody was there.
We were sitting apart in a shady place, waiting till the heat would temper down. He was smoking or reading the paper, I forget which. All of a sudden he jumped up and left me. I looked round. He was addressing a lady who seemed unwilling to hear him. She tried to pa.s.s on without noticing him. She had taken no notice of him at the Beach, though they had been living under the same roof for a week. He persisted in accosting her, and angry words pa.s.sed between them. She said she was free of him. He would not admit it.”
”Who was the lady?”
”A Miss Hillyard of Chicago or somewhere. I am not acquainted with her.”
”That is my niece! The Gilbert Roe you speak of must be her husband.”
”Husband? Ah! that may explain the cruelty of what he did next. And it was cruel and humiliating to me! And there need have been no occasion for it, if he had told me at the first that he was married. She taunted him with my friends.h.i.+p. I heard her. And he--was it manly of him?--he actually proposed to bring her to me, to ask if there was anything between us more than old acquaintances.h.i.+p!” Maida's voice rose into a cry as she said it. She clenched her hands; and cheeks, brow, neck, grew scarlet, and then she buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed.