Part 60 (1/2)
”He has imagination, you see,” Maurice suggested, smiling.
”Now you are sneering, Mr. Wynne. I shall talk to the man on the other side.”
She was good as her word, and left Maurice to devote himself to the lady on his right. He had the American adaptability, and a couple of months had sufficed to make him reasonably at ease at a dinner. The continuous delight he felt in his freedom, moreover, inspired him with an inclination to be frank and communicative, so that if he did not talk like the conventional man of the world, he managed not to sit silent. His neighbor to-night was Mrs. Thayer Kent, and he chatted easily with her about the West, where for a couple of years she had been living on a ranch. Something in Mrs. Kent's talk reminded him of Berenice, and he sighed inwardly that the latter's mourning prevented her from going out. As if the thought had been spoken aloud, Mrs.
Wilson recalled herself to his attention by saying in his ear:--
”It is such a pity Berenice Morison isn't here. Have you seen her since the Mardi Gras ball?”
”Yes,” he answered, turning quickly, and vexed to feel himself flush.
”I saw her yesterday at the consecration.”
”Did you go? How immoral! I stayed at home and gave a luncheon for Marion Delega.s.s.”
”So I heard; but everybody hadn't such a moral thing as that to do.”
”Oh, no; very likely not. By the way, you have never apologized for deserting me in the middle of the service that night.”
”I had to take care of that girl. She fainted.”
”Oh, you did? Who was she? What did you do with her? However, I don't care. It's none of my business. I wonder, though, what sort of a story you'd have told Berenice if she'd been there.”
Wynne was too confused to answer this sally, although he wanted to say something about the cruelty of taking him into the ball-room. His confusion increased Mrs. Wilson's amus.e.m.e.nt.
”I think I should like to be in at the death,” she said. ”She is coming down to stay with me next week. Come down and make love to her. I won't tell about the girl you carried out of church in your arms.”
More and more disconcerted and self-conscious, Maurice could only stammer that Mrs. Wilson flattered him if she supposed that Miss Morison would tolerate any love-making on his part.
”You are adorable when you blush like that,” was the reply which he got. ”I have almost a mind to set you to make love to me. However, that wouldn't be fair. I will take it out in seeing you and her. You must surely come down.”
Maurice regarded the invitation as merely part of Mrs. Wilson's badinage, but in due time it was formally repeated by note. He opened the letter at the breakfast table, and was advised by his cousin to accept.
”Mrs. Wilson,” she commented, ”is like a banjo, more exciting than refined, but she isn't bad-hearted. She has the old Boston blood and traditions behind her.”
”They are sometimes rather far behind,” interpolated Mr. Staggchase dryly. ”She wasn't a Beauchester, you know. However, she has her ancestors safe in their graves so that they can't escape her.”
Mrs. Staggchase smiled good-naturedly at the little fling at her own family pretensions.
”You are wicked this morning, Fred,” was her reply. ”Elsie is something of a sport on the ancestral tree; but she is worth visiting. Berenice Morison is going down there sometime soon. Perhaps she will be there with you, Maurice.”
”I thought,” Mr. Staggchase observed, ”that old Mrs. Morison didn't approve of Mrs. Wilson.”
”n.o.body approves of Elsie,” was Mrs. Staggchase's calm reply. ”I'm sure I don't; but after all she is a sort of cousin of Berenice, and she can't very well refuse to visit her. Really, there is nothing bad about Elsie. She is startling, and she certainly does things which are bad form. That's half of it because she married as she did.”
Nothing more was said, and Maurice kept his own counsel in regard to the fact that he knew that Miss Morison was to be his fellow-guest. He was full of wild hopes. He reproached himself that he was wrong to forget that Berenice was rich and he was poor; yet not for all his reproaches could he keep himself from feeling Mrs. Wilson had not seemed to see any insurmountable obstacle to his wooing; that she had appeared rather to be ready to help his suit. He must not, of course, try to win Berenice; yet he was going to Mrs. Wilson's to meet her, to be with her, to revel in the delicious pleasure of hoping, of fearing, of loving.
The house of the Wilsons at Beverly Farms was on a bluff overlooking the sea. It was reached by a long avenue winding through pines mingled with birches and rowan trees; and stood in a clearing where all the day and all the night the sound of the waves on the cliff answered the whispering of the wind in the pine-tops. The broad piazzas of the house looked out over the sea, and gave views of the islands off sh.o.r.e, the ever-changing water, the beautiful curves of the sea marge, now high with defiant rocks, and now falling into sandy beaches. A level lawn, velvety and green, stretched from the house to the edge of the cliff, with here and there a rustic seat or a century plant stiff and arrogant in its lonely exile from warmer climes.
On this piazza Maurice found himself, just before dinner on the evening of his arrival, walking up and down with Berenice. It was still cool enough to make the exercise grateful.
”It is so delightful to have the weather warm enough to be out of doors without being all bundled up,” she said, looking over the sea, cold green and gray in the declining light.