Part 15 (1/2)
”That might have been spared me. I suppose you think I deserve it. Very well, I do, and you need not stay to argue the matter. Go!”
”Go! Why I should be a fool to go now, and you would be--well, we will call it mistaken--to let me. After we have got as far as we have, it would be absurd to suppose we can go back again. We know each other now better than nine tenths of the couples who have been married a year. I don't ask you to say you love me now; I am very sure you can, and I know I can love you--infinitely----”
”Oh, but--but you said you would not take his place--Mr. Ponsonby's. Can you let everyone think you capable of such an act of meanness? And if you could not respect me as your wife, how can you expect others to? Can we appear to act in a way to deserve contempt without despising each other?”
”There will be a good deal that is unpleasant about it, no doubt; but everyone's life has some unpleasantness. It would be worse to let a dream, even a dream of honor, come between us and our future. You made a mistake and underestimated its consequences, but it would be foolish to lose the substance of happiness because we have lost the shadow. We will live it down together and be glad it is no worse.”
”But I have been so wrong, so very wrong--I have too many faults ever to make anyone happy.”
”Of course you have faults, but I know the worst of them and can put up with them. I have plenty of my own which you may be finding out by this time. I am very domineering--you will have to promise to obey me, and I shall keep you to it; and then I can, under provocation, be furiously jealous.”
”You are not jealous of Jack Allston?” she whispered.
”Jealous of old Jack? Oh, no! I shall keep my jealousy for poor Mr.
Ponsonby.”
Society had been so often agitated by Lily Carey's affairs that it took with comparative coolness the tidings that she was to be married to Arend Van Voorst in six weeks. Miss Morgan said she supposed Lily was tired of ”engagements,” and wanted to be married this time. Her niece Emmeline shed tears over ”poor Mr. Ponsonby,” and refused to act as bridesmaid at his rival's nuptials; and in spite of her aunt's scoldings and Lily's entreaties, and all the temptations of the bridesmaids' pearl ”lily” brooches and nosegays of Easter lilies, arranged a visit to her cousins in Philadelphia to avoid being present. Miss Thorne had no such scruples, and it is to her the world owes a lively account of the wedding; how it was fixed at so early a date lest ”poor Mr. Ponsonby”
should hurry over to forbid the banns, and how terribly nervous Lily seemed lest he might, in spite of the absolute impossibility, and though Ponsonby, true gentleman to the last, never troubled her then or after.
”Poor Mr. Van Voorst, I should say!” exclaimed Mrs. Jack Allston. ”I am sure he is the one to be pitied. But do tell me all the presents that have come in, for Jack says that I must give them something handsome after such a present as he gave me when we were married.”
Mrs. Van Voorst received the tidings of her son's approaching marriage rather doubtfully. ”Yes--the Careys were a very nice family; she knew Mrs. Carey was an Arlington, and her mother a Berkeley, and his mother--but--Miss Carey was very handsome, she had heard--with the Berkeley style of beauty and the Arlington manner, but--but--she did not mind their being Unitarians, for many of the very best people were, in Boston, but--but--but--indeed, my dear Arend, I have heard a good deal about her that I do not altogether like. I hope it may not be true--about her keeping Jack Allston hanging on for years, as _pis-aller_ to that young Englishman she was engaged to all the while--and finally throwing him over--and now she has thrown over this Mr. Ponsonby too!”
”Will you do just one thing for me, dear mother,” asked her son; ”will you forget all you have _heard_ about Lily, and judge her by what you _see_?”
Mrs. Van Voorst had never refused Arend anything in his life, and could not now. By what magic Lily, in their very first interview, won over the good lady is not known, but afterwards no mother-in-law's heart could have withstood the splendid son and heir with which she enriched the Van Voorst line. The young Van Voorsts were allowed by all their friends to be much happier than they deserved to be. Long after the gossip over their marriage had ceased, and it was an old story even to them, Arend was still in love with his wife. Lily was interesting; she had that quality or combination of qualities, impossible to a.n.a.lyse, which wins love where beauty fails, and keeps it when goodness tires. Her own happiness was more simple in its elements. She was better off than most women, and knew it--the last, the crowning gift, so often lacking to the fortunate of earth. She thought her husband much too good for her, though she never told him so. Nay, sometimes when she was a little fretted by his exacting disposition, for Arend was a strict martinet in all social and household matters and, as he had said, would be minded, she would sometimes more or less jestingly tell him that perhaps after all she had made a mistake in not keeping faith with ”poor Mr.
Ponsonby.”
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MODERN VENGEANCE
”Well, Lucy, I must say I never saw anything go off more delightfully!”
”It would hardly fail to, with such interesting people,” said Mrs. Henry Wilson.
”Why, every one said they thought it would be most difficult to manage; a sort of half-public thing, you know, to entertain those delegates or whatever they call them; they said it was well you had it, for no one else could possibly have made it go so well.”
”I have no doubt most of them could, if they had all the help I had--from you, especially! I only wish I could have made it a dinner, instead of a lunch; but Henry is so very busy, just now, and I dared not attempt a dinner without him.”
”Oh, my dear!” said her mother-in-law, ”a doctor's time is always so occupied; they all know that. And dear Henry, of course, is more occupied than most.”
”Perhaps it is as well,” said the younger lady, ”that they could come by daylight, as it is so far out of town; Medford is pretty, even in winter.”
”Oh, yes! so they all said. Lady Bayswater thinks it is the prettiest suburb of Boston she has yet seen; and she admired the house, too, and you, and everything. 'Mrs. Wilson,' she said to me, 'your charming daughter-in-law is the prettiest American woman I have seen yet.'” And Mrs. Wilson, senior, a little elderly woman, to whom even her rich mourning dress could not impart dignity, jerked her heavy black Astrachan cape upon her shoulders, and tied its wide ribbons in a fluttering, one-sided way.
”She is very kind.”