Part 9 (1/2)
”No good could have come of that!” returned he coldly. ”When an amputation is to be performed, wise people submit to it without useless preliminaries. The exchange of farewells in this case would be inexpedient in the highest degree. You would compromise yourself by continued acknowledgment of this fellow's acquaintance. My will is that you and the world should forget, as soon as it can be done, that you ever saw or heard of him. The connection was degrading.”
”Don't abuse him, brother! Let the knowledge that we are parted forever, satisfy your resentment. Since he has not appealed to me from your verdict, I am left to suppose that, upon second thoughts, he has resolved to acquiesce in your will. I do not blame him for the change of purpose.” Still impa.s.sive in feature and voice, still not withdrawing her fixed gaze from that one point upon the floor. ”He, too, has pride, and it matches yours. I do not say mine. I question, sometimes, if I have any.”
”If your conjecture be correct, you cannot object to return the letters you have already received from him,” said Winston, pressing on to the conclusion of a disagreeable business. ”Since you are not likely to add to your stock of these valuables, you do not care to retain them, I suppose? I believe the rule is total surrender of souvenirs when a rupture is p.r.o.nounced hopeless.”
”I shall keep them a week longer!”
She a.s.signed no reason for the resolution, and her manner, without being sullen, aggravated her brother into wrath, the effusion of which was a withering sneer.
”Your hope in his repentance is creditable to the strength--or weakness--of woman's love. But have your way. The ill.u.s.trious record of his former life is a powerful argument in favor of clemency. In a week, then!”
He nodded dismissal, wheeled his chair around to the table, dipped a pen in the standish, and pulled an account-book toward him.
He was surprised and not pleased, nevertheless, that Mabel retired without other reply than a simple ”Good-night,” said without temper, or any evidence of excitement. A month before, a milder sarcasm, the lightest breath of reproof, would have brought her to his feet in a paroxysm of tears, to implore pardon for her contumacy, and to promise obedience for all time to come. She was getting beyond his control the while she offered no open resistance to his government. Was sorrowful shame, or her infatuation for the adventurer he cursed in his heart by his G.o.ds, the influence that was petrifying her into this unlovely caricature of her once bright and affectionate self?
She presented herself, unsummoned, in his study at the expiration of the period she had designated, a pacquet in her hand, neatly done up and sealed.
”I will trouble you to direct it,” was all she said, as she laid it before him.
”This is done of your own free will--remember!” he said, impressively.
”In after years, should you be so unreasonable as to regret it, there must be no misconception on the subject between us. If you wish, at this, the eleventh hour, to draw back, I shall not oppose you.”
”You will write the address, then, if you please!” was Mabel's reply, showing him the surface intended for it.
Then she left him.
”A sensible girl, after all! a genuine Aylett, in will and stoicism!”
commented the master of the situation, beginning in his round, legible characters, the inscription he hoped never to trace again. ”So endeth her first lesson in Cupid's manual!”
He never knew that Mrs. Sutton had bolstered the Aylett will and stoicism into stanchness at this closing scene. In a fit of despondency, she had that morning imparted to Mabel the fact that she had written to Frederic, ten days before, and had no answer, although she had besought an immediate one.
”I have expected him confidently every day for a week,” she lamented. ”I didn't suppose he would stay at Ridgeley, after what has happened; but there's the hotel in the village, and, as I told him, he could accomplish more by an hour's talk with you than by fifty letters. It is very mysterious--his continued silence! He always appeared so frank and reasonable. Nothing else like it has ever occurred in my experience--and I have had a great deal, my dear!”
”I am sorry you wrote, aunt,” replied Mabel, sorrowfully dignified.
”Sorry you have subjected yourself to unnecessary mortification. I am past feeling it for myself. We cannot longer doubt that Mr. Chilton desires to hold no further communication with any of us.”
Within the hour she made up the pacquet and carried it to her brother.
CHAPTER VII. -- Wa.s.sAIL.
ALMOST sixteen months had pa.s.sed since the dewless September morning, when Mabel had gathered roses in the garden walks, and her brother's return had shaken the dew with the bloom from her young heart. It was the evening of Christmas-day, and the tide of wa.s.sail, the blaze of yule, were high at Ridgeley. Without, the fall of snow that had commenced at sundown, was waxing heavier and the wind fiercer. In-doors, fires roared and crackled upon every hearth; there was a stir of busy or merry life in every room. About the s.p.a.cious fire-place in the ”baronial” hall was a wide semicircle of young people, and before that in the parlor, a cl.u.s.ter of elders, whose graver talk was enlivened, from time to time, by the peals of laughter that tossed into jubilant surf the stream of the juniors' converse.
Nearest the mantel, on the left wing of the line, sat the three months'
bride, Imogene Barksdale, placid, dove-eyed, and smiling as of yore, very comely with her expression of satisfied prettiness n.o.body called vanity, and bedecked in her ”second day's dress” of azure silk and her bridal ornaments. Her husband hovered on the outside of the ring, now pulling the floating curls of a girl-cousin (every third girl in the country was his cousin, once, twice, or thrice-removed, and none resented the liberties he, as a married man, was pleased to take), anon whispering in the ear of a bashful maiden interrogatories as to her latest admirer or rumored engagement; oftenest leaning upon the back of his wife's chair, a listener to what was going on, his hand lightly touching her lace-veiled shoulders, until her head gradually inclined against his arm. They were a loving couple, and not shy of testifying their consent to the world.
”They remind me irresistibly of a pair of plump babies sucking at opposite ends of a stick of sugar candy!” Rosa Tazewell said aside to the hostess, as the latter paused beside her on her way through the hall to the parlor.
”The candy is very sweet!” replied Mrs. Aylett, charitably, but laughing at the conceit--the low, musical laugh that was at once girlish in its gleefulness, yet perfectly well-bred.