The Bay State Monthly Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 written by Various
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Various >> The Bay State Monthly Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884
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"I suppose we shall, but I had no recollection that it was I who gave
her the name."
"Yes, you gave it to her," repeated Katie. "You may be very sure I
should not have forgotten it if I had been so clever. Those were happy
days for all their petty tribulations," she added after a pause.
Elizabeth looked at her sitting there meditative.
"I should think these were happy days for you, Katie. What more can you
want than you have now?"
"Oh, the roc's eggs, I suppose," answered the girl. "No, seriously, I am
pretty likely to get what I want most. I am happy enough, only not
absolutely happy quite yet."
"Why not?"
"Our good minister would say it was not intended for mortals."
"If I felt like being quite content I should not give it up because
somebody else said it was too much for me."
"Oh, well," said Katie, laughing, "it has nothing to do with our good
Parson Shurtleff, anyway."
"I thought not. What, then?"
The other did not answer, but sat looking out of the window with eyes
that were not studying the landscape. Whether her little troubles
dissolved into the cloudless sky, like mist too thin to take shape, or
whether she preferred to keep her perplexities to herself is uncertain,
but when she spoke it was about another reminiscence of school days.
"Do you remember that morning Stephen came to see me?" she began. "Madam
thought at first that Master Archdale must be my father, and she gave a
most gracious assent to my request to go to walk with him. I was dying
of fun all the time, I could scarcely keep my face straight; then, when
she caught a glimpse of him as we were going out of the hall, she said
in a dubious tone, 'Your brother, I presume, Mistress Archdale?' But I
never heard a word. I was near the street door and I put myself the
other side of it without much delay. So did Stephen. And we went off
laughing. He said I was a wicked little cousin, and he spelled it
'cozen;' but he didn't seem to mind my wickedness at all." There was a
pause, during which Katie looked at her smiling friend, and her own
face dimpled bewitchingly. "This is exactly what you would have done,
Elizabeth," she said. "You would have heard that tentative remark of
Madam's, of course you would, and you would have stood still in the hall
and explained that Stephen was your cousin, instead of your brother, and
have lost your walk beyond a doubt, you know the Flamingo. Now, I was
just as good as you would have been, only, I was wiser. I, too, told
Madam that he was my cousin, but I waited until I came home to do it.
The poor old lady could not help herself then; it was impossible to take
back my fun, and she could not punish me, because she had given me
permission to go, nor could she affirm that I heard her remark, for it
was made in an undertone. There was nothing left for her but to wrap her
illustrious shawl about her and look dignified." "Do you think Master
Harwin will come to-day?" Katie asked a few moments later, "and Master
Waldo? I hope they will all three be here together; it will be fun, they
can entertain each other, they are so fond of one another."
"Katie! Katie!"
The girl broke into a laugh.
"Oh, yes, I remember," she said, "Stephen is your property."
"Don't," cried Elizabeth, with sudden gravity and paleness in her face.
"I think it was wicked in me to jest about such a sacred thing. Let me
forget it."
"I wont tease you if you really care. But if it was wicked, it was a
great deal more my doing, and Master Waldo's, than your's or Stephen's.
We wanted to see the fun. Your great fault, Elizabeth, is that you vex
yourself too much about little things. Do you know it will make you have
wrinkles?"
This question was put with so much earnestness that Elizabeth laughed
heartily.
"One thing is sure," she said, "I shall not remain ignorant of my
failings through want of being told them while I'm here. It would be
better to go home."
"Only try it!" cried Katie, going to her and kissing her. "But now,
Elizabeth, I want to tell you something in all seriousness. Just listen
to me, and profit by it, if you can. I've found it out for myself. The
more you laugh at other people's absurdities the fewer of your own will
be noticed, because, you see, it implies that you are on the right
standpoint to get a review of other people."
"That sounds more like eighty than eighteen."
"Elizabeth, it is the greatest mistake in the world, I mean just that,
to keep back all your wisdom until you get to be eighty. What use will
it be to you then? All you can do with it will be to see how much more
sensibly you might have acted. That's what will happen to you, my dear,
if you don't look out. But at eighteen--I am nineteen--everything is
before you, and you want to know how to guide your life to get all the
best things you can out of it without being wickedly selfish--at least I
do. Your aspirations, I suppose, are fixed upon the forests and the
Indian, and problems concerning the future of the American Colonies. But
I'm more reverent than you, I think the Lord is able to take care of
those."
Elizabeth looked vaguely troubled by the fallacy which she felt in this
speech without being quite willing or able to bring it to light.
"But, remember, I was twenty-one my last birthday," she answered. "I
ought to take a broader view of things."
"On the contrary, you're getting to be an old maid. You should consider
which of your suitors you want, and say 'yes' to him on the spot. By the
way, what has become of your friend, the handsome Master Edmonson?"
Elizabeth colored.
"I don't know," she answered. "Father has heard from him since he went
away, so I suppose that he is well."
"And he has not written to you?"
"No, he has only sent a message." Then, after a pause, "He said that he
was coming back in the autumn."
"I hope so," cried Katie, "he is a most fascinating man, and of such
family! Stephen was speaking of him the other day. He was very
attentive, was he not, Betsey?"
"Ye-es, I suppose so. But there was something that I fancied papa did
not like."
"I'm so sorry," cried Katie. She rose, and crossing the little space
between herself and her friend, dropped upon the footstool at
Elizabeth's feet, and laying her arms in the girl's lap and resting her
chin upon them, looked up and added, "Tell me all about it, my dear."
"There is nothing to tell," answered Elizabeth, caressing the beautiful
hair and looking into the eyes that had tears of sympathy in them.
"I was afraid something had gone wrong, afraid that you would care."
Elizabeth sat thinking.
"I don't know," she said slowly at last, "I don't know whether I should
really care or not if I never saw him again."
Her companion looked at her a moment in silence, and when she began to
speak it was about something else.
CHAPTER IV.
GIRDING ON THE HARNESS.
Later that same morning a gentleman calling upon Mistress Katie Archdale
was told that he would find her with friends in the garden. Walking
through the paths with a leisurely step which the impatience of his mood
chafed against, he came upon a picture that he never forgot.
Great stretches of sunshine lay on the garden and in it brilliant beds
of flowers glowed with their richest lights, poppies folded their
gorgeous robes closely about them, Arab fashion, to keep out the heat;
hollyhocks stood in their stateliness flecked with changing shadows from
the aspen tree near by. Beds of tiger lilies, pinks, larkspur,
sweetwilliams, canterbury bells, primroses, gillyflowers, lobelia,
bloomed in a luxuriance that the methodical box which bordered them
could not restrain. But the garden was by no means a blaze of sunshine,
for ash trees, maples, elms, and varieties of the pine were there.
Trumpet-vines climbed on the wall, and overtopping that, caught at
trellises prepared to receive them, and formed screens of shadows that
flickered in every breeze and changed their places with the changing
sun. But it was only with a passing glance that the visitor saw these
things, his eyes were fixed upon an arbor at the end of the garden; it
was covered with clematis, while two great elms met overhead at its
entrance and shaded the path to it for a little distance. Under these
elms stood a group of young people. He was unannounced, and had
opportunity without being himself perceived, to scan this little group
as he went forward. His expression varied with each member of it, but
showed an interest of some sort in each. Now it was full of passionate
delight; then it changed as his look fell upon a tall young man with
dark eyes and a bearing that in its most gracious moments seemed unable
to lose a touch of haughtiness, but whose face now was alive with a
restful joy. The gazer, as he perceived this happiness, so wanting in
himself, scowled with a bitter hate and looked instantly toward another
of the party, this time with an expression of triumph. At the fourth and
last member of the group his glance though scowling, was contemptuous;
but the receiver was as unconscious of contempt as he felt undeserving
of it. From him the gazer's eyes returned to the person at whom he had
first looked. She was standing on the step of the arbor, an end of the
clematis vine swaying lightly back and forth over her head, and almost
touching her bright hair which was now towered high in the fashion of
the day. She was holding a spray of the vine in her hand. She had
fastened one end in the hair of a young lady who stood beside her, and
was now bringing the other about her neck, arranging the leaves and
flowers with skilful touches. Three men, including the new-comer,
watched her pretty air of absorption, and the deftness of her taper
fingers, the sweep of her dark lashes on her cheek as from the height of
her step she looked down at her companion, the curves of her beautiful
mouth that at the moment was daintly holding a pin with which the end of
the spray was to be fastened upon the front of the other's white dress.
It was certainly effective there. Yet none of the three men noticed
this, or saw that between the two girls the question as to beauty was a
question of time, that while the one face was blooming now in the
perfection of its charm, the charm of the other was still in its calyx.
The adorner intuitively felt something of this. Perhaps she was not the
less fond of her friend that the charms she saw in her were not patent
to everybody. Bring her forward as much as she might, Katie felt that
Elizabeth Royal would never be a rival. She even shrank from this kind
of prominence into which Katie's play was bringing her now. She had been
taken in hand at unawares and showed an impatience that if the other
were not quick, would oblige her to leave the work unfinished.
"There," cried Katie, at last giving the leaves a final pat of
arrangement, "that looks well, don't you think so, Master Waldo?"
"Good morning, Mistress Archdale," broke in a voice before Waldo could
answer. "And you, Mistress Royal," bowing low to her. "After our late
hours last night, permit me to felicitate you upon your good health this
morning, and--" he was about to add, "your charming appearance," but
something in the girl's eyes as she looked full at him held back the
words, and for a moment ruffled his smooth assurance. But as he
recovered himself and turned to salute the gentlemen, the smile on his
lips had triumph through its vexation.
"My proud lady, keep your pride a little longer," he said to himself.
And as he bowed to Stephen Archdale with a dignity as great as Stephen's
own, he was thinking: "My morning in that hot office has not been in
vain. I know your weak point now, my lofty fellow, and it is there that
I will undermine you. You detest business, indeed! John Archdale feels
that with his only son in England studying for the ministry he needs a
son-in-law in partnership with him. The thousands which I have been
putting into his business this morning are well spent, they make me
welcome here. Yes, your uncle needs me, Stephen Archdale, for your
clever papa is not always brotherly in his treatment, he has more than
once brought heavy losses upon the younger firm. It's a part of my
pleasure in prospect that now I shall be able to checkmate him in such
schemes, perhaps to bring back a little of the loss upon the shoulders
of his heir. Ah, I am safer from you than you dream." He turned to
Waldo, and as the two men bowed, they looked at one another steadily.
Each was remembering their conversation the night before over some
Bordeaux in Waldo's room, for they were staying at the same inn and
often spent an hour together. They had drunk sparingly, but, just
returned from their sail, each was filled with Katie Archdale's beauty,
and each had spoken out his purpose plainly, Waldo with an assurance
that, if it savored a little of conceit, was full of manliness, the
other with a half-smothered fierceness of passion that argued danger to
every obstacle in its way.
"You've come at the very right moment, Master Harwin," broke in Katie's
unconscious voice, and she smiled graciously, as she had a habit of
doing at everybody; "We were talking about you not two minutes ago."
"Then I am just in time to save my character."
"Don't be too sure about that," returned Miss Royal.
Waldo laughed, and Katie exchanged glances with him, and smiled
mischievously.
"No, don't be too sure; it will depend upon whether you say 'yes,' or
'no,' to my question. We were wondering something about you."
Harwin's heart sank, though he returned her smile and her glance with
interest. For there were questions she might ask which would
inconvenience him, but they should not embarrass him.
"We were wondering," pursued Katie, "if you had ever been presented.
Have you?"
As the sun breaks out from a heavy cloud, the light returned to Harwin's
blue eyes.
"Yes," he said, "four years ago. I went to court with my uncle, Sir
Rydal Harwin, and his majesty was gracious enough to nod in answer to my
profound reverence."
"It was a very brilliant scene, I am sure, and very interesting."
"Deeply interesting," returned Harwin with all the traditional respect
of an Englishman for his sovereign. Archdale's lip curled a trifle at
what seemed to him obsequiousness, but Harwin was not looking at him.
"Stephen has been," pursued Katie, "and he says it was very fine, but
for all that he does not seem to care at all about it. He says he would
rather go off for a day's hunting any time. The ladies looked charming,
he said, and the gentlemen magnificent; but he was bored to death, for
all that."
"In order to appreciate it fully," returned Archdale, "it would be
necessary that one should be majesty." He straightened himself as he
spoke, and looked at Harwin with such gravity that the latter, meeting
the light of his eyes, was puzzled whether this was jest or earnest,
until Miss Royal's laugh relieved his uncertainty. Katie laid her hand
on the speaker's arm and shook it lightly.
"You told me I should be sure to enjoy it," she said. "Now, what do you
mean?"
"Ah! but you would be queen," said Harwin, "queen in your own right, a
divine right of beauty that no one can resist."
Katie looked at him, disposed for a moment to be angry, but her love of
admiration could not resist the worship of his eyes, and the lips
prepared to pout curved into a smile not less bewitching that the
brightness of anger was still in her cheeks. Archdale and Waldo turned
indignant glances on the speaker, but it was manifestly absurd to resent
a speech that pleased the object of it, and that each secretly felt
would not have sounded ill if he had made it himself. Elizabeth looked
from Katie to Harwin with eyes that endorsed his assertion, and as the
latter read her expression his scornful wonder in the boat returned.
"Why are we all standing outside in the heat?" cried the hostess. "Let
us go into the arbor, there is plenty of room to move about there, we
have had a dozen together in it many a time." She passed in under the
arch as she spoke, and the others followed her. There in her own way
which was not so very witty or wise, and yet was very charming, she held
her little court, and the three men who had been in love with her at the
beginning of the hour were still more in love at the end of it. And
Elizabeth who watched her with an admiration as deep as their's, if more
tranquil, did not wonder that it was so. Katie did not forget her, nor
did the gentlemen, or at least two of them, forget to be courteous, but
if she had known what became of the spray of clematis which being in the
way as she turned her head, she had soon unfastened and let slip to the
ground, she would not have wondered, nor would she have cared. If she
had seen Archdale's heel crush it unheedingly as he passed out of the
arbor, the beat of her pulses would never have varied.
CHAPTER V.
ANTICIPATIONS.
It was early in December. The months had brought serious changes to all
but one of the group that the August morning had found in Mr. Archdale's
garden. Two had disappeared from the scene of their defeat, and to two
of them the future seemed opening up vistas of happiness as deep as the
present joy. Elizabeth Royal alone was a spectator in the events of the
past months, and even in her mind was a questioning that was at least
wonderment, if not pain.
Kenelm Waldo was in the West Indies, trying to escape from his pain at
Katie Archdale's refusal, but carrying it everywhere with him, as he did
recollections of her; to have lost them would have been to have lost his
memory altogether.
Ralph Harwin also had gone. His money was still in the firm of John
Archdale & Co., which it had made one of the richest in the Colonies;
its withdrawal was now to be expected at any moment, for Harwin did not
mean to return, and Archdale, while endeavoring to be ready for this,
saw that it would cripple him. Harwin had been right in believing that
he should make himself very useful and very acceptable to Katie's
father. For Archdale who was more desious of his daughter's happiness
than of anything else in the world, was disappointed that this did not
lie in the direction which, on the whole, would have been for his
greatest advantage. Harwin and he could have done better for Katie in
the way of fortune than Stephen Archdale with his distaste for business
would do. The Archdale connection had always been a dream of his, until
lately when this new possibility had superseded his nephew's interest in
his thoughts. There was an address and business keenness about Harwin
that, if Stephen possessed at all, was latent in him. The Colonel was
wealthy enough to afford the luxury of a son who was only a fine
gentleman. Stephen was a good fellow, he was sure, and Katie would be
happy with him. And yet--but even these thoughts left him as he leaned
back in his chair that day, sitting alone after dinner, and a mist came
over his eyes as he thought that in less than a fortnight his home would
no longer be his little daughter's.
"It will be all right," he said to himself with that sigh of resignation
with which we yield to the inevitable, as if there were a certain choice
and merit in doing it. "It is well that the affairs of men are in higher
hands than ours." John Archdale's piety was of the kind that utters
itself in solitude, or under the breath.
Katie at the moment was upstairs with her mother examining a package of
wedding gear that had arrived that day. She had no hesitation as to whom
her choice should have been. Yet, as she stood holding a pair of gloves,
measuring the long wrists on her arm and then drawing out the fingers
musingly, it was not of Stephen that she was thinking, or of him that
she spoke at last, as she turned away to lay down the gloves and take up
a piece of lace.
"Mother," she said, "I do sometimes feel badly for Master Harwin; he is
the only man in all the world that I ever had anything like fear of, and
now and then I did of him, such a fierceness would come over him once in
a while, not to me, but about me, I know, about losing me. He was
terribly in earnest. Stephen never gets into these moods, he is always
kind and lovable, just as he has been to me as far back as I can
remember, only, of course more so now."
"But things have gone differently with him and with poor Master Harwin,"
answered Mrs. Archdale. "If you had said 'no' to Stephen, you would have
seen the dark moods in him, too."
The young girl looked at her mother and smiled, and blushed a little in
a charming acknowledgment of feminine power to sway the minds of the
sterner half of humanity. Then she grew thoughtful again, not even
flattery diverting her long from her subject.
"But Stephen never could be like that," she said. "Stephen couldn't be
dark in that desperate sort of way. I can't describe it in Master
Harwin, but I feel it. Somehow, he would rather Stephen would die, or I
should, than have us marry."
"Did he ever say so?"
"Why, no, but you can feel things that nobody says. And, then, there is
something else, too. I am quite sure that sometime in his life he did
something, well, perhaps something wicked, I don't know what, but I do
know that a load lies on his conscience; for one day he told me as much.
It was just as he was going away, the day after I had refused him and he
knew of my engagement. He asked permission to come and bid me goodby.
Don't you remember?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Archdale.
"He looked at me and sighed. 'I've paid a heavy price,' he said half to
himself, 'to lose.' Then he added, 'Mistress Archdale, will you always
believe that I loved you devotedly, and always have loved you from the
hour I first saw you? If I could undo'--then he waited a moment and grew
dreadfully pale, and I think he finished differently from his first
intention--'If I could undo something in the past,' he said, 'I would
give my life to do it, but my life would be of no use.'"
"That looks as if it was something against you, Katie."
"Oh, no, I don't think so. Besides, he wouldn't have given his life at
all; that's only the way men talk, you know, when they want to make an
impression of their earnestness on women and they always think they do
it that way. But the men that are the readiest to give up their lives
don't say anything about it beforehand. Stephen would die for me, I'm
sure, but he never told me so in his life. He don't make many
protestations; he takes a great deal for granted. Why shouldn't he;
we've known one another from babyhood? But Master Harwin knew, somehow,
the minute after he spoke, if he didn't at the time, that he wouldn't
die for his fault at all, whatever it was. And then, after he spoke it
seemed to me as if he had changed his mind and didn't care about it in
any way, he only cared that I had refused him, and that he was not going
to see me any more. I am sorry for a man like that, and if he were going
to stay here I should be afraid of him, afraid for Stephen. But he sails
in a few days. I don't wonder he couldn't wait here for the next ship,
wait over the wedding, and whatever danger from him there may have been
sails with him. Poor man, I don't see what he liked me for." And with a
sigh, Katie dismissed the thought of him and his grief and evil
together, and turned her attention again to the wedding finery.
"Only see what exquisite lace," she cried, throwing it out on the table
to examine the web. "Where did Elizabeth get it, I wonder? She begged to
be allowed to give me my bridal veil, and she has certainly done it
handsomely, just as she always does everything, dear child. I suppose it
came out in one of her father's ships."
"Everything Master Royal touches turns into gold," said Mrs. Archdale,
after a critical examination of the lace had called forth her
admiration. "It's Mechlin, Katie. There is nobody in the Colonies richer
than he," she went on, "unless, possibly, the Colonel."
"I dare say I ought to pretend not to care that Stephen will have ever
so much money," returned the girl, taking up a broad band of India
muslin wrought with gold, and laying it over her sleeve to examine the
pattern, at which she smiled approvingly. "But then I do care. Stephen
is a great deal more interesting rich than he would be poor; he is not
made for a grub, neither am I, and living is much better fun when one
has laces like cobwebs, and velvets and paduasoys, and diamonds, mother,
to fill one's heart's desire."
As she spoke she looked an embodiment of fair youth and innocent
pleasure, and her mother, with a mother's admiration and sympathy in her
heart, gave her a lingering glance before she put on a little sternness,
and said, "My child, I don't like to hear you talk in that light way.
Your heart's desires, I trust, are set upon better things, those of
another world."
"Yes, mother, of course. But, then you know, we are to give our mind
faithfully to the things next to us, in order to get to those beyond
them, and that's what I am doing now, don't you see? O, mother, dear,
how I shall miss you, and all your dear, solemn talks, and your dear,
smiling looks." And winding her arms about her mother, Katie kissed her
so affectionately that Mrs. Archdale felt quite sure that the laces and
paduasoys had not yet spoilt her little daughter.
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