East Angels: A Novel

This last reflection gave his mood a sharp turn in the other direction; he thought – he thought a thousand things. Chief among them came now the remembrance that he should see her at table, she would be obliged to appear there, she would be obliged to speak to him. But when in answer to Telano's summons he went to the dining-room, hardly knowing how he should bear himself towards her, she was not present; Garda brought word that she was suffering from headache, and could not appear.

That night Winthrop was awake until a late hour, he found himself unable to sleep. He was conscious of the depth of the disturbance that swayed him, but though he did his best to conquer it, he made no progress; dawn found him still under its influence. He decided to go away for a few days; he had been shut up at East Angels too long, the narrow little round of Gracias life was making him narrow as well. The evening before, he had felt a strong wish to see Margaret, to note how she would appear; but now his one desire was to get away without seeing her, if possible. Curiosity – if curiosity it had been – had died down; in its place was something that ached and throbbed, which he did not care to analyze further.

Lucian had really gone – he had ascertained that; East Angels was therefore safe for the present, as far as he was concerned. Winthrop remained very indifferent to Lucian personally, even now; he consigned his good looks to the place where the good looks of a strikingly handsome man are generally consigned by those of his less conspicuously endowed brethren who come in contact with him, and he felt that immense disgust which men of his nature are apt to feel in such cases, with no corresponding realization, perhaps, of the effect which has been observed to be produced sometimes by – item, a pair of long-lashed eyes; item, a pink young cheek; item, a soft dimpled arm – upon even the most inflexible of mankind. No, he did not care about Lucian. He said to himself that if it had not been Lucian, it would have been somebody else; he made himself say that.

Now, as he sat there at the end of the long pier, with the dense rain falling all round him, he went over again in his own mind all these things. Two states of feeling had gradually become more absorbing than the rest; one of these was a deep dumb anger against Margaret for the indifference with which she had treated him, was still treating him. What rank must he hold in her mind, then? – one which could leave her so untroubled as to his opinion of her. What estimation must she have of him that made her willing to brave him in this way? She had not written during his absence, expressing – or disguising – apprehension; making excuses; she had not even written (a woman's usual trick) to say that she knew it was not necessary to write, that she was safe with him, and that she only wrote now to assure him that she felt this. Was he such a nonentity in every way that she could remain unconcerned as to any fear of danger from him? Did she suppose him incapable of action? – too unimportant to reckon with, too unimportant to trouble, even if he should try, the well-arranged surface of her unperturbed life? Very possibly she might not like him, but he was at least a man; it seemed to him that she ought to have some regard for any man's opinion; even some fear of it, in a case of this kind.

Yes, he was very angry. And he knew that he was.

Then, adding itself to this anger, there came always a second, came against his will; this was a burning resentment against her personally, for falling so far below the idea he had had of her. He had thought her narrow, self-righteous, – yes; but he had also thought her life in other respects as pellucid (and cold) as a mountain brook; one of those brooks, if one wanted a comparison, that flow through the high valleys of the Alps, clear, cold, and dreary; he had had time to make comparisons in abundance, if that were any entertainment!

But it was not. And he found it impossible, too, to think of Margaret in any other than this his first way; the second, in spite of what he had with his own eyes beheld, remained unreal, phantasmagoric. This seemed to him folly, and he was now going back to East Angels to break it up; it would break it up to find her defiant. And it would amount to defiance – her looking at him and talking to him without giving any sign, no matter how calmly or even timidly she might do it; in his actual presence perhaps she would be timid. In all cases, in any case, he now wished to see her; the desire to find himself face to face with her had taken possession of him again.

He reached East Angels the next day at two o'clock. Betty Carew was the first to greet him, she had herself arrived from Gracias only an hour before. She was full of the intelligence she brought, and immediately repeated it to the new-comer: Mr. Moore had that morning received a letter, or rather a note of six lines; Rosalie Spenser was dead. Her illness had been brief, and she had not suffered; they thought it was the heart. Fortunately Lucian had been able to get to her; he had found the despatch at New Orleans, and had started immediately; they had had the last three days together, and she was conscious to the end. And then followed the good Betty's regrets, which were sincere; she had always liked Lucian, and, when he married, her affectionate, easily expanding heart had made room for Rosalie as well; "Lucian's wife" would have had to be a very disagreeable person indeed to have made Betty dislike her. For Betty's liking included the relatives of all her friends, simply because they were relatives. The relationship made them a whole, she accepted them in a body as one accepts "the French," "the Portuguese;" they did not present themselves to her as objects for criticism.

Winthrop had lunch alone, the others had had theirs. While he was still at the table, Garda came in. He had already seen her, as well as Betty, and he had been in to say a word of greeting to his aunt; but Margaret he had not yet seen.

"I should like to speak to you," Garda said. "Could you come out after lunch to the orange walk for a few moments?" There was nothing unusual in her tone.

When he entered that leafy aisle, later, she came to meet him.

"I am sorry to have made you take this trouble," she said, "when you are only just back from your journey. But I wanted to tell you at once, it seems unfair to wait; I wonder if you will be surprised? I don't care for you any more; don't you think it would be as well, then, to break our engagement?"

CHAPTER XXIII

Winthrop had literally made no answer to Garda's speech; he only looked at her.

After a moment the girl went on, gently enough: "If I don't care about you, I think I ought to tell you; you will feel more free. Don't you think it is better that I should tell you?"

"Certainly; if it is true."

After her first greeting, Garda had moved away a step or two; she now stood leaning back against the firm little trunk of one of the orange-trees, playing with a small spray of the bright leaves as she talked. At this answer of his, her gentleness turned to exasperation. "If it is true! And why shouldn't it be true? – do you think it impossible for anybody to stop caring for you? I have stopped, and very completely. I care no more for you now than I do for that twig." And she tossed it away with a little gesture of disdain.

Winthrop's eyes followed the motion. But he did not speak.

"Still don't you believe it?" she asked, in surprise; "you look as though you didn't. I think that rude."

"On the contrary, it seems to me that my being slow to believe it, Garda, is the best honor I can pay you."

"Oh, how could I ever have liked you! – how disagreeable you can be when you try!" Tears shone in her eyes. "Everybody in the world seems to tell lies but me," she went on, hotly. "And everybody else seems to prefer it. You yourself would like it a great deal better, and think it nicer in me, if I should tell lies now, pretend that this was the beginning of a change instead of the end, make it more gradual. Whereas I tell you simply the truth; and then you are angry."

"I am not angry."

"You are ever so much surprised, then, and that's worse. I call it almost insulting for you to be so much surprised by what seems to me perfectly natural. Have you never heard of people's changing? That is what has happened to me – I have changed. And I tell you the truth about it, just as I told you the truth when it was different – when I cared for you. For I did care for you once, ever so much; didn't you believe it? Didn't you know that I cared for you that night on the barren?"

A red rose in Winthrop's cheeks. After a moment he answered, humbly enough, "Yes, I thought you did."

"Of course you thought I did. And why? Because I did; that night, and for some time afterwards, I adored you, Evert. But I don't see why you should color up about it; wasn't it natural that I should be delighted to be engaged to you when I adored you? and isn't it just as natural that I should wish to break it off when I don't? You can't want me to pretend to care for you when it's all over?"

"No, no," said Winthrop, his eyes turning from her.

"I do believe you are embarrassed," said Garda, reverting to her usual good temper again. Then she broke into smiles. "You ought to thank me, for, really, you never cared for me at all." She leaned back against her tree again, and folded her arms. "I dare you to tell me that you ever really cared for me, even when I cared so much for you," she continued, in smiling challenge. "What you would answer if you spoke the truth (as I do), would be – 'I did my duty, Garda.' As though I wanted duty! You ought to fall down on your knees in the sand this moment and thank me for releasing you; for you are much too honorable ever to have released yourself, you are the soul of honor. Just supposing we had been married – that we were married now – where should we be? I should have got over caring for you, probably (you see I have got over it without being married), and you never did really care for me at all; I think we've had a lucky escape."

"Perhaps we have," Winthrop answered.

"No 'perhaps,' it's a certainty. And yet," she went on, slowly, looking at him with musing eyes, "it might have had a different termination. For I adored you, and you could perhaps have kept it along if you had tried. But you never did try, the only thing you tried to do was to 'mould' me; you made me read things, or, if you didn't, you wanted to; you have treated me always as if I were a child. You have had an idea of me from the first (I don't know where you got it) that wasn't like me, what I really am, in the very least. And you never found out your mistake because you never took the trouble to study me, myself; you only studied your Idea. Your Idea was lovely, of course," pursued the girl, laughing; "so much the worse for me, I suppose, that I am not like her. Your Idea would have been willing to be moulded; and she would have read everything you suggested; and then in due course of time —when she should be at least eighteen" – interpolated the girl, with another burst of laughter, "she would have gratefully thanked you for admitting her to the privileges of being 'grown up.' Why – you didn't even want me to care for you as much as I did, because your Idea wouldn't have cared so much for anybody, of course, 'when she was only sixteen.'"

Winthrop flushed fiercely, as her mocking eyes met his, full of mirth. Then he controlled himself, and stopped where he was; he did not answer her.

"You are the best man in the world," said Garda, coming towards him and abandoning her raillery. "With your views (though I think them all wrong, you know), you could say the most dreadful things to me; yet you won't, because – because I'm a woman. You engaged yourself to me in the first place because you thought I cared for you (I did, then); and now, when I tease you because you have made the mistake of not understanding me – of having, that is, a higher idea of me than I deserve – you don't answer back and tell me that, or anything else that would be true and horrid. That's very good of you. I wish I could have gone on caring for you! But I don't, I can't; isn't it a pity?" She spoke with perfect sincerity.

Winthrop burst into a laugh.

"Don't laugh in that way," Garda went on; "I assure you I know perfectly that – that the person I care for now isn't what you are in many ways. But if I do care for him (as I cared for you once – you know what that was) shouldn't I be true to it and say so?"

"The – the person?" said Winthrop, looking at her inquiringly, a new expression coming into his face.

"Yes, Lucian, of course."

"Lucian!"

"Oh, very well, if you take that tone! And after I have said, too, that I knew he wasn't as – that he wasn't like you. It seems to me that I have been very honest."

"Very," replied Winthrop. Then his voice changed, it grew at once more serious and more gentle. "I hardly know, Garda, how to take what you say, I don't think you know what you are saying. You stand there and tell me that you care so much for Lucian Spenser – a married man – "

"He isn't married now," said Garda.

Winthrop gave her a look which made her rush towards him. "I didn't mean it – that is, I didn't mean that I was thinking about Rosalie's death; I wasn't thinking about that at all, I have never thought about Rosalie. Very likely I shall not see Lucian for ever and ever so long, and very likely he won't care for me when I do. He has never given the least sign that he cared – don't think that." And, clasping her hands round his wrist, she looked up in his face in earnest appeal. "Nothing has ever been said between us – not one word; it is only how I have felt."

"Whom are you defending now?" asked Winthrop, as coldly as a man may when a girl so beautiful is clinging to him pleadingly.

"Lucian," responded Garda, promptly.

The mention of his name seemed to give her thoughts a new direction; disengaging herself, she came round to stand in front of her companion in order to have a good position while she told her story. "Don't you remember that I began caring for Lucian first of all? you must remember that? Then I got over it. Next I cared for you. Then, when he came back, I began to care for him again – you have no idea how delightful he is!" she said, breaking off for a moment, and giving him a frank smile. "Well, I should have told you all about it long ago, only Margaret wouldn't let me; she has made me promise her twice, and faithfully, not to tell you. You see, Margaret thinks you care for me; therefore it would hurt you to know it. I have told her over and over again that you don't care at all, and that I don't care any longer for you. But it doesn't make any difference, she can't understand it; she thinks that if I cared once, it must last still; because that is the kind that Margaret is herself; if she cared, it would last. So she can't believe that I have really changed, she thinks (isn't it funny?) that I am mistaken about myself, that I don't know my own mind. And then, too, to change from you to Lucian —that she could never understand in a thousand years."

Winthrop had had his hands deep in the pockets of his morning-coat during this history. He stood looking steadily down, perhaps to keep her from seeing his expression.

But she divined it. "You needn't have such a stern face, I am sure everybody's very good to you. Here I've released you from an engagement you didn't desire, and Margaret, the sweetest woman in the world, cares so much for your feelings – what she supposes them to be – that she has done her best to hold me to you just because she thinks you would mind. Of course, too, on my own account a little – because she thinks it would be well for me to marry you, that it would be safe. Well, you know you are safe, Evert." And the rippling laugh broke forth again, meeting this time decided anger in Winthrop's gray eyes as he raised them to meet hers.

"There, you needn't crush me," Garda resumed. "And you needn't mind me, either me, or my laughing. For, of course, I know that if I could have cared for you, that is, gone on caring, and if in the end you could have cared for me, it would have been better for me than anything that could possibly happen; you ought not to be angry with a girl who tells you that?" And taking his arm, she looked up in his face very sweetly. "But the trouble was that you didn't care for me, you don't now. Yet you kept to your engagement, you took me and made the best of me; and I think that was very good. Well, it's over now." She had kept his arm, and now she began to stroll down the aisle towards the rose-garden. "There's something else I want to speak to you about, now that we've got through with our own affairs; and that's Margaret. Why have you such a wrong idea of her? – she is so noble as well as so sweet. She promised my mother to be like a sister to me; but, Heaven knows, few real sisters would have been as patient as she has been. I have never seen any one that could approach her. I didn't know a woman could be like that – so unchangeable and true. For we are not true to each other – women, I mean; that is, not when we care for somebody. Then we pretend, we pretend awfully; we tell things, or keep them back, or tell only half, just as we choose; and we always think that we have a perfect right to do it. But Margaret's different, Margaret's wonderful. Yet none of you, her nearest relatives, do her the least justice; it is left to me to appreciate her. Leaving Mrs. Rutherford out, this is more stupidity than I can account for in you."

"Men are all stupid, of course," Winthrop answered.

"What makes all she has done for me the more remarkable," Garda went on, not heeding his tone, "is the fact that she doesn't really like me, she cannot, I am so different. Yet she goes on being good to me just the same."

Winthrop made an impatient movement. "Suppose we don't talk any more about Mrs. Harold," he said.

"I must talk about her, when I love her and trust her more than anything."

"Don't trust her too much."

She drew her arm from his, indignantly. "One night she came way down the live-oak avenue after me, with only slippers on her poor little feet, to keep me from going out in the fog with Lucian – sailing, I mean. What do you think of that?"

"I don't think anything."

"Yes, you do; your face shows that you do."

"My face shows, perhaps, what I think of the extraordinary duplicity of women," said Winthrop.

"Duplicity? Do you call it duplicity for me to be telling you every single thing I think and feel, as I have done to-day?"

"I was speaking of Mrs. Harold."

"Duplicity and Margaret!" exclaimed Garda.

They had reached the end of the orange aisle, and she no longer had his arm. "I can't discuss her with you, Garda," he said. And he went out into the sunshine beyond.

But Garda followed him. She came round, placed her hands on his shoulders, and pushed him with soft violence back into the shade. "Why do you speak so of her? you shall tell me. Why shouldn't I trust her? But I do and I will in spite of you!"

"Do you mean to marry that man, Garda?" asked Winthrop, at last, as she stood there holding him, her eyes on his, thinking of her no longer as the young girl of his fancy, but as the woman.

"I don't know," answered Garda, her tone altering; "perhaps he won't care for me."

"But if he should care?"

"Oh!" murmured the girl, the most lovely, rapturous smile lighting up her face.

Winthrop contemplated her for a moment. "Very well, then, I think I ought to tell you: she cares for Lucian herself."

Garda's hands dropped. "It isn't possible that you believe that – that you have believed it! Margaret care for Lucian! She doesn't care a straw for him, and since I have begun to care for him again, I verily believe that she has detested him; he knows it too. Margaret care for him! What are you thinking of? I care, not Margaret; I've done nothing but try to be with him, and meet him, and I've seen him more times than she knows. Why – it gave her that fever just because she had to do something for him; that last afternoon before he went away (I promised her I wouldn't tell you; but I don't care, I shall), I had asked Lucian to meet me at the pool in the south-eastern woods, and then I thought that I should rather see him at the house after all, and so I started a little earlier, and was on my way to Madam Giron's, when I came upon Margaret. I had to tell her, because she wanted me to go home with her and of course I couldn't. And then, suddenly, we saw Dr. Kirby coming, and I knew it must be for me – he had found out in some way my plan – and I knew, too, that it would be dreadful if he should meet Lucian; I was sure he would shoot him! And I was going to run over and warn Lucian – there was just time – when Margaret said she would do it, and that I had better go back up the path and stop the Doctor, keep him away from there entirely, if possible, which was, of course, much the best plan. So I did. And she went to Madam Giron's. And I am convinced that it was the cause of her illness – it was so disagreeable to her to be mixed up in anything connected with Lucian."

Garda had poured out this narrative with all the eloquence of the warm affection she had for her friend. Now she stopped. "She doesn't like Lucian because she doesn't understand him," she said. Then she repented. "No, it isn't that, he isn't the person for her. Lucian will do for me; but not for Margaret." And she looked at Winthrop with one of her sudden comprehending glances, clear as a beam of light.

But he did not respond to this. "When you met her that afternoon, Garda, where was she?" he asked; he seemed to be thrusting Garda and her affairs aside now.

"I told you; in the south-eastern woods."

"Yes. But where?"

"In the eastern path, at the end of that long straight stretch beyond the pool – just before you get to the bend."

"And then?"

"Then I went back up the path to meet the Doctor. And Margaret went down the path and across the field to Madam Giron's."

At this instant appeared Celestine. She had gone to the entrance of the aisle which was nearest the house, and looked in; then, seeing that they were at the far end, she had left it and come round on the outside.

For something forbade Celestine to walk down that long vista alone. They would probably hear her and turn; and then there would be the necessity of approaching them for fully five minutes step by step, with the consciousness that they were looking; she could not stare back at them, and yet neither could she look all the time at the sand at her feet – which would be dizzying. Celestine always took care of her dignity in this way; she had a fixed regard for herself as a decent Vermont woman; you could see that in the self-respecting way in which her large neat shoes lifted themselves and came down again when she walked.

"Mrs. Rutherford would like to see you, Mr. Evert, if you please; she isn't so well, she says."

"Nothing serious, Minerva, I hope?"

"I guess there's no occasion to be scairt, Mr. Evert. But she wants you."

"I will come immediately."

Celestine disappeared.

Garda and Winthrop turned back towards the house through the orange aisle.

"Mrs. Rutherford has never known, has she, that we have been engaged?" asked Garda.

"No."

"There is no need that she should ever know, then; she isn't fond of me as it is, and she would detest me forever if she knew there had been a chance of my becoming in reality her niece. I don't want to trouble her any longer with even my unseen presence; I want to go away."

"Where?"

"It doesn't make much difference where. It is only that I am restless, and as I have never been restless before, I thought that perhaps if I should go away for a while, it would stop."

"Yes, you wish to see the world," said Winthrop, vaguely. His mind was not upon Garda now.

"I don't care for 'the world,'" the girl responded. "I only care for the people in it."

Then, in answer to a glance of his as his attention came back to her, "No, I am not going after Lucian," she said; "don't think that. I am almost sure that Lucian will go abroad now; he was always talking about it, – saying that he longed to spend a summer in Venice, and paint everything there. No – but I think I might go to Charleston – the Doctor could take me; he has a cousin there, Mrs. Lowndes; I could stay with her. Margaret will oppose it. But the Doctor is my guardian too, you know; and I hope you will take my part. Of course I should rather go with Margaret anywhere, if she could only go; but she cannot, you know Mrs. Rutherford would never let her. So she will feel called upon – Margaret – to oppose it."