East Angels: A Novel

The Doctor took Garda to a remote part of the garden. Here he placed before her in serious words the strong wish he had that she should return with him to Gracias.

Garda laughed out merrily. Then she came and kissed him. "Don't ask me to do anything so horribly disagreeable," she said, coaxingly.

"Would it be disagreeable?" asked the Doctor, his voice changing to pathos.

"Of course. For you're not nice to Lucian, you know you're not; how can I like that?"

"I will be – nice," said the Doctor, borrowing her word, though the use of it in that sense was to him like turning a somersault.

"Would you really try?" said Garda. She came behind him, putting her arms round his neck and resting her head on his shoulder. "You never could," she said, fondly. And then, as though he were some big good-natured animal, a magnanimous elephant or bear, she let him feel the weight of her little dimpled chin.

"I am weak because I have loved you so long, my child. I might insist; you are my ward. But it seems to me that you ought to care more about doing a little as we wish, Mrs. Harold agrees with me in thinking this."

"Margaret is sweet; I love her dearly. But, do you know" – here she disengaged herself, and began with a sudden inconsequent industry to gather flowers – "it's so funny to me that you should think, either of you, for one moment, that I would leave Lucian now."

"He could come too. A little later." The Doctor was driven to this concession.

"But I shouldn't see him as I do here, you know I shouldn't. Here we do quite as we please; no one ever comes to this part of the garden but ourselves; we might be on a desert island – only it would have to be an island of flowers."

"And you care more for this than for our wishes?" began the Doctor. Then he took a lighter tone. "Of course you don't; you will come home with me, my child; we will start this afternoon." Watching her move about among the bushes as she gathered her roses, he had fallen back into his old belief; this young face where to him were still so plainly visible the childish outlines of the little girl he had been used to lead about by the hand – even of the dimpled baby he remembered so well – he could not bring himself to realize that it had gained older expressions, expressions he did not know.

"I'm very sorry, dear," Garda answered, generally. And then she knelt down to peer through a bush which might perhaps be holding its best buds hidden.

The Doctor, completely routed by the word which she had without the least effort used – the maturity of that "dear," addressed her at last, though unconscious that he was doing so, in the tone of equality. "It isn't as though you had anything to bear, like the prospect of a long engagement, as though there were any difficulties in the way; your marriage is to come so soon," he pleaded.

"Soon?" said Garda. "Six long months! Do you call that 'soon?'" She stopped gathering roses, and sat down on a garden bench. "Six months! I must see him every day, and for a long while every day; that will be the only way to bear it." Then her words ceased; but her splendid eyes, meeting the Doctor's (she had forgotten that he was there), grew fuller and fuller of the loveliest dreaming expression, until the poor guardian – he realized that she would not perceive his departure – could not stand there and watch it any longer. He turned abruptly and went away.

"Dear Margaret, – The Doctor has gone" (Garda wrote the next day). "And I am afraid he is displeased. Apparently we please no one but ourselves and Sally Lowndes! Margaret, when my wedding-day really comes at last, nobody must touch me but you; you must dress me, and you must put on my veil, and the orange-blossoms (from the old East Angels grove – I won't have any others). And then, just before we go down-stairs, you must say you are pleased. And you must forgive me all I have done – and been too – because I couldn't help it. I shall come over from Gracias, and go down on my knees to Mr. Harold to beg him to let me be with you, or rather to let you; he must, he shall say yes."

But Lanse was not called upon to go through this ordeal.

He had already said, "You go!" in rather a high-noted tone of surprised remonstrance when Margaret suggested, some time before, that she should go herself to Charleston and bring Garda back. "And leave me shut up alone here!" he added, as if to bring home to her the barbarity of her proposal.

"The servants do very well at present."

"They don't look as you do," Lanse answered, gallantly. "I must have something to look at."

"But I think I ought to go."

"You can dismiss that 'ought' from your mind, there are other 'oughts' that come nearer. In fact, viewing the matter impartially, you should never have consented in the beginning, Madge, to take charge of that girl, without first consulting me." Lanse brought out this last touch with much judicial gravity. "Fortunately your guardianship, such as it is, will soon be over," he went on; "she will have a husband to see to her. Apparently she needs one."

"That won't be for six months yet."

"Call it two; as I understand it, there's nothing but dogmatic custom between them, and as Florida isn't the land of custom – "

"Yes, it is."

"Well, even grant that; the girl is, from all accounts, a rich specimen of wilfulness – "

"Of naturalness."

"Oh, if they're guided by naturalness," said Lanse, "they won't even wait two."

And it was not two, when early one morning, in old St. Michael's Church in Charleston, with Sally Lowndes, excited and tearful, as witness – their only one save an ancient little uncle of hers, who had come in from his rice plantation to do them the favor of giving the bride (whom he had never seen before) away, Edgarda Thorne and Lucian Spenser were married.

The Rev. Batton Habersham, as he came robed in his surplice from the vestry-room, could not help being conscious, even then and there, that he had never seen so beautiful a girl as the one who now stood waiting at the chancel-rail – not in the veil she had written about, or the orange-blossoms from East Angels, but in an every-day white frock, and garden hat covered with roses. The bridegroom was very handsome also. But naturally the clergyman was not so much impressed by Lucian's good points as by Garda's lovely ones. Sally Lowndes was impressed by Lucian, she gazed at him as one gazes at a portrait; Lucian looked very handsome, very manly, and very much in love – a happy combination, Sally thought. And then, with fresh sweet tears welling in her eyes, she knelt down for the benediction (though it was not given to her), and thought of "Roger," and the day when she should see him again in paradise.

The Rev. Batton Habersham, who was officiating in St. Michael's for a week only, during the absence of the rector, was a man unknown to fame even in his own diocese. But it is possible to do a great deal of good in the world without fame, and Batton Habersham did it; his little mission chapel was on one of the sea islands. Always thereafter he remembered the early morning marriage of that beautiful girl in the dim, empty old Charleston church as the most romantic episode of his life. Fervently he hoped that she would be happy; for even so good a man is more earnest (unconsciously) in his hopes for the happiness of a bride with eyes and hair like Garda's than he is for that of one with tints less striking. Though the relation, all the same, between the amount of coloring matter in the visual orbs or capillary glands, and the degree of sweetness and womanly goodness in the heart beneath, has never yet been satisfactorily determined.

An hour later the northward-bound train was carrying two supremely happy persons across the Carolinas towards New York – the Narrows – Italy.

"Well, we have all been young once, Sally," the little old rice planter had said to his weeping niece, as the carriage drove away from the hospitable old mansion of the Lowndes'. Garda had almost forgotten that they were there, Sally and himself, as they had stood for a moment at the carriage door; but she had looked so lovely in her absorbed felicity that he forgave her on the spot, though of course he wondered over her choice, and "couldn't imagine" what she could see in that "ordinary young fellow." He went back to his plantation. But he was restless all the evening. At last, about midnight, he got out an old miniature and some letters; and any one who could have looked into the silent room later in the night would have seen the little old man still in his arm-chair, his face hidden in his hand, the faded pages beside him.

"It is perhaps as well," said Margaret Harold. She was trying to administer some comfort to Dr. Kirby, when, two days later, he sat, a flaccid parcel of clothes, on the edge of a chair in her parlor, staring at the floor.

Mrs. Rutherford was triumphant. "A runaway match! And that is the girl you would have married, Evert. What an escape!"

"She has escaped," Winthrop answered, smiling.

"What do you mean? Escaped? – escaped from what?"

"From all of us here."

"Not from me," answered Aunt Katrina, with dignity. "I never tried to keep her, I always saw through her perfectly from the very first. Do you mean to say that you understand that girl even now?" she added, with some contradiction.

"Yes, I think I do —now," Winthrop answered.

"I don't envy you your knowledge! Poor Lucian Spenser – what could have possessed him?"

"He? He's madly in love with her, of course."

"I'm glad at least you think he's a fool," said Aunt Katrina, applying her vinaigrette disdainfully to her well-shaped nose.

"Fool? Not at all; he's only tremendously happy."

"The same thing – in such a case."

"I don't know about that. The question is, is it better to be tremendously happy for a little while, and unreasonable; or to be reasonable all the time, and never tremendously happy?"

"Oh, if you're going to talk rationalism– " said Aunt Katrina.

Immediately after her return from Norfolk, in the interval before Lucian came, Garda sent for Adolfo Torres. When he appeared she begged him to do her a favor, namely, to leave Charleston for the present.

"Is it that you wish me to return to Gracias?" asked Adolfo. "The place is a desperation without you."

"You need not go to Gracias if you don't want to; but please go away from here. Go to the Indian River," she suggested, with a sudden inspiration.

"I will go to the Indian River certainly – if that is your wish," replied the Cuban; "though I do not know" – this he added rather longingly – "what harm I do here."

"No harm at all. But I want you to go." She smiled brightly, though there was also a good deal of sympathy in her eyes as she surveyed his lack-lustre countenance.

"That is enough – your wish. I go – I go at once." He took leave of her.

She called him back, and looked at him a moment. Then she said, "Yes, go. And I will write to you."

This was a great concession, Adolfo felt it to be such.

The letter was long in coming; and when it did come at last, it dealt him, like an actual hand, a prostrating blow. It was dated several days after that morning which had seen the early marriage in St. Michael's, and the signature, when his dazed eyes reached it, was one he did not know – Edgarda Spenser.

The Cuban had received this note at dusk. He went out and wandered about all night. At daylight he came in, dressed himself afresh and carefully, and had his boots polished – a process not so much a matter of course on the Indian River at that day as in some other localities. Next he said a prayer, on his knees, in his rough room in the house where he was lodged. Then he went out and asked the old hunter, his host, for the favor of the loan of one of his guns for the morning.

With this gun he departed into the woods. He was no sportsman; but this did not matter, since the game he had in view was extremely docile, it was so docile that it would even arrange itself in the best possible position for the ball.

But the desperate young man – his manner was calm as he made his way through the beautiful southern forest – was not permitted to end his earthly existence then. A hand seized his shoulder. "Are you mad, Adolfo?" said Manuel Ruiz, tears gleaming in his eyes as he almost threw his friend to the ground in the quick, violent effort he made to get possession of the gun. Then, seeing that Adolfo was looking at him very strangely, "If you come another step nearer, I'll shoot you down!" he shouted.

The Cuban did not say, "That is what I want;" he did not move or speak.

Manuel immediately began to talk. "They sent me down here, Adolfo; they had heard, and they were afraid for you. I had just got home, and they asked me to come – your aunt asked me."

"My aunt asked you," repeated Torres, mechanically.

"Yes, Adolfo, your aunt. You must care something for her," said Manuel. He looked uneasily about him.

And then hurrying through the wood, came Madam Giron.

The loving-hearted, sweet-tempered woman was much moved. She took her dead sister's unhappy boy in her arms, and wept over him as though he had been her own child; she soothed him with motherly caresses; she said, tenderly, that she had not been kind enough to him, that she had been too much taken up with her own children; "But now —now, my dearest – " This all in Spanish, the sweetest sound in the world to poor Torres' ears.

A slight convulsion passed over his features, though no tears came. He was young enough to have felt acutely the loneliness of his suffering, the solitude of the death he was on his way to seek. He stood perfectly still; his aunt was now leaning against him as she wept, he put one arm protectingly round her; he felt a slow, slow return towards, not a less torturing pain, but towards greater courage in bearing it, in this sympathy which had come to him. Even Manuel had shown sympathy. "I feel – I feel that I have been – rather cowardly," he said at last in a dull tone.

"No, no, dear," said his aunt, putting up her soft hand to stroke his dark hair. "It was very natural, we all understand."

And then a mist did show itself for an instant in the poor boy's eyes.

That same evening, Garda, far at sea, sitting with her head on Lucian's shoulder under the brilliant stars, answered a question he asked. She did not answer it at first, she was too contented to talk. Then, as he asked it again, "What ever became of that mediæval young Cuban of mine?"

"Oh, Adolfo?" she said. "I sent him down to the Indian River."

"To the Indian River? What in the world did you do that for?"

"He was in Charleston, and you were coming; I didn't want him there."

"Were you afraid he would attack me?" asked Lucian, laughing.

"I was afraid he would suffer, – in fact, I knew he would; and I didn't want to see it. He can suffer because he is like me —he can love."

"Poor fellow!"

"Yes. But I never cared for him; and he wouldn't see it."

"And ''way down there in the land of the cotton,' I don't suppose he knows yet what has happened, does he?" said Lucian.

"Oh yes; I wrote to him from New York."

"You waited till then? Wasn't that rather hard?"

"Are you finding fault with me?" she murmured, turning her head so that her lips could reach and rest against his bending face.

"Fault!" said Lucian, taking her in his arms.

Adolfo passed out of their memory.

CHAPTER XXVII

"I cannot let you go alone," said Evert Winthrop, decidedly.

He was speaking to Margaret. They were in the East Angels drawing-room, Betty Carew hovering near, and agreeing with perfect sincerity now with one, now with the other, in the remarkable way which was part of the breadth of her sympathy.

"But it's not in the least necessary for you to go," Margaret repeated. "Even if the storm should break before I reach the river, the carriage can be made perfectly tight."

"From the look of the sky, I am almost sure that we shall have a blow before the rain," Winthrop responded; "in the face of such a probability, I couldn't allow you to start across the barrens alone – it's absurd to suppose I should."

Margaret stood hesitating. "You want me to give it up – postpone it. But I cannot get rid of the idea that something has happened – I have had no letter for so long; even if Lanse had not cared to write himself, one of the men, Elliot or Dodd, would have done so, it seems to me, under any ordinary circumstances."

"Lanse probably keeps them too busy."

"They always have their evenings."

But Winthrop showed scanty interest in the evenings of Elliot and Dodd. "For myself, I can't pretend to be anxious," he said – "I mean about Lanse; I am only anxious about you."

"But if I don't go now, I can't go until to-morrow noon; before that time I shouldn't meet a boat that stops at our landing. That would make a delay of twenty-four hours." She looked at him as she said this, with a sort of unconscious appeal.

"I doubt whether anything very exciting could happen over there in twice twenty-four; it isn't an exciting place."

"Of course you think me obstinate. But I cannot help feeling that I ought to go."

"Perfectly natural," said Betty. "I should feel just the same in your place – I know I should – not hearing for so long."

"It's that – the silence," said Margaret. "I have been disturbed about it for several days."

"Go, by all means, if you feel in that way," said Winthrop. "I haven't the least desire to prevent it – as you seem to think; I only say that I shall go too."

"Yes; and that is what I don't want." She turned away and stepped out on the balcony to scan the sky.

A dark haze edged the eastern horizon. It was far away at present, lying low down on the sea, but it would come, it was already coming, westward; a clear, empty-looking space of cold pearl-hued light preceded it. Here on the lagoon the atmosphere was breathlessly still, not a sound of any kind stirred the warm silence. "Perhaps it will be only a rain," said Margaret, rather helplessly. She looked very uncomfortable.

"Yes, I reckon that's all it will be," said Betty, who had followed her to the balcony door. "And then, too, if it should be anything more, Mr. Winthrop will be with you, of course; that is, in case you decide to go; and if you don't go, why then he won't, you know; so either way, it's all for the best."

Margaret turned and came back into the drawing-room. Winthrop was standing by the table where she had left him; his eyes met hers, she saw that he would not yield. "I don't dare give it up, I don't dare wait," she broke out with sudden agitation. "Something has happened, nothing less could have kept both of the men from writing, when I gave them my express orders. I don't understand why you don't agree with me."

"You see probabilities, and Lanse isn't a devotee of probabilities, as a general thing. Didn't the last letter say that he had begun to walk a little? – with the aid of two canes? By this time it is one cane, and he is camping out. And he has carried off the whole force of the house to cook for him."

Betty thought this an excellent joke, and laughed delightedly over it.

"If he is camping out, it is quite time I was back," answered Margaret, trying to speak lightly. She took up her gloves. "Good-by, Aunt Betty; you will write to me?"

"Yes, indeed, I will," said Betty, kissing her. "Poor dear, you're like Mahomet's coffin, aren't you? suspended between heaven and – and the other place. And I'm so glad you've decided as you have, because you will be much easier in your mind, though of course, too, Mr. Winthrop was quite right of course, about being afraid for you in case you were alone, for sometimes we do have the most dreadful gusts, and the pine-trees are blown down all over the barrens and right across the roads; but then, all the same, if you hadn't decided, you would be so uncomfortable, like the old man and his son and the donkey, who never got anywhere, you know, because they tried to please too many people, or was it that they had to carry the donkey at last? at any rate, certainly, there's no donkey here. Well, good-by, dear; I shall be so dreadfully anxious about you."

"I am quite sure" – this was called down the stairs after Margaret had descended – "I'm quite sure, dear, that it will be nothing but a rain."

A carriage was waiting at the lower door; Winthrop's man was to drive; but the horses were not his; they were a pair Margaret had sent for. Margaret took her place, and Winthrop followed her; Betty, who had now hurried out to the balcony, waved her handkerchief in farewell as long as she could see them.

Margaret had been at East Angels for nearly a month, called there by a sudden illness which had attacked Mrs. Rutherford. It was not a dangerous illness; but it was one that entailed a good deal of suffering, and Margaret had been immediately summoned.

By this time everybody in Gracias knew how dependent "dear Katrina" was in reality upon her niece, in spite of her own majestic statements to the contrary. No one was surprised therefore, when, after the new illness had declared itself, and Mrs. Rutherford had said, plaintively, that she should think Margaret would feel that she ought to be there, Betty immediately sat down and wrote a note.

After two weeks of suffering, Mrs. Rutherford had begun to improve. She had now almost attained her former comparatively comfortable condition, and Margaret was returning to the house on the river.

The light carriage crossed the barren rapidly; the same hushed silence continued, the pine-trees which Betty had seen in a vision, prostrate, did not stir so much as one of their green needles. Margaret and Winthrop spoke occasionally, but they did not talk; anything they should say would necessarily be shared by the man who was driving. But conversation between them was not much more free when the steamer was taking them up the river. They sat on the deck together at some distance from the other passengers, but their words were few; what they said had even a perfunctory sound. They exchanged some remarks about Garda which contained rather more of animation.

Garda's last letter to Margaret had borne at the head of the page the magic word "Venice." Garda had appeared to think life there magical indeed. "She admires everything; she is delightfully happy," was Margaret's comment.

"How does she say it?"

"You have heard her talk."

"Not as Mrs. Lucian Spenser. And from Venice!"

"I shall tell her to write her next letter to you."

"I have no doubt she would. I see you are afraid to quote."

"Afraid?" said Margaret, in a tone of cold inquiry. And then, with the same cold intonation, she repeated two or three of Garda's joyous phrases.

"Yes, she is happy! Of course it's magnanimous in me to say so, but I owe her no grudge; on the contrary, it has been refreshing to see, in this nineteenth century, a girl so frankly in love. She would have married Lucian Spenser just the same if they neither of them had had a cent; she would have made any sacrifice for him – don't you think so?"

"Yes; but it wouldn't have been a sacrifice to her."

"Bravo! I gave you such a chance to say insidious things."

Margaret smiled a little at this suggestion. Then, in the silence that followed, the old look came back to her face – a look of guarded reserve, which, however, evidently covered apprehension.

She had, indeed, been in great dread. The dread was lest the agitation which had overpowered her during that last conversation she had had with Winthrop before she went back to her husband, should reappear. This brief journey of theirs together was the first perfect opportunity he had had since then to call it forth again; up to to-day there had been no opportunity, she had prevented opportunity. But now she was at his mercy; any one of a hundred sentences which he could so easily say, would suffice to bring back that emotion which suffocated her, and made her (as she knew, though he did not) powerless. But, so far, he had said none of these things. She was grateful to him for every moment of the respite.