Horace Chase

When the last letter was finished, and she saw her companion begin on his newspapers, she spoke again: "I don't think Ruth ought to go to that reception to-night; she is not well enough."

"Why, I thought it was nothing but a very slight cold," Chase said, turning round, surprised. "She mustn't think of going if she's sick. She wants to go; she telegraphed for that dress."

"Yes; last week. But that was before – before she felt ill. If she goes now, it will be only because you care for it."

"Oh, shucks! I care for it! What do I care for that sort of thing? I'll go and tell her to give the whole right up." He rose, leaving his newspapers on the floor (Chase always wanted his newspapers on the floor, and not on a table), and went towards the door. But, at the same instant, Ruth herself came in. "I was just going up to tell you, Ruthie, that I guess we won't turn out to-night after all – I mean to that show at the Barracks. I reckon they can manage without us?"

"Oh, but I want to see it," said Ruth. "If you are tired, I can go with Mrs. Kip."

"Well, who's running this family, anyway?" Chase demanded, going back to his seat, not ill-pleased, however, that Dolly should see that her information concerning her sister was less accurate than his own. But his care regarding everything that was connected with his wife made him add, "You'll give it up if I want you to, Ruthie?"

"You don't. It's Dolly!" Ruth declared. "Dolly-Dulcinea, I have changed my mind. I did not want to go this morning; I did not want to go this noon. But, at half-past five o'clock precisely, I knew that I must go or perish! Nothing shall keep me away." And, gayly waving her hand to her sister, she went into the music-room, which opened from the larger apartment, and, seating herself at the piano, began to play.

Chase returned to his reading; his only comment to Dolly was, "She seems to look pretty well." And it was true that Ruth looked not only well, but brilliant. After a while they heard her begin to sing:

"My short and happy day is done;The long and dreary night comes on;And at my door the Pale Horse stands,To carry me to unknown lands."His whinny shrill, his pawing hoof,Sound dreadful as a gathering storm;And I must leave this sheltering roof,And joys of life so soft and warm."

"Don't sing that!" called Dolly, sharply.

"Why not let her do as she likes?" suggested Chase, in the conciliatory tone he often adopted with Dolly. To him all songs were the same; he could not tell one from the other.

At this moment Malachi Hill entered, with his arms full of roses. "Long stalks?" said Ruth, hurrying to meet him. "Lovely! Now you shall help me make my posy. What shall I bring home for you in my pocket, Mr. Hill? Ice-cream?"

"Well, the truth is I am thinking of going myself," answered Malachi, coloring a little. "It has been mentioned to me that I ought to go – as a representative of the clergy. It is not in the least a ball, they tell me; it is a reception – a reception to General Grant. The young people may perhaps dance a little; but not until after the general's departure."

"Capital idea," said Chase, adding a fourth to his pile of perused sheets on the floor. "And don't go back on us, Hill, by proposing to escort some one else. Ruth wants to make an impression on the general, and, three abreast, perhaps we can do it."

Suddenly Ruth went to her sister. "Dolly, you must go too. Now don't say a word. You can go early and have a good seat; and as to dress, you can wear your opera-cloak."

"Oh no – " began Dolly.

But Ruth stopped her. "You must. I want you to see me there."

"Well, who's conceited, I'd like to know?" commented Chase, as he read on.

But Ruth's face wore no expression of conceit; its expression was that of determination. With infinite relief Dolly saw this. "I'll go," she said, comprehending Ruth's wish.

The reception was given by a West Point comrade of General Grant's, who happened to be spending the winter in Florida. As he had left the army many years before, he was now a civilian, and the participation of St. Francis Barracks in the affair was therefore accidental, not official. For the civilian, being a man of wealth, had erected for the occasion a temporary hall or ball-room, and had connected it by a covered passage with the apartments of his brother, who was an artillery officer, stationed that winter at this old Spanish post. At ten o'clock, this improvised hall presented a gay appearance, owing to the flowers with which it was profusely decorated, to the full dress of the ladies, and to the uniforms; for the army had been reinforced by a contingent from the navy, as two vessels belonging to the Coast Survey were in port.

The reticent personage to whom all this homage was offered looked as if he would like to get rid of it on any terms. He had commanded great armies, he had won great battles, and that seemed to him easy enough. But to stand and have his hand shaken – this was an ordeal!

A lane had been kept open through the centre of the long room in order to facilitate the presentations. At half-past ten, coming in his turn up this avenue, the tall figure of Horace Chase could be seen; his wife was with him, and they were preceded by the Rev. Malachi Hill. Chase, inwardly amused by the ceremony, advanced towards Grant with his face very solemn. But for the moment no one looked at him; all eyes were turned towards the figure by his side.

Half an hour earlier, as he sat alone in his drawing-room, waiting (and reading another newspaper to pass away the time), Ruth had come to him. As he heard her enter, he had looked up with a smile. Then his face altered a little.

"What! no diamonds?" he said.

Ruth wore the new dress about which he had joked, but no ornaments save a string of pearls.

"It shall be just as you like," she answered, in a steady voice.

"Oh no, Ruthie; just as you like."

He admired diamonds, and now that she was nearly twenty-three, he had said to himself that even her mother, if she had lived, would no longer have objected to her wearing them. He had therefore bought for her recently a superb necklace, bracelets, and other ornaments, and he had pleased himself with the thought that for this official occasion they would be entirely appropriate. Ruth, reading his disappointment in his eyes, went out, and returned a few minutes later adorned with all his gifts to the very last stone. And now, as she came up the lane in the centre of the crowded room, the gems gleamed and flashed, gleamed on her neck, on her arms, in her hair, and in the filmy lace of her dress. Always tall, she had grown more womanly, and she could therefore bear the splendor. To-night, in addition, her own face was striking, for her color had returned, and her extraordinarily beautiful eyes were at their best – lustrous and profound. It had always been said of Ruth that her beauty came and went. To-night it had certainly come, and to such a degree that it spurred Etheridge to the exclamation, in an undertone:

"Too many diamonds. But, by George, she shines them down!"

After the presentation was over Chase stepped aside, and, with his wife, joined Dolly. Dolly had a very good place; draped in her opera-cloak, which was made of a rich Oriental fabric, she looked odd, ugly, and distinguished.

"Everybody is here except the Barclays," Etheridge announced. "There can't be a soul left in any of the hotels. And all the negroes in town are on the sea-wall outside, ready to hurrah when the great man drives away."

"Here's Walter. He is coming this way – he is looking for us," said Chase. "How are you, Walter?"

"Mrs. Chase! Delighted to meet you again," said Willoughby, shaking hands with Ruth with the utmost cordiality.

"My sister is here also," Ruth answered, moving aside so that he could see Dolly. And then Walter greeted Miss Franklin with the same extreme heartiness.

"Bless my soul, what enthusiasm!" commented Etheridge. "One would suppose that you had not met for years."

"And we haven't," said Ruth, surveying Walter, coolly. "Mr. Willoughby has changed. He has a sort of Chinese air."

"Willoughby has been living in California for two years, commodore; didn't you know that?" Chase explained, inwardly enjoying his wife's sally. "I've been to California four times since then. But as he hasn't been east, the ladies have lost sight of him."

"Are you returning to the Pacific?" Etheridge inquired of the younger man, "so as to look more Chinese still?"

"The Celestial air I have already caught will have to do," Walter answered, laughing. "California is a wonderfully fascinating country. But I am not going back; the business which took me there is concluded."

Horace Chase smiled, detecting the triumph under these words. For his Pacific-coast enterprise had been highly successful, and Walter had carried out his part of it with great energy and intelligence, and had profited accordingly. That particular partnership was now dissolved.

When the dancing began, Ruth declined her invitations. "It isn't necessary to stay any longer, is it?" Dolly suggested in a low tone. "The carriage is probably waiting."

Here Chase, who had left them twenty minutes before, came up. "I've been seeing the general off," he said. "Well – he appeared middling glad to go! No dancing, Ruthie?" For he always remembered the things that amused his wife, and dancing, he knew, was high on her list.

And then, with that overtouch which it is so often the fate of an elder sister to bestow, Dolly said, "I really think she had better not try it. She is not thoroughly strong yet – after her cold."

This second assertion of a knowledge superior to his own annoyed Chase. And Ruth perceived it. "I am perfectly well," she answered. And, accepting the next invitation, she began to dance. She danced with everybody. Walter Willoughby had his turn with the rest.

A week later, Chase, coming home at sunset, looked into the drawing-room. His wife was not there, and he went upstairs in search of her. He found her in her dressing-room, with a work-basket by her side. "Well! I've never seen you sew before," he declared, amused by this new industry.

"I've had letters that make it necessary for me to go north, Ruthie. You'll be all right here, with Dolly, won't you?" He had seated himself, and was now glancing over a letter.

"Don't go," said Ruth, abruptly. And she went on sewing with her unnecessarily strong stitches; her mother had been wont to say of her that, if she sewed at all, the results were like iron.

Petie Trone, Esq., aged but still pretty, had been reposing on the lounge by her side. But the moment Chase seated himself, the little patriarch had jumped down, gone over, and climbed confidently up to his knees, where, after turning round three times, he had finally settled himself curled up like a black ball, with his nose on his tail.

"Oh, I must," Chase answered. "There's something I've got to attend to." And he continued to study the letter.

"Take me with you, then," said Ruth, going on with her rocklike seam.

"What's that? Take you?" her husband responded, still absorbed. "Not this time, I guess. For I'm going straight through to Chicago. It would tire you."

"No; I should like it; I don't want to stay here." She put down her work; going to one of the tables, she stood there with her back towards him, turning things over, but hardly as though she perceived what they were. Chase finished his letter. Then, as he replaced it in his pocket, he saw that she had risen, and, depositing Mr. Trone on the lounge, he went to her and put his arm round her shoulders.

"I'd take you if I could, Ruthie," he said, indulgently, beginning a reasonable argument with her. "But my getting to Chicago by a certain date is imperative, and to do it I've got to catch to-night's train and go through, and that would be too hard travelling for you. Besides, you would lose all the benefit of your Southern winter if you should hurry north now, while it is still so cold; that is always a mistake – to go north too early. Your winter here has done you lots of good, and that's a great pleasure to me. I want to be proud of you next summer at Newport, you know." And he pinched her cheek.

Ruth turned and looked at him. "Are you proud of me?"

"Oh no!" answered Chase, laughing. "Not at all!" Then, after a moment, he went on, his tone altering. "I like to work a big deal through; I'm more or less proud of that, I reckon. But down below everything else, Ruthie, I guess my biggest pride is just —you." He was a man without any grace in speech. But certain tones of his voice had an eloquence of their own.

Ruth straightened herself. "I will do what you wish. I will stay here – as you prefer it. And you must keep on being proud of me. You must be proud of me always, always."

This made her husband laugh a second time. "It's a conceit that's come to stay, Mrs. Chase. You may put your money on it!"

CHAPTER XIX

AS he walked down the sea-wall to his hotel after the Grant reception, Walter Willoughby said to himself that Mrs. Chase's coldness was the very thing he desired, the thing he had been hoping for, devoutly, for more than two years. The assertion was true. But though he had hoped, he had hardly expected that her indifference would have become so complete. If he did not exactly enjoy it, it had at least the advantage of leaving him perfectly free. For purposes of his own (purposes which had nothing to do with her), he had found it convenient to come to Florida this winter. And now that St. Augustine was reached, these same private purposes made him desire to remain there rather longer than he had at first intended. After the Grant reception he told himself with relief that there was now no reason, "no reason on earth," why he should not stay as long as it suited him to do so. He therefore remained. He joined in the amusements of the little winter-colony, the riding, driving, sailing, walking, and fishing parties that filled the lovely days. Under these conditions two weeks went by. Horace Chase had not as yet returned; he was engaged in one of those bold enterprises of a speculative nature which he called "a little operation;" occasionally he planned and carried through one of these campaigns alone.

On the last night of this second week Ruth came into her sister's room. It was one o'clock, but Dolly was awake; the moonlight, penetrating the dark curtains, showed her who it was. "Is that you, Ruth?"

"Yes," Ruth answered. "Dolly, I want to go away."

Dolly raised herself, quickly. "Whenever you like," she answered. "We can go to-morrow morning by the first train; they can pack one trunk, and the rest can be sent after us. I shall be quite well enough to go." For Dolly had been in bed all day, suffering severely; it was the only day for two weeks which she had not spent, hour by hour, with her sister. "You will have had a telegram from Mr. Chase," she went on; "we can say that as explanation."

Ruth turned away. She left the details to her sister.

"Oh, don't go off and shut yourself up. Stay here with me," pleaded Dolly, entreatingly.

"I'd rather be alone," Ruth began. But her voice broke. "No, I'm afraid! I will stay here. But you mustn't talk to me, Dolly."

"Not a word," Dolly responded; "if you will tell me, first, where you have been?"

"Oh, only at Andalusia, as you know," Ruth answered, in the same exhausted tone. "It isn't very late; every one stayed till after twelve. And I came home as I went; that is, with Colonel and Mrs. Atherton; they left me just now at the door."

"Alone?"

"No; with Walter Willoughby. But he did not come in; he only stood there on the steps with me for a moment; that's all." While Ruth was saying this, she had taken off her hat and gloves; then, in the dim light, Dolly saw her sink down on the divan, and lie there, motionless. The elder sister crept towards her on the outside of the bed (for the divan was across its foot), and covered her carefully with a warm shawl; then, faithful to her promise, she returned to her place in silence. And neither of them spoke again.

On the divan Ruth was not fighting a battle; she had given up, she was fleeing.

When, two years before, absorbed in her love for Walter, she had insisted upon that long, solitary voyage northward from Charleston, so that she could give herself up uninterruptedly to her own thoughts, alone with them and the blue sea, the tidings which had met her at New York as she landed – the tidings of her brother's death – had come upon her almost like a blinding shaft of lightning. It was as if she, too, had died. And she found her life again only partially, as she went southward in the rushing trains, as she crossed the mountains in the wagon, and arrived by night at dimly lighted L'Hommedieu. Sleepless through both journeys – the voyage northward and the return by land – worn out by the intense emotions which, in turn, had swept over her, she had reached her mother's door at last so exhausted that her vital powers had sunk low. Then it was that the gentle care of the man who knew nothing of the truth had saved her – saved her from the dangerous tension of her own excitement, and, later, from a death-like faintness which, if prolonged, would have been her end. For when she beheld the changed, drawn, unconscious face of her mother, that "mother" who had seemed to her as much a fixed part of her life as her own breath, her heart had failed her, failed not merely in the common meaning of the phrase, but actually; its pulsations grew so weak that a great dread seized her – the instinctive shrinking of her whole young being from the touch of death. In her terror, she had fled to her husband, she had taken refuge in his boundless kindness. "Oh, I am dying, Horace; I must be dying! Save me!" was her frightened cry.

For she was essentially feminine. In her character, the womanhood, the sweet, pure, physical womanhood, had a strong part; it had not been refined away by over-development of the mental powers, or reduced to a subordinate position by ascetic surroundings. It remained, therefore, what nature had made it. And it gave her a great charm. But its presence left small place for the more masculine qualities, for stoical fortitude and courage; she could not face fear; she could not stand alone; and she had always, besides, the need to be cherished and protected, to be held dear, very dear.

This return to her husband was sincere as far as it carried her. From one point of view, it might be said that she had never left him. For her love for Walter had contained no plan; and her girlish affection for Horace Chase remained what it always had been, though the deeper feelings were now awake underneath.

Time passed; the days grew slowly to months, and the months at last became a long year, and then two. Little by little she fell back into her old ways; she laughed at Dolly's sallies, she talked and jested with her husband. She sometimes asked herself whether those buried feelings would ever rise and take possession of her again. But Walter remained absent – that was the thing that saved her. A personal presence was with her always a powerful influence. But an absence was equally powerful in its quieting effect; it produced temporarily more or less oblivion. She had never been able to live on memories. And she had a great desire at all times to be happy. And, therefore, to a certain degree, she did become happy again; she amused herself with fair success at Newport and New York.

And then Walter had re-entered the circle of her life. And by a fatality this had come to her at St. Augustine. On the morning of the day of the Grant reception, she had suddenly learned that he was in town. And she knew (it came like a wave over her) that she dreaded the meeting.

There had been no spoken confidences between the sisters. But Dolly had instantly extended all the protection that was in her power, and even more; for she had braved the displeasure of her brother-in-law by maintaining that his wife was ill, and that she (Dolly) knew more of the illness than he did. And then, suddenly, this elder sister was put in the wrong. For Ruth herself appeared, declaring gayly that she was well, perfectly well. The gayety was assumed. But the declaration that she was well was a truthful one; she was not only well, but her heart was beating with excitement. For the idea had taken possession of her that this was the very opportunity she needed to prove to herself (and to Dolly also) that she was changed, that she was calm and indifferent. And it would be a triumph also to show this indifference to Walter. Her acts, her words, her every intonation should make this clear to him; delightfully, coldly, brilliantly clear!

Yet, into this very courage had come, as an opposing force, that vague premonition which had made her suddenly begin to sing "The Stirrup Cup."

But a mood of renewed gayety had followed; she had entered the improvised ball-room with pulses beating high, sure that all was well.

Before the evening was over she knew that all was ill; she knew that at the bottom of everything what had made her go thither was simply the desire to see Walter Willoughby once more.

When, a few days later, her husband told her that he was going north, with one of her sudden impulses she said, "Take me with you." He had not consented. And she knew that she was glad that he had not. Certain tones of his voice, however, when he spoke of his pride in her, had touched her deeply; into her remembrance came the thought of all he had done for her mother, all he had done for Jared, and she strengthened herself anew: she would go through with it and he should know nothing; he should remain proud of her always, always.

But this was not a woman who could go on unmoved seeing daily the man she loved; those buried feelings rose again to the surface, and she was powerless to resist them. All she could do (and this required a constant effort) was to keep her cold manner unaltered.

Walter, meanwhile, was not paying much heed to Mrs. Chase. At the Grant reception, he had been piqued by her sarcasms; he had smarted under the surprise which her laughing coolness and gayety gave him. But this vexation soon faded; it was, after all, nothing compared with the great desire which he had at this particular moment to find himself entirely free from entanglements of that nature. He was therefore glad of her coldness. He continued to see her often; in that small society they could not help but meet. And occasionally he asked himself if there was nothing underneath this glittering frost? No least little scrap left of her feeling of two years before? But, engrossed as he was with his own projects, this curiosity remained dormant until suddenly these projects went astray; they encountered an obstacle which for the time being made it impossible for him to pursue them further. This happened at the end of his second week in St. Augustine. Foiled, and more or less irritated, and having also for the moment nothing else to do, he felt in the mood to solace himself a little with the temporary entertainment of finding out (of course in ways that would be unobserved by others) whether there was or was not anything left of the caprice which the millionaire's pretty wife had certainly felt for him when he was in Florida before.

For that was his idea of it – a caprice. He saw only one side of Ruth's nature; to him she seemed a thoughtless, spoiled young creature, highly impressionable, but all on the surface; no feeling would last long with her or be very deep, though for the moment it might carry her away.

What he did was so little, during this process of finding out, and what he said was so even less, that if related it would not have made a narrative, it would have been nothing to tell. But the woman he was studying was now like a harp: the lightest touch of his hand on the strings drew out the music. And when, therefore, upon that last night, taking advantage of the few moments he had with her alone at her door, after her friends from the Barracks had passed on – when he then said a word or two, to her it was fatal. His phrase meant in reality nothing; it was tentative only. But Ruth had no suspicion of this; her own love was direct, uncomplicated, and overmastering; she supposed that his was the same. She looked at him dumbly; then she turned, entering the house with rapid step and hurrying up the stairs, leaving the sleepy servant who came forward to meet her to close the door. Fatal had his words been to her; fatally sweet!