An Old Man's Darling

"Perhaps I am selfish," he says. "Let us return to the ball-room, my love."

"As you please," she answers.

He leads her back and lingers by her side awhile, then it strikes him that les proprietes do not sanction a man's monopolizing his wife's company in society. With a sigh he leaves her, and tries to make himself agreeable to other fair women.

He has hardly left her before the band strikes up "The Beautiful Blue Danube," and Byron Penn starts up from some remote corner, from which he has witnessed her return to the ball-room.

"This is our waltz, is it not?" he says, with a tremor of pleasure in his voice.

A slight flush rises over Bonnibel's cheek.

"I believe it is," she answers; "but if you will not think me very rude, Mr. Penn, I am going to ask you to excuse me from it. I am tired and shall dance no more this evening."

"You are very cruel," says the poet, plaintively; "but if you wish to atone for your injustice you will walk down to the shore with me and look at the moonlight on the sea, and hear how delicious the music sounds down there. You can form no conception of its sweetness when mellowed by a little distance and blent with the solemn diapason of the waves."

"If you will go and tell my maid to bring me a shawl," she answers, indifferently, "I will go with you for a minute."

He returns with a fleecy white wrap, and they stroll away from the "dancers dancing in tune."

CHAPTER XX

Colonel Carlyle soon misses his heart's fair queen from the ball-room, and immediately the whole enchanting scene becomes a desert in his love-lorn eyes. He glances hither and thither; he wanders disconsolately around, yet no flitting glimpse of his snow-maiden rewards his eager eyes. She has vanished as completely from his sight as if a sunbeam had shone down upon and dissolved her into a mist.

"Have you seen Bonnibel anywhere?" he inquires of Felise, meeting her on her partner's arm as he wandered around.

Felise looks up with a low, malicious laugh.

"Bonnibel?" she says. "Oh, yes; she and Byron Penn have been down on the beach this half hour in the moonlight, composing sonnets."

Her partner laughs and hurries her on, leaving the anxious old husband standing in the floor like one dazed. A dozen people standing around have heard the question and its answer. They nod and wink at each other, for Colonel Carlyle's patent jealousy has begun to make him a laughing stock. After a moment he recollects himself and turns away. People wonder if he will go out and confront the sentimental pair, and a few couples, on curiosity bent, stroll out to watch his proceedings. They are rewarded directly, for he comes out and takes his way down the shore.

Felise's assertion of a half an hour is merely a pleasant fiction. It has not been ten minutes since she left the house on the arm of the young poet. They are standing on the beach looking out at the glorious sea, and the young man whose soul is so deeply imbued with poetry that he can think and speak of nothing else, has been telling her what a sweet poem is "Lucille," Owen Meredith's latest. He repeats a few lines, and the girl inclines her head and tries to be attentive.

"O, being of beauty and bliss! seen and knownIn the depths of my heart, and possessed there alone,My days know thee not, and my lips name thee never,Thy place in my poor life is vacant forever,We have met, we have parted, no more is recordedIn my annals on earth."

The pretty lines have a more attentive listener than Bonnibel. Her husband has come up softly and unnoticed. He sees the graceful head graciously inclined, hears the lines that Byron Penn has, unconsciously to himself, made the vehicle for expressing his own sentiments, and his heart quakes with fury. He strides before them, white and stern.

"Mrs. Carlyle," he says, in low, stern accents, "will you come with me?"

The young wife lifts her drooping head with a start and sees him standing before her, wan, white and haggard, quite a different man from the enraptured lover who had kissed and praised her but a little while ago.

"I—oh, dear me—has anything happened, Colonel Carlyle? Are you ill?" she falters, in her innocent unconsciousness.

"Will you come with me?" he repeats, grinding his teeth in a fury.

"Certainly," she says, thinking that something dreadful must have happened surely, and simply saying, "You will excuse me, Mr. Penn," she bows and turns away on her husband's arm.

The handsome young fellow looks after them blankly.

"Upon my word," he exclaims, "what a furious, uncalled-for outbreak of jealousy! So that's what it is to be an old man's darling, is it? Truly an enviable position for such a peerless angel."

He throws himself down on the beach, to the detriment of his immaculate evening costume, and resigns himself to some rather melancholy musings.

Meanwhile Bonnibel, as she walks away, again asks, with sweet unconsciousness:

"Has anything happened, Colonel Carlyle?"

"Let us go to your private parlor; I will tell you there," he answers, coldly.

Inside that safe retreat they confront each other in momentary silence, Bonnibel anxious, troubled, and totally unconscious, Colonel Carlyle pale with anger and wild, unreasoning jealousy, his brain on fire with contending passions that have been seething there ever since Felise's consummate art had been employed to torture him this evening.

"Now you will tell me?" she inquires, standing before him with loosely-clasped hands, the fleecy drapery falling from her shoulders, the fairest vision his eyes ever rested upon.

"Bonnibel, you surely do not pretend to be ignorant that you have given me cause for offense?" he exclaims, hoarsely.

Her blue eyes dilate; she retreats a step with genuine surprise depicted on her face. Then she remembered her promise about waltzing.

"Surely, there is some misunderstanding," she answers, slowly. "I assure you, sir, that I have not waltzed any more since you asked me not to do so."

"You have done worse, much worse!" he exclaims, passionately, "and your affectation of innocence must certainly be feigned. No woman in her senses could be oblivious to the fact that your open flirtation with that silly rhymester, Byron Penn, is simply scandalous."

In his excitement he characterizes her offense in terms more forcible than true. She is dumb with astonishment for a moment, then she walks straight up to him, a blaze of color rushing over her face and neck, while her eyes flash lightning scorn upon him.

"This to me!" she exclaims, her girlish voice ringing with passion and resentment. "Such an accusation to Harry Vere's daughter! Oh! for shame! How dare you!"

"You provoked it yourself," he answers, retreating before her, for her little hands were clenched wildly as if she would strike him down to earth; "I gave you my honored name to wear—a name as proud as your father's—and you have dragged it through the mire of a moonlight flirtation with a dandy, an idiot."

"It is false," she answers, proudly, "I never flirted in my life, I should not know how to do it. And there was no harm in my short walk down to the shore with Mr. Penn. No one could make harm of it except a man blinded by jealousy!"

A glimmer of the truth had begun to dawn upon her. It angered him bitterly to know that she had detected his weakness.

"I have been blinded by many things," he answers, furiously. "I was blinded by your beautiful face before I married you, and could not see that you had never received the proper training and education to fit you for the position to which I elevated you. My eyes have been opened by your recent conduct, and I find you simply an unformed child, utterly ignorant how to maintain your dignity as my wife!"

Word for word he is going over the specious sophistries of Felise, but he is utterly unconscious of the fact. He has been merely a pliant tool in her artful hands, but he believes that he has found out all these facts for himself, and he asserts them with a perfect conviction of truth.

For Bonnibel stands listening in stunned silence to his vehement rhodomontade. She has walked away from him a little way, and stands clinging to the back of a chair, as if to save herself from falling. The angry flush has died out of her face, and she looks marble-cold, and white even to her lips. As he pauses, she speaks in low, resentful accents:

"Colonel Carlyle, you are the first man who has ever offered me an insult!"

"An insult!" he exclaims. "Do you call the truth an insult? You talk like a child and act like a child, Bonnibel. I see no other resource before me than to put you at school and keep you there until you learn the necessary amenities of social life which your uncle's blind indulgence aided and abetted you in ignoring."

"Send me—a married woman—to school—like a child!" she says, staring at him blankly.

"Why not? You are quite young enough yet," he answers, moodily. "Two years at a convent school in Paris would give you the training and finish you lack at present."

"I assure you, sir, that my education has not been so totally neglected as your words imply," she answers from the depths of the arm-chair into which she has wearily fallen. "My Uncle Francis, though he loved me too well to send me away from him to school, always provided me with competent governesses, and if my training does not do them credit it is my own fault, not his; so I beg that you will not needlessly reflect on his memory."

He was silent a moment, pacing restlessly up and down the floor. An unconscious pathos in her words had stung him into reflection. "My Uncle Francis loved me too well to send me away from him," has touched a responsive chord in his own heart. Her uncle had loved her like that, yet he, her husband, bound to her by the dearest tie on earth, could talk of sending her away from him like a naughty child that, having disobeyed, must be punished for its fault.

"Could I do it?" he asked himself, suddenly. "I love her as my own life, though her childish follies drive me mad with jealousy. I am growing old—could I lose her out of my life two precious years when my span of existence may be so short? No, no, fool that I was to threaten her so; I will retract it if I can without compromising my dignity."

He paused before her and said abruptly:

"I understand from your words then, Bonnibel, that you refuse your consent to my proposed plan?"

To his surprise and confusion she lifted her head with a proud, stag-like motion, and said icily:

"Au contraire, sir, I think well of it, and fully agree with you that I need more training and polish to fit me for the exalted position I occupy as your wife!"

The fine, delicate irony of her tone could not fail to strike him keenly.

He tried to ignore it as he said in a voice that betrayed nothing of his conflicting emotions:

"My proposed course meets with your full approval, then, madam?"

She inclines her head with stately grace.

"I cannot think of anything at present, Colonel Carlyle, that would please me so well as a few years at a Parisian school such as you mentioned."

"She is only too glad to have an opportunity of separating herself from me," he thinks, bitterly; but aloud he answers coldly, "So be it; I shall be happy to meet your wishes."

CHAPTER XXI

It is barely midnight and the mirth and merriment are at their hight down-stairs. Bonnibel hears the sound of

"The violin, flute and bassoon,And the dancers dancing in tune."

through all her interview with Colonel Carlyle, but when it is ended she does not return to the ball-room. She leaves him with a cold good-night, and retires to her own room.

Lucy, her maid, starts up drowsily from her easy-chair as she enters.

"You here, Lucy?" she says. "I told you not to stay up for me. You should not break your rest staying up night after night like this."

"Lor', Miss Bonnibel, I have had as comfortable a snooze in your arm-chair as if I had been tucked into my bed," Lucy answers good-naturedly. "Don't you go for to worry over me staying up. I kin stand it if you kin."

Her mistress stands in the center of the room, her eyes shining, her white hands tearing at the diamond necklace about her throat.

"Take it off, Lucy," she cries out impatiently. "It hurts me, it chokes me!"

Lucy hastens to obey, but starts back as she sees the wild, white face of the hapless girl.

"Oh, me!" she exclaims, "you look like a ghost, you are that white. Are you sick, Miss Bonnibel? Let me get you something to take—some wine, or something?"

"No, no, I wish nothing," she answers, impatiently. "Only undress me, Lucy, and help me to bed. I am very tired—that is all."

She sits quite still while Lucy removes the jewels that shine about her, the white satin slippers, the elegant dress, and brings the snowy night-dress instead. Then as the maid kneels down and buttons the delicate robe, Bonnibel, glancing down, sees her eyes full of tears and her full lip quivering.

"Lucy," she says, in surprise, "what is it? What has grieved you?"

Lucy starts as if frightened at being detected.

"Forgive me, ma'am," she says; "it's for you I grieve. You are that changed that I can't bear it! Here I have been your maid since you was a little girl of twelve, and how happy you used to be before the master died—now for goin' on a year I've never seen a real smile on your face. Something troubles you all the time. Can't I help you? Can't I do something for you?"

The humble, patient fidelity of the girl touches Bonnibel to the heart, it is so seldom that an honest, heartfelt word of kindness falls on her ears. Impulsively she bends and puts her lily white hand into the strong clasp of the girl sitting humbly at her feet, looking up at her with tear-filled eyes.

"Lucy, my poor girl," she says, plaintively, "I believe you are the only true friend I have on earth!"

"Then can't I help you, Miss Bonnibel?" cried Lucy, feeling that the words of her young mistress are too true for her to dispute them. "Something troubles you—can't I help you to be happier?"

A sigh—hopeless, passionate, profound—drifts across the lips of the listener.

"No no, my poor, kind girl," she answers; "no one can help me—I must bear my own cross—no one can carry it for me! Only stay with me, Lucy, and love me always—I have so few to love me—and I shall feel better when I can see that your kind heart sympathizes with me."

"I'll never leave you, my dear mistress," sobs the girl; "I'll never forget to love every hair of your innocent head."

She kisses the little hand Bonnibel has given her reverently and tenderly, as if it were some precious thing.

"Lucy, I am going to test your fidelity," says the girl, drearily. "I am going away to Europe next week. Will you go with me?"

Lucy stares open-mouthed.

"To Yurrup, Miss Bonnibel! Away off to them furrin parts?"

"Yes, Lucy, away off there. Does your courage fail you?" her mistress inquires, with a slight, sad smile.

"No, no, ma'am. I don't like furrin people much; but I'll go to the ends of the earth with you!" is the resolute reply.

"Your devotion shall not be taxed that far, Lucy. We will go to France."

"That heathen land," exclaims Lucy, "where the monseers eats frogs and snakes?"

Bonnibel cannot repress a smile at the girl's quick gesture of disgust.

"You will like the French people better, I hope, when you stay among them two years, for I shall probably stay in Paris that long. I am going to school there, Lucy. You know that I have never been to school in my life, and my governesses were not strict enough with me. There are many things I do not know yet, that one moving in society I frequent should know. So I am going to learn something yet. It is never too late to mend, you know."

Lucy looks up, her eyes growing round with surprise.

"Lor', Miss Bonnibel, I never heard of a married woman going to school in my life."

"Perhaps you never heard of a married woman so untutored as I am," her young mistress returns, somewhat bitterly; "anyway, I am determined to go to school and learn something. But I cannot do without a maid, and I will take you, if you will go."

"That I certainly will, Miss Bonnibel," said Lucy, emphatically.

"Very well, Colonel Carlyle and I will start to New York to-morrow to make preparations for our trip. See that the trunks are all packed, Lucy."

"I will, ma'am. They shall be ready, never fear."

She rises and looks wistfully at the little white figure in the chair, resting its dimpled chin in the curve of one pink palm, the golden head bent wearily.

"Sha'n't I get you something? Indeed, you look ill," she implores.

"Nothing, Lucy. Good-night."

"Good-night, ma'am," Lucy responds, going away rather reluctantly.

Bonnibel makes no move to retire when Lucy has gone. The little white bed awaits her, tempting to repose by its daintiness and coolness, but she does not look toward it; only sits still as Lucy left her, with her face bowed on her hand.

Colonel Carlyle has gone back to the ball-room again, trying to steel his heart against the upbraidings of his conscience. He moves among the revelers pale and distrait, yet still trying to bear his part in the gaieties lest people should whisper that he is unhappy, and fearful that some one may read the secret of his jealousy and cruelty to his beautiful darling.

Curious glances follow him, whispers breathe the story that he fain would conceal, every eye notes Bonnibel's absence.

They shrug their shoulders and tell each other in confidence that Colonel Carlyle is a perfect Bluebeard, and has banished his wife from the festal scene because he is jealous of Byron Penn.

And the music and the dancing go on until daylight warns the gay ones to flee from that too true light that reveals their weariness and haggardness so plainly.

But the ball is long since over for Bonnibel. Lucy finds her as she left her, curled up in the great arm-chair, sleeping like a grieved child, with the trace of tears on her cheek.

CHAPTER XXII

Long Branch is electrified next day by the sudden departure of the Carlyles for New York.

Surprise and wonder run high, and the curious ones seek Felise, thinking that she, if any one, must be acquainted with the whys and wherefores.

But Felise is rather reticent on the subject.

"I will tell you all I know," she says, with a pretty affectation of frankness. "That is not much. The Carlyles are going abroad next week and the colonel is going to put his wife at a convent school in Paris to finish her education and perfect herself in music. He told me that much this morning, and I did not ask him why he proposed taking such a singular step."

"You thought him so crazed by jealousy that he could hardly account for his whims in a rational manner, eh?" inquired one.

"It is monstrous!" says another. "Why, the girl was as finished and elegant in her manners as mortal could be. It were impossible to add another charm to her."

While Byron Penn quoted with enthusiasm:

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,To smooth the ice; or add another hueUnto the rainbow; or with taper lightTo seek the beauteous eye of Heaven to garnish,Were wasteful and ridiculous excess."

It was a nine days' wonder, and then it was over. People voted Colonel Carlyle a bear and a Bluebeard, and his lovely young bride a victim and martyr. They said that he was secluding her from the world because he was too jealous for the light of Heaven to shine upon her.

The young poet indited some charming verses for his favorite magazine: "To Those Blue Eyes Across the Sea," and then the gossip began to die out, and new subjects engrossed society's mind.

Months rolled on, and the Carlyle eclaircissement was almost forgotten, or at least but seldom named, even by those who had been the most interested at first.

But Felise was jubilant.

"Mother, you see what I can do," she said, with a wicked laugh. "The honeymoon is barely over, yet I have thrown sand in the old man's eyes and parted him from his darling for two whole years."

"Felise, how did you accomplish it?" Mrs. Arnold inquired curiously.

"That is my secret," she answered, triumphantly.

"You might share it with me," her mother said, reproachfully. "I never have secrets from you, my dear."

"I only used a little tact and humbug, mother—just a word dropped in season here and there—yet the seed I sowed has brought forth an abundant harvest. I have driven him nearly mad with jealousy and doubt and suspicion; I put that scheme of sending Bonnibel to school into his mind. And yet so blinded is he by his jealousy that he does not dream of my complicity in the matter, and he will always blame himself for the everlasting alienation that will exist between them."

"You had your revenge sooner than I thought you would. You are a clever girl, Felise," Mrs. Arnold said, admiringly.

"It is but begun," Felise answered, moodily. "If time spares the old man until Bonnibel comes out of her school I will wring his heart even more deeply than I have already done. I bide my time."

Her mother, cruel and vindictive as she was herself, looked at her in wonder.

"Why, it seems to me that you have already deeply avenged yourself," she said.

"Hell has no fury like a woman scorned!" Felise exclaimed, repeating her favorite text. "Be patient, mother, and you shall yet see what a woman scorned can do."

"What does Colonel Carlyle propose to do with himself while his wife is immured in her convent?" asked Mrs. Arnold.

"He talks of a trip around the world. He affects to be very fond of travel now. But I could see while he talked to me that the old fool repented his intention and would retract it if he could."

"Perhaps he may do so yet."

"No, he will not. He is too proud and stubborn to do so voluntarily, and I think that Bonnibel has acquiesced so readily in the plan that he can find no loop-hole of escape from it. She is as proud as he is; besides, she does not love him, and his unreasoning harshness has rendered her perfectly reckless. She will go to the school, if only to break his heart."

"Perhaps he will die of grief, Felise, or disappointment, and then she will be left a wealthy young widow," cautions Mrs. Arnold.

"No danger," sneers Felise, cynically. "Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love, as the immortal Shakespeare says, mother. I do not anticipate such a contingency. The old dotard has buried two partners and not succumbed to the pangs of bereavement yet. It is possible he may live to plant the weeping willow over his little white-faced dove."

"Perhaps so. She has never seemed over strong since her illness last summer."

"She has been grieving over the loss of Leslie Dane," Felise answered, carelessly.

She goes to the piano, strikes a few chords, and gets up again, wandering about the room restlessly. There is a marked fitfulness and unrest in her every movement, and her eyes flash and roll about in their sockets in a way that troubles her mother.

"Felise, do you sleep well at night?" she inquires, abruptly.

"Why should I not?" the girl asks, turning her head away.

"I do not know; but there is a haggardness and restlessness about you as if you didn't sleep much. I fancy you are getting nervous and wakeful brooding over this revenge of yours. Your face has grown wan and your eyes quite wild. Take care of yourself or you will lose your beauty."

"Never mind, mother; when we go to Paris next year I will go to one of those wonderful women there and have myself made beautiful forever."

"To Paris? Do you really mean it, Felise? I thought you said the last time we went abroad that you were tired of it and never meant to go again."

"I have changed my mind, mother. That is the privilege of the fair sex, you know."

"I suppose you have some motive in this change of mind, Felise."

"Yes. I have. I want to be on hand when Mrs. Carlyle comes forth from her finishing school. I have a fancy to see her after the polishing process is completed."

She laughs softly to herself as if something pleasant has occurred to her.

"Well, well, have your own way about it, my dear—you always do. But I wish you could forget the Carlyles and enjoy life better. We have everything to make it enjoyable, and if you wanted to marry, why you could buy almost anyone you wanted with our wealth."