Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, December 1878

"But Mr. Thorpe looks at me as Mills would never dare to look. He thrusts his personality upon me," exclaimed Helen in a small fury. "Let him pay his compliments to Georgy: I do not want them. Think of it! he called me Miss Helen this morning!"

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him nothing: I looked–"

"I pity him then: I know how you can look."

"Am I so dreadful?" she asked coaxingly. "Tell me how to behave to young gentlemen, Floyd. Really, I don't know."

"To me you should behave in the most affectionate manner, mademoiselle. Granted that, the more disdainful you are to other fellows the more I shall admire you."

"Really, now?"

"Well, since you are in earnest, dear child, if I were you I would show nothing but kindness to my friends.

Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike;But, like the sun, they shine on all alike,

is a very pretty description of the manner of a successful woman."

"But I cannot be like that," she cried plaintively. "Would you like me to treat you and Mr. Thorpe in precisely the same way, Floyd?"

"Not at all. Don't count me in with the rest of your admirers: I must have the first, best, dearest place."

"I am sure you always do," she remonstrated in a tone of injury. "You come next after papa. If I behave badly to you sometimes, it is because I like to see if you mind my putting on little airs." That was candor.

"Well, Miss Kitten," said I, "you seem to know how to behave to young men. I shall waste no more advice upon you."

And indeed she did not require it. She possessed in an exquisite degree that gift of a delightful manner which generally comes through inheritance, and cannot be perfectly gained by education. But my suggestion regarding Thorpe bore fruit, and henceforward she was a little more queenly and indifferent to him than ever, but never displayed pique or asperity. Yet, however badly she treated him, he quite deserved my title of a "tame cat:" he bore every reverse patiently, and indeed at times displayed an absolute heroism in the face of her indifference, going on in fluent recital of something he believed would interest her while she utterly ignored him and his subject. However, Thorpe was a good actor, and could play his part, and do it well, in spite of his audience. I sometimes fancied that he was less cheerful in those times than he seemed. In fact, I was ready to believe that he was in reality, as he was in pretence, seeking to win Helen's attention. Mr. Floyd looked at the matter in the same light.

"When he gets his congé he cannot complain of having received encouragement," he said once or twice. "But he's no fool: can it be that he is in love with Miss Lenox all the time, and that he tries to pique her with a show of devotion to Helen?"

"Tony Thorpe will never be in love with a poor girl," I replied: "there is nothing of that sort."

"I don't like Helen's having lovers," said Mr. Floyd. "When I married my wife it was the pleasantest thing in the world to know that no other man had ever breathed a word of love in her ears. 'The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.' The first sound of a lover's voice brings a thrill to a girl's heart which she never knows but once. Miss Lenox's perceptions in that way must be considerably toughened: sole-leather is nothing in thickness compared to the epidermis of a coquette's heart. Now, a man can love with delicacy, fervor, passion a score of times. Women are frail creatures, are they not? I would like to have my little girl give her heart once, receive unbounded love in return, and never think of another man all her life. But Fate will manage her affairs for her, as for us all."

I have said that my morning interviews with Miss Lenox on the beach continued for a time. Suddenly they ceased: she came to the rendezvous no more, and it was impossible for me to get near enough to her to seek an explanation. I had felt quite dissipated and like a man of the world when I jumped out of my bed half awake each morning with an appointment on my hands. I had not told myself that it was bliss to meet her, and in fact had smiled a little at the recollection that it had been she who had asked me to join her ramble. Once or twice I had designated the whole thing a bore, and had wished it might rain and let me have a comfortable morning's nap instead of an hour or two with the most beautiful of girls at a romantic trysting-place. But most men deceive themselves about their feelings concerning women. When the first time I did not find Georgina awaiting me (for my orders were to join her walk, not to have her join mine) I lay on the rocks and took a nap until Thorpe came along the beach as usual and awoke me. But when I had failed to find her the second morning I was restless and disturbed. After two more fruitless quests I grew by turns insanely jealous and wretchedly self-distrustful.

Had I vexed her? What had I said? what had I done? I went over and over again every word of our talks: every mood of hers, every blush and glance and smile, lived again for me. We had spoken of many things those mornings we had met, yet there had been small reference to our mutual relations; and certainly if there were love-making on my part, it had colored none of our moods to any passion. I had travelled and seen many people: I had been introduced in courts, and had, by Mr. Floyd's influence, penetrated into an exclusive and brilliant continental society, where I had found much to observe. These reminiscences of mine had delighted Georgina: she had the irresistible feminine instinct for details, the analysis of which made a mastery of brilliant results easily attainable to her who possessed, to begin with, remarkable beauty, and, if not tact, so bewildering a way of doing what she chose that in the eyes of men at least she lacked nothing which grace and good taste could teach her. She was always anxious, too, to hear everything concerning Mr. Floyd—his friends abroad, his habits, his vie intime at certain houses which had been his favorite lounge for years while he was minister at –. Garrulity was by no means my habit in those days, but I had talked to her very freely: indeed, she could do with me what she wished.

But why had she suddenly given me up? Had she tired of me, exhausted me, wrung my mind dry of interest; and flung me by like a squeezed orange? I lay in wait for her in the passages that I might speak to her, but she seemed never to be alone any more. I would lurk in her path for hours, only to be rewarded by the sight of her dress vanishing in another direction. I wrote her notes, to none of which would she reply. "If a woman flies, she flies to be pursued," I had heard all my life. Elusive, mocking goddess that she was, I felt every day more and more ardent in my pursuit, yet I rarely saw her now except at breakfast, when she was demure, a little weary, and altogether indifferent to me. I determined to follow her into society.

It was early in July now, and the watering-place life was at its gayest. I had hitherto accepted no invitations, from respect for the habits of the house where I was staying, but now I examined with interest every card and note brought to me. Accordingly, I set out on a round of pleasure-seeking, which soon transformed me from a boy whose foolish aim in life was to be as clever as other men into an impassioned lover. Other men may look back upon their first love with a certain pleasing sentimentality: in spite of all the years that now lie between me and the fever of those few months at The Headlands, I still suffer bitterly from the recollection of that time.

CHAPTER XVIII

I had gone with Georgina to a picnic one day at her request, meeting her at the house of Mrs. Woodruff, with whom she was staying for a fortnight, at the Point. The picnic meant merely a drive for miles back into the country and a lunch in the woods prepared by a French cook, but it was a delightful road through shadows of tall forest trees, the glare of sunlight alternating with green copsewood coolness. They were cutting the grass and clover in the fields, and the air was fresh with the scent of new-mown hay: half the land on either side of us was covered with ripening grain, and the light breeze that played perpetually over it gave us endless shimmerings and glimmerings of wonderful light almost as beautiful as the tints that play over the sea.

I had every need to find the beauty of the summer gracious to me that day. It was but another of many days when every throb of my feeling for Georgy Lenox became an anguish hard to bear. She was opposite me as we rode through the fair country, but she neither looked at nor spoke to me. I was much lionized, however, by Mrs. Woodruff, a pretty, faded, coquettish woman, who had been balancing herself on the very edge of proprieties for years, but who still, thanks to a certain weariness she compelled in men, was yet safe enough in her position as a matron. Georgy's companion was a titled foreigner just then a favorite at the Point, but of whom I need not speak.

"Did you ask me to come that I might hear you talk with the count?" I asked her when once that day I had a chance to address her.

"But the count would talk to me," she returned, laughing. "Do you suppose I care for him? I think him the most odious man I know, with his waxed moustache, his small green eyes, his wicked mouth and teeth. But Mrs. Woodruff is dying for him, and half the women here hate me in their hearts because he pays me attention. I like you infinitely better, Floyd."

"Then come away and sit upon the rocks with me."

"Oh, I cannot afford to do those romantic, compromising things. You see that, as we are both staying at The Headlands, where everybody's curiosity is centred this summer, we are much observed, much commented upon."

"It seems to me you are not at all afraid of compromising yourself with other men."

"Now you are cross and jealous. Perhaps if you betrayed a little less interest in me you might make me less afraid of concession. And you must not watch me so: the count himself spoke about your eyes ready to burn me with their melancholy fire."

"Hang the count!"

"With all my heart! I am tired of his hanging about me, however. Now go away: at the dance to-night I will talk to you all you wish."

There were plenty of beautiful girls at the picnic, and not a few of them sat outside the circle quite neglected or wandered away like school-girls in couples, picking ferns and gathering pale wood-blossoms; but since I could not speak to Georgina at my ease, there seemed to me neither meaning nor occupation for the slowly-passing hours. I have sometimes wondered how those women feel to whom society brings no homage, no real social intercourse, who sit outside the groups formed around their more brilliant sisters and behold their easy triumphs. They seem patient and good-natured, but must they not wonder in their hearts why one woman's face and figure are a magnet compelling every man to come within the circle of her attraction, while others, not less fair and sweet, seem depolarized?

Georgy had many successful days, and this was but one of them. She understood allurement now not as an accident, but as a science, and she practised it cleverly. She had already heard bold language from the count, so held him in check as he sat beside her, giving him at times, however, "a side glance and look down," and to his trained habits of observation showed constantly that she was perfectly aware of his presence even if she seemed to ignore him. She was openly flirting with Frank Woolsey (a cousin of mine), but since she knew him for a veteran whose admiration only counted to lookers-on, she consoled herself by other little diversions, and scarcely a man there but felt his pulses tingle as she sent him a bright word or a careless smile.

Thorpe was there, but dull, moody, distrait, and he joined me and poured into my ears his disgust at this form of entertainment. He had eaten ants in his salad, he affirmed, his wine was corked, his pâté spoiled.

"What are we here for?" he asked. "I see no reason in it. I suppose Miss Lenox is enjoying herself, and she thinks the men about her are in a seventh heaven. What do even the cleverest women know about the men they meet? Woolsey hates her like poison; the count is on the lookout for a belle héritière and is yawning over his loss of time; and I doubt if one of that group except Talbot would marry her. I don't think many of us are pleased with that sort of thing. We don't want too fierce a light to beat about the woman we are dreaming of. She has no love or respect for sweetness and womanly virtue for their own sake—no faith in their value to her, further than that the semblance of them may attract admirers."

"You're out of humor, Thorpe," said I: "don't vent it on her."

"I am out of humor," he exclaimed, "devilishly out of humor! For God's sake, Randolph, tell me if you think I have any chance with Miss Floyd."

"Look here, Thorpe," I returned under my breath: "I have no business to make any suppositions concerning that young lady, but I will say just this much. Do you see that bird in the air hovering above that oak tree?"

He followed my look upward toward the unfathomable blue. "I do," he returned.

"I think there is just as much chance of that bird's coming down at your call and nestling in your bosom as there is of your winning the young lady you allude to."

He looked crestfallen for a moment: then his thorough coxcombry resumed its sway. "You see," said he, with a consummate air of reserve, "you know nothing about the affair at all, Randolph."

"You'd much better drop the subject, Thorpe," I remarked: "I assure you it's much safer let alone."

I contrived to live through the long hours of the day. At sunset we drove back to the Point, I giving up my seat in Mrs. Woodruff's barouche to a lady and joining Frank Woolsey and Thorpe in a dog-cart. We none of us spoke, but smoked incessantly, our eyes upturned to the sky, which was lovely, mystical, wonderful, with the pale after-glow thrilling it with the most beautiful hues. Before we had reached the town a strange yellow moonlight had crept over the landscape, making the trees gloom together in solemn masses, while the sea glimmered in a thousand lines of trembling light away, away into remote horizons. We all enjoyed the drive, although none of us spoke until we got down from the cart at the steps of the hotel.

"That was the best part of the day," observed my cousin Frank. "What good times we fellows might have if there were no women to disturb us!"

Thorpe growled some inarticulate assent or dissent, as the case might be, and went up to his room, while Frank and I had our cigars out on the piazza.

A dance at Mrs. Woodruff's was to follow the picnic, and thither we resorted about ten o'clock and found the chairs placed for a German. Georgy Lenox was there, radiant in a ravishing toilette, waiting for Frank to lead the cotillon with her. She nodded to me pleasantly as she took her seat. I was angry with myself for my disappointment, doubly angry with her for causing it. It cost me my self-respect to be so utterly at her mercy. What did I gain by following her into this gay coterie but pang upon pang of humiliation and pain? Why did I come, indeed? It was not the first time she had broken her promises to me. Yet what could I expect of her? Bright, gay, dazzling creature that she was, warm and eager in her love of vigorous life, could she sit down with me in a corner and talk while the rest of the world palpitated and glowed and whirled around her to the music of the waltz, which stirred even my crippled limbs with a wild wish for voluptuous swaying motion in rhythm with the melodious melancholy strain? No, I could not blame her: I was merely out of my place. Let me go home and remember what a gulf of disparity separated me from my fellows.

So I walked out of the house through the grounds into the street, and along the road home to The Headlands. It was a long walk for me, yet I overcame the distance quickly, and long before eleven o'clock gained the house, entered quietly and sat down beside my mother on her sofa, unseen by Mr. Floyd and Helen, who were in the next room.

I was half mad with baffled desire, blind anger and fatigue that night, and the sound of Helen's voice as she sang some song like a lullaby was like a blessing. My mother did not speak to me; only smiled gently in my face and kissed me on my forehead. Her tenderness touched my heart, and my head drooped to her shoulder, then to her lap, and I lay there like a boy comforted by his mother's touch, just as I was. A kind of peaceful stupor came over me. Helen went on singing some quiet German piece of which her father was fond, with many verses and a sweet, moving story. Her voice was delicious in its way, with a noble and simple style, and a pathetic charm in some of its cadences I never heard surpassed. Mr. Floyd never tired of hearing her. After a time the ballad came to an end.

"Floyd has come, papa," I heard her say.

"Why, no! Has he? so early?"

"Go on singing, Helen," whispered my mother. "Floyd has gone to sleep."

She sang something soft, cooing, monotonous, a strain a mother might sing as she hushed her baby at her breast: then she came out, followed by her father, and both sat down beside us. I, half shyly, half through dread of talking, went on counterfeiting sleep.

"Poor boy!" exclaimed Mr. Floyd. "He has evidently walked back from the Point. He was tired out with his dissipations, or Miss Georgina was coquetting with other men or ate too much to suit him. If I were in love to extremity of passion with Miss Lenox, or rather with her brilliant flesh-tints and her hands and feet, I should recover the moment I saw her at table. She is the frankest gourmande I ever saw, and will be stout in five years."

"Now, papa, Georgy's hands and feet are nothing so particular."

"Helen's are smaller and much better shaped," said my mother jealously.

"Now, Mary, how little you understand the points of a woman! Helen has hands that I kiss"—and he kissed them—"the most beautiful hands in the world; and she has feet whose very shoe-tie I adore; but, nevertheless, there is nothing aggressive about her insteps and ankles. She considers her feet made to walk with, not to captivate men with."

"I should hope not," said Lady Disdain, with plenty of her chief attribute in her voice. "I prefer that nobody should know I have any feet."

"That is just it. Now, Miss Lenox never comes in or goes out of a room but every man there knows the color of her stockings."

"I am ashamed of you, papa!—Scold him, Mrs. Randolph. I think him quite horrid."

"Since, my mouse, you don't want to be admired for your feet and hands, what points of your beauty may we venture to obtrude our notice upon?"

"Oh, you may love me for whatever you like. But I don't want other people ever to think of me in that way at all."

"Your intellect is a safe point, perhaps."

"I do not want anybody to love me at all, papa, except yourself."

"Not even Floyd?"

"Floyd would never be silly," Helen said indignantly. "Floyd likes me because we are old friends: he knew grandpa and you, papa, and all that."

"You are easily satisfied if you are contented with affection on the score of your aged relatives."

"How soundly he sleeps!" murmured Helen; and I knew that she bent close to me as she spoke, for I could feel the warmth of her young cheeks. Half to frighten her, half because I wanted to see how she looked as she regarded me, I suddenly opened my eyes.

"You weren't asleep at all!" she exclaimed, laughing and quite unembarrassed. "But I think you were wicked to hoax us so. Did you hear everything we said?"

"Indeed, Helen," I said, "I was fast asleep, I do believe, until you confessed your affection for me. You did not expect me to sleep through that?"

She stared at me blankly, then looked at the others with dilating eyes. "Did I say anything about that?" she asked, growing pale even to her lips and tears gathering in her eyes.

"Why, no, you foolish child!" said her father, drawing her upon his knee: "he is only teasing you. As if anybody had any affection for one of the Seven Sleepers!—Well, Floyd, how happened you to come back so soon? The carriage was going for you at midnight.—Here, Mills, Mr. Randolph has already returned, and the coachman may go to bed."

"The day was pretty long," I returned. "I had had enough of it, and so set out and walked back. I was well tired out when I came in, and that put me to sleep."

"It was a shame for you to walk so far," exclaimed Helen imperiously: "you are not strong enough for such an effort. There are eight horses in the stables, every one of them pawing in his stall, longing for a gallop, and for you to be obliged to walk four miles! Don't do such a dreadful thing again, Floyd."

I sprang up and limped about, feeling impatient and cross. "In spite of my poor leg," I returned, "I am a fair walker. Don't set me down as a helpless cripple, Helen."

I was bitter and wrathful still, or I trust I was too magnanimous to have wounded her so.

"Floyd!" exclaimed my mother in a tone of reproof; but I did not turn, and went down the long suite of parlors and stood at the great window which overlooked the sea. It was all open to the summer night, and the lace curtains waved to and fro in the breeze. Solemnly came up the rhythmic flow of the waves as they beat against the rocks. I pushed aside the draperies and looked out at the wide expanse of waters lying, it seemed, almost at my feet, for everything else but the great silver plain of sea was in shadow. Above, the moon had it all her own way to-night: the constellations shone pale, and seemed weary of the firmament which at other times they span and compass with their myriad splendors. Mars moved in a stately way straight along above the southern horizon to his couch in the west: even his red light was dim.

But what stillness and peace seemed possible beneath this throbbing sea? I sighed as I listened to the sound of the waves and gazed at the great golden pathway of the moon across the silver waters. I knew that some one had followed me and stood timidly behind me: I guessed it was Helen, but did not know until a slim satin hand stole into mine, for surely it was not my mother's hand. Hers was warm and firm in its pressure: the touch of this was soft and cool like a rose-leaf. I held the hand close, but did not turn.

"Floyd!" she whispered timidly, "dear Floyd!"

"I hear you, Helen," I returned wearily.

"Are you angry with me? Do not be angry."

"I am only angry with myself: I am not behaving well to-night."

She came in front of me and looked up in my face. "I don't want you to think," she said in a little faint trembling voice, "that—that I—that I—" She quite broke down.

"I really don't know what you mean, Helen."

"Floyd," she cried passionately, "I think I would die before I would wilfully hurt your feelings!"

"Why, my poor little girl," said I, quite touched at the sight of her quivering face and the sound of her impassioned voice, "you did not hurt my feelings for an instant. What I said was in answer to my own thoughts. I like to say such things to myself at times, and remember that I do not possess the advantages of other men. Besides, facts are facts: I am lame. I cannot dance, and although I can walk, it is with a limping gait: I should be a poor fellow in a foot-race. I don't suppose that my being a cripple will forfeit me anything in the kingdom of heaven, but, nevertheless, it obliges me to forego a good many pleasures here on earth."

"You are not a cripple!" she burst out impetuously. "You have every advantage! What is it that you cannot dance? I despise men who whirl about like puppets: I have never seen them waltzing but they must make themselves ridiculous. I am glad you cannot dance: you are on the level of too much dignity and noble behavior to condescend to such petty things. And surely you do not want to run a foot-race!" she added with an intensity of disdain which made me laugh, high-wrought and painful although my mood was. Then her lip trembled, and I saw tears in her eyes as she went on. "If you were a cripple," she pursued in a low, eager voice, "really a helpless cripple, everybody would love you just the same. Why, Floyd, what do you think it is to me that, as you say, you do not possess the advantages of other men? Have you forgotten how it all came about? I was a little girl then, but there is nothing that happened yesterday clearer to my memory than that terrible morning when I cost you so dear. I know how I felt—as if forsaken by the world. I wondered if God looked down and saw me, alone, in danger, blind and dizzy and trembling, so that again and again I seemed to be slipping away from everything that held me. I could not have stayed one minute more had I not heard your voice. You were so strong, so kind, Floyd! When you reached me your hands were bleeding, your face scratched and torn, your breath came in great pants, but you looked at me and smiled. And then you carried me to the top and put me in safety, and I let you go down, down, down!" She was quite speechless, and leaned her cheek against my hand, which she still held, and wet it freely with her tears.