East Angels Part 17

His idea of her was that she had argued it all out carefully in her own mind (she was not a person who acted on impulse), and had taken her stand upon what she considered irrefragable grounds. In other words, she had sat apart and judged her husband. Instead of trying to win him or to keep him, she had made little rules for him probably, and no doubt very good little rules of their kind; but Lanse had of course broken them, he wasn't a man for rules; a man of his age, too, would hardly keep the rules made by a girl of nineteen. After repeated breakage of all her well-regulated little canons, she had withdrawn herself, and kept aloof; she had held herself superior to him, and had let him see that she did.

Winthrop could imagine the effect of all this upon Lanse!

But no matter what Lanse had done that annoyed her (and it was highly probable that he had done a good deal), her duty as a wife, in Winthrop's opinion, clearly was, and would to the end of time continue, to remain with her husband--not to leave him, unless her life or the welfare of her children should be in actual danger; that was what marriage meant. The welfare of children included a great deal, of course; he held that a wife was justified in separating them from a father whose influence was injurious. But in this case there had been no questions of the sort, Lanse was not violent, and there were no children to think of. There was, indeed, nothing very wrong about Lanse save that he was self-willed, and did quite as he pleased on all occasions. But what he did was, after all, nothing very terrible; he was willing that other people should do as they pleased, also; he was not a petty tyrant.

But this state of things had not satisfied his wife, who wished other people, her husband first of all, to do as _she_ pleased. Why? Because she was always sure that she was right! This slender, graceful woman with the dark blue eyes and clear low voice had a will as strong as her husband's. She had found, probably, that her tranquillity and what she called her dignity--both inexpressibly dear to her--were constantly endangered by this unmanageable husband, who paid not the slightest heed to her axioms as to what was "right" and "not right," what was "usual"

(Lanse was never usual) and "not usual," but strode through and over them all as though they did not exist. His course, indeed, made it impossible for her to preserve unbroken that serenity of temper which was her highest aspiration; for she was exactly the woman to have an ideal of that sort, and to endeavor to live up to it; it was not improbable that she offered her prayers to that effect every night.

All this was a very harsh estimate. But Winthrop's beliefs on these subjects were rooted in the deepest convictions he possessed. Such a character as the one he attributed to Margaret Harold was to him insufferable; he could endure easily a narrow mind, if with it there was a warm heart and unselfish disposition, but a narrow mind combined with a cold, unmoved nature and impregnable self-conceit--this seemed to him a combination that made a woman (it was always a woman) simply odious.

These things all pa.s.sed through his thoughts again as he rode over the barrens. He recalled Lanse's handsome face as he used to see it in childhood. Lanse was five years older than the little Evert, tall, strong, full of life, a hero to the lad from New England, who was brave enough in his way but who had not been encouraged in boldness, nor praised when he had been lawless and daring. Mrs. Rutherford had a phrase about Lanse--that he was "just like all the Harolds." The Harolds, in truth, were a handsome race; they all resembled each other, though some of them were not so handsome as the rest. A good many of them had married their cousins. They were tall and broad-shouldered, well made, but inclined to portliness towards middle-age; they had good features, the kind of very well-cut outline, with short upper lip and full lower one, whose fault, if it has a fault, is a tendency to blankness of expression after youth is past. Their hair was very dark, almost black, and they had thick brown beards of rather a lighter hue--beards which they kept short; their eyes were beautiful, dark brown in hue, animated, with yellow lights in them; their complexions had a rich darkness, with strong ivory tints beneath. They had an appearance of looking over the heads of everybody else, which, among many noticeable things about them, was the most noticeable--it was so entirely natural. Because it was so natural n.o.body had tried to a.n.a.lyze it, to find out of what it consisted. The Harolds were tall; but it was not their height. They were broad-shouldered; but there were men of the same mould everywhere. It was not that they expanded their chests and threw their heads back, so that their eyes, when cast down, rested upon a projecting expanse of s.h.i.+rt front, with the watch-chain far in advance; the Harolds had no such airs of inflated frog. They stood straight on their feet, but nothing more; their well-moulded chins were rather drawn in than thrust out; they never posed; there was never any trace of att.i.tude. Yet, in any large a.s.semblage, if there were any of them present, they were sure to have this appearance of looking over other people's heads. It was accompanied by a careless, good-humored, unpretending ease, which was almost benevolent, and which was strikingly different from the self-a.s.sertive importance of more nervous (and smaller) men.

As a family the Harolds had not been loved; they were too self-willed for that. But they were witty, they could be agreeable; in houses where it pleased them to be witty and agreeable, they were the most welcome of guests. The small things of life, what they called the "details," the tiresome little cares and responsibilities, annoyances, engagements, and complications, these they shed from themselves as a s.h.a.ggy dog sheds water from his coat--they shook them off. People who did not love them (and these were many) remarked that this was all very pretty, but that it was also very selfish. The Harolds, if their attention had been called to it, would have considered the adjective as another of the "details," and would have shaken that off also.

Mrs. Rutherford in her youth never could help admiring the Harolds (there were a good many of them, almost all men; there was but seldom a daughter); when, therefore, her sister Hilda married Lansing of the name, she had an odd sort of pride in it, although everybody said that Hilda would not be happy; the Harolds seldom made good husbands. It was not that they were hara.s.sing or brutal; they were simply supremely inattentive. In this case, however, there had been little opportunity to verify or prove false the expectation, as both Lansing Harold and his wife had died within two years after their marriage, the wife last, leaving (as her sister, Mrs. Winthrop, did later) a son but a few days old. The small Lansing was adopted by his aunt. Through childhood he was a n.o.ble-looking little fellow, never governed or taught to govern himself; he grew rapidly into a large, manly lad, active and strong, fond of out-of-door sports and excelling in them, having the quick wit of his family, which, however (like them), he was not inclined to bestow upon all comers for their entertainment; he preferred to keep it for his own.

Evert remembered with a smile the immense admiration he had felt for his big cousin, the excited antic.i.p.ation with which he had looked forward to meeting him when he went, twice a year, to see his aunt. The splendid physical strength of the elder boy, his liberty, his dogs and his gun, his horse and boat--all these filled the sparingly indulged little New England child with the greatest wonder and delight. Most of all did he admire the calm absolutism of Lanse's will, combined as it was with good-nature, manliness, and even to a certain degree, or rather in a certain way, with generosity--generosity as he had thought it then, careless liberality as he knew it now. When Evert was ten and Lanse fifteen, Lanse had decided that his cousin must learn to shoot, that he was quite old enough for that accomplishment. Evert recalled the mixture of fear and pride which had filled his small heart to suffocation when Lanse put the gun into his hands in the remote field behind Mrs.

Rutherford's country-house which he had selected for the important lesson. His fear was not occasioned so much by the gun as by the keen realization that if his father should question him, upon his return home, he should certainly feel himself obliged to tell of his new knowledge, and the revelation might put an end to these happy visits.

Fortunately his father did not question him; he seldom spoke to the boy of anything that had happened during these absences, which he seemed to consider necessary evils--so much waste time. On this occasion how kind Lanse had been, how he had encouraged and helped him--yes, and scolded him a little too; and how he had comforted him when the force of the discharge had knocked the little sportsman over on the ground rather heavily. A strong affection for Lanse had grown up with the younger boy; and it remained with him still, though now not so blind a liking; he knew Lanse better. They had been widely separated, and for a long time; they had led such different lives! Evert had worked steadily for ten long, secluded years; later he had worked still harder, but in another way, being now his own master, and engaged in guiding the enterprises he had undertaken through many obstacles and hazards towards success. These years of unbroken toil for Evert had been spent by Lanse in his own amus.e.m.e.nt, though one could not say spent in idleness exactly, as he was one of the most active of men. He had been much of the time in Europe. But he came home for brief visits now and then, when his aunt besought him; she adored him--she had always adored him; she was never tired of admiring his proportions, what seemed to her his good-nature, his Harold wit, his poise of head; she was never so happy as when she had him staying with her in her own house. True, he had his own way of living; but it was such a simple way! He was not in the least a gourmand--none of the Harolds were that; he liked only the simplest dishes, and always demanded them; he wanted the windows open at all seasons when the snow was not actually on the ground; he could not endure questioning, in fact, he never answered questions at all.

Returning for one of these visits at home, Lanse had found with his aunt a young girl, Margaret Cruger, a niece of her husband's. Evert smiled now as he recalled certain expressions of the letter which his aunt had written to him, the other nephew, announcing Lanse's engagement to Miss Cruger; in the light of retrospect they had rather a sarcastic sound.

Mrs. Rutherford had written that Margaret was very young, to be sure--not quite eighteen--but that she was very gentle and sweet. That it was time Lanse should marry, he was thirty-two--though in her opinion that was exactly the right age, for a man knew then what he really wanted, and was not apt to make a mistake. That she hoped the girl would make him the sort of wife he needed; for one thing, she was so young that she would not set up her opinion in opposition to his, probably, and with Lanse that would be important. Mrs. Rutherford furthermore thought that the girl in a certain way understood him; she (Mrs.

Rutherford) had had the greatest fear of Lanse's falling into the hands of some woman who wouldn't have the sense to appreciate him, some woman who would try to change him; one of those dreadful Pharisaic women, for instance, who are always trying to "improve" their husbands. There was nothing easier than to get on with Lanse, and even to lead him a little, as she herself (Mrs. Rutherford) had always done; one had only to take him on the right side--his good warm heart. Margaret was almost too simple, too yielding; but Lanse had wit and will enough for two. There was another reason why this marriage would be a good thing for Lanse: he had run through almost all his money (he had never had a very great deal, as Evert would remember), and Margaret had a handsome fortune, which would come in now very well. She was rather pretty--Margaret--in a delicate sort of way. Mrs. Rutherford _hoped_ she appreciated her good-luck; if she didn't now, she would soon, when she had seen a little more of the world. And here one of his aunt's sentences came, word for word, into Winthrop's memory: "But it's curious, isn't it, Evert? that such an inexperienced child as she is, a girl brought up in such complete seclusion, should begin life by marrying Lansing Harold! For you know as well as I do how he has been sought after, what his career has been." This was true. Allowance, of course, had to be made for Mrs.

Rutherford's partiality; still, Evert knew that even with allowance there was enough to verify her words, at least in part. Lansing Harold had never been in the least what is called popular; he was not a man who was liked by many persons, he took pains not to be; he preferred to please only a few. Whether or not there had been women among those he had tried to please, it was at least well known that women had tried to please him. More than one had followed him about, with due regard, of course, for the proprieties (it is not necessary to include those--who also existed--who had violated them), finding themselves, for instance, in Venice, when he happened to be there, or choosing his times for visiting Rome. Now Lanse had had a way of declaring that June was the best month for Rome; it had been interesting to observe, for a long period, that each year there was some new person who had made the same discovery.

"We were home long before you," said Mrs. Rutherford, when Winthrop, having brought his reflections to a close, and enjoyed another gallop, returned to the eyrie. "Mrs. Thorne has been here," she added; "she came up from East Angels after Garda, and took the opportunity--she generally _does_ take the opportunity, I notice--to pay me a visit. She never stopped talking, with that precise p.r.o.nunciation, you know, one single minute, and I believe that's what makes her so tired all the time; I know _I_ should be tired if I had to hiss all my s's as she does! She had ever so many things to say; one was that when her life was sad and painful she was able to rise out of her body--out of the flesh, she called it (there isn't much to rise from), and float, unclothed, far above in the air, in the realm of pure thought, I think she said. And when I asked her if it wasn't rather unpleasant--for I a.s.sure you it struck me so--she wasn't at all pleased, not at all. She's such an observer of nature,--I suppose that's because she has always lived where there was nothing but nature to observe; well, I do believe she had seen an allegorical meaning in every single tree on the sh.o.r.e as she came up the river!"

"I rather think she saw her meanings more than her trees," said Winthrop; "I venture to say she couldn't have told you whether they were cypresses or myrtles, palmettoes or gums; such people never can. Tired?

Of course she's tired; her imagination travels miles a minute, her poor little body can't begin to keep up with it."

"So foolish," commented Mrs. Rutherford, tranquilly--Mrs. Rutherford, who had never imagined anything in her life. "And do you know she admires Margaret beyond words--if she's ever beyond them! Isn't it odd?

She says Margaret _answers_ one so delightfully. And when I remarked, 'Why, we think Margaret rather silent,' she said, 'That is what I mean, it is her silence that is so sympathetic; she answers you with it far more effectually than most persons do with their talkativeness.'"

"I'm afraid you talked, Aunt Katrina," said Winthrop, laughing.

"I never do," replied Mrs. Rutherford, with dignity. "And she told me, also," she went on, resuming her gossip in her calm, handsomely dressed tone (for even Mrs. Rutherford's tone seemed clothed in rich attire), "that that young Torres had asked her permission to 'address' Garda, as she expressed it."

"To address Garda? Confound his impudence! what does he mean?" said Winthrop, in a disgusted voice. "Garda's a child."

"Oh, well," replied Mrs. Rutherford, "she's half Spanish, and that makes a difference; they're older. But I don't think the mother favors the Cuban's suit, she prefers something 'more Saxon,' she said so. And, by-the-way, she asked me if you were not 'more recently English' than the rest of us. What do you suppose she could have meant?--I never quite know what she is driving at."

Winthrop burst into a laugh. "More recently Englis.h.!.+ Poor little woman, with her small New England throat, she has swallowed the British Isles!

You don't think the Cuban has a chance, then?"

"Oh, I don't know," replied Mrs. Rutherford, comfortably; "it doesn't concern us, does it? It will depend upon what Garda thinks, and Garda will think what she pleases; she isn't a girl to be guided."

"She hasn't been difficult to guide so far, I fancy," said Winthrop, after a moment's silence.

"She will be, then," responded his aunt, nodding her head with an a.s.sured air. "You'll see."

CHAPTER IX.

"I am not partial to it myself," said the Rev. Mr. Moore--"this confection of oranges called marmalade. I am told, however, that the English are accustomed to make their breakfast princ.i.p.ally of similar saccharine preparations; in time, therefore, we may hope to establish an export trade."

A fresh breeze astern was blowing the _Emperadora_ down the lagoon in a course straight enough to please even Mrs. Carew, if that lady could have been pleased by anything aquatic. She was present, in spite of fears, sitting with the soles of her prunella gaiters pressed tightly against the little yacht's side under the seat (the peculiarity of the att.i.tude being concealed by her long skirt), with the intention, probably, of acting as a species of brake upon too great a speed.

The position was a difficult one. But she kept her balance by means of her umbrella, firmly inserted in a crack of the planking before her, and did not swerve.

The broad sails were set wing and wing; the morning was divinely fair.

Down in the south the tall trees looming against the sky seemed like a line of hills; owing to the lowness of the sh.o.r.es, on a level with the water, and the smoothness of the sea stretching eastward beyond Patricio, the comparative effect was the same. Above, the soft sky bending down all round them, touching here the even land and there the even water, conveyed nothing of that sense of vastness, of impersonality, which belongs so often to the American sky further north.

This seemed a particular sky belonging to this especial neighborhood, made for it, intimate with it; and the yacht, with those on board did not appear like a floating atom, lost in immensity; on the contrary, it was important, interesting; one could not rid one's self of the idea that its little voyage was watched with friendly curiosity by this bending personal sky, and these near low sh.o.r.es.

The Rev. Mr. Moore had been sent upon this pleasure-party by his wife.

Mrs. Penelope Moore was sure that a pleasure-party would do him good; the Reverend Middleton therefore endeavored to think the same, though it was not exactly his idea of pleasure. He was not fond of sailing; there was generally a breeze, and a breeze he did not enjoy. There was, indeed, something in his appearance, when exposed to a fresh wind, which suggested the idea that a portion of it was blowing through him, finding an exit at his shoulder-blades behind; his lank vest somehow had that air; and the sensation (so the spectator thought) could hardly have been an agreeable one to so thin a man, even on the warmest day.

Mrs. Penelope Moore was a brave woman. And she knew that she was brave.

Not being able, on account of her delicate health, to take part personally in the social entertainments of Gracias, she sent her husband in her place. And this was her bravery; for he was without doubt the most agreeable as well as the handsomest of men, and anybody with sense could foretell what must follow: given certain conditions, and the results all the world over were the same. Other people might say that quiet little Gracias was safe, Mrs. Penelope Moore knew better. Other people, again, might be blind; but Mrs. Penelope Moore was never blind.

She knew that such a man as her Middleton pa.s.sed, must pa.s.s, daily through temptations of the most incandescent nature, all the more dangerous because merged inextricably with his priest's office; but he pa.s.sed unscathed, he came out always, as she once wrote triumphantly to her mother, "without so much as a singe upon the hem of his uttermost garment." And if, on the other hand, it might have seemed that so little (blessedly) that was inflammable had been included in this good man's composition that he might have pa.s.sed safely through any amount of incandescence, even all that his wife imagined, here again, then, others were most decidedly mistaken; Mrs. Moore was convinced that her Middleton was of the fieriest temperament. Only he kept it down.

Gracias-a-Dios was certainly quiet enough. But Mistress Penelope, like many good women before her, could believe with ease in a degree of depravity which would have startled the most hardened of actual partic.i.p.ants. Having no standards by which to gauge evil, no personal experience of its nature, she was quite at sea about it. As Dr. Kirby once said of her (when vexed by some of her small rulings), "If people don't come to Friday morning service, sir, she thinks it but a small step further that they should have poisoned their fathers and beaten their wives."

On the present occasion this lady set her husband's hat straight upon his amiable forehead, and gave him his b.u.t.terfly net; then from her Gothic windows (the rectory of St. Philip and St. James' was of the same uncertain Gothic as the church), she watched him down the path and through the gate, across the plaza out of sight, going back to her sofa with the secure thought in her heart, "I can trust him--_anywhere_!"

The party on the yacht was composed of the same persons who had taken part in most of the entertainments given for the northern ladies, save that Manuel and Torres were absent. Torres had not been allowed to "address" Garda, after all, Mrs. Thorne having withheld her permission.

The young Cuban was far too punctilious an observer of etiquette to advance further without that permission; he had therefore left society's circle, and secluded himself at home, where, according to Manuel, he was engaged in "consuming his soul."

"His cigars," Winthrop suggested.

Whereupon Manuel, who was not fond of the northerner, warmly took up the cause of the absent Adolfo (though ordinarily he declared himself tired to death of him), and with his superbest air remarked, "It is possible that Mr. Wintup does not understand us."

"Quite possible," Winthrop answered.

Mrs. Thorne had consulted him about the request of Torres. Not formally, not (at least it did not appear so) premeditatedly; she alluded to it one afternoon when he had found her alone at East Angels. Winthrop was very severe upon what he called the young Cuban's "presumption."

"Presumption--yes; that is what I have been inclined to consider it,"

said Mrs. Thorne, with her little preliminary cough. But she spoke hesitatingly, or rather there seemed to be hesitation in her mind behind her words, for her words themselves were carefully clear.

Winthrop looked at her, and saw, or fancied he saw, a throng of conflicting possibilities, contingencies, and alternatives in the back part of her small bright eyes. "Your daughter is too young to be made the subject of any such request at present," he said, curtly. For it seemed to him a moment when a little masculine brevity and masculine decision were needed in this exclusively feminine atmosphere.

Mrs. Thorne accepted his suggestion. "Yes, Garda _is_ young," she murmured, emerging a little from her hesitations. "Quite too young," she repeated, more emphatically. Winthrop had given her a formula, and formulas are sometimes as valuable as a life-raft.

Torres, therefore, being engaged in the consumption of his soul, and Manuel having haughtily declined the northerner's invitation, the party on the yacht consisted, besides Winthrop, of Mrs. Rutherford and Margaret Harold, Mrs. Carew, Garda, Dr. Kirby, and the Rev. Mr. Moore, Mrs. Thorne having been detained at home by the "pressing domestic engagements" which Winthrop had been certain would lift their heads as soon as the day for the _Emperadora's_ little voyage had been decided upon. Wind and tide were both in their favor; they had a swift run down the Espiritu, and landed on Patricio a number of miles below Gracias, where there was a path which led across to the ocean beach. This path was narrow, and the gallant Dr. Kirby walked in the bushes all the way, suffering the twigs to flagellate his plump person, in order to hold a white umbrella over Mrs. Rutherford, who, arm in arm with her Betty, took up the entire track. Patricio, which had first been a reef, and then an outlying island, was now a long peninsula, joining the main land some forty miles below Gracias in an isthmus of sand; it came northward in a waving line, slender and green, lying like a ribbon in the water, the Espiritu on one side, the ocean on the other. When the ocean beach of the ribbon was reached, Mrs. Rutherford admired the view; she admired it so much that she thought she would sit down and admire it more. Dr.

Kirby therefore bestirred himself in arranging the cus.h.i.+ons and rugs which Winthrop's men had brought across from the yacht, to form an out-of-door sofa for the ladies; for Betty, of course, decided to remain with Katrina. The Doctor said that he should himself bear them company, leaving the "younger men" to "fume and fl.u.s.ter and explore."

The Rev. Mr. Moore was, in actual years, not far from Dr. Reginald's own age. But the Rev. Mr. Moore was perennially young; slender and light, juvenile in figure, especially when seen from behind, his appearance was not that of an elderly man so much as of a young man in whom the progress of age has been in some way arrested, like the young peaches, withered and wrinkled and yet with the bloom of youth about them still, which have dropped to the ground before their prime. He now stood waiting on the beach, armed with his b.u.t.terfly net; as his b.u.t.terfly net was attached to a long green pole, one end of which rested on the ground, he had the air of a sort of marine shepherd with a crook.

The Rev. Mr. Moore always carried this entomological apparatus with him when he went upon pleasure excursions; his wife encouraged him in the amus.e.m.e.nt, she said it was a distraction for his mind; the b.u.t.terflies also found it a distraction, they were in the habit of laughing (so some persons declared) all down the coast whenever the parson and his net appeared in sight.