Part 2

She had no such intention. She was silent, watching his set face, sensitively aware of some eager wish to help him.

His friend returned. Trescot took the wine and said at last, as they rose, “I am better, but I think I must go.”

She said, “My sister and I shall be glad to see you; we are always at home on Monday afternoons.”

“Thank you,” he returned; “I shall hope to be better company when we meet again.”

There was no indecision about this love-affair. In two weeks they were engaged. She had often said to herself that she would be hard to please, and that only a long acquaintance would justify a woman in giving herself to a man. She asked herself no questions as to the unreasoning passion which made easy for Trescot what so many had found hard. Their mutual attraction had the inevitability of the physical forces. From the moment of their first meeting, Constance Hood was the realization of his dream of the most stately womanhood. The impression he made on her was as sudden. He was not over her own height, slightly made, and, just then, even delicate in appearance. The look of intellect and power which a few faces show with features of great refinement gave added charm to manners which were gently formal, with some flavor of a more leisurely day when men had time to be courteous.

The contrast between his frail look and the stories men told of his fearlessness in the great war had its influence on the woman who had broken into a passion of anger and grief when the news of Sumter revealed the power of sentiment to stir her, as it stirred and energized the manhood of a great nation, presumed by those who thus challenged it to be given over to the ledger and day-book.

Susan Hood watched with surprise, anxiety, and a little amusement the progress of a love-affair which did not explain itself to one who considered marriage as a matter not to be entered into lightly or unadvisedly, and who had had no personal experience to shock her with the discovery of passions in herself or another. To the very humorous, love comes with difficulty.

Very soon Constance talked to her with strange unreserve. This abandonment to love, so profound, so abrupt, shocked Susan. A man might thus exhibit affection, not a woman. Needless to say that it was for a time only the sister who thus saw and heard and wondered, dismayed at a passion as wild as that of Juliet.

* * * * *

When Trescot, having left her uncle, found Constance, the lovers sat down beyond the garden, before them the quiet of an unruffled sea and the eastward glow of the setting sun. The woman’s hand sought his and held it. “Has uncle told you?” she said.

“Your uncle is an amazing person, but I learned at last that you and he had settled the matter.”

She was aware at once that he was not entirely satisfied, and said:

“Oh, of course, George, it rests with you. If you accept we can be married soon, and if you say no we must wait a year, or even two years. How can I be without you so long? My uncle remains here in the country all the year, as you know; and now that I have disturbed his theory as to what my life was to be, I shall be made to suffer.”

“But we would be near, and I should see you often—very often.”

“Yes, I know; but it would be hard—oh, harder than you can know; and my uncle is never done with a subject; my life would be made intolerable. And then, after all, we should not be there—I mean at St. Ann—always; you would succeed, and some day we should come home.” She made it all seem clear, definite, and certain. Indeed, it so appeared to her.

It seemed much more vague to the young man, but the bribe she offered was too much for him to resist.

“We should go among a strange and hostile people, Constance—I a Northern officer, you with your strong feeling about the South.”

“I should learn to hold my tongue, and you would be sure to make friends.”

“Perhaps.” He remained silent a moment, and then went on. “I have rarely had doubts as to any future, dear, except as concerned whether I could make you love me. But this future of a life at St. Ann seems to me a very doubtful matter. I am to displace the present agent and—”

“But Mr. Averill—my uncle calls him, with respect, major-general—Mr. Averill desires to give up the care of uncle’s lands. He did not tell you that, I am sure.”

“No, he did not. Of course that somewhat simplifies the matter. But to act for a man like Mr. Hood may well have its difficulties.”

“I do not think so. He always backs down before a resolute man, or even an obstinate woman. You will have your own way, and we shall be so happy, George.”

“Of that I am sure, there or anywhere; and yet I am in reason, and above all because I love you, bound to think of the future. I am naturally sanguine, Constance. Even in the darkest hours of the war I was that; but in this matter I am not sanguine, and if you were to ask me why, I could not tell you. I have a feeling—” and here he paused.

“A feeling, George?”

“Yes, like that I had once on South Mountain. I was about to ride on to a hillock for a better view of the enemy’s line, when I felt for a moment a curious reluctance. I pulled up my horse, half surprised at myself—and then, with a sense of the absurdity of the thing, I rode on. As my horse moved across the space between, a shell exploded on the hillock.”

“Oh, George! But it isn’t like that—was not that a pure superstition?”

“Yes, very absurd, utterly ridiculous in its application here; I ought not to have said it.”

“It does not in the least trouble me, although, like my uncle, I have my own little thrills about thirteen at table, and all such nonsense. My uncle says—” and she stopped.

“Well, dear?”

“Oh, he says that a person may reason himself out of religious beliefs, but can never quite get rid of these little half-beliefs.”

“I think,” he returned, “that people who are really and thoughtfully religious have least of these remnants of a more ignorant day.”

“And yet, George,” she returned, laughingly, “you obeyed an impulse quite without reason; I should hardly call it a superstition.”

“No; you are right. But to go back to what is for you and me a very serious question. I believe now that I may accept your uncle’s offer. But I must think it over when those dear eyes are not looking into mine, those lips saying, ‘Come, let us go away and be all of life to each other.’ Let us drop it now and talk of other things. I have to go back to Boston by the late train. Within a day I shall write to you and to your uncle. I must talk it over with an older lawyer.”

She was satisfied, and saw, or thought she saw, that he would be of her opinion. She had her own reasons for desiring to have no such delay as he would have tranquilly accepted. He had all through life been denying himself this or that to-day in order that he might be more secure of to-morrow’s wants. Such a passion as possessed her with the power of a primal instinct was not yet in him victorious over all rational considerations. He knew little of women, and nothing of the woman who desires to absorb, so to speak, all of the thoughts and feelings of the one man, and who, as time goes on, becomes jealous of his friends, and even of his work, and, at last, of every hour not given to her. Such women are happily rare, but are now and then to be found. From the hour she first saw him, frail and pallid from suffering, a vast protecting eagerness arose in her mind. As her kinship of pity blossomed into love, the desire to be with him and watch over what seemed to her in her new anxiety a more delicate life than it really was, supplied her with a reason for early marriage. She had never asked herself why she had been so suddenly captured; but as time went on she knew that she had drawn a prize in the uncertain lottery of love, and felt that his charm of manner, his distinction, the delicacy and refinement with which he had pleaded for her love, had fully justified her choice.

After further talk he left her at twilight, and at the last moment, in haste to catch his train. She watched him as he walked swiftly away, noting the arm caught for relieving support in his waistcoat, the upright, soldierly carriage of figure, well built, but lacking flesh. She said:

“Ah! but I love you well; how well, you do not yet know, George Trescot,—but you will—you shall.”

As he turned at the garden gate to look back, she cried, as she ran toward him, “You forgot, George.”

“What?” he said.

“To kiss me again.”

Late in the afternoon of the next day she received a letter, with which she fled to the rocks above the sea. She tore it open and read:

“DEAREST CONSTANCE:

“I wonder how you got that pleasantly prophetic name. You must tell me.

“Yes, I have made up my mind; my friend has urgently advised me to accept your uncle’s offer. He thinks the position affords chances I ought not to decline, and with your ever dear self thrown in—you remember the Scotch song:

“‘I’ll gie ye my bonny black hen If ye’ll but advise me to marry The lad I love dearly, Tam Glenn’—

“I gladly conclude to say yes. With what joy I am filled, you, I trust, know. I am not very strong as yet, but I come of a vigorous breed, and no tonic has ever helped me like the bounty of love. You have given me yourself—how can I ask more?

“Between us there lies one large gulf of difference—and only one. That some day we shall bridge it over, I hope and believe. Meanwhile, we shall trust each other’s honesty in this, life’s largest matter, and, so trusting, wait with the patience of love—”

“No,” she said, looking up, “it is not for me life’s largest matter. This human love is for me the larger. His religion, or any faith, is, compared to that, dim, misty, unsatisfying. But love! ah, that is near and sweet and real.”

“Well, well,” she mused, as she sat with the letter in her lap. “He would have me to believe as he believes. Would I wish him to change? No. He is my religion. That would shock him. To please him I could almost make believe to think as he does. To be separated in anything from him seems terrible.”

She was facing a hard question, made the more difficult by pure ignorance. Since childhood she had been in her uncle’s care. He had his own very peculiar views, and the delight in opposition which is fed by self-esteem and accounts in some degree for the ways and opinions of men who in the conduct of life depart radically from the common-sense standards of the world at large. His theories found a fair field in Constance. She was never to be punished; reasoning would do everything. How could a child accept a creed? She must be kept with a neutral mind. She had never been allowed to set foot in a church. When she grew up she might choose for herself. It shocked the elder sister, who, until the death of an aunt with whom she lived, saw Constance rarely, as they were separated by a hundred miles. When later she herself was left without a home, she gladly accepted her uncle’s invitation to live with them.

The new abode was far more luxurious than the one she had lost upon her aunt’s death. It was also very different. As time ran on, and she became more familiar with what she felt to be a rather singular household, she had an eager desire to help her young sister to escape from what seemed to Susan a bondage of the spirit. She became watchful and observant of her uncle and Constance, and saw, with something like dismay, the completeness of her sister’s isolation from all knowledge of that which seemed to her an essential part of the higher life. She was by temperament and sense of duty made unwilling to accept a neutral attitude; a growing affection added a strong motive, and she was resolute not to go on endlessly without protest. Some feeble attempts to approach the subject on which the elder sister felt so deeply were met by Constance either with indifference or mild amusement, as a thing long since disposed of, or as beneath the consideration of the larger mind. Rather than by persistence risk the loss of a growing affection, Susan ceased to speak of that which she held with such reverent faith, and could only pray that time and circumstances would afford more prosperous opportunities. With her uncle she was still less fortunate, but as he at least rested content with the situation he had created, she felt forced at last to secure for herself an opportunity to make the protest to which she felt driven by motives which left no escape possible.

He had soon become accustomed to use her for many of the little tasks which Constance disliked. She was seated with her uncle in his library after breakfast, engaged in cutting the leaves of a report on the census. He was minutely noting in his diary the state of the barometer and such reflections of his own as he considered worth preserving, and as to this he was generous.

He was not too busy to observe that, true to the habit of the born reader, she was now and then caught by some fact of interest, and ceased using the paper-cutter.

“Ah,” she exclaimed, laughing, “the census of this State embraces three millions of women—poor Mr. Census.”

“Yes, yes,” he returned, “quite remarkable,—an old joke, I believe. But I wish you would finish. I need the book. Constance has been trained to do one thing at a time.” The niece thus characterized had declined the task, and gone out to sail.

“I shall finish it, sir, in a few minutes.”

There was again silence, until at last she said: “The method of securing the number of people in the different religious sects seems to me quite absurd—just listen, Uncle Rufus.”

“I have no interest in it. It ought to be left out. The multitudinous opinions of irrelevant minds are disgraceful to the human intelligence. Negation is the proper attitude. Constance represents it to my satisfaction.”

Susan’s chance had come. She laid the book down and said earnestly: “You must pardon me if I say that I think you are wrong.”

“Well, I am always ready to hear honest opinions,—go on.”

“Do not you think that to leave a young girl without any sense of relation to God must result in her never acquiring any when grown up?”

“No, I do not. I have my views. When she is a woman and mature, she will choose.”

“But will she? She will have no interest in the matter.”

“Well, what then? Suppose that she never has.”

Susan was shocked; but after a moment replied: “Well, why not let her choose her morals? Why insist on her being, as a child, truthful, and charitable? Why insist on good manners? Let her choose her morals and her manners when she is what you call mature.”

“Nonsense; you are sophistical, and you are too clever not to know it.”

Susan was well enough aware of the difficulty in defending her statement, but she was too vexed to be logical, and said: “You have taken away from a young life one of the most imperative motives to be all that a woman ought to be.”

“I think I am a better judge of that than you. I have never missed what you call religion, nor will Constance. I have my views, and I insist that you are not to bother the girl with your superstitions.”

“I am sorry, uncle, but I can make no promise.”

“I suppose not. You are as obstinate in your folly as I am resolute in my common sense.”

“That is fine,” murmured Susan, as she returned to her work, making him no reply, and inclined for the time to abandon a useless purpose. Presently she laid the book beside him, saying:

“Is there anything else?”

“No, nothing.”

She left him and went out to the company of the flowers and the wholesomeness of a perfect day, troubled that she had made no impression, and asking herself if, after all, her argument was sophistical.

As she sat looking at the white sail of Constance’s cat-boat, rocking over an unquiet sea, she began to sum up her slowly acquired knowledge of the younger woman.

Yes, she was intelligent,—clever, accomplished, as Susan was not; an admirable musician, singularly ignorant of the great literature, but, like her uncle, unusually well informed on the history of her country. How she had come to have political opinions the reverse of her uncle’s puzzled Susan. It might be that she too loved to be in opposition, but certainly she held to her views with such passion as he was incapable of. And surely the girl was beautiful. As yet Susan could go no further in her interested analysis. Yes, she had the virtues of her caste, and great capacity for affection.

The woman concerning whom it was thus needful to digress went back to her letter.

“We will put this question aside for the time. You will let me try to help you. Your uncle made me understand that his affairs would suffer by delay, and now that I am clear in mind I see no cause to prevent us from being married whenever you can set a time. No time will be too soon for me. I have been alone in the world these many years. All that friendship could give in the army and at home I have had, but neither love of mother nor of sister, nor of any other woman has been mine. You have it all—the all that might have been others is yours, to-day and always.”

Again she paused, with the thought that to take him away even from his friends gave her a sense of such completeness of possession as filled her with joy. The rest of what he wrote was as delightful. She put the letter in her bosom and felt it move with her breathing; now and again she took it out and kissed it.

III

A month had gone by. A savage northeast wind was rocking the pines and hurling a thunderous surf on the rock-guarded coast. It was the third of March, the night before the day set for the marriage. Their uncle having as usual gone to bed early, the two sisters sat alone by a bright wood fire in the sitting-room they shared.

Susan rose and went to the window. “What a wild night!” she said, as the rain, wind driven, crashed against the panes, and the casement rattled. “The gardener said this afternoon a ship had gone ashore on Carlton’s Reef. I hope no lives were lost.”

“Yes, Uncle Rufus told me of it, and was gracious enough to observe that going to sea was like getting married—a very uncertain business.”

Susan, as she returned to the fire, remarked: “He has an unequaled capacity for saying unpleasant things, but I really believe that he does not mean to be malicious. The trouble is, he values the product of his own mind too highly to be willing to suppress any of it. I might have had the fancy that the ocean and marriage are uncertain. I should not have thought it fit or worth while to say so.”

“I do not see, Susan, how George has stood it for this last month. What with Uncle Rufus’s endless indirectness and perpetual indecision, I cannot wonder that George is puzzled to understand what he wants. I shall be more than glad to have done with it, and get half a continent between us and uncle.”

“You will never be done with it while he lives,” returned Susan; “and you may be pretty sure that he will some day appear at St. Ann and still further bother George.”

“Well, George is as obstinate as—I ought to say more resolute than—Uncle Rufus.”

“George asked me,” said Susan, “how uncle had been so fortunate in his affairs. I told him what you of course know, that uncle’s fortune was largely inherited, and that as the mills in which most of it was invested are managed by wiser men, and he is almost morbidly cautious, it is easy to see how he became rich. Those lands in and about St. Ann were one of his father’s ventures. They have been the source of constant trouble. I suspect that General Averill could not agree to do as uncle desired, and that when he gave up no one else would accept the agency.”

No sooner had she spoken than she knew that she had been unwise. Constance rose with a quick movement, and turning to her sister, said:

“Uncle said nothing like that to me or to George. Do you mean that he is using George because he could get no one else? I shall go and ask him if he has dared to do that.” As she spoke she moved quickly to the door. Susan was just in time.

“Stop, dear,” she said; “I have no authority for what I said.”

“Then you should not have spoken. You make me unhappy—and now, to-night of all nights. If your suspicion be correct, it is a thing I will not stand. Let me go.”

“No.” Susan set her back to the door. “Listen, dear. Uncle is asleep.”

“I do not care. He must wake up.”

“But you must care; and if I have been foolish or imprudent, it is too late for you to act wildly on a mere fancy of mine. Forget it, dear, and be sure that no matter what may be uncle’s little schemes, George Trescot will succeed where others have failed.”

The tall girl, still flushed, angry, and only half convinced, moved away and stood beside the fire, silent for a moment. Then, as Susan took her hand, she said:

“You are right; but, indeed, if he has put George in a false position I shall never forgive him. I shall not tell George.”

“I should not, dear. Sit down. It is really of no moment, but I was as indiscreetly anxious in George’s interest as you can be. Let us drop it. This is our last talk. What a mad storm, Conny!”

“Yes. Listen to the wind.”

“But you love storms, dear.”

“Yes, but not to-night. Oh, not to-night!”

“I hope you will have sunshine to-morrow.”

“Oh, sister, I do hope so.”

“It does not look like it, Conny; but there is sunshine enough in George Trescot. No one could help liking him; I am half in love with him myself.”

Constance laughed. “I can’t have that, I want him all to myself.”