"The obvious course," said he, after reflection, "is to shake off the bonds of matrimony, without further delay. So let's elope, Patricia."

Patricia, who was really unhappy, took refuge in flippancy, and laughed.

"I make it a rule," said she, "never to elope on Fridays. Besides, now I think of it, there is, Rudolph--Ah, Rudolph doesn't care a b.u.t.ton's worth about me, I know. The funny part is that he doesn't know it. He has simply a.s.sumed he is devoted to me, because all respectable people are devoted to their wives. I can a.s.sure you, _mon ami_, he would be a veritable Oth.e.l.lo, if there were any scandal, and would infinitely prefer the bolster to the divorce-court. He would have us followed and torn apart by wild policemen."

Mr. Charteris meditated for a moment.

"Rudolph, as you are perfectly aware, would simply deplore the terribly lax modern notions in regard to marriage and talk to newspaper reporters about this much--" he measured it between thumb and forefinger --"concerning the beauty and chivalry of the South. He would do nothing more. I question if Rudolph Musgrave would ever in any circ.u.mstances be capable of decisive action."

"Ah, don't make fun of Rudolph!" she cried, quickly. "Rudolph can't help it if he is conscientious and in consequence rather depressing to live with. And for all that he so often plays the jacka.s.s-fool about women, like Grandma Pendomer, he is a man, Jack--a well-meaning, clean and dunderheaded man! You aren't; you are puny and frivolous, and you sneer too much, and you are making a fool of me, and--and that's why I like you, I suppose. Oh, I wish I were good! I have always tried to be good, and there doesn't seem to be a hatpin in the world that makes a halo sit comfortably. Now, Jack, you know I've tried to be good! I've never let you kiss me, and I've never let you hold my hand--until to-day-- and--and----"

Patricia paused, and laughed.

"But we were talking of Rudolph," she said, with a touch of weariness.

"Rudolph has all the virtues that a woman most admires until she attempts to live in the same house with them."

"I thank you," said Mr. Charteris, "for the high opinion you entertain of my moral character." He bestowed a reproachful sigh upon her, and continued: "At any rate, Rudolph Musgrave has been an unusually lucky man--the luckiest that I know of."

Patricia had risen as if to go. She turned her big purple eyes on him for a moment.

"You--you think so?" she queried, hesitatingly.

Afterward she spread out her hands in a helpless gesture, and laughed for no apparent reason, and sat down again.

"Why?" said Patricia.

It took Charteris fully an hour to point out all the reasons.

Patricia told him very frankly that she considered him to be talking nonsense, but she seemed quite willing to listen.

II

Sunset was approaching on the following afternoon when Rudolph Musgrave, fresh from Lichfield,--whither, as has been recorded, the bringing out of the July number of the _Lichfield Historical a.s.sociations Quarterly Magazine_ had called him,--came out on the front porch at Matocton. He had arrived on the afternoon train, about an hour previously, in time to superintend little Roger's customary evening transactions with an astounding quant.i.ty of bread and milk; and, Roger abed, his father, having dressed at once for supper, found himself ready for that meal somewhat in advance of the rest of the house-party.

Indeed, only one of them was visible at this moment--a woman, who was reading on a rustic bench some distance from the house, and whose back was turned to him. The poise of her head, however, was not unfamiliar; also, it is not everyone who has hair that is like a nimbus of thrice-polished gold.

Colonel Musgrave threw back his shoulders, and drew a deep breath.

Subsequently, with a fine air of unconcern, he inspected the view from the porch, which was, in fact, quite worthy of his attention.

Interesting things have happened at Matocton--many events that have been preserved in the local mythology, not always to the credit of the old Musgraves, and a few which have slipped into a modest niche in history.

It was, perhaps, on these that Colonel Musgrave pondered so intently.

Once the farthingaled and red-heeled gentry came in sluggish barges to Matocton, and the broad river on which the estate faces was thick with bellying sails; since the days of railroads, one approaches the mansion through the maple-grove in the rear, and enters ignominiously by the back-door.

The house stands on a considerable elevation. The main portion, with its hipped roof and mullioned windows, is very old, but the two wings that stretch to the east and west are comparatively modern, and date back little over a century. Time has mellowed them into harmony with the major part of the house, and the kindly Virginia creeper has done its utmost to conceal the fact that they are constructed of plebeian bricks which were baked in this country; but Matocton was Matocton long before these wings were built, and a mere affair of yesterday, such as the Revolution, antedates them. They were not standing when Tarleton paid his famous visit to Matocton.

In the main hall, you may still see the stairs up which he rode on horseback, and the slashes which his saber hacked upon the hand-rail.

To the front of the mansion lies a close-shaven lawn, dotted with sundry oaks and maples; and thence, the formal gardens descend in six broad terraces. There is when summer reigns no lovelier spot than this bright medley of squares and stars and triangles and circles--all Euclid in flowerage--which glow with mult.i.tudinous colors where the sun strikes. You will find no new flowers at Matocton, though. Here are verbenas, poppies, lavender and marigolds, sweet-william, hollyhocks and columbine, phlox, and larkspur, and meadowsweet, and heart's-ease, just as they were when Thomasine Musgrave, Matocton's first chatelaine, was wont to tend them; and of all floral parvenus the gardens are innocent.

Box-hedges mark the walkways.

The seventh terrace was, until lately, uncultivated, the trees having been cleared away to afford pasturage. It is now closely planted with beeches, none of great size, and extends to a tangled thicket of fieldpines and cedar and sa.s.safras and blackberry bushes, which again masks a drop of some ten feet to the river.

The beach here is narrow; at high tide, it is rarely more than fifteen feet in breadth, and is in many places completely submerged. Past this, the river lapses into the horizon line without a break, save on an extraordinarily clear day when Bigelow's Island may be seen as a dim smudge upon the west.

All these things, Rudolph Musgrave regarded with curiously deep interest for one who had seen them so many times before. Then, with a shrug of the shoulders, he sauntered forward across the lawn. He had planned several appropriate speeches, but, when it came to the point of giving them utterance, he merely held out his hand in an awkward fashion, and said:

"Anne!"

She looked up from her reading.

She did this with two red-brown eyes that had no apparent limits to their depth. Her hand was soft; it seemed quite lost in the broad palm of a man's hand.

"Dear Rudolph," she said, as simply as though they had parted yesterday, "it's awfully good to see you again."

Colonel Musgrave cleared his throat, and sat down beside her.

A moment later Colonel Musgrave cleared his throat once more.

Then Mrs. Charteris laughed. It was a pleasant laugh--a clear, rippling carol of clean mirth that sparkled in her eyes, and dimpled in her wholesome cheeks.

"So! do you find it very, very awkward?"

"Awkward!" he cried. Their glances met in a flash of comprehension which seemed to purge the air. Musgrave was not in the least self-conscious now. He laughed, and lifted an admonitory forefinger.

"Oh, good Cynara," he said, "I am not what I was. And so I cannot do it, my dear--I really cannot possibly live up to the requirements of being a Buried Past. In a proper story-book or play, I would have to come back from New Zealand or the Transvaal, all covered with glory and epaulets, and have found you in the last throes of consumption: instead, you have fattened, Anne, which a Buried Past never does, and which shows a sad lack of appreciation for my feelings. And I--ah, my dear, I must confess that my hair is growing gray, and that my life has not been entirely empty without you, and that I ate and enjoyed two mutton-chops at luncheon, though I knew I should see you to-day. I am afraid we are neither of us up to heroics, Anne. So let's be sensible and comfy, my dear."

"You brute!" she cried--not looking irreparably angry, yet not without a real touch of vexation; "don't you know that every woman cherishes the picture of her former lovers sitting alone in the twilight, and growing lackadaisical over undying memories and faded letters? And you--you approach me, after I don't dare to think how many years, as calmly as if I were an old schoolmate of your mother's, and attempt to talk to me about mutton-chops! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Rudolph Musgrave. You might, at least, have started a little at seeing me, and have clasped your hand to your heart, and have said, 'You, you!' or something of the sort. I had every right to expect it."

Mrs. Charteris pouted, and then trifled for a moment with the pages of her book.

"And--and I want to tell you that I am sorry for the way I spoke to you--that night," she swiftly said. Anne did not look at him. "Women don't understand things that are perfectly simple to men, I suppose--I mean--that is, Jack said--"

"That you ought to apologize? It was very like him"--and Colonel Musgrave smiled to think how like John Charteris it was. "Jack is quite wonderful," he observed.

She looked up, saying impulsively, "Rudolph, you don't know how happy he makes me."

"Heartless woman, and would you tempt me to end the tragedy of my life with a Shakesperian fifth act of poisonings and a.s.sa.s.sination? I spurn you, temptress. For, after all, it was an unpleasantly long while ago we went mad for each other," Musgrave announced, and he smiled. "I fancy that the boy and girl we knew of are as dead now as Nebuchadnezzar.

'Marian's married, and I sit here alive and merry at'--well, not at forty year, unluckily--"

"If you continue in that heartless strain, I shall go into the house,"

Mrs. Charteris protested.

Her indignation was exaggerated, but it was not altogether feigned; women cannot quite pardon a rejected suitor who marries and is content.

They wish him all imaginable happiness and prosperity, of course; and they are honestly interested in his welfare; but it seems unexpectedly callous in him. And besides his wife is so perfectly commonplace.