"You said, Maida, that you intended to come instead of answering my letter--that you started?"

"I did. I was at Narwhal Junction waiting for the train, when I met a very old friend on the platform--going to Clam Beach, just as I was coming away. I could not resist going back with my old friend, it was so long since we had met. And after that, the matter of the sociology cla.s.s escaped my memory."

"Very strange. Is Clam Beach a scene of such rackety dissipation that people forget their private affairs? I had inferred from your descriptions that it was quite retired--a place to rest in."

"My friend and I had not met for years. The meeting engrossed me."

Miss Rolph glanced in Maida's face, one sharp short glance, like an inquisitive bird, and with the flicker of a smile which did not spread beyond the corner of her mouth, inquired--

"And did--she?--your friend, take as engrossing an interest in you, my dear? Such friendships are rare, as well as precious."

"I did not say 'she,' Miss Rolph. It was a gentleman."

"I imagined as much, my dear; but you were so hampered by your noun of epicene gender, that I thought it best to be rid of it."

Maida blushed. "Oh, Miss Rolph! What will you think of me?--of my fitness as a pioneer in Woman's cause?"

"Think, my dear? That you are a woman like the rest of us. This was a feature in your nature that seemed missing. The absence of a universal weakness does not necessarily argue strength. It may arise from insensibility, and merely show an incomplete nature. I think better of you, perhaps. Go on."

"I had known him long ago. My first situation, when I began to teach, was in his uncle's house. He was a student at Harvard, but spent his vacations at home with us. His cousins were mere children; his uncle and aunt had their own affairs; I was his sole companion. He taught me much. It was a happy time. We were both young, fresh and hopeful, and--well---- He is the only young man I ever saw much of. He expected to make his fortune right away, and we---- But I cannot speak of it....

"That was ten years ago. We corresponded--for the first year or so.

After that we lost sight of one another. I came to Montpelier; he--was making his fortune. He recognised me on the platform at Narwhal Junction. I was so pleased to find that he remembered me. He asked if I was married, and he told me that he was not. He went back with me to Clam Beach--or so I thought. Perhaps I ought to put it the other way, and say that it was I who went with him; but at any rate we went together, and we were together there all the time. He knew n.o.body but myself, and he did not care to make acquaintances, it seemed; and he stayed on, though at first he had spoken of leaving in two days.

And so it appeared to me--is there not some excuse for me, Miss Rolph?--that we were taking up our intimacy just where we had laid it down before."

"Ah!" said Miss Rolph. The bird-like look of the philosophic investigator had left her features now, and she was listening with genuine interest. She had still a heart, away down deep below her theories and professional fads, and there was perennial interest for her in a kindness between man and woman; which may have been unworthy of her position, but was as salt to preserve her nature sound and wholesome.

"What is his name, my dear? One follows a story so much better for knowing the names."

"Roe--Gilbert Roe. Has it not a pleasant sound?"

Miss Rolph's eyelids quivered in a momentary start. Then she looked down into her lap, compressing her lips, and making as if she would show no sign till all was told.

"He stayed on more than a week. He is there now, I daresay. He was with me constantly--sat beside me at table. People said it was a sure case, and congratulated me; and I--well--what else could I think? I believed them. Looking back now, with my insight cleared by what came after, I am bound to own that he said nothing in all that time. When I tried to hark back to the community of feeling that had subsisted between us long ago, he disregarded and pa.s.sed it by. I am not accusing him of behaving badly, remember. It is my own foolish credulity alone which I have to blame; and oh, Miss Rolph, what humiliation it has brought on me! It hunted me away home here. I dared not, for shame, go back to Clam Beach, even to bring away my things."

"I do not follow."

"We went one day--it was yesterday, but it seems like years since, for the gulf of misery I have waded across since then. There was a clam-bake at Blue Fish Creek, and we were there. Everybody was there.

We were sitting apart in a shady place, waiting till the heat would temper down. He was smoking or reading the paper, I forget which. All of a sudden he jumped up and left me. I looked round. He was addressing a lady who seemed unwilling to hear him. She tried to pa.s.s on without noticing him. She had taken no notice of him at the Beach, though they had been living under the same roof for a week. He persisted in accosting her, and angry words pa.s.sed between them. She said she was free of him. He would not admit it."

"Who was the lady?"

"A Miss Hillyard of Chicago or somewhere. I am not acquainted with her."

"That is my niece! The Gilbert Roe you speak of must be her husband."

"Husband? Ah! that may explain the cruelty of what he did next. And it was cruel and humiliating to me! And there need have been no occasion for it, if he had told me at the first that he was married. She taunted him with my friendship. I heard her. And he--was it manly of him?--he actually proposed to bring her to me, to ask if there was anything between us more than old acquaintanceship!" Maida's voice rose into a cry as she said it. She clenched her hands; and cheeks, brow, neck, grew scarlet, and then she buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed.

"It must be Rose, my niece, and her husband. I would believe anything that could be told me of them. There never were two such ill-regulated young things brought together, I do believe--so fond, so foolish, so obstinate and wayward. There never was such a fiasco as their married life has proved. Both handsome, both clever, both well off, and each, I believe, most truly attached to the other; yet neither would forbear to gratify a whim, neither would submit to be crossed in the smallest trifle by the other. They squabbled away for not much over a year, and then the Divorce Court came in and parted them. A pair of unruly children! It was whipped they should have been, and made promise to kiss and be friends. Instead of that, they are divorced and discredited for life, and nothing good need be expected ever to happen to either of them any more. These ill-considered changes in our customs are deplorable. It is good to rescue the downtrodden from oppression, but only evil can come of confounding liberty with licence."

"Perhaps you may be mistaken," Maida answered, looking up and drying her eyes. It consoled her to hear her affronters soundly scolded, even in their absence. "Hillyard is no such uncommon name. This lady pa.s.sed for unmarried at the hotel, and they say she is engaged to be married to a gentleman from Canada. Yes, by the by, it was to remonstrate about that, that Mr Roe spoke to her."

"So the Divorce Court, even, does not end their squabbles! Whom was she said to be engaged to?"

"A Mr Naylor--a real nice gentleman, and devoted to her. Every one was talking about the beautiful presents of jewellery he had ordered her from New York."

"Naylor? What is he like?"

"He is real nice, I should say, by his looks, and very rich. He has some nieces with him, well dressed and real aristocratic. Belong to the first families, I guess, and quite thick with all the first people at the Beach. No culture to speak of, but high-strung--very!"

"How old is this Mr Naylor, should you suppose? and what is he like?

Is he a tall man, now, for instance?"

"He is not tall--no. Thick-set, almost stout; a heap shorter than Gil----Mr Roe. Middle-aged. His hair is beginning to turn. Not old, though certainly not young, but with a nice kindly face, and real cheerful. I hope she will stick to him. It would be real distressing if she were to jilt him, and I don't see what call a divorced husband can have to interfere. What were divorces made for, if not to keep bad husbands from bothering?"

Miss Rolph had been moving uneasily in her chair. She stood up now, looking agitated but very firm.

"I believe I know this Mr Naylor. The engagement must be broken off without an hour's delay. The idea is horrible!... I thought I had done with this awful girl. When she left her husband, and refused to listen to right principle and common decency, I washed my hands of her. But this---- It is an unimaginable horror! When does the next train leave for Clam Beach, I wonder? How do you go?"

"You cannot go to-night You will not be able to connect," Maida answered in some disgust. The idea of Naylor's coming in and securing the lady, and leaving Roe forlorn, which she had begun to conjure up, was distinctly consoling. She did not like to think of the energetic Miss Rolph intervening to upset the pleasing possibility.

Miss Rolph spread out a map. "There is Lippenstock, a station where all trains stop, close by. I can book for there, and drive over in the evening."

Maida sighed. "If you go, Miss Rolph, would you kindly mention to Mrs Denwiddie that I am here? You know her, I daresay; you seem to know every one at the Beach. Say I got a telegram--say anything. She is sure to be thinking something dreadful about my going away so sudden-like--without a word, or taking away my things."

Miss Rolph, in her agitation, looked round on Maida. She could not help smiling, notwithstanding her anxiety. The world is filled with such a tangle of conflicting interests, and each of us has room in his little brain only for the few which connect with himself.

"I do not know the lady, my dear; but I shall mention at the office that you were suddenly called home. I will settle your bill, and bid them pack up and forward your things."

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

"YOU MAY TRUST ME TO HOLD MY TONGUE!"

The dance at Blue Fish Creek was a success of its kind--the kind which might be expected. It was held in the "town hall," a sort of loft above the station of the village fire-engine, the one large room of the place; used on Sundays as a church by some sect which had not attained to a meeting-house of its own, as a singing-school on winter nights when the younger villagers grew tired of remaining at home, and as general place of gathering where the people met to discuss politics or to be entertained by itinerant players.

The hall was crowded and very hot. Three fiddles supplied the squeaking music of catgut in agony, while the young and active disported themselves amid clouds of dust of their own raising. The dances were complicated and strange, being of the kind in which an earlier generation loved to take exercise; but the motley crowd was happy--poussetted, cha.s.sied, and performed feats which I can neither name nor spell, with a will.

Margaret Naylor had had a great deal of young Petty's company, and was rather weary of him. From the moment when her uncle had bidden her farewell, her attention to the young man's conversation had begun to wander. Exert himself as he might, he failed to interest her, and he grew depressed himself in consequence. In the hall he persuaded her to dance once, but she refused point-blank when he ventured to ask her again. He felt dispirited, and soon withdrew from the festive throng, going out into the night, which had fallen dark and starless, and wandering round within hearing of the fiddles and the stamping feet, like a Peri shut out of Paradise--detesting the sounds of mirth in which he had no share, but unable to drag himself away. Even tobacco, that silent comforter of the miserable, failed to soothe him, and he hung around the entrance of the hall, to which he had no desire to return.

It was growing late. The stablemen had put the horses to the vehicles for the home-going, and ranged them in double row to await the breaking up of the gathering; but still the fiddlers plied the cruel bow upon the screeching catgut, and still the steady tramp of the dancers went on as briskly as ever. Petty lighted a fresh cigar, and told himself that his time of waiting had nearly expired. As the thought formed itself, a figure pa.s.sed him coming down from the hall.

It was m.u.f.fled, so far as the lightness of summer attire would admit.

Something was drawn over the head which made it unrecognisable as it pa.s.sed quickly from under the dim lamp on the stairs into the darkness without. It stood for an instant accustoming itself to the gloom. He could see it turn about as if looking for an expected object. There was an omnibus provided with a lantern in the line of vehicles, which weakly illumined a little circle around it, and lent a few feeble indications as to more distant objects. The figure looked around again, and then, in a tremulous voice raised little above a whisper, it uttered the one word "Walter!"

Walter Petty's heart bounded into his throat, and beat tumultuously, like a startled bird, against his ribs. This was an altogether unexpected turn. She--there was no question as to who she was, when once that dear voice sounded--she called him by his name! It was her first time to do it, and he had not dared to hope she ever would. The cigar was tossed into the gutter in a twinkling, and he was at her side, too deeply moved to trust himself to speak.