Chapter XI…

Chapter XI

She was under the great rose-tree. Dressed in an old white gown of a thick cotton material, she was sitting on the ground, with her crossed arms resting on the bench, and her head laid on her arms; her straw hat was off, the rose-tree shading her from the afternoon sun. Carlos Mateo, mounting guard near, eyed Winthrop sharply as he approached. But though Garda of course heard his steps, she did not move; he came up and stood beside her, still she did not raise her head. He could see her face in profile, as it lay on her arm; it was pale, the long lashes were wet with tears.

"Garda," he said.

"Yes, I know who it is," she answered without looking up;--"it is Mr. Winthrop. Mamma has asked you to come and talk to me, I suppose; but it is of no use." And he could see the tears drop down again, one by one.

"I should be glad to come on my own account, without being asked, if I could be of any use to you, Garda."

"You cannot," she murmured, hopelessly.

His speech had sounded in his own ears far too formal and cold for this grieving child--for the girl looked not more than fourteen as she sat there with her bowed head on her arms. He resisted, however, the impulse to treat her as though she had been indeed a child, to stoop down and try to comfort her.

"I am very sorry to find you so unhappy," he went on, still feeling that his words were too perfunctory.

"I don't believe it; I wish I did," answered Garda, who was never perfunctory, but always natural. "If I did, perhaps I could talk to you about it, and then it wouldn't be quite so hard."

"Talk to me whether you believe it or not," suggested Winthrop.

"I cannot; you never liked him."

A frown showed itself on Winthrop's face; but Garda could not see it, and he took good care that his voice should not betray irritation as he answered: "But as I like you, won't that do as well? You ought to feel safe enough with me to say anything."

"Oh, why won't you be good to me?" said the girl, in a weeping tone, abandoning the argument. "I shall die if everybody is so cruel when I am suffering so."

"I am not cruel," said Winthrop. He had seated himself on the bench near her, he put out his hand and laid it for a moment on her bright brown hair.

The touch seemed very grateful to Garda; instantly she moved towards him, put her arms on his knee, and laid her head down again, in much the same attitude she often assumed when with Margaret Harold, save that she did not look up; her eyes remained downcast, the lashes heavy with tears. "I cannot bear it--he has gone away," she said, letting her sorrow come forth. "I liked him so much--so much better than I liked any one else. And now he has gone, and I am left! And there was no preparation--it was so sudden! Only yesterday we had that beautiful walk on Patricio beach (don't you remember?--I called to you as we passed), and he said nothing about going. I can never tell you how long and dreadful the time has been since I got his note this morning."

"Don't try," said Winthrop. "Think of other things. Some of us are left, make the best of us; we are all very fond of you, Garda." He felt a great wrath against Lucian Spenser; but he could not show any indication of it lest he should lose the confidence she was reposing in him, the confidence which made her come and lay her crossed arms on his knee and tell him all her grief. This confidence had other restrictive aspects, it showed that she regarded him as a species (somewhat younger, perhaps) of Mr. Moore or Dr. Kirby; Winthrop was acutely conscious that he could not play that part in the least; it certainly behooved him, therefore, to do the best he could with his own.

"Yes, you are all kind, I know," Garda had answered. "But Lucian was different, Lucian amused me so."

"Amused? Was that it?" said Winthrop, surprised by the word she had chosen.

"Of course," answered Garda, in the same dejected tone. "Is there anything better than to be amused? I am sure I don't know anything. I was so dull here, and he made everything delightful; but now--" Her tears rose again as the contrast came over her.

"Perhaps, now that you have called our attention to it, the rest of us might contrive to be more amusing," said Winthrop, with a tinge of sarcasm in his tone.

But Garda did not notice the sarcasm. "No," she answered, seriously, "you could not. You might try; but no, you could not," she repeated, with conviction. "For it wasn't anything he did, it was Lucian himself. Besides, I liked so much to look at him--he was so beautiful. Don't you remember the dimple that came when he threw back his head and laughed?" She moved a little so that she could rest her chin on her clasped hands, and look up into Winthrop's face; her eyes met his dreamily; she saw him, but she was thinking of Spenser.

"Torres has a dimple too," answered Winthrop, rather desperately. For between the beauty of the girl herself, made more appealing as it was now by her sorrow, her confiding trust that he was prepared to play on demand the part of grandfather or uncle--between this and her extraordinary, frank dwelling upon the attractive points of Lucian Spenser, together with the wrath he felt against that accomplished young engineer--he was not, perhaps, so fully in possession of his accustomed calmness as usual. But she was a child, of course; he always came back to that; she was nothing but a child.

It was true that poor Torres had a dimple, as Winthrop had said. It was in his lean dark cheek, and everybody was astonished to see it there; once there, everybody wondered where it found space to play. It did not find it in depth, and had to spread itself laterally; it was a very thin dimple on a bone.

But Garda paid no attention to this attempt at a diversion. "Did you ever see such eyes as Lucian's, such a deep, deep blue?" she demanded of Winthrop's gray ones.

"Very blue," he answered. He was succeeding in keeping all expression out of his face (if there had been any, it would not have been of the pleasantest). He felt, however, that his tone was dry.

But acquiescence was enough for Garda, she did not notice his tone; she continued the expression of her recollections. "When the light shone across his hair--don't you remember the color? It was like real gold. He looked then like--like a sun-god," she concluded, bringing out the word with ardor.

"What do you know of sun-gods?" said Winthrop, endeavoring to bear himself agreeably in these intimate confidences. "How many of the warm-complexioned gentlemen have you known?"

"I mean the Kirbys' picture," answered Garda, with much definiteness, rejecting sun-gods in general as a topic, as she had the dimple of poor Torres; "you must remember the one I mean."

Winthrop did remember; it was a copy of the Phoebus Apollo of Guido's "Aurora" at Rome.

"Oh," continued Garda, without waiting for reply, "what a comfort it is to talk to you! Mamma has been so strange, she has looked at me as though I were saying something very wrong. I have only told her how much I admired him--just as I have been telling you; is that wrong?"

"Not the least in the world," answered Winthrop, who had at last decided upon the course he should pursue. "But it won't last long, you know, it's only a fancy; you have seen so few people, shut up in this one little place. When you have been about more, your taste will change."

Garda did not pay much heed to these generalities arrayed before her, nor did he expect that she would. But this was the tone he intended to take; later she would recall it. All she said now was, "Oh, please stay ever so long, all the evening; I cannot let you go, now that you are so good to me." And taking his hand with a caressing little motion, she laid her soft cheek against it.

"Suppose we walk a while," suggested Winthrop, rising. He said to himself that perhaps he should feel less like a grandfather if he were on his feet; perhaps, too, she would treat him less like one.

Garda obeyed him directly. She was as docile as possible. When they were a dozen yards off, Carlos Mateo began to follow them slowly, taking very high steps with his thin legs, and pausing carefully before each one, with his upheld claw in the air, as if considering the exact point in the sand where he should place it next. They went to the live-oak avenue. "How long do you think it will hurt me so, hurt me as it does now--his going away?" the girl asked, sadly.

"Not long," replied Winthrop, in a matter-of-course tone. "It's always so when we are parted from our friends; perhaps you have never been parted from a friend before?"

"That is true, I have not," she answered, a little consoled. "But no," she went on, in a changed voice, "it's not like that, it's not like other friends; I cared so much for him! You might all go away, every one of you, and I shouldn't care as I do now." And with all her figure drooping, as though it had been struck by a blighting wind, she put her hand over her eyes again.

"Take my arm," said Winthrop; "we will go down to the landing, where you can rest on the bench; you are tired out, poor child."

Again she obeyed him without opposition, and they walked on; but her breath came in long sobs, and she kept her little hand over her eyes, trusting to his arm to guide her. He felt that it was better that she should talk of Spenser than sob in that way, and, bracing himself with patience, he began.

"How was it that he entertained you so? what did he do?" he asked. There was no indefiniteness about that "he;" there was only one "he" for Garda.

She took the bait immediately. "Oh, I don't know. He always made me laugh." Then her face brightened as recollection woke. "He was always saying things that I had never thought of--not like the things that other people say," she went on; "and he said them, too, in a way that always pleased me so much. Generally he surprised me, and I like to be surprised."

"Yes, I see; it was the novelty."

"No," answered Garda, with a reasonable air, "it couldn't have been the novelty alone, because, don't you see, there were you. You were novel--nothing could have been more so; and yet you never began to give me any such amusement as Lucian did."

Evert Winthrop remarked to himself that a girl had to be very pretty, very pretty indeed, before a man could enjoy such comparisons as these from her lips. But Garda Thorne's beauty was enchanting, sometimes he had thought it irresistibly so; to be wandering with this exquisite young creature on his arm, in this soft air, on this far southern shore--yes--one could put up with a good deal for that.

They reached the landing; she seated herself on the bench that stood at the bank's edge, under the last oak, and folded her hands passively. A little dilapidated platform of logs, covered with planks, ran out a few yards into the water; the old boat of the Thornes lay moored at its end. Winthrop took a seat on the bench also. "Tell me, Garda," he said, "have you ever thought of going north?"

"I have thought of it to-day. But there's no use, we cannot go."

"Don't you remember that you wanted to see snow, and the great winter storms?"

"Did I?" said Garda, vaguely. "I should like to go to Washington," she added, with more animation. "But what is the use of talking about it? We cannot go." And she relapsed again. "We cannot ever go anywhere, unless we should be able to sell the place, and we shall never be able to sell it, because nobody wants it; nobody could want it."

"It's a pleasant old place," remarked Winthrop.

A sudden light came into Garda's eyes. "Mr. Winthrop," she said, eagerly, "I had forgotten your odd tastes; perhaps you really do like East Angels? I remember I thought so once, or rather mamma did; mamma thought you might buy it. I told her I did not want you to feel that it was urged upon you; but everything is different to me now, and I wish you would buy it. I suppose that you are so rich that it wouldn't matter to you, and it would make us so happy."

"Us?"

"Oh yes, to sell it has long been mamma's hope. I won't say her only one, because mamma has so many hopes; but this has been the principal one, the one upon which everything else hung. So few people come to Gracias--people of our position, I mean (for of course we wouldn't sell it to any one else)--that it has seemed impossible; there have been only you and Lucian, and Lucian, you know, has no money at all. But you have a great deal, they all say, and I almost think you really do like the place, you look about you so when you come."

"I like it greatly; better than any other place I have seen here."

"He likes it greatly; better than any other place he has seen here," repeated Garda, in a delighted tone. She rose and began to walk up and down the low bank, clapping her hands softly, and smiling to herself. Then, laughing, she came back to him, her pretty teeth shining beneath her parted lips. "You are the kindest man in the whole world," she announced, standing before him. Winthrop laughed also to see how suddenly happy and light-hearted she had become. "Let us go and tell mamma," continued Garda. "Poor mamma--I haven't been nice to her. But now I will be; I shall tell her that you will buy the place, there's nothing nicer than that. Then we can go to Washington."

"It will take some time, you know," Winthrop suggested.

Her face fell. "Much?" she asked.

"I hardly know; probably a good deal could be done in the course of the summer. There may be difficulty about getting a clear title; complications about taxes, tax claims, or the old Spanish grants." He thought it was as well she should comprehend, in the beginning, that there would be no going to Washington, for the present at least.

"But in our case there can be no complications, we are the old Spaniards ourselves," said Garda, confidently.

He was silent.

"It would be very hard to have to wait long," she went on, dejected by his manner.

"Yes. But it's something to have it sold, isn't it?"

"Of course it is, it's everything," she responded, taking heart again. "And even if it is long, I am young, I can wait; Lucian is young too; and--I don't think he will forget me, do you?"

"I want to advise one thing--that you should not talk so constantly about Spenser," suggested Winthrop.

"Not talk about him? It's all I care for." She drew her arm from his, and moved away. Stopping at a little distance, she gazed back at him with a frown.

"I know it is," answered Winthrop, admiring the beauty of her face in anger. "My suggestion is that you talk about him only to me."

"Then I shall have to see you very often," she answered, breaking into smiles, and coming to take his arm again of her own accord. They went back through the avenue towards the house.

They found Mrs. Thorne in the drawing-room. She appeared to have dressed herself afresh from head to foot, her little black gown was exquisitely neat, her hair under her widow's cap was very smooth; she had a volume of Emerson in her hand. She looked guardedly at Winthrop and her daughter as they came into the room; her face was steady and composed, she was ready for anything.

Garda kissed her, and sat down on the edge of her chair, with one arm round her small waist, giving her a little hug to emphasize her words.

"Oh, mamma, think of it! Mr. Winthrop wants to buy the place."

Mrs. Thorne turned her eyes towards Winthrop. They still had a guarded expression, her face remained carefully grave.

"I have long admired the place, Mrs. Thorne," he began, in answer to her glance. "I have thought for some time that if you should ever feel willing to sell it--"

"Willing? Delighted!" interpolated Garda.

"--I should be very glad to become the purchaser," he concluded; while Garda laughed from pure gladness at hearing the statement repeated in clear, business-like phrase.

Mrs. Thorne gave her little cough, and sat looking at the floor. "It would be a great sacrifice," she answered at last. "There would be so many old associations broken, so many precious traditions given up--"

"Traditions?" repeated Garda, in her sweet, astonished voice. "But, mamma, we cannot live forever upon traditions."

"We have done so, or nearly so, for some time, and not without happiness, I think," replied Mrs. Thorne, with dignity. "Take one thing alone, Edgarda, one thing that we should have to relinquish--the family burying-ground; it has been maintained here unbroken for over two hundred years."

"Mamma, Mr. Winthrop would leave us that."

"Even if he should, there's not room for a house there that I am aware of," replied Mrs. Thorne, funereally.

Winthrop with difficulty refrained from a laugh. But he did refrain. He saw that the relief of having her daughter returned to her, freed from the incomprehensible grief that had swept over her so strangely, this, combined with the suddenly expanding prospect of a fulfilment of her long-cherished dream of selling the place, had so filled her constantly anxious mind with busy plans, pressing upon each other's heels, that beyond them she had only room for a general feeling that she must not appear too eager, that she must, as a Thorne, say something that should seem like an objection--though in reality it would not be one.

But if Winthrop refrained from a laugh, Garda did not. "Oh, mamma, how funny you are to-day!" she said, embracing her again with a merry peal.

"I am not aware that I am funny," replied Mrs. Thorne, with solemnity.

"Why, yes, you are, mamma. Do we want to live in the burying-ground?" said Garda, with another peal.

But Mrs. Thorne preserved her composed air. It almost seemed as if that indeed might be her wish.

Winthrop took leave soon afterwards, in spite of Garda's entreaty that he should stay longer. He had administered a good deal of comfort, it may have been, too, that he had come to the end of his capacity to hear more, that day at least, about Lucian Spenser. He had reached the bottom of the old stairway, and gone some distance down the stone-flagged corridor towards the door, when he heard Garda's voice again:

"Mr. Winthrop?" He looked up. She had come half-way down the stairs, and was standing with one hand on the carved balustrade, her white figure outlined against the high dark panelling of the other side. "I shall never be able to keep silence as you wish, unless I see you very soon again," she said.

He smiled, without making answer in words, for Raquel had now appeared, coming from her own domain to open the lower door. Raquel always paid this attention, though no one asked her to do it. Mrs. Thorne, indeed, disapproving of it and her, never rang to let her know that her guests were departing. This made no difference to Raquel, or rather it gave her the greater insistence; when guests were in the house she now made a point of giving up all work while they remained, in order to be in readiness for this parting ceremonial. Raquel had a high regard for ceremonials; she had been brought up by the Old Madam.

Winthrop carried out his project. Asking the good offices of Dr. Kirby as appraiser, he took the first steps towards the purchase of East Angels. It soon became apparent that the steps would be many. The Dueros having been, as Garda had said, "the old Spaniards" themselves, there was no trouble in this case about the Spanish grants; theirs was a bona fide one. But there were other intricacies, and in studying them Winthrop learned the history of the place almost back to the landing of Ponce de Leon. The lands had been granted in the beginning by the crown of Spain (of course over the heads of the unimportant natives) to Admiral Juan de Duero in 1585. They had been regranted (over the heads of the Dueros), seventy years later, by the crown of England, to an English nobleman, who, without taking possession, had sold his grant, and comfortably enjoyed the profits; the buyer meanwhile had crossed the ocean only to lose his life by shipwreck off the low Florida coast, and his descendants had, it appeared, sent an intermittent cry across from England that they should assuredly come over, and take possession. They never did, however; and the Dueros of course considered their claim as merely so much unimportant insanity. Later, at the beginning of the British occupation in 1763, the Dueros themselves had transferred part of their domain to other owners. Then, upon the return of the Spaniards, twenty years afterwards, they had calmly taken possession of the property again, without going through the form of asking permission, the new owners meanwhile having gone north, to cast their fortunes with the raw young republic called the United States; the descendants of these new owners had also at intervals sent up a cry, which echoed through the title rather more clearly than the earlier one from England. The place had been three times pillaged by buccaneers, who at one period were fond of picnic-parties on Florida shores; it had been through several attacks by Indians, in one of which the stone sugar-mill had been destroyed. Since the long warm peninsula had come into the possession of the United States these same lands had suffered several partitions (on paper) from forced sales (also on paper), owing to unpaid taxes, the confusion having been much increased by the late war. Tax claims in large numbers lifted their heads, like a crop of quick-growing malodorous weeds, at the first intimation that a bona fide purchaser had appeared, a man from the North who had the eccentricity of wishing, in the first place, for such a worn-out piece of property as East Angels, and, in the second, for a clear title to it; this last seemed an eccentricity indeed, when the Dueros themselves had lived there so long without one. Evert Winthrop persevered; he persevered with patience, for he was amused by the local history his researches unearthed. Dr. Kirby persevered also, but he persevered with impatience; he was especially incensed against the attorney who represented a portion of the later tax titles. This attorney, a new-comer in Gracias, was a tall, narrow-chested young man from Maine, who had hoped to obtain health and a modest livelihood in the little southern town; it was plain that he would obtain neither, if long opposed to Reginald Kirby.

"Sir," said the Doctor, who had been especially exasperated by a tax title which stood in the name of a certain Increase Kittredge, described as a resident, "there is collusion in this evidently. There is no such person in Gracias-a-Dios, and I venture to say there is no such person in the State; it is some northern freebooter who is acting through you. Kittredge," he repeated, putting on his spectacles to read the name again. "And Increase!" he added, throwing back his head and looking about the room, as if calling the very furniture to witness. "No southerner, high or low, sir, had ever such a name as that since the universe was created; it's Yankee, Yankee to the core, as--if you will kindly allow me to mention it--is your own also."

The youthful attorney, whose name was Jeremiah Boise, sat looking at his pen-holder with a discouraged air; he was very young, and he admired the Doctor profoundly, which made it worse.

"And I am surprised," continued the Doctor, changing his tone to one of simple gravity, "that you should be willing to lend yourself to these plots and jobs" (the Doctor brought out these two words with rich round utterance), "which must, of course, act more or less upon the nerves, you who are so far from robust, who have so evidently a tendency"--here the Doctor paused, surveying Jeremiah from head to foot--"a tendency to weakness of the breathing powers."

The poor young man, who knew that he had, looked so pallid, nevertheless, under this professional statement of his case that the kind-hearted Doctor instantly repented. He put out his hand, "There, there," he said; "don't look so disheartened. Come to my office and let me see you, I venture to say I can set you up in no time--in no time at all. I presume you haven't the least idea how to take care of yourself, it's extraordinary how people go about the world one mass of imprudence. Have the kindness to stand up for a moment. Now draw a long breath. Hum--hum--I thought so; no absolute harm done as yet." And the Doctor tapped and listened, and tapped and listened again, with as much interest as though the suspected chest had belonged to a southern Kirby instead of to a Jeremiah from Maine. "That will do; thank you. You must come and see me this very afternoon; come about five. I shall give you some rules to follow. One of the first will be that you live more generously, enjoy yourself more (you northerners don't seem to know how). Never fear, man; we'll build you up in a few months so that you won't know yourself!" And cordially shaking his hand, the Doctor took leave--only to come back and remark, standing upon the threshold, with a full return of his majestic manner, "But I should advise you, sir--I should most seriously advise you to relinquish all connection with the scandalous claims masquerading under that fraudulent name--that name of Increase Kittredge!"

He departed, and returned again briskly, to say in his pleasantest voice: "Oh, by-the-way, I'm going to send you some sound wine--port; I have a little left. Be good enough to take it according to the directions." And this time he was really gone.

In the mean while all Gracias congratulated Mrs. Thorne. That lady bore herself with much propriety under the altered aspect of her affairs. There were advantages in it, she said with a sigh, which of course she appreciated; still, it was impossible for her to think without sadness of "the severing of old associations" which such a change must bring about. Gracias agreed with her there--the severing would be difficult; old associations, indeed, had always been Gracias's strong point. Still, a good deal of breakage could be borne--it was, indeed, a duty to bear it--when such an equivalent was to be rendered ("equivalent" was the term they had decided upon). The equivalent--that is, the sum which Winthrop was to pay for the plantation--was not large. But to Gracias in its reduced state it seemed an ample fortune; Gracias wondered what Mrs. Thorne would do with it. That lady kept her own counsel; but in private she covered sheets of paper with her small careful figures, and pondered over them.

To Garda the hoped-for sum represented but one word--Washington! Winthrop had again dwelt upon the advice that she should not speak that word too audibly. "So long as I can whisper it to you, I can be dumb to the others," she answered, laughing.

But it did not seem to him that she whispered.

The conditions of their friendship at present were remarkable. Garda was restless unless she could see him every day; if he came on horseback, she had espied him from afar, and was at the edge of the barren to meet him; if he sailed down the lagoon in the Emperadora, she had recognized the sail, and was in waiting on the landing. Once there, she wished to have him all to herself, she grudged every moment he spent with her mother. This did not prevent him from spending a good many with the little mistress of East Angels, who now received him with a subdued resignation which was his delight. This was the man who was about to dispossess them of their home, the home of her daughter's forefathers; he meant no harm, he wished for the place, sad misfortune compelled them to part with it; but naturally, naturally, they could not quite welcome him with undiluted feelings; naturally their feelings were, must be, charged with--retrospect. All this, especially the retrospect, was so reluctantly yet perfectly expressed in her voice and manner that Winthrop was never tired of admiring it, and her; she was practising the tone she intended to take about him; he could not deny that it was a very perfect little minor note. Garda's feelings, however, did not seem to be diluted with anything; she received him with unmixed joy. As soon as she could get him to herself she carried him off to the live-oak avenue, whose high arches and still gray shade had now become her favorite resort; here she strolled up and down with him and talked of Lucian, being contented with his mere presence as reply. Often Carlos Mateo stalked up and down behind them; for he lived in the live-oak avenue now, Garda declared that he danced by himself there on moonlight nights. Sometimes Adolfo Torres performed similar sentinel duty. For Garda had become almost tender in her manner to the young Cuban since her own interest in Lucian had developed itself. "He feels as I do," she said to Winthrop, with conviction.

"Never mind his feeling. What is yours for him?" suggested Winthrop, who was perhaps rather tired of the sentinels, bird and man.

"Pity," answered Garda, promptly. "A nice, kind pity."

"He must be a poor stick to keep coming here for that."

"Oh, he doesn't think it's pity, he would never comprehend that, though you should tell him a dozen times. He's satisfied; Adolfo is always satisfied, I think."

"Couldn't he enjoy his satisfaction at home, then?--it doesn't seem to depend at all upon your talking to him?"

"I talk to him when you are not here. You cannot always be here, you know, but he almost can, he lives so near. Lucian was always going to see him--don't you remember? He said he was like a mediaeval finger-post; you must remember that."

Winthrop felt that he was sometimes required to remember a good deal.

He did not, however, have to remember Manuel, at least at present; Lucian not having discovered mediaeval qualities in that handsome youth, Garda was content to let him remain where he was; this was the San Juan plantation, twenty miles away. He had been there some time. His mother said he was hunting.

"Yes, there are a number of pretty girls about there," remarked Dr. Kirby.

But Torres, who was jealous of no one, and whose patience and courteous certainty remained unmoved, continued to accompany Garda and Winthrop in their strolls up and down the live-oak avenue. He generally walked a little behind them; that gave him his sentinel air. Several yards behind him came Carlos Mateo; but Carlos affected not to belong to the party, he affected to be taking a stroll for his own amusement, like any other gentleman of leisure; he looked about him, and often stopped; he appeared to be admiring the beauties of nature.

And Garda talked on, never rapidly, her topic ever the same. Torres, of course, understood nothing of her monologues. And Winthrop? Winthrop suffered them.

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Chapter XII

Of his reasons for pursuing this course, Margaret Harold knew more than any one else. For as Garda's devotion to Margaret remained unchanged, she talked to her as freely as she talked to Winthrop. She saw Winthrop oftener; but whenever she could pay a visit to Margaret, or whenever Margaret came down to East Angels, Garda's delight was to sit at her feet and talk of Lucian. The girl, indeed, had made an express stipulation with Winthrop that Margaret should be excepted from his decree of silence. "I must talk to Margaret," she said, "because I am so fond of her. The reason I like to talk to you is because you are a man, and therefore you can appreciate Lucian better."

"I should think it would be just the other way," observed Winthrop.

"Oh no; Margaret doesn't even see how beautiful he is, much less talk about it."

"And I like to talk about it so much!"

"You do it to please me," said Garda, gratefully. "I appreciate that."

"She tells me she talks to you--I mean, of course, about Lucian Spenser--just as she does to me," he said to Margaret one day; "she has chosen to confide her little secrets to you and me alone." Margaret was standing by a table in the eyrie's dining-room, arranging in two brown jugs a mass of yellow jessamine which she had brought in from the barrens. "Rather a strange choice," he went on, smiling a little as he thought of himself, and then of Margaret, reserved, taciturn, gentle enough, but (so he had always felt) cold and unsympathetic.

"Yes," assented Margaret. "What do you think the best way to receive it?" she added, going on with her combinations of green and gold.

"Not to bluff her off--to let her talk on. It is only a fancy, of course, a girl's fancy; but it needs an outlet, and we are a safe one, because we know how to take it--know what it amounts to."

"What does it amount to?"

"Nothing."

"Oh," murmured the woman at the table, rather protestingly.

"I mean that it will end in nothing, it will soon fade. But it shows that the child has imagination; Garda Thorne will love, some of these days; a real love."

"Yes; that requires imagination."

"My sentences were not connected, they did not describe each other. What I meant was that the way the child has gone into this--this little beginning--shows that she will be capable of deep feelings later on."

Margaret did not reply.

"There are plenty of excellent women who are quite incapable of them," pursued Winthrop, conscious that he had, as he expressed it to himself, taken the bit in his teeth again, but led on by the temptation which, more and more this winter, Margaret's controlled silences (they always seemed controlled) were becoming to him. "And the curious point is that they never suspect their own deficiencies; they think that if they bestow a prim, well-regulated little affection upon the man they honor with their choice, that is all that is necessary; certainly it is all that the man deserves. I don't know what we deserve; but I do know that we are not apt to be much moved by such affection as that. They are often very good mothers," he added, following here another of his tendencies, the desire to be just--a tendency which often brought him out at the end of a remark where people least expected.

"Don't you think that important?" said Margaret.

"Very. Only let them not, in addition, pretend to be what they are not."

"I don't think they do pretend."

"You're right, they're too self-complacent. They're quite satisfied with themselves as they are."

"If they are satisfied, they are very much to be envied," began Margaret.

"She's going to defend herself," thought Winthrop. "It's a wonder she hasn't done so before; to save my life, I don't seem to be able to resist attacking her."

But Margaret did not go on. She took up the last sprays and looked at them. "Then you think I had better let her talk on, without checking her," she said, returning to the original topic between them. "You think I had better not try to guide her?"

"Refused again!" thought Winthrop. "Guide her to what?" he said, aloud.

"Not to anything. Away--away from Lucian Spenser."

"Then you don't like him?" he said, questioningly.

"He is very handsome," answered Margaret, smiling.

"But that isn't what we're discussing, that isn't advice."

"Let her talk as she pleases--that is my advice; let her string out all her adjectives. My idea is that, let alone, it will soon exhale; opposition would force it into an importance which it does not in reality possess. Are you going?"

"Yes, I have finished. But I shall remember what you say." And she left the room, carrying the flowers with her.

Mrs. Thorne came up to Gracias, and called upon Mrs. Rutherford at the eyrie. Her visits there had always been frequent, but this one had the air of a visit of ceremony; it seemed intended as a formal expression of her chastened acquiescence in the northern gentleman's projects concerning East Angels.

"I have reserved the memories," she said, with expression.

"Yes, indeed; fond Memory brings to light, and so it will be with you, Mistress Thorne," said Betty, who was spending the afternoon with her Katrina; "you can always fall back on that, you know."

"Have you reserved old Pablo?" inquired Mrs. Rutherford. "He is a good deal of a memory, isn't he?"

"I have reserved Pablo, and also Raquel; they will travel with us," replied Mrs. Thorne. "Raquel will act as my maid, Pablo as my man-servant."

"They're very southern," remarked Betty, shaking her head. "I doubt whether they would get on well, living at the North. Raquel, you know, has no system; she would as soon leave her work at any time and run and make a hen-coop--that is, if you should happen to have hens, and I am sure I hope you would, because at the North, they tell me--"

But here Mrs. Thorne bore down upon her. "And did you suppose, Betty--were you capable of supposing--that Edgarda and I were thinking of living at the North?"

"I don't know what I'm capable of," answered Betty, laughing good-humoredly; "Mr. Carew never knew either. But you're really a northerner after all, Mrs. Thorne; and so it didn't seem so unlikely."

Mrs. Thorne had called her Betty, but she did not address Mrs. Thorne as Melissa in return. No one had called Mrs. Thorne Melissa (Melissa Whiting had been the name of her maiden days) since she had entered the manorial family to which she now belonged. Her husband had called her "Blue-eyes" (he had admired her very much, principally because she was so small and fair); the Old Madam had unfailingly designated her by the Spanish equivalent for "madam my niece-in-law," which was very imposing--in the Old Madam's tone. To every one else she was Mistress Thorne, and nothing less than Mistress Thorne; the title seemed to belong to every inch of her straight little back, to be visible even in the arrangement of her bonnet-strings.

Madam my niece-in-law now addressed herself to answering Betty. "When I married my dear Edgar, Betty, I became a Thorne, I think I may say, without affectation, a thorough one; no other course was open to me, upon entering a family of such distinction; Edgarda, therefore is Thorne and Duero, she is nothing else. Gracias-a-Dios will continue to be our home; we could not permanently establish ourselves anywhere, I think, save on the--the strand, where her forefathers have lived, and died, with so much eminence and distinction."

"Well, I'm sure I am very glad to hear it," answered Betty, cordially. "We are all so fond of Garda that we should miss her dreadfully if she were to be away long, though of course we can't expect to monopolize her so completely as we have done; she'll be going before long, you know, to that bourne from which--"

"Oh, Betty," interrupted Mrs. Rutherford, throwing up her white hands, "what horrors you do say!"

"I didn't mean it," exclaimed Betty, in great distress, the tears rising in her honest eyes; "I didn't mean anything of the sort, dear Mistress Thorne, I beg you to believe it; I meant 'She stood at the altar, with flowers on her brow'--indeed I did." And much overcome by her own inadvertence, Betty produced her handkerchief.

"Never mind, Betty; I always understand you," said Mrs. Thorne, graciously.

But it soon became evident that though she might understand Betty she did not understand Melissa, at least not so fully as she supposed she did, for, not long after her visit at the eyrie, she fell ill. On the fifth day it was feared that her illness had taken a dangerous turn; the delicate little cough with which they had been acquainted so long, in the various uses she put it to, that they had almost come to consider it a graceful accomplishment, this cough had all the time had its own character under the assumed ones, and its own character was simply an indication of a bronchial affection, which had now assumed a serious phase, sending inflammation down to the lungs.

"Her lungs have never been good," said Dr. Kirby to Winthrop; the Doctor was much affected by the danger of his poor little friend. "She has never had any chest to speak of, none at all." And the Doctor tapped his own wrathfully, and brought out a sounding expletive, the only one Winthrop had ever heard him use; he applied it to New-Englanders, New-Englanders in general.

The Doctor went back to East Angels. And in the late afternoon Winthrop himself rode down there. The little mistress of the house was very ill; besides Garda, the Doctor, his mother, and Mrs. Carew were in attendance. He saw only Mrs. Carew. She told him that Mrs. Thorne was very much disturbed mentally, as well as very ill, that she seemed unable to allow Garda out of her sight; when she did not see her at the bedside, she kept calling for her in her weak voice in a way that was most distressing to hear; Garda therefore now remained in the room day and night, save for the few moments, now and then, when her mother fell into a troubled sleep. The Doctor was very anxious. They were all very anxious.

Winthrop rode back to Gracias, he went to the eyrie. Mrs. Rutherford was out, she was taking a short stroll with the Rev. Mr. Moore. Margaret was on the east piazza; she was bending her head over some fine knitting.

"I'll wait for Aunt Katrina," said Winthrop, taking a chair near her. "Knitting for the poor, I suppose. Do you know, I always suspect ladies who knit for the poor; I suspect that they knit for themselves--the occupation."

"So they do, generally. But this isn't for the poor; don't you see that it's silk?"

"You could sell it. In the Charity Basket."

"What do you know of Charity Baskets?" said Margaret, laughing. "But I'm afraid I am not very good at working for the poor; the only thing I ever made--made with my own hands, I mean--was a shirt for that eminent Sioux chieftain Spotted Tail, and he said it did not fit."

"They don't want shirts, they want their land," said Winthrop. "We should have made them take care of themselves long ago, but we shouldn't have stolen their land. I'm not thinking of Lo, however, at present, I am thinking of that poor little woman down at East Angels. I am afraid she is very ill. Do you know, I cannot help suspecting that the sudden change in her prospects has had something to do with her illness; I mean the unexpected vision of what seems to her prosperity. She has kept up unflinchingly through years of struggle, and I think she could have kept up almost indefinitely in the same way, for Garda's sake, if she had had the same things to encounter; but this sudden wealth (for, absurd as it is, so it seems to her) has changed everything so, has buried her so almost over her head in plans, that the excitement has broken her down. You probably think me very fanciful," he concluded, realizing that he was speaking almost confidentially.

"Not fanciful at all; I quite agree with you," answered Margaret, her head still bent over her knitting.

"She has asked for you a number of times, Mrs. Carew tells me," he said, after a moment or two of silence.

"Has she?" said Margaret, this time raising her eyes. "I should have gone down to East Angels before this if I had not feared that I should be only in the way; all their friends have been there, I know; it is a very united little society."

"Yes, Madam Ruiz and Madam Giron were there yesterday taking care of her; Mrs. Kirby and Mrs. Carew are there to-day. Everything possible is being done, of course. Still--I don't know; from something Mrs. Carew said, I fear the poor woman is suffering mentally as well as physically; she is constantly asking for Garda, cannot bear her out of her sight."

"If I thought I could be of any service," said Margaret.

"I am sure you could; the greatest," he responded promptly, his voice betraying relief. "Mrs. Thorne is an odd little woman; but she has a very genuine liking for you; I think she feels more at home with you, for some reason or other, than she does with any of these Gracias friends, long as she has known them. And as for Garda, I am sure you could do more for her than any other person here could--later, I mean--she is so fond of you." He paused; what he had said seemed to come back to him. "Both of them, mother and daughter, appear to have selected you as their ideal of goodness," he went on; "I hope you appreciate the compliment." This time the slight, very slight indication of sarcasm showed itself again in his tone.

"Is it possible that you think the poor mother really in danger?" said Margaret, paying no heed, apparently, to his last remark.

"She has evidently grown very weak, and I have never thought she had any strength to spare. But it is only my own idea, I ought to tell you, that she is--that she may not recover."

"I will go as soon as possible; early to-morrow morning," said Margaret. "But if I do--" She hesitated. "I am afraid Aunt Katrina will be lone--I mean I fear she might feel deserted if left alone."

"Alone--with Minerva and Telano and Cindy, and the mysterious factotum called Maum Jube?"

"There would still be no companion, no one for her to talk to."

"How you underrate the conversation of Celestine! I should, of course, come in often."

"I think that if you should stay in the house, while I am gone, it would be better," answered Margaret.

"To try and make up, in some small degree, for what she loses when she loses you?"

"Whatever you please, so long as you come," she responded.

The next morning she went down to East Angels. Garda received her joyously. "Oh, Margaret, mamma is better, really better."

It was true. The fever had subsided, the symptoms of pneumonia had passed away; the patient was very weak, but Dr. Kirby was now hopeful. He had taken his mother back to Gracias, but the kind-hearted Betty remained, sending by the Kirbys a hundred messages of regret to her dearest Katrina that their separation must still continue.

Later in the day Margaret paid her first visit to the sick-room. Mrs. Thorne was lying with her eyes closed, looking very white and still; but as soon as she perceived who it was that had entered, a change came over her; she still looked white, but she seemed more alive; she raised herself slightly on one arm, and beckoned to the visitor.

"Now don't try to talk, that's a dear," said Mrs. Carew, who was sitting on the other side of the bed, fanning the sick woman with tireless hand.

Mrs. Thorne slowly turned her head towards Betty, and surveyed her solemnly with eyes which seemed to have grown during her illness to twice their former size. "Go--away," she said, in her whispering voice, which preserved even in its faintness the remains of her former clear utterance.

"What?" said the astonished Betty, not sure that she had heard aright.

"I wish--you would go--away," repeated Mrs. Thorne, slowly. And with her finger she made a little line in the air, which seemed to indicate, like a dotted curve on a map, Betty's course from the bed to the door.

Betty gave her fan to Margaret. Incapable of resentment, the good soul whispered to Garda, as she passed: "They're very often so, you know--sick people; they get tired of seeing the same persons about them, of course, and I am sure it's very natural. I'll come back later, when she's asleep."

"I was not tired of seeing her, that wasn't it," murmured Mrs. Thorne, who had overheard this aside. "But I wanted to see Margaret Harold alone, and without any fuss made about it; and the first step was to get her out of the room. Now, Edgarda, you go too. Go down to the garden, where Mrs. Carew will not see you; stay there a while, the fresh air will do you good."

"But, mamma, I don't think I ought to leave you."

"Do as I tell you, my daughter. If I should need anything, Margaret will call you."

"You need not be afraid, Garda, that I shall not know how to take care of her," said Margaret, reassuringly. "I am a good nurse." She arranged Mrs. Thorne's pillows as she spoke, and gently and skilfully laid her down upon them again.

"Of course," whispered Mrs. Thorne. "Any one could see that." Then, as Garda still lingered, "Go, Garda," she said, briefly. And Garda went.

As soon as the heavy door closed behind her, Mrs. Thorne began to speak. "I have been so anxious to see you," she said; "the thought has not been once out of my mind. But I suppose my mind has not been perfectly clear, because, though I have asked for you over and over again, no one has paid any attention, has seemed to understand me." She spoke in her little thread of a voice, and looked at her visitor with large, clear eyes.

Margaret bent over her. "Do not exert yourself to talk to me now," she answered. "You will be stronger to-morrow."

"Yes, I may be stronger to-morrow. How long can you stay?"

"Several days, if you care to have me."

"That is kind. I shall have time, then. But I mustn't wait too long; of one thing I am sure, Margaret: I shall not recover."

"That is a fancy," said Margaret, stroking the thin little hand that lay on the white coverlet; "Dr. Kirby says you are much better." She spoke with the optimism that belongs to the sick-room, but in her heart she had another opinion. A change had come over Mrs. Thorne's face, the effect of which was very striking; it was not so much the increase of pallor, or a more wasted look, as the absence of that indomitable spirit which had hitherto animated its every fibre, so that from the smooth scanty light hair under the widow's cap down to the edges of the firm little jaws there had been so much courage, and, in spite of the constant anxiety, so much resolution, that one noticed only that. But now, in the complete departure of this expression (which gleamed on only in the eyes), one saw at last what an exhausted little face it was, how worn out with the cares of life, finished, ready for the end.

"Yes, I am better, it is true, for the present," whispered Mrs. Thorne. "But that is all. My mother and my two sisters died of slow consumption, I shall die of the rapid kind. I shall die and leave Garda. Do you comprehend what that is to me--to die and leave Garda?" Her gaze, as she said this, was so clear, there was such a far-seeing intelligence in it, such a long experience of life, and (it almost seemed) such a prophetic knowledge of death, that the younger woman found herself forced to make answer to the mental strength within rather than to the weakness of the physical frame which contained it. "Why am I taken now, just when she will need me most?" went on the mother's whisper, which contrasted so strangely in its feebleness with the power of her gaze. "Garda had only me. And now I am called. What will become of her?"

"You have warm friends here, Mrs. Thorne; they are all devoted to Garda. It has seemed to me that to each one of them she was as dear as an own child."

"Yes, she is. They would do anything in the world they could for her. But, I ask you, what can they do? The Kirbys, the Moores, Betty Carew, and Madam Giron, Madam Ruiz--what can they do? Nothing! And Garda--oh, Garda needs some one who is--different."

Margaret did not reply to this; and after a moment Mrs. Thorne went on.

"When Mr. Winthrop buys the place," she said, with the touching Gracias confidence that a few thousands would constitute wealth, "my child need not be a charge, pecuniarily. But of course I know that in other ways she might be. And I cannot leave her to them, these people here; I cannot die and do that. Garda is not a usual girl, Margaret--you must have seen it for yourself. I only want a little oversight of the proper kind for her; that would be all that I should ask; it would not be a great deal of care. From the very first, Margaret, I have liked you so much! You have no idea how much." Her voice died away, but her eyes were full of eloquence. Slowly a tear rose in each, welled over, and dropped down on the white cheek below, but without dimming the gaze, which continued its fixed, urgent prayer.

Margaret had remained silent. Now she covered her face with her hand, the elbow supported on the palm of the other. Mrs. Thorne watched her, mutely; she seemed to feel that she had made her appeal, that Margaret comprehended it, was perhaps considering it; at any rate, that her place now was to wait with humility for her answer.

At length Margaret's hand dropped. She turned towards the waiting eyes. "Before your illness, Mrs. Thorne," she said, in her tranquil voice, "I had thought of asking you whether you would be willing to let me take Garda north with me for some months. I have a friend in New York who would receive her, and be very kind to her; she could stay with this lady, and take lessons. I should see her every day, it would not be quite like a school."

"That is what I long for--that she should be with you," said Mrs. Thorne, not going into the details of the plan, but seizing upon the main fact. "That you should have charge of her, Margaret--that is now my passionate wish." She used the strongest word she knew, a word she had always thought wicked in its intensity. But it was applicable to her present overwhelming desire.

"And I had thought that perhaps you would follow us, a little later," pursued Margaret; "I hope you will do so still."

Mrs. Thorne made a motion with her hand, as if saying, "Why try to deceive?" She lay with her eyes closed, resting after her suspense. "You are so good and kind," she murmured. "But not kinder, Margaret, than I knew you would be." Her voice died away again, and again she rested.

"I have asked and accepted so much--for of course I accept instantly your offer--that I feel that I ought not to ask more," she began again, though without opening her eyes. "But I have got to die. And I trust you so, Margaret--"

"Why do you trust me?" interposed Margaret, abruptly. "You have no grounds for it; you hardly know me. It makes me very uncomfortable, Mrs. Thorne."

But Mrs. Thorne only smiled. She lifted her hand, and laid it on Margaret's arm. "My dear," she said, simply (and it was rare for Mrs. Thorne to be simple; even now, though deeply in earnest, she had had the old appearance of selecting with care what she was about to say), "I don't know why any more than you do! I only know that it is so; it has been so from the beginning. I think I understand you," she added.

"Oh no," said the younger woman, turning away.

"At any rate, I understand your steadfastness, Margaret. You have steadfastness in the supreme degree. Many women haven't any, and they are much the happiest. But you, Margaret, are different. And it is your steadfastness that attracts me so--for my poor child's sake I mean. Yes, for hers I must say a little more--I must. If you could only see your way to letting her remain under your care as long as she is so young--you see I mean longer than the few months you spoke of just now,--it would make my dying easier. For it's going to be very hard for me to die. Perhaps you think I'm not going to. But I know that I am. All at once my courage has left me. It never did before, and so I know it is a sign."

Margaret sat listening, she looked deeply troubled. "You wish to intrust to me a great responsibility," she began.

"And it seems to you very selfish. Of course I know that it is selfish. But it is desperation, Margaret; it is my feeling about Garda. Let me tell you one thing, I am relying a little upon your having suffered yourself. If you had not, I should never have asked you, because people who haven't suffered, women especially, are so hard. But I saw that you had suffered, I saw it in the expression of your face before I had heard a word of your history."

"What do you know of my history?" asked Margaret, the guarded reserve which was so often there again taking possession of her voice and eyes.

"In actual fact, very little. Only what Mrs. Rutherford told Betty Carew."

"What did she tell her?"

"That her nephew, your husband, was travelling abroad--that was all. But when I learned that the travelling had lasted seven years, and that nothing was said of his return or of your joining him, of course I knew that inclination, his or yours, was at the bottom of it. And I imagined pain somewhere, and probably for you. Because you are good; and it is the good who suffer."

"In reality you know nothing about it," replied Margaret to these low-breathed sentences. "I think I ought to tell you," she went on, in the same reserved tone, "that both Mrs. Rutherford and Mr. Winthrop think I have been much to blame; it may make a difference in your estimation of me."

"Not the least. For Mrs. Rutherford's opinions I care nothing. As to Mr. Winthrop, Mr. Winthrop--"

"Agrees with Mrs. Rutherford."

"He will live to change his opinion; I think very highly of Mr. Winthrop, but on this subject he is in the wrong. Do you know why I think so highly of him?"

But Margaret's face remained unresponsive.

"I think highly of him because he has had such a perfect, such a delicate comprehension of Garda--I mean lately, through all this fancy of hers--such a strange one--for that painter." Mrs. Thorne always called Lucian a "painter," very much as though he had been a decorator of the exterior of houses. His profession of civil engineer she steadily ignored; perhaps, however, she did not ignore it more than Lucian himself did.

"Mr. Winthrop likes Garda so much that it is easy for him to be considerate," Margaret answered.

"On the contrary," murmured Mrs. Thorne; "on the contrary. While I am most grateful to him for his consideration, I have feared that it was in itself a proof that he did not really care for her. If he had cared, would he have been so patient with her--her whim? Would he have let her talk on by the hour, as I know she has done, about Lucian Spenser? Men are jealous, extremely so; far more so than women ever are. They don't call it jealousy, of course; they have half a dozen names for it--weariness, superiority, disgust--whatever you please. You don't agree with me?"

"It's a general view, and I've given up general views. But of one thing I am certain, Mrs. Thorne--Evert admires Garda greatly."

The mother raised herself so that she could look at Margaret more closely. "Do you think so?--do you really think so?" she said, almost panting.

"Yes, I think so."

"Then, Margaret, I will have no concealments from you, not one. If Mr. Winthrop should ever care enough for my poor child--some time in the future--to wish to make her his wife, I should be so happy, I am sure I should know it wherever I was! I could trust her to him, he is a man to trust. He is much older. But if she should once begin to care for him, that would make no difference to her, nothing would make any difference; she will never be influenced by anything but her own liking, it has always been so. And if--she could once--begin to care--" The short sentences, which had been eager, now grew fainter, stopped; the head sank back upon the pillows again. "If she were to be with you, Margaret, she would have--more opportunity--to begin."

"About that I could promise nothing," said Margaret, with decision. "I could take no step to influence Garda in that way."

"I don't ask you to. I myself wouldn't do anything, that would be wrong; on such subjects all must be left to a Higher Power," replied Mrs. Thorne, with conviction. For, in spite of her efforts to be Thorne and Duero, she had never departed a hair's-breadth from her American belief in complete liberty of personal choice in marriage. Love, real love, was a feeling heaven-born, heaven-directed; it behooved no one to meddle with it, not even a mother. "I could never scheme in that way," she went on, "I only wanted you to know all my thoughts. The great thing with me, of course, is that she is to be in your charge."

Here the door at the other end of the large room opened, and Dr. Kirby came in; he had returned as soon as possible, putting off all other engagements. "You look better," he said to his patient, with his hand on her pulse. "Come, this is doing well."

"I am better," murmured Mrs. Thorne, looking gratefully at Margaret. Mrs. Carew soon followed the Doctor; Margaret went down to the garden to find Garda, the girl who was to become so unexpectedly her charge. For she shared the mother's feeling; the illness might advance slowly, but it would conquer in the end.

Garda was in the garden, lying at full length under the great rose-tree, on a shawl which she had spread upon the ground; her hands were clasped under her head, and she was gazing up into the sky. Carlos, standing near, with his neck acutely arched, his breast puffed out and his beak thrust in among the feathers, looked like a gentleman of the old school in a ruffled shirt, with his hand in the breast of his coat.

"Does mamma want me?" asked Garda, as Margaret came up.

"Dr. Kirby and Mrs. Carew are there. No, I do not think she wants you at present."

"Come down on the shawl, then, and look up into the sky," pursued Garda. "I've never tried it before--looking straight up in this way--and I assure you I can see miles!"

"I'm not such a sun-worshipper as you are," answered Margaret, taking a seat on the bench in the shade.

"The sun's almost down. No, it isn't the sun, it's because you never in the world could stretch yourself out full length on the ground, as I'm doing now. The ground's nice and warm, and I love to lie on it; but you--you have always sat in chairs, you have been drilled."

"Yes, I have been drilled," answered Margaret, sombrely, looking at the graceful figure on the shawl.

Garda did not notice the sombre tone, her attention was up in the sky. After a while she said, "Mr. Winthrop hasn't been here to-day; I wonder why?"

"He won't be able to come so often while I am here, he will have to see to Aunt Katrina."

"Mist' Wintarp desiahs to know whedder you's tome, Miss Gyarda," said the voice of old Pablo. "I tole him I farnsied you was in de gyarden." Pablo recognized Garda as a Duero; he treated her therefore with respect, and benignant affection.

Winthrop now appeared at the garden gate, and Margaret rose.

"Perhaps I had better go in, too?" said Garda.

"No, stay as long as you like; I will send word, if your mother asks for you," Margaret responded.

She left the garden by another way. When she had gone some distance, she looked back. Garda had changed her position; she was still looking at the sky, though she was no longer lying at length; she had curled herself up, and was leaning against a dwarf tree. Winthrop was in Margaret's place on the bench, and Garda had evidently spoken to him of the sky, for he, too, was looking up.

But he did not look long; while Margaret stood there, his eyes dropped to the figure at his feet. This was not surprising. There was nothing in the sky that could approach it.

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Chapter XIII

Mrs. Thorne improved. She was still very weak, confined to her bed, and the cough continued at intervals to rack her wasted frame. But there was now no fever; she slept through the nights; she had always been so delicate in appearance that she did not seem much more fragile now. These at least were the assertions of her Gracias friends; her Gracias friends were determined to believe that time and good nursing would restore her. The nursing they attended to themselves, and with devoted care, one succeeding the other day after day. Mrs. Thorne appreciated their good offices; but she no longer concealed her preference for the companionship, whenever it was to be obtained, of Margaret Harold.

"I have pretended so long!" she said to Margaret, when they were alone together. "I am so tired of pretending! and with you I can be myself. It isn't really necessary now to be any one else--now that I shall so soon have to go; but I have got into such a habit of it with the others that I shouldn't know how to stop. With you I can talk freely, and you are the only one."

"So long as it doesn't tire you," Margaret answered.

"It tires me a great deal more to be silent," responded Mrs. Thorne.

Often, therefore, when Margaret came down to East Angels, Mrs. Thorne would send Garda into the open air to stroll about, or rest under the rose-tree, and then, while Madam Ruiz, or Mrs. Carew, or whoever happened to be in attendance, was sleeping to make up for the broken rest of the coming night, she would talk to her northern friend, talk with an openness which was in itself a sign that the many cautions of a peculiarly cautious life were drawing to a close. One reason for this freedom was that in spite of the apparent improvement, there were no illusions between these two regarding the hoped-for recovery. "We are northerners, Margaret, and we know," Mrs. Thorne had said one day, when Margaret had raised her so that she could cough with less difficulty. "Consumption--our kind--these southerners cannot grasp!" She did not wish to die, poor woman; she clung to life with desperation; nevertheless, she found a momentary satisfaction in a community of feeling with Margaret over this southern lack.

"Oh, these southern lacks--how Garda would have been part of them!" she went on. "If I had had to leave her here, if you had not promised to take her, how inevitably she would have been sunk in them, lost in them! she would never have got out. Oh! I so hate and loathe it all--the idle, unrealizing, contented life of this tiresome, idle coast. They amounted to something once, perhaps; but their day is over, and will never come back. They don't know it; you couldn't make them believe it even if you should try. That is what makes you rage--they're so completely mistaken and so completely satisfied! Every idea they have is directly contrary to all the principles of the government under which they exist But what is that to them? They think themselves superior to the government. I'm not exaggerating, it's really true; I can speak from experience after my life with that"--she paused, then chose her word clearly--"with that devilish Old Madam!"

It seemed to Margaret as if this poor exile were imbibing a few last draughts of vitality from the satisfaction which even this late expression of her real belief gave her; she had been silent so long!

Her Thorne and Duero envelope was dropping from her more and more. "Oh yes, I have stood up for them," she said, another time. "Oh yes, I have boasted of them, I knew how! I knew how better than any of them; I made a study of it. The first Spaniards were blue-blooded knights and gentlemen, of course; they never worked with their hands. But the Puritans were blacksmiths and ploughmen and wood-choppers--anything and everything; I knew how to bring this all out--make a picture of it. 'Think what their hands must have been!' I used to say" (and here her weak voice took on for a moment its old crispness of enunciation)--"'what great coarse red things, with stiff, stubby fingers, gashed by the axe, hardened by digging, roughened and cracked by the cold. Estimable men they were, no doubt; heroic--as much as you like. But gentlemen they were not.' I have said it hundreds of times. For those idle, tiresome, wicked old Dueros, Margaret (the English Thornes too, for that matter), were Garda's ancestors, and the right to talk about them was the only thing the poor child had inherited; naturally I made the most of it. They were the feature of this neighborhood, of course--those Spaniards, I knew that; I had imagination enough to appreciate it far more, I think, than the very people who were born here. I made everything of it, this feature; I learned the history and all the beliefs and ideas. I always hoped to get hold of some northerners to whom I could tell it, tell it in such a way that it would be of use to us, make a background for Garda some time. That's all ended; I have never had the proper chance, and now of course never shall. But at least I can tell you, Margaret, now that it is all over, that in my heart I have always hated the whole thing--that in my heart I have always ranked the lowest Puritan far, far above the very finest Spaniard they could muster. They didn't work with their hands, these knights and gentlemen; and why? Because they caught the poor Indians and made them work for them; because they imported Human Flesh, they dealt in negro slaves!" It was startling to see the faded blue eyes send forth such a flash, a flash of the old abolitionist fire, which for a moment made them young and brilliant again.

Margaret tried to soothe her. "It is nothing," said Mrs. Thorne, smiling faintly and relapsing into quiet.

But the next day Melissa Whiting blazed forth anew. "I detest every vestige of those old ideas of theirs; I hate the pride and shiftlessness of all this land. I am attached to our friends here, of course; they have always been kind to me. But--it is written! They will go down, down, they and all who are like unto them; already they belong to the Past. Their country here will be opened up, improved; but not by them. It will be made modern, made rich under their very eyes; but not by them. It will be filled with new people, new life; but they will get no benefit from it, their faces will always be turned the other way. They will dwindle in numbers, but they will not change; generations must pass before the old leaven will be worn out. Could I leave Garda to that? Could I die, knowing that she would live over there on Patricio, on that forlorn Ruiz plantation, or down the river in that tumble-down house of the Girons--that Manuel with his insufferable airs, or that wooden Torres with his ridiculous pride, would be all she should ever know of life and happiness--my beautiful, beautiful child? I could not, Margaret; I could not." Her eyes were wet.

"But she is not to be left to them," said Margaret.

"No; you have saved me from that," responded the mother, gratefully. She put out her hand and took Margaret's for a moment; then relinquished it. The brief clasp would have seemed cold to their southern friends; but it expressed all that was necessary between these two northerners.

Another day the sick woman resumed her retrospect, she spoke of her early life. "I was a poor school-teacher, you know; I had no near relatives, no home, I was considered to have made a wonderful match when I married as I did. Everybody was astonished at my good luck--perfectly astonished; they couldn't comprehend how it had happened. When they knew, in New Bristol, that I was to marry Mr. Edgar Thorne, of Florida; that I was to be taken down to an old Spanish plantation which had been in his family for generations; that I was to live there in luxury, and 'a tropical climate'--they all came to see me again, to look at me; they seemed to think that I must have changed in some way, that I couldn't be the same Melissa Whiting who had taught their district school. At New Bristol the snow in the winter is four feet deep. At New Bristol everybody is busy, and everybody is poor. But I was to live among palm-trees in a place called Gracias-a-Dios; I was to go down by sea; roses bloomed there at Christmas-time, and oranges were to be had for the asking. Gracias-a-Dios is very far from New Bristol, Margaret," said Melissa Whiting, pausing. "It's all the distance between a real place and an ideal one. I know how far that is!"

She was silent for some minutes; then she went on. "My elevation--for it seemed that at New Bristol--was like a fairy story; I presume they are telling it still. But if I hadn't you behind me, Margaret, I would put Garda back there in all the snow, I would put her back in my old red school-house on the hill (only she wouldn't know how to teach, poor child!)--I would do it in a moment, I say, if I had the power, rather than leave her here among the 'roses,' the 'oranges,' and the 'palms.'" (Impossible to give the accent with which she pronounced these words.) "I don't say my husband wasn't kind to me; he was very kind; but--the Old Madam was here! He only lived a short time; and then, more than ever, the Old Madam was here! Well, I did the best I could--you must give me that credit: there was Garda to think of, and I had no other home. It's so unfortunate to be poor, Margaret--have you ever thought of it?--unfortunate, I mean, for the disposition. So many people could be as amiable and agreeable and yielding as any one, if they only had a little more money--just a little more! I could have been, I know. But how could I be yielding when I had everything on my hands? Oh! you have no idea how I have worked! We had no income to live upon, Garda and I, there hasn't been any for a long time; we have had the house and furniture, the land, Pablo and Raquel,--that's all. We have lived on the things that we had, the things that came off the place, with what Pablo has been able to shoot, and the fish and oysters from the creeks and lagoon. The few supplies which one is obliged to buy, such as tea and coffee, I have got by selling our oranges; I have taken enormous pains with the oranges on that account. The same way with Garda's shoes and gloves; I couldn't make shoes and gloves, though I confess I did try. Then, if any one broke a pane of glass, that took money; and there were a few other little things. But, with these exceptions, I have tried to do everything myself, and manage without spending. I have kept all the furniture in repair; I have painted and varnished and cleaned with my own hands; I learned to mend the crockery and even the tins. I have made almost everything that Garda and I have worn, of course; I braid the palmetto hats we both wear; I have dyed and patched and turned and darned--oh! you haven't a conception! Some of the table-cloths are nothing but darns. I could put in myself the new panes of glass, after they were once bought. And, every month or two, I have had to mend the roof, to keep it from leaking; generally I did that at sunrise, but I have done it, too, on moonlight nights, late, when no one was likely to come. Then, every single day, I have had to begin all over again with Pablo and Raquel. Three times every week I have had to go out myself and stand over Pablo to see that he did as I wished about the orange-trees. Always the very same things; but we have been at it in this way for years! Every day of my life I have had to go out and see with my own eyes whether Raquel had wiped off the shelves; three hundred and sixty-five times each year, for seventeen years, she has pretended to forget it."

She lay silent, as if reviewing it all. "Perhaps I have been over-thorough," she resumed. "But somehow I couldn't help it, thoroughness has always been my mania. It has taken me to great lengths--I see it now; it has made burdens where there needn't have been any. Still, I couldn't have helped it, Margaret; I really don't think I could. After sweeping, I always used to go down on my hands and knees and dust the carpets with a cloth. And I used to pick up every seed that Dick, my canary, had dropped. Dear little Dick, how I cried when he died!--he was the last northern thing I had left; yet, would you believe it? I pretended I didn't care for him, that I was tired of his singing. I pretended I preferred the mocking-birds. Mocking-birds!" repeated Melissa Whiting, with whispered but scathing contempt.

She came back to the subject of her thoroughness when Margaret paid her next visit. "It has been a hard task-master; I have been thinking it over," she said. "Still, without it, should I have got on as well even as I have? I don't believe I should. Take the way I have made myself over--made myself a Thorne. I couldn't have lived here at all as I was, there was no room for Melissa Whiting. I saw that; and so, while I was about it, I made the change complete. Oh yes, I was very complete! I swallowed everything. I even swallowed slavery,--I, a New England girl,--what do you say to that?--a New England girl, abolitionist to the core! It was the most heroic thing I ever did in my life. Very likely you don't think so, but it was. For, never for one instant were my real feelings altered, my real beliefs changed--I couldn't have changed them if I had tried. And I could have died for them at any moment, if I had been called upon to do so, though I was playing such a part. But I wasn't called upon, and so I made them stay down; I covered every inch of myself with a southern skin. But if any one thinks that it was easy or pleasant, let him try it--that's all!"

"When the war began," she went on, "I remember how much more clearly reasoned out were my views of the southern side of the question than were those of the southerners themselves about here. They were as warm as possible in their feelings, of course, but they hadn't studied the subject as I had, got their reasons into shape; so it ended in their borrowing my reasons! But every night through all that time, Margaret, on my knees I prayed for my own people, and I used to read the accounts of the northern victories--when I could get them--with an inward shout; never once, never once, had I a doubt of the final success."

"It's a curious story, isn't it?" Margaret said to Winthrop, when she repeated to him some of these confidences. "She wished me to tell you, she asked me to do so; she said she should like to have you understand her life."

"Does she expect me to admire it?" said Winthrop, rather surprised himself to feel how quickly the old heat could rise in his throat again when confronted with a tale like this. For the southern women, who had everywhere suffered so much, given so much, and lost their all, he had nothing but the tenderest pity. But a northern woman who had joined their cause--that seemed to him apostasy. That the apostasy had been but pretence only made it worse.

"She expects you to remember her motive for it, after she is gone," Margaret answered.

"Her motive can't make me like it. Even in the midst of her mistakes, however, she has been a wonderful little creature. But you say 'after she is gone'--do you think her worse, then? I thought she was so much better."

"So she is better. But she will fail again; at least that is what she thinks herself, and I cannot help fearing she is right."

"I am very sorry to hear it." He seemed to have the idea that she would say more; and he waited. But she did not speak.

"I suppose, then, you have had some further talk about Garda?" he said at last, breaking the pause.

"Yes."

"You would rather not tell me?"

"I will tell you later."

At this moment Mrs. Rutherford came into the room. But her nephew remained silent so long, his eyes resting absently on Margaret's dusky hair as she bent her head over a long seam (she seemed to like long seams!), that at last the aunt asked him if he knew that he was growing absent-minded.

"Absent-minded--impossible! No one has ever accused me of that before. I have always been too present-minded; viciously so, they say."

"People change," remarked Mrs. Rutherford, with dignity. "There have been many changes here lately."

Her voice had an undertone that suggested displeasure; the lady was indeed in the fixed condition of finding nothing right. The state appeared to have been caused by the absences of her niece at East Angels. The household wheels had apparently moved on with their usual smoothness during that interval; Mrs. Rutherford herself had appeared to be in the enjoyment of her usual agreeably weak health; her attire had been as becoming as ever, her hair as artistically arranged. But in spite of all this there was the undertone. Nothing was as it should be--that might have been the general summing up. If she leaned back in her chair, that was not comfortable; if she sat erect, that was not comfortable either; there were draughts everywhere, it was insupportable--the draughts; the floors were cold; they were always cold. She was convinced that the climate was damp; it must be, "with all this water" about. Then, again, she was sure that it was "feverish;" it must be, "with all this sand." The eyrie had become "tiresome," the fragrance of the orange flowers "enervating;" as for pine barrens, she never wished to see a pine barren again.

These things were not peevishly said, Mrs. Rutherford's well-modulated voice was never peevish; they were said with a sort of majestic coldness by a majestic woman who was, however, above complaints. She was as handsome as ever; but it was curious to note how her inward dissatisfactions had deepened lines which before had been scarcely visible, had caused her fine profile to assume for the first time a little of that expression to which regular profiles, cut on the majestic scale, are liable as age creeps on--a certain hard, immovable appearance, as though the features had been cut out of wood, as though the changing feelings, whatever they might be, would not be able to affect their rigid line.

"She's missed you uncommon," Celestine confided to Margaret, when she returned; "nothin's ben right. 'Most every mornin' when she was all dressed I sez to her, 'Mrs. Rutherford,' sez I, 'what's the preposition for now?' And there never warn't any preposition, or, ruther, there was so many we couldn't begin to manage 'em! Mr. Evert--he's ben down to the Thornes' a good deal, you know, an' Dr. Kirby--he hasn't ben in at all. Even Mrs. Carew's ben gone. An' so she's rather petered out. Glad you're back, Miss Margaret; dear me suz! yes. A person needn't be a murderer to make a house almighty uncomfortable by just sheer grumpiness. But she'll pick up now."

Celestine had been right when she said that the lady's mental condition would improve now that her niece had returned. Gradually, as Margaret's touch on the helm brought the household back into the atmosphere she loved, the atmosphere of few questions and no suggestions, suggestions as to what she had "better" do (Mrs. Rutherford hated suggestions as to what she had "better" do), of all her small customs silently furthered, her little wishes remembered without the trouble of having to express them, her remarks listened to and answered, and conversation (when she wished for conversation) kept up--all this so quietly done that she could with ease ignore that it was anything especial to do, maintain the position that it was but the usual way of living, that anything else would have been unusual--gradually, as this congenial atmosphere re-established itself, Mrs. Rutherford recovered her geniality, that geniality which had been so much admired. Her majestic remarks as to the faults of Gracias and everything in Gracias became fewer, the under-note of cold displeasure in her voice died away; her profile grew flexible and personal again, it was less like that of a Roman matron in a triumphal procession--a procession which has been through a good deal of wind and dust.

This happy revival of placidity at the eyrie (to which possibly the reappearance of Dr. Kirby had added something) was sharply broken one morning by bad news from East Angels. Mrs. Thorne was worse--"sinking" was the term used in the note which Betty Carew had hastily scribbled; she was anxious to see Mrs. Harold.

It had come, then, the end, and much sooner than even she herself had expected. She had suffered severely for twenty-four hours; the suffering was over now, but she had not the strength to rally.

"It's because she's always worked so hard--I can't help thinking of it," said Betty, who sat in the outer room, crying (she had been up all night, but did not dream of taking any rest); "she never stopped. We all knew it, and yet somehow we didn't half realize it, or try to prevent it; and it's too late now."

All the Gracias friends were soon assembled at East Angels; even Mrs. Moore, invalid though she was, made the little journey by water, and was carried up to the house in an arm-chair by her husband and old Pablo. Recovering, if not more strength, then at least that renewed command of speech which often comes back for a time just before the end, Mrs. Thorne, late in the afternoon, opened her eyes, looked at them all, and then, after a moment, asked to be left alone with Garda, Margaret, and Evert Winthrop. Margaret thought that she had spoken Winthrop's name by mistake.

"She doesn't mean you, I think," she said to him, in a low tone.

"Yes, I mean Mr. Winthrop," murmured Mrs. Thorne, with a faint shadow of her old decision.

Her Gracias friends softly left the room. Even Dr. Kirby, after a few whispered words with Winthrop, followed them.

When the door was closed, Mrs. Thorne signified that she wished to take Margaret's hand. Then, her feeble fingers resting on it, "Garda," she said, in her husky voice, "Margaret--whom I trust entirely--has promised--to take charge of you--for a while--after--I am gone. Promise me--on your side--to obey her--to do as she wishes."

"Do not make her promise that," said Margaret. "I think she loves me; that will be enough."

Garda, crying bitterly, kissed Margaret, and then sank on her knees beside the bed, her head against her mother's arm. The sight of her child's grief did not bring the tears to Mrs. Thorne's eyes--already the calm that precedes death had taken possession of them; but it did cause a struggling effort of the poor harassed breath to give forth a sob. She tried to stroke Garda's hair, but could not. "How can I go--and leave her?" she whispered, looking piteously at Margaret, and then at Winthrop, as he stood at the foot of the bed. "She had--no one--but me." And again came the painful sound in the throat, though the clogged breast had not the strength to rise.

"If I could only know," she went on, desolately, to Margaret, the slow turning of the eyes betraying the approach of that lethargy which was soon to touch the muscles with numbness. "You have said--for a while; but you did not promise for longer. If I could only know, Margaret, that she would be under your care as long as she is so alone in the world, then, perhaps, it would be easier to die."

These words, pronounced with difficulty one by one, separated by the slow breaths, seemed to Winthrop indescribably affecting. It was the last earthly effort of mother-love.

Margaret hesitated. It was only for a moment that she was silent. But Evert took that moment to come forward, he came to the side of the bed where she was standing. "Give me your permission, Mrs. Thorne," he said to the dying woman. "Trust me, and I will fill the trust. Garda shall have every care, my aunt shall take charge of her." He was indignant with Margaret for hesitating.

But Margaret hesitated no longer. "I think I am the better person," she interposed, gently. Then, bending forward, she said, with distinctness, "Mrs. Thorne, Garda shall live with me, or near me under my charge, as long as she is so young and alone, as long as she needs my care. You have given me a great trust, I hereby accept it; and I will keep it with all the faithfulness I can." Her voice took on an almost solemn tone as the last words were spoken.

Winthrop, glancing at her as she bent forward beside him, perceived that though she was holding herself in strict control, she was moved by some deep emotion; he could feel that she was trembling. Again, even then and there, he gave an instant to the same conjecture which had occupied his thoughts before. Why should she show emotion? why should her voice take on that tone? She was not excitable; he had had occasion to know that she was not afraid of death, she had stood beside too many death-beds in her visits among the poor (not that he admired her philanthropy); it could not be that she had suddenly become so fond of poor Mrs. Thorne. But he left his conjectures unsolved. A faint but beautiful smile was passing strangely over the mother's face, strangely, because no feature stirred or changed--she was beyond that--and yet the smile was there; the eyes became so transfigured that the two who were watching stood awe-struck; for it seemed as if she were beholding something, just behind or above them, which was invisible to them, something which had lifted from her all the pains and cares of her earthly life, and set her free. For some moments longer the beautiful radiance shone there. Then the light departed, and death alone was left, though the eyes retained a consciousness. They seemed to try to turn to Garda, who was still kneeling with her head hidden against her mother's shoulder.

"Take her in your arms, Garda," whispered Margaret; "your face is the last she wishes to see."

Winthrop had summoned Dr. Kirby; the other friends came softly in. For twenty minutes more the slow breaths came and went, but with longer and longer intervals between. Garda, lying beside her mother, held her in her arms, and the dying woman's fixed eyes rested on her child's for some time; then consciousness faded, the lids drooped. Garda put her warm cheek against the small white face, and, thus embraced, the mother's earthly life ebbed away, while in the still room ascended, in the voice of the clergyman, the last prayer--"O Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of men after they are delivered from their earthly prisons, we humbly commend to Thee the soul of this thy servant, our dear sister--" Our dear sister; they were all there, her Gracias friends--Mrs. Kirby, Mrs. Carew, Mrs. Moore, Madam Giron, Madam Ruiz--and they all wept for her as though she had been a sister indeed. In the hall outside, at the open door, stood handsome Manuel, not ashamed of his tears; and near him, more devout as well as more self-controlled, knelt Torres, reverently waiting, with head turned away, for the end.

Dr. Kirby laid the little hand he had been holding, down upon the coverlet. "She has gone," he said, in a low voice. And, with a visible effort to control his features, he passed round to the other side of the bed, and lifting Garda tenderly, tried to draw her away. But Garda clung to the dead, and cried so heart-brokenly that all the women, with fresh tears starting at the desolate sound--that sound of audible sobbing which first tells those outside the still room that the blow has fallen--all the women came one by one and tried to comfort her. But it was not until Margaret Harold took her in her arms that she was at all quieted.

"Come with me, Garda," she said. "You are not leaving your mother alone, your mother is not here; she has gone home to God. Come with me; remember she wished it." And Garda yielded.

They buried Mrs. Thorne in the family burying-ground at East Angels (the one of which she had spoken), her daughter and her friends following, on foot, the coffin, borne on the shoulders of eight of their former slaves. Thus the little procession crossed the Levels to the secluded enclosure at the far end, Mr. Moore in his surplice leading the way. A high hedge of cedar-trees set closely together like a wall, their dark branches sweeping the ground, encircled the place; across the narrow opening which had been left for entrance, was a low paling-gate. Within, ranged in a circle, were a number of oblong coquina tombs, broad and low, without inscriptions; here slept all the Dueros, the first Englishman, Edgar Thorne, and the few American-born Thornes who had succeeded him. Into the presence of this company was now borne Melissa Whiting.

Her coffin was covered with the beautiful flowers of the South; but within, hidden on her breast, there was a faded spray of arbutus, the last "May-flowers" which had been sent to her, years before, from her northern home; she had given them to Margaret, and asked her, when the time came, to place them there. Thus was she lowered to her rest. All who were present came one by one, according to Gracias custom, to cast into the deep grave the handful of white sand which, in Florida, represents the "earth to earth"--that sound which, soft though it be, breaks the heart. Garda, shivering, clung to Margaret and hid her face. Then rose Mr. Moore's voice among them: "I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, 'Write. From henceforth blessed are the dead--for they rest from their labors.'"

Beautiful words, unmeaning to the young and happy, more and more do they convey to many of us a dear comfort, for ourselves as well as for those already gone--blessed are the dead, for they rest from their labors. For they rest.

That evening the negroes of the neighborhood assembled at East Angels, and, standing outside in the darkness, under the windows, sang their own funeral hymn; their voices rose with sweetness in the wildly plaintive minor strains; then grew softer and softer, as, still singing sweetly, they marched quietly away.

And so night closed down over the old southern house. But the little mother, who had toiled there so long, was gone. She was away in that far country where we hope we shall no more remember the cares and pain, the mysteries and bitter griefs of this.

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Chapter XIV

The next day it was arranged that Garda should, for the present, remain where she was; she wished to do this, and Mrs. Carew, unselfish always, had offered to close her own house (so far as Cynthy and Pompey would permit), and stay with her for a while.

It was known now that Mrs. Harold was to have charge of Garda. The Gracias friends were grieved by this tidings; they had supposed that Garda would be left to them. But they all liked Margaret, and when, a little later, they learned that she had asked Dr. Kirby to fill the office of guardian, they welcomed with gladness this guarantee that they were not to be entirely separated from the child whom they had known and loved from her birth, that one of them was to have the right, in some degree, to direct her course, and watch over her. These unworldly people, these secluded people, with their innocently proud, calm belief in their own importance, never once thought of its being possibly an advantage to Garda, this opportunity to leave Gracias-a-Dios, to have further instruction, to see something of the world. They could not consider it an advantage to leave Gracias-a-Dios, and "further instruction," which, of course, meant northern instruction, they did not approve; as for "the world," very little confidence had they in any world so remote from their own. That, indeed, was the Gracias idea of New York--"remote." Nor did the fact that Mrs. Harold had a fortune (a very large one it would have seemed to them had they known its amount) make any especial impression. They would each and all have welcomed Garda to their own homes, would have freely given her a daughter's share in everything they possessed; that, from a worldly point of view, these homes were but poor ones, and a daughter's share in incomes which were in themselves so small and uncertain, a very limited possession--these considerations did not enter much into their thoughts. Their idea was that for a fatherless, motherless girl, love was the great thing; and of love they had an abundance.

Before he had had his interview with Margaret, before he knew of her intention to ask him to be guardian, Dr. Kirby had gone about silent; with a high color; portentous. Much as he admired Mrs. Rutherford, he did not present himself at the eyrie; his mirror told him that he had not the proper expression. But Margaret did not delay; on the third day she made her request; and then the Doctor went home stepping with all his old trimness, his toes well turned out, his head erect.

"It's very fortunate, ma" (the Doctor's a in this word had a sound between that of a in "mare" and in "May"), "that she has asked me," he said to his mother; "I doubt whether I could have kept silence otherwise. I admire Mrs. Rutherford highly, as you know; she is a lady of the finest bearing and presence. And I admire Mrs. Harold too. But if they had attempted--if Mrs. Harold had attempted to take Garda off to the North, and keep her there, without any link, any regularly established communication with us, I fear" (the Doctor's face had grown red again)--"I fear, ma, I should have balked; I should have just set my feet together, put down my head, and--raised the devil behind!"

"Why, my son, what language!" said his mother, surprised; though she felt, too, the force of his comparison, as she lived in the country of the mule.

"Excuse me, ma; I am excited, or rather I have been. But Garda is one of us, you know, and we could not, I could not, with a clear conscience allow them to separate her from us entirely, hurry her off into a society of which we know little or nothing, save that it is totally different from our own--modern--mercantile--hurrying" (the Doctor was evidently growing excited again)--"all that we most dislike. You are probably thinking that there are Mrs. Rutherford, Mrs. Harold, yes, and Mr. Winthrop too (if he would only dress himself more as a gentleman should), to answer for it, to serve as specimens. Those charming ladies would grace, I admit, any society--any society in the world! But I am convinced that they are not specimens, they are exceptions; I am convinced that society at the North is a very different affair. And, besides, Garda belongs here. Her ancestors have been men of distinction,--among the most distinguished, indeed, of this whole coast; I may be mistaken, of course, ma; I may be too severe; but still I cannot help thinking that at the North this would fall on ignorant ears; that the people there are too--too ignorant of such matters to appreciate them."

"I reckon you are right," replied Mrs. Kirby. "Still, Reginald, we must not forget that it was the mother's own wish that Mrs. Harold should take charge of Garda."

"Yes, ma, I know. Poor little Mistress Thorne, to whom I was most sincerely attached"--here the Doctor paused to give a vigorous cough--"was, we must remember, a New-Englander by birth, after all; and in spite of her efforts (most praiseworthy they were too), she never quite outgrew that fact. It couldn't, therefore, be expected that she should comprehend fully the great advantages (even taking merely the worldly view of it) of having her daughter continue to live here--here where such a descent is acknowledged, and proper honor paid to ancestors of distinction."

"True, my son," said the neat little old lady, knitting on. "But still a mother has a good deal to do with the 'descent!' I'm not sure that she hasn't even more than an ancestor--ahem."

On the whole, as matters were now arranged, with Dr. Kirby appointed as guardian, it could be said that Gracias accepted the new order of things regarding Garda's future. Not thankfully or gratefully, not with inward relief; it was simply an acquiescence. They felt, too, that their acquiescence was magnanimous.

The only discordant element was Mrs. Rutherford. And she was very discordant indeed. But as she confined the expression of her feelings to her niece, the note of dissonance did not reach the others.

"It's beyond belief," she said. "What possible claim have these Thornes upon you? The idea of her having tried to saddle you with that daughter of hers! She took advantage of you, of course, and of the situation; I am really indignant for you, and feel that I ought to come to your rescue; I advise you to have nothing to do with it. You can be friendly, of course, while we are here; but, afterwards, let it all drop."

"I can hardly do that when I have promised, Aunt Katrina," answered Margaret. And she answered in the same way many times.

For Mrs. Rutherford could make a very dexterous use of the weapon of iteration. She was seldom betrayed into a fretful tone, there was always a fair show of reason in what she said (its purely personal foundation she was skilful in concealing); her best thrust was to be so warmly on the side of the person she was trying to lead, to be so "surprised" for him, and "angry" for him (as against others), that he was led at last to be "surprised" and "angry" himself, though in the beginning he might have had no such idea. By these well-managed reiterations she had gained her point many times during honest Peter's lifetime; he never failed to be touched when he saw how warmly she was taking up "his side," though up to that moment, perhaps, he had not been aware that he had a "side" on that particular subject, or that anybody was on the other.

But if she gained her point with Peter, she did not gain it with Peter's niece.

"Garda, I hope, will not be a trouble to you, Aunt Katrina. For the present she is to remain at East Angels; when we go north, I shall place her with Madame Martel."

"It's really pitiful to think how unhappy she will be," said Mrs. Rutherford, the next day, shaking her head prophetically. "Poor child--poor little southern flower--to take her away from this lovely climate, and force her to live at the cold North--to take her away from a real home, where they all love her, and put her with Madame Martel! You must have a far sterner nature than I have, Margaret, to be able to do it."

To this Margaret made no answer.

"I really wish you would tell me why you rate your own influence over that of everybody else," remarked Mrs. Rutherford on another occasion. She spoke impersonally, as though it were simply a curiosity she felt. "Have you had some experience in the management of young girls that I know nothing about?"

"No," replied Margaret.

"Yet you undertake it without hesitation! You have more confidence in your powers than I should have in mine, I confess. How do you know what she may do? Depend upon it, she won't have our ideas at all. You are a quiet sort of person, but she may be quite the reverse, and then what a prospect! She will be talked about, such girls always are; she may even get into the papers."

"Not for a year or two yet, I think," answered Margaret, smiling.

The next day, "It would be so easy to do it now," observed the handsome aunt; "it almost seems like a tempting of Providence to neglect such an opportunity." (Mrs. Rutherford always lived on intimate terms with Providence.) "You could keep up your interest in her, send her down books, and even a governess for six months or so, if you wished to be very punctilious; all the people here want Garda to stay--they cannot bear to give her up; you would be doing them a kindness by yielding. They are really fond of her, and she is fond of them; of course you can't pretend that she cares for you in that way?"

"Oh no, I don't pretend," replied Margaret.

"You carry her off without it!"

The next advance was on another line. "What are you going to do when she is through school, Margaret?" demanded the inquirer, with interested amiability. "She'll have to see something, go somewhere--you can't shut her up; and who is going to chaperon her? I am an invalid, you know, and you yourself are much too young. You must remember, my dear, that you are a young and pretty woman." (Aunt Katrina had evidently been driven to her best shot.)

But though this, or a similar remark, would have been certain to bring down Peter, and place him just where his wife wished him to be, it failed to bring down Peter's niece.

Mrs. Rutherford saw this. And concluded as follows: "However, it doesn't make much difference; with the kind of beauty Garda Thorne has, no one would look at you, you might be any age; she has the sort of face that simply extinguishes every one else."

"Having no radiance of my own to look after, I can see her all the better, then," replied Margaret. "She'll be the lighted Bank, and I the policeman with the dark lantern."

Mrs. Rutherford did not like this answer, she thought it flippant. It was true, however, that Margaret was very seldom flippant.

"It does seem to me so weak to keep an extorted promise," she began another day. "I suppose you won't deny that it was extorted?"

"It was very much wished for."

"And you gave it unwillingly."

"Not unwillingly, Aunt Katrina."

"Reluctantly, then."

"Yes, I was reluctant."

"You were reluctant," repeated Mrs. Rutherford, with triumph. "Of course I knew you must be. But whatever possessed you to do it, Margaret--induced you to consent, extortion or no extortion--that passes me!"

Margaret gave no explanation. So the aunt attempted one. "It almost seems as though you were influenced by something I am ignorant of," she went on, making a little gesture of withdrawal with her hand, as if she found herself on the threshold of mysterious regions of double motive into which she should prefer not to penetrate.

This was a random ball. But Margaret's fair face showed a sudden color, though the aunt's eyes did not detect it. "She is alone, and very young, Aunt Katrina; I have promised, and I must keep my promise. But I shall do my best to prevent it from disturbing you, with me you will always be first; this is all I can say, and I do not think there is any use in talking about it more." She had risen as she said these words, and now she left the room.

In addition to her niece's obstinacy, this lady had now to bear the discovery that her nephew Evert did not share her views respecting Garda Thorne--views which seemed to her the only proper and natural ones; he not only thought that Mrs. Harold should keep her promise, but he even went further than she did in his ideas as to what that promise included. "She ought to keep Garda with her, and not put her off at Madame Martel's," he said.

"I see that I am to be quite superseded," remarked Mrs. Rutherford, in a pleasant voice, smoothing her handkerchief, however, with a sort of manner which seemed to indicate that she might yet be driven to a use--lachrymose--of that delicate fabric.

"My dear aunt, what can you be thinking of?" said Winthrop. "Nobody is going to supersede you."

"But how can I like the idea of sharing you with a stranger, Evert?" Her tone continued affectionate; she seldom came as far as ill temper with her nephew; she seldom, indeed, came as far as ill temper with any man, a coat seemed to have a soothing effect upon her.

"There's no sharing, as far as I am concerned," Winthrop answered. "I have nothing to do with Garda; it's Margaret."

"Yes, it is Margaret. And very obstinate, too, has she been about it. Now, if the girl had been left to me," pursued the lady, in a reasonable way, "there would have been some sense in it. I have had experience, and I should know what to do. I should pick out an excellent governess, and send her down here with all the books necessary--perhaps even a piano," she added, largely; "in that way I should keep watch of the child's education. But I should never have planned to take her away from her home and all her friends; that would seem to me cruelty. My idea would have been, and still is, that she should live here, say with the Kirbys; then she would have the climate and life which she always has had, to which she is accustomed; and in time probably she would marry either that young Torres, or Manuel Ruiz, both quite suitable matches for her. But what could she do in our society, if Margaret should persist, later, in taking her into it? It would be quite pitiable, she would be so completely out of her element, poor little thing!"

"So beautiful a girl is apt to be in her element wherever she is, isn't she?" remarked Winthrop.

"Is it possible, Evert, that you really admire her?"

"I admire her greatly."

The tears rose in Mrs. Rutherford's eyes at this statement. They were only tears of vexation, but the nephew did not know that; he came and stood beside her.

She had hidden her face in her handkerchief. "If you should ever marry that girl, Evert, my heart would be broken!" she lamented from behind it. "She isn't at all the person for you to marry."

Winthrop burst into a laugh. "I'm not at all the person for her to marry. Have you forgotten, Aunt Katrina, that I am thirty-five, and she--barely sixteen?"

"Age doesn't make any difference," answered Mrs. Rutherford, still tearful. "And you are very rich, Evert."

"Garda Thorne doesn't care in the least about money," responded Winthrop, shortly, turning away.

"She ought to, then," rejoined Mrs. Rutherford, drying her eyes with a soft pressure of the handkerchief, so that the lids should not be reddened. "In fact, that is another of her lacks: she seems to have no objection to imposing herself upon Margaret in a pecuniary way as well as in others. She has nothing, there isn't literally a cent of income, Betty Carew tells me; only a pile of the most extraordinarily darned old clothes and house-linen, a decayed orange grove, and two obstinate old negro servants, who don't really belong to anybody, and wouldn't obey them if they did. That you should buy the place, that has been their one hope; it was very clever of them to give you the idea."

"Garda didn't give it, I wanted the place as soon as I saw it. She is ignorant about money; most girls of sixteen are. But what is it that really vexes you so much in this affair, Aunt Katrina? I am sure there is something."

"You are right," replied Mrs. Rutherford, with dignity. "But 'vexes' is not the word, Evert. It is a deeper feeling." She had put away her handkerchief, and now sat majestically in her chair, her white hands extended on its cushioned arms. "Hurt is the word; I am hurt about Margaret. Here I have done everything in the world for her, opened my home and my heart to her, in spite of all; and now she deserts me for a totally insignificant person, a stranger."

"Margaret has always been very devoted to you, and I am sure she will continue to be--she is conscientious in such things--no matter what other responsibilities she may assume," said Winthrop, with warmth.

Mrs. Rutherford noticed this warmth (Winthrop noticed it too); but, for the moment, she let it pass. "That is just it--other responsibilities," she answered; "but why should she assume any? Before she promised to give that girl a home, she should have remembered that it was my home. Before she promised to take charge of her, she should have remembered that she had other things in charge. I am an invalid, I require (and most properly) a great deal of her care; not to give it, or to give it partially, would be, after all I have done for her, most ungrateful; she should have remembered that she was not free--free, that is, to make engagements of that sort."

Winthrop had several times before in his life come face to face with the evidence that his handsome, agreeable aunt was selfish. He was now face to face with it again.

"As regards what you say about a home, Aunt Katrina, Margaret could at any time have one of her own, if she pleased," he answered; "her income fully permits it."

Mrs. Rutherford now gave way to tears that were genuine. "It's the first time, Evert, I've known you to take her part against me," she answered, from behind her shielding handkerchief.

Winthrop recalled this speech later--after he had made his peace with his afflicted relative; it was the first time. He thought about it for a moment or two--that he should have been driven to defend Lanse's wife. But that was it, he had been driven. "She was so confoundedly unjust," he said to himself, thinking of his aunt. He knew that he had a great taste for justice.

A few days after this he came to the eyrie one morning at an hour much earlier than his accustomed one; he sent Celestine to ask Mrs. Harold to come for a moment to the north piazza, the one most remote from Mrs. Rutherford's rooms. Margaret joined him there immediately; her face wore an anxious expression.

"I see you think I bring bad news--sending for you in this mysterious way," he said, smiling. "It isn't bad at all; under the circumstances I call it very good, the best thing that could have happened. Mr. Moore has had a letter; Lucian Spenser was married last week. Something sudden, I presume; probably it was that that took him north."

Margaret's eyes met his with what he called their mute expression. He had never been able to interpret it, he could not now.

"It hasn't, of course, the least interest for us, except as it may touch Garda," he went on. "I don't apprehend anything serious; still, as we are the only persons who have known her little secret--this fancy she has had--perhaps it would be better if one of us should go down to East Angels and tell her before any one else can get there--don't you think so? And will you go? or shall I?"

"You," Margaret answered.

"I don't often ask questions, you must give me that credit," he said, looking at her. "But I should really like to know upon what grounds you decide so quickly."

"The grounds are unimportant. But I am sure you are the one to go."

Winthrop, on the whole, wished to go. He now found himself telling his reasons. "I can go immediately, that is one thing; you would have to speak to Aunt Katrina, make arrangements, and that would take time. Then I think that Garda has probably talked more freely to me about that youth than she has to you; it's a little odd that she should, but I think she has."

"It's very possible."

"On that account it would come in more naturally, perhaps, if she should hear it first from me."

Again Margaret assented.

"And then it won't make her think it's important, my stopping there as I pass; your going would have another look. I'm a little curious to see how she will take it," he added.

"That is your real reason, I think," said Margaret.

"She has just lost her mother," he went on, without taking up this remark. "Perhaps the real sorrow may make her forget the fictitious one; I am sure I hope so. I will go down, then. But in case I am mistaken, in case she should continue to--fancy herself in earnest, shall I come back and tell you?"

"I suppose so, she is in my charge. But if I should have to go down there myself, Aunt Katrina would take it rather ill, I am afraid,--that is just now."

"You are very good to Aunt Katrina, I want to tell you that I appreciate it; I am afraid she has rather a way of treating you as an appendage to herself, not as an independent personage."

"That is all I am--an appendage," said Margaret. She paused. "Feeling as she does," she continued, "she yet allows me to stay with her. That has been a great deal to me."

Winthrop's face changed a little; up to this time his expression had been almost warmly kind. "Feeling as she does!" Yes, Aunt Katrina might well feel as she did, with her favorite nephew, her almost son, wandering about the world (this was one of the aunt's expressions, he used it in his thoughts unconsciously), without a home, because he had a wife so Pharisaic, so icily unforgiving.

"You make too much of it," he answered, coldly; "the obligation is by no means all on one side." Then he finished what he had begun to say before she made her remark. "I had occasion to remind my aunt, only the other day, that if at any time you should wish to have a home of your own, she ought not to object. She would miss you greatly, of course; I, however--and I am glad to have this opportunity of saying it--should consider such a wish very natural, and I should be happy to do everything possible towards furthering it."

"I have no such wish; but perhaps you think--perhaps you prefer that I should leave Mrs. Rutherford?" She had turned away, he could not see the expression of face that accompanied the words.

"It would be impossible that I should prefer such a thing; I don't think you can be sincere in saying it," responded Winthrop, with a tinge of severity. "We both know perfectly well what you are to Aunt Katrina; what is the use of pretending otherwise?" His voice softened. "Your patience with her is admirable; as I said before, don't think I don't see it. I spoke on your own account, I thought you might be tired."

"I am tired--sometimes. But I should be tired just the same in a house of my own," answered Margaret Harold.

He left her, and rode down to East Angels.

But his visit was short; before three o'clock he was again at the eyrie. "I think you had better go down," he said to Margaret, as soon as he could speak to her unheard. "She is taking it most unreasonably; she is crying almost convulsively, and listens to nothing. So far, Mrs. Carew thinks it the old grief for her mother; a revival. But she won't think so long; for Garda, you know, never conceals anything; as soon as she is a little calmer she will be sure to say something that will let out the whole."

"You do not want it known?"

"I thought we were agreed about that. How can any one who cares for the girl want it known? It's so"--he hesitated for a word, and then fell back upon the useful old one--"so childish," he repeated.

"I will go down, then," said Margaret.

"The sooner the better. I hope that you will be able to bring her to reason."

"But if you didn't--"

"I didn't because I lost my temper a little. It seemed to me that the time had come to speak to her plainly."

"Plainly generally means severely. I think severity will never have much effect upon Garda; if you are severe, you will only lose your influence."

"My influence!--I don't know that I have any. What is your idea of Edgarda Thorne?" he said, suddenly. "I don't know that I have ever asked you. Very likely you won't tell."

"I will tell exactly, so far as I know it myself--my idea," replied Margaret. "One cannot have a very definite idea of a girl of sixteen."

"I beg your pardon; to me she seems a remarkably definite person."

"She is, in one way. I think she is very warm-hearted. I think she is above petty things; I have never seen any girl who went so little into details. Mentally, I think her very clever, though she is also indolent. Her frankness would be the most remarkable thing about her were it not for her beauty, which is more remarkable still; it is her beauty, I think, that makes her, young as she is, so 'definite,' as you call it."

"We seem to have much the same idea of her," said Winthrop. "I shouldn't have thought it possible," he added.

"That we should agree in anything?" said Margaret, with a faint smile.

"No, not that; but a woman so seldom has the same idea of another woman that a man has. And--if you will allow me to say it--I think the man's idea often the more correct one, for a woman will betray (confide, if you like the term better) more of her inner nature, her real self, to a man, when she knows him well and likes him, than she ever will to any woman, no matter how well she may know and like her."

Margaret concurred in this.

"So you agree with me there too? Another surprise! What I have said is true enough, but women generally dispute it."

"What you have said is true, after a fashion," Margaret answered. "But the inner feelings you speak of, the real self, which a woman confides to the man she likes rather than to a woman, these are generally her ideal feelings, her ideal self; what she thinks she feels, or hopes to feel, rather than the actual feeling; what she wishes to be, rather than what she is. She may or may not attain her ideal; but in the mean time she is judged, by those of her own sex at least, according to her present qualities, what she has already attained; what she is practically, and every day."

"So you think it is her ideals that Garda has confided to me? What sort of an ideal was Lucian Spenser!"

"Garda is an exception; she has no ideals."

"Oh! don't make her out so disagreeable."

"I couldn't make her out disagreeable even if I should try," answered Margaret. "All I mean is that her nature is so easy, so sunny, that it has never occurred to her to be discontented; and if you are contented you don't have ideals."

"Now you are making her out self-complacent."

"No, only simple; richly natural and healthy. She puts the rest of us (women, I mean) to shame--the rest of us with our complicated motives, and involved consciences."

"I hope you don't mean to say that Garda has no conscience?"

Margaret looked up; she saw that he was smiling. "She has quite enough for her happiness," she answered, smiling too.

But in spite of the smile he detected a melancholy in her tone. And this he instantly resented. For he would never allow that it was owing to her conscientiousness--her conscience, in short--that Margaret Harold's married life had been what it was; that sort of conscientiousness was odious.

"Don't imagine that I admire conscience," he remarked. "Too much of it makes an arid desert of a woman's life. A woman of that sort, too, makes her whole family live in the desert!"

Margaret made no reply to this. She left him and went to find Mrs. Rutherford.

"Of course if it is Garda, little Garda," that lady replied, with a sort of sardonic playfulness which she had lately adopted, "I couldn't dream of objecting." She had given up open opposition since Winthrop's suggestion that Margaret could have, if she should wish it, a home of her own. The suggestion had been very disagreeable, not only in itself (the possibility of such a thing), but also because it cut so completely across her well-established position that it was an immense favor on her part to give Margaret a home. The favor implied, of course, a following gratitude; and Margaret's gratitude had been the broad cushion upon which Mrs. Rutherford had been comfortably seated for seven years. Take it away, and she would be reduced to making objections--objections (if it should really come to that) to Margaret's departure; and what objections could she make? She would never admit that her niece's presence had become necessary to her comfort; and to say that she was too young and attractive to be at the head of a house of her own, this would not accord at all with her accustomed way of speaking of her--a way which had carried with it the implication (though not in actual words) that she was neither. For some reason, the youth of other women was always an offence to Mrs. Rutherford.

However, she was skilful in reducing that attraction. Up to twenty, girls, of course, were "silly," "uninteresting." After that date, they all sprang immediately, in her estimation, to be "at least twenty-five," and well on the road, both in looks and character, to old-maidhood. If they married, it was even easier; for in a few months they were sure to become "so faded and changed, poor things," that one would scarcely know them; and, with a little determination, this stage could be kept along for fifteen or twenty years. Only when they were over forty did Mrs. Rutherford begin to admit the possibility of their being rather attractive; in this lady's opinion, all the really "superb" women were several years even beyond that.

"I shall not be long away this time," Margaret had responded.

"Oh, enjoy your new plaything; it won't last!" said the aunt, still sportive.

Margaret reached East Angels before sunset. Mrs. Carew told her that Garda was down at the landing.

"I've been down there three times myself; in fact, I've just got back," said Betty, who looked flushed by these excursions. "The truth is, I fancy she doesn't want to talk--she's cried so; and so of course I don't stay, of course. And then, no sooner do I get back here, than I think perhaps she's lonely, and down I go again. I don't mind the walk in the least, though it is a little warm to-day, but Carlos Mateo seems to have taken a spite against me, for every single time, both going and coming, he has chased me the whole length of the live-oak avenue--just as soon as we were out of Garda's sight; and I'm so afraid he'll reach down and nip my ankles, that I run. However, I don't mind it at all, really; and when I came up this last time I thought the best thing I could do would be to try and get up something nice for Garda's supper; she's touched nothing since morning, and so much crying is dreadfully exhausting, of course. I'm right glad you've come, you'll be such a comfort to her; and now I will devote my time (I reckon it'll take it all) to that Raquel, who certainly is the most tiresome; the only manner of means, Mrs. Harold, by which I can get what I want this evening is to keep going out to the kitchen and pretend to be merely looking in for a moment or two in a friendly sort of way, as though she were an old servant of my own, and talk about other matters, and then just allude to the supper at the end casually, as one may call it; by keeping this up an hour and a half more (I've already been out three times) I may get some faint approach to what I'm after. You see I'm only a Georgian, not a Spaniard! And to think of what poor little Mistress Thorne must have gone through with her--she, not even a Southerner! Oh dear! she must have suffered. But a good many of us have suffered," continued Betty, suddenly breaking down and bursting into tears. "I'm sure I don't know why I cry now, Mrs. Harold, any more than any other time; I'm ashamed of myself, really I am. But--sometimes--I--cannot--help it!" And for a few moments the stout, ruddy-faced woman sobbed bitterly. In truth she had suffered; she had seen her brothers, her husband's brothers, her young nephews, her own fortune and theirs, swept off by war, together with the hopes and beliefs which had been as real to her as life itself. She had never reasoned much, or argued, but she had felt. The unchangeable sweetness of her disposition, which had kept her from growing bitter, had not been a sign of quick forgetfulness; poor Betty's heart ached often, and never, never forgot.

"I didn't think you could be so sympathetic, my dear," she said, naively, to Margaret, as she wiped her eyes. "Thank you; I can see now why Garda's so fond of you." She pressed Margaret's hand, kissed her, and, still shaken by her sudden emotion, went out for another encounter with Raquel.

Margaret found Garda on the bench at the landing. She looked pale and exhausted, and was glad to lay her head on her northern friend's shoulder and tell her all her grief. It was a surprising sort of sorrow--she expressed it freely as usual; there was no manifestation of wounded pride in it, no anger that she had been so soon forgotten, or jealousy of the person whom Lucian had married; she seemed, indeed, scarcely to remember the person whom Lucian had married. All she remembered was that now she should probably not see him again, or soon again; and this was the cause of all her tears--disappointment in the hope of having the pleasure, the entertainment, of his presence. For it all came back to that, her amusement; the rich share of enjoyment that had been taken from her; even Lucian himself she did not dwell upon save as he was associated with this, save as he could give her the delight of looking at him (she announced this as a great delight), could charm her with the versatility of his talk. "I have never seen any one half so beautiful"--"Nobody ever made me laugh so"--these two declarations she repeated over and over again; Margaret could have laughed herself had the grief which accompanied them been less real. But there was nothing feigned in the heavy eyes, and the sobs which came every now and then, shaking the girl's whole frame.

She remained at East Angels two days. During this time, while she was very gentle with Garda, she did not try to "bring her to reason," as Winthrop had suggested; but she did try the method of simple listening, and found it very efficacious.

Garda, unrebuffed, unchilled, and frank as always, let out all her thoughts, all her feelings; she said some very astonishing things--astonishing, that is, to her hearer; but then she was herself an astonishing girl, an unusual girl. The end of it was that the unusual girl clung more closely than ever to her friend, and that she soon became calmer, passive if not happy. Winthrop, coming down to East Angels on the second day, found her so, and took counsel with Margaret, after she had returned home, over the change; he expressed the opinion that very soon she would have forgotten all about it. In this he was mistaken; the days passed, and Garda remained in the same passive condition. She was gentle with every one; to Margaret and Winthrop she was affectionate. But in spite of her bloom--for her color came back as soon as the tears ceased--in spite of her rich youthfulness, she had the appearance of a person who has stopped, who does not care, who has lost interest and lets the world go by. This could not make her look older; but it did give her a strange expression.

"A mourning child is worse than a mourning woman," said Winthrop to Margaret, emphatically. "It's unnatural."

"Garda isn't a child," she answered.

"Since when have you come to that conclusion?"

She hesitated. "I think, perhaps, I have never fully understood her. I don't know that I understand her even now."

"Oh, 'understand'--as if she were a sphinx, poor little girl! One thing is certain," he added, rather contradictorily, "if she loses her simplicity, she loses all her charm."

"Not all, I think."

"Yes, all to me."

"You cannot see what she finds to admire in Lucian Spenser; that is what vexes you."

"I am not in the least vexed. She fancied her own fancy, her own imagination; that was all."

"Garda has very little imagination."

"How you dislike her!" said Winthrop, looking straight into her eyes.

To his surprise he almost thought he saw them falter. "On the contrary, I am much attached to her," she answered, letting her glance drop; "I shall grow very fond of her, I see that. It was nothing against her to say that she has little imagination. If she had had more, would she have been so contented here? I think it has been very fortunate."

"Yes, she has certainly been contented," said Winthrop. "I like that."

"As to what you say about her losing her simplicity, I don't think she has lost it in the least. Why, what could be a greater evidence of it than the open way in which she has shown out to me, but more especially to you, all she has felt about Mr. Spenser?"

"Yes, to me--I should think so! I might have been her grandfather," responded Winthrop, flapping his hat with his gloves, which he had just discovered in some unremembered pocket.

In the mean time the dark Torres, lean and solemn, had haunted East Angels ever since Mrs. Thorne's death. Twice a day, with deep reverence for affliction, he came to inquire after Garda's health; twice a day, walking almost on tiptoe, he withdrew. His visits never exceeded ten minutes in length. So great was his respect that he never sat down. But underneath all this quietude the feelings, which Manuel had described as volcanic, were surging within; if they did not show on the surface, that was the misfortune (or advantage) of having a profound sense of dignity, and a yellow skin. Garda was now alone in the world, and she was in great trouble; like the other Gracias friends, Torres believed that all the recent grief, together with the change in her, had been caused by her mother's death--Margaret and Winthrop had at least succeeded in that. But even if all Gracias had known the truth, Torres would never have known it; he would never have known it because he would never have believed it. A Torres believed only what was credible, and such a tale about a Duero would be incredible. In the same way, he had never given the least credit to the story that Garda was going north--to New York. Why should Garda go to New York, any more than he, Torres, to Japan? No; what Garda needed now was not wild travelling about the world with promiscuous people, but safeguards that were not promiscuous; safeguards that should be embodied in a single and distinct Arm, a single and distinguished Name; in short, what he himself could give her--an Alliance; an Alliance suited to her birth.

So when the visits of affliction had been all accomplished, he started one morning in his best attire, and his aunt's black boat, rowed by eight negroes, for Gracias-a-Dios, to ask permission from Reginald Kirby, guardian, to "address," with reference to an Alliance, the Dueros' daughter.

The Giron fields, meanwhile, lay idle and empty behind him; he had swept them of every man.

"Dear Adolfo," said his aunt, who, as a widow with six little children, was trying hard (for a Giron) to raise something on her plantation that year, "must you have them all? They are very much needed to-day, we are so behindhand with everything."

"My aunt, what is sugar compared with our name?"

Madam Giron immediately agreed that it was nothing, nothing.

"Look out, my aunt, as we start; that will be compensation," said Adolfo.

Madam Giron not only looked out, but she came down to the landing. She was a handsome woman still, though portly; she had dark eyes of a charming expression, and shining black hair elaborately braided. When she was dressed for a visit she had a waist. On ordinary occasions it lapped over the band more or less. She was good-nature itself, and now stood on the bank smiling, wearing a gown of rather shapeless aspect, which was, however, short enough to show a pair of very pretty Spanish feet incased in neat little black slippers. She had already forgotten the idle fields in her pride at the fine appearance of the rowers. "A good voyage!" she said.

The boat, with the eight negroes sitting close together, was low in the water as it started off. The stern seemed higher; any place where Torres sat always seemed higher.

Reaching Gracias, he landed at the water-steps of the plaza, and leaving the boat waiting below, went to the residence of the Kirbys--an old white house in a large garden. Dr. Reginald, for the moment, was out. Torres signified that he would return, and making his way with his stiff gait to one of the side streets, he walked up and down for twenty minutes, beguiling the time (as all his phrases for the interview were definitely arranged, and he did not wish to disturb them) by trying to translate a sign which was nailed on a low coquina house near.

CHRISTOBAL REY,

TONSORIAL ARTIST.

N.B.--CLEAN TOWELS. SATISFACTION GUARANTEED.

Having thus employed the interval (and still at "Tonsorial" in his attempted translation), he returned to the Kirby homestead.

The Doctor was now in, and received him courteously. Torres, standing in the centre of the room, hat in hand, his feet drawn together at the heels, made (after several opening sentences of ceremony which he had constructed with care at home) his formal demand.

The Doctor had always got on very well with Torres by replying to him in English; any chance remark would do. Torres listened to the remark with respect, understanding no more of it than the Doctor had understood of the Spanish sentence which had preceded it. Then, after due pause, the Cuban would say something more in his own tongue. And the Doctor would again reply in English. In this way they had had, when they happened to meet, quite long conversations, which appeared to be satisfactory to both. The Doctor now reverted to this method; the boy had evidently come to pay him a visit of ceremony in acknowledgment of several invitations; he would not probably stay long. So, in answer to Torres' request for permission to "address" Garda, with reference to an "Alliance," he replied that on the whole he thought the oranges would be good this year, though--and here followed a little disquisition on the effects respectively of wet and dry seasons, to which Torres listened with gravity unmoved. He then advanced to his second position: he hoped the Doctor, as guardian, cherished no personal objections to his suit; this was the courtesy of ceremony on his part, of course; the Doctor naturally could cherish no objection.

The Doctor replied that he had never cared much for mandarins; for his own part, he preferred the larger kinds. However, that was a matter of taste--each one to his own; he believed in letting everybody have what he liked. And, having the third time pushed a chair in vain towards his visitor, he waived further ceremony and seated himself; he had already been kept standing unconscionably long.

Torres, who had understood at least the gesture, responded with deference, pointing out that to be seated would not accord with his present position as most humble of suitors for the Doctor's favor.

And then the Doctor responded that, to please his mother, he had planted a few mandarins after all.

So they went on. The Doctor thought his visitor would never go. From his comfortable chair he watched him standing in his fixed attitude, producing his Spanish phrases, one after the other, with grave regularity, whenever there was a pause. Finally the Doctor, who had a gleam of fun in him, folded his arms and recited to him two hundred lines from "The Rape of the Lock," which was one of his favorite poems; he emphasized the parts which he liked, and even gesticulated a little as he went on, not hurrying at all, but finishing the whole in round full tones, with excellent taste and elocution. "There!" he said to himself; "let us see how he likes that."

But Torres, apparently, liked it as well as anything else; he listened to the whole without change of expression, and then, after the proper pause, brought out another of his remarks. The Doctor glanced at the clock; the visitor had been there over half an hour. "Look here, Torres, what is it you are talking about?" he said, convinced at last that the Cuban had really something to say, and that their usual tactics would not do this time. He had understood not a word of the long Spanish sentences, for Garda's name, which might have thrown some light upon them, had been scrupulously left unspoken by this punctilious suitor, who had used the third person throughout, alluding to her solely as the descendant of her ancestors, and, as such, a "consort" who would be accepted by his own.

Torres watched while the Doctor walked about the room, trying to think of something which should act as interpreter; he paused at pen and paper on the writing-table; but written Spanish was no clearer to him than spoken. At last, with a sudden inspiration, he took down a dictionary. "Here," he said, "find the words you want." And he thrust the Spanish half upon the grave young man.

But Torres recoiled; he could not possibly make a "school exercise," he declared, of his most sacred aspirations.

The Doctor, exasperated, pried the words out of him one by one, and then himself, with spectacles on, looked them out, or tried to, in the dictionary. But progress was slow; Torres' sentences contained much circumlocution, and he would not give the infinitives of his verbs when the Doctor asked for them, considering it beneath his dignity to lend himself in any way to such a childish performance. At length, after much effort, suddenly the Doctor got at his meaning. "You ridiculous idiot!" he said, throwing the dictionary down with a slam (for he had had to work hard, and the print was fine), "you make 'an Alliance,' indeed! Alliance! Why, you're two years under age yourself, and haven't done growing yet, not to speak of your having nothing in the world to offer a wife that I know of--except your impudence, which is colossal, I grant! Go home and play with your top. When you're a man, you can come back and talk of it--if you like; at present face about, go home and play with your top!"

Torres, of course, could not comprehend these injunctions. But he could comprehend the Doctor's opening the door for him; and, with respect unbroken, he formally took leave. He walked down the side street, and looked mechanically at the sign again; but he could not translate it any more than he could the Doctor's last sentence, whose words he carried carefully in his memory. He went back to his boat, and was rowed in state again down the shining water.

"My aunt," he said, when he had arrived, drawing Madam Giron apart from the small Girons who encompassed her, "what is 'Co--ome--oonplay--weetyer--torp?'"

But Madam Giron could not tell him; her English was not imaginative enough to enable her to comprehend her nephew's pronunciations. Torres decided that he would go and ask Manuel, and rowed himself across to Patricio for the purpose; this not being a state occasion, it was allowable to ply the oars.

"Manuel, what is 'Co--ome--oonplay--weetyer--torp?'" he said, appearing on the piazza of Manuel's room, which formed one of the wings of the rambling old house.

But Manuel was in a desperate humor; he was putting on his hat, then dragging it off again, and rushing up and down the room with a rapid step; he glared at his friend, but would not reply.

"I asked you, Manuel, what is 'Co--ome--oonplay--weetyer--torp?'" repeated Torres. "It is what the Gracias-a-Dios doctor said to me, as answer, when (after very long stupidity on his part; I can say it to you, Manuel--doltishly long) he at last comprehended that I was requesting his permission to address the Senorita Duero. Naturally, as you will now understand, I desire a careful translation."

Manuel laughed bitterly. "So you've got it too! But I went to the girl herself, as you would have done if you hadn't been such a ninny; but you're always a ninny. What do you suppose she said to me--yes, Garda herself?" he went on, furiously, dropping, in the recital of his wrongs, even the pleasure of abusing his friend. "Here I only went to her because she is so alone now, so unhappy, it was pure compassion on my part; I made sacrifices, sacrifices, I tell you, and poignant ones!--I intended to see the world first. Am I not in the flower of my youth--I ask you that? Am I not keenly pleasing? But--everybody knows! Well, was she grateful? I leave you to judge! She deliberately said--yes, in so many words--that she had never cared for me, when the whole world knows she has cared to distraction, to frenzy. And she had the effrontery to add that the only person she cared for--and for him she cared 'day and night'--was that--that--" In his rage Manuel could not speak the name, but he seized a great knife with a sharp edge, and cut straight through a book which was lying on the table. "There!" he cried, throwing the severed leaves in handfuls about the room, "that is how I will serve him--Spenser-r-r-r! Let him come on!" And he continued to throw the papers wildly.

Torres was shocked. Not at the sight of his friend displaying his vengeance in that childish fashion; he had long considered Manuel hopelessly undignified. His shock came from the idea of a Senorita Duero having been spoken to on such a subject, spoken to directly! Of course she had rejected Manuel (it would always be of course that she should reject Manuel), but the idea of her having been forced to do so by word of mouth--being deprived of the delicate privilege of expressing herself through her proper guardian! As to the story that she was thinking of some one else, "day and night," he paid no heed to it; that was plainly Manuel's fiction. No one could for a moment believe that the senorita thought of any one long after sunset--say half-past seven or eight; anything else would be clearly improper.

"If you had given the subject a deeper consideration, Manuel--" he began.

But Manuel was still engaged with the book; he was now slicing the cover. "Spenser-r-r-r-r!"

Torres went towards him, and put out his forefinger with an impressive gesture. "I say if you had given the subject a deeper consideration, Manuel--"

"Scat!" said Manuel.

"What?" said the Cuban.

"Scat! scat! You're no better than an old tabby."

Torres looked at him solemnly. Then he put up his finger again. "It was not the proper course, Manuel," he began, a third time. "If you had given--"

"Oh, go to the devil!" cried Manuel, with a sort of howl, leaping towards him with the knife.

Torres thought he had better go.

He was not in the least afraid of Manuel; Torres had never been afraid in his life. But Manuel was a little excited (he had the bad habit of excitement); it was, perhaps, better to leave him to himself for a while. So he went back to the main-land; and meditated upon the Doctor's words. They remained mysterious, and the next day he made another progress up the Espiritu to Gracias, having decided to intrust his secret to the good rector of St. Philip and St. James', and profit by his knowledge of both languages.

The Rev. Mr. Moore was not only good, but he had not been troubled by nature with too large an endowment of humor--often an inconvenient possession. He listened to his visitor's story and the quoted sentence with gravity; then, after a moment's meditation, he put his long hands together, the tip of each delicately finished finger accurately meeting its mate, and made a discreet translation as follows: "You are still young; it would be better, perhaps, to remain at home until you are somewhat older." "Somewhat" was Mr. Moore's favorite word; everything with him was somewhat so; nothing (save wickedness) entirely so. In this way he escaped rashness. Certainly Reginald Kirby had put no "somewhat" of any sort in his answer to the Cuban. But Mr. Moore was of the opinion that he intended to do so (being prevented, probably, by that same rashness), and so he gave his guest the benefit of the doubt.

Torres reflected upon the translation; he had accepted a chair this time, but sat hat in hand, his heels drawn together as before. "With your favor, sir," he said at last, raising his eyes and making the clergyman a little bow, "this seems to me hardly an acceptance?"

"Hardly, I think," replied the clergyman, with moderation.

"At the same time, it is not a rejection. As I understand it, I am advised--for the present at least--simply to wait?" And he looked at the clergyman inquiringly.

"Exactly--very simple--to wait," assented Mr. Moore.

The Cuban rose; and made ceremonious acknowledgments.

"You return?" asked the clergyman, affably.

"I return."

"There is, no doubt, much to interest you on the plantation," remarked Mr. Moore, in a general way.

"What there is could be put upon the point of the finest lance known to history, and balanced there," replied Torres, with a dull glance of his dull dark eyes.

"I fear that young man has a somewhat gloomy disposition," thought the clergyman, when left alone.

Torres went down the lagoon again; and began to wait.

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Chapter XV

"Man alive! of all the outlandish!" This was the unspoken phrase in Minerva Poindexter's mind as she watched a little scene which was going on near by. "I suppose it's peekin', but I don't care. What in the name of all creation are they at?"

Behind one of the old houses of Gracias there was a broad open space which had once been a field. On the far edge of this sunny waste stood some negro cabins, each brilliant with whitewash, and possessing a shallow little garden of its own, gay with flowers; in almost every case, above the low roof rose the clear green of a clump of bananas. A path bordered by high bushes led from the town to this little settlement, and here it was that Celestine, herself invisible, had stopped to look through a rift in the foliage. A negro woman was coming down the dusty track which passed in front of the cabins; on her head she carried a large bundle tied up in a brightly colored patchwork counterpane. As she drew near the first house she espied her friend Mrs. Johnson sitting on her front step enjoying the air, with the last young Johnson, Nando, on her knee. The first woman (Celestine knew that she was called Jinny) stopped, put one arm akimbo, and, steadying her bundle with the other hand, began to sway herself slightly from side to side at the hips, while her bare feet, which were visible, together with a space of bare ankle above, coming out below her short cotton skirt, moved forward in a measured step, the heel of the right being placed diagonally against the toes of the left, and then the heel of the left in its turn advanced with a slow level sweep, and placed diagonally across the toes of the right. There was little elevation of the sole, the steps, though long, being kept as close as possible to the ground, but without touching it, until the final down pressure, which was deep and firm. There seemed to be no liberty allowed, it was a very exact measure that Jinny was treading; the tracks made by her heel, the broad spread of her foot, and the five toes in the white dust, followed each other regularly in even zigzags which described half circles. Thus swaying herself rhythmically, turning now a little to the right, now a little to the left, Jinny slowly approached Mrs. Johnson, who regarded her impassively, continuing to trot Nando without change of expression. But when Jinny had come within a distance of fifteen feet, suddenly Mrs. Johnson rose, dropped her offspring (who took it philosophically), and began in her turn to sway herself gently from side to side, and then, with arms akimbo, her bare feet performing the same slow, exact evolutions, she advanced with gravity to meet Jinny, the two now joining in a crooning song. They met, circled round each other three times with the same deliberate step and motion, their song growing louder and louder. Then Mrs. Johnson shook her skirts, flung out her arms with a wild gesture, and stopped as suddenly as she had begun, walking back to her door-step and picking up Nando, while Jinny, advancing and taking up a comfortable position on one broad foot (idly stroking its ankle meanwhile with the dust-whitened sole of the other), the two fell into conversation, with no allusion either by word or look to the mystic exercises of the moment before.

"Howdy, Mis' Johnson?" said Jinny, as though she had just come up. "How's Mister Johnson dis mawnin'? Speck he's bettah; I year he wuz."

"Yessum, Miss Jinny More, yessum. He's bettah, dat's a fac'; he's mighty nigh 'bout well agin, Mister Johnson is, tank de Lawd!"

"Save us! what mistering and missussing!" said Celestine to herself. She watched them a moment longer, the colored people being still a profound mystery to her. Then she emerged from her bush-bordered path, and making her way to Mrs. Johnson, hurriedly delivered her message: Mrs. Harold would like to have her come to the eyrie for a while, to act as nurse for Mrs. Rutherford.

For that lady had met with an unfortunate accident; while stepping from her phaeton she had fallen, no one knew how or why, and though the phaeton was low and the ground soft, she had injured one of her knees so seriously that it was feared that she would not be able to walk for some time. Once fairly in bed and obliged to remain there, other symptoms had developed themselves, so that she appeared to have, as the sympathetic Betty (who had hurried up from East Angels) expressed it, "a little, just a little, you know, of pretty much everything under the sun." In this condition of affairs Katrina Rutherford naturally required a good deal of waiting upon. And after the time had been divided between Margaret and Celestine for several days and nights, Dr. Kirby peremptorily intervened, and told Margaret to send for Looth Johnson, "the best nurse in Gracias--the best, in fact, south of the city of Charleston." Looth was Telano's mother: this was in her favor with Celestine. But when the poor Vermont spinster was actually face to face with her, it was difficult to believe that a person who danced with bare black legs in the dusty road in the middle of the day could be either the mother of the spotlessly attired Telano, or the sort of attendant required by Mrs. Peter Rutherford. Dr. Kirby's orders, peremptory as they were, Celestine would have freely disobeyed; but she did not dare disobey them when they had been repeated by Margaret Harold.

"It's where your son is," she explained, desperately, forcing herself to think of Telano's snowy jackets as she caught another glimpse of his mother's toes.

"I knows whar 'tis," replied Looth, who had risen and dropped a courtesy. And then, as Celestine departed, hurrying away with an almost agitated step, "Telano 'lows she's a witch," she said to Jinny, in a low voice, as the two looked after the spare erect figure in its black gown. "I 'lows, howsumebber, it's juss ribs an' bones an' all knucklely up de back; nubbuddy 'ain't nebber seed so many knucklelies! I say, Jinny, 'tain't much honeyin' roun' she's eber been boddered wid, I reckon." And the two women laughed, though restraining themselves to low tones, with the innate civility of their race.

Meanwhile it was taking Minerva Poindexter the entire distance of the walk home to compose herself after that dancing, and more especially after the unseemly amplitude of the two large, comely black women, an amplitude which she would have confined immediately, if she had had the power, in gowns of firm fibre made after a straight fashion she knew, in which, by means of a system of restrictive seams in unexpectcd places, the modeller was able to neutralize the effect of even the most expansive redundancy.

At present Mrs. Rutherford was absorbing the time of Margaret, Celestine, Evert Winthrop; of Betty Carew, who, sending Garda to stay with the Moores, remained with dear Katrina; of Dr. Kirby, who paid three visits a day; of Telano, Cyndy, Maum Jube, and Aunt Dinah-Jim, who had transferred herself and her disorderly skill to the kitchen of the eyrie. During the only other serious illness Katrina Rutherford had known, one of her friends had remarked, "Oh, she's such a philanthropist!"

"Philanthropist?" said another, inquiringly.

"Yes; she has such a wonderful talent for employing people. That's philanthropy nowadays, you know, and I think Katrina could employ the whole town."

Looth arriving, still redundant but spotlessly neat in a loose white linen short-gown over a brilliant yellow cotton skirt, a red handkerchief arranged as a turban, white stockings, and broad, low shoes (which were soundless), supplied an element of color at the eyrie, as well as abundant tact, a sweet, cooing voice, and soft strong arms for lifting. She called Mrs. Rutherford "honey," and changed her position skilfully and sympathetically twenty times a day. Mrs. Rutherford liked the skill; even better she liked the sympathy; she had often complained that there was very little true sensibility in either Margaret or Celestine. To hear and see Looth persuade her patient to eat her dinner was a daily entertainment to Winthrop. It was the most persuasive coaxing ever heard, and Mrs. Rutherford, while never once losing her martyr expression, greatly enjoyed it; there was some different method of tender urging for each dish. Celestine, who was not a jealous person, looked on with deep though concealed interest, never failing to be in the room, apparently engaged with something else, when Looth appeared with the tray. Though she understood her mistress's foibles perfectly, she was at heart fond of her (she had dressed her too long not to be), and would have felt her business in life at an end if separated from her; yet she could no more have called her "my dove," and cooed over her with soft enthusiasm when she had eaten a slice of venison, than she could have danced at noon barelegged in the dusty road.

But in spite of all these helpers, Mrs. Rutherford did not improve; if she did not grow worse, she did not grow better. At last she declared that she should never grow better so long as she must hear, day and night, the wash of the water on the beach; now it was only a teasing ripple, which still she must listen for, now a long regular swell, to which she found herself forced mentally to beat time. As they could not take away the sea--even Looth could not coo it away--there was some uneasiness at the eyrie as to what the result would be; they decided that it was but a fancy, and that she would forget it. But Katrina Rutherford did not forget. At length there came three nights in succession during which she did not sleep "a moment;" she announced to Winthrop that she should soon be in need of no more sleep, "save the last long one." Dr. Kirby, who still profoundly admired her--she continued to look very handsome after Celestine had attired her for the day in a dressing-gown of delicate hue, covered with white lace, a dainty little lace cap lightly resting on her soft hair--Dr. Kirby said to Winthrop that unstrung nerves were a serious matter; and that though her idea about the water was a fancy, of course, the loss of three nights' sleep was anything but fanciful. They could not move the sea; but they could move her, and they must. The next question was--where? The Seminole being as near the water as the eyrie, there was nothing to be gained by going there. Betty promptly offered her house, she was full of plans for taking in their whole party under her hospitable roof. But Mrs. Rutherford confided to her nephew that the constant sighing of the pines round Betty's domicile would be as "maddening" as the water, if not worse. "I'd much rather they'd howl!" she said.

Then came old Mrs. Kirby in her black silk visite, her parasol held high above her head, and with mathematical precision directly over it, though the afternoon sun, slanting from the west, shone steadily into her eyes underneath, so that she was kept winking and blinking all the way. She came to offer their residence; the full half of it stood empty, and, needless to say that she and Reginald would be "right glad" if the ladies would accept it. But Mrs. Rutherford confided, to Margaret this time, that nothing would induce her to go there. "She would be sure to come in every day with cookies hidden somewhere about her, and then nibble."

"They're wafers, I think," said Margaret, laughing.

"Wafers or cookies, she crunches when she eats them; I've heard her," Mrs. Rutherford declared. "It's all very well for you to laugh, Margaret; you have no sensitiveness. I wish I had a cooky now," she went on, irrelevantly--"a real one; or else a jumble, or a cruller, or an oley-koek. But there's no getting anything in this desolate place; their one idea is plum-cake--plum-cake!"

Mrs. Kirby was followed by Mr. Moore, who brought a note from his wife, cordially placing at the disposal of the northern party "five pleasant rooms at the rectory," which could be made ready for them at any time upon shortest notice.

"They haven't more than six in all," commented Winthrop. "Does this mean, do you suppose, that they intend to shut themselves up into one, and give up to us all the rest?"

"Very probably," Margaret answered.

But the Moores were not obliged to make good their generous offer. Mrs. Rutherford said that she could not possibly live in the house with an invalid. "Always little messes being carried clinking up-stairs on waiters, or left standing outside of doors for people to tumble over;--cups, with dregs of tea in them, set into each other. Horrid!"

"But there are no stairs at the rectory," suggested Winthrop.

"Don't be owlish, Evert; one is even more apt to step into them on a ground-floor," replied the aunt.

Meanwhile the sea still washed the beach under the eyrie, and now, too, the nerves of almost everybody in it, for neither Margaret nor Celestine could sleep when Mrs. Rutherford could not; even Winthrop, at the Seminole, found himself wakeful, listening to the little soft sound, and thinking of his suffering aunt. For in spite of her fancies and her fairly good appetite, in spite of her rich dressing-gowns and carefully arranged hair, Aunt Katrina undoubtedly did suffer. Already her eyes had begun to have something of a sunken look; to Margaret and Winthrop she appeared sometimes to be seeing them through a slight haze, and to be trying, though ineffectually, to pierce it. "That dreadful water on the beach! that dreadful water!" was still her constant complaint.

"Do you think she would like to go down to East Angels?" suggested Dr. Kirby to Margaret one morning. "The motion of a carriage she couldn't bear at present, but she could go down very well in the Emperadora."

But Margaret thought she would not like it at all.

"How do you know, without asking, what I shouldn't like at all?" Aunt Katrina demanded when Margaret repeated to her this little conversation. Aunt Katrina liked to have the little conversations repeated. "Don't imagine, Margaret, I beg, that you know all my feelings by intuition."

Later in the day came Evert. "Dr. Kirby has a fantastic plan for your going down to East Angels to stay for a while, Aunt Katrina. But I told him that you didn't like East Angels."

"Where did you get that idea? But of course from Margaret, who thinks she knows everything. East Angels is a charming old place."

"Oh!" said her nephew, rather astonished, remembering various adjectives she had applied to it; "decayed" had been a favorite one.

"I have always thought it charming," pursued the lady. And then she began to enumerate its good points. It was too far from the lagoon to be troubled by that tiresome sound of the water; it had no pines near it to tease people to death with their sighing; there would be no old ladies to drop in with cookies, and nibble; and there were no invalids, with teacups being sent clinking up-stairs (Mrs. Rutherford herself drank chocolate). The one objection was that Dr. Reginald would have a long ride every morning to get to her. But Dr. Reginald, coming in at this moment, gallantly volunteered, in case she should go down there, to spend a week with them by way of beginning; in the evenings they could play cribbage until she should feel drowsy, for she certainly would feel drowsy down there among the--he had almost said "pines," but stopped in time; then he thought of live-oaks, but remembered that she considered them "dreary." Among the--he had nearly brought out "magnolias," but recollected that she disliked their perfume. "Among the andromedas," he concluded at last, pronouncing the word firmly, determined not to abandon it.

"Oh, andromedas. Aromatic?" inquired the patient, languidly.

"Immensely so," replied the Doctor. "Im--mensely!"

The next day, coming in again and finding that the poor lady had passed another bad night, and that at half-past nine in the morning she had burst into tears, and called Looth her "only friend," as that turbaned handmaid was feeding her with toast and the softest sympathy, he took Winthrop to the north piazza and seriously advised the change.

"But East Angels is still Garda's," said Winthrop. "I don't see how we can go there."

"She will be delighted to have you. I don't think Garda is happy at present when long separated from Mrs. Harold," went on the speaker, candidly; "Mrs. Harold has had a wonderfully cheering influence over her, poor child, since her mother's death. Garda has been so unlike herself--I hardly know what to call it--passive, perhaps; I presume you have not noticed the change, but ma and I have."

Winthrop thought he had noticed. But all he said was: "We should have to send down the servants, and--and a good many other things, I'm afraid. The party would be large, it would be like taking possession--so many of us."

"Don't let that trouble you," said the Doctor, balancing himself in his old way. "In the matter of guests, our feeling here has always been that the more we had under our roof the better; yes, the better."

"It is true that the place is to be mine as soon as I can get a title. You are the guardian; perhaps you will allow us to rent it until then?"

"Sir," said the Doctor, stopping his balancing, "we will not speak of rent." (And in truth rent was not a word esteemed in Gracias. Nobody "rented" there, and nobody "boarded;" each man lived in his own house, and sat at his own table; the roof might be in need of repairs, and the table bare, but they were at least his own.) "As you have remarked, I am Miss Thorne's guardian, and as such I can assure you that she will be right glad to entertain you all at East Angels, and for as long a time as it will be agreeable to you to so favor her."

Thus it was arranged; they were all to pay Garda a visit. It was to be ignored that workmen were to be sent down to the old house, and the resources of Gracias-a-Dios strained to the utmost to make the rooms accord with the many requirements of Mrs. Rutherford; it was to be ignored that six servants and supplies of all kinds were to be added. Garda appeared at the eyrie and gave her invitation. She seemed to think of it in the same way that the Doctor did--it was a visit; she had all the air of a hostess, though rather a listless one.

Nothing in this young girl had Margaret Harold admired more than the untroubled way in which she had accepted her new friend's assistance. Mrs. Rutherford, who was industrious in prodding for motive (she considered it a praiseworthy industry), had long ago announced that Garda's affection for Margaret was based upon her own pennilessness and Margaret's fortune. If this were so, there was at least no eagerness about it; the girl accepted all that Margaret did, simply; sweetly enough, but as a matter of course. The funeral expenses had been paid by the Gracias friends, they had claimed this as their privilege; but since then Margaret had provided for everything, from Garda's new mourning garb to the money for the daily house-keeping at East Angels--sums which Betty Carew had disbursed with her nicest care, which was yet a mad expenditure when compared with the economies of Mrs. Thorne. The lean, clean larder of East Angels had had a sense of repletion that was almost profligate, and had felt itself carried wildly back to the days of Old Madam--who had spent the last of the Duero capital in making herself comfortable, smiling back wickedly at the blue eyes of Melissa Whiting when the latter had tried to save some of it.

Margaret could not but contrast Garda's simple way with the scruples, the inward distress, which she herself should have been a victim to if she had been placed at that age in such a situation, thrown entirely upon the care of a comparative stranger, at best a new friend. But here was a nature which could accept unreservedly; it seemed to her a noble trait; she said this to Mrs. Rutherford in answer to one of that lady's attacks.

"If the positions were to be reversed, Aunt Katrina, I am sure she would be just the same, she would give in the way in which she now accepts; she would share everything with me with the same unreserve, and without a second thought."

"Give me the second thoughts, then!" said Aunt Katrina. "I must say I cannot see the nobility in it that you and Evert see." (This was quite true; Aunt Katrina never saw nobility.) "The girl has always had what she wanted, and she's got it now; that's all there is of it. Evert talks about her being so contented; most of us are contented, I suppose, when every wish is gratified, and if you would look at it fairly, without all this decoration you have added to it, you would see that hers have always been. Evert brings up their poverty--it has all come out, of course, since the mother's death. But, poor or not poor, Garda at least always had what she wanted; there were always honey-cakes and oranges for her, and those old servants would wait upon her when they would not speak to her mother. She has never lifted her hand to do anything in her life but swing in her hammock, smell her roses, and play with that crane. Evert keeps harping--what simple things they were to give her so much pleasure. But somebody had to work to keep up even the 'simple things;' and that somebody was her mother. Simple--of course they were simple, she has been brought up in the country, and she is only sixteen; she has had no opportunity to see anything else. But it seems to me that the laziness which is shown by that hammock, and the epicureanism which comes out in the honey-cakes and oranges, yes, and the roses too, and the frivolity which makes her find amusement by the hour in playing with that dreadful crane--all these are a very pretty development of temperament in a girl of that age."

Over this dark picture Margaret was unable to resist a laugh.

"Laugh on," said Aunt Katrina, ominously. "You will live to come to my opinion."

But Margaret continued to think Garda's free acceptance the sign of a generous nature; the girl judged her benefactress by herself; if she had been the one to bestow the kindness, she would not have liked effusive thanks; Margaret therefore would not like them either.

But if Garda did not turn the conversation towards Margaret's material gifts, she did turn it, and warmly, upon the delight it was to her that her friend was to be at East Angels; upon that point she was effusive enough. "Now I can live," she said.

"There's something so tiresome in being with Aunt Betty Carew day after day," she added, meditatively. "Don't you think so?"

"She has been extremely kind to you," Margaret answered.

"Yes, she's very kind, there's nobody kinder. That doesn't make her any the less wandering in her conversation, does it? or any the less flushed. Do you remember how pretty my dear little mother was? She had such a nice straight little nose it was a pleasure to look at her. You have a lovely nose too, Margaret; I wonder if I should have liked you so well without it? Oh, won't you stay at East Angels until it is time to go north? In that way, as I am to go with you, we shouldn't be separated at all."

"Aunt Katrina may tire of East Angels in two days," Margaret answered.

"We won't allow it We'll amuse her!" Garda declared, with soft energy.

But something else was to amuse poor Aunt Katrina. She made the little journey comfortably, one beautiful morning, on the Emperadora, surrounded by her retinue, of which Betty was one; she enjoyed her installation, and the novelty of the new rooms; she enjoyed the congratulations of Dr. Kirby, when, later in the day, he came down for his week's visit; and she played cribbage with him for a little while in the evening. Her nephew too was there; she had required his presence. "You must come, of course, Evert," she said; "I couldn't possibly stay way down in that lonely place without you." So Evert had been obliged to install himself as well as his aunt; he took up his abode not unwillingly in the old house which he expected some day to own.

After the cribbage, Aunt Katrina went to bed, and passed a night of blessed oblivion, unteased by the whining water: that had been her latest term for it--that it whined. But after a few days of this delightful rest, a fresh assortment of pains lifted their heads. The Doctor at first alluded to them as rheumatic. But Aunt Katrina would not accept that suggestion. He then called them "suppressed gout." This was better; Aunt Katrina had always had a certain esteem for gout. Besides, suppressed gout had no fixed habitation; Aunt Katrina, having very shapely feet, took the opportunity, the very day she accepted the name, to have herself lifted to the sofa, where these same members, in delicate slippers, reposed upon a bear-skin, only half concealed by an India shawl.

But these little vanities could be forgiven, they could even be encouraged (and were by the quick-witted Looth), if they had the power to make her forget her pain. This pain was of the kind she herself described as "wearing." Fortunately it was not constant, there were many free intervals; but during these intervals she was often tired, and Katrina Rutherford had lived such an easy, comfortable life that she had almost never been tired before. This fatigue after pain sometimes extended to her mind, and made her irritable. On these days no one could soothe her but Margaret, and it was soon discovered that no one must try. Margaret must read to her, read her to sleep; Margaret must sit in a certain place, and sit still; she must not leave the room; nobody must speak to her but Margaret--the others could say what was necessary through her. During one of her free intervals she explained to Winthrop that it was Margaret's voice that soothed her; "it's so hard," she said.

"I shouldn't think that quality would be particularly soothing," Winthrop answered.

"On the contrary, it's the very one--that is, for me. I only need her when I've been reduced to a pulp--like the pulp in the paper mills--by pain; at such times that hard voice of hers is the first firm thing I can take hold of; I crystallize round it by degrees, don't you know, and gradually get back some shape again."

Margaret's voice was not in the least hard; it was low and clear; when it took on certain intonations, very sweet. But Winthrop did not remind his aunt of this. She could crystallize round any adjectives that pleased her in her moments of rest; her nephew's usual championship of justice was postponed until she should be better.

During this time Celestine and Looth were often obliged to be companions; there were certain things they each did which no one else could do as well, and therefore neither one could be spared. To Celestine it was a weird experience, this sitting up at night in the large bare room of a strange old Spanish house (a house which had been inhabited for generations by Papists), opposite a great black woman in a red turban, who was in the habit of dancing barelegged in the roads in the middle of the day; and all this on a winter night with roses blooming outside in the garden, and the perfume of orange blossoms coming in through the half-closed windows--a winter night which seemed to have gone astray from some other world. The absence of cold in winter climates abroad Celestine had accepted without opposition; it was only part of their general outlandishness. But that such foreign eccentricities should exist in the United States of America, under the Stars and Stripes, this she by no means approved; like many other persons, she could not help believing that frost-tipped noses were an accompaniment of republican simplicity and virtue, and that a good conscience and east wind could not be long separated without danger to morals.

She had never alluded to the dance. But one night Looth herself alluded to it. "Specks yer seen us, Miss Selsty, dat day you wuz firs' down dar fur to ax me to come up yer to nuss--specks yer seen me an' Jinny?"

Celestine nodded grimly: a confession was evidently on the way.

"Yessum, Miss Selsty, I reckoned yer seen us. We wuz shoutin'," Looth went on, with gentle satisfaction. "I's a very rilligeous 'oman, Miss Selsty, yessum. An' so's Jinny too."

All the Gracias friends came down often to East Angels to inquire after Mrs. Rutherford; Madam Ruiz and Madam Giron came over from their respective plantations. Adolfo Torres, however, did not come; he remained at home, and sent his respectful inquiries by his aunt. Neither the Doctor nor Mr. Moore had betrayed his secret; these two gentlemen were not in the habit of betraying anybody. Torres did not altogether like their reticence upon this particular occasion, he could not see that it was a subject upon which reticence was required. In the old days (the only days he cared about) the position of suitor, devoted suppliant for his lady's hand, was an honorable one, one distinctly recognized; he should like to be recognized as occupying it now. But if these friends would not tell, he could not; to tell would not accord with his present posture. "Posture" was his own word, no one else would have dreamed of applying it to anything connected with this self-controlled young man. Gracias, too, was having veritable postures of another kind to look at. These were the attitudes of Manuel Ruiz, which were very new and surprising. After that first burst of fury (which Torres had witnessed) he had taken to riding over the barren at headlong speed on his large, thin black horse, with several knives stuck in his belt--a belt whose presence (in itself brigandish) he had further emphasized by tying over it a crimson sash. Next he had suddenly appeared as a man of dissipations, a scoffer; he haunted the two small, rather sleepy bar-rooms of Gracias, smoking large cigars, wearing his sombrero much on one side, and in public places--the plaza for instance--made cynical remarks about "the fair sex." This was worse even than the knives and the galloping, and Gracias was considering what had better be done, when, lo! Manuel appeared among them playing a third part. He was not only himself, but more mellifluous even than he had ever been before; his manner, indeed, when he met any of these ladies, had in it such a delicate yet keenly personal admiration, such an appreciation of what they had been as well as of what they were, that all of them, even stout, honest Betty, and little Mrs. Kirby herself, under her high-held parasol, were set to blushing a little, without knowing why, and to vaguely adjusting their front hair with a touch or two, only to become conscious of it later, and say to themselves, angrily, that that boy ought to have a good horsewhipping! Manuel called upon all his friends and all his mother's friends (except Garda at East Angels), and could hardly sit in a chair. Upon seeing him, the idea was that he had been accustomed to a divan; he seemed to have come from the sipping of nectar, and to have touched nothing but rose-leaves. Having thus thrown dust in the eyes of the town, he took his departure; as he had long threatened, he was going to see the world. He mentioned to Mrs. Harold that he should try to "take in" New York; and then he sailed on a coasting schooner for Key West, with four dollars and twenty five-cents in his pocket.

Gracias knew nothing of the real cause of all this. Madam Ruiz, Manuel's broad-shouldered and martial-looking, but in reality sighingly gentle, sentimental step-mother, was not in his confidence with regard to Garda. But she would not have credited the story, even if she had been, for she firmly believed her handsome step-son to be invincible from the Everglades to the Altamaha. During the long, warm, mid-summer afternoons, when flat Patricio, low in the blue sea, had not a shadow, this lady, in her thick white house, the broad rooms darkened by the closed shutters, was in the habit of amusing herself with many romances about this; for your warm, still countries are ever the land of the storyteller. Madam Ruiz now and then told her stories to her husband.

"Yes, yes," said that gentleman; "he inherits it all from me." He was partially paralyzed, and sat all day in his chair; he did not like to have Manuel about much, he envied him so. He took more comfort in the children of this second marriage--a flock of brown-skinned, chattering little girls, who would be sure to grow up dark, lovely, and gentle, with serene, affectionate eyes, and the sweetest voices in the world, in which to call him their "dearest papa."

Adolfo Torres meanwhile kept his friend's secret punctiliously, as it was not to his credit; it was terribly against his credit to have gone as he did to Garda herself,--so Adolfo thought.

As for Garda, she said, afterwards, that she did not mention it because it was so much trouble; she did not like to tell things, she was not a narrator (one of her mother's phrases); besides it was not interesting. The girl had a very decided idea about what was and what was not interesting. But she stopped there, she did not explain her idea to others; she had the air of not even explaining it to herself.

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Chapter XVI

Evert Winthrop was very fond of the pine barrens. They seemed to him to have a marked character of their own; their green aisles were as unlike the broad roll of the prairie as they were unlike the usual growth of the American forest farther north. The pines of the barren stood apart from each other, they were not even in clusters or pairs. To a northerner, riding or walking for the first time across the broad sun-barred spaces under them, the feeling was that this separated growth was the final outer fringe of some thick forest within, that it would soon come to an end, widen out, and disappear. But it never did disappear, the single trees went on rising in the same thin way from the open ground, they continued to rise for miles; and when the new-comer had once got rid of the idea that they would soon stop, when he had become accustomed to the sparse growth, it seemed beautiful in a way of its own; as slender girls will sometimes seem more exquisite in their fair meagreness than the maturer women about them with their sumptuous shoulders and arms.

For one thing, the barrens were the home of all the breezes; winds from the four quarters of the heavens could sweep through their aisles as freely as though no trees were there, the foliage was so far above. But though the winds could blow as they liked, they yet had to take something of the influences of the place as they passed, and the one they took oftenest was the aromatic odor, odor sun-warmed through and through, never chilled by ice or snow. These odors they gathered up and bore along, so that if it was a breeze from the south, one felt like sitting still and breathing the soft fragrance forever; and if it was a north wind, careering down the vistas, the resinous tang it carried gave a sort of excitement which could find its best expression in the gallop of a fast horse over the levels. At least so Winthrop thought. And he had often been guilty of riding for miles at a speed which he would not have acknowledged at the North; it seemed boyish to ride at that rate for the mere sake of the glow and the spicy wind in one's face.

The barrens were always green. But it was not the green of the northern forest; it was the dark, tranquil, unchanging hue of the South. The ground was covered thickly with herbage and little shrubs. Here and there flower stalks made their way through, pushing themselves up as high as they could in order to get their heads out in the sunshine; there they swung merrily to and fro, and looked about them--violets so broad and bright that one could recognize their blueness at a distance, red bells of the calopogon, the yellow and lavender of pinguiculas rising from their prim little rosettes of leaves down below; near the pools the pitcher-plants; nearer still, hiding in thickets, the ferns. These pools were a wonder. How came they there in so dry a land? For the barrens were pure white sand; each narrow road, where the exterior mat of green had been worn away, was a dry white track in which the foot sank warmly. The pools were there, however, and in abundance. Though shallow, their clear water had a rich hue like that of dark red wine. Those on horseback or in a cart went through them, the little silver-white descent on one side to get to them, and the ascent on the other, forming the only "hills" the barrens knew; for those on foot, a felled pine-tree sometimes served as a bridge.

The trails, crossing in various directions, were many, they all appeared to be old. One came upon them unexpectedly, often they were not visible in the low shrubbery three feet away. Once found, they were definite enough; they never became merged in the barren, or stopped; they always went sleepily on and on, they did not appear themselves to know whither. And certainly no one else knew, as Winthrop found when occasionally, he being more lost than usual (on the barrens he was always lost to a certain degree, and liked it), he would stop his horse to ask of a passing cracker in what direction some diverging trail would take him, in case he should follow it. The cracker, astride his sorry pony, would stare at him open-mouthed; but he never knew. Packed into the two-wheeled cart behind him, all his family, with their strange clay-colored complexions and sunburnt light hair, would stare also; and they never knew. They were a gentle, mummy-like people, too indolent even to wonder why a stranger should wish to know; they stared at him with apathetic eyes, and then passed on, not once turning their heads, even the children, for a second look. But as a general thing Winthrop rode on without paying heed to the direction he was taking; he could always guide himself back after a fashion by the pocket-compass he carried.

One afternoon Winthrop, out on the barren, saw in the distance a horse and phaeton. There was no phaeton in all that country but his aunt's. He rode across to see who was in it. To his surprise it was Garda; she was leaning indolently back on the cushioned seat, the reins held idly in her hand, an immense bunch of roses fastened in her belt. The horse was one he did not know.

"Garda!--this you!" he said.

"Yes," she answered, laughing at his astonishment. "Everything was so dull at the house that I thought I must do something. So I did this."

"I wasn't aware that you knew how to drive?"

"This isn't driving."

"No, I hardly think it is," he answered, looking at her reclining figure and the loose reins. "Where are you going?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Whose horse have you?--if I may ask another question."

"Madam Giron's; I sent Pablo to borrow it, as I did not like to take your aunt's."

"Then they know what you are doing?"

"Pablo knows."

"And Margaret?"

"No, Margaret doesn't know. I should have told her, of course, if I could have seen her, or rather, if I could have seen her, I should not have come out at all. But that was the trouble--I couldn't see her; she has been shut up in Mrs. Rutherford's room ever since early this morning, and there's no prospect, according to Looth, of seeing her until to-morrow."

"Yes, I feared my aunt was going to have one of her bad days."

"Of course I'm sorry, but that doesn't make the hours any shorter, that I know of; there was no one to speak to; even you were away. You have the advantage of being able to leave the house whenever you like, and staying out forever."

"Well, I've turned up now."

"I don't want you now; I've 'turned up' myself. Where are you going, may I ask in my turn?"

"Going to drive you home."

"Not if you intend to tie that horse of yours at the back of the phaeton, where he will nibble my shoulders all the way. But I'm not going home yet; haven't I told you how dull it was there? I'm going on."

"I don't know about letting you go on; I'm not satisfied with the look of that horse."

"Yes, he's the wildest one Madam Giron has; but that isn't very wild," said Garda, in a tone of regret.

"You are already over four miles from East Angels--"

"Delightful!"

"--and if you won't turn round, I shall have to follow you on horseback; I shouldn't have a clear conscience otherwise."

"Oh, have a clear conscience, by all means."

But she did not long like this arrangement; the sound of another horse behind made Madam Giron's horse restless, so that she could not keep the reins lying idle, as she liked.

"Let your horse go, and come and drive me," she said.

"Let him go? Where?"

"Home, I suppose."

"He wouldn't go; he's an animal of intelligence, and of course has observed that he could lead a nomadic life here perfectly, with constant summer, and water, and--but I can't say much for the grass. I think, however, that I can arrange it so that he shall not trouble you." And dismounting, he changed and lengthened some straps; then seating himself in the phaeton beside her, he took the reins, his own horse trotting along docielly at his side of the phaeton, fastened by a long line.

"It's caravanish," said Garda. "But I'll allow it because I want you to drive; it's more amusing than driving myself."

"More lazy, you mean."

"Yes; I ran away to be lazy."

"For a variety?"

She did not take this up, but, leaning back still further, half closed her eyes.

"Have you often been out in this way on the barrens, driving yourself?" he went on.

"This is the first time I have ever driven--on the barrens or anywhere else."

"Yet you come out alone, and with this restless horse! I never knew you to do such a thing before."

"That only shows how short a time you have known me; I always like to do things I have never done before."

The phaeton rolled on towards the west--on and on, as she would not let him turn. But he did not wish to turn now; they had reached a part of the barren which he had not visited, though he had ridden to much greater distances both towards the north and the south. Here were wider pools; and here also was a sluggish narrow stream; far off on the left rose the long dark line of the great cypresses on the edge of a swamp. The sluggish stream at length crossed their road, or rather their road essayed to cross the sluggish stream; but the dark water looked deep, there were no tracks of wheels on the little descent to show that any one had tried the ford lately--say within the last twenty years. Winthrop hesitated.

"Go on," said Garda.

"But I might have to swim with you to the other shore."

"Nothing I should like better."

"To see me soaked?"

"To see you excited."

"That wouldn't excite me; I should only be wet and depressed. In any case it is time for us to turn back."

"No, I've set my heart upon going at least as far as that ridge." And she indicated a little rise of land on the other side of the stream, whose summit was covered thickly with Dr. Kirby's andromedas, and shining laurel, sprays of yellow jessamine, bright with flowers, pushing through the darker green and springing into the air. "There's a bridge," she added.

Winthrop turned; a felled pine-tree, roughly smoothed, crossed the stream a short distance below the ford.

"You can tie the horses here, and we will walk over," pursued Garda.

"Then will you come back?" he asked, amused by her taking it as a matter of course, always, that she was to have her own way.

"Then I will come back."

He tied the horses to two pine-trees, some distance apart from each other. Then he tried the bridge. It seemed firm. Garda, refusing his offers of assistance, crossed lightly and fearlessly behind him. Some of the twigs still remained on the old trunk, and she lifted her skirt so that they should not catch upon it and cause her to stumble; when they had gone nearly three-quarters of the distance, Winthrop, turning his head to speak to her, saw that she wore low slippers, thin-soled papery little shoes fit only for a carpeted floor. "You must not go among the bushes in those shoes," he said. "The bushes over there are sure to be wet; all that ground is wet."

"Don't stop on the bridge," said Garda, laughing.

But he continued to bar the way. "I will bring you the flowers," he said.

"I don't want the flowers, I want to go myself to the top of that ridge, and look down on the other side."

"There's nothing to see on the other side."

"That makes no difference. Go on. Go on."

He turned round; cautiously, for the bridge was slippery and narrow. They were now face to face.

"I shall never yield," Garda declared, gayly. "But I shall make you yield. Easily."

"How?"

"By telling you that if you do not go on, I shall jump into the water, and get to the other bank in that way."

He laughed. But as he did so he suddenly felt a conviction come over him, owing to an expression he saw in her eyes, that she was capable of carrying out her threat. He seized her hands; but she wrested them from his grasp; and as she did so he had a vision of her figure in the water below. He could easily rescue her, of course; but it would be a situation whose pleasures he should fail to appreciate, both of them wet through, and many miles from home. She had no sooner freed her hands, therefore, than he took a firmer hold of her, so that she could not stir.

But she still openly exulted; her face, close to his, was brilliant with light and mirth. "That's of no use," she said. "You cannot possibly walk backward on this narrow tree, even if you could carry me--which I doubt."

It was true that his back was towards the bank which was near, the one they had been approaching, and that he could not make his way thither on that narrow surface without seeing where he was going. He had flushed a little at her taunt. "I can carry you back to the side we started from," he said.

"No, you cannot do that, either. For I could easily blind you with my hands, and make you stumble."

"Garda!--how absurd!"

"Yes; but it's you who look so," she answered, bursting into a peal of irrepressible glee.

Winthrop had the feeling that she might be right. He knew that he was flushed and angry; no man likes to be laughed at, even by a girl of sixteen. Her eyes, though over-flowing with mirth, had still an unconquerable look in them. Suddenly he released her. "Your actions are ridiculous," he said; "I can only leave you to yourself." And turning, he crossed to the near bank. He had successfully resisted his impulse, which had been to take her, mocking and mirthful as she was, and carry her back to the bank from which they had started; he felt sure that he could have done it in spite of any resistance she might have offered.

Garda ran after him, and put her arm in his. "Are you vexed with me?" she said, looking up coaxingly in his face.

"Don't you think you are old enough now, Garda, not to act so much like a child?"

"It isn't a child," she answered, as it seemed to him rather strangely. "I shall always be like this."

"Do you mean that you never intend to be reasonable?"

"Oh, I don't know what I intend, I don't think I intend anything; intending's a trouble. But don't be angry with me," she went on; "you and Margaret are all I have now." And she looked up at him still coaxingly, but this time through a mist of tears.

"I am not vexed," answered Winthrop, quickly. "Will you have the kindness to glance at your feet?" he added, by way of diversion into another channel.

They had been standing among the low bushes on the further shore, and Garda was again holding her skirt slightly lifted; her thin slippers were seen to be as completely drenched as though they had been in the stream. "Yes, they're wet," she assented, lifting first one, and then the other, so as to get a good view; "they're quite wet through, soles and all. And, do you know, my feet are already very cold."

"And we have still the long drive home! You must acknowledge that you are wise."

At this moment they heard a sound, and turned; Madam Giron's horse had broken his fastenings, and started down the barren, the phaeton gently rolling along behind him. Winthrop ran across the pine-tree bridge and after him, as swiftly yet as noiselessly as he could, so that the sound of pursuit should not increase his speed. But Madam Giron's horse enjoyed a run on his own account, and after trotting for a while, he broke into the pace which suited him best, a long-stepped easy gallop; thus, with the phaeton bounding at his heels, he took his way down the broad green vista, faster and faster, yet still with a regular motion, which was doubly exasperating because it seemed so much more like an easy gait for the saddle (which it was) than a demoralized running away. At length, when Winthrop himself had run half a mile, in the vain hope that he would stop or turn, Madam Giron's steed disappeared in the distance, having reached and gone down, Garda said, the curve of the earth, as a ship does at sea.

"Isn't it funny? What are we going to do now?" she asked. She had come back across the bridge while he was vainly pursuing the chase.

"If it were not for your wet feet I should put you on my horse and start towards home, hoping to meet some one with a cart. As it is, I think you had better try to walk for a while."

"It would be very uncomfortable in these wet things. No; I couldn't."

"I hardly know what we can do, then, unless you will take off your stockings and those silly slippers, and wrap your feet up in something dry. Then I could put you on the horse."

"But there's nothing to wrap them up in."

"Yes; my coat."

Garda laughed. "To think of seeing you without one!"

But at length this was done; the pretty little feet, white and cold, she dried with her handkerchief, and then wrapped up as well as she could in his coat, securing the wrapping with the black ribbon which had been her belt. Thus protected he lifted her, laughing at her own helplessness, on the horse, where she sat sidewise, holding on; she had fastened all the roses which had been in her belt on her palmetto hat, so that she looked like a May-queen. Winthrop walked on in advance, leading the horse by the bridle, and carrying her slippers dangling from his arm by a string, in the hope, he said, of at least beginning the drying. For some time Garda amused herself making jests at their plight. But after a while the uneasy posture in which she was obliged to sit began to tire her; she begged him to stop and let her rest.

"We shouldn't reach home then until long after dark," he answered. "As it is, at this rate, it will be very late before we can get there."

"Never mind that; of what consequence is it? I'm so tired!"

He came back, and walking by her side, guiding the horse by the rein, he told her to put her hand on his shoulder, and steady herself in that way; this bettered matters a little, and they got over another long slow mile. The sun had sunk low in the west; his horizontal rays lit up the barren with a flood of golden light. "My poor slippers are no drier," said Garda, lifting the one that hung near her.

"If we had had time we could have made a fire, and dried them with very little trouble."

"Oh, let us make a fire now! I love to make a fire in the woods. You could get plenty of dry cones and twigs and it wouldn't take fifteen minutes; then, if they were once dry, I could walk, you know."

"Your fifteen minutes would be an hour at least, and that is an hour of daylight very precious to us just now. Besides, I am afraid I doubt your walking powers."

"Yes," answered Garda, with frankness; "I hate to walk."

"Yet you can run," he suggested, referring to her escapade on Patricio beach.

Garda took up this memory, and was merry over it for some time. Then, growing weary again, she told him despotically that he must stop. "I cannot bear this position and jolting a moment longer, with my feet fettered in this way," she said, vehemently. "You couldn't either."

He turned; though she was smiling, he saw that she had grown pale. "I shall have to humor you. But I give you fifteen minutes only." He lifted her down, and mounting the horse, rode off to a distance, first in one direction, then in another, hoping to discover some one whom he could send in to Gracias for a carriage or wagon. But the wide barren, growing rapidly dusky, remained empty and still; there was no moving thing in sight.

When he came back he found that Garda had put on her stockings and slippers again, wet as they were. She was trying to walk; but the soft sand of the track clung to each soaked shoe so that she lifted, as she said, a mountain every time she took a step. In spite of this, "I'm going on," she announced.

"You must, now that you have put on those wet things again; it's the only way to keep from taking cold."

So they started, Garda leaning on his arm, while he held the bridle with his other hand. "I might ride, and carry you behind me," he suggested. "Like Lochinvar."

"Who's Lochinvar? See; there's somebody!"

He looked towards the point she indicated, and saw the figure of a man going in another direction, and at a good distance from them. He jumped on his horse again, and rode across to speak to him. The man proved to be a tall young negro of eighteen or nineteen; he was ready to do anything that Winthrop should desire, but he had also the disappointing tidings to communicate that they were even farther from East Angels and Gracias than they had supposed; they were still ten miles out.

"Why, it's Bartolo," said Garda, as they came back together. She had seated herself, and was looking at her clogged feet gravely.

"Yessum," said Bartolo, removing his fragmentary straw hat.

"He's Telano's cousin," pursued Garda, inspecting the wrinkled kid at the heel of the left slipper. "Do you know, they are beginning to shrink; and they hurt me."

Winthrop stood still, deliberating. There was no house or cabin of any kind within a number of miles, Bartolo said; if he should send the boy in to Gracias on foot for a carriage, and keep on advancing with Garda in the same direction at their present slow rate, they should not probably reach East Angels until midnight; to go in himself on horseback, and leave Garda with only Bartolo as protector--no, he could not do that. This last would have been the southern way, and Garda herself suggested it. "Ride in to Gracias as fast as you can, and come back with a carriage, or something, for me; I shall not be afraid if Bartolo can stay."

Bartolo showed his white teeth. "I ken stay, sho," he said. He was blacker and jollier than his cousin Telano, he had not the dignified manners of a Governor of Vermont; he was attired in a light costume of blue cotton shirt and butternut trousers, his sleeves rolled up, his feet bare.

Winthrop still deliberated. "Perhaps it would be better," he said at last, "if Bartolo should go in, on my horse; I could wait here with you." And he looked at Garda with eyes which asked the question--was Bartolo to be trusted so far as that?

She understood. "Bartolo will carry your message as well as any one could, I know," she answered.

Bartolo gave his head a lurch to one side in acknowledgment of her compliment. He slapped his leg resoundingly;--"I tell yer!" he said. It was his way of affirming his capabilities.

There was really nothing else to be done, unless Winthrop should essay to ride, as he had suggested, with Garda behind him; and Garda had declined to try this mode of progression. Bartolo offered the statement that he could reach Gracias, and have a carriage back, before dark.

"That's impossible," said Winthrop, briefly.

"'Twon' be more'n de edge of de ebenin', den, marse," said Bartolo, with his affable optimism.

"Be off, in any case; the sooner you are back, the more dimes you will have."

Bartolo flung himself in a heap upon the saddle, disentangling his legs after the horse was in motion; then, his bare feet dangling and flapping without use of the stirrup, he galloped across the barren, not by the road, but taking a shorter cut he knew. Winthrop stood watching him out of sight; but he could not see far, as the light was nearly gone.

"Now make a fire," said Garda.

"Don't you think you could walk on--if we should go very slowly? We might shorten the distance by a mile or two."

"I don't think I could take a step. These slippers are tightening every minute, in the wrong places; they hurt me even as I sit still."

"Try my shoes."

"I couldn't carry them, my feet would slip out at the top."

This was true; her little feet looked uselessly small, now that they were needed for active service. "You are very inconvenient," he said, smiling.

"The next thing--you will be asking me to go in to Gracias barefoot," continued Garda. "But I never could, never; one step on this sand would make me all creepy."

"Well," said Winthrop at last, accepting his fate, "I suppose I might as well make a fire."

"It's what I wanted you to do in the first place," answered Garda, serenely.

He made a fire that leaped high towards heaven. He made it systematically, first with twigs and pine cones which he collected and piled together with precision before applying the match; then he added dry branches, which he searched for and hauled in with much patience and energy.

"When I asked you to make a fire, I did not suppose you would be away all night," remarked Garda, as he returned from one of these expeditions, dragging another great load behind him.

"All night? Twenty minutes, perhaps."

"At least an hour."

He looked at his watch by the light of the blaze and found that she was right; he had been at work an hour. As he had now collected a great heap of branches for further supply, he stood still, watching his handiwork; Garda was sitting, or rather half reclining, on his coat, her back against a pine, her slippers extended towards the glow.

"You look sleepy," he said, smiling to see her drowsy eyes. "But I am glad to add that you also look warm."

"Yes, I am extremely comfortable. But, as you say, I am sleepy; would you mind it if I should really fall asleep?"

"The best thing you could do."

She put her head down upon her arm, her eyes closed; it was not long before he could perceive that sleep had come. He took off his soft felt hat, and, kneeling down, raised her head gently and placed it underneath as a pillow. She woke and thanked him; but fell asleep again immediately. He drew the little mantle she wore--it was hardly more than a scarf--more closely round her shoulders, added to it the only thing he had, his silk handkerchief. And then, coatless and hatless, he walked up and down beside the fire and her sleeping figure, keeping watch and listening for the distant sound of wheels. But it was too early to listen, he knew that. Night had darkened fully down upon the barren, the fire, no longer leaping, burned with a steady red glow; a warm breeze stirred now and then in the pine-trees; but except that soft sound it was very still. And the aromatic odors grew stronger.

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