III.
She stopped in the narrow passage, just by a niche containing a tall and bilious-complexioned alabaster vase, with scraggly arms, which had always impressed her as giving the house a great advantage over other boarding-houses. (That vase, by the way, had levied its tax in many a bill.) But now it seemed gloomily symbolic; everything had begun to seem unnatural and suggestive since that trunk appeared. She fancied the vase was like a "storied urn," containing the ashes of some valiant warrior who should no more wield the humble breakfast-knife at her devastated table. Overcome with emotion, she passed on and pushed open the drawing-room door.
"Natalia," she exclaimed, impressively, "guess what has happened!" As the expressman, with fate-like footsteps, tramped up-stairs, carrying the trunk on his shoulder, Barrington, who came after him, noticed that the rumbling and twittering of the piano had ceased, and that his landlady had disappeared. The two women were, in fact, conversing in agitated whispers on the other side of the closed parlor door.
"Well, never did I think to lose him!" exclaimed Mrs. Douce.
"Poor aunt!" said Natalia; "and so late in the season, too."
"It isn't that so much," interrupted the other, severely; "but it hurts me that he should have been so sudden and so secret."
"Perhaps he thought we—" Natalia paused, and blushed. "But why should he think we'd urge him to stay?"
"Hark! is he coming down again?" said her aunt. No; it was merely the expressman. He thumped his way down to the street door. They heard the wagon drive off, and for a moment afterward they held their breath, as if a battle had been raging near them, and the heavy current of the fight had now swept by, leaving them in suspense, lest it should return. Then the dignified step of Barrington resounded on the staircase. He came to the door, and opened it. "I ought," he began, stepping in with a smile, "to explain matters a little."
Mrs. Douce's mood was like that of elderly matrons at the wedding of a young friend. She hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. "Oh," she returned, in the breathless, short-of-supplies manner usual with her in awkward situations, "oh—no—explanation is needed, Mr. Barrington!" and, after a short pause, simpering, "I'm sure."
Natalia, meanwhile, stood in a shrinking, drooping attitude near the battered rosewood piece of furniture from which she had been drawing music, and looked a good deal like one of those young ladies in old colored prints who devote themselves to standing mournfully under weeping willows, among headstones.
"Well, you see," proceeded Barrington, who took Mrs. Douce's denial at its worth, "I didn't say anything, because—well, it wasn't quite settled."
"Then you're not sure of going to the war?" Natalia burst forth, with pathetic eagerness. (Barrington noticed that her heightened color was becoming to her.)
"Sure?" answered he, cruelly; "oh, yes; humanly speaking, I suppose it's sure enough. I—good gracious!—I only—"
These incoherent phrases were drawn out by the effect his statement had produced. Natalia's eyelids fell at his words. She was trying to repress a tendency to sob. By the time the hero had discovered this a tear had found its way into sight beneath her eyelashes.
"There!" cried Mrs. Douce, sternly. "Any one might have known it. We aren't made of sole-leather, Mr. Barrington. [He said to himself it was lucky she had told him this.] Common humanity and friendship ought to have shown you what this suddenness would lead to."
"I can't help it," murmured her niece, referring to the tears now hurrying down her face, and misled by the matron's angry tone and her own confusion into the idea that she was being scolded. (She was at this time without money.)
"Of course you can't, dear," said the aunt, soothingly. "As if any one with any considerateness, or average humanity, I may say, would suppose you could! I am not the woman to blame you for giving way under the circumstances, Natalia. It only shows you've got a heart, while some people—Mr. Barrington, excuse me, but I must speak out." However, she didn't speak out any further, but wound up with: "Anyway, it can't be worse than it is [though nobody had intimated that it could be]. You've decided to leave me. Well, that's what I must expect, I suppose." And she dropped into a chair, and patted her thumbs together, as if there were some crushing sarcasm in the action, which satisfied her wounded feelings.
Barrington succumbed to remorse. Besides, Natalia's unhappiness aroused his sympathy, and he became angry—without knowing whether he had a right to be so—at Mrs. Douce's taking the part of a comforter. He fancied he could do this even better than she. "Of course," he said, stiffly, "I don't expect to leave you without compensation for not giving notice. I shall pay you for two or three weeks extra."
He felt a dreadful sinking of the pocket as he spoke; but dignity required the sacrifice. The landlady did not respond for an instant; her eyes wandered about with a pained, prophetic air. "What have I done," she cried, "to bring this upon me? Mr. Barrington, have I ever asked you more than we agreed upon? Have I treated my family meanly? You have been in this house two years, and I know you can't point to anything. What have I done to be insulted so?" she demanded of the faded window-curtains.
A moment of silence followed this outburst; then she swept out of the room, with a thin rustle of her black dress, and left the prospective captain and Natalia alone.