CHAPTER XXIV.
["THEY MET, 'TWAS IN A CROWD."]
It was long before Gilbert Roe could go to sleep, and the occupants of adjoining chambers had abundant opportunity to sympathise with him. He could not rest peacefully in his bed, and was driven to get up and pace his room after his neighbours had retired. He thought he would smoke, but could not find a light, so groped his way down passages and staircases, where only a lamp was left burning here and there, stumbling over boots at bedroom-doors, and arousing echoes in the slumbering house, to ask for matches from the night-watchman. Returned to his room he could not sit and smoke, but must go out upon the gallery, marching up and down through the night-watches, till every sleeper lay awake counting his footfalls and wishing him a cripple. Towards morning he succeeded in growing drowsy, and turned in, and this time slept till it was late. Maida joined him at the breakfast-table, wishing him good morning with an easy intimacy of proprietorship, which provoked him for some reason which did not appear. However, her company was a relief after the weary solitude of his midnight vigil, and in spite of himself he relaxed and grew sociable.
"Come to church, Gilbert?" she said, when breakfast was over; and he, having nothing better to do, consented. They walked leisurely along the sands, as did also a good many of the younger company, who objected to being mewed up in an omnibus.
"Let us step out a little," said Gilbert, "and join those folks in front."
"It is too warm for stepping out much," she answered. "We have a long walk before us. If we hurry we will be flushed and crumpled, and not fit to be seen, when we go into church. And it is a close little place at the best."
"Never mind. We can stop outside when we get there; but let's be cheerful in the meantime. I see Miss Deane in that crowd on in front. Come, let's join them."
"Oh yes! and that little Fanny Payson you were so set on dancing with last night," Maida answered, a little crossly. "You'll have to take to surf-bathing if you want to get in with that crowd. I think them real frivolous, myself, and mighty conceited and stuck-up. My father might have been a senator too, by now, if he had lived. He ran for Congress the year I was born; and if he did not get sent there, it was none of his fault."
"Never mind, Maida; you may go to Congress yourself yet, when the woman's suffrage law passes. But you must take to wearing glasses"--she had dropped using her goggles, I must observe, since Gilbert's appearance--"to show that you have intellect. Intellect, short-sight, and high culture, all run together, like a three-abreast Russian team. If it wasn't for their short-sightedness they would drop the high culture altogether, for they would see it don't pay in this country. We have only a few professors and scientists all told, you see. Three or four dozen women could marry them all, and the rest of the men don't care to be kept humble all the time, by living with wives who know more than themselves. That's why so many spectacled women go lecturing. It's because nobody wants to marry them."
"To hear you talk, Gilbert, one would say you were just dreadful. You do not really mean, I'm sure, that you believe a woman makes a better wife for being ignorant or a fool. What companionship can there be between an intelligent man and an empty-headed doll? And perhaps you are not aware, but it is a fact, that the most successful female lecturers are married women; and very poorly off their families and invalid husbands would be, if they could not earn money that way."
"Maybe, Maida; I do not know from personal knowledge. I do not attend many lectures, and I never heard a female lecture in my life; but if you think the average man don't like what you call a doll--which, I suppose, means a nice, soft, pretty little thing, who believes she is not clever, and lets other women trample on her, as regards science and things--you never were more mistaken in your life. Lots of smart men find them the best company in the world; and--well--I know for a fact that a woman may be no end of smart, and the very best of company, though she don't read poetry, and knows nothing about the 'ologies.'"
"Natural intelligence, you mean, without any advantages of education. To be sure, you find that in many a farmhouse--the kind of woman who scrapes and saves to send all her sons to college, and sees one of them elected President of the United States, and has her likeness in all the illustrated papers. But if she had had culture, think what such a woman would have become!"
"She would have become a female lecturer. The men would have been afraid of her. She would never have been married, never had a son, and never got her likeness into the magazines as mother of a President. When men marry, they hope, at least, to be boss at home: and few have the conceit to tackle a female steam-engine, expecting to be able to break her in to quiet paces."
"But in cities you want culture to keep up your place in the community. A poorly educated woman must be a drag on her husband's social advancement."
"Not a bit of it. Our first families in Chicago and elsewhere, in this country, and in every other, are noways remarkable for culture. Sometimes it's money raises them, sometimes it's because their fathers were of first families before them, or their friends. Culture may help now and then--it's a distinction in its way, just like beauty or talent; but there must be money, you bet! You country folks talk a heap of nonsense about the help culture is, to rising in the world; so do the newspapers, though they should know better. They think they have it themselves, you see, so they crack it up for their own sakes."
"Oh, Gilbert! I am sorry to hear you speak like that. You used to think very differently."
"Because I did not know any better, and I believed what I read in print. We're not a highly cultured lot in the cities, I can tell you--we successful folks, I mean. How could we be? It takes all we can do to keep ourselves ahead of our neighbours. If we were to divide ourselves between business and politics, or business and culture, we would have to take a back seat in the community. It is not so much special talent that is wanted, for getting on, as entireness. A man must pour his whole self into the one groove, if he is to make a hit. The whole of a very ordinary fellow is more, you see, and therefore surer to win, than part of one of your superior people dabbling in half-a-dozen different pursuits. Remember that, when you come to many, Maida; and if you want to stand high, choose a man of one idea, and that one his business."
"I know better than that, Gilbert," Maida answered, looking up in his eyes with a fond but rather watery smile. She felt wounded by the advice, but she took comfort, in that he was by her side while he spoke, and could not mean it. It was only a man's thoughtless speech--his rough way of being playful. For had he not kept faithful through ten long years--long after she herself had ceased to expect or hope? Had he not come back to her? and was not his presence the strongest refutation of his worldly and cynical words?
And now, having gained, unconsciously to Maida, upon the party whose appearance had started their discussion, she found they were abreast. Gilbert drew towards them, leaving her somewhat apart, as if he would join them.
"Good morning, Miss Deane," he said to Lettice, who was next him.
"Good morning, Mr Roe," she answered very coldly, passing behind Walter Petty immediately after, and becoming engrossed in conversation with Lucy Naylor, who walked on his other side.
Gilbert bit his lip, and Maida could not forbear a smile, to see with the corner of her eye--for she would not turn her head--his chilling reception by those he had been so eager to overtake, as if in preference to her own company. They were all in close discussion now, and completely ignored his presence. The distance widened between him and them, while Maida walked straight forward; and not being minded to walk alone, he was compelled, with something of a crestfallen air, to return to her side.
Maida was not ill-natured. She betrayed no sign of having perceived his discomfiture, and exerted herself to talk in a livelier way than her wont, till he should recover from his mortification. She felt that she was generous in doing this, and the neglect of the others seemed to bind him to her by a rivet the more; so that her spirits rose, and completely shook off the depression which his seeming weariness of her company had been bringing on. He felt grateful in his turn that she should so well cover his retreat, and enable him to bear up under the snub he had been subjected to; the consequence being that they reached Blue Fish Creek on terms of demonstrative good-fellowship, sang from one hymn-book in church, and walked home by the sands again in cordial intimacy.
"Jest look at them two interestin' young things!" Mrs Denwiddie observed to her neighbour, as she pointed them out from the omnibus window. "Ain't they fond, now! It makes me feel better to look at them. It's kind of hard, you see, for us worldly-minded Americans, sometimes, to believe about Adam and Eve and their innocent ongoings mentioned in Scripter. There's nothing makes me so 'feared of turning into one of them sceptics the ministers are so down on, as that history; when I see the way young men and gals get on together, with never a thought but dollars and cents and sich. 'There ain't one of them as 'ud eat an apple as he knows'll disagree with him, jest to please his Betsy, nowadays,' I thought. But there!--you see an instance of what faithful love'll do. Jest look at them on the sands there, wanderin' along! They might be babies gatherin' shells, with their little spades in their hands."
"Do you mean the Montpelier schoolma'am?" the friend replied. "'Pears to me always like as she was jest vinegar--with her blue glasses and her knitting. I see she has left the glasses at home to-day--guess it's to get a better look at her young man. Wonder what he thinks of her? His taste must be pecooliar."
"They're true lovers, them two, believe me, Mrs Strange. If they ain't, there's none sich. It's more'n ten years since they were engaged, and he's been away all that time, to make his pile, and she's been a-waitin' and a-workin' till he could come back to her, and never a complaint. It's not a week yet, since she told me all about it, and not a man would she listen to, in all that time, out of pure faithfulness."
"There's few would try to shake her constancy, I'm thinkin'," said Mrs Strange; but her companion was too busy talking to heed her, and continued--
"Think of the young man keepin' her image before his mind's eye all them years! and the world so full of gals, and temptations of all kinds."
Lettice Deane, returning home in the same omnibus, sat opposite. She raised her eyebrows, looking in the speaker's face, her nostrils quivered, and the corners of her mouth, and then she buried her face in her handkerchief and laughed silently; or, at least, so thought Mrs Denwiddie, who returned her look with one of blackest indignation, calling her, in her own mind, "A sassy brat, and that stuck-up as no self-respectin' woman would demean herself by taking account of."
And the modern illustrations of Adam and Eve walked cheerfully homeward along the sands. It was indeed Eden to one of them--an Eden such as she had never hoped to enter, so bright that she could not think what she had done to earn it. As for the other, it did not appear exactly what were his thoughts, but he was cheerful, and perfectly kind and attentive to his companion.
At dinner, Gilbert and Maida were early in their places. They had earned an appetite by their long walk, and were duly hungry. Gilbert's soup was before him, his spoon was lifted half-way to his mouth, when the voices of a party in high spirits entering the room reached his ear. The tone of a familiar voice among the others drew his attention, and he raised his eyes. Senator Deane and his wife headed their party, advancing up the room; behind came Lettice and Rose Hillyard. Gilbert started, and the spoon slipped from his fingers and fell back in the plate with a clatter which resounded through the room.
Rose's eye was drawn in the direction, and she saw him. She grew pale to the lips and faltered, with a stop and a half-turn, as though she would leave the room; then her colour flooded back and mounted to her brow, her lips grew hard and set, and with a flash of the eye she turned away her head and walked proudly forward to her place; taking care that her back should be turned to the object which had disturbed her.
Gilbert's blood had rushed into his face when their eyes met, but he grew pale when she turned away, and he did not very speedily recover himself. His soup was taken away untasted, and he refreshed himself with ice-water instead.
Maida was filled with tender solicitude, and he would have been overwhelmed with her inquiries and suggestions, if he had been attending to what she said; but it scarcely seemed as if he were. "Was it a qualm? Was he faint? Did he feel better now? Perhaps his heart was weak, and he had over-exerted himself in the sun. She would never forgive herself for taking him so long a walk. Would he not try some wine?" which last was an ill-advised question, seeing they were then in the State of Maine, where strong drink is not partaken of in public. Not that an innkeeper's guests must go without--far from it; but they must imbibe their stimulants sub rosâ, though the concealment is merely of a conventional kind.
Gilbert ate very little dinner, and poor Maida never taxed her skill to interest and enliven, with less success than during that meal. Her companion attempted to eat one thing and another, and he drank ice-water, but he had become deaf as the adder which refuses to hear the voice of the charmer. He parted from her at the dining-room door, saying he would go in search of brandy, as he really felt ill; and Maida ended the Sunday which had begun so brightly, in solicitude and wretchedness. She might have had as much sympathy as she pleased from her elderly friend, but the unending Denwiddie babble was more than she could endure. It was easier to be alone and nurse her anxiety. There was a foreboding on her spirit which she could not define, a clouding over of the future and its dawning hopes, which she felt but could not explain. Nothing had happened, so far as she knew, but she felt a frost in the air, which had been so warm and bland, and it was nipping the blossoms in her poor fool's paradise.