I
At one end of the village stood a century-old house, infinitely seemly in line and proportion, in color unblemished white. A hint of the manorial, if not the temple-like, it owed to a front of broad stairs and fluted columns, upholding a pediment which over-hung the ground-floor window-doors and shadowed the windows of the upper story. An equal dignity and rather serious beauty belonged to the arrangement of the surrounding garden. Year after year, the same plants bloomed there, the sort, mostly, we call old-fashioned. A reverence for ancestral predilections determined the colors and fragrances to be enjoyed to-day; but as these fairly accorded with the present owners’, the garden remained a true expression of the house’s inhabitants.
At the other end of the village, overlooking the main street, stood a new house, fruit of what seemed now and then to some one the most singularly successful research in vulgar ugliness. But to a large proportion of the villagers it embodied the last word of splendor: it had, on the face of it, cost enormously, and necessarily met the tastes of many, from the fact that it offered some specimen of every style the one who planned it had admired in any dwelling ever seen by her: turrets, balconies, projecting windows, a Renaissance roof, acres of verandah, and, ornamenting all, as lace might a lady’s garment, numberless yards of intricate wooden openwork. It had originally been painted in three colors, but one day, no one divined at what prompting, a gang of workmen was seen overlaying the rich buff, russet, and green, with white, and the house stood forth among its trees no longer utterly condemnable to the more fastidious, but clothed in such redeeming grace as we might find in a person who with every fault had yet some quality of candor. Pyramidal masses of hydrangea flanked the entrance-door and spread in opaline patches upon the lawn; a round of ornamental water, with a central statue and a border of sea-conchs, supported the green pads of lilies,—the pink variety. The estate was bounded on the street by a fence of wrought iron,—more ponderous lace, in this case black.
In these two houses lived two women who frankly could not bear each other. We had nearly said two beautiful women, but the one impressed rather by charm than any unusual felicity of form, and the other, strikingly effective, “stunning,” as she was frequently described, displeased almost as many as she pleased. Yet each of them had heard herself called beautiful often enough to have assumed the bearing and outlook upon life of a beautiful woman: there was something positive in the claim of each that her will should be given weight. We have said they hated each other: but each fair bosom harbored a very different sentiment from the other. Celia Compton, the charming, who lived in the peaceful ancient house, hated Judith Bray, the red-blooded beauty for whom had been built the architectural monstrosity on the main street, merely as one hates smoke in the eyes, a grating sound, or shudders at the thought of flannel against the teeth. But Judith lay awake in the night, unable to sleep for hating Celia Compton so, and would hardly have suffered more from stabs with a knife than she did from the recapitulation of what she called the slights put upon her by Celia. She turned hot and cold at the recollection, and clenched her hands while she devised sanguinary methods of getting even with her. When the sane light of day returned, these must be dropped: for Celia’s offences were, after all, such as can hardly be visited with vengeance; they could not even be defined. But Judith had a companion, a poor relative whom she had taken to live with her, an insignificant, homely, middle-aged-looking young woman called Jess, who understood without definition, and with whom she could enlarge upon the subject of Miss Compton without concern for being precise as to facts or just as to 421 assumptions,—true only to her dislike, and correct in her sense of the dislike felt for her by Celia. It was with this Jess she planned some of the crude impertinences by which she endeavored to retaliate upon her enemy.
When Celia, at the death of her father, the Egyptologist, whose obituary notice thrust aside the daily news by an ample column, had decided to come back and spend her summers in the grandparents’ house where much of her childhood had been spent, she had looked forward with infinite affection to this return to the tenderly remembered old village which she had not seen for half a dozen years. The vision of it, always in apple-blossom time, had used often to interpose between her and yellow reaches of the Nile. She had been informed, no doubt, in letters, of innovations at home, but had read, as became evident afterwards, without bringing home to herself the meaning of these communications, for it was with a shock she at last beheld them. There had been in the village, as the image of it lived in her brain, one modest store to which you went for everything. It was kept by a good, simple man whose wife and children as often as he waited upon the customers: all people with whom you in good country fashion talked over the affairs of the country-side, crops, church-festival, change of minister. In place of this now stood a large, showy building called the Emporium. One Matthew Bray, from outside, had bought out the widow of the old store-keeper, and enlarged the business as you might see. From all over the county people came to trade there. There was no longer the necessity to go by rail to the city to shop: here were dress-stuffs, trimmings, fashion-books, a millinery department. In reality the thing was not ill done, since it perfectly met a need, but Celia stared at it in helpless grief, hurt as by hearing a familiar melody bawled out of tune. Then she was driven past the new house—it was still tri-colored—and her mind was made up about the Brays.
She loved many of the village people, with whom she had stood from infancy in the simplest cordial relations. It hurt a little to discover their pleasure in these changes, the mean ambitions, as it seemed to Celia, which they were developing. She found it difficult to be just, and pardon as natural their satisfaction in the growing material prosperity brought about by the influx of people drawn by the Emporium. The widow of the old store-keeper, upon the strength of it, had opened an Ice-Cream Room. They loved the increased liveliness, too. Celia could not blame them: her winters were lively, while theirs were dull enough. But she came here for rest, the village of her love had been ideally sleepy. Now it was spoiled for her. It hurt her, too, like a needle-point of neuralgia, to observe, as she fancied, a new tone among the younger people. Were those really attempts at style and dash and smartness she witnessed in the children of good old Asah and Jerusha Brown? Heart-sick, if she allowed herself to consider the spreading of a leaven which would in time unfit the place for her habitation, she lived more secluded than had been her habit while there in former days. The old house was easily sufficient to itself in the matter of society. The family made but a small group, but friends of Celia’s from the outside world succeeded each other in the enjoyment of the Comptons’ hospitality, of an elegance as simple as it was graceful.
She had half suspected what pernicious admiration must be at the root of the degeneracy she perceived among the village girls, when one day—this was soon after her return—she saw Judith Bray. It was in the Emporium, for, no matter how much you hate an Emporium, if there is not the least thread-and-needle store beside, you may be forced to patronize it. The attendant, matching embroidery-silks for her, bent to say: “That across the aisle is Miss Bray.” Celia looked.
For some time she had been aware of a strong feminine voice exchanging witticisms with the clerk, but had paid no attention. She saw a handsome brunette, of what she called to herself, as she thought Judith over on the way home, a crude sort of primitive beauty, as if that superb body and face had been kneaded with profusion of coarse materials and not carefully finished off: large yet quick dark eyes, a black abundance of hair, features of an indescribably triumphant cast. The physical exuberance clearly expressed in the young woman’s color and molding seemed condensed in a voice and laugh whose chime cut ringingly through all contending sounds. She was dressed with conspicuous elegance, according to her own idea, which the community accepted from her. If one discarded all standards, this solid prize-fruit was certainly good to look at. Celia granted so much, but did not for the fraction of an instant relinquish her standards. Personally, she could no more relish that presence than a perfume or a flavor too pronounced; it may be doubted whether that particular perfume and flavor would have been to her taste in the weakest dilution.
While she was thus in the act of stealing glances, Judith abruptly swung round. The clerk, showing off the last importation of dress-fabrics, had whispered to her, “That just behind you is Miss Compton,” and Judith, breathless 422 with interest, turned her full bright eye upon the one who, in Judith’s own words, had been “the most important person socially” until she came.
“She looks just as I thought she would,” she said low to the clerk; and she contrived to find herself near the door when Celia was leaving, and, smiling an assured smile, she said, “I am so glad to see you back, Miss Compton. I have heard so much about you, I feel as if you were already an old acquaintance. I wish you would come and see me. I suppose we are still new-comers to you, so according to the ways here it would be your place to call first, wouldn’t it, though I shouldn’t mind a bit coming first, if you say so....”
Celia, flushing at the intolerable offensiveness to her of this, replied in a low soft voice that she was at present not going out at all, and with a bow of the most finished perfection passed forth. It had been so well done that Judith, who felt snubbed at the moment, rejected, upon consideration, the idea of a repulse, and the year after, when Miss Compton was out of mourning, sent her an invitation. Celia declined it in a note which contained not one discoverable prickle, but yet had about it an atmosphere that seemed to numb Judith’s hand which held it. To the most critical examination, however, it showed nothing that was not completely civil, and the unwary Judith permitted herself to act upon the verdict of her brain, and again, and at intervals again, made overtures to Celia, of whom she had from the first glance fallen into the most extravagant admiration. It was her native conceit which prevented her for such a long time from reaching the certainty that a closer acquaintance with her was not desired. For what reason?... How could such a thing be?... She was in her proper esteem so beyond question as desirable an acquaintance as any person could have. And she was attracted by Celia as she had never been by woman or man before. Though she was far from being so humble as to wish herself in any wise altered to resemble her, it was the difference between them, no doubt, which gave such fascination for her to Celia’s every way of being, her coolness, restraint, that personal pride so quiet it had the face almost of modesty, and her manner! her air!... Covering the house with white paint was, however, the only tribute of imitation Judith ever paid her, and it was not conscious: she had merely looked at the white house so much that she judged the paint on her own house to have become, with wear, more glaring.
It was during the third summer that Judith compassed her desire of standing within the portals of the Compton house. Celia, sitting with her mother and brother and their visitors in the shadow of the Dorian pillars, in the idleness of a warm afternoon, saw Judith’s carriage approach, and—instead of passing, stop. Judith, in splendid array, descended and came forward. Celia, wondering, arose. When the ordinary formalities had been dispatched, Celia ushered Miss Bray into the long museum-like sitting-room, with the odor of strange old far-away things. Judith, while she spoke, could not keep her eyes from roving. She said, and a simple-minded, rich delight in what she had to say, and felt herself able to do, pierced through her expressions: “I understand, Miss Compton, that you don’t like the idea of a line of electric cars running through our village and down to the lake. Some one said so. You think it would spoil the looks of the old street and bring a lot of rough Sunday people. I wanted to hear it directly from you, to be quite sure, for it really, when all is said, you know, depends upon my father, and my father—” she laughed with roguish audacity—“does exactly what I want him to. It’s true he’s set his heart on the line—it’s progress, in his way of looking. But if you don’t want it, there shan’t be any car-line. Isn’t it fun? There’s a town-hall and select-men, and all that, but it really depends upon us two. My Dad will do anything I say, and I’ll do anything you say. There!... You’ve only got to speak....”
Celia had felt herself growing pale with the sheer force of antipathy. Her nervous hands were so near trembling, she reached to a jade cup and took from it a string of curious blue beads with which to keep them occupied. She replied in precisely modulated tones; “You are mistaken in believing I care—beyond a certain point. I had rather there were electric cars than—than certain other things. Personally, it can affect me very little—since I believe we shall soon cease altogether coming here for the summer.”
Judith, the dense, went away charmed with her call. She had loitered a little while on the porch, in chatter with the company, and been escorted to her carriage by the brother. She was amply discussed after her departure, she and her errand; the brother and the other man, as far as circumstances permitted, wedging in good words for her, with half-ironical good-humor.
The small, withered gentlewoman in the rocking-chair said, “I fear you will be obliged to call upon her, Celia, after all.”
Celia somberly raged. “Is one to be forced to know people whom it gives one goose-flesh to hear mentioned? The Brays have made me 423 feel as if boiled cabbage were reeking from every house in the village, and I am to associate with them quite as with people I like? Voluntary intercourse should signify, after all, some degree of regard, and I am to pretend—No! I will not admit the legitimacy of any tyranny which could so coerce me! I will be civil to her every time my bad luck throws us together, but seek her out I will not.”
At the last of the season, nevertheless, Mrs. Compton’s card and Celia’s were left at the Brays’, their call falling upon a day when Judith was far from home, to the knowledge of every soul in the place, Judith truly believed. Celia left on the day after, with the comfortable sense of having done her duty and deserved the crumb of favor vouchsafed her by fate.
She supposed, when she came back the following year, that her relation with the Brays was now definitely established: one formal call from each party during the season. But the first time she met Judith, she perceived instantly that all was changed. She knew she had made an enemy. How the revulsion had come about was never clear: whether owing to the mere ripening of age—Judith was now twenty-four or -five, Celia five or six years older—or the souring of a despised prepossession, or the intimacy with Jess, which began at about this time. Celia’s punctilious bow met the response of as much petty rudeness as could be concentrated into a lifting of the chin and a stare. “Very well,” she said to herself stonily, “if you prefer it so, it is by far the most agreeable to me.”
It was not, altogether; that is, not all the time. We are seldom of a piece, and a part of Celia was chafed, and now and then saddened, by the sense of having brought about anything so unbeautiful as this hate. She could not at all moments clear her conscience of blame, and had pangs of regret—too honest with herself, however, not to know that if all were still to do, she should do the same. For another part of Celia, child of a worldly clan, felt itself eminently justified. One must keep the two worlds distinct in practice: Brethren before our Maker, we yet play the social game according to its rules. After the first, she relegated the matter to a high shelf. She had not made much case of Judith’s friendship, she made scarcely more of her enmity. Her life was full of other interests, and, as she mingled less and less with the village, the reminder of Judith’s sentiments toward her hardly recurred often enough to constitute an element in her consciousness. The truth is that as Judith dropped out of her existence in the character of one who could interfere with it, she disliked her less. Sometimes the flushed face with its assumed haughtiness, “cutting her dead,” (Celia, with some idea, perhaps, of doing for her part a Christian’s duty, continued to bow as if unaware of the insult intended her) smote her with a sense of pity at the evil passions hardening that really beautiful face. The Comptons’ idea that they might have to give up the village as a summering place was forgotten. When a little chafed by some noisy exhibition of the Brays’ vulgarity, Celia used to say to herself hopefully that no doubt Judith would in time marry and go to live elsewhere. She would have been amazed to discover that she was herself directly concerned with Judith’s singleness. Judith, the very type of whose charms proclaimed her passionate temperament, had never among her adorers seen one she was sure would have been felt good enough for Celia. There was a story passed along in confidence—how things which the persons concerned in them never breathe come to be generally known is a mystery—that Celia would never marry, because the one she should have married, renounced on account of some deadly habit of a drug, was off somewhere at the other end of the world, fighting his weakness, or, there were those who said, having given up the fight. Judith, hearing this long before, had considered the circumstances with an aching sympathy, mingled with awe. She knew she could never have done it. If she had cared for the man,—the most brilliant man before, and now the most unhappy,—she pictured him handsome as a hero of Byron’s,—she would have had to cling to him and go down into the depths together. But spinsterhood had acquired an effect of fineness for her from the study of Celia, with the destruction of her happiness so perfectly concealed that one could detect it by no sign, unless that air of detachment, sometimes, and distance and fatigue, were an expression of it. In her latter mood Judith chose savagely to despise Celia for her defection from her lover; at the same time she lent small ear to love-proffers, absorbed in a different passion. For the hatred of Celia, who did not think of her once a week, was grown to a passion.
It was at this time hardly a matter of resolve that Celia did not think of Judith, unless some vision obtruded itself of her, driving past with Jess, whose little sallow face—owing its effect of malignity perhaps to a defect of the eyes, of which one never could quite ascertain the nature—was so well fitted to set off the proud bloom of hers. A strain of magnificence had developed in her: she was perpetually organizing festivities, picnics, water-parties, lawn-parties: her garden could be seen a mile away 424 at night, festooned with Chinese lanterns, while the village band played among the trees, and the contingent of the village people which she had formed into “her set” ate ices on her verandah. Effluvia of these doings drifted necessarily to the Comptons.
But in time Celia began finding herself subjected to small occasional pin-pricks of annoyance at things reported to her as having been said by Judith. They were repeated without malicious intention, mostly as being funny. The village dressmaker, who sometimes sewed for Celia, was employed as well by Judith. It might almost have been supposed part of this woman’s business to tell the village news while, as was the custom, one sat and sewed with her. Celia expected it as much as that she should bring her thimble and wax. Miss Greene was one of her oldest village associations, a “character” she was called, and was a privileged and much-quoted person. She felt a whole-souled allegiance to the Comptons, but no less to the new-comer, Judith Bray, who had been lavish to her as to everybody. She “did not know as the one interfered with the other.” When she liked a person, the bent of her disposition was to tell her everything, but particularly whatever in the most distant way had reference to her.
She said to Celia one day, without ceasing to push her gathering needle, “You know who Judy Bray thinks you like?... in looks?... Well, you never would guess it! Not ’cause there ain’t nothin’ in it, though ... for after you’ve been told, you’ll see it at once. She says she can never see Beech—Beechnut, your dog, you know—without it makes her think of you.”
Celia felt an inward start. The dog had been given her by some one very dear, and she saw at once by what perhaps unconscious association of ideas it was probable the animal had been selected for her. Some vague resemblance unmistakably existed between herself and the red-haired setter, with his delicate long face and air at once noble and mournful. She felt no inclination to resent the comparison in itself, though she knew it had been meant ill-naturedly; but she chafed under the sense of the power possessed by the first-comer to belittle one at pleasure, if it be only in words.
The remark might have passed from her mind, as originating in Judith’s, but for an event forming a complement to it. Walking down the main street with Beech, she came, as she approached the Emporium, in sight of a bull-dog, hideous enough surely to take a first prize—bow-legged, goggle-eyed, crooked-toothed, a stranger in the village, where no dog had ever happened before who constituted a real danger to Beech. He was decorated with a spiked collar and a splashing cherry ribbon bow. Hurriedly Celia got her hand upon her dog’s collar and drew him to the other side of the road. The bull-dog sat upon the top step of the Emporium stoop, sleepily blinking in the sun, a goodly beast of his sort, in his loose soft coat of brindled plush, but to Celia more hateful than Cerberus. “Whose is that brute?” she asked a boy lounging near the village horse-trough, and heard what she had expected, for she had not failed to notice Judith’s cart in waiting near the Emporium door. A flame of real hatred shot up within her and burned earnestly for a moment. Those who have not a dog cannot conceive the sensitiveness of the spot in their master’s heart reserved for them. The contemplation of this constant menace henceforth to Beech, with the alternative of a confinement he had never known, generated in Celia desires almost murderous toward the heavy-jawed antagonist, over there. She seized the full reach of Judith’s clumsy attempt at esprit: Having pointed out the likeness between Beech and his mistress, she had procured a pet resembling herself, as it was her humour to suppose she appeared in the eyes of Celia. She had succeeded this time to the extent of her intention in embittering existence to Celia. A nervous fear lest there should be an encounter between the proud, gentle Beech and that ruffian—the report reached her that his facetious name was Punch—destroyed all possible enjoyment of walks even in the remotest by-paths and woods, for, supposing Judith to maintain this dog for her annoyance, what sense of bounds or fairness would constrain her?
A long time passed, however, without sign of the enemy in her remoter walks; and she had come to feel secure once more and let her dog range along unleashed, when one day, nothing being further from her thoughts, Beech’s voice came to her ear, tangled in quarrel with another, and her heart told her that the event so dreaded was upon them. She ran, with shaking knees, and saw at a glance the worst she had feared. Celia was not a coward, but a certain permanent sense of the physical means at her command compelled her to stand helpless, crying out and beating the air with her hands. Judith, appearing upon the scene a moment later, white with fright, too, plunged at the fighters, and having by force of rage and fury of muscle got mastery over her dog, was with one hand belaboring his big head, while with the other twisted in his collar she shook and choked him. She stopped, suddenly without strength, and looked over at Celia, who, trembling from head to foot, was clinging to Beech. As their 425 glances met, concentrated indignation shot from Celia’s eyes. “I hope you are satisfied!” she said.
Judith, after a moment’s pause, which appeared owing to amazement, flourished in the air, for Celia to see, a bitten and bleeding hand, and said in her harsh, impudent laugh, “I hope you are!” while yet Celia could not fail to remark that pain or some other emotion was forcing tears into her eyes. Too angry to be in the least moved by them, she turned away.
It was only in recollection that she did grudging justice to Judith’s conduct; but the initial wrong and the whole blame of the occurrence being so signally hers, she felt under no obligation of acknowledgement. What became of Punch she never inquired. He was not seen again in those latitudes. The injury received, however, was of a kind which the tender mistress of Beech was not likely to remit, and the remembrance of it went to intensify the effect of scorn with which upon another occasion she met an impulsive tender of Judith’s, prompted by penitence.... And after that there was no more question between the women of anything but hate to the extent of their respective capacities.
The reinforcement of ill-will in this case arose from a question of so innocent and fragile a thing as wild orchids. Celia alone in all the country-side knew where any were to be found. Her grandmother had taken her as a child to the solitary place in the woods, and it had been her fancy to preserve the secret, but for one exception or two. The donor of Beech had visited the fairy recess with her, and the odor of it now had power to evoke past words and scenes almost more than anything left of that poor romance. The thoughts she had there thought first seemed year after year to be still lying in wait for her there. It was her habit to gather the flowers with discretion and reverence, distributing them as if they had been so much gold. Any wild orchid seen in a village sitting-room was sure to be noticed with the remark, “I see you’ve had a call from Miss Compton,” and it seemed agreed that one should expect them only from her hand. Celia, seeking the hushed green haunt one summer morning, her head as always on those pilgrimages lost in its old dream, upon reaching the dell where her eyes looked for sparks of pink against the lace of ferns, was startled by the sight of Judith, solid and ample. One hand grasped a bunch of orchids, the other was still busily harvesting. What she saw in Celia’s face as Celia recognized her, Judith alone could tell. But instead of anything their immediately preceding intercourse could have led Celia to look for, Judith went to her quickly, and, holding out the flowers for her to take, blurted forth, “It’s a burning shame!... Of course they belong to you, and I’d no business....” But Celia looked at her with eyes of judgment, and, with a gesture of utter rejection, turned. Judith scattered her nosegay angrily upon the earth, and the two women, as fast as ever they could, widened the distance between them.
After that, each according to her nature entertained her aversion. In Celia the act consisted in as perfect an exclusion from her thoughts of the other, now altogether outside the pale of consideration, as her will could compass. She refused to be concerned with such ugliness, or have her life vulgarized by the sentiments which befitted it. In Judith it formed an undercurrent of excitement, never quite below consciousness, and at the root of many an action of hers which from the surface would have seemed to have no relation with it. Other factors in Judith’s life there were combining with her sense of Celia’s disesteem and her revolt against it and requital of hatred, to give her character a touch of lawlessness in its audacity; her wealth, her power over her father, her ascendency over the imaginations of the plain villagers. It was finally felt that she believed everything permitted to her, and an occasional exaggeration in hard, hare-brained boldness made a beginning of division in opinion about her among those whom her generosity and good-humor had first made all alike her adherents. From time to time inevitably the rivals crossed each other’s path, when Celia’s superiority was confirmed to her by the cold freedom of mind she could maintain under the test, while Judith’s tortures were manifest in the loud fool she made of herself, with the cheap drama of her flashing eye and imperial attitudes.
Thus, while weeks grew to months and months to years, under the genial light of day and the beauty of the nights, amid innocent occupations and simple pleasures and natural relations satisfying to the heart, the two carried about, with as little fear as if it had been some such thing as Judith’s diminutive pet alligator brought home from the South, or the diamond snake with which Celia fastened her lace, the sentiment destined to find its termination in such tragic horror.