CHAPTER V.
ANTICIPATIONS.
It was early in December. The months had brought serious changes to all but one of the group that the August morning had found in Mr. Archdale's garden. Two had disappeared from the scene of their defeat, and to two of them the future seemed opening up vistas of happiness as deep as the present joy. Elizabeth Royal alone was a spectator in the events of the past months, and even in her mind was a questioning that was at least wonderment, if not pain.
Kenelm Waldo was in the West Indies, trying to escape from his pain at Katie Archdale's refusal, but carrying it everywhere with him, as he did recollections of her; to have lost them would have been to have lost his memory altogether.
Ralph Harwin also had gone. His money was still in the firm of John Archdale & Co., which it had made one of the richest in the Colonies; its withdrawal was now to be expected at any moment, for Harwin did not mean to return, and Archdale, while endeavoring to be ready for this, saw that it would cripple him. Harwin had been right in believing that he should make himself very useful and very acceptable to Katie's father. For Archdale who was more desious of his daughter's happiness than of anything else in the world, was disappointed that this did not lie in the direction which, on the whole, would have been for his greatest advantage. Harwin and he could have done better for Katie in the way of fortune than Stephen Archdale with his distaste for business would do. The Archdale connection had always been a dream of his, until lately when this new possibility had superseded his nephew's interest in his thoughts. There was an address and business keenness about Harwin that, if Stephen possessed at all, was latent in him. The Colonel was wealthy enough to afford the luxury of a son who was only a fine gentleman. Stephen was a good fellow, he was sure, and Katie would be happy with him. And yet—but even these thoughts left him as he leaned back in his chair that day, sitting alone after dinner, and a mist came over his eyes as he thought that in less than a fortnight his home would no longer be his little daughter's.
"It will be all right," he said to himself with that sigh of resignation with which we yield to the inevitable, as if there were a certain choice and merit in doing it. "It is well that the affairs of men are in higher hands than ours." John Archdale's piety was of the kind that utters itself in solitude, or under the breath.
Katie at the moment was upstairs with her mother examining a package of wedding gear that had arrived that day. She had no hesitation as to whom her choice should have been. Yet, as she stood holding a pair of gloves, measuring the long wrists on her arm and then drawing out the fingers musingly, it was not of Stephen that she was thinking, or of him that she spoke at last, as she turned away to lay down the gloves and take up a piece of lace.
"Mother," she said, "I do sometimes feel badly for Master Harwin; he is the only man in all the world that I ever had anything like fear of, and now and then I did of him, such a fierceness would come over him once in a while, not to me, but about me, I know, about losing me. He was terribly in earnest. Stephen never gets into these moods, he is always kind and lovable, just as he has been to me as far back as I can remember, only, of course more so now."
"But things have gone differently with him and with poor Master Harwin," answered Mrs. Archdale. "If you had said 'no' to Stephen, you would have seen the dark moods in him, too."
The young girl looked at her mother and smiled, and blushed a little in a charming acknowledgment of feminine power to sway the minds of the sterner half of humanity. Then she grew thoughtful again, not even flattery diverting her long from her subject.
"But Stephen never could be like that," she said. "Stephen couldn't be dark in that desperate sort of way. I can't describe it in Master Harwin, but I feel it. Somehow, he would rather Stephen would die, or I should, than have us marry."
"Did he ever say so?"
"Why, no, but you can feel things that nobody says. And, then, there is something else, too. I am quite sure that sometime in his life he did something, well, perhaps something wicked, I don't know what, but I do know that a load lies on his conscience; for one day he told me as much. It was just as he was going away, the day after I had refused him and he knew of my engagement. He asked permission to come and bid me goodby. Don't you remember?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Archdale.
"He looked at me and sighed. 'I've paid a heavy price,' he said half to himself, 'to lose.' Then he added, 'Mistress Archdale, will you always believe that I loved you devotedly, and always have loved you from the hour I first saw you? If I could undo'—then he waited a moment and grew dreadfully pale, and I think he finished differently from his first intention—'If I could undo something in the past,' he said, 'I would give my life to do it, but my life would be of no use.'"
"That looks as if it was something against you, Katie."
"Oh, no, I don't think so. Besides, he wouldn't have given his life at all; that's only the way men talk, you know, when they want to make an impression of their earnestness on women and they always think they do it that way. But the men that are the readiest to give up their lives don't say anything about it beforehand. Stephen would die for me, I'm sure, but he never told me so in his life. He don't make many protestations; he takes a great deal for granted. Why shouldn't he; we've known one another from babyhood? But Master Harwin knew, somehow, the minute after he spoke, if he didn't at the time, that he wouldn't die for his fault at all, whatever it was. And then, after he spoke it seemed to me as if he had changed his mind and didn't care about it in any way, he only cared that I had refused him, and that he was not going to see me any more. I am sorry for a man like that, and if he were going to stay here I should be afraid of him, afraid for Stephen. But he sails in a few days. I don't wonder he couldn't wait here for the next ship, wait over the wedding, and whatever danger from him there may have been sails with him. Poor man, I don't see what he liked me for." And with a sigh, Katie dismissed the thought of him and his grief and evil together, and turned her attention again to the wedding finery.
"Only see what exquisite lace," she cried, throwing it out on the table to examine the web. "Where did Elizabeth get it, I wonder? She begged to be allowed to give me my bridal veil, and she has certainly done it handsomely, just as she always does everything, dear child. I suppose it came out in one of her father's ships."
"Everything Master Royal touches turns into gold," said Mrs. Archdale, after a critical examination of the lace had called forth her admiration. "It's Mechlin, Katie. There is nobody in the Colonies richer than he," she went on, "unless, possibly, the Colonel."
"I dare say I ought to pretend not to care that Stephen will have ever so much money," returned the girl, taking up a broad band of India muslin wrought with gold, and laying it over her sleeve to examine the pattern, at which she smiled approvingly. "But then I do care. Stephen is a great deal more interesting rich than he would be poor; he is not made for a grub, neither am I, and living is much better fun when one has laces like cobwebs, and velvets and paduasoys, and diamonds, mother, to fill one's heart's desire."
As she spoke she looked an embodiment of fair youth and innocent pleasure, and her mother, with a mother's admiration and sympathy in her heart, gave her a lingering glance before she put on a little sternness, and said, "My child, I don't like to hear you talk in that light way. Your heart's desires, I trust, are set upon better things, those of another world."
"Yes, mother, of course. But, then you know, we are to give our mind faithfully to the things next to us, in order to get to those beyond them, and that's what I am doing now, don't you see? O, mother, dear, how I shall miss you, and all your dear, solemn talks, and your dear, smiling looks." And winding her arms about her mother, Katie kissed her so affectionately that Mrs. Archdale felt quite sure that the laces and paduasoys had not yet spoilt her little daughter.
"Now, for my part," she said a few minutes later as she laid down a pair of dainty white kid shoes, glittering with spangles from the tip of their peaked toes to their very heels,—high enough for modern days,—"These fit you to perfection, my dear. For my part," she repeated, "you know that I have always hoped you would marry Stephen, yet my sympathies go with Master Waldo in his loss, instead of with the other one, whom I think your father at last grew to like best of the three; it was strange that such a man could have gotten such an influence, but then, they were in business together, and there is always something mysterious about business. Master Waldo is a fine, open-hearted young man, and he was very fond of you."
"Yes, I suppose so," answered the girl, with an effort to merge a smile into the expression accompanying a sympathetic sigh. "It's too bad. But, then, men must look out for themselves, women have to, and Kenelm Waldo probably thinks he is worth any woman's heart."
"So he is, Katie."
"Um!" said the girl. "Well, he'd be wiser to be a little humble about it. It takes better."
"Do you call Stephen humble?"
Katie laughed merrily. "But," she said, at last, "Stephen is Stephen, and humility wouldn't suit him. He would look as badly without his pride as without his lace ruffles."
"Is it his lace ruffles you're in love with, my child?"
"I don't know, mother," and she laughed again. "When should a young girl laugh if not on the eve of her marriage with the man of her choice, when friends and wealth conspire to make the event auspicious?"
"I shall not write to thank Elizabeth for her gift," she said, "for she will be here before a letter can reach her. She leaves Boston to-morrow, that's Tuesday, and she must be here by Friday, perhaps Thursday night, if they start very early."
"I thought Master Royal's letter said Monday?"
"Tuesday," repeated Katie, "if the weather be suitable for his daughter. Look at this letter and you'll see; his world hinges on his daughter's comfort, he is father and mother both to her. Elizabeth needs it, too; she can't take care of herself well. Perhaps she could wake up and do it for somebody else. But I am not sure. She's a dear child, though she seems to me younger than I am. Isn't it funny, mother, for she knows a good deal more, and she's very bright sometimes? But she never makes the best of anything, especially of herself."
It was the day before the wedding. The great old house was full of bustle from its gambrel roof to its very cellar in which wines were decanted to be in readiness, and into which pastries and sweetmeats were carried from the pantry shelves overloaded with preparations for the next day's festivities. Servants ran hither and thither, full of excitement and pleasant anticipations. They all loved Katie who had grown up among them. And, besides, the morrow's pleasures were not to be enjoyed by them wholly by proxy, for if there was to be only wedding enough for one pair, at least the remains of the feast would go round handsomely. Two or three black faces were seen among the English ones, but though they were owned by Mr. Archdale, the disgrace and the badge of servitude had fallen upon them lightly, and the shining of merry eyes and the gleam of white teeth relieved a darkness that nature, and not despair, had made. In New England, masters were always finding reasons why their slaves should be manumitted. How could slavery flourish in a land where the wind of freedom was so strong that it could blow a whole cargo of tea into the ocean?
But there were not only servants going back and forth through the house, for it was full of guests. The Colonel's family living so near, would not come until the morning of the ceremony, but other relatives were there in force. Mrs. Archdale's brother,—a little patronizing but very rich and gracious, and his family who having been well patronized, were disposed to be humble and admiring, and her sister who not having fed on the roses of life, had a good deal of wholesome strength about her, together with a touch of something which, if it were wholesome, was not exactly grateful. Cousins of Mr. Archdale were there also. Elizabeth Royal, at Katie's special request, had been her guest for the last ten days. Her father had gone home again the day he brought her and was unable to return for the wedding and to take his daughter home afterward, as he had intended; but he had sent Mrs. Eveleigh, his cousin and housekeeper. It seemed strange that the father and daughter were so companionable, for superficially they were entirely unlike. Mr. Royal was considered stern and shrewd, and, though a well-read man, eminently practical, more inclined to business than scholarship, while Elizabeth was dreamy, generous, wholly unacquainted with business of any kind, and it seemed too much uninterested in it ever to be acquainted. To most people the affection between them seemed only that of nature and circumstances, Elizabeth being an only child, and her mother having died while she was very young. It is the last analysis of character that discovers the same trait under different forms. None of her friends carried analysis so far, and it was possible that no effort could have discovered subtle likeness then. Perhaps it was still latent and would only hereafter find some outward expression for itself. It sometimes happens that physical likeness comes out only after death, mental not until late in life, and likeness of character in the midst of unlikeness is revealed usually only in the crucible of events.
That day, Elizabeth, from her window overlooking the garden, had seen a picture that she never forgot. It was about noon, all the warmth that was in the December sun filled the garden (which the leafless trees no longer shaded). There was no snow on the ground, for the few stray flakes premonitory of winter which had fallen from time to time in the month had melted almost as soon as they had touched the ground. The air was like an Indian summer's day; it seemed impossible that winter could be round the corner waiting only for a change of wind. The tracery of the boughs of the trees and of all their little twigs against the blue sky was exquisite, the stalks of the dead flowers warmed into a livelier brown in the sunlight. Yet it may have been partly the figures in the foreground that made the whole picture so bright to Elizabeth, for to her the place was filled with the lovers who were walking there and talking, probably saying those nothings, so far as practical matters go, which they may indulge in freely only before the thousand cares of life interfere with their utterances. Stephen had come to the house, and Katie and he were taking what they were sure would prove to be their last opportunity for quiet talk before the wedding. They went slowly down the long path to the clematis arbor, and then turned back again, for it was not warm enough to sit down out of doors. Elizabeth watched them as they walked toward the house, and a warmth came into her own face in her pleasure. "Dear Katie," she said to herself, "she is sure to be so happy." The young girl's hand lay on Archdale's arm, and she was looking up at him with a smile full of joyousness. Archdale's head was bent and the watcher could not see his eyes, but his attitude of devotion, his smile, and Katie's face told the story.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]