"I believe you, Maria; but the pity of it is that you canna advertise that fact."
"I know that. I know that everyone will doubt me or shun me. I shall be made to suffer, of course. Well, I can suffer and smile as well as any woman,—we all have that experience at some time or other."
"Men have it, too. Look at your uncle."
"Men don't smile when they suffer; they don't even try to. Uncle suffers, any one can see that, but he does not dress up in velvet and silk, and laugh, and dance, and talk nonsense merrily over the grave where all his hopes are buried. No, indeed! He looks as if he had lost the world. And he shuts himself in his room and swears at something or somebody; he does not cry like a woman and get a headache, as well as a heartache; he swears at his trouble and at everything connected with it. That is the way with men, grandmother, you know it is. I have heard both my grandfather and my uncle comforting themselves after this fashion. Grandfather, I thought, even seemed to enjoy it."
Madame smiled and then admitted "men had their ain ways, and so couldna be judged by woman's ways." Moreover, she told Maria in regard to Agnes that a friendship which had begun to decay was best cut off at once. And Maria, in spite of certain regrets, felt this to be a truth. Things were not the same between Agnes and herself; it was, then, more comfortable that they should not be at all.
Only, as day after day went by and no one took the place of Agnes or showed the slightest desire to do so, her life became very monotonous. This was specially remarkable, because New York was at a feverish point of excitement. General Clinton was hurrying his preparations for the reduction of the South. Any hour the troops might get marching orders, and every entertainment had the gaiety and the melancholy of a farewell feast. All day long troops were moving hither and thither, and orderlies galloping in every direction. There was a constant rumble of army wagons in motion; trumpets were calling men together, drums beating them to their stations; and through all the blare and movement of a great military town in motion there was the tinkling of sleigh-bells and the glancing of splendidly caparisoned sleighs, full of women brilliantly dressed.
Now, although the Semple house was beyond the actual throng and tumult of these things, Maria heard the confused murmur of their activity; and Neil told her bare facts, which she easily clothed with all the accessories of their existence and movement. But although there were dinner parties and sleighing parties, nightly dances, and the promise of a fine theatrical season, with the officers of the army as actors, no one remembered her. She was shocked when she realized that she had been cut off from all social recognition. Setting aside the fact that Harry Bradley was a rebel, she had done nothing to deserve such ostracism; but, though conscious of her innocence, she did not find this inner approval as satisfying a compensation for outward respect and pleasant company as it is supposed to be.
As the days went on, she began to wonder at Lord Medway's absence. At least, if she was to be his wife he ought to show her some care and attention. She remembered that in their last important interview she had told him not to trouble her; but he ought to have understood that a woman's words, in such trying circumstances, meant much less or much more than their face value.
Household anxieties of all kinds were added to these personal ones. Madame Semple was sick and full of domestic cares. Never had there been known in New York such bitter frost, such paralyzing cold. Snow lay four to six feet deep; loaded teams or galloping cavalry crossed the river safely on its solid ice. Neil had made arrangements for wood in the summer months, but only part of it had been delivered; the rest, though felled, could not be extricated from the frozen snowdrifts. The sale of the Mill Street property had left them a margin of ready money, but provisions had risen to fabulous prices and were not always procurable at any price. New York was experiencing, this cruel winter, all the calamities of a great city beleaguered both by its enemies and the elements.
Yet the incessant social gaiety never ceased. Thousands were preparing for the battlefield; thousands were dying in a virulent smallpox epidemic; thousands were half-frozen and half-fed; the prisons were crowded hells of unspeakable agonies; yet the officers in command of the city, and the citizens in office, the rich, the young and the beautiful, made themselves merry in the midst of all this death and famine, and found very good recreation in driving their jingling sleighs over the solid waters of the river and the bay.