Sitting by the open window and looking out over the bustling street Major Abbot later in the evening is trying to collect his senses and convince himself that he really is himself. "It never rains but it pours," and events have been pouring upon him with confusing rapidity. Early in the summer he had noted an odd constraint in the tone of the few letters that came from Miss Winthrop. That they were few and far between was not in itself a matter to give him much discomfort. From boyhood he had been accustomed to the household cry that at some time in the future—the distant future—Viva Winthrop was to be his wife. He had known her quite as long as he had been conscious of his own existence, and the relations between the families were such as to render the alliance desirable. Excellent friends were the young people as they grew to years of discretion, and, in the eyes of parents and intimate acquaintances, no formal betrothal was ever necessary, simply because "it was such an understood thing." For more than a year previous to the outbreak of the war, however, Miss Winthrop was in Europe, and much of the time, it was said, she had been studying. So had Mr. Hollins, who withdrew from Harvard in his second year and read law assiduously in the office of Winthrop & Lawrence, and then went abroad for his health. They returned on the Cunarder in the early part of April, and Mrs. Winthrop was ill from the time she set foot on the saloon deck until they sighted the State House looming through the fog, and nothing could have been more fortunate than that Mr. Hollins was with them—he was so attentive, so very thoughtful. When he wasn't doing something for her he was promenading with Viva on deck or bundling that young lady in warm wraps and hedging her in a sunny corner. Pity that Mr. Hollins was so poor and rather obscure in his family—his immediate family—connections. His mother was Mr. Winthrop's first cousin, and she had been very fond of Mr. Winthrop when she was a child, and he had befriended her son when a friend was needed. She died years ago, and no one knew just when her husband followed her. He was a person no one ever met, said Mrs. Winthrop, a man who had a singular career, was an erratic genius, and very dissipated. But he was a very fascinating person, she understood, in his younger days, and his son was most talented and deserving, but entirely out of the question as an intimate or associate. Viva would not be apt to see anything of him after their return; but the question never seemed to occur to her, how much had the daughter been influenced by their frequent companionship abroad? It really mattered nothing. Viva was to marry Revere Abbot, as Mrs. Winthrop preferred to call him, and such was distinctly the family understanding. Miss Winthrop had been home but a few weeks when all the North was thrilled by the stirring call for volunteers, and the old Bay State responded, as was to be expected of her. In the —th Massachusetts were a score of officers, as has been said, whose names were as old as the colony and whose family connections made them thoroughly well known to each other at the earliest organization of the command. That Paul Abbot should be among the first to seek a commission as a junior lieutenant was naturally expected. Then with all possible hesitancy and delicacy, after a feminine council in the family, his mother asked him if he did not think there ought to be some distinct understanding about Viva Winthrop before he went away to the front. The matter was something that he had thought of before she went to Europe, but believed then that it could wait, Now that she had returned, improved both physically and intellectually, Mr. Abbot had once or twice thought that it would not be long before he would be asked some such question as his mother now propounded, but again decided that it was a matter that could be deferred. They had met with much hearty cordiality, and called each other Paul and Viva, as they had from babyhood, and then she had a round of social duties and he became absorbed in drills, day and night, and they saw very little of each other—much less than was entirely satisfactory to the parental councils, and these were frequent. While the masters of the households of Abbot and Winthrop seldom interchanged a word on the subject, they had their personal views none the less; and, as to the mothers, their hearts had long been set upon the match. Miss Winthrop had abundant wealth in her own right. Paul Abbot's blood was blue as the doctrines of the Puritans. Without being a beauty in face or form, Miss Winthrop was unquestionably distinguished-looking, and her reputation for a certain acerbity of temper and the faculty of saying cutting things did not materially lower her value in the matrimonial market. There was, however, that constantly recurring statement, "Oh, she's engaged to Paul Abbot," and that, presumably, accounted for the lack of those attentions in society which are so intangible when assailed, and yet leave such a void when omitted. Mrs. Abbot put it very plainly to Paul when she said:
"Everybody considers her as virtually engaged to you and expects you to look after her. That is why I say it is due to her that you should arrive at some understanding before your orders come."
Paul had come up from camp that day—a Saturday afternoon—and he stood there in the old family gathering room, a very handsome young soldier. He had listened in silence and respect while his mother spoke, but without much sign of responsive feeling. When she had finished he looked her full in the face and quietly said:
"And is there any other reason, mother?"
Mrs. Abbot flushed. There was another reason, and one that after much mental dodging both she and Mrs. Winthrop had been compelled to admit to each other within a very few days. Mr. Hollins was constantly finding means to come over to the city and see Miss Winthrop, and the ladies could not grapple with the intricacies of a military problem which permitted one officer to be in town three or four days a week and kept the others incessantly drilling at camp. Mrs. Abbot, motherlike, had more than once suggested to her son that he ought to be able to visit town more frequently, and on his replying that it was simply impossible, and that none of the officers could leave their duties, had triumphantly pointed to Mr. Hollins.
"But he is quartermaster," said Paul, "and has to come on business."
"He manages to combine a good deal of pleasure with his business," was the tentative response, and Abbot knew that he was expected to ask the nature of Mr. Hollins's pleasures. He was silent, however, much to his mother's disappointment, for he had heard from other sources of the frequency with which Mr. Hollins and Miss Winthrop were seen together. Finding that he would not ask, Mrs. Abbot was compelled to suppress the inclination she felt to have her suspicions dragged to light. She wished he had more curiosity, or jealousy, or something; but in its absence she could only say,
"Well, I wish you were quartermaster, that's all."
And now that he had asked her if there were no other reason, there was something in his placid tone she did not like. A month agone she wanted him to know of Mr. Hollins's evident attentions to Genevieve because it would probably, or possibly, spur him into some exertion on his own account. Now that she felt sure he had heard of it, and it had not spurred him, she was as anxious to conceal the fact that, both to Mrs. Winthrop and herself, these attentions were becoming alarming. If he did not care for Viva, the chances were that so soon as he found that public attention had been drawn to her acceptance of such devotions, Paul would drop the matter entirely, and that would be a calamity. Knowing perfectly well, therefore, what was in his mind when he asked the question, Mrs. Abbot parried the thrust. Though she flushed, and her voice quivered a little, she looked him straight in the face.
"There is, Paul. I—think she has a right to expect it of you; that—that she does expect it."