In the week that followed, there were almost daily visits between the ladies of the Royal and Camp Street households. Vinton had sufficiently improved to be able to drive out every day and to take very short walks, accompanied by his radiant fiancée. Much mysterious shopping was going on, Mrs. Amory and Kitty being occupied for some hours each bright morning in accompanying Miss Summers on her Canal Street researches. Mars had returned to duty with his troop, and almost every evening could be seen riding down to Royal Street to report to his captain how matters were progressing. I was struck by the regularity and precision with which those reports seemed to be necessary, and the absolute brevity of their rendition. Having nothing better to do, as I fancied, I was frequently there at Royal Street when Mars would come trotting down the block pavement. Each evening seemed to add to the spring and activity with which he would vault from the saddle; toss the reins to his attendant orderly, and come leaping up the steps to the second floor. "All serene" was the customary extent of his report to Vinton, who was almost invariably playing backgammon with Miss Summers at that hour; while the judge, Harrod, and I would be discussing the affairs of the day in a distant corner. This left Kitty the only unoccupied creature in the room, unless the listless interest bestowed upon the book she held in her lap could be termed occupation. What more natural, therefore, than that Mr. Amory should turn to her for conversation and entertainment on his arrival? And then Kitty had improved so in health and spirits of late. She was so blithe and gay; humming little snatches of song; dancing about the old house like a sprite; striving very hard to settle down and be demure when I came to see the judge; and never entirely succeeding until Amory appeared, when she was the personification of maidenly reserve and propriety. Occasionally Mars would escort his mother down, and then there would be a joyous gathering, for we had all learned to love her by this time; and as for Vinton—Miss Summers once impetuously declared that she was with good reason becoming jealous. When she came, Kitty would quit her customary post on the sofa; take a low chair, and actually hang about Mrs. Amory's knees; and all Mars' chances for a tête-à-tête were gone. Nevertheless, he was losing much of the old shyness, and apparently learning to lose himself in her society, and to be profoundly discontented when she was away; and one lovely evening a funny thing happened. There was to be a procession of some kind on Canal Street,—no city in the world can compete with New Orleans in the number and variety of its processions,—and as the bands were playing brilliantly over towards the St. Charles, Vinton proposed that we should stroll thither and hear the music. The judge offered his arm with his old-fashioned, courtly grace to Mrs. Amory; Vinton, of course, claimed Pauline; Harrod and I fell back together; and Amory and Kitty paired off both by force of circumstances and his own evident inclination. Once on the banquette, Amory showed a disposition to linger behind and take the rear with his sweet companion, but Miss Kit would none of it. With feminine inconsistency and coquettishness she fairly took the lead, and so it resulted that she and Amory headed instead of followed the party. Plainly Mars was a little miffed; but he bore up gallantly, and had a most unexpected and delightful revenge.
At the very first crossing, something of a crowd had gathered about the cigar store, and so it resulted for a moment that our party was brought to a stand, all in a bunch, right by the old Dago's orange counter to which Harrod had made disdainful allusion in connection with Kitty's mysterious mission of the previous week; and now, close beside the counter, there was seated a chatty old negress with a great basket before her heaped with violets: some in tiny knots, others in loose fragrant pyramids. The instant she caught sight of Kitty her face beamed with delight. She eagerly held forward her basket; Kitty struggled as though to push ahead through the throng on the narrow pavement, but all to no purpose. She could not move an inch; and there, imprisoned, the little beauty, bewildered with confusion and dismay, was forced to hear what we all heard, the half-laughing, half-reproachful appeal of the darky flower-vender.
"Ah, lady! you doan' come to me no mo' for vi'lets now de captain's up agin." And there was no help for it; one and all we burst into a peal of merry laughter; even poor Kitty, though she stamped her foot with vexation and turned away in vehement wrath. And oh! how proud, wild with delight Frank Amory looked as he bent over her and strove to make some diversion in her favor by boring a way through the crowd and hurrying her along! We could see him all the rest of the evening striving hard to make her forget that which he never could. But Kitty had only one feminine method of revenging herself, and that was on him. Womanlike, she was cold and distant to him all the evening; left him at every possible opportunity to lavish attentions on anybody else,—even me; and after all Mars went home that night looking far from happy.
No sooner was he out of the house than Harrod turned to me with an expression of inspired idiocy on his face and said, "What was it you were all laughing at up there at the corner,—something about violets and captains?"
Whereat Kitty flounced indignantly out of the room, and we saw her no more that night.
But all this time not another word had I heard from Bella Grayson. In fact, not a word had I written to her. She had parried the verbal thrusts in my letter with such consummate ease and skill that it occurred to me I was no match for her in that sort of diplomacy. Now the question that was agitating my mind was, how was Mars to get out of that entanglement if it really existed? My efforts in his behalf did not seem to be rewarded with the brilliant and immediate success that such depth of tact had deserved; and, my intervention being of no avail, what could he expect?
Fancy the surprise, therefore, with which I received on the following day a visit from Mars himself. It was late in the afternoon; I was alone in the office and hard at work finishing some long neglected business, when the door opened and my young cavalryman appeared.
He shook my hand cordially; said that he had come to see me on personal business; and asked if I could give him half an hour. I gladly said yes, and, noting his heightened color and his evident embarrassment, bade him pull up a chair and talk to me as he would to an old chum. I can best give his story in nearly his own words.
"Mother says I owe it to you, Mr. Brandon, to tell you what has been on my mind so long. You have been very kind and very indulgent, and I wish I had told you my trouble long ago. I'll make it short as I can." And with many a painful blush—but with manful purpose and earnestness—Mars pushed ahead.
"I met Miss Grayson, your niece, during my first class summer at West Point, and got to admire her, as everybody else did. I got to more than admire her. She absolutely fascinated me. I don't mean that she tried to in the least,—she just couldn't help it. Before camp was half over I was just beside myself about her; couldn't be content if I didn't see her every day; take her to the hops, and devote myself generally. Every man in the class thought I was dead in love with her. Mr. Brandon, I—I did myself. I never ceased to think so—until last—until after that Ku-Klux fight at Sandbrook. I made her think so. She really tried to talk me out of it at first,—she did indeed. She said that it was simply a fancy that I would soon outgrow; and she never for once could be induced to say that she cared anything for me. She was always lovely and ladylike, always perfect, it seemed to me. She even went so far as to remind me that she was as old as I was, and far older in the ways of the world, and cadets especially. She never encouraged me one bit, and I just went on getting more and more in love with her all that year; used to write to her three or four times a week; dozens of letters that she only occasionally answered. Then she came up in June, and I was incessantly at her side. She might not care for me, but she did not seem to care for anybody else, and so it went on. She would not take my class ring when I begged her to that summer. She wore it a few days, but made me take it back the day we graduates went away; but I went back that summer to see her twice, and when I came away I swore that after I'd been in service a year I would return to New York to offer myself again; and we used to write to each other that winter, only her letters were not like mine. They were nice and friendly and all that,—still, I knew she had my promise. I thought she would expect me to come back. I felt engaged so far as I was concerned; then when I got wounded her letters grew far more interested, you know (Mr. Brandon nodded appreciatively); and then they began to come often; and, whether it was that she thought our life was very hazardous, or that the climate was going to be a bad thing for me, or that I would not recover rapidly there, her letters began to urge me to come North. I got two at Sandbrook—one the very day you were there at the tent—and two since we came here; and then—then I found only too surely that it was not love I felt for her; indeed, that I had grown to love—you know well enough (almost defiantly)—Miss Carrington. I felt in honor bound to carry out my promise to Miss Grayson, and to avoid—to—well, to be true to my promise in every way. But I was utterly miserable. Mother detected it in my letters, and at last I broke down and told her the truth. She said there was only one honorable course for me to pursue, and that was to write to Miss Grayson and tell her the same, tell her the whole truth; and it was an awful wrench, but I did it that day you were at the house. It came hard too, for only the day before a letter came from her full of all sorts of queer things. A little bird had whispered that, like all the rest, I had found my cadet attachment something to be forgotten with the gray coat and bell buttons. She had heard this, that, and the other thing; she would not reproach. It was only what she had predicted all along, etc., and it cut me up like blazes; but mother smiled quietly when I told her, said that I must expect to be handled without gloves, and warned me that I must look for very just comments on my conduct; and then somehow I decided that you had written to her about me. You said nothing to make me think so, and altogether I was in an awful stew until this morning."