Some faint reflection of the rumor which was flying about Washington concerning Baskerville’s devotion had reached Anne Clavering’s ears. It gave a delightful shyness to her eyes, a warm color to her usually pale cheeks. Something in Baskerville’s manner—the ingenuity with which he managed to perform every little service for her himself, conveyed subtly but plainly to Anne his interest in her. She had been deeply flattered and even made happy by Baskerville’s calling at last at her house. There was every reason why he should remain away—so much Anne had admitted to herself often, and always with a burning blush, remembering what she knew and had read about the investigation through which her father was passing. But Baskerville had come, and there must have been a powerful force, much stronger than her mother’s timid invitation, to bring him. Perhaps he came because he could not stay away.
At this thought Anne, who was sitting at her dressing-table after the dinner at the Thorndykes’, caught sight of her own face in the mirror. A happy smile hovered about the corners of her mouth, her eyes became eloquent. Women, being close students of their own emotions, can always detect the dawning and the development of this silent but intense interest in a certain man, an interest which is born, grows, and often dies for want of nourishment, but sometimes lives and thrives on neglect—and sometimes,—O glorious consummation!—comes into its kingdom of love. Anne Clavering, who had passed her twenty-seventh birthday, and who, shamed and indignant at the conduct of her sisters, had maintained a haughty reserve toward men and had hitherto found it easy, knew that it was not without meaning she felt herself watching for Baskerville’s entrance into a room; that she was secretly uneasy until he had placed himself beside her; that when he talked, an instant, sweet, and positive mental sympathy came into being between them which seemed to bring them together without any volition on their part.
January was flying by. Anne Clavering went out quite as much as Mrs. Luttrell, but with a different motive. To Mrs. Luttrell society was a necessity, as a thing becomes after a lifetime of habitude. Anne Clavering would have liked society well enough if it had been merely a means of pleasure. But she had to maintain before the world a position which her father and her two sisters jeopardized every hour. The place of the Claverings in society was by no means a fixed one. All the idle and careless people, all the worshippers of money, all those who love to eat and drink at somebody else’s expense, all those who pursue pleasure without conscience or delicacy, thronged the Clavering house.
Clavering himself was seldom invited out, and did not regret it. The small talk of society bored him, and he was conscious that he did not shine unless he had the centre of the stage. Occasionally he met a man who interested him, and semi-occasionally a woman who did the same. But no woman had ever interested him as much as Elizabeth Darrell. He was amazed, himself, at the power she had of drawing him to her; for, under the specious pretence of getting information from General Brandon concerning the K. F. R. land grants, Clavering soon managed to spend two or three evenings a week in Elizabeth’s company. He speedily found out General Brandon’s ways—his hour or two at the club in the evening, his visits to his old friends, all of which were clock-like in their regularity. On these evenings, when General Brandon returned to meet an appointment, Clavering would invariably be found established in the study. Any other man in the world but General Brandon would have had his suspicions aroused, but the General was born to be hoodwinked. His chivalric honor, his limpidness of character, his entire innocence, were strong forces, as all these things are. He radiated good influences upon honest men, and gave active encouragement to every rogue of every sort who had dealings with him.
Elizabeth Darrell, however, was not so simple as her father. After that first evening she saw that Clavering was determined to secure her society. She wondered at herself for submitting to it, but in truth it would have been more remarkable if she had not done so. The extreme dulness of her life made almost any companionship a resource, and Clavering had certain fascinating qualities which were very obvious. Without making himself the hero of his own recitals, he gave the most vivid and interesting pictures of life on the wide Wyoming ranges, on the Staked Plains, in California mining camps, amid the boulders of the Yellowstone. Elizabeth listened under a kind of bewitchment, while Clavering, in his rich voice, told the story of those years—a story pulsing with movement, brilliant with adventure, with life and death at issue every moment. She began to understand this man’s power over men, and to recognize a kind of compulsion he exercised over her. She might have remained out of the study, where, with a map spread out, to amuse General Brandon, Clavering talked to him and at Elizabeth. She was present not only because she wished to be, but she recognized distinctly that she also came because Clavering wished her to come. Especially was this true with regard to those odd half-hours which she spent with Clavering alone.
Once she went out of the room when Serena brought Clavering’s card up. In a minute or two Serena came with a message: “De gent’mun seh he mus’ see you, Miss ’Liz’beth, ’bout some dem papers outen de Gin’l’s trunk.” And Elizabeth, obeying this strange compulsion, went back into the room, and saw Clavering’s eyes light up with lambent fire at sight of her.
That he was deeply and even desperately in love with her from the start there could be no question to any woman, and least of all to a woman as clever as Elizabeth Darrell. She received a profound shock when this was quickly revealed to her, not by any explicit word of Clavering’s, but by all his words, his looks, his course of conduct. He knew too much to venture to make open love to Elizabeth, and in other ways she made him keep his distance in a manner which Clavering had never experienced in his life before. He would no more have dared the smallest personal liberty with Elizabeth Darrell than he would have ventured to put a stick of dynamite into the fire. He had never really been afraid of a woman before, and this of itself added a powerful interest to Elizabeth. He realized fully the difficulties which beset him when he thought of his chances of making Elizabeth his wife. He could manage a divorce from his present wife in a way not known by the poor soul herself, or by Anne, or by any one else in the world except Clavering. That once accomplished, though, Elizabeth remained still to be won. She probably inherited the Southern prejudice against divorce, and it might not be easy to overcome it. And there was General Brandon to be considered. Clavering, studying that honest, simple, handsome face across the table from him, bent earnestly over the ridiculous maps and useless memoranda, remembered that the General still cherished an ancient pair of duelling pistols, which he had inherited from his grandfather. He had taken these antique shooting-irons out of the old escritoire in the corner and had shown them, not without pride and reverence, to Clavering, saying solemnly:—
“These weapons, my dear sir, have never been used since my grandfather purchased them in 1804, when he unfortunately became involved in a dispute concerning politics with a gentleman of the highest character in Virginia. They had a hostile meeting and shots were exchanged, but no blood was spilled. I am exceedingly glad that the old practice of duelling over trifles is gone, never to return. But there is one class of cases left in which a gentleman has but one resource—the duello. That is, when the honor of the ladies of his family is impugned. In most instances the transgressor should be shot down like a dog. But there are other cases when, owing to imprudence on the lady’s part, the code must be invoked. Thank God, the honor of Southern women is safe in their own keeping. But behind her, every woman, sir, of every country, should have the protection of a man with arms in his hands, if need be. I am aware that my ideas are antiquated; but I have always held them and I always shall.”
Clavering listened to this without a word or smile. Nothing would be more likely, if he should betray his design toward Elizabeth, than that he should find himself looking down the barrel of one of those queer old pistols in the hands of this soft-voiced, gullible, guileless old Don Quixote. These, however, were but obstacles; and obstacles, in Clavering’s lexicon, were things to be overcome.
In the narrowness and dulness of her life, Elizabeth naturally thought much of Clavering. If she had been asked at any moment whether she would marry him, should he get a divorce, she would instantly and with horror have answered “no.” But she had seen enough of the great, self-indulgent world to know that divorce and remarriage are by no means the impossible and unheard-of things which simple people in staid communities think they are. She began to speculate idly, in her lonely afternoon walks and in the evenings when Clavering did not come, as to what would happen if she should marry Clavering. Whenever she caught herself at this she would recoil from the idea in horror. But it returned. Pelham’s conduct had shattered all her ideals of man’s love. If he could act as he had done, where was the difference between the love of the best and the worst of men?