A voyage of discovery

by Hamilton Aïdé

Strange to say, now that the discussion had entered upon personal grounds, the young lady had comparatively regained her composure. Still, it was not without an effort that she said,

"Mr. Lawrence and I are very good friends, and I hope we shall always remain so. We never have been, and, of course, never shall be, anything more. I see no reason why I should not write and assure him that there is one person who believes in him if all the verdicts in the world went against him; if the whole of London cut him dead, it would make no difference to me. I know him to be a perfectly honorable, truthful, noble character. He is peculiar; there are some very rugged knots in him which you and Aunt Su, particularly Aunt Su, could never understand. And you don't understand him now. You think, supposing that he cared for me, which of course he never did, that he should have proposed when he found himself with ten thousand pounds a year. That is the last thing he would do with this accusation, this cloud over his head. He might have done so as a poor barrister, but never as one whose good name was tainted. I don't say he is right in avoiding us as he has done; I think, on the contrary, he is quite wrong. But I should not be afraid of his misunderstanding me if I wrote to him. I think he would do justice to my motives, and thank me."

"All the same, Grace, I do hope to goodness you won't. Men of the world are not used to such high-flown sentiments. And it's so very like throwing yourself at the head of a cad, who—"

"None of that, Mordy, please, or I must ask you to leave the room." She spoke now with more excitement. "We have gone through all the string of opprobrious epithets at your command before, you know. They produce no effect on me—yes, they do. They make me feel very irritable with you. So, like a dear, drop it, please, and if you mention Mr. Lawrence—I have no objection whatever to your mentioning him—do so respectfully, as my friend."

He felt there was nothing more to be said. He had expended all his ammunition—retreat alone remained for him. But when the door was closed behind her brother, the girl's fortitude and pride broke down. She laid her head between her hands, and the hot tears of wounded love and disappointment coursed down her cheeks and fell on the note-paper upon which her pen had traced a confusion of curves and circles. Why had he not spoken to her when he was a struggling barrister? Was it because of her aunt, her brother? Was it by reason of false pride? That he had pride, of an unreasoning, indomitable kind, allied to the obstinacy which was so marked a feature of his character, she knew well. But this should not have been enough to have kept him silent if he cared for her. And unless she was utterly blinded by vanity, by a fatuous misapprehension of looks she had now and again found fastened upon her, of casual words and actions escaping from a reticent man, he had cared for her at that time. She would sooner have died than admit to her brother that she believed this. To him, as to her aunt, while hotly defending Ivor Lawrence, whenever a discussion concerning him arose, she always declared that, as "there had been nothing between them," her only feeling as to his now holding aloof from them was grief at the alienation of the most trusted friend she had ever had. Of course, Mrs. Frampton was much too acute to be deceived by these protestations. When the accusations against Lawrence were made public, Grace's health and spirits were so visibly affected for a time that those who loved her most could not but see how strong a hold this man had taken on her heart. Nearly eight months had passed since then, and to all outward seeming she had recovered her buoyant tone, her healthy interest and capacity of deriving pleasure from things around her. Only at rare moments, and when alone, as now, did the flood-gates of a grief, the well-springs of which lay so far below the surface, rise up and overflow.

Nevertheless, after a while her brave spirit rose. She must not succumb to her trouble. For the sake of others she must put it away from her. She rose and bathed her eyes. She had an engagement to a "ladies' luncheon" party, convened at the house of an agreeable woman, almost a stranger to Grace, who, after securing her, had invited seventeen others "to meet Miss Ballinger." The luncheon was exquisite and well-served; the conversation general and very pleasant.

"I had no idea it could have been so pleasant," she said, afterwards. "I really think eighteen Englishwomen would have been very dull, all the waves floundering together without a male rock to dash themselves against. But these waves had so much salt in them! I felt myself quite invigorated by plunging among them."

The truth was these waves were rather stronger than those which played, as a rule, upon the fine shores of fashionable New York life. The women here met were almost all interested and active in better things than gossip, parties, dress. Their fields and their aims were diverse; some of them were young and active, some past middle age, but with keen intelligence undimmed, sympathies warm as in girlhood, and a playful humor—a humor altogether national, conveyed sometimes in a word, the turn of a phrase, lighting with the illusive flame of a will-o'-the-wisp swamps into which an interchange of talk so often flounders. They were not pretentious, though many of them did adventure upon subjects that demand more time, thought, and preparation than most Englishwomen conceive it fitting to give to any study. One girl had been through a course of anatomy; not, as it appeared, with any ulterior object, but in order to master the wonderful mechanism of the human frame, "which," as she said, with a hard directness which sounded odd in one so young, "being a fact always present, should interest us more than it does. We can learn, and we ought to know all about it; for this is a thing which affects our whole being here, our present and our future; whereas the soul, which people trouble themselves so much about, is only a matter of speculation. It seems a pity to waste time on a subject we know so little of."

Grace was too wise to enter into a discussion with the youthful philosopher. This was a phase which would probably pass away in a few years, when, if the girl fell under right influence, she might learn that there were higher truths than those which can be tangibly felt. In the meantime, the uncompromising antagonism to all conventional acceptances and polite euphemisms, the resolve to seize the truth to her hand and probe it thoroughly, interested Grace. This was a type of American character she had not yet met.

But among the middle-aged women was one whose studies and experience were far more curious. She had large means, which she had partly expended among the fast-diminishing tribe of Zuni Indians in Arizona, whose language she had rescued from oblivion by means of the phonograph. The music of their hymns and chants and invocations for rain had also thus been noted down, and several unique objects—notably a jewelled toad, supposed to be a god—secured by her excavations. The ruined city, made of adobe, in which this tribe dwelt, had been saved from total destruction through this lady's exertions, who induced the government to aid her in protecting them from the attacks of other and more powerful tribes. So interested had she become in this people, that she had bidden some of their high-priests to journey to the East, and visit her—which they did. She described most graphically their dignity, their admirable breeding, the eloquence of their gestures, expressing their meaning so clearly as scarcely to need the interpreter's verbal translation of their speech. They went thrice a day down to the sea-shore—the house stood on a cliff—to make their prayers and libations. "You are not as religious as we are," they said, "but we suppose you are as religious as you have time to be."