The Merivale banks

by Mary Jane Holmes

Fred was there, and Blanche Percy was with him. She had signified a wish to see Louie again, and Fred had asked her to accompany him. But for his knowledge of the engagement he would have preferred going alone, but now it didn’t matter; nothing mattered much, and he wondered why he felt so dull and depressed, scarcely hearing what Blanche was saying to him as they drove to the Grey’s, where they found Louie just as he had found her the previous day, sitting alone on the piazza.

She had not been as happy that day as newly engaged girls are wont to be. The secret weighed upon her, and she wondered how she could keep it four years, and why she must keep it at all. She would do a good deal to save Herbert from unpleasant relations with his father, but wouldn’t they be just as unpleasant at the last, when the truth was known? Would four years lessen them at all? She doubted it, and was sorry she had given the promise.

Then, in spite of all she could do to prevent it, thoughts of Fred Lansing would obtrude themselves into her mind, with a feeling that he would never have required so hard a thing of her if a hundred fathers had stood in the way. He had said he should call that afternoon, and it was partly in anticipation of his call that she had taken a seat upon the piazza, just where she had met him the day before. There was nothing of the coquette about Louie. She had promised to be Herbert’s wife and would be true to him as steel; but just what her feeling was with regard to Fred Lansing, she did not know. Comparatively he was a stranger, and yet he did not seem so. He had been so kind and thoughtful, and was so wholly a gentleman in every act, and his voice had been so pleasant and winsome when he spoke to her, and his eyes had looked so kindly at her that her pulse throbbed with a delicious kind of exultation whenever she thought of him, and she was glad he was to be her cousin. The possibility that he might have been anything nearer to her did not enter her mind. He was far above her and above Herbert, who was more on her plane and suited her better. Then she wondered why Herbert had not been to see her, and was feeling a little piqued at his neglect, when the White carriage drew up and Miss Percy and Fred alighted.

It was scarcely possible that there should not be an air of consciousness in Louie’s manner as she went forward to meet the people with whom she expected to be allied. Fred saw it, and felt a little pang he could not define as he looked at her bright face, suffused with a flush of joy, as she greeted them. Herbert had asked if he were in love with her, and he had not answered except to say, that it was absurd, but the bit of linen hidden so carefully in his valise, for the sake of a little girl in a bib apron and white sun-bonnet, seemed to tell a different story and to prove that love is not always of slow growth. Herbert’s announcement of his engagement had taken him by surprise, and the secrecy attending it offended his sense of openness and honor. Then he knew Herbert pretty well, and had detected in him a drawing away from Louie’s father and mother, as if they were inferior to the White’s. Had he been in Herbert’s place he would not have cared who Louie’s parents were, or what they were. Louie was just as sweet as if she had never lived in White’s Row, or hemmed the napkin he had purloined.

“I shouldn’t wonder if I were more than half in love,” he thought, but there was nothing in his manner to show his real feelings, as he offered her his hand and said laughingly that she did not look at all as if she had danced all night till broad daylight.

“Oh, I didn’t,” Louie answered in the same strain. “You forget that I sat through one dance, and then sang that ridiculous bird-song twice, which nearly split my throat. It aches now.”

“And it is about that throat I have come to talk,” Miss Percy said, entering at once upon the principal object of her call. “You have the most wonderful voice I ever heard in one so young. You must cultivate it. You ought to go abroad—to Marchesi, in Paris. Don’t you believe your father would let you go with me in the autumn? I have a great desire to see what can be made of your voice.”

Louie’s eyes were like stars as she thought of Paris, but a shadow fell on her face when she remembered Herbert, who at that moment came bowling up the street on his wheel, looking flushed and not altogether pleased when he saw who Louie’s visitors were. He knew Fred was watching him, and felt annoyed at the seeming indifference with which Louie received him. She merely bowed to him and gave him her hand, and then kept talking to Miss Percy as if he were not there. She was only carrying out his instructions, he knew, but he would have liked more warmth in her manner, and was not at all pleased when Miss Percy began to speak again of Paris and Marchesi, and taking Louie abroad.

“Not with a view to the stage?” he said, and he laid his hand heavily on Louie’s shoulder, as if to protect her from a threatened danger.

Miss Percy looked curiously at him, wondering why he should be so excited, or why he should care whether Louie sang on the stage or not. Neither could she define her own interest in a young girl she had known so short a time. She was passionately fond of music, and Louie’s voice had impressed her greatly. She was also rather fond of attending to other people’s business and having her own way about it. When once her mind was made up, she held on with a firm grip, and usually carried her point. With nothing in particular to do and plenty of money to spend, she would like to have a girl like Louie under her wing; it would help to divert her mind from a horror which was ever present with her when she was unoccupied, and she talked on of Paris and Marchesi and Europe generally as if it were settled that Louie was to go abroad with her in the autumn.