The portraits on the walls looked down upon us with a dumb intelligence, almost a warning sternness; the rain tried to weary us out; the old clock struck the passing hours distinctly; the sound of voices in the library, after a long while, died away, and then the party passed through the hall and into the parlor, and Josephine's voice, at the piano succeeded, and then a dance, but still we did not move. What was the spell that kept me there, I could not have told. Whatever it was, it was tightening the toils around me, and shutting me off more hopelessly than ever from all paths but the one I had almost involuntarily taken.
It appeared at dinner, that the theatricals were given up, owing, principally, I could not but suspect, to the want of harmony that has characterized all the attempts at private theatricals that I have ever witnessed, no one, under any circumstances, having been known to be pleased with the rôle assigned to him or her, and all manner of discontent prevailing on all sides. But Mr. Rutledge, with great discretion, put it upon other grounds—the short time that intervened for preparing them, etc. It was agreed that patriotism and propriety both pointed to the Fourth of July as the appropriate day, and a bal masqué was determined on instead of the theatricals. It was to be the most delightful affair. Mr. Rutledge had promised to ask everybody, to send to town for dresses, and to have the house so beautifully decorated.
"Ah!" said Josephine with a ravishing smile, "Mr. Rutledge is the best, the kindest of men."
Mr. Rutledge, starting from a fit of abstraction at that moment, certainly did not convey the idea of any very excessive kindness or goodness. The sternest frown contracted his brow, and in the cold rigidity of his face, one would never have looked for anything gentle or tender, and the expression that succeeded it under the influence of Josephine's smile, was bitter and cynical, even to the most indifferent observer.
Rain-storms in June have a way of abating their violence toward evening, and breaking away enough to let the declining sun look for half an hour over the wet and shining earth, and make of the desolate place the freshest and most beautiful of Edens, cheering the silenced birds into song, and the wet flowers into perfume, and the breaking clouds into yellow lustre. A whole fair sunshiny day is nothing to it. The sudden brilliancy and freshness are worth all the gloom that have made them so dazzling. There was not a tree in the park that afternoon, not a flower on the lawn, that did not shine and sparkle with a brightness it had never worn before. There was a fine coolness too, in the fresh wind, soft and June-like as it was.
"Is it too late for a ride?" asked Josephine, stepping out on the piazza where we were all sitting. "A ride on horseback would be delightful, would it not?"
"Delightful!" echoed Ella Wynkar.
"It would be a capital thing," said Phil, rising. "I wonder how it is about saddle-horses—are there any fit for ladies in the stable, do you know?"
"There are only two that would do for us ladies, Mr. Rutledge said," answered Josephine, "but several that you gentlemen could ride, and I think it would be the nicest thing in the world to have a brisk canter this fine afternoon. What do you say, Captain McGuffy?"
"By all means," responded the captain. "I wonder where Mr. Rutledge is."