Josephine's song was gay and brilliant, her voice was rich and full, but they failed to drive the dreary echo of Victor's last words out of my mind, that deepened and strengthened as the night advanced: "You shall be freed! Be sure you shall be freed!" The lights shone clear and soft on the gay groups that peopled the rooms around me; but instead of them, I seemed to see, far nearer and more distinct, the deserted chamber at Rutledge, where the guilt of the Past and the crime of the Present, kept awful watch together.
[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
"My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it;
Stands and lies by me, does what I have done,
This too familiar care does make me rue it."
QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Late breakfast, long lingering at the table, delay in ordering the horses, lengthened adieux, all combined to retard our starting for home on the following morning. I had stood ready on the piazza, waiting for the others to come out, for fifteen minutes; every new delay increased unbearingly my nervousness. "Spare that innocent vine," said Phil, arresting my riding-whip. "You have beaten that cluster of roses to fragments." "Will they never come!" I ejaculated. "It is so tiresome to wait for all those adieux. Can't we start?"
"Certainly," said he, signalling the man who held our horses. "We can ride forward; they will soon overtake us, and McGuffy can accompany the carriage as far as the cross-road. He is going to Brandon, I believe, this morning."
I stepped back. "After all, it would hardly be polite to go, as he was of the riding party. There they come from the greenhouse. They must be ready now."
At last, we were mounted, and our companions arranged for the drive, our last good byes said; but the understanding was, as we parted, that the whole party of Masons and Emersons should adjourn to Rutledge for the evening, where a grand finale, in the shape of a supper and a dance, should wind up the festivities of the season. The pretty Janet whispered, as I went down from the saddle to exchange a parting word with her, "I have not given up the visit yet, Papa promises to take Mrs. Churchill by storm this evening, and you must consent."
As we rode along, I gave a sigh to the impossibility of this; nothing could give me pleasure now, but this seemed more like it than anything else. To be quietly with Janet, and to learn to love her, and to unlearn the terrible lesson of the last few weeks, looked almost like peace. But I knew too well what my aunt's answer would be, as she was to be appealed to, and without throwing off the mask of deference that I still preserved and wished to preserve, I could not resist her decision. I well knew the programme sketched out for me, for the rest of the summer: in the thrice empty dreariness of Gramercy Park I was to be immured, while the others whiled away the pleasant weeks at Newport and Nahant. The Wynkars, Capt. McGuffy and Phil had consented to make their plans agree with the Churchills, and Mr. Rutledge had promised to join them in the course of a fortnight. He had made his arrangements to leave home on the same day that we did, and accompany us part of the way; business in the western part of the State would occupy him for some ten days; but, at the end of that time, he proposed rejoining the party at Newport. Nothing had been said to me about my plans, but I knew from something that escaped inadvertently, that the subject had been canvassed, and it had been decided that the income allowed me would not warrant such an expense, and that, with Frances, I was to be dropped at home, while mamma's maid should serve also for Josephine and Grace for the remainder of the summer. I should have loathed the gaiety of Newport, the crowd and the excitement would have been insupportable to me; but the prospect of being smothered in that silent, dark house in the hot city, hateful with memories of my recent illness, and with trials that I could never forget, was even harder to anticipate. But I had to submit. What a future for seventeen.
"Wait till December," whispered Hope, just stirring his wounded, drooping wings, just trembling with a faint life that for days had seemed extinct. "Yes," I thought, with a bitter sigh, "in December I shall be of age, it will be a glorious thing to be my own mistress! To begin the world when I've lost all interest in it—to do as I please when there's nothing on earth that pleases me—to be free from restraint and authority, and from all human love and care! To be independent! God help me! What a glorious thing it will be. All hope points to December!"