INTRODUCED TO MRS. ESTELL.
A week passed by with no sign of a setback and one morning the doctor said that I might sit up. Brother Washington eased me into a rocking chair, and stood as if expecting me to command him to continue the work of my conversion. But I told him to sit down, a position which he always assumed in sorrow, seeming to regard it as a retreat when his spirit cried for a charge.
The Senator came in with a hearty good morning, and instructed Washington to draw my chair into the parlor. The sore trial of listening to Mrs. Estell had come. I had not seen her, had made no inquiry concerning her, but I had thought of her, and not with kindness. The pleasure of getting again into my clothes had been marred by fancy's sketch of her—sharp of voice and sour of face—a woman whose husband had willingly died, leaving her, unfortunately, to inflict man with her elocution. I wanted to sit alone and enjoy the sweet scents blown from the garden; through the window I had seen a mocking-bird alight on the top of a magnolia tree, and in silence I wanted to listen to his song. But the Senator was my benefactor. He had found me a wounded outcast, lying unconscious on the sand, and had made his mansion my hospital; and I could not lift an ungrateful finger in protest against a torture which in his belief was an act of kindness.
"Now easy, Washington," said the Senator as he held the door open. "That's it, come ahead."
The parlor was at the end of a long and lofty hall. The Senator opened the door. The chair was drawn across the threshold, and I found myself in the midst of dark, old-fashioned furniture and the portraits of Statesmen and of ladies done by Frenchmen who had come to this country to leave a trail of art along the shores of the mighty river.
"Not too near the window, Washington," said the Senator. "About here. Now you can go about your business and I will introduce Mrs. Estell."
They left me sitting with my back toward the door. I wondered why there should be such an air of ceremony. Was it the custom in Bolanyo to dignify a torture with a stately introduction? But I had not long to muse. I heard the Senator returning. "Ah, Mr. Belford," he said, stepping into the room, "let me present you to my daughter, Mrs. Estell."
I looked round with a start, and a living line from old Chaucer, in golden letters, hung bright before me—"Her glad eyes." I bowed; and I must have spluttered my astonishment, for the Senator broke out in a loud and ringing laugh.
"Sit down, Florence," he said, drawing forward a chair for her. And then to me, while softly laughing, he observed:
"Oh, I saw you were distressed at the idea of being read to, and I could have explained that you needn't look forward to any infliction, but I thought I'd wait and let you find it out for yourself. Why, Sir, this child couldn't bore anybody."