All in Belfield knew both Mrs. Lenox and Georgy so well—their history, the miserable shortcomings of their home, the girl's scanty education both of intellect and morals—that we could but attribute their faults to sheer worldliness combined with the evils of their bitter poverty. Jack and myself, at least, with the most meagre excuse readily forgave Georgy everything. She was so beautiful, so radiant in all the phases of her dingy life, so good-natured even in her contempt of our stupidity and dulness, so eager to find enjoyment in everything, that we were willing to accept all her faults with her charms, to love her idolatrously, and blame ourselves for harshness if we were momentarily angry with the lovely creature.
We had all, even Georgy, been reasonably happy in Belfield until Mr. Floyd and Antonio Thorpe came. My guardian's influence I will speak of later, for it touched only myself perhaps; but Tony's was felt more or less by us all. He widened our horizons at once, and, as usual, enlarged our imaginations at the expense of our belief in ourselves. We were not used exactly to be complimented on our ignorance of the world, but in Belfield habits of thought tended toward a pleasant conviction of the uselessness of all knowledge and experience that our best inhabitants did not happen to possess. Until Tony came we were in the habit of deploring the fate of people who were not born and brought up in Belfield. Almost the entire population were descendants of the original proprietors of the soil, and we had our own ideas about our first families. Thorpe's views, however, were not flattering: he was, in fact, one of those elegant young men whose innermost souls are penetrated with convictions of the inadequacy of intellects in general to appreciate theirs in particular.
Both Jack and I passed sleepless nights at first, wretched at the thought of his sleeping beneath the same roof with Georgy Lenox—of his enjoying that mystical, beautiful experience of coming down every morning to find her at table with her hair freshly curled, to enjoy the felicity of passing her eggs and toast, to carve a slice for her from the joint which the welcome addition of the young man's payment for board allowed Mrs. Lenox to provide for her dinner. Then, too, we felt with a pang that he would receive with his unequalled grace all sorts of little services from the daughter of the house: she would pour his tea for him, counting the lumps of sugar and dropping cream upon them in the distracting way we knew; she would amuse him with her sweet-voiced chatter. He was so old, so handsome with his velvety eyes and his moustache, she might even fall in love with him. However, Georgy was not given to sentiment, and Tony, for his part, was utterly indifferent to her: indeed, the most exclusive circles in Belfield opened to him at once, for a young man with a moustache was a rara avis there, the masculine element in the village falling short of social requirements, as its representatives were generally either in their first or second childhood. But the only intimacy he cultivated was with me and my mother: he criticised everybody else, and it was evident that he considered nothing in Belfield quite good enough for him.
"What a great man my master is!" says the French valet: "nothing suits him." And it must be confessed that the valet's state of mind concerning his master much resembled ours regarding Thorpe. At every woman in the place except my mother he levelled trenchant sarcasms: the men, he declared, possessed every trait which could shock or weary a man of the world, and not only displeased his eyes, but were so foreign to his spheres of thought that he was obliged to ignore them. At the habits and customs of everybody alike he shrugged his shoulders, and we used to wonder to each other why so great a man stayed in Belfield at all. But he did us no harm, and it is not impossible that he did us good. He laughed freely at our provincialisms, accustomed us to take raillery good-naturedly, disillusionized us in many ways, and showed us always a pattern of polished and careful demeanor.
He used to entertain us frequently—if I may use the word "entertain" to describe his indifferent toleration of us and his acceptance of such listeners in default of better—by a description of Mr. Raymond's place, "The Headlands," as it was usually called. He had been in the habit of spending a few days of his vacations there for years, and was in a position to enlighten Georgy about her distant cousin and mine, Helen Floyd, Mr. Raymond's probable heiress. Perhaps he liked to tease Georgy, yet it is possible that the little daughter of Mr. Floyd, growing up in the quiet, stately place, really possessed something already to arouse Tony's admiration for a child ten years old; but he would dwell upon her beauty, her brilliant prospects in the future and the grandeur of her present possessions, until Georgy was enraged with him. The train was perhaps already laid in the mind of the young girl which led up to a magazine of hatred and anger against more successful mortals, and needed but a chance spark to light it. She made a rival of little Helen Floyd at once, and every action of her life became infused with ambitious desires to surpass her in some way. She besieged me with questions concerning my guardian, his ideas, views, tastes and habits, and beset me feverishly to use my influence to get her invited to The Headlands.
Mr. Floyd's visits became more and more frequent as the summer advanced, and I began with some jealousy to notice a growing change in my mother. In former times she had shown an exquisite poise of strength and peace in every phase of her life, but of late she seemed possessed with a sort of girlish fluttering and disquiet: her eyes were dreamy and her voice softer and less decided in its inflexions, and her manner to me, instead of continuing its old noble habits of command, became timid and caressing, as if she were anxious to propitiate me. In the evenings, instead of sitting among us boys on the piazza, she would leave us and walk by herself under the laburnums in the garden; and if I followed her and put my arm about her, I found, with vague pain and rebellion at my heart, that although she amply responded to my tenderness, she had sweet and sacred thoughts that she was smiling over all by herself. It had been her wont to busy herself with housekeeping cares from morning until night: our income was small, and she was very busy, for she gave thought to everything and decided wisely upon the smallest matter. In these duties she had found pleasant occupation apparently: she had shown no fatigue, had marred nothing by impatience or over-haste—had judiciously studied how to manage every detail of our lives. Now all at once there seemed a little lassitude upon her: she left all questions concerning the housekeeping for her domestic, Ann, to decide; she would drop her sewing in her lap and fall into reverie, her cheeks crimsoning, her eyes growing dark and misty, and emerge into reality presently with a beautiful trembling smile on her lips. I grudged her those reveries and those smiles: I quaked at the thought that her heart was turning toward Mr. Floyd, much as I loved and venerated him. I knew that she had worshipped my father, and I wanted her to carry that one feeling supreme to the end of her days. Cet âge est sans pitié. I realized nothing of the preciousness of those impulses which were quickening her again into happy youth: I realized nothing of her having been lonely—nothing of the pain and passion of longing which must have tried her through these eight years of widowhood, without any companionship save mine, with such cruel silence when she had been used to every tenderness, to constant loving flatteries, to gentlest ministrations—or I hope I should not so bitterly have resented this new hope of hers which made her almost afraid to look me in the face.
When Mr. Floyd did not come he wrote frequently to my mother. I used to bring his letters to her with a swelling heart and bitter tears in my eyes; but she knew nothing of those tears, for she never looked up, nor when she took the letters did she read them before me. He wrote frequently to me as well as to her, but while her envelopes covered numerous well-filled pages, his notes to me were adorned with just one degree more ample verbiage than we use in a telegram.
But nothing was said between us until one night early in September. It was a rainy evening, but so warm that both doors and windows stood wide open, and we heard the faint pattering music of the swift succeeding showers mingled with the monotonous chant of the katydids. My mother sat at the table with a pretence of work in her hands, but I saw that she trembled so much that she could not draw the thread. I had brought her in a letter at seven o'clock directed in Mr. Floyd's fine cramped handwriting, and I too had a note from him. My mother had taken hers from me with a devouring blush, and as if to hide it had thrust it beneath a pile of cambric ruffles on the table.
Her look and manner had made me turn almost sick with pain, for it seemed to me she no longer loved or trusted me. I had lost everything, I told myself with profound dreariness. I laid my own letter from Mr. Floyd open in her lap without a word. It ran thus:
"My Dear Boy: I have had a trying week: Helen has been at the point of death, and that she is now convalescent fills me with gratitude to God too great for words. I think she would have died if I had not been here. As soon as she is well I want you to spend a few weeks at The Headlands: you need the change, and my little girl needs a friend. Love to your dear mother and for yourself.