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!"

But my release, such as it was, was nearer than December. I might have spared myself the hateful anticipations with which I blackened the fresh summer morning. I had not seen any further into futurity than the rest of the human family, who fret about their fate and look whole years ahead, and put the misery of a lifetime into the present, and torture themselves about what they know is, and fear is to be, till the flood of God's judgment comes and sweeps all away, and leaves them bewildered in the midst of a strange desolation and a new terror.

"Phil," said Capt. McGuffy, as we rode slowly along through the loveliest, freshest country, washed by last night's rain; and gleaming in the morning sun--of which I had not seen one beauty, in my absorbing anxiety--"Phil, may I trust this young lady to you, if I leave you at the cross-road? I want to ride over to Brandon for half an hour before dinner."

"Oh, Captain McGuffy!" I exclaimed, startled out of future fears by present dangers, "why do you take that tiresome ride this morning? It will be sunny and disagreeable before you get back to Rutledge; wait till after dinner."

The captain still leaned to the idea of accomplishing it all "under one head," and having the rest of the day at home I didn't dare to press the subject, but seeing my only chance lay in engrossing their attention to the exclusion from their memories of the Brandon project, I worked faithfully to accomplish my design, and succeeded in a great measure. Before we had gone another half mile, I had enticed the captain into the enthusiastic description of a bull-baiting in Mexico, at which Phil and he had "assisted," and into the recollection of which they both seemed to enter with great ardor. We were on the top of Ridgway Hill--the road for a good mile stretched away at its foot, while on the left, branched off the Brandon turnpike.

"Heaven send they may forget it!" I ejaculated, bending forward to renew my questions about the bull-baiting. The carriages were coming close behind--the bull-fight soon began to flag.

"Phil," began the captain again.

"Capt. McGuffy," I cried, "Madge is fairly beside herself this morning, I can hardly hold her; we have been creeping all the way from the Grove, what do you say to a race, a bona fide race, and I'll ask no favor. It's a clear road from here to Rutledge, and he's the best fellow who clears the park gate first!"

"Done!" cried the captain, catching fire from my eyes; and before another minute, we were off on the maddest race I ever ran or hope to run. For a while, the three straining beasts were nearly neck and neck, the three dilated nostrils and fiery eyes were nearly on a line; then gradually, very gradually, Madge's black head gained an inch or so upon them, an inch or so, and then we were a foot in advance. Phil drove the spurs into his horse--he sprang forward, but soon fell back again--the captain urged Vagabond on with lash and oath; I did not move the loosened bridle on Madge's neck--steady and unswerving she kept the road, each spring as even and as sure as if measured and done by rule--no relaxing of the eager neck--no gasping in the even breath. I only saw, with a heartfelt sigh of relief, that the Brandon turnpike lay unnoticed far behind us, and Madge might take us where she liked: but when I dashed through the park gate, half a dozen yards in advance of Phil, and the captain in a fury with Vagabond, perfectly blown, quarter of a mile in the rear, I was quite helpless and weak from excitement.

"I don't know which to be proudest of, the young lady or the mare," said Stephen, as he lifted me down. "I wouldn't have missed seeing you come in for considerable money."

I hurried into the house and upstairs, leaving Phil to make all explanations and apologies: Kitty had seen me, and followed close behind me.

"Well?" I asked, breathlessly, as she closed the door.

"Nothing, Miss, nothing has happened. Do lie down and rest; you look fit to drop."

"But he is well? What did he say--has nothing happened?"

"Nothing has happened. I only saw him for a moment yesterday. Mrs. Roberts kept me close at marking linen all the rest of the day and evening; and this morning I had only a few moments to speak to him when I went in, for her door was open a crack, and I didn't dare to stay: you look so tired--won't you let me undress you?"

"But how did he seem? what did he say about my being away?"

"Oh!" returned Kitty, rather uneasily, "he asked why the house was so quiet, and whether you'd got back yet: he looks a little pale and badly, but I'm sure that's natural enough. Anybody would get pale and gloomy shut up day after day in that awful room, among all poor Miss Alice's books and pictures and things, all looking so dusty and dismal; it gives me a shudder only to go inside the door."

"But he doesn't know anything about her; you've never told him anything about the room?"

"I didn't mean to, Miss; I had no thought of opening my lips about it; but he made me tell him--he wouldn't be satisfied till I had told him every word I knew about the family troubles. What put it into his head to ask, I think was something he had come across in a French book he had been reading; it was a little note that had marked the place. He held it in his hand as I came in, and he looked so white and strange, I was almost frightened. Oh, so many questions as he put me! so eager as he was! He seemed to look so through and through me with those black eyes of his, I didn't dare to keep back anything I knew. And then he asked me about master; if he had really loved his sister--if he had grieved for her, and tried to find her out, or if he held her memory in contempt--if he tried to forget that she had ever lived, and hated to hear her name."

"You didn't tell him that he did, Kitty?"

"How could I help it, Miss? You would not have had me tell him _a lie_. I had to tell him how it was. I had to tell him that her name was forbidden here--that no one dared for their lives to breathe a word about those times to the master--that her picture, and all that belonged to her, was put out of sight forever--that her room was shut up and hid as much from the living, as the poor lady was herself in her lonesome grave beyond seas. And he clenched his hand till the blood sprung under his nails, and his very lips were white like the wall; he said so low I could just hear him, 'but he shall not forget!' I am no coward, Miss, but I confess I was right glad when I got outside again."

All that wretched day I watched for a chance to see him. Kitty, nearly as anxious as I was myself, hovered around to try to clear the way for me, but in vain. No other day had the upper hall been so favorite a resort. Josephine had ordered her trunks to be put out there, and Ella's also, and Frances was packing them. Ellerton and Grace, lounging on the stairs, watched the operation, Mrs. Churchill sat with her door open. I cannot possibly describe the misery it gave me to know what danger might arise from this delay. I knew too much already of Victor's morbid jealousy, to imagine it was not brooding now over this long neglect. The hours were leaden-winged and fiery-footed; each slow passing one seemed to burn into my very soul.

Kitty wiped away frequent tears as she busied herself about my packing; there were no tears in my eyes as I walked quickly up and down the room, or lay, face downward on the bed, trying to stifle thoughts that I could not endure.

"There's dinner!" said Kitty, ruefully. "And there's no hope of any more chance after it. Mrs. Roberts is at her eternal knitting in the hall window, and Frances won't stop packing these four hours yet. But don't you worry, Miss; I'll manage it, somehow. Go down to dinner, and _don't_ fret!"

Of course not, why should I? What was there in my circumstances to occasion it? Nothing, of course; and nothing, either, to fret about in Josephine's taunts and Grace's sauciness, in the cold eyes of my aunt, in Ella's supercilious scorn; nothing to fret about when the captain talked of the murder and the evidence, the state of the public mind, and the state of his own private mind, in regard to it; when Ellerton talked about the news from town, and the letters he had just received from some of his inestimable chums there resident, and of the inexplicable nature of the fact that none of them had spoken of meeting or seeing Victor before he sailed, and of his own conviction that it was very strange we had heard nothing from him since he left, _very_ strange.

"Oh!" cried Grace, "that's the way, they say, with these foreigners, adventurers, may be. You mustn't be astonished, my dear (turning pleasantly to me), you mustn't be astonished if you shouldn't hear from him 'never no more.' These French meteors, they say, sometimes flash through society in that way, and dazzle everybody, then sink into their native night again. And you know it is just possible our Victor may be of that order; but, of course, I don't want to distress you, only it's as well you should be prepared."

"Grace, hush! you are a saucy child; but really it _is_ odd that we have never heard a word from him since he left."

"Did you expect to, Josephine? I didn't suppose you had made any arrangements to correspond. I am sorry I didn't know how deep your interest was, I might have relieved your mind before. Mr. Viennet is very well. I have heard from him more than once since we parted."

An exclamation of surprise went round the table; I was overwhelmed with questions and reproaches.

"You might have told us, really, now I think," said Ellerton.

"Why did you not ask me, then?"

"Why, we thought you'd tell, to be sure. We didn't know how sacred you considered his epistles."

"What sort of a journey did he have? What day did he get in town?"

"He didn't say much about his journey. I fancy from something he said that he met with some detentions."

"Didn't he send any messages to anybody?"

"None that I remember."

"Ungrateful rascal!"

"He succeeded, I suppose, in getting a state-room? He had some fears that he would be too late."

"He didn't say a word about it."

"Absurd! what did he talk about, then?"

"Not about his journey, nor his stateroom, nor you, Josephine; but you know there are more things, and as interesting, in heaven and earth, to us both, strange as it may seem to you."

"_Pardon!_ I had forgotten!"

"You won't hear again before the Persia is in, will you?"

"That will be in three weeks, will it not?"

"Yes; that will be after we are at Newport. To whose care do your letters come addressed?"

"Really, Mr. Wynkar, you are too kind. Your interest is so unexpected!"

"Let us all drink to his _bon voyage_," said the captain, filling my glass.

"_Avec plaisir_," cried Josephine, and Phil said heartily, as he poured her out a glass:

"Victor's a good fellow; he has my best wishes on land or sea."

"And mine," said Mr. Rutledge, very low.

Why was there a hush around the table as that toast was drunk? Why did a sort of shade creep over the careless mirth of the company? Not surely because they guessed that he whose health they drank was within hearing, almost, of their words, nor because they knew how fallen and how wretched he was; but because, perhaps unconsciously, the gloom on their host's face, and the misery on mine, damped for a moment their gaiety and confidence.

"The last day at Rutledge!" murmured Josephine, with a pretty sigh, as we left the dining-room. "I cannot bear to think of it. I never had so happy a fortnight in my life. Shall any of us ever forget this visit?"

"It doesn't seem as if we'd been here a week," said Ella, "does it?"

"A week! It seems to me a year!" I exclaimed, involuntarily.

"That doesn't speak well for your enjoyment, at all events; Mr. Rutledge will never ask you to come again. Will you, Mr. Rutledge?"

"I am afraid, Miss Wynkar, that it will be out of my power to enjoy the honor of any one's society here for a long while to come. I am going abroad in the course of a month, and"----

"You, Mr. Rutledge!" exclaimed more than one voice, and Josephine's color suffered a shade of diminution.

"It is a sudden determination, is it not, sir?" asked Phil.

"No, I have been thinking of it for some weeks, but I have not till recently had much idea of the time I should start."

"Mr. Rutledge does not look upon crossing the Atlantic for a few months, as any way more formidable than going to town for a night, he has been such a traveller," said Mrs. Churchill, with admirable composure; but _I_ knew the effort that it cost her. "You do not think of being absent long, I suppose?"

"It is uncertain; I shall make my arrangements to be gone for about two years, but something may occur to detain me longer, in which case I can easily settle all things here by letter. I have trusty persons in my employ, and I think there is no chance of my presence being necessary at home for a long while to come."

"I envy you," said Ellerton; "I wish I could run off for a year or two."

I saw Josephine's lips move, but she could not command her voice, and, bending down, she caressed Tigre with a nervous hand. I could not but pity her; I had not realized before how much her heart had been set upon this match; and wounded pride is next in sting to wounded love.

The gentlemen lit their cigars, and talked of Mr. Rutledge's plans; we all lounged idly about the north end of the hall; the doors were all open, and a fine fresh breeze came in. I had been listening anxiously to a faint sound overhead, _where_ I knew too well; a hasty stride from one end to the other of the room above us.

"Hark!" cried Grace, "what's that? I heard the same sound this morning."

Every one stopped talking, and listened.

"The house is haunted, you may depend," said Josephine. "There have been strange noises next my room for the last three nights."

"That's a peculiar sound. What do you make of it, Mr. Rutledge?" said Ellerton, walking toward the stairs.

"It is nothing," he returned, advancing that way too. "Some of the servants are up there now, perhaps; I will go and see. Don't trouble yourself, Mr. Wynkar."

"I'll go," I cried, starting forward. "Perhaps it's Kitty, she may be waiting for me."

Ellerton paused and listened; Mr. Rutledge passed up before him, followed closely by Tigre. I brushed past Ellerton and kept close to Mr. Rutledge. Mrs. Roberts was standing at the head of the stairs.

"Mrs. Roberts," said Ellerton, "we're investigating an unusual noise up here. Can you account for it?"

Now, Mrs. Roberts never could abide the insinuation that anything might possibly be going on of which she was ignorant; if she had nosed anything herself, she did not, as we have seen, lack zeal in ferreting it out, but it was impossible to put her on a new scent; she refused to acknowledge any other sagacity than her own. So, on the present occasion, as she had heard no noise, she utterly scouted the idea, and assigned some trifling cause for it; the girls, she said, had been in the attic, clearing out an old store-room; probably that was what Mr. Rutledge had heard. Ellerton hurried down to inform the ladies of the explanation, and Mr. Rutledge, crossing the hall, was going toward his dressing-room, when Tigre, who had been exploring the neighborhood, now rushed whining along the hall, with his nose to the floor. The attention of all was attracted to him; he darted under the wardrobe, and began scratching and growling earnestly at the door of Victor's hiding-place. I followed Mr. Rutledge's quick glance from my face to the wardrobe, and, starting forward, I tried to call off Tigre.

"Come here, sir! Come here, I say!" But he was too intent upon his discovery to heed me.

"He is a little nuisance," said Mrs. Roberts. "I never approved having him allowed to come upstairs."

"Tigre, what are you after, sir?" said Mr. Rutledge, as he walked down the hall toward him.

"Oh, nothing, I'm sure, sir, nothing!" I cried, following him. "Don't scold him. Tigre, come out, you rascal! come out, I say!" and I stamped vehemently on the floor.

"He will not mind you," said Mr. Rutledge, in a low voice. "He will obey his instincts, and persevere till he has reached the object of his search."

"He isn't searching for anything," I exclaimed, dropping down on my knees and stooping till I could see under the wardrobe. "If I could only reach him. Tigre--you torment--if you don't come, I'll whip you, _so!_ Here, here, _poor_ fellow! Come here, my pet!"

Tigre desisted a moment from his whining, and wavered in his determination. I thrust my arm under the wardrobe, seized him, and drew him, yelping, out; then, springing up, ran across the hall, and almost threw him into my room. Mr. Rutledge watched me silently with a contracted brow, and crossing over to his own room, shut himself into it.

Not a very faithful index, certainly of the real feelings of men and women, is to be obtained from their outward and visible emotions. A very gay party, no doubt, the visitors who came that night to Rutledge, thought they found there. They little guessed how unhappy and disappointed a man their courteous host was, nor that Mrs. Churchill, serene and charming, was looking in the face the failure of the hopes of years, nor that the pretty Josephine's smiles were in ghastly contrast with the bitterness of her spirit; nor that Phil, who knew her face too well to be deceived by them, was smarting under the realizing sense it gave him of her ambition and worldliness. And if they had guessed the interpretation of _my_ gaiety!

There were just enough of us to make the dancing spirited, and to keep every one on the floor. We had before always danced in the parlors, but some evil spirit prompted Grace to propose that we should try a double set of Lancers in the hall. Everybody, encouraged, doubtless, by their attendant evil spirits, seemed to think nothing could be more delightful than the hall, and urged the moving of the piano out there; and there we adjourned. I tried not to remember how plainly we could be heard in a certain room at the end of the hall above; how the laughing and the music would grate on the jealous ears there. If he caught the tones of my voice, he would not know that I laughed because I must keep pace with the captain's jokes, and encourage him in punning and joke-making, to keep him from the hideous topic that he always turned to when left to himself; and to drive away the suspicion that sharpened Mr. Rutledge's eyes, and to keep Mr. Mason my admirer, and no more.

"Like the lady of 'Old Oak Chest' memory, 'I'm weary of dancing,'" I cried at length, "let's amuse ourselves some other way."

"Play hide-and-seek, like that ancient party?" asked Phil, throwing himself on the lowest step of the stairs.

"That's not a bad suggestion!" exclaimed Grace. "This is just the place for such an adventure. I don't mean that I want anybody to be smothered in a chest exactly, but lost for a little while, and hunted for, you know. It would be so jolly."

"So it would!" echoed Ellerton.

"And there's no end of capital hiding-places about the house, so many odd rooms where you'd never expect them; and acres of attic, beyond a doubt!"

"Come!" cried Josephine, "we're all ripe for adventure. Let's have a game of hide-and-seek."

"Delightful!" cried the youngest Miss Mason.

"I'm ready for anything," said Phil, getting up and shaking himself.

"I'm afraid you will not find any oak chests," said Mr. Rutledge, discouragingly.

"Oh! yes, we will," cried Grace, "chests, and crannies, and closets, and wardrobes, and trap-doors without number. A regiment of soldiers might be hid away in this house and nobody the wiser."

Everybody was in the spirit of it now, and it was useless to oppose.

"Who shall hide first?" demanded Grace.

"Oh, your cousin, of course!" cried the captain. "She proposed the game."

I was voted in by acclamation.

"And you must take somebody with you, it will make it more exciting, but you must hide in separate places," added Grace.

"Very well; the captain must go out with me, and you must all go into the parlor, and promise, on your honor, to stay there five minutes by the clock, and then we give you leave to find us."

"We promise," said Ellerton; "but remember, you are to hide somewhere in the house, and to surrender yourselves in half an hour if you are not found before."

"Always provided," said the captain, shutting the parlor-doors upon them, "that we're not smothered in some old chest in the meantime."