Chapter 15

"Heaven knows. She is capable of concocting anything; and you must remember that we had accepted her as a cousin. She could put him off easily, for he had no suspicion to start with. I must now go and have a final delightful interview with Miss Trumbull."

She met her in the hall, and experienced a sudden sense of helplessness in the face of that mighty curiosity. She almost respected it.

"I just want to say," drawled Miss Trumbull, tossing her head, "that I know more'n you think I do. There just ain't nothin' I don't know, I'll tell you, as you've turned me out as if I was a common servant. I know who you meet up the lake and take breakfast in farmhouses with, and I know why Miss Harriet was so dreadful scared you'd find out--"

Betty understood then why some people murdered others. Her eyes blazed so that the woman quailed.

"Oh, I ain't so bad as you think," she stammered. "I'd never think any harm of you, and I'd never be so despisable as to take away any woman's character. I'm a Christian and I don't want to hurt any one, likewise, I'd never tell him _that_. Bad as she's treated me--I who am as good and better'n she is any day--I wouldn't do any woman sech a bad turn as that. Only I'm just glad I do know it. When I'm settin' in my poor little parlor waitin' for another position to turn up--six months, mebbe--it'll be a big satisfaction to me to think that I could ruin her if I had a mind to--a big satisfaction."

Betty went to her room, wrote a cheque for three months' wages and returned with it. "Take this and go," she said. "And be kind enough not to look upon the amount as a bribe. The position of housekeeper is not an easy one to find, and I do not wish to think of any one in distress."

XVI

Miss Trumbull left that afternoon, and although Betty half expected the woman, who had possessed some of the attributes of the villain in the play, to reappear at intervals in the interest of her role, the grave might have closed over her for all the sign she gave. But Miss Trumbull had done enough, and the Fates do not always linger to complete their work. The housekeeper, with all her self-satisfaction, never would have thought of calling herself a Fate; but motives are not always commensurate with results. She was only a common fool, and there were thousands like her, but her capacity for harm-doing was as far-reaching as had she had the brain of a genius and the soul of a devil.

As Emory positively refused to go to Europe until money of his own came in, although Betty offered to lend him what he needed, and as he was really well only when in the Adirondacks, and an abrupt move to one of the hotels would have animated the gossips, it was decided finally that he and his wife should remain where they were until it was time to sail. Harriet offered to take charge of the servants until another housekeeper could be found; and as she seemed anxious to do all she could to make amends for deceiving her benefactress, Betty let her assume what would have been to herself an onerous responsibility. After a day or two of constraint and awkwardness, the little household settled down to its altered conditions; and in a week everybody looked and acted much as usual, so soon does novelty wear off and do mortals readjust themselves. Jack and Harriet seemed happy; but the former, at least, was too fastidious to vaunt his affections in even the little public of his lifelong friends. He spent hours swinging in a hammock, reading philosophy and smoking; occasionally he read aloud to his aunt and Harriet, and in the afternoon he usually took his wife for a walk.

Harriet at this period was a curious mixture of humility and pride. She could not demonstrate sufficiently her gratitude to Betty, but the very dilation of her nostril indicated gratified ambition. She had held her head high ever since her marriage; since her acknowledgment by the world as a wife, her carriage had been regal. Betty gave a luncheon one day to some acquaintances at the hotel, and when she introduced Harriet as Mrs. Emory, she saw her quiver like a blooded horse who has won a doubtful race.

As for Mrs. Madison, she finished by regarding the whole affair in the light of a novel, and argued with Betty the possible and probable results. Her interest in the plot became so lively that she took to discussing it with Harriet; and although the heroine was grateful at first for her interest, there came a time when she looked apprehensive and careworn. Finally she begged Mrs. Madison, tearfully, not to allude to the subject again, and Mrs. Madison, who was the kindest of women, looked surprised and hurt, but replied that of course she would avoid the subject if Harriet wished.

"It's just this," said Mrs. Emory, bluntly; "the subject is so much on your mind that I'm in constant terror you'll begin talking of it before Jack."

"My dear girl, I never would tell him; for his sake as well as your own, you can rely on me."

"I know you would never do it intentionally, ma'am, but I'm scared you'll do it without thinking; you talk of it so much, more than anything. The other night when you began to talk of the crime of miscegenation, I thought I should die."

"That was very inconsiderate of me. Poor girl, I'll be more careful." But in her secluded impersonal life few romantic interests entered, and although she was too courteous to harp upon a painful subject, it was evident that she avoided it with an effort, and that it dwelt in the forefront of her mind. One evening after Betty had been playing some of the old Southern melodies, she caught Jack's hand in hers, and assured him brokenly that no people on earth were bound together as Southerners were, and that he must think of her always as his mother and come to her in the dark and dreadful hours of his life. He pressed her hand, and continued smoking his cigarette; he never had doubted that his aunt loved him as a mother. Harriet rose abruptly and left the room. She returned before long, however, and after that night she never left her husband alone with Mrs. Madison for a moment.

XVII

Betty herself was happy again. She hated the dark places of life, and got away from them and out into the sunshine as quickly as possible. Although she was too well disciplined to shirk her duty, she did it as quickly as possible and pushed it to the back of her mind. Jack and Harriet were married; that was the end of it for the present. Let life go on as before. She gave several hours of the day to her mother, the rest to the forest and the lake. When Senator North came up again, she was her old gay self, the more attractive perhaps for the faint impression which contact with deep seriousness is bound to leave. If Jack and Harriet had been safely out of the country, she would have felt like a Pagan, especially after the Tariff Bill passed and Senator North came up to stay.

"I shouldn't have a care in the world," she said to him one morning, "if I did not know, little as I will permit myself to think of it, that exposure may come any day. There is only a chance that somebody at St. Andrew will hear of the marriage and denounce her, but it might happen. If only they were in Europe! She told me the other night that she knows she can keep him there, her influence is so great. I hope that is true, but she cannot make him go till he has his own money to go with."

"What she means is that he won't leave her. He has her here now and is in no hurry to move. He should be able to rent his farm. It is a very good one." "He has rented it for a year--from September. He gets nothing till then. If pride were not a disease with him, he would let me advance the money, but he is not as sure as he might be of the man who has rented the farm and he will not take any risks, I am sorry for Harriet. She has the idea on her mind now that Molly will blurt it out, and she has the sort of mind that broods and exaggerates. I sincerely wish they had got off to Europe undiscovered and sent the news back by the pilot. I had to speak to Molly once or twice myself; I never knew her so garrulous about anything."

Senator North laughed. "You have a great deal of trouble with your parent," he said. "I fear you have not been firm enough with her in the past. Will you come into the next lake? I like the fish better there. You are not to worry about anything, my dear, while we have the Adirondacks to imagine ourselves happy in."

"Ar'n't you really happy?" she asked him quickly.

"Not wholly so," he replied. "But that is a question we are not to discuss."

XVIII

Senator North had been formally invited by Mrs. Madison for dinner that evening, and Betty, who had parted from him just seven hours before, restrained an impulse to run down the terrace as his boat made the landing. Emory and Harriet were on the veranda, however, and she managed to look stately and more or less indifferent at the head of the steps. There were pillars and vines on either side of her, and bunches of purple wistaria hung above her head. It was a picturesque frame for a picturesque figure in white, and a kindly consideration for Senator North's highly trained and exacting eye kept her immovable for nearly five minutes. As he reached the steps, however, self-consciousness suddenly possessed her and she started precipitately to meet him. She wore slippers with high Louis Quinze heels. One caught in a loosened strand of the mat. Her other foot went too far. She made a desperate effort to reach the next step, and fell down the whole flight with one unsupported ankle twisted under her.

For a moment the pain was so intense she hardly was aware that Senator North had his arm about her shoulders while Emory was straightening her out. Harriet was screaming frantically. She gave a sharp scream herself as Emory touched her ankle, but repressed a second as she heard her mother's voice.

Mrs. Madison stood in the doorway with more amazement than alarm on her face.

"Betty?" she cried. "Nothing can have happened to Betty! Why, she has not even had a doctor since she was six years old."

"It's nothing but a sprained ankle," said Emory. "For heaven's sake, keep quiet, Harriet," he added impatiently, "and go and get some hot water. Let's get her into the house."

Betty by this time was laughing hysterically. Her ankle felt like a hot pincushion, and the unaccustomed experience of pain, combined with Harriet's shrieks, delivered with a strong darky accent, and her mother's attitude of disapproval, assaulted her nerves.

When they had carried her in and put her foot into a bucket of hot water, she forgot them completely, and while her mother fanned her and Senator North forced her to swallow brandy, she felt that all the intensity of life's emotions was circumferenced by a wooden bucket. But when they had carefully extended her on the sofas and Emory, who had a farmer's experience with broken bones, announced his intention of examining her ankle at once, Betty with remarkable presence of mind asked Senator North to hold her hand. This he did with a firmness which fortified her during the painful ordeal, and Mrs. Madison was not terrified by so much as a moan.

"You have pluck!" exclaimed Senator North when Emory, after much prodding, had announced that it was only a sprain. "You have splendid courage."

Emory assured her that she was magnificent, and Betty felt so proud of herself that she had no desire to undo the accident.

In the days that followed, although she suffered considerable pain, she enjoyed herself thoroughly. It was her first experience of being "fussed over," as she expressed it. She never had had so much as a headache, no one within her memory had asked her how she felt, and she had regarded her mother as the centre of the medical universe. Now a clever and sympathetic doctor came over every day from the hotel and felt her pulse, and intimated that she was his most important patient. Mrs. Madison insisted upon bathing her head, Emory and Harriet treated her like a sovereign whose every wish must be anticipated, even the servants managed to pass the door of her sitting-room a dozen times a day. Senator North came over every morning and sat by her couch of many rose-coloured pillows; and not only looked tender and anxious, but suggested that the statesman within him was dead.

"It is hard on you, though," she murmured one day, when they happened to be alone for a few moments. "Two invalids are more than one man's portion. And no one ever enjoyed the outdoor life as you do."

"This room is full of sunshine and fresh air, and I came up here to be with you. I don't know but what I am heartless enough to enjoy seeing such an imperious and insolently healthy person helpless for a time, and to be able to wait on her."

"I feel as if the entire order of the universe had been reversed."

"It will do you good. I hope you will have every variety of pleasure at least once in your life."

"You are laughing at me--but as I am a truthful person I will confide to you that I almost hate the idea of being well again."

"Of course you do. And as for the real invalids they enjoy themselves thoroughly. The great compensation law is blessed or cursed, whichever way you choose to look at it."

"I wonder if you had happened to be unmarried, what price we would have had to pay."

"God knows. The compensation law is the most immutable of all the fates."

"I have most of the gifts of life,--good looks, wealth, position, brains, and the power of making people like me. So I am not permitted to have the best of all. If I could, I wonder which of the others I'd lose. Probably we'd have an accident on our wedding journey, which would reduce my nerves to such a state that I'd be irritable for the rest of my life and lose my good looks and power to make you happy. It's a queer world."

He made no reply.

"What are you thinking of?" she asked, meeting his eyes.

"That you are not to become anything so commonplace as a pessimist. Get everything out of the present that is offered you and give no thought to the future. What is it?" he added tenderly, as the blood came into her cheeks and she knit her brows.

"I moved my ankle and it hurt me so!" She moved her hand at the same time, and he took it, and held it until her brows relaxed, which was not for some time.

The best of women are frauds. Betty made that ankle the pivot of her circle for the rest of the summer. When she wanted to see Senator North look tender and worried, she puckered her brows and sighed. When she felt the promptings of her newly acquired desire to be "fussed over," she dropped suddenly upon a couch and demanded a cushion for her foot, or asked to be assisted to a hammock. She often laughed at herself; but the new experience was very sweet, and she wondered over Life's odd and unexpected sources of pleasure.

XIX

Senator Burleigh came up for a few days to the hotel before going West, and Betty, who had anticipated his visit, invited two of the prettiest girls she knew to assist her to entertain him. They had been at one of the hotels on the lower lake, and came to her for a few days before joining their parents. She showed Burleigh every possible attention, permitting him to eat nothing but breakfast at his hotel; but he did not see her alone for a moment. When he left, he felt that he had had three cheerful days among warm and admiring friends, but his satisfaction was far from complete.

"Betty," said Senator North, one morning a fortnight later, "how much do you like Burleigh? If you had not met me, do you think you could have loved him?"

"I think I could have persuaded myself that I liked him better than I ever could have liked anybody; but it would not have been love."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, yes, I am sure! You know that I am sure. It may be possible to mistake liking for love, but it is not possible to mistake love for anything else. And you cannot even pretend to believe that I do not know what love is."

"Oh, yes," he said softly, "I think you know." He resumed in a moment: "You are so young--I would leave you in a moment if I thought that you did not really love me, that you were deluding yourself and wasting your life. But I believe that you do; and you are happier than you would be with a man who could give you only the half that you demand. Marriage is not everything. I love you well enough to make any sacrifice for you but a foolish one. And I know that there is much less in the average marriage than in the incomplete relation we have established. And there is another marriage that is incomparably worse. I shall never let you go--so long as I can hold you--unless I am satisfied that it is for your good."

"If you leave me for any Quixotic idea, I'll marry the first man that proposes to me," said Betty, lightly. "I am too happy to even consider such a possibility. There are no to-morrows when to-day is flawless--Hark! What is that?"

They were on the upper lake. Over the mountains came the sonorous yet wailing, swinging yet rapt, intonation of the negro at his hymns.

"There is a darky camp-meeting somewhere," said Senator North, indifferently. "I hope they don't fish."

The fervent incantation rose higher. It seemed to fill the forest, so wide was its volume, so splendid its energy. The echoes took it up, the very mountains responded. Five hundred voices must have joined in the chorus, and even Senator North threw back his head as the columns of the forest seemed to be the pipes of some stupendous organ. As for Betty, when the great sound died away in a wail that was hardly separable from the sighing of the pines, she trembled from head to foot and burst into tears.

He took hold of the oars, and rowed out of the lake and down to the spot where he was in the habit of landing. She had quite recovered herself by that time, and nodded brightly to him as he handed her the oars and stepped on shore.

At the breakfast-table she mentioned casually that there was a negro camp-meeting in the neighborhood, and that she never had heard such magnificent singing. She saw an eager hungry flash leap into Harriet's eyes, but they were lowered immediately. Harriet had lost much of her satisfied mien in the last few weeks, and of late had looked almost haggard. But she had fallen back into her old habit of reticence, a condition Betty always was careful not to disturb. That afternoon, however, she asked Betty if she could speak alone with her, and they went out to the summer-house.

"I want to go to that camp-meeting," she began abruptly. "Betty, I am nearly mad." She began to weep violently, and Betty put her arms about her.

"Is there any new trouble?" she asked. "Tell me and I will do all I can to help you. Why do you wish to go to this camp-meeting?"

"So that I can shout and scream and pray so loud perhaps the Lord'll hear me. Betty, I don't have one peaceful minute, dreading your mother will tell him, and that if she doesn't that dreadful Miss Trumbull will. She hated me, and she laughed that dry conceited laugh of hers when she said good-bye to me. What's to prevent her writing to Jack any minute? I lost her a good place, and we both insulted her common morbid vanity. What's to prevent her taking her revenge? Ever since that thought entered my head it has nearly driven me mad."

The same thought had occurred to Betty more than once, but she assured Harriet as earnestly as she could that there was no possible danger, that the woman was conscientious in her way, and prided herself on being better than her neighbors.

"You must put these ideas out of your head," she continued. "Any fixed idea soon grows to huge proportions, and dwarfs all the other and more reasonable possibilities. You sail now in a few weeks. Keep up your courage till then--"

"That's why I want to go to the camp-meeting. I used to go to them regularly every year with Uncle, and they always did me good. I'm right down pious by nature, and I loved to shout and go on and feel as if the Lord was right there: I could 'most see him. Of course I gave up the idea of going to camp-meetings after you made a high-toned lady of me, and I've never sung since you objected that morning; but it's hurt me not to--_it's all there;_ and if it could come out in camp-meeting along with all the rest that's torturing me, I think I'd feel better. You've always been fine and happy, you don't know the relief it is to holler."

Betty drew a long breath. "But, Harriet, I thought you did not like negroes. I don't think any white people are at this camp."

"I despise them except when they're full of religion, and then we're all equal. Betty, I must go. Can you think of an excuse to make to Jack? Couldn't I pretend to stay at the hotel all day?"

"There is no reason to lie about it. Nothing would induce him to go to a camp-meeting. But he knows that you are a Methodist, and that you were raised in the thick of that religion. I will row you to the next lake to-morrow morning before he is up, and tell him that I am to return for you. I don't approve of it at all. I think it is a horrid thing for you to do, if you want to know the truth, and there are certain tastes you ought to get rid of, not indulge. But if you must go, you must, I suppose."

XX

She sent a note over to Senator North that evening, explaining why she could not meet him in the morning; but as she rowed Harriet up the lake, she saw him standing on the accustomed spot. He beckoned peremptorily, and she pulled over to the shore, wondering if he had not received her note.

"Will you take me with you?" he asked. "I cannot get a boat, and I should like to row for you, if you will let me."

He boarded the boat, and Betty meekly surrendered the oars. She sat opposite him, Harriet in the bow, and he smiled into her puzzled and disapproving eyes. But he talked of impersonal matters until they had entered the upper lake, and explained to Harriet the whereabouts of the farmhouse whence she might be directed to the camp. Harriet had not parted her lips since she left home. She sprang on shore the moment Senator North beached the boat, and almost ran up the path.

"Well!" he exclaimed. "Did you suppose that I should allow you to row through that lane alone? There is no lonelier spot in America; and with the forest full of negroes--were you mad to think of such a thing?"

"I never thought about it," said Betty, humbly. "I am not very timid."

"I never doubted that you would be heroic in any conditions, but that is not the question. You must not take such risks. I shall return with you tonight--"

"And Harriet!" exclaimed Betty, in sudden alarm. "Perhaps we should not leave her."

"She will be with the crowd. Besides, it is her husband's place to look after her. I am concerned about you only. And I certainly shall not permit you to go to a camp-meeting, nor shall I leave you to take care of her. So put her out of your mind for the present."

And Betty Madison, who had been pleased to regard the world as her football, surrendered herself to the new delight of the heavy hand. He re-entered the long water lane in the cleft of the mountain, and she did not speak for some moments, but his eyes held hers and he knew of what she was thinking.

"I wonder if you always will do what I tell you," he said at length. She recovered herself as soon as he spoke.

"Too much power is not good for any man! Nothing would induce me to assure you that you held my destiny in your hands, even did you!"

His face did not fall. "You are the most spirited woman in America, and nothing becomes you so much as obedience."

"Nevertheless--"

"Nevertheless, you always will do exactly what I tell you."

"Even if you told me to marry another man?"

"Ah! I never shall tell you to do that. On your head be that responsibility." He did not attempt to speak lightly. His face hardened, and his eyes, which could change in spite of their impenetrable quality, let go their fires for a moment.