Part 3

New York burst upon her eager senses as the first deafening crash of a full orchestra might salute the ears of a music-mad boy who had never heard anything more stimulating than the wheezy strains of a second-rate melodeon. Stunned but delighted, she gazed from the carriage windows upon the crowds, the stores, and the elevated railway, and thought that now she was seeing the world.

Vivian went to the Windsor, and as the youthful pair descended to the dining-room about seven o'clock and told a servant at the door that they wanted "supper," the lofty head waiter in condescending admiration, swooped down and led them to the extreme rear of the room, where, ranged in close proximity, were four other bridal couples as newly made as themselves.

But Amanda had come down in a white lawn gown profusely trimmed with pink satin ribbon, and heavy gold bracelets on her arms, bare to the elbow. The other brides wore walking suits and bonnets, with the exception of one, whose gown was of rich brocade, and whose supercilious face was set off by the most unapproachable coiffure Amanda had ever seen.

She had quick perceptions, and was keenly alive to any defect in her own appearance, and in ten minutes she suffered all the agony that would be felt by a finished woman of the world who had inadvertently worn full dress to a reception demanding bonnets. Yet, to the first test her metal rang true. With heightened color she went through the form of dining, and Vivian, whose sensibilities were as keen as hers and whose self-love was greater, took note of certain differences between his young wife and the other women, and felt himself aggrieved by her lack of taste. It was too soon, and he was too tender toward her for him to betray intentionally this slight annoyance. But an admitted cause of irritation is like the first rip in one's apparel; every movement that touches the rent extends it until the garment falls into rags.

Vivian had permitted himself the latitude of secret fault-finding, and from this to the next step it was easy.

Their first quarrel came within a week. The wonder is not that it came so soon, but that it was deferred so long. Yet, the immediate cause was absurdly trivial. They had arranged to drive to Clairmont and lunch in company with some friends of Vivian. But when the morning came he felt averse to carrying out the program. Perhaps his head ached, or he had slept ill, or the discovery that his trunk key was missing annoyed him unduly. But anyway he was out of tone.

One o'clock found him stretched out on the couch in their room yawning discontentedly over the _Herald_. Amanda, flitting about, suddenly became aware when her toilet was half made that he had not begun to get ready.

"If you don't hurry up I'll go off and leave you--lazy fellow!" she cried. "They talk about women being always the ones to keep people waiting. I'm sure it's the other way. I'm always ready for everything before you."

"I'm not going," said Vivian abruptly, directing a scowl toward the wall paper.

They had now been married eight days. A certain French author, renowned for his biting epigrams, remarks: "I do not believe there ever was a marriage in the world, even the union of a tiger and a panther, which would not pretend to perfect happiness for at least fifteen days after the marriage ceremony."

In this case was neither tiger nor panther; only a young man who had always lorded it prettily over the women in his family, and a girl who had been brought up to expect much deference. Perhaps in France it might have taken fifteen days for the glamour to wear off. But in America emotions exhaust themselves rapidly. Amanda, standing with one gloved hand stretched out before her, seemingly intent upon fastening the buttons, had begun to reflect.

"You ain't well," she observed coldly. "Probably you ate too much pie last night."

Now, among the trifles that grate upon the masculine mind, is having an indisposition referred to gastronomic indulgence. At such times a man is apt to consider that a wife but poorly replaces a mother.

"Amanda, I wish you would learn that all varieties of pastry don't come under the head of 'pie.' And I wish you wouldn't say 'ain't.' It's deucedly countrified."

"Oh," said Amanda. She deliberately took off her gloves and hat, and sat down upon an ottoman near the couch. Her color had arisen, and her black eyes had an ominous sparkle. "Is there anything else you wish?" She asked this aggressively. Her tone suggested that she had not forgotten that episode of the fight in the barn that lay a dozen years back. She was quite as ready to stand upon the defensive now as she had been then. But when women stand sentinel their guns go off inadvertently.

"I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself, Vivian Thomas!" then said Amanda. She felt that he ought to be ashamed; that his display of petulance had occurred at least a fortnight too soon; that aside from the general fact that she was in the right, as usual, he had put himself in the exceptional attitude of ill-treating a bride and trying to spoil her pleasure during the tour avowedly taken to give her pleasure.

"What of?" asked Vivian, shutting his eyes.

"Of the way you're acting," promptly answered Amanda. "If you were a little boy you'd deserve a whipping. As you're supposed to be a man----"

"Only supposed to be?" sarcastically put in the depreciated young gentleman.

"Well, _act_ like a man, then!" said Amanda in a biting tone.

"You're acting like a shrew," he returned, not entirely without reason, for the girl-wife had worked herself up to quite a pretty rage. Yet, as is plain, the blame was his, and in his heart he knew it. But since he had evoked a display of temper he had a mind to bring her to the stool of repentance. As well now as later.

Amanda, upon her side was reminded that Vivian's mother had spoiled him, and she fancied that the time had come for her to establish the supremacy over him that was essential to the happiness of both. So mixed are the motives that direct any one of our actions that it is possible there lay side by side with this lofty determination of the spirited young woman a wish to prove her husband; to find out if he had strength of character sufficient to hold his own against her and bring her to the point he evidently aimed toward, of coaxing him into good humor. There was no suggestion of any such weakness in her next words.

"It's no use to talk sense to you," she remarked, as if considering ways and means. "Because you haven't got common sense. Ma always said that."

One can pardon reproaches provoked by the occasion, but a deliberate accusation delivered at second hand has the weight of society behind it. And the affront was the greater in this instance, in that Vivian had considered "Aunt Nellie" his firm friend. He turned a trifle pale, and rising to his feet began walking slowly up and down the floor. After a few strides he paused in front of Amanda and said:

"I guess your mother was right--if she meant I hadn't good sense when I wanted to marry you. I don't know as I've ever shown myself much of a fool, otherwise."

And then--it was only eight days since the ceremony, and they were both so young--somehow the quarrel died out, and they patched up a peace, and went to Clairmont after all, in a great hurry, and with spirits considerably ruffled. But neither of them enjoyed the day.

After that a great many things went wrong. There was money enough to pay their expenses for a month or so, but none to waste; and they wasted it. Accustomed to the use of carriages, as a matter of course neither of them thought of economizing in this line, until confronted with an appalling livery-bill. They did not know how to order a dinner _à la carte_, until they learned by costly experience, and the fees they bestowed upon the servants, although seemingly a trifle at the time, were matters of grave moment when the sum total of their expenditures for the month came under discussion.

It had been the plan to remain away six weeks, but upon the thirtieth day Vivian came up to his wife, who was talking with some other ladies upon the porch of the Grand Union Hotel--they were then at Saratoga--and said abruptly:

"Dear, can I speak with you a minute?"

Rather alarmed, Amanda accompanied him to a retired spot, and put herself in a listening attitude. It was an awkward minute for Vivian. He was the soul of generosity, and nothing gratified him more than to give to others pleasure, when it cost him no effort. Yet here he was in a deuce of a hole, and under the necessity of making a humiliating explanation to the person whom of all others he found it hard to confess to.

"Well?" said Amanda, rather impatiently, as he fidgeted about without saying anything.

"Well, my--dearest," said poor Vivian, with pathos, turning out an empty pocket, "we are in a fix. We've spent money a little too fast, and have only this left!" And he held up to view a five-dollar bill, and two silver quarters.

Amanda gave a gasp, and then collected her mental forces. She had a fund of practical common sense in her nature, and now when she summoned it for the first time it responded to call. The first impression her husband's confidence made upon her was to arouse a slight contempt, not attended to at the instant, but unconsciously stored away to be used on other occasions. When our friends gracefully ignore our blunders and follies is it to be supposed that they have really been blind to what they gave no evidence of perceiving? As well hope that the stone we flung into the wayside stream was totally lost when the ripples ceased, and that it found no home in the bed beneath.

"I have some money," said Amanda, hastily. "Do we owe for hotel bills?"

"No, I've just settled up everything. It was that opened my eyes. I had no idea I was so nearly broke."

"Then we can get home--I reckon--if we start right off. I have fifty dollars that mother gave me, the last thing. For 'extras,' she said. Perhaps she meant this."

She could not help the little fling. It was too hard to use this money, which she had reserved for a special purpose.

Vivian bit his lip and turned his back for a moment; but what was the use of making a fuss now? He was thankful upon the whole to get out of a bad scrape. It wouldn't be Amanda if she didn't say something unpleasant.

Ah, Vivian, has it come to this already? It seems the scars of certain little passages at arms have not faded away.

Upon a warm, sunshiny day in June they came home. Benvenew was in order, owing to the efforts of the two mothers, and Mrs. Powell's four-seated wagon was waiting at the little station, and her genial face smiled a welcome from the back seat.

"Darling mother!" murmured Amanda, yielding to the clasp of her mother's arms, and for one instant feeling as if the past month with its bewildering experiences, was all a wild dream, and she a child again, careless, irresponsible, and light hearted. The familiar sights, of which she had been weary not long ago, were charming; the smiles and nods from people they met warmed a heart that had been chilled and affrighted many times since she had left her Virginia home. Here, in her own clime, she was a princess, with friends to love her and listen to her with respect and sympathy.

They forded a stream and came to the old mill, standing half-buried in the marsh. Part of the roof was off and the rank, clambering vine of the wild grape had reached up and hung over the sides in graceful festoons. Their appearance started up a number of yellow butterflies that had been fluttering over the stream, and now rose in the air like a shower of golden sparks.

"How beautiful it all is," said Amanda. "I am glad to be home again. But where is Alex taking us?"

"To Benvenew, of course," Mrs. Powell answered. "Why, Mandy, dear, didn't you want to go right there, or would you ruther go home fur to-night? We thought probably you'd both prefer--but the laws knows I'd be glad to have you both come back with me."

"Why, ma, I forgot!" said Amanda. "And so I'm to begin my housekeeping right off. I don't know enough about it to take care of that big place."

"You'll have Ellen Digby to cook," said Mrs. Powell anxiously, "and little Admonia."

"Admonia!" exclaimed Vivian, looking around in some indignation from the front seat. "I can't have that harum-scarum creature on the place."

"You know Ellen really is a good servant," Mrs. Powell explained, apologetically. "And she won't come without the child. Admonia's twelve now, and she's really not so bad. She can be trained. There wasn't anybody else we could lay hands on."

"Never mind, ma, Admonia 'll do well enough," interposed Amanda. "She's a funny little thing, and I rather like her."

"Ex--actly!" Vivian observed, with an accent lately acquired. "I imagine Amanda training anybody."

We all have our secret pet vanities which undiscriminating persons, seeing only our surface beauties, are perpetually wounding. Amanda's vanity was a wish to be acknowledged sensible and practical. Beautiful, she knew herself to be, and to hear of that was an old story; but her executive ability was not yet proved, and she was very sensitive upon this point. And herein Vivian blundered. It did not occur to him that he hurt her feelings by depreciating her executive powers. He had been used to regarding her as a pretty play-thing, something to be petted and disciplined alternately. That she had an ambition to be something more was what he had not yet discovered. Perhaps the idea was one that he would have to blindly grope his way toward; for "we can only comprehend that of which we have the beginnings in ourselves," and in the handsome, suave, popular young Virginian the germ of common sense and good judgment was small; so very much smaller than his little world believed it to be.

"Mandy is a leetle apt to spoil the young niggers," said her peace-making mother. "But then she wuz always so powerful fond o' children."

Amanda patted her mother's shoulder, while a far-away look came into her eyes as she fixed them on a distant hill, where the newly plowed earth lay darkly red against the tender sky-tints, and the sun swept down upon one spot, covered with young wheat, and spread over it like the caressing touch of a golden hand.

She was passionately fond of children--this fiery, tender-hearted woman, who showed so many prickles to the grown people who approached her incautiously. And Vivian was not. So much the more diplomatic, so much the more polished, so full of gentleness toward women and forbearance toward their troublesome little ones--was it possible that it was he who failed in patience and kindness, and the forward Amanda who must be credited with the possession of both, when helpless hands were stretched out toward her? Fauquier County would have shaken its head over such a question. Fauquier County said that Vivian Thomas was the mildest and best humored young man in the world except when things happened that he had a right to be angry about; but that Amanda Powell was rather too spunky and high-strung for any man except a saint to get along with peaceably. For her mother's sake--and also, a little in spite of its preternaturally wise judgment--for the sake of certain winning ways of her own, the county people liked her; but Vivian, they adored.

And so, overshadowed by this disadvantage, of which she was not quite unconscious, the young wife descended from the wagon, helped out as gracefully and tenderly as he had helped her out of another vehicle the day we first saw her, by her courteous husband, and entered the door of her new home.

The first person they laid eyes upon was the shock-headed, wild-eyed little creature called Admonia, who dropped a flower-pot she was carrying through the hall, and without stopping to pick up the pieces, raced to the kitchen, shouting:

"Mis' Mandy and Mr. Vivian done come home, fur shore! Whoopy! Ain't I glad! Now, we'uns gwine ter have times!"

Admonia was a prophet.

II.

"ADMONIA!" called a woman's voice, and in a twinkling the owner followed and stopped in the last one of the long row of outbuildings that spread beyond the dining-room of Benvenew.

It was a mere shed, enclosed on three sides and open at the end, the sky showing through holes in the roof. The rough boarding that answered for a floor was broken in many places, and dirt and confusion reigned everywhere. Upon a stool sat a shock-headed, wild-eyed darkey girl of twenty or so, plucking the feathers from a couple of fowls, and throwing them upon the floor. Her heavy under-lip fell and her eyes rolled as the imperative tones of her mistress smote upon her ear, and she arose quickly, a cloud of feathers falling from her unspeakably dirty dress, and stood dangling a half plucked fowl, her dark brown face so immersed in gloom that all the features seemed to have run together, the whites of her eyes and her broad yellow teeth giving her the appearance of a bank of much soiled and partly melted snow.

"Admonia," said her mistress, pausing in the doorway, "where is Nellie?"

"Laws, Mis' Mandy, I dunno. I hain't saw de chile sence Mr. Thomas tuk her."

"When was that?" Amanda's voice had a peculiar ring which the girl recognized, and knew the cause of. Her dusky face softened into an expression of sympathy, and with the fluency of her race she uttered the first consoling thought that came into her head.

"Now, Mis' Mandy, honey, don' yo' tak' on--li'le Nellie she all safe 'nuff; her pa done tak' her wid him up ter he room on'y lettle bit ago. She was pesterin' him ter show her de stuffed owl what he done brung home frum Ryburg, an' he jes tuk her wid him ter show her. He--he all right, Mis' Mandy."

The last sentence was spoken in a lower tone, and the harum-scarum girl, whom everyone except her mother and her mistress considered irreclaimably rough and wild, averted her eyes from Amanda's pale face, and sitting down again began industriously plucking her fowls.

Without another word, but with one sharply indrawn breath that left her lips white, Amanda entered the house and ascended the stairs. As she drew near a rear room on the second floor sounds reached her ear that brought a flaming color into her cheeks and made her hasten her steps. The frightened, sobbing tones of a little child came from behind the closed door of her husband's room, mingled with a half articulate but apparently angry growl of a deep masculine voice.

Amanda turned the handle of the door with an expression that boded ill for the person who had evoked it. The door resisted her pressure. It was locked. Then, in a second, all the smouldering anxiety of the mother's heart leaped into furious flame.

"Open this door!" she commanded. There was no answer. The sobbing ceased.

"Mother!" called the child.

Amanda shook the door and pushed against it with all her strength. "Open this door, or I'll break it down!" So her grandfather might have thundered out an order to some refractory sailor on board his own good ship. The only reply was an oath. The man in his sober senses addressed by any one, especially a woman, in such a manner, must have been mild indeed, had he refrained from swearing. But a mother, maddened by such fears as lacerated this woman's heart, takes nothing into account but her own feelings. With swift steps she turned into her own room, brought thence a large and heavy hammer and gave the door the strongest blow her arms were capable of throwing against it. Another--and another. The lock yielded, and Amanda, holding the hammer under her left arm, flew into the room.

Could anything excuse or justify such violence in a wife? Would not the man who had met force with force and turning upon her, knocked her down, have been not only cleared but applauded by any court in a Christian country? And in Virginia, of all other places, the laws are made for the protection of men; and public sentiment is in harmony with the State's code.

Vivian Thomas must then either be despised by those of us who see him leaning against the wardrobe in a passive attitude, while the woman who had vowed to love, honor, and obey him, ten years before, effected this headlong entrance into his own sacred stronghold, or he must be considered a saint, enduring with superhuman patience the tantrums of a domineering wife. The critic may take his choice of opinions; only, let us note that the handsome man now averting his eyes from Amanda's scorching glance is not exactly the frank, fresh-looking fellow who brought his young bride to Benvenew. All the graceful bearing, the nobility of outline, and that indescribable beauty Nature confers upon her favorite sons, are still here. The silky brown mustache droops over sensitive red lips with tender, downward curves; the white brow is placid, and the nostrils delicate and fine. But the entire effect is different. A slight alteration of a few details has changed everything. The dark eyes have faded to a dull hazel, and the whites have taken on a yellowish tinge. The cheeks have rather too much color, the flush extending to the nose. In a word, Vivian's countenance, while retaining the refinement that seems a part of the very flesh of some organisms and independent of those shaping forces that ennoble or mar the faces of most people, betrayed some deterioration of the whole man.

He seemed rather embarrassed than enraged as Amanda, panting from her exertions and trembling from the terrible tension of her nerves, swept past him and picked up a little girl cowering in the corner.

Without staying for another look or word she clasped the child in her arms and left the room; the very atmosphere charged with the contempt that emanated from her haughty spirit and which Vivian felt, even in his dulled condition, to the core of his being.

She carried the little girl to her own room, and with hurried motions bathed her face, changed her dress, and put on her hat and cloak, all the while uttering low, endearing words, and pressing tender kisses on the little upturned face which was lovely as an angel's, with great, dark eyes looking out from a thicket of golden-brown curls.

"Are we going to grandma's, mother?" Nellie asked, as Amanda changed her wrapper for a black silk dress and took up her bonnet and gloves. Once before, about a year ago, after a scene between father and mother, which had deeply impressed itself upon the child's memory, she had been taken in the carriage to her grandmother's, and had remained there a week, her mother with her. It had been a week of rare delight, shadowed only by two things: her grandmother's remarkable gravity, and the indisposition of her adored mother.

"Yes, darling," Amanda answered hastily, as she threw some things into a satchel and arising from her kneeling posture before a chest of drawers, left the room with her child, locking the door behind her.

They went straight to the barn, where Amanda hitched up old Queenie, her own horse, to a rickety old phaeton, and drove out into the yard, Admonia holding the gate open and sniffling audibly as she muttered:

"Goo'bye, Mis' Mandy; goo'bye, li'le Nellie. Wish't I wuz gwine wif ye, so I does."

"Be a good girl, Admonia," said her mistress, bending down and giving the black hand a cordial shake. "Look after things as well as you can. You and your mother are all I have to depend on now, you know, since Pete is gone."

"Good-bye, Admonia!" called Nellie's liquid tones. "Please take care of my Bantam hen!"