Chapter III.

Chez Lui.

Miss Hamilton did not go down to dinner the first day; but when she heard Mr. Granger come in, sent a line to him, excusing herself till evening, on the plea that she needed rest. The truth was, however, that she shrank from first meeting the family at table, a place which allows so little escape from embarrassment.

Her door had been left ajar; and in a few minutes she heard a silken rustling on the stairs, then a faint tap; and at her summons there entered a small, lily-faced woman who looked like something that might have grown out of the pallid March evening. The silver-gray of her trailing dress, the uncertain tints of her hair, deepening from flaxen to pale brown, even the cobwebby Mechlin laces she wore, so thin as to have no color of their own--all were like light, cool shadows. This lady entered with a dainty timidity which by no means excluded the most perfect self-possession, but rather indicated an extreme solicitude for the person she visited.

"Do I intrude?" she asked in a soft, hesitating way. "Mr. Granger thought I might come up. We feared that you were ill."

Margaret was annoyed to feel herself blushing. There was something keen in this lady's beautiful violet eyes, underneath their superficial expression of anxious kindness.

"I am not ill, only tired," she replied. "I meant to go down awhile after dinner."

"I am Mrs. Lewis," the stranger announced, seating herself by the bedside. "My husband and I, and my husband's niece, Aurelia Lewis, live here. We don't call it boarding, you know. I hope that you will like us."

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This wish was expressed in a manner so _naïve_ and earnest that Margaret could but smile in making answer that she was quite prepared to be pleased with everything, and that her only fear was lest she might disturb the harmony of their circle--not by being disagreeable in herself, but simply in being one more.

With a gesture at once graceful and kind, Mrs. Lewis touched Margaret's hand with her slight, chilly fingers. "You are the one more whom we want," she said; "we have been rejoicing over the prospect of having you with us. You do not break, you complete the circle."

Her quick ear had caught a lingering tone of pain; and she had already found something pathetic in that thin face and those languid eyes. Miss Hamilton did not appear to be a person likely to disturb the empire which this lady prided herself on exercising over their household.

"I know very little about the family," Margaret remarked. "Mr. Granger mentioned some names. I am not sure if they were all. And men never think of the many trifles we like to be told."

Her visitor sighed resignedly. "Certainly not--the sublime creatures! It is the difference between fresco and miniature, you know. Let me enlighten you a little. Besides those of us whom you have seen, there are only Mr. Southard, my husband, and Aurelia. We consider ourselves a very happy family. Of course, being human, we have occasional jars; but there is always the understanding that our real friendship is unimpaired by them. And we defend each other like Trojans from any outside attack. We try to manage so as to have but one angry at a time, the others acting as peacemakers. The only one who may trouble you is my husband. I am anxious concerning him and you."

With her head a little on one side, the lady contemplated her companion with a look of pretty distress.

"Forewarned is forearmed," suggested Miss Hamilton.

"Why, you see," her visitor said confidentially, "Mr. Lewis is one of those provoking beings who take a mischievous delight in misrepresenting themselves, not for the better, but the worse. If they see a person leaning very much in one way, they are sure to lean very much the other way. Mr. Southard calls my husband an infidel, whatever that is. There certainly are a great many things which he does not believe. But one half of his scepticism is a mere pretence to tease the minister. I hope you won't be vexed with him. You won't when you come to know him. Sometimes I don't altogether blame him. Of course we all admire Mr. Southard in the most fatiguing manner; but it cannot be denied that he does interpret and perform his duties in the preraphaelite style, With a pitiless adherence to chapter and verse. Still, I often think that much of his apparent severity may be in those chiselled features of his. One is occasionally surprised by some sign of indulgence in him, some touch of grace or tenderness. But even while you look, the charm, without disappearing, freezes before your eyes, like spray in winter. I don't know just what to think of him; but I suspect that he has missed his vocation, that he was made for a monk or a Jesuit. It would never do to breathe such a thought to him, though. He thinks that the Pope is Antichrist."

"And isn't he?" calmly asked the granddaughter of the Rev. Doctor Hamilton.

Mrs. Lewis put up her hand to refasten a bunch of honey-sweet tuberoses that were slipping from the glossy coils of her hair, and by the gesture concealed a momentary amused twinkle of her eyes.

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"Oh! I dare say!" she replied lightly. "But such a dear, benignant old antichrist as he is! Ages ago, when we were in Rome, I was in the crowd before St. Peter's when the pope gave the Easter benediction. Involuntarily I knelt with the rest; and really, Miss Hamilton, that seemed to me the only benediction I ever received. I did not understand my own emotion. It was quite unexpected. Perhaps it was something in that intoxicating atmosphere which is only half air; the other half is soul."

Margaret was silent. She had no wish to express any displeasure; but she was shocked to hear the mystical Babylon spoken of with toleration, and that by a descendant of the puritans.

Mrs. Lewis sat a moment with downcast eyes, aware of, and quietly submitting to the scrutiny of the other--by no means afraid of it, quite confident, probably, that the result would be agreeable.

This lady was about forty years of age, delicate rather than beautiful, with a frosty sparkle about her. Her manner was gentleness itself; but one soon perceived something fine and sharp beneath; a blue arrowy glance that carried home a phrase otherwise light as a feather, a slight emphasis that made the more obvious meaning of a word glance aside, an unnecessary suavity of expression that led to suspicion of some pungent hidden meaning. But with all her airy malice there was much of genuine honesty and kind feeling. She was like a faceted gem, showing her little glittering shield at every turn; but still a gem.

"Aurelia is quite impatient to welcome you," she resumed softly. "You cannot fail to like her, when you happen to think of it. She is sweet and beautiful all through.

"Now I will leave you to take your rest, and read the note of which Mr. Granger made me the bearer. I hope to see you this evening."

Margaret looked after the little lady as she glided away, glancing back from the door with a friendly smile and nod, then disappeared, soundless save for the rustling of her dress. She listened to that faint silken whisper on the stairs, then to the soft shutting of the parlor door, two pushes before it latched. Then she read her note. It was but a line. "Rest as long as you wish to. But when you are able to come down, we all want to see you."

She went down to the parlor after dinner, and found the whole family there. There was yet so much of daylight that one gentleman, sitting in a western window, was reading the evening paper by it; but the stream of gaslight that came in from some room at the end of the long _suite_ made a red-golden path across the darkened back-parlor, and caught brightly here and there on the carving of a picture, a curve of bronze or marble, or the gilding of a book-cover, and glimmered unsteadily over a winged Mercury that leaned out of the vague dusk and sparkle, tiptoe, at point of flight, with lifted face and glinting eyes.

Mr. Granger stood near the door by which Margaret entered, evidently on the watch for her; and at sight of him that slight nervous embarrassment inseparable from her circumstances, and from the unstrung condition of her mind and body, instantly died away. To her he was strength, courage, and protection. Shielded by his friendship, she feared nothing.

Mrs. Lewis and Dora met her like old friends; that florid gentleman with English side-whiskers she guessed to be Mr. Lewis; and she recognized that fine profile clear against the opaline west.

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Mr. Southard came forward at once, scarcely waiting for an introduction.

"A granddaughter of the Rev. Doctor Hamilton?" he said with emphasis. "I am happy to see you."

Miss Hamilton received tranquilly his cordial salutation, and mentally consigned it to the manes of her grandfather.

Mr. Lewis got up out of his armchair, and bowed lowly. "Madam," he said with great deliberation, "I do not in the least care who your grandfather was. I am glad to see _you_."

"Thank you!" said Margaret.

The gentleman settled rather heavily into his chair again. He was one of those who would rather sit than stand. Margaret turned to meet his niece, who was offering her hand, and murmuring some word of welcome. She looked at Aurelia Lewis with delight, perceiving then what Mrs. Lewis had meant in saying that her husband's niece was sweet and beautiful all through. The girl radiated loveliness. She was a blonde, with deep ambers and browns in her hair and eyes, looking like some translucent creature shone through by rich sunset lights too soft for brilliancy. She was large, suave, a trifle sirupy, perhaps, but sweet to the core, had no salient points in her disposition, but a charmingly liquid way of adapting herself to the angles of others. If the looks and manners of Mrs. Lewis were faceted, those of her husband's niece were what jewelers' call _en cabochon_. What Aurelia said was nothing. She was not a reportable person. What she _was_ was delicious.

"I remember Doctor Hamilton very well," Mr. Lewis said when the ladies had finished their compliments. "He was one of those men who make religion respectable. He held some pretty hard doctrines; but he believed every one of 'em, and held 'em with a grip. The last time I saw him was seven or eight years ago, just before his death. They had up their everlasting petition before the legislature here, for the abolition of capital punishment; and a committee was appointed to attend to the matter. I went up to one of their hearings. There were Phillips, Pierpont, Andrew, Spear, and a lot of other smooth-tongued, soft-hearted fellows who didn't want the poor, dear murderers to be hanged; and on the other side were Doctor Hamilton with his eyes and his cane, common sense, Moses and the decalogue. They had rather a rough time of it. Andrew called your grandfather an old fogy, over some one else's shoulders; and Phillips tilted over Moses, tables and all, with that sharp lance of his. But Doctor Hamilton stood there as firm as a rock, and beat them all out. He had the glance of an eagle, and a way of swinging his arm about, when he was in earnest, that looked as if it wouldn't take much provocation to make him hit straight out. Phillips said something that he didn't like, and the doctor stamped at him. Well, the upshot of the matter was, that capital punishment was not abolished that year, thanks to one tough, intrepid old man."

"My grandfather was very resolute," said Margaret, with a slight, proud smile.

"Yes," answered Mr. Lewis, "he would have made a prime soldier, if he hadn't made the mistake of being a doctor of divinity."

"The church needed his authoritative speech," said Mr. Southard, with decision. "To the minister of God belongs the voice of denunciation as well as the voice of prayer."

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Mr. Lewis gave his moustache an impatient twitch.

Mr. Granger seized the first opportunity to speak aside to Margaret. "You like these people? You are contented?" he asked hastily.

"Yes, and yes," she replied.

"You think that you will feel at home when you have become better acquainted with them?" he pursued.

"It seems to me that I have always lived here," she answered, smiling. "There is not the least strangeness. Indeed, surprising things, if they are pleasant, never surprise me. I am always expecting miracles. It is only painful or trivial events which find me incredulous and ill at ease."

The chandeliers were lighted, and the windows closed; but, according to their pleasant occasional custom, the curtains were not drawn for a while yet. If any person in the street took pleasure in seeing this family gathering, they were welcome.

Mrs. Lewis broke a few sprays from a musk-vine over-starred with yellow blossoms, and twined them into a wreath as she slowly approached the two who were standing near a book-case. "_Vive le roi!_" she said, lifting the wreath to the marble brows of a Shakespeare that stood on the lower shelf.

Margaret glanced along a row of blue and brown covers, and exclaimed, "My Brownings! all hail! there they are!"

"You also!" said Mrs. Lewis, with a grimace. "Own, now, that they jolt horribly--that the Browning Pegasus is a racker, and that the Browning road up Parnassus is macadamized with--well, diamonds, if you will, but diamonds in the rough. True, the hoofs do make dents; they do dash over the ground with a four-footed trampling; but--" a shrug and a shiver completed the sentence.

"Mrs. Browning needs a lapidary," Mr. Granger said; "but her husband's constipated style is a necessity. His books are books of quintessences. At first I thought him suggestive; but soon perceived that he was stimulating instead. He seems to have brushed a subject. Look again, and you will see that he has exhausted it."

Margaret read the titles of the books, and in them read, also, something of the minds of her new associates. There were a few shining names from each of the great nations, and a good selection of English and American authors, the patriarchs in their places. She had a word for each, but thought, "I wonder why I like Lowell, almost in silence, yet like him best."

Near this was another case of books, all Oriental, or relating to the Orient. There were the Talmud and the Koran; there were hideous mythologies full of propitiatory prayers to the devil. There were _Vathek, The Arabian Nights, Ferdousi_, and a hundred others. Over this case hung an oval water-color of sea and sky with a rising sun blazing at the horizon, lighting with flickering gold a path across the blue, liquid expanse, and flooding with light the ethereal spaces. On a scroll beneath this was inscribed, "Ex Oriente Lux."

"Light and hasheesh," said Mr. Southard laughingly. "Don't linger there too long."

Mr. Granger called Dora to him. "What has my little girl been learning to-day?" he asked.

The little one's eyes flashed with a sudden, glorious recollection. "O papa! I can spell cup."

The father was suitably astonished.

"Is it possible? Let me hear."

The child raised her eyebrows, and played the coquette with her erudition. "You spell it," she said tauntingly.

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Mr. Granger leaned back in his chair, and knitted his brows in intense study. "T-a-s-s-e, cup."

"No-o, papa," said the fairy at his knee.

"T-a-z-z-a, cup!" he essayed again.

Dora shook her flossy curls.

"T-a-z-a, cup!" he said desperately.

The child looked at him with tears in her eyes.

"Oh!" he said, "c-u-p, cup!" at which she screamed with delight.

"How blue it sounds," said Margaret. "Like a Canterbury bell with a handle to it."

A tray was brought in with coffee, which was Dora's signal to go to bed. She took an affectionate leave of all, but hid her face in Margaret's neck in saying good night.

"Who was the little girl in the picture?" she whispered.

"It was you, dear," was the reply.

"I keeped thinking of it this ever so long," said the child.

Her father always accompanied her to the foot of the stairs; and the two went out together, Dora clinging to his hand, which she held against her cheek, and he looking down upon her with a fond smile.

Margaret shrank with a momentary spasm of pain and terror, as she looked after them. How fearful is that clinging love which human beings have for each other! how terrible, since, sooner or later, they must part; since, at any instant, the hand of fate may be outstretched to snatch them asunder!

"Are you ill?" whispered Aurelia, touching her arm.

Margaret started, and recollected herself with an effort; then smiled without an effort; for the door opened, and Mr. Granger came in again, glancing first at her, then coming to sit near her.

"I have found out the origin of coffee," Mrs. Lewis said. "It is, or is capable of being, a Mohammedan legend. I will tell you. When Mother Eve, to whom be peace! fell, after her sin, from the seventh heaven, and was precipitated to earth, as she slipped over the verge of Paradise, she instinctively flung out her arm, and caught at a shrub with milk-white blossoms that grew there. It broke in her hand. She fell into Arabia, near Mocha. The branch that fell with her took root and grew, and had blossoms with five petals, as white as the beautiful Mother's five fingers. And that's the history of coffee. Aura, give me a cup without delay. That story was salt."

"Why should we not have sentiments with so wonderful a draught?" Mr. Granger said. "Propose anything. Shall I begin? I have been reading the European news. Victor Emmanuel is dawning like a sun over Italy. I propose Rome, the dead lion, with honey for Samson."

Mr. Lewis pushed out his underlip. He always scouted at republicans, red or black.

"I follow you," he said immediately, with a sly glance at Mr. Southard. "Rome, the rock that does not crack, though all the bores blast it."

There was a momentary pause, during which the eyes of the minister scintillated. Then he exclaimed, "Luther, the Moses at the stroke of whose rod the rock was rent, and the gospel waters loosed."

"Ah! Luther!" endorsed Mr. Lewis with an affectation of enthusiasm. "Greater than Nimrod, he built a Babel which babbles to the ends of the earth."

Mr. Southard flashed out, "Yes; and every tongue can spell the word Bible, sir!"

"And deny its plainest teachings," was the retort; "and vilify the hand that preserved it!"

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"Now, Charles," interposed Mrs. Lewis, touching her husband's arm, "why will you say what you do not mean, just for the sake of being disagreeable? You know, Mr. Southard, that he cares no more for Rome than he does for Pekin, and knows no more about it, indeed. The fact is, he has the greatest respect for our church--may I say _militant_?"

"Sweet peacemaker!" exclaimed Mr. Lewis, delighted with the neat little sting at the end of his wife's speech.

Aurelia lifted her cup, and interposed with a laughing quotation:

"'Here's a health to all those that we love. Here's a health to all them that love us. Here's a health to all those that love them that love those that love them that love those that love us.'"

This was drunk with acclamations, and peace restored.

After a while Mr. Lewis managed, or happened, to find Margaret apart.

"I protest I never had a worse opinion of myself than I have tonight," he said. "There I had promised Louis and my wife to let religion alone, and not get up a skirmish with the minister for at least a week after you came; and I meant to keep my promise. But you see what my resolutions are worth. I am sincerely sorry if I have vexed you."

He looked so sorry, and spoke so frankly, that Margaret could not help giving him a pleasant answer, though she had been displeased.

"The fact is," he went on, lowering his voice, "I have seen so much cant, and hypocrisy, and inconsistency in religion that it has disgusted me with the whole business. I may go too far. I don't doubt that there are honest men and women in the churches; but to my mind they are few and far between. I've nothing to say against Mr. Southard, and I don't want any one else to speak against him. I say uglier things to his face than I would say behind his back. He's a good man, according to his light; but you must permit me to say that it is a Bengal-light to my eyes. I can't stand it. It turns me blue all through."

"Perhaps you do not understand him," Margaret suggested. "May be you haven't given him a chance to explain."

"I tried to be fair," was the reply. "Now Southard," said I, "tell me what you want me to believe, and I'll believe if I can." Well, the first thing he told me was, that I must give up my reason. 'By George, I won't!' said I, and there was an end to the catechism. Of course, if I set my reason aside, I might be made to believe that chalk is cheese. Perhaps I am stubborn and material, as he says; but I am what God made me; and I won't pretend to be anything else. I believe that there is somewhere a way for us all--a way that we shall know is right, when once we get into it. These fishers of men ought to remember that whales are not caught with trout-hooks, and that it isn't the whale's fault if there's a good deal of blubber to get through before you reach the inside of him. St. Paul let fly some pretty sharp harpoons. I can't get 'em out of me for my life. And, for another kind of man, I like Beecher. His bait isn't painted flies, but fish, a piece of yourself. But the trouble with him is, there's no barb on his catch. You slip off as easily as you get on."

Margaret was glad when the others interposed and put an end to this talk. To her surprise, she had nothing to reply to Mr. Lewis's objections. And not only that, but, while he spoke, she perceived in her own mind a faint echo to his dissatisfaction. Of course it must be wrong, and she was glad to have the conversation put an end to.

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They had music, Aurelia playing with a good deal of taste some perfectly harmless pieces. While she listened, Miss Hamilton's glance wandered about the rooms, finding them quite to her taste. The first impertinent gloss of everything had worn off, and each article had mellowed into its place, like the colors of an old picture. There was none of that look we sometimes see, of everything having been dipped into the same paint-pot. The furniture was rich in material and beautiful in shape; the upholstery a heavy silk and wool, the colors deep and harmonious, nothing too fine for use. The dull amber of the walls was nearly covered with pictures, book-cases, cabinets, and brackets; there was every sort of table, from the two large central ones with black marble tops, piled with late books and periodicals, to the tiny teapoys that could be lifted on a finger, marvels of gold, and japanning, and ingenious Chinese perspective. On the black marble mantel-piece near her were a pair of silver candelebra, heirlooms in the family, and china vases of glowing colors, purple, and rose, and gold. There was more bronze than parian; there were curtains wherever curtains could be; and withal, there was plentiful space to get about, and for the ladies to display their trains.

All this her first glance took in with a sense of pleasure. Then she looked deeper, and perceived friendship, ease, security, all that make the soul of home. Deeper yet, then, to the vague longing for a love, a security, a rest exceeding the earthly. One who has suffered much can never again feel quite secure, but shrinks from delight almost as much as from pain.

She turned to Mr. Southard, who sat beside her. "I am thinking how miserably we are the creatures of circumstance," she said, in her earnestness forgetting how abrupt she might seem. "When we are troubled, everything is dark; when we are happy, everything that approaches casts its shadow behind, and shows a sunny front."

He regarded her kindly, pleased with her almost confidential manner. "There is but one escape from such slavery," he said. "When we set the sun of righteousness in the zenith of our lives, then shadows are annihilated, not hidden, but annihilated."

When Margaret went up-stairs that night, she knelt before her open window, and leaned out, feeling, rather than seeing, the brooding, starless sky, soft and shadowy, like wings over a nest. Her soul uplifted itself blindly, almost painfully, beating against its ignorance. There was something out of sight and reach, which she wanted to see and to touch. There was one hidden whom she longed to thank and adore.

"O brooding wings!" she whispered, stretching out her hands. "O father and mother-bird over the nest where the little ones lie in the sweet, sweet dark!"

Words failed. She knew not what to say. "I wish that I could pray!" she thought, tears overflowing her eyes.

Margaret did not know that she had prayed.