"Couldn't he enjoy his satisfaction at home, then? – it doesn't seem to depend at all upon your talking to him?"
"I talk to him when you are not here. You cannot always be here, you know, but he almost can, he lives so near. Lucian was always going to see him – don't you remember? He said he was like a mediæval finger-post; you must remember that."
Winthrop felt that he was sometimes required to remember a good deal.
He did not, however, have to remember Manuel, at least at present; Lucian not having discovered mediæval qualities in that handsome youth, Garda was content to let him remain where he was; this was the San Juan plantation, twenty miles away. He had been there some time. His mother said he was hunting.
"Yes, there are a number of pretty girls about there," remarked Dr. Kirby.
But Torres, who was jealous of no one, and whose patience and courteous certainty remained unmoved, continued to accompany Garda and Winthrop in their strolls up and down the live-oak avenue. He generally walked a little behind them; that gave him his sentinel air. Several yards behind him came Carlos Mateo; but Carlos affected not to belong to the party, he affected to be taking a stroll for his own amusement, like any other gentleman of leisure; he looked about him, and often stopped; he appeared to be admiring the beauties of nature.
And Garda talked on, never rapidly, her topic ever the same. Torres, of course, understood nothing of her monologues. And Winthrop? Winthrop suffered them.
CHAPTER XII
Of his reasons for pursuing this course, Margaret Harold knew more than any one else. For as Garda's devotion to Margaret remained unchanged, she talked to her as freely as she talked to Winthrop. She saw Winthrop oftener; but whenever she could pay a visit to Margaret, or whenever Margaret came down to East Angels, Garda's delight was to sit at her feet and talk of Lucian. The girl, indeed, had made an express stipulation with Winthrop that Margaret should be excepted from his decree of silence. "I must talk to Margaret," she said, "because I am so fond of her. The reason I like to talk to you is because you are a man, and therefore you can appreciate Lucian better."
"I should think it would be just the other way," observed Winthrop.
"Oh no; Margaret doesn't even see how beautiful he is, much less talk about it."
"And I like to talk about it so much!"
"You do it to please me," said Garda, gratefully. "I appreciate that."
"She tells me she talks to you – I mean, of course, about Lucian Spenser – just as she does to me," he said to Margaret one day; "she has chosen to confide her little secrets to you and me alone." Margaret was standing by a table in the eyrie's dining-room, arranging in two brown jugs a mass of yellow jessamine which she had brought in from the barrens. "Rather a strange choice," he went on, smiling a little as he thought of himself, and then of Margaret, reserved, taciturn, gentle enough, but (so he had always felt) cold and unsympathetic.
"Yes," assented Margaret. "What do you think the best way to receive it?" she added, going on with her combinations of green and gold.
"Not to bluff her off – to let her talk on. It is only a fancy, of course, a girl's fancy; but it needs an outlet, and we are a safe one, because we know how to take it – know what it amounts to."
"What does it amount to?"
"Nothing."
"Oh," murmured the woman at the table, rather protestingly.
"I mean that it will end in nothing, it will soon fade. But it shows that the child has imagination; Garda Thorne will love, some of these days; a real love."
"Yes; that requires imagination."
"My sentences were not connected, they did not describe each other. What I meant was that the way the child has gone into this – this little beginning – shows that she will be capable of deep feelings later on."
Margaret did not reply.
"There are plenty of excellent women who are quite incapable of them," pursued Winthrop, conscious that he had, as he expressed it to himself, taken the bit in his teeth again, but led on by the temptation which, more and more this winter, Margaret's controlled silences (they always seemed controlled) were becoming to him. "And the curious point is that they never suspect their own deficiencies; they think that if they bestow a prim, well-regulated little affection upon the man they honor with their choice, that is all that is necessary; certainly it is all that the man deserves. I don't know what we deserve; but I do know that we are not apt to be much moved by such affection as that. They are often very good mothers," he added, following here another of his tendencies, the desire to be just – a tendency which often brought him out at the end of a remark where people least expected.
"Don't you think that important?" said Margaret.
"Very. Only let them not, in addition, pretend to be what they are not."
"I don't think they do pretend."
"You're right, they're too self-complacent. They're quite satisfied with themselves as they are."
"If they are satisfied, they are very much to be envied," began Margaret.
"She's going to defend herself," thought Winthrop. "It's a wonder she hasn't done so before; to save my life, I don't seem to be able to resist attacking her."
But Margaret did not go on. She took up the last sprays and looked at them. "Then you think I had better let her talk on, without checking her," she said, returning to the original topic between them. "You think I had better not try to guide her?"
"Refused again!" thought Winthrop. "Guide her to what?" he said, aloud.
"Not to anything. Away – away from Lucian Spenser."
"Then you don't like him?" he said, questioningly.
"He is very handsome," answered Margaret, smiling.
"But that isn't what we're discussing, that isn't advice."
"Let her talk as she pleases – that is my advice; let her string out all her adjectives. My idea is that, let alone, it will soon exhale; opposition would force it into an importance which it does not in reality possess. Are you going?"
"Yes, I have finished. But I shall remember what you say." And she left the room, carrying the flowers with her.
Mrs. Thorne came up to Gracias, and called upon Mrs. Rutherford at the eyrie. Her visits there had always been frequent, but this one had the air of a visit of ceremony; it seemed intended as a formal expression of her chastened acquiescence in the northern gentleman's projects concerning East Angels.
"I have reserved the memories," she said, with expression.
"Yes, indeed; fond Memory brings to light, and so it will be with you, Mistress Thorne," said Betty, who was spending the afternoon with her Katrina; "you can always fall back on that, you know."
"Have you reserved old Pablo?" inquired Mrs. Rutherford. "He is a good deal of a memory, isn't he?"
"I have reserved Pablo, and also Raquel; they will travel with us," replied Mrs. Thorne. "Raquel will act as my maid, Pablo as my man-servant."
"They're very southern," remarked Betty, shaking her head. "I doubt whether they would get on well, living at the North. Raquel, you know, has no system; she would as soon leave her work at any time and run and make a hen-coop – that is, if you should happen to have hens, and I am sure I hope you would, because at the North, they tell me – "
But here Mrs. Thorne bore down upon her. "And did you suppose, Betty – were you capable of supposing – that Edgarda and I were thinking of living at the North?"
"I don't know what I'm capable of," answered Betty, laughing good-humoredly; "Mr. Carew never knew either. But you're really a northerner after all, Mrs. Thorne; and so it didn't seem so unlikely."
Mrs. Thorne had called her Betty, but she did not address Mrs. Thorne as Melissa in return. No one had called Mrs. Thorne Melissa (Melissa Whiting had been the name of her maiden days) since she had entered the manorial family to which she now belonged. Her husband had called her "Blue-eyes" (he had admired her very much, principally because she was so small and fair); the Old Madam had unfailingly designated her by the Spanish equivalent for "madam my niece-in-law," which was very imposing – in the Old Madam's tone. To every one else she was Mistress Thorne, and nothing less than Mistress Thorne; the title seemed to belong to every inch of her straight little back, to be visible even in the arrangement of her bonnet-strings.
Madam my niece-in-law now addressed herself to answering Betty. "When I married my dear Edgar, Betty, I became a Thorne, I think I may say, without affectation, a thorough one; no other course was open to me, upon entering a family of such distinction; Edgarda, therefore is Thorne and Duero, she is nothing else. Gracias-á-Dios will continue to be our home; we could not permanently establish ourselves anywhere, I think, save on the – the strand, where her forefathers have lived, and died, with so much eminence and distinction."
"Well, I'm sure I am very glad to hear it," answered Betty, cordially. "We are all so fond of Garda that we should miss her dreadfully if she were to be away long, though of course we can't expect to monopolize her so completely as we have done; she'll be going before long, you know, to that bourne from which – "
"Oh, Betty," interrupted Mrs. Rutherford, throwing up her white hands, "what horrors you do say!"
"I didn't mean it," exclaimed Betty, in great distress, the tears rising in her honest eyes; "I didn't mean anything of the sort, dear Mistress Thorne, I beg you to believe it; I meant 'She stood at the altar, with flowers on her brow' – indeed I did." And much overcome by her own inadvertence, Betty produced her handkerchief.
"Never mind, Betty; I always understand you," said Mrs. Thorne, graciously.
But it soon became evident that though she might understand Betty she did not understand Melissa, at least not so fully as she supposed she did, for, not long after her visit at the eyrie, she fell ill. On the fifth day it was feared that her illness had taken a dangerous turn; the delicate little cough with which they had been acquainted so long, in the various uses she put it to, that they had almost come to consider it a graceful accomplishment, this cough had all the time had its own character under the assumed ones, and its own character was simply an indication of a bronchial affection, which had now assumed a serious phase, sending inflammation down to the lungs.
"Her lungs have never been good," said Dr. Kirby to Winthrop; the Doctor was much affected by the danger of his poor little friend. "She has never had any chest to speak of, none at all." And the Doctor tapped his own wrathfully, and brought out a sounding expletive, the only one Winthrop had ever heard him use; he applied it to New-Englanders, New-Englanders in general.
The Doctor went back to East Angels. And in the late afternoon Winthrop himself rode down there. The little mistress of the house was very ill; besides Garda, the Doctor, his mother, and Mrs. Carew were in attendance. He saw only Mrs. Carew. She told him that Mrs. Thorne was very much disturbed mentally, as well as very ill, that she seemed unable to allow Garda out of her sight; when she did not see her at the bedside, she kept calling for her in her weak voice in a way that was most distressing to hear; Garda therefore now remained in the room day and night, save for the few moments, now and then, when her mother fell into a troubled sleep. The Doctor was very anxious. They were all very anxious.
Winthrop rode back to Gracias, he went to the eyrie. Mrs. Rutherford was out, she was taking a short stroll with the Rev. Mr. Moore. Margaret was on the east piazza; she was bending her head over some fine knitting.
"I'll wait for Aunt Katrina," said Winthrop, taking a chair near her. "Knitting for the poor, I suppose. Do you know, I always suspect ladies who knit for the poor; I suspect that they knit for themselves – the occupation."
"So they do, generally. But this isn't for the poor; don't you see that it's silk?"
"You could sell it. In the Charity Basket."
"What do you know of Charity Baskets?" said Margaret, laughing. "But I'm afraid I am not very good at working for the poor; the only thing I ever made – made with my own hands, I mean – was a shirt for that eminent Sioux chieftain Spotted Tail, and he said it did not fit."
"They don't want shirts, they want their land," said Winthrop. "We should have made them take care of themselves long ago, but we shouldn't have stolen their land. I'm not thinking of Lo, however, at present, I am thinking of that poor little woman down at East Angels. I am afraid she is very ill. Do you know, I cannot help suspecting that the sudden change in her prospects has had something to do with her illness; I mean the unexpected vision of what seems to her prosperity. She has kept up unflinchingly through years of struggle, and I think she could have kept up almost indefinitely in the same way, for Garda's sake, if she had had the same things to encounter; but this sudden wealth (for, absurd as it is, so it seems to her) has changed everything so, has buried her so almost over her head in plans, that the excitement has broken her down. You probably think me very fanciful," he concluded, realizing that he was speaking almost confidentially.
"Not fanciful at all; I quite agree with you," answered Margaret, her head still bent over her knitting.
"She has asked for you a number of times, Mrs. Carew tells me," he said, after a moment or two of silence.
"Has she?" said Margaret, this time raising her eyes. "I should have gone down to East Angels before this if I had not feared that I should be only in the way; all their friends have been there, I know; it is a very united little society."
"Yes, Madam Ruiz and Madam Giron were there yesterday taking care of her; Mrs. Kirby and Mrs. Carew are there to-day. Everything possible is being done, of course. Still – I don't know; from something Mrs. Carew said, I fear the poor woman is suffering mentally as well as physically; she is constantly asking for Garda, cannot bear her out of her sight."
"If I thought I could be of any service," said Margaret.
"I am sure you could; the greatest," he responded promptly, his voice betraying relief. "Mrs. Thorne is an odd little woman; but she has a very genuine liking for you; I think she feels more at home with you, for some reason or other, than she does with any of these Gracias friends, long as she has known them. And as for Garda, I am sure you could do more for her than any other person here could – later, I mean – she is so fond of you." He paused; what he had said seemed to come back to him. "Both of them, mother and daughter, appear to have selected you as their ideal of goodness," he went on; "I hope you appreciate the compliment." This time the slight, very slight indication of sarcasm showed itself again in his tone.
"Is it possible that you think the poor mother really in danger?" said Margaret, paying no heed, apparently, to his last remark.
"She has evidently grown very weak, and I have never thought she had any strength to spare. But it is only my own idea, I ought to tell you, that she is – that she may not recover."
"I will go as soon as possible; early to-morrow morning," said Margaret. "But if I do – " She hesitated. "I am afraid Aunt Katrina will be lone – I mean I fear she might feel deserted if left alone."
"Alone – with Minerva and Telano and Cindy, and the mysterious factotum called Maum Jube?"
"There would still be no companion, no one for her to talk to."
"How you underrate the conversation of Celestine! I should, of course, come in often."
"I think that if you should stay in the house, while I am gone, it would be better," answered Margaret.
"To try and make up, in some small degree, for what she loses when she loses you?"
"Whatever you please, so long as you come," she responded.
The next morning she went down to East Angels. Garda received her joyously. "Oh, Margaret, mamma is better, really better."
It was true. The fever had subsided, the symptoms of pneumonia had passed away; the patient was very weak, but Dr. Kirby was now hopeful. He had taken his mother back to Gracias, but the kind-hearted Betty remained, sending by the Kirbys a hundred messages of regret to her dearest Katrina that their separation must still continue.
Later in the day Margaret paid her first visit to the sick-room. Mrs. Thorne was lying with her eyes closed, looking very white and still; but as soon as she perceived who it was that had entered, a change came over her; she still looked white, but she seemed more alive; she raised herself slightly on one arm, and beckoned to the visitor.
"Now don't try to talk, that's a dear," said Mrs. Carew, who was sitting on the other side of the bed, fanning the sick woman with tireless hand.
Mrs. Thorne slowly turned her head towards Betty, and surveyed her solemnly with eyes which seemed to have grown during her illness to twice their former size. "Go – away," she said, in her whispering voice, which preserved even in its faintness the remains of her former clear utterance.
"What?" said the astonished Betty, not sure that she had heard aright.
"I wish – you would go – away," repeated Mrs. Thorne, slowly. And with her finger she made a little line in the air, which seemed to indicate, like a dotted curve on a map, Betty's course from the bed to the door.
Betty gave her fan to Margaret. Incapable of resentment, the good soul whispered to Garda, as she passed: "They're very often so, you know – sick people; they get tired of seeing the same persons about them, of course, and I am sure it's very natural. I'll come back later, when she's asleep."
"I was not tired of seeing her, that wasn't it," murmured Mrs. Thorne, who had overheard this aside. "But I wanted to see Margaret Harold alone, and without any fuss made about it; and the first step was to get her out of the room. Now, Edgarda, you go too. Go down to the garden, where Mrs. Carew will not see you; stay there a while, the fresh air will do you good."
"But, mamma, I don't think I ought to leave you."
"Do as I tell you, my daughter. If I should need anything, Margaret will call you."
"You need not be afraid, Garda, that I shall not know how to take care of her," said Margaret, reassuringly. "I am a good nurse." She arranged Mrs. Thorne's pillows as she spoke, and gently and skilfully laid her down upon them again.
"Of course," whispered Mrs. Thorne. "Any one could see that." Then, as Garda still lingered, "Go, Garda," she said, briefly. And Garda went.
As soon as the heavy door closed behind her, Mrs. Thorne began to speak. "I have been so anxious to see you," she said; "the thought has not been once out of my mind. But I suppose my mind has not been perfectly clear, because, though I have asked for you over and over again, no one has paid any attention, has seemed to understand me." She spoke in her little thread of a voice, and looked at her visitor with large, clear eyes.
Margaret bent over her. "Do not exert yourself to talk to me now," she answered. "You will be stronger to-morrow."
"Yes, I may be stronger to-morrow. How long can you stay?"
"Several days, if you care to have me."
"That is kind. I shall have time, then. But I mustn't wait too long; of one thing I am sure, Margaret: I shall not recover."
"That is a fancy," said Margaret, stroking the thin little hand that lay on the white coverlet; "Dr. Kirby says you are much better." She spoke with the optimism that belongs to the sick-room, but in her heart she had another opinion. A change had come over Mrs. Thorne's face, the effect of which was very striking; it was not so much the increase of pallor, or a more wasted look, as the absence of that indomitable spirit which had hitherto animated its every fibre, so that from the smooth scanty light hair under the widow's cap down to the edges of the firm little jaws there had been so much courage, and, in spite of the constant anxiety, so much resolution, that one noticed only that. But now, in the complete departure of this expression (which gleamed on only in the eyes), one saw at last what an exhausted little face it was, how worn out with the cares of life, finished, ready for the end.
"Yes, I am better, it is true, for the present," whispered Mrs. Thorne. "But that is all. My mother and my two sisters died of slow consumption, I shall die of the rapid kind. I shall die and leave Garda. Do you comprehend what that is to me – to die and leave Garda?" Her gaze, as she said this, was so clear, there was such a far-seeing intelligence in it, such a long experience of life, and (it almost seemed) such a prophetic knowledge of death, that the younger woman found herself forced to make answer to the mental strength within rather than to the weakness of the physical frame which contained it. "Why am I taken now, just when she will need me most?" went on the mother's whisper, which contrasted so strangely in its feebleness with the power of her gaze. "Garda had only me. And now I am called. What will become of her?"
"You have warm friends here, Mrs. Thorne; they are all devoted to Garda. It has seemed to me that to each one of them she was as dear as an own child."
"Yes, she is. They would do anything in the world they could for her. But, I ask you, what can they do? The Kirbys, the Moores, Betty Carew, and Madam Giron, Madam Ruiz – what can they do? Nothing! And Garda – oh, Garda needs some one who is – different."
Margaret did not reply to this; and after a moment Mrs. Thorne went on.
"When Mr. Winthrop buys the place," she said, with the touching Gracias confidence that a few thousands would constitute wealth, "my child need not be a charge, pecuniarily. But of course I know that in other ways she might be. And I cannot leave her to them, these people here; I cannot die and do that. Garda is not a usual girl, Margaret – you must have seen it for yourself. I only want a little oversight of the proper kind for her; that would be all that I should ask; it would not be a great deal of care. From the very first, Margaret, I have liked you so much! You have no idea how much." Her voice died away, but her eyes were full of eloquence. Slowly a tear rose in each, welled over, and dropped down on the white cheek below, but without dimming the gaze, which continued its fixed, urgent prayer.
Margaret had remained silent. Now she covered her face with her hand, the elbow supported on the palm of the other. Mrs. Thorne watched her, mutely; she seemed to feel that she had made her appeal, that Margaret comprehended it, was perhaps considering it; at any rate, that her place now was to wait with humility for her answer.
At length Margaret's hand dropped. She turned towards the waiting eyes. "Before your illness, Mrs. Thorne," she said, in her tranquil voice, "I had thought of asking you whether you would be willing to let me take Garda north with me for some months. I have a friend in New York who would receive her, and be very kind to her; she could stay with this lady, and take lessons. I should see her every day, it would not be quite like a school."
"That is what I long for – that she should be with you," said Mrs. Thorne, not going into the details of the plan, but seizing upon the main fact. "That you should have charge of her, Margaret – that is now my passionate wish." She used the strongest word she knew, a word she had always thought wicked in its intensity. But it was applicable to her present overwhelming desire.
"And I had thought that perhaps you would follow us, a little later," pursued Margaret; "I hope you will do so still."
Mrs. Thorne made a motion with her hand, as if saying, "Why try to deceive?" She lay with her eyes closed, resting after her suspense. "You are so good and kind," she murmured. "But not kinder, Margaret, than I knew you would be." Her voice died away again, and again she rested.
"I have asked and accepted so much – for of course I accept instantly your offer – that I feel that I ought not to ask more," she began again, though without opening her eyes. "But I have got to die. And I trust you so, Margaret – "
"Why do you trust me?" interposed Margaret, abruptly. "You have no grounds for it; you hardly know me. It makes me very uncomfortable, Mrs. Thorne."
But Mrs. Thorne only smiled. She lifted her hand, and laid it on Margaret's arm. "My dear," she said, simply (and it was rare for Mrs. Thorne to be simple; even now, though deeply in earnest, she had had the old appearance of selecting with care what she was about to say), "I don't know why any more than you do! I only know that it is so; it has been so from the beginning. I think I understand you," she added.
"Oh no," said the younger woman, turning away.
"At any rate, I understand your steadfastness, Margaret. You have steadfastness in the supreme degree. Many women haven't any, and they are much the happiest. But you, Margaret, are different. And it is your steadfastness that attracts me so – for my poor child's sake I mean. Yes, for hers I must say a little more – I must. If you could only see your way to letting her remain under your care as long as she is so young – you see I mean longer than the few months you spoke of just now, – it would make my dying easier. For it's going to be very hard for me to die. Perhaps you think I'm not going to. But I know that I am. All at once my courage has left me. It never did before, and so I know it is a sign."
Margaret sat listening, she looked deeply troubled. "You wish to intrust to me a great responsibility," she began.
"And it seems to you very selfish. Of course I know that it is selfish. But it is desperation, Margaret; it is my feeling about Garda. Let me tell you one thing, I am relying a little upon your having suffered yourself. If you had not, I should never have asked you, because people who haven't suffered, women especially, are so hard. But I saw that you had suffered, I saw it in the expression of your face before I had heard a word of your history."
"What do you know of my history?" asked Margaret, the guarded reserve which was so often there again taking possession of her voice and eyes.
"In actual fact, very little. Only what Mrs. Rutherford told Betty Carew."
"What did she tell her?"
"That her nephew, your husband, was travelling abroad – that was all. But when I learned that the travelling had lasted seven years, and that nothing was said of his return or of your joining him, of course I knew that inclination, his or yours, was at the bottom of it. And I imagined pain somewhere, and probably for you. Because you are good; and it is the good who suffer."
"In reality you know nothing about it," replied Margaret to these low-breathed sentences. "I think I ought to tell you," she went on, in the same reserved tone, "that both Mrs. Rutherford and Mr. Winthrop think I have been much to blame; it may make a difference in your estimation of me."
"Not the least. For Mrs. Rutherford's opinions I care nothing. As to Mr. Winthrop, Mr. Winthrop – "
"Agrees with Mrs. Rutherford."
"He will live to change his opinion; I think very highly of Mr. Winthrop, but on this subject he is in the wrong. Do you know why I think so highly of him?"
But Margaret's face remained unresponsive.
"I think highly of him because he has had such a perfect, such a delicate comprehension of Garda – I mean lately, through all this fancy of hers – such a strange one – for that painter." Mrs. Thorne always called Lucian a "painter," very much as though he had been a decorator of the exterior of houses. His profession of civil engineer she steadily ignored; perhaps, however, she did not ignore it more than Lucian himself did.
"Mr. Winthrop likes Garda so much that it is easy for him to be considerate," Margaret answered.
"On the contrary," murmured Mrs. Thorne; "on the contrary. While I am most grateful to him for his consideration, I have feared that it was in itself a proof that he did not really care for her. If he had cared, would he have been so patient with her – her whim? Would he have let her talk on by the hour, as I know she has done, about Lucian Spenser? Men are jealous, extremely so; far more so than women ever are. They don't call it jealousy, of course; they have half a dozen names for it – weariness, superiority, disgust – whatever you please. You don't agree with me?"
"It's a general view, and I've given up general views. But of one thing I am certain, Mrs. Thorne – Evert admires Garda greatly."
The mother raised herself so that she could look at Margaret more closely. "Do you think so? – do you really think so?" she said, almost panting.
"Yes, I think so."
"Then, Margaret, I will have no concealments from you, not one. If Mr. Winthrop should ever care enough for my poor child – some time in the future – to wish to make her his wife, I should be so happy, I am sure I should know it wherever I was! I could trust her to him, he is a man to trust. He is much older. But if she should once begin to care for him, that would make no difference to her, nothing would make any difference; she will never be influenced by anything but her own liking, it has always been so. And if – she could once – begin to care – " The short sentences, which had been eager, now grew fainter, stopped; the head sank back upon the pillows again. "If she were to be with you, Margaret, she would have – more opportunity – to begin."
"About that I could promise nothing," said Margaret, with decision. "I could take no step to influence Garda in that way."
"I don't ask you to. I myself wouldn't do anything, that would be wrong; on such subjects all must be left to a Higher Power," replied Mrs. Thorne, with conviction. For, in spite of her efforts to be Thorne and Duero, she had never departed a hair's-breadth from her American belief in complete liberty of personal choice in marriage. Love, real love, was a feeling heaven-born, heaven-directed; it behooved no one to meddle with it, not even a mother. "I could never scheme in that way," she went on, "I only wanted you to know all my thoughts. The great thing with me, of course, is that she is to be in your charge."