IT took two or three days for Pembroke to recover from his fatigue and excitement. Perhaps he did not hasten his complete recuperation. It was surely pleasanter to come down to a twelve o’clock breakfast, served piping hot by Petrarch, with Olivia to pour his coffee for him, with that morning freshness which is so becoming to a woman, than the loneliness of Malvern, with poor Miles’ sad face and pathetic effort to forget himself and the wreck of his boyish life. Cave had taken the boy to his cabin in the pine woods to stay some days, so that there was nothing to call Pembroke back home. Miles was happier than for a long time. Cave spoke to him with a certain bracing encouragement that Olivia’s pitiful sympathy and his brother’s sharp distress lacked. There was more of the salt of common sense in what Cave said than in Olivia’s unspoken consolation, which much as it charmed the boy, sometimes left him sadder than it found him. She was so sorry for him that she could not always disguise it.
So a few days went on, and Pembroke began to find Olivia every hour pleasanter, more winning—until one night in his own room, after Olivia had played to him half the evening and had read to him the other half, he took himself to task. In the first place, he did not want to marry at all then. He had a great many things to do first. Then, there was a serious obstacle in the way, even had all the rest been smoothed out. The Pembroke fortune, such as it was, was on its last legs. With the negroes gone, and the land frightfully reduced in value, there was only a slender competence left—and those two years in Paris had cost a pretty penny. Only during the last few weeks Pembroke had waked up to the true condition of affairs. Miles must be provided for, and upon a scale more suited to Pembroke’s tastes than his resources. Then, there remained for the elder brother, nothing. He had not thought of this when he borrowed money at a high interest so merrily while he was in Paris—but as he was every day awaking to his manlier self, this had come home to him in its true light. He was not a man to ask any woman to share poverty with him. To have brought a woman down, as his wife, from a state of former luxury, would have been a misery too keen. Rather would he have died—for false as well as true pride had great share in him. Therefore, he thought, as he sat in his room smoking, it would be better that he did not get his wings scorched. It was to his credit that he did not allow any supposition that Olivia cared for him to enter into his calculation.
“Sweet Olivia,” he thought to himself, “some luckier man will win you. I shall be ten years too late,”—and then he sighed, and presently began to whistle cheerfully. But one thing was sure. He would never marry Elise Koller. Even though his eyes were opened now to the fact that he was virtually a ruined man, there was no longer any chance that the baser part of him would succumb to that temptation.
It was pleasant—especially the Colonel’s jolly company, to say nothing of Petrarch’s, who highly approved of Pembroke, and remarked as he industriously brushed his clothes on the last night, “I clar, Marse French, you sutny do favor yo’ par. I ’member de time he made that argyument when Marse Jack Thornton, he mos’ kilt Marse Spott Randolph on ’count o’ Miss Tilly Corbin. We had ole wuks dat time. ’Twuz when me an’ Marse was co’tin’ missis. I tell yo’ par, ‘A eye fur a eye,’ ‘a toof fur a toof, an’ I will resist de cripplers, say de Lord.’ Marster an’ me went to de cote house ter hear him. I tho’t ’bout it de yether night, when de white folks was a crowdin’ ’roun’ an’ shakin’ yo’ han’ an’ clappin’ you on de back. Arter you went up st’yars, Miss Livy, she come an’ say to me, ‘Petrarch, did you hear de speech?’ I say, ‘Lord, honey, dat I did. You jes’ oughter seen de folks whoopin’ an’ hollerin’ and Marse French he stannin’ up, lookin’ handsome like he mar’—you aint forgit yo’ mar, has you, Marse French?”
“No,” said Pembroke.
“I reklecks her when she warn’t no older ’n Miss Livy. She was kinder light on her feet like Miss Livy, and she had dem shinin’ eyes, an dat ar way Miss Livy got o’ larfin’ at yer. She an’ mistis’ was mighty good frien’s, jes’ like you par an’ marse, an’ David an’ Jonadab. Dey use ter come here an’ stay a week—yo’ mar come in de kerridge wid Miss ’Lizbeth an’ Marse Miles, an’ yaller Betsy—she was a likely nigger, but a dretful sinner,—an’ you on a little pony ridin’ by yo’ par’s side. Lordy how you did useter tease Miss Livy an’ dem chillen! Some times you mek Miss Livy cry—an’ cry, an’ de tears wuz like de waters o’ Babylon.”
“What a brute I must have been! Why didn’t you or yellow Betsy get me a lathering?”
“Hi, Marse French, boys is boys. Dey c’yarn help bein’ troublesome an’ dirty an’ teasin’. Gord done made ’em so. ‘My people is rambunctious,’ He say, an’ I ain’t never seen no boys ’cept what was dirty an’ tormentin’.”
At last, Pembroke felt he had no excuse for remaining longer at Isleham, and besides, he was seriously afraid of falling in love with Olivia. So he took his way back to Malvern.
While at Isleham, he had got one or two cocked-hatted notes from Madame Koller. But on reaching home he found that one arrived with great regularity every morning and occasionally during the day beside. The tenor of all was the same. Why did he not come to see his friend. She was so lonely. The country was triste at best. Pembroke felt very like asking her if the country was so triste then why did she not go away. But he was a gentleman as well as a man, and was patient with women even in their follies.
At last, when he could put it off no longer—as indeed he had no tangible reason for not going to see Madame Koller—he went. She received him in her little sitting-room, adapting at the time one of her prettiest poses for his benefit. She had heard of his triumph and was full of pretty congratulations—but in some way, she could not strike the note of praise that would harmonize. She didn’t know anything about professional men. She had lived in Europe long enough to get the notion that it was rather vulgar to work for pay—not that Pembroke got any pay in this case. But if Pembroke had married her, that weather-beaten sign “Attorney-at-Law” would have come down from his office in the village, and the office itself would have lost its tenant—so she thought.
Pembroke always felt a delicacy in asking her to sing, but Madame Koller often volunteered to do it, knowing Pembroke’s passionate fondness for music, and feeling that truly on that ground they were in sympathy. Olivia Berkeley’s finished and charming playing pleased and soothed him, but it was nothing to the deep delight that Madame Koller’s music gave him—for when she sat down to the piano and playing her own accompaniments sang to him in her fervid way, it simply enchanted him—and Madame Koller knew it. Although he was exasperatingly cool under the whole battery of her smiles and glances, yet when she sang to him, he abandoned himself to the magic of a voice.
While she seated herself at the piano and began to sing, Pembroke, stretched out in a vast chair, glanced sidewise at her. She did not mouth and grimace in singing as many women do. She opened her wide, handsome mouth, and seemed only to be calmly smiling, while her voice soared like a bird. She had, in short, no amateurish tricks.
Her profile, with its masses of yellow hair, was imposing. She was no mere slip of a girl. When she had sung to him for the best part of an hour she thought the time had come for her reward. So she went back to her place on the sofa near the fire and posed beautifully. Pembroke almost groaned. The singing was delicious enough, but the sentimental hair-splitting had long since palled—and besides, the lady was too much in earnest.
“You remained several days, did you not, at the Colonel’s?”
“Yes,” said Pembroke, cheerfully, and thinking gloomily how very like a matrimonial lecture was the ensuing conversation. These interviews with Madame Koller always disinclined him extremely to giving any woman the power to ask him searching questions. Only, he did not believe Olivia Berkeley was an inquisitive woman—she was quite clever enough to find out what she wished to know without asking questions.
The only remark Madame Koller made in reply was, “Ah,”—and lapsed into silence, but the silence did not last long.
“Olivia must have been very charming.”
“Immensely,” answered Pembroke, with much heartiness, and wishing Madame Koller would sing again. He hardly knew which was the more exasperating, Madame Koller’s tone to him in speaking of Olivia, or Olivia’s tone in speaking of Madame Koller.
“Olivia is so excessively tame,” said she, after a pause. “So cold—so self-contained.”
“I don’t think she lacks spirit, though,” responded Pembroke, with the easy air of a man discussing the most trivial subject, although he swore mentally at Madame Koller for introducing the subject. “Miss Berkeley has the reticence of a gentlewoman. But by heaven! I wouldn’t like to arouse that spirit of hers.”
Madame Koller sighed. It was a real and genuine sigh. She was thinking how hard and strange it was that she was not permitted by fate to be either a complete gentlewoman or a complete artist. She had learned in her student days, and in that brief and brilliant artistic period, to be reticent about her money matters, but that was all. She saw even in her Aunt Sally Peyton, whom she regarded as an interfering old person, without any style whatever, a certain air of security in what she said and did—a calm indifference to her world—that Madame Koller was keen enough to know marked the gentlewoman—which she, Elise Koller, who had ten times the advantages, and had twenty times the knowledge of the world that old Mrs. Peyton had, was never quite sure—there just was a little uncertainty—ah, it was very little, but it made a great deal of difference.
“America seems queer enough to me now,” she said presently.
“Very likely,” answered Pembroke. “You have remained here much longer already than I expected.”
Madame Koller at this fixed her eyes upon Pembroke in a way that made him wince. A blush, too, showed through his dark skin.
“Can you—can you—say that to me?” she cried.
Like any other man under the same circumstances, Pembroke remained perfectly silent—because it is a well-known fact that when a woman takes the initiative in tender speeches, the man, if he be a man, is at once silenced. But Madame Koller was fluent.
“I know what you think of me,” she said. This surprised Pembroke, who really did not know what he thought of her. “You think me the weakest woman in the world. But I have been strong. While my husband lived, heaven knows what I endured. He was the cruelest creature God ever made.”
Pembroke thought it was the same old story of continental husbands and wives. He had once known a marchese who made no secret that he occasionally beat his marchesa. But Madame Koller almost made him smile at the grotesqueness of what she told him, although it was real enough to her to make her weep in the telling.
“He was always ill—or imagining himself ill. He took medicine until he nearly drove me crazy with his bottles and plasters. He lived in a bath chair when he was as well able to walk about as I was—and I was chained to that bath chair. Everything made him ill—even my singing. He would not let me sing—only think of it—think of it.”
Madame Koller glanced at Pembroke through her tears. He had stood up and was saying something vague but comforting. The late Mr. Koller was indeed a dreadful reminiscence.
“Banish that time as far as you can,” he said. “The present is yours.”
“Is it?” she said. “Now I will say to you that black as that past is, it is not so black as this present. Now I endure torments far greater than any I felt then.”
Pembroke’s strong jaw was set resolutely. He felt rising tumultuously within him that masculine pity that has wrecked many men. He would not, if he could help it, prove false to himself with this woman, in spite of her tears and her voice.
“What have you to say to me?” she demanded, after a pause.
“This,” answered Pembroke, with much outward boldness. “That your coming here is an unsuccessful experiment. The same things that made this country life distasteful to you in your childhood even, make it distasteful now. This is not your native atmosphere. You will never be anything but morbid and wretched here. This country life is like death to you—and almost like death to me.”
“Then why—why—”
“Why do I stand it? Because I must. Because as a man, I must. Here is my work, my duty, my manhood. Don’t be surprised to hear me talk this way. You haven’t heard me speak of these things before—but still they govern me some—more of late than they used to do. There is a good deal here that is melancholy enough to me—but I would be a poltroon if I started out to make life amusing. You see, I have considerable ambition—and that impels me to work.”
Madame Koller surveyed him keenly. By degrees the fire of resentment rose in her eyes. She was angered at his coolness, at his calm reasoning. Prudence in love is commonly regarded as a beggarly virtue by women.
“After all,” she said, “what are you to me? Nothing but a whim, a caprice. But had you spoken to me a year ago as you do now, I should not be here.”
Pembroke remembered with a blush some slight love-making episodes, and her tone stung him.
“I can play the rascal if you like,” he said, angrily. “I can pretend to feel what I don’t feel, but I warn you, I shan’t be a pleasant rascal. If ever I take to villainy I shall probably take to drink and gambling too.”
Madame Koller sat down discontentedly on the sofa. When Pembroke had arrived that afternoon her intention had been to determine one thing or another—for life at The Beeches could not be endured much longer. It mattered little what old Madame Schmidt said, but her cousin, Ahlberg, was getting restive and threatened to leave her—and she was mortally afraid of being left in America alone. But what progress had she made? None. And suppose Pembroke were to leave that house her lover, would it not be the greatest act of folly she had ever committed?—and she had had her follies. And so she was tossed hither and thither by prudence and feeling, and condemning her own weakness, yet tamely submitted to it.
Meanwhile, Pembroke had decided for himself. This thing could go on no longer. He felt at that moment as if he had had enough of love-making to last him for the next ten years. And besides, he had withstood enough to make him feel that he did not care to withstand any more. So he picked up his hat with an air of great determination.
“I must leave you,” he said. “Elise, you have given me many happy hours, but it would be ruin for us to become either more or less than friends.”
Madame Koller had thought herself thoroughly prepared for this, which her own sense told her was literally true. But suddenly, without a moment’s warning, without her own volition, and almost without her knowledge, she burst into violent weeping. Was it for this she had come the interminable distance—that she had suffered horrors of loneliness and ennui? Alas, for her!
Pembroke was appalled. Apparently all was to do over again, but there was no longer any room for weakness. His mind was made up and could not be unmade. He only stood silent, therefore, biting his lip, while his face grew crimson.
For the first time in his life he hailed Ahlberg as a relief—for at that moment Ahlberg appeared on the threshold. Madame Koller pulled herself together as quickly as she had given way.
“Ah, Louis, you are welcome. Do not go yet,” to Pembroke.
Pembroke did not take the hint. He went immediately.