THE sudden pang which wrenched poor Mr. Cole’s heart when he heard that Madame Koller would soon leave the county, and the country as well, was vain suffering. For Madame Koller did not go. Old Madame Schmidt for the first time became restless. Ahlberg protested that he could not stay any longer. Pembroke had become entirely at ease about Ahlberg. Apparently Ahlberg was in no hurry to carry out that rash engagement to fight, which Pembroke regarded on his own part as a piece of consummate folly, and was heartily ashamed of. He did not feel the slightest apprehension that, if the truth got out, his personal courage would be suspected, because that had been tested during the war, but he was perfectly willing to let Ahlberg’s arm take as long to recover as it chose, and called himself a fool every time he thought about the roadside quarrel.
The ennui was nearly killing to Madame Koller, yet she stayed on under a variety of pretexts which deceived everybody, including herself.
She was not well adapted for solitude, yet most of the people about bored her. Mrs. Peyton, she considered as her bête noir, and quite hated to see the Peyton family carriage turning into the carriage drive before the door. But for her singing she would have died. But just as long as the wheezy old grand piano in the drawing-room would hold together, she would not be quite friendless. Pembroke had not been to see her since that afternoon when she had wept so. But she conveyed to him one day when she met him at Isleham, that he need not be afraid to come to see her. Man like, Pembroke could not resist this challenge, and went—and found Madame Koller received him more like an ordinary visitor than ever before. Consequently he went again. Another motive which impelled him was the talk that would arise in the county if he ceased going to The Beeches at all. Everybody would imagine there had been a breach, and if a breach, a former friendship.
Cave, one day, met Madame Koller at Isleham. When she told him of her loneliness he was stricken with pity for not having been to see her. Like Colonel Berkeley, he thought her presence in Virginia was explained by money troubles, and asked permission to visit her mother and herself, Madame Schmidt being invariably brought in by Madame Koller as if she were a real person instead of a mere breathing automaton. And so he went.
“What a strange, fascinating man is your friend Cave,” she said afterward to Pembroke upon one of his occasional formal visits, when their conversation was always upon perfectly safe and general subjects.
“I never discovered any strange fascination about him,” laughed Pembroke with masculine practicality.
“He lives in the woods. Yet he understands art better than any man I know.”
“There’s nothing extraordinary. He is a highly educated man. The doctors tell him he can’t live except in the pine woods, but his two rooms in his log cabin are more comfortable than any I have at Malvern.”
“By the way, you have never invited me to Malvern. I used to go there as a girl.”
Pembroke remembered a speech of his friend’s, Mrs. Peyton, to him some time before.
“Ah, my dear French,” she had said, “what a dear, sweet, amiable creature your mother was—and your father was a regular Trojan when he was roused. I remember taking Eliza there for a visit once, when she was growing up, and the singing mania had just possessed her. She sung all day and nearly all night—screech, screech—bang, bang on the piano. Your father almost danced, he was so mad—but your dear mother was all thoughtfulness. ‘My dear Sally,’ she would say every day laughing. ‘Don’t feel badly about Eliza’s singing, and the way Mr. Pembroke takes it. It is the only chance John Cave has to say a word to Elizabeth.’ Your mother was highly in favor of that match, I can tell you, though John had no great fortune—and your father was so fond of him too, that he really imagined John was courting him, instead of Elizabeth. But I shortened my visit considerably, I assure you.”
All this flashed through Pembroke’s mind when Madame Koller spoke. And then he colored slightly. He was a little ashamed of the dilapidation of a once fine country house. During the war, the place had been raided and the house fired. The fire had been quickly extinguished, but the front porch and a part of one wing was charred. He felt some false, though natural shame at this, particularly as Ahlberg, when he and Pembroke were on visiting terms, had never been to the place without intimating that it was queer they did not have the house thoroughly rehabilitated. But Pembroke had inherited a soul of Arab hospitality, and he answered promptly:
“Whenever you and Madame Schmidt will honor me with a visit, you will be most welcome.”
“And will you ask Mr. Cave, too?”
“Certainly. Mr. Cave is my closest friend.”
Just as on a similar occasion, Colonel Berkeley had incurred Olivia’s wrath by inviting the Pembrokes to meet Madame Koller, so Miles, meaning to do the most agreeable thing in the world, informed Pembroke a day or two after he had mentioned that Madame Koller and her mother and Cave were coming to luncheon on Tuesday, that meeting Colonel Berkeley, he, Miles, had invited the Colonel and Olivia over for Tuesday, also—to meet the others. Miles walked away, whistling to his dog, serenely unconscious of the chagrin that overwhelmed Pembroke at this apparently harmless information.
Pembroke did not swear, although he was profane upon occasions—but when Aunt Keturah, his old nurse and housekeeper, came to him the next minute to ask something about the proposed festivity, his answer was,
“Go to the devil!”
Aunt Keturah was naturally offended at this.
“I didn’t never think my mistis’ son gwin’ talk dat discontemptuous way to de mammy dat nuss him and Miss ’Lizbeth, and Marse Miles, an’ lay yo’ par out, and your mar, an’ set by Miss ’Lizbeth an’ hole her han’ ’twell de bref lef’ her body—” For your true African never omits to mention any family tragedy or sorrow or other lugubrious proceedings in which he or she may have had a part.
“Well, old lady, I didn’t exactly mean what I said—”
“Well, den, you hadn’t orter said nuttin’ like it—”
“I know it. If you were to go to the devil, I don’t know what would become of me.”
“Dat’s so, honey. An’ ain’t no wife gwi’ do fur you like yo’ po’ ole mammy”—for the possibility of Pembroke’s marriage was extremely distasteful to Keturah, as portending her downfall and surrender of the keys.
Colonel Berkeley had often been to Malvern since his return, but Olivia, not since she was a child, when she would go over with her mother, and played in the garden with Miles. Then Pembroke was a tall, overbearing boy, a remorseless tease, whose only redeeming trait, in her childish eyes, was the wonderful stories he could tell out of books—when he chose. Elizabeth she remembered—a beautiful, haughty girl, who alternately snubbed and petted her. It seemed so long ago. They were to come to luncheon at two o’clock. When Olivia and her father drove up, with Cave in the carriage with them, whom they had picked up on the road, Pembroke had been called off for a moment by a client who was interviewing him in “the office”—that necessary adjunct of every professional man, and most of the gentry in Virginia, a comfortable one or two-roomed building, a little back of the “great house,” where the master kept his books and accounts, his guns and hunting paraphernalia, where his dogs had the right of entry and his women kind had not.
The house had once been imposing. Two wings rambled off from the center building. One was overgrown with ivy, and looked both comfortable and picturesque under the tall and branching elms. The other was gaunt and scorched and weather-beaten. The heat had cracked the windows and had forced the bricks out of place. One pillar of the porch on that side was gone. The damage to the house was really not great, but apparently it was ruined.
Miles met them at the door—Miles, once the handsome scapegrace, and now the blighted, the unfortunate. The spectacle of his marred face was in melancholy keeping with what surrounded him.
He was genuinely glad to see them. He came down the steps, and gallantly and even with a certain grace, offered Olivia his one arm to alight from the carriage. The Colonel scrambled out and immediately seized Miles.
“My dear fellow, driving through this plantation to-day brought back to me your father’s purchase of that woodland down by the creek in ’forty-six.”
Anything that occurred in ’forty-six had such a charm for Colonel Berkeley that Miles knew he was in for it. The Colonel took his arm and trotted up and down the portico, pointing out various ways in which the late Mr. Pembroke, his devoted friend, had neglected the Colonel’s advice in regard to farming, and the numberless evils that had resulted therefrom. Colonel Berkeley entirely forgot that his own farming was not above reproach, and if he had been reduced to his land for a living, instead of that lucky property at the North that he had so strenuously tried to make way with, he would indeed have been in a bad way. But the Colonel was a famous farmer on paper, was president of the Farmers’ Club of the county, had published several pamphlets on subsoil drainage, and was a frequent contributor to the columns of the Southern Planter before the war.
Cave and Olivia, finding themselves temporarily thrown on each other, concluded to walk through the grounds. Madame Koller and her mother had not yet arrived, and under the huge trees, a little distance off, they could see Pembroke talking with his visitor, as the latter mounted his horse to ride away.
In former days the grounds, like the house, had been fine, but now they were completely overgrown and neglected, yet, there was a kind of beauty in their very wildness.
“How charming this wilderness of roses will be when they are in bloom,” said Olivia, as they walked through what had once been a rose walk, stiff and prim, now rioting in lush luxuriance. “I remember it quite straight, and the rose trees trimmed up all in exactly the same shape—and see, the roses have climbed so over the arbor that we can’t get in.”
Cave said nothing. The one love of his life was born and lived and died in this home. He could see, through a rift in the trees, the brick wall around the burying ground where Elizabeth lay. It was fallen away in many places, and the sheep browsed peacefully over the mounds. The marble slab over Elizabeth was as yet new and white. Still Olivia did not jar on him at that moment. She was innately sympathetic.
They paced slowly about the graveled paths overgrown in many places with weeds, and among a vigorous growth of young shrubbery, unpruned and unclipped. She pulled a great branch of pink dogwood from a transplanted forest tree, and swayed it thoughtfully as she walked. Presently they saw Pembroke coming to look for them. As he approached and took Olivia’s hand, a color as delicate as that of the dogwood blossoms she held in her other hand, mounted to her face.
Then they turned back leisurely toward the house. At one spot, under a great linden tree, was the basin of a fountain, all yellow and choked with the trailing arbutus, which grew with the wild profusion that marks it in the depth of the woods. The fountain was long since gone. Pembroke plucked some of the arbutus and handed it to Olivia, taking from her the dogwood branch at the same time and throwing it away.
“The arbutus has a perfume—the dogwood has none—and a flower without perfume is like a woman without sentiment,” he said gayly. As they stood still for a moment, Olivia suddenly exclaimed to Pembroke:
“Oh, I remember something about this fountain—don’t you?” Then they both began to laugh.
“What is it?” asked Cave.
“I was staying here once with mamma, when I was a little girl—”
“I picked you up and held you over the basin to scare you.”
“And dropped me in, and—”
“Went gallantly to the rescue and dragged you out—”
“And your mother sent you to bed without your dinner.”
“I remember thinking you were the most comical looking object I ever saw with your curls dripping, and I was particularly amused at the chattering of your teeth. What remorseless wretches boys are!”
“I don’t believe you meant to let me slip.”
“You were splashing in the basin before I knew it. But it seemed a delicious piece of mischief then, and Miles’ terror that his turn would come next—Elizabeth boxed my ears for it.”
For the first time since their return home each came back to something like the old boy and girl frankness, and they laughed like children.
“How I loved to come here when I was a little girl. Your mother was certainly the most delightful companion for a child. I remember how she allowed me to brush her hair, it was so long and beautiful. I suppose my efforts were torture to her; how splendid she looked when she was dressed for a ball.”
Pembroke was touched to the heart. His mother who died like Elizabeth, in her youth and beauty, was only seventeen years older than himself. He remembered that she had been a little more than a girl when he, her eldest son, reached up to her shoulder. Olivia and her father were always associated with his mother. Few persons remembered her, he thought bitterly. He had imagined that it was impossible for any one to know her without being inspired with the profound admiration he felt, along with his affection for her. But naturally it was not so—and he felt an inexpressible pride in hearing Olivia’s words. They were not many, but he knew they came from her heart.
“Do you know,” he said as they turned away and pursued the path to the house while Cave dropped behind, “I think you are a little like my mother. Petrarch says so too, and Petrarch is a physiognomist.”
“Nonsense,” cried Olivia, nevertheless coloring with pleasure. “Your mother was one of the most beautiful women in the world, and most commanding in her beauty. I don’t know anybody at all like her.”
They were now near the house, and looking up, Pembroke saw Madame Koller and the bundle of wrappings she called mamma descending from the carriage. A little unpleasant shock came upon him. The ladies from The Beeches were out of harmony just then.
Nevertheless they were very cordially greeted. Although the day was spring-like, Madame Koller’s gown was trimmed with fur, and she cowered close to the fire in the big, draughty drawing-room. Pembroke fancied that Madame Schmidt’s fondness for wrappings would eventually descend to her daughter. But Madame Koller was very handsome. The quiet winter, the country air had made her much younger and fresher. And then, most women are much better looking when they are in love. They live in a perpetual agitation, which gives a strange brightness to the eye, a softness to the smile. They are impelled toward their natural rôle, which is acting. Madame Koller had the benefit of all this.
The luncheon passed off very well. In the house was that queer mixture of shabbiness and splendor common in Virginia country houses. At table they sat in common Windsor chairs, but ate off Sèvres china; a rickety sideboard was loaded down with plate. The Virginians were, as a rule, indifferent to comforts, but luxuries they must have. After the luncheon Pembroke took them to the library, and through such of the house as was habitable. Madame Koller raved over the fine editions of books, the old mahogany furniture, the antique portraits intermingled with daubs of later ancestors—the whole an epitome of the careless pleasure-loving, disjointed life of the dead and gone Virginia—when the people stocked their cellars with the best wines and slept on husk mattresses—where the most elaborate etiquette was maintained in the midst of incongruities of living most startling. It had never ceased to be puzzling to Madame Koller. She admired, as well she might, a lovely girlish portrait of Pembroke’s mother which hung in the drawing-room. There was a piteous likeness between it and the one unscarred side of Miles’ face.
Miles had kept close to Olivia—he was not quite easy with Madame Koller. As for Madame Schmidt, he had in vain tried to get something out of her, but the old lady was obviously so much more comfortable seated by the drawing-room fire, well wrapped up, with her feet on the footstool, and nobody to distract her attention from keeping warm, that she was considerately left to herself.
But Madame Koller did not enjoy the day, as, indeed, she did not at that phase of her existence enjoy anything. She had fancied she could conquer her heart, in the presence of its object, and with a dangerous rival in the foreground. Love finds a mighty helper in self-love. Whatever determination she might once have had to relinquish Pembroke melted away when she saw that Olivia Berkeley and he were quietly slipping into a state of feeling that would turn to something stronger in a moment of time. And naturally she thought no woman alive could withstand the man that had conquered her.
It was late in the afternoon when the carriages drove off. Olivia said truly she had had a very happy day. Not so truly said Madame Koller.