THE winter had lapsed into spring. It was April—the May of colder climates. In a week—a day—Nature had rushed into bloom. Even Madame Koller, who cared little for these things, was awakened to the beauty surrounding her. She spent hours walking in the fresh morning air and thinking—thinking. The few times she saw Pembroke, and the quiet, formal courtesy with which he treated her was as wind to flame. In his absence she was perpetually thinking of him, devising wild and extravagant methods of winning him. It was her pride, she now persuaded herself, that needed to be avenged. Again throwing prudence wildly aside, she boldly acknowledged to herself that it was love. For the first time in her life she was thrown upon herself—and a very dangerous and undisciplined self it was. Sometimes she blamed him less than he deserved for whatever folly he had been a party to—and again she blamed him more. Madame Koller was fast working herself up to the point of an explosion.
Toward dusk one evening, as Olivia Berkeley sat in the dim drawing-room where a little fire crackled on the hearth, although the windows were opened to the purple twilight outside, she heard a light step upon the portico—and the next moment, Madame Koller walked in.
Olivia received a kind of shock when she recognized her. Madame Koller’s manner to her had been queer of late, but she spoke to her very cordially. Very likely she was wearied and ennuyéd at home—and had to come to Olivia in the desperation of loneliness.
Madame Koller, in response to Olivia’s hospitable offer, allowed her to remove the long furred mantle, and place it on a chair. She looked at Olivia fixedly. Her eyes were large and very bright.
“You are surprised that I should come here at this time, Miss Berkeley?”
“I am very pleased, Madame Koller.”
“You are surprised. However, is it not strange how in moments of great agitation, trifles will come to one’s mind? It reminds me even now, how all the people in this county are amazed at simple—very simple things. There is nothing in my walking a mile or two to see you—I have a servant outside—but you, like the rest, regard it as very queer.”
“As you please, Madame Koller,” answered Olivia.
“Still more strange will you think it when I tell you my errand—for, although you are no fool, Olivia Berkeley, you have no heart.”
“Did you take so much trouble in order to tell me this to-night?” answered Olivia pleasantly enough, but with that little shade of sarcasm in her voice that is infuriating to people in deadly earnest.
“Not entirely. But I am glad you have no heart to suffer. I would not wish any one to suffer as I do.”
Madame Koller paused a moment.
“You know why I suffer. It is not my purpose to say how much Pembroke is to blame. I do not know how you cold, self-contained people consider these things. He did not take the trouble to undeceive me, when I supposed he loved me until a few months ago—until you, in short, appeared.”
“Madame Koller,” said Olivia, haughtily, “may I beg that you will not bring my name into your personal affairs or Pembroke’s either? While I am under no obligation to tell you, I have no hesitation in saying that there is nothing whatever between him and me that the whole world may not know. He is not my lover and never has been.”
Madame Koller looked at Olivia and laughed mirthlessly.
“You sit there and tell me that as coolly as if you expected me to go home without saying another word. But I will not go, and I will speak. However, there is nothing that you need be angry about. Only this. Pembroke, you see, is poor. He has great gifts, but they will not bring him money for many years. He is extravagant—he is proud. He wants to go into public life—that he has told me. Imagine the terrible future of poverty and debt before him if he marries without a fortune. I can save him from all this. I am rich enough for both. Say that you will not stand in my way. I will remove the only obstacle in his path. I will give up everything. I will stay in this tedious land for his sake. He shall pursue any career he chooses. Think well what it is to rob such a man of his only chance of fortune and ease. For if he does not marry me, he will certainly marry you.”
Olivia sat upright in her chair completely dazed. She forgot to be indignant. For the first time the truth enunciated by Madame Koller came home to her. Pembroke was poor. He was extravagant. He was bent upon entering politics. Olivia had, as most women, a practical sympathy. She knew very well the horrors of poverty for such a man, and her portion would be but small.
Madame Koller, seeing that she had made her impression, waited—and after a while continued. Her voice was low and very sweet. She seemed pleading for Pembroke’s salvation.
“Pembroke, you know, is already deeply in debt. He cannot readily accommodate himself to the style of provincial living here. He would say all these things are trifles. I tell you, Olivia Berkeley, they are not trifles. They are second nature. Is it not cruel of God to make us so dependent on these wretched things? It was for these same wretched things that I endured torture for years—for money and clothes and carriages—just such things as that.”
Olivia by a great effort recovered herself.
“What you say is true, Madame Koller. But I will not—how can you ask me such things about a man who has never—never”—she stopped at a loss to express her meaning, which implied a reproach at Madame Koller’s want of delicacy.
Madame Koller made a gesture of impatience.
“What are promises?” she cried. “Nevertheless, I want you to see that if you marry Pembroke it will be his ruin. It would be most wicked selfishness.”
“Madame Koller,” answered Olivia, rising, “I will not listen to any more.”
“I have nothing more to say,” responded Madame Koller, rising too, and drawing her cloak around her. “I did not expect more from you than conventional tolerance. Had you a heart you would have felt for me—for him—for yourself. Can you conceive of anything more noble, or more piteous than two women, one of whom must make a great sacrifice for the man they both love—come, you need not deny it, or lose your temper—because I see you have a temper.” Olivia’s air and manner did certainly indicate dangerous possibilities. “I repeat, of two women as we are, the one makes the sacrifice—the other feels it to the quick. You talk though like a boarding-school miss. You might have got all the phrases you have used out of a book of deportment.”
“I am as sincere as you are, Madame Koller,” answered Olivia, in a voice of restrained anger. “I cannot help it that I am more reserved. I could no more say what you have said—” here a deep flush came into Olivia’s face—“than I could commit murder.”
Madame Koller stood up, and as she did so, she sighed deeply. Olivia, for the first time, felt sorry for her.
“Women who love are foolish, desperate, suicidal—anything. I do not think that you could ever love.”
“Do you think that? I know better. I could love—but not like—not like—”
“Not like me?”
“Yes, since you have said it. Something—something—would hold me back from what you speak of so openly.”
“I always said you were as nearly without feeling as the rest of the people here. Elizabeth Pembroke is the only woman I know of, among all of us, that ever really loved. But see how curious it was with her. She defied her father’s curses—yet she did not have the nerve to marry the man she truly loved, because he happened to be an officer in the Union army, for fear the Peytons and the Coles, and the Lesters, and the rest of them, would have turned their backs on her at church. Bah!”
“I don’t think it was want of nerve on Elizabeth Pembroke’s part,” replied Olivia. “She was not born to be happy.”
“Nor was I,” cried Madame Koller, despondently.
There was no more said for a minute or two. Then Madame Koller spoke again.
“Now you know what I feel. I don’t ask anything for myself—I only wish to show you that you will ruin Pembroke if you marry him.”
An angry light came into Olivia’s eyes. She stood up, straight and stern, and absolutely grew taller as she looked fixedly at Madame Koller.
“This is intolerable,” she said. “There is nothing—absolutely nothing—between Pembroke and me, and yet I am subjected to this cross-questioning.”
“You would complain a great deal more of it if there were anything between you,” answered Madame Koller, not without a glimpse of grotesque humor. “But now you know where I stand—and let me tell you, Olivia Berkeley, Pembroke is not guiltless toward me, however he would pretend it”—and without waiting for the angry reply on Olivia’s lips, she vanished through the open door.
All that evening, as Olivia sat with a book on her lap, not reading, but watching the flame on the broad hearth, she was turning over in her mind what Madame Koller had said. It had disturbed her very much. It had not raised Pembroke at all in her esteem. She begun, nevertheless, to think with pity over the wretchedness of his fate should he be condemned to poverty. She fancied him harassed by debts, by Miles’ helplessness. Her tender heart filled with pity.
“Olivia, my love,” said the Colonel, emerging from behind his newspaper for a moment. “Pembroke means to try for the nomination to Congress—and Cave tells me he is pretty sure to get it. Great pity. A man who goes into public life without out a competence dooms himself to a dog’s life for the remainder of his days. It ruined Pembroke’s father thirty years ago.”
Olivia started. This was like an oracle answering her own thoughts.
She thought, with a little bitter smile that it did not require much generosity to give up a man on whom one had no claim, and laughed at the idea of a struggle. At all events she would forget it all. It was not so easy to forget though. The thought stayed with her, and went to bed with her, and rose with her next morning.
Meanwhile, alas, for Madame Koller. When she came out, she looked around in vain for the negro woman who had come with her. She was not to be seen. They had come by the path that led through the fields, which made it only a mile from The Beeches to Isleham, but in going back, she missed her way—and then being a little afraid of the negroes, she went “around the road,” as they called it. At the first gate, a man galloped out of the darkness. It was Pembroke. He recognized her at once, and got off his horse.
“You here,” he cried in surprise—“at this hour”—for it was well on to seven o’clock, and Madame Koller was not noted for her fondness for walking.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Is anything the matter at Isleham?” he asked—for she could not have come from anywhere else.
“Nothing at all,” she replied nervously. “I—I—went over to see Olivia Berkeley,” she added boldly.
Pembroke could say nothing. After a pause, Madame Koller burst out.
“Pembroke, that girl is made of iron. She cares nothing for you—for anybody but herself.”
“And did you find out any of those things by asking her?” he inquired.
The twilight was so upon them that Madame Koller could not well see Pembroke’s face, but she realized the tone of suppressed rage in his voice. She herself had a temper that was stormy, and it flamed out at that tone.
“Yes, I asked her. Are you a man that you can reproach me with it?”
It is difficult for a man, if he is a gentleman, to express his wrath toward a woman. Pembroke was infuriated at the idea that Madame Koller should go to Olivia Berkeley and ask prying questions. He ground his teeth with wrath as he looked at Madame Koller standing before him, in the half light.
“What a price I have had to pay for folly,” he cried furiously. “A little damned love-making in a garden—” he was so savage that he was not choice of words and fell into profanity as men naturally do—“a half dozen notes and bouquets—Great God! Is there anything in that which should be a curse to a man’s whole life! And I love Olivia Berkeley. I could make her love me, but—but for you.”
His violence sobered Madame Koller at once.
“There was not much, certainly,” she responded calmly. “The love-making in the garden and the bouquets would have been little enough—but unfortunately hearts are so perverse. A great many are broken by such trifles. It was very amusing to you but not so amusing altogether to me.”
Pembroke began to be ashamed of himself. But he was still magnanimous enough not to tell her that she had taken a queer course about those things.
“I suppose I am to blame,” he said with sulky rage after a moment. “I’m willing to shoulder all the blame there is—but why should Olivia Berkeley be insulted and annoyed by this kind of thing? Do you think you will ever accomplish anything by—” he stopped and blushed both for himself and her.
“One thing is certain,” he continued. “After what you have said to Olivia Berkeley, questioning her about me, as you have admitted, I shall simply carry out my intention of asking her to marry me. She shall at least know the truth from me. But I think my chances are desperate. Pshaw! I have no chance at all. It’s rather grotesque, don’t you think, for a man to ask a woman to marry him when he knows that she will throw him over and despise him from the bottom of her heart?”
“That I must decline to discuss with you,” quietly answered Madam Koller. She was indeed quiet, for at last—and in an instant, she realized that she must forever give up Pembroke. All that long journey was for nothing—all those months of wretched loneliness, of still more wretched hopes and fears, were in vain. She heard Pembroke saying:
“You had best let me see you home. It is too late for you to be out alone.”
“You will not,” she replied. “I will not permit you, after what you have said, to go one step with me.”
Pembroke felt thoroughly ashamed. It was one of the incidents of his association with Madame Koller and Ahlberg that they always made him say and do things he was ashamed of. In short, they demoralized him. He had been betrayed by temper and by circumstances into things that were utterly against his self-respect—like this ebullition of rage against a woman. In the plenitude of his remorse he was humble to the last degree.
“May I,” he asked—“may I, at least accompany you to your own grounds? It is really not safe for you.”
Madame Koller turned upon him and stamped her foot.
“No, no—always no. Do you think there is any danger on earth from which I would accept your protection? Go to Olivia Berkeley. She would marry you in your poverty if it suited her whim, and be a millstone around your neck. Go to her, I say.”
Pembroke watched her figure disappearing in the dusk along the faint white line of the road. He stood still with his horse’s bridle in his hand, turning over bitter things in his mind. He thought he would not go to Isleham that night. He was depressed and conscience-stricken, and in no lover-like mood. He mounted his horse and rode slowly back to Malvern.