The Bay State Monthly. Volume 2, No. 3, December, 1884

"But, remember, I was twenty-one my last birthday," she answered. "I ought to take a broader view of things."

"On the contrary, you're getting to be an old maid. You should consider which of your suitors you want, and say 'yes' to him on the spot. By the way, what has become of your friend, the handsome Master Edmonson?"

Elizabeth colored.

"I don't know," she answered. "Father has heard from him since he went away, so I suppose that he is well."

"And he has not written to you?"

"No, he has only sent a message." Then, after a pause, "He said that he was coming back in the autumn."

"I hope so," cried Katie, "he is a most fascinating man, and of such family! Stephen was speaking of him the other day. He was very attentive, was he not, Betsey?"

"Ye-es, I suppose so. But there was something that I fancied papa did not like."

"I'm so sorry," cried Katie. She rose, and crossing the little space between herself and her friend, dropped upon the footstool at Elizabeth's feet, and laying her arms in the girl's lap and resting her chin upon them, looked up and added, "Tell me all about it, my dear."

"There is nothing to tell," answered Elizabeth, caressing the beautiful hair and looking into the eyes that had tears of sympathy in them.

"I was afraid something had gone wrong, afraid that you would care."

Elizabeth sat thinking.

"I don't know," she said slowly at last, "I don't know whether I should really care or not if I never saw him again."

Her companion looked at her a moment in silence, and when she began to speak it was about something else.

CHAPTER IV.

GIRDING ON THE HARNESS

Later that same morning a gentleman calling upon Mistress Katie Archdale was told that he would find her with friends in the garden. Walking through the paths with a leisurely step which the impatience of his mood chafed against, he came upon a picture that he never forgot.

Great stretches of sunshine lay on the garden and in it brilliant beds of flowers glowed with their richest lights, poppies folded their gorgeous robes closely about them, Arab fashion, to keep out the heat; hollyhocks stood in their stateliness flecked with changing shadows from the aspen tree near by. Beds of tiger lilies, pinks, larkspur, sweetwilliams, canterbury bells, primroses, gillyflowers, lobelia, bloomed in a luxuriance that the methodical box which bordered them could not restrain. But the garden was by no means a blaze of sunshine, for ash trees, maples, elms, and varieties of the pine were there. Trumpet-vines climbed on the wall, and overtopping that, caught at trellises prepared to receive them, and formed screens of shadows that flickered in every breeze and changed their places with the changing sun. But it was only with a passing glance that the visitor saw these things, his eyes were fixed upon an arbor at the end of the garden; it was covered with clematis, while two great elms met overhead at its entrance and shaded the path to it for a little distance. Under these elms stood a group of young people. He was unannounced, and had opportunity without being himself perceived, to scan this little group as he went forward. His expression varied with each member of it, but showed an interest of some sort in each. Now it was full of passionate delight; then it changed as his look fell upon a tall young man with dark eyes and a bearing that in its most gracious moments seemed unable to lose a touch of haughtiness, but whose face now was alive with a restful joy. The gazer, as he perceived this happiness, so wanting in himself, scowled with a bitter hate and looked instantly toward another of the party, this time with an expression of triumph. At the fourth and last member of the group his glance though scowling, was contemptuous; but the receiver was as unconscious of contempt as he felt undeserving of it. From him the gazer's eyes returned to the person at whom he had first looked. She was standing on the step of the arbor, an end of the clematis vine swaying lightly back and forth over her head, and almost touching her bright hair which was now towered high in the fashion of the day. She was holding a spray of the vine in her hand. She had fastened one end in the hair of a young lady who stood beside her, and was now bringing the other about her neck, arranging the leaves and flowers with skilful touches. Three men, including the new-comer, watched her pretty air of absorption, and the deftness of her taper fingers, the sweep of her dark lashes on her cheek as from the height of her step she looked down at her companion, the curves of her beautiful mouth that at the moment was daintly holding a pin with which the end of the spray was to be fastened upon the front of the other's white dress. It was certainly effective there. Yet none of the three men noticed this, or saw that between the two girls the question as to beauty was a question of time, that while the one face was blooming now in the perfection of its charm, the charm of the other was still in its calyx. The adorner intuitively felt something of this. Perhaps she was not the less fond of her friend that the charms she saw in her were not patent to everybody. Bring her forward as much as she might, Katie felt that Elizabeth Royal would never be a rival. She even shrank from this kind of prominence into which Katie's play was bringing her now. She had been taken in hand at unawares and showed an impatience that if the other were not quick, would oblige her to leave the work unfinished.

"There," cried Katie, at last giving the leaves a final pat of arrangement, "that looks well, don't you think so, Master Waldo?"

"Good morning, Mistress Archdale," broke in a voice before Waldo could answer. "And you, Mistress Royal," bowing low to her. "After our late hours last night, permit me to felicitate you upon your good health this morning, and—" he was about to add, "your charming appearance," but something in the girl's eyes as she looked full at him held back the words, and for a moment ruffled his smooth assurance. But as he recovered himself and turned to salute the gentlemen, the smile on his lips had triumph through its vexation.

"My proud lady, keep your pride a little longer," he said to himself. And as he bowed to Stephen Archdale with a dignity as great as Stephen's own, he was thinking: "My morning in that hot office has not been in vain. I know your weak point now, my lofty fellow, and it is there that I will undermine you. You detest business, indeed! John Archdale feels that with his only son in England studying for the ministry he needs a son-in-law in partnership with him. The thousands which I have been putting into his business this morning are well spent, they make me welcome here. Yes, your uncle needs me, Stephen Archdale, for your clever papa is not always brotherly in his treatment, he has more than once brought heavy losses upon the younger firm. It's a part of my pleasure in prospect that now I shall be able to checkmate him in such schemes, perhaps to bring back a little of the loss upon the shoulders of his heir. Ah, I am safer from you than you dream." He turned to Waldo, and as the two men bowed, they looked at one another steadily. Each was remembering their conversation the night before over some Bordeaux in Waldo's room, for they were staying at the same inn and often spent an hour together. They had drunk sparingly, but, just returned from their sail, each was filled with Katie Archdale's beauty, and each had spoken out his purpose plainly, Waldo with an assurance that, if it savored a little of conceit, was full of manliness, the other with a half-smothered fierceness of passion that argued danger to every obstacle in its way.

"You've come at the very right moment, Master Harwin," broke in Katie's unconscious voice, and she smiled graciously, as she had a habit of doing at everybody; "We were talking about you not two minutes ago."

"Then I am just in time to save my character."

"Don't be too sure about that," returned Miss Royal.

Waldo laughed, and Katie exchanged glances with him, and smiled mischievously.

"No, don't be too sure; it will depend upon whether you say 'yes,' or 'no,' to my question. We were wondering something about you."

Harwin's heart sank, though he returned her smile and her glance with interest. For there were questions she might ask which would inconvenience him, but they should not embarrass him.

"We were wondering," pursued Katie, "if you had ever been presented. Have you?"

As the sun breaks out from a heavy cloud, the light returned to Harwin's blue eyes.

"Yes," he said, "four years ago. I went to court with my uncle, Sir Rydal Harwin, and his majesty was gracious enough to nod in answer to my profound reverence."

"It was a very brilliant scene, I am sure, and very interesting."

"Deeply interesting," returned Harwin with all the traditional respect of an Englishman for his sovereign. Archdale's lip curled a trifle at what seemed to him obsequiousness, but Harwin was not looking at him.

"Stephen has been," pursued Katie, "and he says it was very fine, but for all that he does not seem to care at all about it. He says he would rather go off for a day's hunting any time. The ladies looked charming, he said, and the gentlemen magnificent; but he was bored to death, for all that."

"In order to appreciate it fully," returned Archdale, "it would be necessary that one should be majesty." He straightened himself as he spoke, and looked at Harwin with such gravity that the latter, meeting the light of his eyes, was puzzled whether this was jest or earnest, until Miss Royal's laugh relieved his uncertainty. Katie laid her hand on the speaker's arm and shook it lightly.

"You told me I should be sure to enjoy it," she said. "Now, what do you mean?"

"Ah! but you would be queen," said Harwin, "queen in your own right, a divine right of beauty that no one can resist."

Katie looked at him, disposed for a moment to be angry, but her love of admiration could not resist the worship of his eyes, and the lips prepared to pout curved into a smile not less bewitching that the brightness of anger was still in her cheeks. Archdale and Waldo turned indignant glances on the speaker, but it was manifestly absurd to resent a speech that pleased the object of it, and that each secretly felt would not have sounded ill if he had made it himself. Elizabeth looked from Katie to Harwin with eyes that endorsed his assertion, and as the latter read her expression his scornful wonder in the boat returned.

"Why are we all standing outside in the heat?" cried the hostess. "Let us go into the arbor, there is plenty of room to move about there, we have had a dozen together in it many a time." She passed in under the arch as she spoke, and the others followed her. There in her own way which was not so very witty or wise, and yet was very charming, she held her little court, and the three men who had been in love with her at the beginning of the hour were still more in love at the end of it. And Elizabeth who watched her with an admiration as deep as their's, if more tranquil, did not wonder that it was so. Katie did not forget her, nor did the gentlemen, or at least two of them, forget to be courteous, but if she had known what became of the spray of clematis which being in the way as she turned her head, she had soon unfastened and let slip to the ground, she would not have wondered, nor would she have cared. If she had seen Archdale's heel crush it unheedingly as he passed out of the arbor, the beat of her pulses would never have varied.

CHAPTER V.

ANTICIPATIONS

It was early in December. The months had brought serious changes to all but one of the group that the August morning had found in Mr. Archdale's garden. Two had disappeared from the scene of their defeat, and to two of them the future seemed opening up vistas of happiness as deep as the present joy. Elizabeth Royal alone was a spectator in the events of the past months, and even in her mind was a questioning that was at least wonderment, if not pain.

Kenelm Waldo was in the West Indies, trying to escape from his pain at Katie Archdale's refusal, but carrying it everywhere with him, as he did recollections of her; to have lost them would have been to have lost his memory altogether.

Ralph Harwin also had gone. His money was still in the firm of John Archdale & Co., which it had made one of the richest in the Colonies; its withdrawal was now to be expected at any moment, for Harwin did not mean to return, and Archdale, while endeavoring to be ready for this, saw that it would cripple him. Harwin had been right in believing that he should make himself very useful and very acceptable to Katie's father. For Archdale who was more desious of his daughter's happiness than of anything else in the world, was disappointed that this did not lie in the direction which, on the whole, would have been for his greatest advantage. Harwin and he could have done better for Katie in the way of fortune than Stephen Archdale with his distaste for business would do. The Archdale connection had always been a dream of his, until lately when this new possibility had superseded his nephew's interest in his thoughts. There was an address and business keenness about Harwin that, if Stephen possessed at all, was latent in him. The Colonel was wealthy enough to afford the luxury of a son who was only a fine gentleman. Stephen was a good fellow, he was sure, and Katie would be happy with him. And yet—but even these thoughts left him as he leaned back in his chair that day, sitting alone after dinner, and a mist came over his eyes as he thought that in less than a fortnight his home would no longer be his little daughter's.

"It will be all right," he said to himself with that sigh of resignation with which we yield to the inevitable, as if there were a certain choice and merit in doing it. "It is well that the affairs of men are in higher hands than ours." John Archdale's piety was of the kind that utters itself in solitude, or under the breath.

Katie at the moment was upstairs with her mother examining a package of wedding gear that had arrived that day. She had no hesitation as to whom her choice should have been. Yet, as she stood holding a pair of gloves, measuring the long wrists on her arm and then drawing out the fingers musingly, it was not of Stephen that she was thinking, or of him that she spoke at last, as she turned away to lay down the gloves and take up a piece of lace.

"Mother," she said, "I do sometimes feel badly for Master Harwin; he is the only man in all the world that I ever had anything like fear of, and now and then I did of him, such a fierceness would come over him once in a while, not to me, but about me, I know, about losing me. He was terribly in earnest. Stephen never gets into these moods, he is always kind and lovable, just as he has been to me as far back as I can remember, only, of course more so now."

"But things have gone differently with him and with poor Master Harwin," answered Mrs. Archdale. "If you had said 'no' to Stephen, you would have seen the dark moods in him, too."

The young girl looked at her mother and smiled, and blushed a little in a charming acknowledgment of feminine power to sway the minds of the sterner half of humanity. Then she grew thoughtful again, not even flattery diverting her long from her subject.

"But Stephen never could be like that," she said. "Stephen couldn't be dark in that desperate sort of way. I can't describe it in Master Harwin, but I feel it. Somehow, he would rather Stephen would die, or I should, than have us marry."

"Did he ever say so?"