Constance Trescot

On the afternoon of the next day the sisters left for the long journey to their home on the Beverly coast of Massachusetts. The general, who had gone with them to the station, on his return came into the parlor—no one called it a drawing-room in St. Ann. Mrs. Averill was seated before the hickory-log fire, her knitting on her lap. She was looking up at the rival flags, the swords, and the poor little photographs. As she heard Averill’s step she took up her knitting, smiling sadly at the intrusive remembrance concerning the “ravell’d sleave of care” which none can knit. He had a letter in his hand.

“Eleanor,” he said, “this has been a great shock to me. I could not have imagined it as possible.”

“No new trouble?” she said quickly. “What is it? Always tell me things first and say what you like afterward. Men always prepare one.” She was slightly irritated.

“Oh, it is of no personal moment. Read that, Eleanor, and tell me what on earth I am to do.”

She took the letter and read:

Mrs. Averill slowly folded the letter, and replaced it in the envelop. “Do you not think, Edward, that she may be a little—well, not quite sane? It is too strange, too horrible.”

“No; she is sane enough, Eleanor. But grief plays strange tricks with the most sane.”

“I, at least, cannot imagine a really great sorrow associated with ideas of revenge; but, after all, Edward, there is more than revenge here—or perhaps less. It would, after all, be only an unusual act of justice.”

“But you could never have desired such a thing.”

“I am not sure. No, I could not; but I am not Constance. I do not blame her.”

The general stood by the fire, the letter in his hand. At last he said: “Personally, Eleanor, I could wish this thing done. A man commits a crime like this and justice fails; people forget, and there is not even a record; and at last the man, too, I suppose, forgets.”

“But does he? Do you think that a man like him does at last cease to feel what he must have felt when that dear, beautiful woman fell at his feet? I often think, as I sit here, Edward,—just a sad, childless mother,—that if the men whose bullets left us lonely could have seen us or fully known what they had done, they could not have failed to be unhappy.” Then she paused and, looking up affectionately at the kind, brave face of the comrade and lover, added: “But I am glad they cannot know.”

“Yes, that is as well, dear. I, too, have helped to create in unseen homes the misery of war, more’s the pity. If every man in an army knew and saw whom his shot killed or crippled, and saw, too, all the far-away, never-ending consequences, I think wars would cease.”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” she said, as she looked up with full eyes at the crossed swords over the mantel.

They were silent again for a little while. Then she said:

“What will you do about this letter—this inscription?”

“I hardly know.”

“You may be sure that the churchwarden will never permit it. You can see him and show him the letter in confidence. He will say no; and you can repeat this to our poor Constance.”

The general, well pleased to be thus counseled, had his interview with the astonished warden, and upon his protesting wrote to Constance to that effect.

She replied that no one, not even Susan, knew anything of her letter, and that no further steps need be taken. She was sorry to have given trouble.

She wrote from time to time, but her letters were rare and never personal. Meanwhile, they had gone to Europe, as the doctor had desired them to do. Susan wrote often. Constance was, apparently, well again, but still thin and without a trace of her lovely coloring. The doctors said it was anemia, but one in Milan insisted that it was not want of blood, but some change in the nervous system. He had seen such cases and said that she would always be pale. “I really think,” said Susan, “that she is more beautiful than ever, but it is the beauty of living marble; and, dear Mrs. Averill, I had a cherished belief that this awful thing would make my sister turn where alone are peace and rest and the hope that lives when earth has none. I can see no such result. She will not even let me speak of what is so near to me. This alone makes her irritable, and that is new to Constance. People stare at her, and no wonder—so pale, so stately, and so sadly indifferent. She reads little, goes to the galleries, and takes no real interest in anything except that she shows the most eager desire to get well and vigorous. I should have wished to die. She was always, except with George and me, a reserved person, and now I am sure there is something constantly on her mind. It is not a mere torturing memory, but something which, when she thinks she is unnoticed, makes her smile in a cold way. I cannot describe it; but it does worry me. Once only she has shown interest, and that was about the miniatures we have had made for you from the photographs of your sons. They are very admirable, and to know what they will be to our dear friends pleased her. She said, ‘How George would have liked them!’ and, believe me, this is the only time I have heard his name pass her lips. I can give you no better idea of the effect she produces than to tell you what happened yesterday at the Pitti—no, it was at the Bargello. I was seated, looking at the statue of David. My sister was moving about, never looking long at any one of the wonderful things on every side. I heard a man near by say to a younger man: ‘Did you see that woman?’ ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘what a colorless face! She is as pale as death.’ The other said: ‘But what a cold, beautiful face! She must have had a history worth hearing.’ They strolled away, and I heard no more. I have a dreadful desire to know what has become of that man Greyhurst. Is he still in St. Ann?”

Mrs. Averill looked up from the letter she had been reading aloud to her husband.

“I have never chanced to set eyes on him,” she said. “But, then, I rarely leave my home.”

“As you know, dear,” returned Averill, “we do not speak. Of course I see him and hear of him. I think he has been made to feel that men are more than ever inclined to avoid him; not so much, I am sorry to say, on account of Trescot’s death as because of that terrible evidence of his uncertain temper. At the club I notice that he is not asked to take a hand at cards, although he plays well.”

“That is rather a mild punishment.”

“Yes; but it means something to him; and the social discipline has had its effect on a man who is, or was, amusing, and who liked the society of men. He is a sensitive person and feels it. I hear, too, that he no longer carries a revolver.”

“Indeed! and here, where it is so common!”

“Yes; Colonel Dudley told me. He has had two or three successful cases of late, and behaved with propriety and good temper.”

“Mrs. Dudley told me that he has been speaking in the county at political meetings.”

“Yes,” said Averill, “and admirably well. He wants to go to the legislature. That is all I know, Eleanor. I dislike even to talk about him. So far he is prospering, and that dear fellow is forgotten. This is a strange world, and not altogether satisfactory.”

Mrs. Averill was silent for a moment, automatically plying her knitting-needles. The general stood with a hand on her shoulder. Presently she said:

“Will you drive me to the churchyard this afternoon? I want to leave some flowers on the grave.”

He replied, “Certainly—of course.”

Then she added: “I was wondering how, in the far future, these two lives will end—her life and his.”

“Oh, she is young, and he will live on, and the whole thing will be forgotten in time. It is not the only case we have had in St. Ann; and, as far as I have been able to see, the actors in these tragedies appear to be very little influenced or altered. Greyhurst is the sole instance I recall in which the man who killed seemed to be personally changed by what he had done. He certainly is changed—Dudley says very much changed.”

“But how?”

“Oh, he is moody and silent; he is less gay; he is more deferential. Suppose we drop him, Eleanor.”

“It is all very sad,” she said; and gathering up her knitting, she went out into the garden, where now in the late spring the flowers were welcoming the sun.