Constance Trescot

George Trescot was, like Constance, an orphan, and of the same old New England breed as the woman he loved. With slender means, he had made his way in college, unassisted, by aiding duller men as a tutor, and had passed through the law school with unusual distinction. Then the war broke out, and, enlisting in the ranks, he rose rapidly, as death cleared the way, until in the final struggle he was so wounded as partially to disable his right shoulder, which he commonly eased by carrying his hand caught in his waistcoat. Although five years had gone by, at times it gave him pain, and he felt this as he passed through the drawing-room and out into the garden. Constance’s appearance of being tall struck him as she passed across the path and disappeared behind a row of shrubs which sheltered the garden from the rough sport of the east winds. In reality, admirable symmetry was responsible, for she was not of more than full middle height.

As he turned to meet her she was joyously flushed, a glad welcome in her eyes. In a moment she was in his arms. “A whole week!” she cried.

Conscious that the embrace was as much hers as his, he cast an uneasy glance about him, fearful of profane eyes, of which she was, to appearance, heedless.

The moment was expressive. He loved her with some sense that she was a thing apart from other women. A great respect went with it—a delicate, shy tenderness which passed into delicious wonder at the deep passion which he had awakened. They had met first at a dance, where, as he crossed the room, an awkward partner in the waltz had brought her roughly against his wounded shoulder. In extreme pain he had dropped into a chair. She caught sight of his face. “Who is he?” she said. Her partner replied, “He is George Trescot, my old major in the Sixth. I must have hurt his wounded arm. Excuse me a moment.”

“No, take me to him.”

“Trescot,” said his friend, “I am sorry; I was awkward.”

“May I, too, apologize?” said she.

As they spoke, Trescot, pale with pain, looked up and tried to rise. He met a pair of violet eyes and a face of anxious interest he was never to forget.

“Pardon me,” he said; “I shall be all right in a little while. It was worth some pain to know Miss Hood.”

“Thank you. That is a great deal to say.”

He asked for a glass of wine, and, as his friend went for it, she sat down beside him.

“I am more sorry,” she said, “than I can tell you. Were you hurt in the war? I think Mr. Ware said so.”

“Yes; but pardon me, I cannot talk—not now, not just yet. But do not go.”

She had no such intention. She was silent, watching his set face, sensitively aware of some eager wish to help him.

His friend returned. Trescot took the wine and said at last, as they rose, “I am better, but I think I must go.”

She said, “My sister and I shall be glad to see you; we are always at home on Monday afternoons.”

“Thank you,” he returned; “I shall hope to be better company when we meet again.”

There was no indecision about this love-affair. In two weeks they were engaged. She had often said to herself that she would be hard to please, and that only a long acquaintance would justify a woman in giving herself to a man. She asked herself no questions as to the unreasoning passion which made easy for Trescot what so many had found hard. Their mutual attraction had the inevitability of the physical forces. From the moment of their first meeting, Constance Hood was the realization of his dream of the most stately womanhood. The impression he made on her was as sudden. He was not over her own height, slightly made, and, just then, even delicate in appearance. The look of intellect and power which a few faces show with features of great refinement gave added charm to manners which were gently formal, with some flavor of a more leisurely day when men had time to be courteous.

The contrast between his frail look and the stories men told of his fearlessness in the great war had its influence on the woman who had broken into a passion of anger and grief when the news of Sumter revealed the power of sentiment to stir her, as it stirred and energized the manhood of a great nation, presumed by those who thus challenged it to be given over to the ledger and day-book.

Susan Hood watched with surprise, anxiety, and a little amusement the progress of a love-affair which did not explain itself to one who considered marriage as a matter not to be entered into lightly or unadvisedly, and who had had no personal experience to shock her with the discovery of passions in herself or another. To the very humorous, love comes with difficulty.

Very soon Constance talked to her with strange unreserve. This abandonment to love, so profound, so abrupt, shocked Susan. A man might thus exhibit affection, not a woman. Needless to say that it was for a time only the sister who thus saw and heard and wondered, dismayed at a passion as wild as that of Juliet.

* * *

When Trescot, having left her uncle, found Constance, the lovers sat down beyond the garden, before them the quiet of an unruffled sea and the eastward glow of the setting sun. The woman’s hand sought his and held it. “Has uncle told you?” she said.

“Your uncle is an amazing person, but I learned at last that you and he had settled the matter.”

She was aware at once that he was not entirely satisfied, and said:

“Oh, of course, George, it rests with you. If you accept we can be married soon, and if you say no we must wait a year, or even two years. How can I be without you so long? My uncle remains here in the country all the year, as you know; and now that I have disturbed his theory as to what my life was to be, I shall be made to suffer.”

“But we would be near, and I should see you often—very often.”

“Yes, I know; but it would be hard—oh, harder than you can know; and my uncle is never done with a subject; my life would be made intolerable. And then, after all, we should not be there—I mean at St. Ann—always; you would succeed, and some day we should come home.” She made it all seem clear, definite, and certain. Indeed, it so appeared to her.

It seemed much more vague to the young man, but the bribe she offered was too much for him to resist.

“We should go among a strange and hostile people, Constance—I a Northern officer, you with your strong feeling about the South.”

“I should learn to hold my tongue, and you would be sure to make friends.”

“Perhaps.” He remained silent a moment, and then went on. “I have rarely had doubts as to any future, dear, except as concerned whether I could make you love me. But this future of a life at St. Ann seems to me a very doubtful matter. I am to displace the present agent and—”

“But Mr. Averill—my uncle calls him, with respect, major-general—Mr. Averill desires to give up the care of uncle’s lands. He did not tell you that, I am sure.”

“No, he did not. Of course that somewhat simplifies the matter. But to act for a man like Mr. Hood may well have its difficulties.”

“I do not think so. He always backs down before a resolute man, or even an obstinate woman. You will have your own way, and we shall be so happy, George.”

“Of that I am sure, there or anywhere; and yet I am in reason, and above all because I love you, bound to think of the future. I am naturally sanguine, Constance. Even in the darkest hours of the war I was that; but in this matter I am not sanguine, and if you were to ask me why, I could not tell you. I have a feeling—” and here he paused.

“A feeling, George?”

“Yes, like that I had once on South Mountain. I was about to ride on to a hillock for a better view of the enemy’s line, when I felt for a moment a curious reluctance. I pulled up my horse, half surprised at myself—and then, with a sense of the absurdity of the thing, I rode on. As my horse moved across the space between, a shell exploded on the hillock.”

“Oh, George! But it isn’t like that—was not that a pure superstition?”

“Yes, very absurd, utterly ridiculous in its application here; I ought not to have said it.”

“It does not in the least trouble me, although, like my uncle, I have my own little thrills about thirteen at table, and all such nonsense. My uncle says—” and she stopped.

“Well, dear?”

“Oh, he says that a person may reason himself out of religious beliefs, but can never quite get rid of these little half-beliefs.”

“I think,” he returned, “that people who are really and thoughtfully religious have least of these remnants of a more ignorant day.”

“And yet, George,” she returned, laughingly, “you obeyed an impulse quite without reason; I should hardly call it a superstition.”

“No; you are right. But to go back to what is for you and me a very serious question. I believe now that I may accept your uncle’s offer. But I must think it over when those dear eyes are not looking into mine, those lips saying, ‘Come, let us go away and be all of life to each other.’ Let us drop it now and talk of other things. I have to go back to Boston by the late train. Within a day I shall write to you and to your uncle. I must talk it over with an older lawyer.”

She was satisfied, and saw, or thought she saw, that he would be of her opinion. She had her own reasons for desiring to have no such delay as he would have tranquilly accepted. He had all through life been denying himself this or that to-day in order that he might be more secure of to-morrow’s wants. Such a passion as possessed her with the power of a primal instinct was not yet in him victorious over all rational considerations. He knew little of women, and nothing of the woman who desires to absorb, so to speak, all of the thoughts and feelings of the one man, and who, as time goes on, becomes jealous of his friends, and even of his work, and, at last, of every hour not given to her. Such women are happily rare, but are now and then to be found. From the hour she first saw him, frail and pallid from suffering, a vast protecting eagerness arose in her mind. As her kinship of pity blossomed into love, the desire to be with him and watch over what seemed to her in her new anxiety a more delicate life than it really was, supplied her with a reason for early marriage. She had never asked herself why she had been so suddenly captured; but as time went on she knew that she had drawn a prize in the uncertain lottery of love, and felt that his charm of manner, his distinction, the delicacy and refinement with which he had pleaded for her love, had fully justified her choice.

After further talk he left her at twilight, and at the last moment, in haste to catch his train. She watched him as he walked swiftly away, noting the arm caught for relieving support in his waistcoat, the upright, soldierly carriage of figure, well built, but lacking flesh. She said:

“Ah! but I love you well; how well, you do not yet know, George Trescot,—but you will—you shall.”

As he turned at the garden gate to look back, she cried, as she ran toward him, “You forgot, George.”

“What?” he said.

“To kiss me again.”

Late in the afternoon of the next day she received a letter, with which she fled to the rocks above the sea. She tore it open and read:

“No,” she said, looking up, “it is not for me life’s largest matter. This human love is for me the larger. His religion, or any faith, is, compared to that, dim, misty, unsatisfying. But love! ah, that is near and sweet and real.”

“Well, well,” she mused, as she sat with the letter in her lap. “He would have me to believe as he believes. Would I wish him to change? No. He is my religion. That would shock him. To please him I could almost make believe to think as he does. To be separated in anything from him seems terrible.”

She was facing a hard question, made the more difficult by pure ignorance. Since childhood she had been in her uncle’s care. He had his own very peculiar views, and the delight in opposition which is fed by self-esteem and accounts in some degree for the ways and opinions of men who in the conduct of life depart radically from the common-sense standards of the world at large. His theories found a fair field in Constance. She was never to be punished; reasoning would do everything. How could a child accept a creed? She must be kept with a neutral mind. She had never been allowed to set foot in a church. When she grew up she might choose for herself. It shocked the elder sister, who, until the death of an aunt with whom she lived, saw Constance rarely, as they were separated by a hundred miles. When later she herself was left without a home, she gladly accepted her uncle’s invitation to live with them.

The new abode was far more luxurious than the one she had lost upon her aunt’s death. It was also very different. As time ran on, and she became more familiar with what she felt to be a rather singular household, she had an eager desire to help her young sister to escape from what seemed to Susan a bondage of the spirit. She became watchful and observant of her uncle and Constance, and saw, with something like dismay, the completeness of her sister’s isolation from all knowledge of that which seemed to her an essential part of the higher life. She was by temperament and sense of duty made unwilling to accept a neutral attitude; a growing affection added a strong motive, and she was resolute not to go on endlessly without protest. Some feeble attempts to approach the subject on which the elder sister felt so deeply were met by Constance either with indifference or mild amusement, as a thing long since disposed of, or as beneath the consideration of the larger mind. Rather than by persistence risk the loss of a growing affection, Susan ceased to speak of that which she held with such reverent faith, and could only pray that time and circumstances would afford more prosperous opportunities. With her uncle she was still less fortunate, but as he at least rested content with the situation he had created, she felt forced at last to secure for herself an opportunity to make the protest to which she felt driven by motives which left no escape possible.

He had soon become accustomed to use her for many of the little tasks which Constance disliked. She was seated with her uncle in his library after breakfast, engaged in cutting the leaves of a report on the census. He was minutely noting in his diary the state of the barometer and such reflections of his own as he considered worth preserving, and as to this he was generous.

He was not too busy to observe that, true to the habit of the born reader, she was now and then caught by some fact of interest, and ceased using the paper-cutter.

“Ah,” she exclaimed, laughing, “the census of this State embraces three millions of women—poor Mr. Census.”

“Yes, yes,” he returned, “quite remarkable,—an old joke, I believe. But I wish you would finish. I need the book. Constance has been trained to do one thing at a time.” The niece thus characterized had declined the task, and gone out to sail.

“I shall finish it, sir, in a few minutes.”

There was again silence, until at last she said: “The method of securing the number of people in the different religious sects seems to me quite absurd—just listen, Uncle Rufus.”

“I have no interest in it. It ought to be left out. The multitudinous opinions of irrelevant minds are disgraceful to the human intelligence. Negation is the proper attitude. Constance represents it to my satisfaction.”

Susan’s chance had come. She laid the book down and said earnestly: “You must pardon me if I say that I think you are wrong.”

“Well, I am always ready to hear honest opinions,—go on.”

“Do not you think that to leave a young girl without any sense of relation to God must result in her never acquiring any when grown up?”

“No, I do not. I have my views. When she is a woman and mature, she will choose.”

“But will she? She will have no interest in the matter.”

“Well, what then? Suppose that she never has.”

Susan was shocked; but after a moment replied: “Well, why not let her choose her morals? Why insist on her being, as a child, truthful, and charitable? Why insist on good manners? Let her choose her morals and her manners when she is what you call mature.”

“Nonsense; you are sophistical, and you are too clever not to know it.”

Susan was well enough aware of the difficulty in defending her statement, but she was too vexed to be logical, and said: “You have taken away from a young life one of the most imperative motives to be all that a woman ought to be.”

“I think I am a better judge of that than you. I have never missed what you call religion, nor will Constance. I have my views, and I insist that you are not to bother the girl with your superstitions.”

“I am sorry, uncle, but I can make no promise.”

“I suppose not. You are as obstinate in your folly as I am resolute in my common sense.”

“That is fine,” murmured Susan, as she returned to her work, making him no reply, and inclined for the time to abandon a useless purpose. Presently she laid the book beside him, saying:

“Is there anything else?”

“No, nothing.”

She left him and went out to the company of the flowers and the wholesomeness of a perfect day, troubled that she had made no impression, and asking herself if, after all, her argument was sophistical.

As she sat looking at the white sail of Constance’s cat-boat, rocking over an unquiet sea, she began to sum up her slowly acquired knowledge of the younger woman.

Yes, she was intelligent,—clever, accomplished, as Susan was not; an admirable musician, singularly ignorant of the great literature, but, like her uncle, unusually well informed on the history of her country. How she had come to have political opinions the reverse of her uncle’s puzzled Susan. It might be that she too loved to be in opposition, but certainly she held to her views with such passion as he was incapable of. And surely the girl was beautiful. As yet Susan could go no further in her interested analysis. Yes, she had the virtues of her caste, and great capacity for affection.

The woman concerning whom it was thus needful to digress went back to her letter.

Again she paused, with the thought that to take him away even from his friends gave her a sense of such completeness of possession as filled her with joy. The rest of what he wrote was as delightful. She put the letter in her bosom and felt it move with her breathing; now and again she took it out and kissed it.