First harvests

WHEN the train had fairly started, that morning, Flossie sank back into her seat with a certain sensation of relief. Almost immediately, they entered the long tunnel under the city; no conversation was possible, nor could she see Mr. Wemyss’s face. She had the back seat herself; Justine sat with him, on the seat in front of her. As they came out of the tunnel and crossed the Harlem River, she looked at him. He met her eye nervously, and she could see that he was embarrassed by the presence of the maid.

“When do we sail?” said she. Flossie was quite indifferent to the maid. What cared she for the maid’s opinion? And she ignored his glances beseeching that she might be told to go. But Justine herself asked Mrs. Gower demurely if she should not fetch a glass of water, and went of her own accord.

“The Parthia sails at six to-night,” said Wemyss. “You will have ample time to rest in Boston, if you wish, dearest.” The expression of affection sounded commonplace; and Wemyss felt that it did, self-consciously. “It is infinitely better we should go from Boston,” he went on; “the Parthia is slow, but that makes no difference; and there is certain to be no one in her we know, at this time of the year. I took the passage in fictitious names, of course.”

“What did you do that for?”

“I thought you would prefer it,” said he; and made bold to take her hand.

“It was very ridiculous and quite unnecessary,” said Flossie, withdrawing it. “When I go to Europe, I am willing all the world should know.”

Wemyss did not know just what to say; and fortunately the conductor made his first entry at that juncture. He attended to his business perfunctorily; and it struck Wemyss as curious that he did not note anything unusual about their trip. It seemed to him that all the world must see that he was going to England with her, and that she was not his wife.

The newspapers lay unread upon the seat. Mrs. Gower did not care to read them; and Wemyss gave his whole attention to her, as a matter of course. She was looking at the window, watching the familiar landscape fly by; and he began to think how they could pass through Boston with least certainty of being seen. He had had the passenger-list of the steamer telegraphed on the night before; and knew that no acquaintance would be on board; he felt it would be embarrassing to meet an acquaintance, until their position was regularized.

When the train had crossed the Harlem River, Wemyss felt as if the Rubicon were passed. But already the feeling of elation, the flattery to his amour-propre, began to pass away. There were certain difficulties, even in the Décadence; conventions yet remaining which annoyed him.

It had been tacitly agreed between them that when Gower got his divorce, Wemyss was to marry her. In the meantime, he was to escort her to England, where they both had many friends. And Wemyss reassured himself by thinking how these friends had treated similar cases; leniently, he was sure, with result of a not wholly unpleasant notoriety, and even, in the man’s case, of a certain glamour. A little temporary retirement, of course, was fitting enough.

How long would that have to last? Six months? A year? They could go abroad—to the Mediterranean—up the Nile—that is, if he could persuade Mrs. Gower to do so. It would be terribly slow, being in England through the London season and not going out; for of course he could not honorably go out without her.—Not but that, of course, he would always be happy wherever he could be with her; as correcting himself, he hastened to think.—The train stopped at Bridgeport; and looking out, he saw a company of blue-coated, elderly men, rigged out with swords and divers sashes and parti-colored orders. It was some post of G. A. R. marching in procession, with a brass band; they did not march well, and yet seemed gravely impressed with the importance of the occasion. They took themselves seriously; and had not yet discovered the Décadence. Wemyss called Mrs. Gower’s attention to them with some amusement; she looked at them listlessly, with her mind on other things. “Don’t you want to go and smoke?” said she.

Mr. Wemyss had never felt so much need of a cigar in his life, but he felt bound to deny it. The train pulled out of the station; and he saw the bluecoats, now portly citizens, with weapons that seemed curiously out of place, marching cheerfully through the snow. Wemyss had not fought in the war. He wondered what he ought to do if Gower should challenge him. Wemyss was no physical coward, and he felt he ought to be true to the code of honor. But did not English ideas rather cast ridicule upon duels in such cases? And Wemyss dreaded ridicule more than anything else in the world; and was an Englishman above all things—particularly for the future. There was no question that the bourgeoisie of Boston would never condone his offence. Still, if Gower sent a challenge, he should certainly have to meet him.

“I wish you would go and smoke,” said Flossie, impatiently. “I want to go to sleep.”

“True—and forgive me, dear—I ought to have remembered you have been up all night, and your triumphs at the ball.” He took her hand, and bent over it; and the trivial thought came into his head to wonder if Flossie had any doubts of her complexion; the thought annoyed him, coming at such a time; it was not like a Launcelot, hardly like Lauzun. But he walked away regretfully, and went to the smoking-room, where he did take the cigar he really needed; for he too had been up all night, and he, at least, was worn and weary. When he was gone, Flossie closed her eyes and went quietly to sleep.

There were two men in the smoking-room; but Wemyss looked in before he entered, and made up his mind that they were neither of them gentlemen. He sat down and lit his cigar without fear that they could recognize him. He looked at the two other occupants of the place, who were evidently on some business journey, and fancied to himself what they would say if they knew the object of his own. For all his indifference, Wemyss was more nervous after his grand coup than had been Jem Starbuck.

He reminded himself that he must think, like other heroes of great passion, of his lady fair. Last night, at the ball, he had really adored her; if, to-day, there was the faintest possible reaction, was it not natural after all? It takes a Dresden-china shepherd rather than a man of the world to be idyllic in a railroad car; he was sure that he admired her, that she fascinated him, that if he was not in love with her, he had never been in love. He had contemplated this step for years. He was ready to sacrifice his whole future for her.

Another man entered the car, a younger man; he looked at him almost inquisitively, and Wemyss felt sure that he had seen his face before. His cigar was nearly done; moreover his savoir faire reproached him with staying so long away from Flossie, and he left his place to the new-comer. But he found her still asleep; though she opened her eyes at his entrance. “Where are we?”

“New Haven.” Flossie sighed.

“Don’t let me disturb you,” he added.

“Oh, I shall sleep no more.” He sat down opposite, looking over at her tenderly; Justine sat up sphinx-like, and he was losing the constraint her presence at first had caused him. The fact that she took the situation so as of course even gave him a certain support. In this French maid’s trained face he had much comfort. A new conductor came in to take their tickets; and they drew out again into the gray-white landscape of New England winter. Wemyss had made the journey many hundred times; and yet, as he sat there looking at Flossie, his one thought was a surprise that it did not seem more novel, even now. He tried, like Claude Melnotte, to think of Italy, and Como villas; but his imagination failed to go beyond their arrival in Boston and his arrangements for the voyage.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Gower’s thoughts were larger and less troubled. She had no thought for the immediate future, at least. And as to the distant future—well, she, too, had made up her mind. They were both rich; and she had tried her woman’s weapons on the world before. She by no means meant to give up her position in society; she purposed leading it with more celebrity than ever; and in Paris, London, not New York. They had no divorce in France; and no one she cared about would blame her for having exercised that envied American privilege. While in England—she could not go to court, of course; but what cared she for that? She had been presented once; and the more fashionable London court, the circle to which all her social friends belonged, would not dream of caring what the status or position of an American had been. Her springs in Paris, her summers in London, her winters in Pau—ah, this last was the life she secretly looked forward to. She knew that she could be as full of conquests, brilliant, captivating, as any of her favorite Feuillet’s heroines. She knew that she could still be there a reine du monde.

She smiled to herself as she thought how the news would fly around New York. She delighted to think that with Baby Malgam, her nearest friend and rival, a certain almost envious admiration would mingle with pretended triumph. Flossie had led them up to the very end; and then, when she was fairly bored with winning, she had dared the very steepest fence of all. But how the old madams would chuckle to themselves and the blue-blooded coterie she had laughed at so! She had driven a coach and four through all their stupid conventions, and led the fashion to its very end. And twenty years ago she had not been “in society.”

She took up the newspaper, and read the long account of the ball. She had always liked to see her beauty and her dresses hymned in the daily prints; and two whole paragraphs were given to her to-day. “No one attracted so much admiration as Mrs. Levison Gower”—Poor Lucie! She almost wished she had a different husband, though. Poor Lucie was likely to be simply sorry. She almost despised him again for this; if he had been a man like Kill Van Kull, for instance, it would have been an added excitement; and that faint reproach that came rather from her good-nature than her conscience would have been gone entirely. She laid the paper down, and fell again into a reverie; not reading the news of that great fire which the ball had relegated to the second page. On such trivial chances do the actions of our lives depend.

She in turn looked over at Mr. Caryl Wemyss, sitting opposite; he met her eye with a glance of adoration that seemed affected to sharp-sighted Flossie. A well-bred polished person this; but hardly that Guy Livingstone of her youthful fancy. The journey was certainly tedious; they were not at Hartford yet, and she looked out the window and watched the rude fences of her native land fly by, in dwindling perspective. She half-divined his thoughts—he was still reflecting of de Musset and George Sand; of Byron and the Countess Guiccioli; or perhaps, more recently, of Lord Eskdale, his friend, and Mrs. White-Thompson. She, however, for long had had no romance in her composition; but only love of adventure, admiration, social primacy, for good or evil. She tried to banish her companion from her mind, and scheme of future triumphs. Yet she knew that his position was safer in the world than hers.

Already the gray day was growing dark; and the monotonous white wooden houses that they passed were beginning to be lit with evening lamps. The empty fields and wooded hills about them made her lonely; and she pictured to herself, with a shudder, their commonplace firesides. Heavens, how stupid a thing must life be to some! They passed an ugly manufacturing village with its dull, wide streets and garniture of unpainted wood; and her fancy seemed to paint to her all their obscurity of life, their ox-like submission, with really no more faith or virtue, as she thought, than she, only more hypocrisy and less courage. Yet she remembered just such a village, hereabout, in her awkward youth; and something of the view of life it taught came back to her, now; abandoned, as it had been, from her very girlhood.

So this was the climax, after all! And all her triumphs and all her cleverness had led to this? Some people would call it but a common elopement, and say that her position in respectable society was gone forever. She had not valued this, nor all these things, when she had got them; not even perhaps as any Jenny Starbuck valued her diamond ring; would she care for them more, now she had lost them? She fancied not. And she looked over the unpicturesque New-England landscape and pretended that she was a French duchess, travelling in some barbaric province. And then she looked at Mr. Wemyss once more, and again half wished that it had been Van Kull. She knew very well that there was no grande passion in her case.

When they got to Springfield, Wemyss got out; and came back in some trepidation. “I have seen Charlie Clarendon,” said he; “but I don’t think that he noticed me.”

“And what does it matter whether he noticed you or not?” said Flossie, opening her eyes.

“Why, I thought—that you—that is, I wanted——” He broke off in some confusion at Flossie’s laugh; and nothing more was said between them, all his well-worded compliments meeting no response. “She snubs me as if I were her husband,” thought he; and he wished the awkward journey well over, and they were safely on the steamer.

There was something pitilessly practical in the dull light of the winter afternoon; commonplace, dispiriting, and the twilight hour least suited of the twenty-four for daring deeds. The very way the newsboys cried the evening papers jarred on Wemyss’s mood. Mrs. Gower had insisted on opening the door of their compartment, for air; and he could see his fellow-travellers. As Wemyss sat studying them, they seemed types too simple even to weave imaginations about; their natures could better be taken apart, like a piston from its rod, than painted, like a flower. He felt that his orbit transcended their imagination. Opposite him was a girl of twenty or more, but going back to school; attendant on her was a boy of nearer thirty, most obviously wishing to be contracted to her for matrimony, and most probably about to be. When his eyes returned from this roving they met Flossie’s; hers were fixed on him, and remained so, though she did not speak, all the way to Worcester.

There she alighted for a little walk; and so they passed Charlie Clarendon, who recognized them and bowed. “Pray heaven he does not fasten to us in the train,” thought Wemyss, devoutly. The young girl of twenty had also got out, and passed them, walking with her adorer, to whose arm she naïvely clung. When they got back to the car, Wemyss drew the sliding-door before their compartment, but Mrs. Gower again objected; and, as he feared, Clarendon was not the man to lose the chance of recommending himself to such a social shrine as Flossie Gower’s. As the train drew out of the station, he stood before their door, smirking with delight and pulling his travelling cap like Hodge his forelock. But Wemyss had to curse him inaudibly; for Flossie looked up with a brighter glance than she had worn that day, and a certain gleam of her old audacity in her famous eyes.

“So glad to see you honoring Boston in the middle of the season,” said Clarendon. “Ah—Mr. Gower with you?”

“No,” said Flossie, “Mr. Wemyss is with me. Do you not know each other? Mr. Clarendon, Mr. ——”

“I have the pleasure of Mr. Clarendon’s acquaintance,” broke in Mr. Wemyss, dryly.

“Er— Gower too busy to get away, I suppose?”

“Not at all,” said Flossie. “He did not know I was coming.”

“Ah—quite so,” said Clarendon. “I hope you mean to stop some time with us?”

“No,” said Flossie. “I leave Boston to-morrow for——”

But here Wemyss took the word from her. “Mrs. Gower has only come on for the bachelors’ ball, to-morrow night,” said he. As he spoke, Flossie looked at him, amazed, as if about to speak; then pressed her lips together scornfully. Clarendon had been congratulating himself on his success so far; but now he seemed to meet with difficulties. For Mrs. Gower became obstinately silent; she turned her face to the window, though it was little better than a slaty square, and looked obstinately out of it. Wemyss made no offer to give up his seat, and answered mostly by unflattering interjections.

When Clarendon had gone, Mrs. Gower continued silent. He watched her for some minutes; then he ventured a remark. “That little Clarendon is the greatest gossip in Boston.”

Flossie made no reply; and there was silence between them until the train reached Boston. Justine made a motion to go, as if to prepare herself for the arrival; but Mrs. Gower bade her stay. “We are here, dearest, at last,” said Wemyss, taking her hand; but Mrs. Gower withdrew it without a word.

They alighted, and Wemyss looked about him; the electric light made the faces of a welcoming crowd terribly distinct; but he was inexpressibly relieved to find no familiar face among them.

He engaged the first carriage that he found, and put Flossie into it with the maid; and then went in search of her travelling trunks. The coachman put them on; and Wemyss began to tell him the hotel.

“I have already told him where to go,” said Flossie. “I have decided to stay for the bachelors’ ball.” She shut the door; and before Wemyss could find his speech, the carriage had driven rapidly off and left him standing there, alone, in the Boston railway station.