Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1876 — AN EAVESDROPPER. [ARTICLE]

AN EAVESDROPPER.

A great attraction—perhaps an International Exhibition—was drawing every body to London from all parts of the world. Sjuch a time brings many friends to any Londoner who happens to have a house of decent size. It therefore did not leave friendless Mr. and Mrs. Octavius Fletcher, whom everybody Jliked, who would have been visited by troops of well-wishers if they had lived in a garret, and who actually lived in a very pretty villa on one of the northwestern fringes of London. Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher were hardly yet in middle life, but they were growing fatherly and motherly prematurely to all their friends by reason of their having no children. A childless mother, when she does not turn to frivolity or sourness, has for young people many of the peculiar characteristics o! a kindly old maiden aunt. “Well, we can’t make room for any more at present,” Mrs. Fletcher said to her husband. “ It’s no use, dear. We couldn’t hear of the Idens going anywhere else.” “ Oh, certainly not. I’ll telegraph to them at once.” “ And we have asked that boy—” “That boy, dear?” “Yes—Reddy Poyntz. You hadn’t forgotten ?” “ JSTo; only I didn’t quite recognize Mr. Reginald as that boy. He’s more than eight-and-twenty, and rather tall for his age.” “ Oh, I always think of him as only a boy. I suppose I shall have to kiss him when he comes.” “ Certainly, by all means. Nothing can be more proper. I get into the same puzzlement myself about these young people. Now' there’s Alexandra Iden. I believe she has refused three offers already, and yet I can only regard her in the light of an infant. I shall have to ask her to kiss me when she comes.” “ Indeed, dear, I dare say she’ll kiss you without waiting to be asked,” Mrs. Fletcher said, smiling. “If she doesn’t, I’ll scold her.” “Notyou; you wouldn’t scold her if she bit my head off.” “ Well, Ido love her mother—l always did—and now I believe I love Alexandra herself almost as well. I wonder if we shall like Reddy Poyntz’s bride?” “Oh, yes, dear, you’re sure to like her. You like everybody.” “Now! And only yesterday, when I said I didn’t think I should like her, you said I never liked anybody.” “Well, I dare say I was right both times. Women, you know, are so changeable." “Come, what does Goethe say on that subject?” “Piss-pass! What did Goethe know about women ?”

Mrs. Fletclier opened widely her handsome, expressive eyes. “Ay, lady, ’twas my word! He had such an incessant muddle of flirtatious that he never gave himself time to know anything about the general subject of women. Might as well expect a man to have a profound knowledge of English rural life because he drives a railway engine every day between London and Liverpool and sees the villages as he rattles along.” Mra. Fletcher laughed, but was too busy just then to continue the discussion; and that very evening Reginald Poyntz arrived. He was full of friendly talk and descriptions of places he had lately,been seeing, and he put off pleasantly the allusions to his bride, only assuring Mrs. ■Fletcher that she was the sweetest girl in all the world, and a great deal too good for him. He seemed to Mrs. Fletcher to avoid reminiscences of any kind. There was something about him which puzzled her a little. “The boy can’t have been falling into bad habits —he can’t have been getting dissipated ?” she asked of herself. “That wouldn’t be like him; and yet is he quite like himself now?” Mr. Fletcher, however, assured her that she might banish all fears of that kind. Poyntz was not a bit changed in that way. “We’ll have a stroll along the road tonight, late, in the old way,” he said (Mr. Fletcher and Poyntz used to delight in long walks late at night); “and we’ll smoke & cigar, and you may depend upon it that if anything is wrong—business or that sort of thing—he’ll tell me.” None of thp other guests were to arrive until the next day; and Mr. Fletcher and Poyntz had their long stroll by night and by moonlight through the pleasant lanes, where the moonbeams were broken by many trees and by plenteous ivy growing on the walls of dainty suburban lodged But the host did not get any . hint of any thing amiss with his guest. Certainly all business affairs were looking well, according‘to Poyntz’s frankly volunteered explanations; and Poyntz must be looking with longing to the prospect qf a marriage with his cousin, for he said more than once that he was sick of the life he had been leading—the bachelor life. “Rather surprised, weren’t you and Mrs. Fletcher, when you heard that my cousin and I were engaged?” Reginald suddenly said, as they were in avery darksome part of the road; and he kept his eyes on the ground. “ Well, I don’t know that we were—at least I don’t know why we should have been- You do appear to have kept your secret very well, and perhaps it was just a little surprise to some of your friends, in London at least, where we hadn’t the Mod luck to know the lady at .that time. When do you expect her in town?” “ Day after to-morrow I should think. You must likelier, you and Mrs. Fletcher. But you couldn’t help liking her, she is so sweet a girl.”

“ You are a lucky fellow, Reginald.” ‘“Yes, oh yea; ao 1 am, to be aure.” Mr. Fletcher looked at him, a little surprised, he could hardly tell why. To change the subject, ha said, v, “You’ll see some old friends here tomorrow, Reginald. The Idens—you remember?”.- v ~t, _ . jVfc “The fdenst Mrs. Idea! do you mean ?” “ And her daughter Alexandra.” Reginald was silent for several seconds, and strained fiercely at his cigar. Then he said, “Oh yes, of course. What's her name now.? I quite forget.” “Her name?” “Yes. What’s her husband’s name ? I can’t remember it” “Why, didn’t you know? She’s not married at all. She broke off that affair somehow, threw him over, in fact, spite of all his money. I never knew why. My wife won’t hear a word said against her, and I’m very fond of Alexandra myself. But I’m afraid she’s a flirt. I doubt if she has much of a heart.” “So much the better. Don’t see what people want of hearts—women, I mean. No matter. Look here, Fletcher, I’m tired. Let’s go in. I’m confoundedly sleepy. I’ll go to bed.” “ All right, my boy. Don’t fail to dream of your bride.” “I shall have no dreams—if I can,” Reginald answered. And the friends parted for the night.

The gathering of the clans which the Fletchers were about to have was somewhat remarkable. Mrs. Iden and her daughter Alexandra were very dear friends, and were coming from the south of France, where they had been living for more than a year. Mr. Iden had long been dead. Reginald Poyntz was one of the principal partners in a great Liverpool firm which carried on business with India and China, and he had just returned from a trip to China and Japan, by way of San Francisco and New York. “Reginald’s bride”—as Mr. Fletcher was pleased to call her, saying that the name sounded so delightfully like the title of a fashionable novel—was coming from Algeria, where she had been spending the winter with her married sister and the husband of the latter, who was a little of an invalid. “ Reginald’s bride” was, of course, only his fiancee. They were cousins, ana had been a good deal together, and were very affectionate and all that, but nobody ever supposed that they were lovers, until one day when Reginald proposed and was gently accepted! Reginald’s bride had a pretty name, Violet, and was a pretty girl, with a sweet temper that nothing ever imbittered, and an unchanging wish to give everybody pleasure. As she had Pived chiefly in the north of England, the Fletchers knew but little of her except through Reginald, who was as much in London as in Liverpool, and knew almost as many people in Madison avenue and on Murray Hill as in either of the English towns. Now, however, she was coming with her sister and brother-in-law to spend a few days in the pleasant house of the Fletchers. It was to be a grand rendezvous, as one consequence of which the host and hostess were to be domiciled every night in a bed made up in Mr. Fletcher’s study. Reginald Poyntz hsd rather an uncomfortable night of it. He had professed to be sleepy, but he sat up until dawn began to show itself; and when he slept at last he only dreamed of Alexandra laen. “ I wish I hadn’t come here at all,” he said to himself in the morning. “Themoment I entered the house the whole thing came back upon me, and I saw her again as if she were before me. I wish I hadn’t come. No, I don’t. I’m glad I came. What do I care? Jso more than she ever did. I ought to be only too happy. My sweet little Violet is worth a thousand such. A girl without a heart is odious. I wonder why she didn’t marry that fellow*”

Was his discomfort decreased by a sight which he saw as he looked out of his window, attracted by the rattle of wheels upon the gravel before the door ? A carriage drove up, piled with trunks and shawls. Mr. Fletcher jumped out. He handed out first an elderly lady, and next a tall young woman, who stepped lightly to the ground and ran to greet Mrs. Fletcher, who had come out in her friendly way to receive her guests. That was a pretty group embowered in the green of the lawn and the trees, and with the soft, delicious atmosphere of an English June all over it. Mrs. Fletcher was a very pretty little woman, over whom her forty odd years had had no power. She was fair and soft, pink and white; and she wore a purple morning dress, and had something white and fleecy thrown carelessly over her head and shoulders. The girl who ran up to her caught her in her arms and kissed her several times. She was a tall girl, with a noble presence, eveiy movement suggesting energy; she had dark hair and eyes, and a face of intellectual shape, from which the sunny air and the glad meeting had driven the paleness habitual to it. Reginald grew red as he saw her. He drew back and turned away; looked out again. She had disappeared into the house. He almost groaned. It was Alex-andra-Iden; and only the other day it seemed he was wildly in love with her, and it was in that house he first saw her, and he once thought she loved him, and then he thought she didn’t, and he tried to pique her into love through jealousy, ana he played off his innocent and sweet little Violet against her, and Alexandra drew coldly away from him altogether; and then lie heard that she was about to be married, and rage glowed within him. So when he saw little Violet’s eyes resting sweetly, tenderly, one day, a great rush of emotion compounded of resentment toward another, kindliness to her, and wanton, reckless self-sacrifice came over him, and he asked Violet to be his wife. That was all- A better wife he could not have. Why did he complain or repent? A hundred times a day he assured himself that he did not complain or repent. But we know what it means when a man insists to himself that he does not complain, does not repent. It is like Sir Anthony Absolute’s protestation that he is not in a passion, or the quick and repeated declaration of some girl that she is not blushing when her jesting companions press her with questions about her lover. However, Reginald assured himself as firmly as ever that he had had a lucky escape ; that Mias Iden was a flirt and had no heart. “ I wonder for whose benefit all that kissing on the lawn was meant ? Girls like her don’t kiss women in that way out of womanly affection. Fletcher is married, and I saw nobody else. But I suppose even Fletcher as a spectator is better than nobody. How tpritkaall that is Violet !” ; Poyntz was determined when he met A lexandra to display a cool and easy indifference. But she n>et him with a friendly welcome that seemed so unaffected a& to compel him into a kind of cordiality. She was evidently determined that they should be gooff and even warm friends. She asked after Violet with

affection. Poyntz was really puzzled. He had expected any tiling but that. Her manner toward him was altogether that which a woman assumes quite naturally when she has a frank and warm friendship for a man, and takes it for granted that he knows It and feels Just the same toward her. It wus almost as cordial and unconcealed as the kindness of a sister. “I see it all now,” Reginald said to himself. “Bhe never cared a rush for me, except in the way of mere friendship. I What a fool I was! Yes, there is no mistaking her manner now; how did I ever mistake it? There is no affectation in that, at all events.” No, none whatever. No affectation! If Reginald could only have seen the rush of color .that came over Alexandra’s face when she heard, too late for any retreat, that he too was a guest in the house of the Fletchers; if he could only have seen her as, alone in her room, she tried to school herself into submission and self-command; how she tried to learn, how earnestly she Ssd to be taught, what course she tto pursue; how she at last resolved that the right thing to do as a woman resolute to forgive, and sincerely wishing for the good of him who was lost to her and of the one who, she believed, supplanted her, would be to prove at once that she was the true friend of him and of her—of him exactly as of her, and no more. Affectation ? If the putting on of a noble part, despite all the struggles of passion and the spasms of pain, can be called affectation, then sorely Alexandra Iden’s frank and placid friendship was as unreal and as much affected as the false smile of any coquette. If peace hath her victories no less renowned than war, so self sacrifice lias sometimes her affectations no less unreal than selfishness.

If Reginald could only have known all that! And if he coaid have known, too, how often the gentle little heart of his Violet throbbed with sad and strange doubts and fears as she paced the deck of the French steamer, on soft and moonlit nights while returning from Algeria to Marseilles, and the handsome young French officer, Capt. Charles D’Anglare, who likewise was returning to Europe, and whose acquaintance they had made ia Algeria, walked by her side, and carried her shawl for her, or arranged her seat and sat by her! He was so handsome and gallant and genial, with such a sunny smile; and her sister and brother-in-law had grown to like him so much; and he never said anything sarcastic or difficult to understand. But of course Miss Violet regarded him merely as a friend; for if he didn’t know that she was engaged to her cousin, she did; and she had a good and faithful little heart, and would, if needs were, rather have broken her heart than her engagement. For how could she act so cruelly to Reginald ? Still the truest of betrothed maidens may be allowed, perhaps, under certain trying conditions, the luxury of a sigh. But if Reginald could have known that she too was only schooling herself to a duty that hourly grew less and less congenial, he might have had something more to say about the affectations of women.

Meanwhile things began to go on very pleasantly, to all appearances, under the friendly roof of the Fletchers. Violet and her companions had arrived, and Violet seemed as if she could not show enough of tender deference to Reginald’s every wish and word. Alexandra and her mother seemed to enjoy themselves very much. Capt. D’Anglare came to London to see the Exhibition, and met the whole party there, and made the acquaintance of the Fletchers, and became a frequent visitor at their house. “ I suppose Raddy is really very much in love with that girl,” Mrs. Fletcher said to her husband one night when they were alone. “I can’t understand it. There’s nothing in her—nothing at all.” “ My dear,” Mr. Fletcher replied, “ the one thing women never understand is howwomen seem in the eyes of men. Do you fancy that because this little woman doesn’t interest you, another little woman, she must necessarily fail to interest a man? Perhaps you don’t interest her; but you do interest me.” “ Yes; but then I can talk about something—about many things; and she can’t talk about any thing.” “ Some .men, dear, may like a woman just because she can’t talk about any thing. But you say Violet can’t talk. Can’t she, though? Ask Capt. D’Anglare whether she can talk or not.”

Mrs. Fletcjier looked up suddenly at her husband, with an inquiring and perhaps a half-frightened glance, but his face seemed unconscious of any special meaning. “ I can’t understand w’hy Reddy should be in love with her,” she quietly said again. “You have heard the story of Charles the Second and the dead fish and the living philosophers—or perhaps you may not have heard of it. Well, then, Charles the Second asked the philosophers why a dead fish displaced more water than » living fish—” “Oh yes, of course I’ve heard the story ever so often, and how nobody thought of asking first whether it was so at all; and it wasn’t, in fact.” “ Exactly. Well, there’s your answer.” “ Answer to what, dear ? ” “The question you were putting to me, or to yourself, just now.” “Why Reddy is in love with Violet? Oh yes, I see.” And Mrs. Fletcher became grave for a moment; and then looked up and asked, “Are you quite serious, Octavius ? ” “Quite, my dear.” “You don’t think he really does love her?” “ I don’t believe he does.” “ Then I can tell you one thing of which I am certain: she does not love him.” “Do you think so—are yon certain? How do you know?” “ I know it by a hundred signs that I can’t well describe. I know that when he comes into a room where she is her eyes don’t light up and turn to him in the way that every girl’s eyes do when she sees her lover. Oh, no, she does not love him.” “ Strange. She is so quiet and sweet and calm, perhaps she is not capable of feeling what we call love.” “ Qh, yes, Octavius, she is. She it in love—with Captain D’Anglaire.” “ Good heavens!” exclaimed Fletcher. “ This is a bewildering piece of business if it is true. What are we to do?” “ I don’t know; hut that’s true—quite true, Octavius. Does ft not seem a shocking thing that these two should marry and mar their own lives and the lives of others?” » “ On this theme they talked quietly and earnestly for a long time, and tried to-see their way and to resolve whether they could do anything to extricate the lives of their friends from entanglement. All meetings of bnsiness, pleasure or pain, come to an end. So with the gathering that seemed so pleasant under the rooxof the Fletchers. It was coming- to an end. The group was breaking up. They had had many pleasant talks and many secret thoughts, and some of them

had had many bitter reflections and keen pangs of regret; and it was time to go. The Idens ware returning to Nice. Capt. D’Anglare was going back to Paris; perhaps from Paris to be ordered off nobody knew where, for these were days when Caesar was mighty yet, and Mexico had not proved itself a Moscow. It is a soft and lovely evening without a moon, and the windows of tire house that look on the lawn are open down to the grass. Many friends are assembled In the noose who do not belong to the gronp of guests so soon to be dissolved; and people wander in and wander out, and sing and play the piano, and walk in tire little shrubbery behind the house, «nd make themselves agreeable and happy just as they please. Reginald Poyntz is not in a humor forcompany. He slinks away into a remote walk (if anything within so limited a boundary could be called remote) of the shrubbery, and lounges there wearily, and laments that he has made au ass of himself. Ay, an ass! Such, and none other, is the word he keeps saying to himself, in his bitterness, over ana over again. For lie now knows only too well that he still loves Alexandra Iden, and that sweet little Violet is sweetness and nothing else, and that he never could love her. But he is resolved to do his duty all the same. If the happiness of little Violet is bound up with nfm, she at least shall not suffer. All the mistake has been of his own making, and he means to bear the consequences manfully. He will do his duty, he resolves, whatever may be the cost to his own feelings. Still it is a sad beginning of married life for a young man when he can only resolve that, come what will, he will endure his marriage. It was a great misfortune, poor Reginald thought, that he should have bee* brought into any manner of renewed association with Miss Iden. Things might have gone well enough but for that. Every time he saw her and spoke with her the memory of the dear past days and their hopes and their loves came back upon him with greater power and fresher pain. “I wish I never had seen her!” he exclaimed. And that moment, looking up, he saw her again. She was approaching; she was in the same walk. There was no escape or turning away possible now. He felt that his face was growing red, and he saw that she was blushing and confused. He hardly knew what to say, and naturally, therefore, he said the very worst thing that he could well have got out: “ So you are going away to-morrow, Miss Iden?” “ Yes; the whole party is breaking up, apparently.” She tried to look easy and careless. “ We—some of us, I mean—are not likely to meet again for a very long time.” “ I suppose not.” These woras came out in a very faint tone. “I—l hope you will be very happy, Mias Iden.” She could not help it. She raised her eyes to his, and looked at him for an instant with an expression half surprised, half reproachful. At once recovering her self-control, she banished that expression from her face; but its stay had been long enough for him. He understood its meaning only too well. If he could only have spoken one sentence, to try to clear himself in her eyes; to tell her how deeply he repented the folly through which he had lost her, how well he understood her and her heart, now that it was too late; to tell her that in all his life he could only love her; to beg of her to forgive him ana pity him. No word of all this, however, could he say as a man of honor; no word of the kind would she listen to, as he well . knew. It is terrible to have to make up one’s mind to be thus misunderstood for all life by one in whose heart we would most earnestly pray to he kindly judged and tenderly cherished. But it has to be done deliberately sometimes, and this was such a time. Poyntz remained silent for a moment, then muttered some commonplace, and Alexandra quickly said she was-returning to the house—and fled with a heart that seemed breaking. There was a seat in the walk, and Reginald sat listlessly down and hung his head low toward the ground, and was for a while like a man m a trance. He could hardly be said to be grieving, or repenting, or resolving, or in any way thinking at all—only dazed and stupefied. He heafd footsteps and the trail of a dress on the other side of the hedge; hut he did not move. The hedge was between him and the loungers, and he did not care. Presently he heard two voices talking earnestly. Suddenly he started out of his .stupefaction, and he listened. Yes, he positively listened! Probably it was a disgraceful action; but he could not avoid it —not for all the world! Oh, shame! he listened.

“But you have been cruel to me—cruel!” said the voice of a man. I did not know you were fiancee until after I love you too much, and tell you so. Why did you not long ago tell me all the truth?” “ It was wrong—oh, very, very wrong,” pleaded a woman’s plaintive tone. “It was wicked of me, but I had not the courage. lam very lonely. If you only knew—” “You love him not. I know it; you would not many him if you could. But it is not too late, oh, Mees Violet!” “Oh, Charles L Charles! for shame!” (in sweet, Imploring tones). “Let go my hand. It is too late.” “ But you love him not.” “ But we are engaged, and we were brought up together; and —oh no, Charles, I never, never could break from my engagement! Think of him—of Reginald -of .what I owe to him, of his happiness. No, Charles, I must be the victim, I will suffer; but I will never make Reginald unhappy.” “That’s a dear, good girl,” exclaimed Reginald himself, bursting through the hedge and confronting the astonished pair. “ Don’t blush or be alarmed, Violet, my dear; and, D’Anglare, my boy, don’t look so angry; but give us your hand. I know it all, and I’ll stand your friend—see if I don’t. “Oh, Reginald,” plaintively murmured the blushing Violet, “wnat does this mean?” “ Only that you are the dearest little cousin any body ever had, and that I thought v’ou were in love with me, and I’m so glad you are not; for my dear little Violet, I love another, as the romances say, and have done so for years.” Poor little Violet hardly knew whether she ought to be ashamed, or angry, or happy, or all together, for Reginald had been so terribly abrupt and overwhelming. But the matter was easily settled when they had all recovered themselves; and as there must ho an edaireittemeni, they agreed that in this case the frankest and quickest way was the best for all parties. The Fletchers were promptly taken into full confidence, and they soon managed to put things right- Reginald and Alexandra were allowed half an hour’s interview, and their mutual explanations proved satisfactory. " • 'T ~ - ■ - “Nothing is changed,” said Poyntz to Mr. Fletcher; “there’s only to be one marriage the more.”

“Bless you, my children!” said the boat, with a smile. “How happily everything • has turned out!” Mrs. Fletcher mterp;>sed with a tear glittering in her eye; “aadwhat a sad game of cross-purposes you were all near stuff some of these proverbs are!” Reginald remarked, thoughtfully, to his host and hostess. “ ‘Listeners never hear any goad of themselves,’ for example. My one little bit of eavesdropping brought me the best thing I heard or myself in the course of my life. I am the happiest creature on earth." “Except Alexandra,” said Mrs. Fletch«T. r~' . L__ 1.-..: . L.. . “And Captain D’Anglare," said Mr. Fletcher. * “And Violet,” said Mrs. Fletcher again. And so, as Jean Paul Richter says, finishing up a long sentence of quaint meditation—anil to halloo! —Juttin McCarthy, in Harper'» Weekly. ' ■ !■ - - , i ' * * t'l'l ‘