Ailsa Paige. Robert W. Chambers
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peeped into the glass over my ole mammy's shoulder, and she said I'd sho'ly be punished befo' the year was done."
"And were you?"
"I don't exactly remember," said Mrs. Craig demurely, "but I think
I first met my husband the ve'y next day."
They both laughed softly, looking at each other in the mirror.
So, in her gown of rosy muslin, bouffant and billowy, a pink flower in her hair, and Celia's pink-and-white cameo at her whiter throat Ailsa Paige descended the carpeted stairs and came into the mellow dimness of the front parlour, where there was much rosewood, and a French carpet, and glinting prisms on the chandeliers—and a young man, standing, dark against a bar of sunshine in which golden motes swam.
"How do you do," she said, offering her narrow hand, and: "Mrs. Craig is dressing to receive you. … It is warm for April, I think. How amiable of you to come all the way over from New York. Mr. Craig and his son Stephen are at business, my cousins, Paige and Marye, are at school. Won't you sit down?"
She had backed away a little distance from him, looking at him under brows bent slightly inward, and thinking that she had made no mistake in her memory of this man. Certainly his features were altogether too regular, his head and body too perfectly moulded into that dark and graceful symmetry which she had hitherto vaguely associated with things purely and mythologically Olympian.
Upright against the doorway, she suddenly recollected with a blush that she was staring like a schoolgirl, and sat down. And he drew up a chair before her and seated himself; and then under the billowy rose crinoline she set her pretty feet close together, folded her hands, and looked at him with a smiling composure which she no longer really felt.
"The weather," she repeated, "is unusually warm. Do you think that Major Anderson will hold out at Sumter? Do you think the fleet is going to relieve him? Dear me," she sighed, "where will it all end, Mr. Berkley?"
"In war," he said, also smiling; but neither of them believed it, or, at the moment, cared. There were other matters impending—since their first encounter.
"I have thought about you a good deal since Camilla's theatre party," he said pleasantly.
"Have you?" She scarcely knew what else to say—and regretted saying anything.
"Indeed I have. I dare not believe you have wasted as much as one thought on the man you danced with once—and refused ever after."
She felt, suddenly, a sense of uneasiness in being near him.
"Of course I have remembered you, Mr. Berkley," she said with composure. "Few men dance as well. It has been an agreeable memory to me."
"But you would not dance with me again."
"I—there were—you seemed perfectly contented to sit out—the rest—with me."
He considered the carpet attentively. Then looking up with quick, engaging smile:
"I want to ask you something. May I?"
She did not answer. As it had been from the first time she had ever seen him, so it was now with her; a confused sense of the necessity for caution in dealing with a man who had inspired in her such an unaccountable inclination to listen to what he chose to say.
"What is it you wish to ask?" she inquired pleasantly.
"It is this: are you really surprised that I came? Are you, in your heart?"
"Did I appear to be very much agitated? Or my heart, either, Mr. Berkley?" she asked with a careless laugh, conscious now of her quickening pulses. Outwardly calm, inwardly Irresolute, she faced him with a quiet smile of confidence.
"Then you were not surprised that I came?" he insisted.
"You did not wait to be asked. That surprised me a little."
"I did wait. But you didn't ask me."
"That seems to have made no difference to you," she retorted, laughing.
"It made this difference. I seized upon the only excuse I had and came to pay my respects as a kinsman. Do you know that I am a relation?"
"That is a very pretty compliment to us all, I think."
"It is you who are kind in accepting me."
"As a relative, I am very glad to——"
"I came," he said, "to see you. And you know it."
"But you couldn't do that, uninvited! I had not asked you."
"But—it's done," he said.
She sat very still, considering him. Within her, subtle currents seemed to be contending once more, disturbing her equanimity. She said, sweetly:
"I am not as offended as I ought to be. But I do not see why you should disregard convention with me."
"I didn't mean it that way," he said, leaning forward. "I couldn't stand not seeing you. That was all. Convention is a pitiful thing—sometimes—" He hesitated, then fell to studying the carpet.
She looked at him, silent in her uncertainty. His expression was grave, almost absent-minded. And again her troubled eyes rested on the disturbing symmetry of feature and figure in all the unconscious grace of repose; and in his immobility there seemed something even of nobility about him which she had not before noticed.
She stole another glance at him. He remained very still, leaning forward, apparently quite oblivious of her. Then he came to himself with a quick smile, which she recognised as characteristic of all that disturbed her about this man—a smile in which there was humour, a little malice and self-sufficiency and—many, many things she did not try to analyse.
"Don't you really want an unreliable servant?" he asked.
His perverse humour perplexed her, but she smiled.
"Don't you remember that I once asked you if you needed an able-bodied man?" he insisted.
She nodded.
"Well, I'm that man."
She assented, smiling conventionally, not at all understanding. He laughed, too, thoroughly enjoying something.
"It isn't really very funny," he said, "Ask your brother-in-law. I had an interview with him before I came here. And I think there's a chance that he may give me a desk and a small salary in his office."
"How absurd!" she said.
"It is rather absurd. I'm so absolutely useless. It's only because of the relationship that Mr. Craig is doing this."
She said uneasily: "You are not really serious, are you?"
"Grimly serious."
"About a—a desk and a salary—in my brother-in-law's office?"
"Unless you'll hire me as a useful man. Otherwise, I hope for a big desk and a small salary. I went to Mr. Craig this morning, and the minute I saw him I knew he was fine enough to be your brother-in-law. And I said, 'I am Philip Ormond Berkley; how do you do!' And he said, 'How do you do!' And I said, 'I'm a relation,' and he said, 'I believe so.' And I said, 'I was educated at Harvard and in Leipsic; I am full of useless accomplishments, harmless erudition, and insolvent amiability, and I am otherwise perfectly worthless. Can you give me a position?'"
"And he said: 'What else is the matter?' And I said, 'The stock market.' And that is how it remains, I am to call on him to-morrow."
She said in consternation: "Forgive me. I did not think you meant it. I did not know that you were—were——"
"Ruined!" he nodded laughingly. "I am, practically. I have a little left—badly invested—which I'm trying to get at. Otherwise matters are gay enough."
She said wonderingly: "Had this happened when—I saw you that first time?"
"It