Then she held up the novel for him to see. It was the book he had just published.
CHAPTER XIV.
MAMIE TRIMM WAS one of those young girls of whom it is most difficult to give a true impression by describing them in the ordinary way. To say that her height was so many feet and so many inches — fewer inches than the average — that her hair was very fair, her eyes grey, her nose small, her mouth large, her complexion clear, her figure well proportioned, to say all this is to say nothing at all. A passport, in the days of passports, would have said as much, and the description would have just sufficed to point out Mamie Trimm if she had found herself in a company of tall women with black hair, large features and imposing presence. It would have been easier for a man to find her amongst a bevy of girls of her age, if he had been told that she possessed a charm of her own, which nobody could define. It would help him in his search, to be informed that she looked very delicate, but was not so in reality, that her figure was not only well proportioned, but was very exceptionally perfect and graceful, and that, but for her well-set grey eyes and her transparent complexion, her face could never have been called pretty. All these points may have combined to produce the aforesaid individuality that was especially hers. Little is known, I believe, of that fair young girl of whom Charles Lamb wrote to Landor— “Rose Aylmer has a charm that I cannot explain.” Mamie Trimm was George Wood’s Rose Aylmer.
He had known her all her life and there was between them that sort of intimacy which cannot exist at all unless it has begun in childhood. The patronising superiority of the schoolboy has found a foil in the clinging admiration of the little girl who is only half his age. The budding vanity of the young student has delighted in “explaining things” to the slim maiden of fourteen who believes all his words and worships all his ideas, the struggling, striving, hardworking beginner has found comfort in the unfailing friendship and devotion of the accomplished young woman whom he still thinks of as a child, and treats as a sister, not realising that the difference between fourteen and seven is one thing, while that between five or six and twenty, and eighteen or nineteen is quite another.
When a friendship of that kind has begun in childish years it is not easily broken, even though the subsequent intercourse be occasionally interrupted. Of late, indeed, Constance Fearing had taken, and more than taken Mamie’s place in George’s life. He had seen his cousin constantly of course, but she had felt that he was not to her what he had been, that something she could not understand had come between them, and that she had been deprived of something that had given her pleasure. On the other hand, it was precisely at this time that she had made her first appearance in society and her life had been all at once made very full of new interests and new amusements. She had been received into the bosom of social institutions with enthusiasm, she had held her own with tact, she had danced at every ball, had received offers of marriage about once in three months, had refused them all systematically and was, on the whole, in the very prime of an American girl’s social career. If her head had been turned by much admiration, she had concealed the fact very well, and the expression of her attractive face had not changed for the worse after two years of uninterrupted gaiety. She was still as innocently fond of George as she had been when a little girl and if the exigencies of continual amusement had deprived her of some of his companionship, she looked upon the circumstance with all the fatalism of the very young and the very happy, as a matter to be regretted when she had time for regrets, but inevitable and predestined. Her regrets, indeed, had not troubled her much until very lately, when George’s growing reputation had begun to draw him into the current of society. She had seen then for the first time that there was another person, somewhat older than herself, in whose company he delighted as he had never delighted in her own, and her dormant jealousy had been almost awakened by the sight. It seemed to her that she had always had a prior right and claim upon her cousin’s attention and conversation, and she did not like to find her right contested, especially by one so well able to maintain her conquests against all comers as was Constance Fearing. In her innocence, she had more than once complained to her mother that George neglected her, but hitherto her observations on the subject had received no sympathy from Mrs. Sherrington Trimm. Totty had no idea of allowing her only child to marry a penniless man of genius, and though, as has been set forth in the early part of this history she felt it incumbent upon her to do something for George, and encouraged his visits, she took care that he should meet Mamie as rarely as possible in her own house. As for Sherrington Trimm himself, he cared for none of these things. If Mamie loved George, she was welcome to marry him, if she did not there would be no hearts broken. George might come and go in his house and be welcome.
Mamie Trimm’s undefinable charm doubtless covered a multitude of defects. She was of course very well educated, in the sense in which that elastic term is generally applied to all young girls of her class. It would be more true to say that she, like most of her associates, had been expensively educated. Nothing had been omitted which, according to popular social belief can contribute to the production of a refined and accomplished feminine mind. She had been taught at great pains a number of subjects of which she remembered little, but of which the transient knowledge had contributed something to the formation of her taste. She had been instructed in the French language with a care perhaps not always bestowed upon the subject in France, and the result was that she could read novels written in that tongue and, under great pressure of necessity, could converse tolerably in it, though the composition of the shortest note plunged her into a despair that would have been comic had it been less real. She possessed a shadowy acquaintance with German and knew a score of Italian words. In the department of music, seven years of study had given her some facility in playing simple dance music, and she was able to accompany a song tolerably, provided the movement were not too fast. On the other hand she danced to perfection, rode well and played a very fair game of lawn-tennis, and she got even more credit for these accomplishments than she deserved because her naturally transparent complexion and rather thin face had always made the world believe that her health was not strong.
In character she was neither very sincere, nor by any means unscrupulous. Her conscience was in a very natural state, considering her surroundings, and she represented very fairly the combination of her mother’s worldly disposition with her father’s cheerful, generous and loyal nature. She was far too much in love with life to be morbid, and far too sensible to invent imaginary trials. She had never thought of examining herself, any more than she would have thought of pulling off a butterfly’s wings to see how they were fastened to its body. Her simplicity of ideas was dashed with a sprinkling of sentimentality which was natural enough at her age, but of which she felt so much ashamed that she hid it jealously from her father and mother and only showed a little of it to her most intimate friend when she had danced a little too long or suspected herself of having nearly accepted an offer of marriage. It was indeed with her, rather a quality than a weakness, for it sometimes made her feel that life did not consist entirely in waltzing a dozen miles every night and in talking over the race the next morning. The only visible signs of this harmless sentimentality were to be found in a secret drawer of her desk and took the shape of two or three dried flowers, a scrap of ribband and a dance programme in which the same initials were scrawled several times. She did not open the drawer at dead of night and kiss the flowers, nor hold the faded ribband to her hair, nor bedew the crumpled little bit of illuminated cardboard with her warm tears. On the contrary she rarely unlocked the receptacle unless it were to add some new memento to the collection, and on such occasions the principal reason why she did not summarily eject the representatives of older memories was that she felt a sort of good-natured pity for them, as though they had been living things and might be hurt by being thrown away. Her dainty room contained, indeed more than one object given her by George Wood, from a collection of pictu
re-books that bore the marks of age and rough usage, to her first tennis racquet, now battered and half unstrung, and from that to a pretty toilet-clock set in chiselled silver which her cousin had given her on her last birthday, as a sort of peace-offering for his neglect. It never would have entered her head, however, to hide anything she had received from him in the secret drawer. There was no sentimentality about her feelings for him, and if there was a sentiment it was of the better and stronger sort. She felt that she had a right to like George, and that his gifts had a right to be seen. Once or twice, of late, when she had been watching him through the greater part of an evening while he talked earnestly with Constance Fearing, Mamie had felt an itching in her fingers to take everything he had given her and to throw all into the street together; but she had always been glad on the next day that she had not yielded to the destructive impulse, and she had once dreamed that, having carried out her dire intention George had picked up the various articles in the street and had brought them back to her, neatly packed in a basket, with a sardonic smile on his grave face. Since then, she had thought more of Constance than of George’s old picture-books, the worn-out racquet, or the clock.
Mamie bore no malice against him, however, though she was beginning to dislike the name of Fearing in a way that surprised herself. If George talked to her at a party, she was always herself, graceful, winning and happy; if he came to see her, the same words of welcome rose to her lips and the same soft colour flashed through the alabaster of her cheek, a colour which, as her mother thought, should not have come so easily for one who was already so dear. The careful Totty heard love’s light tread afar off and caught the gleam of his weapons before it was yet day, her maternal anxiety had been stirred, and the devotion of the social tigress to her marriageable young had been roused almost to the point of self-sacrifice. Indeed, she had more than once interrupted some pleasant conversation of her own, in order to draw Mamie away from George, and more than once she had stayed at home when Mamie was tired with the dancing of the previous night lest in her absence George’s evil genius should lead him to the house. Fortunately for her, no one had given her more constant and valuable assistance than George himself, which was the reason why Totty had not ceased to like him. Had he, on his part seemed as glad to be with Mamie, as Mamie to be with him, the claws of the tigress would have fastened upon him with sudden and terrible ferocity and would have accompanied him to the front door. There would now in all likelihood be a change in the tigress’s view of the matter, and what had until lately seemed one of George’s best recommendations, would soon be regarded in the light of a serious defect. The position of the invader had been very much changed since the day on which Totty Trimm had been left alone in the strong room for a quarter of an hour, and had brought away with her the last will and testament of Thomas Craik.
If George had ever in his life felt anything approaching to love for Mamie, he could not have failed to notice that Totty had done all in her power to keep the two apart during the past three years, in other words since Mamie had been of a marriageable age. But it had always been a matter of supreme indifference to him whether he were left alone with her or not, and to-day it had not struck him that Totty had never before proposed that he should go and spend an hour with her daughter when there was nobody about. Totty herself, if her heart had not been bursting with an anticipated triumph, would have been more cautious, and would have thought twice before making her suggestion with so much frankness. In the moment of her meeting with him and guessing the truth so many possibilities had suggested themselves to her that she had not found time to reflect, and she had for an instant entertained the idea of returning immediately from Washington Square to her own home, in order to find George there and perform the part of the skilful and interested consoler. A very little consideration showed her that this would be an unwise course to pursue, and she had adopted a plan infinitely more diplomatic, of which the results will be seen and appreciated before long. In the meantime George Wood was seated beside Mamie and her flowers, listening to her talk, answering her remarks rather vaguely, and wondering why he was alive, and since he was alive, why he was in that particular place.
“You look tired, George,” said the young girl, studying his face. “You look almost ill.”
“Do I? I am all right. I have been doing a lot of work lately. And you, Mamie — what is the matter? Your mother told me just now that you had a bad cold. I hope it is nothing serious.”
“Oh, it is nothing. I wanted to read your book, and I did not want to make visits, and I had just enough of a cold to make a good excuse. A cold is so useful sometimes — it is just the same thing that your writing is to you. Everybody believes it is inevitable, and then one can do as one pleases. But you really do look dreadfully. Have some tea — with a stick in it as papa calls it.”
Mamie laughed a little at her own use of the slang term, though her eyes showed that she was really made anxious by George’s appearance.
“Thank you,” he answered. “I do not want anything, but I am very tired, and when your mother told me you were all alone at home I thought it would do me good to come and stay with you a little while, if you would talk to me.”
“I am so glad you came. I have not seen much of you, lately.” There was a ring of regret in her voice.
“You have been so gay. How can I get at you when you are racing through society all the year round from morning till night?”
“Oh, it is not that, George, and you know it is not! We have often been in the same gay places together, and you hardly ever come near me, though I would much rather talk with you than with all the other men.”
“No you would not — and if you would, you are such a raving success, as they call it, this year, that you are always surrounded — unless you are sitting in corners with the pinks of desirability whose very shoe-strings are a cut above the ‘likes o’ me.’ When are you going to marry, Mamie?”
“When somebody asks me, sir — she said,” laughed the young girl.
“Who is somebody?”
“I do not know,” answered Mamie with an infinitesimal sigh. “People have asked me, you know,” she added with another laugh, “any number of them.”
“But not the particular somebody who haunts your dreams?” asked George.
“He has not even begun to haunt me yet. You do, though. I dreamed of you the other night.”
“You? How odd! What did you dream about me?”
“Such a funny dream!” said Mamie, leaning forward and smelling the roses beside her. It struck George as strange that the colour from the dark red petals should be thrown up into her face by the rays of the sun, though he knew something of the laws of incidence and reflection.
“I dreamed,” continued Mamie, still holding the roses, “that I was very angry with you. Then I took all the things you ever gave me, the picture-books, and the broken doll, and the old racquet and the clock — by the by, it goes beautifully — and I threw them all out of my window into the street. And, of course, you were passing just at that moment, and you brought them all into the house in a basket, nicely done up in pink paper, and handed them back to me with that horrid smile you have when you are going to say something perfectly hateful.”
“And then, what happened?” inquired George, who was amused in spite of himself.
“Oh, nothing. I suppose I woke just then. I laughed over it the next morning.”
“But what made you so angry with me?”
“Nothing — that is — the usual thing. The way you always behave to me at parties.”
George looked at her in silence for a second, before he spoke again.
“Do you mean to say that you really care,” he asked, “whether I talk to you at parties, or not?”
“Of course I care!” exclaimed the young girl. “What a question!”
“I am sure I cannot see why. I am not a very amusing person. But since you would like me to talk to you, I will, as much as you please.”
; “It is too late now,” answered Mamie, laying down the roses she had held so long. “Everything is over, or will be in a day or two, and you will not get a chance unless you come and stay with us this summer. Why do you never come and stay with us? I have often wondered.”
“I was never asked,” said George indifferently. “I could not well come without an invitation. And besides, I have generally been very busy in the summer.”
“Did they never ask you?” inquired Mamie in evident surprise. “Mamma must have forgotten it.”
“I daresay,” George replied, rather dreamily. His thoughts were wandering from the conversation.
“She shall, this time,” said Mamie with considerable emphasis. Then there was silence for some moments.
George did not know what she was thinking and cared very little to inquire. He was conscious that the surroundings in which he found himself were soothing to his humour, that Mamie’s harmless talk was pleasant to his ear, and that if he had gone anywhere else on that afternoon, he might have committed some act of folly which would have had serious consequences. He was neither able nor anxious to understand his own state, since, whatever it might be, he desired to escape from it, and he was grateful for all external circumstances which helped his forgetfulness. He was no doubt conscious that it would be out of the question to recover from such a shock as he had received without passing through much suffering on his way to ultimate consolation. But he had been stunned and overcome by what had happened. The first passion of almost uncontrollable anger that swept over his nature had left him dull and almost apathetic for the time, bruised and willing to accept thankfully any peace that he could find.
Presently, Mamie turned the conversation to his books and talked enthusiastically of his success. She had read what he had written with greater care and understanding than he had expected of her, and she quoted whole passages from his novels, puzzling him sometimes with her questions, but pleasing him in spite of himself by her sincere and admiring appreciation. At last he rose to leave her.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 509