Read Ebook: The Confounding of Camelia by Sedgwick Anne Douglas

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Ebook has 1463 lines and 70106 words, and 30 pages

llies. Still, in a world of sillies, I am a personage. It does come round to that, you see."

"Yes; I see."

Camelia leaned back in her end of the little sofa, her arms folded, her head bent in a light scrutiny of her companion's face. The warm quiet of the summer day pervaded the peaceful room, a room with so many associations for both of them. They had studied, read there together for years; laughed, quarrelled, been the best of friends and the fondest of enemies. Perior, as he looked about it, could call up a long vista of Camelias, all gay, all attaching, all evasive, all culminating and fulfilling themselves with an almost mathematical inevitableness, as was now so apparent to him, in the long, slim "personage" beside him, her eyes, as he knew, studying him, her mind amused with conjectures as to what he really thought of her, she herself quite ready to display the utmost sincerity in the attempt to elicit that thought. Oh no, Camelia would keep up very few pretences with him. Perior, gazing placidly enough at the sunlit green outside the morning-room, knew very well what he thought of her.

"Are you estimating the full extent of my folly," she asked presently, "tempering your verdict by the consideration of extenuations?"

This was so apt an exposition of his mental process that Perior smiled rather helplessly.

"See," she said, rising and going to the writing-table, "I'll help you to leniency; show you some very evident extenuations." From a large bundle of letters she selected two. "Weigh the extent of my influence, and find it funny, if you like, as I do."

"I wonder if you quite realize the ludicrous aspect of our conversation," said Perior, taking a thick sheaf of paper from the first letter.

"Quite--quite. Only you push me to extremes. I must make you own my importance--my individuality."

"Ah, from Henge," said Perior, looking at the end of the letter. "He was my fag at Eton, you know; dear old Arthur!"

"Yes, and you quarrelled with him five years ago, about politics."

"We didn't quarrel," said Perior, with a touch of asperity; "he was quite big enough not to misunderstand my opposition. Must I read all this, Camelia? It looks rather dry."

"Well, I should like you to. He is one of the strongest men in the government, you know."

"Quite. He is the man for me, despite past differences of opinion. The man for you, too, perhaps," he added, glancing sharply up at her from the letter; "his devotion is public property, you know."

"But my reception of his devotion isn't," laughed Camelia.

"I am snubbed," said Perior, returning to the letter, and flushing a little. Camelia noted the flush. Dear old Alceste! Shielding so ineffectually, under his sharp blunt bearing, that quivering sensitiveness.

She put her hand through his arm, sinking down beside him, her eyes over his shoulder following his, while he read her--certificate. Perior quite understood the smooth making of amends.

"Well, what do you say to that?" she asked when he had obediently read to the very end.

"I should say that he was a man very much in love," said Perior, folding the letter.

"You are subtle if you can trace an amorous influence in that letter."

"It doesn't call for subtlety. Samson only abandons himself so completely under amorous circumstances. I hope you are not going to shear the poor fellow."

"For shame," said Camelia, while Perior, looking at her reflectively, softly slapped the palm of his hand with Arthur Henge's letter. "I am his comrade. I help him; I am on his side, if you please, and against the Philistines."

"Oh, are you? And this? Ah! this is from the leader of the Philistines, Rodrigg. Yes, I heard that Rodrigg was in the toils." Perior examined the small, compact handwriting without much apparent curiosity.

"That is simply nonsense. There was a time--but he soon saw the hopelessness. He is my friend now; not that I am particularly fond of him--the grain is rather coarse: but he is a good creature, far more honest than he imagines, simple, after a clumsy fashion. He aims at distinguished diplomatic complexity, I may tell you, and, I fancy, comes to me for the necessary polishing. Read his letter."

Perior had looked at her, still smiling, but more absently, while she spoke.

"Oh! Rodrigg is more cautious," he said glancing through the great man's neatly constructed phrases. "You are not with the Philistines; he feels that."

"Politically no; but I have a good deal of influence with him. You see those reviews he mentions; I went through a lot of heavy French and Italian reading for him--sociology, industrialism--and saw the result in his last speech."

"Really."

"Ah, really. Don't be sarcastic, Alceste, to me. One of those men will probably be Prime Minister some day. You can't deny that they are eminent men."

"And therefore you are an eminent woman. Well, the logic isn't too lame. I'll conclude, Camelia, that you may do quite a lot of harm in the world."

"You don't believe that a woman's influence in politics can be for good?"

"Good!" cried Camelia, gently clapping her hands.

"You are mistaken, Alceste."

"If I am mistaken--if they cherish ideals, they are unlucky devils."

"Yes, to convince you."

"Of what, pray?"

"That I am not a little insignificance to be passed by with indulgence."

"Should you prefer severity?" and Perior, conscious that she had succeeded in "drawing" him, could not repress "You are an outrageous little egotist, Camelia."

Camelia, her hands clasped over her knee, contemplated him with more gravity than he had expected.

Camelia was smiling irrepressibly as he joined her, and they watched the approach of the two ladies across the lawn. Certainly the angular, thick-set form of the younger gave no hint of pleasing possibilities under circumstances so trying as the equestrian.

"No, she rode rather nicely," said Perior concisely. There was something rather brutal in Camelia's comments as she stood there with such rhythmic loveliness of pose and contour.

"I wish Mary did not look so much like a milk pudding," she went on; "a raisinless milk pudding--so sane, so formless, so uneventful."

Perior did not smile.

Lady Paton was a thin, graceful woman, her slenderness emphasized, like her daughter's, by a very small head. Since her husband's death she had worn black, and even now it seemed to invade her delicate whiteness rather overwhelmingly, rising closely about her throat, falling over her fragile hands, enfolding her with a soft solemnity. Her white hair was smoothed thickly under the transparent cambrics of an exquisite cap, and framed the sweetness of a faded face, in profile like Camelia's. Camelia's eyes were her father's, and her smile; Lady Paton's eyes were round like a child's, and her smile half-frightened, half-explanatory. With all the gentlewoman's mild dignity, her look was timid, as though it besought indulgence for a lifelong sense of insignificance, a look that aroused in Perior his grimmest scorn for a world in which such flower-like moral loveliness is inevitably victimized by garish egotisms. He had known Sir Charles, a charming companion, a good fellow--in the somewhat widely licensed sense the term implies, but not fit to untie his wife's shoe-strings when it came to a comparison. Camelia now had stepped upon her father's undeserved pedestal, and Perior, watching the new epoch of incense-burning, had smiled more and more grimly. He was devoted to Lady Paton, and had been so since the days when a raw, sensitive, high-strung youth, fresh from college, her Madonna head had roused in him poetical idealizations, and her husband's gay indifference a chafing resentment. With years he had grown rather fond of Sir Charles, could make allowances for him, and, too, had no longer idealized Lady Paton; but though he now saw her, sweet but dull, lovely in unselfishness, yet weak in all except a submission noble in its own way, the fragrant charm still stirred him with an almost paternal tenderness, a pity, even a reverence. She was too obtuse to see her own cramped and imprisoned life, but he saw it, and her unconsciousness was part of the pathos. He was very fond of her, and she of him, so that with all his protective partisanship there was, too, a willing filial deference.

This little corner of appreciation and affection was the softest spot in Perior's character. He took both her hands now and said, looking at her with a whimsical gentleness, "So you are back at last! And glad to be back, too, are you not?"

"Oh, very. And Camelia seems to like it so much," she smiled round at her daughter; "she was beginning to look quite fagged; already the country has done her good."

Camelia smiled back with a humoring lightness.

Mary Fairleigh stood quietly behind her aunt. Her expressionless face certainly did suggest a lacteal dulness. The Fairleighs were not responsible for her short nose and clumsily-cut mouth. Impecunious Maurice Fairleigh, third son, had "done for himself" when he married his younger sisters' nursery governess. Maurice had no money--and not many brains, and poor Miss Hockey had neither brains nor beauty, nor family nor money. Her flaxen hair and vacant blue eyes captured Maurice's vagrant fancy during a lazy summer. He was very young, that fact was the only excuse possible; but, as the Fairleighs said, there was no accounting for Maurice's folly. Maurice himself, after a very little time, could no longer account for it. He was a good-natured fellow, and his wonder at himself did not become too painfully apparent to his wife; but the short years of their married life were by no means a success. Maurice was very delicate, and the struggle to make both ends meet was but grudgingly aided by disapproving relatives. Lady Paton, only, was sympathetic, practically sympathetic too; but during the greater part of Maurice's matrimonial venture she was in India, and, as the other Fairleighs said, Angelica never had the wit to resent anything. Maurice died at Davos-Platz, and Mrs. Fairleigh, when her daughter was sixteen, departed her seemingly very pointless existence. Her last years had been sweetened by Lady Paton's devoted kindness, and she left Mary to this guardian angel. Since that time Mary had lived at Enthorpe Lodge; a grave, good little girl, solemnly submissive to her cousin, painstaking in dutiful gratitude toward her aunt. Camelia had always found this gratitude irritating, and Mary's manner--as of one on whom Providence had laid the patiently-borne burden of obscurity and dependence, very vexing. Camelia intended as little as her mother to recognize a difference, and did not realize that her own dominant characteristics necessitated Mary's non-resistance.

She laughed at Mary's gravity, tried to tease her out of her stolid acceptance of the r?le of poor relation, but, inevitably, she came to treat Mary with the tolerant carelessness she seemed only to expect. As for Lady Paton, she never surmised about Mary, nor analyzed her. Lady Paton accepted people and things as they appeared, and without conjecture. Mary was a dear, good girl. It was indeed impossible that her uninteresting virtues should arouse enthusiasm, and her aunt's appreciation from its very fulness was calmly unemotional.

Lady Paton having become in these latter days a sort of decorative adjunct to her daughter--for Camelia used her mother to the very best advantage,--lace caps, sweetness and all,--it was upon Mary that the duller duties fell. Mary managed bills and servants, and household matters; wrote little notes, ran little errands, chose embroidery silks, and sent for the books to Mudie's,--the tender books with happy matrimonial endings that Lady Paton liked. She read these books aloud, and talked to her aunt--as Camelia never did, never could. Lady Paton listened to her daughter, but she and Mary talked about her. Mary's conversation required no adjustment of amazed faculties, no quelling of old-fashioned alarms, nor acceptance of a wondering incompetence.

The little prattle of gardening and gowns, and Camelia's doings went on happily, unless hushed in an absorbed observance of that young heroine herself,--flinging pretty missiles of speech far above the heads of her mother and cousin.

Both dull dears; such was Camelia's realistic inner comment, but Mary was an earthenware dear, and Mamma translucent porcelain. Camelia, who appreciated and loved all dainty perfection, appreciated and loved her mother, with much the same love that she would have given a slender white vase of priceless ware, displayed on a stand of honor in her knowingly grouped drawing-room. She was a distinctly creditable and decorative Mamma. As for Mary, she was not decorative; a harmless, necessary hot water jug.

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