Louie

“ Why do you sit here alone, and make a martyr of yourself, Louie?"
"I am not a martyr," I answered, cheerfully. "I did not want a hash, that was all. I wasn't expecting you, Ronald, or I would have had something nice."
"Oh, tell them to cook a chop," he responded in a hurried tone. "Don't fidget about me, Louie; I shall do well enough. The fact is, I was half engaged to dine with Greystock, and then he suddenly remembered that Lady Waterville had asked him this evening. The old lady ages visibly." ”

“ I got away from the widow by eight o'clock, and then trotted over to Louie."
"Louie?"
"Yes, Louie. Why, man—why not?"
"What, after the late mitten?"
"Mitten? of course. What do you suppose I care for that? Isn't Louie the best friend I have? Isn't she my only comfort? Doesn't she give magnificent advice to a fellow, and all that? Louie? Why, man alive, it's the only thing I have to look forward to! Of course. Well, you see, Louie was luckily disengaged. The other girls were at whist with their father and the aunt. So I had Louie to myself." ”

“ I said, sadly.
"My dear child, there have been terrible misunderstandings; but everything will be set right. Trust me, Louie, your husband has never truly loved any woman but yourself, and he has been suffering acutely since you left him."
"Suffering? Oh, Marian! Send for him; tell him to come at once!"
"Hush, hush, Louie. You must wait until you are a little stronger. He will be quite happy when he knows that you want him back again."
I closed my eyes and gave myself up to the new, blissful sense of thankfulness and peace. Somehow—I knew not in what way—my Ronald would be given back to me. ”

“ Ronald's face brightened at the invitation.
"We have been living like two hermits," he said. "It's time that we saw a little more of the world. Not that I am tired of your society, Louie; but I'm afraid I shall bore you awfully if you never see any one else, and I like this friend of yours; she is worth knowing."
I, too, was well pleased, although my pleasure was considerably damped by the consciousness of having to wear an old gown. Marian was, I knew, incapable of any unkindly criticism; but other eyes might look less indulgently on my old frock. ”

“ I have only a poor home to offer you, Louie; but I will work for you, dear. Will you come to me?"
Lady Waterville still slumbered peacefully; the large tabby cat kept up a drowsy purr on the hearth-rug at my feet, and there was no one near to utter a word of caution. Yet, in my own heart, a stern voice failed not to make itself heard above all love's fervent pleadings; and for an instant I paused, and listened to that inward warning. Then Ronald's eyes met mine, and the bright vision of an Eden came back at once; I should have been more than woman if I could have resisted its spell. ”

“ French Louie would have to stop and think. When a man has loved deeply and often—oh, well!
But now those days were gone, and French Louie had no mistaken ideas on the subject. It was time for him to flock by himself back in the green timber, and live close to all those beautiful things which he found were a sort of substitute—for an old man—for affairs of the heart.
He would tell himself that in fact the green timber was an affair of the heart. What? Couldn't a man love the white canoe-birch? ”

“ What sends bright and laughing children forth to a life of shame? Louie was the kindest little comrade on earth, unselfish, devoted, and of a tenderness only surpassed by my nurse's. Was this not proved when I began to droop and pine, missing the picture of Stevie kneeling on his sofa and staring out of the window? ”

“ He was always getting lost——" And with that he must not desert Louie! She had even more trouble with him this time. "He will lose his head," he expostulated mildly—his old, unfailing attitude of gentleness toward her. "He will lose his head and waste his strength in running from things which do not exist."
"Big Louie will find his way this time." ”

“ Didn't I hear Louie begin to talk of operas, and things in general; and soon after, didn't I see her rise and come over to Laura, and Nina, and me, as we were playing dummy? Methinks I did. Oh, Louie! Oh, Jack! Is she destined to be Number Four! or, good Heavens! Number Forty? Why, the man's mad! He engages himself to every girl he sees!
Home again.
Jack was full of Louie.
"Such fun! such life! Did you ever see any thing like her?"
"But the widow, Jack?"
"Hang the widow!"
"Miss Phillips?"
"Bother Miss Phillips!"
"And Number Three?"
Jack's face grew sombre, and he was silent for a time. ”

“ Louie's the gent in the leather leggin's and north-pole outfit that comes around after Mr. Robert every night with the machine. Say, it's a reg'lar rollin' bay window, that car of Mr. Robert's! I wouldn't mind havin' one of that kind taggin' around after me. But if I was pickin' a shover I'd pass Louie by. He wears his nose too high in the air and is too friendly with himself to suit me. There's a lot of them honk-honk boys just like him; but he's the only one I ever has a chance to get real confidential with. ”

“ To this Louie retorted that she did not think him of as much consequence as he thought himself. She considered a daughter of Thomas Grey quite as 149good as a son of Robert White, and others thought so, too. He needn’t trouble himself to look up a finishing school for her. If she cared to go to one, her father was capable of finding it.
And so, boy- and girl-like, they quarrelled on until Herbert’s love triumphed over every other feeling, and the quarrel was made up as such quarrels usually are, each taking upon himself the most blame. Louie, however, held out the longest. ”

“ Miss Coverdale, the petted companion of Lady Waterville, with her rounded cheeks and smiling lips, was soon destined to become a creature of the past.
We lingered long over our afternoon tea, and were still sitting with the cups and the little table between us, when Ronald came in. He was looking noticeably worn and sad—so sad, that after one glance at his face all my gay spirits deserted me.
"We have been enjoying ourselves immensely," said Lady Waterville, in a mischievous tone. "Louie got through a good deal of flirting; it's astonishing to see the progress that she has made in the art! ”

“ And again Frances knew what Louie meant--that she loved her three sons, Michael and Nicholas and John, with passion, and her one daughter, Dorothea, with critical affection. That was the sort of thing that Louie was always saying and thinking about people, and nobody ever paid the slightest attention to what Louie said or thought. Frances told herself that if there was one emotion that she was more free from than another it was sex jealousy.
The proof of it, which she offered now, was that she had given up Dorothy to Anthony. It was natural that he should care most for the little girl. ”

“ It is a pity, Louie, that you call only believe in demonstrative people. William Greystock is one of the most undemonstrative men on earth; he always says less than he means, therefore you never give him credit for any good intentions."
My quick temper rose at these words.
"I will believe in him, Ronald," I said, "when I have seen the fruit of those good intentions."
He started up from the sofa, and began to pace angrily up and down the little room. ”

“ Louie said.
Bertha, between whom and her cousin there were no domestic secrets, replied:
“Because I do not love him, and never can, good and kind as I know him to be. With your experience, would you advise me to marry for money?”
43Instantly a shadow came over Louie’s face, and she hesitated a little before she answered:
“Yes, and no; all depends upon the man, and whether you loved some one else. If you knew he would swear at you, and call you names, and storm before the servants, and throw things,—not at you, perhaps, but at the side of the house,—I should say no, decidedly ”

“ Louie.”
Suddenly the tears blurred into her eyes at thought of the little disappointed sister yet taking care for her in her absence. Dear little Louie! How hard it must have been for her! And she remembered the sigh she had heard from the kitchen a little while ago. Well, she was thankful she had been awakened right away and not allowed to go on in her selfish indifference. She glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to nine. She had lost a lot of time mooning over her own troubles. She had but seven hours in which to work wonders before any one returned. She must go to work at once. ”

“ I took care that he should not see my face.
"Yes; she is often there," he replied. "Greystock is a great ally of hers; and he has persuaded her to take pity on the old soul in her loneliness. Lady Waterville was really fond of you, Louie. She misses you so much that she can't help being bitter."
"She used to be very good to me," I said, with a sigh.
"Everybody would be good to you, little woman, if you would let them. But you take far too gloomy a view of people, and of life in general; and your face is getting to wear a settled look of melancholy. ”

“ She was also rather fond of attending to other people’s business and having her own way about it. When once her mind was made up, she held on with a firm grip, and usually carried her point. With nothing in particular to do and plenty of money to spend, she would like to have a girl like Louie under her wing; it would help to divert her mind from a horror which was ever present with her when she was unoccupied, and she talked on of Paris and Marchesi and Europe generally as if it were settled that Louie was to go abroad with her in the autumn. ”

“ Miss Frarnie herself, had she seen it, could not have told whose it was.
Notwithstanding all the elasticity of youth, life became an inexpressibly dull thing to Louie as the year wore into the next--dull, with neither aim nor object, the past a pain to remember, the future a blank to consider. She could live only from day to day, one day like another, till they grew so wearisome she wondered her hair was not gray--the pretty hair that, shorn from her head in her illness, had grown again in a short fleece of silky curls--for it seemed to her that she had lived a hundred years. ”

“ Lady Waterville quoted his wise sayings continually, and was often heard to wish that Ronald—"poor, foolish, fascinating Ronald—" would put himself completely under the guidance of Mr. Greystock.
"Do you think Mr. Hepburne fascinating?" I said, one day.
"Yes," she answered, "and so do you, Louie. I admire that soft, languid manner of his; and you are in love with his melancholy face and manifold misfortunes. It does not matter to you that he brought a good many of those misfortunes on himself; like all women of your type, you are willing to heal wounds without inquiring how they were gained. ”

“ Miss that track—a matter of some fifteen minutes' walk for the sturdy farmer who knows it well—and you find yourself lost in a region which has no features and no landmarks, where the earth lays snares for you and the mists betray you, and where even in bright sunshine there reigns an eternal and indescribable melancholy. The strangeness and wildness of the scene entered the boy's consciousness, and brought with them a kind of exaltation. He stood gazing; that inner life of his, of which Louie, his constant companion, knew as good as nothing, asserting itself. ”

“ Miss Percy said, entering at once upon the principal object of her call. “You have the most wonderful voice I ever heard in one so young. You must cultivate it. You ought to go abroad—to Marchesi, in Paris. Don’t you believe your father would let you go with me in the autumn? I have a great desire to see what can be made of your voice.”
Louie’s eyes were like stars as she thought of Paris, but a shadow fell on her face when she remembered Herbert, who at that moment came bowling up the street on his wheel, looking flushed and not altogether pleased when he saw who Louie’s visitors were. ”

“ He went his way, and left her strumming on the guitar and brooding over her miseries. You are angry with him, Louie, I see."
"He is just the kind of man I could hate!" cried I.
"Nonsense, my dear. He was moral and highly respectable, quite an ornament, as people said, to his profession. A heart, you know, is a most unfortunate thing for any one to possess; it is sure to retard one's advancement in life. Colonel Greystock was a lucky man ”

“ And in Louie's heart there was something just as strange and still as in all other things throughout that wearing, blinding day; but with her the calm was not of fear, only of unspeakable joy; for if Andrew lived it was she that had saved him, and though he died, his delirium had told her that his heart was hers. "If he dies, he is mine!" she cried triumphantly, forgetting all the long struggle of scruple and doubt, "and if he lives, he shall never be hers!" ”

“ Why, Louie, you have a guitar here! Is it yours?"
"No; that is Ronald's. Ah, Marian, how I should like to hear you sing again! Can't you remember any of your old songs? Sing one of Moore's—something sweet and old-fashioned—I am so tired of all our ballads of to-day. There should not be too many deep thoughts in verses that are written for music. A little sentiment—a little pathos—a dash of hope—that is all that we want to sing about. There are poems that are inscribed on our hearts with the point of a diamond, but we do not care to sing them." ”