When June Came "Methought I met a Damsel Fair And tears were in her eyes;Her head and arms were bare, I heard her bursting sighs.
"I stopp'd and looked her in the face, `Twas then she sweetly smiled.
Her features shone with mournful grace, Far more than Nature's child.
"With diffident and downcast eye, In modest tones she spoke;She wiped a tear and gave a sigh, And then her silence broke--"
So sang Mrs. Tanberry at the piano, relieving the melancholy which possessed her; but Nelson, pausing in the hail to listen, and exceedingly curious concerning the promised utterance of the Damsel Fair, was to suffer disappointment, as the ballad was broken off abruptly and the songstress closed the piano with a monstrous clatter. Little doubt may be entertained that the noise was designed to disturb Mr. Carewe, who sat upon the veranda consulting a brown Principe, and less that the intended insult was accomplished. For an expression of a vindictive nature was precipitated in that quarter so simultaneously that the bang of the piano- lid and the curse were even as the report of a musket and the immediate cry of the wounded.
Mrs. Tanberry at once debouched upon the piazza, showing a vast, clouded countenance. "And I hope to heaven you already had a headache!" she exclaimed.
"The courtesy of your wish, madam," Carewe replied, with an angry flash of his eye, "is only equaled by the kindness of heaven in answering it. I have, in fact, a headache. I always have, nowadays."
"That's good news," returned the lady heartily.
"I thank you," retorted her host.
"Perhaps if you treated your daughter even a decent Indian's kind of politeness, you'd enjoy better health."
"Ah! And in what failure to perform my duty toward her have I incurred your displeasure?"
"Where is she now?" exclaimed the other excitably. "Where is she now?"
"I cannot say."
"Yes, you can, Robert Carewe!" Mrs. Tanberry retorted, with a wrathful gesture. "You know well enough she's in her own room, and so do I--for I tried to get in to comfort her when I heard her crying. She's in there with the door bolted, where you drove her!"
"I drove her!" he sneered.
"Yes, you did, and I heard you. Do you think I couldn't hear you raging and storming at her like a crazy man? When you get in a temper do you dream there's a soul in the neighborhood who doesn't know it? You're a fool if you do, because they could have heard you swearing down on Main Street, if they'd listened. What are you trying to do to her?--break her spirit?--or what? Because you'll do it, or kill her. I never heard anybody cry so heart-brokenly." Here the good woman's own eyes filled.
"What's the use of pretending?" she went on sorrowfully. "You haven't spoken to her kindly since you came home. Do you suppose I'm blind to that? You weren't a bad husband to the poor child's mother; why can't you be a good father to her?"
"Perhaps you might begin by asking her to be a good daughter to me."
"What has she done?"
"The night before I went away she ran to a fire and behaved there like a common street hoyden. The ladies of the Carewe family have not formerly acquired a notoriety of that kind."
"Bah!" said Mrs. Tanberry.
"The next morning, when I taxed her with it, she dutifully defied and insulted me."
"I can imagine the delicacy with which you `taxed' her. What has that to do with your devilish tantrums of this afternoon, Robert Carewe?"
"I am obliged to you for the expression," he returned. "When I came home, this afternoon, I found her reading that thing." He pointed to many very small fragments of Mr. Cummings's newspaper, which were scattered about the lawn near the veranda. "She was out here, reading an article which I had read downtown and which appeared in a special edition of that rotten sheet, sent out two hours ago."
"Well?"
"Do you know what that article was, madam, do you know what it was?"
Although breathing heavily, Mr. Carewe had compelled himself to a certain outward calmness, but now, in the uncontrollable agitation of his anger, he sprang to his feet and struck one of the wooden pillars of the porch a shocking blow with the bare knuckles of his clenched hand. "Do you know what it was? It was a eulogy of that damned Vanrevel! It pretended to be an account of the enrollment of his infernal company, but it was nothing more than a glorification of that nigger-loving hound! His company--a lot of sneaks, who'll run like sheep from the first Greaser--elected him captain yesterday, and today he received an appointment as major! It dries the blood in my veins to think of it!--that black dog a major! Good God! am I never to hear the last of him? Cummings wrote it, the fool, the lying, fawning, slobbering fool; he ought to be shot for it! Neither he nor his paper ever enter my doors again! And I took the dirty sheet from her hands and tore it to pieces--"
"Yes," interposed Mrs. Tanberry, "it looks as if you had done it with your teeth."
"--And stamped it into the ground!"
"Oh, I heard you!" she said.
Carewe came close to her, and gave her a long look from such bitter eyes that her own fell before them. "If you've been treacherous to me, Jane Tanberry," he said, "then God punish you! If they've met--my daughter and that man--while I was away, it is on your head. I don't ask you, because I believe if you knew anything you'd lie for her sake. But I tell you that as she read that paper, she did not hear my step on the walk nor know that I was there until I leaned over her shoulder. And I swear that I suspect her."
He turned and walked to the door, while the indomitable Mrs. Tanberry, silenced for once, sank into the chair he had vacated. Before he disap- peared within the house, he paused.
"If Mr. Vanrevel has met my daughter," he said, in a thick voice, stretching out both hands in a strange, menacing gesture toward the town that lay darkling in the growing dusk, "if he has addressed one word to her, or so much as allowed his eyes to rest on her overlong, let him take care of himself!"
