MAITLAND TAIT
The only difference between the houses in West Clydemont Place and
museums was that there was no admission fee at the front door.
Otherwise they were identical, for the "auld lang syne" flavor greeted
you the moment you put foot into that corner of the town. You knew
instinctively that every family there owned its own lawn-mower and
received crested invitations in the morning mail.
Yet it was certainly not fashionable! Indeed, from a
butler-and-porte-cochère standpoint it was shabby. The business of
owning your own lawn-mower arises from a state of mind, rather than
from a condition of finances, anyway. We were poor, but aloof--and
strung high with the past-tension. The admiral, the ambassador and
the artist rubbed our aristocracy in on any stray caller who lingered
in the hall, if they had failed to be pricked by it on the point of
grandfather's jeweled sword in the library.
I saw 1919 through a new vista as I came up to it in the late dusk,
following the Flag Day reception, and I wondered what the effect of
all this antiquity would be on the mind of a man who so clearly
disregarded the grandfather clause in one's book of life. I hoped that
he would be amused by it, as he had been by the long-tailed D. A. R.
badge on my coat.
"You'd better have a little fire kindled up in the library, Grace,"
mother observed chillingly just after lunch that next afternoon. "It's
true it's June, but--"
"But the day _is_ bleak and raw," I answered, with a sudden cordial
sense of relief that she was on speaking terms with me again.
"Certainly I'll tell Cicely to make a fire."
"The dampness of the day has nothing at all to do with it," she kept
on with frozen evenness. "I suggested it because a fire is a safe
place for a girl to look into while her profile is being studied."
"Mother!"
Her sense of outraged propriety suddenly slipped its leash.
"It keeps her eyes looking earnest, instead of _eager_," she burst
out. "And any girl who'd let a man--allow a man--to run away from a
party whose very magnificence was induced on his account, and take her
off to tea in a public place, and come to see her the very next
afternoon--a stranger, and a foreigner at that--is--is playing with
fire!"
"You mean she'd better be playing with fire while he's calling?" I
asked quietly. "We must remember to have the old andirons polished,
then."
She stopped in her task of dusting the parlor--whose recesses without
the shining new player-piano suddenly looked as bare and empty as a
shop-window just after the holidays.
"You wilfully ignore my warning," she declared. "If this man left that
party yesterday and comes calling to-day, of course he's impressed!
And if you let him, of course _you're_ impressed. This much goes
without saying; but I beg you to be careful, Grace! You happen to have
those very serious, _betraying_ eyes, and I want you to guard them
while he's here!"
"By keeping my hands busy, eh?" I laughed. "Well, I'll promise,
mother, if that'll be any relief to you."
So the fire was kindled, as a preventative measure; and at four
o'clock he came--not on the stroke, but ten minutes after. I was glad
that he had patronized the street railway service for this call, and
left the limousine in its own boudoir--you couldn't imagine anything
so exquisite being kept in a lesser place--or I'm afraid that our
little white-capped maid would have mistaken it for an ambulance and
assured him that nobody was sick. Gleaming blue limousines were scarce
in that section.
"Am I early?" he asked, after we had shaken hands and he had glanced
toward the fire with a little surprised, gratified expression. "I
wasted a quarter of an hour waiting for this car."
Now, a woman can always forgive a man for being late, if she knows he
started on time, so with this reassurance I began to feel at home with
him. I leaned over and stirred the fire hospitably--to keep my eyes
from showing just how thoroughly at home I felt.
"No--you are not early. I was expecting you at four, and--and mother
will be down presently."
He studied my profile.
"I was out at the golf club dance last night," he said, after a pause,
with a certain abruptness which I had found characterized his more
important parts of speech. I stood the tongs against the marble
mantlepiece and drew back from the flame.
"Was it--enjoyable?" I asked politely.
"Extremely. Mrs. Walker was there, and she had very kindly forgiven
me for my defection of the afternoon. In fact, she was distinctly
cordial. She talked to me a great deal of you and your mother."
My heart sank. It always does when I find that my women friends have
been talking a great deal about me.
"Oh, did she?"
"She is very fond of you, it seems--and very puzzled by you."
"Puzzled because I work for the _Herald_?"
I spoke breathlessly, for I wondered if Mrs. Walker had told of the
Guilford Blake puzzle, as well; but after one look into the candid
half-amused eyes I knew that this information had been withheld.
"Well, yes. She touched upon that, among other things."
"But what things?" I asked impatiently. At the door I heard the maid
with the tea tray. "I suppose, however, just the usual things that people
tell about us. That we have been homeless and penniless--except for
this old barn--since I was a baby, and that, one by one, the pomps of
power have been stripped from us?"
He looked at me soberly for a moment.
"Yes, she told me all this," he said.
"And that our historic rosewood furniture was sold, years ago, to Mrs.
Hartwell Gill, the grocer's wife who used the chair-legs as
battering-rams?"
He smiled.
"Against Oldburgh's unwelcoming doors? Yes."
"And that--"
"That you belonged to the most aristocratic family in the whole
state," he interrupted softly. "So aristocratic that even the
possession of the rosewood furniture is an open sesame! And of course
this state is noted for its blooded beings, even in my own country."
"Really?" I asked, with a little gratified surprise.
"Indeed, yes!" he replied earnestly. "And Mrs. Walker told me
something that I had not in the least thought to surmise--that you are
a descendant of the famous artist, Christie. I don't know why I
happened not to think about it, for the name is one which an
Englishman instantly connects with portrait galleries. He was very
favorably known on our side."
"Yes. He had a very remarkable--a very pathetic history," I said.
Turning around, he glanced at a small portrait across the room.
"Is--is this James Christie?" he asked.
"Yes. There is a larger one in the hall."
He walked across the room and examined the portrait. After a
perfunctory survey, which did not include any very close examination
of the strong features--rugged and a little harsh, and by no means the
glorious young face which had been a lodestar to Lady Frances Webb--he
turned back to me. For a moment I fancied that he was going to say
something bitter and impulsive--something that held a tinge of
mass-hatred for class, but his expression changed suddenly. I saw
that his impulse had passed, and that what he would say next would be
an afterthought.
"Do you care for him--for this sort of thing?" he asked, waving his
hand carelessly toward the other portraits in the room and toward the
sword, lying there in an absurd sort of harmlessness beneath its glass
case. "I imagined that you didn't."
He spoke with a tinge of disappointment. Evidently he was sorry to
find me so pedigreed a person.
"I do--and I don't," I answered, coming across the room to his side
and drawing back a curtain to admit a better light. "I certainly care
for--him."
"The artist?"
"Yes."
"But why?" he demanded, with a sudden twist of perversity to his big
well-shaped mouth. "To me it seems such a waste of time--this
sentiment for romantic antiquity. But I am not an unprejudiced judge,
I admit. I have spent all the days of my life hating aristocracy."
"Oh, my feeling for him is not caused by his aristocracy," I made
haste to explain. "And indeed, the Christies were very commonplace
people until he elevated them into the ranks of fame. He was not only
an artist of note, but he was a very strong man. It is this part of
his history that I revere, and when I was a very young girl I
'adopted' him--from all the rest of my ancestors--to be the one I'd
care for and feel a pride in."
He smiled.
"Of course you don't understand," I attempted to explain with a little
flurry. "No _man_ would ever think of adopting an ancestor, but--"
He interrupted me, his smile growing gentler.
"I think I understand," he said. "I did the selfsame thing, years ago
when I was a boy. But my circumstances were rather different from
yours. I selected my grandfather--my mother's father, because he was
clean and fine and strong! He was--he was a collier in Wales."
"A collier?" I repeated, wondering for the moment over the
unaccustomed word.
"A coal-miner," he explained briefly. "He was honest and
kind-hearted--and I took him for my example. He left me no heirlooms
that--"
I turned away, looking at the room's furnishings with a feeling of
reckless contempt.
"Heirlooms are--are a nuisance to keep dusted!" I declared quickly.
"Yet you evidently like them," he said, as we took our places again
before the fire, and the little maid, in her nervous haste, made an
unnecessary number of trips in and out. The firelight was glowing
ruddily over the silver things on the tea-table, and looking up, I
caught his eyes resting upon the ring I wore--Guilford's scarab. "That
ring is likely an heirloom?"
"Yes--the story goes that Mariette himself found it," I elucidated,
slipping the priceless old bit of stone off my hand and handing it to
him to examine.
But as I talked my head was buzzing, for grandfather was at one ear
and Uncle Lancelot was at the other.
"Grace, you ought to tell him!" grandfather commanded sharply. "Tell
him this minute! Say to him: 'This ring is an heirloom in the family
of my betrothed.'"
"_Rot_, parson!" came in Uncle Lancelot's dear comforting tones.
"Shall a young woman take it for granted that every man who admires
the color of her eyes is interested in her entire history?--Why, it
would be absolutely indelicate of Grace to tell this man that she's
engaged. It's simply none of his business."
"You'll see! You'll see!" grandfather warned--and my heart sank, for
when a member of your family warns you that you'll see, the sad part
of it is that you _will_ see.
"It's a royal scarab, isn't it?" Maitland Tait asked, turning the
ancient beetle over and viewing the inscription on the flat side.
"Yes--perhaps--oh, I don't know, I'm sure," I answered in a bewildered
fashion. Then suddenly I demanded: "But what else did Mrs. Walker tell
you? Surely she didn't leave off with the mention of one illustrious
member of my family."
"She told me about your great-aunt--the queer old lady who left James
Christie's relics to you because you were the only member of the
family who didn't keep a black bonnet in readiness for her funeral,"
he laughed, as he handed me back the ring.
"They were just a batch of letters," I corrected, "not any other
relics."
"Yes--the letters written by Lady Frances Webb," he said.
It was my turn to laugh.
"I knew that Mrs. Walker must have been talkative," I declared. "She
didn't tell you the latest touch of romance in connection with those
letters, did she?"
He was looking into the fire, with an expression of deep
thoughtfulness; and I studied his profile for a moment.
"Late romance?" he asked in a puzzled fashion, as he turned to me.
"A publishing company has made me an offer to publish those letters!
To make them into a stunning 'best-seller,' with a miniature portrait
of Lady Frances Webb, as frontispiece, I dare say, and the
oftenest-divorced illustrator in America to furnish pictures of
Colmere Abbey, with the lovers mooning 'by Norman stone!'"
He was silent for a little while.
"No, she didn't tell me this," he finally answered.
"Then it is because she doesn't know it!" I explained. "You see,
mother is still too grieved to mention the matter to any one by
telephone--and it happens that she hasn't met Mrs. Walker face to face
since the offer was made."
"And--rejected?" he asked, with a little smile.
"Yes, but how did you know?"
The smile sobered.
"There are some things one _knows_," he answered. "Yet, after all,
what are you going to do with the letters? If you don't publish them
now how are you going to be sure that some other--some future
possessor will not?"
"I can't be sure--that's the reason I'm not going to run any risks," I
told him. "I'm going to burn them."
He started.
"But that would be rather a pity, wouldn't it?" he asked. "She was
such a noted writer that I imagine her letters are full of literary
value."
"It would be a cold-blooded thing for _me_ to do," I said
thoughtfully. "I've an idea that some day I'll take them back to
England and--and burn them there."
"A sort of feeling that they'd enjoy being buried on their native
soil?" he asked.
"I'll take them to Colmere Abbey--her old home," I explained. "To me
the place has always been a house of dreams! She describes portions of
the gardens in her letters--tells him of new flower-beds made, of new
walls built--of the sun-dial. I have always wanted to go there, and
some day I shall bundle all these letters up and pack them in the
bottom of a steamer trunk--to have a big bonfire with them on the very
same hearth where she burned his."