STERN HER FACE AND MASCULINE HER STRIDE.
Mr. Huntington, after leaving the Mercer mansion, stood for a minute
on the sidewalk, in deepest thought. He turned his face toward his own
house, then, looking in the direction of the up-river suburbs of the
town, he turned his head back again, like one drawn two ways, and,
finally coming to a decision, hailed a passing car, and was whirled
rapidly in the direction his thoughts had taken.
A few minutes later he had reached the terminus of the car line, and
was picking a somewhat muddy way toward a long, high-shouldered house
of foreign aspect, situated on the river bank, and showing him a broad,
friendly face at the end of an avenue of poplars.
"Is Miss Gastonguay at home?" he asked of an old man servant, who
opened the door to him.
"Yes, sir,--she's just a-scolding of old Tribulation," said the demure
old man, with ill-concealed satisfaction. "Look at him--" and he threw
open the door of a near parlour.
The handsome furniture of the room was pushed on one side, and in the
middle of the polished floor stood a second old man, his gray head bent
over the handle of a broom, tears raining from his eyes to the floor.
"You sha'n't have one morsel of food to-day, if you don't do this room
better," a decided feminine voice was saying. "Now go right over it
again."
The clergyman stood silently gazing at the straight back of his
hostess. She was dressed in a scant blue serge skirt, a man's coat, a
man's hat, thick boots were on her feet, and she carried a riding-whip
in her hand. Her hair was cut short, her sex would have been
indeterminate to a stranger, but the clergyman knew her well as Miss
Jane Gastonguay,--an eccentric, kind-hearted old maid, who loved to
masquerade in semi-masculine garments.
Presently the ceasing of the old man's flow of crocodile tears caused
her to turn around. "Oh, you are here," she said, coolly, to the
clergyman, "I just want some one in your profession to hear me register
a vow to send this old fool back to the poorhouse, if he does not mend
his ways. This room was to have been done by eight o'clock, and my fine
gentleman here lies in bed and smokes instead of sweeping it,--some day
he will burn us all up. You would think he was the millionaire and I
the pauper. How old are you, idiot?"
"Six--sixty," sobbed the old man.
"That's a falsehood. Tell me the truth, quick now, or you will go right
out of this house."
"Six--six--ty--five, ma'am."
"A mere boy,--only one year older than I am. I know an old man of
eighty who would be glad to take your place. Haven't I fed and clothed
you for years?"
"Ye--yes, ma'am," he stammered.
"And this is the way you serve me. Well, as I said before, if I have
any more trouble with you, back you go to the poorhouse," and, loftily
holding up her head, she swaggered from the room.
"And you, too, Prosperity," she exclaimed, pausing in the hall to
reprove the second grayhead, who was openly chuckling over his
companion's discomfiture. "Your dusting lately is shameful; just
look at this chair," and she ran her forefinger over the back of one
standing near her. "Go get a cloth."
The old man, with a ludicrous descent from gratification to
mortification, fairly ran down the hall, while Miss Gastonguay preceded
the clergyman into a music-room, where she seated herself on a piano
stool and motioned him to a monk's bench.
"I shall not detain you," he said, "I see you are going out."
"No hurry," she replied, airily. "I am just going to try a new colt in
the field yonder,--you want money, I suppose."
"Not this time," he replied, in his smooth, polished tones. "I want to
ask a favour of another order."
"What is it?" she said, abruptly.
"Have you heard of Justin Mercer's marriage?"
"Good gracious, yes,--is this place so large that we should miss an
important piece of gossip like that? The whole town is ringing with it."
"Have you thought of calling on his wife?"
"I-- Wherefore should I enter the doors of those sour-faced Puritans?"
"The daughter-in-law is different."
"Is she? I am glad to hear it."
"I used to know her two years ago. She was a charming young girl. I
think possibly you and Miss Chelda would enjoy her acquaintance."
"Chelda may, I assure you I shall not trouble myself about her. Here,
Chelda--Chelda--come speak to Mr. Huntington. You're somewhere near,
you young sly-boots, for I hear you."
A tall, dark girl, with a graceful figure and an attractive if
enigmatic face, came from the hall, and exchanged a calm "Good morning"
with the clergyman.
"Chelda, will you go call on the new Mrs. Mercer?" said Miss
Gastonguay, abruptly. "I don't want to be bothered with her. I know
too many girls now."
"Do you wish me to go?" asked the young lady, addressing their caller,
and narrowing her long liquid eyes as she spoke.
"Of course he does," said Miss Gastonguay. "That is what he's here for.
You only want to gain time to make up your mind. Will you go?"
"Yes, I will, aunt."
"Thank you," said Mr. Huntington, rising. "I do not think you will
regret it."
"I think we should be grateful to you," said the young lady. "There are
few desirable people in Rossignol, and you would not call our attention
to any one who would be undesirable."
She spoke sweetly and smoothly, yet her tones flowed into her
relative's ear with a hidden meaning. "Now what do you mean by that,
Chelda?" she asked.
Chelda glanced at their caller. He understood her, and he at once lost
the contented, almost exalted expression that he had brought away
from the Mercer mansion, and took on instead his usual one of slight
moodiness.
"She means," he said, hastily, "that my duties call me among a class of
people with whom it would not be your good pleasure to associate."
"And I am called the most radical woman in Rossignol!" said Miss
Gastonguay. "Thank you, young ecclesiastic."
"I referred to your niece, rather than to you," he said, with a bow.
"Oh, Chelda,--yes, she is an aristocrat," said Miss Gastonguay. "It is
born in her, she can't help it. You ought to understand her, in view of
your former life. Come, now, do you love all those dirty mill hands and
slovenly women you work among?"
"I do not think we need discuss that point. There is duty to be
considered as well as pleasure."
"But if one can combine both," said Chelda; "it is possible."
"The question is to know your duty," he replied.
"It is our duty to be happy," said the young lady, blandly, yet with a
certain boldness.
The clergyman looked straight into her eyes. They were wide open. Their
usual filmy appearance was gone. What he saw seemed to fascinate and
yet repel him, for with his hands he made a gesture as if he would be
gone, yet his feet still lingered.
Miss Gastonguay's abrupt voice disenchanted him. "Come back to lunch,
Mr. Huntington. I daresay you are taking your Monday walk in this
direction."
He started slightly. "I am, yet I thought of returning to my study."
He had retreated toward the door, but the young lady moved a step
toward him. "How devoted you are to that desk of yours. How you must
miss your former life of freedom."
The cloud on his brow grew more heavy, and seeing it, Miss Gastonguay
exclaimed, hospitably, "Let the musty old Negus books alone, and go
take your constitutional on the river road. Then after lunch Chelda
will drive you in town and make her call on your friend, the bride. You
will, won't you, Chelda?"
"Certainly," said the young lady, sweetly, but without eagerness.
The clergyman flashed one rapid glance about the quiet elegance of the
room, and another at his eccentric and unconventional hostess and her
graceful niece.
These surroundings were more congenial to him in his present state of
mind than the dingy parsonage. "I will come back, thank you," he said,
and, hurrying from the house, he went down the road at a swinging gait.
Miss Gastonguay, with her little manly swagger, followed him to the big
hall door. "Chelda, that man does not seem happy lately."
"Perhaps he is working too hard."
"He isn't in love with you, is he?" asked Miss Gastonguay, sharply.
Chelda discreetly lowered her eyes. "I don't know."
"You wouldn't marry him if he were. You are too fond of your own
comfort to tie yourself to a poor clergyman."
"You are right, aunt, I shall never marry a clergyman."
"I believe," continued Miss Gastonguay, in a puzzled voice, "that he
likes to come to this house. He once told me that it reminded him of
his father's house on the Hudson. Have they ever forgiven him for
turning parson, do you know?"
"No; his father has cut him out of his will, and has requested him not
to go home."
"A cold-hearted money-bags, nourished on the milk of Wall Street.
Chelda, do you believe that among foreign aristocracy there is half the
scorn for the lowly born, the toiling poor, that there is among our
so-called American aristocrats?"
"I do not know, aunt, my acquaintance with the foreign nobility being
limited."
"You have met them travelling,--those counts and countesses, dukes and
duchesses,--you have seen that they have some bowels of compassion;
but our rich people here,--they are grossly material. It is money,
money, how much have you? What is the biggest piece of foolery you can
perpetrate with it? Some day we shall have a labour war; the poor will
rise up against them," and shaking her head and scolding to herself she
started in the direction of her stables.
Chelda, with the train of her Parisian gown rustling daintily over the
bare and polished steps of the staircase, went up to the top of the
house, where she sat sunning her sleek, beautiful self and observing
the country for miles around. Sometimes she picked up a field-glass
beside her to better watch the movements of a stalwart pedestrian on
the high-road.
"He has one devil now; Heaven grant that he may return with seven
more," she murmured, joyfully.