Miss Carter, lying awake in the dark, had before her eyes the image of
Maude, so pale and grave and so very young, standing there in that
dazzlingly white, highly efficient kitchen. The night wind blew in at
the open window, fluttering the curtains, and outside in the dark garden
a little owl gave its tremulous cry. A great loneliness came over her.
She thought of this old house, with all those rooms, so neat and
orderly--and empty, standing in the dark, quiet garden, and with herself
and poor lovely young Maude all alone in it. Two spinsters all alone!
“No!” said Miss Carter, aloud.
Miss Carter’s forefathers, three hundred years ago, had kept themselves
alive on the “stern and rock-bound coast” of New England because of
their grim determination; and though Miss Carter had inherited very
little of their grimness, she certainly was determined. Then and there
she made up her mind; and, what is more, she was positively artful about
it.
“I was wondering,” she said to Maude, the next morning. “Didn’t Mr.
Rhodes say that his business was up in Massachusetts? How did you come
to meet him, child?”
“Oh, he’s a great friend of Mr. Lawrence’s,” said Maude, very, very
casually. “Mr. Lawrence’s firm are shipowners, you know, and we write
all their insurance for them. Their office is on the same floor with us,
and I often--I often have to run in there. Whenever Mr. Rhodes comes to
New York, he always stops in there, and I’ve met him there several
times.”
“I see!” said Miss Carter brightly.
What she saw was the wave of color that rose in Maude’s cheeks. She also
saw how a letter could be addressed to Mr. Rhodes, in care of Mr.
Lawrence, in the same building where Maude worked.
After Maude had gone, she wrote the letter. She told Mr. Rhodes that she
and her niece would be very pleased to see him next Sunday afternoon,
and she said that the “best” train was one that arrived at their station
about three o’clock.
How could the truthful Miss Carter write such a letter? How could she
say that Maude would be glad to see Mr. Rhodes when she never told Maude
a word about his coming? How could she call a train a “best” train that
stopped at every tiniest station, and that arrived, moreover, at a time
when Maude would not be at home? But she did say all this, and was not
even ashamed of it.
And then, right under Maude’s nose, she prepared a supper which utterly
surpassed the previous dinner; and when the poor, unsuspicious girl had
gone off to the Sunday school where she taught a class, Miss Carter flew
upstairs, put on the _crêpe de Chine_ dress, arranged her hair in a new
fashion, and just had time to get down to the veranda when Mr. Rhodes
appeared.
She kept on in the same deplorably artful manner. Although she was still
a little out of breath from her struggle with the dress, she pretended
to be so deeply absorbed in the magazine she had just that moment
snatched up that she didn’t hear him coming up the path. There she sat,
looking calm, serene, almost queenly.
As he mounted the steps, she glanced up with a mendacious air of
surprise, and rose, smiling, very polite, but still queenly.
“Oh, Mr. Rhodes!” she said. “This is very nice! Sit down, won’t you?”
He did so, and Miss Carter began her campaign. She said she was sorry
Maude wasn’t at home, but nothing could induce that girl to miss her
Sunday school class.
“She’s so conscientious!” Miss Carter said, and told him several
anecdotes about Maude’s conscientiousness.
Then she told him how devoted the children in the class were to Maude.
There was no pretense about Miss Carter now. She was speaking from her
heart, telling him what she knew to be the truth about her dear girl,
pleading Maude’s cause with dignity and sincerity. This man, this wooden
Indian, must be made to realize what Maude was!
Miss Carter watched him pretty closely, but it did her no good, for it
was impossible to tell from his face what impression she was making. He
just listened. She waited for him to ask questions about Maude, but he
did not. After awhile she grew indignant, and spoke no more. He, too,
fell silent, and there they sat.
He was one of those persons to whom the sunshine is becoming. In spite
of his age and his exasperating silence and his shocking lack of
curiosity, Miss Carter was obliged, in justice, to admit that she liked
his face. It was honest and keen and strong. She remembered, too, that
when he had talked about his ships he had been really interesting. Well,
he wasn’t going to talk about ships this time. He had been brought here
to be taught appreciation of Maude, and taught he should be.
“Your garden--” he began.
“Maude’s making a little rock garden,” Miss Carter said. “She had the
prettiest violets this spring!”
“I like those bright-colored things that grow in the sun better,” said
he, with a gesture toward the glowing bed of pinks and phlox and
verbena. “My mother used to have those things in her garden.”
Miss Carter didn’t say that she wasn’t interested in his mother’s
garden, but she looked it, and he seemed a little taken aback. He
glanced at her anxiously. He felt that somehow he had said the wrong
thing, and that he had better start another topic.
“I’m going up home next week,” he observed.
Miss Carter made no sort of reply to this. She could not. Going home,
was he? Going away? She thought of Maude’s pale, grave young face, of
the odd little note in her voice when she had said that she was afraid
Mr. Rhodes didn’t think she was very interesting.
“He’s a--a selfish beast!” thought Miss Carter.
This thought, too, was reflected in her honest face, and Mr. Rhodes saw
that once more he had said the wrong thing.
“You see,” he explained, still more anxiously, “I’m obliged to go there.
My business--”
Miss Carter raised her eyebrows with a toplofty expression never before
seen upon her face.
“Indeed!” she said.
The unhappy man could not imagine in what way he had offended her, but
he had no doubt that she was offended. He felt that he must go on
explaining.
“You see,” he said, “it’s this.”
From the pocket of his coat he brought out an advertisement. Miss Carter
glanced at it, and saw that on the 8th of July, at Rhodes’s dock, two
schooners were to be sold “as is where is.”
“Indeed!” she said again.
He gave up then, and relapsed into total silence.
“Very well!” said Miss Carter, but not aloud. “Go home, then, and stay
there! I wish you’d never left your home! Maude was happy before you
came. Oh, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
She looked at him, and to save her life she couldn’t help feeling just a
little sorry for him. He had such a bewildered and miserable air.
“After all,” she thought, “he’s a guest.”
So she went into the kitchen, took six doughnuts out of a stone crock,
put them on a plate, and brought them out to the veranda.
“Maybe you’d like one,” she said.
It was a mistake. While the man was eating a doughnut, he did not look
in the least old, or like a wooden Indian. Indeed, his enjoyment was
positively boyish, and Miss Carter could not help feeling a little
touched. She invited him to take another and another.
“Did you make them?” he asked.
“Yes, I did,” replied Miss Carter, with modest pride.
“I never tasted anything like them--never!” he declared.
“Well, I like to cook,” said Miss Carter.
“You know,” he went on, “your niece told me a good deal about you,
and--”
“Maude makes the most delicious soda biscuits!” cried Miss Carter,
suddenly recalled to her duty.
“She told me all you’d done for her,” he continued. “I--I wanted to meet
you. I”--he paused--“I knew you’d be--like this!”
It was Miss Carter’s intention to greet this statement with an amused,
indulgent smile; but she could not. There was something in the man’s
straightforward glance, in his quiet voice, that filled her with
confusion. She turned her head aside, feeling her cheeks grow hot.
“You don’t know what I’m really like, Mr. Rhodes,” she said.
“Yes, I do,” said he. “When I came this afternoon, you didn’t see me, at
first, but I--I saw you.” His face had grown red, but he went on
sturdily. “You--you don’t know how you looked, sitting there--in your
own home!”
Miss Carter understood his speech only too well. She understood, by a
sort of instinct, that he was one of those men who see all the romance
and glamour of the world about the head of a woman in her own home. She
understood, too, that he was very lonely and very homesick; and she made
another mistake.
“Tell me about your home,” she said. “Your mother’s garden--”
He was silent for a moment.
“Well, you see,” he said, “when my father died, my elder brother got the
old place; and he and his wife--well, they’ve made a good many changes.”
Miss Carter felt a sudden and most unreasonable indignation against Mr.
Rhodes’s brother and sister-in-law.
“I hate changes!” she said. Then, feeling that she had been too
vehement, she smiled. “That’s a sign of growing old,” she said. “I’m--”
“Old!” he cried. “You!”
Now this was the sort of thing almost any chivalrous man would have
said in the circumstances, but the way he said it--the way he looked at
her--
A most curious thing happened. Suddenly Miss Carter saw the Miss Carter
that _he_ saw--not the practical, brisk, busy woman who was simply
Maude’s aunt and a good housekeeper, but the woman who had bidden
farewell to romance fifteen years ago, when the man she was to have
married died. No--this Miss Carter was a charming and gracious woman,
and a pretty one. She positively felt the lovely color in her cheeks,
the soft tendrils of her brown hair about her temples, and even the
clear blueness of her eyes; and all her heart was filled with an
innocent and beautiful joy that it should be so.
She sat very still, almost afraid to breathe, for fear of breaking the
enchantment. She was so happy!
The garden gate clicked, and, looking up, she saw Maude.