The dining-room in the White homestead was a large, low room whose
southward windows were shaded at this season with a cloud of
gold-green young grape leaves. The paper was a nondescript pattern, a
large satin scroll on white. The room was wainscoted in white, and
the panel-work around the great chimney was beautiful. A Franklin
stove with a pattern of grape-vines was built into the chimney under
the high mantel. Sylvia regarded this dubiously.
"I don't think much of that old-fashioned Franklin stove," she told
Henry. "Why Abrahama had it left in, after she had her nice furnace,
beats me. Seems to me we had better have it taken out, and have a
nice board, covered with paper to match this on the room, put there
instead. There's a big roll of the paper up garret, and it ain't
faded a mite."
"Mr. Allen will like it just the way it is," said Henry, regarding
the old stove with a sneaking admiration of which he was ashamed. It
had always seemed to him that Sylvia's taste must be better than his.
He had always thought vaguely of women as creatures of taste.
"I think maybe he'll like a fire in it sometimes," he said, timidly.
"A fire, when there's a furnace?"
"I mean chilly days in the fall, before we start the furnace."
"Then we could have that nice air-tight that we had in the other
house put up. If we had a fire in this old thing the heat would all
go up chimney."
"But it would look kind of pretty."
"I was brought up to think a fire was for warmth, not for looks,"
said Sylvia, tartly. She had lost the odd expression which Henry had
dimly perceived several days before, or she was able to successfully
keep it in abeyance; still, there was no doubt that a strange and
subtle change had occurred within the woman. Henry was constantly
looking at her when she spoke, because he vaguely detected unwonted
tones in her familiar voice; that voice which had come to seem almost
as his own. He was constantly surprised at a look in the familiar
eyes, which had seemed heretofore to gaze at life in entire unison
with his own.
He often turned upon Sylvia and asked her abruptly if she did not
feel well, and what was the matter; and when she replied, as she
always did, that nothing whatever was the matter, continued to regard
her with a frown of perplexity, from which she turned with a switch
of her skirts and a hitch of her slender shoulders. Sylvia, while she
still evinced exultation over her new possessions, seemed to do so
fiercely and defiantly.
When Horace Allen arrived she greeted him, and ushered him into her
new domain with a pride which had in it something almost repellent.
At supper-time she led him into the dining-room and glanced around,
then at him.
"Well," said she, "don't you think it was about time we had something
nice like this, after we had pulled and tugged for nothing all our
lives? Don't you think we deserve it if anybody does?"
"I certainly do," replied Horace Allen, warmly; yet he regarded her
with somewhat the same look of astonishment as Henry. It did not seem
to him that it could be Sylvia Whitman who was speaking. The thought
crossed his mind, as he took his place at the table, that possibly
coming late in life, after so many deprivations, good-fortune had
disturbed temporarily the even balance of her good New England sense.
Then he looked about him with delight. "I say, this is great!" he
cried, boyishly. There was something incurably boyish about Horace
Allen, although he was long past thirty. "By George, that Chippendale
sideboard is a beauty," he said, gazing across at a fine old piece
full of dull high lights across its graceful surfaces.
Sylvia colored with pleasure, but she had been brought up to disclaim
her possessions to others than her own family. "Mrs. Jim Jones has
got a beautiful one she bought selling Calkin's soap," she said. "She
thinks it's prettier than this, and I must say it's real handsome.
It's solid oak and has a looking-glass on it. This hasn't got any
glass."
Horace laughed. He gazed at a corner-closet with diamond-paned doors.
"That is a perfectly jolly closet, too," he said; "and those are
perfect treasures of old dishes."
"I think they are rather pretty," said Henry. He was conscious of an
admiration for the old blue-and-white ware with its graceful shapes
and quaint decorations savoring of mystery and the Far East, but he
realized that his view was directly opposed to his wife's. This time
Sylvia spoke quite in earnest. As far as the Indian china was
concerned, she had her convictions. She was a cheap realist to the
bone.
She sniffed. "I suppose there's those that likes it," said she, "but
as for me, I can't see how anybody with eyes in their heads can look
twice at old, cloudy, blue stuff like that when they can have nice,
clear, white ware, with flowers on it that _are_ flowers, like this
Calkin's soap set. There ain't a thing on the china in that closet
that's natural. Whoever saw a prospect all in blue, the trees and
plants, and heathen houses, and the heathen, all blue? I like things
to be natural, myself."
Horace laughed, and extended his plate for another piece of pie.
"It's an acquired taste," he said.
"I never had any time to acquire tastes. I kept what the Lord gave
me," said Sylvia, but she smiled. She was delighted because Horace
had taken a second piece of pie.
"I didn't know as you'd relish our fare after living in a Boston
hotel all your vacation," said she.
"People can talk about hotel tables all they want to," declared
Horace. "Give me home cooking like yours every time. I haven't eaten
a blessed thing that tasted good since I went away."
Henry and Sylvia looked lovingly at Horace. He was a large man,
blond, with a thick shock of fair hair, and he wore gray tweeds
rather loose for him, which had always distressed Sylvia. She had
often told Henry that it seemed to her if he would wear a nice suit
of black broadcloth it would be more in keeping with his position as
high-school principal. He wore a red tie, too, and Sylvia had an
inborn conviction that red was not to be worn by fair people, male or
female.
However, she loved and admired Horace in spite of these minor
drawbacks, and had a fiercely maternal impulse of protection towards
him. She was convinced that every mother in East Westland, with a
marriageable daughter, and every daughter, had matrimonial designs
upon him; and she considered that none of them were good enough for
him. She did not wish him to marry in any case. She had suspicions
about young women whom he might have met while on his vacation.
After supper, when the dishes had been cleared away, and they sat in
the large south room, and Horace had admired that and its
furnishings, Sylvia led up to the subject.
"I suppose you know a good many people in Boston," she remarked.
"Yes," replied Horace. "You know, I was born and brought up and
educated there, and lived there until my people died."
"I suppose you know a good many young ladies."
"Thousands," said Horace; "but none of them will look at me."
"You didn't ask them?"
"Not all, only a few, but they wouldn't."
"I'd like to know why not?"
Then Henry spoke. "Sylvia," he said, "Mr. Allen is only joking."
"I hope he is," Sylvia said, severely. "He's too young to think of
getting married. It makes me sick, though, to see the way girls chase
any man, and their mothers, too, for that matter. Mrs. Jim Jones and
Mrs. Sam Elliot both came while you were gone, Mr. Allen. They said
they thought maybe we wouldn't take a boarder now we have come into
property, and maybe you would like to go there, and I knew just as
well as if they had spoken what they had in their minds. There's
Minnie Jones as homely as a broom, and there's Carrie Elliot getting
older, and--"
"Sylvia!" said Henry.
"I don't care. Mr. Allen knows what's going on just as well as I do.
Neither of those women can cook fit for a cat to eat, let alone
anything else. Lucy Ayres came here twice on errands, too, and--"
But Horace colored, and spoke suddenly. "I didn't know that you would
take me back," he said. "I was afraid--"
"We don't need to, as far as money goes," said Sylvia, "but Mr.
Whitman and I like to have the company, and you never make a mite of
trouble. That's what I told Mrs. Jim Jones and Mrs. Sam Elliot."
"I'm glad he's got back," Henry said, after Horace had gone up-stairs
for the night and the couple were in their own room, a large one out
of the sitting-room.
"So am I," assented Sylvia. "It seems real good to have him here
again, and he's dreadful tickled with his new rooms. I guess he's
glad he wasn't shoved off onto Mrs. Jim Jones or Mrs. Sam Elliot. I
don't believe he has an idea of getting married to any girl alive. He
ain't a mite silly over the girls, if they are all setting their caps
at him. I'm sort of sorry for Lucy Ayres. She's a pretty girl, and
real ladylike, and I believe she'd give all her old shoes to get him."
"Look out, he'll hear you," charged Henry. Their room was directly
under the one occupied by Horace.
Presently the odor of a cigar floated into their open window.
"I should know he'd got home. Smoking is an awful habit," Sylvia
said, with a happy chuckle.
"He'd do better if he smoked a pipe," said Henry. Henry smoked a pipe.
"If a man is going to smoke at all, I think he had better smoke
something besides a smelly old pipe," said Sylvia. "It seems to me,
with all our means, you might smoke cigars now, Henry. I saw real
nice ones advertised two for five cents the other day, and you
needn't smoke more than two a day."
Henry sniffed slightly.
"I suppose you think women don't know anything about cigars," said
Sylvia; "but I can smell, anyhow, and I know Mr. Allen is smoking a
real good cigar."
"Yes, he is," assented Henry.
"And I don't believe he pays more than a cent apiece. His cigars have
gilt papers around them, and I know as well as I want to they're
cheap; I know a cent apiece is a much as he pays. He smokes so many
he can't pay more than that."
Henry sniffed again, but Sylvia did not hear. She had one deaf ear,
and she was lying on her sound one. Then they fell asleep, and it was
some time before both woke suddenly. A sound had wakened Henry, an
odor Sylvia. Henry had heard a door open, forcing him into
wakefulness; Sylvia had smelled the cigar again. She nudged her
husband. Just then the tall clock in the sitting-room struck ten
deliberately.
"It's late, and he's awake, smoking, now," whispered Sylvia.
Henry said nothing. He only grunted.
"Don't you think it's queer?"
"Oh no. I guess he's only reading," replied Henry. He had a strong
masculine loyalty towards Horace, as another man. He waited until he
heard Sylvia's heavy, regular breathing again. Then he slipped out of
bed and stole to the window. It was a strange night, very foggy, but
the fog was shot through with shafts of full moonlight. The air was
heavy and damp and sweet. Henry listened a moment at the bedroom
window, then he tiptoed out into the sitting-room. He stole across
the hall into the best parlor. He raised a window in there
noiselessly, looked out, and listened. There was a grove of pines and
spruces on that side of the house. There was a bench under a pine.
Upon this bench Henry gradually perceived a whiteness more opaque
than that of the fog. He heard a voice, then a responsive murmur.
Then the fragrant smoke of a cigar came directly in his face. Henry
shook his head. He remained motionless a moment. Then he left the
room, and going into the hall stole up-stairs. The door of the
southwest chamber stood wide open. Henry entered. He was trembling
like a woman. He loved the young man, and suspicions, like dreadful,
misshapen monsters, filled his fancy. He peeped into the little room
which he and Sylvia had fitted up as a bedroom for Horace, and it was
vacant.
Henry went noiselessly back down-stairs and into his own room. He lay
down without disturbing his wife, but he did not fall asleep. After
what seemed to him a long time he heard a stealthy footstep on the
stair, and again smelled the aroma of a cigar which floated down from
overhead.
That awoke Sylvia. "I declare, he's smoking again," she murmured,
sleepily. "It's a dreadful habit."
Henry made no reply. He breathed evenly, pretending to be asleep.