When Sylvia reached home she found Rose Fletcher and Horace Allen
sitting on the bench under the oak-trees of the grove north of the
house. She marched out there and stood before them, holding her
fringed parasol in such a way that it made a concave frame for her
stern, elderly face and thin shoulders. "Rose," said she, "you had
better go into the house and lay down till dinner-time. You have been
walking in the sun, and it is warm, and you look tired."
She spoke at once affectionately and severely. It seemed almost
inconceivable that this elderly country woman could speak in such
wise to the city-bred girl in her fashionable attire, with her air of
self-possession.
But the girl looked up at her as if she loved her, and answered, in
just the way in which Sylvia liked her to answer, with a sort of
pretty, childish petulance, defiant, yet yielding. "I am not in the
least tired," said she, "and it did not hurt me to walk in the sun,
and I like to sit here under the trees."
Rose was charming that morning. Her thick, fair hair was rolled back
from her temples, which had at once something noble and childlike
about them. Her face was as clear as a cameo. She was dressed in
mourning for her aunt, but her black robe was thin and the fine
curves of her shoulders and arms were revealed, and the black lace of
her wide hat threw her fairness into relief like a setting of onyx.
"You had better go into the house," said Sylvia, her eyes stern, her
mouth smiling. A maternal instinct which dominated her had awakened
suddenly in the older woman's heart. She adored the girl to such an
extent that the adoration fairly pained her. Rose herself might
easily have found this exacting affection, this constant
watchfulness, irritating, but she found it sweet. She could scarcely
remember her mother, but the memory had always been as one of lost
love. Now she seemed to have found it again. She fairly coquetted
with this older woman who loved her, and whom she loved, with that
charming coquettishness sometimes seen in a daughter towards her
mother. She presumed upon this affection which she felt to be so
staple. She affronted Sylvia with a delicious sense of her own power
over her and an underlying affection, which had in it the protective
instinct of youth which dovetailed with the protective instinct of
age.
It had been planned that she was to return to New York immediately
after Miss Farrel's funeral. In fact, her ticket had been bought and
her trunk packed, when a telegram arrived rather late at night. Rose
had gone to bed when Sylvia brought it up to her room. "Don't be
scared," she said, holding the yellow envelope behind her. Rose
stared at her, round-eyed, from her white nest. She turned pale.
"What is it?" she said, tremulously.
"There's no need for you to go and think anything has happened until
you read it," Sylvia said. "You must be calm."
"Oh, what is it?"
"A telegram," replied Sylvia, solemnly. "You must be calm."
Rose laughed. "Oh, Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela are forever sending
telegrams," she said. "Very likely it is only to say somebody will
meet me at the Grand Central."
Sylvia looked at the girl in amazement, as she coolly opened and read
the telegram. Rose's face changed expression. She regarded the yellow
paper thoughtfully a moment before she spoke.
"If anything has happened, you must be calm," said Sylvia, looking at
her anxiously. "Of course you have lived with those people so many
years you have learned to think a good deal of them; that is only
natural; but, after all, they ain't your own."
Rose laughed again, but in rather a perplexed fashion. "Nothing has
happened," she said--"at least, nothing that you are thinking
of--but--"
"But what?"
"Why, Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela are going to sail for Genoa
to-morrow, and that puts an end to my going to New York to them."
A great brightness overspread Sylvia's face. "Well, you ain't left
stranded," she said. "You've got your home here."
Rose looked gratefully at her. "You do make me feel as if I had, and
I don't know what I should do if you did not, but"--she frowned
perplexedly--"all the same, one would not have thought they would
have gone off in this way without giving me a moment's notice," she
said, in rather an injured fashion, "after I have lived with them so
long. I never thought they really cared much about me. Mrs. Wilton
and Miss Pamela look too hard at their own tracks to get much
interest in anybody or anything outside; but starting off in this
way! They might have thought that I would like to go--at least they
might have told me."
Suddenly her frown of perplexity cleared away. "I know what has
happened," she said, with a nod to Sylvia. "I know exactly what has
happened."
"What?"
"Mrs. Wilton's and Miss Pamela's aunt Susan has died, and they've got
the money. They have been waiting for it ever since I have been with
them. Their aunt was over ninety, and it did begin to seem as if she
would never die."
"Was she very rich?"
"Oh, very; millions; and she never gave a cent to Mrs. Wilton and
Miss Pamela. She has died, and they have just made up their minds to
go away. They have always said they should live abroad as soon as
they were able." Rose looked a little troubled for a moment, then she
laughed. "They kept me as long as they needed me," said she, with a
pleasant cynicism, "and I don't know but I had lived with them long
enough to suit myself. Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela were always nice
to me, but sometimes--well, sometimes I felt so outside them that I
was awfully lonesome. And Mrs. Wilton always did just what you knew
she would, and so did Miss Pamela, and it was a little like living
with machines that were wound up to do the right thing by you, but
didn't do it of their own accord. Now they have run down, just like
machines. I know as well as I want to that Aunt Susan has died and
left them her money. I shall get a letter to-morrow telling me about
it. I think myself that Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela will get married
now. They never gave up, you know. Mrs. Wilton's husband died ages
ago, and she was as much of an old maid as Miss Pamela, and neither
of them would give up. They will be countesses or duchesses or
something within a year."
Rose laughed, and Sylvia beamed upon her. "If you feel that you can
stay here," she said, timidly.
"_If_ I feel that I can," said Rose. She stretched out her slender
arms, from which the lace-trimmed sleeves of her night-gown fell away
to the shoulder, and Sylvia let them close around her thin neck and
felt the young cheek upon her own with a rapture like a lover's.
"Those folks she lived with in New York are going to Europe
to-morrow," she told Henry, when she was down-stairs again, "and they
have treated that poor child mean. They have never told her a word
about it until now. She says she thinks their rich aunt has died and
left them her money, and they have just cleared out and left her."
"Well, she can stay with us as long as she is contented," said Henry.
"I rather guess she can," said Sylvia.
Henry regarded her with the wondering expression which was often on
his face nowadays. He had glimpses of the maternal depths of his
wife's heart, which, while not understanding, he acquiesced in; but
there was something else which baffled him.
But now for Sylvia came a time of contentment, apparently beyond
anything which had ever come into her life. She fairly revelled in
her possession of Rose, and the girl in her turn seemed to
reciprocate. Although the life in East Westland was utterly at
variance with the life she had known, she settled down in it, of
course with sundry hitches of adjustment. For instance, she could not
rid herself at first of the conviction that she must have, as she had
always had, a maid.
"I don't know how to go to work," she said to Sylvia one day. "Of
course I must have a maid, but I wonder if I had better advertise or
write some of my friends. Betty Morrison may know of some one, or
Sally Maclean. Betty and Sally always seem to be able to find ways
out of difficulties. Perhaps I had better write them. Maybe it would
be safer than to advertise."
Sylvia and Rose were sitting together in the south room that
afternoon. Sylvia looked pathetically and wistfully at the girl.
"What do you want a maid for?" she asked, timidly.
Rose stared. "What for? Why, what I always want a maid for: to attend
to my wardrobe and assist me in dressing, to brush my hair,
and--everything," ended Rose, comprehensively.
Sylvia continued to regard her with that wistful, pathetic look.
"I can sew braid on your dresses, and darn your stockings, and button
up your dresses, and brush your hair, too, just as well as anybody,"
she said.
Rose ran over to her and went down on her knees beside her. "You
dear," she said, "as if you didn't have enough to do now!"
"This is a very convenient house to do work in," said Sylvia, "and
now I have my washing and ironing done, I've got time on my hands. I
like to sew braid on and darn stockings, and always did, and it's
nothing at all to fasten up your waists in the back; you know that."
"You dear," said Rose again. She nestled her fair head against
Sylvia's slim knees. Sylvia thrilled. She touched the soft puff of
blond hair timidly with her bony fingers. "But I have always had a
maid," Rose persisted, in a somewhat puzzled way. Rose could hardly
conceive of continued existence without a maid. She had managed very
well for a few days, but to contemplate life without one altogether
seemed like contemplating the possibility of living without a comb
and hair-brush. Sylvia's face took on a crafty expression.
"Well," said she, "if you must have a maid, write your friends, and I
will have another leaf put in the dining-table."
Rose raised her head and stared at her. "Another leaf in the
dining-table?" said she, vaguely.
"Yes. I don't think there's room for more than four without another
leaf."
"But--my maid would not eat at the table with us."
"Would she be willing to eat in the kitchen--cold victuals--after we
had finished?"
Rose looked exceedingly puzzled. "No, she would not; at least, no
maid I ever had would have," she admitted.
"Where is she going to eat, then? Would she wait till after we were
through and eat in the dining-room?"
"I don't believe she would like that, either."
"Where is she going to eat?" demanded Sylvia, inexorably.
Rose gazed at her.
"She could have a little table in here, or in the parlor," said
Sylvia.
Rose laughed. "Oh, that would never do!" said she. "Of course there
was a servants' dining-room at Mrs. Wilton's, and there always is in
a hotel, you know. I never thought of that."
"She has got to eat somewhere. Where is she going to eat?" asked
Sylvia, pressing the question.
Rose got up and kissed her. "Oh, well, I won't bother about it for a
while, anyway," said she. "Now I think of it, Betty is sure to be off
to Newport by now, and Sally must be about to sail for Paris to buy
her trousseau. She is going to marry Dicky van Snyde in the autumn
(whatever she sees in him)! So I doubt if either of them could do
anything about a maid for me. I won't bother at all now, but I am not
going to let you wait upon me. I am going to help you."
Sylvia took one of Rose's little hands and looked at it. "I guess you
can't do much with hands like yours," said she, admiringly, and with
an odd tone of resentment, as if she were indignant at the mere
suggestion of life's demanding service from this dainty little
creature, for whom she was ready to immolate herself.
However, Rose had in her a vein of persistency. She insisted upon
wiping the dishes and dusting. She did it all very badly, but Sylvia
found the oddest amusement in chiding her for her mistakes and in
setting them right herself. She would not have been nearly as well
pleased had Rose been handy about the house. One evening Henry caught
Sylvia wiping over all the dishes which Rose had wiped, and which
were still damp, the while she was fairly doubled up with suppressed
mirth.
"What in creation ails you, Sylvia?" asked Henry.
She extended towards him a plate on which the water stood in drops.
"Just see this plate that dear child thinks she has wiped," she
chuckled.
"You women do beat the Dutch," said Henry.
However, Rose did prove herself an adept in one respect. She had
never sewed much, but she had an inventive genius in dress, and, when
she once took up her needle, used it deftly.
When Sylvia confided to her her aspiration concerning the pink silk
which she had found among Abrahama's possessions, Rose did not laugh
at all, but she looked at her thoughtfully.
"Don't you think it would be suitable if I had it made with some
black lace?" asked Sylvia, wistfully. "Henry thinks it is too young
for me, but--"
"Not black," Rose said, decisively. The two were up in the attic
beside the old chest of finery. Rose took out an old barege of an
ashes-of-roses color. She laid a fold of the barege over the pink
silk, then she looked radiantly at Sylvia.
"It will make a perfectly lovely gown for you if you use the pink for
a petticoat," said she, "and have the gown made of this delicious old
stuff."
"The pink for a petticoat?" gasped Sylvia.
"It is the only way," said Rose; "and you must have gray gloves, and
a bonnet of gray with just one pale-pink rose in it. Don't you
understand? Then you will harmonize with your dress. Your hair is
gray, and there is pink in your cheeks. You will be lovely in it.
There must be a very high collar and some soft creamy lace, because
there is still some yellow left in your hair."
Rose nodded delightedly at Sylvia, and the dressmaker came and made
the gown according to Rose's directions. Sylvia wore it for the first
time when she walked from church with Lucinda Hart and found Rose and
Horace sitting in the grove. After Rose had replied to Sylvia's
advice that she should go into the house, she looked at her with the
pride of proprietorship. "Doesn't she look simply lovely?" she asked
Horace.
"She certainly does," replied the young man. He really gazed
admiringly at the older woman, who made, under the glimmering shadows
of the oaks, a charming nocturne of elderly womanhood. The faint pink
on her cheeks seemed enhanced by the pink seen dimly through the
ashen shimmer of her gown; the creamy lace harmonized with her
yellow-gray hair. She was in her own way as charming as Rose in hers.
Sylvia actually blushed, and hung her head with a graceful sidewise
motion. "I'm too old to be made a fool of," said she, "and I've got a
good looking-glass." But she smiled the smile of a pretty woman
conscious of her own prettiness. Then all three laughed, although
Horace but a moment before had looked very grave, and now he was
quite white. Sylvia noticed it. "Why, what ails you, Mr. Allen?" she
said. "Don't you feel well?"
"Perfectly well."
"You look pale."
"It is the shadow of the oaks."
Sylvia noticed a dainty little white box in Rose's lap. "What is
that?" she asked.
"It is a box of candy that dear, sweet Lucy Ayres who sang to-day
made her own self and gave to me," replied Rose. "She came up to me
on the way home from church and slipped it into my hand, and I hardly
know her at all. I do think it is too dear of her for anything. She
is such a lovely girl, and her voice is beautiful." Rose looked
defiantly at Horace. "Mr. Allen has been trying to make me promise
not to eat this nice candy," she said.
"I don't think candy is good for anybody, and girls eat altogether
too much of it," said Horace, with a strange fervor which the
occasion hardly seemed to warrant.
"Wouldn't I know he was a school-teacher when I heard him speak like
that, even if nobody had ever told me?" said Rose. "Of course I am
going to eat this candy that dear Lucy made her own self and gave me.
I should be very ungrateful not to, and I love candy, too."
"I will send for some to Boston to-morrow," cried Horace, eagerly.
Rose regarded him with amazement. "Why, Mr. Allen, you just said you
did not approve of candy at all, and here you are proposing to send
for some for me," she said, "when I have this nice home-made candy, a
great deal purer, because one knows exactly what is in it, and you
say I must not eat this."
Rose took up a sugared almond daintily and put it to her lips, but
Horace was too quick for her. Before she knew what he was about he
had dashed it from her hand, and in the tumult the whole box of candy
was scattered. Horace trampled on it, it was impossible to say
whether purposely or accidentally, in the struggle.
Both Rose and Sylvia regarded him with amazement, mixed with
indignation.
"Why, Mr. Allen!" said Rose. Then she added, haughtily: "Mr. Allen,
you take altogether too much upon yourself. You have spoiled my
candy, and you forget that you have not the least right to dictate to
me what I shall or shall not eat."
Sylvia also turned upon Horace. "Home-made candy wouldn't hurt her,"
she said. "Why, Mr. Allen, what do you mean?"
"Nothing. I am very sorry," said Horace. Then he walked away without
another word, and entered the house. The girl and the woman stood
looking at each other.
"What did he do such a thing for?" asked Rose.
"Goodness knows," said Sylvia.
Rose was quite pale. She began to look alarmed. "You don't suppose
he's taken suddenly insane or anything?" said she.
"My land! no," said Sylvia. "Men do act queer sometimes."
"I should think so, if this is a sample of it," said Rose, eying the
trampled candy. "Why, he ground his heel into it! What right had he
to tell me I should or should not eat it?" she said, indignantly,
again.
"None at all. Men are queer. Even Mr. Whitman is queer sometimes."
"If he is as queer as that, I don't see how you have lived with him
so long. Did he ever make you drop a nice box of candy somebody had
given you, and trample on it, and then walk off?"
"No, I don't know as he ever did; but men do queer things."
"I don't like Mr. Allen at all," said Rose, walking beside Sylvia
towards the house. "Not at all. I don't like him as well as Mr. James
Duncan."
Sylvia looked at her with quick alarm. "The man who wrote you last
week?"
"Yes, and wanted to know if there was a hotel here so he could come."
"I thought--" began Sylvia.
"Yes, I had begun the letter, telling him the hotel wasn't any good,
because I knew he would know what that meant--that there was no use
in his asking me to marry him again, because I never would; but now I
think I shall tell him the hotel is not so bad, after all," said Rose.
"But you don't mean--"
"I don't know what I do mean," said Rose, nervously. "Yes, I do know
what I mean. I always know what I mean, but I don't know what men
mean making me drop candy I have had given me, and trampling on it,
and men don't know that I know what I mean." Rose was almost crying.
"Go up-stairs and lay down a little while before dinner," said
Sylvia, anxiously.
"No," replied Rose; "I am going to help you. Don't, please, think I
am crying because I feel badly. It is because I am angry. I am going
to set the table."
But Rose did not set the table. She forgot all about it when she had
entered the south room and found Henry Whitman sitting there with the
Sunday paper. She sat down opposite and looked at him with her clear,
blue, childlike eyes. She had come to call him Uncle Henry.
"Uncle Henry?" said she, interrogatively, and waited.
Henry looked across at her and smiled with the somewhat abashed
tenderness which he always felt for this girl, whose environment had
been so very different from his and his wife's. "Well?" he said.
"Uncle Henry, do you think a man can tell another man's reasons for
doing a queer thing better than a woman can?"
"Perhaps."
"I almost know a woman could tell why a woman did a queer thing,
better than a man could," said Rose, reflectively. She hesitated a
little.
Henry waited, his worn, pleasant face staring at her over a vividly
colored page of the paper.
"Suppose," said Rose, "another woman had given Aunt Sylvia a box of
candy which she had made herself, real nice candy, and suppose the
woman who had given it to her was lovely, and you had knocked a piece
of candy from Aunt Sylvia's mouth just as she was going to taste it,
and had startled her so you made her drop the whole box, and then set
your heel hard on the pieces; what would you have done it for?"
The girl's face wore an expression of the keenest inquiry. Henry
looked at her, wrinkling his forehead. "If another woman had given
Sylvia a box of candy she had made, and I knocked a piece from her
hand just as she was going to taste it, and made her drop the whole
box, and had trampled all the rest of the candy underfoot, what
should I have done it for?" he repeated.
"Yes."
Henry looked at her. He heard a door shut up-stairs. "I shouldn't
have done it," he said.
"But suppose you had done it?"
"I shouldn't have."
Rose shrugged her shoulders. "You are horrid, Uncle Henry," she said.
"But I shouldn't have done it," repeated Henry. He heard Horace's
step on the stair. Rose got up and ran out of the room by another
door from that which Horace entered. Horace sat down in the chair
which Rose had just vacated. He looked pale and worried. The eyes of
the two men met. Henry's eyes asked a question. Horace answered it.
"I am in such a devil of a mess as never man was yet, I believe," he
said.
Henry nodded gravely.
"The worst of it is I can't tell a living mortal," Horace said, in a
whisper. "I am afraid even to think it."
At dinner Rose sat with her face averted from Horace. She never spoke
once to him. As they rose from the table she made an announcement. "I
am going to run over and see Lucy Ayres," she said. "I am going to
tell her an accident happened to my candy, and maybe she will give me
some more."
Henry saw Horace's face change. "Candy is not good for girls; it
spoils their complexion. I have just been reading about it in the
Sunday paper," said Henry. Sylvia unexpectedly proved his ally. Rose
had not eaten much dinner, although it had been an especially nice
one, and she felt anxious about her.
"I don't think you ought to eat candy when you have so little
appetite for good, wholesome meat and vegetables," she said.
"I want to see Lucy, too," said Rose. "I am going over there. It is a
lovely afternoon. I have nothing I want to read and nothing to do. I
am going over there."
Henry's eyes questioned Horace's, which said, plainly, to the other
man, "For God's sake, don't let her go; don't let her go!"
Rose had run up-stairs for her parasol. Horace turned away. He
understood that Henry would help him. "Don't let her go over there
this afternoon," said Henry to Sylvia, who looked at him in the
blankest amazement.
"Why not, I'd like to know?" asked Sylvia.
"Don't let her go," repeated Henry.
Sylvia looked suspiciously from one man to the other. The only
solution which a woman could put upon such a request immediately
occurred to her. She said to herself, "Hm! Mr. Allen wants Rose to
stay at home so he can see her himself, and Henry knows it."
She stiffened her neck. Down deep in her heart was a feeling more
seldom in women's hearts than in men's. She would not have owned that
she did not wish to part with this new darling of her heart--who had
awakened within it emotions of whose strength the childless woman had
never dreamed. There was also another reason, which she would not
admit even to herself. Had Rose been, indeed, her daughter, and she
had possessed her from the cradle to womanhood, she would probably
have been as other mothers, but now Rose was to her as the infant she
had never borne. She felt the intense jealousy of ownership which the
mother feels over the baby in her arms. She wished to snatch Rose
from every clasp except her own.
She decided at once that it was easy to see through the plans of
Horace and her husband, and she determined to thwart them. "I don't
see why she shouldn't go," she said. "It is a lovely afternoon. The
walk will do her good. Lucy Ayres is a real nice girl, and of course
Rose wants to see girls of her own age now and then."
"It is Sunday," said Henry. He felt and looked like a hypocrite as he
spoke, but the distress in Horace's gaze was too much for him.
Sylvia sniffed. "Sunday," said she. "Good land! what has come over
you, Henry Whitman? It has been as much as I could do to get you to
go to meeting the last ten years, and now all of a sudden you turn
around and think it's wicked for a young girl to run in and see
another young girl Sunday afternoon." Sylvia sniffed again very
distinctly, and then Rose entered the room.
Her clear, fair face looked from one to another from under her black
hat. "What is the matter?" she asked.
Sylvia patted her on the shoulder. "Nothing is the matter," said she.
"Run along and have a good time, but you had better be home by five
o'clock. There is a praise meeting to-night, and I guess we'll all
want to go, and I am going to have supper early."
After Rose had gone and Sylvia had left the room, the two men looked
at each other. Horace was ashy pale. Henry's face showed alarm and
astonishment. "What is it?" he whispered.
"Come out in the grove and have a smoke," said Horace, with a look
towards the door through which Sylvia had gone.
Henry nodded. He gathered up his pipe and tobacco from the table, and
the two men sauntered out of the house into the grove. But even there
not much was said. Both smoked in silence, sitting on the bench,
before Horace opened his lips in response to Henry's inquiry.
"I don't know what it is, and I don't know that it is anything, and
that is the worst of it," he said, gloomily; "and I can't see my way
to telling any mortal what little I do know that leads me to fear
that it is something, although I would if I were sure and actually
knew beyond doubt that there was--" He stopped abruptly and blew a
ring of smoke from his cigar.
"Something is queer about my wife lately," said Henry, in a low voice.
"What?"
"That's just it. I feel something as you do. It may be nothing at
all. I tell you what, young man, when women talk, as women are
intended by an overruling Providence to talk, men know where they are
at, but when a woman doesn't talk men know where they ain't."
"In my case there has been so much talk that I seem to be in a fog of
it, and can't see a blessed thing sufficiently straight to know
whether it is big enough to bother about or little enough to let
alone; but I can't repeat the talk--no man could," said Horace.
"In my case there ain't talk enough," said Henry. "I ain't in a fog;
I'm in pitch darkness."