"I didn't sleep, so all my dreams were wakeful ones. You're not sorry,
are you, Rosemary?"
"No, indeed! How could I ever be sorry?"
"You never shall be, if I can help it. I want to be good to you, dear.
If I'm ever otherwise, you'll tell me so, won't you?"
[Sidenote: Always]
"Perhaps--I won't promise."
"Why not?"
"Because, even if you weren't good to me, I'd know you never meant it."
Rosemary's eyes were grave and sweet; eloquent, as they were, of her
perfect trust in him.
He laughed again. "I'd be a brute not to be good to you, whether I meant
it or not."
"That sounds twisted," she commented, with a smile.
"But it isn't, as long as you know what I mean."
"I'll always know," sighed Rosemary, blissfully leaning her head against
his shoulder. "I'll always understand and I'll never fail you. That's
because I love you better than everything else in the world."
"Dear little saint," he murmured; "you're too good for me."
"No, I'm not. On the contrary, I'm not half good enough." Then, after a
pause, she asked the old, old question, first always from the lips of
the woman beloved: "When did you begin to--care?"
"I must have cared when we first began to come here, only I was so blind
I didn't know it."
"When did you--know?"
"Yesterday. I didn't keep it to myself very long."
[Sidenote: When Shall It Be?]
"Dear yesterday!" she breathed, half regretfully.
"Do you want it back?"
She turned reproachful eyes upon him. "Why should I want yesterday when
I have to-day?"
"And to-morrow," he supplemented, "and all the to-morrows to come."
"Together," she said, with a swift realisation of the sweetness
underlying the word. "Yesterday was perfect, like a jewel that we can
put away and keep. When we want to, we can always go back and look at
it."
"No, dear," he returned, soberly; "no one can ever go back to
yesterday." Then, with a swift change of mood, he asked: "When shall we
be married?"
"Whenever you like," she whispered, her eyes downcast and her colour
receding.
"In the Fall, then, when the grapes have been gathered and just before
school begins?"
He could scarcely hear her murmured: "Yes."
"I want to take you to town and let you see things. Theatres, concerts,
operas, parks, shops, art galleries, everything. If the crop is in
early, we should be able to have two weeks. Do you think you could crowd
all the lost opportunities of a lifetime into two weeks?"
"Into a day, with you."
He drew her closer. This sort of thing was very sweet to him, and the
girl's dull personality had bloomed like some pale, delicate flower. He
saw unfathomed depths in her grey eyes, shining now, with the
indescribable light that comes from within. She had been negative and
colourless, but now she was a lovely mystery--a half-blown windflower on
some brown, bare hillside, where Life, in all its fulness, was yet to
come.
[Sidenote: What Will They Say?]
"Did you tell your Grandmother and Aunt Matilda?"
"No. How could I?"
"You'd better not. They'd only make it hard for you, and I wouldn't be
allowed in the parlour anyway."
Rosemary had not thought of that. It was only that her beautiful secret
was too sacred to put into words. "They'll have to know some time," she
temporised.
"Yes, of course, but not until the last minute. The day we're to be
married, you can just put on your hat and say: 'Grandmother, and Aunty,
I'm going out now, to be married to Alden Marsh. I shan't be back, so
good-bye."
She laughed, but none the less the idea filled her with consternation.
"What will they say!" she exclaimed.
"It doesn't matter what they say, as long as you're not there to hear
it."
"Clothes," she said, half to herself. "I can't be married in brown
alpaca, can I?"
[Sidenote: The Difference]
"I don't know why not. We'll take the fatal step as early as possible in
the morning, catch the first train to town, you can shop all the
afternoon to your heart's content, and be dressed like a fine lady in
time for dinner in the evening."
"Grandmother was married in brown alpaca," she continued, irrelevantly,
"and Aunt Matilda wore it the night the minister came to call."
"Did he never come again?"
"No. Do you think it could have been the alpaca?"
"I'm sure it wasn't. Aunt Matilda was foreordained to be an old maid."
"She won't allow anyone to speak of her as an old maid. She says she's a
spinster."
"What's the difference?"
"I think," returned Rosemary, pensively, "that an old maid is a woman
who never could have married and a spinster is merely one who hasn't."
"Is it a question of opportunity?"
"I believe so."
"Then you're wrong, because some of the worst old maids I've ever known
have been married women. I've seen men, too, who deserve the title."
"Poor Aunt Matilda," Rosemary sighed; "I'm sorry for her."
"Why?"
[Sidenote: Alden's Mother]
"Because she hasn't anyone to love her--because she hasn't you. I'm
sorry for every other woman in the world," she concluded, generously,
"because I have you all to myself."
"Sweet," he answered, possessing himself of her hand, "don't forget that
you must divide me with mother."
"I won't. Will she care, do you think, because--" Her voice trailed off
into an indistinct murmur.
"Of course not. She's glad. I told her this morning."
"Oh!" cried Rosemary, suddenly tremulous and afraid. "What did she say?"
"She was surprised at first." Alden carefully refrained from saying how
much his mother had been surprised and how long it had been before she
found herself equal to the occasion.
"Yes--and then?"
"Then she said she was glad; that she wanted me to be happy. She told me
that she had always liked you and that the house wouldn't be so lonely
after you came to live with us. Then she asked me to bring you to see
her, as soon as you were ready to come."
The full tide overflowed in the girl's heart. She yearned toward Mrs.
Marsh with worship, adoration, love. The mother-hunger made her faint
with longing for a woman's arms around her, for a woman's tears of joy
to mingle with her own.
[Sidenote: Madame's Welcome]
"Take me to her," Rosemary pleaded. "Take me now!"
Madame saw them coming and went to the door to meet them. Rosemary was
not at all what she had fancied in the way of a daughter-in-law, but,
wisely, she determined to make the best of Alden's choice. Something in
her stirred in answer to the infinite appeal in the girl's eyes. At the
crowning moment of her life, Rosemary stood alone, fatherless,
motherless, friendless, with only brown alpaca to take the place of all
the pretty things that seem girlhood's right.
Madame smiled, then opened her arms. Without a word, Rosemary went to
her, laid her head upon the sweet, silken softness of the old lady's
shoulder, and began to cry softly.
"Daughter," whispered Madame, holding her close. "My dear daughter!
Please don't!"
Rosemary laughed through her tears, then wiped her eyes. "It's only an
April rain," she said. "I'm crying because I'm so happy."
"I wish," responded Madame, gently, with a glance at her son, "that I
might be sure all the tears either of you are ever to shed would be
tears of joy. It's the bitterness that hurts."
[Sidenote: Tears]
"Don't be pessimistic, Mother," said Alden, with a little break in his
voice. Rosemary's tears woke all his tenderness. He longed to shield and
shelter her; to stand, if he might, between her and the thousand pricks
and stabs of the world.
"We'll have tea," Madame went on, brightly, ringing a silver bell as she
spoke. "Then we shan't be quite so serious."
"Woman's inevitable solace," Alden observed, lounging about the room
with his hands in his pockets. Man-like, he welcomed the change of mood.
"I wonder," he continued, with forced cheerfulness, "why people always
cry at weddings and engagements and such things? A husband or wife is
the only relative we are permitted to choose--we even have very little
to say when it comes to a mother-in-law. With parents, brothers,
sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins all provided by a generous but
sometimes indiscriminating Fate, it seems hard that one's only choice
should be made unpleasant by salt water.
"Why," he went on, warming to his subject, "I remember how a certain
woman angled industriously for months to capture an unsuspecting young
man for her daughter. When she finally landed him, and the ceremony came
off to the usual accompaniment of Mendelssohn and a crowded church, I
feared that the bridal couple might have to come down the aisle from the
altar in a canoe, on account of the maternal tears."
[Sidenote: A Contrast]
"Perhaps," suggested Rosemary, timidly, "she was only crying because she
was happy."
"If she was as happy as all those tears would indicate, it's a blessed
wonder she didn't burst."
Madame smiled fondly at her son as she busied herself with the tea
things. Rosemary watched the white, plump hands that moved so gracefully
among the cups, and her heart contracted with a swift little pang of
envy, of which she was immediately ashamed. Unconsciously, she glanced
at her own rough, red hands. Madame saw the look, and understood.
"We'll soon fix them, my dear," she said, kindly. "I'll show you how to
take care of them."
"Really?" cried Rosemary, gratefully. "Oh, thank you! Do you suppose
that--that they'll ever look like yours?"
"Wait and see," Madame temporised. She was fond of saying that it took
three generations of breeding to produce the hand of a lady.
The kettle began to sing and the cover danced cheerily. Tiny clouds of
steam trailed off into space, disappearing in the late afternoon
sunshine like a wraith at dawn. Madame filled the blue china tea-pot
and the subtle fragrance permeated the room.
[Sidenote: A Cup of Tea]
"Think," she said, as she waited the allotted five minutes for it to
steep, "of all I give you in a cup of tea. See the spicy, sunlit fields,
where men, women, and children, in little jackets of faded blue, pick it
while their queues bob back and forth. Think of all the chatter that
goes in with the picking--marriage and birth and death and talk of
houses and worldly possessions, and everything else that we speak of
here.
"Then the long, sweet drying, and the packing in dim storehouses, and
then the long journey. Sand and heat and purple dusk, tinkle of bells
and scent of myrrh, the rustle of silks and the gleam of gold. Then the
open sea, with infinite spaces of shining blue, and a wake of pearl and
silver following the ship. Dreams and moonbeams and starry twilights,
from the other side of the world--here, my dear, I give them all to
you."
She offered Rosemary the cup as she concluded and the girl smiled back
at her happily. This was all so different from the battered metal
tea-pot that always stood on the back of the stove at Grandmother's, to
be boiled and re-boiled until the colour was gone from the leaves. Alden
was looking into his cup with assumed anxiety.
[Sidenote: In the Bottom of the Cup]
"What's the matter, dear?" asked his mother. "Isn't it right?"
"I was looking for the poem," he laughed, "and I see nothing but a
stranger."
"Coming?" she asked, idly.
"Of course. See?"
"You're right--a stranger and trouble. What is there in your cup,
Rosemary?"
"Nothing at all," she answered, with a smile, "but a little bit of
sugar--just a few grains."
Alden came and looked over her shoulder. Then, with his arm over the
back of her chair, he pressed his cheek to hers. "I hope, my dear, that
whenever you come to the dregs, you'll always have that much sweetness
left."
Rosemary, flushed and embarrassed, made her adieus awkwardly. "Come
again very soon, dear, won't you?" asked Madame.
"Yes, indeed, if I may, and thank you so much. Good-bye, Mrs. Marsh."
"'Mrs. Marsh?'" repeated the old lady, reproachfully. Some memory of her
lost Virginia made her very tender toward the motherless girl.
"May I?" Rosemary faltered. "Do you mean it?"
Madame smiled and lifted her beautiful old face. Rosemary stooped and
kissed her. "Mother," she said, for the first time in her life. "Dear
Mother! Good-bye!"
VII
A Letter and a Guest
[Sidenote: An Unexpected Missive]
"A letter for you, Mother," Alden tossed a violet-scented envelope into
the old lady's lap as he spoke, and stood there, waiting.
"For me!" she exclaimed. Letters for either of them were infrequent. She
took it up curiously, scrutinised the address, sniffed at the fragrance
the missive carried, noted the postmark, which was that of the town near
by, and studied the waxen purple seal, stamped with indistinguishable
initials.
"I haven't the faintest idea whom it's from," she said, helplessly.
"Why not open it and see?" he suggested, with kindly sarcasm. His
assumed carelessness scarcely veiled his own interest in it.
"You always were a bright boy, Alden," she laughed. Another woman might
have torn it open rudely, but Madame searched through her old mahogany
desk until she found a tarnished silver letter-opener, thus according
due courtesy to her unknown correspondent.
Having opened it, she discovered that she could not read the
handwriting, which was angular and involved beyond the power of words to
indicate.
[Sidenote: A Woman's Writing]
"Here," she said. "Your eyes are better than mine."
Alden took it readily. "My eyes may be good," he observed, after a long
pause, "but my detective powers are not. The _m's_ and _n's_ are all
alike, and so are most of the other letters. She's an economical
person--she makes the same hieroglyphic do duty for both a _g_ and a
_y_."
"It's from a woman, then?"
"Certainly. Did you ever know a man to sprawl a note all over two sheets
of paper, with nothing to distinguish the end from the beginning? In the
nature of things, you'd expect her to commence at the top of a sheet,
and, in a careless moment, she may have done so. Let me see--yes, here
it is: 'My dear Mrs. Marsh.'"
"Go on, please," begged Madame, after a silence. "It was just beginning
to be interesting."
"'During my mother's last illness,'" Alden read, with difficulty, "'she
told me that if I were ever in trouble, I should go to you--that you
would stand in her place to me. I write to ask if I may come, for I can
no longer see the path ahead of me, and much less do I know the way in
which I should go.
[Sidenote: A Schoolmate's Daughter]
"'You surely remember her. She was Louise Lane before her marriage to my
father, Edward Archer.
"'Please send me a line or two, telling me I may come, if only for a
day. Believe me, no woman ever needed a friendly hand to guide her more
than
"'Yours unhappily,
"'EDITH ARCHER LEE.'"
"Louise Lane," murmured Madame, reminiscently. "My old schoolmate! I
didn't even know that she had a daughter, or that she was dead. How
strangely we lose track of one another in this world!"
"Yes?" said Alden, encouragingly.
"Louise was a beautiful girl," continued Madame, half to herself. "She
had big brown eyes, with long lashes, a thick, creamy skin that someway
reminded you of white rose-petals, and the most glorious red hair you
ever saw. She married an actor, and I heard indirectly that she had gone
on the stage, then I lost her entirely."
"Yes?" said Alden, again.
"Edith Archer Lee," Madame went on. "She must be married. Think of
Louise Lane having a daughter old enough to be married! And yet--my
Virginia would have been thirty-two now. Dear me, how the time goes
by!"
[Sidenote: In Trouble]
The tall clock on the landing chimed five deep musical strokes, the
canary hopped restlessly about his gilt cage, and the last light of the
sweet Spring afternoon, searching the soft shadows of the room, found
the crystal ball on the table and made merry with it.
"Time is still going by," Alden reminded her. "What are you going to
do?"
Madame started from her reverie. "Do? Why, she must come, of course!"
"I don't see why," Alden objected, gloomily. "I don't like strange
women."
"It is not a question of what we like or don't like, my son," she
returned, in gentle reproof. "She is in trouble and she needs something
we can give her."
"When people are in trouble, they usually want either money or sympathy,
or both."
"Sometimes they only need advice."
"There are lots of places where they can get it. Advice is as free as
salvation is said to be."
Madame sighed. Then she crossed the room, and put her hands upon his
shoulders. "Dear, are you going to be cross?"
His face softened. "Never to you, if I know it, but why should strange
women invade the peace of a man's home? Why should a woman who writes
like that come here?"
"Don't blame her for her handwriting--she can't help it."
"I don't blame her; far from it. On the contrary, I take off my hat to
her. A woman who can take a plain pen, and plain ink, and do such
dazzling wonders on plain paper, is entitled to sincere respect, if not
admiration."
[Sidenote: An Invitation]
Smiling, Madame went to her desk, and in a quaint, old-fashioned script,
wrote a note to Mrs. Lee. "There," she said, as she sealed it. "I've
asked her to come to-morrow on the six o'clock train. I've told her that
you will meet her at the station, and that we won't have dinner until
half-past seven. That will give her time to rest and dress. If you'll
take it to the post-office now, she'll get it in the morning."
Alden shrugged his shoulders good-humouredly, kissed his mother, and
went out. He wondered how he would recognise the "strange woman" when
she arrived on the morrow, though few people came on the six o'clock
train, or, for that matter, on any train.
"Might write her a little note on my own account," he mused. "Ask her to
take off her right shoe and hold it in her left hand, or something of
that sort. No, that isn't necessary. I'll bet I could go into a crowd of
a thousand women and pick out the one who wrote that letter."
The scent of violet still haunted him, but, by the time he had posted
his mother's note, he had forgotten all about it and was thinking of
Rosemary.
[Sidenote: Planning for the Guest]
Madame, however, was busy with plans for her guest's comfort. She took
down her best hand-embroidered linen sheets, shaking out the lavender
that was laid between the folds, selected her finest towels and
dresser-covers, ransacked three or four trunks in the attic for an old
picture of Louise Lane, found a frame to fit it, laid out fresh
curtains, had the shining silver candlesticks cleaned again, and opened
wide every window of the long-unused guest-room to give it a night's
airing.
Downstairs, she searched through the preserve-closet for dainties to
tempt an unhappy woman's appetite, meanwhile rejoicing with housewifely
pride in her well-stocked shelves. That evening, while Alden read the
paper, she planned a feast for the next night, and mended, with
fairy-like stitches, the fichu of real lace that she usually wore with
her lavender silk gown.
"Is it a party?" queried Alden, without looking up from his paper.
"Yes. Isn't company a party?"
"That depends. You know three are said to be a crowd."
"Still inhospitable, dear?"
"Only mildly so. I contemplate the approaching evil with resignation, if
not content."
"You and I have lived alone so long that we've got ourselves into a rut.
Everyone we meet may give us something, and receive something from us
in return."
[Sidenote: Best Things for Strangers]
"I perceive," said Alden, irrelevantly, "that the Lady Mother is going
to be dressed in her best when the guest arrives."
A pale pink flush mantled the old lady's fair cheeks. At the moment she
looked like a faded rose that had somehow preserved its sweetness.
"Why not?" she asked.
"Why do we always do for strangers what we do not willingly do for our
own flesh and blood?" he queried, philosophically. "You love me better
than anything else in the world, yet you wouldn't put on that lavender
gown twice a year, just for me alone. The strange woman may feast her
eyes upon it the moment she enters the house. She'll eat from the best
china, sleep between embroidered sheets, and, I have no doubt, drink the
wine that Father put away the day I was born, to be opened at my
wedding."
"Not at your wedding, my son, but the day you found the woman you
loved." Then, after a long pause, she added, shyly: "Shouldn't it be
opened now?"
"It'll keep," the young man grunted. "After lying for thirty years among
the cobwebs, a few more weeks or months or years, as the case may be,
won't hurt it. Besides, I don't expect to have any wedding. I'm merely
going to be married. Might as well let the strange woman have it."
[Sidenote: Old Wine]
Alden's father had, as he said, put away on the day he was born all the
wine that was then ready to be bottled. The baby girl had been welcomed
gladly, especially as she had her mother's eyes, but the day the second
Alden Marsh was born, the young father's joy had known no bounds. He had
gone, at dusk, to the pale little mother, and, holding her in his arms,
had told her about the wine.
"I've put it all away," he had said, "for the boy. He's to open it the
day he finds the woman he loves as I love you."
The shelf in the storeroom, where he had placed it, had never been
disturbed, though dust and cobwebs lay thickly upon it and Madame had
always prided herself upon her immaculate housekeeping. It grieved her
inexpressibly because Alden cared so little about it, and had for it,
apparently, no sentiment at all. To her it was sacred, like some rare
wine laid aside for communion, but, as she reflected, the boy's father
had died before he was much more than a child.
"Don't you remember your father at all?" asked Madame, with a sigh.
"I can't say that I do--that is, not before he died." The casket and the
gloom of mourning had made its own vivid impression upon the child's
sensitive mind. One moment stood out quite clearly, but he forebore to
say so. It was when his mother, with the tears raining down her face,
had lifted him in her arms and bade him look at the man who lay in the
casket, oh, so cold and still.
[Sidenote: The Passing of the Father]
"Say good-bye to Father, dear," she had sobbed. "Is Father gone away?"
he had asked, in childish terror, then she had strained him to her
heart, crying out: "Just for a little while! Oh, if I could only believe
it was for just a little while!"
The rest had faded into a mist of sadness that, for a long time, had not
even begun to lift. When he found his mother in tears, as he often did
after that, he went away quietly, knowing that she longed for "Father,"
who had gone away and never returned. Later, he used to sit on the top
step of the big Colonial porch--a fragile little figure--waiting,
through the long Summer afternoons, for the father who did not come.
Once, when his mother was so absorbed in her grief that she did not hear
him come into the room, he had laid a timid, trembling hand upon her
knee, saying: "Mother, if you will tell me where Father is, I will go
and bring him back." But, instead of accepting the offer, she had caught
him to her breast, sobbing, with a sudden rush of impassioned prayer:
"Dear God, no--not that!"
Time, as always, had done his merciful healing, which, though slow, is
divinely sure. Madame was smiling, now, at some old memory that had come
mysteriously out of the shadow, leaving all bitterness behind. She had
finished mending the lace and had laid it aside. Alden took it up,
awkwardly, and looked at it.
[Sidenote: Tired and Unhappy]
"This for the strange woman," he said, teasingly, "and plain black or
grey silk for me, though I am fain to believe that you love me best. Why
is it?"
"Because," she responded, playfully, "you know me and love me, even
without fuss and frills. For those who do not know us, we must put our
best foot forward, in order to make sure of the attention our real merit
deserves."
"But doesn't immediately command--is that it?"
"I suppose so."
"What must I wear to the train--my dress suit?"
"Don't be foolish, son. You'll have plenty of time to dress after you
get home."
"Shall I drive, or walk?"
"Take the carriage. She'll be tired. Unhappy women are always tired."
"Are they tired because they're unhappy, or unhappy because they're
tired? And do they get unhappier when they get more tired, or do they
get more tired when they get unhappier?"
[Sidenote: The Arrival]
"Don't ask me any more conundrums to-night. I'm going to bed, to get my
beauty sleep."
"You must have had a great many, judging by the results."