It was on the first day of Robeson's two-weeks' July vacation that he came
to take Juliet Marcy and her aunt, Mrs. Dingley, who had long stood to her
in the place of the mother she had early lost, to see the home he had
bought in a remote suburb of a great city. It was a three-hours' journey
from the Marcy country place, but he had insisted that Juliet could not
furnish the house intelligently until she had studied it in detail.
So at eleven o'clock of a hot July morning Miss Marcy found herself
surveying from the roadway a small, old-fashioned white house, with green
blinds shading its odd, small-paned windows; a very "box of a house," as
Anthony had said, set well back from the quiet street and surrounded by
untrimmed trees and overgrown shrubbery. The whole place had a neglected
appearance. Even the luxuriant climbing-rose, which did its best to hide
the worn white paint of the house-front, served to intensify the look of
decay.
"Charming, isn't it?" asked Robeson with the air of the delighted
proprietor. "Of course everything looks gone to seed, but paint and a
lawn-mower and a few other things will make another place of it. It's good
old colonial, that's sure, and only needs a bit of fixing up to be quite
correct, architecturally, small as it is."
He led the way up the weedy path, Mrs. Dingley and Juliet exchanging
amused glances behind his back. He opened the doors with a flourish and
waved the ladies in. They entered with close-held skirts and noses
involuntarily sniffing at the musty air. Anthony ran around opening
windows and explaining the "points" of the house. When they had been over
it Mrs. Dingley, warm and weary, subsided upon the door-step, while Juliet
and Anthony fell to discussing the possibilities of the place.
"You see," said Anthony, mopping his heated brow, "it isn't like having
big, high rooms to decorate. These little rooms,"--he put up his hand and
succeeded, from his fine height, in touching the ceiling of the lower
front room in which they stood--"won't stand anything but the most simple
treatment, and expensive papers and upholsteries would be out of place. It
will take only very small rugs to suit the floors. The main thing for you
to think of will be colours and effects. You'll find five hundred dollars
will go a long way, even after the repairs and outside painting are
disposed of."
He looked so appealing that Juliet could but answer heartily: "Yes, I'm
sure of it. And now, Tony, don't you think you'd better draw a plan of the
house, putting in all the measurements, so we shall know just how to go to
work? And I will go around and dream a while in each room. Give me the
photograph, you devoted lover, so I can plan things to suit _her_."
Anthony laughed and put his hand into his breast-pocket. But he drew it
out empty.
"Why--I've left it behind," he admitted in some embarrassment. "I really
thought I had it."
"Oh, Tony! And on this very trip when we needed it most! How could you
leave it behind? Don't you always carry it next your heart?"
"Is that the prescribed place?"
"Certainly. I should doubt a man's love if he did not constantly wear my
likeness right where it could feel his heart beating for me."
"Now I never supposed," remarked Anthony, considering her attentively,
"that you had so much romance about you. Do you realise that for an
extremely practical young person such as you have--mostly--appeared to be,
that is a particularly sentimental suggestion? Er--should you wear his in
the same way, may I inquire?"
"Of course," returned Juliet with defiance in her eyes, whose lashes, when
they fell at length before his steadily interested gaze, swept a daintily
colouring cheek.
"Have you ever worn one?" inquired this hardy young man, nothing daunted
by these signs of righteous indignation. But all he got for answer was a
vigorous:
"You absurd boy! Now go to work at your measurements. I'm going upstairs.
There's one room up there, the one with the gable corners and the little
bits of windows, that's perfectly fascinating. It must be done in Delft
blue and white. Since I haven't the photograph"--she turned on the
threshold to smile roguishly back at him--"memory must serve. Beautiful
dark hair; eyes like a Madonna's; a perfect nose; the dearest mouth in the
world--oh, yes----"
She vanished around the corner only to put her head in again with the air
of one who fires a parting shot at a discomfited enemy: "But, Tony--do you
honestly think the house is large enough for such a queen of a woman?
Won't her throne take up the whole of the first floor?"
Then she was gone up the diminutive staircase, and her light footsteps
could be heard on the bare floors overhead. Left alone, Anthony Robeson
stood still for a moment looking fixedly at the door by which she had
gone. The smile with which he had answered her gay fling had faded; his
eyes had grown dark with a singular fire; his hands were clenched.
Suddenly he strode across the floor and stopped by the door. He was
looking down at the quaint old latch which served instead of a knob. Then,
with a glance at the unconscious back of Mrs. Dingley, sitting sleepily on
the little porch outside, he stooped and pressed his lips upon the iron
where Juliet's hand had lain.