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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I 3
II 19
III 24
IV 33
V 49
VI 62
VII 73
VIII 88
IX 101
X 110
XI 122
XII 132
XIII 150
XIV 165
XV 184
XVI 210
XVII 221
XVIII 231
XIX 254
XX 271
XXI 278
XXII 290
XXIII 301
XXIV 310
XXV 323
XXVI 341
XXVII 351
XXVIII 363
[Illustration: (cover)]
[Illustration: (inside front and back covers)]
“_GOOD MORNING,
ROSAMOND!_”
_Lulu Jones Downing_
[Illustration]
[Illustration: “_When one is to have perhaps only one wonderful day,
decision how one shall spend any moment of it is important_”
(See Page 24)]
“GOOD-MORNING, ROSAMOND!”
by
CONSTANCE LINDSAY SKINNER
[Illustration]
Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty
Garden City New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1917
Copyright, 1917, by
Constance Lindsay Skinner
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“When one is to have perhaps only one wonderful day, decision how
one shall spend any moment of it is important” _Coloured frontis_.
(See page 24)
FACING PAGE
“Mrs. Lee sat in her rocker knitting. Her ball of yarn was
flipping about the sward under the paws of a white kitten” 42
“Regarding each other and yielding to the charm of the sunset
and the music, they did not observe a black-whiskered man who
was crawling through the orchard” 154
“Rosamond saw a man who was presumably in his ‘middle
thirties’--a strong, well-built man, with face and hands
tanned by years of turning them, unprotected, toward all
weathers” 234
[Illustration: “_GOOD-MORNING, ROSAMOND!_”]
“_GOOD-MORNING, ROSAMOND!_”
CHAPTER I
Négligés were unknown in Roseborough. Even at seven in the morning,
which was Rosamond Mearely’s hour for greeting the new day, the ladies
of Roseborough did not kimono: they dressed.
Young Rosamond Mearely might be--as indeed she was--the richest and
fairest woman in Roseborough, and the widow of a gentleman whose name
the hamlet and countryside mentioned still with the bated breath
of pride; but she would no more have dared to appear at breakfast
before her housemaids, the imposing Frigget sorority--Amanda, aged
forty-nine years “come Michelmas,” and Jemima, forty-seven and three
quarter years--in what they would have pronounced (and condemned
as) a “wrapper,” than she would wittingly have committed any other
irretrievable _faux pas_.
The mother of the Frigget sorority had guided the first adventures
of the late, distinguished Hibbert Mearely about the by-ways of
Trenton Waters, his birthplace, in the infantile push-carts of his
period--that is to say, fifty-odd years before this morning when his
young widow slipped a decorous print gown (lavender with black floral
design) over her dainty, white roundness and the whalebone and batiste
article that confined it, and descended to her fourteen hundred and
eightieth solitary breakfast. It was four years since Hibbert Mearely’s
departure. His faithful nurse was slowly preparing to follow him;
she lay bedridden in Trenton Waters. Her two daughters, who had been
brought up to serve him, still dominated his household.
Rosamond saw them now, as the stairs circled to the door of the large
living room where summer breakfasts were spread. They were tall,
multi-boned women with straight, thin, gray hair--drawn sheerly
to a polka dot at the back, which one, or at most two, hairpins
controlled--and clad in skimpy, dark, cotton dresses, well starched
and designed to reveal every puritan angle. They stood at opposite
sides of a long, black table. The table was one of Hibbert Mearely’s
antiques (a ticket attached to the foot gave its date and history); its
“early Seventeenth” carvings were hidden now by a cloth of gleaming
white damask bearing Mrs. Mearely’s breakfast. Rosamond’s glance, by
habit, travelled in a direct line between her female grenadiers to
the wall where a life-size portrait, in oils, of the late master
depended. Outside the wide-open doors, the sunlight filtered through
the overlacing trees and kindled the proud red of the dahlias to flame.
A little breeze, vagrant and wilful, danced through the garden and set
all the leaves to clapping their hands. Rosamond sighed. She flitted
through the doorway and down the huge room, sedately, to her place.
“Good-mornin’, Mrs. Mearely, ma’am.”
“Good-mornin’, Mrs. Mearely, ma’am.”
“Good-morning, Amanda. Good-morning, Jemima.”
These salutations never varied. Rosamond spread her old-fashioned
damask napkin on her lap slowly with a sense of apprehension. Amanda
had her own manner of establishing an “atmosphere.” Out of the corner
of her eye Rosamond perceived that she was more unbending than usual
this morning.
“I was a’most a-comin’ up to see if you’d ben took sick--it’s five
after.” Amanda’s tone was dry and accusative.
“Is it? Perhaps I may have dawdled a little ... I mean,” hastily, “I
think one of my laces knotted.”
“Seven _sharp_ was a’ways Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s breakfast
hour”--Jemima’s tone was impersonal and final--“as we’d oughter know
that cooked and served it to him twenty year, not countin’ the long
time of his young an middle manhood when he was trapsein’ the world
after them curios an’ antics of his’n.”
“Antiques, Jemima,” the lady of the house corrected.
“That’s wot I said,” stubbornly.
“Your porridge was dished at seven sharp an’ was perfec’ for that hour;
but five minutes makes a world of difference in the nature of a hot
bowl of porridge.”
“I’m sure it will be delicious, Amanda,” her mistress murmured. Her
tone was timid and placating.
“Speakin’ of laces knottin’,” Amanda continued, “Mary Caroline was the
only one of us girls that was inclined to fat, an’ maw a’ways made her
let ’em out when she took ’em off, nights, so there’d be no time wasted
in the mornin’.”
“It was my _boot_-lace, Amanda,” milady protested.
“Mebbe ’twas--an’ mebbe ’twasn’t. It’s loosenin’ ’em overnight that
counts--both boots _an’_ stays. An’ so Mary Caroline found--leastways
if she didn’t want maw to wallop her for bein’ late--sloth bein’ one of
the seven deadly sins maw could not abide. Mary Caroline was a natural
temptation to a high-tempered, energetic woman like maw--she bein’
inclined to fat.”
Mrs. Mearely motioned the porridge bowl away with a chill gravity.
“I’d like my toast and eggs now. Of course I do not suppose you mean
anything personal, Amanda, by your repeated allusions to your deceased
sister’s physique. Nevertheless I may say, without lowering my dignity,
that, although I am not thin and--and--er--flat all over like some
of Roseborough’s women, I am not fat. I am not even ‘_inclined_ to
fat’ as it appears your--er--walloped sister was, according to your
description.”
Mrs. Mearely’s attempt to reduce Amanda Frigget, domestic, to a proper
sense of her relation toward the mistress of Villa Rose, failed
miserably. The haughty eye of the would-be _grande dame_ wavered
from that forbidding countenance and weakly sought refuge in the
colour-blend of buttered toast with yolk of egg. Alas, she had given
Amanda the sort of opportunity which never passed unimproved.
“You’re not fat as compared with _some_, but you’ve got a general curve
to you, which is on’y to be expected in the daughter-of-a-farmer’s
figure.” Amanda proceeded, uncompromisingly, to make the Frigget
position on curves and non-curves even plainer. “Now Mr. Hibbert
Mearely’s sisters, both what married small but choice titles, was
so lean an’ aristocratical you could count the ridges in their
backbones--on’y you wouldn’t of persoomed that way on born ladies. But
look who their father was--an’ Mr. Mearely’s father, too! A perfessor
an’ clergy that had his descent from the middle ages of Henery Seven!”
“No wonder Mr. Mearely felt he could afford to be condescendin’,”
Jemima put in, as she removed the tea cosy. “But I don’t s’pose he’d
ever have set his a’most royal foot onto ploughed an’ harrowed groun’,
if he hadn’t of seen you that day in the gate of your father’s farm in
Poplars Vale. That’s when he forgot about Henery Seven an’ went back
to the soil--a man that was past fifty an’ had seen all the museums of
Europe!”
“Strange--strange, indeed!” Mrs. Mearely hissed softly, striking a
small silver knife into a butter ball with intent to wound.
Amanda took up the theme.
“An’ how did it all come to happen? By the accident of him, a
absen’-minded man, takin’ the wrong turn at the cross-roads as he come
up from fishin’! The han’ of fate pinted him to Poplars Vale ’stead of
Roseborough. An’ there was you, eighteen--an’ allurin’ no doubt, but
’umble an’ uncultured--a-sittin’ on your paw’s farm gate, but lookin’
higher. What a talk it made in these parts! When I says to maw, I says,
‘Mr. Mearely’s goin’ to marry Rosamon’ Cort of Poplars Vale,’ she took
to her bed for the day with a spell. Such a shock it was to her to
think how him as she’d used to trundle had forgot his station.”
“By marrying a butter-maker?” Rosamond’s voice was sharp at the edges
now.
“We said then--maw an’ Jemima an’ me (Mary Caroline havin’ passed
beyon’)--we said, ‘We’ll never remember again in this life that Mr.
Hibbert Mearely’s fiancy’s mother made _an’ sol’_ the first _roun’_
fancy butter pats in this distric’.’ That’s the way all Trenton Waters
an’ Roseborough felt bounden towards the Mearelys. That’s, in special,
the way His Friggets felt bounden toward Mr. Hibbert Mearely.”
“No doubt he is very grateful to you both, and is waiting eagerly to
reward your devotion”--she paused also at the “cross-roads,” so to
speak, ere she gestured a vague direction and concluded--“wherever he
is.”
If her inflections were strangely pungent and her phraseology
speculative, the angle of vision sought by her too large,
cloud-flecked, sky-blue eyes was absolutely right. They gazed
ceilingward. Amanda folded her hands across her apron. She also looked
upward.
“No doubt,” she repeated, solemnly.
“No doubt;” Jemima echoed her sister’s sepulchral accents, and folded
_her_ hands and looked at the same bit of the gold cornice. If they had
concentrated on this point long enough in rapt faith--who knows?--they
might have materialized there the shade of the departed collector of
antiquities to demand of them, sternly, which careless handmaid with
intrusive mop had nicked his Florentine gilding.
“The raspberries, Jemima, please. I shall always wonder why it is that
... (cream, please) ... the very persons who wouldn’t for worlds ...
(and powdered sugar) ... recall the fact that Hibbert Mearely’s widow’s
mother once sold butter ... (are you sure this is sugar, Jemima? It
looks suspiciously like salt) ... are the very ones who are always
reminding me of ... the _butter, please_.” She finished, tartly.
Jemima hastened to pass the hereditary slur.
“Well, ma’am, I wouldn’t go to say that exac’ly.” Amanda studied the
question. “But them what thought so high of Mr. Mearely kind of wants
to help you remember what he done for you.”
“Ah! that is it, eh?”
“Yes. An’ you bein’ a widow an’ havin’ to put all his blue blood in the
tomb--when you hadn’t enjoyed it but a year an’ four month--we feel
like it comforts you to remin’ you that, even if _you_ come off a farm
in Poplars Vale, your diseased husban’ didn’t. _No, Sir!_ _He_ come off
of Henery Seven!”
An odd little squeak pierced through Rosamond’s damask napkin. It
terminated hastily in a cough.
“May I ask, ma’am, when Mrs. Witherby stopped in here yesterday mornin’
did you happen to be wearin’ them _white_ cuffs an’ collar with your
lavender ’stead of the black watered ribbon ones as you’ve worn for
nigh a year?”
“Yes. Yes, Amanda, I believe I did have these on yesterday--for
the first time in the daytime. You know I’ve worn _all_ white with
flowers--in the evening.”
“It’s doin’ it in broad daylight that causes remark. Oh, I’m not
forgettin’ my place an’ criticizin’. It’s all correc’ enough. You done
your eighteen months crape an’ one year plain, then your six month
black’n white. Then come your year of lavender with black ribbons, an’
now it’s time for white or even light colours, if you’re desirous,
an’ none should objec’. But Mrs. Witherby’s tongue is like a dog’s on
a huntin’ mornin’; it’s that easy set to waggin’ an’ anticipatin’.
Jemima, you it was overheard her remarks. Be so kin’ an’ repeat.”
Nothing loath, Jemima obliged.
“Mrs. Witherby says, says she, ‘well, you mark me,’ says she, ‘Mrs.
Mearely will not remain long a widder. It’ll be Judge Giffen or Wilton
Howard afore Christmas.’”
“Oh! the gossip!” Mrs. Mearely snapped indignantly. Amanda nodded
sagely.
“It was them white muslin trimmin’s what done it,” she averred. “She
says it afore her niece, Miss Mabel, who all Roseborough knows is jus’
a-pinin’ an’ a-languishin’ for Mr. Howard; and Miss Mabel she goes
white as your napkin--which ain’t so white, but considerable eggy now
you’ve had your sof’ boileds. I could a’ways tell your napkin from
Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s wherever I’d pick ’em up--be it in church or
tavern--for Mr. Mearely he could comfort his appetite without a smear.
But, of course, _he_ was born to refinements. Well, it’s too bad,
ma’am, but gossip is what you mus’ expec’ from now henceforth.”
“Yes,” Jemima went on to illustrate, “all Roseborough is a-waitin’
breathless to see what you’ll do nex’--you bein’ the widder of a
aristocrat but the chil’ of a farm.”
“Standing, so to speak, with one foot on the throne and the other on
the churn?” milady murmured between bites at a large berry.
“Wilton Howard’s too young--he’s on’y aroun’ thirty-five,” Jemima
continued. “Though him bein’ a relation of the departed has a sort
of sentimentality to it. It’ll be the Judge, if ever she do take
unto her another spouse. Him an’ Mr. Mearely was intimate bach’lor
frien’s; an’ the Judge is a highborn man, specially on his mother’s
side--‘Doubledott’ bein’ one of our proudest names. An’ he’s jus’
fifty-three years old, what is the exac’ age Mr. Hibbert Mearely was
when he lifted you from the farm gate to the altar. It’d be a’most like
gettin’ married to Mr. Mearely all over again--specially as the Judge
not havin’ any property, you’d be livin’ on here with him.”
This graphic prophecy of a second state of connubial bliss affected
Mrs. Mearely strongly. She burst into explosive sobs.
“Yes! yes--yes! It would be just the--the same as marrying
Hib--Hib--Hibbert Mearely all o--o--over again! And I’m only--only--not
quite--twenty-four. Oh--h--h!”
She swept the dishes back ruthlessly, overtoppling the hot water
pitcher--Amanda saved the cream just in time--and hid her face on her
black-flowered, lavender sleeves with their white cuffs (which, being
amorously interpreted by the Roseborough gossip, had provoked this
sorrow) and sobbed as stormily and shamelessly as if she were still
little Rosamond Cort pouring out the briny aftermath of punishment in
the hayrick behind the dairy.
“There, there, ma’am,” Amanda said, gently. “There, there. Who could
know better how you feel than His Friggets, what has been to Hibbert
Mearely fifty year--mother an’ daughters--all that hired help can be in
the life of any highborn man?”
“Who could know better’n us?” Jemima obbligatoed.
“It’s like a sacrilege to you to think of putting any man, even Judge
Giffen, acrost the table from you under that portrait. To take a secon’
spouse seems to some natures a’most indelicate. Ma’am, while His
Friggets is conductin’ Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s late home on earth, gossip
can say no word agin you, for I’ll promise you as no young sheeps-eyed,
gallantin’ male critter will ever get inside the walls of Villa Rose to
blaspheme your sacred mem’ries. It’ll be the Judge or none--an’ I ain’t
decided yet even as the Judge....” She stopped short.
From the little anteroom which connected the living room with the
formal dining room came a tinkling.
“A telephone in Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s antic an’ aristocratical home
is what I’ll never get accustomed to.” Amanda drew her lips down in
displeasure. “_He’d_ never have permitted it.”
“Answer it, if you please, Amanda.” Mrs. Mearely lifted her head with
an air that became her well, despite her tears.
“Answer it, Jemima,” the elder sister commanded, noting, with a glitter
of satisfaction, that her alleged “mistress’s” eyes flashed angrily. By
such subtleties did Amanda remind milady, when necessary, that, while
“His Friggets” would do whatever was to be expected of servants in
Villa Rose, neither would take personal orders--above all, if given as
such--from the farmer’s daughter of Poplars Vale.
“I don’t mind obligin’ you, Amanda,” Jemima responded, with a certain
pointedness.
“There won’t be anyone there to answer, if you don’t hurry,” Rosamond
said sharply. Perhaps it was the liberating influence of her white
cuffs and fichu; perhaps it was because the early morning sun and
breeze on a midsummer day have a rapture of their own which is
communicable and urges gay defiance of all convention; but, whatever
the cause, Rosamond Mearely was aware that, although she had been
irked aforetime, never had she felt the oppressiveness of the Frigget
sorority as she felt it at that moment. Inwardly she was thinking:
“I couldn’t discharge them. They wouldn’t go. Or, if they did leave,
they’d make it impossible for me to live in Roseborough. But if a
wicked tramp were to come by and I paid him a lot of money, and he
murdered them for me...?”
Mrs. Mearely’s assassination reverie was cut short by woeful wails from
Jemima at the telephone.
“Oh! Mercy! Amanda! oh...!”
It was only on extreme occasions that Amanda indulged in profanity. She
did so now.
“Jemima! What in all sassafras is the matter with you?” she demanded
sternly as her sister reeled into the room.
“Oh! Oh! Maw’s had another stroke! We’re to go to her bedside immejit.”
“Another stroke!” Amanda echoed in a ghostly voice. “It’s the _end_.
Poor Maw! _Another stroke!_”
“Oh, poor Mrs. Frigget. Oh, poor Amanda! Oh, poor Jemima! But it isn’t
the end. She’ll have lots more.” Rosamond, all tender consternation,
endeavoured to console. “It’s only her second, and they always have
_three_, at least. Dr. Wells says he knew a patient who had seven.”
Failing to stop their cries by hopeful words, she took practical steps.
She ran to the open door and called:
“Blake! Blake! Oh, there you are. Blake, you must harness the mare at
once and drive Amanda and Jemima to Trenton. Their mother is ill!”
“Good-mornin’, Mrs. Mearely, mum. Ill, is she? In course, she’s ill,”
came in a slow, rumbling voice from some aged masculine out of sight.
“She’s been bedridden nigh three year.”
“Hush, Blake. You must not be so unfeeling. She’s just had a stroke.”
“That’s them sleezy, new-style, board-roof cottages. They’d oughter
kep’ a green umbreller over ’er bed.”
“It isn’t a _sun_-stroke, Blake! It’s a--another kind. And you must
harness, at once, and take her daughters to her.”
“Oh, yep. If the wuss is a-goin’ to ’appen, them two Friggets has got
to be thar to see it. Good-mornin’, Amanda and Jemima.”
Blake, gray-haired, sixty, and stooped but hale and ruddyfaced, limped
to the threshold.
“So yer maw’s nearin’ ’er end, is she? That’s very sad--I know to a
t ’ow you feel--if so be ye’re feelin’ _bad_--coz my rheumatiz is
twistin’ me like a peavine this mornin’. I’m four square yards of
twinges. ’Owever, I’ll ’arness the mare an’ she’ll get us over to
Trenton lickety-split--judgin’ from the way she’s been actin’ sence
daybreak. That is, if she don’t fling us all over the bridge.”
“Yes, yes! That’ll do, Blake,” Mrs. Mearely interrupted impatiently.
“People could be dying while you’re talking, you know. Hurry, now!
hurry!”
“Oh, whatever’ll you do without us? Somethin’s mortally sure to
happen!” Amanda moaned, torn between two duties. “Somethin’ a’ways goes
wrong in Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s home when His Friggets leaves it. Oh,
be sure and sen’ right away for Bella Greenup to tidy up an’ get your
dinner.”
“Nonsense, Amanda. What _should_ happen? Nothing has ever happened
in Roseborough yet. Nothing ever _will_ happen in Roseborough. Leave
everything and go at once to your mother.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Jemima said between sobs. “It’s kin’ of you. If
you’ll telephone to Dollop’s Drugs, he’ll sen’ to Bella Greenup for
you--him bein’ sweet on her an’ more’n willin’ to take her messages.”
At the end of a half hour Rosamond saw them driven off down the winding
hill road, the gray mare snorting and kicking up her heels as if she
had not, some time since, reached years of discretion.
“Florence is not acting in the least like a _Roseborough_ mare,” she
commented aloud. “She is positively unladylike this morning. Oh, dear,
I do hope their mother will get better--the poor things!” Then, in
spite of her genuine sympathy, a giggle escaped her. “If it weren’t
such a sad occasion it would be rather fun to see Florence kick a
fraction too high and roll ‘His Friggets’ down the hill. They are so
unintentionally amusing that there are times when I could almost like
them if only they wouldn’t call themselves _that_!”
[Illustration]