In the living room she paused for a conference with herself.
“Let me see,” she said, aloud. “Amanda said I must send for Mrs.
Greenup at once, to manage the house till they come back. So I shan’t
do it! I’ll be my own Cinderella--sometimes in the kitchen and
sometimes my ladyship. This may be the only day I’ll ever have that
is all mine. So it _must_ be--it’s just _got_ to be--_wonderful_! and
nobody shall spy on it. What shall I do _first_?”
She dropped into an enormous padded chair and stared thoughtfully at
the farthest wall. When one is to have perhaps only one Wonderful Day,
decision regarding how to spend every moment of it is important.
Even immersed--as she was--in delicious hopes, she could not remain
long unaware that her eyes were fixed upon the countenance of the
man who had brought her to Villa Rose. The childish glow, the eager
make-believe, which had transformed her into a girl of eighteen again,
faded from her eyes. In their place came a wistful gravity, the look of
one who has probed and queried and accepted certain harsh facts, yet
refused to let them wholly dispel the fancy and optimism which alone
can make a life of facts livable. She accosted the portrait.
“You were very good to me, in your way, Hibbert Mearely; but you never
allowed me to forget how greatly you had honoured me. It pleased you
when I called you ‘sir.’ You didn’t marry me for love of me--you took
me as if I were a--a--bunch of wild flowers, to give just the right
contrasting touch of rustic simplicity to your fine house. No, not
home. It never was a home--only a museum.”
She looked about the large room. It was ornamented with scores of
pieces of bric-à-brac, with jars, images, plates, trays, boxes,
gathered from all parts of the globe. They were artistically arranged,
making pleasant spots of colour, and might have looked as if they
belonged there and together--but for the tags. Every article, no matter
what its size--even the thimble which, it is safe to say, Mary Stuart
never _did_ wear--had a ticket attached to it. Mr. Mearely had spent
most of his time, when at Villa Rose, in writing on these tickets, in
his small, pointed calligraphy, the fictions of dealers most pleasing
to his egotistical and highly artificial mind.
“I have been only another curio with a ticket on--” Rosamond said,
accusingly--“the rustic trifle to offset the art of all ages. You
even told me that was why you married me and thought I should feel
complimented. What higher compliment could a woman desire than to be
regarded by her husband purely as an art object? And I agreed--at
first. I thought that was finer than just love--the love of farm lads
and lasses. But, oh sir, the farm lads and lasses know something
more precious than any treasure that has ever come into Villa Rose.
Everybody in Roseborough said that the butter-maker’s daughter married
you from ambition, but it wasn’t only ambition. It was glamour!”
The wistful, far-away look came into her eyes again, despite the little
smile at the corners of her mouth--a smile as if she mocked herself for
a past foible, the while her eyes denied that it _was_ past.
“Yes, it was glamour. I had known nothing but humdrum farm poverty--but
I believed fairy tales. I thought it would be good to be the wife of
the distinguished Hibbert Mearely--to live in Villa Rose among the
antiques--among Cleopatra’s knitting needles and Madame Pompadour’s
stuffed lizards, with a knob of Charles I’s unwise, not to say wooden,
head for the handle of my shoe-horn!”
A short sharp laugh came from her, unmellowed by the spirit which had
bubbled in her since His Friggets’ departure. It suggested that, unless
she laughed, she might cry.
“There wasn’t a single woman in the district who wouldn’t have jumped
at the chance of marrying Hibbert Mearely. So I--yes, sir--I jumped!
And you never knew that I wasn’t happy. You never knew because you were
not interested to inquire. You of the portrait, there--do you accuse me
of ingratitude? Are you saying that you richly dowered a beggar maid
who gave you nothing but the beggar maid in return? Let us discuss
that. You made me believe it, and I did believe it, until lately. But
it isn’t true. I spoiled nothing that you gave me; but you!--I gave
you my dreams, all the fairy tales I’d imagined, all my ideals and
faith and all that I knew of reverence. But these things weren’t art
objects, so you despised them. Well, I suppose you’d say I gave you no
gifts at all, because I gave you what you had no taste for! Enough said
for my gifts. What do I owe you? Let us talk of _your_ gifts--without
glamour--heart to heart.”
Her hands smoothed down the crease in the hem of the satin pannier, and
she smiled.
“You dressed me very beautifully and extravagantly; but it was only
to delight your eyes--not to make me seem more lovable to you. Love
was too common--almost too vulgar--a sentiment to find lodgment in
the Mearely breast. I didn’t mind your being fifty-three, sir. That
was like being wooed by a prince with powdered hair--say, the Fourth
George, ‘the first gentleman in Europe.’”
She nodded emphatically over this.
“Yes, sir; indeed his nickname suited you, too, as well as his nature;
for you both had wonderful manners but no hearts at all. What other
gifts? Many. I remember, sir, and gratefully, that you taught me all I
know of fine airs--how to walk, as if I’d never paddled on flat bare
soles through the creeks and meadows; how to talk in drawing-room
accents without the ill-bred emphasis of excitement. ‘Don’t rattle
the milk pails, my love,’ is what you used to say, when my zest for
life keyed my tones above the Mearely pitch and tempo. How you enjoyed
seeing people writhe under your ridicule! It put you into a pleasant
mood again, presently. You taught me what music to admire, and what
to consider with pursed lips and lifted eyebrows; what books, modern
and classic, should lie on a cultured woman’s table. But I remember,
too, that you taught me these things by means of sarcasm that cut to
the bone; and my tears you called ‘squeezing out the buttermilk.’ You
had a sort of placid cruelty, sir, that always made the butter-maker’s
daughter cringe. And only a few days before you died you told me you
feared I was ‘irredeemably _bourgeoise_’--because I had ‘so much
emotion.’ And the last gift?”
A tremor of rebellion went through her, and her eyes flashed.
“Villa Rose, and your small, safe fortune! Villa Rose and the Mearely
money willed to me in terms that make me a prisoner all my life! So I
think, on the whole, I’ve earned my right to this day. I have paid your
memory the last jot of respect demanded by Roseborough. For four years
I have worn hideous blackish clothes which would have caused _you_ to
swoon with horror had the angels allowed you to lean out of heaven to
observe me. Now, I am going to be _young_ and dress like a bird of
paradise! And--and....”
In a trice she threw off the mood that had held her there. The grave
analyst disappeared. It was a young creature thrilling with the joy of
life who leaped up and threw her arms high above her head and laughed.
“Do you know what this ‘irredeemably _bourgeoise_’ bird of paradise is
going to do now? She is going out into the hedges and the river grass
and along the highways; and she is going to twirl her finery about,
and shake her hair out in the sun, and call--and call--till her true
mate comes to her! And he’ll jump down off his horse--or the wind, or a
heron’s back--and he’ll catch me up in his arms, because _he_, also, is
irredeemably _bourgeois_! And he’ll say ... he’ll say--‘Good-morning,
Rosamond!’ ‘Good-morning, Rosamond!’”
The sound of her name this morning gave her exquisite delight, as if it
introduced her to a new being; as if, indeed, she had discovered that
this new being, herself, contained in profusion all the elements of
the romance she coveted.
She sing-songed her matutinal salutation in the theme of the little
minuet she had hummed, from time to time, since her pleasant interview
with the Orleans mirror, and danced herself out with it to the garden.
The portrait of the late possessor of this rebellious bit of country
bric-à-brac was an excellent essay in flesh painting of the realistic
school. It had no psychic qualities. Therefore it did not change its
tints or take on shadows when Mrs. Hibbert Mearely, renouncing the life
of an art-object, wafted out on rustic love-adventure bent. The morning
sun, so kind to the fresh countenance of the farmer’s daughter, dealt
very sincerely with the gentleman in the picture. Its arrow rays, shot
across the wall, lent neither warmth nor softness--only pointedness--to
the long, thin head, and the nose, chin, and lips that were all long
and thin and curved. Nor did the sunshine kindle the prominent,
cold, pale eyes which looked out with condescension upon a world of
humanity that mattered little, collectively or individually, to the
self-contained self-sufficiency of Mr. Hibbert Mearely, aristocrat and
amateur collector of antiques.
One long, thin hand held a small gold-painted box from which James II
was supposed to have pecked his after-dinner comfits. With a fine
impartiality, the other hand rested on the head of a cane of English
oak and silver, said to have been given to William of Orange by Mary,
his spouse. Indeed, she may have given it to him for, as all history
knows, the intense but plain-faced lady put her Stuart pride in her
pocket and wooed her dour Dutch Bill, assiduously and submissively from
A to Z, before she finally convinced him--to his belated joy--that they
were two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.
It may not be amiss to mention here (in whispers) that the
distinguished dilettante--whose taste and knowledge of arts past and
present had been that of an amateur and a gentleman without vulgar
taint of professionalism--had once (only once and _never again_) sought
the opinion of an expert on his collection. This “brutal person,” as
Mr. Mearely had characterized him on the only occasion thereafter,
when he permitted his name to be mentioned in his presence, found the
Orleans mirror and the Louis chair to be of the _periods_ claimed, but
doubted that princesses had ever looked in the one or kings sat in the
other. He approved the jade Buddha and certain bronzes, potteries, and
two pictures; but as to the rest, he had said, amid detestable chuckles:
“Well, sir, my advice to you is, don’t ever charge the public
admission to your private bazaar--Villa _Bizarre_, eh?--for the
law would be down on you for obtaining money under false pretences.
And I can promise you that all your ‘royal’ pepper pots and powder
puffs and poodles and _petits pois_--if they sold for what they’re
_worth_--wouldn’t bring in enough to pay your fines.”
“I have not a _poodle_ in my collection,” Mr. Hibbert Mearely retorted
with icy dignity, and showed the “brutal person” the door.
Perhaps it was not strange, therefore, that little Rosamond Cort,
equipped by Nature from the beginning to be a connoisseur in happiness,
should have found out that the crown of wifehood bestowed on her by
Hibbert Mearely was something less than royal, and that the joys which
had glistered to her through the window panes of Villa Rose were golden
only on the surface.
[Illustration]