Down the hill and down the valley, where the crossroads pointed east to
Poplars Vale and west to Roseborough, and the low, gray stone bridge
with its mossy ooze led over the winding river toward Trenton Waters,
three miles north, stood a stone tower. In it an old ship’s bell hung,
which, so report said, had once rung meal hours and lullabies and other
clock stations for a captain and crew whose gory barque flew the “Jolly
Roger.” The aged pensioner, who collected the tow-path tolls, rang the
strokes of the hour on this bell from six A.M. until six P.M., and, so
closely did the low, curving hills advance to smile upon each other
from both sides of the running water that they made a channel for the
sound--like a great, twisted, golden horn--so that the bell-tones, rung
out at the crossroads, were heard at Roseborough and at Poplars Vale
and even rolled their echoes, when the wind was kind, upon the town of
Trenton Waters.
Nine o’clock! Rosamond heard it pealing as she reached the terrace.
“I must hurry to find whatever it is I am looking for,” she said,
“because my Wonderful Day won’t wait. It will move on, hour by hour,
just like any other day.”
The house was on a jut of the hill, sheer above the gravel road and
midway from the summit. The road must make a long detour about the
grounds of Villa Rose ere it could continue its progress round and over
the hilltops and on toward more modern and populous districts of Old
Canada. At the foot of the incline was the village proper, occupying
three streets in triangle about a combined courthouse, police station
and gaol, the latter seldom visited even by the constables. On one
street corner the post office stood, flanked by a few small houses.
The other two streets shared between them the business buildings of
Roseborough; such as Bilkin’s meat market and hardware store; Miss
Jenny’s millinery and dressmaking establishment; George Dollop’s drugs,
stationery and lending library, with John Dollop, plumber, and James
Dollop, undertaker, adjoining, and Horace Ruggle of the telegraph
office next door; and Brandon’s stables and feed store.
In going over the hill’s brow and on to the vague unknown, the road led
past Charleroy College whither the lads within twenty miles came to
acquire knowledge. The residential portion of Roseborough, comprising
about sixty houses and gardens, spread about the hillsides between the
village and Charleroy.
The sun fell aslant over the garden and the orchard, as if indeed
it had cast a golden net about Villa Rose to snare the willing lady
thereof in a witchery from which she might never escape. To decide that
this was to be the great day of her life, a day of splendid adventure,
was one thing; to make it so--to make any day a day of adventure in
Roseborough--was quite another. Pondering ways and means of conjuring
up romance, she fluttered about among the blazing dahlia beds like a
huge lavender butterfly.
“Oh!” She stopped suddenly. “I shall not deserve my Wonderful Day if I
don’t take Mrs. Lee her flowers and her fruit, as usual.”
She ran back to the verandah and picked up a willow basket containing
stout gloves and shears and returned to the flower beds. She lingered
only a moment or two among the dahlias. Beyond their haughty glory lay
the rose garden, a radiant and random half acre spilling forth every
tint and perfume known to the rose family. Here Rosamond’s shears went
to work busily. She found delight in the task, for she hummed again the
little minuet theme which she had recomposed into this day’s salutation
to herself.
When one is young, not only with the fearless years but with the brave
desires of youth and eager for fairy tale happenings, so that every
other sentence begins with “I wonder!” one must talk; and if fate has
set one in a high and lonely place with no young, imaginative twin soul
to companion one’s dreams, then one must talk to oneself--not merely
in silence but with the uttered phrase. Rosamond talked to herself
habitually.
She was musing aloud now:
“I wonder how it would feel to own all this--Villa Rose and its
gardens--with love, and then to lose it--and love, too. Mrs. Lee did.
I’m afraid I couldn’t be sweet about it, as she is.” She concluded
presently that in such circumstances she would even feel resentful when
flowers were brought to her from the garden that had once been hers.
She pictured Mrs. Lee in thought as she would see her presently--seated
in her bit of garden, knitting, or perhaps indoors, lovingly sorting
and dusting the precious (and, it must be confessed, prosy) manuscripts
written by her husband during his forty years as professor of
literature at Charleroy. She would hear the gentle voice greeting her
lovingly--not because she was the rich Mrs. Mearely but because Mrs.
Lee instinctively greeted all the world lovingly. Under the white hair
and dainty, white lace cap, the kind eyes, which had seen seventy years
of life--with its human sun and shadow--go by, would beam out of the
delicately wrinkled face with a delight in the flowers’ beauty and
fragrance as spontaneous and young as youth itself--the spirit which
discounts time because its habitation is with the good and the eternal.
“Maybe it is because she never thinks of herself that she has never
found out that she hasn’t things any more.”
Mrs. Lee’s ability to be happy, even after fate had bereft her of
everything, was a subject full of unusual interest for Rosamond this
morning. By some art this lonely woman, past her seventieth milestone,
managed to make every day of her life her “_wonderful_ day.” The song
of her “Good-morning!” came out of a deep-toned, divine joy which
neither age, poverty, nor grief could blur. The wistful look was in
Rosamond’s eyes again as she passed out of the rose garden and into the
orchard on her way to make her daily offering.
The orchard lay higher than the garden and the house. Rosamond went on
up rustic steps, made of earth and roots, that led between irregular
lines of pear trees weighted to the ground with their promise of
brown and golden fruit. She made her way to a huge cherry tree, ran
nimbly up the ladder, and covered the bottom of her basket with large,
red-cheeked, white cherries; then, jumping down, she hastened on up the
remaining steps into a small grass plot surrounding a tiny cottage. A
beech tree took up its full share of the grounds and, close beside it,
as if in friendly converse, rose the rustic, vine-clad top of a well
with wet bucket hung high on the roller.
Mrs. Lee sat in a rocker beside the well, knitting. Her ball of
yarn was filliping about the sward under the paws of a white kitten
whose smudgy face betrayed a nature so obsessed with the entrancing
amusements of a woollen tangle that the duty of the daily ablution was
wholly forgotten.
“Oh, Mrs. Lee, I’m late; but here they are.” Rosamond held out her
basket.
“Good-morning, Mrs. Mearely. How you spoil me, my dear! What lovely
roses--oh, and dahlias!--dahlias of the very hue of life itself, the
unquenchable crimson flame. How bravely and confidently they give
themselves to the sun and blend with its rays! And cherries, too!”
Rosamond laughed.
“Now, Mrs. Lee, how can you pretend to feel such delighted surprise
when you knew perfectly well that I’d bring them to-day just as I
always do?”
“Ah, my dear, that is the very secret of happiness.” She paused to pick
up a dropped stitch, and Rosamond, eager for data on this subject above
all others, asked quickly:
“_What_ is the secret of happiness?”
“Why--don’t you know? It is to anticipate only what you know will
surely happen. Then your every desire comes to pass. And the surprise
you feel is not so much surprise, after all, as a kind of charmed
wonder that life is so beautifully arranged.”
“_Is_ life beautifully arranged, Mrs. Lee?” Rosamond took the basket
from her friend’s lap, where it interfered with the stocking’s
progress, and set it on the grass. She sank down on the broad, rustic
seat which surrounded the well’s rim.
“Is it _not_? I am sure you feel that it is. To you, in particular,
in spite of the one great grief, life must seem like a fairy tale. I
must pause in discussion of this infinite theme to remark upon your
appearance, my dear. You look ravishing this morning. What a beautiful
frock! I know that it has been hard for you to put away the last black
ribbons. Although it is just what he would wish, it seems to you like
wilfully forgetting the beloved one.”
She laid a comforting hand lightly for a moment on Rosamond’s.
Rosamond, remembering the manner in which she had discarded the
black-garnished, lavender dress, drooped her head quickly to hide alike
the little blush of shame that tinted her cheeks and the wicked twinkle
that brightened her eyes.
“It is so fortunate,” Mrs. Lee went on, “that there are no ‘styles’
in Roseborough. In Roseborough all your lovely frocks will be as
fashionable now as when you bought them, four or five years ago. Miss
Jenny says that she does not know what this generation is coming to,
because, even in Trenton Waters, they are beginning to ask whether a
garment or a ribbon is ‘in style’ before they buy it. Miss Jenny says
that she has seen some of those so-called stylish hats, and garments
of various kinds, and that she is willing to take her ‘solemn oath
in court’--as she expressed it, being very much moved--that a few
scissor-snips would have laid the whole in ruins. ‘Mrs. Lee,’ she said
to me, ‘when Jenny Hackensee sews a bow on even a child’s hat, or a
bone button on the band of a genteel woman’s flannel petticoat, my
_conscience_ is satisfied that it will _never_ come off!’ Poor Miss
Jenny. She fears that the Roseborough ladies may forget her worth and
run after follies. My dear husband used to say that that trait was one
of the charms of Roseborough--namely, the loving regard each person in
the community has for the general _morale_.”
“Yes, that trait _is_ very marked in Roseborough.” Again Mrs. Mearely’s
drooped head hid a twinkle.
“It rejoices me to see you in that dainty lilac and white. It is just
as if the fragrance and tints of spring had lingered to make midsummer
more bewitching.”
“Are you going to make me vain again to-day, as you always do?”
“Nonsense, dear child. Does expatiating on the beauty of a rose or
a brook make it vain? Beauty is one of heaven’s choicest gifts, and
is always to be admired gratefully. How foolish must any fair woman
be who allows herself to become vain--as if the beauty admired were
_her_ possession exclusively, and not a free gift to the eyes of all
beholders! She might as reasonably be conceited about holding up a
candle in the dusk.”
Rosamond put out a hand and stopped the knitting for the moment. “You
were going to show me how perfectly life is arranged. I need to be
shown.” She laughed.
“Perhaps I did, too, at your age. And I was. For I married a remarkable
man and life became for me at once very simple and large--something
like the process of Nature’s unfoldment under sunlight. Professor Lee’s
spirit was just that--a mellow sunshine, which made for growth in those
who lived within its radius. A bright and searching spirit it was; for
it revealed to you the weeds as well as the grain, but in such a way
that you were not hurt or humiliated; your only feeling was a sense of
freedom, of relief that a danger had been pointed out, and that you had
therefore escaped it.”
“Perhaps it would not be so difficult to give up one’s faults if one
were told about them in that way. One would have no reason for trying
to excuse them.”
“Ah, that was it exactly! He always said that when you deprived people
of the feeling of personal possession in their errors you took away
their only reason for clinging to those errors. But for this egoism,
we would all see clearly enough how indefensible are many of the traits
we justify. My husband would have refused outright, if he could, to
believe there was any evil in the world at all. He _did_ insist that
it was no true part of any person. That was why he could help others
so wonderfully in their moral struggles, because he never censured,
never expressed a personal anger, only pointed out the wrong as if it
were--as, indeed, he regarded it--an outside thing trying to fasten
itself on the unsuspecting individual. He used to say that moral
victories over temptation were all-important--because they registered
something permanent, a degree of progress won--but that defeats, though
pitiable, were not deeply important, because they were of the moment
only--the next hour _might_ see victory; _some_ hour _must_ see it.”
“It must have been wonderful for his students to be trained by him--I
mean, to be taught first to look at life and themselves by a man who
had such a deep faith within him. But weren’t you always busy keeping
bad people from taking advantage of him?”
[Illustration: “Mrs. Lee sat in her rocker knitting. Her ball of yarn
was filliping about the sward under the paws of a white kitten”]
“Sometimes; but far less often than you would think. I came to see that
this spirit of my dear husband’s, so far from bringing deception and
imposture upon him, really contained its own protection against these
things. Those who were unworthy of his interest soon eliminated
themselves. He never seemed to guess why they went--but saw them go and
wished them well.”
“To live for nearly fifty years with a man like that might make me also
believe that life is beautifully arranged. But I am not convinced this
morning.”
“You are wilful!”
“I know it. There will be only twenty-four hours in this day and I need
at least twice that.” She paused.
Mrs. Lee smiled as she said: “You flit from one subject to another like
a bee after honey! My mental wings take slow and reasoned flights. I
cannot follow you. What am I to make of your last inconsequential spurt
through the air--that, for you, life would be rightly arranged if this
particular day could have double hours? If so, why?”
Rosamond laughed.
“Don’t let me give you ‘nerves,’ Mrs. Lee. I know I do lack sequence,
and that, to the life companion of a professor of literature, must be
very trying. I can begin things wonderfully and I know the ending I
_want_; but I can’t fill in the middle part. The middle is just dots
and dashes.”
“Principally dashes,” Mrs. Lee smiled.
“Principally. This time, though, there _is_ a connection. To-day is to
be my _Wonderful_ Day. So, if life really is beautifully arranged I
must find it out before to-morrow. And even a forty-eight hour day is
hardly long enough for one’s _only_ Wonderful Day.”
“Oh, youth, youth! With all life before it, it must still invent limits
for itself and tragic ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and ‘perhapses.’ Why must to-day
alone be wonderful? _Every_ day has its wonders.”
There was no answer for a moment; then Rosamond leaned over and
kissed the elder woman’s cheek--a fragile bit of pale pink and ivory
modelling, faintly impressed with many tiny lines. She knew that she
could not uncover to Mrs. Lee’s eyes all the remote reasons for her
mood of this morning. She who had worn her weeds in loving sorrow and
resignation must not be told of the young heart beating its rebellious
tattoo for long irksome months, under crape and plain black, black and
white, and lavender with black trimmings--nor of the hoydenish kick
which had cast the last stage of woe from her forever.
It seemed to Rosamond, then, that the cynic touch of disillusionment,
and not the mere passing of time, was what aged; and that, according
to such calculation, she was years older than Mrs. Lee. Twenty-four’s
responsibility was to guard the _couleur de rose_ for Seventy! Her
thoughts culminated in the inward exclamation:
“It makes a difference, even in one’s _age_, what sort of a man one
marries!”
Aloud, she said:
“You see, I called this my ‘Wonderful Day,’ and put on this frock to
celebrate it. So I must _make_ it wonderful, mustn’t I?”
“Yes, indeed, my dear, and all the midsummer fairies will help you,”
her friend answered.
Mrs. Lee was placidly and patiently unmingling her kitten and her wool,
which had revolved and resolved themselves into one untidy ball with a
miewing centre.
Two sounds broke upon the lull in conversation.
Near by clattered the hoofs of the letter carrier’s pony rounding the
hill’s turn to the front gate. Far down by the river the old bell rang
its song of ten o’clock into the mouth of the golden horn valley, and
the tones--muted but round and perfect--floated up across the hillside
gardens and carried, even here, their separate theme dimly above the
murmurs of wind-rippled leaves and dripping bucket.
“Morning, Mrs. Lee. Morning, Mrs. Mearely, ma’am.”
Mr. Horace Ruggle--who was the mail carrier twice daily when he was
not the telegraph agent, and _vice versa_--blinked perspiringly over
the gate. Mr. Ruggle was stout--deliberately and tyrannically stout,
no doubt his equine would have said, had there been a bit of speech
instead of a bit of steel in his mouth--and whatever he did was done
with gusty effort.
“Good-morning, Mr. Ruggle. Is it possible that you have a letter for
me?” Mrs. Lee queried, putting her knitting aside and rising to the
rare occasion. Rosamond ran forward to receive it.
“One for you and one for Mrs. Mearely.” Mr. Ruggle put the letters into
Rosamond’s hand. “Yours has come quite a ways; but Mrs. Mearely’s is
just from Poplars. It’ll be from her folks, likely. Mebbe her mother’s
took sick or her sister’s children’s caught a epidemic; or, more likely
yet, has had a accident with that new farm machinery.”
“Oh, dear, oh, dear, I hope not!” Mrs. Lee looked upon him with gentle
disapprobation as if she considered his attempts to rival the literary
imagination of Edgar Allan Poe wholly out of tune with a midsummer
morning in Roseborough. “Do tell me there is nothing of the sort, Mrs.
Mearely, I can’t enjoy my own missive until I know. Mr. Ruggle has
alarmed me.”
“Telegrapher and postman,” Mr. Ruggle wheezed, mopping his huge cheeks,
“I’m the Bad News Syndicate. I made that anecdote first along in the
‘nineties,’ when the newspaper at Trenton joined the news syndicate and
gave me the idea; but it’s a joke that’s always good. Back about six
years ago, I added something to it that’s made it even better. It’s
this: ‘If I carry bad news and don’t know it, who carries worse and
knows it?’ Answer: the undertaker.’” He took his own time and told it
to the bitter end despite Mrs. Lee’s polite, but none-the-less quite
marked, attempts to prevent the sombre jest’s completion.
“Yes, yes, Mr. Ruggle. You are fond of your wit, we know; but while you
are entertaining us, think of the impatient ones elsewhere waiting for
their letters.”
“Right you are, ma’am--impatient for their doom, never thinking as how
what they don’t know won’t hurt them.” Mr. Ruggle drew his pony’s head
out of the greenery about the fence. “Bad news from Poplars?”
“Oh, no, not at all.” Mrs. Mearely gave him a nod that meant dismissal.
“It is only a line from my sister, Mrs. Lee, saying she can’t come to
me for a week.”
“Should think you’d be looking in your own envelope, ma’am,” Mr. Ruggle
hinted to Mrs. Lee. “It’s come quite a ways.”
“Not just now; I must find my other glasses first, so I shall wait some
time.”
“Well, _you_ may, but _I_ can’t!” The nonplussed Mr. Ruggle masked
his disappointment with a facetious air. “Good-day, ladies.” The
over-freighted pony jogged on up the hill.
“Dear, dear, I wonder how many thousand times Mr. Ruggle has repeated
to me that unpleasant ‘anecdote’ of his, as he insists on calling it.”
Mrs. Lee shook her head, with a mild perplexity that any one should
evince a taste for such humour.
“Dreadful person!” Rosamond concurred. “Wouldn’t you suppose that an
ordinary sense of the fitness of things would keep a fat man from being
morbid?”
Mrs. Lee laughed heartily.
“I’m afraid I have been guilty of a tiny fib. Although I generally use
my other glasses for reading, I do not positively require them. Still
I do feel that I should not be _compelled_ to share my mail with Mr.
Ruggle.” She slipped a knitting needle under the flap and opened the
envelope deftly. Presently a murmur of delight caused her guest to say:
“No epidemics or accidents in _your_ letter, either! I heard you purr.”
[Illustration]