In Roseborough, as has been remarked, Judge Giffen was universally
listed by the adjective “imposing.” Those spinsters with clinging
natures preferred to describe him as “authoritative.” Miss Palametta
Watts, who was suspected (to put it mildly) of special leanings--not
to say intentions--in his direction, called him “masterful.” Quite
recently Miss Palametta had boldly charged him with this trait; and,
with the daring of desperate thirty-seven, had asked him if she were
not correct in deducing from his stern mien that his wife, when he
selected one, would be constrained to obey him; for her own part she
knew _she_ would.
“Such is the scriptural injunction,” he pronounced after weighing the
matter; but, to her disappointment, pursued the subject no further. To
be sure, not having his glasses on at the time, he may not have seen
her inviting looks.
Mrs. Witherby’s dicta were taken as final in Roseborough, for it was
conceded that she had “a wonderful way of expressing herself,” and Mrs.
Witherby had a vast admiration for Judge Giffen and frequently summed
him up thus:
“Well, it may be true that the Judge has had more decisions reversed
than any other judge in the land, and that but for Hibbert Mearely’s
influence he would never have been a judge at all; but what _I_ always
say is, ‘Where in all Roseborough (or elsewhere, either, for the matter
of that) will you find a man who has such an _air_ about him?’ Judge
Giffen is a gentleman who understands his own worth. One can see that
at a glance.”
One could see it at a glance this afternoon as he rode forward. It was
emphatically a man with a fine understanding of his own worth whom the
large, flea-bitten white horse brought to pause at Villa Rose’s gate.
Though above medium stature, he was still not so tall as he appeared,
from the height of his collar and the lofty manner of carrying his
head. It was this last habit in particular, no doubt, which gave him
the “air” so much admired.
His hair was graying with an even pepper-and-salt sprinkling. He
allowed it to grow long in front, that his small, square forehead
might be ornamented with a “statesman’s lock.” His eyes were small and
brown and of no marked luminosity or keenness; his pepper-and-salt
eyebrows were short and highly peaked at the outer corners--a sign,
phrenologists declare, of latent ferocity. Doubtless the eyebrows
assisted Miss Palametta Watts to her definition of “masterful.” He
wore a short-cropped moustache naturally, and affected an imperial
and goatee. His morals, of course, like all Roseborough morals, were
above reproach. His hobbies were chess and the _Weekly Digest_, which
gave him the news of the world in twelve pages of small paragraphs with
inserts of verse, fiction, humour, publisher’s advertisements, and
editorials on all world-wide topics, from single tax to the Oriental
problem and back by way of the clam middens of British Columbia to the
Greek schism and free verse. By lingering and studious perusal, he
managed to make each week’s _Digest_ last until the post brought the
next.
For the rest, he dwelt in apartments in the house of a Mrs. Taite,
a gentlewoman fallen into adverse circumstances, who was willing to
take in and care for a paying guest in order to eke out. He lived in
an economical and dignified style, and kept two horses, on the means
which could very much better have been applied to the purchase of
a neat cottage to shelter a wife. At least such was the opinion of
Roseborough’s spinsters.
Perhaps the Judge did not treat the Roseborough spinsters quite fairly.
The legal mind, by reason of its professional habits, becomes versed
in subtleties, evasions, and the like--“technicalities” as they are
called. The judge’s apartments were sincerely and solidly furnished by
Mrs. Taite; but they were decorated with technicalities and evasions.
In this wise: on the slippery horsehair sofa (supplied by Mrs. Taite)
there was a row of cushions contributed by hungry hearts. They were
stuffed with rags, excelsior, goose feathers, or ducks’ down, according
to the financial rating of Miss Hopeful; and covered with crochet,
tatting, crazy-quilt patches, sampler, or crewel work, according to
her taste and her proficiency with the embroidery needle, the bobbin,
or the small steel hook. One sampler-topped pillow bore the legend,
tidily cross-stitched in a circle: “When here you rest your weary head,
dream of the Giver.” The Judge had accepted the cushion and highly
complimented the workmanship, vaguely maundered on the sweet thoughts
that natively abide in woman’s breast, and set the pillow at the _foot_
of the sofa. As his stockinged or slippered pedal extremities were
not dreamers, he could use the gift without troubling his weary head
about the giver. Thus, it will be seen, that the learned jurist could
appropriate the soft advantages of a tentative contract, and escape the
expected payment on a technicality, as well as any man he ever solemnly
upbraided in court for the same act.
“I know what _I_ should like to do with these rooms,” Miss Hopeful
would say, with arch looks.
The Judge would answer promptly:
“What, for instance?”
He was, in his way, a shrewd man as a man who knows a trifle about
horses is apt to be. He asked purposely, because, since the spinsters
of Roseborough were each and all “homey” women, domestic by training,
he had found that their suggestions, when followed out, added to the
comfort of his bachelor life.
Encouraged by his receptivity, the lady would express her idea and even
offer to come and assist “dear Mrs. Taite” in putting it into effect.
More than one damsel had spent her half hour mounted on a kitchen
stool, with her mouth full of tacks, while dear Mrs. Taite handed the
hammer back and forth and made mental note of defects in the aspirant’s
figure to retail later to the judge, who liked what he called “a
well-turned woman.” To retain her paying guest was Mrs. Taite’s
life-work.
To tell the truth, the Judge had been in no haste to woo. He was not
touched with Romeo’s fever. His temperament was judicial and calm.
He was--it may again be remarked--shrewd. He knew to a penny exactly
what his monthly income could do for him in the way of providing a
Roseborough gentleman’s requisites, and he was in little danger of
deliberately seeking to curtail his small personal luxuries by taking
a dowerless wife. So he listened the more appreciatively to his
landlady’s analyses of the dispositions and physical characteristics of
Roseborough’s spinsters.
“Knowledge is power,” he would aver with a solemn sort of waggishness,
when she had permitted him to gather, from her discourse, that there
was not an ankle among the lot which would dare show itself in a plain
white stocking; or that a certain melting-eyed one’s shoulder blades
or hip bones were “at least no sharper than her _temper_.” He knew
from other of Mrs. Taite’s hints--dropped generally while stirring a
hot cup of chocolate for his nightcap and buttering a toasted scone
to accompany it, that some young ladies who owned to twenty-six would
never see thirty-three again, and that a baby-waisted white muslin
frock was no longer the badge of a guileless heart, as it had been in
the days when _she_ wore one to induce that maiden’s shock, the first
kiss.
What with Mrs. Taite’s chocolate and subtlety and the judge’s legal
technicalities, it will be seen that the Roseborough spinsters were
out-generalled. They had once been a threat; but, nowadays, there was
scarcely the aroma of danger surrounding them. Mrs. Taite felt that
the menace to her came from another quarter. It had (as she mentally
phrased it) “struck upon her bosom and fairly winded her” one evening
when Judge Giffen had remarked, between chocolate sips, that Mrs.
Mearely had received him that afternoon in a black-and-white striped
gown. Unlike Mr. Albert Andrews, the Judge rather prided himself on
having an eye for feminine apparel.
“And she looked uncommonly well in it, too,” he added. “A very
well-turned woman is Mrs. Mearely. Yes, Mrs. Taite, I believe poor dear
Mearely’s taste to have been as infallible in that case as in every
other.”
“Mr. Hibbert Mearely had the large means necessary to indulge a woman
of such extravagant fancies.” In Mrs. Taite’s voice there was a tremolo
as she shot the only dart she could find at that moment, knowing, alas,
that it was unbarbed save to her own heart.
“And now _she_ has the means, and none to please but herself.”
The landlady attempted to retrieve her error.
“Considering her humble origin, I should hope she’d spend her life
henceforth as an offering to her distinguished husband’s memory.” This
conversation had taken place on a winter’s evening, but that was not
the reason why Mrs. Taite’s teeth chattered.
“Ah, no doubt--for a year or so. Mearely, himself, was a great stickler
for form, and he trained her in the niceties of observance. Her
origin--that is to say, the butter pats and so on--is a forgotten myth
in Roseborough now.”
“Among the _men_, perhaps.”
“A forgotten myth, Mrs. Taite. Mearely put the quietus on it by his
will. He left her everything. I drew it up, you know. Yes; he was in
the pink of condition at the time--the very pink. Whoever thought he
would go to his last account not three months later?” He mused on this
so long that Mrs. Taite, anxious to get to the terms of the will and
learn the worst she had to fear, put in a remark to bring him back to
the theme.
“Cholera Morpheus, was it not?”
“_Morbus_, Mrs. Taite, _morbus_--a latin word meaning--er. Yes. Poor
dear Mearely said to me: ‘I am a healthy man and the Mearelys are a
long-lived family. I except to see ninety and bury my wife a dozen
years earlier, as my grandfather did before me. However, we are all
mortal and subject to climate and accident. I may die to-morrow and
leave Mrs. Mearely a widow. I wonder, ought I make the proviso that she
must lose all my fortune, if she marries again? What would you advise?’”
“And what _did_ you advise, Judge Giffen?” Mrs. Taite trembled.
“Ah, a really remarkable thing! I advised against it, and he didn’t do
it.”
“What a calamity!” Mrs. Taite cried out in spite of herself, and
hastened to add: “Leaving her at the mercy of fortune hunters.”
“I said that, in the very unlikely event of her being left a young
widow, it would be better that she should have the responsibility of
living up to the Mearely name and estate. This duty would guide her
choice in re-marriage. Whereas, without responsibilities, she might
hark back to the farm strain and contract a union which would be a slur
on the Mearely honour. He perceived the point, and, after providing for
a few bequests to relatives, he left her everything, on condition that
she continued to live in Villa Rose. ‘For,’ said he, ‘I won’t have her
running up and down Europe, spending money to fatten a conscienceless
army of waiters, guides, and _concierges_. Let her remain quietly at
home and continue to carry out my artistic scheme, as the one rustic
and indigenous object of beauty in the midst of my priceless antiques
and _objets d’art_.’ That was his idea. A very superior man--was my
dear friend, Mearely.”
“So Mrs. Mearely has control of her fortune and is obliged to live in
Roseborough? Then she is compelled to choose a man from these parts.”
“Yes. If she leaves Villa Rose and Roseborough, she loses everything.
Yes, it was I who drew up that will, Mrs. Taite. I relate the facts to
you now in strict confidence, relying on your discretion. You have been
my confidante for a number of years, Mrs. Taite, and I believe there is
no woman in Roseborough so discreet.”
Whereupon, Mrs. Taite had besought him to continue this reliance, as
no word of his confidences had ever passed, or should ever pass,
her lips; but she believed that the will’s terms were not unknown in
Roseborough; she had heard rumours, indeed, though she had not credited
them. Perhaps, she thought, Mr. Howard, being a distant cousin of Mr.
Mearely’s, had felt privileged to inform Roseborough. On the contrary,
the Judge argued, Mr. Howard had known nothing of this proviso. He was
sure of that.
“Poor Howard would have been left out entirely but for me. I got his
little legacy for him. So much per year, you know--just enough to keep
him, if prices don’t soar. I pointed out to Mearely that Howard is
really an excellent chess player.”
Mrs. Taite, of course, had never heard the terms of the will as they
affected Mrs. Mearely’s re-marriage. When she said she had heard
rumours she meant that she was about to set some afloat. She put on her
bonnet and took two pennies to the Widower’s Mite Society’s treasurer,
Mr. Albert Andrews, and dropped the hint which, in due course, matured
into the aim of his life. It was she who told the news to Wilton
Howard, amid sly compliments; again sowing seed which, though ignored
at the time, was to bear fruit later.
Mrs. Taite saw that the Judge was deliberately considering the pros and
cons of a union with the young widow when all her black should have
been put by, and she intended that he should not lack rivals. She knew
that his legal mind would take its time in coming to a decision, and
that his self-sufficient nature would neither anticipate rivals nor
that the widow might say him nay. Meanwhile, there was the one chance
in a hundred that Mrs. Mearely might marry a faster moving admirer.
She racked her brains for schemes to balk him. She even thought wildly
of sending Mrs. Mearely anonymous letters, or of poisoning Villa Rose’s
well by dropping a murdered cat into it. She nursed her fears in
secret, copiously wept, prayed nightly that a worthy gentlewoman might
not be brought to penury through the unnecessary matrimony of a paying
guest, and took to walking at midnight, shut-eyed, in her nainsook and
curl rags.
Meanwhile the judge had handed down his decision, and he apprehended no
reversal of it by the higher court, i. e., by fair Rosamond herself. He
felt that he, of all men, deserved her fortune because it was he who
had prevented a pen-stroke from depriving her of it. Having accepted
his decision, he began to formulate a plan of procedure. He rode out to
Trenton churchyard and verified the date on the headstone. From that
he computed a proper date for proposal, which appeared to be midsummer
week, a year and six months from the day on which Mrs. Mearely had
received him in black and white. He would go to see her--say, on a
Wednesday--and inform her, in dignified yet adequate language, of the
part he had played in smoothing life for her. She would have until
Sunday to regard him as a benign fate and to become so mellowed with
gratitude that, when he returned on the Sabbath afternoon to make
formal offer of himself, she would answer with blushing enthusiasm,
“Oh, be my fate again--a second time, and forever.”
Unaware that this midsummer day was Rosamond’s “Wonderful Day”
(though, if he had known, he would have found the fact pleasantly
apropos) or that she had given up her last attenuation of mourning
only a few hours before he set out to make this preliminary and
way-paving call--resolved upon, even to the date, eighteen months
previously--Judge Giffen nosed his flea-bitten white horse up to
the gate post, removed and replaced his tall hat in high and solemn
salutation, slipped off his glove (gray, with two pearl buttons),
enclosed Rosamond’s rosy palm, and said in the tone of one who conveys
information of grave import:
“Good-afternoon, my dear Mrs. Mearely.”
Almost simultaneously he noticed the green-gray shot parasol and the
lilac-bud silk gown and was distinctly pleased by the omen. It was,
indeed, as if she had expected him.