Since Blake would not be on the premises that night, Rosamond asked
herself whether she ought not to go to Mrs. Lee’s and engage Bella
Greenup to stay the night at Villa Rose. She had never spent a night
alone in the large house and questioned whether she cared to do so. In
the end she dismissed the idea of a companion; for, as she reminded
herself, the community had never had a burglar or even a burglar
scare, and, while an occasional tramp might stray to the Trenton road,
none had been known to climb the hill into the sacred precincts of
Roseborough.
Like the toll-man, she was unaware that nearly an hour had slipped by
in the combined delay of the Judge’s call and Florence’s manœuvres.
Still under the impression that the afternoon was hers to spend by
the river, she went into the house for more hair pins to catch up the
curls, shaken loose by laughter and the mignonette’s fingers. She
satisfied herself that the Orleans mirror reflected a vision both fair
and neat enough to entrance Love at sight, if he should come riding by
where the rushes divided and made a peephole to the slough. Then she
ran downstairs again, but her gay song ceased in the shock of hearing
four o’clock ring out--a shock by no means modified when she asked the
kitchen clock for denial and saw the long hand at eleven minutes past
the hour.
“Four o’clock! If Amanda were here she would be bringing me tea to
the summer-house. It seems very late to go to the river; because, of
course, I must have my supper at five-thirty as usual. Oh, dear! I
ought to have it at five to-night; because they will all be here by
seven, and I shall take so much longer than His Friggets would to get
my own supper and wash up, and then set out all the things for them on
the dining-room table.... And, of course, if I don’t have my tea now, I
shall be hungry _before_ five-thirty. Oh, dear! It would seem that His
Friggets have their uses in my life, after all.”
Another wave of indignation swept over her, to cool in despair, as she
realized how her Wonderful Day had vanished, hour by hour, leaving her
only the distressful discovery that colours were not going to free her.
From now on she would risk a proposal from some tiresome man every
time she stepped abroad, alone. As for the women...! she trembled to
think of the gossip that might gush forth as soon as they saw her.
Tittle-tattle and unwelcome proposals! Were these to be her lot until,
in desperation, she allowed herself to be persuaded by one or other of
Roseborough’s gentlemen? Angry, helpless tears filled her eyes.
“If I were smothered in crape I could go anywhere alone, and do
whatever I wanted to, without stupid, silly men intruding. I didn’t
know when I was well off,” she whimpered. “I’ve never once got outside
the gates of Villa Rose all this day!”
Barely one hour left! What should she do with it?
The question as to this hour, as with all the previous hours, was
settled for her by Roseborough. A sound of wheels on the road ceased
at her carriage-gate. In a trice, she saw the gate unlatched and borne
inward by a short, stout woman in a white mull dress, and a white hat
covered with a green mosquito-netting veil, which served to keep the
dust from her broad, pink countenance. She wore also a very wide tartan
sash with a large bunchy bow at the back, the worse for being much and
heavily sat upon.
“Whatever on earth are The Kilties coming here for?” Rosamond asked
herself with another rush of anger. “Isn’t this just too awful?” She
stamped her foot in vexation.
She did not need to see the cart come through to know that all three of
the Misses MacMillan were about to honour her with a visit. Wherever
one MacMillan went, all MacMillans went. While Miss Elspeth held the
gate open, a broken-kneed gray nag wobbled into the grounds, drawing
a loose-wheeled, scratched cart, with one seat that could comfortably
hold two, but always squeaked protestingly under three. Two more short,
stubby, green-netted, white-frocked maids crowned the cart; both, like
their eldest sister, displayed the MacMillan plaid.
To Rosamond’s dismay, their cart was followed by a four-wheeler laden
with furbelows. The spinsters of Roseborough always wore white fluffy
frocks with bright ribbon sashes, in the summer, because they were
“so young-looking” (the frocks, not the spinsters). The four-wheeler
held two seats, one stool, and seven girls. Only two could sit on each
narrow seat; but there was a stool wedged in between the seats and
one sat on that, holding the sixth girl on her lap. The seventh stood
partly on her own and partly on the fifth girl’s feet, and held on with
all her might to the back of the front seat to keep from toppling into
the road. When the vehicle stopped and they all tried to get out, the
whole looked more like a wrecked ice-cream cart than anything else,
with the white flounces spilling and tumbling over the edge in every
direction. These were the Misses Pelham-Hew.
Dr. Wells, Roseborough’s highly trusted physician--a doctor of the
old school and a man who loved his joke (no matter who else loved it
not)--was fond of saying that the difference between Jacob Pelham-Hew
and his namesake in the Old Testament was that Jacob of the Bible
waited seven years for one damsel whereas Jacob Pelham-Hew had seven
damsels waiting for one man--a witticism considered very funny by
everyone in Roseborough but the Pelham-Hews.
In the wake of the ice-cream cart came a scrawny sorrel, drawing a
sulky. Miss Graham sat in the one bowl-shaped seat, very erect and
mannish in demeanour with a tan coat over her white duck dress and
sporting a “choker” with a gold horseshoe pin. Miss Imogen Graham let
it be known that she was well able to take care of herself and despised
men; indeed, she would not look at one, save to be courteous. That
courtesy was the keystone of her character was at once made evident if
there was a man in the room, for he never lacked her company.
Miss Palametta Watts and her mother in their phaeton brought up the
rear. Miss Palametta was small--“a lean, simpering wisp of a thing,”
Mrs. Witherby called her. She possessed two brown eyes, with fairly
good possibilities in the line of flirtation, and a bang of curly,
brown hair that had received its first baptism of walnut tea--what is
called “touching up”--just above the ears and at the long ends. Miss
Palametta was arch. Some one had once told her that there was something
birdlike in the little tosses and dartings of her head on her long
throat, with the unfortunate result that her head was now never still a
moment and she twittered incessantly. Her mother, who was very fat and
nearly stone deaf, accompanied her everywhere; for, as Miss Palametta
said, she would not for worlds be classed with forward, modern women
who showed themselves in public, unchaperoned. Under cover of her
mother’s deafness, the modest creature had practically proposed to
every eligible man in Roseborough; and had so compromised one poor
fellow that he fled to Trenton, and became a bank clerk, to escape the
condemnation Roseborough heaped on any man who went so far and then
refused his destiny.
Rosamond’s surprise had turned to alarm by the time the Watts’ chariot
hove in sight.
“I’m not at home,” she muttered, blankly. “_I am not at home._”
What could be the cause of this white-starched avalanche descending
upon her out of four creaking rigs? She was not left long in doubt.
“We’ve come to hear all about the new man!” they chorused, in running
up the steps to her. “Mrs. Witherby says a new man is coming to
Roseborough and you know all about him.”
“I--er--I--I don’t know anything about him,” she stammered to the
eager, glittered-eyed ones, cramming her in on every side.
“Oh, yes, you do! You’ve been told everything,” Elspeth MacMillan
shrilled in her ear from behind.
“His name is Jack Falcon and he used to go to Charleroy,” her sister,
Jeanie Deans MacMillan, supplemented from in front. “Mrs. Witherby says
so.”
“You needn’t tell _me_ anything about him,” said Imogen Graham, in her
deep voice, and giving her mannish choker a tug. “I despise men--in
fact nothing--_nothing_--disgusts me like a man!” Any one of the group
might have completed the sentence for her; they had all heard it so
often.
“He’s done something _famous_,” Flora Macdonald MacMillan shrieked.
“He’s made a lot of _money_,” Anabeth Pelham-Hew called, pushing her
head into Rosamond’s ken under Imogen Graham’s elbow. Anabeth was
short, and Dr. Wells said her hair had grown thin on the top from
scraping against her taller sisters’ angles in order to thrust herself
into notice.
“A lot of money,” Anabel, her twin, echoed.
“A lot--a _lot_ of money!” Justinia Pelham-Hew stuttered.
“Oh, yes! he’s made a _lot_ of _money_.” Constanza Pelham-Hew came in
with the longer repetition--the whole line--exactly as if the thing
were a glee and she were concluding the first round.
“Oh! isn’t it interesting?” Maravene Pelham-Hew trebled, taking up the
second verse.
“Yes! _isn’t_ it interesting?”
“Oh! _so interesting_!”
Claribel and Berthalin Pelham-Hew generally expressed their view in
duet form.
“But I don’t know anything about Mr. Falcon. I really don’t. He’s a
friend of Mrs. Lee’s--I mean he was a pupil of the Professor’s--years
ago. He--he....” Rosamond stammered on, innocent that she was
arousing the worst suspicions in the breast of the one silent maiden
in the group, the chaperoned Palametta. “He--er--is coming home
to-morrow--from Europe.”
“Europe?”
“Europe?”
“Europe?” the MacMillans.
“For my part,” Miss Graham boomed, “if you don’t stop talking about
that man I shall go home. Nothing,” said she, putting her arms akimbo
and nudging into the verandah rail--“_Nothing_ disgusts me like a man!”
“I’d be so glad to--to--er--offer you tea,” Rosamond said hastily,
glad of a chance to change this embarrassing conversation, “only
Amanda and Jemima are away for the day; and I’ve--er been out to tea
myself--and--er--the fire’s out. But I hope you’ve all had your tea.”
“Mrs. Witherby wouldn’t tell us a thing about the man.”
“No! she didn’t tell _us_, either.”
“No! she thinks, if he has _money_, she’ll get him for Corinne or her
precious niece.”
“We tried to get Mabel Crewe to come with us, but she said she didn’t
care whether the man came to Roseborough, or not!”
“_I’ve_ always claimed that Mabel Crewe is insincere.
“It will be so nice to have another man at parties.”
“Did you hear how _much_ money he has?” a Pelham-Hew queried. At the
word “money” the chatter ceased; they all drew up at attention.
“I--that is--Mrs. Lee didn’t say anything about money. No, really, she
didn’t.” Rosamond felt as cruel as if she had wantonly run her hat pin
into seven palpitating Pelham-Hew hearts. Income was so pinched and
painful a strain in their home.
“Noth--ing--about--mon--ey?”
“You’re either mistaken or you are amusing yourself at our expense,
Mrs. Mearely!” A MacMillan’s nerves were snapping and her voice was so
sharp that it stung.
“Mrs. Witherby said positively he’d made a great success.”
“Positively!”
“_Grea-at_ success!”
“Yes--yes, Mrs. Lee said something of success,” Rosamond admitted, “but
I--er--gathered that it was an _artistic_ success.”
“Ugh! the brute!” Miss Graham snarled. The others looked blank.
One cold titter broke the silence. It emerged from Palametta’s thin
lips. Everyone looked at her. They knew that titter of Palametta’s.
“Why--of course,” said Palametta as if she had discerned what should
have been obvious to every one. “Why--of--course.” She drawled it.
“Of course _what_?” Rosamond, the sometimes blunt, demanded.
“I’ve been noticing your gown and wondering why you won’t tell us
anything really about Mr. Falcon,” she twittered archly, darting her
head from side to side; but there was rather more of the snake than of
the bird in her, as she did it.
“Miss Watts, what on earth do you mean?”
“Why, yes!” a MacMillan shrilled. “She’s in colours!”
“Mrs. Mearely’s in _colours_,” the Pelham-Hew septet sounded the tocsin.
Rosamond’s face blazed.
“There’s no change in my dress,” she asserted violently, “except that
there are no black ribbons. I’ve often worn white--with flowers--in the
evening. Why, the colour of this dress is”--she caught Palametta’s
glittering gaze, then a Pelham-Hew’s appraising eye, and, realizing
that this feline bevy was not composed of the colour-blind, finished
weakly--“well--it’s a sort of lavender.”
Miss Palametta tittered coldly.
“It’s a sort that never grew in a border of fragrant remembrance round
a last resting-place,” the eldest and Scotchest of the MacMillans
bur-r-red at her, sternly.
Anabeth Pelham-Hew’s eyes filled with tears; not only did her lip
tremble, but her chin wagged, with the volume and velocity of the fear
that seized her.
“You--you--you’ve _had one_ husband, you--you greedy thing!” She flung
herself on Anabel’s breast and cried hysterically.
“Well! I never!” Rosamond exclaimed hotly.
“Anabeth is su-subject to hys-s-teria,” Justinia explained, as if
all Roseborough did not know it. Roseborough held pronounced views
regarding Anabeth’s hysteria; views which coincided with Blake’s on the
cavorting of Eve and the remedy for it.
Never since she had come to reside in Villa Rose as milady, had
a Roseborough spinster shown Mrs. Mearely anything but an almost
sycophantic homage. But never until to-day had Mrs. Mearely clashed
with a Roseborough spinster’s hopes. Words and breath left her as she
saw herself--so recently an object of adulation--confronted with one
dozen enemies.
“For my part, I’d be astounded if there were anything in this,” Miss
Graham averred, with another tug at her choker; “because I can’t
see how a widow could be induced to _hang_ herself a _second_ time.
Nothing--_nothing_ disgusts _me_ like....”
“It’s a great shock to all of us to see you in colours again,” Flora
Macdonald MacMillan broke in. “In all your days of mourning, no other
hearts have beaten in such unison with yours as ours. We, the girls of
Roseborough, have felt almost as if we were widows with you.”
“Yes,” her sister, Jeanie Deans, chimed in, “the girls of Roseborough
loved to think of you as so beautiful and so sad, and forever alone.”
“Oh, yes! _forever alone!_” Elspeth concurred emphatically.
“We girls have often talked about it,” Maravene informed her; “we just
love to picture you like a mourning dove....”
“A fading rose is what _I_ always say, Maravene. I think it’s more
appropriate, besides sweeter,” Constanza interrupted.
“I know you do, sister; but I like the mourning dove idea better. It’s
_lonesomer_.”
Rosamond emitted an indignant sound nearly related to a snort.
“Stuff and nonsense! If that is the silly way you think about me, you
can just give it up right now. It is time for me to put on ordinary
colours and I intend to wear them--just as other people do. I am not
in the least eager to meet Mr. Falcon, except for my dear Mrs. Lee’s
sake. You can have him, for all I care and--and tear him to bits among
you! I forgot to tell you that he is quite an _old_ man--with a gray
beard--and a bald head.”
“Oh--h! No--o!”
“Naturally--what I expected,” Miss Graham began. “Nothing--nothing....”
She paused a fraction of a second to give her choker the usual
masculine tug, and Berthalin and Claribel burst in with:
“Old?--gray?--bald?--who says so?”
“Mrs. Lee says so.”
“And she hasn’t seen him for nearly twenty years,” Palametta ruminated.
“Oh, come now, Mrs. Mearely! Why can’t you be as frank about your
interest in the newcomer as we are? Tell us his real age,” she tittered
icily.
Rosamond’s bosom swelled and her hands clenched as the flame of anger
scorched her. It burned the more fiercely because she was, for the
moment, wholly at the mercy of the spinsterial dozen. She could not
force them to believe her: nay, it would appear that the only way to
change the “girls” of Roseborough from foes into friends again was to
return to the raiment of Niobe.
“I am sorry, but I must ask you to excuse me.” She tried to say it
with the dignity of the Mearely name and Villa Rose behind her; “Mrs.
Witherby and the Wellses and Mrs. Lee are coming in for cards this
evening. And I must prepare for them. Amanda and Jemima are away for
the day, and I have everything to do.”
“Shall you wear colours at Mrs. Lee’s breakfast to-morrow?” a MacMillan
demanded.
“Yes! That is what we all want to know,” a Pelham-Hew added.
As usual Rosamond’s sense of humour overcame her anger.
“I will compromise the matter if you will only run away now, like good
girls,” she answered, laughing a little in spite of herself. “I will
wear white--no ribbons. So put on your fanciest sashes and catch the
poor old chap fast in the bow knots.”
“Oh! Mrs. Mearely!” Elspeth MacMillan ejaculated, catching the
infection of Rosamond’s mirth, and smiling. “Of course--we only
meant--we think it would be so nice to have another man at parties.”
“So that we won’t always have to dance together all our lives,” the
Pelham-Hews choired.
“Make a circle around him and pin your sash ends to him as if he were
a maypole; then, at the signal, all run in different directions and see
which gets him--or the biggest piece of him.”
“Oh! Mrs. Mearely!” every one but Palametta (and, of course, her deaf
mother) exclaimed at once. Rosamond’s bold speech had made them feel
slightly absurd; they thought it best to laugh it off and make a joke
of the whole affair.
“Anabeth is su-subject to hys-s-teria so that wh-hen she makes a
je-jest she always c-cries,” Justinia elucidated tactfully.
“Yes,” Constanza amended, “we are not really all trying to catch a man
we’ve never seen.”
“And may not like when we _have_ seen him!” Claribel concluded.
“Come on, girls,” Imogen boomed. “Mrs. Mearely wants to get rid of us.
Let’s go down to Dollop’s. I’ll stand treat for one ginger syrup all
around.”
“Oh, goody!” “Oh, come on!” “Hooray!” “Imogen’s going to treat.”
Her offer was greeted with the shouts of joy that generally follow
on a treat, especially in communities like Roseborough. The seven
Pelham-Hews, who never had pennies to spend in Dollop’s, rushed,
giggling, down the steps and scrambled over one another into their
rig for all the world like a pan of dough “raising.” The MacMillans
followed as fast as was consistent with the dignity of the clan’s
tartan. Palametta made a point of lingering to offer a limp handshake
and, as her fingers slipped away and her head tossed and perked, she
tittered faintly.
“If she te-he-hes like that at me again I’ll box her ears,” Rosamond
vowed inwardly. An inspiration came to her, from the springs of her
naturally impulsive generosity, which went far to restore her to her
former position in the hearts of Roseborough’s spinsters.
“Wait, wait,” she called. “I’ll give you some bottles of Amanda’s
parsnip wine. That will be better than Dollop’s syrup. And a basket
full of glasses and some ginger cookies, and you can picnic down by the
tower in that little nook of the slough.”
Not delaying for more than the first “hooray,” she caught up her flower
basket from the porch and ran into the kitchen. To fill the basket
with glasses, cookies, and the three quart bottles was the work of
only a few minutes. She confided the precious cargo to the MacMillans
and smilingly waved off her now friendly guests, who departed amid
subdued and genteel cheering. Imogen even baritoned the first line of
“For he’s a jolly good fellow,” (substituting “she” of course); but the
Pelham-Hews, turning crimson in an agony of hurt refinement, begged her
to desist.
The gate clicked behind the spinsterical _cortège_; and five o’clock
rang from the tower.
Rosamond went indoors and set out the plates for her supper.
By the slough, where the spinsters of Roseborough picnicked, the reeds
and rushes were now silent and still, save where the light breeze
passed; though there was a trail of freshly crushed and broken ones,
where something heavier than the breeze had made its way through. One
individual besides the toll-man saw the black-suited, black-whiskered
stranger that afternoon. Johnson, the butcher’s boy, encountered him
in a lane almost directly behind the two neighbouring cottages where
lived Mr. Horace Ruggle and Miss Jenny’s mother, Mrs. Hackensee. Mrs.
Hackensee occupied the front of her cottage and rented the two back
rooms, overlooking the river, to Dr. Frei, the young musician who
had come to Roseborough within the last few weeks. “DR. FREI, VIOLIN
INSTRUCTOR” said the written placard on his door.
Johnson nursed an intense dislike for aliens; he “suspected ’em of
plottin’ agin the guver-mint.” Dr. Frei was an alien, and Johnson
told Mrs. Witherby’s day maid, Hannah Ann, that he suspected the
black-whiskered man of being in a plot with Dr. Frei to blow up the
Roseborough gaol or the bell tower “or sump’n”; because, when he turned
about at the end of the lane for a second look, _the stranger had
disappeared_! After he had left her, Hannah Ann was in a seriously
overwrought condition; and so Mrs. Witherby found her when she returned
from her drive. Such was Mrs. Witherby’s own temperament, that it was
not long before mistress and maid were in the same state of mind.
Indeed, Mrs. Witherby was obliged to forego her customary glass of
stout at dinner, because Hannah Ann refused to descend alone to the
cellar for it and Mrs. Witherby would not allow her daughter Corinne
to accompany her. Mabel Crewe, her niece, was not afraid, but she had
turned sulky and bitter under her aunt’s jibes on Wilton Howard’s
account. She revenged herself, therefore, by mocking at Mrs. Witherby’s
fears and by making her go without her ale.
[Illustration]