Rosamond brought out the roast chicken again and made another meal of
it with milk and bread and butter. His Friggets would have raised a
great to-do if they had known how slimly their distinguished master’s
widow had lunched and dined during their absence. She cleared away
her own few dishes quickly and put the contents of her larder on the
dining-room table. It looked a very respectable collation when set off
with the Mearely crockery and silver.
“I shan’t lay the table,” she decided, “because they never want to sit
down at the same time. They can wander in and out as they like between
games, and help themselves to plates and forks and so on.”
Blake, who was gardener as well as coachman, except in the seeding
season, had brought in fresh lettuce already before he had set out to
Trenton; and, as His Friggets kept a supply of their very excellent
mayonnaise always on hand, the big bowl of chicken salad was soon made.
She took another peep at Dom Paradis’s cake, and felt a just pride in
its smooth, snow-white beauty.
“If I can’t stand Villa Rose, in the end I can always go and be
somebody’s cake-maker.” She consoled herself with this thought as she
ran upstairs to dress herself in one of the costliest gowns in her
wardrobe.
This was the rose-and-silver garment taken from the chest in the
morning and hung upon the Louis chair under linen covers. She disposed
the lilac-bud silk in the carved mahogany closet, against the morrow.
As she exchanged her embroidery petticoat for one of organdie and
Valenciennes, it did not occur to her to ask herself how she would
like to have to dress in future on a cake-maker’s wages. Her rapid
fingers, removing hair pins, let down the massy bright waves of her
hair which separated into ringlets just above her waist. It was not a
pure yellow gold, that thick waving fall of hair; it was mingled with
light brown and reddish tints, which made the whole, when pyramided in
curls on her small head, as vital, brilliant, alluring, and indefinable
as the inner nature of its owner. It was hair that in its variety of
shades was truly indicative of milady’s mercurial spirit; for even her
occasional sobriety of mood resembled the sober brown strands that
twisted in with the auburn and gold threads; it was a sobriety inclined
to curl. Her own complaint about her hair was that it never look
combed. Five minutes after she had demurely parted it in the centre the
parting would disappear and the glistening waves, mocking the damp
brush’s authority, would rise and undulate and interlace again at their
pleasure.
She was in a hurry this evening and so let her curls please themselves,
looping the ends through an antique circular Spanish comb of pale gold
and seed pearls. She shook the dress out lovingly. She had never worn
it.
Slowly, so that none of the small raptures of sliding silk should be
missed, she let it descend, enveloping her, carefully keeping it from
touching her hair, till it skirted her ankles evenly and her face
looked over the top and flushed with pleasure to see itself so framed.
The material was a stiff silk of a quality too old for her if the
colour and make of the gown had been different; but the rich shade,
that was a rose-old-rose--neither so placid as old rose nor so positive
as pink--and the semi-pompadour fashion combined with the weave (which
would “stand by itself”) made her look quaint. She was neither of
one period nor another, nor was her gown old or young. The picture
presented was radiant young womanhood of all time in its perfection.
The gown had a partial overdress of dull silver gossamer, finished
in a broad silver lace, in which the vine figure was worked in a
brighter silver, toned again by gray-green leaves in the clusters. The
short sleeves were of the gossamer over rose net, fitted sheerly and
smoothly to the arm. A cuff of the lace turned back from the elbow. A
gossamer and lace collar stood up from the back of the bodice, which
was cut in a narrow low square in front. There were touches of rose in
the pattern of the lace of the collar; reversely, the narrow, smooth,
stiff, rose girdle had silver eyelet holes and a hint of the vine
tracery. Rose stockings and silver shoes, with buckles made of clusters
of tiny roses, completed her costume.
She surveyed herself for some time with a delight that needed no
formulated thought to express it. When she could endure parting with
the vision the Orleans mirror gave her, she tossed a white wrap over
her and went downstairs. Presently she giggled.
“Oh, wouldn’t the Pelham-Hews and Palametta and The Kilties” (her name
for the MacMillans) “rave if I were to go to Mr. Falcon’s breakfast in
this glorious thing! They needn’t worry. I shall be a dowd to-morrow.
But to-night! The shock may kill Mrs. Witherby--and incite Mr. Andrews
and the Judge--but I’ll end my Wonderful Day in splendour, even if it
must be _lonely_ splendour.” Whatever rashness her gown proclaimed, she
would refuse censure for it; it was her right to dare all things on her
Wonderful Day, which could not be said to have passed until midnight
struck.
The six o’clock bell, the last one to toll for the day, had rung ere
she left the mirror.
The fall of gold light through the clear air of the valley, with the
western sky giving just a hint of sunset and the river shining like
molten glass, wooed her to the garden again. Some of the little annuals
had already closed their eyes for the night. The insects and birds
were on homeward flight. She went on, to the incline where the orchard
began. From a point, here, she could look down at the gleaming river
with the picture framed in arching boughs. She found something mystical
in this view and loved it above all others, especially at this hour,
when the last yellow rays fell like a slanting mist and the shadowed
spaces under the huge apple trees were cool and dark.
[Illustration: “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”]
She stood there for some time in deep, calm enjoyment. It came to her
then, as it had done before on such evenings, that the few small-minded
inhabitants, with their petty jealousies, were less than the gravel
on the hillroad that rattled to the passing wheel. There was indeed
a spirit of Roseborough, but the communal spirit was only a poor
counterfeit of it. Professor Lee and his wife had found that pure and
perfect spirit and translated it into human life. It was here for her
also to find and make her own. It grew out of Roseborough’s earth with
its abundant flowers and trees. It was in its clear air, with the
radiance of its light and of the wings that darted and floated and
bathed themselves in it. The river bore it upon its waters, and the
moving reeds sang of it by night and day. When the valley and hills
slept, that spirit soared to the domain of the moon and the stars and
kept watch with them.
“I couldn’t be happy anywhere else,” Rosamond said to herself. “There
is something about this valley that is a part of me. But it is hard
to live here, so close to earth, without love. Roseborough was made
for love. That is what ails us all--Palametta, and The Kilties and the
Pelham-Hews and--and--Rosamond Mearely! Well, I hope the old bald thing
will marry Anabeth and then she’ll stop that crying every time a man is
mentioned.”
The change to humour was only momentary, for the spell of Roseborough
at this hour was too profound to be put off with lightness. Rosamond
yielded to it, because she must. That mood was hers which only Nature,
or a pure art, can give--a yearning that blended peace and sadness,
and which made rich by what it withheld--a desire that was a deeper
happiness than completion could be.
Into her silent reverie strains of music crept. Soft, thin, but mellow
under a lover’s touch, they came from the muted strings of a violin.
The player was coming nearer, and from the upper end of the orchard.
It was no surprise to her now to find Dr. Frei using her orchard as
his concert hall. Dr. Frei had tested Roseborough’s communal spirit
from the first day of his arrival; for he chose to consider that all
Roseborough shared with him whatever it possessed--gladly, lovingly.
Roseborough, taken off guard by the quixotic confidence reposed in her,
had responded in kind. Instead of looking the stranger over through
her lorgnettes _ad lib._, she had returned his instant greeting and
opened her heart to him with a warmth that amazed herself, though the
recipient of her favour appeared to see nothing unusual in it.
“I wonder if he has been playing to Mrs. Lee?” was Rosamond’s mental
query.
In playing to Mrs. Lee, Dr. Frei had first introduced himself to
Roseborough. One bright spring morning, hearing strange, delectable
sounds, Mrs. Lee had hastened into her tiny garden and--found a young
man sitting by the well playing a violin. A Trenton carter sat on his
wagon beyond the gate, eating his way through a loaf of bread. The cart
was piled high with small luggage. The violinist had risen, at sight of
her, bowed profoundly, kissed her hand with emotion, explained himself
as a concert violinist whose health had failed under the strain of
public appearance, and begged leave to live in her cottage. This she
finally convinced him, to his great annoyance, was not to be.
“But I honour you when I say I wish to live in your home!” he had
exclaimed, autocratically. “It is not to be argued. I have decided.”
He pointed to the carter and the portmanteaux.
He was not insane, she had become comfortably assured of that, though
he was undeniably eccentric. In the end she had sent him with a note to
Mrs. Hackensee, asking that he be cared for as a dear young stranger
who had brought to Roseborough, not only his great talent, but also his
beautiful faith in human goodness.
From that moment Dr. Frei had waited for no introductions or
invitations. If a Roseborough door stood open, he entered it; and told
those within that he was rejoiced to be among them. If the inmates were
breakfasting, lunching, or supping, he pulled a chair up to the table
and waited to be served as naturally as if he were a member of the
family.
“Would you believe that this is the one spot on earth where I could
do this?” he would say. “Yet it is so. It is your spirit. It is
Roseborough. Roseborough restores my soul.”
Violin in hand, he had walked in upon their mother and the seven
Pelham-Hews at eight o’clock one morning in house-cleaning time.
Some of the septet were on ladders and on chairs with mops and with
dusters, rubbing the paper down or cleaning the pictures; and others
were beating cushions or mattresses and generally translating the word
home into horror. Thinking that nothing but financial ruin or a death
from infectious disease could make such an upheaval necessary, and
eager to offer the only consolation in his power--a tender, wordless
sympathy--he had seated himself on a rolled mattress and played to them
for two hours without cessation; then, with tender looks, taken his
departure.
“I, too, have the spirit. I, too, belong to Roseborough,” was all that
he said, as he waved them a majestic farewell from the door. Thinking
him mad, not a Pelham-Hew had dared to move or speak during the
recital. Anabeth, whose foot had gone to sleep, fell off the ladder as
soon as he had gone and struck her funny-bone, the accident resulting
in severe hysterics.
He had made himself equally free of the house and grounds of Villa
Rose. Though, before others, his manner to the Villa’s lady was formal,
he expressed, in private, the intimate affection of a brother. Her
widowhood appealed to his chivalry; and her black ribbons, he said, put
out the sun for him; how had the anomaly of grief entered Roseborough
and how had it attached itself to _her_?
“In me you have always a brother, a friend, a protector,” he would
say. “What privilege of manhood is more to be envied than the right to
shelter women?”
She saw him now, and perceived that he had already seen her and was
playing to her--the minuet she loved. He came slowly down the path, his
dark eyes fixed on her, a smile about the lips that were too finely and
sensitively formed for a man’s mouth.
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 and hiding from time to time behind the broad tree
trunks. He was observing them, however, minutely.
Frei paused beside her. They did not speak until the exquisite melody
was ended. He took her hand and kissed it.
“Rosamond.” It was his habit to address her so, because--so he
said--the sound of her name was like music.
“Your music supplies the only thing that this wonderful scene lacked,”
she said--“melody!”
“You are moved. How beautiful your eyes and lips are when feeling stirs
you! I have often remarked it. It is like a wind in the rose garden
to-night, because you are a rose. I can see rose petals under that
white cloud. Remove your cloak.”
She slipped it off and hung it on the gate. Not until she had done
so, did it occur to her that she had obeyed a command, given with
an authority which was inborn and unconscious that such a thing as
opposition existed in the human breast.
“If I could compose a melody noble, tender, wistful.... Ah! I lack
the words to describe it! But if I could compose it I would call it
‘Rosamond.’”
“And dedicate it to me as if I were a royal highness.”
He frowned.
“Not at all!” he asserted almost with violence. “I compose no
masterpieces for royal highnesses. Royal highnesses are ugly and
artificial. But you! Fair Rosamond, they tell me--Miss Watts, I think
it was, told me last--that you were born on the farm. ‘Farm product,’
she called you. Your mother....”
“Made and sold butter! I am sure all Roseborough has informed you of
that!”
“Ah, yes!” eagerly. “Almost every lady here--knowing by intuition how
I would regard it--has told me this. And to each I have expressed my
delight. Butter! how fragrant--how mellow! It is for you the perfect
origin. Clover and hay and the sweet things of earth! Butter! It
enraptures me to think your childish hands played in the churn with
what Nature alone had produced.” He caught her hands and kissed them
fervently.
“So that is how you think of it?” she smiled.
“Hush; I wish to play you the little Tschaikowsky.”
He leaned his head over the instrument again and began to play.
Watching him, she noted the whitening temple-locks against the coal
black of his hair where it had not turned, and the lines in his thin,
dark-skinned face, and wondered what sorrow had written these marks of
age upon so young a man.
“I am thirty-five,” he had once said to her. “I tell you only what all
the world knows.” This last was a pet phrase of his in relating details
about himself. She understood by it that, in some brilliant circle far
from Roseborough, he had been a concert artist of note.
When the little air was ended, she said:
“I have learned the accompaniment to that. We will play it this
evening. You have heard from Mrs. Lee that I am having a few guests for
an hour or so this evening.”
“No! I have not heard. I went just now to play for Mrs. Lee, whom I
love with a reverent affection. But I saw through the windows that
she had a woman there, and oh, such a running hither and thither with
towels and candles and so forth! So I stole silently away. I will come,
dear Rosamond, and we will play. But now I must go home to Mütterlein
Hackensee, who will have made a simple but perfect meal for me. She
will be so distressed that I am not there to eat it fresh from her
hands.”
“I see Mr. Andrews coming over the top of the hill. If you wait a
moment you will just catch him below the wall here, and he will drive
you home.”
“Ah! So? That is excellent. Rosamond, to-day, an hour ago, perhaps, I
made a wonderful discovery. I felt like some poor simple-minded peasant
who finds a sacred relic. I, also, wished to kneel, in awe and joy,
before a holy thing which I could not understand because my mind could
not grasp it. You are my dear sister and my spiritual kin, and to you I
will tell what I found.”
“What? Tell me,” she said gently.
“I discovered that I am Richard Frei--a man, like any other man; and
that I may love and marry--like any man. The amazement of it has
overwhelmed me.”
The rapt intensity in his eyes forbade her to smile. With a spontaneous
movement of sympathy she slipped her hand into his arm.
“But why does that amaze you? The right to love is given to every
man--to all the world. It has always been so.”
He looked at her in silence for a few moments; a sensitive quiver
passed over his face and his eyes filled.
“It is true,” he said at last, slowly. “It is true--that strange,
wonderful thing you have said there. It _is_ given to every man to love
one woman and to be loved by her. Oh, marvellous! I can no longer
believe that once I saw men who had not known the feeling of gratitude.”
She pressed his arm kindly, but did not try to speak.
Mr. Andrews’ cart wheels sounded near by. Rosamond withdrew her hand
then, and smilingly reminded him:
“You’ll have to run to catch him. His nag always canters down hill. It
has cast-iron knees.”
“Adieu. Till to-night.” He ran through the slanting orchard toward the
wall, calling back to her twice:
“To-night,” and, “later, I come.”
She watched him disappear among the trees, and presently heard the cart
stop, then go on again.
The last russet gold of sunset and the gray and purple of oncoming
twilight mingled over the gleaming river. One star shone high above
Villa Rose.
“It is night now,” she thought, as she looked at the star. “My
Wonderful Day is ended. And _he_ never came to say, ‘Good-morning,
Rosamond!’”
Turning, she caught a glimpse of Mrs. Lee’s dove-gray dress. She went
up the path to meet her. Together they walked across the garden and
into Villa Rose.
The black-whiskered man, stooping among the shadows, stole to the gate
and watched Rosamond until she disappeared. Then he disposed himself
comfortably on the grass under a pear tree and covered his face with
his hat. Anon his heavy breathing and zizz-z-zing told the rival
locusts and crickets that he slept.
[Illustration]