“Industrious lady! You have brought fancy work of some kind!” Rosamond
pointed to the little crocheted bag hanging from the older woman’s
wrist.
“Oh, no. Just a bit of lace I’m mending. What an exquisite twilight. It
seems a pity to turn on artificial light. Your lighting scheme is very
beautiful; but, nevertheless, I’ve always wondered that Mr. Mearely
did not keep to candles. They seem more harmonious with his antiques.
Electricity is so modern.”
“Mr. Mearely thought that electric light was a great protection. He
used to say that a burglar might come into the house, and clear out
with the most priceless of his antiques, while he himself was hunting
for the intruder with a candle, and that a draught, or even the burglar
himself, might blow out the candle; but that, with electric light,
one need only turn a button and the guilty party would be discovered
and confounded. It was his theory that a sudden blaze of light always
frightens wrongdoers.”
Mrs. Lee was composing herself on the large settee near the fireplace.
She exchanged her ordinary glasses for her “fine work” spectacles and,
setting thimble, scissors, and thread on the little table at the end of
the settee, she drew out of the bag a small, circular frame holding the
kerchief she was darning.
“Personally, I think he really wanted his art objects properly lit up
at night, so that he could sit in his swivel chair and look at them all
in turn.” Rosamond turned on the last of the little, separate lamps.
Then she opened a drawer in her inlaid desk at the back of the room,
near the door to the music room, and took out a pack of cards.
“I think this is the pack they had last. Mrs. Witherby is very hard
on cards--especially when she is losing. She tears the edges with her
teeth.”
“An intense nature, poor dear woman. Her married life, though otherwise
ideal, I fear was stormy. She was wildly jealous, poor soul; without
cause, I’m sure. I know Mr. Witherby came to my husband for advice
about it. ‘Tell me, for heaven’s sake, what to do with Emma,’ he said.
He was distracted.”
Rosamond giggled.
“He should have asked Blake. Blake has very practical ideas.”
“Has he? I can hear you laughing, so I know you’re at some mischief.
But I will say, nevertheless, that I believe humble peasant folk, like
Blake and his kind, have many simple, natural ideas that would benefit
all of us. Peasant unions are frequently happier than the marriages of
intellectuals. For all your laughing, I dare say Blake could have given
Mr. Witherby good advice.”
Rosamond giggled again.
“He could! excellent advice! ‘Hemma ud a-ben a different ’ooman if
Timothy Blake had ’ad ’er,’” she concluded, in fair mimicry of the
disciplinarian’s dialect.
“My dear husband told him there was nothing he could do with Emma, but
let time and patience prove her own folly to her. The poor man did not
live long, and I dare say she has often regretted her tantrums. I’m
afraid a good many married couples do have these times with each other.
The only things I ever scolded Professor Lee for were giving so much
money away, and being so unpunctual at meals; and that was only because
these were both so bad for him. But though his generosity did bring us
to very slender means and a tiny cottage, we had enough for our needs
after all; and I wouldn’t really have changed his nature, in this
respect, if I could. It is something of a problem to be both liberal
and cautious at the same time; and I confess the Lees never solved that
problem.” She laughed.
Rosamond, finding that a ten-spot was so torn that its identity could
not be hidden from any player who had once held it, was seeking through
the desk for another pack.
“Look, Mrs. Lee!” she called; “Look and tremble.”
“Dear me, what is it?” Mrs. Lee turned and tried to peer across the
room through her “fine work” spectacles. “It’s all a blur to me.”
“This!” Rosamond came over and stood beside her with something gleaming
in her hand. “An engine of destruction.”
“Good heavens, child! a revolver? I do hope it is not loaded.” She
drew back in trepidation from the shining toy with its mother-of-pearl
handle. Rosamond laughed.
“It’s a kind of revolver. It’s a pistol. And it _is_ loaded!”
“Dear, dear. What for? Are you afraid of marauders? Perhaps having all
these valuable art objects in the house makes you nervous; but I am
sure there is no need of pistols. Roseborough never has experiences of
that sort.”
“No,” she laughed. “I’m not afraid. I remember I took it with me two
weeks ago, when Wilton and I went riding with Miss Crewe and Corinne
into the other valley beyond Charleroy. I wanted to prove to him that I
could hit objects at a certain distance. And I did. Mr. Mearely taught
me to shoot and he said I had a straight eye. He was a crack shot
himself, you know. I remember now that I put it in that drawer when
we all came in for tea. Amanda made such a fuss about my keeping it
upstairs. She seemed to think I would get up and commit suicide in my
sleep. I wanted to teach the two girls to fire it, but they wouldn’t
learn, and they screamed every time I popped it off. So it wasn’t a
very successful shooting-party.”
She returned to the desk and slipped the pistol back into its drawer.
“I think I’ll put this new pack in an envelope and write on the outside
‘Losers should not bite.’ If I indulged in Mrs. Witherby’s manners,
she’d be the first to say that nothing else was to be expected from a
farm urchin! But, in her, they are a sign of the aristocrat’s fiery
soul! Pooh!” She put the cards in the centre of the large table.
“It is incredible to me how any one so beautiful as you are to-night
can be so naughty! I had almost said----” Mrs. Lee paused and looked
with mock severity over her glasses.
“What?” with airy defiance.
“‘Spiteful,’ was the word I _almost_ said.”
“I thought you did say it!” The unrepentant one tiptoed over and kissed
her.
“Well, if I did, I might better have kept my breath to cool my
porridge, as the country folk say. My wise rebukes do not seem to
benefit you in the least to-day.”
“Well, you mustn’t scold, for I baked Dom--I mean, Mr. Falcon’s cake,
and it is a marvel of flavoured architecture. It looks like a new
Parthenon--with raisin and fig filling.”
“Then no wonder you will not take reproof from me! And I suppose you
would say I am an ungrateful old woman to attempt to scold you. Very
well. You shall be as wicked as ever you please.”
“And when I have set all Roseborough by the ears, you will come and
straighten things out for me?”
“Oh, surely!” She smiled.
“Hark! The first carriage wheels. It will be the Wellses. They always
arrive first because they have farthest to come.” Rosamond ran to the
verandah. “They are not very far ahead this evening, though; because
Mrs. Witherby’s barouche is just behind.”
In a moment Mrs. Lee heard her exchanging good-evenings with the
arrivals. Then Dr. Wells’s deliberate but hearty voice greeted her from
the steps.
“Ah! there is Mrs. Lee. Well! Well! What an honour! Though, as the
one man in Roseborough who is responsible for the health of the
community--even as our Mrs. Witherby is responsible for its morals
_here_, and the vicar for its status _hereafter_, te-he-he--I ought to
order you home to bed at once. Anyone of your young years should be
asleep at this hour, especially when you keep up the habit of rising at
daybreak.”
Dr. Wells seldom spoke without making a little oration. He was wont to
say that he took his own time about everything because, the time being
his own, he knew he had plenty of it, and no one else had the right
to call him to account for his expenditure of it. That he frequently
forced others to spend a great deal of _their_ own time, in listening
to him wind away from exordium to peroration, was a point he did not
take into his consideration. He was a fine specimen of a fine type,
namely the country doctor of the old school who was constantly to be
seen in all weathers carrying hope and pills, human affection and
gray powders, camomile and cheer, into anxious homes, and caring far
less about his fee than about the patient’s relief. He was short and
stocky--a deep-chested, stout, sound, and roll-shaped body, every hard
layer of fat-protected gristle daring weather and disease to come
on and see what would happen to them. Nature had formed him to be a
country physician; for country folk put their faith only in doctors who
are never ill themselves. A doctor’s health is a country superstition.
It is the sadder, therefore, to be obliged to relate that Dr.
Wells--and his wife, also, for she was, in this temptation, even weaker
morally than himself--had become addicted to dyspepsia. There was
not a thing the matter with their interior mechanisms, really, but
some strain of notoriety-love had led him and his spouse to affect
this delicacy of constitution in order to remind people perpetually
that he was a cousin of Dr. Mayhew Pipp of London who had discovered a
remedy for the burning aftermath of the sin of gluttony--a pellet that
extinguished the fires of the inferno within. It must also be stated
that this pose was losing for Dr. Wells some of that confidence in
his immunity without which no medicine man can treat persons to their
profit or his own--in the country.
He took off his light topcoat, hat, and thin, white silk scarf, [of
the old school, he believed in bundling up for driving, at night,
regardless of the weather,] and laid them on a bamboo seat on the
verandah. His outer coverings removed, there emerged an apple-rosy,
rotund face, with white hair, moustache, and whiskers about it, every
hirsute atom crisp and electrical with health. The very man, one would
say, to enter a sick room; for the patient would inevitably cry: “No
matter what it is, give _me_ the dose _you_ take!”
“And where is Mrs. Wells?” Mrs. Lee inquired, as the doctor came down,
leaving the ladies still unwinding their wraps, with Mrs. Mearely’s aid.
“Ah! in bed. Yes, the dear soul. In bed. Another dyspeptic attack.
But she insisted on my coming without her. She knows that whist is my
weakness, and, being glad that I have no worse vices, she encourages
it. It is most satisfactory, my dear lady, to indulge in vices approved
of by one’s wife.” Smiling, he seated himself beside her.
“Well! There is our dear Mrs. Lee!” Mrs. Witherby sailed down upon her.
“What a surprise! I had no idea we should find you here!”
What more she might have said, in this vein, was curbed by a
supercilious glance from her niece, who bent to kiss Mrs. Lee’s left
cheek as soon as her aunt had completed her osculations on the other
one. Mrs. Witherby knew that Mabel was in a dangerous humour; and
she recalled that, at times, on far less provocation, Miss Crewe
had succeeded in conveying to an assembly her doubts of her aunt’s
truthfulness. Avoiding danger, therefore, she drew away from the settee
and seated herself at the table.
“Cards!” she cooed. “Isn’t that delightful? And a new pack, too! How
thoughtful of you, dear Mrs. Mearely, to get us a new pack. The others
were really rather spoiled. Men are so rough in their handling of
cards.”
Mrs. Witherby was, like Dr. Wells, less an individual than a type.
She was symbolic of efficiency, as the village understood the term.
That is, never having been obliged to do anything herself to satisfy
others, she felt completely competent to give anyone directions about
any task whatsoever. She knew how _she_ wanted things done, and had a
rooted conviction that she was the only person in the community whose
pleasure or approval mattered in the least. She was rather overwhelming
in appearance, being of more than medium height, and decidedly more
than medium breadth. Furthermore, she wore both those anatomical
protuberances cited by the ancient Hebraic scribes as perilous
next-door neighbours for a humble and a contrite heart--namely, the
proud bosom and the high stomach.
Her two chins reposed between the upper folds of her fichu, for she
held her head haughtily with chins in, brow high, eyebrows elevated,
eyes alert and ready to snap with indignation at the stupidity and
impropriety constantly affronting them, and mouth slightly open,
prepared to exclaim the scathing contempt surging within her for anyone
and everyone whose views on any subject differed from Emma Crewe
Witherby’s.
Her hair was but slightly touched with gray and she was still doing
all she could to conceal the blanched tendrils. She made an erection
of her tresses, after the tongs had crimped every strand, till the
formation suggested an overturned cornucopia; she then inset it with
tortoiseshell pins. Her dress was a plum-coloured brocade with black
velvet train, and elbow sleeves of brocade. Her fichu and her sleeves
were trimmed with Honiton lace. “A gentlewoman should adorn her
station,” was one of her favourite axioms. Three fourths of the money
spent on dress in her household went to assist her in living up to the
saying. The rest was sufficient to buy girlish muslins for Corinne, who
was “too young for silks,” being barely eighteen.
Mabel Crewe, who was twenty-five--and handsome, in a slim, dusky,
reserved fashion (with sulphurous suggestions underneath it)--was
provided for with her aunt’s cast-offs, which her own clever fingers
converted into passable, though not suitable, raiment for her comely
young body. She was in black silk to-night. The long skirt hid the
fact that her hose were not silk and that her slippers were rubbed in
places. Her well-shaped white arms and slender throat were oddly set in
Aunt Emma’s old _peau de soie_, but perhaps whiter by contrast.
This last was Wilton Howard’s opinion as his gaze sought and lingered
on her. He had driven up so closely upon the other two vehicles that
the sound of his wheels had not been heard. He stood on the verandah,
divesting himself of his topcoat. Anticipation of the only happiness
she knew--her few words and stolen moments with this man--made Mabel
Crewe keener than the others to detect his noiseless presence. She
turned and saw him, this handsome, well-bred, shallow young gentleman,
surveying her with admiration in his eyes and a frown between his
brows. Perchance the frown meant that he was resentful of her power
to stir him, since nothing could come of it but disappointment. In
Roseborough, persons of his and Miss Crewe’s birth and kindred could
not marry on nothing but love. Their families, and Roseborough,
demanded of them that they settle themselves properly in life, to keep
up appearances.
Her eyes met his and a movement went through her, like the slightest
swaying of a tree; but, after the first instant, her face revealed
nothing. It was proud, indifferent--cold, one might almost have said,
but for the undercurrents tingling through her and stirring the depths
of her eyes.
“Good-evening, Mr. Howard,” she called in her leisurely voice--a voice
refined and musical in quality and indifferent in its inflections. She
turned her back on him and moved to the settee where Dr. Wells and Mrs.
Lee were still in conversation.
“Mr. Howard has arrived, and I am sure Judge Giffen and Mr. Andrews
cannot be far off. Doctor, you will presently be rejoicing in beating
Aunt Emma at cards. That is, if she is not your partner. If she _is_
your partner, then you can rejoice in being beaten for her sake, with
many stripes.”
“I heard every word of that, Mabel,” Mrs. Witherby declared, with a
little more asperity than usual. “You delight to undermine my intellect
in the ears of my friends. As to cards, I frequently say, and without
egotism, that there is not a woman in Roseborough who plays a better
hand than I.”
Corinne Witherby giggled at this.
“I heard the Judge say one evening that no doubt there is no woman in
Roseborough who plays a _better_ hand than some he has seen you hold,
Mamma; and that he is positive no other woman in the world would play a
_good_ hand in the way he’s seen you play some of yours.”
“Corinne!”
“Oh, it’s no use reproving me! If I am old enough to play cards with
you, I’m old enough to criticise the way you play your hands.”
“Corinne, be quiet. I am speaking to Mrs. Mearely. I fear I’ve spoiled
you by making such a companion of you. You should be in the schoolroom.”
“But, I’m not!” Corinne cried, merrily. She was thinking little of what
she said; for her eyes, round as saucers, were devouring Rosamond in
her rose-and-silver trappings.
“Isn’t Mrs. Mearely too beautiful for words to-night?” she whispered
into her cousin’s ear.
“Who is she to have everything? Any one could be beautiful in such a
frock,” was the bitter reply.
Corinne’s arm went round Mabel’s slim waist. She whispered again:
“You look beautiful, too--even if your dress is plainer than hers. When
I am twenty-one, and mamma gives me some of the handsome things out of
the big box, I’m going to divide everything half and half with you.”
“Oh, Corinne!” she smiled. “Perhaps, when you’re twenty-one, you won’t
want to divide.”
“I’ll want to, more! Because I’ll be three and a half years fonder of
you than I am now.”
Seeing Mr. Howard manœuvring his greetings so that he could conclude
them naturally at Mabel’s side, Corinne withdrew. She was a pretty
little creature, plump, rosy, and lively. Her white muslin frock, the
work of her cousin’s clever fingers, set off her black, curly hair and
big, bright brown eyes. Mrs. Taite could never have cast her doubts
upon Corinne in her muslins, for the guileless heart made itself
evident in all her words and acts. One surmised--from her buoyancy
and sweetness of temper, and a native thoughtfulness she had for the
sensibilities of others--that her father, the late Jameson Witherby,
Esquire, had taken a good disposition away from earth with him when he
had quitted the side of his Emma--until that day when an overworked
Providence (meaning only to be systematic, not unkind) should re-unite
them for all eternity.
“Mrs. Mearely, do come aside a moment. I must ask you something.” Mrs.
Witherby took Rosamond firmly by the arm.
“It is my dress she is after!” Rosamond thought. “Ask; I’m all
attention,” she said.
“Your gown. Do tell me now, have you put off _all_--even the smallest
hint--of mourning?... _Permanently?_” She added the last word with
heavy emphasis.
“Yes. Even to the last, smallest hint. Permanently.”
“Indeed? Indeed?”
“Yes. Indeed and indeed!”
“Of course, I felt sure you would not resent my questions. Though if
any one else asked you, you might ask, in return, what business it was
of theirs. And I, for one, should back you up in that; for, if there
is one thing above another which I neither can nor will tolerate, it
is inquisitiveness. Why pry into the affairs of others? Whose business
is it but their own? That is what I say. All Roseborough knows what I
think about busybodying and gossip.”
“Yes; that is very true. All Roseborough knows.... By the way,
Roseborough has behaved beautifully to my mourning, never resenting
that it shadowed the pleasure of teas and little gatherings,
when--er--joy should have been unconfined. I am showing Roseborough how
well I understand it, and how grateful I am for its forbearance, by
returning to colours--the brightest and cheeriest I can select.” She
beamed sweetly.
“Oh!--oh-h? Really?” Mrs. Witherby felt her sails slacken as the wind
was taken out of them.
“To-morrow, at Mrs. Lee’s breakfast, I shall wear white--a very simple
frock. But to-night I have put this one on, to introduce myself in my
new character--first, to you and Mrs. Lee and our closest intimates.
You can understand how I would naturally do so?” She smiled again, more
sweetly.
“Oh, yes. Oh-h, ye-es! I understand it perfectly. Oh, _perfectly_! Are
you sure, my dear Mrs. Mearely, that you do not intend to make a little
announcement ere we leave to-night?”
“An announcement?”
“Judge Giffen is to be here--ah, he _is_ here! I didn’t see him come
in. It is very sweet of you to say that you have dressed yourself
so charmingly, to-night, to give pleasure to _my_ eyes, but are you
sure--are you _sure_” (she wagged a forefinger playfully) “that you
didn’t put on that ineffable gown to charm a _lover_?”
In spite of herself, Rosamond’s eyes snapped and the red flamed in her
cheeks.
“Not only sure, but certain and positive,” she said tartly.
Mrs. Witherby, much pleased to see the flush and discomposure, smiled,
bridled, and said:
“Well, we shall see what we shall see! and I feel confident we shall
know a great deal more about our dear Mrs. Mearely to-morrow. The sweet
blush is _most_ becoming.”
Knowing that she had the worst of the encounter and could not easily
recover, Rosamond was glad to be obliged to give her attention to the
Judge. She showed a proper solicitude regarding his misadventures on
horseback and made gracious response to his compliments.
Presently Mr. Andrews and Dr. Frei arrived. The latter, violin-case
in hand, loitered by Miss Crewe and Wilton Howard, who had seated
themselves on the verandah to observe the young moon rise over the
river, defiant of the wrath their _tête-à-têtes_ always aroused in Mrs.
Witherby’s breast. While it could be said of even the stocky doctor
that he wore evening dress naturally, and looked as if the coat--which
classifies all who wear it as either gentlemen or waiters--_belonged_
to him, yet it must be admitted that Dr. Frei brought a greater
distinction to the garment than did any other man in Roseborough.
Rosamond thought he carried his head like some _mæstro_ receiving the
homage of an enraptured public. As to features, he was less handsome
than Howard, and he lacked the smooth and respectfully caressing
manner which was the latter’s greatest charm to women; but there
was “an elegance about him”--as all Roseborough echoed Mrs. Witherby
in saying--that set him apart. Even Mrs. Witherby was baffled by his
manner. It stopped her questions before they were completed, making
her change their tenor and give them the semblance of innocent and
uninquisitive remarks.
Mr. Albert Andrews stood back surveying his hostess with a stare more
pop-eyed than usual. He knew _pink_ when he saw it; and he was seeing
pink. The silver overdress, however, raised a row of interrogation
points across the blank spaces of his mind. Mrs. Bunny had not shown
him silver’s place in the emotional scale. He was a cautious, sensitive
soul, and desired to avoid making himself ridiculous a second time. He
looked about for aid and anon decided that Dr. Wells, whose profession
brought him into intimate relations with death, was the man who should
know whether a silver overdress was a condition of mourning or not. He
drew him aside and asked the important question.
“Silver? Silver? God bless my soul, man, I don’t know. One sees a good
deal of it about.”
“I think I recall seeing silver wreaths on caskets?” Mr. Andrews
ruminated with questioning inflection.
“No doubt. No doubt. And on wedding cakes, too! Many a man wishes the
wreath that topped his wedding cake had adorned his casket instead.”
Dr. Wells was not interested in the subject, so he chuckled at his
own joke, gave Andrews a dig in the ribs, and made off to the whist
table, mentally resolving to have Corinne instead of her mother for his
partner. In this he was disappointed. Andrews had already asked Corinne
to play with him. He was practising gallantry, as well as colour
selection, to fit himself for the _rôle_ he wished to enact as the
master of the mistress of Villa Rose.
“I am eager to try the Tschaikowsky with you,” Frei said to Rosamond,
taking his violin from its case. “May we not play now?”
“Yes, certainly. We shall not be missed.”
She looked about at her guests and saw that they were all apparently in
contentment. Dr. Wells was dealing the cards, and the four at the table
were engrossed already with the pleasure to come. Howard and Mabel,
chatting in low tones on the verandah, had forgotten all the world
but each other. Mrs. Lee was absorbed in a difficult moment of her
lace-mending. The Judge had seated himself at the other end of the long
settee and descended into the profundities of the latest _Digest_.
Rosamond, lifting herself on tiptoe, put one finger on her laughing
lips and the other hand into Frei’s.
“Come,” she whispered.
Smiling delightedly at her prankishness, he clasped her fingers and
tiptoed with her into the music room.