The morning sunbeams fell across the floor when Marcia awoke suddenly to a
sense of her new surroundings. For a moment she could not think where she
was nor how she came there. She looked about the unfamiliar walls, covered
with paper decorated in landscapes—a hill in the distance with a tall
castle among the trees, a blue lake in the foreground and two maidens
sitting pensively upon a green bank with their arms about one another.
Marcia liked it. She felt there was a story in it. She would like to
imagine about the lives of those two girls when she had more time.
There were no pictures in the room to mar those upon the paper, but the
walls did not look bare. Everything was new and stiff and needed a woman’s
hand to bring the little homey touches, but the newness was a delight to
the girl. It was as good as the time when she was a little girl and played
house with Mary Ann down on the old flat stone in the pasture, with acorns
for cups and saucers, and bits of broken china carefully treasured upon
the mossy shelves in among the roots of the old elm tree that arched over
the stone.
She was stiff from the long ride, but her sleep had wonderfully refreshed
her, and now she was ready to go to work. She wondered as she rose how she
got upon that bed, how the blue bonnet got untied and laid upon the chair
beside her. Surely she could not have done it herself and have no memory
of it. Had she walked upstairs herself, or did some one carry her? Did
David perhaps? Good kind David! A bird hopped upon the window seat and
trilled a song, perked his head knowingly at her and flitted away. Marcia
went to the window to look after him, and was held by the new sights that
met her gaze. She could catch glimpses of houses through bowers of vines,
and smoke rising from chimneys. She wondered who lived near, and if there
were girls who would prove pleasant companions. Then she suddenly
remembered that she was a girl no longer and must associate with married
women hereafter.
But suddenly the clock on the church steeple across the way warned her
that it was late, and with a sense of deserving reprimand she hurried
downstairs.
The fire was already lighted and David had brought in fresh water. So much
his intuition had told him was necessary. He had been brought up by three
maiden aunts who thought that a man in the kitchen was out of his sphere,
so the kitchen was an unknown quantity to him.
Marcia entered the room as if she were not quite certain of her welcome.
She was coming into a kingdom she only half understood.
“Good morning,” she said shyly, and a lovely color stole into her cheeks.
Once more David’s conscience smote him as her waking beauty intensified
the impression made the night before.
“Good morning,” he said gravely, studying her face as he might have
studied some poor waif whom he had unknowingly run over in the night and
picked up to resuscitate. “Are you rested? You were very tired last
night.”
“What a baby I was!” said Marcia deprecatingly, with a soft little gurgle
of a laugh like a merry brook. David was amazed to find she had two
dimples located about as Kate’s were, only deeper, and more gentle in
their expression.
“Did I sleep all the afternoon after we left the canal? And did you have
hard work to get me into the house and upstairs?”
“You slept most soundly,” said David, smiling in spite of his heavy heart.
“It seemed a pity to waken you, so I did the next best thing and put you
to bed as well as I knew how.”
“It was very good of you,” said Marcia, coming over to him with her hands
clasped earnestly, “and I don’t know how to thank you.”
There was something quaint and old-fashioned in her way of speaking, and
it struck David pitifully that she should be thanking her husband, the man
who had pledged himself to care for her all his life. It seemed that
everywhere he turned his conscience would be continually reproaching him.
It was a dainty breakfast to which they presently sat down. There was
plenty of bread and fresh butter just from the hands of the best
butter-maker in the county; the eggs had been laid the day before, and the
bacon was browned just right. Marcia well knew how to make coffee, there
was cream rich and yellow as ever came from the cows at home and there
were blackberries as large and fine every bit as those Marcia picked but a
few days before for the purchase of her pink sprigged chintz.
David watched her deft movements and all at once keen smiting conscience
came to remind him that Marcia was defrauded of all the loving interchange
of mirth that would have been if Kate had been here. Also, keener still
the thought that Kate had not wanted it: that she had preferred the love
of another man to his, and that these joys had not been held in dear
anticipation with her as they had with him. He had been a fool. All these
months of waiting for his marriage he had thought that he and Kate held
feelings in common, joys and hopes and tender thoughts of one another;
and, behold, he was having these feelings all to himself, fool and blind
that he was! A bitter sigh came to his lips, and Marcia, eager in the
excitement of getting her first breakfast upon her own responsibility,
heard and forgot to smile over the completed work. She could hardly eat
what she had prepared, her heart felt David’s sadness so keenly.
Shyly she poured the amber coffee and passed it to David. She was pleased
that he drank it eagerly and passed his cup back for more. He ate but
little, but seemed to approve of all she had done.
After breakfast David went down to the office. He had told Marcia that he
would step over and tell his aunts of their arrival, and they would
probably come over in the course of the day to greet her. He would be back
to dinner at twelve. He suggested that she spend her time in resting, as
she must be weary yet. Then hesitating, he went out and closed the door
behind him. He waited again on the door stone outside and opened the door
to ask:
“You won’t be lonesome, will you, child?” He had the feeling of troubled
responsibility upon him.
“Oh, no!” said Marcia brightly, smiling back. She thought it so kind of
him to take the trouble to think of her. She was quite anticipating a trip
of investigation over her new domain, and the pleasure of feeling that she
was mistress and might do as she pleased. Yet she stood by the window
after he was gone and watched his easy strides down the street with a
feeling of mingled pride and disappointment. It was a very nice play she
was going through, and David was handsome, and her young heart swelled
with pride to belong to him, but after all there was something left out. A
great lack, a great unknown longing unsatisfied. What was it? What made
it? Was it David’s sorrow?
She turned with a sigh as he disappeared around a curve in the sidewalk
and was lost to view. Then casting aside the troubles which were trying to
settle upon her, she gave herself up to a morning of pure delight.
She flew about the kitchen putting things to rights, washing the delicate
sprigged china with its lavendar sprays and buff bands, and putting it
tenderly upon the shelves behind the glass doors; shoving the table back
against the wall demurely with dropped leaves. It did not take long.
There was no need to worry about the dinner. There was a leg of lamb
beautifully cooked, half a dozen pies, their flaky crusts bearing witness
to the culinary skill of the aunts, a fruit cake, a pound cake, a jar of
delectable cookies and another of fat sugary doughnuts, three loaves of
bread, and a sheet of puffy rusks with their shining tops dusted with
sugar. Besides the preserve closet was rich in all kinds of preserves,
jellies and pickles. No, it would not take long to get dinner.
It was into the great parlor that Marcia peeped first. It had been toward
that room that her hopes and fears had turned while she washed the dishes.
The Schuylers were one of the few families in those days that possessed a
musical instrument, and it had been the delight of Marcia’s heart. She
seemed to have a natural talent for music, and many an hour she spent at
the old spinet drawing tender tones from the yellowed keys. The spinet had
been in the family for a number of years and very proud had the Schuyler
girls been of it. Kate could rattle off gay waltzes and merry, rollicking
tunes that fairly made the feet of the sedate village maidens flutter in
time to their melody, but Marcia’s music had always been more tender and
spiritual. Dear old hymns, she loved, and some of the old classics.
“Stupid old things without any tune,” Kate called them. But Marcia
persevered in playing them until she could bring out the beautiful
passages in a way that at least satisfied herself. Her one great desire
had been to take lessons of a real musician and be able to play the
wonderful things that the old masters had composed. It is true that very
few of these had come in her way. One somewhat mutilated copy of Handel’s
“Creation,” a copy of Haydn’s “Messiah,” and a few fragments of an old
book of Bach’s Fugues and Preludes. Many of these she could not play at
all, but others she had managed to pick out. A visit from a cousin who
lived in Boston and told of the concerts given there by the Handel and
Haydn Society had served to strengthen her deeper interest in music. The
one question that had been going over in her mind ever since she awoke had
been whether there was a musical instrument in the house. She felt that if
there was not she would miss the old spinet in her father’s house more
than any other thing about her childhood’s home.
So with fear and trepidation she entered the darkened room, where the
careful aunts had drawn the thick green shades. The furniture stood about
in shadowed corners, and every footfall seemed a fearsome thing.
Marcia’s bright eyes hurried furtively about, noting the great glass knobs
that held the lace curtains with heavy silk cords, the round mahogany
table, with its china vase of “everlastings,” the high, stiff-backed
chairs all decked in elaborate antimacassars of intricate pattern. Then,
in the furthest corner, shrouded in dark coverings she found what she was
searching for. With a cry she sprang to it, touched its polished wood with
gentle fingers, and lovingly felt for the keyboard. It was closed. Marcia
pushed up the shade to see better, and opened the instrument cautiously.
It was a pianoforte of the latest pattern, and with exclamations of
delight she sat down and began to strike chords, softly at first, as if
half afraid, then more boldly. The tone was sweeter than the old spinet,
or the harpsichord owned by Squire Hartrandt. Marcia marvelled at the
volume of sound. It filled the room and seemed to echo through the empty
halls.
She played soft little airs from memory, and her soul was filled with joy.
Now she knew she would never be lonely in the new life, for she would
always have this wonderful instrument to flee to when she felt homesick.
Across the hall were two square rooms, the front one furnished as a
library. Here were rows of books behind glass doors. Marcia looked at them
with awe. Might she read them all? She resolved to cultivate her mind that
she might be a fit companion for David. She knew he was wise beyond his
years for she had heard her father say so. She went nearer and scanned the
titles, and at once there looked out to her from the rows of bindings a
few familiar faces of books she had read and re-read. “Thaddeus of
Warsaw,” “The Scottish Chiefs,” “Mysteries of Udolpho,” “Romance of the
Forest,” “Baker’s Livy,” “Rollin’s History,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and a
whole row of Sir Walter Scott’s novels. She caught her breath with
delight. What pleasure was opening before her! All of Scott! And she had
read but one!
It was with difficulty she tore herself away from the tempting shelves and
went on to the rest of the house.
Back of David’s library was a sunny sitting room, or breakfast room,—or
“dining room” as it would be called at the present time. In Marcia’s time
the family ate most of their meals in one end of the large bright kitchen,
that end furnished with a comfortable lounge, a few bookshelves, a thick
ingrain carpet, and a blooming geranium in the wide window seat. But there
was always the other room for company, for “high days and holidays.”
Out of this morning room the pantry opened with its spicy odors of
preserves and fruit cake.
Marcia looked about her well pleased. The house itself was a part of
David’s inheritance, his mother’s family homestead. Things were all on a
grand scale for a bride. Most brides began in a very simple way and
climbed up year by year. How Kate would have liked it all! David must have
had in mind her fastidious tastes, and spent a great deal of money in
trying to please her. That piano must have been very expensive. Once more
Marcia felt how David had loved Kate and a pang went through her as she
wondered however he was to live without her. Her young soul had not yet
awakened to the question of how _she_ was to live _with_ him, while his
heart went continually mourning for one who was lost to him forever.
The rooms upstairs were all pleasant, spacious, and comfortably furnished.
There was no suggestion of bareness or anything left unfinished. Much of
the furniture was old, having belonged to David’s mother, and was in a
state of fine preservation, a possession of which to be justly proud.
There were four rooms besides the one in which Marcia had slept: a front
and back on the opposite side of the hall, a room just back of her own,
and one at the end of the hall over the large kitchen.
She entered them all and looked about. The three beside her own in the
front part of the house were all large and airy, furnished with high
four-posted bedsteads, and pretty chintz hangings. Each was immaculate in
its appointments. Cautiously she lifted the latch of the back room. David
had not slept in any of the others, for the bedcoverings and pillows were
plump and undisturbed. Ah! It was here in the back room that he had
carried his heavy heart, as far away from the rest of the house as
possible!
The bed was rumpled as if some one had thrown himself heavily down without
stopping to undress. There was water in the washbowl and a towel lay
carelessly across a chair as if it had been hastily used. There was a
newspaper on the bureau and a handkerchief on the floor. Marcia looked
sadly about at these signs of occupancy, her eyes dwelling upon each
detail. It was here that David had suffered, and her loving heart longed
to help him in his suffering.
But there was nothing in the room to keep her, and remembering the fire
she had left upon the hearth, which must be almost spent and need
replenishing by this time, she turned to go downstairs.
Just at the door something caught her eye under the edge of the chintz
valence round the bed. It was but the very tip of the corner of an old
daguerreotype, but for some reason Marcia was moved to stoop and draw it
from its concealment. Then she saw it was her sister’s saucy, pretty face
that laughed back at her in defiance from the picture.
As if she had touched something red hot Marcia dropped it, and pushed it
with her foot far back under the bed. Then shutting the door quickly she
went downstairs. Was it always to be thus? Would Kate ever blight all her
joy from this time forth?