PAUL’S NEWS.
He had grown broader and handsomer and looked a trifle older, with that
brown beard on his chin, she thought, but otherwise he was the same Paul
as of old, with his sunny smile, his friendly manner and his
unmistakable joy at seeing her again. She made him sit down in the best
rocking chair,—took his hat, and smoothed his hair caressingly, and
forgot that she had not breakfasted and that her rolls were still
blackening in the oven.
“How did you get here?” she asked. “Nobody knew you had landed or was on
the way even.’
“I should suppose your bones would have warned you of our arrival. I
hope they haven’t ceased to do duty,” Paul answered, and then explained
that they had changed their plans and sailed from Havre a week earlier
than they had intended. Some of their friends were coming on the Ville
de Paris and among them Mrs. Percy and Clarice.
The name of Jack Percy was to Miss Hansford much like a red flag to a
bull, while that of any member of his family was nearly as bad. Now,
however, she only straightened her back a little with an ominous “Ugh,”
which Paul did not notice, so absorbed was he in the great good news he
had come to tell her. But first he must answer her numberless questions
as to what he had seen and where he had been.
“Been everywhere and seen everything, from Queen Victoria to the Khedive
of Egypt. Been on the top of Cheops, and inside of him, too,—and up the
Nile to Assouan and Philae and Luxor, and seen old Rameses,—frightful
looking old cove, too, with his tuft of hair and his one tooth showing,”
he said, rattling on about places and people of whom Miss Hansford knew
nothing.
Luxor and Assouan and Cheops were not familiar to her, but when he said,
“I tell you what, the very prettiest place in all Europe is Monte
Carlo,” she was on the alert in a moment. She looked upon Monte Carlo as
a pool of iniquity, and she said to the young man, “Paul, you didn’t
gamble there!”
Paul answered laughingly, “They don’t call it gambling; they call it
play.”
“Well, play, then. You didn’t play? I know you didn’t, for when I heard
you was there I wrestled in prayer three times a day that God would keep
you unspotted, and he did, didn’t he?”
She had her hand on his shoulder and was looking into his face with such
faith and trust in her kind old eyes that it was hard to tell her the
truth. But the boy who had never told a lie when he stole the melon had
not told one since, and would not do so now, even if he lost some of the
good woman’s opinion.
“I’m afraid you didn’t wrestle enough,” he said, “for I did play.”
“Oh, Paul,” and Miss Hansford drew a long breath, which hurt the young
man some, but he went on unfalteringly, “I didn’t mean to, but when I
saw how easy it was to put down a piece of money and double it I tried
and made quite a lot at first; then I began to lose and quit.”
“Thank God!” came with great fervor from Miss Hansford, while Paul
continued, “It beats all what a fascination there is about it, and what
luck some people have. There was Clarice, won straight along till she
made two or three hundred dollars.”
“Clarice! oh, she was there, was she?” Miss Hansford asked, her tone
indicating that she knew now perfectly well why Paul played and in a
measure exonerated him.
Had Paul been less in love than he was, or less blinded with his great
happiness, he would have interpreted her manner aright. But he was
blind, and he was in love, and he replied, “Why, yes; didn’t you know
that Mrs. Percy and Clarice were with us in Italy and Switzerland and in
Paris, and on the same ship with us? That’s why we came a week earlier.
We wanted to be with them.”
“I see, but I didn’t know as Miss Percy was able to go scurripin’ all
over the world,” was Miss Hansford’s comment, to which Paul did not
reply.
He was thinking how he should tell her what he had come to tell and what
seemed very easy when he was by himself. If Miss Hansford had not been
sitting up quite so straight and prim and looking at him so sharply
through her spectacles, which he knew were her near-seers, and which
nothing could escape, he would have been less nervous.
“You see,” he began at last, “we were together in Switzerland last
summer,—met quite by accident at Chamonix,—and then at Geneva and
Lucerne, and we walked up the Rigi together and got lost in a fog and
stumbled around half the night. It was great fun and she was awfully
plucky.”
Here Paul stopped to recall the fun it was to be lost in a fog with a
pretty girl, who clung so closely to him for protection that he
sometimes had to hold her hand in his when she was very nervous and
timid, and sometimes had his arm around her waist to keep her from
falling when the way was rough and steep. Miss Hansford was still
looking at him, and when she thought he had waited long enough she
brought him back from his blissful reminiscence by asking, “Who walked
up the Rigi with you, and got lost in the fog, and stumbled round half
the night, and was awfully plucky? Your mother?”
“Mother!” Paul repeated. “Mother walk up the Rigi! Great Scott! She was
at the hotel, wild because we didn’t come. They had sent out two or
three guides to look for us, and Mrs. Percy was in high hysterics when
we finally reached the hotel. It was Clarice who was with me.”
“Oh!” and Miss Hansford’s mouth was puckered into the perfect shape of
the letter O, and kept its position as Paul went on: “Clarice took a
severe cold and was ill for a week at the Schweitzerhoff, in Lucerne. We
left them there, but they were with us again in Monte Carlo and Florence
and Rome—and—”
He hesitated, wishing Miss Hansford would say something to help him
along. But she sat as rigid as a stone, while he floundered on until the
climax was reached in Paris, where he asked Clarice to be his wife.
“I always thought she was a nice girl when I used to see her here,” he
said, “but I didn’t know half how bright and pretty she was till—er—”
“Till you got lost with her in a fog on the Rigi,” Miss Hansford
suggested grimly.
It was something to have her speak at all, and Paul answered briskly, “I
guess that’s about the truth. I couldn’t forget her after that, you
know, and so we are engaged. I wanted to tell you and came this way from
New York last night on purpose to see you. I hope you are glad.”
Miss Hansford was not glad. She had never thought of Paul’s marrying for
a long time,—certainly not that he would marry Clarice Percy, whom she
disliked almost as much as she did her half brother, Jack. As Paul
talked he had left the rocking chair and seated himself on the door
step, with the netting thrown back, letting in a whole army of flies.
But Miss Hansford did not notice them. She was trying to swallow the
lumps in her throat and wondering what she could say. She could not tell
him that she was sorry, and with a gasp and a mental prayer to be
forgiven for the deception, she said, “Of course, I’m glad for anything
which makes you happy. I never thought of you and Clarice. I s’posed she
was after that snipper-snapper of an Englishman who was once here.”
She could not resist this little sting, which made Paul wince and fan
himself with his hat.
“Oh! you mean Fenner, who has a title in his family. There’s nothing in
that. Why, he hasn’t a dollar to his name.”
“And you have a good many dollars,” Miss Hansford rejoined; then added,
as she saw a flush on Paul’s face and knew her shaft had hit, “You seem
too young to get married.”
“Why, Aunt Phebe,” Paul exclaimed, “I am twenty-three, and Clarice is
twenty-one. I look like a boy, I know, but this will age me some,” and
he stroked the soft brown mustache, of which he was rather proud. “This
was Clarice’s idea. I believe she thinks I look younger than she does,
but I don’t. We are neither of us children. Some fellows are married
when they are twenty. I shall be twenty-four, for we do not intend to be
married until the middle of October. I mean to have you come to the
wedding with mother. You have never been in Washington and you’ll like
it. I shall have you stop at Willard’s. Mrs. Percy does not live far
from there. You’ve heard of Willard’s?”
“I’d smile if I hadn’t,” Miss Hansford said, while Paul began to open a
paper box which he had brought with him.
“You see,” he continued, as he untied the cords, “I wanted to bring you
something from Europe. I found a creamy kind of shawl in Cairo,—the real
thing, and no sham,—and after I was engaged I felt so happy that I
wanted to give you something more to wear to my wedding, so I thought of
a silk dress. Clarice picked it out for me at the Louvre in Paris. Here
it is,” and he unrolled a pattern of grey silk, whose texture and
quality Miss Hansford appreciated, although not much accustomed to
fabrics like this. “Clarice said the color would be becoming to you and
was just the thing. She knows what’s what,” he continued, gathering up
the silk material in folds, just as the salesman had done at the Louvre.
He did not explain that when he spoke of inviting Miss Hansford to his
wedding Clarice had at first objected and only been won over when she
saw how much he wished it. It was not necessary to tell this, and he
kept quoting Clarice, as if she had been prime mover in the matter. No
woman is proof against a silk such as Paul was displaying, and Miss
Hansford was not an exception.
“Oh, Paul,” she said, laying her hand upon the heavy folds which would
almost stand alone, “what made you do this for an old woman like me, who
never had but two silk gowns in her life, and both of ’em didn’t cost
half as much as this, I know. It was kind in you and Clarice, too, I’m
sure. Tell her I thank her, and I hope you will be happy.”
Her manner certainly had changed, mollified by the dress and the part
Clarice had in it, and when Paul, emboldened by the change, ventured to
say, “Clarice thinks you should have some little lace thingembob for
your head such as mother wears,” she didn’t resent it, but replied, “I
can find that in Boston. Neither you nor Clarice shall be ashamed of me
if I go.”
“Of course, you’ll go,” Paul said, dropping the silk and throwing around
her shoulders the shawl which had been his choice in Cairo. “Look in the
glass and see if it isn’t a beauty.”
Miss Hansford admitted that it was a beauty, but on a very homely old
stick, and Paul knew by her voice that the chords which had been a
little out of tune were in harmony again. Suddenly it occurred to her
that as she had not breakfasted, probably Paul had not either, and she
urged him to stay, but he declined. He was to leave on the next boat,
and there were some things he must attend to at the house. He should
come to Oak City again in a few days, he said, and then bade her
good-bye, while she folded up the shawl and dress, admiring the latter
greatly, wondering if it were quite right for one who professed what she
did to wear so expensive a silk, and if she were not backsliding a
little. She did a good many things now which she would not have done
when she first became a resident of the place. The world and the flesh
were crowding her to the wall, and the devil, too, she sometimes feared,
but she would keep her silk gown in spite of them all, and as she put it
away in her bureau drawer she thought that as none of her immediate
friends had anything like it they might disapprove.
“I don’t care much if they do. They haven’t chances to see things as I
have,” she said, with a degree of complacency which would have amused
one who knew that her superior chances “to see things” were comprised in
the week she had spent in Boston years ago, and her frequent visits to
the Ralston House, where, on Paul’s account, she was always a welcome
guest.
And now the good days were drawing to a close, for Paul was going to be
married. This in itself was bad enough, for with a wife he could never
be the same to her, but worse than that, he was to marry Clarice Percy.
This tarnished the lustre of the grey silk from Paris and marred the day
she had thought so bright in the early morning.
“I’ve lost my boy,” she said, sadly, as she watched the boat which was
taking Paul away, and on the upper deck of which he stood waving his
umbrella towards her.
She didn’t wave back, but raised her hands in a kind of benediction and
looked after him with an indefinable yearning until he was hidden from
view. Her bones were in full swing this morning, and as she resumed her
work she soliloquized, “I don’t know what ails me, but I feel that
something bad will come of this marriage. How can it be otherwise? I
know it is mean, and may be wicked, but I can’t abide the Percys.”