BREAD
Three weeks had now passed since Miss Keith’s departure, and the daily
toil of each had been punctuated by a series of unexpected events.
Much as Brooke had dreaded the going of her executive kinswoman, it was
in a sense a relief. She was well aware that until she was entirely
thrown upon her own resources it would be impossible to judge her
strength or plan definitely for the future; and now that the move had
been made, this planning was the next hill to climb. It was impossible
for Brooke to have a quiet moment, except when she was alone in her room
at night, so long as Miss Keith was in the house; for the estimable woman
was continually remembering some important bit of advice, relative to the
year’s rotation of work in the garden or the “putting up” of the fruit.
One of the last details that she impressed upon Brooke in showing her
baskets of various bulbs and a large store of the seeds of sweet peas,
nasturtiums, and other hardy annual flowers, all neatly put up in paper
bags, was to sow plenty of them in long rows like vegetables, because
as she said “the rich folks were always stopping to see the view as they
drove from Stonebridge to Gordon, and often sent in and begged to buy the
old-fashioned flowers, because their gardens had not room for them.”
Brooke promised, but the matter passed quickly from her overcrowded mind;
for, interpreted by Miss Keith, the work of the mistress of the West
homestead would have kept at least six Plymouth-Rock-ribbed housewives at
work from rise until set of sun. Very different indeed was it from Mrs.
Enoch Fenton’s soothing advice, “Dearie, just begin by doing what you
must, and let the rest sort of slip off your hands until the Lord gives
’em the knack to handle it.”
When the rockaway, driven by Larsen, at last came to the door with the
Cub as honorary footman to see Miss Keith off and make sure that none of
her twelve pieces of wonderfully assorted baggage went astray, she broke
down completely, yet did not seem comforted or pleased with Brooke’s
invitation to return if she changed her mind about matrimony, the final
sniff that followed the sincere and cordial offer being more of scorn
than of grief.
Mrs. Lawton was now fast shaking off the state of being in a waking
dream, in which she lived since the night of the calamity; and, once Miss
Keith had gone, both mother and daughter began to taste the quiet joys
of a companionship that the forced separation of the last few years of
conventional city life had not only left undeveloped but unknown.
Their intercourse was none the less sustaining because the things that
they discussed were the bread-and-butter affairs of every day—whether
the invalid should have chicken or mutton broth, and as to whether it
was possible to make many of the dishes they desired with only half the
ingredients the cook-book demanded, Mrs. Lawton’s experience of long ago
and Brooke’s common sense deciding in the affirmative.
In fact, the young mistress had not been working side by side with Mrs.
Peck (who came to “accommodate” and instruct the day after Miss Keith
left) a week before she was sure of what she had always suspected, that
fully three-quarters of modern recipes for cooking are merely competitive
struggles to see how much good material can be crammed into something
totally unsuitable for the human stomach.
Gradually, as the first week drew to a close, it happened that, after
the Cub and Brooke had helped establish their father in his wheel-chair
for the day, Mrs. Lawton went to and fro about the lower floor, dusting,
adjusting, wiping dishes, watering the plants, and doing the thousand
and one little things that make a woman a part of her home. Then later
in the day she would wheel Adam Lawton into the kitchen perhaps, and,
taking out her work-basket, do some of the sewing that was imperative to
make the garments of the past even possible for present use. As to Adam
Lawton himself, he was more alert and did not seem to doze as constantly
as before, while his eyes wandered from object to object with a changeful
expression unlike the apathy of his first conscious period.
Before the seven days were completely rounded, three things had happened.
Brooke heard her mother hum a snatch of the ballad “Jock o’Hazeldean,”
as she snipped withered leaves from the plants in the kitchen window;
she saw her father stroke Tatters’ head and finger his ears with his
well hand; and Robert Stead, who now left their mail as he returned with
his own from the village every morning, brought her, together with some
belated foreign New Year’s cards, a flat, square package, spattered with
foreign postmarks, addressed in an unknown hand, in care of Charlie
Ashton, and evidently remailed by him.
In a perfectly unobtrusive and matter-of-course way, without so much
as by your leave, the silent man had established a more or less silent
intercourse with the Lawton family as a whole. He must pass the house on
his daily horseback trip to the village, and the fact that he brought
their morning mail or did a bit of marketing was a courtesy that could
not be construed into an obligation, and the lending of a magazine,
novel, or gardening book soon came to be a matter of course.
Mrs. Lawton could not but welcome one of her own kind who belonged as
remotely to a certain past as she herself. Brooke, remembering Dr.
Russell’s words, greeted him cordially, glad to give cheer to one so
lonely, and added to this motive, be it said, was the general interest
which a man of fifty, who is in any way surrounded by a tragedy or
mystery, excites in a young, warm-hearted woman; while the Cub fairly
adored his tutor to be, afar off, for had not Stead a taste for horses,
dogs, guns, fishing tackle, and, above all, liberty? Also, had he not
offered to make easy the torturing pathway of mathematics?—while best of
all from the first he had treated the youth of the difficult age, which
is both aggressive and sensitive, like a fellow-man, younger, of course,
but still an equal, instead of a cross between a fool, a nuisance, and a
criminal, as some of his instructors had chosen to regard him.
When Brooke had taken the little package from Stead’s hand, in spite of
the unfamiliarity of the writing upon it, a sudden embarrassment seized
upon her, making her redden to the temples; and, instead of considering
and opening it as one of the many cards of Christmas greeting that she
had received from fellow-students and friends ever since her Paris year,
she laid it aside and presently carried it to her room.
Closing the door, though it was very seldom that even her mother came to
the second floor, Brooke turned the thick envelope over several times
before cutting the heavy cord that bound it, and so swift and sure is
the speech of telepathy that she did not wonder who had written to
her in care of Carolus Ashton. She did not try to trace the identity
of unfamiliar characters or remember that in the years that separated
her from that time no similar letter had reached her; she simply knew
that the address had been traced by the pen of Marte Lorenz, without
for a moment realizing that the source of this clairvoyance lay in the
undeniable craving of her whole being to know of him. Once opened, a
double sheet of blank paper enclosed a square of artists’ board covered
with light tissue. Tearing this off, with eager trembling fingers,
instead of the man’s face that she had expected to look out at her, with
those wide-open eyes from under the tumbled thatch of hair, instead of
the mustache-veiled lips which told simple truths with such sympathetic
sincerity that it made them more desirable than praise, she saw herself,
or rather one of herselves, for it is only a strangely monotonous,
colourless type of woman who can be interpreted by merely the universal
blending of composites.
It was simply a head, small, perforce, and lightly sketched in oil, with
only enough of the shoulder curve, over which the face was turned, to
give a balance, the sombre background of deep browns serving to throw
out the golden glints of the hair; but the quality that struck Brooke at
once was the same strange effect of lighting that had puzzled her in the
picture of Eucharistia. Without being in the form of the conventional
halo of the old masters, a raying light emanated from behind the head,
and the eyes seemed as if they were but the opening to a vision beyond.
Still hoping for some message or word, Brooke, holding the picture close,
saw in one corner, half hidden by a bit of drapery, the initials “M. L.”
and the words “For the New Year.”
Then Brooke, the girl of sentiment and idealized emotions, argued with
Miss Lawton, the head of the family, the young woman of responsibilities
and practicalities.
Brooke said, “Why did he send me my picture instead of his own?”
Miss Lawton answered, “Perhaps it is not intended for a portrait at all,
but merely a chance resemblance in a New Year’s token, such as an artist
may send to a dozen friends!”
“But,” queried Brooke, not listening, but following her desire, “he may
have meant by sending my portrait that he wished to tell me that he still
thought of me, and a girl always likes to have her picture painted; but
if he had sent his own it would be like intruding himself upon me, if I
had forgotten. How shall I thank him?”
“It is evident, as he sent no address, he particularly desires not to be
thanked,” replied Miss Lawton, somewhat tartly.
“If he trusted his letter to Carolus Ashton, probably hearing of him
through some mutual artist friend, why should not I do likewise, who have
known him as Lucy’s cousin all my life?” persisted Brooke.
“And have him get up one of his fabulous tales about a mysterious
correspondence and tantalize Lucy with it until she turns about and
extracts the scant truth from him?” sneered Miss Lawton.
Without deigning further reply, Brooke went to the little table by
the window, where stood an inkstand, in the drawer of which were some
loose sheets of paper and envelopes. Picking up one of the latter,
she addressed it in her usual hand, stamped it, and then, resting it
on the window ledge, drew a sheet of paper toward her and straightway
fell into a brown study, during which either her brain refused to think
or her hand to write. Then, suddenly starting up, she crossed to her
bureau and, taking up the little picture of Eucharistia, gazed at it
steadily, slipped it from the delicate silver frame, and with a sigh,
half of regret, wrapped it in a sheet of note-paper and sealed it in the
addressed envelope.
Putting the wordless letter in the pocket of the short working apron she
wore, Brooke went to the letter-box that stood at the junction of main
road and lane leading to the barn, and dropped it in, that the carrier
might find it that afternoon on his daily trip.
Returning by way of the kitchen, the loaves of bread that Brooke had
that morning kneaded, moulded, and covered for their final raising met
her eye. At first, smiling at the sudden change of motive, she examined
them seriously, for in reality these loaves were of no small importance,
representing as they did the girl’s first independent baking.
Opening the oven doors, she tested floor and side, adjusted dampers after
Mrs. Peck’s custom, and then, shutting the loaves from sight, went away,
feeling very much as if she had imprisoned some living thing in a fiery
furnace, so much depended upon the outcome of the first venture.
An hour later Mrs. Peck, returning from a neighbourly call upon Mrs.
Fenton, surprised Brooke in the act of taking the four freshly baked
loaves from their pans. They were done to a nicety of golden brown,
and she laid each one down carefully and paused a moment, sniffing the
appetizing odour before covering them with a clean towel, lest too sudden
cooling should make the crust seam.
“Tired, bean’t you!” ejaculated Mrs. Peck, whose principal comfort in the
present was to lament and bewail a past of fabulous grandeur upon the
like of which no living contemporary had ever set eyes. “I suppose you
are thinking how little wunst you ever expected to hev to set to riz and
knead and bake your own bread. Poor dear, I kin feel for you! I’ve been
through it all—it’s turrible to feel yoursel’ downsot like I was after
Mr. Peck died, and not through your own deserts!”
Brooke, who knew the good woman’s pet infirmity, hardly listened to her;
there was another theme that filled her brain, almost shaping itself
to rhythm, not of the past alone, but the present, the future—of all
time, as old as life itself, the unending song of the man who sows, of
the grain in the field that endures the winter and leaps upward, spears
aloft, militant, at the bugle of spring; of the grain in the ear, of the
molten gold of the harvest that goes to the mill, of the clear white
flour that the man’s mate blends with the magic leaven to be bread for
the house. And her heart took wing as she looked at the loaves, for if
the weal of the land rests on the farmer’s plough, second only should
stand the toil of the maker of bread.
There were only four loaves, it is true, but to Brooke they stood for a
definite power—her first direct productive work.
Choosing one from the rest and half wrapping it in a white towel, she
carried it to her mother, who was sitting beside her father, whose chair
was placed close by the sunny window. For the two days past his lips had
moved, though inarticulately, and his wife was doubly on the alert for a
single spoken word.
Holding the loaf before her as if it had been a trophy, Brooke crossed
the room and, folding back the towel, the steaming odour of the bread
reached her mother’s nostrils. Then she held out her hands to her
daughter, taking the bread from her almost reverently.
“Watch father!” whispered Brooke.
There was a look of recognition struggling with other visions in his
eyes, and strange incoherent sounds were formed on the struggling lips.
His eyes fixed themselves on the loaf, which his wife held close. His
nostrils quivered as if in unison with his other awakening senses. Brooke
knelt by his chair, endeavouring to read sense in the vague sounds he
uttered. There came a pause, a hush, and then, in hoarse, uncertain
accents, unmistakable yet feeble at the close, Adam Lawton whispered two
words, “New bread.”
Meanwhile, outside in the kitchen, warming himself by the stove, was
the Cub, who, coming in from the cold and the exertion of rounding up
refractory chickens after their morning sunning, had brought a keen
appetite with him. Snatching a knife that lay on the table, he cut a
thick crust from one of the loaves; this he hastened to spread with
molasses from a jug in the pantry, and then stood with his back to the
fire, taking great round bites with the wholesome gusto of six, instead
of his old-time critical mouthing of surfeited dyspeptic discontent.
* * * * *
The surprise of the second week was a visit from Lucy Dean at its close.
The excellent sleighing had filled many houses of both Stonebridge and
Gordon for the week end, and shortly before noon of Saturday Brooke was
sitting at the old desk in the living room, for which her added books had
earned the name of library, writing her weekly letter to Lucy, when a
shadow darkened the nearest window, and, looking up, she saw Lucy in the
flesh, peering in at her with a serio-comic expression that Brooke knew
of old to mean deep, real feeling. Bells had been jingling by the whole
morning, so that those that had heralded her coming had passed unnoticed.
In an instant Brooke was at the door, and no one who saw the silent but
emphatic meeting could ever after deny the possible existence of real
friendship between women.
“Where did you drop from?”
“The Hendersons’ sleigh! I’m up there for Sunday simply because you
haven’t asked me here yet!”
“Oh, Lucy, everything has been so unsettled and uncertain I really didn’t
even think of it.”
“Of course not; now don’t begin to worry, it’s only my brutal way of
letting you know that I simply had to see you, and have not in the least
increased my admiration for the country in the winter, or the Hendersons
in particular!”
“You will stay to dinner, surely? Or are they waiting outside?” cried
Brooke, in a sudden panic at the thought of being brought thus face to
face with some of their ultrafashionable friends.
“No, my lamb, they have gone over for luncheon to the Parkses’ at Gordon
(you don’t know, of course, that the frisky Senator has just bought the
Smythers’ big estate,—furniture, servants, and all,—in order to carry
still farther the success of the New York housewarming). I begged off for
the day, and, as the party was one man shy, they gratefully gave me my
liberty, and will pick me up about four.
“Now show me your property, live stock and all, and tell me of its
advantages and otherwise, that I may have the right background to keep
in my mind’s eye when I go home. But bless me! where is your mother? and
your father—perhaps he may know me!”
Lucy clung to Mrs. Lawton as she always had, with a wealth of the
untutored daughterly affection that had missed its own outlet motherward,
so Brooke left the two alone together for a few moments in the library
while she went in to see how her father was faring. Tatters, as usual,
was by his chair, not lying down but sitting erect and close. Adam
Lawton was looking intently at a picture paper that Stead had brought
which was propped on the rack before him. Seeing that her father had
not yet noticed her, Brooke stood quite still, watching the pair. Once
in a while the left hand would pat the dog’s head, that was constantly
turned toward him, but Tatters’ attention seemed fixed upon the useless
hand that rested, a dead weight, upon the knee. Nosing it gently, as
a mother dog does her sleeping pups to make sure that they are alive,
Tatters moved it perhaps an inch, his eyes open wide and ears moving
questioningly.
Meeting with no response, no sign of life, his dog mind evidently argued
that the poor human paw was ill, and bringing the universal medicine of
his race in play, he began to lick the hand with slow regular strokes
of his strong, clean tongue, first going over the entire surface, then
separating each finger with a clinging circular motion.
Amazement seized Brooke as the thought came to her that, after all, had
not nature antedated man in this, as in many things, and endowed the
tongues of the dumb beasts with the vital principles of massage? Did the
dog know, with that wisdom that only the confessed materialist is willing
to call mere instinct, the impotence of that right hand; and why might
there not be healing in his imparted vitality? Why might not the natural
magnetism be as good as the electricity from the little machine that her
mother gave her father each day?
As she thought all this, she again heard that hoarse whisper. Straining
every nerve, she listened; the sound came once more—a single word,
“Tatters,” repeated again and again, and lingered over as if it were a
magic clew to the loosening of a tangled skein of memory.
Stepping quickly to his side, Brooke said, slowly and distinctly,
“Father, Lucy Dean is here, with mother in the library. Lucy Dean—would
you like to see her?” Ever since his return to Gilead, Brooke had made
a point of calling Adam Lawton “father” very distinctly whenever she
entered the room in his waking hours, to accustom him to the sound, also
to speak of the ordinary unemotional affairs of every day as a matter of
course, regardless of the fact that he did not heed.
As she repeated the words “Lucy Dean” he shook his head slightly, but
the word “mother” he repeated quite distinctly several times, smiling
as he did so; and then Brooke knew for a certainty that, though motive
power and sense of touch and taste and smell were coming back, memory
had halted, and that it was the Tatters and mother of his youth that he
associated with the words.
Presently Pam came rushing in; she had tracked the footprints of her
friend through the snow and had cast herself wildly against the front
door, regardless alike of paint or bruises, and scrambled into Lucy’s
lap in a very ecstasy. Nor was the Cub far off, and as the two young
women, two dogs, and one youth trudged off presently to see the “estate,”
as Lucy called it, she caught the boy by the wrist and held his right
palm upward as a fortune-teller might, asking what to Brooke seemed
strange questions.
“Where did those blisters come from?”
“Please, teacher, I got ’em splitting wood,” whined the Cub, in comic
imitation of the drawl of the children at the school below at the
cross-roads.
“That dark red stain?”
“Paint, off Silent Stead’s box sleigh—it’s been done over.”
“Who, pray, is Silent Stead?”
The Cub explained with adjectives and details, while Lucy made a mental
note of the same, watching Brooke out of the tail of her eye the while.
“Yes, but those dirty brown stains on the thumb and fingers—they are not
paint!”
“Nope—pine tar!” jerked the Cub, uncertain whether to laugh or resent
this catechising, but deciding on the former.
“Honour bright, nothing else?”
“Honour bright!”
“Then here’s your pipe!” cried Lucy gayly, to the further mystification
of Brooke, who could not interpret the by-play. “Your birthday is half
a year off and Christmas is past; what comes next? Why St. Valentine’s
Day, of course! It’s a present for that with Pam’s love and my—respects
for your fortitude!” Then, rummaging in the front of her blouse, the
present and only pocket universal allowed women by fashion, she drew out
a leather case that enclosed a meerschaum of really beautiful curve, the
bowl being the carved head of the bull terrier!
Then Brooke understood, and locking her arms in those of the other two,
they slid her between them as they ran up and down an icy bit on the side
road, while the Cub further suggested a good coast down the river slope
on an improvised bob-sled after dinner.
But after dinner and its dishwashing, in which Lucy gayly took part,
the two young women ensconced themselves so snugly before the library
fire that it would have taken a stronger lure than a whiz down ever so
smooth a hill to drag them forth. Then they talked woman’s talk, and
Brooke found herself gradually asking for people, as from the distance
of another world, that two months ago she had met in almost daily
intercourse; while the strangest part of all was the fact thus borne in
upon her that a scant dozen, perhaps, were all among the throng who had
been bound by kindred tastes which make the enduring sympathy called
friendship. The rest were merely incidents, the floating clouds of
summer skies bred and born of the caprice of social wind and weather.
“By the way, Brooke,” said Lucy, after they had travelled the old paths
once more in company, “what did you do with those two thin keys that Tom
Brownell picked up from under the rug the day I escorted him from your
apartment at the St. Hilaire? I gave them to you afterward. Don’t say
that you have lost them!” and, as Brooke hesitated, Lucy sat up straight
with a look of alarm.
“Oh, no, they are quite safe in a box in my drawer, though they are
nothing to bother about, for they do not belong to anything of ours, and
both your father and our lawyer said that they fitted no business desk or
box of father’s.”
“That may be,” said Lucy, guilelessly, “but Tom Brownell asked me
particularly if I would beg you to lend them to him. You see he has
a sort of genius for fitting odd numbers together, and finding those
ownerless keys as he did, they seem to have fascinated him strangely.”
“Tom Brownell,” mused Brooke; then, becoming in her turn suddenly all on
the alert, she continued: “Why, he was that reporter who contradicted the
story of father’s feigned illness in the _Daily Forum_, was he not? And
pray, where did you stumble over him again?”
“I haven’t stumbled over him—that is, I mean not to any great extent.
I wish I had, for he’s a most refreshing person,” answered Lucy, at
first surprised into confused utterance and next growing defiant and
continuing recklessly: “Didn’t you recognize him as the college friend
of Charlie Ashton? Oh, I thought you did! Well, he is, anyway, though he
wouldn’t go to Charlie’s red New Year’s tea, even when I begged him; and
he doesn’t go to dances or play bridge, for he’s on the jump most of the
time with his newspaper work. He’s been to the house a couple of times,
with Charlie, of course, and father being at home and unshakable, we four
have sat down to a solemn game of genuine whist; and you know yourself
that to sit opposite to a youngish man for two whole evenings under such
circumstances and not hate him is a proof of remarkable character, and as
I can’t be accused of anything of that kind, it lies with him, you see.”
“Did he ask for the keys that night?” said Brooke, with overtransparent
innocence, which, however, passed unnoticed.
“No, quite another time, when, having observed my intense interest in
cards, he dropped in between assignments (while he was waiting for it to
be time to take the speeches at an important corporation dinner, I think)
and offered to teach me solitaire; but that was yet more melancholy than
the whist, for as he had to look over my shoulder, I couldn’t even gaze
at him, so we drifted to casino, which allowed both sight and speech!
“Really, Brooke, he is an awfully nice fellow; a gentleman and poor as
a church mouse, for though Charlie says his father would overlook his
distaste for the hereditary family business, a stepmother has recently
occurred, whose policy it is to keep the feud boiling. But you see
the fact that he can’t afford to marry, as Charlie says, and plainly
stating it, puts everything on a nice friendly basis, with no possible
misunderstanding on either side, which is quite delightful,” and Lucy
bridled with an amusing air of disinterested and sisterly virtue.
So the time slipped away, as it has a way of doing under like
circumstances, and the cross streak of sunlight that illuminated the
title “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” on the lower shelf of the diamond-paned
bookcase topping the desk, told Brooke, now becoming versed in the
language of such things, that it was past four o’clock.
“Now we will have some tea before the Hendersons come for you,” she said,
moving a quaint spindle-legged table from the corner to a convenient
place by the lounge, and lifting one of the flaps.
“Yes, we have it as usual every day, mother and I, all by ourselves,
except once in a while when Mr. Stead joins us; and though Adam scorns
tea, I find that he happens in if fresh cakes are about, and Mrs. Peck
has simply spoiled us with her seed cookies, though of course in another
week that sort of thing will all be over.
“No, don’t come and help, sit quite still while I get the tray and
kettle. Mother will make the tea; you know the girls always said, even in
the rush of the season, that a cup of her tea was something to remember,
and the making of it seems to pull her together.”
The three women had but just gathered about the little table, with
Tatters sitting sedately beside, sniffing and coaxing for cookies, by
waving one paw in the air, while Pam found herself being fed literally
in the lap of luxury as personified by Lucy, when a clanging of heavy
shaft-bells sounded, quite unlike the merry jingle of the usual sleigh,
and then stopped suddenly, while at almost the same moment the ring in
the brass lion’s mouth that was the door-knocker sounded a vigorous
rat-tat-tat!
“It’s the Hendersons; they’ve come for me!” cried Lucy, looking from
Mrs. Lawton to Brooke anxiously and jumping up in a confusion unusual
for this young person, who prided herself upon never being caught off
guard. For it suddenly occurred to her that it might be painful for her
friends to have their privacy thus invaded by those who were nothing if
not gossipingly critical, while at the same time she made a motion as if
to put on her outer garments before answering the knock.
Brooke’s face, too, reflected something of her apprehension, but Mrs.
Lawton arose quietly, her head unconsciously taking the half backward
poise of mingled dignity and courtesy which many women of her world had
tried in vain to imitate. Stopping Lucy by a single gesture, she said:
“Do not hurry, it is still quite early; surely our friends will be glad
to join us, for they have already had a long drive and it has been
growing bitterly cold these two hours past. Who did you say made up the
party beside Paula and Leonie Henderson?”
“Violet Lang, the Bleecker brothers, and Charlie Ashton,” replied Lucy,
sinking meekly back into her chair, holding Pam up before her face as a
sort of screen against consequences.
“Brooke, will you please get some fresh tea, bread, and butter, and ask
Adam to show the coachman the way to the barn, where he can shelter the
horses and warm himself by Larsen’s little wood stove?” Then, as the
second battery of knocks began, Mrs. Lawton went swiftly to the door and
threw it open, revealing Charlie Ashton, enveloped to the eyes in the
most picturesque of furs, beating his hands and stamping his feet with
the cold.
At the unexpected sight of the sweet-faced woman at the door,
backgrounded by the hospitable firelit interior, Ashton dropped back the
hooded arrangement that covered his head, and, holding out both hands,
grasped those of Mrs. Lawton with a fervor and expression of face that
said twenty times more than the conventional words of greeting that
followed.
Would they all come in for a cup of tea? Just wouldn’t they, though! The
ladies were growling most dangerously about the wind, their ears, etc.,
and he’d dig them out of that uncomfortable omnibus sleigh in a jiffy!
When the six had fairly entered and been unwrapped from their furs in
the square hall, and the female portion had patted up ragged locks at
Great-grandma West’s eagle mirror that faced the old clock, Brooke (aided
by Mrs. Peck, who arose at once to the country watchword “company”) had
returned with fresh tea and two plates, one of thin bread and butter, the
other of wafer-like cheese sandwiches, while the hospitable influence of
the teakettle put the visitors quite at their ease. As for the men, they
were naturally and frankly delighted at seeing old friends, at the dogs,
the genuine simplicity of the house, and with the good things.
True, the colour had rushed to Brooke’s face as Charlie Ashton had
greeted her, but no reference was made to the letter sent to his care
save a significant pressure of the hand, which somehow gave Brooke
comfort and a feeling of championship.
The women talked rather nervously of the gossip of everyday and eyed the
surroundings in an uncomfortable, furtive sort of way that, as Lucy wrote
Brooke afterward, must have nearly made them cross-eyed. The men roamed
about openly after being bidden by their hostess to make themselves
at home and go where they pleased, “even into the pantry!” This they
presently did. Charlie Ashton, returning with one of Miss Keith’s jars of
strawberry jam carried aloft, and holding out the empty sandwich plate,
begged for more bread to spread it on.
“Very well,” said Brooke, recovering her old-time gayety, “only you must
come to the kitchen and cut it for yourself; my hand is quite tired.”
“Where did you buy such delightful sandwich bread in this out-of-the-way
place?” inquired Miss Henderson, patronizingly. “It is awfully difficult
to get it even in New York, and it’s one of Tokay’s specialties that lets
him ask such fabulous prices for his sandwiches, and this is even a shade
better. I wish I could get the recipe just to start a rival and pique
him, he’s so lordly!”
“The bread?” said Brooke, looking back over her shoulder, “oh, I make it.
The recipe? That is one of the West family inheritances that I cannot
part with,” but as she spoke an idea entered Brooke’s teeming brain,
which remained there for many days awaiting development.
Then the adieus were said, Brooke whispering to Lucy, as she drew her
inside for a final hug, “Remember, in the spring you are to come to stay
with me, even if the sky falls.”
To which Lucy replied, “If I may do as you do in every way, it is a
bargain.” Then the door closed, and the jingle of bells died away in the
distance.
Brooke, going to the kitchen, collected the crusts clipped from the
sandwiches into her chicken dish, Mrs. Peck, who had miraculously kept
in the background, remarking that she never saw pleasanter gentlemen and
that for solid satisfaction in feeding company, give her males.
The men, speeding downhill in the sleigh, praised house and hostesses
alike and said that they had never been to a finer tea-party, the
Bleecker brothers declaring that Brooke’s cheese sandwiches knocked the
truffle and lettuce messes of Ashton’s pink, yellow, and red teas out of
the game. For some unaccountable reason, however, the women were very
silent, but that might have been because with Lucy’s return they were
again one man short.