Immediately they gathered by the fallen rose vine, all talking and
disputing at once. Alix and the dogs added only noise to the confusion;
the men debated, measured, and doubted; Anne, busy with household
duties, came and went smilingly. About them stretched the forest,
wrapped in the summer morning stillness that is really compounded of a
thousand happy sounds. There was no fog now; warm spokes of sunshine
fell brightly into the dim, glowing heart of the woods; bees and birds
murmured on short journeys; aromatic sweetness drifted on the air.
They had known a thousand such mornings, the doctor and his girls,
still, exquisite, happy, dedicated to some absurd undertaking. They had
built chicken pens, they had dammed or cleared the creek, they had
felled bay-trees, and lopped the lower branches of the redwoods, they
had built roaring bonfires, or painted the porch floor, and many times
they had roasted chops or potatoes at the brick oven, and feasted
royally in the open forest.
A light rope was tied; an experimental tug broke it like a string,
tumbling Alix violently in a sitting position, and precipitating her
father into a loamy bed. Anne, who was bargaining with a Chinese fruit
vendor frankly interested in their undertaking, had called that she
would help them in a second, when behind Alix, who was still sitting on
the ground, another voice offered help.
A young man had come into the doctor's garden; work was stopped for a
few minutes while they welcomed Martin Lloyd.
He was tall and fair, broad, but with not an ounce of extra weight,
with brown eyes always laughing, and a ready friendliness always in
evidence. He was dressed becomingly to-day, in a brown army shirt open
at the throat, and shabby golf trousers that met his thick woollen
stockings at the knee. Anne's heart gave a throb of approval as she
studied him; Alix flushed furiously, scowled a certain boyish approval;
Cherry had not come down.
"Can you help us?" The doctor echoed his question doubtfully. "I don't
know that it can be done!" he admitted.
"This shameless old man has just confessed that he gouged the heart out
of the poor tree a week ago," Alix said, getting to her feet. "That's
the first use he put his birthday knife to! And Anne stood here and
abetted him, as far as I can find out!"
"How you garble things, Alix!" Anne said, giving her hand to Martin. "I
came out here to find my uncle busily pruning and chopping the dead
underwood away, but I had no more to do with it than you had!"
"What's that you're eating--an apricot?" Martin said to Anne, in his
laughing way. "I was going to say that if it was a peach, you are a
cannibal!"
"Oh, help!" Alix ejaculated, with a look of elaborate scorn.
"No, but where were you last night?" Martin added in a lower tone when
he and Anne could speak unnoticed. The happy colour flooded her face.
"I have to take care of my family SOMETIMES!" she reminded him
demurely. "Wasn't Cherry a good substitute?"
"Cherry's adorable!" he agreed heartily.
"Isn't she sweet?" Anne asked enthusiastically. "She's only a little
girl, really, but she's a little girl who is going to have a lot of
attention some day!" she added, in her most matronly manner.
Martin did not answer, but turning briskly toward the doctor, he
devoted himself to the business in hand. Peter had climbed on an
inverted barrel, to inspect and advise. Alix dashed upstairs for nails
and hammer; the doctor whittled pegs; Martin measured the comparative
strength of ropes and branches with a judicial eye and hand. Anne
flitted about, suggesting, commenting, her pretty little head tipped to
one side.
They were all deep in the first united tug, each person placed
carefully by the doctor, and guys for the rope driven at intervals
decided by Martin, when there was an interruption for Cherry's arrival
on the scene. With characteristic coquetry she did not approach, as the
others had, by means of the front porch and the garden path, but crept
from the study window into a veritable tunnel of green bloom, and came
crawling down it, as sweet and fragrant, as lovely and as fresh, as the
roses themselves. She wore a scant pink gingham that had been a dozen
times to the tub, and was faded and small; it might have been a regal
mantle and diadem without any further enhancing her extraordinary
beauty. Her bright head was hidden by a blue sunbonnet, assumed, she
explained later, because the thorns tangled her hair; but as, laughing
and smothered with roses, she crept into view, the sunbonnet slipped
back, and the lovely, flushed little face, with tendrils of gold
straying across the white forehead, and mischief gleaming in the blue,
blue eyes was framed only in loosened pale gold hair.
Years afterward Alix remembered her so, as Martin Lloyd helped her to
spring free of the branches, and she stood laughing at their surprise
and still clinging to his hand. "The day we raised the rose tree" had a
place of its own in Alix's memory, as a time of carefree fun and
content, a time of perfume and sunshine--perhaps the last time of its
kind that any one of them was to know.
Cherry looked at Martin daringly as she joined the labourers; her whole
being was thrilling to the excitement of his glance; she was hardly
conscious of what she was doing or saying. Under her father's direction
she tied ropes, presently was placed with her arms clasped tightly
about a great sheaf of vines, ready for the united tug. Martin came
close to her, in the general confusion.
"How's my little sweetheart this morning?"
Cherry looked up, her throat contracted, she looked down again, unable
to speak. She had been waiting for his first word; now that it had come
it seemed so far richer and sweeter than her wildest dream.
"How can I see you a minute?" Martin murmured, snapping his big knife
shut.
"I have to walk down for the mail--" stammered Cherry, conscious only
of Martin and herself.
Both Peter and her father were watching her with an uneasiness and
suspicion that had sprung into being full-blown. Both men were asking
themselves what they knew of this strange young man who was suddenly a
part of their intimate little world.
He was simply a man; not unusual in any apparent way. He was ready with
his words, fairly good-looking, clean and muscular, his evident lack of
polish in languages and letters atoned for by his quick wit, and by a
certain boyish artlessness and ingenuousness. He represented himself as
about to receive an excellent salary at the mine at El Nido, two
thousand a year, but also admitted cheerfully that he was always
"broke." He had distinguished himself at college, but had left it after
only two years, upon being offered a promising position. There was
nothing especially to admire in him, nothing especially to blame; under
other circumstances Peter and the doctor might have pronounced him as
one of the least interesting of human specimens. The beauty of
childhood and adolescence were gone, the ripeness given by years and
suffering was wanting; Martin Lloyd was just, as he himself laughingly
remarked, "one of the fellers."
Peter had secretly criticized him because he used the words "'phone"
and "photo" and "'Frisco," but in justice he had to admit to himself
that there was no particular significance to the criticism. He also, in
his secret heart, had a vague, dissatisfied feeling that Lloyd was a
man who held women, as a class, rather in disrespect, and had probably
had his experiences with them, but there was no way of expressing, much
less governing, his conduct toward Martin by so purely speculative a
prejudice. The young man had dined at his house a few nights ago, had
shown an admiration, if not an appreciation, for music, had talked with
sufficient intelligence about political matters, mining, and--what
else? photography, and pullman cars, and the latest wreck off
Bolinas--just the random conversation that was apt to trail through a
country dinner. He had told a Chinese joke well, and essayed an Irish
joke not so successfully. Peter, somewhat appalled, in the sunny
garden, struggling with the banksia, decided that this was not much to
know of a person who might have the audacity to fall in love with an
exquisite and innocent Cherry. After all, she would not be a little
girl forever, some man would want to take that little corn-coloured
head and that delicious little pink-clad person away with him some day,
to be his wife--
And suddenly Peter was torn by a stab of pure pain, and he stood
puzzled and sick, in the garden bed, wondering what was happening to
him.
"Listen--want a drink?" Alix asked, coming out with a tin dipper that
spilled a glittering sheet of water down on the thirsty nasturtiums.
"Rest a few minutes, Peter. Dad wanted a pole, and Mr. Lloyd has gone
up into the woods to cut one."
"And where's Cherry?" Peter asked, drinking deep.
"She went along--just up in the woods here!" Alix answered. "Dad had to
answer the telephone, but they're going to yell if they need help!
WELL!" and Alix, panting, sat down on a log, "are we going to do it?"
"We ought to go up and help Lloyd," Peter decreed. "Which way did he
go?"
"I don't know, darling!" Alix answered, leaning back, crossing her
ankles, and yawning. "But they'll be back before you could get there.
They've been gone five minutes!"
Only five minutes, but they were enough to take Cherry and her lover
out of sight of the house, enough to have him put his arm about her,
and to have her raise her lips confidently, and yet shyly, again to
his. They kissed each other deeply, again and again. The girl was a
little confused and even a little uneasy as he continued the tight grip
on his arm about her, and her upward look found his eyes close to her
own.
Their talk was incoherent. Cherry was still playing, coquetting and
smiling, her words few, and Martin, having her so near, could only
repeat the endearing phrases that attempted to express to her his love
and fervour.
"You darling! Do you know how I love you? You darling--you little
exquisite beauty! Do you love me--do you love me?" Martin murmured, and
Cherry answered breathlessly:
"You know I do--but you know I do!"
Presently he selected the sapling redwood, and brought it down with two
blows of his axe. The girl seated herself beside him, helped him strip
the trunk, their hands constantly touching, the man once or twice
delaying her for one more snatched and laughing kiss.
"But, Martin, you've been engaged before?" Cherry asked.
"Never--on my honour! But yes, I was once, too, years ago. I want to
tell you about that--"
He told her, her grave face bent over the redwood boughs she was
tearing. She nodded, flushed, paled. He had met this girl at his
mother's, do you see? And she was a cute little thing, don't you know?
Her name was Dorothy King, and when he went back to college she had
promised to write, do you see? But she hadn't written for weeks, and
then she had written to say that she was engaged to another man, a man
named--named--he had forgotten the name. But she had married him all
right----
And Cherry looked up, laughing almost reproachfully. How could he ever
forget her married name! Cherry said that she suspected that Martin
hadn't really cared, and he said no, but he had wanted to tell her
about it all the same, because knowing her had made him want really to
be honest--and to be good--
Tears stood in his eyes, and she forgave him his admiration for Dorothy
King, and said that she knew he was good. And Martin said that he was
going to make her the happiest wife a man ever had.
Dragging the stripped tree, they ran down the sharp hill to the house
just as Anne came out to announce luncheon. Peter was wandering off in
the woods nearby, but came at Alix's shrill yell of summons, and looked
relieved when he saw Cherry and Martin not even talking to each other.
They had been gone only ten minutes.
Anne, who did not like Peter, had decided not to ask him to stay, but
Peter had calmly taken his usual place, and had annoyed Anne with his
familiar questioning of Hong as to the amount of butter needed in
batter bread. It was a happy meal for everyone, and after it they had
attacked the rose bush again, with aching muscles now, and in the first
real summer heat. It was three o'clock before, with a great crackling,
and the scream of a twisted branch, and a general panting and heaving
on the part of the workers, at last the feathery mass had risen a
foot--two feet--into the air, had stood tottering like a wall of bloom,
and finally, with a downward rush, had settled to its old place on the
roof. Hong was pressed into service now, and with Martin, was on the
roof, grappling with a rope, shouting directions. A shower of tiny
blossoms and torn leaves covered the steps of the office-porch, the
garden beds were trampled deep, the seven labourers breathless and
exhausted. But the rose vine was in place! Alix shouted congratulations
to Martin as he busily roped and tied the recaptured masses in their
old position. Anne had vanished for sandwiches; Peter was being
scientifically bandaged by the doctor. Cherry stood looking up at the
roof; she did little talking; she watched Martin during every second he
spent there.
Her small heart was bursting with excitement. He had found easy
opportunities to talk to her a dozen times under cover of the general
noise. He had said wonderful and thrilling things.
"How is my own girl? Sweetheart, you're the sweetest rose of them all!
Cherry, do you suppose they can see from our faces how happy we are?"
Little sentences that meant nothing when other lips spoke them, but
that his voice made immortal.
Looking up at him, she thought of the glorious days ahead. How they
would all wonder and exclaim; yes, and how the girls would envy her!
Little Cherry, just eighteen, going to be married, and married to a man
that Alix or Anne would have been only too glad to win! A real man,
from the outside world, a man of twenty-eight, ten years older than she
was. And how the letters and presents and gowns and plans would begin
to flutter through the bungalow--she would be married in cafe-au-lait
rajah cloth, as Miss Pinckney in San Francisco was; she would be Mrs.
Lloyd! She could chaperone Alix and Anne--
There was a rending, slipping noise on the roof, a scream from Martin,
and shouts from the doctor and Peter. With a great sliding and rushing
of the refractory sprays, and with a horrifying stumbling and falling,
down came Martin, caught in a great rope of the creeper, almost at her
feet.
A time of great running and calling ensued. Cherry dropped on her knees
beside him, and had his head on her arm for a moment; then her father
took her place, and Alix, with an astonished look at the younger girl's
wet eyes, drew her sister away. Immediately afterward Martin sat up,
looked bewilderedly about from one face to another, looked at his
scratched wrist and said "Gee!" in a thoughtful tone. Anne, coming out
with sandwiches, joined in the general laugh.
"You scared Cherry out of ten years' growth!" Alix reproached Martin.
"I--I thought he might have hurt himself!" Cherry said, in the softest
of little-girl voices, and with her shy little head hanging. Anne
decided that it was becoming her clear duty to talk to Cherry.
"My dear," she said, later that same afternoon, when by chance she was
alone with her little cousin, "don't you think perhaps it would be a
little more dignified to treat Mr. Lloyd with more formality? He likes
you, dear, of course. But a man wants to respect as well as like a
pretty girl, and I am afraid--Uncle has noticed it!" she interrupted
herself quickly, as Cherry tossed her head scornfully. "He spoke of it
last night, and Alix tells me that you are calling Mr. Lloyd 'Martin!'
Now, dearie, Martin Lloyd is fully ten years---"
"Then Alix is a tattle-tale!" Cherry said childishly.
"I don't know about that," Anne said gently, although perhaps it would
have been more generous in her to add that Alix had made the comment
gleefully, and almost admiringly. "But that isn't important. The point
is that you are only a young girl--"
"I wish you would all mind your own royal business for about five
seconds!" Cherry said, rudely and impatiently. She was in her own room,
rummaging on the upper shelf of the closet for a certain hat. She
secured the hat now, and ran unceremoniously away from her admonitor,
to join Alix, Peter, and Martin for the daily ceremony of walking into
the village for the mail.
Anne followed her downstairs sedately, perhaps a little dashed
presently to discover that this dignified proceeding had lost her the
walk. They were all gone. The house was very still, early summer
sweetness was drifting through wide-opened windows and doors; the long
day was slowly declining. In the woods close to the door a really
summery hum of insect life was stirring. Hong, in dull minor gutturals,
jabbered somewhere in the far distance to a friend. Anne peeped into
the deserted living room, softened through all its pleasant shabbiness
into real beauty by the shafts of sunset red that came in through the
casement windows; and was deliberating between various becoming
occupations--for Martin might walk back with the girls--when her uncle
called her.
He was sitting in the little room that was still called his office, but
that was really his study now, and the late afternoon light, through
the replaced rose vine, streamed in on the shabby books and the green
lampshade and the cluttered desk.
"Anne--you weren't there when that young chap tumbled. But I've been
worrying about it a little. There's no question--there's no question
that she--that Cherry--called him by his name. 'Martin,' she called
him."
Anne had crossed to the shadowy doorway; she stood still.
"It can't be!" protested the doctor, uneasily. "Did Alix say anything
to you about it?"
"She said that," Anne admitted, drily.
"You've not noticed anything between him and Cherry?" pursued the
doctor. "A girl might call a man by his name, I suppose--"
"I don't think there has been anything to notice," Anne stated, in a
level tone.
"You don't?" the doctor echoed, in relief, peering at her. She could
meet his look with a smile, but in her heart were the same thoughts
that Cherry had been innocently indulging, under the rose vine an hour
ago, and the dream that had been Heaven to Cherry was Purgatory to
Anne. Cherry married, Cherry receiving cups and presents and gowns,
Cherry, Mrs. Lloyd, with a plain gold ring on her young, childish hand,
Cherry able to patronize and chaperone Alix and Anne--! "I half fancied
that it might be you, Anne," her uncle added, "although I know what a
sensible little head you have!" "I'm afraid I'm a trifle exacting where
men are concerned!" Anne said, understanding perfectly that her pride
was being shielded, but hurt to the heart, nevertheless.
"Well, it must be stopped, if it has begun," decided her uncle. "I
can't permit it--I'd forgotten how the little witch grows!"
"He isn't as eligible for Cherry as for me, then?" Anne asked lightly.
But her smile disarmed the unsuspicious old man, and he answered
honestly:
"You're quite different, Anne. You were older at eighteen than she'll
be at twenty-four; you could hold your own--you could, in a way, make
your own life! She--why, she's only an innocent little girl; she's got
dolls in the attic; we were teasing her about turning up her hair last
week!"
Again Anne was silent. It occurred to her to laugh at the absurdity of
these quick suspicions, but they had already seized upon her with the
curious tenacity of truth; already she had accepted the fact that what
yesterday would have been the unbelievable maximum of humiliation and
hurt was true to-day, and less than the whole bitter truth!
She was not in love with Martin Lloyd; she was not as susceptible as
the much younger Cherry, and she had not had his urging to help her to
a quick surrender. But for the first time in her life she had seen an
absolutely suitable man, a man whose work, position, looks, name, and
character fitted her rather exacting standard, and for the first time
she had let herself think confidently of being wooed and won. It was
all so right, so dignified, so fitting. She had been the light of her
uncle's eyes, and the little capable keeper of his house for years; she
had been reminding her own friends of this frequently during the past
year or two; now she was ready to step into a nest of her own.
Standing there in the doorway, she tasted the last bitter dregs of the
dream. It was all over. Anne was at the age that sets twenty-five years
as the definite boundary of spinsterhood. She would be twenty-five in
August.
Alix came in from her walk glowing, and full of a great discovery.
"Dad," she said eagerly, taking her place at the supper table, "what do
you think! I'll bet you a dollar that man is falling in love with our
Cherry!"
Anne, at the head of the table, looked pained, but there was genuine
apprehension in the doctor's face.
"Where is your sister?" he asked.
"Down there by the gate," Alix answered. "They're gazing soulfully into
each other's eyes, and all that! Peter went home. But CHERRY--with a
beau! Isn't that the ultimate extension of the limit! I'm crazy about
it--I think it's great. An engineer, Dad, and Mrs. North's nephew, and
he has a fine job in a mine somewhere," she summarized
enthusiastically, "you couldn't ask anything better than that, could
you? Could you, Dad? I love weddings! This'll be the third I've been
to!"
"All this seems to have come up very suddenly," the doctor said,
dazedly, rumpling his gray hair with a fine old hand. "I don't imagine
your sister is taking it as seriously as you and Anne seem inclined
to---"
"Oh, does Anne think so!" Alix exclaimed.
"I think Cherry is one of the fortunate girls destined to drift along
the surface of life," Anne said, "and to accept wifehood quite simply.
I only wish I were that type--"
"Oh, Nancy, what rot you talk every time you remember you had a year at
college!" Alix said, lightly. "Can't you let the poor kid fall in love
without yapping about types and biology and the cosmic urge---"
"Really, Alix, you use extraordinary language!" Anne remonstrated,
glancing at her uncle with outraged dignity. "And I am not aware that I
spoke of biology or the cosmic urge!" But her tone was not as
impersonal as her words, and she was flushed and even agitated. "Shan't
we begin, Uncle Lee?" she asked, patiently. "If Cherry is just down at
the gate there, she'll only be another minute--"
She was interrupted by Cherry herself. The girl came to the porch door,
and as she hesitated there a minute, with her smiling eyes seeking her
father's face, they saw that by one firm, small hand she drew her lover
beside her. Martin Lloyd's smiling face showed above hers in the
lamplight.
"Dad!" said Cherry, with a childish breath. "Dad! I've brought Martin
to supper!"