Young Rutherford bounded from his chair. The tall clock in the hall, as
though loth to mark the passage of Time,--Time,--who had been its friend
for something more than a hundred and fifty years,--the steadfast old
clock began to mark three very slow, slow notes.
“Miss Adgate, forgive me! I suppose I ought to go, you should be left to
rest!” he held out his hand. “I've never known any pleasure comparable
to this afternoon's. May I come again? The whole of Oldbridge shall envy
me to-day,--I'm too vain not to tell them where I've lunched. Good-bye,
goodbye,” he repeated. He gave Ruth a furtive glance and flushed, very
red.
“Good-bye, Rutherford,” said General Adgate. He smiled indulgence to the
young man who still malingered. “We'll see you to-night,” he reassured
him, with a nod. “Ruth, you're to make yourself splendid tonight. I'm
to take you to dine at the Wetherbys. They are giving a dinner party
in your honour, for knowing you were not ridden yet with engagements
I accepted for you. There will be some sort of a reception
afterwards--you'd call it _At Home_ wouldn't you? Everyone's coming.
Everybody wants to meet Miss Adgate.” He laughed, as though well
pleased.
“I believe he's proud of me,” thought Miss Adgate, gratefully.
The door at last closed on Rutherford. Niece and uncle stood together
in the hall, where the voice of the family time-piece, its brass
face marking the phases of the sun and moon, underlined the pervading
stillness of the house with an austere, admonitative, solemn
“tick-tack!”
“Ruth,” said her uncle abruptly, “why did you come to America?”
“Why?--To see you, of course,” Ruth said, her tone one of innocent
surprise, but she felt a little guilty catch at her heart.
“Oh,--me!” her uncle said. “You young witch, you never crossed the seas
to look at an old man. It was as much my business to cross them to look
after you. Come,” said he, with a look of raillery, “there was some
precipitating cause. You came in a hurry. Something happened--for you
might have put your journey off for another year. Something occurred, to
induce you--to come--in a hurry.”
Ruth hesitated. She gave a light laugh--then she looked away. “Shall I
really tell you?” she asked.
“The sooner you tell me,” said the old General, “the better,--for then
we'll understand one another.”
“I left Europe,”--Ruth said, embarrassed, “because--because--I wanted
to see--my uncle--and have a look at my ancestral acres!” she still
prevaricated, yet dimpling with amusement.
“Your ancestral acres!”--repeated her uncle, sceptically. “Well?” he
encouraged.
“Oh--well--because,--if you must have another reason still,
well--because--well--I felt sore.”
“Why?” said General Adgate.
“Why?” said Ruth with a persistent and feminine reluctance to reveal
her real self, speak her true reasons: “Uncle,--I wish--you wouldn't ask
me!”
“Out with it,” said her uncle.
“Bertram, Crown Prince of Altronde, wanted me to marry him
morganatically. I felt outraged, though they told me it would be a legal
marriage. Harry Pontycroft and Lucilla sympathised with my disgust and
packed me off. And--that is why.”
The old man looked grave. “Damned European whelps,” he muttered. “No
wonder your Puritan ancestors shook that dust from their souls. You did
well,” he said, patting Ruth on the back.
X
Ruth went upstairs without another word. The upper hall was lined with
bookshelves reaching to the ceiling. “I must add a library to this
dear place,” she said to herself while she sought for a book. She was
tired,--she wanted to lie down, she wanted to wash from her mind the
impressions of the day; she felt completely fagged.
General Adgate came upstairs behind her while she was peering along
the shelves of calf-bound books. The shelves seemed to hold only a
monotonous row on row of histories and works of philosophy.
“Take this,” he said as he passed her, and, pausing, he removed a book
from an upper shelf and handed it to her.
This was a volume of Governor Bradford's History of New England.
“But,” Ruth weakly objected, “I wanted a novel!”
“You'll find that more interesting than any novel,” General Adgate threw
over his shoulder as he proceeded on to his own apartments.
O Reflex Egotism! Ruth found the book more interesting than any novel.