On New Year's Day, Miss Adgate woke to a blizzard.
The New Year in Oldbridge is feasted in that old-time pleasant fashion
which has long ago _passé de mode_ in New York, which is regarded
with disfavour at Boston and in other New England towns. But Oldbridge
perseveres in welcoming the New Year, for this smacks of ancientry, and,
in sooth, the custom is a genial one. 'Tis well known that in Paris,
every hostess, mistress of a salon, is deluged with cards and flowers
and bonbons from Boissier on the New Year. At Rome, too, on the New
Year, and in Vienna and Berlin, is it not considered courteous for a
young man, not alone to leave his card, but to call wherever he has
received a welcome? The servants of the houses he frequents, a hint to
the wise, never allow him to forget his obligations; they pass at his
lodgings betimes on the New Year and receive for their _Buon' Anno_ a
substantial Buono Mano. Oldbridge is, therefore, wholly in touch with
the most modern capitals when it hospitably celebrates the New Year.
As Ruth, accompanied by Paolina, passed, by meadows all sparkling and
white with hoar-frost, from the New Year's Midnight Mass at the
Parish Church, the stars in a clear sky scintillated with suspicious
brilliancy. The usual eager nipping air of a New England Autumn had
until then condensed into just an occasional flurry of snow--or it had
subdued its edge; the days were often warm enough to sit beside open
windows. The American Winter had not begun to show its teeth. But from
her bed to-day Ruth saw the flakes descend--small, dry,--to the rumour
of low complaints, murmurs in the chimney. The flakes had a stealthy, a
persistent look. Ruth, though, was very, sure the storm would prove the
hitherto pretty diversion of a whitened landscape and trees, of a rapid
thaw under warm sun, and Miss Adgate adored these snow falls! She had
never, she thought, seen anything comparable to the white still beauty
of the country and the wood, the gentian blueness of the sky when the
snow had ceased, the clouds had emptied sack and the sun burst forth.
When this happened she would put on a pair of high rubber boots, take a
stick and start for a walk. And when, in her walk, she came across the
marks of little feet along the snow,--squirrel tracks, mole tracks, the
tracks of birds, quail, the larger ones of woodchucks, of foxes,--little
existences living to themselves--which she could never know,
never fathom--her mind would travel off into endless reveries and
speculations.
But her rôle to-day was that of hostess and there would be no going out
to-day after the snowfall. Miss Adgate shortly after breakfast sauntered
into the kitchen to see how matters there were progressing.
Before her, on the kitchen table, an array of angel cake, nut cake,
pound cake, orange cake, maple-sugar cake lacked the supreme touch, and
waited to be frosted. Spread upon a crackled Coalport dish a quantity
of thin, brown, crisp, sugar wafers invited appetite. These wafers were
from a recipe handed down in the Adgate family. Ruth knew the original,
had seen it in Priscilla Mulline Alden's neat cramped little Huguenot
handwriting; it was carefully preserved among the most curious of the
Adgate relics.
Martha, Ellen,--busy preparing endless edible New England subtleties in
the buttery,--Margaret stirring an icing for the cake, General Adgate
expected,--he had promised to come in an hour to brew his famous
punch, the ingredients for which were mellowing and combining in the
dining-room. Everything was, then, well under way, each aide-de-camp was
at his post; the commander-in-chief felt she might safely mount to her
dressing-room to let Paolina put on the robes of state.
Now it must be known that Paolina had taken to her new life with
unexpected cheerfulness; and the reason was shortly to be disclosed.
“Signorina,” Paolina began timidly, while she dressed her mistress's
hair in a high French twist, placed a bow of pale blue ribbon fetchingly
to the left of the coil, poised it there like a butterfly with wings
outspread,--“Signorina--would--you be very angry if I confided to you,
something?”
“It depends upon what the something is, Paolina,” said Ruth absently,
giving her attention to the becoming effect of the bow.
“Oh, Signorina!” sighed Paolina. Suddenly she clasped her hands; she
held them out before her, dropped to her knees. “Oh! Signorina! Jobias
has asked me to marry him!”
“Jobias--has--asked you--to--marry him?” repeated Ruth in astonishment.
Then she began to laugh--laughed in merry peals of musical laughter, her
head thrown back, her face a ripple of mirth.
But Paolina was quite offended.
“Signorina,” she said, and she rose with dignity, “why should it make
you laugh to learn that Tobias has asked me to marry him?”
“Forgive me, Paolina,” Ruth said; “it is not that Jobias has asked you
to marry him that makes me laugh--it is the tone in which you break the
news to me.” Then, gravely: “And what did you say to him, Paolina, when
he asked you to marry him?”
“Signorina, I said I would have to ask you. I said that you were a
mother to me, and that I would have to get your consent.”
“So,--” said Ruth, “you really think of accepting him?”
“I esteem him,” said Paolina, “I think he is a good man. He has saved up
two thousand dollars. He has a nice house across the river which he
lets out, and of which he reserves for himself one room. I think my own
mother would be pleased with the match, if you approve, Signorina.”
“But do you realise,” said Ruth, “that if you marry Jobias you cannot
see your mother again? It costs a deal of money to cross the ocean.
Jobias could not take you--he would have his work to do.”
“Oh, Signorina, but _you_ would take us! I would not leave you, Jobias
said I need not. But when you marry (Jobias says you will surely marry,
before long)”--Paolina nodded her head several times sagaciously--“then
your husband will want a valet, and Jobias says he will be glad to put
himself at your excellencies' services. And then, you will go abroad
for the wedding tour, and you will want to take us. I can then go to my
mother and receive her blessing.”
Ruth caught her breath. “Thus are our lives arranged for us,” she
thought, smiling, “and by whom?” For half an instant she was silent.
Somewhere, among the recesses of memory, Ruth tried to recall such a
conversation. She remembered--she had read it,--why,--it was in one of
Corvo's witty tales.... So does history repeat itself. What the romancer
invents women and men enact.
But just then, crisis of Paolina's life, the knocker at the front door
went rat-tat.
“Good gracious, and I'm not dressed yet. Put my dress on quickly,
Paolina,--we'll finish our talk at some other time,” Ruth exclaimed.
Paolina ran to the bed, lifted the pale blue chiffon gown inlaid with
yellow lace--passed it dexterously, delicately, over Ruth's head, and
began with her adroit, rapid fingers to lace the bodice. Martha knocked
at the door: “Master Jack Enderfield is in the drawing-room, Miss,” she
said in her precise voice. Ruth glanced at the clock--the hands pointed
to ten.
“Tell Master Jack Enderfield I'll be down directly,” she said. Ruth,
standing before the cheval glass, gave a light pat here to her gown, a
touch there to her coiffure--Martha lingered a minute to take the vision
in.
“Yes, Miss,” she said, closed the door, and was gone.
Then Ruth descended the stairs in a froufrou of skirts, wafting an odour
of violets as she went along; and she greeted Master Jack Enderfield at
the drawing-room door with that radiant grace the young man seemed so
well able to appreciate.