THE DAUGHTERS OF
THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE
BY
MARION AMES TAGGART
AUTHOR OF THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE McCLURE COMPANY
MCMVII
* * * * *
_Copyright, 1907, by The McClure Company_
Published, October, 1907
* * * * *
_To
My Cousin
Ella T. Johnson, with love_
* * * * *
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ITS INMATES 3
II. ITS GUESTS 21
III. ITS OLD FRIENDS 39
IV. ITS DREADFUL NIGHT 57
V. ITS HERO 74
VI. ITS LEAN-TO ROOM 94
VII. ITS AMBITIONS 113
VIII. ITS BLENDED ROMANCE 130
IX. ITS TRIUMPH 148
X. ITS AFTERMATH 168
XI. ITS DEADLY INSULT 186
XII. ITS SEPARATE ELL 204
XIII. ITS GAINS AND LOSSES 225
XIV. ITS RENUNCIATIONS 244
XV. ITS FIRST WEDDING 264
XVI. ITS DENIAL AND ITS GIFT 277
XVII. ITS ADAMANTINE DAUGHTER 296
XVIII. ITS GLAD SURRENDER 315
* * * * *
DAUGHTERS OF LITTLE GREY HOUSE
* * * * *
CHAPTER ONE
ITS INMATES
"How do you know when you're a young lady?" asked Roberta Grey.
She was sitting before the ancient mahogany dressing-table in her--and
Wythie's--room, unblushingly regarding herself in the mirror, while
the fingers of both hands, supporting her brilliant face, experimented
with changes in it by pushing up the delicate eyebrows into quite a
celestial angle.
Frances Silsby, from the rocking-chair by the window, and Wythie on the
foot of the bed, laughed.
"I know I'm young by the record in the Bible--and by the way I feel,"
said Frances. "And I know I'm a lady by the company I keep, since
'birds of a feather,' and so forth." Frances made a deep salaam almost
to the floor, taking advantage of the forward tilt of the rocking-chair
to deepen it.
"That's the retort courteous, Francie. You will be an ornament to the
diplomatic circle when you are Lady Ambassadress to the court of St.
James'. But I should like to know how to be sure one's reluctant feet
have crossed the meeting point of the brook and the river," insisted
Rob.
"_Lady_ Ambassadress, Rob?" hinted Oswyth. "You don't think that is
tautological, do you? You know in 'Rudder Grange' they never noticed
that Pomona had grown up until a young man walked home with her one
night, and loitered at the gate; perhaps that's the test," added
Wythie slyly. Bruce Rutherford had come down with Rob from Frances'
the previous night alone, and not with Basil and Bartlemy to bear them
company, as usual, hence Wythie's suggestion had a personal application.
"If one had to put on shoes and stockings, for instance, after she
ceased to stand where the brook and river meet, she would know that she
had waded in and had come out on the other side, a young lady," Rob
went on with slightly heightened colour, ignoring her sister. "That's
it; I have it!" she cried, wheeling around to look at her audience
outside the glass. "It is something of the sort--it's the hair! I am
just eighteen, but I wear my hair in a braid, with a big bow where it
is turned up on the top of my head. If I discarded that bow, and made a
great soft knot of hair 'on the top of my head, in the place where the
wool ought to grow'"--Rob chanted this direct quotation--"I should be a
young lady! I think I'll do it!"
She jumped up, snatched a kimono from a hook in the closet, threw
it over her shoulders, dropped back into her chair before the
dressing-table and in a twinkling had the pins out of her braid; the
bow, badge of young girlhood, thrown on the table, and her rebellious,
red-brown hair tumbling about her slender shoulders in a mass of
beautiful colour.
"Wythie is already done up, and Frances, too. I have been wondering
why they seemed so much more the real thing than I did, and I never
discovered till now," said Rob, speaking with difficulty as she sat,
head almost touching her lap, gathering her wealth of locks into her
hand. "Now, I am going to take my place among my peers," she added,
righting herself, displaying crimson cheeks as she faced the glass,
and twisting and coaxing her hair to the crown of her head. "You shall
see me in my true dignity henceforth. Won't it be pathetic, when the
fashion-books come and Mardy has no longer any interest in those
charming pages headed: Styles for Young Girls? Thank goodness, there
is Prue still, but even she is sixteen, and that means her hours are
numbered. I didn't want to grow up, and I mean to italicize the _young_
in my title of young lady just as long as I can, but I think I'm grown
up. There, will that do?"
Rob arose as she spoke and faced her sister and her friend. She was
tall, slender, radiant with nervous energy and quick wit; pretty, yet
charming more than pretty. The sort of girl that she had promised to
be; one who would carry everything before her with her high courage,
high standards, and her flashing charm of variety in colouring and
expression. Wythie was the same Wythie that she had been always;
pretty, womanly, gentle, sweet, with goodness, pure, simple,
unadulterated goodness, shining from her steady eyes and smiling
lips. Frances Silsby had not changed much. She, too, was pretty in
an unobtrusive way, and had grown more so in growing older. "She was
a girl," Bruce Rutherford said, "whom one would endorse or cash at
sight," and she deserved the trust that she inspired. But Rob swept
everything before her; no one ever stopped to criticise nor analyse
Rob. She flashed on the scene, and instantly every eye was filled
with the variable charm of her face, which defied regular laws of
beauty. Every heart went out to the warmth of her magnetic presence and
kindliness of nature; while no one could be sceptic enough to doubt her
crystal purity of purpose and truth.
Oswyth loved her with adoring love, and Frances regarded her as the
embodiment of all her ideals, just as she had regarded her from her
first meeting with Rob at the great age of three.
In the fifteen months that had passed since Rob's resolution had
prevented the sacrifice of her beloved "Patergrey's" legacy to his
family, and had secured for the Greys the full value of the patent into
which he had poured the best effort of years of his pathetic life,
both Oswyth and Rob had blossomed into girls of nineteen, and eighteen
respectively, and into a fulness of life and happiness such as they
could never have attained but that the stress and strain of anxiety
and even want, had thus been removed. They were not wealthy people, by
any means, these blithe and busy Greys, but they possessed, now, what
seemed contrastingly like wealth to them, and which was quite enough
to satisfy the true standards and tastes which their noble mother had
given them. And the little grey house, which had always seemed rather
like one of themselves than a mere house, had blossomed with its
daughters into fuller adornment and cheerfulness during this year and
a quarter. Many pretty modern things had crept in to take their places
among the riches of inherited mahogany, pewter and china which were the
little grey house's glory and pride.
"Well, you don't say anything! Don't you like me in my new rôle of full
blown young lady, sans braid, sans bow, sans everything that fettered
me in the bud?" demanded Rob, as Frances and Wythie gazed at her
without speaking.
"You are lovely, Robin dear," said Wythie, "but somehow it makes me
feel a little sorry to see the familiar bow discarded, and your hair
done up with a full grown _do_! I am so used to my young girl sister!"
"You have preceded me a-down the knotty way, Wythie," said Rob. "See
what dreadful puns you force me to in order to cheer you when you
become pensive! Your hair has been knotted and twisted up for a year.
You preceded me into the world by a twelvemonth, and dutifully I follow
you, one year in retard, in the matter of full-grown hair-dressing.
Isn't it all right, Francie?"
"The rightest kind of right, Rob," said Frances emphatically. "You are
eighteen, and it is time you came into your kingdom--besides, it is
most becoming! I only wish I could make my hair puff and lie up loose
like that."
For Frances' hair was of that fine, yet determined kind which is no
more capable of trifling with life than were the Puritan ancestors from
whom it was derived.
"There is no power on earth could make mine lie down smooth and
decorous like yours," retorted Rob, surveying with half approval, half
disfavour her hair which, like her face, was as full of ripples and
curves as ever. "Then, on the whole, the sentiment of the meeting is in
favour of the new departure. Girls, you have been singularly fortunate!
You have seen the larva turn into the butterfly--and you didn't have
to stand a glass over me either! I am now, Roberta Grey, spinster, and
I will fold up my hair-bow and present it to Prudence to have and to
hold, and to use until her hour of eighteen sounds."
"Here she comes now, with your mother," announced Frances from her seat
by the window.
"They went up to Aunt Azraella's, and then Mardy was going to Cousin
Charlotte's, while Prue went to the post-office. They were to meet at
Cousin Charlotte's, and come home together. I hope Mardy isn't tired,"
said Wythie, untwining herself from her Turkish position on the foot
of the bed, and running to look over Frances' shoulder and to wave her
hand at the beloved mother and Prudence.
Prue ran up-stairs; the girls heard Mrs. Grey going through the house
to find Lydia in the kitchen. Accustomed as she was to seeing Prue,
Frances felt anew, as she always did each time that she saw her, the
startling quality of the youngest Grey girl's great beauty. During the
past year Prue had grown amazingly, and had shot up into a slender
creature that topped by nearly a head Rob, who had seemed fairly tall
until Prue accomplished this feat. Her complexion was white with not a
hint of colour, unless it was brought there by her emotions, or whipped
into her cheeks by the breeze. Her features were faultlessly regular;
her hair bright gold, silky and abundant, flying like floss around her
low white brow. Her lips relieved the pallor of her face by their warm
crimson, and from under the golden crown of hair, which the tall young
creature wore proudly, there looked out a pair of large dark brown eyes
that startled one by their contrast with their surroundings. There was
no question that Prue was not only the beauty of the family, but that
she had grown into a beauty of a rare type and of a very high rank.
Unfortunately, she was conscious of her effect, although she was hardly
to blame for this, since every one, except her wise mother and sisters,
flattered her. It was a lucky thing for Prue that Wythie's sweetness
and Rob's charm surpassed in the long run the attraction of Prue's
dazzling beauty; for, otherwise, she might have forgotten altogether
that beauty is by no means the only gift that the good fairies can
bestow at a christening.
"I thought I should find you here, Frances. Here is a letter for you,
Rob, but there was no other. I saw Battalion B down by the post-office;
I thought they went back this morning," said Prue, dropping a letter in
Rob's lap, and laying her hat on her knee as she seated herself beside
Wythie and picked out the edges of its bows.
"No; Basil said he had to meet Mr. Dinsmore--they are having some
trouble with their landlord, and Basil said if they couldn't get it
straightened up they would buy the Caldwell place. It isn't really
their landlord, but his agent that bothers them," said Wythie, trying
to mention Basil Rutherford's name in the same old, easy, unconscious
way she had used it when Battalion B and the Grey girls had first
become friends. "And Bruce wanted to see Dr. Fairbairn, so they all
waited to go back to New Haven this afternoon--of course Bartlemy
waited to go with Basil and Bruce."
"Basil and Bruce both said that they would buy the Caldwell place
rather than leave Fayre," smiled Frances, and Wythie blushed; but Rob
was deep in her letter and did not heed. "Do you know, Wythie, I don't
believe we realize what a lot of money those boys must have?" Frances
continued. "You know they never say anything directly, but here they
are, all three of them in Yale, keeping this place here, and having
every wish gratified--all this means wealth, Oswyth, my dear. You
know papa is called the richest man in Fayre, but he says Commodore
Rutherford must have a great deal more than he has, for his boys to do
all this. They are so nice and simple that somehow they seem to have
the effect of being quite poor, but they are far from that."
"It doesn't make people simple to be poor, Francie; it makes them
self-conscious and generally horrid. I have so recently escaped the
throes of dire poverty, you know, that I speak by the book. The reason
Battalion B are such nice, straightforward boys is that they don't have
to think of money at all, and that--"
"That they are upright, straightforward, honest boys, well-bred, and
all 'round fine," said Mrs. Grey, entering and interrupting Rob. "What
nonsense you do talk, Robin, you chatterbox! I think Wren would be a
better name for you than Robin! As though money made people or unmade
them, by its possession or lack! Qualities are intrinsic, as you know
quite well, my dear. The boys are gentlemen, in the true sense of that
abused old word, and would be such were they kings or beggars. Whom is
your letter from; isn't it Hester Baldwin?"
"Yes, Mardy," said Rob meekly. "Please don't call me Wren; it doesn't
sound lofty and dignified, somehow. Don't you see that I've done my
hair up in what Wythie called 'a grown-up do'? I'd hate to be called
Wren with my hair done up--it's such an abbreviated bird!"
"Rob, you are so very silly!" smiled Mrs. Grey reproachfully. "Your
hair looks well, dear, but must I lose the last vestige of my little
Rob?"
"Yes, Mardy; she is gone but not forgotten. Prue, here before these
witnesses, I give you my last-worn hair-bow, and these, and these,"
said Rob, hastily rummaging in her drawer and producing several big,
soft ribbon bows which she tossed into Prue's lap.
"Much obliged," said Prue, beginning to fold her acquisitions. "I
think that I shall give up hair ribbons before I am eighteen; whom will
mine descend to?"
"There are always little girls, Prudy, though they may not be little
Grey ones," said Rob wisely. "Your ribbons will probably go to little
Polly Flinders. How did you find our relatives, Mardy? Is Aunt Azraella
still herself, and is dear Cousin Peace well?"
"Aunt Azraella has a cold, Rob; it isn't serious, but she is nursing
it. I think it would be as well if you and Wythie would go up there
after tea. And Charlotte looked tired. I fear it is too much for her to
go on keeping house there, now that she is alone. The dear soul clings
to her life-long home, but without some one besides Annie to look after
her it seems to me unsafe for her to live there," said Mrs. Grey,
looking anxious. "Why, what did Hester say, Rob? I forgot to ask you?"
"And you may well ask!" cried Rob, springing to her feet. "How could
I forget to tell you? She says that she wants to bring her favourite
cousin here to-morrow, and that if she doesn't hear from us to the
contrary she will assume that it is all right to do so, and come."
"Her cousin? What cousin is it? Does she mean to stay with us, or
merely to call? asked Mrs. Grey with a quick mental outlook over the
domestic conditions for guests.
"To lunch only," said Rob, looking over her letter. "The cousin is that
Lester Baldwin of whom she has talked so much. He is named after her
father, with the John dropped. He is young--twenty something--and has
been in Japan for three years. Hester thinks there never was such a
boy. When we wave our Battalion B in her face and she praises them, you
can see her reserving her opinion of Lester. We shall let them come,
Mardy?"
"Oh, yes, of course," said that motherly woman. "It is curious, but
with all her advantages I feel as though I must do everything I can to
make Hester happy."
"She just escaped being morbid," said Wythie rising. "Frances, you will
excuse me if I leave you to Rob and baby Prue, and go to look over the
pantry? There is time for one of us to go down again with orders if
there is anything that we must have for the lunch to-morrow. Suppose I
go down with orders, and stop at Aunt Azraella's, Mardy? Then Rob won't
have to go."
"You forget that I am now the favourite niece, Wythie dear," said Rob.
"But go if you will, and try to usurp that proud position; I will
never upbraid you."
Wythie smiled her quiet smile and left the room. Just beyond the
door she met with Kiku-san, grown into a mountain of a cat, but more
clingingly kittenfied and dependent than ever. Wythie swung him to her
shoulder just as she had always done since he had come to them, a white
down-ball with pink trimmings, and continued her way to the kitchen to
interview Lydia.
Lydia was the young woman who had come to preside over that department
when the sale of the bricquette machine patent had made it possible
for the Greys to have some one to help them in the tiresome routine of
housework.
"Help" was what Lydia was, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, used
as a particularly proper--and personal--noun. She was a most staid and
respectable young woman of native stock antedating Revolutionary days.
She could not have been more than half-way through her second decade
of years, but she seemed removed by eons from anything approaching to
youthful pleasures, not to say follies.
She had scorned domestic service, having preferred attending Fayre's
bake-shop, until she learned that the Greys were seeking "help"; then
she offered herself for the position, which she had filled from that
day to the present one. The Greys were immensely flattered by her
preference for them over all their townsfolk until they discovered
that Lydia had been willing to come to them because, as they had
heretofore been doing their own housework unaided, "they wouldn't feel
themselves better than she was." This humbled the Greys, but delighted
their sense of humour, and from the date of this discovery they had,
Rob said, "been vainly trying to feel themselves as good as Lydia."
Thus Lydia was a character, in the possession of whom the merry Greys
revelled, not less for her competent service than for her unconscious
contributions to their mirth. She welcomed Wythie, and Kiku-san on
Wythie's shoulder, with a solemn face raised from a small sheet which
she was attentively reading.
"Don't you think you had ought to take the pledge, Wythie?" she
demanded so unexpectedly that Wythie involuntarily glanced in the small
mirror which hung convenient to Lydia's back door to see what there was
in her appearance to warrant such a question.
"Why, no, Lyddie," she said rallying and with difficulty keeping her
lips straight. "I can't say I have felt any special need of it. What
made you ask that?"
"This paper," said Lydia, tapping the sheet she held as if Doom were
wrapped in it. "I get it sent me from Maine; it's a warning. I think
you had ought to take the pledge, you and Roberta and Prue, the whole
of you. There's the Rutherford boys."
"Where?" cried Wythie, looking hastily out of the window, for the
Rutherford boys were, she supposed, safely back at college by this
time. "Oh, you mean we ought to take the pledge on the boys' account?
Well, but you see, Lydia, we never give the boys wine, and they are
perfectly safe, as far as I can see----"
"It's the example," said this serious young woman severely, "I'm
a-going to sign. This paper has made me see I owe it to my conscience
to Protest--" she spoke the word with a capital--"and Protect the weak
from themselves. Was you going to get something?" she added, for Wythie
beat a retreat to the pantry, hiding her face in Kiku-san's fur. Lydia
frequently propounded moral questions to Wythie and Rob when they came
upon her, or were working with her, but thus far they had not grown
accustomed to these questions to the extent of meeting them with the
gravity which their handmaid felt they deserved.
"No," came Wythie's voice huskily from the depths of the pantry. "No,
Lyddie, I don't want anything, except to see what we have in the house
toward a luncheon-party to-morrow. Hester Baldwin is coming out from
New York, bringing a young man cousin of hers whom we have never seen,
so I want them to have something particularly nice. I thought we would
take account of stock and plan our lunch, and that I would go down
to-night to order what we needed before tea. Then I shall be here all
the morning to help you with some of the fancy things that take time."
"You might have lobster _à la_ Newburg," said Lydia, folding her paper
and abandoning the principles which it had just taught her with a speed
that finished Wythie's hopes of gravity.
Her laugh rang out so infectiously that her mother, hearing it
up-stairs, smiled in sympathy.
"Isn't that appropriate?" said Lydia, standing rigid in displeasure.
"We couldn't have anything better," cried Wythie emphatically. "That
wasn't what I laughed at, Lyddie. And you make it so well that we are
proud of your skill, aren't we?"
"That's what made me mention it," said Lydia innocently. And Wythie
just succeeded in checking a second laugh.
But Lydia would never have guessed that Wythie laughed because the
solemn girl beside her had lost sight of her principles and the wine
in the lobster _à la_ Newburg at one and the same moment, oblivious to
all but her newly acquired skill in making the delectable dish. Lydia
had long ago abandoned all hope of understanding at what Wythie and
Rob Grey laughed so often. She had decided that it was usually mere
light-mindedness.
CHAPTER TWO
ITS GUESTS
Rob walked up and down the platform of Fayre's small station waiting
the train which was to bring her guests from New York to spend the
day. It was a day that it seemed a pity to spend; it should have been
laid by for the winter need of such weather, much as one would lay
by a golden guinea against a dark day. And no guinea could have been
more golden than this October day. The sunshine seemed to be filtered
through its atmosphere till the very air was golden, and the trees sent
their showers of yellow leaves down the shafts of sunshine in the brisk
breeze, retaining more than they gave of their cloth-of-gold garments
to brighten the quiet streets and illumine the hillsides.
Hester Baldwin had been a frequent visitor to Fayre since Rob's
expedition to New York to save her father's patent had brought her into
Hester's orbit.
An only child, with an inheritance of wealth on both sides, Hester
lacked nothing in the way of opportunities, and had been introduced to
society the previous winter, in which she had thus far found little
to interest or attract her. She was a girl of considerable strength
of character, with vaguely great aspirations; it was true that she
had barely escaped being morbid. Thus far her vocation had not been
revealed, and she moved dissatisfiedly through a life from which all
outward reasons for dissatisfaction had been removed. Rob laughed at
Hester, and told her that she was only a degree less serious than
Lydia, but she sympathized with her none the less. Rob said in private
that Hester had been misplaced; that she should have been the oldest
daughter of a struggling family of sixteen members, for whom she would
have been forced to exert herself into forgetfulness of her own soul,
and her hair-splitting self-analysis. Rob herself had never had time
to question, being early called upon to do without choice of action,
and she did not underrate the advantages of her early disadvantages in
forming her character and keeping her cheerful--though nature had more
to do with the latter than Rob knew.
The more Hester came to Fayre the more she wanted not to leave it.
Her father and mother--whom Rob had found perfect in those difficult
rôles--were naturally wrapt up in this dear only daughter, but Hester
revelled in the family life of the little grey house, and envied Rob
her chum-sisters, thinking Rob richer in her simple home than was
Hester Baldwin in her big house, with servants, society, and all the
advantages of wealth which were hers alone, and which, being alone, she
could not half enjoy.
Rob smiled to herself as she paced the platform, thinking how Hester's
pale face was that moment lighting up with joy, for the train whistled
around the bend, and in an instant would be in sight.
Hester, her cousin, an old woman, and the mail-bag were the only
passengers for Fayre. The tall girl leaving the car would have been
conspicuous, however, among many, and the young man, browned by Eastern
suns, who followed her, not less so. Hester was as tall as Prue Grey.
She had a keen, restless face, with hungry, eager grey eyes, and rather
a melancholy droop to her well-cut lips. She was not a pretty girl, but
she was distinguished looking, and would be fine looking at forty when
many of her pretty contemporaries had become entirely commonplace. She
was clad in that quiet elegance of material and style which is the
perfection of taste, utterly unattainable except one has a purse long
enough to pay for its expensive simplicity.
Rob realized that their modest competence would never let her look
as Hester did that moment; she realized it anew every time she saw
her friend again, but it troubled her no more than it troubles her
namesake, the redbreast, that he is not clad like the oriole. For while
Rob was too sensible to ignore the lesser things of life she was too
light-heartedly happy to care for them greatly.
Hester sprang off the last step of the car, beyond the conductor's
extended hand, and had Rob in her arms before her cousin could
disentangle himself from the leisurely elderly passenger and her bag
which had got between him and Hester when they were in the aisle, and
now, by dismounting from the car sidewise, one step at a time, delayed
him from following his cousin. At last he circumnavigated the old
person's bulk and came forward, laughing, to be presented to Rob.
He looked so much like a younger edition of his uncle, John Lester
Baldwin, two thirds of whose name he bore, that Rob gave him her
friendship on the spot, and the three young people walked up the hill
of Fayre's main street, talking gaily all the way to the little grey
house.
"I asked Frances to luncheon, Lester," said Rob, as they turned in at
the low gate.
"And this is the little grey house, is it?" asked Lester Baldwin at the
same moment. "I have heard of it and dreamed of it in distant Japan."
"Just an every day, little colonial house; not worth dreaming of at the
foot of Fusiyama, among the cherry blossoms and the chrysanthemums,"
smiled Rob. "But we love it dearly; it has been a little Grey house for
five generations, including us, the present girls."
"_Present_ girls?" laughed Lester Baldwin. "Or _pleasant_ girls? And
does that hint a future possibility; does it mean: Girls, at present?"
"It means: Present girls," said Rob accenting the last syllable as
Wythie and Prue appeared in the doorway, thus turning her adjective
into a verb. "Let me present you, Mr. Baldwin, to my sisters, Oswyth
and Prudence. And our friend, Miss Frances Silsby," added Rob, as she
espied Frances in the hall.
Now Kiku-san, hearing Rob's voice, had come towards the door to welcome
her. Being abnormally timid, especially fearing men, he swiftly turned
and started to flee back to the kitchen for safety as he unexpectedly
caught a glimpse of Lester Baldwin, where he had counted on finding
only Rob. At the same instant that the white cat flew back from the
door, Frances advanced towards it. There was a fearful shriek of
terror and pain from Kiku, who thought that the worst he had feared
had happened as Frances came down upon his paw; a scream of terror
from Frances, who had not time to realize what was wrong, and she was
launched headlong at the stranger, Hester's travelled cousin, before
whom she, naturally, wanted to appear at her best.
The stranger received the sudden charge with a gravity that at once
established him high in the fun-loving Greys' good opinion. Steadying
himself against the casement he caught Frances in time to save her from
being dashed headforemost down the low steps, and helped her to regain
her feet.
"Customs have changed in the States since I left home," Lester said
quietly. "We exceed the hospitality of the East--there the arriving
guests are never offered more than tea, water for their hands and,
possibly, flowers."
All five girls burst into such a peal of laughter that old Mrs.
Dinsmore, the lawyer's mother, passing on the opposite side of the
street, laughed to herself till she had long passed the little grey
house.
"That reception was caused by the one Japanese member of our family,"
said Wythie. "Our white cat, Kiku-san, being timid, retreated from your
presence and upset Frances."
"Kiku--chrysanthemum?" suggested Lester Baldwin. "Nice name for a white
cat, but I was not prepared to find you speaking Japanese here."
"We have spoken all we know of it in naming Kiku. Won't you walk into
our parlour? We are not spiders," said Rob. "Prudy, please tell Mardy
we are come."
Prue disappeared, and the others entered the beautiful parlour of
the little grey house. For it was a beautiful room with its extreme
simplicity of green walls and high white wainscoting, its splendid
old mahogany, fine pictures, books, and with the logs burning on the
hearth, which the October wind made it just cool enough indoors to
warrant.
Lester Baldwin threw himself into a hospitable chair with a long breath
of appreciation. "I see why Uncle John said they had hard work to keep
you at home, Hessie, and why you never dream of living in marble halls,
but rather in a little grey house."
"Don't you?" said Hester, pulling out the fingers of her gloves, as she
stood with one foot extended towards the warmth of the fire for the
mere luxury of it, and not because she was in the least cold. "And you
don't know it all yet."
"My cousin doesn't mean that for slang, Miss Roberta," said Lester
Baldwin.
"Thanks," remarked Rob. "We love to have people like our house. There
is something in the dear little old thing that I can't get anywhere
else--Maybe it's my own love for it," she added.
"No, it's quality," said young Baldwin. "It has an atmosphere that is
quite indescribable that is partly the result of your love for it, no
doubt, but it is also the very delightful architecture of the house,
its simplicity and harmony, and its venerableness. An artist would envy
you it, Miss Roberta."
"Oh, I forgot for the moment that you were an architect," cried Rob,
beaming gratefully upon him.
Lydia might be solemn, but she made everybody else light-hearted on
such occasions as this. Mrs. Grey emerged from the kitchen to greet
her young guests, looking flushed, but peaceful. She and Wythie had
been helping Lydia all the morning, and the result was a luncheon that
satisfied her housewifely soul.
It was a merry luncheon, too, and Lydia served it with a face so
saddened by the constant laughter ringing around the table that Wythie
and Rob telegraphed to each other their appreciation of its contrasting
expression.
After luncheon Wythie, Frances, and Prue took Lester Baldwin to see
the beauties of Fayre, which were well worth seeing; its lovely, quiet
river; its great elms, and dignified mansions. Hester begged them to
let her stay at home and keep Rob with her, and she bore Rob off at
once, when she had obtained her way, for a long, confidential talk in
the room which her friend shared with Wythie.
"Well, Hester, what is it this time?" asked Rob, when they had
established themselves opposite to each other, one in a small, the
other in a large rocking-chair, and were rocking for dear life at that
cosey pace which seems at once to pursue and keep up with confidences.
Rob's eyes wandered a trifle longingly out of the window at the perfect
weather; though she was fond of Hester and interested in all that she
could have to tell her, she, too, would have found the walk which the
rest were enjoying pleasant had Hester been thus minded.
"Is it Chinese-missionarying, adopting a baby, teaching new Italian
citizens, or what, Hester?" she continued. Hester had been full of each
of these projects at various times.
Hester sat up straight in the energy of her reply. "Everything is
beginning, Rob," she cried, "and I can't stand it!"
"It does sound rather awful, though vague," retorted Rob, settling
herself back in her chair as Hester grew rigid, and moving her head
about until her hair got comfortably loose, and fitted over the chair
top.
"Ah, you know what I mean!" said Hester reproachfully in her alto
voice, which was her greatest charm. "Invitations, and teas, and all
those things! If I let myself drift into it all it takes every bit of
my time--strength too--and I shall never amount to one thing."
"Well, I suppose it's true that it will take all your time, but
I don't see that the rest of your proposition follows," said Rob
sensibly. "Your mother keeps up her social duties, and, except--loyally
excepting, you know--Mardy-mine, I don't know any woman who amounts to
much more. Amounting to something doesn't depend on circumstances, but
conquers them. We've gone over this ground a good many times already,
Hessie, and, really, what's the use?"
"My mother married, and her duty is to do exactly what she does," said
Hester. "She is a great help to father, entertaining his business
acquaintances, and furthering all his interests. But I am not helping
any one when I go butterflying about, and it is for me to choose now
what sort of a woman I will be."
"I suppose I can't enter into this tremendous earnestness of yours
as I ought," sighed Rob. "It seems to me that we both have only to
lead good, kind, sweet tempered lives, and be ready for our work when
it comes. I think a vocation ought to mean being called, and not
calling--with a megaphone, too--to all sorts of distant duties to come
and switch us off our track. We are young, Hester."
"Eighteen; quite old enough to find ourselves, Rob," said Hester.
"Yes, and I'm wearing my hair in full blown young-lady fashion; my
bow is gone--did you notice, Hester?" said Rob, refusing to rise to
Hester's heights. "But for mercy's sake, Hessie dear, don't adopt
soulful slang! I've heard seven separate women, one lecturer and six
private--geese?--talk about 'finding ourselves' lately! There's
something in set soulful phrases that affects my stout nerves."
"Yes," assented Hester with entire sympathy. "I didn't know I said it;
those things are so catching! You see, Rob, you wouldn't care for a
society life, any more than I do! It is full of catch phrases and catch
ways."
"Hessie, Hessie, what are you trying to get at?" cried Rob. "You know
I have as much desire for a society life as there is prospect of my
leading one! But I don't see why you can't 'just be happy'; wasn't
that the burden of one of James Whitcomb Riley's poems? Why can't
you dance and play, and be eighteen, only, with all your might, and
let the future take care of itself? I declare you are very like our
Lydia! She convulsed Wythie last night by suddenly demanding, when
poor Wythiekins came into the kitchen, if she didn't think she ought
to take the pledge! Wythie felt satisfied with her naturally temperate
tendencies, but Lydia thought she should sign as an example, chiefly to
the Rutherfords, who are sobriety itself! Don't you think you magnify
your office more as Lyddie does than as St. Paul did?"
Hester laughed. "I think one ought to make up one's mind definitely to
something," she insisted. "Rob, truthfully, do you think you would
like to marry?"
Rob laughed long and merrily. "Not this afternoon," she cried. "I'll
let you know if I feel differently to-morrow."
"No, but don't you think if a girl knows positively that she will
never marry, and nothing can change her mind, that she ought to act
differently from a girl who is willing to entertain the thought?"
Rob laughed again. "I notice the thought entertains most girls," she
said. "We have spoken on this tremendous subject also, Hessie. It never
occurs to me to make up my mind for good and for all about anything.
I have lived only eighteen years, but I have changed my tastes lots
of times, for food, for people, for amusements--for lots of things. I
don't know how I shall feel at twenty, much more at five and twenty.
I'm perfectly happy, and I'm not over the border of little girlhood--I
wish I could romp and play dolls without shocking people. And I've had
a hard fight, and tasted care and even sorrow, so it seems to be almost
wrong to go on twisting and distorting these lovely young days the way
you do, Hessie dear. You haven't told me what it is that has set you
out this time, however?"
"It is something I saw the other day," said Hester sadly. "I wish I
could be sunny and light-hearted like you."
"The reason of the difference is partly in our temperaments, but it is
a good deal because I had to be happy in self-defence from the trials
that began early for me," said Rob, with the keen wisdom that underlay
her merry ways. "You had your path made smooth; I had to be jolly to
keep up myself and the others. If you had worked as I did with a frail,
sensitive, beloved father, and had seen your brave mother trying to win
a fight where the odds against her were too heavy to count, you'd have
learned what virtue lay in a laugh. I don't mean to preach, Hester, but
you ought to be satisfied to love and to be loved, and wait your life's
meaning cheerfully. But what did you see?"
"Father had to go to a tenement district to look over some property
there which a client talked of buying," said Hester. "I begged to be
taken with him, and, though he objected, saying I was sober enough
without seeing misery, he let me have my way--as he usually does, the
dear, kind father! I saw, Robin, a cripple boy that was heartrending. I
never, never shall forget him, nor get over the feeling that I have no
right to my comforts while there is such as he. No; don't interrupt.
I know all that reason can tell me on that head, because father talked
to me, and he is not merely just--though that's the highest sort of
kindness--but he is tenderly kind as well, we both know that. But the
feeling remains after I have reasoned and reasoned. Then, after that
poor, poor child, I saw others, crippled, maimed, and all incurable.
What can be done with them, except leave them in the slums, to be
maimed in mind as well as in body?"
Hester stopped, her eyes overflowing. Rob put out her hand with a
responsive moisture in her own bright eyes.
"Dear Hessie, I beg your pardon. I suppose our point of view is
different, and very likely I am wrong, and you are right in taking life
so hard," she said.
"No, Rob; but you have your work in your family, which needs you,
while I am free, and I can't help thinking I ought to find mine. Such
sights make me sure that having money, I have no right to use it for
teas, receptions, dancing gowns--all that sort of thing," said Hester
earnestly.
"While we Greys, though we are freed from all our old worries, have
only enough income to live plainly, and help one another," added Rob,
finishing the thought Hester felt afraid to voice. "Then, here in Fayre
there is no such misery as you see in town, and when I go in to visit
you I see only New York's splendour. Go on, Hester; what have you in
mind?"
Hester flushed, and rose. "I don't know precisely, and I see the
others, coming back, so I can't talk my thoughts into shape with you
as I meant to. It will have to wait. But I know one thing: I can not
possibly rest till I find out exactly what it is that is in my mind.
Isn't Lester fine; don't you like him?"
"How can I help it, when he is so like his uncle?" retorted Rob. "There
is no other man in the world equal to your father, Hester, or whom I
love so much."
"Not Battalion B?" suggested Hester, fearing to narrow her question to
one member of that battalion.
"Battalion B are boys," retorted Rob. "Your cousin seems to find our
Prudy beautiful."
"Lester is an artist," said Hester. "Prue is the handsomest girl I ever
saw, but she isn't Roberta." And Hester twined an admiring and loving
embrace of both eyes and arms around the friend in whose mobile face
she found a beauty more entrancing than Prue's.
"We must go down, Hester dear," said Rob, patting the arm under her
right hand. She had grown quiet since Hester had told her of the sad
children, and the deep womanliness which lay hidden in her merry
girl-heart, and which had grown deeper and more apparent since her
father's death, softened the sparkling face into a most becoming
gravity. "Perhaps something can be done, Hester. Perhaps something good
may come, and through you, to the poor mite whom you saw! And perhaps,
after all, your discontent is that 'divine discontent,' which makes the
world better."
Hester smiled gladly; it was a comfort to feel that Rob did not think
her ridiculous.
The Greys' guests departed after an early tea to which they were easily
persuaded to remain. All three Grey girls saw them off on the edge of
the October twilight, and came home under Fayre's elms and the young
moon, discussing Hester's newly presented cousin, with unanimous praise.
"He may be an artist, but he liked the little grey house," said Prue,
as they stood in a sisterly row, warming their feet, first the right
ones and then the left, like a kind of drill, before the wood fire on
the hearth.
"He likes it _because_ he is an artist; not in spite of being one, as
you imply, Prudy," said Wythie.
"I am glad that he has come home to Hester, instead of becoming the
Mikado's prime minister," said Rob, as if Lester Baldwin had narrowly
missed that as an alternative.
"Tired, Mardy?" asked Wythie, turning to her mother as she entered, and
Rob and Prue made room for her between them on the hearth.
"What lovely, lovely times we do have in the little grey house!" she
added. It was the refrain that the Greys had sung to all their pleasant
times ever since the old anxieties had been laid to rest.
CHAPTER THREE
ITS OLD FRIENDS
Friday was a gala-day in the little grey house. "Battalion B," the
three tall Rutherford boys, were at Yale, pursuing their way towards
their chosen vocations with commendable industry, and with no apparent
detriment to their health. Every Friday the three B's came back to
Fayre to spend "the week end," bringing with them the cheer which they
had shed upon the Greys' pathway since their first meeting.
"It is like having six children," Mrs. Grey said happily, as she shook
her duster out the dining-room window. "The boys' coming sheds joy upon
the weekly task of sweeping and setting straight."
"It is a perpetual Thanksgiving Home-coming, isn't it, Mardy?" said
Oswyth joyously. For though the Rutherfords were supposed to come
to their own home, the Caldwell house, which they had occupied for
nearly three years, with a competent housekeeper to preside over its
destinies, their return was really to the little grey house, where they
made their absence of five days a plea for spending the other two of
each seven.
"Your sister-in-law's coming," called Lydia from her watch-tower, the
window beside the kitchen sink.
Wythie hastily glanced around the room which her mother was dusting,
while she herself was polishing silver, with newspapers carefully
spread over the fine old mahogany dining-table. Aunt Azraella had
been another Aunt Azraella since his family had been established in
comfort by the success of the machine over which poor Sylvester Grey
had spent the apparently fruitless hours which she had then so fiercely
denounced. But she never could conquer her habit of criticism, and the
girls still felt vague apprehension of what was coming at her heels
when they saw their aunt crossing the grass. Rob was out; since the
day when she alone had held her ground against Mrs. Winslow's opinion,
and had thus been the means of winning for the family all that they
now enjoyed, Wythie had been deposed from the first place in Aunt
Azraella's respect, and Rob was now, as she had herself said, the
favourite niece.
"Good-morning, Mary. Good-morning, Wythie. Is Rob about? She asked
me to let her know if Tobias got sick again, so I came down. Elvira
says she thinks he might as well be chloroformed, but Rob insisted on
being told if the cat ailed; I think his leg is broken." Aunt Azraella
delivered herself of her errand without giving any one time to reply to
her opening salutation. She seated herself in the low rocking-chair,
Mrs. Grey's favourite seat by the window, and began divesting herself
of overshoes, and a cape which she wore over her coat. Seeing Wythie
glance out at the grass she immediately said: "The grass isn't damp, I
suppose you think, Wythie, and it doesn't seem to be, but in October,
when the leaves are falling, you can't be certain. I think most people
sow the seeds of their death in the fall of the year and the spring."
"Are you feeling better, Azraella?" asked Mrs. Grey. Wythie glanced up
again and noticed that Mrs. Winslow looked pale, and less equal than
usual to the demands of living.
"My cold's better, Mary, but I feel weak," said Aunt Azraella, settling
back in her chair, having discarded her outer shell. "I think it must
have been grippish, though I didn't know it at the time. If I should
pass away, Mary, would the girls go back into all black?"
"Dear me!" ejaculated Wythie involuntarily.
"Oh, Azraella, I am sure I don't know! Why do you think of such
discordant things on this bright morning?" expostulated Mrs. Grey. "I
am sure that you are going to live a long, long time."
"It is impossible to be sure of anything of the sort," retorted Mrs.
Winslow, as though such obdurate cheerfulness annoyed her. "Human life
is most uncertain. I wish you would go out of black for Sylvester
Mary,--I mean solid black--this fall. White with it would be pretty,
and by another year you could wear sober greys."
"We are always trying to avoid anything like sober Greys, Azraella,"
said Mrs. Grey with her sunny smile, while in her heart she knew that
all her life she should wear the widow's garb for a loss irreparable to
her, though borne cheerfully, and courageously.
"You are too young--only a little past forty--to wear black long," said
Aunt Azraella, as if grief and mourning were a matter of astronomical
calculation, like eclipses of the sun. "What would you do if you had my
wealth, Wythie? You know you are not nearly as well off as I am."
"Quite as well off as I want to be," said Wythie contentedly. "Four
thousand a year is an ideal sum for four people. Enough to make life
secure, too little to give us much bother, and not enough to allow us
to be idle. Really, it is just the right sum. I never have thought what
I should do if I were as rich as you are, Aunt Azraella."
"Your mind seems to be travelling rapidly from one thing to another,
this morning, Azraella," smiled Mrs. Grey. "Tobias' leg, mourning,
money--though these latter subjects are closely connected only too
often."
"And the only thing I came for was Tobias' leg," added Mrs. Winslow.
"I'm getting too warm here; I'll be overheated and catch more cold.
You tell Rob when she comes that my cat's limping again and won't eat,
and if she wants to see him, she can. If she don't we'll chloroform
him--and I guess that's best."
Mrs. Winslow arose as she spoke, but Wythie pushed her gently back into
her chair and knelt to put on her aunt's overshoes. "Rob will be up,
Aunt," she said. "She has a surgeon's tastes and talents."
"I wonder if that's why she and that second Rutherford boy are
specially good friends?" suggested Aunt Azraella, stooping her
shoulders to receive her cape. "He's going to be a doctor, isn't he?"
"Yes, Bruce is studying hard for that end; he will make a good doctor.
Dr. Fairbairn says he has a marked vocation for his profession," said
Mrs. Grey.
"He's a good boy," said Aunt Azraella unexpectedly, "though they
are all three fine specimens. Well, send Rob, if she wants to come.
Good-bye."
"No fear of her not wanting to try to relieve Tobias and give him a
chance to live his exemplary life longer," said Wythie as she let her
aunt out of the side door by which she had entered.
"Is this your morning at home, Mardy?" called Prue from up-stairs where
she was setting the chambers straight. "Rob is coming up the hill with
Cousin Peace, and Mrs. Flinders is coming in the opposite direction
with Polly."
"And the boys to-night!" sighed Wythie. "I don't believe I shall get
done half I meant to do."
"That sigh must have been for Mrs. Flinders; it couldn't have been for
Charlotte," said her mother.
"I've brought a trophy," announced Rob, coming into the room like a
western breeze, eyes dancing and cheeks reddened by the October wind.