like--like--oh, like gravity! I don't mean seriousness, because for
that we should have to lean on Lydia, but gravitation gravity. She
is our pillar of reliance, and our pillow of soothing in the little
grey house. You know that as well as I do, Francie. And as to you, you
founded my story-telling, and you are always a rock of common sense and
efficiency."
"I'm afraid I shouldn't like too efficient a rock, Rob; it sounds
formidable. But you needn't try to console me; I don't need consoling.
I accepted our relative positions when I was five years old, and it
doesn't annoy me now. Besides, though mysticism and occult influences
are not much in my line, I do have a half belief in the power of strong
intentions and profound feeling to set in motion waves that bring
about the end for which we can only feel and long. I can't express it
clearly, but I mean I half believe that our united interest has a kind
of power for good; it's like wireless electricity, used as a force,
instead of to carry messages."
"Mercy upon us, Frances!" cried Rob, pretending to be stunned, though
she perfectly understood what Frances meant. "I feel as if you were the
chela and I were Kim! Aren't they mahatmas or something, who send down
influences? You're an Indian mystic--I hope not an Indian fakir."
But Prue halted in her walk for a moment, holding her golden head high.
"I know exactly what Frances means," she said, "and I believe it, too.
Only I believe one all alone can make what she wants come to her,
without any union of minds."
Wythie turned to look with amazement at the tall girl whom she still
regarded as her baby sister. She did not speak, but Rob uttered her
thought for her.
"That it is only another way of saying that you feel that your will
is very strong, my Prudy, so strong that you can't imagine yourself
balked. But many a strong willed person has tasted bitter defeat: take
care what you set your will upon," she said.
Prue tossed her head, but did not reply, and the whistle of the train
half a mile away quickened the girls' steps and silenced their tongues.
It was curious to see the arrival of the party whom they had gone to
meet. Mr. Baldwin handed down his wife and daughter; Mr. Armstrong
followed, and then came the three Rutherford boys and Lester Baldwin,
each bearing in his arms a child whose thin hands were clasped behind
his neck, and whose wizened face looked dully upon the scene upon which
they were appearing.
"I feel as if I were taking part in a tableau representing the Romans
carrying off the Sabine maidens," said Bruce as soon as he was within
speaking distance.
Rob laughed. "The Sabines didn't need robust warriors to steal them,"
she said, "if they looked like this. Aunt Azraella has sent Aaron with
the carriage for the children, because it is more comfortable than
these station things, which the rest of us are going to take."
"Wythie, Hester, Rob and Frances had better go up with the children,"
said Mr. Baldwin. "They will ride more comfortably in their laps."
"Of course they will," said Bruce. "Come on cushions--aren't you to be
temporarily regarded in that light?"
Hester took on her lap the only little boy of the pathetic group,
the child whose discovery had inspired and directed her vague
dissatisfaction towards this charity, and over whom she had been
keeping watch ever since. Wythie, Rob and Frances received the three
little girls without a word, and Bruce's heart shone out of his eyes as
he caught a glimpse of the moisture dimming Rob's laughing ones, and
saw the sweet, motherly pity on her merry lips.
The children could not be won to talk; they lay looking gravely out on
the green and blossoming world into which they were being introduced,
but no expression of any sort of feeling escaped them.
"Hester, Hester, I beg your pardon that I ever thought you
exaggerated," said Rob as they neared Green Pastures. "I am thankful
that I helped you a little, and at last I understand that you were not
too earnest."
"You are a splendid girl, Hester Baldwin," said Oswyth emphatically.
"I don't feel like a girl, Wythie. I am a happy young woman; I have
found something to do in the world, and I have found my place. There
isn't a dissatisfied corner in me now, and when I first knew you I was
all cravings and emptiness."
Hester's earnest eyes, alight with joy, confirmed her words, and the
nobility of her face far transcended mere beauty. In their hearts her
three friends believed that Hester knew herself, and that she was to be
one of those devoted women who find their life in losing it, and their
happiness in turning aside from all personal happiness to minister to
distress.
The wan children ate their light supper with gratifying appetites, and
keen appreciation of Mrs. Flinders' buttermilk cookies and the fresh
strawberries. Then they were handed over to the care of their nurse,
and the friends to whom they owed their new home drank tea in the
westerly room, flooded now with the long rays of the sinking sun.
Rob took her cup into the window and stood looking out on the peaceful
Green Pastures into which these waifs had been gathered. Something
stirred within her, the appeal of suffering childhood to a woman,
however young that woman may be.
Mr. Baldwin came quietly up behind her. "Dear Rob," he said, "I am
so proud of my girl, so happy to see how deep and fine is her nature
that I want to tell you that I realize what your friendship has done
for her, and that it was a fortunate day for Hester that brought to my
office a brave, frightened little heroine in her black garments, and
carrying her bumping suitcase."
Rob's lips quivered; she felt overwrought. "I have done nothing, Mr.
Baldwin; it was all in Hester herself."
"All in her, but how much you have helped to bring it out, merely by
being yourself, a high-minded, simple, wholesome, brave girl, you don't
know. It's atmosphere and character that count, Robin, Bobs Bahadur,
and we none of us realize how we mould others for good or ill when we
breathe the air they breathe," said her fatherly friend. "Here comes
Bruce after you; I must give place."
Bruce came up as Mr. Baldwin slipped away, and Rob turned back to the
contemplation of the sunset.
"Say, Rob," Bruce began boyishly. "You know you call this house the
separate ell of the little grey house, I shall soon be graduated and
reading under Dr. Fairbairn, and I mean to devote myself to this
branch of practice, as you know. I feel as though the opening of Green
Pastures meant the opening of my way before me. Don't you think, Rob
dear, you might tell me that you're going to help me, that you'll
be--be--why, be Rob," Bruce broke off with sudden helplessness and
shyness.
It was a new thing to find Bruce stammering, and appealing to her, and
Rob had been deeply moved by the clinging hands of the suffering little
creatures whom they had brought home. She lost all control of herself.
"I don't see what makes you follow me here, into this window, to ask
for help, Bruce Rutherford!" she cried. "Of course I can't help you;
of course I don't even know what you mean!" added poor Rob, usually so
scrupulously truthful.
"I wanted to keep the birthday of this house in which I mean to work
by getting a word from you," said Bruce aghast in his turn at Rob's
change of demeanor.
"Well, of course; what word?" cried Rob. "I have given you lots of
words."
"Why, Rob!" began poor Bruce reproachfully.
And just then Frances came up with her face aglow, and her eyes shining
through unshed tears.
"Bruce, Rob!" she murmured. "Lester took me out in the garden and--He
said he wanted to celebrate Hester's triumph by getting her a new
cousin--He meant me, Rob!"
"Yes, he's been meaning you for some time," said Rob grimly. "What did
you say?"
"What could I say?" said Frances simply, "but one thing?"
"Oh, just listen to that!" growled Bruce, and walked away.
Frances looked from his retreating back to Rob's perturbed face. "Rob!"
she cried, "what have you done?"
"Nothing, nothing in this wide world!" cried Rob hysterically. "I
should like to know why I should do anything? I hope you will be very
happy, Frances, and I'm sure you will, because Lester Baldwin is a nice
fellow, and if you don't mind marrying him, why you're sure to be
happy."
And Rob walked off in the opposite direction from the one Bruce had
taken, leaving Frances to accept this dubious congratulation from her
oldest friend, and to comfort herself with the reflection which she had
often heard her grandmother make, that "heaven was full of days," and
that Bruce and Rob would see another dawn.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ITS GAINS AND LOSSES
"It will be a miserable summer," thought Rob despondently, keeping
her face away from the range of Wythie's eyes as she stood before the
glass brushing her hair for the night while her sister lay peacefully
on her pillow, waiting for Rob to lie down beside her. Oswyth's and her
mother's discretion and consideration oppressed Rob. They must have
noticed that Bruce went home alone that night for the first time since
Battalion B had been added to the assets of the little grey house, but
they seemed not to see it. Rob, annoyed with herself, with Bruce, with
fate, with the world in general and growing up in particular, suspected
Frances of having given them a hint of her suspicions as to Rob's bad
behavior that evening when she announced to them her own happiness.
For Wythie watched her sister with a gentle gaze that Rob felt in her
spine, but, contrary to their girlish custom, did not seem inclined
to gossip over the happenings of that night. She let perturbed Rob
alone so considerately that Rob longed to complain of her cruelty.
Rob felt very much as she had felt when, in her childish days after
some misdemeanor her mother had "left her to her conscience," as the
good Mardy used to say, a process that was harder to endure than the
whipping which she had never received would have been.
It proved not to be a miserable summer in the least. Bruce went back to
college, and returned to Fayre his old self, unchanged. Rob, alertly
suspicious, guessed that Basil had advised him to manage Rob thus,
and that the advice had originated in Wythie. She felt quite certain
that the time was only postponed in which she should have to face the
disagreeable duty of wounding the friend whom she loved best in the
world--so she put it to herself--for there was that in Bruce's eyes and
beneath his easy comradeship which told her that a frustrated attempt
to have his way would not be final to him.
But after a little while, allowable to her discomfort, Rob lost her
dread of Bruce, and there was no constraint apparent between them,
and no more romance in the atmosphere of the little grey house than
Wythie's placid happiness with Basil, and Lydia's comedy of betrothal
to her loquacious Demetrius.
In the meantime, the soft air of June was stirred by the carpenters'
hammers rapidly putting up Cousin Peace's new house, and visits to
watch its growth made serious inroads upon the busy Grey household's
time.
It was going to be a little cottage with remarkable effect upon its
neighbour and elder by two centuries. For not only had Lydia's plan
to take Miss Charlotte under her wing, and to bring Demetrius to
supplement languid auctioneering by caring for Miss Charlotte's garden
been accepted, but Miss Charlotte proposed taking Polly Flinders to
live with her. The child and the blind woman had grown so fond of each
other that Polly hung evenly balanced between her desire to remain
under the same roof with Rob and to go to Miss Charlotte, while the
latter pleaded to the Greys that she needed Polly, while her cousin,
rich in three girls, could afford to give her up.
It was not decided, but there was sufficient likelihood of Polly's
going to the new house to make Rob suggest that it be called Anemone
Cottage, "and that won't mean the frail little spring anemone, Cousin
Peace," she said, "but the sea anemone, with tentacles sucking in
everything it can reach."
"It is going to suck you into its depths, my Robin, just as my first
house used to do, for its brightening," retorted Miss Charlotte.
College Commencement had passed--"commencement had ended," Bartlemy
said--and the Rutherfords were all back in Fayre for the long vacation.
Basil wrote every morning, to test his powers further in his chosen
vocation; Bruce read and drove with Dr. Fairbairn every day; Bartlemy
painted with industry, so that the long June days were far from idle
ones. And Commodore Rutherford, "their long lost father," as Bruce
called him, was coming home at last from the East to see the sons
whom he had left tall boys, and was to find young men. There was a
feeling of coming events in the air; with the supervising of the new
house, the constant coming and going of Hester Baldwin, the absorbing
interest of the increasing prosperity and success of Green Pastures,
Mrs. Grey found her girls harder to secure for home usefulness than
they had ever been before. Lydia complained feelingly of the difficulty
she experienced in finding time to prepare the household linen which,
though she would have no use for it in Miss Charlotte's house, she
evidently regarded as equally indispensable to a lawful marriage as a
license.
Besides all these distractions which disturbed the even currents of
life in the little grey house, Aunt Azraella was rapidly growing much
more ill; it was plain to them all that the term of life allowed her by
the doctor was to be greatly curtailed. Aunt Azraella had not been the
sort of person to which young affections are likely to cling; but death
is never less than awful, and the shadow of Azrael's wings, drooping
visibly over the woman who bore his name, modified the sunlight of
that summer in the little grey house. The Greys allowed no day to pass
without many of its hours being spent by one of them up in the big
house on the hill. Altogether it was a time of many interruptions.
Rob had told her first series of stories to the Fayre children, and was
launched on her second set continued late into July. She was winding
it up with great relief, though her audience gave her attention most
flattering, considering the heat, and that they were all at what Prue
called "the wriggling age."
The dear old wainscotted room was shaded into comparative coolness, and
a great bunch of mignonette sustained Rob through her last story with
its fragrance close to her hand. Over by the window sat little Polly
Flinders, looking out dreamily upon the warm stillness of the afternoon
as she listened to Rob. The child never joined the other children who
flocked close to Rob's side and hung on her knees; her love for her
idol was too exclusive to share with these more prosperous little ones,
too sacred to reveal to their eyes--Polly kept her revelations of it
for Rob's knowledge alone.
Now she looked around so suddenly that Rob halted in her story, and
asked: "What is it, Polly?"
"Your Aunt Azraella is coming," said Polly, and as she spoke Mrs.
Winslow's figure passed the window, and paused at the rarely used door
which led from this room out on the yard.
"Open the door, please, Polly," said Rob, wondering why Aunt Azraella
should choose this entrance on her story-telling afternoon.
Mrs. Winslow entered, and seated herself near the door. "Go on,
Roberta," she said. "I will wait; I wanted to see you alone, so came
this way."
"Almost through, Aunt Azraella," said Rob. "So you see, children, as we
were saying," she continued, "Godfrey de Bouillon was a great soldier,
a wonderful leader of men, but that which we remember first when we
think of him is not his high courage, or brilliant mind, but that he
refused to wear a golden crown in Jerusalem, where his Lord had been
crowned with thorns, and that he put away from him the honour and name
of king, and would be called but the Defender of the Holy Sepulchre.
Thus Godfrey, the hero, shows us that greatness of name and fame is
less than greatness of soul, and his humble piety rings through the
ages more loudly than the clash of his battles. We shall none of us be
great in the other ways in which Godfrey was great, but we may try to
have a little of his greatness of soul, and turn away from gain, and
the glitter of worldly glory when conscience tells us that it is higher
and nobler to be poor and lowly. And this last story of the crusaders
shows us, what the lives of all real heroes show us, and that is that
he is bravest who knows when to say No, and that the highest courage
is to dare for the sake of right. It shows us that the greatest hero
is not he whom the world honours, or who cares for its praise, but he
who fights against meanness and cruelty; loving purity, truth and right
better than anything that the world can give him. If we try, perhaps,
like Godfrey of Bouillon, when we are tempted we can refuse gold and
high sounding title, and greater glory if to get it we should have to
be less worthy of the Master whom, when He came to show the world the
beauty of holiness, they crowned with thorns."
Rob's voice trembled as she ceased, and she buried her face for an
instant in the mignonette at her side. The chivalric girl was stirred
into profound emotion at the thought of lofty deeds; she thrilled and
quivered at the presentation of the highest ideals, and responded
to the beauty of renunciation with the full force of her own great
heartedness.
The children crowded around her to bid her good-bye with as much
eagerness and fervour as if this had been a life-long parting instead
of the end of her stories for the summer. She kissed each flushed,
upturned little face, and when the last had withdrawn, turned to Aunt
Azraella with a tired sigh.
"It's lovely work entertaining them, Aunt Azraella," she said, "and
beautiful to see how they care for it, but it is exhausting. Why, what
has happened?" she added, seeing for the first time the expression on
Mrs. Winslow's face.
"I am much worse, Roberta," said Aunt Azraella. "I felt so queer at
noon that I sent for Dr. Fairbairn, and he says my disease has taken a
sudden turn for the worse. I shall probably die within two weeks--less
time."
Rob dropped upon a chair and gasped, turning pale under the shock.
Mrs. Winslow went on in the same hard, even voice, as if she were
announcing the most ordinary tidings. "The doctor said I must go to
bed, but I made up my mind I was going to walk down here whatever he
said; for the last time, you know. If a body's going to die, she is
going to die, and it doesn't make any difference what you do. So here
I am, I'm going all through this house, and you're not to say one word
to any of the rest about what I've told you. Then you come home with
me, and I will go to bed, for I don't believe I can keep out of it any
longer. I want you to stay with me while I last. Now pull yourself
together, Roberta, because you've got plenty of backbone when you
need it, and I don't want your mother to know this is a visit to say
good-bye to this house. I've always taken more interest in it than in
any other place, except my own house, and more in your family than in
my own relations--I like that Mayflower strain in the Winslows and
Greys, and I like the way they forget all about money; we Browns always
thought a good deal about money. Now, come along, Roberta, and keep
your face natural, as well as your tongue still."
Roberta arose to follow her aunt as that indomitable woman strode ahead
of her to bid good-bye to the little grey house. She could hardly
realize that her uncle's widow was really under sentence of death. It
was so ghastly like her to take it in this way, like the gladiator
that she was. "_Morituri te salutamus_," thought Rob, as she fell
back to see Mrs. Winslow throw open the sitting-room door and say:
"Good-afternoon, Mary," in her usual tone and manner, though her face
betrayed suffering.
"I should like to go over the house," announced Aunt Azraella. "I want
to see every room in it."
Mrs. Grey arose with a look of wonder; she, too, saw the change in her
sister-in-law's face, but she had long since been taught that Mrs.
Winslow disliked sympathy, so she made no comment, going at once to
escort her over the little grey house, speculating the while on her
reasons for wishing to see it.
Aunt Azraella made her tour of the rooms, pausing a nearly equal time
in each, and scanning their every detail as if to impress them upon her
memory.
"It is a pleasant house, Mary," she said when they reached the lower
hall again. "It has something about it that I don't understand, but it
makes it more homelike than other places. My house will be better for
Roberta; young people ought to have modern houses, and she will be able
to afford to keep up the big house in good style, if she marries that
second Rutherford boy. I want her to come up and stay with me to-night.
I am not as well."
"I thought you were not as well, Azraella, but I feared to ask you,"
said Mrs. Grey. "Of course, you may borrow, Rob."
"Come up to-morrow and I will tell you how I am then," said Aunt
Azraella. "I don't believe in complaining. Come, Rob." She led the way
out the door; Rob ran up-stairs to snatch a few necessities for the
night, glad to hide the face which she knew revealed her feeling on
hearing her aunt's assumption that she was to marry Bruce.
She was not gone five minutes, and took her place at her aunt's side on
the flagged walk where she was awaiting her, the only one of the little
group in the doorway who understood the significance of Mrs. Winslow's
long look up and down the little house which had seen so many depart
from the light of its twinkling window-panes.
"Now, then, Rob," said Aunt Azraella, and nodded over her shoulder at
her sister-in-law, Miss Charlotte, Wythie, and Prue, with little Polly,
peering out under Wythie's encircling arm. Roberta felt the arm tremble
which she drew within her own, but otherwise Mrs. Winslow gave no sign
of the tragedy for which this call stood.
At her own house, after the difficult mounting of the hill, Aunt
Azraella's indomitable will refused to sustain her beyond the
attainment of its end. She sank, half fainting, into the faithful arms
of Elvira, who had been suffering agonies of anxiety since her mistress
had taken her way and gone down for that last visit, against the
doctor's prohibition.
"She's got to be got to bed, Rob," said that devoted woman, who for so
many years had been Mrs. Winslow's patient and affectionate house-mate
in the old relation that forbade the word servant.
In that final effort Mrs. Winslow's granite will had broken forever,
when Rob and Elvira laid her in her ample bed, in her large, orderly
and bleak chamber, she laid herself down to die without a struggle.
She suddenly seemed very ill. When Dr. Fairbairn came up that night he
stood looking long at his patient as he leaned with folded arms on the
black walnut footboard of the bed, decorated with a bunch of grapes and
its leaves. His face wore a look that plainly declared his work done.
Rob did not leave her aunt that night. Mrs. Winslow's eyes followed the
girl speechlessly; both Rob and Elvira saw that they begged Rob not
to leave her. So, even when she slept, Rob kept her post, and at two
o'clock Aunt Azraella woke to mental activity.
"Rob," she said, "there is something that I want to say to you, now,
while we are alone, and before I get worse. I have made my will."
"Ah, Aunt Azraella, don't bother about such things now; just rest,"
protested Rob.
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Winslow with her accustomed energy. "Because
I am done with my property, is that any reason that I should not make
it available to the next one? This world, and its goods, too, still
look important to me, Roberta; it is a good or a bad place while you
are in it, according to what you have or lack, even if you don't stay
in it much above seventy years; I am leaving it at sixty. I don't
intend to be less practical because I'm dying, Roberta Grey. Now you
listen to me. This house is yours; I've left it to you, as I said
I should, and money to each of you girls. There's a niece of mine,
Myrtilla Hasbrook, that may or may not turn up after I'm gone to tell
you how I promised her the house and it ought to be hers. Now remember!
It isn't hers, and she has no right to it. I've left it to you because
I want you should have it, and supposing I did mean to give it to her
once, that's not saying that I can't change my mind, is it?"