paused for a reply. "Won't you tell me about this Miss Hasbrook, Aunt
Azraella? Does she need the house?"
"She's my sister's daughter, and she isn't Miss, but Mrs. Hasbrook to
begin with," said Aunt Azraella. "She's a young widow. As to needing
the house, she needs almost anything. Myrtilla's one of the sort that
hasn't any faculty. She married at seventeen, and now she's a widow
at twenty-nine or thirty with four children. When I promised her the
house I told her she could use it to take boarders, and get along;
she's got her husband's life-insurance, and a little from her mother,
but not enough to support four growing children. She's a gentle,
harmless thing, but she hasn't gumption. Now, I've seen what there is
in you, and I've made up my mind you're the one to keep up this house
the way it should be, so I've left it to you. I only want you should
understand, so if Myrtilla should come here and say anything--which it
isn't at all like her to do, but she might--you're not to get any of
your high flown, Grey notions, like your father, and give it up to her.
For I'm certainly in the full possession of my faculties and I say it's
yours. Now I'm going to sleep; it tires me to talk to-night."
Rob smoothed the sheet under her aunt's chin and turned the lamp a
little lower without speaking. She was relieved to hear Mrs. Winslow's
even breathing in a few moments, for she wanted to feel that she was
alone to think.
She sat with her changeable face very grave, resting on the hand that
her knee supported; she was thinking hard. The outline of the picture
and the history of this hitherto unknown Myrtilla Hasbrook, the young
widow to whom fate had been so hard, she was perfectly well able to
fill out from her knowledge of Aunt Azraella's mind. She pictured her
as gentle, shrinking, unfit to cope with difficulties, the sort of
person whom Rob, out of her own sensitive soul and early hardships,
most pitied, and whom she was to be the instrument of disappointing and
further impoverishing!
No, she would not have the house! She started erect with the fulness of
her determination. If she had any influence over her aunt-in-law, Mrs.
Winslow, herself, should make right this intended injustice. She, Rob
Grey, could get on perfectly with what she now had, and with the legacy
that she could justly receive from her aunt out of the ample fortune
her Uncle Horace had left her--but not the house!
She did not want to bother her mother with her refusal of this legacy,
certain as she was that she should refuse it in any case, and she had a
feeling that she did not want to pose as a heroine of renunciation in
the eyes of her own family, especially Prue. When it was all over, some
day she would tell her mother and Wythie all about it. She cast about
in her mind for some one to help her to induce Aunt Azraella to change
her will, and she thought of Bruce, Bruce whom she had abused, but who
had never failed her when she needed a friend.
Bruce came in the morning early, sent by Dr. Fairbairn to administer
certain remedies.
After the doctor-that-was-to-be had performed his task Rob followed
him down the broad stairs and out into the dewy sweetness of the
midsummer morning. She told him her story. "And you wouldn't have the
house if you were I, would you, Bruce?" she ended.
Bruce looked at her queerly. "If I were you I suppose I should do
precisely as you do, being the same person," he said. "But I doubt that
many who were not you would act thus."
"But, even if you were yourself, wouldn't you feel as I do?" persisted
Rob.
"I think we generally agree, Robin," said Bruce quietly. "I should feel
as you do, yes. It comforts me in saying so to know that I could not
change your mind were I to try. But it is my duty to point out that
you are throwing away a valuable piece of property, which, lying only
two hours distant from New York, is bound to increase in value, and
to which most people would cling tenaciously. Also, that there is no
obligation upon you of defending this unknown young woman."
"But you would act precisely as I want to act, Bruce," said Rob. "You
like to have me do it, and you know that we all think that enough of
this world's goods does not mean great wealth, and that I have enough
without this. You want me to try to persuade Aunt Azraella to carry
out her first plan--I see it in your eyes."
"Yes, Donna Quixote, I want you to act precisely in the chivalric
spirit that inspires you, and I would rather see you--what you are,"
Bruce stopped himself, and went on more indifferently, "counting
obligations binding which to many would not exist at all, than to see
you richer than you are by millions. By all means make your aunt leave
this house to her poor widowed niece. You will not want."
Rob flushed, half in gratification, half in annoyance at the
remembrance of Bruce's own probable wealth, and what these last words
might imply. And as she did so she remembered her words to the children
on the preceding afternoon when Aunt Azraella had come in as she was
finishing the story of Godfrey de Bouillon. She was glad, with a warmth
at her heart, that Bruce was also knightly and had the inward vision
which revealed to him duties and ideals to which the majority of
mortals were blind.
"Good-bye, Roberta," said Bruce. "If I can help you to persuade your
aunt to disinherit you, call on me; we'll manage it between us.
Goodbye, Donna Quixote."
"Good-bye, Sir Bruce, the defender of the destitute," retorted Rob,
and turned to run back into the house with a light step and lighter
heart. For with the wisdom of the noble folly of her training Rob was
glad that she hoped to turn from herself her aunt's rich gift.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ITS RENUNCIATIONS
The days were filled with visitors and Rob had no opportunity to
present her petition to Aunt Azraella. Wythie and Prue relieved her at
this strange dying bed, and Mrs. Grey was rarely absent. It was Rob,
however, Rob, and not Wythie, to whom Mrs. Winslow turned for comfort
in those hours in which she lay facing eternity with thoughts which
could be conjectured, but which she never expressed.
In the old days she had found Rob unmanageable, too quick of speech and
impatient of mind, and Wythie had been her favourite of the three Grey
girls. Now she turned to Rob's high courage and bright cheerfulness as
to a tonic. It was another Rob, an older, more controlled and wiser
Rob, too, on whom she was leaning. Mrs. Grey saw with great rejoicing
the development of her daring, high-minded girl, who needed but this
touch of womanly gentleness which she was gaining to make her very
near the ideal of American girlhood.
"The end may be suffering," Dr. Fairbairn had said. "We shall be
obliged to use morphine, probably; if there is anything that you think
she would like to attend to get your sister-in-law about it now, Mary."
Mrs. Grey knew of nothing, but Rob, hearing, resolved that she must
bring Aunt Azraella to change her will without further loss of time.
The brief sketch that Mrs. Winslow had given the girl of her young
widowed niece had been enough to convince Rob that the promise of
the house upon which she must be relying could not be broken for the
benefit of Roberta Grey. But letters had been despatched to the various
relatives of the dying woman, and Browns of varying degrees of kindred
had been arriving in Fayre. For testamentary reasons, if not for more
sentimental ones, Mrs. Winslow's death was an event in the Brown family.
Among the arrivals had been Myrtilla Hasbrook; she was in the house
with her baby of four, as Rob plotted for the restoration to her of a
bequest of which she had no idea that she had been deprived.
It seemed to Rob when her eyes first rested upon Myrtilla that she
could have painted her portrait equally well before she had seen her
as afterward. She was of medium height, medium colouring, with a pale,
gentle, resigned face, and a slender, drooping frame. Goodness, the
patient, uncomplaining goodness of the type of woman who has strength
to endure forever, but none to remedy matters, shone from her sad eyes
and quiet lips. Rob knew in a flash of intuitive pity just how such a
woman must wear herself out to provide for her children in her poverty.
How she would weep of nights lest that poverty prevent her from doing
her duty by them. The young widow looked younger than her years, and
Rob's great heart went out to her in a pulse of knightly protection.
"You poor thing!" she thought. "Indeed, I will never add one straw
to the burden on those thin shoulders! If Aunt Azraella won't make a
codicil to her will I'll give you the house anyway. But I should hate
most dreadfully to appear in the light of a Noble Benefactor!"
That night Rob kept watch alone at her aunt's bedside. The dim light
that deepened the darkness burned on the small table on which sat the
alcohol stove and the collection of glasses and bottles inevitable to a
sick room. Mrs. Winslow had slept, but at midnight she became wakeful,
and Rob felt that her opportunity had come.
"Aunt Azraella," she began, coming close to the bed with a timidity new
to her. "Do you think it would harm you if I talked to you a little
while? I want to ask a favour of you when nobody can hear us, and we
are so seldom alone!"
"You can't harm me, Rob, because we know exactly what end we are
travelling to, and if you want to ask something of me there may not be
much more chance," said Mrs. Winslow with her customary stalwart sense.
Rob perched herself lightly on the edge of the bed. She longed to take
into her own one of the hands lying near her on the coverlid, but its
self-reliance was so apparent, even then, that she dared not venture.
"I'm afraid you won't like what I have to say, Aunt," Rob began. "It's
about this fine house which you want to leave me."
"Which I have left you, once for all," Aunt Azraella sharply corrected
her. "Give me a teaspoonful of my cordial."
Rob obeyed, resuming her place when she had done so. "I know that you
have willed it to me, Aunt Azraella, but I want you please, please to
alter that will, and give the house to Mrs. Hasbrook. I can't take it."
Rob spoke with decision, and her aunt saw that she had considered, and
had spoken out of a mind fully made up, saw it with dismay, for she had
reason to know that Rob's decisions, once reached, were likely to be as
inflexible as her own.
It was in a voice almost pleading that she cried: "Rob, Roberta, don't
ask me to do that! I want you should have the house; I won't die happy
if you haven't it, and I have a right to do what I please with it.
Myrtilla has no claim."
"Yes, she has, Auntie!" cried Rob, slipping to her knees beside the
bed and bringing her bright face close to the grim one on the pillow.
"Dear Aunt Azraella, she has the claim of needing it so very, very
much! She looks so sweet and patient and worn that it would be horrible
to know that disappointment awaited her. I have all, more than I need,
and she has those little children. Think of it, Aunt Azraella! And we
shall know, you and I, that you wanted to give it to me, so that I
shall always feel grateful, knowing that it was mine as far as your
desire went. And nobody else need know anything about it. I couldn't
live one week, feeling that because of me that poor girl was losing
the home she needed. Dear Aunt Azraella, you can die happy giving it
to her, because you know the good you will do, while I could never
live happy, owning the house. You have left it to me absolutely, to be
used for Hester's children, instead of the Flinders' place, or for my
own use. Then listen, Aunt Azraella: To-morrow morning add a codicil
to that will and give the house to Myrtle. If you do not I must tell
you truthfully that I shall hand it over to her the moment that it
comes into my possession. Will you, oh, will you do this for me, Aunt
Azraella?"
"Do you think you leave me much choice?" demanded her aunt.
Rob almost laughed; the remark was so exactly in Aunt Azraella's
familiar tone.
"No, I don't; yes, I do," she said. "You can force me to give your
niece the house, and I don't want to. It would be horrid to be regarded
as--oh, no decent person would want to seem that kind of heroine,"
protested Rob incoherently.
Aunt Azraella understood, and liked the young creature looking so
enthusiastic, so flushed and lovely in the dim night light, better than
she had ever liked her before. She even went so far as to lay one hand
lightly on the rippling hair.
"I wanted you to live in my house, Rob," she said, and Rob instantly
melted at this glimpse of an Aunt Azraella whom she had not known.
"Ah, dear Auntie, don't think me ungrateful; I love to think that you
would rather it were I who had your home. But you have given it to
me--that is enough for us to know. Now give it to Myrtle, for my sake,
and let it be our secret," she said.
"Our secret? When I am gone?" asked Mrs. Winslow.
"Yes, into that world which holds no injustice," whispered Rob.
Mrs. Winslow was silent, and Rob waited, tears in her eyes, with the
hand which had taken Aunt Azraella's hand after it had touched her
hair, trembling eagerly.
"You see," Rob murmured when her aunt still kept silence, "it would
hurt Myrtle if you took the house from her, and she had to receive it
from me--and she has not deserved hurting."
"If I don't do this you will be made to see that the house is yours and
that you can keep it," said Aunt Azraella slowly.
"Never, Aunt Azraella!" said Rob, "I shall give this house to Myrtilla
Hasbrook; won't you do it for me?"
Mrs Winslow lay still, her head half turned from Rob. Then, suddenly
she faced her.
"Yes, I will," she said. "But I hate to."
Rob sprang to her feet with an exclamation of delight. "Thank you,
thank you more than I can say, dear Aunt Azraella! You are good to me,
and I shall never forget."
"I hear the hall clock striking three; I took my medicine by that, this
one is slow. Give me my drops. I wonder if any one ever heard of undue
influence brought to bear on a dying woman to take away a gift she had
made the person influencing her? You have a good deal of Sylvester Grey
in you after all, Roberta; it's lucky you've got enough Winslow to save
you from being all visionary and impractical," said Rob's uncle's widow
with something between admiration and disgust in her voice.
In the morning Mrs. Winslow repented of her promise. She sent everybody
from her room while she talked to Bruce Rutherford of the matter.
Rob dared not speculate on what Bruce told Mrs. Winslow; he kept his
promise to Rob and urged the change of will--that was all that she
knew--and, after all, it was enough.
Mr. Dinsmore came up that forenoon, and was closeted with Aunt
Azraella.
When Rob brought her aunt her broth at noon the sick woman looked up
at her with an inscrutable look. "I have kept my promise, Roberta;
Myrtilla has the house," she said. "You're a foolish child, but maybe
yours is wise folly. I suppose I should not be able to admit that much
if I had not come to where you can look through."
More than that she never said, and in a day came the suffering that Dr.
Fairbairn had foreseen, and with grim patience, and with the help of
morphine Aunt Azraella waited the end.
It had come, and the Greys were back again in the little grey house,
Myrtilla Hasbrook was installed in the big one, with her four little
children to banish effectually its orderly primness under Aunt Azraella.
To Rob's unspeakable chagrin the secret of her generosity had leaked
out; perhaps Aunt Azraella had meant it to be known, for she had acted
upon Rob's thoughtless suggestion of a codicil, leaving the original
bequest of the house to her to be read on the opening of the will, and
she had so framed the codicil that it more than hinted at its being,
the result of influence--and whose that influence save Rob's?
Rob turned thorny at her betrayal, and Wythie interposed her
soft self as a fender for praise for her sister. The matter
ceased to be discussed, and only the young widow's loving eyes
told Rob that in spite of herself she was regarded as the Noble
Benefactor--capitalized--which she had determined not to be.
This was to be the autumn of renunciation for the little grey house.
Cousin Peace's dear little nest was built, and she and little Polly
Flinders were to take possession of it as soon as it was made ready.
And Lydia was solemnly prepared to espouse her Demetrius, and her
mother was arriving to take--though perhaps not to fill--her place in
the Grey household.
"Demetrius and I consider it wrong to indulge in worldly display at
such a solemn event as entering into the holy bounds of matrimony,"
said Lydia, whose language grew more and more impressive as she
profited increasingly by the companionship of Demetrius, and as she
approached "the bounds" of matrimony. "I shall wear a brown suit
throughout, with a brown hat, and no ornament but a brown feather. I'd
like to ask you girls to the ceremony, but we consider it right to make
it private. I've asked my mother to get here in time for it, and my
friend Ella M. Barnes is going to stand up with me, and his brother,
Lysander Dennis, is going to come out to stand up with him, and that's
all there'll be, except the minister's wives, or somebody for the
witnesses." Rob with difficulty restrained herself from suggesting
that the minister's wife was probably not plural, and her mother asked
instead: "Where are you to be married, Lydia?"
"At the minister's house, the Methodist minister's, because Demetrius'
is willing to waive the Congregationalist, which is his sect," said
Lydia.
"I should like to have a wedding supper for you here," said Mrs. Grey.
"You have so long been an inmate of the little grey house."
"No, I don't want you should," said Lydia firmly. "I don't care about
wedding suppers. You've given me my outfit, and that's enough. I'd
rather you used the money in a good cause. If you wanted to do any more
for me--you might subscribe, the whole family, to that temperance paper
I set so much by; I'm getting up clubs."
"We will wait, then," said Mrs. Grey, controlling her lips. "We would
rather do something more personal for you, Lyddie; there may be a
chance later."
The three Grey girls hung out of the upper windows, watching with
breathless interest Lydia departing to her marriage. Demetrius had
come out from town to espouse Lydia in the glory of deeply creased
pearl grey trousers, a white vest, stately Prince Albert coat, and a
snowy satin tie, all topped by a silk hat. Fortunately the bride had
secured Ben Bolt against an assault on this wedding raiment. The groom
and bride-elect went out arm in arm from the little grey house, Lydia
dignified in her uniform brown and audibly starched skirt. It occurred
to the admiring girls, hurling slippers at her from their windows, that
Lydia's mind was more distracted by her superiority to wedding finery
than it would have been by all the glory of veil, wreath and bridal
white.
After the wedding Lydia's mother returned to the grey house in Lydia's
stead. The happy pair had gone on a wedding journey to Chautauqua,
which it appeared both had longed to see; on their return they were
to go to the new house to superintend Miss Charlotte; the little grey
house would know Lydia no more.
Her mother proved to be a person who at once announced her daughter's
likeness to her father, because she bore no resemblance to her mother.
Her name was Rhoda, and she was rounded at every point, with an almost
African tendency to sway her plump person, and a cheerful readiness to
laughter. She was, as Rob had hoped, several years younger than Lydia,
although she had lived two decades longer; age being, as, of course,
every one knows, not a matter of years.
Timidly the Grey ladies confided to one another after Rhoda had been
installed in Lydia's deserted room, that they foresaw something like
relief in the possession of a lighter character in their kitchen. Rob
said that she had learned to overlook herself, with charity for her own
shortcomings, but that Lydia had made her dimly conscious that, ignore
it as she would, she was on the Index. Wythie added that, good girl
though Lyddie was, it would be restful not to feel as though one's most
decorous street gown were a tarleton spangled skirt and a bright pink
bodice.
"It is a funny wedding," said Prue from her own room. "I wonder whether
people like that are really happy."
"They think they are, Prudy, and that does just as well," laughed Rob,
but Wythie and she glanced at each other. Prue was a young lady, though
she was but seventeen, and both her sisters feared that their hope for
her was not to be fulfilled.
Bartlemy's fondness for her was unmistakable, but Arthur Stanhope, the
acquaintance of the Twelfth Night entertainment, came more and more
frequently to the little grey house, and Bartlemy's artistic eye did
not appreciate Prue's marvellous beauty more keenly than did this newer
friend. It was impossible for her mother's daughter to care for any
one for the sake of his wealth, but Prue was young, and splendour and
wealth had always held for her a glamour that it had not possessed for
the other two girls.
Might it not be that Arthur Stanhope's immense fortune might clothe him
in a charm that Prue, innocent of worldly intent, might mistake for
love?
Well, Arthur Stanhope was trustworthy; Prue would not choose ill in
choosing him, but Wythie and Rob were Bartlemy's advocates, though Rob
glowered at a hint that Bruce deserved at least as well at her hands.
Only one year more and then would come the first break in the Grey
household, for then Wythie and Basil would be married. She was twenty
years old herself, poor Rob, rebelling against the fulfilment of their
beautiful girlhood.
Two weeks after Lydia's wedding Miss Charlotte's tiny house received
its final enrichings, and the last of her possessions had been carried
by Battalion B from the little grey house to the new home. It was a
day of tremendous excitement, for not only was it to see Cousin Peace's
establishing, but at its close, Commodore Rutherford was at last coming
to Fayre.
October winds were blowing high as Wythie, Rob, and Prue followed their
mother and Cousin Peace down to the house which awaited them on the
spot where Cousin Peace had lived all her serene life. Polly had been
taken down first, "to make it seem homelike," Cousin Peace said, and to
be there to welcome her. The boys were there also, and Frances; while
Myrtilla Hasbrook, with her four children, had preceded the hostess to
her home, and was there ready for the modest housewarming which this
installation was to be. Mr. and Mrs. Demetrius Dennis had proved their
title to look after Miss Charlotte by the shining order of everything,
within and without, and by the odours which wafted in from the little
kitchen.
Mrs. Grey, Miss Charlotte and the girls came into the square hall,
which was also the living-room, and their faces brightened at the
wood-fire on the hearth, and the sunshine pouring through the deep
recessed windows, with their half curtains fluttering in the breeze
which the fire necessitated admitting.
Polly ran to meet Miss Charlotte as if she had been parted from her for
a month, instead of less than an hour. Then she turned to Rob and flung
her arms around her. "I wish I had you both in one," she said.
"Like two out of a set of Japanese boxes?" suggested Rob. "It's much
nicer to have us separate. Besides, Cousin Peace and I would be certain
to quarrel as to which should be the outside one. You haven't gone
away from us, Polly-kins--this little house is only the lean-to room,
leaning a little further. And isn't it the dearest little home?"
There was no mistaking that Polly thought so. Miss Charlotte drew a
long breath of profound content as she turned her face, from point to
point, precisely as if she saw, whereas she was inhaling the room, if
one may so express it.
"We are authorized, Miss Grey, to present you with this house, yielding
up to you all claim and title," said Basil, with a tremendous bow, and
as if the property had been his until that moment.