earnest pleader for her old chum. "I may go to Italy, too--not this
autumn, but by spring. We are such old friends that I can tell you,
and you'll understand, though I would not have any right to speak of
this to any one else. Perhaps you may paint me as Romola in Florence,
if we meet there. I want to go to Europe to stay for a long time--on
my wedding-trip. Arthur Stanhope--Oh, Bart dear, please don't look so
hurt. He hasn't told me that he cares for me, not yet, but I know that
he does care and will say so, and I shall go to Italy with him, not
with my dear old chum, Bartlemy. But I'll see you there, and you shall
paint me as Romola, Bart dear. I'd love to be painted as Romola, not
Romola in black and serious under Savonarola's influence, but radiant,
beautiful, golden-haired, young Romola, as she was when Tito found her."
"And you'll always care for me; why don't you add that, Prue--it's what
girls say in novels when they don't care a hang for a fellow," muttered
Bartlemy.
"Oh, I do care for you, I shall always care for you," protested Prue
eagerly. "I didn't say it because I know you are sure of it! Aren't you
my special property, the member of Battalion B that belonged to me,
just as Basil and Bruce belonged to Wythie and Rob?"
Bartlemy looked up at the girl with a new anxiety that made the noble
lad forget his own misfortune for an instant. She spoke like a child,
with entire unconsciousness of the sting this assurance must bear for
Bartlemy.
"Say, Prue, you are fond of Stanhope? You--you aren't making a mistake,
are you? Because if you are I should think you would see what all this
is to me," he said. "I don't understand how you can help knowing that
kind of caring doesn't comfort a fellow much, not if you've felt the
other kind of love yourself."
"I'm not making a mistake, Bart dear. I'm as fond of you as I can be,
but Mr. Stanhope is ever so much older than I am, and it's quite, quite
different. We are chums, Bart, and we shall be always, shall we not?"
Prue held out her hand with a cheerful kindness that made Bartlemy
catch his breath as he took the little white thing that seemed to
understand as well as the girl's brain did what she was denying and
what she was offering him.
"It isn't likely that I shall change much to you," he said, and even
Prue saw the mute misery he was trying to hide.
"It's only because I am pretty and you are an artist, Bartlemy; if
it wasn't for that and my being the youngest, the one you always
walked and talked with most, you would not care more for me than for
Rob--everybody admires Rob. You mustn't imagine that you are unhappy,
Bart dear, because that would distress me beyond anything. You won't
mind, will you? And if we should be in Florence we'd have the nicest
times, don't you think we should? I mean if we met there? Because
we're like Joe Gargery and Pip: 'Ever the best of friends,' aren't we,
dear Bartlemy--chum?" And Prue smiled, radiant in her beauty with the
breeze dappling her faultless face with the shadows of the branches.
She thought privately that she was showing wonderful skill and insight
in the difficult task of adjusting her best friend and first lover,
tactfully giving him the clue to their future intercourse.
Bartlemy seemed less pleased with the interview. He was wise enough to
see that no mere protestations on Prue's part could so effectually deny
him hope of winning her as did her careless indifference, her childish
lack of understanding of how hard it was for him to stand there with
her smiling at him, forever out of reach.
"I think I'll go home, Prue," he said a trifle unsteadily. "You're
going up to Mrs. Hasbrook. Good-bye, Prue."
"Good-bye, Bartlemy? Well, till to-night then. We shall see you after
tea. Good-bye," said Prue still smiling, but with a troubled look
creeping over her face as she watched Bartlemy gather together his
painting tools and walk slowly down the hill without looking back. For
she guessed that the picture would never be finished; that for the
young painter of whom she was, in her insufficient way, so very fond,
"My Lady June" would remain but a sketch upon the canvas, symbol and
reminder of his first romance.
Bruce went alone to the little grey house that evening. Bartlemy
remained with his father till late at night, and when they parted with
the handshake which spoke them friends as well as father and son, it
was arranged that Bartlemy should at once go away to begin the European
study to which he had been looking forward throughout his college days,
though then he had not meant to go alone.
Commodore Rutherford was to go with the lad as far as England, possibly
into France. It was all so sudden that the Greys had hardly time to
adjust their minds to the fact that Bartlemy was going before he came
to say good-bye. Basil and Wythie were at home and this first real
break in the sextette of beautiful comradeship, as well as their
disappointment in its cause, threw a shadow over the other five who
without Bartlemy would be so incomplete.
Wythie and Rob kissed the tall boy with tears which they did not try to
keep back, and the dear Grey mother held him close.
"Good-bye, my dear; good-bye, dear Bartlemy," she whispered. "I am so
sorry, but I fear we can do nothing but be sorry. Learn to be happy;
one disappointment in the beginning of life will not harm, but will
strengthen you, and remember we all love you, and shall watch your
every step with anxious pride."
"Good-bye, Mardy Grey. The little grey house has given me much, but it
has denied me its best gift," said Bartlemy. He looked once more at
Prue, standing a little aloof, pale, sorry, ashamed, but not relenting,
and last of all he took her hand without a word. The door closed behind
him, and with his footsteps down the flags died away the last echo
of the unbroken tramp of Battalion B, which had brought cheer to the
little grey house for more than four years.
"For just you and Basil can never be the battalion," said Rob
reproachfully to Bruce, as if it were his fault.
Wythie and Basil went away to their new home and Bruce went with them.
Bartlemy was to start on a train that stopped on signal at Fayre at
half-past three in the morning. It was a dismal going away, and the
Greys remembered how much they should miss not only Bartlemy but the
kind Commodore whose very voice was a cordial. He would return in two
months, leaving Bartlemy abroad to study.
"Of course time, and the work he loves so much, and the glorious
pictures and architecture he is to see for the first time, will
heal Bartlemy's wound, Rob," said Mrs. Grey, as she and her second
daughter lingered after Prue had gone soberly up-stairs, leaving
them to themselves. "And Rob, only fancy! I have had a letter from
Arthur Stanhope in the last mail to-night announcing his coming here
to-morrow, avowedly to ask little Prudy to marry him. I must take to
cap and spectacles, for she is my baby--yet after all, she is eighteen."
"To-morrow! The very day poor Bartlemy sails! It is altogether too much
like that game you used to play with us when we were babies, sticking
bits of paper on your finger-tips, and crying: 'Fly away, Jack, fly
away, Jill! Come again, Jack, come again, Jill!' I do think he might
have waited! Yet how could he know?" cried Rob.
"It is a good letter, manly, straightforward--I left it up-stairs, or
I would show it to you," said her mother with a half laugh at Rob's
vehemence. "He says he will not assume that I know that he wants
to marry our Prue, though he feels sure that we must have seen how
profoundly he admires her. He wants me to receive him to-morrow with
the intention of asking her to marry him. I suppose I must say yes,
Rob?"
"I suppose you must, Mardy. Really, I can't feel about Prue's marrying
as I did about Wythie's," said Rob. "Though I do feel very badly that
it isn't dear old Bart."
"And I feel much more about it, in a certain way," returned her mother.
"Wythie's marriage held no risk; it was the natural and lovely outcome
of a charming romance, but Prue, foolish, ambitious, beautiful Prue is
going into a different world from ours, and I am less sure of her fate."
"She wouldn't be satisfied in our world, Mardy; she never was. So isn't
it best to be glad that another has opened to her?" suggested Rob.
"Wise Robin!" smiled her mother. "I suppose it is."
Mrs. Grey had telegraphed to Arthur Stanhope her permission to come, as
he had asked her to do. A box of rare and costly flowers preceded him,
and Prue was making herself ready to receive him with triumph in her
eyes, and without a shadow of doubt or regret to confirm her mother's
fears. But she was so young; did she really know what she wanted? Mrs.
Grey could not answer her own question. It lurked behind the eyes
smiling at Prue in the glass as the girl made herself ready to receive
her coming fate. She turned to meet the eyes with a little laugh of
satisfaction, pardonable to the possessor of such beauty as she had
just been contemplating.
"I think we weren't half sympathetic enough with Lydia in having a
young man come out from New York to see her--it's really very nice,
Mardy," she cried, shaking out of its box a single pink rose from among
the many long-stemmed beauties filling the room with their odour. "I
suppose you and Rob, and Wythie, if she were here, would rather have
one of those old-time blush roses from the bush some one planted ages
ago," Prue continued, "but I wouldn't; I'd rather have this magnificent
thing that came from a hot-house after ever so long cultivating and
selecting to make it what it is."
"Only that you may be good and happy, Prudy; that granted, your mother
will not quarrel with you for loving the splendours of a world that
never for a moment has appealed to her," said Mrs. Grey gently.
"Kiss me then, you dear, sweet mother," said Prue. "It's a pity I'm
not like you, but I am a worldly Prudence--oh, I never thought of it
before! Why did you name me Prudence if you did not want me to love
this world's goods prudently?"
"It has always seemed to me imprudent to love them, Prue. But here's
your kiss, my baby, and all good attend you, darling."
The faint blush tint of her floating gown, deepening into the pink of
the rose he had sent her seemed to Arthur Stanhope, as Prue glided into
the room, like the dawn, for he saw that she had come to fulfil his
dreams.
It was moonlight, and Rob, sitting chin in hand by the window which
Wythie had loved best in the room that had been theirs, saw her younger
sister walking in its rays, and knew that she alone was now wholly the
daughter of the little grey house.
The next morning saw Prue stirring early in a rapture of plans and
gratified desires which the day was not long enough to allow her to
tell to her mother and to Wythie and Cousin Peace who came in to wish
joy to little Prudy.
The girl walked on air and the air was rainbow-tinted. Arthur's aunt,
one of the leaders of the best social set in New York, had sent a
loving note to the girl whom he had chosen, asking her to come to her
at Newport for August, and then to go with them to the Berkshires, to
her other house, for the supplementary season there.
"Only fancy," cried Prue, lifting her arms in a rapture that seemed
to call upon all the world to witness and to share it. "I, I, Prue
Grey, who used to go to school shabbily clad, who had to look at
goodies in the shops till my mouth watered, I am going to Newport, to
the Berkshires, to walk on velvet and to eat off of gold plate like a
queen, and to take my place among everything and everybody I want! Oh,
it is a dream! It can't be true!"
"But your blood is the best in the land; you talk as if you were a
beggar maid, and Arthur Cophetua!" cried Rob indignantly.
"He is giving me everything I want," said Prue. "He thinks he is not
worthy to untie my shoe, so don't be afraid that he undervalues me."
"Wouldn't you rather be all alone, just with him this summer when you
are first engaged?" asked Wythie timidly. She really felt afraid of
this new Prue who swept everything before her like an empress.
Prue laughed. "You dear, sentimental little Wythie-goose!" she cried
patronizing her favourite sister. "Of course I wouldn't! I wouldn't
rather anything were anyway but just as it is! But I'll tell you what
Arthur says--he says I'm so pretty he would not dare to let them
all see me unless I had first promised--Oh, no; I won't tell you,
either--it's silly!"
"We might conjecture what you had omitted--let me see--three words, I
should think," remarked Rob.
"Dear little Prudy, I hope you will be happy every minute of this life
that you think is to prove fairyland to you," said Cousin Peace gently.
Suddenly Rob seemed to shake herself mentally. "I really don't see
why we all have an ill-concealed feeling that Prue is liable to be
anything but happy!" she cried. "It is all because we love Bartlemy,
and our thoughts are following him across the deep. Of course you will
be happy, Prudy, and of course it is fine to be going to Newport and
way stations, dancing and looking lovely with nothing to distract your
attention from newly-found bliss, 'with the world so new-and-all,' as
Kipling says. You are going to enjoy your little eighteen-year-old self
till you won't believe it's you. And Arthur is a nice fellow, who has
behaved beautifully all through this trying period, and I'm glad you
are to be set in such a way as to show our jewel to her best advantage.
We are envious old foxes, looking at your grapes! Ask us, Wythie and
me, to your splendid mansion--when you get one--and you'll see how
worldly we shall be, too!"
Prue laughed, but she did not need Rob's consideration. She had been
too engrossed in the wonderful splendour awaiting her to be sensitive
to the misgivings of her family. And after all why should she not be
happy who had always longed for luxury, and to whom poverty in the old
days had been more irksome than to her sisters?
"I'll ask you," she said, "to my fine mansion, to my box at the opera,
to drive behind my splendid horses, to dine with my brilliant friends.
Oh, girls, won't it be lovely?"
Prue ran down-stairs to meet Frances and Hester, whom she saw coming,
and to tell them of her glories before any one else could take the edge
off of her tidings.
"I wish she realized more, were less young. She seems scarcely
different than when her father bought her that little blue silk parasol
in her third year, and she refused to eat except beneath its shade,"
said Mrs. Grey.
"She was not unhappy after she got used to the parasol, although it no
longer held her spellbound, Mardy," said Rob, the philosopher. "Why
should she be unhappy after she has grown accustomed to a million?
Prudy is so happy now that her parasol would not interest her. Let us
believe that by and by she will be so much happier than now that this
beginning too will be forgotten in greater bliss."
"Prue is one of the Grey girls, your daughter, Mary; I am sure wealth
will not spoil her, and only think, with her great beauty and her great
wealth what royal opportunities she will have for doing good!" added
Cousin Peace. "Dear little golden-haired Prudy! She is only very young,
and that will be but too soon corrected in her."
"Walk up the street part way with me, Robin; my husband will be waiting
lunch for me," said Wythie with such a happy smile that Rob remarked,
as she snatched a parasol:
"Dear me, how fine that sounds! Happiness seems to be a drug in our
market. I'll come, Mrs. Rutherford; Hester and Frances will have to
listen to Prue a while but they won't mind."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ITS ADAMANTINE DAUGHTER
"'It's we two, it's we two, it's we two for aye,'" sang Rob to a
slight, inconsequent tune of her own making. "We are the only Grey
girls left, Mardy, the only reliable daughters of the little grey
house. What with Wythie so very young-matronly and preoccupied in her
home, and Prue shining at Newport and writing us of the cotillions and
general splendours, and of admiration enough to turn any head, I begin
to feel like Holmes' Last Leaf."
"Why, that's a rather dismal ending to a speech that began in such a
contented little chant," said Mrs. Grey, looking up from her desk with
her pen marking the point half-way up her column of accounts at which
she had suspended addition.
"Oh, no; it's not a withered, dun leaf; it's a flaming maple," returned
Rob. "But it is queer to be the spinster Miss Grey, with one's sisters
married and gone--gone at any rate, and as good as married. The house
is quiet, and--and--well, spacious."
"Lonely, Rob?" suggested her mother.
"No, Mardy; not lonely with you, but I feel, as near as I can express
it--shrunken," said Rob thoughtfully. "I miss the girls, of course,
but there is something sweet about this solitude of two, as the French
say--like being an only child."
Mrs. Grey looked at Rob consideringly, wondering how long she could
keep this daughter, if not the one dearest to her motherly heart,
certainly the one that she could least well spare. The girl's face
was not less brilliant, but it was quieter; the quick tongue had
learned the curb, and there was a softer, more womanly look around the
sensitive lips which always seemed ready to laugh or to quiver because
the upper one was so short. "Wythie is as pretty and sweet as a dove,
and Prue is rarely beautiful, but to my eyes Rob is the prettiest of
the Grey girls, the one whose face has most power to charm," thought
the mother for the unnumbered time as she looked at her. She dared not
allude to Bruce. She believed and hoped that sooner or later Bruce's
quiet persistence and devotion would win from Rob its reward, but the
girl sprang to arms so quickly at a hint of such a possibility that her
mother dared not suggest now that Rob, too, might slip away from the
little grey house.
Instead, she asked: "Aren't you going up to see Wythie a moment before
you go down to Charlotte's?"
"Yes; Wythie wants advice on the curtains for the Commodore's room,"
said Rob. "Much as we all like and enjoy Commodore Rutherford, I wonder
if Basil and Wythie don't half dread his coming back? Love is selfish;
not one bit noble, no matter what the poets say. Wythie flies to hug me
when I come in, but I always feel sure that she likes to have me shut
the door and leave Basil and her to themselves."
"Why, Robin!" remonstrated her mother.
"Oh, well; it's all right. We made up our minds to that, I suppose,
when we let her go. She loves me just as well as ever, but she isn't my
Wythie altogether, as she used to be--she's my exclusively-and-happily
married sister. Home is home, Mardy, and every one, who doesn't belong
inside it, no matter who she may be, is an outsider. Very likely I
shall feel just the same when I have been longer alone with you."
"If ever you marry, dear, I shall pray you to come here to live, and
let me have a corner in your home, otherwise the little grey house
would be left bereft, indeed. Would you mind letting your Mardy Grey
stay with you, and should I be an outsider?" asked Mrs. Grey.
"You are the very inside and core of my heart, Mardy, as you well know,
and those are the only terms upon which I would marry--if I could
marry. But I won't marry, Mardy; I never, never will! I don't want to.
I want to be Rob Grey, just nobody but Rob Grey of the little grey
house to the end." And Rob dropped a kiss on her mother's glossy brown
hair as she went out of the room to get her hat for her call on Wythie.
"You could not be any one better or more beloved," her mother called
after her, and resumed her accounts.
Rob went up the street in the bright September sunshine, wondering
at her vague dissatisfaction, which made her feel unlike her usual
blithe self. It was worse than foolish, she told herself, but Wythie's
blissful contentment had a bad effect upon her mind.
Basil faithfully retired after breakfast to the room which had been
set apart for his use and wrote till luncheon, resisting the strong
temptation to watch his girl-wife busying herself about her morning
household cares. So Rob did not expect to find Basil when she came
in by the side door, and followed the sound of Wythie's voice to the
library. She did not expect to find Bruce either, yet there he was, at
the hour when he was usually busiest, for Bruce was working in earnest
at his profession, and Dr. Fairbairn told enthusiastic stories of his
assistant's natural gift for healing and of his untiring industry.
Rob halted a perceptible instant on the threshold before entering; she
had avoided Bruce of late, feeling an electrical atmosphere surrounding
him.
The "Hallo, Rob!" with which he greeted her sounded safe enough, and
Rob returned it cheerfully as she entered.
It was a beautiful room, high ceiled and dignified, and its
appointments were perfect. Rob looked around it with new satisfaction,
seeing anew, as she did at each visit, how quietly fine and tasteful
was Oswyth's home.
"I'm so sorry that I made you come up here first this morning when
you were in a hurry to get to Cousin Charlotte's, Rob," said Wythie.
"You know I thought Frances was going to town on the 1.53 train, but
she went this morning, so I had to decide the curtains for myself and
give her the sample. I took the autumn-tinted fabric. Basil says he is
sure father would prefer it, and I want the room to be what he likes,
although he won't be in it long, and nobody knows how soon he will get
back here. Aren't you going to stay with me, or haven't you settled
Cousin Peace's problem?"
"If you're going down to Miss Charlotte's I'll take you there safely,
Rob. I've got to meet the doctor at the new family's, four doors below
her," said Bruce rising.
Rob flushed; she had been long trying to avoid these solitary
interviews with Bruce, and now Wythie had made it impossible for her
to escape this walk without being downright rude. She arose with a
reluctance that every muscle betrayed, and said: "I suppose I must go
if you don't need me, Wythie. Cousin Peace is waiting for me; I told
her I would hurry down as soon as I had seen your samples once more."
"Basil and I are going to drive over to the lake this afternoon; be
ready by three, and tell Mardy," said Wythie nervously. Her experienced
eye detected a look in Bruce's that spoke of determination, and in
Rob's an expression of defiant fear.
She watched them off down the long walk under the heavy trees that
shaded the approach to her new home, clasping and unclasping her hands
in a panic of foreboding. It took all her strength of mind to keep her
resolution not to disturb Basil during his working hours; she longed
to rush to him and say what she could now say only to herself and the
carved chair upon which she was kneeling by the window: "Oh, dear, oh
dear! He is going to tell her he cares for her, and she is going to be
horrid! Oh, Rob, how can you, when he is such a dear boy, and you know
you will never look at any one else! it isn't like Prue. Oh, I wish
Basil were here!"
Wythie's forecast was proving entirely correct. Bruce walked down
to the gate without a word, and Rob kept at his side with a most
forbidding expression on her face, which seemed to have had all its
ripples and sunshine frozen in Wythie's library.
For a few paces down the street Bruce preserved this silence, then
suddenly he halted, and turned on Rob fiercely. "Look here, Rob," he
said. "You've been trying to keep out of my way, and I suppose you
think I'll take that for my answer. But I won't! Are you going to marry
me?"
"No, indeed I am not," retorted Rob with equal emphasis.
"Why not?" asked Bruce, walking on as if disposed to argue it.
"Because I do not want to," said Rob, evidently not inclined to
discussion.
"But you care for me," insisted Bruce.
"Do I? Well, I shall not very long if you bother me about such things,"
said Rob.
"I want you, Rob," said Bruce with a break in his voice that softened
Rob a little.
"I wish you wouldn't; it is so unpleasant," she said.
"Rob, dear, from the first moment that I saw you I cared for you in
a boyish way. And now that I am a man you have grown to be so much a
part of every hope I have, every thought I think, every effort I make
that to tear you out of my life would leave a crippled Bruce Rutherford
forever. I don't mean to appeal to your pity, of course, but it's the
simple truth that my future lies at your mercy. It's not going to be
with me as with Bartlemy. I don't mean that Bart wasn't in earnest
and that Prue did not hurt him, but he has the artist nature, and
he'll pull through. I'm a fellow of one idea, and it wouldn't be easy
to uproot me and make me grow in new soil. Somehow, I can't imagine
living without you, Rob. What's the use of my telling you all this,
when you know me better than I know myself, when I've never had a
secret from you in all these years of our fine friendship? You know
what it will be if I have to try to limp along without you. You helped
Hester with the Green Pasture's; why do you want to cripple me worse
than that poor little chap you've got there is crippled? Can't you
imagine what it means to me even to think of losing you, Rob?"
Bruce held out his hands with an appealing gesture, and Rob saw them,
the strong well-shaped, true doctor's hands, tremble.