“Yes. I'm too lazy and comfortable to go downstairs; I am in extremity,
and I can't seem to scare up any help.”
“Dear me, what is the matter?”
“Matter enough, I can tell you!”
“Oh, don't keep me in suspense, dear! What is it?”
“I want to know what time it is.”
“You abominable boy, what a turn you did give me! Is that all?”
“All--on my honor. Calm yourself. Tell me the time, and receive my
blessing.”
“Just five minutes after nine. No charge--keep your blessing.”
“Thanks. It wouldn't have impoverished me, aunty, nor so enriched you
that you could live without other means.”
He got up, murmuring, “Just five minutes after nine,” and faced his
clock. “Ah,” said he, “you are doing better than usual. You are only
thirty-four minutes wrong. Let me see... let me see.... Thirty-three
and twenty-one are fifty-four; four times fifty-four are two hundred and
thirty-six. One off, leaves two hundred and thirty-five. That's right.”
He turned the hands of his clock forward till they marked twenty-five
minutes to one, and said, “Now see if you can't keep right for a
while--else I'll raffle you!”
He sat down at the desk again, and said, “Aunt Susan!”
“Yes, dear.”
“Had breakfast?”
“Yes, indeed, an hour ago.”
“Busy?”
“No--except sewing. Why?”
“Got any company?”
“No, but I expect some at half past nine.”
“I wish I did. I'm lonesome. I want to talk to somebody.”
“Very well, talk to me.”
“But this is very private.”
“Don't be afraid--talk right along, there's nobody here but me.”
“I hardly know whether to venture or not, but--”
“But what? Oh, don't stop there! You know you can trust me, Alonzo--you
know, you can.”
“I feel it, aunt, but this is very serious. It affects me deeply--me,
and all the family---even the whole community.”
“Oh, Alonzo, tell me! I will never breathe a word of it. What is it?”
“Aunt, if I might dare--”
“Oh, please go on! I love you, and feel for you. Tell me all. Confide in
me. What is it?”
“The weather!”
“Plague take the weather! I don't see how you can have the heart to
serve me so, Lon.”
“There, there, aunty dear, I'm sorry; I am, on my honor. I won't do it
again. Do you forgive me?”
“Yes, since you seem so sincere about it, though I know I oughtn't to.
You will fool me again as soon as I have forgotten this time.”
“No, I won't, honor bright. But such weather, oh, such weather! You've
got to keep your spirits up artificially. It is snowy, and blowy, and
gusty, and bitter cold! How is the weather with you?”
“Warm and rainy and melancholy. The mourners go about the streets with
their umbrellas running streams from the end of every whalebone. There's
an elevated double pavement of umbrellas, stretching down the sides of
the streets as far as I can see. I've got a fire for cheerfulness, and
the windows open to keep cool. But it is vain, it is useless: nothing
comes in but the balmy breath of December, with its burden of mocking
odors from the flowers that possess the realm outside, and rejoice in
their lawless profusion whilst the spirit of man is low, and flaunt
their gaudy splendors in his face while his soul is clothed in sackcloth
and ashes and his heart breaketh.”
Alonzo opened his lips to say, “You ought to print that, and get it
framed,” but checked himself, for he heard his aunt speaking to some
one else. He went and stood at the window and looked out upon the wintry
prospect. The storm was driving the snow before it more furiously than
ever; window-shutters were slamming and banging; a forlorn dog, with
bowed head and tail withdrawn from service, was pressing his quaking
body against a windward wall for shelter and protection; a young girl
was plowing knee-deep through the drifts, with her face turned from the
blast, and the cape of her waterproof blowing straight rearward over her
head. Alonzo shuddered, and said with a sigh, “Better the slop, and the
sultry rain, and even the insolent flowers, than this!”
He turned from the window, moved a step, and stopped in a listening
attitude. The faint, sweet notes of a familiar song caught his ear. He
remained there, with his head unconsciously bent forward, drinking in
the melody, stirring neither hand nor foot, hardly breathing. There was
a blemish in the execution of the song, but to Alonzo it seemed an added
charm instead of a defect. This blemish consisted of a marked flatting
of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh notes of the refrain or
chorus of the piece. When the music ended, Alonzo drew a deep breath,
and said, “Ah, I never have heard 'In the Sweet By-and-by' sung like
that before!”
He stepped quickly to the desk, listened a moment, and said in a
guarded, confidential voice, “Aunty, who is this divine singer?”
“She is the company I was expecting. Stays with me a month or two. I
will introduce you. Miss--”
“For goodness' sake, wait a moment, Aunt Susan! You never stop to think
what you are about!”
He flew to his bedchamber, and returned in a moment perceptibly changed
in his outward appearance, and remarking, snappishly:
“Hang it, she would have introduced me to this angel in that sky-blue
dressing-gown with red-hot lapels! Women never think, when they get
a-going.”
He hastened and stood by the desk, and said eagerly, “Now, Aunty, I am
ready,” and fell to smiling and bowing with all the persuasiveness and
elegance that were in him.
“Very well. Miss Rosannah Ethelton, let me introduce to you my favorite
nephew, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence. There! You are both good people, and
I like you; so I am going to trust you together while I attend to a
few household affairs. Sit down, Rosannah; sit down, Alonzo. Good-by; I
sha'n't be gone long.”
Alonzo had been bowing and smiling all the while, and motioning
imaginary young ladies to sit down in imaginary chairs, but now he took
a seat himself, mentally saying, “Oh, this is luck! Let the winds blow
now, and the snow drive, and the heavens frown! Little I care!”
While these young people chat themselves into an acquaintanceship, let
us take the liberty of inspecting the sweeter and fairer of the two. She
sat alone, at her graceful ease, in a richly furnished apartment which
was manifestly the private parlor of a refined and sensible lady,
if signs and symbols may go for anything. For instance, by a low,
comfortable chair stood a dainty, top-heavy workstand, whose summit was
a fancifully embroidered shallow basket, with varicolored crewels, and
other strings and odds and ends protruding from under the gaping lid and
hanging down in negligent profusion. On the floor lay bright shreds of
Turkey red, Prussian blue, and kindred fabrics, bits of ribbon, a spool
or two, a pair of scissors, and a roll or so of tinted silken stuffs.
On a luxurious sofa, upholstered with some sort of soft Indian goods
wrought in black and gold threads interwebbed with other threads not
so pronounced in color, lay a great square of coarse white stuff, upon
whose surface a rich bouquet of flowers was growing, under the deft
cultivation of the crochet-needle. The household cat was asleep on this
work of art. In a bay-window stood an easel with an unfinished picture
on it, and a palette and brushes on a chair beside it. There were books
everywhere: Robertson's Sermons, Tennyson, Moody and Sankey, Hawthorne,
Rab and His Friends, cook-books, prayer-books, pattern-books--and books
about all kinds of odious and exasperating pottery, of course. There was
a piano, with a deck-load of music, and more in a tender. There was
a great plenty of pictures on the walls, on the shelves of the
mantelpiece, and around generally; where coigns of vantage offered
were statuettes, and quaint and pretty gimcracks, and rare and costly
specimens of peculiarly devilish china. The bay-window gave upon a
garden that was ablaze with foreign and domestic flowers and flowering
shrubs.
But the sweet young girl was the daintiest thing these premises, within
or without, could offer for contemplation: delicately chiseled features,
of Grecian cast; her complexion the pure snow of a japonica that is
receiving a faint reflected enrichment from some scarlet neighbor of
the garden; great, soft blue eyes fringed with long, curving lashes; an
expression made up of the trustfulness of a child and the gentleness of
a fawn; a beautiful head crowned with its own prodigal gold; a lithe
and rounded figure, whose every attitude and movement was instinct with
native grace.
Her dress and adornment were marked by that exquisite harmony that can
come only of a fine natural taste perfected by culture. Her gown was of
a simple magenta tulle, cut bias, traversed by three rows of light-blue
flounces, with the selvage edges turned up with ashes-of-roses
chenille; overdress of dark bay tarlatan with scarlet satin lambrequins;
corn-colored polonaise, en panier, looped with mother-of-pearl buttons
and silver cord, and hauled aft and made fast by buff velvet lashings;
basque of lavender reps, picked out with valenciennes; low neck, short
sleeves; maroon velvet necktie edged with delicate pink silk; inside
handkerchief of some simple three-ply ingrain fabric of a soft saffron
tint; coral bracelets and locket-chain; coiffure of forget-me-nots and
lilies-of-the-valley massed around a noble calla.
This was all; yet even in this subdued attire she was divinely
beautiful. Then what must she have been when adorned for the festival or
the ball?
All this time she had been busily chatting with Alonzo, unconscious of
our inspection. The minutes still sped, and still she talked. But by and
by she happened to look up, and saw the clock. A crimson blush sent its
rich flood through her cheeks, and she exclaimed:
“There, good-by, Mr. Fitz Clarence; I must go now!”
She sprang from her chair with such haste that she hardly heard the
young man's answering good-by. She stood radiant, graceful, beautiful,
and gazed, wondering, upon the accusing clock. Presently her pouting
lips parted, and she said:
“Five minutes after eleven! Nearly two hours, and it did not seem twenty
minutes! Oh, dear, what will he think of me!”
At the self-same moment Alonzo was staring at his clock. And presently
he said:
“Twenty-five minutes to three! Nearly two hours, and I didn't believe
it was two minutes! Is it possible that this clock is humbugging again?
Miss Ethelton! Just one moment, please. Are you there yet?”
“Yes, but be quick; I'm going right away.”
“Would you be so kind as to tell me what time it is?”
The girl blushed again, murmured to herself, “It's right down cruel
of him to ask me!” and then spoke up and answered with admirably
counterfeited unconcern, “Five minutes after eleven.”
“Oh, thank you! You have to go, now, have you?”
“I'm sorry.”
No reply.
“Miss Ethelton!”
“Well?”
“You--you're there yet, ain't you?”
“Yes; but please hurry. What did you want to say?”
“Well, I--well, nothing in particular. It's very lonesome here. It's
asking a great deal, I know, but would you mind talking with me again by
and by--that is, if it will not trouble you too much?”
“I don't know but I'll think about it. I'll try.”
“Oh, thanks! Miss Ethelton!... Ah, me, she's gone, and here are the
black clouds and the whirling snow and the raging winds come again! But
she said good-by. She didn't say good morning, she said good-by! ... The
clock was right, after all. What a lightning-winged two hours it was!”
He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for a while, then heaved a
sigh and said:
“How wonderful it is! Two little hours ago I was a free man, and now my
heart's in San Francisco!”
About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the window-seat of her
bedchamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas
that washed the Golden Gate, and whispering to herself, “How different
he is from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antic
talent of mimicry!”