Project Gutenberg's The Indifference of Juliet, by Grace S. Richmond
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Title: The Indifference of Juliet
Author: Grace S. Richmond
Illustrator: Henry Hutt
Release Date: August 9, 2008 [EBook #26233]
Language: English
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[Illustration: "The rich voice of the bishop was as impressive as it
had ever been." (See page 77)]
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THE INDIFFERENCE OF JULIET
By GRACE S. RICHMOND
Author of
"The Second Violin" "The Dixons"
With Illustrations
By HENRY HUTT
A. L. BURT COMPANY,
PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
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Copyright,
1902, 1903, 1904,
by The Curtis
Publishing Company
Copyright, 1905, by
Doubleday, Page
& Company
Published,
March, 1905
All rights reserved, including that of
translation--also right of translation
into the Scandinavian languages
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To
Father and Mother
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. An Audacious Proposition 3
II. Measurements 12
III. Shopping with a Chaperon 17
IV. The Cost of Frocks 23
V. Muslins and Tackhammers 30
VI. A Question of Identity 36
VII. An Argument Without Logic 46
VIII. On Account of the Tea-Kettle 57
IX. A Bishop and a Hay-Wagon 69
X. On a Threshold 80
XII. The Bachelor Begs a Dish-Towel 101
XIII. Smoke and Talk 114
XIV. Strawberries 120
XV. Anthony Plays Maid 136
XVI. A House-Party--Outdoors 144
XVII. Rachel Causes Anxiety 155
XVIII. An Unknown Quantity 164
XIX. All the April Stars Are Out 175
XX. A Prior Claim 181
XXI. Everybody Gives Advice 191
XXII. Roger Barnes Proves Invaluable 201
XXIII. Two Not of a Kind 215
XXIV. The Careys Are at Home 233
XXV. The Robeson Will 246
XXVI. On Guard 266
XXVII. Lockwood Pays a Call 282
XXVIII. A High-Handed Affair 294
XXIX. Juliet Proves Herself Still Indifferent 303
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PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
HORATIO MARCY, an elderly New Englander of some wealth.
ANTHONY ROBESON, the last young male representative of the Kentucky
ROBESONS, now making his own way in Massachusetts.
WAYNE CAREY, Robeson's former college chum, an office clerk on a salary.
DR. ROGER WILLIAMS BARNES, a surgeon.
LOUIS LOCKWOOD, an attorney-at-law.
STEVENS CATHCART, an architect.
MRS. DINGLEY, sister of Horatio Marcy.
JULIET MARCY, daughter of Horatio Marcy.
JUDITH DEARBORN, Juliet's friend since school-days.
SUZANNE GERARD, MARIE DRESSER, other friends of Juliet.
RACHEL REDDING, a poor country girl--of education.
MARY MCKAIM--in the background, but valuable.
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THE INDIFFERENCE OF JULIET
I.--AN AUDACIOUS PROPOSITION
Anthony Robeson glanced about him in a satisfied way at the shaded nook
under the low-hanging boughs into which he had guided the boat. Then he
drew in his oars and let the little craft drift.
"This is an ideal spot," said he, looking into his friend's face, "in
which to tell you a rather interesting piece of news."
"Oh, fine!" cried his friend, settling herself among the cushions in the
stern and tilting back her parasol so that the light through its white
expanse framed her health-tinted face in a sort of glory. "Tell me at
once. I suspected you came with something on your mind. There couldn't be
a lovelier place on the river than this for confidences. But I can guess
yours. Tony, you've found 'her'!"
"And you'll be my friend just the same?" questioned Anthony anxiously. "My
chum--my confidante?"
"Oh, well, Tony, that's absurd," declared Juliet Marcy severely. "As if
_she_ would allow it!"
"She's three thousand miles away."
"I'm ashamed of you!"
"Just in the interval, then," pleaded Anthony. "I need you now worse than
ever. For I've a tremendous responsibility on my hands. The--the--you
know--is to come off in September, and this is June--and I've a house to
furnish. Will you help me do it, Juliet?"
"_Anthony Robeson!_" she said explosively under her breath, with a laugh.
Then she sat up and leaned forward with a commanding gesture. "Tell me all
about it. What is her name and who is she? Where did you meet her? Are you
very much----"
"Would I marry a girl if I were not 'very much'?" demanded Anthony.
"Well--I'll tell you--since you insist on these non-essentials before you
really come down to business. Her name is Eleanor Langham, and she lives
in San Francisco. Her family is old, aristocratic, wealthy--yet she
condescends to me."
He looked up keenly into her eyes, and her brown lashes fell for an
instant before something in his glance, but she said quickly: "Go on."
"When the--affair--is over I want to bring my bride straight home,"
Anthony proceeded, with a tinge of colour in his smooth, clear cheek. "I
shall have no vacation to speak of at that time of year, and no time to
spend in furnishing a house. Yet I want it all ready for her. So you see I
need a friend. I shall have two weeks to spare in July, and if you would
help me--"
"But, Tony," she interrupted, "how could I? If--if we were seen shopping
together----"
"No, we couldn't go shopping together in New York without being liable to
run into a wondering crowd of friends, of course--not in the places where
you would want to go. But here you are only a couple of hours from Boston;
you will be here all summer; you and Mrs. Dingley and I could run into
Boston for a day at a time without anybody's being the wiser. I know--that
is--I'm confident Mrs. Dingley would do it for me----"
"Oh, of course. Did Auntie ever deny you anything since the days when she
used to give you jam as often as you came across to play with me?"
"Never."
"Have you _her_ photograph?" inquired Miss Marcy with an emphasis which
left no possible doubt as to whose photograph she meant.
"I expected that," said Anthony gravely. "I expected it even sooner. But I
am prepared."
She sat watching him curiously as he slowly drew from his breast-pocket a
tiny leather case, and gazed at it precisely as a lover might be expected
to gaze at his lady's image before jealously surrendering it into other
hands. She had never seen Anthony Robeson look at any photograph except
her own with just that expression. She had often wondered if he ever
would. She had recommended this course of procedure to him many times,
usually after once more gently refusing to marry him. She had begun at
last to doubt whether it would ever be possible to divert Tony's mind from
its long-sought object. But that trip to San Francisco, and the months he
had spent there in the interests of the firm he served, had evidently
brought about the desired change. She had not seen him since his return
until to-day, when he had run up into the country where was the Marcy
summer home, to tell her, as she now understood, his news and to make his
somewhat extraordinary request.
She accepted the photograph with a smile, and studied it with attention.
"Oh, but isn't she pretty?" she cried warmly--and generously, for she was
thinking as she looked how much prettier was Miss Langham than Miss
Marcy.
"Isn't she?" agreed Anthony with enthusiasm.
"Lovely. What eyes! And what a dear mouth!"
"You're right."
"She looks clever, too."
"She is."
"How tall is she?"
"About up to my shoulder."
"She's little, then."
"Well, I don't know," objected Anthony, surveying his own stalwart length
of limb. "A girl doesn't have to be a dwarf not to be on a level with me.
I should say she must be somewhere near your height."
"What a magnificent dresser!"
"Is she? She never irritates one with the fact."
"Oh, but I can see. And she's going to marry you. Tony, what can you give
her?"
"A little box of a house, one maidservant, an occasional trip into town,
four new frocks a year--moderate ones, you know, in keeping with her
circumstances--and my name," replied Anthony composedly.
"You won't let her live in town, then?"
"Let her! Good heavens, what sort of a place could I give her in town on
my salary? Now, in the very rural suburb I've picked out she can live in
the greatest comfort, and we can have a real home--something I haven't had
since Dad died and the old home and the money and all the rest of it
went."
His face was grave now, and he was staring down into the water as if he
saw there both what he had lost and what he hoped to gain.
"Yes," said Juliet sympathetically, though she did not know how to imagine
the girl whose photograph she held in the surroundings Anthony suggested.
Presently she went on in her gentlest tone: "I'm not saying that the name
isn't a proud one to offer her, Tony--and if she is willing to share your
altered fortunes I've no doubt she will be happy. Along with your name
you'll give her a heart worth having."
"Thank you," said Anthony without looking up.
Miss Marcy coloured slightly, and hastened to supplement this speech with
another.
"The question is--since the home is to be hers--why not let her furnish
it? Her tastes and mine might not agree. Besides----"
"Well----"
"Why--you know, Tony," explained Juliet in some confusion, "I shouldn't
know how to be economical."
"I'm aware that you haven't been brought up on the most economical basis,"
Anthony acknowledged frankly. "But I'll take care of my funds, no matter
how extravagant you are inclined to be. If I should hand you five dollars
and say, 'Buy a dining-table,' you could do it, couldn't you? You couldn't
satisfy your ideals, of course, but you could give me the benefit of your
discriminating choice within the five-dollar limit."
Juliet laughed, but in her eyes there grew nevertheless a look of doubt.
"Tony," she demanded, "how much have you to spend on the furnishing of
that house?"
"Just five hundred dollars," said Anthony concisely. "And that must cover
the repairing and painting of the outside. Really, Juliet, haven't I done
fairly well to save up that and the cost of the house and lot--for a
fellow who till five years ago never did a thing for himself and never
expected to need to? Yes, I know--the piano in your music-room cost twice
that, and so did the horses you drive, and a very few of your pretty gowns
would swallow another five. But Mrs. Anthony Robeson will have to chasten
her ideas a trifle. Do you know, Juliet--I think she will--for love of
me?"
He was smiling at his own audacious confidence. Juliet attempted no reply
to this very unanswerable statement. She studied the photograph in
silence, and he lay watching her. In her blue-and-white boating suit she
was a pleasant object to look at.
"Will you help me?" he asked again at length. "I'm more anxious than I can
tell you to have everything ready."
"I shouldn't like to fail you, Tony, since you really wish it, though I'm
very sure you'll find me a poor adviser. But you haven't been a brother to
me since the mud-pie days for nothing, and if I can help you with
suggestions as to colour and style I'll be glad to. Though I shall all the
while be trying to live up to this photograph, and that will be a little
hard on the five-dollar-dining-table scale."
"You've only to look out that everything is in good taste," said Anthony
quietly, "and that you can't help doing. My wife will thank you, and the
new home will be sweet to her because of you. It surely will to me."
II.--MEASUREMENTS
It was on the first day of Robeson's two-weeks' July vacation that he came
to take Juliet Marcy and her aunt, Mrs. Dingley, who had long stood to her
in the place of the mother she had early lost, to see the home he had
bought in a remote suburb of a great city. It was a three-hours' journey
from the Marcy country place, but he had insisted that Juliet could not
furnish the house intelligently until she had studied it in detail.
So at eleven o'clock of a hot July morning Miss Marcy found herself
surveying from the roadway a small, old-fashioned white house, with green
blinds shading its odd, small-paned windows; a very "box of a house," as
Anthony had said, set well back from the quiet street and surrounded by
untrimmed trees and overgrown shrubbery. The whole place had a neglected
appearance. Even the luxuriant climbing-rose, which did its best to hide
the worn white paint of the house-front, served to intensify the look of
decay.
"Charming, isn't it?" asked Robeson with the air of the delighted
proprietor. "Of course everything looks gone to seed, but paint and a
lawn-mower and a few other things will make another place of it. It's good
old colonial, that's sure, and only needs a bit of fixing up to be quite
correct, architecturally, small as it is."
He led the way up the weedy path, Mrs. Dingley and Juliet exchanging
amused glances behind his back. He opened the doors with a flourish and
waved the ladies in. They entered with close-held skirts and noses
involuntarily sniffing at the musty air. Anthony ran around opening
windows and explaining the "points" of the house. When they had been over
it Mrs. Dingley, warm and weary, subsided upon the door-step, while Juliet
and Anthony fell to discussing the possibilities of the place.
"You see," said Anthony, mopping his heated brow, "it isn't like having
big, high rooms to decorate. These little rooms,"--he put up his hand and
succeeded, from his fine height, in touching the ceiling of the lower
front room in which they stood--"won't stand anything but the most simple
treatment, and expensive papers and upholsteries would be out of place. It
will take only very small rugs to suit the floors. The main thing for you
to think of will be colours and effects. You'll find five hundred dollars
will go a long way, even after the repairs and outside painting are
disposed of."
He looked so appealing that Juliet could but answer heartily: "Yes, I'm
sure of it. And now, Tony, don't you think you'd better draw a plan of the
house, putting in all the measurements, so we shall know just how to go to
work? And I will go around and dream a while in each room. Give me the
photograph, you devoted lover, so I can plan things to suit _her_."
Anthony laughed and put his hand into his breast-pocket. But he drew it
out empty.
"Why--I've left it behind," he admitted in some embarrassment. "I really
thought I had it."
"Oh, Tony! And on this very trip when we needed it most! How could you
leave it behind? Don't you always carry it next your heart?"
"Is that the prescribed place?"
"Certainly. I should doubt a man's love if he did not constantly wear my
likeness right where it could feel his heart beating for me."
"Now I never supposed," remarked Anthony, considering her attentively,
"that you had so much romance about you. Do you realise that for an
extremely practical young person such as you have--mostly--appeared to be,
that is a particularly sentimental suggestion? Er--should you wear his in
the same way, may I inquire?"
"Of course," returned Juliet with defiance in her eyes, whose lashes, when
they fell at length before his steadily interested gaze, swept a daintily
colouring cheek.
"Have you ever worn one?" inquired this hardy young man, nothing daunted
by these signs of righteous indignation. But all he got for answer was a
vigorous:
"You absurd boy! Now go to work at your measurements. I'm going upstairs.
There's one room up there, the one with the gable corners and the little
bits of windows, that's perfectly fascinating. It must be done in Delft
blue and white. Since I haven't the photograph"--she turned on the
threshold to smile roguishly back at him--"memory must serve. Beautiful
dark hair; eyes like a Madonna's; a perfect nose; the dearest mouth in the
world--oh, yes----"
She vanished around the corner only to put her head in again with the air
of one who fires a parting shot at a discomfited enemy: "But, Tony--do you
honestly think the house is large enough for such a queen of a woman?
Won't her throne take up the whole of the first floor?"
Then she was gone up the diminutive staircase, and her light footsteps
could be heard on the bare floors overhead. Left alone, Anthony Robeson
stood still for a moment looking fixedly at the door by which she had
gone. The smile with which he had answered her gay fling had faded; his
eyes had grown dark with a singular fire; his hands were clenched.
Suddenly he strode across the floor and stopped by the door. He was
looking down at the quaint old latch which served instead of a knob. Then,
with a glance at the unconscious back of Mrs. Dingley, sitting sleepily on
the little porch outside, he stooped and pressed his lips upon the iron
where Juliet's hand had lain.
III.--SHOPPING WITH A CHAPERON
"Five hundred dollars," mused Miss Marcy, on the Boston train next
morning. "Six rooms--living-room, dining-room, kitchen, and three
bedrooms. That's----"
"You forget," warned Anthony Robeson from the seat where he faced Juliet
and Mrs. Dingley. "That must cover the outside painting and repairs. You
can't figure on having more than three hundred dollars left for the
inside."
"Dear me, yes," frowned Juliet. She held Anthony's plan in her hand, and
her tablets and pencil lay in her lap. "Well, I can spend fifty dollars on
each room--only some will need more than others. The living-room will take
the most--no, the dining-room."
"The kitchen will take the most," suggested Mrs. Dingley. "Your range will
use up the most of your fifty. And kitchen utensils count up very
rapidly."
"It will be a very small range," Anthony said. "A little toy stove would
be more practical for our--the kitchen. How big is it, Juliet?"
"'Ten by fourteen,'" read Juliet. "From the centre of the room you can hit
all the side walls with the broom. Speaking of walls, Tony--those must be
our first consideration. If we get our colour scheme right everything else
will follow. I have it all in my head."
So it proved. But it also proved, when they had been hard at work for an
hour at a well-known decorator's, that the tints and designs for which
Miss Marcy asked were not readily to be found in the low-priced
wall-papers to which Anthony rigidly held her.
"I must have the softest, most restful greens for the living-room," she
announced. "There--_that_----"
"But that is a dollar a roll," whispered Anthony.
"Then--_that_!"
"Eighty-five cents."
"But for that little room, Tony----"
"Twenty-five cents a roll is all we can allow," insisted Anthony firmly.
"And less than that everywhere else."
The salesman was very obliging, and showed the best things possible for
the money. It was impossible to resist the appeal in the eyes of this
critical but restricted young buyer.
"There, that will do, I think," said Juliet at length, with a long breath.
"The green for the living-room and for the bit of a hall--No, no, Tony;
I've just thought! You must take away that little partition and let the
stairs go up out of the living-room. That will improve the apparent size
of things wonderfully."
"All right," agreed Anthony obediently.
"Then we'll put that rich red in the dining-room. For upstairs there is
the tiny rose pattern, and the Delft blue, and that little pale yellow and
white stripe. In the kitchen we'll have the tile pattern. We won't have a
border anywhere--the rooms are too low; just those simplest mouldings, and
the ivory white on the ceilings. The woodwork must all be white. There
now, that's settled. Next come the floors."
There could be no doubt that Juliet was becoming interested in her task.
Though the July heat was intense she led the way with rapid steps to the
place where she meant to select her rugs. Here the three spent a trying
two hours. It was hard to please Miss Marcy with Japanese jute rugs,
satisfactory in colouring though many of them were, when she longed to buy
Persian pieces of distinction. If Juliet had a special weakness it was for
choice antique rugs.
She cornered Anthony at last, while Mrs. Dingley and the salesman were
politely but unequivocally disputing over the quality of a certain piece
of Chinese weaving.
"Tony," she begged, "please let me get that one dear Turkish square for
the living-room. It will give character to the whole room, and the colours
are perfectly exquisite. I simply can't get one of those cheap things to
go in front of that beautiful old fireplace. Imagine the firelight on that
square; it would make you want to spend your evenings at home. Please!"
"Do you imagine that I shall ever want to spend them anywhere else?" asked
Tony softly, looking down into her appealing face. "Why, chum, I'd like to
get that Tabriz you admire so much, if it would please you, in spite of
the fact that we should have to pull the whole house up forty notches to
match it. But even the Turkish square is out of the question."
"But, Tony"--Juliet was whispering now with her head a little bent and her
eyes on the lapel of his coat--"won't you let me do it as my--my
contribution? I'd like to put something of my own into your house."
"You dear little girl," Anthony answered--and possibly for her own peace
of mind it was fortunate that Miss Langham, of California, could not see
the look with which he regarded Miss Marcy, of Massachusetts--"I'm sure
you would. And you are putting into it just what is priceless to me--your
individuality and your perfect taste. But I can't let even you help
furnish that house. She--must take what I--and only I--can give her."
"You're perfectly ridiculous," murmured Juliet, turning away with an
expression of deep displeasure. "As if she wouldn't bring all sorts of
elegant stuff with her, and make your cheap things look insignificant."
"I don't think she will," returned Anthony with conviction. "She'll bring
nothing out of keeping with the house."
"I thought you told me she was of a wealthy family."
"She is. But if she marries me she leaves all that behind. I'll have no
wife on any other basis."
"Well--for a son of the Robesons of Kentucky you are absolutely the most
absurd boy anybody ever heard of," declared the girl hotly under her
breath. Then she walked over and ordered a certain inexpensive rug for the
living-room with the air of a princess and the cheeks of a poppy.
IV.--THE COST OF FROCKS
It may have been that Miss Marcy was piqued into trying to see how little
she could spend, but certain it was that from the time she left the carpet
shop she begged for no exceptions to Mr. Robeson's rule of strict economy.
She selected simple, delicate muslins for the windows, one and all,
without a glance at finer draperies; bought denims and printed stuffs as
if she had never heard of costlier upholsteries; and turned away from
seductive pieces of Turkish and Indian embroideries offered for her
inspection with a demure, "No, I don't care to look at those now," which
more than once brought a covert smile to Anthony's lips and a twinkle to
the eyes of the salesman. It was so very evident that the fair buyer did
not pass them by for lack of interest.
Altogether, it was an interesting week these three people spent--for a
week it took. Anthony began to protest after the first two days, and said
he could not ask so much of his friends. But Juliet would not be hindered
from taking infinite pains, and Mrs. Dingley good humouredly lent the two
her chaperonage and her occasional counsel, such as only the gray-haired
matron of long housewifely experience can furnish.
The selection of the furniture took perhaps the most time, and was the
hardest, because of the difficulty of finding good styles in keeping with
the limited purse. Anthony possessed a number of good pieces of antique
character, but beyond these everything was to be purchased. Juliet turned
in despair from one shop after another, and when it came to the fitting of
the dining-room she grew distinctly indignant.
"It's a perfect shame," she said, "that they can't offer really good
designs in the cheap things. Did you ever see anything so hideous? Tony,
if I were you I'd rather eat my breakfast off one of those white kitchen
tables--or----"
She broke off suddenly, rushed away down the long room to a group of
chastely elegant dining-room furniture and came back after a little with a
face of great eagerness to drag her companions away with her. She took
them to survey a set of the costliest of all.
"Have you gone crazy?" Anthony inquired.
"Not at all. Tony, just study that table. It's massive, but it's
simple--simple as beauty always is. Look at those perfectly straight
legs--what clever cabinet maker couldn't copy that in--in ash, Tony? Then
there are stains--I've heard of them--that rub into wood and then finish
in some way so it's smooth and satiny. You could do that--I'm sure you
could. Then you'd get the lovely big top you want. And the chairs--do you
see the plain, solid-looking things? I know they could be made this way.
Then the dining-room would be simply dear!"
* * * * *
"Juliet, you're coming on," declared Anthony with satisfaction that
evening as the two, back at the Marcy country place, strolled slowly over
the lawn toward the river edge. "At this rate you'll do for a poor man's
wife yourself some day. That frock you have on now--isn't that a sort of
concession to the humble company you're in?"
"In what way?" Juliet glanced down at the pale-green gown whose delicate
skirts she was daintily lifting, and in which she looked like a flower in
its calyx. She had rejoiced to exchange the dusty dress in which she had
come home from town for this, which suggested coolness in each fresh
fold.
"Why, it strikes me as about the simplest dress I ever saw you wear. Isn't
it really--well--the least expensive thing you have had in that line in
some time?"
The amused laugh with which this observation was greeted might have been
disconcerting to anybody but Anthony Robeson, but he maintained his ground
with calmness.
"How many of these do you think you can furnish Mrs. Anthony with in a
year?" Juliet inquired, her lips forcing themselves to soberness, but the
laughter lingering in her eyes.
"Several, as girlishly demure as that, I fancy," asserted the young man
with confidence.
But Juliet's momentary gravity broke down. "Oh, you clever boy!" she said.
"I shall advise Mrs. Anthony to send you shopping for her when she needs a
new frock. You will order home just what she wants without stopping to ask
the price, you will be so confident that you know a cheap thing when you
see it. Afterward you will pay the bill--and then the awful frown on your
brow! You will have to live on bread and milk for a month to get your
accounts straightened out. Oh, Tony!--No, I shouldn't do for a poor man's
wife--not judging by this 'girlishly demure' gown, you poor lamb.--But,
Tony," with a swift change of manner, "I do think the little house will be
very charming indeed. I can hardly wait to know that the painting and
papering are done, so that we can go down and get things in order. I long
to arrange those fascinating new tin things in that bit of a cupboard.
Tony"--turning to him solemnly--"does _she_ know how to cook?"
"I think she is learning now," he assured her. "Seems to me she mentioned
it in to-day's----" He fumbled in his breast-pocket and brought out a
letter.
Juliet stole an interested glance at it. She observed that there were
three closely written sheets of the heavy linen paper, and that the
handwriting was one suggestive of a pleasing individuality. Anthony, in
the dim twilight, was scanning page after page in a lover's absorbed way.
Juliet walked along by his side in silence. She was thinking of the face
in the photograph, and wondering if Miss Eleanor Langham really loved
Anthony Robeson as he deserved to be loved.
"For he is a dear, dear fellow," she said to herself, "and if she could
just see him planning so enthusiastically for her comfort, even if he does
have to economise, she'd----"
"No, it's not in this letter," observed Anthony, putting the sheets
together with a lingering touch which did not escape his companion's quick
eyes. "It must have been in yesterday's."
"Does she write every day?"
"Did you ever hear of an engaged pair who didn't write every day?"
"It must take a good deal of your time," she remarked. "But, of course,
she can cook. Every sane girl takes a cooking-school course nowadays. It's
as essential as French."
"You did, then?"
"Of course. Don't you remember when I used to edify you with new and
wonderful dishes every time you dropped in to luncheon?"
"But did you learn the more important things?"
"I paid especial attention to soups, sir," laughed Juliet. "Now, if Mrs.
Anthony has done that you can live very economically."
"I'll suggest it to her," said Anthony gravely.
V.--MUSLINS AND TACKHAMMERS
It took several trips to the small house, and a great deal of hemming and
ruffling of muslin on the part of Juliet and the Marcy sewing-woman, to
say nothing of many days of Anthony's hard labour, to get everything in
place. But it was all done at length, and the hour arrived to close the
new home and leave it to wait the oncoming day in September when it should
be permanently opened.
"I'll just go over it once more," said Juliet to Mrs. Dingley. The latter
lady was lying in a hammock out under the apple trees, waiting for train
time and her final release from duties which were becoming decidedly
wearisome. It was the first day of August, and the evening was a warm one.
Anthony had gone off upon a last errand of some sort. Mrs. Dingley was too
exhausted to offer to accompany her niece, and Juliet ran back into the
house alone. She wandered slowly through the rooms, looking about to see
if there might be any perfecting touch which she could add.
It was a charming place; even a daughter of the house of Marcy could but
own to that. Under her skilful management the little rooms had blossomed
into a fresh, satisfying beauty that needed only the addition of the
personal adornment which Anthony's bride would be sure to bring, to become
a home--the home not only of a poor man but of a refined and cultured one
as well. Restricted though she had been to the most inexpensive means of
bringing about this happy result, Juliet had made them all tell toward an
effect of great harmony and beauty. Perhaps to nobody was this more of a
revelation than to the girl herself.
She was very proud of the living-room, as she looked about it. The
partition between it and the tiny hall had been removed, according to her
suggestion, and the straight staircase altered by means of a landing and
an abrupt turn which transformed it into picturesqueness. With its low,
broad steps, its slender spindles and odd posts, it added much to the
character of the room.
Like most old New England houses, this one's chief glory was its great
central chimney, with big fireplaces opening both into the living-room and
the dining-room. In the former, between the fireplace and the staircase,
and forming a suggestion of an inglenook, Juliet had contrived a high,
wide seat, cushioned in dull green, and boasting a number of pretty
pillows. It must be confessed that she had surreptitiously added a little
to these in the matter of certain modestly rich bits of material, and she
contemplated the result with great satisfaction. It may be remarked, with
no comment whatever, that in spite of their beauty there was not a pillow
of all those scattered about the house which a weary man might not tuck
under his head without fear of ruining a creation too delicate for any use
but to be admired.
Having seized upon the idea of staining cheap material, she had carried it
out in a set of low bookcases across the end and one side of the room.
These awaited the coming of the several hundreds of choice books which
Anthony had saved from his father's library. Two fine old portraits, dear
to the hearts of many generations of the "Robesons of Kentucky," lent
distinction to the home of their young descendant. Altogether the room was
both quaint and artistic, and with its few plain chairs and tables, mostly
heirlooms, and all of good old colonial design, was a room in which one
could readily imagine one's self sitting down to a winter evening of cosy
comfort, such as is not always to be had in far finer abiding-places.
The dining-room was a study in its reds and browns, and its home-made
furniture was an astonishing success--if one were not too severely
critical. As she surveyed it Juliet seemed to see the future master and
mistress of this little home sitting down opposite each other in the
fireglow, and smiling across.
The coming Mrs. Robeson, if one might judge by her photograph, was a woman
to lend grace and dignity to her surroundings, whatever they might be.
Juliet could imagine her pretty, stately way of presiding at such small
feasts as the room was destined to see, making her guests quite forget
that she was not mistress of a mansion equal to any in the land. Would she
be happy? Could she be happy here, after all that she had had of another
and very different sort of life? For some reason, as Juliet stood and
looked and thought, her face grew very sober, and a long-drawn breath
escaped her lips.
The little kitchen was an exceedingly alluring place, gay in the bravery
of fresh paint and spotless, shining utensils. There were even crisp
curtains--at eight cents a yard--tied back at the high, wide-silled,
triple window with its diminutive panes. It needed only a pot or two of
growing plants in the window, and a neat-handed Phyllis in a figured gown,
to be the old-time kitchen of one's dreams.
But it was upon the rooms on the upper floor that Juliet had exhausted her
imagination and effort. Nothing could have been conceived of more dainty
than they. Here her denims and muslins had run riot. Low dressing-tables
clad in ruffled hangings, their padded tops delicate with the breath of
orris; beds valanced with similar stuffs; high-backed chairs, their seats
cushioned into comfort--everything was done in the cleverest imitation of
the ancient styles in keeping with the old-fashioned house. It all made
one think of the patter of high-heeled, buckled slippers, and stiff,
rustling, brocaded gowns, and powdered hair, and the odours of long ago.
Anthony would never know what his friendly home-maker had put into these
rooms of sentiment and charm.
VI.--A QUESTION OF IDENTITY
At the door of the blue-and-white room, the one upon which the girl had
lavished her most tender fancies, she stood at length, looking in. And as
she looked something swam before her eyes. A sob rose in her throat. She
choked it back; she brushed her hand across her face. Then she tried to
laugh. "Oh, what a goose I am!" she said sternly to herself. And then she
ran across the room, sank upon her knees before the window-seat with its
blue and white cushions, and burying her face in one of them cried her
wretched, jealous, longing heart out.
Anthony, coming in hastily but softly through the small kitchen, heard the
rush of footsteps overhead, and stopped. He waited a moment, listening
eagerly; then he came noiselessly into the living-room and stood still.
His face, always strong and somewhat stern in its repose, had in it
to-night a certain unusual intensity. He looked at his watch and saw that
there was an hour before train time. Then he sat down where he could see
the top of the staircase and waited.
By and by light footsteps crossed the floor above and came through the
little hall. From where he sat Anthony caught the gleam of Juliet's crisp
linen skirt. Presently she came slowly down. As she turned upon the
landing she met Anthony's eyes looking up. In a fashion quite unusual to
the straightforward gaze of his friend her eyes fell. He saw that her
cheeks were pale. He rose to meet her.
"Come and rest," he said. "You are tired. You have worked too hard. Such a
helper a man never had before. And you have made a wonderful success.
Juliet, I can't thank you. It's beyond that."
But she would not be led to the cosy corner by the window. She found
something needing her attention in the curtain of the bookcase in the
dimmest corner of the room, and began solicitously to pull it in various
ways, as if there were something wrong with it. He watched her, standing
with his arm on the high chimney-piece.
"I think you enjoyed it just a little bit yourself, though," he observed.
"Didn't you, chum?"
"Yes, indeed," said Juliet.
Her back was toward him, her head bent down, but his quick ear detected a
peculiar quality in her voice. He questioned her again hurriedly.
"You're not sorry you did it?"
"Oh, no," said Juliet.
Now there is not much in two such simple replies as these to indicate the
state of one's mind and heart; but when a girl has been crying stormily
and uninterruptedly for a half-hour, and is only not crying still because
she is holding back the torrent of her unhappiness by sheer force of will,
it is radically impossible to say so much as four words in a perfectly
natural way. Anthony understood in a breath that the unfamiliar note in
his friend's voice was that of tears. And, strange to say, into his face
there flashed a look of triumph. But he only said very gently:
"Come here a minute--will you, Juliet?"
She bent lower over the curtain. Then she stood up, without looking at
him, and moved toward the door.
"I believe I'm rather tired," she said in a low tone. "It has been so warm
all day, and I--I have a headache."
In three steps he came after her, stopping her with his hand grasping hers
as she would have left the room.
"Come back--please," he urged. "Your aunt is asleep out there, I think. I
wanted to go over the house once more with you, if you would. But you're
too tired for that. Just come back and sit down in this nook of yours, and
let's talk a little."
She could not well refuse, and he put her into a nest of cushions,
arranging them carefully behind her back and head, and sat down facing
her. He had placed her just where the waning light from the western sky
fell full on her face; his own was in the shadow. He was watching her
unmercifully--she felt that, and desperately turned her face aside,
burying in a friendly pillow the cheek which was colouring under his
gaze.
"Is the headache so bad?" he asked softly. "I never knew Juliet Marcy to
have a headache before. Poor little girl--dear little girl--who has worked
so hard to please her old friend." He leaned forward and she felt his hand
upon her hair. The tenderness in his voice and touch were carrying away
all her defences. But he went on without giving her respite.
"Do you think _she_ will be happy here, chum? Will it take the place of
the old life for a few years, till I can give her more? She'll have
nothing here, you know, outside of this little home, but my love. That
wouldn't be enough for any ordinary woman, would it?"
She was not looking at him, but she could see him as plainly as if she
were. Always she had thought him the strongest, best fellow she knew. He
had been her devoted friend so long; she had not realised in the least
until lately how it was going to seem to get on without him. But she knew
now.
She felt a dreadful choking in her throat again. It seemed to be closely
connected with another peculiar sensation, as if her heart had turned into
a lump of lead. In another minute she knew that she should break down,
which would be humiliating beyond words. She started up from her cushions
with a fierce attempt to keep a grip upon herself.
"I know you're very happy," she breathed, "and I'm very glad. But really
I--I'm not at all sentimental to-night. I'm afraid a headache does not
make one sympathetic."
But she could not get past him; Anthony's stalwart figure barred the way.
His strong hands put her gently back among the cushions. She turned her
head away, fighting hard for that thing she could not keep--her
self-control.
"Is it really a headache?" asked the low voice in her ear. "Just a
headache? Not by any chance--a heartache, Juliet?"
"Anthony Robeson!" she cried, but guardedly, lest the open window betray
her. "What do you mean? You say very strange things. Why should I have a
heartache? Because you are marrying the girl you love? How often have I
begged you to go and find her? Do you think I would have done all this for
her--and you--if I had cared?"
She tried to look defiantly into his eyes--those fine eyes of his which
were watching her so intently--tried to meet them steadily with her own
lovely, tear-stained ones--and failed. Swiftly an intense colour dyed her
cheeks, and she dropped her head like a guilty child.
"Of course I care--that is, in a way," she was somehow forced to admit
before the bar of his silence. "Why shouldn't I hate to lose the friend
who used to carry my books to school, and fought the other boys for my
sake, and has been a brother to me all these years? Of course I do. And
when I am tired I cry for nothing--just nothing. I----"
It was certainly a brave attempt at eloquence, but perhaps it was not
wonderfully convincing. At all events it did not keep Anthony from taking
possession of one of her hands and interrupting her with a most irrelevant
speech.
"Juliet, do you remember telling me that you should expect a man who loved
you to carry your likeness always with him? And you asked me for
_hers_--and I had to own I had left it behind. Yet I had one with me
then--it is always with me--and that was why I forgot the other. Look."
He drew out a little silver case, and Juliet, reluctantly releasing one
eye from the shelter of the friendly sofa pillow, saw with a start her own
face look smiling back at her. It was a little picture of her girlish self
which she had given him long ago when he went away to college.
"No," he said quickly, as he recognised the indignant question which
instantly showed in her eyes, "I'm not disloyal to Eleanor Langham.
Because--dear--there is no such person."
With a little cry she flung herself away from him among the pillows,
hiding her face from sight. There was a moment's silence while Anthony
Robeson, his own face growing pale with the immensity of the stakes for
which he played, made his last venture.
"The little home is only for you, Juliet. If you won't share it with me it
shall be closed and sold. Perhaps it was an audacious thing to do--it has
come over me a great many times that it was too audacious ever to be
forgiven. But I couldn't help the hope that if you should make the home
yourself you might come to feel that life with a man who had his way to
make could be borne after all--if you loved him enough. It all depended on
that. As I said, I didn't mean to be presumptuous, but it was a desperate
chance with me, dear. I couldn't give you up, and I thought perhaps--just
_perhaps_--you cared--more than you knew. Anyhow--I loved you so--I had to
risk it."
Juliet's charming brown head was buried so deep in the pillows that only
its back with the masses of waving, half-rumpled hair was visible. But up
from the depths came a smothered question:
"The photograph?"
Anthony's face lightened as if the sun had struck it, but he kept his
voice quiet. "Borrowed--it's my old friend Dennison's. I never even saw
the girl--though I ought to beg her pardon for the use I have made of her
face. She's married now, and lives abroad somewhere. Will you forgive
me?"
He was standing over her, leaning down so that his cheek touched the
rumpled hair. "How is it, Juliet? Could you live in the little home--with
love--and me?"
It was a long time before he got any answer. But at last a flushed, wet,
radiant face came into view, an arm was reached out, and as with an
inarticulate, deep note of joy he drew her up into his embrace, a voice,
half tears, half laughter, cried:
"Oh, Tony--you dear, bad, darling, insolent boy! I did think I could do
without you--but I can't. And--oh, Tony"--she was sobbing in his arms now,
while he regarded the top of her head with laughing, exultant eyes--"I'm
so glad--so glad--_so glad_--there isn't any Eleanor Langham! Oh, _how_ I
hated her!"
"Did you, sweetheart?" he answered, laughing aloud now. Then bending, with
his lips close to hers--"well, to tell the truth--to tell the honest
truth, little girl--_so did I_!"
VII.--AN ARGUMENT WITHOUT LOGIC
"I don't like it," repeated Mr. Horatio Marcy, obstinately, and shook his
head for the fifth time. "I've not a word to say against Anthony, my
dear--not a word. He's a fine fellow and comes of a good family, and I
respect him and the start he has made since things went to pieces,
but----"
Juliet waited, her eyes downcast, her cheeks very much flushed, her mouth
in lines of mutiny.
"But--" her father continued, settling back in his chair with an air of
decision, "you will certainly make the mistake of your life if you think
you can be happy in the sort of existence he offers you. You're not used
to it. You've not been brought up to it. You can spend more money in a
forenoon than he can earn in a twelve-month. You don't know how to adapt
yourself to life on a basis of rigid economy. I----"
"You don't forbid it, sir?"
"Forbid it?--no. A man can't forbid a twenty-four year old woman to do as
she pleases. But I advise you--I warn you--I ask you seriously to consider
what it all means. You are used to very many habits of living which will
be entirely beyond Anthony's means for many years to come. You are fond of
travel--of dress--of social----"
"Father dear," said his daughter, interrupting him gently by a change of
tactics. She came to him and sat upon the arm of his chair, and rested her
cheek lightly upon the top of his thick, iron-gray locks.--"Let's drop all
this for the present. Let's not discuss it. I want you to do me a
particular favour before we say another word about it. Come with me down
to see the house. It's only three hours away. We can go after breakfast
to-morrow and be back for dinner at seven. It's all I ask. My arguments
are all there. Please!--_Please!_"
So it came about that at eleven o'clock on a certain morning in August,
Mr. Horatio Marcy discovered himself to be eyeing with critical, reluctant
gaze a quaintly attractive, low-spreading white house among trees and
vines. He became aware at the same time of a sudden close clasp on his
arm.
"Here it is," said a low voice in his ear. "Does it look habitable?"
"Very pretty, very pretty, my dear," Mr. Marcy admitted. No sane man could
do otherwise. The little house might have been placed very comfortably
between the walls of the dining-room at the Marcy country house, but there
was an indefinable, undeniable air of gracious hospitality and
homelikeness about its aspect, and its surroundings gave it an appearance
of being ample for the accommodation of any two people not anxious to get
away from each other.
Juliet produced an antique door-key of a clumsy pattern, and opened the
door into the living-room. She ran across to the windows and threw them
open, then turned to see what expression might be at the moment illumining
Mr. Marcy's face. He was glancing about him with curious eyes, which
rested finally upon the portrait of a courtly gentleman in ruffles and
flowing hair, hanging above the fireplace. He adjusted a pair of
eyeglasses and gave the portrait the honour of his serious attention.
"That is an ancestor," Juliet explained. "Doesn't he give distinction to
the room? And isn't the room--well--just a little bit distinguished-looking
itself, in spite of its simplicity?--because of it, perhaps. The tables
and most of the chairs are what Anthony found left in the old Kentucky
homestead after the sale last year, and bought in with--the last of his
money." Her eyes were very bright, but her voice was quiet.
Mr. Marcy looked at the furniture in question, stared at the walls, then
at the rug on the polished floor. The rug held his attention for two long
minutes, then he glanced sharply at his daughter.
"The colourings of that rug are very good, don't you think?" she asked
with composure. "It will last until Anthony can afford a better one."
Mr. Marcy turned significantly toward the door of the dining-room, and
Juliet led him through. He surveyed the room in silence, laying a hand
upon a chair back; then looked suddenly down at the chair and brought his
eyeglasses to bear upon it.
"The furniture was made by a country cabinet-maker who charged country
prices for doing it. Tony rubbed in a very thin stain and rubbed the wood
in oil afterward till it got this soft polish."
The visitor looked incredulous, but he accepted the explanation with a
polite though exceedingly slight smile. Then he was taken to inspect the
kitchen. From here he was led through the pantry back to the living-room,
and so upstairs. He looked, still silently, in at the door of each room,
exquisite in its dainty readiness for occupancy. As he studied the
blue-and-white room his daughter observed that he retained less of the air
of the connoisseur than he had elsewhere exhibited. She had shown him this
place last with artful intent. No room in his own homes of luxury could
appeal to him with more of beauty than was visible here.
When Mr. Marcy reached the living-room again he found himself placed
gently but insistently in the easiest chair the room afforded, close by an
open window through which floated all the soft odours of country air
blowing lightly across apple orchards and gardens of old-fashioned
flowers. His daughter, bringing from the ingle seat a plump cushion,
dropped upon it at his feet. But instead of beginning any sort of argument
she laid her arm upon his knee, and her head down upon her arm, and became
as still as a kitten who has composed itself for sleep. Only through the
contact of the warm young arm, her father could feel that she was alive
and waiting for his speech.
When he spoke at last it was with grave quiet, in a gentler tone than that
which he had used the day before in his own library.
"You helped Anthony furnish this house?"
"Yes, father."
"Do you mind telling me how much you had at your disposal?"
"Five hundred dollars." Juliet maintained her position without moving, and
her face was out of sight.
"Did this include the repairs upon the place?"
"Yes--but you know wages are low just now and lumber is cheap. Having no
roof to the porch made it inexpensive. The painting Anthony helped at
himself. He worked every minute of his two weeks' vacation on whatever
would cost most to hire done."
"Anthony worked at painting the house?" There was astonishment in Mr.
Marcy's voice. He had known the Robesons of Kentucky all his life. He had
never seen one of them lift his hand to do manual labour. There had been
no need.
"Yes," said Juliet, and the cheek which rested against her father's knee
began to grow warm.
"You have obtained a somewhat extraordinary effect of harmony and comfort
inside the house," Mr. Marcy pursued. "It is difficult to understand just
how you brought it about with so small an expenditure of money."
It was quite impossible now for Juliet to keep her head down. She looked
up eagerly, but she still managed to speak quietly.
"It _is_ effect, father, and it is art--not money. The paper on the wall
cost twenty-five cents a roll, but it is the right paper for the place,
and the wrong paper at ten times that sum wouldn't give the room such a
background of soft restfulness. Then, you see, the old white woodwork is
in very good style, and the green walls bring it out. The old floor was
easily dressed to give that beautiful waxed finish. They told me how to do
that at the best decorator's in Boston. The rug fits the colourings very
well. Anthony's old furniture would give any such room dignity. The
portrait lends the finishing touch, I think. You see, when you analyse it
all there's nothing in the least wonderful. But it looks like a
home--doesn't it? And when the little things are in which grow in a
home--the photographs, a bowl of sweet-williams from the garden, the
lovely old copper lamp you gave me on my birthday--can't you think how
dear it will all be?"
Mr. Marcy glanced down keenly into his daughter's face.
"There are a great many things of your own at home which would naturally
come into your married home," he said.
Juliet coloured richly. "Yes," she answered with steady eyes, "but except
for the lamp, and the photographs, and a few such very little things, I
should not bring them. Anthony is poor, but he is very proud. I couldn't
hurt him by furnishing his home with the overflow of mine. Besides--I
don't need those things. I don't want them. All I want out of the old home
is--your love--your blessing, dear!"
The sharp eyes meeting hers softened suddenly. Juliet drew herself to her
knees, and leaning forward across her father's lap, reached both arms up
and flung them about his neck. He held her close, her head upon his
shoulder, and all at once he found the slender figure in his arms shaken
with feeling. Juliet was not crying, but she was drawing long, deep
breaths like a child who tries to control itself.
"You need have no doubt of either of those things, my little girl," said
her father in her ear. "Both are ready. It is only your happiness I want.
I distrust the power of any poor man to give it to you. That is all. Since
I have seen this house the question looks less doubtful to me--I admit
that gladly. But I still am anxious for the future. Even in this
attractive place there must be monotony, drudgery, lack of many things you
have always had and felt you must have. You have never learned to do
without them. I understand that Robeson will not accept them at my hand,
nor at yours. I don't know that I think the less of him for that--but--you
will have to learn self-denial. I want you to be very sure that you can do
it, and that it will be worth while."
There was a little silence, then Juliet gently drew herself away and rose
to her feet. She stood looking down at the imposing figure of the elderly
man in the chair, and there was something in her face he had never seen
there before.
"There's just one thing about it, sir," she said. "I can't possibly spare
Anthony Robeson out of my life. I tried to do it, and I know. I would
rather live it out in this little home--with him--than share the most
promising future with any other man. But there's this you must remember: A
man who was brought up to do nothing but ride fine horses, and shoot, and
dance, must have something in him to go to work and advance, and earn
enough to buy even such a home as this, in five years. He has a future of
his own."
Mr. Marcy looked thoughtful. "Yes, that may be true," he said. "I rather
think it is."
"And, father----" she bent to lay a roseleaf cheek against his own--"you
began with mother in a poorer home than this, and were so happy! Don't I
know that?"
"Yes, yes, dear," he sighed. "That's true, too. But we were both poor--had
always been so. It was an advance for us--not a coming down."
"It's no coming down for me." There was spirit and fire in the girl's eyes
now. "Just to wear less costly clothes--to walk instead of drive--to live
on simpler food--what are those things? Look at these," she pointed to the
rows of books in the bookcases which lined two walls of the room. "I'm
marrying a man of refinement, of family, of the sort of blood that tells.
He's an educated man--he loves the things those books stand for. He's good
and strong and fine--and if I'm not safe with him I'll never be safe with
anybody. But besides all that--I--I love him with all there is of me.
Oh--_are_ you satisfied now?"
Blushing furiously she turned away. Her father got to his feet, stood
looking after her a moment with something very tender coming into his
eyes, then took a step toward her and gathered her into his arms.
VIII.--ON ACCOUNT OF THE TEA-KETTLE
"This is the nineteenth day of August," observed Anthony Robeson. "We
finished furnishing the house for my future bride on the third day of the
month. Over two weeks have gone by since then. The place must need
dusting."
He glanced casually at the figure in white which sat just above him upon
the step of the great porch at the back of the Marcy country house. It was
past twilight, the moon was not yet up, and only the glow from a distant
shaded lamp at the other end of the porch served to give him a hint as to
the expression upon his companion's face.
"I'm beginning to lie awake nights," he continued, "trying to remember
just how my little home looks. I can't recall whether we set the
tea-kettle on the stove or left it in the tin-closet. Can you think?"
"You put it on the stove yourself," said Juliet. "You would have filled it
if Auntie Dingley hadn't told you it would rust."
Anthony swerved about upon the heavy oriental rug, which covered the
steps, until his back rested against the column; he clasped his arms about
one knee, and inclined his head at the precise angle which would enable
him to study continuously the shadowy outlines of the face above him, shot
across with a ruby ray from the lamp. "I wish I could recollect," he
pursued, "whether I left the porch awning up or down. It has rained three
times in the two weeks. It ought not to be down."
"I'm sure it isn't," Juliet assured him. There was a hint of laughter in
her voice.
"It was rather absurd to put up that awning at all, I suppose. But when
you can't afford a roof to your piazza, and compromise on an awning
instead, you naturally want to see how it is going to look, and you rush
it up. Besides, I think there was a strong impression on my mind that only
a few days intervened before our occupancy of the place. It shows how
misled one can be."
There was no reply to this observation, made in a depressed tone. After a
minute Anthony went on.
"These cares of the householder--they absorb me. I'm always wondering if
the lawn needs mowing, and if the new roof leaks. I get anxious about the
blinds--do any of them work loose and swing around and bang their lives
out in the night? Have the neighbours' chickens rooted up that row of
hollyhock seeds? Then those books I placed on the shelves so hurriedly.
Are any of them by chance upside down? Is Volume I. elbowed by Volume II.
or by Volume VIII.? And I can't get away to see. Coming up here every
Saturday night and tearing back every Sunday midnight takes all my time."
"You might spend next Sunday in the new house."
"Alone?"
"Of course. You have so many cares they would keep you from getting
lonely."
Anthony made no immediate answer to this suggestion, beyond laughing up at
his companion in the dim light for an instant, then growing immediately
sober again. But presently he began upon a new aspect of the subject.
"Juliet, are we to be married in church?"
"Tony!--I don't know."
"But what do you think?"
"I--don't think."
"What! Do you mean that?"
"No-o."
"Of course you don't. Well--what about it?"
"I don't know."
"Are we to have a big wedding?"
"Do you want one?"
"I--but that's not the question. Do you want a big wedding?"
She hesitated an instant. Then she answered softly, but with decision:
"No."
Anthony drew a long breath. "Thank the Lord!" he said devoutly.
"Why?" she asked in some surprise.
"I've never exactly understood why the boys I've been best man for were so
miserable over the prospect of a show wedding--but I know now. A runaway
marriage appeals to me now as it never did before. I want to be
married--tremendously--but I want to get it over."
A soft laugh answered him. "We'll get it over."
Anthony sat up suddenly. "Will we?" he asked with eagerness. "When?"
"I didn't say 'when'!"
"Juliet--when are you going to say it?"
"Why, Tony--dear----"
"That's right--put in the 'dear,'" he murmured. "I've heard mighty few of
'em yet, and they sound great to me----"
"We've been engaged only two weeks--"
"And two days----"
"And the little house isn't spoiling, even though you're not sure about
the tea-kettle and the awning. I--you don't want to hurry things----"
"Don't I!"--rebelliously.
"If I'm very good and say 'Christmas'----"
"'Christmas!'--Great Cæsar!"
"But, Tony----"
"Now see here--" he leaned forward and stared up at her, without touching
her--he was as yet allowed few of the lover's favours and prized them the
more for that--"do you think our case is just like other people's? Here
I've been waiting for you all my days--waiting and waiting, and tortured
all the time by suspense. Then I lived that month of July with my heart in
my mouth--you'll never know what you put me through those days, talking
and jollying about 'Eleanor Langham,' and never for one instant, until
just that last day, giving me the smallest pinch of hope that it was
anything to you except just what it pretended to be. Then--I've been a
long time without a home--and the little house--sweetheart--it looks like
Heaven to me. Must I stay outside till Christmas--when everything's all
ready? Confound it--I don't want to play the pathetic string, and the Lord
knows I'm happy as a fellow can be who's got the desire of his life.
But----"
A warm hand came gently upon his hair, and for joy at the touch he fell
silent. Once he turned his head and put his lips against the white sleeve
as it fell near, and looked up an instant with eyes whose expression the
person above him felt rather than saw through the subdued light. By and by
she took up the conversation.
"So you are rejoiced that I don't want a great wedding?"
"Immensely relieved."
"What would you like best?"
"I don't dare tell you."
"You may."
"Tell me what you would like, Julie."
"Of course father would say the town house, even if it were a small
affair. Auntie Dingley would probably agree to having it here--if that
were what you--we--wanted--that is----"
Anthony looked up quickly. "Even at Christmas?"
"Why--yes. We could come back. People do that sometimes."
"Yes. Must we do what other people do?"
"Would you rather not?"
"Ten thousand times. It seems to me that the biggest mistake people make
is the way they do this thing. Juliet--think of the little house. We made
it--you made it. For years, without doubt, it's to hold us and our
experiences. Do you know I'd like to give it this one to begin with?--I'm
holding my breath!"
Plainly she was holding hers. Her head was turned away--he could just see
her profile outlined against the ruby light. And at the moment there were
footsteps inside a long French window near at hand which lay open into the
library. Mr. Horatio Marcy came out and stood still just behind them.
Anthony sprang to his feet, and came forward up the steps. The older man
greeted him cordially. Anthony pulled a big chair into position, and Mr.
Marcy sat down. He was smoking and wore an air of relaxation. He and his
guest fell to talking, the younger man entering into the conversation with
as much ease and spirit as if he were not fresh from what was to him at
this hour a much more interesting discussion. Juliet sat quietly and
listened.
It grew into an absorbing argument after a little, the two men taking
opposite sides of a great governmental question just then claiming public
interest. Mrs. Dingley came out and joined the group, and she and Juliet
listened with increasing delight in a contest of brains such as was now
offered them. Mr. Marcy himself, while he put forth his arguments with
conviction and with skill, was evidently enjoying the keen wit and wisdom
of his young opponent. The elder man met objection with objection, set up
men of straw to be knocked down, and ended at last with a hearty laugh and
a frankly appreciative:
"Well, Anthony--you have convinced me of one thing, certainly. There are
more sides to the question than I had understood. I will admit that you've
made a strong argument. But when I come back I'll down you with fresh
material. I shall have plenty of it."
"Are you going away soon, sir?" Anthony asked with some surprise. Mr.
Marcy was a frequent traveller, preferring to look after various business
interests in faraway ports himself rather than entrust them to others.
"Yes--I shall be off in a few weeks--and for a longer time than usual. I
haven't told these ladies of my household yet--but this is as good a time
as any. Juliet, little girl--I may be gone all winter this time."
She came quickly to him without speaking, and gave him her regretful
answer silently.
"When do you go, Horatio?" Mrs. Dingley asked.
"About the first of October. I hadn't fully decided till to-day. I had
thought of inviting you two to go with me."
He looked with a smile at his sister and his daughter, then somewhat
quizzically at Anthony. The latter was regarding him with an alert face in
which, as nearly as could be made out in the dim light, were no signs of
discomfiture.
"Horatio," said Mrs. Dingley, "I wish you would come into the library for
a few minutes. This reminds me of a letter I had to-day from one of your
old friends, asking when you were to be at home."
The French window closed on the two older people. Juliet, left sitting on
the arm of her father's chair, found Anthony behind her.
"Do you want to go on a voyage to the Philippines?" he was asking over her
shoulder.
"I'm not sure just what I do want," she answered rather breathlessly.
"The tea-kettle would rust while you were gone."
He got no reply.
"The dust would grow inches deep on the dining-table we polished so
carefully."
Juliet rose and walked slowly to the edge of the steps. Anthony followed.
"Let's go and walk on the terrace," he proposed, and they ran down to the
smooth sward below. It was a warm night, with no dew, and the short-shaven
grass was dry. All the stars were out. Anthony walked beside the figure in
white, his hands clasped behind his back.
"Do white ruffled curtains like those at our windows ever grow musty from
being shut up?" he insinuated gently.
"I don't know."
"Will you write from every port you touch at? It will take a good many
letters to satisfy me."
"I suppose so."
"Suppose what? That you will write?"
Juliet stood still. "You're the greatest wheedler I ever saw," she said.
"Is that a compliment?"
"It's not meant for one. What am I to do when I'm----"
"Married to me?--I don't know, poor child. I can only pity you. What do
you think the prospect is for me, never to be able to get the smallest
concession from you except by every art of coaxing? Yet--if I can get this
thing I want, by any means--I warn you I shall not give up until I've seen
you sail."
"You'll not see me sail."
He wheeled upon her. He had her hand in his grasp. "And if you don't go?"
"I'll stay."
"With me?"
She laughed irresistibly. "How could I stay without you?"
"Will you marry me before your father goes?"
"Oh, Tony, Tony----"
"We can't be married without his blessing, can we?"
"No--dear father."
"Then----"
"I'll tell you to-morrow," said she.
IX.--A BISHOP AND A HAY-WAGON
Juliet Marcy's prospective maid-of-honour found Anthony Robeson's best man
at her elbow the moment she entered the waiting-room of the big railway
station. Now, although she greeted him with a charming little conscious
look, there was nothing either new or singular about the quiet rush he had
made across the waiting-room the instant he saw her. The rest of the party
of twenty people who were going down into the country to the Marcy-Robeson
wedding understood it perfectly, although the engagement had not been
announced and probably would not be until Wayne Carey should have an
income decidedly larger than he had at present.
Judith Dearborn joined the group at once, and Carey reluctantly followed
her. Judith had a way of joining groups and of giving her betrothed many
impatient half-hours thereby.
"Just think of this," she said to the others. "When I knew Juliet had
really given in to Anthony Robeson at last I thought I should be asked to
assist at an impressive church wedding. But here we are going down to what
Tony describes as 'a box of a house' in the most rural of suburbs. If it's
really as small as he says even twenty people will be a tight fit."
"How in the world did they come to be married there?" asked the sister of
the best man. Everybody had been summoned to this wedding so hurriedly and
so informally that nobody knew much about it.
The son of the Bishop--whose father was going down to perform the
ceremony--answered promptly:
"Tony tells me its Juliet's own choice. You see they furnished the house
together, with her aunt, Mrs. Dingley; and Juliet fell so in love with it
that she must needs be married in it. What's occurred to that girl I don't
know. After the Robesons of Kentucky lost their money and everything else
but their social standing I thought it was all up with Anthony. But he's
plucky. He's made a way for himself, and he's won Juliet somehow. He seems
to be a late edition of that obstinate chap who remarked 'I will find a
way or make one.' By Jove--he must have made one when he convinced Juliet
Marcy that she could be happy in a house where twenty people are a tight
fit."
When the train stopped at the small station Judith Dearborn said in Wayne
Carey's ear, as he glanced wonderingly from the train: "Is this it? Juliet
Marcy must be perfectly crazy!"
"She certainly must," admitted Robeson's best man. But he stifled a sigh.
If Juliet Marcy could do so crazy a thing as to marry Anthony Robeson on
the comparatively small salary that young man--brought up to do nothing at
all--was now earning, why must Wayne Carey wait for several times that
income before he could have Juliet's closest friend? Was there really such
a difference in girls?
But at the next instant he was shouting hilariously, and so was everybody
else except the Bishop and the Bishop's wife, who only smiled indulgently.
The rest of the party were young people, and their glee brooked no
repression. The moment they reached the little platform they comprehended
not only that they were coming to a most informal wedding--they were also
in for a decidedly novel lark.
Close to the edge of the platform stood a great hay-wagon, cushioned with
fragrant hay and garlanded with goldenrod and purple asters. Standing
erect on the front, one hand grasping the reins which reached out over a
four-in-hand of big, well-groomed, flower-bedecked farm horses, the other
waving a triumphant greeting to his friends, was Anthony Robeson, in white
from head to foot, his face alight with happiness and fun. He looked like
a young king; there could be no other comparison for his splendid outlines
as he towered there. And better yet, he looked as he had ever looked,
through prosperity and through poverty, like a "Robeson of Kentucky."
Below him, prettier than she had ever been--and that was saying much--her
eyes brilliant with the spirit of the day, laughing, dressed also in
white, a big white hat drooping over her brown curls, stood Juliet Marcy.
In a storm of salutations and congratulations the guests rushed toward
this extraordinary equipage and the radiant pair who were its charioteers.
All regrets over the probable commonplaceness of a small country wedding
had vanished.
[Illustration: "Standing erect ... one hand grasping the reins ... was
Anthony Robeson."]
"Might have known they would do things up in shape somehow," grunted the
Bishop's son approvingly. "This is the stuff. Conventionality be tabooed.
They're going to the other extreme, and that's the way to do. If you don't
want an altar and candles, and a high-mucky-muck at the organ, have a
hay-wagon. _Gee!_--Let me get up here next to Ben Hur and the lady!"
Even the Bishop, sitting with clerical coat-tails carefully parted, his
handsome face beaming benevolently from under his round hat, and Mrs.
Bishop, granted by special dispensation a cushion upon the hay seat,
enjoyed that drive. Anthony, plying a long, beribboned lash, aroused his
heavy-footed steeds into an exhilarating trot, and the hay-wagon, carrying
safely its crew of young society people in their gayest mood, swept over
the half-mile from the station to the house like a royal barge.
As they drew up a chorus of "Oh's!" not merely polite but sincerely
surprised and admiring, recognised the quaint beauty of the little house.
It was no commonplace country home now, though the changes wrought had
been comparatively slight. It looked as if it might have stood for years
in just this fashion, yet it was as far removed from its primitive
characterless condition as may be an artist's drawing of a face upon which
he has altered but a line.
Mrs. Dingley and Mr. Horatio Marcy--a pair whose presence anywhere would
have been a voucher for the decorum of the most unconventional
proceedings--welcomed the party upon the wide, uncovered porch.
"We're going to be married very soon, to have it over," called Anthony.
"But you may explore the house first, so your minds shall be at rest
during the crisis. Just don't wander too far away in examining this
ancestral mansion. There are six rooms. I should advise your going in
line, otherwise complications may occur in the upper hall. Please don't
all try to get into the kitchen at once; it can't be done. It will hold
Juliet and me at the same time--all the rooms have been stretched to do
that--they had to be; but I'm not sure as to their capacity for more. Now
make yourselves absolutely at home. The place is yours--for a few hours.
After that it's mine--and Juliet's."
He glanced, laughing, at his bride, as he spoke from where he stood in the
doorway. She was on the little landing of the staircase, at the opposite
end of the living-room. She looked down and across at him, and nearly
everybody in the room--they were thronging through at the moment--caught
that glance. She was smiling back at him, and her eyes lingered only an
instant after they met his, but her friends all saw. There could be no
question that the Juliet Marcy who, since she had laid aside her
pinafores, had kept many men at bay, had at last surrendered. As for
Anthony----
"Why, he's always been in love with her," said the Bishop's son in the ear
of the best man, as in accordance with their host's permission they peeped
admiringly in at the little kitchen, "but any idiot can see that he's
fairly off his feet now. Ideal condition--eh? Say, this dining-room's
great--Jove, it is. I'm going to get asked out here to dinner as soon as
they are back. Let's go upstairs. The girls are just coming down--hear 'em
gurgling over what they saw?"
Upstairs the best man looked in at the blue-and-white room with eyes which
one with penetration might have said were envious. Indeed, he stared at
everything with much the same expression. He was the soberest man present.
Ordinarily he could be counted on to enliven such occasions, but to-day
his fits of hilarity were only momentary, and during the intervals he was
observed by the Bishop's son to be gazing somewhat yearningly into space
with an abstraction new to him.
Nobody knew just how the moment for the ceremony arrived. But when the
survey of the house was over and everybody had instinctively come back to
the living-room, the affair was brought about most naturally. The Bishop,
at a word from the best man, took his place in the doorway opening upon
the porch, which had been set in a great nodding border of goldenrod.
Anthony, making his way among his guests, came with a quiet face up to
Juliet and, bending, said softly, "Now, dear?" A hush followed instantly,
and the guests fell back to places at the sides of the room. Anthony's
best man was at his elbow, and the two went over to the Bishop, to stand
by his side. Mr. Marcy moved quietly into his place. Juliet, with Judith,
who had kept beside her, walked across the floor, and Anthony, meeting
her, led her a step farther to face the Bishop. It was but a suggestion of
the usual convention, and Anthony, in his white clothes, surrounded as he
was by men in frock-coats, was assuredly the most unconventional
bridegroom that had ever been seen. Juliet, too, wore the simplest of
white gowns, with no other adornment than that of her own beauty. Yet,
somehow, as the guests, grown sober in an instant, looked on and noted
these things, there was not one who felt that either grace or dignity was
lacking. The rich voice of the Bishop was as impressive as it had ever
been in chancel or at altar; the look on Anthony's face was one which
fitted the tone in which he spoke his vows; and Juliet, giving herself to
the man whose altered fortunes she was agreeing to share, bore a
loveliness which made her a bride one would remember long--and envy.
"There, that's done," said the Bishop's son with a gusty sigh of relief,
which brought the laugh so necessary to the relaxing of the tension which
accompanies such scenes. "Jove, it's a good thing to see a fellow like
Robeson safely tied up at last. You never can tell where these quixotic
ideas about houses and hay-wagons and weddings may lead. It's a terrible
strain, though, to see people married. I always tremble like a leaf--I
weigh only a hundred and ninety-eight now, and these things affect me.
It's so frightful to think what might happen if they should trip up on
their specifications."
There was a simple wedding breakfast served--by whom nobody could tell. It
was eaten out in the orchard--a pleasant place, for the neglected grass
had been close cut, and an old-fashioned garden at one side perfumed the
air with late September flowers. The trim little country maids who brought
the plates came from a willow-bordered path which led presumably to the
next house, some distance down the road. There were several innovations in
the various dishes, delicious to taste. Altogether it was a little feast
which everybody enjoyed with unusual zest. And the life of the party was
the bridegroom.
"I never saw a fellow able to scintillate like that at his own wedding,"
remarked the son of the Bishop to the best man's sister. "Usually they are
so completely dashed by their own temerity in getting into such an
irretrievable situation that they sit with their ears drooping and their
eyes bleared. Do you suppose it's getting married in tennis clothes that's
done it?"
"Tennis clothes!" cried the best man's sister with a merry laugh. "If you
realised how much handsomer he looks than you men in your frock-coats you
would not make fun."
"Make fun!" repeated the Bishop's son solemnly. "I joke only to keep my
head above water. I never in my life was so completely submerged in the
desire to get married instantly and live in a picturesque band-box.
Nothing can keep me from it longer than it takes to find the girl and the
band-box. If--if--" his voice dropped to a whisper, and a hint of redness
crept into his face which belied his jesting words, "you knew of the
girl--I--er--say--should you mind living in a band-box?"
The best man's sister was the sort of girl who can discern when even an
inveterate joker is daring to be somewhat more than half in earnest, and
she flushed so prettily that the son of the Bishop caught her hand
boyishly under the little table. He had hitherto been considered a
hopeless old bachelor, so it may readily be seen that, now the contagion
had caught him, his was quite a serious case.
X.--ON A THRESHOLD
When it was all over Judith Dearborn went upstairs with Juliet to help her
dress for her going away. The maid-of-honour looked about the
blue-and-white room with thoughtful eyes.
"This is certainly the dearest room I ever saw," she said. "Oh, Juliet, do
you think you really will be happy here?"
"What do you think about it, dear?" asked Juliet.
"Oh--I--well, really--I never imagined that a little old house like this
could be made so awfully attractive. But, Juliet--you--you must be very,
very fond of Anthony to give up so many things. How well he looked to-day.
Seems to me he's grown gloriously in every way since he--since his family
came into so many misfortunes."
Juliet smiled, but answered nothing.
"And you're so different, too. Never in my life would I have imagined you
having a wedding like this--and yet it's been absolutely the prettiest one
I ever saw. That's a sweet gown to go away in--but it's the simplest thing
you ever wore, I'm sure. Juliet, where are you going?"
"We are going to drive through the Berkshires in a cart."
"Juliet Marcy!"
"'Robeson,'" corrected Juliet with a little laugh, but in a tone which it
was a pity Anthony could not hear. "Don't forget that. I'm so proud of the
name. And I think a drive through the Berkshires will be a perfectly ideal
trip."
Judith Dearborn was not assisting the bride at all. Instead she was
sitting in a chair, staring at Juliet with much the same abstraction of
manner observable in the best man throughout the day.
"Of course you didn't need to live this way," observed Miss Dearborn at
length. "You could have afforded to live much more expensively."
"No, I couldn't," said Juliet with a flash in her eyes, though she smiled;
"I couldn't have afforded to do one thing that would hurt Tony's pride.
Why, Judith--he's a 'Robeson of Kentucky.'"
"Well, he looks it," admitted Judith. "And you're a Marcy of
Massachusetts. The two go well together. Juliet, do you know--somehow--I
thought it was a fearful sacrifice you were making, even for such a man as
Anthony--but--this blue-and-white room----"
"Ah, this blue-and-white room----" repeated Juliet. Then she came over and
dropped on her knees by her friend in her impulsive way and put both arms
around her. The plain little going-away gown touched folds with the one
whose elegance was equalled only by its cost. Anthony Robeson's wife
looked straight up into the eyes of her maid-of-honour and whispered:
"Judith, don't put Wayne--and--your blue-and-white room off too long. You
will not be any happier to wait--if you love him."
* * * * *
Drawn up close to the door stood the cart. Beside it waited Anthony.
Around the cart crowded twenty people. When Juliet came through them to
say good-bye the son of the Bishop murmured:
"Er--Mrs. Robeson----"
"Yes, Mr. Farnham----" said Juliet promptly, her delicate flush answering
the name, as it had answered it many times that day.
"When are you going to be at home to your friends?"
"The fifteenth day of October," said Juliet. "And from then on, every day
in the week, every week in the year. Come and see us--everybody. But don't
expect any formal invitations."
"I'll be down," declared the Bishop's son. "I'll be down once a week."
"Please don't stay long after we are gone," requested Anthony, putting his
bride into the cart and springing in beside her. He gathered up the reins.
"Good-bye," he called. "Take this next train home. It goes in an hour.
Lock the door, Carey, and hang the key up in plain sight by the window
there. We live in the country now, and that's the way we do.
Good-bye--good-bye!"
Then he drove rapidly away down the road.
"And that pair," said the son of the Bishop gravely, looking after them
and speaking to the company in general, "married, so to speak, in a
hay-wagon, and going for a wedding trip in a wheel-barrow through the
Berkshires, is Juliet Marcy and Anthony Robeson."
"No, my son," said the Bishop slowly--and everybody always listened when
the Bishop spoke: "It is Anthony and Juliet Robeson--and that makes all
the difference. I think two happier young people I never married. And may
God be with them."
The best man said that he and the maid-of-honour would walk the half-mile
to the station. The son of the Bishop and the sister of the best man had
already taken this course without saying anything about it. Nearly
everybody murmured something about it being a lovely evening and a
glorious sunset and a charming road, and, pairing off advisedly, adopted
the same plan. The Bishop and Mrs. Bishop, Mrs. Dingley and Mr. Marcy
decided on being driven over to the station in a light surrey provided for
this anticipated emergency.
The best man and the maid-of-honour succeeded in dropping behind the rest
of the pedestrians. Their friends were used to that, and let them
mercifully alone.
"Mighty pretty affair," observed Carey in a melancholy tone.
"Yes--in its way," admitted Judith Dearborn with apparent reluctance.
"Cosy house."
"Very."
"Tony seemed happy."
"Ecstatic." Judith's inflection was peculiar.
"Nobody would have suspected Juliet of feeling blue about living off
here."
"She doesn't seem to."
"What's made the difference?"
"Anthony Robeson, probably."
"Must seem pretty good to him to have her care like that."
"I presume so."
"It isn't everybody that could inspire such an--affection--in such a
girl."
"No, indeed."
Carey looked intensely gloomy. The two walked on in silence, Miss Dearborn
studying the sunset, Carey studying Miss Dearborn. Suddenly he spoke
again.
"Judith, do all our plans for the future seem as desirable to you as they
did this morning?"
"Which ones?"
"Apartment in the locality we've picked out--life in the style the
locality calls for--and _wait_ for it all until I'm _gray_----" with a
burst of tremendous energy. "Good heavens, darling, what's the use?
Why--if I could have you and a little home like that----"
He bit his lip hard. The maid-of-honour walked on, her head turned still
farther away than before. They were nearing the station. Just ahead lay a
turn in the road--the last turn. The rest of the party, with a shout back
at this dilatory pair, disappeared around it. From the distance came the
long, shrill whistle of the approaching train.
The maid-of-honour glanced behind: there was not a soul in sight; ahead:
and saw nothing to alarm a girl with an impulse in her heart. At a point
where great masses of reddening sumac hid a little dip in the road from
everything earthly she stopped suddenly, and turning, put out both hands.
She looked up into a face which warmed on the instant into a
half-incredulous joy and said very gently: "You may."
* * * * *
The sun had been gone only two hours, and the soft early autumn darkness
had but lately settled down upon the silent little house, waiting alone
for its owners to come back some October day, when a cart, driven slowly,
rolled along the road. In front of the house it stopped.
"Where are we?" asked Juliet's voice. "This is a private house. I thought
we--Why, Tony--do you see?--We've come around in a circle instead of going
on to that little inn you spoke of. This is--_home_!"
"Is it?" said Anthony's voice in a tone of great surprise. "So it is!" He
leaped out and came around to Juliet's side. "What a fluke!" But the happy
laugh in his voice betrayed him.
"Anthony Robeson," cried Juliet softly, "you need not pretend to be
surprised. You meant to do it."
"Did I?" He reached out both arms to take her down. "Perhaps I did. Do you
mind--Mrs. Robeson? Shall we go on?"
Juliet looked down at him. "No, I don't think I mind," she said.
He swung her down, and they went slowly up the walk. "Somehow," said
Anthony Robeson, looking up at the house, lying as if asleep in the
September night, "when I thought of taking you to that little public inn,
and then remembered that we might have this instead--We can go on with our
wedding journey to-morrow, dear-but--to-night----"
He led her silently upon the porch. He found the key, where in jest he had
bade his best man put it, and unlocked the door and threw it open.
He stepped first upon the threshold, and, turning, held out his arms.
"Come," he said, smiling in the darkness.
XI.--A BACHELOR AT DINNER
"Hallo there--Anthony Robeson--don't be in such a hurry you can't notice a
fellow."
The big figure rushing through the snow paused, wheeled, and thrust out a
hand of hearty greeting. "That you, Carey? Hat over your eyes like a train
robber--electric lights all behind you--and you expect me to smile at you
as I go by! How are you? How's Judith?"
"Infernally lonely--I mean I am--Judith's off on a visit to her mother.
Say, Tony--take me home with you--will you? I want some decent things to
eat, so I'm holding you up on purpose."
"Good--come on. Train goes in a few minutes. Juliet will be delighted."
The two hurried on together into the station from which the suburban
trains were constantly leaving. As they entered they encountered a mutual
friend, at whom both flung themselves enthusiastically with alternate
greetings:
"Roger Barnes----"
"Roger--old fellow--glad to see you back!"
"Patient safely landed?"
"Get a big fee?"
"Where you going?"
"Let's take him home with us, Tony----" The third man looked smiling at
Tony. "I'll challenge you to," said he.
"That's easy--come on," responded Anthony Robeson with cordiality. "I'll
just telephone Mrs. Robeson."
"That's it," said Dr. Roger Barnes. "You don't dare not to. I understand.
Go ahead. But if she's too much dashed let me know, will you?"
Anthony turned, laughing, into a telephone closet, from which he emerged
in time to catch his train with his guests.
"It's all right," he assured them. "But it's only fair to let her know a
few minutes ahead. You like to understand, Roger, before you start, don't
you, whether your emergency case is a hip-fracture or a cut lip, so you
can tell whether to take your glue or your sewing-silk?"
"By all means," said the bachelor of the party. "And I suppose you think
Mrs. Juliet Marcy Robeson is now smiling happily to herself over this
little surprise. I'll lay you anything you please that if I can make her
own up she'll admit that she said '_Merciful heavens!_' into the telephone
when she got your message."
Anthony shook his head. "Evidently you don't know what guests in the
remote suburbs on a stormy February night mean to a poor girl whose
nearest neighbour is five hundred feet away. Your ideas of married life
need a little freshening, too. They're pretty antique."
It was a half-mile from the station to the house--the "box of a
house"--which had been Anthony's home for five months, and toward which he
now led his friends with the air of a man about to show his most treasured
possessions. He strode through the deepening snow as if he enjoyed the
strenuous tramp, setting a pace which Wayne Carey, with his office life,
if not the doctor, more vigorously built and bred, found difficult to
maintain.
"Here we are," called the leader, pointing toward windows glowing with a
ruddy light. The doctor looked up with interest. Carey was a frequent
visitor, but the busy surgeon, old school-and-college chum of Anthony's
though he was, was about to have his first introduction to a place of
which he had heard much, but of whose nearness to Paradise he doubted with
the strong skepticism of a man who has seen many a fair beginning end in
all unhappiness and desolation.
As they stamped upon the little porch the door flew open, the brilliancy
and comfort of a fire-and-lamplit room leaped out at them, a delicious
faint odour of cookery assailed their hungry nostrils, and the welcome
which makes all worth having met them on the threshold.
"Wayne," said the rich young voice of the mistress of the house, "I'm so
glad. Roger Barnes, this is just downright good of you; it's so long
you've promised us this. Tony----"
What she said to Tony must have been whispered in his ear if voiced at
all, for the two guests, looking on with laughing, envious eyes, saw their
hostess swept unceremoniously into a bearlike embrace, swung into the air
as one thrusts up a child, poised there an instant, laughing and
protesting, then slowly lowered to be kissed, and set down once more
lightly upon the floor.
"It's all right. I didn't tumble your hair a bit," said Anthony coolly.
"Excuse me, gentlemen, but Wayne understands--and Roger will some day, I
hope--that a man who has been thinking about it all the way home can't put
it off on account of a couple of idiots who stand and stare instead of
politely turning their backs. Oh, don't mention it--it doesn't disturb me
at all; and Mrs. Robeson is becoming reconciled to my impetuosity by
degrees. Make yourselves at home, boys. Juliet----"
"Take them upstairs, Tony, please. Of course we can't let them go back
to-night, now we have them. It's beginning to storm heavily, isn't it? I
thought so. Take them to the guest-room, Tony--and dinner will be served
as soon as you are down."
* * * * *
"By Jupiter, I believe she means it," declared the doctor, with approval,
as the door of the bedroom closed on his host. "I think I can tell when a
woman is shamming. She's improved, hasn't she, tremendously? Pretty girl
always, but--well--bloomed now. Nice little house. Believe I'll have to
stay, though I ought not--just to take observations on Tony. His
enthusiasm has all the appearance of reality. In fact, it strikes me he
has rather----"
It was on his lips to say "rather more than you have," but it occurred to
him in time that jokes on this ground are dangerous. Wayne Carey had been
married in November, was living in a somewhat unpretentious way in a
downtown boarding-house, and certainly had to-night so much of a lost-dog
air that it made the doctor pause. So he substituted: "--rather more than
I should have expected, even of a fellow who has got the girl he has
wanted all his life," and fell to washing and brushing vigorously, eyeing
meanwhile the little room with a critical bachelor's appreciation of
beauty and comfort in the quarters he is to occupy. It was very simply
furnished, certainly, but it struck him as a place where his dreams were
likely to be pleasant for every reason in the world.
Downstairs, Juliet, in the dining-room, was surveying her table with the
hostess's satisfaction. Opposite her stood a tall and slender girl,
black-haired, black-eyed, with a face of great attractiveness.
"I wish, Mrs. Robeson," she was saying eagerly, "you would let me serve
you as your maid, and not make a guest of me. Really, I should love to do
it. I don't need to meet your friends, and I don't mind seeming what I
really am--your----"
"Rachel Redding," Juliet interrupted, lifting an affectionate glance
across the table, "if you want to seem what you really are--my friend--you
will let me do as I like."
"My shabby clothes----" murmured the girl.
"If I could look as much like a princess as you do in them----"
"Mrs. Robeson, in that lovely dull red you're a queen----"
"--dowager," finished Juliet gayly. "Well, I'll be proud of you, and you
can be proud of me, if you like, and together we'll make those hungry men
think there's nothing like us. The dinner's the thing. Isn't it the
luckiest chance in the world I sent for those oysters this morning? Doctor
Barnes is perfectly fine, but he never would believe in the happiness of
married life if the coffee were poor or the beefsteak too much broiled.
Doesn't the table look pretty? Those red geranium blossoms you brought me
give it just the gay touch it needed this winter night."
* * * * *
Three men, standing about the wide fireplace, warming cold hands at its
friendly blaze, turned expectantly as their youthful hostess came in,
followed by a graceful girl in gray. Juliet presented her guests with the
air of conferring upon them a favour, and they seemed quite ready to
accept it as such.
Anthony looked on with interest to see a person whom he had known hitherto
only as a pretty but poor young neighbour whom Juliet had engaged to help
her for a certain part of every day, introduced as his wife's friend, and
greeted by Doctor Barnes and Wayne Carey with quite evident admiration and
pleasure. He looked hard at her, as Carey seated her, noticing for the
first time that she was really worth consideration, and remembering
vaguely that Juliet had more than once tried to impress him with the fact.
If it had not been for the other fellows, with whose eyes as their host he
was now stimulated to observe her, he might have been still some time
longer in coming to the realisation that Juliet had found somebody in whom
her genuine interest was not misplaced. But Anthony Robeson had all his
life been singularly blind to the fascinations of most other women than
Juliet. As he turned his keen gaze from Rachel Redding to the charming
figure that sat on the other side of the table the satisfaction in his
eyes became so pronounced that it could mean, Dr. Roger Barnes admitted to
himself, as he caught it, nothing less than a very real happiness.
It was not an elaborate dinner. It was not by any means the sort of dinner
Juliet might have prepared had she known that morning whom she was to
entertain. It was merely a dinner planned with affectionate care to please
and satisfy one hungry man who liked good things to eat--and amplified as
much as possible in quantity after Anthony's message reached her. And by
that admirable collusion between hostess and feminine friend which can
sometimes be effected when the situation demands it, the dinner prepared
for three seemed ample for five.
[Illustration: "Three men, standing about the wide fireplace ... turned
expectantly as their youthful hostess came in, followed by a
graceful girl in gray."]
Between them Juliet and Rachel Redding served the various dishes and
changed the plates which Anthony handed from his place. It was gracefully
done and so simply that the absence of a maid was a thing to be enjoyed
rather than regretted. When Juliet, in the softly sweeping dull-red frock
which made of her a warm picture for a winter's night, slipped from her
chair and moved about the room, or brought in from the kitchen a steaming
dish, she seemed the ideal hostess, herself bestowing what her own hands
had prepared. And when Rachel Redding offered a man a cup of fragrant
coffee, smiling down in the general direction of his uplifted face without
meeting his eyes, there was certainly nothing lost from his enjoyment of
the beverage.
"Say, but this dinner has tasted just about right," was Wayne Carey's
satisfied observation as he leaned back in his chair at last, after
draining his third cup of coffee--and the pot itself, if he had but known
it.
"Went to the spot?" asked Anthony, leaning back also with the expression
of the friendly host. He was young to cultivate that expression, but he
appeared to find no difficulty about it.
"It did--every last mouthful."
"Good. Now, if you fellows will come back to the fire and have a pipeful
of talk we shall not be missed. In this house on ordinary occasions we
reverse the order of after-dinner privileges--the men retire to the
atmosphere of the sofa-pillows, and the women--I'm not allowed to tell
what they do. But after remaining discreetly out of sight for some little
time, during which faint sounds as of the rattle of china penetrate
through closed doors, they reappear, pleasantly flushed and full of a sort
of relieved joy."
"I know what I wish," said Roger Barnes, looking back from the dining-room
doorway at young Mrs. Robeson; "I wish that when the dishes are all ready
you would let me know. I should like nothing better than to have a
dish-towel at them. I know all about it--my mother taught me how."
He looked so precisely as if he meant it, and the glance he sent past
Juliet at Rachel Redding was so suggestive of his dislike to be separated
for the coming hour from the feminine portion of the household, that his
hostess answered promptly: "Of course you may. We never refuse an offer
like that. We will try you--on promise of good behaviour."
XII.--THE BACHELOR BEGS A DISH-TOWEL
When the door closed on the three Juliet produced from somewhere two
aprons--attractive affairs on the pinafore order--one of which she slipped
upon Rachel, the other donned herself.
"These are my kitchen party-aprons," she said gayly, noting how the pretty
garment became the girl, "calculated to impress the masculine mind with
the charm of domesticity in women. The doctor needs a little illustrated
lesson of the sort. Life in boarding-houses isn't adapted to encourage a
man in the belief that real comfort is to be found anywhere outside of a
bachelor's club."
Before he was called the doctor forsook a half-smoked cigar and the
seductive hollows of Anthony's easiest chair and marched briskly out to
the kitchen.
"You see I distrust you," he announced, putting in his head at the door.
"I'm afraid you will get them all done without me."
"Not a bit of it. Here you are," and Juliet tied a big white apron about a
large-sized waist. "Here's your towel. No, don't touch the glass; a man is
too unconscious of his strength."
"A surgeon?" demurred Rachel softly, from over her steaming dishpan.
"Thank you, Miss Redding," said the doctor, smiling.
"Ah, how stupid of me," Juliet made amends swiftly. "Miss Redding
remembers that when I got my telephone message to-night I told her that
the most distinguished young specialist in the city was coming here to
dinner. A hand trained to such delicate tasks as those of surgery--here,
Dr. Roger Barnes, forgive me, and wipe my most precious goblets."
"You'll have my nerves unsteady with such speeches as that," said he, but
he accepted the trust. He held the goblets and the other daintily cut and
engraved pieces of glass with evident pleasure in the task.
Meanwhile Juliet and Rachel made rapid work of the greater part of the
dishes, handling thin china with the dexterity of housewives who love
their work--and their china. Talk and laughter flowed brightly through it
all, and when the doctor had finished his glass he looked disappointed at
seeing not much left to do. At the moment Rachel was scrubbing and
scraping a big baking-dish, portions of whose surface strongly resisted
her efforts, in spite of previous soaking. The assistant, looking about
him for new worlds to conquer, fell upon this dish.
"Here, here," said he, "let me have it. I'll use on it some of the
unconscious strength Mrs. Robeson credits me with."
But Rachel clung to the dish. "Proper housekeepers," she averred, "always
say 'That's all, thank you,' as soon as the china is done, and finish the
pots and kettles after the guest has gone back to pleasanter things."
"I see. Did you ever have a man for dish-wiper before?"
"Never a surgeon," admitted Miss Redding.
"Then you don't appreciate the fact that a man likes to do big things
which make the most show and get the credit for them."
He took the dish away from her by a dexterous little twist in which
conscious strength certainly asserted itself. Rachel, laughing, with a
dash of colour in cheeks which were normally of dark ivory tints, accepted
the dish-towel he handed her.
* * * * *
"Hallo, there," cried Wayne Carey's voice from the door. "You're having
more fun out here than we are in there, and that's not fair. The lord of
the manor is getting so chesty over the delights of a country home in a
February snowbank that he's becoming heavy company."
"No room for you here," returned the doctor, removing with a flourish the
last candied sugar lump from the bottom of the big dish, and beginning to
swash about vigorously in the hot water. "We do something besides talk out
here; we work. Our kitchen is so small we have to waste no time in steps;
as we dry the things we chuck them straight into their places."
Suiting the action to the word he caught up a shining cake-tin and cast it
straight at Carey. That gentleman dodged, but Anthony caught it, performed
upon it an imitation of the cymbals, then turned about and laid it in a
nest of similar tins upon a shelf in an open closet.
"Ah, but I'm well trained," he boasted.
"If you were you wouldn't put it away wet," observed Rachel slyly.
Anthony withdrew the tin, wiped it with much solicitude, and replaced it.
"These little technicalities are beyond me," he apologised. "Your real
athlete in kitchen work is your scientific man. See him dry that bean-pot
with the glass-towel. Now, I know better than that."
"Go away, all of you," commanded the mistress of the place. "Go back to
the fire and we'll join you. If you are very good we'll bring you a
special treat by-and-by."
"That settles it," said the doctor, and led the retreat, but not without a
backward glance at the little kitchen.
Juliet had gone into the dining-room with a trayful of glass and silver.
Rachel Redding was plunging half a dozen white towels into a pan of
steaming water. Barnes stood an instant, staring hard at the slender
figure in the white pinafore, the round young arms gleaming in the
lamplight--then he turned to follow the others. There are some pictures
which linger long in a man's memory; why, he can hardly tell. With all his
varied experiences Dr. Roger Barnes had never before discovered how
attractive a background a well-kept kitchen makes for a beautiful woman,
so that she be there mistress of the situation. Long after he had gone
back to the fire his absent eyes, while the others talked, were studying
the--to him--unaccustomed and singularly charming scene he had just left
in the kitchen.
When Juliet and Rachel came in at length they found a plan afoot for their
entertainment. Wayne Carey was standing at the window showing cause why
the whole party should go out and coast upon the hill near by.
"You admit," he argued with Anthony, "that you know where we can get a
pair of bobs--and if you can't I'll bribe some of those youngsters out
there to let us have theirs. The storm has stopped; the boys have swept
off the whole hill, I should judge, by the way their track shines again
under the moonlight. I haven't had a good coast since I left college."
He turned to Juliet. "Will you go?" he asked coaxingly.
"Of course we will," promised Juliet. "Tony wants to go--he's just
enjoying making you tease. As for the doctor----"
"If my right hand has not forgot her cunning," he agreed.
In ten minutes the party was off. A young matron of five months' standing
is not so materially changed from the girl she used to be that she can
fail to be the gayest of company, perhaps with the more zest that the old
good times seem a bit far away already and she is glad to bring them
back.
As for the real girl of the party, in this case it chanced to be a country
lass who had been away to school and half-way through college, had been
brought home by love and duty to some elderly people who needed her, and
had known many hours of stifled longing for the sort of companionship with
which she had grown happily familiar.
Matron and maid--they were a pair for whose sakes the men who were with
them gladly made slaves of themselves to give them an evening of glorious
outdoor fun--and at small sacrifice.
* * * * *
"What a night!" exulted the doctor, striding up the long hill beside
Rachel Redding breathing deep. "I'm thanking all my lucky stars that they
led my path across Anthony Robeson's to-night. I've been intending to come
out here ever since he was married--and might not have done it for another
six months if I hadn't got started. He'll have all he wants of me now.
It's the most delightful spot I've been in for many moons."
"It is a dear little home," agreed Rachel warmly. "Mrs. Robeson would make
the most commonplace house in the world one where everybody would want to
come."
"That's evident. Yet, somehow, knowing her well as a girl, I never should
have suspected just those home-making qualities. You didn't know her then,
I suppose? She was a girl other girls liked heartily, and men
enthusiastically--one of the 'I'll be a good friend, but don't come too
near' sort, you know. But she was very fond of travel and change, ready
for everything in the way of sport--and, well, I certainly never saw her
before in anything resembling an apron of any description. What a
delightful article of attire an apron is, anyhow. I think I never
appreciated it before to-night."
"That's because you never saw one of Mrs. Robeson's aprons. Hers are not
like other people's."
"She makes hers poetic, does she?"
"She certainly does--even the ones for baking and sweeping. Not ruffled or
beribboned, but cut with an eye to attractiveness, and always of becoming
colour."
"I see. She's an artist--that was noticeable in the oysters--if she made
the dish."
"Of course she did."
"The coffee was the best I ever drank."
"Was it?"
"You made that, then," remarked the doctor astutely.
"I'm glad it was good," said Rachel demurely.
They had reached the top of the hill. Doctor Barnes insisted that Anthony
had been the best steerer of coasting parties known to the juvenile world,
and placed him at the helm. Next came Juliet, with both arms clasped as
far about her husband's stalwart frame as they would go. Carey had wanted
to be the end man, but Doctor Barnes would have none of it. "You have to
take care of Mrs. Robeson," he said firmly, and placed him next. This
brought Miss Redding last, and Dr. Roger Barnes, knowing man, as hanger-on
behind upon bobs already fairly full. The last man, as every coaster
understands, has to be alert to help out any possible bad steering, and so
keeps a watchful head thrust half over the shoulder in front.
The foregoing explanation will show how it came about that all down the
long, swift descent, Rachel, breathless with the unaccustomed delight of
the flight, felt upon her cheek a warm breath, and was conscious of a most
extraordinary nearness of the lips which kept saying merry things into her
ear. The ear itself grew warm before the bottom of the track was reached.
"That was a great coast," cried the doctor as they reached the end of the
long slide. "Now for another. I'm a boy again. This beats the best thing I
could have had in town if I hadn't run across Anthony."
So they had another--and another--and one more. Then Rachel Redding,
stopping in front of a small house which lay at the foot of the hill, said
good-night to them and slipped away before Barnes had realised what had
happened.
* * * * *
"Does she live there?" he questioned Juliet, as the four who were left
moved on toward home. Anthony and Wayne were discussing a subject on which
they had differed at the top of the hill. "Somehow, I got the impression
she lived with you."
"No--but she comes over a good deal. I couldn't get on without her."
"As a friend?"
Juliet looked up at him. "I think it would be better that you should know,
Roger," she said, "and I'm sure Miss Redding herself would prefer it--that
I pay her for several hours a day of regular work. You've only to see her
to understand that she does this simply because it's the only thing open
to her as long as her father and mother can't spare her to go away. She
gave up her college course in the middle because she said they were pining
to death for her. They are in very greatly reduced circumstances, after a
lifetime of prosperity. She's a rare creature--I'm learning to appreciate
her more every day. She's never said a word about her loneliness here, but
it shows in her eyes. It's a perfect delight to me to have her with me,
and I mean to give her all the fun I can. For all that demure manner and
her Madonna face she's as full of mischief as a kitten when something
starts her off."
"Juliet," said the doctor soberly, turning to look searchingly down at her
in the moonlight, "would you be willing to let me come often?"
Juliet looked up quickly. "So that you may see her?" she asked
straightforwardly.
"Yes. I won't pretend it's anything else. I can tell you honestly that if
there were no other reason I should want to come because of my old
friendship for you and Anthony, and because this evening in your little
home has given me a rare pleasure. I know of no place like it. But I'll
tell you squarely that I want the chance to meet your friend often and at
once. If I don't you will have other people coming out from town----"
"Yes," said Juliet, and something in the way she said it made him ask
quickly: "Has that already happened? Am I too late?"
"I don't know whether you're too late, but I know that we've suddenly
grown most attractive to another man from town. If you had gone into
Rachel's home the odour of violets would have met you at the door. He
sends them every few days."
"_Ah!_" said the doctor. It was not much of a comment, but it spoke
volumes. He had been keen before--he was determined now. Violets--well,
there were rarer flowers than those.
XIII.--SMOKE AND TALK
At the house there remained for the guests an hour before the fire, where
Juliet brought in something hot and sweet and sour and spicy, which tasted
delicious and brought her a shower of compliments while they drank a
friendly draught to her. When she had left them, standing in an admiring
group on the hearth-rug and wishing her happy dreams, they settled into
luxurious positions of ease before the fire--a fire in the last stages of
red comfort before it dies into a smoulder of torrid ashes.
"Anthony Robeson," said Wayne Carey, regarding the andirons fixedly over
his bed-time pipe, "you're a happy man."
Anthony laughed contentedly. He had thrown himself down upon the
hearth-rug with his head on a pillow pulled from the settle, and lay flat
on his back with his hands clasped behind his neck. It was an attitude
deeply expressive of masculine comfort.
"You're exactly right," said he. "And you would be the same if you would
give up living in that infernal boarding-house. What do you want to fool
with your first year of married life like that for? You told me that
Judith was bowled over by our wedding, and was ready to go in for this
sort of thing with a will."
"I know it," admitted Carey, "but"--he spoke hesitatingly--"we couldn't
seem to find this sort of thing. You had corralled all there was."
"Nonsense."
"You had. Everything we looked at was so old and mouldy, or so new and
inartistic, or so high-priced, or so far away--well, we couldn't seem to
get at it, so we said we'd board a while and wait until we could look
around."
"How does it work?"
"Why, I suppose it works very well," said Carey cautiously. "Judith seems
contented. We have as good meals as the average in such houses, and the
people are rather a nice lot. We're invited around quite a good deal, and
Judith likes that. I ought to like it better than I do, somehow. I'm so
confoundedly tired when I get home nights I can't help thinking of you and
Juliet here in this jolly room. There's an abominable blue and yellow
wall-paper on our sitting-room--and it has a way of appearing to turn
seasick in the evening under the electrics. Sometimes I think it's that
that makes me feel----"
"Seasick, too?" inquired the doctor with his professional air. He was
standing with his arm on the chimney-piece, looking alternately down on
his friends and around the long, low room. It _was_ a jolly room--the very
essence of comfort and cosiness. It was a beautiful room, too, in a simple
way; one which satisfied his sense of harmony in colours and fabrics--a
keen sense with him, as it is apt to be with men of his profession.
"Judith likes this, too, you know," Carey went on loyally. "She thinks
it's great. But how to get it for ourselves--that's another matter.
Somehow, you were lucky."
"Did you ever happen to see," asked Anthony, "a photograph I took, just
for fun, of this house as it was when Juliet saw it first? No? Well, just
look in that box on the end of the farther bookcase, will you? It's near
the top--there--that's it."
He lay looking up through half-closed lashes at the two men as they
studied the photograph, the doctor leaning over Carey's shoulder.
"On your word, man, did it look like that?" cried Barnes.
"Just like that."
"Yes, I've heard it did," admitted Carey; "but I never quite believed it
could have been as bad as that."
"Who planned it all?" the doctor asked, getting possession of the
photograph as Carey laid it down, and giving it careful scrutiny.
"My little home-maker."
"Jove--are there any more like her?"
"They're pretty rare, I understand. Juliet has one in training--one with a
good deal of native capacity, I should judge."
"Let me know when her graduation day approaches," remarked the doctor.
* * * * *
When he fell asleep that night in the dainty guest-room Barnes was
wondering whether Mrs. Robeson got her own breakfasts, and hoping that she
certainly did not, at least when guests were in the house. He was down
half an hour earlier than necessary, and to his great satisfaction found a
slender figure brushing up ashes and setting the fireplace in order for
the morning fire. As he begged leave to help he noted the satin smoothness
of Miss Redding's heavy black hair and the trim perfection of her attire.
She reminded him of his hospital nurses in their immaculate blue and
white. When he saw the mistress of the house and found her similarly
dressed a certain skepticism grew in his mind.
When he went out to breakfast he murmured in Anthony's ear: "Just tell me,
old fellow--to satisfy the curiosity of a bachelor--do these girls of your
household always look like this in the early morning? I know it's
mean--but you will know how to evade me if I'm too impertinent----"
Anthony glanced from Juliet, resembling a pink carnation in her wash
frock--February though it was--to Rachel Redding in dark blue and white,
and smiled mischievously. "Mrs. Robeson--and Miss Redding--you are
challenged," he announced. "Here's a fine old chump who has an awful
suspicion that maybe when there are no guests you come down in calico
wrappers with day-before-yesterday's aprons on."
Juliet gave the doctor a glance which made him pretend to shrink behind
Carey for protection. "Will you please answer him, Tony?" she said.
"On my word and honour, Roger Barnes, then," said Anthony proudly, "they
always look like this."
When the doctor left he was weighing carefully in his mind an urgent
problem: After waiting six months before making his first visit at the
Robesons, how soon could he decently come again?
XIV.--STRAWBERRIES
"Here are yer strawberries, ma'm."
Juliet, alone in her little kitchen, ran to the door in dismay. She looked
down at a freckle-faced boy carrying a big basket filled with
strawberry-boxes.
"But my order was for next Wednesday," she said.
"Well, Pa said he cal'lated you'd ruther have 'em when they was at the
best, an' that's now. This hot weather's a dryin' 'em up. May not be any
good ones by Wednesday."
Every housekeeper knows that if there is one thing particularly liable to
happen it is the arrival of fruit for preserving at the most inopportune
moment of the week. It matters little what the excuse of the sender may
be--there is always a sufficient reason why the original date set by the
buyer has been ignored. In this case the strawberries had been engaged
from a neighbour, and Juliet understood at once that she must not refuse
to take them.
She stood looking at the rows of baskets upon the table, when the boy had
placed them there and gone whistling away. She was in the midst of a
flurry of work. It was Saturday, and she was cooking and baking, putting
together various dishes to be used upon the morrow. Mr. Horatio Marcy had
lately returned from abroad. He and Mrs. Dingley were to spend the coming
Sabbath with Juliet and Anthony--the first occasion on which Juliet's
father should be entertained in the house. It was an event of importance,
and his daughter meant to show him several things concerning her fitness
for her present position.
Rachel Redding was not available upon this Saturday morning. Her mother
had been taken seriously ill the night before, and Rachel had sent word
that she could not leave her. Juliet had not minded much, although it was
a day when Rachel's help would have been especially acceptable. As it was,
she had reached a point where her housewifely marshalling of the day's
work was at a critical stage. A cake had been put into the oven. A large
bowl of soup stock had been brought from a cool retreat to have the smooth
coating of fat removed from its surface. Various other dishes, in process
of construction, awaited the skilled touch of the cook.
"I shall have to do them, I suppose," said Mrs. Robeson to herself,
regarding the strawberries with a disapproving eye. "But _why_ they had to
come to-day----"
She went at the strawberries, wishing she had ordered less. They were fine
berries--on top; by degrees, as the boxes lowered, they became less fine.
It seemed desirable to separate the superior from the inferior and treat
them differently. Only the best would do for the delectable preserve which
was to go into glasses and be served on special occasions; the others
could be made into jam less attractive to the eye if hardly less
acceptable to the palate. Juliet was obliged to put down her berry-boxes
every fifth minute to attend to one or other of the various saucepans and
double-boilers upon the little range. Her cheeks grew flushed, for the day
was hot and the kitchen hotter. It must be admitted that her occasional
glance out over the green fields and the woods beyond was a longing one.
The better selection of the berries went into the clear syrup in the
preserving-kettle. Juliet flew to get her glass pots ready. She stopped to
stir something in a saucepan. She thrust some eggs into the small
ice-chest to cool them for the salad dressing soon to be made. She kept
one eye on the clock, for the strawberry preserve had to be timed to a
minute--ten, no more, no less. It was a strenuous hour.
As she dipped up the fourth ladleful of crimson richness--translucent as a
church window--and filled the waiting jar, a peculiar pungent odour
drifted across the fragrance of the strawberries. Juliet dropped her ladle
and pulled open the oven door.
The delicate cake which she had compounded with especial care because it
was Mrs. Dingley's favourite, lay a blackened ruin. Some of it had run
over upon the oven bottom and become a mass of cinders. Juliet jerked the
cake-tin out into the daylight and shut the oven door with a slam.
It was at this unpropitious moment that a figure appeared in the
doorway--a tall, slim figure, in crisp, cool, white linen. A charming
white hat surmounted Mrs. Wayne Carey's carefully ordered hair, a white
parasol in her hands completed a particularly chaste and appropriate
morning toilette for a young woman who had nothing to do with kitchens.
She was regarding with interest the young person at the range. Juliet wore
one of her characteristic working frocks, and the big pinafore which
enveloped it from head to foot was of an attractive design. But the
morning's flurry had set its signs upon her, and the pinafore was not as
immaculate as it had been three hours earlier. Her hair, curling moistly
about her flushed face, had been impatiently pushed back more than once,
and its disorder, while not unpicturesque, was suggestive of a somewhat
perturbed mind. Her hands were pink with strawberry juice. She looked
warm, tired, and--if the truth must be told--at the moment not a little
out of temper. The smile with which she welcomed her friend could hardly
be said to be one of absolute pleasure.
"I'm afraid I've come at the wrong time," said Judith, regretfully. "Did
you just burn something? Too bad. I suppose all young housekeepers do
that. Where's your--assistant?"
"She's not here to-day," said Juliet, ladling up strawberry preserve with
more haste than caution. Her fingers shook a little but she kept her voice
tranquil. "It's all right. A number of things had to be done at once,
that's all. Please don't stay in this hot place. Take off your hat and
find a cool corner somewhere in the house. I'll be in presently."
"I mustn't bother you. I was going to stay for lunch with you, it was so
hot in town, but I mustn't think of it when you're so----"
"Of course you'll stay," said Juliet with decision. "What you see before
you is only the smoke of battle. It will soon clear away. Run off--and
I'll be with you presently. You'll find the late magazines in the
living-room."
Her tone was intended to deceive and it was sufficiently successful.
Judith was anxious to stay. She was also interested in the situation. She
had heard much from Wayne in praise of Juliet's successful housekeeping,
and had seen enough of it herself to be curious about its inner workings.
For the first time she had happened upon a scene which would seem to
indicate that there were phases in this sort of domestic life less ideal
than she was asked to believe. She went back into the coolness and quiet
of the living-room with a full appreciation of the fact that no hot
kitchens ever threatened her own peace of mind.
Juliet finished her strawberry preserve, saw that everything liable to
burn was removed to safe quarters; then deliberately took off her apron
and stole out of the kitchen door. She went swiftly down through the
orchard to the willow-bordered path by the brook; then, out of sight of
everything human, ran several rods down it with a sweep of skirts which
put everything in the bird creation to flight. At a certain pleasant spot
among the willows, sheltered from all possible observation, she paused and
flung herself down upon the warm ground.
But not in any attitude of despair. Neither did she cry tears of vexation
and weariness. She was a healthy girl, with the perfect physical being
whose poise is not upset by so small a matter as a fatiguing morning.
Because a cake had burned, an extra amount of work had had to be conquered
and an unexpected guest had arrived, her nerves were not worn to the
rending point. But, having been reared in the belief that a breath of
outdoors is the great antidote for all physical or mental discomforts born
of confinement indoors, she had acquired a habit of running away from her
cares at any and all times of day in precisely this fashion--and many were
the advantages she had reaped from this somewhat unusual course of
procedure.
Mrs. Anthony Robeson lay upon one side, her arm outstretched, her cheek
pillowed upon her arm. She was drawing long, deep breaths, and looking
lazily off at a stretch of blue sky cleft in the exact centre by one great
graceful elm tree. One would have thought she had forgotten every care in
the world, not to mention the guest from the city waiting expectantly for
her hostess to appear. After ten minutes of this sort of indolence the
figure in the blue and white print dress sat up, clasped both arms about
her knees and remained regarding with half closed eyes the softly
fluttering leaves of the willows along the edge of the brook. The hot
flush died out of her cheeks; the lips whose expression a few minutes
since had indicated self-control under a combination of trying
circumstances, relaxed into their natural sweetness with a tendency toward
mirth; and her whole aspect became that merely of the young athlete
resting from one encounter and preparing herself for another.
At length she rose, shook out her skirts, and said aloud: "Now, Judith
Dearborn Carey, I'm ready to upset your expectations. Since you looked in
at me this morning you've been thinking I wished I hadn't--haven't you?
Well, you may just understand that I don't wish anything of the sort." And
in five minutes more she had walked in upon her guest by way of the front
door, her pretty face serene, her hands full of pink June roses which she
threw in a fragrant mass of beauty into her friend's lap.
"Put those into bowls for me, will you?" she requested. "Arrange them to
suit yourself. Aren't they lovely? I suppose you're getting hungry. In
half an hour you shall be served with a very modest but, I trust, not
insufficient lunch. Would you like hot chocolate or iced tea?"
"Iced tea, by all means," chose Judith, who, being used to the privileges
of selection from a variety of offered foods and beverages, was apt to
want what was not set before her, when at a private table. Juliet
understood this propensity of her friend and slyly took advantage of it.
As it happened, she knew that at the moment she was quite out of
chocolate, but she had counted advisedly upon Judith's choice on a hot
June day, and she smiled to herself as she chopped ice and sliced lemon.
At the end of the half hour, Judith, who found the coolness of the
living-room too delightful to allow her to keep watch of her friend in the
hot kitchen, much as she was tempted to do so, was summoned to an equally
cool dining-room. Upon the bare table, daintily set out upon some of the
embroidered white doilies of Juliet's wedding linen, was a simple lunch of
a character which appealed to the guest's critical appetite in a way which
made her draw a long breath of satisfaction.
"You certainly do have a trick of serving things to make them taste better
than other people's," she acknowledged, glancing from the little platter
of broiled chicken with its bit of parsley to the crisp fruit salad made
up of she knew not what, but presenting an appetising appearance--then
regarding fondly a dish of spinach, pleasingly flanked by thin slices of
boiled egg.
"It's really too hot to eat anything very solid," agreed Juliet with
guile. "Rachel and I have a way of planning our lunches a day or two
ahead, so that the leftovers we use up are not yesterday's but the day
before's, and we remember with surprise how good the original dish was far
back in the past. I wish Anthony could have his midday meal at
home--though perhaps if he did the dinners wouldn't strike him so happily.
Don't you think it's great fun to see a big, hearty man sit down at a
table and look at it with an expression of adoration? Women may deride the
fact as they will, but a healthy body does demand good things to eat, and
shouldn't be blamed for liking them."
"Wayne hasn't much appetite," said Judith, eating away with relish. "He
dislikes the people at our table--sometimes I think that's why he bolts
his food and gets off in such a hurry. By the way, Juliet, are you and
Tony coming in to the Reardons' to-night? Of course you are."
"I suppose we must," admitted Juliet with reluctance. "We have refused a
good many things since we've been here, but I did promise Mrs. Reardon we
would try to come to-night."
The little repast over, Judith offered, with well simulated warmth, to
help her friend with the after work. But Juliet would have none of her.
She sent her guest out into a hammock under the trees, and despatched the
business of putting the little kitchen to rights with the celerity of one
who means to have done with it.
In the middle of the June afternoon Judith awoke from a nap in the hammock
to find her hostess standing laughing beside her, fresh in a thin gown of
flowered dimity.
"Well," yawned Judith, heavily, "I must have gone off to sleep. I was
tired--I am tireder. This is a fatiguing sort of weather--don't you think
so? But you don't look it. And after all that work I found you in! Why
aren't you used up? It _kills_ me to do things in the heat."
Juliet dropped a big blue denim pillow on the ground and sat down upon it
in a flutter of dimity. She lifted a smiling face and said with spirit:
"Last summer I could walk miles over a golf course twice a day and not
mind it in the least. The year before I was most of the time on the river,
rowing till I was as strong as a girl could be. I've had gymnasium work
and fencing lessons and have been brought up to keep myself in perfect
trim by my baths and exercise. What frail thing am I that a little
housework should use me up?"
"Yes--I know--you always did go in for that sort of thing," reflected
Judith, eyeing her companion's fresh colour and bright eyes. "I suppose I
ought, but I never cared for it--I don't mean the baths and all that--of
course any self-respecting woman adores warm baths. I don't like the cold
plunges and showers you always add on."
"Then don't expect the results."
"It isn't everybody who has your energetic temperament. I hate golf,
despise tennis, never rowed a stroke in my life, and could no more keep
house as you are doing than I could fly."
"Let me see," said Juliet demurely, pretending to consider. "What is it
that you do like to do?"
"You know well enough. And little enough of it I can get now with a
husband who never cares to stir." There was a suspicion of bitterness in
Judith's voice. But Juliet, ignoring it, went blithely on:
"I've a strong conviction that one can't be happy without being busy. Now
that I can't keep up my athletic sports I should become a pale
hypochondriac without these housewifely affairs to employ me. I don't like
to embroider. I can't paint china. I'm not a musician. I somehow don't
care to begin to devote myself to clubs in town. I love my books and the
great outdoors--and plenty of action."
"You're a strange girl," was Judith's verdict, getting languidly out of
the hammock, an hour later, after an animated discussion with her friend
on various matters touching on the lives of both. "Either you're a
remarkable actress or you're as contented as you seem to be. I wish I had
your enthusiasm. Everything bores me--Look at this frock, after lying in a
hammock! Isn't white linen the prettiest thing when you put it on and the
most used up when you take it off, of any fabric known to the shops?"
"It is, indeed. But if anybody can afford to wear it it's you, who never
sit recklessly about on banks and fences, but keep cool and correct and
stately and----"
"--discontented. I admit I've talked like a fractious child all day. But
I've had a good time and want to come oftener than I have. May I?"
"Of course you may. Must you go? I'll keep you to dinner and send for
Wayne."
"You're an angel, but I've an engagement for five o'clock, and there's the
Reardons' this evening. You won't forget that? You and Anthony will be
sure to come?"
"I'll not promise absolutely, but I'll see. Mrs. Reardon was so kind as to
leave it open. It's an informal affair, I believe?"
"Informal, but very gorgeous, just the same. She wouldn't give anybody but
you such an elastic invitation as that, and you should appreciate her
eagerness to get you," declared Judith, who cared very much from whom her
invitations came and could never understand her friend's careless attitude
toward the most impressive of them.
Juliet watched her guest go down the street, and waved an affectionate
hand at her as Judith looked back from her seat in the trolley car. "Poor
old Judy," she said to herself. "How glad you are you're not I!--And how
very, very glad I am I'm not you!"
An observation, it must be admitted, essentially feminine. No man is ever
heard to felicitate himself upon the fact that he is not some other man.
XV.--ANTHONY PLAYS MAID
After dinner that night, Juliet, having once more put things in order and
slipped off the big pinafore which had kept her spotless, joined her
husband in the garden up and down which he was comfortably pacing, hands
in pockets, pipe in mouth.
"Jolly spot, isn't it? Come and perambulate," he suggested.
"Just for a minute. Tony, are we going to the Reardons?"
He stood still and considered. "I don't know. Are we? Did you accept?"
"On condition that you felt like it. I represented you as coming home
decidedly fagged these hot nights and not always caring to stir."
"Wise schemer! I don't mind the aspersion on my physical being. She urged,
I suppose?"
"She did. I don't know why."
"I do." Anthony smiled down at his wife. "Everybody is a bit curious about
us these days. Your position, you see, is considered very extraordinary."
"Nonsense, Tony. Shall we go?"
"Possibly we'd better, though it racks my soul to think of dressing. The
less I wear my festive garments the less I want to. For that very reason,
suppose we discipline ourselves and go. Do you mind?"
"Not at all. We'll have to dress at once, for it's nearly eight now, and
by the time we have caught a train and got to Hollyhurst----"
"To be sure. Here goes, then."
Half an hour later Anthony, wrestling with a refractory cuff button,
looked up to see his wife at his elbow. She was very nearly a vision of
elegance and beauty; the lacking essential was explained to him by a voice
very much out of breath and a trifle petulant:
"If you care anything for me, Tony, stop everything and hook me up. I'm
all mixed up, and I can't reach, and I'm sure I've torn that little lace
frill at the back."
"All right. Where do I begin?"
"Under my left arm, I think--I can't possibly see."
"Neither can I." He was poking about under the lifted arm, among folds of
filmy stuff. "Here we are--no, we aren't. Does this top hook go in this
little pocket on the other side?"
"I suppose so--can't you tell whether it does by the look?"
"It seems a bit blind to me," murmured Anthony, struggling.
"It's meant to be blind--it mustn't show when it's fastened."
"It certainly doesn't now. Hold on--don't wriggle. I've got it now. I've
found the combination. Three turns to the right, five to the left, clear
around once, then--Hullo! I've come out wrong. The thing doesn't track at
the bottom."
"You've missed a hook."
"Oh, no. I hung onto 'em all the way down."
"Then you missed an eye. You'll have to unhook it all and begin again."
Anthony obeyed. "I'm glad I don't have to get into my clothes around the
corner this way," he commented. "Here you are. We stuck to the schedule
this time."
"Wait, dear. You haven't fastened the shoulder. There are ever so many
little hooks along there and around the arm hole."
"I should say there were. What's the good of so many?--Where do they
begin? Look out--wait a minute--Juliet, if you don't stop twisting around
so I never can do it. I can do great, heroic acts, it's the little trials
that floor me--There--no!--that doesn't look right."
Juliet ran to the mirror. "It isn't right," she cried. "Look--that corner
shouldn't lap over like that. Oh, if I could only reach myself!"
"You can't--I've often tried it. The human anatomy--Stand still,
Julie--you're getting nervous."
"If there's one thing that's trying----" murmured Juliet.
"Why do you let your dressmakers build your frocks this way? Why not get
into 'em all in front, where you can see what you're doing?--Now I've got
it. Isn't that right?"
"Yes. Wait, Tony--here's the girdle. It fastens behind."
Anthony surveyed the incomprehensible affair of silk and velvet ribbon she
put into his hands. "Looks like a head-stall to me," he said. Juliet
laughed and fitted it about her own waist. Anthony attempted to make it
join at the back of the points she held out to him.
"It won't come together," he said.
"Oh, yes, it will. Draw it tight."
"I am drawing it tight. It's smaller than you are. You can't wear it."
Juliet laughed again. Anthony tugged.
"Wait till I hold my breath," she said.
"_Great guns!_" he ejaculated, and by the exertion of much force fastened
the girdle. Then he stood off a step or two and looked at his wife
curiously. Flushed and laughing she returned his gaze.
"Can you breathe?" he asked solicitously.
"Of course I can."
"What with?"
"It is a little tight, of course," she admitted. "This is one of my
trousseau dresses. I've grown a little stouter, I suppose. Never mind, I
can stand it for to-night. Thank you very much. You must hurry now,
Tony."
"I haven't had my pay for playing maid," he said, and came close. He
surveyed his wife's fair neck and shoulders, turned her around and
deliberately kissed the soft hollow where the firm white flesh of her neck
met the waving brown hair drawn lightly upwards.
"That's the spot that tantalized me for about six years," he observed.
Hunting hurriedly through various drawers and boxes in the blue-and-white
room, in search of gloves and fan, Juliet heard her husband come in his
turn to her open door.
"Will you have the goodness to look at me?" he requested, in a melancholy
voice. Juliet turned, gave him one glance, and broke into a merry peal.
"Oh, Tony!--What's the matter? Have you been growing stouter, too?"
"It must be," he said solemnly.
His clawhammer coat was so tight across the shoulders that the strain was
evident. He was holding his arms in the exaggerated position of the small
boy who wears a last year's suit. Juliet revolved around her husband's
well built figure with interest.
"It does look tight," she said. "But have you grown heavier all at once?
It can't be long since you wore that coat before."
"Don't believe I have for months. It's been altogether frock-coats and
informals. I haven't been to an evening affair with ladies for a good
while."
"It doesn't look as it feels, I'm sure. It's getting very late--we ought
to be off," and Juliet gathered up her belongings and gave him a long
loose coat to hold for her which covered her finery completely.
"Now's the hour when I regret that I haven't a carriage for you," said
Anthony, as they descended the stairs. He got into his outer coat
reluctantly. "I shall split something around my back before the evening is
over," he prophesied resignedly.
"Never mind. Remember how tight my girdle is. It grows tighter every
minute."
They got out upon the porch and Anthony locked the door. "If I should show
that door-key to any man I know except Carey he would howl," he remarked,
holding up the queer old brass affair before he slipped it into his
pocket. He looked down at Juliet in the gathering June twilight. "Don't
you wish we didn't have to go?"
"Yes, I do," she agreed frankly.
"Let's not!"
"My dear boy! At this hour?"
"We could telephone."
"Shouldn't you feel rather ashamed to, so late?"
"Not a bit. But of course we'll go if you say so."
She laughed, and he joined her boyishly. She hesitated.
"If I see you looking faint in that girdle shall I throw a glass of cold
water over you?"
"Please do. If I hear a sound as of rending cloth shall I divert the
attention of the company?"
"By all means."
They were laughing like two children. Anthony sat down in one of the porch
chairs. He drew a long sigh. "I never hated to leave my dear home so since
I came into it," he said gloomily.
Juliet pulled off her coat. "If you'll do the telephoning I'll stay," she
said.
He jumped to his feet. "Let me loosen that girdle for you. I haven't been
breathing below the fifth rib myself since you put it on, just in
sympathy," he declared.
XVI.--A HOUSE-PARTY--OUTDOORS
"The trouble is," said Anthony Robeson, shifting his position on the step
below Juliet so that he could rest his head against her knee, "the trouble
is we're getting too popular."
Juliet laughed and ran her fingers through his thick locks, gently
tweaking them. The two were alone together in the warm darkness of a July
evening, upon their own little porch.
"It's the first evening we've had to ourselves since the big snowdrift
under the front windows melted. That was about the date Roger Barnes met
Louis Lockwood here the first time. Ye gods--but they've kept each other's
footprints warm since then, haven't they? And now Cathcart is giving
indications of having contracted the fatal malady. Can't Rachel Redding be
incarcerated somewhere until the next moon is past? I notice they all have
worse symptoms each third quarter. That girl looks innocent, but--by
heaven, Julie, I think she has it down fine."
"No, you don't," said Juliet persuasively. "I should catch her at it if
she were deliberately trying to keep two such men as Roger and Louis
pitted against each other. They're doing it all themselves. I've known her
to run away when she saw one of them coming--so that she couldn't be
found. But, Tony dear, I've a plan."
"Good. I hope it's a duel between the two principals. If it is I'm going
to tamper with the weapons and see that each injures himself past help.
I'm getting a little weary of playing the hospitable host to a trio of
would-bes."
"Listen. We'll entertain them all at once for a week, with some extra
girls, and Judith and Wayne, and then we'll announce that we're not at
home for a month."
"All at once--a house-party?" Anthony sat up and laughed uproariously.
"I've tremendous faith in you, love, but where in the name of all the
French sardines that ever were dovetailed would you put such a crowd?"
"I've a practical plan. Louis Lockwood belongs to a fishing club that
spends every August up in Canada. They have a big tent, twenty by
twenty-five, for he told me so the other day. He would get it for us; we
would put it out in the orchard, close to the river. You and Wayne, and
Roger and Louis, and Stevens Cathcart could sleep down there, and I could
easily take care of Judith and Suzanne Gerard and Marie Dresser, here in
the house. Rachel should stay here, too. And Auntie Dingley would send
down Mary McKaim to cook for us, I'm sure."
"That's not so bad. But why Rachel--when you have so little room?"
"Because I want her to have all the fun; because if I don't keep her here
she will be running away half the time; and because----"
"Now comes the real reason," observed Anthony sagely.
"I don't want the other girls thinking she has the unfair advantage of
taking a man away from the party every evening to walk down home with
her."
"Wise little chaperon. I can see Roger and Louis now, glaring at each
other as the hour approaches for her departure."
"What do you think of my plan? It's only a plan, you know, Tony--subject
to your approval."
"Diplomat!" murmured Anthony, reaching up one arm and drawing it about her
shoulders. "You know you're safe to have my approval when you put it in
that tone. Well, provided you can figure out the finances--and I know you
wouldn't propose it if you hadn't done that already--I don't see any
objection. On one condition, though, Julie, mind you--on one condition."
"Name it."
"Of course, I can only be here evenings during your house party. So my
condition is that I have you and the home all to myself for my vacation
afterward. Not a wooer nor a chum admitted. No overdressed women out from
town, taking afternoon tea--no invitations to lonesome husbands out to
dinner. Just you and I. Did you ever imagine life in the rural localities
would be so gay, anyhow? I want to go fishing with you--tramping through
the woods with you--sitting out here on the porch with you--in short, have
you all to myself--and"--he turned completely about, kneeling below her on
the step, crushing her in both arms so vigorously that he stopped her
breath--"eat--you--up!"
"What a prospect," she cried softly, when she found herself partially
released. "Are you sure you need a vacation, just for that?"
"Certain of it. I've had to share you with other people all the year--and
now I've got to give you up to a jealous lovers' assemblage. So after
that, mind you, I have my satisfaction."
* * * * *
When Doctor Barnes was told of the plan he looked gloomy. "Going to ask
Lockwood?" he inquired at once.
"Of course," assented Juliet promptly.
"I don't see any 'of course' about it."
"What would Marie Dresser do to me if I didn't invite him?"
"He doesn't care for her----"
"Oh, yes, he does. Why, last winter he seemed to be on the point of asking
her to marry him. Everybody expected the announcement any day."
"Last winter and this summer are two different propositions."
"Marie doesn't think so."
"She'll get mightily undeceived, then. Whom else are you asking?"
"Stevens Cathcart."
The doctor groaned. "Is this a dose you're fixing for me? I'm going to be
too busy--I can't come."
"Very well," said Juliet placidly. She was sewing, upon the porch, and the
doctor sat on the step.
He looked up with a grimace. "I suppose you think I'll be out on the next
train after the rest arrive."
"I certainly do, Dr. Roger Williams Barnes."
"I presume you are inviting Suzanne?" he queried.
"Why not?"
"No reason why not. Cathcart admires her immensely--or did, before he
began to cultivate this place."
Juliet laughed. "Suzanne would never forgive you if she heard that."
"By-the-way," said the doctor slowly, "has she ever met--Miss Redding?"
"No."
He meditated for several minutes in silence, while Juliet sewed, glancing
from time to time at one of the most attractive masculine profiles with
which she was familiar. He was not as handsome a man as Louis Lockwood,
but every line of his face stood for strength, not without some
pretensions to good looks. He looked up at length and straight at her.
"Would you mind telling me," he began, "just what you intend to effect
with this combination? I never gave you credit, you know, Juliet, for
wanting to manage Fate, and I don't believe it now."
"No, I don't want to manage Fate," said Juliet, smiling over her work,
"but I admit I want two things: I want you to see Rachel Redding beside
Suzanne Gerard, and--I want Rachel to see you beside Louis Lockwood
and--Suzanne."
"I see," said the doctor grimly. "In other words, you want your protégée
to have fair play."
"Just that," Juliet answered, more gravely now. "I think lots of you,
Roger, and well of you--you know I do--and yet----"
"And yet----"
"Let me guard my girl. She's not like the others, and you and Louis are
making it tremendously hard for her between you."
"You seem to be planning to make it infinitely harder."
Juliet shook her head. "Trust me, Roger, please."
"All right, I will," promised the doctor. "But just assure me that you're
on my side."
"I'm on nobody's side," was all the comfort he got.
Juliet's invitations received delighted acceptances, though Wayne Carey
and Doctor Barnes would be able to come out only for the nights--in time,
however, for late and festive suppers outdoors. The tent in the orchard,
with its comfortable bunks, was accepted by all the men with enthusiasm.
"And to satisfy the men is the essential thing, you know, Tony," Juliet
had observed sagely when she saw their pleasure in their quarters. "The
girls will accept any crowding together if they have a mirror and room to
tie a sash in, as long as devoted admirers are not wanting."
The moment Miss Dresser and Miss Gerard saw Miss Rachel Redding--to quote
Anthony--the fun began. Mrs. Wayne Carey had already met her, and had been
carefully coached by Juliet as to the bearing she must assume toward
Juliet's new friend. So when Marie and Suzanne began to inquire of Judith
the latter was prepared to answer them.
"She's a beauty in her way, isn't she?" Judith asserted. "Juliet's
immensely fond of her, I should judge."
"But who is she?" demanded Suzanne.
"A neighbour, a country girl, a school and college girl, a comparatively
poor girl--and a lucky girl, for Juliet likes her."
"Have the men met her before?"
"Goodness, yes. Haven't you heard how they beg invitations home to dinner
of Anthony, just to see her?" Judith was enjoying the situation. This
statement, however, was no part of Juliet's coaching.
"I didn't see anything particularly attractive about her," said Marie
promptly. "She's a demure thing. One wouldn't think she ever lifted those
long lashes to look at a man--but that's just the kind. Awfully plainly
dressed."
"That's her style," said Suzanne. "These poor, pretty girls are once in a
while just clever enough to make capital out of their poverty by wearing
simply fetching things in pale gray dimity and dark blue lawn and
sunbonnets. Stevens Cathcart would be just the kind to be carried away
with her. Roger Barnes wouldn't look at her twice."
"Louis might pretend to admire her, to please Juliet," admitted Marie. "He
has a way of making every girl think he is in love with her--and he is, to
a certain extent. But it's never serious."
Whether it were serious in this instance Miss Dresser soon had opportunity
to judge.
After dinner that first night Anthony proposed taking all his guests out
upon the river in a big flat-boat he had rented. But when he made up the
party Rachel was not to be found.
"I'm afraid she's gone home," said Juliet.
"I'll run down and see," proposed Lockwood instantly, and was suiting the
action to the word when Cathcart got off ahead of him.
"I'll have her back presently," he called as he dashed down the road. "You
people go on--we'll catch you."
"We'll wait for you," Lockwood shouted after him.
"Why should we wait?" demurred Marie, beginning to walk away toward the
river.
"If we don't he's liable not to find it convenient to catch up with us,"
Lockwood retorted.
"If they prefer their own company why not let them have it?" she said over
her shoulder.
"Run along, Louis," murmured Doctor Barnes. "One girl at a time."
He turned to Juliet. "Shall we go?" he said.
Anthony caught his glance, and, laughing, turned to Suzanne. "Will you
console an old married man, Miss Gerard?" he inquired.
But when Cathcart reappeared, which he did very soon, Rachel was not with
him. "She said she had to stay with her mother," he explained in a tone
which so closely resembled a growl that everybody laughed.
"Bear up, Stevie, boy," chaffed Wayne Carey. "I'm confident she likes you,
but she may not like you all the time, you know. They seldom do."
XVII.--RACHEL CAUSES ANXIETY
In spite of all Juliet's efforts to bring about Rachel's presence as one
of her guests she found herself unable to accomplish it. Whenever she was
needed for help Rachel was never absent, but the moment she was free the
girl was off, and that quite without the appearance of running away. The
men of the party followed her, but they were not allowed to remain. The
girls, confident that her disappearances were part of a very deep game,
begged her to stay; it was useless. Rachel's excuses were ready, her
manner charmingly regretful in a quiet way, but stay she would not.
Dr. Roger Barnes waylaid her one evening as she was vanishing down the
willow-bordered path by the brook, leading to her own home.
"Here you go again," he began discontentedly. "I wish I knew why."
Rachel paused. It was difficult to do otherwise with a large and
determined figure blocking a very narrow path.
"I have ever so many things waiting at home for me to do."
"At nine o'clock in the evening?"
"At whatever hour I am through at Mrs. Robeson's."
"I wish I could imagine something of what they are. It might relieve my
mind a little."
"Why, I will tell you," said Rachel with great appearance of frankness. "I
have to do some mending for mother, read the evening paper for father, and
set the bread. Then the clothes must be sprinkled for ironing in the
morning."
The doctor studied her face in the dimming light. "Who washed the
clothes?" he asked bluntly.
"Do you think you ought to ask?" said Rachel.
"Yes. I'm in the habit of asking questions."
"Of patients----"
"Of everybody I care for. You don't have to answer, but if you don't I
shall know who did the washing."
"Yes, I did it," said Rachel steadily. "It is easily done."
"And then you came over here and got breakfast?"
"Not at all. I helped Mrs. Robeson and Mary McKaim get it. Doctor Barnes,
do you know that you are standing directly in my path?"
"Certainly," said the doctor. "It's what I'm here for."
"Then I shall have to go back and take the road home."
"If you do you will evade me only to encounter another man. Lockwood's
keeping a ferret's eye on the Robeson house door; and I think Cathcart is
already patrolling the road in front of your house."
The girl turned. "You are making me feel very absurd," she said. "I want
to go home, Doctor Barnes. Please let me pass you."
"May I go with you?"
"I would rather not."
"Well, that's frank," he said, amusement and chagrin struggling for the
uppermost. "I wonder I don't stalk angrily away----"
"I wish you would."
Roger Barnes threw back his head and laughed. "I wish you would give some
other girls a leaf out of your book," he said. "The more you turn me down
the more ardently I long to be with you; while the opposite sort of
thing--I'll tell you, Miss Redding, if you want to be rid of me try these
tactics: Say with a languishing smile, 'Oh, Doctor Barnes, won't you take
me a little way down this lovely path?' Perhaps that will accomplish your
ends. I've often felt an instant desire not to do the thing I'm begged
to."
"'Oh, Doctor Barnes,'" said Rachel Redding--and he caught the mischief in
her tone--even Rachel could be mischievous, as Juliet had said--"'won't
you take me a little way down this lovely path?'"
"With the greatest pleasure in the world," replied the doctor promptly,
and stood aside to let her pass him. Whereupon she slipped by him, and
before he could realise that she had gone was running fleetly away in the
twilight down the winding, willow-hung path. With an exclamation he was
off after her, but though he dashed at the pace of a hunter through the
intricacies of the way he presently discovered that he was following
nothing but the summer breeze rustling the willow leaves and wafting into
his face the breath of new-cut hay, the aftermath of late July. He stopped
at length and stared about him, baffled and half angry.
"There never was a girl like you," he muttered. "If you are deliberately
trying to make men mad to get you you are succeeding infuriatingly well.
If I catch you to-night it will be your fault if I tell you what I think
of you. I'll tell you now, for I suppose you are hiding somewhere in this
undergrowth till I give it up and you can get away home. You shall listen
to me if you are here, for you can't help yourself."
He was speaking in a low, even tone, walking slowly along the path and
peering sharply into the bushes on both sides. Suddenly he stood still. He
had detected a spot beside a low-hanging willow which showed nearly white
in the deepening darkness. Rachel was wearing white to-night, he
remembered. His heart quickened its paces and he paused an instant to get
past a certain tightening in his throat.
Then he bent forward and whispered: "If that's not you there I can say
what I like, and there'll be some satisfaction in that. If you'll speak
now you may save yourself, but if you don't I've no reason to think it's
you, and so I can say----"
There was a sharply perceptible noise farther down the path toward the
Redding home. Barnes turned quickly and stood up straight, waiting.
Footsteps came rapidly along the path--no footsteps of hers, evidently. A
man's voice humming a tune grew momentarily plainer--then the voice
stopped humming and began to sing in a subdued but clear and fine
barytone:
"Down through the lane
Come I again
Seeking, my love, for you;
Run to me, dear,
Losing all fear,
Love and----"
The voice stopped. Two men's figures confronted each other in an extremely
narrow path. It was not too dark yet for each to be plainly recognisable
to the other.
"Hallo--that you, Lockwood?"
"Hi there, Roger Barnes; what you doing here? Fishing?"
"Looking for something I've lost."
"Getting pretty dark to find it. Something valuable?"
"Rather. Think I'll give it up for to-night."
"Too bad. Nice night." Lockwood was hastening toward the end of the path
which came out near Anthony's house. Barnes looked after him grimly.
"That voice of yours, young man," he thought, "handicaps me from the
start. Now, if I could just warble my emotions that way----"
He turned and peered again at the white place by the tree. He moved
stealthily toward it, and ascertained presently that it was not what it
seemed. He rose to his feet and walked rapidly down the path to the
Redding house. When he came in sight of it he saw that the kitchen windows
were lighted and that a man stood with his arm on the sill of one of them.
Silhouetted against the light were the familiar outlines of Stevens
Cathcart. As Barnes stood staring amazedly at this, a slender figure in
white came to the window, and in the stillness he could hear the quiet
voice:
"Please let me close the window, Mr. Cathcart. Thank you--no--and
good-night."
"'Three Men in a Boat,' by Rachel Redding," murmured the doctor to
himself, and slipped back to the willow path, from which he at length
emerged to join the group upon the porch--which then, it may be observed,
held for the first time that night its full complement of men.
Three big Chinese lanterns shed a softly pleasant light upon the porch and
the lawn at its foot. Suzanne Gerard and Marie Dresser made a most
attractive picture, one in a low chair, the other upon a pile of cushions
on the step. Suzanne lightly picked a mandolin. Marie was singing softly:
"Down through the lane
Come I again
Seeking, my love, for you;
Run to me, dear,
Losing all fear,
Love and my life will be true."
It was one of the songs of the summer--foolish words, seductive
music--everybody hummed it half the time. Roger Barnes smiled to himself,
remembering where he had heard it last.
"Come here and give account," commanded Suzanne the instant he appeared.
"Every unmarried man vanished the moment twilight fell. You are the last
to show your face. I challenge you, one and all, to swear that you have
not been within sight of a certain small brown house at the foot of the
hill since supper."
Her voice was music; in her eyes was laughter. Marie sang on, pointing her
words with smiles at one and another of the culprits.
From his seat on the threshold of the door, where his head rested against
Juliet's knee as she sat behind him, Anthony laughed to himself. Then he
turned his head and whispered to his wife: "Feel the claws through the
velvet? Poor boys, they have my sympathy."
XVIII.--AN UNKNOWN QUANTITY
"Rachel," said Juliet decisively, next morning, "to-night is the last of
my house party, and I refuse to let you off. I'm asking ten or twelve more
people out from town. You must spend this evening with my guests, or
forfeit my friendship."
She was smiling as she said it, but her tone was not to be denied.
"If that is the alternative," Rachel answered, returning the smile with an
affectionate look of a sort which neither Louis Lockwood nor Stevens
Cathcart nor Dr. Roger Barnes had ever seen on her face--though they had
dreamed of it--"of course I shall stay. But I'll tell you frankly I would
rather not."
"Why not, Rachel?"
"I think you know why not, Mrs. Robeson," Rachel answered.
"Yes, I know why not," admitted Juliet. "Girls are queer things, Ray. They
defeat their own ends all the time--lots of them. Suzanne and Marie are
dear girls, with ever so many nice things about them, but they don't--they
don't know enough not to pursue, chase, run down, the object of their
desires. And, of course, the object, being run down panting, into a
corner, dodges, evades, gets out and runs away. Rachel, dear, what are you
going to wear to-night?"
"My best frock," said Rachel, smiling.
"Which is----"
"White."
"Cut out at the neck?"
"A little."
"Short in the sleeves?"
"To the elbows. It was my sophomore evening dress."
"It will be all right, I know. Rachel, wear a white rose in those low
black braids of yours--will you?"
"No, I think I won't," refused Rachel.
"Why not?"
Rachel did not answer. Into her cool cheek crept a tinge of rebellious,
telltale colour.
Juliet studied her a minute in silence, then came up to her and laying
both hands on her shoulders looked up into her eyes.
"You try to 'play fair,' don't you, dear?" she said heartily, "whatever
the rest may do. And whatever they may do, Rachel Redding, don't you care.
It's not your fault that they are as jealous of you as girls can be and
keep sweet outside. I'd be jealous of you myself if----" She paused,
laughing.
"When you grow jealous," said Rachel, "it will be because you have grown
blind. If anybody ever wore his heart on his sleeve--no, not there--but
beating sturdily in the right place for one woman in the world it's----"
"Right you are," said Anthony Robeson, coming up behind them, "and I hope
you may convince her of it. She has no confidence in her own powers."
Rachel stood looking at them a moment, her dark eyes very bright. "To see
you two," she said slowly at length, "is to believe it all."
The evening promised to be a gay one. The men of the party had sent to
town for many lanterns, flags and decorations of the sort, and had made
the porch and lawn the setting for a brilliant scene. A dozen young people
had been asked out, and came enthusiastically.
"We'll wind up with a flourish," said Anthony in his wife's ear as they
descended the stairs together, "and then we'll send them all off to-morrow
where they'll cease from troubling. I think it was the best plan in the
world, but I'll be glad to prowl about my beloved home without observing
Cathcart scowling at Lockwood, Roger Barnes evading Suzanne, or even my
good boy Wayne with that eternal wonder on his face as to why his flat
does not look like our Eden."
"Hush--and don't look too happy to-morrow, Tony. Oh, here comes Rachel.
Isn't she lovely?"
"Now, watch," murmured Anthony, his face full of amusement. "It's as good
as the best comedy I ever saw. See Suzanne. She never looked toward
Rachel, but don't tell me she wasn't aware of the very instant Rachel came
upon the porch. I believe she read it in Roger Barnes's face. I'll wager
ten to one his pulse isn't countable at the present instant."
"I don't blame him," Juliet answered, smiling at her guests. "She's my
ideal of a girl who won't hold out a finger to the men."
"Yes, she's your sort," admitted Anthony. "I know what it is--poor
fellows--I've been through it. Your cold shoulder used to warm up my heart
hotter than any other girl's kindness. Look at the boys now. They can't
jump and run away from the other girls, but they'd like to. And they're
all deadly anxious for fear the others will get the start. Say, Julie, you
ought not to have asked those new youngsters down from town. They'll catch
it, sure as fate; they're at the susceptible age. I see five of them now,
all staring at Rachel."
"You positively mustn't stay here with me any longer," whispered Juliet.
"Go and devote yourself to her and keep them off for a little."
"Not on your life," Anthony returned "She can take care of herself. If I
mix up in this fray you're likely to be husbandless. Lockwood and Roger
are getting dangerous, and I'm going to keep on the outskirts where it's
safe."
They were all upon the lawn--Rachel, unable to help herself, according to
Anthony's intimation, the centre of a group of men who would not give each
other a chance--when a stranger appeared upon the edge of the circle of
light. He stood watching the scene for a moment--a tall, slender fellow,
with a pale face and deep-set eyes. Then he asked somebody to tell Miss
Redding that Mr. Huntington would like to speak with her. Rachel, thus
summoned, rose, looked about her, caught sight of the stranger, and went
swiftly down the lawn. A dozen people, among them all the men who had been
the guests of the week, saw the meeting. They observed that the newcomer
put out both hands, that his smile was very bright, and that he stood
looking down into Miss Redding's face as if at sight of it he had
instantly forgotten everything else in the world.
Rachel, leaving him, came back up the lawn to find her hostess. As she
passed it became evident to a good many pairs of sharp eyes that her
beauty had received a keen accession from the sweeping over her cheeks of
a burning blush--so unusual that they could not fail to take note of it.
Juliet came back down the lawn with Rachel, who presented Mr. Huntington;
and presently, without a word of leave-taking to any one else, the two
went away down the road.
"Now, who under the heavens was that?" grunted Louis Lockwood in Anthony's
ear, catching his host around the corner of the house.
"Don't know."
"Brother, perhaps?"
"Hasn't any."
"Relative?"
"Don't know."
"Just a messenger, maybe?"
"Give it up."
"She blushed like anything."
"Did she? Man she is going to marry, probably."
"Oh, that can't be!"
"The lady looks marriageable to me," observed Anthony, strolling away.
He ran into Cathcart.
"Say, who was that fellow, Tony?" began Stevens.
"Don't ask me."
"He looked confoundedly as if he meant to embrace her on the spot."
"So he did," agreed Anthony soothingly. "Don't blame him, do you? He may
not have seen her for a month. What condition do you suppose you'd be in
if a week should get away from you out of her vicinity?"
"Bother you, Tony--don't you know who he was?"
"Intimate friend, I should judge."
"She turned pink as a carnation."
"Say hollyhock," suggested Anthony, "or peony. Only a vivid colour could
do justice to it."
"That's right," groaned Cathcart. "She never looked like that for any of
us."
"Never," said Anthony promptly, and got away, chuckling.
"Hold on, there, Robeson, man," said the voice of Dr. Roger Barnes, and
Anthony found himself again held up.
"Come on, old Roger boy," said his host pleasantly. "We'll amble down the
road a bit and give you a chance to get a grip on yourself. No, I don't
know who he is. I'm all worn out assuring Louis and Steve of that. She did
turn red, she did look upset--with joy, I infer. That girl has made more
havoc in one short week--playing off all the while, too--than Suzanne and
Marie have accomplished in the biggest season they ever knew. And I
believe, Roger boy, you're about the hardest hit of any of them."
The doctor did not answer. The two had walked away from the house and were
marching arm in arm at a good pace down the road.
"She's as poor as a church mouse," suggested Anthony.
There was no reply.
"She has a dead weight of a helpless father and mother."
The doctor put match to a cigar.
"Juliet says her brother died of dissipation in a gambling-house."
Doctor Barnes began to chew hard on a cigar that he had failed to light.
"But she's a mighty sweet girl," said Anthony softly.
"See here, Tony," the doctor burst out.--"Oh, hang it all--"
"I see," said his friend, with a hand on his shoulder. "Go ahead, Roger
Barnes--there's nothing in life like it; and the good Lord have mercy on
you, for the sort of girl worth caring for doesn't know the meaning of the
word."
* * * * *
"All gone, little girl," said Anthony jubilantly, as he turned back into
the house the next evening, after watching out of sight the big
touring-car of Lockwood's which had carried all his house-party away at
once. "They are mighty fine people and I like them all immensely--but--I
have enjoyed to the full this speeding the parting guest. And now for my
vacation. It begins to-morrow."
"What shall we do?" asked Juliet, allowing him to draw her into his
favourite settle corner.
"Go fishing. If you'll put up a jolly little--I mean a jolly big--lunch,
and array yourself in unspoilable attire, I'll give you a day's great
sport, whether we catch any fish or not. There's one fish you're sure
of--he's always on the end of your line: hooked fast, and resigned to his
fate. Juliet, are they really all gone?"
"I'm sure they are."
"Good Mary McKaim--peace be to her ashes, for she never gets any on the
toast--has she gone, too?"
"She's packing."
"Rachel safe at home with her presumable fiancé?"
"He can't be her fiancé, Tony--"
"That's what Lockwood said--but I suppose he can, just the same. Rachel
away, do you say?"
"Yes. She didn't come over to-day at all, you know."
"I noticed it--by the gloom on three stalwart men's faces. Well, if
everybody's safely out of the way I'm going to commit myself."
"To what, Tony?"
She was laughing, for he had risen, looked all about him with great
anxiety, tiptoed to each door and listened at it, and was now come back to
stand before her, smiling down at her and holding out his arms.
"To the statement," he said, gathering her close and speaking into her
upturned rosy face, "that without doubt this is the dearest home in the
world, and that you are the sweetest woman who ever has stood or ever will
stand here in it."
XIX.--ALL THE APRIL STARS ARE OUT
It was an April night--balmy with the breath of an exceptionally early
spring. All the April stars were out as Anthony came to the door of the
little house, and opening it flung himself out upon the porch, drawing
great breaths. He looked up into the sky and clasped his arms tightly over
his breast.
"O God," he said aloud, "take care of her--"
He went back into the house after a minute, and paced the floor back and
forth, back and forth, stopping at each turn to listen at the foot of the
stairs; then took up his stride again, his lips set, his eyes dark with
anxiety. Over and over he went to the open door to look up at the stars,
as if somehow he could bear his ordeal best outdoors.
When half the night had gone Mrs. Dingley came downstairs. Anthony met her
at the foot. She smiled reassuringly into his face.
"This is hard for you, dear boy," she said. "But they think by
morning----"
"Morning!" he cried.
"Everything is going well----"
"It's only two o'clock. Morning!"
"She says tell you she's going to be very happy soon."
But at that Anthony turned away, where his face could not be seen, and
stood by the open door. Mrs. Dingley laid an affectionate hand on his
arm.
"Don't worry, Tony," she said gently.
"I can't help it."
"This is new to you. Juliet is young and strong--and full of courage."
"Bless her!"
"In the morning you'll both be very happy."
"I hope so."
"Why, Anthony, dear," said the kindly little woman, "I never knew you to
be so faint of heart."
Anthony faced around again. "If my strength could do her any good I'd be a
lion for her," he said. "But when all I can do is to wait--and think what
I'd do if----"
He was gone suddenly into the night. With a tender smile on her lips Mrs.
Dingley went on upon the errand which had brought her downstairs. "It's
worth something to a woman to be able to make a man's heart ache like
that," she said to herself with a little sigh. Anthony would not have
understood, but even in this hour the older woman, in her wisdom, was
envying Juliet.
Morning came at last, as mornings do. With the first streaks of the gray
dawn Anthony heard a little, high-keyed, strange cry--new to his ears. He
leaped up the stairs, four at a time, and paused, breathless, by the
closed door of the blue-and-white room. After what seemed to him an
interminable time Mrs. Dingley came out. At sight of Anthony her face
broke into smiles, and at the same moment tears filled her eyes.
"It's a splendid boy, Tony," she said. "I meant to come to you the first
minute, but I waited to be perfectly sure. He didn't breathe well at
first."
But Anthony pushed this news aside impatiently. "Juliet?" he questioned
eagerly.
"She's all right, you poor man," Mrs. Dingley assured him. "You shall see
her presently, just for a minute. The first thing she said was, 'Tell
Tony.' Go down now--I'll call you soon."
Anthony stole away downstairs to the outer door again. This time he ran
out upon the porch and down the lawn and orchard, in the early half-light,
to the willow path by the brook. He dashed along this path to its end and
back again, as if he must in some way give expression to his relief from
the tension of the night. But he was back and waiting impatiently long
before he received his summons to his wife's room.
On his way up he wrung the friendly hand of Dr. Joseph Wilberforce, the
best man in the city at times like these, and thanked him in a few uneven
words. Then he came to the door of the blue-and-white room.
"Don't be afraid, Tony," said a very sweet, clear voice; "we're ever so
well--Anthony Robeson, Junior, and I."
Anthony Robeson, Senior, walked across the room in a dim, gray fog which
obscured nearly everything except the sight of a pair of eyes which were
shining upon him brightly enough to penetrate any fog. At the bedside he
dropped upon his knees.
"I suppose I'm an awful chump," he murmured, "but nothing ever broke me up
so in all my life."
Juliet laughed. It was not a sentimental greeting, but she understood all
it meant. "But I'm so happy, dear," she said.
"Are you? Somehow I can't seem to be--yet. I'm too badly scared."
"He's such a beautiful big boy."
"I suppose I shall be devoted to him some time, but all I can think of now
is to make sure I've got you."
The pleasant-faced nurse in her white cap came softly in and glanced at
Tony meaningly.
"If you'll come in here you may see your son, Mr. Robeson," she said, and
went out again.
Anthony bent over his wife. "_Little mother_," he whispered, with a kiss,
and obediently went.
Across the hall he stood looking dazedly down at the round, warm bundle
the nurse laid in his arms.
"My son," he said; "how odd that sounds."
Then he hastily gave the bundle back to the nurse and got away downstairs,
wiping the perspiration from his brow.
"Never dreamed it was going to knock me over like this," he was saying to
himself. "I can't look at her; I can't look at him; I feel like a big boy
who has seen a little fellow take his thrashing for him."
And in this humble--albeit most sincerely thankful--frame of mind he
absently drank his breakfast coffee, and never realised that in her
confusion of spirit good Mary McKaim, who was here again in time of need,
had brewed him instead a powerful cup of tea.
XX.--A PRIOR CLAIM
"Come up, come up--you're just the people we want," cried Anthony heartily
from his own porch. "Thought you'd be getting out to see us some of these
fine August nights. Sit down--Juliet will be out in a minute."
"Baby asleep?" asked Judith Carey, as she and Wayne settled comfortably
into two of the deep bamboo chairs with which the porch was furnished.
"To be sure he's asleep at this hour," Anthony assured her proudly; "been
asleep for two hours. Regular as a clock, that youngster. Nurse trained
him right at the beginning, and Juliet has kept it up. Four months old
now, and sleeps from six at night till four in the morning without waking.
How's that?"
"I suppose it's remarkable," agreed Wayne meekly, "but I don't know
anything about it. He might sleep twenty-three hours out of twenty-four--I
shouldn't understand whether to call him a prodigy or an idiot."
"Why, yes, you would," Judith interposed with spirit. "Think of that baby
on the floor above us. They're walking the floor half the night with
her."
"Girl babies may be different," Carey suggested diffidently, at which
Anthony shouted. "I don't care--all the girls I ever knew wanted to sit up
nights," Carey insisted with a feeble grin.
Juliet came out, welcoming her friends with the cordiality for which she
was famous. "It's so hot in town," she condoled with them. "You should get
out into our delicious air oftener. Somehow, with our breezes we don't
mind the heat."
"It's heaven here, anyhow," sighed Carey, stretching back in his chair
with a long breath. Judith looked sober.
"You say it's heaven," commented Anthony, staring hard at his friend, "and
you profess to admire everything we do, and eat, and say, but you continue
to pay good money every week for a lot of extremely dubious comforts--from
my point of view."
"It's one of the very best places in that part of the city," protested
Judith.
Anthony eyed her keenly. "Yes; if that's what you're paying for you've got
it, I admit. If it's a consolation to you to know that the address you
give when you go shopping is one that you're not ashamed of--why, you're
all right. But I reckon Juliet here doesn't blush when she orders things
sent home to the country."
"Oh, Juliet--" began Judith; "she doesn't need an address to make all the
salespeople pay her their most respectful attention. She----"
"I understand," said Anthony. "That sweetly imperious way of hers when she
shops--I remember it the first time I ever went shopping with her----"
Juliet gave him a laughing glance. "If I remember," she said, "it wasn't I
who did all the dictating on that historic expedition when we furnished
this house."
"We've got to go shopping again," Anthony informed them. "We're planning
to put a little wing on the house, opening from under the stairs in the
living-room, for a nursery and a den."
"Going to put the two together?" asked a new voice from the dimness of the
lawn.
"Oh--hullo, Roger Barnes, M.D., F.R.C.S.--come up. No, I think we'll have
a partition between. But I want a room below stairs for Tony, Junior, so
his mother won't wear herself out carrying him up and down. That youngster
weighs seventeen pounds and a fraction already."
"I was confident I'd get some statistics if I came out," said the doctor,
settling himself near Juliet--with a purpose, as she instantly recognised.
"It seemed to me I couldn't wait longer to learn how much he had gained
since I met Tony day before yesterday. It was seventeen without the
fraction then."
"That's right--guy me," returned Anthony comfortably. "I don't mind--I've
the boy."
* * * * *
"I want a talk with you," said the doctor softly to Juliet, as the others
fell to discussing the project of the enlarged house. "I've got to have
it, too--or go off my head."
Juliet nodded, understanding him. Presently she rose. "I have an errand to
do," she said. "Will you walk over to the Evanstons' with me, Roger?"
"Now, tell me," began the doctor the instant they were off, "is she going
to persist in this awful sacrifice?"
"Poor Rachel," breathed Juliet. "So many lovers--and so unhappy."
"Is she unhappy?" begged the doctor. "Is she? If I only were sure of
it----"
"What girl wouldn't be unhappy--to be making even one man out of two as
miserable as you?"
"But you know what I mean. Is she going to marry Huntington out of love as
well as pity--or only pity?"
"Roger"--Juliet stood still in the road, regarding him in the dim light
with kind eyes--"if I knew I wouldn't tell you. That's Rachel's secret.
But I don't know. She's as loyal as a magnet, and as reserved as--you
would want her to be if you were Mr. Huntington."
"She's everything she ought to be. I'm a dastard for saying it, but I
could forgive her for being disloyal enough to him to show me just a
corner of her heart. Even if she loves him it's what I called it--an awful
sacrifice--a man dying with consumption. If she doesn't--except as the
friend of her early girlhood, when she didn't know men or her own
heart--Juliet, it's impious."
"Roger, dear, keep hold of yourself," Juliet replied. "You're too strong
and fine to want to come between her and her own decision--if she has made
it."
"If you were a man," said he hotly, "would you let a woman marry
you--dying?"
"Yes," answered Juliet stoutly, "if she insisted."
"Women are capable of saying anything in an argument," he growled. "I say
it's outrageous to let her do it. She doesn't love him--she does love me,"
he blurted.
Juliet turned to him anxiously. "Roger, do you know what you are saying?"
"Yes, I do. I've got to tell somebody, and there's nobody but you--you
perfect woman. If ever a man knew a thing without its being put into words
I know that. It was only a look, weeks ago, but I'm as sure of it as I am
of myself. I've had nothing but coolness from her since, but that's in
self-defense. And the thought that, loving me, she's going to give herself
to him--a wreck--do you wonder it's driving me mad?"
"You ought not to have told me this," said Juliet, tears in her voice. "If
Rachel is doing this it's because she's sure she ought----"
"Of course she is. And that's why I tell you. You have more influence with
her than any one. Can't you show her that duty, the most urgent in the
world, never requires a thing like that? Let her be his friend to the
last--the sort of friend she knows how to be, with a warm hand in his cold
one. But never his----"
The doctor grew choky with his vehemence, and stopped short. Juliet was
silent, full of distress. She thought of the two men--Huntington, a frail
ghost, in the grip of a deadly illness, yet fighting it desperately, and
desperately clinging to the girl he loved: a clever fellow, educated as a
mining engineer, successful, even beginning to be distinguished in his
work until his health gave out; Barnes, the embodiment of strength,
standing high in his profession, life and the world before him, a fit mate
for the girl who deserved the best there could be for her--Juliet thought
of them both and found her heart aching for them--and for Rachel Redding.
They were slowly approaching the brown house at the foot of the hill, the
errand at the Evanstons' forgotten, when suddenly a familiar figure in
white came toward them from the doorway. The doctor started at sight of
it, and Juliet grew breathless all at once.
"I thought it was you two," said Rachel. "This rising moon struck you full
just now, and I could see you plainly. I've wanted to see you both--and
this is my last chance. I am going away to-morrow."
There was an instant's silence, while Roger Barnes tried to choose which
of all the things he wanted to say to her should come first. Juliet broke
the stillness.
"Walk back up the road with us, dear," she said, "and tell us how and
where you go."
"I have but a minute to spare," said Rachel. "Let me say good-bye to you
both here----"
"No, by heaven, you shall not," burst out the doctor in a suppressed voice
of fire which startled Juliet. "You owe me ten minutes, in place of the
last letter you haven't answered. There are a score of them, you know--but
the last has to be answered somehow."
Rachel hesitated. "Very well," she said at length, "but only with Mrs.
Robeson."
"Can't you trust me?" He was angry now.
"Yes--but not myself," she answered, so low he barely caught the words. He
seized her hand.
"Then trust me for us both," he said, so instantly gentle and tender that
Juliet found it possible to say what a moment before she had thought
unwise enough: "Go with him, Ray, dear. I think it is his right."
So presently she found herself crossing her own lawn alone, while the two
who had just left her went slowly on up the road together. Her heart was
beating hard and painfully, for she loved them both, and foresaw for them
only the hardest interview of their lives.
* * * * *
At the end of half an hour Rachel Redding stood again upon her own porch,
and Roger Barnes looked up at her from the walk below with heavy eyes.
"At least," he said, "you have done what I never would have believed even
you could do--convinced me against my will that you are right. You love
him--he worships you. There is a promise of life for him in Arizona--with
you. I can't forbid the bans. But I shall always believe, what you dare
not dispute, that if I had come first--you----"
She held out her hand. "That you must not say," she said. "But there is
one thing you may say--that you are my best friend, whom I can count
on----"
"As long as there is life left in me," he answered fervently. He wrung her
hand in both his, looked long and steadily up into her face as if his eyes
could never leave the lovely outlines showing clear in the light from the
windows, then turned away and strode off toward the station without a look
behind.
XXI.--EVERYBODY GIVES ADVICE
"I should do it in brown leather," said Cathcart decidedly, looking about
him.
He stood in the centre of Anthony's den. The carpenters had gone, the
plasterers had finished their work, and the floor had just been swept up.
"You're all right as far as you go," observed Anthony, who stood at his
elbow, "but you don't go far enough. If you want me to hang these walls
with brown leather you'll have to put up the money. I may be sufficiently
prosperous to afford the addition to my house, but I haven't reached the
stage of covering the walls with cloth-of-gold."
"Burlap would be the thing, Tony," Judith suggested.
Anthony was surrounded by people--the room was half full of them, elbowing
each other about.
"Paint the walls," advised Lockwood.
"There are imitation-leather papers," said Cathcart, with the air of one
condescending to lower a high standard for the sake of those who could not
live up to it.
"I suppose so," admitted Anthony, "at four dollars a roll. I saw a simple
thing on that order that struck me the other day at Heminways'. I thought
it might be about forty cents a roll. It was a dollar a square yard. I
told them I would think it over. I haven't got through thinking it over
yet."
"You want a plate-rail," said Wayne Carey.
"What for?"
"Why, to put plates, and steins, and things on."
"Haven't a plate--or a stein. Baby has a silver mug. Would that do?"
Cathcart smiled in a superior way. "You had a lot of mighty fine stuff in
your Yale days," he remarked. "Pity you let it all go."
"I shouldn't have cared for that truck now," Anthony declared easily,
though he deceived nobody by it. Most of them remembered, if Cathcart had
forgotten, how the college boy had sacrificed all his treasures at a blow
when the news of his family's misfortunes had come. It had yielded little
enough, after all, to throw into the abyss of their sudden poverty, but
the act had proved the spirit of the elder son of the house.
"You certainly will want plenty of rugs and hangings of the right sort,"
Cathcart pursued.
Anthony looked at him good-humouredly. "I can see that you have got to be
suppressed," he said, with a hand on Stevens's collar. "I can tell you in
a breath just what's going into this room at present. The floor is to have
a matting, one of those heavy, cloth-like mattings. Auntie Dingley has
presented me with one fine old Persian rug from the Marcy library, which
she insists is out of key with the rest of the stuff. I'm glad it
is--it'll furnish the key to my decorations. Then I've a splendid old desk
I picked up in a place where they temporarily forgot themselves in setting
a price on it. That's going by the window. I've a little Dürer engraving,
and a few good foreign photographs Juliet has put under glass for me. For
the rest I have--what I like best--clear space, pipe-and-hearth room, the
bamboo chairs off the porch with some winter cushions in, my books--and
that."
He pointed to the windows, outside which lay a long country vista
stretching away over fields and river to the woods in the distance,
turning rich autumn tints now under the late October frosts.
"It's enough," said Carey, with the suppressed sigh which usually
accompanied any allusion of his to Anthony's environment. "Dens are too
stuffy, as a rule. Fellows try to see how much useless lumber they can
accumulate in altogether inadequate space."
"But you ought to have a couch," said Judith.
"Oh, yes, I'm going to have a couch," assented Anthony, laughing across
her head at Juliet. "A gem of a couch--we're making it ourselves. You're
not to see it till it's done. It'll be no brickbat couch, either--it'll be
a flowery bed of ease--or, if not flowery, invitingly covered with some
stunning stuff Juliet has fished out of a neighbour's attic."
"Now, come and see the nursery," Juliet proposed, and the party crowded
through the door into the living-room, around to the one by its side which
opened into an attractive room behind the den, all air and sunshine.
"I refuse to suggest," said Cathcart instantly, "the decorations for this
place."
"That's good," remarked Anthony cheerfully. "So much verbiage out of the
way."
"It'll be pink and white, I suppose," said Judith. "Pink is the colour for
boys, I'm told."
Behind all their backs Anthony glanced at his wife, affection and
amusement in his face. She read the look and smiled back. It was no part
of their plan to let the boy grow up alone. And as a mother she seemed to
him far more beautiful than she had ever been.
"We are going to have a little paper with nursery-rhyme pictures all over
it," explained Juliet. "There are all sorts of softly harmonising colours
in it. And just a matting on the floor with a rug to play on, his white
crib, and some gay little curtains at the windows."
"Have you made the partition double-thick, old man?" asked Lockwood. "This
den-nursery combination strikes me as a little dubious."
"It's no use explaining to a fiendish old bachelor," said Anthony, leading
the way out of the place, "that I'd think I was missing a good deal if I
should get so far away that I couldn't hear little Tony laugh--or cry.
Julie, where's the boy? May I bring him down?"
He disappeared upstairs, whence sounds of hilarity were at once heard.
Presently he reappeared on the stairs, bearing aloft upon his shoulder a
rosy cherub of a baby, smiling and waving a chubby fist at the company.
The beauty in his face was an exquisite mixture of that belonging to both
father and mother. Anthony and his son together made a picture worth
seeing.
Once more Wayne Carey smothered a sigh. But Judith hardened her heart.
Since Baby Anthony had come Wayne had been difficult to manage.
* * * * *
Lockwood stayed after the others had gone. Sitting smoking before the fire
with Anthony after Juliet had left them alone he brought the conversation
around to a point which Anthony had expected.
"What do you hear of that man Huntington?" he asked, as indifferently as a
man is ever able to ask a question which means much to him.
"Huntington? Why, the last was that he was improving a little, I believe.
Arizona is a great place for that sort of thing."
"Good deal of a sacrifice for her people to go with her way out there."
"She couldn't leave them behind. Father half-blind--mother a cripple. I
understand that Arizona air is bracing them, too."
"The fellow's own mother was one of the party, wasn't she?"
"I believe so. He's all she has."
"I don't see, with all those people to chaperon her, why she couldn't have
gone along with him without marrying him," observed Lockwood in a gruff
tone.
Anthony smiled. "That would have been a Tantalus draught indeed," he
remarked. "I imagine poor Huntington will need all the concessions he can
get if he keeps on breathing even Arizona air."
"Anthony," said Lockwood, after a silence of some minutes, during which he
had puffed away with his eyes intent on the fire, "do you fancy Rachel
Redding cared enough for that man to immolate herself like that?"
"Looks very much like it."
"I know it looks like it; but if I read that girl right she was the sort
to stick to anything she'd said she'd do, if it took the breath out of her
body. How long had she known him--any idea?"
"A good while, I believe."
"I thought so. Early engagement, you see--ought never to have stood."
"If you'd been Huntington you'd probably have had the unreasonable notion
that it should."
"She's a magnificent girl," said Lockwood, blowing a great volume of smoke
into the air with head elevated and half-shut eyes. "She made those two
who were here with her last summer seem like thirty cents beside her. Nice
girls, too--fine girls--elegant dressers; I don't know what the matter
was. Neither did they." He chuckled a little. "They couldn't believe their
own eyes when they saw three of us going daft over a girl they wouldn't
have staked a copper on in a free-for-all with themselves. They took it
gamely, I'll say that for them. Marie won't have me back."
"I don't blame her."
"Neither do I. Haven't got to the want-to-be-taken-back stage--sometimes
think I never shall. One experience like that spoils a man for the
average girl. The truth is, Tony, the most of them--er--overdo the
meet-you-half-way act. I want a girl to keep me guessing till the last
minute."
"Tell that to the girl," advised Anthony.
"I wish I could. Yet there were a good many times when I thought if Rachel
Redding would just look my way I shouldn't take it ill of her. I wonder if
she'd have been like that if she hadn't been engaged to another fellow."
"Probably." Anthony got up and stretched himself. He was growing weary of
other men's confidences.
"You're right she would. She's built that way. Yet when you get to
fancying what she'd be if she just let herself go and show she cared----"
"Look here, my young friend," said Anthony, "I advise you to go home and
go to bed. Sitting here dreaming over Mrs. Alexander Huntington isn't good
for you. What you want to be doing is to forget her. Huntington's going to
get well, and they're going to live happily ever after, and you fellows
out here can look up other girls. Plenty of 'em. Only, for the love of
heaven, see if you can avoid all setting your affections on the same girl
next time. It's too rough on your friends!"
XXII.--ROGER BARNES PROVES INVALUABLE
Time went swinging on, and by and by it came to be Tony Robeson, Junior's,
second Christmas day. He rode down to breakfast on his father's shoulder,
crowing loudly on a gorgeous brown and scarlet rooster, which he had found
on his Christmas tree the evening before. He had been put to bed
immediately thereafter and had gone to sleep with the rooster in his arms.
The fowl had a charmingly realistic crow, operated by a pneumatic device
upon which the baby had promptly learned to blow. He performed upon it
uninterruptedly throughout breakfast.
"See here, my son," said Anthony, hurriedly finishing his coffee, "let's
see if you can't appreciate some of your less voiceful toys. Here's a
rabbit with fine soft ears for you to pull. There's a train of cars. Let
me wind it for you. Your Grandfather Marcy must have expended several good
dollars on that--you want to show up an interest in it when he comes out
to see you to-day. And here's Auntie Dingley's pickaninny boy-doll--well,
I don't blame you for failing to embrace that. Auntie Dingley was born in
Massachusetts."
[Illustration: "Toys which can be relied upon to please a twenty
months old infant."]
The boy cast an indifferently polite eye on these gifts as their charms
were exhibited to him, and clasped the brown and scarlet rooster to his
breast. There were moments, half hours even, when he became sufficiently
diverted from his fowl to cease from making it crow, but at intervals
throughout the day the family were given to understand once for all that
it is not the most expensive and ornate toys which can be relied upon to
please a twenty-months-old infant. Even the automobile presented by Dr.
Roger Barnes, and warranted to go three times around the room without
stopping, was a tame affair to the recipient compared with the rooster's
shrill salute.
"Remember, Tony," Juliet had said, a month before Christmas, "you are not
to give me any expensive personal gift this year. I care for nothing half
so much as for making the home complete. If--if--you cared to give me
something toward the bathroom fund----"
"All right," said Anthony promptly, for he had learned by this time to
know his wife well. The bathroom fund was dear to her heart. The small
room at the front of the house upstairs, which had been left unfurnished,
had been temporarily fitted up as a bathroom by sundry ingenious devices
in the way of a tin bath and a hot and cold water connection, but a full
equipment of the best sort was to be put in as soon as practicable, and
there was a growing fund therefor.
On Christmas morning, nevertheless, in addition to a generous addition to
the fund, Juliet found beside her plate an exceedingly "personal gift" in
the shape of a little pearl-and-turquoise brooch of rare design, bearing
the stamp of a superior maker.
"Must I scold you?" she asked, smiling up at him as he stood beside her,
watching her face flush with pleasure.
"Kiss me, instead," he answered promptly. "And don't expect me to give up
making you now and then a real present, even though it has to be a small
one. It's too much fun."
Beside his own plate he found her gift, a set of histories he had long
wanted. It was a beautiful edition, and he would have looked reproachfully
at the giver if she had not forestalled him by running around the table to
say softly in his ear, both arms about his neck: "Just at Christmas time,
dearest, let me have my way."
The day was a happy one. Mr. Horatio Marcy and Mrs. Dingley arrived on the
morning train and stayed until evening. At the Christmas dinner Judith and
Wayne Carey and Dr. Roger Barnes were the additional guests, and Mary
McKaim was in the kitchen. Dinner over, everybody sat about the fireplace
talking, when Juliet came in to carry little Tony off to bed.
"Five minutes more," begged Dr. Barnes, on whose knee the child sat, a
willing captive to the arts of his entertainer. His eyes, bright with the
excitement of this great day, were fixed upon the doctor's face.
"And so"--Barnes continued the story he had begun--"the rooster climbed
right up the man's leg"--the toy obeyed his command and scaled the
eminence from the floor where it had been hiding behind a Noah's ark--"and
perched on his knee, and cried"--the rooster crowed lustily and little
Tony laughed ecstatically. "Then the rooster flew up on the man's shoulder
and flapped his wings, and all at once he fell right over backwards and
tumbled on his head on the floor.--Got to go to bed, Tony? Shall the
rooster go too? All right. May I carry him up for you, Juliet? Anthony's
deep in that discussion. Get on my back, old man--that's the way!"
Everybody looked after the two as the doctor mounted the stairs.
"That rooster has captivated the child more than all the mechanical toys
he has had to-day," said Mrs. Dingley.
"What a handsome fellow he is," said Carey, his eyes following little Tony
till he disappeared. "I never saw a healthier, happier child. How sturdy
he is on his legs--have you noticed? He's saying a good many words, too.
It was as good as a play to see him imitate that rooster."
Juliet's father and Mrs. Dingley left on an early evening train, and only
the three younger guests remained when Juliet came downstairs after
putting her boy to bed. She set about gathering up the toys scattered over
the floor, and Barnes helped her. In the midst of this labour, during
which they all made merry with some of the more elaborate mechanical
affairs, Juliet suddenly said "What's that?" and went to the bottom of the
stairs.
"Let me go," offered Anthony. "He's probably too excited to get to sleep
easily after all this dissipation.--Hullo!--he's crowing with the rooster
yet."
But Juliet went up, and he followed her, saying from the landing to his
guests, "Excuse me for a little. I'll get the boy quiet, and let his
mother come down. I've a fine talent for that sort of thing. That rooster
will have to be given some soothing syrup--he's too lively a fowl."
"I never saw a man fonder of his youngster than Tony," Carey observed.
"The child is a particularly fine specimen," the doctor said. "I think I
never saw a more ideal development than he shows."
He began to tell an incident in which little Tony had been involved, when
he was interrupted.
"Barnes!"--called Anthony's voice from the top of the stairs. "Come up
here, please."
There was something in the imperative quality of this summons which made
the doctor run up the stairs, two at a time. Judith and Wayne listened.
The rooster could still be heard crowing, faintly but distinctly.
"Perhaps he's grown too excited over it," Judith suggested. "They ought to
take it away."
Carey went to the bottom of the stairs and listened. There were rapid
movements overhead. The doctor's voice could be heard giving directions
through which sounded the steady crowing of the toy. "Hold him so--now
move him that way as I thump--now the other----"
Carey turned pale. "He's got that rooster in his throat," he said
solemnly. The rooster was nearly life-size, but the incongruity of this
suggestion did not strike him. Judith hastily rose from her chair and went
to him.
"Had we better go up?" he whispered.
"Heavens--no!" Judith clutched his arm. "We couldn't do any good. The
doctor's there. Such things make me ill. They ought not to have let him
have the toy to take to bed with him. How could it get into his throat?
Perhaps they are making it crow to divert him. Perhaps he's hurt himself
somehow."
"He's got the crow part of that thing in his throat," Carey persisted in
an anxious whisper. "The manufacturers ought to be prosecuted for making a
toy that will come apart like that."
"Don't stand there," protested his wife. "Maybe it's nothing. Come here
and sit down."
But Carey stood still. Presently Anthony came to the head of the stairs.
"Wayne," said he rapidly, "telephone Roger's office. Ask the trained
nurse, Miss Hughes, to send a messenger with the doctor's emergency
surgical case by the first train--he can catch the 9:40 if he's quick.
Tell Miss Hughes to follow as soon as she can get ready, prepared to stay
all night."
Then he disappeared. His voice had been steady and quiet, but his eyes had
showed his friend that the order was given under tension. Carey sprang to
the telephone, and his hand shook as he took down the receiver.
Upstairs Roger Barnes, in command, was giving cool, concise orders, his
eyes on his little patient. When he had despatched Juliet for various
things, including boiling water which she must get downstairs, he said to
Anthony in a conversational tone:
"It will probably not be safe to wait till my instruments get here, and
there's no surgeon near enough to call. I'm not going to take any chances
on this boy. If I see the necessity I'm going to get into that throat and
give him air. I shall want you and Carey to hold him. Juliet must be
downstairs."
Anthony nodded. He did not quite understand; but a few minutes later, when
Juliet had brought the boiling water, he suddenly perceived what his
friend meant.
"Alcohol, now, please," said the doctor. When Juliet had disappeared again
Barnes drew from his pocket a pearl-handled pocket-knife and tried its
blades. "It's a fortunate thing somebody made me a present of such a good
one to-day," he observed, "but it needs sharpening a bit. Have you an
oil-stone handy?"
With tightly shut lips Anthony watched the doctor put a bright edge on his
smallest blade, then, satisfied, drop the open knife into the water
bubbling over a spirit-lamp. Anthony turned his head away for an instant
from the struggling little figure on the bed. Barnes eyed him keenly.
"You're game, of course?" he said.
Anthony's eyes met his and flashed fire. "Don't you know me better than
that?"
"All right," and the young surgeon smiled. "But I've seen a medical man
himself go to pieces over his own child. This is a simple matter," he went
on lightly. "Luckily, boiling water is a more potent antiseptic than all
the drugs on the market--and alcohol's another. I shall want a new hairpin
or two--if Juliet has a wire one.--That the alcohol? Thank you. Now if
you've the hairpins, Juliet--ah--a silver one--all the better."
This also he dropped into the boiling water. Then he spoke very quietly to
Tony's mother, as she bent over her child, fighting for his breath.
"It's a bit tough to watch," he said, "but we'll have him all right
presently. Suppose you go and get his crib ready for him. You might fill
some hot-water bags and bottles and have things warm and comfortable."
The telephone-bell rang below. After a minute Carey dashed upstairs. He
looked into the room and spoke anxiously. "The messenger just missed the
9:40. He and the nurse will come on the 10:15."
"All right," said the doctor, as if the delay were of small consequence.
"We're going to want your help presently, Carey, I think. Just ask Mrs.
Carey to keep Mrs. Robeson with her for a few minutes, if she can."
Carey went down and gave his wife the message, then he hurried back and
stood waiting just outside the door. And all at once the summons came. In
a breath the doctor had changed his rôle. He spoke sharply:
"_Now, Robeson--now, Carey--we've waited up to the limit. Keep cool--hold
him like a rock--_"
* * * * *
Wayne Carey came down to his wife, ten minutes later, smiled tremulously,
sank into a chair, and fell to crying like a baby--softly, so that he
could not be heard.
"But Juliet says he'll be all right," murmured Judith unsteadily.
"Yes, yes----" Carey wiped his eyes and blew his nose. "I'm just a little
unnerved, that's all. Lord--and he's dropped off to sleep as quiet as a
lamb--with Barnes holding the gash in his throat open with a hairpin to
let the air in. When it comes to emergency surgery I tell you it's a lucky
thing to have an expert in the house. Completely worn out--the little
chap. When the nurse comes they'll get out the whistle and sew the place
up. She ought to be here--I'll go meet that train."
He sprang to his feet and hurried out of the house. Presently he was back,
followed by an erect young woman who wore a long coat over the uniform she
had not taken time to change. Carey carried the long black bag she had
brought with her.
By and by Anthony and Roger Barnes came down. The former was pale, but as
quietly composed as ever; the latter nonchalant, yet wearing that gleam of
satisfaction in his eye which is ever the badge of the successful
surgeon.
"Well, Mrs. Carey," said the doctor, smiling, "why not relax that tension
a bit? The youngster is right as a trivet."
"I suppose that's your idea of being right as a trivet," Judith retorted.
"In bed, with a trained nurse watching you, and a doctor staying all night
to make sure."
"Bless you--what better would you have? If it were any other boy the
doctor would have been home and in bed an hour ago, I assure you.
Carey--if you don't stop acting like a great fool I'll put you to bed
too."
For Carey was wringing Barnes' hand, and the tears were running unashamed
down his cheeks. "I gave him that rooster myself," he said, and choked.
Upstairs all was quiet. The little life was safe, rescued at the crucial
moment when interference became necessary, by the skill and daring which
do not hesitate to use the means at hand when the authorized tools can not
be had. Every precaution had been taken against harm from these same
unconventional means, and the doctor, when he left his patient in the
hands of his nurse, felt small anxiety for the ultimate outcome.
He said this very positively to the boy's father and mother, holding a
hand of each and bidding them go peacefully to sleep. He would have
slipped away then, but they would not let him go. There were no tears, no
fuss; but Juliet said, her eyes with their heavy shadows of past suspense
meeting his steadily, "Roger, nothing can ever tell you what I feel about
this," and Anthony, gripping his friend's hand with a grip of steel,
added: "We shall never thank the Lord enough for having you on hand, Roger
Barnes."
But when the young surgeon had gone, warm with pleasure over the service
he had done those he loved this night, the ones he had left behind found
their self-control had reached the ragged edge. Turning to her husband
Juliet flung herself into his arms, and met there the tenderest reception
she had ever known. So does a common anxiety knit hearts which had thought
they could be no tighter bound.
* * * * *
Judith and Wayne Carey, walking along silent streets in the early dawn of
the day after Christmas on their way to take their train home, had little
to say. Only once Judith ventured an observation to her heavy-eyed
companion:
"Surely, such a scene as you went through last night must diminish a
trifle that envy you are always possessed with, when you're at that
house."
But Wayne, staring up at the wintry sky, answered, more roughly than his
wife had ever heard him speak: "_No_--God knows I envy them even at a time
like this!"
XXIII.--TWO NOT OF A KIND
"Yes, they are very pleasant rooms," Juliet admitted, with the air of one
endeavouring to be polite. She sat upon a many-hued divan, and glanced
from the blue-and-yellow wall-paper to the green velvet chairs, the
dull-red carpet and the stiff "lace" curtains. "You get the afternoon sun,
and the view opposite isn't bad. The vestibule seemed to be well kept, and
I rang only three times before I made you hear."
"The janitor promised to fix that bell," said Judith hastily. "Oh, I know
the colour combinations are dreadful, but one can't help that in rented
rooms. Of course our things look badly with the ones that belong here. But
as soon as we can we are going to move into a still better place."
"Going to keep house?"
"No-o, not just yet." Judith hesitated. "You seem to think there's nothing
in the world to do but to keep house."
"I'm sure of it."
"I can't see why. A girl doesn't need to assume all the cares of life the
minute she marries. Why can't she keep young and fresh for a while?"
Juliet glanced toward a mirror opposite. "How old and haggard I must be
looking," she observed, with--it must be confessed--a touch of
complacency. The woman who could have seen that image reflected as her own
without complacency must have been indifferent, indeed.
"Of course, you manage it somehow--I suppose because Anthony takes such
care of you. But you wait till five years more have gone over your head,
and see if you're not tired of it."
"If I'm as tired of it as you are--" began Juliet, and stopped. "But
seriously, Judith, is it nothing to you to please Wayne?"
"Why, of course." Judith flushed. "But Wayne is satisfied."
"Are you sure of it?"
"Certainly. Oh, sometimes, when we go to see you, and you make things so
pleasant with your big fire and your good things to eat, he gets a spasm
of wishing we were by ourselves, but----"
Juliet shook her head. "Wayne doesn't say a word," she said, "and he's as
devoted to you as a man can be. But, Judith, if I know the symptoms, that
husband of yours is starving for a home, and--do I dare say it?"
Judith was staring out of the window at the ugly walls opposite. It was
her bedroom window, and the opposite walls were not six feet away.
"I suppose you dare say anything," she answered, looking as if she were
about to cry. "I'm sure I envy you, you're so supremely contented. I don't
think I was made to care for children."
"That might come," said Juliet softly. "I'm sure it would, Judith. As for
Wayne, if you could see the look on his face I've surprised there more
than once, when he had little Anthony, and he thought nobody noticed, it
would make your heart ache, dear. Don't deny him--or yourself--the best
thing that can happen to either of you. At least, don't deny it for lack
of a home. I'm sure I can't imagine Tony, Junior, in these rooms of yours.
They don't look," she explained, smiling, "exactly babyish."
She rose to go. She looked so young and fair and sweet as she spoke her
gentle homily that Judith, half doubting, half believing, admitted to
herself that of one thing there could be no question: Mrs. Anthony Robeson
envied nobody upon the face of the earth.
The visits of the Robesons to the various apartments which were in
rotation occupied by the Careys were few. Somehow it seemed much easier
and simpler for the pair who had no children, and no housekeeping to
hamper them, to run out into the suburbs than for their friends to get
into town. So the Careys came with ever increasing frequency, always
warmly welcomed, and enjoyed the hours within the little house so
thoroughly that in time the influence of the content they saw so often
began to have its inevitable effect.
"I've great news for you," said Anthony, coming home one March day, when
little Tony was nearing his second birthday. "It's about the Careys.
Guess."
"They are going to housekeeping."
"How did you know?"
"I didn't know, but Judith told me weeks ago she supposed she should have
to come to it. Have they found a house?"
"Carey thinks he has. Judith doesn't like the place, for about fifty good
and sufficient reasons--to her. He's trying to persuade her. He has an
option on it for ten days. He wants us to come out and look at it with
them."
"Where is it?"
"About as far east of the city as we are north. If to-morrow is a good day
I promised we would run out with them on the ten-fifteen. I suspect they
need us badly. Wayne looks like a man distracted. The great trouble, I
fancy, is going to be that Judith Dearborn Carey is still too much of a
Dearborn to be able to make a home out of anything. And Carey can't do it
alone."
"Indeed he can't, poor fellow. I never saw a man in my life who wanted a
home as badly as Wayne does. Let's do our best to help them."
"We will. But the only way to do it thoroughly is to make Judith over.
Even you can't accomplish that."
"There's hope, if she has agreed at all to trying the experiment," Juliet
declared, and thought about her friends all the rest of the day.
It was but five minutes' walk, from the suburban station where the party
got off next morning, to the house which Carey eagerly pointed out as the
four approached.
"There it is," he said. "Don't tell me what you think of it till you've
seen the whole thing. I know it doesn't look promising as yet, but I keep
remembering the photographs of your home, Robeson, before you went at it.
I'm inclined to think this can be made right, too."
Anthony and Juliet studied Carey's choice with interest. Judith looked on
dubiously. It was plain that if she should consent it would be against her
will.
"It looks so commonplace and ugly," she said aside to Juliet, as the four
completed the tour around the house and prepared to enter. "Your home is
old-fashioned enough to be interesting, but this is just modern enough to
be ugly. Look at that big window in front with the cheap coloured glass
across the top. What could you do with that?"
"Several things," said her friend promptly. "You might put in a row of
narrow casement windows across the front, with diamond panes. No--the
porch isn't attractive with all that gingerbread work, but you could take
it away and have something plain and simple. The general lines of the
house are not bad. It has been an old-fashioned house, Judith, but
somebody who didn't know how has altered it and spoiled it. People are
always doing that. There must have been a fanlight over this door. You
could restore it. And do you see that quaint round window in the gable?
Probably they looked at that and longed to do away with it, but happily
for you didn't know how."
Carey glanced curiously at his friend's wife, then anxiously at his own.
Juliet's face was alight with interest; Judith's heavy with
dissatisfaction. He wondered for the thousandth time what made the
difference. He would have given a year's salary to see Judith look
interested in this desire of his heart. It was hard to push a thing like
this against the will of the only person whose help he could not do
without. Carey was determined to have the home. Even Judith acknowledged
that she had not been happy in any of the seven apartments they had tried
during the less than four years of their married life. Carey believed with
all his heart that their only chance for happiness lay in getting away
from a manner of living which was using up every penny he could earn
without giving them either satisfaction or comfort. His salary would not
permit him to rent the sort of thing in the sort of neighbourhood which
Judith longed for. And if it should, he did not believe his wife would
find such environments any more congenial than the present one. Carey had
a theory that a woman, like a man, must be busy to be contented. He meant
to try it with his handsome, discontented wife.
"Oh, what a pretty hall!" cried Mrs. Robeson, with enthusiasm. "How lucky
that the vandals who made the house over didn't lay their desecrating
hands on that staircase."
"The hall looks gloomy to me," said Mrs. Carey, with a disapproving glance
at the walls.
"Of course--with that dingy brown paper and the woodwork stained that
hideous imitation of oak. You can scrape all that off, paint it white, put
on a warm, rich paper, restore your fanlight, and you'll have a
particularly attractive hall."
"I wish I could see things that are not visible, as you seem to be able
to," sighed Judith, looking unconvinced. "I never did like a long,
straight staircase like that. And there's not room to make a turn."
"You don't want to, do you? It's so wide and low it doesn't need to turn,
and the posts and rails are extremely good. How about this front room?"
She stood in the center of the front room, and the two men, watching her
vivid face as it glowed above her furs, noting the capable, womanly way
she had of looking at the best side of everything and discerning in a
flash of imagination and intuition what could be done with unpromising
material, appreciated her with that full masculine appreciation which it
is so well worth the trouble of any woman to win.
Judith was not blind; she saw little by little as Juliet went from room to
room--seizing in each upon its possibilities, ignoring its poorer features
except to suggest their betterment, giving her whole-hearted, friendly
counsel in a way which continually took the prospective homemakers into
consideration--that she herself was losing something immeasurably valuable
in not attempting to cultivate these same winning characteristics. And in
the same breath Judith was forced to admit to herself that she did not
know how to begin.
"There is really a very pretty view from the dining-room," she said, as a
first effort at seeing something to admire. Both Juliet and Anthony agreed
to this statement with a cordiality which came very near suggesting that
it was a relief to find Mrs. Carey on the optimistic side of the
discussion even in this small detail. As for Carey, he looked so surprised
and grateful that Judith's heart smote her with a vigour to which she was
unaccustomed.
"I suppose you could use this room as a sort of den?" she was prompted to
suggest to her husband; and such a delighted smile illumined Carey's face
that the sight of it was almost pathetic to his friends, who understood
his situation rather better than he did himself. In his pleasure Carey put
his arm about his wife's shoulders.
"Couldn't I, though?" he agreed enthusiastically. "And you could use it
for a retreat while I was away for the day."
"A retreat from what? Too much excitement?" began Judith, the old habit of
scorn of everything which was not of the city returning upon her
irresistibly. But it chanced that she caught Juliet's eyes, unconsciously
wearing such an expression of solicitude to see her friend complaisant in
this matter which meant so much, that Judith hurriedly followed her ironic
question with the more kindly supplement: "But doubtless I should have
plenty, and be glad to get away."
"You certainly would," asserted Anthony. "We never guessed how much there
would be to occupy us in the country, but there seems hardly time to write
letters. Nobody can believe, till he tries, how much pleasure there is in
wheedling a garden into growing, nor how well the labour makes him sleep
o' nights."
"Yes--I think I could sleep here," said Carey, and passed a hand over a
brow which was aching at that very moment. "I haven't done that
satisfactorily for six months."
"You'll do it here," Anthony prophesied confidently. "It's a fine air with
a good breath of the salt sea in it, which we don't get. Your sleeping
rooms are all well aired and lighted--a thing you don't always find in
more pretentious houses. And when the paint and paper go on you'll own
yourselves surprised at the transformation. I was never so astonished in
my life as I was at the change in the little bedroom in our house which
has that pale yellow-and-white stripe on the wall. It was a north room,
and the old wall was a forlorn slate, like a thundercloud. My little
artist here, with her eye for colours, instantly announced that she would
get the sunshine into that room. And so she did--with no more potent a
charm than that fifteen-cent paper and a fresh coat of white paint."
Carey looked at Juliet with longing in his eye. He wanted to ask her to
supervise the alterations in his purchase, if he should make it. But he
remembered other occasions when he had held the sayings and doings of Mrs.
Robeson before the eyes of Mrs. Carey with disastrous result, and he dared
not make the suggestion. He hoped, however, that Judith might be inclined
to ask the assistance of her friend, and himself hinted at it, cautiously.
But Judith, beyond inquiring what Juliet thought of certain possible
changes, seemed inclined to shoulder her own responsibilities.
Anthony left his wife upon the home-bound train, to return to his work;
the Careys accompanied him, so that he had no chance to talk things over
until he came home to dinner at night. But when he saw Juliet again almost
her first words showed him where her thoughts were.
"Tony, I can't get those people off my mind. Do you suppose they will ever
make a home out of anything?"
"They haven't much genius for utilizing raw material, I'm very much
afraid," Anthony responded thoughtfully. "Carey has the will, and he can
furnish a moderate amount of funds, but whether Judith can furnish
anything but objections and contrariety I don't dare to predict. If her
heart were in it I should have more hope of her. There's one thing I can
tell her. If she doesn't set her soul to the giving the old boy a taste of
peace and rest she'll have him worn out before his time. A fellow who
doesn't know how it feels to sleep soundly, and whose head bothers him
half the time, needs looking after. He's a slave to his office desk, and
needs far more than an active chap like me to get out of the city as much
as he can."
"Yes, he's worried and restless, Tony. He's so devoted to Judith and so
anxious to make her happy, her dissatisfaction rests on him like a weight.
Don't you see that every time you see them together?"
"Every time--and more plainly. What's the matter with her anyhow, Julie?
She seemed promising enough as a girl. You certainly found enough in her
to make you two congenial. She's no more like you than--electric light is
like sunshine," said Anthony, picking up the simile with a laugh and a
glance of appreciation.
"Judith shines in the surroundings she was born and brought up in, misses
them, and doesn't know how to adapt herself to any others. She ought to
have been the wife of some high official--she could entertain royally and
have everybody at her feet."
"Magnificent characteristics, but mighty unavailable in the present
circumstances. It carries out my electric-light comparison. I prefer the
sunlight--and I have it.--Poor Carey!"
"We'll hope," said Juliet. "And if we have the smallest chance to help,
we'll do it."
But, as Anthony had anticipated, there was small chance to help. Meeting
Carey a fortnight later, Anthony inquired after the new home, and Carey
replied with apparent lack of enthusiasm that the house had been leased
for a term of three years, with refusal of the purchase at the expiration
of the time. He explained that Judith had been unwilling to burn her
bridges by buying the place outright, and that he thought perhaps the
present plan was the better one--under these conditions. But the fact that
the house was not their own made it seem unwise to expend very much upon
alterations beyond those of paint and paper. With the prospect of a sale
the owner had unwillingly consented to replace the gingerbread porch with
one in better style, but refused to do more. The big window, with its
abominable topping of cheap coloured glass, was to remain for the
present.
"And I think this whole arrangement is bound to defeat my purpose," said
Carey unhappily. "The very changes we can't afford to make in a rented
house are the ones Judith needs to have made to reconcile her to the
experiment. She says she feels ill every time she comes to the house and
sees that window. She wants a porcelain sink in the kitchen. She would
like speaking-tubes and a system of electric bells. We're to have a
servant--if we can find her. We've put green paper on all the downstairs
rooms, and it turns out the wrong green. I wanted a sort of corn-colour
that looked more cheerful, but it seems green is the only thing. I don't
know what's the matter with me. Perhaps I'm bilious. Green seems to be all
right in your house, but in mine it makes me want to go outdoors."
"That's precisely what you should do," Anthony advised cheerfully. "Get
outdoors all you can. Start your garden. Mow your lawn yourself. Make over
that gravel path to your front door."
"I've only evenings," objected Carey. "And we're not settled yet. The
paper's only just on. We haven't moved. We're buying furniture. We bought
a sideboard yesterday. It cost so much we had to get a cheaper range for
the kitchen than seemed desirable, but Judith liked the sideboard so well
I was glad to buy it. I don't know when we shall get to living there
permanently. This furnishing business knocks me out. We don't seem to know
what we want. I'd like--" he hesitated--"I hoped Mrs. Robeson might be
able to give us the advantage of her experience, but it turns out that
Judith has a sort of pride in doing it herself, and of course--I presume
you made some mistakes yourselves, eh?" He suggested this with eagerness.
"Oh, of course," agreed Anthony readily, though he wondered what they
were, and inwardly begged Juliet's pardon for this answer, given out of
masculine sympathy with his friend's helplessness. "You'll come out all
right," he hastily assured Carey. "Once you are living in the new place
things will adjust themselves. Keep up your courage. Your daily walk to
and from the train will do wonders. Lack of exercise will make a rainbow
look gloomy to a fellow. I think you've great cause for rejoicing that
Judith has agreed to try the experiment at all. And as with all
experiments, you must be patient while it works itself out."
"That's so," agreed Carey, a gleam of hope in his eyes; and Anthony got
away. But by himself the happier man shook his head doubtfully. "Where
everything depends on the woman," he said to himself, "and you've married
one that her Maker never fashioned for domestic joys, you're certainly up
against a mighty difficult proposition!"
XXIV.--THE CAREYS ARE AT HOME
Wayne and Judith Carey had been keeping house for two months before Judith
was willing to accede to her husband's often repeated request that they
entertain the Robesons.
"We've been there, together and separately, till it's a wonder their
hospitality doesn't freeze up," he urged. "Let's have them out to-morrow
night, and keep them over till next day, at least. I'd like to have them
sleep under this roof. They'd bring us good luck."
"One would think the Robesons were the only people worth knowing," said
Judith, with a petulance of which she had the grace, as her husband stared
at her, to be ashamed.
"They're the truest friends we have in the world," he said, with a dignity
of manner unusual with him. "Sometimes I think they are the only people
worth knowing--out of all those on your calling list."
"We differ about that. Your ideas of who are worth knowing are very
peculiar. Heaven knows I'm fond of Juliet, but I get decidedly tired of
having her held up as a model. And I haven't been anxious to entertain her
until we were in order."
"We're certainly as much in order now as we shall be for some time. Let's
have them out. You'll find they'll see everything there is to praise. It's
their way."
So Anthony and Juliet were asked, and came. Wayne's prophecy was proven a
true one--even Judith grew complacent as her friends admired the result of
her house-furnishing. And in truth there was much to admire. Judith was a
young woman of taste and more or less discretion, and if she could have
had full sway in her purchasing the result might have been admirable. As
it was, the unspoken criticism in the minds of both the guests, as they
followed their hosts about the house, was that Judith had struck a
key-note in her construction of a home a little too ambitious to be wholly
satisfactory.
"I believe in buying the best of everything as far as you go," she said,
indicating a particularly costly lounging chair in a corner of the
living-room. "Of course that was very expensive, but it will always be
right, and we can get others to go with it. The bookcases were another
high-priced purchase, but they give an air to the room worth paying for."
"I've only one objection to this room," said Wayne with some hesitation.
"As Judith says, the things in it seem to be all right, and it certainly
looks in good taste, if I'm any judge, but--I don't know just how to
explain it----" he hesitated again, and smiled deprecatingly at his wife.
"Speak out," said Judith. She was in a very good humour, for her guests
had shown so fine a tact in their commendation that she was in quite a
glow of satisfaction, and for the first time felt the pleasure of the
hostess in an attractive home. "It can't be a serious objection, for
you've liked every single thing we've put into it."
"Indeed I have," agreed Carey, eagerly glancing about the brilliantly lit
room. "I like it all awfully well--especially in the daylight. The corner
by the window is a famous place for reading. But, you see, I'm so little
here in the daytime, except on Sundays. Of course I know we lack the
fireplace that makes your living-room jolly, but it seems as if we lack
something besides that we might have, and for the life of me I can't tell
what it is."
Anthony knew by a certain curve in the corner of his wife's mouth that she
longed to tell him what it was. For himself, he could not discover. He
studied the room searchingly and was unable to determine why, attractive
as it really was, it certainly did, upon this cool May evening, lack the
look of warm comfort and hospitality of which his own home was so full.
"Possibly it's because everything is so new," he ventured. "Rooms come to
have a look of home, you know, just by living in them and leaving things
about. It's a pretty room, all right, and I fancy it will take on the
friendly expression you want when you get to strewing your books and
magazines around a little more, and laying your pipe down on the corner of
the mantel-piece, you know--and all that. I can upset things for you in
half a minute if you'll give me leave."
"You have my full permission," said Judith, laughing. "I fancy it's just
as you say: Wayne isn't used to it yet. He always likes his old slippers
better than the handsomest new ones I can buy him. Come--dinner has been
served for five minutes. No more artistic suggestions till afterward."
The dinner was perfect. It should have been so, for a caterer was in the
kitchen, and a hired waitress served the viands without disaster. As a
delectable meal it was a success; as an exhibition of Mrs. Carey's
capacity for home making, it was something of a failure. It certainly did
not for a moment deceive the guests. For the life of her, as Juliet tasted
course after course of the elaborate meal, she could not help reckoning up
what it had cost. Neither could she refrain from wondering what sort of a
repast Judith would have produced without help.
After dinner, as Wayne and Anthony smoked in front of the fireless
mantel-piece in the den, each in a more luxurious chair than was to be
found in Anthony's whole house, Judith took Juliet to task.
"You may try to disguise it," she complained, "but I've known you too long
not to be able to read you. You would rather have had me cook that dinner
myself and bring it in, all red and blistered from being over the stove."
"As long as the dinner wasn't red and blistered you wouldn't have been
unhappy," Juliet returned lightly. "But you mustn't think that she who
entertains may read my ingenuous face, my dear. It isn't necessary that I
attempt to convert the world to my way of thinking. And I haven't told you
that when Auntie Dingley goes abroad with father again this winter I'm to
have Mary McKaim for eight whole months. I can assure you I know how to
appreciate the comfort of having a competent cook in the kitchen."
She got up and crossed the room. "Judith, what an exquisite lamp," she
observed. "I'd forgotten that you had it. Was it one of your wedding
presents?"
Judith followed her to where she stood examining an imposing,
foreign-looking lamp, with jeweled inlets in the hand-wrought metal shade.
"Yes," she said carelessly, "it's pretty enough. I don't care much for
lamps."
"Not to read by?"
"It's bright enough for anybody but a blind man to read, here." Judith
glanced at the ornate chandelier of electric lights in the centre of the
ceiling. "The rooms aren't so high that the lights are out of reach for
reading."
"But this is beautiful. Have you never used it?"
"It might be used with an electric connection, I suppose. No, I've never
used it as an oil lamp. I hate kerosene oil."
"But you have some in the house?"
"Oh, yes, I think so. Wayne insisted on getting some little hand-lamps.
Something's always happening to the wires out here. That's one of the
numerous joys of living in the suburbs."
"Let's fill this and try it," Juliet suggested, turning a pair of very
bright eyes upon her friend. "If you've never lit it I don't believe
you've half appreciated it. You're neglecting one of the prettiest sources
of decoration you have in the house. Out of sympathy for the giver,
whoever he was, you ought to let his gift have a chance to show you its
beauty."
"Stevens Cathcart gave it to us, I believe," said Judith. "Here, let me
have it. I'll fill it, since you insist. But I never thought very much of
it. It was put away in a closet until we came here. It took up so much
room I never found a place for it."
"Mr. Cathcart gave it to you? That proves my point, that it's worth
admiring. If there's a connoisseur in things of this sort, it's he. He
probably picked it up in some out-of-the-ordinary European shop."
Smiling to herself, as if something gave her satisfaction, Juliet awaited
the return of her hostess. She understood, from the manner of Judith's
exit with the lamp, that the free and easy familiarity with which guests
invaded every portion of Anthony's little home, was not to be made a
precedent for the same sort of thing in Judith's.
The lamp reappeared, accompanied by a lamentation over the disagreeable
qualities of kerosene oil for any use whatever.
"You can put electricity into this and use it as a drop-light, if you
prefer," said Juliet, as she lit it and adjusted the shade. "May I set it
on the big table over here? Right in the center, please, if you don't mind
moving that bowl of carnations. There!--Of course you can send it back to
oblivion over there on the bookcase if you really don't like it.--But you
do like it--don't you?"
"It's handsomer than I thought it was," Judith admitted without
enthusiasm. Juliet glanced up at the blazing chandelier overhead.
"May I turn off some of this light?" she asked. "You won't get the full
beauty of your lamp till you give it a chance by itself."
Judith assented. Juliet snapped off three out of the four lights, and
smiled mischievously at her friend. Then she extinguished the fourth, so
that the only luminary left in the room was the lamp. Judith groaned.
"Maybe you like a gloomy room like this. I don't. Look at it. I can hardly
see anything in the corners."
"Wait a little bit. You're so used to the glare your eyes are not good for
seeing what I mean. Study the lamp itself a minute. Did you ever see
anything so fascinating as the gleam through those jewels? An electric
bulb inside would add to the brilliancy, though it's not so soft a light
to read by, and the effect in the room isn't so warm. Observe those
carnations under the lamplight, honey? Come over here to the doorway and
look at your whole room under these new conditions. Isn't it
charming?--enticing?--Let's draw that lovely Morris chair up close to the
table, as if you were expecting Wayne to come in and read the evening
paper by the lamp. _There!_"
Juliet softly clapped her hands, her face shining with friendly
enthusiasm. There could be no question that the whole room, as she had
said, had taken on a new look of homelike comfort and cheer which it had
lacked before. Even Judith was forced to see it.
"It looks very well," she admitted. "But I should have more light from
above. I like plenty of light."
"So do I, if you manage it well." Whereupon the guest, having gained her
point and made sufficient demonstration of it, turned the conversation
into other channels. But the lamp was not yet through with its position of
reformer. The two men, having finished their cigars, and hearing sounds of
merriment from the adjoining room, came strolling in. Anthony,
comprehending at a glance the change which had come over the aspect of the
room and the cause thereof, advanced, smiling. But Carey came to a
standstill upon the threshold, his lips drawn into an astonished whistle.
"What's happened?" he ejaculated, and stood staring.
"Do you like it?" asked his wife.
"I should say I did. But what's done it? What makes the room look so
different? It looks--why it looks like your rooms!" he cried, gazing at
Anthony.
"He can say nothing more flattering than that," said Judith, evidently not
altogether pleased. "It's the highest compliment he knows."
Carey stared at the lamp. "I didn't know we had that," he said. "Is it
that that does it?"
"I fancy it is," said Anthony. "I never understood it till I was taught,
but it seems to be a fact that a low light in a room gives it a more
homelike effect than a high one. I don't know why. It's one of my wife's
pet theories."
"Well, I must say this is a pretty convincing demonstration of it," Carey
agreed, sitting down in a chair in a corner, his hands in his pockets,
still studying this, to him, remarkable transformation. "It certainly does
look like a happy home now. Before, it was a place to receive calls in."
He turned, smiling contentedly, to his wife. Something about the glance
which she returned warned him that further admiration was unnecessary. The
contented smile faded a little. He got up and came over to the table.
"Now, let's have a good four-handed talk," he proposed.
Two hours later, in the seclusion of the guest-room upstairs, Anthony said
under his breath:
"They're coming on, aren't they? Don't you see glimmerings of hope that
some day this will resemble a home, in a sort of far-off way? Isn't Judith
becoming domesticated a trifle? She didn't get up that dinner?"
Juliet turned upon him a smiling face, and laid her finger on her lip.
"Don't tempt me to discuss it," she warned him. "My feelings might run
away with me, and that would never do under their very roof."
"Exemplary little guest! May I say as much as this, then? I'd give a good
deal to see Wayne speak his mind once in a way, without a side glance to
see if Her Royal Majesty approves."
But Juliet shook her head. "Don't tempt me," she begged again. "There's
something inside of me that boils and boils with rage, and if I should
just take the cover off----"
"Might I get scalded? All right--I'll leave the cover on. Just one
observation more. When I get inside our own four walls again I'm going to
give a tremendous whoop of joy and satisfaction that'll raise the roof
right off the house!"
XXV.--THE ROBESON WILL
When people are busy and happy the years may go by like a dream. So the
months rolled around and brought little Tony past the third anniversary of
his birth, and into another summer of lusty development. Except to the
growing child, however, time seemed to bring slight changes to the little
home under whose roof he grew. The mistress thereof lost no charm either
for her husband or her friends--Anthony indeed insisted that she grew
younger; certainly, as time taught her new lessons without laying hands
upon her beauty, she gained attractiveness in every way.
"You look as much like a girl as ever," Anthony said to her one morning,
as dressed for a trip into town she came out upon the porch where he and
little Tony were frolicing together.
"You had ever a sweetly blarneying tongue," said she, and bestowed a
parting caress impartially upon both the persons before her. "I feel a bit
guilty at making a nursemaid of you for even one morning of your vacation,
but----"
"That's all right. Do your errands with an easy conscience. I'll enjoy
looking after the boy, and am rather glad your usual little maid is away.
That's one thing my vacation is for--to get upon a basis of mutual
understanding and confidence with my son. We see too little of each
other."
So Juliet caught the early car, and left the two male Robesons together,
father and son, waving good-bye to her from the porch. When she was out of
sight the elder Robeson turned to the younger.
"Now, son," he said, "I'm going to mow the lawn. What are you going to
do?"
"I is going to mow lawn, too," announced Tony, Junior, with decision.
"All right, sir. Here we are. Get in front of me and mind you push hard.
That's the stuff!"
All went joyously for ten minutes. Then little Tony wriggled out from
between his father's arms and went over to the porch step. He sat down and
crossed two fat legs. He leaned his head upon his hand, his elbow on his
knee, and watched with serious eyes the progress of the lawn-mower three
times across before he said wistfully:
"Favver, I wis' you'd p'ay wiv me."
"When I get this job done perhaps I will," said Anthony, and made the
grass fly merrily. Presently he put away the lawn-mower, and stood looking
down at the sturdy little figure in the blue Russian blouse. "What do you
want to play?" he asked. Tony's face lit up.
"Le's play fire-endjun," he proposed enthusiastically.
"Where shall we play the fire is?"
"Le's have weal fire," said Tony eagerly.
"Real fire? Well, I don't know about that, son," his father responded
doubtfully. "Young persons of three are not considered old enough to play
with the real thing. Won't make believe do just as well?"
"No, no--weal fire," repeated the child. "Le's put it out wiv sqi'yt
watto. P'ease, favver--p'ease!"
"Sqi'wt watto," repeated Anthony, laughing. "What do you mean by----? Oh,
I see----" as Tony demonstrated his meaning by running to the garden hose
which remained attached to a hydrant behind the house. "Well, son--if I
let you have a real fire and put it out with real water, will you promise
me never to try anything of that sort by yourself?"
Tony walked over to his father and laid a little brown fist in Anthony's.
"Aw wight," he said solemnly. Anthony looked down at the clasped hands and
smiled at the serious uplifted face. "Is that the way mother teaches you
to promise her?" he asked, with interest.
Tony nodded. "Aw wight," he said. "Come on. Le's make fire!"
The fire was made, out of a packing-box brought up from the cellar. It
burned realistically down by the orchard, and was only discovered by
chance when Anthony Robeson, Junior, happened to glance that way.
"_Fire!--fire!_" he shouted, and alarmed the fire company, who, as fire
companies should be, were ready to start on the instant. The hose-cart,
propelled by a pair of stout legs, made a gallant dash down the edge of
the garden, followed by the hook-and-ladder company, their equipment just
three feet long. It took energetic and skilful work to quench the
conflagration, which raged furiously and made plenty of good black smoke.
The fire chief rushed dramatically about, ordering his men with ringing
commands. Once he stubbed his bare toe and fell, and for a moment it
looked as though he must cry, but like the brave fellow that he was he
smothered his pain behind an uplifted elbow, and in a moment was again in
the thick of the fray. His men obeyed him with admirable promptitude,
although, contrary to the usual custom of fire chiefs, he himself took
hold of the hose and poured its volume upon the blazing structure.
When the fire was out the chief, breathless, his blue blouse bearing the
marks of the encounter with flood and flame, sat down upon the overturned
hose-cart and beamed upon his company.
"Vat was awful nice fire," he said. "Le's have anuver."
"Another? Oh, no," protested the company, hastily. "No more of that just
now. Pick up your hook-and-ladder wagon and put it back where it belongs.
I'll see to the hose."
Anthony gently displaced the fire chief and rolled away the hose. Then he
looked back down the garden and saw his son poking among the ruins of the
fire. "Come here, Tony," he called, "and bring the hook-and-ladder."
Tony came slowly, but without the toy wagon. Anthony stood still. When the
boy reached him he said, "Why didn't you bring the hook-and-ladder cart?"
"'Cause I'm ve chief," Tony responded gravely. "My mens'll bring ve
cart."
"Your men aren't there. You'll have to bring it yourself."
Tony shook his head. "I'm ve chief," he repeated, and looked his father in
the eye. Anthony understood. It was not the first time. There were moments
in one's experience with Anthony Robeson, Junior, when one seemed to
encounter a deadlock in the child's will. Reasoning and commands were apt
at such times to be alike futile. The odd thing about it was that it was
impossible to predict when these moments were at hand. They arose without
warning, when the boy was apparently in the best of tempers, and they did
not seem to be the result of any previous mismanagement on the part of
those in authority over him.
Of one point Anthony, Senior, was sure. The child, like all children, and
possibly more than most, possessed a vivid imagination. When he announced
himself to be a fire chief, there could be no question that he believed
himself to be for the time that which he pretended to be. His father
understood, therefore, that to make progress with the boy it was necessary
to get back to the standpoint of reality before commands could be expected
to take hold. So he sat down on a rustic seat near Juliet's roses and
spoke in a pleasantly matter-of-fact way.
"Yes, you've been a fire chief, son, and a good one. That was a great
game. But the game is over now, and you're not a fire chief any more.
You're Tony Robeson, and the little hook-and-ladder cart is your
plaything. Father wants you to bring it here and put it in its place in
the house. It looks a little bit like rain, and the cart mustn't be left
out to get wet. See?"
But Tony still shook his head. "My men'll put it in," he said, with
calmness undisturbed.
"You haven't any men. You played there were some, but the play is over and
there aren't any men. If you don't put the cart in it may get wet."
"I'm ve chief," said little Tony. "Chiefs don't draw carts."
"When they've turned back to little boys they do. You've turned back to a
little boy."
"No, I hasn't," said Tony, and his eyes met his father's unflinchingly.
"I's going to be a chief all ve time."
The argument seemed unanswerable. Anthony considered swiftly what to do.
He studied the grave brown eyes an instant in silence, their beauty and
the inflexibility in their depths appealing to him with equal force. He
loved the tough little will. He recognised it as his own--the same
powerful quality which had brought him thus far on the road to fortune
after being landed at the furthermost end from the goal. He would not for
worlds deal with his son's will in any but the way which should seem to
him wisest.
He rose from his seat. He spoke quietly but with force. "Very well," he
said. "If you're still a fire chief, of course you're too big to play. I'm
much obliged to you for putting out my fire. But now that it's out I don't
want your hook-and-ladder in my garden any longer. When your men take it
away I shall be glad. But of course we can't play any more till you stop
being a fire chief and the hook-and-ladder is back in its corner in the
nursery. Good-bye. When you are ready to be Tony Robeson again, you'll
find me in my den."
He smiled at his son and walked away. Tony watched him go. Tony's hands
were clasped behind his back, his legs planted wide apart.
Anthony, Senior, found it difficult to remain in the den. He was obliged
to keep track of a small figure in a blue blouse from whichever of the
various windows commanded the doings of that young person. He perceived
that the fire chief was still holding dominion over the scene.
At the end of an hour small footsteps were heard approaching. Anthony
looked up from the letter he was attempting to write. "Favver, may I have
a bread and butter?" asked a pleasant voice. Anthony turned about in his
chair.
"Is the hook-and-ladder in the nursery?" he inquired gravely.
Tony shook his head.
"Oh, then you are still the fire chief. Fire chiefs go to the hotel for
their bread and butter. I haven't any bread and butter for the fire
chief."
He turned back to his desk. The small figure in the doorway stood still a
moment, then the footsteps were heard retreating. Five minutes later,
Anthony, looking out, saw Tony careering about the garden on a
hobby-horse.
"Obstinate little duffer," he said affectionately to himself. "He's
playing go to the hotel, I suppose. Perhaps when that imagination of his
gets to work at hypothetical bread and butter he'll find the reality
preferable to the fancy."
In a short time Anthony again reconnoitred. The garden was empty. He
looked out at the front of the house. No small figure in blue was to be
seen. He went out and took a turn about the place. He called the boy;
there was no response. From past experience and from the statements of
Juliet and the young girls of the neighbourhood, whom, at various times,
she was in the habit of engaging to assist her in the oversight of the
child at his play, he knew that Tony had a trick of getting himself out of
sight in an incredibly brief space of time.
"As a fire chief he may consider himself free to do what he pleases," said
Anthony to himself, and set about a thorough search of the place, having
no doubt that at any moment he should come upon the boy carrying out the
details of his imaginary vocation. After a time he went back into the
house and scoured it from top to bottom. And when, even here, there was to
be discovered no trace of the child, he began to feel a slight
uneasiness.
There was no source of immediate danger to a stray child in the
neighbourhood, of which he was aware, except the electric line, and little
Tony had never manifested the slightest inclination to approach this by
himself. There were no open ponds, no traps of any kind for the incautious
feet of a three-year-old. Everybody knew Tony, and everybody admired and
loved him, so that, as Anthony took up his hat and started upon a more
extended search, he had no doubt whatever of finding the runaway without
delay.
In a very short time it became a rousing of the neighbourhood. It was
Saturday, and all the children who knew Tony were at hand. They were soon
eagerly searching for him near and far, without finding the slightest
trace of his passing. Anthony, now thoroughly alarmed, telephoned in every
direction, warned every police station in the city, and took every
possible step for the discovery of the child. It occurred to him with
tremendous force that the boy might have been stolen. Such things did
happen. It seemed almost the only way to account for such a sudden and
mysterious disappearance.
Before it seemed possible two hours had slipped past. And now, on every
car which whirled by the corner, Anthony began to expect Juliet. He
dreaded yet longed to see her. He turned cold at the thought of telling
her the situation, yet at the same time he felt as if she might have some
sort of a solution ready which nobody else had thought of. And while,
still searching over and over the entire ground, he kept watch of the
arriving cars, he saw his wife suddenly appear. He went to meet her.
"What is it?" she said, the instant her eye met his.
"I think it's all right, dear," he told her, as quietly as he could, "but
somehow we can't find Tony. He disappeared during five minutes when I was
in the house--too short a time for him to have got very far away, but--we
can't find him. Do you think he may be hiding? Does he ever hide himself
so effectually as that?"
The bright colour in her face had slipped out of it on the instant, for he
could not keep the anxiety out of his voice. But she said no word of
reproach, nor did she lose command of herself in any way.
"How long has he been gone?" she asked, going straight toward the house,
Anthony close behind her.
"I think--I am afraid--nearly two hours. I will tell you what happened. It
is possible something I said is responsible for all this, though I don't
know."
She was going swiftly about the house, as he told her the story of his
attempt to teach the boy a lesson, and she was listening closely to every
word as she examined for herself each nook and corner. She disclosed
several possible hiding places of which Anthony had not thought,
explaining that Tony knew them all and sometimes betook himself to them in
the course of various games. The two came out upon the porch, and Juliet
stood still, thinking.
"You have done everything to intercept him, if he should really have--got
far away?"
"Everything I can think of, except start out myself. I am ready to do
that, if you think best."
"Not until I have gone over the neighbourhood myself. I don't believe he
is far away--I believe he is near. He may have heard every call you and
the children have made, and wouldn't answer. If by any chance his pride
has been a little hurt, he is very likely to do this sort of thing.
Wait--have you looked--I wonder if the children know----"
She was off without stopping to explain, through the garden and down the
old willow-bordered path by the brook. Anthony followed. "I've been down
here a dozen times," he called. "The brook is too shallow to hurt him, and
he's certainly not anywhere on it within a mile. The children have been
all over the ground."
But Juliet did not pause. She ran along the path for some distance, then
turned abruptly at a point where an abandoned lot filled with stumps
joined the area by the brook. She made her swift way among these stumps,
Anthony following, his hope rising as he noted the directness of his
wife's aim. At the biggest stump she came to a standstill, carefully swung
out-ward like a door a great slab of bark, and disclosed a hollow. The
sunlight streamed in upon a little heap of blue, and a tangled brown mass
of hair. Anthony Robeson, Junior, lay fast asleep in his cunningly devised
retreat.
Without a word his father stood looking down at the boy's flushed cheeks.
Then he turned to Juliet, standing beside him, smiling through the tears
which had not come until the anxiety was past. His own eyes were wet.
"That was a bad scare," he said softly. "Thank God it's over."
Then he stooped and gently lifted the fire chief and carried him home
without waking him. Twenty children flocked joyfully from all about to
see, and hushed their shouts of congratulation at Juliet's smiling
warning.
Anthony went alone down the garden to the place where the hook-and-ladder
cart had stood. It was still there. He stood and looked at it, his eyes
very tender but his lips firm. "The little chap didn't give in," he said
to himself. "It's going to be hard to make him, but for the sake of the
Robeson will I think we'll have to take up the job where we left it. I'd
mightily like to flunk the whole business now, but I should be a pretty
weak sort of a beggar if I did."
When little Tony had wakened from his nap, and had been washed and brushed
and fed, and made fresh in a clean frock, his mother brought him to his
father.
"Is this Tony Robeson?" Anthony asked soberly. Tony considered for a
moment, then shook his head.
"I's ve fire chief," he said, with polite stubbornness.
"Have your men put away the hook-and-ladder cart?"
"No, favver."
"Are they going to do it?"
"I didn't tell vem to."
"Why not?"
"Didn't want to."
"Listen, son," said Anthony. "I could make the fire chief put away the
cart. I'm stronger than he is, you know. I could make him walk out to
where it lies in the garden, and I could make his hands pick it up and
carry it into the house, and then it would be done.--Don't you think I
could?"
Tony considered. "Es, I fink 'ou could," he admitted. Evidently the
question was one he could reflect upon from the standpoint of the
outsider.
"But I don't want to do that. I want Tony Robeson to put the cart away
because his father asks him to do it. Don't you think he ought to do
that?"
"I isn't Tony Robeson, I'se ve fire chief."
"Were you the fire chief when you woke up, and mother washed you and
dressed you and gave you your lunch? I don't think she thought you were.
If you had been the fire chief she would have left you to take care of
yourself."
Tony thought about it. "I dess I'se Tony wiv muvver," he said.
"Then you aren't Tony with me?"
The thick locks shook vehemently in the sir with the negative response. "I
said I was ve fire chief, and I'se got to _be_ ve fire chief," he
reiterated.
Without question it was a battle of wills. But Anthony's mind was made up.
For lack of time to deal with them previous similar issues had been dodged
in various ways, compromises had been effected. It was plain that argument
and reasoning, the wiles of the affectionately wise adversary who does not
want to bring the matter to a direct conflict, had been tried. Anthony
could see no way out except to dominate the child by the force of his own
resolute character. It was not the way by which he wanted to obtain the
mastery, but it was becoming plain to him that, in this case, at least, it
was the only way left.
His face grew stern all at once, his eyes, though still kind, met his
son's with determination. "Tony," he said very gravely--and there was a
new quality in his tone to which the child was not accustomed--"You are
not the fire chief now. You are Tony Robeson. _I shall not let you be the
fire chief any longer._ Do you understand?"
There was no threat in the words, only a decisiveness of the sort before
which men give way, because they see that there is no alternative. Tony
stared into his father's eyes curiously. His own grew big with wonder,
with something which was not alarm, but akin to it. He gazed and gazed, as
if fascinated. Anthony's look held his; the man's powerful eyes did not
flinch--neither did the boy's. It is possible that both pulses quickened a
beat.
Little Tony drew his eyes away at last, turned and started for the door.
Silently Anthony watched him as he reached for the knob, turned again, and
looked back at his father. On the very threshold the child stood still and
stared back. His brown eyes filled, his red lips quivered. The stern face
which watched his melted into a winning smile, and Anthony held out his
arms. An instant longer, and his son had run across the floor and flung
himself into them.
When the childish storm of tears had quieted, and several big hugs had
been exchanged, Anthony set the boy down upon the floor and took his hand.
Silently the two walked out of the house and down the garden. The
hook-and-ladder cart stood patiently waiting, just where it had waited all
day. Little Tony ran to it and picked it up. Over his exquisite face broke
the first smile that had been seen there since the earliest disregarded
command of the morning.
"Ve fire chief's gone," he said. "He was a bad fire chief."
So together the man and the boy escorted the hook-and-ladder cart to the
nursery, and backed it carefully into its stall, between the milk wagon
and the automobile. Then the child went to his play. But the man drew a
long breath.
"I would rather manage a hundred striking workmen," he said to himself
with emphasis.
XXVI.--ON GUARD
While little Tony had been growing, waxing strong and sturdy: while Juliet
had been tending and training him, learning, as every mother does, more
than she could impart: Anthony, in his place, had not stood still. The
strength and determination he had from the first hour put into his daily
work had begun to tell. His position in a great mercantile establishment
had steadily advanced as he had made himself more and more indispensable
to its heads.
Cathcart, the successful architect, began to talk about a new home for the
man into whose hands Henderson and Henderson were putting large interests
to manage for them, and whose salary, he asserted, must now justify,
indeed call for, life under more ideal surroundings than the little home
in the unfashionable suburb which poverty had at first made necessary.
"Let me draw some plans for you," urged Cathcart, one evening in June,
when he had run out to see his friend. Juliet was by chance away, and
Cathcart took advantage of this to call Anthony's attention, in a politely
frank fashion, to the shortcomings of his present residence. "It's all
right in its way," he said, standing upon a corner of the lawn with
Anthony, and surveying the house critically. "Mrs. Robeson certainly
deserves full credit for the admirable way in which she restored the old
house and added just the changes in keeping with its possibilities. I've
always said it couldn't have been better done, with the means you've told
me you were able to put at her disposal. But the place is too small for
you now."
"I don't think we feel it so," said Anthony tentatively, strolling beside
Cathcart along the edge of the lawn, his hands in his pockets, lifting
friendly eyes at the little house. "Since we put in the bathroom--that
small room off the upper hall, you know--and added the nursery and den,
we're very comfortable. The furnace keeps us warm as toast, and we're soon
to have the water system out here, so we won't have to depend upon our
present expedients. I'm fond of the place, and I'm confident Mrs. Robeson
is devoted to it."
"I can understand that," agreed Cathcart. "Of course, the spot where you
began life together will always have its charm for you both--in fact the
sentiment of the matter may blind you to the real inadequacies of the
place for a man in your position."
"My position isn't so stable that I want to build a marble palace on it
yet," said Anthony, a humorous twinkle in his eye. He enjoyed watching
another man manoeuvre for his favourable hearing of a scheme. It was an
art in which he was himself accomplished; it was one of the points of his
value to Henderson and Henderson.
"Everybody knows that you're in a fair way to become head man with the
Hendersons," said Cathcart, "and everybody also knows that you might as
well have struck a gold-mine. It's superb, the way you have come into the
confidence of those old conservatives."
"That's all well enough; but I don't see that it entails upon me the duty
of laying out all I've saved on a new house. I know what you fellows
are--when you begin to draw plans your love of the ideal runs away with
the other man's pocketbook."
"Not at all," declared Cathcart. "Particularly when he's a friend and you
understand just what he can afford to do."
"Why don't you talk about enlarging the old house? That's much more likely
to appeal to my desires."
The two had reached the back of the house and were close by the kitchen
windows. Cathcart reached up and took hold of a sill. With a strong hand
he wrenched and pounded about the window, until he succeeded in showing
that it was old and uncertain.
"That's why," he said, dusting his hand with his handkerchief. "The house
is old--fairly rotten in places. The minute you began to enlarge it in any
ambitious way you'd find it would be cheaper to tear it down and begin
again. But the site, Robeson--the site isn't desirable. The place is
respectable enough, but it has no future. The good building is all going
south, not north, of the city. You don't want to spend a lot of money
here--you couldn't sell out except at a loss."
"Your arguments are good, very good," admitted Anthony; "so good that I'd
like to put you on your mettle to draw me a set of plans for just the sort
of thing you think I ought to have--or Mrs. Robeson ought to have, for
she's the one to be considered. Anything will do for me. I'll let you do
this--on one condition."
"Name it."
"That you also do your level best to demonstrate to me what a clever man
and an artist of your proportions could make out of this house, provided
he really wanted to show the extent of his ability. Now, that's fair. If
you really care to convince me you won't fool with this proposition,
you'll make a study of the one problem as thoroughly as you do of the
other, and let me decide the case on its merits. If I thought you weren't
giving the old house a fair chance I should take up its cause out of pure
affection."
He smiled at Cathcart's discontented face with so brilliant a good humour
that the architect cleared up.
"By Jove, Robeson," he said, "I think I see what endears you to the
Hendersons. I wouldn't have said you could have induced me to try my hand
at the old house, but I'll be hanged if I don't follow your instructions
to the letter--and win out, too."
"Good," said Anthony. "And don't mention it to my wife. We'll keep it for
a surprise; and I promise you when the time comes I won't prejudice her in
any way."
Cathcart drew out a notebook and pencil and entered some memoranda on the
spot, while Anthony, coming up on the piazza of the dining-room, laid upon
the old Dutch house-door a hand which seemed to caress it. He was
wondering if by any possible magic Cathcart could create, in the rarest
abode in the world, a new door which he should ever care to enter as he
now cared to enter this.
* * * * *
"I think," said Juliet decidedly, "you're wrong about it."
"And I know," returned Anthony with emphasis, "that you are."
The two faced each other. They were walking through a short stretch of
woodland, which lay as yet untouched by the hand of suburban property
owners. It was a favourite ground for the diversions of the Robesons, when
they had not time to spend in getting farther away. They had been
strolling through it now, in the early June evening, discussing a matter
relative to the investment of a certain moderate sum of money which had
come into Anthony's hands. It developed that their ideas about it differed
radically.
"It's not safe to do as you propose," said Juliet.
"To do what you propose would be only one better than tying it up in an
old stocking--or putting it away in the coffee pot. It's essentially a
woman's plan--no man would do it the honour of considering it a moment."
Juliet flushed brilliantly. Even in Anthony's cheek the colour rose a
little. Their eyes met with a challenge.
"Very well," said Juliet proudly. "I'll offer no more woman's plans.
Invest the money as you like. Then, when you've lost it----"
Anthony's eyes flashed. "When I've lost it----" he began, and turned away
with a gesture of impatience. Then he stopped short. "That isn't like
you," he said.
Juliet stared at him an instant. Then she shut her lips together and
walked on in silence. Anthony shut his lips together also. It was not
their habit to indulge in sharp altercation. While both had decided ideas
about things, both were also much too well bred to be willing to allow
differences of opinion--which must arise as inevitably as two human beings
live under the same roof--to degenerate into the deplorable thing commonly
referred to as a quarrel.
When they had proceeded a few rods Juliet turned abruptly off from the
path and picked up from the ground a slender straight stick, evidently cut
and trimmed by some boy and then thrown aside. She looked about her and
after some search found another, of similar size, untrimmed. She held out
the latter to Anthony. He accepted it with a look of surprise. Then she
walked into the path in front of him, stood stiff and straight, her small
heels together, and made him the fencer's salute. "_On guard!_" she
cried.
His lips relaxing, Anthony grasped his stick and fell into position. A
moment more and two accomplished fencers were engaged in close combat.
Juliet happened to be wearing a trim linen skirt of short walking length,
which impeded her movements as slightly as anything not strictly adapted
to the exercise could do. Although her fencing lessons were some years
past, the paraphernalia belonging both to herself and Anthony were in the
house, and an occasional bout with the masks and foils was a means of
exercise and diversion which both thoroughly enjoyed. Although Juliet was
no match for the superior skill and endurance of her husband, she was
nevertheless no mean antagonist, and her alertness of eye and hand usually
gave him sufficient to do to make the encounter a stimulating one.
On the present occasion Anthony, challenged to combat with his coat and
cuffs on, and wielding the more awkward weapon of the two impromptu foils,
found himself distinctly at a disadvantage. Moreover, he was at the moment
not precisely in the mood for fun, and he began to defend himself with a
somewhat lazy indifference. After a minute or two, however, he discovered
that his adversary's slightly ruffled temper was inspiring her hand and
wrist to distinctly effective work, and he found himself forced to look to
his methods.
Attack and parade, disengagement and thrust--the battle was waged over the
uneven ground of the wood. And presently Anthony discovered that the
richly glowing face opposite his was a smiling one. The absurdity of the
match struck him irresistibly and he smiled in return. He tripped a little
over an obtruding oak-root, and Juliet took advantage of her opportunity
to press him hard. He fended off the attack and himself assumed the
aggressive. An instant more and he had disarmed her and had thrown his own
stick flying after hers. Both were laughing heartily enough.
"Forgive the trick," cried Anthony. "A man must disarm his wife when she
becomes his enemy."
Breathless, Juliet sank upon a small knoll, her hand at her side. "If I'd
been dressed for it--" she panted.
"You need coaching on your time thrusts, but you gave me plenty to do as
it was," Anthony admitted. "More than that, you've presented me with a
chance to recover my equilibrium. I was hot inside before. Now it's all on
the outside."
He looked down at her affectionately. She smiled back. "I was crosser than
sticks," she said. "I really can't imagine why, now. I apologise."
"So do I." He threw himself down on the ground at her feet, lay flat on
his back, his clasped hands behind his head, and gazed up into the
tree-tops.
"I'll take your advice into careful consideration," said he.
"I know you won't do anything rash," said she, and they both laughed
again.
"How much more diplomatic that sort of talk is," he observed. "Why do we
ever allow ourselves to use any other?"
"Because we are human, I suppose." Juliet was putting a mass of waving
brown hair, disordered by the fight, into shape again. "It isn't nice. We
don't do it often. To-night you came home tired, and found a wife who had
been entertaining people from town all the afternoon. But it's all right
now, isn't it?"
She bent forward, and Anthony took her outstretched hand in his own and
gave it a grip which made it sting. He began to whistle cheerfully.
"Should we be happier if we never disagreed?" she asked thoughtfully.
The whistle stopped. "Jupiter, no! I want a thinking being to talk things
over with, not a mental pincushion."
"Thank you.--Isn't it lovely here?"
"Delightful.--Julie, do you know we'll have been married five years next
September?"
"It doesn't seem possible."
"I shouldn't know it, to look at you," he observed. He rolled upon his
left side and regarded her from under intent brows. "You haven't grown a
day older."
"I'm not sure that's a compliment."
"It's meant for one. Do you know you're a beauty?"
"I never was one and never shall be," she answered laughing, but she could
not object to the obvious sincerity of his opinion as he delivered it.
"You're near enough to satisfy me. I'd rather have your good looks than
all the--Well, I sat in front of a newly married pair on the way home
to-night--that fellow Scrivener and his bride. _She's_ what people call a
raving beauty, I suppose. I wouldn't have her in the house at a dollar an
hour. She's a whiner. Had him doing something to satisfy her whim every
minute. I heard him trying to tell her about something that interested
him, but she couldn't take time from herself to listen. His voice had a
note of fatigue in it, already, or I'm not Robeson. I tell you,
Juliet--that's the sort of thing that makes a bachelor vow to stay single,
and he can't be blamed."
"Suppose a bachelor had overheard us half an hour ago?"
"I'm glad none did--but if he had it wouldn't have disgusted him the way
the other sort of thing did me to-day. A brisk little altercation is
nothing, with unlimited hours of friendliness and understanding before and
after. But a perpetual drizzle of fault finding and exactions--would make
a fellow go hang himself. Mrs. Robeson, do you know, you're a very
exceptional young person?"
"In what way, sir?"
"Whatever you do, you never nag. I've an awful suspicion that Judith Carey
nags. You know how to let a man alone when he's in the mood for being
alone. She never does. Carey had me out there not long ago, for what he
called a quiet, confidential talk on some business matters. We went into
what is supposed to be his private room and shut the door. Probably she
came to that door not less than twelve times during that two hours. She
called Carey away on every sort of pretext. Once she got him to do a
stroke of work for her that took up at least ten minutes neither of us
could spare. And she looked like a thundercloud every time I caught a
glimpse of her face. Cæsar!--think of having to live with that sort of
person. No wonder Carey looks old before his time."
"It's certainly unfortunate. But I'm not an exception, Tony. There are
plenty of women who know when to keep out of the way."
"Well, then, they're erratic on some other line, that's all. You're
absolutely the only thoroughly sweet and sane woman I know."
"My dear boy! Remember how snappish I was just this evening."
"I was grouchy enough to match it. I tell you, Julie--the women who don't
talk you to death on every subject, important or trivial, bore you with
idiotic questions or impertinence about your affairs. How do I know so
much about 'em? My dear, dozens of them come into the office every day,
and Mr. Henderson has acquired a habit lately of turning them all over to
me. I earn a double salary every hour I spend that way--wish I could put
in a demand for it. Speaking of salaries, dear"--Anthony suddenly sat
up--"I've no right to be grouchy, for I'm promised another advance next
month."
"Splendid!" She put out her hand, and the two shook hands vigorously
again, like the pair of comrades they were.
"Juliet," said her husband, watching her face closely. "It's been a happy
five years, hasn't it?"
"A happy five years, Tony."
"Do you mean it?" He smiled at her. "You've never been sorry?" Then he got
to his feet and held out his hand again to help her up. "The mortal combat
we engaged in gave you a magnificent colour," he commented, and passed
affectionate fingers across the smooth cheek near his shoulder.
"Sweetheart----" he drew her into his arms--"I may fence with you once in
a while with sharp words for weapons, but--do you know how I love you?"
"I wonder why?"
"It's strange, isn't it?--after all these years. To be really up-to-date,
we should long since have become interested each in some other----"
A hand came gently but effectually upon his mouth. He kissed the hand.
"No, I won't say it. It's a cynical philosophy, and I'll not take its
language on my lips--not with my wife in my arms, giving the lie to that
sort of thing. Julie, we're not sentimentalists because we still
care----"
"Who thinks we are?"
"Plenty of envious skeptics, I'll wager. I see it in their green-eyed
glances. They can't believe it's genuine. Dear--is it genuine? Look up,
and tell me."
She looked up, and seeing his heart in his eyes, met his deep caress with
a tenderness which told him more than she could have put into the words
she suddenly found it impossible to speak.
XXVII.--LOCKWOOD PAYS A CALL
"Did you know Roger Barnes was back?" asked Wayne Carey of Anthony
Robeson, on the evening of the twenty-fifth of June, as the two met on the
street corner from which Anthony was to take his car. Electrics ran within
a few rods of his home now, but they ran only at fifteen-minute intervals
and were difficult to catch.
"No. To stay this time, I hope?"
"Off again to-morrow. Never saw such a fellow--restless as a fish. Been
working all winter in Vienna--off to-morrow on the Overland Limited to
sail Saturday for Hongkong. Goes to do a special operation on the
Emperor's brother or some swell of the sort. He's been doing some mighty
slick operating, according to the medical review I ran across in a throat
specialist's office."
"I must see him. Where is he?"
"At your house now, more than likely. Said he'd got to see you, and if you
haven't seen him yet you're sure to before he goes to-morrow night. By the
way, Anthony, do you know what we heard lately about Rachel
Redding--Huntington? That she wasn't married to Huntington till the night
he died, almost three years ago."
Anthony stared.
"Guess it's straight, too," pursued Carey. "Queer she should have kept it
all this time. Didn't Juliet hear from her at all?"
"Only once or twice, I believe."
"Her father and mother both died last winter."
"Are you sure?"
"The man who told me was a traveller. Said she and Huntington's mother
were coming back to live East again. He was an Eastern man himself--knew
Huntington, and got interested when he heard the name out in Arizona.
'Alexander Huntington's' rather an uncommon name, you know. But what could
have been her motive for keeping everything so still?"
"I've no idea," said Anthony, and let Carey talk on by himself till the
car came. He was unwilling to discuss Rachel Redding's affairs on a street
corner even with Wayne Carey, because she was Juliet's friend. But he had
an idea as to why Rachel had been so reserved about herself. There were
three men in the East whose interest in Huntington's life or death had not
been an altogether unbiased one. He could understand that the girl would
not be eager to declare herself free to them, though the fact of
Huntington's death had reached them soon after its occurrence. But this
other fact--that she had married him only at the last moment--it was
obvious that the sort of girl Rachel Redding was would never make capital
out of that strange occurrence, whatever its explanation might be. That
Roger Barnes knew nothing of it he was quite certain.
He missed Juliet from the corner where she and the boy usually met him,
and hurrying on to the house came upon his wife just as she was leaving.
"Oh, I didn't realise I was late, dear," she said, while Anthony swung his
little son up to his shoulder, eliciting triumphant shouts as a reward.
"Tony, Rachel is here."
"_Rachel?_"
"Hush--yes; she's upstairs, and her window is open. Walk down the orchard
with me and I'll tell you. Her coming, an hour ago, was what made me
forget the time."
"Carey was talking about her this afternoon," said Anthony, strolling by
her side and carrying on a frolic with the boy at the same time. "He'd
just heard a singular thing--that she wasn't married to Huntington till
the very night he died."
"She told me. She's going away to-night, she insists; but I shall not let
her. No, Mr. Huntington wouldn't let her marry him. After they went away
he said he wouldn't take her unless he got well. Tony, he was a fine
character; in our sympathy for Roger Barnes we haven't appreciated him. It
was only at the last that he let her do it. She found out how happy it
would make him then, and she would have it so."
"I'm glad she did--poor fellow. Juliet, Roger Barnes is in town."
"Really?" Juliet stopped, her breath catching. "Oh, Tony----"
"Came day before yesterday--leaves to-morrow night for Hongkong."
"Tony!"
Anthony looked down at her, smiling. "There's a situation for you. Can you
be expected to keep your friendly hands off that possibility?"
"He won't go away without coming to see us?"
"Most certainly not."
"Then he will naturally come to-night."
"It's more than probable."
"Tony, I won't be trying to manage fate--that's what the doctor calls
it--if I keep Rachel here until after----"
"Until after the Overland Limited leaves for San Francisco? Well, fate
needs a little assistance once in a while. I think you may legitimately
persuade Rachel to stay, if you can. What is her hurry, anyway?"
"I can't find out, except that I imagine she's afraid of meeting one of
the men she most assuredly would meet if they knew she had come. She
thinks Roger Barnes is in Vienna still."
"She does? Ye gods! I think my knees will begin to tremble if I see their
meeting imminent. Come, son, let's try a race to the house. I'll give you
to the big, crooked apple tree. One--two--three--go!"
Juliet followed more slowly, thinking busily. Rachel had been very decided
about going back into the city that night. Mrs. Huntington, Senior, was
with friends, who had begged her daughter's acceptance of their
hospitality, and for the elder woman's sake she had acquiesced. Rachel was
a keeper of promises, Juliet knew. And to tell her of the probability of
the doctor's appearance would be a doubtful means of securing her
detention. But if, for any reason, the doctor should fail to
appear--Juliet made up her mind that she would give fate her chance until
nine o'clock that night. If by that time Barnes had not come----
* * * * *
Juliet looked on eagerly while Anthony greeted Rachel. Her friend had
never seemed to her so lovely as now, in her simple black gown,
accentuating, as it did, the deep tone of her hair and eyes. Her face had
gained in colour and contour in the Arizona climate--its tints were
richer. The delicacy of her features was not changed, but their beauty was
greater.
"You've lived much outdoors, I see," said Anthony, when dinner was over
and the three had gone out upon the porch, "and it's been good for you."
"I've even slept outdoors," Rachel told them, "fully half the year; and
ridden horseback every day. I can't quite think how the electrics are
going to seem in place of my gallop on Scot. The people on the ranch where
we were have simply made me do the things they did. The owner was a dear
old gentleman; he gave me Scot. He wanted to send him after me; but nurses
have small use for horses, I believe," she ended, smiling.
"That's the plan, is it?"
"Yes. It's what I can do best, I think. I am to enter the training-school
the first of July, at the Larchmont Memorial Hospital."
"I'll wager tremendous odds you don't," thought Anthony, "in spite of that
confident tone. If Roger Barnes looks in to-night it's all up with your
plans--or make a bigger fight than even you can do. A man who can't stay
in his own town because you are out of it----"
He was sitting--purposely--where he faced the road. He had considerately
offered Rachel a chair with her back to the highway. Juliet was swinging
lightly in the hammock behind the vines. Anthony, talking on about Arizona
and the Larchmont Memorial, kept an eye on the approach to the house from
the corner where visitors always left the car. His watch was rewarded at
length by the sight of a figure rapidly turning the corner and making
straight for the house.
"Now we're in for it," he thought. "From now on the question with Juliet
and me will be how we can most gracefully efface ourselves without seeming
to do it. If I remember this young person correctly she's a little
difficult to leave unchaperoned against her will."
Out of the corner of his eye he kept track of the approaching figure. It
was coming on at a great pace, and in the twilight could be seen looming
taller and taller as it crossed the road and turned in across the lawn,
making a short cut according to Barnes's own fashion, so that the coming
footsteps were noiseless, even to the moment when the figure reached the
porch itself.
"Now for it," thought Anthony, feeling as if the curtain were about to
ascend on the fourth act of a play, when the third had ended amidst all
possible excitement.
"I found the roses blooming just as they used to do, at the side of the
house"--Rachel's warm, contralto voice was answering a question from
Juliet--"only so untended. I think I shall have to come out again before I
begin my work, to look after them."
Anthony did not turn as the step he had been watching for sounded upon the
porch. To save his life he could not help keeping his eyes upon Rachel's
face. Rachel herself looked up with the air of the visitor who does not
know the guests of the house, and the expression Anthony saw upon her face
showed only the slightest possible surprise--certainly no other feeling.
Juliet rose. "Ah, Mr. Lockwood," she said, with a cordiality, sincere
little person though she was, Anthony knew for once she did not feel. "In
the dusk I couldn't be quite sure."
Lockwood's eyes instantly turned to Rachel. That he had known in some way
whom he was to see was evident from a most unusual agitation in his
manner.
"Mrs.--Huntington," he got out somehow, taking her hand, and staring
eagerly down into her face, "I heard you were home, and I hoped to find
you here. I--you are--I am extremely glad----"
* * * * *
Half an hour later Anthony came upon his wife in the darkness of the
dining-room. "Oh, you shouldn't have left them when I was away," she said.
"Little Tony cried out and I had to go. I know Rachel doesn't want to be
left with him to-night."
"Angels and chaperons defend us," muttered Anthony. "I can't stand it
forever to feel a man wanting to kill me for staying by him through a
meeting like this, after three years. I didn't know but Lockwood would
attempt to throw me off my own porch. Give him a chance--he hasn't any,
anyhow."
"It's after nine," whispered Juliet.
"I know it. Roger's taking a terrible risk."
"He doesn't know she's here. But I thought he cared enough for us to----"
"That's what I've been so sure of. He's probably been detained by some
case. He's getting so distinguished, the minute he sets foot in town now
the folks with things the matter with them begin to block his path. I hope
she knows what she throws over her shoulder if she refuses him now."
"I don't see that she's going to have a chance to refuse him," mourned
Juliet. "Do you think he'd ever forgive us if we let him get away without
knowing she was here?"
"Lockwood found it out, somehow. Carey's safe to tell him if he sees
him--and he's pretty sure to, at Roger's club."
"You couldn't telephone?"
"Where? If he can he'll come here, if only to get news of her. She's never
let him write to her, has she?"
"He told me she hadn't when he was here last fall. And she didn't know
where he was."
"Fellow-conspirator," whispered Anthony, "we'll give fate her chance
to-night. If she bungles the game we'll take it into our own hands
to-morrow. But I've a feeling I'd like to let it happen by itself, if it
will."
When Lockwood had gone--which was not until eleven o'clock, in spite of
the way his hosts remained in his vicinity--Rachel stood still upon the
porch smiling a little wearily at Juliet.
"My staying all night has been settled for me," she said. "There was no
way to go."
"Luckily for us," Juliet answered. "Sit here a little longer, dear. It's
such a perfect night, and I know we shall see little enough of you when
you get at work."
Rachel dropped into the hammock. "I should like to lie here all night,"
she said, "and watch the stars until I go to sleep. I've done that so
many, many nights from under a tent flap."
All at once she looked up, her eyes widening. Upon the porch step stood a
strong figure--as unlike Lockwood's gracefully slender one as possible. A
man's eyes were gazing steadily down into hers--determined gray eyes, with
a light in them. The two faces were plainly visible to each other in the
radiance from the open door.
XXVIII.--A HIGH-HANDED AFFAIR
If she had not been standing in the doorway Juliet would have run away,
but she had to welcome Dr. Roger Barnes, a traveler whom she had not seen
for almost a year. Her presence, however, after one glad greeting, seemed
not to bother him much. He turned from her to Rachel, who had risen, and
took her outstretched hand in both his.
"It's been rather a long evening," he said, "wandering around and around
this place, waiting for the other man to go. I explored the orchard and
the willow path, and every familiar haunt. I had to refresh myself
occasionally by stealing up for a glimpse of your face between the vines.
But, somehow, that only made it harder to wait. I had to march myself off
again with my fists gripped tight in my pockets to keep them off that
fellow, eating you up with his eyes--confound him--you, who belong only to
me."
He did not smile as he said the last words, but stood looking eagerly at
her with a gaze that never faltered. She tried to draw her hands away; it
was useless. Juliet slipped off, knowing that neither of them would see
her go.
"Come down on the lawn with me," he said, but she resisted.
"Please stay here, Doctor Barnes," she said, "and please let me have my
hand. I can't talk so."
"You needn't talk--for a while," he answered. He sat down facing her. "At
six o'clock I found out you were here. At eight--as soon as I could get
away--I came out. I told you how I spent the evening. If I had needed
anything to sharpen my longing for you that would have done it--but I
think I had reached about the limit of what I could bear in that line
already. It has been one constant augmenting thirst for a draught that was
out of my reach. I shouldn't have kept my promise not to write you another
day after I had been here this time and heard--what I have heard,
Rachel."
She did not answer. Her face was turned away; she was very still. Only a
slightly quickened breathing, of which he was barely conscious, betrayed
to him that this was not listening of an ordinary sort.
"I shouldn't have said anything could make any difference with my feeling,
to strengthen it," he went on very quietly, after a while, "but I find it
has. I don't try to explain it to myself, except by the one thing I am
sure of--that Alexander Huntington was the noblest and most heroic of men,
and deserved to the full those last few hours of knowledge that you had
taken his name. And I can understand your loyalty to him in wishing to
wear it these three years. But, Rachel, I can't let you wear it any
longer."
She turned her face a shade farther away.
"I am leaving to-morrow night for another year's absence." He spoke as
simply as if he were discussing the most ordinary of subjects. "So I can
see but one thing to do, and that is----"
He got up and came around behind her, standing in the shadow of the vines,
where the light did not touch him--"and that is, to take you with me."
He had not said it doubtfully, although his inflection was very gentle.
She moved quickly, startled.
"Doctor Barnes----"
"Yes, I'm ready for them. You can't raise an objection that I'm not ready
for, not one that I can't meet--except one. And that you can't raise,
Rachel."
She was silent, the words upon her lips held in check by this last bold
declaration.
"You see you can't, being truthful," he said, smiling a little. "If I seem
too confident, forgive me; but I've carried with me all these years that
one look, when you forgot to veil your eyes away from me as you always
had--and always have since then. When I get that look from you again----"
He paused, drawing a long breath. "I don't dare dream of it. Rachel, will
you go?"
She tried to glance at him, and managed it, but no higher than his
shoulders.
"I am engaged to take the training for nurses at the Larchmont
Memorial----" she began.
But he interrupted her joyfully. "You don't say, 'I don't love you'--it's
only, 'I was intending to be a nurse.' I told you you couldn't say it,
because it isn't true. You do love me, Rachel. Tell me so."
Her hurried breathing was plainly perceptible now. She rose quickly, as if
she could not bear the telltale lamplight upon her face any longer, and
went hurriedly across the porch and down upon the lawn, into the
starlight. He followed her, his pulses bounding.
"Oh, give up to me," he said in her ear, his own breath coming fast.
"You've been fighting it four years now--it's no use. We were made for
each other, and we've known it from the first. You stood heroically by
your first promise--you gave him all you could; but that's all over. You
don't have to be true to anything or anybody now but me. Give up, dear,
and let me know what it feels like to have you pull a man toward you
instead of pushing him away."
They had reached the edge of the orchard--in deep shadow; and she
stopped.
"I don't know what I came down here for," she said, in confusion.
"I do; you were running away. It's your instinct to run away--I love you
for it--it's what first made me want to follow. But I can't stand your
running away much longer. Look, Rachel, can you see? I'm holding out my
arms. Rachel--I can't wait----"
For an instant longer she held out, while he stood silent, holding himself
that he might have the long-dreamed-of joy of receiving her surrender.
Then, all at once, he realised that it had been worth all his days of
patient and impatient waiting, for turning to him at last she gave
herself, with the abandon such natures are capable of showing when they
yield after long resistance, into the arms which closed hungrily around
her.
* * * * *
If anybody could have told what happened during the next twenty-four hours
it would have been Juliet, for it was she who took the helm of affairs.
She lay awake half the night, or what there was left of it after the
doctor had come back with Rachel and told his friends what had happened
and what was yet to happen, planning to make the hasty wedding as ideal as
might be. She was a wonderful planner, and a most energetic and
enthusiastic young matron as well, so by five in the afternoon she had
accomplished all that had seemed to her good. Rachel's part was only to
see that her trunk was packed, her explanations offered and good-byes
said, and her choice made of several exquisite white gowns which Juliet
had had sent out from town.
"But I can't be married in white, Mrs. Robeson," she had said protestingly
when Juliet had opened the boxes.
"Yes, you can--and must. This is your only bridal, dear. The other--you
know that was only what the doctor said of it once--'your hand in his to
the last'--the hand of a friend. But this--isn't this different?"
Rachel had turned away her face. "Yes, this is different," she had owned.
"But----"
"He asked me to beg you for him to have it so," Juliet urged, and Rachel
was silent. So the simplest of the white frocks it was, and in it Rachel
looked as Juliet had meant she should.
Only Judith and Wayne Carey were asked down to see them married. To humour
the doctor the ceremony was performed in the orchard, near the entrance to
the willow path. The time afterward was short, and before she knew it
Juliet was bidding the two good-bye.
"I've got her," said the doctor, looking from Juliet to Rachel, who stood
at his side. "She's mine--all mine. I have to keep saying it over and over
to make sure."
"For your comfort," answered Juliet, smiling at them both, "I'll tell you
that she looks as if she were yours."
"Does she?" he cried, laughing happily. "How does she look?" He turned and
surveyed her. "She looks very proud and sweet and still--she's always been
those things--and very beautiful--more beautiful than ever before. But do
you think she really looks as if she were mine? Tell me how."
Juliet turned from him, big and eager like a boy, to his bride, "proud and
sweet and still," as he had said. "I've never seen Rachel look absolutely
happy before," she told him. "There's always been a bit of a shadow. But
now--look down into her eyes, Roger; there's no shadow there now."
But when he would have looked Rachel's lashes fell. "Not yet? By-and-by
then, Rachel," he whispered. Then he turned to Juliet--and Anthony, who
had come up to stand beside her.
"If it hadn't been for you and your home-making this day would never have
come for me," he said. "You have been good friends and true, to us both.
Let us keep you so--and good-bye."
XXIX.--JULIET PROVES HERSELF STILL INDIFFERENT
On a July evening, a month later, Cathcart and a great roll of architects'
paper arrived on the Robeson porch. For an hour Juliet looked and
listened, while Anthony, as he had promised, said not a word to bias her
decision. Cathcart laid before her plans for a new house which were--even
Anthony could but admit to himself beyond praise. From every
standpoint--the artistic, the domestic, the practical, even the
economical, so far as the modern architect understands the meaning of the
word--the plans were ideal. Juliet studied them absorbedly, showing
plainly her appreciation of them.
"It would be a beautiful home," she said at length. "I can think of
nothing more perfect than such a house."
Cathcart looked triumphant. Without glancing at Anthony he produced
another set of plans.
"Just to please myself, Mrs. Robeson," he announced, "I have spent some
interesting hours in trying to show what could be done with this old
house, should any one care to lay out a reasonable sum upon it. Frankly,
old houses never repay much expenditure of money, yet there is a certain
satisfaction in working out the details of restoration and improvement
which makes interesting study. Purely as a matter of that sort I have
fancied such extensions as these."
He laid the plans before her. Juliet looked, bent over them, cried out
with delight, and called upon Anthony to join her.
"Oh, Mr. Cathcart," she said eagerly, "before you proved yourself an
exceedingly fine architect; but now you show yourself a master. To make
this of the old house--why, it's far the higher art."
Anthony glanced, laughing, across at Cathcart, whose face had fallen so
pronouncedly that Juliet would have seen it if she had been observing. But
she was too absorbed in the new plans.
"If we could do this," she was saying, "it would satisfy my best ideals of
a permanent home."
"But, my dear Mrs. Robeson," stammered the man of castles, "consider the
location--the neighbourhood--the rural character of the surroundings."
"I do," she answered, still studying the plans. "I love them all--and the
old home most of all. Ever since I knew"--how had she known? they
wondered--"that a change of houses was a possible thing for us I have been
homesick in anticipation of a change I couldn't bear to think of. Yet I
wondered if we ought to go. But if you can make this of the old home----"
She lifted to her husband an enthusiastic face. His eyes met hers in a
long look in which each read deep into the mind of the other. Then Anthony
Robeson, like a man who hears precisely what he most wants to hear, turned
smiling to Cathcart.
"I think you've lost, Steve," he said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good Fiction Worth Reading.
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WINDSOR CASTLE. A Historical Romance of the Reign of Henry VIII, Catharine
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his marriage to the beautiful Anne Boleyn. The King's love was as
brief as it was vehement. Jane Seymour, waiting maid on the Queen,
attracted him, and Anne Boleyn was forced to the block to make room
for her successor. This romance is one of extreme interest to all
readers.
HORSESHOE ROBINSON. A tale of the Tory Ascendency in South Carolina in
1780. By John P. Kennedy. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by Watson
Davis. Price, $1.00.
Among the old favorites in the field of what is known as historical
fiction, there are none which appeal to a larger number of Americans
than Horseshoe Robinson, and this because it is the only story which
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of the British under such leaders as Cornwallis and Tarleton.
The reader is charmed with the story of love which forms the thread of
the tale, and then impressed with the wealth of detail concerning
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neither time nor labor in his efforts to present in this charming love
story all that price in blood and tears which the Carolinians paid as
their share in the winning of the republic.
Take it all in all, "Horseshoe Robinson" is a work which should be
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THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND. A story of the Coast of Maine. By Harriet
Beecher Stowe. Cloth, 12mo. Illustrated. Price, $1.00.
Written prior to 1862, the "Pearl of Orr's Island" is ever new: a book
filled with delicate fancies, such as seemingly array themselves anew
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all around the pine-girt, lonely shores of Orr's Island" and
straightway comes "the heavy, hollow moan of the surf on the beach,
like the wild angry howl of some savage animal."
Who can read of the beginning of that sweet life, named Mara, which
came into this world under the very shadow of the Death angel's wings,
without having an intense desire to know how the premature bud
blossomed? Again and again one lingers over the descriptions of the
character of that baby boy Moses, who came through the tempest, amid
the angry billows, pillowed on his dead mother's breast.
There is no more faithful portrayal of New England life than that
which Mrs. Stowe gives in "The Pearl of Orr's Island."
* * * * *
For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the
publishers, A. L. BURT COMPANY, 52-58 Duane St., New York.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good Fiction Worth Reading.
A series of romances containing several of the old favorites in the field
of historical fiction, replete with powerful romances of love and
diplomacy that excel in thrilling and absorbing interest.
* * * * *
GUY FAWKES. A Romance of the Gunpowder Treason. By Wm. Harrison Ainsworth.
Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by George Cruikshank. Price, $1.00.
The "Gunpowder Plot" was a modest attempt to blow up Parliament, the
King and his Counsellors. James of Scotland, then King of England, was
weak-minded and extravagant. He hit upon the efficient scheme of
extorting money from the people by imposing taxes on the Catholics. In
their natural resentment to this extortion, a handful of bold spirits
concluded to overthrow the government. Finally the plotters were
arrested, and the King put to torture Guy Fawkes and the other
prisoners with royal vigor. A very intense love story runs through the
entire romance.
THE SPIRIT OF THE BORDER. A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio
Valley. By Zane Grey. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson
Davis. Price, $1.00.
A book rather out of the ordinary is this "Spirit of the Border." The
main thread of the story has to do with the work of the Moravian
missionaries in the Ohio Valley. Incidentally the reader is given
details of the frontier life of those hardy pioneers who broke the
wilderness for the planting of this great nation. Chief among these,
as a matter of course, is Lewis Wetzel, one of the most peculiar, and
at the same time the most admirable of all the brave men who spent
their lives battling with the savage foe, that others might dwell in
comparative security.
Details of the establishment and destruction of the Moravian "Village
of Peace" are given at some length, and with minute description. The
efforts to Christianize the Indians are described as they never have
been before, and the author has depicted the characters of the leaders
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of interest to the student.
By no means least among the charms of the story are the vivid
word-pictures of the thrilling adventures, and the intense paintings
of the beauties of nature, as seen in the almost unbroken forests.
It is the spirit of the frontier which is described, and one can by
it, perhaps, the better understand why men, and women, too, willingly
braved every privation and danger that the westward progress of the
star of empire might be the more certain and rapid. A love story,
simple and tender, runs through the book.
RICHELIEU. A tale of France in the reign of King Louis XIII. By G. P. R.
James. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis, Price,
$1.00,
In 1829 Mr. James published his first romance, "Richelieu," and was
recognized at once as one of the masters of the craft.
In this book he laid the story during those later days of the great
cardinal's life, when his power was beginning to wane, but while it
was yet sufficiently strong to permit now and then of volcanic
outbursts which overwhelmed foes and carried friends to the topmost
wave of prosperity. One of the most striking portions of the story is
that of Cinq Mar's conspiracy; the method of conducting criminal
cases, and the political trickery resorted to by royal favorites,
affording a better insight into the statecraft of that day than can be
had even by an exhaustive study of history. It is a powerful romance
of love and diplomacy, and in point of thrilling and absorbing
interest has never been excelled.
For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the
publishers, A. L. BURT COMPANY, 52-58 Duane St., New York.
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