"Good-Morning, Rosamond!"

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE I 3 II 19 III 24 IV 33 V 49 VI 62 VII 73 VIII 88 IX 101 X 110 XI 122 XII 132 XIII 150 XIV 165 XV 184 XVI 210 XVII 221 XVIII 231 XIX 254 XX 271 XXI 278 XXII 290 XXIII 301 XXIV 310 XXV 323 XXVI 341 XXVII 351 XXVIII 363

[Illustration: (cover)]

[Illustration: (inside front and back covers)]

“_Good Morning, Rosamond!_”

_Lulu Jones Downing_

[Illustration]

[Illustration: “_When one is to have perhaps only one wonderful day, decision how one shall spend any moment of it is important_”

(See Page 24)]

“Good-Morning, Rosamond!”

by

Constance Lindsay Skinner

[Illustration]

Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty

Garden City New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1917

Copyright, 1917, by Constance Lindsay Skinner

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian

List Of Illustrations

“When one is to have perhaps only one wonderful day, decision how one shall spend any moment of it is important” _Coloured frontis_. (See page 24)

FACING PAGE “Mrs. Lee sat in her rocker knitting. Her ball of yarn was flipping about the sward under the paws of a white kitten” 42

“Regarding each other and yielding to the charm of the sunset and the music, they did not observe a black-whiskered man who was crawling through the orchard” 154

“Rosamond saw a man who was presumably in his ‘middle thirties’--a strong, well-built man, with face and hands tanned by years of turning them, unprotected, toward all weathers” 234

[Illustration: “_GOOD-MORNING, ROSAMOND!_”]

“_Good-Morning, Rosamond!_”

Chapter I

Négligés were unknown in Roseborough. Even at seven in the morning, which was Rosamond Mearely’s hour for greeting the new day, the ladies of Roseborough did not kimono: they dressed.

Young Rosamond Mearely might be--as indeed she was--the richest and fairest woman in Roseborough, and the widow of a gentleman whose name the hamlet and countryside mentioned still with the bated breath of pride; but she would no more have dared to appear at breakfast before her housemaids, the imposing Frigget sorority--Amanda, aged forty-nine years “come Michelmas,” and Jemima, forty-seven and three quarter years--in what they would have pronounced (and condemned as) a “wrapper,” than she would wittingly have committed any other irretrievable _faux pas_.

The mother of the Frigget sorority had guided the first adventures of the late, distinguished Hibbert Mearely about the by-ways of Trenton Waters, his birthplace, in the infantile push-carts of his period--that is to say, fifty-odd years before this morning when his young widow slipped a decorous print gown (lavender with black floral design) over her dainty, white roundness and the whalebone and batiste article that confined it, and descended to her fourteen hundred and eightieth solitary breakfast. It was four years since Hibbert Mearely’s departure. His faithful nurse was slowly preparing to follow him; she lay bedridden in Trenton Waters. Her two daughters, who had been brought up to serve him, still dominated his household.

Rosamond saw them now, as the stairs circled to the door of the large living room where summer breakfasts were spread. They were tall, multi-boned women with straight, thin, gray hair--drawn sheerly to a polka dot at the back, which one, or at most two, hairpins controlled--and clad in skimpy, dark, cotton dresses, well starched and designed to reveal every puritan angle. They stood at opposite sides of a long, black table. The table was one of Hibbert Mearely’s antiques (a ticket attached to the foot gave its date and history); its “early Seventeenth” carvings were hidden now by a cloth of gleaming white damask bearing Mrs. Mearely’s breakfast. Rosamond’s glance, by habit, travelled in a direct line between her female grenadiers to the wall where a life-size portrait, in oils, of the late master depended. Outside the wide-open doors, the sunlight filtered through the overlacing trees and kindled the proud red of the dahlias to flame. A little breeze, vagrant and wilful, danced through the garden and set all the leaves to clapping their hands. Rosamond sighed. She flitted through the doorway and down the huge room, sedately, to her place.

“Good-mornin’, Mrs. Mearely, ma’am.”

“Good-mornin’, Mrs. Mearely, ma’am.”

“Good-morning, Amanda. Good-morning, Jemima.”

These salutations never varied. Rosamond spread her old-fashioned damask napkin on her lap slowly with a sense of apprehension. Amanda had her own manner of establishing an “atmosphere.” Out of the corner of her eye Rosamond perceived that she was more unbending than usual this morning.

“I was a’most a-comin’ up to see if you’d ben took sick--it’s five after.” Amanda’s tone was dry and accusative.

“Is it? Perhaps I may have dawdled a little ... I mean,” hastily, “I think one of my laces knotted.”

“Seven _sharp_ was a’ways Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s breakfast hour”--Jemima’s tone was impersonal and final--“as we’d oughter know that cooked and served it to him twenty year, not countin’ the long time of his young an middle manhood when he was trapsein’ the world after them curios an’ antics of his’n.”

“Antiques, Jemima,” the lady of the house corrected.

“That’s wot I said,” stubbornly.

“Your porridge was dished at seven sharp an’ was perfec’ for that hour; but five minutes makes a world of difference in the nature of a hot bowl of porridge.”

“I’m sure it will be delicious, Amanda,” her mistress murmured. Her tone was timid and placating.

“Speakin’ of laces knottin’,” Amanda continued, “Mary Caroline was the only one of us girls that was inclined to fat, an’ maw a’ways made her let ’em out when she took ’em off, nights, so there’d be no time wasted in the mornin’.”

“It was my _boot_-lace, Amanda,” milady protested.

“Mebbe ’twas--an’ mebbe ’twasn’t. It’s loosenin’ ’em overnight that counts--both boots _an’_ stays. An’ so Mary Caroline found--leastways if she didn’t want maw to wallop her for bein’ late--sloth bein’ one of the seven deadly sins maw could not abide. Mary Caroline was a natural temptation to a high-tempered, energetic woman like maw--she bein’ inclined to fat.”

Mrs. Mearely motioned the porridge bowl away with a chill gravity.

“I’d like my toast and eggs now. Of course I do not suppose you mean anything personal, Amanda, by your repeated allusions to your deceased sister’s physique. Nevertheless I may say, without lowering my dignity, that, although I am not thin and--and--er--flat all over like some of Roseborough’s women, I am not fat. I am not even ‘_inclined_ to fat’ as it appears your--er--walloped sister was, according to your description.”

Mrs. Mearely’s attempt to reduce Amanda Frigget, domestic, to a proper sense of her relation toward the mistress of Villa Rose, failed miserably. The haughty eye of the would-be _grande dame_ wavered from that forbidding countenance and weakly sought refuge in the colour-blend of buttered toast with yolk of egg. Alas, she had given Amanda the sort of opportunity which never passed unimproved.

“You’re not fat as compared with _some_, but you’ve got a general curve to you, which is on’y to be expected in the daughter-of-a-farmer’s figure.” Amanda proceeded, uncompromisingly, to make the Frigget position on curves and non-curves even plainer. “Now Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s sisters, both what married small but choice titles, was so lean an’ aristocratical you could count the ridges in their backbones--on’y you wouldn’t of persoomed that way on born ladies. But look who their father was--an’ Mr. Mearely’s father, too! A perfessor an’ clergy that had his descent from the middle ages of Henery Seven!”

“No wonder Mr. Mearely felt he could afford to be condescendin’,” Jemima put in, as she removed the tea cosy. “But I don’t s’pose he’d ever have set his a’most royal foot onto ploughed an’ harrowed groun’, if he hadn’t of seen you that day in the gate of your father’s farm in Poplars Vale. That’s when he forgot about Henery Seven an’ went back to the soil--a man that was past fifty an’ had seen all the museums of Europe!”

“Strange--strange, indeed!” Mrs. Mearely hissed softly, striking a small silver knife into a butter ball with intent to wound.

Amanda took up the theme.

“An’ how did it all come to happen? By the accident of him, a absen’-minded man, takin’ the wrong turn at the cross-roads as he come up from fishin’! The han’ of fate pinted him to Poplars Vale ’stead of Roseborough. An’ there was you, eighteen--an’ allurin’ no doubt, but ’umble an’ uncultured--a-sittin’ on your paw’s farm gate, but lookin’ higher. What a talk it made in these parts! When I says to maw, I says, ‘Mr. Mearely’s goin’ to marry Rosamon’ Cort of Poplars Vale,’ she took to her bed for the day with a spell. Such a shock it was to her to think how him as she’d used to trundle had forgot his station.”

“By marrying a butter-maker?” Rosamond’s voice was sharp at the edges now.

“We said then--maw an’ Jemima an’ me (Mary Caroline havin’ passed beyon’)--we said, ‘We’ll never remember again in this life that Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s fiancy’s mother made _an’ sol’_ the first _roun’_ fancy butter pats in this distric’.’ That’s the way all Trenton Waters an’ Roseborough felt bounden towards the Mearelys. That’s, in special, the way His Friggets felt bounden toward Mr. Hibbert Mearely.”

“No doubt he is very grateful to you both, and is waiting eagerly to reward your devotion”--she paused also at the “cross-roads,” so to speak, ere she gestured a vague direction and concluded--“wherever he is.”

If her inflections were strangely pungent and her phraseology speculative, the angle of vision sought by her too large, cloud-flecked, sky-blue eyes was absolutely right. They gazed ceilingward. Amanda folded her hands across her apron. She also looked upward.

“No doubt,” she repeated, solemnly.

“No doubt;” Jemima echoed her sister’s sepulchral accents, and folded _her_ hands and looked at the same bit of the gold cornice. If they had concentrated on this point long enough in rapt faith--who knows?--they might have materialized there the shade of the departed collector of antiquities to demand of them, sternly, which careless handmaid with intrusive mop had nicked his Florentine gilding.

“The raspberries, Jemima, please. I shall always wonder why it is that ... (cream, please) ... the very persons who wouldn’t for worlds ... (and powdered sugar) ... recall the fact that Hibbert Mearely’s widow’s mother once sold butter ... (are you sure this is sugar, Jemima? It looks suspiciously like salt) ... are the very ones who are always reminding me of ... the _butter, please_.” She finished, tartly.

Jemima hastened to pass the hereditary slur.

“Well, ma’am, I wouldn’t go to say that exac’ly.” Amanda studied the question. “But them what thought so high of Mr. Mearely kind of wants to help you remember what he done for you.”

“Ah! that is it, eh?”

“Yes. An’ you bein’ a widow an’ havin’ to put all his blue blood in the tomb--when you hadn’t enjoyed it but a year an’ four month--we feel like it comforts you to remin’ you that, even if _you_ come off a farm in Poplars Vale, your diseased husban’ didn’t. _No, Sir!_ _He_ come off of Henery Seven!”

An odd little squeak pierced through Rosamond’s damask napkin. It terminated hastily in a cough.

“May I ask, ma’am, when Mrs. Witherby stopped in here yesterday mornin’ did you happen to be wearin’ them _white_ cuffs an’ collar with your lavender ’stead of the black watered ribbon ones as you’ve worn for nigh a year?”

“Yes. Yes, Amanda, I believe I did have these on yesterday--for the first time in the daytime. You know I’ve worn _all_ white with flowers--in the evening.”

“It’s doin’ it in broad daylight that causes remark. Oh, I’m not forgettin’ my place an’ criticizin’. It’s all correc’ enough. You done your eighteen months crape an’ one year plain, then your six month black’n white. Then come your year of lavender with black ribbons, an’ now it’s time for white or even light colours, if you’re desirous, an’ none should objec’. But Mrs. Witherby’s tongue is like a dog’s on a huntin’ mornin’; it’s that easy set to waggin’ an’ anticipatin’. Jemima, you it was overheard her remarks. Be so kin’ an’ repeat.”

Nothing loath, Jemima obliged.

“Mrs. Witherby says, says she, ‘well, you mark me,’ says she, ‘Mrs. Mearely will not remain long a widder. It’ll be Judge Giffen or Wilton Howard afore Christmas.’”

“Oh! the gossip!” Mrs. Mearely snapped indignantly. Amanda nodded sagely.

“It was them white muslin trimmin’s what done it,” she averred. “She says it afore her niece, Miss Mabel, who all Roseborough knows is jus’ a-pinin’ an’ a-languishin’ for Mr. Howard; and Miss Mabel she goes white as your napkin--which ain’t so white, but considerable eggy now you’ve had your sof’ boileds. I could a’ways tell your napkin from Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s wherever I’d pick ’em up--be it in church or tavern--for Mr. Mearely he could comfort his appetite without a smear. But, of course, _he_ was born to refinements. Well, it’s too bad, ma’am, but gossip is what you mus’ expec’ from now henceforth.”

“Yes,” Jemima went on to illustrate, “all Roseborough is a-waitin’ breathless to see what you’ll do nex’--you bein’ the widder of a aristocrat but the chil’ of a farm.”

“Standing, so to speak, with one foot on the throne and the other on the churn?” milady murmured between bites at a large berry.

“Wilton Howard’s too young--he’s on’y aroun’ thirty-five,” Jemima continued. “Though him bein’ a relation of the departed has a sort of sentimentality to it. It’ll be the Judge, if ever she do take unto her another spouse. Him an’ Mr. Mearely was intimate bach’lor frien’s; an’ the Judge is a highborn man, specially on his mother’s side--‘Doubledott’ bein’ one of our proudest names. An’ he’s jus’ fifty-three years old, what is the exac’ age Mr. Hibbert Mearely was when he lifted you from the farm gate to the altar. It’d be a’most like gettin’ married to Mr. Mearely all over again--specially as the Judge not havin’ any property, you’d be livin’ on here with him.”

This graphic prophecy of a second state of connubial bliss affected Mrs. Mearely strongly. She burst into explosive sobs.

“Yes! yes--yes! It would be just the--the same as marrying Hib--Hib--Hibbert Mearely all o--o--over again! And I’m only--only--not quite--twenty-four. Oh--h--h!”

She swept the dishes back ruthlessly, overtoppling the hot water pitcher--Amanda saved the cream just in time--and hid her face on her black-flowered, lavender sleeves with their white cuffs (which, being amorously interpreted by the Roseborough gossip, had provoked this sorrow) and sobbed as stormily and shamelessly as if she were still little Rosamond Cort pouring out the briny aftermath of punishment in the hayrick behind the dairy.

“There, there, ma’am,” Amanda said, gently. “There, there. Who could know better how you feel than His Friggets, what has been to Hibbert Mearely fifty year--mother an’ daughters--all that hired help can be in the life of any highborn man?”

“Who could know better’n us?” Jemima obbligatoed.

“It’s like a sacrilege to you to think of putting any man, even Judge Giffen, acrost the table from you under that portrait. To take a secon’ spouse seems to some natures a’most indelicate. Ma’am, while His Friggets is conductin’ Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s late home on earth, gossip can say no word agin you, for I’ll promise you as no young sheeps-eyed, gallantin’ male critter will ever get inside the walls of Villa Rose to blaspheme your sacred mem’ries. It’ll be the Judge or none--an’ I ain’t decided yet even as the Judge....” She stopped short.

From the little anteroom which connected the living room with the formal dining room came a tinkling.

“A telephone in Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s antic an’ aristocratical home is what I’ll never get accustomed to.” Amanda drew her lips down in displeasure. “_He’d_ never have permitted it.”

“Answer it, if you please, Amanda.” Mrs. Mearely lifted her head with an air that became her well, despite her tears.

“Answer it, Jemima,” the elder sister commanded, noting, with a glitter of satisfaction, that her alleged “mistress’s” eyes flashed angrily. By such subtleties did Amanda remind milady, when necessary, that, while “His Friggets” would do whatever was to be expected of servants in Villa Rose, neither would take personal orders--above all, if given as such--from the farmer’s daughter of Poplars Vale.

“I don’t mind obligin’ you, Amanda,” Jemima responded, with a certain pointedness.

“There won’t be anyone there to answer, if you don’t hurry,” Rosamond said sharply. Perhaps it was the liberating influence of her white cuffs and fichu; perhaps it was because the early morning sun and breeze on a midsummer day have a rapture of their own which is communicable and urges gay defiance of all convention; but, whatever the cause, Rosamond Mearely was aware that, although she had been irked aforetime, never had she felt the oppressiveness of the Frigget sorority as she felt it at that moment. Inwardly she was thinking:

“I couldn’t discharge them. They wouldn’t go. Or, if they did leave, they’d make it impossible for me to live in Roseborough. But if a wicked tramp were to come by and I paid him a lot of money, and he murdered them for me...?”

Mrs. Mearely’s assassination reverie was cut short by woeful wails from Jemima at the telephone.

“Oh! Mercy! Amanda! oh...!”

It was only on extreme occasions that Amanda indulged in profanity. She did so now.

“Jemima! What in all sassafras is the matter with you?” she demanded sternly as her sister reeled into the room.

“Oh! Oh! Maw’s had another stroke! We’re to go to her bedside immejit.”

“Another stroke!” Amanda echoed in a ghostly voice. “It’s the _end_. Poor Maw! _Another stroke!_”

“Oh, poor Mrs. Frigget. Oh, poor Amanda! Oh, poor Jemima! But it isn’t the end. She’ll have lots more.” Rosamond, all tender consternation, endeavoured to console. “It’s only her second, and they always have _three_, at least. Dr. Wells says he knew a patient who had seven.”

Failing to stop their cries by hopeful words, she took practical steps. She ran to the open door and called:

“Blake! Blake! Oh, there you are. Blake, you must harness the mare at once and drive Amanda and Jemima to Trenton. Their mother is ill!”

“Good-mornin’, Mrs. Mearely, mum. Ill, is she? In course, she’s ill,” came in a slow, rumbling voice from some aged masculine out of sight. “She’s been bedridden nigh three year.”

“Hush, Blake. You must not be so unfeeling. She’s just had a stroke.”

“That’s them sleezy, new-style, board-roof cottages. They’d oughter kep’ a green umbreller over ’er bed.”

“It isn’t a _sun_-stroke, Blake! It’s a--another kind. And you must harness, at once, and take her daughters to her.”

“Oh, yep. If the wuss is a-goin’ to ’appen, them two Friggets has got to be thar to see it. Good-mornin’, Amanda and Jemima.”

Blake, gray-haired, sixty, and stooped but hale and ruddyfaced, limped to the threshold.

“So yer maw’s nearin’ ’er end, is she? That’s very sad--I know to a t ’ow you feel--if so be ye’re feelin’ _bad_--coz my rheumatiz is twistin’ me like a peavine this mornin’. I’m four square yards of twinges. ’Owever, I’ll ’arness the mare an’ she’ll get us over to Trenton lickety-split--judgin’ from the way she’s been actin’ sence daybreak. That is, if she don’t fling us all over the bridge.”

“Yes, yes! That’ll do, Blake,” Mrs. Mearely interrupted impatiently. “People could be dying while you’re talking, you know. Hurry, now! hurry!”

“Oh, whatever’ll you do without us? Somethin’s mortally sure to happen!” Amanda moaned, torn between two duties. “Somethin’ a’ways goes wrong in Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s home when His Friggets leaves it. Oh, be sure and sen’ right away for Bella Greenup to tidy up an’ get your dinner.”

“Nonsense, Amanda. What _should_ happen? Nothing has ever happened in Roseborough yet. Nothing ever _will_ happen in Roseborough. Leave everything and go at once to your mother.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Jemima said between sobs. “It’s kin’ of you. If you’ll telephone to Dollop’s Drugs, he’ll sen’ to Bella Greenup for you--him bein’ sweet on her an’ more’n willin’ to take her messages.”

At the end of a half hour Rosamond saw them driven off down the winding hill road, the gray mare snorting and kicking up her heels as if she had not, some time since, reached years of discretion.

“Florence is not acting in the least like a _Roseborough_ mare,” she commented aloud. “She is positively unladylike this morning. Oh, dear, I do hope their mother will get better--the poor things!” Then, in spite of her genuine sympathy, a giggle escaped her. “If it weren’t such a sad occasion it would be rather fun to see Florence kick a fraction too high and roll ‘His Friggets’ down the hill. They are so unintentionally amusing that there are times when I could almost like them if only they wouldn’t call themselves _that_!”

[Illustration]

Chapter II

Unless she meant to clear away her breakfast dishes herself, her first duty was to send for Bella Greenup. She turned her back on both telephone and dishes, however, and ran up the stairs and into her room. It might be supposed that she intended to begin the day’s work by making her bed; but she spared not a glance for its crumpled state. Some secret purpose, brought to definite shape as the carriage had disappeared, possessed and thrilled her.

There was a window seat formed by a huge, carved rosewood chest. Rosamond dropped on her knees before it and began to search through the layers of coloured frou-frous which were neatly sandwiched between pieces of smooth, white linen. Pink muslin bags containing dried rose leaves, and bunches of dried lavender blossoms woven together in loose checker pattern by lavender and white baby ribbons, were tossed among the rainbow flounces of a profuse wardrobe.

She rose presently with billows of perfumed satins and lace flowing over her arm. Her cheeks were rosy not only from her exertions but from the excitement that stirred her small round bosom, and also kindled her eyes till they glowed like the blue sparks of a driftwood fire. She skimmed across the dull-polished dark oak floor to the mirror. This latter was the one bright article among the sombre furnishings of the room. It was a huge thing with an ornate gold-enamelled frame that finished in a top of turrets, flower-twined trellises, and one-stepping cupids. It reflected the room for Rosamond in fan-shape, with herself the Watteau figure in the fan’s centre.

As she unfastened the top button of the black-sprayed lavender gown she began to hum a little song. They were tiny cut jet buttons, and no doubt suggested to her that time could be saved and the adventure hastened by a good pull. Two sharp tugs ripped them all out of the button-holes; but two of the jet balls had shot, like stray bullets, into the unknown, ere the hated garment reached the middle of the room, having been propelled thereto by the farmer’s daughter’s toe.

The gown she selected in its place was of soft satin, thin and sheer as silk, and of a lilac hue. The skirt, made in two panniers and short round train, draped over an Irish lace petticoat. The round-necked bodice and short, close-fitting sleeves were of the lace. From the front of the girdle, silk folds went over the shoulders and hung in sash-ends at the back. It was a frock of costly simplicity, witnessing that the departed collector of curios, antiques, and _objets d’art_ had been no niggard in the matter of supplying appropriate cases for his purchases.

The other gown, shimmering and smelling of pink roses and trailing with silver gossamer, she shook out and hung upon the high back of some medieval Louis’ chair and draped it with linen to protect it from dust. Presently she returned to the mirror to survey, at her delightful leisure, a sight that would have caused His Friggets to swoon with apprehension, so boldly did it register new claims on life and on youth’s inalienable right to inspire love.

The figure reflected was not diminutive. Without being tall, there was height enough, one would say, to insure the eyes a good view of golden horizons and near heavens, and the arms an easy reach to the honeysuckle clusters or the ripe purple plum hanging low by its own weight. The lines were long and not fragile but well knit at knee and thigh, at shoulders and supple waist; the curves were not less sturdy than graceful and sinuous, like the outlines of a young, white, birch tree, where poetic beauty harmonizes with limber, enduring strength. The tenuousness of high breeding, which His Friggets so admired, was wholly absent from Rosamond’s body. The well-made feet looked equal to miles of meadow running; and the finely rounded, firm, white arms would not tire under the pressure of market baskets. Yet there was a daintiness about her--in her postures and her movements, in the set of her throat and of the chin raised to thrust her eager face a little forward--but it was the daintiness of the field, not of the hothouse.

Both _La France_ and the wild rose are roses; both permeate their worlds with fragrance and are something alike in colour, but no one would compare or contrast them for purposes of criticism. One, the product of selection, is the aristocrat of horticulture. The other is the queen of rusticdom, as unspoiled as she is undisputed in her sway, the passing centuries of garden fancies and fads having influenced her not at all. She is not the less lovely because she is sturdy and able to bear wind and weather.

Rosamond Mearely, _née_ Cort--like the wild rose--proclaimed that the cottager’s environs, and not lordly estates, were her native ground. She was a willing little daughter of the earth, with the earth’s promise in her; and her halesome, country-bred beauty challenged with a frank admission that it would have shone as radiantly in a sun-bonnet, patched gingham apron, and bare feet. This, despite its present wrappings of Lyons silk and Limerick lace and its background of some ancient, royal reprobate’s furniture; and also despite the fact that the mirror which imaged the eager, wistful face under its bright hair had once reflected (so ’twas said) the coronets and the _hauteur_ of the princesses of the House of Orleans.

A joyous flush tinted her satiny skin which was innocent of even the knowledge of powder. Thoughts of freedom came to her and made her breath stir quickly. They promised her things vague and splendid and she felt a flutter about her heart like the wings of birds waking for the morning flight. She was beautiful, she was rich, she was young; and for one whole day, at least, she was her own mistress. A laugh rippled through the sombre old curio shop of a bedroom. She swept herself a curtsy and called gleefully to the contented-looking apparition in the mirror:

“Good-morning, Rosamond!”

She fairly danced down the stairs.

[Illustration]

Chapter III

In the living room she paused for a conference with herself.

“Let me see,” she said, aloud. “Amanda said I must send for Mrs. Greenup at once, to manage the house till they come back. So I shan’t do it! I’ll be my own Cinderella--sometimes in the kitchen and sometimes my ladyship. This may be the only day I’ll ever have that is all mine. So it _must_ be--it’s just _got_ to be--_wonderful_! and nobody shall spy on it. What shall I do _first_?”

She dropped into an enormous padded chair and stared thoughtfully at the farthest wall. When one is to have perhaps only one Wonderful Day, decision regarding how to spend every moment of it is important.

Even immersed--as she was--in delicious hopes, she could not remain long unaware that her eyes were fixed upon the countenance of the man who had brought her to Villa Rose. The childish glow, the eager make-believe, which had transformed her into a girl of eighteen again, faded from her eyes. In their place came a wistful gravity, the look of one who has probed and queried and accepted certain harsh facts, yet refused to let them wholly dispel the fancy and optimism which alone can make a life of facts livable. She accosted the portrait.

“You were very good to me, in your way, Hibbert Mearely; but you never allowed me to forget how greatly you had honoured me. It pleased you when I called you ‘sir.’ You didn’t marry me for love of me--you took me as if I were a--a--bunch of wild flowers, to give just the right contrasting touch of rustic simplicity to your fine house. No, not home. It never was a home--only a museum.”

She looked about the large room. It was ornamented with scores of pieces of bric-à-brac, with jars, images, plates, trays, boxes, gathered from all parts of the globe. They were artistically arranged, making pleasant spots of colour, and might have looked as if they belonged there and together--but for the tags. Every article, no matter what its size--even the thimble which, it is safe to say, Mary Stuart never _did_ wear--had a ticket attached to it. Mr. Mearely had spent most of his time, when at Villa Rose, in writing on these tickets, in his small, pointed calligraphy, the fictions of dealers most pleasing to his egotistical and highly artificial mind.

“I have been only another curio with a ticket on--” Rosamond said, accusingly--“the rustic trifle to offset the art of all ages. You even told me that was why you married me and thought I should feel complimented. What higher compliment could a woman desire than to be regarded by her husband purely as an art object? And I agreed--at first. I thought that was finer than just love--the love of farm lads and lasses. But, oh sir, the farm lads and lasses know something more precious than any treasure that has ever come into Villa Rose. Everybody in Roseborough said that the butter-maker’s daughter married you from ambition, but it wasn’t only ambition. It was glamour!”

The wistful, far-away look came into her eyes again, despite the little smile at the corners of her mouth--a smile as if she mocked herself for a past foible, the while her eyes denied that it _was_ past.

“Yes, it was glamour. I had known nothing but humdrum farm poverty--but I believed fairy tales. I thought it would be good to be the wife of the distinguished Hibbert Mearely--to live in Villa Rose among the antiques--among Cleopatra’s knitting needles and Madame Pompadour’s stuffed lizards, with a knob of Charles I’s unwise, not to say wooden, head for the handle of my shoe-horn!”

A short sharp laugh came from her, unmellowed by the spirit which had bubbled in her since His Friggets’ departure. It suggested that, unless she laughed, she might cry.

“There wasn’t a single woman in the district who wouldn’t have jumped at the chance of marrying Hibbert Mearely. So I--yes, sir--I jumped! And you never knew that I wasn’t happy. You never knew because you were not interested to inquire. You of the portrait, there--do you accuse me of ingratitude? Are you saying that you richly dowered a beggar maid who gave you nothing but the beggar maid in return? Let us discuss that. You made me believe it, and I did believe it, until lately. But it isn’t true. I spoiled nothing that you gave me; but you!--I gave you my dreams, all the fairy tales I’d imagined, all my ideals and faith and all that I knew of reverence. But these things weren’t art objects, so you despised them. Well, I suppose you’d say I gave you no gifts at all, because I gave you what you had no taste for! Enough said for my gifts. What do I owe you? Let us talk of _your_ gifts--without glamour--heart to heart.”

Her hands smoothed down the crease in the hem of the satin pannier, and she smiled.

“You dressed me very beautifully and extravagantly; but it was only to delight your eyes--not to make me seem more lovable to you. Love was too common--almost too vulgar--a sentiment to find lodgment in the Mearely breast. I didn’t mind your being fifty-three, sir. That was like being wooed by a prince with powdered hair--say, the Fourth George, ‘the first gentleman in Europe.’”

She nodded emphatically over this.

“Yes, sir; indeed his nickname suited you, too, as well as his nature; for you both had wonderful manners but no hearts at all. What other gifts? Many. I remember, sir, and gratefully, that you taught me all I know of fine airs--how to walk, as if I’d never paddled on flat bare soles through the creeks and meadows; how to talk in drawing-room accents without the ill-bred emphasis of excitement. ‘Don’t rattle the milk pails, my love,’ is what you used to say, when my zest for life keyed my tones above the Mearely pitch and tempo. How you enjoyed seeing people writhe under your ridicule! It put you into a pleasant mood again, presently. You taught me what music to admire, and what to consider with pursed lips and lifted eyebrows; what books, modern and classic, should lie on a cultured woman’s table. But I remember, too, that you taught me these things by means of sarcasm that cut to the bone; and my tears you called ‘squeezing out the buttermilk.’ You had a sort of placid cruelty, sir, that always made the butter-maker’s daughter cringe. And only a few days before you died you told me you feared I was ‘irredeemably _bourgeoise_’--because I had ‘so much emotion.’ And the last gift?”

A tremor of rebellion went through her, and her eyes flashed.

“Villa Rose, and your small, safe fortune! Villa Rose and the Mearely money willed to me in terms that make me a prisoner all my life! So I think, on the whole, I’ve earned my right to this day. I have paid your memory the last jot of respect demanded by Roseborough. For four years I have worn hideous blackish clothes which would have caused _you_ to swoon with horror had the angels allowed you to lean out of heaven to observe me. Now, I am going to be _young_ and dress like a bird of paradise! And--and....”

In a trice she threw off the mood that had held her there. The grave analyst disappeared. It was a young creature thrilling with the joy of life who leaped up and threw her arms high above her head and laughed.

“Do you know what this ‘irredeemably _bourgeoise_’ bird of paradise is going to do now? She is going out into the hedges and the river grass and along the highways; and she is going to twirl her finery about, and shake her hair out in the sun, and call--and call--till her true mate comes to her! And he’ll jump down off his horse--or the wind, or a heron’s back--and he’ll catch me up in his arms, because _he_, also, is irredeemably _bourgeois_! And he’ll say ... he’ll say--‘Good-morning, Rosamond!’ ‘Good-morning, Rosamond!’”

The sound of her name this morning gave her exquisite delight, as if it introduced her to a new being; as if, indeed, she had discovered that this new being, herself, contained in profusion all the elements of the romance she coveted.

She sing-songed her matutinal salutation in the theme of the little minuet she had hummed, from time to time, since her pleasant interview with the Orleans mirror, and danced herself out with it to the garden.

The portrait of the late possessor of this rebellious bit of country bric-à-brac was an excellent essay in flesh painting of the realistic school. It had no psychic qualities. Therefore it did not change its tints or take on shadows when Mrs. Hibbert Mearely, renouncing the life of an art-object, wafted out on rustic love-adventure bent. The morning sun, so kind to the fresh countenance of the farmer’s daughter, dealt very sincerely with the gentleman in the picture. Its arrow rays, shot across the wall, lent neither warmth nor softness--only pointedness--to the long, thin head, and the nose, chin, and lips that were all long and thin and curved. Nor did the sunshine kindle the prominent, cold, pale eyes which looked out with condescension upon a world of humanity that mattered little, collectively or individually, to the self-contained self-sufficiency of Mr. Hibbert Mearely, aristocrat and amateur collector of antiques.

One long, thin hand held a small gold-painted box from which James II was supposed to have pecked his after-dinner comfits. With a fine impartiality, the other hand rested on the head of a cane of English oak and silver, said to have been given to William of Orange by Mary, his spouse. Indeed, she may have given it to him for, as all history knows, the intense but plain-faced lady put her Stuart pride in her pocket and wooed her dour Dutch Bill, assiduously and submissively from A to Z, before she finally convinced him--to his belated joy--that they were two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.

It may not be amiss to mention here (in whispers) that the distinguished dilettante--whose taste and knowledge of arts past and present had been that of an amateur and a gentleman without vulgar taint of professionalism--had once (only once and _never again_) sought the opinion of an expert on his collection. This “brutal person,” as Mr. Mearely had characterized him on the only occasion thereafter, when he permitted his name to be mentioned in his presence, found the Orleans mirror and the Louis chair to be of the _periods_ claimed, but doubted that princesses had ever looked in the one or kings sat in the other. He approved the jade Buddha and certain bronzes, potteries, and two pictures; but as to the rest, he had said, amid detestable chuckles:

“Well, sir, my advice to you is, don’t ever charge the public admission to your private bazaar--Villa _Bizarre_, eh?--for the law would be down on you for obtaining money under false pretences. And I can promise you that all your ‘royal’ pepper pots and powder puffs and poodles and _petits pois_--if they sold for what they’re _worth_--wouldn’t bring in enough to pay your fines.”

“I have not a _poodle_ in my collection,” Mr. Hibbert Mearely retorted with icy dignity, and showed the “brutal person” the door.

Perhaps it was not strange, therefore, that little Rosamond Cort, equipped by Nature from the beginning to be a connoisseur in happiness, should have found out that the crown of wifehood bestowed on her by Hibbert Mearely was something less than royal, and that the joys which had glistered to her through the window panes of Villa Rose were golden only on the surface.

[Illustration]

Chapter IV

Down the hill and down the valley, where the crossroads pointed east to Poplars Vale and west to Roseborough, and the low, gray stone bridge with its mossy ooze led over the winding river toward Trenton Waters, three miles north, stood a stone tower. In it an old ship’s bell hung, which, so report said, had once rung meal hours and lullabies and other clock stations for a captain and crew whose gory barque flew the “Jolly Roger.” The aged pensioner, who collected the tow-path tolls, rang the strokes of the hour on this bell from six A.M. until six P.M., and, so closely did the low, curving hills advance to smile upon each other from both sides of the running water that they made a channel for the sound--like a great, twisted, golden horn--so that the bell-tones, rung out at the crossroads, were heard at Roseborough and at Poplars Vale and even rolled their echoes, when the wind was kind, upon the town of Trenton Waters.

Nine o’clock! Rosamond heard it pealing as she reached the terrace.

“I must hurry to find whatever it is I am looking for,” she said, “because my Wonderful Day won’t wait. It will move on, hour by hour, just like any other day.”

The house was on a jut of the hill, sheer above the gravel road and midway from the summit. The road must make a long detour about the grounds of Villa Rose ere it could continue its progress round and over the hilltops and on toward more modern and populous districts of Old Canada. At the foot of the incline was the village proper, occupying three streets in triangle about a combined courthouse, police station and gaol, the latter seldom visited even by the constables. On one street corner the post office stood, flanked by a few small houses. The other two streets shared between them the business buildings of Roseborough; such as Bilkin’s meat market and hardware store; Miss Jenny’s millinery and dressmaking establishment; George Dollop’s drugs, stationery and lending library, with John Dollop, plumber, and James Dollop, undertaker, adjoining, and Horace Ruggle of the telegraph office next door; and Brandon’s stables and feed store.

In going over the hill’s brow and on to the vague unknown, the road led past Charleroy College whither the lads within twenty miles came to acquire knowledge. The residential portion of Roseborough, comprising about sixty houses and gardens, spread about the hillsides between the village and Charleroy.

The sun fell aslant over the garden and the orchard, as if indeed it had cast a golden net about Villa Rose to snare the willing lady thereof in a witchery from which she might never escape. To decide that this was to be the great day of her life, a day of splendid adventure, was one thing; to make it so--to make any day a day of adventure in Roseborough--was quite another. Pondering ways and means of conjuring up romance, she fluttered about among the blazing dahlia beds like a huge lavender butterfly.

“Oh!” She stopped suddenly. “I shall not deserve my Wonderful Day if I don’t take Mrs. Lee her flowers and her fruit, as usual.”

She ran back to the verandah and picked up a willow basket containing stout gloves and shears and returned to the flower beds. She lingered only a moment or two among the dahlias. Beyond their haughty glory lay the rose garden, a radiant and random half acre spilling forth every tint and perfume known to the rose family. Here Rosamond’s shears went to work busily. She found delight in the task, for she hummed again the little minuet theme which she had recomposed into this day’s salutation to herself.

When one is young, not only with the fearless years but with the brave desires of youth and eager for fairy tale happenings, so that every other sentence begins with “I wonder!” one must talk; and if fate has set one in a high and lonely place with no young, imaginative twin soul to companion one’s dreams, then one must talk to oneself--not merely in silence but with the uttered phrase. Rosamond talked to herself habitually.

She was musing aloud now:

“I wonder how it would feel to own all this--Villa Rose and its gardens--with love, and then to lose it--and love, too. Mrs. Lee did. I’m afraid I couldn’t be sweet about it, as she is.” She concluded presently that in such circumstances she would even feel resentful when flowers were brought to her from the garden that had once been hers.

She pictured Mrs. Lee in thought as she would see her presently--seated in her bit of garden, knitting, or perhaps indoors, lovingly sorting and dusting the precious (and, it must be confessed, prosy) manuscripts written by her husband during his forty years as professor of literature at Charleroy. She would hear the gentle voice greeting her lovingly--not because she was the rich Mrs. Mearely but because Mrs. Lee instinctively greeted all the world lovingly. Under the white hair and dainty, white lace cap, the kind eyes, which had seen seventy years of life--with its human sun and shadow--go by, would beam out of the delicately wrinkled face with a delight in the flowers’ beauty and fragrance as spontaneous and young as youth itself--the spirit which discounts time because its habitation is with the good and the eternal.

“Maybe it is because she never thinks of herself that she has never found out that she hasn’t things any more.”

Mrs. Lee’s ability to be happy, even after fate had bereft her of everything, was a subject full of unusual interest for Rosamond this morning. By some art this lonely woman, past her seventieth milestone, managed to make every day of her life her “_wonderful_ day.” The song of her “Good-morning!” came out of a deep-toned, divine joy which neither age, poverty, nor grief could blur. The wistful look was in Rosamond’s eyes again as she passed out of the rose garden and into the orchard on her way to make her daily offering.

The orchard lay higher than the garden and the house. Rosamond went on up rustic steps, made of earth and roots, that led between irregular lines of pear trees weighted to the ground with their promise of brown and golden fruit. She made her way to a huge cherry tree, ran nimbly up the ladder, and covered the bottom of her basket with large, red-cheeked, white cherries; then, jumping down, she hastened on up the remaining steps into a small grass plot surrounding a tiny cottage. A beech tree took up its full share of the grounds and, close beside it, as if in friendly converse, rose the rustic, vine-clad top of a well with wet bucket hung high on the roller.

Mrs. Lee sat in a rocker beside the well, knitting. Her ball of yarn was filliping about the sward under the paws of a white kitten whose smudgy face betrayed a nature so obsessed with the entrancing amusements of a woollen tangle that the duty of the daily ablution was wholly forgotten.

“Oh, Mrs. Lee, I’m late; but here they are.” Rosamond held out her basket.

“Good-morning, Mrs. Mearely. How you spoil me, my dear! What lovely roses--oh, and dahlias!--dahlias of the very hue of life itself, the unquenchable crimson flame. How bravely and confidently they give themselves to the sun and blend with its rays! And cherries, too!”

Rosamond laughed.

“Now, Mrs. Lee, how can you pretend to feel such delighted surprise when you knew perfectly well that I’d bring them to-day just as I always do?”

“Ah, my dear, that is the very secret of happiness.” She paused to pick up a dropped stitch, and Rosamond, eager for data on this subject above all others, asked quickly:

“_What_ is the secret of happiness?”

“Why--don’t you know? It is to anticipate only what you know will surely happen. Then your every desire comes to pass. And the surprise you feel is not so much surprise, after all, as a kind of charmed wonder that life is so beautifully arranged.”

“_Is_ life beautifully arranged, Mrs. Lee?” Rosamond took the basket from her friend’s lap, where it interfered with the stocking’s progress, and set it on the grass. She sank down on the broad, rustic seat which surrounded the well’s rim.

“Is it _not_? I am sure you feel that it is. To you, in particular, in spite of the one great grief, life must seem like a fairy tale. I must pause in discussion of this infinite theme to remark upon your appearance, my dear. You look ravishing this morning. What a beautiful frock! I know that it has been hard for you to put away the last black ribbons. Although it is just what he would wish, it seems to you like wilfully forgetting the beloved one.”

She laid a comforting hand lightly for a moment on Rosamond’s. Rosamond, remembering the manner in which she had discarded the black-garnished, lavender dress, drooped her head quickly to hide alike the little blush of shame that tinted her cheeks and the wicked twinkle that brightened her eyes.

“It is so fortunate,” Mrs. Lee went on, “that there are no ‘styles’ in Roseborough. In Roseborough all your lovely frocks will be as fashionable now as when you bought them, four or five years ago. Miss Jenny says that she does not know what this generation is coming to, because, even in Trenton Waters, they are beginning to ask whether a garment or a ribbon is ‘in style’ before they buy it. Miss Jenny says that she has seen some of those so-called stylish hats, and garments of various kinds, and that she is willing to take her ‘solemn oath in court’--as she expressed it, being very much moved--that a few scissor-snips would have laid the whole in ruins. ‘Mrs. Lee,’ she said to me, ‘when Jenny Hackensee sews a bow on even a child’s hat, or a bone button on the band of a genteel woman’s flannel petticoat, my _conscience_ is satisfied that it will _never_ come off!’ Poor Miss Jenny. She fears that the Roseborough ladies may forget her worth and run after follies. My dear husband used to say that that trait was one of the charms of Roseborough--namely, the loving regard each person in the community has for the general _morale_.”

“Yes, that trait _is_ very marked in Roseborough.” Again Mrs. Mearely’s drooped head hid a twinkle.

“It rejoices me to see you in that dainty lilac and white. It is just as if the fragrance and tints of spring had lingered to make midsummer more bewitching.”

“Are you going to make me vain again to-day, as you always do?”

“Nonsense, dear child. Does expatiating on the beauty of a rose or a brook make it vain? Beauty is one of heaven’s choicest gifts, and is always to be admired gratefully. How foolish must any fair woman be who allows herself to become vain--as if the beauty admired were _her_ possession exclusively, and not a free gift to the eyes of all beholders! She might as reasonably be conceited about holding up a candle in the dusk.”

Rosamond put out a hand and stopped the knitting for the moment. “You were going to show me how perfectly life is arranged. I need to be shown.” She laughed.

“Perhaps I did, too, at your age. And I was. For I married a remarkable man and life became for me at once very simple and large--something like the process of Nature’s unfoldment under sunlight. Professor Lee’s spirit was just that--a mellow sunshine, which made for growth in those who lived within its radius. A bright and searching spirit it was; for it revealed to you the weeds as well as the grain, but in such a way that you were not hurt or humiliated; your only feeling was a sense of freedom, of relief that a danger had been pointed out, and that you had therefore escaped it.”

“Perhaps it would not be so difficult to give up one’s faults if one were told about them in that way. One would have no reason for trying to excuse them.”

“Ah, that was it exactly! He always said that when you deprived people of the feeling of personal possession in their errors you took away their only reason for clinging to those errors. But for this egoism, we would all see clearly enough how indefensible are many of the traits we justify. My husband would have refused outright, if he could, to believe there was any evil in the world at all. He _did_ insist that it was no true part of any person. That was why he could help others so wonderfully in their moral struggles, because he never censured, never expressed a personal anger, only pointed out the wrong as if it were--as, indeed, he regarded it--an outside thing trying to fasten itself on the unsuspecting individual. He used to say that moral victories over temptation were all-important--because they registered something permanent, a degree of progress won--but that defeats, though pitiable, were not deeply important, because they were of the moment only--the next hour _might_ see victory; _some_ hour _must_ see it.”

“It must have been wonderful for his students to be trained by him--I mean, to be taught first to look at life and themselves by a man who had such a deep faith within him. But weren’t you always busy keeping bad people from taking advantage of him?”

[Illustration: “Mrs. Lee sat in her rocker knitting. Her ball of yarn was filliping about the sward under the paws of a white kitten”]

“Sometimes; but far less often than you would think. I came to see that this spirit of my dear husband’s, so far from bringing deception and imposture upon him, really contained its own protection against these things. Those who were unworthy of his interest soon eliminated themselves. He never seemed to guess why they went--but saw them go and wished them well.”

“To live for nearly fifty years with a man like that might make me also believe that life is beautifully arranged. But I am not convinced this morning.”

“You are wilful!”

“I know it. There will be only twenty-four hours in this day and I need at least twice that.” She paused.

Mrs. Lee smiled as she said: “You flit from one subject to another like a bee after honey! My mental wings take slow and reasoned flights. I cannot follow you. What am I to make of your last inconsequential spurt through the air--that, for you, life would be rightly arranged if this particular day could have double hours? If so, why?”

Rosamond laughed.

“Don’t let me give you ‘nerves,’ Mrs. Lee. I know I do lack sequence, and that, to the life companion of a professor of literature, must be very trying. I can begin things wonderfully and I know the ending I _want_; but I can’t fill in the middle part. The middle is just dots and dashes.”

“Principally dashes,” Mrs. Lee smiled.

“Principally. This time, though, there _is_ a connection. To-day is to be my _Wonderful_ Day. So, if life really is beautifully arranged I must find it out before to-morrow. And even a forty-eight hour day is hardly long enough for one’s _only_ Wonderful Day.”

“Oh, youth, youth! With all life before it, it must still invent limits for itself and tragic ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and ‘perhapses.’ Why must to-day alone be wonderful? _Every_ day has its wonders.”

There was no answer for a moment; then Rosamond leaned over and kissed the elder woman’s cheek--a fragile bit of pale pink and ivory modelling, faintly impressed with many tiny lines. She knew that she could not uncover to Mrs. Lee’s eyes all the remote reasons for her mood of this morning. She who had worn her weeds in loving sorrow and resignation must not be told of the young heart beating its rebellious tattoo for long irksome months, under crape and plain black, black and white, and lavender with black trimmings--nor of the hoydenish kick which had cast the last stage of woe from her forever.

It seemed to Rosamond, then, that the cynic touch of disillusionment, and not the mere passing of time, was what aged; and that, according to such calculation, she was years older than Mrs. Lee. Twenty-four’s responsibility was to guard the _couleur de rose_ for Seventy! Her thoughts culminated in the inward exclamation:

“It makes a difference, even in one’s _age_, what sort of a man one marries!”

Aloud, she said:

“You see, I called this my ‘Wonderful Day,’ and put on this frock to celebrate it. So I must _make_ it wonderful, mustn’t I?”

“Yes, indeed, my dear, and all the midsummer fairies will help you,” her friend answered.

Mrs. Lee was placidly and patiently unmingling her kitten and her wool, which had revolved and resolved themselves into one untidy ball with a miewing centre.

Two sounds broke upon the lull in conversation.

Near by clattered the hoofs of the letter carrier’s pony rounding the hill’s turn to the front gate. Far down by the river the old bell rang its song of ten o’clock into the mouth of the golden horn valley, and the tones--muted but round and perfect--floated up across the hillside gardens and carried, even here, their separate theme dimly above the murmurs of wind-rippled leaves and dripping bucket.

“Morning, Mrs. Lee. Morning, Mrs. Mearely, ma’am.”

Mr. Horace Ruggle--who was the mail carrier twice daily when he was not the telegraph agent, and _vice versa_--blinked perspiringly over the gate. Mr. Ruggle was stout--deliberately and tyrannically stout, no doubt his equine would have said, had there been a bit of speech instead of a bit of steel in his mouth--and whatever he did was done with gusty effort.

“Good-morning, Mr. Ruggle. Is it possible that you have a letter for me?” Mrs. Lee queried, putting her knitting aside and rising to the rare occasion. Rosamond ran forward to receive it.

“One for you and one for Mrs. Mearely.” Mr. Ruggle put the letters into Rosamond’s hand. “Yours has come quite a ways; but Mrs. Mearely’s is just from Poplars. It’ll be from her folks, likely. Mebbe her mother’s took sick or her sister’s children’s caught a epidemic; or, more likely yet, has had a accident with that new farm machinery.”

“Oh, dear, oh, dear, I hope not!” Mrs. Lee looked upon him with gentle disapprobation as if she considered his attempts to rival the literary imagination of Edgar Allan Poe wholly out of tune with a midsummer morning in Roseborough. “Do tell me there is nothing of the sort, Mrs. Mearely, I can’t enjoy my own missive until I know. Mr. Ruggle has alarmed me.”

“Telegrapher and postman,” Mr. Ruggle wheezed, mopping his huge cheeks, “I’m the Bad News Syndicate. I made that anecdote first along in the ‘nineties,’ when the newspaper at Trenton joined the news syndicate and gave me the idea; but it’s a joke that’s always good. Back about six years ago, I added something to it that’s made it even better. It’s this: ‘If I carry bad news and don’t know it, who carries worse and knows it?’ Answer: the undertaker.’” He took his own time and told it to the bitter end despite Mrs. Lee’s polite, but none-the-less quite marked, attempts to prevent the sombre jest’s completion.

“Yes, yes, Mr. Ruggle. You are fond of your wit, we know; but while you are entertaining us, think of the impatient ones elsewhere waiting for their letters.”

“Right you are, ma’am--impatient for their doom, never thinking as how what they don’t know won’t hurt them.” Mr. Ruggle drew his pony’s head out of the greenery about the fence. “Bad news from Poplars?”

“Oh, no, not at all.” Mrs. Mearely gave him a nod that meant dismissal.

“It is only a line from my sister, Mrs. Lee, saying she can’t come to me for a week.”

“Should think you’d be looking in your own envelope, ma’am,” Mr. Ruggle hinted to Mrs. Lee. “It’s come quite a ways.”

“Not just now; I must find my other glasses first, so I shall wait some time.”

“Well, _you_ may, but _I_ can’t!” The nonplussed Mr. Ruggle masked his disappointment with a facetious air. “Good-day, ladies.” The over-freighted pony jogged on up the hill.

“Dear, dear, I wonder how many thousand times Mr. Ruggle has repeated to me that unpleasant ‘anecdote’ of his, as he insists on calling it.” Mrs. Lee shook her head, with a mild perplexity that any one should evince a taste for such humour.

“Dreadful person!” Rosamond concurred. “Wouldn’t you suppose that an ordinary sense of the fitness of things would keep a fat man from being morbid?”

Mrs. Lee laughed heartily.

“I’m afraid I have been guilty of a tiny fib. Although I generally use my other glasses for reading, I do not positively require them. Still I do feel that I should not be _compelled_ to share my mail with Mr. Ruggle.” She slipped a knitting needle under the flap and opened the envelope deftly. Presently a murmur of delight caused her guest to say:

“No epidemics or accidents in _your_ letter, either! I heard you purr.”

[Illustration]

Chapter V

“It’s from Jack--our Jack--and he is coming home!” Mrs. Lee’s deeply set, dark eyes were shining, her cheeks flushed; her voice, keen-toned with happiness, denied her three score and ten years.

“Oh, I hardly dared to believe it when he wrote months ago that he would come! But he _did_ mean it--the dear, dear lad. Listen: ‘I will walk in upon you on the morning of the fifteenth.’ The fifteenth? why, that will be to-morrow! To-morrow morning! Oh, think of it, Mrs. Mearely! I, too, am to have my ‘wonderful day’; and it is to be to-morrow!”

“Who is coming to-morrow? It should be a remarkable person indeed to inspire all this joy.”

“Oh, he is! But you shall see for yourself. It is Jack Falcon.”

“And who is Jack Falcon? His hawk-like name makes me none the wiser!” Rosamond laughed in asking.

“Oh, you will not recall him at all. You must have been a small child when he went away. Oh, dear, I am so excited! To-morrow morning! Come in with me, dear friend, and do help advise me what preparations to make. And let me chatter, too; for, really, if I cannot let out some of this exhilaration in words, I fear I shall just puff and puff and go up like a balloon.”

“No, you won’t, for I’ll hold on to you!”

“Oh, come in, dear, and help me--advise me.”

She drew Rosamond’s hand through her arm.

“I shall love to help in anything that makes you so happy. And to-morrow, early, you shall have fresh flowers and fruit--and everything that Villa Rose can supply. If only Amanda and Jemima were there to cook things! But they went to Trenton for the day,” she added, not wishing to cloud Mrs. Lee’s joy by a recital of His Friggets’ sudden sorrow. “But there! _I_ can cook! I’ll bake a cake. It will be fun to do it.”

“Oh, my dear! will you? Oh, think of that!” Mrs. Lee fluttered in ahead of her. “I must decide which room to give him.”

“You haven’t any room. He’ll have to sleep in the well!”

“Ah! I have it! yes! I’ve just thought that I can use the little room as a dining-room and give Jack the dining-room because of the two sun windows looking down toward the river. He will want a sunny room to work in.”

She led the way into the dining-room where light and colour reigned even in the woodwork and draperies. Purple, pink, and blue morning-glories, burdened with bees, peered in at the broad, low windows.

“To work?” Rosamond repeated interrogatively.

“Yes--I haven’t told even you yet. It has been such a secret! It is the professor’s manuscripts. I have arranged them. Oh! it took months to sort them. Look.”

She drew aside the scrim curtains before a low bookcase. The shelves were packed with notebooks and loose pages covered with small, even writing, all lying in neat piles.

“Sit down, my dear, and let me tell you all about it.”

She pressed her guest into a little wicker chair trimmed with rose chintz, and then sat at the table, herself, with half a dozen of the manuscripts before her. Marking a place with her forefinger, she continued:

“You see, since my dear husband went away, these have been my companions.”

“He must have written a great deal that no one else knew about. Why were they never published?”

“Ah, that is the secret, dear! They _will_ be published. These are all thoughts of his, fruits of experience, little jottings on life and human character as he had observed them, descriptive and philosophical essays: the result, as he said, of having been taught faithfully and diversely by youth for forty years.”

“Of being taught by youth!” Rosamond repeated. “Oh! what things youth _could_ teach if age would only let it.” Her eyes sparkled.

“He often spoke of it in that way, as if _he_ were the pupil, and a very fortunate one, of all the hundreds of boys who passed through his hands. And I know that he hoped, in these writings, to give back to his boys--in their maturer life, when they could appreciate it--some of the gold of their youth.”

“Did he care so much for all of them?”

“He cared for every living thing. In loving any individual it was _all_ life that he loved with all its potentialities. It came to me that if I could only publish these notes and essays I would thus extend his influence although he is no longer personally here. I wrote to several of the boys about it. (I must still call them ‘boys,’ although some have their gray and their bald spots, no doubt--and their whiskers!)”

“So Jack Falcon, dear filial soul, is bald and whiskered,” Rosamond murmured. “I might have known it.”

Mrs. Lee, examining the manuscripts, in a search for some special article or paragraph, did not hear her.

“Some of the boys were interested, and some I thought were a trifle indifferent; but Jack wrote that he would come home to help arrange and edit the scattered notes into coherent form. He said he was willing to give a year to the task, if need be. And--think of it--he was ever so far away in southern Europe at the time! Somewhere in those excitable Balkans.”

“The poor old thing was probably scared to death in the Balkans and grasped at the opportunity to get to a quiet spot,” went through Rosamond’s mind, but she said, aloud: “He has a good, loyal heart, evidently, and deserves that I bake him a cake.”

“Indeed he does. Though he was a dreadful cake-thief as a boy. I had to wrap my cakes in a towel and hide them in my bonnet box. He would go barefoot on long tramps through the valley and then come into the house, after we had retired, and eat up everything. The dear boy!”

“He wouldn’t have done it a second time with _my_ cakes! The idea of crawling in through windows at midnight hunting for food! _I’d_ ‘dear boy’ him!”

Mrs. Lee laughed.

“Oh, dear, how I _am_ rambling on! It is the excitement, and not knowing what to tell you first. But I fear that authentic news of Jack Falcon could never be grouped in _orderly_ fashion, for he himself was a very disorderly, lawless person. But _so_ lovable!”

In chattering breathlessly, as she was, her slender fingers had been searching rather inefficiently among the leaflets; but now it appeared that she had found what she wanted.

“Here’s his letter, pinned to this little prose poem about Roseborough.”

“He writes poems about Roseborough?”

“Oh, no, no! It is the professor’s. You see I copied the little gem about our dear old town and enclosed it when I first wrote him about publishing. I wanted it to awaken the home desire in him. He has never married--it is too bad. Wait ... oh, here it is. He says:

“I remember that names and dates never stayed in your head, Mother Lee, even simple Anglo-Saxon names. So I won’t burden you with the extensive and excruciating hereditary title of the royal personage who just now employs me at a handsome salary in laying out a recreation garden for his peasants. You would weary and faint before you reached the end of it! Suffice it for your pride to know that I have given to this royal personage the little article about Roseborough. It came about, naturally, one day in the garden that I read it to him. He was charmed with it, touched. So I, of course, let him keep it. He has translated it into his own jawcracking language [‘Jawcracking’ is in brackets--the naughty boy!], and has made an illuminated copy which hangs in his music room where he spends most of his time.

“There, my dear! Is not that something to be proud of? To think that my dear husband is even helping unpronounceable personages in those dreadful Balkans!”

Rosamond’s own cheeks were rosy from sympathetic thrill and she joined warmly in the elder woman’s delight.

“Oh, Mrs. Lee, how lovely! I should think you would be so proud that you would refuse to speak to poor commoners like us! You have known that for weeks and never told it! _I_ should have gone up and down Roseborough with a trumpet.”

“Oh, you must not tell it even now! I wish to keep it until the right moment, when I can give it out in such a way that all Roseborough will feel that the honour does not exalt _me_, in a personal way, but is theirs as much as mine.”

Rosamond cocked her head, impudently.

“Afraid Mrs. Witherby will scratch?”

“No, you naughty girl! But Roseborough, having the communal spirit so strongly, does not take kindly to personal exaltations. I have learned to respect this sensitiveness.”

Rosamond’s eyes twinkled again, as she listened to Mrs. Lee’s charitable paraphrase on local jealousy.

“What do you suppose it could have been, about Roseborough, that appealed to the Balkan person?” she asked. “Try to imagine Roseborough in the Balkans!”

“Do you know I, too, wondered about that at first? Then I saw how natural it was--and felt that I had been stupid not to comprehend it at once. What _should_ appeal to those poor, sad, explosive Balkans so much as Roseborough’s peacefulness? They must grow very tired of the continuous gun-popping and broken glass, and long for the ‘twelve hours of dreamless sleep’ to which Professor Lee alludes in the article. I always think that the sound of windows, or even glass tumblers, breaking is such a sharp, perturbing noise. I particularly dislike it. And then, too, the pieces of broken glass, flying through the air or scattered in profusion about the roads, are really dangerous.”

She was adjusting her glasses, so did not see the sparkles of merriment in Rosamond’s eyes.

“The article is short--only a few hundred words--let me read it to you. It is entitled” (she paused--dwelling lovingly on the written word before she uttered it) “‘Roseborough.’ Listen.” She repeated “Roseborough.”

“Here, where all hearts are tender and sincere, and no harsh word is ever breathed aloud, I will spend my days--be they few or many. Roseborough, thou art the other name of Happiness! Thy fragrance is a spiritual sweet that exudes from fadeless petals. Thy calm days are the flower, and thy velvety, star-veined nights of twelve hours of dreamless sleep are the leafy stem, of my perfect Rose of Content. I am happy indeed to be a busy bee plying my simple art at the centre of this sweetness. For what is my art--and all art? What is the art of pen, brush, chisel, and melodic strain? These are but parts of the great Art of Life, namely the distillation of love. If Happiness be thy other earthly name, dear Roseborough, thy ‘new name’--written in the heavens--is Love. To every seeker of harmony, thou art his end of journeying; to every wanderer, his home.

(Signed) PH. AUTOCRITUS LEE, 21st June, 1895.

“He did not even initial all that he wrote; but he must have felt himself that this was especially fine--of course, as a professor of literature, with degrees, he would know that about his own work as well as about another’s--for he signed it in full and dated it. Except the first name,” she added. “He never signed Phineas but always used Ph. instead, saying that Ph. was short for philosophy and so was he, _short_ of it, in spite of all his profound cogitations.”

She sat gazing at the faded handwriting, though the tears, that slowly formed and coursed her finely wrinkled cheeks, entirely blurred the lines for her.

“‘Here where all hearts are tender and sincere.’ To think that he wrote that about Roseborough nearly twenty years ago, my dear! And it was just as true then as it is now.”

Rosamond put both her arms about the older woman’s neck and leaned her cheek against hers.

“His faith saw the beautiful truth of things, nothing else. It was the same quality he loved best in Jack. He used to say that Jack’s faith was like the morning lark. Nothing could keep it from soaring and singing.”

“Then he is the right person to edit those papers and you have reason to be happy.”

Mrs. Lee looked down into Rosamond’s eyes with unwonted solemnity.

“Mrs. Mearely, I am going to tell you something now which, in days to come, you will hear from many others. Then you will remember that it was I who first told it to you--here, in this little room. Professor Lee was one of the world’s great and original minds, though the world has not yet found it out.”

“Dear Mrs. Lee, I am sure he was.”

“While Jack, of course, agrees with me about that, he feels that Professor Lee’s highest value was of another quality. He writes somewhere in this letter--wait; yes, it is in this one--mum-m-m.” She buzzed softly over the lines, hunting for the passage. “Ah! here it is:

“I think that to lay stress, in a preface, upon the vastness and originality of Professor Lee’s intellect would be a mistake. Besides, in these careless days, the words have been misapplied until their meaning is nil.”

She looked up from the letter. “He means by that, dear, that while the words are _truly_ applicable to Professor Lee they would fail to make him so conceived of by the reader; because they have been used noisily by persons of no judgment to describe men of shallow attainments--like some of those unfortunate foreign professors, for instance, who are so pathetically askew about everything. Poor things. It was the electron that set them all off. My dear husband used to say that the atomic theory, though purely materialistic and proving nothing in the world, was nevertheless not inimical to scientists’ sobriety and dignity, but that, when they lost the atom, they lost their heads and their shoes and their shirts as well! The electronic theory proved too exciting for them. He would say to me: ‘My dear, they should have held on to the atom. It was much the safer toy!’ When I saw the other day that radium has shown that matter disappears altogether, I wondered what the poor things would do now. They must be dreadfully disturbed.” She paused, shaking her head from side to side in sympathy.

“What else does Mr. Falcon say about Professor Lee?” Rosamond called her back, tactfully, to the main point.

“Ah! none knows better than Jack that Professor Lee was secretly a very great man. He goes on to say:

“He thought and said the things which all good and loving men have thought and said, and in much the same way. Because like them, he had discovered the truth of those things through living it. That was what made him priceless to us. He was a Sympathy--a refining and strengthening animus--which endured and went with us to meet life. The world of letters, science, and philosophy will hardly note these memoirs, perhaps; but if the day ever comes when greatness is measured by goodness--as _he_ measured it--and hope, faith, and charity form the lens of the scientist’s microscope, then his name, like Abou ben Adhem’s, will lead all the rest!”

“You can see by that last phrase that Jack considers Professor Lee to have been far in advance of his time as a thinker.”

Rosamond did not speak at once. When she did, she said:

“Yes, one can see plainly what he thinks, and also what he _feels_--which is more important. I think he is a very nice man, your Mr. Falcon; and this afternoon I will bake him a _marvellous_ cake. He deserves it.”

Mention of food brought Mrs. Lee back to the immediate present and its problems.

“Oh, my dear, how good of you! I shall send for Bella Greenup to cook other things. But there is something even more important than food.” She paused and patted her lips with her forefinger, evidently cogitating deeply.

“What?”

“Roseborough--dear, sensitive Roseborough. How shall I present my Jack to Roseborough so that everyone will feel his homecoming--and the book, and all of it--to be a communal event and not merely a selfish, personal pleasure of mine? _That_ will require some planning. Yes, it will need some quite subtle planning.”

She folded her hands on the pile of notebooks. Her absent gaze turned to the window where the splashes of purple and pink morning-glories vignetted a bit of sun-smitten river. She was thinking hard.

[Illustration]

Chapter VI

Rosamond regarded her with eyes a-twinkle and presently interrupted her meditation to ask:

“What did Roseborough think of him before he went away?”

Mrs. Lee sighed.

“That is what adds to the difficulty. The truth is that Roseborough hardly knew him. Jack did not care for Roseborough! It seems incredible, but it is a fact. Jack did not care for Roseborough--I mean, the people. He was an orphan and a poor lad of whose beginnings we knew little. He came to us because, in his wanderings, he had met a Charleroy man and heard from him of my husband. He had been tramping about the farming country, year after year, tilling, sowing, reaping--whatever outdoor work he could get--and saving his pennies to put toward an education when he should find just the right instructor. As a child he had been with gypsies.”

“Gypsies! What adventures!”

“Yes, his mother, a young girl of excellent birth, had run away and married a poor artist and been cast off by her proud family. They suffered the hardship of poverty, and Jack was soon left an orphan. Whether he joined the gypsies or they stole him I don’t remember, but he was with them for awhile. At one time his mother’s relations found him and offered to bring him up, but he considered the restrictions of their home too irksome. After two years of it, he ran off and wandered about, earning his way, as I have told you. I shall never forget the night he came to us--it was a rainy, autumn evening--a black, splashing night. There was a loud knock on the door and, when we opened it--for I had followed the Professor, holding the candle (we did not have electric lights in our day in Villa Rose)--there stood a dark, tall, sturdy-looking young man, with long, black hair and the largest and blackest eyes I’d ever seen; and, what’s more, he stood there on two bare feet, and he had no coat, only a gray woollen shirt, belted into dark, fustian trousers turned up above his ankles.”

“You were frightened, weren’t you?”

“Hardly that; I was more amazed. He said--and his voice was mellow and attractive--‘You are Professor Lee and I have come to you to be taught.’ My husband asked, ‘What do you wish to be taught?’ And Jack said, ‘I can read and write and keep a merry heart under all skies; but I wish you to teach me whatever men must know to make them good and wise.’ Then my husband said, ‘Come in, and I will give you dry clothes and something hot to drink.’ Jack answered, ‘Oh, as to that, the weather and I are friends. It never hurts me.’ Well, my dear, he came in and we attended to his needs and gave him a room for the night. Of course he was not ready then to enter college, so my husband gave him private instruction. And he seemed to take it for granted that he could live in our home so we let him have the little room off the living-room....”

“The little room? Which do you mean?”

“Oh, that is all changed now, of course. Mr. Mearely--when he bought Villa Rose--had it enlarged and built out, taking in all that bend of the verandah. It is your music room now. Jack was a good deal of trouble, you may know!” She laughed. “But he loved my husband and was constantly showing his gratitude, so that I never minded when he upset things.”

“And he didn’t like Roseborough? You could forgive such sacrilege?”

“One forgave Jack everything. He made very few intimates. Indeed, I doubt if he had any besides ourselves. He loved Nature, books, and solitude. He was elusive and shy, I think. For instance I remember that one day while we three were chatting over a cup of chocolate we saw dear Mrs. Witherby and her aged uncle--the late Reverend Dr. Cumming-Shaw of Trenton Waters--drive up to the door. As I turned back from greeting them, I saw one leg of Jack’s fustian trousers and a bare foot disappearing over the back fence. The worst of it was, he had taken the cake with him and I had nothing but crackers to offer the poor dear old vicar, who died almost immediately after of bronchitis. It was really whooping-cough.”

“Wicked, careless lady! They weren’t crackers. You gave him dog-biscuit by mistake and he barked himself to death.”

Mrs. Lee shook a stern forefinger at her irreverent guest.

“You say shocking things. What I mean to show by my little anecdote is that Jack ... well ... that was, in general, Jack’s attitude toward Roseborough.”

Rosamond burst out laughing.

“His attitude? A barefoot kick over the back fence? Oh, Mrs. Lee!”

“How very naughty you are this morning! To twist my words so! I shall always maintain that it was shyness which made Jack avoid all intimacy with those who would have received him for my husband’s sake. They did know, later, that he had left the college abruptly, just because the desire to wander was so strong in him; and that, too, after Professor Lee had succeeded in having him appointed to teach minor subjects. They were most indignant--even those who did not know him at all.”

“They might have left it to Professor Lee and to you to be indignant.”

“Oh! but you see, in a matter of that kind the communal spirit of Roseborough was affronted. And, alas, it will be remembered. All that must be overcome, and Roseborough must take him to its heart. How shall it be managed?”

To manage the communal spirit of sensitive Roseborough was no light undertaking. Old head and young head pondered in silence.

“If they could come together in some wholly unexpected way, without personalities, and not as Roseborough and Jack Falcon, who shook the dust of Roseborough from his feet sixteen years ago! If only they could meet under other identities and, having no memories, each immediately find the other’s true self!”

“Like a fairy prince and a fairy kingdom. Oh, yes, that would be lovely. But,” the gay, mocking light danced within her eyes again, “even if life _is_ ‘beautifully arranged,’ it is not _so_ beautifully arranged as all that!”

“What would _you_ suggest?”

“Well, I think that--since he _can’t_ come as a fairy prince and discover Roseborough’s true nature and, in turn, be discovered as a human symbol of all Roseborough’s day-dreams--which is what you would like, you writer of fairy tales”--(she paused, with wrinkled brow and pursed lips) “I think you will have to make it the very opposite of all that, and lay stress on the fact that this returning wanderer _is_ the very same Jack Falcon who _did_ run away, but who has now come back to dear old Roseborough with bells on, and all of them ringing! And then Roseborough will be beside itself with delight at the opportunity of welcoming home its distinguished prodigal son. Emphasize the point that he has deserted kings’ palaces for Roseborough and they will all turn out to greet him.”

“Yes! Yes! You’re right. Roseborough _would_ enjoy that view.”

“How will he come?”

“By the morning train to Trenton Waters. I know he will want to walk home from there--the old walk he loved--down the river path. He should arrive between ten and eleven, easily. What do you think of this? To gather all our dear friends here to meet him, at a sort of informal breakfast?”

Rosamond clapped her hands.

“Oh, yes! I knew you’d think of something clever in a moment! Make it one of those breakfast-lunch affairs with delicious cold things to eat, and have it set out in the garden in a semicircle about the well, so that the big tree will shade them all. Mrs. Greenup can do all the cooking for it this afternoon. I will run home and telephone her that you want her. And do let me bring over enough of that old Mearely damask to cover the tables.”

“Yes--yes. I shall be so grateful for everything. Oh, dear! I _never_ was in such a flutter! I do believe that I never, _never_ was in such a flutter! How shall I let them all know?”

“I will telephone to all those who have telephones. And--oh! a splendid idea! We will ask Mrs. Witherby to drive about to those who have no telephones, and ask them to come. Then she will feel that it is really _she_ who is arranging everything, and that will help tremendously.”

“Yes, yes--dear Mrs. Witherby. In a sense, her nature epitomizes our sensitive little town. One must not take it by surprise--that is, not deliberately. How fortunate that dear Jack has given me at least a day’s leeway! If he had walked in on me to-morrow, without notice, I doubt whether I could ever have truly convinced them that I had not known of his coming and kept the secret from them perhaps for weeks. Quite innocently I might have caused discord in Roseborough!”

“I think it would be nice for you to come to Villa Rose this evening for an hour. Now, don’t shake your head, I know you go to bed when the first star peeps out. Some of us will bring you home at eight, if you like. This is my idea, and it is a very good one. I will ask Mrs. Witherby to come over with Corinne and Mabel for a round or two of cards with Dr. and Mrs. Wells--and Judge Giffen and Mr. Andrews. Wilton will come, too. Just those few--oh, yes, and Dr. Frei also; he can play for us. I can say that I wanted a few friends about me this evening, since my sister has disappointed me. That will seem very natural to them. And you can take the occasion, just at the right moment, to talk about Mr. Falcon and to tell about the book and the royal person--all in that unselfish, tactful way of yours. They will all be pleased, and Mrs. Witherby will set the pace for Roseborough. Nobody dares gainsay her.”

“How thoughtful you are! My dear, you have forgotten nothing. It is really you who will have made my Jack’s homecoming a success. And _you_ have just called _me_ unselfish! The word belongs to _you_, dear.”

“No, I’m not. I’m not! I’m--I’m jealous.” Suddenly her eyes misted and her lip quivered. Protest, passionate and clamorous, surged through her and out at her trembling mouth. “Oh! must _I_ wait till I am seventy to have a real, Wonderful Day? Nothing--nothing but make-believe.”

“My dear child, what is the matter?”

Rosamond’s fingers tightened on the hand which had gently taken hers. She turned almost fiercely upon Mrs. Lee as if she challenged fate, or an enemy, in this benign old lady who was regarding her now with some perturbation.

“Will nobody ever come to _me_ till I’m old--_old_--_old_?”

“Will nobody ever come to you?” Mrs. Lee repeated, puzzling.

Tragedy rushed on, interrupting her.

“This is my Wonderful Day--my only, one, Wonderful Day. And somebody should come--_he_ should come....”

“He? Oh, you mean Jack.”

“I _don’t_! I dare say he’s nice--a thoroughly good man. I’m glad that you’re glad, and all that. But _I’m_ not glad! No, I’m not! I think it’s an outrage. The gray, the bald, the whiskered! Roseborough is full of _them_ already. Another of those is an outrage!”

“My--dear--child! _What_ is an outrage?”

“That another oldish man is coming to Roseborough! I want a fairy prince--or a beggar--or a tramp--if only he is _young_! He can come to the back door in bare feet and fustian, or in rags and patches. I shan’t mind what he wears or how empty his pockets are, if only he is young--young--and can laugh out loud and say ‘Good-morning, Rosamond!’”

“My--dear! You go so fast; and tears and laughter follow each other so rapidly that I am all in a whirl. But if you think my Jack....”

Rosamond broke in impetuously:

“Do you hear that? Ding--dong, ding--dong. It is eleven o’clock and nearly half my only Wonderful Day has passed already! I shall run away now and do all that I have promised--telephones, cakes, linen, Witherby, everything! But every moment of the time I shall be saying in my heart: ‘It is an outrage that another gray, bald, whiskered, middle-aged, prosy _old_ man is coming to Roseborough! It is an outrage!’ ... _Why couldn’t he be young?_”

Before Mrs. Lee could gather herself into composure after a sudden violent hug and as sudden and violent a release, her mercurial friend was dashing through the gateway into the grounds of Villa Rose.

Mrs. Lee sat down and gave herself up to reflection.

“‘A gray--bald--whiskered--outrage!’ Is that what she said? Dear, dear. What _can_ have given her the notion that Jack...?” She murmured. “To be sure I _did_ say that some of our boys are past middle life now, but I’m sure I didn’t say that Jack....” [She broke off her musing to pat her sooty kitten smartly. “No, no! naughty kitty! You are not to scratch the table legs!”] “Such a rebel cry for youth! Nay, it was more; it was an unashamed cry for a young man! Yet we all thought hers such a wonderful marriage for a farm girl. But perhaps it wasn’t, after all. Do those who live by the soil need the cling of the earth in all vital things? Why there! what a mate she might have made for my Jack if....”

Her perplexed expression changed suddenly into a glow and a smile as if her questioning thoughts had accidentally discovered something so unexpected that she hardly knew what to make of it.

“If? Why, there _is_ no ‘if’! She is quite free! It may be difficult for Roseborough to believe that its Hibbert Mearely has really passed away from it to a better place--for, of course, it seems almost disloyal to suggest that even heaven is a better place than Roseborough--but the truth remains that Hibbert Mearely _has gone_.” After contemplating this calamitous but none-the-less statistical fact, she added, “And it would almost seem as if that April-hearted child he married realizes it and is”--she cast about for a word and presently decided upon--“resigned.”

[Illustration]

Chapter VII

Ding-dong.

The last stroke of eleven drummed softly through the thick leafage of the orchard. Rosamond sped down the path, as sure-footed as if she wore no other heels, or soles either, than the ones she had come into the world with, and by which Mother Earth had held little Rosamond Cort of the Poplars Vale farm in close acquaintance until the fancy butter-pats had reduced poverty and inspired ambition.

She executed faithfully the commissions she had given herself. After having entranced “Dollop’s Drugs” via telephone, by sending him to inform Bella Greenup--the lady of his heart--that her culinary art was in requisition, she called for the number of that important gentlewoman, whose nature--as Mrs. Lee had said--epitomized Roseborough.

“Good-morning, Mrs. Witherby.”

“Who is it? Oh, of course; it is Mrs. Mearely.” The answer came back in rather high accents and the over-emphasized impressiveness that commonly garnishes the slim utterances of self-importance. “I was saying to Corinne not five minutes ago--actually, my dear Mrs. Mearely, not five minutes ago, or _ten_ at the _most_--‘I think I shall drive round to Mrs. Mearely’s this afternoon.’ Yes! that is exactly what I said to Corinne _not five moments ago_.”

“How--er--remarkable! Then it is fortunate I rang up; because I shall be out all afternoon and would be so disappointed if I returned to find that I had missed you.”

“Indeed? Where are you going?”

“Ah! you may well ask what I am going to do.”

“What? What? A secret? (Be quiet, Central, I’m talking.)”

“A beautiful secret, but I’m going to tell _you_ about it now. It is Mrs. Lee’s secret and she has asked me to let _you_ know of it first. If she had a telephone she would be telling you about it now herself. However, she said that she felt sure you would allow me to be her messenger.”

“Oh, my _dear_ Mrs. Mearely!”

“One of Professor Lee’s old pupils--oh, of years ago--is coming back to Roseborough to-morrow morning. Yes. Oh, very unexpected. A tremendous surprise! And Mrs. Lee is inviting you and Roseborough to breakfast at eleven to-morrow in her garden to help her welcome the prodigal home.”

“Oh! How exciting! But who _is_ he?”

“His name is Falcon--Jack Falcon.”

“Oh! no one _I_ ever knew, evidently. Jack Falcon?”

“Yes, Falcon is the name--one of them; the other, of course, being Jack.”

“Falcon?--Jack? Stop!” (dramatically--as if Mrs. Mearely were running from the instrument at the other end.) “Isn’t that the man who literally decamped from Roseborough years ago?”

[“Waiting?” Maria Potts, the Central, always intoned her official query at brief intervals through Mrs. Witherby’s telephonic monologues and delighted to cut her off, which she always did, as soon as the conversation ceased to interest Miss Potts herself.]

“Yes--er--that is--I understand he _did_ leave Roseborough some years ago,” Rosamond answered.

“Falcon? Yes. I’m sure that is the name. We never encouraged the Lees to talk about him after he went away, though they, no doubt, would have liked to make us believe he was doing well. They were idiotic about him when he _was_ here. (Be quiet, Central!) How extraordinary of Mrs. Lee to be giving a breakfast to _that_ person! While he lived in Roseborough, he _ignored_ Roseborough; and he ran away from it _just as soon as ever he could_.”

Rosamond saw--or heard, rather--that hers was not to be so easy a task. She summoned all her diplomacy and continued:

“It is because of all this that Mrs. Lee is calling on you to help her. She feels--er--dependent on your generous heart to mellow the heart of Roseborough. It seems that Mr. Falcon has come to a realization of what Roseborough and--er--incidentally, Professor and Mrs. Lee--did for him.”

“Well! I should _hope_ so,” Mrs. Witherby broke in--it was always difficult for her to remain silent and allow another to talk--“but I certainly doubt it. Why, I’ve seen him climb a _thorn hedge_ to avoid meeting me on the highway. I have always made it a point to stop the boys, especially when I saw them dawdling about the countryside, and say a few pointed words to them about wasted opportunities. (_Be quiet, Central!_) But I don’t believe I ever once caught _that_ uncouth, hedge-leaping youth. I can’t imagine _him_ coming to any good.”

“Life--the years--age, you know--have greatly changed him. He has come to feel that, but for his training here in Roseborough, he could never have made his” (she elongated the next two words) “great success.”

“What’s that? What’s that you say?” Mrs. Witherby shook the instrument in her excitement. “Success? _What_ success?”

(“Waiting?”)

(“Be quiet, Central! Be quiet, I say!) What success?”

“You are to hear all about _that_ this evening. I told Mrs. Lee I should ask you and the girls and the Wellses, the Judge, Mr. Andrews, and Dr. Frei--and Wilton, of course--to come in for cards and a little supper. My sister has disappointed me. So I shall be all alone, unless you come. I shall coax Mrs. Lee to come, too, for an hour--though she never goes anywhere in the evening. Then--with that inimitable tact and sympathy of yours--you can lead her to tell us all about Mr. Falcon’s achievements in Europe.”

“In _Europe_? Good gracious!”

“Yes. Of course, I only gathered odds and ends about it, because Mrs. Lee is so retiring and seemed to feel that to tell of the old pupil’s honours might appear vain on her part....”

“Oh, _dear_ Mrs. Lee! Why _should_ she feel so? If this Mr. Falcon has won honours abroad, Mrs. Lee can hardly consider his return in a _personal_ light. _I_ consider it entirely a _Roseborough_ matter.”

“There! Do you know I felt that you would? I told Mrs. Lee so. Isn’t that remarkable?”

“Did you? _Did_ you? My _dear_ Mrs. Mearely! But don’t you yourself consider that it is a Roseborough matter?”

“I do. Yes--I do.” Her tone was judicial. “However, I won’t say anything more to Mrs. Lee about that. I will trust it all to your tact and sympathy, when you see her this evening, here. Won’t that be best?” Sweetly.

“Oh, entirely! Oh, yes! Oh, certainly! Leave it _absolutely_ in _my_ hands. Dear Mrs. Lee! I always know exactly how to manage her. In fact, my dear Mrs. Mearely, I sometimes say that that is my one great gift; (_Will_ you be quiet, Central?)--er--my one great gift is managing people, _especially_ in emergencies.”

“All Roseborough admits that, Mrs. Witherby. It is a wonderful gift; but not your only one, I’m sure. So we can rely on you this afternoon to carry the breakfast invitation to those of our dear friends who have no telephones? That means, chiefly, the Gleasons, the Montereys, and the Pelham-Hews.”

“And the MacMillans, and the Grahams.”

“Yes, and the Wattses. If _only_ they all had telephones, I could spare you the trouble. Really they _ought_ to have them put in, for their friends’ sakes.”

“Ah! now, _there_ I _don’t_ agree with you! No, I really do _not agree_. The telephone is a little luxury, like electric lights--and--er--modern plumbing--to which those are entitled who can afford them, and whose heads will not be turned by possessing them. Like ourselves, dear Mrs. Mearely. But what is permissible luxury in one home is wicked extravagance in another. (Maria Potts! If you say ‘Waiting’ to me again while I am talking, I shall report you!) If persons in the MacMillans’ straitened circumstances were to have a telephone put in, I think all Roseborough would resent it. I am convinced that _I_ should! And when one knows--as we all do--that the Gleasons can hardly manage to keep their boy at Charleroy College! As for the Pelham-Hews, with their small income and those seven simpering girls on their hands! Well, I, for one, _dare_ not imagine what all Roseborough would say if we heard, to-morrow, that they were piping water to the second floor--and wallowing in enamelled tubs! No, my dear Mrs. Mearely. In the Witherby home a stationary bath-tub is a refinement; in the Pelham-Hew home it would be an immorality.”

It was at this point that Miss Potts deliberately disconnected “Roseborough one-eight” from “Roseborough two-one” and turned deaf ears to the latter’s indignant demand for “the manager at Trenton.”

Rosamond came to the door sill of the living-room again and drew a deep breath of the breeze-stirred fragrance which enveloped Villa Rose on this perfect midsummer morning. She sighed.

“Oh, Roseborough, couldn’t you make a milady of the little butter girl from Poplars without making her--Milady Prevaricator? What is it--you, there, Mr. Golden Sun, who sees everything; you, shining old heart-searcher, tell me--what is it makes so many poor humans twist and trick when it is their blessed privilege to speak the plain truth? Did you laugh long ago, Mr. Sun, when you saw the little, barefoot butter girl birched for telling fibs?--and did you know that some day she would put on silk stockings and satin shoes and have to learn to use something called ‘tact’--first, because the rod of a certain fine gentleman’s sarcasm was merciless toward any feeling that frankly revealed itself, and secondly, because--marvel of marvels!--most people, it seems, prefer deceit? Heigh-ho! How the old pool in the south meadow is shining among its reeds at this very moment!”

She laughed, and the wistful shadow which had darkened her eyes disappeared.

“At any rate, I’ve managed Mrs. Witherby so that dear Mrs. Lee can continue to believe in the beneficent spirit of Roseborough. Roseborough will open its arms to her Jack Falcon instead of tearing off his hair--that is, if he still _has_ hair. B’r’r’r, but I am a-weary of old men!”

She gathered up her breakfast dishes, and took them into the kitchen. The kitchen closet yielded a blue-checked all-over apron of Amanda’s. Rosamond literally dropped herself into it at the neck. She pinned it up in front so that she could not fall over it. The back she did not bother about but let it trail. After washing the dishes, she set about the cake-making. This was not so simple as she had expected. It appeared presently that, in a few years of miladying, one could forget even such native feminine knowledge as pints, pecks, and egg calculations.

“This is absurd!” she exclaimed, indignantly. “I can’t have forgotten! Why, I made much better cakes than Mrs. Greenup does. I shall have to find a cook book.”

A thorough search of every shelf and drawer in Amanda’s domain yielded naught in literature but a few almanacs, and a tract entitled “Howl, Sodom!” This last, she knew, belonged to Jemima, who had surreptitiously attended a revival in Trenton Waters during the spring and had been roundly scolded for it by her elder sister, for whom the Church of her fathers was sufficient. Mrs. Mearely surmised that Jemima had hidden this leaflet of grace in the clove pot because no cranny of her bedroom was safe from Amanda’s prying.

“Horrid nonsense!” She dropped it into the stove. “There! I’m not going to have that Howl Jemima stuff in _my_ kitchen. No cook book? Of course, not! His Friggets’ boast that they never even measure anything, because they are such born cooks! What shall I do?”

She spent five minutes in dark despair. Then a light broke upon her. It was a light with humour in its flash, evidently, for she giggled.

“Now, I wonder if there is a cake recipe in the old cook book written by that Portuguese woman, Countess Lallia of Mountjoye, who catered to the Prince of Paradis so attractively that she never lost his affection?”

She was soon rummaging recklessly among the old volumes on the lowest shelf of the glassed bookcase. Each book or collection of leaves was in a leather binding and bore a tag, telling its name, date, and presumed history in Mr. Hibbert Mearely’s fine flourish. Memoirs, missals and Latin parchments of all sorts and sizes--some said to have been in popes’ and princes’ pockets--were tumbled out on the floor, while irreverent Mrs. Mearely hunted for information on practical cakemaking to serve Mr. Falcon’s palate.

“Ah ha!” she cried, gleefully. “Here it is!” She scrutinized the tag attached to some sheets of parchment in a green leather binding (stamped with the Mearely crest). The parchment bore characters in black India ink and each page was ornamented by a coloured margin of very badly painted fishes, birds, bunches of fruit, and other delicacies. There was even one little creature on a platter which may have represented a stuffed suckling pig, or a mulatto baby _au jus_, with its mouth pouting with prunes. The countess, by her own confession, had wantonly tossed toxic and gaseous particles together and then dared indigestion to murder love. Most of her gluttonous recipes bore this introductory note:--

And upon thys day, beinge of ambitious mynde to pleasure the gracious appetyte of milorde, the Prince of Paradis withe delicate dyshes of newe raptures, I didde herewythe devyse and prepare and with myne owne handes styrre the essences thereof, thys--“puddynge,” “sauce,” “souppe,” or whatever it might be.

So well had his fair one pleasured, devysed, and styrred to feed Dom Paradis’s earthly appetite that it was easy to believe the last legend of their love; namely, that, in dying, he had left her his jewelled belt--no doubt as a grateful remembrance from the princely “tummy” it had adorned though not restrained, and which she had kept so well lined.

“Contessa, if love and greed kept pace in your little affair, your hearts must have been overflowing with sweet spices and _goo_; for you smothered your food in them. I think a plain, boiled potato would have been a chastening experience for you both.”

Rosamond was sitting on the floor, tailor fashion, in the centre of a scattered ring of tagged leather cases and books of all sizes, with the countess’s illuminated parchments spread on her knees. She turned several pages of death-defying sauces, before she came upon the welcome phrase “I didde devyse a cake”--or “a goodlie heartes cake”--as Contessa Lallia y Poptu de Sillihofo Sanza Mountjoye preferred to describe it.

Wrote the Countess:

On thys day, beinge the same of a most warme myd-summere day, I dydde persuade milorde husbande to waite upon his highness and so to goe forthe and dydde sende unto milorde the Prince of Paradis, who is in alle weatheres mye beloved kinsmanne and friende in exile, to come unto me to taste of a cake....

“Oh, you wasteful woman, to use all those eggs!” exclaimed Rosamond, in reading the list of ingredients. “You must have passed over the first-born of the hen houses of Mountjoye like the destroying angel over the Egyptians. A piece of butter as big as milord’s fist, she says; that is, half to three quarters of a pound. Figs, raisins--so ‘thatte they dydde cover mye two handes.’ That’s the way Amanda measures--by hand. All born cooks do. Contessa, I believe this is the original Lady Baltimore cake--except that it is ever so much richer, and peppered with spice and ground perfumes, which I shall omit with the ‘oil of beaten milk,’ which is merely melted butter. No wonder he died, your Dom Paradis. You oiled his goings for him, and slid him down where all breakers of the commandments go. You were not only a Portuguese, you were a Portu-grease.”

She read on and presently repeated the lines aloud with little murmurs of laughter.

Thys cake dydde so pleasure mye deare Dom Paradis thatte he therewythe expressed a greate love for mye person; whych he dydde declare to be beauteouse beyonde compare, and manny tymes dydde kysse me, and wysh milorde the Earl myght nevere return, and dydde suddenlye falle into a greate jealousie, and beseech me to vowe thatte I would no cakes make for Mountjoye, and dydde aske and importune me to saye if he be stille so younge and handsome thatte I do love him, I beinge twentie yeares youngere than milorde Dom Paradis. Then sayde I thatte I would bathe and dresse mye hearte for hys delights, but at this he cryde oute and would not and--when he had eaten alle my love-cake--Mountjoye dydde enter.

“Twenty years younger! and was Mountjoye old, too? Poor Contessa! You and I both, it seems, must cater--and caker--for old men. Oh, Mr. Falcon, when you bite into my modified edition of the Contessa’s ‘love-cake,’ I pray you, fall not in love with me!”

When she had popped her cake into the oven, tossed off Amanda’s apron, and stepped outside to cool her cheeks in the breeze, the sun stood directly over the rose garden and twelve o’clock was ringing from the tower by the river.

“Noon! half my Wonderful Day has gone, and I haven’t even set out on the adventures I planned at nine.” She thought this over for a few moments, and concluded that, so far as this morning was concerned, it had been a question of choice between her own day and Mrs. Lee’s, and that Mrs. Lee’s had won because it was actual--one of age’s realities--and her own was only a dream. Then, reversing all this wisdom, she added hopefully, “But I still have this afternoon!”

She walked across the garden and leaned her elbows on the rough stone wall that formed Villa Rose’s front defense. Portulacca and canary creeper ran over the stone displaying their bright green foliage and little blossoms attractively against the granite gray. Farther along, the wall rose to a man’s height and ragged robins and rose ramblers wantoned over it merrily, always a-hum and a-twitter with bees and wrens.

“That looks like Mr. Andrews,” she thought, surveying a small cart, drawn by a fat, stocky, black pony wending upward. The road was steep and one could not keep travellers in sight for long at a time. She decided to wait until he drew near, in order to give him his invitation for the evening card game.

Forgetting her lilac-bud silk and her Irish lace petticoat; forgetting the blush from the cook stove, which still mantled her modest brow, forgetting that the strains of the gay minuet issuing from her lips, with the words of salutation to herself, were being carried to the ears of the gentleman in the cart; all innocently, she waited.

It was important that he should not pass without seeing her, since he could save her the trouble and delay of telephoning to several of the desired breakfast guests whom he would see on the round of his duties. Mr. Andrews was the treasurer of the Widowers’ Mite Society of St. Jephtha’s, which paid the sexton’s salary, and this was his day for collecting from his associates. Mrs. Mearely, preferring to arrest attention by a gesture rather than by a shout, plucked a rose-bud from the bush nearest her, and threw it; well aimed, it struck the brim of the gentleman’s straw hat and dropped into the cart in front of him. He looked up, startled, and heard a glad young voice chanting:

“Oh, Mr. Andrews! I am waiting for you.”

[Illustration]

Chapter VIII

Mr. Albert Andrews was a young man, according to Roseborough time, being now in his forty-second year; and he was a widower. Although he was not rich he was fairly “comfortable.” He was not brilliant, but his character was exemplary. If he was somewhat deliberate--one need not say pompous--of utterance, this was altogether becoming in a gentleman who had twice been elected tax collector, and, once, president of the Orphans’ Fund Board. He was not handsome, but Roseborough ladies considered him “personable”--just as they had considered Hibbert Mearely _distingué_ and as they did consider Judge Giffen imposing, Wilton Howard magnetic, and Dr. Frei “so foreign and so elegant.” In height, width, weight, colouring, and expression, he was medium; on the top of his head he was less than that, because his hair there was thin, but he devoted careful attention to it and, as yet, the shining, pinky surface, lurking amid the tan-coloured strands, was screened. His eyes were prominently set, pale and placid. He had been “alone” for six years; but, during the last two, he had been slowly coming to a momentous decision. In fact, he had already arrived at it. He had decided to propose to Hibbert Mearely’s widow.

With this canny and romantic aim in view, he had recently visited a millinery and tub frocks shop in Trenton, kept by a woman who owed his mother for favours bestowed on her in poorer days, and had allowed her to settle the score, so to speak, by informing him as to the etiquette involved.

“It’s all but four years sence the departed did so,” Mrs. Bunny had said, after ponderous consideration, “and you say her perferred raiment seems to be of a palish hue with black ribbons? That’s lavender, an’ no question ’tall about it. I’d say, Mr. Albert, after a’most a lifetime of expeer’ence in dressin’ the genteel sets, that--so long as the black ribbons indures--silence must be your potion. (It is conceivable that she meant “portion.”) Even if she was to put on white or lavender streamers, you couldn’t pop the question, but only _hint_, an’ trim your subtile speech with looks an’ gestures. If she was to step out afore you in colours, it would be good ettikay to fall on your knees an’ offer your name an’ pertection. (Of course,” she amended parenthetically, “your name ain’t nothing to the Mearely name; an’ I don’t know how much pertection you’d be ekal to in a pinch--you never havin’ played no basketball, nor nothing but whist--but there’s no requiremints to tell _her_ so.) So long as she’s got a speck of mournin’ onto her, do it rev’rence an’ utter no ardint word. Bestow on her sighs an’ looks of yearnin’; an’ you can converse, offhand, concernin’ wedded love an’ flowers that never fadeth, an’ the moon, an’ all such sent’mints--an’”--she wound up, impressively--“_hover_, Mr. Albert, _hover_.”

This last bit of advice he had obeyed as consistently as was possible to a man by nature meek and unobtrusive--he had hovered. He had, also, in a measure, overcome his temperamental reserve through the private practice of amorous facial expression in the mirror after shaving.

Mr. Albert Andrews, like the majority of his sex, was practically colour-blind. He knew black and white, red, yellow, blue, and green in their violent tints. A cobalt blue, for instance, a mustard yellow or a bright bottle-green, he could immediately identify. Other shades, such as tan, champagne, lilac-bud, lavender, mauve, cadet and alice blues, pale pinks, straw-yellows, and delicate grass-stain and reseda greens, he called gray. He knew gray also to be a colour; because he himself--as well as other Roseborough gentlemen of quality, who were nicely apparelled--favoured it in summer.

“Gray,” he had answered unhesitatingly in response to Mrs. Bunny’s question as to what Mrs. Mearely was wearing; “Gray with a dark pattern in it, and black ribbons.”

Her expert knowledge immediately translated this correctly. “Not gray, Mr. Albert; _lavender_.”

“Ah!” with heavy facetiousness, “when _ladies_ wear it they call it lavender? The sentimental dears! So that is lavender. Well. Well.”

Mrs. Bunny had thereupon led him to the ribbon counter and endeavoured to teach him to distinguish between pastels.

“For,” said she, “Mrs. Mearely, being that kind of a brownish blonde, an’ not pure goldin nor yet flaxin, she’ll not take to loud shades. An’, Mr. Albert, if you don’t know a pale turkoy blue, nor a silver green nor a fawn, from a lavender, how’ll you know if the time’s come to cease your dumb yearnin’ and bust out?”

Earnestly seeking to profit by Mrs. Bunny’s instructions, he had carefully scanned, several times daily, the little ribbon and chiffon samples she had snipped from the reels and labelled for him. Even without them in his hand, he believed he should feel a degree of confidence if he were to encounter his charmer without her black streamers and decked in a “pastel.”

He looked up now and saw her--a sight for rapture, even to the eyes of an unimaginative widower of forty-two, and indeterminate as to colours. He saw that the customary dark garniture was not there. He saw the white lace bodice and sleeves, the blushing, radiant face, the rosy lips, humming softly and mellifluously. He saw the silk folds of shoulder-drape and girdle, where the sun cast a silvery sheen over the material’s hue.

What _was_ that hue? Poor man: his heart leaped and fell before the dooming fact that his mind--forgetful of its recent culture in this subject--had automatically registered the word, “gray.” To find his intellect immediately correcting its stumbling with “lavender” was no consolation. Here, seemingly, was his great opportunity; it was calling to him, throwing coquettish flowerets, and chanting: “I am waiting for you”--yet, alas, he knew not whether the tint of that sun-silvered, silken girdle enjoined upon him a silence to “do it rev’rence” or coyly urged him to “bust out.”

Drops of moisture stood upon his brow, his hands became clammy, as he drew the pony up to the wall of Villa Rose garden. Mutely he invoked the spirit of Mrs. Bunny.

“Mrs. Mearely!”

“Yes,” she laughed back at him, cheerily. “Wasn’t that a lucky shot? It hit you, didn’t it?”

“Mrs. Mearely!” (What _was_ that colour?)

“You’d better put your hat on again, to shade your eyes from the sun,” she cautioned, for Mr. Albert Andrews’s pale, prominent optics were almost popping out of their sockets.

“Mrs. Mearely!” (Surely that tint was blue? Now that she turned, and her body shadowed it from the sun’s rays, it certainly looked as blue as Mrs. Bunny’s inch of baby ribbon.)

“I want to ask all sorts of favours of you, Mr. Andrews.” She paused, with her pretty head perked on one side. It was her fashion to request favours with this little flirt and smile which suggested, with guileless conceit, that to serve any one so beautiful and so young was payment enough and to spare for any man in Roseborough. Little did she remember at this moment, however, the results of that same perking from her father’s farm gate, when Hibbert Mearely had asked her to tell him if he had, or had not, taken the wrong turning at the bridge.

“Mrs. Mearely!” (He would dare to believe it blue. He would act as if it _were_ blue!)

“What on earth is the matter with the poor man? He’ll be as red as a beanflower in a minute,” ran through her mind. Aloud she said: “I know you are making your collecting rounds and you will pass Dr. Wells’s and Mr. Howard’s and also Judge Giffen’s. Will you deliver a message at each house for me?”

A gulp was the only reply, for a second or two. It meant that Mr. Andrews was done with “dumb yearnin’.” (The dress was, unquestionably, blue.)

“Mrs. Mearely! I beg you to listen to what I am about to say.” The words tumbled out pell-mell, now that he knew blue for what it was; in Mrs. Bunny’s phrase, they “bust out.” “I will take any message of yours, every message, wherever and whither you may send it. I shall be honoured--nay, more, pleased.”

Surely she could not mistake such ardour! he had declared himself, and as a man of honour, would stand by this avowal. He waited breathlessly for her answer.

“Splendid!” She clapped her hands. “Then you shall ask the Wellses and the Judge and Wilton to come for cards this evening. Mrs. Witherby and her daughter and niece are coming; and Mrs. Lee, who has some news for us all. You will come, of course, won’t you? I am relying on you.”

(She was relying on him--in blue!)

“Mrs. Mearely!”

“Well, then, _say_ that you will,” she prompted, inwardly provoked by what she regarded as a stupid man’s more than usually dense mood, and remembering that it would be wise to peep into the oven to see how Dom Paradis’s “goodlie hearte’s” cake was behaving in a modern cook stove.

He removed his hat again. He spoke solemnly.

“I will,” he said--even as he had said it, thirteen years ago, at St. Jephtha’s altar.

“Thank you ever so much, Mr. Andrews. Now I must run along in....”

“Mrs. Mearely!”

“Yes? Were you about to say something?”

(_Was_ he about to say something? She was leading him on--in blue!)

“Mrs. Mearely! I _have_ said it. Mrs. Mearely, did you understand the purport of what I said to you just now?”

“What did you say to me just now, Mr. Andrews?”

Such smiles leaning to him over the low wall; such large blue eyes, flecked and changing from grave to gay; and behind and about this entrancing jewel of a woman her opulent setting of the Villa Rose estate! He grew dizzy. Her dress was blue; and she was eager to hear him repeat the declaration he had already made to her! This could mean only one thing, he was convinced. She had observed his devotion and secretly coveted him. She had noticed that he _hovered_ and had approved his brooding flutter. In short, she had donned that blue satin to allure him; and had hung her charms upon the wall, that morning, because she well knew he must pass by.

Mr. Albert Andrews was the average, simple, masculine creature, making up for other deficiencies by an excellent conceit of himself. The tradition of his sex--that woman is the pursuer, because she recognizes the superiority of the male and wishes to entrap a specimen of the wonderful species for her glory--comprised the major part of Mr. Andrews’s knowledge of the feminine. He had not learned more during his marriage, because his satisfied opacity was proof against all attempts to instruct.

It was to him wholly natural that Rosamond Mearely--being, for all her beauty and wealth, only a woman after all and therefore an inferior--should have decided to entrain him; because, forsooth, he was a man. He did not see how she could have chosen better in all Roseborough.

Literally he rose to do that which was demanded of him; for he stood up in his cart and laid hold of the wall with both hands. By standing on tiptoe he could just reach the ledge near where her two finely turned arms rested.

“Goodness me!” she exclaimed with a trace of the Poplars Farm in her accents. “Suppose your horse walks off and leaves you hanging to my wall like--like a tom-cod in a fish market?”

He interrupted her.

“Mrs. Mearely! I said just now that I would carry any message of yours wherever and whither you desire. I said even more. I said that I would be _pleased_ to do so. I meant it. I mean it still. Mrs. Mearely! Can I tell you--may I tell you....” He gulped. “Mrs. Mearely I have long--Mrs. Mearely! I have often thought over the little sentiments I might one day express to you. That is to say, when I should see you again as I see you now, that is to say, without the black-edged habiliments of woe....”

“Oh, my frock? I see. You are going to pay me compliments.”

(She was asking him to pay her compliments! She was making it easy for him!)

He beamed at her--the eager, engaging young creature, so artful, yet artless, too--the pursuing feminine.

“I have considered, in a poetical way, what I would say if I saw you first in something--er--green. Some little phrase about the grass and verdant innocence. Or, in pink. I had that thoroughly outlined, too; because we thought, Mrs. Bunny and I, that the likeliest hue would be a pastel pink.”

Her fair white forehead puckered; her perfect eyebrows lifted.

“Mrs. Bunny? Pastel pink?” She sought enlightenment.

“One moment. I would then have likened you to a rose and a sea-shell, both chaste similes and very pretty conceits. But now I can say to you, that you are most fair in this colour since it is the colour of the sky, therefore--may we not say?--(I think we may) the colour of heaven--and of my birthstone, the aquamarine, and, ah!--the colour of your eyes.”

“What?” She was startled.

“Blue sky--that is to say, blue heavens--blue birthstone, blue dress, blue eyes; gown and eyes a perfect match....”

“Mercy! I hope not,” she burst out laughing, “Whatever makes you think this frock is blue? Or do my eyes look like lavender to you?”

Mr. Andrews’s rather loose under jaw slipped down, the smiles of rapt satisfaction faded. Slowly he turned a purplish red that passed off in a chill.

“Mrs. Mearely,” he asked hoarsely. “Did you say that gown is l--lavender?”

She shrieked joyously. Then, taking pity on his plainly revealed agony of mind, tried to control her laughter.

“Yes. At least, it is lilac; but they are much alike. Lavender, lilac....”

“Stop!” he gasped.

“Mauve, heliotrope,” she tipped them off merrily on her digits. “Amethyst.” She crooked her little finger.

“Don’t,” he groaned.

“Wood-violet.” She waggled the thumb of her other hand.

“Lavender!” He sank back into the seat of the cart like a stone into the sea.

“Or lilac. But it doesn’t match my eyes, Mr. Andrews; no, really, I haven’t lavender eyes.”

She found his error too entertaining and, ceasing her kind attempt at gravity, she bubbled gaily.

“Lavender,” he muttered. He thought with gruelling shame of how he had “bust out,” and added: “I have been indelicate.”

“Oh, why take it so seriously?” she giggled. “I’m not offended. I’m--I’m--laughing.”

He could hear that she was!--but the ripples of her mirth fell balmless upon his wound. His sober, orderly, plodding mind was in a perilous whirl. She had _not_ lured him; she had _not_ been waiting for him, as the desirous feminine awaiteth the superior being. Tradition itself, the perfect tradition of the sexes, was exploding like firecrackers in the little hisses and snickers that went off just above his humbled head. He doubted that he would be able even to “hover” in silence--with his wonted dignity and optimism--for some time to come.

“Lavender,” he repeated. He gathered up the reins, hardly knowing that he did so, and motioned the stocky pony away from the vine-clad walls of Mockery’s citadel.

“Don’t forget to give my messages,” she called after him. “Cards at Villa Rose this evening. Don’t be later than seven.”

He might still be muttering “Lavender” as he went on his way; but there was just one colour, at that moment, of which Mr. Albert Andrews was positive, and that colour was gray. All the world was gray, drab-gray.

Rosamond ran into the house to examine Dom Paradis’s cake, but, while she poked a sprig from the broom into its dough, she was still pondering Mr. Andrews’s odd behaviour.

“Good gracious!” she exclaimed as she found to be satisfactory what the end of the bent straw revealed. “Rosamond, dear, do you suppose that dubby thing was making love to you? Is that what will happen to you, Rosamond, now that you have put off the last black ribbon? Haven’t you seen it coming? Proposals from the stupid men and gossip from the catty women, till they _make_ you marry somebody--somebody _old_! Rosamond, dear, you simply must go in search of that irredeemably _bourgeois_ lover this afternoon. And you have no time to lose.”

However, she refused to be downcast. There would still be six hours of sun in this day--even if His Friggets came back to-morrow.

She was so busy in the kitchen and pantry that she did not hear one o’clock ring from the tower bell at twenty minutes past the hour. The toll-man, being full of years and midday dinner, had fallen asleep immediately after tucking away his meal. On awaking he decided, very sensibly, to ignore the occurrence, and to ring the hour as usual, no matter what the time might be.

Chapter IX

Dom Paradis’s cake, as modified by Rosamond of Roseborough and twentieth century dietetic caution, came from the oven a golden brown and snowy white success. Its odour was unique and delectable. Its weight was light as a puff. Rosamond surveyed it with a pride almost equal to that which must have extended the cheeks and bosom of its sybaritic inventor, Lallia y Poptu de Sillihofo Sanza, Countess of Mountjoye, when she first saw the glory she had evolved to deck the inner circles of her beloved. She sniffed it in long-drawn delight.

“Mum-mum--ooh-h! No wonder he ate himself to death for love of you, Contessa! I wonder if Dom Jack, the Prince of Roseborough, is _fat_?”

She dropped herself into Amanda’s apron again and set about preparing the icing. Countess Lallia had called it:

A stylle and stykkie sauce of the smoothe colour of a pearle but lyke to a paste wych dydde covere my cake about lyke a napkyn, as it were a mysterie.

“I think my icing will be nicer than yours, Contessa--without all that oriental sweetmeat chopped fine and beaten into it. There will be less anticipatory excitement about my cake and more of the calm satisfaction one feels when one knows what is coming next. You had so many mixed spices and sweets and flavours in your cake that Dom Paradis could not possibly tell from one bite what the next would taste like. There is a modern slang term that describes the culinary tactics you employed on the prince’s appetite--you ‘kept him guessing.’”

At first the whole conceit of the Countess of Mountjoye’s cake--“devysed and styrred first in the yeare 1715,” and now reproduced in almost identical mixture from the old recipe--had seemed to her deliciously humorous. She had chuckled and chattered over it to herself and extracted from it a larger degree of the essence of mirth than had come to her palate and nostrils in many weeks; for it cannot be denied that life at Villa Rose lacked brightness. A mansion full of antiques, with no human associates but servants of the same vintage, did not provide the kind of environment which spontaneously generates happiness in the heart of youth. Hibbert Mearely’s widow had been a prisoner in her own grandeur, daily acquainted with that state which, to the young, is worse than sharp grief, namely, boredom.

To-day, with the departure of His Friggets, and the new meeting with her young heart--which had taken place when she regarded herself in the Orleans mirror--a joy had awakened within her like the return of her girlhood. So vivid a joy it was, so brave and confident, that it had sent her forth singing salutations to herself, as if she believed the whole sun-filled, rose-scented earth were calling to her in that syren phrase, “Good-morning, Rosamond!”

How swiftly joy had unfolded hope! And how naturally, inevitably, both had promised love! Permeated with them, she had defied Villa Rose and its antiquities to hold her spirit twenty-four hours longer. Lo, a day was given her--a _Wonderful_ Day. In it she might recapture her lost heritage--romance.

Now, while she beat white of egg and powdered sugar together to make the fundamental paste of the icing for the Paradis cake, an indefinable sense of sorrow descended upon her. Thought lost its elasticity of hope--it lagged and drooped. A lassitude crept over her whole person. Her eyelids felt hot and heavy. There was a pressure on her head that kept it from tossing in the air after its wonted fashion like a proud hollyhock.

“Everything is going wrong,” she whispered. “I have a presentiment of it--just as if some dreadfully unhappy thing had taken place and I was about to hear of it.” A tear fell, hit the rim of the soup plate in which she was beating the icing, and, luckily, rolled off instead of in. Both eyes filled again. She wiped them on the back of her arm, and, by this mournful gesture, sent a trail of icing across the wall from the fork in her hand.

“I never felt so sad in all my life,” was her inward admission, as she set about filling the cake with the cooked concoction of chopped figs, nuts, raisins, and candied fruit that made two inches of lusciousness between the layers. This fruity mixture, further complicated with the oriental “sweets and spyces” of her period, Countess Lallia had poured into the centre of the original cake and baked the whole together. In Rosamond’s day, fortunately for the more nervous digestive apparatus of current humanity, wisdom has reduced weightiness in cookery--hence the layer cake.

She proceeded to encase the whole--a large, imposing square of three layers--in the “stylle and stykkie sauce of the smoothe colour of a pearle.”

She went about it slowly and with downcast mien--sighing and sniffing--tears welling over her lids. When she had put the perfected achievement away in the pantry to await its modern Dom Paradis, she sank down in the kitchen rocker and let woe take its way with her. She thought of her high hopes of the morning and marvelled at the malevolent power of fate, which could change those hopes, at the noon hour, into vague, insidious griefs. Her body seemed to have lost its substance, to be let out into space. She felt vacant and psychic.

“Something dreadful is going to happen,” she whimpered. “I feel my heart sinking right out of me.”

She wished that she were not alone. The big house, so silent and aloof, was oppressive. She questioned if it were safe for her to remain there, solitary, and decided that she would have Blake sleep in the house that night.

“I’d give anything right now to have His Friggets walk in and say ‘It’s a quarter to one, Mrs. Mearely. I persoom you’ll like your lunch.’ That reminds me,” she added, “I suppose it must be almost that time now.”

Unable to see the clock from where she sat she rose listlessly.

“Ten minutes past one? Why--no! It is the long hand that is at one. Surely it can’t be five minutes past _two_!”

She was still denying this when the bell rang from the tower by the river.

“_Two o’clock!_ Two--and I haven’t had my lunch. Why, I--I’m _starving_!”

Discovery of the true cause of her sudden malady went far toward curing it. She ran to the larder, to see what cold fare she could find there, all ready to be devoured without delay in preparation. She thought, with compunction, of the faithful Friggets, always as punctual as time itself, who would never have let her fall into this pathos of the interior vacuum, had a greater grief not called them from her service.

She found so many dishes, that she might have wondered if His Friggets had not been secretly preparing for a party, except that she knew well their one extravagance. They _would_ cook, when the spirit moved them. They were proud of their cooking; and they argued that what was uneaten could always be given to the clergyman, whose stipend was meagre, and what he did not devour he could pass on to the thirteen McGuires, who embodied Roseborough’s poor. It must be confessed not only that the vicar was tempted from spiritual yearnings, by the tasty abundance of His Friggets’ art, but that the thirteen McGuires were fattening like pigs. Their sleek looks mocked at sweet charity’s very name. Mrs. McGuire, herself, had given up her random profession of charwoman, because, as she said: “Sure an’ I’ve got too heavy to be bendin’ me waist, and up and down on me knees, and the loike.”

It occurred to Rosamond that His Friggets’ extravagance in this one direction was fortunate for her, to-day, since it not only provided her with lunch but with refreshments for her guests of the evening. There were two large trembling jellies, bowls of cream, a junket, a whole roasted chicken and a whole boiled one--[“I’ll turn the boiled one into a salad for to-night,” she thought]--cold ham, which had been boiled in a pot of Amanda’s own brew of currant wine, and half a dozen quart bottles of the parsnip wine, considered by Amanda, metaphorically speaking, as the diamond in her crown. All Roseborough admitted that Amanda Frigget’s parsnip wine was so good, so golden, and so lively, that it both looked and tasted “exactly like champagne, except that, instead of the regular champagne taste, it had the taste of parsnips.”

Rosamond appropriated the roast chicken and found bread and butter also for her needs. To these she added a tall glass of foamy milk. A crock filled with cookies was another pleasant discovery.

She pictured to herself, amid giggles, the expressions that would adorn the faces of Amanda and Jemima and all Roseborough if they could see the distinguished Hibbert Mearely’s widow perched on the end of the kitchen table eating with her fingers.

“I suppose, if I were a born lady, I’d starve because there’s no one here to set my lunch before me properly,” she thought, “well, there are advantages in having a pedigree of butter pats.”

As one second joint, followed by the other, was nipped all around neatly to the bone, and the milk followed the chicken fragments, Rosamond’s indefinable sorrow vanished. She hung Amanda’s apron on its hook, and ran upstairs to wash her face and hands and catch up a loosened curl or two.

She had decided to spend the afternoon hours in a nook she knew by the river, not a stone’s throw from the bell tower. It was the loveliest spot in the valley and, unseen, one might watch the three roads that crossed one another at the tower. She needed a parasol, and ignoring the four black ones--one with lavender flowers--and the two black and white ones--the latest with a white chiffon frill--which, in their appointed order, had screened her grieved countenance during the last four years--she selected a shot silk of a grass green, its brightness tempered with silver gray. As she set out from the house now, with its silken shade arched over her bright hair and bringing out every bit of life there was in her skin and her gown, even Mr. Albert Andrews could not have doubted that the young widow’s mourning days were over.

With her hand on the latch of her gate, she paused. Far down the road, just on the near side of the bridge, she perceived Blake returning with the obstreperous mare. Even while she looked, she saw Florence rear and dart off down the road to Poplars. There was a trotting on the gravel road immediately round the curve of Villa Rose’s line. In a moment the rider had reined in at the gate and uncovered in salute to her.

“I hope he doesn’t think he has come to make a special call--he looks all dressed up--because I’m not going indoors again,” was her mental greeting. Aloud, she said, cordially, “Good afternoon, Judge Giffen.”

[Illustration]

Chapter X

In Roseborough, as has been remarked, Judge Giffen was universally listed by the adjective “imposing.” Those spinsters with clinging natures preferred to describe him as “authoritative.” Miss Palametta Watts, who was suspected (to put it mildly) of special leanings--not to say intentions--in his direction, called him “masterful.” Quite recently Miss Palametta had boldly charged him with this trait; and, with the daring of desperate thirty-seven, had asked him if she were not correct in deducing from his stern mien that his wife, when he selected one, would be constrained to obey him; for her own part she knew _she_ would.

“Such is the scriptural injunction,” he pronounced after weighing the matter; but, to her disappointment, pursued the subject no further. To be sure, not having his glasses on at the time, he may not have seen her inviting looks.

Mrs. Witherby’s dicta were taken as final in Roseborough, for it was conceded that she had “a wonderful way of expressing herself,” and Mrs. Witherby had a vast admiration for Judge Giffen and frequently summed him up thus:

“Well, it may be true that the Judge has had more decisions reversed than any other judge in the land, and that but for Hibbert Mearely’s influence he would never have been a judge at all; but what _I_ always say is, ‘Where in all Roseborough (or elsewhere, either, for the matter of that) will you find a man who has such an _air_ about him?’ Judge Giffen is a gentleman who understands his own worth. One can see that at a glance.”

One could see it at a glance this afternoon as he rode forward. It was emphatically a man with a fine understanding of his own worth whom the large, flea-bitten white horse brought to pause at Villa Rose’s gate. Though above medium stature, he was still not so tall as he appeared, from the height of his collar and the lofty manner of carrying his head. It was this last habit in particular, no doubt, which gave him the “air” so much admired.

His hair was graying with an even pepper-and-salt sprinkling. He allowed it to grow long in front, that his small, square forehead might be ornamented with a “statesman’s lock.” His eyes were small and brown and of no marked luminosity or keenness; his pepper-and-salt eyebrows were short and highly peaked at the outer corners--a sign, phrenologists declare, of latent ferocity. Doubtless the eyebrows assisted Miss Palametta Watts to her definition of “masterful.” He wore a short-cropped moustache naturally, and affected an imperial and goatee. His morals, of course, like all Roseborough morals, were above reproach. His hobbies were chess and the _Weekly Digest_, which gave him the news of the world in twelve pages of small paragraphs with inserts of verse, fiction, humour, publisher’s advertisements, and editorials on all world-wide topics, from single tax to the Oriental problem and back by way of the clam middens of British Columbia to the Greek schism and free verse. By lingering and studious perusal, he managed to make each week’s _Digest_ last until the post brought the next.

For the rest, he dwelt in apartments in the house of a Mrs. Taite, a gentlewoman fallen into adverse circumstances, who was willing to take in and care for a paying guest in order to eke out. He lived in an economical and dignified style, and kept two horses, on the means which could very much better have been applied to the purchase of a neat cottage to shelter a wife. At least such was the opinion of Roseborough’s spinsters.

Perhaps the Judge did not treat the Roseborough spinsters quite fairly. The legal mind, by reason of its professional habits, becomes versed in subtleties, evasions, and the like--“technicalities” as they are called. The judge’s apartments were sincerely and solidly furnished by Mrs. Taite; but they were decorated with technicalities and evasions. In this wise: on the slippery horsehair sofa (supplied by Mrs. Taite) there was a row of cushions contributed by hungry hearts. They were stuffed with rags, excelsior, goose feathers, or ducks’ down, according to the financial rating of Miss Hopeful; and covered with crochet, tatting, crazy-quilt patches, sampler, or crewel work, according to her taste and her proficiency with the embroidery needle, the bobbin, or the small steel hook. One sampler-topped pillow bore the legend, tidily cross-stitched in a circle: “When here you rest your weary head, dream of the Giver.” The Judge had accepted the cushion and highly complimented the workmanship, vaguely maundered on the sweet thoughts that natively abide in woman’s breast, and set the pillow at the _foot_ of the sofa. As his stockinged or slippered pedal extremities were not dreamers, he could use the gift without troubling his weary head about the giver. Thus, it will be seen, that the learned jurist could appropriate the soft advantages of a tentative contract, and escape the expected payment on a technicality, as well as any man he ever solemnly upbraided in court for the same act.

“I know what _I_ should like to do with these rooms,” Miss Hopeful would say, with arch looks.

The Judge would answer promptly:

“What, for instance?”

He was, in his way, a shrewd man as a man who knows a trifle about horses is apt to be. He asked purposely, because, since the spinsters of Roseborough were each and all “homey” women, domestic by training, he had found that their suggestions, when followed out, added to the comfort of his bachelor life.

Encouraged by his receptivity, the lady would express her idea and even offer to come and assist “dear Mrs. Taite” in putting it into effect. More than one damsel had spent her half hour mounted on a kitchen stool, with her mouth full of tacks, while dear Mrs. Taite handed the hammer back and forth and made mental note of defects in the aspirant’s figure to retail later to the judge, who liked what he called “a well-turned woman.” To retain her paying guest was Mrs. Taite’s life-work.

To tell the truth, the Judge had been in no haste to woo. He was not touched with Romeo’s fever. His temperament was judicial and calm. He was--it may again be remarked--shrewd. He knew to a penny exactly what his monthly income could do for him in the way of providing a Roseborough gentleman’s requisites, and he was in little danger of deliberately seeking to curtail his small personal luxuries by taking a dowerless wife. So he listened the more appreciatively to his landlady’s analyses of the dispositions and physical characteristics of Roseborough’s spinsters.

“Knowledge is power,” he would aver with a solemn sort of waggishness, when she had permitted him to gather, from her discourse, that there was not an ankle among the lot which would dare show itself in a plain white stocking; or that a certain melting-eyed one’s shoulder blades or hip bones were “at least no sharper than her _temper_.” He knew from other of Mrs. Taite’s hints--dropped generally while stirring a hot cup of chocolate for his nightcap and buttering a toasted scone to accompany it, that some young ladies who owned to twenty-six would never see thirty-three again, and that a baby-waisted white muslin frock was no longer the badge of a guileless heart, as it had been in the days when _she_ wore one to induce that maiden’s shock, the first kiss.

What with Mrs. Taite’s chocolate and subtlety and the judge’s legal technicalities, it will be seen that the Roseborough spinsters were out-generalled. They had once been a threat; but, nowadays, there was scarcely the aroma of danger surrounding them. Mrs. Taite felt that the menace to her came from another quarter. It had (as she mentally phrased it) “struck upon her bosom and fairly winded her” one evening when Judge Giffen had remarked, between chocolate sips, that Mrs. Mearely had received him that afternoon in a black-and-white striped gown. Unlike Mr. Albert Andrews, the Judge rather prided himself on having an eye for feminine apparel.

“And she looked uncommonly well in it, too,” he added. “A very well-turned woman is Mrs. Mearely. Yes, Mrs. Taite, I believe poor dear Mearely’s taste to have been as infallible in that case as in every other.”

“Mr. Hibbert Mearely had the large means necessary to indulge a woman of such extravagant fancies.” In Mrs. Taite’s voice there was a tremolo as she shot the only dart she could find at that moment, knowing, alas, that it was unbarbed save to her own heart.

“And now _she_ has the means, and none to please but herself.”

The landlady attempted to retrieve her error.

“Considering her humble origin, I should hope she’d spend her life henceforth as an offering to her distinguished husband’s memory.” This conversation had taken place on a winter’s evening, but that was not the reason why Mrs. Taite’s teeth chattered.

“Ah, no doubt--for a year or so. Mearely, himself, was a great stickler for form, and he trained her in the niceties of observance. Her origin--that is to say, the butter pats and so on--is a forgotten myth in Roseborough now.”

“Among the _men_, perhaps.”

“A forgotten myth, Mrs. Taite. Mearely put the quietus on it by his will. He left her everything. I drew it up, you know. Yes; he was in the pink of condition at the time--the very pink. Whoever thought he would go to his last account not three months later?” He mused on this so long that Mrs. Taite, anxious to get to the terms of the will and learn the worst she had to fear, put in a remark to bring him back to the theme.

“Cholera Morpheus, was it not?”

“_Morbus_, Mrs. Taite, _morbus_--a latin word meaning--er. Yes. Poor dear Mearely said to me: ‘I am a healthy man and the Mearelys are a long-lived family. I except to see ninety and bury my wife a dozen years earlier, as my grandfather did before me. However, we are all mortal and subject to climate and accident. I may die to-morrow and leave Mrs. Mearely a widow. I wonder, ought I make the proviso that she must lose all my fortune, if she marries again? What would you advise?’”

“And what _did_ you advise, Judge Giffen?” Mrs. Taite trembled.

“Ah, a really remarkable thing! I advised against it, and he didn’t do it.”

“What a calamity!” Mrs. Taite cried out in spite of herself, and hastened to add: “Leaving her at the mercy of fortune hunters.”

“I said that, in the very unlikely event of her being left a young widow, it would be better that she should have the responsibility of living up to the Mearely name and estate. This duty would guide her choice in re-marriage. Whereas, without responsibilities, she might hark back to the farm strain and contract a union which would be a slur on the Mearely honour. He perceived the point, and, after providing for a few bequests to relatives, he left her everything, on condition that she continued to live in Villa Rose. ‘For,’ said he, ‘I won’t have her running up and down Europe, spending money to fatten a conscienceless army of waiters, guides, and _concierges_. Let her remain quietly at home and continue to carry out my artistic scheme, as the one rustic and indigenous object of beauty in the midst of my priceless antiques and _objets d’art_.’ That was his idea. A very superior man--was my dear friend, Mearely.”

“So Mrs. Mearely has control of her fortune and is obliged to live in Roseborough? Then she is compelled to choose a man from these parts.”

“Yes. If she leaves Villa Rose and Roseborough, she loses everything. Yes, it was I who drew up that will, Mrs. Taite. I relate the facts to you now in strict confidence, relying on your discretion. You have been my confidante for a number of years, Mrs. Taite, and I believe there is no woman in Roseborough so discreet.”

Whereupon, Mrs. Taite had besought him to continue this reliance, as no word of his confidences had ever passed, or should ever pass, her lips; but she believed that the will’s terms were not unknown in Roseborough; she had heard rumours, indeed, though she had not credited them. Perhaps, she thought, Mr. Howard, being a distant cousin of Mr. Mearely’s, had felt privileged to inform Roseborough. On the contrary, the Judge argued, Mr. Howard had known nothing of this proviso. He was sure of that.

“Poor Howard would have been left out entirely but for me. I got his little legacy for him. So much per year, you know--just enough to keep him, if prices don’t soar. I pointed out to Mearely that Howard is really an excellent chess player.”

Mrs. Taite, of course, had never heard the terms of the will as they affected Mrs. Mearely’s re-marriage. When she said she had heard rumours she meant that she was about to set some afloat. She put on her bonnet and took two pennies to the Widower’s Mite Society’s treasurer, Mr. Albert Andrews, and dropped the hint which, in due course, matured into the aim of his life. It was she who told the news to Wilton Howard, amid sly compliments; again sowing seed which, though ignored at the time, was to bear fruit later.

Mrs. Taite saw that the Judge was deliberately considering the pros and cons of a union with the young widow when all her black should have been put by, and she intended that he should not lack rivals. She knew that his legal mind would take its time in coming to a decision, and that his self-sufficient nature would neither anticipate rivals nor that the widow might say him nay. Meanwhile, there was the one chance in a hundred that Mrs. Mearely might marry a faster moving admirer.

She racked her brains for schemes to balk him. She even thought wildly of sending Mrs. Mearely anonymous letters, or of poisoning Villa Rose’s well by dropping a murdered cat into it. She nursed her fears in secret, copiously wept, prayed nightly that a worthy gentlewoman might not be brought to penury through the unnecessary matrimony of a paying guest, and took to walking at midnight, shut-eyed, in her nainsook and curl rags.

Meanwhile the judge had handed down his decision, and he apprehended no reversal of it by the higher court, i. e., by fair Rosamond herself. He felt that he, of all men, deserved her fortune because it was he who had prevented a pen-stroke from depriving her of it. Having accepted his decision, he began to formulate a plan of procedure. He rode out to Trenton churchyard and verified the date on the headstone. From that he computed a proper date for proposal, which appeared to be midsummer week, a year and six months from the day on which Mrs. Mearely had received him in black and white. He would go to see her--say, on a Wednesday--and inform her, in dignified yet adequate language, of the part he had played in smoothing life for her. She would have until Sunday to regard him as a benign fate and to