The Project Gutenberg eBook, "Good-Morning, Rosamond!", by Constance Lindsay Skinner, Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: "Good-Morning, Rosamond!" Author: Constance Lindsay Skinner Release Date: June 2, 2018 [eBook #57254] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "GOOD-MORNING, ROSAMOND!"*** E-text prepared by Clarity, Charlie Howard, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/goodmorningrosam00skinrich Transcriber’s Note The Table of Contents was added by the Transcriber and placed into the Public Domain. Other notes will be found at the end of this eBook. 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 Cover Inside front and back covers “GOOD MORNING, ROSAMOND!” Lulu Jones Downing (See Page 24) “When one is to have perhaps only one wonderful day, decision how one shall spend any moment of it is important” “GOOD-MORNING, ROSAMOND!” BY CONSTANCE LINDSAY SKINNER 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 N “GOOD-MORNING, ROSAMOND!” “GOOD-MORNING, ROSAMOND!” CHAPTER I égligés 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’.” 3 4 5 6 “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?” 7 8 9 10 11 “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...!” 12 13 14 15 U 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!” CHAPTER II nless 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 16 17 18 19 20 I 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. CHAPTER III n 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. 20 21 22 23 24 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!’” 25 26 27 28 29 D 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. CHAPTER IV own 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. 30 31 32 33 34 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 35 36 37 38 39 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 be...