Constance Lindsay Skinner

“ 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. ”

“ He had made himself equally free of the house and grounds of Villa Rose. Though, before others, his manner to the Villa’s lady was formal, he expressed, in private, the intimate affection of a brother. Her widowhood appealed to his chivalry; and her black ribbons, he said, put out the sun for him; how had the anomaly of grief entered Roseborough and how had it attached itself to her?
“In me you have always a brother, a friend, a protector,” he would say. “What privilege of manhood is more to be envied than the right to shelter women?” ”

“ Mabel’s tone was delicately unpleasant. It angered her aunt.
“Not at all! I doubt if there is a woman in Roseborough who plays a better hand.”
In turning to make her speech more impressive and to give Miss Crewe a broadside, as it were, of her displeasure, she had a full view of the verandah, and was in the nick of time to see a swarthy, black-whiskered face, topped by a soft, black felt hat, slowly raised over the verandah rail. She panted twice from terror’s cold shock; then screamed with all her might. The apparition disappeared.
“Eh? What?” Dr. Wells looked up, jerkily, from his cards. ”

“ He put his hand over the pistol, looked into her face, smiling whimsically, then coolly took the pistol from her and tossed it on the table.
“You—you are the strangest tramp I ever saw,” she gasped.
“Tramp? Oh! Am I? Then look well at me—that noble and pathetic figure, the tramp! Madam, the rich world you live in occasionally produces a man like me, but it soon casts him out!” He sighed heavily.
Like most persons who have been lifted above their original station in life, Mrs. Mearely thought others should keep to theirs. ”

“ 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 is a miracle of beauty to look at—and, to eat! Who made it? I ask, because the cooker of that cake has the soul of an artist. I wish to spend my days in the shadow of her wing.”
“I made it.” She blushed, happily, under the royal praise.
“You? Put a raisin in your diadem, as its central jewel!”
“You will not mock at the ‘museum’ any more when I tell you that I found the recipe for that cake in an old parchment. The Countess of Mountjoye invented the cake first in 1715 for the Prince of Paradis: and history says she was the only one of his sweethearts who never lost his affection. ”

“ The prominence of your position in Roseborough makes it doubly my duty—not only for your sake, but for the community. I can understand that a girl—young and beautiful but not rich—might have a friend—some childhood’s sweetheart—who still retained her affection, even after she had married prosperously and above her own station. I can understand that, once having been lifted to a position of importance, she might well hesitate to lose that elevation by marrying the early sweetheart, who has probably remained in his humble sphere—and yet, might yield to her affection for this individual. ”

“ When vagabond and constable entered Villa Rose, Peter was even then rapping on the doctor’s chamber door and saying the name of “Mearely.”
Rosamond scurried hither and thither producing soft linen and lotions, safety pins and needle and thread, cotton batting and smelling salts, until the end of the big table looked like a peep into a hospital. To all protests she answered:
“Don’t talk! Don’t talk! Save your strength.” ”

“ But if I could compose it I would call it ‘Rosamond.’”
“And dedicate it to me as if I were a royal highness.”
He frowned.
“Not at all!” he asserted almost with violence. “I compose no masterpieces for royal highnesses. Royal highnesses are ugly and artificial. But you! Fair Rosamond, they tell me—Miss Watts, I think it was, told me last—that you were born on the farm. ‘Farm product,’ she called you. Your mother....”
“Made and sold butter! I am sure all Roseborough has informed you of that!” ”

“ 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 which37 discounts time because its habitation is with the good and the eternal. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Mabel thought.
Rosamond, asking for more fairy tales, said:
“Oh, won’t Your Highness tell us about your country?”
367 He took her hands lightly, smiling into her eager eyes:
“‘Prince, Prince, how does your garden grow?’ It is a great thing to be the prince of one’s own little country. There are no prisons; because there are no criminals. That is because everything is freely given. Our financial rating is according to what a man has given.” He looked pointedly at the heiress of the Mearely fortune, and added, “No one is proud of being merely rich.” ”

“ Miss Graham averred, with another tug at her choker; “because I can’t see how a widow could be induced to hang herself a second time. Nothing—nothing disgusts me like....”
“It’s a great shock to all of us to see you in colours again,” Flora Macdonald MacMillan broke in. “In all your days of mourning, no other hearts have beaten in such unison with yours as ours. We, the girls of Roseborough, have felt almost as if we were widows with you.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Out of the corner of her eye she could see Howard, standing by the chimney-piece and leaning upon it in a handsome and familiar attitude. He could not have looked more at home if he had owned the house. A sense of anger stirred in her.
“If he were old I could understand it. Old men naturally want a snug home to die in!” Then, as was habitual with her, amusement took the place of indignation. “To-morrow I’ll hang a crape bow and streamers between my shoulder-blades and go my way in lonesome peace.” ”

“ Witherby had a vast admiration for Judge Giffen and frequently summed him up thus:
111 “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.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Frei was humming, with a bland and childlike look on his face. He picked up his violin from the desk where he had laid it and put it into its case.
“Will you not sup, too?” she asked him.
“No, I thank you.” He came toward her. “My body needs no salads, for my soul is satisfied. I have found a place where there is no criticism; where the memorial fountains of kindness are unsealed—and the waters do arrive. Here, in Roseborough—‘here, where all hearts are tender and sincere’—surely I shall find at last a beautiful woman to love me for myself alone.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ Howard took her hands and bent over them, giving her the benefit, too, of his magnetic and confident smile. He saw in her appeal exactly the opportunity he needed.
“That, partly, is what hastens my offer. Gossip is inevitable. Why not forestall it? As a matter of fact, a young woman cannot remain alone—more especially if she is a widow, and beautiful.” ”

“ Look at the chairs; when you sit down, you feel you are settled there for life—and will not move again till some one carries you to the churchyard. I came here so proudly—to be the wife of such a fine, distinguished gentleman. I thought it would be a wonderful life—with all this,” she waved her hands to indicate the furnishings of Mr. Mearely’s museum. “But it wasn’t. It was dreadful. In its heart, Roseborough still regards me as an alien and an upstart. My mother once sold butter. They remember that. They are waiting for a chance to rub it in. ”

“ I was born to be a poet. I found, however, that society felt no need of me and my verses. Society does not need poets. Society’s great need is chauffeurs! And I could never stomach the smell of gasolene.”
“But, even so, need you have become a tramp—an outcast? A—a vagabond who enters houses at night for food? Frightening people!” Her indignation rose. “Why don’t you work?”
He looked at her keenly, pointing at her with the burr he had just caught between forefinger and thumb. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her mother, with Howard close after her, rushed to the chair.
“Suicide!” Mrs. Witherby hissed dramatically. “Do you know of her secret sorrow? To think she may have been preparing to take her own life in the midst of all our gayety! Oh! Mr. Howard.” She broke down, emotionally, grasping his shoulder to weep upon. “Oh! Mr. Howard, that is what comes of taking people out of their proper station. Our dear Rosamond was never quite one of us. Her mother—the butter—! She must have felt it herself—felt300 poignantly her inability to live up to her station among us. Oh Mr. Howard—oh—dear!” ”

“ Lee’s advent. She came in, all tender distress, and put her arms about Rosamond as if to protect something precious to herself.
“Oh, my dear. You are all right, unhurt? Susannah Potts stopped just now, and told me of your fright—the excitement—and, oh, such a tale! She was on her way to do a day’s cleaning at the Kilroys, and saw me in my garden, and told me that Maria had sat up in a bedquilt all night at the telephone, and had rung your number twenty-nine times! When one has no telephone one misses a great deal. ”

“ Rosamond vowed inwardly. An inspiration came to her, from the springs of her naturally impulsive generosity, which went far to restore her to her former position in the hearts of Roseborough’s spinsters.
“Wait, wait,” she called. “I’ll give you some bottles of Amanda’s parsnip wine. That will be better than Dollop’s syrup. And a basket full of glasses and some ginger cookies, and you can picnic down by the tower in that little nook of the slough.”
Not delaying for more than the first “hooray,” she caught up her flower basket from the porch and ran into the kitchen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It won’t let us marry—because we’re poor. Well, it won’t let her alone, either—because she’s rich. This is Rosamond’s fourth year of widowhood. Gossip has its eye on her. She’ll have to marry. I am a kinsman—being a distant cousin of her departed husband’s. That gives me a more familiar footing here. Gossip will naturally pick me out as the most likely bridegroom. In other words, don’t let their miserable, superwise social code crush you, but twist it round and use it to your own advantage. ”

“ Howard manœuvring his greetings so that he could conclude them naturally at Mabel’s side, Corinne withdrew. She was a pretty little creature, plump, rosy, and lively. Her white muslin frock, the work of her cousin’s clever fingers, set off her black, curly hair and big, bright brown eyes. Mrs. Taite could never have cast her doubts upon Corinne in her muslins, for the guileless heart made itself evident in all her words and acts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”