Mary Jane Holmes

“ In the excitement of caring for her cousin she had not noticed her hair, but she did now, and exclaimed:
“Irene, Irene, what has happened? Half your head is gone! Put up your hand and see.”
Irene sprang to her feet, put her hand to her head, and realized her loss, while like a flash came the thought, “Did he see it? Did he pull it off? Does he know?”
“Oh, heavens!” she said, sinking back to her seat. “I’ve lost my beautiful braid of hair, for which I gave so much. I must look like a guy. Do you think he saw it? Mr. Travers, I mean. I don’t care for Tom! Put on my hat, quick, before they come.” ”

“ Rena said, “and such lovely roses. Did they grow in your garden? I smelled them the moment I came in.”
She had her face close to the fruit-jar in which I had put a cluster of the finest roses from my room.
“No, they came from Mr. McPherson. He sent ’em with his compliments,” Mrs. Parks replied, and instantly Rena’s cheeks were like the flowers whose perfumes she was inhaling.
“Mr. McPherson,” Irene repeated, beginning to notice the flowers, for which she did not really care as Rena did. “What a delightful old man he must be. ”

“ Irene knew that Tom could help or hinder her cause, and with a great effort she controlled herself and said:
“It is not probable that Mr. Travers will ever ask me to be his wife. If he does I shall accept him and try to be to him all even you could wish me to be, and—Tom—” she hesitated, while the tears began to fill her eyes—“and, Tom, don’t throw obstacles in my way. You will get Rena and be happy. She does not want Mr. Travers. If she did I believe she could get him. She wants you. Take her and let me be happy, too. I have not much that is pleasant in my home life. ”

“ I am going home to-night on business, and when I come back I have concluded to tell Rex of his mistake and take every whit of the blame myself. Don’t look so scared,” he continued, as he saw how white Irene turned. “If Rex Travers cares for you he is not the man to give you up because there is no money with you. And, Irene, pardon me, my great friendship for Rex is my excuse for what I’m about to say. If he does care for you, will you try your best to make him a good, true wife?” ”

“ Tom exclaimed, with a feeling as if Rex had struck him.
“Perhaps,” Rex answered. “At all events, I am a different man from what I was before this illness. Something has wrought a change in me. You know how afraid I used to be of women, and how I shrank from talking to—to—Miss Irene, and how you used to call me a fool, as I was, and may be yet, but somehow the fear of a woman’s dress is gone. Perhaps it was having Miss Bennett potter round me so much, and perhaps it was the touch of Rena’s hands which brought such cooling with them. Don’t look so savage. ”

“ Rena on the contrary leaned forward and said: “Certainly, let him ride; he looks tired and warm,” and again her beautiful eyes beamed on Sam a look which made him change his mind a little as to Irene’s superiority over her. In a moment he was on the seat with Nixon, but turned toward the ladies, with whom he was inclined to be sociable, and knowing no reason why he should not be so. Nor was he at all abashed by the coolness with which Irene listened to him. He could see Rena’s eyes and the dimples in her cheeks and her smile at his loquacity, which amused her. ”

“ There is no deception at which she would stop, if she hoped to be benefited by it. I am sure of it. It is in her blood—not on your side of the house, not on the Burdick side, thank Heaven! but on her mother’s. She is useful to you because—excuse me, Rena—you do not like trouble, and she takes it all from you, and does it in a purring kind of way which soothes you to sleep, as it were, or shuts your eyes to her real character. Don’t take her to Oakfield. Don’t go there yourself. If you do not like the will and do not mean to have anything to do with it, or with Reginald, say so at once ”

“ Reginald didn’t like bare necks, but this was so much like a piece of polished marble that he rather admired it, and watched her while she chided Tom for never writing to her, or coming to see her for so long a time. Tom returned her banter playfully, but was looking at Rena, who was sitting where the lamplight fell upon her as it did upon Irene, bringing out her delicate features in profile and showing her beautiful eyes which rested very often, but very furtively, upon the man in the rocker. ”

“ Rena repeated. “You are a fine man to talk of duty! What of Irene, and her pulse? Did you ever ask how that beat?”
“No,” Rex said, while a shadow passed over his face. “I’d rather not discuss Irene except to say I never asked her to be my wife as I have you; and you won’t?”
285“No, I won’t, and I am going now to tell Tom,” Rena replied, her eyes filling with tears.
This time Rex did not try to detain her, as she left him without a word and went in quest of Tom, whom she could not find. So she started home, feeling very hot and indignant and finally ending in a cry when alone in her room. ”

“ There is nothing I like better, especially in the country,” while visions of a tête-à-tête with him and no Tom to look on flitted through her mind. But Rex had no idea of a drive alone with her, and her illusion was at once dispelled by his saying:
“I hope your cousin likes it, too. I know Tom does, and we will go to-morrow, perhaps, if it is fine. Or, no, not so soon as that, perhaps. You will wish to get over the fatigue of your journey.”
He was beginning to draw back, thinking he might be a little too fast in his attentions, but Irene disclaimed all thoughts of fatigue. ”

“ McPherson delighted her. To stand well with him might be a means of advancing her cause with Reginald. “Beauty and good dressing take with every old man,” she thought, and her toilet was faultless when, after dinner, she came out upon the piazza where I was sitting with Rena. Her gown, which fell in soft folds around her perfect figure, was black, with no color to relieve it except the roses she had pinned on the bosom of her dress.
“O Irene!” Rena exclaimed, “how lovely you look! I always like you best in black, and the roses are the color of your cheeks.” ”

“ Dear Rena, I was never so shocked in my life as when I received your letter. You have been up to a good many escapades, larks, or experiments you call them, but this last is the craziest of them all; and I beg you to give it up. It is unworthy of you. It is unwomanly—excuse me for saying so—it is a deception, if not a positive lie, and an imposition upon a good man. I know Reginald Travers. We were in college together and room-mates for two years. He is my best friend and I don’t want him wronged. He is shy and reticent, not at all a ladies’ man. ”

“ The duties of home were imperative, even to her selfish nature. Her overworked mother gave up when Johnnie died, and Irene was compelled to take the helm, which she did unwillingly, rebelling against her fate and sending her thoughts constantly to Oakfield where Rex Travers lay burning with fever and talking constantly of the will, of the broken mirror, the half face and the eye, which troubled him more than all the rest. ”

“ He was frank and outspoken, fond of fun and joke, and ready to do a favor to a friend or foe, and knew just what to say to ladies, no matter what their calibre might be. Everybody liked Tom Giles, and not 54many liked Reginald Travers until they knew him intimately, and found that beneath his cold, impassive exterior there was a heart as warm, perhaps, as Tom’s, when the right chord was touched. For women Reginald cared but little, and matrimony had had no part of his thoughts until he read a copy of Sandy McPherson’s will. ”

“ I persuaded Tom and Irene. She is not to blame.”
“Irene,” the old Scotchman growled, growing more and more indignant. “She is as deep in it as you. Yes, deeper,” he continued, as his thoughts went over the past and he recalled Irene’s manner whenever he met her. “Didn’t she let Rex make love to her, knowing he thought she was somebody else, and didn’t she make a fool of me, who paid her all sorts of attention because I thought she was to be Rex’s wife? ”

“ REX AND SAM It was three o’clock, and the heat, instead of growing less, seemed to increase. There were a few thunder-heads in the western sky and some mutterings in the distance, but the sun poured down in a blaze like noonday and the heat seemed unbearable to Rex, as he walked slowly along, his feet dragging heavily, his umbrella seeming fifty pounds weight and the plantain leaves pressing upon his head. ”

“ Travers was, or how he appeared. He could never be anything to her. She had settled that before she saw him, and the conviction had been strengthened when she walked and sat with Tom in the moonlight. There was but one man in the world for her and that was Tom, she thought, as she bade Irene good-night, and left the young lady stalking about her room like a restless spirit. She did not think as badly of Reginald as she had pretended, and had ridiculed him to Rena with a view to disenchant her should she by any chance fancy him. ”

“ There was a good deal more advice of the same nature, some of which Rex heard and some he didn’t. One fact, however, was clear to him. He was going to have it out with Irene, and about a quarter past ten he started for Mrs. Parks’ house, walking slowly and not at all as an ardent lover walks when going to woo his mistress. He did not feel very ardent, although he tried to work himself up to a proper state of mind and to remember what Colin had told him to say and do. ”

“ I’ll call Miss Bennett, or Tom, or both,” Rena said, starting again to rise, but Rex’s imperative “Sit still,” kept her quiet, while he went on:
“I am an awkward man as you know, and in nothing more so than in lovemaking, the last thing in the world I once thought I should have attempted. Uncle Colin tried to coach me when I was laboring under a mistake and thought I ought to make love to some one else. He said I must ask the girl if her pulse beat in unison with mine.” ”

“ No man likes to be fooled as Rex and I have been, and I believe my soul I take it harder than he does. I don’t think he was hit bad. Now, if you had been you—”
“No, no, no,” Rena cried vehemently, guessing what he meant. “There was Tom—always Tom—before I saw Mr. Travers. It could never have been.”
“Then Sandy made a confounded mistake and muddle. The will was a queer one any way, and now how is the money to go? I’d like to know,” Colin asked.
Rena neither knew nor cared. She had confessed everything, and her heart was lighter than it had been since she came to Oakfield. ”

“ Rena was very tired and she accepted Colin’s offer gladly and was driven home by Nixon. With Rena gone Rex’s paroxysms of delirium returned. The eye came back and sat upon the wall and the ceiling and the bureau and chairs, sometimes in one place, sometimes in another, while the braid of hair wound itself now around my head and then around that of Rex, who kept asking for Rena, and became so wild that the doctor said to me at last: “I think we must send for that young lady. She does more good than both of us.” ”

“ He had taken a bath—in fact he had taken two that day, hoping to cool the fever in his veins, and was literally clean without and within, as Tom had written of him to Rena. He had also taken a good deal of pains with his toilet and looked as if fresh from the hands of his laundress and tailor as he stood trying to pull on a new glove which stuck at the thumb.
“Going to wear gloves?” Tom said, in some surprise, “I am not. It is too hot, and my hands are too sweaty to get them on if I tried.” ”

“ With Rex you would get fifty thousand dollars in your own right, and this, you know, you lose if you marry me, who have very little beside my profession to depend upon. You will be a poor man’s wife.”
“There’s that ten thousand I am to have of Sandy McPherson’s money, no matter whom I marry; that’s something, besides what I already have. We shall not starve,” came in a smothered voice from Tom’s bosom, against which Rena’s face was pressed, and Tom knew the victory was won. ”

“ Sandy said, recalling with a shudder his experience with Nannie. “They must not only be agreed, but they must love each other. There must be no one-sided affair. I’ll make that plain,” and he wrote a note which he put with his will, addressed to Reginald and Irene, charging them, as they hoped for happiness in this world and heaven in the next, not to enter into matrimony with each other unless their hearts were in it. “For be ye well assured that if any persons are joined together otherwise than as God’s word doth allow, their marriage is not lawful,” he wrote in conclusion. ”

“ Irene declined Mrs. Parks’ offer of her cape.
“I never take cold,” she said, “nor need any one unless she chooses. There’s no such thing as a cold. It’s only a mortal belief.”
“Oh, ho! Christian Science, are you? The last thing I heard, your fad was Theosophy,” Tom said, “and the getting into an occult body.”
Reginald looked alarmed. What if Irene should take to Theosophy, and Christian Science and Spiritualism, and all the other isms of the day! He believed he should follow Nannie into the well, or do something desperate. Well, he needn’t be in a hurry. ”

“ It does not make one feel better to be told that he looks queer, and Rex was not an exception. He felt queer. The hornets were in full play, and he put up his hand to brush away one which seemed buzzing in his face, while the eye was staring at him from the stone near the well where it had first appeared to him. ”

“ Tom has grown stouter and jollier, if possible, while Rena, who will always be girlish, tries to assume a matronly air on account of the two little children who call her mother. One is a boy, christened Travers McPherson, the other a girl named Nannie, for her far-removed relative, whose picture Colin insists she resembles. Irene has made up her mind to bear the inevitable gracefully and is a frequent visitor in Newton, where her still lovely face attracted the attention of a middle-aged bachelor from Boston, with a handsome house on Commonwealth Avenue, and more money than either Rex or Tom. ”