_ Chapter VIII
Sylvia gave a hurried glance at her hair in the glass. It shone like satin with a gray-gold lustre, folded back smoothly from her temples. She eyed with a little surprise the red spots of excitement which still remained on her cheeks. The changelessness of her elderly visage had been evident to her so long that she was startled to see anything else. "I look as if I had been pulled through a knot-hole," she muttered.
She took off her gingham apron, thrust it hastily into a bureau drawer in the next room, and tied on a clean white one with a hemstitched border. Then she went down-stairs, the starched white bow of the apron-strings covering her slim back like a Japanese sash. She heard voices in the south room, and entered with a little cough. Horace and the new-comer were standing there talking. The moment Sylvia entered, Horace stepped forward. "I hardly know how to introduce you," he said; "I hardly know the relationship. But, Mrs. Whitman, here is Miss Fletcher--Miss Rose Fletcher."
"Who accepts your hospitality with the utmost gratitude," said Miss Rose Fletcher, extending a little hand in a wonderful loose gray travelling glove. Mrs. Whitman took the offered hand and let it drop. She was rigid and prim. She smiled, but the smile was merely a widening of her thin, pale, compressed lips. She looked at the girl with gray eyes, which had a curious blank sharpness in them. Rose Fletcher was so very well dressed, so very redolent of good breeding and style, that it was difficult at first to comprehend if that was all. Finally one perceived that she was a very pretty girl, of a sweet, childish type, in spite of her finished manners and her very sophisticated clothes. Sylvia at first saw nothing except the clothes, and realized nothing except the finished manner. She immediately called to the front her own manners, which were as finished as the girl's, albeit of a provincial type. Extreme manners in East Westland required a wholly artificial voice and an expression wholly foreign to the usual one. Horace had never before seen Sylvia when all her manners were in evidence, and he gazed at her now in astonishment and some dismay.
"Her mother was own sister to Miss Abrahama White, and Abrahama White's mother and my mother were own cousins on the mother's side. My mother was a White," she said. The voice came like a slender, reedy whistle from between her moveless, widened lips. She stood as if encased in armor. Her apron-strings stood out fiercely and were quite evident over each hip. She held her head very high, and the cords on her long, thin neck stood out.
Poor Rose Fletcher looked a little scared and a little amused. She cast a glance at Horace, as if for help. He did not know what to say, but tried manfully to say it. "I have never fully known, in such a case," he remarked, "whether the relationship is second cousin or first cousin once removed." It really seemed to him that he had never known. He looked up with relief as Henry entered the room, and Sylvia turned to him, still with her manners fully in evidence.
"Mr. Whitman, this is Miss Abrahama White's niece," said she.
She bowed stiffly herself as Henry bowed. He was accustomed to Sylvia's company manners, but still he was not himself. He had never seen a girl like this, and he was secretly both angry and alarmed to note the difference between her and Sylvia, and all women to which he had been used. However, his expression changed directly before the quick look of pretty, childish appeal which the girl gave him. It was Rose's first advance to all men whom she met, her little feeler put out to determine their dispositions towards her. It was quite involuntary. She was unconscious of it, but it was as if she said in so many words, "Do you mean to be kind to me? Don't you like the look of me? I mean entirely well. There is no harm in me. Please don't dislike me."
Sylvia saw the glance and interpreted it. "She looks like her mother," she announced, harshly. It was part of Sylvia's extreme manners to address a guest in the third person. However, in this case, it was in reality the clothes which had occasioned so much formality. She immediately, after she had spoken and Henry had awkwardly murmured his assent to her opinion, noticed how tired the girl looked. She was a slender little thing, and looked delicate in spite of a babyish roundness of face, which was due to bone-formation rather than flesh.
Sylvia gave an impression of shoving the men aside as she approached the girl. "You look tired to death," said she, and there was a sweet tone in her force voice.
Rose brightened, and smiled at her like a pleased child. "Oh, I am very tired!" she cried. "I must confess to being very tired, indeed. The train was so fast. I came on the limited from New York, you know, and the soft-coal smoke made me ill, and I couldn't eat anything, even if there had been anything to eat which wasn't all full of cinders. I shall be so very glad of a bath and an opportunity to change my gown. I shall have to beg you to allow your maid to assist me a little. My own maid got married last week, unexpectedly, and I have not yet replaced her."
"I don't keep a hired girl," said Sylvia. She looked, as Henry had, both angry and abashed. "I will fasten up your dress in the neck if that is what you want," said she.
"Oh, that is all," Rose assured her, and she looked abashed, too. Even sophistication is capable of being daunted before utterly unknown conditions. She followed Sylvia meekly up-stairs, and Henry and Horace carried the trunk, which had been left on the front walk, up after them.
Leander Willard was a man of exceeding dignity. He was never willing to carry a trunk even into a house. "If the folks that the trunk belongs to can't heft it in after I've brought it up from the depot, let it set out," he said. "I drive a carriage to accommodate, but I ain't no porter."
Therefore, Henry and Horace carried up the trunk and unstrapped it. Rose looked around her with delight. "Oh, what a lovely room!" she cried.
"It gets the morning sun," said Sylvia. "The paper is a little mite faded, but otherwise it's just as good as it ever was."
"It is perfectly charming," said Rose. She tugged at the jewelled pins in her hat. Sylvia stood watching her. When she had succeeded in removing the hat, she thrust her slender fingers through her fluff of blond hair and looked in the glass. Her face appeared over the bunch of flowers, as Sylvia had thought of its doing. Rose began to laugh. "Good gracious!" she said. "For all I took such pains to wash my face in the lavatory, there is a great black streak on my left cheek. Sometimes I think the Pullmans are dirtier than the common coaches--that more soft-coal smoke comes in those large windows; don't you think so?"
Sylvia colored, but her honesty was fearless. "I don't know what a Pullman is," she said.
Rose stared for a second. "Oh, a parlor-car," she said. "A great many people always say parlor-car." Rose was almost apologetic.
"Did you come in a parlor-car?" asked Sylvia. Rose wondered why her voice was so amazed, even aggressive.
"Why, of course; I always do," said Rose.
"I've seen them go through here," said Sylvia.
"Do you mind telling me where my bath-room is?" asked Rose, looking vaguely at the doors. She opened one. "Oh, this is a closet!" she cried. "What a lovely large one!"
"There ain't such a thing as a bath-room in this house," replied Sylvia. "Abrahama White, your aunt, had means, but she always thought she had better ways for her money than putting in bath-rooms to freeze up in winter and run up plumbers' bills. There ain't any bath-room, but there's plenty of good, soft rain-water from the cistern in your pitcher on the wash-stand there, and there's a new cake of soap and plenty of clean towels."
Rose reddened. Again sophistication felt abashed before dauntless ignorance. She ran to the wash-stand. "Oh, I beg your pardon!" she cried. "Of course this will do beautifully. What a charming old wash-stand!--and the water is delightfully soft." Rose began splashing water over her face. She had taken off her blue travelling-gown and flung it in a heap over a chair. Sylvia straightened it out carefully, noting with a little awe the rustle of its silk linings; then she hung it in the closet. "I'll hang it here, where it won't get all of a muss," said she. Already she began to feel a pleasure which she had never known--the pleasure of chiding a young creature from the heights of her own experience. She began harshly, but before she had finished her voice had a tender cadence.
"Oh, thank you," said the girl, still bending over the wash-basin. "I know I am careless with my things. You see, I have always been so dependent upon my maid to straighten out everything for me. You will do me good. You will teach me to be careful."
She turned around, wiping her face, and smiling at Sylvia, who felt her very soul melt within her, although she still remained rigidly prim, with her stiff apron-strings standing out at right angles. She looked at the girl's slender arms and thin neck, which was pretty though thin. "You don't weigh much, do you?" she said.
"A little over a hundred, I think."
"You must eat lots of fresh vegetables and eggs, and drink milk, and get more flesh on your bones," said Sylvia, and her voice was full of delight, although now--as always, lately--a vague uneasiness lurked in her eyes. Rose, regarding her, thought, with a simple shrewdness which was inborn, that her new cousin must have something on her mind. She wondered if it was her aunt's death. "I suppose you thought a good deal of my aunt who died," she ventured, timidly.
Sylvia regarded her with quick suspicion. She paled a little. "I thought enough of her," she replied. "She had always lived here. We were distant-related, and we never had any words, but I didn't see much of her. She kept herself to herself, especially of late years. Of course, I thought enough of her, and it makes me feel real bad sometimes--although I own I can't help being glad to have so many nice things--to think she had to go away and leave them."
"I know you must feel so," said Rose. "I suppose you feel sometimes as if they weren't yours at all."
Sylvia turned so pale that Rose started. "Why, what is the matter? Are you ill?" she cried, running to her. "Let me get some water for you. You are so white."
Sylvia pushed her away. "There's nothing the matter with me," she said. "Folks can't always be the same color unless they're painted." She gave her head a shake as if to set herself right, and turned resolutely towards Rose's trunk. "Can you unpack, yourself, or do you want me to help you?" she asked.
Rose eyed the trunk helplessly, then she looked doubtfully at Sylvia. A woman who was a relative of hers, and who lived in a really grand old house, and was presumably well-to-do, and had no maids at command, but volunteered to do the service herself, was an anomaly to her.
"I'm afraid it will be too much trouble," she said, hesitatingly. "Marie always unpacked my trunk, but you have no--"
"I guess if I had a girl I wouldn't set her to unpacking your trunk," said Sylvia, vigorously. "Where is your key?"
"In my bag," replied Rose, and she searched for the key in her dark-blue, gold-trimmed bag. "Mrs. Wilton's maid, Anne, packed my trunk for me," she said. "Anne packs very nicely. Mr. Wilton and her sister, Miss Pamela Mack, did not know whether I ought to put on mourning or not for Cousin Eliza, but they said it would be only proper for me to wear black to the funeral. So I have a ready-made black gown and hat in the trunk. I hardly knew how much to bring. I did not know--" She stopped. She had intended to say--"how long I should stay," but she was afraid.
Sylvia finished for her. "You can stay just as long as you are a mind to," said she. "You can live here all the rest of your life, as far as that is concerned. You are welcome. It would suit me, and it would suit Mr. Whitman."
Rose looked at Sylvia in amazement as she knelt stiffly on the floor unlocking her trunk. "Thank you, you are very kind," she said, feebly. She had a slight sensation of fear at such a wealth of hospitality offered her from a stranger, although she was a distant relative.
"You know this was your own aunt's house and your own aunt's things," said Sylvia, beginning to remove articles from the trunk, "and I want you to feel at home here--just as if you had a right here." The words were cordial, but there was a curious effect as if she were repeating a well-rehearsed lesson.
"Thank you," Rose said again, more feebly than before. She watched Sylvia lifting out gingerly a fluffy white gown, which trailed over her lean arm to the floor. "That is a tea-gown; I think I will put it on now," said Rose. "It will be so comfortable, and you are not formal here, are you?"
"Eh?"
"You are not formal here in East Westland, are you?"
"No," replied Sylvia, "we ain't formal. So you want to put on--this?"
"Yes, I think I will."
Sylvia laid the tea-gown on the bed, and turned to the trunk again.
"You know, of course, that Aunt Abrahama and mamma were estranged for years before mamma died," said Rose. She sat before the white dressing-table watching Sylvia, and the lovely turn of her neck and her blond head were reflected in the glass above the vase of flowers.
"Yes, I knew something about it."
"I never did know much, except that Aunt Abrahama did not approve of mamma's marriage, and we never saw her nor heard of her. Wasn't it strange," she went on, confidentially, "how soon after poor mamma's death all my money came to me?"
Sylvia turned on her. "Have you got money?" said she. "I thought you were poor."
"Yes, I think I have a great deal of money. I don't know how much. My lawyers take care of it, and there is a trustee, who is very kind. He is a lawyer, too. He was a friend of poor Cousin Eliza's. His name is McAllister. He lives in Chicago, but he comes to New York quite often. He is quite an old gentleman, but very nice indeed. Oh yes, I have plenty of money. I always have had ever since mamma died--at least, since a short time after. But we were very poor, I think, after papa died. I think we must have been. I was only a little girl when mamma died, but I seem to remember living in a very little, shabby place in New York--very little and shabby--and I seem to remember a great deal of noise. Sometimes I wonder if we could have lived beside the elevated road. It does not seem possible that we could have been as poor as that, but sometimes I do wonder. And I seem to remember a close smell about our rooms, and that they were very hot, and I remember when poor mamma died, although I was so young. I remember a great many people, who seemed very kind, came in, and after that I was in a place with a good many other little girls. I suppose it was a school. And then--" Rose stopped and turned white, and a look of horror came over her face.
"What then?" asked Sylvia. "Don't you feel well, child?"
"Yes, I feel well--as well as I ever feel when I almost remember something terrible and never quite do. Oh, I hope I never shall quite remember. I think I should die if I did."
Sylvia stared at her. Rose's face was fairly convulsed. Sylvia rose and hesitated a moment, then she stepped close to the girl and pulled the fair head to her lean shoulder. "Don't; you mustn't take on so," she said. "Don't try to remember anything if it makes you feel like that. You'll be down sick."
"I am trying not to remember, and always the awful dread lest I shall comes over me," sobbed the girl. "Mr. McAllister says not to try to remember, too, but I am so horribly afraid that I shall try in spite of me. Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela don't know anything about it. I never said anything about it to them. I did once to Mr. McAllister, and I did to Cousin Eliza, and she said not to try, and now I am telling you, I suppose because you are related to me. It came over me all of a sudden."
Rose sobbed again. Sylvia smoothed her hair, then she shook her by the slender, soft shoulders, and again that overpowering delight seized her. "Come, now," she said, "don't you cry another minute. You get up and lay your underclothes away in the bureau drawers. It's almost time to get supper, and I can't spend much more time here."
Rose obeyed. She packed away piles of laced and embroidered things in the bureau drawers, and under Sylvia's directions hung up her gowns in the closet. As she did this she volunteered further information.
"I do remember one thing," she said, with a shudder, "and I always know if I could remember back of that the dreadful thing would come to me." She paused for a moment, then she said, in a shocked voice: "Mrs. Whitman."
"What is it?"
"I really do remember that I was in a hospital once when I was little. I remember the nurses and the little white beds. That was not dreadful at all. Everybody petted me, but that was when the trying not to remember began."
"Don't you think of it another minute," Sylvia said, sternly.
"I won't; I won't, really. I--"
"For goodness' sake, child, don't hang that heavy coat over that lace waist--you'll ruin it!" cried Sylvia.
Rose removed the coat hurriedly, and resumed, as Sylvia took it out of her hand: "It was right after that Cousin Eliza Farrel came, and then all that money was left to me by a cousin of father's, who died. Then I went to live with Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela, and I went to school, and I went abroad, and I always had plenty, and never any trouble, except once in a while being afraid I should remember something dreadful. Poor Cousin Eliza Farrel taught school all the time. I never saw her but twice after the first time. When I grew older I tried to have her come and live with me. Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela have always been very nice to me, but I have never loved them. I could never seem to get at enough of them to love."
"You had better put on that now," said Sylvia, indicating the fluffy mass on the bed. "I'll help you."
"I don't like to trouble you," Rose said, almost pitifully, but she stood still while Sylvia, again with that odd sensation of delight, slipped over the young head a lace-trimmed petticoat, and fastened it, and then the tea-gown. The older woman dressed the girl with exactly the same sensations that she might have experienced in dressing her own baby for the first time. When the toilet was completed she viewed the result, however, with something that savored of disapproval.
Rose, after looking in the glass at her young beauty in its setting of lace and silk, looked into Sylvia's face for the admiration which she felt sure of seeing there, and shrank. "What is the matter? Don't I look nice?" she faltered.
Sylvia looked critically at the sleeves of the tea-gown, which were mere puffs of snowy lace, streaming with narrow ribbons, reaching to the elbow. "Do they wear sleeves like that now in New York?" asked she.
"Why, yes!" replied Rose. "This tea-gown came home only last week from Madame Felix."
"They wear sleeves puffed at the bottom instead of the top, and a good deal longer, in East Westland," said Sylvia.
"Why, this was made from a Paris model," said Rose, meekly. Again sophistication was abashed before the confidence of conservatism.
"I don't know anything about Paris models," said Sylvia. "Mrs. Greenaway gets all her patterns right from Boston."
"I hardly think madame would have made the sleeves this way unless it was the latest," said Rose.
"I don't know anything about the latest," said Sylvia. "We folks here in East Westland try to get the _best_." Sylvia felt as if she were chiding her own daughter. She spoke sternly, but her eyes beamed with pleasure. The young girl's discomfiture seemed to sweeten her very soul.
"For mercy's sake, hold up your dress going down-stairs," she admonished. "I swept the stairs this morning, but the dust gathers before you can say boo, and that dress won't do up."
Rose gathered up the tail of her gown obediently, and she also experienced a certain odd pleasure. New England blood was in her veins. It was something new and precious to be admonished as a New England girl might be admonished by a fond mother.
When she went into the south room, still clinging timidly to her lace train, Horace rose. Henry sat still. He looked at her with pleased interest, but it did not occur to him to rise. Horace always rose when Sylvia entered a room, and Henry always rather resented it. "Putting on society airs," he thought to himself, with a sneer.
However, he smiled involuntarily; the girl was so very pretty and so very unlike anything which he had ever seen. "Dressed up as if she were going to a ball, in a dress made like a night-gown," he thought, but he smiled. As for Horace, he felt dazzled. He had scarcely realized how pretty Rose was under the dark-blue mist of her veil. He placed a chair for her, and began talking about the journey and the weather while Sylvia got supper. Henry was reading the local paper. Rose's eyes kept wandering to that. Suddenly she sprang to her feet, was across the room in a white swirl, and snatched the paper from Henry's hands.
"What is this, oh, what is this?" she cried out.
She had read before Horace could stop her. She turned upon him, then upon Henry. Her face was very pale and working with emotion.
"Oh," she cried, "you only telegraphed me that poor Cousin Eliza was dead! You did not either of you tell me she was murdered. I loved her, although I had not seen her for years, because I have so few to whom my love seemed to belong. I was sorry because she was dead, but murdered!"
Rose threw herself on a chair, and sobbed and sobbed.
"I loved her; I did love her," she kept repeating, like a distressed child. "I did love her, poor Cousin Eliza, and she was murdered. I did love her." _