Part 47

Even a high white stool had been provided for Miss Carter. She found it very convenient for many purposes, but she _did_ like a rocking-chair, and she had apologetically brought one down from the attic. To please Maude she had painted it white, so that it also had a somewhat severe look; but when there was nobody else in the house, Miss Carter always got out that nice, downy old red silk cushion from the hall cupboard, put it into the chair, and sat down and rocked comfortably while she shelled peas or hulled berries, and so on.

The cushion always disappeared before Maude got home, because it would distress her. If she were to see it, she would surely go out the very next day and buy a scientific, up-to-date one--perhaps one like those hard, shiny things that dentists have in their chairs.

Maude disapproved of old, soft, comfortable things, and called them “slipshod.” She hated all that was not exact and efficient. It was misery for her to hear Miss Carter talk about putting in “a pinch” of cinnamon, instead of one-eighth of a teaspoonful, and the mention of “a lump of butter the size of an egg” appalled her.

She had bought Miss Carter glass measuring cups, quart measures, pint measures, scales, and sets of spoons of all sizes; and yet, in the making of these very doughnuts, Miss Carter had used that old blue teacup for measuring, and she had put in many “pinches” of things. It made her feel guilty to think of it, but she really couldn’t help it. At forty--

Now there was another treacherous thought! Maude never allowed her to be forty.

“Never think of yourself as forty,” Maude often said, “and you won’t feel forty.”

But in her secret heart Miss Carter wished that she could just comfortably be forty. It seemed to her a remarkably nice age to be. Indeed, she felt proud of it. When she went to buy a hat, and the saleswoman said something nice about her splendid head of hair, Miss Carter liked to say:

“It’s not bad for a woman of forty, if I do say it myself!”

She didn’t say this any more, because it worried Maude, but there were times when she defiantly thought it. It gave so much zest to life. For instance, that evening when they came back from the picnic, and every one else was so tired, and she wasn’t, one bit, even if she was for--

As she left the kitchen and the tantalizing aroma of the doughnuts, another perfume came floating in at the open front door. It was the scent of those dear little pinks and verbenas in the garden.

“I guess I’ll go out and sit on the porch for half an hour,” thought Miss Carter.

So out she went, and the very sight of the garden on this summer day made her so happy that tears came to her eyes. Maude had improved the house a good deal, but she had been satisfied to leave the garden to her aunt, and it was just as it had always been--a gay, careless sort of garden, with a lawn shaded by fine old trees, and a rebellious crowd of bright, old-fashioned flowers. The sweet alyssum was foaming over the borders of the largest bed and marching down to the path, just as it had done when she was a little girl. There were the rosebushes that her mother had planted, and the privet hedge that had seemed so tall and dark and impenetrable to a child’s vision. It was indeed a dear and wonderful old garden!

With a sigh of content, she sank into a chair--and almost at once jumped up again. She mustn’t sit out here in her gingham house dress, wearing these old shoes! Somebody might see her, and Maude would never get over it if anybody should see her aunt looking really comfortable; so she went back to the house, and up to her own room.

This was, in Miss Carter’s eyes, the most charming room in all the world. The things in it were old, and some of them were not very beautiful, but she liked them--all of them, even the two old calendars on the wall and the French clock that had not ticked for years and years. The dark shades were pulled down against the afternoon sun, and a limpid green light filled the room. The mahogany bureau shone like dark water, and the big four-post bed, with its old-fashioned bolster and the ruffled spread, looked exquisitely restful.

“Upon my word,” said Miss Carter to herself, “I believe I could take forty winks! Such a hot afternoon! And there’s nothing much I ought to do for the next half hour.”

Now the naps of housekeepers are different from the naps of other people. There is always a faint feeling of guilt about them, no matter how much work has been done, or how well earned the rest--always a consciousness of all sorts of other things that ought to be done. Even Miss Carter, whose house was a model of cleanliness and order, had this feeling of guilt, and was quite human enough to enjoy her nap all the more for it.

She settled herself comfortably on the sofa, and closed her eyes. One of the shades flapped softly in the breeze, and she thought that it was like a sail, and that she was floating off somewhere--floating off--

The telephone bell rang.

Miss Carter sat up, frowned a little, yawned, and went downstairs; and over the wire came the voice that was dearer to her than any other voice in the world.

“Auntie Sue, darling, would it bother you if I were to bring some one home for dinner?”

“Bother me?” cried Miss Carter. “Why, of course not, child! You can bring a dozen people, any time you’ve a mind to!”

“I just thought I’d ask Mr. Rhodes,” said Maude.

A very odd sort of feeling came over Miss Carter. She smiled graciously, as people do who wish to hide their emotions from the watchful telephone, and said:

“I’ll be very glad to see him, child.”

But this was not quite true. She had never heard of Mr. Rhodes before, yet she had been expecting him for five years, ever since Maude was eighteen. She had known that somebody was bound to come and take Maude away, and this was the man--she was sure of it! The way Maude said she would “ask Mr. Rhodes” was enough.

“Well, why not?” Miss Carter demanded sternly of herself. “You couldn’t expect a girl like Maude t-to s-stay--Pshaw, I’ve left my handkerchief upstairs!”

She went upstairs hastily, and lay down on the sofa again for a little while, but she did not go to sleep.

After awhile she got up and washed her face in cold water, and began to get ready for Maude’s guest. Naturally Maude would expect her to wear the _crêpe de Chine_ dress she had given her aunt as a birthday present, so Miss Carter opened the cupboard door, and there it was--a dark and elegant stranger, hanging there with a sort of disdainful air among the sensible, sturdy linens and cottons.

She brought it out, took off her loose, comfortable house dress, and struggled into the _crêpe de Chine_.

“A slip-on-dress,” Maude had called it.

“A squirm-on dress, I should say!” thought Miss Carter.

She did not like herself in that dress. She looked at her image in the mirror, and she did not like it. A sturdy little woman she was, straight as an arrow. Her face, with its small, clear, regular features and healthy color, and those very blue eyes of hers, was quite as pretty as it had been fifteen years ago--perhaps even more so, because of the patience and the compassion she had learned; but she had long ago forgotten to think about being pretty. She noted nothing except the dress, which didn’t suit her.

“Specially designed upon long, slender lines,” Maude had said.

“And I’m not!” thought Miss Carter. “What’s the sense in a dress being long and slender, if the person inside it is short and”--she paused--“and roly-poly,” she added firmly. “That’s what I am!”

She covered up all this magnificence with a big checked apron, and went down into the kitchen again. The dinners that she prepared for Maude every night were so good that it was scarcely possible to improve upon them, but this evening she intended to try. She intended to outdo herself for Maude’s Mr. Rhodes.

From the garden she picked enough early June peas to make cream-of-pea soup. The chicken, which she had intended to roast, was not, she thought, quite large enough for three, so she made it into a fricassee, with dumplings beyond description. Then she had a dish of wax beans, and a dish of asparagus, cooked to perfection and seasoned only with plenty of butter, and potatoes most marvelously fried, and she made fresh strawberry ice cream. When you consider what it meant to crack ice and turn the freezer, in that dress with long, tight sleeves and floating things that hung from the shoulders--

She didn’t dare to take it off, though, for fear of their coming by an early train, because she knew that even more than a superb dinner Maude would want to see her aunt in all her glory.

Then she laid the table with her finest tablecloth and her grandmother’s china, and with every rose in the garden in a bowl in the center. She really was pleased with the result.

II

As it happened, they came by a late train, so that Miss Carter was sitting on the veranda, looking very calm and leisurely, as they approached. She did not feel so, however. When, around the corner of the hedge, she saw Maude’s familiar gray hat, which came down almost to the tip of her niece’s pretty little nose, and beside it a most unfamiliar straw hat on a tall head that bent deferentially, she was anything but calm--and, for a moment, anything but hospitable. How could she be glad to see this man who might take Maude away from her?

“He’d never appreciate her!” said Miss Carter. “Not in a month of Sundays!”

Perhaps this might seem a little unjust, when Miss Carter hadn’t even seen the man yet; but what she meant was that neither this man nor any one else in the world could know the Maude she knew. He had never seen and never would see the remarkable infant Maude, the neatest baby that ever was, who used to lie out in a basket under that elm tree, her long white dress pulled down perfectly straight, her little dark head exactly in the center of the tiny pillow, her clenched fists lying one on each side of her round, serious face.

How Maude’s mother used to laugh at that neat baby of hers! And how she used to laugh at the slightly older Maude who went, every day for weeks, in a pink sunbonnet and a pink dress, to try to open the garden gate, and each time sat down unexpectedly upon the path!

When there was no mother to laugh any more, Miss Carter had taken on the job. At first she had thought that without her sister she never could laugh again; but it proved easier than she had expected. She found that when the person you love wants anything, you can do impossible things. When figured out on paper, she had seen that it was impossible to send Maude to college; but she had sent her. And now, when she realized how impossible it would be to let Maude go, she knew in her heart that she could and would do that gladly.

“If he’s anything like good enough for her,” she stipulated.

She felt pretty sure, though, that Maude would never look at a man who was not admirable. She had seen that this Mr. Rhodes was tall, and she expected him to be marvelously handsome, with knightly manners and a commanding intellect. Maude was so very particular, and so intelligent herself--a private secretary at the age of twenty-three!

The garden gate opened, and there they were. Miss Carter rose with a welcoming smile, but--

“Good gracious!” she cried to herself. “The man’s _old_!”

He carried himself well, this tall man. His face, in its way, was a fine one, kindly and strong and trustworthy; but Miss Carter saw the tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and the touch of gray in his dark hair, and she was cruelly disappointed. If she had seen him alone, she wouldn’t have dreamed of calling him old, for he wasn’t more than forty-five; but with Maude beside him he was a Methuselah. Maude was so pathetically young! Her very earnestness was such a young sort of thing! She hadn’t really learned to smile yet.

“Auntie,” she said, “this is Mr. Rhodes.”

Over the telephone her voice had sounded very happy, but now there was a note of portentous solemnity in it. She spoke as if she were bidding her aunt gaze upon one of the wonders of the world; and this did not please Miss Carter.

“I’m very glad to see you, Mr. Rhodes,” she said.

She said it pleasantly enough, but in a tone that Maude had never heard before. She looked different, too. No one would have dared to think of her as roly-poly now. Her dignity was such that she actually looked taller.

“Dinner,” said she, “will be served in ten minutes.”

From the way she spoke, there might have been a butler and two footmen to serve dinner. It was hard to imagine that this Miss Carter knew what a gingham apron was. Nevertheless, she put one on as soon as she entered the kitchen.

Almost at once Maude appeared in the doorway.

“Auntie!” she said. “Auntie, do you like Mr. Rhodes?”

“My dear, I don’t know him!” answered Miss Carter, as if surprised.

But Maude, though young, was also a woman, and she knew what a deceitful answer this was.

“Yes, but--” she said, and paused. “You know, auntie, he’s a very remarkable man,” she went on briskly.

“Oh, indeed, is he?” replied Miss Carter pleasantly.

Well, she didn’t think so. When called, Mr. Rhodes came in from the veranda, took his place at the table, and ate his dinner. He said yes, the weather was cool for this time of the year, and no, he hadn’t been in this part of the State before, and yes, thanks, he would have a little more of the fricassee, and the roses on the table were very fine, and he liked roses. Remarkable, was he?

“A wooden Indian!” said Miss Carter to herself.

It hurt her to see Maude sitting there, with shining eyes and flushed cheeks, fairly hanging on the man’s words, and to see that he never looked at the girl in that way. When he did look at her--which was not often--he wore a kind, grown-up sort of smile which Miss Carter thought detestable. He did not appreciate Maude. Miss Carter was sorry she had made ice cream, and she wouldn’t let him have a single doughnut.

When dinner was over, they all went out on the veranda. Dusk had settled over the garden, and the stars were out, faint in the violet sky. A breeze stirred in the leaves of the old trees and swayed the gay little flowers, which, scarlet or blue or orange, all looked white now. It was a lovely night. Even the disapproving and indignant Miss Carter yielded a little to its softening influence, and was silent, thinking of the old, dear things that haunted her garden.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” came Mr. Rhodes’s deep, quiet voice from the dark corner where he sat.

“Oh, no!” said Miss Carter, somewhat frigidly polite.

Nobody had smoked a cigar on this veranda for a good many years. Miss Carter’s father used to smoke. How the smell of the smoke drifting through the dark brought back the memory of that big, jolly man, who used suddenly to chuckle aloud when something amusing crossed his mind! She smiled to herself, thinking of the days when the house had not been the silent, orderly place it was now--the days when she and her brothers had been young, and the house alive with voices, and laughter, and youth.

“And that’s what poor little Maude ought to have,” she thought. “Young people--_silly_ young people--music and dancing. She shouldn’t be sitting out here with me and this wooden Indian!”

She made up her mind that at least the man should be made to talk, and in a firm and resolute manner she set about the task of drawing him out. Perhaps, in her heart, she hoped that he would reveal himself as dull and pompous; but he did not.

He was a shipbuilder, the descendant of a long line of Massachusetts shipbuilders. To Miss Carter there was romance in that business, and Mr. Rhodes evidently had the same feeling. He had a sort of reverence for ships, and an inexhaustible fund of interesting tales about them. Not that he was at all eloquent. He was rather a shy man, and halting in his speech, and he needed a good deal of drawing out; but Miss Carter did it.

He talked, and Miss Carter, leaning back in her chair, enjoyed hearing him. She liked the sound of his quiet, careful voice, and liked the fragrant smoke of his cigar. She intended to go into the house presently, to wash the dishes, leaving him and Maude by themselves for awhile; but a dreadful thing happened. There was a pause in the conversation, and suddenly the clock in the hall struck eleven.

Mr. Rhodes got up hastily. He apologized for having stayed so long. He seemed conscience-stricken, and wouldn’t even wait while they looked up a train for him. He said good night and set off hurriedly.

“You must come again,” Miss Carter told him.

“Thank you,” he replied earnestly.

“Soon!” cried Miss Carter, still more earnestly.

“_Thank_ you!” answered his voice, from halfway down the path.

“He never will,” thought Miss Carter, in despair. “Never! I’ve spoiled everything! I never even gave him a chance to speak one single word to Maude. Of course he’ll never come again!”

And it did not add very greatly to her peace of mind to see that Maude was unusually silent and pale.

“You get right to bed, child,” she said. “I’ll do the dishes.”

“No--I’ll help you, auntie darling.”

“But you have to get up in the morning,” Miss Carter protested.

“So do you,” returned Maude.

“But you have to go to work.”

“I don’t work as hard as you do,” said Maude.

This startled Miss Carter, because somehow she never thought of her work as work. It touched her, too, very much, and if she had not been a Connecticut Carter she would probably have cried; but she was one, so she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t even hint to Maude how sorry she was for her wicked, selfish conduct. All she could do was to be very, very brisk and cheerful, and to fly around the kitchen like a bee.

And there was Maude, drying the dishes, her lovely young face so pale, so grave!

“A meddlesome old maid!” thought Miss Carter. “That’s what I am!”

At last she had to say something.

“I think Mr. Rhodes is--_very_ nice,” she observed, in an unexpectedly loud voice.

“Do you, auntie?” said Maude. “Well, I--I think so, too; but”--she turned away, to put some glasses up on a shelf--“but I’m afraid that he doesn’t consider me very interesting.”

“Nonsense, child!” cried Miss Carter.

“Well, I’m not,” said Maude. “I just don’t know anything!”

Miss Carter was on the point of telling Maude that she was a college graduate and a private secretary, and probably the most intelligent young woman alive; but something stopped her. Instead, she said that she must wind up the clock while she thought of it. In passing behind the girl, she laid a hand on her shoulder.

“My dear!” she said. “My dear!”

Their eyes met--those two pairs of blue eyes that were so much alike.

“Good night, auntie,” said Maude.

“Good night, Maude,” said Miss Carter.

And in those six words they said more than some people could have expressed in an hour’s conversation.

III

Miss Carter, lying awake in the dark, had before her eyes the image of Maude, so pale and grave and so very young, standing there in that dazzlingly white, highly efficient kitchen. The night wind blew in at the open window, fluttering the curtains, and outside in the dark garden a little owl gave its tremulous cry. A great loneliness came over her. She thought of this old house, with all those rooms, so neat and orderly--and empty, standing in the dark, quiet garden, and with herself and poor lovely young Maude all alone in it. Two spinsters all alone!

“No!” said Miss Carter, aloud.

Miss Carter’s forefathers, three hundred years ago, had kept themselves alive on the “stern and rock-bound coast” of New England because of their grim determination; and though Miss Carter had inherited very little of their grimness, she certainly was determined. Then and there she made up her mind; and, what is more, she was positively artful about it.

“I was wondering,” she said to Maude, the next morning. “Didn’t Mr. Rhodes say that his business was up in Massachusetts? How did you come to meet him, child?”

“Oh, he’s a great friend of Mr. Lawrence’s,” said Maude, very, very casually. “Mr. Lawrence’s firm are shipowners, you know, and we write all their insurance for them. Their office is on the same floor with us, and I often--I often have to run in there. Whenever Mr. Rhodes comes to New York, he always stops in there, and I’ve met him there several times.”

“I see!” said Miss Carter brightly.

What she saw was the wave of color that rose in Maude’s cheeks. She also saw how a letter could be addressed to Mr. Rhodes, in care of Mr. Lawrence, in the same building where Maude worked.

After Maude had gone, she wrote the letter. She told Mr. Rhodes that she and her niece would be very pleased to see him next Sunday afternoon, and she said that the “best” train was one that arrived at their station about three o’clock.

How could the truthful Miss Carter write such a letter? How could she say that Maude would be glad to see Mr. Rhodes when she never told Maude a word about his coming? How could she call a train a “best” train that stopped at every tiniest station, and that arrived, moreover, at a time when Maude would not be at home? But she did say all this, and was not even ashamed of it.

And then, right under Maude’s nose, she prepared a supper which utterly surpassed the previous dinner; and when the poor, unsuspicious girl had gone off to the Sunday school where she taught a class, Miss Carter flew upstairs, put on the _crêpe de Chine_ dress, arranged her hair in a new fashion, and just had time to get down to the veranda when Mr. Rhodes appeared.

She kept on in the same deplorably artful manner. Although she was still a little out of breath from her struggle with the dress, she pretended to be so deeply absorbed in the magazine she had just that moment snatched up that she didn’t hear him coming up the path. There she sat, looking calm, serene, almost queenly.