CHAPTER IX

COLIN McPHERSON’S CALL

The next day was hot and sultry, with signs of rain, which began to fall heavily by eight o’clock, but not so heavily that Nixon did not get through it with a basket of cut flowers from Mr. McPherson, who, he said, would call in the afternoon. There was also a note from Reginald for Irene saying that as the rain might continue all day and if it did not the roads would be very muddy, the proposed drive must be postponed to some later date. The arrival of the flowers and note created a little diversion in the household and helped to clear the atmosphere. Mrs. Parks, who was usually all amiability, was somewhat ruffled in spirits. “She felt wrong end up and didn’t know whether she was on foot or horseback,” she confided to me, said deplorable state having been brought about first by the lateness of the hour when we came in. She did not blame me as much as she did the young folks. As a rule they were regular night owls. For her part she could never get to sleep when she knew anybody was out. She kept listening for ’em till her hair began to twist, she got so nervous. It was nigh on to twelve when we came in, she said, and the tardiness of the young ladies at breakfast was another grievance. This meal, which was usually served with the utmost regularity at half-past seven, had waited until eight, and the good woman was greatly distressed for her muffins and my digester, which was sure to suffer from the delay.

“Well, set down anyway,” she said, just as Rena appeared, full of apologies as she took her seat at the table, her eyes dancing when Mrs. Parks explained that she was rather particular about her hours for meals, as things was apt to spile if they stood, and then Miss Bennett’s digester was bad and had to be reg’lar.

“I’m sorry if I have spoiled things and injured Miss Bennett’s digester. It shall not occur again,” Rena said, with a mischievous look at me which I understood.

It was fully ten minutes before Irene came down, seeming languid and dispirited, but brightening when she took the note and saw the flowers which Nixon had brought, and heard that Mr. McPherson would call in the afternoon. It was something to have Reginald write to her and she read his note two or three times but not aloud. She merely explained that the drive was postponed on account of the rain, while her manner indicated that there was more she could tell if she would. The prospect of meeting Mr. 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.”

“Thank you,” Irene said, smiling very graciously as she took her seat near us and remarked upon the beauty of the country now that the rain was over.

She was in the best of humors, and during the half hour which followed I found her intensely agreeable, as I listened to her animated descriptions of what she had seen abroad. Occasionally it occurred to me that Rena’s eyes opened very wide at some things Irene said and which seemed to me overdrawn. I did not then know that her theory was, “if you are telling anything make it interesting, if you have to add to do so.” She was interesting me very much with her adventure on the _mer-de-glace_, making up half of it, at least, when there was the sound of wheels coming down the road and the McPherson carriage stopped at the gate. It devolved upon me to present Mr. McPherson to the young ladies, and I must have spoken their names indistinctly, or he was more deaf than usual, for he said, “Which is Miss Burdick, and which is Miss—” he hesitated and looked at Rena.

“I am Miss Rena; she is Miss Burdick,” and she motioned toward Irene, who looked regally beautiful as she bowed and held out her hand, saying:

“Both Burdicks, both Irenes, and both very glad to meet you and thank you for your thoughtful kindness in sending your carriage for us to the station—and for the lovely flowers.”

“Hey, what?” he said, “carriage and flowers? Rex must have the credit of the flowers yesterday, but was too modest to have them presented in his name. Fine fellow—that Rex!”

He looked steadily at Irene, who blushed becomingly, while Rena seemed troubled as if she felt herself in the shadow of her brilliant cousin. If so the feeling only lasted a moment before she smiled again at something he said. This time his sharp, black eyes looked quickly at her through his gold rimmed glasses, scanning her closely. Then, putting his hand on her shoulder and turning her to the light, he said, “Excuse an old man who might be your grandfather; but, you are more like the picture in our drawing-room than your cousin, who should resemble her. Are you both related to Nannie—Nannie Wilkes, I mean, who drowned herself?”

Mr. McPherson was not one who minced matters at all, but called a spade a spade when he knew it was one. He had heard his brother say many times that the artist had been most happy in getting the right expression in Nannie’s eyes, and that the eyes of the girl seen on the beach were like them. He fancied, too, that Sandy had said she was small, like Nannie, and yet here was this tall blonde, with eyes as blue as the waters of Loch Katrine among the heather hills of Scotland, presented as Miss Burdick. The Miss Burdick, of course—Rex’s fiancée, if he would have it so. No look in her eyes like Nannie. No look like Nannie anywhere in her face. But in the great gray eyes of the other, there was certainly a strong resemblance to Nannie. He knew that look too well to be mistaken. He had seen it for years in the girlish face of his brother’s first love, and he expected to find it in Irene, instead of Rena, whom he would have selected as the great-step-granddaughter, had he made his choice unaided. Hence his question, “Are you both relatives of Nannie?”

Both Irene and Rena were puzzled, and it was Irene who replied, “We must have the same ancestors on one side of our family, as we are cousins, but I never heard of Nannie till I came here.”

“Nor I,” Rena said, “although it seems to me as if I had heard of some relative away back who drowned herself like Nannie. Aunt Mary may know. I’ll write and ask her. Am I really like the picture? I shall be so glad to see it.”

“You are very like it, dimples and all,” Mr. McPherson said, looking admiringly at her, while Irene began to grow hot with envy and anger which she had the tact to conceal.

It would never do to show her chagrin to this shrewd man, whose keen eyes made her so uncomfortable.

“I’ll have to win Rex through him,” she thought, and never was her voice softer, nor her smile sweeter than during the half hour she sat chatting with Colin, who asked her at last if, while she was abroad, she visited Scotland?

“Oh, Scotland!” she exclaimed, remembering that he was Scotch, “Certainly, I did; and the memory of it is a joy forever.”

Colin was delighted and said next:

“And Glasgow, where I was born—did you go there?”

Just for an instant Irene hesitated. Of all the cities visited in Europe, Glasgow was the one she liked the least. She had been there but two days—one of which was rainy—and in that time she saw more squalor and hard faces in the streets among the poor than she had ever seen before in her life, to say nothing of three street fights, one between a girl and a newsboy directly in front of the hotel. She disliked Glasgow and was glad to leave it, but it would not do to decry Colin’s native city, which she assured him she enjoyed so much, especially the parks and drives. In short, Glasgow was charming, and Scotland still more so.

“And you?” he said, turning to Rena. “Were you with your cousin, and did you like Glasgow and Scotland?”

“Scotland, yes, very much; but really, I didn’t care so much for Glasgow as for some other cities, Edinburgh, for instance,” was Rena’s truthful answer.

“Umpht!” came a little testily from Mr. McPherson, who turned again to Irene, listening with rapt attention while she talked, drawing a good deal upon her imagination, but doing it so well that Rena wondered where she was when Irene saw all she was describing and wished she had seen it, too!

Irene knew how to use her eyes and hands when talking, and if the former were not like Nannie’s, they were so effective and did their work so well that Mr. McPherson was as fully impressed as she could have desired. A clause in his brother’s will was to the effect that although he was to have a life interest in the house, Reginald was to live there after his marriage as much of the time as he chose. On this account Colin was especially interested in the girl who was to be Reginald’s wife and anxious to see her.

“She’ll do. She is just the one to grace our house,” was his mental verdict, as he arose to go.

“By the way,” he said, “I came near forgetting one part of my errand, I have been so well entertained. I have arranged to have you to dinner to-morrow at six. The carriage will come for you at five, and Miss Rena, and the other lady—Miss Bennett.”

Irene was profuse in her thanks. She would like to see the McPherson house, of which she had heard so much, she said.

“You will come, of course. I want to compare you with Nannie,” Colin said to Rena, putting his hand on her hair in a caressing kind of way as if she had been a child he wanted to pet.

She did seem to him much younger than Irene, she was so short and slim, and the expression of her face was so frank and open and innocent.

“Yes, I’ll come,” she said, while I, too, accepted rather reluctantly, feeling that I might be _de trop_ with the young people.

Irene seemed very happy the remainder of the day, talking of the dinner and looking over her wardrobe and trying on dress after dress to see which was the most suitable and becoming. She was more fully resolved than ever upon winning Reginald. Of Rena as a rival she had but little fear. Tom stood as a strong wall against any advance from Reginald and her way seemed comparatively clear, now that she had sounded the Scotchman and felt tolerably sure of him as an ally.

“Only talk Glasgow to him and he is all right,” she thought, wishing she had visited more places of interest, or that she had some book in which she could read up and post herself.

Perhaps there was one in the house, she thought. She would inquire. Fortunately for her, a former boarder had left a Harper’s Guide Book which Lottie found for her, and when Rena asked what she was going to do with that musty old volume she answered, “Refresh my memory;” and that night after Rena was asleep she did refresh it to the extent of knowing all there was in it about the Cathedral and the Royal Exchange and Royal Bank and Merchants’ Institute, the Picture Gallery and Museum and Stewart Memorial Fountain. She could scarcely recall one of them, neither had she seen them all, but she had them at her tongue’s end and felt quite ready to meet the old Scotchman on his native heather, if he were disposed to take her there again.