CHAPTER TWO
The Savins, glistening in its snowy blanket, wore an air of expectancy, the house on the corner below was being swept and garnished, while the cold twilight air was burdened with savory odors suggestive of feastings to come. Mrs. McAlister came back from a final survey of the corner house, made her eleventh tour of the parlor, dining-room and kitchen at The Savins, and then took her stand at the front window where she tapped restlessly on the glass and swayed the curtain to and fro impatiently. She was not a nervous woman; but to-night her mood demanded constant action. Moreover, it was only an hour and a quarter before the train was due. If she were not watchful, the carriage might come without her knowing it, and the occupants miss half their welcome home.
Framed in the soft, white draperies, her face made an attractive picture for the passer-by. Mrs. McAlister's girlhood had passed; a certain girlishness, however, would never pass, and her clear blue eyes had all the life and fire they had shown when, as Bess Holden she had been the leader in most of the pranks of her class at Vassar. The brown hair was still unmarked by grey threads and the complexion was still fresh and rosy, while in expression the face in the window below was far younger than the one peering out from the upper room, just above it.
Allyn McAlister was a graft on the family stock, in temperament, at least. Born into a genial, jovial, healthy family, his was the only moody nature there. His brother and sisters might be mischievous or even fractious; but they were never prone to have black half-hours. It was reserved for the youngest one of them all, Allyn McAlister, aged fifteen, to spell his moods with a capital M. His father was wont to say that Allyn was a mixture of two people, of two nameless, far-off ancestors. For days at a time, he was a merry, happy-go-lucky boy. Then, for some slight cause or for no cause at all, he retired within himself for a space when he remained dumb and glowered at the rest of the world morosely. Then he roused himself and emerged from his self-absorption into a frank crossness which wore away but slowly. A motherless childhood when he was alternately teased and spoiled by his older sisters and brother had helped on the trouble, and not even the wisdom of his father and the devotion of his stepmother could cure the complaint. At his best, Allyn was the brightest and most winning of his family; at his worst, it was advisable to let him severely alone. In the whole wide world, only two persons could manage him in his refractory moods. One was his father; the other was his sister Theodora, and Theodora had been in Helena, all winter long. However, she was coming home that night, and Allyn's nose grew quite white at the tip, as he pressed it against the windowpane, in a futile effort to see still farther up the street.
Theodora, meanwhile, sat watching the familiar landscape sweeping backward past the windows of the express train. She knew it all by heart, the low hillocks crowned with clusters of shaggy oaks still thick with unshed leaves, the strips of salt marsh with the haycocks like gigantic beehives, the peeps of blue sea, sail-dotted or crossed by a thin line of smoke, and the neat little towns so characteristic of southern New England. Impulsively she turned to her husband.
"Oh, don't you pity Hope, Billy?"
"What for?"
"To live out there. I suppose Archie's business makes it a necessity; but
I do wish he would come back and settle down near us."
"He would be like a bull in a china shop, Teddy. Fancy Archie Holden, after having all the Rocky Mountains for his workshop, coming back and settling down into one of these bandboxy little towns! He is better off, out there."
"Perhaps. But isn't it good to get back again?"
He looked at her in some perplexity.
"I thought you were having such a good time, Ted."
"I was, a beautiful one; but I am so glad to see blue, deep water again. I was perfectly happy, while I was there; but now I feel as if I couldn't wait to be in our own home again, Billy, and gossip with you after dinner in the library. People are so in the way. It will be like a second honeymoon, with nobody to interrupt us."
He laughed at her enthusiasm.
"Old married people like us! But you will mourn for Mac, Ted; you know you will."
Forgetting the familiar landscape, she turned to face him with a laugh which chased all the dreaminess from her eyes.
"Billy Farrington! But did you ever know such a mockery of fate?"
"As Mac?"
"Yes, as Hope's having such a child?"
"It is a little incongruous."
"It is preposterous. Hope was always the meek angel of the household, and Archie is not especially obstreperous. But Mac—" Theodora's pause was expressive.
Billy laughed.
"He combines the face of an angel and the wisdom of a serpent," he remarked. "I don't know whether his morals or his vocabulary are more startling. Hope has her hands full; but she will find a way to manage him, even if she can't learn from her own childhood, as you could."
"Thank you, dear. Your compliments are always charming. Perhaps I wasn't an angel-child; but you generally aided and abetted me in my misdeeds. I do hope, though, that Mac will grow in grace before they come East, next summer."
Her husband glanced up, started slightly, then leaned back in his chair while a sudden look of amusement came into his blue eyes. The next moment, Theodora sprang up with a glad exclamation.
"Hu!"
The train had stopped, and a young man had come into the car, given a quick look at the passengers and then marched straight to Mrs. Farrington's chair. Resting his hands on her shoulders, he bent down and laid his cheek against hers, and Theodora, regardless of the people about her, turned and cast herself into his arms. Tall and lithe and singularly alike in face, it scarcely needed a second glance to show that they were not only brother and sister, but twins as well. Moreover, in spite of Hubert's successful business life and Theodora's devotion to her husband, the twins were as necessary to each other as the blades of a pair of scissors.
"How well you are looking! Have you missed me? Aren't you glad to see us back? How are they all at home?" she demanded breathlessly.
Her brother laughed, as he shook hands with Billy.
"Steady, Ted! One at a time. You haven't lost your old trick of asking questions. We are all well, and I left the mother alternately peering out of the front window of our house and punching up the pillows on the couch in your library."
"And papa?"
"Splendid, and covered with glory for his last operation on the Gaylord child. It is the talk of the town."
Theodora's eyes flashed proudly.
"Isn't he wonderful? If he had never had a patient but Billy, he might have been content. I wish you could be half the man he is, Hu."
"I do my endeavors, Ted."
"Yes, and you are a boy to be proud of, even if you aren't a doctor," she answered. "You look as if the last five months had agreed with you."
"They have, for I didn't have anybody around to torment me, and I grew fat and sleek from day to day. How is Hope?"
"As well as is compatible with being Mac's mother."
"What is the matter with him? You didn't write much."
"No; for I knew you wouldn't believe the half of my tales. Hu, the boy is an imp."
"He combines the least lovely traits of Teddy and Babe," Mr. Farrington remarked gravely.
"I was never half so original and daring as he is," Theodora said regretfully. "My iniquities were trite; his are fresh from the recesses of his own brain. He is a cunning child, Hu, and a pretty one; but his ways are past finding out, and—"
"And, as I said, he favors his Aunt Teddy," her husband interposed.
Theodora decided to change the subject.
"How is Allyn?" she asked.
Hubert's face sobered.
"He is well."
"Is anything the matter with the boy?" Theodora demanded, for Allyn had always been her own especial charge, and her marriage had made no break in their relations. Allyn's home was as much at the corner house as at The Savins.
"No; only the world goes hard with him. He has needed you, Teddy. The rest of us rub him the wrong way. He has a queer streak in him. I wish I could get hold of him; but I can't."
"It is the cross-grained age," Theodora said thoughtfully. "He will come out all right."
"Perhaps; but meanwhile he is having a bad time of it, for he can't get on with any of the boys. He lords it over them, and then resents it and sulks, if they rebel. Where does he get it, Ted? We weren't like that."
"It is too bad," she said slowly; "but I'll see what I can do with him."
"He has needed you, Teddy; that is a fact. Even the mother can't get on with him as you do. You're going to stay at home now for a while; aren't you?"
"Yes; we are going to have a perfect honeymoon of quiet. We have wandered enough, and we don't mean to budge again for the next ten years. I am going to write, all day long; and, when twilight falls, Billy and I will draw our elbow chairs to the fire, and sit and gossip and nod over the andirons till bedtime. We haven't had an hour to ourselves for five months, and now we must make up for lost time."
Hubert laughed.
"You are as bad as ever. When do I come in?"
"On Sundays. I expect a McAlister dinner party, every Sunday night. Otherwise, four times a day. We have three elbow chairs, you know, and the hearth is a broad one."
"You haven't asked after Phebe," Hubert said, after a pause.
"What was the use? Billy had a letter from his mother, the day we left
Helena, and I knew you would have had nothing later."
"But we have."
"What?"
"She sailed for home, to-day, on the Kaiserina."
"Hubert!"
"Theodora?"
"What do you mean?"
"Just that and no more."
"How did you hear?"
"A cable, to-day."
"But Mrs. Farrington said she was going to Italy."
"Perhaps she is."
"Not if she is coming home."
"She isn't."
Theodora looked mystified, as much at the ambiguity of the pronouns as at the fact itself.
"Babe is coming home alone," Hubert added.
"Is she ill?"
"Quite well, she says."
"Then what in the world is she coming for?" Theodora's tone expressed both indignation and incredulity.
"It passes my comprehension. What do you think, Billy?"
Mr. Farrington took off his hat and pushed back his red-gold hair. It was a trick he had, when he was worried or annoyed.
"I can't imagine," he said anxiously. "Mother has enjoyed Babe and she has written often of Babe's being happy over there. It seemed a pleasant thing for them both; and I am sorry to have the arrangement broken up. What has Babe written to you?"
"Constant ecstasies. She has been perfectly happy, and has chanted the praise of your mother for paragraphs at a time. I think there can't have been any trouble, or Babe would have told us. She isn't the one to disguise her feelings and spoil a story for relationship's sake."
Theodora sighed. Then she laughed.
"It is only another one of Babe's freaks," she said, with a blitheness which was meant for her husband's ear. "We must bide our time till she comes to explain herself. Did you ever know her to do what you expected of her?"
It was nearly dark when the train rolled in at the familiar station. The Farrington carriage was waiting, and beside it waited a grey-haired man in plain green livery. The travelers hailed him as Patrick, and he greeted them with a delight that was out of all keeping with the severe decorum of his manner of a moment before. Then, merry as a trio of children, they drove up the snowy streets, Theodora and Billy in wild rapture at the thought of being at home once more, Hubert more quiet, but none the less happy in the prospect of having his sister within reach again.
They were to dine at The Savins, that night, and they drove directly there. The low red house rested unchanged on its hilltop where the twilight was casting greyish shadows across the snow. Lights gleamed in all the windows; but no welcoming face was silhouetted against them. Upstairs, Allyn was restlessly pacing his room at the back of the house; below, a sudden fragrance of burning meats had sent Mrs. McAlister flying to the kitchen, and for an instant the travelers stood alone in the broad front hall, with no one to welcome them.
It was only for an instant, however. Dr. McAlister rushed out from his office, and Mrs. McAlister came running to meet them, to exclaim over them and lead them forward to the blazing fire. Then there was a thud and a bump, and Theodora was gripped tight in two strong boyish arms and felt a clumsy boyish kiss on her cheek, while she heard, not noisily, but quite low,—
"Oh, Teddy, you've come at last!"