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[Pg 286] 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.[Pg 287]
“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.