VII
On New Year's Day, Miss Adgate woke to a blizzard.
The New Year in Oldbridge is feasted in that old-time pleasant fashion which has long ago passé de mode in New York, which is regarded with disfavour at Boston and in other New England towns. But Oldbridge perseveres in welcoming the New Year, for this smacks of ancientry, and, in sooth, the custom is a genial one. 'Tis well known that in Paris, every hostess, mistress of a salon, is deluged with cards and flowers and bonbons from Boissier on the New Year. At Rome, too, on the New Year, and in Vienna and Berlin, is it not considered courteous for a young man, not alone to leave his card, but to call wherever he has received a welcome? The servants of the houses he frequents, a hint to the wise, never allow him to forget his obligations; they pass at his lodgings betimes on the New Year and receive for their Buon' Anno a substantial Buono Mano. Oldbridge is, therefore, wholly in touch with the most modern capitals when it hospitably celebrates the New Year.
As Ruth, accompanied by Paolina, passed, by meadows all sparkling and white with hoar-frost, from the New Year's Midnight Mass at the Parish Church, the stars in a clear sky scintillated with suspicious brilliancy. The usual eager nipping air of a New England Autumn had until then condensed into just an occasional flurry of snow—or it had subdued its edge; the days were often warm enough to sit beside open windows. The American Winter had not begun to show its teeth. But from her bed to-day Ruth saw the flakes descend—small, dry,—to the rumour of low complaints, murmurs in the chimney. The flakes had a stealthy, a persistent look. Ruth, though, was very, sure the storm would prove the hitherto pretty diversion of a whitened landscape and trees, of a rapid thaw under warm sun, and Miss Adgate adored these snow falls! She had never, she thought, seen anything comparable to the white still beauty of the country and the wood, the gentian blueness of the sky when the snow had ceased, the clouds had emptied sack and the sun burst forth. When this happened she would put on a pair of high rubber boots, take a stick and start for a walk. And when, in her walk, she came across the marks of little feet along the snow,—squirrel tracks, mole tracks, the tracks of birds, quail, the larger ones of woodchucks, of foxes,—little existences living to themselves—which she could never know, never fathom—her mind would travel off into endless reveries and speculations.
But her rôle to-day was that of hostess and there would be no going out to-day after the snowfall. Miss Adgate shortly after breakfast sauntered into the kitchen to see how matters there were progressing.
Before her, on the kitchen table, an array of angel cake, nut cake, pound cake, orange cake, maple-sugar cake lacked the supreme touch, and waited to be frosted. Spread upon a crackled Coalport dish a quantity of thin, brown, crisp, sugar wafers invited appetite. These wafers were from a recipe handed down in the Adgate family. Ruth knew the original, had seen it in Priscilla Mulline Alden's neat cramped little Huguenot handwriting; it was carefully preserved among the most curious of the Adgate relics.
Martha, Ellen,—busy preparing endless edible New England subtleties in the buttery,—Margaret stirring an icing for the cake, General Adgate expected,—he had promised to come in an hour to brew his famous punch, the ingredients for which were mellowing and combining in the dining-room. Everything was, then, well under way, each aide-de-camp was at his post; the commander-in-chief felt she might safely mount to her dressing-room to let Paolina put on the robes of state.
Now it must be known that Paolina had taken to her new life with unexpected cheerfulness; and the reason was shortly to be disclosed.
“Signorina,” Paolina began timidly, while she dressed her mistress's hair in a high French twist, placed a bow of pale blue ribbon fetchingly to the left of the coil, poised it there like a butterfly with wings outspread,—“Signorina—would—you be very angry if I confided to you, something?”
“It depends upon what the something is, Paolina,” said Ruth absently, giving her attention to the becoming effect of the bow.
“Oh, Signorina!” sighed Paolina. Suddenly she clasped her hands; she held them out before her, dropped to her knees. “Oh! Signorina! Jobias has asked me to marry him!”
“Jobias—has—asked you—to—marry him?” repeated Ruth in astonishment. Then she began to laugh—laughed in merry peals of musical laughter, her head thrown back, her face a ripple of mirth.
But Paolina was quite offended.
“Signorina,” she said, and she rose with dignity, “why should it make you laugh to learn that Tobias has asked me to marry him?”
“Forgive me, Paolina,” Ruth said; “it is not that Jobias has asked you to marry him that makes me laugh—it is the tone in which you break the news to me.” Then, gravely: “And what did you say to him, Paolina, when he asked you to marry him?”
“Signorina, I said I would have to ask you. I said that you were a mother to me, and that I would have to get your consent.”
“So,—” said Ruth, “you really think of accepting him?”
“I esteem him,” said Paolina, “I think he is a good man. He has saved up two thousand dollars. He has a nice house across the river which he lets out, and of which he reserves for himself one room. I think my own mother would be pleased with the match, if you approve, Signorina.”
“But do you realise,” said Ruth, “that if you marry Jobias you cannot see your mother again? It costs a deal of money to cross the ocean. Jobias could not take you—he would have his work to do.”
“Oh, Signorina, but you would take us! I would not leave you, Jobias said I need not. But when you marry (Jobias says you will surely marry, before long)”—Paolina nodded her head several times sagaciously—“then your husband will want a valet, and Jobias says he will be glad to put himself at your excellencies' services. And then, you will go abroad for the wedding tour, and you will want to take us. I can then go to my mother and receive her blessing.”
Ruth caught her breath. “Thus are our lives arranged for us,” she thought, smiling, “and by whom?” For half an instant she was silent. Somewhere, among the recesses of memory, Ruth tried to recall such a conversation. She remembered—she had read it,—why,—it was in one of Corvo's witty tales.... So does history repeat itself. What the romancer invents women and men enact.
But just then, crisis of Paolina's life, the knocker at the front door went rat-tat.
“Good gracious, and I'm not dressed yet. Put my dress on quickly, Paolina,—we'll finish our talk at some other time,” Ruth exclaimed.
Paolina ran to the bed, lifted the pale blue chiffon gown inlaid with yellow lace—passed it dexterously, delicately, over Ruth's head, and began with her adroit, rapid fingers to lace the bodice. Martha knocked at the door: “Master Jack Enderfield is in the drawing-room, Miss,” she said in her precise voice. Ruth glanced at the clock—the hands pointed to ten.
“Tell Master Jack Enderfield I'll be down directly,” she said. Ruth, standing before the cheval glass, gave a light pat here to her gown, a touch there to her coiffure—Martha lingered a minute to take the vision in.
“Yes, Miss,” she said, closed the door, and was gone.
Then Ruth descended the stairs in a froufrou of skirts, wafting an odour of violets as she went along; and she greeted Master Jack Enderfield at the drawing-room door with that radiant grace the young man seemed so well able to appreciate.