AN OLD COMEDY
Norton had scarcely passed his gate on the way to catch the train when Cleo left the window, where her keen eyes had been watching, and made her way rapidly to the room he had just vacated.
Books and papers were scattered loosely over his table beside the typewriter which he had, with his usual carelessness, left open.
With a quick decision she seated herself beside the machine and in two hours sufficiently mastered its use to write a letter by using a single finger and carefully touching the keys one by one.
The light of a cunning purpose burned in her eyes as she held up the letter which she had written on a sheet paper with the embossed heading of his home address at the top.
She re-read it, smiling over the certainty of the success of her plan. The letter was carefully and simply worded:
"My Dear Miss Helen:
"As your guardian is still in Europe, I feel it my duty, and a pleasant one, to give you a glimpse of the South before you go abroad. Please come at once to my home for as long as you care to stay. If I am away in the campaign when you arrive, my son and housekeeper, Cleo, will make you at home and I trust happy.
"With kindest regards, and hoping to see you soon,
"Sincerely,
"Daniel Norton."
The signature she practiced with a pen for half an hour until her imitation was almost perfect and then signed it. Satisfied with the message, she addressed an envelope to "Miss Helen Winslow, Convent of the Sacred Heart, Racine, Wisconsin," sealed and posted it with her own hand.
The answer came six days later. Cleo recognized the post mark at once, broke the seal and read it with dancing eyes:
"My Dear Major Norton:
"I am wild with joy over your kind invitation. As my last examinations are over I will not wait for the Commencement exercises. I am so excited over this trip I just can't wait. I am leaving day after to-morrow and hope to arrive almost as soon as this letter.
"With a heart full of gratitude,
"Your lonely ward,
"Helen."
Two days later a hack rolled up the graveled walk to the white porch, a girl leaped out and bounded up the steps, her cheeks flushed, her wide open blue eyes dancing with excitement.
She was evidently surprised to find that Cleo was an octoroon, blushed and extended her hand with a timid hesitating look:
"This—this—is Cleo—the major's housekeeper?" she asked.
The quick eye of the woman took in at a glance the charm of the shy personality and the loneliness of the young soul that looked out from her expressive eyes.
"Yes," she answered mechanically.
"I'm so sorry that the major's away—the driver told me——"
"Oh, it's all right," Cleo said with a smile, "he wrote us to make you feel at home. Just walk right in, your room is all ready."
"Thank you so much," Helen responded, drawing a deep breath and looking over the lawn with its green grass, its dense hedges and wonderful clusters of roses in full bloom. "How beautiful the South is—far more beautiful than I had dreamed! And the perfume of these roses—why, the air is just drowsy with their honey! We have gorgeous roses in the North, but I never smelled them in the open before"—she paused and breathed deeply again and again—"Oh, it's fairyland—I'll never want to go!"
"I hope you won't," Cleo said earnestly.
"The major asked me to stay as long as I wished. I have his letter here"—she drew the letter from her bag and opened it—"see what he says: 'Please come at once to my home for as long as you can stay'—now wasn't that sweet of him?"
"Very," was the strained reply.
The girl's sensitive ear caught the queer note in Cleo's voice and looked at her with a start.
"Come, I must show you to your room," she added, hurriedly opening the door for Helen to pass.
The keen eyes of the woman were scanning the girl and estimating her character with increasing satisfaction. She walked with exquisite grace. Her figure was almost the exact counterpart of her own at twenty—Helen's a little fuller, the arms larger but more beautiful. The slender wrists and perfectly moulded hand would have made a painter beg for a sitting. Her eyes were deep blue and her hair the richest chestnut brown, massive and slightly waving, her complexion the perfect white and red of the Northern girl who had breathed the pure air of the fields and hills. The sure, swift, easy way in which she walked told of perfect health and exhaustless vitality. Her voice was low and sweet and full of shy tenderness.
A smile of triumph flashed from Cleo's greenish eyes as she watched her swiftly cross the hall toward the stairs.
"I'll win!" she exclaimed softly.
Helen turned sharply.
"Did you speak to me?" she asked blushing.
"No. I was just thinking aloud."
"Excuse me, I thought you said something to me—"
"It would have been something very nice if I had," Cleo said with a friendly smile.
"Thank you—oh, I feel that I'm going to be so happy here!"
"I hope so."
"When do you think the major will come?"
The woman's face clouded in spite of her effort at self-control:
"It may be a month or more."
"Oh, I'm so anxious to see him! He has been acting for my old guardian, who is somewhere abroad, ever since I can remember. I've begged and begged him to come to see me, but he never came. It was so far away, I suppose. He never even sent me his picture, though I've asked him often. What sort of a man is he?"
Cleo smiled and hesitated, and then spoke with apparent carelessness:
"A very striking looking man."
"With a kind face?"
"A very stern one, clean shaven, with deep set eyes, a firm mouth, a strong jaw that can be cruel when he wishes, a shock of thick iron gray hair, tall, very tall and well built. He weighs two hundred and fifteen now—he was very thin when young."
"And his voice?"
"Gentle, but sometimes hard as steel when he wishes it to be."
"Oh, I'll be scared to death when I see him! I had pictured him just the opposite."
"How?"
"Why, I hardly know—but I thought his voice would be always gentle like I imagine a Southern father's who loved his children very much. And I thought his hair would be blonde, with a kind face and friendly laughing eyes—blue, like mine. His eyes aren't blue?"
"Dark brown."
"I know I'll run when he comes."
"We'll make you feel at home and you'll not be afraid. Mr. Tom will be here to lunch in a few minutes and I'll introduce you."
"Then I must dress at once!"
"The first door at the head of the stairs—your trunk has already been taken up."
Cleo watched the swift, strong, young form mount the stairs.
"It's absolutely certain!" she cried under her breath. "I'll win—I'll win!"
She broke into a low laugh and hurried to set the table in a bower of the sweetest roses that were in bloom. Their languorous odor filled the house.
Helen was waiting in the old-fashioned parlor when Tom's step echoed on the stoop. Cleo hurried to meet him on the porch.
His face clouded with a scowl:
"She's here?"
"Yes, Mr. Handsome Boy," Cleo answered cheerfully. "And lunch is ready—do rub that awful scowl off your face and look like you're glad."
"Well, I'm not—so what's the use? It'll be a mess to have a girl on my hands day and night and I've got no time for it. I wish Dad was here. I know I'll hate the sight of her."
Cleo smiled:
"Better wait until you see her."
"Where is she?"
"In the parlor."
"All right—the quicker a disagreeable job's over the better."
"Shall I introduce you?"
"No, I'll do it myself," he growled, bracing himself for the ordeal.
As he entered the door he stopped short at the vision as Helen sprang to her feet and came to meet him. She was dressed in the softest white filmy stuff, as light as a feather, bare arms and neck, her blue eyes sparkling with excitement, her smooth, fair cheeks scarlet with blushes.
The boy's heart stopped beating in sheer surprise. He expected a frowzy little waif from an orphanage, blear-eyed, sad, soulful and tiresome.
This shining, blushing, wonderful creature took his breath. He stared at first with open mouth, until Cleo's laugh brought him to his senses just as he began to hear Helen's low sweet voice:
"And this is Mr. Tom, I suppose? I am Helen Winslow, your father's ward, from the West—at least he's all the guardian I've ever known."
Tom grasped the warm little hand extended in so friendly greeting and held it in dazed surprise until Cleo's low laughter again roused him.
"Yes—I—I—am delighted to see you, Miss Helen, and I'm awfully sorry my father couldn't be here to welcome you. I—I'll do the best I can for you in his absence."
"Oh, thank you," she murmured.
"You know you're not at all like I expected to find you," he said hesitatingly.
"I hope I haven't disappointed you," she answered demurely.
"No—no"—he protested—"just the opposite."
He stopped and blushed for fear he'd said too much.
"And you're just the opposite from what I'd pictured you since Cleo told me how your father looks."
"And what did you expect?" he asked eagerly.
"A stern face, dark hair, dark eyes and a firm mouth."
"And you find instead?"
Helen laughed:
"I'm afraid you love flattery."
Tom hurried to protest:
"Really, I wasn't fishing for a compliment, but I'm so unlike my father, it's a joke. I get my blonde hair and blue eyes from my mother and my great-grandfather."
Before he knew what was happening Tom was seated by her side talking and laughing as if they had known each other a lifetime.
Helen paused for breath, put her elbow on the old mahogany table, rested her dimpled chin in the palm of her pretty hand and looked at Tom with a mischievous twinkle in her blue eyes.
"What's the joke?" he asked.
"Do you know that you're the first boy I ever talked to in my life?"
"No—really?" he answered incredulously.
"Don't you think I do pretty well?"
"Perfectly wonderful!"
"You see, I've played this scene so many times in my day dreams——"
"And it's like your dream?"
"Remarkably!"
"How?"
"You're just the kind of boy I always thought I'd meet first——"
"How funny!"
"Yes, exactly," she cried excitedly and with a serious tone in her voice that was absolutely convincing. "You're so jolly and friendly and easy to talk to, I feel as if I've known you all my life."
"And I feel the same—isn't it funny?"
They both laughed immoderately.
"Come," the boy cried, "I want to show you my mother's and my grandfather's portraits in the library. You'll see where I get my silly blonde hair, my slightly pug nose and my very friendly ways."
She rose with a laugh:
"Your nose isn't pug, it's just good-humored."
"And your hair is very distinguished looking for a boy. I'd envy it, if it were a girl's."
Tom led the way into the big, square library which opened on the pillared porch both on the rear and on the side of the house. Before the fireplace he paused and pointed to his mother's portrait done in oil by a famous artist in New York.
It was life-size and the canvas filled the entire space between the two fluted columns of the Colonial mantel which reached to the ceiling. The woodwork of the mantelpiece was of dark mahogany and the background of the portrait the color of bright gold which seemed to melt into the lines of the massive smooth gilded frame.
The effect was wonderfully vivid and life-like in the sombre coloring of the book-lined walls. The picture and frame seemed a living flame in its dark setting. The portrait was an idealized study of the little mother. The artist had put into his canvas the spirit of the tenderest brooding motherhood. The very curve of her arms holding the child to her breast seemed to breathe tenderness. The smile that played about her delicate lips and blue eyes was ethereal in its fleeting spirit beauty.
The girl caught her breath in surprise:
"What a wonderful picture—it's perfectly divine! I feel like kneeling before it."
"It is an altar," the boy said reverently. "I've seen my father sit in that big chair brooding for hours while he looked at it. And ever since he put those two old gold candlesticks in front of it I can't get it out of my head that he slips in here, kneels in the twilight and prays before it."
"He must have loved your mother very tenderly," she said softly.
"I think he worships her still," the boy answered simply.
"Oh, I could die for a man like that!" she cried with sudden passion.
Tom pointed to his grandfather's portrait:
"And there you see my distinguished features and my pug nose——"
Cleo appeared in the door smiling:
"I've been waiting for you to come to lunch, Mr. Boy, for nearly an hour."
"Well, for heaven's sake, why didn't you let us know?"
"I told you it was ready when you came."
"Forgot all about it."
He was so serenely unconscious of anything unusual in his actions that he failed to notice the smile that continuously played about Cleo's mouth or to notice Andy's evident enjoyment of the little drama as he bowed and scraped and waited on the table with unusual ceremony.
Aunt Minerva, hearing Andy's report of the sudden affair that had developed in the major's absence, left the kitchen and stood in the door a moment, her huge figure completely filling the space while she watched the unconscious boy and girl devouring each other with sparkling eyes.
She waved her fat hand over their heads to Andy, laughed softly and left without their noticing her presence.
The luncheon was the longest one that had been known within the memory of anyone present. Minerva again wandered back to the door, fascinated by the picture they made, and whispered to Andy as he passed:
"Well, fer de Lawd's sake, is dey gwine ter set dar all day?"
"Nobum—'bout er nodder hour, an' he'll go back ter de office."
Tom suddenly looked at his watch:
"Heavens! I'm late. I'll run down to the office and cut the work out for the day in honor of your coming."
Helen rose blushing:
"Oh, I'm afraid I'll make trouble for you."
"No trouble at all! I'll be back in ten minutes."
"I'll be on the lawn in that wilderness of roses. The odor is maddening—it's so sweet."
"All right—and then I'll show you the old rose garden the other side of the house."
"It's awfully good of you, but I'm afraid I'm taking your time from work."
"It's all right! I'll make the other fellows do it to-day."
She blushed again and waved her bare arm high over her dark brown hair from the porch as he swung through the gate and disappeared.
In a few minutes he had returned. Through the long hours of a beautiful summer afternoon they walked through the enchanted paths of the old garden on velvet feet, the boy pouring out his dreams and high ambitions, the girl's lonely heart for the first time in life basking in the joyous light of a perfect day.
Andy made an excuse to go in the garden and putter about some flowers just to watch them, laugh and chuckle over the exhibition. He was just in time as he softly approached behind a trellis of climbing roses to hear Tom say:
"Please give me that bud you're wearing?"
"Why?" she asked demurely.
"Just because I've taken a fancy to it."
She blushed scarlet, took the rosebud from her bosom and pinned it on his coat:
"All right—there!"
Andy suppressed a burst of laughter and hurried back to report to Minerva.
For four enchanted weeks the old comedy of life was thus played by the boy and girl in sweet and utter unconsciousness of its meaning. He worked only in the mornings and rushed home for lunch unusually early. The afternoon usually found them seated side by side slowly driving over the quiet country roads. Two battlefields of the civil war, where his father had led a regiment of troops in the last desperate engagement with Sherman's army two weeks after Lee had surrendered at Appomattox, kept them busy each afternoon for a week.
At night they sat on the moonlit porch behind the big pillars and he talked to her of the great things of life with simple boyish enthusiasm. Sometimes they walked side by side through the rose-scented lawn and paused to hear the love song of a mocking-bird whose mate was busy each morning teaching her babies to fly.
The world had become a vast rose garden of light and beauty, filled with the odors of flowers and spices and dreamy strains of ravishing music.
And behind it all, nearer crept the swift shadow whose tread was softer than the foot of a summer's cloud.