"Doctor Strong," she said, "I think—it is no light thing for me to say, holding the convictions I do—but I think you are worthy of single blessedness!"
CHAPTER III.
GARDEN FANCIES
Miss Vesta was trimming her lamp. That meant, in this early summer season, that it was after seven o'clock. The little lady stood at the window in the upper hall. It was a broad window, with a low round arch, looking out on the garden and the sea beyond it. A bracket was fastened to the sill, and on this bracket stood the lamp that Miss Vesta was trimming. (It was against all fitness, as Miss Phoebe said, that a lamp should be trimmed at this hour. Every other lamp in the house was in perfect order by nine o'clock in the morning; but it was Miss Vesta's fancy to trim this lamp in the evening, and Miss Phoebe made a point of indulging her sister's fancies when she conscientiously could.)
It was a brass lamp of quaint pattern, and the brass shone so that several Miss Vestas, with faces curiously distorted, looked out at the real one, as she daintily brushed off the burnt wicking, and, after filling and lighting the lamp, replaced the brilliantly polished chimney. She watched the flame as it crept along the wick; then, when it burned steady and clear, she folded her hands with a little contented gesture, and looked out of the window.
The sun had set. The sea on which Miss Vesta looked was a water of gold, shimmering here and there into opal; only where it broke on the shingle at the garden foot, the water was its usual colour of a chrysophrase, with a rim of ivory where it touched the shore. The window was open, and a light breeze blew from the water; blew across the garden, and brought with it scents of lilac, syringa, and June roses. It was a pleasant hour, and Miss Vesta was well content. She liked even better the later evening, when the glow would fade from the west, and her lamp would shed its own path of gold across the water; but this was pleasant enough.
"It is a very sightly evening!" said Miss Vesta, in the soft half-voice in which she often talked to herself. "Good Lord, I beseech thee, protect all souls at sea this night; for Jesus Christ's sake; amen!"
This was the prayer that Miss Vesta had offered every evening for thirty years. As often as she repeated it, the sea before her eyes changed, and she saw a stretch of black tossing water, with foam-crests that the lightning turned to pale fire; a sail drove across her window, dipped, and disappeared. Miss Vesta closed her eyes.
But as the old doctor said, people do not mourn for thirty years; when she opened her eyes, they were grave, but serene. "It is a very sightly evening!" she repeated. She leaned out of the window, and drew in long breaths of sweetness. Presently the sweetness was crossed by a whiff of a different fragrance, pungent, aromatic,—the fragrance of tobacco. Doctor Strong was smoking his evening cigar in the garden. He would not have thought of smoking in the house, even if Miss Phoebe would have allowed it; he smoked as he rode on his morning round, and he took his evening cigar, as now, in the garden. Miss Vesta saw him now, in the growing dusk, striding up and down; not hastily, but with energy and determination in every stride. Her eyes dwelt upon him affectionately; she had grown very fond of him. It was delightful to her to have this young, vigorous creature in the house, fairly electric with life and joy and strength; she felt younger every time she saw him. He was good to look at, too, though no one would have called him a beauty. Tall and well-made, his head properly set on shoulders that were perhaps the least bit too square; his fair hair cropped close, in hope of destroying the curl that would still creep into it in spite of him; his hazel eyes as bright as eyes could be, his skin healthy red and brown,—yes, the young doctor was good to look at. So Miss Vesta thought. There was a little look, too—it could hardly be called a resemblance—yet he reminded her somehow—Miss Vesta's face changed from a white to a pink rose, and she said, softly, "If I had had a son, he might have looked like this. The Lord be with him and give him grace!"
As Miss Vesta watched him, Geoffrey Strong stopped to examine something in one of the borders; stooped, hands on knees, and scrutinised a certain plant; then, glancing upward as he straightened himself, saw Miss Vesta at the window looking down at him.