Rena's experiment

by Mary Jane Holmes

She stopped abruptly, not wishing to say “You are too old,” but I understood her and answered, “Yes, too old to be looking into a well at noon to find my future husband.” Then I questioned her about the girls who might be my neighbors.

“They are cousins,” she said, “and their name is Burdick; one of them, we suppose, is the girl old Sandy McPherson wanted Mr. Reginald Travers to marry. It is the same name and she lives in New York with her aunt Mrs. Graham, and has just got home from Europe, and when mother asked Mr. McPherson if it wasn’t the one, he said he wouldn’t wonder, and laughed. I can’t imagine why she is coming here unless she wants to see what kind of man Mr. Travers is. I should suppose she’d let him go after her, wouldn’t you?”

I did not express an opinion, but began to feel a good deal of interest in the romance likely to go on around me. Mr. Travers was a great swell, Lottie said, and as that was what Sam had called him, I was anxious to see him. I did see him the next Sunday in the little church which, with Mrs. Parks and Lottie, I attended in the village. It was one of the oldest churches on the coast, Mrs. Parks said, and it looked its full age. There were not many Episcopalians in town; few of them had much money, except Colin McPherson, who paid three-fourths of the rector’s salary and left the rest of the expense to the other parishioners and summer visitors. The windows were high, with small panes of glass; the carpet was faded; the backs of the pews were low; the seats were narrow and hard, and the small organ was frightfully out of tune. Accustomed as I was to city churches, I began to feel homesick in this shabby place, where the people looked nearly as forlorn as their surroundings. The organ had just commenced what was intended as a voluntary, which set my nerves on edge, when there was a stir near the door, and the sexton in his creaky boots tiptoed up the aisle to a square pew with red cushions, which I had singled out as the McPherson pew. Nearly every one turned his head, and I with the rest, to look at the white-haired man carrying himself very erect, with his gold-bowed glasses on his nose and his big prayer-book held tightly in his hand. “Stiff, with a good face,” was my mental comment, and then I scanned curiously the young man who walked behind him, with aristocracy and polish and city stamped all over him from his collar and necktie to the shape of his shoes. I couldn’t see the latter, it is true, but I felt sure of them, and that his trousers were creased as they should be and were of the latest fashion. He had a pale, refined face, with clearly cut features, a mouth which told of firmness rather than sweetness, and eyes which I was certain seldom brightened at a joke because they didn’t see it. And yet there was about him something which I liked. He might be proud and probably was, but his presence seemed to brighten the little church wonderfully, so that I forgot its shabbiness in watching him, and nearly forgot the service, which the rector tried to intone, and the harsh notes of the organ and the discords of the soprano.

What did he think of it all? I wondered. He was certainly very devout and only once gave any sign of annoyance, and that was when the organ was galloping madly through the Te Deum and the soprano was trying to keep up with the alto, and the bass and tenor were in full pursuit of the soprano. Then he shrugged his shoulders very slightly and turned toward the organ loft so that, for an instant our eyes met. In his I fancied there was a look of surprise and half wonder, a second searching glance, and then he turned to his book more devoutly than ever, and I heard a full, rich baritone joining with the organ and soprano and leading them steadily on to the end of the grand anthem. As he sat down he looked at me again with something like inquiry in his eyes. Could it be that he had heard of the expected arrival of Irene Burdick at Mrs. Parks’ and wondered if I were she? If so, I knew he was thinking what his decision in the matter would be. He couldn’t marry his grandmother.

Mrs. Parks was one who meant to do her duty by her boarders, and was a little proud of her acquaintance with Colin McPherson and liked to show it. As we left the church she managed to get herself and myself very near to him, and after asking how he was and telling him she was pretty well and it was a fine day she introduced me to him as Miss Rose Bennett from Albany, while her eyes rested upon Mr. Travers standing close to him. Mr. McPherson took the hint and presented him after asking my name, which he had not quite caught, as he was rather deaf.

“Miss Benton! oh, yes, Miss Benton; good first-class name! Any relation to the Colonel? Mr. Travers, this is Mrs. Parks and Miss Benton,” he said, while Mrs. Parks grasped the young man’s hand effusively and said she was glad to know him and hoped he would call, and that she was expecting two young ladies, the Miss Burdicks, from New York.

Then over the cold, proud, pale face there broke a smile which changed its expression altogether and made it very attractive. “If he smiles like that on Irene she’ll not go back on him,” I thought, as I walked away after hearing him say something about being pleased to meet me and call.

That afternoon when dinner was over I went with Lottie to the pine-woods and saw Nannie’s Well and the little mirror which Lottie took from its box in the hollow trunk of the tree and showed to me, saying it was the very one into which poor Nannie had looked. It had been sold by the Wilkes family and bought and sold again and again until some one gave it to the young people of the town.

“It would be easy for two faces to be seen in it,” she said. “I wonder if there’s anything in it. I don’t believe so, but I shall try it to-morrow, if it’s a bright day. Don’t tell mother. She says it’s all humbug, but owns that she tried it once.”

I promised, and the next day about twenty minutes before twelve I saw Lottie going down the lane in the direction of the pine-woods, and felt a little curiosity as to the result of her experiment. I had been a week in the family and had learned their habits pretty well, while they had learned mine, and knew that I liked quiet and regular meals because, as Mrs. Parks said, my “digester was out of kilter and needed toning up,” and it was my digester which she used as one argument to hurry up the delinquent Lottie, when she stood on the rail fence, calling: “Charlotte Ann! Charlotte Ann! Charlotte Ann Parks! Where be you?”