CHAPTER XV. The Lady of the House.
Daisy, in whose virile young body the habit of sound and healthy sleep was too firmly established for even an event so epochal as that of the previous evening to break her rest, awoke next morning, after a night of undisturbed slumber. A little clock, sounding one of the hours with chimes instead of the ordinary striking gong, drew her notice. The dial registered nine.
The first use she made of her opened eyes was to glance, with a thrill, about that beautiful pink bedchamber; a door at one end showing a little bathroom, tiled in clean and shining white, with folded towels on a glass roller above the long porcelain tub. The morning sun came rosily in through a curtained bow window, that had an alcoved seat piled comfortably with cushions. A fresh draught coming from another quarter drew her eyes toward an open way leading to a balcony, with straw matting, a hammock, and comfortable-looking rattan rocking-chair.
There was some uneasy feeling in the back, as it were, of Daisy's head. For a moment or two, she could not understand it; then, as she found herself instinctively glancing about the apartment to see if there were any corners hard to reach with the broom, the solution of her sensation of unrest came. It was nine o'clock and she was still in mental habit a housemaid at the big Harrison villa. By this hour she should have had all the windows in the sleeping-rooms opened and the blankets and sheets turned back to air the beds.
Daisy laughed to herself, and snuggled back luxuriously on the deep soft pillows. Her mind resumed its office of recollection and ratchetted on over the events of the night before. The evening had been spent, by the rector's invitation, at his house, adjoining massive St. George's church. There had been a pleasant little wedding "dinner," during which Daisy had met a Mrs. Heathcote who had afterwards taken her off by herself and asked her a good many blunt and, as Daisy thought, rather intimate questions. She had met one Jessica Heathcote, too, a bird of slightly different plumage—a companionable, back-slapping girl, who sat on the edges of tables, or put her feet up on chairs like a man, while she conversed; haw-hawed and whacked her knee when she heard a good joke; and was in every way a person to banish misgiving and dolor and, unaided, to make things hum. Jess was coming over to see her early to-day.
"You'll need a bit of help, you know, young-un," Jessica had predicted, "when you face 'Grandmammah'. Yes—rathah!"
After the little family wedding-supper at the Heathcotes', Daisy had gone home with Sir William in the rector's car. Everybody at the Ware house had retired when they reached it, for the hour was well on toward midnight; and Sir William, after—as he jokingly put it, to Daisy—"smuggling" her up to this apartment, had pushed her playfully in, and with a squeeze of the hand and a whispered "pleasant dreams," had considerately departed to his own rooms.
The air that entered from the balcony was very inviting. Daisy could hear the whisper of ivy-leaves. Flower-breath came up and in from some hidden garden below. Fitful rattlings of a mower and the hiss from a hose-nozzle sounded on the lawn.
Daisy's garments—the white waist, the stuff skirt, the brown stockings, one with an incipient hole in the heel—lay over the foot of the bed, where she had yawningly cast them when she disrobed last midnight. They looked very cheap and poor and out of place in this lovely room; and Daisy pursed her lips a moment, and wrinkled her brows after a way she had, as she regarded them. But presently, with that little shrug of the shoulders that was her customary way of casting off trouble, she hopped out of bed, dressed up in the old clothes—which somehow, as she fastened them about her handily, conveyed a comfortable at-home feeling—and, sticking a pin or two in her hair, stepped out on the balcony. Leaning her elbows on the rail, she looked down and about.
The Ware house and grounds were very different from the Harrison house and grounds. No concrete in evidence here—no artificial terracing—no stone garage. No evidence of money anywhere, except such as was incidentally shown by possession, in the costly residential section of the city, of these great broad grounds, with their natural swell and slope; their big trees, between which here and there a little footpath wandered wild; their plain white street-fence, twinkling afar through the shrubbery. The house was frame, ivied from the ground almost to the chimney-tops (ends of the green runners, as Daisy could see on an adjoining gable, had climbed right up on the shingles), and with verandahs everywhere. It was a villa for people who loved fresh air; whereas the Harrison house, for all its massive and costly ostentation, was no more airy than a prison. The object in the case of the latter was display, the manifestation of the Ware place, good-mannered reserve, with reasonable provision for comfort and health.