Ladies-In-Waiting

“I’m afraid I can’t. I’m eating now on a tray in my sitting-room,”—and she waved a table napkin she was holding in her hand. “I am rather tired, and Miss Scattergood gave me some bacon and an egg from the nest.”

“Give the bacon to the cat and put back the egg in the nest,” he said coaxingly. “Mrs. Kennion said: ‘Don’t let her eat her last dinner alone. Take her to the Swan.’”

“Oh, I am only in my traveling-clothes and the Swan is full of strangers to-night.”

“The Green Dragon, then, near the cathedral. You look dressed for Buckingham Palace.”

She hesitated a moment, and then melted at the eagerness of his wish. “Well, then, if you’ll wait five minutes.”

“Of course; I’ll go along to the corner and whistle a hansom from the stand. Don’t hurry!”

The mental processes of Miss Thomasina Tucker had been very confused during the excitement of the last twenty-four hours.

That she loved Fergus Appleton she was well aware since the arrival of the cablegram calling her back to America. Up to that time she had fenced with her love—parried it, pricked it, thrust it off, drawn it back, telling herself that she had plenty of time to meet the issue if it came. That Fergus Appleton loved her she was also fairly well convinced, but that fact did not always mean—everything—she told herself, with a pitiful little attempt at worldly wisdom. Perhaps he preferred his liberty to any woman; perhaps he did not want to settle down; perhaps he was engaged to some one whom he didn’t care for now, but would have to marry; perhaps he hadn’t money enough to share with a wife; perhaps he was a flirt—no, she would not admit that for an instant. Anyway, she was alone in the world, and the guardian of her own dignity. If she could have allowed matters to drift along in the heavenly uncertainty of these last days, there would have been no problem; but when she was forced to wake from her delicious dream and fly from everything that held her close and warm, fly during Fergus Appleton’s absence, without his knowledge or consent—that indeed was heart-breaking. And still her pride showed her but the one course. She was alone in the world and without means save those earned by her own exertions. A living income was offered her in America and she must take it or leave it on the instant. She could not telegraph Fergus Appleton in London and acquaint him with her plans, as if they depended on him for solution; she could only write him a warm and friendly good-bye. If he loved her as much as a man ought who loved at all, he had time to follow her to Southampton before her ship sailed. If business kept him from such a hurried journey, he could ask her to marry him in a sixpenny wire, reply paid. If he neither came nor wired, but sent a box of mignonette to the steamer with his card and “Bon voyage” written on it, she would bury something unspeakably dear and precious that had only just been born—bury it, and plant mignonette over it. And she could always sing! Thank Heaven for the gift of song!

This was Tommy’s mood when she was packing her belongings, after hearing the bishop say that Appleton could not return till noon next day. It had changed a trifle by the time that Fergus had gone to the corner to whistle for a hansom. Her gray frieze jacket and skirt were right enough when she hastily slipped on a better blouse with a deep embroidered collar, pinned with Helena Markham’s parting gift of an emerald clover-leaf. Her gray straw hat had a becoming band of flat green leaves, and she had a tinge of color. (Nothing better for roses in the cheeks than hurrying to be ready for the right man.) Anyway, such beauty as Tommy had was always there, and when she came to the door she smote Appleton’s eyes as if she were “the first beam from the springing east.”

Once in the hansom, they talked gayly. They dared not stop, indeed, for when they kept on whipping the stream they forgot the depth of the waters underneath.

Meantime the Green Dragon, competitor of the Swan, had great need of their lavish and interesting patronage.

The Swiss head waiter, who was new to Wells, was a man of waxed mustaches and sleepless ambitions. The other hotels had most of the tourists, but he intended to retrieve the fortunes of his employer, and bring prosperity back to the side streets. He adored his vocation, and would have shed his heart’s blood on the altar of any dining-room of which he had charge.

There were nine tables placed about the large room, though not more than three had been occupied in his tenure of office; but all were beautifully set with flowers and bright silver and napkins in complicated foldings. Pasteboard cards with large black numbers from one to eight stood erect on eight of the tables, and on the ninth an imposing placard bore the sign:

ENGAGED

in letters two inches high, giving the idea that a hungry crowd was waiting to surge in and take the seats.

The second man, trained within an inch of his life, had been already kindled by the enthusiasm of his superior, and shared his vigils.

This very evening there had been hopes deferred and sickened hearts over the indifference of the public to a menu fit for a king. Were there not consommé royale, filet of sole, maître d’hôtel, poulet en casserole, pommes de terres sautés, haricots verts, and a wonderful Camembert? A savory could be inserted in an instant, and a sweet arranged in the twinkling of an eye.

“A carriage, Walter! Prepare!”

Both flew silently to the window.

“Two ladies; ah, they are not alighting! They wish to know if there is evening service in the cathedral.”

“A gentleman, Walter! In a four-wheeler!”

“No, he dines not. He has come to request his umbrella of the porter.”

“A hansom, Walter!”

“Ah, they alight. She is of an elegance unmistakable. They are young married ones, and will dine well. Hasten, Walter, and order both sweet and savory!”

Fergus and Tommy looked about the cozy room with pleasure as they entered, receiving the salute of Gustave and the English bow of Walter as tributes to their deep, unspoken hopes.

“Where will you sit, Miss Tucker?” asked Appleton, and as he spoke his quick eye observed the “Engaged” placard, and with lightning dexterity he steered his guest toward that table. (There was an opening, if you like!) Not quick enough for Tommy, though, for she had seen it and dropped into a seat several feet away, declaring its position was perfect. Gustave put menus before his distinguished clients with a flourish, and indicated the wine card as conspicuously as was consistent with good form. Then he paused and made mental notes of the situation.

“Ah, very good, very good,” murmured Appleton. “You might move the flowers, please; they rather hide—the view; and bring the soup, please.”

“Very young married ones!” thought Gustave, summoning his slave and retiring to a point where he could watch the wine card. Walter brought the consommé, and then busied himself at the other tables. They would never be occupied, but it was just as well to pretend, so he set hideous colored wine-glasses, red, green, and amber, at the various places, and polished them ostentatiously with a clean napkin in the hope that the gentleman would experience a desire for liquid refreshment.

“This is very jolly, and very unexpected,” said Appleton.

“It is, indeed.”

“I hope you don’t miss the nest-egg.”

“You mustn’t call it a nest-egg! That’s a stale thing, or a china one that they leave in, I don’t know why—for an example, or a pattern, or a suggestion,” said Tommy, laughing. “An egg from the nest is Miss Scattergood’s phrase, and it means a new-laid one.”

“Oh, I see!—well, do you regret it?”

“Certainly not, with this sumptuous repast just beginning!”

“You always give me an appetite,” exclaimed Appleton.

“It’s a humble function, but not one to be despised,” Tommy answered mischievously, fencing, fencing every minute, with her heart beating against her ribs like a sledge-hammer.

Walter brought the fish and solicitously freed the wine card that had somehow crept under a cover of knives and forks.

“I beg ten thousand pardons. What will you drink, Miss Tucker? We must have a drop of something to cheer us at a farewell dinner. Here is a vintage champagne, a good honest wine that will hearten us up and leave no headache in its train.”

“I couldn’t to-night, Mr. Appleton; I really couldn’t.”

“Then I refuse to be exhilarated alone,” said Fergus gallantly; “and you always have the effect of champagne on me anyway. I decline to say good-bye. I can’t even believe it is ‘au revoir’ between us. We had such delightful days ahead, and so many plans.”

“Yes; it isn’t nice to make up your mind so suddenly that it turns everything topsy-turvy,” sighed Tommy—“I won’t have any meat, thank you.”

Walter looked distinctly grieved. “I can recommend the pulley-ong-cazzerole, miss, and there’s potatoes sortey with it.”

Tommy’s appetite kindled at the sound of his accent, and she relented. “Yes, I’ll have a small portion, please, after all.”

“When friends are together the world seems very small, and when they are separated it becomes a space too vast for human comprehension—I think I’ve heard that before, but it’s true,” said Appleton.

“Yes,” Tommy answered, for lack of anything better to say.

“It seems as if we had known each other for years.”

“And it is less than three weeks,” was Tommy’s contribution to the lagging conversation.

“The bishop offered me a letter of introduction to you when he wrote me at the Bexley Sands Inn, you remember, but he added in a postscript that in case of accident he was not to be held responsible. Rather cryptic, I thought—at the time.”

“A little Commonburg, sir?” asked Walter. “It is a very fine ripe one, and we have some fresh water-cress.”

“‘Commonburg,’ Miss Tucker? No? Then bring the coffee, please.”

A desperate silence fell between them, they who had talked unendingly for days and evenings!

When Walter brought the tray with the coffee-pot and the two little cups, Appleton suddenly pushed his chair back, saying: “Let us take our coffee over by the window, shall we, and perhaps I may have a cigarette later? Don’t light the gas, waiter—we want to see the hills and the afterglow.”

There was no avoiding it; Appleton and the waiter conveyed Tommy helplessly over to a table commanding the view and the sunset, and it was the one on which the huge “Engaged” placard reared itself persuasively and suggestively.

“We shall need nothing more, waiter; you may go; I think this will cover the bill,”—and scorning the chair opposite Tommy, Appleton seated himself beside her.

“You have turned your back to the afterglow,” she said, as she reached forward to move “Engaged” to a position a trifle less obvious.

“I don’t care tuppence about the afterglow,” and Appleton covered her hand with his own. “Make it come true, dear, dear Tommy! Make it come true!”

“What?” she asked, between a smile and a tear.

“The placard, dear, the placard! If you should travel the world over, you couldn’t find a man who loves you as I do.”

“What would be the use in my traveling about to find another man when I am so satisfied with this one?” whispered Tommy. “Oh, remember! they may come back at any moment!”

“I will, I will, if only I may have the comfort of holding your hand after all my miserable doubts! I never knew what companionship meant before I met you! I never really cared about life until now.”

“I have always cared about it, but never like this,” confessed Tommy. “You see, I have always been alone, ever since I grew up.”

“And I! How wonderful of Fate to bring us together! And will you let me cable to the churches that you cannot come home just yet?”

“You think I’d better not go—so soon?”

“Without me? Never! You shall go anywhere you like, any time you like, so long as you take me with you. We’ll settle all those things to-morrow—the blessedest day that ever dawned, that’s what to-morrow will be! Couldn’t you marry me to-morrow, Tommy?”

“Certainly not! At any rate—not in the morning!” said Tommy mischievously, withdrawing her hand and moving out of the danger zone.

“And you must remember that your talent is your own, to use as you like!” Appleton continued after a well-filled pause. “Your voice is a unique and precious gift. I’ll try not to be selfish with it, or jealous of it, though if it had half the effect on other men that it has upon me, the floor would be strewn with broken hearts every time you sing!”—and he hummed under his breath:

“I hardly know, my darling,What mostly took my heart,Unless perhaps your singingHas done the greater part.”

“Oh, you dear absurdity!” said Tommy, twinkling and sparkling enchantingly.—“I wish the waiter wouldn’t come in every time I want to say something especially private!”

“‘Confound his politics, frustrate his knavish tricks,’ but we shall soon be out of his reach, spinning along to the palace.”

“Are we going there? Oh! I shall be afraid to tell the bishop and Mrs. Kennion!”

“You needn’t be. I told Mrs. Kennion this afternoon that I loved you to distraction. If the bishop is back from Bath, she’ll have passed on the information by now.”

“I was just going to say, when the waiter came so near, that it isn’t the public I love, it’s the singing! Just to sing and sing, that’s what I long to do!”

“And what you shall do, so help me! You know you wanted me to find a new name for you? Wasn’t I clever to think of Appleton?”

“Very! And you’re kindly freeing me of half of my ‘bizarre Americanism,’ as my Torquay correspondent called it. How shall we deal with Thomasina?”

“We’ll call her Tommy. A darling, kissable little name, Tommy!—No, I’m not going to do anything!”

“You don’t think it’s cowardly of me to marry you?”

“Cowardly?”

“Yes, when I haven’t actually proved that I can earn my living; at least, I haven’t done it long enough, or well enough, yet.”

“I think it’s brave of you to marry me.”

“Brave?”

“To turn your back on a possible career.”

“It’s not the ‘careering’ that I love; though it will seem very strange when Tommy Tucker doesn’t have to sing for her supper!—Shall we go? The waiter is coming in again. I believe he thinks we are going to run off with the spoons!”

“So we are! At least, when we go, the spoons will go! I know it’s a poor joke, but I am too happy to be brilliant. Call the head waiter, please,”—this to Walter, who despaired of ever getting rid of his guests, and was agreeably disappointed that a gentleman who had not ordered wine should ask for Gustave.

Appleton took the “Engaged” placard off the table and used it nonchalantly as a fan in crossing the room. Then as he drew near the men he slipped two gold pieces into Tommy’s hand.

“May I carry away this placard, waiter?” he asked, as if it were quite a sane request. “I’ve taken a fancy to it as a souvenir of a most delightful and memorable dinner.”

“Assuredly, assuredly!” murmured Gustave. He knew that there was romance in the air, although he did not perceive the exact point of Appleton’s request.

“The young lady will reward you for your courtesy. No; I’ll help with her jacket, thank you.”

Tommy, overcome with laughter and confusion and blushes, pressed the gold pieces into the hands of the astonished waiters, who bowed almost to the floor.

“You are always giving me sovereigns, dear Fergus,” she whispered with a laugh and something like a sob, as they drove along in the delicious nearness provided by the hansom.

“Never mind,” said Fergus. “You will be giving me one when you marry me!”

THE TURNING-POINT

Not far from the village of Bonny Eagle, on the west bank of the Saco, stood two little low-roofed farmhouses; the only two that had survived among others of the same kind that once dotted the green brink of the river.

Long years before, in 1795 or thereabouts, there had been a cluster of log houses on this very spot, known then as the Dalton Right Settlement, and these in turn had been succeeded at a later date by the more comfortable frame-roof farmhouses of the period.

In the old days, before the sound of the axe for the first time disturbed the stillness of the forest, the otter swam in the shadowy coves near the shore and the beaver built his huts near by. The red deer came down to dip his antlers and cool his flanks in the still shallows. The speckled grouse sat on her nest in the low pine boughs, while her mate perched on the mossy logs by the riverside unmolested.

The Sokokis built their bark wigwams here and there on the bank, paddling their birch canoes over the river’s smooth surface, or threading the foamy torrents farther down its course.

Here was the wonderful spring that fed, and still feeds, Aunt Judy’s Brook, the most turbulent little stream in the county. Many a moccasin track has been made in the soft earth around the never-failing fountain, and many the wooden bucket lowered into its crystal depths by the Dalton Righters when in their turn they possessed the land.

The day of the Indian was over now, and the day of the farmer who succeeded him was over, too. The crash of the loom and the whir of the spinning-wheel were heard no longer, but Amanda Dalton, spinster,—descendant of the original Tristram Dalton, to whom the claim belonged,—sat on alone in her house, and not far away sat Caleb Kimball, sole living heir of the original Caleb, himself a Dalton Righter, and contemporary of Tristram Dalton.

Neither of these personages took any interest in pedigree or genealogy. They knew that their ancestors had lived and died on the same acres now possessed by them, but the acres had dwindled sadly, and the ancestors had seemingly left little for which to be grateful. Indeed, in Caleb’s case they had been a distinct disadvantage, since the local sense of humor, proverbially strong in York County, had always preserved a set of Kimball stories among its most cherished possessions. Some of them might have been forgotten in the century and a half that had elapsed, if the Caleb of our story had not been the inheritor of certain family traits famous in their day and generation.

Caleb the first had been the “cuss” of his fellow farmers, because in coming from Scarboro to join the Dalton Righters he had brought whiteweed with the bundle of hay for his cattle when he was clearing the land. The soil of this particular region must have been especially greedy for, and adapted to, this obnoxious grass-killer, for it flourished as in no other part of the county; flourishes yet, indeed—though, if one can forget that its presence means poor feed for cattle where might be a crop of juicy hay, the blossoming fields of the old Dalton Settlement look, in early June, the loveliest, most ethereal, in New England. There, a million million feathery daisies sway and dance in the breeze, lifting their snowy wheels to the blue June sky. There they grow and thrive, the slender green stalks tossing their pearly disks among sister groves of buttercups till the eye is fairly dazzled with the symphony of white and gold. The back-aching farmers of the original Dalton Settlement had indeed tried to root out the lovely pests, but little did our Caleb care! If he had ever trod his ancestral acres either for pleasure or profit he might in time have “stomped out” the whiteweed, so the neighbors said, for he had the family foot, the size of an anvil; but he much preferred a sedentary life, and the whiteweed went on seeding itself from year to year.

Caleb was tall, loose-jointed, and black as a thunder-cloud—the swarthy skin, like the big foot, having been bequeathed to him by the original Caleb, whose long-legged, shaggy-haired sons had been known as “Caleb’s colts.” Tall and black, all of them, the “colts,” so black that the village wits said the Kimball children must have eaten smut and soot and drunk cinder tea during the years their parents were clearing the land. Tall and black also were all the Kimball daughters, so tall it was their boast to be able to look out over the tops of the window curtains; and proud enough of their height to cry with rage when any rival Amazon came into the neighborhood.

Whatever else they were or were not, however, the Kimballs had always been industrious and frugal. It had remained for the last scion of the old stock to furnish a byword for slackness. In a village where stories of outlandish, ungodly, or supernatural laziness were sacredly preserved from year to year, Caleb Kimball’s indolence easily took the palm. His hay commonly went to seed in the field. His cow yielded her morning’s milk about noon, and her evening “mess” was taken from her (when she was lucky) by the light of a lantern. He was a bachelor of forty-five, dwelt alone, had no visitors and made his living, such as it was, off the farm, with the help of a rack-o’-bones horse. He had fifty acres of timber-land, and when his easy-going methods of farming found him without money he simply sold a few trees.

The house and barn were gradually falling into ruins; the farm implements stood in the yard all winter, and the sleigh all summer. The gate flapped on its hinges, the fences were broken down, and the stone walls were full of gaps. His pipe, and a snarling rough-haired dog, were his only companions. Hour after hour he sat on the side steps looking across the sloping meadows that separated his place from Amanda Dalton’s; hour after hour he puffed his pipe and gazed on the distant hills and the sparkling river; gazed and gazed—whether he saw anything or thought anything, remembered anything, or even dreamed anything, nobody could guess, not even Amanda Dalton, who was good at guessing, having very few other mental recreations to keep her mother-wit alive.

Caleb Kimball, as seen on his doorstep from Amanda Dalton’s sink window, was but a speck, to be sure, but he was her nearest neighbor; if a person whose threshold you never cross, and who never crosses yours, can be called a neighbor. There were seldom or never meetings or greetings between the two, yet each unconsciously was very much alive to the existence of the other. In days or evenings of solitude one can make neighbors of very curious things.

The smoke of Amanda’s morning fire cried “Shame” to Caleb’s when it issued languidly from his kitchen chimney an hour later. Amanda’s smoke was like herself, and betokened the brisk fire she would be likely to build; Caleb’s showed wet wood, poor draught, a fallen brick in the chimney.

Later on in the morning Caleb’s dog would sometimes saunter down the road and have a brief conversation with Amanda’s cat. They were neither friends nor enemies, but merely enlivened a deadly, dull existence with a few casual remarks on current topics.

Once Caleb had possessed a flock of hens, but in the course of a few years they had dwindled to one lonely rooster, who stalked gloomily through the wilderness of misplaced objects in the Kimball yard, and wondered why he had been born.

Amanda pitied him, and flung him a surreptitious handful of corn from her apron pocket when she met him walking dejectedly in the road halfway between the two houses. So encouraged he extended his rambles, and one afternoon Amanda, looking out of her window, saw him stop at her gate and hold a tête-à-tête with one of her Plymouth Rock hens. The interview was brief but effective. In a twinkling he had told her of his miserable life and his abject need of sympathy.

“There are times,” he said, “when, I give you my word, I would rather be stewed for dinner than lead my present existence! It is weak for me to trouble you with my difficulties, but you have always understood me from the first.”

“Say no more,” she replied. “I am a woman and pity is akin to love. The fowls of Amanda Dalton’s flock do not need me as you do. Eleven eggs a day are laid here regularly, and I will go where my egg will be a daily source of pleasure and profit.”

“The coop is draughty and the corn scarce,” confessed the rooster, doing his best to be noble.

“I am of the sex created especially to supply companionship,” returned the hen, “therefore I will accompany you, regardless of personal inconvenience.”

Amanda saw the departure of the eloping couple and pursued them not.

“Land sakes!” she exclaimed, “if any male thing hereabouts has sprawl enough to go courtin’ I’m willin’ to encourage ’em. She’ll miss her clean house and good food, I guess, but I ain’t sure. She’s ‘women-folks’ after all, and I shouldn’t wonder a mite but she’d take real comfort in makin’ things pleasanter up there for that pindlin’, God-forsaken old rooster! She’ll have her hands full, but there, I know what ’tis to get along with empty ones!”