Chapter 9

“Why don't you go down in a leisurely way and investigate? You know the direction it blew away; follow it. If you meet any one, be admiring the scenery!”

Again Edith's look deserved the foot-lights, but Rose shrugged her shoulders and withdrew her detaining hand. Edith caught up her parasol and ran down the stairs. The big hall was empty. From a room on the right came a click of billiard-balls.

“Perhaps they are all in the house!” she thought, and drew a small breath of relief.

On the door-step she paused, with her parasol open, and considered. The house faced the west; her room was to the south, and the letter had disappeared to the east. She chose her line of advance carefully careless.

The lawn on the eastern side of the house sloped to an artificial pond, and near it a vine-covered summer-house made a dim retreat from the June sun. Look as she would, though, no faintest glimpse of white paper rewarded her gaze.

She strolled on--daunted, but still persistent, with the wind blowing her hair out of order--to the door of the summer-house. Within it a young man was standing, reading her letter. He looked up and took off his hat hastily, crumpling the letter in his hand. She saw he was quite ugly, with determined-looking eyes, and the redemption of a pleasant mouth.

She hesitated, the words “That is my letter!” absolutely frozen on her lips. He had been reading it! It seemed impossible for her to claim it, and so for a moment's silence she stood, with the green vines of the doorway--

Half light, half shade--

framing herself and her white umbrella.

“You are looking for a cool spot?”--he deprecatingly took the initiative. “This is a good choice. There's a wind--”

“Horrid!” she interrupted, so vehemently that she caught his involuntary surprise. “I don't like the wind,” she added.

“'It's an ill wind,' you know, 'that doesn't blow some one good.'”

“I assure you _this_ is an ill wind! It has blown me all of the ill it could.”

“Do come out of it,” he begged. “The vines keep it off. It's a half-hour until luncheon,” he added, “unless they've changed since I was here last.” He put up his watch. “We're fellow guests. You came this morning, didn't you?--while we were out. I came last night.”

She seated herself provisionally on the little bench by the door, and dug the point of her umbrella into the ground. Her mind was busy. He still held the letter. She had had a forlorn hope that he would throw down the sheet; but he did not. Was there any strategy, she wondered. But none suggested itself; and indeed, as if divining her thought, he put the crumpled sheet in his pocket. Her eyes followed despairingly the “Dear Christopher,” in her clear and, she felt, unfortunately individual writing, as it disappeared in his capacious blue serge pocket.

Different ideas wildly presented themselves, but none would do. Could she ask him to climb a tree? Of course in that case he would have to take off his coat and put it down, and give her the opportunity to recover the horrible letter from his pocket. But one cannot ask a stranger to climb a tree simply to exhibit his acrobatic powers. And trees!--there were none save saplings in a radius of fifty yards! Could she tumble in the pond? It would be even less desirable, and he would simply wade in and pull her out, with no need to remove his coat.

“Mrs. Manstey,” he was saying, a little tentatively, upholding the burden of conversation, “sent some of us out riding this morning, and Ralph Manstey raced us home by a short cut cross country. That is, he took the short cut. _We_ gave it the cut direct and looked for gaps.”

“If I had been out, I'd have taken every fence,” she said, boastfully, and then laughed. He laughed too.

“If I--if you were my sister, I shouldn't let you follow Ralph Manstey on horseback. He's utterly reckless.”

“So am I,” she came in, with spirit. “At home I ride anything and jump everything.”

“Well, you shouldn't if you were my sister,” he repeated, decisively.

“I'm sorry for your sister,” she declared.

“Well, you see, I haven't one,” he said, gayly, and smiled down at her lifted face. Remembering the letter, she corrected her expression to colder lines.

“There's no one to introduce us,”--he broke the pause. “Mayn't I--” He colored and put his hand into his pocket, and taking out her letter, folded the blank sheet out and produced a pencil. “It's hard to call one's own name,” he continued. “Suppose we write our names?”

As he was clumsy in finesse, she understood his idea, and her eyes flashed. But she said nothing as he scribbled and handed the paper to her. She read, “C.K. Farringdon,” and played with the pencil.

“Mr. Farringdon,”--she said it over meditatively. “How plainly you write! My name's Edith Eversley,” she added, tranquilly, and, because she must, per force, returned the sheet to him. She had a wicked delight in the defeat of his strategy which she could cleverly conceal.

“I wish,” he deprecated, gently, but with persistence, “that you would write your name here--won't you, as a souvenir?”

But she shook her head and rose--angry, which she hid, but also amused at his pertinacity.

“I can't write decently with a pencil,” she said, carelessly, and her eyes followed his hand putting the letter back into his pocket. That she should have actually had the letter in her hand, and had to give it back! But no quick-witted pretext had occurred to help her. Rose would think her stupid--utterly lacking in expedients.

She left the summer-house, unfurling her umbrella, and Farringdon followed instantly, his failure apparently forgotten.

They passed the tennis-court on their way to the house, and--

“Do you play?” he asked.

“A little.” Her intonation mocked the formula.

“Might we, then, this afternoon--”

She gave him a side glance. “If you don't mind losing,” she suggested.

“But I play to win,” he modestly met it, and again they laughed.

Rose Eversley looked with curiosity at her sister when she entered the dining-room for luncheon, followed by Farringdon, but Edith's face was non-committal. She was bright and vivacious, and made herself very pleasant to Farringdon, who sat by her. After luncheon they went to the tennis-court together.

“A delightful young man,” Mrs. St. Cleve commented, putting up her lorgnette as she stood at the window with Rose, watching their disappearing figures, “but so far as money is concerned, a hopeless detrimental. Don't let your pretty sister get interested in him. He hasn't a cent except what he makes--he's an architect.”

“Edith is to be depended upon,” Rose said, enigmatically. She was five years older than her sister, and had drawn the inference of her own plainness, comparatively, ever since Edith had put on long dresses.

“Have you written to Christopher?” she asked, that night, invading Edith's room with her hair-brushes.

“No, I haven't,” Edith said, thoughtfully. “I tried just now. It seems--I don't know how, exactly, but I just _can't_ write it over again! If I had the letter I wrote this morning, I suppose I would send it; but to write it all over again--it's too horrible!”

“'Horrible'!” Rose repeated. “Very few people would think it that! He's rich, thoroughly good, and devoted to you.”

“You put the least last,” Edith said, slowly, “and you're right. I'm not sure Christopher is so devoted to me, after all. He may only fancy that I like him, and from his high estate--”

“Nonsense!” Rose said, warmly. “He isn't, as you know, that sort of a man. I've known him for years--” She paused.

Edith said nothing; she brushed her hair with careful slowness.

“He is so sincere--so straight-forward,” Rose went on, in an impersonal tone; “and as papa has had so much ill luck and our circumstances have changed--they _are_ changed, you know, though we are still able to keep up a certain appearance--he has been unchanged. You ought to consider--”

“You consider Christopher's interests altogether,” Edith said. “I've some, too.”

“Oh no! You needn't think of them with Christopher,” Rose said, seriously. “That's just it! He would so completely look after _yours!_ It's _his_, in this regard, that need consideration.”

“Well--I'll consider Christopher's interests,” Edith said, quietly.

She remembered perfectly the letter she had written--which was in an ugly young man's pocket! It had been:

“DEAR CHRISTOPHER,--Do you think you really want me? If you are very sure, I am willing. I don't care for anybody else, so perhaps I can learn to care for you.

“The only thing is, you will spoil me, and they've done that at home already! and Rose says I need a strong hand! So in your interests--” and then it had blown away!

When Rose, after some desultory talk, went back to her room, Edith wrote another letter:

“DEAR CHRISTOPHER,--I know you have made a mistake. I don't care for you--to marry you--a bit, but I like you, oh, a quantity! We have always been such friends, and we always will be, won't we? but not _that_ way.

“Some day you will be very happy with some one else who will suit you better. Then you will know how right I am.

“With kindest wishes,

“EDITH EVERSLEY.”

She took this letter down the next morning to put in the bag, but the postman had come and gone. As she stood in the hall holding the letter, Farringdon came up.

“Good morning,” he said. “You've missed the postman? I will be very happy to post it for you on my way to church.”

“Thank you. But if it's on the way to church, I'm going myself, so I needn't trouble you.”

Farringdon merely bowed, without saying anything banal about the absence of trouble. She was demurely conscious beneath his courtesy of the effort he was making to see her handwriting, and she wondered if he thought her refusal rude and a confirmation of his suspicion, or simply casual.

Whatever he thought, it did not prevent the steps as she came out a few hours later in the freshness of white muslin, with her umbrella, prayer-book, and an unobtrusive white envelope in her hands.

They were going together down then drive--under his umbrella--before she quite grasped the situation.

“We seem to be the only ones,” she hazarded.

“We are,” he nodded.

“Mrs. Manstey has a headache,” Edith said, “but the others--”

“The sun is too hot!”--he smiled.

“But you--I shouldn't have thought--” She paused, a little embarrassed.

“Yes?” he helped her. “That I was one of those who go to church, you mean?”

“Oh no!” she protested; but it was what she had meant.

“You are right,” he said, without heeding the protest, and his ugly but compellingly attractive face was turned to hers. “I'm not in the least a scoffer, though; pray believe that. It's just that I--” he hesitated. “Do you remember a little verse:

'Although I enter not, Yet round about the spot Sometimes I hover, And at the sacred gate With longing eyes I wait, Expectant of her.'”

Her face flushed. “But,” she reverted, with naïveté, “you said you were going to church--”

“But because I knew you were one of the women who would be sure to go!” he said, positively.

She rebelled. “I don't look devotional at all!”

“But your eyes do,” he declared. “They're suggestive of cathedrals and beautiful dimness, and a voice going up and up, like the 'Lark' song of Schubert's, don't you know!”

“No, I _don't!_” she said, wilfully; but she was conscious of his eyes on her face, and angry that her cheeks flushed.

They both were silent for a little, and when they left Mrs. Manstey's grounds for the uneven country road, that became shortly, by courtesy, the village street, they had a view of the little church with its tiny tower.

“The post-office,” Farringdon explained, “is at the other end of the street. Service is beginning, I dare say. Shall we wait until it is over, or post the letter now?”

“No; after service,” she agreed, and inopportunely the letter slipped from her hand and fell, with the address down, on the grass. She stooped hurriedly, but he was before her, and picking it up, returned it scrupulously, with the right side down, as it had fallen. She slipped it quickly, almost guiltily, into her prayer-book.

The church was small, the congregation smaller, and the clergyman a little weary of the empty benches. But the two faces in the Manstey pew were so bright, so vivid with the vigor of youth, that his jaded mind freshened to meet the interest of new hearers.

But neither Edith nor Farringdon listened attentively to the sermon, for their minds were busy with other things. He was thinking of the girl beside him, whose hymnal he was sharing, and whose voice, very sweet and clear, if of no great compass, blended with his own fine tenor. Her thoughts could not stray far from the letter and--from other things!

The benediction sent them from the cool dimness into the sunlight, and she looked down the street toward the post-office.

“It's quite at the other end of the street,” Farringdon said, opening his umbrella and tentatively discouraging the effort. “By the way, your letter won't leave, I remember, until the seven-o'clock train. The Brathwaites are leaving by that train; you can send your letter down then.”

She found herself accepting this proposition, for the blaze of the sun on the length of the dusty street was deterring. They walked back almost in silence the way they had come; but with his hand on Mrs. Manstey's gate and the house less than two hundred yards away, Farringdon paused.

“You have been writing to 'Christopher,'” he said, quietly. “I don't want you to send the letter.” He was quite pale, but she did not notice it or the tensity of his face; his audacity made her for the moment dumb.

“You don't want me to--!” She positively gasped. “I never heard of such--”

“Impertinence,” he supplied, gravely. “It looks that way, I know, but it isn't. I can't stand on conventions--I've too much at stake. I don't mean to lose _you_--as you lost your letter!”

She thought she was furious. “You knew it was my letter!” she accused.

They had paused just within the gate, in the shade of a great mulberry-tree that stood sentinel.

“Forgive me,” he said. “Not at first--but I guessed it. My name,” he added, “is Christopher, too.”

He took a crumpled sheet, that had been smoothed and folded carefully, from his pocket. “Do you remember what you wrote?” he asked, in a low voice.

Her face was crimson.

“It blew to me. Such things don't happen every day.” He had taken off his hat, and, bareheaded, he bent and looked questioningly into her eyes. “My name is Christopher,” he repeated. “I can't--it isn't possible--that I can let another Christopher have that letter.”

Her eyes fell before his.

“I”--he paused--“I play tennis very well, you said. I play to win! What I give to the interest of a game--”

“Is nothing to what you give to the interests of Christopher!”

As she mockingly spoke, Farringdon caught a glimpse of one or two people strolling down from the house. “That letter,” he hastily said,--“you can't take it from me! Do you remember that wind? It blew _you_ to _me!_ Dearest, _darling_, don't be angry. You _can't_ take yourself away.”

A little smile touched her lips--mutinous, but tremulous, too, and something in her look made his heart beat fast.

“I didn't--The last letter wasn't like the first,” she said, incoherently, but it seemed he understood.

“I knew you were _you_ as soon as I saw you,” he said, idiotically.

“And,” she murmured, as they walked perforce to meet the people coming toward them down the drive, “after all, you _were_ Christopher!”

THE WRONG DOOR

BY FRANCIS WILLING WHARTON

The stairs were long and dark; they seemed to stretch an interminable length, and she was too tired to notice the soft carpet and wonder why Mrs. Wilson had departed from her iron-clad rules and for once considered the comfort of her lodgers. The rail of the banisters lay cold but supporting under the pressure of her weary hand, and, at her own door at last, she fitted the key in the lock. Something was wrong; it would not turn; she drew it out and tried the handle. The door opened, and entering, she stood rooted to the spot.

Had her poor little room doubled its size and trebled its furniture? Her imagination, always active, for one wild moment suggested that old Grandaunt Crosbie from over the seas had remembered her poor relatives and worked the miracle; she always had Grandaunt Crosbie as a possible trump in the hand of fate. And then the dull reality shattered her foolish castle--she was in the wrong room. All this comfort had a legitimate possessor, whose Aunt Crosbie did her proper part in life.

She walked mechanically to a window and looked down; yes, there was the bleak yard she usually found below her, four houses off; she had come into the wrong door, and now to retrace her useless steps.

She paused a moment, and slowly revolving, made bitter inventory of the charming interior. Soft, bright stuffs at the windows, on the chairs; pictures; books; flowers even; a big bunch of holly on the mantelpiece. A sitting-room--no obnoxious bed behind an inadequate screen, no horrid white china pitcher in full view! What woman owned all this? She stared about for characteristic traces. No sewing! Pipes! It belonged to a man.

She must go. She moved toward the door, and dropped her eyes on the little hard-coal fire in the grate; it tempted her, and, with a sort of defiance, she moved over to it and warmed her chilled fingers. A piano, too, and not to teach children on! To play upon, to enjoy! When was her time to come? Every dog has his day! Where was hers? Here some man was surrounded with comforts and pleasures, and she slaved all day at her teaching, and came home at night tired, cold, to a miserable little half-furnished room--alone.

Resting her arms on the mantelpiece, she dropped her face a moment on them and rebelled, kicking hard against the pricks; and sunk in that profitless occupation, heard vaguely the sound of rapid steps and suddenly realized what they might mean.

She straightened her young form and stared, fascinated, at the door. Good heavens! What should she do? What should she say? If she appeared confused, she would be thought a thief; she must have some excuse: she had come--to--find a lady--was waiting! She sank into a little chair and tried not to tremble visibly to the most unobservant eye, and the door opened, shut, and the owner of the room stood before her.

“How do you do?” said Amory, and coming forward, he shook hands warmly. “Please forgive me for being late, but I could not get away a moment before. Where” he looked about the room--“where is Mrs. White?”

The girl had risen nervously, and stood with her fingers clasped, looking at him; she answered, stammering, “She--I--she--couldn't come.”

“Couldn't come?” repeated the young man. “I'm awfully sorry. Do sit down.”

She still stood, holding to the back of her chair. “She said she would come if she could, and I was to--but I had better go.”

Amory laughed. “Not a bit of it. Now I've got you, I sha'n't let you go. It was very brave of you to come alone. You know brothers-in-law are presumptuous sometimes.” He smiled down into the soft, shy, dark eyes raised to his, and looked at his watch. “You must have waited a half-hour; I said four o'clock. I'm so sorry.”

Her eyes dropped. “I was late, too,” she answered, and felt a horrible weight lifted from her. (They surely could not be coming; she could go in a moment; he would never know until she was beyond his reach. But she reckoned without her host.)

“Draw up to the fire,” he began, and wheeled up a big armchair, and gently made her sit in it. “Put your feet on the fender and let's have a long talk. You know I sha'n't see you before the wedding, and I'd like to know something of my brother's wife. Tom said I must see you once before you and he got off to Paris, and I may not be able to get West for the wedding; so this is the one chance I shall have.” He drew his chair near, and looked down at her with friendly, pleasant eyes.

She must say something. She rested her head on the high back of her chair, and felt a sensation of bewildered happiness. It was dangerous; she must get away in a moment; but for a moment she might surely enjoy this extraordinary situation that fortune had thrust upon her--the charm of the room, the warmth, and something more wonderful still--companionship. She looked at him; she must say something.

“You think you can't come to the wedding?” she said, and blushed.

Amory shook his head. “I'm afraid not, though of course I shall try. Now”--he stared gravely at her--“now tell me how you came to know Tom and why you like him. I wonder if it is for my reasons or ones of your own.”

He was surprised by the deep blush which answered his words. What a wonderful wild-rose color on her rather pale cheek!

“Don't you think it very warm in here?” said the girl.

Amory got up, and going to the window, opened it a little; then, stopping at his desk, picked up a note and brought it to the fire.

“Why, here is a note from Mrs. White,” he said. “Why didn't you tell me?”

She had risen, and laid her hand an instant on his arm. “Don't open it--yet,” she said. Her desperation lent her invention; just in this one way he must not find her out. She gave him a look, half arch, half pleading. “I'll explain later,” she said.

Amory felt a stir of most unnecessary emotion; he understood Tom.

“Of course,” he said, dropping it on the mantelpiece,--“just as you like. Now let's go back to Tom. You see,”--he sat down, and tipping his chair a little, gave her a rather curious smile,--“Tom and I have been enigmas to each other always, deeply attached and hopelessly incomprehensible, and I had my own ideas of what Tom would marry--and--you are not it;--not in the least!” He leant forward and brought his puzzled gaze to bear upon her.

She settled deeply into her chair, half to get farther away from those searching gray eyes, half because she was taking terrible risks, and she might as well enjoy it; the chair was so comfortable, and the fire so cheerful, and Amory--it occurred to her with a sort of exhilaration what it would be to please him. She had pleased other people, why not him? Her lids drooped; she looked down at her shabby gloves.

“What did you expect?” she said.

He leant back and laughed. “What did I expect? Well, frankly, a silly little blond thing, all curls and furbelows!”

She raised those heavy lids of hers and gazed straight at him. “Was that Tom's description?” she asked, and raised her eyebrows. They were delicately pencilled, and Amory watched her and noted them.

“No,” he answered; “he didn't describe you, but I thought that was his taste. Now, you are neither silly nor little; no blonde; you have no curls and no furbelows. In fact”--he smiled with something delightfully intimate in his eyes--“in fact, you are much more the kind of girl _I_ should like to marry.”

It gave her an absurd little thrill. She sat up, rebellious. “If _I_ would have liked you,” she returned.

Amory laughed and put his hands in his pockets. “Of course,” he said; “but you would, you know!”

“Why?” she demanded, opening her eyes very wide; and again he inwardly complimented her on her eyebrows, and above them her hair grew in a charming line on her forehead. The little points are all pretty, he thought, and it is the details that count in the long run. How much one could grow to dislike blurry eyebrows and ugly ears, even if a woman had rosy cheeks and golden hair!