Part 14

Brent moved closer to her. "Have you thought of what I talked to you about?"

"It's no use to talk about that; I rather think they expect me to make a great match, some time. Mamma wouldn't consider you eligible, you know," she drawled, softly, with smooth, matchless insolence.

Brent looked at her with an expression she did not understand; but she never troubled herself about what was beyond her easy comprehension. And herein Brent had vastly the advantage; he understood her to the depths of her nature, and he knew perfectly that he had made himself an essential part of her existence. But he was wise enough to be patient. For the present he allowed her to waive the subject aside; nor did he betray even by the quiver of an eyelash that she had wounded his self-love. Indeed, their temperaments were much alike, and neither one was troubled with sensitiveness. Of the two the robust, mastiff-like man had more than the brown-eyed angel, who now took to the hammock and left him to finish her work; for it was as natural for him to work as it was for her to be idle.

"You must get settled in town early this fall," he said to the mother, when the family had assembled again on the veranda after dinner. "I have laid out a good winter's work for Rosa at the gallery, and I want her to start as soon as possible."

"Mr. Brent, I admire your coolness," commented Caroline. "If you expect Rosa to put in a steady winter's work you must have suddenly created a remarkable change in her."

"I really don't see how we are to go to town at all this winter," said Mrs. Jones, wrinkling her pretty forehead. "The Farleys haven't yet positively pledged themselves to take the place, as we depended on their doing; and of course we can't go unless we let this house."

"Oh, the Farleys will take the place," said Brent confidently. "And there is a nice little house on "H" Street that will be vacant about the first of October. I wish you would go in to-morrow and look at it."

"Give me the address," said Caroline. "I have to go in town to-morrow, and I'll take a peep at it. Then, if it seems worth while for you to take the trouble, mamma dear, you can go in next week."

"Only don't let it slip through your fingers," counseled Brent. "Rosa, don't you want to take a little walk up the hill and see the sunset?"

"Get the wheelbarrow!" said Minnie, briskly. "You'll never get Rosa to climb the hill."

But Brent continued to look smilingly at Rosa, and, somewhat to their surprise, she got up and went with him. As they began to climb the gentle slope he took hold of her arm, and she leaned against him with the same unconcern with which she would have accepted aid from one of her sisters. They were gone half an hour, and when they came back a close observer might have noted a satisfied look in Brent's face. He had made a slight, very slight, advance in his plans, whatever they were.

It was in accordance with them that the family moved into the little house on "H" Street within a fortnight. Every afternoon saw Rosa seated before a Corot in the main gallery of the Corcoran Art Building, and for at least two hours she was busily occupied. Just how it came about no one could have said. Perhaps Rosa herself was not aware of the tightening of a leash which had been woven securely about her, and that had guided and now held her to certain duties. Once, as he sat beside her, painting away upon his small canvas with those minute, exquisite touches which characterized his style, Brent said, with some significance:

"You work very well under direction, Rosa; but you wouldn't set a stroke if I were not here, would you?"

She laughed, and turned her eyes upon him inquiringly. "Wouldn't I?" she asked; "ah, well, perhaps not. But then, you see, you _are_ here."

"You have grown so used to having me always at hand, that you couldn't get on at all without me, could you?"

"Get on without you?" she repeated. "Why, I never thought of it."

The next day he let her think of it. For a week he was absent on a sketching tour. When he returned he discovered that she had taken a vacation also; and then, for the first time in her life, he said a few stern words to her. They were very few, and without any hint of anger; but the girl crimsoned, and opened her eyes pathetically. Any other man would have been self-condemned; but Brent, while instantly resuming his usual manner, did not lessen the effect of his rebuke; and from this time her manner toward him began to undergo a change. It was imperceptible to others, but apparent to Brent. She was no longer so sweetly insolent to him; she was more timid, more tractable; and she attended more steadily to her work, seeming to set a new value upon the praise of which he had always been lavish.

The winter passed and the enervating air of April crept over the city. One afternoon Rosa threw down her brushes petulantly, exclaiming that she could not make another stroke.

Brent quietly gathered her implements and his own and stored them neatly away. Then he laid his hand over hers and said, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone:

"Let's go and get married, Rosa?"

For a minute they looked at one another in silence. Then her eyes dropped to her dress, a pink print, fresh and crisp under the great gray apron which she had begun to untie.

"What! In a calico dress?" she said.

"Yes, just as you are; and now."

"What will they say at home?"

"Think how much trouble we are going to save your mother. We will tell them this evening. Come, Rosa, I have been waiting for you a good many years; don't keep me waiting any longer."

"It is dreadfully absurd," she observed. "What will you do with me?"

"Take you abroad next week, and when we come back settle you down in the prettiest little house you ever saw. I have bought one up on Capitol Hill, and you shall be its little mistress."

"I don't like housekeeping," remarked Rosa; but she was walking with him toward the door. Suddenly she stopped. "We can't get married without a license, can we?"

"I have the license," said Brent, touching his waistcoat pocket. "I got it yesterday."

"It seems to me," she said, pouting a little, "You were rather premature. How did you know I would have you?"

"I believed in my lucky star. We were meant for each other, my dear."

She was silent after this. They walked half-a-dozen squares and stopped before a house next to a church. As Brent rang the bell he saw that the girl was trembling slightly, and he lost no time in getting her into the parlor, where a puzzled minister came to them a moment or so later. Brent explained and produced the license. Rosa was nineteen and her father was not living. There was no delay, and in the presence of the minister's wife and daughter (who took the bride for a pretty servant girl and were condescending) the ceremony was performed. But for the heavy ring that encircled her finger the girl might have believed that she was dreaming, as Brent drew her out of the house again and hailed a passing horse-car to take them to her mother's house.

Minnie opened the door, and through the dusk her quick eyes perceived something unusual in her sister; but Brent, giving her no time for questions, drew his wife into the little parlor, where the widow sat with her sewing.

"Mrs. Jones," he said calmly, "Rosa and I are married." As she got up hastily, the color rushing to her face, he added, "I believe my old friend the major would not have refused to give me his daughter."

It was a stroke of genius. Instead of uttering the angry words upon her lips the widow fell back upon her chair, crying. The major, dead, was not less the family oracle; and even the girls, who had burst into exclamations, and were not to be repressed for half an hour or so, felt that, irregular and shocking as the affair was, yet there was within it a grain of amelioration.

"But that she should have got married in a sixpenny calico!" exclaimed Caroline, tearfully. "I never shall get over that."

"I will buy her a gown or two in Paris," said the new brother-in-law. "We shall sail next week, and be gone a year, or perhaps longer."

But three years passed before the little house on Capitol Hill had to be vacated by its tenant in favor of the owners, who walked in upon the Jones family one day, when the harvest apples were ripe, and the two girls sat upon the porch of the farm-house paring a bowlful of them for supper.

"What is the change in Rosa?" mother and sisters asked each other when the pair had gone back to town the next morning. Mrs. Brent was even more beautiful than she had been as a girl. She did not look unhappy. Yet there was a difference.

The family found out what it meant when they began to visit the little house in town. Rosa had found another guide than her own sweet will. She no longer idled the days away, but sat patiently upon her little stool and painted from morning till late in the afternoon, while Brent--the personification of vigilance--hovered about, pipe in mouth, seeing to the thousand and one things about the house, which, except for his superintendence, kept itself, and dividing the rest of his attention between Rosa's canvas and his own.

"Do you know," said Caroline, indignantly, "that Rosa--our lazy little Rosa--has made fifteen hundred dollars the past year, while Brent has only made three hundred?"

"That's what he married her for," said Minnie, with a rapid inspiration. "I wondered what impelled him. I thought it wasn't love."

"My dear, he seems very fond of her," said Mrs. Jones, divided between a wish to cry and a wish to make the best of it.

"He _is_ fond of her," declared Caroline, "and she's fond of him. But if ever a girl found a master she has. He makes her work as I never expected to see Rosa work. Not at housework, dear me, no! She is not to waste her precious strength on such things. She is to devote herself to art, which is to make _her_ reputation and _his_ living. That's all there is to it."

"Perhaps it is not the worst thing that could have happened to her," mused Minnie. "There is a kind of nature that needs to be compelled to make the best of itself."

"Don't you want some brute of an Englishman to compel you to make the best of yourself?" snapped Caroline.

"No," answered Minnie, quietly. "What would do for Rosa would never suit me."

"Well, I think we had better go in and take some peaches and straighten up that disorderly house," said the elder sister.

They found Rosa sitting absorbed over a beautiful screen which was a piece of ordered work, to cost a hundred and fifty dollars, while Brent stood at the kitchen door, smoking placidly as he contemplated a tableful of unwashed dishes.

"Come in, sisters both," he said, gaily. "But don't stop Rosa just now; she hates to be interrupted when she is at work."

AN AWAKENING[7]

"AND who is that tall young man in the store, who stood there as if nothing could induce him to take his hands from his pockets?"

Miss Stretton's companion looked as if he were mystified by her scornful tone. "That's Albert Johnson," he answered in his matter-of-fact way. "He's only been back hyar about six months. A couple o' years ago he went down to Texas and made about five hundred dollars, and then, all to onct, he turned up hyar again. He's nephew to old Johnson, and stays in th' store, mostly."

"Doing what?" asked Miss Stretton, crisply.

"Why, doin' whatever's to do," answered Jerry Douglas with his thin laugh. He was a tall, bony youth, with gray eyes and a delicate mouth. Although unformed and shy, there was a hint of character about him; which was the reason why Miss Stretton gave him the honor of her company that morning on his trip to Stoneyton. It was partly in pursuance of her amiable wish to draw him out, and partly because she liked the ride on horseback. She was usually talkative, but now they ambled along the dusty pike in silence.

"Ah--I jest thought of it, Miss Julia," Jerry said suddenly. "Old Johnson's got a nice horse he might let you have. Bert's been ridin' it since he come back, but he can't want it all th' time. I'll see if I kin git it fur you, if you say so."

"Of course I say so, Jerry," retorted Miss Stretton, coming out of her brown study and turning her bright blue eyes upon him. "And why didn't you think of it before? But I know it takes you Virginia young men a long time."

Young Douglas laughed again uneasily. "I s'pose we're ruther backward compared to th' men you know, but you must recollect we've been under a cloud since th' war. We haven't got eddication, and consequently we feel at a disadvantage. Me, now, I've been to school, but what do I know? Th' only thing's fur me to go ter Texas."

"Yes, and make a little money and come back again and loaf around till it is spent," commented the girl inwardly. But she said aloud, "Don't be disheartened, Jerry. It isn't what we know that counts; it's what we do."

"What I want t' do is t' make money," Jerry muttered; "only th' people home won't let me go 'way."

"Your time will come if you don't give up, never fear," she returned kindly, as they rode up to the stile and he awkwardly helped her off the great plow-horse.

She stood at the gate for a minute, watching the angular, boyish figure lead the horse to the stable, heard the rough but not unkindly, "Go in thar, now, Victor--stand, sir!" And then all was still.

In front of the low frame-house was a small, trim garden, with two beds of red geranium bordered by bits of whitened oyster-shells. Behind, lay the fields; to the left, the stable, pig-sty and orchard. On the right, was an unkempt bit of woods, thick with undergrowth. Some day they were going to cut out that undergrowth, which obstructed the fine view of the hills beyond.

"Some day," mused Miss Stretton, "great things are to be done!" And yet she was not without pity as she contemplated the few acres of worn-out land, the meager cattle, the small, uncertain fruit-crop which made the living of the worthy lady, Mrs. Douglas, and her sluggish, semi-invalid husband. This summer they had for the first time followed the example of their neighbors and augmented their income by taking two summer boarders; there was not room for more.

Two or three days went by, and Jerry had apparently done nothing about the horse. Miss Stretton's dearest wish was to hire an animal on which she might take her daily rides with credit to herself and less jarring of her bones. The great beast now at her service resembled some creature in process of transformation to some other species, so shambling, so long-mouthed, so ashamed of his own appearance did he seem. But, rendered desperate by Jerry's procrastination, she mounted Prince one morning and turned toward the village.

"You have shaken me to pieces--you, Prince!" she said reproachfully as she stopped him in front of the store.

Stoneyton was perhaps the very smallest village ever dignified by the name. There was a church, the store, and two neighboring houses, one beside the store and one just across the narrow street. Two swaying elms almost covered this space with their low-hanging branches, and a broken wagon shaft lying in the way made it difficult for a vehicle to turn there. A cart and horse now stood in the road, its driver absent. There was, for a rarity, no one on the stoop; all was unusually still; and Miss Stretton, waiting impatiently until the driver should come out and start off, leaving the road again a thoroughfare, sat still on her tall steed, and let her eyes roam dreamily around on the well-known but ever-pleasing landscape.

The customer came out, and with her came young Mr. Johnson, who stowed away her parcels, helped her into the wagon, and handed her the reins before he turned to the pretty girl with a tinge of color still dyeing his brown cheek.

"Is--your uncle in?" asked Miss Stretton sweetly.

He was very sorry, but his uncle had gone to Port Royal that morning to see a sick sister. Could he do anything for her?

"Well," she said, hesitating, "I suppose you might do just as well, only--I had expected to talk with your uncle."

Young Johnson looked puzzled but admiring. It was the admiration in his splendid dark eyes that embarrassed her. To the city girls who came up to the mountain every one of these little country stores, and every farm which boasted a son or two of some old, impoverished family, furnished an escort to dances and picnics, and the beau of a summer. Miss Stretton was not exempt from girlish weaknesses, and as the handsome countryman stood there waiting for her probable order for ribbons or candy or stationery, she wished that she could settle her little matter of business with some one else.

But she took it like a douche at last, all at once. "Jerry told me that your uncle has a nice riding-horse, and I want one for a month or so. Would he hire it? Could I arrange the matter with you?"

"Well, the horse is mine, in fact. Uncle made a present of it to me," explained Albert, kicking a little stone in the road.

"Oh!" said the young lady. The affair was now a nuisance to both of them. For her part, she felt that, if she proceeded, there must ensue some pecuniary loss in the transaction; she must be large and uncalculating. On the other hand, Albert shrank from the mention of dollars and cents, although if the matter had been conducted through a third party, he would not have hesitated to make something out of the Yankee girl. Being a Virginian, he could not now put a cool, business face upon it. It occurred to him that he would like to drive her down to the hop at Berryville to-morrow night. How would it look to make bargains before tendering an invitation!

He looked up and down the road; the soft breeze from over the hills just rustled the leaves, the low grunt of a porker reached their ears from around the house, a dog barked somewhere, but no figure disturbed the scene; nobody was coming, they must talk it out.

"Well?" she interrogated impatiently. She looked very graceful and saucy. He glanced upward and caught her fleeting smile.

"I'll tell you what, Miss Stretton," he said with the relief of an inspiration, "you mustn't make bargains in the dark. Try my Sultana to-morrow, and if she goes to suit you, we'll talk further."

"All right, Mr. Johnson, and I'm extremely obliged to you." She was grateful for the suggestion; Jerry should be messenger next time.

They were now at ease and could look one another frankly in the face. Each knew the other well by hearsay. Who did not know of the Johnson family, who had lived on the same fine old place for a hundred years and more? And to which of the inquisitive natives was the affable young lady a stranger when she had been staying for a fortnight at the Douglas farm? It was quite conventional for them to call each other by name and to linger a few minutes talking.

She rode off finally, with a charming smile, and Albert went into the dingy store whistling, with his hands in his pockets; handsome and lazy, and with nothing better to do than to recline on the counter and recollect each detail of the conversation.

The next morning he made taking the horse over an excuse for a call, and obtained her promise to go with him to the hop. Every one went; the road was gay with vehicles of every description, and on the ten-mile drive there and back their acquaintance grew old. If Miss Stretton knew how to talk, Albert could listen eloquently.

Afterward she tried to recall something sensible and original in his talk, which would account for the pleasure she had taken in his company, but there was nothing in her memory save confused impressions of what he must have meant.

"What a shame," she said to herself vehemently, "for a young man of intelligence and versatility--he knows many things and could know more if he tried--to be playing fifth wheel to a coach on a stupid country road--clerk in that little store which a girl of twelve could manage alone!"

And as soon as the chance came, she told him this, indirectly, and with many a friendly ameliorating glance. Albert took her lecture meekly. It came one morning when they were riding together. She had found Sultana delightful, and he had made a joking bargain, letting her ride if he might ride with her when he had time and his mother's horse could be spared from the farm. And so this little matter was adjusted without any reference to money.

It was rare pleasure to the city girl to gallop over the open country of a fair August morning before the sun grew red; the fresh breeze from the Blue Ridges colored her cheeks and lighted up her eyes, while it filled her mind with longings, arousing her energy.

"It is energy that you young men lack," she admonished him in a sweet, deferential tone. "Energy! Chalk it up on the fences, and spell it out as you saunter along these dull little country lanes."

Albert thought best to treat it as a joke, but that only made her more earnest. Then he changed his tactics, and met the reproach by a degree of pathetic admission that unsettled her.

She found it a fascinating pastime to chide this handsome idler for making little use of his abilities and she longed to be able to exert a strongly stimulating influence. But when he told her that, on the whole, he enjoyed his life as it was and had no wish to change it, that there was virtue in contentment and that he appreciated his lot, much as she seemed to despise it----

"I didn't say I despised it!" she exclaimed, abashed, her airy ambitions seeming for an instant less grand. But when she looked at her young Alcibiades, lost in the luxury of peace, she pined to send him forth among men to do battle for the things men care to win. And yet the girl had such tact that her touch did not irritate. The young Southerner felt her thrilling tones move him pleasantly; she cooled his languid breath like a fresh North wind coming in the summer heat. Throughout, his face wore the same look of rich, indolent peace. One day, however, he opened his splendid, dark eyes wide, and asked her just what she would have a man do to prove himself a man.

Miss Stretton was as vague and inexperienced as women usually are who urge extraordinary feats upon men in whom they are interested. But not to seem foolish, she took the matter into consideration.

"I'll give you time," he said, laughing when she hesitated, "but--you have been so hard on me, Miss Julia, that I really must press the question home."

After this she listened to the reports about him, and heard much of his sweet temper under provocation--to which, she owned, she herself could testify--of his kindness of heart, his courage, his goodness to his feeble mother. The country people relied upon him; his moral character was spotless. Yet, even while she learned to admire him, she was not satisfied. Seeing her gem thus proved real, made her the more determined to bring out its luster.

His question was carried gravely in her mind, and she forbore to resume the subject until she could say something wise and practical.

They met often, there were so many affairs during the summer to bring them together, hops, drives, and picnics, and then the camp-meetings, which brought out all the county. She saw him sometimes in attendance on his mother there, always gentlemanly and good, where the other boys were openly rowdy. She saw him in the store, always patient with the freaks of customers and with the cross humors of his uncle.

And one day she met him (and her heart was touched) carrying along the road a little crying child, whose bare toes were crinkled up with the hurt from a sharp stone. The ragamuffin sat perched upon the broad shoulder and peered down at the lady with eyes of cerulean blue. He hugged his friend a little closer but with undiminished confidence. Albert colored slightly, but walked along beside the stylish girl without apologizing for his burden.