CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ITS GAINS AND LOSSES

"It will be a miserable summer," thought Rob despondently, keeping her face away from the range of Wythie's eyes as she stood before the glass brushing her hair for the night while her sister lay peacefully on her pillow, waiting for Rob to lie down beside her. Oswyth's and her mother's discretion and consideration oppressed Rob. They must have noticed that Bruce went home alone that night for the first time since Battalion B had been added to the assets of the little grey house, but they seemed not to see it. Rob, annoyed with herself, with Bruce, with fate, with the world in general and growing up in particular, suspected Frances of having given them a hint of her suspicions as to Rob's bad behavior that evening when she announced to them her own happiness. For Wythie watched her sister with a gentle gaze that Rob felt in her spine, but, contrary to their girlish custom, did not seem inclined to gossip over the happenings of that night. She let perturbed Rob alone so considerately that Rob longed to complain of her cruelty. Rob felt very much as she had felt when, in her childish days after some misdemeanor her mother had "left her to her conscience," as the good Mardy used to say, a process that was harder to endure than the whipping which she had never received would have been.

It proved not to be a miserable summer in the least. Bruce went back to college, and returned to Fayre his old self, unchanged. Rob, alertly suspicious, guessed that Basil had advised him to manage Rob thus, and that the advice had originated in Wythie. She felt quite certain that the time was only postponed in which she should have to face the disagreeable duty of wounding the friend whom she loved best in the world--so she put it to herself--for there was that in Bruce's eyes and beneath his easy comradeship which told her that a frustrated attempt to have his way would not be final to him.

But after a little while, allowable to her discomfort, Rob lost her dread of Bruce, and there was no constraint apparent between them, and no more romance in the atmosphere of the little grey house than Wythie's placid happiness with Basil, and Lydia's comedy of betrothal to her loquacious Demetrius.

In the meantime, the soft air of June was stirred by the carpenters' hammers rapidly putting up Cousin Peace's new house, and visits to watch its growth made serious inroads upon the busy Grey household's time.

It was going to be a little cottage with remarkable effect upon its neighbour and elder by two centuries. For not only had Lydia's plan to take Miss Charlotte under her wing, and to bring Demetrius to supplement languid auctioneering by caring for Miss Charlotte's garden been accepted, but Miss Charlotte proposed taking Polly Flinders to live with her. The child and the blind woman had grown so fond of each other that Polly hung evenly balanced between her desire to remain under the same roof with Rob and to go to Miss Charlotte, while the latter pleaded to the Greys that she needed Polly, while her cousin, rich in three girls, could afford to give her up.

It was not decided, but there was sufficient likelihood of Polly's going to the new house to make Rob suggest that it be called Anemone Cottage, "and that won't mean the frail little spring anemone, Cousin Peace," she said, "but the sea anemone, with tentacles sucking in everything it can reach."

"It is going to suck you into its depths, my Robin, just as my first house used to do, for its brightening," retorted Miss Charlotte.

College Commencement had passed--"commencement had ended," Bartlemy said--and the Rutherfords were all back in Fayre for the long vacation. Basil wrote every morning, to test his powers further in his chosen vocation; Bruce read and drove with Dr. Fairbairn every day; Bartlemy painted with industry, so that the long June days were far from idle ones. And Commodore Rutherford, "their long lost father," as Bruce called him, was coming home at last from the East to see the sons whom he had left tall boys, and was to find young men. There was a feeling of coming events in the air; with the supervising of the new house, the constant coming and going of Hester Baldwin, the absorbing interest of the increasing prosperity and success of Green Pastures, Mrs. Grey found her girls harder to secure for home usefulness than they had ever been before. Lydia complained feelingly of the difficulty she experienced in finding time to prepare the household linen which, though she would have no use for it in Miss Charlotte's house, she evidently regarded as equally indispensable to a lawful marriage as a license.

Besides all these distractions which disturbed the even currents of life in the little grey house, Aunt Azraella was rapidly growing much more ill; it was plain to them all that the term of life allowed her by the doctor was to be greatly curtailed. Aunt Azraella had not been the sort of person to which young affections are likely to cling; but death is never less than awful, and the shadow of Azrael's wings, drooping visibly over the woman who bore his name, modified the sunlight of that summer in the little grey house. The Greys allowed no day to pass without many of its hours being spent by one of them up in the big house on the hill. Altogether it was a time of many interruptions.

Rob had told her first series of stories to the Fayre children, and was launched on her second set continued late into July. She was winding it up with great relief, though her audience gave her attention most flattering, considering the heat, and that they were all at what Prue called "the wriggling age."

The dear old wainscotted room was shaded into comparative coolness, and a great bunch of mignonette sustained Rob through her last story with its fragrance close to her hand. Over by the window sat little Polly Flinders, looking out dreamily upon the warm stillness of the afternoon as she listened to Rob. The child never joined the other children who flocked close to Rob's side and hung on her knees; her love for her idol was too exclusive to share with these more prosperous little ones, too sacred to reveal to their eyes--Polly kept her revelations of it for Rob's knowledge alone.

Now she looked around so suddenly that Rob halted in her story, and asked: "What is it, Polly?"

"Your Aunt Azraella is coming," said Polly, and as she spoke Mrs. Winslow's figure passed the window, and paused at the rarely used door which led from this room out on the yard.

"Open the door, please, Polly," said Rob, wondering why Aunt Azraella should choose this entrance on her story-telling afternoon.

Mrs. Winslow entered, and seated herself near the door. "Go on, Roberta," she said. "I will wait; I wanted to see you alone, so came this way."

"Almost through, Aunt Azraella," said Rob. "So you see, children, as we were saying," she continued, "Godfrey de Bouillon was a great soldier, a wonderful leader of men, but that which we remember first when we think of him is not his high courage, or brilliant mind, but that he refused to wear a golden crown in Jerusalem, where his Lord had been crowned with thorns, and that he put away from him the honour and name of king, and would be called but the Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. Thus Godfrey, the hero, shows us that greatness of name and fame is less than greatness of soul, and his humble piety rings through the ages more loudly than the clash of his battles. We shall none of us be great in the other ways in which Godfrey was great, but we may try to have a little of his greatness of soul, and turn away from gain, and the glitter of worldly glory when conscience tells us that it is higher and nobler to be poor and lowly. And this last story of the crusaders shows us, what the lives of all real heroes show us, and that is that he is bravest who knows when to say No, and that the highest courage is to dare for the sake of right. It shows us that the greatest hero is not he whom the world honours, or who cares for its praise, but he who fights against meanness and cruelty; loving purity, truth and right better than anything that the world can give him. If we try, perhaps, like Godfrey of Bouillon, when we are tempted we can refuse gold and high sounding title, and greater glory if to get it we should have to be less worthy of the Master whom, when He came to show the world the beauty of holiness, they crowned with thorns."

Rob's voice trembled as she ceased, and she buried her face for an instant in the mignonette at her side. The chivalric girl was stirred into profound emotion at the thought of lofty deeds; she thrilled and quivered at the presentation of the highest ideals, and responded to the beauty of renunciation with the full force of her own great heartedness.

The children crowded around her to bid her good-bye with as much eagerness and fervour as if this had been a life-long parting instead of the end of her stories for the summer. She kissed each flushed, upturned little face, and when the last had withdrawn, turned to Aunt Azraella with a tired sigh.

"It's lovely work entertaining them, Aunt Azraella," she said, "and beautiful to see how they care for it, but it is exhausting. Why, what has happened?" she added, seeing for the first time the expression on Mrs. Winslow's face.

"I am much worse, Roberta," said Aunt Azraella. "I felt so queer at noon that I sent for Dr. Fairbairn, and he says my disease has taken a sudden turn for the worse. I shall probably die within two weeks--less time."

Rob dropped upon a chair and gasped, turning pale under the shock.

Mrs. Winslow went on in the same hard, even voice, as if she were announcing the most ordinary tidings. "The doctor said I must go to bed, but I made up my mind I was going to walk down here whatever he said; for the last time, you know. If a body's going to die, she is going to die, and it doesn't make any difference what you do. So here I am, I'm going all through this house, and you're not to say one word to any of the rest about what I've told you. Then you come home with me, and I will go to bed, for I don't believe I can keep out of it any longer. I want you to stay with me while I last. Now pull yourself together, Roberta, because you've got plenty of backbone when you need it, and I don't want your mother to know this is a visit to say good-bye to this house. I've always taken more interest in it than in any other place, except my own house, and more in your family than in my own relations--I like that Mayflower strain in the Winslows and Greys, and I like the way they forget all about money; we Browns always thought a good deal about money. Now, come along, Roberta, and keep your face natural, as well as your tongue still."

Roberta arose to follow her aunt as that indomitable woman strode ahead of her to bid good-bye to the little grey house. She could hardly realize that her uncle's widow was really under sentence of death. It was so ghastly like her to take it in this way, like the gladiator that she was. "_Morituri te salutamus_," thought Rob, as she fell back to see Mrs. Winslow throw open the sitting-room door and say: "Good-afternoon, Mary," in her usual tone and manner, though her face betrayed suffering.

"I should like to go over the house," announced Aunt Azraella. "I want to see every room in it."

Mrs. Grey arose with a look of wonder; she, too, saw the change in her sister-in-law's face, but she had long since been taught that Mrs. Winslow disliked sympathy, so she made no comment, going at once to escort her over the little grey house, speculating the while on her reasons for wishing to see it.

Aunt Azraella made her tour of the rooms, pausing a nearly equal time in each, and scanning their every detail as if to impress them upon her memory.

"It is a pleasant house, Mary," she said when they reached the lower hall again. "It has something about it that I don't understand, but it makes it more homelike than other places. My house will be better for Roberta; young people ought to have modern houses, and she will be able to afford to keep up the big house in good style, if she marries that second Rutherford boy. I want her to come up and stay with me to-night. I am not as well."

"I thought you were not as well, Azraella, but I feared to ask you," said Mrs. Grey. "Of course, you may borrow, Rob."

"Come up to-morrow and I will tell you how I am then," said Aunt Azraella. "I don't believe in complaining. Come, Rob." She led the way out the door; Rob ran up-stairs to snatch a few necessities for the night, glad to hide the face which she knew revealed her feeling on hearing her aunt's assumption that she was to marry Bruce.

She was not gone five minutes, and took her place at her aunt's side on the flagged walk where she was awaiting her, the only one of the little group in the doorway who understood the significance of Mrs. Winslow's long look up and down the little house which had seen so many depart from the light of its twinkling window-panes.

"Now, then, Rob," said Aunt Azraella, and nodded over her shoulder at her sister-in-law, Miss Charlotte, Wythie, and Prue, with little Polly, peering out under Wythie's encircling arm. Roberta felt the arm tremble which she drew within her own, but otherwise Mrs. Winslow gave no sign of the tragedy for which this call stood.

At her own house, after the difficult mounting of the hill, Aunt Azraella's indomitable will refused to sustain her beyond the attainment of its end. She sank, half fainting, into the faithful arms of Elvira, who had been suffering agonies of anxiety since her mistress had taken her way and gone down for that last visit, against the doctor's prohibition.

"She's got to be got to bed, Rob," said that devoted woman, who for so many years had been Mrs. Winslow's patient and affectionate house-mate in the old relation that forbade the word servant.

In that final effort Mrs. Winslow's granite will had broken forever, when Rob and Elvira laid her in her ample bed, in her large, orderly and bleak chamber, she laid herself down to die without a struggle.

She suddenly seemed very ill. When Dr. Fairbairn came up that night he stood looking long at his patient as he leaned with folded arms on the black walnut footboard of the bed, decorated with a bunch of grapes and its leaves. His face wore a look that plainly declared his work done.

Rob did not leave her aunt that night. Mrs. Winslow's eyes followed the girl speechlessly; both Rob and Elvira saw that they begged Rob not to leave her. So, even when she slept, Rob kept her post, and at two o'clock Aunt Azraella woke to mental activity.

"Rob," she said, "there is something that I want to say to you, now, while we are alone, and before I get worse. I have made my will."

"Ah, Aunt Azraella, don't bother about such things now; just rest," protested Rob.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Winslow with her accustomed energy. "Because I am done with my property, is that any reason that I should not make it available to the next one? This world, and its goods, too, still look important to me, Roberta; it is a good or a bad place while you are in it, according to what you have or lack, even if you don't stay in it much above seventy years; I am leaving it at sixty. I don't intend to be less practical because I'm dying, Roberta Grey. Now you listen to me. This house is yours; I've left it to you, as I said I should, and money to each of you girls. There's a niece of mine, Myrtilla Hasbrook, that may or may not turn up after I'm gone to tell you how I promised her the house and it ought to be hers. Now remember! It isn't hers, and she has no right to it. I've left it to you because I want you should have it, and supposing I did mean to give it to her once, that's not saying that I can't change my mind, is it?"

"No," said Rob, groping her way through vague fears, as her aunt paused for a reply. "Won't you tell me about this Miss Hasbrook, Aunt Azraella? Does she need the house?"

"She's my sister's daughter, and she isn't Miss, but Mrs. Hasbrook to begin with," said Aunt Azraella. "She's a young widow. As to needing the house, she needs almost anything. Myrtilla's one of the sort that hasn't any faculty. She married at seventeen, and now she's a widow at twenty-nine or thirty with four children. When I promised her the house I told her she could use it to take boarders, and get along; she's got her husband's life-insurance, and a little from her mother, but not enough to support four growing children. She's a gentle, harmless thing, but she hasn't gumption. Now, I've seen what there is in you, and I've made up my mind you're the one to keep up this house the way it should be, so I've left it to you. I only want you should understand, so if Myrtilla should come here and say anything--which it isn't at all like her to do, but she might--you're not to get any of your high flown, Grey notions, like your father, and give it up to her. For I'm certainly in the full possession of my faculties and I say it's yours. Now I'm going to sleep; it tires me to talk to-night."

Rob smoothed the sheet under her aunt's chin and turned the lamp a little lower without speaking. She was relieved to hear Mrs. Winslow's even breathing in a few moments, for she wanted to feel that she was alone to think.

She sat with her changeable face very grave, resting on the hand that her knee supported; she was thinking hard. The outline of the picture and the history of this hitherto unknown Myrtilla Hasbrook, the young widow to whom fate had been so hard, she was perfectly well able to fill out from her knowledge of Aunt Azraella's mind. She pictured her as gentle, shrinking, unfit to cope with difficulties, the sort of person whom Rob, out of her own sensitive soul and early hardships, most pitied, and whom she was to be the instrument of disappointing and further impoverishing!

No, she would not have the house! She started erect with the fulness of her determination. If she had any influence over her aunt-in-law, Mrs. Winslow, herself, should make right this intended injustice. She, Rob Grey, could get on perfectly with what she now had, and with the legacy that she could justly receive from her aunt out of the ample fortune her Uncle Horace had left her--but not the house!

She did not want to bother her mother with her refusal of this legacy, certain as she was that she should refuse it in any case, and she had a feeling that she did not want to pose as a heroine of renunciation in the eyes of her own family, especially Prue. When it was all over, some day she would tell her mother and Wythie all about it. She cast about in her mind for some one to help her to induce Aunt Azraella to change her will, and she thought of Bruce, Bruce whom she had abused, but who had never failed her when she needed a friend.

Bruce came in the morning early, sent by Dr. Fairbairn to administer certain remedies.

After the doctor-that-was-to-be had performed his task Rob followed him down the broad stairs and out into the dewy sweetness of the midsummer morning. She told him her story. "And you wouldn't have the house if you were I, would you, Bruce?" she ended.

Bruce looked at her queerly. "If I were you I suppose I should do precisely as you do, being the same person," he said. "But I doubt that many who were not you would act thus."

"But, even if you were yourself, wouldn't you feel as I do?" persisted Rob.

"I think we generally agree, Robin," said Bruce quietly. "I should feel as you do, yes. It comforts me in saying so to know that I could not change your mind were I to try. But it is my duty to point out that you are throwing away a valuable piece of property, which, lying only two hours distant from New York, is bound to increase in value, and to which most people would cling tenaciously. Also, that there is no obligation upon you of defending this unknown young woman."

"But you would act precisely as I want to act, Bruce," said Rob. "You like to have me do it, and you know that we all think that enough of this world's goods does not mean great wealth, and that I have enough without this. You want me to try to persuade Aunt Azraella to carry out her first plan--I see it in your eyes."

"Yes, Donna Quixote, I want you to act precisely in the chivalric spirit that inspires you, and I would rather see you--what you are," Bruce stopped himself, and went on more indifferently, "counting obligations binding which to many would not exist at all, than to see you richer than you are by millions. By all means make your aunt leave this house to her poor widowed niece. You will not want."

Rob flushed, half in gratification, half in annoyance at the remembrance of Bruce's own probable wealth, and what these last words might imply. And as she did so she remembered her words to the children on the preceding afternoon when Aunt Azraella had come in as she was finishing the story of Godfrey de Bouillon. She was glad, with a warmth at her heart, that Bruce was also knightly and had the inward vision which revealed to him duties and ideals to which the majority of mortals were blind.

"Good-bye, Roberta," said Bruce. "If I can help you to persuade your aunt to disinherit you, call on me; we'll manage it between us. Goodbye, Donna Quixote."

"Good-bye, Sir Bruce, the defender of the destitute," retorted Rob, and turned to run back into the house with a light step and lighter heart. For with the wisdom of the noble folly of her training Rob was glad that she hoped to turn from herself her aunt's rich gift.