CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ITS RENUNCIATIONS

The days were filled with visitors and Rob had no opportunity to present her petition to Aunt Azraella. Wythie and Prue relieved her at this strange dying bed, and Mrs. Grey was rarely absent. It was Rob, however, Rob, and not Wythie, to whom Mrs. Winslow turned for comfort in those hours in which she lay facing eternity with thoughts which could be conjectured, but which she never expressed.

In the old days she had found Rob unmanageable, too quick of speech and impatient of mind, and Wythie had been her favourite of the three Grey girls. Now she turned to Rob's high courage and bright cheerfulness as to a tonic. It was another Rob, an older, more controlled and wiser Rob, too, on whom she was leaning. Mrs. Grey saw with great rejoicing the development of her daring, high-minded girl, who needed but this touch of womanly gentleness which she was gaining to make her very near the ideal of American girlhood.

"The end may be suffering," Dr. Fairbairn had said. "We shall be obliged to use morphine, probably; if there is anything that you think she would like to attend to get your sister-in-law about it now, Mary."

Mrs. Grey knew of nothing, but Rob, hearing, resolved that she must bring Aunt Azraella to change her will without further loss of time.

The brief sketch that Mrs. Winslow had given the girl of her young widowed niece had been enough to convince Rob that the promise of the house upon which she must be relying could not be broken for the benefit of Roberta Grey. But letters had been despatched to the various relatives of the dying woman, and Browns of varying degrees of kindred had been arriving in Fayre. For testamentary reasons, if not for more sentimental ones, Mrs. Winslow's death was an event in the Brown family.

Among the arrivals had been Myrtilla Hasbrook; she was in the house with her baby of four, as Rob plotted for the restoration to her of a bequest of which she had no idea that she had been deprived.

It seemed to Rob when her eyes first rested upon Myrtilla that she could have painted her portrait equally well before she had seen her as afterward. She was of medium height, medium colouring, with a pale, gentle, resigned face, and a slender, drooping frame. Goodness, the patient, uncomplaining goodness of the type of woman who has strength to endure forever, but none to remedy matters, shone from her sad eyes and quiet lips. Rob knew in a flash of intuitive pity just how such a woman must wear herself out to provide for her children in her poverty. How she would weep of nights lest that poverty prevent her from doing her duty by them. The young widow looked younger than her years, and Rob's great heart went out to her in a pulse of knightly protection.

"You poor thing!" she thought. "Indeed, I will never add one straw to the burden on those thin shoulders! If Aunt Azraella won't make a codicil to her will I'll give you the house anyway. But I should hate most dreadfully to appear in the light of a Noble Benefactor!"

That night Rob kept watch alone at her aunt's bedside. The dim light that deepened the darkness burned on the small table on which sat the alcohol stove and the collection of glasses and bottles inevitable to a sick room. Mrs. Winslow had slept, but at midnight she became wakeful, and Rob felt that her opportunity had come.

"Aunt Azraella," she began, coming close to the bed with a timidity new to her. "Do you think it would harm you if I talked to you a little while? I want to ask a favour of you when nobody can hear us, and we are so seldom alone!"

"You can't harm me, Rob, because we know exactly what end we are travelling to, and if you want to ask something of me there may not be much more chance," said Mrs. Winslow with her customary stalwart sense.

Rob perched herself lightly on the edge of the bed. She longed to take into her own one of the hands lying near her on the coverlid, but its self-reliance was so apparent, even then, that she dared not venture.

"I'm afraid you won't like what I have to say, Aunt," Rob began. "It's about this fine house which you want to leave me."

"Which I have left you, once for all," Aunt Azraella sharply corrected her. "Give me a teaspoonful of my cordial."

Rob obeyed, resuming her place when she had done so. "I know that you have willed it to me, Aunt Azraella, but I want you please, please to alter that will, and give the house to Mrs. Hasbrook. I can't take it."

Rob spoke with decision, and her aunt saw that she had considered, and had spoken out of a mind fully made up, saw it with dismay, for she had reason to know that Rob's decisions, once reached, were likely to be as inflexible as her own.

It was in a voice almost pleading that she cried: "Rob, Roberta, don't ask me to do that! I want you should have the house; I won't die happy if you haven't it, and I have a right to do what I please with it. Myrtilla has no claim."

"Yes, she has, Auntie!" cried Rob, slipping to her knees beside the bed and bringing her bright face close to the grim one on the pillow. "Dear Aunt Azraella, she has the claim of needing it so very, very much! She looks so sweet and patient and worn that it would be horrible to know that disappointment awaited her. I have all, more than I need, and she has those little children. Think of it, Aunt Azraella! And we shall know, you and I, that you wanted to give it to me, so that I shall always feel grateful, knowing that it was mine as far as your desire went. And nobody else need know anything about it. I couldn't live one week, feeling that because of me that poor girl was losing the home she needed. Dear Aunt Azraella, you can die happy giving it to her, because you know the good you will do, while I could never live happy, owning the house. You have left it to me absolutely, to be used for Hester's children, instead of the Flinders' place, or for my own use. Then listen, Aunt Azraella: To-morrow morning add a codicil to that will and give the house to Myrtle. If you do not I must tell you truthfully that I shall hand it over to her the moment that it comes into my possession. Will you, oh, will you do this for me, Aunt Azraella?"

"Do you think you leave me much choice?" demanded her aunt.

Rob almost laughed; the remark was so exactly in Aunt Azraella's familiar tone.

"No, I don't; yes, I do," she said. "You can force me to give your niece the house, and I don't want to. It would be horrid to be regarded as--oh, no decent person would want to seem that kind of heroine," protested Rob incoherently.

Aunt Azraella understood, and liked the young creature looking so enthusiastic, so flushed and lovely in the dim night light, better than she had ever liked her before. She even went so far as to lay one hand lightly on the rippling hair.

"I wanted you to live in my house, Rob," she said, and Rob instantly melted at this glimpse of an Aunt Azraella whom she had not known.

"Ah, dear Auntie, don't think me ungrateful; I love to think that you would rather it were I who had your home. But you have given it to me--that is enough for us to know. Now give it to Myrtle, for my sake, and let it be our secret," she said.

"Our secret? When I am gone?" asked Mrs. Winslow.

"Yes, into that world which holds no injustice," whispered Rob.

Mrs. Winslow was silent, and Rob waited, tears in her eyes, with the hand which had taken Aunt Azraella's hand after it had touched her hair, trembling eagerly.

"You see," Rob murmured when her aunt still kept silence, "it would hurt Myrtle if you took the house from her, and she had to receive it from me--and she has not deserved hurting."

"If I don't do this you will be made to see that the house is yours and that you can keep it," said Aunt Azraella slowly.

"Never, Aunt Azraella!" said Rob, "I shall give this house to Myrtilla Hasbrook; won't you do it for me?"

Mrs Winslow lay still, her head half turned from Rob. Then, suddenly she faced her.

"Yes, I will," she said. "But I hate to."

Rob sprang to her feet with an exclamation of delight. "Thank you, thank you more than I can say, dear Aunt Azraella! You are good to me, and I shall never forget."

"I hear the hall clock striking three; I took my medicine by that, this one is slow. Give me my drops. I wonder if any one ever heard of undue influence brought to bear on a dying woman to take away a gift she had made the person influencing her? You have a good deal of Sylvester Grey in you after all, Roberta; it's lucky you've got enough Winslow to save you from being all visionary and impractical," said Rob's uncle's widow with something between admiration and disgust in her voice.

In the morning Mrs. Winslow repented of her promise. She sent everybody from her room while she talked to Bruce Rutherford of the matter.

Rob dared not speculate on what Bruce told Mrs. Winslow; he kept his promise to Rob and urged the change of will--that was all that she knew--and, after all, it was enough.

Mr. Dinsmore came up that forenoon, and was closeted with Aunt Azraella.

When Rob brought her aunt her broth at noon the sick woman looked up at her with an inscrutable look. "I have kept my promise, Roberta; Myrtilla has the house," she said. "You're a foolish child, but maybe yours is wise folly. I suppose I should not be able to admit that much if I had not come to where you can look through."

More than that she never said, and in a day came the suffering that Dr. Fairbairn had foreseen, and with grim patience, and with the help of morphine Aunt Azraella waited the end.

It had come, and the Greys were back again in the little grey house, Myrtilla Hasbrook was installed in the big one, with her four little children to banish effectually its orderly primness under Aunt Azraella.

To Rob's unspeakable chagrin the secret of her generosity had leaked out; perhaps Aunt Azraella had meant it to be known, for she had acted upon Rob's thoughtless suggestion of a codicil, leaving the original bequest of the house to her to be read on the opening of the will, and she had so framed the codicil that it more than hinted at its being, the result of influence--and whose that influence save Rob's?

Rob turned thorny at her betrayal, and Wythie interposed her soft self as a fender for praise for her sister. The matter ceased to be discussed, and only the young widow's loving eyes told Rob that in spite of herself she was regarded as the Noble Benefactor--capitalized--which she had determined not to be.

This was to be the autumn of renunciation for the little grey house. Cousin Peace's dear little nest was built, and she and little Polly Flinders were to take possession of it as soon as it was made ready. And Lydia was solemnly prepared to espouse her Demetrius, and her mother was arriving to take--though perhaps not to fill--her place in the Grey household.

"Demetrius and I consider it wrong to indulge in worldly display at such a solemn event as entering into the holy bounds of matrimony," said Lydia, whose language grew more and more impressive as she profited increasingly by the companionship of Demetrius, and as she approached "the bounds" of matrimony. "I shall wear a brown suit throughout, with a brown hat, and no ornament but a brown feather. I'd like to ask you girls to the ceremony, but we consider it right to make it private. I've asked my mother to get here in time for it, and my friend Ella M. Barnes is going to stand up with me, and his brother, Lysander Dennis, is going to come out to stand up with him, and that's all there'll be, except the minister's wives, or somebody for the witnesses." Rob with difficulty restrained herself from suggesting that the minister's wife was probably not plural, and her mother asked instead: "Where are you to be married, Lydia?"

"At the minister's house, the Methodist minister's, because Demetrius' is willing to waive the Congregationalist, which is his sect," said Lydia.

"I should like to have a wedding supper for you here," said Mrs. Grey. "You have so long been an inmate of the little grey house."

"No, I don't want you should," said Lydia firmly. "I don't care about wedding suppers. You've given me my outfit, and that's enough. I'd rather you used the money in a good cause. If you wanted to do any more for me--you might subscribe, the whole family, to that temperance paper I set so much by; I'm getting up clubs."

"We will wait, then," said Mrs. Grey, controlling her lips. "We would rather do something more personal for you, Lyddie; there may be a chance later."

The three Grey girls hung out of the upper windows, watching with breathless interest Lydia departing to her marriage. Demetrius had come out from town to espouse Lydia in the glory of deeply creased pearl grey trousers, a white vest, stately Prince Albert coat, and a snowy satin tie, all topped by a silk hat. Fortunately the bride had secured Ben Bolt against an assault on this wedding raiment. The groom and bride-elect went out arm in arm from the little grey house, Lydia dignified in her uniform brown and audibly starched skirt. It occurred to the admiring girls, hurling slippers at her from their windows, that Lydia's mind was more distracted by her superiority to wedding finery than it would have been by all the glory of veil, wreath and bridal white.

After the wedding Lydia's mother returned to the grey house in Lydia's stead. The happy pair had gone on a wedding journey to Chautauqua, which it appeared both had longed to see; on their return they were to go to the new house to superintend Miss Charlotte; the little grey house would know Lydia no more.

Her mother proved to be a person who at once announced her daughter's likeness to her father, because she bore no resemblance to her mother. Her name was Rhoda, and she was rounded at every point, with an almost African tendency to sway her plump person, and a cheerful readiness to laughter. She was, as Rob had hoped, several years younger than Lydia, although she had lived two decades longer; age being, as, of course, every one knows, not a matter of years.

Timidly the Grey ladies confided to one another after Rhoda had been installed in Lydia's deserted room, that they foresaw something like relief in the possession of a lighter character in their kitchen. Rob said that she had learned to overlook herself, with charity for her own shortcomings, but that Lydia had made her dimly conscious that, ignore it as she would, she was on the Index. Wythie added that, good girl though Lyddie was, it would be restful not to feel as though one's most decorous street gown were a tarleton spangled skirt and a bright pink bodice.

"It is a funny wedding," said Prue from her own room. "I wonder whether people like that are really happy."

"They think they are, Prudy, and that does just as well," laughed Rob, but Wythie and she glanced at each other. Prue was a young lady, though she was but seventeen, and both her sisters feared that their hope for her was not to be fulfilled.

Bartlemy's fondness for her was unmistakable, but Arthur Stanhope, the acquaintance of the Twelfth Night entertainment, came more and more frequently to the little grey house, and Bartlemy's artistic eye did not appreciate Prue's marvellous beauty more keenly than did this newer friend. It was impossible for her mother's daughter to care for any one for the sake of his wealth, but Prue was young, and splendour and wealth had always held for her a glamour that it had not possessed for the other two girls.

Might it not be that Arthur Stanhope's immense fortune might clothe him in a charm that Prue, innocent of worldly intent, might mistake for love?

Well, Arthur Stanhope was trustworthy; Prue would not choose ill in choosing him, but Wythie and Rob were Bartlemy's advocates, though Rob glowered at a hint that Bruce deserved at least as well at her hands.

Only one year more and then would come the first break in the Grey household, for then Wythie and Basil would be married. She was twenty years old herself, poor Rob, rebelling against the fulfilment of their beautiful girlhood.

Two weeks after Lydia's wedding Miss Charlotte's tiny house received its final enrichings, and the last of her possessions had been carried by Battalion B from the little grey house to the new home. It was a day of tremendous excitement, for not only was it to see Cousin Peace's establishing, but at its close, Commodore Rutherford was at last coming to Fayre.

October winds were blowing high as Wythie, Rob, and Prue followed their mother and Cousin Peace down to the house which awaited them on the spot where Cousin Peace had lived all her serene life. Polly had been taken down first, "to make it seem homelike," Cousin Peace said, and to be there to welcome her. The boys were there also, and Frances; while Myrtilla Hasbrook, with her four children, had preceded the hostess to her home, and was there ready for the modest housewarming which this installation was to be. Mr. and Mrs. Demetrius Dennis had proved their title to look after Miss Charlotte by the shining order of everything, within and without, and by the odours which wafted in from the little kitchen.

Mrs. Grey, Miss Charlotte and the girls came into the square hall, which was also the living-room, and their faces brightened at the wood-fire on the hearth, and the sunshine pouring through the deep recessed windows, with their half curtains fluttering in the breeze which the fire necessitated admitting.

Polly ran to meet Miss Charlotte as if she had been parted from her for a month, instead of less than an hour. Then she turned to Rob and flung her arms around her. "I wish I had you both in one," she said.

"Like two out of a set of Japanese boxes?" suggested Rob. "It's much nicer to have us separate. Besides, Cousin Peace and I would be certain to quarrel as to which should be the outside one. You haven't gone away from us, Polly-kins--this little house is only the lean-to room, leaning a little further. And isn't it the dearest little home?"

There was no mistaking that Polly thought so. Miss Charlotte drew a long breath of profound content as she turned her face, from point to point, precisely as if she saw, whereas she was inhaling the room, if one may so express it.

"We are authorized, Miss Grey, to present you with this house, yielding up to you all claim and title," said Basil, with a tremendous bow, and as if the property had been his until that moment.

"And I have made a poem for the occasion, which I will now recite for you," added Bruce. "Usually it is Basil who is regarded as the literary member of Battalion B, but I have usurped his office. You will please notice that it is not my fault that the rhyme of my poem halts in one place--the only place, in fact, for the poem is not long. If the English language were ever pronounced as it is spelled the rhyme would be perfect, which you will at once perceive after I have recited it. Ladies and gentlemen: My poem."

Bruce also bowed deeply, turning from side to side, then proceeded to recite slowly and impressively:

_Miss Grey, The key!_

and handed Miss Charlotte the key to her own front door.

"You perceive," said Bruce as soon as he could speak for his audience's applause and laughter, "that the spelling of those two words is identical; evidently the pronunciation of one or the other should be changed. There was not time after the composition of the poem--which consumed hours--to decide which it should be."

"If you had written your poem in Irish brogue it would have settled itself," observed Rob.

"Now we heroes of Battalion B are going down to meet our long lost father," said Bartlemy. "Come Bas and Bruce; there's not too much time."

The three tall, stalwart young fellows tramped out of the house and down the walk bordered by the old-fashioned shrubs which had sprung up again since the fire.

"How proud of them their father will be!" said Mrs. Grey, watching them with as loving a look as if they had been her own boys.

Polly and the little Hasbrooks were already friends, and Polly bore the four away to display the charms of her new home.

"It's as nice as it can be, and I'm glad you have it, Cousin Peace, but only think what renunciations the little grey house has had to make lately--you and Polly, Lydia--I suppose I can't include Demetrius----"

"Are those the only renunciations, and is it only the little grey house which has renounced, Rob dear?" asked Myrtle Hasbrook significantly.

"But, as I was about to say when this lady rudely interrupted me," continued Rob frowning at Myrtle, fearfully, "consider what we have gained: A new house to make a supplementary home; a new kind-of-cousin-through-our-aunt-in-law; up at the big house, little Doris and Ted and Bobby, besides dear little Betty to pet and look after, and----"

"Our father, dear Grey people," broke in Basil's voice, completing Rob's sentence.

The group around the fireplace of the new house turned towards the door.

They saw the three tall Rutherford boys, and with them a man in navy uniform, as tall as his sons, smiling at them with his handsome bronzed face.

"I need no introduction to the Greys. I have known you all so long through these great boys of mine that it feels like coming home, merely to meet you. It will take all of my two years' leave of absence to tell you how grateful I am for all that you have done for my boys. Dear Mrs. Grey, I am your humble debtor," said Commodore Rutherford, bending over the motherly hand which had wrought so much good to his sons, with a something caught in other climes added to his cordial frank heartiness of manner. "And which is Oswyth, my daughter Wythie?" he asked looking unerringly straight at Wythie's blushing and happy face. "My little girl, you dear, little old-fashioned, sweet faced little girl, I verily believe that Basil's love is not blind." And he kissed Wythie tenderly, half lifting her as he touched her cheeks.

"Come to supper in my new little house, and insure its prosperity by its happy beginning," called Miss Charlotte's musical voice from the dining-room.