CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ITS ADAMANTINE DAUGHTER

"'It's we two, it's we two, it's we two for aye,'" sang Rob to a slight, inconsequent tune of her own making. "We are the only Grey girls left, Mardy, the only reliable daughters of the little grey house. What with Wythie so very young-matronly and preoccupied in her home, and Prue shining at Newport and writing us of the cotillions and general splendours, and of admiration enough to turn any head, I begin to feel like Holmes' Last Leaf."

"Why, that's a rather dismal ending to a speech that began in such a contented little chant," said Mrs. Grey, looking up from her desk with her pen marking the point half-way up her column of accounts at which she had suspended addition.

"Oh, no; it's not a withered, dun leaf; it's a flaming maple," returned Rob. "But it is queer to be the spinster Miss Grey, with one's sisters married and gone--gone at any rate, and as good as married. The house is quiet, and--and--well, spacious."

"Lonely, Rob?" suggested her mother.

"No, Mardy; not lonely with you, but I feel, as near as I can express it--shrunken," said Rob thoughtfully. "I miss the girls, of course, but there is something sweet about this solitude of two, as the French say--like being an only child."

Mrs. Grey looked at Rob consideringly, wondering how long she could keep this daughter, if not the one dearest to her motherly heart, certainly the one that she could least well spare. The girl's face was not less brilliant, but it was quieter; the quick tongue had learned the curb, and there was a softer, more womanly look around the sensitive lips which always seemed ready to laugh or to quiver because the upper one was so short. "Wythie is as pretty and sweet as a dove, and Prue is rarely beautiful, but to my eyes Rob is the prettiest of the Grey girls, the one whose face has most power to charm," thought the mother for the unnumbered time as she looked at her. She dared not allude to Bruce. She believed and hoped that sooner or later Bruce's quiet persistence and devotion would win from Rob its reward, but the girl sprang to arms so quickly at a hint of such a possibility that her mother dared not suggest now that Rob, too, might slip away from the little grey house.

Instead, she asked: "Aren't you going up to see Wythie a moment before you go down to Charlotte's?"

"Yes; Wythie wants advice on the curtains for the Commodore's room," said Rob. "Much as we all like and enjoy Commodore Rutherford, I wonder if Basil and Wythie don't half dread his coming back? Love is selfish; not one bit noble, no matter what the poets say. Wythie flies to hug me when I come in, but I always feel sure that she likes to have me shut the door and leave Basil and her to themselves."

"Why, Robin!" remonstrated her mother.

"Oh, well; it's all right. We made up our minds to that, I suppose, when we let her go. She loves me just as well as ever, but she isn't my Wythie altogether, as she used to be--she's my exclusively-and-happily married sister. Home is home, Mardy, and every one, who doesn't belong inside it, no matter who she may be, is an outsider. Very likely I shall feel just the same when I have been longer alone with you."

"If ever you marry, dear, I shall pray you to come here to live, and let me have a corner in your home, otherwise the little grey house would be left bereft, indeed. Would you mind letting your Mardy Grey stay with you, and should I be an outsider?" asked Mrs. Grey.

"You are the very inside and core of my heart, Mardy, as you well know, and those are the only terms upon which I would marry--if I could marry. But I won't marry, Mardy; I never, never will! I don't want to. I want to be Rob Grey, just nobody but Rob Grey of the little grey house to the end." And Rob dropped a kiss on her mother's glossy brown hair as she went out of the room to get her hat for her call on Wythie. "You could not be any one better or more beloved," her mother called after her, and resumed her accounts.

Rob went up the street in the bright September sunshine, wondering at her vague dissatisfaction, which made her feel unlike her usual blithe self. It was worse than foolish, she told herself, but Wythie's blissful contentment had a bad effect upon her mind.

Basil faithfully retired after breakfast to the room which had been set apart for his use and wrote till luncheon, resisting the strong temptation to watch his girl-wife busying herself about her morning household cares. So Rob did not expect to find Basil when she came in by the side door, and followed the sound of Wythie's voice to the library. She did not expect to find Bruce either, yet there he was, at the hour when he was usually busiest, for Bruce was working in earnest at his profession, and Dr. Fairbairn told enthusiastic stories of his assistant's natural gift for healing and of his untiring industry.

Rob halted a perceptible instant on the threshold before entering; she had avoided Bruce of late, feeling an electrical atmosphere surrounding him.

The "Hallo, Rob!" with which he greeted her sounded safe enough, and Rob returned it cheerfully as she entered.

It was a beautiful room, high ceiled and dignified, and its appointments were perfect. Rob looked around it with new satisfaction, seeing anew, as she did at each visit, how quietly fine and tasteful was Oswyth's home.

"I'm so sorry that I made you come up here first this morning when you were in a hurry to get to Cousin Charlotte's, Rob," said Wythie. "You know I thought Frances was going to town on the 1.53 train, but she went this morning, so I had to decide the curtains for myself and give her the sample. I took the autumn-tinted fabric. Basil says he is sure father would prefer it, and I want the room to be what he likes, although he won't be in it long, and nobody knows how soon he will get back here. Aren't you going to stay with me, or haven't you settled Cousin Peace's problem?"

"If you're going down to Miss Charlotte's I'll take you there safely, Rob. I've got to meet the doctor at the new family's, four doors below her," said Bruce rising.

Rob flushed; she had been long trying to avoid these solitary interviews with Bruce, and now Wythie had made it impossible for her to escape this walk without being downright rude. She arose with a reluctance that every muscle betrayed, and said: "I suppose I must go if you don't need me, Wythie. Cousin Peace is waiting for me; I told her I would hurry down as soon as I had seen your samples once more."

"Basil and I are going to drive over to the lake this afternoon; be ready by three, and tell Mardy," said Wythie nervously. Her experienced eye detected a look in Bruce's that spoke of determination, and in Rob's an expression of defiant fear.

She watched them off down the long walk under the heavy trees that shaded the approach to her new home, clasping and unclasping her hands in a panic of foreboding. It took all her strength of mind to keep her resolution not to disturb Basil during his working hours; she longed to rush to him and say what she could now say only to herself and the carved chair upon which she was kneeling by the window: "Oh, dear, oh dear! He is going to tell her he cares for her, and she is going to be horrid! Oh, Rob, how can you, when he is such a dear boy, and you know you will never look at any one else! it isn't like Prue. Oh, I wish Basil were here!"

Wythie's forecast was proving entirely correct. Bruce walked down to the gate without a word, and Rob kept at his side with a most forbidding expression on her face, which seemed to have had all its ripples and sunshine frozen in Wythie's library.

For a few paces down the street Bruce preserved this silence, then suddenly he halted, and turned on Rob fiercely. "Look here, Rob," he said. "You've been trying to keep out of my way, and I suppose you think I'll take that for my answer. But I won't! Are you going to marry me?"

"No, indeed I am not," retorted Rob with equal emphasis.

"Why not?" asked Bruce, walking on as if disposed to argue it.

"Because I do not want to," said Rob, evidently not inclined to discussion.

"But you care for me," insisted Bruce.

"Do I? Well, I shall not very long if you bother me about such things," said Rob.

"I want you, Rob," said Bruce with a break in his voice that softened Rob a little.

"I wish you wouldn't; it is so unpleasant," she said.

"Rob, dear, from the first moment that I saw you I cared for you in a boyish way. And now that I am a man you have grown to be so much a part of every hope I have, every thought I think, every effort I make that to tear you out of my life would leave a crippled Bruce Rutherford forever. I don't mean to appeal to your pity, of course, but it's the simple truth that my future lies at your mercy. It's not going to be with me as with Bartlemy. I don't mean that Bart wasn't in earnest and that Prue did not hurt him, but he has the artist nature, and he'll pull through. I'm a fellow of one idea, and it wouldn't be easy to uproot me and make me grow in new soil. Somehow, I can't imagine living without you, Rob. What's the use of my telling you all this, when you know me better than I know myself, when I've never had a secret from you in all these years of our fine friendship? You know what it will be if I have to try to limp along without you. You helped Hester with the Green Pasture's; why do you want to cripple me worse than that poor little chap you've got there is crippled? Can't you imagine what it means to me even to think of losing you, Rob?"

Bruce held out his hands with an appealing gesture, and Rob saw them, the strong well-shaped, true doctor's hands, tremble.

"Oh, don't Bruce," she begged faintly. It was harder than she had thought it would be, and all the courage and defiance with which she had set out had ebbed away.

"Then why, why are you treating me as you do?" demanded Bruce. "There isn't another fellow whom you know and would rather have--there's no Arthur Stanhope in the way of this Rutherford wooer. And I'm sure you love me, Rob, though you don't know it, or won't admit it."

This was an unfortunate remark for Bruce. It sent Rob's head up in the air again, and awoke her spirit of resistance.

"I freely admit being fond of you, Bruce, but you are not satisfied with my affection. You want me to marry you, and I don't want to marry. Of course there isn't any other I want--but that would be quite as true if you omitted the other:--There isn't _any_body I want, you or another. I tell you I don't want to marry; I'm sick of hearing of marrying--Wythie, Frances, Bartlemy, you, even Prue, all wanting to marry some one! Hester is the only sensible person. Won't you please, _please_, Bruce, try to be reasonable? Can't you see how unpleasant it makes things? I have to dodge you for fear you'll make love to me, and we used to be so happy and affectionate and comfortable! It's all your own fault. For pity's sake believe me, Bruce, and let's be happy again! I won't marry, I can't marry, I don't want to marry, and all you are doing is spoiling a chumminess that is as much nicer than sentimental fussing as roast beef is nicer than white of egg, beaten to a stiff froth." And whimsical Rob stopped to laugh at her involuntary quotation from the cook-book, though her eyes were brimming.

Bruce looked at her and to her great relief his face cleared up, though she might have felt less cheerful if she could have read his mind.

"You're only a fledgling still, Roberta," he said to her manifest annoyance. "You are unable to diagnose your own symptoms; as a physician-to-be I think I know you better than you know yourself. Very well, then; so be it. I will stop pestering you, and you shall get back your old-time comrade as near as I can recall him. Of course we are both going to remember that we are man and woman, even though we are young ones, not boy and girl any longer, and of course you cannot quite forget that I love you. But there is no help for that; we'll go back to the old ways as near as we can. So don't dodge me any more, Roberta, and I'll curb my impatience."

Rob looked at Bruce sidewise and most doubtfully. "You mean mischief," she said. "You always did when you were too good and yielding."

Bruce laughed outright. "I mean beneficiently--to us both," he said. "'You'll love me yet and I can wait your love's protracted growing.' We always loved our Browning, you know. Here is Cousin Charlotte's gate. Run in, little Robin, and don't worry. If I had lost you I couldn't meet the doctor down yonder and go on with my work--I'd be--well, never mind all that! We're not to talk of these things, and I hope I'd be man enough to live my life to some purpose if I lost my eyes, and limbs--or even you! But it would take time, to face my maimed life. It seems queer to find you, clear, decided, sane Rob, trying to fight against happiness, and not understanding yourself! Good-bye, Robin dear. When you see me again it will be your old chum Bruce, so don't run away from him. Good-bye."

Bruce took one of Rob's hands--the left one nearest him--shook it kindly, raised his hat and walked swiftly away, leaving Rob to go slowly into Cousin Peace's pretty house with a new sensation of bewilderment and defeat subduing her into a person whom she did not in the least recognize as confident Rob Grey.

Lydia opened the door and Rob amazed her by exclaiming: "Why I forgot all about you, Lyddie; you're another!"

"Another what, Roberta?" Lydia asked with her customary gravity.

"Another who has lately married. It doesn't matter; I had been reckoning up how many seemed to have been stricken with the epidemic; that's all," said Rob.

"What you are meant to do, you do, Roberta, and it's not an epidemic," returned Lydia. "It is a state of great blessedness when the brethren dwell together in it in unity."

The sound of a piano ceased from within and Polly, growing taller and with an awakening look on her pale face, rushed out to greet Rob with the ardour of her intense and hidden nature. Rob folded the little girl in her arms with more than usual tenderness.

"Dear Polly, did Cousin Peace think I had broken my promise? I had to go to Wythie's first, you know," she said.

"No; we weren't looking for you so soon; I thought I should get through practising before you came," said Polly. "Maraine is waiting for you."

Maraine was the title by which Rob had solved the difficulty of what Polly should call Miss Charlotte, "for, though she was not really your godmother--I doubt your having a godmother, Pollykins,--she is near enough a fairy godmother to deserve the name," she said.

"Very well; take me to her, Polly," Rob said now, and followed Polly to Miss Charlotte, whose soft voice and gentle, unseeing face, raised to smile at her, fell on Rob's perturbed spirit like the balm which she always found Cousin Peace.

"What has happened, Robin dear?" asked Cousin Peace instantly. "What troubles you?"

"Nothing worth talking about, dearest peaceful cousin," said Rob.

"Bruce came down with you, Polly said. Did he tell you what has been discussed, and does it frighten you?" asked Miss Charlotte.

"He told me nothing except--Oh, why are we talking about Bruce?" Rob burst out in an hysterical cry that revealed to Miss Charlotte all her troubles.

"Only that it was Bruce's plan which I was to lay before you--Hester wanted me to tell you without waiting for her to-morrow, when she comes out. Bruce thinks that in the course of his reading he has stumbled upon the cause of the lameness, the worse than lameness, of our one boy at Green Pastures. He worked on his idea secretly till he felt that he had his theory and proposed course well in hand, then he laid it before Dr. Fairbairn. The old doctor is most wrought up about it. It involves an operation, which, if Bruce is right, will cure that poor child. The old doctor has called upon several surgeons; some of them laugh at Bruce, with the intolerance of older minds for young ones, but a few--and they are the more important ones--agree with Bruce that, young and undiplomaed though he is, he has hit upon an actual discovery. They are discussing performing the operation on the child--for Bruce could not be allowed to do it, of course--under Bruce's direction, in a sense. It is not fully decided, but very nearly. Curious Bruce did not speak of it himself!"

"Not a bit; it is just like Bruce to let other people tell even his best friend of his triumphs--and, Cousin Peace, I was not very nice to Bruce," said Rob, with a glow of pride in the clever student, and a humility new and bewildering.

"Oh, dearest Robin, don't be blinder than I, and fail to recognize happiness when it knocks at your door!" cried Miss Charlotte, laying her hand on Rob's. "Bruce deserves the best at the hands of all of us--Bruce is my boy of boys, you knew."

"There's not another boy on earth equal to him; we all know that, not even Basil and Bartlemy, but that doesn't make one love him, does it?" cried Rob.

"It makes us all love him, Robin, and we will let him feel it, quite simply and honestly, as is his right," said Cousin Peace softly. "Whether or not the operation is performed, and whether or not Bruce's theory is correct, the mere fact that he formed it and is clever enough to have thought of it has already won him honour in the eyes of his future associates and it has given him a place among those of his profession who think and discover. Isn't that a great thing for a student to have accomplished?"

"It is fine, Cousin Peace; don't think I am not glad," said Rob feebly. "Is Polly going on well with her music?"

"Better than we expected; she is a faithful little Polly, and works hard," said Miss Charlotte, with a smile that rewarded Polly for aching muscles in back and untrained little fingers. "Mr. Armstrong is coming out especially to see Polly on Saturday. He is greatly interested in her. What about Prue?"

"She goes from glory to glory, revelling in admiration, luxury and all the honey-pots of the world open in a row, pouring their sweetness over her," said Rob. "Mardy will not let her marry till spring, you know, but I suppose she will be with Arthur's aunt a great deal this winter--this aunt took Arthur's mother's place when she died, you remember, don't you? So it is really like letting Prue go to her future mother-in-law. Mardy can hardly help it. Besides, Prue is nearly beside herself with happiness, and the only fly in her honey is that she can't afford to dress like the girls she meets, but even that trouble will drop off when she is Arthur's wife. Isn't it strange that Prue should have got what she wanted, when she aimed at something so far beyond her reach, apparently?" And Rob sighed unconsciously.

"It is a great joy to know that all three of you dearest girls are finding such perfect joy," said Cousin Peace, while Polly climbed into Rob's lap at the sound of the sigh.

"Hester has done a nice thing, did you know it?" asked Rob, as if anxious to get the conversation into safe waters.

"Hester does nothing but nice things," said Miss Charlotte. "What is this particular one?"

"She has persuaded her father to rent three rooms in Myrtle Hasbrook's house for the Baldwins to use when they come to Fayre. Since Green Pastures is succeeding and is a permanent institution Hester made her father see they ought to have a place in Fayre that was their own. By taking Myrtle's rooms they add enough to her little income to secure her. I think Hester is really a magnificent girl!" Rob spoke with warmth, and Miss Charlotte as warmly assented.

"But my dear Robin made it possible," she added, with her loving touch on Rob's hair.

"Oh, I didn't want the house; it wasn't good in me to refuse it," said Rob, rising to go. "The little grey house and Mardy, isn't that enough to satisfy any girl?"

"It is a great deal, but it is natural to want to round our lives, Robin," said her cousin. "I am a happy and blessed woman, dear, and my life was marked out for me when my eyes were closed to all visions, except those of dreams. But I am a happier woman for having my little Polly. Each life has its meaning, every one her limitations and she is a blessed woman to whom the whole meaning of life comes, offered in such love and honour and security that she may take it fearlessly, and through it reach up to the highest ends. To go without bravely and cheerfully when that is one's vocation is noble, Rob, but to receive, gratefully, on one's knees, and to enjoy the fulness of all living is not a thing to turn from, dearie, for in its highest form it is the lot of few."

"You who never married are the best, the most peaceful, the most comforting of women. Even Mardy has had a hard life, in some ways, and does not seem so lifted above sorrow and loss as you," said Rob.

"I am blind Charlotte Grey; set apart, not lifted up, dearie," returned her cousin, who rarely spoke of her misfortune.

Polly looked from one to the other. "Miss Charlotte is the sky, and you are a green field, full of flowers, Rob," she said.

"Little singing Polly!" said Miss Charlotte. "A green field for sweet human joys and nourishment! That is the very point, my children."