Part 12

Miss Adgate doubtless was a sight for the gods, when (conducted by her uncle) she went the following evening to the Oldbridge Industrial Exhibits. As she was led first by young Rutherford, then by young Milman, then by young Massington, then by young Leffingwell, and then by young Wetherby--through a crowd of friends, to every stall and counter of the big illuminated hall,--as each of these young men explained, volubly, minutely, each exhibit--little was left, we may believe, of Oldbridge Industry which Ruth had not at the end fathomed, become well acquainted with. Pausing at one stall and at another, she ordered with reckless discrimination, rugs, lawnmowers, carpenter's tools, muslins, silks, furniture; and a surfeit of glass blown by a little glass-blower who had quite a local reputation for his designs; linens, too, and rugs of delicate colour dyed and woven in the neighbourhood upon a hand-loom a hundred years of age. The tools might do for Jobias. He had confided to Paolina that his stock was getting rusty; the mowers, asked the piratical salesman, are not lawnmowers forever getting out of order?

These, Ruth's purchases, she destined for the new wing. She was furnishing the old Morris House, too. The Morris House General Adgate had, to her joy, just presented her with. This had been the home of a maternal greatgrandmother. From its portals, that lady with the patient eyes (whose portrait, painted by one Jarvis, hung in the drawing-room) having taken Admiral Richard Adgate for better or for worse under the Puritan marriage service read by Parson Ebenezer Allsworthy,--that lady had tripped across the hill to come and reign at Barracks Hill.

The Morris House! Miss Adgate destined it for her Summer overflow of guests. It is is a quaint and picturesque spot, all nooks and cupboards, within; of panelled walls and broad brick fireplaces. As its gardens overlook the purling brook and the Wigwam, it was, thought she, well suited to the purpose she intended--and it is in fact deserving of far more attention that this passing word can say for it.

VII

On New Year's Day, Miss Adgate woke to a blizzard.

The New Year in Oldbridge is feasted in that old-time pleasant fashion which has long ago _passé de mode_ in New York, which is regarded with disfavour at Boston and in other New England towns. But Oldbridge perseveres in welcoming the New Year, for this smacks of ancientry, and, in sooth, the custom is a genial one. 'Tis well known that in Paris, every hostess, mistress of a salon, is deluged with cards and flowers and bonbons from Boissier on the New Year. At Rome, too, on the New Year, and in Vienna and Berlin, is it not considered courteous for a young man, not alone to leave his card, but to call wherever he has received a welcome? The servants of the houses he frequents, a hint to the wise, never allow him to forget his obligations; they pass at his lodgings betimes on the New Year and receive for their _Buon' Anno_ a substantial Buono Mano. Oldbridge is, therefore, wholly in touch with the most modern capitals when it hospitably celebrates the New Year.

As Ruth, accompanied by Paolina, passed, by meadows all sparkling and white with hoar-frost, from the New Year's Midnight Mass at the Parish Church, the stars in a clear sky scintillated with suspicious brilliancy. The usual eager nipping air of a New England Autumn had until then condensed into just an occasional flurry of snow--or it had subdued its edge; the days were often warm enough to sit beside open windows. The American Winter had not begun to show its teeth. But from her bed to-day Ruth saw the flakes descend--small, dry,--to the rumour of low complaints, murmurs in the chimney. The flakes had a stealthy, a persistent look. Ruth, though, was very, sure the storm would prove the hitherto pretty diversion of a whitened landscape and trees, of a rapid thaw under warm sun, and Miss Adgate adored these snow falls! She had never, she thought, seen anything comparable to the white still beauty of the country and the wood, the gentian blueness of the sky when the snow had ceased, the clouds had emptied sack and the sun burst forth. When this happened she would put on a pair of high rubber boots, take a stick and start for a walk. And when, in her walk, she came across the marks of little feet along the snow,--squirrel tracks, mole tracks, the tracks of birds, quail, the larger ones of woodchucks, of foxes,--little existences living to themselves--which she could never know, never fathom--her mind would travel off into endless reveries and speculations.

But her rôle to-day was that of hostess and there would be no going out to-day after the snowfall. Miss Adgate shortly after breakfast sauntered into the kitchen to see how matters there were progressing.

Before her, on the kitchen table, an array of angel cake, nut cake, pound cake, orange cake, maple-sugar cake lacked the supreme touch, and waited to be frosted. Spread upon a crackled Coalport dish a quantity of thin, brown, crisp, sugar wafers invited appetite. These wafers were from a recipe handed down in the Adgate family. Ruth knew the original, had seen it in Priscilla Mulline Alden's neat cramped little Huguenot handwriting; it was carefully preserved among the most curious of the Adgate relics.

Martha, Ellen,--busy preparing endless edible New England subtleties in the buttery,--Margaret stirring an icing for the cake, General Adgate expected,--he had promised to come in an hour to brew his famous punch, the ingredients for which were mellowing and combining in the dining-room. Everything was, then, well under way, each aide-de-camp was at his post; the commander-in-chief felt she might safely mount to her dressing-room to let Paolina put on the robes of state.

Now it must be known that Paolina had taken to her new life with unexpected cheerfulness; and the reason was shortly to be disclosed.

“Signorina,” Paolina began timidly, while she dressed her mistress's hair in a high French twist, placed a bow of pale blue ribbon fetchingly to the left of the coil, poised it there like a butterfly with wings outspread,--“Signorina--would--you be very angry if I confided to you, something?”

“It depends upon what the something is, Paolina,” said Ruth absently, giving her attention to the becoming effect of the bow.

“Oh, Signorina!” sighed Paolina. Suddenly she clasped her hands; she held them out before her, dropped to her knees. “Oh! Signorina! Jobias has asked me to marry him!”

“Jobias--has--asked you--to--marry him?” repeated Ruth in astonishment. Then she began to laugh--laughed in merry peals of musical laughter, her head thrown back, her face a ripple of mirth.

But Paolina was quite offended.

“Signorina,” she said, and she rose with dignity, “why should it make you laugh to learn that Tobias has asked me to marry him?”

“Forgive me, Paolina,” Ruth said; “it is not that Jobias has asked you to marry him that makes me laugh--it is the tone in which you break the news to me.” Then, gravely: “And what did you say to him, Paolina, when he asked you to marry him?”

“Signorina, I said I would have to ask you. I said that you were a mother to me, and that I would have to get your consent.”

“So,--” said Ruth, “you really think of accepting him?”

“I esteem him,” said Paolina, “I think he is a good man. He has saved up two thousand dollars. He has a nice house across the river which he lets out, and of which he reserves for himself one room. I think my own mother would be pleased with the match, if you approve, Signorina.”

“But do you realise,” said Ruth, “that if you marry Jobias you cannot see your mother again? It costs a deal of money to cross the ocean. Jobias could not take you--he would have his work to do.”

“Oh, Signorina, but _you_ would take us! I would not leave you, Jobias said I need not. But when you marry (Jobias says you will surely marry, before long)”--Paolina nodded her head several times sagaciously--“then your husband will want a valet, and Jobias says he will be glad to put himself at your excellencies' services. And then, you will go abroad for the wedding tour, and you will want to take us. I can then go to my mother and receive her blessing.”

Ruth caught her breath. “Thus are our lives arranged for us,” she thought, smiling, “and by whom?” For half an instant she was silent. Somewhere, among the recesses of memory, Ruth tried to recall such a conversation. She remembered--she had read it,--why,--it was in one of Corvo's witty tales.... So does history repeat itself. What the romancer invents women and men enact.

But just then, crisis of Paolina's life, the knocker at the front door went rat-tat.

“Good gracious, and I'm not dressed yet. Put my dress on quickly, Paolina,--we'll finish our talk at some other time,” Ruth exclaimed.

Paolina ran to the bed, lifted the pale blue chiffon gown inlaid with yellow lace--passed it dexterously, delicately, over Ruth's head, and began with her adroit, rapid fingers to lace the bodice. Martha knocked at the door: “Master Jack Enderfield is in the drawing-room, Miss,” she said in her precise voice. Ruth glanced at the clock--the hands pointed to ten.

“Tell Master Jack Enderfield I'll be down directly,” she said. Ruth, standing before the cheval glass, gave a light pat here to her gown, a touch there to her coiffure--Martha lingered a minute to take the vision in.

“Yes, Miss,” she said, closed the door, and was gone.

Then Ruth descended the stairs in a froufrou of skirts, wafting an odour of violets as she went along; and she greeted Master Jack Enderfield at the drawing-room door with that radiant grace the young man seemed so well able to appreciate.

VIII

“I thought I'd come early,” Jack explained, as he stood before the wood-fire in a man-of-the-world attitude: “I knew that when the crowd began there'd be no chance for me.”

“I'm delighted you came early,” said Ruth. “Won't you sit down?”

Jack sat down. He plunged at once into the subject which was on his mind.

“It's all nonsense, this talk about a Republic,” he began. “We'd have been much better off if we'd stuck to England. Oh, we mightn't have been so rich,” he made a large gesture, “but we'd have been nicer.”

“Jack, these sentiments on the New Year for a child of Liberty, a son of the Revolution!” Ruth reproved.

“It's not my fault, Miss Adgate, if I'm a son of the Revolution, and I don't believe in Liberty. I wish my double great-grandfather hadn't come over here and married my double great-grandmother.” Master Jack stuck his hands doggedly in his pockets and glowered at the fire.

“Oh, cheer up,” laughed his young hostess. “Accept the inevitable, Jack, make the best of it! But what can have happened to-day to make you think ill of Liberty and the Revolution?”

“It's very well for you to sit there, Miss Adgate, sit and poke fun at me in your soft voice and your beautiful gown,” Jack said, flushing. “But you know as I do, that this--this country--is rotten--it's going to the dogs, nothing'll save it!”

“My dear Jack,” accused Ruth, “you've been reading the newspapers!” Miss Adgate never would, for her part, so much as look at an American newspaper; she got all her news by way of England, in the _Morning Post_.

“The demoralisation's in the air, Miss Adgate, the newspapers only tell what's happening. But our nation has the impertinence to go on, like a rooster on a wall, flapping its wings in the world's face and screeching, 'Admire me! Don't I behave pretty?' No,” continued Jack impressively, with a look of uncanny wisdom in his blue eyes, “No--I'm going to skip this country as soon as I can get out of it. Here in quiet old Oldbridge, we're not so bad, though we do like to play a game among ourselves; proud of being old and aristocratic and so forth, and we expect if we're good we'll get to Heaven; some of us, though, don't remember Charity's the only way to get to Heaven! But the whole country's talking Choctaw,--with a hare lip--and only a few of us, like your uncle and old Mrs. Leffingwell and Mr. Massington, know what a good Anglo-Saxon Ancestry implies. The rest of us cackle like the aforesaid barnyard fowl.

“Miss Adgate,” went on Jack, briskly, “no wonder! See how we mix affably with the riff-raff who haven't a language. People who are told by the blooming Constitution of this land that they're as good as you and me and make uncouth noises according. This I'm-as-good-as-you idea is all rot. They're not as good as you and they're not as good as me. I am better than the Butcher's boy, who hasn't brains enough to know his own foolish business and forgets to bring my meat. I am better than Ezekiel, who won't black my boots. Damn him,” said the boy wildly, “why shouldn't he black my boots? Let him do his honest work, like a man; become a useful member of society if he wants to get to be my equal! Not spend his days shirking and complaining through his nose.”

“Dear, _dear_ Jackie!--Have a glass of lemonade, have a cake! America's not so bad if you can rise above it,” soothed Miss Adgate with, perhaps, a grain of malice. She rang for refreshments.

“She's the sweetest, prettiest, dearest thing in Oldbridge,” the boy thought as he followed Ruth's movements with adoring eyes.

“Miss Adgate, am I accountable for what my double great-grandfather did?” Jack asked suddenly. “I think he played me a low trick. He was one of these Cavalier people who stuck to Charles the Second. The King, after he'd come to the throne, offered him the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster. But the idiot refused it! He'd tasted blood, he said. He knew Court life, found it dull!--He wanted one of adventure, something like the dance he'd been leading with Charles. 'Give me land, Sire, in Virginia,' he said. 'I'll go out there and extend your Majesty's importance.'

“Miss Adgate, _he should have stuck to Merry England_. And pray, what did his great-grandson do? Married a Northerner, became wife-ridden, dropped his title, sold his lands, went to New England, settled right here in Oldbridge, his wife's town; and equipped a regiment and fought. I'm glad to say he got killed, at Lexington. But not without leaving posterity, of which you see before you the last indignant remnant.”

“And you, you find you're reverted to the state of mind of the Cavalier before he forsook England,” Ruth said thoughtfully. “Jack, you've a homesick hankering to go back there?”

“Yes, Miss Adgate,” cried the boy. “And, I'll tell you a still greater secret----”

Jack paused.

“_C'est une journée de confidences_,” thought Ruth, “well?” she encouraged.

“Miss Adgate, we're not aristocratic,” Jack declared in a low voice. “We've just become low-down Provincials. But when I'm a man I mean to go and claim our lands and titles and our position in Devon. I'm the rightful heir! My father kept the Enderfield Tree in an old desk in the drawing-room. It's there, at this moment, in a tin tube, on parchment. I've often brought it out when my mother's at church and had a good look at it.”

“Try a chocolate,” interposed Ruth soothingly; but the image of the Enderfield tree in a tube made her laugh as she offered the lacquered box, inlaid with mother of pearl, which she kept filled for these occasions.

“You're a Catholic, Miss Adgate,” presently observed the youthful aristocrat when he had permitted Ruth's sweets to be thrust upon him.

“Yes,” said Ruth urbanely. And--“I wonder whether Jack is preparing to rend the Faith,” she thought.

“Well,” Jack announced with deliberation,

“I mean to be a Catholic when I'm done with all this.” He swept the present away with his hand.

“Ah?” said Ruth, surprised. “Why?”

“Oh, it's the only Faith for a Gentleman,” the boy answered. “For a gentleman and a scholar,” he emendated. “You see we're all compounded too much of human nature and we're all too much given to thinking. Yet our thinking leads nowhere,--in the end the flesh and the devil do what they like with us. We may sit with our heads between our hands, we may try to reconcile our human nature with idealism until we're ready for the madhouse, and we'll get to the madhouse, but we won't have solved the problem. Now a man wants to be decent, and the Catholic Faith (I got Mary to tell me a lot about it, and I've read about it in some of my father's books), while it makes allowances for human nature and treats it in the most sympathetic way, does know how to keep it within bounds. Why, it's a regular school of Saints! And it honestly recognises that we're mortal; inheritors of original sin as the spark flies upward. Yet if we go and confess our sins and try to feel sorry for 'em, we receive the grace of the Sacrament of Penance and Absolution,--and we can then receive the Blessed Sacrament. And when we receive the Blessed Sacrament our souls are developed and fed from God Himself and enabled to dominate our bodies.”

“I see you've been well instructed,” said Ruth, astonished at this boy's clear exposition.

“I got Mary to tell me a lot about the Catholic Faith, and I've read Bellarmine and Saint Augustine and a lot of my father's books,” repeated the boy, a little wearily. “But what I like best,” he said brightening again, “is that the Church is down on divorce.”

“What hasn't this singular boy reflected upon,” thought Ruth.

“In a few years I'm going to take the money my father left me, marry, and go abroad and be a writer, Miss Adgate,” declared Jack.

“Ah,--that might not be a bad idea. Have you selected the young lady?” Ruth enquired.

“I've been looking about, among the girls here,” Jack answered, “but I don't find any I can fall in love with,” he added plaintively. “They're all rather silly and superficial. I should like to find someone like you,” he declared with abrupt enthusiasm. “Someone who's pretty, someone who's a soft sweet voice, thinks about things,--likes to read, that sort of thing. Yes,” he said, gazing at her, “if you were younger or I older, I should like you to marry me, I should ask you to marry me.”

“But no divorce,” Ruth threatened merrily.

“No divorce? No--of course not!” said Jack in sober disgust. “When once we're married it's for better for worse. I shall say that from the first. Don't we always have to live with people we quarrel with at first? Look at my mother and Mary. She was for flouncing that girl from the house the first week, and Mary gave notice, day after she got in. Then they shook down and my mother thinks Mary's a treasure and Mary'd cut her hand off for my mother. She would for me, told me so. Gives me all the cream and pie I want, never tells when I come in late from the Post Office. No, the sooner you find out you're tied to the person you love by a hard knot for life,--the sooner you realise that marriage is a Sacrament, the sooner--if you've got an ounce of sense and the Catholic Faith to help you--you learn to shake down and be happy. Besides, my wife shall be in love with me and she'll do exactly as I like,” declared Master Jack Enderfield.

IX

A gay jingle-jangle, the concord of sleigh-bells, the muffled piaffering of horses' hoofs and the door-knocker went again rat-tat.... Voices sounded in the hall, Rutherford and Robert Leffingwell entered the room, Jack's tête-à-tête was interrupted.

“Good-bye, Miss Adgate,” said Jack, abruptly. He cast a scowl of dislike at the jovial face of Rutherford. Before Ruth could make reply Jack was out the front door, and his friend had a glimpse of a pair of boyish legs leaping the offset.

“Splendid way of getting rid of obstacles,” Rutherford said as he followed Miss Adgate's eyes, “but what an odd boy it is! We're in for a blizzard, Miss Adgate,” added he, and he approached the fire and cheerfully rubbed his hands.

“A Blizzard!” cried Ruth. She ran to the window, followed by her two guests.

For a moment Ruth and the two young men watched the flakes descend.... They seemed to fall, fall, from limitless Niagaras of snow, from regions without the world, whose fountain-heads, beyond the skies, might be situate in those wastes of storm and cloud, where a Teutonic Mythology places its gods. The trees swayed gently, but even as Ruth watched them they had begun to bend in torture under a furious gale. Clouds of snow rose and fell like the billows of the sea....

The temperature capriciously dropped to far below zero. Had not Jobias been prepared for this by previous knowledge, the house might have become uninhabitable. But Jobias knew his business and stood by the furnace. All that day and evening he watched it, fed it;--and left his post from time to time only to replenish with fresh baskets of logs the voracious fireplaces in the drawing-rooms, casting above the baskets of wood a paternal smile, an indulgent glance upon those idle ones gathered round the flames.

Sledges, meantime, drove up. Guests departed, guests arrived, unruffled by stress of weather. All, rather, were most obviously exhilarated by it. Ruth's friends were in the maddest spirits. Punch flowed, quips, cranks, peals of laughter made the house resound. The Blizzard adding, at it always does, a fresh elixir, more oxygen to the already supercharged New England atmosphere, Ruth, too, felt unaccountably elated. Her eyes sparkled while the winds howled and hooted, and bullied and tore; the unassuaged tempers of five thousand demons seemed about to take their fill of hate upon an innocent, well-meaning world, but a rosy colour bloomed in Miss Adgate's usually pale cheeks. She had never appeared to such advantage; she had never looked so lovely, appeared so brilliant, nor been so amusing. Rutherford, as though the storm had gone to his head, Rutherford watching her covertly, vowed he could throw himself at her feet before the roomful, and Ruth's intuitions warned her; she had a feminine inkling of danger. She chatted and she laughed from her corner by the table laden with excellent things to eat; but she kept Rutherford at arm's length the while her fancy began to draw a picture of Pontycroft, standing it beside Rutherford. For the first time, she perceived that General Adgate recalled Pontycroft in a measure. Tall, thin, spare, his aquiline features were like Pontycroft's, his bearing was that of a distinguished man. “He has Harry Pontycroft's air of knowing that he knows,” reflected Ruth softly; tenderly to her soul she quoted a line Pontycroft long ago had ironically applied to himself:

“He who Knows that he Knows, follow him.”

Pontycroft loved to discourse for the pleasure of holding forth. General Aldgate was reticent. His voice was low, well modulated; one could not have helped listening to it, or to what he said; even though this had not been wise or witty if often touched with irony.

Rutherford, of medium stature, had the neck of a bull. His skin, originally clear, was yet ensanguined by exposure to wind and weather; he liked an out-of-door life and since he was heir to a fortune and detested the counting house, his life went in hunting, shooting, and fishing. He had a shock of black hair, clear black eyes, rather an attractive habit of darting a keen glance at his interlocutor as he spoke--a glance that seemed to grasp all there was to see, hidden or upon the surface, in a flash. But his voice was nasal, his words rushed, spluttered to be free; they issued chopped in two and left the idea unformulated. It required some familiarity with the American vernacular to understand him.

“And he, a college man!” scoffed Miss Adgate.