Chapter 10

There was a practical brightness in her voice, and her even white teeth, as she smiled persuasively at him, were very pretty. He smiled back at her.

"That seems a fair proposition," he agreed. He reached for her hand and for a moment her soft, bright coloring, her dainty completeness, framed in the green of the little glade, were all he saw. Then, as his eyes lingered on the cool little pond and the waving pine boughs dark against the blue sky, he sighed.

"But I'm sorry you don't like the country, Tina, I am, truly," he said boyishly. "I've had such bully times in it. And I--I rather had the idea that we liked the same things."

"Gracious!" the young lady murmured, "after the arguments we've had over plays and actors!"

"Oh well, I suppose girls are all alike. But I mean other things--"

"Where did you do the Pirates?" Brother inquired, politely.

"What? Where did I--oh to be sure," he returned good-naturedly. "We had an enormous cellar, all full of pillars, to hold it up, and queer little rooms and compartments in it; a milk room and vegetable bins and a workshop. You could ride on a wheel all round, dodging the pillars. There were all kinds of places to lie in wait there, and spring out. Win told us an awful thing out of Poe that happened in a cellar, and Thea would never go there after four in the afternoon.

"It was a jolly old place," he went on dreamily, "I can't keep my mind off it this afternoon, somehow, since I've seen you fellows rigged out the way we used to. And there was a pond back in the Christmas Tree Lot like this one. Ridge and I built a raft out there and stayed all day on it. It was something out of Clark Russell's books, and Win pushed a barrel out and rescued us. She was a wonder, that girl."

He chuckled softly to himself.

"We tried to stock that pond with oysters once, and Ridge and I printed invitations for a clambake on our handpress, on the strength of them, but it was a dreadful waste of money. When we found it wasn't working, Ridge nearly killed himself diving for 'em, so we could get some good out of 'em. There they lay at the bottom, showing just as plain as possible, but it was no use--Poor fellow, he'll never dive any more."

"Is he--did he--" Caroline had crawled along till her head lay almost on the young man's knee; her eyes were big with sympathy.

"Lost his leg," he told her briefly. "Philippines. Above the knee. He ran away from college to go. He had the fever badly, too, and he'll never be fit for much again, I'm afraid. But he's just as brave about it--"

"Oh, yes," Brother burst out eagerly, "I bet you he is!"

"We had such plans," he said softly, "all of us, you know, for coming back to the old place and ending up there. Win says her kids shall stay there if she can't."

"Where is she?"

"Oh, she's 'most anywhere. Her husband's in the Navy--Asiatic Squadron--and she hangs about where he's likely to strike the country next. She was in Honolulu the last I heard. So she's not likely to do much for the place, you see."

"Where's Thea?" Miss Honey inquired.

"Wha tee?" mimicked the General, with an astounding similarity of inflection.

The young man threw his light cap at the baby's head; it landed grotesquely cocked over one eye, and the General, promptly sitting upon it to protect himself from further attacks, fell into convulsions of laughter as the young man threatened him.

"Thea's out West, on a ranch just out of Denver. She was married first, and her boys have ponies now--broncos. Of course it's fine for them out there, but she says she won't be happy till they can get East for a year or two. She wants them to see the place and grow up a little in it. She wants 'em to see the attic and poke about the barn and the stable and climb over the rocks. You see they're on the ranch all summer and in school in Denver all winter, and Thea says they don't know the look of an old stone wall with an apple tree in the corner. She says the fruit's not nearly so nice out there."

"Where is the place? Near here?"

"No, not so very. It's in the Berkshires, just out of Great Barrington. Father's practice was there, and grandfather's, too. Grandfather built it."

"That's where Lenox is, the Berkshires, isn't it?" the lady inquired with a yawn.

"Heavens, its nothing like Lenox!" he assured her hastily.

"No?" she moved slightly and scowled.

"My foot's asleep! That comes of sitting here forever!"

She got up slowly and with little tentative gasps and cries stamped her prickled feet.

"Aunty has several customers who go to Lenox"--a vicious stamp--"it must be grand there, I think. One of them, a regular swell, too--she thinks nothing of a hundred and fifty for a dress"--a faint stamp and a squeal of anguish--"told her that property was going up like everything around there. You could probably"--a determined little jump--"sell your old place and buy a nice house right in Lenox."

The young man sat up suddenly. "Sell the place!" he repeated, "sell the place!"

He had been watching her pretty, vexed contortions with lazy pleasure, noticing through rings of cigarette smoke her dainty ankles, white through the mesh of the thin silk stockings, her straight, slim back, and the clear flush that deepened her eyes. But now his face changed, and he stared at her in frank irritation.

"Sell the place!" echoed Brother and Miss Honey in horror, and Caroline's lower lip pushed out scornfully.

The lady stamped again, but not wholly as a therapeutic measure.

"Well, really!" she cried, "any one would think that these children were your friends, and I was the stranger, from the way you all talk. What is the matter with you, anyway? What are you quarreling about, Rob?"

He looked at her thoughtfully, appraisingly.

"I don't think we're quarreling, Tina," he said, "its only that we look at things differently. And--and looking at things in the same way rather makes people friends, you know."

He glanced down at the children, close about him now, and then over appealingly at her. But she had moved to a rock a little away from them and now sat on it, her face turned toward the road, leaning on her pale pink parasol: she did not catch the glance.

"What became of the Babe?" Caroline suggested suddenly.

"Babe? She's--her name's Margaret--at school now. She's growing awfully pretty."

"And is she going to live at the place, too?" queried the young lady sharply.

"Babe's going to capture a corporation or trust or something, and have oceans of money and build on a wing and a conservatory and make Italian gardens, I believe," he answered, pleasantly enough.

"But I'd just as soon she left the gardens alone," he went on, "the rest of us like 'em the way they are. There was one separate one on the west side, just for Uncle Robert's chrysanthemums. He used to work all the morning there and then read in the afternoon. He'd sit on the side porch with his pipe and Bismarck--he was an old collie--and he did tell the bulliest yarns. He helped us with lessons, too. I don't know what we'd have done without Uncle Rob. Father was so busy--he had a big country practice and he used to get terribly tired--and we went to Uncle Rob for everything. He got us out of more scrapes, Ridge and me--

"There were tiger lillies in the south garden and lots of clumps of peonies. Grandmother put those there. And fennel and mint. Mother used to like dahlias--it seems as if she must have had a quarter of a mile of dahlias, but of course she didn't--all colors. That garden ran right up against the house, and directly next to the bricks was a row of white geraniums. They looked awfully well against the red. It's a brick house and the date is in bricks over the door--1840. Of course it's been rented for ten years now, but we have our things stored in the attic and the people are careful and--well they love the old place, you know, and they keep up the gardens. They wanted to buy when father died and again after mother--

"But Ridge and I just hung on and leased it from year to year. We always hoped to get it back. And now to think that I should be the one to do it!"

"How are you the one?" Brother inquired practically.

"Why Uncle Wesley that ran away to sea--I used to have his room, just over the kitchen, and many a time I've climbed down the side porch just as he did, and run away fishing--Uncle Wesley died in England, last year, and left me considerably more than he'd ever have made if he'd minded grandmother and studied to be a parson. It seems Uncle Rob knew where he was all the time, and wrote him, before he was sick himself, to leave the money to the family, and by George, he did.

"Lots of the old stuff is there--the sideboard and the library table and grandfather's old desk mother kept the preserves in.

"I used to lie on an old sofa in the dining-room on hot afternoons, waiting for it to get cool, reading some travel book, eating summer apples, and listening to Win and Thea practicing duets in the parlor. Lord, I can hear 'em now! I'd look out at the brick walls, hot, you know, in the sun, and the pear tree, with the nurse rocking Babe under it, and old Annie shelling peas by the kitchen door, and it all seemed so comfortable--"

His eyes were half closed. The children listened dreamily, huddled against him; low red rays crept down from the west-bound sun and struck the little pond to copper, the nickel dishes to silver, the lady's skirt to a peach-colored glory; a little sudden breeze set the red bottle tinkling between the stones. But to the group entranced with memories so vivid that reality blurred before them, the peach and copper glories were ripe fruit against an old brick wall, the tinkle echoed from an old piano in a dim, green-shuttered parlor, and the soft snoring of the General, asleep on the silk motor coat, was the drowsy breathing of a contented little fellow in knickerbockers dreaming in a window seat.

"Did you ever go to Atlantic City?"

The lady's voice woke them as a gong wakes a sleeper. "Now that's my idea of the country!"

He stared at her vaguely.

"But--but that's no place for children," he protested. He had hardly grown up at that moment, himself.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"It's not exactly necessary to have six children, you know," she said, "and then you needn't be worried over a place for them, and can afford to think a little about the place you'd like for yourself."

The sun was in her eyes and she missed the look in his as he jumped up from the astonished group and seized her wrist.

"Christine, you simply shan't talk that way!" he said. "I don't know what's the matter with you to-day--why are you so different? Are you trying to tease me? Because I might as well tell you right now that you're succeeding a little too well."

The pink parasol dropped between them. Her eyes met his squarely, though her voice shook a little.

"Let my wrist go, Mr. Armstrong," she said, "you hurt me. I assure you I'm not different at all. If you really want to know what the matter with me is, let me ask you if you saw anything out of the way before your friends there interfered?" she pointed to the little group he had left. "We seemed to be getting on very well then."

His face fell, and she went on more quickly and with less controlled tones.

"You are the one that is different! I have always been just the same--just exactly the same! Ask anybody if I've changed--ask aunty! 'Tina has the best temper of any girl I know,' aunty always says. But its just as she warned me. Aunty always knows--she's seen lots and lots of people and plenty of swells, too--it isn't as if you were the only one, Mr. Armstrong!"

He looked curiously at the flushed, lovely face; curiously, as though he had never really studied it before.

"Perhaps--perhaps it _is_ I," he said slowly, "I--maybe you're right. And of course I know--" he smiled oddly at the pretty picture she made--"that I'm not the only one."

Something in his tone irritated her; she unfurled the rosy parasol angrily.

"Aunty said from the beginning you'd be hard to get on with," she flashed out. "She said the second time you came to the house with Mr. Walbridge for his sister's fitting and asked Kitty and I for a ride in the machine, 'I'm perfectly willing you girls should go, for they're both all right and I think the dark one's serious, but--"

"You discussed me with your aunt, then?"

She looked at him in amazement.

"Discussed you with aunty? Why certainly I did. Why shouldn't I? How do you suppose I'm to get anywhere, placed as I am, Mr. Armstrong, unless I'm pretty careful? I've nothing but my looks--I know that perfectly well--and I can't afford to make any mistakes. And aunty said, 'I think the dark one's serious, Tina, but I don't know, somehow, I'd keep in with Walbridge. He may not have so much money, but he'll be easier to manage. Armstrong seems like any other gay young fellow, and for all I know he is--he's certainly generous--but I'd rather have you Mrs. Walter Walbridge and lose the family custom, than have you tied up to an obstinate man."

"And--excuse me, but I'm really interested," he asked, "could you be Mrs. Walter Walbridge?"

"Yes, I could," she answered, "he asked me when he lent you the machine. I suppose he thought you might," she added simply.

He drew a long breath.

"And you answered--"

"I said I'd think it over," she said softly. "I--are you really angry with me, Rob? We're friends, aren't we? Friends--"

Her eyes lifted to his. "You see, Rob," she went on, still softly, "a girl like me has to be awfully straight and pretty careful. It's not easy to go to theaters and suppers and out with the machines and keep your head--you can't always tell about men. And I've cost aunty quite a lot, though of course, my clothes were the cheapest, really, all made in the house. I had two good offers to go on the stage, but she wouldn't have it. And even if Mr. Walbridge's mother did make a fuss, she can't help his getting the money. Of course I told him I'd think it over, but I always liked--"

"And now you've thought it over," he interrupted quickly, "and you've found out that your remarkably able aunt was right. You're a wise little girl, Tina, for if I know Walter, he _will_ be easier to manage! He's a lucky fellow--always was. But he'll never get his car at six to-night."

He plucked out his watch and strapping up the tea basket began to push the things hastily into it.

She stared ahead of her, her chin shaking a little, her eyes a little dim and most beautiful.

"I--you don't--you're not angry, Rob?" She leaned over him.

"Tina, if you look like that I'll kiss you, and Walter will call me out!" he said lightly. "Of course I'm not angry--we're as chummy as you'll let me be. Come on and find the choo-choo car!"

He slipped his arm through the basket handle and made for his coat. The children scrambled off it apologetically; they were not quite certain where they stood in the present crisis. But he smiled at them reassuringly.

"We'll have to meet again," he called, already beyond them, "and have some more of those little cakes! Good-by till next time!"

"Good-by! Good-by!" they called, and Miss Honey, eyeing the pink parasol longingly, ventured, "Good-by, Miss Tina!"

The lady did not answer, but walked slowly after the young man, shaking out her billowy skirts. Soon he was behind the big boulder; soon she had followed him.

"Yady go!" the General announced.

"They had a quarrel, didn't they?" Miss Honey queried. "But they made up, so it was all right."

Caroline shook her head wisely.

"We--ell," she mused, "they made it up, but I don't believe he changed his mind, just the same."

Something puffed loudly in the road, whirred down to a steady growl, and grew fainter and fainter.

"There they go!" Brother cried.

He picked up a bit of bark and tossed it into the little pool.

"I bet you Ridge will be glad to get back to the Place," he said.

VII

THE PRETENDERS

Midsummer dust lay ankle-deep in the road, white and hot. The asphalt sidewalk baked in the noon sun, the leaves hung motionless from the full trees; only the breathless nasturtiums flickered like flames along the fences, for the other flowers wilted in the glare. Caroline, hatless and happy as a lizard in the relentless heat, spun along on her bicycle, the only bit of movement on all the long stretch of the road. The householders had all retired behind their green blinds; even New England yielded to August's imperious _siesta_, and it might have been a deserted village, empty and mysterious, through which she glided.

By little and little she grew to feel this; her feet moved more and more slowly on the pedals, her brows knitted as the great idea grew. Her lips moved, inaudibly at first, but soon began the sing-song murmur so well known to those who crept upon her unawares.

"I am all alone; the rest have gone--where have they gone!--where _could_ they go? Oh, they're dead. Murdered! No, the town was besieged, and we made ropes with our hair, and bowstrings.... And they all marched out, and they closed the city gates...." Slower and slower the pedals moved: Caroline was pushing uphill. "So then the Mayor said: 'No, this sacrifice is too great--I can not allow you to make it, my brave children. Death--and worse--await you beyond these walls. Let us die here together.'" Her chin quivered. At the summit of the hill she paused.

"'Then _die_! Die like the dogs you are!' cried the Captain"--with feet perched high she swooped down the slope, her heart pounding with excitement, narrowly escaping collision at the bottom with an empty van, crawling through the heat, manned by a somnolent, huddled driver. Its hollow, cumbrous rattling pointed sharply the loneliness of the silent road, almost bare now of houses, for they were on the very outskirts of the village, and in a flash Caroline knew it for what it was, and shuddered.

"It's the Tumbrel!" she murmured softly, and to her awed fancy the graceful, slim-necked figures in flowered gowns drooped dreadfully or stiffened in a last pathetic defiance as they rolled by.

"Courage, my sister, courage!" whispered the brave gentleman, while the hoarse crowd shouted.... "_And I am Marie Antoinette!_" cried Caroline in a burst of inspiration.

Dismounting, she walked proudly beside her wheel; scornfully she held her head above that vulgar, cruel mob; the driver, poor in illusions, drowsed stupidly in front of the baleful wagon-load he knew not of, and clattered down the hill. To the ill-fated Queen, who followed the curving line of the twelve-foot iron fence that had sprung up at her side, ten minutes seemed but one. Lost in tragic musing, she wandered swiftly on; had you, meeting her suddenly, asked her where she was going, there is little doubt that she would have told you she was escaping to her palace. And all at once, as she halted a moment opposite a clear space in the shrubbery and thickly planted trees that followed the inside line Of the iron fence, she beheld the palace, high on a terraced knoll. It was of clean-cut gray stone, rising into a square tower at one corner, from which the flag drooped in bright folds of red and blue. The windows shone like mirrors; trim, striped awnings broke the severe angles of the long building; brilliant flower-beds gleamed from the smooth turf and bordered the neat walks of crushed gray stone. It stood massively above its terraces, a very castle of romance to Caroline, who had never before seen it so polished and beflagged. Wonderingly she tried the great wrought-iron gate, but it was securely locked, and a new sign was attached to it:

PRIVATE PROPERTY!

ALL TRESPASSERS ARE WARNED

FROM THE PREMISES!

VISITORS PLEASE RING AT THE LODGE.

Caroline stared at it vaguely. So delicate are the oscillations of the imaginative imp, that it is hard to say just where he swings his slaves into determined self-delusion. If you had shaken Caroline severely and demanded of her in the character of an impatient adult the name of her castle, she would undoubtedly have informed you that it was Graystone Tower, a long deserted mansion, too expensive hitherto for any occupants but the children who roamed every inch of it for the first spring flowers and coasted down its terraces in winter. But no one was there to shake her, and so with parted lips and dreamy eyes she speculated as to whether they would fire the cannon on her arrival and whether she would scatter coins among her loyal servants or merely order an ox roasted whole in honor of her safe return.

Soon she reached the smaller gate, but before she tried the handle the sign warned her that it would be useless. She frowned: no one could keep up the spirit of a royal home-coming under these disadvantages. Suddenly her eyes brightened, she tossed her head, and following what was apparently a little blind alley of shrubbery, she plunged into a tangle of undergrowth and disappeared. Only her bicycle, resting against the fence, showed that some one had passed that way. Working herself through the screen of leaves, she emerged into a fairly cleared path that her accustomed feet followed to its logical climax--a deep depression scooped out under the sharp, down-pointed iron prongs, worn smooth by the frequent pressure of small bodies. The fence had lost its shiny blackness by now and the grass grew rank and untended around the mouth of the gap. Wriggling through, Caroline straightened herself and strolled unconcerned toward the castle, not so near her now. Soon she reached a newly rolled tennis court; farther on two saddled horses pawed beside a little summer-house, impatient for the start; an iridescent fountain tossed two gleaming balls high into the air. Caroline moved like one in a dream; her fancy, grown so overwhelmingly real, dazzled her, fairly. But it was like the court of the Sleeping Beauty--no one came or called.

At length, wandering on, she came upon a gardener in a neat gray livery, clipping with a large, distorted pair of scissors the velvet edge of a flower-bed. He resembled so undeniably the gardeners in that ageless chronicle of Alice that Caroline smiled approvingly upon him.

"You are one of my gardeners, I suppose," she said regally.

"Yes, Miss," he replied, respectfully, touching his banded cap, "I am that."

"You garden very well," said Marie Antoinette, dizzy with delight at his manner.

"Yes, Miss; thank you, Miss, I'm sure," and the cap came off.

She walked on superbly. At last it had happened, and she, Caroline in the flesh, had fought her way through the prickly hedge of every-day appearance and won into the garden of romance, where dreams were true and anything might happen.

At that moment there came to meet her from behind a great beech tree a slender little lady. She had gray hair puffed daintily and fancifully about her small, pale face, and knots of pale blue ribbon, woven in and out of her lacy, trailing gown, repeated the color of her mild, round eyes. Half consciously Caroline muttered: "Here is one of my ladies-in-waiting," when the little lady rushed at her, smiling delightedly.

"Are you a queen, then?" she cried in a high, sweet voice. "How very pleasant. Dear me, how _very_ pleasant!"

Caroline smiled with equal delight. Very few persons of this little lady's age had such quick sense; mostly they had to be taught the game.

"Yes," she answered, "I am. I am Queen Marie Antoinette."

The little lady fell back a step. Her blue eyes clouded and she pouted like a big baby.

"Why--why, how _can_ you be?" she demanded, fretfully, "when that is who I am, myself!"

For a moment Caroline scowled; such flexibility was almost disconcerting. Then her natural good-humor and the training resulting from many summers with Miss Honey, who claimed all the best roles at once and shifted often, prompted her generous reply:

"All right. I'll be Mary Queen of Scots, then--I like it about as well."

The little lady beamed again.