"Oh, daddy! Why, daddy!"
They finished up with the sh.o.r.e, and then at sunset they came back and sat down on the old garden bench. Before them a sea of splendour, burning like a great jewel, stretched to the gateways of the west.
The long headlands on either side were darkly purple, and the sun left behind him a vast, cloudless arc of fiery daffodil and elusive rose.
Back over the orchard in a cool, green sky glimmered a crystal planet, and the night poured over them a clear wine of dew from her airy chalice. The spruces were rejoicing in the wind, and even the battered firs were singing of the sea. Old memories trooped into their hearts like shining spirits.
"Baby Blossom," said Old Man Shaw falteringly, "are you quite sure you"ll be contented here? Out there"--with a vague sweep of his hand towards horizons that shut out a world far removed from White Sands--"there"s pleasure and excitement and all that. Won"t you miss it?
Won"t you get tired of your old father and White Sands?"
Sara patted his hand gently.
"The world out there is a good place," she said thoughtfully, "I"ve had three splendid years and I hope they"ll enrich my whole life. There are wonderful things out there to see and learn, fine, n.o.ble people to meet, beautiful deeds to admire; but," she wound her arm about his neck and laid her cheek against his--"there is no daddy!"
And Old Man Shaw looked silently at the sunset--or, rather, through the sunset to still grander and more radiant splendours beyond, of which the things seen were only the pale reflections, not worthy of attention from those who had the gift of further sight.
VII. Aunt Olivia"s Beau
Aunt Olivia told Peggy and me about him on the afternoon we went over to help her gather her late roses for pot-pourri. We found her strangely quiet and preoccupied. As a rule she was fond of mild fun, alert to hear East Grafton gossip, and given to sudden little trills of almost girlish laughter, which for the time being dispelled the atmosphere of gentle old-maidishness which seemed to hang about her as a garment. At such moments we did not find it hard to believe--as we did at other times--that Aunt Olivia had once been a girl herself.
This day she picked the roses absently, and shook the fairy petals into her little sweet-gra.s.s basket with the air of a woman whose thoughts were far away. We said nothing, knowing that Aunt Olivia"s secrets always came our way in time. When the rose-leaves were picked, we carried them in and upstairs in single file, Aunt Olivia bringing up the rear to pick up any stray rose-leaf we might drop. In the south-west room, where there was no carpet to fade, we spread them on newspapers on the floor. Then we put our sweet-gra.s.s baskets back in the proper place in the proper closet in the proper room. What would have happened to us, or to the sweet-gra.s.s baskets, if this had not been done I do not know.
Nothing was ever permitted to remain an instant out of place in Aunt Olivia"s house.
When we went downstairs, Aunt Olivia asked us to go into the parlour.
She had something to tell us, she said, and as she opened the door a delicate pink flush spread over her face. I noted it, with surprise, but no inkling of the truth came to me--for n.o.body ever connected the idea of possible lovers or marriage with this prim little old maid, Olivia Sterling.
Aunt Olivia"s parlour was much like herself--painfully neat. Every article of furniture stood in exactly the same place it had always stood. Nothing was ever suffered to be disturbed. The ta.s.sels of the crazy cushion lay just so over the arm of the sofa, and the crochet antimaca.s.sar was always spread at precisely the same angle over the horsehair rocking chair. No speck of dust was ever visible; no fly ever invaded that sacred apartment.
Aunt Olivia pulled up a blind, to let in what light could sift finely through the vine leaves, and sat down in a high-backed old chair that had appertained to her great-grandmother. She folded her hands in her lap, and looked at us with shy appeal in her blue-gray eyes. Plainly she found it hard to tell us her secret, yet all the time there was an air of pride and exultation about her; somewhat, also, of a new dignity.
Aunt Olivia could never be self-a.s.sertive, but if it had been possible that would have been her time for it.
"Have you ever heard me speak of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson?" asked Aunt Olivia.
We had never heard her, or anybody else, speak of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson; but volumes of explanation could not have told us more about him than did Aunt Olivia"s voice when she p.r.o.nounced his name. We knew, as if it had been proclaimed to us in trumpet tones, that Mr. Malcolm MacPherson must be Aunt Olivia"s beau, and the knowledge took away our breath. We even forgot to be curious, so astonished were we.
And there sat Aunt Olivia, proud and shy and exulting and shamefaced, all at once!
"He is a brother of Mrs. John Seaman"s across the bridge," explained Aunt Olivia with a little simper. "Of course you don"t remember him.
He went out to British Columbia twenty years ago. But he is coming home now--and--and--tell your father, won"t you--I--I--don"t like to tell him--Mr. Malcolm MacPherson and I are going to be married."
"Married!" gasped Peggy. And "married!" I echoed stupidly.
Aunt Olivia bridled a little.
"There is nothing unsuitable in that, is there?" she asked, rather crisply.
"Oh, no, no," I hastened to a.s.sure her, giving Peggy a surrept.i.tious kick to divert her thoughts from laughter. "Only you must realize, Aunt Olivia, that this is a very great surprise to us." "I thought it would be so," said Aunt Olivia complacently. "But your father will know--he will remember. I do hope he won"t think me foolish. He did not think Mr.
Malcolm MacPherson was a fit person for me to marry once. But that was long ago, when Mr. Malcolm MacPherson was very poor. He is in very comfortable circ.u.mstances now."
"Tell us about it, Aunt Olivia," said Peggy. She did not look at me, which was my salvation. Had I caught Peggy"s eye when Aunt Olivia said "Mr. Malcolm MacPherson" in that tone I must have laughed, w.i.l.l.y-nilly.
"When I was a girl the MacPhersons used to live across the road from here. Mr. Malcolm MacPherson was my beau then. But my family--and your father especially--dear me, I do hope he won"t be very cross--were opposed to his attentions and were very cool to him. I think that was why he never said anything to me about getting married then. And after a time he went away, as I have said, and I never heard anything from him directly for many a year. Of course, his sister sometimes gave me news of him. But last June I had a letter from him. He said he was coming home to settle down for good on the old Island, and he asked me if I would marry him. I wrote back and said I would. Perhaps I ought to have consulted your father, but I was afraid he would think I ought to refuse Mr. Malcolm MacPherson."
"Oh, I don"t think father will mind," said Peggy rea.s.suringly.
"I hope not, because, of course, I would consider it my duty in any case to fulfil the promise I have given to Mr. Malcolm MacPherson. He will be in Grafton next week, the guest of his sister, Mrs. John Seaman, across the bridge."
Aunt Olivia said that exactly as if she were reading it from the personal column of the Daily Enterprise.
"When is the wedding to be?" I asked.
"Oh!" Aunt Olivia blushed distressfully. "I do not know the exact date.
Nothing can be definitely settled until Mr. Malcolm MacPherson comes.
But it will not be before September, at the earliest. There will be so much to do. You will tell your father, won"t you?"
We promised that we would, and Aunt Olivia arose with an air of relief.
Peggy and I hurried over home, stopping, when we were safely out of earshot, to laugh. The romances of the middle-aged may be to them as tender and sweet as those of youth, but they are apt to possess a good deal of humour for onlookers. Only youth can be sentimental without being mirth-provoking. We loved Aunt Olivia and were glad for her late, new-blossoming happiness; but we felt amused over it also. The recollection of her "Mr. Malcolm MacPherson" was too much for us every time we thought of it.
Father pooh-poohed incredulously at first, and, when we had convinced him, guffawed with laughter. Aunt Olivia need not have dreaded any more opposition from her cruel family.
"MacPherson was a good fellow enough, but horribly poor," said father.
"I hear he has done very well out west, and if he and Olivia have a notion of each other they are welcome to marry as far as I am concerned.
Tell Olivia she mustn"t take a spasm if he tracks some mud into her house once in a while."
Thus it was all arranged, and, before we realized it at all, Aunt Olivia was mid-deep in marriage preparations, in all of which Peggy and I were quite indispensable. She consulted us in regard to everything, and we almost lived at her place in those days preceding the arrival of Mr.
Malcolm MacPherson.
Aunt Olivia plainly felt very happy and important. She had always wished to be married; she was not in the least strong-minded and her old-maidenhood had always been a sore point with her. I think she looked upon it as somewhat of a disgrace. And yet she was a born old maid; looking at her, and taking all her primness and little set ways into consideration, it was quite impossible to picture her as the wife of Mr.
Malcolm MacPherson, or anybody else.
We soon discovered that, to Aunt Olivia, Mr. Malcolm MacPherson represented a merely abstract proposition--the man who was to confer on her the long-withheld dignity of matronhood. Her romance began and ended there, although she was quite unconscious of this herself, and believed that she was deeply in love with him.
"What will be the result, Mary, when he arrives in the flesh and she is compelled to deal with "Mr. Malcolm MacPherson" as a real, live man, instead of a nebulous "party of the second part" in the marriage ceremony?" queried Peggy, as she hemmed table-napkins for Aunt Olivia, sitting on her well-scoured sandstone steps, and carefully putting all thread-clippings and ravellings into the little basket which Aunt Olivia had placed there for that purpose.
"It may transform her from a self-centered old maid into a woman for whom marriage does not seem such an incongruous thing," I said.
The day on which Mr. Malcolm MacPherson was expected Peggy and I went over. We had planned to remain away, thinking that the lovers would prefer their first meeting to be unwitnessed, but Aunt Olivia insisted on our being present. She was plainly nervous; the abstract was becoming concrete. Her little house was in spotless, speckless order from top to bottom. Aunt Olivia had herself scrubbed the garret floor and swept the cellar steps that very morning with as much painstaking care as if she expected that Mr. Malcolm MacPherson would hasten to inspect each at once and she must stand or fall by his opinion of them.
Peggy and I helped her to dress. She insisted on wearing her best black silk, in which she looked unnaturally fine. Her soft muslin became her much better, but we could not induce her to wear it. Anything more prim and bandboxy than Aunt Olivia when her toilet was finished it has never been my lot to see. Peggy and I watched her as she went downstairs, her skirt held stiffly up all around her that it might not brush the floor.
""Mr. Malcolm MacPherson" will be inspired with such awe that he will only be able to sit back and gaze at her," whispered Peggy. "I wish he would come and have it over. This is getting on my nerves."
Aunt Olivia went into the parlour, settled herself in the old carved chair, and folded her hands. Peggy and I sat down on the stairs to await his coming in a crisping suspense. Aunt Olivia"s kitten, a fat, bewhiskered creature, looking as if it were cut out of black velvet, shared our vigil and purred in maddening peace of mind.
We could see the garden path and gate through the hall window, and therefore supposed we should have full warning of the approach of Mr.
Malcolm MacPherson. It was no wonder, therefore, that we positively jumped when a thunderous knock crashed against the front door and re-echoed through the house. Had Mr. Malcolm MacPherson dropped from the skies?