"We"ll have tea," Madame went on, brightly, ringing a silver bell as she spoke. "Then we shan"t be quite so serious."
"Woman"s inevitable solace," Alden observed, lounging about the room with his hands in his pockets. Man-like, he welcomed the change of mood.
"I wonder," he continued, with forced cheerfulness, "why people always cry at weddings and engagements and such things? A husband or wife is the only relative we are permitted to choose--we even have very little to say when it comes to a mother-in-law. With parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins all provided by a generous but sometimes indiscriminating Fate, it seems hard that one"s only choice should be made unpleasant by salt water.
"Why," he went on, warming to his subject, "I remember how a certain woman angled industriously for months to capture an unsuspecting young man for her daughter. When she finally landed him, and the ceremony came off to the usual accompaniment of Mendelssohn and a crowded church, I feared that the bridal couple might have to come down the aisle from the altar in a canoe, on account of the maternal tears."
[Sidenote: A Contrast]
"Perhaps," suggested Rosemary, timidly, "she was only crying because she was happy."
"If she was as happy as all those tears would indicate, it"s a blessed wonder she didn"t burst."
Madame smiled fondly at her son as she busied herself with the tea things. Rosemary watched the white, plump hands that moved so gracefully among the cups, and her heart contracted with a swift little pang of envy, of which she was immediately ashamed. Unconsciously, she glanced at her own rough, red hands. Madame saw the look, and understood.
"We"ll soon fix them, my dear," she said, kindly. "I"ll show you how to take care of them."
"Really?" cried Rosemary, gratefully. "Oh, thank you! Do you suppose that--that they"ll ever look like yours?"
"Wait and see," Madame temporised. She was fond of saying that it took three generations of breeding to produce the hand of a lady.
The kettle began to sing and the cover danced cheerily. Tiny clouds of steam trailed off into s.p.a.ce, disappearing in the late afternoon sunshine like a wraith at dawn. Madame filled the blue china tea-pot and the subtle fragrance permeated the room.
[Sidenote: A Cup of Tea]
"Think," she said, as she waited the allotted five minutes for it to steep, "of all I give you in a cup of tea. See the spicy, sunlit fields, where men, women, and children, in little jackets of faded blue, pick it while their queues bob back and forth. Think of all the chatter that goes in with the picking--marriage and birth and death and talk of houses and worldly possessions, and everything else that we speak of here.
"Then the long, sweet drying, and the packing in dim storehouses, and then the long journey. Sand and heat and purple dusk, tinkle of bells and scent of myrrh, the rustle of silks and the gleam of gold. Then the open sea, with infinite s.p.a.ces of shining blue, and a wake of pearl and silver following the ship. Dreams and moonbeams and starry twilights, from the other side of the world--here, my dear, I give them all to you."
She offered Rosemary the cup as she concluded and the girl smiled back at her happily. This was all so different from the battered metal tea-pot that always stood on the back of the stove at Grandmother"s, to be boiled and re-boiled until the colour was gone from the leaves. Alden was looking into his cup with a.s.sumed anxiety.
[Sidenote: In the Bottom of the Cup]
"What"s the matter, dear?" asked his mother. "Isn"t it right?"
"I was looking for the poem," he laughed, "and I see nothing but a stranger."
"Coming?" she asked, idly.
"Of course. See?"
"You"re right--a stranger and trouble. What is there in your cup, Rosemary?"
"Nothing at all," she answered, with a smile, "but a little bit of sugar--just a few grains."
Alden came and looked over her shoulder. Then, with his arm over the back of her chair, he pressed his cheek to hers. "I hope, my dear, that whenever you come to the dregs, you"ll always have that much sweetness left."
Rosemary, flushed and embarra.s.sed, made her adieus awkwardly. "Come again very soon, dear, won"t you?" asked Madame.
"Yes, indeed, if I may, and thank you so much. Good-bye, Mrs. Marsh."
""Mrs. Marsh?"" repeated the old lady, reproachfully. Some memory of her lost Virginia made her very tender toward the motherless girl.
"May I?" Rosemary faltered. "Do you mean it?"
Madame smiled and lifted her beautiful old face. Rosemary stooped and kissed her. "Mother," she said, for the first time in her life. "Dear Mother! Good-bye!"
VII
A Letter and a Guest
[Sidenote: An Unexpected Missive]
"A letter for you, Mother," Alden tossed a violet-scented envelope into the old lady"s lap as he spoke, and stood there, waiting.
"For me!" she exclaimed. Letters for either of them were infrequent. She took it up curiously, scrutinised the address, sniffed at the fragrance the missive carried, noted the postmark, which was that of the town near by, and studied the waxen purple seal, stamped with indistinguishable initials.
"I haven"t the faintest idea whom it"s from," she said, helplessly.
"Why not open it and see?" he suggested, with kindly sarcasm. His a.s.sumed carelessness scarcely veiled his own interest in it.
"You always were a bright boy, Alden," she laughed. Another woman might have torn it open rudely, but Madame searched through her old mahogany desk until she found a tarnished silver letter-opener, thus according due courtesy to her unknown correspondent.
Having opened it, she discovered that she could not read the handwriting, which was angular and involved beyond the power of words to indicate.
[Sidenote: A Woman"s Writing]
"Here," she said. "Your eyes are better than mine."
Alden took it readily. "My eyes may be good," he observed, after a long pause, "but my detective powers are not. The _m"s_ and _n"s_ are all alike, and so are most of the other letters. She"s an economical person--she makes the same hieroglyphic do duty for both a _g_ and a _y_."
"It"s from a woman, then?"
"Certainly. Did you ever know a man to sprawl a note all over two sheets of paper, with nothing to distinguish the end from the beginning? In the nature of things, you"d expect her to commence at the top of a sheet, and, in a careless moment, she may have done so. Let me see--yes, here it is: "My dear Mrs. Marsh.""
"Go on, please," begged Madame, after a silence. "It was just beginning to be interesting."
""During my mother"s last illness,"" Alden read, with difficulty, ""she told me that if I were ever in trouble, I should go to you--that you would stand in her place to me. I write to ask if I may come, for I can no longer see the path ahead of me, and much less do I know the way in which I should go.
[Sidenote: A Schoolmate"s Daughter]
""You surely remember her. She was Louise Lane before her marriage to my father, Edward Archer.
""Please send me a line or two, telling me I may come, if only for a day. Believe me, no woman ever needed a friendly hand to guide her more than