""Yours unhappily,
""EDITH ARCHER LEE.""
"Louise Lane," murmured Madame, reminiscently. "My old schoolmate! I didn"t even know that she had a daughter, or that she was dead. How strangely we lose track of one another in this world!"
"Yes?" said Alden, encouragingly.
"Louise was a beautiful girl," continued Madame, half to herself. "She had big brown eyes, with long lashes, a thick, creamy skin that someway reminded you of white rose-petals, and the most glorious red hair you ever saw. She married an actor, and I heard indirectly that she had gone on the stage, then I lost her entirely."
"Yes?" said Alden, again.
"Edith Archer Lee," Madame went on. "She must be married. Think of Louise Lane having a daughter old enough to be married! And yet--my Virginia would have been thirty-two now. Dear me, how the time goes by!"
[Sidenote: In Trouble]
The tall clock on the landing chimed five deep musical strokes, the canary hopped restlessly about his gilt cage, and the last light of the sweet Spring afternoon, searching the soft shadows of the room, found the crystal ball on the table and made merry with it.
"Time is still going by," Alden reminded her. "What are you going to do?"
Madame started from her reverie. "Do? Why, she must come, of course!"
"I don"t see why," Alden objected, gloomily. "I don"t like strange women."
"It is not a question of what we like or don"t like, my son," she returned, in gentle reproof. "She is in trouble and she needs something we can give her."
"When people are in trouble, they usually want either money or sympathy, or both."
"Sometimes they only need advice."
"There are lots of places where they can get it. Advice is as free as salvation is said to be."
Madame sighed. Then she crossed the room, and put her hands upon his shoulders. "Dear, are you going to be cross?"
His face softened. "Never to you, if I know it, but why should strange women invade the peace of a man"s home? Why should a woman who writes like that come here?"
"Don"t blame her for her handwriting--she can"t help it."
"I don"t blame her; far from it. On the contrary, I take off my hat to her. A woman who can take a plain pen, and plain ink, and do such dazzling wonders on plain paper, is ent.i.tled to sincere respect, if not admiration."
[Sidenote: An Invitation]
Smiling, Madame went to her desk, and in a quaint, old-fashioned script, wrote a note to Mrs. Lee. "There," she said, as she sealed it. "I"ve asked her to come to-morrow on the six o"clock train. I"ve told her that you will meet her at the station, and that we won"t have dinner until half-past seven. That will give her time to rest and dress. If you"ll take it to the post-office now, she"ll get it in the morning."
Alden shrugged his shoulders good-humouredly, kissed his mother, and went out. He wondered how he would recognise the "strange woman" when she arrived on the morrow, though few people came on the six o"clock train, or, for that matter, on any train.
"Might write her a little note on my own account," he mused. "Ask her to take off her right shoe and hold it in her left hand, or something of that sort. No, that isn"t necessary. I"ll bet I could go into a crowd of a thousand women and pick out the one who wrote that letter."
The scent of violet still haunted him, but, by the time he had posted his mother"s note, he had forgotten all about it and was thinking of Rosemary.
[Sidenote: Planning for the Guest]
Madame, however, was busy with plans for her guest"s comfort. She took down her best hand-embroidered linen sheets, shaking out the lavender that was laid between the folds, selected her finest towels and dresser-covers, ransacked three or four trunks in the attic for an old picture of Louise Lane, found a frame to fit it, laid out fresh curtains, had the shining silver candlesticks cleaned again, and opened wide every window of the long-unused guest-room to give it a night"s airing.
Downstairs, she searched through the preserve-closet for dainties to tempt an unhappy woman"s appet.i.te, meanwhile rejoicing with housewifely pride in her well-stocked shelves. That evening, while Alden read the paper, she planned a feast for the next night, and mended, with fairy-like st.i.tches, the fichu of real lace that she usually wore with her lavender silk gown.
"Is it a party?" queried Alden, without looking up from his paper.
"Yes. Isn"t company a party?"
"That depends. You know three are said to be a crowd."
"Still inhospitable, dear?"
"Only mildly so. I contemplate the approaching evil with resignation, if not content."
"You and I have lived alone so long that we"ve got ourselves into a rut.
Everyone we meet may give us something, and receive something from us in return."
[Sidenote: Best Things for Strangers]
"I perceive," said Alden, irrelevantly, "that the Lady Mother is going to be dressed in her best when the guest arrives."
A pale pink flush mantled the old lady"s fair cheeks. At the moment she looked like a faded rose that had somehow preserved its sweetness.
"Why not?" she asked.
"Why do we always do for strangers what we do not willingly do for our own flesh and blood?" he queried, philosophically. "You love me better than anything else in the world, yet you wouldn"t put on that lavender gown twice a year, just for me alone. The strange woman may feast her eyes upon it the moment she enters the house. She"ll eat from the best china, sleep between embroidered sheets, and, I have no doubt, drink the wine that Father put away the day I was born, to be opened at my wedding."
"Not at your wedding, my son, but the day you found the woman you loved." Then, after a long pause, she added, shyly: "Shouldn"t it be opened now?"
"It"ll keep," the young man grunted. "After lying for thirty years among the cobwebs, a few more weeks or months or years, as the case may be, won"t hurt it. Besides, I don"t expect to have any wedding. I"m merely going to be married. Might as well let the strange woman have it."
[Sidenote: Old Wine]
Alden"s father had, as he said, put away on the day he was born all the wine that was then ready to be bottled. The baby girl had been welcomed gladly, especially as she had her mother"s eyes, but the day the second Alden Marsh was born, the young father"s joy had known no bounds. He had gone, at dusk, to the pale little mother, and, holding her in his arms, had told her about the wine.
"I"ve put it all away," he had said, "for the boy. He"s to open it the day he finds the woman he loves as I love you."
The shelf in the storeroom, where he had placed it, had never been disturbed, though dust and cobwebs lay thickly upon it and Madame had always prided herself upon her immaculate housekeeping. It grieved her inexpressibly because Alden cared so little about it, and had for it, apparently, no sentiment at all. To her it was sacred, like some rare wine laid aside for communion, but, as she reflected, the boy"s father had died before he was much more than a child.
"Don"t you remember your father at all?" asked Madame, with a sigh.
"I can"t say that I do--that is, not before he died." The casket and the gloom of mourning had made its own vivid impression upon the child"s sensitive mind. One moment stood out quite clearly, but he forebore to say so. It was when his mother, with the tears raining down her face, had lifted him in her arms and bade him look at the man who lay in the casket, oh, so cold and still.
[Sidenote: The Pa.s.sing of the Father]
"Say good-bye to Father, dear," she had sobbed. "Is Father gone away?"
he had asked, in childish terror, then she had strained him to her heart, crying out: "Just for a little while! Oh, if I could only believe it was for just a little while!"