Rosalind thought of all this, her eyes on the dismantled garden. The flower beds were bare, the shrubs done up in straw, the fountain dry, and yet something recalled the summer day when she had sat just here learning her hymn. She remembered her old dreams of Friendship, and now she decided that the reality was best. She shut her eyes and tried to think just how she had felt that Sunday afternoon.
"What is the matter, little girl?" The magician"s words, but not his voice; nor was it his face she looked into.
"Father!" she cried,--"you dear! Where did you come from?"
It was some time before any connected conversation was possible.
"Why, father, how brown you are!"
"And Rosalind, how tall you are, and how rosy! To think I have lost six months of your life!"
"And I want to tell you everything just in one minute. What shall I do?"
Rosalind said, laughing, as she held him fast.
It did indeed seem a task of alarming proportions to tell all there was to tell; Rosalind felt a little impatient at having to share her father with her grandmother that evening. And there was almost as much to hear,--of Cousin Louis, whose health was now restored, but who was to spend some months in England, of their adventures, and the sights they had seen.
"We shall want something to talk about when we get home," she was reminded.
It would have been plain to the least observant that Patterson Whittredge"s life was bound up with that of this little daughter. As he talked to his mother, his eyes rested fondly on Rosalind, and every subject led back to her at last.
Rosalind, looking from her father to her grandmother, noted how much alike were their dark eyes, but here the resemblance ended. Mrs. Whittredge"s oldest son, although he might possess something of her strong will, had nothing of her haughty reserve. His manner, in spite of the preoccupation of the student, was one of winning cordiality. Older and graver than Allan, there was yet a strong likeness between the brothers.
Rosalind could not rest until she had taken her father to all the historic spots, as she merrily called them,--Red Hill, the Gilpin place, the cemetery, and the magician"s shop, of course.
"Friendship has been good for you, little girl," he said, as they set out far a walk next day.
"I used to think that stories were better than real things, father, but it isn"t so in Friendship. At first I was--oh, so lonely; I thought I never could be the least bit happy without you and Cousin Louis; but the magician and the Forest helped me, and since then I have had a beautiful time. I love Friendship. I almost wish we could live here."
"And desert Cousin Louis and the university?"
"No, I suppose not; but we can come back in the summer, can"t we? And, oh, father dear, you"ll join the Arden Foresters, won"t you?"
As they walked up the winding road at the cemetery, Mr. Whittredge heard something of those puzzles which had so disturbed Rosalind"s first weeks in Friendship, beginning with the story of the rose.
"It"s funny, father, but I hadn"t thought till then that grown people had quarrels. I might have known it from the story of the Forest; I remembered that afterward, and how things all came right."
"Poor little girl! You should have been warned; and yet in spite of it you have learned that realities are better than dreams."
"Father," Rosalind asked abruptly, "why was it you did not come to Friendship for so many years? Did not grandmamma like my mother? I think I ought to know."
Mr. Whittredge smiled at the womanly seriousness of the lifted face. "I think you ought, dear," he answered.
With her hand clasped in his he told her the story briefly, for even now he could not dwell upon it without pain, and as Rosalind listened she discovered that she had already heard a bit of it from Mrs. Parton and Mrs. Molesworth at the auction.
"We must try, you and I, not to think too hardly of grandmamma now. She has suffered a great deal, and it was your mother"s earnest wish that the trouble might be healed if the opportunity ever came." Patterson said nothing of his own struggle to forgive his mother"s att.i.tude toward his young wife.
"I think, father," Rosalind said, "that perhaps grandmamma is sorry. One day, not long ago, I saw her looking at mother"s picture. She did not know I was there. She took it from the table and held it in her hand, and I am sure she was crying a little."
That was a happy day, for now they put aside sad memories, and turned to the merry side of life, Rosalind kept forgetting that her father had been in Friendship before, and continued to point out objects of interest with which he had been familiar long before she was born. So full were the hours that it was growing dusk when they turned into Church Lane to call on the magician.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINTH.
AT THE MAGICIAN"S.
"I would have you."
Over his work these days the magician often smiled. It seemed to him that the good in things was beginning to show very plainly. The atmosphere of Friendship was clearing; the trouble which had first shown itself when Patterson Whittredge left his home had begun to lift with the coming of his daughter. Not that Rosalind had anything to do with it; it was only one of those bits of poetical justice that go to make life interesting.
An onlooker might have observed that he smiled oftener when engaged on the spinet than at other times; but if the magician had made any more discoveries in connection with it, he kept them to himself.
Now that the days were growing chill, a cheerful fire blazed on his hearth, before which Crisscross and Curly Q. dozed; he had found time to renew the motto over the chimney-piece, and the window-shelf was full of plants. The Arden Foresters appeared to regard the place as a club-room for their special benefit, and dropped in at all hours. The magician liked to have them there. As he sandpapered and oiled and polished, it was pleasant to glance in, now and then, at the open door, at a row of bright faces in the chimney-corner.
Once in a while Celia joined them for a few minutes. She wanted to know about the purchaser of the spinet, but Morgan seemed inclined to evade her questions. He did not deny that there was a purchaser, but the name had apparently escaped him.
Belle suggested that it might be the same mysterious individual who had bought the house, and Morgan accepted this as a happy solution when it was mentioned to him.
The cabinet-maker was a very queer person at times.
Celia sat in one corner of the high-backed settle alone this afternoon.
Belle, who had come in with the news of the arrival of Rosalind"s father the evening before, had just gone, and Celia, who had spent a busy morning, was reflecting that it was too late to begin a new task, and that she might as well allow herself to rest. Of late she hid taken life more quietly.
"Morgan seems to have gone out. May I come in?" It was Allan Whittredge who spoke, standing in the door.
"He was there a moment ago," Celia answered, rising.
"May I wait for him here? You agreed we were not to be enemies; can"t we go a step farther, and be friends?"
Celia found no reply to this, but she sat dawn again.
Allan took the arm-chair and faced her. "I seem to be always forcing myself on you, but I"ll promise you this is the last time," he said.
Still Celia had nothing to say, but she allowed him a glance of her dark eyes which was not discouraging.
Allan went on: "I am so tired of mistakes and misunderstandings that, before the subject is closed forever between us, I want you to know the exact truth in regard to my feelings.
"When I received your letter putting an end to things, at first I was hurt and angry, and I tried to persuade myself that it was for the best after all. You see, I did not know your side, and you will forgive me if I confess I thought you childish and lacking in deep feeling. Then, two years later, I saw you with the children, coming down the stairs at the Gilpin house, and something made me feel dimly that I had wronged you; but still I could not understand, until some words of Cousin Betty"s suddenly made it clear. It was maddening to think what my long silence must have seemed to mean to you. Then, for the first time, I saw the real barrier between us, and the more I thought of it, the more impenetrable it became.
"But it is hard for me to give up. I have looked at it on all sides; I went away that I might think more clearly about it, and of late I have begun to hope. I believe that love worthy of the name lives on in spite of everything, and I have dared to wonder if your love could have weathered this storm; if you still cared, though it might be only enough to give me the chance to win you again." Allan bent forward in his earnestness, his eyes fixed appealingly upon the small, still figure in the corner of the settle.
"Do you not care at all, Celia?" he asked, after a moment"s silence.
Celia lifted her eyes. "Care?" she cried, "I have always cared,--through everything! When I thought you knew and believed the cruel charge against my father; when I knew his heart was broken; when he was dead,--when I wanted to hate you, still I cared. Have you cared like that?"
This vehement confession, with its note of defiance, was bewildering.
Allan hesitated before this unapproachable, tempestuous Celia. Then he drew his chair nearer. "Celia, dear heart, do not speak so; I have not been tried like you, but give me the chance and see how I will atone for the past."