Instantly roused, the guest raised bright, pleased eyes.
"The ladies" question, Warriner," said he. "It was silk, my dear, her first silk gown. Yellowish, or brownish, it was. And she had one of those little ruffled capes the ladies used to wear. And a little bonnet--"
"A BONNET!"
"A bonnet she had trimmed herself. I remember watching her, when we were engaged, making that tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. You don"t see it any more, but that year all the girls were making it. They made little bunches of grapes out of dried peas covered with chamois skin--"
"Oh, not really!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Anne.
"Indeed, they did. Then they covered their bonnets with them, and with leaves cut out of the chamois skin. They were charming, too. My wife wore that bonnet a long time. She trimmed it over and over." He sighed, but there was a shade of longing as well as pity in his eyes. "We were young," he said thoughtfully; "I was but twenty-five; we had our hard times. The babies came pretty fast. Rose wasn"t very strong. I worked too hard, got broken down a little, and expenses went right on, you know--"
"You bet I know!" Jim said, with his pleasant laugh, and a glance for Anne.
"Well," said Charles Rideout, looking keenly from one to the other, "thank G.o.d for it, you young people! It never comes back! The days when you shoulder your troubles cheerfully together,--they come to their end! And they are"--he shook his head--"they are very wonderful to look back to! I remember a certain day," he went on reminiscently, "when we had paid the last of the doctor"s bills, and Rose met me down town for a little celebration. We had had five or six years of pretty hard sailing then. We bought her new gloves that day, I remember, and--shoes, I think it was, and I got a hat, and a book I"d been wanting. We went to a little French restaurant to dinner, with all our bundles. And that, that, my dear,--" he said, smiling at Anne,--"seemed to be the turning point. We got into the country next year, picked out a little house. And then, the rest of it all followed; we had two maids, a surrey, I was put into the superintendent"s place--" a sweep of the fine hand dismissed the details. "No man and wife, who do what we did," said he, gravely, "who live modestly, and work hard, and love each other and their children, can FAIL. That"s one of the blessed things of life."
Jim cleared his throat, but did not speak. Anne was frankly unable to speak.
"And now I mustn"t keep these children out of bed any longer," said the older man. "This has been a--a lovely afternoon for me. I wish Mrs.
Rideout had been with me." He stood up. "Shall I give you this little fellow, Mrs. Warriner?"
"We"ll put the babies down," said Jim, rising, too, "and then, perhaps, you"d like to look about the house, Mr. Rideout?"
"But I know how a lady feels about having her house inspected--"
hesitated the caller, with his bright, fatherly look for Anne.
"Oh, please do!" she urged them.
So the gas was lighted, and they all went into the bedroom, where Anne tucked the children into their cribs. She stayed there while the others went on their tour of inspection, patting her son"s small, warm body in the darkness, and listening with a smile to the visitor"s cheerful comments in kitchen and hallway, and Jim"s answering laugh.
When she came blinking out into the lighted dining-room, the men were upstairs, and Helma, to Anne"s astonishment, was showing in another caller,--and another Charles Rideout, as Anne"s puzzled glance at the card in her hand, a.s.sured her. This was a tall young man, a little dishevelled, in a big storm coat, and with dark rings about his eyes.
"I beg your pardon, madam," said he, abruptly, "but was my father, Mr.
Charles Rideout, here this afternoon?"
"Why, he"s upstairs with my husband now!" Anne said, strangely disquieted by the young man"s manner.
"Thank G.o.d!" said the newcomer, briefly. And he wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, and drew a deep short breath.
"He--I must apologize to you for breaking in upon you this way," said young Rideout, "but he came out in the car this afternoon, and we didn"t know where he had gone. He made the chauffeur wait at the corner at the bottom of the hill, and the fool man waited an hour before it occurred to him to telephone me at the house. I came at once."
"He"s been here all that time," Anne said. "He"s all right. Your mother and father used to live here, you know, years ago. In this same house."
"Yes, I know we did. I think I was born here," said Charles Rideout, Junior. "I had a sort of feeling that he had come here, as soon as Bates telephoned. Dear old dad! He and mother have told us about this place a hundred times! They were talking about it for a couple of hours a few nights ago." He looked about the room as his father had done.
"They were very happy here. There--" he smiled a little bashfully at Anne--"there never was a pair of lovers like mother and dad!" he said.
Then he cleared his throat. "Did my father tell you--?" he began, and stopped.
"No," Anne said, troubled. He had told them a great deal, but not--she felt sure--not this, whatever it was.
"That"s why we worried about him," said his son, his honest, distressed eyes meeting hers. "You see--you see--we"re in trouble at the house--my mother--my mother left us, last night--"
"Dead?" whispered Anne.
"She"s been ill a good while," said the young man, "but we thought--She"s been so ill before! A day or two ago the rest of us knew it, and we wired for my married sister, but we couldn"t get dad to realize it. He never left her, and he"s not been eating, and he"d tell all the doctors what serious sicknesses she"d gotten over before--" And with a suddenly shaking lip and filling eyes, he turned his back on Anne, and went to the window.
"Ah!" said Anne, pitifully. And for a full moment there was silence.
Then Charles Rideout, the younger, came back to her, pushing his handkerchief into his coat pocket; and with a restored self-control.
"Too bad to bother you with our troubles," he said, with a little smile like his father"s. "To us, of course, it seems like the end of the world, but I am sorry to distress YOU! Dad just doesn"t seem to grasp it, he hasn"t been excited, you know, but he doesn"t seem to understand. I don"t know that any of us do!" he finished simply.
"Here they are!" Anne said warningly, as the two other men came down the stairs.
"h.e.l.lo, Dad!" said young Rideout, easily and cheerfully, "I came to bring you home!"
"This is MY boy, Mrs. Warriner," said his father; "you see he"s turned the tables, and is looking after me! I"m glad you came, Charley. I"ve been telling your good husband, Mrs. Warriner," he said, in a lower tone, "that we--that I--"
"Yes, I know!" Anne said, with her ready tenderness, and a little gasp like a child"s.
"So you will realize what impulse brought me here to-day," the older man went on; "I was talking to my wife of this house only a day or two ago." His voice had become almost inaudible, and the three young people knew he had forgotten them. "Only a day or two ago," he repeated musingly. And then, to his son, he added wistfully, "I don"t seem to get it through my head, my boy. For a while to-day, I forgot--I forgot.
The heart--" he said, with his little old-world touch of dignity--"the heart does not learn things as quickly as the mind, Mrs. Warriner."
Anne had found something wistful and appealing in his smile before, now it seemed to her heartbreaking. She nodded, without speaking.
"Dear old Dad," said Charles Rideout, affectionately. "You are tired out. You"ve been doing too much, sir, you want sleep and rest."
"Surely--surely," said his father, a little heavily. Father and son shook hands with Jim and Anne, and the older man said gravely, "G.o.d bless you both!" as he and his son went down the wet path, in the shaft of light from the hall door. At the gate the boy put his arm tenderly about his father"s shoulders.
"Oh, Anne, Anne," said her husband as she clung to him when the door was shut, "I couldn"t live one day without YOU, my dearest! But don"t--don"t cry. Don"t let it make you blue,--he HAD his happiness, you know,--he has his children left!"
Anne tightened her arms about his neck.
"I am crying a little for sorrow, Jim, dearest!" she sobbed, burying her face in his shoulder. "But I believe it is mostly--mostly for joy and grat.i.tude, Jim!"
THE TIDE-MARSH
"What are you going to wear to-night in case you CAN go, Mary Bell?"
said Ellen Brewster in her lowest tones.
"Come upstairs and I"ll show you," said Mary Bell Barber, glancing, as they tiptoed out of the room, toward the kitchen"s sunny big west window, where the invalid mother lay in uneasy slumber.
"My new white looks grand," said Ellen on the stairs. "I made it empire."
Mary Bell said nothing. She opened the door of her s.p.a.cious bare bedroom, where tree shadows lay like a pattern on the faded carpet, and the sinking sun found worn places in the clean white curtains. On the bed lay a little ruffled pink gown, a petticoat foamy with lace, white stockings, and white slippers. Mary Bell caught up the gown and held the shoulders against her own, regarding the older girl meanwhile with innocent, exultant eyes. Ellen was impressed.