Justin Hare looked at them with interest--at the slender girl in her white gown, at the tall, straight old man with his air of command.
"Women in these days do not lean," he said, with decision; "they lead."
A spark came into Petronella"s eyes. "And do you like the modern type best?" she challenged.
He answered with smiling directness, "I like you."
The Admiral was pleased with that, though he was still troubled by this man"s difference from the men of his own race. Yet if back of that honest bluntness there was a heart which would enshrine her--well, that was all he would ask for this dearest of girls.
He glanced at the clock, and spoke hurriedly: "I must be going, my dear; it is long after five."
"Must you really go?" asked the mendacious Petronella.
An hour later she was alone. The visit had been a failure. She admitted that, as she gazed with a sort of agonized dismay through the wide window to where the sea was churned by the wildness of the northeast gale. Snow had come with the wind, shutting out the view of the great empty hotels on the Point, shutting out, too, the golden star of hope which gleamed from the top of the lighthouse.
Petronella turned away from the blank scene with a little shudder. Thus had Justin Hare shut her out of his life. He had talked of his mother in Maine, of his hospital plans for the winter, but not a word had he said of those moonlight nights when he had masterfully swayed her by the force of his own pa.s.sion, had wooed her, won her.
And now there was nothing that she could do. There was never anything that a woman could do! And so she must bear it. Oh, if she could bear it!
A little later, when a maid slipped in to light the candles, Petronella said out of the shadows, "When Jenkins goes to the post-office, I have a parcel for the mail."
"He"s been, miss, and there won"t be any train out to-night; the snow has stopped the trains."
"Not any train!" At first the remark held little significance, but finally the fact beat against her brain. If the one evening train could not leave, then Justin Hare must stay in town, and he would have to stay until Christmas morning!
Petronella went at once to the telephone, and called up the only hotel which was open at that season. Presently she had Hare at the other end of the line.
"You must come to my house to dinner," she said. "Jenkins has told me about your train. Please don"t dress--there"ll be only Miss Danvers and uncle; and you shall help me trim my little tree."
Although she told him not to dress, she changed her gown for one of dull green velvet, built on the simple lines of the white wool she had worn in the afternoon. The square neck was framed by a collar of Venetian point, and there was a queer old pin of pearls.
The Admiral, arriving early, demanded: "My dear, what is this? I was just sitting down to bread and milk and a handful of raisins, and now I must dine in six courses, and drink coffee, which will keep me awake."
She laid her cheek against his arm. "Mr. Hare"s train couldn"t get out of town on account of the snow."
"And he"s coming?"
"Yes."
"But what of this afternoon, my dear?"
She slipped her hand into his, and they stood gazing into the fire. "It was dreadful, uncle. I had a feeling that I had compelled him to come--against his will."
"Yet you have asked him to come again to-night?"
She shivered a little, and her hand was cold. "Perhaps I shall regret it--but oh, uncle, can"t I have for this one evening the joy of his presence? And if to-morrow my heart dies--"
"Nella, my dear child--"
The Admiral"s own Petronella had never drawn in this way upon his emotions. She had been gentle, perhaps a little cold. But then he had always worshiped at her shrine. Perhaps a woman denied the lore she yearns for learns the value of it. At any rate, here in his arms was the dearest thing in his lonely life, sobbing as if her heart would break.
When Justin came, a half-hour later, he found them still in front of the fire in the great hall, and as she rose to welcome him he saw that Petronella had been sitting on a stool at her uncle"s feet.
"When I was a little girl," she explained, when Hare had taken a chair on the hearth and she had chosen another with, a high, carved back, in which she sat with her silken ankles crossed and the tips of her slipper toes resting on a leopard-skin which the Admiral had brought back from India--"when I was a little girl we always spent Christmas Eve in this house by the sea instead of in town. We were all here then--mother and dad and dear Aunt Pet, and we hung our stockings at this very fireplace--and now there is no one but Miss Danvers and me, and uncle, who lives up aloft in his big house across the way, where he has a lookout tower. I always feel like calling up to him when I go there, "Oh, Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anybody coming?""
She was talking nervously, with her cheeks as white as a lily, but with her eyes shining. The Admiral glanced at Hare. The young man was drinking in her beauty. But suddenly he frowned and turned away his eyes.
"It was very good of you to ask me over," he said, formally.
That steadied Petronella. Her nervous self-consciousness fled, and she was at once the gracious, impersonal hostess.
The Admiral glowed with pride of her. "She"ll carry it off," he said to himself; "it"s in her blood."
"Dinner is served," announced Jenkins from the doorway, and then Miss Danvers came down and greeted Justin, and they all went out together.
There was holly for a centerpiece, and four red candles in silver holders. The table was of richly carved mahogany, and the Admiral, following an old custom, served the soup from a silver tureen, upheld by four fat cupids. From the wide arch which led into the great hall was hung a bunch of mistletoe; beyond the arch, the roaring fire made a background of gleaming, golden light.
To the young surgeon it seemed a fairy scene flaming with the color and glow of a life which he had never known. He had lived so long surrounded by the bare, blank walls of a hospital. Even Petronella"s soft green gown seemed made of some mystical stuff which had nothing in common with the cool white or blue starchiness of the uniforms of nurses.
They talked of many things, covering with, their commonplaces the tenseness of the situation. Then suddenly the conversation took a significant turn.
"I love these stormy nights," Petronella had said, "with the snow blowing, and the wind, and the house all warm and bright."
"Think of the poor sailors at sea," Hare had reminded her.
"Please--I don"t want to think of them. We have done our best for them, uncle and I. We have opened a reading-room down by the docks, so that all who are ash.o.r.e can have soup and coffee and sandwiches, and there"s a big stove, and newspapers and magazines."
"You dispense charity?"
"Why not?" she asked him, confidently. "We have plenty--why shouldn"t we give?"
"Because it takes away from their manhood to receive."
The Admiral spoke bluntly. "The men don"t feel it that way. This charity, as you call it, is a memorial to my wife. The grandfathers of these boys used to see her light in the window of the old house on stormy nights, and they knew that it was an invitation to good cheer.
More than one crew coming in half frozen were glad of the soup and coffee which were sent down to them in cans with baskets of bread. And this little coffee-room has been the outgrowth of just such hospitality.
There are too many of the men to have in my house. I simply entertain them elsewhere, and I like to go and talk to them, and sometimes Petronella goes."
"There"s a picture of dear Aunt Pet hanging there," said Petronella, "and you can"t imagine how it softens the manners of the men. It is as if her spirit brooded over the place. They have made it into a sort of shrine, and they bring sh.e.l.ls and queer carved things to put on the shelf below it."
"In the city we are beginning to think that such methods weaken self-respect."
"That"s because," said the wise old Admiral, "in the city there isn"t any real democracy. You give your friend a cup of coffee and think nothing of it, yet when I give a cup of coffee to a sailor whose grandfather and mine fished together on the banks, you warn me that my methods tend to pauperize. In the city the poor are never your friends--in this little town no man would admit that he is less than I.
They like my coffee and they drink it."
Petronella, seeing her chance, took it. "I think people are horrid to let money make a difference."
"You say that," said Hare, "because you have never had to accept favors--you have, in other words, never been on the other side."