"What shall we do to make a clearance?" Rollo had said, laughing, as his eyes went round the parlour. "I wish, Hazel, you would look at these things, and see what use you can find for them. Take Byrom to open packages and do them up again, and let him ticket them according to your orders. Will you? and when I come home I will help. It is a most ridiculous a.s.sortment!"
Accordingly, after luncheon, Hazel put on an ap.r.o.n and summoned Byrom, whom she could not have earlier; she was not afraid of interruptions, not being supposed, as she thought, to be in town.
The task set her was an amusing piece of work enough, remembering as she did how and where and why many of the articles had come to be bought. Here were baskets, what an array of baskets! which had been purchased from a poor little discouraged seller of wickerware. A large order had first gone off to Morton Hollow; then as Rollo walked round the store he had picked up this and that and bade the woman send it to the hotel; till the dim eyes had brightened up and the hopeless face had taken quite another expression. Here was a package of stationery. Hazel remembered the sickly-looking man who had sold it, in a little shop, far down Broadway; she recollected Rollo"s cheery talk to the man and some counsel he had given him about his health; which counsel, coming from so free a purchaser, who paid cash with so ready a hand, stood a fair chance of being followed. Here were books, and there were books; here were pictures; there was a package of hardware. Well Hazel remembered a little corner shop into which her husband had turned to get a dog-chain; and where, finding a slim girl keeping shop, and learning that she was doing it for her father who was ill, he had gone on to buy a bewildering variety of things, which he would not order sent to Chickaree, there being perhaps no one in the shop to pack them. Hazel smiled as she recollected how Rollo found out that he wanted all sorts of things from that little establishment, and how the little girl had looked at him and sprung to serve him before he got through.
Byrom was busy unpacking and Hazel examining; the room was in a confusion of papers and twines and ropes; when the door opened, and there entered upon the scene no less a person than Josephine Charteris, nee Powder. The lady"s look, on taking the effect of things, it is impossible to describe. Hazel was gloved in dainty buff gauntlets, the folds of her scarlet dress half smothered in the great white ap.r.o.n, ruffled and fluted and spotless,?and looked indescribably busy.
"Josephine Powder!?I am not receiving company!" she exclaimed.
"Nonsense! I am glad of it. I want to see you, and I don"t want to see other people. How you _do_ look, Hazel! Well?have you really gone and got married, and told n.o.body? Is it true?"
"Telling people is not one of my strong points," said Hazel. "Phoebe, bring a duster to this chair for Mrs. Charteris."
"It is one your weak points, I think," said Josephine. "Never mind the chair. What made you do things in that way?"
Wych Hazel dismissed her attendants, and went back to her foot- cushion among the packages. "What makes one do anything?" she asked, beginning upon a series of troublesome knots.
"Hm!" said Josephine.?"Not being able to help yourself."
"O is that it?" said Hazel. "There?happily for you, I have found some sugarplums. Do you buy so many now-a-days that you have no taste for more?"
"What on earth are you about?"
"Hard at work on chaos?!"
"What sort of chaos?"
"Don"t you see?" said Wych Hazel. "Here are six brackets together, for instance, which _should_ be one in a place; and I am puzzled in what light to hang these pictures;?and these books have no place where to be. And if you want needles, Josephine, or a thimble?or a sewing-bird, or any little trifle like notepaper or a clotheshamper, help yourself!"?And her sweet laugh rung out, half for nervousness and half for fun.
"How long have you been married?" was the other lady"s impetuous question.
"Since some time last year," said Hazel, dragging up another package.
"Don"t be wicked, Hazel! Were you married at Christmas? Kitty Fisher says so, and I didn"t believe it. Were you really?"
"I suppose Dr. Maryland does such things "really," when he does them at all."
"Yes!" said Josephine, after a moment"s pause and with a half groan, "that"s the worst of it. I wish I could know it was a sham. _I_ think marriages ought to be broken, if people want them broken.
The law ought to be so."
Hazel was silent.
"Don"t you think, that when people are tired of each other, they ought not to be bound to live together?"
"But you were tired to begin with."
"No, I wasn"t; not so. I thought I could get along with John Charteris. He wasn"t a beauty, nor a distinguished speaker, but I thought I could get along with him. Hazel, I hated him before I had been married a week. Men are at your feet till you are tied to them, fast; and then?it"s very hard, Hazel!?the man is the master, and he likes it."
"Is that Mr. Charteris?" said Hazel.
"It is every man!"
"Some flourish their sceptres with a difference," said Hazel, her lips at play. "Take another bonbon?"
"It"s nothing to laugh at!" said the girl bitterly. "I know you will tell me you warned me,?but what could I do? They were all at me; mamma said I must be married some time; and I thought it didn"t make much difference; and now?I think I"ll run away. Do you like your husband?"
"No," said Hazel with indescribable arch of her brows, which was however extremely stately. But as she spoke, the very flush of the morning?all light and joy and promise?stirred and mantled and covered her face. It was unmistakeable; words could not have been clearer. She bent down over her parcels. And Josephine, watching her keenly, saw and read. It was very bitter to her.
"Why," she said incredulously, though she was not incredulous, "you used to hate him a year ago. Do you remember when he would not let you ride home with us from the Seatons" one night, and how furious you were? Has he changed?"
"As I never remember hating anybody in my life," said Wych hazel, "it is perhaps useless to discuss the question. Do you spend the winter here?"
"He had money enough of his own," Josephine went on,?"he had no business to marry you. Well?marriage is a lottery, they say; and I have drawn John Charteris. I suppose I must wear him out. If I could wear him out!?If it was only Jack Charteris!?but he is the sort of man you couldn"t say "Jack" to. Spend the winter here?
No, I think not. I shall go to Washington by and by. But I don"t see that it signifies much where one is; life is flat when one can"t flirt; and John won"t let me do that any more, unless I do it on the sly.
Do you expect to have anything in the world your own way, with Dane Rollo?"
Hazel felt herself (privately) getting rather "furious" now. Yet the girl at her side stirred her pity, too.
"What sort of man can you say "Jack" to?" she enquired, as if she had heard no question.
"You know. A fellow that"s anyhow jolly. What are all these things here for?"
"If I were you," said Hazel, "I would make Mr. Charteris so "jolly"
(lend me your word for once) that he would be delighted to have me say "Jack." "
"I don"t want him to be delighted," said Josephine, "nor to call him Jack. And a man that smokes all the time can"t be made jolly. He didn"t use to let me see it, you know; and now he don"t care. He ought to live in a house by himself, that"s all chimney!"
"Counter attractions would work a cure," said Wych Hazel, ready to laugh at her own suddenly developed wisdom. "If you make yourself disagreeable, Josephine, I should think he _would_ smoke, and hide you in a haze."
"I don"t!" said the girl indignantly. "And nothing on earth will cure a man who smokes. He likes it better than anything except money; far better than me. Try to get your husband??"
Josephine broke suddenly off. The door had opened noiselessly, and Mrs. Powder entered, followed immediately by Miss Molly Seaton.
Greetings and congratulations pa.s.sed of course, according to form.
"Dane is not at home, my dear?" said the elder lady.
"Husbands are not gallant in these days, mamma," said Josephine.
"But Mr. Rollo is!" said Molly rashly.
"So it seems," said Josephine laughing. "Left his lady-love to put his affairs in order; while he is having a good sleighride somewhere, you bet! But you see, she is busy, like a good child."
"And what _are_ you doing, my dear?" said Mrs. Powder.
Juts then the set of Hazel"s head would have told keen eyes what she was doing _mentally_. She was still in her camelshair morning robe; the scarlet folds and the white ap.r.o.n, and herself, making a brilliant spot down among the packages.
"I am putting Mr. Rollo"s affairs in order," she said composedly.