Part 2 (1/2)
And it was in the violet flamed dusk as he sat with his immortal friends ranged around that Mrs. Matilda brought the treasure home to him. She was a very lovely thing, a fragrant flower of a woman with the tender shyness of a child in her manner as she laid her hands in his outheld to her with his courtly old-world grace.
”My dear, my dear,” he said as he drew her near to him, ”here's a welcome that's been ready for you twenty years, you slip of a girl you, with your mother's eyes. Did you think you could get away from Matilda and me when we've been waiting for you all this time?”
”I may have thought so, but when I saw her I knew I couldn't; didn't want to even,” she answered him in a low voice that hinted of close-lying tears.
”Child, Matilda has had a heart trap ready for you ever since you were born, in case she sighted you in the open. It's baited with a silver rattle, doll babies, sugar plums, the ashes of twenty years' roses, the fragrance of every violet she has seen, and lately an aggregation of every eligible masculine heart in this part of the country has been added. She caught you fair--walk in and help yourself; it's all yours!”
CHAPTER II
THE RITUAL
”Well, it's a sensation all right, Major,” said David as he stood in front of the major's fire early in the morning after the ceremonies of the presentation of sketches of the statue out at the Temple of Arts.
”Mrs. Matilda told me the news and helped me sandwich it into my speech between that time and the open-up talk. People had asked so often who was giving the statue, laid it on so many different people, and wondered over it to such an extent all fall that they had got tired and forgot that they didn't know all about it. When I presented it in the name of Caroline Darrah Brown in memory of her mother and her grandfather, General Darrah, you could have heard a pin drop for a few seconds, then the applause was almost a sob. It was as dramatic a thing as has been handed this town in many a day. Still it was a bit sky-rockety, don't you think--keeping it like that and--”
”David,” interrupted the major quickly, ”she never intended to tell it.
She had done the business part of it through her solicitors. She _never_ wanted us to know. I persuaded her to let it be presented in her name, myself, just before Matilda went out with you. She shrinks--”
”Wait a minute, Major, don't get the two sides of my brain crossed. You persuaded her--she isn't in town is she?--don't tell me she's here herself!” And David ruffled his auburn forelock with a gesture of perplexity.
”Yes,” answered the major, ”Caroline Darrah Brown is here and is, I hope, going to stay for a time at least. I wanted to tell you about it yesterday but I hadn't seen her and I--”
”And, David dear,” interrupted Mrs. Buchanan who had been standing by with s.h.i.+ning eyes waiting for an opening to break in on Kildare's astonishment with some of the details of her happiness over her discovery. ”I didn't tell you last night for the major didn't want me to, but she _is_ so lovely! She's your inherited friend, for your mother and hers were devoted to each other. I do want you to love her and everybody help me to make her feel at home. Don't mind about her father being a--you know a--a carpetbagger. Three of her Darrah grandfathers have been governors of this state; just think about them and don't talk about her father or any carpet--you know. Please be good to her!”
”Be good to her,” exclaimed David heartily, ”just watch me! I am loving her already for making you so happy by this down-from-the-sky drop, Mrs.
Matilda. And we'll all be careful about the carpetbags; won't even mention a rug; lots of talk can be got out of the dead governors I'm thinking. My welcome's getting more enthusiastic every moment. When can I hand it to her?”
”She's resting now and I think she ought to be quiet for to-day, because she has been under a strain,” answered Mrs. Buchanan as she glanced tenderly at a closed door across the hall. ”Oh, I'm so glad you think you are going to love her in spite of--of--”
”The Brown graft on the Darrah family tree?” finished David quizzically.
His eyes danced with delighted amus.e.m.e.nt across her puffs at the major as he added, ”Must have been silversmiths dangling on most of his ancestral branches, judging from his propensity for making dollars; a million or two, stocks, bonds, any kind of flimflam,--eh, Major?”
”Yes,” answered the major as he blew a ring of smoke into the air, ”yes, just about that; any kind of flimflam. And I can not conceive of Peters Brown rejoicing at having thirty thousand of those dollars put into an In Memoriam to the women who sniffed at him and his carpetbags for a good twenty years after the war. But the child doesn't take any of that in.
Those were twenty rich years he put in in reconstructing us, but when he took those same heavy carpetbags North he took Mary Caroline Darrah, the prettiest woman in the county with him. This girl--as I have said before, isn't love a strange thing? And you say the populace was astonished?”
”Almost to the point of paralyzation,” answered David as he filled a stray pipe with some of the major's most choice heart-leaf tobacco. ”But we managed to open up the picture show all right. The entire hive of busy art-bees was there in a queer kind of clothes; but proud of it. They acted as if we were dirt under their feet. They smiled on the whole glad-crowd of us with pity and let us rave over the wrong pictures. The portrait of Mrs. Peyton Kendrick by the great Susie Carrie Snow is--er--well, a little more of it shows than seems natural about the left off arm, but it's a Susie Carrie all right. You ought to have gone, Major, you would take with the art-gang, but we didn't; we were too afraid of them. After we had been shooed in front of most of the pictures and told how to see things in them that weren't there at all, Hob Capers said:
”'Let's all go down to the University Club and get drunk to forget 'em.'
That's why Mrs. Matilda came home so late.”
”And I want Hobson to be nice to her too,” continued Mrs. Buchanan as if she had not been interrupted in planning for her guest. ”And Tom and Peyton Kendrick. I'll ask them to come and see her right away.”
”Don't! Wait a bit, Mrs. Matilda,” exclaimed David. ”Hob saw a mysterious girl in an orchid hat out in the park day before yesterday. He says his heart creaked with expansion at just the glimpse of a chin he got from under her veil. Suppose she's the girl. Let him have first innings.”
”David,” remarked the major, ”flag the sun, moon and stars in their courses and signal time to reverse a day or a year, but don't try to turn aside a maker of matches from her machinations.”