Part 8 (1/2)
”Grandfather himself frequently personates the whole seven,” observed Stella, with a nod at her cousins. She smiled, as if the memory of some past scenes amused her, then said soberly: ”The fact of it is, Aunt Katharine is a regular crank. There's nothing in this world that goes right according to her notion of it, but she's particularly down on the ways of the men. She _would_ have a little patience with women-for she thinks their faults are mostly due to their being so down-trodden-if they only wouldn't marry. I've heard her say so! She never married herself, you know, and she has an awfully poor opinion of the whole inst.i.tution.”
Ruel Saxon looked as if he had a word to offer at this point in regard to his sister's matrimonial opinions, but Aunt Elsie was before him.
”Now, don't you think,” she said, looking gravely at Stella, and incidentally including him in the pa.s.sing glance, ”that we'd better let the girls form their own impressions of Aunt Katharine? They may like her a great deal better than you do, Stella.”
”I'm sure I'm willing,” said the girl, with another shrug, and her grandfather, after wrestling with a little more extremely hot tea, seemed to be willing too; but he suggested that the girls should make an early call on their Aunt Katharine. It would give them a chance of forming the desired impressions, and besides she would expect it.
The girls accepted the suggestion promptly. Indeed Kate, whose interest in her namesake had been considerably whetted by what had been said of her, proposed that they should go that very morning; but to this Aunt Elsie's judgment was again opposed. It seemed that Aunt Katharine had a special dislike to being interrupted in her morning duties by callers, and was disposed to think slightingly of people who hadn't ”work enough to keep them at home in the fore part of the day.” In the case of her nieces, who must certainly be excused for being at leisure, she might waive the last objection, but it was best to be on the safe side.
It was settled that the girls, accompanied by their grandfather, should go that afternoon, and if the call had been upon some distinguished person they could not have taken more pains with their toilets. Esther debated between three gowns, and finally settled on a soft gray, with plain white cuffs and collar, while Kate put on a pretty lawn and the das.h.i.+ng Roman sash which had been Aunt Milly's parting gift.
It was less than a half hour's walk across the fields to Aunt Katharine's house, but the grandfather had decided to go by the road in state, and had Dobbin and the two-seated carriage at the door in good time. He had taken a little more pains than usual with his own appearance, and his daughter-in-law added the last touches with careful hand.
She was not much inclined to the giving of gratuitous advice; but, in the absence of the young people from the room, she did say, persuasively, as she adjusted the old gentleman's cravat: ”If I were you, father, I'd try not to get into one of those discussions to-day with Aunt Katharine. We want the girls to have as pleasant an opinion of her as possible, and you know she always appears at a disadvantage when she's arguing with you.”
Sly Aunt Elsie! There were moments when the wisdom of the serpent was as nothing to hers. Ruel Saxon twisted his neck for a moment impatiently in his cravat, then replied meekly: ”Well, I s'pose it does kind of put her out to have me always get the better of her. Katharine has her good p'ints as well as anybody, and I'd be glad to have Lucia's children see 'em. If she don't rile me up too much I'll-yes, I'll try to bear with her this afternoon. Solomon says there's a time for everything: a time to keep silence and a time to speak; and mebbe it's a time to keep silence to-day.”
In this accommodating frame of mind he started off with his granddaughters. Stella had declined an invitation to accompany them-possibly at her mother's suggestion-though the fact that the way lay along one of her favorite drives, the old county road, had been something of an inducement to go.
It was one of those dear old roads, familiar in every part of New England, through which the main business of the region, now diverted to other highways, once took its daily course, but which, as its importance dwindled, had gained in every roadside charm. The woods, sweet with all summer odors, had crept close to its edge; daisies and ferns encroached on its borders, and its wavy line made gracious curve for the rock which had rolled from the hill above and lay beside it still, a moss-covered perch for children and squirrels. Here, the birds, not startled too often in their secret haunts, tilted on sprays of the feathery sumach, finis.h.i.+ng their songs with confident clearness as the traveller drew near, and the swift brown lizards darted across the way before the very wheels of his carriage.
Miss Katharine Saxon's farm was one of those which still had contact with the world through this deserted highway, but its comparative isolation had not affected its well-kept appearance. The house was white, with green blinds at the front and sides, but presented a red end to the fields behind, after the fas.h.i.+on of many in that section. The dooryard, a small rectangle, was shut off from the surrounding pastures by a high picket fence, though there were no shrubs, or even a flower-bed, inside the enclosure. The owner was not visible at any of the windows as her guests walked up the gravel path, which was too narrow to admit of their advancing in any but single file, but the bra.s.s knocker had scarcely fallen before she opened the door in person.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”SHE OPENED THE DOOR IN PERSON.”]
Even Esther had no remembrance of having seen her before, but there could be no doubt of her ident.i.ty. In feature she was singularly like her brother, but her small thin figure was not trim and straight like his. She was so painfully bent as plainly to need the aid of the stout oak stick on which she leaned, and her hair, in striking contrast with his, was snowy white. She greeted her nieces with as little effusion as their Aunt Elsie, but her quick bright eyes betrayed a much keener interest as they darted sharply from one to the other.
”Well, Ruel, I s'pose you're feeling just as smart as ever to-day, and just as able to bless the Lord that you ain't as the rest of us are.
Thank you, my rheumatism ain't a mite better 'n 'twas the last time you was here, and my sight and hearing are mebbe a little grain worse.”
She delivered herself of this with surprising rapidity as she walked before them into the parlor, looking back with short quick glances at her brother. He responded by a rather discomfited grunt. Evidently she had the start of him. The parlor was of the primmest New England type, and so dark that for some moments the girls, sitting uncomfortably on straight-backed chairs whose hard stuffed seats seemed never before to have been pressed by a human figure, could scarcely make out what manner of place they had entered. It dawned on them by degrees, and if anything had been needed to enhance the charm of the parlor at the old homestead, the necessary contrast would certainly have been furnished here.
There was nothing to suggest that any of the ordinary occupations of human life had ever been carried on in this room. The pictures which Stella had banished would seem to have been dragged from their hiding-places and hung on these walls, and beside them there was nothing of mural ornament except three silver coffin plates framed in oak on a ground of black. The Northmore girls, gazing in wonder at these s.h.i.+ning tablets, could scarcely believe that they were really what they seemed, but Stella, to whom they appealed on their return, promptly disabused them of the doubt. Most certainly these sombre ornaments had their original place on the funeral casket. It was not uncommon, she said, to find such relics displayed in old-fas.h.i.+oned houses in this region.
”There were some in our house once,” she added, ”but I persuaded grandfather to let me lay them away in the best bureau drawers. He objected at first, but after I put up my Madonnas and cathedrals he succ.u.mbed. I believe he considered the place unfit to display the names of those who had died in the faith.”
But this was afterward. At present Esther was occupied with the strenuous effort to read the names thus honored of Aunt Katharine, and Kate was bending all her energies to discover the points in which she herself resembled that lady. The latter turned upon them now with one of her sharp glances.
”So you're Lucia's girls,” she said with deliberation. ”Well, you ain't as good looking as she was, neither of you. But handsome is that handsome does; and if you behave yourselves, you'll do.”
The girls were somewhat taken aback by this, but Kate rallied in a moment. ”You can't hurt our feelings by telling us we aren't as good looking as mother was,” she said gayly, ”for we know she was a regular beauty. Father's told us that over and over.”
”I'll warrant he thought so,” chuckled her grandfather, ”and he wasn't the only one, neither. Why all the likeliest young fellows in town came courting your mother. She didn't have to take up with a Western man because she couldn't get anybody nearer home.”
”Perhaps it was because she had a chance to compare the Western man with those around here that she _did_ take up with him,” said Kate, quickly.
It was a fair retort; but the old gentleman's forehead puckered for a moment as if he were not quite prepared for it. Before he could say anything in reply his sister had changed the subject, by asking, in her abrupt way, with her eyes fixed on her younger niece, ”What do you think of this country?”
It is the stereotyped question from the old resident to the newcomer in all parts of the world. Perhaps, convenient as it is in bridging over the awkwardness of first acquaintance, it would be oftener omitted if society remembered that dictum of Dr. Johnson's, that no one has a right to put you in such a position that you must either hurt him by telling the truth, or hurt yourself by not telling it. Kate Northmore had never faced the alternative under very crucial conditions, but whatever twinge there might be she preferred on general principles to resign to the other party, and she did so promptly now.
”Well, I can't say I'm very much struck with the looks of it,” she said frankly. ”It's different from ours, you know; and these little bits of fields are so funny, all checkered off with stone walls. I haven't got used to them yet.”
Miss Saxon looked at her niece without speaking, but the grandfather bristled at this. ”Hm!” he grunted, ”You Western folks seem to think nothing's of any account unless it's big. 'Taint the size of things, but what you do with 'em, that counts.”