Part 33 (1/2)
Mrs. Marshall-Smith was holding firm with her loveliest manner of warm friendliness concentrated on Page. ”Oh, no ceremony, Mr. Page, not between old friends. Luncheon is just ready--who cares how you look?”
She did not physically dispute with Mr. Sommerville the possession of the new-comer, but she gave entirely that effect.
Sylvia, unable to meet Morrison's eyes, absorbed in the difficulty of the moment for her, unillumined by the byplay between her aunt and old Mr. Sommerville, strove for an appearance of vivacious loquacity, and cast into the conversation entirely disregarded bits of description of the fire. ”Oh, Tantine, such an excitement!--we took nine men with hoes up such a steep--!” And finally Page, resisting old Mr.
Sommerville's pull on his arm, was saying: ”If luncheon is ready, and I'm invited, no more needs to be said. I've been haying and fire-fighting since seven this morning. A wolf is nothing compared with me.” He looked across the heads of the three nearest him and called to Arnold: ”Smith, you'll lend me some flannels, won't you? We must be much of the same build.”
Mrs. Marshall-Smith turned, taking no pains to hide her satisfaction.
She positively gloated over the crestfallen Mr. Sommerville. ”Sylvia, run quick and have Helene smooth your hair. And call to Tojiko to put on an extra place for luncheon. Arnold, take Mr. Page up to your room, won't you, so that he--”
Sylvia, running up the stairs, heard her late companion protesting: ”Oh, just for a change of clothes, only a minute--you needn't expect me to do any was.h.i.+ng. I'm clean. I'm washed within an inch of my life--yellow soap--kitchen soap!”
”And our little scented toilet futilities,” Morrison's cameo of small-talk carried to the upper hall. ”What could they add to such a Spartan l.u.s.tration?”
”Hurry, Helene,” said Sylvia. ”It is late, and Mr. Page is dying of hunger,”
In spite of the exhortation to haste, Helene stopped short, uplifted brush in hand. ”Mr. Page, the millionaire!” she exclaimed.
Sylvia blinked at her in the gla.s.s, amazed conjectures racing through her mind. But she had sufficient self-possession to say, carelessly as though his ident.i.ty was nothing to her: ”I don't know. It is the first time I have seen him. He certainly is not handsome.”
Helene thrust in the hairpins with impa.s.sioned haste and deftness, and excitedly s.n.a.t.c.hed a lace jacket from a drawer. To the maid's despair Sylvia refused this adornment, refused the smallest touch of rouge, refused an ornament in her hair. Helene wrung her hands. ”But see, Mademoiselle is not wise! For what good is it to be so savage! He is more rich than all! They say he owns all the State of Colorado!”
Sylvia, already in full retreat towards the dining-room, caught this last geographic extravagance of Gallic fancy, and laughed, and with this mirth still in her face made her re-entry on the veranda. She had not been away three minutes from the group there, and she was to the eye as merely flushed and gay when she came back as when she went away; but a revolution had taken place. Closely shut in her hand, she held, held fast, the key Helene had thrust there. Behind her smile, her clear, bright look of valiant youth, a great many considerations were being revolved with extreme rapidity by an extremely swift and active brain.
Swift and active as was the brain, it fairly staggered under the task of instantly rearranging the world according to the new pattern: for the first certainty to leap into sight was that the pattern was utterly changed by the events of the morning. She had left the house, betrayed, defenseless save for a barren dignity, and she had re-entered it in triumph, or at least with a valid appearance of triumph, an appearance which had already tided her over the aching difficulty of the first meeting with Morrison and might carry her ...
she had no time now to think how far.
Page and Arnold were still invisible when she emerged again on the veranda, and Mrs. Marshall-Smith pounced on her with the frankest curiosity. ”Sylvia, do tell us--how in the world--”
Sylvia was in the midst of a description of the race to the fire, as vivid as she could make it, when Arnold sauntered back and after him, in a moment, Page, astonis.h.i.+ngly transformed by clothes. His height meant distinction now. Sylvia noted again his long, strong hands, his aquiline, tanned face and clear eyes, his thoughtful, observant eyes.
There was a whimsical quirk of his rather thin but gentle lips which reminded her of the big bust of Emerson in her father's study. She liked all this; but her suspiciousness, alert for affront, since the experience with Morrison, took offense at his great ease of manner. It had seemed quite natural and unaffected to her, in fact she had not at all noticed it before; but now that she knew of his great wealth, she instantly conceived a resentful idea that possibly it might come from the self-a.s.surance of a man who knows himself much courted. She held her head high, gave to him as to Arnold a nod of careless recognition, and continued talking: ”Such a road--so steep--sand half-way to the hubs, such water-bars!” She turned to Morrison with her first overt recognition of the new status between them. ”You ought to have seen your fiancee! She was wonderful! I was proud of her!”
Morrison nodded a thoughtful a.s.sent. ”Yes, Molly's energy is irresistible,” he commented, casting his remark in the form of a generalization the significance of which did not pa.s.s unnoticed by Sylvia's sharp ears. They were the first words he had spoken to her since his engagement.
”Luncheon is ready,” said Mrs. Marshall-Smith. ”Do come in.” Every one by this time being genuinely hungry, and for various reasons extremely curious about the happenings back of Sylvia's appearance, the meal was dedicated frankly to eating, varied only by Sylvia's running account of the fire. ”And then Molly wanted to take the fire-fighters home, and I offered to walk to have more room for them, and Mr. Page brought me up the other side of Hemlock and over the pa.s.s between Hemlock and Windward and down past Deer Cliff, home,” she wound up, compressing into tantalizing brevity what was patently for her listeners by far the most important part of the expedition.
”Well, whatever route he took, it is astonis.h.i.+ng that he knew the way to Lydford at all,” commented Mrs. Marshall-Smith. ”I don't believe you've been here before for years!” she said to Page.
”It's my confounded shyness,” he explained, turning to Sylvia with a twinkle. ”The grand, sophisticated ways of Lydford are too much for the nerves of a plain-living rustic like me. When I farm in Vermont the spirit of the place takes hold of me. I'm quite apt to eat my pie with my knife, and Lydford wouldn't like that.”
Sylvia was aware, through the laughter which followed this joking remark, that there was an indefinable stir around the table. His turning to her had been p.r.o.nounced. She took a sore pleasure in Morrison's eclipse. For the first time he was not the undisputed center of that circle. He accepted it gravely, a little preoccupied, a little absent, a wonderfully fine and dignified figure. Under her misanthropic exultation, Sylvia felt again and again the stab of her immense admiration for him, her deep affinity for his way of conducting life. Whatever place he might take in the circle around the luncheon table, she found him inevitably at the center of all her own thoughts. However it might seem to those evidently greatly struck with her extraordinary good luck, her triumph was in reality only the most pitiful of pretenses. But such as it was, and it gleamed richly enough on the eyes of the onlookers, she shook it out with a flourish and gave no sign of heartsick qualms. She gave a brilliantly undivided attention to the bit of local history Page was telling her, of a regiment of Green Mountain Boys who had gone down to the Battle of Bennington over the pa.s.s between Windward and Hemlock Mountain, and she was able to stir Page to enthusiasm by an appreciative comparison of their march with the splendid and affecting incident before Marathon, when the thousand hoplites from the little town of Plataea crossed the Cithaeron range and went down to the plain to join the Athenians in their desperate stand.
”How do you _happen_ to come East just now, anyhow?” inquired old Mr.
Sommerville, resolutely shouldering his way into the conversation.
”My yellow streak!” affirmed his nephew. ”Colorado got too much for me. And besides, I was overcome by an atavistic longing to do ch.o.r.es.”
He turned to Sylvia again, the gesture as unconscious and simple as a boy's. ”My great-grandfather was a native of these parts, and about once in so often I revert to type.”
”All my mother's people came from this region too,” Sylvia said. She added meditatively, ”And I think I must have reverted to type--up there on the mountain, this morning.”