Part 17 (2/2)

”Ve'y well, seh, thank yo', seh--Ah do mah ve'y best fo' yo'.”

But I saw that he had little hope of ever winning for me the favor of his captious owner.

CHAPTER XIV

THE COMING OF MISS CAROLINE

She came to us auspiciously on a day in the first week of June.

Mistress Caroline Lansdale, a one-time belle of the Old Dominion, relict of the late Colonel Jere Lansdale, C.S.A., legislator and duellist, whose devotion to her in the days of their courts.h.i.+p had been the talk of two states. Not less notable than his eloquence in the forum, his skill in the duello, had been the determined fervor with which he knelt at her feet. And I waited no more than a hundred seconds in her presence to applaud his discernment.

I had pictured an old woman--some aged trifle of an elder day, sad, withered, devitalized, intemperately reminiscent--steeped in traditions that would leave her formidable, and impracticable as a friend to me. I had fancied her thus, from Clem's fragmentary and chance descriptions and my own knowledge of what she should be by all laws of the probable; and she was not as I had evolved her.

The day she came was one of Little Arcady's best; quite all that her anxious servitor could have wished,--a day of summer's first abundance, when our green-bordered streets basked in a tempered sunlight, and our trim white cottages nestled coolly back of their flower gardens. Harried alien as she was, she would be welcomed with smiles, and I was glad for her sake and Clem's when I hurried home to dress for that first dinner with her.

On my way across the lawn at six-thirty I picked a bunch of the newly opened yellow roses as a peace offering, should one be needed. Clem, in his most formal dress, received me ceremoniously at the door, his look betraying only the faintest, formalest acknowledgment of having ever encountered mine before. With a superb bow toward the drawing-room and in tones stiffly magnificent, he announced, ”Mistah Calvin Blake.” It was excellently done, but I knew he had rehea.r.s.ed the ”Mistah.”

Then a woman rose from one of the deep old chairs to offer me her hand, and a soft quick laugh came as she perceived my difficulty, for my one hand held the roses. These she gathered gracefully into her left hand, while her right fell into mine with a swift little pressure as she bade me welcome.

”Clem has told me of you, Mr. Blake. I feel that you are one of us. Let me thank you at once for the consideration you have shown him.”

In the half light I hesitated awkwardly enough to speak her name, for I felt that this could not be the mother of Little Miss. Rather was it the daughter herself. I stammered words that must have revealed my uncertainty, for again she laughed, and then she ordered lights.

Clem came soft-footedly with a branching candelabra, which he placed on the round-topped old table by which she had been sitting. She moved a step to where the soft lights glowed up into her face, and with mock seriousness stood to be surveyed fairly.

”There, Mr. Blake! You see I confess all my years.”

And I saw the truth, that she loitered gracefully among the vague and pleasant fifties. But then she did a thing which would have been injudicious in most women of her years. Her hand, still holding my roses, went up to her face, and her cheek glowed dusky and pink against the yellow petals. I saw that she rightly appraised her own daring and felt free to say:--

”You _see_! My confusion was inevitable. Not one of those candles can be spared if I am to believe you are Miss Caroline.”

Again she laughed, revealing now a girlish freshness in the small mouth, that had somehow lingered to belie the deeper, graver lines about her dark eyes. As she still regarded me with that smiling, waiting lift of the short upper lip, I called out:--

”More lights, Clem! I need all you have.”

Whereat Miss Caroline fell into her chair with a marvellous blush, an undeniable darkening of the pink on cheeks that were in texture like the finest, sheerest lawn.

Never thereafter could I refuse credence to tales, of which many came to me, exposing Miss Caroline as an able and relentless coquette. Nor could I fail to understand how the late Colonel Jere Lansdale would have found need to be a duellist after he became her lover, even had he aforetime been unskilled in that difficult art.

As she chatted, chiefly of her journey, I falsely pretended to listen, whereas I only stared and in spirit was prostrate before her. Mere kneeling at her feet savored too nearly of arrogance. I felt the need to be a spread rug in her presence. She sat back in the chair that embraced her loosely, a slight figure with a small head, on which the heavy strands of whitening hair seemed only a powdered lie above the curiously girlish face. A tiny black patch or two on the face, I thought, would have made this illusion perfect. And yet when she did not laugh, or in some little silence of recollection, the deeper lines stood out, and I could see that sorrow had long known its way to her face. It even lurked now back of her eyes, and I knew that she tried to keep her face lighted for me so that I should not detect it. She succeeded admirably, but the smile could not always be there, and ghosts of her dead years came stealthily to haunt her face as surely as the smile went.

When Clem, with an air of having had word from a numerous kitchen crew, stood before us and bowed out, ”Miss Cahline, dinneh is suhved!” I gave her my arm with a feeling of vast relief. Not only was Miss Caroline an abiding joy, but apprehension as to my modest complicity in her late distress had, too, evidently been groundless. She had once, with what seemed to be an almost artificial politeness, asked me about our timber supply and the state of the lumber market; queries to which I had replied with an a.s.sumption of interest equally artificial, for I was ignorant of both topics, and not even remotely concerned about either.

Seated at the table, which Clem had arrayed with a faultless artistry, I promptly demanded the removal of a tall piece of cut gla.s.s and its burden of carnations, a.s.serting that both gla.s.s and flowers might be well enough in their way, but that I could regard them only as a blank wall of exasperating ugliness while they interrupted a view of my hostess. Whereat I was again regaled with that imcomparable blush.

Clem served a soup that had been two days in the making and was worth the time. But even ere the stain had faded from the cheeks of my hostess, cheeks of slightly crumpled roseleaf, another look flashed the smile from her eyes--a quick, firm, woman look of suffering and defiance.

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