Master of the Vineyard Part 27

"Yesterday, when I was out for a walk." It was not necessary to go back of yesterday.

"Where was she?" insisted Grandmother.

"Up on the hill. I didn't know she was there when I went up. She was at the top, resting."

"Did she speak to you?" asked Aunt Matilda.

"Yes." Rosemary's voice was very low and had in it all the weariness of the world.

"What did she say?" inquired Grandmother, with the air of the attorney for the defence. The spectacles were resting upon the wart now, and she peered over them disconcertingly.

[Sidenote: What Does She Look Like?]

"I asked you what she said," Grandmother repeated distinctly, after a pause.

"She said: 'How do you do, Miss Starr?'"

"How'd she know who you were?"

"There, there, Mother," put in Aunt Matilda. "I reckon everybody in these parts knows the Starr family."

"Of course," returned the old lady, somewhat mollified. "What else did she say?"

"Nothing much," stammered Rosemary. "That is, I can't remember. She said it was a nice day, or something of that sort, and then she went back home. She didn't stay but a minute." So much was true, even though that minute had agonised Rosemary beyond words.

"What does she look like?" Grandmother continued, with deep interest.

"Not--like anybody we know. Aunt Matilda can tell you better than I can.

She saw her too."

Accepting modestly this tribute to her powers of observation, Aunt Matilda took the conversation out of Rosemary's hands, greatly to her relief. The remainder of breakfast was a spirited dialogue.

Grandmother's doubt on any one point was quickly silenced by the sarcastic comment from Matilda: "Well, bein' as you've seen her and I haven't, of course you know."

[Sidenote: Under the Ban]

Meanwhile Rosemary ate, not knowing what she ate, choking down her food with gla.s.s after gla.s.s of water which by no means a.s.suaged the inner fires. While she was was.h.i.+ng the breakfast dishes the other two were discussing Mrs. Lee's hair. Grandmother insisted that it was a wig, as play-actresses always wore them and Mrs. Lee was undoubtedly a play-actress.

"How do you know?" Matilda inquired, with sarcastic inflection.

"If she ain't," Grandmother parried, "what's she gallivantin' around the country for without her husband?"

"Maybe he's dead."

"If he's dead, why ain't she wearin' mourning, as any decent woman would? She's either a play-actress, or else she's a divorced woman, or maybe both." Either condition, in Grandmother's mind, was the seal of social d.a.m.nation.

"If we was on callin' terms with the Marshs," said Matilda, meditatively, "Mis' Marsh might be bringin' her here."

"Not twice," returned Grandmother, with determination. "This is my house, and I've got something to say about who comes in it. I wouldn't even have Mis' Marsh now, after she's been hobn.o.bbin' with the likes of her."

After reverting for a moment to the copper-coloured hair, which might or might not be a wig, the conversation drifted back to mermaids and the seafaring folk who went astray on the rocks. Aunt Matilda insisted that there were no such things as mermaids, and Grandmother triumphantly dug up the article in question from a copy of _The Household Guardian_ more than three months old.

[Sidenote: Working Faithfully]

"It's a lie, just the same," Matilda protested, though weakly, as one in the last ditch.

"Matilda Starr!" The clarion note of Grandmother's voice would have made the dead stir. "Ain't I showed it to you, in the paper?" To question print was as impious as to doubt Holy Writ.

Rosemary was greatly relieved when Mrs. Lee gave way to mermaids in the eternal flow of talk. She wondered, sometimes, that their voices did not fail them, though occasionally a sulky silence or a nap produced a brief interval of peace. She worked faithfully until her household tasks were accomplished, discovering that, no matter how one's heart aches, one can do the necessary things and do them well.

Early in the afternoon, she found herself free. Instinct and remorseless pain led her unerringly to the one place, where the great joy had come to her. She searched her suffering dumbly, and without mercy. If she knew the reason why!

"She's married, and her husband isn't dead, and they're not divorced."

Parrot-like, Rosemary repeated the words to herself, emphasising each fact with a tap of her foot on the ground in front of her. Then a new fear presented itself, clutching coldly at her heart. Perhaps they were going to be divorced and then----

[Sidenote: Something Snapped]

Something seemed to snap, like the breaking of a strained tension.

Rosemary had come to the point where she could endure no more, and mercifully the pain was eased. Later on, no doubt, she could suffer again, but for the moment she felt only a dull weariness. In the background the ache slumbered, like an ember that is covered with ashes, but now she was at rest.

She looked about her curiously, as though she were a stranger. Yet, at the very spot where she stood, Mrs. Lee had stood yesterday, her brown eyes cold with controlled anger when she made her sarcastic farewell.

When she first saw her, she had been sitting on the log, where Alden usually sat. Down in the hollow tree was the wooden box that held the red ribbon. Shyly, the nine silver birches, with bowed heads, had turned down the hillside and stopped. Across, on the other side of the hill, where G.o.d hung His flaming tapestries of sunset from the high walls of Heaven, Rosemary had stood that day, weeping, and Love had come to comfort her.

[Sidenote: Another Standard]

None of it mattered now--nothing mattered any more. She had reached the end, whatever the end might be. Seemingly it was a great pause of soul and body, the consciousness of arrival at the ultimate goal.

When she saw Alden, she would ask to be released. She could tell him, with some semblance of truth, that she could not leave Grandmother and Aunt Matilda, because they needed her, and after they had done so much for her, she could not bring herself to seem ungrateful, even for him.

The books were full of such things--the eternal sacrifice of youth to age, which age unblus.h.i.+ngly accepts, perhaps in remembrance of some sacrifice of its own.

He had told her, long ago, that she was the only woman he knew. Now he had another standard to judge her by and, at the best, she must fall far short of it. Some day Alden would marry--he must marry, and have a home of his own when his mother was no longer there to make it for him, and she--she was not good enough for him, any more than Cinderella was good enough for the Prince.

The fact that the Prince had considered Cinderella fully his equal happily escaped Rosemary now. Clearly before her lay the one thing to be done: to tell him it was all a mistake, and ask for freedom before he forced it upon her. He had been very kind the other day, when she had gone there to tea but, naturally, he had seen the difference--must have seen it.

[Sidenote: Rosemary's Few Days of Joy]

Of course it would not be Mrs. Lee--Rosemary could laugh at that now.

Her jealousy of an individual had been merely the recognition of a type, and her emotion the unfailing tribute inferiority accords superiority.

Married, and her husband not dead, nor divorced--manifestly it could not be Mrs. Lee.

She longed to set him free, to bid him mate with a woman worthy of him.

Some glorious woman, Rosemary thought, with abundant beauty and radiant hair, with a low, deep voice that vibrated through the room like some stringed instrument and lingered, in melodious echoes, like music that has ceased. She saw her few days of joy as the one perfect thing she had ever had, the one gift she had prayed for and received. This much could never be taken away from her. She had had it and been blessed by it, and now the time had come to surrender it. What was she, that she might hope to keep it?

"Lo, what am I to Love, the Lord of all One little sh.e.l.l upon the murmuring sand, One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand--"

The moment of shelter became divinely dear. Already, in her remembrance, she had placed a shrine to which she might go, in silence, when things became too hard. She would have written to Alden, if she had had a sheet of paper, and an envelope, and a stamp, but she had not, and dared not face the torrent of questions she would arouse by asking for it.

[Sidenote: No One Came]