The Heart of Arethusa Part 21

She sighed the sigh of the well-fed when it was all over.

"I feel just like I would burst," she announced, as she pushed back from the table. "We don't have half this much to eat at night at home!"

"Would you," asked Ross, most amused, "like to go to bed and sleep it off? The instinct for which the lower animals are so commended leads them to some such sensible proceeding after over-feeding, I believe."

"Go to bed!" exclaimed Arethusa, indignant at the bare suggestion.

"Why, we never think of going to bed at the Farm before nine or half-past; and sometimes, even ten!"

"Ye G.o.ds! What hours! I'm surprised at Miss Eliza's permitting it!"

And Arethusa could not possibly tell, from his expression, whether he was joking or not.

He strolled slowly across the hall to the music room, his daughter following, the idea stirring within her brain that this new-found father was inclined to be as much of a tease as Timothy, and that his teasing was a trifle hard to understand. Elinor was going to play for them. She played every night to Ross unless they went out somewhere.

"I can plainly see, Arethusa, my child," Ross added, "plainly see where we're going to prove a most demoralizing influence for Miss Eliza's careful rearing."

CHAPTER XIV

In the morning, Arethusa wrote the letter to Miss Eliza she had been bidden to write as soon as possible after arrival in Lewisburg, giving a sketchy description of her trip and the information that it had been accomplished in safety, without mentioning a single one of the friends made on the train; or that she had almost missed her father; or that she was now minus a purse.

But immediately after this duty was done she wrote another letter; to Miss Asenath this one, and it was overflowing with spirits and exuberant retrospect of all that had happened to her since she left the Farm. Into this effort she put her encounter with the strange man, Mrs.

Cherry and Helen Louise and Peter and Mr. Cherry; how nearly she and Ross had missed connection and how terribly she had felt; the loss of her purse, and her fear that the check had been gone also; just how exciting this glorious Visit had already proved.

It was a long letter and a breathless one, with many missing words all down the pages, for Arethusa's mind was working so much faster than she could move her pen that it was quite impossible to get in every syllable. But Miss Asenath would understand.

Arethusa described at length the wonders of this big house where she was a guest, and the superlative Beauty of the room she had been given for her very own. She told of that Anniversary Dinner, and the Artichoke; of all her troubles with the strange food and the bewildering number of knives and forks and spoons. She also told Miss Asenath of Elinor's music.

Elinor made sounds to issue from a piano that Arethusa had never dreamed that instrument was capable of accomplis.h.i.+ng. With her slender fingers on those black and ivory keys, the big, black box had sobbed and laughed, and even talked ordinarily at her bidding.

Arethusa left her chair, and crept nearer and nearer to the musician until she was almost on top of the piano bench herself, in her absorbed interest. Her hands clasped over her heart to still the curious little ache the music made her to feel there, with her lips parted slightly and her eyes like big stars; she had scarcely dared breathe. She wished suddenly for Timothy, for Timothy wors.h.i.+pped music. He loved even to hear her, Arethusa, play. And she was sure he had never heard any music such as this.

It was not what Miss Let.i.tia would have called playing "with expression"; it was not as she had tried to teach Arethusa. Elinor's long, white hands just seemed to wander over the keys, as softly aimless as if she had no slightest idea what the next note was to be; they strayed from themes which aroused to an ecstasy into simple melodies that left a haunting sense that they had not been finished.

Sometimes the piano scarcely seemed to sound; sometimes it crashed in grand chords, as if the musician's playing had changed with her mood.

And Arethusa had listened, full of vague longings she did not understand, feeling when it ended that it was ended far too soon; and Ross had smoked silently, blowing great, blue wreaths about his head, one after another. There had been no single word from either to break the spell of the music.

Arethusa wrote away, the wrinkles of composition between her brows and her writing becoming more and more ragged as the letter proceeded. Her feet were twined in the rounds of her chair, her arms were spread out all over the top of the big desk with a great display of elbows, and she was ungracefully humped as to back; for when Arethusa wrote, her whole body responded to the effort.

Close beside her lay Boris, Ross's Great Dane, a dignified animal of unusual beauty. Ordinarily, he was so indifferent and sometimes so disagreeable to strangers that he was rarely allowed where they were, yet he had adopted Arethusa at sight when first introduced just after breakfast, and he had not left her side since. Most people were frightened nearly speechless when Boris merely opened his mouth to yawn; but he had not frightened Arethusa. She had voted him the most wonderful dog she had ever seen, and pleased Ross immensely by her lack of fear.

Every now and then when she stopped in her writing to open her cramped fingers for a moment and gaze admiringly around the room, she would stoop and pat Boris. And she would stroke him wherever her hand happened to fall, and he did not seem to resent it in the least, which was something most unusual.

Ross was in the library, sprawled on the big davenport, and watching the girl and the dog with keen delight in the picture they made. He had never known Boris to make friends thus suddenly, in all the six years he had owned him; even Elinor was a bit afraid of the splendid creature.

Elinor had been in the library also most of the morning, talking to Ross while Arethusa performed a Duty; but she had been called out to the telephone. When she came back, her first words were for Arethusa.

"I have an invitation for you."

"For _me_!" Arethusa's pen dropped abruptly in the middle of her page to make a large and sprawling splash of ink.

"Yes, for you. That was Mrs. Chestnut on the telephone. I had told her you were coming to visit us, and so she called up to invite you to the dinner-dance she is giving Friday night, if you were here."

"Oh, would that be a Party, a Real Party?" The excited scribe abandoned her letter altogether, and followed Elinor over by the fire-place, nearer to Ross and the davenport, "Isn't that a Party?"

"I should say it was!"

"I've never been to a Party," apologetically explained Arethusa, "and I've wanted to go to one ever since I can remember. Aunt 'Senath said there would be parties in the City, and that I might be invited!

But...." some of the glow began to fade, "I don't know Mrs. Chestnut, Mother."

"That doesn't make any difference this time, Arethusa dear, because she's one of my best friends. And all her parties are wonderful, so if you've really never been to any at all, you're starting in in the right way to enjoy them," said Elinor, and Arethusa glowed once more. "I had hardly dared hope she would invite you," she continued, "because I supposed her list was made up long ago. It's for Emily, her daughter.

You'll like Emily; she's just about your age, and she's coming out this winter. It's to be at the Boden Hotel, I think she said. But she's going to send an escort for you."

What richness of prospect!

Yet with her joy, Arethusa puzzled for a moment over some of the obscurer items of her mother's speech.

"Why doesn't she have her party at home instead of a hotel," she enquired, "and what is Emily coming out of?"

"Your mother used the wrong words, Arethusa," volunteered Ross from the davenport; "she means to say that Mrs. Chestnut's daughter is on exhibition after some years of careful preparation by her mother for just this event and will be gladly presented to the man offering to take her off her mother's weary hands. Said mother will be fearfully disappointed, if, after all this trouble and expense, no man should offer. And as to her not having the party at her home, she thinks far too much of her furniture and Persian rugs and pale pink walls to allow her daughter's callow young friends to romp around among them for a whole evening."

Arethusa looked at him uncertainly, but his expression was one of perfect seriousness. It was even a trifle sad.

"Is she really like that, Father?"

"Really like that," replied Ross sorrowfully.

"Then," announced Arethusa with decision, and her red mouth pursed disapprovingly, "I don't believe that I want to go to her party!"

Elinor struggled between exasperation and a desire to laugh.

"Mrs. Chestnut is lovely, Arethusa, and so is her daughter. They only have the dance at the hotel because their own house is too small for so many people at once. Everyone has their large parties there nowadays.

If you are going to believe everything your father says, you'll be having a very hard time. And if he keeps on talking this way, I'll have to send him out. You mustn't pay so much attention to him."

"Nice, wifely speech, that," observed Ross.

But Arethusa had glimpsed the laughter in his quizzical dark eyes. She realized now he had been teasing, so she turned clear away from him to give all her attention to Elinor, who could be more trusted.

"Do you know how to dance, dear?" asked Elinor.

"Some," replied Arethusa, "Timothy taught me down in the barn. Aunt 'Liza says dancing is very wicked," (Miss Eliza had a truly deep and honest horror of round dances). "But Timothy says it isn't a bit wrong, and I just _love_ it! She doesn't know," added almost confidentially, "that Timothy ever showed me how."

"'Tis just as well, I suppose," murmured Ross.

Arethusa had proved an apt pupil to Timothy's friendly instructions when he had come home from college and pa.s.sed on his acquirements in the art terpsich.o.r.ean. The lessons had taken place in the central, biggest s.p.a.ce in the barn, as she had said, with Timothy humming an accompaniment until breathless, and then she taking up the tune in her turn. This little taste of the joys of dancing had made her long for more. She failed to see how anything that made for such pure and unadulterated delight could be so wicked as Miss Eliza insisted that it was.