Miss Primrose Part 34

"Yes," Peggy said from the doorway, "Miss Primrose is the same enthusiast she used to be when I went to school to her."

"It is like a novel," declared Let.i.tia; "but we must go. You must forgive me for keeping you so long away--from your newer friends."

"It is nothing," was the answer. "I'm so glad you came."

"Remember your promise, Peggy!"

"Oh yes--my promise," Peggy murmured. "Good-bye, Miss Primrose.

Good-bye, doctor. Good-bye. Good-bye."

The carriage-door had scarcely closed upon us when Let.i.tia seized my arm.

"Bertram," she said, "it _is_ a story! I thought it was only in books that such things happened. I would not have missed this visit for the world!"

"But," I said, "do you trust--"

"Trust her? Yes. A woman never cries like that when she's lying, Bertram. Listen: she came to New York from Gra.s.sy Ford. He was nowhere to be found. He had given her a false address. Then a little girl was born--dead. Oh, you can't imagine what that child's been through, Bertram--the disgrace, the sorrow, the rags and poverty, hunger even--and only think how _we_ were eating and sleeping soundly in Gra.s.sy Ford, all that time she was starving here! Then temptations came in this miserable, this wicked, wicked place! Oh, how can man--Well--she did not dare to come home, but stayed on here. It was then she took the name Suzanne, to hide her real one. Twice--twice, Bertram--she went down to the river--"

Let.i.tia's voice was breaking.

"Oh, I can't tell you all she told me. But just when it all seemed darkest, she met this good, kind woman with whom she lives."

"What!" I said. "Did she tell you that?"

"Bertram, that woman saved her!--saved her from worse than death--took her from the very street--clothed her, fed her, and nursed her to health again. Did you see her dress? It was finest silk and lace. Did you see the rings on her fingers? One was a diamond, Bertram, as large as the pearl you wear; one was an opal, set in pearls; another, a ruby--and she told me she had a dozen more up-stairs."

"Who is this woman?"

"She did not tell me. I forgot to ask."

"What was the promise she made you?"

"To visit us--to come next summer to Gra.s.sy Ford."

"_Us_, Let.i.tia?"

"Yes; I made her promise it. She refused at first, but I told her there were hearts as loving in Gra.s.sy Ford as in New York--oh, I hope there are, Bertram; I hope there are! She will go first to the farm, of course, to see her mother, and then, before she comes back to this new mother, who makes me burn, Bertram, when I ask myself if any woman in Gra.s.sy Ford would have done as much--then she will visit us. It will mean so much to her. It will set that poor, spoiled life right again before our petty, little, self-righteous world. Oh, I shall _make_ them receive her, Bertram! I shall make them _take her in their arms_!"

She paused breathlessly, but I was silent.

"I thought you wouldn't mind," she said.

Still I could not speak.

"Tell me," she urged, "did I presume too much? Was I wrong to ask her without consulting you?"

"No," I answered--but not through kindness as Let.i.tia thought, let me confess it; not through having the tenderest man's heart in the world, as she said, gratefully, but because I knew--how, she will always wonder--that Peggy would never come.

VIII

IN A DEVON LANE

I have never seen an English lane, but I have a picture of one above the fireplace, and I once smelled hawthorn blooming. A pleasant, hedgerow scent, it seemed to me, with a faint suggestion of primroses on the other side--I say primroses, but Let.i.tia smiles when I declare I can smell them still, or laughs with Robin: they have been in England.

"Are you quite sure about it, Bertram?"

"They do have primroses," I reply, defiantly.

"But are you sure they are primroses?" she demands.

"Smell again, father!" cries my son.

"Yes," I retort; "or violets; they may be violets beyond the hedge."

It is then they laugh at me, and they make a great point of their puzzling questions: am I certain--for example, that the primrose is fragrant enough to be smelled so far, and is it in flower when the hawthorn blooms? That is important, they insist. It is not important, I reply--in _my_ England.

"_Your_ England!" they cry.

"To be sure," I say. "In my England--and I see it as plainly as you do yours--the hawthorn and primrose is always flowering. In my England it is always spring."

It is summer in theirs. It is always cool and fragrant and wholly charming in my Devons.h.i.+re. It was rather hot when they got to theirs--that is, the sunny coast of it they brag of was a little trying, sometimes, I suspect, in midsummer, though neither will confess.

"But not the moors!" they say.

"Oh, well--the moors--no; I should think not," I answer. "I am not such a fool as to think that moors are hot."

"How cool _are_ the moors?" they then inquire, innocently, but I see the trick; I hear the plot in their very voices, and am wary.

"Oh," I reply, "as cool as usual."

"But there are dense forests on the moors," Robin suggests. "Regular jungles--eh, father?"

I am not to be taken without a struggle.

"Hm," I reply.

"Hm--what, father?"

"Well, I prefer the coast myself."

"The dear white coast," says Let.i.tia, slyly.

"The dear _red_ coast!" I cry in triumph, but they only sigh:

"Ah, it was a wonderful, wonderful journey! One could never imagine it--or even tell it. One must have been there."