At Home with the Jardines Part 19

"I am perfectly reasonable," said Aubrey, gently. "I have listened for an hour to the justice you administer to a tenant with a signed lease.

My reason is what is guiding me now."

He rose as he spoke and moved toward the door.

They glared at us both as they went out.

Aubrey sat and figured for a few moments in silence.

"It has cost us quite a little," he said at last, "to learn that such as we cannot live in New York. We will go into the country where the right to live, and to live this side of insanity, is guaranteed, not by a lease, but by the exact centre of five acres of ground."

"I have always wanted to!" I cried, with enthusiasm. "We will be commuters."

"We will commute," said Aubrey, pausing to let the fire-engines go by, "when necessary."

CHAPTER VIII

MOVING

So we began our search for the Quiet Life and the spot wherein to live it. It must be out-of-town, yet not so far but that the Angel and I could get to town for an occasional feast of music or the theatre.

We asked those of our friends who were commuters to exploit the glories of their own particular towns, but to our minds there was always some insuperable objection.

So one day I took down the telephone-book and looked over the names of the towns. Jersey was tabooed on account of its mosquitoes, and both Aubrey and I cared nothing for the seash.o.r.e. But the Hudson, with its beauty and the delight of its hills rising in such a profusion of loveliness back of it, seemed to draw us irresistibly.

"Anything within an hour of New York," said Aubrey.

The telephone-book should answer. I resolved to read until I got a "hunch." That is not good English, but with me it is good sense, which is better.

Finally I found a number--97 Clovertown--Bucks, Miss Susan. Peach Orchard. The hunch was very distinct. I could fairly see my note-paper with Peach Orchard, Clovertown, stamped on it, for I instantly made up my mind that Susan must be asked to rent Peach Orchard for a term of years and go abroad. I felt sure that Europe would do her good. The more I thought of these names, the more sure I felt that we had arrived.

My next step was to look feverishly through the Clovertown names for a real estate agent. I found one, and without saying a word to the Angel, I called him up.

"h.e.l.lo, Central. Give me Long Distance. h.e.l.lo, Long Distance. Give me sixty-five Clovertown, please! Yes! All right. Is this Close and Murphy? Well, this is New York. I want to ask you if Peach Orchard is to let. What? I say, I would like to know if Miss Bucks would like to let Peach Orchard? She would? Well, how large is it? Four? Oh, five? Is there a good house on the place? And a stable? That's nice.

I see. Yes. Well, I would like to see it to-day if I could, but it is snowing here. Not snowing there? Well, we might try. What time does a train leave 125th Street? In forty minutes? Well, my husband and I will be on that train. Oh, that's very nice. Our name is Jardine--Mr.

and Mrs. Aubrey Jardine. Yes, I understand. Very well. Good-bye."

I hung up the receiver, and rushed into the dining-room.

"Hurry with luncheon, Aubrey!" I said. "I've rented a place in Clovertown, and we go out to take possession to-day. We leave in forty minutes!"

Aubrey looked up with interest.

"I heard you at the telephone. You are a crazy little cat," he said, but I could see that he was charmed. We love to do crazy things.

"He's going to meet us at the station with a carriage," I explained as I struggled into my coat with Mary's help, and Aubrey pawed madly around in the dark closet for overshoes for both of us.

Mary flew about like a distracted hen until she saw us safely started.

Most people would have gone mad at our erratic proceedings, but nothing ever disturbed Mary's equanimity. In fact, crises fairly delighted her. In an emergency she rose to the heights of Napoleon.

Finally we started, caught the train, and arrived. The gallant Mr.

Close met us, true to his word, and in five minutes we were on our way to Peach Orchard.

As we drove into the grounds, Mr. Close clapped his hand to his forehead with an exclamation.

"What is it?" I said, with a sinking heart.

"I've forgotten the key!"

"Never mind," I said, blithely. "We can easily get in through a window. My husband used to be a burglar."

It never occurred to me that the poor man would take such an idiotic remark seriously, so we neither of us looked at him until we had examined every door and window to find if haply one had been left unlocked. Nor did we notice that we were doing all the work until Aubrey selected the back hall window as the loosest, and opening his knife--the wickedest looking pocket-knife I ever saw, by the way--he proceeded deftly to turn the lock of the window and then to raise it.

I was so proud of his cleverness that I turned to ensure the admiration of Mr. Close also, but the look I encountered froze the smile on my lips and the words on my tongue, for the good man was viewing both Aubrey and me with the liveliest horror and distrust.

Aubrey turned also at my sudden silence, and the light dawned upon us both in the same instant.

Mr. Close had the grace to look quite sheepish to see us both sit down abruptly on the top step and shriek with laughter. But I am sure, in my own mind, that he dismissed the idea of burglars in favour of lunatics.

But Peach Orchard was well named, for the old house was set down in the very midst of it. Trees were everywhere, and, indeed, they grew so close to the house, and they were so tall, that we could not see the house properly. The short winter afternoon was drawing to a close and it looked for a moment as if we would have to come again, when on a shelf, good Mr. Close, whose business instincts were keener than his sense of humour, found an old lamp with about three inches of oil in it. A feverish search for matches resulted in the discovery that his match-box was empty, and Aubrey's held only one.

Right here, let me ask just one question of all the smokers all over the world. Why is it, that, needing them more than you need anything else on earth,--home or friends or wife or mother or money or position or religion or your hope of heaven,--why is it that you never have any matches?

Aubrey's one, which he had been saving, as he told me afterward, to light a cigarette on the return drive, proved friendly, and the lamp smoked instead. Armed with this rather unsatisfactory torch, we explored, and as we went up and down, in and out of the queer old place, built a hundred years ago (Mr. Close said!), we decided to take it, and most unwisely said so, thereby paying, as usual, the top price for something which we could have got at a bargain if we had waited.

But such is the perennial foolishness and precipitancy of the Jardines.

Evidently Mary had humoured our going out to Clovertown that afternoon as one of our mad excursions only, and had not fathomed the possibility of our deciding to live there, for when we came home and gaily announced that we had rented Peach Orchard, Mary's jaw fell and her lip pouted sulkily.

This lasted during dinner. We could both see that she intended us to notice it and question her, and when the coffee had been served and we said she might go, she saw that she must open the ball herself, so she fingered her ap.r.o.n and said:

"Missis, I shall be sorry not to go with you to Clovertown, but of all the towns along the Hudson, that is the one I can't bear to go to!"

"Why, Mary?" I said, for the first time in my life suspecting her of the tricks which we afterward came to know were a part of her.

"Because my oldest sister was killed by the railroad right at the station at Clovertown, and I was the one to take her away!"

For about the ten thousandth time Mary held the trump. I felt crushed.

I could fairly picture the scene, and I knew that no one could face such harrowing memories. As I gazed at her and she saw I was touched, tears began to gather in her eyes, brim over and run down her pink cheeks. I felt fairly faint and sick to think of parting with Mary.

Then something told me to probe the matter.

"When was your sister killed, Mary?" I said.

"Just twenty-two years ago come Was.h.i.+ngton's Birthday, Missis dear,"

whimpered Mary, with her ap.r.o.n at her eye.

I began to laugh heartlessly.