CHAPTER XX. ARKWRIGHT'S EYES ARE OPENED
William came back from his business trip the eighth of July, and on the ninth Billy and Bertram went to New York. Eliza's mother was so well now that Eliza had taken up her old quarters in the Strata, and the household affairs were once more running like clockwork. Later in the season William would go away for a month's fishing trip, and the house would be closed.
Mr. and Mrs. Bertram Henshaw were not expected to return until the first of October; but with Eliza to look after the comfort of William, the mistress of the house did no worrying. Ever since Pete's going, Eliza had said that she preferred to be the only maid, with a charwoman to come in for the heavier work; and to this arrangement her mistress had willingly consented, for the present.
Marie and the babies were doing finely, and Aunt Hannah's health, and affairs at the Annex, were all that could be desired. As Billy, indeed, saw it, there was only one flaw to mar her perfect content on this holiday trip with Bertram, and that was her disappointment over the very evident disaster that had come to her cherished matrimonial plans for Arkwright and Alice Greggory. She could not forget Arkwright's face that day at the Annex, when she had so foolishly called his attention to Calderwell's devotion; and she could not forget, either, Alice Greggory's very obvious perturbation a little later, and her suspiciously emphatic assertion that she had no intention of marrying any one, certainly not Arkwright. As Billy thought of all this now, she could not but admit that it did look dark for Arkwright—poor Arkwright, whom she, more than any one else in the world, perhaps, had a special reason for wishing to see happily married.
There was, then, this one cloud on Billy's horizon as the big boat that was to bear her across the water steamed down the harbor that beautiful July day.
As it chanced, naturally, perhaps, not only was Billy thinking of Arkwright that morning, but Arkwright was thinking of Billy.
Arkwright had thought frequently of Billy during the last few days, particularly since that afternoon meeting at the Annex when the four had renewed their old good times together. Up to that day Arkwright had been trying not to think of Billy. He had been “fighting his tiger skin.” Sternly he had been forcing himself to meet her, to see her, to talk with her, to sing with her, or to pass her by—all with the indifference properly expected to be shown in association with Mrs. Bertram Henshaw, another man's wife. He had known, of course, that deep down in his heart he loved her, always had loved her, and always would love her. Hopelessly and drearily he accepted this as a fact even while with all his might fighting that tiger skin. So sure was he, indeed, of this, so implicitly had he accepted it as an unalterable certainty, that in time even his efforts to fight it became almost mechanical and unconscious in their stern round of forced indifference.
Then came that day at the Annex—and the discovery: the discovery which he had made when Billy called his attention to Calderwell and Alice Greggory across the room in the corner; the discovery which had come with so blinding a force, and which even now he was tempted to question as to its reality; the discovery that not Billy Neilson, nor Mrs. Bertram Henshaw, nor even the tender ghost of a lost love held the center of his heart—but Alice Greggory.
The first intimation of all this had come with his curious feeling of unreasoning hatred and blind indignation toward Calderwell as, through Billy's eyes, he had seen the two together. Then had come the overwhelming longing to pick up Alice Greggory and run off with her—somewhere, anywhere, so that Calderwell could not follow.
At once, however, he had pulled himself up short with the mental cry of “Absurd!” What was it to him if Calderwell did care for Alice Greggory? Surely he himself was not in love with the girl. He was in love with Billy; that is—
It was all confusion then, in his mind, and he was glad indeed when he could leave the house. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to think. He must, in some way, thrash out this astounding thing that had come to him.
Arkwright did not visit the Annex again for some days. Until he was more nearly sure of himself and of his feelings, he did not wish to see Alice Greggory. It was then that he began to think of Billy, deliberately, purposefully, for it must be, of course, that he had made a mistake, he told himself. It must be that he did, really, still care for Billy—though of course he ought not to.
Arkwright made another discovery then. He learned that, however deliberately he started in to think of Billy, he ended every time in thinking of Alice. He thought of how good she had been to him, and of how faithful she had been in helping him to fight his love for Billy. Just here he decided, for a moment, that probably, after all, his feeling of anger against Calderwell was merely the fear of losing this helpful comradeship that he so needed. Even with himself, however, Arkwright could not keep up this farce long, and very soon he admitted miserably that it was not the comradeship of Alice Greggory that he wanted or needed, but the love.
He knew it now. No longer was there any use in beating about the bush. He did love Alice Greggory; but so curiously and unbelievably stupid had he been that he had not found it out until now. And now it was too late. Had not even Billy called his attention to the fact of Calderwell's devotion? Besides, had not he himself, at the very first, told Calderwell that he might have a clear field?
Fool that he had been to let another thus lightly step in and win from under his very nose what might have been his if he had but known his own mind before it was too late!
But was it, after all, quite too late? He and Alice were old friends. Away back in their young days in their native town they had been, indeed, almost sweethearts, in a boy-and-girl fashion. It would not have taken much in those days, he believed, to have made the relationship more interesting. But changes had come. Alice had left town, and for years they had drifted apart. Then had come Billy, and Billy had found Alice, thus bringing about the odd circumstance of their renewing of acquaintanceship. Perhaps, at that time, if he had not already thought he cared for Billy, there would have been something more than acquaintanceship.
But he had thought he cared for Billy all these years; and now, at this late day, to wake up and find that he cared for Alice! A pretty mess he had made of things! Was he so inconstant then, so fickle? Did he not know his own mind five minutes at a time? What would Alice Greggory think, even if he found the courage to tell her? What could she think? What could anybody think?
Arkwright fairly ground his teeth in impotent wrath—and he did not know whether he were the most angry that he did not love Billy, or that he had loved Billy, or that he loved somebody else now.
It was while he was in this unenviable frame of mind that he went to see Alice. Not that he had planned definitely to speak to her of his discovery, nor yet that he had planned not to. He had, indeed, planned nothing. For a man usually so decided as to purpose and energetic as to action, he was in a most unhappy state of uncertainty and changeableness. One thing only was unmistakably clear to him, and that was that he must see Alice.
For months, now, he had taken to Alice all his hopes and griefs, perplexities and problems; and never had he failed to find comfort in the shape of sympathetic understanding and wise counsel. To Alice, therefore, now he turned as a matter of course, telling himself vaguely that, perhaps, after he had seen Alice, he would feel better.
Just how intimately this particular problem of his concerned Alice herself, he did not stop to realize. He did not, indeed, think of it at all from Alice's standpoint—until he came face to face with the girl in the living-room at the Annex. Then, suddenly, he did. His manner became at once, consequently, full of embarrassment and quite devoid of its usual frank friendliness.
As it happened, this was perhaps the most unfortunate thing that could have occurred, so far as it concerned the attitude of Alice Greggory, for thereby innumerable tiny sparks of suspicion that had been tormenting the girl for days were instantly fanned into consuming flames of conviction.
Alice had not been slow to note Arkwright's prolonged absence from the Annex. Coming as it did so soon after her most disconcerting talk with Billy in regard to her own relations with him, it had filled her with frightened questionings.
If Billy had seen things to make her think of linking their names together, perhaps Arkwright himself had heard some such idea put forth somewhere, and that was why he was staying away—to show the world that there was no foundation for such rumors. Perhaps he was even doing it to show her that—
Even in her thoughts Alice could scarcely bring herself to finish the sentence. That Arkwright should ever suspect for a moment that she cared for him was intolerable. Painfully conscious as she was that she did care for him, it was easy to fear that others must be conscious of it, too. Had she not already proof that Billy suspected it? Why, then, might not it be quite possible, even probable, that Arkwright suspected it, also; and, because he did suspect it, had decided that it would be just as well, perhaps, if he did not call so often.
In spite of Alice's angry insistence to herself that, after all, this could not be the case—that the man knew she understood he still loved Billy—she could not help fearing, in the face of Arkwright's unusual absence, that it might yet be true. When, therefore, he finally did appear, only to become at once obviously embarrassed in her presence, her fears instantly became convictions. It was true, then. The man did believe she cared for him, and he had been trying to teach her—to save her.
To teach her! To save her, indeed! Very well, he should see! And forthwith, from that moment, Alice Greggory's chief reason for living became to prove to Mr. M. J. Arkwright that he needed not to teach her, to save her, nor yet to sympathize with her.
“How do you do?” she greeted him, with a particularly bright smile. “I'm sure I hope you are well, such a beautiful day as this.”
“Oh, yes, I'm well, I suppose. Still, I have felt better in my life,” smiled Arkwright, with some constraint.
“Oh, I'm sorry,” murmured the girl, striving so hard to speak with impersonal unconcern that she did not notice the inaptness of her reply.
“Eh? Sorry I've felt better, are you?” retorted Arkwright, with nervous humor. Then, because he was embarrassed, he said the one thing he had meant not to say: “Don't you think I'm quite a stranger? It's been some time since I've been here.”
Alice, smarting under the sting of what she judged to be the only possible cause for his embarrassment, leaped to this new opportunity to show her lack of interest.
“Oh, has it?” she murmured carelessly. “Well, I don't know but it has, now that I come to think of it.”
Arkwright frowned gloomily. A week ago he would have tossed back a laughingly aggrieved remark as to her unflattering indifference to his presence. Now he was in no mood for such joking. It was too serious a matter with him.
“You've been busy, no doubt, with—other matters,” he presumed forlornly, thinking of Calderwell.
“Yes, I have been busy,” assented the girl. “One is always happier, I think, to be busy. Not that I meant that I needed the work to be happy,” she added hastily, in a panic lest he think she had a consuming sorrow to kill.
“No, of course not,” he murmured abstractedly, rising to his feet and crossing the room to the piano. Then, with an elaborate air of trying to appear very natural, he asked jovially: “Anything new to play to me?”
Alice arose at once.
“Yes. I have a little nocturne that I was playing to Mr. Calderwell last night.”
“Oh, to Calderwell!” Arkwright had stiffened perceptibly.
“Yes. He didn't like it. I'll play it to you and see what you say,” she smiled, seating herself at the piano.
“Well, if he had liked it, it's safe to say I shouldn't,” shrugged Arkwright.
“Nonsense!” laughed the girl, beginning to appear more like her natural self. “I should think you were Mr. Cyril Henshaw! Mr. Calderwell is partial to ragtime, I'll admit. But there are some good things he likes.”
“There are, indeed, some good things he likes,” returned Arkwright, with grim emphasis, his somber eyes fixed on what he believed to be the one especial object of Calderwell's affections at the moment.
Alice, unaware both of the melancholy gaze bent upon herself and of the cause thereof, laughed again merrily.
“Poor Mr. Calderwell,” she cried, as she let her fingers slide into soft, introductory chords. “He isn't to blame for not liking what he calls our lost spirits that wail. It's just the way he's made.”
Arkwright vouchsafed no reply. With an abrupt gesture he turned and began to pace the room moodily. At the piano Alice slipped from the chords into the nocturne. She played it straight through, then, with a charm and skill that brought Arkwright's feet to a pause before it was half finished.
“By George, that's great!” he breathed, when the last tone had quivered into silence.
“Yes, isn't it—beautiful?” she murmured.
The room was very quiet, and in semi-darkness. The last rays of a late June sunset had been filling the room with golden light, but it was gone now. Even at the piano by the window, Alice had barely been able to see clearly enough to read the notes of her nocturne.
To Arkwright the air still trembled with the exquisite melody that had but just left her fingers. A quick fire came to his eyes. He forgot everything but that it was Alice there in the half-light by the window—Alice, whom he loved. With a low cry he took a swift step toward her.
“Alice!”
Instantly the girl was on her feet. But it was not toward him that she turned. It was away—resolutely, and with a haste that was strangely like terror.
Alice, too, had forgotten, for just a moment. She had let herself drift into a dream world where there was nothing but the music she was playing and the man she loved. Then the music had stopped, and the man had spoken her name.
Alice remembered then. She remembered Billy, whom this man loved. She remembered the long days just passed when this man had stayed away, presumably to teach her—to save her. And now, at the sound of his voice speaking her name, she had almost bared her heart to him.
No wonder that Alice, with a haste that looked like terror, crossed the floor and flooded the room with light.
“Dear me!” she shivered, carefully avoiding Arkwright's eyes. “If Mr. Calderwell were here now he'd have some excuse to talk about our lost spirits that wail. That is a creepy piece of music when you play it in the dark!” And, for fear that he should suspect how her heart was aching, she gave a particularly brilliant and joyous smile.
Once again at the mention of Calderwell's name Arkwright stiffened perceptibly. The fire left his eyes. For a moment he did not speak; then, gravely, he said:
“Calderwell? Yes, perhaps he would; and—you ought to be a judge, I should think. You see him quite frequently, don't you?”
“Why, yes, of course. He often comes out here, you know.”
“Yes; I had heard that he did—since you came.”
His meaning was unmistakable. Alice looked up quickly. A prompt denial of his implication was on her lips when the thought came to her that perhaps just here lay a sure way to prove to this man before her that there was, indeed, no need for him to teach her, to save her, or yet to sympathize with her. She could not affirm, of course; but she need not deny—yet.
“Nonsense!” she laughed lightly, pleased that she could feel what she hoped would pass for a telltale color burning her cheeks. “Come, let us try some duets,” she proposed, leading the way to the piano. And Arkwright, interpreting the apparently embarrassed change of subject exactly as she had hoped that he would interpret it, followed her, sick at heart.
“'O wert thou in the cauld blast,'” sang Arkwright's lips a few moments later.
“I can't tell her now—when I know she cares for Calderwell,” gloomily ran his thoughts, the while. “It would do no possible good, and would only make her unhappy to grieve me.”
“'O wert thou in the cauld blast,'” chimed in Alice's alto, low and sweet.
“I reckon now he won't be staying away from here any more just to save me!” ran Alice's thoughts, palpitatingly triumphant.
CHAPTER XXI. BILLY TAKES HER TURN AT QUESTIONING
Arkwright did not call to see Alice Greggory for some days. He did not want to see Alice now. He told himself wearily that she could not help him fight this tiger skin that lay across his path, The very fact of her presence by his side would, indeed, incapacitate himself for fighting. So he deliberately stayed away from the Annex until the day before he sailed for Germany. Then he went out to say good-by.
Chagrined as he was at what he termed his imbecile stupidity in not knowing his own heart all these past months, and convinced, as he also was, that Alice and Calderwell cared for each other, he could see no way for him but to play the part of a man of kindliness and honor, leaving a clear field for his preferred rival, and bringing no shadow of regret to mar the happiness of the girl he loved.
As for being his old easy, frank self on this last call, however, that was impossible; so Alice found plenty of fuel for her still burning fires of suspicion—fires which had, indeed, blazed up anew at this second long period of absence on the part of Arkwright. Naturally, therefore, the call was anything but a joy and comfort to either one. Arkwright was nervous, gloomy, and abnormally gay by turns. Alice was nervous and abnormally gay all the time. Then they said good-by and Arkwright went away. He sailed the next day, and Alice settled down to the summer of study and hard work she had laid out for herself.
On the tenth of September Billy came home. She was brown, plump-cheeked, and smiling. She declared that she had had a perfectly beautiful time, and that there couldn't be anything in the world nicer than the trip she and Bertram had taken—just they two together. In answer to Aunt Hannah's solicitous inquiries, she asserted that she was all well and rested now. But there was a vaguely troubled questioning in her eyes that Aunt Hannah did not quite like. Aunt Hannah, however, said nothing even to Billy herself about this.
One of the first friends Billy saw after her return was Hugh Calderwell. As it happened Bertram was out when he came, so Billy had the first half-hour of the call to herself. She was not sorry for this, as it gave her a chance to question Calderwell a little concerning Alice Greggory—something she had long ago determined to do at the first opportunity.
“Now tell me everything—everything about everybody,” she began diplomatically, settling herself comfortably for a good visit.
“Thank you, I'm well, and have had a passably agreeable summer, barring the heat, sundry persistent mosquitoes, several grievous disappointments, and a felon on my thumb,” he began, with shameless imperturbability. “I have been to Revere once, to the circus once, to Nantasket three times, and to Keith's and the 'movies' ten times, perhaps—to be accurate. I have also—But perhaps there was some one else you desired to inquire for,” he broke off, turning upon his hostess a bland but unsmiling countenance.
“Oh, no, how could there be?” twinkled Billy. “Really, Hugh, I always knew you had a pretty good opinion of yourself, but I didn't credit you with thinking you were everybody. Go on. I'm so interested!”
Hugh chuckled softly; but there was a plaintive tone in his voice as he answered.
“Thanks, no. I've rather lost my interest now. Lack of appreciation always did discourage me. We'll talk of something else, please. You enjoyed your trip?”
“Very much. It just couldn't have been nicer!”
“You were lucky. The heat here has been something fierce!”
“What made you stay?”
“Reasons too numerous, and one too heart-breaking, to mention. Besides, you forget,” with dignity. “There is my profession. I have joined the workers of the world now, you know.”
“Oh, fudge, Hugh!” laughed Billy. “You know very well you're as likely as not to start for the ends of the earth to-morrow morning!”
Hugh drew himself up.
“I don't seem to succeed in making people understand that I'm serious,” he began aggrievedly. “I—” With an expressive flourish of his hands he relaxed suddenly, and fell back in his chair. A slow smile came to his lips. “Well, Billy, I'll give up. You've hit it,” he confessed. “I have thought seriously of starting to-morrow morning for half-way to the ends of the earth—Panama.”
“Hugh!”
“Well, I have. Even this call was to be a good-by—if I went.”
“Oh, Hugh! But I really thought—in spite of my teasing—that you had settled down, this time.”
“Yes, so did I,” sighed the man, a little soberly. “But I guess it's no use, Billy. Oh, I'm coming back, of course, and link arms again with their worthy Highnesses, John Doe and Richard Roe; but just now I've got a restless fit on me. I want to see the wheels go 'round. Of course, if I had my bread and butter and cigars to earn, 'twould be different. But I haven't, and I know I haven't; and I suspect that's where the trouble lies. If it wasn't for those natal silver spoons of mine that Bertram is always talking about, things might be different. But the spoons are there, and always have been; and I know they're all ready to dish out mountains to climb and lakes to paddle in, any time I've a mind to say the word. So—I just say the word. That's all.”
“And you've said it now?”
“Yes, I think so; for a while.”
“And—those reasons that have kept you here all summer,” ventured Billy, “they aren't in—er—commission any longer?”
“No.”
Billy hesitated, regarding her companion meditatively. Then, with the feeling that she had followed a blind alley to its termination, she retreated and made a fresh start.
“Well, you haven't yet told me everything about everybody, you know,” she hinted smilingly. “You might begin that—I mean the less important everybodies, of course, now that I've heard about you.”
“Meaning—”
“Oh, Aunt Hannah, and the Greggorys, and Cyril and Marie, and the twins, and Mr. Arkwright, and all the rest.”
“But you've had letters, surely.”
“Yes, I've had letters from some of them, and I've seen most of them since I came back. It's just that I wanted to know your viewpoint of what's happened through the summer.”
“Very well. Aunt Hannah is as dear as ever, wears just as many shawls, and still keeps her clock striking twelve when it's half-past eleven. Mrs. Greggory is just as sweet as ever—and a little more frail, I fear,—bless her heart! Mr. Arkwright is still abroad, as I presume you know. I hear he is doing great stunts over there, and will sing in Berlin and Paris this winter. I'm thinking of going across from Panama later. If I do I shall look him up. Mr. and Mrs. Cyril are as well as could be expected when you realize that they haven't yet settled on a pair of names for the twins.”
“I know it—and the poor little things three months old, too! I think it's a shame. You've heard the reason, I suppose. Cyril declares that naming babies is one of the most serious and delicate operations in the world, and that, for his part, he thinks people ought to select their own names when they've arrived at years of discretion. He wants to wait till the twins are eighteen, and then make each of them a birthday present of the name of their own choosing.”
“Well, if that isn't the limit!” laughed Calderwell. “I'd heard some such thing before, but I hadn't supposed it was really so.”
“Well, it is. He says he knows more tomboys and enormous fat women named 'Grace' and 'Lily,' and sweet little mouse-like ladies staggering along under a sonorous 'Jerusha Theodosia' or 'Zenobia Jane'; and that if he should name the boys 'Franz' and 'Felix' after Schubert and Mendelssohn as Marie wants to, they'd as likely as not turn out to be men who hated the sound of music and doted on stocks and dry goods.”
“Humph!” grunted Calderwell. “I saw Cyril last week, and he said he hadn't named the twins yet, but he didn't tell me why. I offered him two perfectly good names myself, but he didn't seem interested.”
“What were they?”
“Eldad and Bildad.”
“Hugh!” protested Billy.
“Well, why not?” bridled the man. “I'm sure those are new and unique, and really musical, too—'way ahead of your Franz and Felix.”
“But those aren't really names!”
“Indeed they are.”
“Where did you get them?”
“Off our family tree, though they're Bible names, Belle says. Perhaps you didn't know, but Sister Belle has been making the dirt fly quite lively of late around that family tree of ours, and she wrote me some of her discoveries. It seems two of the roots, or branches—say, are ancestors roots, or branches?—were called Eldad and Bildad. Now I thought those names were good enough to pass along, but, as I said before, Cyril wasn't interested.”
“I should say not,” laughed Billy. “But, honestly, Hugh, it's really serious. Marie wants them named something, but she doesn't say much to Cyril. Marie wouldn't really breathe, you know, if she thought Cyril disapproved of breathing. And in this case Cyril does not hesitate to declare that the boys shall name themselves.”
“What a situation!” laughed Calderwell.
“Isn't it? But, do you know, I can sympathize with it, in a way, for I've always mourned so over my name. 'Billy' was always such a trial to me! Poor Uncle William wasn't the only one that prepared guns and fishing rods to entertain the expected boy. I don't know, though, I'm afraid if I'd been allowed to select my name I should have been a 'Helen Clarabella' all my days, for that was the name I gave all my dolls, with 'first,' 'second,' 'third,' and so on, added to them for distinction. Evidently I thought that 'Helen Clarabella' was the most feminine appellation possible, and the most foreign to the despised 'Billy.' So you see I can sympathize with Cyril to a certain extent.”
“But they must call the little chaps something, now,” argued Hugh.
Billy gave a sudden merry laugh.
“They do,” she gurgled, “and that's the funniest part of it. Oh, Cyril doesn't. He always calls them impersonally 'they' or 'it.' He doesn't see much of them anyway, now, I understand. Marie was horrified when she realized how the nurses had been using his den as a nursery annex and she changed all that instanter, when she took charge of things again. The twins stay in the nursery now, I'm told. But about the names—the nurses, it seems, have got into the way of calling them 'Dot' and 'Dimple.' One has a dimple in his cheek, and the other is a little smaller of the two. Marie is no end distressed, particularly as she finds that she herself calls them that; and she says the idea of boys being 'Dot' and 'Dimple'!”
“I should say so,” laughed Calderwell. “Not I regard that as worse than my 'Eldad' and 'Bildad.'”
“I know it, and Alice says—By the way, you haven't mentioned Alice, but I suppose you see her occasionally.”
Billy paused in evident expectation of a reply. Billy was, in fact, quite pluming herself on the adroit casualness with which she had introduced the subject nearest her heart.
Calderwell raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, yes, I see her.”
“But you hadn't mentioned her.”
There was the briefest of pauses; then with a half-quizzical dejection, there came the remark:
“You seem to forget. I told you that I stayed here this summer for reasons too numerous, and one too heart-breaking, to mention. She was the one.”
“You mean—”
“Yes. The usual thing. She turned me down. Oh, I haven't asked her yet as many times as I did you, but—”
“Hugh!”
Hugh tossed her a grim smile and went on imperturbably.
“I'm older now, of course, and know more, perhaps. Besides, the finality of her remarks was not to be mistaken.”
Billy, in spite of her sympathy for Calderwell, was conscious of a throb of relief that at least one stumbling-block was removed from Arkwright's possible pathway to Alice's heart.
“Did she give any special reason?” hazarded Billy, a shade too anxiously.
“Oh, yes. She said she wasn't going to marry anybody—only her music.”
“Nonsense!” ejaculated Billy, falling back in her chair a little.
“Yes, I said that, too,” gloomed the man; “but it didn't do any good. You see, I had known another girl who'd said the same thing once.” (He did not look up, but a vivid red flamed suddenly into Billy's cheeks.) “And she—when the right one came—forgot all about the music, and married the man. So I naturally suspected that Alice would do the same thing. In fact, I said so to her. I was bold enough to even call the man by name—I hadn't been jealous of Arkwright for nothing, you see—but she denied it, and flew into such an indignant allegation that there wasn't a word of truth in it, that I had to sue for pardon before I got anything like peace.”
“Oh-h!” said Billy, in a disappointed voice, falling quite back in her chair this time.
“And so that's why I'm wanting especially just now to see the wheels go 'round,” smiled Calderwell, a little wistfully. “Oh, I shall get over it, I suppose. It isn't the first time, I'll own—but some day I take it there will be a last time. Enough of this, however! You haven't told me a thing about yourself. How about it? When I come back, are you going to give me a dinner cooked by your own fair hands? Going to still play Bridget?”
Billy laughed and shook her head.
“No; far from it. Eliza has come back, and her cousin from Vermont is coming as second girl to help her. But I could cook a dinner for you if I had to now, sir, and it wouldn't be potato-mush and cold lamb,” she bragged shamelessly, as there sounded Bertram's peculiar ring, and the click of his key in the lock.
It was the next afternoon that Billy called on Marie. From Marie's, Billy went to the Annex, which was very near Cyril's new house; and there, in Aunt Hannah's room, she had what she told Bertram afterwards was a perfectly lovely visit.
Aunt Hannah, too, enjoyed the visit very much, though yet there was one thing that disturbed her—the vaguely troubled look in Billy's eyes, which to-day was more apparent than ever. Not until just before Billy went home did something occur to give Aunt Hannah a possible clue as to what was the meaning of it. That something was a question from Billy.
“Aunt Hannah, why don't I feel like Marie did? why don't I feel like everybody does in books and stories? Marie went around with such a detached, heavenly, absorbed look in her eyes, before the twins came to her home. But I don't. I don't find anything like that in my face, when I look in the glass. And I don't feel detached and absorbed and heavenly. I'm happy, of course; but I can't help thinking of the dear, dear times Bertram and I have together, just we two, and I can't seem to imagine it at all with a third person around.”
“Billy! Third person, indeed!”
“There! I knew 'twould shock you,” mourned Billy. “It shocks me. I want to feel detached and heavenly and absorbed.”
“But Billy, dear, think of it—calling your own baby a third person!”
Billy sighed despairingly.
“Yes, I know. And I suppose I might as well own up to the rest of it too. I—I'm actually afraid of babies, Aunt Hannah! Well, I am,” she reiterated, in answer to Aunt Hannah's gasp of disapproval. “I'm not used to them at all. I never had any little brothers and sisters, and I don't know how to treat babies. I—I'm always afraid they'll break, or something. I'm just as afraid of the twins as I can be. How Marie can handle them, and toss them about as she does, I don't see.”
“Toss them about, indeed!”
“Well, it looks that way to me,” sighed Billy. “Anyhow, I know I can never get to handle them like that—and that's no way to feel! And I'm ashamed of myself because I can't be detached and heavenly and absorbed,” she added, rising to go. “Everybody always is, it seems, but just me.”
“Fiddlededee, my dear!” scoffed Aunt Hannah, patting Billy's downcast face. “Wait till a year from now, and we'll see about that third-person bugaboo you're worrying about. I'm not worrying now; so you'd better not!”
CHAPTER XXII. A DOT AND A DIMPLE
On the day Cyril Henshaw's twins were six months old, a momentous occurrence marked the date with a flaming red letter of remembrance; and it all began with a baby's smile.
Cyril, in quest of his wife at about ten o'clock that morning, and not finding her, pursued his search even to the nursery—a room he very seldom entered. Cyril did not like to go into the nursery. He felt ill at ease, and as if he were away from home—and Cyril was known to abhor being away from home since he was married. Now that Marie had taken over the reins of government again, he had been obliged to see very little of those strange women and babies. Not but that he liked the babies, of course. They were his sons, and he was proud of them. They should have every advantage that college, special training, and travel could give them. He quite anticipated what they would be to him—when they really knew anything. But, of course, now, when they could do nothing but cry and wave their absurd little fists, and wobble their heads in so fearsome a manner, as if they simply did not know the meaning of the word backbone—and, for that matter, of course they didn't—why, he could not be expected to be anything but relieved when he had his den to himself again, with a reasonable chance of finding his manuscript as he had left it, and not cut up into a ridiculous string of paper dolls holding hands, as he had once found it, after a visit from a woman with a small girl.
Since Marie had been at the helm, however, he had not been troubled in such a way. He had, indeed, known almost his old customary peace and freedom from interruption, with only an occasional flitting across his path of the strange women and babies—though he had realized, of course, that they were in the house, especially in the nursery. For that reason, therefore, he always avoided the nursery when possible. But to-day he wanted his wife, and his wife was not to be found anywhere else in the house. So, reluctantly, he turned his steps toward the nursery, and, with a frown, knocked and pushed open the door.
“Is Mrs. Henshaw here?” he demanded, not over gently.
Absolute silence greeted his question. The man saw then that there was no one in the room save a baby sitting on a mat in the middle of the floor, barricaded on all sides with pillows.
With a deeper frown the man turned to go, when a gleeful “Ah—goo!” halted his steps midway. He wheeled sharply.
“Er—eh?” he queried, uncertainly eyeing his small son on the floor.
“Ah—goo!” observed the infant (who had been very lonesome), with greater emphasis; and this time he sent into his father's eyes the most bewitching of smiles.
“Well, by George!” murmured the man, weakly, a dawning amazement driving the frown from his face.
“Spgggh—oo—wah!” gurgled the boy, holding out two tiny fists.
A slow smile came to the man's face.
“Well, I'll—be—darned,” he muttered half-shamefacedly, wholly delightedly. “If the rascal doesn't act as if he—knew me!”
“Ah—goo—spggghh!” grinned the infant, toothlessly, but entrancingly.
With almost a stealthy touch Cyril closed the door back of him, and advanced a little dubiously toward his son. His countenance carried a mixture of guilt, curiosity, and dogged determination so ludicrous that it was a pity none but baby eyes could see it. As if to meet more nearly on a level this baffling new acquaintance, Cyril got to his knees—somewhat stiffly, it must be confessed—and faced his son.
“Goo—eee—ooo—yah!” crowed the baby now, thrashing legs and arms about in a transport of joy at the acquisition of this new playmate.
“Well, well, young man, you—you don't say so!” stammered the growingly-proud father, thrusting a plainly timid and unaccustomed finger toward his offspring. “So you do know me, eh? Well, who am I?”
“Da—da!” gurgled the boy, triumphantly clutching the outstretched finger, and holding on with a tenacity that brought a gleeful chuckle to the lips of the man.
“Jove! but aren't you the strong little beggar, though! Needn't tell me you don't know a good thing when you see it! So I'm 'da-da,' am I?” he went on, unhesitatingly accepting as the pure gold of knowledge the shameless imitation vocabulary his son was foisting upon him. “Well, I expect I am, and—”
“Oh, Cyril!” The door had opened, and Marie was in the room. If she gave a start of surprise at her husband's unaccustomed attitude, she quickly controlled herself. “Julia said you wanted me. I must have been going down the back stairs when you came up the front, and—”
“Please, Mrs. Henshaw, is it Dot you have in here, or Dimple?” asked a new voice, as the second nurse entered by another door.
Before Mrs. Henshaw could answer, Cyril, who had got to his feet, turned sharply.
“Is it—who?” he demanded.
“Oh! Oh, Mr. Henshaw,” stammered the girl. “I beg your pardon. I didn't know you were here. It was only that I wanted to know which baby it was. We thought we had Dot with us, until—”
“Dot! Dimple!” exploded the man. “Do you mean to say you have given my sons the ridiculous names of 'Dot' and 'Dimple'?”
“Why, no—yes—well, that is—we had to call them something,” faltered the nurse, as with a despairing glance at her mistress, she plunged through the doorway.
Cyril turned to his wife.
“Marie, what is the meaning of this?” he demanded.
“Why, Cyril, dear, don't—don't get so wrought up,” she begged. “It's only as Mary said, we had to call them something, and—”
“Wrought up, indeed!” interrupted Cyril, savagely. “Who wouldn't be? 'Dot' and 'Dimple'! Great Scott! One would think those boys were a couple of kittens or puppies; that they didn't know anything—didn't have any brains! But they have—if the other is anything like this one, at least,” he declared, pointing to his son on the floor, who, at this opportune moment joined in the conversation to the extent of an appropriate “Ah—goo—da—da!”
“There, hear that, will you?” triumphed the father. “What did I tell you? That's the way he's been going on ever since I came into the room; The little rascal knows me—so soon!”
Marie clapped her fingers to her lips and turned her back suddenly, with a spasmodic little cough; but her husband, if he noticed the interruption, paid no heed.
“Dot and Dimple, indeed!” he went on wrathfully. “That settles it. We'll name those boys to-day, Marie, to-day! Not once again will I let the sun go down on a Dot and a Dimple under my roof.”
Marie turned with a quick little cry of happiness.
“Oh, Cyril, I'm so glad! I've so wanted to have them named, you know! And shall we call them Franz and Felix, as we'd talked?”
“Franz, Felix, John, James, Paul, Charles—anything, so it's sane and sensible! I'd even adopt Calderwell's absurd Bildad and—er—Tomdad, or whatever it was, rather than have those poor little chaps insulted a day longer with a 'Dot' and a 'Dimple.' Great Scott!” And, entirely forgetting what he had come to the nursery for, Cyril strode from the room.
“Ah—goo—spggggh!” commented baby from the middle of the floor.
It was on a very windy March day that Bertram Henshaw's son, Bertram, Jr., arrived at the Strata. Billy went so far into the Valley of the Shadow of Death for her baby that it was some days before she realized in all its importance the presence of the new member of her family. Even when the days had become weeks, and Bertram, Jr., was a month and a half old, the extreme lassitude and weariness of his young mother was a source of ever-growing anxiety to her family and friends. Billy was so unlike herself, they all said.
“If something could only rouse her,” suggested the Henshaw's old family physician one day. “A certain sort of mental shock—if not too severe—would do the deed, I think, and with no injury—only benefit. Her physical condition is in just the state that needs a stimulus to stir it into new life and vigor.”
As it happened, this was said on a certain Monday. Two days later Bertram's sister Kate, on her way with her husband to Mr. Hartwell's old home in Vermont, stopped over in Boston for a two days' visit. She made her headquarters at Cyril's home, but very naturally she went, without much delay, to pay her respects to Bertram, Jr.
“Mr. Hartwell's brother isn't well,” she explained to Billy, after the greetings were over. “You know he's the only one left there, since Mother and Father Hartwell came West. We shall go right on up to Vermont in a couple of days, but we just had to stay over long enough to see the baby; and we hadn't ever seen the twins, either, you know. By the way, how perfectly ridiculous Cyril is over those boys!”
“Is he?” smiled Billy, faintly.
“Yes. One would think there were never any babies born before, to hear him talk. He thinks they're the most wonderful things in the world—and they are cunning little fellows, I'll admit. But Cyril thinks they know so much,” went on Kate, laughingly. “He's always bragging of something one or the other of them has done. Think of it—Cyril! Marie says it all started from the time last January when he discovered the nurses had been calling them Dot and Dimple.”
“Yes, I know,” smiled Billy again, faintly, lifting a thin, white, very un-Billy-like hand to her head.
Kate frowned, and regarded her sister-in-law thoughtfully.
“Mercy! how you look, Billy!” she exclaimed, with cheerful tactlessness. “They said you did, but, I declare, you look worse than I thought.”
Billy's pale face reddened perceptibly.
“Nonsense! It's just that I'm so—so tired,” she insisted. “I shall be all right soon. How did you leave the children?”
“Well, and happy—'specially little Kate, because mother was going away. Kate is mistress, you know, when I'm gone, and she takes herself very seriously.”
“Mistress! A little thing like her! Why, she can't be more than ten or eleven,” murmured Billy.
“She isn't. She was ten last month. But you'd think she was forty, the airs she gives herself, sometimes. Oh, of course there's Nora, and the cook, and Miss Winton, the governess, there to really manage things, and Mother Hartwell is just around the corner; but little Kate thinks she's managing, so she's happy.”
Billy suppressed a smile. Billy was thinking that little Kate came naturally by at least one of her traits.
“Really, that child is impossible, sometimes,” resumed Mrs. Hartwell, with a sigh. “You know the absurd things she was always saying two or three years ago, when we came on to Cyril's wedding.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, I thought she would get over it. But she doesn't. She's worse, if anything; and sometimes her insight, or intuition, or whatever you may call it, is positively uncanny. I never know what she's going to remark next, when I take her anywhere; but it's safe to say, whatever it is, it'll be unexpected and usually embarrassing to somebody. And—is that the baby?” broke off Mrs. Hartwell, as a cooing laugh and a woman's voice came from the next room.
“Yes. The nurse has just brought him in, I think,” said Billy.
“Then I'll go right now and see him,” rejoined Kate, rising to her feet and hurrying into the next room.
Left alone, Billy lay back wearily in her reclining-chair. She wondered why Kate always tired her so. She wished she had had on her blue kimono, then perhaps Kate would not have thought she looked so badly. Blue was always more becoming to her than—
Billy turned her head suddenly. From the next room had come Kate's clear-cut, decisive voice.
“Oh, no, I don't think he looks a bit like his father. That little snubby nose was never the Henshaw nose.”
Billy drew in her breath sharply, and pulled herself half erect in her chair. From the next room came Kate's voice again, after a low murmur from the nurse.
“Oh, but he isn't, I tell you. He isn't one bit of a Henshaw baby! The Henshaw babies are always pretty ones. They have more hair, and they look—well, different.”
Billy gave a low cry, and struggled to her feet.
“Oh, no,” spoke up Kate, in answer to another indistinct something from the nurse. “I don't think he's near as pretty as the twins. Of course the twins are a good deal older, but they have such a bright look,—and they did have, from the very first. I saw it in their tiniest baby pictures. But this baby—”
“This baby is mine, please,” cut in a tremulous, but resolute voice; and Mrs. Hartwell turned to confront Bertram, Jr.'s mother, manifestly weak and trembling, but no less manifestly blazing-eyed and determined.
“Why, Billy!” expostulated Mrs. Hartwell, as Billy stumbled forward and snatched the child into her arms.
“Perhaps he doesn't look like the Henshaw babies. Perhaps he isn't as pretty as the twins. Perhaps he hasn't much hair, and does have a snub nose. He's my baby just the same, and I shall not stay calmly by and see him abused! Besides, I think he's prettier than the twins ever thought of being; and he's got all the hair I want him to have, and his nose is just exactly what a baby's nose ought to be!” And, with a superb gesture, Billy turned and bore the baby away.