Paul Ralston

He had grown broader and handsomer and looked a trifle older, with that brown beard on his chin, she thought, but otherwise he was the same Paul as of old, with his sunny smile, his friendly manner and his unmistakable joy at seeing her again. She made him sit down in the best rocking chair,—took his hat, and smoothed his hair caressingly, and forgot that she had not breakfasted and that her rolls were still blackening in the oven.

“How did you get here?” she asked. “Nobody knew you had landed or was on the way even.’

“I should suppose your bones would have warned you of our arrival. I hope they haven’t ceased to do duty,” Paul answered, and then explained that they had changed their plans and sailed from Havre a week earlier than they had intended. Some of their friends were coming on the Ville de Paris and among them Mrs. Percy and Clarice.

The name of Jack Percy was to Miss Hansford much like a red flag to a bull, while that of any member of his family was nearly as bad. Now, however, she only straightened her back a little with an ominous “Ugh,” which Paul did not notice, so absorbed was he in the great good news he had come to tell her. But first he must answer her numberless questions as to what he had seen and where he had been.

“Been everywhere and seen everything, from Queen Victoria to the Khedive of Egypt. Been on the top of Cheops, and inside of him, too,—and up the Nile to Assouan and Philae and Luxor, and seen old Rameses,—frightful looking old cove, too, with his tuft of hair and his one tooth showing,” he said, rattling on about places and people of whom Miss Hansford knew nothing.

Luxor and Assouan and Cheops were not familiar to her, but when he said, “I tell you what, the very prettiest place in all Europe is Monte Carlo,” she was on the alert in a moment. She looked upon Monte Carlo as a pool of iniquity, and she said to the young man, “Paul, you didn’t gamble there!”

Paul answered laughingly, “They don’t call it gambling; they call it play.”

“Well, play, then. You didn’t play? I know you didn’t, for when I heard you was there I wrestled in prayer three times a day that God would keep you unspotted, and he did, didn’t he?”

She had her hand on his shoulder and was looking into his face with such faith and trust in her kind old eyes that it was hard to tell her the truth. But the boy who had never told a lie when he stole the melon had not told one since, and would not do so now, even if he lost some of the good woman’s opinion.

“I’m afraid you didn’t wrestle enough,” he said, “for I did play.”

“Oh, Paul,” and Miss Hansford drew a long breath, which hurt the young man some, but he went on unfalteringly, “I didn’t mean to, but when I saw how easy it was to put down a piece of money and double it I tried and made quite a lot at first; then I began to lose and quit.”

“Thank God!” came with great fervor from Miss Hansford, while Paul continued, “It beats all what a fascination there is about it, and what luck some people have. There was Clarice, won straight along till she made two or three hundred dollars.”

“Clarice! oh, she was there, was she?” Miss Hansford asked, her tone indicating that she knew now perfectly well why Paul played and in a measure exonerated him.

Had Paul been less in love than he was, or less blinded with his great happiness, he would have interpreted her manner aright. But he was blind, and he was in love, and he replied, “Why, yes; didn’t you know that Mrs. Percy and Clarice were with us in Italy and Switzerland and in Paris, and on the same ship with us? That’s why we came a week earlier. We wanted to be with them.”

“I see, but I didn’t know as Miss Percy was able to go scurripin’ all over the world,” was Miss Hansford’s comment, to which Paul did not reply.

He was thinking how he should tell her what he had come to tell and what seemed very easy when he was by himself. If Miss Hansford had not been sitting up quite so straight and prim and looking at him so sharply through her spectacles, which he knew were her near-seers, and which nothing could escape, he would have been less nervous.

“You see,” he began at last, “we were together in Switzerland last summer,—met quite by accident at Chamonix,—and then at Geneva and Lucerne, and we walked up the Rigi together and got lost in a fog and stumbled around half the night. It was great fun and she was awfully plucky.”

Here Paul stopped to recall the fun it was to be lost in a fog with a pretty girl, who clung so closely to him for protection that he sometimes had to hold her hand in his when she was very nervous and timid, and sometimes had his arm around her waist to keep her from falling when the way was rough and steep. Miss Hansford was still looking at him, and when she thought he had waited long enough she brought him back from his blissful reminiscence by asking, “Who walked up the Rigi with you, and got lost in the fog, and stumbled round half the night, and was awfully plucky? Your mother?”

“Mother!” Paul repeated. “Mother walk up the Rigi! Great Scott! She was at the hotel, wild because we didn’t come. They had sent out two or three guides to look for us, and Mrs. Percy was in high hysterics when we finally reached the hotel. It was Clarice who was with me.”

“Oh!” and Miss Hansford’s mouth was puckered into the perfect shape of the letter O, and kept its position as Paul went on: “Clarice took a severe cold and was ill for a week at the Schweitzerhoff, in Lucerne. We left them there, but they were with us again in Monte Carlo and Florence and Rome—and—”

He hesitated, wishing Miss Hansford would say something to help him along. But she sat as rigid as a stone, while he floundered on until the climax was reached in Paris, where he asked Clarice to be his wife.

“I always thought she was a nice girl when I used to see her here,” he said, “but I didn’t know half how bright and pretty she was till—er—”

“Till you got lost with her in a fog on the Rigi,” Miss Hansford suggested grimly.

It was something to have her speak at all, and Paul answered briskly, “I guess that’s about the truth. I couldn’t forget her after that, you know, and so we are engaged. I wanted to tell you and came this way from New York last night on purpose to see you. I hope you are glad.”

Miss Hansford was not glad. She had never thought of Paul’s marrying for a long time,—certainly not that he would marry Clarice Percy, whom she disliked almost as much as she did her half brother, Jack. As Paul talked he had left the rocking chair and seated himself on the door step, with the netting thrown back, letting in a whole army of flies. But Miss Hansford did not notice them. She was trying to swallow the lumps in her throat and wondering what she could say. She could not tell him that she was sorry, and with a gasp and a mental prayer to be forgiven for the deception, she said, “Of course, I’m glad for anything which makes you happy. I never thought of you and Clarice. I s’posed she was after that snipper-snapper of an Englishman who was once here.”

She could not resist this little sting, which made Paul wince and fan himself with his hat.

“Oh! you mean Fenner, who has a title in his family. There’s nothing in that. Why, he hasn’t a dollar to his name.”

“And you have a good many dollars,” Miss Hansford rejoined; then added, as she saw a flush on Paul’s face and knew her shaft had hit, “You seem too young to get married.”

“Why, Aunt Phebe,” Paul exclaimed, “I am twenty-three, and Clarice is twenty-one. I look like a boy, I know, but this will age me some,” and he stroked the soft brown mustache, of which he was rather proud. “This was Clarice’s idea. I believe she thinks I look younger than she does, but I don’t. We are neither of us children. Some fellows are married when they are twenty. I shall be twenty-four, for we do not intend to be married until the middle of October. I mean to have you come to the wedding with mother. You have never been in Washington and you’ll like it. I shall have you stop at Willard’s. Mrs. Percy does not live far from there. You’ve heard of Willard’s?”

“I’d smile if I hadn’t,” Miss Hansford said, while Paul began to open a paper box which he had brought with him.

“You see,” he continued, as he untied the cords, “I wanted to bring you something from Europe. I found a creamy kind of shawl in Cairo,—the real thing, and no sham,—and after I was engaged I felt so happy that I wanted to give you something more to wear to my wedding, so I thought of a silk dress. Clarice picked it out for me at the Louvre in Paris. Here it is,” and he unrolled a pattern of grey silk, whose texture and quality Miss Hansford appreciated, although not much accustomed to fabrics like this. “Clarice said the color would be becoming to you and was just the thing. She knows what’s what,” he continued, gathering up the silk material in folds, just as the salesman had done at the Louvre.

He did not explain that when he spoke of inviting Miss Hansford to his wedding Clarice had at first objected and only been won over when she saw how much he wished it. It was not necessary to tell this, and he kept quoting Clarice, as if she had been prime mover in the matter. No woman is proof against a silk such as Paul was displaying, and Miss Hansford was not an exception.

“Oh, Paul,” she said, laying her hand upon the heavy folds which would almost stand alone, “what made you do this for an old woman like me, who never had but two silk gowns in her life, and both of ’em didn’t cost half as much as this, I know. It was kind in you and Clarice, too, I’m sure. Tell her I thank her, and I hope you will be happy.”

Her manner certainly had changed, mollified by the dress and the part Clarice had in it, and when Paul, emboldened by the change, ventured to say, “Clarice thinks you should have some little lace thingembob for your head such as mother wears,” she didn’t resent it, but replied, “I can find that in Boston. Neither you nor Clarice shall be ashamed of me if I go.”

“Of course, you’ll go,” Paul said, dropping the silk and throwing around her shoulders the shawl which had been his choice in Cairo. “Look in the glass and see if it isn’t a beauty.”

Miss Hansford admitted that it was a beauty, but on a very homely old stick, and Paul knew by her voice that the chords which had been a little out of tune were in harmony again. Suddenly it occurred to her that as she had not breakfasted, probably Paul had not either, and she urged him to stay, but he declined. He was to leave on the next boat, and there were some things he must attend to at the house. He should come to Oak City again in a few days, he said, and then bade her good-bye, while she folded up the shawl and dress, admiring the latter greatly, wondering if it were quite right for one who professed what she did to wear so expensive a silk, and if she were not backsliding a little. She did a good many things now which she would not have done when she first became a resident of the place. The world and the flesh were crowding her to the wall, and the devil, too, she sometimes feared, but she would keep her silk gown in spite of them all, and as she put it away in her bureau drawer she thought that as none of her immediate friends had anything like it they might disapprove.

“I don’t care much if they do. They haven’t chances to see things as I have,” she said, with a degree of complacency which would have amused one who knew that her superior chances “to see things” were comprised in the week she had spent in Boston years ago, and her frequent visits to the Ralston House, where, on Paul’s account, she was always a welcome guest.

And now the good days were drawing to a close, for Paul was going to be married. This in itself was bad enough, for with a wife he could never be the same to her, but worse than that, he was to marry Clarice Percy. This tarnished the lustre of the grey silk from Paris and marred the day she had thought so bright in the early morning.

“I’ve lost my boy,” she said, sadly, as she watched the boat which was taking Paul away, and on the upper deck of which he stood waving his umbrella towards her.

She didn’t wave back, but raised her hands in a kind of benediction and looked after him with an indefinable yearning until he was hidden from view. Her bones were in full swing this morning, and as she resumed her work she soliloquized, “I don’t know what ails me, but I feel that something bad will come of this marriage. How can it be otherwise? I know it is mean, and may be wicked, but I can’t abide the Percys.”