During the long voyage Julia dismissed her work and its obligations from her mind, and resigned herself to that form of happiness women are able to extract from the mere fact of being in love, even when indefinitely separated from the object. Her fear that she might have alienated Tay by her excursion into his brain had been banished by his letters, and she was free to enjoy herself miserably. She was delighted to find that he filled every waking moment, that neither literature nor the several pleasant people with whom she made acquaintance could send him to the rear, and she cultivated long hours of solitude and idleness during which she thought of nothing else. She projected her spirit into the future and California, and dreamed of happiness only: politics, reform, and the improvement of the race were not for dreams. The only real rival of love is Art, for that in itself is a deep personal passion, its function an act of creation, fed by some mysterious perversion of sex, and demanding all the imagination’s activities. This rival Tay was mercifully spared, and the god of duty, always arbitrarily elevated and largely the child of egoism, stands a poor chance when gasping in the furnace of love. Abstractly, Julia purposed to return to her duty when its call became imperious, but during this period of liberty she felt she would be more than fool to close her eyes to any of the beatic pictures composed by her imagination and the tumults of sex.
Of course there were hours when she felt profoundly depressed and miserable, when she stormed and protested, and hated the fluid desert that prevented her from changing her course and fleeing to Tay. But this, also, was novel and exciting and part of love’s curriculum; she revelled in every manifestation of her long-denied womanhood, and was further thrilled with the belief that no woman had ever suffered such an upheaval before. She wrote a daily letter to Tay, revealing herself without mercy, and found a keen delight in this new power of his to annihilate the profound reserve of her nature.
The only thing she didn’t tell him was of the return of her old longing for children. That inherent desire had slunk into horrified retreat at France’s betrothal kiss, and had visited her but fitfully in India, but now it reasserted itself almost as tyrannically as her longing for the man who was the mate of her sex as surely as of her soul and brain. She even felt a passionate delight that she soon could satisfy it vicariously in Fanny. She had never ceased to love this child she once had cuddled daily in her arms, and was far more excited at the prospect of being with her again, than of seeing her strange old mother. To be sure, her love for that once fond parent had risen in all its old strength during this carnival of the primal, but Mrs. Edis at her best was unresponsive, and after the long separation unlikely to thaw for some time to come. In Fanny she could find satisfaction for her maternal yearnings until they found their natural outlet. And she should take her back to London, with or without her mother’s consent. Fanny! What did she look like? She had been an adorable little dark baby; surely she must have inherited the beauty of the family. Some were dark and others almost blond, like herself, but both the Byams and the Edises had always been famous for their looks. Even Mrs. Winstone had grudgingly admitted that Fanny had exterior promise, and if she had turned out a beauty, Ishbel should give her the best of girl’s good times in London. And she herself should have something to cling to during these awful months—perhaps years—of separation.
After she changed steamers at Barbadoes and began the leisurely journey up the Caribbean Sea, she was much diverted by the beauty of the long chain of islands, and began to thrill with the prospect of seeing her birthplace once more. Her roots were in Nevis; it held the dust of generations of her ancestors; it was the one perfect, peaceful, and happy memory of her life, and never could she love even California as well. She knew that she should have flown to it in her trouble were it empty of both her mother and Fanny.
After the steamer left Antigua, she never took her eyes from the stately pyramid, shadowy at first, detaching itself with a sharper definition every moment. When she was close enough to see the green on its sweeping lines, its waving fields of cane, its fine ruins of old “Great Houses,” the white roads, deserted save for an occasional laborer or a colored woman swinging along with a basket on her head, a pic’nie clinging to her hip, the waving palms on the shore, the white cloud that hovered by day over the lost crater, and extinguished the island at night, she ran to her stateroom to quell an almost unbearable excitement. But Collins was packing, and Collins was already puzzled, perturbed, and speculating. No quicker antidote to tumultuous emotions could be devised. Julia’s tears retreated, and she began to rearrange her flying locks before the mirror; but it was impossible to keep the exultation out of her voice.
“We’re nearly there, Collins!”
“Yes, mum.”
“It is my old home! Just think of it, I haven’t seen it for sixteen years.”
“Yes, mum.”
“I’m sure you will enjoy staying here for a bit, Nevis is so beautiful. There’s nothing in all Europe like it.”
“I shan’t be sea-sick. I’m thankful for that.”
“How do I look? I haven’t seen my waist line since I left London.”
“I dressed you this morning, mum. You look quite all right. Shall I really sleep in a Christian bed to-night, and have a decent cup of tea?”
“You shall, you shall! And if my mother still kills stringy old cows, I’ll get good English beef for you from Bath House.”
“Thank God, mum. Everything on board ship tastes that horrid I could eat a cow cooked particular, no matter how stringy. Don’t lean on the rail too much. Linen crushes that easy.”
Julia, who wore a linen coat and skirt of crash brown linen, with a hat and parasol, and shoes and gloves, of a darker shade, nodded at herself in the glass and returned to the deck. For the moment Tay was forgotten.
The steamer was rounding the island and she stared at Bath House, the greatest hotel in the world in its time, a picturesque ruin in her memory, now rebuilt in part and showing many signs of life. Colored servants were hanging out of the upper windows cheering the ship, and gayly dressed people were sitting on the terrace. But Julia, although for a moment she resented the least of the changes in her island, soon forgot Bath House as she eagerly gazed through her field-glass at the groups down by the jetty. There was the usual crowd of whites and negroes, some with much business to attend to when the ship cast anchor, more with none whatever. In a moment she detached a group striving to detach itself from the pushing crowd—all Charles Town seemed to have turned out—and saw Mrs. Winstone, Mr. Pirie, several people of the same class, and one young girl. Could that be Fanny? Once more her hands shook. The girl was dancing up and down, waving her handkerchief. It must be. Julia laid aside her field-glass and waved in return. Then the delay seemed endless.
The water had become suddenly alive with boats. Little black boys were diving for pennies. It was a gay tropical picture; and, behind, the palms and the cocoanut-trees, fringing the suave flowing lines of the great volcano.
The ladder was swung, the first officer gave her his arm, and she descended to the boat, followed by the uneasy Collins, who looked at the heaving waters below that frail craft with dire forebodings. But Julia had no sympathy in her for Collins. Her thoughts were on Fanny, when they were not adjusting her mask of bright cool serenity. She had no intention of making an exhibition of herself in public.
All doubt of Fanny’s identity was set at rest, for a girl’s long supple figure was flying down the jetty, and she was waving frantically and calling out, “Aunt Julia! Aunt Julia!” Julia received a momentary shock, not quite sure that she liked being called aunt by this tall girl, who looked more than her eighteen years. But that was a trifle and she gazed with both fondness and admiration at the blooming beauty of the girl who now stood quite alone on the edge of the jetty. Fanny was very dark, showing the French strain in their blood (Mrs. Edis’s father had found his wife on Martinique); her large eyes and abundant hair were black, her skin olive and claret, her full large mouth as red as one of the hibiscus flowers of her native island; her figure, both slender and full, was as beautiful as her face, even in the white cotton frock which she probably had made itself. Julia thought she had never seen a more perfect type of voluptuous young womanhood, and reflected that she should not be long marrying her off in London, even without a dowry.
She smiled happily, and a moment later, elevated to the jetty by the boatman, was enveloped, smothered, overwhelmed by Fanny.
“Oh, Aunt Julia!” cried the girl between her kisses. “Just to think you are here at last! Something is actually happening on this old island. Oh, promise me that you will take me away with you.”
“Yes, yes, indeed,” gasped Julia, her spirits unaccountably dashed. “Of course I will, darling. How beautiful you are!”
“Oh, am I? Much good it has done me so far. I’ve just spoken to a young man for the first time in my life, and he has gray hair.”
“You poor child! Did—did—my mother come down?”
“Not she. The steamer wasn’t expected until seven, and she was asleep. When I saw it coming, I ran. She’d never have let me come. I’ve never been outside the estate alone before. Even Aunt Maria hasn’t taken me down to Bath House. There she is with an old gentleman that wears a wig.”
They had reached the end of the long jetty, and Julia kissed her aunt, shook hands with Mr. Pirie, who had eyes for no one but Fanny, and was introduced to a young gray-haired man named Morison.
“Morison,” she repeated mechanically to herself. “Where have I heard that name?”
But she had no time to think. Mrs. Winstone was talking rapidly. Julia wondered if the tropics had affected her aunt’s nerves. She was twirling her parasol, and her eyes had more intelligence in them than she usually admitted, save when conducting a dilettante Suffrage meeting.
“Really, Julia!” she exclaimed. “It’s too tiresome. But I didn’t expect the Royal Mail for hours yet; came down to see Hannah and Pirie at Bath House, and sent the horses to be shod. They’re not ready, and there’s nothin’ else—everybody drivin’. Do you think you could walk up the mountain in this heat?”
“Of course she can’t!” cried Fanny. “Of course she can’t!”
“I’m sure I could,” began Julia, but once more Fanny enveloped her.
“Oh, no, darling,” she cried entreatingly. “You’d faint in that heat—climbing. It was bad enough coming down. And, oh, I do want another glimpse of Bath House. You’ve no idea how excited I was all the time it was building. It was like an old romance come to life. But much good it has done me. And it has an orchestra!”
Julia laughed outright. Fanny might not possess the priceless gift of tact, but she was enchantingly young. Her exuberant youth, in fact, made everybody else feel superannuated, and her next remark, as she and Julia started for the hotel arm in arm, did not remove the impression.
“How oddly young you look, Aunt Julia,” observed the girl, whose large curious eyes were exploring every detail of Julia’s appearance. “Of course I knew you were much younger than Granny or Aunt Maria, or I shouldn’t have been so keen to have you come home, but you look almost a girl. I suppose it’s because you are quite a little thing and haven’t grown either scrawny or fat.”
“Really,” said her aunt, dryly, “I’m five feet three and a half, and thirty-four is a long way from old age.”
“Well, it’s not young,” said Fanny, who appeared to be of a hopelessly literal turn. “Thirty-four! Why you are only a year younger than mother would have been.”
This remark touched a chord which for the moment routed anxious vanity. Julia put her arm about Fanny’s waist, no slenderer than her own. “I wish you were mine!” she said fondly. “But sister is the next best thing. I can’t have you calling me aunt. That is much too remote—I have wanted you for so many years. You must imagine that you are my little sister, and call me Julia. Will you?”
“Yes, if you like. But promise me that you will bring me to Bath House every day. You will want to come yourself, if only to get away from Great House, and you have friends there—a nice old lady named Macmanus—and I saw two or three women with such frocks! Did you bring me any frocks from London?”
“Ah—I didn’t! But, you see, I not only left in such a hurry, but I had no idea whether you were tall or short. Of course I brought you some presents.”
“Oh, did you? What are they?”
“Some pretty silver things for your dressing-table, and a manicure set, and some scarves, and all sorts of fol-de-rols that pretty girls like.”
“Well, that’s too sweet of you,” and Fanny, kissed her again. “But I’d rather have had frocks. What shall I do if you take me to the party at Bath House on Thursday night?—and you must! You must! There’s no dressmaker on Nevis that could make a party-gown.”
“You shall have any of my evening gowns you want. You are taller, but Collins is quite a genius.”
Fanny almost danced. “That will be heavenly. Oh—oh—talk about frocks!”
“What a pretty woman!”
They were both looking at a very smart young woman advancing down the palm avenue. She had a dark vivid little face, and wore a frock of sublimated pink linen, and a soft drooping black hat. She smiled and waved her parasol as she caught Julia’s eye.
“Of course you’ve forgotten me, Mrs. France,” she cried gayly.
“This is Mrs. Morison, of New York, Julia,” said Mrs. Winstone, who had accelerated her steps. Her voice had lost its drawl.
“Mrs. Morison?” asked Julia, with a premonitory tremor.
“Yes—Emily Tay—but of course you’ve quite forgotten me. I never forgot you, though—and that terrible old castle you showed me for a solid hour.”
Julia had taken her hand mechanically, wondering if Nevis were shaking herself loose from the sea.
“Of course I do remember you. I liked your independence. But how odd you should be here.”
“Not a bit of it. I’m always after novelty—restless American, you know, and this is the very latest. Besides, my husband had an attack of Wall Street prostration, and this wasn’t too far. But it’s simply enchanting to see you again—I’ve been so proud these last two or three years to be able to say I knew you.”
Fanny cast a glance over her shoulder, then fell back between Mr. Pirie and Mr. Morison.
“I saw Dan in New York,” Dan’s sister rattled on. “It was too funny. He was in a beastly glum temper, until I mentioned your name. Then he cleared up so suddenly that I had my suspicions. Do you remember how dead in love with you he was at the tender age of fifteen, and what a time Cherry had inducing him to go home without you? I’ve just the ghost of an idea he hasn’t got over it. Poor Dan! Of course you’d never look at him.”
“And why not?” asked Julia, in arms.
“Well, you are some person over there, and California is the jumping-off place.”
“I thought it was the most beautiful country in the world.”
“Oh, it’s that, all right. But after London—or New York! I do want Dan to transfer his energies to New York. It’s the only place in America to live.”
“Perhaps he thinks he can do more good in his own state.”
“New York being in no need of a clean-up! However, no doubt you’re right. Dan’s a tremendous gun out there, if he does make himself unpopular. I try to console myself with the thought that he’s making a national reputation, but meanwhile my income doesn’t go up. However, of course you’re not interested in our politics. Dan’ll be delighted to hear that we’ve met again. Here we are. You must be dying for your tea.”
They crossed the terraces and entered the cool spacious hall of the hotel. Mrs. Macmanus, who was sitting alone, came forward and kissed Julia warmly.
“So delighted you’ve come down here to liven us up a bit, my dear. Maria has almost deserted us. It was only to-day I heard you were coming. Bath House is in quite a flutter.”
“My nerves haven’t been worth mentioning since we got Julia’s cable,” said Mrs. Winstone, who was close on Julia’s heels. “I came to Nevis to rest them, and Fanny alone would set them on edge. I don’t believe she’s slept since she heard Julia was comin’.”
Julia, whose agitation had subsided, hastily swallowed a cup of strong tea, left the group abruptly, and put her arm about Fanny. Here, at least, was peace and diversion.
“Come and talk to me, darling,” she said. “I’ve a thousand things to say to you.”
Fanny, who was alone with Mr. Pirie at the moment, went willingly, and they sat down on one of the sofas at the end of the long hall.
“Now let me really look at you. Yes, you look like Fawcett. Do you remember your father?”
“How could I? I was only three when he died.”
“And now you are eighteen! I cannot take it in. I believe I have always thought of you as a baby.”
“Oh, do you think Granny’ll let me go back with you? She hates the world and despises men—as if they were all alike! But at least—Oh, please swear, dear Aunt—Julia—that you will help me to play a bit while you’re here. You can’t fancy how dull I am. I want to come to Bath House every day, and dance every night. You can tell Granny that Mrs. Morison is an old friend of yours, and has come to Nevis to see you. Of course Granny’ll let me go anywhere with you.”
“Poor mother!”
“Oh, she’s had her own way all her life; just what I’d like to have. Please pity me, Julia. Why, I might marry if I ever had a chance to see a man nearer than through a field-glass. The war-ships that I’ve seen come and go in this roadstead! And the St. Kitts girls dancing on them! But I! I might as well be one of those Dutch women in the crater of St. Batts, making drawn-work from one year’s end to the other.”
“Poor child! You may be sure I’ll do all I can. But—ah—” Julia felt quite the aunt for a moment. “Don’t be in such a hurry to marry.”
“But I am in a hurry to marry. That’s the only road out of Nevis. And what girl isn’t in a hurry to marry? If Granny wouldn’t give her consent, well—I’d just love to elope.”
Julia laughed. “If you are as romantic as that, I must manage that you see a good bit of the world before you enter the somewhat prosaic state of matrimony —”
“I am romantic—rather! I think of nothing else but love—love—love. I’ve made up a lover out of all the novels I’ve read—and I’ll have one, no fear! But I must have a chance to see him first. So please give it to me.”
“Where have you found novels to read? Mother long since wrote me to send you none.”
“Oh, I know. And Aunt Maria keeps hers locked up. But I run the estate, you know, and I have to go over to St. Kitts every now and again, body-guarded by two old servants, of course, and I’ve made friends with some girls over there, and they’ve lent me a few. And I always manage to pass an hour in the public library, and look at the picture papers. Granny takes in nothing but the Weekly Times. Sometimes, when we are driving, she lets me get out and read the cablegrams tacked up on the court-house door! Oh, what a place to live in!”
“And yet I could wish that I had never left Nevis. I almost wish I need never leave it again.”
“Oh, you’ll get over that in about a week. Aunt Maria yawns all the time. If it weren’t for her complexion and her waist line, she’d be packing now. What does she want? She’s always spying on me.”
Mrs. Winstone descended upon them precipitately. There was a pleasurable excitement in her mien, and once more Julia wondered if she, like many others, had found the tropics bad for the nerves.
“Fanny. Mr. Pirie wants to talk to you, calls you a blushing peach, volcanic product: you’ve quite rejuvenated him. I want to ask Julia about our great cause in London.”
“I’ll not talk to any old men. Mr. Morison’s quite nice. What a bore he’s married. I could have cried when I heard it, although I never could fall in love with a man with gray hair.” And she deliberately walked over to the young man lounging in a chair and staring at her.
“A bit forward, our Fanny,” said Julia, with a sigh. “But she has all her father’s love of life.”
“And all her grandmother’s of havin’ her own way. Not that it’s worth analyzin’. Analyzin’s so fatiguin’. She’s young, pretty, healthy, starves for life, and exists on a volcano! I’d feel sorry for her if I wasn’t sure she could take care of herself. What’s your impression of her?”
“She’s a beauty. A rather obvious type, perhaps, but still—How’s my mother?”
“Quite all right. She’ll bury us all, and then merely desiccate—or fly off on a broomstick.”
“Was—is—do you think she wants to see me?”
“Don’t ask me. She won’t talk about you. But—but—” Mrs. Winstone shot a cunning glance out of her now absent and ingenuous orbs. “Do tell me, Julia,—I’m expirin’ with curiosity—what brought you here? You hadn’t the least notion of comin’ when I saw you last. Has Mr. Tay —”
“I don’t care to talk about Mr. Tay.”
“Of course it’s none of my business, but please! I’ve been quite excited ever since I came down to-day—it’s astonishin’ what will interest one on a desert island!—But Pirie and Hannah have known all about it ever since Mrs. Morison came. It seems she—ah!—well, came down here on purpose to see you, persuaded her husband he was ill —”
“What an idea!”
“Quite so!”
“But after all, not so unnatural. I may as well tell you, Aunt Maria—there is no occasion for mystery—I am—that is, in a way—engaged to Mr. Tay. But it’s all in the air, at present. It is impossible to marry him without an American divorce, and it is not necessary to explain to you how out of the question that will be for some time to come. But—I was feeling rather done, and the truce with the Government gave me the opportunity I have so longed for—to come to Nevis once more, to see my mother.”
“Oh, that is it! Nevis is good for the nerves; or would be without Fanny, and one or two other distractions. Now, I’ve quite an excitin’ duty to perform, and time’s up. Mr. Tay is here!”
“What?” Julia once more had the sensation that Nevis had left her moorings. She caught the back of the sofa for support. “What are you talking about? Mr. Tay is in California.”
“Not he. He’s been here, stalkin’ round this island, or cruisin’ round in a motor boat he’s hired, for the last five days. I saw him through the field-glass, but didn’t know what brought him until to-day.”
“But what—what—has he come for? Oh, how could he!”
“He’ll tell you that, never fear! The others, includin’ Mrs. Morison, were all for a surprise, but I thought it my duty to tell you. That is the reason I wanted you to go straight home—surprises are so fatiguin’—but there may be time yet. He’s off somewhere in his boat, and the steamer was ahead of time —”
Julia sprang to her feet. “I’ll go this minute. I can walk. You stay with Fanny—poor little thing —”
And then she sat down. Tay was running up the steps of the terrace.
Mrs. Winstone rose and retreated gracefully. Julia’s heart had leaped, but she was very angry. She had made her own plans too long. This was to have been an interval of rest. As Tay walked rapidly down the long hall she was not too agitated to observe that although his keen eyes were alight and eager, and his mouth smiling, there was less confidence in his bearing than usual; she also observed that white linen became him remarkably.
“I think this quite abominable of you,” she said coldly, as he dropped into the chair before her. She withheld her hand.
“So does my father. But please don’t be angry with me. I really couldn’t help it when I heard —”
“How did you hear? Dark, of course. What treachery!”
“Treachery to me if he hadn’t!”
“How you men stand by one another,” said Julia, bitterly. “Especially when it is to defeat a woman.”
“Well,” said Tay, laughing, more at his ease in the presence of futile feminine wrath, “it may be our most contemptible trait, but we shall be driven to practise it more and more, I fancy.”
“I refuse to joke, and I am going home at once.”
She rose.
“Sit down,” said Tay, peremptorily. “If you don’t, I shall kiss you in the presence of Bath House. They can’t hear what we say, but you may be sure they are all watching us.”
Julia hesitated, then sat down. “What—what made you do this? I never should have believed it of you. I came here for rest—for—for strength.”
“Strength? Great Scott! You need less, not more.”
“Oh—I— You’ll never know what I’ve gone through! I shan’t give you the letters I wrote you —”
“Now, Julia, be rational. I simply couldn’t resist coming, that’s all. I cut out business, politics, everything, the moment there was a prospect of seeing you again—and on an enchanted island! The rest can wait, but I, well, I couldn’t! This past month has seemed like a wasted lifetime. I thought I was resigned. I resisted engaging a passage back to England by wireless. I might have got through those six months in California by doing the work of six men; but I could see no reason why I shouldn’t spend at least the interval between steamers with you here. There will be no harm done—much good, for it will make the separation shorter.”
“Dan,” said Julia, sitting upright, “there is something behind all this. What have you really come here for? After all it’s not like you. In the first place you have imperative duties in California, and then—you know, you know, that I need all my strength.”
He hesitated. Should he tell her? But there are certain facts that sound ugly when put into bald English, whatever the excuse; and he doubted if he ever could tell her that he had come to Nevis to wait for a cablegram announcing the death of her husband. Not now, at all events!
“My dear child!” he said earnestly, and before his hesitation became noticeable. “Is not love excuse enough for anything? Haven’t men sacrificed duty, done everything that was rash and foolish, for love, since the beginning of time? The prospect of two or three weeks with you on a tropic island was too much for my limited powers of endurance. I suddenly wanted you more than anything on earth. This is a wonderful place—I never knew I had so much romance in me—let us forget the coming separation and be young and happy.”
Julia leaned back and looked down. “I should have told you more about my mother,” she said, infusing her tones with ice to keep them from vibrating with delight at the vision he had evoked. “Made you realize just what she is. You will never be able to cross her threshold. She would think that you came to see Fanny. Or if she guessed that you loved me, a married woman,—why! she’s quite capable of locking me up on bread and water.”
“Gorgeous! We’ll have a real old-fashioned romance. You will climb out of the window —”
“She’d nail the jalousies.”
“There are no jalousies I can’t unnail—”
“Oh, you’d never get past the gates. She’d post blacks with guns at every corner of the stone wall about the grounds. You don’t know her. She doesn’t belong to this century. She’s never brooked opposition to her will since she was born.”
“Those crude forthright persons are just the ones that can always be outwitted. She needn’t know I’m here. I’ll not go to the house. You can meet me in a hundred enchanting nooks—down among the palms on the beach, in the ruins of one of those old estates, in a jungle I’ve discovered, with a creek, and all sorts of tropical trees that give more shade than these feather dusters they call royal palms —”
“I won’t leave my mother’s house!”
“Do you mean that?”
“Yes.”
“Julia, you have the longest and the blackest eyelashes I ever saw, and you have never given me such an opportunity to admire them. But on the whole I prefer your eyes. Look at me.”
Julia raised her eyes, and Tay held his breath. They were full of tears. “Oh, please go, Dan,” she whispered. “I suffered death after you left before. I can’t, can’t go through all that again. I couldn’t stay here after you left. I never wanted to see you again until I could marry you. I know now why you have come to Nevis. You think that here, where I spent my youth, where it is difficult to remember England and Suffrage, I will weaken—that I will go with you to that horrid place and get a divorce. It was very clever of you, and I might! Oh, I might! You have been too strong for me from first to last. But I don’t want to! I want to finish my duty, as I planned. Please, please go. There is a German steamer in the roadstead. Take it and wait on one of the Danish islands for the American steamer —”
“Julia, there is only one thing on earth I won’t do for you, and that is to leave you now. And believe me, I had no such subtle far-seeing policy in coming here. My purpose was far simpler. I’d marry you up in Fig Tree Church to-morrow if you were free, but if—as I can’t, I’ll be content with this brief romance. Now promise that you will meet me to-morrow over in that jungle —”
“I won’t! I won’t!”
“Then, by God, I’ll manage things myself—if I have to murder niggers and break in —”
“Julia! Julia!” cried Fanny’s excited voice. “The horses are shod. Aunt Maria wants to go.”
She was running down the hall. As Tay rose she stopped short and stared, her heavy lids lifting.
Julia rose hurriedly. “Fanny, this is Mr. Tay, an American friend of mine. My niece, Fanny Edis.”
“An American?” cried Fanny. “Another! Well, Nevis is waking up. Are you thinking of buying an estate and planting?” she asked eagerly. “You don’t look as if you had rheumatism.”
Tay played a bold hand, knowing that young girls like romance even at second hand. “I came to Nevis to see Mrs. France,” he said deliberately. “We are engaged to be married, and she tells me it will be difficult to see her in her mother’s house. Suppose you lend me a helping hand.” And he held out his with a charming smile.
Fanny scowled, and for the moment looked more formidable than handsome; then, with the adaptability of youth, was suddenly afire at the prospect of a vicarious romance.
“How perfectly glorious!” she cried. “Oh, I’ll help you, Mr. Tay. Granny’ll never let you in. But I’ll hide you in the shrubberies. I’ll throw you a rope over the wall, made of ancestral sheets —”
“Fanny!” said Julia, severely. “We’re not characters in an old-fashioned novel.”
“Don’t I wish we were! That’s all I could be. Oh, Mr. Tay, don’t give up.”
“Fanny! Do you forget that my husband is alive?”
“Oh, what’s a lunatic? Mr. Tay just said you were engaged, and anybody can get a divorce. They’ve been talking about it on the terrace.”
“Ah!” Julia made an attempt at lightness. “You are not so inhospitable to these times, after all.”
“I’d swallow them whole. But lots of kings and queens were divorced ages ago. When you’re in love I don’t fancy the century makes any difference.”
“Good! It all comes back to that, Miss Edis!”
“When there’s nothing else to be considered. Come, Fanny.” She held out her hand to Tay. “Good-by. I hope you will take that German steamer —”
“Aunt Julia! Where is your West Indian hospitality?”
“It must wait. Will you go?”
“I shall not. Permit me to see you to your carriage.”
“I’d—I’d rather you stayed here. Anyhow, it’s good-by.”
“Good afternoon,” said Tay, shaking her hand heartily.
“Good-by.”
“Good afternoon.”
Julia turned her back and walked up the hall, her head very high, and hoping she could control the longing to run back.
“You won’t give up, Mr. Tay?” asked Fanny, eagerly.
“Never, Miss Edis.”
“Oh, something is happening on this old island! And what fun it’ll be to get ahead of Granny. I’ll help you. Good-by.” She ran after her aunt, but cast a rapid backward glance over her shoulder. English dukes and European princes had been the heroes of her romantic imaginings, Americans standing, in her limited knowledge of the outside world, for all that was plebeian and strictly commercial. But she liked the looks of this one. By some freak of fate he was a gentleman. And she was to be a character in a live romance!
The terraces, mercifully, possibly tactfully, were deserted. Julia greeted warmly the old man who had served for so many years as butler and coachman, then announced curtly that she had a headache, and kept her eyes closed as the lean old horses crawled through Charles Town and up the mountain. She was still very angry with Tay, but, on the whole, more so with herself. Why hadn’t she rushed into his arms and been happy for a few moments? And what did she really intend to do? She had not the least idea. He had an amazing faculty for getting his own way. He would manage to see her, and what would be the outcome? Was there anything he would stop at? It were more than human not to feel a thrill of excitement.
Her anger passed, and she wondered if she should not steal out and meet him that very night. Why not? Why not? Hadn’t she her right to live? She forgave Tay promptly for this last and most reckless proof of his love for her. Lightly as he had dismissed the fact, she knew that he had made heavy sacrifices in turning his back on California at this critical moment. His party might declare him a traitor and cast him out. He deserved his reward. All the romance in her nature leaped into sudden and vivid life. To her Nevis was the most beautiful spot on earth. To live a few intense weeks—what a memory —
But she opened her eyes as if under the impact of a cold shower. The carriage had entered the grounds about the house. Here, in these beautiful wild spaces of tropic tree and shrub and flaming color, France had once followed her about, striving to kiss her. Here he had kissed her the day he had been forced to leave her for the ship, immediately after the marriage ceremony. His menacing shadow seemed to detach itself as on that awful night in the plantation of White Lodge. Her life with him rose and overwhelmed her. She sat up with a gasp. No romance on Nevis for her!
“Are you thinkin’ of the meetin’ with your mother?” asked Mrs. Winstone. “Fanny and I’ll leave the field clear. She’s probably in the living-room.”
Julia descended slowly, and glanced through the window before entering. Mrs. Edis was sewing by the lamp on the table; the tropic night had descended with a rush. She was a little more bowed than formerly, perhaps a trifle pallid. But her hair was still almost black. Time might have forgotten and passed her by.
As Julia opened the door, she lifted her deep piercing eyes, seized her stick, and rose to her feet. Her hand trembled, but not her voice.
“I am glad to see you, Julia,” she said, in her grand manner. “But the steamer must have been ahead of time.”
She presented her gnarled cheek to be kissed, but Julia, who had suffered many emotions that day, burst into tears and flung herself into her mother’s arms.
“Oh, do say you are glad to see me. I am so miserable, so worried. Oh, please do!”
Mrs. Edis patted her head, but her voice remained dry.
“You have been long coming, but you must know how glad I am to see you once more before I die. Your trouble must be grave indeed! You have been in trouble before.”
Mrs. Edis’s tones would have dried any fountain. They also expressed suspicion. Julia took out her pocket-handkerchief.
“Forgive me. It isn’t worth speaking of. I am only tired. Of course we are all, we women, in a sea of difficulties —”
“Not a word of that, if you please.” Mrs. Edis sat down; the glistening heavy brows that Captain Dundas had once compared to lizards, met over her flashing eyes. “You must make up your mind not to mention that disgusting subject while you are in my house. If that is your trouble, you will have every opportunity to forget it!”
“I came to forget everything but you and Nevis and Fanny. Now give me another kiss, and I’ll go and make myself presentable. I don’t want you to find me too much changed.”
“Maria told me that you had changed very little, and I thought you looked quite pretty before you reddened your eyes. Run along and I will order dinner.”
At the table Mrs. Edis betrayed a little of the joy she felt at the return of her prodigal, by talking far more than her wont. She told Julia the gossip of the islands, mostly mortuary, as all the old women of her own generation had died; but although she anathematized Bath House and the idle rheumatics it would bring to Nevis, she permitted herself to express hope regarding the future of the islands. She went to her room immediately after the meal finished, but it was long before Julia could enjoy the seclusion of her own. Fanny, who barely opened her mouth before her grandmother, burst into speech the moment that august presence was withdrawn, and Julia for quite three hours was obliged to answer her questions regarding the great world of London, when not sympathizing with the dynamic maiden’s hatred of life on Nevis.
“Good heaven!” she thought. “That I ever could have imagined a girl of eighteen interesting!”
She locked herself in her own room at last, but not to sleep. Her homecoming had proved a bitter disappointment. Fanny she might have forgiven, for all girls were more or less alike, wrapped up in themselves, happy in the delusion of their supreme importance. But her mother! She had always remembered her as the most wonderful of her sex, a tower of strength, no matter how hard, a superwoman isolated on a rock in the Caribbean Sea. What was she, after all, but an obstinate old woman? Was she to find strength in no one but herself? Well, why not? Hadn’t it been her cherished ideal to stand alone?
But what, in heaven’s name, was she to do with Tay?
The rooms opened upon a corridor, but her window was only a few feet above the large garden in front of the house. She unlatched the jalousie and sprang to the ground. Here she could decide his fate without sentiment, for here was the shadow of France. But the shadow had departed and ignored her summons. The renaissance of old impressions is fleeting. It rarely comes twice, and never at command. And Nevis and all things on it were changed! Only one of the old servants, Denny, was alive. She had visited the outbuildings before dinner, eager for familiar faces. The girls of her youth were fat old women. There were many of them, and the pic’nies swarmed as of yore. The court, no doubt, was still full of color by day, but everything was orderly and clean; there were few of the old evidences of congenital laziness. Fanny, for all her romantic notions, was an admirable overseer—and a tyrant. Since this duty had been thrust upon her by her inexorable grandparent, she would use it as an outlet for her energies; and Julia suspected that she found a decided gratification in ruling her subjects with an iron hand.
The white cloud on Nevis had slipped down the mountain, enveloping it in a fine white mist. The garden was full of enchanting shapes, of heavy intoxicating odors. Where was Tay? Why had he not come to shake her jalousie? She longed to find him hiding under one of the heavy trees. But he was probably asleep at Bath House; and his temporary quiescence inspired her reason with gratitude. For the first time she feared him. He had come to Nevis for no such indefinite object as an episodical romance. He meant to take her with him when he left, possibly to forge the strongest of all bonds in the earlier phases of love. This thought made her angry once more, roused the subtle antagonism of sex. If it came to an actual contest of strength, here was her chance to prove to him what the years and much else had made of her.
She went to bed, and her thoughts turned contritely to Fanny. Was she really disappointed in this girl who seemed to be the embodiment of soulless, unimaginative, brutal youth? Or might not she still find her so interesting as a study, and companion, that the old fond image would be undeplored? The last, no doubt. She had been just as soulless, and her true imagination as unawakened. She went to sleep determined to love Fanny whatever befell.
She slept until late in the day, Mrs. Edis having given orders that she should not be disturbed. Otherwise the routine of Great House was not altered. Fanny took her daily ride over the estate. Mrs. Edis sat in her chair in the living-room, making a feint of sewing, in reality listening for Julia’s footfalls. So she had sat listening for sixteen years.
But it was a lagging, almost elderly step that she finally heard approaching along the terrace at the back of the house. A moment later Mrs. Winstone entered, flushed, damp, but with her eyes full of malicious amusement.
“Really, Jane,” she drawled, “the tropics were never made for walkin’. I believe I’ll keep my new waist line —”
“Not a bad idea to keep what little Nature is still willing to give you.” Mrs. Edis’s voice was as sarcastic as her eyes. “I hope there was no bad news in your note?”
“Note?” Mrs. Winstone turned her back and began to rearrange the flowers on the bookcase.
“Do you fancy the least event could happen in this house without my knowledge?”
“Really, it was so unimportant I had forgotten it. Merely an invitation to Bath House. That reminds me—” She adopted her airiest tones. “Have I spoken to you of Mrs. Morison? Charmin’ little woman stoppin’ at Bath House. I met her drivin’ just now, and impulsively asked her to come to tea to-day, and bring the others. How naughty of me. I should have consulted you first.”
“Your friends are welcome to tea. I am not a pauper.”
“But such a hermit! It is too kind of you to take me in. I don’t fancy botherin’ you with my friends.”
“How is it you were not carried away by impulse before?”
“I came to Nevis to see you and to rest. I see enough of Hannah and Pirie in London. But now that Mrs. Morison has come to Bath House, and her brother, Daniel Tay —”
Mrs. Edis lifted her head as if she scented powder. “A man? Is he married?”
Mrs. Winstone smiled significantly. “Oh, dear me, no!”
“How old is he?”
“About thirty.”
“I’ll have no young man in this house.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t look at Fanny. Hates girls. He’s a very dear, a very particular friend of mine.”
Mrs. Edis laid her work on the table, dropped her spectacles to the end of her nose, and surveyed the smart figure with the developing waist line. “And what are you doing with very dear and particular friends of that sex at your time of life?”
“Dear Jane!” said Mrs. Winstone, with asperity, and transferring her attention to the early Victorian tidies. “Please remember that if you live out of the world I live in it. Oh, la! la! Come over to London and see the procession of hansoms in Bond Street containin’ smart gray-haired women and nice boys. The gray hairs are generally payin’ for the hansoms, and more. I never had a gray hair, and my rich American friend always pays for the hansoms, and more. Why shouldn’t I have a youngish beau if I can get one? But really, I didn’t think he’d follow me here!”
“Disgusting!” announced Mrs. Edis, who looked as if she had just entered a room in the Paris salon devoted to the nude. “In my time —”
“Ah, dear Jane, that time is forever gone. You couldn’t get a bonnet in all Bond Street to suit your years. Hannah Macmanus, who poses as an old woman, has to have hers made at a little shop in Bloomsbury.”
“I can well believe it! I could see what London was coming to sixty years ago. Enamelled old women —”
“Oh, la! la! Prehistoric! Filthy habit! To-day we keep our skins clean.”
“Do sit down. You are flouncing about like a sylph of twenty. I hope you have not permitted yourself to become seriously interested in this young man.”
Mrs. Winstone dropped into a chair on the other side of the table and looked across the work-basket with airy self-consciousness.
“Why not?”
“You are an old fool, and he must be a young one.”
“Not a bit of it. Level-headed business man. Rich and strenuous.”
“Strenuous?”
“New word. American. Means a short life for yourself and a merry one for your heirs.”
“Be good enough to confine yourself to English. Are you going to marry this youth and make a laughing-stock of yourself and your family?”
“Marry? Oh, how tiresome of you to be so serious. I’d managed him so well! I never thought he would follow me here when I need a rest. But he’s romantic —”
“Romantic? He must be if he’s in love with you. Really, Maria, I never even look at you that I don’t feel like giving thanks I have been permitted to spend my life on Nevis.”
Mrs. Winstone fetched a little sigh. “But you don’t mind my askin’ these people to tea?”
“It is a long time since a stranger has crossed my threshold. Still, they are welcome. This is your birthplace as well as mine.”
“How sweet of you! I’ll go and smarten up a bit.” As she was leaving the room she turned, knit her brows, and said hesitatingly, “Better not tell Julia they’re comin’. She left London because she was sick of people, and has really come for a rest. She might run away, and Mrs. Morison is dyin’ to meet her. Americans are quite mad about celebrities.”
“Oh, very well,” said Mrs. Edis, impatiently.
She sewed for half an hour longer. Suddenly her eyes flashed and she lifted her head. But when Julia came in she said formally: —
“Good morning. Do you always sleep until noon?”
“Rather not! But I didn’t go to sleep till nearly dawn, I was so excited. I shall get up every morning at five and take that old walk round the cone. How often I have thought of it.”
“You have been long coming to take it.”
Julia seated herself on the arm of her mother’s chair, and took the work out of her hand. “Now,” she said, “let’s have it out. You are angry with me for staying away for sixteen years, among other things, and I have been very angry with you. But all my childish resentment was over long ago. It is time you forgave me. If I stayed away, it was because you never asked me to come. Since the day the duke married, you have written me nothing but formal notes, except when you were angry with me for some new cause. You have hurt me more than I can have hurt you, and I have resented your injustice. But let us bury it all. If you knew how glad I am to be here again, to see you look just the same! If you would only be your old self, I could feel your little girl once more. The past—much of it—seems like a dream —”
Mrs. Edis threw back her head. Her heavy nostrils dilated. She looked like an old war-horse. She raised her stick and brought it down on the hard floor with a resounding thump. “Yes!” she said harshly. “Let us have it out. Let me tell you that I have sat here for ten of those years waiting to acknowledge that I have been tortured by remorse. I could not bring myself to write it. But I never thought you would stay away so long— You!—and I an old old woman!”
Julia had moved away uneasily at this outburst. “Oh, don’t!—never mind—it was a natural enough mistake on your part. Let us never speak of it again. I should have come long ago—but time passes so quickly—I don’t think I realized—and then I thought you had given all your love to Fanny —”
“Fanny?” with indescribable scorn.
“Oh, I see now you don’t care for her—”
“Let me finish. I am a hard old woman. Demonstrations are not for me. Nor is my pride dead. That will survive life itself. But I will tell you that I have never ceased to love you—I think I have never loved any one else. Your first petulant childish letters—I didn’t choose to believe. But later, when I began to hear those vague terrible rumors— My God! Well, you had the world, and youth, and diversions—but I have sat here and thought, and thought, and longed for death —”
“Oh, please! It has all been for the best. I needed a hard school. You know what a child I was. If life had been too kind to me, I should have developed slowly, if at all. I might have nothing but a cauliflower in my brain to-day. Now, you would be proud of me if you would only let me explain this great work to you, make you see what it means —”
“Not an allusion to that! You, who were born to be a duchess. Ah! Let me confess that it is not remorse alone that has made me a desolate old woman all these years. My old belief survived the marriage of the duke, even the birth of his heir—at least, I clung to it. But when your husband went hopelessly insane— Oh, my old belief! It had been companion, friend, consolation—as satisfying as only a science can be. When my faith in that was destroyed —”
“Ah! If you would only let me tell you something! I met far wiser men in the East than old M’sieu. They placed a very different interpretation on my horoscope —”
“What?”
“Why, can’t you see—what I have become in England—what I may still become— Oh, far, far more!”
Mrs. Edis snorted in her wrath and disgust as she rose to her feet and thumped the floor with her stick. “Gammon! Do you expect me to believe that that is what the world has come to? Fighting and scratching policemen, going to gaol, speaking on a public platform! Has that become the substitute for a great English lady?”
“Oh, let us say no more about it. I recognize it is hopeless. If you still believe that a woman’s highest destiny is to be an English duchess— Do sit down. There is so much else to talk about.”
Mrs. Edis resumed her seat, but still frowning. She had quite forgotten her remorse.
“I want to talk about poor little Fanny—”
“Poor little Fanny?”
“Who has the best memory in the world? Who was the belle of the West Indies in her day? I have an idea that Fanny looks exactly as you did at her age. And she is not too unlike you in other things —”
“Arrant nonsense. What are you driving at?”
“I mean that youth has its rights, and you are depriving Fanny of hers.”
“I have replanted the entire estate and built a mill. Fanny will be rich one day. I can’t abide the minx, but I know my duty to my son’s child, and the last of my race.”
“So that is to be Fanny’s fate? A little West Indian planter! When she dreams of nothing but love and marriage —”
“She knows naught of such things.”
“Oh, doesn’t she? And what of instincts, especially when a girl is beautiful and fairly bursting with vitality?”
“She can consume her vitality in hard work. Youth and beauty soon pass. Hers will go before they have given any man the chance to ruin her life. In her lies my opportunity for atonement —”
“Fanny will marry. That is her obvious destiny. What is more, she will marry the first man that asks her, unless she has the diversion of society and many admirers. Bath House is open again. Many young men will come —”
“Fanny will see none of them!”
“Oh, won’t she? Youth has a magnet all its own. They’ll be prowling round the place, sitting on the wall like tomcats!”
“Is that a sample of the new school of conversation?”
“No, but it expresses a fact. Now, do be sweet and reasonable and let Fanny go to the party at Bath House on Thursday night —”
“Not another word. Fanny goes to no parties, neither at Bath House nor elsewhere. Have you quite forgotten me, that you fancy you can change my mind when it is made up? There is the luncheon gong. Will you give me your arm?”
“Well,” said Fanny, “I saw you having a talk with Granny in here this morning. I suppose she has promised I shall go to London and live like other girls. That would be so like her,—such a sweet creature —”
“Sh—sh—”
“Oh, why not say what you think? I’d like to hear your real opinion of her—after all these years.”
“She is my mother; and she was angelic to me this morning.”
Fanny stared, then burst into laughter. “Angelic! How I should like to have seen Granny do it. Did you ask her if I could go to the party at Bath House?”
“She is opposed to it,” said Julia, evasively, “but I think I can talk her over. One would never expect to get the best of mother in the first round. I must tell you, however, that I shall not go to Bath House myself —”
“Oh, that Mr. Tay! Only it is romantic, and he is handsome, and quite nice. Do tell me, Julia,” she asked eagerly, “what is it like to be in love with a real man?”
“Put such thoughts out of your head for the present.”
“Did he ever kiss you?”
“Have you looked over my evening gowns? Collins is quite excited at the prospect of fussing with them.”
“How heavenly! I’ll go this minute! What on earth is the matter with Denny? He looks as if he’d just heard the guns at the fort announcing a hurricane.”
The old man almost staggered in. His expression was quite wild.
“Lor’s sake, Missy,” he gasped. “A visitor! A man!”
Fanny snatched the card.
“Julia!” she cried, more excited than Denny. “It’s he! It’s Mr. Tay!”
Julia turned her face away and walked with great dignity to the opposite door. “Tell him that he must excuse me,” she said over her shoulder.
“He ask for Mis’ Winstone, Mis’ Julia.”
“For whom?”
“He say she ask him for tea.”
“She must be quite mad. Well, go and find her.” And she hastened to her room, determined to punish Tay for coming, but not so sure she should not waylay him in the garden when he left.
“Denny,” said Fanny, “ask him to come in here. And you need not disturb my aunt at present. She is taking her nap.”
“Yes, Missy.” And Denny went off, shaking his head.
Fanny ran over to a glass and smoothed her hair, put a flower in it, and made an attempt to stiffen her figure until it looked as if incased in stays. But when Tay entered she immediately became as natural as the young female ever is in the presence of the young and marriageable male. Tay did not look in the best of tempers, but she thought him quite handsome enough to be the hero of a romance.
“Do sit down,” she said hospitably. “Aunt Maria will be in presently. Oh, do tell me how you got in. I mean, what can Aunt Maria have told Granny— Or hasn’t she told her? Perhaps I’d better take you out for a walk. Granny might be too horrid.”
“I fancy Mrs. Winstone has told your grandmother that she asked me for tea,” said Tay, with a slight access of color.
“But what?”
“Oh— Are not you too afraid of this—of your formidable grandmother?”
“Not a bit. I only pretend to be for the sake of peace. But, oh, do tell me how Aunt Maria had the courage to ask you here! I’m simply mad with curiosity. A young man in this house!”
Tay drew a long breath. This was an explanation he had not bargained for, and those immense eyes were disconcertingly young, and very handsome. “Well, you see—this is how it is: I came here, neglected business and a good many other things, to see Julia France, and I have no idea of wasting my time. I don’t like underhand methods. I’d rather fight in the open any time, but with women you almost never can. So let us call this strategy —”
“Yes! Yes!” cried Fanny. “But for heaven’s sake, what is it?”
“We had a conference last night at the hotel.” Tay got up and walked about the room.
“Oh, do go on.”
“Well, briefly, we hatched a plot. Mrs. Winstone was to be induced to tell your grandmother that she and I are engaged —”
“What?”
“Ah—yes.”
“You and Aunt Maria!” She succeeded in taking it in, then went off into shrieks of laughter. Tay swore under his breath, and looked out of the window.
“You and Aunt Maria! I never heard of anything so funny in all my life. Why on earth didn’t you pretend to have fallen in love with me? That would have fooled everybody, and I should have loved to take you out for long walks—and turn you over to Julia!”
“You forget that a man doesn’t care to place a girl in a false position —”
“But Aunt Maria never can have made Granny believe —”
“Why not? Half the women in London have admirers young enough to be their sons, and sometimes they marry them. Your aunt could have one of those brats dangling if she chose. It’s not my rôle, but I can play it at a pinch.” He returned to his chair. “Do you think I can see Julia to-day?”
“She ran away when she heard you were here.”
“Oh, did she?”
“I don’t think she means to see you. That would be horrid of her. But you come here every day—to see Aunt Maria!—and I’ll manage it. And if you always come when Granny’s asleep, you can talk to me.”
“That would be ample compensation,” said Tay, mechanically. He was feeling very cross, and it was long since callow girlhood had appealed to him. Still, this child was beautiful, and beauty exacts tribute at any age. He told himself that he was a surly brute, and exerted himself to be agreeable.
“You must find this a lonely life,” he observed. “What do you do with yourself? Read novels? Go over to parties on St. Kitts?”
“Novels! Parties! I’ve read about ten, and I’ve never been to a party in my life. You are the first young man I’ve ever talked to.”
“Really?” Tay was mildly interested. “What a life for a young girl. I’ve never seen any one look less like a hermit. What do you do with yourself?”
“Oh, Granny put me in charge of the estate a year ago. She’s too old to go out much, and she drilled me until I thought I’d go off my head. But now I rather like it. There’s something to do, anyhow, riding over the estate every morning, keeping the mill overseer from cheating, and getting work out of lazy blacks. I can do that, and in a way it’s like having a little kingdom all your own. I’ve made them all afraid of me.”
“Have you? By George, you are some girl! I thought you were merely out for fun. I’d be put to it to find another girl of your age—and—and—general style—who was running an estate. It seems to be a remarkable family, altogether.”
Fanny saw that she had now really caught his attention, and found him more attractive every moment. The subject of her prosaic duties had never entered her imaginary conversations with young men, but this one was quite different himself from any of her dreams; and she suddenly found reality far more attractive than romance. She was also quick to take a cue, and was about to launch upon a description of plantation life in the West Indies, when Denny came running in, this time looking fairly distracted.
“Lots of visitors, Missy!”
“I should have told you that Mrs. Winstone asked the rest of our party,” said Tay.
Fanny forgot him in her fright, as Mrs. Macmanus, Mr. Pirie, and the Morisons entered. But her instincts asserted themselves, and she went through the ordeal very creditably.
“Why, how do you do?” she said hospitably. “I’m so glad to see you all in our house. Please sit down. Denny, go and tell Mrs. Winstone. Ah—won’t you take off your hats?”
“No, thank you, dear,” said Mrs. Morison, whose eyes were brimming with mischief. “Mine is so becoming. Besides, a lot of hair would come off, too.”
“I will,” said Mrs. Macmanus, “and thank you for asking me. Reminds me of my youth.” And she removed her bonnet and rolled up the strings. “Even one’s hair is too warm for the tropics. Pirie, you might take off your toupee. I’ve seen you do it twice when you thought no one was looking!”
“Really, Hannah!” Pirie almost exploded. What an assault in the presence of glorious eighteen!
But Fanny was paying no attention to Pirie. She was gazing in rapt admiration at Mrs. Morison’s airy toilette of daffodil yellow, with a large chiffon hat of the same shade, covered with more little soft feathers than she had ever seen before, and a perfectly useless, but all the more enviable, sunshade of chiffon and lace.
Mrs. Morison saw the admiration in the girl’s eyes, and no admiration was thrown away on her. She smiled brilliantly.
“How simply enchanting to see the inside of an old West Indian home,” she exclaimed. “I never had any old-fashioned things in my life. Grandpa emigrated to California in the fifties, and every house he built burned down whenever the city did. So when I came along and pa was making his pile, there wasn’t so much as a daguerrotype in the family. We were just upholstered from New York and dressed from Paris. How’s that for family history, Miss Edis?”
“Oh,” said Fanny, through her teeth, “how I should like to live in a country where there were no ancestors. There’s nothing else here.”