CHAPTER XVII.GETTING ACQUAINTED.
After the disease left her, if there had been any disease, Elithe’s recovery was rapid. Of her illness she remembered nothing, except a feeling that she was having a delicious rest and a dream of Mr. Pennington and the diamond ring. Where was her dress and the box, she wondered, and was about to inquire, when, as if guessing her thoughts, her aunt said to her, “I’ve washed your things, dress and all. There was a box in the pocket. I don’t know what was in it, if anything, but I put it in your trunk.”
At first Elithe thought to tell her aunt about the ring and ask her what to do with it. Her father had written that Mr. Pennington had again left Samona and it was uncertain when he would return. She could not send thering direct to him, and she decided that her better way was to keep it until she went home, and then give it to her father, who would return it to Mr. Pennington. With her aunt she did not feel quite at ease, but the acquaintance progressed rapidly during the days of convalescence, when she sat in the large easy chair in the pleasant front room, looking out upon the sea and the passers-by. Every day Paul Ralston came in for a few moments, and Elithe found herself looking forward to his coming with a good deal of interest. Clarice had not called, nor did she intend to. Paul had given her Miss Hansford’s message, and several times had suggested going with her after Elithe was able to see people, but she always had some reason for not going, and at last said pettishly, “Don’t bother me any more, please. The fact is, I am not specially interested in Miss Hansford or her niece, and I have more acquaintances now than I can do justice to.”
After that Paul said no more on the subject, but went oftener himself to make amends for Clarice’s neglect. This was the reason he gave to himself, and at first it was partially true. But he could not see Elithe day after day and not get interested in her, she was so sweet and unaffected, and her eyes welcomed him so gladly when he came, and she was so pretty in her short hair and white negligee jackets which her aunt had bought for her. Paul carried a picture of her with him when he left her and insensibly found himself looking forward to the next day when he could see her again. In this he had no thought of disloyalty to Clarice. She was the rare rose which belonged to him, while Elithe was the simple wild flower, whose perfume he could inhale with no harm to him or any one. Every day he spent hours with Clarice. They went in bathing together; they rode on wheels together on the smoothasphalt pavement, and in the afternoon he took her to drive with his tandem team, the first in Oak City, and greatly admired in consequence. Elithe had seen him go by on his wheel with Clarice and made no comment, except to wonder if she could learn to ride and how much a wheel would cost. Her aunt did not reply and set her lips together in a way which Elithe had learned meant disapprobation. Evidently, Miss Hansford did not believe in wheels.
The next day the tandem turnout went by, with Clarice driving and Paul sitting by her side, radiant with happiness and content. Clarice was handling the reins skillfully and looking very handsome as she sat beside him. He saw Elithe in the door and touched his hat to her, but Clarice’s attention was centered on the fleet horses, which required all her strength to keep well in hand.
“Miss Percy drives a good deal with Mr. Ralston. They must be great friends,” Elithe said.
“They are engaged,” Miss Hansford answered shortly, biting off rather viciously the end of the thread she was trying to put through the point instead of the eye of her needle.
“Engaged!” Elithe repeated, with a feeling for a moment as if the day were not quite as bright as it had been an hour ago.
“Yes,” Miss Hansford replied, “more’s the pity, but if he’s suited I ought to be. They are to be married the last of August, here in Oak City, with a great spread. You’ll be invited, of course, with me. Paul brought me a new grey silk from Paris as a present to wear. It is not made yet. I must get about it pretty soon. Time enough, though. I wonder what you’ve got to wear.”
Elithe had not quite heard all her aunt was saying.Paul’s engagement was a surprise to her and not altogether a satisfaction. She did not know that she had attached any importance to his attentions to herself. She only knew that they had been very pleasing, and could never be quite the same with her knowledge of his engagement to Clarice Percy. Remembering the young lady’s manner towards her, and, contrasting it with Paul’s affability, she felt how unlike they were to each other, and was disappointed that Paul should thus have chosen. For a moment there was a little pang in her heart, making her forget that her aunt was talking of the grand wedding in August and asking what she had that was suitable to wear. As yet, she knew nothing of the elegant toilets worn at watering places. Her changeable silk, made from her mothers gown, was quite equal to any emergency, and she assured her aunt that she was quite well equipped for the wedding, should she be fortunate enough to be invited.
The next time Paul came he staidlonger than usual,—complimented Elithe on her rapid improvement, and said she would soon be able to drive with him behind his tandem.
“Thanks. I saw you go by yesterday with Miss Percy. She is very beautiful, and your horses, too,” Elithe replied, conscious at once that she had made an odd speech in associating Paul’s betrothed with his horses. He did not seem to mind it, but chatted on pleasantly, talking a great deal about his horses and a little about Clarice after Miss Hansford said to him, “I told Elithe you was going to be married in August.”
“Oh, yes; certainly, certainly; expect a great time. Glad you are here,” Paul rejoined, mopping his face with his handkerchief, as the morning was very warm.
Then he began to talk of the guests he expected and when they would arrive.
“Is Jack coming?” Miss Hansford asked, and Paul replied, “Doubtful. Clarice don’t know where he is, and don’t wish to know. She is afraid of the consequences. It takes so little to upset him. He generally carries a bottle in his pocket and is very noisy and quarrelsome when over the bay.”
Miss Hansford was a strong supporter of the W. C. T. U., and had less sympathy for a man easily affected than for one who could take quarts with no bad result. So far as Jack was concerned, whether he could take much or little, did not matter. He was better out of the way, and she said so, with sundry uncomplimentary remarks concerning him, while Paul defended him. The only subject on which he and Miss Hansford ever openly differed was the luckless Jack, whom Paul declared a pretty good fellow, but for one fault, while she denounced him as wholly bad. There was no reason why Elithe should be interested in him; and yet she was, and, after Paul had gone, she asked her aunt why Clarice did not try to reform him instead of turning against him.
“There’s no reform in him,” her aunt replied. “I know Jack Percy,—a bad egg when he was a boy, and a worse one now he is a man, I dare say, though I haven’t known much of him lately. Such as he can’t reform.”
“He must be pretty bad, then,” Elithe said, thinking of Mr. Pennington as he was in the miners’ camp and as he was when she saw him last.
She spoke of him to her aunt, who asked when she had finished, “Is he anything to you?”
“To me? No; nothing but a friend. We all liked him.We couldn’t help it,” was Elithe’s answer, given with no change of voice or color.
She was untouched; but Miss Hansford was not so sure of the man. He could not be insensible to Elithe’s beauty,—no man could. It had impressed Paul, engaged though he was; it must have impressed Mr. Pennington, who might appear on the scene at any moment, and Miss Hansford’s bones began to tell her that trouble would come from Elithe’s reformed friend. She was studying Elithe carefully, and as yet could find no fault with her. She neither sang, nor whistled, nor slatted her things; she was so helpful about the house, so sunny and bright and willing that her aunt wondered how she had ever lived without her, and began to dread the time when she would be gone. There was no Potter blood in her, she decided, unless it were manifest in the flower-like beauty of her face and the supple grace of her figure. So much she conceded to the Potters. For the rest Elithe was all Hansford.
“I hain’t an atom of fault to find with her, nor her bringin’ up,” she said to a neighbor. “Nothing at all, except that she’s never read the Bible through, and she a minister’s daughter. But what can you expect of a ’Piscopal who puts the Prayer Book before everything. She knows that about by heart, same as I did once.”
Reading the Bible through was one of Miss Hansford’s tests of religious training, and she had learned with surprise that Elithe was remiss in this respect.
“Never read the Bible through! My soul! What’s your father been thinking about?” she said, when Elithe confessed her shortcoming. “Why, I’d read it through before I was a dozen years old,—five chapters every Sunday and three every week day will do it in a year.”
Then she began to question Elithe’s knowledge of theScriptures, finding that she neither knew how old Adam was when he died, nor how old he was when Seth was born. Ages were Miss Hansford’s specialty, and she could give you the birthdays at once of most of the noted people in the Bible and the date of their death.
“I suppose you know your catechism from A to izzard,” she suggested to Elithe, who replied, “No, I don’t. I never could manage the long answer about my duty to God and my neighbor. Heathenish, I know, and if you say so I’ll learn them at once. Any way, I’ll begin the three chapters in the Bible to-day, and will soon catch up with the old fellows’ ages.”
Every morning after that Elithe spent an hour or so in her room poring over the Bible until she knew a good deal about Adam and Seth and many more of the patriarchs. If she had a longing for the flesh-pots as represented by the Rink and Casino and the dances at the hotel, she did not show it. But the fun was in her just the same, and she never heard the band in the distance that she did not keep time to it with her hands or her feet, and more than one waltz the little kitchen saw when she was alone, with no one to criticise. She had not yet joined the bathers on the beach, although urged to do so by Paul, who promised to teach her to swim and to float and to help her in every way, if he knew when she was to be there.
“I am going to-morrow,” she said to him one day when he called.
“All right. I’ll find you, if I don’t go blue fishing. Some of us fellows are talking of it,” he answered, as he bade her good afternoon and started across the fields in the direction of the Percy cottage.
When he was gone Elithe brought out her bathing suit and tried it on for her aunt’s inspection.
“That’s decent,” Miss Hansford said, “and doesn’t show your arms and legs as some of ’em do,—Clarice Percy’s, for instance. I declare to goodness it makes me blush when I see her and some of ’em like her, with nothing on but a little skirt, you may say!”
Elithe had been down to the beach and seen the little skirts and thought them and their wearers immodest. Hers, however, was right. It came some ways below her knees, and if the sleeves were rather short it did not matter so much. Her arms were very pretty and she knew it, and her aunt knew it and thought with a good deal of satisfaction that Clarice couldn’t beat them. That night Elithe dreamed she was in the surf with Paul and Mr. Pennington, both contending for her and holding her under the water till she woke to find a soft shower falling outside and the rain beating upon her face from the open window.