"My dear Miss Eliza," it ran—"I may as well come to the point at once—you always liked that best, as I recall—and tell you that I am married; was married in Italy, at the American Consulate at Florence, the second of last June. My wife is the very finest woman God ever made, bar none; save perhaps you ladies to whom I write. And I, who was ever for peace, will fight to a finish him who avers aught to the contrary. I cannot expect you, who have never seen her, to share my enthusiasm, of course. But if you knew her, Miss Eliza, if you knew her!"Words fail me in an effort at description, but will it suffice to say that I am perfectly satisfied to gaze at her all day long, day in and day out? This surely must convey something to you who knew me well of old and will remember that I was ever most critical, having the idea then that my bent was artistic."I could hardly believe in my own good fortune, Miss Eliza, when she said she would have me. I asked her all over again, immediately, just to make sure. So now the former Miss Elinor Harvey is Mrs. Ross Worthington."To make a long story short, I have told her about Arethusa, and she is most anxious to know her new daughter. As she is possessed of considerably more of this world's goods than is your humble servant—the one thing I have against her—she has insisted upon herself enclosing a check for our daughter's immediate needs, and this daughter is to come as soon as you and Miss Letitia can get her ready. Don't be sparing with this check; I am instructed to add, more will be sent if necessary."My wife—I do love to write that word, Miss Eliza,—says that she will write, herself, very shortly. She is most busy at present, turning her house upside down from garret to cellar, but she says that when it is finished it will be a most beautiful house."Give my love to Miss Letitia and my darling daughter, Arethusa, and my most knightly devotion always to Miss Asenath, bless her! My wife joins me in all kind wishes for your household."Yours affectionately,"Ross Worthington."
"My dear Miss Eliza," it ran—
"I may as well come to the point at once—you always liked that best, as I recall—and tell you that I am married; was married in Italy, at the American Consulate at Florence, the second of last June. My wife is the very finest woman God ever made, bar none; save perhaps you ladies to whom I write. And I, who was ever for peace, will fight to a finish him who avers aught to the contrary. I cannot expect you, who have never seen her, to share my enthusiasm, of course. But if you knew her, Miss Eliza, if you knew her!
"Words fail me in an effort at description, but will it suffice to say that I am perfectly satisfied to gaze at her all day long, day in and day out? This surely must convey something to you who knew me well of old and will remember that I was ever most critical, having the idea then that my bent was artistic.
"I could hardly believe in my own good fortune, Miss Eliza, when she said she would have me. I asked her all over again, immediately, just to make sure. So now the former Miss Elinor Harvey is Mrs. Ross Worthington.
"To make a long story short, I have told her about Arethusa, and she is most anxious to know her new daughter. As she is possessed of considerably more of this world's goods than is your humble servant—the one thing I have against her—she has insisted upon herself enclosing a check for our daughter's immediate needs, and this daughter is to come as soon as you and Miss Letitia can get her ready. Don't be sparing with this check; I am instructed to add, more will be sent if necessary.
"My wife—I do love to write that word, Miss Eliza,—says that she will write, herself, very shortly. She is most busy at present, turning her house upside down from garret to cellar, but she says that when it is finished it will be a most beautiful house.
"Give my love to Miss Letitia and my darling daughter, Arethusa, and my most knightly devotion always to Miss Asenath, bless her! My wife joins me in all kind wishes for your household.
"Yours affectionately,
"Ross Worthington."
Arethusa hugged herself ecstatically and then pressed her lips to the Letter until the ink smudged. It was a wonderful Letter!
And the whole of the situation revealed in it appealed to her. The Romance (a love story brought even nearer home than Miss Asenath's, for it was her own dearest father who was living it right now); the Beauty of the bride, so plainly stated, and Arethusa loved beauty with all the fire of her romantic young soul; and the bride's Wealth, undoubtedly intimated, which gave the necessary touch of luxury to the picture, for Arethusa loved the fleshpots also, if an innocent liking for silks and satins and baronial halls could be called "love of the fleshpots,"—it was as perfect a situation as any created by any one of her favorite novelists. She was visioning a Rarely Handsome Couple, hand in hand, moving with slow and stately grace through the vast halts of a Mansion.
"Elinor" was a beautiful name; far more beautiful than any other name she knew.
In short, being constitutionally unable to do anything by halves, Arethusa fell most completely in love with the newcomer into the family, when she might have had other feelings about her, perhaps just as strong. But there was not the slightest trace of anything resembling resentment in the daughter's heart that a strange woman had taken the first place with her father; she would not have understood if anyone had suggested to her that it might be permissible under the circumstances. There was only a very deep gratitude that flooded her whole being. She realised quite plainly from the Letter that it was owing a great deal to the "New Wife" that her dream of so many years was coming true. She had brought Ross back to America, so much nearer to his daughter, and she had sent her, Arethusa, (sent it herself because it was positively so stated) the money whereby she was to make reality that long anticipated meeting.
But she did not waste much time in speculation as to the spending of that "check for her immediate needs"; such would have been truly idle dreaming. Miss Eliza would spend it. She would attend to the providing of a wardrobe for the visit, and that wardrobe would be utilitarian first and foremost, and durable. All of Miss Eliza's purchases had the virtue of durability. For best, perhaps, Arethusa might have a silk dress (her Sunday silk of the season before was almost worn out), but it would be a dark blue one, undoubtedly; and one was convinced before it was even bought that it would be a sensible dress.
Had Arethusa had the spending of the money her outfit might present a very different appearance.
She had been so absorbed in her Letter that she had not noticed that the storm had begun to increase in violence. The wind was rising again and the rain was beginning to come rapidly through the leaves.
Suddenly, with a roar like the approach of some vast army across the fields, it came from the northwest in a blinding sheet, and in just a moment she was drenched. She scrambled hastily to her feet and thrust the Letter far down in the hollow of the tree to keep it dry, and then, flattened herself against the trunk to watch, as much protected as she could be, and with the intensest admiration, this masterpiece of the Storm King. She was not in the least bit frightened of the vivid lightning that played almost incessantly about her, or of the rolling and crashing thunder. She lifted up her face to feel the rain upon it, and smiled in sheer joy of the wonderful beauty of the graceful long sweep of that failing rain.
But with a crack of thunder which Miss Letitia would have said was "near," most certainly, for it sounded as though the heavens themselves were fallen, Arethusa's eyes closed involuntarily.
CHAPTER IV
Timothy Jarvis was making preparations to salt the cattle down in the "V" lot on his place (so-called because a wedge of the Redfield property carved out a bit of its very centre) when those angry black clouds began piling up.
He was not very weather wise as yet, this sturdy boy farmer, Timothy, and so his study of the brooding sky did not help him as much, in his prognostication of what it would bring forth, as it might have helped older folk more acquainted with the vagaries of weather. Mandy or Miss Eliza or Blish could have told him that black clouds in the north west always meant a bad storm, and one that came quickly. But Timothy thought of his sleek red cattle, of which he was so proud, which were needing salt so dreadfully, and he decided that he had plenty of time in which to go on ahead and finish his job before the storm should really break. He hated to leave them until every last one had had a chance at the coarse salt he spread out for them on the rocks by the Branch. And the clouds would probably go on piling up that way for some hours.
So sure was he that this prediction was correct that he sent the man who was helping him back to the barn with the mule and spring-wagon, and planned to walk himself. He wanted a look at the bunch in the wood-lot, and now, while he was so near it, was as good a time as he could find in which to visit that other herd.
But the first falling drops caught him before he was half way to the wood-lot, so he turned around without attempting that visit and started for home. Then that great downpour which had trapped Arethusa under the hollow tree caught him just as he was passing Miss Asenath's Woods, and he decided to go on up to the Redfield house, as it was so much nearer than his own; nearly a mile and a half nearer, this way.
He climbed the snake fence into the woodland and splashed rapidly through the wet growth. The big leaves that he brushed in passing, emptied their load of water upon him; Timothy was getting wetter and wetter, but rather enjoying it all. Then he spied Arethusa propped up against her tree with her eyes shut tight, and he stopped short in amazement.
"A—re—thusa Worthington!"
Her eyes flew open. She screamed; for Timothy had appeared before her as suddenly as though he had come in that clap of thunder.
"Timothy! You nasty thing! You scared me almost to death!"
"What on earth are you doing out here?"
"Picking water lilies!" she replied pertly.
"You must have fallen in then, because I never did see anything just as wet! But I thought you weren't afraid of storms?"
"I'm not. I love 'em."
"Why do you screw up your eyes for when it thunders then?" he asked, teasingly, as at another terrific sound her eyes shut just as tight as before.
But she only made a face at him in reply.
"Does Miss 'Liza know you're out here?" Timothy demanded next.
"She does."
"I'll just bet she doesn't," he contradicted calmly. "You better come go in. You are wet clear through."
"So are you," retorted Arethusa.
"I think you had better come go in," persisted Timothy. "Honest, Arethusa! It's dangerous," he added, quickly, for just as he spoke a great tree in the outer edge of the woodland went crashing to the ground.
"I shan't go in." She stamped her foot for emphasis. "Run along, Timothy, ifyou'reafraid.I'mgoing to stay. I love it!"
That implication of fear put him on his masculine mettle at once.
"I'm not afraid," he declared, stoutly. "It's just foolish, that's all. Come on, Arethusa."
She resented this tone of authority.
"No!" she said, most positively.
"Well, then ... I'll take you," announced Timothy, equally positive. "I just can't let you tempt Providence this way."
Her eyes blazed dark. "If you so much as dare touch me, Timothy Jarvis, even; I'll ... I'll...." Words failed her.
Timothy regarded her in helpless exasperation. Being very well acquainted with Arethusa and Arethusa's ways, he knew that she would have retaliated in some very real and immediate fashion, had he made a single move to carry out his threat. And nothing he could do along this line would have brought the going in any nearer, for in a scuffle she was quite as strong as he was.
They had been forced to converse in shouts in order to be heard above the noise of the storm through the swaying and bending trees, and the whole affair:—the loud argument which got nowhere, and the subsequent tableau of the girl and himself standing here under the big tree glaring at each other while the fury of the rain lashed against them and the storm dinned about them, suddenly struck Timothy as funny.
He laughed.
"Stop laughing!" screamed Arethusa, angrily.
"I can't help it! You—you look so perfectly funny!" Timothy's mirth pealed forth again.
Arethusa's hair hung about her face in long, wet locks; her eyes, in her white face, were like great, dark pools of wrath; and she had spread her arms out behind her against the tree as if she had gripped it to hold should Timothy attempt force to make her leave her stronghold.
"You look just like a drowned rat, yourself!" she exclaimed furiously. "And—and you've got a whole pond in your Jimmy!"
So Timothy took off his big Jimmy hat and shook the pool of rain water out of the curved brim.
Had she not been so angry with him, Arethusa might have likened him then to a young river god instead of a "drowned rat," and the comparison would have fitted much better. And with his blonde head, which the dampness had merely made to wave a little more, for his thickly plaited straw hat had somewhat protected it from a thorough wetting, she might even have called him a young Viking, without any very great misuse of metaphor; Timothy was so thoroughly of the outdoors in his appearance, with all his youthful strength.
His deep blue eyes gleamed with determination as plainly as the grey eyes opposite him gleamed with anger, for Timothy meant that Arethusa should go into the house; and that without much more delay.
But he changed his tactics to accomplish this. Although he was nothing of a weather prophet, he displayed, at times, wisdom rather beyond his years.
"Arethusa, do be reasonable, now," he said, in the most friendly of coaxing tones. "Suppose that tree should be struck; you'd be killed. I would too."
"That wouldn't make very much difference," she replied, naughtily.
But he ignored this interruption. "I might enjoy doing this some other time, Arethusa, when the lightning and thunder aren't so bad. This is the very worst electrical storm we've had this whole summer. And you know that I never do mind being out in the rain, don't you? I've always been quite wilting to play Alpheus for you, whenever you wanted." (Timothy had studied mythology when he was in Freeport at college.) "But think," he added, much more seriously, "think of poor Miss 'Titia. You can be sure she's just having one fit right after the other with you out here. I call it dirt mean to make her suffer so. And it's not a bit like you to be mean, Arethusa, not a bit."
Arethusa yielded.
The picture Timothy presented of Miss Letitia's distress was all the more sad to contemplate because she knew it, only too well, to be true. She was getting a trifle tired of it, besides: it was only obstinacy that had kept her out so long. Yet it would never do to have him find that out. She conveyed the intelligence to him that nothing in the wide world but the thought of Miss Letitia and Miss Letitia's unhappiness would ever have dragged her away from the tree, lest he become unduly convinced of the idea that any of his other, and more immediately personal, arguments had influenced.
"And," she added, "I wanted to get real wet, for just once. But I couldn't get any wetter if I stayed. My shoes slosh now."
He agreed with her perfectly. "Without a doubt they do; I can hear 'em. You were certainly well named Arethusa, you crazy thing!" He tucked her arm in his with an authoritative air, "Let's run for it."
Nothing suited Arethusa better.
They had a glorious race through the wet orchard and brought up with a grand flourish on the back porch, where Mandy greeted their finale with many horrified exclamations and much gesturing.
"Ef Mis' 'Liza wuz to see you! Ef Mis' 'Liza wuz jes' to see you all now!"
"Well, she mustn't," cautioned Timothy. "Stop making so much noise, Mandy, and smuggle Arethusa in."
"I don't really care if she does see me," Arethusa herself announced most recklessly. "I've had so much fun! Listen...." She slapped her wet dress against her, "Doesn't that make a funny sound? And, oh, Timothy, see what a puddle I've made already, just running off me!! Look!"
"Mis' Titia's ben havin' one hystik after anothah, Arethusie, she were so sure you wuz struck w'en we heered that big tree go down in Mis' 'Senath's Woods. An' Mis' 'Liza's...."
"Well, Arethusa! I must say that this is a performance!"
And the three on the back porch turned to see Miss Eliza regarding them grimly from the kitchen doorway.
Timothy gallantly removed his Jimmy hat and bowed, but Miss Eliza's expression did not soften in the least.
"I don't think she's hurt at all, Miss 'Liza," he said, with the worthy intent to soothe, "I found her in Miss 'Senath's Woods and brought her in."
"I can see she isn't," replied Miss Eliza.
Arethusa glared at Timothy for his statement of the situation.
"Arethusa," continued Miss Eliza, "I must say that I think this is going a little bit too far. You have almost made your Aunt 'Titia ill by running off in this storm. You know perfectly well just how they affect her. And I brought you into the house—once. You were certainly expected to stay. Sometimes you seem to me to be absolutely lacking in any finer sensibilities; especially in consideration for others. And you behave just like a child!"
"Oh, Miss 'Liza," interposed Timothy, "please don't jack Arethusa up so hard! I know she didn't mean to make Miss 'Titia ill. She loves a storm herself, so much, that she doesn't always remember that other people are afraid of them. But she did come in just as soon as she remembered it. She...."
"You needn't say all that stuff, Timothy Jarvis," interrupted Arethusa, angrily, "I reckon I can tell Aunt 'Liza anything I want, without you butting in. I'm sorry about Aunt 'Titia, Aunt 'Liza, I truly am, and I'll go right straight and tell her so; but...."
"That will do, Arethusa," interrupted Miss Eliza, in her turn. "Don't add rudeness to Timothy to the rest of your behaviour. And you've been told a number of times not to use that vulgar expression. Timothy is not a goat. But there is not the slightest use in my standing here arguing with you over your disobedience while you and Timothy are catching your death of cold. You'd better take off those wet shoes and go right up to your room and change the rest of your things—immediately. Mandy will make you a hot lemonade. And I want it drunk this time. We won't take any risks from this escapade." (Arethusa hated hot lemonade.) "And, Timothy, you will stay to supper, of course. We are a household of women, and I have nothing to offer you as dry clothes except those old garments of Mr. Worthington's. But at least they are warm and dry, and will be better than what you have on. You just go on up to the west bed-room and I'll send them to you there."
"Timothyshan'twear Father's clothes!"
"Arethusa!"
Arethusa toed the mark, although with a very bad grace.
"It wasn't me that invited you to supper, Timothy Jarvis," she announced, as a small measure of retaliation, "remember that, please! And I don't want you, either!"
"I'm sorry," replied Timothy calmly, and his eyes danced, "because I'm going to stay. Miss 'Liza asked me. Mandy's going to have hot biscuit,—I see 'em; and Miss 'Liza'll get me out some of her strawberry preserves, I know."
Miss Eliza smiled indulgently at this request, and reached down into her leather pocket for the key to the preserve closet.
"You better make lots of biscuit, Mandy," continued Timothy; "I'm as hungry as a bear."
Arethusa sniffed disdainfully and, with her red head high in the air, started off down the passage in the direction of the sitting-room.
"Where are you going?" called Miss Eliza after her.
"To tell Aunt 'Titia I'm sorry I scared her."
"Did you hear me tell you to take off your shoes and go straight to your room?" Miss Eliza's tone was awful.
Although Arethusa towered a good head and shoulders over Miss Eliza, she obeyed as meekly as the tiniest child. She returned to the kitchen to remove her shoes and then went down the side passage to the boxed-in steps, Miss Eliza surveying her sternly all the while.
As Arethusa passed Timothy on her way out of the kitchen, she leaned close to him and whispered, "I'll fix you for all this, Timothy Jarvis! You just wait and see if I don't!"
It was hardly fair to blame Timothy for any of it, but if she had threatened to "fix" Miss Eliza total annihilation would have followed immediately. Yet overcharged feelings must be somehow relieved.
With the disappearance of her niece, Miss Eliza took occasion to apologize to the guest of the evening for any and all of her behaviour, which might have appeared unseemly. This proceeding so delighted Timothy he could hardly repress a whoop; for he well knew that nothing would make Arethusa so furious as to know her aunt had apologized (to him) for anything she had done.
One of the chief joys of Timothy's existence was teasing Arethusa.
What fun to tell her of this!
CHAPTER V
Miss Eliza presided with gentle dignity at the head of the supper table. She seemed to shed some of her militant spirit when seated before the white expanse of table-cloth on her own board. Hospitality was her passion; nothing so thoroughly delighted her as a "guest in the home."
Mandy had made floating custard for dessert this evening, and when Miss Eliza helped it, she helped it with a deprecatory air, as though despite its superlative value as a custard which she very well knew, it really was not fit to be offered to a guest: it might do for just the family. Timothy ate as many as three meals every week of his life in this very dining-room, but not being a member of the immediate home circle, he came quite under the head of guests.
At the other end of the table Miss Letitia carved the beautifully pink old ham into paper thin slices. She was still visibly nervous and her hands trembled a bit, every now and then (that storm had been a terrible experience); but such was habit with Miss Letitia that not a single slice was a bit ragged or a sliver too thick.
Arethusa had paid Miss Letitia a visit just before supper to make her peace, and Miss Letitia had forgiven her, as she always did. And even had she suffered far more on the girl's account than she actually had, who could have resisted such pleading to be forgiven? Contrition had been so plainly visible in those grey-green eyes, and Arethusa had given so many kisses—soft and fleeting as thistledown they were, yet very satisfactory to Miss Letitia as kisses—that it was quite impossible for Miss Letitia not to believe in the perfect genuineness of Arethusa's apology.
She had promised fervently, "Never, so long as I live, to run out in a storm—ever again. Hope I may die right in my tracks if I do!"
While Miss Letitia had deprecated the latter part of that promise as savoring slightly of sacrilege, she had accepted the first part in good faith; and experience should have taught her otherwise.
Miss Asenath had one whole side of the table to herself, her couch took up so much room. It was Blish's duty, generally, to wheel the couch across the hall from the sitting-room, but whenever Timothy stayed to meals, he took this office upon himself. And he took it with a gallantry and old-fashioned deference that brought a faint pink flush to Miss Asenath's soft old cheek. Timothy was a great favorite of hers.
He and Arethusa sat together on the other side; but Arethusa ignored him just as much as possible. Timothy took special delight in moving such dishes of eatables as were nearest him too far away from his neighbor for her to reach herself, so that she would be forced to ask him for them. She might have eaten her supper, and managed very well, without any of this food that Timothy had commandeered, had not one of those dishes been the plate of biscuit, an absolute necessity.
Miss Eliza's sharp eyes would certainly have noticed, had her niece helped herself to too many at a time, so poor Arethusa was most unpleasantly situated. And every request that she was forced to make for that plate of bread, for Timothy pretended every now and then not to hear the first time she asked, added to her fury with him.
But this continued warfare did not seem to affect Timothy's appetite in the slightest. He consumed a most alarming quantity of biscuits and those strawberry preserves Miss Eliza had produced in his honor.
When he was receiving his third helping of ham, Arethusa leaned over close and whispered in his ear, but very, very softly, so that Miss Eliza would not hear her, "Pig!"
She also lost no single opportunity of conveying to him, though much more by expression than by actual word of mouth, how exceedingly ridiculous she thought he looked in his borrowed clothing. It was far too small for him in every possible way. Ross Worthington was a large man, but Timothy was even larger. He topped Arethusa, who was quite tall for a girl, by considerably more than half a head, and he was built all over in proportion.
When he was not covertly teasing his next-door neighbor, Timothy carried on a very polite conversation with Miss Eliza on sundry country matters. He complimented the stand of corn in the Redfield lot near that "V" lot of his own, and told her that it did not seem to show the need of rain so badly as did his corn; and Miss Eliza bridled at the compliment. She was proud of her ability as a farmer, and that the "Redfield Farm" could hold its own among the other farms in the county, even after all the male members of the family had been long gone to their reward, was due solely to Miss Eliza's indefatigable energy. She deserved the compliment; and any others of like tenor that Timothy might have given.
But she was modestly deprecatory, though her old eyes did shine, and her appreciation was written all over her. That had always been a wet piece of ground, said Miss Eliza; she hadn't been so sure corn would do at all well there. She was a bit surprised herself.
It was rather sad, remarked Timothy, after a bit, that this rain couldn't have come just two or three weeks sooner. He was afraid that some of their farmer friends had lost some money by the drought.
Miss Eliza agreed that it was sad. She specified one or two persons whose crops had not seemed to her to be quite up to the mark. And there was a field or two of her own which, if Timothy were to see, he would not compliment quite so highly; but this rain would work wonders in a great many places. It hadn't come altogether too late.
In a slight lull which followed Timothy's third helping to ham, Miss Letitia asked Arethusa if she had brought her father's letter back to the house with her.
Arethusa's eyes shone immediately.
"Yes," she replied. Then she remembered, "No, I didn't either. I left it down in the Hollow Tree."
"It happened to bemyletter," said Miss Eliza, drily.
"I know, but it won't be hurt. I can get it tomorrow. It'll keep perfectly safe and dry. And, oh Aunt 'Liza, please let me go now! He said just as soon as I could get ready. Please don't make me wait 'til fall! Please!"
"Go where?" enquired Timothy.
Arethusa pretended that she had not heard him. Miss Eliza, however, answered.
"Ross Worthington has married again, Timothy, and come back to America. He wants Arethusa to come make him a visit."
Timothy dropped the biscuit he was holding halfway to his mouth.
"Since I was a yellow pup!" he ejaculated feelingly.
"You still are one," Arethusa remarked sweetly for him alone; but Timothy magnanimously allowed this interpolation to pass without retaliation.
"He married an American, thank heaven," continued Miss Eliza, "married her over there somewhere. In Italy, I think he said. She seems to be well-off. It was she sent the money to Arethusa for the visit."
Timothy picked up his biscuit, in his agitation he rebuttered it extravagantly on top of butter already there, and resumed operations.
"Well," he said, between mouthfuls, "this is certainly some bunch of news to hand a fellow all of a sudden. Arethusa's father married! That's enough by itself for a starter!" For to the twenty-two year old mind of Timothy, Ross Worthington seemed far too aged for anything like matrimony. "But wanting Arethusa to come visit him! You going to let her go, Miss Liza?"
"Of course she is!" burst from Arethusa, indignantly.
"Sister 'Titia and I and Sister 'Senath," replied Miss Eliza to Timothy's question, as calmly as if Arethusa had not opened her mouth, "have decided to let her go in the fall. Though I must say I'm not sure it's wise to let her go at all. I never did think it was a very good place for girls, or boys, either, for that matter, the city. Still, Arethusa's never been and a little visit might not do her any harm. After all, he's her father when you get right down, and I reckon he won't let anything happen to his own flesh and blood."
"No," agreed Timothy, with becoming gravity, although his blue eyes danced merrily, "I don't suppose he would. What city is it, Miss 'Liza?"
"He don't say. It's just like him. But the envelope was post-marked 'Lewisburg,' so I reckon it's pretty safe to say that's where he is. I'm glad it's in the State. I wouldn't want Arethusa traveling too far."
Arethusa was irritated beyond her always slight endurance by this little discussion of her and her affairs, carried on so much as if she were not present. She plunged suddenly into the conversation without any invitation.
"I'm not going just to visit," she announced, flatly, "I'm going to Live. Father didn't say just 'visit.'"
This created all the stir she could have wished; a chorus of outcry from Miss Eliza and Miss Letitia and Timothy. Only Miss Asenath smiled. Arethusa pushed her chair back from the table and surveyed them all defiantly.
"I reckon I can go live with my own father!"
"Of course not," snapped Miss Eliza; "youlivehere!"
"Of course you do," affirmed Timothy; "it's perfectly foolish to talk of living any place else but here, Arethusa. And even if you do go make your father a visit, you won't stay very long. I know. You see, I've been there and I know what it's like, and I know you, too, Arethusa; so I know very well you won't want to stay!"
With this calm assurance and assumption of superiority on Timothy's part, Arethusa's rage at him boiled over, openly, despite Miss Eliza's presence.
"Nobody asked your opinion, Timothy Jarvis, that I heard! And you know absolutely nothing whatever about what I'm going to do!"
"Oh, yes, but I do," he replied, still maddeningly superior, "I know...."
Arethusa fairly quivered in her fury.
"You donot," she interrupted, in flat contradiction. "I'm going there tolive. And if you want to know just why, Timothy Jarvis, it's because then I shan't ever have to lay eyes on you again!"
"Arethusa!" from Miss Eliza.
Whereat Arethusa, retaining some small remnants of the instinct for self-preservation, subsided, though her eyes still blazed with honest anger directed at Timothy. And when Miss Eliza's attention was distracted elsewhere for a brief moment, she seized the occasion to whisper to him; "Don't you dare stay a minute after supper, Timothy; don't you dare! I'll go right straight to bed if you do!"
"Which wouldn't harm me at all, if you did," he whispered pleasantly in reply, "just yourself. And Miss 'Liza wouldn't let you do it anyway, even if I stayed and you wanted to. She'd say it was rude, and you know it. But don't worry; keep your shirt on," he added, most inelegantly, "I've got something else to do, so I'm going right on home." Then, very meanly, for it was taking a rather unfair advantage, as Miss Eliza's gimlet eyes were just then boring right through Arethusa to prevent any outburst of suitable venom from her, "And, take it from me, Arethusa, you won't stay long in Lewisburg."
He escaped to Miss Asenath's side to wheel the couch back into the sitting-room, as Miss Eliza had risen just as he finished that last speech and signified that supper was over. Arethusa remained seated for a moment, speechless with wrath, and with that helpless, cheated feeling she always experienced when the last word was Timothy's.
The rain had stopped, so the guest departed with immediacy for home, wearing his borrowed clothing and carrying his own under his arm, much to Arethusa's further ire. She considered that he might just as well have changed before he left, for his own things had got perfectly dry by the roaring kitchen stove.
Then came the lecture for her niece which had been steadily gathering momentum with Miss Eliza for some little time. But Arethusa sat on the end of Miss Asenath's couch, to hold her hand, and did not mind it quite so much. Besides, in the depths of her conscience, she was guiltily aware of rather deserving it.
After the atmosphere had cleared, conversation once more veered around to the Letter, and the aunts sat in solemn consultation over it and the proposed visit and Arethusa.
CHAPTER VI
One of the most agitating parts of this whole affair was the actual traveling that must be done by Arethusa in order to reach her father.
Miss Eliza's first idea was to find out if anyone in the County would be making a trip to the City this fall and to place her niece under that person's protection; provided that person was of the irreproachable character she deemed requisite before being entrusted with such a charge.
Miss Letitia then ventured to mention, most timidly, the State Fair, which was held in Lewisburg every September. Some one of the county's agricultural population would most surely be going there then.
Perhaps Timothy, answered Miss Eliza, graciously conceding Miss Letitia a stroke of real mentality in her suggestion. If he was planning to attend, it would be just the thing; the girl could go with him. She was sorry she had not broached the subject at supper.
But Arethusa vehemently opposed this idea. She would not go a single step with Timothy. And why could she not go alone, anyway? She was quite large enough, and she was all of eighteen this summer.
This very radical departure from the established order of things raised a storm of protest immediately from Miss Letitia and Miss Eliza; Miss Eliza especially. Such was not to be considered for a moment! An absolutely unprotected female traveling alone! And a young female at that!
"No," said Miss Eliza, firmly.
If the worst came to the worst, and it could not possibly be managed any other way, she would go with Arethusa herself, rather than have her make that four hour trip totally unattended; at which presented alternative Arethusa's mobile face clouded over most completely. This was a much worse prospect than Timothy.
Miss Eliza and Miss Letitia suggested and counter-suggested, and then rejected everything. No one idea seemed altogether to suit.
Now all this commotion over the trip and Arethusa's making it alone was really not so uncalled-for when one realized all the circumstances.
She had never been on a railroad train; never having spent longer than a portion of a day away from the Farm in all of her eighteen years, nor slept, even for one night, under any other roof.
The family did their shopping in "Blue Spring," five miles away down the Pike, only by courtesy a town. It was a "town" of six hundred inhabitants, including babes in arms and counting very carefully. On two most memorable occasions Arethusa had visited the county-seat, twelve miles farther on, on the same Pike (for Blue Spring had preempted a portion of the State road as its Main street); and these were occasions truly never to be forgotten. For there ran the railroad, through the heart of the town; there were electric lights and paved streets; the little place in its aping of a city gave her glimpses of a world of fascinating bustle and confusion. To Arethusa, the county-seat seemed bewilderingly active and alive.
But Miss Eliza was not much of a believer in going to town, and she considered it a waste of time to drive about merely to be driving. The old-fashioned surrey, with its dark green felt upholstery, and its flapping curtains, was rarely taken out of the barn without a distinct objective point in view. Church and prayer-meeting at the tiny frame house of worship on the Pike were the principal dissipations of this "household of women." Though Arethusa had often rebelled inwardly at these arbitrary decisions which so limited her excursions abroad, outward rebellion would have done her no good; Miss Eliza was firm and ruled her little kingdom with a rod of iron.
Under cover of the discussion between Miss Eliza and Miss Letitia, Miss Asenath was having a few ideas of her own on other subjects.
"Why," she asked Arethusa, in her soft voice, "why do you dislike Timothy so much, dear?"
"Dislike Timothy, Aunt 'Senath!" Arethusa's eyes opened wide in surprise, "Why, I don't, at all! I like him just lots!"
"Then why," continued Miss Asenath, smiling just a little, "do you quarrel with him so?"
"I don't quarrel with him, Aunt 'Senath, dear.... Not.... Not much...." added for the sake of honesty, after thought.
"I thought you all had rather a bad time at supper."
"Oh, that," Arethusa tossed her head, "that was all Timothy's fault. He's.... He's just awful sometimes. He makes me so mad I could just...." both hands clenched, "and he had on father's clothes!"
"I see. But he's worn them before, dear."
"I know he has, Aunt 'Senath, and every time he does, it makes me just as mad. He.... He doesn't belong in Father's clothes! They don't suit him at all!"
Miss Asenath was silent.
'Way deep down in her heart was a Wish; but it was a Wish she had never expressed to anyone because she was wise, and she knew that wishes expressed were often not granted.
Timothy and Arethusa were nearer and dearer to her than any two people in the world. Timothy was his grandfather over again, name and all, she sometimes thought.
Miss Asenath had not resented it when that first Timothy Jarvis had married. It had hurt her a little, naturally, when she had first heard of it; but her loving heart had very soon understood. An active man could not be expected to view those months before that terrible fall as did she, pinned always to the one spot. There were long hours of both day and night in which she had naught to do but to lie still and remember the joy of those months. And nothing could ever take that away from her, she told herself: it was hers for always, and it was a great deal. So she had clung to her miniature and her memories and sent for him to wish him happiness; and she had wished it with her whole soul from the bottom of her heart. She had loved his sons and daughters when they came, but even more than they, she loved this grandson and namesake, Timothy.
And to see Timothy and Arethusa pick up the threads of her love-story where she had laid them down would almost have compensated Miss Asenath for living all these years with only memories.
Miss Asenath laid her hand on the locket at her throat, and fell to dreaming.
"Timothy," said Arethusa, half to herself, "Timothy and I get along just beautifully sometimes ... when he behaves. But he knows all the things I hate, and I think he does them just for spite to see me get mad. He says he likes to see me get mad, and I ... just like a goose, go right straight ahead and get mad for him. But I'll fix Timothy Jarvis yet for to-night! Just let him wait! If he thinks I'm going to let him ride all over me like that, he's mightily mistaken! Timothy Jarvis!!" with a most scornful emphasis, her voice rising.
Miss Asenath was conscious, although her thoughts were so very far away, of the vindictiveness of this ending, and smiled; Miss Eliza, catching Timothy's name through the sound of her own conversation, asked sharply:—
"What did you say about Timothy, Arethusa?"
Miss Eliza had a Wish also, but her Wish was quite often expressed; she had other ideas than Miss Asenath. She kept Arethusa fully cognizant of what her heart most earnestly desired.
"Nothing very much, Aunt 'Liza."
"Yes, you did. I heard you. Arethusa," Miss Eliza straightened her glasses and attacked directly, "the way you treated Timothy at the supper-table ... all through the meal.... It's beyond my comprehension how you can! But he was a gentleman through the whole thing, I must say, a perfect gentleman. Which ought to make you more than ever ashamed of yourself. Sometimes I'm forced to think that all the training your Aunt 'Titia and I and your Aunt 'Senath have given you has gone for naught. To treat a guest in your own home the way you did Timothy! I was scandalised!! Simply scandalized! But I must say that Timothy behaved like a gentleman."
It was what Timothy would have termed "dirt mean" of Miss Eliza to add this extra chapter to the thorough scolding for the afternoon which she had given Arethusa such a short while before. But Timothy was Miss Eliza's most vulnerable spot; one of her few weaknesses.
"He always does," muttered Arethusa, "according to you. But you don't hear anything he says, he's too smart!"
"What's that?" Miss Eliza looked quite ready for battle.
"Nothing, Aunt 'Liza."
"There was something. You said something about Timothy, Arethusa, for I heard you ... again. That habit of yours of answering 'nothing,' when I ask you to repeat what you have said, is decidedly disrespectful."
Miss Eliza reached around for a copy of theChristian Observerwhich was lying on the sitting room table (the most secular reading she ever did were the stories and articles in its pages) and settled her shiny glasses firmly on the bridge of her nose. Then she drew the lamp nearer and turned it up just a trifle, preparing to enjoy a long discussion of the burning of Servetus which she had been saving for several weeks to read when she would have time to do so uninterrupted. It was signed "Calvinist," and Miss Eliza had the feeling that she was going to agree with every word of it.
Then as a parting shot, as she rattled the pages open:
"You must conduct yourself more like a lady with Timothy, Arethusa, or I'm very much afraid he won't want to marry you."
"Won't want to marry me!" Arethusa sprang hotly from her seat on the couch. "It's me that don't want to marry Timothy!"
"You do not know what you are saying," very coldly and decidedly from Miss Eliza. "Of course you want to. It is fitting in every way, most fitting. He is the right age, the families have known each other always, and the lands adjoin."
This with Miss Eliza was the clinching argument. The Jarvis Farm was on both sides of the Pike, but on one side it enclosed the Redfield Farm north and west and south, and went nearly to town. The "V" lot, especially, seemed to Miss Eliza to be in a position that made annexation desirable. The marriage of Timothy and Arethusa would make one Farm of the two, and straighten all those irregular boundaries. When so made, it would be by far the largest individual piece of property in the County. For to Arethusa, as the sole descendant of the Redfields, would go some day all the land of their owning, and to Timothy had already been left the home Farm of his grandfather, because of his name.
"I shall never marry Timothy," said Arethusa, "Never! If the land was plaited in and out, I never would!"
Miss Eliza put theChristian Observerdown in her lap; her glasses slipped to the end of her nose.
"Why?"
"Oh, Sister, don't!"
Miss Letitia gazed distressfully from Miss Eliza to Arethusa, and then back to Miss Eliza again. Her round, good-natured little face was all drawn up and distorted with worry, just as it always was when war threatened, even remotely, between Miss Eliza and Arethusa. And these bouts concerning the girl's marriage to Timothy occurred so often without any advantage to either side.
"Because I shan't."
"That's no reason. You must have some sort of a reason. You can have no really valid objection to Timothy, Arethusa. He is quite handsome, and very likeable.Iam devoted to him, myself."
Miss Asenath felt quite like answering for Arethusa that this last statement was most irrelevant, but she refrained. There was really no use in adding the slightest fuel to flames already sufficiently high.
"You speak of the land being plaited in and out," continued Miss Eliza, looking sternly over her glasses. "That was a most foolish remark. Such a thing could never be, and you know it. I do not want you to marry Timothy for his land, of course. I merely mention its situation as next to what will some day be your own as making the alliance just that much more desirable. For heaven knows what will happen to the Farm when you do get it, if you haven't some sensible man to take care of it for you! But there are other things about Timothy that would make him a husband any girl could be proud of. There are plenty of them in this very County would jump at the chance you've had."
"They're very welcome to him!"
Arethusa thought it best not to say this too loud, but unfortunately Miss Eliza heard.
"I'm ashamed of you, Arethusa, if you're not ashamed of yourself. It's throwing away the opportunity of a life-time. I wish I was young, and in your shoes. Have you refused him lately?"
No answer from Arethusa. She picked at the soft blue fleece of Miss Asenath's comfort until she had collected quite a little pile of down, which she made into a ball and put as carefully to one side as if she intended it for some future use. Miss Asenath watched her sympathetically. If it would have done the slightest good she would have entered the breach, but when Miss Eliza reached the stage of her argument of pointblank questions, it meant pursuit to the bitter end.
Miss Letitia was not so wise. She had made three attempts to catch the loop of the same stitch in her crocheting, and failed each time, in her excitement. This was a most unusual performance for her. Her crochet needle poised in mid-air.
"Sister," she pleaded, "please. I wouldn't ask the child such a personal question, if I were you. Please!"
"Please what, 'Titia?" Miss Eliza was distracted for the fraction of a moment to Miss Letitia. "Why do you sit there saying, 'Please,' in that silly way? I will ask my niece Arethusa anything I wish. When I was young we were supposed to answer all the questions of our elders, personal or not, as you call them. Arethusa!"
When Miss Eliza spoke of "my niece Arethusa," it meant business. The poor niece turned desperately, and just in time to receive the broadside of a still more emphatic, "Arethusa!"
"Yes, I have, Aunt 'Liza. Timothy has asked me to marry him every summer since I was five years old, and in between times too, and I've said, 'No,' every single time. And if he keeps on asking me until I'm five hundred years old, I'll still keep on saying, 'no!' I shall never, never, marry Timothy!"
She left her refuge of the couch and started toward the door.
"I did not hear you asking permission to leave the room, Arethusa, and I do wish you would not exaggerate so violently. It is simply telling falsehoods. You told two in that one sentence. You know perfectly well Timothy hasn't been asking you to marry him since he was nine—a child of that age doesn't think of marriage. And you also know just as well as I do that you'll not live to be five hundred, it's absurd to make such statements. Come back here, Arethusa? Now what is your real reason for acting this way whenever I speak to you of Timothy. I want to know? You know just how your Aunt 'Titia and I and your Aunt 'Senath feel about it. Why do you persist in going against our wishes?"
Arethusa gazed wildly around the room. She seemed to hunt on walls and floor an answer to the uncompromisingly plain question. Close to the door she was poised like some wild bird arrested in its flight. One glance that included Miss Asenath and Miss Letitia absolved them both from participation in the scheme so clear to Miss Eliza's heart.
"I don't love Timothy," she said, at last, desperately.
"Nonsense!"
"But I don't!"
"Bah!... Love!" Miss Eliza was thoroughly disgusted. "What do you want to be so mawkish and sentimental for? Just like your father! You like Timothy, don't you? Then that's quite enough."
"But I couldn't marry anybody I didn't love." The persecuted one edged a little bit of a way nearer to the door.
"You don't know any thing about it," declared Miss Eliza, flatly. "What you call love is just pure silly!"
"Well," Arethusa despairingly presented her final bit of reasoning, "I hate Timothy! I think it's the very ugliest name I ever heard. I could never be happy married to anybody called 'Timothy'."
Miss Eliza sniffed. The girl was getting more and more foolish! "That certainly means nothing!"
"I always thought 'Timothy' was a good name," came softly from Miss Asenath. "I always liked 'Timothy' very much myself."
Arethusa melted suddenly. She remembered.
How could she have been so cruel as to say such a thing and hurt dear Aunt 'Senath's feelings? With a rush she was across the room and both strong young arms had clasped the frail figure of the best-loved aunt closely to her.
"Oh, Aunt 'Senath, Aunt 'Senath!" she sobbed, wildly penitent. "I was a beast! I didn't think! Your Timothy was a lovely name!"
It sounded a trifle illogical and inconsistent, but Miss Asenath seemed to understand perfectly. She whispered her forgiveness to the weeping Arethusa, who could only squeeze her and murmur incoherent avowals of her lack of intent to be unkind. To be unkind to Aunt 'Titia was bad enough, but to be unkind to Aunt 'Senath! It was the last word in perfidy.
"It all depends on what we think of the person, what we may think of the name, Arethusa, dear," said Miss Asenath. "I know you didn't mean it."
And Arethusa wept some more, scalding tears of still another sort of penitence: Aunt 'Senath was such a darling! The back of Miss Asenath's woolly white wrapper was rapidly getting damper and damper.
Such scenes as the one just past generally ended in just this way, with Arethusa's tears; and the tears nearly always cleared the air. Miss Eliza took up theChristian Observeronce more, and Miss Letitia resumed her rosy crocheting, after raveling out almost a whole row which she had put in as wrong as was possible.
"If I were you, Arethusa," remarked Miss Eliza drily, after awhile, looking up from her magazine to bend her sharp glance on the pair on the sofa, "I would not crush my aunt into jelly in order to show her your sorrow at being so thoughtless and unfeeling. And you will make her quite ill; very likely it will bring on one of her bad headaches, if you carry on much longer that way."
Miss Asenath's headaches were periods of much anxiety for all the family, with the great suffering they brought the gentle invalid. Arethusa drew away from the couch abruptly. She felt suddenly overwhelmed with her inability ever to do the right thing; a feeling which Miss Eliza was quite often successful in arousing in her niece.
Miss Asenath offered her own cobwebby handkerchief to dry Arethusa's reddened eyes. Then she asked Miss Eliza if she would not be good enough to read aloud to them for awhile. Miss Asenath had some of the makings of a diplomat.
None of the roomful of women would really listen, for Miss Letitia would be far too intent on counting stitches, and Miss Asenath would dream, and to Arethusa, Miss Eliza's choice of reading matter was anything but interesting; but Miss Eliza herself would be made beatific. She considered herself somewhat gifted as an elocutionist; during her course at the old Freeport Seminary, now so long ago, she had had the most lady-like of instruction. She prided herself on her ability to put "expression" into her reading. Thus would amiability be especially restored in her quarter, and poor, persecuted Arethusa might have a little while in which to attain some degree of calmness once more.
So Miss Asenath patted the place at her side invitingly. Arethusa cuddled up very close; Miss Eliza went back to the beginning of her article, having read a paragraph or two; and peace began to reign with the very first word of the reading aloud.
When Miss Eliza's voice, with all the proper inflections, had followed the various whys and wherefores of the death of Servetus to a triumphant conclusion, she was a different person. All the sharpness aroused by Arethusa's seeming scorn of Timothy had disappeared. She was even ready to say, when her niece stooped to kiss her good-night, that she was sorry if she had made her unhappy in her manner of discussing Timothy, and Timothy's matrimonial possibilities; and this was a very great concession for Miss Eliza.
"But you are making a great big mistake, Arethusa," she could not help adding, "every way, in not taking Timothy while you can."
Yet it was amiably said, and did not cause the slightest excitement.
Which goes but to prove more surely that Miss Asenath seemed to have missed her calling.