by Louise Welsh
They had traveled about half a mile, passed the village square, and gone a short distance beyond, when the boy drew up with a sudden Whoa! before a very prosperous-looking house. It had been one of the aboriginal cottages of the vicinity, small and white, with a roof extending on one side over a piazza, and a tiny “L” jutting out in the rear, on the right hand. Now the cottage was transformed by dormer windows, a bay window on the piazzaless side, a carved railing down the front steps, and a modern hard-wood door.
“Is this John Dent’s house?” asked Rebecca.
The boy was as sparing of speech as a philosopher. His only response was in flinging the reins over the horse’s back, stretching out one foot to the shaft, and leaping out of the wagon, then going around to the rear for the trunk. Rebecca got out and went toward the house. Its white paint had a new gloss; its blinds were an immaculate apple green; the lawn was trimmed as smooth as velvet, and it was dotted with scrupulous groups of hydrangeas and cannas.
“I always understood that John Dent was well-to-do,” Rebecca reflected comfortably. “I guess Agnes will have considerable. I’ve got enough, but it will come in handy for her schooling. She can have advantages.”
The boy dragged the trunk up the fine gravel-walk, but before he reached the steps leading up to the piazza, for the house stood on a terrace, the front door opened and a fair, frizzled head of a very large and handsome woman appeared. She held up her black silk skirt, disclosing voluminous ruffles of starched embroidery, and waited for Rebecca. She smiled placidly, her pink, double-chinned face widened and dimpled, but her blue eyes were wary and calculating. She extended her hand as Rebecca climbed the steps.
“This is Miss Flint, I suppose,” said she.
“Yes, ma’am,” replied Rebecca, noticing with bewilderment a curious expression compounded of fear and defiance on the other’s face.
“Your letter only arrived this morning,” said Mrs. Dent, in a steady voice. Her great face was a uniform pink, and her china-blue eyes were at once aggressive and veiled with secrecy.
“Yes, I hardly thought you’d get my letter,” replied Rebecca. “I felt as if I could not wait to hear from you before I came. I supposed you would be so situated that you could have me a little while without putting you out too much, from what John used to write me about his circumstances, and when I had that money so unexpected I felt as if I must come for Agnes. I suppose you will be willing to give her up. You know she’s my own blood, and of course she’s no relation to you, though you must have got attached to her. I know from her picture what a sweet girl she must be, and John always said she looked like her own mother, and Grace was a beautiful woman, if she was my sister.”
Rebecca stopped and stared at the other woman in amazement and alarm. The great handsome blonde creature stood speechless, livid, gasping, with her hand to her heart, her lips parted in a horrible caricature of a smile.
“Are you sick!” cried Rebecca, drawing near. “Don’t you want me to get you some water!”
Then Mrs. Dent recovered herself with a great effort. “It is nothing,” she said. “I am subject to – spells. I am over it now. Won’t you come in, Miss Flint?”
As she spoke, the beautiful deep-rose colour suffused her face, her blue eyes met her visitor’s with the opaqueness of turquoise – with a revelation of blue, but a concealment of all behind.
Rebecca followed her hostess in, and the boy, who had waited quiescently, climbed the steps with the trunk. But before they entered the door a strange thing happened. On the upper terrace close to the piazza-post, grew a great rose-bush, and on it, late in the season though it was, one small red, perfect rose.
Rebecca looked at it, and the other woman extended her hand with a quick gesture. “Don’t you pick that rose!” she brusquely cried.
Rebecca drew herself up with stiff dignity.
“I ain’t in the habit of picking other folks’ roses without leave,” said she.
As Rebecca spoke she started violently, and lost sight of her resentment, for something singular happened. Suddenly the rose-bush was agitated violently as if by a gust of wind, yet it was a remarkably still day. Not a leaf of the hydrangea standing on the terrace close to the rose trembled.
“What on earth—” began Rebecca, then she stopped with a gasp at the sight of the other woman’s face. Although a face, it gave somehow the impression of a desperately clutched hand of secrecy.
“Come in!” said she in a harsh voice, which seemed to come forth from her chest with no intervention of the organs of speech. “Come into the house. I’m getting cold out here.”
“What makes that rose-bush blow so when their isn’t any wind?” asked Rebecca, trembling with vague horror, yet resolute.
“I don’t see as it is blowing,” returned the woman calmly. And as she spoke, indeed, the bush was quiet.
“It was blowing,” declared Rebecca.
“It isn’t now,” said Mrs. Dent. “I can’t try to account for everything that blows out-of-doors. I have too much to do.”
She spoke scornfully and confidently, with defiant, unflinching eyes, first on the bush, then on Rebecca, and led the way into the house.
“It looked queer,” persisted Rebecca, but she followed, and also the boy with the trunk.
Rebecca entered an interior, prosperous, even elegant, according to her simple ideas. There were Brussels carpets, lace curtains, and plenty of brilliant upholstery and polished wood.
“You’re real nicely situated,” remarked Rebecca, after she had become a little accustomed to her new surroundings and the two women were seated at the tea-table.
Mrs. Dent stared with a hard complacency from behind her silver-plated service. “Yes, I be,” said she.
“You got all the things new?” said Rebecca hesitatingly, with a jealous memory of her dead sister’s bridal furnishings.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Dent; “I was never one to want dead folks’ things, and I had money enough of my own, so I wasn’t beholden to John. I had the old duds put up at auction. They didn’t bring much.”
“I suppose you saved some for Agnes. She’ll want some of her poor mother’s things when she is grown up,” said Rebecca with some indignation.
The defiant stare of Mrs. Dent’s blue eyes waxed more intense. “There’s a few things up garret,” said she.
“She’ll be likely to value them,” remarked Rebecca. As she spoke she glanced at the window. “Isn’t it most time for her to be coming home?” she asked.
“Most time,” answered Mrs. Dent carelessly; “but when she gets over to Addie Slocum’s she never knows when to come home.”
“Is Addie Slocum her intimate friend?”
“Intimate as any.”
“Maybe we can have her come out to see Agnes when she’s living with me,” said Rebecca wistfully. “I suppose she’ll be likely to be homesick at first.”
“Most likely,” answered Mrs. Dent.
“Does she call you mother?” Rebecca asked.
“No, she calls me Aunt Emeline,” replied the other woman shortly. “When did you say you were going home?”
“In about a week, I thought, if she can be ready to go so soon,” answered Rebecca with a surprised look.
She reflected that she would not remain a day longer than she could help after such an inhospitable look and question.
“Oh, as far as that goes,” said Mrs. Dent, “it wouldn’t make any difference about her being ready. You could go home whenever you felt that you must, and she could come afterward.”
“Alone?”
“Why not? She’s a big girl now, and you don’t have to change cars.”
“My niece will go home when I do, and not travel alone; and if I can’t wait here for her, in the house that used to be her mother’s and my sister’s home, I’ll go and board somewhere,” returned Rebecca with warmth.
“Oh, you can stay here as long as you want to. You’re welcome,” said Mrs. Dent.
Then Rebecca started. “There she
is!” she declared in a trembling, exultant voice. Nobody knew how she longed to see the girl.
“She isn’t as late as I thought she’d be,” said Mrs. Dent, and again that curious, subtle change passed over her face, and again it settled into that stony impassiveness.
Rebecca stared at the door, waiting for it to open. “Where is she?” she asked presently.
“I guess she’s stopped to take off her hat in the entry,” suggested Mrs. Dent.
Rebecca waited. “Why don’t she come? It can’t take her all this time to take off her hat.”
For answer Mrs. Dent rose with a stiff jerk and threw open the door.
“Agnes!” she called. “Agnes!” Then she turned and eyed Rebecca. “She ain’t there.”
“I saw her pass the window,” said Rebecca in bewilderment.
“You must have been mistaken.”
“I know I did,” persisted Rebecca.
“You couldn’t have.”
“I did. I saw first a shadow go over the ceiling, then I saw her in the glass there” – she pointed to a mirror over the sideboard opposite – “and then the shadow passed the window.”
“How did she look in the glass?”
“Little and light-haired, with the light hair kind of tossing over her forehead.”
“You couldn’t have seen her.”
“Was that like Agnes?”
“Like enough; but of course you didn’t see her. You’ve been thinking so much about her that you thought you did.”
“You thought you did.”
“I thought I saw a shadow pass the window, but I must have been mistaken. She didn’t come in, or we would have seen her before now. I knew it was too early for her to get home from Addie Slocum’s, anyhow.”
When Rebecca went to bed Agnes had not returned. Rebecca had resolved that she would not retire until the girl came, but she was very tired, and she reasoned with herself that she was foolish. Besides, Mrs. Dent suggested that Agnes might go to the church social with Addie Slocum. When Rebecca suggested that she be sent for and told that her aunt had come, Mrs. Dent laughed meaningly.
“I guess you’ll find out that a young girl ain’t so ready to leave a sociable, where there’s boys, to see her aunt,” said she.
“She’s too young,” said Rebecca incredulously and indignantly.
“She’s sixteen,” replied Mrs. Dent; “and she’s always been great for the boys.”
“She’s going to school four years after I get her before she thinks of boys,” declared Rebecca.
“We’ll see,” laughed the other woman.
After Rebecca went to bed, she lay awake a long time listening for the sound of girlish laughter and a boy’s voice under her window; then she fell asleep.
The next morning she was down early. Mrs. Dent, who kept no servants, was busily preparing breakfast.
“Don’t Agnes help you about breakfast?” asked Rebecca.
“No, I let her lay,” replied Mrs. Dent shortly.
“What time did she get home last night?”
“She didn’t get home.”
“What?”
“She didn’t get home. She stayed with Addie. She often does.”
“Without sending you word?”
“Oh, she knew I wouldn’t worry.”
“When will she be home?”
“Oh, I guess she’ll be along pretty soon.”
Rebecca was uneasy, but she tried to conceal it, for she knew of no good reason for uneasiness. What was there to occasion alarm in the fact of one young girl staying overnight with another? She could not eat much breakfast. Afterward she went out on the little piazza, although her hostess strove furtively to stop her.
“Why don’t you go out back of the house? It’s real pretty – a view over the river,” she said.
“I guess I’ll go out here,” replied Rebecca. She had a purpose: to watch for the absent girl.
Presently Rebecca came hustling into the house through the sitting-room, into the kitchen where Mrs. Dent was cooking.
“That rose-bush!” she gasped.
Mrs. Dent turned and faced her.
“What of it?”
“It’s a-blowing.”
“What of it?”
“There isn’t a mite of wind this morning.”
Mrs. Dent turned with an inimitable toss of her fair head. “If you think I can spend my time puzzling over such nonsense as –…” she began, but Rebecca interrupted her with a cry and a rush to the door.
“There she is now!” she cried. She flung the door wide open, and curiously enough a breeze came in and her own gray hair tossed, and a paper blew off the table to the floor with a loud rustle, but there was nobody in sight.
“There’s nobody here,” Rebecca said.
She looked blankly at the other woman, who brought her rolling-pin down on a slab of piecrust with a thud.
“I didn’t hear anybody,” she said calmly.
“I saw somebody pass that window!”
“You were mistaken again.”
“I know I saw somebody.”
“You couldn’t have. Please shut that door.”
Rebecca shut the door. She sat down beside the window and looked out on the autumnal yard, with its little curve of footpath to the kitchen door.
“What smells so strong of roses in this room?” she said presently. She sniffed hard.
“I don’t smell anything but these nutmegs.”
“It is not nutmeg.”
“I don’t smell anything else.”
“Where do you suppose Agnes is?”
“Oh, perhaps she has gone over the ferry to Porter’s Falls with Addie. She often does. Addie’s got an aunt over there, and Addie’s got a cousin, a real pretty boy.”
“You suppose she’s gone over there?”
“Mebbe. I shouldn’t wonder.”
“When should she be home?”
“Oh, not before afternoon.”
Rebecca waited with all the patience she could muster. She kept reassuring herself, telling herself that it was all natural, that the other woman could not help it, but she made up her mind that if Agnes did not return that afternoon she should be sent for.
When it was four o’clock she started up with resolution. She had been furtively watching the onyx clock on the sitting-room mantel; she had timed herself. She had said that if Agnes was not home by that time she should demand that she be sent for. She rose and stood before Mrs. Dent, who looked up coolly from her embroidery.
“I’ve waited just as long as I’m going to,” she said. “I’ve come ‘way from Michigan to see my own sister’s daughter and take her home with me. I’ve been here ever since yesterday – twenty-four hours – and I haven’t seen her. Now I’m going to. I want her sent for.”
Mrs. Dent folded her embroidery and rose.
“Well, I don’t blame you,” she said. “It is high time she came home. I’ll go right over and get her myself.”
Rebecca heaved a sigh of relief. She hardly knew what she had suspected or feared, but she knew that her position had been one of antagonism if not accusation, and she was sensible of relief.
“I wish you would,” she said gratefully, and went back to her chair, while Mrs. Dent got her shawl and her little white head-tie. “I wouldn’t trouble you, but I do feel as if I couldn’t wait any longer to see her,” she remarked apologetically.
“Oh, it ain’t any trouble at all,” said Mrs. Dent as she went out. “I don’t blame you; you have waited long enough.”
Rebecca sat at the window watching breathlessly until Mrs. Dent came stepping through the yard alone. She ran to the door and saw, hardly noticing it this time, that the rose-bush was again violently agitated, yet with no wind evident elsewhere.
“Where is she?” she cried.
Mrs. Dent laughed with stiff lips as she came up the steps over the terrace. “Girls will be girls,” said she. “She’s gone with Addie to Lincoln. Addie’s got an uncle who’s conductor on the trai
n, and lives there, and he got ‘em passes, and they’re goin’ to stay to Addie’s Aunt Margaret’s a few days. Mrs. Slocum said Agnes didn’t have time to come over and ask me before the train went, but she took it on herself to say it would be all right, and—”
“Why hadn’t she been over to tell you?” Rebecca was angry, though not suspicious. She even saw no reason for her anger.
“Oh, she was putting up grapes. She was coming over just as soon as she got the black off her hands. She heard I had company, and her hands were a sight. She was holding them over sulphur matches.”
“You say she’s going to stay a few days?” repeated Rebecca dazedly.
“Yes; till Thursday, Mrs. Slocum said.”
“How far is Lincoln from here?”
“About fifty miles. It’ll be a real treat to her. Mrs. Slocum’s sister is a real nice woman.”
“It is goin’ to make it pretty late about my goin’ home.”
“If you don’t feel as if you could wait, I’ll get her ready and send her on just as soon as I can,” Mrs. Dent said sweetly.
“I’m going to wait,” said Rebecca grimly.
The two women sat down again, and Mrs. Dent took up her embroidery.
“Is there any sewing I can do for her?” Rebecca asked finally in a desperate way. “If I can get her sewing along some-”
Mrs. Dent arose with alacrity and fetched a mass of white from the closet. “Here,” she said, “if you want to sew the lace on this nightgown. I was going to put her to it, but she’ll be glad enough to get rid of it. She ought to have this and one more before she goes. I don’t like to send her away without some good underclothing.”
Rebecca snatched at the little white garment and sewed feverishly.
That night she wakened from a deep sleep a little after midnight and lay a minute trying to collect her faculties and explain to herself what she was listening to. At last she discovered that it was the then popular strains of “The Maiden’s Prayer” floating up through the floor from the piano in the sitting-room below. She jumped up, threw a shawl over her nightgown, and hurried downstairs trembling. There was nobody in the sitting-room; the piano was silent. She ran to Mrs. Dent’s bedroom and called hysterically: