After Many Years

by Carolyn Strom Collins

  “What is your name?” asked Samuel.

  “Dorcas Edgelow.”

  “I told him that. He wouldn’t hardly believe it.”

  “Told who?”

  “O, Romney. He was quizzing me about you.”

  “O, indeed! And why wouldn’t he believe my name was Dorcas?”

  “Dunno. He’s full of queer notions. He says,” went on Samuel shamelessly, “that if he was rich he’d marry you.”

  Miss Edgelow crimsoned. She looked very angry for a moment, but Samuel, intent on shifting a snake to more comfortable quarters, did not notice this.

  “But he’s poor—always was and always will be, so he says. He’s a writer man, you know. He likes to spoon about with girls and then put them in his stories.”

  “O, so that is what he does,” said Miss Edgelow, still looking a little dangerous. “Did he tell you so?”

  “Yep. He wants to get acquainted with you so that he can put you in a book. Honest. That’s his idea. Would you like to be put in a book?”

  Miss Edgelow bit her lip.

  “Did he tell you this, too?”

  “Yes,” assented Samuel unblushingly. “Thought I ought to warn you. And he told me he always tells a girl just what he thinks she’d like to hear. Don’t let him fool you.”

  “O, I won’t.” Miss Edgelow looked as if there was not the slightest danger of it.

  “He thinks you ain’t bad looking o’ course,” supplemented Samuel, “only he doesn’t like your freckles. Say, do you know what will cure mange in a bulldog—a half bulldog?”

  Just at this moment Romney came along the lane on his way to have supper with Cousin Clorinda. He was dressed in white flannels and was bareheaded. His eyes were luminous and his thin, delicately cut face was dreamy and remote. He did not see Miss Edgelow until he was quite opposite to her, did not see her because he was thinking of her. Then he halted in confusion and bowed rather stiffly.

  Miss Edgelow stood up. He saw at once that she wore a dark red hat, very wonderful and droopy and becoming, and the palest of pale pink dresses. She turned away, but as she turned she flung him a brief, mysterious smile, a surprisingly nice smile considering the expression that it had replaced. Romney wanted to follow her but dared not. He went on feeling exceedingly and foolishly happy. He was quite as well aware of the foolishness of it as of the exceedingness.

  Miss Edgelow walked away also, forgetting Samuel, who, however, was satisfied, feeling that he had done a good bit of work. Miss Edgelow communed with herself as she went back home.

  “So that is what he does—studies girls for ‘types’ and puts them in his stories! Mr. Cooper, you need a lesson. I believe Uncle Jim was right when he said all Cooper men believed that every girl who looked at them fell in love with them. So you would marry me if you were rich. Condescending, insufferable young man! Wait till I’m through with you! And you don’t like my freckles.” Suddenly Miss Edgelow stopped and laughed. “Why should I blame you for that? I don’t like them myself.”

  “What do you find in this forsaken hole that is so amusing?” asked old Jim Edgelow, coming around a corner of the cedar walk.

  “Uncle Jim,” said Miss Edgelow, “if you were a young man trying to make love to a charming young woman—I am charming, am I not?—would you object to her freckles?”

  “Who’s been making love to you?” demanded old Jim fiercely.

  “Nobody. That’s the trouble. Nobody has made any love to me. I flung myself quite boldly in Romney Cooper’s way to-night and he passed me by. He objects, so I understand, to my freckles. Uncle, do you suppose I could make him fall madly in love with me in spite of my freckles, and then spurn him in true, dramatic Edgelow fashion? Do you suppose it would make any difference if he knew I don’t have freckles in winter?”

  “I think you’re quite mad,” said old Jim. “No, don’t smile at me like that. Let me tell you, Miss, that you trade too much on that smile. It may work with silly young asses but it won’t work with me. I won’t have you associating with this Cooper imbecile, do you hear me? Am I to be defied at my age by a chit of a girl?”

  “He says he won’t marry me,” said Miss Edgelow plaintively.

  “Good Lord, girl, have you asked him to marry you?”

  “Not yet,” said Miss Edgelow. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t be any use. He doesn’t like my freckles, as I’ve said.”

  Old Jim snorted and stamped off, too angry to speak. Besides, he suspected that this girl was making fun of him.

  “If there’s one thing that I like more than another,” Miss Edgelow remarked to the weeping beech, “it is tormenting the men.”

  Romney went down the lane and across the windy fields and along the shore. The sea was ruffled into a living crimson under the sunset. The fishing boats were coming in. One incredibly white little star was just visible where the pale pink of the upper sky shaded off into a paler green. Down low in the southwest there was a new moon. He saw it over his right shoulder, and wondered if Sylvia saw it too. She was not out of his thoughts for a minute during his whole walk, but he thought this was because he allowed it—never that it was because he could not help it.

  Cousin Clorinda’s house was so near the sea that the sound of waves always filled its rooms—a gray old house fronting the sunset, with leagues of satiny-rippled sea before it, purple headlands, and distant, fairylike, misty coasts.

  “What a view old Mark Wallace picked out when he built his homestead!” said Romney admiringly. “What a thing to have the sea at your very doorstep like this! How delightful it would be to live in this old remote place with Sylvia and walk along that shore with her in the moonlight. Heigh-ho, if it were only possible!”

  “If what were only possible?” queried Cousin Clorinda, billowing down the walk in blue muslin and a cherry-hued scarf.

  Romney told her.

  “And why isn’t it possible?”

  He stared at her. This incredible woman scarcely twenty-four hours ago had warned him against having anything to do with Miss Edgelow, and had quoted feuds to him. And now she didn’t seem able to believe that the idea was absurd.

  “Adorable and adored cousin, why this right-about-face? You amaze me.”

  “Haven’t you faced about yourself?” retorted Clorinda. “Yesterday afternoon you were going to marry her out-of-hand. Now you are groaning that it isn’t possible!”

  “I told you three o’clock would bring wisdom. Three o’clock in the morning is the wisest and most accursed hour of the clock. At three o’clock I saw clearly how impossible it all was.”

  “At three o’clock I saw that is was quite possible,” averred Clorinda. “Why not?”

  “She is, or will be, disgustingly rich.”

  “All the better. You can’t live on love.”

  “Nor on my wife’s money, either.”

  “Can’t you make enough to live on?”

  “I’ve always made enough to live on myself. But I couldn’t ask Sylvia to live in a garret with me.”

  “Any other reasons?”

  “She is a flirt, I think. No, I’ll say a coquette. That sounds better, infinitely more alluring and gracious.”

  “A girl like her always flirts till the right man comes.”

  “I don’t suppose she’d look at me.”

  “She’s half in love with you already.”

  “And finally, her name isn’t Sylvia.”

  “I won’t discuss the matter if you’re not going to be serious,” said Cousin Clorinda, really annoyed. She had lain awake most of the night constructing a gorgeous castle in air for Romney, and it was aggravating to find that he refused to inhabit it, and refused so frivolously.

  “Dear young thing, I am serious. Isn’t it serious that that exquisite dream maiden should be named Dorcas? Serious! Why, it’s a tragedy!”

  “I have k
nown several excellent women,” said Cousin Clorinda severely, “who were named Dorcas.”

  “I grant it. Excellent women, beyond a doubt! But had those excellent women beauty, charm, distinction? Did they walk and speak like queens? Could they afford to comb their hair straight back from their faces?”

  “No,” admitted Cousin Clorinda after a few moments of honest reflection, “no, I don’t suppose they were—did—could.”

  “You see,” said Romney triumphantly, “of course she shouldn’t be named Dorcas! But don’t let’s talk of her, cousin. I had an attack of temporary insanity at four by the clock yesterday. I am sane now. I am not in love with Miss Edgelow. I am not going to be in love with her. I think I will put her into my next magazine serial as a heroine. That is her proper environment. She is not meant for human nature’s daily food. I couldn’t ask her to darn my socks or fry my bacon. Lead me to your jam closet, lady fair! Comfort me with raspberry vinegar, for I am sick of Aunt Elizabeth’s sweetish ginger cordial. And stay me with an armchair. Your armchairs always fitted my kinks.”

  “I’ve got supper ready for you in the dining room. I want you to eat it and tell me I’m a good cook. I’m dying for a compliment. I never get any now that I’m old.”

  “Where is your school-teacher?”

  “In her room, correcting exercises. No, I am not going to call her down. If Dorcas Edgelow doesn’t interest you then—”

  “But she does. Haven’t I told you that I’m going to write a story about her? Interest me! Why, I held her in my arms to-day for thirty blissful seconds! I won’t say but what I held her a shade more tightly than was absolutely necessary. But then I had to be careful not to drop her, hadn’t I? Fancy if I had dropped her in the run!”

  “Rom-ney Coop-er!”

  “They didn’t put the hyphens in when they christened me. Strawberry shortcake! Cousin of my heart, you’re—”

  “You shan’t have one crumb of my strawberry shortcake until you’ve told me what you’ve been doing. Romney, you’re overacting. You are dying to talk to me of Dorcas Edgelow, and yet you pretend you aren’t.”

  “I came down here to talk about Samuel Rice,” protested Romney with warmth. “I’m really interested in Samuel. He is a gifted, engaging orphan. I want to do something for him, uplift him. For instance, couldn’t we persuade him to go to Sunday school? You can help me, Cousin Clorinda. A good woman’s influence—”

  “I don’t care a hoot about gifted orphans, just now, anyhow. I’m dying to hear all about Dorcas Edgelow and you. I’ve never known a romantic love affair, not even my own.”

  “Would you sacrifice my happiness, ruin my life, break my heart, to gratify your lust for romance?” demanded Romney. “Cousin Clorinda, I won’t talk of her. She is charming; you’ve no idea how charming she is! Her freckles are enchanting; an atmosphere of perfume seems to surround her and yet I swear she doesn’t use perfume. She has a nice little way of cuddling in your arms when you are carrying her about. And her smile, Cousin Clorinda—”

  “I am a patient woman, Romney, but if you don’t tell me without any further preamble what you mean by carrying her about I’ll smack your ears.”

  Romney told her. Also he told her of the meeting in the Whispering Lane.

  “She was in the Whispering Lane?”

  “Yes, by chance or God’s grace and she wore—”

  “She went to the Whispering Lane after you had suggested it as a sort of neutral ground? And you didn’t stop and talk to her? You didn’t—”

  “I had an engagement with you, divinity.”

  “You are a hopeless goose! You have thrown away a golden opportunity. And you have insulted her.”

  “Cousin Clorinda, you don’t really mean that you think she went there to meet me?”

  “Of course she did,” said Cousin Clorinda. “When she smiled at you as you say she did you should have followed her, even if you broke forty engagements with me; followed her to the very den of old Jim himself, if necessary.”

  “What about the feud?”

  “A feud,” said Cousin Clorinda solemnly, “is an unchristian thing. Besides, it would be a treat to see Mary Edgelow’s face if Dorcas married you.”

  “I give up trying to understand you,” said Romney. “Anyhow, I’ve told you all there is to tell, so now may I have my shortcake?”

  It was starlight when Romney went home. A white filmy mist was hanging over the river valley. He crossed the sea fields and climbed Hill o’ the Winds. The dew was cold and the night was full of mystery and wonder and sheer magic. The two houses on the hill and their old gardens were veiled in it. It was an expectant night, a night when things intended to happen.

  Romney halted on the porch for a moment. There was a blot of white in the Edgelow garden, just across the hedge. As he looked at it something was thrown over the hedge and struck him in the face, a soft, odorous something. He stopped and picked it up. It was a wide-blown rose, damp and exquisite with dew, a rose white enough to lie in her bosom or to star the soft, dark cloud of her hair.

  When Romney straightened up and looked across to the Edgelow garden the blot of white was gone.

  He kissed the rose.

  “It’s too dear a night to go to sleep,” he said. “I will lay me down in the hammock and dream sweet, wonderful, foolish dreams that will be all the more wonderful and foolish and sweet because they can never be anything but dreams. I will dream of a world where there is no three o’clock in the morning.”

  In her room Miss Edgelow was looking scrutinizingly in the glass.

  “They really don’t show so much by lamplight,” she said.

  Chapter IV

  There is, unfortunately, a three o’clock every night, and the fire of Romney’s enthusiasm was in white ashes again by morning. He got up and repeated several times aloud to himself: “She is an Edgelow. Her father is rich. Her uncle will make her richer. Her name is Dorcas,” by way of fortifying his determination to think no more of her and see no more of her.

  He was full of prudent resolution. He would not so much as look toward the Edgelow garden; he would never go near the Whispering Lane; if he ever met Dorcas Edgelow by accident he would bow with easy courtesy and pass on. It did not matter a particle whether her eyes were gray or blue.

  Then it occurred to him that it was odd that it should require such a tremendous amount of resolution to avoid a girl whom he had not even seen forty-eight hours ago. It would not be forty-eight hours until four o’clock that afternoon.

  Romney whistled uproariously all the time he was dressing. One window of his room looked out on the Edgelow garden, but he never glanced that way. He talked to Aunt Elizabeth all through breakfast of his work and his ambitions and his idea for his new serial, but he did not tell her he meant to use Dorcas Edgelow for a heroine. He did not mention Edgelows at all. The curious thing is that he thought himself quite heroic because he did not.

  After breakfast he rushed off to the shore for a surf dip, never glancing at the Edgelow garden at all. Not that he would have seen anything if he did look. Dorcas Edgelow, being no doubt a lazy, luxurious, pampered little thing, was still asleep in bed.

  Halfway to the shore Romney suddenly remembered that he had left the rose she had tossed him in a glass of water in his room. What if Aunt Elizabeth flung it out! She would be sure to, never dreaming that a faded flower was of any value. He turned and rushed madly home again, getting there just in the nick of time. He met Aunt Elizabeth carrying the rose downstairs.

  “O, aunty, give me that. It’s very much mine.”

  “It’s faded,” said Aunt Elizabeth in astonishment.

  “I kissed it to death,” said Romney.

  “It is not,” said Aunt Elizabeth coldly, “the sort of flower you should have in your possession at all.”

  So she knew it for one of the Edgelow roses.

  �
��It’s a rose of Eden,” said Romney. “Do you know the legend of the Rose of Eden, Aunt Elizabeth?”

  No, Aunt Elizabeth did not know it. She knew only that she wanted to get downstairs and that Romney was blocking up the way.

  “Don’t you know your Kipling, Aunt Elizabeth?”

  “What is a Kipling?” asked Aunt Elizabeth patiently.

  “Why—er—ah—Kipling is a poet.” Romney was very flat.

  “Was he any relation to Longfellow?”

  “No, I think I may safely say they were not connected. But he wrote a poem about the Rose of Eden. When Eve left Eden she contrived to carry off with her one of its roses, and wherever one of its blood-red petals fell sprang up a Rose-of-Eden tree. You find ’em here and there all over the world. And every daughter of Eve—and every son of Adam, though Kipling doesn’t mention that—shall once at least ‘ere the tale of his years be done’ smell the scent of an Eden rose, have his one glorious moment when he sees his dream, even though he may never grasp it. And that one moment, Aunt Elizabeth, makes life worthwhile, even though all the rest of it be roseless.”

  Aunt Elizabeth looked down at him. She was not a stupid woman even if she did not know her Kipling, and she understood his meaning. An old, old memory stirred in her heart; a whiff of ghostly fragrance, painfully sweet, blew through the deserted chambers of her soul. Without a word she handed Romney his rose and went on down the stairs. But at the foot she turned and looked up, already repenting her weakness.

  “She is of the race of our enemies,” she said warningly and disapprovingly.

  It was too late now to go to the shore. The sun would be too hot for the return walk. Romney went down to the hollow and hunted up Samuel. Again he never looked at the Edgelow garden. Yet although he did not look, he saw her there quite plainly, strolling up and down the acacia walk bareheaded. When he had disappeared without looking, Dorcas Edgelow went back to the house and remarked to her uncle, who was reading in his library.

  “I hate that young man next door.”

  “It would please me much better, Miss, if you thought nothing at all about him,” said her uncle.