Part 20 (1/2)
”You see the boat is very new and clean, Miss,” he was saying, ”and I hope you were satisfied with me?”
I upset Sally's business affairs at once, engaged Cary, and told him he must take out no one else without knowing our plans. My handkerchief fell as I talked to him and he picked it up and presented it with as much ease and grace as if he had done such things all his life. It was a remarkable sailor we had happened on. A smile came like suns.h.i.+ne over his face--the smile that made him look as Geoffrey Meade looked, half a century ago.
”I'll promise not to take any one else, ma'am,” he said. And then, with the pretty, engaging frankness that won my heart over again each time, ”And I hope you'll want to go often--not so much for the money, but because it is a pleasure to me to take you--both.”
There was mail for us waiting at the Inn. ”Listen, Sally,” I said, as I read mine in my room after dinner. ”This is from Anne Ford. She wants to join us here the 6th of next month, to fill in a week between visits at country-houses.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”You see, the boat is very new and clean, Miss,” he was saying.]
Sally, sitting on the floor before the fire, her dark hair loose and her letters lying about her, looked up attentively, and discreetly answered nothing. Anne Ford was my cousin, but not hers, and I knew without discussing it, that Sally cared for her no more than I. She was made of showy fibre, woven in a brilliant pattern, but the fibre was a little coa.r.s.e, and the pattern had no shading. She was rich and a beauty and so used to being the centre of things, and largely the circ.u.mference too, that I, who am a spoiled old woman, and like a little place and a little consideration, find it difficult to be comfortable as spoke upon her wheel.
”It's too bad,” I went on regretfully. ”Anne will not appreciate Clovelly, and she will spoil it for us. She is not a girl I care for. I don't see why I should he made a convenience for Anne Ford,” I argued in my selfish way. ”I think I shall write her not to come.”
Sally laughed cheerfully. ”She won't bother us, Cousin Mary. It would be too bad to refuse her, wouldn't it? She can't spoil Clovelly--it's been here too long. Anne is rather overpowering,” Sally went on, a bit wistfully. ”She's such a beauty, and she has such stunning clothes.”
The firelight played on the girl's flushed, always-changing face, full of warm light and shadow; it touched daintily the white muslin and pink ribbons of the pretty negligee she wore, Sally was one of the poor girls whose simple things are always fresh and right. I leaned over and patted her rough hair affectionately.
”Your clothes are just as pretty,” I said, ”and Anne doesn't compare with you in my eyes.” I lifted the unfinished letter and glanced over it. ”All about her visit to Lady Fisher,” I said aloud, giving a resume as I read. ”What gowns she wore to what functions; what men were devoted to her--their names--t.i.tles--incomes too.” I smiled. ”And--what is this?” I stopped talking, for a name had caught my eye. I glanced over the page. ”Isn't this curious! Listen, my dear,” I said. ”This will interest you!” I read aloud from Anne's letter.
”'But the man who can have me if he wants me is Sir Richard Leigh. He is the very best that ever happened, and moreover, quite the catch of the season. His t.i.tle is old, and he has a yacht and an ancestral place or two, and is very rich, they say--but that isn't it. My heart is his without his decorations--well, perhaps not quite that, but it's certainly his with the decorations. He is such a beauty, Cousin Mary!
Even you would admire him. It gives you quite a shock when he comes into a room, yet he is so unconscious and modest, and has the most graceful, fascinatingly quiet manners and wonderful brown eyes that seem to talk for him. He does everything well, and everything hard, is a dare-devil on horseback, a reckless sailor, and a lot besides. If you could see the way those eyes look at me, and the smile that breaks over his face as if the sun had come out suddenly! But alas! the sun has gone under now, for he went this morning, and it's not clear if he's coming back or not.
They say his yacht is near Bideford, where his home is, and Clovelly is not far from that, is it?'”
I stopped and looked at Sally, listening, on the floor. She was staring into the fire.
”What do you think of that?” I asked. Sally was slow at answering; she stared on at the burning logs that seemed whispering answers to the blaze.
”Some girls have everything,” she said at length. ”Look at Anne. She's beautiful and rich and everybody admires her, and she goes about to big country-houses and meets famous and interesting people. And now this Sir Richard Leigh comes like the prince into the story, and I dare say he will fall in love with her and if she finds no one that suits her better she will marry him and have that grand old historic name.”
”Sally, dear,” I said, ”you're not envying Anne, are you?”
A quick blush rushed to her face. ”Cousin Mary! What foolishness I've been talking! How could I! What must you think of me! I didn't mean it--please believe I didn't. I'm the luckiest girl on earth, and I'm having the most perfect time, and you are a fairy G.o.dmother to me, except that you're more like a younger sister. I was thinking aloud.
Anne is such a brilliant being compared to me, that the thought of her discourages me sometimes. It was just Cinderella admiring the princess, you know.”
”Cinderella got the prince,” I said, smiling.
”I don't want the prince,” said Sally, ”even if I could get him. I wouldn't marry an Englishman. I don't care about a t.i.tle. To be a Virginian is enough t.i.tle for me. It was just his name, magnificent Sir Richard Grenville's name and the Revenge-Armada atmosphere that took my fancy. I don't know if Anne would care for that part,” she added, doubtfully.
”I'm sure Anne would know nothing about it,” I answered decidedly, and Sally went on cheerfully.
”She's very welcome to the modern Sir Richard, yacht and t.i.tle and all.
I don't believe he's as attractive as your sailor, Cousin Mary.
Something the same style, I should say from the description. If you hadn't owned him from the start, I'd rather like that man to be my sailor, Cousin Mary--he's so everything that a gentleman is supposed to be. How did he learn that manner--why, it would flatter you if he let the boom whack you on the head. Too bad he's only a common sailor--such a prince gone wrong!”
I looked at her talking along softly, leaning back on one hand and gazing at the fire, a small white Turkish slipper--Southern girls always have little feet--stuck out to the blaze, and something in the leisurely att.i.tude and low, unhurried voice, something, too, in the reminiscent crackle of the burning wood, invited me to confidence. I went to my dressing-table, and when I came back, dropped, as if I were another girl, on the rug beside her. ”I want to show you this,” I said, and opened a case that travels always with me. From the narrow gold rim of frame inside, my lover smiled gayly up at her brown hair and my gray, bending over it together.
None of the triumphs of modern photographers seem to my eyes so delicately charming as the daguerrotypes of the sixties. As we tipped the old picture this way and that, to catch the right light on the image under the gla.s.s, the very uncertainty of effect seemed to give it an elusive fascination. To my mind the birds in the bush have always brighter plumage than any in the hand, and one of these early photographs leaves ever, no matter from what angle you look upon it, much to the imagination. So Geoff in his gray Southern uniform, young and soldierly, laughed up at Sally and me from the shadowy lines beneath the gla.s.s, more like a vision of youth than like actual flesh and blood that had once been close and real. His brown hair, parted far to one side, swept across his forehead in a smooth wave, as was the old-fas.h.i.+oned way; his collar was of a big, queer sort unknown to-day; the cut of his soldier's coat was antique; but the beauty of the boyish face, the straight glance of his eyes, and ease of the broad shoulders that military drill could not stiffen, these were untouched, were idealized even by the old-time atmosphere that floated up from the picture like fragrance of rose-leaves. As I gazed down at the boy, it came to me with a pang that he was very young and I growing very old, and I wondered would he care for me still. Then I remembered that where he lived it was the unworn soul and not the worn-out body that counted, and I knew that the spirit within me would meet his when the day came, with as fresh a joy as forty years ago. And as I still looked, happy in the thought, I felt all at once as if I had seen his face, heard his voice, felt the touch of his young hand that day--could almost feel it yet. Perhaps my eyes were a little dim, perhaps the uncertainty of the old daguerrotype helped the illusion, but the smile of the master of the Revenge seemed to s.h.i.+ne up at me from my Geoff's likeness, and then Sally's slow voice broke the pause.
”It's Cousin Geoffrey, isn't it?” she asked. Her father was Geoffrey Meade's cousin--a little boy when Geoff died, ”Was he as beautiful as that?” she said, gently, putting her hand over mine that held the velvet case. And then, after another pause, she went on, hesitatingly; ”Cousin Mary, I wonder if you would mind if I told you whom he looks like to me?”