Books: Old Rose and Silver

M >> Myrtle Reed >> Old Rose and Silver

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On Wednesdays, the men of the other household dined with her. Saturdays,
she and Juliet were honoured guests at the Colonel's, though he
deprecated his own hospitality. "A house needs a woman at the head of
it," he said. "It was different when Miss Rose was here."

"Indeed it was," thought Allison, though he did not put it into words.

At the end of the month, when it was cool enough to make an open fire
seem the most cheerful of companions, Madame had them all at her own
table. Juliet was surpassingly lovely in her first long gown, of ivory-
tinted chiffon, ornamented only by hand embroidery and a bit of deep-
toned lace. Her wavy hair was gathered into a loose knot, from which
tiny tendrils escaped to cling about her face. Madame had put a pink
rose into her hair, slipped another into her belt, and had been well
pleased with the work of her own hands.

After dinner, while Juliet played piquet with the Colonel, and Doctor
Jack sat quietly in the shadow, where he could watch every play of light
and shade upon the girl's lovely changing face, Allison drew Madame into
the library and quietly closed the door.

"Aunt Francesca," he said, without preliminary, "I've been more kinds of
a fool in a few months than most men can manage to be in a lifetime."

"Yes," Madame agreed, with a cool little smile.

"Where is Rose?" he demanded.

"Rose," replied Madame, lightly, "has gone away."

"I know that," he flashed back. "I realise it every day and every hour
of my life. I asked where she was."

"And I," answered Madame, imperturbably, "have told you. She is simply
'away.'"

"Is she well?"

"Yes."

"Is she happy?'

"Of course. Why not? Beauty, health, talent, sufficient income, love--
what more can a woman desire?"

"Aunt Francesca! Tell me, please. Where is Rose?"

"When I was married," answered Madame, idly fingering an ivory paper
knife, "I went to live in a little house in the woods."

"Yes? Where is Rose?"

"It was only a tiny place, but a brook sang in front of it, night and
day."

"Must have been pretty. Where did Rose go?"

"It was very quiet there. It would have been a good place to work, if
either of us had been musical, or anything of that sort."

"Charming," replied Allison, absently.

"It wasn't far from town, either. We could take a train at two o'clock,
and reach Holly Springs a little after three. It was half a mile up the
main road from the station, and, as we had no horse, we always walked."

"Nice walk," said Allison, dejectedly.

"I have never been back since--since I was left alone. Sometimes I have
thought my little house ought to have someone to look after it. A house
gets lonely, too, with no one to care for it."

"I suppose so. Is Rose coming back?"

"I have often thought of the little Summer cottages, huddled together
like frightened children, when the life and laughter had gone and Winter
was swiftly approaching. How cold their walls must be and how empty the
heart of a little house, when there is no fire there! So like a woman,
when love has gone out of her life."

Allison sighed and began to sharpen his pencil. Madame observed that his
hands were trembling.

"I see," he said. "I don't deserve to know where she is, and Rose
doesn't want me chasing after her. Never mind--I had it coming to me, I
guess. What a hopeless idiot I've been!"

"Yes," agreed Madame, cordially. "Carlyle says that 'there is no other
entirely fatal person.'"

Something in her tone gave him courage for another question. "Once for
all, Aunt Francesca, will you tell me where Rose is?"

"George Washington was a great man," Madame observed. "He never told a
lie. If he had promised not to tell anything, he never told it." Then
she added, with swift irrelevance, "this used to be a very pleasant time
of the year at Holly Springs."

A great light broke in upon Allison. "Aunt Francesca!" he cried. He put
his arms around her, lifted her from her chair, and nearly smothered her
in a bear-like embrace. "God bless you!"

"He has," murmured Madame, disengaging herself. "My foster son has been
a dunce, but his reason is now restored."

The two o'clock train to Holly Springs did not leave town until three,
so Allison waited for an hour in the station, fuming with impatience.
Both Colonel Kent and the Doctor had offered to accompany him,
individually or together, but he had brusquely put them aside.

"Don't worry," he said. "My name and address are in my pocket and also
inside my hat. I'll check my grip and be tenderly considerate of my left
hand. Good-bye."

When he had gone Colonel Kent anxiously turned to the doctor. "Where do
you suppose--and why--"

"Cherchez la femme," returned the Doctor.

"What makes you think so? It's not--"

"It's about the only errand a man can go on, and not be willing to take
another chap along. And I'll bet anything I've got, except my girl and
my buzz-cart, that it isn't the fair, false one we met at the hour of
her elopement."

"Must be Rose, then," said the Colonel, half to himself, "but I thought
nobody knew where she was."

"Love will find a way," hummed Doctor Jack. "I suppose you don't care to
go for a ride this afternoon?"

"Not I," laughed the Colonel. "Why don't you take Juliet?"

"All right, since you ask me to. I wonder," he continued to himself, as
he went toward Madame Bernard's at the highest rate of speed, "just how
a fellow would go to work to find a woman who had left no address? Sixth
sense, I suppose, or perhaps seventh or eighth."

Yet Allison was doing very well, with only the five senses of the normal
human being to aid him in his search. He left the train at the sleepy
little place known as "Holly Springs," and walked up the main road as
though he knew the way.

"Half a mile," he said to himself, "and a little brown house in the
woods with a brook singing in front of it. Ought to get to it pretty
soon."

The prattling brook was half asleep in its narrow channel, but the
gentle murmur was audible to one who stopped in the road to listen. It
did not cross the road, but turned away, frightened, from the dusty
highway of a modest civilisation, and went back into the woods, where it
met another brook and travelled to the river in company.

The house, just back of the singing stream, was a little place, as
Madame Bernard had said, but, though he rapped repeatedly, no one
answered. So he lifted the latch and cautiously stepped in.

A grand piano, unblushingly new, and evidently of recent importation
from the city, occupied most of the tiny living-room. The embers of a
wood fire lay on the hearth and the room was faintly scented with the
sweet smoke of hard pine. A well-known and well-worn sonata was on the
music rack; a volume of Chopin had fallen to the floor. Allison picked
it up, and put it in its place. On the piano was some of his own music,
stamped with his Berlin address.

A familiar hat, trimmed with crushed roses, lay on the window seat. The
faint, indefinable scent of attar of roses was dimly to be discerned as
a sort of background for the fragrant smoke. An open book lay face
downward on the table; a bit of dainty needlework was thrown carelessly
across the chair. An envelope addressed to "Madame Francesca Bernard"
was on the old-fashioned writing desk, and a single page of rose-stamped
paper lay near it, bearing, in a familiar hand: "My Dearest."

The two words filled Allison with panic. Not knowing how Rose was wont
to address the little old lady they both loved, he conjured up the
forbidding spectre of The Other Man, that had haunted him for weeks
past.

Sighing, he sat down at the piano, and began to drum idly, with one
hand. "Wonder if I could use the other," he thought. "Pretty stiff, I
guess."

He began to play, from memory:

[Illustration: musical notation]

and outside a woman paused, almost at the threshold, with her hands upon
her heart. In a sudden throb of pain, the old days came back. She saw
herself at the piano, aching with love and longing, while just beyond,
in an old moonlit garden, Allison made love to Isabel.

[Illustration: musical notation]

Was it a ghost, or was it--? No, she was only foolish. Aunt Francesca
had promised not to tell, and she never broke her word. Besides, why
should he seek her?

[Illustration: musical notation]

"It's only someone who has stopped in passing," Rose thought, "to ask
the way to the next town, or to get a glass of water, or--I won't be
foolish! I'll go in!"

So she crossed the threshold, into the house where Love lived.

At the sound of her step, the man turned quickly, the music ending in a
broken chord.

"You!" she gasped. "Oh, how could you come!"

"By train," answered Allison, gently, "and then by walking. I've
frightened you, Rose."

"No," she stammered sinking into a chair. "I'm--I'm surprised, of
course. I'm glad you're well enough to be about again. Did--is anything
wrong with Aunt Francesca?" she asked, anxiously.

"Indeed there isn't. She was blooming like a lilac bush in May, when I
saw her last night."

"Did-did--she tell you?"

"She did not," he returned, concisely.

"Then how--how--?"

"I just came. What made you think you could get away from me?"

"I wasn't--getting away," she returned with difficulty. "I was just
tired--and I came here to--to rest--and to work," she concluded, lamely.
"You didn't need me."

"Not need you," he cried, stretching his trembling hands toward her.
"Oh, Rose, I need you always!"

Slowly the colour ebbed from her face, leaving her white to the lips.
"Don't," she said, pitifully.

"Oh, I know," he flashed back, bitterly. "I've lost any shadow of right
I might ever have had, because I was a blind fool, and I never had any
chance anyway. All I can do is to go on loving you, needing you, wanting
you; seeing your face before me every hour of the day and night,
thirsting for you with every fibre of me. All I have to keep is an empty
husk of memory--those few weeks you were kind to me. At least I had you
with me, though your heart belonged to someone else."

"Someone else?" she repeated, curiously. The colour was coming back
slowly now.

"Yes. Have you forgotten you told me? That day, don't you remember, you
said you had loved another man who did not care for you?"

Rose nodded. Her face was like a crimson flower swaying on a slender
stem. "I said," she began, "that I had loved a man who did not care for
me, and that I always would. Wasn't that it?"

"Something like that. I wish to God I could change places with him."

"Did I," hesitated Rose, "are you sure--that I said--another man, or was
it just--a man?"

"Rose! What do you mean?"

Covered with lovely confusion, she stumbled over to the window, where
she might hide her burning face from him. "Don't you think," she asked,
unsteadily, "that it is beautiful here? This is Aunt Francesca's little
house, where she came when she was first married. She always calls it
'the little house where Love lived.'"

"And I came here," she went on, courageously, "because, in a house where
Love--had lived, I thought there might be some--for--"

Her voice trailed off into an indistinct murmur. "Rose," cried Allison,
"couldn't you give me just what I had before? Couldn't we go back, and
never mind the other man?"

"There's never any going back," she answered, in a whisper. Her heart
was beating wildly because he was so near. "And did I say--are you sure
I said--another man?"

"Rose! Rose! Look at me! Tell me, for God's sake, who he was--or is. I
can't bear it!"

She turned toward him. "Look," she said, softly. "Look in my face and
see."

For a tense instant he hesitated. Then, with a little cry of joy, he
clasped her close forever, having seen his own face mirrored in her
happy eyes.

THE END

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