Master of the Vineyard

"Into a day, with you."

He drew her closer. This sort of thing was very sweet to him, and the girl's dull personality had bloomed like some pale, delicate flower. He saw unfathomed depths in her grey eyes, shining now, with the indescribable light that comes from within. She had been negative and colourless, but now she was a lovely mystery – a half-blown windflower on some brown, bare hillside, where Life, in all its fulness, was yet to come.

What Will They Say?

"Did you tell your Grandmother and Aunt Matilda?"

"No. How could I?"

"You'd better not. They'd only make it hard for you, and I wouldn't be allowed in the parlour anyway."

Rosemary had not thought of that. It was only that her beautiful secret was too sacred to put into words. "They'll have to know some time," she temporised.

"Yes, of course, but not until the last minute. The day we're to be married, you can just put on your hat and say: 'Grandmother, and Aunty, I'm going out now, to be married to Alden Marsh. I shan't be back, so good-bye."

She laughed, but none the less the idea filled her with consternation. "What will they say!" she exclaimed.

"It doesn't matter what they say, as long as you're not there to hear it."

"Clothes," she said, half to herself. "I can't be married in brown alpaca, can I?"

The Difference

"I don't know why not. We'll take the fatal step as early as possible in the morning, catch the first train to town, you can shop all the afternoon to your heart's content, and be dressed like a fine lady in time for dinner in the evening."

"Grandmother was married in brown alpaca," she continued, irrelevantly, "and Aunt Matilda wore it the night the minister came to call."

"Did he never come again?"

"No. Do you think it could have been the alpaca?"

"I'm sure it wasn't. Aunt Matilda was foreordained to be an old maid."

"She won't allow anyone to speak of her as an old maid. She says she's a spinster."

"What's the difference?"

"I think," returned Rosemary, pensively, "that an old maid is a woman who never could have married and a spinster is merely one who hasn't."

"Is it a question of opportunity?"

"I believe so."

"Then you're wrong, because some of the worst old maids I've ever known have been married women. I've seen men, too, who deserve the title."

"Poor Aunt Matilda," Rosemary sighed; "I'm sorry for her."

"Why?"

Alden's Mother

"Because she hasn't anyone to love her – because she hasn't you. I'm sorry for every other woman in the world," she concluded, generously, "because I have you all to myself."

"Sweet," he answered, possessing himself of her hand, "don't forget that you must divide me with mother."

"I won't. Will she care, do you think, because – " Her voice trailed off into an indistinct murmur.

"Of course not. She's glad. I told her this morning."

"Oh!" cried Rosemary, suddenly tremulous and afraid. "What did she say?"

"She was surprised at first." Alden carefully refrained from saying how much his mother had been surprised and how long it had been before she found herself equal to the occasion.

"Yes – and then?"

"Then she said she was glad; that she wanted me to be happy. She told me that she had always liked you and that the house wouldn't be so lonely after you came to live with us. Then she asked me to bring you to see her, as soon as you were ready to come."

The full tide overflowed in the girl's heart. She yearned toward Mrs. Marsh with worship, adoration, love. The mother-hunger made her faint with longing for a woman's arms around her, for a woman's tears of joy to mingle with her own.

Madame's Welcome

"Take me to her," Rosemary pleaded. "Take me now!"

Madame saw them coming and went to the door to meet them. Rosemary was not at all what she had fancied in the way of a daughter-in-law, but, wisely, she determined to make the best of Alden's choice. Something in her stirred in answer to the infinite appeal in the girl's eyes. At the crowning moment of her life, Rosemary stood alone, fatherless, motherless, friendless, with only brown alpaca to take the place of all the pretty things that seem girlhood's right.

Madame smiled, then opened her arms. Without a word, Rosemary went to her, laid her head upon the sweet, silken softness of the old lady's shoulder, and began to cry softly.

"Daughter," whispered Madame, holding her close. "My dear daughter! Please don't!"

Rosemary laughed through her tears, then wiped her eyes. "It's only an April rain," she said. "I'm crying because I'm so happy."

"I wish," responded Madame, gently, with a glance at her son, "that I might be sure all the tears either of you are ever to shed would be tears of joy. It's the bitterness that hurts."

Tears

"Don't be pessimistic, Mother," said Alden, with a little break in his voice. Rosemary's tears woke all his tenderness. He longed to shield and shelter her; to stand, if he might, between her and the thousand pricks and stabs of the world.

"We'll have tea," Madame went on, brightly, ringing a silver bell as she spoke. "Then we shan't be quite so serious."

"Woman's inevitable solace," Alden observed, lounging about the room with his hands in his pockets. Man-like, he welcomed the change of mood.

"I wonder," he continued, with forced cheerfulness, "why people always cry at weddings and engagements and such things? A husband or wife is the only relative we are permitted to choose – we even have very little to say when it comes to a mother-in-law. With parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins all provided by a generous but sometimes indiscriminating Fate, it seems hard that one's only choice should be made unpleasant by salt water.

"Why," he went on, warming to his subject, "I remember how a certain woman angled industriously for months to capture an unsuspecting young man for her daughter. When she finally landed him, and the ceremony came off to the usual accompaniment of Mendelssohn and a crowded church, I feared that the bridal couple might have to come down the aisle from the altar in a canoe, on account of the maternal tears."

A Contrast

"Perhaps," suggested Rosemary, timidly, "she was only crying because she was happy."

"If she was as happy as all those tears would indicate, it's a blessed wonder she didn't burst."

Madame smiled fondly at her son as she busied herself with the tea things. Rosemary watched the white, plump hands that moved so gracefully among the cups, and her heart contracted with a swift little pang of envy, of which she was immediately ashamed. Unconsciously, she glanced at her own rough, red hands. Madame saw the look, and understood.

"We'll soon fix them, my dear," she said, kindly. "I'll show you how to take care of them."

"Really?" cried Rosemary, gratefully. "Oh, thank you! Do you suppose that – that they'll ever look like yours?"

"Wait and see," Madame temporised. She was fond of saying that it took three generations of breeding to produce the hand of a lady.

The kettle began to sing and the cover danced cheerily. Tiny clouds of steam trailed off into space, disappearing in the late afternoon sunshine like a wraith at dawn. Madame filled the blue china tea-pot and the subtle fragrance permeated the room.

A Cup of Tea

"Think," she said, as she waited the allotted five minutes for it to steep, "of all I give you in a cup of tea. See the spicy, sunlit fields, where men, women, and children, in little jackets of faded blue, pick it while their queues bob back and forth. Think of all the chatter that goes in with the picking – marriage and birth and death and talk of houses and worldly possessions, and everything else that we speak of here.

"Then the long, sweet drying, and the packing in dim storehouses, and then the long journey. Sand and heat and purple dusk, tinkle of bells and scent of myrrh, the rustle of silks and the gleam of gold. Then the open sea, with infinite spaces of shining blue, and a wake of pearl and silver following the ship. Dreams and moonbeams and starry twilights, from the other side of the world – here, my dear, I give them all to you."

She offered Rosemary the cup as she concluded and the girl smiled back at her happily. This was all so different from the battered metal tea-pot that always stood on the back of the stove at Grandmother's, to be boiled and re-boiled until the colour was gone from the leaves. Alden was looking into his cup with assumed anxiety.

In the Bottom of the Cup

"What's the matter, dear?" asked his mother. "Isn't it right?"

"I was looking for the poem," he laughed, "and I see nothing but a stranger."

"Coming?" she asked, idly.

"Of course. See?"

"You're right – a stranger and trouble. What is there in your cup, Rosemary?"

"Nothing at all," she answered, with a smile, "but a little bit of sugar – just a few grains."

Alden came and looked over her shoulder. Then, with his arm over the back of her chair, he pressed his cheek to hers. "I hope, my dear, that whenever you come to the dregs, you'll always have that much sweetness left."

Rosemary, flushed and embarrassed, made her adieus awkwardly. "Come again very soon, dear, won't you?" asked Madame.

"Yes, indeed, if I may, and thank you so much. Good-bye, Mrs. Marsh."

"'Mrs. Marsh?'" repeated the old lady, reproachfully. Some memory of her lost Virginia made her very tender toward the motherless girl.

"May I?" Rosemary faltered. "Do you mean it?"

Madame smiled and lifted her beautiful old face. Rosemary stooped and kissed her. "Mother," she said, for the first time in her life. "Dear Mother! Good-bye!"

VII

A Letter and a Guest

An Unexpected Missive

"A letter for you, Mother," Alden tossed a violet-scented envelope into the old lady's lap as he spoke, and stood there, waiting.

"For me!" she exclaimed. Letters for either of them were infrequent. She took it up curiously, scrutinised the address, sniffed at the fragrance the missive carried, noted the postmark, which was that of the town near by, and studied the waxen purple seal, stamped with indistinguishable initials.

"I haven't the faintest idea whom it's from," she said, helplessly.

"Why not open it and see?" he suggested, with kindly sarcasm. His assumed carelessness scarcely veiled his own interest in it.

"You always were a bright boy, Alden," she laughed. Another woman might have torn it open rudely, but Madame searched through her old mahogany desk until she found a tarnished silver letter-opener, thus according due courtesy to her unknown correspondent.

Having opened it, she discovered that she could not read the handwriting, which was angular and involved beyond the power of words to indicate.

A Woman's Writing

"Here," she said. "Your eyes are better than mine."

Alden took it readily. "My eyes may be good," he observed, after a long pause, "but my detective powers are not. The m's and n's are all alike, and so are most of the other letters. She's an economical person – she makes the same hieroglyphic do duty for both a g and a y."

"It's from a woman, then?"

"Certainly. Did you ever know a man to sprawl a note all over two sheets of paper, with nothing to distinguish the end from the beginning? In the nature of things, you'd expect her to commence at the top of a sheet, and, in a careless moment, she may have done so. Let me see – yes, here it is: 'My dear Mrs. Marsh.'"

"Go on, please," begged Madame, after a silence. "It was just beginning to be interesting."

"'During my mother's last illness,'" Alden read, with difficulty, "'she told me that if I were ever in trouble, I should go to you – that you would stand in her place to me. I write to ask if I may come, for I can no longer see the path ahead of me, and much less do I know the way in which I should go.

A Schoolmate's Daughter

"'You surely remember her. She was Louise Lane before her marriage to my father, Edward Archer.

"'Please send me a line or two, telling me I may come, if only for a day. Believe me, no woman ever needed a friendly hand to guide her more than

"'Yours unhappily,"'Edith Archer Lee.'"

"Louise Lane," murmured Madame, reminiscently. "My old schoolmate! I didn't even know that she had a daughter, or that she was dead. How strangely we lose track of one another in this world!"

"Yes?" said Alden, encouragingly.

"Louise was a beautiful girl," continued Madame, half to herself. "She had big brown eyes, with long lashes, a thick, creamy skin that someway reminded you of white rose-petals, and the most glorious red hair you ever saw. She married an actor, and I heard indirectly that she had gone on the stage, then I lost her entirely."

"Yes?" said Alden, again.

"Edith Archer Lee," Madame went on. "She must be married. Think of Louise Lane having a daughter old enough to be married! And yet – my Virginia would have been thirty-two now. Dear me, how the time goes by!"

In Trouble

The tall clock on the landing chimed five deep musical strokes, the canary hopped restlessly about his gilt cage, and the last light of the sweet Spring afternoon, searching the soft shadows of the room, found the crystal ball on the table and made merry with it.

"Time is still going by," Alden reminded her. "What are you going to do?"

Madame started from her reverie. "Do? Why, she must come, of course!"

"I don't see why," Alden objected, gloomily. "I don't like strange women."

"It is not a question of what we like or don't like, my son," she returned, in gentle reproof. "She is in trouble and she needs something we can give her."

"When people are in trouble, they usually want either money or sympathy, or both."

"Sometimes they only need advice."

"There are lots of places where they can get it. Advice is as free as salvation is said to be."

Madame sighed. Then she crossed the room, and put her hands upon his shoulders. "Dear, are you going to be cross?"

His face softened. "Never to you, if I know it, but why should strange women invade the peace of a man's home? Why should a woman who writes like that come here?"

"Don't blame her for her handwriting – she can't help it."

"I don't blame her; far from it. On the contrary, I take off my hat to her. A woman who can take a plain pen, and plain ink, and do such dazzling wonders on plain paper, is entitled to sincere respect, if not admiration."

An Invitation

Smiling, Madame went to her desk, and in a quaint, old-fashioned script, wrote a note to Mrs. Lee. "There," she said, as she sealed it. "I've asked her to come to-morrow on the six o'clock train. I've told her that you will meet her at the station, and that we won't have dinner until half-past seven. That will give her time to rest and dress. If you'll take it to the post-office now, she'll get it in the morning."

Alden shrugged his shoulders good-humouredly, kissed his mother, and went out. He wondered how he would recognise the "strange woman" when she arrived on the morrow, though few people came on the six o'clock train, or, for that matter, on any train.

"Might write her a little note on my own account," he mused. "Ask her to take off her right shoe and hold it in her left hand, or something of that sort. No, that isn't necessary. I'll bet I could go into a crowd of a thousand women and pick out the one who wrote that letter."

The scent of violet still haunted him, but, by the time he had posted his mother's note, he had forgotten all about it and was thinking of Rosemary.

Planning for the Guest

Madame, however, was busy with plans for her guest's comfort. She took down her best hand-embroidered linen sheets, shaking out the lavender that was laid between the folds, selected her finest towels and dresser-covers, ransacked three or four trunks in the attic for an old picture of Louise Lane, found a frame to fit it, laid out fresh curtains, had the shining silver candlesticks cleaned again, and opened wide every window of the long-unused guest-room to give it a night's airing.

Downstairs, she searched through the preserve-closet for dainties to tempt an unhappy woman's appetite, meanwhile rejoicing with housewifely pride in her well-stocked shelves. That evening, while Alden read the paper, she planned a feast for the next night, and mended, with fairy-like stitches, the fichu of real lace that she usually wore with her lavender silk gown.

"Is it a party?" queried Alden, without looking up from his paper.

"Yes. Isn't company a party?"

"That depends. You know three are said to be a crowd."

"Still inhospitable, dear?"

"Only mildly so. I contemplate the approaching evil with resignation, if not content."

"You and I have lived alone so long that we've got ourselves into a rut. Everyone we meet may give us something, and receive something from us in return."

Best Things for Strangers

"I perceive," said Alden, irrelevantly, "that the Lady Mother is going to be dressed in her best when the guest arrives."

A pale pink flush mantled the old lady's fair cheeks. At the moment she looked like a faded rose that had somehow preserved its sweetness.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Why do we always do for strangers what we do not willingly do for our own flesh and blood?" he queried, philosophically. "You love me better than anything else in the world, yet you wouldn't put on that lavender gown twice a year, just for me alone. The strange woman may feast her eyes upon it the moment she enters the house. She'll eat from the best china, sleep between embroidered sheets, and, I have no doubt, drink the wine that Father put away the day I was born, to be opened at my wedding."

"Not at your wedding, my son, but the day you found the woman you loved." Then, after a long pause, she added, shyly: "Shouldn't it be opened now?"

"It'll keep," the young man grunted. "After lying for thirty years among the cobwebs, a few more weeks or months or years, as the case may be, won't hurt it. Besides, I don't expect to have any wedding. I'm merely going to be married. Might as well let the strange woman have it."

Old Wine

Alden's father had, as he said, put away on the day he was born all the wine that was then ready to be bottled. The baby girl had been welcomed gladly, especially as she had her mother's eyes, but the day the second Alden Marsh was born, the young father's joy had known no bounds. He had gone, at dusk, to the pale little mother, and, holding her in his arms, had told her about the wine.

"I've put it all away," he had said, "for the boy. He's to open it the day he finds the woman he loves as I love you."

The shelf in the storeroom, where he had placed it, had never been disturbed, though dust and cobwebs lay thickly upon it and Madame had always prided herself upon her immaculate housekeeping. It grieved her inexpressibly because Alden cared so little about it, and had for it, apparently, no sentiment at all. To her it was sacred, like some rare wine laid aside for communion, but, as she reflected, the boy's father had died before he was much more than a child.

"Don't you remember your father at all?" asked Madame, with a sigh.

"I can't say that I do – that is, not before he died." The casket and the gloom of mourning had made its own vivid impression upon the child's sensitive mind. One moment stood out quite clearly, but he forebore to say so. It was when his mother, with the tears raining down her face, had lifted him in her arms and bade him look at the man who lay in the casket, oh, so cold and still.

The Passing of the Father

"Say good-bye to Father, dear," she had sobbed. "Is Father gone away?" he had asked, in childish terror, then she had strained him to her heart, crying out: "Just for a little while! Oh, if I could only believe it was for just a little while!"

The rest had faded into a mist of sadness that, for a long time, had not even begun to lift. When he found his mother in tears, as he often did after that, he went away quietly, knowing that she longed for "Father," who had gone away and never returned. Later, he used to sit on the top step of the big Colonial porch – a fragile little figure – waiting, through the long Summer afternoons, for the father who did not come.

Once, when his mother was so absorbed in her grief that she did not hear him come into the room, he had laid a timid, trembling hand upon her knee, saying: "Mother, if you will tell me where Father is, I will go and bring him back." But, instead of accepting the offer, she had caught him to her breast, sobbing, with a sudden rush of impassioned prayer: "Dear God, no – not that!"

Time, as always, had done his merciful healing, which, though slow, is divinely sure. Madame was smiling, now, at some old memory that had come mysteriously out of the shadow, leaving all bitterness behind. She had finished mending the lace and had laid it aside. Alden took it up, awkwardly, and looked at it.

Tired and Unhappy

"This for the strange woman," he said, teasingly, "and plain black or grey silk for me, though I am fain to believe that you love me best. Why is it?"

"Because," she responded, playfully, "you know me and love me, even without fuss and frills. For those who do not know us, we must put our best foot forward, in order to make sure of the attention our real merit deserves."

"But doesn't immediately command – is that it?"

"I suppose so."

"What must I wear to the train – my dress suit?"

"Don't be foolish, son. You'll have plenty of time to dress after you get home."

"Shall I drive, or walk?"

"Take the carriage. She'll be tired. Unhappy women are always tired."

"Are they tired because they're unhappy, or unhappy because they're tired? And do they get unhappier when they get more tired, or do they get more tired when they get unhappier?"

The Arrival

"Don't ask me any more conundrums to-night. I'm going to bed, to get my beauty sleep."

"You must have had a great many, judging by the results."

Madame smiled as she bent to kiss his rough cheek. "Good-night, my dear. Think of some other pleasant things and say them to-morrow night to Mrs. Lee."

"I'll be blest if I will," Alden muttered to himself, as his mother lighted a candle and waved her hand prettily in farewell. "If all the distressed daughters of all mother's old schoolmates are coming here, to cry on her shoulder and flood the whole place with salt water, it's time for me to put up a little tent somewhere and move into it."

By the next day, however, he had forgotten his ill-humour and was at the station fully ten minutes before six o'clock. As it happened, only one woman was among the passengers who left the train at that point.

"Mrs. Lee?" he asked, taking her suit-case from her.

"Yes. Mr. Marsh?"

"Yes. This way, please."

"How did you know me?" she inquired, as she took her place in the worn coupé that had been in the Marsh stables for almost twenty years.

"By your handwriting," he laughed, closing the door.

With Bag and Baggage

A smile hovered for a moment around the corners of her mouth, then disappeared.

"Then, too," he went on, "as you were the only woman who got off the train, and we were expecting you, I took the liberty of speaking to you."

"Did you ask the man to have my trunk sent up?"

"Trunk!" echoed Alden, helplessly. "Why, no! Was there a trunk?"

She laughed – a little, low rippling laugh that had in it an undertone of sadness. There was a peculiar, throaty quality in her voice, like a muted violin or 'cello. "Don't be so frightened, please, for I'm not going to stay long, really. I'm merely the sort of woman who can't stay over night anywhere without a lot of baggage."

"It – it wasn't that," he murmured.

"Yes, it was. You don't need to tell me polite fibs, you know. How far are we from the house?"

"Not as far," returned Alden, rallying all his forces for one supreme effort of gallantry, "as I wish we were."

She laughed again, began to speak, then relapsed into silence. Furtively, in the gathering shadow, he studied her face. She was pale and cold, the delicate lines of her profile conveyed a certain aloofness of spirit, and her mouth drooped at the corners. Her hat and veil covered her hair, but she had brown eyes with long lashes. Very long lashes, Alden noted, having looked at them a second time to make sure.

A Child of the City

The silence became awkward, but he could think of nothing to say. She had turned her face away from him and was looking out of the window. "How lovely the country is," she said, pensively. "I wish sometimes I never had to step on a pavement again."