The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding Part 11

"Why on earth did you do that?" gasped Gay.

"Simply fo'ce of habit," laughed Lloyd. "I used to hate it so because it was such an ugly old thing that I always stood it on its head to punish it for staring at me. I did it this time without thinking."

Leland laughed. Never in the short time he had known her had she seemed quite so adorable as she did at this moment, relapsing into the childish imperiousness of her Little Colonel ways. While they waited for Mrs.

Shelby to come down he watched her going around the room, renewing her acquaintance with all the old objects that had once held a fascination for her. She called his attention to the tapestry on the wall, a shepherd and shepherdess beside a trellis on which hung roses as big as cabbages, and told him the quaint fancies she had once had about the romantic figures. The stuffed birds under the gla.s.s case on the mantel each had a name she had given it. She remembered them all, from the yellow canary, to the mite of a humming-bird, poised at the top.

Stopping before a queer old whatnot, filled with bric-a-brac and sh.e.l.ls, she caught up a round china box. A gilt eagle, hovering over a nest of little eaglets formed the lid, and her face began to dimple as she lifted the china bird by its imposing beak.

"There ought to be peppahmints inside," she said. "There always used to be, because I'd howl if there wasn't, and they couldn't beah to have me disappointed. Well, I wish you'd look! Deah old Aunt Alicia! She's remembahed all these yeahs and kept it ready for me."

She held the box out towards him, and he saw that it had been freshly filled with delectable little striped drops.

"It hurts my conscience," she said, looking up wistfully, as the familiar odour of the peppermint greeted her, "to think how I have neglected her. Heah I have been going to picnics and pahties and all sawts of things evah since I came home from school, and have nevah been neah her. I'm going to find her this minute, and not wait for her to come down as if I were some strangah."

The quaintly furnished old room straightway lost its charm for Leland when she left it, but Gay, pus.h.i.+ng aside her veil to taste the contents of the eagle's nest, which Lloyd had deposited in her lap, scrutinized everything with interest. This was Alex's home now, and she wondered how he would look in the midst of such surroundings. She couldn't imagine him with such an antiquated background. Miss Marks picked up a basket of daguerreotypes from the marble-topped table, and began examining them.

They could hear Lloyd calling at the top of the stairs, "Aunt Alicia,"

and then Mrs. Shelby's voice, tremulous with pleased surprise: "Why it's the Little Colonel! Oh, my dear! My _dear_! what a joy it is to have you here again!" Then they heard Lloyd laughingly explaining their mission, and after that they seemed to pa.s.s into another room, for a low hum of voices was all that could be distinguished.

Presently Mrs. Shelby came down alone. She was a gentle little old lady, with faded blue eyes, and a sweet patient face. She wore a bunch of gray curls over each ear in the fas.h.i.+on of her girlhood. There was a lingering charm of youth about her, just as there was a faint suggestion of lavender still clinging to the fine old lace that fell over her little hands. Almost as soon as she had finished welcoming them an old coloured man followed her into the room, bearing a huge tray with tinkling gla.s.ses, a decanter of raspberry shrub, and a plate of little nut-cakes. While he served the guests she explained Lloyd's delay with almost girlish eagerness.

"I have taken a great liberty with your model, Miss Marks, but Lloyd a.s.sured me you would be perfectly willing. This last day of June is a very happy anniversary of mine and the doctor's. I have been thinking of it all morning, and when Lloyd came up the stairs just now, so glowing and bright, it seemed to me I saw my own lost youth rising up before me, and I asked her to put on a gown I have treasured many years, and be photographed in that.

"It is the one I had on when Richard proposed to me," she explained, a faint pink tingeing her soft old cheeks. "Fifty years ago to-day, in that same old garden. This was my grandmother's place then. Richard bought it afterwards. And a year from to-day if we live, we will keep our golden wedding. If you can use the gown in the photograph it will make me very happy, for it is falling to pieces, despite my care of it.

Lloyd thought it very picturesque and appropriate."

While Miss Marks was expressing her delight over the privilege, for the unearthing of old costumes was one of her pet diversions, Lloyd came down the stairs and stopped shyly in the doorway. She had tucked up her s.h.i.+ning hair with a tall ivory comb, and it hung in soft curls on each side of her glowing face, in the old fas.h.i.+on of Mrs. Shelby's girlhood.

The thin, clinging dress enveloped her like a pale blue cloud, and a flat, wide-brimmed garden hat swung from her arm by its blue ribbons.

With the donning of the ancient dress she seemed to have put on the sweet shy manner that had been the charm of its first wearer.

A long-drawn "oh!" of admiration from Gay and Miss Marks greeted her appearance, and she turned a timid glance towards Leland, who had risen quickly. His glance and his silence were more eloquent than their words, for she turned away blus.h.i.+ng.

"Now if I may have a bit of paper to make a moth to pin on the milk-white phlox," began Miss Marks, but Mrs. Shelby stopped her eagerly.

"Oh, my dear, we will have the picture perfect in every way. Richard has a case of b.u.t.terflies and moths in his office. I shall send a servant to bring it and to call him over, for he will want to see Lloyd in that gown I am sure. How I wish Alex were here to be photographed with her.

He is so broad shouldered and erect he reminds me daily of what his uncle was at his age."

"Maybe he will come before we are through," suggested Miss Marks. At the mere thought of his coming, Gay pulled her veil down hastily over her blistered face. Behind its protecting screen she watched the old couple keenly, when the doctor arrived. They had eyes for nothing but Lloyd, and their gaze followed her tenderly wherever she went.

"They're just _daffy_ about her," thought Gay. "It's plain to be seen they'd give anything in the world to get her into the family. I hope Doctor Alex won't come in time to be photographed with her. If he'd never fallen in love with her before he'd have to do it now. He couldn't help himself when she looks like that, and then where would all my plans be for poor Leland?"

But Leland was taking care of his own interests. As soon as Miss Marks had taken enough plates to satisfy herself he led Lloyd off to the end of the garden to show her a flower which he had found with a soft meandering Spanish name.

"We'll begin the lessons to-morrow," he said, as if it were all settled.

The masterfulness of his tone had pleased her the day before, but here in the place where she had done all the dictating and others had obeyed, it aroused a feeling that Mom Beck would have labelled "the Lloyd stubbo'ness." She didn't want to consent, simply because he had taken it for granted that she would, so she laughingly contradicted him.

"We'll begin to-morrow," he repeated, smiling down at her so insistently that she dropped her eyes before his. Then to her surprise she found that her opposition had completely vanished. She felt that it would be one of the pleasantest pastimes that could be devised, to study such a musical language under such a teacher. But she had no intention of letting him know how she felt about it for a long while, so she was thankful for the interruption which came just then.

Miss Marks, who was exploring the rest of the premises in search of further possibilities, sent Gay to summon her to the front of the house.

"She says to 'come into the garden, Maud.' She is going to add a Tennysonian pose to her series of Fancies, and she's found a place where there's a bit of terrace for you to come tripping down, a la Maud, to the tune of 'She is coming, my own, my sweet!'"

Catching up her long filmy blue skirt, Lloyd hurried away, leaving Gay and Leland to follow as they chose. Leland finished the verse in a clear tenor voice as if singing to himself, but it followed Lloyd down the walk as if meant for her alone:

"'She is coming, my own, my sweet!

Were it ever so airy a tread My heart would hear her and beat Though 'twere earth in an earthy bed.

Would start and tremble under her feet And blossom in purple and red.'"

Then he hummed it almost under his breath, the entire verse again, forgetful of Gay at his elbow until she spoke.

"Wouldn't Kitty have looked adorable in that darling old hat tied under her chin? It's too bad she couldn't have been here to pose as Maud."

"Oh, I don't know," he answered absently. "She's too dark for the part.

Miss Lloyd looks it to perfection."

Gay's eyes shone delightedly behind the white veil, and for a few steps she could not help skipping, as she blessed the Martinsville Springs, which had taken Kitty off in the nick of time to save her for a different fate. By the time Maud's picture was taken Alex arrived, and Miss Marks was promptly seized with an inspiration.

"I am going to have two pictures of _Darby and Joan_," she exclaimed, "to add to the series. Alex, you take Lloyd down into the garden again beside the phlox, and turn so that I'll get your profile. It is so like your uncle's. I'll call that one '_Hand in hand when our life was May._'

Then I'll take Mrs. Shelby and the doctor in exactly the same position as a companion piece, and call that '_Hand in hand when our hair is gray._'"

They made a joke of it, the two old people, and obligingly took the places that Lloyd and Alex left, but a mist sprang to Lloyd's eyes a moment later, watching the devoted old couple who for fifty years had been lovers and for forty-nine years had been wed. Marriage like that seemed a beautiful thing; she wondered if such an experience would ever be hers. She wished Mammy Easter had found a better fortune for her than the one she told over her tea-cup.

It was noon by the time the pictures were all taken, and Leland took Miss Marks home in the carriage while Lloyd went up-stairs to change her dress. She wanted Gay and Leland to stop at The Locusts for lunch, but Gay refused because she couldn't go to the table in a veil and under the circ.u.mstances she couldn't go without one. She got out of the carriage, however, and sat on the porch while Leland took the old Colonel for a short spin down the road, to try the new horses.

"It's been a mighty nice morning," she said. "I wish Lucy could have been with us. She adores discovering old places like that and doing unexpected things. It almost spoiled my good times thinking of the wistful way she looked after us when we drove off."

"But she's married!" exclaimed Lloyd. "I shouldn't think she'd care for those things in quite the same way as she did before. I should think she'd rather stay with her husband."

"Bos.h.!.+" said Gay. "Being married doesn't change a person's disposition and make tame old hens out of lively little humming-birds. That's just what Lucy was, a dear little humming-bird, always in a flutter of doing and going; and you needn't tell me that she enjoys poking there at home with n.o.body but Jameson, as much as she would enjoy going out with us and doing things."

"But he's her husband!" insisted Lloyd, as if that term covered all that could be desired of human companions.h.i.+p. Then she hummed meaningly:

"'Hand in hand when our life was May, Hand in hand when our hair is gray!'"

Gay shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "Oh, that Darby and Joan business is all right when your hair _is_ gray, but Lucy is only a year older than I am, and Jameson doesn't interest himself in a single thing that she likes. He's devoted to her, so devoted he doesn't want her out of his sight; but it's the kind of devotion that has taught me a lesson.

If ever I tie myself up that way it will not be while life is May. I'll have a good time first."

Lloyd had no answer for such heresy. She was going over in her mind the list of people from whom she had unconsciously taken her exalted impressions of married life: her mother and Papa Jack, the old Colonel and Amanthis, Doctor Shelby and Aunt Alicia, Rob's father and mother.

She felt that Gay was mistaken. To be sure there were old Mr. and Mrs.

Apwall, who quarrelled like cats and dogs, but somehow even they had given her the impression that they enjoyed their little encounters, and quarrelled to pa.s.s the time, rather than because they bore each other any ill-will. Then she reflected that these were all people of an older generation than Lucy, and maybe there was a difference in the times.

Surely Gay must have good reason for speaking so feelingly. This was not the first time that she had spoken of Lucy with tears in her eyes, and when she did that, Lloyd, recalling Mammy Easter's tea-cups, was vaguely glad that it had been foretold that hers would be empty.

The old Colonel came back in a few minutes loud in his praise of the new horses, and to Lloyd's surprise, in high good humour with their owner.

Evidently Leland had improved his opportunity and had exerted himself to make friends with the old Colonel, for to Lloyd's amazement he cordially insisted on Leland's considering The Locusts a second home as long as he should be in the Valley, and to come at any hour he chose. The latch-string would be out for him.

"I shall certainly avail myself of the privilege very soon," he responded, "for to-morrow I have the honour to begin giving Miss Lloyd lessons in Spanish. So few young ladies nowadays play the harp, that when one has the ability she owes it to the world to learn the Spanish songs. Don't you think so?"

Lloyd opened her mouth to protest that she had not yet given her consent, but closed it again as the old Colonel began expressing his pleasure at such an arrangement. She felt trapped. It was to please him that she had learned to play on her grandmother's harp. Any reference to it always put him in a gentle humour. She wanted him to be cordial and friendly with Leland, and was glad that he was no longer prejudiced against him, so she held her peace; but it exasperated her to have her consent taken for granted in such a high-handed way. He had ridden over her objection as regardlessly as if she had never made any.