Rose of Dutcher's Coolly Part 19

Her aunt came out on the side porch: "h.e.l.lo, Rosie, just in time! The shortcake is about ready. Ain't you comin' in?"

John gave the team up to the hired hand (who stared at Rose with wondering eyes) and then they walked upon the front porch and in the front door. It was new--so new it glistened everywhere and was full of the fragrance of new lumber and the odor of paint.

"I didn't get any new furniture," John said. "I thought I'd let you do that."

Rose turned and put her arms about his neck.

"You dear old daddy, what can I do for you, you're so good to me?"

"There now, don't mind, I'm paid for it now. I just want you to enjoy it, that's all, and if any feller comes around and you like him, why, you can bring him right here. It's big enough now, and I'm ready to let the farm any time."

Rose saw his purpose to the uttermost line. He had built this to keep her at home. How little he knew her now, to think that she could marry and bring her husband home to this place!

She kissed him and then they pa.s.sed into all the rooms.

"Come here--I've got something to show you," he said mysteriously. "I just _determined_ to have it, no matter what it cost." He pushed open a door at the head of the stairway, calling triumphantly:

"There--how's that?--a bathroom!"

For an instant she felt like laughing. Then she looked at his kind and simple face and she broke down again and cried.

John understood now that this was only her way of being glad, so he just patted her shoulder and got her a chair, and waited for her to dry her eyes.

"Yes, sir," he went on, "cost me a hundred dollars to put that in, say nothin' of the fixin's. I had to have special set of eave-spouts made to run the water into a cistern on top of the kitchen. I thought of bringing the water from the spring, but that's a little hard."

They went down to supper at last, he full of talk, she very quiet. His loquacity was painful to her, for it seemed to indicate growing age and loneliness.

The meagreness of the furniture and tableware never struck her so forcibly as now, lost in the big new house. Intellectual poverty was shown also in the absence of books and newspapers, for John Dutcher read little, even of political newspapers, and magazines were quite outside his experimental knowledge till Rose brought a few home with her in her later vacations.

There were no elegancies at their table--that too was borne in upon her along with the other disturbing things. It was as if her eyes had suddenly been opened to all the intolerable meagreness of her old-time life.

"I didn't buy any carpets or wallpaper, Rosie; I thought you'd like to do that yourself," John explained as she looked around the room.

But outside all was beautiful, very beautiful. Under the trees the sinking sun could be seen hanging just above the purple-green hills to the northwest. Robins clucked, orioles whistled, a ring-dove uttered its never changing, sorrowful, sweet love-note. A thrush, high on a poplar, sang to the setting sun a wonderful hymn, and the vivid green valley, with its white houses and red barns, was flooded with orange light, heaped and br.i.m.m.i.n.g full of radiance and fragrance.

And yet what was all that to a girl without love, a brain which craved activity, not repose? Vain were sunset sky, flaming green slopes and rows of purple hills to eyes which dreamed of cities and the movement of ma.s.ses of men. She was young, not old; ambitious, not vegetative. She was seeking, seeking, and to wait was not her will or wish.

The old man saw nothing difficult in all this. She was educated now. He had patiently sent her to school and now it was over; she was to be his once more, his pride and comfort as of olden time. Without knowing it he had forged the chains round her with great skill. Every carpet she bought would bind her to stay. She was to select the wallpaper, and by so doing to proclaim her intention to conform and to content herself in the new home.

She rose the next morning feeling, in spite of disturbing thought, the wonderful peace and beauty of the coule, while her heart responded to the birds, rioting as never before--orioles, thrushes, bob-o-links, robins, larks--their voices wonderful and brilliant as the sunlight which streamed in upon her new, uncarpeted floor.

As she looked around at the large, fine new room, she thought of the little attic in which she had slept so many years. Yes, decidedly there would be pleasure in furnis.h.i.+ng the house, in making her room pretty with delicate drapery and cheerful furniture.

She began to plan, only to break off--it seemed in some way to be deceit. No, before she did anything to it she must tell him she could not stay here, and she went down to breakfast with that resolution tightly clutched in her teeth, but when she saw his smiling face she could not speak the word. He was so pathetically happy. She had never seen him so demonstrative, and this mood showed her how deeply he had missed her.

Now that she was home for good, he felt no need of concealing his exceeding great joy of her daily presence with him. She remembered all the brave words he had spoken to her in order to make her feel he did not suffer when she was happy at school. Fortunately at breakfast he was full of another subject.

"I s'pose you heard that Carl is to be married?" he announced rather than asked her.

She looked up quickly--"No, is he? To whom?"

"Little Sary Wilson."

"Well, I'm very glad to hear it," she said quietly.

Some way, at that moment she seemed more alien to him than ever before, and he looked across at her in wonder. How lady-like she was in her tasty dress. How white her hands were! And it was wonderful to think she could sit so at ease and hear of Carl's approaching marriage. He remembered the time when he called them to his knee, the two young rogues.

She was thinking of that too. It was far in the past, yet, far as it was, it was still measurable, and a faint flush crept over her face. No one in the world knew of that experience but Carl and her father. Would Carl's wife ever know of it? That was the thought which caused the flush.

The first day she spent in looking about the farm with John. Towards evening she climbed the hills alone, and spent an hour on the familiar slope. It helped her to look down on her plans and her daily life, and the next day she met the question direct.

"Well, Rosie, when will you go to Tyre and do our buyin'?"

"O, not yet. I want to look around a few days first."

"All right--you're the captain! only we can't have any company till we get some furniture."

True enough! there was the excuse for buying the furniture; even if she were to go to the city she would be home during the summer, and she would want to entertain her friends. The fever seized her thereupon, and she plunged into planning and cataloguing. They had but little to spend, and she was put to her wit's end to pa.s.sably furnish the house.

This filled in the first week or two of her stay, and she suffered less from loneliness than she expected; it came only at intervals, just before going to sleep, or in the morning, as she made her toilet for each new but eventless day.

As the home came to look pretty and complete, she thought of asking Josie to come on to visit her, and finally wrote her, and when she had promised to come, there was something to look forward to.

Meanwhile, she found something wrong between herself and her old friends. She meant to be just the same as ever, and at first she seemed to succeed, but she found herself not listening to them, or looking at them with alien eyes. She heard their harsh, loud voices, not their words, and she saw their stiff, ungraceful gestures instead of the fancy-work and worked-over dresses which they showed her. They looked at each other with significant nods. Other young people had gone away to school without acquiring airs, why should she?

It was not her education in books, but in manners, which made her alien.

She was educated above them, too. Her thoughts were higher than theirs, and she did not attempt to play the hypocrite. She was not interested in them; for the most part they bored her. In a few cases the misunderstanding grew to be anger and distrust.

Carl drove over once with his bride-elect, and they all sat stiffly in the front room for one distressing hour; then they left, never to come again.

Sarah counted the visit not all in vain, however, for she quite closely reproduced Rose's s.h.i.+rt-waist the following week--that much she got out of the call. Carl was awed and troubled a little by the failure of his bride to get on with Rose, and Rose was bitter over it in heart. She could not see the fun of all this, as so many story-writers had done. It was all pitiful and bitter and barren, and to eat with the knife and drink coffee with a loud, sipping sound were inexcusable misdemeanors to her overwrought temper.

Josie came in like a little oriole. She fluffed down off the train like a bunch of lilac bloom one July day.

"O, what a funny little town," she said, after kissing Rose how-de-do.

"Are we to ride in this carriage? O, I'm _so_ disappointed!"

"Why so?"

"O, I wanted to ride on a hay-cart or dray or whatever it is. Mr.

Dutcher, I'm so glad to see you." She sprang upon John and kissed him, "like a swaller lightin' on me," he said afterward. It astonished him but gratified him.

"Do you live far out in the country--the real country?" she asked.

"Well, you'd think so if you had to haul corn over it in the spring," he replied.

"I'd like to haul corn over it," she replied. "May I?"