Opposite Miss Eudora Yates’s old colonial mansion was the perky modern Queen Anne residence of Mrs. Joseph Glynn. Mrs. Glynn had a daughter, Ethel, and an unmarried sister, Miss Julia Esterbrook. All three were fond of talking, and had many callers who liked to hear the feebly effervescent news of Wellwood. This afternoon three ladies were there: Miss Abby Simson, Mrs. John Bates, and Mrs. Edward Lee. They sat in the Glynn sitting-room, which shrilled with treble voices as if a flock of sparrows had settled therein.
The Glynn sitting-room was charming, mainly because of the quantity of flowering plants. Every window was filled with them, until the room seemed like a conservatory. Ivy, too, climbed over the pictures, and the mantel-shelf was a cascade of wandering Jew, growing in old china vases.
“Your plants are really wonderful, Mrs. Glynn,” said Mrs. Bates, “but I don’t see how you manage to get a glimpse of anything outside the house, your windows are so full of them.”
“Maybe she can see and not be seen,” said Abby Simson, who had a quick wit and a ready tongue.
Mrs. Joseph Glynn flushed a little. “I have not the slightest curiosity about my neighbors,” she said, “but it is impossible to live just across the road from any house without knowing something of what is going on, whether one looks or not,” said she, with dignity.
“Ma and I never look out of the windows from curiosity,” said Ethel Glynn, with spirit. Ethel Glynn had a great deal of spirit, which was evinced in her personal appearance as well as her tongue. She had an eye to the fashions; her sleeves were never out of date, nor was the arrangement of her hair.
“For instance,” said Ethel, “we never look at the house opposite because we are at all prying, but we do know that that old maid has been doing a mighty queer thing lately.”
“First thing you know you will be an old maid yourself, and then your stones will break your own glass house,” said Abby Simson.
“Oh, I don’t care,” retorted Ethel. “Nowadays an old maid isn’t an old maid except from choice, and everybody knows it. But it must have been different in Miss Eudora’s time. Why, she is older than you are, Miss Abby.”
“Just five years,” replied Abby, unruffled, “and she had chances, and I know it.”
“Why didn’t she take them, then?”
“Maybe,” said Abby, “girls had choice then as much as now, but I never could make out why she didn’t marry Harry Lawton.”
Ethel gave her head a toss. “Maybe,” said she, “once in a while, even so long ago, a girl wasn’t so crazy to get married as folks thought. Maybe she didn’t want him.”
“She did want him,” said Abby. “A girl doesn’t get so pale and peaked-looking for nothing as Eudora Yates did, after she had dismissed Harry Lawton and he had gone away, nor haunt the post-office as she used to, and, when she didn’t get a letter, go away looking as if she would die.”
“Maybe,” said Ethel, “her folks were opposed.”
“Nobody ever opposed Eudora Yates except her own self,” replied Abby. “Her father was dead, and Eudora’s ma thought the sun rose and set in her. She would never have opposed her if she had wanted to marry a foreign duke or the old Harry himself.”
“I remember it perfectly,” said Mrs. Joseph Glynn.
“So do I,” said Julia Esterbrook.
“Don’t see why you shouldn’t. You were plenty old enough to have your memory in good working order if it was ever going to be,” said Abby Simson.
“Well,” said Ethel, “it is the funniest thing I ever heard of. If a girl wanted a man enough to go all to pieces over him, and he wanted her, why on earth didn’t she take him?”
“Maybe they quarreled,” ventured Mrs. Edward Lee, who was a mild, sickly-looking woman and seldom expressed an opinion.
“Well, that might have been,” agreed Abby, “although Eudora always had the name of having a beautiful disposition.”
“I have always found,” said Mrs. Joseph Glynn, with an air of wisdom, “that it is the beautiful dispositions which are the most set the minute they get a start the wrong way. It is the always-flying-out people who are the easiest to get on with in the long run.”
“Well,” said Abby, “maybe that is so, but folks might get worn all to a frazzle by the flying-out ones before the long run. I’d rather take my chances with a woman like Eudora. She always seems just so, just as calm and sweet. When the Ames’s barn, that was next to hers, burned down and the wind was her way, she just walked in and out of her house, carrying the things she valued most, and she looked like a picture—somehow she had got all dressed fit to make calls—and there wasn’t a muscle of her face that seemed to move. Eudora Yates is to my mind the most beautiful woman in this town, old or young, I don’t care who she is.”
“I suppose,” said Julia Esterbrook, “that she has a lot of money.”
“I wonder if she has,” said Mrs. John Bates.
The others stared at her. “What makes you think she hasn’t?” Mrs. Glynn inquired, sharply.
“Nothing,” said Mrs. Bates, and closed her thin lips. She would say no more, but the others had suspicions, because her husband, John Bates, was a wealthy business man.
“I can’t believe she has lost her money,” said Mrs. Glynn. “She wouldn’t have been such a fool as to do what she has if she hadn’t money.”
“What has she done?” asked Mrs. Bates, eagerly.
“What has she done?” asked Abby, and Mrs. Lee looked up inquiringly.
The faces of Mrs. Glynn, her daughter, and her sister became important, full of sly and triumphant knowledge.
“Haven’t you heard?” asked Mrs. Glynn.
“Yes, haven’t you?” asked Ethel.
“Haven’t any of you heard?” asked Julia Esterbrook.
“No,” admitted Abby, rather feebly. “I don’t know as I have.”
“Do you mean about Eudora’s going so often to the Lancaster girls’ to tea?” asked Mrs. John Bates, with a slight bridle of possible knowledge.
“I heard of that,” said Mrs. Lee, not to be outdone.
“Land, no,” replied Mrs. Glynn. “Didn’t she always go there? It isn’t that. It is the most unheard-of thing she had done; but no woman, unless she had plenty of money to bring it up, would have done it.”
“To bring what up?” asked Abby, sharply. Her eyes looked as small and bright as needles.
Julia regarded her with intense satisfaction. “What do women generally bring up?” said she.
“I don’t know of anything they bring up, whether they have it or not, except a baby,” retorted Abby, sharply.
Julia wilted a little; but her sister, Mrs. Glynn, was not perturbed. She launched her thunderbolt of news at once, aware that the critical moment had come, when the quarry of suspicion had left the bushes.
“She has adopted a baby,” said she, and paused like a woman who had fired a gun, half scared herself and shrinking from the report.
Ethel seconded her mother. “Yes,” said she, “Miss Eudora has adopted a baby, and she has a baby-carriage, and she wheels it out any time she takes a notion.” Ethel’s speech was of the nature of an after-climax. The baby-carriage weakened the situation.
The other women seized upon the idea of the carriage to cover their surprise and prevent too much gloating on the part of Mrs. Glynn, Ethel, and Julia.
“Is it a new carriage?” inquired Mrs. Lee.
“No, it looks like one that came over in the ark,” retorted Mrs. Glynn. Then she repeated: “She has adopted a baby,” but this time there was no effect of an explosion. However, the treble chorus rose high, “Where did she get the baby? Was it a boy or a girl? Why did she adopt it? Did it cry much?” and other queries, none of which Mrs. Glynn, Ethel, and Julia could answer very decidedly except the last. They all announced that the adopted baby was never heard to cry at all.
“Must be a very good child,” said Abby.
“Must be a very healthy child,” said Mrs. Lee, who had had experience with crying babies.
“Well, she has it, anyhow,” said Mrs. Glynn.
Right upon the announcement came proof. The beautiful door of the old colonial mansion opposite was thrown open, and clumsy and cautious motion was evident. Presently a tall, slender woman came down the path between the box borders, pushing a baby-carriage. It was undoubtedly a very old carriage. It must have dated back to the fifties, if not the forties. It was made of wood, with a leather buggy-top, and was evidently very heavy.
Abby eyed it shrewdly. “If I am not mistaken,” said she, “that is the very carriage Eudora herself was wheeled around in when she was a baby. I am almost sure I have seen that identical carriage before. When we were girls I used to go to the Yates house sometimes. Of course, it was always very formal, a little tea-party for Eudora, with her mother on hand, but I feel sure that I saw that carriage there one of those times.
“I suppose it cost a lot of money, in the time of it. The Yateses always got the very best for Eudora,” said Julia. “And maybe Eudora goes about so little she doesn’t realize how out of date the carriage is, but I should think it would be very heavy to wheel, especially if the baby is a good-sized one.”
“It looks like a very large baby,” said Ethel. “Of course, it is so rolled up we can’t tell.”
“Haven’t you gone out and asked to see the baby?” said Abby.
“Would we dare unless Eudora Yates offered to show it?” said Julia, with a surprised air; and the others nodded assent. Then they all crowded to the front windows and watched from behind the screens of green flowering things. It was very early in the spring. Fairly hot days alternated with light frosts. The trees were touched with sprays of rose and gold and gold-green, but the wind still blew cold from the northern snows, and the occupant of Eudora’s ancient carriage was presumably wrapped well to shelter it from harm. There was, in fact, nothing to be seen in the carriage, except a large roll of blue and white, as Eudora emerged from the yard and closed the iron gate of the tall fence behind her.
Through this fence pricked the evergreen box, and the deep yard was full of soft pastel tints of reluctantly budding trees and bushes. There was one deep splash of color from a yellow bush in full bloom.
Eudora paced down the sidewalk with a magnificent, stately gait. There was something rather magnificent in her whole appearance. Her skirts of old, but rich, black fabric swept about her long, advancing limbs; she held her black-bonneted head high, as if crowned. She pushed the cumbersome baby-carriage with no apparent effort. An ancient India shawl was draped about her sloping shoulders.
Eudora, as she passed the Glynn house, turned her face slightly, so that its pure oval was evident. She was now a beauty in late middle life. Her hair, of an indeterminate shade, swept in soft shadows over her ears; her features were regular; her expression was at once regal and gentle. A charm which was neither of youth nor of age reigned in her face; her grace had surmounted with triumphant ease the slope of every year. Eudora passed out of sight with the baby-carriage, lifting her proud lady-head under the soft droop of the spring boughs; and her inspectors, whom she had not seen, moved back from the Glynn windows with exclamations of astonishment.
“I wonder,” said Abby, “whether she will have that baby call her ma or aunty.”
Meantime Eudora passed down the village street until she reached the Lancaster house, about half a mile away on the same side. There dwelt the Misses Amelia and Anna Lancaster, who were about Eudora’s age, and a widowed sister, Mrs. Sophia Willing, who was much older. The Lancaster house was also a colonial mansion, much after the fashion of Eudora’s, but it showed signs of continued opulence. Eudora’s, behind her trees and leafing vines, was gray for lack of paint. Some of the colonial ornamental details about porches and roof were sloughing off or had already disappeared. The Lancaster house gleamed behind its grove of evergreen trees as white and perfect as in its youth. The windows showed rich slants of draperies behind their green glister of old glass.
A gardener, with a boy assistant, was at work in the grounds when Eudora entered. He touched his cap. He was an old man who had lived with the Lancasters ever since Eudora could remember. He advanced toward her now. “Sha’n’t Tommy push—the baby-carriage up to the house for you, Miss Eudora?” he said, in his cracked old voice.
Eudora flushed slightly, and, as if in response, the old man flushed, also. “No, I thank you, Wilson,” she said, and moved on.
The boy, who was raking dry leaves, stood gazing at them with a shrewd, whimsical expression. He was the old man’s grandson.
“Is that a boy or a girl kid, grandpa?” he inquired, when the gardener returned.
“Hold your tongue!” replied the old man, irascibly. Suddenly he seized the boy by his two thin little shoulders with knotted old hands.
“Look at here, Tommy, whatever you know, you keep your mouth shet, and whatever you don’t know, you keep your mouth shet, if you know what’s good for you,” he said, in a fierce whisper.
The boy whistled and shrugged his shoulders loose. “You know I ain’t goin’ to tell tales, grandpa,” he said, in a curiously manly fashion.
The old man nodded. “All right, Tommy. I don’t believe you be, nuther, but you may jest as well git it through your head what’s goin’ to happen if you do.”
“Ain’t goin’ to,” returned the boy. He whistled charmingly as he raked the leaves. His whistle sounded like the carol of a bird.
Eudora pushed the carriage around to the side door, and immediately there was a fluttering rush of a slender woman clad in lavender down the steps. This woman first kissed Eudora with gentle fervor, then, with a sly look around and voice raised intentionally high, she lifted the blue and white roll from the carriage with the tenderest care. “Did the darling come to see his aunties?” she shrilled.
The old man and the boy in the front yard heard her distinctly. The old man’s face was imperturbable. The boy grinned.
Two other women, all clad in lavender, appeared in the doorway. They also bent over the blue and white bundle. They also said something about the darling coming to see his aunties. Then there ensued the softest chorus of lady-laughter, as if at some hidden joke.
“Come in, Eudora dear,” said Amelia Lancaster. “Yes, come in, Eudora dear,” said Anna Lancaster. “Yes, come in, Eudora dear,” said Sophia Willing.
Sophia looked much older than her sisters, but with that exception the resemblance between all three was startling. They always dressed exactly alike, too, in silken fabric of bluish lavender, like myrtle blossoms. Some of the poetical souls in the village called the Lancaster sisters “The ladies in lavender.”
There was an astonishing change in the treatment of the blue and white bundle when the sisters and Eudora were in the stately old sitting-room, with its heavy mahogany furniture and its white-wainscoted calls. Amelia simply tossed the bundle into a corner of the sofa; then the sisters all sat in a loving circle around Eudora.
“Are you sure you are not utterly worn out, dear?” asked Amelia, tenderly; and the others repeated the question in exactly the same tone. The Lancaster sisters were not pretty, but all had charming expressions of gentleness and a dignified good-will and loving kindness. Their blue eyes beamed love at Eudora, and it was as if she sat encircled in a soul-ring of affection.
She responded, and her beautiful face glowed with tenderness and pleasure, and something besides, which was as the light of victory.
“I am not in the least tired, thank you, dears,” she replied. “Why should I be tired? I am very strong.”
Amelia murmured something about such hard work.
“I never thought it would be hard work taking care of a baby,” replied Eudora, “and especially such a very light baby.”
Something whimsical crept into Eudora’s voice; something whimsical crept into the love-light of the other women’s eyes. Again a soft ripple of mirth swept over them.
“Especially a baby who never cries,” said Amelia.
“No, he never does cry,” said Eudora, demurely.
They laughed again. Then Amelia rose and left the room to get the tea-things. The old serving-woman who had lived with them for many years was suffering from rheumatism, and was cared for by her daughter in the little cottage across the road from the Lancaster house. Her husband and grandson were the man and boy at work in the grounds. The three sisters took care of themselves and their house with the elegant ease and lack of fluster of gentlewomen born and bred. Miss Amelia, bringing in the tea-tray, was an unclassed being, neither maid nor mistress, but outranking either. She had tied on a white apron. She bore the silver tray with an ease which bespoke either nerve or muscle in her lace-draped arms.
She poured the tea, holding the silver pot high and letting the amber fluid trickle slowly, and the pearls and diamonds on her thin hands shone dully. Sophia passed little china plates and fringed napkins, and Anna a silver basket with golden squares of sponge-cake.
The ladies ate and drank, and the blue and white bundle on the sofa remained motionless. Eudora, after she had finished her tea, leaned back gracefully in her chair, and her dark eyes gleamed with its mild stimulus. She remained an hour or more. When she went out, Amelia slipped an envelope into her hand and at the same time embraced and kissed her. Sophia and Anna followed her example. Eudora opened her mouth as if to speak, but smiled instead, a fond, proud smile. During the last fifteen minutes of her stay Amelia had slipped out of the room with the blue and white bundle. Now she brought it out and laid it carefully in the carriage.
“We are always so glad to see you, dearest Eudora,” said she, “but you understand—”
“Yes,” said Sophia, “you understand, Eudora dear, that there is not the slightest haste.”
Eudora nodded, and her long neck seemed to grow longer.
When she was stepping regally down the path, Amelia said in a hasty whisper to Sophia: “Did you tell her?”
Sophia shook her head. “No, sister.”
“I didn’t know but you might have, while I was out of the room.”
“I did not,” said Sophia. She looked doubtfully at Amelia, then at Anna, and doubt flashed back and forth between the three pairs of blue eyes for a second. Then Sophia spoke with authority, because she was the only one of them all who had entered the estate of matrimony, and had consequently obvious cognizance of such matters.
“I think,” said she, “that Eudora should be told that Harry Lawton has come back and is boarding at the Wellwood Inn.”
“You think,” faltered Amelia, “that it is possible she might meet him unexpectedly?”
“I certainly do think so. And she might show her feelings in a way which she would ever afterward regret.”
“You think, then, that she—”
Sophia gave her sister a look. Amelia fled after Eudora and the baby-carriage. She overtook her at the gate. She laid her hand on Eudora’s arm, draped with India shawl.
“Eudora!” she gasped.
Eudora turned her serene face and regarded her questioningly.
“Eudora,” said Amelia, “have you heard of anybody’s coming to stay at the inn lately?”
“No,” replied Eudora, calmly. “Why, dear?”
“Nothing, only, Eudora, a dear and old friend of yours, of ours, is there, so I hear.”
Eudora did not inquire who the old friend might be. “Really?” she remarked. Then she said, “Goodby, Amelia dear,” and resumed her progress with the baby-carriage.
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