Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

Celia hated herself for her burning cheeks as she bowed gravely. One hand held her work big, the other was on Belle's shoulder; and if, us for a fleeting instant she thought, Allan was about to hold out his hand, he changed his mind. His manner was calmly, unconcernedly polite as he spoke her name.

"Uncle Allan, what are you doing here?" called Rosalind.

Under the chorus of greetings and explanations Celia slipped away. Her thoughts were in a tumult as she hurried across the grounds to her own home.

Her mother was on the porch with a caller, and Celia took her seat there and went on with her sewing. The visitor remarked on her improved color, and Mrs. Fair looked at her daughter in some perplexity, Celia had been so pale of late.

All the evening she worked with feverish energy, writing labels for fruit jars and pasting them on, until no shadow of an excuse remained for not going to bed.

When at length she went to her room, it was to sit at the open window gazing blankly out into the darkness. She had been telling herself fiercely how silly and weak she was, but she had not succeeded in conquering her unhappiness. Now she resisted no longer.

She had not met Allan Whittredge face to face before for six years, although since his father's death he had been frequently in Friendship. She had known it must happen sometime, and had schooled herself to think it would mean nothing to her, but instead it had brought back a host of vain regrets.

She had been happier of late. Association with those light-hearted children had brought back something of her old hopefulness. That a chance meeting with Allan Whittredge could change all this, humiliated her.

"You haven't any pride, Celia Fair. It was your own doing."

"I had to do it; it was forced on me."

"And a fortunate thing it was. Do you suppose he would care now? These years which he has spent out in the world--what have they done for you? They have turned a happy-hearted girl into a bitter, disappointed woman." So she argued with herself.

Resting her head on the sill, she let her thoughts go where they would.

"You are sure you won't forget, Celia? It is going to be a long time," Allan had said. She was still a schoolgirl, and he just through college, and no one but her father knew about it. Dr. Fair had shaken his head, but he loved Allan almost as much as he loved Celia. Allan must do as his mother wished and go abroad. Time would show of what stuff their love was made, he said.

She had been so happy. She had been glad no one knew. Her happiness was all her own.

Then had come Judge Whittredge's illness, the trouble about the Gilpin will, and the cruel slander that had crushed her father. The brief letter with which she returned Allan's letters and ring, was the result of her bitter resentment and grief. In her sorrow over her father's death she told herself her love was dead, and for a time she believed it. Now she knew it was not so.

"At least, I will be honest with myself. I do care. Perhaps I shall always care. Oh, it is cruel to come so near happiness and miss it. But it is something to have come near it.

"O God, help me--" she prayed, "not to choose the desert way. I do not want to be bitter and hard."

As she lay back in her chair, too weary to think; through her mind floated Rosalind's words, "Things always come right in the Forest."

* * * * *

It was after dinner. The sun had set, leaving the sky full of opal tints. The delicate leaves of the white birch barely moved, so still was the air. The whir of the last locust had died away, and the soft splash of the fountain was the only sound, as Rosalind in her white dress flitted past the griffins and joined her uncle on the garden bench. He welcomed her with a smile, and smoked on in silence. They were too good comrades to need to talk.

After a while Rosalind spoke: "Uncle Allan, do you know Miss Celia Fair?"

"I used to."

Silence again.

"I like her very much. I think she is sweet, and she bears hard things bravely. Belle says, since her father died they haven't any money, so Miss Celia works, and the boys are troublesome, and her mother is ill a great deal."

Another silence.

"Uncle Allan, was it any harm for me to know her? Belle said there was a quarrel, and Aunt Genevieve said, 'We have nothing to do with the Fairs.'"

As he flicked the ash from his cigar, Allan smiled at Rosalind's unconscious imitation of Genevieve's tone.

"I see no reason why you should take up other people's quarrels," he said gravely.

Then Rosalind told him of her first meeting with Celia, and the incident of the rose. "But I think now I must have been mistaken," she added.

"Perhaps," said Allan, and again he smiled to himself in the twilight, so vividly did the story recall the occasional passionate outbursts of the child Celia, usually so gentle, so timidly reserved.

That strange letter of hers had puzzled while it hurt. Far away from the scene of the trouble, he could not understand the bitterness of the strife. That for a village quarrel--some unkind words, perhaps--she could break the bond between them--was this the Celia he thought he knew so well?

The wound had rankled, but after a time he told himself it was for the best. Travel and study had broadened and matured him, and he could smile now as he recognized, what was unsuspected at the time, that his mother had planned these years of absence in the determination to cure him of a boyish fancy which her eyes had been keen enough to detect.

And yet--his thought would dwell upon her as she stood on the step, her arm around Belle, the laughter fading from her face. Not the little schoolgirl, but a woman, gracious and tender.

Rosalind danced away to join Maurice and Katherine, whose humble penitence had restored her to favor; and over the hedge came the sound of their voices singing an old tune. On the still night air, in their clear treble, the words carried distinctly:--

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot?"--

CHAPTER TWENTIETH.

THE SPINET.

"Thou art not for the fashion of these times."

"Where are you going to put it, Celia?" asked Mrs. Fair.

"In Saint Cecilia's room, I suppose," her daughter replied. Her father had given this name to the sitting room which was her own special property, and in which she would have nothing that was not associated in some way with her great-grandmother.

"I don't believe you ever enter it now," Mrs. Fair continued discontentedly.

"The spinet won't mind that; it is used to being alone," Celia answered cheerfully, standing before the mirror, fastening an oak leaf on her dress. It reminded her that even if her heart was heavy and her life full of difficulties, she could still be courageous.

"Things are sure to come right in the Forest," she had said to herself again and again. Not because she believed it, but because she longed to, and sometimes she did believe it,--just for a little while,--as she looked from Patricia's Arbor across to that bit of sunny road.

Since the adventure of the Arden Foresters the cellar windows of the Gilpin house had been securely fastened, and its bolts and bars made proof against more experienced house breakers than they. And now preparations for the sale became evident. Circulars containing an inventory of the things to be disposed of were spread abroad, and it was known that the proprietor of the new mills, a stranger in Friendship, had been through the house with the idea of purchasing.

As she unlocked the door of Saint Cecilia's room, Celia could not help remembering the days when she had looked forward so happily to owning the spinet, and seeing it stand beneath her great-grandmother's portrait.

From the cushioned window-seat, where there was a glimpse of the river through the trees, she had loved to survey the calm orderliness of the little room. At heart something of a Puritan, the straight-backed chairs and unreposeful sofa, the secretary with its diamond-paned doors and glass knobs, the quaint old jardinieres brought from China a century ago, pleased her fancy.

How Genevieve Whittredge had smiled and shrugged her shoulders! In those days their half antagonistic friendship had not suffered a complete break. She must have color and warmth and lavishness, and Celia acknowledged her unerring taste and admired the beauty and richness Genevieve found necessary to her happiness, even while she returned contentedly to her own prim little room.

It had been her dreaming place, and when dreams were crowded out by an exacting present, she had closed the door and turned the key. It was so much the less to take care of.

"I don't see why Mr. Gilpin couldn't have left you some money," her mother said, following her. "It would be such a help just now. How are we to keep Tom at the university another year?"

Mrs. Fair had a way of bringing up problems just when her daughter had succeeded in putting them aside.

"I think we can manage in some way, mother. Don't worry," she said.

"But some one has to worry."

"Then let me do it," Celia answered, smiling.

Half an hour later she was standing by the spinet, absently touching the tuneless keys, when a voice from the window startled her. It was Morgan, who with his elbows on the sill, was looking in.

"Better sell it, Miss Celia."

Sell it! The idea had never occurred to her. "What could I get for it?" she asked, going to the window.

"Two hundred--maybe more."

Two hundred dollars would be a great help toward Tom's expenses, but to give up her grandmother's spinet? It took on a new value.

"Let me have it to do over and I guarantee you two hundred dollars," said Morgan.

"I'll think of it and let you know," was Celia's answer.

"It seems like the irony of fate," she told herself, "to have to sell it almost before it is really mine; and yet when two hundred dollars lie within my reach, I can't refuse to take them. Poor old spinet, it is too bad to send you away. I shouldn't do it if I could help it; but you don't fit in with these times. Or rather, you are helping me out; that is the way to look at it."

So it was that the spinet did not long keep company with the portrait of Saint Cecilia, its original owner, but was harked away to the shop of the magician and the society of the clock case and the claw-footed sofa.

Here Allan Whittredge saw and recognized it one day, and questioned Morgan. Allan remembered the prim little sitting room, and how Celia had looked forward to owning the spinet, and it troubled him to think she was compelled to part with it. When he left the shop he went over to Miss Betty's.

After talking for a while about other things, he asked, "Betty, is it true that Dr. Fair left his family with very little?"

"True? Of course it is. Have you just found that out? Celia is working her fingers to the bone, and I wish I were sure those boys are worth it," was her reply.

"How did it happen?"

"Well, I don't think Dr. Fair had the best judgment in the world when it came to investments; at the same time, a lot of other people lost in the West View coal mines. His death was a great shock; I loved Dr. Fair."

"I too," said Allan. "He was a good man."

"I don't know whether you know it, Allan. Perhaps I ought not to tell you; but there was some talk of Dr. Fair's treatment having done your father harm. I really believe your mother was out of her mind with anxiety, and you know she disliked the doctor. He was dismissed, you remember; and this was whispered about and exaggerated until I think it almost broke his heart. Of course there was no truth in it--that was made clear in the end--and his death put a stop to the talk, for everybody loved and respected Dr. Fair; but it has been terribly hard on Celia."

Allan sat looking at Miss Betty absently. "Terribly hard on Celia,"--the words repeated themselves over and over in his mind.

"This is the first I ever heard of it," he said at length.

Miss Betty watched him as he walked away. "As usual I have been minding some one else's business," she said to herself; "but he ought to know it. Allan is a fine fellow."