Chapter IX: Rex Makes Discoveries

It was Mr. Leighton who conducted Rex to his sleeping-room, saying, as he put the lamp down upon the dressing-bureau: “There’s a big patch of plaster off in the best chamber, where the girls put company, so you are to sleep in here. This is Bertha’s room.”

Rex became interested immediately. To occupy a young girl’s room, even if that girl were Squint-Eye, was a novel experience, and after Mr. Leighton had said good-night he began to look about with a good deal of curiosity. Everything was plain, but neat and dainty, from the pretty matting and soft fur rug on the floor, to the bed which looked like a white pin-cushion, with its snowy counterpane and fluted pillow-shams.

“It is just the room a nice kind of a girl would be apt to have, and it doesn’t seem as if a great, hulking fellow like me ought to be in it,” he said, fancying he could detect a faint perfume such as he knew some girls affected. “I think, though, it’s the roses and lilies. I don’t believe Squint-Eye goes in for Lubin and Pinaud and such like,” he thought, just as he caught sight of the slippers, which Dorcas had forgotten to remove when she arranged the room for him.

“Halloo! here are Cinderella’s shoes, as I live,” he said, taking one of them up and handling it gingerly as if afraid he should break it. “French heels; and, by Jove, she’s got a small foot, and a well-shaped one, too. I wouldn’t have thought that of Squint-Eye,” he said, with a feeling that the girl he called Squint-Eye had no right either in the room or in the slipper, which he put down carefully, and then continued his investigations, coming next to the window-seat, where the work-basket and book were lying. “Embroiders, I see. Wouldn’t be a woman if she didn’t,” he said, as he glanced at the bit of fancy work left in the basket. Then his eye caught the book, which he took up and saw was a volume of Tennyson, which showed a good deal of usage. “Poetical, too! Wouldn’t have thought that of her, either. She doesn’t look it.” Then turning to the fly-leaf, he read, “Bertha Leighton. From her cousin Louie. Christmas, 18—.”

“By George,” he exclaimed, “that is Louie Thurston’s handwriting. Not quite as scrawly as it was when we wrote the girl and boy letters to each other, but the counterpart of the note she sent me last summer in Saratoga, asking me to ride with her and Fred. And she calls herself cousin to this Bertha! I remember now she once told me she had some relatives North. They must be these Leightons, and I have come here to find them and aunt’s companion too. Truly the world is very small. Poor little Louie! I don’t believe she is happy. No woman could be that with Fred, if he _is_ my friend. Poor little Louie!”

There was a world of pathos and pity in Rex’s voice as he said, “Poor little Louie!” and stood looking at her handwriting and thinking of the beautiful girl whom he might perhaps have won for his own. But if any regret for what might have been mingled with his thoughts, he gave no sign of it, except that the expression of his face was a shade more serious as he put the book back in its place and prepared for bed, where he lay awake a long time, thinking of Louie, and Squint-Eye, and the girl he had knocked down on the ship, and Rose Arabella Jefferson, whose face was the last he remembered before going to sleep.

The next morning was bright and fair, with no trace of the storm visible except in the freshened foliage and the puddles of water standing here and there in the road, and Rex, as he looked from his window upon the green hills and valleys, felt a pang of disappointment that the place he so coveted could never be his. Breakfast was waiting when he went down to the dining-room, and while at the table he spoke of Louie and asked if she were not a cousin.

“Oh, yes,” Dorcas said, quickly, a little proud of this grand relation. “Louie’s mother and ours were sisters. She told Bertha she knew you. Isn’t she lovely?”

Rex said she was lovely, and that he had known her since she was a child, and had been in college with her husband. Then he changed the conversation by inquiring about the livery-stables in town. He would like, he said, to drive about the neighborhood a little before returning to New York, and see the old cemetery where so many Hallams were buried.

“Horses enough, but you’ve got to walk into town to get them. If old Bush will answer your purpose you are quite welcome to him,” Mr. Leighton said.

“Thanks,” Rex replied. “I am already indebted to you for so much that I may as well be indebted for more. I will take old Bush, and perhaps Miss Leighton will go with me as a guide.”

This Dorcas was quite willing to do, and the two were soon driving together through the leafy woods and pleasant roads and past the old houses, where the people came to the doors and windows to see what fine gentleman Dorcas Leighton had with her. Every one whom they met spoke to Dorcas and inquired for Bertha, in whom all seemed greatly interested.

“Your sister must be very popular. This is the thirteenth person who has stopped you to ask for her,” Rex said, as an old Scotchman finished his inquiries by saying, “She’s a bonnie lassie, God bless her.”

“She is popular, and deservedly so. I wish you knew her,” was Dorcas’s reply; and then as a conviction, born he knew not when or why, kept increasing in Rex’s mind, he asked, “Would you mind telling me how she looks? Is she dark or fair? tall or short? fat or lean?”

Dorcas answered unhesitatingly, “She is very beautiful,—neither fat nor lean, tall nor short, dark nor fair, but just right.”

“Oh-h!” and Rex drew a long breath as Dorcas went on: “She has a lovely complexion, with brilliant color, perfect features, reddish-brown hair with glints of gold in it in the sunlight, and the handsomest eyes you ever saw,—large and bright and almost black at times when she is excited or pleased,—long lashes, and carries herself like a queen.”

“Oh-h!” Rex said again, knowing that Rose Arabella Jefferson had fallen from her pedestal of beauty and was really the Squint-Eye of whom he had thought so derisively. “Have you a photograph of her?” he asked, and Dorcas replied that she had and would show it to him if he liked.

They had now reached home, and, bringing out an old and well-filled album, Dorcas pointed to a photograph which Rex recognized as a facsimile of the one his aunt had insisted belonged to Miss Jefferson. He could not account for the peculiar sensations which swept over him and kept deepening in intensity as he looked at the face which attracted him more now than when he believed it that of Rose Arabella of Scotsburg.

“I wish you would let me have this. I am a regular photo-fiend,—have a stack of them at home, and would like mightily to add this to the lot,” he said, remembering that the one he had was defaced with Rose Arabella’s name.

But Dorcas declined. “Bertha would not like it,” she said, taking the album from him quickly, as if she read his thoughts and feared lest he would take the picture whether she were willing or not.

It was now time for Rex to go, if he would catch the next car for Worcester. After thanking Mr. Leighton and Dorcas for their hospitality and telling them to be sure and let him know whenever they came to New York, so that he might return their kindness, he bade them good-bye, with a feeling that although he had lost his fancy farm and fox-hunts, he had gained two valuable friends.

“They are about the nicest people I ever met,” he said, as he walked down the avenue. “Couldn’t have done more if I had been related. I ought to have told them to come straight to our house if they were ever in New York, and I would if it were mine. But Aunt Lucy wouldn’t like it. I wonder she didn’t tell me about the mistake in the photographs when I was on the ship. Maybe she didn’t think of it, I saw her so short a time. I remember, though, that she did say that Miss Leighton was rather too high and mighty, and, by George, I told her to sit down on her! I _have_ made a mess of it; but I will write at once and go over sooner than I intended, for there is no telling what Mrs. Haynes may put my aunt up to do. I will not have that girl snubbed; and if I find them at it, I’ll——”

Here he gave an energetic flourish of his cane in the air to attract the conductor of the fast-coming car, and posterity will never know what he intended doing to his aunt and Mrs. Walker Haynes, if he found them snubbing that girl.