Fool There Was — White Roses; Shadows
WHITE ROSES.
It was two months later.
In the little garden that lay on the side of the big, rambling house at Larchmont where the sun best loved to dwell, roses were in bloom; and roses, even as the sun, seemed to love that garden.
They clustered, great masses of glowing white, against the latticed arbor--they caught playfully at one's hat as one would walk through the gate that led to the broad green lawn, and to the Sound beyond--they snatched at one's clothing as one would walk past the largest bush--the one that stretched its branches across the French window.
It was a real garden--an out-of-door home--a garden in which one might live, and in which one might be glad that one was alive.
At one side of a tiny writing table set upon the thick, carpet-like sward, sat the mother, pen in hand, before her a half-finished letter.
Across from her the child pressed strong white teeth into the yielding wood of her pencil; and before her, too, was a half-written letter--a sprawling, uncertain letter of childhood.
At length the child looked up.
She could see that her mother was not writing; so if she spoke, she would not be interrupting.
"Mother, dear?"
"Yes, honey?"
"How do you spell love?"
"Don't you know, dearie?"
The child shook her head.
"L," prompted the mother.
Muriel ventured, dubiously: "L-a-?"
Her mother shook her head.
The child ventured again: "L-i-?"
"No, honey."
The child kicked her brown little legs.
"Tell me, mother dear," she besought.
"Please tell me."
"L-o-v-e," spelled the mother.
"Oh, yes!
I 'member now....
Mother, dear?"
"Yes, little sweetheart?"
"When is a daddy coming home?
It's awfully hard to write letters.
He's been gone a long time now, hasn't he, mother dear?"
"Yes, dearie....
A long, long time."
The violet eyes were sad.
"'Most a year?"
persisted the little one.
Her mother smiled a little, wanly.
"It seems like it, doesn't it?"
she said.
"But it's only two months--not only two months," she corrected; "but two months."
Came a little pause.
It was broken again by Muriel.
"Mother, dear."
"Yes?"
"Can't I make the rest just kisses?"
With a smile--a smile of infinite love and tenderness, the mother leaned across and kissed the child that was hers.
"Of course you may, dearie," she assented, softly.
"Why don't you write kisses, too, mother, dear?"
queried the little one.
"It's lots easier....
Oh, mother, dear!
I'll tell you what I wrote if you'll tell me what you wrote.
Will you?"
Violet eyes gave loving assent.
"Oh, goody!
We won't tell anyone else, will we?"
"No, dearie."
"Then," declared Muriel, "I'll read mine."
She picked up the wrinkled little sheet of sadly irregular chirography.
"Dear father daddy," she read.
"It rained yesterday.
Mother and I are well.
We hope you are well and God gave our new cat four kittens."
She looked up into the face of her mother.
"God is awfully good to cats, isn't He, mother dear?"
she asked.
She went on, then, with the assurance of childhood: "Please come home.
We miss you.
I fell in the lake yesterday, but didn't take cold.
I love you....
And the rest is just kisses."
She eyed her mother anxiously.
"Do you think daddy will like that letter?"
she asked.
Her mother's voice was a bit uneven as she answered.
"I'm sure he will, little sweetheart I'm _sure_ he will."
"Now," requested the child, "you read yours."
Kathryn, drawing the child to her, bent forward.
There was much in her heart--much that she might not tell to anyone of all the world save two-- and one of these was far away; and, even though the other could not understand, still-- She read: "My John: You know how we love you, but you don't know how we miss you.
Please, please come back to us.
If it weren't for Muriel I don't know what I'd do, John, dear.
I don't want to make you unhappy.
I want you to have all the honors--all the prominence--everything that a man's heart holds dear.
But I can't help being jealous a little of the things that are keeping you from us...."
She ceased, turning her head away.
A robin, in the roses, lifting its head, broke into song.
The child waited, patiently....
At length she inquired: "Is that all, mother dear?"
Kathryn nodded.
"Yes, honey."
"Haven't you made any kisses?"
"No, dearie."
"But," protested the child, "daddy'll be so disappointed!"
"Will he, honey?
That wouldn't do, would it?
...
Very well, then, mother'll make some kisses."
With Muriel looking on, the mother made several large, and heavy crosses at the foot of that which she had written.
There were other marks on that letter--marks that were not kisses--marks that had been made by moisture, and that had smeared the ink as they had been quickly wiped away.
These the child did not notice; she was looking toward the house.
"Here comes Aunt Elinor, mother, dear," she said.
[Illustration] CHAPTER NINETEEN.
SHADOWS.
Mrs. VanVorst had been very ill.
A fever, contracted in South Africa where she had been with her husband--a fever gained in a futile effort to save the life of that husband, had sadly fagged a naturally vigorous constitution.
There had been a recurrence soon after her return to America.
Now she was in that condition of indolent convalescence that is in women so interesting, in men so uninteresting.
She was an out-of-door woman, tall, lithe, willowy.
In the rugged health that was normally hers, she seemed muscled almost like one of the opposite sex; yet she lost by it none of the charm of frank femininity that was hers.
She was long-limbed, clean-limbed, quick of mind and of body....
The forced inaction of illness was irksome to her.
It was hard for her to walk slowly; it was hard for her to sit in silent inaction-- to lie in indolent unrest.
Too, she felt more than anyone save herself might ever know the loss of the man that had been to her not only husband but as well friend, companion and comrade.
She had been of the world, though anything but worldly.
She knew perhaps, more than many another of the Hidden Things.
She strolled forward through the sun-flecked garden.
A magazine, its leaves still uncut, was in her hand.
She sank into a chair, in a spot from which she might see the Sound and its burden of sails.
"Tom come yet?"
she asked.
Kathryn shook her head.
"Not yet."
"Heard from Jack to-day?"
Again Kathryn made negation.
"The foreign mail hasn't come yet," she said.
"I told Pierre to stop at the office for it."
Elinor, selecting a paper knife, ran it slowly between the pages of her magazine.
"That business of his seems to be keeping him a long time," was her comment.
"What did he say in his last letter?"
"Why, there are several matters of great importance that still remain unsettled.
It's not a little thing, his mission, you know.
I don't know much about such things; but diplomatic questions, it always seemed to me, take years and years of all manner of serious discussion, and weighty argument."
Kathryn tried to speak lightly; yet the heaviness of her heart was pitifully apparent.
Elinor was scanning a colored frontispiece--a thing of vivid yellows and brilliant blues.
"You're feeling almost like yourself again, aren't you, Nell?"
Elinor nodded.
"Yes," she replied.
"Thanks to you."
"You were very ill."
"One more doctor would have finished me."
Of a sudden, there came from the drive the quick honking of an automobile horn, together with the soft purring of an engine.
Muriel leaped to her feet; brown little legs flashed as she made her way across the garden.
Kathryn and Elinor watched her going.
They heard her cry, "Oh, Mr. Tom!"
Another moment and Blake, carrying the child in his arms, thrust aside the bending heads of the white roses and made his way into the garden.
"Hello, folks," was his greeting.
"Is God in?"
"Who?"
demanded Elinor.
"God," he returned.
"This is heaven, isn't it?
It certainly does seem like it to anyone who has just come from the fireless cooker that sometimes rejoices under the name of Manhattan.
My old Aunt Maria!
But it is hot there, though."
"We're very glad to see you, Tom," Kathryn began; "although we do owe you a scolding."
"What for?"
he demanded, setting the child to the sward and taking off his hat.
"You haven't been near us for a fortnight."
He seated himself, mopping his forehead.
"Business, Kate.
Business," he declared, importantly.
Elinor laughed in pleasant irony.
"Business!"
she repeated.
"I said, 'business,'" he retorted.
"Yes," she rejoined; "but you can't prove it."
"Can't eh?"
he inquired.
"Well, you go back to the wicked metropolis and you'll find that my rent is paid and that a coupon's been cut from one of my bonds.
And who did it, I'd like to know?"
"Oh, your secretary, or the janitor, or somebody," returned Elinor, easily.
"Not you."
Tom laughed.
"I must have a very negligible reputation for industry in this menage.
How do you think I spend all my time?"
Elinor, arms akimbo, half faced him.
"Well, Mr. Bones," she asked.
"How do you spend all your time?"
He grinned at her, friendlily.
"Feeling better, aren't you?"
"I feel so well," she returned, "that if this doctor of mine weren't such a Simon Legree, I could play you eighteen holes of golf for a box of gloves against a box of cigars."
"Gambler!"
he scoffed.
"And if I should win, I suppose I'd have to smoke the cigars."
"Certainly," she countered, easily, "if I should have to wear the gloves."
He sank back in the big chair.
"Well," he asserted, "it were useless to speculate on that which may never be.
I am at present in that interesting state of a man's career where golf doesn't belong.
A man who is beyond the first flush of adolescence and not yet in the last pallor of senility, has no business dallying with golf.
He's liable to get sunstruck."
Muriel, who had been listening with round, wondering eyes, ran to her mother.
"What does he mean, mother dear?"
she asked.
Elinor replied instead, laughing.
"Nobody knows, Muriel.
Not even he."
"Now that's unkind, Nell," protested Blake; "unkind though true."
The child, eyeing them for a minute in serious non-understanding, recurred with the facility of the very young to other things.
"Oh, mother dear!"
she cried.
"We forgot to stick up our letters to daddy."
Taking her mother's hand, she led her to the little table.
Elinor, left alone with Blake, turned to him and queried: "Heard from Jack lately?"
He shook his head.
"Not lately.
Not since I've seen you."
"Not enjoying himself much, I suppose," she commented.
"He always stuck to this place in summer like a barnacle.
Was crazy about it."
Blake, sitting with left fist in right palm, eyes upon the velvety green of the lawn, shook his head, slowly.
"He shouldn't have left a home like this if they'd offered to make him Queen of Sheba," was his comment.
Kathryn had turned to him.
There was in her eyes a frank gladness--a sincere welcome.
She was glad to see him; how glad, she herself scarcely knew.
She had few friends; for there were but few people for whom she really cared.
She had known Blake for many, many years--known him and liked him, and liking, had respected.
He was of the few men whom money, and bachelorhood, have no power to spoil.
And they are few indeed.
The one has power to spoil, you know, even as has the other; and both together--unusual indeed is the man who can resist.
"It's good to see you again, Tom," she declared.
"It's been lonely here....
And I never thought that would happen."
"It's good to be here," he returned, looking steadily upon her.
"It's good to be here, Kate.
It's a perfect place, this--perfect."
Elinor had risen; plucking a bending blossom, inhaling of its delicate fragrance, she had wandered through the broad archway of the arbor, toward the Sound.
There was a moment of silence.
There came from between Blake's lips a deep sigh.
Kathryn looked up, quickly.
"What's the matter, Tom?"
He shook his head again.
"I don't know.
Sometimes things go all wrong--dead wrong--and no one can tell why, or how, or what to do."
"Why, Tom!"
she cried.
"What do you mean?
Has anything--" "Mean?"
he interrupted.
"Oh, nothing.
Nothing, of course.
I--I guess it's loneliness.
There are a lot of people who think because I have a motor to smell, a yacht to make my friends seasick and a club window to decorate, that I'm contented with my lot.
But at heart I'm the most domestic individual that ever desecrated a dinner coat; and sometimes the natural tendencies of the gregarious male animal will not down.
There's too much of the concentrated quintessence of unadulterated happiness lying around here.
Maybe that's it."
"We have been happy here, Tom--very, very happy."
Then, quickly: "I'm sorry, Tom....
I understand, and I'm sorry."
He smiled.
"It's nothing, Kate," he declared, "nothing at all.
You've got to expect a bachelor to kick every once in a while, you know.
They're a peevish lot of old guys."
[Illustration]
