“Isn’t he an old dear?” asked Iris.
“I don’t know,” answered Lynn. “Is he?”
III
The Gift of Peace
The mistress of the mansion was giving her orders for the day. From the farthest nooks and corners of the attic, where fragrant herbs swayed back and forth in ghostly fashion, to the tiled kitchen, where burnished copper saucepans literally shone, Miss Field kept in daily touch with her housekeeping.
The old Colonial house was her pride and her delight. It was by far the oldest in that part of the country, and held an exalted position among its neighbours on that account, though the owner, not having spent her entire life in East Lancaster, was considered somewhat “new.” To be truly aristocratic, at least three generations of one’s forbears must have lived in the same dwelling.
In the hall hung the old family portraits. Gentlemen and gentlewomen, long since gathered to their fathers, had looked down from their gilded frames upon many a strange scene. Baby footsteps had faltered on the stairs, and wide childish eyes had looked up in awe to this stately company. Older children had wondered at the patches and the powdered hair, the velvet knickerbockers and ruffled sleeves. Awkward schoolboys had boasted to their mates that the jewelled sword, which hung at the side of a young officer in the uniform of the Colonies, had been presented by General Washington himself, in recognition of conspicuous bravery upon the field. Lovers had led their sweethearts along the hall at twilight, to whisper that their portraits, too, should some day hang there, side by side. Soldiers of Fortune who had found their leader fickle had taken fresh courage from the set lips of the gallant gentlemen in the great hall. Women whose hearts were breaking had looked up to the painted and powdered dames along the winding stairway, and learned, through some subtle freemasonry of sex, that only the lowborn cry out when hurt. Faint, wailing voices of new-born babes had reached the listening ears of the portraits by night and by day. Coffin after coffin had gone out of the wide door, flower-hidden, and step after step had died away forever, leaving only an echo behind. And yet the men and women of the line of Field looked out from their gilded frames, high-spirited, courageous, and serene, with here and there the hint of a smile.
Far up the stairs and beyond the turn hung the last portrait: Aunt Peace, in the bloom of her mature beauty, painted soon after she had taken possession of the house. The dark hair was parted over the low brow and puffed slightly over the tiny ears. The flowered gown was cut modestly away at the throat, showing a shoulder line that had been famous in three counties when she was the belle of the countryside. For the rest, she was much the same. Let the artist make the brown hair snowy white, change the girlish bloom to the tint of a faded pink rose, draw around the eyes and the mouth a few tiny time-tracks, which, after all, were but the footprints of smiles, sadden the trustful eyes a bit, and cover the frivolous gown with black brocade, – then the mistress of the mansion, who moved so gaily through the house, would inevitably startle you as you came upon her at the turn of the stairs, having believed, all the time, that she was somewhere else.
At the moment, she was in the garden, with Mrs. Irving and “the children,” as she called Iris and Lynn. “Now, my talented nephew-once-removed,” she was saying, in her high, sweet voice, “will you kindly take the spade and dig until you can dig no more? I am well aware that it is like hitching Pegasus to the plough, but I have grown tired of waiting for my intermittent gardener, and there is a new theory to the effect that all service is beautiful.”
“So it is,” laughed Lynn, turning the earth awkwardly. “I know what you’re thinking of, mother, but it isn’t going to hurt my hands.”
“You shall have a flower-bed for your reward,” Aunt Peace went on. “I will take the front yard myself, and the beds here shall be equally divided among you three. You may plant in them what you please and each shall attend to his own.”
“I speak for vegetables,” said Lynn.
“How characteristic,” murmured Iris, with a sidelong glance at him which sent the blood to his face. “What shall you plant, Mrs. Irving?”
“Roses, heartsease, and verbenas,” she replied, “and as many other things as I can get in without crowding. I may change my mind about the others, but I shall have those three. What are you going to have?”
“Violets and mignonette, nothing more. I love the sweet, modest ones the best.”
“Cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, melons, peas, asparagus,” put in Lynn, “and what else?”
“Nothing else, my son,” answered Margaret, “unless you rent a vacant acre or two. The seeds are small, but the plants have been known to spread.”
“I’ll have one plant of each kind, then, for I must assuredly have variety. It’s said to be ‘the spice of life’ and that’s what we’re all looking for. Besides, judging from the various scornful remarks which have been thought, if not actually made, the rest of you don’t care for vegetables. Anyhow, you sha’n’t have any – except Aunt Peace.”
“Over here now, please, Lynn,” said Miss Field. “When you get that done, I’ll tell you what to do next. Come, Margaret, it’s a little chilly here, and I don’t want you to take cold.”
For a few moments there was quiet in the garden. A flock of pigeons hovered about Iris, taking grain from her outstretched hand, and cooing soft murmurs of content. The white dove was perched upon her shoulder, not at all disturbed by her various excursions to the source of supply. Lynn worked steadily, seemingly unconscious of the girl’s scrutiny.
Finally, she spoke. “I don’t want any of your old vegetables,” she said.
“How fortunate!”
“You may not have any at all – I don’t believe the seeds will come up.”
“Perhaps not – it’s quite in the nature of things.”
The pouter pigeon, brave in his iridescent waistcoat, perched upon her other shoulder, and Lynn straightened himself to look at her. From the first evening she had puzzled him.
Her face was nearly always pale, but to-day she had a pretty colour in her cheeks and her deep, violet eyes were aglow with innocent mischief. There was a dewy sweetness about her red lips, and Lynn noted that the sheen on the pigeon’s breast was like the gleam from her blue-black hair, where the sun shone upon it. She had a great mass of it, which she wore coiled on top of her small, well-shaped head. It was perfectly smooth, its riotous waves kept well in check, except at the blue-veined temples, where little ringlets clustered, unrebuked.
“You should be practising,” said Iris, irrelevantly.
“So should you.”
“I don’t need to.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not going to play with you any more.”
“Why, Iris?”
“Oh,” she returned, with a little shrug of her shoulders, which frightened away both pigeons, “you didn’t like the way I played your last accompaniment, and so I’ve stopped for good.”
Lynn thought it only a repetition of what she had said when he criticised her, and passed it over in silence.
“I’ve already done an hour,” he said, “and I’ll have time for another before lunch. I can get in the other two before dark, and then I’m going for a walk. You’ll come with me, won’t you?”
“You haven’t asked me properly,” she objected.
Irving bowed and, in set, gallant phrases, asked Miss Temple for “the pleasure of her company.”
“I’m sorry,” she answered, “but I’m obliged to refuse. I’m going to make some little cakes for tea – the kind you like.”
“Bother