The Dull Miss Archinard Part 12

Peter was conscious of being sorry for it.

"I think we are both of us tired." Mrs. Archinard's smile grew even more sadly sweet; "both tired, both hopeless, both a little indifferent too.

How few things one finds to care about! Things crumble so, once touched, do they not? Everything crumbles." Mrs. Archinard sighed, and, as Peter found nothing to say ("How dull a man who writes quite clever books can be!" thought Mrs. Archinard), she went on in a more commonplace tone--

"And you talked with dear Katherine last night; you pleased her. She told Hilda and me this morning that you really pleased her immensely.

Katherine is hard to please. I am proud of my girl, Mr. Odd, very, very proud. Did you not find her quite distinctive? Quite significant? I always think of Katherine as significant, many facetted, meaning much."

The murmuring modulations of Mrs. Archinard's voice irritated Odd to such a pitch of ill-temper that he found it difficult to keep his own pleasant as he replied--

"Significant is most applicable. She is a charming girl."

"Yes, charming; that too applies, and oh, what a misapplied word it is!

Every woman nowadays is called charming. The daintily distinctive term is flung at the veriest schoolroom hoyden, as at the hard, mechanical woman of the world."

Peter now said to himself that Mrs. Archinard was an a.s.s--very unjustly--Mrs. Archinard was far from being an a.s.s. She felt the atmosphere with unerring prompt.i.tude. Her effects were not to be made upon _ce type la_. She welcomed Katherine's entrance as a diversion from looming boredom. Katherine seemed to go in for a regal simplicity in dress. Her gown was again of velvet, a deep amethyst color. The high collar and the long sleeves that came over her white hands in points were edged with a narrow line of sable. A necklace of amethysts lightly set in gold encircled the base of her throat. Peter liked to see a well-dressed woman, and Katherine was more than well dressed. In the pearly tints of the room she made a picture with her purple gleams and shadows.

"I _am_ glad to see you. Sit down. It is nice to have you in our little diggings. You are like a bit of England sitting there--a big bit!"

"And you are a perfectly delightful condensation of everything delightfully Parisian."

"The heart is British. True oak!" laughed Katherine; "don't judge me by the foliage."

"Ah, but it needs a good deal of Gallic genius to choose such foliage."

"No, no. I give the credit to my American blood, to mamma. But thanks, very much. I am glad you are appreciative." Katherine smiled so gayly, and looked so charmingly in the amethyst velvet, that Peter forgot for a moment to wonder where Hilda was, but Katherine did not forget.

"I expect Hilda every moment. I have told them to wait tea until she comes, poor dear! 'Them' is Wilson, whom you saw, I suppose; Taylor, our old maid; and the cook! The cook is French, otherwise our staff is shrunken, but of the same elements. One doesn't mind having no servants in a little box like this. Yes, mamma, I have paid _all_ the calls, and only two people were out; so I deserve petting and tea. I hope Hilda will hurry." Mrs. Archinard's face took on a look of ill-used resignation.

"We all pay dearly for Hilda's egotism," she remarked, and for a moment there was a rather uncomfortable silence. Odd felt a queer indignation and a queerer melancholy rising within him.

The Hilda of to-day seemed far further away than the Hilda of ten years ago. They talked in a rather desultory fashion for some time. Mrs.

Archinard's presence was damping, and even Katherine's smile was like a flower seen through rain. The little clock on the mantelpiece struck the quarter.

"Almost six!" exclaimed Katherine; "we must have tea."

"Yes, we may sacrifice ourselves, but we must not sacrifice Mr. Odd,"

said Mrs. Archinard with distinct fretfulness. Taylor answered the bell, and Peter, with a quickness of combination that surprised himself, surmised that Hilda was out alone. Had she become emanc.i.p.ated? Bohemian?

His melancholy grew stronger. Tea was brought, a charming set of daintiest white and a little silver teapot of a quaint and delicate design.

"Hilda designed it in Florence," said Katherine, seeing him looking at it; "an Italian friend had it made for her after her own model and drawings. Yes, Hilda goes in for decorative work a good deal. People who know about it have admired that teapot, as you do, I see."

"It's a lovely thing," said Peter, as Katherine turned it before him; "the simplicity of the outline and the delicate bas-relief"--he bent his head to look more closely--"exquisite." And he thought it rather rough on Hilda; to pour the tea from her own teapot without waiting for her.

Still, he owned, when at last the door-bell rang at fully half-past six, that he might have been asking for too much patience.

"There she is," said Katherine; "I must go and tell her that you are here." Katherine went out, and Odd heard a murmured colloquy in the entrance. He was conscious of feeling excited, and unconsciously rose to his feet and looked eagerly toward the door. But only Katherine came in.

"I don't believe I shall ever see Hilda!" he exclaimed, with an a.s.sumption of exasperation that hid some real nervousness. Katherine laughed.

"Oh yes, you shall, in five minutes. She had to wash her face and hands.

Artists are untidy people, you know," and Odd, with that same strange acuteness of perception with which he seemed dowered this afternoon, felt that Hilda had been coming in in all her artistic untidiness, and that Katherine had seen to a more respectable _entree_.

It rather irritated him with Katherine, and that tactful young lady probably guessed at his disappointment, for she went to the piano and began to play a sad aria from one of Schumann's Sonatas that sighed and pled and sobbed. She played very well, with the same perfect taste that she showed in her gowns, and Peter was too fond of music, too fond of Schumann especially, not to listen to her.

In the middle of the aria Hilda came in. It was over in a moment, the meeting, as the most exciting things in life are. Peter had not realized till the moment came how much it would excite him.

Hilda came in and walked up to him. She put her hand in his with all the pretty gravity he remembered in the child. Odd took the other hand too and stared at her. He was conscious then of being very much excited, and conscious that she was not.

Her eyes were "big and vague," but they were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen, and the vagueness was only in a certain lack of expression, for they looked straight into his. Carried along by that first impulse of excitement, despite the little shock of half-felt disappointment, Peter bent his head and kissed her on each cheek.

"Bravo!" said Katherine, still striking soft chords at the piano, "Bravo, Mr. Odd! considering your first meeting and your last parting, you have a right to that!" And Katherine laughed pleasantly, though she was a trifle displeased.

"Yes, I have, haven't I?" said Peter, smiling. He still held Hilda's hands. The little flush that had come to her cheeks when he had kissed her was gone, and she looked very white.

"Are you glad to see me, Hilda?" he asked; "I beg your pardon, but it comes naturally to call you that."

"I am very glad to see you, Mr. Odd," Hilda smiled. Her voice was very like the child's voice saying, "I thank you very much," ten years ago.

The same voice, grave and gentle. Odd had expected some little warmth, some little embarra.s.sment even, in the girl, considering the parting from the child. But Hilda did not show any warmth, neither did she seem at all embarra.s.sed, and Odd felt rather as one does when an unnecessary downward stride reveals level ground where one expected another step. He had stumbled a little, and now, half ruefully, half humorously, he considered the child Hilda grown up. She sat down near her mother.

"I am so sorry. I am afraid you waited for me," she said, bending towards her; "I really couldn't help it, mamma."

"No, I think it kindest to consider you irresponsible; there is certainly an element of insanity in your exaggerated devotion to your work." Mrs. Archinard smiled acidly, and Hilda, Odd thought, did look a little embarra.s.sed now. He had adjusted himself to the reality of the present, and was able to study her. The same Botticelli Madonna mouth, the same Gainsborough eyes; the skin of dazzling whiteness--an almost unnatural white--but she was evidently tired.

Certainly her black gown looked strangely beside Katherine's velvet, Mrs. Archinard's silk and laces. Odd saw that there was mud on the skirt, a very short skirt, and Hilda's legs were very long. She had walked, then. His own paternal solicitude struck him as amusing, and rather touching, as he glanced at her slim feet, to see with satisfaction that wet boots had been replaced by patent-leather shoes--heelless little shoes.

"I am afraid you work too much, you tire yourself," he said, for after her mother's rebuff she had sunk back in her chair with a weary la.s.situde of pose. Hilda immediately sat up straightly, giving him an almost frightened glance. How unchanged the little face, though the cloud of her hair no longer framed it. Hilda's hair was as smooth as her sister's, only it was brushed straight back, and the soft blue-black coils were ma.s.sed from ear to ear, and showed, in a coronet-like effect above her head, almost too much hair; it emphasized the pale fragility of her look.

"Oh no, I am not tired," she said, "not particularly. I walked home, you see. I am very fond of walking."

"Hilda is fond of such funny things," said Katherine, coming from the piano, "of walking in the mud and rain for instance. She is the most persistently, consistently energetic person I ever knew." Katherine paused pleasantly as though for Hilda to speak, but Hilda said nothing and looked even more vague than before, almost dull in fact.

"Well, she has had no tea," said Odd, "and after mud and rain that is rather cruel, even as a punishment."

Again Hilda gave him the alarmed quick glance; his eyes were humorously kind, and she smiled a slight little smile.

"Some tea!" Katherine cried; "my poor Hilda, I'm afraid it is hard-boiled by this time"--she laid her hand on the teapot--"and _almost_ cold. Shall I heat some more water, dear?"

"Oh! don't think of it, Katherine, it is almost dinner-time."

"Must I be off?" asked Odd, laughing.

"How absurd; we don't dine till eight," Katherine said.

"It wasn't a hint to me, then, Hilda?" Hilda looked helplessly distressed.

"A hint? Oh no, no. How could you think that?"

"I was only joking. I didn't really believe you so anxious to get rid of an old friend." Odd, with some determination, crossed the room and sat down beside her.

"I want to see a great deal of you if you will let me."