The Girl at Cobhurst Part 46

"A telegram!" exclaimed Cicely, but she did not look up at him.

"Yes," said he; "I want to telegraph to Miriam that you and I are engaged to be married. I want her to know it before she gets here. Shall I send it?"

She raised to him a face more brightly hued than any peach blossom--rich with the color of the ripe fruit. Ten minutes after this, two wood doves, sitting in a tree to the east of the lettuce bed, and looking westward, turned around on their twig and looked toward the east. They were sunny-minded little creatures, and did not like to be cast into the shade.

As they went out of the garden gate, Cicely said, "You have always been a very independent person and accustomed to doing very much as you please, haven't you?"

"It has been something like that," answered Ralph; "but why?"

"Only this," she said; "would you begin already to chafe and rebel if I were to ask you not to send that telegram? It would be so much nicer to tell her after she gets back."

"Chafe!" exclaimed Ralph, "I should think not. I will do exactly as you wish."

"You are awfully good," said Cicely, "but you must agree with me more prudently now that we are out here, and I will not tell mother until Miriam knows."

A gray old chanticleer, who was leading his hens across the yard, stopped at this moment and looked at Ralph, but it is not certain that he sniffed.

Ralph knew very well when people, coming from Barport, should arrive in Thorbury, but his mind was so occupied that when he went to the barn, he forgot so many things he should have done at the house, and he ran backward and forward so often, and waited so long for an opportunity to say something he had just thought of, to somebody who did not happen to be ready to listen at the precise moment he wished to speak, that he had just stepped into the gig to go to the station for his sister, when Miriam arrived alone in the Bannister carriage. Not finding anybody at the station to meet her, they had sent her on.

Mrs. Drane was not the liveliest person at the dinner table, and she wondered much how Ralph and Cicely, who had been so extremely sober at breakfast time, should now be so hilarious. The arrival of Miriam seemed hardly reason enough for such intemperate gayety.

As for Miriam, she overflowed with delight. The ocean was grand, but Cobhurst was Cobhurst. "There was nothing better about my trip than the opportunity it gave me of coming back to my home. I never did that before, you know, my children."

This she said loftily from her seat at the head of the table. Dinner was late and lasted long, and Ralph had gone into the room on the lower floor, in which he kept his cigars, and which he called his office, when Miriam followed him. There was no unenc.u.mbered chair, and she seated herself on the edge of the table.

"Ralph," said she, "I want to say something to you, now, while it is fresh in my mind. I think we can sometimes understand our affairs better when we go away from them and are not mixed up in them. I have been thinking a great deal since I have been at Barport about our affairs here, not only as they are but as they may be, and most likely will be, and I have come to the conclusion that some of these days, Ralph, you will want to be married."

"Do you mean me?" cried Ralph. "You amaze me!"

"Oh, you are only a man, and you need not be amazed," said his sister.

"This is the way I have been thinking of it: if you ever do want to get married, I hope you will not marry Dora Bannister. I used sometimes to think that that might be a good thing to do, though I changed my mind very often about it, but I do not think so, now, at all. Dora is an awfully nice girl in ever so many ways, but since I have been at Barport with her, I am positive that I do not want you to marry her."

Ralph heaved a long sigh and put his hands in his pockets.

"Bless my soul!" he exclaimed, "this is very discouraging; if I do not marry Dora, who is there that I can marry?"

"You goose," said his sister, "there is a girl here, under your very nose, ever so much nicer and more suitable for you than Dora. If you marry anybody, marry Cicely Drane. I have been thinking ever and ever so much about her and about you, and I made up my mind to speak to you of this as soon as I got home, so that you might have a chance to think about it before you should see Dora. Don't you remember what you used to tell me about the time when you were obliged to travel so much, and how, when you had a seat to yourself in a car, and a crowd of people were coming in, you used to make room for the first nice person you saw, because you knew you would have to have somebody sitting alongside of you, and you liked to choose for yourself? Now that is the way I feel about your getting married; if you marry Cicely Drane, I shall feel safe for the rest of my life."

"Miriam!" exclaimed Ralph, "you astonish me by the force of your statements. Wait here one moment," and he ran into the hall through which he had seen Cicely pa.s.sing, and presently reappeared with her.

"Miss Drane," said he, "do you know that my sister thinks that I ought to marry you?"

In an instant Miriam had slipped from the table to the floor.

"Good gracious, Ralph!" she cried. "What do you mean?"

"I am merely stating your advice," he answered; "and now, Miss Drane, how does it strike you?"

"Well," said Cicely, demurely, "if your sister really thinks we should marry, I suppose--I suppose we ought to do it."

Miriam's eyes flashed from one to the other, then there were two girlish cries and a manly laugh, and in a moment Miriam and Cicely were in each other's arms, while Ralph's arms were around them both.

"Now," said Cicely, when this group had separated itself into its several parts, "I must run up and tell mother." And very soon Mrs. Drane understood why there had been sobriety at breakfast and hilarity at dinner. She was surprised, but felt she ought not to be; she was a little depressed, but knew she would get over that.

La Fleur did not hear the news that night, but it was not necessary; she had seen Ralph and Cicely coming through the garden gate without a leaf of lettuce or a single sprig of parsley.

CHAPTER XL

ANGRY WAVES

The ocean rolled angrily on the beach, and Miss Panney walked angrily on the beach, a little higher up, however, than the line to which the ocean rolled.

The old lady was angrier than the ocean, and it was much more than mere wind that made her storm waves roll. Her indignation was directed first against Mrs. Bannister, that silly woman, who, by cutting short her stay at the seash.o.r.e, had ruined Miss Panney's plans, and also against Ralph, who had not come to Barport as soon as he had received the telegram. If he had arrived, the party might have stayed a little longer for his sake.

Why he had not come she knew no more than she knew what she was going to say to him in explanation of her message, and she cared as little for the one as for the other.

Her own visit to Barport had been utterly useless. She had spent money and time, she had tired herself, had been frightened and disgusted,--all for nothing. She did not remember any of her plans that had failed so utterly.

Meeting the bathing-master, she rolled in upon him some ireful waves, because he did not keep a boat outside the breakers to pick up people who might be exhausted and in danger of drowning. In vain the man protested that ten thousand people had said that to him, before, and that the thing could not be done, because so many swimmers would make for the boat and hang on to its sides, just to rest themselves until they were ready to go back. It would simply be a temptation to people to swim beyond the breakers. She went on, in a voice that the noise of the surf could not drown, to tell him that she hoped ten thousand more people would say the same thing to him, and to declare that he ought to have several boats outside during bathing hours, so that people could cling to some of them, and so, perhaps, save themselves from exhaustion on their return, and so that one, at least, could be kept free to succor the distressed. At last the poor man vowed that he acted under orders, and that, if she wanted to pitch into anybody, she ought to pitch into the proprietors of the hotel who employed him, and who told him what he must do.

Miss Panney accepted this advice; and if the sea had broken into the private office of that hotel, the owners and managers could not have had a worse time than they had during the old lady's visit. It may be stated that for the remainder of the season two or three boats might always be seen outside the breakers during bathing hours at the Barport beach.

For the sake of appearances, Miss Panney did not leave Barport immediately; for she did not wish her friends to think that she was a woman who would run after the Bannisters wherever they might please to go. But in a reasonable time she found herself in the Witton household, and the maid who had charge of her room had some lively minutes after the arrival of the old lady therein.

The next day she went to Thorbury to see what had happened, and chanced to spy Phoebe resting herself on a bench at the edge of the public green.

Instantly the colored woman sprang to her feet, and began to explain to Miss Panney why she had not made her report before the latter set out on her journey.

"You see, ma'am, I hadn't no shoes as was fit for that long walk out in the country, an' I had to take my best ones to the shoemaker; and though I did my best to make him hurry, it took him a whole day, an' so I had to put off going to Cobhurst, an' I've never got over my walk out thar yit.

My j'ints has creaked ever sense."

"If you used them more, they would creak less," snapped Miss Panney. "How are things going on at Cobhurst? What did you see there?"

"I seed a lot, an' I heard a lot," the colored woman answered. "Mike's purty nigh starved, an' does his own washin'. An' things are in that state in the house that would make you sick, Miss Panney, if you could see them. What the rain doesn't wash goes dirty; an' as for that old cook they've got, if she isn't drunk all the time, her mind's givin' way, an'

I expect she'll end by pizenin' all of them. The vittles she gave me to eat, bein' nearly tired to death when I got thar, was sich that they give me pains that I hain't got over yit. And what would have happened if I'd eat a full meal, n.o.body knows."

"Get out with you," cried Miss Panney. "I don't want any more of your jealousy and spite. If that woman gave you anything to eat, I expect it was the only decently cooked thing you ever put into your mouth. Did you see Mr. Haverley? Were the Drane women still there? How were they all getting on together?"

Phoebe's eyes sparkled, and her voice took in a little shrillness.

"I was goin' to git the minister to write you a letter 'bout that, Miss Panney," said she; "but you didn't tell me whar you was goin', nor give me no money for stamps nor nothin'. But I kin say to you now that that woman, which some people may call a cook, but I don't, she told me, without my askin' a word 'bout nothin', that Mr. Hav'ley an' that little Miss Drane was to be married in the fall, an' that they was goin' away, all of them, to the wife's mother's to live, bein' that that old farm out thar didn't pay to run, an' never would. I reckoned they'd git sick of it afore this, which I always said."

"Phoebe!" exclaimed Miss Panney, "I do not believe a word of all that!

How dare you tell me such a lot of lies?"

Phoebe was getting very angry, though she did not dare to show it; but instead of taking back anything she had said, she put on more lie-power.