The Man in Lonely Land Part 15

"I'll ask her." Dorothea slipped from her uncle's lap. "I'll be back in a minute," and before Laine could press the b.u.t.ton which would bring Moses she had disappeared. Five minutes later she was back, in her hands a good-sized paper box, tied clumsily with red string, and as she put it on the table she patted it with satisfaction.

"That's for Channing," she said, half leaning against the table and drumming on it with the tips of her fingers. "Caddie didn't have any cakes. She says you used to like sweet things, and it was once a pleasure to cook for you; but if you enjoy anything you eat now you never confess it to her. She says you eat, but you don't know the name of what you're eating, and one thing is the same as another. I think her feelings are getting hurt, Uncle Winthrop."

"Are they? I'm sorry. Caddie is a spoiled creature. I long ago exhausted the English language in commendation of her efforts.

Nothing is so wearing on one as continual demand for praise, and Caddie's capacity is exhaustless. I'm sorry she didn't have the little cakes."

"She's going to make some to-morrow and send them to me. It's pop-corn in this box." Dorothea held up the latter and shook it.

"Moses brought it from Virginia. They are the cunningest little ears you've ever saw. Wasn't it nice of Moses to think about us and bring it? Of course, he didn't know we would be away so long and that I was going to be sick and he wouldn't see me until spring; but it's a thing that keeps, and the drier it is the prettier it pops, he says.

What is that picture over there, Uncle Winthrop? It is very ugly."

Laine glanced at the picture to which Dorothea pointed. "That is a Jan Steen--'The Village Fair.' Sorry you don't like it. You think that Botticelli is ugly also. A little later in life it may meet with your approval. The original is priceless."

"A lot of priceless things aren't pretty. I don't ever expect to be a culturated person. Mother makes me go to all those old galleries and museums, when we're in Europe, and look at a lot of cracked pictures and broken statues and carved things, and wants me to think they're beautiful, but I don't. Some of them are hideous, and I get so tired of being told I must admire them that I make a face inside at most of them as I walk along, though, of course, outside, for mother's sake, I don't make any signs. I'm a great disappointment to mother. We had a lady artist guide the last time we were in Italy.

She used to get so mad with me that once she shook me. Father would have killed her if she hadn't been a lady, and after that he and I used to go out by ourselves and have the grandest times. He'd show me just a few pictures at the time, and tell me all about them, and some of them I just loved. Mother says you have so many beautiful things, Uncle Winthrop, and that it's a shame for a man to have them all by himself." She looked around the large room, and again took her seat in her uncle's lap. "Some things I like in here, and some I don't. You've got an awful lot of books, haven't you?"

"Too many, I'm afraid. Would you mind if I smoked?" Laine reached for a cigar from the box on the table and held it between his fingers.

"May I?"

"Of course. I hope I won't forget, though, and kiss you. I'm so apt to when I'm talking, if I like a person. Tobacco is so bitter. I'll tell you what I think is the matter with this room. It's--it's--"

She looked around carefully. "It's something that isn't in it. I don't know what it is. Why don't you get married, Uncle Winthrop?

Maybe your wife would know."

Laine put the unlighted cigar back on the table, and Dorothea's hands, which were stroking one of his, were gripped by it and held tightly.

"I do not doubt it. The trouble is in getting the wife."

Dorothea sat upright. "The idea! I heard Miss Robin French say the other day the way unmarried men were run after was outrageous, and all they had to do was to stand still and crow a little, and up would come a-clucking all kinds of hens, little ones and big ones, and young ones and old ones, and-- Don't you tell anybody, but I think she'd come, too!" Dorothea's hands came together, and she laughed gleefully. "Father says if Miss Robin would give up hoping she'd be happier." Suddenly her face sobered. "Do all ladies try to marry a man, Uncle Winthrop?"

"They most certainly do not." Laine smiled in Dorothea's face, and before the child's clear eyes his own, full of weary pain, turned away. "Many of them take very long to make up their minds to marry at all."

"Have you ever asked one to marry you?"

Laine did not answer. Dorothea's question was unheard. His thoughts were elsewhere.

"Have you?"

"Have I what?"

"Ever asked a lady to many you?"

"I have."

The hand which Dorothea had been stroking was dropped. She sprang to her feet and stood in front of him, her hands clasped in rigid excitement on her breast.

"When"--her voice curled upward in quivering delight--"when is she going to do it, Uncle Winthrop?"

"I do not know. She has not said she would do it at all."

"Not said--she would--marry--you!" Delight had changed to indignation high and shrill, and Dorothea's eyes blazed brilliantly.

"Is she a crazy lady?"

"She is not."

"Then why?"

"She is not quite sure she-- It is not a thing to talk about, Dorothea." He drew her again on his lap and unclasped the clenched fingers. "We are good friends, you and I, and I have told you what I have told no one else. So far as I am concerned, it does not matter who knows, but until she decides we will not talk of this again. You understand, don't you, Dorothea?"

"I understand she must have very little sense. I don't see how you could want to marry a lady who didn't know right off, the very first minute, that she wanted to marry you. Do--do I know her, Uncle Winthrop?"

"You do."

For a moment there was silence, broken only by the ticking of the clock on the mantel; and slowly Dorothea turned to her uncle, her big brown eyes troubled and uncertain. For half a moment she looked at him, then, without warning, threw her arms around his neck and hid her face against his.

"Is--is--it Claudia, Uncle Winthrop?" she whispered. "Is--it--my cousin Claudia?"

"It is--your cousin Claudia."

The quiver in Laine's voice was beyond control, and, lifting the child's face, he kissed it. "I have asked her to marry me, Dorothea, but not yet has she promised to do so."

In Dorothea's cheeks two burning spots of red glowed brilliantly.

Slipping down from her uncle's lap, she drew a long breath. "I knew she must be queer about something," she said, and her fingers interlocked in trembling excitement. "She was too nice not to be, but I didn't think she'd be this kind of queer. The idea of not promising right away! I know what's the matter. It's her home and her mother, and all the things she is doing in the country that she don't want to give up. Why don't you go down there and make her, Uncle Winthrop?"

"She asks me not to come--yet. There is no hotel, and--"

"Does she write to you?"

Laine smiled in the eager eyes. "Yes, she writes to me."

Again there was silence, and presently a queer sound from Dorothea.

"I can't help it, Uncle Winthrop! They're coming! Won't it be grand, because she will, I know she will, and I'm so glad I can't--can't help--" And big, happy tears rolled down Dorothea's face, which was pressed close to Laine's as he held her close to his heart.

That night, when all the house was still and every one asleep, Dorothea slipped out of bed and, kneeling down beside it, folded her hands and began to pray.

"O Lord"--her voice was a high whisper--"please make my cousin Claudia come to her senses and promise my uncle Winthrop that she will marry him right away. She lives in Virginia. Her post-office is Brooke Bank, and she's an awfully nice person, but father says even You don't know why women do like they do sometimes, and of course a man don't. Please make her love him so hard she'd just die without him, and make her write him to come quick. Give her plenteous sense from on high, and fill her with heavenly thankfulness and make her my aunt for ever and ever. Amen."

She got up and scrambled into bed and closed her eyes tightly.

"French prayers aren't worth a cent when you want something and want it quick," she said, half aloud. "And when you're in dead earnest you have to get right down on your knees. I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't talk in plain English to the Lord. I hope He will answer, for if He don't I certainly couldn't say right off, 'Thy will be done.' I'd say I thought my cousin Claudia had mighty little sense."

XXII

SPRINGTIME

Winthrop Laine lifted the tangled vines which overhung the shrub-bordered path leading down the sloping lawn at the back of the house to the rose-garden at its foot, and held them so that Claudia could pa.s.s under.