Under the Country Sky Part 2

Georgiana thought it would. She was up betimes next morning, to begin the sweeping and dusting and general turning upside down of the long-unused upper front room. In the course of her window washing, her shoulders enveloped in an old red shawl, she was vigorously hailed from below.

"Ship ahoy! Your name, cargo, and destination?"

Without turning she called merrily back: "The Jefferson, with a cargo of books, bound for the public!"

"What's that? I don't get you."

"Never mind. I'm too busy to be spoken by every pa.s.sing ship."

"I'll be up," called the voice, and footsteps sounded upon the porch.

The front door banged, the same ringing male voice was heard shouting a "Good-morning, sir!" and the owner of the voice came leaping up the stairs and burst into the room without ceremony. He advanced till he was close to the open window, and nodded through the gla.s.s at the window-washer, who sat on the sill with her upper body outside.

He was a fine specimen of youth and brawn and energy, the young man whom Georgiana had pointed out to her friends as one of her resources when it came to the good times they were so anxious to know of. His name was James Stuart, and he was a near neighbour of the manse. He was a college graduate of three years' longer standing than Georgiana, and he, like her, had returned to the country home and his father's farm because his aging parents could not spare him, and he was the only son whose lack of other ties left him free to care for them. He and this girl had been schoolmates and long-time friends--with interesting intervals of enmity during the earlier years--and were now sworn comrades, though they still quarrelled at times. It looked, after a minute, as if this would be one of those times.

"I didn't just get you," complained James Stuart through the window.

"Wait till I come in. I can't tell all the neighbours."

Georgiana polished off her last pane, pushed up the window and slipped into the room, quite unnecessarily a.s.sisted by Stuart.

"I can't understand," began the young man, eying with approval her blooming face, frost-stung and smooth in texture as the petals of a rose, "why you're washing the windows of a room that's always shut up."

"Jimps, if you were Mrs. Perkins next door I'd understand your consuming curiosity. As it is----"

"Going to have company?"

She shook her head.

"Then--what in thunder----"

"We're going to have a boarder, if you must know." Georgiana began to attack the inside of the window.

"A boarder! What sort?"

"A very good sort. He's a literary person with a book to write."

"Suffering cats! Not the man at the hotel?"

"I believe he was to exist at the hotel--if he could--for twenty-four hours," admitted Georgiana.

"But that man," objected Mr. James Stuart, "is a--why, he's--he doesn't look like that sort at all."

"What sort, if you please?"

"The literary. He looks like a--well, I took him for a professional man of some kind."

Georgiana laughed derisively. "Jimps! Isn't authorship a profession?"

"Well, I mean, you know, he doesn't look like an ink-slinger; he looks like some sort of a doer. He hasn't that dreamy expression. He sees with both eyes at once. In other words, he seems to be all there."

"Your idea of literary men is a disgrace to your education, Jimps. Think of the author-soldiers and author-engineers--and author-Presidents of the United States," she ended triumphantly.

"It doesn't matter," admitted Stuart. "The thing that does is that he's coming here. I can't say that appeals to me. How in time did he come to apply?" Georgiana told him briefly. Stuart looked gloomy. "That's all right," he said, "as long as he confines himself to being company for your father. But if he takes to being company for you--lookout!"

"Absurd! He's years older than I, and he said he would be working very hard. I shall see nothing of him except at the table. Heavens! don't grudge us anything that promises to relieve the monotony of our lives even a little bit."

Stuart whistled. "Monotony, eh? In spite of all my visits? All right.

But I'd be just as well pleased if he wore skirts. And mind you--your Uncle Jimps is coming over evenings just as often as and a little oftener than if you didn't have this literary light burning on your hearthstone. See?"

He went away, his thick fair hair, uncapped, shining in the morning sunlight, his arm waving a friendly farewell back at the window, where a white cloth flapped in reply.

"Dear old boy!" thought the young woman affectionately; "what should I do without him?"

That afternoon, just before the supper hour, the boarder's trunk arrived. It was borne upstairs by the village baggageman, complaining bitterly of its weight. It was an aristocratic-looking trunk, and it bore labels which indicated that it was a traveled trunk. Shortly afterward the boarder himself appeared and was allowed to betake himself at once to his room, from which he emerged at the call of the bell, and came promptly down. Meeting Mr. Warne limping slowly through the hall, he offered his arm, and in the dining-room placed his host in his chair with the gentle deference so welcome from a younger man to an older.

Georgiana, as she served one of the undeniably simple but toothsome meals for the cooking of which she was equipped by many years'

apprenticeship, noted how bright grew Father Davy's face as the supper progressed, and how delightfully the newcomer talked--and listened--for if he was an interesting talker he proved to be a still more accomplished listener. When the supper was over Mr. Jefferson lingered a few minutes by the fire, then went up to his room, explaining that he must unpack his books and make ready for an early attack in the morning upon his work.

In her own room, that night, Georgiana lay awake for a long time. Just before she went to sleep she addressed herself sternly:

"My child, I shouldn't wonder if you've jumped out of the frying pan of monotony into the fire of unrest. It certainly means trouble for you when you can't get a perfect stranger's face out of your mind for an hour. Now, there's just one thing about it: you've always despised girls who let themselves leap into liking any man and are so upset by it that everybody sees it. This one is undoubtedly either married or engaged to be, and even if he's the freest old bachelor alive you are to behave as if he were the tightest tied. You are to go straight ahead with your work and to remember every minute that you are a poor minister's daughter with only a college training for an a.s.set. He's very clearly a man of importance somewhere; he couldn't look like that and be anything else. He will never think twice of you. Whatever attention he gives you will be purely because he is a gentleman and he can't ignore his host's daughter--nonsense, his landlady--I might as well face it. He's a boarder and I'm his landlady. Gentlemen don't take much interest in landladies. So now, Georgiana Warne, landlady--keeper of a boarding-house, be sensible and go to sleep."

But before she went to sleep her mind, in spite of her, had imaged for her again the interesting, clever-looking face of the stranger under the roof, with his clear, straightforward glance that seemed to see so much, his smile which disclosed splendid teeth, his strongly moulded chin. And she had owned, frankly, driven to the confession just to see if it wouldn't relieve her:

"It's just such a face as I've seen and liked--in crowds sometimes--but I never knew the owner of one. It's such a face as a woman would remember to her grave, if its owner had just belonged to her one--hour!

Oh, dear G.o.d, I've prayed you to let something happen--anything! And now I'm--afraid!"

But, in the morning, when pulses beat strongly and courage is bright, Georgiana had another tone to take with herself. She faced her image in the gla.s.s, which looked straight back at her with unflinching dark eyes.

"I'm ashamed of you! To moon and croon like that! Now, brace up, Miss Warne, and be yourself. You've never lacked spirit; you're not going to lack it now. You're going to be strong and sane about this thing. You're going to be the sort of girl whose mind no man can guess at. You're going to weave rugs for your life, and enjoy Jimps Stuart as you always have, and there's not going to be a whimper out of you from this hour, no matter what happens--or doesn't happen. Do you hear? Well, then--attention! Head up, shoulders back, heart steady; forward, _march_!"

Two hours later, when, in the absence of the new inmate, Georgiana went into his room to put it in order for the day, she found it impossible not to note the character of his belongings. They were few and simple enough, but in every detail they betrayed a fastidious taste. And among the articles in ebony and leather which lay upon the linen cover of the old bureau stood one which held her fascinated attention. It was a framed photograph of a young and very lovely woman in evening dress, and the face which smiled over the perfect shoulder was looking straight out at her.

Georgiana stared back. "Who are you?" she whispered. "I might have known you would be here!"

"And who, please, are you?" the picture seemed to query lightly, smiling in return for the other's frown. "As for me, don't you see plainly? I belong to him. Else why should he have me here? You see I'm the only one he cared to bring. Doesn't that speak for itself?"

"Of course it does," agreed Georgiana; then stoutly: "And why should I care? Of course I don't care. To care would be--absurd!"

CHAPTER III

A SEMI-ANNUAL OCCURRENCE

"Father Davy, the 'Semi-Annual' has come!" Georgiana, tugging with both strong young arms, hauled the big express package into the living-room of the old manse, and shut the door with a bang. Breathing rapidly from her exertions, her cheeks warmly flushed, her dark eyes glowing, she stood over the package, looking at her father with a curious sort of smile not wholly compounded of joy and satisfaction.