Under the Country Sky Part 28

Although they had been under the hospitable roof for more than twenty-four hours it was the first occasion on which the three had been together for more than a few minutes at a time.

On the previous evening in an upstairs room had been enacted a little scene which would live forever in the memories of them all; but Doctor Craig, perceiving with trained eyes the signs of growing fatigue in his frail friend after the unwonted strain of the day and its necessarily emotional climax, had gently but firmly insisted on withdrawing at an early hour. Georgiana had remained with her father, herself content to have the strange and wonderful day end in the old, simple, and natural way in which her days had ended for so long. She had felt, as she performed her customary daughterly offices for the beloved invalid, that she had quite enough to take with her to her own pillow to insure its being the happiest upon which she had ever laid her head.

They had seen little of Doctor Craig on the following day; but he had taken dinner with them that night, and as he had brought them back to the library fire he had given stringent directions to the boy Thomas that he be disturbed only for the most important summons. And hardly had the trio taken their places in the pleasant room before Jefferson Craig made his statement that there was something still unsettled in their affairs.

As he spoke he was looking down at Georgiana. It would have been strange if he could have kept his eyes away from her to-night. Like a flower in sunshine had she bloomed under the warm influence of the joy which had come to her when she least expected it. She was again wearing the little gray silk frock, but now its nunlike simplicity was gone--and happily gone--for a bunch of glowing pink Killarney roses at her belt, placed there by Doctor Craig's hands, lighted the plain costume into one of a charm which could no longer be called demure.

"Something still to settle?" It was Father Davy who replied, for Georgiana had no answer for that suggestion. One glance at Doctor Craig's face, as he said the words, had told her what was coming.

"The most important thing of all. Everything else is in order. You, dear sir, have agreed to come and live with us. We are convinced that it's not a sacrifice, except for the leaving of certain old friends. You have a zest still for seeing and hearing the things you have been denied; it's to be our keen pleasure to make your days go by on wings. You're going to have plenty of room here for the bookcases and the books, all the furnishings you care to keep--in short, you're to live the old life with a fine new one as well. Altogether, everything is in train for the great change, except"--he crossed the hearthrug at a stride, and laid a son's hand upon the thin shoulder of Father Davy--"except the date of it," he finished, smiling down into the uplifted face.

"But that," replied Georgiana's father without hesitation, "is not for me to settle. It is for you two."

Craig looked across at Georgiana and for a minute studied her down-bent profile as she sat gazing into the flames; then came round to her, plucking a pillow from a big leather couch by the way, to drop it at her feet and throw himself down upon it. So placed he could look straight into her face. "You'll have to take an interest in the ceiling now if you succeed in avoiding me," he said, with a low laugh.

"I don't want to avoid you," answered Georgiana, and let her eyes meet his fairly for an instant. She could not yet do this in a quite casual way.

He crossed his arms upon her knee, sitting in a boyish att.i.tude and looking not unlike a big boy for the moment, for all the lines of care were gone from his face in the soft firelight, and happiness had laid its rosy mantle over his shoulders as over hers. He began to speak rather quickly:

"For the life of me, I can't think of a reason why you should go back and spend a winter in the same old grind, waiting till spring and--making me wait till spring. Why should anybody wait till spring?

I've let you talk about all the work you were going to do this winter at home, but that was just because I didn't want to make you feel as if you were caught in a trap. I had an idea that for a few hours, anyhow, it might seem enough of a change to come down here and promise to marry a perfect stranger of a surgeon instead of the 'literary light' you knew.

I thought we'd let it go at that for those few hours. But now--it doesn't seem to me possible to go back to bachelorhood again, even with such a prospect before me in the spring. Not after having tasted--this.

Georgiana, why must I?"

Her face was the colour of her roses. There was no getting away from the challenge of those eyes that watched her so steadily--not even by following his suggestion and gazing persistently ceilingward. Craig glanced at Father Davy, to find that his soft blue eyes showed no sign of shock, and that his face was perfectly placid as he looked and listened.

The younger man went on, coming straight to the point: "Georgiana, marry me before you go back! You've promised to stay a week. Let's have a wedding here, next Wednesday. Then we'll leave Father Davy here comfortably with Mrs. MacFayden, and run up to see about getting things packed and shipped. I'll take that much of a vacation now. Then, in April, we'll go abroad for a real honeymoon and take Father Davy with us. I'd propose that now, but the seas are stormy in December and January and we mustn't risk it for him. But, let's not wait! Why should we? Now, honestly, why should we?"

The girl turned her face, with a strange little look of appeal, toward her father, to meet such a look of entire comprehension as stirred her to the depths. Suddenly, obeying an impulse she did not understand, she drew herself gently away from Craig, rose and went to the figure in the big chair opposite. She sat down on the arm and, bending, dropped her face upon the fatherly shoulder, hiding it there. Craig sat perfectly still, watching the pair, as Father Davy put up a thin, white hand and patted the dark head. Then the two men smiled at each other.

After a while Craig got up and quietly left the room.

By and by Father Davy whispered: "What is it, dear? You're not ready?

You shall not be hurried. Or is it----"

She spoke into his ear. "I want to go back home--and earn--and earn--enough to----"

"Can you earn it, daughter? Can you ever get enough ahead to provide what you would like? And meanwhile--he wants you very much, my dear. I think I know more of his heart than you do, in way. Last winter we had certain talks that showed me a little of that. Would it be such a blow to pride to do as he asks? Unless--in other ways you are not ready. If your love for him isn't quite mature enough yet----"

"Oh, it isn't that; it's mature enough. It--it hasn't grown, in spite of me, all this year like--a--tumbleweed"--her voice was a little breathless--"not to have got its growth----"

"Its first growth," amended her father, with a meaning smile.

She nodded. "But--if you could know how I want--time to make the most of--what mother left me. I could do so much if I just had time. If I used it now I should have to use it up so fast! There'll be fifty dollars left when we get back. I could almost make that do, if--no, of course I couldn't. But I could earn more. O Father Davy, is it wrong of me to be so proud?"

"Not wrong, my girl, but very natural, I suppose. Yet to me--well, dear, I hardly know how to say what I feel. I confess I should like to see you married to this man. Life is--so short----"

They sat together in silence for a time; then Georgiana slipped back into the seat where she had been.

Presently Father Davy said that it had been a full day, and that he thought he should be fitter for the morrow if he should go to bed.

Georgiana went up with him, saw him comfortably resting, listened while he whispered something in her ear as she bent above him, kissed him with her heart on her lips, and finally stole like a mouse down the stairs again.

When she came into the library once more it was to find herself in arms which held her close. "Do you think I don't understand, my dearest?"

said the low voice which had such power to move her. "Do you think I don't respect and love you for your perfectly natural feeling about it all? But, Georgiana, you bring me a dowry bigger than any I could ask for--the inheritance from such a father as he is--and from the mother who gave you all he left her to give. What are towels and tablecloths--I don't know what it is brides bring!--beside such things as these? Won't you give me the real thing, and let me furnish the ones that don't count? Dear, if you could know the pleasure there is for me in the very thought of buying you--a hat!"

She could but smile, his tone put so much awe into the word. Suddenly she grew whimsical; it was so like Georgiana to do that when she was deeply stirred!

"What do you suppose that hat was made of, I wore here?" she asked him.

"I'll tell you. I found the shape for twenty-five cents at the village milliner's. I cut it down and sewed it up again into another shape. Then I hunted through the old 'Semi-Annuals'; you don't know what those are, do you? I found a piece of velvet that had been a flounce. I steamed it and covered the shape. Then I had to have some tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. It came from an old evening cloak of my Cousin Jeannette's--a bit of gilt, a silk rose, some ribbon from--I can't tell you what it came from, but it had to be dyed to match the velvet. I couldn't quite get the shade. But the hat, when it was done, wasn't so bad."

"Where is it now?"

"Upstairs in my room."

"Would you mind getting it?"

She laughed, hesitated, finally ran upstairs and down again, the hat in hand. Pausing before an old gilt mirror in the hall she put it on, then came to him, lifting her head with a proud and merry look which bade him beware how he might venture to criticise the work of her hands.

Adjusting his eyegla.s.ses with care, he viewed it judicially. "It looks very nice to me," he said. "Suppose you keep it on and put on a coat and let me take you out in the car for a few minutes. There's a certain window uptown I should like to look at, with you."

"I have no coat," she said steadily, and now the colour ebbed a little from her warm cheek, "except the one that belongs with the suit I wore.

It's short; it wouldn't do to wear with a dress like this."

"I see." Suddenly he came close again, gently lifted the hat from the dark ma.s.ses of her hair, laid it carefully on a table near by, and drew her with him to a broad, high-backed couch at one side of the fire.

"I can see," he said, very quietly, "that you and I have much to do in getting to know each other. Let's lose no time in beginning. Listen, while I try to tell you what marriage means to me--and to find out what it means to you."

It was a long talk, and, by the kindness of the fates which rule over the irregular schedule of the men of Craig's profession, an uninterrupted one. Long before it was over Georgiana learned many new things concerning the man who was to be her husband, not the least of which was his power of making others see as he saw, feel as he felt, and believe, from first to last, in his absolute integrity of motive. And when he told her what he thought he could do for her father if he should have him under his eye during the coming winter, the period which was always so long and trying for the sensitive frame of the invalid, whose resisting powers were at their lowest when the winter winds were blowing, she gave way and the question was settled.

But she did not give way in everything after all, nor did he ask her to do so. When he suggested details of preparation, and she shook her head, he smiled and told her it should all be as she wished. And when he said, very gently, that he hoped she would let him provide her with the means to buy whatever she might need, because everything that he had was hers already, he took with a submission that was all grace her refusal to use a penny of his until she should bear his name. If he made certain reservations of his own as to what might happen when he should hold the right, that did not show.

"So that I get you, dearest," he said at the end of the evening, just before he let her go, "I am willing to take you in any sort of package you may select for yourself. Personally it seems to me that jeweller's cotton is the most appropriate background for you, if you won't have a satin-and-velvet case!"

At which Georgiana laughed, and a.s.sured him that she was no real jewel, only one of the secondary stones, and uncut at that. The answer she got to this sent her off upstairs with thrilling pulses, to lie awake for a long time, recalling his voice and look as he said the few suddenly grave words which had given her a glimpse of his bare heart.

CHAPTER XXIV

MAGIC GOLD

The days which followed were to be remembered with peculiar delight all Georgiana's life. Each morning, in Doctor Craig's own car, accompanied by her father, she went shopping. Mr. Warne could not use his strength in following her into the shops, but he could sit at ease in a corner of the luxurious, closed landau, an extra pillow tucked behind his back, an electric footwarmer at his feet, his slender form wrapped in a wonderful fur-lined coat which his son-in-law to-be had put upon him with the reasonable explanation that it had proved to be too small for himself.

From this sheltered position he could watch the hurrying crowds, study the faces and find untiring interest in the happenings of the streets.

Not the smallest part of his pleasure lay in receiving his daughter again each time she came hurrying out of some great portal, the tiniest of packages under her arm. Although Duncan, Doctor Craig's chauffeur, was always watching, ready to jump from his seat and a.s.sist her, she was usually too quick for him to be of much use, though she always gave him her friendly smile and thanks for his eagerness. It may be said that Duncan himself, a young Scotsman whose devotion to his master was now augmented by his admiration of his master's choice, enjoyed those shopping expeditions with an unusual zest.

"Oh, but these shops are wonderful, Father Davy!" Georgiana was fain to cry, as she came back with her purchases. "Of course I have to shut my eyes and simply fly past the counters where I'd like to buy everything in sight. But I do find such glorious little bargains, such treasures of left-overs--you can't think how I'm making my money hold out! I'm so thankful for all my training in turning and twisting; it's such a help just now!"