Chapter 4

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_ Chapter IV

The little Syrian baby had disappeared. Nobody had reckoned with the soft guile of a race as supple and silent as to their real intentions as cats. There was a verandah column wound with a massive wistaria vine near the window of the baby's room. The little nurse girl went home every night, and Jane Riggs was a heavy sleeper. When she had awakened, her first glance had been into the baby's crib. Then she sprang, and searched with hungry hands. The little softly indented nest was not warm, the child had been gone for some hours, probably had been taken during the first and soundest sleep of the household. Jane's purse, and her gold breast pin, had incidentally been taken also. When she gave the alarm to Von Rosen, a sullen, handsome Syrian boy was trudging upon an unfrequented road, which led circuitously to the City, and he carried a suit-case, but it was held apart, by some of the Eastern embroideries used as wedges, before strapping, and from that came the querulous wail of a baby squirming uncomfortably upon drawn work centre pieces, and crepe kimonas. Now and then the boy stopped and spoke to the baby in a lovely gentle voice. He promised it food, and shelter soon in his own soft tongue. He was carrying it to his wife's mother, and sullen as he looked and was, and thief as he was, love for his own swayed him, and made him determined to hold it fast. Von Rosen made all possible inquiries. He employed detectives but he never obtained the least clue to the whereabouts of the little child. He, however, although he grieved absurdly, almost as absurdly as Jane, had a curious sense of joy over the whole. Life in Fairbridge had, before birth and death entered his home, been so monotonous, that he was almost stupefied. Here was a thread of vital gold and flame, although it had brought pain with it. When Doctor Sturtevant condoled with him, he met with an unexpected response. "I feel for you, old man. It was a mighty unfortunate thing that it happened in your house, now that this has come of it," he said.

"I am very glad it happened, whatever came of it," said Von Rosen. "It is something to have had in my life. I wouldn't have missed it."

Fairbridge people, who were on the whole a good-natured set, were very sympathetic, especially the women. Bessy Dicky shed tears when talking to Mrs. Sturtevant about the disappearance of the baby. Mrs. Sturtevant was not very responsive.

"It may be all for the best," she said. "Nobody can tell how that child would have turned out. He might have ended by killing Mr. von Rosen." Then she added with a sigh that she hoped his poor mother had been married.

"Why, of course she was since there was a baby," said Bessy Dicky. Then she rose hastily with a blush because Doctor Sturtevant's motor could be heard, and took her leave.

Doctor Sturtevant had just returned from a call upon Margaret Edes, who had experienced a very severe disappointment, coming as it did after another very successful meeting of the Zenith Club at Daisy Shaw's, who had most unexpectedly provided a second cousin who recited monologues wonderfully. Wilbur had failed in his attempt to secure Lydia Greenway for Margaret's star-feature. The actress had promised, but had been suddenly attacked with a very severe cold which had obliged her to sail for Europe a week earlier than she had planned. Margaret had been quite ill, but Doctor Sturtevant gave her pain pellets with the result that late in the afternoon she sat on her verandah in a fluffy white tea gown, and then it was that little Annie Eustace came across the street, and sat with her. Annie was not little. Although slender, she was, in fact, quite tall and wide shouldered and there was something about her which seemed to justify the use of the diminutive adjective. Possibly it was her face, which was really small and very pretty, with perfect cameo-like features and an odd, deprecating, almost painfully humble expression. It was the face of a creature entirely capable of asking an enemy's pardon for an injury inflicted upon herself. In reality, Annie Eustace had very much that attitude of soul. She always considered the wrong as her natural place, and, in fact, would not have been comfortable elsewhere, although she suffered there. And yet, little Annie Eustace was a gifted creature. There was probably not a person in Fairbridge who had been so well endowed by nature, but her environment and up-bringing had been unfortunate. If Annie's mother had lived, the daughter might have had more spirit, but she had died when Annie was a baby, and the child had been given over to the tyranny of two aunts, and a grandmother. As for her father, he had never married again, but he had never paid much attention to her. He had been a reserved, silent man, himself under the sway of his mother and sisters. Charles Eustace had had an obsession to the effect that the skies of his own individual sphere would fall to his and his child's destruction, if his female relatives deserted him, and that they had threatened to do, upon the slightest sign of revolt. Sometimes Annie's father had regarded her wistfully and wondered within himself if it were quite right for a child to be so entirely governed, but his own spirit of yielding made it impossible for him to realise the situation. Obedience had been little Annie Eustace's first lesson taught by the trio, who to her represented all government, in her individual case.

Annie Eustace obeyed her aunts, and grandmother (her father had been dead for several years), but she loved only three,--two were women, Margaret Edes and Alice Mendon; the other was a man, and the love was not confessed to her own heart.

This afternoon Annie wore an ugly green gown, which was, moreover, badly cut. The sleeves were too long below the elbow, and too short above, and every time she moved an arm they hitched uncomfortably. The neck arrangement was exceedingly unbecoming, and the skirt not well hung. The green was of the particular shade which made her look yellow. As she sat beside Margaret and embroidered assiduously, and very unskilfully, some daisies on a linen centre-piece, the other woman eyed her critically.

"You should not wear that shade of green, if you will excuse my saying so, dear," she remarked presently.

Annie regarded her with a charming, loving smile. She would have excused her idol for saying anything. "I know it is not very becoming," she agreed sweetly.

"Becoming," said Margaret a trifle viciously. She was so out of sorts about her failure to secure Lydia Greenway that she felt a great relief in attacking little Annie Eustace.

"Becoming," said she. "It actually makes you hideous. That shade is impossible for you and why,--I trust you will not be offended, you know it is for your own good, dear,--why do you wear your hair in that fashion?"

"I am afraid it is not very becoming," said Annie with the meekness of those who inherit the earth. She did not state that her aunt Harriet had insisted that she dress her hair in that fashion. Annie was intensely loyal.

"Nobody," said Margaret, "unless she were as beautiful as Helen of Troy, should wear her hair that way, and not look a fright."

Annie Eustace blushed, but it was not a distressed blush. When one has been downtrodden one's whole life, one becomes accustomed to it, and besides she loved the down-treader.

"Yes," said she. "I looked at myself in my glass just before I came and I thought I did not look well."

"Hideous," said Margaret.

Annie smiled agreement and looked pretty, despite the fact that her hair was strained tightly back, showing too much of her intellectual forehead, and the colour of her gown killed all the pink bloom lights in her face. Annie Eustace had a beautiful soul and it showed forth triumphant over all bodily accessories, in her smile.

"You are not doing that embroidery at all well," said Margaret.

Annie laughed. "I know it," she said with a sort of meek amusement. "I don't think I ever can master long and short stitch."

"Why on earth do you attempt it then?"

"Everybody embroiders," replied Annie. She did not state that her grandmother had made taking the embroidery a condition of her call upon her friend.

Margaret continued to regard her. She was finding a species of salve for her own disappointment in this irritant applied to another. "What does make you wear that hair ring?" said she.

"It was a present," replied Annie humbly, but she for the first time looked a little disturbed. That mourning emblem with her father's and mother's, and a departed sister's hair in a neat little twist under a small crystal, grated upon her incessantly. It struck her as a species of ghastly sentiment, which at once distressed, and impelled her to hysterical mirth.

"A present," repeated Margaret. "If anybody gave me such a present as that, I would never wear it. It is simply in shocking bad taste."

"I sometimes fear so," said Annie. She did not state that her Aunt Jane never allowed her to be seen in public without that dismal adornment.

"You are a queer girl," said Margaret, and she summed up all her mood of petty cruelty and vicarious revenge in that one word "queer."

However, little Annie Eustace only smiled as if she had been given a peculiarly acceptable present. She was so used to being underrated, that she had become in a measure immune to criticism, and besides criticism from her adored Mrs. Edes was even a favour. She took another bungling stitch in the petal of a white floss daisy.

Margaret felt suddenly irritated. All this was too much like raining fierce blows upon a down pillow.

"Do, for goodness sake, Annie Eustace, stop doing that awful embroidery if you don't want to drive me crazy," said she.

Then Annie looked at Margaret, and she was obviously distressed and puzzled. Her grandmother had enjoined it upon her to finish just so many of these trying daisies before her return and yet, on the other hand, here was Margaret, her adorable Margaret, forbidding her to work, and, moreover, Margaret in such an irritable mood, with that smooth brow of hers frowning, and that sweet voice, which usually had a lazy trickle like honey, fairly rasping, was as awe-inspiring as her grandmother. Annie Eustace hesitated for a second. Her grandmother had commanded. Margaret Edes had commanded. The strongest impulse of her whole being was obedience, but she loved Margaret, and she did not love her grandmother. She had never confessed such a horror to herself, but one does not love another human being whose main aim toward one is to compress, to stiffen, to make move in a step with itself. Annie folded up the untidy embroidery. As she did so, she dropped her needle and also her thimble. The needle lay glittering beside her chair, the thimble rolled noiselessly over the trailing fold of her muslin gown into the folds of Margaret's white silk. Margaret felt an odd delight in that. Annie was careless, and she was dainty, and she was conscious of a little pleasurable preening of her own soul-plumage.

Margaret said nothing about the thimble and needle. Annie sat regarding her with a sort of expectation, and the somewhat mussy little parcel of linen lay in her lap. Annie folded over it her very slender hands, and the horrible hair ring was in full evidence.

Margaret fixed her eyes upon it. Annie quickly placed the hand which wore it under the other. Then she spoke, since Margaret did not, and she said exactly the wrong thing. The being forced continually into the wrong, often has the effect of making one quite innocently take the first step in that direction even if no force be used.

"I hear that the last meeting of the Zenith Club was unusually interesting," said little Annie Eustace, and she could have said nothing more hapless to Margaret Edes in her present mood. Quite inadvertently, she herself became the irritant party. Margaret actually flushed. "I failed to see anything interesting whatever about it, myself," said she tartly.

Annie offended again. "I heard that Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder's address was really very remarkable," said she.

"It was simply a very stupid effort to be funny," returned Margaret. "Sometimes women will laugh because they are expected to, and they did that afternoon. Everything was simply cut and dried. It always is at Mrs. George B. Slade's. I never knew a woman so absolutely destitute of originality."

Annie looked helplessly at Margaret. She could say no more unless she contradicted. Margaret continued. She felt that she could no longer conceal her own annoyance, and she was glad of this adoring audience of one.

"I had planned something myself for the next meeting, something which has never been done," said she, "something new, and stimulating."

"Oh, how lovely!" cried Annie.

"But of course, like all really clever plans for the real good and progress of a club like ours, something has to come up to prevent," said Margaret.

"Oh, what?"

"Well, I had planned to have Lydia Greenway, you know she is really a great artist, come to the next meeting and give dramatic recitations."

"Oh, would she?" gasped Annie Eustace.

"Of course, it would have meant a large pecuniary outlay," said Margaret, "but I was prepared, quite prepared, to make some sacrifices for the good of the club, but, why, you must have read it in the papers, Annie."

Annie looked guiltily ignorant.

"I really do not see how you contrive to exist without keeping more in touch with the current events," said Margaret.

Annie looked meekly culpable, although she was not. Her aunts did not approve of newspapers, as containing so much information, so much cheap information concerning the evil in the world, especially for a young person like Annie, and she was not allowed to read them, although she sometimes did so surreptitiously.

"It was in all the papers," continued Margaret, with her censorious air. "Lydia Greenway was obliged to leave unexpectedly and go to the Riveria. They fear tuberculosis. She sailed last Saturday."

"I am so sorry," said Annie. Then she proceeded to elaborate her statement in exactly the wrong way. She said how very dreadful it would be if such a talented young actress should fall a victim of such a terrible disease, and what a loss she would be to the public, whereas all that Margaret Edes thought should be at all considered by any true friend of her own was her own particular loss.

"For once the Zenith Club would have had a meeting calculated to take Fairbridge women out of their rut in which people like Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Sturtevant seem determined to keep them," returned Margaret testily. Annie stared at her. Margaret often said that it was the first rule of her life never to speak ill of any one, and she kept the letter of it as a rule.

"I am so sorry," said Annie. Then she added with more tact. "It would have been such a wonderful thing for us all to have had Lydia Greenway give dramatic recitals to us. Oh, Margaret, I can understand how much it would have meant."

"It would have meant progress," said Margaret. She looked imperiously lovely, as she sat there all frilled about with white lace and silk with the leaf-shadows playing over the slender whiteness. She lifted one little hand tragically. "Progress," she repeated. "Progress beyond Mrs. George B. Slade's and Mrs. Sturtevant's and Miss Bessy Dicky's, and that is precisely what we need."

Annie Eustace gazed wistfully upon her friend. "Yes," she agreed, "you are quite right, Margaret. Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Sturtevant and poor Bessy Dicky and all the other members are very good, and we think highly of them, but I too feel that we all travel in a rut sometimes. Perhaps we all walk too much the same way." Then suddenly Annie burst into a peal of laughter. She had a sense of humour which was startling. It was the one thing which environment had not been able to subdue, or even produce the effect of submission. Annie Eustace was easily amused. She had a scent for the humorous like a hound's for game, and her laugh was irrepressible.

"What on earth are you laughing at now?" inquired Margaret Edes irritably.

"I was thinking," Annie replied chokingly, "of some queer long-legged birds I saw once in a cage in a park. I really don't know whether they were ibises or cranes, or survivals of species, but anyway, the little long-legged ones all walked just the same way in a file behind a tall long-legged one, who walked precisely in the same way, and all of a sudden, I seemed to see us all like that. Only you are not in the least like that tall, long-legged bird, Margaret, and you are the president of the Zenith Club."

Margaret surveyed Annie with cool displeasure. "I," said she, "see nothing whatever to laugh at in the Zenith Club, if you do."

"Oh, Margaret, I don't!" cried Annie.

"To my mind, the Zenith Club is the one institution in this little place which tends to advancement and mental improvement."

"Oh, Margaret, I think so too, you know I do," said Annie in a shocked voice. "And my heart was almost broken because I had to miss that last meeting on account of grandmother's having such a severe cold."

"The last meeting was not very much to miss," said Margaret, for Annie had again said the wrong thing.

Annie, however, went on eagerly and unconsciously. She was only aware that she was being accused of disloyalty, or worse, of actually poking fun, when something toward which she felt the utmost respect and love and admiration was concerned.

"Margaret, you know," she cried, "you know how I feel toward the Zenith Club. You must know what it means to me. It really does take me out of my little narrow place in life as nothing else does. I cannot tell you what an inspiration it really is to me. Oh, Margaret, you know!"

Margaret nodded in stiff assent. As a matter of fact, she _did_ know. The Zenith Club of Fairbridge did mean very much, very much indeed, to little Annie Eustace. Nowhere else did she meet _en masse_ others of her kind. She did not even go to church for the reason that her grandmother did not believe in church going at all and wished her to remain with her. One aunt was Dutch Reformed and the other Baptist; and neither ever missed a service. Annie remained at home Sundays, and read aloud to her grandmother, and when both aunts were in the midst of their respective services, and the cook, who was intensely religious, engaged in preparing dinner, she and her old grandmother played pinocle. However, although Annie played cards very well, it was only with her relatives. She had never been allowed to join the Fairbridge Card Club. She never attended a play in the city, because Aunt Jane considered plays wicked. It was in reality doubtful if she would have been permitted to listen to Lydia Greenway, had that person been available. Annie's sole large recreation was the Zenith Club, and it meant, as she had said, much to her. It was to the stifled young heart as a great wind of stimulus which was for the strengthening of her soul. Whatever the Zenith Club of Fairbridge was to others, it was very much worth while for little Annie Eustace. She wrote papers for it, which were astonishing, although her hearers dimly appreciated the fact, not because of dulness, but because little Annie had written them, and it seemed incredible to Fairbridge women that little Annie Eustace whom they had always known, and whose grandmother and aunts they knew, could possibly write anything remarkable. It was only Alice Mendon who listened with a frown of wonder, and intent eyes upon the reader. When she came home upon one occasion, she remarked to her aunt, Eliza Mendon, and her cousin, Lucy Mendon, that she had been impressed by Annie Eustace's paper, but both women only stared and murmured assent. The cousin was very much older than Alice, and both she and her mother were of a placid, reflective type. They got on very well with Alice, but sometimes she had a queer weariness from always seeing herself and her own ideas in them instead of their own. And she was not in the least dictatorial. She would have preferred open, antagonistic originality, but she got a surfeit of clear, mirror-like peace.

She was quite sure that they would quote her opinion of Annie Eustace's paper, but that did not please her. Later on she spoke to Annie herself about it. "Haven't you something else written that you can show me?" She had even suggested the possibility, the desirability, of Annie's taking up a literary career, but she had found the girl very evasive, even secretive, and had never broached the subject again.

As for Margaret Edes, she had never fairly listened to anything which anybody except herself had written, unless it had afforded matter for discussion, and the display of her own brilliancy. Annie's productions were so modestly conclusive as to apparently afford no standing ground for argument. In her heart, Margaret regarded them as she regarded Annie's personality, with a contempt so indifferent that it was hardly contempt.

She proceeded exactly as if Annie had not made such a fervent disclaimer. "The Zenith Club is the one and only thing which lifts Fairbridge, and the women of Fairbridge, above the common herd," said she majestically.

"Don't I know it? Oh, Margaret, don't I know it," cried the other with such feverish energy that Margaret regarded her wonderingly. For all her exploiting of the Zenith Club of Fairbridge, she herself, unless she were the main figure at the helm, could realise nothing in it so exceedingly inspiring, but it was otherwise with Annie. It was quite conceivable that had it not been for the Zenith Club, she never would have grown to her full mental height. Annie Eustace had a mind of the sequential order. By subtle processes, unanalysable even by herself, even the record of Miss Bessy Dicky started this mind upon momentous trains of thought. Unquestionably the Zenith Club acted as a fulminate for little Annie Eustace. To others it might seem, during some of the sessions, as a pathetic attempt of village women to raise themselves upon tiptoes enough to peer over their centuries of weedy feminine growth; an attempt which was as futile, and even ridiculous, as an attempt of a cow to fly. But the Zenith Club justified its existence nobly in the result of little Annie Eustace, if in no other, and it, no doubt, justified itself in others. Who can say what that weekly gathering meant to women who otherwise would not move outside their little treadmill of household labour, what uplifting, if seemingly futile grasps at the great outside of life? Let no one underrate the Women's Club until the years have proven its uselessness.

"I am so sorry about Lydia Greenway," said Annie, and this time she did not irritate Margaret.

"It does seem as if one were simply doomed to failure every time one really made an effort to raise standards," said Margaret.

Then it was that Annie all unconsciously sowed a seed which led to strange, and rather terrifying results. "It would be nice," said little Annie, "if we could get Miss Martha Wallingford to read a selection from _Hearts Astray_ at a meeting of the club. I read a few nights ago, in a paper I happened to pick up at Alice's, that she was staying in New York at the Hollingsgate. Her publishers were to give her a dinner last night, I believe."

Margaret Edes started. "I had not seen that," she said. Then she added in a queer brooding fashion, "That book of hers had an enormous sale. I suppose her publishers feel that they owe it to her to give her a good time in New York. Then, too, it will advertise _Hearts Astray_."

"Did you like the book?" asked Annie rather irrelevantly. Margaret did not reply. She was thinking intently. "It would be a great feature for the club if we could induce her to give a reading," she said at length.

"I don't suppose it would be possible," replied Annie. "You know they say she never does such things, and is very retiring. I read in the papers that she was, and that she refused even to speak a few words at the dinner given in her honour."

"We might ask her," said Margaret.

"I am sure that she would not come. The paper stated that she had had many invitations to Women's Clubs and had refused. I don't think she ought because she might be such a help to other women."

Margaret said nothing. She leaned back, and, for once, her face was actually contracted with thought to the possible detriment of its smooth beauty.

A clock in the house struck, and at the same time Maida and Adelaide raced up the steps, followed by gleeful calls from two little boys on the sidewalk.

"Where have you been?" asked Margaret. Then she said without waiting for a reply, "If Martha Wallingford would come, I should prefer that to Lydia Greenway."

Maida and Adelaide, flushed and panting, and both with mouths full of candy, glanced at their mother, then Maida chased Adelaide into the house, their blue skirts flitting out of sight like blue butterfly wings.

Annie Eustace rose. She had noticed that neither Maida nor Adelaide had greeted her, and thought them rude. She herself had been most carefully trained concerning manners of incoming and outgoing. She, however, did not care. She had no especial love for children unless they were small and appealing because of helplessness.

"I must go," she said. "It is six o'clock, supper will be ready." She glanced rather apprehensively as she spoke at the large white house, not two minutes' walk distant across the street.

"How very delightful it is to be as punctual as your people are," said Margaret. "Good-bye, Annie." She spoke abstractedly, and Annie felt a little hurt. She loved Margaret, and she missed her full attention when she left her. She passed down the walk between Margaret's beautifully kept Japanese trees, and gained the sidewalk. Then a sudden recollection filled her with dismay. She had promised her grandmother to go to the post-office before returning. An important business letter was expected. Annie swept the soft tail of her muslin into a little crushed ball, and ran, her slender legs showing like those of a young bird beneath its fluff of plumage. She realized the necessity of speed, of great speed, for the post-office was a quarter of a mile away, and the Eustace family supped at five minutes past six, with terrible and relentless regularity. Why it should have been five minutes past instead of upon the stroke of the hour, Annie had never known, but so it was. It was as great an offence to be a minute too early as a minute too late at the Eustace house, and many a maid had been discharged for that offence, her plea that the omelet was cooked and would fall if the meal be delayed, being disregarded. Poor Annie felt that she must hasten. She could not be dismissed like the maid, but something equally to be dreaded would happen, were she to present herself half a minute behind time in the dining-room. There they would be seated, her grandmother, her Aunt Harriet, and her Aunt Jane. Aunt Harriet behind the silver tea service; Aunt Jane behind the cut glass bowl of preserves; her grandmother behind the silver butter dish, and on the table would be the hot biscuits cooling, the omelet falling, the tea drawing too long and all because of her. There was tremendous etiquette in the Eustace family. Not a cup of tea would Aunt Harriet pour, not a spoon would Aunt Jane dip into the preserves, not a butter ball would her grandmother impale upon the little silver fork. And poor Hannah, the maid, white aproned and capped, would stand behind Aunt Harriet like a miserable conscious graven image. Therefore Annie ran, and ran, and it happened that she ran rather heedlessly and blindly and dropped her mussy little package of fancy work, and Karl von Rosen, coming out of the parsonage, saw it fall and picked it up rather gingerly, and called as loudly as was decorous after the flying figure, but Annie did not hear and Von Rosen did not want to shout, neither did he want, or rather think it advisable, to run, therefore he followed holding the linen package well away from him, as if it were a disagreeable insect. He had never seen much of Annie Eustace. Now and then he called upon one of her aunts, who avowed her preference for his religious denomination, but if he saw Annie at all, she was seated engaged upon some such doubtfully ornamental or useful task, as the specimen which he now carried. Truth to say, he had scarcely noticed Annie Eustace at all. She had produced the effect of shrinking from observation under some subtle shadow of self-effacement. She was in reality a very rose of a girl, loving and sweet, and withal wonderfully endowed; but this human rose, dwelt always for Karl von Rosen, in the densest of bowers through which her beauty and fragrance of character could not penetrate his senses. Undoubtedly also, although his masculine intelligence would have scouted the possibility of such a thing, Annie's dull, ill-made garb served to isolate her. She also never came to church. That perfect little face with its expression of strange insight, must have aroused his attention among his audience. But there was only the Aunt Harriet Eustace, an exceedingly thin lady, present and always attired in rich blacks. Karl von Rosen to-day walking as rapidly as became his dignity, in pursuit of the young woman, was aware that he hardly felt at liberty to accost her with anything more than the greeting of the day. He eyed disapprovingly the parcel which he carried. It was a very dingy white, and greyish threads dangled from it. Von Rosen thought it a most unpleasant thing, and reflected with mild scorn and bewilderment concerning the manner of mind which could find amusement over such employment, for he divined that it was a specimen of feminine skill, called fancy work.

Annie Eustace ran so swiftly with those long agile legs of hers that he soon perceived that interception upon her return, and not overtaking, must ensue. He did not gain upon her at all, and he began to understand that he was making himself ridiculous to possible observers in windows. He therefore slackened his pace, and met Annie upon her return. She had a letter in her hand and was advancing with a headlong rush, and suddenly she attracted him. He surrendered the parcel. "Thank you very much," said Annie, "but I almost wish you had not found it."

[Illustration: "I almost wish you had not found it"]

Von Rosen stared at her. Was she rude after all, this very pretty girl, who was capable of laughter. "You would not blame me if you had to embroider daisies on that dreadful piece of linen," said Annie with a rueful glance at the dingy package.

Von Rosen smiled kindly at her. "I don't blame you at all," he replied. "I can understand it must be a dismal task to embroider daisies."

"It is, Mr. von Rosen--" Annie hesitated.

"Yes," said Von Rosen encouragingly.

"You know I never go to church."

"Yes," said Von Rosen mendaciously. He really did not know. In future he, however, would.

"Well, I don't go because--" again Annie hesitated, while the young man waited interrogatively.

Then Annie spoke with force. "I would really like to go occasionally," she said, "I doubt if I would always care to."

"No, I don't think you would," assented Von Rosen with a queer delight.

"But I never can because--Grandmother is old and she has not much left in life, you know."

"Of course."

"It is all very well for people to talk about firesides, and knitting work, and peaceful eyes of age fixed upon Heavenly homes," said Annie, "but all old people are not like that. Grandma hates to knit although she does think I should embroider daisies, and she does like to have me play pinocle with her Sunday mornings, when Aunt Harriet and Aunt Jane are out of the way. It is the only chance she has during the whole week you know because neither Aunt Harriet nor Aunt Jane approves of cards, and poor Grandma is so fond of them, it seems cruel not to play with her the one chance she has."

"I think you are entirely right," said Von Rosen with grave conviction and he was charmed that the girl regarded him as if he had said nothing whatever unusual.

"I have always been sure that it was right," said Annie Eustace, "but I would like sometimes to go to church."

"I really wish you could," said Von Rosen, "and I would make an especial effort to write a good sermon."

"Oh," said Annie, "Aunt Harriet often hears you preach one which she thinks very good."

Von Rosen bowed. Suddenly Annie's shyness, reserve, whatever it was, seemed to overcloud her. The lovely red faded from her cheeks, the light from her eyes. She lost her beauty in a great measure. She bowed stiffly, saying: "I thank you very much, good evening," and passed on, leaving the young man rather dazed, pleased and yet distinctly annoyed, and annoyed in some inscrutable fashion at himself.

Then he heard shouts of childish laughter, and a scamper of childish feet, and Maida and Adelaide Edes rushed past, almost jostling him from the sidewalk. Maida carried a letter, which her mother had written, and dispatched to the last mail. And that letter was destined to be of more importance to Von Rosen than he knew.

As for Annie Eustace, whose meeting with Von Rosen had, after her first lapse into the unconsciousness of mirth, disturbed her, as the meeting of the hero of a dream always disturbs a true maiden who has not lost through many such meetings the thrill of them, she hurried home trembling, and found everything just exactly as she knew it would be.

There sat Aunt Harriet perfectly motionless behind the silver tea service, and although the cosy was drawn over the teapot, the tea seemed to be reproachfully drawing to that extent that Annie could hear it. There sat Aunt Jane behind the cut glass bowl of preserved fruit, with the untouched silver spoon at hand. There sat her grandmother behind the butter plate. There stood Hannah, white capped and white aproned, holding the silver serving tray like a petrified statue of severity, and not one of them spoke, but their silence, their dignified, reproachful silence was infinitely worse than a torrent of invective. How Annie wished they would speak. How she wished that she could speak herself, but she knew better than to even offer an excuse for her tardiness. Well she knew that the stony silence which would meet that would be worse, much worse than this. So she slid into her place opposite her Aunt Jane, and began her own task of dividing into sections the omelet which was quite flat because she was late, and seemed to reproach her in a miserable, low-down sort of fashion.

However, there was in the girl's heart a little glint of youthful joy, which was unusual. She had met Mr. Von Rosen and had forgotten herself, that is at first, and he had looked kindly at her. There was no foolish hope in little Annie Eustace's heart; there would be no spire of aspiration added to her dreams because of the meeting, but she tasted the sweet of approbation, and it was a tonic which she sorely needed, and which inspired her to self-assertion in a childishly naughty and mischievous way. It was after supper that evening, that Annie strolled a little way down the street, taking advantage of Miss Bessy Dicky's dropping in for a call, to slink unobserved out of her shadowy corner, for the Eustaces were fond of sitting in the twilight. The wind had come up, the violent strong wind which comes out of the south, and Annie walked very near the barberry hedge which surrounded Doctor Sturtevant's grounds, and the green muslin lashed against it to its undoing. When Annie returned, the skirt was devastated and Aunt Harriet decreed that it could not be mended and must be given to the poor Joy children. There were many of those children of a degenerate race, living on the outskirts of Fairbridge, and Annie had come to regard them as living effigies of herself, since everything which she had outgrown or injured past repair, fell to them. "There will be enough to make two nice dresses for Charlotte and Minnie Joy," said Aunt Harriet, "and it will not be wasted, even if you have been so careless, Annie."

Annie could see a vision of those two little Joy girls getting about in the remnants of her ghastly muslin, and she shuddered, although with relief.

"You had better wear your cross barred white muslin afternoons now," said Aunt Harriet, and Annie smiled for that was a pretty dress. She smiled still more when Aunt Jane said that now as the cross-barred white was to be worn every day, another dress must be bought, and she mentioned China silk--something which Annie had always longed to own--and blue, dull blue,--a colour which she loved.

Just before she went to bed, Annie stood in the front doorway looking out at the lovely moonlight and the wonderful shadows which transformed the village street, like the wings of angels, and she heard voices and laughter from the Edes' house opposite. Then Margaret began singing in her shrill piercing voice from which she had hoped much, but which had failed to please, even at the Zenith Club.

Annie adored Margaret, but she shrank before her singing voice. If she had only known what was passing through the mind of the singer after she went to bed that night, she would have shuddered more, for Margaret Edes was planning a possible _coup_ before which Annie, in spite of a little latent daring of her own, would have been aghast. _

Read next: Chapter 5

Read previous: Chapter 3

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