But there were no such interruptions, and the baker’s boy, eager and interested in the pretty young lady who wanted to catch a train, conversed with her pleasantly, telling a lot of bright little incidents out of his carefree young life and unknowingly adding to her knowledge of her family’s standing in the neighborhood.
She looked back at the grim old castle as they neared the valley and wondered if she would ever come there again. She wondered if her mother would have been satisfied to have her go away in such haste and yet was sure she would not have wanted her to stay and go to the MacCallummore dinner. For she was really afraid of young Lord MacCallummore. Fearful lest in some way he would wield a power he seemed to have to compel her to marry him even against her will. It didn’t seem possible that this young lord could do that with her, but there was something about his eyes that made her feel he usually got what he wanted, and she was quite sure her uncle and aunt would not lift a finger to protect her. Yet it seemed incredible that such a thing could be possible in this day and age. Surely, even in this land which was to her a foreign land, she couldn’t be forced to marry against her will!
And yet her instinct warned her that she would have a very unhappy time before she got free from them all in case the young lord should attempt any such thing. She felt they all had ways of working with which she would not be able to cope, and as the distance increased from the castle, her relief increased.
As they turned into the city street and swept on toward the station, Rose looked back up at the faraway castle and smiled a little good-bye toward the place where she was leaving that wonderful painting of her mother, and the dear piano. Maybe she would never see them again, but she was glad that she had them in her memory. Nothing could take that away from her.
And so they arrived at the station. The baker’s boy helped her down from the high seat, swung her suitcases down, and with a lift of his cap plunged up to his driver’s seat again and roared away.
Rose, feeling as if the last connection with the old castle had left her, picked up her baggage and hurried into the station, glad to find that she was in plenty of time. She bought her ticket and then sat down to await the train. Not until she was aboard would she feel safe even yet, and it was with great relief that she presently sighted the train coming into the station. She was aboard at last, and in a few moments more she could look out of her window and see the castle, high and far away.
Now, what did the future have in store for her?
Chapter 11
Mrs. McCarroll was quite troubled. She had just received a letter from Sydney Repplier saying she wanted very much to go over to New York and run around a few days, and she wondered if her mother’s old friend wouldn’t like to go over with her. She was thinking of staying there for perhaps two or three months to take a few lessons from a famous pianist whom she heard had been engaged to conduct private lessons and classes for a summer school there, and she hated to go and make arrangements for such a thing without someone along who knew the ropes, who could help her secure a place to stay in the right neighborhood and make the right plans for her. Would dear Mrs. McCarroll be so heavenly good as to take the time and trouble to go, even if only for a day or so?
But Mrs. McCarroll, after she had read the letter over twice, began to feel that she could read between the lines. What the girl really wanted was for Mrs. McCarroll to intercede with her son Gordon and get him to escort Miss Sydney around to the various places and get her nicely and decently settled where he couldn’t help but come and see her occasionally and take her out. And somehow Gordon’s mother was very sure that such an arrangement would not please her son. Not after the conversation they had had the last time he was at home.
“What’s the matter, Agnes?” asked Mr. McCarroll that night when he came home. “You’ve got that anxious pucker between your eyes, so you might as well confess what you’re worried about.”
Agnes McCarroll laughed.
“Why, Daddy, I’m not sure that I’m worried,” she said, letting her smile grow thoughtful, almost puzzled.
“Well, I’m sure! I never yet saw that pucker between your eyes but something developed sooner or later. Let’s make it sooner. What’s to pay?”
“Oh, nothing much,” said Gordon’s mother, trying her best to make light of the matter in her heart. “It’s just that Repplier girl again.”
“What? Is she coming here again? Well, Gordon isn’t here. You don’t mind, do you? You can refuse to send for him, you know, say he is too busy.”
“Oh, but that’s it. She wants me to take her up to New York.”
“For what reason?” asked the father with a quick keen look.
“Why, she says she wants to study music a few months there with a certain artist who is very famous, and she wants me to take her up there and show her the ropes.” The anxious pucker came again, now that she had stated the case in bald language.
“Hmm! Is that the way the young things go fishing these days? Well, you were worried about Gordon; perhaps that would be a good solution of your perplexities. You thought she was wonderful. You thought she would protect Gordon against all those other nameless impossible girls you seemed to think inhabited New York, just lying in wait for him. Now you’ve got your wish, and the girl is pursuing Gordon, and he’s much too courteous, you know, to run away from her. Why worry?”
“Malcolm!” said Agnes McCarroll with a grieved quiver in her voice. “Is that you talking that way to me?”
“Well, now, Agnes, didn’t I understand you the other day to be terribly worried about Gordon up there in New York without any decent girls around to keep him company and keep his mind from straying toward the unworthy ones?”
“No!” said Gordon’s mother, the tears in her voice now. “No! I didn’t distrust Gordon. You know I didn’t.”
“Well, but you liked the girl tremendously, didn’t you, Agnes? Then I don’t see what you are worrying about now.”
“I didn’t say I was worrying,” said the mother, bracing up and smiling through her tears.
“Then what are you worrying about, little mother?”
“Well, I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to break it to Gordon that she’s coming. He’ll hate it, you know. This will be just the last straw, because she’s coming up and asking me to bring her, which practically puts her on his mercy.”
“Well, Mamma, I hope you see she isn’t quite the girl for our son. A girl that foists herself on the family in such a direct appeal as this. If she had to go to New York of all cities to study music, why doesn’t she go quietly and not let anybody know she’s there? Then she wouldn’t make a nuisance of herself with the young man whom she evidently hopes to attract and use as an escort while she’s there.”
“I see. Yes, I see,” said Gordon’s mother. “I’m awfully disappointed in her. I thought she would have had more delicacy and fineness than to put herself in such a position. But what I’m really troubled about is, what am I to do? If I go up to New York with her I’ve practically got to drag Gordon into it, and oh, how he will hate it! What shall I do, Malcolm?”
“Why don’t you put it up to Gordon, Mamma? Ask him what he would like to have you do?”
Her face lighted up with relief.
“I will!” she said happily, and went over to the telephone and called for long distance.
Papa McCarroll retired behind his evening paper and kept an alert ear toward the telephone but didn’t interrupt nor offer any suggestions. He could hear his son’s clear voice. It was as if those two he loved above all others were sitting right there beside him and he was listening to their talk, as it had often been at home, for they had few reserves, these three.
“Gordon, I’ve got a problem I want you to solve for me. I want you to tell me honestly what you would like to have me do about it, because I just don’t know what I should do.”
“Yes?” said Gordon, all warmth and sympathy. “Let’s hear!”
“Well, Gordon, it’s something you
won’t like, I’m sure, and I thought perhaps you could suggest some courteous way out of it.”
“Oh, sure!” said Gordon. “Say, it’s not another girl, is it, Mother? Because I just can’t possibly come home this weekend, any way you fix it.”
“No, Gordon, it isn’t another girl. It’s the same one. And she doesn’t want you to come home to entertain her this time, she wants to come up to New York. She wants me to bring her up and show her the ropes of our great eastern metropolis.”
“Oh yeah? When does she want to come, Mater?”
“Well, I think she’s set the first of next week as her goal.”
“Okay, Mother, bring her on. The sooner the quicker! I have to leave for Chicago on Monday at noon, or maybe sooner, for two or three days. Can you sightsee her in that time or will it take longer?”
“Well, she’s made up her mind to study music in New York, and she wants me to get her settled and show her the ropes, she says.”
“Okay, Mother, but don’t you dare give her my address. You can tell her I’m about to change my address, and you aren’t sure where it will be when I get back. That will tide us over the worst. After that I may be sent to Canada to investigate some business, and then possibly south. I wasn’t relishing the idea of travel, but since things are so, perhaps I’ll encourage my superiors to go on with their scheme. Don’t worry anymore, Mother. Just bring on your girl next week and get her happily settled, and maybe when I return I may leave my card at her door some night, or even call briefly. I can let her know how busy I am, how I am leaving for Kamchatka the next morning, but I wish her well and so on. But seriously, Mums, whyn’t you wish her on Palmer Atkinson? She’d adore him, and he is just waiting around for some nice wise little girl like that to mold him!”
“Hmm!” chuckled Malcolm McCarroll, grinning at his wife as she said good-bye and hung up.
“Yes,” sighed the smiling mother, “it’s pretty safe to leave things to Gordon.”
“And when is it you start up to New York?”
“Well, I was thinking of Monday or Tuesday, but really, Malcolm, I don’t know why I have to go at all. If Gordon is going to be away she’ll miss her goal entirely. Why should I bother?”
“Yes? Well, I’m glad you don’t feel it essential. Still, if I were you, I’d just run up a day or two and see her started, if you really think she means it. Anyway, it would be a pleasant gesture to your old friend’s daughter, and you can introduce her to two or three harmless people. Among them the gentleman Gordon mentioned, and then I think you’ve done your duty. Leave the rest of the responsibility on your son. If he wants to take her out somewhere, let him. But don’t give her his address. He evidently doesn’t want to be chased, and you must admit the girls of today do a good deal of chasing.”
“Yes, I’m afraid they do,” sighed the mother. “But surely, Malcolm, there must be some nice girls.”
“Such as you were, Agnes? Yes, I suppose there are still a few real Christian girls left,” said the father.
“But Gordon doesn’t seem to have identified himself with any church in New York, and where will he meet Christian girls?”
“I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you. He isn’t going to be there so very long perhaps, and as for Christian girls, if God has one for him, He will manage to get them together. Just don’t worry. By the way, are you so sure your Sydney Repplier is one?”
“Well, no,” said the mother. “She said she sometimes went and taught her mother’s Sunday school class, but when she told me what she taught, I wasn’t so sure. She seems to have made a great point of taking all the courses she can in any line, but I’m afraid she has only a great deal of knowledge without understanding. She said she could learn something good from everyone.”
Father McCarroll grinned.
“Yes? Well, in a way that is true, but probably not in the way she meant it. Even the devil might teach you a good deal of what not to do, I suppose. But Mother, if I were you, I’d just pray that our boy may walk very near to the Lord so that he won’t be seeking his own worldly good as much as getting ready to live eternally. If our boy can be kept from the evil that is in the world, I guess we don’t need to fret about picking out a wife for him. Personally, I’m not so keen on that Sydney girl myself, but then of course, I don’t have to marry her.”
So Agnes McCarroll took Sydney Repplier to New York and showed her the sights and looked at apartments with her and went to see the great pianist with her and tried to show her a general good time, as much as one older woman can do for one younger woman. But when the third day Gordon had not yet returned from Chicago, and a telegram informed his mother that he had been ordered farther west, the young girl decided she was not interested in studying music in hot weather and that the pianist wasn’t her type anyway. When an invitation came from another friend bidding her to the mountains for a month, she abandoned her musical plans and departed mountainward. Then Agnes McCarroll came home greatly relieved in mind. Three days in the exclusive company of Sydney Repplier had not increased her desire to have her for a daughter-in-law.
When she reached home she found a letter from Gordon.
Dearest Mother,
Because of your recent interest in girls, I am writing, partly to put myself on the level with you and Dad, and partly to reassure you as to my immunity just at present from the disease known as “falling in love.”
I am hoping that your recent experience with a certain girl in New York will not have increased your desire to have me her constant attendant, because I am quite sure that you have discernment enough to see many little things in her when you have her at close range, which would not make her fit into our scheme of life.
In the first place, her beliefs are quite different from those in which you and Father trained me. Not that I’ve flown very high in those lines, but somehow you don’t like a woman to fling all faith to the winds. It’s all a part and parcel of her knowing it all and telling about everything, as I said. But isn’t that enough for you, without all the other objections I could name?
But Mother, just because you’ve been so nice about my running away when you brought this girl around again, I’m going to tell you something.
When I get a girl, I’m going to be mighty particular about her. And there’s just one girl I’ve ever seen who has come up to my ideal.
Don’t get worried, for it’s not any girl I’ve just met here in New York. I’ve known her all my life. Her name wouldn’t mean a thing to you. She’s just a quiet part of my school life, though I never took much note of her till lately. I don’t know why. It probably was my fault. I always admired her from a distance. It never occurred to me to try to get any nearer. I was too busy. But now I know she was all right.
She’s lovely, mother! I know you would like her.
But again, don’t you worry. She’s over in Europe. I’m over here. I don’t know that she means to come back, ever. But I thought you would like to know there is a girl who has given me a higher standard, and no girl can take my fancy now, unless I feel she would come up to it.
So there you are! If we ever have a chance again for a good old talk, I may tell you more about her and about how I came to be interested in her. But it’s not a thing to write about. Not yet.
So please don’t worry anymore. I’m not going to fall in love with every girl I see in New York. And you can tell Dad I’m aiming, if I ever get a girl, to get one as good as the one he got, or I’ll go alone.
Your loving son,
Gordon
With tears of happiness on her face, Agnes took her letter to her boy’s father, and he, with his arms about her, read it and then kissed her tenderly.
“He couldn’t get a better girl,” he said fervently.
“Dear!” she said softly. And then added with a small pucker in her brow, “Only—I wish he had told us her name. I would like so much to know more about her.”
“You must be patient, little mother,” said Gordon’s father. “When you
r son gets ready to have a name for her he’ll tell you. If there’s anything to tell, and she’s not just an ideal who may vanish into somebody else, he’ll tell you when the time is ripe. You can’t hurry a bud in opening, you can’t force a love tale until it comes true. If you try, you may be sorry!”
Agnes McCarroll smiled understandingly, and later that evening she wrote to Gordon. “All right, dear son. And when you ever bring her here, I shall be ready to receive her with open arms.” That very night Gordon began to dream how it would be if he ever brought her. And just before he slept it seemed his lips were upon hers again, and her face close to his.
The next day he received, with great relief and joy, the letter from Edinburgh, together with the letter she had written from the ship. For the vision of her had begun to be so beautifully far away that he had feared it might vanish some day and turn out only a dream. Maybe there hadn’t been any girl at all who was different from other girls. Maybe it had all been fancy. Only, the touch of her lips still stayed upon his.
So he sat down at once with a great light of joy in his eyes and wrote her a letter.
Dear Rose:
I was so glad to get your ship letter today and to know that you are safely across and landed among relatives. I do not have to think of you as all alone on a ship full of strangers. Somehow I felt as if I ought to have done something about that for you before I left you. I hoped the flowers would tell you how I felt about it. So I am very glad you found a real friend in your Lady Campbell. I could not bear to have you lonely all the way across.
Gordon stopped at that and read over what he had written. Was he getting too intimate all of a sudden? Perhaps she wouldn’t understand why he should care. Perhaps she would think he was getting silly. He might frighten her, acting as if he had a right to look out for her that way. Maybe he ought to tear it up and begin again. But after he had read it the third time, he decided to let it stand. There was nothing wrong in being solicitous for a friend’s comfort on a voyage, and they had both agreed that they were friends. She would understand. So he dashed on with his letter.