name, were soothing her with quiet and comfortable words, Grandmother was standing in the middle of the great Merion kitchen, with her hands folded before her in the light pretty way she had, listening to Grandfather; and while she listened she looked to and fro with shy startled glances, and seemed to sway lightly from side to side, as if a breath would move her; she was like a windflower, as Anne Peace said.
“You mustn’t mind Rachel,” Grandfather was saying, as he filled his long pipe and settled himself in his great chair. “She is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth; where it listeth. She has grown up motherless—like yourself, my dear, but with a difference; with a difference; neither your grandmother—I would say, neither my wife nor I have ever governed her enough. She has rather governed me, being of that disposition; of that disposition. Yes! But she is a fine girl, and I hope you will be good friends. This is the kitchen, where we mostly sit in summer, for coolness, you see; Rachel cooks mostly in the back kitchen in summer. That is the sitting-room beyond, which you will find pleasant in cooler weather. That is the pantry door, and that one opens on the cellar stairs. Comfortable, all very comfortable. I hope you will be happy, my dear. Do you think you will be happy?”
He looked at her with a shade of anxiety in his cheerful eyes, and waited for her reply.
“Oh—yes!” said Grandmother, with a flutter in her voice that told of a sob somewhere near. “Yes, sir, if—if she will not always be angry. Will she always, do you think?”
“No! No!” said Grandfather; “very soon, very soon, we’ll all be comfortable, all be comfortable. Just don’t mind her, my dear. Let her be, and she’ll come round.”
He nodded wisely with his kind grave smile. By and by he bade her go out in the garden and gather a posy for herself; and then he took his hat and stepped across the road to Widow Peace’s.
Grandmother started obediently, but when she came to the garden door she stopped and looked out with wide startled eyes. Rachel in her scarlet dress was down on her knees in the poppy bed, the pride of her heart, and was plucking up the poppies in furious haste, dragging them up by the roots and trampling them under her feet.
“It seemed the only thing to do!” said Grandfather Merion, absently. “Wild parts, Susan; wild parts, ma’am! Her parents dead, as I told you, and the child left with the innkeeper’s wife, who was not—not a person fitted to bring up a young girl; no other woman—at least none of suitable character near. It seemed clearly my duty to bring the child away. Then—my search led me into mining camps, and often I had to be off alone among the mountains, as a rumor came from here or there—the marriage bond was a protection, you see; yes, I was clear as to my duty. But I confess I forgot about Rachel, Susan, and Rachel is so ungoverned! I fear she will not—a—not be subject to my wife—whose name is Pity, by the way, Susan; a quaint name; she is a very good child. I am sure you and little Annie will be good to her.”
Good Widow Peace promised, and so did Anne, her soft brown eyes shining with good-will; but when he was gone back, the old woman shook her head. “No good can come of it!” she said. “I hadn’t the heart to say so, Anne, for poor Grandfather must have a hard time, searching them cruel mountains for his graceless son; but no good can come of it.”
“But we can try!” said Anne.
CHAPTER II
HOW THE FIRST LINE CAME IN HER FACE
Rachel did not kill herself, nor go crazy; nor did she even go away, as she threatened to do when she wearied of announcing her imminent death. She stayed and made things unpleasant for Grandmother. She was barely civil to her in Grandfather’s presence, for she dared not be otherwise; but the moment his back was turned she was grimacing and threatening behind it, and when he left the room she would break out into open taunt and menace. There was no name too hateful for her to call the pale girl who never reviled her in turn; but Grandmother’s very silence was turned against her.
“You needn’t think that I don’t know why you’re dumb as a fish!” raved the frantic girl. “You know what I say is true, and you darsn’t speak! you darsn’t! you darsn’t!—” She stopped short; for Grandmother had come and taken her by both wrists, and stood gazing at her.
“Stop!” she said quietly. “That is enough. Stop!”
They stood for some minutes, looking into each other’s eyes; then Rachel turned her head away with a sullen gesture. “Let me go!” she said. “I don’t want to say anything more. I’ve said enough. Let me go!”
These were bad hours, but there were good ones too for little Grandmother. She loved her housework, and did it with a pretty grace and quickness; she loved to sit by Grandfather with her sewing, or read the paper to him. She could not be doing enough for the old man. She told Anne Peace that he had saved her life. “I should not have gone on living out there,” she said, “it was not good to live after my father died. I had one friend, but he left me, and there were only strangers when Grandfather came and saved me. It is a little thing to let her scold”—it was after one of Rachel’s tantrums—“if only she will be quiet before him, and not make him grieve.”
But her happiest hours were in the garden. It was a lovely place, the Merion garden; not large, only a hundred feet from the house to the street; but this space was so set and packed with flowers that from a little distance it looked like a gay carpet stretched before the old red brick house. Small lozenge-shaped beds, each a mass of brilliant color; sweet-william, iris, pansies, poppies, forget-me-nots, and twenty other lovely things. Between the beds, round and round like a slender green ribbon, ran a little grassy path, just wide enough for one person. Grandmother would spend her best hours following this path; pacing slowly along, stopping here to look and there to smell, and everywhere to love. She was like a flower herself, as she drifted softly along in her light dress, her soft hair blowing about her sweet pale face; a windflower, as Anne Peace said.
One day she had followed the path till she came to where it ran along by the old vine-covered brick wall that stood between the garden and the road. You could hardly see the wall for the grapevines that were piled thick upon it; and inside the vines tumbled about, overrunning the long bed of yellow iris that was the rearguard of the garden.
Grandmother was talking as she drifted slowly along; it was a way she had, bred by her lonely life in the western cabin; talking half to herself, half to the long white lily that she held, putting it delicately to her cheek now and then, as if to feel which was the smoother.
“But Manuel never came back!” she was saying. “I never knew, white lily, I never knew whether he was alive or dead. That made it hard to come away, do you see, dear? Whether he was lost in the great snow up on the mountains, or whether the Indians caught him—I can never know now, lily dear; and he was my only friend till Grandfather came, and I loved him—I loved Manuel, white lily! Ah! what is that?”
“THE LONG WHITE LILY—PUTTING IT DELICATELY TO HER CHEEK.”
There was a smothered exclamation; a rustle on the other side of the wall. The next moment a figure that had been lying under the wall rose up and confronted Grandmother; the figure of a young man, tall and graceful, with the look of a foreigner.
“Pitia!” cried the young man. “It is you? You call me?—see, I come! I am here, Manuel Santos.”
