Amazing Grace Part 16

"The dampness of the day has nothing at all to do with it," she kept on with frozen evenness. "I suggested it because a fire is a safe place for a girl to look into while her profile is being studied."

"Mother!"

Her sense of outraged propriety suddenly slipped its leash.

"It keeps her eyes looking earnest, instead of _eager_," she burst out. "And any girl who'd let a man--allow a man--to run away from a party whose very magnificence was induced on his account, and take her off to tea in a public place, and come to see her the very next afternoon--a stranger, and a foreigner at that--is--is playing with fire!"

"You mean she'd better be playing with fire while he's calling?" I asked quietly. "We must remember to have the old andirons polished, then."

She stopped in her task of dusting the parlor--whose recesses without the s.h.i.+ning new player-piano suddenly looked as bare and empty as a shop-window just after the holidays.

"You wilfully ignore my warning," she declared. "If this man left that party yesterday and comes calling to-day, of course he's impressed!

And if you let him, of course _you're_ impressed. This much goes without saying; but I beg you to be careful, Grace! You happen to have those very serious, _betraying_ eyes, and I want you to guard them while he's here!"

"By keeping my hands busy, eh?" I laughed. "Well, I'll promise, mother, if that'll be any relief to you."

So the fire was kindled, as a preventative measure; and at four o'clock he came--not on the stroke, but ten minutes after. I was glad that he had patronized the street railway service for this call, and left the limousine in its own boudoir--you couldn't imagine anything so exquisite being kept in a lesser place--or I'm afraid that our little white-capped maid would have mistaken it for an ambulance and a.s.sured him that n.o.body was sick. Gleaming blue limousines were scarce in that section.

"Am I early?" he asked, after we had shaken hands and he had glanced toward the fire with a little surprised, gratified expression. "I wasted a quarter of an hour waiting for this car."

Now, a woman can always forgive a man for being late, if she knows he started on time, so with this rea.s.surance I began to feel at home with him. I leaned over and stirred the fire hospitably--to keep my eyes from showing just how thoroughly at home I felt.

"No--you are not early. I was expecting you at four, and--and mother will be down presently."

He studied my profile.

"I was out at the golf club dance last night," he said, after a pause, with a certain abruptness which I had found characterized his more important parts of speech. I stood the tongs against the marble mantlepiece and drew back from the flame.

"Was it--enjoyable?" I asked politely.

"Extremely. Mrs. Walker was there, and she had very kindly forgiven me for my defection of the afternoon. In fact, she was distinctly cordial. She talked to me a great deal of you and your mother."

My heart sank. It always does when I find that my women friends have been talking a great deal about me.

"Oh, did she?"

"She is very fond of you, it seems--and very puzzled by you."

"Puzzled because I work for the _Herald_?"

I spoke breathlessly, for I wondered if Mrs. Walker had told of the Guilford Blake puzzle, as well; but after one look into the candid half-amused eyes I knew that this information had been withheld.

"Well, yes. She touched upon that, among other things."

"But what things?" I asked impatiently. At the door I heard the maid with the tea tray. "I suppose, however, just the usual things that people tell about us. That we have been homeless and penniless--except for this old barn--since I was a baby, and that, one by one, the pomps of power have been stripped from us?"

He looked at me soberly for a moment.

"Yes, she told me all this," he said.

"And that our historic rosewood furniture was sold, years ago, to Mrs.

Hartwell Gill, the grocer's wife who used the chair-legs as battering-rams?"

He smiled.

"Against Oldburgh's unwelcoming doors? Yes."

"And that--"

"That you belonged to the most aristocratic family in the whole state," he interrupted softly. "So aristocratic that even the possession of the rosewood furniture is an open sesame! And of course this state is noted for its blooded beings, even in my own country."

"Really?" I asked, with a little gratified surprise.

"Indeed, yes!" he replied earnestly. "And Mrs. Walker told me something that I had not in the least thought to surmise--that you are a descendant of the famous artist, Christie. I don't know why I happened not to think about it, for the name is one which an Englishman instantly connects with portrait galleries. He was very favorably known on our side."

"Yes. He had a very remarkable--a very pathetic history," I said.

Turning around, he glanced at a small portrait across the room.

"Is--is this James Christie?" he asked.

"Yes. There is a larger one in the hall."

He walked across the room and examined the portrait. After a perfunctory survey, which did not include any very close examination of the strong features--rugged and a little harsh, and by no means the glorious young face which had been a lodestar to Lady Frances Webb--he turned back to me. For a moment I fancied that he was going to say something bitter and impulsive--something that held a tinge of ma.s.s-hatred for cla.s.s, but his expression changed suddenly. I saw that his impulse had pa.s.sed, and that what he would say next would be an afterthought.

"Do you care for him--for this sort of thing?" he asked, waving his hand carelessly toward the other portraits in the room and toward the sword, lying there in an absurd sort of harmlessness beneath its gla.s.s case. "I imagined that you didn't."

He spoke with a tinge of disappointment. Evidently he was sorry to find me so pedigreed a person.

"I do--and I don't," I answered, coming across the room to his side and drawing back a curtain to admit a better light. "I certainly care for--him."

"The artist?"

"Yes."

"But why?" he demanded, with a sudden twist of perversity to his big well-shaped mouth. "To me it seems such a waste of time--this sentiment for romantic antiquity. But I am not an unprejudiced judge, I admit. I have spent all the days of my life hating aristocracy."

"Oh, my feeling for him is not caused by his aristocracy," I made haste to explain. "And indeed, the Christies were very commonplace people until he elevated them into the ranks of fame. He was not only an artist of note, but he was a very strong man. It is this part of his history that I revere, and when I was a very young girl I 'adopted' him--from all the rest of my ancestors--to be the one I'd care for and feel a pride in."

He smiled.

"Of course you don't understand," I attempted to explain with a little flurry. "No _man_ would ever think of adopting an ancestor, but--"

He interrupted me, his smile growing gentler.

"I think I understand," he said. "I did the selfsame thing, years ago when I was a boy. But my circ.u.mstances were rather different from yours. I selected my grandfather--my mother's father, because he was clean and fine and strong! He was--he was a collier in Wales."

"A collier?" I repeated, wondering for the moment over the unaccustomed word.