Brenda's Summer at Rockley/Chapter 18
XVIII
A PROSPECTIVE BROTHER-IN-LAW
For a day or two after her sister’s arrival Brenda went about as if half in a dream. It was quite upsetting to have a romance going on right under her eyes. For this was the view that she took of the engagement. Although an artist, Agnes had always been called the practical one of the family, and the year before her departure for Europe she had been so busy, so absorbed in her art, that her mother had with difficulty persuaded her to keep up her interest in society. Brenda remembered so well the family discussions of that year, in which Agnes tried to beg off from this party, or that reception, on the plea that she needed all her waking hours for her painting, and that her evenings ought to be given to rest.
“But you know, Agnes, the condition on which your father and I gave our permission for you to study regularly at the Art School.”
“Oh, yes, I remember.”
“It was that you were not to cut yourself off from your friends,—from our friends.”
“But I don’t mean to do that.”
“Well, that is what it will amount to, if you continue to decline all the invitations sent you. You are too young a girl for that.”
“Oh, but, mamma, if you realized how I long to be a great painter, and how I hate all this trouble of dressing up and making myself agreeable to people, especially to men who are so stupid; really, I wish that I need not do it.”
Brenda remembered these discussions, and she recalled (for it was only two or three years before) that Agnes would often make her work the excuse when some particularly agreeable man would come to call,—“agreeable,” at least from Brenda’s point of view, although apparently less agreeable from that of Agnes.
“They could n’t even see her when they called on Sunday afternoons,” and Brenda smiled at the remembrance; “for she was always off somewhere studying cloud effects or something of that kind. She used to say that she thought that the average young man was the stupidest creature. Why, I thought that she went to Paris on purpose to avoid society and to give all her time to her work. But here she is spending every minute that she can with Ralph Weston, when she really ought to be doing other things. Well, perhaps he is n’t an average young man. That’s the kind she used to say she did n’t care for.”
Yet if he was n’t the “average young man” from the point of view of Agnes, Brenda found her prospective brother-in-law delightful. It took her several days to call him Ralph to his face, and behind his back she was very apt to say “Ralph Weston.” But he pleased her exceedingly by treating her exactly as if she were grown-up, that is, he often asked her opinion on important subjects, and he never teased her as the others did. Once or twice in the course of the first week he had invited her to drive with him, and although this may have been possible only because Agnes was too busy to drive, still the attention was none the less agreeable to Brenda.
In addition to the pleasure of welcoming her sister and Mr. Weston, Brenda had the excitement of looking at her presents. While Agnes had brought nothing that was extremely valuable, there were ever so many pretty little trinkets such as can be found only in Paris. Two or three little stick-pins in curious designs especially pleased her. “They go right to my heart!” she had exclaimed on opening the little box containing them.
“Now don’t let them go right to your heart,” Agnes had said. “We cannot have any funerals here,—at least until after the wedding;” and all the others, even Julia, had laughed,—all excepting Ralph. It was by refraining from laughing at what Brenda called the wrong place, that Ralph had made rapid advance in her regard.
A half-dozen of the exquisitely embroidered Swiss handkerchiefs had also been among her presents. “I’m afraid that you have forgotten the difficulty that Brenda has in keeping her handkerchiefs,” and Mrs. Barlow shook her head warningly, as Brenda held up each delicate bit of cambric for admiration.
“Oh, no, I have n’t forgotten; but Brenda is so much older now that I am sure there is little danger of her losing these.”
Whereupon Brenda decided to reward Agnes’s faith in her by taking the best of care of this gift of hers, and keeping the handkerchiefs—well, perhaps until she could show them to her in Paris. It is n’t worth while, perhaps, to enumerate the liberty scarfs, pretty fans, and last, but not least, the exquisite hat which Agnes produced from her trunk for Brenda. Moreover, whatever there was for Brenda, had its duplicate for Julia. This had been part of the instructions sent to Agnes when her mother wrote her regarding her return.
“I don’t see how you ever got it all in. They are so very strict now at the Custom House,” said Julia, after thanking her cousin most warmly, and admiring all the pretty things that she had brought to others.
Oh, I had n’t so very much of my own. I am going to get the most of my trousseau when I return to Paris. So the Custom House people thought that I was n’t bringing in any more than the proper amount for a young woman who had been abroad a year or two.”
“Well, they were very sensible. I should have used my influence against the Administration [does the child know what she means? thought Agnes] if they had taken any of my pretty things away from you.”
“I’m glad they did n’t confiscate my lace scarf,” said Mrs. Barlow, holding up the filmy web that had been Agnes’s chief present to her.
“I bought that in Brussells last spring,” said Agnes, “direct from the woman who made it. She was the most fascinating little creature, and to see her work was the most marvellous thing. With that cushion before her, and all those pins, it did n’t seem as if she had the least design in her work. But somehow the pattern grew right under our eyes.”
“Did you see her making this very scarf? ”
“Oh, no, Brenda; but one that was going to be very like it. Yet I pitied her. In spite of her skill, it must be very trying to the nerves.”
“And to her eyes.”
“Oh, yes, it is very injurious to the eyes. But then we must have lace,” and Agnes shrugged her shoulders.
As Agnes was naturally occupied with many things connected with her wedding, and as Mrs. Barlow, too, had much to occupy her, it fell to Julia and Brenda to take Mr. Weston sight-seeing. To display their newly acquired knowledge of Marblehead, one of their first expeditions was to go over much of the ground of the former pilgrimage.
“Although I ’ve lived chiefly in New York, you must n’t think that I know nothing about Massachusetts,” the young man said, laughingly, as the girls began to explain why Marblehead was worth seeing. “I know that it used to be a great sea-port, and that Marblehead men rowed Washington across the Delaware. I know that it has one of the best harbors on the coast, and that the government has named Cruiser No. 10, ‘Marblehead.’ I know—”
“There, there!” exclaimed Brenda, “I do believe that you know more than we do about it. Perhaps you ’ve seen all the places that we intend showing you.”
“Oh, no, I ’ve never set foot in Marblehead; but I know that Elbridge Gerry was born there, and Joseph Story, and Commodore Tucker, and Moll Pitcher, and Agnes Surriage, and a large number of Massachusetts fishermen—”
“Did you have a guide-book under your pillow last night?” asked Julia quietly, with a sly glance at Brenda.
“There,” he said, “that is exactly it; the guide-book has done it all.”
“I thought I saw you reading it last evening. Uncle Robert said that he was going to bring one down from town, and when I saw him give you a yellowish pamphlet last evening I thought that it had a guide-book look.”
“Nevertheless,” said Mr. Weston, “I left it at home. I really do prefer human guides. Suppose you take me to some place where you have n’t been yourself. Did n’t you say that you had n’t been on the old burying-hill. It always delights me to read odd epitaphs. Perhaps we may find some worth smiling at.”
Accordingly, they climbed the rocky hill, which is on the outskirts of the town, but a short distance from many of the old houses.
“What a superb view!” and Mr. Weston threw back his head and shoulders to get a deeper draught of the fresh air at the summit.
“Is n’t that south, off there?” asked Brenda, pointing off toward the sea.
“Yes, it certainly is,” answered Julia.
“Then that must be the South Shore that we see, that blue line off there in the distance.”
“That’s a logical conclusion,” said Mr. Weston.
“Well, I only spoke of it because I was surprised to think that we can see so far. It must be twenty-five miles away.”
“This seems a strange place for a burying-ground, up on the top of a stony hill,” said Julia.
“Well, it is here because it used to be the churchyard, and the first church was put here because the early settlers wanted to feel sure that when they were in church they would n’t be unexpectedly scalped. I did get this from my guide-book,” he added, as he turned to Julia. “They used to have sentinels stationed outside who kept a sharp look-out for Indians or other enemies. Nothing could escape them at this height. They could see all that was happening on sea or land for some miles away.”
“Now for the gravestones!” cried Brenda. “I wonder if we ’ll find anything really queer.”
You may say that this was not just the right spirit in which to approach a burying-ground, but Julia could not help exclaiming when she found one that read:—
HERE LIES Ye BODY
OF MRS. MIRIAM GROSE
WHO DEeD IN THE
81ST YEAR OF HER
AGE & LEFT 180 CHILDREN
“What!” exclaimed Brenda, running over to read the stone for herself. “Well, it really is,” she added, as she looked at the inscription.
“Oh, you have n’t read the whole of it. You are trying to impose on me,” said Mr. Weston, as he came up and read aloud the last two lines of the epitaph:—
GRAND CHILDREN AND
GREAT GRAND CHILDREN.
“I wonder if she ever tried to invite them all to a birthday party. The Town House would hardly have held them all.”
There were hardly any other epitaphs that deserved especial attention on account of their peculiarities, although many of the stones were quaintly and rudely carved, and there was one that they noted especially because it marked the resting-place of a negro slave. Near the summit of the hill they all paused in solemn thought for a moment, for the little monument commemorated the death by drowning of sixty-five Marblehead fishermen who were lost in ten vessels during a fierce storm off the Banks of Newfoundland more than fifty years ago.
Thinking of the sorrow that must have come to all these families, Brenda and Julia and Mr. Weston walked down the hill a little less gayly.
One afternoon the three went over to Gloucester,—a long expedition, as they had to change cars twice. But in the end they enjoyed it very much, and, as it happened, not one of the three had ever been there before. Mr. Weston insisted on going down on the wharves, and visiting the old fish houses. He found one or two odd characters, quite worth sketching, and he amused himself (and the girls, too, for that matter) by another kind of “drawing.” This, at least, was the term that Brenda applied to his manner of drawing out the old fishermen.
Julia begged to be taken out to Eastern Point to get a glimpse of an Old Maid’s Paradise. Mr. Weston read statistics from a guide-book, and Julia quoted poetry, and they yielded so far to Brenda’s wishes, as to take her down to a hotel, where she could sit on the piazza, and see a crowd of young people wandering back and forward to the beach, to the rocks toward the Golf Links, and where at last they had dinner in the vast dining-room into which the strains of a small orchestra wandered, in a rather hopeless competition with the clatter of dishes, and knives and forks.
They had almost a week of this pleasant wandering about, and Mr. Weston used his sketching-block almost as extravagantly as Brenda used her camera, and Julia wrote long pages in a note-book, which she intended to copy into her diary on her return home. Then in the evening, when Agnes and Ralph Weston sat apart at one end of the piazza, “looking at the stars,” as Brenda said, Julia and Brenda talked over the doings of the day with Mr. and Mrs. Barlow. They had only a week for these pleasant jaunts, for at the end of that time Mr. Weston was to return to New York for a fortnight, while Brenda and Julia were to go off on little visits. During their absence, Agnes was to entertain several of her school friends. Her absence had cut her off from many of them, and now her marriage was to take her away for a still longer time. The absence of Julia and Brenda would enable her to have a larger house-party than would have been possible with them both at home.
“Have you seen Amy this week?” asked Julia, as the two cousins were on their way to service on Sunday morning. The two girls always walked to church, and were very regular in their attendance. It was a particularly interesting little church, and it had been built by a very liberal-minded man a few years before for the use of the summer residents who did not care to go to one of the neighboring towns to church. Visiting clergymen of different denominations preached in it in turn, and hence people of different denominations attended it.
There was only one service a day, and Mr. Barlow required from his daughter the same regular attendance at the seashore that he expected in the city. Amy also attended the Rustic Chapel, as it was popularly called from its style of architecture, and ever since the beginning of their acquaintance she had been in the habit of joining the two girls, and walking part way home with them.
Now when Julia asked Brenda whether she had seen Amy the past week, Brenda felt a little uncomfortable thrill pass through her.
“No, I have n’t,” she replied, shortly. Indeed, if the truth were told, she had hardly thought of Amy since Agnes’ home-coming.
“I have been wondering,” said Julia,—“I have been wondering about the reading class. Perhaps Amy expected to hear something from us about it.”
“I don’t see why,” responded Brenda. “We can’t have her on our minds all the time. Not that I don’t like her,” she added, hastily, noting Julia’s look of surprise; “but of course we ’ve had so many other things to do this week.”
“Yes,” said Julia, a little doubtfully; “but still— still—”
“Now, Julia, Amy is more my friend than she is yours. So you don’t have to stand up for her.”
Julia said no more, although she wondered why a longer acquaintance should entitle Brenda to greater liberty in neglecting Amy. It was true that the actual time since they had last met was not so very great,—little more than ten days. Yet there had been a kind of understanding that the girls should meet every two or three days—“if not oftener,” Nora had said—to read together, and discuss their books.
A week had now passed without a meeting of this kind, and Julia wondered if Brenda had made an explanation to Amy. From Brenda’s present tone she felt quite sure that no explanation had been made, and she felt sorry that she had not attended to it herself. Now Amy, when she saw the two cousins taking their seats in church, looked at Brenda with more or less bitterness in her thoughts. It was plain that Brenda had had no compunction about dropping her. She would have cared less had not cousin Joan and Fritz both been ready to talk to her about it. Fritz had not meant to annoy her, but in offering once or twice to go on his wheel with a message for her to the girls at Rockley, he had not pleased her. His intentions, however, had been the best in the world, for since their reconciliation over the stranded boat he had never once teased Amy. Such goodness could not last indefinitely, but for the present Amy appreciated it.
With cousin Joan, however, it was different.
“It is just as I told you,” she said,—“just as I told you. I hear that there are to be great goings-on at Rockley,—a wedding and other things. Minnie Murphy’s aunt is going over there to accommodate, as a cook. Of course at such a time they won’t think of you. I told you that it would n’t do to set too much by those city people. They ’re always taken up with their own affairs. Well, ‘put not your trust in princes,’—that reminds me, Amy that I wish you’d ask your mother not to have the custard quite so sweet. So much sugar don’t agree with me.”
“I should say not,” said poor Amy to herself, as she walked downstairs to attend to little things in the kitchen. The little Murphy girl worked for Mrs. Redmond only in the morning, and the rest of the work of the house after the noon meal was shared by mother and daughter. It did not greatly soothe poor Amy’s ruffled feelings to see from her window, when she looked out, the Barlow beach-wagon passing, loaded with young people in the greatest spirits. To be sure, all told, there were only half a dozen,—Julia and Brenda, Tom Hearst and Philip, who had come over for the day, and Mr. Weston and Agnes. But Amy, as she heard their laughter as they passed by, felt sadly neglected, and her expression was so sombre that her mother, coming in with her easel, was on the point of asking her what the matter was. On second thought, she said nothing at the time. She, too, had seen the beach-wagon as she walked up the road, and she understood why Amy looked so unhappy.