It seemed an age until six o'clock."This won't do,"she said to herself;"I'll have to learn how to sew,or crochet,or make tatting.At last,I am to be domesticated.I used to wonder how women had time for the endless fancy work,but I see,now."She was accustomed to self analysis and introspection,and began to consider what she could get out of the next six months in the way of gain.Physical strength,certainly,but what else?The prospect was gloomy just then.
"It's goin'to rain,Miss Thorne,"said Hepsey,at the door."Is all the winders shut?""Yes,I think so,"she answered.
"Supper's ready any time you want it."
"Very well,I will come now."
When she sat down in the parlour,after doing scant justice to Hepsey's cooking,it was with a grim resignation,of the Puritan sort which,supposedly,went with the house.There was but one place in all the world where she would like to be,and she was afraid to trust herself in the attic.
By an elaborate mental process,she convinced herself that the cedar chest and the old trunks did not concern her in the least,and tried to develop a feminine fear of mice,which was not natural to her.She had just placed herself loftily above all mundane things,when Hepsey marched into the room,and placed the attic lamp,newly filled,upon the marble table.
Here was a manifest duty confronting a very superior person and,as she went upstairs,she determined to come back immediately,but when she had put the light in the seaward window,she lingered,under the spell of the room.
The rain beat steadily upon the roof and dripped from the eaves.
The light made distorted shadows upon the wall and floor,while the bunches of herbs,hanging from the rafters,swung lightly back and forth when the wind rattled the windows and shook the old house.
The room seemed peopled by the previous generation,that had slept in the massive mahogany bed,rocked in the chairs,with sewing or gossip,and stood before the old dresser on tiptoe,peering eagerly into the mirror which probably had hung above it.
It was as if Memory sat at the spinning-wheel,idly twisting the thread,and bringing visions of the years gone by.
A cracked mirror hung against the wall and Ruth saw her reflection dimly,as if she,too,belonged to the ghosts of the attic.She was not vain,but she was satisfied with her eyes and hair,her white skin,impervious to tan or burn,and the shape of her mouth.The saucy little upward tilt at the end of her nose was a great cross to her,however,because it was at variance with the dignified bearing which she chose to maintain.As she looked,she wondered,vaguely,if she,like Aunt Jane,would grow to a loveless old age.It seemed probable,for,at twenty-five,The Prince had not appeared.She had her work and was happy;yet unceasingly,behind those dark eyes,Ruth's soul kept maidenly match for its mate.
When she turned to go downstairs,a folded newspaper on the floor attracted her attention.It was near one of the trunks which she had opened and must have fallen out.She picked it up,to replace it,but it proved to be another paper dated a year later than the first one.There was no marked paragraph,but she soon discovered the death notice of "Abigail Winfield,nee Weatherby,aged twenty-two."She put it into the trunk out of which she knew it must have fallen,and stood there,thinking.Those faded letters,hidden under Aunt Jane's wedding gown,were tempting her with their mute secret as never before.She hesitated,took three steps toward the cedar chest,then fled ingloriously from the field.
Whoever Charles Winfeld was,he was free to love and marry again.
Perhaps there had been an estrangement and it was he for whom Aunt Jane was waiting,since sometimes,out of bitterness,the years distil forgiveness.She wondered at the nature which was tender enough to keep the wedding gown and the pathetic little treasures,brave enough to keep the paper,with its evidence of falseness,and great enough to forgive.
Yet,what right had she to suppose Aunt Jane was waiting?Had she gone abroad to seek him and win his recreant heart again?Or was Abigail Weatherby her girlhood friend,who had married unhappily,and then died?
Somewhere in Aunt Jane's fifty-five years there was a romance,but,after all,it was not her niece's business."I'm an imaginative goose,"Ruth said to herself."I'm asked to keep a light in the window,presumably as an incipient lighthouse,and I've found some old clothes and two old papers in the attic--that's all--and I've constructed a tragedy."She resolutely put the whole matter aside,as she sat in her room,rocking pensively.Her own lamp had not been filled and was burning dimly,so she put it out and sat in the darkness,listening to the rain.
She had not closed the shutters and did not care to lean out in the storm,and so it was that,when the whistle of the ten o'clock train sounded hoarsely,she saw the little glimmer of light from Miss Ainslie's window,making a faint circle in the darkness.
Half an hour later,as before,it was taken away.The scent of lavender and sweet clover clung to Miss Hathaway's linen,and,insensibly soothed,Ruth went to sleep.After hours of dreamless slumber,she thought she heard a voice calling her and telling her not to forget the light.It was so real that she started to her feet,half expecting to find some one standing beside her.
The rain had ceased,and two or three stars,like timid children,were peeping at the world from behind the threatening cloud.It was that mystical moment which no one may place--the turning of night to day.Far down the hill,ghostly,but not forbidding,was Miss Ainslie's house,the garden around it lying whitely beneath the dews of dawn,and up in the attic window the light still shone,like unfounded hope in a woman's soul,harking across distant seas of misunderstanding and gloom,with its pitiful "All Hail!"
