Rose Galbraith (12 page)

She looked at Aunt Janet with her apology, but Aunt Janet was engaged in erasing the traces of tears and did not answer. Even her uncle was blowing his nose furiously. Who would have thought that that hard old customer would have been stirred emotionally by mere music!

It was the guest, after all, who felt the burden of an answer upon him.

“I am sure you have attained a large degree of excellence in the art of music!” he said stiltedly. “I should think that even a professional musician might commend you. One wonders that a lady would care to take the trouble to reach that degree of perfection, but I suppose some do, and of course it would be pleasant for her family to hear her play upon occasion.” His voice was cold and hard, and one could see that he was struggling, with his ordinary vocabulary, to find suitable words, but he was really doing his best.

Rose swept him an indifferent flicker of a smile and said a cool “Thank you” and then turned away. Lord Warloch cleared his throat and said, “Quite so!” and Lady Warloch turned to Rose and said, “It is getting late, Margaret. You must be tired after your journey. Perhaps we had better retire and leave the gentlemen to have their conversation uninterrupted. We will bid you good night, Lord MacCallummore.” She swept from the room, signing to Rose to follow her.

At the door Rose turned back to flash a good night glance toward her mother's picture on the wall and then gladly followed her aunt up the great stone staircase.

“You really play verra weel, you know,” said her aunt, lapsing into dialect as she stopped at the door of Rose's room. “I had no idea you could play. It seemed—weel—quite like the days whin we baith were yoong.”

Aunt Janet was not quite over her emotion that the music had so unexpectedly brought upon her, and she was almost embarrassed before Rose. But she paused a moment at the door.

“I hope you are quite comfortable,” she added, getting back into more sophisticated words, “and should you be wanting anything, just ring the bell and Maggie will come. Good night!” She stalked down the hall to her own door, and Rose was dismissed.

Left alone, Rose closed her door and went and knelt down beside the bed, burying her flushed face in the cool pillow. She was fairly trembling with the excitement of the last hour. Oh, if only she could talk to her mother about it! She could almost see the shining of her mother's eyes if she could have heard about how Rose had played on her own dear piano!

But the next best thing would be to talk to God about it. Mother was with God, and perhaps He would tell her about it. Or perhaps Mother herself had been able to look down and see the whole thing.

So she knelt and poured out her young heart in a sweet trusting prayer.

“Dear God, if You can let mother know about it, please do! Oh, it would help me so much to know she is looking down and seeing what I do. But anyway, I know You can be with me all through everything. And so, now, please, I thank You for such a mother as You gave me, and I thank You for letting me see that lovely picture of her as a girl, and for letting me play on her dear old piano. I thank You for making Aunt Janet keep it in tune all through the years. She must have loved Mother some to do that of course! I'm glad she told me about it.”

The prayer rambled on sweetly, Rose just talking softly to her Lord, as she might have talked to her mother if she had been alive. Alone in trying circumstances, she was realizing the presence of her heavenly Father as she had never realized Him before. Ah! It was good to talk to God that way!

When she arose from her knees she felt refreshed.

She was just about to unfasten her garments and make quick work of getting into bed when she remembered her little silk handbag, such a pretty little bag that her mother had made out of rosebud ribbon. It was exquisitely made, and she loved it, counted it among her precious treasures. She looked about on the bureau and floor for it, but it wasn't there! She must have left it downstairs. Ah! Now she remembered! She had laid it on the piano when she sat down to play, and probably had left it there.

There was a dainty little handkerchief in it that her mother had given her on a birthday not long ago, and a tiny pink satin purse with a trifle of money in it. Not much, of course, but she couldn't afford to lose any of it, and she would hate to lose the bag. It would be best to slip right down now and get it before the servants picked it up and perhaps thought it was of no account. She fastened her belt again primly and went swiftly over to the door, opening it cautiously.

The hallway seemed just as when she had come in, though she wasn't sure just how long she had knelt to pray. She left her door slightly ajar and slipped out into the hall. The dim stairway wound broadly down against the castle walls, gray and forbidding in the dim flicker of half-burnt candles.

Guardedly she stepped forth, daring a step at a time. Suppose her aunt should open her door and demand to know where she was going! She had been ordered to bed. What would Aunt Janet think of her daring to go downstairs alone again, with the two men still down there? Would she call her bold?

But surely Rose could tell her what she was going for!

She dreaded terribly to come under the further condemnation of her aunt or her chilly old uncle. If she had only been sure about the servants, whether they would touch her bag, her bit of money, she would have let it go till morning. Yet perhaps even that might call condemnation down upon her for being so careless as to forget her bag.

Softly, slowly, she made her way down, anxious eyes to the right where, in a minute now, she would be able to see the great archway leading into the ballroom where the piano resided. Would the candles be extinguished yet? If not, there would be no trouble, surely. It would be but the work of a second to tiptoe lightly over the great Aubusson carpet, whose softness would drown her footsteps. But could she find her way if the candles were put out? Could she find the piano in the dark and the exact place on the piano where she had left the bag? Perhaps she should go back and get her little flashlight that Mother had made her pack in her bag. But no, she would go on and do her best. If the candles were put out, the piano would likely have been closed, and it would be already too late to do anything more about it tonight.

There were voices plainly to be heard now. They were coming from the library, behind the big room where she had been taken first. Her uncle and the guest were talking together and she could almost hear the words they were saying. She
could hear
!

“You say she has a fortune in her own right?” the guest was saying, and his voice had a greedy eager sound. “How much?”

She was startled that the words come to her so distinctly. They must be very near or else it was some trick of the walls, an echo. Oh, she must not be discovered by them. She shrank from them both, inexpressibly. She went more cautiously, casting anxious, furtive glances to the left side of the hall to be sure they were not standing there, just below the great staircase, but she could see no one, though the shadows were deep on that side of the hall. But the voices were sounding very close; a hollow sound though, as if the wall were tricky with echoes.

And who were they talking about?

Just then her uncle answered.

“I'm not sure of the exact figures, though I'm quite sure it is a considerable sum. She is very young, of course, and the estate may not all be settled upon her as yet. You know her mother has just passed away.”

“I see! I should want to be very sure, you understand! You know during the life of my father, I am at his mercy. I cannot be sure what he would do for me in case the marriage did not please him. And of course, since she is the daughter of the girl who jilted him—” His voice was suddenly hushed, and she could not hear the next words.

Suddenly she knew that they were speaking of her. They were daring to discuss a marriage between herself and this obnoxious guest!

Her knees grew weak beneath her, and yet she dared not stop there on the stairway. She was almost down the stairs now, and she could see a flickering light from the great room on her right. Oh, the candles must still be lighted. Perhaps she could get her bag and get back quickly while they were still absorbed in their conversation!

She fairly flew down the remaining steps, silently on her soft little slippers and dashing into the great dim room, flew across to the piano. Yes, there was her little pink bag like a rose full blown lying on the piano just where she had laid it.

Then suddenly she was aware of the presence of her dear girl-mother up there in the picture, and she lifted frightened eyes and smiled toward her, her glance pleading that she would understand. And it almost seemed her mother smiled there in the dimness, in that one second of time that she dared to look, before she turned and fled back to the hallway and stealthily began to mount the stairs, very slowly now, because she must not let a sound of her footsteps reach down there where the two were talking with long pauses between their words. Then she suddenly stood frozen with horror.

“No,” her uncle was saying deliberately in his toneless voice, “I wouldn't be able to find out the exact amount at once. She seemed to think her father would not want the matter discussed. I shall have to go very slowly. You know these Americans have strange ideas.”

“But I thought you said she was not an American. I thought she was pure Scotch on both sides. Galbraith, surely, is Scotch.”

“Yes, her father was Scotch, of course, as well as her mother, but she was born in America, and doubtless is tainted with American ideas. But I think there is no doubt but we shall be able to win her confidence soon. You know she has but just arrived this afternoon. She really does not know us yet.”

“Nonsense!” said the man. “I shall ask her. She certainly cannot expect me to marry her without knowing all there is to know. I shall arrange to take her for a ride, perhaps tomorrow. If necessary, I shall take her over and show her our castle, and then I shall ask her frankly. It seems to me we cannot get anywhere till that is settled. It is you who are so anxious to find a way for me to pay what you loaned to me, to settle quietly that unfortunate affair. I still feel your rate of interest is exorbitant. But if you are sure this girl's fortune would cover the whole thing, I am prepared to go through with it. The girl herself is quite satisfactory, pretty and all that. But, understand, sir, it's to your own interest to carry the matter through quickly.”

In a daze of horror, Rose arrived at the top of the stairs, and the slow deliberate sentences were suddenly cut off by the thick walls of stone and the formation of the hall.

She slid into her room and fastened the door behind her. Then she leaned back against it, her hand on her heart, and breathed hard, partly from the speed with which she had flown up those last few stairs, but mainly from the horror she felt at the conversation she had overheard.

Her uncle was actually bargaining to sell her in marriage!

Had this uncle had anything to do with that other proposed marriage of her dear mother, from which the bride had flown so suddenly? She tried to think, to remember what her mother had said. Yes, her mother's sister had been married then, and it must have been this uncle who was at the bottom of all that trouble. What an old miser he must be! Or else he was now learning from that past idea to try the experiment again and feather his own nest in the same way that probably had been planned by the grandfather years ago.

Well, inadvertently perhaps, she had helped to further his plans by saying her father had left her money, without telling how very little it was beside the fortune they were figuring on. But of course her uncle had no right to ask such questions, and she simply could not discuss with him what her father had done. She had not intended to give him ground for supposing she had a large fortune; whatever conclusions he had drawn were of his own creation. And now, short of telling him just what her father had left her, the only thing that seemed left to do was to clear out of the neighborhood as soon as possible, which very well accorded with her own desires. The only things she would be sorry to leave would be that wonderful picture of her mother and that darling piano. Was it conceivable that sometime they would let her buy them? Why, she would feel justified in taking that money her father had saved for her in order to get possession of those. But of course that wasn't the thing to think about now. She must somehow get away from here just as soon as possible. And how could that be managed?

Just staying around and saying no to this possible would-be suitor wouldn't be enough. Her mother's experience had shown that. If this young man were anything like his determined father, it wouldn't be worth the breath she used to say no. Her mother just escaped imprisonment in her own home, with an alternative of kidnapping or something like that if home imprisonment failed. But she had acted quickly and gone away with her lover far out of their reach. And Rose must be watchful now. Of course, as yet, her uncle and aunt did not know that she was aware of any of their plans in the matter. She should be out and away before they had time to say anything about it to her.

Tomorrow was Sunday. Would they go to church? Could she get away while they were gone? No, she couldn't carry both her suitcases down the mountain alone. There would be no taxis, no way to get hold of them. Should she risk losing her clothes that her dear mother had prepared so carefully for her? No, she mustn't do that. The whole family had been so ugly to her mother when she spoiled their plans, they would in all probability keep her suitcases just to annoy her. No, she must plan a better way. It wasn't likely that the uncle and his guest could do anything much immediately. It would be better to wait till Monday, and perhaps a way would open for her to get away without exciting more antagonism. She mustn't lose her head. Just because she had overheard plans that made her very angry and just a little frightened, she mustn't go and make a mess in her affairs that she would have to live down afterward. She'd come over here at her mother's bidding, to try and make peace where disagreement had reigned. Aunt Janet was her mother's sister, and they used to be dear to one another. She remembered the tears which had flowed down Aunt Janet's cheeks while she was playing. Perhaps Aunt Janet had wanted to be friends with Mother long ago and somebody wouldn't let her, perhaps the hard, cold, old uncle!