Kate Wiggin - Ladies-In-Waiting

Yes, there she was, in the very loveliest nook, the stone wall at her back, and in front nice sandy levels for books and papers and writing-pad.

“Miss Tucker, may I invade your solitude for a moment? Our mutual friend, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, has written asking me to look you up as a fellow countryman and see if I can be of any service to you so far away from home.”

Tommy looked up, observed a good-looking American holding a letter in one hand and lifting a hat with the other, and bade him welcome.

“How kind of the bishop! But he is always doing kind things; his wife, too. I have seen much of them since I came to England.”

“My name is Appleton, Fergus Appleton, at your service.”

“Won’t you take a stone, or make yourself a hollow in the sand?” asked Tommy hospitably. “I came out here to read and study, and get rid of the week-enders. Isn’t Bexley Sands a lovely spot, and do you ever get tired of the bacon and the kippered herring, and the fruit tarts with Devonshire cream?”

“I can’t bear to begin an acquaintance with a lady by differing on such vital points, but I do get tired of these Bexley delicacies.”

“Perhaps you have been here too long—or have you just come this morning?”

Appleton swallowed his disappointment and hurt vanity, and remarked: “No, I came on Friday.” (He laid some emphasis on Friday.)

“The evening train is so incorrigibly slow! I only reached the hotel at ten o’clock when I arrived on Thursday night.” Miss Tucker shot a rapid glance at the young man as she made this remark.

“I came by the morning express and arrived here at three on Friday,” said Appleton.

Miss Tucker, with a slight display of perhaps legitimate temper, turned suddenly upon him. “There! I have been trying for two minutes to find out when you came, and now I know you were at my beastly concert on Friday evening!”

“I certainly was, and very grateful I am, too.”

“I suppose all through my life people will be turning up who were in that room!” said Miss Tucker ungraciously. “I must tell somebody what I feel about that concert! I should prefer some one who wasn’t a stranger, but you are a great deal better than nobody. Do you mind?”

Appleton laughed like a boy, and flung his hat a little distance into a patch of sea-pinks.

“Not a bit. Use me, or abuse me, as you like, so long as you don’t send me away, for this was my favorite spot before you chose it for yours.”

“I live in New York, and I came abroad early in the summer,” began Tommy.

“I know that already!” interrupted Appleton.

“Oh, I suppose the bishop told you.”

“No, I came with you; that is, I was your fellow passenger.”

“Did you? Why, I never saw you on the boat.”

“My charms are not so dazzling that I expect them to be noted and remembered,” laughed Appleton.

“It is true I was very tired, and excited, and full of anxieties,” said Tommy meekly.

“Don’t apologize! If you tried for an hour, you couldn’t guess just why I noticed and remembered you !”

“I conclude then it was not for my dazzling charms,” Tommy answered saucily.

“It was because you wore the only flower I ever notice, one that is associated with my earliest childhood. I never knew a woman to wear a bunch of mignonette before.”

“Some one sent it to me, I remember, and it had some hideous scarlet pinks in the middle. I put the pinks in my room and pinned on the mignonette because it matched my dress. I am very fond of green.”

“My mother loved mignonette. We always had beds of it in our garden and pots of it growing in the house in winter. I can smell it whenever I close my eyes.”

Tommy glanced at him. She felt something in his voice that she liked, something that attracted her and wakened an instantaneous response.

“But go on,” he said. “I only know as yet that you sailed from New York in the early summer, as I did.”

“Well, I went to London to join a great friend, a singer, Helena Markham. Have you heard of her?”

“No; is she an American?”

“Yes, a Western girl, from Montana, with oh! such a magnificent voice and such a big talent!” (The outward sweep of Tommy’s hands took in the universe.) “We’ve had some heavenly weeks together. I play accompaniments, and—”

“I know you do!”

“I forgot for the moment how much too much you know! I went with her to Birmingham, and Manchester, and Leeds, and Liverpool. I wasn’t really grand enough for her, but the audiences didn’t notice me, Helena was so superb. In between I took some lessons of Henschel. He told me I hadn’t much voice, but very nice brains. I am always called ‘intelligent,’ and no one can imagine how I hate the word!”

“It is offensive, but not so bad as some others. I, for example, have been called a ‘conscientious writer’!”

“Oh, are you a writer?”

“Of a sort, yes. But, as you were saying—”

“As I was saying, everything was going so beautifully until ten days ago, when Helena’s people cabled her to come home. Her mother is seriously ill and cannot live more than a few months. She went at once, but I couldn’t go with her—not very well, in midsummer—and so here I am, all alone, high and dry.”

She leaned her chin in the cup of her hand and, looking absent-mindedly at the shimmering rushes, fell into a spell of silence that took no account of Appleton.

To tell the truth, he didn’t mind looking at her unobserved for a moment or two. He had almost complete control of his senses, and he didn’t believe she could be as pretty as he thought she was. There was no reason to think that she was better to look at than an out-and-out beauty. Her nose wasn’t Greek. It was just a trifle faulty, but it was piquant and full of mischief. There was nothing to be said against her mouth or her eyelashes, which were beyond criticism, and he particularly liked the way her dark-brown hair grew round her temples and her ears—but the quality in her face that appealed most to Appleton was a soft and touching youthfulness.

Suddenly she remembered herself, and began again:

“Miss Markham and I had twice gone to large seaside hotels with great success, but, of course, she had a manager and a reputation. I thought I would try the same thing alone in some very quiet retreat, and see if it would do. Oh! wasn’t it funny!” (Here she broke into a perfectly childlike fit of laughter.) “It was such a well-behaved, solemn little audience, that never gave me an inkling of its liking or its loathing.”

“Oh, yes, it did!” remonstrated Appleton. “They loved your Scotch songs.”

“Silently!” cried Tommy. “I had dozens and dozens of other things upstairs to sing to them, but I thought I was suiting my programme to the place and the people. I looked at them during luncheon and made my selections.”

“You are flattering the week-enders.”

“I believe you are musical,” she ventured, looking up at him as she played with a tuft of sea-pinks.

“I am passionately fond of singing, so I seldom go to concerts,” he answered, somewhat enigmatically. “Your programme was an enchanting one to me.”

“It was good of its kind, if the audience would have helped me,”—and Tommy’s lip trembled a little; “but perhaps I could have borne that, if it hadn’t been for the—plate.”

“Not a pleasant custom, and a new one to me,” said Appleton.

“And to me!” (Here she made a little grimace of disgust.) “I knew beforehand I had to face the plate—but the contents! Where did you sit?”

“I was forced to stay a trifle in the background, I entered so late. It was your ‘Minstrel Boy’ that dragged me out of my armchair in the lounge.”