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Flood Tide

<h3> CHAPTER XI </h3> <h3> THE GALBRAITH HOUSEHOLD </h3> The estate the Galbraiths had leased stood baldly upon a rise overlooking the sea in the midst of the fashionable colony adjacent to Wilton, and was one of those blots which the city luxury-lover affixes to a community whose keynote is simplicity. Its expanse of veranda, its fluttering green and white awnings, its giant tubs of blossoming hydrangeas, to say nothing of its Italian garden with rose-laden pergolas, were as out of place as if Saint Peter's itself had been dropped down into a tiny New England fishing hamlet. The house, it is true, did not lack beauty, for it was well proportioned and gracefully planned, and there was no denying that one found, perhaps, more comfort on its screened and shaded piazzas than was to be enjoyed on Willie Spence's unprotected doorstep. Nevertheless, there was too much of everything about it: too many rambler roses, too many rustic baskets and mighty palms; too many urns, and stone benches, and sundials and fountains. Still, as the car stopped at the door, the great wicker chairs with their scarlet cushions presented a gay picture and so, too, did Mrs. Galbraith and Cynthia who immediately rose from a breezy corner and came forward. The older woman was tall and handsome and in her youth must have possessed great beauty; even now she carried with a spoiled air almost girlish the costly gowns and jewels that her husband, proud of her looks, lavished upon her. She had a languid grace very fascinating in its indifference and spoke with a pretty little accent that echoed of the South. For all her attractiveness, Cynthia could not compare in charm with her mother whose femininity lured all men toward her as does a magnet steel. Bob leaped from the car almost before it had come to a stop and went to her side, bending low over her heavily ringed hand. "We're so glad to see you, Bobbie!" she smiled. "The very nicest thing that could have happened was to find you here." "It is indeed a delightful surprise for me," Robert Morton answered. "How are you, Cynthia?" Cynthia, who was standing in the background, frowned. "You've been long enough getting here," declared she petulantly. "Where on earth have you been? We decided you must have got stalled on the road." "Oh, no," interrupted her father, coming up the steps. "We made the run over and back without a particle of trouble. What delayed us was that we stopped to visit with Bob's aunt and the old gentleman with whom he is staying. Such a quaint character, Maida! You really should see him. I had all I could do to tear myself away from the place." His wife raised her delicately penciled brows. "We do not often see you so enthusiastic, Richard." "They are charming people, I assure you. I don't wonder Bob prefers staying over there to coming here," chuckled the financier. "Oh, I say, Mr. Galbraith—" began Bob; but his host interrupted him. "That is a rather rough accusation, isn't it?" declared he, "and it's not quite fair, either. To tell the truth, Bob's deep in some important work." There was a light, scornful laugh from Cynthia. "He is, my lady. You needn't be so incredulous," her brother put in. "Bob is busy with a boat-building project. Dad's got interested in it, too." Cynthia pursed her lips with a little grimace. "Ask him if you don't believe it," persisted Roger. "Yes," went on Mr. Galbraith, "that old chap over at Wilton has an idea that may make all our fortunes, Bob's included." There was a general laugh. "Well," pouted Cynthia, glancing down at the toe of her immaculate buckskin shoe, "I call it very tiresome for Bob to have to work all his vacation." "I don't have to," Robert Morton objected. "I am simply doing it for fun. Can't you understand the sport of—" "No, she can't," her brother asserted. "Cynthia never sees any fun in working." "Roger!" Mrs. Galbraith drawled gently. "Well, I don't like to work," owned the girl with delicious audacity. "I detest it. Why should I pretend to like it when I don't?" "Cynthia is one of the lilies of the field; she's just made for ornament," called Roger over his shoulder as he passed into the house. "There is something in being ornamental, isn't there, daughter?" said Mr. Galbraith, dropping into a chair and lighting a fresh cigar. She was decorative, there was no mistake about that. The skirt of heavy white satin clung to her slight figure in faultless lines, and her sweater of a rose shade was no more lovely in tint than was the faint flush in her cheeks. Every hair of the elaborate coiffure had been coaxed skilfully into place by a hand that understood the cunning, and wherever nature had been guilty of an oversight art had supplied the defect. Yes, Cynthia Galbraith was quite a perfect product, thought Bob, as he surveyed her there beneath the awning. "I thought Madam Lee was here," the young man presently remarked, as he glanced about. Mrs. Galbraith's face clouded. "Mother is not well to-day," she answered. "Careful as we are of her she has in some way taken cold. She is not really ill, but we thought it wise for her to keep her room. She is heartbroken not to be downstairs and I promised that after she had had her luncheon and nap you would go up and see her." "Surely!" Robert Morton cried emphatically. "Mother is so devoted to you, Bobbie," went on Mrs. Galbraith. "Sometimes I think she cares much more for you than she does for her own grandchildren." "Nonsense! Of course she doesn't." "I'm not so certain," laughed the elder woman lightly. "You know she is tremendously strong in her likes and dislikes. All the Lees are. We're a headstrong family where our affections are concerned. You, Bob, are the apple of her eye." "She has always been mighty kind to me," the young man affirmed soberly. "I never saw my own grandmothers; both of them died before I came into the world. So, you see, if it were not for borrowing Roger's and Cynthia's, I should be quite bereft." The party rose and moved through the cool hall into the dining room. A delicious luncheon, perfectly served by a velvet-footed maid and the old colored butler, followed, and there was a great deal of conversation, a great deal of reminiscing and a great deal of laughter. Cynthia complained that the claret cup was too sweet and that the ices were not frozen enough and had much to say of the ice cream at Maillard's. "But you are far from Maillard's now, my dear," her mother remarked, "and you must make the best of things." "Being on Cape Cod you are almighty lucky to get any ice cream at all," announced Roger with brotherly zest. "Roger, why will you tease your sister so? You hector Cynthia every moment you are in the house." "Oh, she knows I don't mean it," grinned Roger. "I just have to take the starch out of her now and then, don't I, Cynthia Ann?" "Roger!" fretted his sister. "I wish you wouldn't call me Cynthia Ann! I can't imagine why you've taken to doing so lately." "Chiefly because you do not like it, my dear," was the retort. "If I were not so sure of getting a rise out of you every time, perhaps I might be tempted to stop." "You children quarrel like a pair of apes," Mr. Galbraith said. "If I did not know that underneath you were perfectly devoted to each other, I should be worried to death about you." "You needn't waste any worry on Cynthia Ann and me, Dad," Roger declared. "Bad as she is, she's the best sister I've got, and I rather like her in spite of her faults." A smile passed between the two. "You've some faults of your own, remember," observed the girl, with a grimace. "Not a one, mademoiselle, not a one! I swear it," was the instant retort. "Coming into the family first, I picked the cream of the Lee and Galbraith qualities and gave you what was left." "I command you two to stop your bickering," Mr. Galbraith said at last. "You are wasting the whole luncheon, squabbling. You'd much better be deciding what you are going to do with Bob for the rest of the day." "I thought I'd take him out in the knockabout," Roger suggested. "That is, if he would like to go. The tide will be just right and there is a fine breeze." "You may take him if you will get him home at tea time," Mrs. Galbraith said. "Your grandmother has set her heart on seeing him this afternoon and you know she retires soon after dinner." "You wouldn't have any time to sail at all, Roger," put in Cynthia. "Especially if you should get stuck on a bar as you did the other day." "We should have two hours." "Why don't you take the launch, Roger?" his mother inquired. "And get snagged in the eel grass—not on your life!" "Bob and Mr. Spence are going to do away with all that eel grass, you know," called his father, sauntering out of doors. "I'll wait until they do, then," was the grim retort. "I should think Bob would a great deal rather go for a motor-ride," Cynthia ventured, her eyes fixed impersonally on the landscape. "I suppose you'd like to cart him off in your car." "It doesn't make any difference whose car he goes in, does it?" "Well, ra—ther! If he goes in yours there's no room for me; if he goes in mine there is no room for you. That's the difference." "Children, do stop tearing Bob to fragments," lisped Mrs. Galbraith with some amusement. "If you keep on pulling him to pieces he won't go anywhere. Now Roger, you take Bob sailing and have a good visit with him, and bring him back so he can have tea with your grandmother at five; this evening the rest of us will have our chance to see him." She did not look at Cynthia, but with a woman's forethought she remembered that the verandas were roomy and that the moon was full soon after dinner. Cynthia remembered it too and smiled. "Yes, go ahead, Roger," she called. "Take Bob round the bay. It is a lovely sail and as he hasn't been here before he will enjoy it." <HR WIDTH="60%" ALIGN="center"> It was only a little past five when the two young men returned, a glow of health and pleasure on their faces. "Now, Bobbie, do make haste," Mrs. Galbraith said, coming to meet him. "Mother's tea has already gone up, and you know how she detests waiting. Her maid is there in the hall to show you the way. Hurry along, dear boy." Robert Morton needed no second bidding and at once followed the middle-aged English woman up the staircase and into a small, chintz-hung sitting room that looked out on the sea. At the farther end of it, seated before a low tea table, was a stately, white-haired lady, very erect, very handsome and very elegantly dressed in a gown of soft black material. At the neck, which was turned away, she wore a fichu of filmy lace tinted by time to a creamy tone and held in place by an old-fashioned medallion of seed pearls. White ruffles at the wrists drooped over her delicately veined hands and showed only the occasional flash of a ring and her perfectly manicured finger tips. Summer or winter, fair weather or foul, Madam Lee never varied this costume, and it seemed to possess some measure of its owner's eternal youth, for it was always fresh and its lustrous folds always swept the ground in the same dignified fashion. Indeed for those who knew Madam Lee to think of her in any other guise would have been impossible. Her silvered hair was parted and rippled over her forehead to her ears where it was slightly puffed and caught back with combs of shell, and from beneath it two little black eyes peered out with a bird's alertness of gaze. Although age had claimed her strength, it was evident from the woman's vivacious expression that she had lost none of her interest in life and as she now sat before the silver-laden tea table there was a girlish anticipation in her eager pose. "Ah, you scamp!" cried she, when she heard her visitor's footstep in the upper hall, "I have been waiting for you a full five minutes. I don't wait for every one, I would have you know. Come here and give an account of yourself." The young man bent and softly touched her cheek with his lips. She put out her hand and let it linger affectionately in his as he dropped into the chair beside her. "I can't begin to tell you how glad I am to see you, Bob," she went on, in a voice soft and exquisitely modulated. "We had no idea you were on the Cape. But for that jeweler's stupidity we should have thought you had gone west long ago. Considering what good friends you and Roger are, you are the worst of correspondents; and you never write to me." "I know it," owned Robert Morton with disarming honesty. "It's beastly of me." "No, dear. On the contrary it is very like a man," contradicted Madam Lee with a pretty little laugh. "However, I am not going to scold you about it now. I have seen too many men in my day. First let me pour your tea. Then you shall tell me all that you have been doing. I hear you are visiting a new aunt whom you have just unearthed." "Yes." "How do you like her?" Bob chuckled at the characteristic directness of the question. "Very much indeed." "That's nice. Since relatives are not of our choosing, it is pleasant to find they are not bores." Again the young man smiled. "And this old gentleman for whom she keeps house—what of him?" It was plain Madam Lee had all the facts well in mind. As best he could Bob sketched Willie in a few swift strokes. "Humph! An interesting old fellow. I should like to see him," declared Madam Lee when the narrative was done. "And so you are working on this motor-boat with him?" "Yes." "How long have you been here?" "Ten days." "And when do you go back to your family?" "I don't quite know," hesitated the big fellow. "There is still a great deal to do on this invention we are working at." His companion eyed him shrewdly. "And the girl—where does she live?" she asked, reaching for Bob's cup. He colored with surprise. "The girl?" he repeated, disconcerted. "Of course there is a girl," went on the woman. "What makes you think so?" "Oh, Bob, Bob! Isn't there always a girl on every young man's horizon?" "I suppose so—generally speaking," he confessed with a laugh. "Suppose we abandon the abstract term and come down to this girl in particular," his interrogator said. "Why are you so sure there is one?" he hedged teasingly. "My dear boy, how absurd of you!" returned the sharp-eyed old lady with a twinkle of merriment. "In the first place, all the motor-boats in the world couldn't keep a young man like you chained up indefinitely in a sleepy little Cape Cod village. Besides, Cynthia told me." "Cynthia? She doesn't know anything about it." "That is precisely how I knew," piped Madam Lee triumphantly. "What did she tell you?" "She did not tell me anything," was the reply. "She simply came back from Wilton in a wretched humor and when I inquired of her whether she had her buckle back again, she answered with such spirit that there was no mistaking its cause. Of course she had the wit to know you were not wearing a belt of that pattern; nor your aunt nor Mr. Spence, either." "The belt and buckle belong to a girl—" "A girl! You surprise me," she murmured derisively. Robert Morton waited a moment, then, without heeding her mischievous comment, added gravely: "A friend of Mr. Spence's." "I see." The old lady smoothed the satin folds of her gown thoughtfully before she spoke, then continued with extreme gentleness: "Tell me all about her." "I couldn't do that," declared Robert Morton. "There aren't words enough to give you any idea how lovely she is or how good." Nevertheless, because he had so eager and sympathetic a listener, he at length began shyly to unfold the story of Delight Hathaway's strange life. He told it reverently and with a lover's tenderness, touching on the girl's tragic advent into the hamlet of Wilton, on her beauty, and on her poverty. "What a romance!" exclaimed Madam Lee meditatively, when the tale was done. "And they know nothing of the child's previous history?" "Next to nothing. The girl's mother died when she was born and the little tot lived all her life aboard ship with her father." "Had neither the father nor mother any relatives?" "Apparently not. The mate of the ship said he had never heard the Captain mention any." "Poor little waif! And these people who took her in have been kind to her? She is fond of them?" "She adores them!" The old lady stirred her tea absently. "But, Bob dear, has the girl any education?" she inquired presently. "That is the miracle of it!" ejaculated he. "When she was small, one of the summer residents, a Mrs. Farwell, who had a tutor for her son, suggested the two children have their lessons together. As a consequence the girl is a fine French scholar; has read broadly both foreign and English literature; is familiar with ancient and modern history and mathematics; and recently a professor from Harvard, who has boarded summers with the family, has instructed her in the natural sciences. She is much better educated than most of the society girls I've met." "Than my granddaughter Cynthia, I dare say," was the quick comment. "Oh—eh—" "You need not try to be polite, Bob. I am not proud of Cynthia's education," asserted Madam Lee. "For all her wealth and all her opportunity to make herself accomplished she has never mastered one thing. If she could even sew well or keep house I should rejoice. But she can't. As for languages, music, art—bah! She is as ignorant as if she had been brought up in a home in the slums. A thin society veneer such as the typical fashionable boarding-school washes over the outside and a little helter-skelter reading and travel is all Cynthia has acquired. A real education entailed too much effort. So she is what we see her,—a thoughtless, extravagant, pleasure-seeking creature. She is a great disappointment to me, a great disappointment!" Robert Morton did not reply. "Come now, Bob. Why don't you agree with me?" "I am fond of Cynthia," said the young man in a low tone. "I know you are. Sometimes I have worried lest you were too fond of her." There was no response. "Cynthia is not the wife for you, my dear boy, and never was. I am older than you and I know life. Moreover, I love you very dearly. Were you of my own blood I believe I could not care more deeply for you than I do. It would break my heart to see you make a foolish marriage—to see you married to a girl like Cynthia. You never would be happy with her in the world. Why, it takes a small fortune even to keep her contented. It is money, money, money, all the time. She cares for little else, and unless a man kept her supplied with that there would be no peace in the house." "Aren't you a little hard on her?" "Not too hard," came firmly from Madam Lee. "You think precisely as I do, too, only you are too loyal and too chivalrous to own it." There was a pause broken only by the tinkle of the teacups. "No, Bob, you let Cynthia alone. She will get over it. And if you have found the jewel that you think you have, be brave enough to assert your freedom and marry her. You are not pledged to Cynthia," went on the musical voice. "Just because you two chanced to grow up together there is no reason any one should assume that the affair is settled. I suppose you are afraid of disappointing the family. Then there is your friendship for Roger—that worries you too. And of course there is Cynthia herself! Being a gentleman you shrink from tossing a girl's heart back into her lap. Isn't it so?" "To some extent, yes." "Would it help matters, do you think, for you to marry Cynthia if you did not love her?" "But I care a lot for her." "Not as you do for this other girl," said the shrewd old lady, with eyes fixed intently on his face. "Oh, no!" was the instant reply. "Then, as I said before, you much better let Cynthia alone," declared Madam Lee emphatically. "At her age disappointments are not fatal, and she will probably live to thank you for it. In any case it is better to blight one life than three." Robert stared moodily down at the floor. "This other girl is attractive, you say." "She is very beautiful." "You don't say so!" was the incredulous rejoinder. "But she really is—she is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." "And she has all these other virtues as well?" She took the teacup from his passive hand and set it on the table. "I want to see her and judge for myself," affirmed she. "I know something of beauty—and of girls, too. Why don't you bring her over here?" "Here?" "Why not?" "But—but—it would look so strange, so pointed," gasped the young man. "You see she doesn't even guess yet that I—" He heard a low, infectious laugh. "She knew it, you goose, from the first moment you looked at her," cried the old lady, "or she isn't the girl I think her. What do you imagine we women are—blind?" "No, of course not," Robert Morton said, joining in the laugh. "What I meant was that I never had said anything that would—" "You wouldn't need to, dear boy." His hostess put a hand caressingly on his arm. "All you would have to do would be to look as foolish as you do now, and she would understand just as I did." Then, resuming a more serious manner, she continued: "It is a perfectly simple matter for you to bring one friend to meet another, isn't it? Tell the girl I have heard her story and have become interested in her. She will overlook an old lady's whims and be quite willing enough to come, I'm sure, if you wish it." "I should like to have her meet you," admitted Bob, with a blush. "You mean you would like me to meet her," answered Madam Lee, with a confiding pat on his arm. "It is sweet of you, Bob, whichever way you put it. And after I have met the charmer you shall know exactly what I think of her, too. Then if you marry her against my judgment, you will have only yourself to thank for the consequences. Now leave it all to me. I will arrange everything. In a day or two I will send the car over to Wilton to fetch you, your aunt, Mr. Spence and this Miss—what did you say her name was?" "Hathaway." "Hathaway! Hathaway!" echoed Madam Lee in an unsteady voice. "Yes. Why?" "Oh, nothing," quavered the old lady, making a tremulous attempt to regain her poise. "Only it is not a common name. I—I—knew a Hathaway once—very long ago—in the South." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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