An Unwilling Guest (Romance Classic). Grace Livingston Hill
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home only yesterday. She came back sooner than she intended because you were coming and Miss Rutherford sent for her. There is really no cause for alarm, for the utmost care will be taken if it should prove to be smallpox, and by morning we may hear that it is all right and she is getting well, and it is not that at all. Besides, there is no New York train going out tonight. The last one passed yours about ten miles back. You will have to stay until tomorrow, anyway."
"Mercy!" said the stranger, seeming not to be able to find words to express her feelings. She was certainly taking the news very badly, but her hostess hoped she would behave better when she was fully possessed of the facts.
Miss Rutherford asked a few more questions about her aunt, commenting scornfully upon her devotion to a servant, which brought an angry flush into the other girl's cheek—and then settled down to the inevitable. Upon reflection she decided it would be better to wait and write or telegraph to her friends in New York before returning to them. Indeed, there was no one in town just then—for it was early for people to return to the city—with whom she felt sufficiently intimate to drop down upon them unannounced for a prolonged visit, and she knew that her father would utterly disapprove of her being with any of them, anyway.
"Do your people keep a boarding house?" she asked, turning curious eyes on Allison, who flushed again under the tone, which sounded to her insolent, but waited until she had disentangled the reins from the pony's tail before she replied gently:
"No."
"Well—but—I don't understand," said the guest. "Did you not say that my aunt had arranged for me to board with you?"
A bright spot came in each of Allison's cheeks ere she replied with gentle dignity:
"No, you are to visit us, if you will. Your aunt is a dear friend of my mother, Miss Rutherford." She resolved in her heart that she would never, never, call this girl Evelyn. She did not want the intimate friendship that her old friend had hinted at in telling her first of the coming of this city niece.
Allison was favored with another disagreeable stare, but she gave her attention to the pony.
"Really, I'm obliged," said the guest in icy tones that made Allison feel as if she had been guilty of unpardonable impertinence in inviting her. "Was there no hotel or private boarding house to which I could have gone? I dislike to be under obligations to entire strangers."
Allison's tones were as icily dignified now as her unwilling guest's as she replied: "Certainly, there are two hotels and there is a boarding house. You would hardly care to stay in the boarding house I fancy. It has not the reputation of being very clean. I can take you to either of the hotels if you wish, but even in Hillcroft it would scarcely be the thing for a young girl to stay alone at one of them. We sometimes hear of chaperons, even as far West as this, Miss Rutherford."
Allison's eyes were bright and she drew herself up straight in the carriage as she said this, but she remembered almost immediately the pained look that would have come into her mother's eyes if she had heard this exhibition of something besides a meek and quiet spirit, and she tried to control herself. Yet in spite of the way in which she had spoken, her words had some effect on the young woman by her side. She had been met by the enemy on her own ground and vanquished. She had a faint idea that her brother Dick would have remarked something about being "hoisted with his own petard" had he been by, for she was wont to be particular about these things at home. She felt thankful that he was several hundreds of miles away. She said no more about hotels. She understood the matter of chaperonage even better than did Allison Grey, and strange as it may seem, Allison rose in her estimation several degrees after her haughty speech.
There was silence in the phaeton for some minutes. Then the driver spoke, to point out a dingy house close to the street with several dirty children playing about the steps. There was a sign in one window on a fly-specked card, "Rooms to Rent," and a card hung out on a stick nailed to the door-frame, "Vegetable soup to-day."
"This is the boarding house," said Allison. "Do you wish me to leave you here?" Her spirit was not quite subdued yet
Evelyn Rutherford looked and uttered an exclamation of horror. Her companion caught the expression and a spirit of fun took the place of her look of indignation. In spite of herself she laughed.
But the girl beside her was too much used to having her own way to relish any such joke as this. She maintained an offended silence.
They passed the two hotels of the town, facing one another on Post-Office Square. There were loungers smoking on the steps and on the long piazzas of both and at the open door of one a dashing young woman, with a loud laugh and louder attire, joked openly with a crowd of men and seemed to be proud of her position among them. Evelyn curled her lip and shrank into the carriage farther at thought of herself as a guest at that house.
"I fear I shall have to trouble you, at least until I can communicate with my aunt or make other arrangements," she said stiffly, and added condescendingly, "I'm sure I'm much obliged."
Then the carriage turned in at a flower-bordered driveway with glimpses of a pretty lawn beyond the fringe of crimson blossoms and Miss Rutherford realized that her journey was at an end.
CHAPTER II.
CONTRASTS
They stopped at a side door which opened on a vine-clad piazza. The house was white with green blinds and plenty of vines in autumn tinting clinging to it here and there as if they loved it. A sweet-faced woman opened the door as they stopped at the steps and came out to meet them. She had eyes like Allison's and a firm, sweet chin that suggested strength and self control. Apparently she had none of Allison's preconceived idea of their guest for she came forward with a gentle welcome in her face and voice.
"So you found her all right, Allison dear," she said as she waited for the stranger to step from the carriage, and Evelyn noticed that she placed her arm around her daughter and put an unobtrusive kiss on the pink cheek.
"This is mother," Allison said, all the sharpness gone out of her voice.
That Mrs. Grey should fold her in her arms and place a kiss, tender and loving, upon her cheek was an utter astonishment to Evelyn Rutherford. She was not used to being kissed. Her own mother had long been gone from her, and the women in whose charge she had been had not felt inclined to kiss her. In fact, she disliked any show of affection, especially between two women, and would have been disposed to resent this kiss, had it been given by one less sweet and sincere. But one could not resent Mrs. Grey, even if that one were Evelyn Rutherford.
"My dear, I am so sorry for you," was what she said next. "It must be very hard for your journey to end among strangers after all. But you need not be anxious about your dear aunt, she is so strong and well and has often nursed contagious diseases without contracting anything."
Allison, as she went down the steps to take the pony to his stable, could not help waiting just the least little bit to hear what this strange girl would say, but all the satisfaction she had was a glimpse of her face filled with utter astonishment. She felt in her heart that the least of Miss Rutherford's concerns was about her aunt. She wondered if her mother could not tell that by just a glance, or if she simply chose to ignore it in her sweet, persistent way. There were often times when Allison Grey wondered thus about her mother, and often had she suspected that behind the sweet, innocent smile which acknowledged only what she chose to see, there was a deeper insight into the character before her than even her shrewd daughter possessed. Allison puzzled over it now as she drove to the stable, flecking the pony's back with the end of the whip that was almost never used for its legitimate purpose.
In the house Miss Rutherford was carried from one astonishment to another. The gentle, well-bred welcome, she could not repulse. It took her at a disadvantage. She was ill at ease. She followed Mrs. Grey silently to her room. Something kept her from the condescending thanks she had been about to speak, thanks which would have put her in no way under obligation to these new, and, as she chose to consider, rather commonplace