CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DOWN in his office in Saint Paul Street, the next afternoon, Ronald started at the speaking of his name, and turned around on his high stool.
"What's the row?" he asked, for the face of his fellow clerk was red with suppressed merriment.
"A fellow to see you."
"Where?"
"Down in the shop. You'll find him out among the stoves."
"You needn't be so hilarious about it," Ronald said indolently, as he slid off from his stool and shook himself into presentable condition. "Whoever the fellow is, he's my joke, not yours." And, his rebuke offered, he went tramping down the staircase which led from the offices into the long suite of shops below.
In the extreme corner of the farthest one, he found Sir George Porteous. Sir George was immaculately groomed, and, thanks to a mild day, his buttonhole was appropriately garnished. Seated on one of the low stoves, his hands lightly crossed upon his knee, he presented every appearance of having come to stay throughout the afternoon, if not to take up his permanent abode among the stoves around him. Ronald hailed him from the doorway.
"How do, Sir George! So you have decided to make us a visit."
Sir George looked up at him with a lack-lustre eye.
"Oh, no; I merely came to see you."
"That's good! What if I show you about the place?"
Sir George hitched himself into a more permanent pose upon his cast-iron pedestal.
"I am quite comfortable, thank you. I came of an errand."
"To see the chief?" Ronald queried, for Sir George made no effort to impart to him the subject of any errand, and, quite naturally, he sought about in his mind to discover to whom else the errand would be directed.
"No; to see you," Sir George made tranquil reply. Then once more he fell silent.
Ronald waited, waited with one lobe of his brain trained upon the probable future actions of Sir George Porteous, the other upon certain letters which must be sent out by that evening's mail. Mercifully, however, the mail did not close until half after eleven, so there was still time for the deliberate mental processes of Sir George Porteous. Ronald shifted his weight to the other foot; then he evened his weight and stood at attention.
"I am giving a dinner," Sir George announced at length.
Like Day Argyle, Ronald found himself at a loss as to how he was expected to meet the announcement.
"How interesting!" he observed dispassionately.
"Yes. I thought it would be interesting. It will be a Christmas dinner."
Ronald forced himself to smile cheerily.
"What a good idea!" he responded.
"Yes. It is so tiresome not to pay any attention to the day. This will not be on Christmas, exactly. It will be on the night after."
Ronald felt his stock of polite phrases running short.
"Oh," he assented courteously.
Sir George mistook his brevity for disapproval, not for paucity of ideas. He sought to justify himself.
"They couldn't come on Christmas. They had to stop at home," he explained. "I am asking some children, you know."
"Then you do know people here in Quebec?"
"Only some children." Sir George spoke as if the weight of centuries rested upon his slim shoulders. "And that's what I came down here for—really, it's a beastly way—to ask you if you would come and dine, too."
Ronald looked slightly startled.
"Oh; but I'm no good at amusing children, Sir George," he demurred.
Sir George shook his head.
"I expect to amuse them, myself," he said, with a grave unconsciousness of his own adequacy to perform that function.
"Then what do you want of me?" Ronald queried.
"Why, to eat, of course," Sir George made cannibalistic reply. "It will be at the Château at seven, the night after Christmas. There will be games in the drawing-room afterwards. You'll let me count on you? There are not so many people here in town that I know," he added, with an unconscious note of pathos which smote rebukingly upon Ronald's ear.
"I'll come, thanks," he responded cheerily; "I'll make a point of being there. At seven, you say?"
But Sir George had lapsed into silence again, and sat with his jaw drooping, his eyes fixed upon the hearth of the opposite stove. Once more Ronald's mind flashed up the stairs to his abandoned desk, and he was conscious of a swift desire to kindle a fire and turn on the draughts in the stove beneath his tranquil guest.
"I say, you haven't anyone you could bring; have you? Any woman?" Sir George queried suddenly.
With marvellous swiftness, Ronald regained his mental poise.
"My mother is not going out, just now," he replied.
"Oh; but she would be quite too old," Sir George rejoined. "Who else?"
"Who else what?" Ronald made blank answer.
"Who else could come?"
"But she couldn't."
"Of course not. You said so. But who else could?" Sir George asked, with accentless persistency.
"I have a young sister," Ronald suggested dubiously. "She isn't out yet. In fact, she is only a child. And—"
"She'll do," Sir George said placidly. Then he rose from his pedestal and, without another word, smoothed his gloves, grasped his stick and moved away in the direction of the door.
For the next three days, Janet Leslie gave herself over to unmitigated gloatings over the prospective feast. According to the fashion of young girlhood, granted a dinner and the fact of her being bidden, she cared little who was the host, or who her fellow guests. A dinner at the Château seemed to her a grown-up function, full of mysterious possibilities for all sorts of elegance, and she repined in secret over the fact that her only possible costume must be the plain black cloth frock which did duty for Sunday morning church. Janet's ideals would have included a sky-blue frock cut low and a nodding plume in her hair. She knew her mother too well, however, to suggest such dreams to Mrs. Leslie's unresponsive ear. In fact, it had taken some coaxing and much telephonic intercourse with Ronald's chief to coerce Mrs. Leslie into allowing Janet to accept the invitation in the first place.
The invitation once accepted, however, Janet gave herself over unreservedly to her golden dreams, and her mother, watching, forbore to check her young daughter's imagination. Truth to tell, Christmas would be a dreary little function in the Leslie household, that year; and, Mrs. Leslie's maternal fears regarding Sir George once allayed, she herself was ready to welcome this addition to the meagre Christmas pleasures she had been able to arrange.
By dint of careful economy and much planning, by help of Ronald's slender salary and the board-money of the Argyles, the Leslies could face the new year with a clean sheet of accounts. True, it had meant the invasion of their home by an alien family; it had meant the giving up to others their pleasantest rooms; it had meant a scrimping behind the scenes to make up for the apparent lavishness of the table, for the Argyles were hungry folk, and dainty withal, and only a small share of their money could go towards the general fund. Mrs. Leslie's hair had whitened beneath the strain, her brows had framed themselves in wrinkles. Nevertheless, the old year would leave them free from debt, and the new year could bring them no harder problems than those she had so lately faced. Looking to the past half-year, her mood was all of thankfulness that they had gone through it and come out so well. And yet, she would so have loved to be able to make the Christmas merry for her two children. Her third child, a daughter married and living in the States, was out of all this worry. In the midst of her general thanksgiving, Mrs. Leslie found time to rejoice in the joyous letters which had come to her, every week since her daughter's marriage, in early October.
To Janet, the Argyles' sudden departure for Montreal had brought a mood of mingled joy and woe. It was a relief to escape for a few days out of the atmosphere of smothered war, to be able to laugh and gossip and to make merry with Ronald over their meals. It was also a relief not to have to sit by and watch Day's overflowing delight in the rich Christmas gifts which were bound to fall to her share. Janet Leslie, as a rule, was above all petty envyings. Nevertheless, she was human, and not quite fifteen. The darn in the front breadth of her every-day gown had never been quite so manifest as on the night when Day came down to dinner in her new tailor-made frock of Argyle plaid, with its kilted skirt and its wealth of thistle buttons. And, when she walked home from church to save her streetcar fare, it was exasperating to have to smile blithely in answer to Rob's hat, lifted from a passing sleigh where he and Day sat enthroned in a warm nest of furs. Day cast aside her Dent gloves at the first rubbing of the fingers. Janet darned her woollen mittens, and then darned the darns. And the time was not so very remote when she too had worn Dent gloves and driven in a fur-heaped sleigh. And the girls at school did pity her, and show their pity, too. The mother of one of them had even offered Mrs. Leslie an outgrown coat. The coat was trimmed with lamb, and it fitted. Mrs. Leslie had accepted it with quiet gratitude. It now hung on a nail in the garret, and Janet wore her last-year one. It was dyed, and frayed on the cuffs, and narrow about the shoulder-blades. Nevertheless, it was her very own, not the offering of a benevolent, but tactless charity. It was her own, and she would wear it till water ran in the spring. She stated her resolution valiantly, and Ronald upheld her in it. Mrs. Leslie made no comment; but she felt a slight uneasiness, as she bethought herself of the dainty little fur-lined jacket which Mrs. Argyle had left in her keeping, when she went up to Montreal.
"I was getting one like it for Day," she had explained; "and I really couldn't resist this. I am fond of Janet, you know; she is such a plucky little woman." And her parting kiss to Janet had given proof of her words.
Janet, her cheek still warm with the kiss, her ears still ringing with Rob's off-hand farewell, was surprised to find how still and empty the house seemed to her, after the stir of their going. Rob and Day had been late to two meals, that day; she herself had been absent from the third. Accordingly, she had not seen them since her talk with Ronald of the night before, and she had been altogether relieved when her mother's news of the trip to Montreal had made it plainly evident that her dreaded apology must be postponed. She had expected to find unmixed pleasure in the sight of the Argyle backs. Instead of that, the house seemed dull and a bit lonesome.
To the young Leslies, Christmas passed quietly, with simple gifts and simpler feastings. To the young Argyles, it was a round of merry-making, gifts and goodies abounding, a long drive to make appetite for the elaborate dinner, and the theatre to wind up the day. It had been late, that night, when Rob and his sister had started to their rooms; but, even then, they had lingered long in the hall outside their doors, talking over the jolliest Christmas they had ever spent. Nevertheless, no trace of sleepiness was in Day's eyes, the next night, as she stood before the glass, dressing herself for Sir George's dinner.
In the eyes of grown-up womanhood, the dress of a young girl is a simple thing and of small account. The girl herself is of a wholly different impression. Day, screwing herself about to reach the hooks on the back of her yoke, shaking her shoulders to settle the yoke into place, tying her wide silk sash, then turning it around into its proper place and softly patting it into position, before clasping her beads around her neck; Day, adding the final touch of the brush and giving a last cock to the ribbon on her hair, was as earnest, as absorbed in the process of beautifying herself as was ever a bud on the eve of her first reception. And, after all, the gown was only a plain white cloth with a little lace tucker which came softly about the base of her round young throat; the beads were only cairngorms set in silver, the gift of her grandmother far off in Scotland. The whole costume, though the work of skilful hands, was simple and girlish as the happy face above it. Nevertheless, Rob, coming into the room and halting at her side, bowed low in admiration half-mocking, half-sincere.
"Lovely vision!" ho observed. "I like your shoes best; they're so nice and shiny. Would that gown smash, if I hugged you?"
"Try it and see," she dared him.
But he backed off and brandished his stick.
"Not much! You would muss up my curls. Does my coat-tail hang right, and is my necktie becoming?" Gravely he turned himself about for approval, while Day mocked at him, though all the time convinced that few girls, Canadian or American, could produce so desirable a brother.
"What do you suppose is the row with the Leslies?" Rob asked, tranquilly dropping into a chair, as soon as the inspection was ended.
Day had been giving all her attention to a refractory lock of hair. Now she faced about suddenly.
"Is Janet on her nerves again?" she demanded.
"Not nerves, exactly; at least, not as far as I am concerned. She is on the rampage, though, about something. She and Ronald appear to be going out somewhere together. She has been stamping around her room until I was afraid she would land down on my head through the ceiling. Once she came to the door and besought somebody to come and hook up her back, whatever that may mean."
"It probably means she couldn't reach it, herself," Day interpreted calmly, as she patted her own yoke into more perfect adjustment. "Where is Ronald?"
"In his room, pumping his bureau drawers in and out as if he mistook them for an accordeon. His nerves are getting on him, I'm afraid. He came in late, and took the stairs four at a time, shouting to Janet to hurry, or they'd be late. It must be a citadel ball, at the very least, to inspire so much prinking. It's a great thing to be a born Quebecker. There's the carriage, ma'am. Where's your cloak?" And he rose with the little deference which he showed, first of all, to the women of his own family.
In a snug little den at the northern end of the long chain of drawing-rooms they found Sir George awaiting them, an impressive and elegant Sir George, whose manner seemed to have gained starch from the vast expanse of his evening linen. Even to Day's uncritical eye, he looked unnecessarily black and white, against the ruby-coloured room, whose plain red walls were dotted thickly with English racing prints. One table in a corner was heaped with games, flanked by a tray of bonbons which obviously held cracker caps beneath their gilt and silver rolls. The other table held a vast bran pie, surrounded by sundry knobby parcels which had defied Sir George's efforts to pack them within his Christmas pastry.
Sir George came forward to meet them hospitably, albeit his face showed misgivings.
"Oh, I say, how do you do?" he said. "How rummy you both look! But I fancy you're too early."
"You said seven; didn't you?" Rob asked, as he crumpled Sir George's fingers in his grasp.
"Yes; but the other fellow isn't here yet. It's ten to, now. He'll be here soon, I fancy. I told him he'd better bring his sister. I thought you would have a better time, if I asked another girl," he added, turning to Day.
"Thank you. It will be better," she assented politely. "What a lovely room!"
"Yes. I told the fellow in the office that I must have it, for to-night. It will be good for the games, you know; and I can tell you stories about the pictures, by and by. That's how we hunt in England, you know," Sir George explained, with unwonted energy.
"Yes, I remember," Day replied, as she crossed the room to look at a print on the opposite wall. "Look, Rob! That's just the way it was at Copsley Heath. I was in England once," she added, facing about to include their host in the talk.
"Oh, no; I fancy not," he returned, with astounding irrelevance. "By George, here comes the other fellow, now!"
As he spoke, he stepped forward to greet his belated guests, while, on the opposite side of the room, Rob and Day waited, Rob's yellow hair and Day's white frock standing out sharply against the deep red background. Steps sounded in the hall, a uniformed boy led the way to the door, then moved aside to allow the guests to pass in before him. An instant later, Sir George was shaking hands with Ronald Leslie and Janet.
The silence which followed, utter, profound and of absolute stupefaction, was weighted with a meaning too strong for any words. Janet stared at Rob, Day at Ronald, while Sir George Porteous stared at all four of them in turn, stared and smiled his pleased contentment with the scene. Then, just as the pause was growing too long for Sir George's perfect pleasure, just as there was dawning upon him the need to break it, Rob rallied from his stupefaction and dashed forward to meet the emergency.
"Hullo, old man!" he hailed Ronald, with disrespectful cordiality. "Delighted to see you! We had no notion that you were coming, too. Hullo, Janet! How stunning you look! I speak to take you out to dinner." Then, smiling broadly, he turned upon Sir George. "Why didn't you tell us," he demanded of his astonished host; "why didn't you tell us that you were going to treat us to a family party?"
And, in the burst of half-hysterical mirth which followed on Rob's words, Sir George Porteous lost his final fears for the success of his Christmas feast.