Part 8

III

The Crystal Ball

"Am I late, Lady Mother?"

Madame Marsh turned toward Alden with a smile. "Only five minutes, and it doesn't matter, since it's Saturday."

"Five minutes," he repeated. "Some clever person once said that those who are five minutes late do more to upset the order of the universe than all the anarchists."

Madame's white hands fluttered out over the silver coffee service. "One lump or two?" she inquired, with the sugar-tongs poised over his cup.

"Two, please."

Of course she knew, but she liked to ask. She had been at the table, waiting for him, since the grandfather's clock in the hall struck eight.

In the old house on the shore of the river, breakfast was a function, luncheon a mild festivity, and dinner an affair of high state. Madame herself always appeared at dinner suitably clad, and, moreover, insisted upon evening clothes for her son. Once, years ago, he had protested at the formality.

"Why not?" she had queried coldly. "Shall we not be as civilised as we can?" And, again, when he had presented himself at the dinner hour in the serviceable garb of every day, she had refused to go to the table until he came down again, "dressed as a gentleman should be dressed after six o'clock."

The sunlight streamed into every nook and cranny of the room where they sat at breakfast. It lighted up the polished surfaces of old mahogany, woke forgotten gleams from the worn old silver, and summoned stray bits of iridescence from the prisms that hung from the heavy gilt chandeliers.

With less graciousness, it revealed several places on the frame of the mirror over the mantel, where the gold had fallen away and had been replaced by an inferior sort of gilding. By some subtle trickery with the lace curtain that hung at the open window, it laid an arabesque of delicate shadow upon the polished floor. In the room beyond, where Madame's crystal ball lay on the mahogany table, with a bit of black velvet beneath it, the sun had made a living rainbow that carried colour and light into the hall and even up the stairway.

As she sat with her back to it, the light was scarcely less gentle with Madame. It brought silver into her white hair, shimmered along the silken surface of her grey gown, and deepened the violet shadows in her eyes. It threw into vivid relief the cameo that fastened the lace at her throat, rested for a moment upon the mellow gold of her worn wedding-ring as she filled Alden's cup, and paused reminiscently at the corner of her mouth, where there had once been a dimple.

Across the table, the light shone full upon Alden's face, but, man-like, he had no fear of it. Madame noted, with loving approval, how it illumined the dark depths of his eyes and showed the strength of his firm, boyish chin. Each day, to her, he grew more like his father.

"A penny for your thoughts," he said.

Madame sighed. "It seems so strange," she replied, after a pensive interval, "that I should be old and you should be young. You look so much like your father sometimes that it is as though the clock had turned back for him and I had gone on. You're older now than he was when we were married, but I need my mirror to remind me that I'm past my twenties."

"A woman and her mirror," laughed Alden, helping himself to a crisp muffin. "What tales each might tell of the other, if they would!"

"Don't misunderstand me, dear," she said, quickly. "It's not that I mind growing old. I've never been the unhappy sort of woman who desires to keep the year for ever at the Spring. Each season has its own beauty--its own charm. We would tire of violets and apple-blossoms if they lasted always. Impermanence is the very essence of joy--the drop of bitterness that enables one to perceive the sweet."

"All of which is undoubtedly true," he returned, gallantly, "but the fact remains that you're not old and never will be. You're merely a girl who has powdered her hair for a fancy-dress ball."

"Flatterer!" she said, with affected severity, but the delicate pink flush that bloomed in her cheeks showed that she was pleased.

"Will you drive to-day?" he asked, as they rose from the table.

"I think not. I'm a hot-house plant, you know, and it seems cold outside."

"Have the new books come yet?"

"Yes, they came yesterday, but I haven't opened the parcel."

"I hope they won't prove as disappointing as the last lot. There wasn't a thing I could ask Rosemary to read. I'm continually falling back on the old ones."

"The old books are the best, after all, like the old friends and the old ways."

Alden walked around the room restlessly, his hands in his pockets. At length he paused before the window overlooking the vineyard, on the other side of the valley. The slope was bare of snow, now; the vines waited the call of Spring.

A soft footfall sounded beside him, then his mother put a caressing hand upon his shoulder. "It's almost time to begin, isn't it?" she asked. Her beautiful old face was radiant.