Part 14

“The Old.”

“I should say that if you found some remarks about breaking the bones of your enemy, and have twisted it out of its connection, it would be particularly bad advice to follow.”

“It is nothing of that sort.”

“What is it, then?”

She took out a tortoise-shell dagger just here, and gave her head an absent-minded shake so that her lustrous coil of hair uncoiled itself and fell on her shoulders in a ruddy spiral. It was a sight to induce covetousness, but one couldn’t be envious of Egeria. She charmed one by her lack of consciousness.

“The happy lot Be his to follow Those threads through lovely curve and hollow, And muse a lifetime how they got Into that wild, mysterious knot,”—

quoted I, as I gave her head an insinuating pat. “Come, Egeria, stand and deliver! What is the Scriptural command, that having first obeyed, you ask my advice about afterwards?”

“Have you a Bible?”

“You might not think it, but I have, and it is here on my table.”

“Then I am going into my room, to lock the door, and call the verse through the keyhole. But you must promise not to say a word to me till to-morrow morning.”

I was not in a position to dictate terms, so I promised. The door closed, the bolt shot into the socket, and Egeria’s voice came so faintly through the keyhole that I had to stoop to catch the words:—

“Deuteronomy, 10:19.”

I flew to my Bible. Genesis—Exodus—Leviticus—Numbers—Deuteronomy—Deut-er-on-omy—Ten—Nineteen—

“Love ye therefore the stranger—”

V PENELOPE AT HOME

“’Tis good when you have crossed the sea and back To find the sit-fast acres where you left them.”

EMERSON.

BERESFORD BROADACRES, April 15, 19–.

PENELOPE, in the old sense, is no more! No mound of grass and daisies covers her; no shaft of granite or marble marks the place where she rests;—as a matter of fact she never does rest; she walks and runs and sits and stands, but her travelling days are over. For the present, in a word, the reason that she is no longer “Penelope,” with dozens of portraits and three volumes of “Experiences” to her credit, is, that she is Mrs. William Hunt Beresford.

As for Himself, he is just as much William Hunt Beresford as ever he was, for marriage has not staled, nor fatherhood withered, his infinite variety. There may be, indeed, a difference, ever so slight; a new dignity, and an air of responsibility that harmonizes well with the inch of added girth at his waist-line and the grey thread or two that becomingly sprinkle his dark hair.

And where is Herself, the vanished Penelope, you ask; the companion of Salemina and Francesca; the traveller in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; the wanderer in Switzerland and Italy? Well, if she is a thought less irresponsible, merry, and loquacious, she is happier and wiser. If her easel and her palette are not in daily evidence, neither are they altogether banished from the scene; and whatever measure of cunning Penelope’s hand possessed in other days, Mrs. Beresford has contrived to preserve.

If she wields the duster occasionally, in alternation with the paint-brush and the pen, she has now a new choice of weapons; and as for models,—her friends, her neighbours, even her enemies and rivals, might admire her ingenuity, her thrift, and her positive genius in selecting types to paint! She never did paint anything beautifully but children, though her backgrounds have been praised, also the various young things that were a vital part of every composition. She could never draw a horse or a cow or an ox to her satisfaction, but a long-legged colt, or a newborn Bossy-calf were well within her powers. Her puppies and kittens and chickens and goslings were always admired by the public, and the fact that the mothers and fathers in the respective groups were never quite as convincing as their offspring,—this somehow escaped the notice of the critics.

Very well, then, what was Penelope inspired to do when she became Mrs. Beresford and left the Atlantic rolling between the beloved Salemina, Francesca, and herself? Why, having “crossed the sea and back” repeatedly, she found “the sit-fast acres” of the house of Beresford where she “left them” and where they had been sitting fast for more than a hundred years.

“Here is the proper place for us to live,” she said to Himself, when they first viewed the dear delightful New England landscape over together. “Here is where your long roots are, and as my roots have been in half a hundred places they can be easily transplanted. You have a decent income to begin on; why not eke it out with apples and hay and corn and Jersey cows and Plymouth Rock cocks and hens, while I use the scenery for my pictures? There are backgrounds here for a thousand canvases, all within a mile of your ancestral doorstep.”

“I don’t know what you will do for models in this remote place,” said Himself, putting his hands in his pockets and gazing dubiously at the abandoned farm-houses on the hillsides; the still green dooryards on the village street where no children were playing, and the quiet little brick school-house at the turn of the road, from which a dozen half-grown boys and girls issued decorously, looking at us like scared rabbits.

“I have an idea about models,” said Mrs. Beresford.

And it turned out that she had, for all that was ten years ago, and Penelope the Painter, merged in Mrs. Beresford the mother, has the three loveliest models in all the countryside!

Children, of course, are common enough everywhere; not, perhaps, as common as they should be, but there are a good many clean, well-behaved, truthful, decently-featured little boys and girls who will, in course of time, become the bulwarks of the Republic, who are of no use as models. The public is not interested in, and will neither purchase nor hang on its walls anything but a winsome child, a beautiful child, a pathetic child, or a picturesquely ragged and dirty child. (The latter type is preferably a foreigner, as dirty American children are for some reason or other quite unsalable.)