The Rivet in Grandfathers Neck | Page 5

then, "I suppose," said Miss Musgrave, absently, "you will be
falling in love with her, just as you did with Anne Charteris and Aline
Van Orden and all those other minxes. I would like to see you married,
Rudolph, only I couldn't stand your having a wife."
"I! I!" sputtered the colonel. "I think you must be out of your head! I
fall in love with that chit! Good Lord, Agatha, you are positively
idiotic!"
And the colonel turned on his heel, and walked stiffly through the
garden. But, when half-way down the path, he wheeled about and came
back.
"I beg your pardon, Agatha," he said, contritely, "it was not my
intention to be discourteous. But somehow--somehow, dear, I don't
quite see the necessity for my falling in love with anybody, so long as I
have you."
And Miss Musgrave, you may be sure, forgave him promptly; and
afterward--with a bit of pride and an infinity of love in her kind,
homely face,--her eyes followed him out of the garden on his way to
open the Library. And she decided in her heart that she had the dearest
and best and handsomest brother in the universe, and that she must
remember to tell him, accidentally, how becoming his new hat was.
And then, at some unspoken thought, she smiled, wistfully.
"She would be a very lucky girl if he did," said Miss Musgrave,
apropos of nothing in particular; and tossed her grizzly head.
"An earl, indeed!" said Miss Musgrave

IV
And this is how it came about:

Patricia Vartrey (a second cousin once removed of Colonel Rudolph
Musgrave's), as the older inhabitants of Lichfield will volubly attest,
was always a person who did peculiar things. The list of her
eccentricities is far too lengthy here to be enumerated; but she began it
by being born with red hair--Titian reds and auburns were undiscovered
euphemisms in those days--and, in Lichfield, this is not regarded as
precisely a lady-like thing to do; and she ended it, as far as Lichfield
was concerned, by eloping with what Lichfield in its horror could only
describe, with conscious inadequacy, as "a quite unheard-of person."
Indisputably the man was well-to-do already; and from this nightmarish
topsy-turvidom of Reconstruction the fellow visibly was plucking
wealth. Also young Stapylton was well enough to look at, too, as
Lichfield flurriedly conceded.
But it was equally undeniable that he had made his money through a
series of commercial speculations distinguished both by shiftiness and
daring, and that the man himself had been until the War a wholly
negligible "poor white" person,--an overseer, indeed, for "Wild Will"
Musgrave, Colonel Musgrave's father, who was of course the same
Lieutenant-Colonel William Sebastian Musgrave, C.S.A., that met his
death at Gettysburg.
This upstart married Patricia Vartrey, for all the chatter and whispering,
and carried her away from Lichfield, as yet a little dubious as to what
recognition, if any, should be accorded the existence of the Stapyltons.
And afterward (from a notoriously untruthful North, indeed) came
rumors that he was rapidly becoming wealthy; and of Patricia Vartrey's
death at her daughter's birth; and of the infant's health and strength and
beauty, and of her lavish upbringing,--a Frenchwoman, Lichfield
whispered, with absolutely nothing to do but attend upon the child.
And then, little by little, a new generation sprang up, and, little by little,
the interest these rumors waked became more lax; and it was brought
about, at last, by the insidious transitions of time, that Patricia Vartrey
was forgotten in Lichfield. Only a few among the older men
remembered her; some of them yet treasured, as these fogies so often
do, a stray fan or an odd glove; and in bycorners of sundry

time-toughened hearts there lurked the memory of a laughing word or
of a glance or of some such casual bounty, that Patricia Vartrey had
accorded these hearts' owners when the world was young.
But Agatha Musgrave, likewise, remembered the orphan cousin who
had been reared with her. She had loved Patricia Vartrey; and, in due
time, she wrote to Patricia's daughter,--in stately, antiquated phrases
that astonished the recipient not a little,--and the girl had answered. The
correspondence flourished. And it was not long before Miss Musgrave
had induced her young cousin to visit Lichfield.
Colonel Rudolph Musgrave, be it understood, knew nothing of all this
until the girl was actually on her way. And now, she was to arrive that
afternoon, to domicile herself in his quiet house for two long
weeks--this utter stranger, look you!--and upset his comfort, ask him
silly questions, expect him to talk to her, and at the end of her visit,
possibly, present him with some outlandish gimcrack made of
cardboard and pink ribbons, in which she would expect him to keep his
papers. The Langham