So Beatrix there and then in a firm hand wrote in printing letters, “At twelve tonight,” on three several scraps of paper. One scrap she deposited under Cousin Lavinia’s door; one under Piers’s door, whence a light streaming from beneath seemed to indicate that he was reading beside his fire; and one under the study door, behind which sat the Professor, intent on consuming his midnight oil and giving its product to the world in the shape of his golden thoughts on philosophy as an aid to the control of the emotions.
In every case she accompanied the delivery of the note with a sharp rap, to draw attention to it, and at the Professor’s door with such a hailstorm of raps that he jumped out of his chair, forgot his good breeding, and indulged in a string of exclamations such as had not fallen from his lips since Beatrix had been in the house.
When this was accomplished she went stealthily down the stairs and took up her position in the hall below, lighting a gasalier, but turning it so low as to be scarcely visible. Round this hall ran a gallery, and from off this gallery the bedrooms, and the Professor’s den also, opened.
Cousin Lavinia was putting her corkscrew curls into paper when the rap at her door, and the note pushed beneath it, caught her attention and set her heart fluttering.
For a moment she gazed at the three little words in amazement, then her expression grew rapturous. “It’s from him him!” she said, softly. “Dear John! he wishes to begin the New Year with his hand in mine and words of love upon his lips!” It did not in the least to her fancy matter that the hand was disguised, there was no one in the whole house likely to make an appointment with her but Cousin John, who, in spite of his irritable temper, she had invariably reverenced as a being of an altogether superior order. Of course she would meet him, here, there, anywhere the whole world through. “And I will attire myself,” she murmured, “as one who wishes to make herself worthy of so great an honour.” So the little old maid went to a big trunk that had not been opened for years, and took out, first, a huge crinoline measuring three yards round, and then a delicate white tarlatan dress profusely trimmed with blush rosebuds. It was the dress in which, more than thirty years previously, she had made her first and last appearance at a ball, and which she had kept locked up and carefully strewn with lavender till a fit occasion for wearing it should arise.
Meantime, the Professor on the opposite side of the gallery, indulging in wild speculations as to the writer of his little note, could only come to one conclusion: “Philosophy has given me the key to human character; there is but one person in the house capable of writing that note—Beatrix. Now I think of it there is a degree of mystery attached to her sudden journey to England” (he knew nothing of the lover in London to whom Beatrix had been engaged for ten years), “and her conduct since she has been in the house has exhibited—yes, I may say it without vanity—the tenderest solicitude on my behalf. She wishes to encourage my advances she knows I would make them diffidently—so she as good as says to me, ‘Come and meet me, love, at an hour free from distractions, when calmly we can discuss the question of the suitability of a matrimonial alliance.’ Ah, Lavinia is a good sort of creature enough, but beside Beatrix, nowhere!”
“I’m not what I was,” he went on, sorrowfully. “I am a little bald, and she has such a beautiful head of hair! Perhaps my old black velvet cap might improve me.”
He went to a drawer beneath one of his bookcases and took thence a rusty black velvet cap. The light was dim and his eyes, bereft of glasses, did not discover that the cap was turned inside out, and that what he thought was a silk tassel was really a strip of the well-worn lining hanging loose.
Nellie, though passed over by Beatrix, was to have a missive she did not expect under her door that night. Piers, sitting gloomily over his fire with a law book on his knee, which he was making believe to study, was a little startled by the rap at his door. “I wonder, I wonder how it will end? Beatrix says it will be all right, but what if it be all wrong and Nellie and I are parted for life!” he was at that moment saying to himself. One glance, however, at the little missive seemed to tell him that everything would be all right. Of course it was from Nellie. “My darling,” he cried, rapturously kissing the note, “she wants to forgive and forget, and for us two to cross the threshold of the year together!”
And there and then he took up his pen and wrote:
“God bless you, darling! With pleasure! At twelve tonight in the big window in the hall, where eight years ago I first saw your sweet face. Always your true
Then, to make quite sure that Nellie received it, he went along the gallery, called “Nellie, Nellie,” twice at her door, and then put his note beneath.
Beatrix, sitting below in the hall in her dark corner, had her eyes regaled with a variety of strange sights.
First Piers made his appearance on the side of the gallery over her head, and came down the stairs leading to the hall at such an unconscionable pace that only a special Providence could have saved him from a fractured skull in the dim light.
He evidently did not see that the gasalier was lighted, and took his cigar-lights from his pocket
