ENID
If Persis Dale's extraordinary action in adopting a family _en masse_
had stirred Clematis from center to circumference, that agitation was
trivial in comparison with the flutter produced by Joel's capitulation.
Mrs. West, backed up by Mary, told the news to auditors frankly
incredulous who yet were sufficiently impressed by her sincerity to
resolve on looking into the thing for themselves. Consequently the
Dale homestead became a magnet for the curious, and many a skeptic came
and went away convinced that the day of miracles had returned.
As a matter of fact Joel's surrender was in accord with the most
elemental of psychological laws. With the characteristic caprice of
her sex in matters of the heart, Celia had taken a violent fancy to
this pale-blooded hypochondriac, and made no secret of the fact that
she regarded him as her especial property. Nothing is so flattering to
the vanity as the preference of a child, that naive, spontaneous
affection to which it is impossible to impute mercenary motives. And
Joel had responded by becoming Celia's abject slave. He ignored the
other children for the most part, seldom betraying, unless perhaps by
an impatient gesture or a frown, that he was aware of their existence.
But his eyes were always on Celia, and when she spoke, he listened.
As was to be expected, that morsel of femininity improved every
opportunity to parade her conquest. She took Joel to walk, holding
tightly to his hand and entertaining him with an outpouring of those
quaint fancies which have been the heritage of childhood from the
beginning and yet always seem to the older generation so marvelously
new. She inveigled him into playing whatever rôle she assigned in
fantastic dramas of her own creation. He was Celia's father or her
little boy as the whim took her, the wolf which devoured Red Riding
Hood's grandmother, or the hapless old lady herself, attacked
ruthlessly by Celia as wolf. Crawling on all fours he played elephant,
or with the handle of a basket between his teeth, he submitted to be
patted on the head and addressed as Towser. Persis looked on with a
wonder that never lost its poignancy. That the self-centered Joel
should succumb to the innocent spell of childhood had never entered her
calculations, and she reproached herself that she had so little
understood him.
The comments of Persis' acquaintances were characteristic. Mrs. West,
on the occasion of a second call, hinted her anxiety regarding the
future of the impromptu family. "When you pick children up that way,
you can't tell how they're going to turn out."
"And when you bring 'em into the world," remarked Persis dryly, "and
rear 'em yourself and never let 'em out of your sight when you can help
it, you don't know how they're going to turn out either." There was in
her manner an ingenious suggestion of having in mind the recent
heart-broken confidences of Thad's mother, and Etta West blushed hotly
and changed the subject.
Mrs. Robert Hornblower looked upon the acquisition as practical
rebellion against the decrees of Providence. In Persis' presence, she
said little, having a sincere respect for her ex-dressmaker's gift of
repartee. But to Mr. Hornblower, she expressed herself in no uncertain
terms.
"If it's the Lord's will for a woman to raise a family, it stands to
reason He'll send her a husband. This snapping your fingers in the
face of the Almighty and gathering up children from here and there and
anywhere, looks downright impious."
"Seems to me," began Mr. Hornblower in mild expostulation, "that Persis
Dale--"
"Yes, I know, Robert," interrupted the submissive wife. "I feel just
as you do. It's always been Persis Dale's greatest fault to imagine
that she's a law unto herself. But this time she's overstepped the
mark."
"Those children are orphans," exclaimed Mr. Hornblower, his complexion
becoming apoplectic. "And if--"
In another instant he would have spoken his mind. Only by raising her
voice so his next words became inaudible, did his wife avoid that
catastrophe.
"I don't wonder you're shocked, Robert," said Mrs. Hornblower, "to
think of her bringing into Clematis children of nobody knows who, to
grow up with our own boys and girls and as like as not lead 'em astray.
All I can say is that Persis Dale may have a lot to answer for some
day."
Though Mrs. Hornblower's stand was somewhat extreme she was not without
her supporters. Thomas Hardin's sister, Mrs. Gibson, declared with
unconcealed rancor that Persis would have done better to think about
getting a husband before interesting herself in securing a family.
Mrs. Richards, with sanctimonious rolling of her eyes, admitted that
she had recognized long before an inherent coarseness in the character
of Persis Dale. Others like Annabel Sinclair exclaimed over the folly
of burdening one's self with juvenile responsibilities when free to
seek distraction wherever one pleased.
Diantha did not agree with her mother. Ever since the memorable
occasion when, with the dressmaker's connivance, she had startled
Clematis by growing up between noon and supper-time, she had been one
of Persis' attendant satellites. But after the advent of the children
she fairly haunted the establishment. She dropped in after breakfast
to announce that Miss Perkins credited Algie with having the best head
for arithmetic of any boy in her room and came again at noon to suggest
taking Malcolm and Celia for a walk. But though she distributed her
favors with creditable impartiality, she found the baby peculiarly
fascinating. And rather to Persis' surprise, the frail and fretful
little creature, who looked askance even at the kindly Mary, fell under
the spell of the girlish beauty and always had a smile for Diantha.
"Goodness, child, you do look grown up," Persis exclaimed abruptly one
afternoon, as she glanced at the pair snuggled in the depths of the
armchair, Diantha had flung her hat aside. Her face was dreamy as she
looked down at the little head against her shoulder. All her girlish
coquetry, every trace of juvenile mischief, the occasional flashes of
petulance which told that she was her mother's daughter had vanished.
She looked a brooding madonna.
Ordinarily Diantha would have fluttered at the compliment. In her
present preoccupation, it drew from her only a thoughtful smile.
"She's going to sleep," she said, an exquisite softness in her voice.
"How nice and heavy their heads feel when they're sleepy, Miss Persis!"
"Well?"
"I'm going to adopt a lot of children some day. I always was crazy to
have a crowd around. The way I've prayed for a sister," sighed
Diantha, her face temporarily overcast. And then brightening: "When I
get old enough to do as I please, I'll make up for it."
Persis, studying the rapt young face, made no immediate reply. Her
sense of guilty complicity in Diantha's precocious womanhood distracted
her attention from the girl's resentful speech. Apparently her silence
proved stimulating to Diantha's impulse toward confidences.
"Do you know the latest notion mother's got in her head?"
"No."
"She wants to send me off to school somewhere. She talks to father and
talks to him, till I'm afraid she'll tire him into it. Thad West says
any woman can get her way if she never stops talking about it."
Persis regarded her keenly and Diantha's color rose. For no apparent
reason her blush became a conflagration.
"I didn't know you and Thad had much chance to talk things over
nowadays."
"They won't let him come to the house. They say I'm too young."
Diantha laughed mockingly. "And mother was only a little older when
she married father, and she was engaged twice before that."
"I suppose you keep on seeing him just the same."
"Course I do."
Persis mused. Diantha was wrong, undoubtedly, and yet more sinned
against than sinning. Cautions and expostulations were unavailing with
this spirited young creature, smarting under continued injustice and
seeing with her uncompromising clearness of vision the selfish jealousy
which would keep her out of her birthright indefinitely. "You want to
be real careful, Diantha," said Persis, realizing the futility of her
words. "Thad's a nice boy and you're a nice girl, but it don't look
well for young folks to be meeting on the sly."
She tried but with little success, to exercise a certain supervision
over Diantha that winter. Though the children came down with measles
one after another, and Joel had an attack of rheumatism which kept him
a prisoner in his bed for seven weeks, it seemed to Persis that Diantha
was never really out of her mind. She was surprised on the other hand
to find how little Justin Ware was in her thoughts. Instead of
returning to Clematis in a few weeks as he had intended, he had been
called West unexpectedly. He had not written Persis to apprise her of
his change of plans, and she heard of it only through Mrs. Hornblower.
And the astonishing part was that she heard it with scarcely a pang.
She had discontinued her practise of saying good night to the
photograph in the plush frame with Justin Ware's return, but sometimes
when the house was still, she took her stand before it and studied the
pleasant, immature face intently, as if trying to read from its
ingenuous smile a solution of some inward perplexity.
The measles and the winter ran their course together. The children
ventured out and the daffodils ventured up. Joel hobbled about with a
cane and took Celia in search of violets. The baby who had come very
near dying, decided apparently that since recovery was in order she
might as well make a thorough job of it and began to grow fat and
sweet-tempered and to acquire dimples. And Persis made the pleasing
discovery that in the months during which she had been a woman of
property, she had not spent her income and resolved at once on
rectifying this needless opulence.
"I've done considerable plodding in my time, I wouldn't mind a little
skimming for a change," thought Persis. Next to a family she had long
craved an automobile. The surplus of her income was sufficient for the
purchase of one of the cheaper grades of cars. Persis decided on a
visit to the city, with a view to making this investment.
"I'm a little seedy with being shut in so much this winter, and a trip
will do me good whether I buy an automobile or not. Mary's mother will
come and stay with her and help out with the children. And if Joel
wants to go along, he can." But apparently the protective impulse
which had moved Joel to offer his company on the occasion of her
previous visit had waned during the winter. He declined the invitation
without thanks.
It was proof enough of Persis' temperamental youthfulness that she
reached the city with as keen a sense of adventure as if she had been a
runaway boy following a circus. She went to the modest hotel she had
patronized the previous fall and was surprised and flattered when the
clerk called her by name.
"Gives a body a home-coming feeling, that does," remarked Persis, as
she wrote the cramped signature which so poorly represented her robust
personality. "I don't see how you can remember everybody, with folks
coming and going all the time."
"There are some people it's easy to remember," replied the clerk
gallantly and at the same time with sincerity. Whatever else time
erased from the tablets of his memory, he would never forget Persis,
and her acquisition of a family. Then he looked at her
interrogatively, for Persis had jumped, blotting the register.
"You'll have to excuse me." Persis reached for the blotter. "I saw a
name I know and it sort of took my breath." There were but two
signatures on the page besides her own, the names of Mrs. Honoria Walsh
and Enid Randolph, both of Warren, New York.
"I'll give you room forty-two," said the clerk, taking a key from the
hook and nodding to a watchful lad in uniform. "Mrs. Walsh and her
niece Miss Randolph are on the same floor. If they are friends of
yours--"
"No, I wouldn't say that," Persis interrupted. "It's just that I've
heard of 'em before." As she left the elevator on the second floor,
two women glided past her, one the portly widow with abundant crêpe who
is not easily differentiated, the other a stately girl with blonde hair
and a scornfully tilted chin. Instinct told Persis that the latter was
Enid.
She enjoyed her first day vastly. She drove some two hundred miles in
machines of different makes and listened with keen interest to the
arguments proving conclusively that each was superior to all others.
Night found her tired, a little homesick for the children, but still
happy, nevertheless. She finished her dinner--a good dinner as became
a woman of means--and went into the little writing-room off the parlor
with the intention of jogging Mary's memory regarding the baby's diet.
There was but one person in the room, a young woman with fair hair
busily engaged in writing.
Persis sat down at the next desk. She was aware of a marked
acceleration of the pulse which to her temperament was far from
disquieting.
"Excuse me, but isn't this Miss Enid Randolph?"
"Yes." The young woman looked up from her letter. Though her hair was
light, her brows were dark and her air distinctly distant.
"I've always wanted to meet you." Persis spoke with unabashed
friendliness. "I've been interested in you for quite a spell. My name
is Dale, Persis Dale."
Miss Randolph lifted her fine eyebrows, but offered no further comment
on this interesting circumstance.
"Perhaps you'll remember," Persis continued briskly, "that we've had a
little correspondence. At least you wrote me about a letter of yours
to a Mr. Wash--"
"I remember the incident clearly," said Miss Randolph. For all her
chilling air, she glanced toward the door to assure herself that they
were not overheard. "It is true I wrote you," she continued with a
hauteur which would have reduced a less buoyant nature to instant
dumbness. "But I hardly see that this constitutes a ground for
considering ourselves acquaintances."
So far from being crushed, Persis smiled. And there was something so
frankly spontaneous in her look of amusement, that the young woman
colored.
"Bless you, I know it wasn't a letter of introduction," Persis assured
her with unimpaired good humor. "But I've always wanted to tell you
that when you wrote me that time, you did a lot of good without knowing
it. Love-letters seem to me like firearms. In the proper hands
they're real useful, but if the wrong people get hold of 'em it's bound
to make trouble. At least that was the way with the one you wrote Mr.
Wash--"
For the second time Miss Randolph looked toward the door, and when next
Persis saw her eyes they were appealing rather than disdainful.
"The letter by mistake was sent to a young man who lives in Clematis,"
Persis continued. "His name is Thompson, and W. Thompson, at that. He
thought it such a joke that he put it in his pocket for his wife to
find. Didn't know 'twas loaded, you see. And when she did find it and
he explained, she didn't believe him. I don't know as anybody believed
him but me, but it seemed such a silly explanation for a sensible man
to make up that I felt pretty sure it must be true."
Miss Randolph put down her pen and gave herself up to the business of
listening.
"If I could tell you how that little woman looked," declared Persis,
"it would just make your heart jump to think it was you that helped
her. Only six months married, she was, too. Well, I took a risk and
wrote to Mr. Thompson, Cleveland, and when I got his letter I knew
everything was all right. But I wasn't sure of proving it to young
Mrs. Thompson. After a woman's brooded over a thing as long as she
had, with her neighbors egging her on to do something desperate, she's
not going to be convinced with anything short of downright proof. But
between your letter and Mr. Wash--"
"I don't see," interrupted Miss Randolph quickly, "that she has
anything to thank me for. You certainly deserve all the credit, Miss
Dale, for clearing up the mystery."
"Well, they were grateful all right," Persis smiled reminiscently.
"The baby's six weeks old now, and her name is Persis Dale Thompson.
And they're both about as happy as any folks you're likely to see till
you die and go to Heaven. But I couldn't have done anything without
your help, and I wish I thought you was half as contented as I know
they are."
"Really," said Miss Randolph, with an unsuccessful attempt to duplicate
her earlier reserve, "it is impossible for me to see--"
"Yes, I know." Persis leaned toward her, speaking with a vehemence
that swept the feeble expostulation aside. "But just because I never
set eyes on you before ain't any reason why I shouldn't want you to be
happy. I've laid awake nights thinking about that letter of yours, so
loving and so sorrowful. Dearie, if love pulls you one way and
conscience the other, there's only one thing to do and that's the right
thing."
"Really," began Miss Randolph, and then her eyes unexpectedly filled,
quenching the incipient fire of her indignation. She had recourse to
her handkerchief and Persis patted her shoulder, and in that instant
the two were friends.
"You don't quite understand," explained Enid in a muffled voice.
"'Tommy' isn't married. 'Her' is auntie."
Persis drew a sigh of such unmistakable relief that the girl looked at
her amazed. The older woman's face was shining.
"Well, that's a weight off my mind," she smiled. "Nothing but your
aunt. Thank goodness."
"A weight off your mind!" Enid repeated. "But you didn't know me."
"No, but I knew you were a young thing in trouble, and that 'Her' gave
me many a bad minute."
Enid's fingers reached gropingly toward her new-found friend. Their
two hands clasped and held fast.
"Auntie took me when I was a little girl. I was an orphan. She's been
everything to me, and she adores me. But she doesn't like Tommy."
"Why not?"
"She hasn't anything really against him except that he's poor. It
would kill her to have me leave her to marry him. I can't bring myself
to do it. And yet I can't bring myself to give Tommy up." She was
crying in earnest now, and the clasp of Persis' hand tightened.
"You can't and you oughtn't. There's too much sacrifice of love these
days. Young fellows instead of having homes of their own are
supporting two or three grown-up sisters and getting crabbed and
bitter. And girls the Lord meant for wives and mothers stay at home
because the old folks don't want to spare them. Nine times out of ten
it's like Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and there's a he-goat somewhere
round in the bushes that would do just as well."
"But it would seem so dreadfully ungrateful to disappoint her," gasped
Enid Randolph with the air of one who longs to be disproved. "After
she's done everything for me."
"Bless you, child, if you love and are sure of him, the mother who bore
you wouldn't have a right to say no. And what's more, if you're
sensible enough to go your own way, she'll probably end up by thinking
he next thing to made the world and taking all the credit for the
match. You're twenty-one, of course."
"Twenty-three."
"Then I wouldn't have any more of this underhanded business. Talk it
out with your aunt, and unless she can show you good reasons for giving
up your young man, you've got the best reason in the world for taking
him."
Enid deliberated. Then very slowly she tore her letter to bits.
"I was saying good-by to him forever--for the twenty-ninth time." She
smiled somewhat palely. "But I rather think, Miss Persis Dale, that
I'll take your advice."