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THE MELTING OF MOLLY
by
MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS
Author of
Miss Selina Lue, The Road to Providence,
Rose of Old Harpeth, etc., etc.
Illustrated by R. M. Crosby
Indianapolis
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Publishers
1912
[Illustration: Melted]
MOLLY CARTER AND I
DEDICATE THIS BOOK
TO OUR GOOD FRIEND
CAROL KING JENNEY
LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF MOLLY
Leaf First
THE BACHELOR'S-BUTTONS
Leaf Second
A LOVE-LETTER, LOADED
Leaf Third
MONUMENT OR TROUSSEAU?
Leaf Fourth
SCATTERED JAM
Leaf Fifth
BLUE ABSINTHE
Leaf Sixth
THE RESURRECTION RAZOO
Leaf Seventh
DASHED!
Leaf Eighth
MELTED
LEAF FIRST
THE BACHELOR'S-BUTTONS
Yes, I truly think that in all the world there is nothing so dead
as a young widow's deceased husband, and God ought to give His wisest
man-angel special charge concerning looking after her and the devil at
the same time. They both need it! I don't know how all this is going to
end and I wish my mind wasn't in a kind of tingle. However, I'll do the
best I can and not hold myself at all responsible for myself, and then
who will there be to blame?
There are a great many kinds of good-feeling in this world, from radiant
joy down to perfect bliss, but this spring I have got an attack of just
old-fashioned happiness that looks as if it might become chronic.
I am so happy that I planted my garden all crooked, my eyes upon the
clouds with the birds sailing against them, and when I became conscious
I found wicked flaunting poppies sprouted right up against the sweet
modest clover-pinks, while the whole paper of bachelor's-buttons was
sowed over everything--which I immediately began to dig right up again,
blushing furiously to myself over the trowel, and glad that I had caught
myself before they grew up to laugh in my face. However, I got that
laugh anyway, and I might just as well have left them, for Billy ran to
the gate and called Doctor John to come in and make Molly stop digging
up his buttons. Billy claims everything in this garden, and he thought
they would grow up into the kind of buttons you pop out of a gun.
"So you're digging up the bachelor-pops, Mrs. Molly?" the doctor asked
as he leaned over the gate. I went right on digging without looking up
at him. I couldn't look up because I was blushing still worse. Sometimes
I hate that man, and if he wasn't Billy's father I wouldn't neighbor
with him as I do. But somebody _has_ to look after Billy.
I believe it will be a real relief to write down how I feel about him
in his old book and I shall do it whenever I can't stand him any longer,
and if he gave the horrid, red leather thing to me to make me miserable,
he can't do it; not this spring! I wish I dared burn it up and forget
about it, but I don't! This record on the first page is enough to
_reduce_ me--to tears, and I wonder why it doesn't.
I weigh one hundred and sixty pounds, down in black and white, and it
is a tragedy! I don't believe that man at the grocery store is so very
reliable in his weights, though he had a very pleasant smile while he
was weighing me. Still I had better get some scales of my own, smiles
are so deceptive.
I am five feet three inches tall or short, whichever way one looks at
me. I thought I was taller, but I suppose I will have to believe my own
yardstick.
But as to my waist measure, I positively refuse to write that down, even
if I have promised Doctor John a dozen times over to do it, while I only
really left him to _suppose_ I would. It is bad enough to know that
your belt has to be reduced to twenty-three inches without putting down
how much it measures now in figures to insult yourself with. No, I
intend to have this for my happy spring.
Yes, I suppose it would have been lots better for my happiness if I had
kept quiet about it all, but at the time I thought I had to advise with
him over the matter. Now I'm sorry I did. That is one thing about being
a widow, you are accustomed to advising with a man, whether you want to
or not, and you can't get over the habit right away. Poor Mr. Carter
hasn't been dead much over a year and I must be missing him most
awfully, though just lately I can't remember not to forget about him a
great deal of the time. Now if he had been here--_horrors_!
Still, that letter was enough to upset anybody, and no wonder I ran
right across my garden, through Billy's hedge-hole and over into Doctor
John's office to tell him about it; but I ought not to have been
agitated enough to let him take the letter right out of my hand and read
it.
"So after ten years Al Bennett is coming back to pop his
bachelor's-buttons at you, Mrs. Molly?" he said in the deep drawling
voice he always uses when he makes fun of Billy and me and which never
fails to make us both mad. I didn't look at him directly, but I felt his
hand shake with the letter in it.
"Not ten, only _eight_! He went when I was seventeen," I answered
with dignity, wishing I dared be snappy at him; though I never am.
"And after eight years he wants to come back and find you squeezed into
a twenty-inch-waist, blue muslin rag you wore at parting? No wonder Al
didn't succeed at bank clerking, but had to make his hit at diplomacy
and the high arts. Some hit at that to be legationed at Saint James!
He's such a big gun that it is a pity he had to return to his native
heath and find even such a slight disappointment as a one-yard waist
measure around his--his--"
"Oh it's not, it's _not_ that much." I fairly gasped and I couldn't
help the tears coming into my eyes. I have never said much about it, but
nobody knows how it hurts me to be all this fat! Just writing it down in
a book mortifies me dreadfully. It's been coming on worse and worse
every year since I married. Poor Mr. Carter had a very good appetite and
I don't know why I should have felt that I had to eat so much every day
to keep him company; I wasn't always so considerate of him. Then he
didn't want me to dance any more because married women oughtn't, or ride
horseback either--no amusement left but himself and weekly
prayer-meetings, and--and--I just couldn't help the tears coming and
dripping as I thought about it all and that awful waist measure in
inches.
"Stop crying this minute, Molly," said Doctor John suddenly in the deep
voice he uses to Billy and me when we are really sick or stump-toed.
"You know I was only teasing you and I won't stand for--"
But I sobbed some more. I like him when his eyes come out from under his
bushy brows and are all tender and full of sorry for us.
"I can't help it," I gulped in my sleeve. "I did used to like Alfred
Bennett. My heart almost broke when he went away. I used to be beautiful
and slim, and now I feel as if my own fat ghost has come to haunt me all
my life. I am so ashamed! If a woman can't cry over her own dead beauty,
what can she cry over?" By this time I was really crying.
Then what happened to me was that Doctor John took me by the shoulders
and gave me one good shake and then made me look him right in the eyes
through the tears and all.
"You foolish child," he said in the deepest voice I almost ever heard
him use. "You are just a lovely, round, luscious peach, but if you will
be happier to have Al Bennett come and find you as slim as a string-bean
I can show you how to do it. Will you do just as I tell you?"
[Illustration: "Will you do just as I tell you?"]
"Yes, I will," I sniffed in a comforted voice. What woman wouldn't be
comforted by being called a "luscious peach". I looked out between my
fingers to see what more he was going to say, but he had turned to a
shelf and taken down two books.
"Now," he said in his most businesslike voice, as cool as a bucket of
water fresh from the spring, "it is no trouble at all to take off your
surplus avoirdupois at the rate of two and a half pounds a week if you
follow these directions. As I take it you are about twenty-five pounds
over your normal weight. It will take over two months to reduce you and
we will allow an extra month for further beautifying, so that when Mr.
Bennett arrives he will find the lady of his adoration in proper trim to
be adored. Yes, just be still until I copy these directions in this
little, red leather blank-book for you, and every day I want you to keep
an exact record of the conditions of which I make note. No, don't talk
while I make out these diet lists! I wish you would go across the hall
and see if you don't think we ought to get Bill a thinner set of
night-drawers. It seems to me he must be too warm in the ones he is
wearing."
When he speaks to me in that tone of voice I always do it. And I needed
Billy badly at that very moment. I took him out of his little cot by
Doctor John's big bed and sat down with him in my arms over by the
window through which the early moon came streaming. Billy is so little,
little not to have a mother to rock him all the times he needs it that I
take every opportunity to give it to him I find--when he's unconscious
and can't help himself. She died before she ever even saw him and I've
always tried to do what I could to make it up to him.
Poor Mr. Carter said when Billy cut his teeth that a neighbor's baby can
be worse than twins of your own. He didn't like children and the baby's
crying disturbed him, so many a night I walked Billy out in the garden
until daylight, while Mr. Carter and Doctor John both slept. Always his
little, warm, wilty body has comforted me for the emptiness of not
having a baby of my own. And he's very congenial, too, for he's slim and
flowery, pink and dimply, and as mannish as his father, in funny little
flashes.
"Git a stick to punch it, Molly," he was murmuring in his sleep. Then I
heard the doctor call me and I had to kiss him, put him back in his bed,
and go across the hall.
Doctor John was standing by the table with this horrid small book in his
hand and his mouth was set in a straight line and his eyes were deep
back under their brows. I hate him that way, too, and I would like to
get up so close to him that he couldn't _hit_ me or have a door
locked between us. It's strange how the thought of taking a beating from
a man can make a woman's heart jump. Mine jumped so it was hard to look
as meek as I felt best under the circumstances; but I looked it out from
under my lashes cautiously.
"There you are, Mrs. Molly," he said briskly as he handed me this book.
"Get weighed and measured and sized-up generally in the morning and
follow all the directions. Also make every record I have noted so that
I can have the proper data to help you as you go along--or rather down.
And if you will be faithful about it to me, or rather Al, I think we can
be sure of buttoning that blue muslin dress without even the aid of the
button-hook." His voice had the "if you can" note in it that always sets
me off.
"Had we better get the kiddie some thinner night-rigging?" he hastened
to ask as I was just about to explode. He knows the signs.
"Thank you, Doctor Moore! I hate the very ground you walk on and I'll
attend to those night-clothes myself to-morrow," I answered, and I
sailed out of that office and down the path toward my own house beyond
his hedge. But I carried this book tight in my hand and I made up my
mind that I would do it all if it killed me. I would show him I could be
_faithful_--to whom I would decide later on. But I hadn't read far
into this book when I committed myself to myself like that!
I don't know just how long I sat on the front steps all by myself bathed
in a perfect flood of moonlight and loneliness. It was not a bit of
comfort to hear Aunt Adeline snoring away in her room down the dark
hall. It takes the greatest congeniality to make a person's snoring a
pleasure to anybody and Aunt Adeline and I are not that way.
When poor Mr. Carter died, the next day she said: "Now, Mary, you are
entirely too young to live all your long years of widowhood alone, and
as I am in the same condition, I will rent my cottage and move right
up the street into your house to protect and console you." And she
did,--the moving and the protecting.
Mr. Henderson has been dead forty-two years. He only lived three months
after he married Aunt Adeline and her crepe veil is over a yard long
yet. Men are the dust under her feet, but she likes for Doctor John to
come over and sit on the porch with us because she can consult with him
about what Mr. Henderson really died of and talk with him about the sad
state of poor Mr. Carter's liver for a year before he died. I just go on
rocking Billy and singing hymns to him in such a way that I can't hear
the conversation. Mr. Carter's liver got on my nerves alive, and dead it
does worse. But it hurts when the doctor has to take the little
sleep-boy out of my arms to carry him home; though I like it when he
says under his breath, "Thank you, Molly."
And as I sat and thought how near he and I had been to each other in all
our troubles, I excused myself for running to him with that letter and I
acknowledged to myself that I had no right to get mad when he teased me,
for he had been kind and interested about helping me get thin by the
time Alfred came back to see me. I couldn't tell which I was blushing
all to myself about, the "luscious peach" he had called me or the
"lovely lily" Alfred had reminded me in his letter that I had been when
he left me.
Why don't people realize that a seventeen-year-old girl's heart is a
sensitive wind-flower that may be shattered by a breath? Mine shattered
when Alfred went away to find something he could do to make a living,
and Aunt Adeline gave the hard green stem to Mr. Carter when she married
me to him. Poor Mr. Carter!
No, I wasn't twenty, and this town was full of women who were aunts and
cousins and law-kin to me, and nobody did anything for me. They all said
with a sigh of relief, "It will be such a nice safe thing for you,
Molly." And they really didn't mean anything by tying up a gay, dancing,
frolicking, prancing colt of a girl with a terribly ponderous bridle.
But God didn't want to see me always trotting along slow and tired and
not caring what happened to me, even pounds and pounds of plumpness, so
he found use for Mr. Carter in some other place but this world, and I
feel that He is going to see me through whatever happens. If some of the
women in my missionary society knew how friendly I feel with God they
would put me out for contempt of court.
No, the town didn't mean anything by chastening my spirit with Mr.
Carter and they didn't consider him in the matter at all, poor man. Of
that I feel sure. Hillsboro is like that. It settled itself here in a
Tennessee valley a few hundreds of years ago and has been hatching and
clucking over its own small affairs ever since. All the houses set back
from the street with their wings spread out over their gardens, and
mothers here go on hovering even to the third and fourth generation.
Lots of times young, long-legged, frying-size boys scramble out of the
nests and go off to college and decide to grow up where their crow will
be heard by the world. Alfred was one of them.
And, too, occasionally some man comes along from the big world and
marries a plump little broiler and takes her away with him, but mostly
they stay and go to hovering life on a corner of the family estate.
That's what I did.
I was a poor, little, lost chick with frivolous tendencies and they
all clucked me over into this empty Carter nest which they considered
well-feathered for me. It gave them all a sensation when they found out
from the will just how well it was feathered. And it gave me one, too.
All that money would make me nervous if Mr. Carter hadn't made Doctor
John its guardian, though I sometimes feel that the responsibility of me
makes him treat me as if he were my step-grandfather-in-law. But all in
all, though stiff in its knees with aristocracy, Hillsboro is lovely and
loving; and couldn't inquisitiveness be called just real affection with
a kind of squint in its eye?
And there I sat on my front steps, being embraced in a perfume of
everybody's lilacs and peachblow and sweet syringa and affectionate
interest and moonlight, with a letter in my hand from the man whose two
photographs and many letters I had kept locked up in the garret for
years. Is it any wonder I tingled when he told me that he had never come
back because he couldn't have me and that now the minute he landed in
America he was going to lay his heart at my feet? I added his honors
to his prostrate heart myself and my own beat at the prospect. All the
eight years faded away and I was again back in the old garden down at
Aunt Adeline's cottage saying good-by, folded up in his arms. That's
the way my memory put the scene to me, but the word "folded" made me
remember that blue muslin dress again. I had promised to keep it and
wear it for him when he came back--and I couldn't forget that the blue
belt was just twenty-three inches and mine is--no, I _won't_ write
it. I had got that dress out of the old trunk not ten minutes after I
had read the letter and measured it.
No, nobody would blame me for running right across the garden to Doctor
John with such a real trouble as that! All of a sudden I hugged the
letter and the little book up close to my breast and laughed until the
tears ran down my cheeks.
Then before I went into the house I assembled my garden and had family
prayers with my flowers. I do that because they are all the family I've
got, and God knows that all His budding things need encouragement,
whether it is a widow or a snowball-bush. He'll give it to us!
And I'm praying again as I sit here and watch for the doctor's light to
go out. I hate to go to sleep and leave it burning, for he sits up so
late and he is so gaunt and thin and tired-looking most times. That's
what the last prayer is about, almost always,--sleep for him and no
night call!
LEAF SECOND
A LOVE-LETTER, LOADED
The very worst page in this red--red devil--I'm glad I've written it at
last--of a book is the fifth. It says:
"Breakfast--one slice of dry toast, one egg, fruit and a tablespoonful
of baked cereal, small cup of coffee, no sugar, no cream." And me with
two Jersey cows full of the richest cream in Hillsboro, Harpeth Valley,
out in my pasture!
"Dinner, one small lean chop, slice of toast, spinach, green beans and
lettuce salad. No dessert or sweet." The blue-grass in my yard is full
of fat little fryers and I wish I were a sheep if I have to eat lettuce
and spinach for grass. At least I'd have more than one chop inside me
then.
"Supper--slice of toast and an apple." Why the apple? Why supper at all?
Oh, I'm hungry, hungry until I cry in my sleep when I dream about a
muffin! I thought at first that getting out of bed before my eyes are
fairly open and turning myself into a circus actor by doing every kind
of overhand, foot, arm and leg contortion that the mind of cruel man
could invent to torture a human being with, would kill me before I had
been at it a week, but when I read on page sixteen that as soon as all
that horror was over I must jump right into the tub of cold water, I
kicked, metaphorically speaking. And I've been kicking ever since,
literally to keep from freezing.
[Illustration: She shrouds me for the agony]
But as cruel a death as freezing is, it doesn't compare to the tortures
of being melted. Judy administers it to me and her faithful heart is so
wrung with compassion that she perspires almost as much as I do. She
wrings a linen sheet out in a caldron of boiling water and shrouds me
in it for the agony--and then more and more blanket windings envelop me
until I am like the mummy of some Egyptian giantess. I have ice on the
back of my neck and my forehead, and murder for the whole world in my
heart. Once I got so discouraged at the idea of having all this hades
in this life that I mingled tears with the beads of perspiration that
rolled down my cheeks, and she snatched me out of those steaming
grave-clothes in less time than it takes to tell it, soused me in
a tub of cold water, fed me a chicken wing and a hot biscuit and the
information that I was "good-looking enough for _anybody_ to eat up
alive without all this foolishness," all in a very few seconds. Now I
have to beg her to help me and I heard her tell her nephew, who does the
gardening, that she felt like an undertaker with such goings-on. At any
rate, if it all kills me it won't be my fault if anybody has to lie in
saying that I was "beautiful in death".
But now that more than a month has passed, I really don't mind it so
much. I feel so good and strong and prancy all the time that I can't
keep from bubbling. I have to smile at myself.
Then another thing that helps is Billy and his ball. I never could
really play with him before, but now I can't help it. But an awful thing
happened about that yesterday. We were in the garden playing over by the
lilac bushes and Billy always beats me because when he runs to base he
throws himself down and slides along on the grass on his little stomach
as he sees the real players do over at the ball grounds. Then all of a
sudden, before I knew it, I just did the same thing, and we slid to the
flower pot we use as a base together, each on his own stomach. And what
did Billy do but begin right there on the grass the kind of a tussle we
always have in the big rocking-chair on the porch! Over and over we
rolled, Billy chuckling and squealing while I laughed myself all out of
breath. I'm glad I always would wear delicious petticoats, for there,
looking right over my front fence, I discovered Judge Benton Wade. I
wish I could write down how I felt, for I never had that sensation
before and I don't believe I'll ever have it again.
I have always thought that Judge Wade was really the most wonderful man
in Hillsboro, not because he is a judge so young in life that there is
only a white sprinkle in his lovely black hair that grows back off his
head like Napoleon's and Charles Wesley's, but because of his smile,
which you wait for so long that you glow all over when you get it. I
have seen him do it once or twice at his mother when he seats her in
their pew at church and once at little Mamie Johnson when she gave him a
flower through their fence as he passed by one day last week, but I
never thought I should have one all to myself. But there it was, a most
beautiful one, long and slow and distinctly mine--at least I didn't
think much of it was for Billie. I sat up and blushed as red all over as
I do when I first hit that tub of cold water.
[Illustration: I sat up and blushed red all over]
"I hope you'll forgive an intruder, Mrs. Carter, but how could a mortal
resist a peep into the garden of the gods if he spied the queen and her
faun at play?" he said in a voice as wonderful as the smile. By that
time I had reefed in my ruffles around my feet and pushed in all my
hairpins. Billy stood spread-legged as near in front of me as he could
get and said in the rudest possible tone of voice:
"Get away from my Molly, man!"
I never was so mortified in all my life and I scrambled to my feet and
came over to the fence to get between him and Billy.
"It's a lovely day, isn't it, Judge Wade?" I asked with the greatest
interest, which I didn't really feel, in the weather; but what could I
think of to say? A woman is apt to keep the image of a good many of the
grand men she sees passing around her in queer niches in her brain, and
when one steps out and speaks to her for the first time it is confusing.
Of course I have known the judge and his mother all my life, for she is
one of Aunt Adeline's best friends, but I had a feeling from the look in
his eyes that that very minute was the first time he had ever seen me.
It was lovely and I blushed some more as I put my hand up to my cheek so
I wouldn't have to look right at him.
"About the loveliest day that ever happened in Hillsboro," he said, and
there was still more of the delicious smile, "though I hadn't noticed it
so especially until--"
But I never knew what he had intended to say, for Billy suddenly swelled
up like a little turkey-cock and cut out with his switch at the judge.
"Git, man, git, and let my Molly alone!" he said, in a perfect
thundertone of voice; but I almost laughed, for it had such a sound in
it like Doctor John's at his most positive times with Billy and me.
"No, no, Billy, the judge is just looking over the fence at our flowers!
Don't you want to give him a rose?" I hurried to say as the smile died
out of Judge Wade's face and he looked at Billy intently.
"How like John Moore the youngster is," he said, and his voice was so
cold to Billy that it hurt me, and I was afraid Billy would notice it.
Coldness in people's voices always makes me feel just like ice-cream
tastes. But Billy's answer was still more rude.
"You better go, man, before I bring my father to sic our dog on you,"
he exploded, and before I could stop him his thin little legs went
trundling down the garden path toward home.
Then the judge and I both laughed. We couldn't help it. When two people
laugh straight into each other's eyes something feels dangerous and you
get closer together. The judge leaned farther over the fence and I went
a little nearer before I knew it.
"You don't need to keep a personal dog, do you, Mrs. Carter?" he asked,
with a twinkle that might have been a spark in his eyes, and just at
that moment another awful thing happened. Aunt Adeline came out on the
front porch and said in the most frozen tone of voice:
"Mary, I wish to speak to you in the house," and then walked back
through the front door without even looking in Judge Wade's direction,
though he had waved his hat with one of his mother's own smiles when he
had seen her before I did. One of my most impossible habits is, when
there is nothing else to do I laugh. I did it then and it saved the day,
for we both laughed into each others eyes a second time, and before we
realized it we were within whispering distance.
"No, I don't--don't--need any dog," I said softly, hardly glancing out
from under my lashes because I was afraid to risk looking straight at
him again so soon. I could fairly feel Aunt Adeline's eyes boring into
my back.
"It would take the hydra-headed monster of--may I bring my mother to
call on you and the--Mrs. Henderson?" he asked and poured the wonder
smile all over me. Again I almost caught my breath.
"I do wish you would, Aunt Adeline is so fond of Mrs. Wade!" I said in a
positive flutter that I hope he didn't see, but I am afraid he did, for
he hesitated as if he wanted to say something to calm me, then bowed
mercifully and went on down the street. He didn't put on the hat he had
held in his hand all the while he stood by the fence until he had looked
back and bowed again. Then I felt still more fluttered as I went into
the house, but I received the third cold plunge of the day when I
reached the front hall.
"Mary," said Aunt Adeline in a voice that sounded as if it had been
buried and never resurrected, "if you are going to continue in such an
unseemly course of conduct I hope you will remove your mourning, which
is an empty mockery and an insult to my own widowhood."
"Yes, Aunt Adeline, I'll go take it off this very minute," I heard
myself answer her airily to my own astonishment. I might have known that
if I ever got one of those smiles it would go to my head! Without
another word I sailed into my room and closed the door softly.
I wonder if God could have realized what a tender thing He was leaving
exposed to life in the garden of the world after He had finished making
a woman? Traditionally, we are created out of rose-leaves and star-dust
and the harmony of the winds, but we need a steel-chain netting to fend
us. Slowly I unbuttoned that black dress that symbolized the ending of
six years of the blackness of a married life, from which I had been
powerless to fend myself, and the rosy dimpling thing in snowy lingerie
with tags of blue ribbon that stood in front of my mirror was as
new-born as any other hour-old similar bundle of linen and lace in
Hillsboro, Tennessee. Fortunately, an old, year-before-last, white lawn
dress could be pulled from the top shelf of the closet in a hurry, and
the Molly that came out of that room was ready for life--and a lot of it
quick and fast.
And again, fortunately, Aunt Adeline had retired with a violent headache
and black Judy was carrying her in a hot water-bottle with a broad grin
on her face. Judy sees the world from the kitchen window and understands
everything. She had laid a large thick letter on the hall table where I
couldn't fail to see it.
I took possession of it and carried it to a bench in the garden that
backs up against the purple sprayed lilacs and is flanked by two rows of
tall purple and white iris that stand in line ready for a Virginia reel
with a delicate row of the poet's narcissus across the broad path. I
love my flowers. I love them swaying on their stems in the wind, and I
like to snatch them and crush the life out of them against my breast and
face. I have been to bed every night this spring with a bunch of cool
violets against my cheek and I feel that I am going to flirt with my
tall row of hollyhocks as soon as they are old enough to hold up their
heads and take notice. They always remind me of very stately gentlemen
and I have wondered if the fluffy little butter and eggs weren't shaking
their ruffles at them.
A real love-letter ought to be like a cream puff with a drop of dynamite
in it. Alfred's was that kind. I felt warm and happy down to my toes as
I read it and I turned around so old Lilac Bush couldn't peep over my
shoulder at what he said.
He wrote from Rome this time, where he had been sent on some sort of
diplomatic mission to the Vatican, and his letter about the Ancient City
on her seven hills was a prose-poem in itself. I was so interested that
I read on and on and forgot it was almost toast-apple time.
Of course, anybody that is anybody would be interested in Father Tiber
and the old Colosseum, but what made me forget the one slice of dry
toast and the apple was the way he seemed to be connecting me up with
all those wonderful old antiquities that had never even seen me. Because
of me he had felt and written that poem descriptive of old Tiber, and
the moonlight had lit up the Colosseum just because I was over here
lighting up Hillsboro, Tennessee, with Mr. Carter dead. Of course that
is not the way he put it all, but there is no place to really copy what
he did say down into this imp book and, anyway, that is the sentiment he
expressed, boiled down and sugared off.
That's just what I mean--love boiled down and sugared off is mighty apt
to get an explosive flavor, and one had better be careful with that kind
if one is timid; which I'm not. As I said, also, I am ready for a little
taste of life, so I read on without fear. And, to be fair, Alfred had
well boiled his own last paragraph. It snapped; and I jumped and gasped
both. I almost thought I didn't quite like it and was going to read it
over again to see, when there came a procession from over to Doctor
John's and I laid the bombshell down on the bench.
First came the red setter that is always first with Doctor John, and
then he came himself, leading Billy by the hand. It was Billy, but the
most subdued Billy I ever saw, and I held out my arms and started for
him.
"Wait a minute, please, Molly," said the doctor in the voice he always
uses when he's punishing Billy and me. "Bill came to apologize to you
for being rude to your--your guest. He told me all about it and I think
he's sorry. Tell Mrs. Carter you are sorry, son." When that man speaks
to me as if I were just any old body else, I hate him so it is a wonder
I don't show it more than I do. But there was nothing to say and I
looked at Billy and Billy looked at me.
Then suddenly he stretched out his little arms to me and the dimples
winked at me from all over his darling face.
"Molly, Molly," he said with a perfect rapture of chuckles in his voice,
"now you look just as pretty as you do when you go to bed; all whity all
over. You can kiss my kiss-spot a hundred times while I bear-hug you
for that nice not-black dress," and before any stern person could have
stopped us I was on my knees on the grass kissing my fill from the
"kiss-spot" on the back of his neck, while he hugged all the starch out
of the summer-before-last.
And Doctor John sat down on the bench quick and laughed out loud one of
the very few times I ever heard him do it. He was looking down at us,
but I didn't laugh up into _his_ eyes. I was afraid. I felt it was
safer to go on kissing the kiss-spot for the present, anyway.
"Bill," he said, with his voice dancing, "that's the most effective
apology I ever heard. You were sorry to some point."
Then suddenly Billy stiffened right in my arms and looked me straight in
the face and said in the doctor's own brisk tones, even with his cupid
mouth set in the same straight line:
"I say I'm sorry, Molly, but damn that man and I'll git him yet!"
What could we say? What could we do? We didn't try. I busied myself in
tying the string on Billy's blouse that had come untied in the bear-hug
and the doctor suddenly discovered the letter on the bench. I saw him
see it without looking in his direction at all.
"And how many pounds are we nearer the string-bean state of existence,
Mrs. Molly?" he asked me before I had finished tying the blouse, in the
nicest voice in the world, fairly crackling with friendship and good
humor and hateful things like that. Why I should have wanted him to huff
over that letter is more than I can say. But I did; and he didn't.
"Over twenty, and most of the time I am so hungry I could eat Aunt
Adeline. I dream about Billy, fried with cream gravy," I answered, as I
kissed again the back of the head that was beginning to nod down against
my breast. Long shadows lay across the garden and the white-headed old
snow-ball was signaling out of the dusk to a Dorothy Perkins down
the walk in a scandalous way. At best, spring is just the world's
match-making old chaperon and ought to be watched. I still sat on the
grass and I began to cuddle Billy's bare knees in the skirt of my dress
so the chigres couldn't get at them.
"But, Mrs. Molly, isn't it worth it all?" asked the doctor as he bent
over toward us and looked down with something wonderful and kind in his
eyes that seemed to rest on us like a benediction. "You have been just
as plucky as a girl can be and in only a little over two months you have
grown as lightfooted and hearty as a boy. _I_ think nothing could
be lovelier than you are right now, but you can get off those other few
pounds if you want to. You know, don't you, that I have known how hard
some of it was and I haven't been able to eat as much as I usually do
thinking how hungry you are? But isn't it all worth it? I think it is.
Alfred Bennett is a very great man and it is right that he should have a
very lovely wife to go out into the world with him. And as lovely as you
are I think it is wonderful of you to make all this sacrifice to be
still lovelier for him. I am glad I can help you and it has taught me
something to see how--how faithful a woman can be across years--and then
in this smaller thing! Now give me Bill and you get your apple and
toast. Don't forget to take your letter in out of the dew." I sat
perfectly still and held Billy tighter in my arms as I looked up at his
father, and then after I had thought as long as I could stand it, I
spoke right out at him as mad as hops and I don't to this minute know
why.
"Nobody in the world ever doubted that a woman could be faithful if she
had anything to be faithful to," I said as I let him take Billy out of
my arms at last. "Faithfulness is what a woman flowers, only it takes a
_man_ to pick his posy." With which I marched into the house and
left him standing with Billy in his arms, I hope dumfounded. I didn't
look back to see. I always leave that man's presence so mad I can never
look back at him. And wouldn't it make any woman rage to have a man pick
out another man for her to be faithful to when she hadn't made any
decision about it her own self?
I wonder just how old Judge Wade is? I believe I will make up with Aunt
Adeline enough before I go to bed to find out why he has never married.
LEAF THIRD
MONUMENT OR TROUSSEAU?
Men are very strange people. They are like those horrible sums in
algebra that you think about and worry about and cry about and try to
get help from other women about, and then, all of a sudden, X works
itself out into perfectly good sense. Not that I thought much about Mr.
Carter, poor man! When he wasn't right around I felt it best to forget
him as much as I could, but it seems hard for other women to let you
forget either your husband or theirs.
I know now that I really never got any older than the poor, foolish,
eighteen-years' child that Aunt Adeline married off "safe", all the time
I was the "refuge" sort of wife. I would sit and listen while the other
wives talked over the men in utter bewilderment and most times terror,
then I would force myself to a little more forgetting and poor Mr.
Carter must have suffered the consequences. But all that was a mild sort
of exasperation to what a widow has to go through with in the matter
of--of, well I think hazing is about the best name to give it.
"Molly Carter," said Mrs. Johnson just day before yesterday, after the
white-dress, Judge-Wade episode that Aunt Adeline had gone to all the
friends up and down the street to be consoled about, "if you haven't got
sense enough to appreciate your present blissful condition somebody
ought to operate on your mind."
I was tempted to say, "Why not my heart?" I was glad she didn't know
how good that heart did feel under my tucker when the boy brought that
basket of fish from Judge Wade's fishing trip Saturday. I have firmly
determined not to blush any more at the thought of that gorgeous man--at
least outwardly.
"Don't you think it is very--very lonely to be a widow, Mrs. Johnson?" I
asked timidly to see what she would say about Mr. Johnson, who is really
lovely, I think. He gives me the gentlest understanding smile when he
meets me on the street of late weeks.
"Lonely, _lonely_, Molly? You talk about the married state exactly
like an old maid. Don't do it--it's foolish, and you will get the lone
notion really fastened in your mind and let some fool man find out that
is how you feel. Then it will be all over with you. I have only one
regret, and it is that if I ever should be a widow Mr. Johnson wouldn't
be here to see how quickly I turned into an old maid, by the grace of
God." Mrs. Johnson sews by assassinating the cloth with the needle, and
as she talked she was mending the sleeve of one of Mr. Johnson's shirts.
"I think an old maid is just a woman who has never been in love with a
man who loves her. Lots of them have been married for years," I said,
just as innocently as the soft face of a pan of cream, and went on
darning one of Billy's socks.
"Well, be that as it may, they are the blessed members of the women
tribe," she answered, looking at me sharply. "Now I have often told
Mr. Johnson--" but here we were interrupted in what might have been the
rehearsal of a glorious scrap by the appearance of Aunt Bettie Pollard,
and with her came a long, tall, lovely vision of a woman in the most
wonderful close clingy dress and hat that you wanted to eat on sight.
I hated her instantly with the most intense adoration that made me want
to lie down at her feet, and also made me feel like I had gained all the
more than twenty pounds that I have slaved off me and doubled them on
again. I would have liked to lead her that minute into Doctor John's
office and just to have looked at him and said one word--"string-bean!"
Aunt Betty introduced her as Miss Chester from Washington.
"Oh, my dear Mrs. Carter, how glad I am to meet you!" she said as she
towered over me in a willowy way, and her voice was lovely and cool
almost to slimness. "I am the bearer of so many gracious messages that
I am anxious to deliver them safely to you. Not six weeks ago I left
Alfred Bennett in Paris and really--really his greetings to you almost
amounted to steamer luggage. He came down to Cherbourg to see me off,
and almost the last thing he said to me was, 'Now, don't fail to see
Mrs. Carter as soon as you get to Hillsboro; and the more you see of her
the more you'll enjoy your visit to Mrs. Pollard.' Isn't he the most
delightful of men?" She asked me the question, but she had the most
wonderful way of seeming to be talking to everybody at one time, so
Mrs. Johnson got in the first answer.
"Delightful, nothing! But Al Bennett is a man of sense not to marry
any of the string of women I suppose he's got following him!" she said.
Miss Chester looked at her in a mild kind of wonder, but she went on
murdering Mr. Johnson's shirt-sleeve with the needle without noticing
the glance at all.
"Well, well, honey, I don't know about that," said Aunt Bettie as she
fanned and rocked her great, big, darling, fat self in the strong rocker
I always kept in the breezy angle of the porch for her. "Al is not old
enough to have proved himself entirely, and from what I hear--" she
paused with the big hearty smile that she always wears when she begins
to tease or match-make, and she does them both most of her time.
But at whom do you suppose she looked? Not me! Miss Chester! That was
cold tub number two for that day, and I didn't react as quickly as I
might, but when I did I was in the proper glow all over. When I revived
and saw the lovely pale blush on her face I felt like a cabbage-rose
beside a tea-bud. I was glad Aunt Adeline came out on the porch just
then so I could go in and tell Judy to bring out the iced tea and cakes.
When I came from the kitchen I stepped into my room and took out one of
Alfred's letters from the desk drawer and opened it at random, as you do
the Bible when you want to decide things, and put my finger down on a
line with my eyes shut This was what it was:
"--and all these years I have walked the world, blindfolded to its
loveliness with the blackness that came to me when I found that you--"
I didn't read any more, but shoved it back in a hurry and went on out on
the porch, comforted in a way, but feeling some more in sympathy with
Mrs Johnson than I had before Aunt Bettie and her guest from Washington
had interrupted our algebraic demonstration on the man subject. You
can't always be sure of the right answer to X in any proposition of
life; that is, a woman can't!
And, furthermore, I didn't like that next hour much, just as a sample of
life, for instance. Aunt Bettie had got her joining-together humor well
started, and right there before my face she made a present of every nice
man in Hillsboro to that lovely, distinguished, strange girl who could
have slipped through a bucket hoop if she had tried hard. I had to sit
there, listen to the presentations, watch her drink two tall delicious
glasses of tea full of sugar and consume without fear three of Judy's
puffy cakes, while I crumbled mine in secret over the banisters and set
half the glass of tea out of sight behind the wistaria vine.
It was bad enough to hear Aunt Bettie just offer her Tom, who, if he is
her own son, is my favorite cousin, but I believe the worst minute I
almost ever faced was when she began on the judge, for I could see from
Aunt Adeline's shoulder beyond Miss Chester how she was enjoying that,
and she added another distinguished ancestor to his pedigree every time
Aunt Bettie paused for breath. I couldn't say a word about the fish and
Aunt Adeline wouldn't! I almost loved Mrs. Johnson when she bit off a
thread viciously and said, "Humph," as she rose to start the tea-party
home.
That night I did so many exercises that at last I sank exhausted in a
chair in front of my mirror and put my head down on my arms and cried
the real tears you cry when nobody is looking. I felt terribly old and
ugly and dowdy and--widowed. It couldn't have been jealousy, for I just
love that girl. I want most awfully to hug her very slimness and it
was more what she might think of poor dumpy me than what any man in
Hillsboro, Tennessee, or Paris, France, could possibly feel on the
subject that hurt so hard. But then, looking back on it, I am afraid
that jealousy sheds feathers every night so you won't know him in the
morning, for something made me sit up suddenly with a spark in my eyes
and reach out to the desk for my pencil and check-book. It took me more
than an hour to figure it all up, but I went to bed a happier, though
in prospects a poorer woman.
It is strange how spending a man's money makes you feel more congenial
with him and as I sat in the cars on my way to the city early the next
morning I felt nearer to Mr. Carter than I almost ever did, alive or
dead. After this I shall always appreciate and admire him for the way he
made money, since, for the first time in my life, I fully realized what
it could buy. And I bought things!
First I went to see Madam Courtier for corsets. I had heard about her
and I knew it meant a fortune. But that didn't matter! She came in and
looked at me for about five minutes without saying a word and then she
ran her hands down and down over me until I could feel the flesh just
crawling off of me. It was delicious!
Then she and two girls in puffs and rats came in and did things to a
corset they laced on me that I can't even write down, for I didn't
understand the process, but when I looked in that long glass I almost
dropped on the floor. I wasn't tight and I wasn't stiff and I
looked--I'm too modest to write how lovely I really looked to myself.
I was spellbound with delight.
[Illustration: I was spellbound with delight]
Next I signed the check for three of those wonders with my head so in
the clouds I didn't know what I was doing, but I came to with a jolt
when the prettiest girl began to get me into that black taffeta bag I
had worn down to the city. I must have shrunk the whole remaining pounds
I had felt obliged to lose for Alfred and Ruth Chester from the horror I
felt when I looked at myself. The girl was really sympathetic and said
with a smile that was true kindness: "Shall I call a taxi for madam and
have it take her to Klein's? They have wonderful gowns by Rene all ready
to be fitted at short notice. Really, madam's figure is such that it
commands a perfect costume now." Men do business well, but when women
enter the field they are geniuses at money extracting. I felt myself
already clothed perfectly when that girl said my figure "commanded" a
proper dress. Of course, Klein pays Madam Courtier a commission for the
customers she passes right on to him. The one for me must have looked to
her like a real estate transaction.
I spent three days at the great Klein store, only going to the hotel to
sleep and most of the time I forgot to eat. Madam Rene must have been
Madam Courtier's twin sister in youth, and Madam Telliers in the hat
department was the triplet to them both. When women have genius it
breaks out all over them like measles and they never recover from it;
those women had the confluent kind. But I know that old Rene really
liked me, for when I blushed and asked her if they had a good beauty
doctor in the store she held up her hands and shuddered.
"Never, Madam, never _pour vous_. _Ravissant, charmant_--it is
to fool. Nevair! _Jamais, jamais de la vie!_" I had to calm her
down and she kissed my hand when we parted.
I thought Klein was going to do the same thing or worse when I signed
the check which would be good for a house and lot and motor-car for him,
but he didn't. Only he got even with me by saying: "And I am delighted
that the trousseau is perfectly satisfactory to you, Mrs. Carter."
That was an awful shock and I hope I didn't show it as I murmured:
"Perfectly, thank you."
The word "trousseau" can be spoken in a woman's presence for many years
with no effect, but it is an awful shock when she first _really_
hears it. I felt funny all afternoon as I packed those trunks for the
five o'clock train.
Yes, the word "trousseau" ought to have a definite surname after it
always and that's why my loyalty dragged poor Mr. Carter out into the
light of my conscience. The thinking of him had a strange effect on me.
I had laid out the dream in dark gray-blue rajah, tailored almost beyond
endurance, to wear home on the train and had thrown the old black
taffeta bag across the chair to give to the hotel maid, but the decision
of the session between conscience and loyalty made me pack the precious
blue wonder and put on once more the black rags of remembrance in a kind
of panic of respect.