planning for months to keep up conversation with Aunt Adeline, than wear
that dress again. I felt conscience reprove me once more with loyalty
looking on in disapproval as I buttoned the old thing up for the last
time, because I really ought to have stayed over a day to buy that
monument, but--to tell the truth I wanted to see Billy so desperately
that his "sleep-place" above my heart hurt as if it might have prickly
heat break out at any minute.
So I hurried and stuffed the gray-blue darling in the top tray, lapped
old black taffeta around my waist and belted it in with a black belt off
a new green linen I had made for morning walks, down to the drug store
on the public square, I suppose. That is about the only morning
dissipation in Hillsboro that I can think of, and it all depends on whom
you meet, how much of a dissipation it is.
The next thing that happens after you have done a noble deed is, you
either regard it as a reward of virtue or as a punishment for having
been foolish. I felt both ways when Judge Wade came down the car aisle,
looking so much grander than any other man in sight that I don't see how
they stand him ever. At that minute the noble black-taffeta deed felt
foolish, but at the next minute I thanked my lucky stars for it.
It is nice to watch for a person to catch sight of you if you feel sure
how they are going to take it and somehow in this case I felt sure. I
was not disappointed, for his smile broke his face up into a joy-laugh.
Off came his hat instantly so I could catch a glimpse of the fascinating
frost over his temples, and with a positive sigh of rapture he subsided
into the seat beside me. I turned with an echo smile all over me when
suddenly his face became grave and considerate, and he looked at me as
all the men in Hillsboro have been doing ever since poor Mr. Carter's
funeral.
"Mrs. Carter," he said very kindly, in a voice that pitched me out of
the car window and left me a mile behind on the track, all by myself,
"I wish I had known of your sad errand to town so I could have offered
you some assistance in your selection. You know we have just had our lot
in the cemetery finally arranged and I found the dealers in memorial
stones very confusing in their ideas and designs. Mrs. Henderson just
told my mother of your absence from home last night, and I could only
come down to the city for the day on important business or I would have
arranged to see you. I hope you found something that satisfied you."
What's a woman going to say when she has a tombstone thrown in her face
like that? I didn't say anything, but what I thought about Aunt Adeline
filled in a dreadful pause.
Perfectly dumb and quiet I sat for an awful space of time and wondered
just what I was going to do. Could a woman lie a monument into her suit
case? It was beyond me at that speaking and the Molly that is ready for
life quick, didn't want to. I shut my eyes, counted three to myself as I
do when I go over into the cold tub, and told him all about it. We both
got a satisfactory reaction and I never enjoyed myself so much as that
before.
I understand now why Judge Wade has had so many women martyr themselves
over him and live unhappily ever afterward, as everybody says Henrietta
Mason is doing. He's a very inspiring man and he fairly bristles with
fascinations. Some men are what you call taking and they take you if
they want you, while others are drawing and after you are drawn to them
they will consider the question of taking you. The judge is like that.
In the meantime it tingles me up to a very great degree to have a man
use his eyes on me as it is the privilege of only womankind to do, and I
feel that it will be good for his judgeship for me to let him "draw" me
at least a little way. I may get hurt, but I shall at least have an
interesting time of it. I started right then and got results, for he
stopped under the old lilac bush that leans over my side gate and kissed
my hand. Old Lilac shook a laugh of perfume all over us and I believe
signaled the event at the top of his bough to the white clump on the
other side of the garden. I'm glad Aunt Adeline isn't in the flower
fraternity or sorority. Suppose she had seen or heard!
And it didn't take many minutes for me to slip into old
summer-before-last--also for the last time inside of those buttons--and
run through the garden, my heart singing, "Billy, Billy," in a perfect
rapture of tune. I ran past the office door and found him in his cot
almost asleep and we had a bear reunion in the rocker by the window that
made us both breathless.
"What did you bring me, Molly?" he finally kissed under my right ear.
"A real base-ball and bat, lover, and an engine with five cars, a rake
and a spade and a hoe, two blow-guns that pop a new way and something
that squirts water and some other things. Will that be enough?" I hugged
him up anxiously, for sometimes he is hard to please and I might not
have got the very thing he wanted.
"Thank you, Molly, all them things is what I want, but you oughter brung
more'n that for three days not being here with me." Did any woman ever
have a more lovely lover than that? I don't know how long I should have
rocked him in the twilight if Doctor John's voice hadn't come across the
hall in command.
"Put him down now, Mrs. Molly, and come and say other how-do-you-does,"
he called softly.
It was a funny glad-to-see-him I felt as I came into the office where he
was standing over by the window looking out at my garden in its twilight
glow. I think it is wrong for a woman to let her imagination kiss a man
on the back of his neck even if she has known for some time that there
is a little drake-tail lock of hair there just like his own son's. I
gave him my hand and a good deal more of a smile and a blush than I
intended.
He very far from kissed the hand; he held it just long enough to turn me
around into the light and give me one long looking-over from head to
feet.
"Just where does that corset press you worst?" he asked in the tone of
voice he uses to say "poke out your tongue." So much of my Tennessee
shooting-blood rose to my face that it is a wonder it didn't drip; but I
was cold enough to have hit at forty paces if I had had a shooting-iron
in my hand. As it was the coldness was the only missile that I had, but
I used it to some effect.
"I am making a call on a friend, Doctor Moore, and not a consultation
visit to my physician," I said, looking into his face as though I had
never seen him before.
"I beg your pardon, Molly," he exclaimed and his face was redder than
mine and then it went white with mortification. I couldn't stand that.
"Don't do that way!" I exclaimed, and before I knew it I had taken
hold of his hand and had it in both of mine. "I know I look as if I
was shrunk or laced, but I'm not! I was going to tell you all about
it and show it to you. I'm really inches bigger in the right place and
just--just 'controlled', the woman called it, in the wrong place. Please
feel me and see," and I offered myself to him for examination in the
most regardless way. He's not at all like other people.
The blood came back into his face and he laughed as he gave me a little
shake that pushed me away from him. "Don't you ever scare me like that
again, child, or it might be serious," he said in the Billy-and-me tone
of voice that I like some, only--
"I never will," I said in a hurry; "I want you to ask me anything in the
world you want to and I'll always do it."
"Well, let me take you home through the garden then--and, yes, I believe
I'll stay to break a muffin with Mrs. Henderson. Don't you want to tell
me what a little girl like you did in a big city and--and read me part
of that London letter I saw the postman give Judy this afternoon?"
Again I ask myself the question why his friendliness to Alfred Bennett's
letters always makes me so instantly cross.
LEAF FOURTH
SCATTERED JAM
Sleep is one of the most delightful and undervalued amusements known
to the human race. I have never had enough yet and every second of time
that I'm not busy with something interesting I curl up on the bed and
go dream hunting--only I sleep too hard to do much catching. But this
torture book found that out on me and stopped it the very first thing on
page three. The command is to sleep as little as possible to keep the
nerves in a good condition,--"eight hours at the most and seven would
be better." What earthly good would a seven-hour nap do me? I want ten
hours to sleep and twelve if I get a good tired start. To see me stagger
out of my perfectly nice bed at six o'clock every morning now would
wring the sternest heart with compassion and admiration at my
faithfulness--to whom?
Yes, it was the day after poor Mr. Carter's funeral that Aunt Adeline
moved up here into my house and settled herself in the big south room
across the hall from mine. Her furniture weighs a ton each piece, and
Aunt Adeline is not light herself in disposition. The next morning when
I went in to breakfast she sat in the "vacant chair" in a way that made
me see that she was obviously trying to fill the vacancy. I am sorry she
worried herself about that. Anyway, it made me take a resolve. After
breakfast I went into the kitchen to speak to Judy.
"Judy," I said, looking past her head, "my health is not very good and
you can bring my breakfast to me in bed after this." Poor Mr. Carter
always wanted breakfast on the stroke of seven, and me at the same time,
though he rarely got me. Judy has two dead husbands and she likes a
ginger-colored barber down-town. Also her mother is our washerwoman
and influenced by Aunt Adeline. Judy understands everything I say to
her. After I had closed the door I heard a laugh that sounded like a
war-whoop, and I smiled to myself. But that was before my martyrdom to
this book had begun. I get up now!
But the day after I came from the city I lay in bed just as long as I
wanted to and ignored the thought of the exercises and deep breathing
and the icy unsympathetic tub. I couldn't even take very much interest
in the lonely egg on the lonely slice of dry toast. I was thinking about
things.
Hillsboro is a very peculiar little speck on the universe; even more
peculiar than being like a hen. It is one of the oldest towns in
Tennessee and the moss on it is so thick that it can't be scratched off
except in spots. But it has a lot of racehorse and distillery money in
it and when it gets poked up by anything unusual it takes a gulp of its
own alcoholic atmosphere and runs away on its own track at a two-five
gait, shedding moss as it goes. It hasn't had a real joy-race for a long
time and I felt that it needed it. I rolled over and laughed into my
pillow.
The subject of the conduct of widows is a serious one. Of all the things
old Tradition is most set about it is that, and what was decided to be
the proper thing a million years ago this town still dictates shall be
done, and spends a good deal of its time seeing its directions carried
out. For a year after the funeral they forget about the poor bereaved
and when they do remember her they speak to and of her in the same tones
of voice they used at the obsequies. Then sooner or later some neighbor
is sure to see some man walk home from church with her or hear some old
bachelor's voice on her front porch. Mr. Cain took Mrs. Caruther's
little Jessie up in his buggy and helped her out at her mother's gate
just before last Christmas, and if the poor widow hadn't acted quick the
town would have noticed them to death before he proposed to her. They
were married the day after New Year's and she lost lots of good friends
because she didn't give them more time to talk about it.
I don't intend to run any risk of losing my friends that way and I want
them to have all the good time they can get out of it. I'm going to
serve out mint-juleps of excitement until the dear old place is running
as it did when it was a two-year-old. Why get mad when people are
interested in you? It's a compliment after all and just gives them more
to think about. I remembered the two trunks across the hall and hugged
my knees up under by chin with pleasure at the thought of the town-talk
they contained.
Then just as I had got the first plan well-going and was deciding
whether to wear the mauve meteor or the white chiffon with the rosebud
embroidery as a first julep for my friends, a sweetness came in through
my window that took my breath away and I lay still with my hand over my
heart and listened. It was Billy singing right under my window, and I've
never heard him do it before in all his five years. It was the dearest
old-fashioned tune ever written and Billy sang the words as distinctly
as if he had been a boy chorister doing a difficult recitative. My heart
beat so it shook the lace on my breast like a breeze from heaven as he
took the high note and then let it go on the last few words.
"If you love me, Molly, darling,
Let your answer be a kiss!"
A confused recollection of having heard the words and tune sung by my
mother when I was at the rocking age myself brought the tears to my eyes
as I flew to the window and parted the curtains. If you heard a little
boy-angel singing at your casement wouldn't you expect a cherubim face
upturned with heaven-lights all over it? Billy's face was upturned as he
heard me draw the shade, but it was streaked like a wild Indian's with
decorations of brown mud and he held a long slimy fish-worm on the end
of a stick while he wiped his other grimy hand down the front of his
linen blouse.
[Illustration: I lifted him into my arms]
"Say, Molly, look at the snake I brunged you!" he exclaimed as he came
close under the sill, which is not high from the ground. "If you put
your face down to the mud and sing something to 'em they'll come outen
they holes. A doodle-bug comed, too, but I couldn't ketch 'em both. Lift
me up and I can put him in the water-glass on your table." He held up
one muddy paddie to me and promptly I lifted him up into my arms. From
the embrace in which he and the worm and I indulged my lace and dimity
came out much the worse.
"That was a lovely song you sang about 'Molly, darling', Billy," I said.
"Where did you hear it?"
"That's a good bug-song, Molly, and I bet I can git a lizard with it,
too, if I sing it right low." He began to squirm out of my arms toward
the table and the glass.
"Who taught it to you, sugar-sweet?" I persisted as I poured water in on
the squirming worm under his direction.
"Nobody taught it to me. Doc sings it to me when Tilly, nurse, nor you
ain't there to put me to bed. He don't know no good songs like _Roll,
Jordan, Roll_, or _Hot Times_ or _Twinkle_. I go to sleep quick 'cause
he makes me feel tired with his slow tune what's only good for bugs. Git
a hair-pin for me to poke him with, Molly, quick!"
I found the hair-pin and I don't know why my hand trembled as I handed
it to Billy. As soon as he got it he climbed out the window, glass, bug
and all, and I saw him and the red setter go down the garden walk
together in pursuit of the desired lizard, I suppose. I closed the
blinds and drew the curtains again and flung myself on my pillow.
Something warm and sweet seemed to be sweeping over me in great waves
and I felt young and close up to some sort of big world-good. It was
delicious and I don't know how long I would have stayed there just
feeling it if Judy hadn't brought in my letter.
He had written from London, and it was many pages of wonderful things
all flavored with me. He told me about Miss Chester and what good
friends they were, and how much he hoped she would be in Hillsboro when
he got here. He said that a great many of her dainty ways reminded him
of his "own slip of a girl", especially the turn of her head like a
"flower on its stem." At that I got right out of bed like a jack jumping
out of a box and looked at myself in the mirror.
There is one exercise here on page twenty that I hate worst of all. You
screw up your face tight until you look like a Christmas mask to get
your neck muscles taut and then wobble your head around like a new-born
baby until it swims. I did that one twenty extra times and all the
others in proportion to make up for those two hours in bed. Hereafter
I'll get up at the time directed on page three, or maybe earlier. It
frightens me to think that I've got only a few weeks more to turn from a
cabbage-rose into a lily. I won't let myself even think "luscious peach"
and "string-bean." If I do, I get warm and happy all over and let up on
myself. I try when I get hungry to think of myself in that blue muslin
dress.
I haven't been really willing before to write down in this torture
volume that I took that garment to the city with me and what Madam Rene
did to it--made it over into the loveliest thing I ever saw, only I
wouldn't let her alter the size one single inch. I'm honorable as all
women are at peculiar times. I think she understood, but she seemed not
to, and worked a miracle on it with ribbon and lace. I've put it away on
the top shelf of a closet, for it is torment to look at it.
You can just take any old recipe for a party and mix up a début for a
girl, but it takes more time to concoct one for a widow, especially if
it is for yourself. I spent all the rest of the day doing almost nothing
and thinking until I felt lightheaded. Finally I had just about given up
any idea of a blaze and had decided to leak out in general society as
quietly as my clothes would let me, when a real conflagration was
lighted inside me.
If Tom Pollard wasn't my own first cousin I would have loved him
desperately, even if I am a week older than he. He was about the
only oasis in my marriage mirage, though I don't think anybody would
think of calling him at all green. He never stopped coming to see me
occasionally, and Mr. Carter liked him. He was the first man to notice
the white ruche I sewed in the neck of my old black taffeta four or five
months ago and he let me see that he noticed it out of the corner of his
eyes even right there in church, under Aunt Adeline's very elbow. He
makes love unconsciously and he flirts with his own mother. As soon as
I've made this widowhood hurdle--well, I'm going to spend a lot of time
buying tobacco with him in his Hup runabout, which sounds as if it was
named for himself.
And when that conflagration was lighted in me about my début, Tom did
it. I was sitting peaceably on my own front steps, dressed in the
summer-before-last that Judy washes and irons every day while I'm
deciding how to hand out the first sip of my trousseau to the neighbors,
when Tom, in a dangerous blue-striped shirt, with a tie that melted into
it in tone, blew over my hedge and landed at my side. He kissed the lace
ruffle on my sleeve while I reproved him severely and settled down to
enjoy him. But I didn't have such an awfully good time as I generally do
with him. He was too full of another woman, and even a first cousin can
be an exasperation in that condition.
"Now, Mrs. Molly, truly did you ever see such a peach as she is?" he
demanded after I had expressed more than a dozen delighted opinions of
Miss Chester. His use of the word "peach" riled me and before I stopped
to think, I said: "She reminds me more of a string-bean."
"Now, Molly, don't be mean just because old Wade has got her out driving
behind the grays after kissing your hand under the lilacs yesterday,
which, praise be, nobody saw but little me! I'm not sore, why should you
be? Aren't you happy with me?"
I withered him with a look, or rather _tried_ to wither him, for
Tom is no Mimosa bud.
"The way that girl has started in to wake up this little old town
reminds me of the feeling you get under your belt seven minutes after
you've sipped an absinthe frappé for the first time--you are liable for
a good jag and don't know it," he continued enthusiastically. "Let's
don't let the folks know that they are off until I get everybody in a
full swing of buzz over my queen." I had never seen Tom so enthusiastic
over a girl before and I didn't like it. But I decided not to let him
know that, but to get to work putting out the Chester blaze in him and
starting one on my own account.
"That's just what I'm thinking about, Tom," I said with a smile that was
as sweet as I could make it, "and as she came with messages to me from
one of my best old friends I think I ought to do something to make her
have a good time. I was just planning a gorgeous dinner-party I want to
have for her when you came so suddenly. Do you think we could arrange it
for Tuesday evening?"
"Lord love us, Molly, don't knock the town down like that! Let 'em have
more than a week to get used to this white rag of a dress you've been
waving in their faces for the last few days. Go slow!"
"I've been going so slow for so many years that I've turned around and
I'm going fast backward," I said with a blush that I couldn't help.
"Help! Let my kinship protect me!" exclaimed Tom in alarm, and he
pretended to move an inch away from me.
"Yes," I said slowly and as I looked out of the corner of my eyes from
under the lashes that Tom himself had once told me were "too long and
black to be tidy," I saw that he was in a condition to get the full
shock. "If anybody wakes up this town it will be I," I said as I flung
down the gauntlet with a high head.
"Here, Molly, here are the keys of my office, and the spark-plug to the
Hup; you can cut off a lock of my hair, and if Judy has got a cake I'll
eat it out of your hands. Shall it be California or Nova Scotia? And I
prefer _my_ bride served in light gray tweed." Tom really is
adorable and I let him snuggle up just one cousinly second, then we both
laughed and began to plan what Tom was horrible enough to call the
resurrection razoo. But I kept that delicious rose-embroidered treasure
all to myself. I wanted him to meet it entirely unprepared.
I was glad we had both got over our excitement and were sitting
decorously at several inches' distance apart when the judge drew the
grays up to the gate and we both went down to the sidewalk to ask him
and the lovely long lady to come in. They couldn't; but we stood and
talked to them long enough for Mrs. Johnson to get a good look at us
from across the street and I was afraid I would find Aunt Adeline in a
faint when I went into the house.
Miss Chester was delightfully gracious about the dinner--I almost called
it the début dinner--and the expression on the judge's face when he
accepted! I was glad she was sitting sidewise to him and couldn't see.
Some women like to make other women unhappy, but I think it is best for
you to keep them blissfully unconscious until you get what you want.
Anyway, I like that girl all over and I can't see that her neck is so
absolutely impossibly flowery. However, I think she might have been a
little more considerate about discussing Alfred's London triumph over
the Italian mission. As a punishment I let Tom put his arm around my
waist as we stood watching them drive off and then was sorry for the
left gray horse that shied and came in for a crack of the judge's
irritated whip.
Then I refused to let Tom come inside the gate and he went down the
street whistling, only when he got to the purple lilac he turned and
kissed his hand to me. That, Mrs. Johnson just couldn't stand and she
came across the street immediately and called me back to the gate.
"You are tempting Providence, Molly Carter," she exclaimed decidedly.
"Don't you know Tom Pollard is nothing but a fly-up-the-creek? As a
husband he'd chew the rope and run away like a puppy the first time your
back was turned. Besides being your cousin, he's younger than you. What
do you mean?"
"He's just a week younger, Mrs. Johnson, and I wouldn't tie him for
worlds, even if I married him," I said meekly. Somehow I like Mrs.
Johnson enough to be meek with her and it always brings her to a higher
point of excitement.
"Tie, nonsense; marrying is roping in with ball and chain, to my mind.
And a week between a man and a woman in their cradles gets to be fifteen
years between them and their graves. I'm going to make you the subject
of a silent prayer at the next missionary meeting, and I must go home
now to see that Sally cooks up a few of Mr. Johnson's crotchets for
supper." And she began to hurry away.
"I don't believe you'll be able to make it a 'silent' session about me,
Mrs. Johnson," I called after her, and she laughed back from her own
front gate. Marriage is the only worm in the bud of Mrs. Johnson's life,
and her laugh has a snap to it even if it is not very sugary sweet.
When I told Judy about the dinner-party and asked her to get the yellow
barber to come help her and her nephew wait on the table she grinned
such a wide grin that I was afraid of being swallowed. She understood
that Aunt Adeline wouldn't be interested in it until I had time to tell
her all about it. Anyway, she will be going over to Springfield on a
pilgrimage to see Mr. Henderson's sister next week. She doesn't know it
yet; but I do.