dinner-party and I had a most royal good time. I always have had lots
of company, but mostly the spend-the-day kind with relatives, or more
relatives to supper. That's what most entertaining in Hillsboro is like,
but, as I say, once in a while the old slow pacer wakes up.
I'll never forget my first real dinner-party, as the flower girl for
Caroline Evans' wedding, when she married the Chicago millionaire, from
which Hillsboro has never yet recovered. I was sixteen, felt dreadfully
naked without a tucker in my dress, and saw Alfred for the first time in
evening clothes--his first. I can hardly stand thinking about how he
looked even now. I haven't been to very many dinner-parties in my life,
but from this time on I mean to indulge in them often. Candle-light,
pretty women's shoulders, black coat sleeves, cut glass and flowers are
good ingredients for a joy-drink, and why not?
But when I got to planning about the gorgeous food I wanted to give them
all, I got into what I feel came near being a serious trouble. It was
writing down the recipe for the nesselrode pudding they make in my
family that undid me. Suddenly hunger rose up from nowhere and gripped
me by the throat, gnawed me all over like a bone, then shook me until I
was limp and unresisting. I must have astralized myself down to the
pantry, for when I became conscious I found myself in company with a
loaf of bread, a plate of butter and a huge jar of jam.
I sat down by the long table by the window and slowly prepared to enjoy
myself. I cut off four slices and buttered them to an equal thickness
and then more slowly put a long silver spoon into the jam. I even paused
to admire in Judy's mirror over the table the effect of the cascade of
lace that fell across my arm and lost itself in the blue shimmer of old
Rene's masterpiece of a negligée, then deep down I buried the spoon in
the purple sweetness. I had just lifted it high in the air when out of
the lilac-scented dark of the garden came a laugh.
[Illustration: "Why Molly, Molly, Molly!"]
"Why, Molly, Molly, Molly!" drawled that miserable man-doctor as he came
and leaned on the sill right close to my elbow. The spoon crashed on the
table and I turned and crashed into words.
"You are cruel, cruel, John Moore, and I hate you worse than I ever did
before, if that is possible. I'm hungry, hungry to death, and now you've
spoiled it all! Go away before I wet this nice crisp bread and jam with
tears into a mush I'll have to eat with a spoon. You don't know what it
is to want something sweet so bad you are willing to steal it--from
yourself!" I fairly blazed my eyes down into his and moved as far away
from him as the table would let me.
"Don't I, Molly?" he asked softly, after looking straight in my eyes for
a long minute that made me drop my head until the blue bow I had tied on
the end of my long plait almost got into the scattered jam. Even at such
a moment as that I felt how glad old Rene would have been to have given
such a nice man as the doctor a treat like that blue silk
chef-d'oeuvre of hers. I was glad myself.
"Don't I, Peaches?" he asked again in a still softer voice. Again I had
that sensation of being against something warm and great and good like
your own mother's breast and I don't know how I controlled it enough not
to--to--
"Well, have some jam then," I managed to say with a little laugh as I
turned away and picked up the silver spoon.
"Thank you, I will, all of it and the bread and butter, too," he
answered, in that detestable friendly tone of voice as he drew himself
up and sat in the window. "Hustle, Peaches, if you are going to feed me,
for I'm ravenous. It took Sam Benson's wife the longest time to have the
shortest baby I ever experienced and I haven't had any supper. You have;
so I don't mind taking it all away from you."
"Supper," I sniffed as I spread the jam on those lovely, lovely slices
of bread and thick butter that I had fixed for my own self. "That
apple-toast combination tires me so now that I forget it if I can." As I
handed him the first slice of drippy lusciousness I turned my head away.
He thought it was from the expression of that jam, but it was from his
eyes.
"Slice up the whole loaf, Peaches, and let's get on a jam jag! Come with
me just this once and forget--forget--" He didn't finish his sentence
and I'm glad. We neither of us said anything more as I fed him that
whole loaf. I found that the bite I took off of each piece I had ready
for him when he finished with the one he had in hand satisfied me as
nothing I had ever eaten in all my life before had done, while at the
same time my nibbles soothed his conscience about robbing me.
His teeth are big and strong and white and his jaws work like machinery.
He is the strongest man I ever saw, and his gauntness is all muscle.
What is that glow a woman gets from feeding a hungry man whom she likes
with her own hands; and why should I want to be certain that he kissed
the lace on my sleeve as it brushed his face when I reached across him
to catch an inquisitive rose that I saw peeping in the window at us?
LEAF FIFTH
BLUE ABSINTHE
"The juice of a lemon in two glasses of cold water, to be drunk
immediately on wakening!" Page eleven! I've handed myself that lemon
every morning now until I am sensitive with myself about it. If there
was ever anybody "on the water wagon" it's I, and I have to sit on the
front seat from dawn to dusk to get in the gallon of water I'm supposed
to consume in that time. Sometime I'm going to get mixed up and try to
drink my bath if I don't look out. I dreamed night before last that I
was taking a bath in a glass of ice-cream soda-water and trying to hide
from Doctor John behind the dab of ice-cream that seemed inadequate for
food or protection. I haven't had even one glass for two months and I
woke up in a cold perspiration of embarrassment and raging hunger.
I don't know what I'm going to do about this book and I've got myself
into trouble about writing things besides records in it. He looked at me
this morning as coolly as if I was just anybody and said:
"I would like to see that record now, Mrs. Molly. It seems to me you are
about as slim as you want to be. How did you tip the scales last time
you weighed, and have you noticed any trouble at all with your heart?"
"I weigh one hundred and thirty-four pounds and I've got to melt and
freeze and starve off that four," I answered, ignoring the heart
question and also the question of producing this book. Wonder what he
would do if I gave it to him to read just as it is?
"How about the heart?" he persisted, and I may have imagined the smile
in his eyes for his mouth was purely professional. Anyway, I lowered my
lashes down on to my cheeks and answered experimentally:
"Sometimes it hurts." Then a cyclone happened to me.
"Come here to me a minute!" he said quickly and he turned me around and
put his head down between my shoulders and held me so tight against his
ear that I could hardly breathe.
"Expand your chest three times and breathe as deep as you can," he
ordered from against my back buttons. I expanded and breathed--pretty
quickly at that.
[Illustration: "Breathe as deep as you can"]
"Now hold your breath as long as you can," he commanded, and it fitted
my mood exactly to do so.
"Can't find anything," he said at last, letting me go and looking
carefully at my face. His eyes were all anxiety; and I liked it. "When
does it hurt you and how?" he asked anxiously.
"Moonlight nights and lonesomely," I answered before I could stop
myself, and what happened then was worse than any cyclone. He got white
for a minute and just looked at me as if I was a bug stuck on a pin,
then gave a short little laugh and turned to the table.
"I didn't understand you were joking," he said quietly.
That maddened me and I would have done anything to make him think
I was not the foolish thing he evidently had classified me as being.
I snatched at my mind and shook out a mixture of truth and lies that
fooled even myself and gave them to him, looking straight in his face.
I would have cracked all the ten commandments to save myself from his
contempt.
"I'm not joking," I said jerkily; "I _am_ lonesome. And worse than
being lonesome, I'm scared. I ought to have stayed just the quiet relict
of Mr. Carter and gone on to church meetings with Aunt Adeline and let
myself be fat and respectable; but I haven't got the character. You
thought I went to town to buy a monument, and I didn't; I bought enough
clothes for two brides, and now I'm scared to wear 'em, and I don't know
what you'll think when you see my bank-book. Everybody is talking about
me and that dinner-party Tuesday night, and Aunt Adeline says she can't
live in a house of mourning so desecrated any longer; she's going back
to the cottage. Aunt Bettie Pollard says that if I want to get married
I ought to do it to Mr. Wilson Graves because of the seven children and
then everybody would be so relieved that they are taken care of that
they would forget that Mr. Carter hasn't been dead quite one year yet.
Mrs. Johnson says I ought to be declared a minor and put as a ward to
you. I can't help Judge Wade's sending me flowers and Tom's sitting on
my front steps night and day. I'm not strong enough to carry him away
and murder him. I am perfectly miserable and I'm--"
"Now that'll do, Molly, just hush for a half-minute and let me talk to
you," said Doctor John as he took my hand in his and drew me near him.
"No wonder your heart hurts if it has got all that load of trouble on it
and well just get a little of that 'scare' off. You put yourself in my
hands and you are to do just as I tell you, and I say--forget it! Come
with me while I make a call. It is a long drive and I'm--I'm lonesome
sometimes myself."
I saw the worst was over and I breathed freely again, but I had talked
so much truth in that fiction that I felt just as I said I did, which is
a slightly unnatural feeling for a woman. There was nothing for it but
to go with him, and I wanted to most awfully.
To my dying day I'll never forget that little house, way out on the Cane
Run Pike, he took me to in his shabby little car. Just two tiny rooms,
but they were clean and quiet and a girl with the sweetest face I ever
saw lay in the bed with her eyes bright with pride and a tiny, tiny
little bundle close beside her. The young farmer was red with
embarrassment and anxiety.
"She's all right to-day, but she worries because she don't think I can
tend to the baby right," he said; and he did look helpless. "Her mother
had to go home for two days, but is coming to-morrow. I dasn't undress
and wash the youngster myself. It won't hurt him to stay bundled up
until granny comes, will it, Doc?"
"Not a bit," answered Doctor John in his big comforting voice.
But I looked at the girl and I understood her. She wanted that baby
clean and fresh even if it was just five days old, and I felt all of a
sudden terribly capable. I picked up the bundle and went into the other
room with it where a kettle was boiling on the stove and a large bucket
by the door. I found things by just a glance from her, and the hour I
spent with that small baby was one of the most delicious of all my life.
I never was left entirely to myself with one before and I did all I
wanted to this one, guided by instinct and desire. He slept right
through and was the darlingest thing I ever saw when I laid him back on
the bed by her. I never looked in Doctor John's direction once, though
I felt him all the time.
But on the way home I gave myself the surprise of my life! Suddenly
I turned my face against his sleeve and cried as I never had before.
I felt safe, for it is a cliff road and he had to drive carefully.
However, he managed to press that one arm against my cheek in a way that
comforted me into stopping when I saw we were near town. I got out of
the car at the garage and walked away through the garden home without
looking in his direction at all. I never seem to be able to look at him
as I do at other people. We hadn't spoken two words since we had left
the little house in the woods with that happy-faced girl in it. He has
more sense than just a man.
It was almost dusk and I stopped in the garden a minute to pull the dirt
closer around some of the bachelor's-buttons that had "popped" the
ground some weeks ago. Thinking about them made me regain my spirits and
I went on in the house to be scolded for whatever Aunt Adeline had
thought up while I was gone to do it to me about. Judy told me with her
broadest grin that she had gone down to her sister-in-law's for supper
and I sat down on the steps with a sigh of relief.
Some days are like tin cocoanut graters that everybody uses to grate you
against and this was one for me. For an hour I sat and grated my own
self against Alfred's letter that had come in the morning. I realized
that I would just have to come to some sort of decision about what I was
going to do, for he wrote that he was to sail in a day or two, and ships
do travel so fast these days.
I love him and always have, of that I am sure. He offers me the most
wonderful life in the world and no woman could help being proud to
accept it. I am lonely, more lonely than I was even willing to confess
to Doctor John. I can't go on living this way any longer. Ruth Chester
has made me see that if I want Alfred it will be now or never
and--quick. I know now that she loves him, and she ought to have her
show if I don't want him. The way she idolizes and idealizes him is a
marvel of womanly stupidity.
Some women like to collect men's hearts and hide them away from other
women on cold storage and the helpless things can't help themselves.
I have contempt for that sort of butcher, and I love Ruth!
It's my duty to look the matter in the face before I look in
Alfred's--and _decide_. If not Alfred, what then?
First--no husband. That's out of the question! I'm not strong-minded
enough to crank my own motor-car and study woman's suffrage. I prefer
to suffer at the hands of some cruel man and trust to beguiling him into
doing just as I say. I like men, can't help it, and want one for my own.
I don't count poor Mr. Carter.
Second--if not Alfred, who? Judge Wade is so delightful that I flutter
at the thought, but his mother is Aunt Adeline's own best friend and
they have ideas in common. She is so religious that living with her
would be like having the sacrament for daily bread. Still, living with
him might have adventures. I never saw such eyes! The girl he wanted to
marry died of tuberculosis and he wears a locket with her in it yet. I'd
like to reward him for such faithfulness with a nice husky wife to wear
instead of the locket. But then Alfred's been faithful too! I look at
Ruth Chester and realize how faithful, and my heart melts to him in my
breast--my hips have almost all melted away, too, so I had better keep
the heart cold enough to handle if I want anything left at all for him
to come home to.
In some ways Tom Pollard is the most congenial man I ever knew. You have
to say "don't" to him all the time, but what woman doesn't like a little
impertinence once in a while? I flavor all Tom's dare-devil kisses with
kinship when I feed them to my conscience, and I truly try to make him
be serious about the important things in life like going to church with
his mother and working all day, even if he is rich. I wish he wasn't so
near kin to me! Now, there, I feel in Ruth Chester's way again! One of
the things that keeps the devil so busy is taking helpless widows to the
heights of knowledge and showing them kingdoms of men that girls never
dream even exist. If all women could have been born with widow-eyes,
things would run much more smoothly along the marriage and
giving-in-marriage line. And the poor men are most of them as ignorant
as girls about what to do.
I suppose I really would be doing a righteous thing to marry Mr. Graves,
and I would adore all those children to start with, but I know Billy
wouldn't get on with them at all. I can't even consider it on his
account, but I'll let the nice old chap come on for a few times more to
see me, for he really is interesting and we have suffered things in
common. Mrs. Graves lacked the kind of temperament poor Mr. Carter did.
I'd like to make it all up to him, but if Billy wouldn't be happy, that
settles it, and I don't know how good his boys are. I couldn't have
Billy corrupted.
And so, as there is nobody else exactly suitable in town, it all simmers
down to one or the other of these or Alfred. In my heart I knew that I
couldn't hesitate a minute--and in the flash of a second I
_decided_. Of course I love Alfred and I'll take him gladly and be
the wife he has waited for all these six lonely years. I'll make
everything up to him if I have to diet to keep thin for him the rest of
my life. I likely will have that very thing to do and I get weak at the
idea. Before I burn this book I'll have to copy it all out and be
chained to it for life. At the thought my heart dropped like a sinker to
my toes; but I hauled it up to its normal place with picturing to myself
how Alfred would look when he saw me in that old blue muslin done over
into a Rene wonder. However, old heart would show a strange propensity
for sinking down into my slippers without any reason at all. Tears were
even coming into my eyes when Tom suddenly came over the fence and
picked me and the heart up together and put us into an adventure of the
first water.
"Molly," he said in the most nonchalant manner imaginable, "we've got a
dandy, strolling, gipsy band up at the hotel; the dining-room floor is
all waxed and I'm asking for the first dance with the young and radiant
Mrs. Carter. Get into a glad rag and don't keep me waiting."
"Tom," I gasped!
"Oh, be a sport, Moll, and don't take water! You said you would wake up
this town, and now do it. It seems twenty instead of six years since I
had my arms around you to music and I'm not going to wait any longer.
Everybody is there and they can't all dance with Miss Chester."
That settled it--I couldn't let a visiting girl be danced to death. Of
course I had planned to make a dignified début under my own roof, backed
up by the presence of ancestral and marital rosewood, silver and
mahogany, as a widow should, but _duty_ called me to de-weed myself
amidst the informality of an impromptu dance at the little town hotel.
And in the fifteen minutes Tom gave me I de-weeded to some purpose and
flowered out to still more. I never do anything by halves.
In that--that--trousseau old Rene had made me there was one, what she
called "simple" lingerie frock. And it looked just as simple as the
check it called for, a one and two ciphers back of it. It was of linen
as sheer as a cobweb, real lace and tiny delicious incrustations of
embroidery. It fitted in lines that melted into curves, had enticements
in the shape of a long sash and a dangerous breast-knot of shimmery
blue, the color of my eyes, and I looked new-born in it.
I'm glad that poor Mr. Carter was so stern with me about rats and things
in my hair, now that they are out of style, for I've got lots of my own
left in consequence of not wearing other peoples'. It clings and coils
to my head just any old way that looks as if I had spent an hour on it.
That made me able to be ready to go down to Tom in only ten minutes over
the time he gave me.
I stopped on next to the bottom step in the wide old hall and called Tom
to turn out the light for me, as Judy had gone.
I have turned out that light lots of times, but I felt it best to let
Tom see me in a full light when we were alone. It is well I did! At
first it stunned him,--and it is a compliment to any woman to stun Tom
Pollard. But Tom doesn't stay stunned long and I only succeeded in
suppressing him after he had landed two kisses on my shoulder, one on my
hair and one on the back of my neck.
"Molly," he said, standing off and looking at me with shining eyes, "you
are one lovely dream. Your shoulders are flushed velvet, your cheeks are
peaches under cream, your eyes are blue absinthe and your mouth a red
devil. Come on before I get drunk looking at you." I didn't know whether
I liked that or not and turned down the light quickly myself and went to
the gate hurriedly. Tom laughed and behaved himself.
[Illustration: "Molly, you are one lovely dream"]
Everybody in town was up to the hotel and everybody was nice to me,
girls and all. There is a bunch of lovely posy girls in this town and
they were all in full flower. Most of the men were college boys home for
vacation, and while they are a few years younger than me, I have been
friends with them for always and they know how I dance. I didn't even
get near enough to the wall to know it was there, though I was conscious
of Aunt Bettie and Mrs. Johnson sitting on it at one end of the room,
and every time I passed them I flirted with them until I won a smile
from them both. I wish I could be sure of hearing Mrs. Johnson tell Aunt
Adeline all about it.
And it was well I did come to save Ruth Chester from a dancing death,
for she is as light as a feather and sails on the air like thistle-down.
I felt sorry for Tom, for when he danced with me he could see her, and
when he danced with her I pouted at him, even over Judge Wade's arm. I
verily believe it was from being really rattled that he asked little Pet
Buford to dance with him--by mistake as it were. After that if Pet
breathed a single strain of music out of his arms I didn't see it. I
knew that gone expression on his face and it made me feel so lonesome
that I was more gracious to the judge than was exactly safe. He dances
just as magnificently as he exists in life and it is a kind of
ceremonial to do it with him. The boys all wore white flannels, and most
of the men, but the judge was as formally dressed as he would have been
in mid-winter, and I wondered if Alfred could be half as distinguished
to look at. I suppose my eyes must have been telling on me about how
grand I thought he was looking because he--well, I was rather relieved
when one of the boys took me out of his arms for a good, long, swinging
two-step.
And how I did enjoy it all, every single minute of it! My heart beat
time to the music as if it would never tire of doing so. Miss Chester
and I exchanged little laughs and scraps of conversation in between
times and I fell deeper and deeper in love with her. Every pound I have
melted and frozen and starved off me has brought me nearer to her and I
just _can't_ think about how I am going to hurt her in a few days
now. I put the thought from me and so let myself swing out into
thoughtlessness with one of the boys. And after that I really didn't
know with whom I was dancing, I began to get so intoxicated with it all.
I never heard musicians play better or get more of the spirit of dance
in their music than those did to-night. They had just given us the
most lovely swinging things, one after another, when suddenly they all
stopped and the leader drew his bow across his violin. Never in all my
life have I ever heard anything like the call of that waltz from that
gipsy's strings. It laughed you a signal and you felt yourself follow
the first strain.
Just then somebody happened to take me from whomever I was with and I
caught step and glided off the universe. The strongest arms that I had
felt that evening--or ever--held me and I didn't have to look up to see
who it was. I don't know why I knew but I did. I wasn't clasped so very
close to him or left to float by myself an inch; I was just a part of
him like the arms themselves or the hand that mine molded into. And
while that wonder-music teased and cajoled and mocked and rocked and
sobbed and throbbed, I laid my cheek against his coat sleeve and gave
myself away, I didn't care to whom.
Again that strange sense of some wonderful eternal good came to me and I
found myself humming Billy's little "soul to keep" prayer against the
doctor's sleeve to the tune of that magic waltz. I had never danced with
him before, of course, but I felt as if I had been doing it always, and
I melted in his arms as that baby had wilted to his mother out in the
cabin a few hours earlier and I don't see how such happiness as that
_could_ stop. But with a soft entreating wail the music came to an
end and there the doctor was, smiling down into my face with his
whimsical friendly smile that woke me up all over.
"Somebody has stolen a rose from the Carter garden and brought it to the
dance," he said with a laugh that was for me alone.
"No," I flashed back, "a string-bean." And with that I danced off again
with the judge, while the doctor disappeared through the door, and I
heard the chuck of his car as it whirled away. He had just stopped in
for a second to see the fun and God had given me that gipsy waltz with
him, because He knew I needed something like that in my life to keep for
always.