though he doesn't know it yet. I am going to take it as a sign that life
for us is going to be brilliant and gay and full of laughter and love.
I haven't had Billy in my arms to-day and I don't know how I shall ever
get myself to sleep if I let myself think about it. His sleep-place on
my breast aches. It is a comfort to think that the great big God
understands the women folk that He makes, even if they don't understand
themselves.
LEAF SIXTH
THE RESURRECTION RAZOO
Most parties are just bunches of selfish people who go off in the
corners and have good times all by themselves, but in Hillsboro,
Tennessee, it is not that way. Everybody that is not invited helps the
hostess get ready and have nice things for the others, and sometimes I
think they really have the best time of all.
This morning Aunt Bettie came up my front steps before breakfast with a
large basketful of things for my dinner and I wondered what I would have
collected to be served to those people by the time all my neighbors had
made their prize contributions. It took Aunt Bettie and Judy a half-hour
to unpack her things and set them in the refrigerator and on the pantry
shelves. One was a plump fruit-cake that had been keeping company in a
tight box with a sponge soaked in sherry for ever since New Year's. It
was ripe, or smelled so. It made me gnaw under my belt.
A little later Judy was exclaiming over a two-year-old ham that had been
simmered in port and larded with egg dressing, when Mrs. Johnson came in
and began to unpack her basket, which was mostly bottles of things she
said she used to "stick" food. The ginger-colored barber got the run of
them before the dinner was over and got badly stuck, so Judy says.
That's what made him make the mistake.
I had planned to have a lot of strange food and had ordered some things
up from a caterer in the city, but I telephoned the express man not to
deliver them until the next day, even if they did spoil. How could I use
soft shelled crabs when Mrs. Wade had sent me word that she was going to
bake some brook trout by a recipe of the judge's grandmother's? Mrs.
Hampton Buford had let me know about two fat little summer turkeys she
was going to stuff with corn-pone and green sage, and _fillet
mignon_ seemed foolish eating beside them. But when the little bit of
a baby pig, roasted whole with an apple in its mouth, looking too frisky
and innocent for worlds with his little baked tail curled up in the air,
arrived from Mrs. Caruthers Cain, I went out into the garden and laughed
at the idea of having spent money for lobsters, to be shipped alive and
to be served broiled in their own shells.
When I got back in the kitchen things were well under way, everything
smelling grand, and Aunt Bettie in full swing matching up my dinner
guests.
"Nobody in this town could suit me better than Pet Buford for a
daughter-in-law and I believe I'll have all the east rooms done over in
blue chintz for her. I think that would be the best thing to set off her
blue eyes and corn silk hair," she was saying as she cut orange peel
into strips.
"You've planned the refurnishing of that east wing to suit the style of
nearly every girl in Hillsboro since Tom put on long trousers, Bettie
Pollard, and they are just as they have been for fifteen years since you
did over the whole house," said Mrs. Johnson as she poured a wine-glass
half full from one bottle and added a tablespoonful from another.
"Well, I think he is really interested now from the way he danced most
of his time with her down at the hotel the other night, and I have hopes
I never had before. Now, Molly, do put him between you and her, sort of
cornered, so he can't even _see_ Ruth Chester. She is too old for
him." And Tom's mother looked at me over the orange peel as to a
confederate.
"Humph, I'd like to see you or Molly or any woman 'corner' Tom Pollard,"
said Mrs. Johnson with a wry smile as she tasted the concoction in the
wine-glass.
"I have to put him at the end of the table because he is my kinsman and
the only host I've got at present, Aunt Bettie," I said regretfully. I
always take every chance to rub in Tom's and my relationship on Aunt
Bettie, so she won't notice our flirtation.
"I'd put John Moore at the head of the table if I were you, Molly
Carter, because he's about the only man you've invited that has got any
sense left since you and that Chester girl took to visiting Hillsboro.
He's a host of steadiness in himself and the way he ignores all you
women, who would run after him if he would let you, shows what he is. He
has my full confidence," and as she delivered herself of this judgment
of Doctor John, Mrs. Johnson drove in all the corks tight and began to
pound spice.
"He's not out of the widower-woods yet, Caroline," said Aunt Bettie with
her most speculative smile. "I have about decided on him for Ruth since
the judge has taken to following Molly about as bad as Billy Moore does.
But don't you all say a word, for John's mighty timid, and I don't
believe, in spite of all these years, he's had a single notion yet. If
he had had he'd have tried a set-to with you, Molly, like all the rest
of the shy birds in town. He doesn't see a woman as anything but a
patient at the end of a spoon, and mighty kind and gentle he does the
dosing of them, too. Just the other day--dearie me, Judy, what has
boiled over now?" And in the excitement that ensued I escaped to the
garden.
Yes, Aunt Bettie is right about Doctor John; he doesn't see a woman, and
there is no way to make him. What she had said about it made me realize
that he had always been like that, and I told myself that there was no
reason in the world why my heart should beat in my slippers on that
account. Still I don't see why Ruth Chester should have her head
literally thrown against that stone wall and I wish Aunt Bettie
wouldn't. It seemed like a desecration even to try to match-make him and
it made me hot with indignation all over. I dug so fiercely at the roots
of my phlox with a trowel I had picked up that they groaned so loud I
could almost hear them. I felt as if I must operate on something. And it
was in this mood that Alfred's letter found me.
It had a surprise in it and I sat back on the grass and read it with my
heart beating like a trip-hammer. He had sailed the day he had posted it
and he was due to arrive in New York almost as soon as it did, just any
hour now I calculated in a flash. And "from New York immediately to
Hillsboro" he had written in words that fairly sung themselves off the
paper. I was frightened--so frightened that the letter shook in my
hands, and with only the thought of being sure that I might be alone for
a few minutes with it, I fled to the garret.
Surely no woman ever in all the world read such a letter as that, and no
wonder my breath almost failed me. It was a love-letter in which the
cold paper was transubstantiated into a heart that beat against mine and
I bowed my head over it as I wet it with tears. I knew then that I had
taken his coming back lightly; had fussed over it and been silly-proud
of it; while not _really_ caring at all. All that awful melting
away of my fatness seemed just a lack of confidence in his love for me;
he wouldn't have minded if I weighed five hundred, I felt sure. He loved
me--really, really, really; and I had sat and weighed him with a lot of
men who were nothing more than amused by my flightiness, or taken with
my beauty, and who wouldn't have known such love if it were shown to
them through a telescope.
[Illustration: His letters were all there and his photographs]
I reached into a trunk that stood right beside me and took out a box
that I hadn't looked into for years. His letters were all there and his
photographs that were as handsome as the young god of love himself.
I could hardly see them through my tears, but I knew that they were
dim in places with being cried over when I had put them away years ago
after Aunt Adeline decided that I was to be married. I kissed the poor
little-girl cry-spots; and with that a perfect flood of tears rose to my
eyes--but they didn't fall, for there, right in front of me, stood a
more woe-stricken human being than I could possibly be, if I judged by
appearances.
"Molly, Molly," gulped Billy, "I am so sick I'm going to die here on the
floor," and he sank into my arms.
"Oh, Billy, what is the matter?" I gasped and gave him a little
terrified shake.
"Mamie Johnson did it--poked her finger down her throat and mine, too,"
he wailed against my breast. "We was full of things folks gived us to
eat and couldn't eat no more. She said if we did that with our fingers
it would all come up and we would have room for some more then. She did
it and I'm going to die dead--dead!"
"No, no, lover; you'll be all right in a second. Stay quiet here in your
Molly's lap and you will be well in just a few minutes," I said with a
smile I hid in his yellow mop as I kissed the drake-tail kiss-spot.
"Where's Mamie?" I thought to ask with the greatest apprehension.
"In the garden eating cup-cake Judy baked hot for both of us. She didn't
frow up as much as I did--or maybe more." He answered, snuggling close
and much comforted.
"Don't ever, ever do that again, Billy," I said, giving him both a hug
and a shake. "It's piggy to eat more than you can hold and then still
want more. What would your father say?"
"Doc ain't no good and I don't care what he says," answered Billy with
spirit. "He don't play no more and he don't laugh no more and he don't
eat no more hardly, too. I ain't a-going to live in that house with him
more'n two days longer. I want to come over and sleep in your bed with
blue ribbons on the posts and have you to play with me, Molly."
"Don't say that, lover, ever again," I said as I bent over him. "Your
father is the best man in the world, and you must never, never leave
him."
"I bet I will, when I get big enough to kill a bear," answered Billy
decidedly. "Say, do you reckon Mamie saved even a little piece of that
cake? I 'spect I had better go see," and he slipped out of my arms and
was gone before I could hold him.
It _is_ a lonely house across the garden with the big and the tiny
man in it all by themselves! And tears, from another corner of my heart
entirely, rose to my eyes at the thought, but they, too, never fell, for
I heard Mrs. Johnson calling and I had to run down quick and see what
new delicacy had arrived for my party.
Uncle Thomas Pollard had sent me a quart bottle of his private stock
with the message to put the mint to soak just one hour and twenty
minutes before the men came. I made room for it beside the case of
champagne on the cellar shelf and wondered how they would stand it all.
We don't have champagne often in Hillsboro, and when we do nobody seems
to want to cut down on the juleps, consequently--well, nothing ever
really happens! However, it must have been the champagne that made Tom
act as he did. He was never like that before.
Somehow I didn't enjoy dressing to-night for my dinner as I did for the
dance, and when I was through I stood before the mirror and looked at
myself a long time. I was very tall and slim and--well, I suppose I
might say regal in that amethyst crêpe with the soft rose-point, but I
looked to myself about the eyes as I had been doing for years when I put
on my Sunday clothes to go to church with Mr. Carter. He was always in a
hurry and I didn't care about looking at myself in the mirror anyway;
nobody else ever looked at me and what was the use? And to-night that
Rene triumph made me feel no different from one of Miss Hettie Primm's
conceptions that I had been wearing for ages with indifference and total
lack of style. I shrugged my shoulder almost out of the dress with what
I thought was sadness, though it felt a trifle like temper, too, and
went on down into the garden to see if any of my flowers had a cheer-up
message for me.
But it was a bored garden I stepped into just as the last purple flush
of day was being drunk down by the night. The tall white lilies laid
their heads over on my breast and went to sleep before I had said a word
to them, and the nasturtiums snarled around my feet until they got my
slippers stained with green. Only Billy's bachelor's-button stood up
stiff and sturdy, slightly flushed with imbibing the night dew, and
tipped me an impertinent wink. I felt cheered at the sight of them and
bent down to gather a bunch of them to wear, even if they did swear at
my amethyst draperies, when an amused smile that was done out loud came
from the path just behind me.
"Don't gather them all to-night, Mrs. Peaches," said Doctor John
teasingly, as he stooped beside me. "Leave a few for--for the others."
I waked up in a half-second and so did all those prying flowers, I felt
sure.
"I was just gathering them for place bouquets for--for the girls," I
said stupidly as I moved over a little nearer to him. Why it is that the
minute that man comes near me I get warm and comfortable and stupid, and
as young as Billy, and bubbly and sad and happy and cross is more than I
can say, but I do. I never possibly know how to answer any remark that
he may happen to make unless it is something that makes me lose my
temper. His next remark was the usual spark.
"Better give them the run of the garden--alone, Mrs. Molly. No show for
'em unless you do," he said laughingly, "or the buttons' either," he
added under his breath so I could just hear it. I wish Mrs. Johnson
could have heard how soft his voice lingered over that little
half-sentence. She is so experienced she could have told me if it
meant--but of course he isn't like other men!
There are lots of questions I'm going to ask Alfred after I'm married to
him--Mr. Carter didn't know anything about anything and I never cared to
ask him, but I wonder how you know when--
"Oh, you Molly," came a hail in Tom's voice from the gate, just as I was
making up my mind to try and think up something to wither the doctor
with, and he and Ruth Chester came up the front walk to meet us. I
wondered why I was having a party in my house when being alone in my
garden with just a neighbor was so much more fun, but I had to begin to
enjoy myself right off, for in a few minutes all the rest came.
I don't think I ever saw my house look so lovely before. Mrs. Johnson
had put all the flowers out of hers and Mrs. Cain's garden all over
everything and the table was a mass of soft pink roses that were
shedding perfume and nodding at one another in their most society
manner. There is no glimmer in the world like that which comes from
really old polished silver and rosewood and mahogany, and one's
great-great-grandmother's hand-woven linen feels like oriental silk
across one's knees.
Suddenly I felt very stately and grand-damey and responsible as I looked
at them all across the roses and sparkling glasses. They were lovely
women, all of them, and could such men be found anywhere else in the
world? When I left them all to go out into the big universe to meet the
distinctions that I knew my husband would have for me, would I sit at
salt with people who loved me like this? I saw Pet Buford say something
to Tom about me that I know was lovely from the way he smiled at me; and
the judge's eyes were a full cup for any woman to have offered her. Then
in a flash all the love-fragrance seemed to go to my head--Tom's mixing
of that julep had been skilful, too--and tears rose to my eyes, and
there I might have been crying at my own party if I hadn't felt a strong
warm hand laid on mine as it rested on my lap and Doctor John's kind
voice teased into my ears: "Steady, Mrs. Peaches, there's the loving-cup
to come yet," he whispered. I hated him, but held on to his thumb tight
for half a minute. He didn't know what the matter really was, but he
understood what I needed. He always does.
And after that everybody had a good time, the ginger barber and Judy as
much as anybody, and I could see Aunt Bettie and Mrs. Johnson peeping in
the pantry door, having the time of their lives, too.
That dinner was going like an airship on a high wind, when something
happened to tangle its tail feathers and I can hardly write it for
trembling yet. It was a simple little blue telegram, but it might have
been nitro-glycerin on a tear for the way it acted. It was for me, but
the ginger barber handed it to Tom and he opened it and, looking at me
over his full--after many times emptied--glass, he solemnly read it out
loud. It said:
"Landed this noon. Have I your permission to come to Hillsboro
immediately? Answer. Alfred."
It was dreadful! Nobody said a word and Tom laid the telegram right down
in his plate, where it immediately began to soak up the dressing of his
salad. He was so white and shaky that Pet looked at him in amazement,
and then I am sure she had the good sense to find his hand under the
cloth and hold it, for his shoulder hovered against hers and the color
came back to his face as he smiled down at her. I don't believe I'll
ever get the courage to look at Tom again until he marries Pet, which
he'll do now, I feel sure.
And as for the judge and Ruth Chester, I was glad they were sitting
beside each other, for I could avoid that side of the table with my eyes
until I had steadied myself a few seconds at least. The surprise made
the others I had been dining seem statues from the stone age, and only
Mr. Graves' fork failed to hang fire. His appetite is as strong as his
nerves and Delia Hawes looked at his composure with the relief plain in
her eyes. Henrietta's smile in the judge's direction was doubtful. But
they were not all my lovers and why that awful silence?
I couldn't say a word, and I am sure I don't know what I would have done
if it hadn't been for the doctor. He leaned forward and his deep eyes
came out in their wonderful way and seemed to collect every pair of eyes
at the table, even the most astounded, as he raised his glass. We all
held our breaths and waited for him to speak.
"No wonder we are all stricken dumb at Mrs. Carter's telegram," he said
in his deep voice that commands everybody and everything, even the
terrors of birth and death. "The whole town will be paralyzed at the
news that its most distinguished citizen is only going to give them two
days to get ready to receive him. I can see the panic the brass band
will have now getting the brass shined up, and I want to be the one to
tell Mayor Pollard myself, so as to suggest to him to have at least a
two-hour speech of welcome to hand out at the train. We'll make it one
'hot time' for him when he lands in the old town, and here's to him, God
bless him. Every glass high!" They all drank, and I suppose it helped
them. I wish I could have drained a quart, but I couldn't swallow a sip,
though I did a good stunt of pretending.
[Illustration: "Every glass high"]
The rest of this evening has paid me off for every sin I have ever
committed or am ever going to commit. Tom took Pet home early and I hope
they walked in the moonlight for hours. Tom is the kind of man that any
pretty girl who is loving enough in the moonlight could comfort for
anything. I'm not at all worried about him, but--
The hour I sat on my front steps and talked to Judge Wade must have
brought gray hairs to my head if it was daylight and I could see them.
Ruth Chester had said good-by with the loveliest haunted look in her
great dark eyes and I had felt as if I had killed something that was
alive and that I hadn't killed it enough. Doctor John had been called
from his coffee to a patient and had gone with just a friendly word of
good night, and the others had at last left the judge and me alone--also
in the moonlight, which I wished in my heart somebody would put out.
They say among the lawyers that it is a good thing that Benton Wade is
on the bench, for it is no use to try a case against him when he has the
handling of a jury. He just looks them in the face and tells them how to
vote. To-night he looked me in the face and told me how to marry, and
I'm not sure yet that I won't do as he says. Of course I'm in love with
Alfred, but if he wants me he had better get me away quick before the
judge makes all his arrangements. A woman loves to be courted with poems
and flowers and deference, but she's mighty apt to marry the man who
says, "Don't argue, but put on your bonnet and come with me." The fact
that it was too late to get into the clerk's office saved me to-night,
but in two days--
Oh, I'm crying, crying in my heart, which is worse than in my eyes, as I
sit and look across my garden, where the cold moon is hanging low over
the tall trees behind the doctor's house and his light in his room is
burning warm and bright. They are right; _he_ doesn't care if I am
going away for ever with Alfred. His quick toast to him and the lovely
warm look he poured over poor frightened me at his side, as he drank his
champagne, told me that once and for all. Still we have been so close
together over his baby and I have grown so dependent on him for so many
things that it cuts into me like a hot knife that he shouldn't care if
he lost me--even for a neighbor. I shouldn't mind not having _any_
husband if I could always live close by him and Billy like this, and if
I married Judge Wade I could at least have him for a family physician.
_No--I don't like that_! Of course I'm going with Alfred now that
an accident has made me announce the fact to the whole town before he
even knows it himself, but wherever I go that light in the room with
that lonely man is going to burn in my heart. Hope it will throw a glow
over Alfred!
LEAF SEVENTH
DASHED!
I do believe God gave that wise angel charge concerning me lest I get
dashed, but I just got dashed anyway, and its my own fault, not the
angel's. I have suffered this day until I want to lay my face down
against the hem of His garment and wait in the dust for Him to pick me
up. I shall never be able to do it myself, and how He's going to do it
I can't see, but He will.
That dinner-party last night was bad enough, but to-day's been worse.
I didn't sleep until long after daylight and then Judy came in before
eight o'clock with a letter for me that looked like a state document.
I felt in my trembly bones that it was some sort of summons affair from
Judge Wade; and it was. I looked into the first paragraph and then
decided that I had better get up and dress and have a cup of coffee and
a single egg before I tried to read it.
Incidental to my bath and dressing, I weighed and found that I had lost
all four of those last surplus pounds and two more in three days. Those
two extra pounds might be construed to prove love, but exactly on whom
I was utterly unprepared to say. I didn't even enjoy the thinness, but
took a kind of already-married look in my glass and tried to slip the
egg past my bored lips and get myself to chew it down. It was work; and
then I took up the judge's letter, which also was work and more of it.
He started in at the beginning of everything, that is at the beginning
of the tuberculosis girl and I cried over the pages of her as if she had
been my own sister. At the tenth page we buried her and took up Alfred
and I must say I saw a new Alfred in the judge's bouquet-strewn
appreciation of him, but I didn't want him as bad as I had the day
before when I read his own new and old letters, and cried over his old
photographs. I suppose that was the result of some of what the judge
manages the juries with. He'd be apt to use it on a woman and she
wouldn't find out about it until it was too late to be anything but mad.
Still when he began on me at page sixteen I felt a little better, though
I didn't know myself any better than I did Alfred when I got to page
twenty.
What I am, is just a poor foolish woman, who has a lot more heart than
she can manage with the amount of brains she got with it at birth. I'm
not any star in a rose-colored sky, and I don't want to inspire anybody;
it's too much of a job. I want to be a healthy happy woman and a wife to
a man who can inspire himself and manage me. I want to marry a thin man
and have from five to ten thin children, and when I get to be thirty I
want my husband to want me to be as fat as Aunt Bettie, but not let me.
An inspiration couldn't be fat and I'm always in danger from hot muffins
and chicken gravy. However, if I should undertake to be all the things
Judge Wade said in that letter he wanted me to be to him, I should soon
be skin and bones from mental and physical exercise. Still, he does
live in Hillsboro and I won't let myself know how my heart aches at the
thought of leaving my home--and other things. It's up in my throat and
I seem always to be swallowing it, the last few days.