skyrocket and then let themselves explode in the last paragraph and it
always upsets my nerves. I was just about to begin to cry again over the
last words of the judge when the only bright spot in the day so far
suddenly happened. Pet Buford blew in with the pinkest cheeks and the
brightest eyes I had seen since I looked in the mirror the night of the
dance. She was in an awful hurry.
"Molly, dear," she said, with her words literally falling over
themselves, "Tom says you'll give us some of your dinner left-overs to
take for lunch in the Hup, for we are going way out to Wayne County to
see some awfully fine tobacco he has heard is there. I don't want to ask
mother, for she won't let me go; and his mother, if he asked her, will
begin to talk about us. Tom said come to you and you would understand
and fix it quick. He said kiss you for him and tell you he said 'Come on
in, the water's fine.' Isn't he a joke?" And we kissed and laughed and
packed a basket, and kissed and laughed again for good-by. I felt amused
and happy for a few minutes--and also deserted. It's a very good thing
for a woman's conceit to find out how many of her lovers are just
make-believes. I may have needed Tom's deflection.
Anyway, I don't know when I ever was so glad to see anybody as I was
when Mrs. Johnson came in the front door. A woman who has proved to her
own satisfaction that marriage is a failure is at times a great tonic to
other women. I needed a tonic badly this morning and I got it.
"Well, from all my long experience, Molly," she said as she seated
herself and began to hem a dish-towel with long steady stabs, "husbands
are just stick candy in different jars. They may look a little
different, but they all taste alike and you soon get tired of them. In
two months you won't know the difference in being married to Al Bennett
and Mr. Carter and you'll have to go on living with him maybe fifty
years. Luck doesn't strike twice in the same place and you can't count
on losing two husbands. Al's father was Mr. Johnson's first cousin and
had more crochets and worse. He had silent spells that lasted a week and
family prayers three times a day, though he got drunk twice a year for a
month at a time. Al looks very much like him."
"Mrs. Johnson," I said after a minute's silence, while I had decided
whether or not I had better tell her all about it. If a woman's in love
with her husband you can't trust her to keep a secret, but I decided to
try Mrs. Johnson. "I really am not engaged exactly to Alfred Bennett,
though I suppose he thinks so by now if he has got the answer to that
telegram. But--but something has made me--made me think about Judge
Wade--that is he--what do you think of him, Mrs. Johnson?" I concluded
in the most pitifully perplexed tone of voice.
"All alike, Molly; all as much alike as peas in a pod; all except John
Moore, who's the only exception in all the male tribe I ever met! His
marrying once was just accidental and must be forgiven him. She fell in
love with him while he was treating her for typhoid, when his back was
turned as it were, and it was God's own kindness in him that made him
marry her when he found out how it was with the poor thing. There's not
a woman in this town who could marry, that wouldn't marry him at the
drop of his hat--but, thank goodness, that hat will never drop and I'll
have one sensible man to comfort and doctor me down into my old age.
Now, just look at that! Mr. Johnson's come home here in the middle of
the morning and I'll have to get that old paper I hunted out of his desk
for him last night. I wonder how he came to forget it!" It's funny how
Mrs. Johnson always knows what Mr. Johnson wants before he knows himself
and gets it before he asks for it!
As she went out the gate the postman came in and at the sight of another
letter my heart again slunk off into my slippers, and my brain seemed
about to back up in a corner and refuse to work. In a flash it came to
me that men oughtn't to write letters to women very much--they really
don't plow deep enough, they just irritate the top soil. I took this
missive from Alfred, counted all the fifteen pages, put it out of sight
under a book, looked out the window and saw the ginger barber coming
dejectedly around to the side gate from the kitchen--I knew the scene he
had had with Judy, about the bottle encounters of the night before--saw
Mr. Johnson shooed off down the street by Mrs. Johnson; saw the doctor's
car go chucking hurriedly in the garage and then my spirit turned itself
to the wall and refused to be comforted. I tried my best, but failed to
respond to my own remonstrances with myself, and tears were slowly
gathering in a cloud of gloom when a blue gingham, rompers-clad sunbeam
burst into the room.
"Git your night-gown and your toothbresh quick, Molly, if you want to
pack 'em in my trunk!" he exclaimed with his eyes dancing and a curl
standing straight up on the top of his head, as it has a habit of doing
when he is most excited. "You can't take nothing but them 'cause I'm
going to put in a rope to tie the whale with when I ketch him, and
it'll take up all the rest of the room. Git 'em quick!"
"Yes, lover, I'll get them for you, but tell Molly where it is you are
going to sail off with her in that trunk of yours?" I asked, dropping
into the game as I have always done with him, no matter what game of my
own pressed when he called.
"On the ocean where the boats go 'cross and run right over a whale.
Don't you remember you showed me them pictures of spout whales in a
book, Molly? Doc says they comes right up by the ship and you can hear
'em shoot water and maybe a iceberg, too. Which do you want to ketch
most, Molly, a iceberg or a whale?" His eager eyes demanded instant
decision on my part of the nature of capture I preferred. My mind
quickly reverted to those two ponderous and intense epistles I had got
within the hour and I lay back in my chair and laughed until I felt
almost merry.
"The iceberg, Billy, every time," I said at last. "I just can't manage
whales, especially if they are ardent, which word means hot. I like
_icebergs_, or I think I should if I could catch one."
"I don't believe you could, Molly, but maybe Doc will let you put a rope
and a long hook in his trunk to try with if your clothes go into mine.
His is a heap the biggest anyway and Nurse Tilly said he oughter put my
things in his, but I cried and then he went up-stairs and got out that
little one for me. Come see 'em!"
"What do you mean, Billy?" I asked, while a sudden fear shot all over me
like lightning. "You're just playing go-away, aren't you?"
"No, I ain't playing, Molly!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Me and you and
Doc is a-going across the ocean for a long, long time away from here.
Doc ast me about it this morning and I told him all right and you could
come with us, if you was good. He said couldn't I go without you if you
was busy and couldn't come and I told him you would put things down and
come if I said so. Won't you, Molly? It won't be no fun without you and
you'd cry all by yourself with me gone." His little face was all drawn
up with anxiety and sympathy at my lonely estate with him out of it and
a cry rose up from my heart with a kind of primitive savagery at what I
felt was coming down upon me.
Without waiting to take him with me, or think, or do anything but feel
deadly savage anger, I hurried across the garden and into Doctor Moore's
office, where he was just laying off his gloves and dust coat.
"What do you mean, John Moore, by daring, daring to think you can go and
take Billy away from me?" I demanded looking at him with what must have
been such fear and madness in my face that he was startled as he came
close to the table against which I leaned. His face had grown white and
quiet at my attack and he waited to answer for a long horrible minute
that pulled me apart like one of those inquisition machines they used to
torture women with when they didn't know any better modern way to do it.
"I didn't know Bill would tell you so soon, Mrs. Molly," he said at last
gently, looking past me out of the window into the garden. "I was coming
over just as soon as I got back from this call to talk with you about
it, even if it did seem to intrude Bill's and my affairs into a day
that--that ought to be all yours to be--be happy in. But Bill, you see,
is no respecter of--of other people's happy days if he wants them in
his."
"Billy's happy days are mine and mine are his and he has the heart not
to leave me out even if you would have him!" I exclaimed, a sob
gathering in my heart at the thought that my little lover hadn't even
taken in a situation that would separate him from me across an ocean.
"Bill is too young to understand when he is--is being bereaved, Molly,"
he said and still he didn't look at me. "I have been appointed a
delegate to represent the State Medical Association at the Centennial
Congress in London the middle of next month--and somehow I--feel a bit
pulled lately and I thought I would take the little chap and have--have
a _wander-jahr._ You won't need him now, Mrs. Peaches, and I
couldn't go without him, could I?" The sadness in his voice would have
killed me if I hadn't let it madden me instead.
"Won't need Billy any more!" I exclaimed with a rage that made my voice
literally scorch past my lips. "Was there ever a minute in his life that
I haven't needed Billy? How dare you say such a thing to me? You are
cruel, cruel, and I have always known it, cold and cruel like all other
men who don't care how they wring the life blood out of women's hearts
and are willing to use their children to do it with. Even the law
doesn't help us poor helpless creatures and you can take our children
and go with them to the ends of the earth and leave us suffering. I have
gone on and believed that you were not like what the women say all men
are and that you cared whether you hurt people or not, but now I see
that you are just the same and you'll take my baby away if you want
to--and I can do nothing to prevent it--nothing in the wide world--I am
completely and absolutely helpless--you coward, you!"
When that awful word, the worst word that a woman can use to a man, left
my lips, a flame shot up into his eyes that I thought would burn me up,
but in a half-second it was extinguished by the strangest thing in the
world--for the situation--a perfect flood of mirth. He sat down in his
chair and shook all over with his head in his hands until I saw tears
creep through his fingers. I had calmed down so suddenly that I was
about to begin to cry in good earnest when he wiped his eyes and said
with a low laugh in his throat:
"The case is yours, Molly, settled out of court, and the
'possession-nine-points-of-the-law clause' works in some cases for a
woman against a man. Generally speaking, anyway, the pup belongs to the
man who can whistle him down and you can whistle Bill from me any day.
I'm just his father and what I think or want doesn't matter. You had
better take him and keep him!"
"I intend to." I answered haughtily, uncertain as to whether I had
better give in and be agreeable or stay prepared to cry in case there
was further argument. But suddenly a strange diffidence came into his
eyes and he looked away from me as he said in queer hesitating words:
"You see, Mrs. Molly, I thought from now on your life wouldn't have
exactly a place for Bill. Have you considered that you have trained him
to demand you all the time and all of you? How would you manage
Bill--and--and other claims?"
And if there is a contagious thing in this world it is embarrassment. I
never felt anything worse in all my life than the shame that swept over
me in a great hot wave when that look came into his eyes and made me
realize just exactly what I had been saying to him, about what, and how
I had said it. I stood perfectly still, shook all over like a leaf, and
wondered if I would ever be able to raise my eyes from the ground. A
dizzy nauseated feeling for myself rose up in me against myself and I
was just about to turn on my heels and leave him, I hoped for ever, when
he came over and laid his hand on my shoulder.
"Molly," he said in a voice that might have come down from heaven on
dove wings, "you can't for a moment feel or think that I don't realize
and appreciate what you have been to the motherless little chap, and for
life I am yours at command, as he is. I really thought it would be a
relief to you to have him taken away from you for just a little while
right now, and I still think it is best; but not unless you consent. You
shall have him back whenever you are ready for him, and at all times
both he and I are at your service to the whole of our kingdoms. Just
think the matter over, won't you, and decide what you want me to do?"
Something in me died for ever, I think, when he spoke to me like that.
He's not like other men and there aren't any other men on earth but him!
All the rest are just bugs or bats or something worse. And I'm not
anything myself. There's no excuse for my living and I wish I wasn't so
healthy and likely to go on doing it. It was all over and there was
nothing left for me to live for, and before I could stop myself I buried
my face in my hands.
"Billy asked me to go with him on this awful whale hunt!" I sobbed out
to comfort myself with the thought that somebody did care for me,
regardless of just how I was further embarrassing and complicating
myself in the affairs of the two men I had thought I owned and was now
finding out that I had to give up. I wish I had been looking at him, for
I felt him start, but he said in his big friendly voice that is so
much--and never enough for me.
"Well, why not you and Al come along and make it a family party, if that
is what suits Bill, the boss?"
If men would just buy good, sharp, kitchen knives and cut out women's
hearts in a businesslike way it would be so much kinder of them.
Why do they prefer to use dull weapons that mash the life out slowly?
Everything is at an end for me to-night and that blow did it. It was a
horrible cruel thing for him to say to me! I know now that I have been
in love with John Moore for longer than my honor lets me admit and that
I'll never love anybody else, and that also I have offered myself to him
served up in every known enticement and have had to be refused at least
twice a day for a year. A widow can't say she didn't understand what she
was doing, even to herself, but--My humiliation is complete and the
only thing that can make me ever hold up my head is to puzzle him by--by
_happily_ marrying Alfred Bennett--and quick!
Of course, he must suspect how I feel about him, for two people couldn't
both be so ignorant as not to see such an enormous thing as my love for
him is, and I was the blind one. But he must never, never know that I
ever realized it, for he is so good that it would distress him. I must
just go on in my foolish way with him until I can get away. I'll tell
him I'm sorry I was so indignant to-night and say that I think it will
be fine for him to take my Billy away from me with him. I must smile at
the idea of having my very soul amputated, insist that it is the only
thing to do, and pack up the little soul in a steamer trunk with the
smile. Just smile, that is all! Life demands smiles from a woman even if
she must crush their perfume from her own heart; and she generally has
them ready.
Oh, Molly, Molly, is it for this you came into the world, twice to give
yourself without love? What difference does it make that your arms are
strong and white if they can't clasp him to the softness and fragrance
of your breast? Why are your eyes blue pools of love if they are not for
his questioning and what are your rose lips for if they quench not his
thirst?
[Illustration: What are your rose lips for]
Yes, I know God is very tender with a woman and I think He understands,
so if she crept very close to Him and caught at His sleeve to steady
herself He would be kind to her until she could go on along her own
steep way. Please, God, never let him find out, for it would hurt him to
have hurt me!
LEAF EIGHT
MELTED
Some days are like the miracle flowers that open in the garden from
plants you didn't expect to bloom at all. I might have been born, lived
and died without having this one come into my life, and now that I have
had it I don't know how to write it, except in the crimson of blood, the
blue of flame, the gold of glory--and a tinge of light green would well
express the part I have played. But it is all over at last and--
Ruth Chester was the unfolding of the first hour-petal and I got a
glimpse of a heart of gold that I feel dumb with worship to think of.
She's God's own good woman and He made her in one of His holy hours. I
wish I could have borne her, or she me, and the tenderness of her arms
was a sacrament. We two women just stood aside with life's artifices and
concealments and let our own hearts do the talking.
She said she had come because she felt that if she talked with me I
might be better able to understand Alfred when he came and that she had
seen that the judge was very determined, and she thoroughly recognized
his force of character. We stopped there while I gave her the document
to read. I suppose it was dishonorable, but I needed her protection from
it. I'm glad she had the strength of mind to walk with a head high in
the air to Judy's range and burn it up. Anything might have happened if
she hadn't. And even now I feel that only my marriage vows will close up
the case for the judge--even yet he may--But when Ruth had got done
with Alfred, she had wiped Judge Wade's appreciation of him completely
off my mind and destroyed it in tender words that burned us both worse
than Judy's fire burned the letter. She did me an awfully good service.
"And so you see, you lovely woman you, do you not, that God has
made you for him as a tribute to his greatness and it is given to
you to fulfil a destiny?" She was so beautiful as she said it that
I had to turn my eyes away, but I felt as I did when those awful
'_let-not-man-put-asunder_'--from Mr. Carter--words were spoken
over me by Mr. Raines, the Methodist minister. It made me wild, and
before I knew it I had poured out the whole truth to her in a perfect
cataract of words. The truth always acts on women as some hitherto
untried drug, and you can never tell what the reaction is going to be.
In this case I was stricken dumb and found it hard to see.
"Oh, dear heart," she exclaimed as she reached out and drew me into her
lovely gracious arms, "then the privilege is all the more wonderful for
you, as you make some sacrifice to complete his life. Having suffered
this, you will be all the greater woman to understand him. I accept my
own sorrow at his hands willingly, as it gives me the larger sympathy
for his work, though he will no longer need my personal encouragement
as he has for years. In the light of his love this lesser feeling for
Doctor Moore will soon pass away and the accord between you will be
complete." This was more than I could stand and feeling less than a
worm, I turned my face into her breast and wailed. Now who would have
thought that girl could dance as she did?
By this time I was in such a solution of grief that I would soon have
had to be sopped up with a sponge if Pet hadn't run in bubbling over
like a lovely, white, linen-clad glass of Rhine wine and seltzer.
Happiness has a habit of not even acknowledging the presence of grief
and Pet didn't seem to see our red noses, crushed draperies and
generally damp atmosphere.
"Molly," she said with a deliciously young giggle, "Tom says for you to
send him ten dollars to spend getting the brass band half drunk before
the six o'clock train, on which your Mr. Bennett comes. He has spent
five dollars paying the negroes to polish up their instruments and clean
up the uniforms and it cost him twenty-five to bail the cornettist out
of jail for roost robbing, and it takes a whole gallon of whisky to get
any spirit into the drummer. He says tell you that as this is your
shindig you ought at least to pay the piper. Hurry up, he's waiting for
me, and here's the kiss he told me to put on your left ear!"
"I suppose you delivered that kiss straight from where he gave it to
you, Pettie, dear," I had the spirit to say as I went over to the desk
for my pocket-book.
"Why, Molly, you know me better than that!" she exclaimed from behind a
perfect rose cloud of blushes.
"I know Tom better than I do you," I answered as she fled with the ten
in her hand. I looked at Ruth Chester and we both laughed. It is true
that a broader sympathy is one of the by-products of sorrow, and a week
ago I might have resented Pet to a marked degree instead of giving her
the ten dollars and a blessing.
"I'm going quick, Molly, with that laugh between us," Ruth said as she
rose and took me into her arms again for just half a second, and before
I could stop her, she was gone.
She met Billy toiling up the front step with a long piece of rusty iron
gas-pipe, which took off an inch of paint as it bumped against the edge
of the porch. She bent down and kissed the back of his neck, which theft
was almost more than I could stand, and apparently more than Billy was
prepared to accept.
"Go way, girl," he said in his rudest manner; "don't you see I'm busy?"
I met him in the front hall just in time to prevent a hopeless scar on
my hardwood floor. He was hot, perspiring and panting, but full of
triumph.
"I found it, Molly, I found it!" he exclaimed as he let the heavy pipe
drop almost on the bare pink toes. "You can git a hammer and pound the
end sharp and bend it so no whale we ketch can git away for nothing. You
and Doc kin put it in your trunk 'cause it's too long for mine, and I
can carry Doc's shirts and things in mine. Git the hammer quick and I'll
help you fix it!" The pain in my breast was almost more than I could
bear.
"Lover," I said as I knelt down by him in the dim old hall and put my
arms around him as if to shield him from some blow I couldn't help being
aimed at him, "you wouldn't mind much, would you, if just this time your
Molly couldn't go with you? Your father is going to take good care of
you and--and maybe bring you back to me some day."
"Why, Molly," he said, flaring his astonished blue eyes at me, "'taint
me to be took care of! I ain't a-going to leave you here, for maybe a
bear to come out of a circus and eat you up, with me and Doc gone.
'Sides Doc ain't no good and maybe wouldn't help me hold the rope right
to keep the whale from gitting away. He don't know how to do like I tell
him like you do."
"Try him, lover, and maybe he will--will learn to--" I couldn't help the
tears that came to stop my words.
"Now you see, Molly, how you'd cry with that kiss-spot gone," he said
with an amused, manly, little tenderness in his voice that I had never
heard before, and he cuddled his lips against mine in almost the only
voluntary kiss he had given me since I had got him into his ridiculous
little trousers under his blouses. "You can have most a hundred kisses
every night if you don't say no more about not a-going and fix that
whale hook for me quick," he coaxed against my cheek.
Oh, little lover, little lover, you didn't know what you were saying
with your baby wisdom, and your rust-grimy, little paddie burned the
sleep-place on my breast like a terrible white heat from which I was
powerless to defend myself. You are mine, you are, you _are!_ You
are soul of my soul and heart of my heart and spirit of my spirit
and--and you ought to have been flesh of my flesh!
I don't know how I managed to answer Mrs. Johnson's call from my front
gate, but I sometimes think that women have a torture-proof clause in
their constitutions.
She and Aunt Bettie had just come up the street from Aunt Bettie's house
and the Pollard cook was following them with a large basket, in which
were packed the things Aunt Bettie was contributing to the entertainment
of the distinguished citizen. Mr. Johnson is Alfred's nearest kinsman in
Hillsboro, and, of course, he is to be their guest while he is in town.
"He'll be feeding his eyes on Molly, so he'll not even know he's eating
my Washington almond pudding with Thomas' old port in it," teased Aunt
Bettie with a laugh as I went across the street with them.
"There's going to be a regular epidemic of love in Hillsboro, I do
believe," she continued in her usual strain of sentimental speculation.
"I saw Mr. Graves talking to Delia Hawes in front of the store an hour
ago, as I came out from looking at the blue chintz to match Pet for the
west wing, and they were both so absorbed they didn't even see me. That
was what might have been called a conflagration dinner you gave the
other night, Molly, in more ways than one. I wish a spark had set off
Benton Wade and Henrietta, too. Maybe it did, but is just taking fire
slowly."