unmarried person in this town and marry them to the first person they
touch hands with. It would be fun for her and then we could have peace
and apparently as much happiness as we are going to have anyway. Mrs.
Johnson seemed to be in somewhat the same state of mind as I found
myself.
"Humph," she said as we went up the front steps, "I'll be glad when you
are married and settled, Molly Carter, so the rest of this town can
quiet down into peace once more, and I sincerely hope every woman under
fifty in Hillsboro who is already married will stay in that state until
she reaches that age. But I do believe if the law marched widows from
grave number one to altar number two they would get into trouble and
fuss along the road. But come on in, both of you, and help me get this
marriage feast ready, if I must! The day is going by on greased wheels
and I can't let Mr. Johnson's crotchets be neglected, Al Bennett or no
Al Bennett!"
And from then on for hours and hours I was strapped to a torture wheel
that turned and turned, minute after minute, as it ground spice and
sugar and bridal meats and me relentlessly into a great suffering pulp.
Could I ever in all my life have hungered for food and been able to get
it past the lump in my throat that grew larger with the seconds? And if
Alfred's pudding tasted of the salt of dead sea-fruit this evening, it
was from my surreptitious tears that dripped into it.
It was late, very late before Mrs. Johnson realized it and shooed me
home to get ready to go to the train along with the brass band and all
the other welcomes.
I hurried all I could, but for long minutes I stood in front of my
mirror and questioned myself. Could this slow, pale, dead-eyed, slim,
drooping girl be the rollicking child of a Molly who had looked out of
that mirror at me one short week ago? Where were the wings on her heels,
the glint in her curls, the laugh on her mouth and the devil in her
eyes?
Slowly at last I lifted the blue muslin, twenty-three-inch waist shroud
and let it slip over my head and fall slimly around me. I had fastened
the neck button and was fumbling the next one into the buttonhole when I
suddenly heard laughing excited voices coming up the side street that
ran just under my west window. Something told me that Alfred had come on
the five-down train instead of the six-up and I fairly reeled to the
window and peeped through the shutters.
They were all in a laughing group around him, with Tom as master of
ceremonies, and Ruth Chester was looking up into his face with an
expression I am glad I can never forget. It killed all my regrets on the
score of his future.
It took two good looks to take him all in and then I must have missed
some of him, for all in all, he was so large that he stretched your eyes
to behold him. He's grown seven feet tall, I don't know how many pounds
he weighs and I don't want anybody ever to tell me!
I had never thought enough about evolution to know whether I believed in
it and woman's suffrage, but I do now! I know that millions of years ago
a great, big, distinguished hippopotamus stepped out of the woods and
frightened one of my foremothers so that she turned tail and fled
through a thicket that almost tore her limb from limb, right into the
arms of her own mate. That's what I did! I caught that blue satin belt
together with one hand and ran through my garden right over a bed of
savage tiger-lilies and flung myself into John Moore's office, slammed
the door and backed up against it.
"He's come!" I gasped. "And I'm frightened to death, with nobody but you
to run to. Hide me quick! He's fat and I _hate_ him!" I was that
deadly cold you can get when fear runs into your very marrow and
congeals the blood in your arteries. "Quick, quick!" I panted.
He must have been as pale as I was, and for an eternity of a second he
looked at me, then suddenly heaven shone from his eyes and he opened his
arms to me with just one word.
"Here?"
I went.
He held me gently for a half-second, and then with a sob which I felt
rather than heard, he crushed me to him and stopped my breath with his
lips on mine. I understood things then that I never had before, and I
felt that wise guardian man-angel take his fingers from mine and leave
me safe at last. I raised my hand and pressed it against John's wet
lashes until he could let me speak and I was melted into his very breast
itself.
"Molly," he said when enough tenderness had come back into his arms to
let me breathe, "you have almost killed me!"
"You!" I exclaimed, crowding still closer, or at least trying to. "It's
not _you_; it's I that am killed, and you did it! I know you don't
really want me, but I can't help that I'd rather you'd do the suffering
with me than to do it myself away from you. I'm so hungry and thirsty
for you that--that I can't diet any longer!" I put the case the
strongest way I knew how and got a swooning, maddening, luscious result.
"Want you, Molly?" he almost sobbed, and I felt his heart pounding hard
next to my shoulder.
"Yes, want me!" I answered with more spirit than breath left in me. "I
refuse to believe you are as stupid as I am, and anybody with even an
ordinary amount of brains must have seen how hard I was fighting for
you. I feel sure I left no stone unturned. Some of them I can already
think back and see myself tugging at, and it makes me hot all over. I'm
foolish, and always was, so I'm to be excused for acting that awful way,
but you are to blame for _letting_ me do it. I'm going to be your
punishment for life for not having been stern and stopped me. You had
better stop me some now anyway, for if I go on loving you as I have been
for the last few minutes it will make you uncomfortable."
"Peaches," he said, after he had hushed me with another broken dose of
love, as large as he thought I could stand--I could have stood more!--"I
am never going to tell you how long I have loved you, but that day you
came to me all in a flutter with Al Bennett's letter in your hand it is
going to take you a lifetime to settle for. You were mine--and Bill's!
How _could_ you--but women don't understand!" I felt him shudder
in my arms as I held him close. I was repaid for all those tiresome
exercises I had taken by the strength to crush him against my breast
almost as hard as he crushed me. Our combined strength was terrific,
dangerous to life and ribs, but--heavenly!
"Don't women know, John?" I managed to ask softly in memory of a like
question he had put to me across that bread and jam with the rose
a-listening from the dark.
What brought me to consciousness was his fumbling with the buttons at
the waist of that blue muslin relict of a sentiment. I had fastened but
one, and the lace had got caught on his sleeve buttons.
"Please don't button me into his possession," I laughed under his chin.
"I'm still scared to death of him, and you haven't hid me yet!"
"Molly," he asked, this time with a heaven-laugh, "where could you be
more effectually hid from Al Bennett than in my arms?"
I spent ten minutes telling Billy what a hippopotamus really looks like
as I put him to bed, but later, much as I should have liked to, I
couldn't consume that horrible dinner, that I had helped prepare at the
Johnsons, in the shelter of John's arms, and I had to face Alfred. Ruth
Chester was there, and she faced him too.
A man that can't be happy with a woman who is willing to "fulfil his
destiny" doesn't deserve to be.
Then we came over here, and John had the most beautiful time persuading
Aunt Adeline how a good man like Mr. Carter would want his young widow
to be taken care of by being married to a safe friend of his instead of
being flighty and having folks wondering whom she would marry.
"You know yourself how hard a time a beautiful young widow has, Mrs.
Henderson," he said in the tone of voice that always makes his patients
glad to take his worst doses. He got his blessing and me--with a
warning.
A lovely night wind is blowing across my garden and bringing me
congratulations from all my flower family. Flowers are a part of love
and the wooing of it, and they understand. I am waiting for the light to
go out behind the tall trees over which the moon is stealthily sinking.
He promised me to put it out right away, and I'm watching the glow that
marks the place where my own two men creatures are going to rest, with
my heart in full song.
He needs rest, he is so very tired and worn. He confessed it as I stood
on the step above him to-night, after he had taken his own good night
from me out on the porch. When he explained to me how his agony over me
for all these months had kept him walking the floor night after night,
not knowing that I was waiting for the light to go out, I gave myself a
sweetness that I am going to say a prayer for the last thing before I
sleep. I took his head in my arms and pressed his cheek down against
Billy's sleep-place on my breast over my heart and put my lips to that
drake-tail kiss-spot that has tempted me for I won't say how long. Then
I fled--and so did he!
I had about decided to burn this book, because I shan't need it any
longer, for he says he and Billy and I are going to play so much golf
and tennis that I shall keep as thin as he wants me to be without any
more melting or freezing, or starving, but perhaps he would like to read
the little red devil. Do you suppose he would?