There was one woman in the world whom Hughes admired without
reservation, and that was his aunt, Kate Boles. He saw in her no flaw.
She was a childless widow, living alone in the loneliest little cottage
in the Berkshires; she had a hard life, and she gloried in it.
Not only did Aunt Kate live upon an almost impossibly small income, but
she saved out of it, and when Hughes wanted to help her, she refused.
She said she had a roof over her head, and enough to eat, and clothing
to cover her decently, and that she wanted nothing more. He thought
this admirable.
She admired him, too. It was a part of her philosophy of life to believe
that men could never be so noble as women, but, for a man, she thought
her nephew remarkably good. So, when he asked her, she came down from
her mountains, for the first time in many years.
“Desborough Hughes!” she declared. “I shouldn’t do this for any one else
on earth.”
“I appreciate it, Aunt Kate,” he agreed.
But when he explained his intention, her face grew mighty grim.
“Women!” she exclaimed. “You didn’t mention that in your letter,
Desborough!”
“I know,” he said. “But--”
“All you told me,” she went on, “was that you wanted to open that house
your Uncle Joseph left you out at Green Lake, and that you wanted me to
keep house for you and some friends of yours for awhile. Not a word did
you say about women.”
“I didn’t think it would make any difference--”
“Well, it does!” said she. “I don’t know that I’m inclined to keep house
for a parcel of idle women.”
Hughes said that there were only two of them, a mother and a daughter.
“And why can’t they keep house for themselves?”
“They’re not accustomed to--to country life. They’re--”
“I see!” said Mrs. Boles. “A couple of these highfalutin’ city people. I
may as well tell you, Desborough, that I don’t feel disposed to wait on
them hand and foot.”
“I don’t want you to,” Hughes asserted. “It’s only--” He paused. He saw
that he would be obliged to give his aunt some inkling of his plan.
“It’s like this,” he said. “They’ve got used to that artificial, effete
sort of life, and I thought--a week or two of a different sort of
life--I thought it might--well--give them a--a new point of view.”
“Desborough!” she exclaimed. “They want to marry you. I can see that.”
“No, they don’t!” he pointed out. “I want to marry them. One of them, I
mean.”
He had not wished to say that, but it couldn’t be helped. His serious
face grew scarlet, and he turned away, very greatly dreading the
questions and comments his aunt might utter. But, to his surprise, she
said nothing at all for a long time, and presently, to his still greater
surprise, she laid her bony hand on his shoulder.
“Very well, my boy!” she said.
He looked at her, but he could not read her face, and he was afraid to
ask her what her words and her tone signified. They made him uneasy, and
he wasn’t very happy, anyhow.
He knew that he could count upon his aunt to set a superb example of
fine, old-fashioned simplicity and industry, but that, after all, was
not quite what he had intended. His idea had been simply to let Mimi and
her mother see what life was like--real life, without false and
unnecessary adornments. He hoped that this glimpse would impress them,
that was all, so that it would be easier for him to explain to Mimi
later on:
“That’s what I call the right way to live. Plainly, simply--as you saw
it out at Green Lake.”
And he did believe that when she actually saw this life in operation,
she would admire it. Only, it was important that his Aunt Kate should
not be too obviously an example.
There was nothing he could do about it now, though. He had written to
his Aunt Kate, and she had come; he had arranged to open the house at
Green Lake, and to spend a three weeks’ vacation there, and the house
was open, and he was in it; he had invited Mrs. Dexter and Mimi for a
fortnight, and they were coming this afternoon. The experiment was about
to begin. He could only hope.
But this afternoon he found it difficult to do any really effective
hoping. An unaccountable depression had come over him; he stood upon the
veranda of this house of his, smoking a pipe, and regarding the scene
before him with something very like dismay in his eyes.
He had only seen the house once before, and it seemed to him that his
outlook must have been biased then by his pleasure in having inherited a
house. Certainly it had looked very different, that first time. It had
been midsummer, then, and he remembered standing in this same window and
looking out at the lake--a glimpse of glittering water seen through the
trees.
It was late September, now, and the leaves were thinner, and he could
see the lake very well. Lake? It was a pond--a stagnant and sinister
little pond, covered with scum, the source and the refuge of all these
swarms and swarms of mosquitoes. And the house itself, which had seemed
so dim and cool and restful on that summer day, was strangely altered
now.
His late uncle’s furniture was good, and quite plain enough to suit any
one, but it seemed to him that there wasn’t enough of it; the rooms had
so bare and desolate a look. And it was damp. He had been here now for a
week with his aunt, and she herself said that the dampness had “got into
her bones.” He thought that was a good way of putting it; the dampness
had got into his bones, too; he had never felt so cold in his life. He
was positively shivering with it.
“That’s all nonsense!” he said to himself, angrily. “The mercury’s up to
fifty-eight. I can’t be cold!”
He was, though--wretchedly, miserably cold. He sauntered down the hall
and stood in the doorway of the kitchen, pretending that he wished to
chat with his aunt, but really to be near the stove. It did him no good
at all; he felt as cold as ever, and the aroma of the plain dinner--a
lamb stew--which Mrs. Boles was cooking, filled him with unaccountable
distaste. Such was his mood that Mrs. Boles herself had a chilling
appearance; her gray hair seemed frosty; her white apron looked as if it
would be icy to touch.
The cuckoo clock in the hall struck three. It was a cantankerous old
clock, and when it struck three, it meant a quarter to four; time for
him to be off. So off he went, out to the barn where he kept his car, in
he climbed, and set off for the railway station.
And it was no use insisting that it was the jolting over bad roads which
made him shake so, because the shaking kept on after he had alighted and
was waiting on the platform. He was shivering violently; his teeth were
chattering; his head ached; he felt horribly ill.
Still, when his guests descended from the train, he greeted them
cordially; he clenched his teeth to stop their chattering; he forced his
stiff lips into a smile; he talked. He drove them back to the house. And
that finished him.
“Mr. Hughes! You have a chill!” cried Mrs. Dexter.
“N-n-no!” he insisted.
But nobody would pay any attention to what he said. He was driven
upstairs and ordered to lie down, and Mrs. Boles covered him up with
blankets and brought him hot lemonade to drink. He felt so exceedingly
miserable that he submitted to all this, but when she mentioned a
doctor, he rebelled.
“L-look here!” he said. “I _won’t_ have a doctor! I mean that! I’ll be
all right in the morning. I’d be all right now if I had--”
He told Mrs. Boles what he fancied he needed to make him all right, but
she sternly disagreed with him. She told him that this remedy he
mentioned was simply “poison,” and that hot lemonade was beyond measure
more beneficial. And, to be sure, the chill was already passing off,
only what took its place was even worse. He now became unbearably hot,
burning, and she wouldn’t let him take off a single one of that mound of
blankets.
He remembered afterward that he had not been very amiable toward his
aunt. He was so humiliated by this weakness, so anxious about his
guests; he seemed to remember shouting at her to let him _alone_, and go
downstairs and look after those people. Anyhow, she went, and the
instant she was out of sight, he pushed the blankets off onto the floor,
and, with a throbbing head, lay back again and closed his eyes.
He heard her come back into the room. She paused near him.
“I tell you I’m all right!” he said, without opening his eyes. “For
Heaven’s sake, don’t leave those people alone! Go downstairs--”
“It’s just me,” said the smallest voice. “I thought maybe you’d like a
cup of tea.”
It was Mimi, standing there with a tray. He pulled the counterpane up to
his chin, and turned away his face; what he really wanted to do was to
cover up his head entirely, and not to answer, so that she could neither
see nor hear him. But if he did that, she wouldn’t go away, and he had
to make her go away immediately. It was unendurable that she should see
him like this.
“Oh, thanks!” he said, in an odiously condescending voice. “But there’s
nothing much wrong with me. Half an hour’s nap, and I’ll be all right
again.”
That put a quick stop to her dangerous sympathy.
“Oh!” she observed. “I thought--I’m sorry I disturbed you, Mr. Hughes!”
And out she went. She was offended; he knew that, but he had to make
her go, at any cost. He could endure almost anything with fortitude, but
not the thought of Mimi being sorry for him. He never allowed any one to
be sorry for him.
As the door closed behind her, he turned his head. She had left the tray
on a chair beside him. On it were a cup and a saucer and a plate of his
uncle’s antique china which he had carefully put away. There was thin
bread with butter, cut star-shaped and placed just so.
And there were two doilies. No, not doilies; those, at least, she could
not find in this house; they were two little lace handkerchiefs spread
out.
And he was ill, helpless, unable to combat with any vigor this insidious
attack. In the gathering dusk he lay propped up on one elbow, looking at
those terrifying handkerchiefs.