COMPLICATIONS
For a week Forbes' spirits were fitful. Morning after morning, the
Rural Free Delivery brought a variety of offerings, and disappointment
along with the rest. Each afternoon Howard rode to the village, and
though he never returned empty-handed, he might as well have done so,
since he failed to bring the right letter. Had it not been for Agatha,
Forbes' depression might easily have become serious. She spent with him
all the time she could spare, even shelling peas and whipping cream
upon the porch within arm's length of his chair. Whatever opinion he
expressed, she promptly disagreed. She railed at modern institutions.
She professed unbounded contempt for the modern girl. She was as
prickly as a chestnut burr, as puckery as an unripe persimmon, as
ruffling as a January gale. But she gained her point. Forbes did not
mope.
In that week of waiting, she wrote at his dictation three letters to
Julia, all of them ardently tender, and quite uncomplaining. Though he
confessed to disappointment over not hearing from her, he did not seem
to question that it was her privilege to keep him waiting her pleasure.
His humility aroused Agatha to a fury of protest. She dotted her "i's"
as if she were stabbing the paper, and crossed her "t's" with a sweep,
like the slash of a knife. Her valorous instinct to champion the cause
of the under dog had never been so constantly in evidence.
The table at Oak Knoll was extremely good that week. In addition to
distracting Forbes' thoughts by continually opposing him, Agatha
concentrated her attention on making him eat. The fundamental common
sense, underlying like granite her girlish caprices and audacity,
assured her that an aching heart was in some mysterious fashion
relieved by a full stomach. The price Forbes had insisted on paying
for his board had seemed to her excessive, and now it justified her in
trying her choicest recipes. And while Forbes' mood would have made it
easy for him to be quite indifferent to what was set before him, thanks
to these tactics he ate with a rather shamefaced relish, and assured
Agatha that cooks of her sort had all been born before the Civil War.
At the end of a trying week, the looked-for letter arrived. Agatha
herself took it from the mail box at the end of the long drive, and she
eyed it as if it had been a new species of noxious insect. Though she
had never seen Julia's chirography, she instantly recognized it, even
without the aid of the post-mark. The letter was a long one, evidently,
for it had called for double postage.
Agatha walked rapidly back to the house, congratulating herself that
her duties would be less onerous, at least till the stimulating effect
of this letter had worn away. She beckoned to Howard, who was escorting
Forbes about the grounds on his morning constitutional, and despatched
him on some unnecessary errand, while she took his place at Forbes'
side. "It's come," she said briefly.
Though terse, the statement was quite intelligible. Forbes put out his
hand eagerly, and she saw it was trembling. She gave him the letter,
conscious of a pity that had a mixture of contempt. "Shall I read it to
you?" she asked.
"Why, of course. What am I thinking of! Shall we go to the porch? It
seems like a fat fellow, and I don't want to keep you standing."
Agatha put her hand through his arm and steered him in the direction
of the house. She noticed the shadow on his face had lifted. A little
color had come to his cheeks, and his sensitive mouth seemed on the
point of smiling. She felt that she despised his weakness in letting
himself be played upon by the caprices of a heartless girl, but at the
same time, she wanted to cry. And Forbes, as if suspecting her mood,
entertained her as they walked, by making fun of himself and of the
rapture he could not hide.
"What do you think, Miss Kent? Will you be equal to reading this to me
every day till the next one comes?"
"I suppose," said Agatha with resignation, "that I can stand it if you
can."
"Oh, there won't be any difficulty as far as I'm concerned. In fact,
if my eyes were normal, I should probably read it several times a day,
whenever I had a minute to spare. But I haven't the nerve to impose on
you to that extent."
"Heaven forbid!" cried Agatha devoutly, and he broke into hilarious
laughter. Agatha reflected that if this was the result of falling in
love, the longer that catastrophe was postponed, the better.
Forbes had been quite correct in saying that Julia's letter would
not be sentimental. Howard could have read it without the slightest
embarrassment. She apologized casually for not having written earlier,
and by way of explanation gave a list of her engagements for the past
two weeks, a device which lent her letter the effect of the society
column in a Sunday newspaper, and accounted for the double postage.
The names of several men appeared frequently in her record, and it
was evident that Forbes was not the only one of his sex to recognize
her charm. She even quoted one or two compliments she had received,
as if certain of his sympathetic pleasure in her popularity, and his
expression as he listened seemed to justify her confidence.
On the last page of the fifteen, Julia detached herself from this
fascinating theme, and touched on his affairs. She was glad he was
better and she was sure he must enjoy Oak Knoll. She thought those old
colonial houses simply lovely and from his description, Miss Kent was a
perfect dear. It was good of him to write so often for she was always
glad to hear, and she was very cordially his friend, Julia.
Agatha laid down the letter, hardly able to keep back the scornful
comment that rushed to her lips like a hemorrhage. She was rather in
hopes Forbes would say it himself. The shallowness of the missive, its
unabashed vanity, its colossal selfishness were so apparent to her
intelligence that she half expected to have Forbes break the silence by
congratulating himself on his escape from marrying Julia in January.
With this thought in her mind, the fatuous complacency indicated by
Forbes' tone came in the nature of a shock.
"She's a bit irregular as a correspondent, but when she does write, you
see it's some letter."
Agatha digested this in silence.
"You can gather from this," continued the unconscious Mr. Forbes, "how
popular she is. Wherever she goes, she's the center of attention."
Since it gave him pleasure to continue in this strain, and Agatha was
not really hard-hearted, she composed herself to listen till Howard's
return. But the sight of her brother's slender figure in the distance
was peculiarly welcome. By dint of vehement gestures, she induced him
to exchange his sauntering gait for a run, and so shortened her ordeal
perceptibly.
Howard looked from the frowning girl to the smiling young man with
perplexity. For several days Forbes' depression had weighed on the
boy's spirits. And now Mr. Forbes was grinning like a chessy cat,
and Aggie looked mad enough to bite a nail in two. Howard continued
to stare till by a sweeping gesture Agatha indicated her wish to be
left to herself. For some time Forbes had gone through the program
of exercise his physician had outlined with a listlessness which
proved his lack of interest. Now as Howard suggested continuing their
interrupted walk, he clapped the boy on the shoulder, seized his arm
and the two went off laughing. And Agatha, recalling his boast that he
was a representative of a generation remarkable for its reasonableness,
smiled sourly and significantly after his departing figure, and asked
herself whether all men were fools, or only the nice ones.
In her valiant effort to sustain Forbes' spirits, Agatha had for some
days neglected her household duties, and she profited by his temporary
accession of cheerfulness to despatch a number of pressing duties,
aided by Phemie Tidd, the daughter of a neighboring farmer. The most
notable characteristic of Phemie was her stupidity, and though Agatha
had sometimes found this trying, in the present emergency she derived
satisfaction from the certainty that nature had rendered it impossible
for Phemie to find out anything on her own initiative. Whether she was
positively weak-minded or not was a question on which the community did
not agree, but under careful supervision she accomplished rather more
work than would have seemed possible, considering her mental equipment.
As there was no immediate prospect of another letter from Julia,
Howard was excused from his afternoon trips to the village, and left
to discharge his secretarial duties unassisted. For this reason Agatha
was several hours late in learning an important bit of news. It was
approaching noon on Friday when she came out upon the porch flushed and
weary, after a strenuous morning, and dropped into a chair near that
which Forbes was occupying. Though the young man was alone, his mood
was evidently cheerful. As she approached him, his smile challenged her
attention, and she pondered with frank amazement on the extraordinary
effect of Julia's inane letter.
"It's Miss Kent, isn't it?" Forbes looked boyishly pleased over having
guessed correctly. "I am beginning to enjoy some of the perquisites of
blindness. I can recognize the footsteps of all of you. Do you know
you walk with wonderful lightness for a woman of your age?"
Agatha immediately resolved to begin wearing a pair of Howard's
slippers, which could be kept on only by dragging her feet.
"I've been wanting to see you all the morning," continued Forbes
light-heartedly. "I've great news for you. We're going to have company."
"Company!" Had Forbes' sense of hearing reached the stage of acuteness
he fondly imagined, he would have recognized instantly a note of
wildness in Agatha's exclamation.
"Had a letter this morning from a pal of mine, fellow I knew in
college. He's coming to-morrow to spend Sunday with me."
"To spend Sunday!" Even though Forbes was unable to perceive the frozen
horror of Agatha's countenance, her appalled tone convinced him that
something was wrong. His smile gave way to an expression of anxiety.
"It won't inconvenience you to put him up, will it, Miss Kent?"
Agatha found herself unable to reply. Her castle in the air was about
to topple. A friend of Forbes was coming, and his would be as eyes to
the blind. Through him Forbes would learn that the house was in need
of painting and shingling and papering, that the furniture was in all
stages of dilapidation, and that she herself was not an elderly lady
with a motherly interest in youth, but a mere girl with a surprising
facility in falsehood. And while these agonized forebodings flitted
through her brain, Forbes was offering dismayed apologies.
"I beg your pardon a thousand times. I should have realized--Of course,
this isn't a boarding-house, but the fact that you advertised for
boarders, misled me, don't you see? If Warren's coming is going to put
you out at all, I'll have Howard telegraph him at once."
Agatha came to herself. There was risk, of course, in granting
permission for his friend's visit, yet anything was better, even
discovery, than that she should appear inhospitable. Her cheeks grew
hot as she recalled his generosity and saw him confused and apologetic
over having asked a friend to solace his loneliness for a week-end.
"Indeed you shall do nothing of the kind," she said with authority.
"You didn't understand me. I'm only sorry not to meet your friend. I
expect to be away over Sunday."
"Oh, but that's bad. I particularly wanted Warren to see you. We might
telegraph him to make it Sunday week."
Agatha vetoed the suggestion. It was better that Mr. Warren should come
as he had planned. "And besides," she added with swift return of her
normal audacity, "if he is here you won't miss me so much."
"I shall miss you under any and all circumstances, dear lady." Forbes'
air of animation had returned, and it was so great a relief to see him
smiling again, that she resolutely shut her eyes to the pitfalls ahead.
"I shall get a girl from the neighborhood to do the cooking," explained
Agatha. "And Miss Finch will mother you all in my place."
"But not in your way." Forbes had a confused but unflattering
impression of Miss Finch, due to the fact that she never dared trust
herself to converse with him for more than a minute at a time, for
fear of making some unfortunate revelation. "And I'm sorry," he ended
regretfully, "that Warren's not to taste your cooking."
"Oh, Hephzibah is exactly as good. I trained her."
"Good Heavens! You don't mean there's a living woman with a name like
that."
"Oh, do you think Hephzibah an odd name? It wasn't uncommon when I was
a girl." Agatha felt that she had taken leave of reason as well as of
principle. "Hephzibah Diggs," she repeated thoughtfully. "I suppose it
would have rather a quaint sound to any one not used to it."
"It's a name for the vaudeville stage," said Mr. Forbes with
conviction. He returned to the subject of Agatha's other substitute. "I
suppose Warren will have a chance to get more of an impression of Miss
Finch than I have succeeded in doing, for he'll have his eyes to help
him out. All I have been able to discover is that she never finishes
her sentences."
"She's shy with men, poor girl," said Agatha, and then as he looked
puzzled, "Of course she seems quite elderly to you, but to me she's
only a girl."
Forbes whistled softly, shaking his head. "A blind man would credit you
with immortal youth, and convict her of never having been less than
middle-aged. I begin to believe that eyesight is misleading."
Agatha broke away from him before her mood of reprehensible
recklessness should have implicated her still further. Then in the
seclusion of her own room, she wept. "It's bad enough to stretch the
truth when I positively can't help it," she told herself, "but this
morning I simply wallowed in falsehood. And now I must live up to
Hephzibah Diggs. Why couldn't I have called her Mamie Thompson? It's
all the fault of that atrocious Warren person, and I wish something
would happen to him on the way down. I suppose it's too much to hope
for a railway accident, with only one passenger killed, but that would
serve him exactly right."
Agatha's courage did not revive until she undertook to prepare Miss
Finch for the responsibilities which would devolve upon her in the
absence of the mistress of the house. Her pale eyes became unnaturally
prominent as Agatha explained.
"Agatha, I can't. I'd go through fire and water for you, but I can't
have a lie on my conscience. At my age I've got to prepare for death,
any day, and I can't be loading my soul down with mortal sin."
"Oh, Fritz, don't be so foolish. It's not necessary to lie." Agatha's
conscience gave a twinge like an uneasy tooth, as she recalled her
entirely gratuitous inventions of the morning. "All you have to do is
to keep from telling the truth."
"You can do it all right, you're so quick-witted, but I have to have
time."
Agatha had an inspiration. "If he says anything you don't know how to
answer, pretend you're hard of hearing. And make him keep repeating it
over till he gets tired, or you've thought of something to say."
Miss Finch showed no inclination to rejoice over this simple solution
of her difficulty. Her thin nose reddened as abruptly as if it had been
pinched, and her eyes filled.
"I know I'm going to make a mess of things. I've felt from the start
that no good could come of cheating a blind man. And after you go
to-morrow--"
"But I'm not really going, Fritz. Somebody must do the cooking. I shall
be in the kitchen, and my name will be Hephzibah Diggs."
"Hephzibah Diggs!" Miss Finch repeated, appalled. "You're going to be
somebody else?"
"Only till Mr. Warren gets out of the house."
"And you picked out that name yourself, just for the fun of it?"
Agatha reddened under her old friend's accusing gaze. "I had to have
some name," she protested weakly.
"You didn't have to have that. It almost looks to me as if you were
getting where you took pleasure in deception."
As this only echoed Agatha's self-accusation, she exclaimed, "The
idea!" with an air of indignant protest.
"It keeps me awake nights," Miss Finch continued mournfully, "the way
things are in this house. It seems as if there might be an explosion
any minute. You're young and light-hearted, Agatha, and you can't
understand my feelings."
"Can't I, though," mused Agatha, as her old friend tottered toward the
house. "And what's more, I shouldn't wonder if the explosion came off
in just about twenty-four hours."