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MAVIS
OF GREEN HILL
BY
FAITH BALDWIN
(MRS. HUGH HAMLIN CUTHRELL)
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1921,
BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_To_
JEAN WICK
_In Gratitude and Affection_
MAVIS OF GREEN HILL
CHAPTER I
GREEN HILL, June
A new doctor has arrived in Green Hill!
Sarah told me so this morning when she brought in my breakfast. She
set the tray down with an agitated thump, and after her strong arms
had raised me a little higher among the pillows, she stepped back,
folded her hands beneath her apron, and fixed me with a portentous
eye.
"Now do try and relish your breakfast, Miss Mavis," she coaxed,
"there's a good girl!"
An undercurrent of excitement colored her tone. I looked upon her with
suspicion. But I know my Sarah. Like Fate, and the village
fire-company, she is not to be hurried. Very casually, I reached for
my glass of milk. Years of lying comparatively flat on a useless back
tend to the development of patience as a necessity.
"What time is it?" I inquired conversationally.
"Past nine."
I set the glass aside, and bit reflectively into a crisp triangle of
toast. Since I've become so clever at eating and drinking, there's a
sense of adventure about these commonplace functions which no whole
person could ever comprehend. Sarah, busying herself with details of
window-shades and counterpanes, watching me meanwhile from the corner
of her eye, waited until I had turned indifferently to my pillows
again, before making the following terse but thrilling remark.
"Your pink rose-bush's come into blossom, Miss Mavis."
Here was news indeed! My unconcern took unto itself wings and flew
away.
"Not really!" I cried, "Oh, Sarah, how perfectly darling of her to
waken so early!"
Sarah, accustomed to my extravagant fashion of endowing all growing
things with distinct personalities, nodded gravely. And then, with all
the majesty of Jove--if one may picture that deity as female, fifty,
and New England incarnate--she launched her thunderbolt of Green Hill
gossip.
"That young doctor--him that was to come from the city to help Doctor
McAllister with his patien's--he's here!"
There was more truth than enunciation in Sarah's neglect of that final
"t" in patients. Our village doctor is long on wisdom, but short of
temper. I reached out for the morning paper, lying on my bedside
table, and rustled it in dismissal.
"How interesting!" I murmured, successfully concealing any concern at
all.
Sarah swooped down upon my tray and bore it to the door, in a manner
which carried conviction. But we can deceive each other so little,
Sarah and I.
"Come last night," she volunteered, "from New York. And every girl in
Green Hill is furbishing up her Sunday clothes, so Sammy said."
Sammy, surnamed Simpson, the freckled-faced Mercury who delivers the
milk, and is in close touch with all the divers heart-throbs of Green
Hill, holds a sentimental, if unacknowledged appeal for Sarah. A
century or two ago, Sammy's father, in those days a gay and
unencumbered spark, courted my Sarah, so runs the story, in the public
manner of Green Hill. And Sarah, difficult to believe though it be,
showed him no disfavor. There was, however, an obstacle to eventual
union, in the person of Sarah's invalid mother, a querulous,
ninety-pound tyrant. Upon this rock the frail bark of the Simpson
affections shattered. This is of history, the most ancient, but had
the far-reaching result that Sarah, whose lot seems ever cast among
the stricken, now waits on me heart, hand, and foot, while over the
Simpson hearthstone another goddess presides, and rigidly too, if one
can judge from the harrassed expressions of Sammy, Sr., Sammy, Jr.,
and all the other innumerable Simpson olive branches.
But to return to our muttons--the palpitating girlhood of Green Hill.
"Silly geese!" I commented unkindly.
Sarah from the doorway looked as cryptic as is consistent with the
features Nature had given her.
"Oh, I don't know!" she answered with spirit, and an unconscious
effect of argot, "In Green Hill, Miss Mavis, men is scarce!"
Here was truth! Mentally I echoed, "They is!" and Sarah, reading
ratification in my silence, achieved a disappearance of my tray, and
returned to the attack.
"Sammy says--he was down to the station last night when the ten-six
come in--seems like," she digressed, "he's always hanging around the
station since Rosie Allan's been telegraph operator there--"
"Rosie is a very pretty girl, Sarah," I chided gently.
"Pretty is as pretty does!" said Sarah, in irrefutable self-defense.
"Limb, I call her--bold as brass! But then," she added in her most
pleasant tone, "Sammy was never raised to know better." And she looked
at me with that unique light in her eyes which never fails them of the
mention of any Simpson delinquency, however slight.
"Sammy says," she continued, bound to pursue the subject to the bitter
end, "that the new doctor is a likely-looking young fellow, and seems
well off."
At this juncture, I opened my paper with an air of finality.
"If this stranger in our midst is, as you infer, young, handsome, and
wealthy," I remarked, "why then, in Heaven's name, has he descended
upon Green Hill, Sarah?"
I hate handsome men. They are always so much vainer than women.
Sarah, accustomed as she is to my intemperate habits of speech,
regarded me with a somewhat shocked air.
"Sammy says," she quoted--and here the conversational cat leaped from
the bag--"that he come down here because he is suffering from nerves!"
The door closed after her, but her contempt lingered, almost tangibly,
in the room; and I smothered my laughter in the lavender-scented
pillows.
But Sarah had given me something to think about. I have known so few
men, young ones, that perhaps I am given to speculating about them
even more than the average girl. They're such an unknown quality. And
certainly the one or two who have been escorted to my presence have
not shown to good advantage. The healthy man reacts unfavorably to
invalid feminism. They are bored, or too sympathetic; they speak in
whispers, or in too cheery tones; they shuffle their great feet; and
escape, eventually, with a sigh of relief. And I am impatient of them,
of their bulk and their strength, and the arrogance which is part and
parcel of their sex. Perhaps it is because I am handicapped,
circumstantially out of the running, so as to speak, that an
"eligible" male always arouses in me a feeling of antagonism. And yet
with not unremarkable inconsistency, I always wish, wistfully, deep
down, that I might make, sometime, a man friend of my own generation.
But I can't. Something in me shuts doors and bolts them in any
strange, masculine face.
A breeze stole delicately through my open window and ruffled my hair,
luring my eyes to the out-of-door world where young Summer goes
walking today, clad in blue and green. Not far off, the hills which
give our town its pretty name, rise mistily, like altars. Just beyond
that tall tangle of oak trees, a little river comes singing from its
source. In winter I miss its friendly voice, yet I am more in sympathy
with it then, for ice-bound, its bright limbs fettered, its dancing
stilled, it seems kin to such as I. But for me there will never dawn a
springtide, with the prison keys in her green girdle and rosy hands
outstretched to unlock the door.
Year in, year out, my bed is always close to the windows. All of
out-doors that I may see and hear, I must have for my own. I love
every glimpse and scent and sound of it. Only the aggressive shriek of
the train at the distant crossing makes me shrink and shudder. That
was the last thing I heard--a whistle at a crossing--before the day
coach which was carrying me home from a happy visit plunged over the
embankment.
Eleven years ago! It seems like many centuries. Yet I remember it as I
remember yesterday--that crash before oblivion. I can remember even
the thrill of twelve-year old pride in the dignity of that fifty-mile
journey, made quite alone. It was the beginning of a longer journey,
where the milestones are the years; a journey painful and rebellious,
marked with many stations of weariness, and black tunnels of agony; a
journey which, despite all the loving care that surrounds me, I must
make in isolation of body and spirit. Oh, little blue diary, it is
well that I may shut away my moods and my mutiny between your covers!
No one in all this house must be made sadder because of me. Not
father, unfailing playmate, and tender; not Sarah, whose silent
affection is like protecting arms about me. There's a great shaft of
sunlight quivering across what I've just written. Incongruous,
somehow. And I'm out of tune with the June weather and the birds just
beyond my windows.
I must ask Sarah to bring me my first rose from my Sleeping Beauty
bush. First roses are always the sweetest--like the kiss of Prince
Charming.
I wonder what the nervous doctor's name is--poor Sarah!
June paid me a visit this afternoon while I slept. She was reluctant
to waken me, but left me her prettiest card. The first roses from my
bush! They have been happily translated to a vase beside me, as I
write. Father brought them upstairs with him when he came in for tea.
"Did you kiss her hands and tell her how sorry I would be to miss
her?" I asked him soberly.
Father looked alarmed.
"Whose hands?" he began.
"Who has called on us today?"
"Mrs. Withers!" he answered, suppressing a groan.
Rudely I laughed.
"Surely, Mavis," father continued plaintively, "you could never demand
that I kiss--"
I laughed again. Mrs. Withers--ugly name, isn't it!--is the wife of
our pastor. She is a good woman, but she possesses little charm.
I just touched my roses, with a cautious finger-tip.
"June has been here, you prosaic person," I said. "Witness these, and
then deny it if you can."
Father, relieved, leaned back in my comfortable armchair. At least, I
know it _looks_ comfortable.
"I did not see her," he said. "That is, not until I entered this room,
and found her wearing my daughter's most becoming face."
Father is so satisfactory! I'm sure I bridled.
"Bring me a mirror, immediately!" I demanded.
Father rose obediently to his lean height, and fumbled among the
things on my dresser for the fat silver mirror, adorned with its
charmingly ugly cupids, which had been my mother's.
"There, Miss Vanity!" he said. And while I studied my reflection, he
studied me from under his bushy brows.
Finally, in silence, I gave him back the glass.
"Well?" asked father.
"Well?" I responded, which was not courteous.
"Do you find yourself prettier than yesterday?"
"Oh! Much!" I answered, with conviction.
After all, there are compensations in the possession of a pointed
face, decorated with big dark eyes, and a delightful mouth. My nose
has never pleased me; but always, when I am gloomiest, my hair affords
me consolation. Sarah makes a household pet of it, and cares for it
devotedly. There's heaps of it. So much, that it makes my head ache to
wear it piled high. So it generally lies in two long braids across the
sheets.
"Father," I asked, "what color is my hair?"
He leaned forward and lifted one of the braids.
"Exactly the color of cloudy amber," he answered.
I pondered on this for a time, and then: "That," I said, "sounds very
nice--but improbable."
We smiled at one another, but suddenly the laughter left his eyes, and
he bent to kiss my forehead, perhaps to hide his face.
"You grow more lovely every day, Mavis," he said, gravely.
Could anything be sweeter than a father who says all those little,
lover things to one? I think not.
I laid my cheek against his hand. He has nice hands, quick to soothe
and caress. Nothing is quite unendurable with father near.
"You should be a poet," I told him. "Sometimes I think you are,
instead of a historian. Nothing in the world can ever make me believe
that you write deadly-dull books for deadly-dull people to read. Do
they read them?" I inquired as an afterthought.
"Mavis!" he shook his finger at me, in mock indignation.
"Well," I answered truthfully, "mediaeval history must be dull. I'm
sure I can't remember any of it!"
Here our argument, but half commenced, ceased. For father, with an
exclamation, plunged his hands deep into his pockets, and after a time
produced a slim, sober volume.
"Here it is!" he cried in triumph.
"Here is what?" I asked in some astonishment. "How you do dash about,
father. Your mind turns all sorts of corners. What is it--mediaeval
history?"
"Certainly not, minx! Poetry!"
"Poetry!"
He laid the book on the bed, and my hands pounced upon it like two
white cats on a small brown mouse.
"I've been starving for some!" I announced, and turned the book over
to read the title, _The Lyric Hour by Richard Warren_.
"Where," I asked, tucking my treasure under my pillow, "did you get
it?"
"It came in the morning mail," he answered.
I looked at him searchingly.
"There is," I ventured, "some mystery about this _Lyric Hour_."
Father laughed, and fished once more in his pockets.
"Here is the letter which came with it," he said.
I opened the envelope, which bore the name of father's publisher and
good friend, and read:
NEW YORK CITY
June 18th
Dear Carroll:
I'm sending you your delayed proofs, and by way of apology and
distraction, the volume of verse which has created such a
sensation in literary and critical circles--those two kingdoms
which occasionally overlap--but are not always completely allied.
I feel certain that you and Mavis will enjoy Richard Warren. Old
and sedate as I have grown with the years, I must confess that he
has made my pulses quicken and my heart take on something of its
youth again.
With warmest remembrances to you both,
Faithfully yours,
JOHN DENTON
I gave the letter back to father.
"It must be some book!" I remarked with awe, if slangily.
Father raised an eyebrow.
"Why?"
"Mr. Denton--and 'quickened pulses'?" I quoted with a rising
inflection.
"Why not?" interrogated my parent. "A contemporary of mine, and,
Mavis, you must admit, an admirer of yours--"
I was flattered into silence, and turned my attention to my roses once
more. Father chewed his pipe stem--a reprehensible habit--and made an
announcement.
"We've had another caller today," he said.
"You're as bad as Sarah for concealing things until the eleventh
hour," I reproached him. "Who was it?"
"Denton's nephew."
This, in Green Hill phraseology, really fetched me. Round-eyed, I
stared.
"Didn't know he had one!" I said, somewhat aggrieved. "Who is he, and
what is he doing here?"
Father stretched out his long legs, preparatory to explanation.
"It's a long story," he said. "Briefly, this is a prodigal nephew.
There has been some family feud in the Denton clan, but recently done
away with. When the hatchet was buried, Denton got into touch with
his late brother's family, which consists of a wife, and an only
son, who is a doctor. He has just recovered from a slight
break-down--overwork, I believe. And Denton through me arranged to
have him come here to recuperate and at the same time to assist our
good friend, McAllister in some of his surgical research."
By this time my mind was putting two and two together and making eight
or nine.
"Not Doctor Denton," I asked, "_the_ Doctor Denton?"
Father nodded.
"Perhaps--" he began wistfully. But I shook my head.
"Please not!" I said. And he left me with his sentence unspoken. But I
knew! We had both read so much of the young surgeon who had effected
wonderful cures in cases similar to mine. It had never occurred to
either of us, at the time, that he might be of John Denton's family.
But I knew that father often wished, out loud, that he might consult
with him about me, deploring the fact that he was in Europe. But for a
number of years I have begged so hard that no more doctors be let
loose to probe and pound me--a process of infinite torture with no
results save deeper hopelessness and white nights, that father
promised. So I have been left in peace. Lazily, I wondered why father
had not told me sooner of his discovery and subsequent arrangement
with Doctor Mac. But I had a bad siege of it, a while back, and
probably during that very period the matter had come up. Doubtless,
when I had finally struggled up again from my depths, father, once
more lost to the world among his books, had forgotten.
I lay silent, watching a bird seesaw on the vine which clambers over
my window-ledge in friendly fashion. "Long past your bed-time!" I
remarked severely. But it cheeped at me impudently.
I wonder what Doctor Denton looks like. Thin, I fancy, professional,
and probably very jumpy. But I cannot condemn his nerves quite as
harshly as I know Sarah does. I have had a speaking acquaintance with
nerves, myself.
I meant to indulge in _The Lyric Hour_ tonight. But my little blue
friend has claimed all of my time. I will save Mr. Warren, therefore,
for another day. Like icing on a cake. The book lies under my pillow
still, barely peeped at. Perhaps I shall sleep better with that Ship
of Song beneath my cheek.
Diary, good night!
Twenty-four hours later.
Oh, Diary, I have found him! And I don't know, and care less, whether
he is twenty or ninety, fat or thin, married or single! The only thing
in all the world which I am sure of at present is that he is mine! For
I have him locked up between two vellum doors, from which he shall
never escape. He's here--and never in all my life has anyone so
thoroughly belonged to me. I've the heart and brains and beautiful
spirit of him, and all day long his name makes a happy spot in my
conscience. _Richard Warren! Richard Warren!_ I hold the book that he
has given to the world between my hands, in reverence. For all that I
have hoped, and dreamed, and lived, in my shut-in life; all that I
have ever wanted to be; all, that in my secret soul-shrine I have
worshipped in God and Nature and Love of Love, is written down here
for me to read and make doubly my own. I don't know who or what he is,
Diary, in the outside world. And it doesn't matter. Nothing matters
but this one little book to which he has set his name. For everything
worth while is here; dust of stars and wine of dreams; essence of
youth and joy of living, given word-form. And yet, these are not words
so much as they are music, and color, and fragrance. I've just been
reading and reading, and now I've laid the book aside, and have been
lying here idly, letting broken snatches of purest beauty drift
through my mind. And, for the first time I find myself regretting the
shade of my eyes, for my new companion sings of "grey eyes as pure as
God's first dream of stars." But perhaps it's just that grey lends
itself more easily to poetry than common or garden brown.
Diary, I wonder if I have fallen in love with a book! But what a
satisfactory state of heart to be in after all! I can banish my lover
with so little effort, if ever I am not in the mood for him! I can
even cast him into the fire, if he ever bores me! And I am sure that
the most lovelorn maiden on earth must have moments when she would
envy that faculty! And when I finally relent, as all true lovers must,
how simple it has been made for me to buy a new copy of the Beloved!
Good night, "sweet gossip," as the ladies of Shakespeare's time were
wont to say. You're such a comfort! And you'll not tell, will you,
that Richard Warren and all his words lie once again beneath my
pillow?
June 21
It's raining. Silver fingers are tapping at my window pane, and
father's morning offering of roses came to me with their darling faces
all wet and gleaming. I hated the weather _hard_ when I woke up, but
in my _Lyric Hour_, which holds so many, many lyric hours for me,
there's a little verse about the rain, which patters through my mind
as soothingly as the drops outside. So I've become almost reconciled
to a dull day, devoid of visitors, and with Sarah complaining of
"rheumatics." I shall begin to grumble about them myself soon, for I'm
aware of warnings in my spine which bode no good. I'm too tired to
write more, Diary.
July 1
Since last I set pen to your paper, Blue One, I have descended into
Sloughs of Despair. Now, emerged again, I take up my story where I
left it. A day or so after the last time I talked with you, I had an
attack, of the sort which has mercifully been spared me for over a
year. It had been coming on, steadily, but I wasn't going to give in
to it--oh, no! So, the first intimation which father and Sarah had of
its arrival was late one night, when a moan that I had been biting
back for an hour tore its way to freedom past my closed lips, and
revealed its presence, surprisingly, in the shape of a scream. Sarah
came flying to my bed, and hard on her heels, father. They gave me
such remedies as are always at hand, and which generally prove
friendly. But this time they failed. My Demon had been in abeyance too
long, and was reluctant to loosen his clutches. Once made free of my
flesh, he would listen to no reason. Presently there came a period of
half-consciousness, through which I dimly heard father at the
telephone, calling Dr. McAllister's number. I almost smiled, through
the creeping faintness, to think how annoyed he would profess himself
to be, "called out of bed at this ungodly hour!" and how once arrived,
he would toil to help me.
When I opened my eyes again after what seemed years, it was with a
vague sense of amazement that Doctor Mac had grown so young since last
I had seen him. For he was slim, where once he had been inclined to
rotundity, and ruddy-brown where once he had been sparse and grey.
Upon my pulse was an unfamiliar hand, and a strange voice, close to
me, was saying quietly.
"She's coming round, Mr. Carroll."
Somehow, this calm disposition of me was annoying.
"I'm not," I heard myself contradict weakly.
Two steel-blue eyes, set in a lean face, met mine. It was not a
friendly encounter.
"Please don't talk," ordered this new Doctor Mac briefly.
Father laid his hand upon my forehead.
"Is the pain better, dear?" he asked, with that break in his voice
which always comes when he knows that I am suffering.
I tried to flash triumph into the blue eyes, and responded, "Yes."
Then, as My Demon's jaws took a fresh hold on my spinal column,
"Oh--no--!"
There was a low-voiced consultation, and then father said,
reassuringly,
"Don't talk, Mavis dear, and lie quiet. Doctor Denton is going to give
you something to relieve you."
I felt six years old again, and resentful to find father going over to
the enemy. But I was grateful, that, after all, our own dear Doctor
Mac had not been metamorphosed into an ogre with icicle eyes. As the
tiny, merciful piston went home, I said feebly, with malice
aforethought.
"Hello--_Doctor Jumpy_!"
And the last thing I saw before I fell asleep was his startled face.
And in my first half-dreams, I found myself repeating, childishly, "He
did jump! He _did_. And I made him!"
And that, Dear Diary, was my informal introduction to the nervous
nephew of Mr. John Denton.