“Oh, Peggy! don't tell your mother. She is not--not simpatica. I might
lose my home here, my only home. Peggy, promise me.”
“Daughter!” mother was calling from the dining-room.
I slipped away from Aunt Elizabeth's hands. “I promise,” said I. “You
sha'n't lose your home.”
“Daughter!” mother called again, and I went in.
That night at supper nobody talked except father and mother, and they
did every minute, as if they wanted to keep the rest of us from speaking
a word. It was all about the Works. Father was describing some new
designs he had accepted, and telling how Charles Edward said they would
do very well for the trimmings of a hearse, and mother coughed and said
Charles Edward's ideas were always good, and father said not where the
market was concerned. Aunt Elizabeth had put on a white dress, and I
thought she looked sweet, because she was sad and had made her face
quite pale; but I was chiefly busy in thinking how to escape before
anybody could talk to me. It doesn't seem safe nowadays to speak a word,
because we don't know where it will lead us. Alice, too, looked pale,
poor child! and kept glancing at me in a way that made me so sorry. I
wanted to tell her I didn't care about her pranks and Billy's, whatever
they were. And whatever she had written, it was sure to be clever. The
teacher says Alice has a positive genius for writing, and before
many years she'll be in all the magazines. When supper was over I ran
up-stairs to my room. I sat down by the window in the dark and wondered
when the moon would rise. I felt excited--as if something were going to
happen. And in spite of all the dreadful things that had happened to us,
and might keep on happening, I felt as if I could die with joy. There
were steps on the porch below my window. I heard father's voice.
“That's ridiculous, Elizabeth,” he said--“ridiculous! If it's a good
thing for other girls to go to college, it's been a good thing for her.”
“Ah,” said Aunt Elizabeth, “but is it a good thing?”
Then I knew they were talking about me, and I put my fingers in my ears
and said the Latin prepositions. I have been talked about enough.
They may talk, but I won't hear. By-and-by I took my fingers out and
listened. They had gone in, and everything was still. Then I began to
think it over. Was it a bad thing for me to go to college? I'm different
from what I was three years ago, but I should have been different if I'd
stayed at home. For one thing, I'm not so shy. I remember the first day
I came out of a class-room and Stillman Dane walked up to me and said;
“So you're Charlie Ned's sister!” I couldn't look at him. I stood
staring down at my note-book, and now I should say, quite calmly: “Oh,
you must be Mr. Dane? I believe you teach psychology.” But I stood and
stared. I believe I looked at my hands for a while and wished I hadn't
got ink on my forefinger--and he had to say: “I'm the psychology man.
Charlie Ned and I were college friends. He wrote me about you.” But
though I didn't look at him that first time, I thought he had the
kindest voice that ever was--except mother's--and perhaps that was why
I selected psychology for my specialty. I was afraid I might be stupid,
and I knew he was kind. And then came that happy time when I was getting
acquainted with everybody, and Mr. Dane was always doing things for me.
“I'm awfully fond of Charlie Ned, you know,” he told me. “You must let
me take his place.” Then Mr. Goward told me all those things at the
dance, how he had found life a bitter waste, how he had been betrayed
over and over by the vain and worldly, and how his heart was dead and
nobody could bring it to life but me. He said I was his fate and his
guiding-star, and since love was a mutual flame that meant he was my
fate, too. But it seemed as if that were the beginning of all my bad
luck, for about that time Stillman Dane was different, and one day he
stopped me in the yard when I was going to chapel.
“Miss Peggy,” said he, “don't let's quarrel.”
He held out his hand, and I gave him mine quickly.
“No,” said I, “I'm not quarrelling.”
“I want to ask you something,” said he. “You must answer, truly. If
I have a friend and she's doing something foolish, should I tell her?
Should I write to her brother and tell him?”
“Why,” said I, “do you mean me?” Then I understood. “You think I'm not
doing very well in my psychology,” I said. “You think I've made a wrong
choice.” I looked at him then. I never saw him look just so. He had my
hand, and now I took it away. But he wouldn't talk about the psychology.
“Peggy,” said he, “do your people know Goward?”
“They will in vacation,” I said. “He's going home with me. We're
engaged, you know.”
“Oh!” said he. “Oh! Then it is true. Let him meet Charles Edward at
once, will you? Tell Charles Edward I particularly want him to know
Goward.” His voice sounded sharp and quick, and he turned away and left
me. But I didn't give his message to Charles Edward, and somehow, I
don't know why, I didn't talk about him after I came home. “Dane never
wrote me whether he looked you up,” said Charles Edward one day. “Not
very civil of him.” But even then I couldn't tell him. Mr. Dane is one
of the people I never can talk about as if they were like everybody
else. Perhaps that is because he is so kind in a sort of intimate,
beautiful way. And when I went back after vacation he had resigned, and
they said he had inherited some money and gone away, and after he went
I never understood the psychology at all. Mr. Goward used to laugh at
me for taking it, only he said I could get honors in anything, my verbal
memory is so good. But I told him, and it is true, that the last part of
the book is very dull. While I was going over all this, still with that
strange excited feeling of happiness, I heard Aunt Elizabeth's voice
from below. She was calling, softly: “Peggy! Peggy! Are you up there?”
I got on my feet just as quietly as I could, and slipped through
mother's room and down the back stairs. Mother was in the vegetable
garden watering the transplanted lettuce. I ran out to her. “Mother,” I
said, “may I go over to Lorraine's and spend the night?”
“Yes, lamb,” said mother. That's a good deal for mother to say.
“I'll run over now,” I told her. “I won't stop to take anything.
Lorraine will give me a nightie.”
I went through the vegetable garden to the back gate and out into the
street. There I drew a long breath. I don't know what I thought Aunt
Elizabeth could do to me, but I felt safe. Then--I could laugh at it
all, because it seems as if I must have been sort of crazy that night--I
began to run as if I couldn't get there fast enough. But when I got
to the steps I heard Lorraine laughing, and I stopped to listen to see
whether any one was there.
“I tell Peter,” said she, “that it's his opportunity. Don't you remember
the Great Magician's story of the man who was always afraid he should
miss his opportunity? And the opportunity came, and, sure enough, the
man didn't know it, and it slipped by. Well, that mustn't be Peter.”
“It musn't be any of us,” said a voice. “Things are mighty critical,
though. It's as if everybody, the world and the flesh and the Whole
Family, had been blundering round and setting their feet down as near as
they could to a flower. But the flower isn't trampled yet. We'll build
a fence round it.” My heart beat so fast that I had to put my hand
over it. I wondered if I were going to have heart-failure, and I knew
grandmother would say, “Digitalis!” When I thought of that I laughed,
and Lorraine called out, “Who's there?” She came to the long window.
“Why, Peggy, child,” said she, “come in.” She had me by the hand and
led me forward. They got up as I stepped in, Charles Edward and Stillman
Dane. Then I knew why I was glad. If Stillman Dane had been here
all these dreadful things would not have happened, because he is
a psychologist, and he would have understood everybody at once and
influenced them before they had time to do wrong.
“Jove!” said Charles Edward. “Don't you look handsome, Peg!”
“Goose!” said Lorraine, as if she wanted him to be still. “A good neat
girl is always handsome. There's an epigram for you. And Peggy's hair is
loose in three places. Let me fix it for you, child.”
So we all laughed, and Lorraine pinned me up in a queer, tender way, as
if she were mother dress-me for something important, and we sat down,
and began to talk about college. I am afraid Stillman Dane and I did
most of the talking, for Lorraine and Charles Edward looked at each
other and smiled a little, in a fashion they have, as if they understood
each other, and Lorraine got up to show him the bag she had bought that
day for the steamer; and while she was holding it out to him and asking
him if it cost too much, she stopped short and called out, sharply,
“Who's there?” I laughed. “Lorraine has the sharpest ears,” I said.
“Ears!” said Lorraine. “It isn't ears. I smell orris. She's coming. Mr.
Dane, will you take Peggy out of that window into the garden? Don't yip,
either of you, while you're within gunshot, and don't appear till I tell
you.”
“Lorraine!” came a voice, softly, from the front walk. It was Aunt
Elizabeth. She has a way of calling to announce herself in a sweet,
cooing tone. I said to Charles Edward once it was like a dove, and he
said: “No, my child, not doves, but woodcock.” Alice giggled and called
out, quite loudly, '“Springes to catch woodcock!'” And he shook his head
at her and said, “You all-knowing imp! isn't even Shakespeare hidden
from you?” But now the voice didn't sound sweet to me at all, because
I wanted to get away. We rose at the same minute, Mr. Dane and I, and
Lorraine seemed to waft us from the house on a kind little wind. At
the foot of the steps we stopped for fear the gravel should crunch, and
while we waited for Aunt Elizabeth to go in the other way I looked at
Mr. Dane to see if he wanted to laugh as much as I. He did. His eyes
were full of fun and pleasure, and he gave me a little nod, as if we
were two children going to play a game we knew all about. Then I heard
Aunt Elizabeth's voice inside. It was low and broken--what Charles
Edward called once her “come-and-comfort-me” voice.
“Dears,” said she, “you are going abroad?”
“Yes,” Charles Edward answered. “Yes, it looks that way now.”
“Yes,” said Lorraine, rather sharply, I thought, as if she meant to show
him he ought to be more decisive, “we are.”
“Dears,” Aunt Elizabeth went on, “will you take me with you?”
Mr. Dane started as if he meant to go back into the house. I must have
started, too, and my heart beat hard. There was a silence of a minute,
two minutes, three perhaps. Then I heard Charles Edward speak, in a
voice I didn't know he had.
“No, Aunt Elizabeth, no. Not so you'd notice it.”
Mr. Dane gave a nod as if he were relieved, and we both began tiptoeing
down the path in the dark. But it wasn't dark any more. The moon was
coming through the locust-trees, and I smelled the lindens by the wall.
“Oh,” I said, “it's summer, isn't it? I don't believe I've thought of
summer once this year.”
“Yes,” said he, “and there never was a summer such as this is going to
be.”
I knew he was very athletic, but I don't believe I'd thought how much
he cared for out-of-doors. “Come down here,” I said. “This is Lorraine's
jungle. There's a seat in it, and we can smell the ferns.”
Charles Edward had been watering the garden, and everything was sweet.
Thousands of odors came out such as I never smelled before. And all
the time the moon was rising. After we had sat there awhile, talking a
little about college, about my trip abroad, I suddenly found I could not
go on. There were tears in my eyes. I felt as if so good a friend ought
to know how I had behaved--for I must have been very weak and silly to
make such a mistake. He ought to hear the worst about me. “Oh,” I said,
“do you know what happened to me?”
He made a little movement toward me with both hands. Then he took them
back and sat quite still and said, in that kind voice: “I know you are
going abroad, and when you come back you will laugh at the dolls you
played with when you were a child.” But I cried, softly, though, because
it was just as if I were alone, thinking things out and being sorry,
sorry for myself--and ashamed. Until now I'd never known how ashamed I
was. “Don't cry, child,” he was saying. “For God's sake, don't cry!” I
think it came over me then, as it hadn't before, that all that part of
my life was spoiled. I'd been engaged and thought I liked somebody,
and now it was all over and done. “I don't know what I'm crying for,” I
said, at last, when I could stop. “I suppose it's because I'm different
now, different from the other girls, different from myself. I can't ever
be happy any more.”
He spoke, very quickly. “Is it because you liked Goward so much?”
“Like him!” I said. “Like Harry Goward? Why, I--” There I stopped,
because I couldn't think of any word small enough, and I think he
understood, for he laughed out quickly.
“Now,” said he, “I'm a psychologist. You remember that, don't you? It
used to impress you a good deal.”
“Oh,” said I, “it does impress me. Nobody has ever seemed so wise as
you. Nobody!”
“Then it's understood that I'm a sage from the Orient. I know the
workings of the human mind. And I tell you a profound truth: that the
only way to stop thinking of a thing is to stop thinking of it. Now,
you're not to think of Goward and all this puppet-show again. Not a
minute. Not an instant. Do you hear?” He sounded quite stern, and I
answered as if I had been in class.
“Yes, sir.”
“You are to think of Italy, and how blue the sea is--and Germany, and
how good the beer is--and Charlie Ned and Lorraine, and what trumps they
are. Do you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” said I, and because I knew we were going to part and there
would be nobody else to advise me in the same way, I went on in a great
hurry for fear there should not be time. “I can't live at home even
after we come back. I could never be pointed at, like Aunt Elizabeth,
and have people whisper and say I've had a disappointment. I must make
my own life. I must have a profession. Do you think I could teach? Do
you think I could learn to teach--psychology?”
He didn't answer for a long time, and I didn't dare look at him, though
the moon was so bright now that I could see how white his hand was,
lying on his knee, and the chasing of the ring on his little finger. It
had been his mother's engagement ring, he told me once. But he spoke,
and very gently and seriously. “I am sure you could teach some things.
Whether psychology--but we can talk of that later. There'll be lots of
time. It proves I am going over on the same steamer with Charlie Ned and
Lorraine and you.”
“You are!” I cried. “Why, I never heard of anything so--” I couldn't
find the word for it, but everything stopped being puzzling and unhappy
and looked clear and plain.
“Yes,” said he. “It's very convenient, isn't it? We can talk over your
future, and you could even take a lesson or two in psychology. But I
fancy we shall have a good deal to do looking for porpoises and asking
what the run is. People are terribly busy at sea.”
Then it occurred to me that he had never been here before, and why was
he here now? “How did you happen to come?” I asked. I suppose I really
felt as if God sent him.
“Why,” said he, “why--” Then he laughed. “Well,” said he, “to tell the
truth, I was going abroad if--if certain things happened, and I needed
to make sure. I didn't want to write, so I ran down to see Charlie Ned.”
“But could he tell you?” said I. “And had they happened?”
He laughed, as if at something I needn't share. “No,” he said, “the
things weren't going to happen. But I decided to go abroad.”