I was very happy all the morning; so happy that I forgot my tonics,
massage, and sedative tablets; but the doctor called at noon and spoke
of the wonderful way in which my system responded to his remedies, so
I said nothing.
Cousin Sarah forwarded me a letter from Richard Morton, who is
superintending some surveying near a small town in Pennsylvania. He
knows that I am not well and away from home on a visit to the country,
but, of course, he is not aware of my exact whereabouts. It was just
one of his gay, friendly letters, with an undertone of something
warmer in it. Among other things he said:
How weak a thing is man! Now that you are so far away and I am
exiled in a village where there is but one post a day I suffer
pangs of hunger for a word from you. So far the one daily mail
would have been all too ample for your desires, since you have
not written a word as yet; but there is always the hope! I have
been speculating to-night upon the frightful risks and dangers
surrounding the man who is waiting for a letter. It seems to me
the very best postal service is inadequate to take care of a
letter from you to me! Think of the uncertainties and perils to
which it is exposed in transit! You give it to a maid to drop in
a pillar post-box, but she may forget and leave it in her
pocket, or she may lose it. Or say she drops it in; it must be
removed from the box by an ordinary human being who has no
conception of the issues involved in the rigid performance of
this particular duty. The letter is then taken to the branch
office of your section, then to the general post, and then to
the railway, where new dangers menace its precious existence.
The train may be robbed; and if a single letter is stolen it
will be yours to me. No man alive could resist a letter of yours
after he had once read one.
Is there not a note of tenderness here, a note that has crept in only
during the last few months? But what if there is? It occurred to me
after dinner that the question of his feeling for me is not the only,
nor even the principal one to be considered. The point under
advisement is, shall I allow him to love me when there is something
better in store for him?
Miss Blossom had scarcely left my room this evening when I heard a
pattering step and a hurried tap on my door. On my saying "Come," my
opposite neighbor slipped in and turned the key in the lock. It was an
unconventional and amusing performance, but I didn't mind. Somehow one
couldn't mind anything with such a spoiled baby.
"Good-evening, Zuleika!" she said. "No, you needn't smile and raise
your finger at me as if you were dying to tell me your name is
Abigail! Miss Blossom has gone for the night, hasn't she? I thought
so. You know it's the nurses' ball this evening, and there's only one
attendant on duty in each corridor from now to half-past nine. May I
have this big chair by the window? I am so bored with this place that
it excites me even to think how stupid it is. I almost wish I had a
symptom or two, just by way of sensation. Did you have Somnolina for
supper? I did, and some time I shall make a scene in the dining-room
when I watch the hundred and fifty dyspeptics simultaneously lifting
cups of Teaette or Somnolina to their parched lips."
"You ought to be ashamed," I chided, "when you know almost every one
who is here needs to be put upon a diet. You wouldn't expect
champagne, terrapin, and canvasback ducks?"
"I know it; don't scold, it makes you look like Cassandra. Isn't the
moonlight enchanting, and if this weren't a health resort wouldn't it
be a heaven upon earth?"
The broad, unscreened windows were wide open and vines of woodbine or
honeysuckle framed them on every side. A lake shone like a silver
mirror in the distant landscape and the elms and maples and chestnuts
swayed in the summer breeze. Little groups chatted on the broad
piazzas, and here and there on a rustic bench in the moonlight sat a
man and a woman--two minds with but a single thought, and that thought
his or her own solar plexus.
It was an hour for confidences, and I remember that my troubled heart
cried out for a strong, tried friendship on which to draw for counsel
and sympathy. What wonder, then, that the Angora kitten, deprived of
her Laura, emptied her silky little head of some of its worries,
divining that I was older and graver and perhaps would find her lost
ball and give it to her to play with again.
"There's no telling when Laura will be here!" she exclaimed
despairingly. "When there is any duty within a thousand miles she
stays to perform it. Mrs. Beckett has poisoned herself with mercury
and Laura thinks she ought to go and nurse her for a day or two--as if
Mrs. Beckett hadn't six maids and twenty thousand a year to spend in
nurses! Laura can't bear Tom, his incurable levity gets on her nerves,
and why she wants to martyr herself by staying in the house with him
when I'd be only too glad to go, passes my comprehension!"
(I can't explain it, but at this juncture I seemed to have visions of
Laura flirting with the Beckett during the Kitten's absence.)
"Sometimes," she continued, rippling along as if natural speech had
been denied her for hours, "sometimes I wish I hadn't selected such a
superior being for a bosom friend, and then again I despise myself for
harboring such a mean feeling. I'm forever trying to climb, and Laura
is continually trying to drag me to her level, but I suppose I don't
belong there, and that's the reason I keep slipping off and sliding
down. At this minute, if she'd let me be the groveling little
earthworm I am by nature, I could marry Tom Beckett and be as happy as
the day is long."
"What is the matter?" I asked sympathetically, though rather ashamed
to drop a plummet into so shallow a brook. "If you love his mother so
dearly, and love him too, and are sure of his affection, why don't you
marry him? Isn't he suitable?"
"Oh, yes; he's almost too suitable; that's one of the lions in the
way. His family is good, he is as handsome as Apollo, and he has a
much larger income than mine, but you see there's another man."
"Another man! You didn't mention him yesterday."
"Didn't I? How funny! But after all it was our very first interview,
and even silly I have my reserves."
"Do you love them both equally?" I asked, trying to keep the note of
sarcasm out of my voice.
"Certainly not. I care nothing about anybody but Tom Beckett, but
Laura says that such a marriage will simply mean a life of
self-indulgent luxury, idleness, and pleasure. She says marriage is
something loftier and nobler than pleasing one's self; that it ought
to mean growth and development both to the man and the woman. She says
that I should have no influence on Tom, and that I need somebody
strong and serious to steady me. She says Tom and I would only frisk
through life and leave the world no better or wiser than we found it.
She even says" (and here she turned her face to the honeysuckles)--"I
don't like to repeat it, but Laura is so advanced she makes my
embarrassment seem simply idiotic--she even says that the children of
such a union would be incurably light-minded and trivial; and oh,
Zuleika, if one isn't a bit advanced in any way, doesn't it seem hard
to keep from marrying somebody you love just for the good of a few
frivolous children you've never seen in your life?"
It was neither the place, the hour, nor the subject for laughter, but
I forgot my neurasthenia and gave way to a burst of wholehearted
mirth! Every second of time seemed to increase the unconscious humor
of her point of view, and only fear of the nurse on duty in the
corridor enabled me to control myself at all.
"Have I been funny?" she asked delightedly, as she drew her head in
the window. "I never can see my own jokes, but I'm glad to have amused
you, only I did hope for a little sympathy. Everybody can't be
Zenobias and Vashtis and Lauras, superior to common weaknesses!"
"I do, I do sympathize," I said, wiping the tears of merriment from my
eyes, "and I agree with you much more than with Laura. Now the 'other
man' is, I suppose, all that is grave and reverend--a complete
contrast to the too trivial Thomas?"
"Yes, and he's as good as good can be; trustworthy, talented,
honorable, everything; you know the kind? I never get on with them."
"Does he love you?"
"Laura thinks he does, but I've no reason to suppose so. We've always
been friends, while Tom Beckett and I squabble and make up twice a
week; but anyway, even if he doesn't adore me in Tom's silly way,
Laura says I ought not to mind. She says it would be noble of me to
help him to a splendid and prosperous career, and thinks I ought to
remember how much my father wanted him for a son-in-law--you see he is
awfully poor."
At this coupling of fathers and poverty a sudden light blazed in upon
my consciousness and I sat bolt upright among the sofa-pillows. How
could I have guessed that the love-affairs of this rosy-cheeked
dumpling, the casual acquaintance of a rest-cure, could have any
connection with my own? If she hadn't been the sort of person who
confides at first sight we should have learned each other's names at
the beginning and been on guard. The truth is, I had thought of no one
but Tom Beckett in her confessions; the personality of "the other man"
had stolen into the chronicle so late in the day that I had taken no
interest in him.
"Are you Amy Darling?" I asked her plump.
"Yes, but how mean of you to pump Blossom! I wanted to go on thinking
of you as Zuleika and have you call me something imaginary and
romantic."
"I am Philippa Armstrong. Did you ever hear the name?"
"No, but it's all right; it looks like you, and it's nearly as pretty
as Zenobia. Now if Tom Beckett had only chosen you and I could have
obliged Laura by falling in love with--"
"Don't mention the other man's name!" I cried hastily; "it just comes
to me that I may have met him."
"Met Dick Morton?"
It was true then! Here was the girl whom Richard ought, for his
worldly good, to marry, and she was not a woman at all, only an Angora
kitten, and moreover a kitten in love with Tom Beckett!
"Yes, I have met him, but I only this moment suspected it!"
"Have you known him long?"
"Less than a year."
"That settles it!" she cried, leaping to her feet excitedly. "If Dick
Morton has known you for a year he won't want me and I can marry Tom!
Goody, goody, goody!"
"Stuff and nonsense!" I said quickly. "Richard Morton is only a very
dear friend."
"Stuff and nonsense yourself! No man with an eye in his head could be
a dear friend to you! And Dick Morton is the hero sort who doesn't
care for Dottie Dimples, but worships Vashtis and Zuleika-Zenobias.
Have you any money?"
"Not a penny!"
"Oh, dear! I might have known you wouldn't have, with that hair and
those eyes. Never mind! I'm certain that Dick would rather have a
pauper goddess than a rich little earthworm."
"You mustn't talk any more about the matter," I said with as much
dignity as I could muster in the midst of her laughter-provoking
nonsense, which made the most sacred subjects seem a natural matter of
discussion. "I know through Mrs. Taunton all about the
circumstances--your father's wishes and his letter to Richard. If you
can possibly love him you must accept him, advance his fortunes, and
do your duty by your father. I am determined to be as noble as Laura
Simonds in this matter and I refuse to be a stumbling-block!"
The girl fell limply into the lounging-chair.
"Oh," she said despondently, "if _you_ are going to be noble, too,
there's no use discussing the matter. What an example we shall be for
the heathen nations! You will be noble and give up Dick Morton; I
shall be noble and marry him; and be noble at the same time in giving
up Tom; Tom will be noble in suffering me to marry anybody but
himself; Dick will be noble in obliging my father and marrying me
instead of you; Laura is always noble! We could use up a whole order
of nobility among us! And it is all so silly! Do you suppose my dear
father would want four of us to be unhappy, his own daughter among
them? It's really only Laura who matters, and if you had any ingenuity
you could pacify her and persuade her that it is my duty for once to
follow my ignoble inclinations. I am afraid of her, but _you_ needn't
be! You could blaze and flash and tower, if you only would, and save
us all!"
"You seem to forget," I urged, "that Mr. Morton has never asked me to
marry him."
"That's nothing; he has probably been thinking how he could get me
nicely disposed of, or how he could earn a roof under which he could
ask you to step in wet weather. He's been too stupid and moody and
dull this last winter for any use, and now I understand him. Has he
ever seen you like this with your Rebecca-at-the-well hair down?"
"Certainly not!"
"I thought so; or he'd have forgotten the necessary roof!--Come
in!--Goodness! it's your room and I locked the door! Do excuse me;
I'll open it. A telegram for you.--Wait outside for an answer,
Jimmy."
I tore open the envelope, confidently expecting that Cousin Sarah had
been struck with paralysis; instead of which I read:
Archville, Pennsylvania,
June 16
Have this moment secured a large and important contract assuring
two years' lucrative work. May I come to see you immediately?
Name earliest day.