A DAMP COAT
Andy undoubled himself with alacrity and sprang from the sleepy-hollow
chair. His stern face was softened and filled with a boyish eagerness.
"Oh, Nance! Can't you forgive me?"
"Excuse me, Dr. McLean, I did not know you were still here," and Nance
turned to leave the room.
Andy with long strides reached the door first and with his back against
it held out beseeching hands.
"Yes, I'm here and am going to stay here----"
"Well, I am not! Please let me pass." Nance was filled with a righteous
indignation against Molly at having played this trick on her.
"But, my dear, I must tell you what a fool I have been----"
"That is not necessary. I know."
Andy laughed. Nance had a laconic way of putting things that always
tickled his humor.
"Now you sound like yourself, honey, but oh, please act like yourself!
The real Nance Oldham could not be so cruel as to go off without letting
me explain--I have no excuse--there could be none for my blind rage and
jealousy--none unless loving you too hard could be called one. Will you
listen to me?"
"I shall have to unless I stop up my ears, since you stop up the
doorway." Nance was very pale and trembling. Two years of suffering
could not be done away with in a moment and the girl had surely
suffered.
"Couldn't we sit down and let me tell you?"
"We could!"
Andy eagerly directed Nance to the sofa, but she sedately seated herself
in a small isolated sewing rocker. Andy accepted the amendment and
placed his chair as near to hers as the frigid atmosphere around her
permitted.
"Before I explain I must apologize. I would have done it the very day
after that awful row we had, the very moment after it, if I had not
thought you hated me."
"And now?"
"And now I am going to apologize and explain, whether you hate me or
not. I could do it lots better if you would let me hold your hand while
I am doing it," but Nance drew Molly's knitting from a bag hung on the
back of the chair and declared her hands were otherwise occupied. Molly
had reached the purling end of a sleeveless sweater and no doubt would
be glad of Nance's expert assistance.
"Nance, there never has been any other woman in my life but you, you and
my mother. You know perfectly well from the time I met you, when I was
at Exmoor College and you were here at Wellington, that you were the
only girl in the world for me. I had a kind of notion in my fool brain
that I was going to be the only man in the world for you. When we were
engaged I thought I was, but when I realized that Dr. Flint was paying
you such devoted attention, at your home constantly----"
"My father's physician!"
"Yes, I know,--but, honey, you see you were way up there in Vermont and
I was down in New York and I was hungry for you all the time, and when
your father died I thought you would pick right up and come to me--I
knew nothing of your mother's determination to stay with you--nothing of
her illness--nothing but that you were staying in the same town with
Flint and I must go back to New York. You did not tell me."
"Well, hardly, after the way you raged and tore! I felt if you could
rage that way we had better separate."
"But, my dear, I'll never rage that way again--I've learned my lesson.
Can't you forgive me?" Nance was silent.
"I love you just as much as I always did,--more, in fact. When little
Mildred Green told me you had let her fall in the water because you were
so busy with your husband, I wanted to die that minute. Of course I
thought it was Flint. How could I know the child was playing a game with
you? Nance, do you hate me as much as you did that terrible day two
years ago?"
"Yes!" Nance's answer was very low but Andy heard it.
"Well, then, there is no use in saying any more," he sprang to his feet,
his face grey with misery.
"I didn't hate you then at all--nor do I now."
"Oh, Nance, don't tease me! Can you forgive me?" and poor Andy sank on
his knees and bowed his head on her knees.
Nance's arms were around him in a moment. She hugged his sandy head to
her bosom with one hand and patted his back with the other while he gave
a great sob.
"Andy McLean, you are still wringing wet. Get up from here this minute
and take off that coat and let me dry it! And your shirt is damp, too!
My, what a boy! Here, sit right close to the fire and dry that wet
sleeve."
Andy meekly submitted in a daze. Nance's motherly attitude and sudden
melting were too much for him. The coat was hung by the fire to dry
while the young doctor stood helplessly by in his shirt sleeves.
"And now, Andy, I'm going to apologize to you and ask you to forgive
me," declared Nance, stoutly trying to go on with her knitting.
But Andy firmly took it from her and possessed himself of those busy
hands.
"I was worse than you--when you said those hard things to me they hurt
like fury--you didn't know how they did hurt, but I did, and I should
not have done the same thing to you. I said worse things to you than you
did to me,--at least I tried to."
"You did pretty well," said Andy whimsically, pressing one of the
imprisoned hands to his lips.
"Dr. Flint did want to marry me; I guess he still does, but--but----"
"But what, lassie?" Sometimes Andy dropped into his parents' vernacular.
"I am not going to tell a man in his shirt sleeves why I didn't marry
Dr. Flint," said Nance firmly. "It is too unpicturesque."
"Then I'll put on my coat."
"No, you won't! I wouldn't tell a man in a wet coat, either."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't like to lay my brown head on a damp shoulder. Why don't
you do as I told you and dry that shirt sleeve? Hold it close to the
fire, sir!"
"I won't do it unless you tell me why you didn't marry Dr. Flint."
"Well, then, to keep you from catching your death of cold, I will
tell you, but remember I have saved your life. It was--it was
because--because he didn't have sandy hair and a bad temper," and Nance
was enfolded in the despised shirt sleeves and found a very nice dry
spot on which to lay her brown head.
The sun had set and twilight was upon them. The front door opened to
admit the master of the house, but Molly was in ambush ready to catch
him to keep him out of the library. Kizzie had started in to mend the
fire but Molly stopped her.
"Never mind the fire, Kizzie. It is all right for such a warm evening.
Give us tea in the den."
"Why all of this mystery?" asked Edwin Green as he followed his wife
back to the den, going on tiptoe as she demanded.
"Andy and Nance are in there."
"Andy McLean! Fine! I want to see him. Won't he be here to tea? I'll go
in and speak to him."
"You'll do no such thing! Edwin Green, you may be--in fact, are, a grand
lecturer on English, but you have no practical sense. Don't you know you
might break in just at the wrong moment and Andy may get off to France
without their making it up?"
"Making up what? Who making up: the Allies and the central powers?"
"Oh, Edwin, you know I mean Nance and Andy!"
"What are they making up? If it is a row, let's go help them."
"Not a soul shall go in that room until they come out, unless it is over
my dead body."
"Well, well! I'd rather stay in this room with your live body than go in
there over your dead one," and the professor pulled his wife down on the
sofa by him, "especially if you will give me some tea," as Kizzie came
in grinning with the tea tray.
"They's co'tin' a-goin' on in yander, boss. The fiah is low an' the
lights ain't lit, but Miss Molly she guard that do' like a cat do a
mouse hole. Cose Miss Nance ain't got no maw to futher things up for her
but Miss Molly is all ready to fly off an' git the preacher, seems
like."
"I can't remember that things were made easy for me this way when I was
addressing my wife," complained Edwin as he stirred his tea with his arm
around his wife, a combination that could not have been made had his
arm not been long and Molly still slender.
"Ungrateful man! Why, Judy and Kent took the bus from Fontainebleau to
Barbizon when they were simply dying to walk, just to give you a chance.
Have you forgotten?"
"I haven't forgotten the walk--I never will--and if they really rode on
my account, I'll pass on the favor to other lovers and stay out of my
library until the cows come home; that is, if you will stay with me."
Molly told him then of the whole affair and how Mildred had righted
matters, telling Andy just exactly the right thing to bring him to his
senses.
"I am almost sure they have made up and are engaged again," sighed Molly
ecstatically. A romance was dear to her soul and being happily married
herself, she felt like furthering the love affairs of all her friends.
"They are either engaged or dead," laughed Edwin. "Such silence
emanating from the library must bode extreme calamity or extreme
bliss. If it continues much longer I think it is my duty as a
householder to break in the door and offer congratulations or call the
coroner, as the case demands."
"It is getting late. Maybe I had better go in and ask Andy to stay to
dinner."
Molly, who had a deep-rooted objection to noise and usually talked in a
low tone, now spoke in a loud voice as she bumped her way along the
hall, pushing chairs and rattling the hat rack and calling out shrilly
to the amused husband following her. Strange to say, she could not
remember on which side of the door the knob was, although she had lived
several years in that house. She fumblingly hunted it and finally opened
the door with a great rattle.
Nance was seated sedately knitting and Andy was holding his coat close
to the dying flames. The room was almost dark.
"Kizzie should have lighted the lamp and attended to the fire," Molly
said briskly. Oh, Molly, how could you be so untruthful, blaming things
on poor Kizzie, too? (Molly's conscience did hurt her for dragging
Kizzie in and she gave the girl a long coveted blue hat that she had
meant to keep for second best, feeling that it might act as a salve on
her own tender, truth-loving soul. Kizzie, quite ignorant of the cause
for this generosity, gratefully accepted the hat and asked no
questions.)
"Yes, it gets dark before one realizes," said Nance demurely.
"Ahem!" from the professor.
"Oh, Andy, your coat is still wet! Mildred told me you wrapped it around
her. I'll get you Edwin's smoking jacket and have your coat dried. You
must stay to dinner with us. I can 'phone your mother not to expect you
at home."
Andy did not need much persuading, but accepted the invitation with
alacrity. Molly called up Mrs. McLean to ask for the loan of her son for
dinner.
"Yes!" exclaimed that wise lady at the other end of the wire. "I have
been expecting a telephone call for the last half hour. You may keep him
but I shall wait up to see him when he gets home. I am sur-r-e he'll
have something to tell me. From my back window I saw Nance with the
perambulator full of babies on her way to the lake and I sent Andy off
for a walk, first putting a flea in his ear by suggesting that the lake
was getting shallower and shallower. He has always been that inquisitive
that I was sur-r-e he would make for that spot to find out why. I knew
that all those poor-r young folks had to do was to meet. Keep him,
Molly--and God bless you!"
There was a little choking sound at the other end that Molly understood
very well. She hung up the receiver "with a smile on her lip but a tear
in her eye." It is all very well for a mother to be unselfish and want
her son to marry and to be happy, but there is a tug of war going on in
her heart all the time.
"I know how I will feel when Dodo gets engaged," Molly said to Edwin
when she told him of what Mrs. McLean had said; but that young father
went off into such shouts of laughter, Molly had a feeling that mere man
could never understand a mother's heart.