Life began to take on a more familiar and interesting aspect to Marcia
after that. She had her daily round of pleasant household duties and she
enjoyed them.
There were many other gatherings in honor of the bride and groom,
tea-drinkings and evening calls, and a few called in to a neighbor’s house
to meet them. It was very pleasant to Marcia as she became better
acquainted with the people and grew to like some of them, only there was
the constant drawback of feeling that it was all a pain and weariness to
David.
But Marcia was young, and it was only natural that she should enjoy her
sudden promotion to the privileges of a matron, and the marked attention
that was paid her. It was a mercy that her head was not turned, living as
she did to herself, and with no one in whom she could confide. For David
had shrunk within himself to such an extent that she did not like to
trouble him with anything.
It was only two days after the evening at the old Spafford house that
David came home to tea with ashen face, haggard eyes and white lips. He
scarcely tasted his supper and said he would go and lie down, that his
head ached. Marcia heard him sigh deeply as he went upstairs. It was that
afternoon that the post had brought him Kate’s letter.
Sadly Marcia put away the tea things, for she could not eat anything
either, though it was an unusually inviting meal she had prepared. Slowly
she went up to her room and sat looking out into the quiet, darkening
summer night, wondering what additional sorrow had come to David.
David’s face looked like death the next morning when he came down. He
drank a cup of coffee feverishly, then took his hat as if he would go to
the office, but paused at the door and came back saying he would not go if
Marcia would not mind taking a message for him. His head felt badly. She
need only tell the man to go on with things as they had planned and say he
was detained. Marcia was ready at once to do his bidding with quiet
sympathy in her manner.
She delivered her message with the frank straightforward look of a school
girl, mingled with a touch of matronly dignity she was trying to assume,
which added to her charm; and she smiled her open smile of comradeship,
such as she would have dispensed about the old red school house at home,
upon boys and girls alike, leaving the clerk and type-setters in a most
subjected state, and ready to do anything in the service of their master’s
wife. It is to be feared that they almost envied David. They watched her
as she moved gracefully down the street, and their eyes had a reverent
look as they turned away from the window to their work, as though they had
been looking upon something sacred.
Harry Temple watched her come out of the office.
She impressed him again as something fresh and different from the common
run of maidens in the village. He lazily stepped from the store where he
had been lounging and walked down the street to intercept her as she
crossed and turned the corner.
“Good morning, Mrs. Spafford,” he said, with a courtly grace that was
certainly captivating, “are you going to your home? Then our ways lie
together. May I walk beside you?”
Marcia smiled and tried to seem gracious, though she would rather have
been alone just then, for she wanted to enjoy the day and not be bothered
with talking.
Harry Temple mentioned having a letter from a friend in Boston who had
lately heard a great chorus rendered. He could not be quite sure of the
name of the composer because he had read the letter hurriedly and his
friend was a blind-writer, but that made no difference to Harry. He could
fill in facts enough about the grandeur of the music from his own
imagination to make up for the lack of a little matter like the name of a
composer. He was keen enough to see that Marcia was more interested in
music than in anything he said, therefore he racked his brains for all the
music talk he had ever heard, and made up what he did not know, which was
not hard to do, for Marcia was very ignorant on the subject.
At the door they paused. Marcia was eager to get in. She began to wonder
how David felt, and she longed to do something for him. Harry Temple
looked at her admiringly, noted the dainty set of chin, the clear curve of
cheek, the lovely sweep of eyelashes, and resolved to get better
acquainted with this woman, so young and so lovely.
“I have not forgotten my promise to play for you,” he said lightly,
watching to see if the flush of rose would steal into her cheek, and that
deep light into her expressive eyes. “How about this afternoon? Shall you
be at home and disengaged?”
But welcome did not flash into Marcia’s face as he had hoped. Instead a
troubled look came into her eyes.
“I am afraid it will not be possible this afternoon,” said Marcia, the
trouble in her eyes creeping into her voice. “That is—I expect to be at
home, but—I am not sure of being disengaged.”
“Ah! I see!” he raised his eyebrows archly, looking her meanwhile straight
in the eyes; “some one else more fortunate than I. Some one else coming?”
Although Marcia did not in the least understand his insinuation, the color
flowed into her cheeks in a hurry now, for she instinctively felt that
there was something unpleasant in his tone, something below her standard
of morals or culture, she did not quite know what. But she felt she must
protect herself at any cost. She drew up a little mantle of dignity.
“Oh, no,” she said quickly, “I’m not expecting any one at all, but Mr.
Spafford had a severe headache this morning, and I am not sure but the
sound of the piano would make it worse. I think it would be better for you
to come another time, although he may be better by that time.”
“Oh, I see! Your husband’s at home!” said the young man with relief. His
manner implied that he had a perfect understanding of something that
Marcia did not mean nor comprehend.
“I understand perfectly,” he said, with another meaning smile as though he
and she had a secret together; “I’ll come some other time,” and he took
himself very quickly away, much to Marcia’s relief. But the trouble did
not go out of her eyes as she saw him turn the corner. Instead she went in
and stood at the dining room window a long time looking out on the Heaths’
hollyhocks beaming in the sun behind the picket fence, and wondered what
he could have meant, and why he smiled in that hateful way. She decided
she did not like him, and she hoped he would never come. She did not think
she would care to hear him play. There was something about him that
reminded her of Captain Leavenworth, and now that she saw it in him she
would dislike to have him about.
With a sigh she turned to the getting of a dinner which she feared would
not be eaten. Nevertheless, she put more dainty thought in it than usual,
and when it was done and steaming upon the table she went gently up and
tapped on David’s door. A voice hoarse with emotion and weariness
answered. Marcia scarcely heard the first time.
“Dinner is ready. Isn’t your head any better,—David?” There was caressing
in his name. It wrung David’s heart. Oh, if it were but Kate, his Kate,
his little bride that were calling him, how his heart would leap with joy!
How his headache would disappear and he would be with her in an instant.
For Kate’s letter had had its desired effect. All her wrongdoings, her
crowning outrage of his noble intentions, had been forgotten in the one
little plaintive appeal she had managed to breathe in a minor wail
throughout that treacherous letter, treacherous alike to her husband and
to her lover. Just as Kate had always been able to do with every one about
her, she had blinded him to her faults, and managed to put herself in the
light of an abused, troubled maiden, who was in a predicament through no
fault of her own, and sat in sorrow and a baby-innocence that was
bewilderingly sweet.
There had been times when David’s anger had been hot enough to waft away
this filmy mist of fancies that Kate had woven about herself and let him
see the true Kate as she really was. At such times David would confess
that she must be wholly heartless. That bright as she was it was
impossible for her to have been so easily persuaded into running away with
a man she did not love. He had never found it so easy to persuade her
against her will. Did she love him? Had she truly loved him, and was she
suffering now? His very soul writhed in agony to think of his bride the
wife of another against her will. If he might but go and rescue her. If he
might but kill that other man! Then his soul would be confronted with the
thought of murder. Never before had he felt hate, such hate, for a human
being. Then again his heart would soften toward him as he felt how the
other must have loved her, Kate, his little wild rose! and there was a
fellow feeling between them too, for had she not let him see that she did
not half care aright for that other one? Then his mind would stop in a
whirl of mingled feeling and he would pause, and pray for steadiness to
think and know what was right.
Around and around through this maze of arguing he had gone through the
long hours of the morning, always coming sharp against the thought that
there was nothing he could possibly do in the matter but bear it, and that
Kate, after all, the Kate he loved with his whole soul, had done it and
must therefore be to blame. Then he would read her letter over, burning
every word of it upon his brain, until the piteous minor appeal would
torture him once more and he would begin again to try to get hold of some
thread of thought that would unravel this snarl and bring peace.
Like a sound from another world came Marcia’s sweet voice, its very
sweetness reminding him of that other lost voice, whose tantalizing music
floated about his imagination like a string of phantom silver bells that
all but sounded and then vanished into silence.
And while all this was going on, this spiritual torture, his living,
suffering, physical self was able to summon its thoughts, to answer gently
that he did not want any dinner; that his head was no better; that he
thanked her for her thought of him; and that he would take the tea she
offered if it was not too much trouble.
Gladly, with hurried breath and fingers that almost trembled, Marcia
hastened to the kitchen once more and prepared a dainty tray, not even
glancing at the dinner table all so fine and ready for its guest, and back
again she went to his door, an eager light in her eyes, as if she had
obtained audience to a king.
He opened the door this time and took the tray from her with a smile. It
was a smile of ashen hue, and fell like a pall upon Marcia’s soul. It was
as if she had been permitted for a moment to gaze upon a martyred soul
upon the rack. Marcia fled from it and went to her own room, where she
flung herself on her knees beside her bed and buried her face in the
pillows. There she knelt, unmindful of the dinner waiting downstairs,
unmindful of the bright day that was droning on its hours. Whether she
prayed she knew not, whether she was weeping she could not have told. Her
heart was crying out in one great longing to have this cloud of sorrow
that had settled upon David lifted.
She might have knelt there until night had there not come the sound of a
knock upon the front door. It startled her to her feet in an instant, and
she hastily smoothed her rumpled hair, dashed some water on her eyes, and
ran down.
It was the clerk from the office with a letter for her. The post chaise
had brought it that afternoon, and he had thought perhaps she would like
to have it at once as it was postmarked from her home. Would she tell Mr.
Spafford when he returned—he seemed to take it for granted that David was
out of town for the day—that everything had been going on all right at the
office during his absence and the paper was ready to send to press. He
took his departure with a series of bows and smiles, and Marcia flew up to
her room to read her letter. It was in the round unformed hand of Mary
Ann. Marcia tore it open eagerly. Never had Mary Ann’s handwriting looked
so pleasant as at that moment. A letter in those days was a rarity at all
times, and this one to Marcia in her distress of mind seemed little short
of a miracle. It began in Mary Ann’s abrupt way, and opened up to her the
world of home since she had left it. But a few short days had passed,
scarcely yet numbering into weeks, since she left, yet it seemed half a
lifetime to the girl promoted so suddenly into womanhood without the
accompanying joy of love and close companionship that usually makes
desolation impossible.
“DEAR MARSH,”—the letter ran:—
“I expect you think queer of me to write you so soon. I ain’t much
on writing you know, but something happened right after you
leaving and has kept right on happening that made me feel I kinder
like to tell you. Don’t you mind the mistakes I make. I’m thankful
to goodness you ain’t the school teacher or I’d never write ‘slong
s’ I’m living, but ennyhow I’m going to tell you all about it.
“The night you went away I was standing down by the gate under the
old elm. I had on my best things yet from the wedding, and I hated
to go in and have the day over and have to begin putting on my old
calico to-morrow morning again, and washing dishes just the same.
Seemed as if I couldn’t bear to have the world just the same now
you was gone away. Well, I heard someone coming down the street,
and who do you think it was? Why, Hanford Weston. He came right up
to the gate and stopped. I don’t know’s he ever spoke two words to
me in my life except that time he stopped the big boys from
snow-balling me and told me to run along quick and git in the
school-house while he fit ’em. Well, he stopped and spoke, and he
looked so sad, seemed like I knew just what he was feeling sad
about, and I told him all about you getting married instead of
your sister. He looked at me like he couldn’t move for a while and
his face was as white as that marble man in the cemetery over
Squire Hancock’s grave. He grabbed the gate real hard and I
thought he was going to fall. He couldn’t even move his lips for a
while. I felt just awful sorry for him. Something came in my
throat like a big stone and my eyes got all blurred with the
moonlight. He looked real handsome. I just couldn’t help thinking
you ought to see him. Bimeby he got his voice back again, and we
talked a lot about you. He told me how he used to watch you when
you was a little girl wearing pantalettes. You used to sit in the
church pew across from his father’s and he could just see your big
eyes over the top of the door. He says he always thought to
himself he would marry you when he grew up. Then when you began to
go to school and was so bright he tried hard to study and keep up
just to have you think him good enough for you. He owned up he was
a bad speller and he’d tried his level best to do better but it
didn’t seem to come natural, and he thought maybe ef he was a good
farmer you wouldn’t mind about the spelling. He hired out to his
father for the summer and he was trying with all his might to get
to be the kind of man t’would suit you, and then when he was
plowing and planning all what kind of a house with big columns to
the front he would build here comes the coach driving by and _you_
in it! He said he thought the sky and fields was all mixed up and
his heart was going out of him. He couldn’t work any more and he
started out after supper to see what it all meant.
“That wasn’t just the exact way he told it, Marsh, it was more
like poetry, that kind in our reader about “Lord Ullin’s
daughter”—you know. We used to recite it on examination
exhibition. I didn’t know Hanford could talk like that. His words
were real pretty, kind of sorrowful you know. And it all come over
me that you ought to know about it. You’re married of course, and
can’t help it now, but ’taint every girl that has a boy care for
her like that from the time she’s a baby with a red hood on, and
you ought to know ’bout it, fer it wasn’t Hanford’s fault he
didn’t have time to tell you. He’s just been living fer you fer a
number of years, and its kind of hard on him. ’Course you may not
care, being you’re married and have a fine house and lots of
clo’es of your own and a good time, but it does seem hard for him.
It seems as if somebody ought to comfort him. I’d like to try if
you don’t mind. He does seem to like to talk about you to me, and
I feel so sorry for him I guess I could comfort him a little, for
it seems as if it would be the nicest thing in the world to have
some one like you that way for years, just as they do in books,
only every time I think about being a comfort to him I think he
belongs to you and it ain’t right. So Marsh, you just speak out
and say if your willing I should try to comfort him a little and
make up to him fer what he lost in you, being as you’re married
and fixed so nice yourself.
“Of course I know I aint pretty like you, nor can’t hold my head
proud and step high as you always did, even when you was little,
but I can feel, and perhaps that’s something. Anyhow Hanford’s
been down three times to talk about you to me, and ef you don’t
mind I’m going to let him come some more. But if you mind the
leastest little bit I want you should say so, for things are mixed
in this world and I don’t want to get to trampling on any other
person’s feelings, much less you who have always been my best
friend and always will be as long as I live I guess. ’Member how
we used to play house on the old flat stone in the orchard, and
you give me all the prettiest pieces of china with sprigs on ’em?
I aint forgot that, and never will. I shall always say you made
the prettiest bride I ever saw, no matter how many more I see, and
I hope you won’t forget me. It’s lonesome here without you. If it
wasn’t for comforting Hanford I shouldn’t care much for anything.
I can’t think of you a grown up woman. Do you feel any different?
I spose you wouldn’t climb a fence nor run through the pasture lot
for anything now. Have you got a lot of new friends? I wish I
could see you. And now Marsh, I want you to write right off and
tell me what to do about comforting Hanford, and if you’ve any
message to send to him I think it would be real nice. I hope
you’ve got a good husband and are happy.
“From your devoted and loving school mate,
“MARY ANN FOTHERGILL.”
Marcia laid down the letter and buried her face in her hands. To her too
had come a thrust which must search her life and change it. So while David
wrestled with his sorrow Marcia entered upon the knowledge of her own
heart.
There was something in this revelation by Mary Ann of Hanford Weston’s
feelings toward her that touched her immeasurably. Had it all happened
before she left home, had Hanford come to her and told her of his love,
she would have turned from him in dismay, almost disgust, and have told
him that they were both but children, how could they talk of love. She
could never have loved him. She would have felt it instantly, and her
mocking laugh might have done a good deal toward saving him from sorrow.
But now, with miles between them, with the wall of the solemn marriage
vows to separate them forever, with her own youth locked up as she
supposed until the day of eternity should perhaps set it free, with no
hope of any bright dream of life such as girls have, could she turn from
even a school boy’s love without a passing tenderness, such as she would
never have felt if she had not come away from it all? Told in Mary Ann’s
blunt way, with her crude attempts at pathos, it reached her as it could
not otherwise. With her own new view of life she could sympathize better
with another’s disappointments. Perhaps her own loneliness gave her pity
for another. Whatever it was, Marcia’s heart suddenly turned toward
Hanford Weston with a great throb of gratitude. She felt that she had been
loved, even though it had been impossible for that love to be returned,
and that whatever happened she would not go unloved down to the end of her
days. Suddenly, out of the midst of the perplexity of her thoughts, there
formed a distinct knowledge of what was lacking in her life, a lack she
had never felt before, and probably would not have felt now had she not
thus suddenly stepped into a place much beyond her years. It seemed to the
girl as she sat in the great chintz chair and read and re-read that
letter, as if she lived years that afternoon, and all her life was to be
changed henceforth. It was not that she was sorry that she could not go
back, and live out her girlhood and have it crowned with Hanford Weston’s
love. Not at all. She knew, as well now as she ever had known, that he
could never be anything to her, but she knew also, or thought she knew,
that he could have given her something, in his clumsy way, that now she
could never have from any man, seeing she was David’s and David could not
love her that way, of course.
Having come to this conclusion, she arose and wrote a letter giving and
bequeathing to Mary Ann Fothergill all right, title, and claim to the
affections of Hanford Weston, past, present, and future—sending him a
message calculated to smooth his ruffled feelings, with her pretty thanks
for his youthful adoration; comfort his sorrow with the thought that it
must have been a hallucination, that some day he would find his true ideal
which he had only thought he had found in her; and send him on his way
rejoicing with her blessings and good wishes for a happy life. As for Mary
Ann, for once she received her meed of Marcia’s love, for homesick Marcia
felt more tenderness for her than she had ever been able to feel before;
and Marcia’s loving messages set Mary Ann in a flutter of delight, as she
laid her plans for comforting Hanford Weston.