down the shady street, on which longer and warmer shadows were creeping,
back perhaps in a reverie of her childhood, started a little; the
sensitive blush which years in the world had not given her power to
control, mantled her fair cheek; she turned and gave the Southerner's
light smile a serious, almost solemn gaze. When she spoke it was with a
gentle coldness, as if she felt she had been too frank with
strangers--at least so the hostess interpreted it.
"_I_ didn't forget; and we were not separated for several years. I went
to the high school with Nannie; it was really I who went, for my
entreaties overcame my mother's aversion to the clamorous life of a
public school. We were so happy; and when I had the trouble with my
eyes, Nannie used to read my lessons to me. She learned a whole
different course so she could help me. You see, she was awfully clever.
The more I knew of other girls, the finer Nannie seemed to me. The--the
difference between the classes, the real thing which keeps them apart,
is their lack of a common ground of experience. They haven't anything to
talk about. I should have been as shy with another girl who worked for
her living as she would have been with me, but I knew Nannie so well--I
never knew any other woman friend so well, and only one man."
"Whom you married?" said the Southerner with an apologetic accent.
"Yes, poor dear," laughed Mrs. Curtis. "It wasn't treating him well,
perhaps, but he brought it on himself."
"Did you go through the high school with your friend?" Mrs. Waite's deep
voice was heard again. "But no, surely you weren't a graduate?"
"No; we went to Europe in my second year. I cried myself ill when we
parted. My only comfort was that Nannie and I had promised each other
that we would go to college together. Nannie was already earning money
by her carving. Still--it was bitter. Youth can suffer so easily and so
horribly!"
"Yet," said Mrs. Clymer, "though I admit you were a woeful object,
Connie, I thought at the time, and I think now, that Nannie suffered the
most. She didn't shed a tear that morning when she came up to your house
to say good-by; and I went with you to the depot; but there was a look
in her eyes which haunted me. And when she stood in the driveway as we
rolled away, watching the carriage, and you turned and she waved her
hand and smiled--I felt as if I had seen a surgical operation."
"And then? Oh, Mrs. Curtis, that wasn't the end of it?" cried the
youngest member.
"Oh, no. I missed Nannie amid all the change and excitement; and I wrote
her often. At first she wrote me as often. Now I can appreciate how
hard she must have tried to collect the little items of news likely to
interest me. And they were all about girls whom she barely knew, and
things remote from her. Somehow she found out about everything. It was
she who first wrote about when Annie Baylor had scarlet fever, and she
who told first of that astounding happening, Mary Taine Willis'
engagement. Mary was only three years older than we; it was almost like
one of us being engaged. And her reports about the house and the grounds
and the horses, my father said, were clearer and more useful than those
of the man in charge. But somehow during the last year the letters grew
a little less open-hearted and affectionate; a queer film of constraint
froze over them, if I may call it that. And on my part I was conscious
of a mingling of dread in my delight at the prospect of seeing Nannie
when we had come. I knew she would be the same faithful, dear girl whom
I should always love; but my Nannie was more--she was the leader, she
had charm; I admired her so tremendously, I wondered should I admire her
in the same way. Maybe you think that was horrid of me?"
"I don't know"--the Southern woman spoke before the others--"I know it
was natural. Well, did you find it different? _Had_ she changed?"
"I don't remember; I only remember that, in the first half-hour, my only
fear was lest she should be disappointed in _me_. I admired everything
about her; her very clothes were so dainty; and I had expected to be
superior there, I fancy. But it wasn't that; it was my feeling that she
was finer and stronger than my other friends. You know the pretty
clothes, the pretty manners, are only signs of the real thing; and
Nannie had the real thing, I was sure. But there was always that
constraint about her. You would not believe," said Mrs. Curtis gently to
the Southerner, "you would not believe how absurdly this intangible
reserve of hers hurt me."
"I think it was very nasty of her, myself," laughed the Southerner; "but
did it never occur to you that some other friend of yours might have
been making mischief? You were a very desirable chum, some one might
have filled your friend's head with notions of how different were your
classes and walks in life; and how you were too loyal and kind hearted
to desert or repel an old friend, but you might find such ties a drag on
you. If that happened she would be a little morbid about making
advances. She was probably proud in her own way."
"There was Elsa Clarke," Mrs. Clymer suggested; "she was always trying
to be intimate with you; and if ever there was a sly little climber, it
was she."
"Wait a minute!" exclaimed the hostess. "I am beginning to reminisce,
myself. Wasn't there a boy in the Marsh family, Nannie Marsh's brother
or cousin? Yes, her cousin, Oscar. Why, to be sure. He came back from
college and was a clerk in Norris Blanchard's store, and fell madly in
love with Gladys Blanchard. She treated him abominably, they did say.
Led him on, and then married that young man from Massachusetts; and
Oscar shot himself in the front yard while they were standing up under
the floral bell."
"How ghastly," murmured the youngest member, "to kill himself--"
"Oh, it didn't kill him, though they thought he would die. I don't know
but his uncle wondered sometimes if it wouldn't have been better. For
after he got up he took to drink and notions--wild, anarchistic,
socialistic--"
"He couldn't take to them both at the same time," Mrs. Waite interrupted
with fervor. "They are absolutely antagonistic, socialism--"
"Yes, yes, to be sure"--the hostess hastily turned a conversational
switch before the collision--"of course I didn't mean to say he believed
in _both_, only that he took to making fierce speeches at the populist
meetings, and wrote articles for the papers, girding at the rich. And he
used to get drunk. The poor Marshes felt awfully. I shouldn't be a bit
surprised if that was what made Nannie a little shy and stiff. Did she
tell you about Oscar's tragedy?"
"Not until I found it out myself. I somehow had the feeling that I
wasn't so gladly welcomed as I used to be. And Mrs. Marsh was changed
and saddened. But the little chair was no longer by the window; and I
knew the mother grieved. Dear little Hattie, always so patient and so
pleased with every little thing. One day Nannie was walking home with
me, and we met Oscar. After that I knew. I will own up, when I saw his
condition, I--I told you I was a coward--I simply turned and ran away.
To be sure, Nannie had seen him also, and said suddenly, 'Good-by,
Connie; I can't go any farther'; but that is only a mitigation, not an
excuse. I was so ashamed of myself I hardly slept all night. Nannie was
coming to see me the next afternoon. I was awfully afraid she wouldn't
come, and almost as afraid to see her when she did come. And when she
began to talk, I couldn't think of anything better than to kiss her,
with my eyes shut--as if I were going to have a tooth pulled! We both
cried. It gave me a weird, earthquaky sensation to see Nannie cry. I had
never, through all our years of intimacy, seen her cry. But almost
immediately she pulled herself together, and said, 'Well, I'm not going
to stand it. Daddy has found a place in the country where Oscar can go
and learn the business and then be a partner. If he has a little
property of his own he will stop wanting to overturn things so bad.
So--he's going; and he did seem to feel bad about making aunty so
wretched; and he's promised to give up drinking _and_ talking; so I
don't know what I'm crying about, unless it is having to give up going
to college with you! But it's only putting it off for a year. I'll make
it all back by then; I'm going into the furniture factory this summer.'
But when I saw the family I realized for the first time what this
education, which we take so lightly, indeed often with weariness, means
to those who have to deny themselves for it. The love of it was a
passion with Nannie's people. They seemed to think a college was a
wonderful place, where one learned all the secrets of life and art and
knowledge. When they spoke of it their voices would drop reverentially,
as they dropped when they spoke of heaven. To have this glory for Nannie
put off another year seemed cruel to them. 'Well,' I suggested to Mr.
Marsh, 'at least it will be I who will have to miss her, and not you.'
'It's wicked to take such comfort,' said he, 'but I guess I can't help
taking it a mite. Nannie is so very comforting and pleasant to have
around.'"
"He certainly was a nice man," said Mrs. Clymer. "Do you remember him
beaming at Nannie's graduation? I thought I should be bored, but I
wasn't; and you, my dear, were a little drama of delight by yourself, so
scared when she began, and so radiant presently; and darting such
furious glances at Elsa Clarke."
"Well," retorted Mrs. Curtis, "wasn't she whispering all through the
essay to a boy she had with her! But she was on the stage afterward,
before any of us, and she had sent Nannie a most impressive and
expensive bouquet; and she was hugging her and making joyful noise over
her when my father and I came up. Father paid her the prettiest of
compliments and called her Miss Nannie. Her own father and her aunt and
Ned stood by, with Oscar, who had come in from the country for this
important occasion. Mr. Marsh did not say a word. But I never knew
before how many different kinds of smiles a man could smile. And
somehow, after that evening, although Nannie was so little affected by
the glamour of it all, I was provoked with her; somehow, she was more
like her old gay self with me. Why do you suppose, Mrs. Atherton?"
"I suppose," ventured the Southerner, smiling, "because she felt that
her little triumph (no doubt she overvalued it, in spite of the level
head you give her); she felt it made her a little better worth your
friendship. But--what happened next? You went to college?"
"Yes, I went; and we had to have that odious little Elsa with us,
because she was going, too. I was most dolefully homesick; and oh, how I
missed Nannie! I wrote her, if I weren't so afraid of the ferocious
cabmen who roared so at one, I should run away, and it was all her
fault--"
"Your father did want--" Mrs. Curtis cut Mrs. Clymer's sentence off with
a quick "Ah, they wouldn't accept; they were quite as proud as we.
However, the time dragged itself away, and I went home for the Christmas
holidays. I found Nannie in very different circumstances, but quite as
cheerful. She was working in the factory, and earning good wages, and
she had all sorts of racy experiences with human nature to relate. How
the whole family hung on my college stories! And Oscar was doing well,
and becoming cheerful, and they could all talk proudly about him again!
They comforted me as much as my own people, and I went back with a show
of courage. Nannie wrote me every week. I don't know just when I began
to feel a change in the letters, not in their affection or their gaiety;
but she no longer told me so much about her studies (for she wanted to
keep up with me and enter in the second year); after a while she hardly
mentioned them; yet she _had_ shown the keenest interest. My people came
on east for me that summer, and as we made several visits, it was late
in the summer when we came home. Although I had noticed this change in
Nannie's letters, I had not dreamed what it really meant; and I was not
prepared for the shock I received. She greeted me with all her old
affection; but at my first inquiry about her savings, she answered,
'Yes, I have enough--if I go.' 'If!' I cried. 'Don't be talking of
if's!' 'Indeed, I ought not,' she answered very gravely, 'for there is
no if about it; I know that I oughtn't to go. It isn't fair to the
others.' 'But they want you to go!' I pleaded in inexpressible dismay.
'It will be the awfulest disappointment!' It seems to me that I still
remember every word of her reply. She said that she knew it, that her
education had been the whole family's day dream. But that, in the first
place, it would be harder than they would admit for them to have her go.
'If it were only this it would be hard,' she said, 'but we could bear
it; but--it isn't. What they couldn't bear would be to--to have me grow
away from them. I _couldn't_, truly; but--you know Elsa is at home now.
She talks of nothing but her college, her college friends, her high
marks at exams, her basketball team, and all that. She is always
complaining of her own people's plain ways. Connie, I can see so plainly
that when she has finished the education which her parents are pinching
themselves to give her she will use it to establish herself as far as
possible from them.'
"'Oh, Elsa?' I sniffed. 'I can believe anything of Elsa. _You_ couldn't
be so horrid and snobbish!'
"'She doesn't mean to be horrid, or know she is; she speaks of her
mother with tears in her eyes. It is only that she has gone into another
world from them, and wants to stay there. I don't want to go into any
other world than my father's and the others'. I don't want any better
taste than they have! I want better taste and I want them to have it,
but I want us all to get it together. Whatever I get I want to share
with them. I couldn't if I went away. I used to think I could bring it
all back in a lump; but I know better now. You can't pot culture and
give it away as you choose; you have to grow it from the seed. What I am
afraid of is that they should not get what I get. So far they have; why,
aunty knows more of Virgil from hearing me translate aloud than I do
myself; and dad is wonderful in geometry, and he has taught _me_ to love
Charles Lamb, whom he loved just from the extracts in the literature.
First he bought the Essays, then I bought him the Letters. It is that
way with so many things. You know'--she laughed--'you know we have some
long-legged Fra Angelico angels instead of the pictures of Lincoln and
Grant; they are in other frames, which my father made, and hang in the
hall; and the Rogers groups have gone up-stairs, and, Connie, Oscar and
dad and I have had a real artist paint a pastel of Uncle Jed as a
present for aunty, and we have it in the parlor now; and nobody's
feelings are hurt; we were all pleased together. That is the right way.
I can't take any other way. Not even to be with you, Connie. No, dear, I
can't go.' I am afraid I made it harder for her with my selfish grief,
and her father almost frantically opposed the sacrifice, he who was
always so tranquil; and Oscar was angry, and Ned cried. Oh, we gave poor
Nannie a frightful quarter of an hour; but she did not go."
"What became of her? How did it turn out in the end?" asked the youngest
member.
"I don't know," answered Mrs. Curtis.
"Did her conduct make a breach between you?" Mrs. Waite showed the dawn
of disapproval on her brow.
"Surely not. But in my next year we went abroad unexpectedly, on
account of my mother's health. We stayed four years; and while we were
away, my grandfather died, and the house here was sold. At first we both
wrote often; but, as the years went by, insensibly we wrote less often.
Both of us, I suppose. That same film of constraint was over Nannie's
letters that had been over her manner before. Then it went away. This
time it came, and did not go away. Then the letters ceased altogether.
When I--when I found I was going to marry Mr. Curtis, I wrote Nannie the
very first letter. There was no answer. I wrote again--not once, but
many times. After a long while my letters came back to me, unopened,
with the post-office inscription, 'Not to be found.' I wrote to Elsa,
who was home. I asked her for Nannie's address; for some word about her.
She wrote back that the Marshes had sold their house after Oscar's
trouble, to raise money for his defense; and they had all moved away,
she believed, to Dakota, but she didn't know where. She said Nannie
avoided everybody."
"And what _was_ Oscar's trouble?" demanded Mrs. Waite. "I know there was
some iniquitous blunder of the law, but what exactly was it?"
Mrs. Clymer, who had been watching Mrs. Curtis attentively, explained
while the other woman seemed searching for the right words. "Oscar was
convicted of burning the store of a rival merchant who had treated him
very treacherously. He had lost his temper, and threatened the man. What
he meant, he explained, was to give him a good hiding. But he was
overheard; and when, that night, the store burned, and Oscar was
discovered to have gone there, suspicion lighted on him. Of course, all
his former wild actions were brought up against him, although he had
quite reformed. There had been a number of incendiary fires, and you
know how people always want _somebody_ punished; poor Oscar Marsh was
sent to the penitentiary, after his people had spent almost their last
dollar to defend him. They moved away, and all trace of them was lost.
It is a wretched story. And really, Oscar was innocent. A year afterward
(I always credited it mostly to Nannie) it was discovered that the man
had set fire to the store himself. Nannie got the insurance company on
his trail. He fled. The governor pardoned Oscar. And that is all any of
us know."
"It is a sad story," sighed Mrs. Waite. "I think she did wrong not to
educate herself."
"I think she did quite right," said Mrs. Curtis.
"But as it was, the sacrifice was so useless," urged the youngest
member. "She didn't lift them; they only all went under the waves
together."
"Not necessarily," objected the Southerner. "Why be so dismal? Why not
be cheerful? They had their good trade and their good sense and their
love for each other. I am going to suppose that those things are more
than money, and that they went to work in a new place, rose little by
little, and then more and more, and are all prosperous and respected,
and Miss Nannie has married the young superintendent of her new factory,
who has now risen to be the main partner; he is of an old though
impoverished family--"
"You think so much of family in the South, don't you?" interjected Mrs.
Waite.
"Well, we have so many old and good but impoverished families there, you
see. I think the chances are she married such a boy; and they have made
money, and Oscar has a nice plantation near them, and is married to a
sweet little Southern girl, and his mother adores the baby; and Ned
goes to college, and Mr. Marsh is a prosperous builder, high in the
Scottish Rite, and growing used to his dress coat--"
"But," said the hostess, "you are having them all south; they went to
Dakota."
"Why, so they did! I forgot," cried the Southerner. "Maybe it was a
mistake; and anyhow, they would have done better to go south!"
Everybody laughed and Mrs. Curtis' fine eyes lit up. "I perceive you are
a psychic, Mrs. Atherton," she said gaily. "And they _did_ go south.
Being a psychic, can't you tell me something? Why didn't Nannie answer
my letters?"
The Southerner dropped her chin and looked upward in the pose of a seer;
no one noticed Mrs. Clymer's sudden movement or the ripple of quick
emotion in Mrs. Curtis' face. "That's easy," she responded. "I see a
slim girl with dark hair walking with another girl who answers to the
name of Elsa. The dark-haired girl gives her a letter, stamped, but not
addressed. She has sent a letter to her friend, which has not reached
her. Letters sometimes do not reach people who are hurrying through
Egypt or--or other places. This letter she gives to Elsa, who is to
marry the cousin of an acquaintance of the friend. She is to post
it--_voila tout!_"
"She _was_ engaged to Bertha Miller's cousin; and she did try awfully
hard to be intimate with Constance," whispered Mrs. Clymer in the
hostess' ear; while everybody laughed again.
"He drinks like a fish," returned the hostess irrelevantly.
"Oh, Mrs. Atherton, don't stop, tell us more," begged the youngest
member. "I feel so interested in Nannie. Has she any children?" The
youngest member had just acquired the most remarkable baby in the world.
"I reckon," jested the Southerner, "two or three. Two boys, let us
say--"
"How nice!" cried Mrs. Curtis, coloring prettily. "_I_ have two boys."
"And--I think a little girl, whom she has named Constance, Constance
Ridgely--Are we going, Mrs. Clymer?"
Mrs. Clymer laid a kindly hand on her shoulder, saying, "Yes, my dear, I
must go; but as I am stopping on my way, I shall walk; and Constance
will take care of you."
"Thank you, Aunt Kate," said Mrs. Curtis, so low the others--except the
Southerner--did not hear. They were alone in the carriage before she
made any sign of that which had stirred her profoundly. Then she turned
on her companion a pale face and eyes that were swimming in tears.
"Yes, dear," said the Southerner, whose lips were smiling, but whose own
eyes were wet.
"Oh--_Nannie!_" cried Constance Ridgely. And the faces of the two women
were strangely like the faces of the two little girls who had found each
other years and years ago.
THE OLD PARTISAN
A STORY OF THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1896
I sat so far back in the gallery that my opinion of my delegate friend
dwindled with every session. Nevertheless my unimportant seat had its
advantages. I could see the vast assembly and watch the throbbing of the
Republican pulse if I could not hear its heart-beats. Therefore,
perhaps, I studied my neighbors more than I might study them under
different circumstances. The great wooden hall had its transient and
unsubstantial character stamped on every bare wooden joist and
unclinched nail. It was gaudy with flags and bunting and cheap
portraits. There were tin bannerettes crookedly marshaled on the floor,
to indicate the homes of the different states. A few delegates,
doubtless new to the business and over-zealous, were already on the
floor, but none of the principals were visible. They were perspiring and
arguing in those committee rooms, those hotel lobbies and crowded hotel
rooms where the real business of the convention was already done and
neatly prepared for presentation to the nation. I had nothing to keep me
from studying my neighbors. In front of me sat two people who had
occupied the same seats at every session that I was present, a young
girl and an old man. The girl wore the omnipresent shirt waist (of
pretty blue and white tints, with snowy cuffs and collar), and her green
straw hat was decked with blue cornflowers, from which I inferred that
she had an eye on the fashions. Her black hair was thick and glossy
under the green straw. I thought that she had a graceful neck. It was
very white. Whiter than her face, which kept a touch of sunburn, as if
she were often out in the open air. Somehow I concluded that she was a
shop-girl and rode a wheel. If I were wrong it is not likely that I
shall ever know.
The old man I fancied, was not so old as he looked; his delicate,
haggard profile may have owed its sunken lines and the dim eye to
sickness rather than to years. He wore the heavy black broadcloth of the
rural politician, and his coat sagged over his narrow chest as if he had
left his waistcoat at home. On his coat lapel were four old-fashioned
Blaine badges. Incessantly he fanned himself.
"It can't be they ain't going to nominate him to-day?" he asked rather
than asserted, his voice breaking on the higher notes, the mere wreck of
a voice.
"Oh, maybe later," the girl reassured him.
"Well, I wanted to attend a Republican convention once more before I
died. Your ma would have it I wasn't strong enough; but I knew better;
you and I knew better; didn't we, Jenny?"
She made no answer except to pat his thin, ribbed brown hand with her
soft, white, slim one; but there was a world of sympathy in the gesture
and her silent smile.