Tom Dilworth's boy was a curious _sport_ from the family stock. He
did, indeed, look down on the hardware business, but not much more than
on any business, although galvanized utensils were perhaps a little
more hideous than most things. Business in itself did not interest
him. Money-making was sordid folly, he said; because, "What do you
want money for? Isn't it to buy food and clothes and shelter? Well,
you can't eat more food than enough; you can only wear one suit of
clothes at a time; and an eight-foot cell is all the shelter that is
necessary."
"Eight-foot--_grandmother!_" his father would retort; "you'll inventory
that lot of spades, young man, and dry up."
And Ned, with shrinking hands and ears that shuddered at the hideous
screech of scraping shovels, would make out his inventory with
loathing. His mother was not impatient or contemptuous with him--she
could not have been that to any one; she simply could not understand
what he meant when he spouted upon the folly of wealth (for, like most
shy people, he occasionally burst into orations upon his theories), or
when he set off some fireworks of scepticism borrowed from Mr. Ezra
Barkley, or undertook (when Thomas was not present) to prove his
father's politics entirely wrong. On such occasions Nancy would say,
"Oh, Ned, _do_ be quiet!" and Mary would yawn openly. As for his
music, nobody cared about it, except, perhaps, his mother. "But I must
say, Neddy, I like a tune," she would say, mildly, after Edwin had
tucked his violin under his chin and poured out all his young soul in
what was a true and simple passion.
"A tune!" poor Ned said, and groaned. "Mother, I wish you wouldn't
call me that ridiculous name."
"I'll try not to, Neddy, dear," she would promise, anxiously; and Ned
would groan again.
With such a family circle, one can fancy what it was to the lad when
quite by accident he found a friend. It was the summer that he was
twenty, that once, coming back in the stage with him from Mercer, Miss
Helen Hayes showed a keen interest in something he said; then she asked
a question or two; and when, hesitating, waiting for the laugh which
did not come, he began to talk, she listened. Oh, the joy of finding a
listener! She looked at him, as they sat on the slippery leather seat
of the old stage, with soft, intelligent eyes, her slightly faded
prettiness giving a touch of charm to the high and flattering gravity
of her manner. When she asked him to bring his violin sometime and
play to her, the boy could almost have wept with joy. He made haste to
work off several of his dearest and most shocking phrases, which she
took with deep seriousness: A whale's throat is not large enough to
swallow a man--therefore the Biblical account is false, etc., etc. "In
fact," said Ned, "if I could have a half-hour's straight conversation
with Dr. Lavendar, I could prove to him the falsity of most of the Old
Testament."
Helen Hayes was shocked; she regretted Mr. Dilworth's scepticism with
almost tearful warmth; yet she realized that a powerful mind must
search for truth, above all. She wished, however, that he would read
such and such a book. "I can't argue with you myself," she said--"you
are far too clever for my poor little reasoning powers."
It was in April that Edwin entered into this experience of feminine
sympathy; and by mid-summer, at the time when Mr. Thomas Dilworth also
found Miss Helen Hayes so remarkably intelligent, the boy was absorbed
in his new emotion of friendship. He never spoke of it at home, hence
his father's astonishment at finding him at the Hayeses'. And when, a
week later, he found him a second time, Tom Dilworth was much perplexed.
"I dropped in on my way back from the store," he told his wife, "and
there was that boy. I said to Miss Helen that she really must not let
him bother her. I told her he was a blatherskite, and she must just
tell him to dry up if he talked too much."
"Tom, I don't think you ought to talk that way about Neddy," Mrs.
Dilworth said. "He's a dear boy."
"He may be a dear boy, but he is a great donkey," Ned's father said,
dryly; "and I think it is very good in Helen Hayes to put up with him.
I can see she does it on my account. Milly, why don't you ask her to
come to supper, sometime? I like to talk to her; she's got brains,
that girl. And she's good-looking, too. Ask her to tea, and have
waffles and fried chicken, and some of that fluffy pink stuff the
children are so fond of, for dessert."
"She's not much of a child," said Mrs. Dilworth, her face growing
slowly red. "She's thirty-two if she's a day."
"My dear, she has aged rapidly; you said thirty a month ago. I like
the pink stuff myself, and I'm nearly fifty. I bet the Hayeses don't
have anything better at their house."
Milly softened at that. Where is the middle-aged housekeeper who does
not soften at being told that her pink stuff is better than anything
the Hayeses can produce? Yet Tom's talk of Miss Helen's brains pierced
through her vagueness and bit into her heart and mind; and she could
not forget that he had called the girl good-looking. "Girl!" said Mrs.
Dilworth. She was standing before the small swinging glass on her high
bureau, looking at herself critically; then she slipped back and locked
her door; then took a hand-glass and stood sidewise to look again. Her
hair was drawn tightly from her temples and twisted into a hard knot at
the back of her head; she remembered that the Hayes girl wore high
rats, which were very fashionable, and had a large curl at one side of
her waterfall. "But it's pinned on," Milly said to herself; "anyway,
mine's my own." Then she pulled her cap farther forward (in those days
mothers of families began to wear caps when they were thirty) and
looked in the glass again: Helen Hayes did not have a double chin.
"She's a skinny thing," Milly said to herself. Yet she knew, bitterly,
that she would rather be skinny than see those cruel lines, like
gathers on a drawing-string, puckering the once round neck below the
chin. And her forehead: she wondered whether if, every day, she
stroked it forty-two times, she could smooth out the wrinkles?--those
wrinkles that stood for the tender and anxious thought of all her
married life! She had heard of getting rid of wrinkles in that way.
"It would take a good deal of time," she thought, doubtfully. Still,
she might try it--with the door locked. These reflections did not,
however, interfere with the invitation which Thomas had suggested.
Milly had her opinion of a middle-aged woman who wore wrappers in
public; but if Tom wanted her and her wrappers, he should have them.
He should have anything in the world he desired, if she could procure
it. Had he desired Miss Hayes hashed on toast, Milly would have done
her best to set the dainty dish before her king. And no doubt poor
Miss Helen in this form would have given Mrs. Dilworth more personal
satisfaction than did her presence at Tom's side (for the invitation
was promptly accepted) in some trailing white thing, her eyes fixed on
her host's face, intent, apparently, upon any word he might utter.
Watching that absorbed and flattering gaze, Milly grew more and more
silent. She heard their eager talk, and her mild eyes grew round and
full of pain with the sense of being left out; for Miss Hayes, though
patient with her hostess, and even kind in a condescending way, hardly
spoke to her. Once when, her heart up in her throat, Mrs. Dilworth
ventured a comment, it seemed only to amuse Thomas and his guest--and
she did not know why.
"This morning," Tom said, "I was h'isting up a big bunch of galvanized
buckets to our loft with a fall and tackle, and all of a sudden the
strap slipped, and the whole caboodle just whanged down on the
pavement--"
"O-o-o-o!" said Helen Hayes, putting her hands over her ears with
dramatic girlishness.
"It was terrific, and just at that moment up came Dr. Lavendar. Well,
of course I couldn't express my feelings--"
"Poor Mr. Dilworth!"
"--he came up, and gave me a rap with his stick. 'Thomas,' he said
(you know how his eyes twinkle!)--'Thomas, this is the most profane
silence I ever heard.'"
Everybody laughed, except Milly and Edwin, the latter remarking that he
didn't see anything funny in that. At which Miss Hayes said to him,
under her breath, "Oh, you superior people are so contemptuous of our
frivolity!" And Ned blushed with satisfaction, and murmured, "Why, no;
I'm not superior, I'm sure."
As for Milly, with obvious effort and getting very red, she said that
she didn't see how silence could be profane. "As long as you didn't
say anything, you conquered your spirit," she added, faintly.
And then they all (except Edwin) laughed again. After that she made no
attempt to be taken into the gayety about her, but her heart burned
within her. The next morning at breakfast some words struggled out:
"You'd think she was a young thing, she laughs so. And she's nearly
thirty-five."
"How time flies!" said Tom, chuckling. And then, to everybody's
astonishment, the mute Edwin spoke up, and said that as for age it was
a matter of the soul and not of the body. "Some people are always
young," said Edwin. "Dr. Lavendar is, and you are, father--"
"Thank you, grave and reverend seignior."
"--and mother," continued the candid youth, "has always been old.
Haven't you, mother?"
"True, for you, my boy," said the father; "your mother has the wisdom
of the family."
Milly Dilworth's face grew dully red to the roots of her hair; a wave
of anger rose up in her inarticulate heart. They called her old, these
two. She could hardly see her plate for tears.
Edwin, however, was so thrilled by the elegance of his sentiment that
he was eager to repeat it to Miss Hayes; but, somehow, he always had
difficulty in introducing the subject of age. When he did succeed in
getting in his little speech, she said that he impressed her very much
when he said things like that. "Your insight is wonderful," she
murmured, looking at him with something like awe in her eyes. (Miss
Helen was never cunning with Ned.)
"I guess you're the only person that thinks so," Ned said; "at home
they're always making fun of me."
"My friend," she said, gravely, "what else can you expect? You are an
eagle in a pigeon's nest. I don't mean to criticise your family, but
you know as well as I that you are--different. You are an inspiration
to me," she ended. And Ned blushed with joy.
It certainly is inspiring to be told you are an inspiration.... Mr.
Thomas Dilworth did not blush when he learned that mentally he was the
most stimulating person that Miss Hayes had ever met; but he had an
agreeable consciousness of his superiority, which he made no effort to
conceal from his wife. He never made any effort to conceal anything
from Milly, not even that fondness for female society which Mrs.
Drayton had deplored.
And by-and-by Milly's tears began to lie very near the surface. They
never gathered and fell, but perhaps they dropped one by one on her
heart, leaving their imprint of patiently accepted pain. At this time
she thought of her own mental deficiencies very constantly. Her mind
had no flexibility, and she reached conclusions only by toilsome
processes; but once reached, they were apt to be permanent. Her slow
reasoning at this time led her to conclude that her Thomas was not to
blame because he admired some one who was cleverer than she. "Why,
he'd be foolish not to," she thought, sadly.
But this eminently reasonable conclusion did not save Mrs. Dilworth
from turning white and red with misery, when, for instance, her husband
observed that he had had to take down two bars of the Gordon fence, so
that Miss Hayes could go home across lots. Then Thomas chuckled, and
added that Helen Hayes was the brightest woman he knew.
He did not go on to tell of his walk in the October dusk, and Miss
Helen's arch appeal to him for instruction on a certain political point
on which she was ignorant. Thomas had instructed her so fully and
volubly, while she looked at him with her reverent gaze, that it had
grown dark; and that was why he had to take her home across lots.
Thomas had not mentioned these details; he merely said he thought Miss
Helen Hayes a bright woman--the brightest, to be exact, that he knew.
And yet his Milly went into the kitchen pantry and hid her face in the
roller behind the door and sobbed.
Well, of course! It's very absurd. A fat, wordless woman, who ought
to be darning her children's stockings, it's very absurd for her to be
weeping into a roller because her man, who has loved her for
forty-three years, eleven months, twenty-nine days, twenty-three hours,
and forty minutes--her man, to whom she is as absolutely necessary as
his old slippers or his shabby old easy-chair--because this man does
not think her the brightest woman he knows. But absurd as it is, it is
suffering.
The woman of faithful heart who has been left behind mentally by her
husband is a tragic figure, even if she is at the same time a little
ridiculous--poor soul! Her futile, panting efforts to catch up; her
brave, pitiful blunders; her antics of imitation; her foolish pink lawn
frocks--of course they are funny; but the midnight tears are not funny,
nor the prinking (behind locked doors), nor the tightened dresses, nor
the stealthy reading to "improve the mind"--that poor, anxious, limited
mind which knows only its duty to its dearest and best. These things
mean the pain--a hopeless pain--of the recognition of limitations.
What did it matter that once a year Tom announced that he had loved his
Amelia for so many years, months, days, hours, and minutes?--He did not
talk to her about the President's letter! But he talked to Helen Hayes
about it. And yet she was a pale thing. "She never had my color,"
poor Milly thought; "and they say she doesn't get along well at home.
And she's no housekeeper. Mrs. Hayes herself told me she was just real
useless about the house. I can't understand it."
Of course she could not understand it. What feminine mind ever
understood why uselessness attracts a sensible man? It is so foolish
that even the most foolish woman cannot explain it.
As the autumn closed in on Old Chester, nobody in the family noticed
Milly Dilworth's heavier look and deeper silence. Tom himself was more
talkative than usual; business had been good, and he was going to get
something handsome out of a deal he had gone into with Hayes. This
took him often to the Hayeses' house; and after the two men had had
their talk, Miss Helen was to be found at the parlor fireside, very
arch and eager with questions, but most of all so respectful of Tom's
opinions. His Amelia was respectful of his opinions, too, but in such
a different way. Perhaps just at this time Thomas Dilworth pitied
himself a little--the middle-aged husband does pity himself once in a
while. Perhaps he sighed--certainly he whistled. There is no doubt
that Mrs. Drayton would have felt he was wandering from his Amelia--at
least in imagination. And yet Tom was as settled and grounded in love
for his middle-aged wife as he ever had been.
This, however, cannot be understood by those who do not know that the
male creature, good and honest and faithful as he may be, is at heart a
Mormon.
"I declare," Tom said, coming home at twelve o'clock at night--"I
declare I feel younger."
Milly was silent.
Then Tom began to whistle:
[Illustration: music fragment]
Then he broke off to say that he didn't think that Helen Hayes was
over-happy at home. "The Hayeses are commonplace people, and she is
very superior. I guess they don't get along well."
Milly thought to herself that when a girl didn't get along with her own
mother it didn't speak well for the girl; but she did not say so.
But Thomas went on to declare that he didn't know what to make of Ned.
"Hanging round the Hayeses till I'm ashamed of him! Why doesn't he
know better? I never bored a woman to death when I was his age." And
his wife thought, in heavy silence, that there were other people who
hung round the Hayeses.
However, Thomas made his feeling so clear to his son that during the
winter Ned was never seen at the Hayeses' on the same evening that his
father was there. But there was an hour in the afternoon, from five to
six, when the boy was free and Thomas was busy with his spades and
buckets;--but you can't look after a boy every minute.