up here! You ought to let me known--I'm the one for jobs like this.
Just let me into the kitchen, Miss----" She paused, but as the girl
made no attempt to help her, continued easily, "well, I should say
so! Got a little burnt, didn't it? Never mind, you ought to a' seen
my first corn-meal muffins! Now you just step out and rest a minute,
dear, and by the time you've called your husband I'll have a little
lunch scratched up and you'll feel so different you won't know
yourself. It's surprisin' how distressed you c'n get on an empty
stomach. 'Tis your husband, isn't it, or is it your brother?"
"No, it's not--yes. It--it's not my brother," the girl said in a
low voice.
"No," Luella repeated soothingly, "no, I see. That's a fine cat,
ain't it? I've read of 'em--Angora, ain't it?--but I never saw one.
They say they're mostly deaf. Is that one?"
"Yes. No--I don't know. I don't believe she is," the girl murmured,
brokenly. She seemed newly distressed; her lips, very red against
her white cheeks, quivered, her full breast strained against her
white linen blouse.
Luella strode lightly about the disorderly little kitchen; she had
forgotten the very presence of the girl, it seemed, for as she
gathered the soiled dishes, coaxed the fire, filled the kettle and
hastily removed the traces of the ill-fated huckleberry bread, she
hummed a tune and appeared to see only her work.
Caroline was on her knees before the Angora and knew nothing of the
flight of time, though it was really hardly more than a quarter of
an hour before the kitchen rivalled Luella's in neatness and the
pine table in the living-room, covered with a fresh cloth, and shiny
plated silver, only waited its host.
"Now if you'll step out and call your husband, Miss--I didn't just
get the name?" said Luella invitingly.
The girl rose from the chair where she had been sitting, motionless,
except for her eyes, which had followed every movement of the older
woman. She stood very straight and threw her head back with a
gesture almost defiant.
"My name is Dorothy Hartley," she declared, and ran abruptly out of
the cottage.
"Well, well," Luella shook her head whimsically, "she's pretty well
wrought up, isn't she? Sweet little thing, too--real loveable, I
sh'd say. It don't seem possible he'd be mean to her. But o' course
he wants his breakfast fit to eat, just the same. I put a place for
you, Car'line, 'cause I know you c'n eat, no matter what time
'tis--you're 's empty's a bag. There he comes--my, but he's
haughty! He looks like somebody in one o' those novels, don't he,
now?"
They came slowly up the path, hand in hand, like children, her gray
eyes on the ground, his black ones challenging the world. The clear
mountain air carried his words easily to the two in the door:
"Now, dearest, be brave! Remember, we are right, and we know we are
right."
She clutched his hand nervously, but made no reply.
"Come right in," Luella urged them hospitably, "you must be 'most
starved."
"Oh, no," he assured her, with a loyal glance at the girl, "I--I had
a good breakfast, didn't I, dear?"
But his eyes brightened at sight of the half chicken and the omelet,
glowing in a parsley wreath, and he had broken one of the puffy
rolls and plunged into a great cup of coffee before he addressed
Caroline.
"You seem to be a valuable person to know," he observed,
"you and Matthew Arnold or John Greenleaf Whittier or
what-ever-his-name-is."
Caroline looked embarrassed and helped herself to jelly.
"You have helped my--we are very much obliged to you, I am sure,"
he turned to address Luella, who was passing from stove to table,
"aren't we, dearest?"
The girl sat with her hands in her lap, staring at her plate.
"Yes, of course," she agreed, "certainly."
"If you could come every day--they told me I could find some one to
do that--it would be a great accommodation," he went on, with a
worried look at the sad face opposite him, "and anything it might be
worth, I am sure, Mrs.----"
"Judd, Luella Judd," she supplied, briskly. "Now, dear, try to eat a
little, do! That omelet'll do you good. And that's a lovely piece o'
breast I cut you off. It was all right my bringin' it, for the old
gentleman never touches cold meat and the jelly's my own. There,
that's right. I thought you'd like it, once you began. There's no
need to tempt Car'line and your husband, is there? But that's all
right: young folks ought to eat--I never grudged mine a crumb, and
the Lord knows they eat me out of house and home."
The young man, indeed, ate voraciously, and under Luella's kindly
domineering the hostess herself cleared her plate. The hot coffee
brought the color to her cheeks, and she had even smiled at Henry D.
Thoreau. Caroline had never seen anyone prettier. She had a great
dimple in either cheek, and her gray eyes smiled with the sweetest
confidence into the black eyes opposite: any one could see that they
loved each other very much, even if they had "had words."
"Just a little more o' the huckleberry bread, dear?" Luella urged
her. "I've been sort o' plannin' out how I c'd manage to get here
every day, and I guess I can, if you'll be content to wait a little
for your breakfast. My old gentleman don't have anything but a cup
o' coffee in the morning, an' I c'd be over here by ha' past eight,
easy enough, Mr. Hartley, if that suited you--"
"Wortley, my name is Wortley," the young man interrupted, hastily.
Luella looked puzzled.
"Wortley?" she repeated, "why, that's--well, never mind, it's none
o' my business. I cert'nly thought she said Hartley, though. Well,
if you'n Mrs. Wortley _can_ wait till ha' past eight--"
"Frank, dear," the girl broke in appealingly, but the young man
shook his head.
"No, darling," he said firmly, and then looking straight at Luella,
he went on: "This lady's name is Hartley. We are not--we are not
related."
Luella stared blankly at him a moment, then turned to the girl. But
she, though she got up from her seat and going over to the young man
seized his hand and pressed it between her own, did not lift her
eyes to the woman's troubled and accusing gaze.
Luella drew a long breath, took off her checked apron and rolled it
mechanically into a bundle. Her face had hardened; only the
shrewdness was left in her eyes.
"You might 'a told me so before," she said briefly, and turned on
her heel.
The girl was crying on his shoulder. "Tell her, Frank, please tell
her why," she begged, through her sobs.
Luella faced her sternly. "He needn't trouble to tell me why,"
she said, "I know more'n you think, maybe. I know who your
father is, Mr. Wortley, an' I guess I understand pretty well
by now what his troubles are. If he forbade you marryin' each
other, he had his reasons, I don't doubt, for he's a good man,
if he is quick-tempered, an'--"
"He _didn't_ forbid our marrying," the young man broke in sharply,
glaring with ill-suppressed irritation at Luella, while he softly
patted the girl's shoulder. "He begged us on his bended knees to
marry, though I don't know how you know him."
Luella paused with her hand on the door.
"What!" she exclaimed sharply. "Then it was your folks?" She looked
at the girl.
"No, it wasn't!" Dorothy lifted her head. "They b-begged us on
_their_ b-bended knees, too," she sobbed and disappeared again.
"For the Lord's sake!" Luella muttered. Then turning fiercely on him
she took a step forward.
"Do you mean to tell me you're scoundrel enough--" she began, but
the young man--he was really only a boy--shook his head angrily.
"Not at all, not at all," he burst out with a curious likeness to
his father, "I'm no more a scoundrel than you are, Mrs. Judd, and
you'll oblige me by acting accordingly."
It was so evident that he meant what he said, he appeared so
righteously indignant, that Luella paused, dumbfounded, twisting the
apron in her hands.
"Wh-why ain't you married, then?" she demanded.
The young man surveyed her calmly. "Because I--we disapprove of
marriage," he said.
Luella turned a brick-red; her mouth opened vaguely. Though she
spoke not a word, he answered her amazed face.
"The conditions of marriage at the present day," he stated loftily,
"are not such as to lead me--to lead us to suppose that as an
institution it has accomplished its purpose. Where it is not merely
legalized--"
"Oh, Frank!" the girl moaned softly, putting her little hand over
his opened lips. He kissed it gently, but removed it.
"To say nothing of the absolute misery you can see all about you as
a result of a chain that ought long ago to have been broken, or
better still, never--"
"And before that child, too!" Luella burst out. "Caroline, you get
right up and come home. I never heard anything like it in my life.
Come this minute, now!"
Caroline rose unwillingly; she thought Luella unnecessarily severe.
"As to that," young Mr. Wortley announced composedly, "we differ
again. The sooner these matters are discussed frankly before
children, the sooner we shall have fewer unhappy men and women.
There is nothing whatever in my intentions or Miss--or Dorothy's,
to shock or affront the youngest child. I have no children myself,
but--"
"Humph!" Luella sniffed furiously, "I sh'd hope not!"
"--but _if_ I had," he pursued evenly, "I should teach them
precisely--"
"Look here," Luella interrupted roughly, "look me in the face, both
of you!"
They turned their eyes full on her, the boy's dilated to
fanaticism, glowing with obstinacy; the girl's, wet and pleading,
miserable, but full of love. Luella, with narrowed lids, bored into
those clear young eyes: no shadow of deceit, no hint of shuffling or
double-dealing could withstand that relentless scrutiny.
Slowly her face softened, her eyebrows relaxed, her hold on the
twisted apron loosened.
"I guess we better talk this over," she said decisively, closing the
door and seating herself squarely in the chair nearest it. "How old
did you say you was, Mr. Wortley?"
The forensic expression faded helplessly from the boy's face. He
clutched at it, but it failed him, and with the air of a pupil
addressing his teacher, he replied: "I didn't say, but I'm
twenty-one."
Luella nodded. "An' you can't be a day over nineteen, can you?" she
demanded of the girl. The braided chestnut head shook sadly.
"I thought not. I s'pose you've found out that your views ain't
shared by most o' the world," she proceeded, with a fine air of
impartiality.
"I--we have been very much misunderstood," said the boy stiffly,
"but I have never been in the habit of allowing other people's ideas
to affect my actions."
"You been spoiled, you mean," Luella interpolated, "I thought so.
Spoiled to death, prob'ly."
He bit his lip. "But I hope I--we are prepared for
anything--_anything_," he repeated with emphasis, "that may result
from the course we have taken. I expect the results will be
unpleasant--I expect it fully."
"I guess your expectations 'll be fulfilled right enough," she
responded promptly. "And as for bein' prepared--you remind me o' my
father, Mr. Wortley. He used to say he'd been prepared for death
since the age o' seven years, but he did hope the Lord wouldn't take
advantage of it. Is--is she prepared, too?"
He looked lovingly at the girl who crouched on the floor beside him.
"Dorothy and I think precisely the same in everything," he said
proudly, "don't we, my dearest one?"
Luella's lips twitched; she looked at the flushed arrogant young
face with irrepressible admiration.
"I reely b'lieve you think so!" she declared, and as his hand
clinched and his eyes flashed dangerously, she raised her hand with
a warning gesture.
"There, there now, I get enough o' that from your father!" she
admonished him, adding quickly, "Does he know you're here?"
"I don't know," he answered irritably, "I never supposed _he'd_ be
here. I came up here because I'd made all my plans to--and I never
let my plans be interfered with, if I can possibly avoid it. I told
the man to get it ready for me, but just before we started he
telegraphed that it was engaged for the season. But I came all the
same, because I knew this little one would be empty. Father bought
it up to protect himself. Does he know I'm here?"
Luella looked thoughtful. "I reely don't know," she said slowly.
"It'll come pretty hard on her, doin' her own work, won't it?" she
went on, watching him curiously. Then, as he started angrily, "Oh,
there ain't nobody here will come, by the day, or any other way--I
sh'd s'pose you'd known that. And as for any o' the cottage
people--heavens an' earth, Car'line, will you get up an' go home? I
don't know what's come over me to forget that child--she sits so
still--"
But as Caroline got sulkily from her seat, cowed by Luella's stern
face, Dorothy put out her hand and caught the child's dress.
"Oh! Oh!" she cried hysterically, "don't send her away--don't,
Frank! L-let me have somebody!"
"There, you see!" said Luella sadly, "you see how 'tis, Mr. Wortley.
Do you mean to say you have the heart--"
"Dorothy, I don't understand you at all," said the young man, with
evident self restraint.
"You probably do not realize the very trying position you put me in.
I hope it is not necessary to explain to you, Mrs. Judd, that if
Miss Hartley _wishes_ to marry me, she has but to say the word, and
it shall be done instantly--instantly!" he repeated with emphasis,
"as if," Luella said later, "he'd had a minister in his side
pocket."
"There, my dear, hear that!" she cried triumphantly, "now just tell
him what you want--"
"You horrid woman, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" the girl
broke in furiously. "How dare you intimate--as if I didn't know that
Frank would do anything in the world I asked him to!"
"Oh, no, dearest," he broke in satirically, "that's a poor basis for
action in this beautiful world of ours! Catch your man and tie him
tight before he has time to change his mind. Then he'll be obliged
to stay by you--you've got him hand and foot! That is love!"
"It's just as well, sometimes, though," Luella inserted placidly.
"Do you suppose I would ever," the girl stormed, "unless I--oh,
dear, will somebody understand? Don't you know that my--that Frank
has studied this question very deeply, that it's a matter of
principle with us? If you had read all the dreadful things--"
"I am afraid, darling," he interrupted, with cold dignity, "that
if your people and mine cannot understand the position I take,
if we are actually obliged to take the matter into our own hands,
and--and run away, in fact, in order to prove our sincerity, you
can hardly expect people of a different--of less--with fewer--"
"I know what you mean, Mr. Wortley," Luella said gravely. She
rose to her feet, beckoning to Caroline, whose waist the girl
still clasped.
"I haven't got your education," she went on, with a simple humility
that became her very touchingly, "we're poor people up here, us
'natives,' and we don't get much time for books, or when we do,
we're too tired to read 'em much. I don't doubt you've been to
college, yourself, and you've prob'ly learnt a lot about the
mistakes that's been made in the world--a lot that I wouldn't
understand. But I want to tell you one thing. I'm old enough to 'a
been your mother, Mr. Wortley, my oldest boy'd 'a been twenty if
he'd lived--and I've buried two besides him. You'll know I've seen
trouble when I tell you that I've always thought we'd saved him and
Annie if we could 'a had another doctor that'd had more experience
with typhoid, and that's an awful thing to feel."
She paused a moment with somber eyes.
"I've worked hard since I was ten years old, and for the last five
years there's been nothin' but me between the children and the poor
house. You don't know much about that kind o' worry, Mr. Wortley,
an' 'taint likely you ever will. I was married when I was
nineteen--" Her eyes fell on the girl and softened lovingly, "'an
what that means in the country with seven children an' no help, an'
the winters what they are here, maybe you can guess a little. But I
tell you this: I ain't had the sorrow, all told, that's preparin'
for that girl, if you keep on like this. An' I wouldn't change my
lot for hers, nor would she, if she knew."
There was a dead silence in the room. Only the short, grunting
breaths of the sleeping dog stirred the air. The girl sat as if
turned to stone, her arm hard about Caroline; the boy stared
doubtfully at the woman, studying her plain, wrinkled face.
"I--I have plenty of money," he said, in a hollow thin little voice,
"she will always--"
"Money!" Luella's voice shook with scorn, "what's money? The Lord
knows, Mr. Wortley, I need money more'n you ever will, but let me
tell you there's things money can't buy. Can you buy children--nice
children like this one--to play with your children? Tell me that!"
"I shall never have any children," the girl's voice came in a husky,
strained whisper, "I shall be too--too miserable," she concluded
softly, and utterly to herself; she had absolutely forgotten the
others, even the boy, whose eyes turned incessantly from her face to
the older woman's.
Luella's shrewd glance enveloped the strong young figure. "I never
heard 't misery prevented 'em," she said dryly.
The boy seemed unable to move, so intense was the concentration of
his thoughts; his fingers stuck out stiffly in a purposeless, set
gesture.
"If it is true, all that we thought," he said slowly, "then no
hardship, no merely personal suffering should prevent ... the
experiment must be made ... must inevitably, _sometime_...."
"But not with her, not _her_, Mr. Wortley!" Luella cried. Her
expression turned quickly whimsical.
"You remind me o' me an' my mother one time, when I was a girl," she
cried. "I wanted to prove that you c'd raise biscuits without the
bakin' powder--I was terrible headstrong; I know what 'tis well
'nough, an' how hard 'tis to give 'way--an' she was tryin' to
persuade me.
"'I think 't least you might let me make th' experiment,' I says,
an' she turned to me--I c'n see her now an',
"'Luella,' says she, 'it's all very well for you to make th'
experiment, but I'm the one that'll have to pay the bill!' she says.
"It'll be like that with you, Mr. Wortley--you'll make th'
experiment, but _she'll_ pay!"
There was another silence.
"We always pay," Luella added thoughtfully, "it don't seem just
fair, but we do."
The young man shook himself suddenly, like a dog fresh from the
water.
"I didn't mean to--God knows I wouldn't hurt a hair of her head," he
said, in a low voice. His hands relaxed, his shoulders drooped. "It
seemed the best thing only this morning--is that what you meant this
morning, Dorothy, when we--when we--when I went away?" he asked
gently.
She held out her hand to him, still clasping Caroline, and he knelt
beside her, one arm around her neck.
"I--I don't want you ever--to do--what you--think--is--is wrong,"
she said brokenly, but with a brave effort at steadiness.
"I'll--I'll never--leave you--Frank."
She gazed adoringly into his eyes, her hand tight in his. Luella's
mouth twitched and she choked as she spoke.
"Oh, Mr. Wortley," she urged, "it isn't that I don't see what you
mean--partly. You think I don't, but I do. There's awful mistakes
made in marryin', we all see 'em; even 'way back here in the country
dreadful things happen, an' the papers--we c'n read 'em, that's
enough an' more'n enough. There's things that ought to be changed, I
know, but not the way you want to change 'em--oh, not that way! It
can't help any, not marryin', don't you see--folks must just take
pains and marry more careful, 'cause we've begun this way and now we
can't stop without somebody gettin' hurt--and that won't be you, nor
any other man. Marryin's all we've got to tie to, Mr. Wortley, us
women, an' we can't quit now!"
The boy looked thoughtfully at her: "I--I think perhaps you are
right," he said slowly. He appeared unaccountably older; small,
worried lines were cutting themselves deep around his eyes and
mouth.
He threw back his head in an attempt to regain the old, masterful
manner.
"I hope I am too sincere not to state honorably that I--I feel sure
you are right!" he announced, "that is, in this particular instance.
I have no desire to establish any point at the expense--at the
expense...."
He frowned into space; his lips tightened obstinately.
"But it will _have_ to be at somebody's expense!" he cried
irritably. "Shall we _always_ go on like this, putting off, putting
off, letting this shameful, unsatisfactory state of things continue,
just because it would be _our_ wives that would suffer...."
"I guess that's about it," Luella answered, seriously.
"Then all I have to say is, we're damned cowards, all of us!" he
cried, with the old flash of rage.
But it was the last time. Beaten, yet triumphant, he stooped for his
harness and himself assumed it, with set teeth.
"I--I shouldn't have said that," he said, gravely. "It's--it's a
very difficult thing ... a man has so many responsibilities...."
They waited patiently.
"It seems one must compromise--something--anyway," he went on,
thinking his way painfully along. "I don't know why it seems so
difficult to me now; ... they talked enough, all the others, and of
course I shall never speak to your Aunt Ethel again--you may use
your own judgment, Dorothy--because there are some insults...."
He shook himself again and drew the girl to her feet.
"Dearest," he said, and there was a sad little ring in his voice,
but a strangely kind one, "I--we have been mistaken. It wouldn't do.
I think--" he looked anxiously at Luella--"the sooner we get some
one--to--to--a clergyman, you know, or a--a legal person of some
kind--"
"I'll get Mr. Andrews right away," Luella assured him briskly. "He's
Cong'ational, and he's a real pleasant young man--new here.
Car'line, you run right down cross-lots to that first white house
an' there he'll be, callin' this minute on the Wilkinses, 'cause she
told me he would. You say Luella Judd wants him right away, an'
he'll come."
"Yes, Luella, I will," said Caroline but her eyes were fastened on
the girl.
She was in the boy's arms, her head on his shoulder; she clung to
him tightly, shivering a little, hiding her face.
"You don't mind, darling?" he begged her earnestly, "you believe I
am doing it for the best? You won't blame me for changing, after all
I've said?"
She lifted her head and through her loving gray eyes looked out at
him the woman she would be in ten years. A little tender smile
curved her lips; she patted his shoulder as a mother caresses her
headstrong, dearest son.
"Whatever you think is best, Frank dear," she said, "let's do that."
* * * * *
"I only hope to heaven she don't understand!" Luella muttered
nervously, glancing unguardedly at Caroline.
Caroline stamped her foot angrily. Her sensitive little body had
thrilled in the girl's arm; she had felt all the pathos and dignity
of Luella's appeal, the young man seemed to her mysterious and
noble. And now she was distrusted, grudged her free part in this
exciting afternoon! She scowled at Luella.
"You must think I'm a baby, Luella Judd!" she cried irritably. "I
understand all about it, just as well as you do! Didn't we have just
the same thing in the family, ourselves?"
Luella gasped.
"For heaven's sakes, Car'line, wha' do you mean?" she demanded;
"it's perfectly awful the things you city children know! I do
declare, I don't think it's right!"
"Pooh!" said Caroline grandly. "I should hope I knew more'n that!
Why, my Uncle Joe's own sister, her man that she was engaged to, he
didn't believe in church weddings, either, and he told my mother if
he had to stand up in gray trousers with those six girls in pink
hats and the bishop all togged out and the whole town glaring at 'em
he'd run away with Cousin Elizabeth, and he didn't know whether he'd
marry her at all! And they cried and they begged 'em, and I was to
be a flower girl and wear my white silk stockings, but still they
wouldn't. And Cousin Elizabeth cried, too, and she said she'd never
feel married in a travelling dress, but Cousin Richard said he
guessed she would. And everybody was terribly angry with them, but
they just had it in her aunt's house that was paralyzed and couldn't
ever go out, and it was right next door to Cousin Richard's father's
house, too, just like this! Not one bridesmaid and nobody had any
cake in a box to take away. It was awful, just like Luella says, but
afterwards we all forgave 'em. They ran off and did it in the
afternoon--there was only her father and that paralyzed aunt."
She drew a long breath and smiled importantly at them.
Dorothy put an arm over her fat little shoulders.