MARY BALLARD'S DISCOVERY
Peter Junior's mind was quite made up to go his own way and leave home
to study abroad, but first he would try to convert his father to his
way of thinking. Then there was another thing to be done. Not to
marry, of course; that, under present conditions, would never do; but
to make sure of Betty, lest some one come and steal into her heart
before his return.
After his talk with his father in the bank he lay long into the night,
gazing at the shadowed tracery on his wall cast by the full harvest
moon shining through the maple branches outside his window. The leaves
had not all fallen, and in the light breeze they danced and quivered,
and the branches swayed, and the shadows also swayed and danced
delicately over the soft gray wall paper and the red-coated old
soldier standing stiffly in his gold frame. Often in his waking dreams
in after life he saw the moving shadows silently swaying and dancing
over gray and red and gold, and often he tried to call them out from
the past to banish things he would forget.
Long this night he lay planning and thinking. Should he speak to Betty
and tell her he loved her? Should he only teach her to think of him,
not with the frank liking of her girlhood, so well expressed to him
that very day, but with the warm feeling which would cause her cheeks
to redden when he spoke? Could he be sure of himself--to do this
discreetly, or would he overstep the mark? He would wait and see what
the next day would bring forth.
In the morning he discarded his crutch, as he had threatened, and
walked out to the studio, using only a stout old blackthorn stick he
had found one day when rummaging among a collection of odds and ends
in the attic. He thought the stick was his father's and wondered why
so interesting a walking stick--or staff; it could hardly be called a
cane, he thought, because it was so large and oddly shaped--should be
hidden away there. Had his father seen it he would have recognized it
instantly as one that had belonged to his brother-in-law, Larry
Kildene, and it would have been cut up and used for lighting fires.
But it had been many years since the Elder had laid eyes on that
knobbed and sturdy stick, which Larry had treasured as a rare thing in
the new world, and a fine antique specimen of a genuine blackthorn. It
had belonged to his great-grandfather in Ireland, and no doubt had
done its part in cracking crowns.
Betty, kneading bread at a table before the kitchen window, spied
Peter Junior limping wearily up the walk without his crutch, and ran
to him, dusting the flour from her hands as she came.
"Lean on me. I won't get flour on your coat. What did you go without
your crutch for? It's very silly of you."
He essayed a laugh, but it was a self-conscious one. "I'm not going to
use a crutch all my lifetime; don't you think it. I'm very well off
without, and almost myself again. I don't need to lean on you--but I
will--just for fun." He put his arm about her and drew her to him.
"Stop, Peter Junior. Don't you see you're getting flour all over your
clothes?"
"I like flour on my clothes. It will do for stiffening." He raised her
hand and kissed her wrist where there was no flour.
"You're not leaning on me. You're just acting silly, and you can
hardly walk, you're so tired! Coming all this way without your crutch.
I think you're foolish."
"If you say anything more about that crutch, I'll throw away my cane
too." He dropped down on the piazza and drew her to the step beside
him.
"I must finish kneading the bread; I can't sit here. You rest in the
rocker awhile before you go up to the studio. Father's up there. He
came home late last night after we were all in bed." She returned to
her work, and after a moment called to him through the open window.
"There's going to be a nutting party to-morrow, and we want you to go.
We're going out to Carter's grove; we've got permission. Every one's
going."
Peter Junior rubbed the moisture from his hair and shook his head. He
must get nearer her, but it was always the same thing; just a happy
game, with no touch of sentiment--no more, he thought gloomily, than
if she were his sister.
"What are you all going there for?"
"Why, nuts, goosey; didn't I say we were going nutting?"
"I don't happen to want nuts." No, he wanted her to urge and coax him
to go for her sake, but what could he say?
He left his seat, took the side path around to the kitchen door, and
drew up a chair to the end of the table where she deftly manipulated
the sweet-smelling dough, patting it, and pulling it, and turning it
about until she was ready to put the shapely balls in the pans,
holding them in her two firm little hands with a slight rolling motion
as she slipped each loaf in its place. It had never occurred to Peter
Junior that bread making was such an interesting process.
"Why do you fuss with it so? Why don't you just dump it in the pan any
old way? That's the way I'd do." But he loved to watch her pink-tipped
fingers carefully shaping the loaves, nevertheless.
"Oh--because."
"Good reason."
"Well--the more you work it the better it is, just like everything
else; and then--if you don't make good-looking loaves, you'll never
have a handsome husband. Mother says so." She tossed a stray lock from
her eyes, and opening the oven door thrust in her arm. "My, but it's
hot! Why do you sit here in the heat? It's a lot nicer on the porch in
the rocker. Mother's gone to town--and--"
"I'd rather sit here with you--thank you." He spoke stiffly and
waited. What could he say; what could he do next? She left him a
moment and quickly returned with a cup of butter.
"You know--I'd stop and go out in the cool with you, Peter, but I must
work this dough I have left into raised biscuit; and then I have to
make a cake for to-morrow--and cookies--there's something to do in
this house, I tell you! How about to-morrow?"
"I don't believe I'd better go. All the rest of the world will be
there, and--"
"Only our little crowd. When I said everybody, you didn't think I
meant everybody in the whole world, did you? You know us all."
"Do you want me to go? There'll be enough others--"
She tossed her head and gave him a sidelong glance. "I always ask
people to go when I don't want them to."
He rose at that and stood close to her side, and, stooping, looked in
her eyes; and for the first time the color flamed up in her face
because of him. "I say--do you want me to go?"
"No, I don't."
But the red he had brought into her cheeks intoxicated him with
delight. Now he knew a thing to do. He seized her wrists and turned
her away from the table and continued to look into her eyes. She
twisted about, looking away from him, but the burning blush made even
the little ear she turned toward him pink, and he loved it. His
discretion was all gone. He loved her, and he would tell her now--now!
She must hear it, and slipping his arm around her, he drew her away
and out to the seat under the old silver-leaf poplar tree.
"You're acting silly, Peter Junior,--and my bread will all spoil and
get too light,--and my hands are all covered with flour, and--"
"And you'll sit right here while I talk to you a bit, if the bread
spoils and gets too light and everything burns to a cinder." She
started to run away from him, and his peremptory tone changed to
pleading. "Please, Betty, dear! just hear me this far. I'm going away,
Betty, and I love you. No, sit close and be my sweetheart. Dear, it
isn't the old thing. It's love, and it's what I want you to feel for
me. I woke up yesterday, and found I loved you." He held her closer
and lifted her face to his. "You must wake up, too, Betty; we can't
play always. Say you'll love me and be my wife--some day--won't you,
Betty?"
She drooped in his arms, hanging her head and looking down on her
floury hands.
"Say it, Betty dear, won't you?"
Her lip quivered. "I don't want to be anybody's wife--and, anyway--I
liked you better the other way."
"Why, Betty? Tell me why."
"Because--lots of reasons. I must help mother--and I'm only seventeen,
and--"
"Most eighteen, I know, because--"
"Well, anyway, mother says no girl of hers shall marry before she's of
age, and she says that means twenty-one, and--"
"That's all right. I can wait. Kiss me, Betty." But she was silent,
with face turned from him. Again he lifted her face to his. "I say,
kiss me, Betty. Just one? That was a stingy little kiss. You know I'm
going away, and that is why I spoke to you now. I didn't dare go
without telling you this first. You're so sweet, Betty, some one might
find you out and love you--just as I have--only not so deeply in love
with you--no one could--but some one might come and win you away from
me, and so I must make sure that you will marry me when you are of age
and I come back for you. Promise me."
"Where?--why--Peter Junior! Where are you going?" Betty removed his
arm from around her waist and slipped to her own end of the seat.
There, with hands folded decorously in her lap, with heightened color
and serious eyes, she looked shyly up at him. He had never seen her
shy before. Always she had been merry and teasing, and his heart was
proud that he had wrought such a miracle in her.
"I am going to Paris. I mean to be an artist." He leaned toward her
and would have taken her in his arms again, but she put his hands
away.
"Will your father let you do that?" Her eyes widened with surprise,
and the surprise nettled him.
"I don't know. He's thinking about it. Anyway, a man must decide for
himself what his career will be, and if he won't let me, I'll earn the
money and go without his letting me."
"Wouldn't that be the best way, anyway?"
"What do you mean? To go without his consent?"
"Of course not--goosey." She laughed and was herself again, but he
liked her better the other way. "To earn the money and then go.
It--it--would be more--more as if you were in earnest."
"My soul! Do you think I'm not in earnest? Do you think I'm not in
love with you?"
Instantly she was serious and shy again. His heart leaped. He loved to
feel his power over her thus. Still she tantalized him. "I'm not
meaning about loving me. That's not the question. I mean it would look
more as if you were in earnest about becoming an artist."
"No. The real question is, Do you love me? Will you marry me when I
come back?" She was silent and he came nearer. "Say it. Say it. I must
hear you say it before I leave." Her lips trembled as if she were
trying to form the words, and their eyes met.
"Yes--if--if--"
Then he caught her to him, and stopped her mouth with kisses. He did
not know himself. He was a man he had never met the like of, and he
gloried in himself. It seemed as if he heard bells ringing out in joy.
Then he looked up and saw Mary Ballard's eyes fixed on him.
"Peter Junior--what are you doing?" Her voice shook.
"I--I'm kissing Betty."
"I see that."
"We are to be married some day--and--"
"You are precipitate, Peter Junior."
Then Betty did what every woman does when her lover is blamed, no
matter how earnestly she may have resisted him before. She went
completely over to his side and took his part.
"He's going away, mother. He's going away to be gone--perhaps for
years; and I've--I've told him yes, mother,--so it isn't his fault."
Then she turned and fled to her own room, and hid her flaming face in
the pillow and wept.
"Sit here with me awhile, Peter Junior, and we'll talk it all over,"
said Mary.
He obeyed her, and looking squarely in her eyes, manfully told her his
plans, and tried to make her feel as he felt, that no love like his
had ever filled a man's heart before. At last she sent him up to the
studio to tell her husband, and she went in and finished Betty's task,
putting the bread--alas! too light by this time--in the oven, and
shaping the raised biscuit which Betty had left half-finished.
Then she paused a moment to look out of the window down the path
where the boys and little Janey would soon come tumbling home from
school, hot and hungry. A tear slowly coursed down her cheek, and,
following the curves, trembled on the tip of her chin. She brushed it
away impatiently. Of course it had to come--that was what life must
bring--but ah! not so soon--not so soon. Then she set about
preparations for dinner without Betty's help. That, too, was what it
would mean--sometime--to go on doing things without Betty. She gave a
little sigh, and at the instant an arm was slipped about her waist,
and she turned to look in Bertrand's eyes.
"Is it all right, Mary?"
"Why--yes--that is--if they'll always love each other as we have. I
think it ought not to be too definite an engagement, though, until his
plans are more settled. What do you think?"
"You are right, no doubt. I'll speak to him about that." Then he
kissed her warm, flushed cheek. "I declare, it makes me feel as Peter
Junior feels again, to have this happen."
"Ah, Bertrand! You never grew up--thank the Lord!" Then Mary laughed.
After all, they had been happy, and why not Betty and Peter? Surely
the young had their rights.
Bertrand climbed back to the studio where Peter Junior was pacing
restlessly back and forth, and again they talked it all over, until
the call came for dinner, when Peter was urged to stay, but would not.
No, he would not see Betty again until he could have her quite to
himself. So he limped away, feeling as if he were walking on air in
spite of his halting gait, and Betty from her window watched him pass
down the path and off along the grassy roadside. Then she went down to
dinner, flushed and grave, but with shining eyes. Her father kissed
her, but nothing was said, and the children thought nothing of it, for
it was quite natural in the family to kiss Betty.