PROVINCETOWN AND A WALK IN THE WOODS
Elizabeth enjoyed her ride to Provincetown much more than she expected
to.
The objectionable Mr. Piggy Chambers shared with Ruth the soft cushions
of the back seat of the big touring car while the two girls occupied the
folding seats forward, which were, as Peggy said, as luxurious as most
stationary seats in machines of an ordinary make. The chauffeur was in a
smart buff livery that matched the upholstery, and on either side of
Peggy and Elizabeth were sliding panels that revealed at the touching of
a button a vanity box and a smoking kit respectively. Peggy had found a
green leather driving coat with buff facings for herself tucked away
under the chauffeur's seat, and Mr. Chambers had produced a brown and
blue coat of soft scotch wool for Elizabeth. Ruth was wearing a white
wool cape of her own, and steadily refused any of the additional
luxuries that the owner of the big car offered to produce.
"I feel like an absolute traitor to Buddy to be taking a minute's
comfort," Elizabeth thought, trying to keep firmly in mind the fact that
Mr. Piggy Chambers had claimed industrial exemption from the service
through which her brother had lost his health, and perhaps the girl he
loved, "but the car does roll smoothly, and the country is beautiful,
and I'm lucky to have a chance to see it, though my motives in coming
were quite unmixed."
"You see, the Cape has everything," Peggy said with the air of a
showman, "salt-water ponds, and fresh-water ponds, and hills and woods
and sand-dunes. If you want a walk through the pines to a leafy glade,
walk this way, ladies and gentlemen. If you want rocks and breakwaters
and sand-dunes and inlets, look out of the car on the other side. Every
town has at least two or three of the oldest windmills on Cape Cod, and
dancing pavilions and moving-picture palaces stare at us from every
side, without in the least interfering with the general panorama."
"Don't you think you have talked enough, Peggy?" Ruth suggested.
"No, I honestly don't, but perhaps Mr. Chambers does."
"This is Miss Ruth's party," Mr. Chambers smiled diplomatically. "This
country makes me think of English country, in one way," he added,
smoothly. "It is, of course, altogether different, but in England,
especially in the north, you get a varied landscape in a limited area,
as you do here. This is the only place in the states where you find just
that."
"The Cape is only eight miles across at its widest point," Ruth said,
"and of course the whole scenic effect is miniature in proportion. We'll
begin to see the sea on both sides of us presently."
"What amuses me is the way the townships are cut up; a township of
fifteen hundred people is cut into almost what you might call house
lots. North, South, East, West Harwich, Harwich Port, Harwich Centre,
and it doesn't take ten minutes to run through any one of these little
villages, and get into the next."
"They are all very attractive," Elizabeth said, defensively, but not
very loudly.
"I'd like to show you England," Mr. Chambers continued, in a lowered
voice. "I think you'd like it over there, say in a year or two, after
the children begin to get back their rosy cheeks again, and the gardens
are flourishing a bit more. The war has left it all a bit ragged."
"It hasn't left _you_ ragged," Elizabeth thought. "It's only left you
fatter and complacenter and richer. I wish Buddy had a million."
"You look like a snow maiden in those white clothes," Piggy Chambers was
saying to Ruth.
"'Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart,'" Elizabeth repeated to herself.
"'I have never called you this and I have no right to call you so now.'"
That was what her Buddy had written to Ruth Farraday, and Ruth Farraday,
not knowing, was leaning back in Piggy Chambers' great French car, and
letting him tell her that she looked like a snow maiden.
"My brother says that southern France is much more beautiful--_was_ much
more beautiful than England," she said aloud. "He--he helped to break
the Hindenburg Line, you know."
"Did he?" said Mr. Piggy Chambers, civilly.
"My--my father would have gone, I think, but he wasn't able to get away
from his business."
"If he was in the steel business, he would have been industrially
exempted, anyway."
"He--he wouldn't have wanted to be industrially exempted," was on the
tip of Elizabeth's tongue, but she remembered that she was talking to
her host of the day. "It won't get me very far to be ill-bred and
impolite all of a sudden," she thought, sensibly. "Mr. Piggy Chambers
might just as well think that the members of our family are well brought
up." Provincetown reminded Mr. Chambers a little of a Dutch fishing
village, which he described at great length.
"Anybody would think he had just discovered Abroad," Peggy scolded in an
undertone. "Ruth likes all that travelogue stuff, because she was so
crazy to get there and couldn't. Now we are going to get out and walk, I
am thankful to say, but if he tries to lose us, don't let him, that's
all!"
Mr. Chambers did try to lose them. He tried bribing them with ice-cream
and they took the ice-cream, but consumed it in time to join the two
before they had strolled more than three blocks. He suggested that the
chauffeur take the two girls in the car to examine the Truro lights a
mile or two back from the course over which they had just come, while he
and Miss Ruth strolled along the shore.
"I'd rather stay here with Ruthie," Peggy insisted, flatly, and
Elizabeth could not determine whether Ruth was pleased or displeased,
for she made no display of either emotion.
"If she wanted us to go, I think perhaps she would say so, but I don't
know. Grown-up girls don't seem to think they can say what they mean,
the way children do," she thought.
Presently they were all walking along the beach, and Elizabeth found
herself walking with Ruth, though she could not tell exactly how it had
come about. No one seemed to have planned to pair off in that way. It
just happened, though both Peggy and Mr. Chambers seemed to be very much
dissatisfied with the arrangement.
"Buddy would love a day like this," Elizabeth said. "He's shut up in
that old hospital, you know, and he can't get out till he gets better,
and he can't get better till he gets out. I want to get him down to the
Cape, where I can take care of him."
"You must be very worried about him," Ruth said. "I didn't even know
that he wasn't discharged or anything about him, until Peggy found out
all these things through you."
"He's been too sick to write much."
"He writes to you, doesn't he?" Ruth said, so very carelessly that
Elizabeth's heart sank.
"Yes, he does. He says that I'm the only girl that answers his letters
whether he writes to them or not."
"Does he expect to have girls write to him that he doesn't take the
trouble to inform of his whereabouts?"
"I think he would be very pleased if they did."
"Why should they?"
"Why--why shouldn't they?" Elizabeth stammered.
"He's probably devoted to dozens of girls," Ruth said, lightly, "all
waiting for a personal word from him. He's probably quite a Lothario,
only little sisters aren't supposed to know that."
"I don't exactly remember what a Lothario is," Elizabeth said, "but if
you mean that he's a flirt and I don't know it, you're just awfully
mistaken. I know things about Buddy that nobody else knows, that he
doesn't even know that I know. I know what he's like, too, inside."
"You think he's very nice inside, don't you?"
"Yes," said Elizabeth, a little hostilely.
"Well, I'll tell you a secret," said Ruth Farraday, still very lightly
and gayly. "I do, too."
"Then why--why do you go to Provincetown and things with Mr. Piggy
Chambers?"
"Mr--Mr. _who_? Really, that's too bad of Peggy. I'll have to speak to
her." Ruth Farraday seemed to have a sudden little coating of ice all
over her. "Would you mind telling Peggy that I want to speak to her
alone a minute?"
Elizabeth obeyed meekly and so miserably that Mr. Chambers, at whose
side she lingered, since there was nothing to do but take Peggy's place
with him, asked her what was wrong.
"I'm not feeling very well," Elizabeth said, "the sun is so bright."
"I find her rather bright myself," Mr. Piggy Chambers murmured. "Would
you like to do me a great favour?"
"Yes, yes, indeed," Elizabeth said, untruthfully.
"Will you take Miss Peggy and go back to the drug store where you had
your ice-cream, and buy a five-pound box of the very best chocolates
they have? If they haven't a five-pound box, get five one-pound boxes.
Just use your own judgment about it."
"I will," said Elizabeth, "of course, Peggy might not want to go.
She--I--we don't care very much about chocolates."
"But Ruth does," said Mr. Chambers, decisively. "I should very much
appreciate it, and we'll come along and pick you up presently. You might
like some more ice-cream." He slipped a five-dollar bill into her hand.
"He asked me if I would do him a great favour," Elizabeth explained to
the protesting Peggy, as they turned toward the quaint street on which
the little shops were set, "and I couldn't say no, could I? I couldn't
say, 'Thank you for your lovely ride, but I don't feel obliging.'"
"I just wish he'd asked me. I would have said 'No!' right out. Sister
has been giving me fits because you told her that I called him Piggy."
Elizabeth's eyes filled.
"I'm not blaming you. I know you didn't spill the beans on purpose. I
just wanted to know how it happened."
"I just called him that. That's all," Elizabeth said, miserably.
"Well, don't you care, darling," Peggy advised. "Ruth was only upset
about something else, and wanted to take it out on me. It will serve her
right if Mr. Hoggy Chambers proposes while we're gone. I promised her I
wouldn't call him Piggy any more."
"I think he means to."
"Well, if he does, I wonder what he'll say. Love me and the world is
mine. I guess that's about what he will say. The world is my oyster and
I'll let you keep it in your stew, if you'll be good."
"Mr. Piggy Chambers," said Elizabeth, "Oh!"
"If she says 'yes' to that freak, I'll--I'll disown her."
"Oh, let's not think of it."
"There isn't much else I can think of," Elizabeth said. "Oh, but look!
Sixty-four, sixty-five. Those are black Portuguese, and they count." Two
swarthy fishermen in bright blouses were passing them on the narrow
street.
"You've caught up with me," Peggy said. "I was four ahead of you for a
long time."
"We'll probably get them all just in time to shake hands with Tommy
Robbins and Billy Dean."
"I won't," said Peggy.
"You might have to," Elizabeth argued. "Supposing we were going away and
they came to say good-bye, and held out their hands to shake hands. We'd
have to shake them."
"I'd say I had a sore finger."
"We couldn't both say we had sore fingers. Besides, they could see we
hadn't."
"We might both have lame wrists, if we had been doing the same thing,
rowing or playing tennis."
"It would look rather suspicious."
"Wouldn't it be better to look a little suspicious than to tie yourself
up for life that way, or run the chance of it? I know who you want to
shake hands with. That Reynolds boy."
"I don't want to shake hands with anybody," Peggy said. "We may like Tom
and Bill a good deal better before the summer is over, though."
"They really are quite nice," Elizabeth reflected.
"Mr. Chambers is trying to get us to ride home in the front seat, with
the chauffeur. He says the front seat is the most comfortable in the
car, and was designed for three. I told him I'd think it over."
"I don't see what difference it makes now. He's talking to her alone,
anyway."
"I think it's a terrible responsibility. They are both old enough to be
married, and they ought to be old enough to know just what they want to
do, instead of keeping a couple of kids--I mean children--worried to
death all the time."
"I think Mr. Chambers knows what he wants to do."
"Yes, but he ought to know better than to keep bothering a girl that
doesn't."
Elizabeth and Peggy managed to eat a plate of ice-cream apiece in spite
of their dejection, but Elizabeth steadfastly refused to break Mr.
Chambers' five-dollar bill, even to pay for the five pounds of candy she
purchased for him.
"He can pay me the way he would a grown-up person," she said. "I prefer
to buy our own ice-cream, and do his errands on a strictly business
basis."
"My goodness," Peggy said, "I feel as if we had suffered enough, without
having to buy our own refreshments."
They rode with the chauffeur only a part of the way home, because when
they had travelled twenty miles of the forty between the tip and the
elbow of the crooked right arm of Massachusetts a tire gave way and they
all stepped out of the car and took a walk in the woods while they were
waiting for repairs to be made.
Mr. Chambers and Ruth slipped into a thread of a path going in the
opposite direction from that taken by the two girls, but evidently made
a detour and turned again toward them, for the moment in silence. When
they heard the sound of voices just beyond Peggy put her finger to her
lips.
"I am the kind of man who always gets what he wants," Mr. Chambers was
saying. "You won't give me the chance to tell you what I want, but you
know pretty well what it is, and I think you know that I am going to get
it."
"No," said Ruth Farraday.
"You know that I want you to marry me?"
"Yes, I know that."
"You know that I love you?"
"I--I don't know much about love."
"I can teach you,"
"Nobody can teach me anything that I can't find out for myself. If I
don't know what this--this feeling people call Love is, from the inside,
nobody can come and throw it over me, like a cloak."
"Oughtn't we to stuff our fingers in our ears?" Elizabeth pantomimed.
"No," Peggy shook her head, fiercely.
"Wrapping it around you like a cloak is just what I should like to do. I
should like to keep you warm and comfortable for the rest of your life."
"And happy?"
"I know I could make you happy."
"Warmth comes from within, doesn't it? You wouldn't want an icicle of a
woman."
"I am not afraid that you would be an icicle."
Peggy was showing strong signs of disgust, but Elizabeth was listening
with parted lips and shining eyes. She had forgotten that she was
eavesdropping, forgotten everything except that Buddy's girl did not
want to give up her chance of learning something that Buddy could teach
her. She expected the next words when they came.
"I would be an icicle--to you."
The suitor did not seem to realize the significance of this statement.
"All I want is a chance to melt the icicle," he said, complacently.
"Goop!" said Peggy in a loud whisper. Then she sneezed, but fortunately
the speakers had passed far enough beyond to confuse the sound with the
general blend of forest sounds, the whirring of wings in the underbrush,
or the rustling in the trees overhead.
"I guess he thought I was a startled quail," Peggy said, "though I
wouldn't have cared much if he had found me. I never heard such
silliness, did you?"
"I didn't think it was silliness," Elizabeth said. "It was quite a lot
the way people talk in books, you know."
"It wasn't really mushy," Peggy agreed, "only sort of peculiar. Well, I
guess I am not going to have a new brother-in-law right away. Still, I
notice she's keeping a string tied to him, just the same."
When they got back into the car Ruth suggested that the girls take the
folding seats in the tonneau again, and Mr. Chambers quietly acquiesced
in this arrangement. As they took their places Peggy gave her friend the
benefit of a long, significant wink, and then subsided into the silence
that encompassed them all during the remainder of the long drive home.