ELIZABETH IS RUDE
Elizabeth and Moses took the shore road, and finally struck off across
the fields and through the woods to make a short cut for the bathing
beach. Moses was going to initiate the new bathing suit Elizabeth had
bought him, and Elizabeth to sit on the beach and knit on a sweater she
was making for Madget.
It was a rehabilitated Moses that alternately darted and jogged along by
her side. He was wearing one of the half-dozen shirts that Grandmother
had cut and made by the famous Butterick pattern from which the girls
had fashioned the garment he wore on his appearance at the bean supper.
His trousers were the veritable "pants" of his dreams, and the rudiments
of suspenders, with which he would not part, were tucked in under his
belt. His face was comparatively clean, and he had allowed Elizabeth to
brush his heavy, upstanding hair until it looked almost personable.
"What are those things around your neck?" Elizabeth cried, catching
sight of an extraordinary decoration only partially concealed by his
shirt collar.
"Shark's teeth. I wear 'em for luck. I cut 'em out myself."
"Cut them out of what?"
"Sharks. What'd you think I got 'em from? Cats or something?"
"Moses, you've got to learn to be a little more respectful to me. I
don't like the way you speak to me."
"All right," he agreed, amiably.
"Where did you get those teeth from?"
"I told you I got 'em from sharks. I go down to the shore when the boats
come in from their weir. You know, the men bring in a lot of fish every
day. Well, yesterday they brought in four sharks and they let me cut out
these teeth. I could of got more if my knife had been sharper, or I'd
had more time. Every night they give me a fish, too."
"That doesn't sound a bit probable, about the sharks. Still, I never
caught you telling a lie, Moses. What do you do with the fish they give
you?"
"I take 'em home and I cook 'em. Mis' Laury Ann, she showed me how, one
time. Mabel, I'm learning her to cook, and Madget she wants I should
learn her, but I don't think I shall."
"Oh, dear, I'm afraid I've rather neglected you lately," Elizabeth said.
"I haven't been to see your mother for a long time."
"Well, Mis' Laury Ann she comes, and Judidy. Mother says neglecting is
all you can expect from girls."
"She's a whole lot better, isn't she?" Elizabeth asked, hastily.
"Sure. Mis' Abithy Hawes she come around and got Little Eva to going it,
and Little Eva she said that Mother had water on her lungs."
"Mercy!"
"But Mother she got to reading a book that said housework was a good
cure for sickness. About sweeping bein' good for the spine, and washing
bein' good for the stomick, and housecleaning a good thing for the
figger. So she thought she'd try that, too."
"Where did she get the book?"
"It was one that Mis' Laury Ann lent her."
"I guess Grandmother is working along the way she said she was going
to," Elizabeth thought. "Does your mother really do housework?" she
asked, aloud.
"Most every day," Moses said, proudly, "she bought me these pants, too."
"Does she do any cooking?"
"She don't like to cook, and she ain't never learned. I kin learn her
when I've learned myself some more."
"It does seem as if there were _some_ improvement in your family's
condition, doesn't it, Moses?"
"Judidy, she told Ma she was the town's poor, and Ma says she ain't.
That kind of stuck in Ma's crop, and Madget cried and said she wouldn't
go to the poor house. Now Ma says she is going to buy tea and coffee
enough to git a premium set o' dishes. I don't know whether she will or
not. If she don't I'm going to earn them. Captain Swift is going to let
me sell some corn and string beans out of his garden."
The path emerged on the beach, and Moses disappeared abruptly in the
direction of his favourite clump of pines, scorning a bath-house. He
reappeared almost immediately, clad in a single garment of blue jersey
that glistened with newness.
"You watch me pretending to be a whale," he said, "first I'll dive. Then
I'll come up spouting a whole mouthful of water."
"He's a good little swimmer," Elizabeth thought, as she watched his
antics. "I guess he'll turn out all right. How wonderful Grandmother is,
always keeping her eye on them. It's so much easier to do a thing like
that as hard as you can sometimes, and then drop it, than it is to keep
pegging along at it all the time."
She was knitting so busily that she did not see Ruth Farraday
approaching along the beach, and it was not until a long shadow fell
across her work that she realized Ruth was near. Ruth in a pink voile
frock, with a frilly, rose-coloured parasol, smiled down at her--a smile
of the lips only.
"Shall I sit down beside you?" she asked, in her low, clear voice.
"Peggy couldn't come down to the beach to-day. I was too lazy to go in
swimming, but I thought I'd like a smell of the sea, all the same."
"I--I'm very glad to see you," Elizabeth said.
"I'm glad to see you. I haven't seen you since that other day at tea."
"No," said Elizabeth, gravely.
"I haven't been feeling very well since then. It was--nice of your
brother to wire me, wasn't it?"
"I told Buddy that I thought you would be pleased to hear from him. It
was my fault. I shouldn't have told him, if I had known."
"If you had known what?" asked Ruth Farraday, lightly.
"That you were going to marry somebody else."
"Somebody else?" she laughed.
"Somebody that wasn't Buddy," Elizabeth said, bravely.
"There never was any question of my marrying your brother. We were very
good friends before he went abroad. Then he seemed to let it--our
friendship, die a natural death."
"I told you about his being sick," Elizabeth said, "and I told you that
there weren't any other girls."
"There not being any other girls doesn't--didn't necessarily mean----"
"Oh, yes, it does, with Buddy."
"That's putting it rather ambiguously."
"I don't know how it's putting it," Elizabeth cried, "but I do know that
there wasn't any other girl."
"He didn't tell you so, did he?"
"He--he----" Elizabeth stammered.
"You--you said that you told him to communicate with me?" Ruth was
having almost as much difficulty in speaking as Elizabeth.
"He wrote and asked my advice, and I told him I would, if I were he, and
that was why he did it, and then I had to write him that you were
engaged."
"Oh, you've written him that already?"
"I had to," Elizabeth said, miserably. "I had just told him that you
weren't engaged to anybody else, and that you inquired about him, and
that you--you might want to hear from him. He's very sick, and he wrote
and asked me what to do."
"When did he write that?"
"Just the other day."
"And you wrote just the other day?"
"There was time for him to get my letter before he telegraphed to you."
"And then you wrote again to say that I was engaged?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'm still engaged," Ruth Farraday said, lightly. "When you write
to him, won't you tell him that I thank him for remembering me so--so
pleasantly, but that I'm a good deal occupied just at present."
"No, I won't," said Elizabeth.
"Indeed?"
"He's too sick, and it would bother him too much."
"Oh, very well," said Ruth Farraday.
"I didn't mean to be rude," Elizabeth said.
"You were, rather. I'd like to send your brother a message, you see, and
I--I can't write to him. I've tried, and I can't. I don't want him to
think I am altogether unappreciative. What message shall I send him,
Elizabeth?"
"Send him your love, if you really mean it, and then not any message."
"I will. I do send him my love. I'm sorry he's sick. Wouldn't it be wise
to say that?"
"I think so."
"Send him my love and tell him--oh, tell him he was a day too late."
"I will," said Elizabeth.
With one long, indrawn breath, Ruth Farraday turned and walked back
along the beach.
"She's shivering as if she were cold," Elizabeth thought, as she watched
the diminishing figure.
It was high tide, and the deep blue waves were foam-crested. The wide
sky was streaked with clouds, and a bright sun lay hot upon the sands.
Elizabeth looked first at Moses' bobbing head, and then at the bobbing,
rose-coloured parasol dwindling in the distance.
"Life is a curious thing," she said to herself, slowly, "it keeps
changing so, getting better or worse all the time. Here's Moses and the
Steppes, who were so perfectly hopeless and helpless, and there is an
improvement in them. They are my friends and my responsibility--if I
don't live up to it very well. Then here is Ruth Farraday, that I truly
love, and everything about her is getting worse every minute, and it's
all mixed up with me, somehow. I don't do much good, or anything, but
it's mixed up with me all the same."
She knitted to the end of her row and pulled out her needle. She gave
another long look at sea and sky.
"Everything is a part of everything," she said, a little confusedly.
"Poor Buddy, dear."
She wrote him a long letter that night, and told him what Ruth had said,
and then she tried not to think about him at all for the next few days.
She was afraid for what she had done. She had had no word from him in
answer to her letter announcing Ruth's engagement, and only the briefest
line from her mother, who was evidently gravely anxious about her son's
condition. She knew that Buddy was worse, and she knew that the letter
she had written him had made him worse; how much worse, Elizabeth could
not bear to think.
It was five days after her meeting with Ruth upon the beach that the
evening mail brought her two letters, one in her mother's handwriting
and one in Buddy's. Judidy brought them in and put them in her lap.
"We are going to lose Judidy next winter," her grandmother said when
that young woman had blushed, giggled, and withdrawn to the back porch,
from which the sound of a drawling, masculine voice was heard at
intervals, interspersed with Judidy's high-pitched protestations. "She's
going to be married, she tells me."
"Is she?" said Elizabeth, trying to subdue the dizziness she felt at the
sight of Buddy's familiar scrawl.
"Your grandfather and I thought we'd give them a wedding. Judidy's folks
won't. They are nice enough people, but peculiar--odd. They believe in
saving trouble and expense on everything."
"Oh, Grandmother," Elizabeth said, trembling, "will you hold my hand
while I read these letters? I--I am so worried about Buddy."
"Certain." Grandmother drew out the little footstool that matched the
particular valanced rocker she was sitting in. "You come here."
Elizabeth leaned her head against her grandmother's knee, with the
feeling of faintness still upon her. Her grandmother stroked her hair
gently.
"I can't read them out loud, Grandma. They are private in a way.
It's--it's the private things in them that frighten me."
"There ain't nothing in this world to be afraid of. There ain't," said
Grandmother. "Fear once killed a cat, you know."
"Don't you ever get afraid, Grandma?"
"Certain I get afraid, but when I do, I just think that there ain't
nothing in this world to be afraid of so much as of being afraid, and
that kind of stops me."
"I can't help being afraid of what's in this particular letter."
[Illustration: "'I can't help being afraid of what's in this particular
letter'"]
"What are you afraid it's going to do to you?"
"I--I don't know."
"Well, you just open it up and read it, and after you've opened it up,
you'll just find you're sitting here the way you were before, with your
grandma's arms around you."
Elizabeth pulled the kindly hand down to meet her lips.
"Well," she said, "I'm going to read it now."
DEAR LITTLE SISTER:
I can't tell you how much I thank you for your two letters. They
cured me. I've been seeing ghosts, but "being gone, I am a man
again." I'm going to get my discharge if I have to bust the
whole darned hospital, and I'm coming down to Cape Cod. While
there, I shall tell you what I think of several things,
including the opinion I have of a man who sits in a cloud of
vapour all day in a United States Base Hospital, and lets things
go some other man's way.
You tell Miss Ruth Farraday that it's never too late. No, don't
tell her anything, but whenever you see the man in the case,
stick out your sweet little tongue at him. I'm sick--sure I'm
sick, but I'm a well man, just the same. You wait and see. I
broke the news to Mother and she doesn't believe it. She thinks
that I'm probably delirious. Father sees that something
significant has happened, but doesn't believe that I can bust
out so easy. You wait, dear.
Keep your eye on Ruth and report to me.
I love and admire you, and you are my own darling sister, for
whom and which I devoutly thank whatever gods there be. I am the
Captain of my Soul.
YOUR BUDDY.
Elizabeth buried her face in the ample folds of her grandmother's white
apron.
"He's better. He's going to get well," she sobbed. "Oh, dear, I was
afraid I had killed him, but I didn't. I did him good."
"He needed something to rouse him," Grandmother said, "your mother says
the doctor has been saying that for some time. I don't know how you've
done it, but I guess you've turned the trick."
"He says he's going to get out and come down here right away."
"I thought 'twas about time."
"He's so sweet and dear and handsome, and he was so brave, and oh, I
love him so!"
"That don't seem to me to be anything to sob over."
"I--I can't help it."
"I always cried more tears of joy than I ever cried of sorrow. It runs
in the family."
"I guess I can read Mother's letter aloud. It's longer than Buddy's."
ELIZABETH DEAR:
The strangest thing has happened to your brother. He has
suddenly taken a new lease of life. Night before last I left him
just as dull and discouraged and apathetic as ever, and this
morning when I went to see him, at about ten o'clock, he was
another boy. The nurse said he had been that way ever since he
got a letter from you in the morning mail. I suppose that was
merely a coincidence. I don't mean to say that I found him in
any seraphic mood. He was literally fighting mad at the hospital
authorities, and his whole mind seemed concentrated on getting
out. At first I thought his fever had risen, but the doctor
assures me that the subtle cloud that has been resting over his
mind has lifted. He says he has never known a case where the
patient provided his own stimulus before, that usually it has
come from the outside in the form of some kind of shock,
pleasant or unpleasant.
It hasn't been entirely a nervous case, you understand. He would
probably have less trouble in getting away, if it had been just
a matter of mind, but his mind has kept his body sick. It's been
a vicious circle. He has believed, it now develops, that the
physical matter was incurable. His old job was gone, you know,
and that seemed to depress him. Your father was perfectly
willing to keep him at home indefinitely, and we kept telling
him so, but in his poor, tortured mind he had construed our
doing so into an admission that we never expected him to get
well.
At any rate, the worst is over now. I believe we'll have our boy
restored in mind and body very soon. I don't dare to hope we'll
all get down to Cape Cod as soon as he thinks we shall but I am
inclined to think that he is too lively a character for the
United States Government to hold very much longer.
You have been my brave, darling daughter, and I love you more
than I can tell you. I am sending your shoes by this post.
MOTHER.
"I hope he'll get here while it's still cucumber season," Grandmother
said. "My, how that boy used to eat herrings and cucumbers! I cooked a
whole half dozen once, and I vow he et the whole lot, and I don't know
how many cucumbers. He was a dretful one to eat. He used to like to
climb up in the pear tree in pear season, and pick the topmost pear on
the tree and eat his way down."
"Do you mind if I cry a little more, Grandma? I can stop, but I don't
want to," Elizabeth sniffled.
"It will be good for the fern to have a little dampness in the air. You
cry, and I'll knit a spell."
"You tease just about as much as Grandfather does, don't--don't you?
Only you're so--so sly about it, nobody realizes it."
"Ain't that our ring on the telephone?"
"I don't know. I just sit here and let it ring all the time. I forget to
count whether it's fifteen or fourteen."
"Land, fourteen will wake me up out of a sound sleep when I'm to bed
upstairs. And I don't never hear fifteen no more'n if it hadn't
sounded."
"It _is_ fourteen," Elizabeth said, as the imperious instrument sounded
one long and four short signals distinctly. "I'll answer."
"Elizabeth, where have you been all day?" Peggy's voice inquired. "I
particularly want to see you about something, but Mother insists it's
too late for me to come over."
"I went swimming with Moses," Elizabeth said, "and finished Madget's
sweater, and made a chocolate cake. What is it that you've got to tell
me?"
"I can't tell you very well over the phone."
"Is it pleasant or unpleasant?"
"Unpleasant," Peggy whispered, with her mouth close to the receiver.
"Tell me."
"I can't."
"Hint it. Is it about Ruthie?"
"Yes."
"And it's unpleasant?"
"Well, there is something pleasant about it. The festivities will be
pleasant."
"Oh, Peggy, tell me. I've just about got to know."
"Well, listen close. It's going to be hurried up."
"What is?"
"The--well--you know. Somebody's receiver is down. They are listening
in. Don't you hear that clock ticking?"
"Oh, don't mind that. Tell me."
"They've hung up, I think. Guess what I mean. The festivities are going
to be hurried up. We want you to take part in them. It's going to be in
two weeks. Now do you know? It begins with w."
"You mean Ruth is going to be----"
"Yes, but don't breathe it. We want you at it--you know--the w. You and
me, dressed alike in blue dimity. There won't be many people."
"Oh, Peggy, I couldn't."
"Yes, you can. The way I look at it is that we might as well be
philosophical about it and have a good time, even if our hearts do hang
down to our boots. Don't you say so? Mother is calling me and I've got
to go. Don't breathe a word. I'll tell you all about it to-morrow. I'll
be over. Good-bye."
"Oh, good-bye!" said Elizabeth.