THE DRIVE.
Latterly the doctor had taken to driving in his buggy, and when Maddy
was strong enough he took her with him one day, and with his own hands
adjusted the shawl which grandma wrapped around her, and tied the white
sun-bonnet which shaded the sweet, pale face, where the roses were just
beginning to bloom again. The doctor was very happy that morning, and so
too was Maddy, talking to him upon the theme of which she never
tired—Guy Remington, Jessie, and Aikenside. Was it as beautiful a place
as she had heard it was, and didn’t he think it would be delightful to
live there?
“I suppose Mr. Guy will be bringing a wife there some day when he finds
one,” and leaning back in the buggy Maddy heaved a little sigh, not at
thoughts of Guy Remington’s wife, but because she began to feel tired,
and thus gave vent to her weariness.
The doctor, however, did not so construe it. He heard the sigh, and for
the first time when listening to her as she talked of Guy, a keen throb
of pain shot through his heart, a something as near akin to jealousy as
it was possible for him then to feel. But all unused as he was to the
workings of love he did not at that moment dream of such an emotion in
connection with Madeline Clyde. He only knew that something affected him
unpleasantly, prompting him to tell Maddy Clyde about Lucy Atherstone,
who, in all probability, would one day come to Aikenside as its
mistress.
“Yes, Guy will undoubtedly marry,” he began, as just as over the top of
the hill they were ascending horses’ heads were visible, and the
Aikenside carriage appeared in view. “There he is now,” he exclaimed,
adding quickly, “No, I am mistaken, there’s only a lady inside. It must
be Agnes.”
It was Agnes driving out alone, for the sole purpose of passing a place
which had a singular attraction for her, the old, red cottage in
Honedale. She recognized the doctor, and guessed whom he had with him.
Putting up her glass, for which she had no more need than Jessie, she
scrutinized the little figure bundled up in shawls, while she smiled her
sweetest smile upon the doctor, and shook back her wealth of curls with
the air and manner of a young, coquettish girl.
“Oh, what a handsome lady! Who is she?” Maddy asked, turning to look
after the carriage now swiftly descending the hill.
“That is Jessie’s mother, Mrs. Agnes Remington,” the doctor replied.
“She’ll feel flattered with your compliment.”
“I did not mean to flatter. I said what I thought. She is handsome,
beautiful, and so young, too. Was that a gold bracelet which flashed so
on her arm?”
The doctor presumed it was, though he had not noticed. Gold bracelets
were not new to him as they were to Maddy, who continued:
“I wonder if I’ll ever wear a bracelet like that?”
“Would you like to?” the doctor asked, glancing at the small white
wrist, around which the dark calico sleeve was closely buttoned, and
thinking how much prettier and modest-looking it was than Agnes’ half
bare arms, where the ornaments were flashing.
“Y-e-s,” came hesitatingly from Maddy, who had a strong passion for
jewelry. “I guess I would, though grandpa classes all such things with
the pomps and vanities which I must renounce when I get to be good.”
“And when will that be?” the doctor asked.
Again Maddy sighed, as she replied, “I cannot tell. I thought so much
about it while I was sick, that is, when I could think; but now I’m
better, it goes away from me some. I know it is wrong, but I cannot help
it. I’ve seen only a bit of pomp and vanity, but I must say that I like
what I have seen, and I wish to see more. It’s very wicked, I know,” she
kept on, as she met the queer expression of the doctor’s face; “and I
know you think me so bad. You are good—a Christian, I suppose.”
There was a strange light in the doctor’s eye as he answered, half
sadly, “No, Maddy, I am not what you call a Christian. I have not
renounced the pomps and vanities yet.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” and Maddy’s eyes expressed all the sorrow she
professed to feel. “You ought to be, now you are so old.”
The doctor colored crimson, and stopping his horse under the dim shadow
of a maple in a little hollow, he said:
“I’m not so very old, Maddy; only twelve years older than yourself; and
Agnes’s husband was more than twenty-five years _her_ senior.”
The doctor did not know why he dragged that last in, when it had nothing
whatever to do with their conversation; but as the most trivial thing
often leads to great results, so from the pang caused by Maddy’s
thinking him so old, was born the first real consciousness he had ever
had that the little girl beside him was very dear, and that the twelve
years’ difference between them might prove a most impassable gulf. With
this feeling, it was exceedingly painful for him to hear Maddy’s sudden
exclamation:
“Oh, oh! over twenty-five years—that’s dreadful! She must be glad he’s
dead. I could never marry a man more than five years older than I am.”
“Not if you loved him, and he loved you very, very dearly?” the doctor
asked, his voice low and tender in its tone.
Wholly unsuspicious of the wild storm beating in his heart, Maddy untied
her white sun-bonnet, and, taking it in her lap, smoothed back her soft
hair, saying with a long breath: “Oh! I’m so hot;” and then, as if just
remembering his question, she replied: “I shouldn’t love him—I couldn’t.
Grandma is five years younger than grandpa, mother was five years
younger than father, Mrs. Green is five years younger than Mr. Green,
and, oh! ever so many. You are warm, too; ain’t you?” and she turned her
innocent eyes full upon the doctor, who was wiping from his lips the
great drops of water, induced not so much by heat as by the apparent
hopelessness of the love he now knew was growing in his heart for Maddy
Clyde. Recurring again to Agnes, Maddy said: “I wonder why she married
that old man. It is worse than if you were to marry Jessie.”
“Money and position were the attractions, I imagine,” the doctor said.
“Agnes was poor, and esteemed it a great honor to be made Mrs.
Remington.”
“Poor, was she?” Maddy rejoined. “Then maybe Mr. Guy will some day marry
a poor girl.”
Again the doctor thought to tell her of Lucy Atherstone, but he did not,
and as he saw that Maddy was growing tired and needed to be at home, he
turned his horse in the direction of the cottage.
“Perhaps you’ll sometimes change your mind about people so much older,
and if you do you’ll remember our talk this morning,” he said, as he
drove up at last before the gate.
Oh, yes! Maddy would never forget that morning or the nice ride they’d
had. She had enjoyed it so much, and she thanked him many times for his
kindness, as she stood waiting for him to drive away, feeling no tremor
whatever when at parting he took and held her hand, smoothing it gently,
and telling her it was growing fat and plump again. He was a very nice
doctor, much better than she had imagined, she thought, as she went
slowly to the house and entered the neat kitchen, where her grandmother
sat shelling peas for dinner, and her grandfather in his arm-chair was
whispering over his weekly paper.
“Did you meet a grand lady in a carriage?” grandma asked, as Maddy sat
down beside her.
“Yes; and Dr. Holbrook said it was Mrs. Remington, from Aikenside, Mr.
Guy’s step-mother, and that she was more than twenty-five years younger
than her husband—isn’t it dreadful! I thought so; but the doctor didn’t
seem to,” and in a perfectly artless manner Maddy repeated much of the
conversation which had passed between the doctor and herself, appealing
to her grandma to know if she had not taken the right side of the
argument.
“Yes, child, you did,” and grandma’s hands lingered among the light
green peas in her pan, as if she were thinking of an entirely foreign
subject. “I knows nothing about this Mrs. Remington, only that she
stared a good deal at the house as she went by, even looking at us
through a glass, and lifting her spotted veil after she got by. She may
have been as happy as a queen with her man, but as a general thing these
unequal matches don’t work, and had better not be thought on. S’posin’
you should think you was in love with somebody, and in a few years, when
you got older, be sick of him. It might do him a sight of harm. That’s
what spoilt your poor uncle Joseph, who’s been in the hospital at
Worcester goin’ on nine years.”
“It _was_!” and Maddy’s face was all aglow with the interest she always
evinced whenever mention was made of the one great living sorrow of her
grandmother’s life—the shattered intellect and isolation from the world
of her youngest brother, who, as she said, had for nearly nine years
been an inmate of a mad-house.
“Tell me about it,” Maddy continued, bringing a pillow, and lying down
upon the faded lounge beneath the window.
“There is no great to tell, only he was many years younger than I. He’s
only forty-one now, and was several years older than the girl he wanted.
Joseph was smart and handsome, and a lawyer, and folks said a sight too
good for the girl, whose folks were just nothing, but she had a pretty
face, and her long curls bewitched him. She couldn’t have been older
than you when he first saw her, and she was only sixteen when they got
engaged. Joseph’s life was bound up in her, he worshiped the very air
she breathed, and when she mittened him, it almost took his life. He was
too old for her, she said, and then right on top of that we heard after
a little that she married some big bug, I never knew who, plenty old
enough to be her father. That settled it with Joseph; he went into a
kind of melancholy, grew worse and worse, till we put him in the
hospital, usin’ his little property to pay the bill until it was all
gone, and now he’s on charity, you know, exceptin’ the little we do.
That’s what ’tis about your uncle Joseph, and I warn all young girls not
to think too much of nobody. They are bound to get sick of ’em, and it
makes dreadful work.”
Grandma had an object in telling this to Maddy, for she was not blind to
the nature of the doctor’s interest in her child, and though it
gratified her pride, she felt that it must not be, both for his sake and
Maddy’s, so she told the sad story of uncle Joseph as a warning to
Maddy, who could scarcely be said to need it. Still it made an
impression on her, and all that afternoon she was thinking of the
unfortunate man, whom she had seen but once, and that in his prison
home, where she had been with her grandfather the only time she had ever
ridden in the cars. He had taken her in his arms then, she remembered,
and called her his little _Sarah_. Perhaps that was the name of his
treacherous betrothed. And she asked her grandmother if it were not so.
“Yes, Sarah Morris was her name, and her face was handsome as a doll,”
grandma replied; and, wondering if she was as beautiful as Jessie, or
Jessie’s mother, Maddy went back to her reveries of the poor maniac in
the asylum, whom Sarah Morris had wronged so cruelly.