father marvelled at the change; there was no outdoor sport fit for his
age that Ernest did not enter with him, and the long evenings were
filled with delight drawn from all of childhood’s countries, Fairyland
being not the least. Christmas was the time set for the Marches to
return, but new business at Washington claimed the father, and after a
brief week spent in house closing, mother and daughter joined him there;
and from that time Eileen came to be more and more of an unreality save
to the Boy, who seemed to regard her portrait as a living actuality and
the third person of the household, saying one day to the Man: “I’m going
to marry the Princess when I grow up if she will wait, and not grow old.
Do you think, Daddy, Eileen will ever be old like Aunt Louisa?”
“She will never grow old to me; she has stopped,” the Man answered.
* * * * *
The spring of the following year was cold and very wet, bringing more
illness than usual to the well-drained hill country, especially to the
children. There was scarlet fever at Bridgeton, and some one brought it
to the Ridge School, the Boy being one of its first victims.
“Who is going to nurse the Boy?” asked father. “Aunt Louisa is too old,
and no risk must be taken with him. His bed must be moved into the large
room with the open chimney, and a log fire kept on the hearth. Would you
like me to send over a trained nurse from the Bridgeton Hospital?”
“I will care for him,” said Ernest, setting about the preparation of the
room as quietly as a woman could.
That night began a siege that lasted for weeks that seemed like years:
on one side deafness and blindness in league with death, on the other
side Nature, the doctor, and the Man, while between them lay the Boy.
From the end of the first week the doctor came twice daily, then
followed nights when he never went away. Meanwhile, the Man prayed
wordless prayers, fought on, refusing to be discouraged, seeming to
infuse his own vitality into the Boy’s failing pulse by sheer force of
will. Yet all this time the doctor dared not look him in the eyes, so
fierce their agonized questioning.
Then at last Nature first routed death, and then slowly, one by one, the
others of his train, until one soft, mild day in early April the Man
carried a bundle rolled in blankets and, partly unfolding it, set it in
the big chair in the sunny corner of the south porch, where, from above
the wrappings, two great brown eyes looked out, and the voice of the Boy
said clearly, if faintly, “Why, Daddy, I’m so surprised, it’s spring
again; and the robin’s sitting tight on her nest, so there must be eggs
in it.” Then, lying back, he closed his eyes, with a sigh in which both
weakness and content took part, his fingers, thin as birds’ claws,
seeking the Man’s, and twining themselves with his.
Presently he said, as if he had been thinking, “I’ve had a big long
sleep, I guess, and my throat hurt so, and when I was thirsty, I dreamed
that my mother used to turn over my pillow when it burned, and you
always came and gave me a cool drink. Did you, Daddy? Was it always
you?”
“Yes, always.”
“And did mother turn my pillow? Did you see her?”
“I did not see her, Asa, but then she may have been there; you know the
room was often dark.”
“Everything is normal now,” the doctor said that evening when he came
in; “in another month, with fresh air and careful feeding, the Boy will
be quite himself again.”
Then at last the sluice-gates opened, and the waters of sorrow and joy,
so long pent up, rushed forth, and the Man stood before the doctor, his
arm before his face, sobbing like a woman.
At first, the doctor was minded to steal away, then, realizing the nerve
strain Ernest had undergone, he laid his hand upon the arm to urge him
to go to bed, and repressed a start, for the flesh burned under his
touch. Worn out by his vigil and carelessness of self, the Man had
caught the fever.
“But I cannot go to bed; the Boy is only half out of the woods even
now,” protested Ernest, as father told him of his condition in as few
words as possible.
“Do not worry about him,” said father, cheerily. “I will fumigate his
things to-morrow and take him down to our house and Mrs. Evan’s care if
it is necessary, I promise you.” So the Man yielded to the weariness
that weighed him down, and soon, in his turn, was tossing in delirium,
not knowing that a white-capped nurse was caring for him as he had cared
for the Boy.
The fever itself had taken but a slight hold on Ernest; it was the other
spectres, worse than death, that threatened him, Deafness and Blindness;
his parched throat and tongue refused to form coherent sound, as he lay
there with bandaged eyes and ears, that surgery had rendered wholly deaf
in the one hope that Nature might repair the necessary wounds.
As the fever left, and consciousness returned to stay, loneliness
possessed him, entire and complete; except through the sense of touch,
he was utterly isolated from his kind.
The days went by, until one came, after the pain had left his eyes, when
they removed the bandages cautiously, and he saw the chintz figures of
the wall-paper in the partly darkened room, and heaven itself could not
have seemed a fairer vision.
Presently they let him read, a few words at a time, and the nurse wrote
answers to his various questions on a pad that she kept upon the bed;
but oftentimes, when he thought that he was speaking, he had in reality
made no sound, for he could not hear his own voice.
They brought the Boy, now fast gaining colour and strength, in to
reassure him, and Asa, who smiled and puffed out his cheeks to show how
he was gaining, left in his hand a little bunch of pansies and hardy
English violets. The Man pressed them to his face, but scent was as dead
as sound. Would he never again hear the wind in the grass, or Eileen’s
voice laughing as they went fishing and the fish slipped the hook? Then
it came to him, who for a moment had forgotten more recent events,
remembering only the past, that hearing had nothing to do with this.
May fluttered past the Man as though on the wings of many birds. The
sight of the lilacs under the window, and the apple blossoms scattered
through the valley, were his portion of it, and the blood in his veins
seemed to grow warm again and his heart began to take courage. The
horses were plodding to and fro, ploughing the river meadow, but he did
not ask who was guiding the work, or whether the men at the wagon shop
were idle or busy; his head was still tired, so tired that he had
scarcely the strength to think.
“You must try to rouse him now,” said the specialist, who was watching
the unresponsive ears, to father; “with bodily health the hearing will
return.”
It was June when he first crawled down the narrow stairs and took the
Boy’s seat in the sunny porch, near which his dinner was spread by Aunt
Louisa, who bustled about him affectionately, trying by gesture, as well
as by written words, to raise his curiosity to the point of questioning
how they were managing without him.
Every few days the Boy came with the doctor, now bringing him some
little thing that he had made, or a bunch of wayside flowers. One day he
brought a knot of white musk roses fastened together with grass. The Man
caught at them eagerly, for such grew in the old garden at Eileen’s.
Burying his nose in them, their fragrance penetrated the awakening
sense, the same moment that a high-pitched peal of the Boy’s laughter,
as he made the young dogs do their tricks, reached his ears. Ah! blessed
Mother Nature, who had day and night been knitting, knitting, to rejoin
the severed nerves and tissues that they might carry the messages to the
brain once more!
Strawberries were ripe and passing, and the blush rose on the kitchen
porch was shedding its satin petals when the Man said abruptly to
father, who had this day come without the Boy: “When may Asa come home,
Dr. Russell? It is a shame to trouble your daughter any longer, and
besides, I need his company. I’ve been over the farm to-day, and
to-morrow I shall go outside to the wagon shop; yes, to-morrow I must
take up life again.”
“Trouble my daughter—Mrs. Evan?” stammered the doctor, as though taken
by surprise. “Why—oh, yes, to be sure, I’ll bring him over to-morrow,
and perhaps I can persuade his foster-mother to come, too, and render an
account of him.”
But on the morrow, the Man did not go to the wagon shop as he had said;
the day was sultry, and showers threatened, so he wandered down “cross
lots” until he met the trout stream, and quite unconsciously followed it
until he came upon the group of old willows, under whose shade the old
Eileen had vanished.
It was not until he had almost reached the trees that he noticed there
were people there, picnickers, probably, yet something led him to pause
and look again. Surely, it was the Boy lying upon the grass, with eager
upturned face, listening to some one who was evidently reading aloud;
but though figure and book were in sight, foliage concealed the face.
Another step, and he saw that the reader was Eileen.
The Man must have cried out, for instantly the pair started, and the
light fell full upon Eileen’s hair and face, the same as of old, and yet
not the same, while the boy came bounding toward him, calling, “Oh,
Daddy, so you’ve found out at last where the Princess and I come to read
every day!”
“The Princess! How came she here?” said the Man, sick at heart, for he
thought the strange haunting dreams of his illness were coming back.
“She does not live here now.”
“She didn’t,” cried the boy, babbling on eagerly, as he pulled the Man
under the willows, “but they all came back here after you got sick, and
my Princess took me up there to live with her in their house; the doctor
let her, and we’ve been playing a fairy story all the time, and she’s
been, oh, so very good to me, Daddy. She’s made me custard and cookies,
and sang me to sleep when my legs ached from forgetting how to walk; ’n
besides, her father told Peter how to plant the fields, and he’s set
Jeptha figuring on an awful lot of wagons. But I’ve forgotten, I wasn’t
to tell, I wasn’t to tell, because in fairy stories, if you tell, the
lights go out and everything stops. Oh, Princess and Daddy, play you
didn’t hear. Oh, don’t let it all stop!” and the Boy clasped his hands
tightly, while an agony of fear passed over his sensitive face.
But the Man had ceased to hear him. Taking two steps that brought him
face to face with Eileen, he paused and stood looking down at her, and
his expression checked the Boy’s tongue.
“Is this all true?” he almost whispered, and as he spoke he grew white
to the lips and reeled.
“Sit down upon the bank; you have walked too far and you are faint,” she
said, spreading a shawl that lay beside her on the grass. He dropped to
the seat she offered, but never took his eyes from her own, over which
the lids drooped lower and lower.
“Is it true?” he repeated.
“We came back in April,” she answered softly.
“Why?”
“Because I saw in the home papers that you were ill, and—I wanted to be
near.”
“Why, again?” he questioned, almost cruelly, but now he had reached a
point where he could bear no uncertainty, no mere palliation.
“Because, Ernest, though I know that there are many other things in life
besides caring,—caring is best;” the drooping lids rose slowly, and the
gray eyes looked fully and frankly into his. Then, dropping on her knees
beside him, she cried passionately, as she circled with a gesture all
the beauty round about, “Can you hear, can you see as you used? Ah, I
have been so horribly afraid!”
Clasping his long, thin fingers, that would tremble, about hers, the Man
drew Eileen toward him; “I can hear the wind in the grass, I can see
what lies behind your eyes, Eileen; do I need more?”
* * * * *
“You won’t let the fairy story stop? Please promise you won’t,”
interrupted the Boy, unable to wait longer for his answer.
“Part of it must,” answered Eileen, “because you see, Boy, the Princess
who wished to live in a story-book, has turned out to be merely a
woman—” “For the sake of her lover who was not a prince,” added the
Man.
Then, as the Boy looked at them, the comprehension of it all slowly
beamed from his solemn eyes.
“Then I must choose you a new name,” he said.
“Yes, Boy, surely; what shall it be?”
“I will call you Mother, because I love you,” he said very slowly. “Then
when other children say it, it won’t hurt me so here,” pressing his
hands to his throat; “and my real mother away up there will hear and
know that I’m not lonely any more, and that will make her glad.”
And the wind blew on through the wild grass, where never a scythe came
to end the song!
VII
THE SIMPLE LIFE
=AN EPISODE OF JULY=
THE MIDSUMMER MOON
When Rodney Kent, known as Billy, and Marjory, his wife, instead of
taking a honeymoon abroad, immediately tied themselves down by
purchasing a very modest house on the west slope of the Oakland Bluffs,
their friends held up their hands and rolled their eyes in astonishment.
It is true that the couple themselves had never entertained a thought of
the European trip, but their friends, after seeing the amazing display
of wedding gifts, concluded that an expensive and protracted honeymoon
would be a fitting way to begin the state of life that living up to the
presents indicated. They did not formulate that Marjory was the last of
a large family whose parents had always lived quite up to their income
in rearing and educating their brood, or that Billy, with a host of
friends, naturally hospitable and all doors open to him, was as yet only
a confidential clerk in a law firm in spite of the fact that the
distinguished chief, himself a bachelor until recently, treated Billy
like a younger brother.
The young couple, however, from the beginning had faced facts as they
were, for at their respective ages of twenty-four and thirty, they not
only had a goodish bit of common sense mingled with their affection, but
they had also seen more than one matrimonial shallop, at best equipped
only for still water and overloaded with unsought responsibilities,
founder pitifully in the cross currents of the social sea.
The house had at once absorbed all of Kent’s savings, and was
consequently, unlike a city apartment, an object to be considered
seriously. This was the attitude that his men friends held toward the
venture; neither did it seem strange to any one of the twoscore of
assorted male temperaments that the couple should desire to spend their
first summer entirely away from the paths of conventional social
restraint. All the criticism, of which there was a belated April shower,
mingled with not a few hailstones, came from the bride’s friends, her
own elder sister Agatha taking the lead by saying to a select few who
had dropped in a couple of weeks after the wedding to talk it over and
hear the latest news of the bride, that Marjory seemed determined to
slump, and had no sense whatever of the duties she owed society. While
that any woman with her wedding presents, possessing a grain of pride,
would try to make a front during the first year at least, adding as a
final thrust, “So selfish in Marjory, short-sighted too; she’ll ruin
Billy’s prospects for a place in the firm by keeping him away from all
his friends. If they had only taken a smart little apartment, they would
have been able to give half a dozen select dinners before the season
breaks, and possibly they might have managed to get the Head of the Firm
and his wife to come to one, and see the silver service he sent them, or
at least give them a return invitation, for if Mrs. Coates should take
up Marjory, you know their fortune, social and financial, would be
made.”
“Marjory can entertain in the country quite as well as in town, and it’s
far less stuffy from now on; it’s almost May, you know,” said little
Mary Taylor, called Pussy from her demure and confiding ways, which none
the less covered sharp, if delicately pointed, claws, when their use
became necessary for the defence of her friends; she had been maid of
honour at the wedding, and was a staunch friend of the bride.
“You know English couples often borrow a country house from friends to
settle in for the honeymoon, if they’ve none of their own,” she
continued. “There is nothing lovelier than a newly furnished country
house, all white enamelled furniture, flowered chintz, and muslin
draperies, with the maids in light blue or pink chambray and ruffled bib
aprons; besides, Agatha, you know that to be asked to a week-end party
is more of a compliment than a dinner. I shall make Margie invite me to
the very first of them. Then, of course, she will be sure to go in for a
specialty,—golf, tennis, motoring, or the garden craze; everybody
rushes you out to see the garden now, and tells you how many loads of
earth it took to fill it in, and who the landscape architect was.
“I only hope Margie will have an English garden with wooden benches; the
seats in an Italian garden have no backs, and are _so_ cold if you sit
out in the moonlight, in a thin petticoat; and of course that’s one of
the things that one goes to week-end parties for, the moonlight
spooning, I mean.”
“You may banish all your pictures of that sort of thing,” said Agatha,
speaking in a tone in which mystery and disgust were blended. “There
will be no draperies or garden seats or maids; my sister has but _one_
person to do everything, an old black woman named Juno, who wears a
turban, and who, I believe, was Billy’s nurse. As for the house, it’s in
the middle of a field, with some gloomy woods behind it; there’s hardly
a thing in it but wall-papers, Japanese matting, and flower vases, for
Marjory has absolutely sent all of her magnificent silver and
bric-à-brac to storage at Tiffany’s. For the rest, they’ve a
ginger-coloured pony and an absurd buggy, by way of a trap, and I
shouldn’t be surprised to find that they all, including the pony, take
their meals in the kitchen, and that Billy wears an apron and waits on
Marjory and Juno, for she says they intend to lead the simple life this
summer. Think of it! Deliberately committing social suicide.”
Agatha’s voice had a tragic break in it. Poor Agatha, who had never
committed a social error in her life, and had made the most of
everything almost to the extent of separating a poached egg on toast
garnished with parsley into three separate courses, toast, egg, and
salad! Yet at thirty-eight she had acquired nothing but an equivocal
sense of correctness and a complexion that refused either to stand the
light of day or to receive graciously and absorb the improvers that the
owner lavished upon it.
Before Pussy Taylor or any one else could recover from their
astonishment, the door was flung open, the butler announced in his
formal drawl,—Mrs. Rodney Kent, and Marjory herself came in, stopping
short in the middle of the room with a quizzical expression as she saw
the very conscious faces of her friends.
“My dear,” purred Pussy Taylor, throwing her arms around the bride’s
neck, “you’ve come just in time to defend yourself. Oh, yes, of course
we were talking about you, and now, before you begin about the country,
we must know instantly why you have on your last spring suit, which is
of an entirely different shade of brown from this season’s wear, instead
of your lovely reseda going-away gown; what you are doing in the city at
five o’clock in the afternoon, when you are supposed to be wandering in
green lanes and picking violets hand in hand with Billy, who, every now
and then, kneels to tie your shoes; and lastly, why you are personally
conducting those three queer bundles, and what do they contain? I’m sure
if I had appeared at the front door similarly laden, that last butler of
Agatha’s training would have sent me to the basement.”
Marjory looked about for a safe place of deposit for her bundles, which
she finally confided to a tufted chair; then, throwing off her jacket
and drawing off her gloves very deliberately, she took the proffered
half of the seat that Pussy occupied by the tea-table.
Marjory was not what is commonly called a pretty woman; every feature
was alert and too well adapted for the expression of humour for mere
prettiness. A brunette of good colouring, she possessed that quality of
charm that no one denies, even while they cannot locate its exact
source. Matching her forefingers together, she began to count off the
answers to Pussy’s questions.
“Number one. I wore my old suit because this morning it looked like
rain; no one seems to bother much about rain in the city, but in the two
weeks we’ve been at Oaklands, I’ve learned to tell by the colour of the
morning sky, as we see it between two great trees on the hilltop, what
the weather is likely to be. This morning it said rain, and though it’s
held off all day, it’s beginning now.”
“Mercy me!” exclaimed Pussy, rushing to the window; “and my new lace
coat is shrinkable, and interlined with chiffon, to say nothing of my
maline hat. May I use the ’phone to call a cab, Agatha?”
“Secondly,” continued Marjory, “the Head of the Firm asked Billy, as a
favour, if he would come down to-day,—though he still has two weeks to
his credit,—for things were getting in a snarl. As I didn’t care to
stay alone, and needed some downtown things, I came, too, and where do
you think Billy and I lunched? In the private office of his Majesty, to
be sure.”
“What a common thing for you to do,” interrupted Agatha, “trailing into
the office after Billy and lunching with Mr. Coates before Mrs. Coates
has had a chance to make her wedding call.”
Marjory flushed, but without replying to the criticism, continued, “Then
after luncheon the Head of the Firm kindly offered to pilot me to do my
last errand, which was in a very mussy sort of street that ran west of
City Hall Park, and the result of the shopping is in those three boxes.
“Yes, Pussy, something breakable; I’ll give you three guesses. No? You
give it up? Well, then, the boxes are full of eggs. Plymouth rocks,
white leghorns, and buff cochins, each kind by itself. Not store eggs
for cooking, with some ingredients missing, but hatching eggs that will
turn into chickens; for it seems that they are quite different affairs,
and Mr. Coates explained the whole matter to me so nicely.” (“How
disgusting,” muttered Agatha.) “I find that he was brought up on a stock
farm, and expects to have a model one of his own as soon as he and the
Missus can settle upon a location.”
“Marjory Kent, will you please remember who you are, and refrain from
applying such a vulgar title to Mrs. Erastus Coates, whose mother was
Martin Cortright’s aunt, and her father a Philadelphia Biddle? Suppose
it reached her ears, do you think it would improve your prospects?”
“Me? Oh, that’s not original; I was merely quoting the Head of the Firm,
who called her ‘the Missus.’”
“I thought that no one used hens, and that all you had to do was to buy
a box full of eggs, called an incubator, and the lamp that goes with it
did the rest,” said Pussy, wisely, for she sometimes read the
advertisements in her brother’s sporting paper.
“An incubator,” said Marjory, blind to the looks of boredom on the faces
of her friends, “puts all the responsibility upon us, and unnecessary
responsibility is what we are planning to avoid, for this summer at
least. So as we have three very broad-chested, comfortable hens, who are
simply ‘creaking’ with a desire to set, as Juno the cook puts it, we are
going to supply them with good food and a nest of eggs apiece, and let
them take the responsibility.
“Do we care to raise poultry and things? We don’t know; who was it that
said, ‘We know what we are but not what we may be’?”
“Juliet,” cried Pussy.
“No, Ophelia,” said Agatha; “you might know that in Marjory’s present
state of mind she would only quote a mad woman!”
“Whichever it is, that is our present condition, for we may develop a
liking for anything simple! So we shall try chickens and see, and that’s
another thing that we’re going to do this summer,—try to find out what
we really like to do. Billy says that the best beginning is to do
nothing that we are sure we dislike.”
(“And lose all your friends in the process,” growled Agatha.)
“That sounds comfy, but meanwhile aren’t you going to fix up your house,
and ask us all out there by nicely chosen twos or fours?” pleaded Pussy.
“Surely all this stuff about no maids and the simple life that Agatha
has been telling us isn’t true; you will have tables and chairs and
beds, and not expect us to sleep on the matting, with our heads on
blocks, like the Japs?”
“It won’t be quite as simple as that, though I don’t know exactly what
Agatha has said; merely, as I told you before, we are going to try to
avoid unnecessary responsibility in everything, and keep the time we
gain for ourselves. Possibly, after all, that is what is really meant by
the simple life.