To think of my having some of your handwriting for my own!—I was
nearly petrified with joy.
You see I know your writing from having read Burnett all those
“Burn this at once” epistles. And I know it still better from
having to catalogue them for his ready reference. You know how
impatient he is. (But I have run into an open switch and must
digress backwards.)
I shall preserve your letter till I die. In war I shall wear it
carefully spread all over wherever I may be killed, and in peace I
intend to keep my place in my Bible with it. Could words say more!
(Being backed up again, I will now begin.)
I was not at all surprised at your writing me. If you had known me
it would have been different. But where ignorance is bliss any
woman but yourself is always liable to pitch in with a pen, and you
see you are not yourself but only “any woman” to me as yet.
Besides, women have written to me before you. My mother does so
regularly. She encloses a postal card and all I have to do is to
mail it and there she is answered. It’s a great scheme which I
proudly invented when I first went away to school and I recommend
it to you if you—if you ever have a mother.
How my ink does run away with me! Let me refer to your esteemed
favor again! Ah! we have worked down to the bed-rock, or—in Hugh
Miller’s colloquial phrasing—to the “old red sandstone,” of the
fact that you want Jack. You state the fact with what you designate
as brutal candor—and I reply with candied brutality, that I have
thought that all along. If you are averse to my view of the matter,
you must look out of the window the whole time that I continue, for
once entered I always fight to a finish and I cannot retire to my
corner on this auspicious occasion without announcing through a
trumpet that even if Jack is a most idiotic fellow I never have
caught the microbe from him, and, as a sequence, have always seen
clear through and out of the other side of the whole situation. Of
course I should not say this to any woman but you because it would
not have any meaning to her, but, between you and me all things are
printed in plain black and white and, therefore, I respectfully
submit a program consisting of the two o’clock train Tuesday and
myself, to be recognized by a beaming look of burning joy, upon the
platform. Beyond that you may confide yourself to waxing waxy in my
hands. They are not bad hands to be in as your brother and
whatever-you-call-Jack can testify. I will lay my lines in the dark
to the end that you may bloom in the sun.
Trust me. You need do no more—except buy your ticket.
The two o’clock on Tuesday. You can easily remember it by the
T’s—if you don’t get mixed with three o’clock on Thursday. Try
remembering it by the 2’s. A safe way would be to put it down.
Yours to obey,
HERBERT KENDRICK MITCHELL.
P.S. Please recollect that I am only handsome according to the good old
proverb, and do not mistake me for an enterprising hackman.
Mrs. Rosscott clapped her hands with delight when she finished the
letter. She was overjoyed at the success of her “opening play,” and she
wrote her new correspondent two lines accepting his invitation, and
went down on the appointed train on the appointed day. He met her at
the depot and they divined one another at the first glance. It was
impossible not to know so pretty a woman—or so homely a man. For the
ancestors of Mitchell had worn kilts and red hair in centuries gone by,
and although he proved the truth of the red-hair proposition, no one
would ever believe that anything of his build could ever have been
induced to have put itself into kilts—knowingly. Furthermore, his voice
had a crick in it, and went by jerks, and his eyebrows sympathized with
his voice, and the eyes below them were little and gray and twinkling,
and altogether he was the sort of man who is termed—according to a
certain style of phrasing—“above suspicion.” But she liked him, oh!
immensely, and he liked her. And when they were riding up in the
carriage together she felt how thoroughly trustworthy his gray eyes and
good smile declared him to be, and had no hesitation in telling him
what she wanted to do, and in asking him what she wanted to know.
Mitchell certainly had a talent for plotting, for when they reached the
house where the culprits were temporarily domiciled, Burnett had gone
out to give his mended ribs some exercise, and Jack was reading alone
in the room where they shared one another’s liniments with friendly
generosity.
The arch-conspirator went upstairs, came down, and then, seeking the
lady whom he had left in the parlor, said to her:
“Denham’s up there and you can go up and say whatever you have to say.
You know ‘In union there is strength.’ Well you’ve got him alone now,
and he’ll prove weakly as a consequence or I miss my guess.”
Then he walked straight over by the window and picked up a magazine as
if it was all settled, and she only hesitated for half a second before
she turned and went upstairs.
There was a door half open in the hall above, and she knew that that
must be the door. She tapped at it lightly, and a man’s voice (a voice
that she knew well), called out gruffly:
“Come in!”
She pushed the door open at that and entered, and saw Jack, and he saw
her. He turned very pale at the sight, and then the color flooded his
face, and he rose from his chair abruptly, and put his hand up to the
strips that held the bandage on his head.
“Burnett isn’t here,” he said quickly. “He went out just a few minutes
ago.”
His tone was hard, and yet at the same time it shook slightly.
She approached him, holding out her hand.
“I’m glad of that,” she said, “because it was to see you that I came.”
To her great surprise something mutinous and scornful flashed in his
eyes as he rolled a chair forward for her.
“You honor me,” he said, and his tone and manner both hardened yet
more. His general appearance was that of a man ten years older; he had
changed terribly in the weeks since she had last seen him. She took the
chair and sat down, still looking at him. He sat down too, and his eyes
went restlessly around the room as if they sought a hold that should
withhold them from her searching gaze. There was a short pause.
“Don’t speak like that,” she said at last. “It isn’t your way, and I
know you too well—we know one another too well—to be anything but
sincere. You owe me something, too, and if I forbear you should
understand why.”
“I owe you something, do I?” he asked. “What do I owe you?”
Mrs. Rosscott caught her under lip in her teeth.
“You gave me a promise, Mr. Denham,” she said, quite low, but most
distinctly—“a promise which you broke.”
Jack flushed; his eyelids drooped for a minute.
“I didn’t break it,” he said. “I gave it up.”
“Is there any difference?”
“A great difference.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Do you want to have the truth?” he said. “If you really do, I’ll tell
you. But I don’t ask to tell you, recollect, and if I were you I’d drop
the whole—I certainly would.—If I were you.”
She looked at him in astonishment.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Tell me what you mean.”
He raised his hand to his bandaged head again.
“I think,” he said, fighting hard to speak with utter indifference, “I
think that it would have been better if you had told me about
Holloway.”
At that her big eyes opened widely.
“What should I tell you about Mr. Holloway?” she asked. “What could I
tell you about him?”
“It isn’t any use speaking like that,” he said; and with the words he
suddenly leaped from his chair and began to plunge back and forth
across the small room. “You see I’m not a boy any more. I’ve come to my
senses. I know now! I understand now! It’s all plain to me now. Now and
always. I’ve been fooled once but only once and by All that Is, I never
will be fooled again. Your’re pretty and awfully fascinating, and it’s
always fun for the woman—especially if she knows all her bets are
safely hedged. And I was so completely done up that I was even more
sport than the common run, I suppose; but—” she was staring at him in
unfeigned amazement, and he was lashing himself to fury with the
feelings that underlaid his words—“but even if you made it all right
with yourself by calling your share by the name of ‘having a good
influence’ over me (I know that’s how married women always pat
themselves on the back while they’re sending us to the devil), even
then, I think that it would have been better to have been fair and
square with me. It would have been better all round. I’d have been left
with some belief in—in people. As it is, when I saw that you’d only
been laughing at me, I—well, I went pretty far.”
He stopped short, and transfixed her paleness with his big, dark eyes.
“Why weren’t you honest?” he asked angrily. And then he said again,
more bitterly, more scornfully, than before: “Why wasn’t I told about
Holloway?”
She clasped her hands tightly together.
“What has been told you about Mr. Holloway and myself?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Then why do you speak as you do?”
At that he thrust his hands into his pockets and again began to fling
himself back and forth across the room.
“Perhaps you’ll think I’m a sneak,” he said, “but I wasn’t a sneak. I
went in to see you that Saturday as usual, and when I went upstairs—you
were with him in the library. I heard three words. God! they were
enough! I didn’t know that anything could knock the bottom out of life
so quickly. My sun and stars all fell at once—I reckon my Heaven went
too. At all events I went out of your house and down town and I drank
and drank—and all to the truth and honor of women.”
He halted with his back to her, and there was silence in the room for
many minutes.
When he faced around after a little, she was weeping bitterly, having
turned in her seat so that her face might be buried in the chair back.
Her whole body was shaking with suppressed sobs. He stood still and
stared down upon her and finally she lifted up her face and said with
trembling lips:
“And all the trouble came from that. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I
say?”
“I don’t know what you can do, or what you can say,” he said, remaining
still and watching her sincere distress. “I’d feel pretty blamed mean
if I were you, though. Understand, I don’t question your good taste in
choosing Holloway, nor your right to love him, nor his right to be
there; but I fail to understand why you were to me just as you were,
and I think it was unfair—out-and-out mean!”
“Mr. Denham,” she said almost painfully, “you’ve made a dreadful
mistake.” Then she stopped and moistened her lips. “I don’t know just
what words you overheard, but the dramatic instructor was there that
afternoon drilling Mr. Holloway and myself for the parts which we took
in the charity play that week; after he went out we went over one of
the scenes alone. Perhaps you heard part of that.” She stopped and
almost choked. “Mr. Holloway has never really made any love to
me—perhaps he never wanted to—perhaps I’ve never wanted him to.”
Jack stared. His misconception was so strongly intrenched in the
forefront of his brain that he could not possibly dislodge it at once.
Mrs. Rosscott continued to dry the tears that continued to rise; she
seemed terribly affected at finding herself to have been the cause (no
matter how innocently) of this latest tale of wrack and ruin.
“Do you mean to say,” the young man said, at last, “that there was no
truth in what I heard? Don’t you expect to marry Holloway?”
“I never expect to marry anyone, but certainly not him,” she replied,
trying to regain her composure.
“Honest?”
“Assuredly.”
It was as if an unseen orchestra had suddenly burst forth just near
enough and just far enough away. He came to the side of her chair and
laid his hand upon its back.
“Then what have you been thinking of me lately?” he asked.
“Very sad thoughts,” she confessed—hiding her face again.
“Did you care?”
“Yes, I cared.”
He stood beside her for a long time without speaking or moving. Then he
suddenly pulled a chair forward, and sat down close in front of her.
“Don’t cry,” he said, almost daring to be tender. “There’s nothing to
cry about now, you know.”
“I think there’s plenty for me to cry about,” she said, looking up
through her long wet lashes. “It is so terrible for me to be the one
that is to blame. Papa swears he’ll never forgive Bob, and your aunt—”
“Lord love you!” he exclaimed; “don’t worry over me or my aunt. I
don’t. I don’t mind anything, with Holloway staked in the ditch. I can
get along well enough now.”
He smiled—actually smiled—as he spoke.
“Oh, you mustn’t speak so,” she said, blushing; “indeed, you must not.”
And smiled, too, in spite of herself.
“Who’s going to stop me?” he said. “You know that you can’t; I’m miles
the biggest.”
She looked at him and tried to frown, but only blushed again instead.
He put out his hand and took hers into its clasp.
“I’m everlasting glad to shake college,” he declared gayly; “it never
was my favorite alley. I’ve made up my mind to go to work just as soon
as I get these pastry strips off my head.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere. I don’t care.”
“But you’ll come to my house when Bob comes next week, won’t you?” she
asked suddenly. “I can see now why you wouldn’t before, but—but it’s
different now. Isn’t it?”
“Is it?” he said, asking the question chiefly of her pretty eyes. “Is
it honestly different now?”
“I think it is,” she answered.
A door banged below.
“That’s Burr!” he exclaimed, remembering suddenly the proximity of
their chairs, and making haste to place himself farther away.
Burnett’s step was heard on the stair.
“You never said anything to him, did you?” she questioned quickly.
“Certainly not.”
The next instant Burnett was in the room, and his sister was in his
arms. (Astonishing how coolly he accepted the fact, too.)
“Mr. Denham is coming to me with you, Bob,” she said when he released
her. “I’ve persuaded him.”
“How did you do it?” she was asked.
“By undertaking to reconcile him with his aunt, dear,” she replied,
blandly. “It’s a contract that we’ve drawn up between us. You know that
I was always rather good in the part of the peacemaker.”
As she spoke, her eyes fell warningly on the manifest astonishment of
Aunt Mary’s nephew.
“You don’t know what you’re undertaking, Betty,” said her brother. “You
never had a chance to take Aunt Mary for better, for worse—I have.”
“I’m not alarmed,” said she, “I’m very courageous. I’m sure I’ll
succeed.”
“Can the mender of ways—other people’s ways—come in?” asked a voice at
the door.
It was Mitchell’s voice, and he came in without waiting for an
invitation.
“Is it time that I went?” Mrs. Rosscott asked him, anxiously.
“Half an hour yet.”
“Oh, I say Jack,” cried Burnett, “let’s boil some water in the
witch-hazel pan, and make a rarebit in the poultice pan, and have some
tea here.”
“Sure,” said Jack, suddenly become his blithe and buoyant self again.
“You just take off your hat and look the other way, Mrs. Rosscott, and
we’ll have you a lunch in a jiffy.”
Chapter Twelve
A Trap For Aunt Mary
In Aunt Mary’s part of the country the skies had been crying themselves
sick for the last six weeks. The cranberry bog was a goner forever, it
was feared, and a little house, very handy for sorting berries in, had
had its foundations undermined, and disappeared beneath the face of the
waters also.
Under such propitious circumstances, Aunt Mary sat by her own
particular window and looked sternly and severely out across the garden
and down the road. Lucinda sat by the other window sewing. Lucinda
hadn’t changed materially, but her general appearance struck her
mistress as more irritating than ever. Everything and everybody seemed
to have become more and more irritating ever since Jack had been
disinherited. Of course, it was right that he should have been
disinherited, but Aunt Mary hadn’t thought much beforehand as to what
would happen afterward, and it was too aggravating to have him turn out
so well just when she had lost all patience with him and so cast him
off forever, and for him to develop such a beautiful character, all of
a sudden too—just as if education and good advice had been his undoing
and seclusion and illness were the guardian angels arrived just in time
to save him from the evil effects thereof.
It hadn’t occurred to Aunt Mary that people keep on living just the
same even after they have been cut out of a will. And she never had
counted on Jack’s taking his bitter medicine in the spirit he was
manifesting. She had not calculated any of the possible effects of her
hasty action very maturely, but she certainly had not anticipated a
lamblike submission to even the harshest of her edicts, nor had she
expected Jack to be one who would strictly observe the Bible
regulations and so return good for evil—in other words, write her now
when he had never written her in the bygone years (unless under
sharpest financial stress of circumstances).
Yet such was the case. Jack had become a “ready letter-writer” ever
since his removal to the city, whither some kind friends had invited
him directly he could leave his sick-room. Aunt Mary did not know who
the friends were and had hesitated somewhat as to opening the first
letter. But it had borne no sting—being instead most sweetly pathetic,
and since then, others had followed with touching frequency. Their
polished periods fell upon the old lady’s stony hardness of heart with
the persistent frequency of the proverbial drop of water. After the
second she had ceased to regard the instructions given Lucinda as to
mentioning her nephew’s name, and after the third he became again her
favorite topic of conversation.
It seemed that the poor boy had had the misfortune to contract measles,
and in his weakened state the disease had nearly proved fatal. You can
perhaps divine the effect of this statement on the grand-aunt, and the
further effect of the words: “But never mind, Aunt Mary,” with which he
concluded the brief narration.
Aunt Mary had tried to snort and had sniffed instead; she had turned
back to the first page, read, “All my head has been shaved, but I don’t
care about having any more fun, anyhow,” and had let the letter fall in
her lap. Every time that she had thought since of “our boy,” her anger
had fallen hotter upon whoever was handiest. Lucinda (who was used to
it) lived under a figurative rain of cinders, and thrived
salamander-like in their midst; but Arethusa—who had come up for a
week—found herself totally unable to stand the endless lava and boiling
ashes, and fled back to the bosom of Mr. Arethusa the third morning
after her arrival.
“I’ve got to go, I find,” she had yelled the night before her
departure.
“I certainly wish you would,” replied her aunt. “I’m a great believer
in married women paying attention at home before they begin to pry into
their neighbors’ affairs. It’s a good idea. Most generally—most
always.”
This was bitterly unkind, since Arethusa was in the habit of taking the
long journey purely out of a sense of duty and to keep Lucinda up to
the mark; but grateful appreciation is rarely ever a salient point in
the character of an autocrat.
“I’m glad she’s gone,” Aunt Mary told Lucinda, when they were left
together once more. “She puts me beyond all patience. She chatters
gibberish that I can’t make out a word of for an hour at a time, and
then, all of a sudden, she screams, ‘Dinner’s ready,’ or something
equally silly, in a voice like a carvin’ knife. It’s enough to drive a
sane person stark, raving mad. It is.”
Lucinda acquiesced with a nod. Lucinda herself was glad that Arethusa
had gone. She resented the manner in which the latter always looked
over the preserve closet and counted the silver. Nothing was ever
missing, because Lucinda was as honest as a day twenty-five hours long,
but the more honest those of Lucinda’s caliber are, the more mad they
get if they feel that they are being watched. So Lucinda acquiesced
with a nod.
The mistress and maid were sitting alone together, with the June rain
falling without, and it was that pleasantly exciting hour which comes
only in the country and is known as “about mail-time.”
“There’s Joshua now,” Aunt Mary exclaimed, presently, “I see him
turnin’ in the gate. He’ll be at the door before you get there,
Lucinda,—he will. There, he’s twistin’ his wheel off. He’s tryin’ to
hold Billy an’ hold the letters an’ whistle, all at once. Why don’t you
go to him, Lucinda? Can’t you hear a whistle that I can see? Or, if you
can’t hear the whistle, can’t you hear me? Do you think whoever wrote
those letters would be much pleased if they could see you so slow about
gettin’ them? Do—”
Just here the old lady, turning toward Lucinda, perceived that she had
been gone—Heaven knew how long. She felt decidedly vexed at finding
herself to be in the wrong, rubbed her nose impatiently, and waited in
a temper to match the rubbing.
“My Lord! how slow she is!” she thought. “Well, if I don’t die of old
age first, I presume I’ll get my letters some time. Maybe.”
As a matter of fact, the door had blown shut behind Lucinda, and the
latter personage was making her way, with well-hoisted skirts, around
the house to the back door. She didn’t pass the window where the
Argus-eyed was looking forth; because that lady had strong opinions of
those who let doors bang behind them without their own volition.
Five minutes later the maid did finally appear with one letter.
“I thought you was waitin’ to bring to-morrow’s mail at the same time,”
said Aunt Mary, icily.
Then she found that the letter was from Jack, and Lucinda was
completely forgotten in the pleasure of opening and reading it.