of things connected with the church now, the Rector's Aid, and the
Altar Guild, and such things. And that I ought to take a Sunday-school
class. She's said so much about it, she's stopped now, and only _looks_
her hurt and disappointment, that I don't do it." She paused. The fine
old brown hand went on patting hers. Its owner's eyes went on studying
her face not unshrewdly.
"And Auntie comes to industrial school every Saturday morning, and
every Saturday morning looks disappointed when I decline her invitation
to come with her."
"And why decline it, my dear? That at least is a little thing to do, to
please her?"
Selina burst forth. "I'm through with doing things because it pleases
somebody. I've done it all--church, confirmation, communion--because
they told me to. I've never had a conviction in my life. Tell them for
me, please, Dr. Ronald--that's what I've come to you for--tell them
that I've a right to find the ways for myself. Tell them, that because
I haven't found any of them for myself, it's all perfunctory, and all
cut and dried. That I hate the coming, that I hate it when I'm here,
hunting God in my Sunday clothes in congregations, and I hate God, too,
if he's what they all seem to make him."
She sobbed, and her head slipped onto his knee, face down as she
sobbed. The wrinkled brown hand merely moved itself to the masses of
her hair and went on patting.
"My dear, my dear," the old rector said, "I'm surprised, I'm truly
distressed. You are young, overyoung and impatient and heady. And you
imagine these things you feel to-day are final. As for your mother,
Selina, and your good aunt, salt of the earth they are, never overlook
that fact, salt of the earth. While on the other hand, these things you
are confessing to are traits common to all youth rather than peculiar
to you. How many dare I estimate in my forty years' pastorate in this
church, have come to me in this room as you to-day, each with youth's
cry against the claim of things upon him?"
The touch of his hand upon her head was gentle.
"Patience, Selina, patience. Do not think we've not been, all of us,
where you are to-day. And don't forget that it is as inevitable you
also will be where we are!"
She lifted her head, staring at him in a kind of horror. She even
remembered to be sorry for that long procession of youth coming to him
through forty years, her heart seeming to be monotoning in a sort of
bitter chanting for them, "Bread and he gave them a stone. Bread and he
gave them a stone."
"Never," she declared to him passionately, getting up and feeling about
for her hat that had tumbled somewhere. "Never! Please, Dr. Ronald, I'd
rather go now. And as to my coming to the place that you say I some day
will, never, never!"
He looked at her as she pinned on her hat, but made no motion to stay
her. And the while though he said not one word, it was to her as though
he shouted it forth, "So they all said, that procession of youth
passing through this room through forty years."
It infuriated her so to know he was thinking it, she hurried away with
barely a civil word at leaving. Like the rest of them in this also, he
could have told her.
Her way back took her past the home of Algy Biggs. He was getting home
from work just as she got there. The Biggs house, broad and comely,
stood in half a square of irreproachable lawn, rolled and clipped,
trimmed and impeccable. At the curb the carriage was just arrived with
Algy's mother and his sisters in it.
When Algy had been told to go to college or get out and find a job for
himself and depend on it, he found one at the locomotive shops, working
on the inside of boilers. That was two years ago; he was still in the
shops, getting thirty-five dollars a week now, for he said so.
And at this particular moment when Selina met him he probably was
just out of his overalls, for the grime and smudge of the shops were
still upon him. Tall and blond chap that he was, his blue eyes gleamed
unspeakably funny out of his blackened face.
Selina bowed to his mother and sisters. But she--yes--she did--kissed
her finger tips to Algy. She understood _this_! She gloried in his act!
She exulted in Algy!
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The last day of April Selina went to Eadston with her Aunt Juanita and
her Uncle Bruce, to the wedding of Pocahontas and Marcus. In deference
to the occasion the two came by for her on their way to the station in
Uncle Taliaferro's hack, drawn by the two bony white horses.
"I'd like to be going," said Mamma, kissing Selina at the doorstep,
"but to send a present and let you go--is all that could be thought of."
"Auntie," from Selina to this person in the doorway, "tell Culpepper
I'll see Cousin Maria at the wedding, and give her the latest news
about him."
She joined the two in their hack and from the start Uncle Bruce seemed
outdone.
"I ought to be in Washington this very day. The case of the State
against the Federal Banking Tax argued there this morning--" He kept up
a furious little clicking with his tongue.
"Aurelius," from Aunt Juanita, "Marcus told you to have your hair cut
and your beard trimmed. You haven't done it."
"Let him have his own hair cut! What's he got to do with mine? Have I
ever in any way sought to impose my personal ideas and conclusions on
him? Have I ever told him to get _his_ hair cut?" Uncle Bruce glared.
"Well, it's all one to me," from Aunt Juanita indifferently. "I had
it on my mind and now it's off and that's an end to it so far as I'm
concerned."
There was to be worse from Uncle Bruce. The spring freshets were upon
the land, and creeks and rivers were up. The wedding at Eadston was to
be at six o'clock at the Boswell home. The train bearing the Bruces
and Selina was late, held up by a wash-out, one hour, two hours, three
hours! When they did reach Eadston and hurried out the station to the
carriage waiting for them, there was one hour to spare. And of this
ten minutes at least were consumed driving through the sleepy town
and across the covered bridge beneath which the swollen river swept
sullenly.
And another five minutes must have been consumed disembarking at the
Boswell carriage block, their luggage being with them. Uncle Bruce
had his umbrella somewhere, too, he insisted, and that found, a tin
spectacle-case, much prized, was missing! You couldn't hurry Uncle
Bruce! As well give in and turn about on the sidewalk while he plunged
around in the recesses of the carriage hunting his property, and enjoy
the dignified and fine old house in its wedding consciousness, its
purple beeches in tender young leaf, its early magnolias in bloom. And
to the side, beyond the borders of the box, and the gravel paths, one
caught a gleam of the garden, and beyond it, as one knew, came the
terraces overhanging the surging river now at its flood tide.
And at last they could go in, Uncle Bruce being ready! The servants
awaiting them at the door, remembered Selina, a soft-voiced elderly one
in spectacles taking charge of her and a second one of Aunt Juanita and
Uncle Bruce.
And on the way upstairs, with scarce half an hour to the good now, the
door of Pocahontas' room opened, and she calling a greeting to the
older guests, stopped Selina, and kissed her through the half inch of
space.
Selina found that she had her old room, familiar from the visit of a
year ago, while Aunt Juanita and Uncle Bruce were in the room next to
her. Lights, warm water, English tub, met with first at her former
visit, towels, her dress-box thus quickly unstrapped, everything was
ready and at hand!
She dressed swiftly. The green organdie was a joy and she wanted time
at that stage of the toilet to get into it properly.
If Uncle Bruce had seemed like an irascible old lion peeved, earlier in
the day, right now he was worse. In the next room just here he roared.
"Selina!" It was Aunt Juanita calling irascibly herself.
Selina struggling into her green dress, hurried in. Aunt Juanita was on
a low chair changing her shoes with her bonnet still on. The effect,
considering she'd taken off her dress, was startling. Uncle Bruce in
his underwear, which ran around in stripes, sat on the bed and glared
from out of the jungle of his hair and beard.
"You'll have to see if Marcus is anywhere in the house, Selina," from
Aunt Juanita. "I can't do a thing with your Uncle Bruce."
"You've been a model and praiseworthy wife, Juanita, and I respect you
for it," from Uncle Bruce. "You've never tried to do things with me.
Damn my son's impertinence, does _he_ think _he_ can begin to do it
now after all these years? I go to my telescope to get out my clothes
and I take out a suit I do not recognize. And you tell me he's put it
there in place of my own. That I'm to wear it. I'll be damned, he can
be damned, we'll all be damned before I do. Have I ever interfered with
him? Haven't I watched him going about in long hair and a waterproof
cape he looked a durned fool in, and held my tongue? I've done my part
by this wedding, too. I sent the lady my grandmother's pearls because
you and he told me to, and wrote her a letter in addition. And I took
him down to my vault box and gave him a bunch of securities, and when
I found it was the wrong bunch, double in value, told him to keep it
anyhow. I go to this wedding in the clothes I came in, since my others
are missing, or I stay here as I am."
Selina had been desperately hooking her dress.
"Go find Marcus if he's here," said Aunt Juanita, who having buttoned
her boots, now bethought her to untie and remove her bonnet.
Selina went and found Miss Boswell, serene and distinguished in her
wedding array of silvery gray satin, and with her aid and that of the
servants, Marcus was found, having arrived from the hotel with his bevy
of newspaper friends, and betaken himself to the room given over to him.
When Selina returned with him, Uncle Bruce still in his striped
underwear, had moved a big armchair under the gas and gotten out some
documents from somewhere, and lit an evil-looking and smelling cigar,
and dismissed the matter. Aunt Juanita had combed her hair and now was
washing her face!
"Wear what you please, sir," said Marcus promptly. "Your dress clothes
were sleek with age and misuse, but it was damned impertinent of me to
interfere. I beg your pardon, sir, it was none of my business."
"The principle we as a family have always gone on," said Uncle Bruce.
And getting up, he began to draw on the pepper and salt trousers he'd
come to Eadston in. "You've got on a tie with flowing ends with evening
dress, yourself, Marcus!" suddenly he paused to say. Uncle Bruce saw
more than one thought for! "You've put it on to be in keeping with your
bid for eccentricity. I only remark on it to let you know I hold my
tongue as a matter of principle about other people's affairs, and not
because I don't see 'em."
"Selina," said Aunt Juanita, "I've never had on this dress before, that
the dressmaker saw fit to make me. Can you suggest what's wrong with
it?"
"You've put it on with the buttons behind, when they ought to be
before, Aunt Juanita. If you'll take it off I'll help you."
* * * * *
It was a gracious house for a wedding, the rooms so ample and the
halls so generous. There were guests not only from Eadston but from
the neighboring towns and counties, including Cousin Maria and her
two daughters. And like Pocahontas herself, coming down the stairs
in cloudy, trailing white on the arm of Marcus, everything was
punctiliously correct and yet seemingly simple. After the ceremony
Selina found herself at the bride's table between red-faced Mr. Mason,
the rich young horseman she had met last spring, and Mr. Spragg from
her own town, a colleague of Marcus', the city editor in fact of
his paper. Beyond the bridal table, with its charming decorations,
stretched small tables over the house and out on the porches.
"The bride is a wonderful woman," said Mr. Mason doughtily to Mr.
Spragg on the other side of Selina. "What's she getting?"
They seemed to overlook the fact that she, Selina, the cousin of the
groom, sat between them.
Mr. Spragg replied: "Exactly whatever he's planned to make of himself.
He's gifted and smart as the next, and allows nothing to stand between
him and his end. A brilliant editorial paragrapher, thus far, whom
we're losing."
After supper Pocahontas within the cloud of her back-flung veil, found
a moment to draw Selina within the shelter of an embowered window.
"Oh, my dear, my dear! And we were cheated of our promised long talk
by that delay of your train! You've the sweetest eyes, Selina, I must
tell you, looking at me, as now, all intent, impelling the truth from
me whether I want to give it or no. But I do, and only that wash-out
prevented much conversation. So listen to me sweetly and intently now.
It means for me, Selina, all the difference of a life and intelligence
satisfied, not hungry, that I waited and found myself, found what I was
and what I wanted before I married. Selina, dearest little friend, I
want you to have a compensating life, an experience rich and full in
contact and opportunity. I tried to play Providence and arrange to some
of these ends for you and see what I did in getting you down there to
a school that was no school? Does Providence always resent the limited
human interference? I wonder? Must the working out all be through the
person's own will and character? Kiss me, Selina, while we're hidden
away here. There will be no comfort in the general good-bye coming
presently."
"I still resent Marcus, I feel I ought to be honest and say so," from
Selina hurriedly.
"As if you had to tell me that," laughing. "As beauty is its own
excuse for being, for example, Amanthus," laughing again, "you
feel that temperament is its own excuse for using the rest of
us--well--selfishly?"
"Miss Pocahontas!"
"I thought we dropped the 'Miss' by agreement some while back? And if
I choose to be a handmaiden to temperament? If I happen to believe in
the claims of temperament, and want my share in its later rewards and
glories? Marcus and I understand each other, my dear; not for nothing
have we thrashed out every step of the way. And now kiss me again. Our
train leaves at midnight for the East, and from there we sail at once
for our semi-tropical islands in their bluest of seas."
* * * * *
They were gone, and the guests were departed. Aunt Juanita in her
wedding-gown of appalling magenta brocade and passamenterie, and Uncle
Bruce in his pepper-and-salt everyday suit, were gone off to their
room. There were left Cousin Maria Buxton, who was spending the night
and who had on her famous dress of Brussels lace that had done service
for ten years and so she claimed, was good to do it for ten more,
Selina of the pale, pale hair and paler green dress, Miss Boswell in
her silvery gray, and the servants in the background putting out lights
and gathering up napery and glass and silver from the scattered tables.
Cousin Maria who had insisted they all sit down for a breathing space
and a pow-wow over the evening, was full of gratulation over all points
of the affair but the groom. Here she stoutly proclaimed herself
pessimistic.
"Juanita's gone and so we can talk. Marcus has followed his own bent
ever since the hour she brought him into the world and returned to her
own engrossments. He personifies unthwarted, undeterred individuality.
The sort of thing they tell me young people are all beginning to clamor
for these days. I don't know myself; my own minded _me_ while they
were under _my_ roof, right or wrong; it was _my_ way. But to get back
to Marcus. Pocahontas is as adaptable as a person often is, but even
so----"
Miss Marcia Boswell, very pleasing in her charming gown, looked
undisturbed. "In the first place Pocahontas is probably the only person
in the world Marcus relies on to put him right. He's a wonderful idea
of her good taste and her judgment. As for Pocahontas, she's gone
about the world all her life. She was left by herself at school in
Switzerland the first time when she was eight years old. She generally
has a perfectly intelligent idea of what a situation demands of her.
And also of what she on her side demands of it. I wish most young
married people understood what they want as well as these two seem to.
Pocahontas and Marcus both see a future man of letters in Marcus. They
are entirely one in what they're planning on this basis in life."
When Selina went up to her room, she sat and thought about it all.
"Unthwarted and undeterred individuality!" This it was then in Marcus
which she had called selfishness! Was it selfishness, nevertheless,
under another name? Or was it the courage of a pronounced character?
And _were_ young people these days beginning to clamor for it? And was
it better or worse for them who secured it?
Selina sat and thought. She wanted, Oh, she wanted to find--truth.
* * * * *
Selina and her aunt and uncle went home the next day. She watched the
flying scene from the car window: the swirling, turbulent creek whose
rocky bed the track followed; the towering walls of limestone cliffs
mounting from the foaming, brawling water, their ledges white with
dogwood and rosy with red-bud and green like Selina's own pretty dress,
with the pale verdure of April.
Selina was nearing nineteen now. She watched this flying glory of
freshet and cliffs and April flowering, but her thoughts were with
Pocahontas whom she loved, and Marcus whom despite all she so resented.
If anyone had told her that day would come when the personal equation
as the factor, would have faded, and to recall this trip to Eadston
for the wedding would be to see tumbling waters, wild gray cliffs and
tender tints of April, she would have refuted it with young scorn.
She turned from the car window and spoke to her aunt. This person's
bonnet was over one ear, and her breastpin was unfastened and dangling,
but she looked at peace since the thing requiring all this recent
sacrifice of a trip to Eadston of her was over.
[Illustration: "She watched the flying scene from the car window."]
"Miss Boswell says Pocahontas stands ready to complement--that's
the word she used to you when she was talking about it this
morning--whatever Marcus chooses in life. She, not he, it seems. I
suppose the justification is that he considers he's got the talent to
be exploited and not she."
Aunt Juanita responded but absently. She'd done her part by her son's
wedding now, and was through with it, and it distracted her to have her
mind drawn any longer from her own affairs.
"Marcus has to go the way he feels driven, naturally. We all have to
if we're going to amount to any force at all. Selina," abruptly, "I
seem to recall in the prospectus of that school you went South to teach
in, and which Lavinia gave me to read, that you went down there to do
something or other secretarial?"
Selina changed countenance. It's hard to live down a false position,
apparently, but she wasn't going to have these assumptions hanging over
her any longer. "I know now that I didn't realize what it was I was
undertaking and agreed to it because I wanted so much to go. Why, Aunt
Juanita?"
"Mrs. Higginson and I are going to need some help. We're willing to
give a hundred dollars each to the advancing of the cause of women, for
printing, postage and some clerical assistance. That word secretarial
made me think about you. We'll probably need you and one or two more as
well, for a morning or so every week, directing envelopes and putting
stamps on. I plan to turn my library into working quarters."
"Will I do, Aunt Juanita?" anxiously. "I'd like to try. And I might ask
Maud and Juliette. What will we have to do?"
"Get together lists of the women we want to reach and their addresses."
Aunt Juanita was perfectly definite. "Direct and stamp circular reports
of what women through organization are doing elsewhere, mark articles
in the daily newspapers we'll have printed there and mail these like
the circulars. There's so much that might be done it's hard to decide
on just what _not_ to do. Aurelius," this to Uncle Bruce deep in his
newspaper on the seat in front of them, "I want a list of the women
in town who pay taxes on property in their own name." Then to Selina,
"We'll find more intelligence among these coming from tending to their
own affairs. We'll need it, too. There'll likely prove to be too few of
them to raise the general level of intelligence of the rest, woman of
the helpless, indeterminate kind I mean, your mother for example, and
Miss Ann Eliza, who don't know the first thing about their affairs and
are content not to know."
* * * * *
Their train pulled into the shed about eight in the evening. Selina was
in the care of her aunt and uncle, but nevertheless had a feeling that
some more especial escort of her own, say Culpepper, with whom she was
good friends again, or if not he, Tuttle Jones, would be there waiting
for her.
What she had not thought about was what happened. Tuttle and Culpepper
both were there, Tuttle at the gate talking to the gate-keeper,
Culpepper a moment late, as usual, hurrying up through the crowd. Oddly
enough he merely shook hands around, inquired if there was anything in
the way of baggage to look after, said good-bye curtly and left them.
Afterward Aunt Juanita spoke about it. "Now Selina, do be sensible,
if, being Lavinia's child, you can. Shutting your eyes to the obvious
is only patterning after the ostrich. It was perfectly patent those
two absurd young men there at the station were taking each other's
measure."
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The morning after Selina's return from Eadston she spoke to her mother
about her Aunt Juanita's proposal that she do some clerical work.
"It'll be for only a few weeks, but if she thinks I can do it, Mamma,
I'd like to try."
"Juanita has a wonderful head for just that sort of thing," said Mrs.
Wistar, impeccable little lady, sitting by her window stitching on a
petticoat for Selina, "hunting up lists and sorting people and poking
figures and facts at them when she's sorted them. I suppose she knows
what it's about. I must say I never have grasped it myself. And I do
wish she'd mend her clothes. The only concession she's ever made to
being a woman is curl-papers. I asked her once how it happened and she
said no doubt Hecuba, wife of Priam, had some weakness. I asked her who
Hecuba, wife of Priam, was, and she said she'd expected I'd ask just
that. Still I'd like you to know your aunt better by being thrown with
her. Juanita's a most excellent and high-minded person."
"She doesn't think as much of the rest of her sex," said Selina to this
stoutly. Wasn't Mamma defending Aunt Juanita who had criticized _her_?
"She says _you_ don't know the first thing about your affairs. What
does she mean? What affairs?"
"I should consider it an insult to your father if I thought I had to
know. I had five thousand dollars when I married, the same as she had.
It's this she means. She's always asking me where it is. I've never
sought to know." Mamma spoke virtuously, even proudly.
In the surprise of this knowledge of her mother's affluence, Selina
lost her head. "Five thousand dollars, Mamma! What became of it?"
"The tone of your question sounds like your aunt Juanita," severely,
"I've never asked."
Selina found herself suddenly turned stubborn. "Why didn't Papa tell
you? Why should you have to ask?"
Auntie came into the conversation. They had forgotten her sitting over
at the second window also stitching on a petticoat, also for Selina. It
was the one Selina had started for herself. It was the first of May,
and did they not, these two dear ladies, always endeavor to make Selina
two around of everything in underclothes and thus replenish her stock,
every April and May? Darling Auntie, who had acknowledged the meager
satisfaction of a life given up to stitching underclothes and polishing
brasses!
She was speaking. "Robert has always insisted on explaining and going
over business matters with me. I inherited the same as he did under
our father's will, you see, Selina. From the start he has regularly
brought me slips of paper written over with figures and those worrying
ditto marks. I listen while he goes over them, but when he goes I drop
'em in the fire. I know it's right if Robert says so."
Selina turned stubborn again. She felt unaccountably irritated. "Well,
I don't just see the merit in that, myself, Auntie. Somehow it doesn't
seem quite fair to Papa."
"Selina!" from her mother scandalized. "Do you realize what you are
saying? And _who_ you're talking to?"
* * * * *