PRIDE AND PENELOPE
Aunt Edie and Uncle Jimmie and Jacqueline didn't leave The Chimnies
quite at crack of dawn, but they did really sit down to breakfast at
five minutes after seven.
Early as it was, Jacqueline had been up already for half an hour. She
had dressed herself in a jumper of wood brown jersey, and a frilled
blouse of white silk, with an orange colored tie. She had put some last
things into her suitcase, which would go in Uncle Jimmie's car. Her
trunk, which Aunt Edie and Sallie had packed the night before, would go
by express straight to the steamer.
When her packing was done, she left her brown cape coat, with its
buttons of pressed leather, and her little soft motor hat of brown,
stitched with orange, lying on the bed with her precious vanity bag, and
she slipped down the back-stairs into the kitchen. She had been there
once before, you'll remember.
Hannah was mixing batter, and the waffle iron was steaming on the stove.
"So you're the young one that really belongs here, are you?" boomed
Hannah. "Well, I never did, in all my born days!"
She didn't say what it was she never did, and Jacqueline thought it
tactful not to ask her. She meant to be very tactful, all the rest of
her life!
Just then Sallie came out from the dining room, on her way to get
chilled water and unsalted butter from the ice-chest. At sight of
Jacqueline she began to giggle.
"Say," cried Sallie, "if _you'd_ been here all summer, I guess things
wouldn't have gone fast, nor nothing."
Jacqueline grinned in acknowledgment of the compliment, but rather
sheepishly.
"I want to give you back your dime," she said.
"Oh, shucks!" cried Sallie, reddening.
"Honest, I do," Jacqueline repeated earnestly. "I shouldn't have taken
it, just for stepping up to the store to help you out, but I'll say I
needed the money something awful."
"I'll say you must have!" chuckled Sallie.
"I'm keeping the twenty-five cents," Jacqueline went on. "My Aunt Edie
says she's going to frame it, 'cause it's the first money I ever earned,
and Uncle Jimmie says probably it'll be the last. But the dime's in this
envelope for you--and here's an envelope for Hannah--and I was ever so
much obliged for the milk."
She fairly mumbled the last words, as she put the two creamy envelopes,
marked Sallie and Hannah, on the table, and then she fled. In each
envelope there was a dollar bill, besides the dime in Sallie's envelope.
Jacqueline had found two dollars in the purse in her vanity bag. All
that summer Caroline must have scrupulously left the money untouched.
Breakfast at The Chimnies that morning was a rather hectic meal. Cousin
Penelope was very silent. Once her eyes traveled from Jacqueline to the
picture of Great-aunt Joanna that hung on the wall behind her.
Great-aunt Joanna was the austere lady in the cap, you will remember,
that Cousin Penelope had said Caroline looked like, when she believed
that Caroline was Jacqueline. Now when Cousin Penelope looked at
Great-aunt Joanna she positively choked over her soft roll, and had to
leave the table.
Aunt Eunice saw that every one had plenty of coffee and waffles and
scrambled eggs and crisp bacon. But she scarcely ate at all herself. As
for Aunt Edie, she was worried for fear she had mislaid her trunk-key,
and for fear that Jacqueline had hopelessly upset everybody, and she was
more fluttery and helpless than ever. But Uncle Jimmie was calm and
good-humored. He had said his say the night before. Now with him
by-gones were by-gones, and he was friends all round, even with his
troublesome niece-by-marriage.
When the good-bys at last were hurriedly and briefly said, Jacqueline
hopped down the steps of the porch, holding to Uncle Jimmie's hand, and
scrambled up in front beside the driver's seat. Aunt Edie was
established in the tonneau, with rugs and cushions. She meant to sleep
clear to New Haven, she said. Uncle Jimmie slipped his long legs under
the steering wheel beside Jacqueline and as he put the car in gear,
grinned at her, in his old comradely fashion.
It was a radiant little face, under the brown and orange hat, that
Jacqueline showed to Aunt Eunice, as she waved farewell to The Chimnies
and to Longmeadow, and it was with a little half-smile that Aunt Eunice,
on the broad porch, turned to Cousin Penelope.
"I'm glad she's gone off happy," said Aunt Eunice. "She's a bright
little thing, and you must admit it was plucky of her to stick it out at
the farm, and let the other child have a happy summer here. Fine of her,
too, with every one condemning, to take the whole blame on herself. That
was so like her father!"
"I don't see it," Cousin Penelope spoke in a hard voice. "She's not one
bit a Gildersleeve. She's a bold, forward, underbred child--Delane,
every inch of her."
Aunt Eunice didn't retort, as well she might have:
"The Delanes, to judge by 'Aunt Edie,' are fair-haired and gray-eyed and
small, while Jacqueline is brunette and big-boned, like all the
Gildersleeves."
Old women are often wise women, so Aunt Eunice merely said:
"She's a pretty child, and I'm sure we should have come to like her, but
I'm glad," she added, with a little catch in her voice, "that she
happened to pick a dress that the other one had never worn here."
Cousin Penelope shivered.
"It's shockingly chilly on the porch," she spoke brusquely. "Let's go
into the house."
They crossed the threshold, into the cool, dim hall.
"How quiet the house is!" Aunt Eunice exclaimed.
They looked at each other and quickly averted their eyes.
There is a good deal for people to do, when they come home after weeks
of absence. Aunt Eunice and Cousin Penelope each had her own affairs to
attend to, in the house and the garden. They managed to see no more of
each other until they sat down to luncheon, just the two of them, in the
big dining-room.
"I called up Martha Conway this morning," Aunt Eunice spoke, in one of
the many pauses that fell between them. A little flush--was it shame or
defiance?--was in her withered cheeks. "I wanted to know how the little
girl was, after her long walk, and all the excitement."
Penelope's eyes traveled to the picture of Great-aunt Joanna. Her face
flushed redder than Aunt Eunice's.
"Bad blood will always tell in the long run," she said bitterly. "To
think of that child's deceiving us all summer, and then leaving us like
that--after all we had done for her--and without a word!"
"She left a letter for me, remember, Penelope."
The red patches in Penelope's cheeks were throbbing. Actually if she had
been a child, you might have thought she was going to cry.
"I don't want to _see_ her letter," she snapped.
"It's on the desk in the library," Aunt Eunice told her placidly.
If you'll believe it, Aunt Eunice never went near the library all that
afternoon. Whether or not Penelope went there, only Penelope herself
knew, and she never told. Indeed there was little talk of any sort that
night at dinner, and when Penelope spoke at last, this was what she
said:
"I believe we'd better rehang these pictures. I'm really tired of
looking at Great-aunt Joanna. I think she's badly painted, rather.
Especially the nose and the eyebrows."
"Why not change your seat?" Aunt Eunice suggested gently.
It was very quiet in the house, as Penelope had said. All the quieter
because Penelope did not touch the piano. She said she was sure it was
out of tune. But the stillness of the house was broken next afternoon,
when Mrs. Wheeler Trowbridge and Mrs. Francis Holden came to call.
They had heard the story of the turned-about girls. Hadn't all
Longmeadow heard it in one form or another and nothing lost in the
telling? They were very sympathetic with Aunt Eunice and Cousin
Penelope, on whom two sly children had played such a disgraceful,
downright wicked trick, and they gave them long accounts of how they
themselves managed their children, who never were guilty of any
naughtiness.
"Cats!" said Penelope after the callers had gone. She was not in the
habit of so far losing control of herself as to call people names, but
she had neither eaten nor slept as she should in the last hours. "I
simply cannot stand these visits of condolence. I'm going to Boston
to-morrow for a couple of days. Will you come with me, Mother?"
"I've just got home," Aunt Eunice answered, after a moment. "I don't
think I'll go jaunting again so soon."
"You'll be rather--lonely here, won't you?" said Penelope. She hesitated
a second, then she spoke quickly, and without looking at her mother.
"Why don't you send for that child to make you a little visit? You know
you're dying to see her again."
They looked at each other, and suddenly Aunt Eunice's old face, that
seemed so soft, was a grim mask of obstinacy.
"No, Penelope," she said. "She's not coming into this house on any
little visit. She's had the wrench of leaving here once--and once is
enough. She's got to forget us, and forget The Chimnies. It's the
kindest way."
"Yes, of course," Penelope agreed haughtily. "I spoke on impulse--a very
foolish impulse."
Aunt Eunice smiled, but so fleetingly that Penelope, brooding on her own
thoughts, never marked it.
Penelope went to the city and was gone a day, and a night, and most of
another day. She came home with a lot of boxes. She had done a little
shopping, she said. There was much to talk about that night at
dinner--relatives that Penelope had seen in Boston, and new things in
the shops. Penelope talked quite gayly, perhaps because her seat at
table had been changed, and she no longer had to face the mocking eyes
of Great-aunt Joanna, who like all Longmeadow, she felt, was laughing at
her, and with reason!
Over the coffee in the library, by the soft light of the candles, Aunt
Eunice at last began in her turn to tell what she had been doing. She
had been to tea yesterday at the Holdens. She had attended a meeting of
the Sewing Guild that afternoon.
"And last evening," she ended mildly, "I had Martha Conway here for a
good long talk."
"Oh!" said Penelope, with a queer smile. "While the cat's away, Mother?
Well--how's that niece of hers?"
Aunt Eunice stirred her coffee attentively.
"Little Caroline's mother seems to have been an exceptionally fine
woman," she said at length. "One could see that from the child's pretty
ways. Quite gifted musically, too. There are no near relatives on the
mother's side. On the father's side Martha is the child's nearest of
kin, and her guardian. Martha has all she can do to provide for her own
children, and the two babies she's already taken. She's a good woman if
ever there was one! She'll do the best she can for Caroline, but she
wouldn't stand in the child's light, and indeed I think she'd be
relieved if some one else----"
Penelope laughed outright, and there was something very like relief in
her laughter.
"You blessed old schemer!" she said. "Why don't you do what you've been
pining to do ever since the little girl went out of this house? Have her
here to stay--indefinitely."
Aunt Eunice smiled, but she shook her head.
"Martha Conway is as set as I am against any idea of visits," she said.
"It's not fair to the child to accustom her to our way of living, and
then at seventeen or eighteen turn her off, untrained, to take care of
herself."
There was silence--silence in which the very room seemed to wait for a
decision on which lives depended. Then Penelope rose to her feet.
"If you'll excuse me," she said, in an aloof voice, "I'm going up to bed
early. Really, this Boston trip has quite fagged me out."
She went away to her room--the room next to the green and golden nest
where Caroline had lain so many nights, and been so happy. Whether she
read or wrote or merely sat with her own thoughts, nobody knows. At any
rate she didn't sleep as she had said she should.
About eleven o'clock that same night when Aunt Eunice, in her soft
dressing-sack of gray and golden crêpe, with a lacy cap on her white
hair, sat propped up in her bed, reading (if you'll believe it!) "Alice
in the Looking Glass," there came a knock at her door. When Aunt Eunice
called: "Come in!" Penelope herself trailed into the room.
Penelope had on the lavender dressing-gown that Caroline loved her in.
Her face was quite pale, and her eyes looked big, but rather starlike.
She came and stood at the foot of the big mahogany bed, with its four
pillars, and facing Aunt Eunice, spoke breathlessly:
"Mother, I wouldn't for the world stand in the way of what would give
_you_ happiness. After all, this little Caroline comes of good honest
Longmeadow blood on her father's side, and her mother seems to have been
more than all right. And the child is gifted--no doubt about that. You
should hear Woleski rave over her. So you go ahead and adopt her,
Mother! Don't mind _me_. I'm sure I shan't ever raise the slightest
objection."
Aunt Eunice looked down at the passage she had been reading in her book.
It was the place where Alice reaches the lovely garden, where she wishes
to be, simply by walking away from it. Aunt Eunice thought very highly
of "Alice in the Looking Glass." She called it the work of a
philosopher, and an excellent rule of conduct. She closed the book
carefully, over her finger that still kept the place.
"Adopting a child isn't like adopting a puppy or a kitten," she spoke
musingly. "It's a responsibility, and one shouldn't undertake it, unless
one is pretty sure of seeing it through. Now I'm seventy-one, and when I
go, there's no way of my providing for Caroline. Our property is
trusteed, as you know, and when I'm done with it, it's absolutely yours,
to do with as you please."
They looked at each other, the two of them. Then Penelope cried
passionately:
"But I _won't_ adopt her, Mother. I _can't_! After what I've said of the
Meadows children--after what every one has heard me say--all my life. My
pride wouldn't _let_ me!
"Oh, Penelope!" The words on Aunt Eunice's lips were just a breath of
pain.
"Well, say it--say it!" Penelope cried, in a breaking voice. "Isn't it
what I'm saying to myself? If it hadn't been for my pride, years ago--if
I'd taken back some silly words I never meant--Jack would have stayed in
Longmeadow--Jack would have married me."
"Penelope--my baby!" Aunt Eunice cried the words in amazement and in
pity.
"Didn't you know--didn't you ever guess?" Penelope's voice was no more
than a whisper. "That was why he went. I drove away the only man I
loved--and if I could do that--for pride, and nothing else--I can put
this wretched child out of my heart--and I'll do it, I tell you, I'll do
it, even if it _kills_ me!"