One Wednesday in June Sherman arrived home an hour earlier than
usual from his office, as his wont was the first Wednesday in every
month, on which day his mother was at home to her friends. They had
not many callers. To-day there was no one as yet but a badly-dressed
old lady his mother had picked up he knew not where. She had been
looking at his photograph album, and recalling names and dates
from her own prosperous times. As she went out Miss Leland came in.
She gave the old lady in passing a critical look that made the poor
creature very conscious of a threadbare mantle, and went over to Mrs.
Sherman, holding out both hands. Sherman, who knew all his mother’s
peculiarities, noticed on her side a slight coldness; perhaps she did
not altogether like this beautiful dragon-fly.
‘I have come,’ said Miss Leland, ‘to tell John that he must learn to
paint. Music and society are not enough. There is nothing like art to
give refinement.’ Then turning to John Sherman--‘My dear, I will make
you quite different. You are a dreadful barbarian, you know.’
‘What ails me, Margaret?’
‘Just look at that necktie! Nothing shows a man’s cultivation like
his necktie! Then your reading! You never read anything but old books
nobody wants to talk about. I will lend you three everyone has read
this month. You really must acquire small talk and change your necktie.’
Presently she noticed the photograph-book lying open on a chair.
‘Oh!’ she cried, ‘I must have another look at John’s beauties.’
It was a habit of his to gather all manner of pretty faces. It came
from incipient old bachelorhood, perhaps.
Margaret criticised each photograph in turn with, ‘Ah! she looks as if
she had some life in her!’ or ‘I do not like your sleepy eyelids,’ or
some such phrase. The mere relations were passed by without a word. One
face occurred several times--a quiet face. As Margaret came on this one
for the third time, Mrs. Sherman, who seemed a little resentful about
something, said: ‘That is his friend, Mary Carton.’
‘He told me about her. He has a book she gave him. So that is she? How
interesting! I pity these poor country people. It must be hard to keep
from getting stupid.’
‘My friend is not at all stupid,’ said Sherman.
‘Does she speak with a brogue? I remember you told me she was very
good. It must be difficult to keep from talking platitudes when one is
very good.’
‘You are quite wrong about her. You would like her very much,’ he
replied.
‘She is one of those people, I suppose, who can only talk about their
relatives, or their families, or about their friends’ children: how
this one has got the whooping-cough, and this one is getting well of
the measles!’ She kept swaying one of the leaves between her finger
and thumb impatiently. ‘What a strange way she does her hair; and what
an ugly dress!’
‘You must not talk that way about her--she is my great friend.’
‘Friend! friend!’ she burst out. ‘He thinks I will believe in
friendship between a man and a woman!’
She got up, and said, turning round with an air of changing the
subject, ‘Have you written to your friends about our engagement? You
had not done so when I asked you lately.’
‘I have.’
‘All?’
‘Well, not all.’
‘Your great friend, Miss —— what do you call her?’
‘Miss Carton. I have not written to her.’
She tapped impatiently with her foot.
‘They were really old companions--that is all,’ said Mrs. Sherman,
wishing to mend matters. ‘They were both readers; that brought them
together. I never much fancied her. Yet she was well enough as a
friend, and helped, maybe, with reading, and the gardening, and
his good bringing-up, to keep him from the idle young men of the
neighbourhood.’
‘You must make him write and tell her at once--you must, you must!’
almost sobbed out Miss Leland.
‘I promise,’ he answered.
Immediately returning to herself, she cried, ‘If I were in her place
I know what I would like to do when I got the letter. I know who I
would like to kill!’--this with a laugh as she went over and looked at
herself in the mirror on the mantlepiece.