PSYCHO-CARDIAC PROCESSES
Kitty was so pleased with her little party, and so interested in seeing
how many cheesecakes and hot scones the boys could eat ("There were four
dozen of them cakes, I counted as I laid them out," Sarepta announced
grimly at supper. "There's one apiece left for you two folks, and that's
_all_ there is. If I was their Mas, I'd give 'em a portion of physic and
put 'em to bed!") that she hardly noticed Judge Peters's quiet
departure. When the young people reluctantly followed a little later,
Kitty stood at the window of the Other Parlor, watching them with
shining eyes. Melissa and Bobby walked together; well, they had to, of
course, with that nice Myers boy so wrapped up in Nelly; dear Nelly!
Kitty was _so_ glad! But Bobby's back was really interested, his
shoulders _most_ attentive; and he did not once turn round to see if she
were standing at the window. He always had, up to now, though of course
she never let him see her. Now--of course he would walk home with Lissy;
and then--there was no train back to Corona before the eight-thirty--if
Lissy would only ask him in to supper!
"Because," said Kitty aloud, "you see, if one could make some one
else--some _two_ else--happy, perhaps it would not hurt so much; do you
think?"
Lissy _did_ ask him in to supper, in a rapture of wishfulness, in an
anguish of terror lest there should not be enough, lest he should not
like creamed fish and baked potatoes. Bobby hesitated, guessed the folks
were expecting him at home; caught the glance of the sweet brown eyes,
and yielded. There _was_ enough; the simple refection proved to be his
favorite supper. He ate as if cheesecakes and scones had never existed
for him; ate till Lissy glowed with delight over her own humming-bird's
portion; till even Mrs. Wibird felt a thin stream of cordiality stealing
through her poor chilly little heart, and fetched the plateful set aside
for Wilson, mentally promising him "a good scramble," which he really
liked better.
"Gee!" said Master Bobby, surveying the total residue of two prunes and
one molasses cooky, as he pushed his chair back; "I hope Wilse gets
supper with Uncle Marsh, Mrs. Wibird. I don't seem to have left much, do
I? Mother always says my legs are hollow!"
Still with that thread of warmth curling about her heart, Mrs. Wibird
hesitated a moment after leaving the table. For the first time (except a
brief space when Lissy had croup) her house of maternal instinct was
divided against itself. She had always sacrificed Lissy, as she had
herself, to every wish of her son's. Wilson was so particular, he had to
have things just so, or it went to his liver, and made him bilious! He
commonly occupied the sitting-room in the evening; he let her and
Melissa creep in with their sewing, and sit in the corner, but callers
disturbed him. Could she--_how_ could she?
She glanced at Bobby, cheerfully unconscious; then at her daughter,
flushing, fluttering, the meek little drudge transfigured for the
moment. Her own youth rose up within her and struck.
"You take Robert into the sitting-room, Lissy!" she said. "You can light
the stove if it's chilly. I'll wash the dishes; you go right along!"
Oh, blissful hour in the little stuffy sitting-room, which yet was
chilly this May evening! Oh, friendly blinking of that one red eye of
the baseburner stove! Bobby, comforted by supper, conscious of tender
sympathy fluttering by his side in the low rocking chair, waxed
confidential; told of college pranks, of contests on ball fields and on
the river. Lissy hung on his lips: her own were parted, her breath came
quick; she thought he must hear the beating of her heart. Her cries of
wonder and admiration warmed him still further. His voice dropped to a
lower note. It was awfully nice of Lissy to care. It was ripping to have
some one to talk to; he was awfully lonely sometimes! Bobby! Bobby! with
three sisters, all a-quiver to share the treasure of your heart--never
mind! These things must be.
"I've been awfully unhappy, too, lately!" said Bobby. "Nobody knows,
but----"
Out it all came! His love, his hopes, "seeing Tom was out of the
running, or so everybody said," his bitter disappointment. Out it all
poured in a flood; and little Lissy heard it all with tear-brimmed eyes,
with clasped hands, and soft ejaculations of pity, of sympathy, of
wonder that was almost anger. How could Kitty? How _could_ she?
"But it is all over now!" Bobby rose and straightened his shoulders
manfully. "Of course there will never be any one like her in the world,
but I promised I would never say anything more, and I never will. As she
says, there's lots to life even if one isn't happy; and she thinks we
ought not to stand for kicking because things are the way they are: not
that she put it just that way. And I shall be real glad to have you for
a sister, Lissy, and I'll tell you everything. You must tell me things,
too!" Mr. Chanter added as an afterthought, reaching for his hat. "I'm
sure you must have lots of things; good-night, Lissy!"
He took her hand; hesitated a moment, and then took the other.
"Good-night, Sister Lissy! What soft little hands you have! What makes
them shake so? I mustn't keep you standing here in the cold!"
Still he hesitated, holding the little hands in his. How they trembled!
How they seemed to nestle in his! Kitty shook hands like another chap:
her wrists were like steel. Well, of course, driving that way, she had
to be strong. It was very pleasant to hold the little trembling hands;
if they were to be brother and sister--perhaps? The girls were always
bothering him to kiss them--Bobby decided it would be "too cheeky for
the first time," and finally departed, warmer about the heart than he
had felt since Madam Flynt's party.
And Melissa? I believe her little cold attic glowed that night with all
the warmth and light of paradise, and that she went to sleep lulled by
the sound of silver bells.
Kitty turned away happily from her window, and crossed the hall to the
sitting-room, humming under her breath.
"What _is_ that tune you are forever humming, child?" Miss Johanna looked
up from her knitting.
"'The Duke of Lee?' Oh, it's an old, old English song and dance. Mother
used to sing it, don't you remember? And Tommy and I used to dance it:
he was the Duke of Lee, and I was the gentlewoman of high qualitee.
Surely you remember! How handsome you look, Aunt Johanna!"
"Fiddlededee!" said Aunt Johanna; she got up and poked the fire. It was
true none the less. The lady was slightly flushed; her dark eyes were
very bright; the purple broadcloth, with touches of gold about the
bodice, was extremely becoming; certainly she was a handsome woman.
"It's true!" said Kitty. "Just look in the glass and see if it isn't! I
wonder the dear Judge managed to go at all, with you looking so, and the
violets smelling so, and the fire crackling so, and--he might have
waited to see me!" Kitty was hovering over the bowl of violets, drawing
deep breaths of fragrance. "Business, Sarepta said. Nothing wrong, I
hope, Auntie?"
"N-no!" said Miss Johanna, slowly and meditatively. "Nothing precisely
wrong that I know of. Nothing half as wrong as this knitting!" she added
briskly. "Come here, child! You and Sarepta Darwin together having
accomplished this atrocity of teaching me to knit, are bound to see me
through. I seem to have done something queer here!"
Kitty sat down beside her on the leather sofa, and for some minutes both
were absorbed in the mysteries of purling, compared with which, Miss
Johanna declared, those of Eleusis were kindergarten play.
"That's a ridiculous tune!" she remarked presently. "It keeps jigging
through my head so, I can't keep my feet still. So you used to dance it
with Tommy Lee. Tommy was a nice boy; I always liked him. Do you ever
hear from him, Kitty?"
"No," said Kitty quietly. "I believe he is doing very well--Mr. Chanter
heard of him last winter from a friend who had met him in the West--but
I don't know that any one has heard directly."
She did not add that, according to Cissy Sharpe, "they claimed" that Tom
Lee had married the widow of a cattle king, and was spending millions on
a marble palace overlooking the Golden Gate; she did not believe this,
but it hurt, somehow. If he would only write a line; a postal card even!
Cissy had heard it in Tinkham; she fixed greedy eyes on Kitty as she
spoke. Millions of money, they claimed! A handsome woman, ten years
older than what he was. She presumed Kitty knew more about it than what
she did; ha! ha!
"There!" Kitty handed Miss Johanna her knitting and took up her own.
"That's all clear, dear. Now knit straight on, ten rows, and then I'll
show you about the neck."
A long silence followed, broken only by clicking needles and purring
fire. Presently Miss Johanna spoke, abruptly:
"Elderly marriages are _ridiculous_! Grandpa Westcott to the contrary
notwithstanding. _Ridiculous!_"
Kitty started, then looked up wondering. "Are they?" she said vaguely.
"And what about Grandpa Westcott, Aunt Johanna?"
Miss Johanna looked a little confused. "My dear," she said, "I was just
thinking aloud. I was in a referee, as old Mr. Weller says. Nothing of
importance; and then I thought of Grandpa Westcott; that's all!"
"Did he elderly marry?" Kitty roused herself with a little effort. _If
it were true, what did anything else matter?_ But that was no reason why
she should be an unsociable curmudgeon.
"Tell me about him, Aunt Jo! dear Father never had time to tell me
family stories, and blessed Mother didn't know them, I suppose. Let's
have a good tell now!"
She looked up brightly. Miss Johanna returned the smile, not quite with
her usual crisp composure. Her fine eyebrows lifted and knitted in a
curious little way they had when she was disturbed; her laugh rang not
wholly clear.
"I certainly cannot leave you in ignorance about Grandpa Westcott's
third marriage!" she said. "I wonder at John; but he never cared about
Family. Little White Lily didn't know, of course. _Her_ grandfather was
an archangel and her grandmother a seraph; good gracious! Suppose Egeria
should hear me! Well, my dear, you shall have your 'tell'; I have
brought it upon myself."
Miss Johanna paused to pick up a brand with the tongs and lay it
carefully on top of the back-log. Kitty, turning the heel of her
stocking, prepared for a pleasant season. She loved "tells," and Aunt
Johanna was the ideal story-teller.
"Grandpa Westcott," the lady began, "my great, your great-great, was one
of the best men that ever lived. I remember him well; tall, dignified,
handsome: the only person I ever saw in a queue. He had had two wives,
both patterns in every way. The first--she was a Siddall of Trimount,
and a Beauty--the Stuart portrait--had no children and died young. The
second was my grandmother, Katharine Turner; you are named for her, of
course, and you look like her. She was not altogether plain, either,"
said Miss Johanna dryly, with a glance at the lovely face that smiled
down from the wall in an exquisite pastel. "She had four children and
lived to see them all grown up and settled in life, and to be the
delight of her grandchildren's hearts. Then, when she was sixty and
Grandpa seventy, she died quite suddenly, and Grandpa went all to
pieces. Naturally! he was a very affectionate man, and for fifty years
he had been told every day what to eat, drink and avoid, what shirt to
put on, and where his socks were. More than that, he had been _listened
to_, which is the most necessary thing for a man. He mourned and he
moaned, he moaned and he mourned, till at last old Delia, who had been
with him thirty of the fifty years, sent to the City for Uncle Doctor. I
can just remember old Delia. She had large white teeth, and used to let
me scribble on them with a pencil: _horrid_ child! She sang old Irish
songs as no one else ever did: I wish you could have heard her sing,
'Irish Molly O!'"
Miss Johanna broke off to sing, in a high, clear little voice:
"'She's galliant, she's beautiful,
She's the fairest one I know;
She's the primrose of Ireland,
All for my guinea, oh!
And the only one entices me
Is Irish Molly O,
Molly O!'
"Well! So Delia sent for Uncle Doctor, and he came. 'Mr. Doctor,' she
said, 'your Da is looking for his dead clo'es. If you don't find a woman
for him to marry, I'll have to marry him myself, and fine I'd look
cocking in the parlor, d'ye see?"
"'Bless my soul!' says Uncle Doctor, 'I see. I'll attend to it, Delia.'
"So Delia went back to her pots and pans, and Uncle Doctor, after
thinking a little, went down the street and called on Aunt Elizabeth.
Aunt Elizabeth was Grandma's sister; they were like a pair of gloves,
only she was a single woman.
"'Auntie,'" says Uncle Doctor, 'would you mind marrying Father?'
"'Bless my soul, Nathaniel!' says Aunt Elizabeth. So he told her what
Delia said, and they talked it over. She was a sensible woman and fond
of Grandpa. By and by, back he goes to Grandpa. 'Father,' he says, 'I
want you to put on your hat and go down street and ask Aunt Elizabeth to
marry you.'
"'_Bless my soul!_' says Grandpa. 'She wouldn't have me, Nathaniel!'
"'I think she would,' says Uncle Doctor.
"'And what would Katharine say?' says Grandpa.
"'She would say, "Put on your hat, and _don't forget your muffler_."'
"So Uncle Doctor put on the hat and muffler for him and saw him out of
the door, headed down street; and he and Aunt Elizabeth were married
next day, and had ten happy years together. So there is _that_."
Miss Johanna rolled up her knitting briskly, and rose from her seat.
"But one swallow doesn't make a summer, Kitty, and one pair of old f--
of dear old things doesn't make folly the less foolish. I am going
upstairs, my dear. If you are watering the plants, you might just change
the water for those violets: they are drooping a little."
"Dear things! so they are!" Kitty rose, too, and bent lovingly over the
bowl. "The new ones are due to-morrow, aren't they, Auntie?"
"I don't know anything about the new ones!"
Miss Johanna spoke rather snappishly from the door.
"We may all be dead to-morrow, and very likely the best thing for us.
They would be nice for our funerals!" she added rather enigmatically
from the stairs: and the door of the Red Indian Room closed shortly
behind her.
Judge Peters seemed to have a good deal of business to transact with
Miss Johanna. He came regularly once a week, almost always during the
hour of Madam Flynt's drive. This puzzled Kitty, used all her life to
being the Judge's pet and playmate. He could not be vexed with her, for
his smile and greeting when they met was as affectionate as ever, even
more so perhaps. He pressed her hand very tenderly on the steps one day,
and said, "God bless you, my dear child!" in a way that brought the
tears to Kitty's eyes. Yet he never came to see _her_ nowadays!
"I do hope Aunt Johanna's business is all right!" she said to Madam
Flynt one day, when that lady had brought her in after the drive for a
little visit.
"I hope so!" said Madam Flynt. "Why shouldn't it be? Johanna is an
excellent woman of business, I have always heard."
"Oh, it's only--well, Judge Peters comes pretty often, and--it may be
all my imagination, but she seems rather troubled sometimes after he is
gone. I ought not to speak of this, perhaps, but--Mother always used to
come to you, didn't she, Madam Flynt?"
Madam Flynt took off her gold spectacles to wipe her eyes.
"She did, my dear. That sweetest flower of all the world used to bring
her little troubles to me: she never had any big ones, bless her! she
didn't like to bother John about the price of butter, she said. She
called me her Cousin Confessor; as if she ever had anything to confess!
But about Johanna--wait a moment, my dear!"
The door opened, and Miss Croly appeared with the inevitable milk
posset.
"I will take it in ten minutes, Cornelia. I am busy now."
"It is the regular hour----" Miss Croly began mildly; but she was cut
short.
"I will take it in ten minutes!" Madam Flynt raised her voice, a rare
thing with her. "There is a gazelle in the garden, Cornelia!"
Miss Croly vanished without a word. Kitty opened wondering eyes; Madam
Flynt waved her hand.
"She understands. We have our private code, my dear. Though exasperating
at times, Cornelia Croly is no fool. She will be back in ten minutes.
Kitty, my child----" Madam Flynt spoke with kindly emphasis--"don't be
disturbed about your Aunt Johanna and the Judge. They know each other
like two old shoes."
"Of course! I was only afraid----"
"You needn't be afraid. You would be glad, I should think, wouldn't you?
Edward Peters is the very salt of the earth, and he has been in love
with her all his life. It's the Cyrus way!" Madam Flynt added rather
pettishly. "One-idea'd people: that's why they are mostly spinsters and
bachelors. _Well_, Kitty! What is it?"
Kitty had risen from her low stool, pale and wide-eyed.
"You don't mean," she faltered; "Madam Flynt, you cannot mean that
they----"
Madam Flynt nodded her cap-ribbons into a perfect dance of triumph. "I
mean that they are probably going to marry each other," she announced.
"I certainly hope they are! Why upon earth shouldn't they? Kitty, do you
suppose the affections run down like a clock if they are not wound up in
the early twenties? Nothing of the sort! A man of sixty needs a wife as
much as a boy of twenty; more, in many cases! And if ever," she added
emphatically, "a woman needed a sensible man to take care of her, and
keep the bees out of her bonnet, that woman is Johanna Ross! There! Give
me a kiss, my dear, and then run along, and tell Cornelia Croly, as you
go, that she may bring in her noxious draught. She doesn't sleep at
night if I don't take it regularly. Most exasperating woman--and,
Kitty!" she called the girl back to add impressively; "if you meet your
Uncle Edward on the steps to-day give _him_ a kiss, and tell him you are
thankful for your mercies!"
Was Madam Flynt in league with Occult Powers? An already sufficiently
bewildered Kitty did meet Judge Peters on the steps, just coming out of
Ross House. Some strong emotion had broken up his usual courtly calm;
his face was suffused, his eyes shone.
"Kitty!" he cried. "Kitty, I----" He bent and kissed her forehead. "She
will tell you!" he murmured, with a gesture toward the house.
"Blessed,-blessed----" He waved his hand, almost (poor Kitty thought)
like Mr. Jordano, and departed with long, hasty strides.
Kitty hesitated a moment at the sitting-room door, dreading she hardly
knew what. Strong emotions shook her like a leaf in these days, she did
not ask herself why.
"Foolish creature!" she murmured.
She need have had no fear; Miss Johanna was pale, and her eyes showed
traces of tears, but she was entirely calm.
"Sit down, Kitty, my dear!" she said. "Here, by me, on the sofa. I have
something to tell you. Do you remember my quoting Peggotty the other
day? Barkis was willin', you know, and David didn't understand the
message; 'Drat the man! he wants to marry me,' said Peggotty. Well, my
child, drat the Judge, he wants to marry me! I haven't spoken of it
before, because if I had decided to say no, there would have been no
occasion; but he is the most obstinate man I ever saw, in his quiet way;
so--I have said yes, Kitty. I told you, didn't I, it is he who has sent
the violets all these years? You needn't smother me, my dear!"
Kitty had her in her arms, exclaiming, caressing, laughing and crying,
all at once.
"Auntie! Darling, wicked, deceitful Auntie! What a blind bat I have
been! I was afraid--oh! I am so glad, so glad! But you always said you
didn't know who sent them."
"I didn't--exactly--_know_! I only felt at the back of my head that it
was probably Edward; he is that kind of faithful, doggy person. It's
perfectly ridiculous, as I said. And--_my stars_!" Miss Johanna was all
in a moment her crispest, most incisive self. "There is no possible
thing that a woman of fifty can be married in except gray or lavender,
and I look like a blown-out tallow dip in either of 'em. Run after him,
Kitty, and tell him I've changed my mind!"