Produced by David Edwards, Emmy and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT
AND OTHER STORIES
[Illustration]
BY
ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL
A Christmas Accident
STORIES BY
ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL
[Illustration: Leaf]
A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT AND OTHER
STORIES. 16mo. Cloth $1.00
ROD'S SALVATION AND OTHER STORIES.
16mo. Cloth 1.00
A CAPE COD WEEK. 16mo. Cloth 1.00
MISTRESS CONTENT CRADOCK.
Cloth. 16mo. 1.00
[Illustration: Leaf]
A. S. BARNES & CO., PUBLISHERS,
_New York_.
A Christmas Accident
_And Other Stories_
By
Annie Eliot Trumbull
Author of "White Birches," "A Masque of Culture," etc.
[Illustration: Emblem]
New York
A. S. Barnes and Company
1900
_Copyright, 1897_,
BY A. S. BARNES AND COMPANY.
=University Press:=
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
OF the stories included in this volume, the first originally appeared in
the _Hartford Courant_; "After--the Deluge," in the _Atlantic Monthly_;
"Mary A. Twining," in the _Home Maker_; "A Postlude" and "Her Neighbor's
Landmark," in the _Outlook_; "The 'Daily Morning Chronicle,'" in _The
New England Magazine_; and "Hearts Unfortified," in _McClure's
Magazine_. To the courtesy of the editors of these periodicals I am
indebted for permission to reprint them.
A. E. T.
Contents
Page
A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT 1
AFTER--THE DELUGE 32
MEMOIR OF MARY TWINING 67
A POSTLUDE 99
THE "DAILY MORNING CHRONICLE" 139
HEARTS UNFORTIFIED 177
HER NEIGHBOR'S LANDMARK 210
A Christmas Accident
[Illustration: Leaf]
AT first the two yards were as much alike as the two houses, each house
being the exact copy of the other. They were just two of those little
red brick dwellings that one is always seeing side by side in the
outskirts of a city, and looking as if the occupants must be alike too.
But these two families were quite different. Mr. Gilton, who lived in
one, was a pretty cross sort of man, and was quite well-to-do, as cross
people sometimes are. He and his wife lived alone, and they did not have
much going out and coming in, either. Mrs. Gilton would have liked more
of it, but she had given up thinking about it, for her husband had said
so many times that it was women's tomfoolery to want to have people,
whom you weren't anything to and who weren't anything to you, ringing
your doorbell all the time and bothering around in your
dining-room,--which of course it was; and she would have believed it if
a woman ever did believe anything a man says a great many times.
In the other house there were five children, and, as Mr. Gilton said,
they made too large a family, and they ought to have gone somewhere
else. Possibly they would have gone had it not been for the fence; but
when Mr. Gilton put it up and Mr. Bilton told him it was three inches
too far on his land, and Mr. Gilton said he could go to law about it,
expressing the idea forcibly, Mr. Bilton was foolish enough to take his
advice. The decision went against him, and a good deal of his money went
with it, for it was a long, teasing lawsuit, and instead of being three
inches of made ground it might have been three degrees of the Arctic
Circle for the trouble there was in getting at it. So Mr. Bilton had to
stay where he was.
It was then that the yards began to take on those little differences
that soon grew to be very marked. Neither family would plant any vines
because they would have been certain to heedlessly beautify the other
side, and consequently the fence, in all its primitive boldness, stood
out uncompromisingly, and the one or two little bits of trees grew
carefully on the farther side of the enclosure so as not to be mixed up
in the trouble at all. But Mr. Gilton's grass was cut smoothly by the
man who made the fires, while Mr. Bilton only found a chance to cut his
himself once in two weeks. Then, by and by, Mr. Gilton bought a red
garden bench and put it under the tree that was nearest to the fence. No
one ever went out and sat on it, to be sure, but to the Bilton children
it represented the visible flush of prosperity. Particularly was Cora
Cordelia wont to peer through the fence and gaze upon that red bench,
thinking it a charming place in which to play house, ignorant of the
fact that much of the red paint would have come off on her back. Cora
Cordelia was the youngest of the five. All the rest had very simple
names,--John, Walter, Fanny, and Susan,--but when it came to Cora
Cordelia, luxuries were beginning to get very scarce in the Bilton
family, and Mrs. Bilton felt that she must make up for it by being
lavish, in one direction or another. She had wished to name Fanny, Cora,
and Susan, Cordelia, but she had yielded to her husband, and called one
after his mother and one after herself, and then gave both her favorite
names to the youngest of all. Cora Cordelia was a pretty little girl,
prettier even than both her names put together.
After the red bench came a quicksilver ball, that was put in the middle
of the yard and reflected all the glory of its owner, albeit in a
somewhat distorted form. This effort of human ingenuity filled the
Bilton children with admiration bordering on awe; Cora Cordelia spent
hours gazing at it, until called in and reproved by her mother for
admiring so much things she could not afford to have. After this, she
only admired it covertly.
Small distinctions like these barbed the arrows of contrast and
comparison and kept the disadvantages of neighborhood ever present.
Then, it was a constant annoyance to have their surnames so much alike.
Matters were made more unpleasant by mistakes of the butcher, the
grocer, and so on,--Gilton, 79 Holmes Avenue, was so much like Bilton,
77 Holmes Avenue. Gilton changed his butcher every time he sent his
dinner to Bilton; and though the mistakes were generally rectified,
neither of the two families ever forgot the time the Biltons ate,
positively ate, the Gilton dinner, under a misapprehension. Mrs. Bilton
apologized, and Mrs. Gilton boldly told her husband that she was glad
they'd had it, and she hoped they'd enjoyed it, which only made matters
worse; and altogether it was a dark day, the only joy of it being that
fearful one snatched by John, Walter, Susan, Fanny, and Cora Cordelia
from the undoubted excellence of the roast.
Of course there was an assortment of minor difficulties. The smoke from
the Biltons' kitchen blew in through the windows of the Giltons'
sitting-room when the wind was in one direction, and, when it was in the
other, many of the clothes from the Giltons' clothesline were blown into
the Biltons' yard, and Fanny, Susan, or Cora Cordelia had to be sent out
to pick them up and drop them over the fence again, which Mrs. Bilton
said was very wearing, as of course it must have been. Things like this
were always happening, but matters reached a climax when it came to the
dog. It wasn't a large dog, but it was a tiresome one. It got up early
in the morning and barked. Now we all know that early rising is a good
thing and honorable among all men, but it is something that ought to be
done quietly, out of regard to the weaker vessels; and a dog that barks
between five and seven in the morning, continuously, certainly ought to
be suppressed, even if it be necessary to use force. Everybody agreed
with the Biltons about that,--everybody except the Giltons themselves,
who, by some one of nature's freaks, didn't mind it. Mrs. Bilton often
said she wished Mrs. Gilton could be a light sleeper for a week and see
what it was like. So, too, everybody thought that Mr. Bilton had right
on his side when he complained that this same dog came into his yard,
being apparently indifferent to any coolness between the estate owners,
and ran over a bed of geraniums and one thing and another, that was the
small Bilton offset to the Gilton bench and ball. But when one morning,
for the first time, that dog remained quiet and restful, and was found
cold and poisoned, and Mr. Gilton was loud in his accusations of the
Bilton boys and their father, public opinion wavered for a moment. After
that accident, no member of either family spoke to any member of the
other. That was the way matters stood the day before Christmas.
* * * * *
It was snowing hard, and the afternoon grew dark rapidly, and the
whirling flakes pursued a blinding career. In spite of that, everybody
was out doing the last thing. Mrs. Gilton was not, to be sure. Of course
they would have a big dinner, but even that was all arranged for,
although the turkey hadn't come and her husband was going to stop and
see about it on his way home. She shuddered as the possibility of its
having gone to the Biltons occurred to her. But she didn't believe it
had,--they hadn't the same butcher any longer. Meanwhile there was so
little to do. It was too dark to read or sew, and she sat idly at the
window looking out at the passers and the driving snow. Everybody else
was in a hurry. She wished she, too, had occasion to hasten down for a
last purchase, or to light the lamp in order to finish a last bit of
dainty sewing, as she used to do when she was a girl. She seemed to have
so few friends now with whom she exchanged Christmas greetings. Was it
then only for children and youth, this Christmas cheer? And must she
necessarily have left it behind her with her girlhood? No, she knew
better than that. She felt that there was a deeper significance in the
Christmas-tide than can come home to the hearts of children and
unthoughtfulness, and yet it had grown to be so painfully like other
days,--an occasion for a little bigger dinner, that was about all. With
an unconscious sigh she looked across to the Bilton house. Plenty of
people over there to make merry. Five stockings to hang up. She wished
she might have sent something in. To be sure, there was the dog, but
that was some time ago. Very likely the dog would have been dead now,
anyhow. She felt, herself, that this logic was not irrefutable, but she
wished she could have sent some paper parcels just the same. So strong
had this impulse been that she had said to her husband somewhat timidly
that morning,--
"There are a good many of those Bilton children to get presents for."
"More fools they that get 'em presents, then," he had pleasantly
replied.
"I don't suppose he has much to buy them with," she continued.
"He had enough to buy poison for my dog," exclaimed her husband, giving
his newspaper an angry shake.
"I'd almost like to send them in some cheap little toys."
"Well, as long as you don't quite like to, it won't do any harm," he
said with some violence, laying down his newspaper, and looking at her
in a manner not to be misunderstood. "But you see that the liking
doesn't get any farther."
"It's Christmas, you know," said his plucky wife.
"Oh, no, I don't know it!" he replied gruffly. "I haven't fallen over
forty children a minute in the street with their ridiculous parcels, and
I haven't had women drop brown-paper bundles that come undone all over
me when they crowd into the horse car, and I haven't found it impossible
to get to the shirt-collar counter on account of Christmas novelties!
Oh, no, I didn't know it was Christmas!"
After that there was really not much to be said, for we all know
Christmas is dreadfully annoying, and the last thing a man in this sort
of temper wants to hear about is peace and good will.
Notwithstanding the fact that Mrs. Gilton looked over to her neighbors'
with an envious feeling this dark afternoon, their Christmas cheer was
not so abounding as it had been in more prosperous times. There was not
very much money to be spent this year, and they were obliged to give up
something. Mr. and Mrs. Bilton had decided that it should be the
Christmas dinner; they would have a simple luncheon, and let all the
money that could be spared go for the stockings. Each child had its own
sum to invest for others, and there was still a small amount for the
older members of the family. That it was a small amount Mrs. Bilton felt
strongly, as she went from shop to shop. But when she reached home again
she was somewhat encouraged; there was such an air of joyous expectation
in the house, and her purchases looked larger now that they were away
from the glittering counters. Then each of the five children came to her
separately and confided to her the nothing less than wonderful results
of judicious bargaining which had enabled them to buy useful and
beautiful presents for each of the others out of the sums intrusted to
their care, ranging in amount from the two dollars of John to the fifty
cents of Cora Cordelia. She felt sure that there were further secrets
yet; secrets attended by brown paper and string, which she had taken the
greatest care for the last two weeks not heedlessly to expose,--riddles
of which the solution lay perilously near her eyes, which would be
revealed to her astonished gaze the next morning.
She had reason to believe that even Cora Cordelia was making something
for her, and though it was difficult for her to ignore the fact that it
was a knit washcloth, she had hitherto avoided absolute certainty on the
subject. So that altogether it was a pretty cheerful afternoon at the
Biltons'.
Meanwhile, down in the main street of the city it was a confusing scene.
It was darker there than where the streets were more open; and although
there were several daring spirits of that adventurous turn of mind which
leads people into byways of discovery, who asserted that the street
lamps were lighted, it was not generally believed. The snow was blowing
down and up and across, and getting more and more unmanageable under the
feet of foot passengers every moment. It was cold and windy and blinding
and crowded, and a good many other disconcerting things, all of which
Mr. Gilton felt the full force of as he stood on the corner where he had
just bought his turkey. It was a fine turkey, and had been a good
bargain, and though he had to carry it home himself, there was nothing
derogatory in that. If it had been anybody else he would have been
thrilled with a glow of satisfaction, but Mr. Gilton was long past glows
of satisfaction--it was years since he had permitted himself to have
such things.
"Jour--our--nal! fi-i-i-ve cents!" screamed an intermittent newsboy in
his ear.
"Get out!" replied Mr. Gilton, the uncompromising nature of his
language being intensified by the fact that he jumped nearly two feet
from the suddenness of the newsboy's attack. Even the newsboy, inured to
the short words of an unfriendly world, and usually quite indifferent
thereto, was impressed by the asperity of the suggestion and moved
somewhat hastily on. Possibly his cold, wet little existence had been
rendered morbidly susceptible by the general good feeling of the hour,
one lady having even spontaneously given him five cents.
After this exchange of amenities Mr. Gilton stepped into his horse car.
It was crowded, of course, as horse cars that are small and run once in
half an hour are apt to be, and he had to stand up, and the turkey legs
stuck out of the brown paper in a very conspicuous way. If Mr. Gilton
had been anybody else he would have been chaffed about his turkey,
because to make up for the conveniences that the horse car line did not
furnish the public, the large-hearted public furnished the horse car
line with an unusual amount of friendliness. There was almost always
something going on in these horse cars. Their social privileges were
quite a feature. To-night they were in unusual force on account of the
season. But nobody said anything to Mr. Gilton. Only when he jerked the
bell and stepped off, one stout man with his overcoat collar turned up
to his ears said, without turning his head:--
"I supposed of course he was going to give the turkey to the conductor."
Everybody laughed in that end of the car except one small old lady in
the corner, who was a stranger and visiting, and who was left with the
impression that the gentleman who got off must be a very kind man. It
was darker and blowier and snowier than when he had left the corner, and
Mr. Gilton floundered through the unbroken drifts up the little path to
the door with increasing grudges in his heart against the difficulties
of Christmas. The lock was off, and he went in slamming the door after
him. There was no light in the hall, and he murmured loudly against the
inconvenience.
"Confound it!" he said, "why didn't they light the gas? I'm not one of
those confounded Biltons; I can afford to pay for what I don't get;"
and, without pausing to take off his hat and coat, he strode to the
sitting-room door and flung it open. That was an awful moment. The
sudden change from the cold and darkness almost blinded him, and
confirmed the impression that he was the victim of an illusion. The
sound of many voices, and then the hush of sudden consternation, was in
his ears. There was a lamp and there was a fire, and there between them
sat Mr. Bilton on one side and Mrs. Bilton on the other, and round
about, in various unconventional attitudes, sat four Bilton children.
And there in the very midst of them, in his heavy overcoat, with snow
melting on his hat, his beard, and his shoulders, stood Mr. Gilton. The
unexpected scene, the amazed faces gazing into his, rendered him
speechless; he wondered vaguely if he were losing his reason. Then, in a
flush of enlightenment, he realized what had happened; thanks to the
storm outside, he had come into the wrong house. Naturally his first
impulse was towards flight, but as his bewildered gaze slipped about the
room it fell upon five stockings hung against the mantelpiece, and
stayed there fascinated. Five foolish, limp, expressionless
stockings,--it was long since he had seen such an unreasonable
spectacle. Then he recollected himself and looked around him. Perhaps
even then, if he had made a dash for the door, he might have escaped and
matters have been none the worse. But in that instant of hesitation
caused by the sudden sight of those five stockings something dreadful
occurred. It must be premised that Cora Cordelia did not know Mr. Gilton
very well by sight, being in the first place small and not noticing,
and in the second, filled with an unreasoning fear that caused her to
flee whenever she had seen him approach. This is the only excuse for
what she did; for while her mother was feebly murmuring, as if in
extenuation, "We thought it was John coming in," Cora Cordelia clasped
her hands in delirious delight, and cried aloud, "It's Santa Claus! Oh,
it's Santa Claus!" Could anything more awful happen to a cross man, a
very cross man, than to be taken for Santa Claus!
Mr. Gilton looked at Cora Cordelia, and wondered why she had not been
slaughtered in her cradle.
"And," exclaimed Susan Bilton, with sudden communicative fervor, "he has
come and brought us a turkey for to-morrow's dinner!"
The truth was that Susan had been coming to the age that is sceptical
about Santa Claus, but she could not resist this sudden appearance.
No one could appreciate the nonsense of the whole situation better than
Mr. Gilton; and yet, strangely enough, together with his annoyance was
mingled a touch of the strange feeling that had dawned upon him first
when he saw the stockings. To be sure, it only added to his annoyance,
but it was there. By this time--it was really a very short time--Mrs.
Bilton had recovered herself and risen, and Mr. Bilton had risen too.
"Hush, children; it is not Santa Claus," she said, "it is Mr. Gilton. We
are glad to see you, Mr. Gilton;" and she held out her hand to him.
"Won't you sit down?" She felt that he had come in the Christmas spirit,
and she was anxious to meet him half-way.
"Yes," said her husband, coming forward, and instantly taking his cue
from his wife,--for he was really a very nice man,--"we are very glad."
To be sure, in his manner there was a certain stiffness, for a man
cannot always change completely in a moment, as a woman can; but Mr.
Gilton was too perplexed to notice this. In the incomprehensible way
that one's mind has of clinging to unimportant things at great crises,
while he was fuming with rage and bothered with this strange feeling
which was not precisely rage, he was wondering how in the world he was
going to sit down with that ridiculous turkey, with its ridiculous legs,
in his arms, and not look more absurd than he did now. In this moment of
absentmindedness he had mechanically taken Mrs. Bilton's hand and shaken
it, and after that of course there was nothing to do except to shake Mr.
Bilton's. Then he began to know it was all up. He had not spoken yet,
but now he made a frantic effort to save what might be left besides
honor. "I came--" he began, "I came--came to your house--" There he
paused a moment, and that unlucky child with that tendency to be
possessed by one idea, which is characteristic of small and trivial
minds, and for which she should have been shaken, burst in with, "And
did the reindeer bring you, and are they outside?"
He almost groaned, so overwhelmed was he by this new idiocy. Reindeer!
If those overworked, struggling car-horses could have heard that! Then
Mrs. Bilton, pitying his evident confusion, came to his assistance.
"Don't mind the children, Mr. Gilton," she said, her cheeks flushing,
and looking very pretty with the excitement of the unusual
circumstances, "we are glad you came, however you made your way here. I
think we may thank Christmas Eve for it. Now do take off your overcoat
and sit down."
Oh, mispraised woman's tact! What complications you may produce! That
finished it, of course. He sat down. In those few moments that strange
feeling had grown marvellously stronger. It seemed to be made up of the
most diverse elements,--a mixture of green wreaths and his own
childhood, and his mother, and a top he had not thought of for years,
and the wide fireplace at home, and a stable with a child in it, and a
picture, in a book he used to read, of a lot of angels in the sky, one
particular one in the middle, and underneath it some words--what were
the words? He'd forgotten they had anything to do with Christmas,
anyway.
"But you _did_ bring us the turkey, didn't you?" said Cora Cordelia,
helping her mother on.
To do the child justice,--for even Cora Cordelia has a right to demand
justice,--her manners were corrupted by Christmas expectancy.
"Cora Cordelia, I'm ashamed of you," said Mrs. Bilton.
"Yes," said Mr. Gilton, the words wrung from his lips, while beads stood
on his forehead,--"yes, I brought you the turkey."
"Did you really?" exclaimed Mrs. Bilton, who thought he had all the
time. "That was very kind of you."
"Will you please take it--take it away?" he said, with that wish to have
something over which we associate with the dentist. So Mrs. Bilton took
the turkey and thanked him, and gave it to Fanny, who carried it out to
the kitchen, and Mr. Gilton gave one last look at its legs as it went
through the door, feeling that now he must wake up from this nightmare.
But things only went farther and became more incredible and upsetting,
only that, strangely enough, that feeling of horror began to wear off,
and that singular strain of association with all sorts of Christmas
things to grow stronger. He himself could hardly believe that it was no
worse, when he found himself seated by the littered table, with Mrs.
Bilton near and Mr. Bilton over by the fire again, listening to first
one and then the other, and occasionally letting fall a word himself,
his conversational powers seeming to thaw out along with the snow on
his greatcoat. These words themselves were a surprise to him. He was
quite sure that he started them with a creditable gruffness, but the
Christmas air mellowed them in a highly unsatisfactory fashion, so that
they fell on his own ears quite otherwise than as he had meant they
should sound. Moreover the general tenor of the conversation was
exceedingly perplexing. It was all about how fine it was of him to come
this evening, and how they had often regretted the hard feeling, and how
things always did get exaggerated. Of course he would not have believed
a word of it, if he had been able to get any grip on the situation, but
he wasn't, and he just went on assenting to it all as if it were true.
There came a time when Mr. Bilton cleared his throat, hesitated a
moment, and then said boldly,--
"I think I ought to tell you, Mr. Gilton, that I had nothing whatever to
do with the death of your dog." Mr. Gilton felt the ground slipping
away from under his very feet. That dog had been his piece of
resistance, as it were. "I wouldn't have poisoned him," went on Mr.
Bilton, "for a hundred dollars. But," he added, with a queer little
smile, "I wasn't going to tell you so, you know."
"Of course you wasn't," exclaimed Mr. Gilton, hurriedly, with a touch of
that unholy excitement that a lapse from grammar imparts.
"We wouldn't any of us," asserted Walter.
"No," said Susan, Fanny, and Cora Cordelia.
Then it came out that the whole family had rather admired the dog than
otherwise. It was here that John did really come in, his entrance
sounding very much as had Mr. Gilton's. He nearly fell over when he saw
the visitor, but he had time to pull himself together, for Cora Cordelia
had snatched that moment for showing Mr. Gilton her gifts for the
family, and he was bound hand and foot with helplessness. Then they all
came and showed him their gifts. While he examined them Mr. and Mrs.
Bilton carefully averted their eyes and gazed hard at the opposite wall,
while Cora Cordelia urged him, in stage whispers, not to let them
suspect. It was pitiable the state to which he was reduced. Of course
resisting this Christmas enthusiasm was out of the question. To be sure
it came over him once with startling force, as she showed him a toy
water-wheel, that went by sand,--which she had purchased for her father
at a phenomenally low rate because the wheel could not be made to
go,--that Cora Cordelia was the very child that he had fallen over as
she came hastening out of a toy-shop with a queerly shaped bundle, the
day before, and so been further imbittered towards Christmas. Susan had
purchased a cup and ball for her mother, and as she went out of the room
for a moment, insisted upon Mr. Gilton's trying to do it and see what
fun it was. If Mr. Gilton lives to be a hundred he will never forget the
mingled feelings with which he awkwardly tried to get that senseless
ball into that idiotic cup. At last he stood up to go--it was after six
o'clock--and they went with him to the door, and wished him Merry
Christmas, and sent Merry Christmas to Mrs. Gilton, and said good-night
several times, and he stumbled on through the snow, this time towards
his own door. It had stopped snowing as suddenly and quietly as it had
begun, and the stars had come out. He gazed up at them,--something he
very rarely did. They seemed a part of Christmas. Just before he turned
in at his own gate, he looked back at the Bilton house and shook his
fist at it, but the expression on his face was such that the very same
newsboy who had accosted him earlier failed utterly to recognize him and
was emboldened to offer him a paper. He too was pushing his way home
with two papers left, in a somewhat dispirited way.
"I'll take 'em both," said this singular customer. "Here's a
quarter--never mind the change. It's Christmas Eve, I believe--" and
this when he knew perfectly well that a copy of that very same journal
was waiting for him on his table. The boy looked at his quarter and
looked again at his customer, and recognized him, and made up his mind
to buy a couple of hot sausages on the corner, and went on his way
feeling that there was a new heaven and a new earth. Mrs. Gilton was
standing at the parlor window, peering out anxiously as he came up the
path. She was in the hall as he entered.
"Why, Reuben," she said, "I was afraid something had happened."
Goodness gracious! As if something hadn't happened! He turned away to
hang up his overcoat and tried to speak crossly.
"Well," he said, "I've lost my turkey. That's happened."
"Never mind," said Mrs. Gilton, quickly; "the other one came later, the
first one, you know--so--so the Biltons didn't get it this time."
"They got the second one, though," said Reuben, hanging up his hat.
"Oh, dear, did they!" said Mrs. Gilton. Then she went on, "Well, I don't
care if they did, so there! I guess they need it for their Christmas
dinner."
"No, they don't," said Reuben, turning around and facing her, "because
they are going to eat part of ours. They are coming in to-morrow to have
dinner with us,--every one of them!" he asserted more loudly, on account
of the expression on his wife's face. "Bilton, and his wife, and all the
five children, down to Cora Cordelia! So we'll have to have something
for them to eat."
If Mr. Gilton will never forget the cup and ball, Mrs. Gilton will never
forget that moment. She went all over it in her mind whether she could
manage him herself to-night, or whether to send Bridget right away then
for the doctor, and if she hadn't better say a policeman too, and
whether he could be kept for the future in a private house, or would
have to be confined in an asylum. She was inclining towards the asylum
when he, who was going into the sitting-room before her, turned round
and laughed an odd little laugh. She began to think then that a private
house would do.
The next day they all dined together, which proved that it was not all a
Christmas Eve illusion. There is a report in the neighborhood that the
fence between the houses is to be taken down to make room for a tennis
court for the Bilton children, but of course this may not be true. It
would have to be done in the summer, and if the effect of Christmas
could be depended upon to last into the summer this would be a very
different sort of world.
After--the Deluge
THE sombre tints of Grayhead were slightly suffused by a pink light
sifting from the west through the clear air. The yachts in the harbor
lay idly beneath the mellow influences of the passing of the summer
day,--idly as only sailboats can lie, a bit of loose sail or cordage now
and then flapping inconsistently in a breath of wind, which seemed to
come out of the west for no other purpose, and to retire into the east
afterward, its whole duty done. On board, men were moving about, hanging
lanterns, making taut here, setting free there, all with an air of utter
peace and repose such as is found only on placid waterways beneath a
setting sun. Occasionally an oar dipped in the still water, a hint of
action, modified, softened into repose. Along one of the quaint streets
of the irregular town, winding where it would, climbing where it
climbed, hurried an angular figure,--that of a woman of about fifty
years, whose tense expression suggested an unrest at variance with the
keen calmness of that of the other faces about the streets and doorways.
Not that it was feverish in its intensity; rather, it was an expression
of resolution, undeviating and persistent, but not sure of sympathy or
support.
"They've gone down yonder, t'other side of the wharf, Mis' Pember," said
a middle-aged sea captain, whose interest in his kind had not been
obliterated by the forced loneliness of northern voyages.
The woman paused and glanced doubtfully down one of the byways that led
between small, weather-beaten houses and around disconcerting abutments
to the water, and then forward, straight along the way she had been
travelling, which led out of the town.
"I'd rather fixed on their going down Point-ways this evening," she
said.
"Well, they ain't," rejoined Captain Phippeny, with that absence of mere
rhetoric characteristic of people whose solid work is done otherwise
than by speech.
Mrs. Pember nodded, at once in acknowledgment and farewell, and, turning
about, followed the path he had indicated, her gait acquiring a certain
precipitancy as she went down the rough, stony slope. At the foot of the
descent she paused again, and looked to the right and left. Captain
Phippeny was watching her from his vantage ground above. His figure was
one unmistakably of the seaboard. His trousers were of a singular cut,
probably after a pattern evolved in all its originality by Mrs.
Phippeny, her active imagination working towards practical effect. In
addition, he wore a yellow flannel shirt ribbed with purple, which would
hopelessly have jaundiced a rose-leaf complexion, but which, having
exhausted its malignancy without producing any particular effect, ended
by gently harmonizing with the captain's sandy hair, reddish beard, and
tanned skin. His mouth was like a badly made buttonhole, which gaped a
little when he smiled. He had a nose like a parrot's beak, and his eyes
were blue, kindly, and wise in their straightforwardness. When he would
render his costume absolutely _de rigueur_, he wore a leathern jacket
with manifold pockets, from one to another of which trailed a gold
watch-chain with a dangling horseshoe charm.
"I wonder the old woman don't take a dog with her and trace 'em out, she
spends so much time on the hunt," he said to himself. "I declare for't,
it's a sing'lar thing the way she everlastin' does get onto them
'prentices; ain't old enough to talk about settin' sail by themselves."
His quid of tobacco again resumed its claim to his undivided attention,
and he leaned back against the fence and waited as idly as the drooping
sails for a breath of something stirring. By and by it appeared in the
shape of another old sailor, between whom and himself there was the
likeness of two peas, save for a slight discrepancy of feature useful
for purposes of identification.
"You told her where they'd gone, I reckon," he remarked, with a slight
chuckle, as he too leaned up against the fence and looked out over the
harbor.
"Yes, I did," replied Captain Phippeny. "I didn't have no call to tell
her a lie."
"Kinder hard on the young uns," observed the new-comer.
"They ain't ever anythin' as hard on the young uns as on the old uns,"
asserted Captain Phippeny, "because--well, because they're _young_, I
guess. That's Chivy's yacht that came in just at sundown, ain't it?"
"Yare. They say she's seen dirty weather since she was here last."
"Has? Well, you can't stay in harbor allers, and git your livin' at the
same time. She's got toler'ble good men to handle her."
There was a pause. The soft twilight was battening down the hatches of
the day, to drop into the parlance of the locality.
"Well, I do suppose old Pember warn't an easy shipmate, blow or no
blow," observed Captain Smart. He was a small, keen-eyed, quickly moving
old man, seasoned with salt.
"I reckon he warn't. And she thinks she can keep that girl of hers out
of the same kind of discipline that she had to take,--that's the truth
of it."
"Cur'ous, ain't it?" ruminated Captain Smart. "A woman's bound to take
it one way or 'nother; there seems to be more sorts of belayin' pins to
knock 'em over with than they, any on 'em, kinder cal'late on at first."
"So there be," assented Captain Phippeny.
Near the water, with its fading, rose-colored reflections, not so far
from the anchored vessels but they might, had they chosen, have spoken
across to those on board, the monotonous, austere, and yet vaguely soft
gray of the old town rising behind them against the melting sky, sat
Mellony Pember and Ira Baldwin.
"If you'd only make up your mind, Mellony," urged the young man.
"I can't, Ira; don't ask me." The young girl's face, which was delicate
in outline, was troubled, and the sensitive curves of her lips trembled.
The faded blue of her dress harmonized with the soft tones of the scene;
her hat lay beside her, an uncurled, articulated ostrich feather
standing up in it like an exclamation point of brilliant red.
The young man pulled his hat over his eyes and looked over to the
nearest boat. Mellony glanced at him timidly.
"You see, I'm all she's got," she said.
"I ain't goin' to take you away from her, unless you want to go," he
replied, without looking at her.
"She thinks I'll be happier if I don't--if I don't marry."
"Happier!"--he paused in scorn--"and she badgerin' you all the time if
you take a walk with me, and watchin' us as if we were thieves! You
ain't happy now, are you?"
"No." Mellony's eyes filled, and a sigh caught and became almost a sob.
"Well, I wish she'd give me a try at makin' you happy, that's all." His
would-be sulkiness softened into a tender sense of injury. Mellony
twisted her hands together, and looked over beyond the vessels to the
long, narrow neck of land with its clustering houses, beyond which
again, unseen, were booming the waves of the Atlantic.
"Oh, if I only knew what to do!" she exclaimed,--"if I only knew what to
do!"
"I'll tell you what to do, Mellony," he began.
"There's ma, now," she interrupted.
Ira turned quickly and looked over his shoulder. Across the uneven
ground, straight towards them, came the figure of Mrs. Pember. The
tenseness of her expression had further yielded to resolution, which had
in turn taken on a stolidity which declared itself unassailable. No one
of the three spoke as she seated herself on a bit of timber near them,
and, folding her hands, waited with the immobility and the apparent
impartiality of Fate itself. At last Mellony spoke, for of the three she
was the most acutely sensitive to the situation, and the least capable
of enduring it silently.
"Which way did you come, ma?" she asked.
"I come down Rosaly's Lane," Mrs. Pember answered. "I met Cap'n
Phippeny, and he told me you was down here."
"I'm obligated to Cap'n Phippeny," observed Ira, bitterly.
"I dono as he's partickler to have you," remarked Mrs. Pember,
imperturbably.
There was another silence. Mrs. Pember's voice had a marked sweetness
when she spoke to her daughter, which it lost entirely when she
addressed her daughter's companion, but always it was penetrated by the
timbre of a certain inflexibility.
The shadows grew deeper on the water, the glow-worms of lanterns
glimmered more sharply, and the softness of the night grew more
palpable.
"I guess I may as well go back, ma," said Mellony, rising.
"I was wonderin' when you cal'lated on going," remarked her mother, as
she rose too, more slowly and stiffly, and straightened her decent black
bonnet.
"I suppose you was afraid Mellony wouldn't get back safe without you
came after her," broke out Ira.
"I guess I can look after Mellony better than anybody else can, and I
count on doing it, and doing it right along," she replied.
"Come, ma," said Mellony, impatiently; but she waited a moment and let
her mother pass her, while she looked back at Ira, who stood, angry and
helpless, kicking at the rusted timbers.
"Are you coming, too, Ira?" she asked in a low voice.
"No," he exclaimed, "I ain't coming! I don't want to go along back with
your mother and you, as if we weren't old enough to be out by ourselves.
I might as well be handcuffed, and so might you! If you'll come round
with me the way we came, and let her go the way she came, I'll go with
you fast enough."
Mellony's eyes grew wet again, as she looked from him to her mother, and
again at him. Mrs. Pember had paused, also, and stood a little in
advance of them. Her stolidity showed no anxiety; she was too sure of
the result.
"No,"--Mellony's lips framed the words with an accustomed but grievous
patience,--"I can't to-night, Ira; I must go with ma."
"It's to-night that'll be the last chance there'll be, maybe," he
muttered, as he flung himself off in the other direction.
The two women walked together up the rough ascent, and turned into
Rosaly's Lane. Mellony walked wearily, her eyes down, the red feather,
in its uncurled, unlovely assertiveness, looking more like the oriflamme
of a forlorn hope than ever. But Mrs. Pember held herself erect, and as
if she were obliged carefully to repress what might have been the signs
of an ill-judged triumph.
Ira prolonged his walk beyond the limits of the little gray town, goaded
by the irritating pricks of resentment. He would bear it no longer, so
he told himself. Mellony could take him or leave him. He would be a
laughing-stock not another week, not another day. If Mellony would not
assert herself against her tyrannical old mother, he would go away and
leave her! And then he paused, as he had paused so often in the flood of
his anger, faced by the realization that this was just what Mrs. Pember
wanted, just what would satisfy her, what she had been waiting
for,--that he should go away and leave Mellony alone. It was an
exasperating dilemma, his abdication and her triumph, or his uncertainty
and her anxiety.
Mellony and her mother passed Captain Phippeny and Captain Smart, who
still stood talking in the summer evening, the fence continuing to
supply all the support their stalwart frames needed in this their hour
of ease. Captain Smart nudged Captain Phippeny as the two figures turned
the corner of Rosaly's Lane.
"So you found 'em, Mis' Pember," remarked Captain Phippeny. He spoke to
the mother, but he looked, not without sympathy at the daughter.
"Yes, I found 'em."
"You reckoned on fetchin' only one of 'em home, I take it," said Captain
Smart.
"I ain't responsible but for one of 'em," replied Mrs. Pember with some
grimness, but with her eyes averted from Mellony's crimsoning face.
"Come, ma," said Mellony again, and they passed on.
"Mis' Pember is likely enough lookin' woman herself," observed Captain
Smart; "it's kind of cur'ous she should be so set agen marryin,' just
_as_ marryin'."
"'Tis so," assented Captain Phippeny, thoughtfully, looking after the
two women.
Without speaking, Mellony and her mother entered the little house where
they lived, and the young girl sank down in the stiff, high-backed
rocker, with its thin calico-covered cushion tied with red braid, that
stood by the window. Outside, the summer night buzzed and hummed, and
breathed sweet odors. Mrs. Pember moved about the room, slightly
altering its arrangements, now and then looking at her daughter half
furtively, as if waiting for her to speak; but Mellony's head was not
turned from the open window, and she was utterly silent. At last this
immobility had a sympathetic effect upon the mother, and she seated
herself not far from the girl, her hands, with their prominent knuckles
and shrunken flesh, folded in unaccustomed idleness, and waited, while
in the room dusk grew to dark. To Mellony the hour was filled with
suggestions that emphasized and defined her misery. In her not turbulent
or passionate nature, the acme of its capacity for emotional suffering
had been reached. Hitherto this suffering had been of the perplexed,
patient, submissive kind; to-night, the beauty of the softly descending
gloom, the gentle freedom of the placid harbor, the revolt of her
usually yielding lover, deepened it into something more acute.
"Mellony," said her mother, with a touch of that timidity which appeared
only in her speech with her daughter, "did you count on going over to
the Neck to-morrow, as you promised?"
"I'll never count on doing anything again," said Mellony, in a voice she
tried to make cold and even, but which vibrated notwithstanding,--"never,
so long as I live. I'll never think, or plan, or--or speak, if I can
help it--of what I mean to do. I'll never do anything but just work and
shut my eyes and--and live, if I've got to!" Her voice broke, and she
turned her head away from the open window and looked straight before her
into the shadowed room. Her mother moved uneasily, and her knotted hands
grasped the arms of the stiff chair in which she sat.
"Mellony," she said again, "you've no call to talk so."
"I've no call to talk at all. I've no place anywhere. I'm not anybody. I
haven't any life of my own." The keen brutality of the thoughtlessness
of youth, and its ignoring of all claims but those of its own happiness,
came oddly from the lips of submissive Mellony. Mrs. Pember quivered
under it.
"You know you're my girl, Mellony," she answered gently. "You're all
I've got."
"Yes," the other answered indifferently, "that's all I am,--Mellony
Pember, Mrs. Pember's girl,--just that."
"Ain't that enough? Ain't that something to be,--all I plan for and work
for? Ain't that enough for a girl to be?"
Mellony turned her eyes from emptiness, and fixed them upon her mother's
face, dimly outlined in the vagueness.
"Is that all you've been," she asked, "just somebody's daughter?"
It was as if a heavy weight fell from her lips and settled upon her
mother's heart. There was a silence. Mellony's eyes, though she could
not see them, seemed to Mrs. Pember to demand an answer in an
imperative fashion unlike their usual mildness.
"It's because I've been,--it's because I'd save you from what I have
been that I--do as I do. You know that," she said.
"I don't want to be saved," returned the other, quickly and sharply.
The older woman was faced by a situation she had never dreamed of,--a
demand to be allowed to suffer! The guardian had not expected this from
her carefully shielded charge.
"I want you to have a happy life," she added.
"A happy life!" flashed the girl. "And you're keeping me from any life
at all! That's what I want,--life, my own life, not what anybody else
gives me of theirs. Why shouldn't I have what they have, even if it's
bad now and then? Don't save me in spite of myself! Nobody likes to be
saved in spite of themselves."
It was a long speech for Mellony. A large moon had risen, and from the
low horizon sent golden shafts of light almost into the room; it was as
if the placidity of the night were suddenly penetrated by something more
glowing. Mellony stood looking down at her mother, like a judge. Mrs.
Pember gazed at her steadily.
"I'm going to save you, Mellony," she said, her indomitable will making
her voice harsher than it had been, "whether you want to be saved or
not. I'm not going to have you marry, and be sworn at and cuffed."
Mellony moved to protest, but her strength was futility beside her
mother's at a time like this. "I'm not going to have you slave and grub,
and get blows for your pains. I'm going to follow you about and set
wherever you be, whenever you go off with Ira Baldwin, if that'll stop
it; and if that won't, I'll try some other way,--I know other ways. I'm
not going to have you marry! I'm going to have you stay along with me!"
With a slight gesture of despair, Mellony turned away. The flash had
burned itself out. The stronger nature had reasserted itself. Silently,
feeling her helplessness, frightened at her own rebellion now that it
was over, she went out of the room to her own smaller one, and closed
the door.
Mrs. Pember sat silent in her turn, reviewing her daughter's resentment,
but the matter admitted no modifications in her mind; her duty was
clear, and her determination had been taken long ago. Neither did she
fear anything like persistent opposition; she knew her daughter's
submissive nature well.
Brought up in a country village, an earnest and somewhat apprehensive
member of the church, Mrs. Pember had married the captain early in life,
under what she had since grown to consider a systematic illusion
conceived and maintained by the Evil One, but which was, perhaps, more
logically due to the disconcerting good looks and decorously restrained
impetuosity of Captain Pember himself. Possibly he had been the victim
of an illusion too, not believing that austerity of principle could
exist with such bright eyes and red cheeks as charmed him in the country
girl. At least, he never hesitated subsequently, not only to imply, but
to state baldly, a sense of the existence of injury. Captain Phippeny
was one of those sailors whom the change of scene, the wide knowledge of
men and of things, the hardships and dangers of a sea life, broaden and
render tolerant and somewhat wise. Pember had been brutalized by these
same things.