"Breakfast--one slice of dry toast, one egg, fruit and a small cup of
coffee, no sugar, no cream." And me with two Jersey cows full of the
richest cream in Hillsboro, out in my meadow!
"Dinner, one small lean chop, slice of toast, spinach or lettuce salad.
No dessert or sweet." My poultry-yard is full of fat little chickens,
and I wish I were a sheep if I have to eat lettuce and spinach for
grass. At least I'd have more than one chop inside me then.
"Supper--slice of toast and an apple." Why the apple? Why supper at all?
Oh, I'm hungry, hungry until I cry in my sleep when I dream about a
muffin! I thought at first that getting out of bed before my eyes are
fairly open, and turning myself into a circus acrobat by doing every
kind of overhand, foot, arm and leg contortion that the mind of cruel
man could invent to torture a human being with, would kill me before I
had been at it a week, but when I read on page sixteen that as soon as
all that horror was over I must jump right into the tub of cold water,
I kicked, metaphorically speaking. And I've been kicking ever since,
literally to keep from freezing.
But as cruel as freezing is, it doesn't compare to the tortures of being
melted. Jane administers it to me, and her faithful heart is so wrung
with compassion that she perspires almost as much as I do. She wrings a
linen sheet out in a cauldron of hot water and shrouds me in it--and
then more and more blanket windings envelop me until I am like the mummy
of some Egyptian giantess.
Once I got so discouraged at the idea of having all this misery in this
life that I mingled tears with the beads of perspiration that rolled
down my cheeks, and she snatched me out of those steaming wrappings in
less time than it takes to tell it, soused me in a tub of cold water,
fed me with a chicken wing and mashed potatoes, and the information that
I was "good-looking enough for _anybody_ to eat up alive without
all this foolishness," all in a very few seconds. Now I have to beg her
to help me, and I heard her tell her nephew, who does the gardening,
that she felt like an undertaker with such goings-on. At any rate, if it
all kills me it won't be my fault if people tell untruths in saying that
I was "beautiful in death."
But now that more than a month has passed, I really don't mind it so
much. I feel so strong and prancy all the time that I can't keep from
bubbling. I have to smile at myself.
Then another thing that helps is Billy and his ball. I never could
really play with him before, but now I can't help it. But an awful thing
happened about that yesterday. We were in the garden playing over by the
lilac bushes, and Billy always beats me because when it goes down the
slope he throws himself down and rolls over on the grass. I went after
him. And what did Billy do but begin the kind of a tussle we always have
in the big armchair in the living-room! Billy chuckled and squealed,
while I laughed myself all out of breath. And then, looking right over
my front hedge, I discovered Judge Wade. I wish I could write down how
I felt, for I never had that sensation before, and I don't believe I'll
ever have it again.
I have always thought that Judge Wade was really the most wonderful man
in Hillsboro, not because he is a judge so young in life that there is
only a white sprinkle in his lovely black hair that grows back off his
head like Napoleon's and Charles Wesley's, but because of his smile,
which you wait for so long that you glow all over when you get it. I
have seen him do it once or twice at his mother when he seats her in
their pew at church, and once at little Mamie Johnson when she gave him
a flower through their fence as he passed by one day last week, but I
never thought I should have one all to myself. But there it was, a most
beautiful one, long and slow and distinctly mine--at least I didn't
think much of it was for Billy. I sat up and blushed as red all over as
I do when I first hit that tub of cold water.
"I hope you'll forgive an intruder, Mrs. Carter, but how could a mortal
resist a peep into such a fairy garden if he spied the queen and her
faun at play?" he said in a voice as wonderful as the smile. By that
time I had pushed in all my hairpins. Billy stood spread-legged as near
in front of me as he could get, and said, in the rudest possible tone of
voice--
"Get away from my Molly, man!"
I never was so mortified in all my life, and I scrambled to my feet and
came over to the hedge to get between him and Billy.
"It's a lovely day, isn't it, Judge Wade?" I asked with the greatest
interest, which I didn't really feel, in the weather; but what could I
think of to say? A woman is apt to keep the image of a good many of the
grand men she sees passing around her in queer niches in her brain, and
when one steps out and speaks to her for the first time it is confusing.
Of course, I have known the judge and his mother all my life, for she is
one of Aunt Adeline's best friends, but I had a feeling from the look in
his eyes that that very minute was the first time he had ever seen me.
It was lovely, and I blushed still more as I put my hand up to my cheek
so that I wouldn't have to look right at him.
"About the loveliest day that ever happened in Hillsboro," he said, and
there was still more of the delicious smile, "though I hadn't noticed it
so especially until--"
But I never knew what he had intended to say, for Billy suddenly swelled
up like a little turkey-cock and cut out with his switch at the judge.
"Go away, man, and let my Molly alone!" he said, in a perfect
thunder-tone of voice; but I almost laughed, for it had such a sound in
it like Dr. John's at his most positive times with Billy and me.
"No, no, Billy; the judge is just looking over the hedge at our flowers!
Don't you want to give him a rose?" I hurried to say, as the smile died
out of Judge Wade's face and he looked at Billy intently.
"How like John Moore the youngster is!" he said, and his voice was so
cold to Billy that it hurt me, and I was afraid Billy would notice it.
Coldness in people's voices always makes me feel just like ice-cream
tastes. But Billy's answer was still more rude.
"You'd better go, man, before I bring my father to set our dog on you,"
he exploded, and, before I could stop him, his thin little legs went
trundling down the garden path toward home.
Then the judge and I both laughed. We couldn't help it. The judge leaned
farther over the fence, and I went a little nearer before I knew it.
"You don't need to keep a personal dog, do you, Mrs. Carter?" he asked,
with a twinkle that might have been a spark in his eyes, and just at
that moment another awful thing happened. Aunt Adeline came out of the
front door, and said in the most frozen tone of voice--
"Mary, I wish to speak to you in the house," and then walked back
through the front door without even looking in Judge Wade's direction,
though he had waved his hat with one of his mother's own smiles when he
had seen her before I did. One of my most impossible habits is, when
there is nothing else to do I laugh. I did it then, and it saved the
day, for we both laughed into each other's eyes, and, before we realised
it, we were within whispering distance.
"No, I don't--don't--need any dog," I said softly, hardly glancing out
from under my lashes, because I was afraid to risk looking straight at
him again so soon. I could fairly feel Aunt Adeline's eyes boring into
my back.
"It would take the hydra-headed monster of--may I bring my mother to
call on you and the--Mrs. Henderson?" he asked, and poured the wonder
smile all over me. Again I almost caught my breath.
"I do wish you would, Aunt Adeline is so fond of Mrs. Wade!" I said in a
positive flutter that I hope he didn't see; but I am afraid he did, for
he hesitated as if he wanted to say something to calm me, then bowed
mercifully and went on down the street. He didn't put on the hat he had
held in his hand all the while he stood by the hedge until he had looked
back and bowed again. Then I felt still more fluttered as I went into
the house, but I received the third cold plunge of the day when I
reached the front hall.
"Mary," said Aunt Adeline in a voice that sounded as if it had been
buried and never resurrected, "if you are going to continue in such an
unseemly course of conduct I hope you will remove your mourning, which
is an empty mockery and an insult to my own widowhood."
"Yes, Aunt Adeline, I'll go take it off this very minute," I heard
myself answer her airily, to my own astonishment. I might have known
that if I ever got one of those smiles it would go to my head! Without
another word I sailed into my room and closed the door softly.
Slowly I unbuttoned that black dress that symbolised the ending of six
years of the blackness, and the rosy dimpling thing in snowy lingerie
with tags of blue ribbon that stood in front of my mirror was as
new-born as any other hour-old similar bundle of linen and lace in
Hillsboro. Fortunately, an old white lawn dress could be pulled from the
top shelf of the cupboard in a hurry, and the Molly that came out of
that room was ready for life--and a lot of it.
And again, fortunately, Aunt Adeline had retired with a violent
headache, and Jane was carrying her in a hot water-bottle with a broad
smile on her face. Jane sees the world from the kitchen window and
understands everything. She had laid a large thick letter on the hall
table where I couldn't fail to see it.
I took possession of it and carried it to a bench in the garden that
backs up against the purple sprayed lilacs and is flanked by two rows of
tall purple and white iris that stand in line ready for a Virginia reel
with a delicate row of the poet's narcissus across the broad path. I
love my flowers. I love them swaying on their stems in the wind, and I
like to snatch them and crush the life out of them against my breast and
face. I have been to bed every night this spring with a bunch of cool
violets against my cheek, and I feel that I am going to dance with my
tall row of hollyhocks as soon as they are old enough to hold up their
heads and take notice. They always remind me of very stately gentlemen,
and I have wondered if the little narcissus weren't shaking their
ruffles at them.
A real love-letter ought to be like a cream puff with a drop of dynamite
in it. Alfred's was that kind. I felt warm and happy down to my toes as
I read it, and I turned round so that old Lilac Bush couldn't peep over
my shoulder at what he said.
He wrote from Rome this time, where he had been sent on some sort of
diplomatic mission to the Vatican, and his letter about the Ancient City
on her seven hills was a prose-poem in itself. I was so interested that
I read on and on and forgot it was almost toast-apple time.
Of course, anybody that is anybody would be interested in Father Tiber
and the old Colosseum, but what made me forget the one slice of dry
toast and the apple was the way he seemed to be connecting me up with
all those wonderful old antiquities that had never even seen me. Because
of me he had felt and written that poem descriptive of old Tiber, and
the moonlight had lit up the Colosseum just because I was over here
lighting up Hillsboro. Of course, that is not the way he put it all, but
there is no place to really copy what he did say down into this imp book
and, anyway, that is the sentiment he expressed, boiled down and sugared
over.
That's just what I mean--love boiled down and sugared over is apt to get
an explosive flavour, and one had better be careful with that kind if
one is timid; which I'm not. As I said, also, I am ready for a little
more of life, so I read on without fear. And, to be fair, Alfred had
well boiled his own last paragraph. It snapped; and I jumped and gasped.
I almost thought I didn't quite like it, and was going to read it over
again to see, when I saw a procession coming over from Dr. John's, and
I laid the bombshell down on the bench.
First came the red setter that is always first with Dr. John, and then
he came himself, leading Billy by the hand. It was Billy, but the most
subdued Billy I ever saw, and I held out my arms and started for him.
"Wait a minute, please, Molly," said the doctor in a voice he always
uses when he's punishing Billy and me. "Bill came to apologise to you
for being rude to your--your guest. He told me all about it, and I think
he's sorry. Tell Mrs. Carter you are sorry, son." When that man speaks
to me as if I were just any old body else, I hate him so it is a wonder
I don't show it more than I do. But there was nothing to say, and I
looked at Billy, and Billy looked at me.
Then suddenly he stretched out his little arms to me, and the dimples
winked at me from all over his darling face.
"Molly, Molly," he said, with a perfect rapture of chuckles in his
voice, "now you look just as pretty as you do when you go to bed--all
whity all over. You can kiss my kiss-spot a hundred times while I
bear-hug you for that nice not-black dress," and before any stern person
could have stopped us I was on my knees on the grass kissing my fill
from the "kiss-spot" on the back of his neck, while he hugged all the
starch out of the old white dress.
And Dr. John sat down on the bench quick, and laughed out loud one of
the very few times I ever heard him do it. He was looking down at us,
but I didn't laugh up into _his_ eyes. I was afraid. I felt it was
safer to go on kissing the kiss-spot for the present.
"Bill," he said, with his voice dancing, "that's the most effective
apology I ever heard. You were sorry to some point."
Then suddenly Billy stiffened right in my arms, and looked me straight
in the face, and said in the doctor's own brisk tones, even with his
Cupid mouth set in the same straight line--
"I say I'm sorry, Molly, but bother that man, and I'll hit him yet!"
What could we say? What could we do? We didn't try. I busied myself in
tying the string on Billy's blouse that had come untied in the bear-hug,
and the doctor suddenly discovered the letter on the bench. I saw him
see it without looking in his direction at all.
"And how many pounds are we nearer the scarlet-runner state of
existence, Mrs. Molly?" he asked me before I had finished tying the
blouse, in the nicest voice in the world, fairly cracking with
friendship and good humour and hateful things like that. Why I should
have wanted him to get huffy over that letter is more than I can say.
But I did; and he didn't.
"Over twenty, and most of the time I am so hungry I could eat Aunt
Adeline. I dream about Billy, fried with cream gravy," I answered, as I
kissed again the back of the head that was beginning to nod down against
my breast. Long shadows lay across the garden, and the white-headed old
snow-ball was signalling out of the dusk to a Dorothy Perkins rose down
the walk in a scandalous way. At best, spring is just the world's
match-making old chaperon, and ought to be watched. I still sat on the
grass, and I began to cuddle Billy's bare knees in the skirt of my dress
so the gnats couldn't get at them.
"But, Mrs. Molly, isn't it worth it all?" asked the doctor as he bent
over toward us and looked down with something wonderful and kind in his
eyes that seemed to rest on us like a benediction. "You have been just
as plucky as a girl can be, and in only a little over two months you
have grown as lightfooted and hearty as a boy. _I_ think nothing
could be lovelier than you are now, but you can get off those other few
pounds if you want to. You know, don't you, that I have known how hard
some of it was, and I haven't been able to eat as much as I usually do,
thinking how hungry you are? But isn't it all worth it? I think it is.
Alfred Bennett is a very great man, and it is right that he should have
a very lovely wife to go out into the world with him. And as lovely as
you are I think it is wonderful of you to make all this sacrifice to be
still lovelier for him. I am glad I can help you, and it has taught me
something to see how--how faithful a woman can be across years--and then
in this smaller thing! Now give me Bill and you get your apple and
toast. Don't forget to take your letter in out of the dew." I sat
perfectly still and held Billy tighter in my arms as I looked up at his
father, and then after I had thought as long as I could stand it, I
spoke right out at him as mad as could be, and I don't to this minute
know why.
"Nobody in the world ever doubted that a woman could be faithful if she
had anything to be faithful to," I said as I let him take Billy out of
my arms at last. "Faithfulness is what a woman flowers, only it takes a
_man_ to pick his posy." With which I marched into the house and
left him standing with Billy in his arms, I hope dumbfounded. I didn't
look back to see. I always leave that man's presence so mad I can never
look back at him. And wouldn't it make any woman rage to have a man pick
out another man for her to be faithful to when she hadn't made any
decision about it her own self?
I wonder just how old Judge Wade is? I believe I will make up with Aunt
Adeline enough before I go to bed to find out why he has never married.
Leaf III.
Men are very strange people. They are like those sums in algebra that
you think about and worry about and cry about and try to get help from
other women about, and then, all of a sudden, X works itself out into
perfectly good sense.
I know now that I really never got any older than the poor, foolish,
eighteen-years child that Aunt Adeline married off "safe." But all that
was a mild sort of exasperation to what a widow has to go through with
in the matter of--of, well, I think worrying interference is about the
best name to give it.
"Molly Carter," said Mrs. Johnson just day before yesterday, after the
white-dress, Judge-Wade episode that Aunt Adeline had gone to all the
friends up and down the street to be consoled about, "if you haven't got
sense enough to appreciate your present blissful condition, somebody
ought to operate on your mind."
I was tempted to say, "Why not my heart?" I was glad she didn't know how
good that heart did feel under my blouse when the boy brought that
basket of fish from Judge Wade's fishing expedition Saturday. I have
firmly determined not to blush any more at the thought of that gorgeous
man--at least outwardly.
"Don't you think it is very--very lonely to be a widow, Mrs. Johnson?"
I asked timidly to see what she would say about Mr. Johnson, who is
really a kind-hearted sort of man, I think. He gives me the gentlest
understanding smile when he meets me in the street of late weeks.
"Lonely, _lonely_, Molly? You talk about the married state exactly
like an old maid. Don't do it--it's foolish, and you will get the lone
notion really fastened in your mind and let some man find out that is
how you feel. Then it will be all over with you. I have only one regret;
and it is that if I ever should be a widow Mr. Johnson wouldn't be here
to see how quickly I turned into an old maid." Mrs. Johnson sews by
assassinating the cloth with the needle, and as she talked she was
mending the sleeve of Mr. Johnson's lounge coat.
"I think an old maid is just a woman who has never been in love with a
man who loves her. Lots of them have been married for years," I said,
just as innocently as the soft face of a pan of cream, and went on
darning one of Billy's socks.
"Well, be that as it may, they are the blessed members of the women
tribe," she answered, looking at me sharply. "Now I have often told Mr.
Johnson--" but here we were interrupted in what might have been the
rehearsal of a glorious scrap by the appearance of Aunt Bettie Pollard,
and with her came a long, tall, lovely vision of a woman in the most
wonderful close clingy dress and hat that you wanted to eat the minute
you saw it. I hated her instantly with the most intense adoration that
made me want to lie down at her feet, and also made me feel as though
I had gained all the more than twenty pounds that I have slaved off me
and doubled them on again. I would have liked to lead her that minute
into Dr. John's office and just to have looked at him and said one
word--"Scarlet-runner!" Aunt Betty introduced her as Miss Clinton from
London.
"Oh, my dear Mrs. Carter, how glad I am to meet you!" she said as she
towered over me in a willowy way, and her voice was lovely and cool
almost to slimness. "I am the bearer of so many gracious messages that
I am anxious to deliver them safely to you. Not six weeks ago I left
Alfred Bennett in Paris, and really--really his greetings to you almost
amounted to a pile of luggage. He came down to Cherbourg to see me off,
and almost the last thing he said to me was, 'Now, don't fail to see
Mrs. Carter as soon as you get to Hillsboro; and the more you see of her
the more you'll enjoy your visit to Mrs. Pollard.' Isn't he the most
delightful of men?" She asked me the question, but she had the most
wonderful way of seeming to be talking to everybody at one time, so
Mrs. Johnson got in the first answer.
"Delightful indeed! But Alfred Bennett is a man of sense not to marry
any of the string of women who I suppose are running after him!" she
said. Miss Clinton looked at her in a mild kind of wonder, but she went
on hacking Mr. Johnson's coat-sleeve with the needle without noticing
the glance at all.
"Well, well, dearie, I don't know about that," said Aunt Bettie as she
fanned and rocked her great, big, darling, fat self in the strong
rocking-chair I always kept for her. "Alfred is not old enough to have
proved himself entirely, and from what I hear--" she paused with the
big hearty smile that she always wears when she begins to tease or
match-make, and she does them both most of her time.
But at whom do you suppose she looked? Not me! Miss Clinton! That was
cold tub number two for that day, and I didn't react as quickly as I
might, but when I did I was in the proper glow all over. When I revived
and saw the lovely pale blush on her face I felt like a cabbage-rose
beside a tea-bud. I was glad Aunt Adeline came in just then so I could
go in and tell Julia to bring out the tea and cakes. When I came from
the kitchen I stepped into my room and took out one of Alfred's letters
from the desk drawer and opened it at random, and put my finger down on
a line with my eyes shut. This was what it was--
"--and all these years I have walked the world, blindfolded to its
loveliness with the blackness that came to me when I found that you--"
I didn't read any more, but pushed it back in a hurry and went back to
the company comforted in a way, but feeling a little more in sympathy
with Mrs. Johnson than I had before Aunt Bettie and her guest from
London had interrupted our algebraic demonstration on the man subject.
You can't always be sure of the right answer to X in any proposition of
life; that is, a woman can't!
And, furthermore, I didn't like that next hour much, just as a sample of
life, for instance. Aunt Bettie had got her joining-together humour well
started, and there, before my face, she made a present of every nice man
in Hillsboro to that lovely, distinguished, strange girl who could have
slipped through a bucket hoop if she had tried hard. I had to sit there,
listen to the presentations, watch her drink two delicious cups of tea
full of sugar and cream, and consume without fear three of Jane's puffy
cakes, while I crumbled mine in secret and set half the cup of tea out
of sight behind a fern pot.
It was bad enough to hear Aunt Bettie just offer her Tom, who, if he is
her own son, is my favourite cousin, but I believe the worst minute I
almost ever faced was when she began on the judge, for I could see from
Aunt Adeline's shoulder beyond Miss Clinton how she was enjoying that,
and she added another distinguished ancestor to his pedigree every time
Aunt Bettie paused for breath. I couldn't say a word about the fish and
Aunt Adeline wouldn't! I almost loved Mrs. Johnson when she bit off a
thread viciously and said, "Humph," as she rose to start the tea-party
home.
* * * * *
That night I did so many exercises that at last I sank exhausted in a
chair in front of my mirror and put my head down on my arms and cried
the real tears you cry when nobody is looking. I felt terribly old and
ugly and dowdy and--widowed. It couldn't have been jealousy, for I just
love that girl. I want most awfully to hug her very slimness, and it
was more what she might think of poor dumpy me than what any man in
Hillsboro, or Paris, could possibly feel on the subject, that hurt so
hard. But then, looking back on it, I am afraid that jealousy sheds
feathers every night so you won't know him in the morning, for something
made me sit up suddenly with a spark in my eyes and reach out to the
desk for my pencil and cheque-book. It took me more than an hour to
reckon it all up, but I went to bed a happier, though in prospects
a poorer woman.
As I sat in the train on my way to town early the next morning I thought
a good deal about poor Mr. Carter. After this I shall always appreciate
and admire him for the way he made money, and his kindness in leaving it
to me, since, for the first time in my life, I fully realised what it
could buy. And I bought things!
First I went to see Madam Courtier for corsets. I had heard about her,
and I knew it meant a fortune. But that didn't matter! She came in and
looked at me for about five minutes without saying a word, and then she
ran her hands down and down over me until I could feel the superfluous
flesh just walking off of me. It was delicious!
Then she and two girls wearing fashionable frocks and fashionable hair
came in and did things to a corset they laced on me that I can't even
write down, for I didn't understand the process, but when I looked in
that long glass I almost dropped on the floor. I wasn't tight and I
wasn't stiff, and I looked--I'm too modest to write how lovely I really
looked to myself. I was spellbound with delight.
Next I signed the cheque for three of those wonders with my head so in
the clouds I didn't know what I was doing, but I came to with a jolt
when the prettiest girl began to get me into that black silk bag I had
worn down to the West End. I must have shrunk the whole remaining pounds
I had felt obliged to lose for Alfred and Ruth Clinton, from the horror
I felt when I looked at myself. The girl was really sympathetic and said
with a smile that was true kindness: "Shall I call a taxi for madame and
have it take her to Klein's? They have wonderful gowns by Rene all ready
to be fitted at short notice. Really, madame's figure is such that it
commands a perfect costume now."
Men do business well, but when women enter the field they are geniuses
at money extracting. I felt myself already clothed perfectly when that
girl said my figure "commanded" a proper dress. Of course, Klein pays
Madame Courtier a commission for the customers she passes on to him.
The one for me must have looked to her like a big transaction.
I spent three days at the great Klein establishment, only going to the
hotel to sleep, and most of the time I forgot to eat. Madame Rene must
have been Madame Courtier's twin sister in youth, and Madame Telliers in
the hat department was the triplet to them both. When women have genius
it breaks out all over them like measles, and they never recover from
it; those women had the confluent kind. But I know that Madame Rene
really approved of me, for when I blushed and asked her if she could
recommend a good beauty doctor she held up her hands and shuddered.
"Never, madame, never _pour vous. Ravissant, charmant_--it is too
foolish. Nevair! _Jamais, jamais de la vie!_" I had to calm her
down, and she bowed over my hand when we parted.
I thought Klein was going to do the same thing or worse when I signed
the cheque which would be enough to provide him with a new motor-car,
but he didn't. He only said politely, "And I am delighted that the
trousseau is perfectly satisfactory to you, madame."
That was an awful shock, and I hope I didn't show it as I murmured
"Perfectly, thank you."
The word "trousseau" can be spoken in a woman's presence for many years
with no effect, but it is an awful shock when she first _really_
hears it. I felt queer all the afternoon as I packed those trunks for
the five o'clock train.
Yes, the word "trousseau" ought to have a definite surname after it
always, and that's why my loyalty dragged poor Mr. Carter out into the
light of my conscience. The thinking of him had a strange effect on me.
I had laid out the dream in dark grey-blue cloth, tailored almost beyond
endurance, to wear in the train going home, and had thrown the old black
silk bag across the chair to give to the hotel maid, but the decision of
the session between conscience and loyalty made me pack the precious
blue wonder and put on once more the black rags of remembrance in a kind
of panic of respect.
I would lots rather have bought poor Mr. Carter the monument I have
been planning for months (to keep up conversation with Aunt Adeline)
than wear that dress again. I felt conscience reprove me once more with
loyalty looking on in disapproval as I buttoned the old thing up for
the last time, because I really ought to have stayed a day longer to
buy that monument, but--to tell the truth I wanted to see Billy so
desperately that his "sleep-place" above my heart hurt as if it might
have prickly heat break out at any minute.
So I hurried and stuffed the grey-blue darling in the top tray, lapped
the old black silk around my waist and belted it in with a black belt
off a new green linen I had bought for morning walks--down to the
butcher's in the High Street, I suppose. That is about the only morning
dissipation in Hillsboro that I can think of, and it all depends on whom
you meet, how much of a dissipation it is.
The next thing that happens after you have done a noble deed is, you
either regard it as a reward of virtue or as a punishment for having
been foolish. I felt both ways when Judge Wade came down the platform at
St. Pancras, looking so much grander than any other man in sight that I
don't see how they ever stand him. At that minute the noble black-silk
deed felt foolish, but at the next minute I was glad I had done it.
It is nice to watch for a person to catch sight of you if you feel sure
how they are going to take it, and somehow in this case I felt sure. I
was not disappointed, for his smile broke his face up into a joy-laugh.
Off came his hat instantly so I could catch a glimpse of the fascinating
frost over his temples, and with a positive sigh of pleasure he got into
the same carriage and took a seat beside me. I turned with an echo smile
all over me, when suddenly his face became grave and considerate, and he
looked at me as all the people in Hillsboro have been doing ever since
poor Mr. Carter's funeral.
"Mrs. Carter," he said very kindly, in a voice that pitched me out of
the carriage window and left me a mile behind on the rails, all by
myself, "I wish I had known of your sad errand to town, so that I could
have offered you some assistance in your selection. You know we have
just had our family grave in the cemetery finally arranged, and I found
the dealers in memorial stones very confusing in their ideas and
designs. Mrs. Henderson just told my mother of your absence from home
last night, and I could only come up to town for the day on important
business or I would have arranged to see you. I hope you found something
that satisfied you."
What is a woman going to say when she has a tombstone thrown in her face
like that? I didn't say anything, but what I thought about Aunt Adeline
filled in a dreadful pause.
Perfectly dumb and quiet I sat for a space of time and wondered just
what I was going to do. It was beyond me at the moment, and the Molly
that is ready for life quick didn't know what to say. I shut my eyes,
counted three to myself as I do when I go over into the cold tub, and
then told him all about it. We both got a satisfactory reaction, and
I never enjoyed myself so much as that before.
I understand now why Judge Wade has had so many women martyr themselves
over him and live unhappily ever afterward, as everybody says Henrietta
Mason is doing. He's a very inspiring man, and he fairly bristles with
fascinations. Some men are what you call taking, and they take you if
they want you, while others are drawing, and after you are drawn to them
they will consider the question of taking you. The judge is like that.
In the meantime I feel that it will be good for his judgeship for me to
let him "draw" me at least a little way. I may get hurt, but I shall at
least have only myself to thank for it. When we reached home, the judge
stopped under the old lilac bush that leans over my side-gate and kissed
my hand. Old Lilac shook a laugh of perfume all over us, and I believe
signalled the event with the top of his bough to the white clump on the
other side of the garden. I'm glad Aunt Adeline isn't in the flower
fraternity. Suppose she had seen or heard!
And it didn't take many minutes for me to slip into old
summer-before-last--also for the last time inside of those buttons--and
run through the garden, my heart singing, "Billy, Billy," in a perfect
rapture of tune. I ran past the surgery door and found him in his cot
almost asleep, and we had a bear reunion in the wicker chair by the
window that made us both breathless.
"What did you bring me, Molly?" he finally kissed under my right ear.
"A real cricket-ball and bat, lover, and an engine with five carriages,
a rake and a spade and a hoe, two guns that pop a new way, and something
that squirts water, and some other things. Will that be enough?" I
hugged him up anxiously, for sometimes he is hard to please, and I might
not have got the very thing he wanted.
"Thank you, Molly, all them things is what I want, but you oughter have
bringed more'n that for three days not being here with me."
Did any woman ever have a more lovely lover than that? I don't know how
long I should have rocked him in the twilight if Dr. John's voice hadn't
come across the hall in command.
"Put him down now, Mrs. Molly, and come and say other how-do-you-does,"
he called softly.
It was a funny glad-to-see-him I felt as I came into the surgery where
he was standing over by the window looking out at my garden in its
twilight glow. I gave him my hand and a good deal more of a smile and a
blush than I intended.
He very far from kissed the hand; he held it just long enough to turn me
round into the light and give me one long looking-over from head to
feet.
"Just where does that corset press you worst?" he asked in the tone of
voice he uses to say "put out your tongue." So much of my bad temper
rose to my face that it is a wonder it didn't make a scar; but I was
cold enough to all outward appearances.
"I am making a call on a friend, Dr. Moore, and not a consultation visit
to my physician," I said, looking into his face as though I had never
seen him before.
"I beg your pardon, Molly," he exclaimed, and his face was redder than
mine, and then it went white with mortification. I couldn't stand that.
"Don't do that!" I exclaimed, and before I knew it I had taken hold of
his hand, and had it in both of mine. "I know I look as if I was shrunk
or laced, but I'm not! I was going to tell you all about it. I'm really
inches bigger in the right place, and just--just 'controlled,' the woman
called it, in the wrong place."
The blood came back into his face, and he laughed as he gave me a little
shake that pushed me away from him. "Don't you ever scare me like that
again, child, or it might be serious," he said in the Billy-and-me tone
of voice that I like a little, only--
"I never will," I said in a hurry; "I want you to ask me anything in the
world you want to, and I'll always do it."
"Well, let me take you home through the garden then--and, yes, I believe
I'll stay to supper with Mrs. Henderson. Don't you want to tell me what
a little girl like you did in a big city, and--and read me part of that
Paris letter I saw the postman give Jane this afternoon?"
Again I ask myself the question why his friendliness to Alfred Bennett's
letters always makes me so instantly cross.
Leaf IV.
Sleep is one of the most delightful and undervalued amusements known to
the human race. I have never had enough yet, and every second of time
that I'm not busy with something interesting, I curl up on the bed and
go dream-hunting--only I sleep too hard to do much catching. But this
torture book found that out about me, and stopped it the very first
thing on page three. The command is to sleep as little as possible to
keep the nerves in a good condition--"eight hours at the most, and seven
would be better." What earthly good would a seven-hour nap do me? I want
ten hours to sleep and twelve if I get a good tired start. To see me
stagger out of my perfectly nice bed at six o'clock every morning now
would wring the sternest heart with compassion and admiration at my
faithfulness--to whom?
Yes, it was the day after poor Mr. Carter's funeral that Aunt Adeline
moved up here into my house and settled herself in the big south room
across the landing from mine. Her furniture weighs a ton each piece, and
Aunt Adeline is not light herself in disposition. The next morning, when
I went in to breakfast she sat in the "vacant chair" in a way that made
me see that she was obviously trying to fill the vacancy. I am sorry she
worried herself about that. Anyhow, it made me take a resolve. After
breakfast, I went into the kitchen to speak to Jane.
"Jane," I said, looking past her head, "my health is not very good, and
you can bring my breakfast to me in bed after this." Poor Mr. Carter
always wanted breakfast on the stroke of seven. Jane has buried
husbands. Also her mother is our washerwoman, and influenced by Aunt
Adeline. Jane understands everything I say to her. After I had closed
the door I heard a laugh that sounded like a war-whoop, and I smiled to
myself. But that was before my martyrdom to this book had begun. I get
up now!
But the day after I came from London I lay in bed just as long as I
wanted to, and ignored the thought of the exercises and deep breathing
and the icy unsympathetic tub. I couldn't even take very much interest
in the lonely egg on the lonely slice of dry toast. I was thinking about
things.
Hillsboro is a very peculiar little speck on the universe; even more
peculiar than being like a hen. It is one of the oldest towns in the
North, and the moss on it is so thick that it can't be scratched off
except in spots. But when it does get stirred up to take an interest in
anything, it certainly goes the pace. It hasn't had any real excitement
for a long time, and I felt that it needed it. I rolled over and laughed
into my pillow.
The subject of the conduct of widows is a serious one. Of all the things
old Tradition is most set about, it is that; and what was decided to be
the proper thing a million years ago this town still dictates shall be
done, and spends a good deal of its time seeing its directions carried
out.
For a year after the funeral they forget about the poor bereaved, and
when they do remember her they speak to and of her in the same tones of
voice they used at the obsequies. Then sooner or later some neighbour
is sure to see some man walk home from church with her, or hear some
masculine voice in her front garden. Mr. Blake gave Mrs. Caruther's
little Jessie a ride in his trap and helped her out at her mother's gate
just before last Christmas, and if the poor widow hadn't acted quickly
the town would have noticed them to death before he proposed to her.
They were married the day after New Year's Day, and she lost lots of
good friends because she didn't give them more time to talk about it.
I don't intend to run any risk of losing my friends that way, and I want
them to have all the enjoyment they can get out of it. I'm going to
serve out doses of excitement until the dear old place is running as it
did when it was a two-year old. Why get annoyed when people are
interested in you? It's a compliment, after all, and gives them more to
think about. I remembered the two trunks I had brought home with me, and
hugged my knees up under my chin with pleasure at the thought of the
town-talk they contained.
Then just as I had got the first plan well going and was deciding
whether to wear the mauve crêpe de Chine or the white chiffon with the
rosebud embroidery as a first dose for my friends, a sweetness came in
through my window that took my breath away, and I lay still with my hand
over my heart and listened. It was Billy singing right under my window,
and I've never heard him do it before in all his five years. It was
the dearest old-fashioned tune ever written, and Billy sang the words
as distinctly as if he had been a boy chorister doing a difficult
recitative. My heart beat so it shook the lace on my breast, like a
breeze from heaven, as he took the high note and then let it go on the
last few words.
"If you love me, Molly darling,
Let your answer be a kiss!"
A confused recollection of having heard the words and tune sung by my
mother when I was at the rocking age myself brought the tears to my eyes
as I flew to the window and parted the curtains. If you heard a little
boy-angel singing at your casement, wouldn't you expect a cherub face
upturned with heaven-lights all over it? Billy's face was upturned as he
heard me draw up the blind, but it was streaked like a wild Indian's
with decorations of brown mud, and he held a slimy frog in one hand
while he wiped his other grimy hand down the front of his linen blouse.
"I say, Molly, look at the frog I bringed you!" he exclaimed as he came
close under the sill, which is not high from the ground. "If you put
your face down to the mud and sing something to 'em, they'll come out of
their holes. A beetle comed, too, but I couldn't ketch 'em both. Lift me
up, and I can put him in the waterglass on your table." He held up one
muddy hand to me, and promptly I lifted him up into my arms. From the
embrace in which he and the frog and I indulged my lace and cambric came
out much the worse.
"That was a lovely song you sang about 'Molly darling,' Billy," I said.
"Where did you hear it?"
"That's a good frog-song, Molly, and I believe I can git a squirrel with
it, too, if I sing it quite low." He began to squirm out of my arms
toward the table and the glass.
"Who taught it to you, sugar-sweet?" I persisted as I poured water in on
the frog under his direction.
"Nobody taught it to me. Father sings it to me when Tilly, nurse, nor
you aren't there to put me to bed. He don't know no good songs like
'Black-eyed Susan' or 'Little Boy Blue.' I go to sleep quick 'cause he
makes me feel tired with his slow tune what's only good for frogs and
things. Get a piece of cloth to tie over the top of the glass, Molly,
quick!"
I found some, and I don't know why my hand trembled as I handed it to
Billy. As soon as he got it he climbed out of the window, glass, frog
and all, and I saw him and the old setter go down the garden walk
together in pursuit of the desired squirrel, I suppose. I closed the
blinds and drew the curtains again and flung myself on my pillow.
Something warm and sweet seemed to be sweeping over me in great waves,
and I felt young and close up to some sort of big world-good. It was
delicious, and I don't know how long I would have stayed there just
feeling it if Jane hadn't brought in my letter.
He had written from London, and it was many pages of wonderful things
all flavoured with me. He told me about Miss Clinton and what good
friends they were, and how much he hoped she would be in Hillsboro when
he got here. He said that a great many of her dainty ways reminded him
of his "own slip of a girl," especially the turn of her head like a
"flower on its stem." At that I got right out of bed like a jack jumping
out of a box and looked at myself in the mirror.
There is one exercise here on page twenty that I hate worst of all. You
screw up your face tight until you look like a Christmas mask to get
your neck muscles taut, and then wobble your head round like a new-born
baby until it swims. I did that one twenty extra times and all the
others in proportion to make up for those two hours in bed. Hereafter
I'll get up at the time directed on page three, or maybe earlier. It
frightens me to think that I've got only a few weeks more to turn from a
cabbage-rose into a lily. I won't let myself even think "perfect flower"
and "scarlet runner." If I do, I get warm and happy all over. I try when
I get hungry to think of myself in that blue muslin dress.
I haven't been really willing before to write down in this wretched
volume that I took that garment to the city with me and what Madame
Rene did to it--remade it into the loveliest thing I ever saw, only I
wouldn't let her alter the size one single inch. I'm honourable, as all
women are at peculiar times. I think she understood, but she seemed not
to, and worked a miracle on it with ribbon and lace. I've put it away
on the top shelf of a cupboard, for it is a torment to look at it.
* * * * *
You can just take any recipe for a party and it will make a good
début for a girl, but it takes more time to concoct one for a widow,
especially if it is for yourself. I spent all the rest of the day doing
almost nothing and thinking until I felt light-headed. Finally I had
just about given up any idea of a party and had decided to leak out
in general society as quietly as my clothes would let me, when a real
conflagration was lighted inside me.
If Tom Pollard wasn't my own first cousin I would have loved him
desperately, even if I am a week older than he. He was about the only
oasis in my childhood's days, though I don't think anybody would think
of calling him at all green. He never stopped coming to see me
occasionally, and Mr. Carter liked him. He was the first man to notice
the white ruche I sewed in the neck of my old black silk four or five
months ago, and he let me see that he noticed it out of the corner of
his eyes as we were coming out of church, under Aunt Adeline's very
elbow.
And when that conflagration was lighted in me about my début, Tom
did it. I was sitting peaceably in my own summer-house, dressed in
the summer-before-last that Jane washes and irons every day while
I am deciding how to hand out the first sip of my trousseau to the
neighbours, when Tom, in a dangerous blue-striped shirt, with a tie that
melted into it in tone, jumped over my fence and landed at my side. He
kissed the lace ruffle on my sleeve while I reproved him severely and
settled down to enjoy him. But I didn't have such a good time as I
generally do with him. He was too full of another woman, and even a
first cousin can be an exasperation in that condition.
"Now, Mrs. Molly, truly did you ever see such a flower as she is?" he
demanded after I had expressed more than a dozen delighted opinions
of Miss Clinton. His use of the word "flower" riled me, and before I
stopped to think, I said, "She reminds me more of a scarlet runner."
"Now, Molly, don't be jealous just because old Wade has taken her out
driving behind the greys after kissing your hand under the lilacs
yesterday, which, fortunately, nobody saw but little me! I'm not sore,
why should you be? Aren't you happy with me?"
I withered him with a look, or rather _tried_ to wither him, for Tom
is no mimosa bud.
"The way that girl has managed to wake up this little old town is a
marvel," he continued enthusiastically. "Let's don't let the folks know
that they are off until I get everybody in a full swing of buzz over my
queen." I had never seen Tom so enthusiastic over a girl before, and I
didn't like it. But I decided not to let him know that, but to get to
work putting out the Clinton blaze in him and starting one on my own
account.
"That's just what I'm thinking about, Tom," I said with a smile that was
as sweet as I could make it, "and as she came with messages to me from
one of my best old friends I think I ought to do something to make her
have a good time. I was just planning a gorgeous dinner-party I want to
have for her when you came so suddenly. Do you think we could arrange it
for Tuesday evening?"
"Good gracious, Molly, don't knock the town down like that! Let 'em have
more than a week to get used to this white rag of a dress you've been
waving in their faces for the last few days. Go slow!"
"I've been going so slow for so many years that I've turned round and
I'm going fast backward," I said with a blush that I couldn't help.
"Help! Let my kinship protect me!" exclaimed Tom in alarm, and he
pretended to move an inch away from me.
"Yes," I said slowly, and as I looked out of the corner of my eyes from
under the lashes that Tom himself had once told me were "too long and
black to be tidy," I saw that he was in a condition to get the full
shock. "If anybody wakes up this town it will be I," I said as I flung
down the gauntlet with a high head.
"Here, Molly, here are the keys of my office, and the spark-plug to the
car; you can cut off a lock of my hair, and if Jane has got a cake I'll
eat it out of your hands. Shall it be Switzerland or Japan? And I prefer
_my_ bride served in light grey tweed." Tom really is delightful. Then
we both laughed and began to plan what Tom called a conflagration. But
I kept that delicious rose-embroidered treasure all to myself. I wanted
him to meet it entirely unprepared.
I was glad we had both got over our excitement and were sitting
decorously drinking tea, when the judge drew the greys up to the gate,
and we both went out to the kerb to ask him and the lovely long lady to
come in. They couldn't; but we stood and talked to them long enough for
Mrs. Johnson to get a good look at us from across the street, and I was
afraid I should find Aunt Adeline in a faint when I went into the house.
Miss Clinton was delightfully gracious about the dinner--I almost
called it the début dinner--and the expression on the judge's face when
he accepted! I was glad she was sitting beside him and couldn't see.
Some women like to make other women unhappy, but I think it is best for
you to keep them blissfully unconscious until you get what you want.
Anyhow, I like that girl all over, and I can't see that her neck is so
absolutely impossibly flowery. However, I think she might have been a
little more considerate about discussing Alfred's triumph over the
Italian mission. As a punishment I let Tom take my arm as we stood
watching them drive off, and then was sorry for the left grey horse
that shied and came in for a crack of the judge's irritated whip.
Then I refused to let Tom come inside the gate, and he went down the
street whistling, only when he got to the purple lilac he turned and
kissed his hand to me. That, Mrs. Johnson just couldn't stand, and she
came across the street immediately and called me back to the gate.
"You are tempting Providence, Molly Carter," she exclaimed decidedly.
"Don't you know Tom Pollard is nothing but a scatter-brained fly-away?
As a husband there'd be no dependence on him. Besides being your cousin,
he's younger than you. What do you mean?"
"He's just a week younger, Mrs. Johnson, and I wouldn't tie him for
worlds, even if I married him," I said meekly. Somehow I like Mrs.
Johnson enough to be meek with her, and it always brings her to a higher
point of excitement.
"Tie, nonsense; marrying is roping in with ball and chain, to my mind.
And a week between a man and a woman in their cradles gets to be fifteen
years between them and their graves. Well, I must go home now to see
that Sally cooks up a few of Mr. Johnson's crotchets for supper." And
she began to hurry away.
Marriage is the only worm in the bud of Mrs. Johnson's life, and her
laugh has a snap to it even if it is not very sugary sweet.
When I told Jane about the dinner-party and asked her to get her mother
to come and help her, and her nephew to wait at table, she smiled such
a wide smile that I was afraid of being swallowed. She understood that
Aunt Adeline wouldn't be interested in it until I had time to tell her
all about it. Anyway, Aunt will be going over to Springfield on a
pilgrimage to see Mr. Henderson's sister next week. She doesn't know it
yet; but I do.
After that I spent all the rest of the evening in planning my
dinner-party, and I had a most royal good time. I always have had lots
of company, but mostly the spend-the-day kind with relatives, or more
relatives to supper. That's what most entertaining in Hillsboro is like,
but, as I say, once in a while the old slow pacer wakes up.
I'll never forget my first real party. I was bridesmaid for Caroline
Evans, when she married a Birmingham magnate, from which Hillsboro has
never yet recovered. It was the week before the wedding. I was sixteen,
felt dreadfully unclothed without a tucker in my dress, and saw Alfred
for the first time in evening clothes--his first. I can hardly stand
thinking about how he looked even now. I haven't been to very many
parties in my life, but from this time on I mean to indulge in them
often. Candle-light, pretty women's frocks, black coat sleeves, cut
glass and flowers are good ingredients for a joy-drink, and why not?
But when I got to planning about the gorgeous food I wanted to give them
all, I got into what I feel came near being a serious trouble. It was
writing down the recipe for the nesselrode pudding they make in my
family that undid me. Suddenly hunger rose up from nowhere and gripped
me by the throat, gnawed me all over like a bone, then shook me until
I was limp and unresisting. I must have astralised myself down to the
pantry, for when I became conscious I found myself in company with a
loaf of bread, a plate of butter and a huge jar of jam.
I sat down at the long table by the window and slowly prepared to enjoy
myself. I cut off four slices and buttered them to an equal thickness,
and then more slowly put a long silver spoon into the jam. I even paused
to admire in Jane's mirror over the table the effect of the cascade of
lace that fell across my arm and lost itself in the blue shimmer of
Madame Rene's masterpiece of a _negligée_, then deep down I buried
the spoon in the purple sweetness. I had just lifted it high in the air
when out of the lilac-scented dark of the garden came a laugh.
"Why, Molly, Molly, Molly!" drawled that miserable man-doctor as he came
and leaned on the sill right close to my elbow. The spoon crashed on the
table, and I turned and crashed into words.
"You are cruel, cruel, John Moore, and I hate you worse than I ever did
before, if that is possible. I'm hungry, hungry to death, and now you've
spoiled it all! Go away before I wet this nice crisp bread and jam with
tears, and turn it into a pulp I'll have to eat with a spoon. You don't
know what it is to want something sweet so bad you are willing to steal
it--from yourself!" I fairly blazed my eyes down into his, and moved as
far away from him as the table would let me.
"Don't I, Molly?" he asked softly, after looking straight in my eyes for
a long minute, that made me drop my head until the blue bow I had tied
on the end of my long plait almost got into the scattered jam. Even at
such a moment as that I felt how glad Madame Rene would have been to
have given such a nice man as the doctor a treat like that blue silk
_chef-d'oeuvre_ of hers. I was glad myself.
"Don't I, Flower?" he asked again in a still softer voice. Again I had
that sensation of being against something warm and great and good, and
I don't know how I controlled it enough not to--to--
"Well, have some jam then," I managed to say with a little laugh, as I
turned away and picked up the silver spoon.
"Thank you, I will, all of it, and the bread and butter, too," he
answered, in that detestable friendly tone of voice, as he drew himself
up and sat in the window. "Hurry, Flower, if you are going to feed me,
for I'm ravenous. I've been attending Sam Benson's wife, and I haven't
had any supper. You have; so I don't mind taking it all away from you."
"Supper," I sniffed, as I spread the jam on those lovely, lovely slices
of bread and thick butter that I had fixed for my own self. "I am so
tired of that apple-toast combination now that I forget it if I can." As
I handed him the first slice of drippy lusciousness, I turned my head
away. He thought it was from the expression of that jam, but it was from
his eyes.
"Slice up the whole loaf, Flower, and let's have a feast. Forget--" He
didn't finish his sentence, and I'm glad. We neither of us said anything
more as I cut that whole loaf; but why should I want to be certain that
he touched the lace on my sleeve as it brushed his face when I reached
across him to catch an inquisitive rose that I saw peeping in the window
at us?
Leaf V.
"The juice of a lemon in two glasses of cold water, to be drunk
immediately on wakening!" Page eleven! I've handed myself that lemon
every morning now until I am sensitive with myself about it. If there
was ever anybody "living a Noah's Ark sort of life" it's I, and I have
to sit at the Ark window from dawn to dusk to get in the gallon of water
I'm supposed to consume in that time. Some time I'm going to get mixed
up and try to drink my bath, if I don't look out.
I don't know what I'm going to do about this book, and I've got myself
into trouble about writing things besides records in it. He looked at me
this morning as coolly as if I was just anybody and said--
"I would like to see that record now, Mrs. Molly. It seems to me you are
about as slim as you want to be. How did you tip the scales last time
you weighed, and have you noticed any trouble at all with your heart?
"I weigh one hundred and thirty-four pounds, and I've got to melt and
freeze and starve off that four," I answered, ignoring the heart
question and also the question of producing this book. Wonder what he
would do if I gave it to him to read just as it is?
"How about the heart?" he persisted, and I may have imagined the smile
in his eyes, for his mouth was purely professional. Anyhow, I lowered my
lashes down on to my cheeks and answered experimentally:
"Sometimes it hurts." Then a cyclone happened to me.
"Come here to me a minute!" he said quickly, and he turned me round and
put his head down between my shoulders and held me so tight against his
ear that I could hardly breathe.
"Expand your chest three times and breathe as deep as you can," he
ordered from against my back buttons. I expanded and breathed--pretty
quickly at that.
"Now hold your breath as long as you can," he commanded, and it fitted
my mood exactly to do so.
"Can't find anything," he said at last, letting me go and looking
carefully at my face. His eyes were all anxiety; and I liked it. "When
does it hurt you, and how?" he asked anxiously.
"Moonlight nights and lonesomely," I answered before I could stop
myself, and what happened then was worse than any cyclone. He got white
for a minute and just looked at me as if I was an insect stuck on a pin,
then gave a short little laugh and turned to the table.
"I didn't understand you were joking," he said quietly.
That maddened me, and I would have done anything to make him think I was
not the foolish thing he evidently had classified me as being.
"I'm not joking," I said jerkily; "I am lonely. And worse than being
lonely, I'm scared. I ought to have stayed just the quiet relict of
Mr. Carter and gone out with Aunt Adeline and let myself be fat and
respectable; but I haven't got the character. You thought I went to town
to buy a monument, and I didn't; I bought enough clothes for two brides,
and now I'm too scared to wear 'em, and I don't know what you'll think
when you see my bankbook. Everybody is talking about me and that
dinner-party Tuesday night, and Aunt Adeline says she can't live in a
house of mourning so desecrated any longer; she's going back to the
cottage. Aunt Bettie Pollard says that if I want to get married I ought
to marry Mr. Wilson Graves because of his seven children, and then
everybody would be so relieved that they are taken care of, that they
would forget that Mr. Carter hasn't been dead quite five years yet. Mrs.
Johnson says I ought to be declared a minor and put as a ward under you.
I can't help judge Wade's sending me flowers and Tom's walking over my
front steps every day. I'm not strong enough to carry him away and drown
him. I am perfectly miserable and I'm--"
"Now that'll do, Molly, just hush for a half-minute, and let me talk to
you," said Dr. John as he took my hand in his and drew me near him. "No
wonder your heart hurts if it has got all that load of trouble on it,
and we'll just get a little of that 'scare' off. You put yourself in my
hands, and you are to do just as I tell you, and I say--forget it! Come
with me while I make a call. It is a long drive and I'm--I'm lonesome
sometimes myself."
I saw the worst was over, and I breathed freely again. There was nothing
for it but to go with him, and I wanted to most awfully.
To my dying day I'll never forget that little house, away out on the
hillside, he took me to in his shabby little car. Just two tiny rooms,
but they were clean and quiet, and a girl with the sweetest face I ever
saw, lay in the bed with her eyes bright with pride, and a tiny, tiny
little bundle close beside her. The young farmer was red with
embarrassment and anxiety.
"She's all right to-day, but she worries because she don't think I can
tend to the baby right," he said; and he did look helpless. "Her mother
had to go home for two days, but is coming to-morrow. I dasn't undress
and wash the youngster myself. It won't hurt him to stay bundled up
until granny comes, will it, doc?"
"Not a bit," answered Dr. John in his big comforting voice.
But I looked at the girl, and I understood her. She wanted that baby
clean and fresh, even if it was just five days old, and I felt all of a
sudden terribly capable. I picked up the bundle and went into the other
room with it where a kettle was boiling on the stove and a large bucket
by the door. I found things by just a glance from her, and the hour
I spent with that small baby was one of the most delicious of all my
life. I never was left entirely to myself with one before, and I did
all I wanted to this one, guided by instinct and desire. He slept right
through and was the darlingest thing I ever saw when I laid him back
on the bed by her. I never looked in Dr. John's direction once, though
I felt him all the time.
But on the way home I gave myself the surprise of my life! Suddenly
I turned my face against his sleeve and cried as I never had before.
I felt safe, for it is a steep road, and he had to drive carefully.
However, he managed to press that one arm against my cheek in a way that
comforted me into stopping when I saw we were near town. I got out of
the car at the garage and walked away through the garden home, without
looking in his direction at all. I never seem to be able to look at him
as I do at other people. We hadn't spoken two words since we had left
the little house in the woods with that happy-faced girl in it. He has
more sense than just a man.
It was almost dusk, and I stopped in the garden a minute to pull the
earth closer round some of the bachelor's-buttons that had "popped" the
ground some weeks ago. Thinking about them made me regain my spirits,
and I went on in the house quite prepared to be scolded for whatever
Aunt Adeline had thought of while I was gone. Jane told me with her
broadest grin that she had gone down to her sister-in-law's for supper,
and I sat down with a sigh of relief.
Some days are like tin nutmeg-graters that everybody uses to grate you
against, and this was one for me. For an hour I sat and grated my own
self against Alfred's letter that had come in the morning. I realised
that I would just have to come to some sort of decision about what I was
going to do, for he wrote that he was coming in a week or two.
I like him and always have, of that I am sure. He offers me the most
wonderful life in the world, and no woman could help being proud to
accept it. I am lonely, more lonely than I was even willing to confess
to Dr. John. I can't go on living like this any longer. Ruth Clinton has
made me see that if I want Alfred it will be now or never and--quick. I
know now that she loves him, and she ought to have her chance if I don't
want him. The way she idolises and idealises him is a marvel of womanly
stupidity.
Some women like to collect men's hearts and hide them away from other
women on cold storage, and the helpless things can't help themselves.