COULEUR de ROSE
Hepsey had been so busy with helping the Maxwells that for some time
no opportunity had occurred for Jonathan to press his ardent suit.
Since his first attempt and its abrupt termination, he had been
somewhat bewildered; he had failed to decide whether he was an engaged
man open to congratulations, or a rejected suitor to be condoled with.
He tried to recall exactly what she had said. As near as he could
recollect, it was: "I'll think it over, and perhaps some day--" Then
he had committed the indiscretion of grasping her hand, causing her
to drop her stitches before she had ended what she was going to say.
He could have sworn at himself to think that it was all his fault that
she had stopped just at the critical moment, when she might have
committed herself and given him some real encouragement. But he
consoled himself by the thought that she had evidently taken him
seriously at last; and so to the "perhaps some day" he added, in
imagination, the words "I will take you"; and this seemed reasonable.
The matter was more difficult from the very fact that they had been on
such intimate terms for such a long time, and she had never hitherto
given him any reason to think that she cared for him other than as a
good neighbor and a friend. Ever since the death of his wife, she
seemed to feel that he had been left an orphan in a cold and
unsympathetic world, and that it was her duty to look after him much
as she would a child. She was in the habit of walking over whenever
she pleased and giving directions to Mary McGuire in regard to matters
which she thought needed attention in his house. And all this had been
done in the most open and matter-of-fact way, so that the most
accomplished gossip in Durford never accused her of making matrimonial
advances to the lonesome widower. Even Jonathan himself had been
clever enough to see that she regarded him much as she would an
overgrown boy, and had always accepted her many attentions without
misinterpreting them. She was a born manager, and she managed him;
that was all. Nothing could be more unsentimental than the way in
which she would make him take off his coat during a friendly call, and
let her sponge and press it for him; or the imperative fashion in
which she sent him to the barber's to have his beard trimmed. How
could a man make love to a woman after she had acted like this?
But he reminded himself that if he was ever to win her he must begin
to carry out the advice outlined by Mrs. Betty; and so the apparently
unsuspecting Hepsey would find on her side porch in the morning some
specially fine corn which had been placed there after dark without the
name of the donor. Once a fine melon was accompanied by a bottle of
perfumery; and again a basket of peaches had secreted in its center a
package of toilet soap "strong enough to kill the grass," as Hepsey
remarked as she sniffed at it. Finally matters reached a climax when a
bushel of potatoes arrived on the scene in the early dawn, and with it
a canary bird in a tin cage. When Hepsey saw Jonathan later, she
remarked casually that she "guessed she'd keep the potatoes; but she
didn't need a canary bird any more than a turtle needs a tooth-pick;
and he had better take it away and get his money back."
However, Jonathan never allowed her occasional rebuffs to discourage
him or stop his attentions. He kept a close watch on all Hepsey's
domestic interests, and if there were any small repairs to be made at
Thunder Cliff, a hole in the roof to be mended, or the bricks on the
top of the chimney to be relaid, or the conductor pipe to be
readjusted, Jonathan was on the spot. Then Jonathan would receive in
return a layer cake with chopped walnuts in the filling, and would
accept it in the same matter-of-fact way in which Hepsey permitted his
services as general caretaker.
This give-and-take business went on for some time. At last it occurred
to him that Mrs. Burke's front porch ought to be painted, and he
conceived the notion of doing the work without her knowledge, as a
pleasant surprise to her. He waited a long time for some day when she
should be going over to shop at Martin's Junction,--when Nickey
usually managed to be taken along,--so that he could do the work
unobserved. Meantime, he collected from the hardware store various
cards with samples of different colors on them. These he would
combine and re-combine at his leisure, in the effort to decide just
what colors would harmonize. He finally decided that a rather dark
blue for the body work would go quite well, with a bright magenta for
the trimmings, and laid in a stock of paint and brushes, and possessed
his soul in patience.
So one afternoon, arriving home burdened with the spoils of Martin's
Junction, great was Mrs. Burke's astonishment and wrath when she
discovered the porch resplendent in dark blue and magenta.
"Sakes alive! Have I got to live inside of that," she snorted. "Why,
it's the worst lookin' thing I ever saw. If I don't settle _him_," she
added, "--paintin' my porch as if it belonged to him--and me as well,"
she added ambiguously. And, catching up her sun-bonnet, she hastened
over to her neighbor's and inquired for Jonathan. "Sure, he's gone to
Martin's Junction to see his brother, Mrs. Burke. He said he'd stay
over night, and I needn't come in again till to-morrow dinner-time,"
Mary McGuire replied.
Hepsey hastened home, and gathering all the rags she could find, she
summoned Nickey and Mullen, one of the men from the farm, and they
worked with turpentine for nearly two hours, cleaning off the fresh
paint from the porch. Then she sent Nickey down to the hardware store
for some light gray paint and some vivid scarlet paint, and a bit of
dryer. It did not take very long to repaint her porch gray--every
trace of the blue and the magenta having been removed by the vigorous
efforts of the three.
When it was finished, she opened the can of scarlet, and pouring in a
large quantity of dryer she sent Nickey over to see if Mary McGuire
had gone home. All three set to work that evening to paint the porch
in front of Jonathan's house. At first Mullen protested anxiously that
it was none of his business to be painting another man's porch, but
Mrs. Burke gave him a look which changed his convictions; so he and
Nickey proceeded gleefully to fulfill their appointed task, while she
got supper.
When the work was quite finished. Hepsey went over to inspect it, and
remarked thoughtfully to herself: "I should think that a half pint of
dryer might be able to get in considerable work before to-morrow noon.
I hope Jonathan'll like scarlet. To be sure it does look rather
strikin' on a white house; but then variety helps to relieve the
monotony of a dead alive town like Durford; and if he don't like it
plain, he can trim it green. I'll teach him to come paintin' my house
without so much as a by-your-leave, or with-your-leave, lettin' the
whole place think things."
As it happened, Jonathan returned late that night to Durford--quite
too late to see the transformation of his own front porch, and since
he entered by the side door as usual, he did not even smell the new
paint. The next morning he sauntered over to Thunder Cliff, all agog
for his reward, and Mrs. Burke greeted him at her side door, smiling
sweetly.
"Good mornin', Jonathan. It was awful good of you to paint my front
porch. It _has_ needed paintin' for some time now, but I never seemed
to get around to it."
"Don't mention it, Hepsey," Jonathan replied affably. "Don't mention
it. You're always doin' somethin' for me, and it's a pity if I can't
do a little thing like that for you once in a while."
Hepsey had strolled round to the front, as if to admire his work,
Jonathan following. Suddenly he came to a halt; his jaw dropped, and
he stared as if he had gone out of his senses.
"Such a lovely color; gray just suits the house, you know," Mrs. Burke
observed. "You certainly ought to have been an artist, Jonathan. Any
man with such an eye for color ought not to be wastin' his time on a
farm."
Jonathan still gazed at the porch in amazement, blinked hard, wiped
his eyes and his glasses with his handkerchief, and looked again.
"What's the matter with you? Have you a headache?" Hepsey inquired
solicitously.
"No, I haven't got no headache; but when I left that porch yesterday
noon it was blue, and now I'm blamed if it don't seem gray. Does it
look gray-like to you, Hepsey?"
"Why certainly! What's that you say? Do you say you painted it blue?
That certainly's mighty queer. But then you know some kinds of paint
fade--some kinds do!" She nodded, looking suspiciously at the work.
"Fade!" Jonathan sneered. "Paints don't fade by moonlight in one
night. That isn't no faded blue. It's just plain gray. I must be goin'
color blind, or something."
"It looks gray to me, and I'm glad it is gray, so don't you worry
about it, Jonathan. Blue would be somethin' awful on the front of a
white house, you know."
"Well," continued the bewildered Junior Warden, "I'm blessed if this
isn't the queerest thing I ever see in all my born days. If I catch
the fellow that sold me that paint, I'll make it lively for him or my
name isn't Jackson."
"Oh, I wouldn't do anything like that! What difference does it make,
so long as I like the color myself; it's my house. I should have been
very much put out if you'd painted it blue; yes, I should."
"But I don't like to be cheated down at the store; and I won't, by
gum! They said it was best quality paint! I'll go down to Crosscut's
and see about this business, right now. I've traded with him nigh on
twenty years, and he don't bamboozle me that way."
Hepsey turned away choking with laughter, and retreated to her
kitchen.
Jonathan started back towards his house to get his hat and coat, and
then for the first time he caught sight of his own porch, done in
flaming scarlet, which fairly seemed to radiate heat in the brilliant
sunlight. He stood motionless for nearly a minute, paralyzed. Then the
color began to rise in his neck and face as he muttered under his
breath:
"Hm! I'm on to the whole business now. I ought to have known that
Hepsey would get the best of me. I guess I won't go down to Crosscut's
after all."
Then he walked up to the porch and touched the scarlet paint with his
finger and remarked:
"Set harder than a rock, by gum! She must have used a whole lot of
dryer. I'll get even with her for this. See if I don't."
In the afternoon Jonathan brought over some fine apples and presented
them to Hepsey, who was knitting on her side porch. She thanked him
for the gift, and the conversation drifted from one thing to another
while she waited for the expected outburst of reproach which she knew
would come sooner or later. But curiously enough, Jonathan was more
cheery and cordial than usual, and made no allusion whatever to the
scarlet porch, which was conspicuously visible from where they sat.
Again and again Hepsey led the conversation around to the point where
it seemed as if he must break covert, but he remained oblivious, and
changed the subject readily. Not a word on the subject passed his lips
that afternoon.
Then, from day to day the neighbors called and inquired of her if
Jackson had gone off his head, or what was the matter. His flaming
porch outraged Durford's sense of decency. She was at her wits end to
answer, without actually lying or compromising herself; so the only
thing she said was that she had noticed that he had been acting a bit
peculiar lately, now they mentioned it. As time went on, the scarlet
porch became the talk of the town. It was duly discussed at the sewing
society, and the reading club, and the general sentiment was
practically unanimous that Jackson must be suffering from incipient
cataract or senile dementia, and needed a guardian. Even Mary McGuire
remarked to Mrs. Burke that she was afraid "that there front porch
would sure set the house on fire, if it wasn't put out before."
Everybody agreed that if his wife had lived, the thing never could
have happened.
Meantime, Jonathan went about his daily business, serene and happy,
apparently oblivious of the fact that there was anything unusual in
the decoration of his house. When his friends began to chaff him about
the porch he seemed surprised, and guessed it was his privilege to
paint his house any color he had a mind to, and there was no law
ag'in' it; it was nobody's business but his own. Tastes in color
differed, and there was no reason in the world why all houses should
be painted alike. He liked variety himself, and nobody could say that
scarlet wasn't a real cheerful color on a white house.
Occasionally people who were driving by stopped to contemplate the
porch; and the Durford Daily _Bugle_ devoted a long facetious
paragraph to the matter. All of which Mrs. Burke knew very well, and
it was having its effect on her nerves. The porch was the most
conspicuous object in view from Hepsey's sitting-room windows, and
every time she entered the room she found herself looking at the
flaming terror with increasing exasperation. Verily, if Jonathan
wanted revenge he was getting far more than he knew: the biter was
badly bit. The matter came to a crisis one day, when Jonathan
concluded a discussion with Mrs. Burke about the pasture fence. She
burst out abruptly:
"Say, Jonathan Jackson, why in the name of conscience don't you paint
your porch a Christian color? It's simply awful, and I'm not goin' to
sit in my house and have to look at it all winter."
Jonathan did not seem greatly stirred, and replied in an absent-minded
way:
"Why don't you move your sittin' room over to the other side of the
house, Hepsey? Then you wouldn't have to see it. Don't you like
scarlet?"
"No, I don't like it, and if you don't paint it out, I will."
"Don't do nothin' rash, Hepsey. You know sometimes colors fade in the
moonlight--some colors, that is. Maybe that scarlet porch'll turn to a
light gray if you let it alone."
Mrs. Burke could stand it no longer; so, laying down her work she
exploded her pent-up wrath:
"Jonathan Jackson, if that paint isn't gone before to-morrow, I'll
come over and paint it myself."
"Oh, that isn't necessary, Hepsey. And it might set people talkin'.
But if you won't move your sittin'-room to the other side of your own
house, why don't you move it over to my house? You wouldn't see so
much of the red paint then."
Hepsey snorted and spluttered in baffled rage.
"Now, now, Hepsey," soothed Jonathan, "if that don't suit you, I'll
tell you what I'll do: I'll paint it over myself on one condition!"
"And what's that, I'd like to know?"
"That you'll marry me," snapped Jonathan hungrily.
Instead of resenting such bold tactics on the part of her suitor, Mrs.
Burke gazed at him a long time with a rather discouraged look on her
face.
"Land sakes!" she exclaimed at last with assumed weariness and a
whimsical smile, "I didn't know I'd ever come to this; but I guess
I'll have to marry you to keep you from makin' another kind of fool of
yourself; widowers are such helpless mortals, and you certainly do
need a guardian." She shook her head at him despondently.
Jonathan advanced towards her deliberately, and clinched the matter:
"Well, Hepsey, seein' that we're engaged----"
"Engaged? What do you mean? Get away, you----" She rose from her chair
in a hurry.
"Now Hepsey, a bargain's a bargain: you just said you'd have to marry
me, and I guess the sooner you do it and have it over with, the
better. So, seein' that we are engaged to be married, as I was about
to remark when you interrupted me...." Relentlessly he approached her
once more. She retreated a step or two.
"Well! Sakes alive, Jonathan! Whatever's come over you to make you so
masterful. Well, yes then--I suppose a bargain's a bargain, all right.
But before your side of it's paid up you've got to go right over and
paint that porch of yours a respectable color."
So, for once, Hepsey's strategy had been manipulated to her own
defeat: Jonathan went off to town with flying colors, and bought
himself a can of pure white paint.
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