Chapter 2

"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.