Chapter 5

Surely no woman ever in all the world read such a letter as that, and no wonder my breath almost failed me. It was a love-letter in which the cold paper was turned into a heart that beat against mine, and I bowed my head over it as I wetted it with tears. I knew then that I had taken his coming back lightly; had fussed over it and been silly-proud of it; while not _really_ caring at all. All that awful reducing my waist measure seemed just a lack of confidence in his love for me; he wouldn't have minded if I weighed five hundred pounds, I felt sure. He loved me--really, really, really; and I had sat and weighed him with a lot of men who were nothing more than amused by my chatter, or taken with my beauty, and who wouldn't have known such love if it were shown to them through a telescope.

I reached into a trunk that stood just beside me and took out a box that I hadn't looked into for years. His letters were all there, and his photographs, that were very handsome. I could hardly see them through my tears, but I knew that they were dim in places with being cried over when I had put them away years ago after Aunt Adeline decided that I was to be married. I kissed the poor little-girl cry-spots; and with that a perfect flood of tears rose to my eyes--but they didn't fall, for there, right in front of me, stood a more woe-stricken human being than I could possibly be, if I judged by appearances.

"Molly, Molly," gulped Billy, "I am so ill I'm going to die here on the floor," and he sank into my arms.

"Oh, Billy, what is the matter?" I gasped and gave him a little terrified shake.

"Mamie Johnson did it--poked her finger down her throat and mine, too," he wailed against my breast. "We was full of things people gived us to eat and couldn't eat no more. She said if we did that with our fingers it would make room for some more then. She did it, and I'm going to die dead--dead!

"No, no, pet; you'll be all right in a second. Stay quiet here in your Molly's lap and you will be well in just a few minutes," I said with a smile I hid in his yellow mop as I kissed the drake-tail kiss-spot. "Where's Mamie?" I thought to ask with the greatest apprehension.

"In the garden eating cup-cake Jane baked hot for both of us," he answered, snuggling close and much comforted.

"Don't ever, ever do that again, Billy," I said, giving him both a hug and a shake. "It's piggy to eat more than is good for you and then still want more. What would your father say?"

"Father isn't no good, and I don't care what he says," answered Billy with spirit. "He don't play no more, and he don't laugh no more, and he don't eat no more hardly, too. I'm not going to live in that house with him more'n two days longer. I want to come over and sleep in your bed and have you to play with me, Molly."

"Don't say that, darling, ever again," I said as I bent over him. "Your father is the best man in the world, and you must never, never leave him."

"I 'spect I will, when I get big enough to kill a bear," answered Billy decidedly. "I say, do you think Mamie saved even a little piece of that cake? I 'spect I had better go see," and he slipped out of my arms and was gone before I could hold him.

It is a lonely house across the garden with the big and the tiny man in it all by themselves! And tears, from another corner of my heart entirely, rose to my eyes at the thought, but they, too, never fell, for I heard Mrs. Johnson calling, and I had to run down quick and see what new delicacy had arrived for my party.

Somehow I didn't enjoy dressing to-night for my dinner, and when I was ready I stood before the mirror and looked at myself a long time. I was very tall and slim and--well, I suppose I might say regal in that amethyst crêpe with the soft rose-point, but I looked to myself about the eyes as I had been doing for years. And to-night that Rene triumph made me feel no different from one of Miss Hettie Primm's conceptions that I had been wearing for ages with indifference and total lack of style. I shrugged my shoulder with what I thought was sadness, though it felt a trifle like temper, too, and went on down into the garden to see if any of my flowers had a cheer-up message for me.

But it was a bored garden I stepped into just as the last purple flush of day was being drunk down by the night. The tall white lilies laid their heads over on my breast and went to sleep before I had said a word to them, and the nasturtiums snarled round my feet until they got my slippers stained with green. Only Billy's bachelor's-buttons stood up stiff and sturdy, slightly flushed with imbibing the night dew. I felt cheered at the sight of them, and bent down to gather a bunch of them to wear, even if they did clash with my amethyst draperies, when an amused smile, that was done out loud, came from the path just behind me.

"Don't gather them all to-night, Mrs. Molly," said Dr. John teasingly, as he stooped beside me. "Leave a few for--for the others." I waked up in a half-second, and so did all those prying flowers, I felt sure.

"I was just gathering them for place bouquets for--for the girls," I said stupidly as I moved over a little nearer to him. Why it is that the minute that man comes near me I get warm and comfortable and stupid, and as young as Billy, and bubbly and sad and happy and cross, is more than I can say, but I do. I never possibly know how to answer any remark that he may happen to make, unless it is something that makes me lose my temper. His next remark was the usual spark.

"Better give them the run of the garden--alone, Mrs. Molly. No chance for them unless you do," he said laughingly, "or the buttons, either," he added under his breath so I could just hear it. I wish Mrs. Johnson could have heard how soft his voice lingered over that little half-sentence. She is so experienced she could have told me if it meant--but, of course, he isn't like other men!

There are lots of questions I'm going to ask Alfred after I'm married to him.

"Oh, you Molly," came a hail in Tom's voice from the gate, just as I was making up my mind to try and think of something to wither the doctor with, and he and Ruth Clinton came up the front walk to meet us. I wondered why I was having a party in my house when being alone in my garden with just a neighbour was so much more interesting, but I had to begin to enjoy myself right off, for in a few minutes all the rest came.

I don't think I ever saw my house look so lovely before. Mrs. Johnson had put all the flowers out of hers and Mrs. Cain's garden all over everything, and the table was a mass of soft pink roses that were shedding perfume and nodding at one another in their most society manner. There is no glimmer in the world like that which comes from really old polished silver and rosewood and mahogany, and one's great-great-grandmother's hand-woven linen feels like Oriental silk across one's knees.

Suddenly I felt very stately and granddamey and responsible as I looked at them all across the roses and sparkling glass. They were lovely women, all of them, and could such men be found anywhere else in the world? When I left them all to go out into the big universe to meet the distinctions that I knew my future husband would have for me, would I sit at table with people who loved me like this? I saw Pet Buford say something to Tom about me that I know was lovely from the way he smiled at me; and the judge's eyes were a full cup for any woman to have offered her. Then in a flash it all seemed to go to my head, and tears rose to my eyes, and there I might have been crying at my own party if I hadn't felt a strong warm hand laid on mine as it rested on my lap and Dr. John's kind voice teased into my ears--"Steady, Mrs. Molly, there's the loving-cup to come yet," he whispered. I hated him, but held on to his thumb tight for half a minute. He didn't know what the matter really was, but he understood what I needed. He always does.

And after that everybody had a good time, Jane and her nephew as much as anybody, and I could see Aunt Bettie and Mrs. Johnson peeping in the pantry door, having the time of their lives, too.

That dinner was going like an airship on a high wind, when something happened to tangle its tail feathers, and I can hardly write it for trembling yet. It was a simple little telegram, but it might have been nitro-glycerine on a tear for the way it acted. It was for me, but the nephew handed it to Tom, and he opened it and, looking at me, he solemnly read it out loud. It said--

"Arrived this noon. Have I your permission to come to Hillsboro immediately? Answer. ALFRED."

It was dreadful! Nobody said a word, and Tom laid the telegram right down in his plate, where it immediately began to soak up the dressing of his salad. He was so white and shaky that Pet looked at him in amazement, and then I am sure she had the good sense to find his hand under the cloth and hold it, for his shoulder hovered against hers, and the colour came back to his face as he smiled down at her. I don't believe I'll ever get the courage to look at Tom again until he marries Pet, which he'll do now, I feel sure.

And as for the judge and Ruth Clinton, I was glad they were sitting beside each other, for I could avoid that side of the table with my eyes until I had steadied myself a few seconds at least. The surprise made the others I had been dining seem statues from the stone age, and only Mr. Graves' fork failed to hang fire. His appetite is as strong as his nerves, and Delia Hawes looked at his composure with the relief plain in her eyes. Henrietta's smile in the judge's direction was doubtful. But they were not all my lovers, and why that awful silence?

I couldn't say a word, and I am sure I don't know what I should have done if it hadn't been for the doctor. He leaned forward, and his deep eyes came out in their wonderful way and seemed to collect every pair of eyes at the table, even the most astounded. We all held our breaths and waited for him to speak.

"No wonder we are all stricken dumb at Mrs. Carter's telegram," he said in his deep voice that commands everybody and everything, even the terrors of birth and death. "The whole town will be paralysed at the news that its most distinguished citizen is only going to give them two days to get ready to receive him. I can see the panic the brass band will have now getting the brass polished up, and I want to be the one to tell Mayor Pollard myself, so as to suggest to him to have at least a two-hour speech of welcome to hand out at the train. We'll make it a great time for him when he lands in the old town."

* * * * *

Tom took Pet home early, and I hope they walked in the moonlight for hours. Tom is the kind of man that any pretty girl who is sympathetic enough in the moonlight could comfort for anything. I'm not at all worried about him, but--

The hour I sat in the garden and talked to Judge Wade must have brought grey hairs to my head if it was daylight and I could see them. Ruth Clinton had said good-bye with the loveliest haunted look in her great dark eyes, and I had felt as if I had killed something that was alive. Dr. John had been called from his coffee to a patient and had gone with just a friendly word of good night, and the others had at last left the judge and me alone--also in the moonlight, which I wished in my heart somebody would put out.

To-night he looked me in the face and told me how to marry, and I'm not sure yet that I won't do as he says. Of course I'm in love with Alfred, but if he wants me he had better get me away quick before the judge makes all his arrangements. A woman loves to be courted with poems and flowers and deference, but she's wonderfully apt to marry the man who says, "Don't argue, but put on your bonnet and come with me."

Oh, I'm crying, crying in my heart, which is worse than in my eyes, as I sit and look across my garden, where the cold moon is hanging low over the tall trees behind the doctor's house and his light in his room is burning warm and bright. They are right: _he_ doesn't care if I am going away for ever with Alfred. His quick eulogy of him, and the lovely warm look he poured over poor frightened me at his side, told me that once and for all. Still, we have been so close together over his baby, and I have grown so dependent on him for so many things, that it cuts into me like a hot knife that he shouldn't care if he lost me--even for a neighbour. I shouldn't mind not having _any_ husband if I could always live close by him and Billy like this, and if I married Judge Wade--_no, I don't like that!_ Of course, I'm going with Alfred, now that an accident has made me announce the fact to the whole town before he even knows it himself, but wherever I go, that light in the room with that lonely man is going to burn in my heart. I hope it will throw a glow over Alfred!

Leaf VII.

Heart Agonies.

I have suffered this day until I want to lay my face down against the hem of His garment and wait in the dust for Him to pick me up. I shall never be able to do it myself, and how He's going to do it I can't see, but He will.

That dinner-party last night was bad enough, but to-day's been worse. I didn't sleep until long after daylight and then Jane came in before eight o'clock with a letter for me that looked like a state document. I felt in my trembly bones that it was some sort of summons affair from Judge Wade; and it was. I looked into the first paragraph and then decided that I had better get up and dress and have a cup of coffee and a single egg before I tried to read it.

Incidental to my bath and dressing, I weighed and found that I had lost all four of those last surplus pounds and two more in three days. Those two extra pounds might be construed to prove that I was in love, but exactly with whom I was utterly unprepared to say. I didn't even enjoy the thinness, but took a kind of already married look in my glass and tried to slip the egg past my bored lips and get myself to chew it down. It was work; and then I took up the judge's letter, which also was work and more of it.

He started at the beginning of everything, that is at the beginning of the tuberculosis girl, and I cried over the pages of her as if she had been my own sister. At the tenth page we buried her and took up Alfred, and I must say I saw a new Alfred in the judge's bouquet-strewn appreciation of him, but I didn't want him as bad as I had the day before, when I read his own new and old letters, and cried over his old photographs. I suppose that was the result of some of what the judge manages the juries with. He'd be apt to use it on a woman, and she wouldn't find out about it until it was too late to be anything but mad. Still when he began on me at page sixteen I felt a little better, though I didn't know myself any better than I did Alfred when I got to page twenty.

What I am, is just a poor foolish woman, who has a lot more heart than she can manage with the amount of brains she got with it at birth. I'm not any star in a rose-coloured sky, and I don't want to inspire anybody; it's too heavy an undertaking. I want to be a healthy, happy woman and a wife to a man who can inspire himself and manage me. I want to marry a thin man, and when I get to be thirty I want my husband to want me to be as large as Aunt Bettie, but not let me. An inspiration couldn't be fat, and I'm always in danger from hot cakes and chicken gravy.

However, if I should undertake to be all the things Judge Wade said in that letter he wanted me to be to him, I should soon be skin and bones from mental and physical exercise. Still, he does live in Hillsboro, and I won't let myself know how my heart aches at the thought of leaving my home--and other things. It's up in my throat, and I seem always to be swallowing it, the last few days.

All the men who write me letters seem to get themselves wound up into a sky rocket and then let themselves explode in the last paragraph, and it always upsets my nerves. I was just about to begin to cry again over the last words of the judge, when the only bright spot in the day so far suddenly happened. Pet Buford ran in with the pinkest cheeks and the brightest eyes I had seen since I looked in the mirror the night of the dance. She was in an awful hurry.

"Molly dear," she said with her words literally falling over themselves, "Tom says you would give us some of your dinner left-overs to take for lunch in the car, for we are going to take a run down to Hedgeland to see some awfully fine cattle he has heard will be in the market there. I don't want to ask mother, in case she won't let me go; and his mother, if he asked her, will begin to talk about us. Tom said I was to come to you, and you would understand and arrange it all quickly. He sent his love and all sorts of other messages. Isn't he fond of a joke?" And we kissed and laughed and packed a basket, and kissed and laughed again for good-bye. I felt amused and happy for a few minutes--and also deserted. It's a very good thing for a woman's conceit to find out how many of her lovers are just make-believes. I may have needed Tom's deflection.

Anyway, I don't know when I ever was so glad to see anybody as I was when Mrs. Johnson came in the front door. A woman who has proved to her own satisfaction that marriage is a failure is at times a great tonic to other women. I needed a tonic badly this morning and I got it.

"Well, from all my long experience, Molly," she said as she seated herself and began to hem a tea-cloth with long steady stabs, "husbands are just like sticks of candy in different jars. They may look a little different, but they all taste alike, and you soon get tired of them. In two months you won't know the difference in being married to Alfred Bennett and Mr. Carter, and you'll have to go on living with him maybe fifty years. Luck doesn't strike twice in the same place, and you can't count on losing two husbands. Alfred's father was Mr. Johnson's first cousin and had more crotchets and worse. He had silent spells that lasted a week, and altogether gave his family a bad time of it. Alfred looks very much like him."

"Mrs. Johnson," I said after a minute's silence, while I had decided whether or not I had better tell her all about it. If a woman's in love with her husband you can't trust her to keep a secret, but I decided to try Mrs. Johnson. "I really am not engaged exactly to Alfred Bennett, though I suppose he thinks so by now if he has got the answer to that telegram. But--but something has made me--made me think about Judge Wade--that is he--what do you think of him, Mrs. Johnson?" I concluded in the most pitifully perplexed tone of voice.

"All alike, Molly; all as much alike as peas in a pod; all except John Moore, who's the only exception in all the male tribe I ever met! His marrying once was just accidental and must be forgiven him. She fell in love with him while he was attending her when she had typhoid, when his back was turned as it were, and it was simple kindness in him that made him marry her when he found out how it was with the poor thing. There's not a woman in this town who could marry that wouldn't marry him at the drop of his hat--but, thank goodness, that hat will never drop, and I'll have one sensible man to comfort and doctor me down into my old age. Now, just look at that! Mr. Johnson's come home here in the middle of the morning, and I'll have to get that old paper I hunted out of his desk for him last night. I wonder how he came to forget it!"

It's funny how Mrs. Johnson always knows what Mr. Johnson wants before he knows himself and gets it before he asks for it!

As she went out of the gate the postman came in, and at the sight of another letter my heart slunk off into my slippers, and my brain seemed about to back up in a corner and refuse to work. In a flash it came to me that men oughtn't to write letters to women very much--they really don't plough deep enough, they just irritate the top soil. I took this missive from Alfred, counted all the fifteen pages, put it out of sight under a book, looked out of the window and saw Mr. Johnson shooed off down the street by Mrs. Johnson; saw the doctor's car go chugging hurriedly in the garage, and then my spirit turned itself to the wall and refused to be comforted. I tried my best, but failed to respond to my own remonstrances with myself, and tears were slowly gathering in a cloud of gloom when a blue gingham, romper-clad sunbeam burst into the room.

"Git your night-gown and your tooth-bresh quick, Molly, if you want to pack 'em in my trunk!" he exclaimed with his eyes dancing and a curl standing straight up on the top of his head, as it has a habit of doing when he is most excited. "You can't take nothing but them 'cause I'm going to put in a rope to tie the whale with when I ketch him, and it'll take up all the rest of the room. Git 'em quick!"

"Yes, lover, I'll get them for you, but tell Molly where it is you are going to sail off with her in that trunk of yours?" I asked, dropping into the game as I have always done with him, no matter what game of my own pressed when he called.

"On the ocean where the boats go 'cross and run right over a whale. Don't you remember you showed me them pictures of spout whales in a book, Molly? Father says they comes right up by the ship and you can hear 'em shoot water and maybe a iceberg, too. Which do you want to ketch' most, Molly, a iceberg or a whale?" His eager eyes demanded instant decision on my part of the nature of capture I preferred. My mind quickly reverted to those two ponderous and intense epistles I had got within the hour, and I lay back in my chair and laughed until I felt almost merry.

"The iceberg, Billy, every time," I said at last. I just can't manage whales, especially if they are ardent, which word means intense. I like _icebergs_, or I think I should if I could catch one."

"I don't believe you could, Molly, but maybe father will let you put a rope and a long hook in his trunk to try with, if your clothes go into mine. His is a heap the biggest anyway, and Nurse Tilly said he ought to put my things in his, but I cried, and then he went upstairs and got out that little one for me. Come and see 'em."

"What do you mean, Billy?" I asked, while a sudden fear shot all over me like lightning. "You're just playing go-away, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not playing, Molly!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Me and you and father is going across the ocean for a long, long time away from here. Father ast me about it this morning, and I told him all right, and you could come with us if you was good. He said couldn't I go without you if you was busy and couldn't come, and I told him you would put things down and come if I said so. Won't you, Molly? It won't be no fun without you, and you'd cry all by yourself with me gone." His little face was all drawn up with anxiety and sympathy at my lonely estate with him out of it, and a cry rose up from my heart with a kind of primitive savagery at what I felt was coming down upon me.

Without waiting to take him with me, or think, or do anything but feel deadly savage anger, I hurried across the garden and into Dr. Moore's surgery, where he was just taking off his gloves and dust-coat.

"What do you mean, John Moore, by daring, daring to think you can go and take Billy away from me?" I demanded, looking at him with what must have been such fear and madness in my face that he was startled as he came close to the table against which I leaned. His face had grown white and quiet at my attack, and he waited to answer for a long horrible minute that pulled me apart like one of those inquisition machines they used to torture women with when they didn't know any better modern way to do it.