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 d.a.m.n that man and I"ll git 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 string-bean state of existence, Mrs. Molly?" he asked me before I had finished tying the blouse, in the nicest voice in the world, fairly crackling with friendship and good humor and hateful things like that. Why I should have wanted him to huff 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 signaling out of the dusk to a Dorothy Perkins 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 gra.s.s and I began to cuddle Billy"s bare knees in the skirt of my dress so the chigres 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 right 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 hops and I don"t to this minute know why.
"n.o.body 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 dumfounded. 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 THIRD
MONUMENT OR TROUSSEAU?
Men are very strange people. They are like those horrible 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. Not that I thought much about Mr.
Carter, poor man! When he wasn"t right around I felt it best to forget him as much as I could, but it seems hard for other women to let you forget either your husband or theirs.
I know now that I really never got any older than the poor, foolish, eighteen-years" child that Aunt Adeline married off "safe", all the time I was the "refuge" sort of wife. I would sit and listen while the other wives talked over the men in utter bewilderment and most times terror, then I would force myself to a little more forgetting and poor Mr.
Carter must have suffered the consequences. 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 hazing 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 tucker when the boy brought that basket of fish from Judge Wade"s fishing trip Sat.u.r.day. 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 lovely, I think. He gives me the gentlest understanding smile when he meets me on 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 fool 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, by the grace of G.o.d." Mrs. Johnson sews by a.s.sa.s.sinating the cloth with the needle, and as she talked she was mending the sleeve of one of Mr. Johnson"s shirts.
"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 sc.r.a.p 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 on sight.
I hated her instantly with the most intense adoration that made me want to lie down at her feet, and also made me feel like 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 Doctor John"s office and just to have looked at him and said one word--"string-bean!"
Aunt Betty introduced her as Miss Chester from Washington.
"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 steamer 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, nothing! But Al Bennett is a man of sense not to marry any of the string of women I suppose he"s got following him!" she said.
Miss Chester looked at her in a mild kind of wonder, but she went on murdering Mr. Johnson"s shirt-sleeve with the needle without noticing the glance at all.
"Well, well, honey, I don"t know about that," said Aunt Bettie as she fanned and rocked her great, big, darling, fat self in the strong rocker I always kept in the breezy angle of the porch for her. "Al 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 Chester! 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 out on the porch just then so I could go in and tell Judy to bring out the iced 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, as you do the Bible when you want to decide things, 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 shoved it back in a hurry and went on out on the porch, comforted in a way, but feeling some more in sympathy with Mrs Johnson than I had before Aunt Bettie and her guest from Washington 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 humor well started, and right 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 tall delicious gla.s.ses of tea full of sugar and consume without fear three of Judy"s puffy cakes, while I crumbled mine in secret over the banisters and set half the gla.s.s of tea out of sight behind the wistaria vine.
It was bad enough to hear Aunt Bettie just offer her Tom, who, if he is her own son, is my favorite 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 Chester 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 n.o.body 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, Tennessee, or Paris, France, 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 check-book. It took me more than an hour to figure it all up, but I went to bed a happier, though in prospects a poorer woman.
It is strange how spending a man"s money makes you feel more congenial with him and as I sat in the cars on my way to the city early the next morning I felt nearer to Mr. Carter than I almost ever did, alive or dead. After this I shall always appreciate and admire him for the way he made money, since, for the first time in my life, I fully realized 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 flesh just crawling off of me. It was delicious!
Then she and two girls in puffs and rats 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 gla.s.s 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: I was spellbound with delight]
Next I signed the check 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 taffeta bag I had worn down to the city. I must have shrunk the whole remaining pounds I had felt obliged to lose for Alfred and Ruth Chester 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 madam and have it take her to Klein"s? They have wonderful gowns by Rene all ready to be fitted at short notice. Really, madam"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 Madam Courtier a commission for the customers she pa.s.ses right on to him. The one for me must have looked to her like a real estate transaction.
I spent three days at the great Klein store, only going to the hotel to sleep and most of the time I forgot to eat. Madam Rene must have been Madam Courtier"s twin sister in youth, and Madam 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 old Rene really liked me, for when I blushed and asked her if they had a good beauty doctor in the store she held up her hands and shuddered.
"Never, Madam, never _pour vous_. _Ravissant, charmant_--it is to fool. Nevair! _Jamais, jamais de la vie!_" I had to calm her down and she kissed my hand when we parted.
I thought Klein was going to do the same thing or worse when I signed the check which would be good for a house and lot and motor-car for him, but he didn"t. Only he got even with me by saying: "And I am delighted that the trousseau is perfectly satisfactory to you, Mrs. Carter."
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 funny all 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 gray-blue rajah, tailored almost beyond endurance, to wear home on the train and had thrown the old black taffeta 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 b.u.t.toned the old thing up for the last time, because I really ought to have stayed over a day 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 p.r.i.c.kly heat break out at any minute.
So I hurried and stuffed the gray-blue darling in the top tray, lapped old black taffeta around my waist and belted it in with a black belt off a new green linen I had made for morning walks, down to the drug store on the public square, 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 n.o.ble 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 car aisle, looking so much grander than any other man in sight that I don"t see how they stand him ever. At that minute the n.o.ble black-taffeta deed felt foolish, but at the next minute I thanked my lucky stars for 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 rapture he subsided into the 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 men in Hillsboro have been doing ever since poor Mr. Carter"s funeral.