"Now, Molly, don"t be mean just because old Wade has got her out driving behind the grays after kissing your hand under the lilacs yesterday, which, praise be, n.o.body 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 started in to wake up this little old town reminds me of the feeling you get under your belt seven minutes after you"ve sipped an absinthe frappe for the first time--you are liable for a good jag and don"t know it," 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 Chester 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?"
"Lord love us, 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 around 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 Hup; you can cut off a lock of my hair, and if Judy has got a cake I"ll eat it out of your hands. Shall it be California or Nova Scotia? And I prefer _my_ bride served in light gray tweed." Tom really is adorable and I let him snuggle up just one cousinly second, then we both laughed and began to plan what Tom was horrible enough to call the resurrection razoo. 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 at several inches" distance apart when the judge drew the grays up to the gate and we both went down to the sidewalk 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 would find Aunt Adeline in a faint when I went into the house.
Miss Chester was delightfully gracious about the dinner--I almost called it the debut dinner--and the expression on the judge"s face when he accepted! I was glad she was sitting sidewise to 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.
Anyway, 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 London triumph over the Italian mission. As a punishment I let Tom put his arm around my waist as we stood watching them drive off and then was sorry for the left gray 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 fly-up-the-creek? As a husband he"d chew the rope and run away like a puppy the first time your back was turned. 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. I"m going to make you the subject of a silent prayer at the next missionary meeting, and 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.
"I don"t believe you"ll be able to make it a "silent" session about me, Mrs. Johnson," I called after her, and she laughed back from her own front gate. 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 Judy about the dinner-party and asked her to get the yellow barber to come help her and her nephew wait on the table she grinned such a wide grin 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, she 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 dinner-party, as the flower girl for Caroline Evans" wedding, when she married the Chicago millionaire, from which Hillsboro has never yet recovered. I was sixteen, felt dreadfully naked 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 dinner-parties in my life, but from this time on I mean to indulge in them often. Candle-light, pretty women"s shoulders, black coat sleeves, cut gla.s.s 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 astralized myself down to the pantry, for when I became conscious I found myself in company with a loaf of bread, a plate of b.u.t.ter and a huge jar of jam.
I sat down by the long table by the window and slowly prepared to enjoy myself. I cut off four slices and b.u.t.tered them to an equal thickness and then more slowly put a long silver spoon into the jam. I even paused to admire in Judy"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 old Rene"s masterpiece of a negligee, 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Why Molly, Molly, Molly!"]
"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 into a mush 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 old 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, Peaches?" he asked again in a still softer voice. Again I had that sensation of being against something warm and great and good like your own mother"s breast 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 b.u.t.ter, too," he answered, in that detestable friendly tone of voice as he drew himself up and sat in the window. "Hustle, Peaches, if you are going to feed me, for I"m ravenous. It took Sam Benson"s wife the longest time to have the shortest baby I ever experienced 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 b.u.t.ter that I had fixed for my own self. "That apple-toast combination tires me so 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, Peaches, and let"s get on a jam jag! Come with me just this once and forget--forget--" He didn"t finish his sentence and I"m glad. We neither of us said anything more as I fed him that whole loaf. I found that the bite I took off of each piece I had ready for him when he finished with the one he had in hand satisfied me as nothing I had ever eaten in all my life before had done, while at the same time my nibbles soothed his conscience about robbing me.
His teeth are big and strong and white and his jaws work like machinery.
He is the strongest man I ever saw, and his gauntness is all muscle.
What is that glow a woman gets from feeding a hungry man whom she likes with her own hands; and why should I want to be certain that he kissed 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 FIFTH
BLUE ABSINTHE
"The juice of a lemon in two gla.s.ses 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 "on the water wagon" it"s I, and I have to sit on the front seat from dawn to dusk to get in the gallon of water I"m supposed to consume in that time. Sometime I"m going to get mixed up and try to drink my bath if I don"t look out. I dreamed night before last that I was taking a bath in a gla.s.s of ice-cream soda-water and trying to hide from Doctor John behind the dab of ice-cream that seemed inadequate for food or protection. I haven"t had even one gla.s.s for two months and I woke up in a cold perspiration of embarra.s.sment and raging hunger.
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. Anyway, 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 around 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 b.u.t.tons. I expanded and breathed--pretty quickly at that.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Breathe as deep as you can"]
"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.