Paul Ralston

The May days were growing longer and warmer. Many of the cottages were open and there was a feeling of summer everywhere, when suddenly the weather changed. The sea looked green and angry, the wind blew cold across it from the east, bringing a drenching rain which, beginning in the early morning, lasted through the day with a persistency which precluded anything like intercourse with the outside world unless it were necessary. Miss Hansford had been alone all day, with no one to speak to but her cat, Jim. To him and to herself she had talked a good deal of the past, the present and the future. The present was dreary enough, with the thick fog on the water and the steady fall of rain, which increased rather than diminished as the night came on. It was some little diversion to carry pans and pails to places where the roof leaked, and to crowd bits of sacking against the doors, under which pools of water were finding their way. When this was done and darkness had settled down and her lamp was lighted, she began to wonder what she should do next to pass the time.

“I ain’t hungry, but it’ll take my mind if I get myself and Jim some supper. I b’lieve I’ll make griddle cakes. Paul used to be so fond of ’em when he was a boy. I wish he was here to-night,” she said, as she replenished her fire in her small kitchen and busied herself with her preparations for her evening meal. “I shall sit here by the stove where I can lift the cakes from the griddle to my plate and save steps,” she thought, and, bringing a small round table or stand from the dining room, she covered it with a towel, placed upon it a plate, a cup and a saucer and a dish of milk for Jim, who was badly spoiled, and was to take his supper with her.

The cakes were ready to bake and still she sat in her rocking chair, with her feet on the stove hearth and her head thrown back, listening to the rain beating dismally against the windows and wondering why she was so much more lonesome than common.

“I don’t know what’s come over me,” she said. “I actually feel as homesick as I did the first night I staid away from mother when I was a little girl. Maybe it’s Roger’s letter taking me back to when his father and I were young and lived on the farm at home. That’s fifty years ago, and John is dead. Everybody is dead but Roger and me, and he might almost as well be dead as to be buried alive in that heathenish country among miners and the dear knows what. Poor as Job’s turkey, five children, six hundred a year, with now and then a missionary box full of half-worn truck, catechisms, and old Churchmans I’ll warrant, though Roger didn’t say so. Queer that he would be a minister after all I said to him about going into business, offering to set him up and all that. But no; he must be a ’Piscopal minister and go out as a missionary to the West and marry Lucy Potter. I told him she was shiftless, and she was. I told him she’d be weakly, and she is. He said he didn’t care how shiftless or weakly she was, he should marry her. I wonder what he thinks now; five children, six hundred a year, and she not very strong, that’s the way he put it. I was glad to hear from him again, and to get Elithe’s picture.”

Taking from her pocket a letter received the previous day from her nephew, who was bravely doing his Master’s work among the mountains and mines of Montana, she read for a second time:

“It is a long time since I have heard from you, and for the last few days I have been thinking a great deal about you and the old times when I was a boy and you were so kind to me. It is more than twenty years since you saw me and I wonder if you would know me now. Lucy says I am growing old, but I feel as young as ever, except, perhaps, when I have had a long ride of twenty or thirty miles on horseback and am very tired. I like my work and I think I have done some good among the people here. They are not all miners, and we have in our little town several good families from the East and from England. We are all poor, and that is a bond between us. I have six hundred dollars a year, which is a pretty good salary for this vicinity. Then we frequently get a missionary box and that helps wonderfully. You should be here when we open one and hear the expressions of delight as article after article is taken out,—not all new, of course, nor the best fit, but the neighbors come in and help cut and make them over, and we feel quite in touch with the world in our finery. I have five children, four of them sturdy boys, healthy as little bears and, I am sometimes fearful, almost as savage, brought up, as they are, just on the verge of civilization. Our eldest child and only daughter, Elithe, is nineteen, and as lovely a flower as ever blossomed in the wilds of the West. Lucy is not strong, and Elithe is our right hand and left hand, and both hands in one. I send you her photograph, taken by an inferior artist compared with those you have East, but still a very good likeness. There is something in her face which reminds me of you as you looked many years ago when I was a little boy and you came to my father’s one day, wearing a white dress, and your long curls tied with a red ribbon. That’s the way I often think of you now, although I know you must have changed. I should like to see you again and the old places of my childhood, but I fear I never shall. With my family and salary there is little surplus for travelling, and then I am trying hard to save something for my boys’ education when they are older. Elithe has studied with me since leaving the only school we have here, and I think her a fair scholar. She would like so much to go East. Please God, she may sometime. I have just been sent for to go to the mines twelve miles away to see a young man who they think is very ill. Elithe is going with me, as she often does on my visits to the sick, and I verily believe the sound of her voice and the sight of her bright face does more for them than many doctors can do. The horses we are to ride are at the door, and I must say good-bye, with love from us all.

“P. S.—I need not tell you how glad I shall be to hear from you. Letters are like angels’ visits.”

This was Roger’s letter, and as Miss Hansford read it for the second time, the tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped into her lap. The storm raging without was forgotten; the kitchen in which she sat in her loneliness vanished, and she was living forty-five years in the past, when she wore the white gown and her hair was bound with a crimson ribbon. She remembered the day so well and the little boy who had called her his pretty Auntie and played with her long curls, making lines of them while she was the horse to be driven.

“Who would believe I ever wore a white gown and red ribbon?” she said, looking down at her plain calico dress and gingham apron, and thinking of her grey hair, combed back from her face as smoothly as she could comb it, for, in spite of her efforts, it had a trick of twining around her forehead and only needed a little coaxing to curl again as it once had done.

She thought curls a device of Satan, and when she put him behind her she cut them off and burned them. It seemed to her now that she could smell the scorched hair blackening on the hearth, while she looked on with a feeling that, in some small degree, she was a martyr and doing God service.

“Maybe I was morbid and went too far, but I want to do right in that and in everything else,” she said, and then her mind recurred again to Roger and his letter and what he had said of Elithe, who reminded him of her.

Reading between the lines, she fancied that she detected a wish that she would invite Elithe to visit her. “But, my land!” she said, “what would I do with a girl singing and whistling and, maybe, dancing around the house, tramping the streets, racing outdoors and in at all hours, never putting the stone in its place and letting in the flies. No, I couldn’t stand it in Lucy Potter’s girl, any way. I dare say she is nice, and she’s handsome, too, if she is like her picture, but as to looking like me,—oh, my!—” and she laughed at the absurdity, but was conscious of a little stir of pleasure at the thought that she was ever at all like Elithe, or any young girl with pretense to beauty.

By this time Jim had become impatient for his supper, and from giving her sundry soft pats with his paws, had jumped into her chair and from thence on to her shoulder, where he sat coaxing and purring, in imminent danger of falling into her lap. She took him down at last, gave him his milk, and was putting a cake for herself upon the griddle, when on the steps outside there was a stamping of feet, followed by a knock upon the door, and Paul Ralston came in with pools of water dripping from his umbrella.

“Isn’t this a corker for a storm?” he said. “I went to the front door first and banged away. I knew you must be home, and so came round here.”

He was shutting his umbrella as he talked and removing his wet coat, while Miss Hansford looked wonderingly at him.

“Where upon earth did you come from?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you as soon as I get to the fire and that cake, which smells awfully good. Don’t you remember how I used to like them when I was a boy and happened in at supper time? Flap-jacks you called them, or something like that.”

She did remember and she hastened to fill the griddle and brought an extra plate and cup.

“Now for it,” he said, as she heaped his plate with the nicely browned cakes and covered them with maple syrup. “I’ve been to Washington,—sent for by telegram. The bottom has fallen out.”

“No, really! You haven’t broke with Clarice?” Miss Hansford asked eagerly, her countenance brightening and then falling at Paul’s answer.

“Not a bit of it. Why should I? It’s that rascally Jack. He’s gone to the bad entirely.”

“I knew he would. I always felt it in my bones. What’s he been up to now?” Miss Hansford asked, and Paul replied: “Drinks like a fish. He’s managed to get rid of most of his own money and has used some of Clarice’s that she gave him to invest and supposed he had, for he paid her the interest regularly until lately. He went West while Mrs. Percy and Clarice were in Europe, and they have heard nothing from him since February. Clarice’s interest was due the first of April, and as it didn’t come and she didn’t know where he was, she wrote to the firm in Denver, and they replied that it had been invested in his name and he had collected it and skipped. Naturally this cramps her, as they spent a lot in Europe and Clarice was depending upon a part of the Denver money to defray the expenses of her wedding in Washington. Meant to make a splurge, you know, but can’t now, and has decided to be married in Oak City the last of August. That suits me. I’d rather be married here, but I offered to pay for the wedding in Washington if Clarice would let me. She wouldn’t do it. Said she’d some pride left. She’s all broke up about Jack, for scamp as he is, she has some affection for him. She telegraphed to me to come and talk it over, and has finally settled upon almost as big a spread here as she meant to have had in Washington. We shall send out a great many invitations, and probably rent rooms in some of the cottages as well as at the hotels. I thought of you, and instead of going straight through to Boston from New York came here to ask you not to engage your rooms after the last of July. We shall have a lot of people at our house, and some of them must sleep elsewhere. I thought the boat would never reach the wharf, the waves were so high, and when it did it stormed so that I came here before going to the house, and am glad I did. These cakes are first rate.”

As he talked he was eating, and Miss Hansford was baking, wondering how many his stomach would hold, and if the batter would hold out. He was satisfied at last, and, taking Jim in his lap and stroking his soft fur with one hand, with the other he drew from his pocket a package, which he handed to Miss Hansford, saying: “I have brought you a present, Clarice’s photograph and mine, taken in Washington. Hers was so good I wanted you to have it. Isn’t she a stunner?”

He had opened the Turkish morocco case and was looking admiringly at the beautiful face of the girl who was to be his wife. Miss Hansford admitted that she was a stunner and asked how she was, and thanked Paul for the picture. Then she said: “I seem to have a run on pictures. This is the second I have had in two days.”

Going into the next room, she returned with something carefully wrapped in tissue paper.

“Maybe you didn’t know I had a nephew Roger, a ’Piscopal minister in Montana?” she said.

“Never knew you had a relation in the world,” Paul replied, and Miss Hansford continued: “Well, I have—plenty of ’em somewhere; none very near, though. Roger’s the nearest. His father was my brother John, and I quarrelled with him,—Roger I mean,—because, in spite of all I could say, he would marry Lucy Potter, a pretty little helpless thing, with no sort of get up in her. Her folks lived in Ridgefield same as we did. Respectable enough, but shiftless,—let things go to rack and ruin. The front gate hung on one hinge, the fence lopped over, the blinds swung loose, and for months there was a broken window light in the garret,—sometimes with paper pasted over it and sometimes an old shawl sticking out of it. That’s who the Potters were. Went everywhere and everybody liked ’em, but, my land, how Roger, who wouldn’t drink from a glass some one else had drank from, could marry one of ’em I don’t know. She was just a China doll, and her beauty took him. I guess he’s paid for it. I’ve no doubt her house looks like bedlam, and he so neat and particular! There was some French blood in old Miss Potter ’way back, and her sister, Lucy’s aunt, was on the stage,—an actress!”

Miss Hansford whispered the last word as if afraid the furniture in the room would hear and rise in judgment against her. Paul did not seem at all disturbed, and she continued: “Roger and Lucy went to hear her when she was in Boston, and tried to have me go. Think of it! I in such a place! I went with your folks, I know, to see ‘Uncle Tom,’ but that was different. This play the Potter woman was in was about Lady somebody, who put her husband up to kill somebody.”

“Lady Macbeth?” Paul suggested, and Miss Hansford replied: “Yes, that’s the one. A blood and thunder play. Why, I’d as soon go to Purgatory as to see it. I’ve never told a living soul before that we had an actress in the family. I’m so ashamed I hope you’ll keep it to yourself. I shouldn’t like to have Elder Atwater’s wife know it. She has never quite got over my going to see ‘Uncle Tom.’”

Paul did not share Miss Hansford’s prejudice against theatres and actresses, but he promised that neither Elder Atwater’s wife nor any other elder’s wife should ever hear from him of the disgrace attaching to Miss Hansford because her nephew’s wife’s aunt, dead years ago, had been an actress. Miss Hansford had handed him the picture, saying as she did so: “It’s Roger’s girl. He sent it in a letter. He thinks she looks like me.”

“By George, she’s a beauty, if she does; but what’s her name?” Paul said, bending close to the lamp and looking at the word “Elithe” written with very pale ink.

“I don’t wonder you ask,” Miss Hansford replied. “Such an outlandish name. I told you her great-grandmother was French, and they called the girl for her and that aunt on the stage. That’s the worst of it. Named for an actress! It’s pronounced A-l-double e-t-h.”

“Yes, I know—Aleeth. It’s a pretty name, and she is pretty, too,” Paul said, admiring the picture, whose large brown eyes looked at him as steadily and intelligently as if they were living eyes and could read his thoughts.

Some of the great-grandmother’s French blood had been transmitted to her descendant, who showed it in her features and in the pose of her head, covered with short curls, which made her look younger than she was. The nose was slightly retroussé and the mouth rather wide, but taken as a whole the face was charming. The dress was countrified and old-fashioned, and you knew at a glance that the artist was countrified, too, and not at all like the one to whom Clarice had sat. Every curve and line of her graceful figure showed to advantage, while Elithe’s position was cramped and awkward. Her hands were placed just where they looked large and stiff. Her boots, which showed under her short dress, were square-toed instead of pointed like those of Clarice, who was standing with her hands behind her in an attitude “for all the world like a play-actor,” Miss Hansford thought, mentally giving the preference to Elithe. Unconsciously Paul did the same. He did not think of Elithe’s boots or dress or hands. He saw only the lovely face, which held and mastered him with a power he could not define.

“Elithe,” he said, as if speaking to her in the flesh. “I know you are a nice girl with no nonsense in you.” Then to Miss Hansford: “Why don’t you have her come here to visit you?”

“It’s too expensive, for I should have to pay carfare both ways,” Miss Hansford replied; “and then she can’t be spared. There’s four more children, all boys,—little savages, I dare say. Lucy is weakly and the brunt of everything falls on Elithe, who works like a dog.”

“More reason why she should have an outing. Poor little Elithe! Let’s see how she’d look beside Clarice,” Paul said, and slipping his own picture from the case, he put Elithe’s in its place side by side with the proud beauty who seemed to look with disdain upon her humble neighbor.

Elithe, however, did not lose by the comparison. She only represented a different type of girlhood, and most people would have looked at her first and longest.

“They are both beauties and no mistake,” Paul said, following Miss Hansford into the sitting room, where she heard a blind banging. “Keep them here, where you can see them every day,” he continued, placing them on the mantel with Miss Hansford’s Bible and hymn book and spectacle case, a card of sea mosses, a conch shell and a plaster bust of John Wesley.

Returning to the kitchen, he sat down again by the stove and plied Miss Hansford with questions concerning Elithe, who interested him greatly. Miss Hansford could only tell him what Roger had written of her, but she had a good deal to say of Roger and Lucy Potter and the Potters generally, whose blood was not as good as that of the Hansfords. At this Paul laughed. He had suspected that one of Miss Hansford’s objections to Clarice was the thinness of the Percy blood compared with the Ralston’s. For himself he didn’t care a picayune for the color of any one’s blood, and it amused him greatly to hear this peculiar old lady vaunting the superiority of her family and his over the Percys and Potters. For a time he listened patiently, and then, as it was growing late, he returned to the real object of his visit, the refusal of her rooms for August and possibly a part of July,—he would let her know in time. The rooms were promised and then he arose to go, after one more look at the photographs.

“I don’t believe Elithe has much Potter blood in her,” he said, “and I’d send for her if I were you. I’d like to see her myself.”

The next morning Miss Hansford took down the morocco case and looked long and critically at Elithe. Paul’s admiration of her was having its influence. The French name, the actress aunt and the Potter blood did not seem quite so obnoxious to her, and she began to feel a longing to see the girl whose eyes held her as they had held Paul Ralston.

“I s’pose an outing would do her good, and I can afford it, too,” she said. “What am I saving my money for? To give to the Methodists, I suppose, and they don’t need it half as much as Roger.”

The idea of sending for Elithe was beginning to take definite shape, and the more she thought about it the more surprised she grew to find how lonesome she was and how much she wanted the girl whose eyes followed her so persistently and seemed to say, “Send for me; send for me.” From an economical standpoint it might be well to do so, for if Miss Hansford’s rooms were full of lodgers she would need help, and colored servants were out of the question. Martha Ann, the best she had ever employed, had decamped with three napkins, two silver spoons and a fruit knife. Her would-be successor had come to the front door in a silk dress and big hat, and, introducing herself as Mrs. Helena Jackson, had asked if Miss Hansford wished to hire either a wash-lady or a lady to do general housework. She was told that Miss Hansford wanted neither a wash-lady nor a nigger, and the door slammed in her face.

“No more darkies for me,” she said, and as she must have some one she began to wonder if Elithe would not do. “I don’t s’pose she’d be much more than a teacup wiper, though if what Roger says is true, she is capable of doing more than that; and then I feel it in my bones that I ought to send for her.”

For a week or more Miss Hansford kept up this style of conversation with herself, while her bones clamored more and more for Elithe. At last she made up her mind and wrote to Roger inviting Elithe to spend the summer with her, and as much longer time as she chose, if she proved the right kind of a girl, and didn’t make more trouble than her company was worth.

“One thing I may as well mention now,” she wrote, “I can’t have her gadding nights to concerts and rides on the water and clambakes and the Casino and the like. She must be in by nine, or half-past at the latest, as I keep early hours. I can’t have her slat her things round everywhere. I can’t have her sing and whistle in the house. I ain’t used to it. I like to be still and meditate. I don’t want you to think she isn’t to have any privileges, for she is. I shall use her well, and I inclose money for her fare and a little more, as she may want to buy a dress or two. Let me know when to expect her.—Phebe Hansford.”

“P. S.—Give my regards to Lucy and a dollar to each of the boys. I’ve allowed for that.”

“There, I’ve done my duty,” Miss Hansford thought, as she posted the letter, and then rather anxiously awaited the result.