RETARDED BOMBS
I
“For the land’s sake! If there isn’t Jonas Lane!” burst out Miss Cockerill irrelevantly.
She so far forgot the respect due to a minister’s wife, and that reserve which should be the portion of a maiden lady, as to forsake her chair for the window. Peering discreetly through her lattice of geraniums, she regarded with tense interest the actions of a gentleman who was emerging from a buggy in front of her neighbour’s house. This person, after securing his horse to a ringed post, made his way with some deliberation toward the door.
“He’s taken on flesh,” pursued Miss Cockerill. She drew a trifle to one side in order to share her opportunity with her visitor, but losing nothing of what it was vouchsafed her to behold during the interval between the pull at the bell and the opening of the door. “She keeps him waitin’, same as she’s done for twenty years,” commented the spectator.
The door at which he sued closed behind the expectant gentleman who had “taken on flesh.” And as Miss Cockerill’s most piercing gaze failed to penetrate that exasperating barrier, she turned apologetically:
“You see, Mis’ Webster, I’ve known Martha Waring ever since we were that high.” She indicated an altitude above the floor about equal to that of an ambitious kitten. “She was born in that very house, and I was born in this, and now we’re the only ones left of our folks. So it seems like I knew more about her than I did about myself.”
It is to be feared that Mrs. Webster, lately come from more impersonal atmospheres to that of Ackerton, made small effort to discourage the revelations which it not seldom befell her to hear. On the contrary, she made it a point to regard them as among the roses which garnish the rather thorny path of young divines and their wives.
“A friendship like that is charming,” she remarked. “It is not many that survive the perils of childhood. You are both fortunate in having such constant friends.”
“H’m! It’s a pity she don’t see it!” exclaimed Miss Cockerill somewhat grimly. “Like as not she’ll tell Jonas Lane to go back out West.”
“Jonas Lane?” echoed Mrs. Webster with diplomatic interrogation. “Mr. Lane? I don’t seem to remember that name.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” agreed Miss Cockerill promptly. “His family’s all dead, like the rest of ours, and he went away twenty years ago—after he’d proposed to Martha the first time.”
“O!” exclaimed Mrs. Webster with discreet non-committal. But there was that in the regard she cast upon Miss Cockerill which did not deter that lady from continuing:
“He’s only been back twice since. That was when he proposed to her the second and third times. Now I s’pose he’s doing it the fourth.”
She looked out of the window again, at the house in which so momentous an event should be taking place. The house gave no hint, however, of being the abode of passion. It stood back in its maple-shaded yard, more trim and respectable in its clap-boarded dove-colour than a thing of nature, but as indifferent to human palpitations. The eyes of both ladies devoted to it an interval of silence. Then Miss Cockerill turned once more to her companion:
“I don’t see how she can refuse him this time. You see the first time she had her father an’ mother and Anne. Her father was real sickly, and Anne took after him. They both lay abed for years. Father Waring did because he fell from the hay loft. But Anne did because her father did, I guess. Anyhow, when Jonas first proposed to Martha, twenty years ago, she said she liked him well enough but that she couldn’t leave her folks while they needed her. So Jonas went out West, he was that provoked. He did mighty well, too. He went into lumber, and he’s a rich man now. But he didn’t forget Martha, for all that. He was always as faithful as you’d want to see—from the time he was a boy and we all went to school together.”
Miss Cockerill let her eye return to the dove-coloured house with a reminiscent light which quickened Mrs. Webster’s interest.
“He asked me to keep him informed of what went on here. He wasn’t a great hand at writin’, and Martha wasn’t either. And so after her father died he came back. She told him she wasn’t ready, though. An’ ’twas the same when Anne went. Martha said she liked him just as much as ever, and maybe more, but that her duty was with her mother. Jonas said then he’d marry her mother, too. He was always a great hand at his jokes, was Jonas. But Martha said her mother wanted to spend her last days at home, and so Jonas had to go off the third time. Seems like Martha knew her own mind better than most folks.”
Again Miss Cockerill paused a moment and contemplated the fateful grey house.
“That was twelve years ago,” she resumed. “And it’s hardly a fortnight since Mis’ Waring was laid in her grave, and here comes Jonas knocking again at Martha’s door. Guess she’ll have to let him in this time. Anyway, I’ll know as soon as anybody. Jonas always promised that he’d tell me first.”
It seemed to Mrs. Webster that she found a certain parallel between the decently painted clap-boards to which her attention had thus been drawn and the somewhat inscrutable exterior of her hostess. There was more within than appeared on the surface. As for Miss Cockerill, her gaze had an intensity which walls of brass could scarcely have withstood. And as if the house could keep its secret from her no longer, Jonas Lane suddenly emerged upon the veranda.
“He’s coming over now, I do believe!” exclaimed Miss Cockerill excitedly, endeavouring to make the most of the window without appearing from the outside to do so.
Jonas, however, strode down the path, untied his horse, threw the halter into the back of the buggy, got in with much less deliberation than he had got out, and drove rapidly away.
Miss Cockerill watched the buggy until it disappeared in the long elm vista. Then, after another glance at the grey house, she turned to her visitor.
“Well, I declare!” she burst forth. “If she hasn’t refused him again!”
II
When Jonas Lane knocked for the fourth time upon Martha Waring’s door his expectancy was a quaint blend of eagerness and humour.
“Seems like things look more spruce than they did last time,” he thought, eyeing the polished knocker, the panels of the door, the slightly inclined planks of the veranda, and the flagstones of the path running back to the kitchen. “That there hemlock’s grown a pile, too. They planted that ’twixt last time and the time before, in place of the old pine that was struck by lightnin’. Marthy never kept me so long though,” he murmured impatiently.
Then the edge of the door began receding, very gently; and when it reached a point which might afford the possibility of ingress or egress to a pet animal a lady’s head approached the aperture. It was Miss Waring, come to parley through the postern.
“Why, Jonas, is that you?” she exclaimed, a faint glow suddenly brightening her countenance.
“Same old penny!” rejoined that worthy, putting forth his hand.
At the sight of this friendly member Miss Waring enlarged the aperture over which she stood guard and drew her visitor in. Not only was it the proper and Christian thing to do, but she had a disturbing intuition of neighbourly eyes. Closing the door as gently as she had opened it, she led the way into the parlour, raised the shades, and took a seat opposite her suitor.
It must be confessed that while Miss Waring had received no immediate warning of this visit—Jonas being, as Miss Cockerill had intimated to Mrs. Webster, no great hand at writing—she had nevertheless been led by experience to entertain a premonition of Jonas’ arrival not long after any change in her own family circle. And on this occasion she was more uncertain of herself than she had ever been. For the last ditch was lost; and now the invader threatened her very person she knew not whether to surrender or to withstand till the last drop of blood. She wished that she had had more time to think.
It was evident that Jonas, too, as he sat twirling his hat and gazing from his hostess to her furniture, felt a little less than his customary assurance.
It was the woman, however, who relieved the situation by uttering:
“I hope you’re feeling well, Jonas. You’re looking just the same as ever.”
“Thank you, Marthy,” rejoined her interlocutor. “You’re lookin’ just about the same, too; but I hope you’re feelin’ different.” And before Miss Waring could recover from this bold attack, Jonas went on: “You know I ain’t no hand at beatin’ about the bush, Marthy. I might as well tell you here and now what I’ve come for. I guess you know well enough, though, without my tellin’. You’ve had chance aplenty to learn what it means when I come here. But this time I ain’t going away without ye. Be I now, Marthy?”
He rose from his place on the sofa and approached her. But then he stopped, acutely embarrassed. His blind desire for vicinity had no definite intent, and he did not know just what to do. As for Martha, she stretched out her palms like a barrier before her, and gasped:
“O, Jonas! Don’t say such things!”
Unexpected as it was, that gave him definiteness. Sitting down beside the lady of his heart Jonas laid a gnarled finger on her knee.
“I know it’s kind of unfair to come on ye sudden like, Martha, just after you’ve lost your mother.
“But if anybody kin comfort ye, I’m the man to do it. I just couldn’t wait a minute longer. I’ve waited purty long, Marthy.”
Martha brushed away the audacious finger, and covered her face with her hands like a nymph at bay.
“O, don’t, Jonas!” she moaned.
Her gentle faun made no further attempt at violence, but looked at her in amazement.
“Marthy!” he groaned: “What do you mean?”
There was that in his voice which at last compelled Martha to reply, haltingly:
“I mean—Jonas—that I—just can’t—go back with you!”
Jonas at first could not speak. Then he said gravely:
“You’re only jokin’ and beatin’ about the bush, Marthy. It’s the way women folks have. But what’s the use of doin’ it with me? You can’t mean it. Didn’t ye always tell me that you liked me real well, and that when there was nothin’ to keep ye you’d come?”
Martha so far recovered her composure as to let her hands resume their customary position in her lap; but her cheeks and her voice betrayed the moral stress under which she laboured.
“I know I did, Jonas,” she said. “And I meant it. But somehow it seems different, now the time has come. I do like you real well, and I always did. But it seems like I couldn’t leave this old house where I was born and where all my people died, and go off among strangers. I just can’t, Jonas!”
With which deliverance she raised a neatly folded handkerchief to her eyes, and held it there. Poor Jonas looked on with the double helplessness of a man before a woman’s tears, and of a lover in the face of his mistress’s perversities. Of what all this could mean he had not the slightest idea. But he felt ill-used, although a great deference put him in a mood of concession.
“But you promised, Marthy,” he said gently. “And how can you live here all by yourself? Who will look out for you?”
“I know I promised, Jonas,” tearfully murmured Miss Waring; “and I just hate to go back on my word. But it comes over me now that I oughtn’t to have promised—that I never could have done it. You needn’t bother about my living alone, though, I’ve always looked out for people, instead of their looking out for me. I shouldn’t know what to do in a strange house, with everything done for me.”
For a moment Jonas looked lost. But then he burst out:
“Why, bless your heart, Marthy, that’s easy enough to fix! You needn’t go away and have people look out for you at all. You can stay right on here, and I’ll come and live with you, instead of taking you away, and then you’ll still have somebody to look out for!”
At this sudden change of front Miss Waring lowered her flag of truce and looked at the enemy askance.
“What is it, Marthy?” inquired that gentleman anxiously. “Won’t that suit ye?”
Evidently Martha had never entertained such a possibility. And of this she presently gave verbal assurance, in a tone of the most doubting.
“I never thought of that, Jonas,” she said slowly. “It would seem so odd to live here and have a stranger in the house.”
“A stranger, Marthy!” expostulated Jonas piteously. “I, a stranger! And whose fault is it if I’m a stranger to you? But never mind about that,” he added hastily. “Just give me a chance, and we’ll get acquainted fast enough! Won’t ye, Marthy—dear?” He uttered the last word timidly and drew nearer his love.
This lady felt her heart as water within her. Indeed, a little of it exuded from her eyes, to the further confusion and agony of Jonas Lane.
“What is the matter, Marthy?” he cried. “For mercy’s sake tell me! Heaven knows I don’t want to make you feel bad! I only want to make you happy and to be happy with you—as I’ve looked forward to for twenty years.”
“I know it, Jonas,” conceded the lady of his dreams. “And I hate to be like this. But—it would be so odd—so odd! And if you came here I s’pose we’d have to be—married——”
As she paused, plucking at a fold of her skirt, the wondering Jonas broke in:
“I rather guess we’d have to, Marthy.”
“O Jonas! Don’t!” supplicated Miss Waring with an agonised blush. “I just meant—that I could never go through it—and live.”
“How do you mean, Marthy?” inquired Jonas, utterly dazed.
“Why, I mean,” explained Miss Waring hesitantly, “that there’d have to be a dress. And I never could go down to the store and ask to see white satin, and buy ever and ever so many yards of it, and take it to Hannah Lee, and tell her to make me up a—a wedding gown. I never could in the world. Everybody would know, and talk, and I couldn’t stand it.”
“I s’pose they’d have to know,” said Jonas apologetically. “There’s too much of me to be hid. Is that all?”
“No,” pursued Martha, relentlessly implanting another dart in her lover’s bosom. “There’d have to be a wedding. And I’ll do a good deal for you, Jonas, but I’ll never stand up with you before the minister and have everybody whispering about Martha Waring and her old beau Jonas Lane, and how they’ve got married at last, and it’s a pity they didn’t do it afore.”
“It is a pity, Marthy,” admitted the doleful Jonas, “but——”
“That isn’t the worst, though,” continued Martha, to whom the whole grim scene unfolded itself in its entirety. “The worst would be the rice. They’d throw it at us when we went away, and the people on the cars would see, and it would stick in our clothes, and roll out wherever we went, and everybody would know, and laugh. O Jonas, I can’t! I’m sorry, but I just can’t!”
To poor Jonas world within world of undreamt feminine perversity had of a sudden been revealed. He felt as one bound by cobwebs. But, after staring for some moments in silence at his liege lady, he addressed her again the word.
“Marthy Warin’,” he asked solemnly, “would you marry me if you could do it without rice, and without a weddin’ dress, and without anybody’s knowin’?”
She regarded him with doubt.
“Seems like it wouldn’t be really getting married,” she objected incautiously.
The face of Jonas darkened with despair. After this, what was there to hope? Martha, however, returned shamefacedly to her guns.
“I would though, Jonas, if I could.”
“Honour bright, Marthy? Will ye promise?” demanded that gentleman, visibly expanding.
“Why, yes, Jonas, if there was a way,” breathed the hunted victim.
“All right,” exclaimed the victor cheerfully, rising forthwith. “We’ll elope then! And now you’ve promised, I’m going off to see about it.”
With which he departed, before the agitated Miss Waring had time to protest against the base advantage which had been taken of her defenceless condition.
III
The soul of Miss Cockerill was ground to powder between wrath and desire. The expected had happened, and neither Jonas Lane nor Martha Waring had told her a word about it. Martha Lane, she supposed she’d have to say now. They were ungrateful as owls, she did declare. All the years she’d known them—and Jonas Lane almost as much her beau as Martha’s! She didn’t know which to be maddest at: Jonas, who had promised to tell her first of anybody in the world, after Martha; or Martha, who had told her everything ever since she was old enough to have anything to tell. But she couldn’t live there next door to them and never make a sign. They’d think it queer—well, as they’d all known each other. And it didn’t seem as if she could wait to hear about it all. The idea of their running off and getting married like that, and setting everybody to talk!
So, putting her pride in her pocket—a convenience which the modes of Ackerton permitted her—and a shawl over her head, she walked across to Martha’s kitchen door.
That lady opened it, beaming consciously.
“Well, Susan! We began to think we’d have to go over and see you first.”
Miss Cockerill eyed her hostess curiously. The change in her spiritual condition, however, had apparently wrought no corresponding physical metamorphosis.
“I would have taken it kindly, Martha,” rejoined the visitor. “You an’ Jonas going off so sudden-like kind o’ took my breath away.”
If Miss Cockerill succeeded in dissembling the poignancy of her emotions, Mrs. Lane nevertheless found means to detect it.
“I don’t wonder, Susan!” exclaimed that matron. “It took mine away, too, and I’ve hardly got it back yet. But Jonas would have it so.” With which interesting information she drew her friend toward the sitting room. “Come in and let’s visit a little. I haven’t seen you for such a while and dinner isn’t in a hurry.”
Miss Cockerill looked about her as they went. It seemed to her that events so momentous must leave a mark upon their material surroundings. But the old house looked exactly as she had known it for nearly fifty years. Mrs. Lane observed these glances, and interpreted them in her own way.
“No, he isn’t here,” she smiled. “There’s too much of him to be hid, as he says. He’s gone down to the store to do some trading. But let me tell you all about it. It’s only fair as you should know, being such an old friend of both of ours.” With which the two ladies settled themselves for a long session.
“You see it was this way,” began the bride, examining her apron as if for inspiration. “You know how it always was between Jonas and me.”
“Yes,” admitted Miss Cockerill inscrutably.
“And you know how I always felt, so long as any of my family were left—that my first duty was with them.”
“Yes,” repeated Miss Cockerill.
“Well, when Jonas came on this time, so soon after mother’s death, he found me all upset. It was the change, I s’pose, and the loneliness, and the having no one to look out for. And when he spoke of taking me away I just couldn’t go. So we arranged that he should come here instead. And I can’t help being glad it was so. It isn’t so hard for him, as ’twould be for me to go ’way out where he lives.”
“Where he lived,” suggested Miss Cockerill.
Mrs. Lane accepted the amendment with a smile.
“And when we came to talk things over we decided we didn’t want any publicity—and I just in mourning, you know.” Mrs. Lane noted that this point told. “We didn’t know just how to manage, though. Jonas, he was for going before the justice. But I told him as how I wouldn’t feel right if I wasn’t married by a minister. Then he wanted we should go off somewheres and get married before a strange minister, so as nobody should know till it was all over. Eloping, he called it, like a story book. But I told him I wouldn’t have any goings on like novels, and that if I couldn’t be married by my own minister I wouldn’t be married at all.”
“Dear me!” cried Miss Cockerill. “After all the time he’s waited! I thought you told him something, though, from the way he left the house the day he came back. I said as much to Mis’ Webster. She was with me at the time.”
“Is that so? ’Twas Mrs. Webster that finally fixed it up with Jonas. It simply used me up, and he told me to leave it to him and he’d get us married by the minister without any fuss and feathers—or rice,” she added.
“How did they do it?” inquired Miss Cockerill.
“Well, I invited the minister and his wife and Jonas in to dinner,” answered the bride. “I naturally would have had you, Susan, if I’d had anybody outside. But Mrs. Webster had to know about it, being the minister’s wife, and she was really the one that managed, and as long as ’twas that way it seemed a comfort to have some other woman there. I felt awful mean, though, not telling you, Susan.”
Whatever might have been the opinions of the lady addressed, she diplomatically concealed them behind a veil of impatience.
“What happened then?” she asked.
“Well, before going to the table, we two stood up in front of Mr. Webster, and he married us. Then we sat down just as if nothing had happened. I was that scared, though, lest somebody should come in before we got to our victuals, that I kept my eye out the window all the time.”
“What did you have on?” inquired Miss Cockerill. “You didn’t have much time to get things made.”
“No, I didn’t want to, being in mourning you know. And that Hannah Lee never could hold her tongue, anyway! So I just wore my grey silk, and Jonas said we’d get whatever else we wanted when we were away.”
“Oh!” ejaculated Miss Cockerill. “And then?”
“And then Mr. and Mrs. Webster went away, carrying my bag with the few things I needed, and Jonas went back to the hotel, and I stayed and did up the dishes.”
“What was all that for?” queried Miss Cockerill. “I should think Jonas might ha’ stayed with his own wife.”
“No, I didn’t want he should. People might have thought it strange if they’d come in. And the Websters took my bag because they were going to be in their team down at the end of the garden lot, and I was going out as if to pick chrysanthemums, and they were going to ask me to take a ride with them.”
“Why in the world did you have them there?” demanded the intrepid Susan.
“Why, because it was less conspicuous,” explained Mrs. Lane. “They’d just been here to dinner and had gone away, and if they’d come back afterwards, it might have looked queer. I wanted it to be as if I saw them by chance like, out back there. Well, after my dishes were all done up, and everything was in order, and the house locked tight for going away, I went upstairs and got ready. But when the time came it seemed as if I could never go in the world. I just stood at the back door in my things and couldn’t budge. ’Twas only the idea of Jonas going off alone by himself in the cars that started me. So I opened the door, very softly, and stepped out as light as I could, and locked it behind me, and made for the garden. I was just sure that you or somebody would see me and call out, and I didn’t know what I should say; and I was so scared I couldn’t hardly see. I did hear some kind of a noise, too, and that made me run. And I ran so fast I actually fell down, Susan—flat on the ground!”
“My!” exclaimed that sympathetic auditor. “Did you spoil your dress?”
“Pretty near. I was all over dirt when I finally got to the carriage, and so out of breath I couldn’t open my mouth, and that nervous I could have cried. I guess I did some, too. But Mrs. Webster just held my hand, and Mr. Webster talked about the weather and the crops and Jonas and everything, as natural as natural. And by and by I perked up. And we had a perfectly lovely ride to West Carthage.”
“Jonas met you there then, I s’pose.”
“No—or at least not just then. I wouldn’t have had him for the world. Such lots of Ackerton folks go to West Carthage.”
“Didn’t you go away together at all, then?” inquired Miss Cockerill sardonically.
“Why, of course we did!” cried the bride. “Jonas came in on the train. He was to be in the last car but one, sitting in the tenth seat from the back on the right-hand side—away from the station. Well, we got there just a little before time, and nobody could have told who was going. And when the train came in Mrs. Webster kissed me, and Mr. Webster shook hands, and they both said real nice things, and hoped I’d find Jonas all right; and then I got out and got on the car just as it started.”
“And did you find Jonas all right?” pursued the quizzical Miss Cockerill.
“You know well enough you don’t need to ask that, Susan Cockerill!” exclaimed Mrs. Lane. “You always find Jonas when he says so. He was right there where he said, looking as if he’d just stolen cream.”
“I should think he’d ha’ been scared when the train started and you wasn’t there.”
“I don’t know. If he was he didn’t show it. He just said he was used to waiting for me.”
For a moment Miss Cockerill regarded her friend in silence. Then she remarked some what cryptically:
“Well, if I’d known it was as easy as that gettin’ married, I’d ha’ done it myself!”