"The juice of a lemon in two glasses 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 glass 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 glass for two months and I woke up in a cold perspiration of embarrassment 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 buttons. I expanded and breathed—pretty quickly at that.
"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.
"Moonlight nights and lonesomely," I answered before I could stop myself, and what happened then was worse than any cyclone. He got white for a minute and just looked at me as if I was a bug stuck on a pin, then gave a short little laugh and turned to the table.
"I didn't understand you were joking," he said quietly.
That maddened me and I would have done anything to make him think I was not the foolish thing he evidently had classified me as being. I snatched at my mind and shook out a mixture of truth and lies that fooled even myself and gave them to him, looking straight in his face. I would have cracked all the ten commandments to save myself from his contempt.
"I'm not joking," I said jerkily; "I am lonesome. And worse than being lonesome, I'm scared. I ought to have stayed just the quiet relict of Mr. Carter and gone on to church meetings with Aunt Adeline and let myself be fat and respectable; but I haven't got the character. You thought I went to town to buy a monument, and I didn't; I bought enough clothes for two brides, and now I'm scared to wear 'em, and I don't know what you'll think when you see my bank-book. Everybody is talking about me and that dinner-party Tuesday night, and Aunt Adeline says she can't live in a house of mourning so desecrated any longer; she's going back to the cottage. Aunt Bettie Pollard says that if I want to get married I ought to do it to Mr. Wilson Graves because of the seven children and then everybody would be so relieved that they are taken care of that they would forget that Mr. Carter hasn't been dead quite one year yet. Mrs. Johnson says I ought to be declared a minor and put as a ward to you. I can't help Judge Wade's sending me flowers and Tom's sitting on my front steps night and day. I'm not strong enough to carry him away and murder him. I am perfectly miserable and I'm—"
"Now that'll do, Molly, just hush for a half-minute and let me talk to you," said Doctor John as he took my hand in his and drew me near him. "No wonder your heart hurts if it has got all that load of trouble on it and well just get a little of that 'scare' off. You put yourself in my hands and you are to do just as I tell you, and I say—forget it! Come with me while I make a call. It is a long drive and I'm—I'm lonesome sometimes myself."
I saw the worst was over and I breathed freely again, but I had talked so much truth in that fiction that I felt just as I said I did, which is a slightly unnatural feeling for a woman. There was nothing for it but to go with him, and I wanted to most awfully.
To my dying day I'll never forget that little house, way out on the Cane Run Pike, he took me to in his shabby little car. Just two tiny rooms, but they were clean and quiet and a girl with the sweetest face I ever saw lay in the bed with her eyes bright with pride and a tiny, tiny little bundle close beside her. The young farmer was red with embarrassment and anxiety.
"She's all right to-day, but she worries because she don't think I can tend to the baby right," he said; and he did look helpless. "Her mother had to go home for two days, but is coming to-morrow. I dasn't undress and wash the youngster myself. It won't hurt him to stay bundled up until granny comes, will it, Doc?"
"Not a bit," answered Doctor John in his big comforting voice.
But I looked at the girl and I understood her. She wanted that baby clean and fresh even if it was just five days old, and I felt all of a sudden terribly capable. I picked up the bundle and went into the other room with it where a kettle was boiling on the stove and a large bucket by the door. I found things by just a glance from her, and the hour I spent with that small baby was one of the most delicious of all my life. I never was left entirely to myself with one before and I did all I wanted to this one, guided by instinct and desire. He slept right through and was the darlingest thing I ever saw when I laid him back on the bed by her. I never looked in Doctor John's direction once, though I felt him all the time.
But on the way home I gave myself the surprise of my life! Suddenly I turned my face against his sleeve and cried as I never had before. I felt safe, for it is a cliff road and he had to drive carefully. However, he managed to press that one arm against my cheek in a way that comforted me into stopping when I saw we were near town. I got out of the car at the garage and walked away through the garden home without looking in his direction at all. I never seem to be able to look at him as I do at other people. We hadn't spoken two words since we had left the little house in the woods with that happy-faced girl in it. He has more sense than just a man.
It was almost dusk and I stopped in the garden a minute to pull the dirt closer around some of the bachelor's-buttons that had "popped" the ground some weeks ago. Thinking about them made me regain my spirits and I went on in the house to be scolded for whatever Aunt Adeline had thought up while I was gone to do it to me about. Judy told me with her broadest grin that she had gone down to her sister-in-law's for supper and I sat down on the steps with a sigh of relief.
Some days are like tin cocoanut graters that everybody uses to grate you against and this was one for me. For an hour I sat and grated my own self against Alfred's letter that had come in the morning. I realized that I would just have to come to some sort of decision about what I was going to do, for he wrote that he was to sail in a day or two, and ships do travel so fast these days.
I love him and always have, of that I am sure. He offers me the most wonderful life in the world and no woman could help being proud to accept it. I am lonely, more lonely than I was even willing to confess to Doctor John. I can't go on living this way any longer. Ruth Chester has made me see that if I want Alfred it will be now or never and—quick. I know now that she loves him, and she ought to have her show if I don't want him. The way she idolizes and idealizes him is a marvel of womanly stupidity.
Some women like to collect men's hearts and hide them away from other women on cold storage and the helpless things can't help themselves.
I have contempt for that sort of butcher, and I love Ruth!
It's my duty to look the matter in the face before I look in Alfred's—and decide. If not Alfred, what then?
First—no husband. That's out of the question! I'm not strong-minded enough to crank my own motor-car and study woman's suffrage. I prefer to suffer at the hands of some cruel man and trust to beguiling him into doing just as I say. I like men, can't help it, and want one for my own. I don't count poor Mr. Carter.
Second—if not Alfred, who? Judge Wade is so delightful that I flutter at the thought, but his mother is Aunt Adeline's own best friend and they have ideas in common. She is so religious that living with her would be like having the sacrament for daily bread. Still, living with him might have adventures. I never saw such eyes! The girl he wanted to marry died of tuberculosis and he wears a locket with her in it yet. I'd like to reward him for such faithfulness with a nice husky wife to wear instead of the locket. But then Alfred's been faithful too! I look at Ruth Chester and realize how faithful, and my heart melts to him in my breast—my hips have almost all melted away, too, so I had better keep the heart cold enough to handle if I want anything left at all for him to come home to.
In some ways Tom Pollard is the most congenial man I ever knew. You have to say "don't" to him all the time, but what woman doesn't like a little impertinence once in a while? I flavor all Tom's dare-devil kisses with kinship when I feed them to my conscience, and I truly try to make him be serious about the important things in life like going to church with his mother and working all day, even if he is rich. I wish he wasn't so near kin to me! Now, there, I feel in Ruth Chester's way again! One of the things that keeps the devil so busy is taking helpless widows to the heights of knowledge and showing them kingdoms of men that girls never dream even exist. If all women could have been born with widow-eyes, things would run much more smoothly along the marriage and giving-in-marriage line. And the poor men are most of them as ignorant as girls about what to do.
I suppose I really would be doing a righteous thing to marry Mr. Graves, and I would adore all those children to start with, but I know Billy wouldn't get on with them at all. I can't even consider it on his account, but I'll let the nice old chap come on for a few times more to see me, for he really is interesting and we have suffered things in common. Mrs. Graves lacked the kind of temperament poor Mr. Carter did. I'd like to make it all up to him, but if Billy wouldn't be happy, that settles it, and I don't know how good his boys are. I couldn't have Billy corrupted.
And so, as there is nobody else exactly suitable in town, it all simmers down to one or the other of these or Alfred. In my heart I knew that I couldn't hesitate a minute—and in the flash of a second I decided. Of course I love Alfred and I'll take him gladly and be the wife he has waited for all these six lonely years. I'll make everything up to him if I have to diet to keep thin for him the rest of my life. I likely will have that very thing to do and I get weak at the idea. Before I burn this book I'll have to copy it all out and be chained to it for life. At the thought my heart dropped like a sinker to my toes; but I hauled it up to its normal place with picturing to myself how Alfred would look when he saw me in that old blue muslin done over into a Rene wonder. However, old heart would show a strange propensity for sinking down into my slippers without any reason at all. Tears were even coming into my eyes when Tom suddenly came over the fence and picked me and the heart up together and put us into an adventure of the first water.
"Molly," he said in the most nonchalant manner imaginable, "we've got a dandy, strolling, gipsy band up at the hotel; the dining-room floor is all waxed and I'm asking for the first dance with the young and radiant Mrs. Carter. Get into a glad rag and don't keep me waiting."
"Tom," I gasped!
"Oh, be a sport, Moll, and don't take water! You said you would wake up this town, and now do it. It seems twenty instead of six years since I had my arms around you to music and I'm not going to wait any longer. Everybody is there and they can't all dance with Miss Chester."
That settled it—I couldn't let a visiting girl be danced to death. Of course I had planned to make a dignified début under my own roof, backed up by the presence of ancestral and marital rosewood, silver and mahogany, as a widow should, but duty called me to de-weed myself amidst the informality of an impromptu dance at the little town hotel. And in the fifteen minutes Tom gave me I de-weeded to some purpose and flowered out to still more. I never do anything by halves.
In that—that—trousseau old Rene had made me there was one, what she called "simple" lingerie frock. And it looked just as simple as the check it called for, a one and two ciphers back of it. It was of linen as sheer as a cobweb, real lace and tiny delicious incrustations of embroidery. It fitted in lines that melted into curves, had enticements in the shape of a long sash and a dangerous breast-knot of shimmery blue, the color of my eyes, and I looked new-born in it.
I'm glad that poor Mr. Carter was so stern with me about rats and things in my hair, now that they are out of style, for I've got lots of my own left in consequence of not wearing other peoples'. It clings and coils to my head just any old way that looks as if I had spent an hour on it. That made me able to be ready to go down to Tom in only ten minutes over the time he gave me.
I stopped on next to the bottom step in the wide old hall and called Tom to turn out the light for me, as Judy had gone.
I have turned out that light lots of times, but I felt it best to let Tom see me in a full light when we were alone. It is well I did! At first it stunned him,—and it is a compliment to any woman to stun Tom Pollard. But Tom doesn't stay stunned long and I only succeeded in suppressing him after he had landed two kisses on my shoulder, one on my hair and one on the back of my neck.
"Molly," he said, standing off and looking at me with shining eyes, "you are one lovely dream. Your shoulders are flushed velvet, your cheeks are peaches under cream, your eyes are blue absinthe and your mouth a red devil. Come on before I get drunk looking at you." I didn't know whether I liked that or not and turned down the light quickly myself and went to the gate hurriedly. Tom laughed and behaved himself.
Everybody in town was up to the hotel and everybody was nice to me, girls and all. There is a bunch of lovely posy girls in this town and they were all in full flower. Most of the men were college boys home for vacation, and while they are a few years younger than me, I have been friends with them for always and they know how I dance. I didn't even get near enough to the wall to know it was there, though I was conscious of Aunt Bettie and Mrs. Johnson sitting on it at one end of the room, and every time I passed them I flirted with them until I won a smile from them both. I wish I could be sure of hearing Mrs. Johnson tell Aunt Adeline all about it.
And it was well I did come to save Ruth Chester from a dancing death, for she is as light as a feather and sails on the air like thistle-down. I felt sorry for Tom, for when he danced with me he could see her, and when he danced with her I pouted at him, even over Judge Wade's arm. I verily believe it was from being really rattled that he asked little Pet Buford to dance with him—by mistake as it were. After that if Pet breathed a single strain of music out of his arms I didn't see it. I knew that gone expression on his face and it made me feel so lonesome that I was more gracious to the judge than was exactly safe. He dances just as magnificently as he exists in life and it is a kind of ceremonial to do it with him. The boys all wore white flannels, and most of the men, but the judge was as formally dressed as he would have been in mid-winter, and I wondered if Alfred could be half as distinguished to look at. I suppose my eyes must have been telling on me about how grand I thought he was looking because he—well, I was rather relieved when one of the boys took me out of his arms for a good, long, swinging two-step.
And how I did enjoy it all, every single minute of it! My heart beat time to the music as if it would never tire of doing so. Miss Chester and I exchanged little laughs and scraps of conversation in between times and I fell deeper and deeper in love with her. Every pound I have melted and frozen and starved off me has brought me nearer to her and I just can't think about how I am going to hurt her in a few days now. I put the thought from me and so let myself swing out into thoughtlessness with one of the boys. And after that I really didn't know with whom I was dancing, I began to get so intoxicated with it all.
I never heard musicians play better or get more of the spirit of dance in their music than those did to-night. They had just given us the most lovely swinging things, one after another, when suddenly they all stopped and the leader drew his bow across his violin. Never in all my life have I ever heard anything like the call of that waltz from that gipsy's strings. It laughed you a signal and you felt yourself follow the first strain.
Just then somebody happened to take me from whomever I was with and I caught step and glided off the universe. The strongest arms that I had felt that evening—or ever—held me and I didn't have to look up to see who it was. I don't know why I knew but I did. I wasn't clasped so very close to him or left to float by myself an inch; I was just a part of him like the arms themselves or the hand that mine molded into. And while that wonder-music teased and cajoled and mocked and rocked and sobbed and throbbed, I laid my cheek against his coat sleeve and gave myself away, I didn't care to whom.
Again that strange sense of some wonderful eternal good came to me and I found myself humming Billy's little "soul to keep" prayer against the doctor's sleeve to the tune of that magic waltz. I had never danced with him before, of course, but I felt as if I had been doing it always, and I melted in his arms as that baby had wilted to his mother out in the cabin a few hours earlier and I don't see how such happiness as that could stop. But with a soft entreating wail the music came to an end and there the doctor was, smiling down into my face with his whimsical friendly smile that woke me up all over.
"Somebody has stolen a rose from the Carter garden and brought it to the dance," he said with a laugh that was for me alone.
"No," I flashed back, "a string-bean." And with that I danced off again with the judge, while the doctor disappeared through the door, and I heard the chuck of his car as it whirled away. He had just stopped in for a second to see the fun and God had given me that gipsy waltz with him, because He knew I needed something like that in my life to keep for always.
This has been a happy night, in which I betrothed myself to Alfred, though he doesn't know it yet. I am going to take it as a sign that life for us is going to be brilliant and gay and full of laughter and love.
I haven't had Billy in my arms to-day and I don't know how I shall ever get myself to sleep if I let myself think about it. His sleep-place on my breast aches. It is a comfort to think that the great big God understands the women folk that He makes, even if they don't understand themselves.
Most parties are just bunches of selfish people who go off in the corners and have good times all by themselves, but in Hillsboro, Tennessee, it is not that way. Everybody that is not invited helps the hostess get ready and have nice things for the others, and sometimes I think they really have the best time of all.
This morning Aunt Bettie came up my front steps before breakfast with a large basketful of things for my dinner and I wondered what I would have collected to be served to those people by the time all my neighbors had made their prize contributions. It took Aunt Bettie and Judy a half-hour to unpack her things and set them in the refrigerator and on the pantry shelves. One was a plump fruit-cake that had been keeping company in a tight box with a sponge soaked in sherry for ever since New Year's. It was ripe, or smelled so. It made me gnaw under my belt.
A little later Judy was exclaiming over a two-year-old ham that had been simmered in port and larded with egg dressing, when Mrs. Johnson came in and began to unpack her basket, which was mostly bottles of things she said she used to "stick" food. The ginger-colored barber got the run of them before the dinner was over and got badly stuck, so Judy says. That's what made him make the mistake.
I had planned to have a lot of strange food and had ordered some things up from a caterer in the city, but I telephoned the express man not to deliver them until the next day, even if they did spoil. How could I use soft shelled crabs when Mrs. Wade had sent me word that she was going to bake some brook trout by a recipe of the judge's grandmother's? Mrs. Hampton Buford had let me know about two fat little summer turkeys she was going to stuff with corn-pone and green sage, and fillet mignon seemed foolish eating beside them. But when the little bit of a baby pig, roasted whole with an apple in its mouth, looking too frisky and innocent for worlds with his little baked tail curled up in the air, arrived from Mrs. Caruthers Cain, I went out into the garden and laughed at the idea of having spent money for lobsters, to be shipped alive and to be served broiled in their own shells.
When I got back in the kitchen things were well under way, everything smelling grand, and Aunt Bettie in full swing matching up my dinner guests.
"Nobody in this town could suit me better than Pet Buford for a daughter-in-law and I believe I'll have all the east rooms done over in blue chintz for her. I think that would be the best thing to set off her blue eyes and corn silk hair," she was saying as she cut orange peel into strips.
"You've planned the refurnishing of that east wing to suit the style of nearly every girl in Hillsboro since Tom put on long trousers, Bettie Pollard, and they are just as they have been for fifteen years since you did over the whole house," said Mrs. Johnson as she poured a wine-glass half full from one bottle and added a tablespoonful from another.
"Well, I think he is really interested now from the way he danced most of his time with her down at the hotel the other night, and I have hopes I never had before. Now, Molly, do put him between you and her, sort of cornered, so he can't even see Ruth Chester. She is too old for him." And Tom's mother looked at me over the orange peel as to a confederate.
"Humph, I'd like to see you or Molly or any woman 'corner' Tom Pollard," said Mrs. Johnson with a wry smile as she tasted the concoction in the wine-glass.
"I have to put him at the end of the table because he is my kinsman and the only host I've got at present, Aunt Bettie," I said regretfully. I always take every chance to rub in Tom's and my relationship on Aunt Bettie, so she won't notice our flirtation.
"I'd put John Moore at the head of the table if I were you, Molly Carter, because he's about the only man you've invited that has got any sense left since you and that Chester girl took to visiting Hillsboro. He's a host of steadiness in himself and the way he ignores all you women, who would run after him if he would let you, shows what he is. He has my full confidence," and as she delivered herself of this judgment of Doctor John, Mrs. Johnson drove in all the corks tight and began to pound spice.
"He's not out of the widower-woods yet, Caroline," said Aunt Bettie with her most speculative smile. "I have about decided on him for Ruth since the judge has taken to following Molly about as bad as Billy Moore does. But don't you all say a word, for John's mighty timid, and I don't believe, in spite of all these years, he's had a single notion yet. If he had had he'd have tried a set-to with you, Molly, like all the rest of the shy birds in town. He doesn't see a woman as anything but a patient at the end of a spoon, and mighty kind and gentle he does the dosing of them, too. Just the other day—dearie me, Judy, what has boiled over now?" And in the excitement that ensued I escaped to the garden.
Yes, Aunt Bettie is right about Doctor John; he doesn't see a woman, and there is no way to make him. What she had said about it made me realize that he had always been like that, and I told myself that there was no reason in the world why my heart should beat in my slippers on that account. Still I don't see why Ruth Chester should have her head literally thrown against that stone wall and I wish Aunt Bettie wouldn't. It seemed like a desecration even to try to match-*make him and it made me hot with indignation all over. I dug so fiercely at the roots of my phlox with a trowel I had picked up that they groaned so loud I could almost hear them. I felt as if I must operate on something. And it was in this mood that Alfred's letter found me.
It had a surprise in it and I sat back on the grass and read it with my heart beating like a trip-hammer. He had sailed the day he had posted it and he was due to arrive in New York almost as soon as it did, just any hour now I calculated in a flash. And "from New York immediately to Hillsboro" he had written in words that fairly sung themselves off the paper. I was frightened—so frightened that the letter shook in my hands, and with only the thought of being sure that I might be alone for a few minutes with it, I fled to the garret.
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 transubstantiated into a heart that beat against mine and I bowed my head over it as I wet 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 melting away of my fatness seemed just a lack of confidence in his love for me; he wouldn't have minded if I weighed five hundred, 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 flightiness, 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 right 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 as handsome as the young god of love himself. 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 sick 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 folks gived us to eat and couldn't eat no more. She said if we did that with our fingers it would all come up and we would have room for some more then. She did it and I'm going to die dead—dead!"
"No, no, lover; 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 Judy baked hot for both of us. She didn't frow up as much as I did—or maybe more." 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 you can hold and then still want more. What would your father say?"
"Doc ain'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 ain't a-going to live in that house with him more'n two days longer. I want to come over and sleep in your bed with blue ribbons on the posts and have you to play with me, Molly."
"Don't say that, lover, 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 bet I will, when I get big enough to kill a bear," answered Billy decidedly. "Say, do you reckon 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.
Uncle Thomas Pollard had sent me a quart bottle of his private stock with the message to put the mint to soak just one hour and twenty minutes before the men came. I made room for it beside the case of champagne on the cellar shelf and wondered how they would stand it all. We don't have champagne often in Hillsboro, and when we do nobody seems to want to cut down on the juleps, consequently—well, nothing ever really happens! However, it must have been the champagne that made Tom act as he did. He was never like that before.
Somehow I didn't enjoy dressing to-night for my dinner as I did for the dance, and when I was through 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 when I put on my Sunday clothes to go to church with Mr. Carter. He was always in a hurry and I didn't care about looking at myself in the mirror anyway; nobody else ever looked at me and what was the use? 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 almost out of the dress 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 around my feet until they got my slippers stained with green. Only Billy's bachelor's-button stood up stiff and sturdy, slightly flushed with imbibing the night dew, and tipped me an impertinent wink. I felt cheered at the sight of them and bent down to gather a bunch of them to wear, even if they did swear at 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. Peaches," said Doctor 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 show for 'em 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—Mr. Carter didn't know anything about anything and I never cared to ask him, but I wonder how you know when—
"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 up something to wither the doctor with, and he and Ruth Chester 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 neighbor was so much more fun, 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 grand-damey and responsible as I looked at them all across the roses and sparkling glasses. 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 husband would have for me, would I sit at salt 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 all the love-fragrance seemed to go to my head—Tom's mixing of that julep had been skilful, too—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 Doctor John's kind voice teased into my ears: "Steady, Mrs. Peaches, 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, the ginger barber and Judy 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 blue telegram, but it might have been nitro-glycerin on a tear for the way it acted. It was for me, but read it out loud. It said:
"Landed 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 color 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 Chester, 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 would 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, as he raised his glass. 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 paralyzed 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 shined 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 one 'hot time' for him when he lands in the old town, and here's to him, God bless him. Every glass high!" They all drank, and I suppose it helped them. I wish I could have drained a quart, but I couldn't swallow a sip, though I did a good stunt of pretending.
The rest of this evening has paid me off for every sin I have ever committed or am ever going to commit. 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 loving enough in the moonlight could comfort for anything. I'm not at all worried about him, but—
The hour I sat on my front steps and talked to Judge Wade must have brought gray hairs to my head if it was daylight and I could see them. Ruth Chester had said good-by with the loveliest haunted look in her great dark eyes and I had felt as if I had killed something that was alive and that I hadn't killed it enough. Doctor 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.
They say among the lawyers that it is a good thing that Benton Wade is on the bench, for it is no use to try a case against him when he has the handling of a jury. He just looks them in the face and tells them how to vote. 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 mighty apt to marry the man who says, "Don't argue, but put on your bonnet and come with me." The fact that it was too late to get into the clerk's office saved me to-night, but in two days—
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 toast to him and the lovely warm look he poured over poor frightened me at his side, as he drank his champagne, 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 neighbor. 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 I could at least have him for a family physician. 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. Hope it will throw a glow over Alfred!