“Remember,” said Charles Edward—he had run in for a minute on his way home from the office where he has been clearing out his desk, “for good and all,” he tells us—“remember, next week will see us out of this land of the free and home of the talkative.” He meant our sailing. I shall be glad to be with him and Lorraine. “And whatever you do. Peg, don't talk, except to mother. Talk to her all you want to. Mother has the making of a woman in her. If mother'd been a celibate, she'd have been, also, a peach.”
“But I don't want to talk,” said I. “I don't want to talk to anybody.”
“Good for you,” said Charles Edward. “Now I'll run along.”
I sat there on the piazza watching him, thinking he'd been awfully good to me, and feeling less bruised, somehow, than I do when the rest of the family advise me—except mother! And I saw him stop, turn round as if he were coming back, and then settle himself and plant his feet wide apart, as he does when the family question him about business. Then I saw somebody in light blue through the trees, and I knew it was Aunt Elizabeth. Alice was down in the hammock reading and eating cookies, and she saw her, too. Alice threw the book away and got her long legs out of the hammock and ran. I thought she was coming into the house to hide from Aunt Elizabeth. That's what we all do the first minute, and then we recover ourselves and go down and meet her. But Alice dropped on her knees by my chair and threw her arms round me.
“Forgive, Peggy,” she moaned. “Oh, forgive!”
I saw she had on my fraternity pin, and I thought she meant that. So I said, “You can wear it today”; but she only hugged me the tighter and ran on in a rigmarole I didn't understand.
“She's coming, and she'll get it out of Lorraine, and they'll all be down on us.”
Charles Edward and Aunt Elizabeth stood talking together, and just then I saw her put her hand on his shoulder.
“She's trying to come round him,” said Alice.
I began to see she was really in earnest now. “He's squirming. Oh, Peggy, maybe she's found it out some way, and she's telling him, and they'll tell you, and you'll think I am false as hell!”
I knew she didn't mean anything by that word, because whenever she says such things they're always quotations. She began to cry real tears.
“It was Billy put it into my head,” said she, “and Lorraine put it into his. Lorraine wanted him to write out exactly what he knew, and he didn't know anything except about the telegram and how the letter got wuzzled, and I told him I'd help him write it as it ought to be 'if life were a banquet and beauty were wine'; but I told him we must make him say in it how he'd got to conceal it from me, or they'd think we got it up together. So I wrote it,” said Alice, “and Billy copied it.”
Perhaps I wasn't nice to the child, for I couldn't listen to her. I was watching Charles Edward and Aunt Elizabeth, and saying to myself that mother'd want me to sit still and meet Aunt Elizabeth when she came—“like a good girl,” as she used to say to me when I was little and begged to get out of hard things. Alice went on talking and gasping.
“Peg,” she said, “he's perfectly splendid—Dr. Denbigh is.”
“Yes, dear,” said I, “he's very nice.”
“I've adored him for years,” said Alice. “I could trust him with my whole future. I could trust him with yours.”
Then I laughed. I couldn't help it. And Alice was hurt, for some reason, and got up and held her head high and went into the house. And Aunt Elizabeth came up the drive, and that is how she found me laughing. She had on a lovely light-blue linen. Nobody wears such delicate shades as Aunt Elizabeth. I remember, one day, when she came in an embroidered pongee over Nile-green, father groaned, and grandmother said: “What is it, Cyrus? Have you got a pain?” “Yes,” said father, “the pain I always have when I see sheep dressed lamb fashion.” Grandmother laughed, but mother said: “Sh!” Mother's dear.
This time Aunt Elizabeth had on a great picture-hat with light-blue ostrich plumes; it was almost the shape of her lavender one that Charles Edward said made her look like a coster's bride. When she bent over me and put both arms around me the plumes tickled my ear. I think that was why I was so cross. I wriggled away from her and said: “Don't!”
Aunt Elizabeth spoke quite solemnly. “Dear child!” she said, “you are broken, indeed.”
And I began to feel again just as I had been feeling, as if I were in a show for everybody to look at, and I found I was shaking all over, and was angry with myself because of it. She had drawn up a chair, and she held both my hands.
“Peggy,” said she, “haven't you been to the hospital to see that poor dear boy?”
I didn't have to answer, for there was a whirl on the gravel, and Billy, on his bicycle, came riding up with the mail. He threw himself off his wheel and plunged up the steps as he always does, pretended to tickle his nose with Aunt Elizabeth's feathers as he passed behind her, and whispered to me: “Shoot the hat!” But he had heard Aunt Elizabeth asking if I were not going to see that poor dear boy, and he said, as if he couldn't help it:
“Huh! I guess if she did she wouldn't get in. His mother's walking up and down front of the hospital when she ain't with him, and she's got a hook nose and white hair done up over a roll and an eye-glass on a stick, and I guess there won't be no nimps and shepherdesses get by HER.”
Aunt Elizabeth stood and thought for a minute, and her eyes looked as they do when she stares through you and doesn't see you at all. Alice asked Charles Edward once if he thought she was sorrowing o'er the past when she had that look, and he said: “Bless you, chile, no more than a gentle industrious spider. She's spinning a web.” But in a minute mother had stepped out on the piazza, and I felt as if she had come to my rescue. It was the way she used to come when I broke my doll or tore my skirt. But we didn't look at each other, mother and I. We didn't mean Aunt Elizabeth should see there was anything to rescue me from. Aunt Elizabeth turned to mother, and seemed to pounce upon her.
“Ada,” said she, “has my engagement been announced?”
“Not to my knowledge,” said mother. She spoke with a great deal of dignity. “I understood that the name of the gentleman had been withheld.”
“Withheld!” repeated Aunt Elizabeth. “What do you mean by 'withheld'? Billy, whom are those letters for?”
In spite of ourselves mother and I started. Letters have begun to seem rather tragic to us.
“One's the gas-bill,” said Billy, “and one's for you.” Aunt Elizabeth took the large, square envelope and tore it open. Then she looked at mother and smiled a little and tossed her head.
“This is from Lyman Wilde,” said she.
I thought I had never seen Aunt Elizabeth look so young. It must have meant something more to mother than it did to me, for she stared at her a minute very seriously.
“I am truly glad for you, Elizabeth,” she said. Then she turned to me. “Daughter,” said she, “I shall need you about the salad.”
She smiled at me and went in. I knew what that meant. She was giving me a chance to follow her, if I needed to escape. But there was hardly time. I was at the door when Aunt Elizabeth rustled after so quickly that it sounded like a flight. There on the piazza she put her arms about me.
“Child!” she whispered. “Child! Verlassen! Verlassen!”
I drew away a little and looked at her. Then I thought: “Why, she is old!” But I hadn't understood. I knew the word was German, and I hadn't taken that in the elective course.
“What is it. Aunt Elizabeth?” I asked. I had a feeling I mustn't leave her. She smiled a little—a queer, sad smile.
“Peggy,” said she, “I want you to read this letter.” She gave it to me. It was written on very thick gray paper with rough edges, and there was a margin of two inches at the left. The handwriting was beautiful, only not very clear, and when I had puzzled over it for a minute she snatched it back again.
“I'll read it to you,” said she.
Well, I thought it was a most beautiful letter. The gentleman said she had always been the ideal of his life. He owed everything—and by everything he meant chiefly his worship of beauty—to her. He asked her to accept his undying devotion, and to believe that, however far distance and time should part them, he was hers and hers only. He said he looked back with ineffable contempt upon the days when he had hoped to build a nest and see her beside him there. Now he had reached the true empyrean, and he could only ask to know that she, too, was winging her bright way into regions where he, in another life, might follow and sing beside her in liquid, throbbing notes to pierce the stars. He ended by saying that he was not very fit—the opera season had been a monumental experience this year—and he was taking refuge with an English brotherhood to lead, for a time, a cloistered life instinct with beauty and its worship, but that there as everywhere he was hers eternally. How glad I was of the verbal memory I have been so often praised for! I knew almost every word of that lovely letter by heart after the one reading. I shall never forget it.
“Well?” said Aunt Elizabeth. She was looking at me, and again I saw how long it must have been since she was young. “Well, what do you think of it?”
I told the truth. “Oh,” said I, “I think it's a beautiful letter!”
“You do!” said Aunt Elizabeth. “Does it strike you as being a love-letter!”
I couldn't answer fast enough. “Why, Aunt Elizabeth,” I said, “he tells you so. He says he loves you eternally. It's beautiful!”
“You fool!” said Aunt Elizabeth. “You pink-cheeked little fool! You haven't opened the door yet—not any door, not one of them—oh, you happy, happy fool!” She called through the window (mother was arranging flowers there for tea): “Ada, you must telephone the Banner. My engagement is not to be announced.” Then she turned to me. “Peggy'” said she, in a low voice, as if mother was not to hear, “to-morrow you must drive with me to Whitman.”
Something choked me in my throat: either fear of her or dread of what she meant to make me do. But I looked into her face and answered with all the strength I had: “Aunt Elizabeth, I sha'n't go near the hospital.”
“Don't you think it's decent for you to call on Mrs. Goward?” she asked.
She gave me a little shake. It made me angry. “It may be decent,” I said, “but I sha'n't do it.”
“Very well,” said Aunt Elizabeth. Her voice was sweet again. “Then I must do it for you. Nobody asks you to see Harry himself. I'll run in and have a word with him—but, Peggy, you simply must pay your respects to Mrs. Goward.”
“No! no! no!” I heard myself answering, as if I were in some strange dream. Then I said: “Why, it would be dreadful! Mother wouldn't let me!”
Aunt Elizabeth came closer and put her hands on my shoulders. She has a little fragrance about her, not like flowers, but old laces, perhaps, that have been a long time in a drawer with orris and face-powder and things. “Peggy,” said she, “never tell your mother I asked you.”
I felt myself stiffen. She was whispering, and I saw she meant it.
“Oh, Peggy! don't tell your mother. She is not—not simpatica. I might lose my home here, my only home. Peggy, promise me.”
“Daughter!” mother was calling from the dining-room.
I slipped away from Aunt Elizabeth's hands. “I promise,” said I. “You sha'n't lose your home.”
“Daughter!” mother called again, and I went in.
That night at supper nobody talked except father and mother, and they did every minute, as if they wanted to keep the rest of us from speaking a word. It was all about the Works. Father was describing some new designs he had accepted, and telling how Charles Edward said they would do very well for the trimmings of a hearse, and mother coughed and said Charles Edward's ideas were always good, and father said not where the market was concerned. Aunt Elizabeth had put on a white dress, and I thought she looked sweet, because she was sad and had made her face quite pale; but I was chiefly busy in thinking how to escape before anybody could talk to me. It doesn't seem safe nowadays to speak a word, because we don't know where it will lead us. Alice, too, looked pale, poor child! and kept glancing at me in a way that made me so sorry. I wanted to tell her I didn't care about her pranks and Billy's, whatever they were. And whatever she had written, it was sure to be clever. The teacher says Alice has a positive genius for writing, and before many years she'll be in all the magazines. When supper was over I ran up-stairs to my room. I sat down by the window in the dark and wondered when the moon would rise. I felt excited—as if something were going to happen. And in spite of all the dreadful things that had happened to us, and might keep on happening, I felt as if I could die with joy. There were steps on the porch below my window. I heard father's voice.
“That's ridiculous, Elizabeth,” he said—“ridiculous! If it's a good thing for other girls to go to college, it's been a good thing for her.”
“Ah,” said Aunt Elizabeth, “but is it a good thing?”
Then I knew they were talking about me, and I put my fingers in my ears and said the Latin prepositions. I have been talked about enough. They may talk, but I won't hear. By-and-by I took my fingers out and listened. They had gone in, and everything was still. Then I began to think it over. Was it a bad thing for me to go to college? I'm different from what I was three years ago, but I should have been different if I'd stayed at home. For one thing, I'm not so shy. I remember the first day I came out of a class-room and Stillman Dane walked up to me and said; “So you're Charlie Ned's sister!” I couldn't look at him. I stood staring down at my note-book, and now I should say, quite calmly: “Oh, you must be Mr. Dane? I believe you teach psychology.” But I stood and stared. I believe I looked at my hands for a while and wished I hadn't got ink on my forefinger—and he had to say: “I'm the psychology man. Charlie Ned and I were college friends. He wrote me about you.” But though I didn't look at him that first time, I thought he had the kindest voice that ever was—except mother's—and perhaps that was why I selected psychology for my specialty. I was afraid I might be stupid, and I knew he was kind. And then came that happy time when I was getting acquainted with everybody, and Mr. Dane was always doing things for me. “I'm awfully fond of Charlie Ned, you know,” he told me. “You must let me take his place.” Then Mr. Goward told me all those things at the dance, how he had found life a bitter waste, how he had been betrayed over and over by the vain and worldly, and how his heart was dead and nobody could bring it to life but me. He said I was his fate and his guiding-star, and since love was a mutual flame that meant he was my fate, too. But it seemed as if that were the beginning of all my bad luck, for about that time Stillman Dane was different, and one day he stopped me in the yard when I was going to chapel.
“Miss Peggy,” said he, “don't let's quarrel.”
He held out his hand, and I gave him mine quickly.
“No,” said I, “I'm not quarrelling.”
“I want to ask you something,” said he. “You must answer, truly. If I have a friend and she's doing something foolish, should I tell her? Should I write to her brother and tell him?”
“Why,” said I, “do you mean me?” Then I understood. “You think I'm not doing very well in my psychology,” I said. “You think I've made a wrong choice.” I looked at him then. I never saw him look just so. He had my hand, and now I took it away. But he wouldn't talk about the psychology.
“Peggy,” said he, “do your people know Goward?”
“They will in vacation,” I said. “He's going home with me. We're engaged, you know.”
“Oh!” said he. “Oh! Then it is true. Let him meet Charles Edward at once, will you? Tell Charles Edward I particularly want him to know Goward.” His voice sounded sharp and quick, and he turned away and left me. But I didn't give his message to Charles Edward, and somehow, I don't know why, I didn't talk about him after I came home. “Dane never wrote me whether he looked you up,” said Charles Edward one day. “Not very civil of him.” But even then I couldn't tell him. Mr. Dane is one of the people I never can talk about as if they were like everybody else. Perhaps that is because he is so kind in a sort of intimate, beautiful way. And when I went back after vacation he had resigned, and they said he had inherited some money and gone away, and after he went I never understood the psychology at all. Mr. Goward used to laugh at me for taking it, only he said I could get honors in anything, my verbal memory is so good. But I told him, and it is true, that the last part of the book is very dull. While I was going over all this, still with that strange excited feeling of happiness, I heard Aunt Elizabeth's voice from below. She was calling, softly: “Peggy! Peggy! Are you up there?”
I got on my feet just as quietly as I could, and slipped through mother's room and down the back stairs. Mother was in the vegetable garden watering the transplanted lettuce. I ran out to her. “Mother,” I said, “may I go over to Lorraine's and spend the night?”
“Yes, lamb,” said mother. That's a good deal for mother to say.
“I'll run over now,” I told her. “I won't stop to take anything. Lorraine will give me a nightie.”
I went through the vegetable garden to the back gate and out into the street. There I drew a long breath. I don't know what I thought Aunt Elizabeth could do to me, but I felt safe. Then—I could laugh at it all, because it seems as if I must have been sort of crazy that night—I began to run as if I couldn't get there fast enough. But when I got to the steps I heard Lorraine laughing, and I stopped to listen to see whether any one was there.
“I tell Peter,” said she, “that it's his opportunity. Don't you remember the Great Magician's story of the man who was always afraid he should miss his opportunity? And the opportunity came, and, sure enough, the man didn't know it, and it slipped by. Well, that mustn't be Peter.”
“It musn't be any of us,” said a voice. “Things are mighty critical, though. It's as if everybody, the world and the flesh and the Whole Family, had been blundering round and setting their feet down as near as they could to a flower. But the flower isn't trampled yet. We'll build a fence round it.” My heart beat so fast that I had to put my hand over it. I wondered if I were going to have heart-failure, and I knew grandmother would say, “Digitalis!” When I thought of that I laughed, and Lorraine called out, “Who's there?” She came to the long window. “Why, Peggy, child,” said she, “come in.” She had me by the hand and led me forward. They got up as I stepped in, Charles Edward and Stillman Dane. Then I knew why I was glad. If Stillman Dane had been here all these dreadful things would not have happened, because he is a psychologist, and he would have understood everybody at once and influenced them before they had time to do wrong.
“Jove!” said Charles Edward. “Don't you look handsome, Peg!”
“Goose!” said Lorraine, as if she wanted him to be still. “A good neat girl is always handsome. There's an epigram for you. And Peggy's hair is loose in three places. Let me fix it for you, child.”
So we all laughed, and Lorraine pinned me up in a queer, tender way, as if she were mother dress-me for something important, and we sat down, and began to talk about college. I am afraid Stillman Dane and I did most of the talking, for Lorraine and Charles Edward looked at each other and smiled a little, in a fashion they have, as if they understood each other, and Lorraine got up to show him the bag she had bought that day for the steamer; and while she was holding it out to him and asking him if it cost too much, she stopped short and called out, sharply, “Who's there?” I laughed. “Lorraine has the sharpest ears,” I said. “Ears!” said Lorraine. “It isn't ears. I smell orris. She's coming. Mr. Dane, will you take Peggy out of that window into the garden? Don't yip, either of you, while you're within gunshot, and don't appear till I tell you.”
“Lorraine!” came a voice, softly, from the front walk. It was Aunt Elizabeth. She has a way of calling to announce herself in a sweet, cooing tone. I said to Charles Edward once it was like a dove, and he said: “No, my child, not doves, but woodcock.” Alice giggled and called out, quite loudly, '“Springes to catch woodcock!'” And he shook his head at her and said, “You all-knowing imp! isn't even Shakespeare hidden from you?” But now the voice didn't sound sweet to me at all, because I wanted to get away. We rose at the same minute, Mr. Dane and I, and Lorraine seemed to waft us from the house on a kind little wind. At the foot of the steps we stopped for fear the gravel should crunch, and while we waited for Aunt Elizabeth to go in the other way I looked at Mr. Dane to see if he wanted to laugh as much as I. He did. His eyes were full of fun and pleasure, and he gave me a little nod, as if we were two children going to play a game we knew all about. Then I heard Aunt Elizabeth's voice inside. It was low and broken—what Charles Edward called once her “come-and-comfort-me” voice.
“Dears,” said she, “you are going abroad?”
“Yes,” Charles Edward answered. “Yes, it looks that way now.”
“Yes,” said Lorraine, rather sharply, I thought, as if she meant to show him he ought to be more decisive, “we are.”
“Dears,” Aunt Elizabeth went on, “will you take me with you?”
Mr. Dane started as if he meant to go back into the house. I must have started, too, and my heart beat hard. There was a silence of a minute, two minutes, three perhaps. Then I heard Charles Edward speak, in a voice I didn't know he had.
“No, Aunt Elizabeth, no. Not so you'd notice it.”
Mr. Dane gave a nod as if he were relieved, and we both began tiptoeing down the path in the dark. But it wasn't dark any more. The moon was coming through the locust-trees, and I smelled the lindens by the wall. “Oh,” I said, “it's summer, isn't it? I don't believe I've thought of summer once this year.”
“Yes,” said he, “and there never was a summer such as this is going to be.”
I knew he was very athletic, but I don't believe I'd thought how much he cared for out-of-doors. “Come down here,” I said. “This is Lorraine's jungle. There's a seat in it, and we can smell the ferns.”
Charles Edward had been watering the garden, and everything was sweet. Thousands of odors came out such as I never smelled before. And all the time the moon was rising. After we had sat there awhile, talking a little about college, about my trip abroad, I suddenly found I could not go on. There were tears in my eyes. I felt as if so good a friend ought to know how I had behaved—for I must have been very weak and silly to make such a mistake. He ought to hear the worst about me. “Oh,” I said, “do you know what happened to me?”
He made a little movement toward me with both hands. Then he took them back and sat quite still and said, in that kind voice: “I know you are going abroad, and when you come back you will laugh at the dolls you played with when you were a child.” But I cried, softly, though, because it was just as if I were alone, thinking things out and being sorry, sorry for myself—and ashamed. Until now I'd never known how ashamed I was. “Don't cry, child,” he was saying. “For God's sake, don't cry!” I think it came over me then, as it hadn't before, that all that part of my life was spoiled. I'd been engaged and thought I liked somebody, and now it was all over and done. “I don't know what I'm crying for,” I said, at last, when I could stop. “I suppose it's because I'm different now, different from the other girls, different from myself. I can't ever be happy any more.”
He spoke, very quickly. “Is it because you liked Goward so much?”
“Like him!” I said. “Like Harry Goward? Why, I—” There I stopped, because I couldn't think of any word small enough, and I think he understood, for he laughed out quickly.
“Now,” said he, “I'm a psychologist. You remember that, don't you? It used to impress you a good deal.”
“Oh,” said I, “it does impress me. Nobody has ever seemed so wise as you. Nobody!”
“Then it's understood that I'm a sage from the Orient. I know the workings of the human mind. And I tell you a profound truth: that the only way to stop thinking of a thing is to stop thinking of it. Now, you're not to think of Goward and all this puppet-show again. Not a minute. Not an instant. Do you hear?” He sounded quite stern, and I answered as if I had been in class.
“Yes, sir.”
“You are to think of Italy, and how blue the sea is—and Germany, and how good the beer is—and Charlie Ned and Lorraine, and what trumps they are. Do you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” said I, and because I knew we were going to part and there would be nobody else to advise me in the same way, I went on in a great hurry for fear there should not be time. “I can't live at home even after we come back. I could never be pointed at, like Aunt Elizabeth, and have people whisper and say I've had a disappointment. I must make my own life. I must have a profession. Do you think I could teach? Do you think I could learn to teach—psychology?”
He didn't answer for a long time, and I didn't dare look at him, though the moon was so bright now that I could see how white his hand was, lying on his knee, and the chasing of the ring on his little finger. It had been his mother's engagement ring, he told me once. But he spoke, and very gently and seriously. “I am sure you could teach some things. Whether psychology—but we can talk of that later. There'll be lots of time. It proves I am going over on the same steamer with Charlie Ned and Lorraine and you.”
“You are!” I cried. “Why, I never heard of anything so—” I couldn't find the word for it, but everything stopped being puzzling and unhappy and looked clear and plain.
“Yes,” said he. “It's very convenient, isn't it? We can talk over your future, and you could even take a lesson or two in psychology. But I fancy we shall have a good deal to do looking for porpoises and asking what the run is. People are terribly busy at sea.”
Then it occurred to me that he had never been here before, and why was he here now? “How did you happen to come?” I asked. I suppose I really felt as if God sent him.
“Why,” said he, “why—” Then he laughed. “Well,” said he, “to tell the truth, I was going abroad if—if certain things happened, and I needed to make sure. I didn't want to write, so I ran down to see Charlie Ned.”
“But could he tell you?” said I. “And had they happened?”
He laughed, as if at something I needn't share. “No,” he said, “the things weren't going to happen. But I decided to go abroad.”
I was “curiouser and curiouser,” as Lorraine says.
“But,” I insisted, “what had Charles Edward to do with it?”
There were a great many pauses that night as if, I think, he didn't know what was wise to say. I should imagine it would always be so with psychologists. They understand so well what effect every word will have.
“Well, to tell the truth,” he answered, at last, in a kind, darling way, “I wanted to make sure all was well with my favorite pupil before I left the country. I couldn't quite go without it.”
“Mr. Dane,” I said, “you don't mean me?”
“Yes,” he answered, “I mean you.”
I could have danced and sung with happiness. “Oh,” said I, “then I must have been a better scholar than I thought. I feel as if I could teach psychology—this minute.”
“You could,” said he, “this minute.” And we both laughed and didn't know, after all, what we were laughing at—at least I didn't. But suddenly I was cold with fear.
“Why,” I said, “if you've only really decided to go to-night, how do you know you can get a passage on our ship?”
“Because, sweet Lady Reason,” said he, “I used Charlie Ned's telephone and found out.” (That was a pretty name—sweet Lady Reason.)
We didn't talk any more then for a long time, because suddenly the moon seemed so bright and the garden so sweet. But all at once I heard a step on the gravel walk, and I knew who it was. “That's Charles Edward,” I said. “He's been home with Aunt Elizabeth. We must go in.”
“No!” said he. “No, Peggy. There won't be such another night.” Then he laughed quickly and got up. “Yes,” he said, “there will be such nights—over and over again. Come, Peggy, little psychologist, we'll go in.”
We found Lorraine and Charles Edward standing in the middle of the room, holding hands and looking at each other. “You're a hero,” Lorraine was saying, “and a gentleman and a scholar and my own particular Peter.”
“Don't admire me,” said Charles Edward, “or you'll get me so bellicose I shall have to challenge Lyman Wilde. Poor old chap! I believe to my soul he's had the spirit to make off.”
“Speak gently of Lyman Wilde,” said Lorraine. “I never forget what we owe him. Sometimes I burn a candle to his photograph. I've even dropped a tear before it. Well, children?” She turned her bright eyes on us as if she liked us very much, and we two stood facing them two, and it all seemed quite solemn. Suddenly Charles Edward put out his hand and shook Mr. Dane's, and they both looked very much moved, as grandmother would say. I hadn't known they liked each other so well.
“Do you know what time it is?” said Lorraine. “Half-past eleven by Shrewsbury clock. I'll bake the cakes and draw the ale.”
“Gee whiz!” said Mr. Dane. I'd never heard things like that. It sounded like Billy, and I liked it. “I've got to catch that midnight train.”
For a minute it seemed as if we all stood shouting at one another, Lorraine asking him to stay all night, Charles Edward giving him a cigar to smoke on the way, I explaining to Lorraine that I'd sleep on the parlor sofa and leave the guest-room free, and Mr. Dane declaring he'd got a million things to do before sailing. Then he and Charles Edward dashed out into the night, as Alice would say, and I should have thought it was a dream that he'd been there at all except that I felt his touch on my hand. And Lorraine put her arms round me and kissed me and said, “Now, you sweet child, run up-stairs and look at the moonlight and dream—and dream—and dream.”
I don't know whether I slept that night; but, if I did, I did not dream.
The next forenoon I waited until eleven o'clock before I went home. I wanted to be sure Aunt Elizabeth was safely away at Whitman. Yet, after all, I did not dread her now. I had been told what to do. Some one was telling me of a song the other day, “Command me, dear.” I had been commanded to stop thinking of all those things I hated. I had done it. Mother met me at the steps. She seemed a little anxious, but when she had put her hand on my shoulder and really looked at me she smiled the way I love to see her smile. “That's a good girl!” said she. Then she added, quickly, as if she thought I might not like it and ought to know at once, “Aunt Elizabeth saw Dr. Denbigh going by to Whitman, and she asked him to take her over.”
“Did she?” said I. “Oh, mother, the old white rose is out!”
“There they are, back again,” said mother. “He's leaving her at the gate.”
Well, we both waited for Aunt Elizabeth to come up the path. I picked the first white rose and made mother smell it, and when I had smelled it myself I began to sing under my breath, “Come into the garden, Maud,” because I remembered last night.
“Hush, child,” said mother, quickly. “Elizabeth, you are tired. Come right in.”
Aunt Elizabeth's lip trembled a little. I thought she was going to cry. I had never known her to cry, though I had seen tears in her eyes, and I remember once, when she was talking to Dr. Denbigh, Charles Edward noticed them and laughed. “Those are not idle tears, Peg,” he said to me “They're getting in their work.”
Now I was so sorry for her that I stopped thinking of last night and put it all away. It seemed cruel to be so happy. Aunt Elizabeth sat down on the step and mother brought her an eggnog. It had been all ready for grandmother, and I could see mother thought Aunt Elizabeth needed it, if she was willing to make grandmother wait.
“Ada,” said Aunt Elizabeth, suddenly, as she sipped it, “what was Dr. Denbigh's wife like?”
“Why,” said mother, “I'd almost forgotten he had a wife, it was so long ago. She died in the first year of their marriage.”
Aunt Elizabeth laughed a little, almost as if no one were there. “He began to talk about her quite suddenly this morning,” she said. “It seems Peg reminds him of her. He is devoted to her memory. That's what he said—devoted to her memory.”
“That's good,” said mother, cheerfully, as if she didn't know quite what to say. “More letters, Lily? Any for us?” I could see mother was very tender of her for some reason, or she never would have called her Lily.
“For me,” said Aunt Elizabeth, as if she were tired. “From Mrs. Chataway. A package, too. It looks like visiting-cards. That seems to be from her, too.” She broke open the package. “Why!” said she, “of all things! Why!”
“That's pretty engraving,” said mother, looking over her shoulder. She must have thought they were Aunt Elizabeth's cards. “Why! of all things!”
Aunt Elizabeth began to flush pink and then scarlet. She looked as pretty as a rose, but a little angry, I thought. She put up her head rather haughtily. “Mrs. Chataway is very eccentric,” she said. “A genius, quite a genius in her own line. Ada, I won't come down to luncheon. This has been sufficient. Let me have some tea in my own room at four, please.” She got up, and her letter and one of the cards fell to the floor. I picked them up for her, and I saw on the card:
I don't know why, but I thought, like mother and Aunt Elizabeth, “Well, of all things!”
But the rest of that day mother and I were too busy to exchange a word about Mrs. Chataway or even Aunt Elizabeth. We plunged into my preparations to sail, and talked dresses and hats, and ran ribbons in things, and I burned letters and one photograph (I burned that without looking at it), and suddenly mother got up quickly and dropped her lapful of work. “My stars!” said she, “I've forgotten Aunt Elizabeth's tea.”
“It's of no consequence, dear,” said Aunt Elizabeth's voice at the door. “I asked Katie to bring it up.”
“Why,” said mother, “you're not going?”
I held my breath. Aunt Elizabeth looked so pretty. She was dressed, as I never saw her before, a close-fitting black gown and a plain white collar and a little close black hat. She looked almost like some sister of charity.
“Ada,” said she, “and Peggy, I am going to tell you something, and it is my particular desire that you keep it from the whole family. They would not understand. I am going to ally myself with Mrs. Chataway in a connection which will lead to the widest possible influence for her and for me. In Mrs. Chataway's letter to-day she urges me to join her. She says I have enormous magnetism and—and other qualifications.”
“Don't you want me to tell Cyrus?” said mother. She spoke quite faintly.
“You can simply tell Cyrus that I have gone to Mrs. Chataway's,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “You can also tell him I shall be too occupied to return. Good-bye, Ada. Good-bye, Peggy. Remember, it is the bruised herb that gives out the sweetest odor.”
Before I could stop myself I had laughed, out of happiness, I think. For I remembered how the spearmint had smelled in the garden when Stillman Dane and I stepped on it in the dark and how bright the moon was, and I knew nobody could be unhappy very long.
“I telephoned for a carriage,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “There it is.” She and mother were going down the stairs, and suddenly I felt I couldn't have her go like that.
“Oh, Aunt—Aunt Lily!” I called. “Stop! I want to speak to you.” I ran after her. “I'm going to have a profession, too,” I said. “I'm going to devote my life to it, and I am just as glad as I can be.” I put my arms round her and kissed her on her soft, pink cheeks, and we both cried a little. Then she went away.
This was the telegram that Peter handed me as I came out of the coat-room at the Universe and stood under the lofty gilded ceiling of the great hall, trying to find myself at home again in the democratic simplicity of the United States. For two years I had been travelling in the effete, luxurious Orient as a peace correspondent for a famous newspaper; sleeping under canvas in Syria, in mud houses in Persia, in paper cottages in Japan; riding on camel-hump through Arabia, on horseback through Afghanistan, in palankeen through China, and faring on such food as it pleased Providence to send. The necessity of putting my next book through the press (The Setting Splendors of the East) had recalled me to the land of the free and the home of the brave. Two hours after I had landed from the steamship, thirty seconds after I had entered the club, there was Peter, in his green coat and brass buttons, standing in the vast, cool hall among the immense columns of verd-antique, with my telegram on a silver tray, which he presented to me with a discreet expression of welcome in his well-trained face, as if he hesitated to inquire where I had been, but ventured to hope that I had enjoyed my holiday and that there was no bad news in my despatch. The perfection of the whole thing brought me back with a mild surprise to my inheritance as an American, and made me dimly conscious of the point to which New York has carried republicanism and the simple life.
But the telegram—read hastily in the hall, and considered at leisure while I took a late breakfast at my favorite table in the long, stately, oak-panelled dining-room, high above the diminished roar of Fifth Avenue—the telegram carried me out to Eastridge, that self-complacent overgrown village among the New York hills, where people still lived in villas with rubber-plants in the front windows, and had dinner in the middle of the day, and attended church sociables, and listened to Fourth-of-July orations. It was there that I had gone, green from college, to take the assistant-editorship of that flapping sheet The Eastridge Banner; and there I had found Cyrus Talbert beginning his work in the plated-ware factory—the cleanest, warmest, biggest heart of a man that I have known yet, with a good-nature that covered the bed-rock of his conscience like an apple orchard on a limestone ridge. In the give-and-take of every day he was easy-going, kindly, a lover of laughter; but when you struck down to a question of right and wrong, or, rather, when he conceived that he heard the divine voice of duty, he became absolutely immovable—firm, you would call it if you agreed with him, obstinate if you differed.
After all, a conscience like that is a good thing to have at the bottom of a friendship. I could be friends with a man of almost any religion, but hardly with a man of none. Certainly the intimacy that sprang up between Talbert and me was fruitful in all the good things that cheer life's journey from day to day, and deep enough to stand the strain of life's earthquakes and tornadoes. There was a love-affair that might have split us apart; but it only put the rivets into our friendship. For both of us in that affair—yes, all three of us, thank God—played a straight game. There was a time of loss and sorrow for me when he proved himself more true and helpful than any brother that I ever knew. I was best man at his wedding; and because he married a girl that understood, his house became more like a home to me than any other place that my wandering life has found.
I saw its amazing architectural proportions erupt into the pride of Eastridge. I saw Cyrus himself, with all his scroll-saw tastes and mansard-roof opinions, by virtue of sheer honesty and thorough-going human decency, develop into the unassuming “first citizen” of the town, trusted even by those who laughed at him, and honored most by his opponents. I saw his aggravating family of charming children grow around him—masterful Maria, aesthetic Charles Edward, pretty Peggy, fairy-tale Alice, and boisterous Billy—each at heart lovable and fairly good; but, taken in combination, bewildering and perplexing to the last degree.
Cyrus had a late-Victorian theory in regard to the education of children, that individuality should not be crushed—give them what they want—follow the line of juvenile insistence—all the opportunities and no fetters. This late-Victorian theory had resulted in the production of a collection of early-Rooseveltian personalities around him, whose simultaneous interaction sometimes made his good old head swim. As a matter of fact, the whole family, including Talbert's preposterous old-maid sister Elizabeth (the biggest child of the lot), absolutely depended on the good sense of Cyrus and his wife, and would have been helpless without them. But, as a matter of education, each child had a secret illusion of superiority to the parental standard, and not only made wild dashes at originality and independent action, but at the same time cherished a perfect mania for regulating and running all the others. Independence was a sacred tradition in the Talbert family; but interference was a fixed nervous habit, and complication was a chronic social state. The blessed mother understood them all, because she loved them all. Cyrus loved them all, but the only one he thought he understood was Peggy, and her he usually misunderstood, because she was so much like him. But he was fair to them all—dangerously fair—except when his subcutaneous conscience reproached him with not doing his duty; then he would cut the knot of family interference with some tremendous stroke of paternal decision unalterable as a law of the Medes and Persians.
All this was rolling through my memory as I breakfasted at the Universe and considered the telegram from Eastridge.
“Do you remember promise?” Of course I remembered. Was it likely that either of us would forget a thing like that? We were in the dingy little room that he called his “den”; it was just after the birth of his third child. I had told my plan of letting the staff of The Banner fall into other hands and going out into the world to study the nations when they were not excited by war, and write about people who were not disguised in soldier-clothes. “That's a big plan,” he said, “and you'll go far, and be long away at times.” I admitted that it was likely. “Well,” he continued, laying down his pipe, “if you ever are in trouble and can't get back here, send word, and I'll come.” I told him that there was little I could do for him or his (except to give superfluous advice), but if they ever needed me a word would bring me to them. Then I laid down my pipe, and we stood up in front of the fire and shook hands. That was all the promise there was; but it brought him down to Panama to get me, five years later, when I was knocked out with the fever; and it would take me back to Eastridge now by the first train.
But what wasteful brevity in that phrase, “much needed”! What did that mean? (Why will a man try to put a forty-word meaning into a ten-word telegram?) Sickness? Business troubles? One of those independent, interfering children in a scrape? One thing I was blessedly sure of: it did not mean any difficulty between Cyrus and his wife; they were of the tribe who marry for love and love for life. But the need must be something serious and urgent, else he never would have sent for me. With a family like his almost anything might happen. Perhaps Aunt Elizabeth—I never could feel any confidence in a red-haired female who habitually dressed in pink. Or perhaps Charles Edward—if that young man's artistic ability had been equal to his sense of it there would have been less danger in taking him into the factory. Or probably Maria, with her great head for business—oh, Maria, I grant you, is like what the French critic said of the prophet Habakkuk, “capable de tout.”
But why puzzle any longer over that preposterous telegram? If my friend Talbert was in any kind of trouble under the sun, there was just one thing that I wanted—to get to him as quickly as possible. Find when the first train started and arrived—send a lucid despatch—no expensive parsimony in telegraphing:
'“To Cyrus Talbert, Eastridge, Massachusetts:
“I arrived this morning on the Dilatoria and found your telegram here. Expect me on the noon train due at Eastridge five forty-three this afternoon. I hope all will go well. Count on me always. Gerrit Wendell.”
It was a relief to find him on the railway platform when the train rolled in, his broad shoulders as square as ever, his big head showing only a shade more of gray, a shade less of red, in its strawberry roan, his face shining with the welcome which he expressed, as usual, in humorous disguise.
“Here you are,” he cried, “browner and thinner than ever! Give me that bag. How did you leave my friend the Shah of Persia?”
“Better,” I said, stepping into the open carriage, “since he got on the water-wagon—uses nothing but Eastridge silver-plated ice-pitchers now.”
“And my dear friend the Empress of China?” he asked, as he got in beside me.
“She has recovered her digestion,” I answered, “due entirely to the abandonment of chop-sticks and the adoption of Eastridge knives and forks. But now it's my turn to ask a question. How are YOU?”
“Well,” said he. “And the whole family is well, and we've all grown tremendously, but we haven't changed a bit, and the best thing that has happened to us for three years is seeing you again.”
“And the factory?” I asked. “How does the business of metallic humbug thrive?”
“All right,” he answered. “There's a little slackening in chafing-dishes just now, but ice-cream knives are going off like hot cakes. The factory is on a solid basis; hard times won't hurt us.”
“Well, then,” said I, a little perplexed, “what in Heaven's name did you mean by sending that—”
“Hold on,” said Talbert, gripping my knee and looking grave for a moment, “just you wait. I need you badly enough or else the telegram never would have gone to you. I'll tell you about it after supper. Till then, never mind—or, rather, no matter; for it's nothing material, after all, but there's a lot in it for the mind.”
I knew then that he was in one of his fundamental moods, imperviously jolly on the surface, inflexibly Puritan underneath, and that the only thing to do was to let the subject rest until he chose to take it up in earnest. So we drove along, chaffing and laughing, until we came to the dear, old, ugly house. The whole family were waiting on the veranda to bid me welcome home. Mrs. Talbert took my hands with a look that said it all. Her face had not grown a shade older, to me, since I first knew her; and her eyes—the moment you look into them you feel that she understands. Alice seemed to think that she had become too grown-up to be kissed, even by the friend of the family; and I thought so, too. But pretty Peggy was of a different mind. There is something about the way that girl kisses an old gentleman that almost makes him wish himself young again.
At supper we had the usual tokens of festivity: broiled chickens and pop-overs and cool, sliced tomatoes and ice-cream with real strawberries in it (how good and clean it tasted after Ispahan and Bagdad!) and the usual family arguing and joking (how natural and wholesome it sounded after Vienna and Paris!). I thought Maria looked rather strenuous and severe, as if something important were on her mind, and Billy and Alice, at moments, had a conscious air. But Charles Edward and Lorraine were distinctly radiant, and Peggy was demurely jolly. She sounded like her father played on a mandolin.
After supper Talbert took me to the summer-house at the foot of the garden to smoke. Our first cigars were about half burned out when he began to unbosom himself.
“I've been a fool,” he said, “an idiot, and, what is more, an unnatural and neglectful father, cruel to my children when I meant to be kind, a shirker of my duty, and a bringer of trouble on those that I love best.”
“As for example?” I asked.
“Well, it is Peggy!” he broke out. “You know, I like her best of them all, next to Ada; can't help it. She is nearer to me, somehow. The finest, most unselfish little girl! But I've been just selfish enough to let her get into trouble, and be talked about, and have her heart broken, and now they've put her into a position where she's absolutely helpless, a pawn in their fool game, and the Lord only knows what's to come of it all unless he makes me man enough to do my duty.”
From this, of course, I had to have the whole story, and I must say it seemed to me most extraordinary—a flagrant case of idiotic interference. Peggy had been sent away to one of those curious institutions that they call a “coeducational college,” chiefly because Maria had said that she ought to understand the duties of modern womanhood; she had gone, without the slightest craving for “the higher education,” but naturally with the idea of having a “good time”; and apparently she had it, for she came home engaged to a handsome, amatory boy, one of her fellow “students,” named Goward. At this point Aunt Elizabeth, with her red hair and pink frock, had interfered and lured off the Goward, who behaved in a manner which appeared to me to reduce him to a negligible quantity. But the family evidently did not think so, for they all promptly began to interfere, Maria and Charles Edward and Alice and even Billy, each one with an independent plan, either to lure the Goward back or to eliminate him. Alice had the most original idea, which was to marry Peggy to Dr. Denbigh; but this clashed with Maria's idea, which was to entangle the doctor with Aunt Elizabeth in order that the Goward might be recaptured. It was all extremely complicated and unnecessary (from my point of view), and of course it transpired and circulated through the gossip of the town, and poor Peggy was much afflicted and ashamed. Now the engagement was off; Aunt Elizabeth had gone into business with a clairvoyant woman in New York; Goward was in the hospital with a broken arm, and Peggy was booked to go to Europe on Saturday with Charles Edward and Lorraine.
“Quite right,” I exclaimed at this point in the story. “Everything has turned out just as it should, like a romance in an old-fashioned ladies' magazine.”
“Not at all,” broke out Talbert; “you don't know the whole of it, Maria has told me” (oh, my prophetic soul, Maria!) “that Charley and his wife have asked a friend of theirs, a man named Dane, ten years older than Peggy, a professor in that blank coeducational college, to go with them, and that she is sure they mean to make her marry him.”
“What Dane is that?” I interrupted. “Is his first name Stillman—nephew of my old friend Harvey Dane, the publisher? Because, if that's so, I know him; about twenty-eight years old; good family, good head, good manners, good principles; just the right age and the right kind for Peggy—a very fine fellow indeed.”
“That makes no difference,” continued Cyrus, fiercely. “I don't care whose nephew he is, nor how old he is, nor what his manners are. My point is that Peggy positively shall not be pushed, or inveigled, or dragooned, or personally conducted into marrying anybody at all! Billy and Alice were wandering around Charley's garden last Friday night, and they report that Professor Dane was there with Peggy. Alice says that she looked pale and drooping, 'like the Bride of Lammermoor.' There has been enough of this meddling with my little Peggy, I say, and I'm to blame for it. I don't know whether her heart is broken or not. I don't know whether she still cares for that fellow Goward or not. I don't know what she wants to do—but whatever it is she shall do it, I swear. She sha'n't be cajoled off to Europe with Charles Edward and Lorraine to be flung at the head of the first professor who turns up. I'll do my duty by my little girl. She shall stay at home and be free. There has been too much interference in this family, and I'm damned if I stand any more; I'll interfere myself now.”
It was not the unusual violence of the language in the last sentence that convinced me. I had often seen religious men affected in that way after an over-indulgence in patience and mild behavior. It was that ominous word, “my duty,” which made me sure that Talbert had settled down on the bed-rock of his conscience and was not to be moved. Why, then, had he sent for me, I asked, since he had made up his mind?
“Well,” said he, “in the first place, I hadn't quite made it up when I sent the telegram. And in the second place, now that you have helped me to see absolutely what is right to do, I want you to speak to my wife about it. She doesn't agree with me, wants Peggy to go to Europe, thinks there cannot be any risk in it. You know how she has always adored Charles Edward. Will you talk to her?”
“I will,” said I, after a moment of reflection, “on one condition. You may forbid Peggy's journey, to-morrow morning if you like. Break it off peremptorily, if you think it's your duty. But don't give up her state-room on the ship. And if you can be convinced between now and Saturday that the danger of interference with her young affections is removed, and that she really needs and wants to go, you let her go! Will you?”
“I will,” said he. And with that we threw away the remainder of our second cigars, and I went up to the side porch to talk with Mrs. Talbert. What we said I leave you to imagine. I have always thought her the truest and tenderest woman in the world, but I never knew till that night just how clear-headed and brave she was. She agreed with me that Peggy's affair, up to now more or less foolish, though distressing, had now reached a dangerous stage, a breaking-point. The child was overwrought. A wrong touch now might wreck her altogether. But the right touch? Or, rather, no touch at all, but just an open door before her? Ah, that was another matter. My plan was a daring one; it made her tremble a little, but perhaps it was the best one; at all events, she could see no other. Then she stood up and gave me both hands again. “I will trust you, my friend,” said she. “I know that you love us and our children. You shall do what you think best and I will be satisfied. Good-night.”
The difficulty with the situation, as I looked it over carefully while indulging in a third cigar in my bedroom, was that the time was desperately short. It was now one o'clock on Tuesday morning. About nine Cyrus would perform his sacred duty of crushing his darling Peggy by telling her that she must stay in Eastridge. At ten o'clock on Saturday the Chromatic would sail with Charles Edward and Lorraine and Stillman Dane. Yet there were two things that I was sure of: one was that Peggy ought to go with them, and the other was that it would be good for her to—but on second thought I prefer to keep the other thing for the end of my story. My mind was fixed, positively and finally, that the habit of interference in the Talbert family must be broken up. I never could understand what it is that makes people so crazy to interfere, especially in match-making. It is a lunacy. It is presuming, irreverent, immoral, intolerable. So I worked out my little plan and went to sleep.
Peggy took her father's decree (which was administered to her privately after breakfast on Tuesday) most loyally. Of course, he could not give her his real reasons, and so she could not answer them. But when she appeared at dinner it was clear, in spite of a slight rosy hue about her eyes, that she had decided to accept the sudden change in the situation like a well-bred angel—which, in fact, she is.
I had run down to Whitman in the morning train to make a call on young Goward, and found him rather an amiable boy, under the guard of an adoring mother, who thought him a genius and was convinced that he had been entrapped by designing young women. I agreed with her so heartily that she left me alone with him for a half-hour. His broken arm was doing well; his amatoriness was evidently much reduced by hospital diet; he was in a repentant frame of mind and assured me that he knew he had been an ass as well as a brute (synonymes, dear boy), and that he was now going West to do some honest work in the world before he thought any more about girls. I commended his manly decision. He was rather rueful over the notion that he might have hurt Miss Talbert by his bad conduct. I begged him not to distress himself, his first duty now was to get well. I asked him if he would do me the favor, with the doctor's permission, of taking the fresh air with his mother on the terrace of the hospital about half-past five that afternoon. He looked puzzled, but promised that he would do it; and so we parted.
After dinner I requested Peggy to make me happy by going for a little drive in the runabout with me. She came down looking as fresh as a wild rose, in a soft, white dress with some kind of light greenery about it, and a pale green sash around her waist, and her pretty, sunset hair uncovered. If there is any pleasanter avocation for an old fellow than driving in an open buggy with a girl like that, I don't know it. She talked charmingly: about my travels; about her college friends; about Eastridge; and at last about her disappointment in not going to Europe. By this time we were nearing the Whitman hospital.
“I suppose you have heard,” said she, looking down at her bare hands and blushing; “perhaps they have told you why I wanted especially to go away.”
“Yes, my dear child,” I answered, “they have told me a lot of nonsense, and I am heartily glad that it is all over. Are you?”
“More glad than I can tell you,” she answered, frankly, looking into my face.
“See,” said I, “there is the hospital. I believe there is a boy in there that knows you—name of Goward.”
“Yes,” she said, rather faintly, looking down again, but not changing color.
“Peggy,” I asked, “do you still—think now, and answer truly—do you still HATE him?”
She waited a moment, and then lifted her clear blue eyes to mine. “No, Uncle Gerrit, I don't hate him half as much as I hate myself. Really, I don't hate him at all. I'm sorry for him.”
“So am I, my dear,” said I, stretching my interest in the negligible youth a little. “But he is getting well, and he is going West as soon as possible. Look, is that the boy yonder, sitting on the terrace with a fat lady, probably his mother? Do you feel that you could bow to him, just to oblige me?”
She flashed a look at me. “I'll do it for that reason, and for another, too,” she said. And then she nodded her red head, in the prettiest way, and threw in an honest smile and a wave of her hand for good measure. I was proud of her. The boy stood up and took off his hat. I could see him blush a hundred feet away. Then his mother evidently asked him a question, and he turned to answer her, and so EXIT Mr. Goward.
The end of our drive was even pleasanter than the beginning. Peggy was much interested in a casual remark expressing my pleasure in hearing that she had recently met the nephew of one of my very old friends, Stillman Dane.
“Oh,” she cried, “do you know HIM? Isn't that lovely?”
I admitted that he was a very good person to know, though I had only seen a little of him, about six years ago. But his uncle, the one who lately died and left a snug fortune to his favorite nephew, was one of my old bachelor cronies, in fact, a member of the firm that published my books. If the young man resembled his uncle he was all right. Did Peggy like him?
“Why, yes,” she answered. “He was a professor at our college, and all the girls thought him a perfect dandy!”
“Dandy!” I exclaimed. “There was no sign of an excessive devotion to dress when I knew him. It's a great pity!”
“Oh!” she cried, laughing, “I don't mean THAT. It is only a word we girls use; it means the same as when you say, 'A VERY FINE FELLOW INDEED.”'
From that point we played the Stillman Dane tune, with variations, until we reached home, very late indeed for supper. The domestic convulsion caused by the formal announcement of Talbert's sudden decision had passed, leaving visible traces. Maria was flushed, but triumphant; Alice and Billy had an air of conscience-stricken importance; Charles Edward and Lorraine were sarcastically submissive; Cyrus was resolutely jovial; the only really tranquil one was Mrs. Talbert. Everything had been arranged. The whole family were to go down to New York on Thursday to stop at a hotel, and see the travellers off on Saturday morning—all except Peggy, who was to remain at home and keep house.
“That suits me exactly,” said I, “for business calls me to town to-morrow, but I would like to come back here on Thursday and keep house with Peggy, if she will let me.”
She thanked me with a little smile, and so it was settled. Cyrus wanted to know, when we were sitting in the arbor that night, if I did not think he had done right. “Wonderfully,” I said. He also wanted to know if he might not give up that extra state-room and save a couple of hundred dollars. I told him that he must stick to his bargain—I was still in the game—and then I narrated the afternoon incident at the hospital. “Good little Peggy!” he cried. “That clears up one of my troubles. But the great objection to this European business still holds. She shall not be driven.” I agreed with him—not a single step!
The business that called me to New York was Stillman Dane. A most intelligent and quick-minded young gentleman—not at all a beauty man—not even noticeably academic. He was about the middle height, but very well set up, and evidently in good health of body and mind; a clean-cut and energetic fellow, who had been matured by doing his work and had himself well in hand. There was a look in his warm, brown eyes that spoke of a heart unsullied and capable of the strongest and purest affection; and at the same time certain lines about his chin and his mouth, mobile but not loose lipped, promised that he would be able to take care of himself and of the girl that he loved. His appearance and his manner were all that I had hoped—even more, for they were not only pleasant but thoroughly satisfactory.
He was courteous enough to conceal his slight surprise at my visit, but not skilful enough to disguise his interest in hearing that I had just come from the Talberts. I told him of the agreement with Cyrus Talbert, the subsequent conversation with Mrs. Talbert, Peggy's drive with me to Whitman, and her views upon dandies and other cognate subjects.
Then I explained to him quite clearly what I should conceive my duty to be if I were in his place. He assented warmly to my view. I added that if there were any difficulties in his mind I should advise him to lay the case before my dear friend the Reverend George Alexanderson, of the Irving Place Church, who was an extraordinarily sensible and human clergyman, and to whom I would give him a personal letter stating the facts. Upon this we shook hands heartily, and I went back to Peggy on Thursday morning.