"If we knew when walking thoughtlessThrough some crowded, noisy way,That a pearl of wondrous whiteness,Close beside our pathway lay;We would pause, where now we hasten,We would often look around,Lest our careless feet should trampleSome rare jewel in the ground."
"If we knew when walking thoughtless
Through some crowded, noisy way,
That a pearl of wondrous whiteness,
Close beside our pathway lay;
We would pause, where now we hasten,
We would often look around,
Lest our careless feet should trample
Some rare jewel in the ground."
It was like my extravagant nature to quote this verse of "speech day" poetry while engaged in such a commonplace pursuit, but then the age of Eve is an extravagant age.
I was in a tight little cell of a room back of the pantry, a hot enough place on an August morning; a little den where we store old magazines, last summer hats, pictures and bric-à-brac that we have outgrown, and piles of newspapers.
It was the last named species of junk that was absorbing my earnest attention, to say naught of perspiration,on the day I have in mind, which is by no means a distant one. My forehead was wet and my hair was sticking to it in damp little slabs, but I was unaware of this until afterward, when my family called my attention to it, and inquired where I had been and what I had been doing. Then I was in no mood to tell them.
"It ought to be somewhere in the June lot," I mused, as I stretched my arm across a bundle of worn-out bedroom curtains and dragged a batch of dusty papers over into my lap.
I have been very idle and lonely for the last few days, else I doubt if I should have been driven to such occupation as this. I knew it was foolish, even as I did it, but the Claybornes have been away, staying with the elder Claybornes a while, only returning this morning early, and Cousin Eunice has been so busy since then repairing the damage done Waterloo's clothes that she has been uninteresting to me. The Sullivans spent last week down in the country at a tiny town named Bayville, where there is no sign of a bay; and I have missed the workings of Neva sadly.
It denoted the recent trend of my mind that, as I thought of Neva, upon this occasion, I immediatelyremembered that her father is a strict anti-Appleton man. Anti-Appleton! How much the term means to me now! A week ago I cared no more for its sound than I cared for the nouns of the fifth declension.
I picked up the paper lying on top and began to fan with it a while before wading into the mazes of the stack. In the few papers which I had already looked over I found,notthe object of my search, it is true, but wood-cuts and cartoons of men whose names have been familiar to me for months in a vague, unreal sort of way, making a sound to my ears, but meaning nothing—like the ringing of the telephone bell in the next room when you are fast asleep. Yet the telephone bell will finally awaken you if you are not dead—evensoit might, if it is a doctor's telephone—and with what a start do you come to your senses as you reproach yourself for not recognizing its important voice sooner! I have felt this way many times lately, since I have taken up the study of politics; and have found it vastly more interesting than geometry.
The first mighty political name which ever forced itself upon my understanding was Cleveland, and it is not surprising to me now that I was mixed upas to its significance and imagined that, instead of a surname, it was a title of nobility. It sounded like such a swelling note of praise to me, for I was only a few years old, and the torchlight procession on the night of his election filled me with a strange delight.
Since then I have always had a good memory for oft-repeated names, although I have frequently held as hazy impressions concerning them as I did of Mr. Cleveland's honored cognomen. The politicians of my native state have all gone by names that were as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals to my untutored ears until the last few days, when I have turned in and studied them as most girls study new embroidery stitches.
This is, in part, what I have learned: Appleton is our governor and is said to be everything that Charles I. of England was beheaded for—"tyrant, traitor, murderer, and enemy to his country." I know this is true because the paper we take says so; and if you are going to doubt what your favorite newspaper says, why, then, do you take it? I believe in loyalty above everything, and I think if the paper which supports the other side of the question should, by mistake, be thrown into your yard, youought to run and kick the horrid sheet over the fence into the gutter. That is, if you are a man. If you are a lady I advise you to use the tongs for the purpose, especially if there is any one passing by at the time.
Personally, I do not know Mr. Appleton, but I heard one fat, motherly woman, whose son held a job under him, say that he was such a kind-hearted governor because he set free so many poor prisoners! This remark impressed me, and I was beginning to think well of him, when here came that paper again (Rufe's paper) saying that the governor was turning them loose at so much per, a murderer being a little higher in price than a "pistol-toter," who, in turn, is more expensive than a boot-legger, the last really being a kind of bargain-day leader, inasmuch as he is such a help to the administration!
Well, I dare say no governor is a hero to all the papers in his state!
This is quite enough penmanship wasted on Mr. Appleton anyway; for he is as dead as Philadelphia on Sunday, and the public, with its handkerchief held to its nose, is only waiting until next election, when quicklime will be poured over the remains by the young and gallant Richard Chalmers.
Of course, you understand the cause of the political unrest? It is the whisky question, and everything in our state has been turned upside down by it; that is, everything except the whisky. It is turned upside down only when there is a glass under the bottle. Mr. Appleton favors this phase of the whisky agitation.
Next in importance after the governor is a man named Blake, Jim Blake, whom nobody ever calls James, and who is so much like a big fat worm that I never pass him in the streets without wanting to mash him. He is like one of those soft, white worms, you know, which I am sure I have eaten dozens of on nights when I used to take a handful of chestnuts to bed with me.
In the mountainous regions during his campaigns, they say, to make himself solid with the boys, Jim Blake uses bad English and good whisky; in the cities he uses good English and better whisky. All in all, he is the most popular man in the state—a fact which makes you wish you had anticipated Carlyle's remark about the population of his country being mainly fools.
Major Blake was a power in politics a few years back, then he went into obscurity for a while, onaccount of an ailing daughter, it was said, who had to live in the West if she would live at all. The story goes the rounds that at one time he gave up a senatorship for the sake of staying with this daughter; and, if this is true, I beg his pardon for calling him a worm!
Her name is Berenice Blake, which sounds so beautiful to me that I feel sure her mother must have been the one who named her. I suppose she improved somewhat in health from her outdoor life in the West, for her father came back after a while, and at this present time she makes frequent vibrations between her home and Denver, every one of which causes prolonged paroxysms in the society columns.
In his political affiliations Jim Blake is like—like—my kingdom for a simile! I might with truth say that he is like a chameleon, but I have already likened him to a worm, and I do not care about getting reptiles on the brain, especially this late at night. Also I might say that he is like a lake of quicksilver, except that such a body would resemble a stagnant, green-scummed pool compared with the surface spring of his opinions—opinions which vary with the tinkle of silvery sounds.
Yet the fact is there, and as immovable as a window-sash in wet weather, that he is the most popular man in the state. And, while what I have repeated about him is truth, or as near truth as anything is supposed to be in politics, it is disloyal gossip coming from menow, for Jim Blake is at home at present, he is unpledged, and we are hoping high hopes that he will come out on our side. The spectacle is pretty much like a body of priests which might be standing by watching for the devil to shed horn, hoofs and tail and put on a clean collar, buttoned behind.
With their zest for canonizing their leaders I wonder what the temperance workerswilldo with a man as handsome as Richard Chalmers is said to be? How the "popular young ladies" of the towns will fall over one another in trying to present him with a great sheaf of roses at the close of his speech! I hate that bouquet-presenting worse than anything else done by the women who mix up with candidates! Men hate it, too, and when I sounded Rufe on the subject he just frowned and said: "Oh, it'sawful, but what are you going to do?" I suggested that he have the candidate say "Please omit flowers," or "I will not look upon the roses whilethey are red," or words to that effect, at the close of his speech.
But Rufe shook his head sadly.
"There are three things in this life that a woman is a fool about," he explained to me, "the surgeon who removes her appendix, the minister who saves her soul, and the politician who lets her 'take on' over him in public!"
"But the candidatehatesthe flowers and the praying at the polls and the general patting on the back like 'he's-mamma's-good-little-boy' that they inflict upon him, doesn't he?"
"I shouldthinkso," Rufe admitted.
I was studying over this phase of the next year's campaign when I attacked the pile of papers in my lap and was wondering if Richard Chalmers would hate the fuss they would inevitably make over him.
June 14, 15, 16, I glanced through without finding anything of interest, and it was tiresome work. Oh, why did I not realize at the time these papers were fresh and new that they held a "pearl of wondrous whiteness?" It would have saved all this trouble. But likely Mammy Lou had used theveryone to kindle the fire with. That would be worse than tramping the rare jewel in the ground! Ah!
Was it prophetic that just as I was thinking over the words "rare jewel" the object of my search met my eyes? Of course, you are not stupid, my journal, and you have long ago seen that I was looking diligently for all the news, butmostlythe picture of Richard Chalmers, the good-looking young David who might slay the monster Goliath, if he would take his smooth pebble from abrookand not from a brewery!
Well, it was the picture I found, and his name was in big letters beneath. I looked at the face first, then quickly at the name, but I put the two together with difficulty.
"So Richard Chalmers isyou!" I said aloud in my surprise. Then I stared at the picture as steadfastly as Ahmed Al Kamel must have looked at the portrait of the princess, the first woman's face he had ever seen. A feeling of superstition came stealing over me and daring me to say that this was only a happen-so.
"So it'syou," I repeated without moving my eyes from the picture, "and that must be why I felt such a curious interest in this political business."
The stuffy heat of the tight little room, the piles of dusty old papers, the politics and rumors of politicswere all forgotten in a twinkling as my memory bounded back and even took in the details of the landscape that dull day last November when I saw him first. Alfred Morgan had asked me to drive with him out one of the pikes where he had a call to make. I was at Cousin Eunice's and he had called me by telephone to ask me to go; Cousin Eunice and Ann Lisbeth were wrestling over an intricate shirt-waist pattern, but they both stopped long enough to insist that it was too cold for me to go so far out just for the fun of going. But I insisted equally as firmly upon going, so Ann Lisbeth made me wear her motor bonnet and long fur coat, which were very becoming.
Our route lay out one of the pikes which I like most, a beautiful driveway, with a lovely little Jewish cemetery about three miles out. I found that itwascold, and when we reached the cemetery I asked Alfred to put me out so that I could walk around a bit and try to get warm—while he made his call just a short distance farther up the road. He could honk-honk for me if I had wandered out of sight by the time he came back. We frequently did that way.
Then it was that I first saw Richard Chalmers,coming out of the little red lodge house at the gates of the cemetery. He was dressed in gray, with a long gray overcoat and a soft gray hat; and his fairness made no break in the dull monochrome of the surroundings. The brilliant-hued lodge, with the Oriental dome, made the only warm spot of color in my line of vision, but he was looking at me, too, and I am sure he saw other spots of color, for my face flushed somewhat as I recognized him as being the first man I had ever seen in my life whom I cared about looking at.
He must be tall, for the coat he wore that day was quite long, but I do not remember taking in any details except his face. This was natural, for it appeared to me then as being a very good face to look at, even aside from the peculiar charm which afterward made me remember it so. Cameo-like in its distinctness, with steel-gray eyes, it reminded me of the face I used to tell Jean about years ago when we each had an Ideal. "Cold-blooded and lean as Dante," my description had been in those bygone days, and Richard Chalmers' face strangely fitted it, though by no means so cold nor so lean as I had formerly thought necessary for perfect charm. It was only lean enough to be intellectual-looking,and, if the keen gray eyes were cold, they were also strong. His hair was short and of a very light-brown color; I remembered this distinctly, for he had taken off his hat as he bade good-by to whoever was inside the lodge, and he had stood a moment bareheaded as he saw me, and looked at me with a degree of well-bred surprise. There was nothing unusual in this, for, in driving out the country roads with Alfred and Doctor Gordon, I have often observed that when two well-dressed people pass each other they usually look. Each one is likely wondering what the other is doing so far from the madding crowd.
I was wondering what he was doing, Anglo-Saxon that he so evidently was, coming from a Hebrew cemetery; then he untied the hitch-rein of a horse that was restlessly twitching its head at a post near by, jumped into the light buggy and drove off. Alfred and I passed him a little later on, for he had been driving slowly, evidently to the distaste of the horse. The creature was just the kind of animal you would expect a man of his appearance to drive—slim and satiny and fast. Alfred slowed up as we were passing, for the horse had drawn quickly to one side of the road and was tremblingwith fright. The man in the buggy held a tight rein and spoke a soothing word to her, then turned and regarded us again. My heart bounded as our eyes met, and I wondered why he had driven back to town so slowly.
The marked look of intellect which his face bore gave it an appearance of asceticism, which his handsome clothes and general make-up belied. He looked almost as unworldly as a monk—a monk fashionably dressed and driving a race-horse!
We passed each other again the very next week, in the lobby of the city hall this time, where I had gone with Ann Lisbeth to pay the water-tax. He was talking with two men, and, as he recognized me, he drew both of these men slightly to one side that Ann Lisbeth and I might make our way to the elevator without being crowded. This time I had passed so close to him that I could see the tiny lines around his eyes, left there by the warring elements of his character, I imagined afterward, when I was trying to recall every feature with its own expression and thereby piece out, to my own satisfaction, a nature for my impressive Unknown.
"He may do bad things sometimes," I finally concluded triumphantly, "but he never enjoys doingthem, because he has a conscience that will not let him."
Once again I saw him, some time afterward, at the entrance of a theater one crowded night when the most popular actress on the American stage was playing. An emotional little actress she is, whose feelings seem to be stationed largely in her finger-tips, for she uses them as if she were talking to deaf mutes with them. I criticized the play, pronounced the leading man a "plumber," made remarks about the extravagant finger-play and otherwise spoiled my pleasure to such an extent that I realized for the first time what a hold upon my imagination the face of this Unknown had taken. He had passed quite close, but he had not seen me!
After this I had thought about him very often, and, while he was not exactly only a "type" to me, as I had been careful to explain to Cousin Eunice, still, as the weeks slipped by and I had not seen him again, his face became a kind of pleasant picture that I might draw out sometimes and look at. A miniature, it must have been, for I carried it with me everywhere I went; and it always seemed to bring with it a sudden radiance, like a burst of sunshine at the close of a dreary day.
A burst of sunshine at the close of a dreary day! The words were lingering pleasantly in my memory when I was called back to earth by the united voices of my family.
"Ann!" mother called. "Ann!"
"I've looked all over the place for her," I heard Cousin Eunice say, and the sound of hurrying feet toward the dining-room gave me a suggestion that it was time to eat again.
I ducked through the pantry door and made my way up-stairs without being seen by any one. I bathed my face in cold water, which helped a little, then I came on back down-stairs and faced them. They all looked up at me. It was awful!
"Where you been at?" Mammy Lou inquired in a low but penetrating voice as I passed her at the dining-room door; and the question was repeated in other degrees of sound and grammatical precision. They were all looking at my damp forehead.
"I tried to find you an hour ago," Cousin Eunice said, "I wanted to tell you the news."
"And I wanted you to polish the silver on the sideboard," mother said in an injured voice.
"Ann, we looked evvywhere fer you," Waterloo chimed in, with his mouth so full that Cousin Eunice'sattention was attracted to it and she made him unload the portions of nourishment that were visible externally. "Me and Grapefruit found a littletarrypin. Aunt Mary said you wasn't scared of 'em!"
"Well, I'm glad it was nothing more important than a 'tarrypin' that needed my ministrations," I began, thankful for a topic so entirely earthly, but there was a hue and cry.
"Important!" Cousin Eunice exclaimed. "There are three mighty politicians coming here to dinner to-night!"
"And the silver needs polishing," mother supplemented.
"Rufe was talking with them over the telephone this morning," father explained. "They are in Bayville at a temperance rally and will have to come here to-night to catch a car back to the city. Mother and I thought it would be a shame to let them go to the hotel for dinner—they're such friends of Rufe's."
"Now, you needn't lay it on Rufe," mother said, smiling at him. "You know that if an Englishman dearly loves a lord, an American dearly loves a lion. It'syouwho want to hear them roar."
"Richard Chalmers is the only lion, so don't look so startled, Ann," Rufe said, as he began passing me things to eat; but I was not hungry.
"The other two likely eat with their knives," Cousin Eunice added soothingly, as she still used her endeavors toward having Waterloo feed himself like an anthropoid being.
"Oh, Ann doesn't worry over company," mother said, as she glanced at me again. "She's been asleep. That's what makes her look—startled."
PRINCE CHARMING
Ihad not been asleep, but I had been in a dream; a dream from which I had awakened to a state of greater unreality.
After the meal was over and the family had all left the dining-room I was still in a dream as I rolled my sleeves up high and began giving hasty dabs with the metal polish to the ancient silver on the sideboard. How delightful it is to have heirloom silver! I failed even to grow cross over the long, hot search for flannel cloths and the gritty feeling which this distasteful task always leaves around my finger-tips.
Still in a dream, I stood at the back kitchen door and watched Dilsey decapitate the plumpest fowls the poultry yard boasted. I saw Lares and Penates flying up and down the cellar steps, and to the garden, orchard and vineyard—all at the same time. Later on in the afternoon I was still dazed whenI saw the ominous black signs of a thunder-storm coming up darkly from the southwest; and I heard father out in the hall using strong language at the telephone when he learned that the liveryman had sent Bob Hall, the town idiot, to Bayville to bring the lions back.
Now Bob Hall is a kind-hearted, narrow-eyed lad, whose mind has never been right because his mother drove twenty miles to a circus just before he was born, so the villagers explained; but, be that as it may, Bob has never been able to learn much beyond when to say "Whoa" and "Git up," but the joy of his life lies in saying these, so that the liverymen of the town are glad to have him hang around the stables and help with the horses at feeding and watering-time. Because the regular driver was a little drunker than usual to-day Bob had been sent to Bayville on that delicate commission!
"He's just as likely as not to dump 'em out in a mud-hole," father said wrathfully, as he hung up the receiver when mother implored him to leave off swearing over the telephone during an electrical storm. "He'll make some kind of mess of it—you see if he doesn't."
I shuddered as I pictured that elegant gray overcoatall disfigured with mud; then I shuddered again at being such an idiot as to imagine he would have on an overcoat in August. And I wondered how he would look without it, and decided that he would look grand, of course!
About five o'clock the storm burst in good earnest, the rain coming down in heavy sheets at first and later settling into a lively drizzle that promised to be good for all night.
With the rain came a noticeable effort on the part of father's rheumatism to attract attention to itself; and Mammy Lou began clapping her hand over her right side in an alarming manner.
Ever since an attack of gall-stones which she suffered over a year ago, and through which she was safely steered by Alfred Morgan—which, of course, placed him upon an Alfred-the-Great pinnacle in the affections of the whole family—we have all turned in and helped Mammy Lou with her work. Especially when company is coming we agitate our minds over the actual meat and bread part of the entertainment, which I abominate, for personally I am domesticated only so far as frothy desserts and embroidered napkins go; and I am now able to understand the decline of hospitality in the South.
Why, since mammy's spell I have actually learned how to "do up" my best blouses, which is a joy so long as I am working on the front, where the embroidery stands out in satisfying bas-relief, but I am ready to weep and long for father's vocabulary by the time I reach the gathers of the sleeves. I should certainly let these go unironed if mammy did not always come to the rescue with a few deft strokes of the Gothic-shaped end of the iron.
I must say, though, that she accepts our help with an exalted indifference, for, since that awful pain in her side, things temporal have been of small moment with her. She has turned to the comforts, or discomforts, of a deeply Calvinistic religion, and is so keen-scented after sin that when I darn stockings on Sunday morning I have to lock my door and pull down the window-shades.
The only symptom of remaining worldliness which I have noted since her belated conversion, besides her overwhelming desire to get me married off to Alfred (my only rival in her affections) was exhibited early this last spring, when her above-mentioned "boarder" was a new-comer in our neighborhood and father had engaged his services to "break up" the garden.
Sam, the homesick stranger, made strong appeal to mammy's hospitality, quite aside, as we thought, from the natural susceptibility of her affections. The man was big andyellow, mammy's favorite color in husbands, and I scented danger one night soon after he came when I happened to see her place before him on the table in the kitchen a mighty dish of "greens" flanked on all sides with poached eggs.
He was busily plying her with questions, between mouthfuls, and when he asked her point-blank "what aged 'oman she was" she threw her head so coquettishly to one side that she splashed half a plateful of "pot liquor" on the floor, as she responded airily: "Oh, I don't rickollect exactly! I'm forty-five, or fifty-five, or sixty-five—somewhere in thefives!"
We held our breath for the next few weeks, expecting at any moment to hear that mammy had decided to out-Henry Henry Eighth, but her religion was too fresh and too enjoyable for her to resign it and marry the seventh time, which she realized would be a bad example for her progeny. Still, there was Sam, in dangerous propinquity, three times a day; and he was broad-shouldered andenchantinglyyellow! She withstood, as long as it wasin her poor, affectionate heart to withstand; then she compromised and took him as a boarder! After searching about for a means of easing her conscience for this concession she lit upon Lares and Penates as brands to be snatched from the burning; and she taught them such doleful facts about the uncertainty of their salvation that the last time Alfred was down here we persuaded him to threaten her with nervous prostration for Lares if she persisted in her gloomy preachments.
"A boy or girl's responsible for they sins as soon as the bumps breaks out on they faces," she was telling them this afternoon, when the storm was at its worst, and the two sat huddled with Grapefruit behind the stove, like poor little frightened chickens in a fence corner.
Mother, who had not seen the meaning gestures that mammy had been making toward her volcanic right side, was inclined to make light of the sins of the twins, and suggested that they come out from behind the stove, so that the minute the rain held up a little they could run on down to the ice-factory and tell the man to hurry with the ice. We were going to have our favorite caramel cream that night.
But with mother's advent into the kitchen thepains in mammy's side grew much worse, and she began suggestions that she didn't know but what the Lord was going to strike her with another spell, "for the old dominecker rooster had been crowin' sad all day!"
The rain kept on, and late in the afternoon the ice-man telephoned that some of the machinery at the factory was broken, so there would be no ice! Then father's rheumatism suddenly grew so bad that we had to stop our preparations for the feast, and spent half an hour searching for the stopper to the hot-water bag. He must have that bag put to his shoulder, he declared, but after we gathered all the essentials together and put it there he could not stand it on account of the heat!
Upon going back to the kitchen to temper the water down a little I was astounded at mammy's declaration that, if Dilsey would go down to the cabin and bring up her easy chair, while I held an umbrella over it, she wouldtryto stay up long enough to directusabout finishing that dinner! Did ever a girl have such dreams and such nightmares mixed up together?
Night descended rapidly, as night has ever had a way of doing when you are in a fearful hurry, andmother was distractedly searching through her recipe book for a dessert that could be quickly made, yet when finished would be grand enough to set before gubernatorial timber!
Her maternal love had caused her steadily to refuse my help with the dessert, and she made me run on up-stairs for a final bath and a few minutes of manicuring before time to dress. "Be sure to dress carefully," she had bidden me, as she always does, for sometimes I am inclined to be a little absent-minded in the matter of hooks and eyes; but her warning was superfluous to-night.
"Make yourself beautiful—an'skase," is Mammy Lou's favorite slogan in the campaign after masculine admiration, and I had prepared to carry it out so far as nature and instinct would permit. I had carefully pressed my prettiest white gown, a filmy, ruffled thing, and spread it out on my bed, with a petticoat that was long enough, butnottoo long, lying conveniently near. Where is the woman who has not shed tears and used feminine profanity because she could not find exactly the right petticoat at an eleventh-hour dressing?
As I came into my room I glanced toward the bed with a feeling of complacency, then I turnedon the lights and looked more closely. My hopes fell and I saw that the gown had shared in the general determination of everything on the place to go wrong that afternoon because we were so particularly anxious that all should go right. A window near the bed had been left open, in the hurry and confusion, and the dress had seemed to drink in every bit of dampness that it could find lying around loose. It looked as limp and dejected as if it had slept in an upper berth the night before. I had no other thin dress that was available, with all its attachments, at that hour, so I laid aside my ambition to look romantic and slipped on a shirt-waist—with a collar so stiff that it scratched my neck until I looked as if I bore the marks of the guillotine.
Toward eight o'clock, after it was inky dark, and mother had got her dessert safely stored away in the refrigerator to cool, she and I were taking a breathing spell in the dining-room, although we were holding our breath every other minute, listening for the approach of wheels, when the night began to be made hideous by the sounds of the most violent calf distress down in the lot.
"Ba-a-a-h!Ba-a-a-a-ah!" came in hoarse, hollow bellows to our already overstrained ears.
"It's that hateful little Jersey," mother said, starting up and going toward the kitchen. "He has his head caught in the fence again!"
"You sit still," I said, drawing her back toward her chair, "I'll go and send Penates to unfasten him."
There were savory odors in the kitchen, and mammy was so interested in the final outcome of the meal that she had abandoned her temporary throne and was stirring around the stove as usual. The three little negroes were gathered at the window, looking out into the blackness and listening with enjoyable horror at the turbulent sounds from the cow-lot.
"Go and unfasten him, Penates," I said. "He'll kill himself and us, too, with that noise!"
But Penates looked at me to see if I could be in earnest. When he saw that I was he began to whine.
"I's a-skeered to!" he half whimpered.
"The idea! A great big boy like you! What are you afraid of?"
"Granny's done tol' us the devil's gwiner ketch us," he began, and, as he saw mother coming in at the kitchen door, he looked appealingly toward her;but the nerve-racking strain of the afternoon had done its work with her—and the calf voice was something frightful!
"Your granny's an old idiot," she said forcefully, looking with wrath toward the stove, where mammy was peering into the oven in an entirely detached fashion. "You go straight and unfasten that calf!"
"Mis' Mary, I declare he'll ketch me ef I so much as step outside the do' there in the dark! Granny's jus' now tol' us he's watchin' ever' minute to ketch us—"
"Lou, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to stuff these children's minds full of lies!" mother said, exasperated out of all semblance of her gentle, even-tempered self by the piled-up mishaps of the afternoon and the anguish of the present moment.
In case you have never heard a calf with his head caught in the fence I will state, under oath, that the diabolical sounds of the Brocken scene in Faust are dulcet music compared with the cry for help that the terrified creature sends forth. It usually brings the neighbors for miles around to find out the cause of the trouble, or ratherwhythe trouble is permitted to continue—for every one who has ever heard itonce knows its sound for ever. What an unlovely salute for Prince Charming when he should drive up in the rainy, black night, I was thinking in agony!
Mammy straightened up and looked at mother as steadfastly as she had looked the day she announced her determination of marrying Bill Williams, the "Yankee nigger."
"It's asinto teach children about the devil!" Mother's voice was a challenge.
"Sin?Why, Mis' Mary!" Mammy's tones were husky with horror. "An' you been a church member for thirty years!"
"Well, the devil has never entered into my calculations in all those thirty years," mother responded hotly, not observing that father had slipped up close behind her and was listening to the theological controversy with an amusement which had routed his rheumatism.
"Well—that's between you an' your Maker," mammy argued stoutly. "I'm goin' to treatmydevil with some respeck, if white folksdon'tmention theirs no mo' than if he was a po' relation that lived in Arkansas!"
Father was smiling almost audibly, but motherwas not looking in his direction—and the little Jersey had evidently found no balm in Gilead for his afflicted head!
"I don't believe there's anysuchthing as a devil!" mother finally broke out with vehemence; and she had turned quickly around as if she would go to the cow-lot herself, when she beheld father standing there, a look of amazement upon his face.
"Mary!Have I lived to hear you deny the faith of your fathers?"
But mother was in no mood for banter.
"Don'tyoutalk to me about the devil, Dan Fielding!" she said, facing him squarely, and reluctantly unfolding her daintiest linen handkerchief to wipe the little beads of perspiration from across her upper lip. "I've had enough to make me believe in him this day, with three politicians coming, and a thunder-storm, and a broken ice-factory, and rheumatism and gall-stones!"
"Well, you knowyouwere the one who suggested inviting them here," father defended himself, Adam-like.
"Well, maybe I was, but I should never have dreamed of such a thing if you hadn't said, with that woebegone look of yours that you wished youcould see them and hear them talk about the latest phases of the situation! Then, just to please you, I suggested that it was too bad to let them go to that dreadful hotel for dinner, when it would be no trouble for Mammy Lou to prepare one of her delightful meals!"
"Of course, neither one of us could know beforehand how deucedly contrary everything was going to turn out to-day, else I should have told younotto invite them"—father was reiterating in what he intended for a soothing tone, when all of a sudden I heard the tramp of feet upon the front porch, for my ears all the time had been straining in that direction, else I should never have heard them, far away as the kitchen is, and with that hideous noise.
"Hush!" I implored, as the footfalls grew quite distinct and I pulled down my cuffs, settled my belt, fluffed my hair out a little more at the sides, and flicked a tiny feather off the toe of my shoe. "They've come!"
"And Ann in a shirt-waist suit," mother sent after father as a final shot when he started toward the front part of the house, "and that bovine orchestra!"
She hurried into her bedroom and made a motion with her powder-puff before she followed father,while I stopped in the dining-room and gave a glance of satisfaction at the shaded lights, the old-fashioned good taste of the furnishings, and the quantities of roses. The table was perfect, and I knew mammy too well to doubt that the dinner, too, would be everything that palate or eye could desire; then I glanced into the great old gold-framed mirror hung above the mantelpiece.
"I believe he'll enjoy his dinner," I decided, nodding in a friendly fashion toward the reflection in the glass; and, hearing the voices still coming from the direction of the porch, I hurried on out there.
They had come! In truth they had come, but alas it was not Richard Chalmers and satellites! It was Miss Delia Badger, Mrs. Sullivan and Neva, drenched and bewildered, that Bob Hall, the fool, had brought from Bayville!
"Oh, Mrs. Fielding," poor Mrs. Sullivan was saying beseechingly, as she looked at mother's startled face, "doyou know what's happened to Tim? We was to stay another week at maw's, but when Bob Hall drove into Bayville at dinner-time to-day and said he'd come after somebody that wanted to get took back here to Mr. Fielding's house, I knew it must a-been Tim took sick and sent for me! So weall piled right in without waitin' for me to belt down my Mother-Hubbard!"
"Jumping Jerusalem!" said father, and the calf bellowed dismally.
Investigation had shown the Sullivan cottage to be locked and barred, and the supposition was that Tim, although not already sick, was in a fair way to be so in the morning, as persistent telephoning on my part finally located him at the drug store with a crowd of friends whose company was both cheering and inebriating.
"I better git Bob to drive down there an' git 'im," Mrs. Sullivan suggested forlornly, looking at Bob, who was leaning against one of the big, white columns and twirling his cap around on one finger.
"For heaven's sake,don't," father objected. "He'll be just as likely to drive up with the county undertaker as with Tim Sullivan! I'll go myself."
"But who'll get the calf out of the fence corner?" mother asked anxiously, as father walked to the hat-rack for an umbrella.
"Me!" cried Bob, speaking for the first time, but to so much purpose that we all beamed gratitude upon him.
So, after being "much tossed about by land and on the deep," the calf was finally loosed from his pillory, the Sullivans were settled in the sanctuary of their own home, the lovely dinner was eaten in silence, and our family went grumpily to bed.
Then this morning early the three belated dinner guests drove in from Bayville. The two lesser lights caught the nine-o'clock car into the city, but Mr. Chalmers drove on to the little hotel in the village and later presented himself, in due calling season, at our house, with apologies for the catastrophe of last evening. Mother said he had spoken of it as catastrophe before I came into the room, but when he mentioned the accident to me later on in the day, as we two sat quite apart from the others, he referred to it ascalamity.
Father and Rufe urged him to spend the day, an invitation which mother warmly seconded after a moment's quick recollection of how many of the dainties left over from last night's feast could be creamed and pâted and souffled.
He said it was rather necessary for him to be in town that day, but he stayed; and father and Rufe both remembered during the course of the forenoon that they had some matters to attend to which, ifhe would excuse them for half an hour or so, they would despatch with all possible haste and rejoin him before the ladies had quite had time to talk him to death!
Rufe really did have some telephoning to the city to get through with; it is his regular morning duty; and father had to drive across part of our place to give directions about some fences which had been washed away last night. Of course, mother was needed about the dining-room, but Cousin Eunice, bless her, unselfishly betook herself off up-stairs out of pure kindness of heart!
Even the day was one of those golden days which come at the very end of summer, when the cool morning air mounts to the head like old wine, and the rich afternoon sunshine seems to hover lovingly over the earth and rejoice in having fulfilled the summer's glorious promise. All through the morning the birds caroled as happily as if they thought it was winter instead of summer a-dying; then later, they settled down like the rest of the world in the hushed silence of the hot afternoon, when the heat causes a brilliant haze over the fields around; and it seems as if all nature rests.
All my life this hour of summer afternoons hasheld a strange, undefinable sadness. When I was a little girl and used to spend long hours out under the trees reading, my book would always drop from my hand as this period of stillness came on, and my eyes would wander away to the intense blue of the sky and the dazzling whiteness of the distant clouds, while a small but persistent voice seemed to keep mocking my memory with the query: "Can'tyou remember what used to happen on days like this?"
And my memory would grope longingly away after the lead of that tormenting voice, and it would visit all the far-away lands of Romance, summer lands of sunshine always, Italy, India, Egypt—but it never would remember exactly. "Where Tasso's spirit soars and sings," I used to repeat in a mystified wonder, for the beauties of his land were as familiar to me as my own fields and meadows.
Then I grew older and learned about reincarnation of the spirit. "That's it!" I cried exultantly, hugging the beautiful mysticism to my heart. "That isboundto be it!"
Life took on a new significance, and then for months I felt myself one with the initiated! I was radiantly happy and achingly miserable with this new, intangible philosophy; then Alfred Morgancame along and told me that my vague memories were imagination; and that my restless longings came from a perpetual idleness. And I believed him, because I could not hear any statement from Alfred Morgan's lips without believing it.
"I'd rather have tuberculosis than an imagination like yours, Ann," he had said, and he advised me to learn to cook.
Perhaps it was the extraordinary beauty of the day and the surroundings that led our talk into unusual channels as Richard Chalmers and I walked out together through the golden afternoon haze. Yes, we had our hour alone again, as in the morning; but not by accident this time. He had graciously demanded it.
"Can't you rescue me from Clayborne's relentless newspaper spirit?" he had asked in a low tone while we were at the table. I smiled assent, whereupon he looked at me gratefully and a few minutes later announced that I had promised to show him the orchard where those magnificent peaches grew.
So it happened that when the rest of the family dispersed in different directions, early in the afternoon, I pinned on a big, flat hat—a white embroidered affair, with a great bow of black velvetribbon—and walked with him out into the glow. Down the avenue of cedars we went and up the broad road, for the orchard can be reached through a big gate opening off the pike, and the distance is much longer around that way. We soon gained the desired shade of its luxuriant leafiness, and I pointed out to him our most noteworthy trees. He admired their beauty without looking at them.
After walking around the orchard a bit we finally sat down on a fragment of stone wall, a prehistoric structure, which still protects a portion of the grounds; and he took off his hat and began to fan with it. His forehead was a little damp, and, as he wiped away the perspiration, I observed again the exceeding fairness of his skin. His hair, too, is so nearly light that the sprinkling of gray is almost unnoticed, save by the closest scrutiny.
My survey of him, while at close range, was quite brief, for, after a remark or two about the heat at this time of day, he turned to me suddenly and asked with disconcerting straightforwardness:
"What were you doing that day at the gates of the little cemetery?"
"Oh! Why, I was walking around—trying to get warm."
I longed to ask him what he was doing there.
"I figured that day that you were a faithful little soul, going out to visit some hallowed spot. You looked so strikingly dark andvividagainst the colorless background of the sky that I quite thought you were Oriental. Then the next time I saw you, in the lobby of the city hall—do you remember?—Well, you were with a tall, foreign-looking woman, a Russian, I imagined; so that convinced me—"
"She is a Pole," I corrected, "but she's the wife of Doctor Gordon, a great friend of ours."
"—and that convinced me," he went on, as if Ann Lisbeth's nationality were of no more moment to him than one of the bits of stone which I had gathered up from fragments scattered over the top of the wall, and was making white marks upon the solid rock sides with these tiny splinters, "that you were foreign." Then, in a lower tone, and with little hesitation in his delightful, drawling voice, he added: "I called you Rebecca—because I had to call you something."
"How disappointing to find me a plain American girl!"
"When I found this morning that you are an American girl—I deny the 'plain'—I gave a startwhich I know was noticed by everybody in the room! It isn't often that I lose my self-possession, but I wasamazedto find you here, in this little town—and my friend, Clayborne's, niece."
"His wife's cousin," I explained, but again he paid no attention to my interruption.
"I had haunted the theaters and shopping districts for weeks last winter—looking for Rebecca," he finished up. "No wonder I was surprised to find that you areyou!"
He paused, waiting for me to say something, and, just because it was the last thing I wished to say, and because I would not, for the world, have had him suspect such a thing, I stammered out the truth!
"I—I wondered whoyouwere, too," I faltered. "You are so entirely Anglo-Saxon-looking; and the place is Hebrew! Besides, it was such a very cold day to visit a cemetery!"
He smiled a little, but politely caught at my bait.
"I had been to see old man Cohen, the sexton. He is interested in politics."
Then we fell to talking about foreign types of faces, a subject which he discussed extremely well, having traveled everywhere, as I felt sure he had when I first laid eyes on him; and from the types ofbeauty, we fell to discussing the various countries. He looked surprised at what he termed the "wistful" note in my voice when I asked him questions about my favorite lands; and he smiled when I explained to him that I have never been anywhere.
"So much the better for your enthusiasm," he said with the provoking air of a person who has been everywhere and done everything—and found it all a bore. "I judge that you are a very enthusiastic young woman."
"My daily life is punctuated with exclamation points," I admitted, but I longed to ask him how he knew I was enthusiastic. Still, it has always seemed in bad taste to me for a girl to try to draw a man into a long discussion of her personality—a new acquaintance, I mean. Mammy Lou's slogan, "Make yourself beautiful, andskase," can be applied in devious ways that she wotted not of when she handed it down to me.
"I suppose that is partly on account of your age?" he said, still looking at me with his amused smile.
My age! His tone and smile awoke a kind of resentment. He must feel himself infinitely older and wiser, else he would never assume that superior air.
"Age has nothing to do with it! It is entirely amatter of temperament," I contradicted, with a little show of feeling. He smiled more broadly, and a hot flush of shame spread over my face as I recalled my dreams of this man. I had thought of him for months, had imagined him in every great and heroic rôle; had made a hero of him. Worse still, I fancied that he—perhaps—had thought of me; had stayed here to-day because he had found me! And here he was smiling down at me as he made playful remarks about my age!
"Why should you look distressed over a mention of your age?" he suddenly broke in, so gently that I looked up in surprise and found his face grave. He had been reading my thoughts—at least in part. "Now, if you were as old as I—that would be something worth troubling over."
"You? Yet the papers always speak of your youth. They will call you the 'boy governor' when you're elected."
He was pleased at my words.
"Or the boy who also ran—perhaps! But age is only a relative condition. My political friends call me a boy because I am only thirty-seven years old. Yet, toyouthat age may seem patriarchal. Doesn't it?"
I thrilled at the look of earnestness in his eyes. He was the one now who was concerned over what I thought of his age.
"Rufe is thirty-seven," I answered, trying to make my tone non-committal.
"And yet you call him Rufe!"
"I've known him always. He's like my brother."
"Well, if you should some day grow to know me 'always,' could you—even if I am thirty-seven—could you call me Richard?"
I made several violent white marks upon the old rock wall with the bit of stone in my hand before I attempted to answer this, the most intimate question ever put to me by a man in my life. Except for Alfred I had never known any other man well, and had certainly never cared about sitting with one upon an old stone wall while the glorious summer afternoon slipped by. All I knew of even incipient love-making I had read in books, so that I could not tell whether his question meant much or little. I had told him earlier in the afternoon that I was booked for a long visit in the city this fall, whereon he had congratulated himself on his friendly footing with the Claybornes. It was possible he meant—
"Could you?" he repeated softly.
I stopped making marks and threw away the bits of stone. I had opened my lips to reply, although I do not know what I had intended saying, when there was an Indian yell close behind us.
"Whoopee! Here he is again!" came an exultant voice, and, glancing around, we beheld a freshly bathed and dressed Waterloo, digging his white linen knees and elbows into the soft black earth, as he raised a radiant face and announced his second discovery of the "little tarrypin." Grapefruit followed him at a respectful distance, while Lares and Penates lingered shyly in the background when they espied us.
"And here'sAnn," Waterloo explained, in great triumph, waving his hand in my direction. "We can make her tote 'im back to the house for us. She ain't skeered of 'em!"
"Quick! Tell me!" Richard Chalmers insisted, and his seriousness made me flippant.
"Age has nothing to do with it! It is entirely a matter of temperament!"
He laughed, quite like a boy, as he sprang down from the wall and extended both hands to help me.I grasped only one of his hands, and that very lightly, as I stepped to the ground.
We joined the little band of hunters and thus formed a funny procession home. Mr. Chalmers and I were in the lead, his right hand gingerly clutching a most disinterested-looking mud-turtle, while, with the left, he attempted to help me over the rough places in the road. Waterloo was close at our heels, while the three little negroes, struggling with their giggles, tagged along behind.
The task of "toting" a mud-turtle fitted so ill with his immaculate clothes and intense dignity that I laughed every time I looked up at him. And he laughed. Perhaps we should have done this, even if nothing funny had happened, for the late afternoon was so beautiful, and everything seemed so happy. The birds were all making a cheerful fuss over going to bed, and the tinklings that lulled the distant folds seemed to me, for the first time in my life, joyous.
"I shall think of this scene the day you are inaugurated," I said, still laughing, after the mud-turtle had been deposited in an empty lard bucket and borne away by Waterloo and his retainers. We hadfound ourselves alone for a moment in the shaded, deserted library.
"You'll be there?" he asked, turning toward me as I stood on the hearth rug and leaned my elbow against the white marble mantelpiece. As he had carefully wiped from his finger-tips the imaginary dust from the mud-turtle I had been studying his profile in the mirror. It was the most perfect face I had ever seen—unless—
My eyes quickly traveled to the little oval portrait of Lord Byron, the old-time idol of my beauty-loving soul. I used to kiss his picture good night when I was twelve years old!
I glanced back again to the living presence of beauty equally as perfect. His gray eyes were upon me.
"You'll be there—if I am ever inaugurated?" he asked again.
"Of course. But you'll never seeme."
Outside there was a glorious sunset, red and yellow and orange. It was like a sea of blood and a sea of gold, with a wonderful blending of the two. The radiance was trying to steal in at the shaded window, and I started across the room to open theblinds to its flood of glory. He put out his hand and stopped me.
"If you were there," he said slowly in his deep, rich voice—which is, in itself, attraction enough for anyoneman—"if you were there, I should be far more conscious ofthatthan of the inauguration."
And the quick look which followed these words made a feeling of having been born again run in little zigzag streaks of joy to my finger-tips.
NEVA'S BEAU BRUMMEL
Many days have passed since Neva and her mother made their dramatic return from Bayville.
These days have seemed long to me, but short to Neva, for protracted meeting has been in progress—and she has had a beau swarm. The swell young clerk at the Racket Store, who says "passé," most Frenchily, and manicures his nails; a fat drummer who sells lard and sings bass; a "wild" young man who drives a fast horse, which the villagers all discuss above their breath, and who also does some other things which they take care to discuss—but in whispers; all these have been Neva's, besides Hiram Ellis, a young farmer whom she cares for most, but makes the most fun of behind his back.
I know that she cares for him, else she would never have counterfeited a swoon one hot night in church when the service held on an unconscionabletime and she feared that Hiram would become impatient and start on his five-mile drive to his farm, without waiting to escort her home, as was his custom when she happened to be unaccompanied by any of the "town fellows."
From her point of vantage in the choir she could see that Hiram was restlessly moving his hands and feet about, although he was seated on the back bench and there was the church full of perspiring humanity between her and the gawky object of her secret love.
The minister continued to exhort and to perspire, as he drank glass after glass of water; and, as the time for mourners seemed to draw no nearer, Neva took that night's destiny into her own hands and fainted—a stiff, peculiar faint.
Fortunately she was sitting close by a small door which opens directly out into the cool night air, so that her carrying-out could be accomplished without any ungraceful display of uplifted feet and sagging petticoats. Neva's artistic temperament could never have endured that!
The performance created small notice outside the choir.
Hiram was around at that little back entrance in a twinkling, his good-natured, sunburnt face a pictureof devoted anxiety. Neva was sitting on the steps shaking with a considerable degree of suppressed emotion, but not looking particularly ill, and insisting that her mother and Aunt Delia should go on back and hear the sermon to its end, if, indeed, it had an end. This they did, after seeing Hiram place Neva carefully in his buggy and start off home; but they failed to reach the choir in time to see the whisperings which had passed between two of Neva's rivals who sat there, and who were not unobservant of the peculiar nature of her fainting-spell.
"It wasn't like any faintIever saw before," some one openly declared to Mrs. Sullivan after the service was over, whereupon the whisperings between the rivals were renewed; and several days thereafter the townspeople were frankly discussing Neva Sullivan's "spell."
In less than a week after the incident which I have just related, because there is absolutely nothing of myownhappening that is worth relating, Neva ran over one day in a great flurry of excitement to consult my expert judgment as to what she should wear that night, as a young gentleman from the city had come down to see her and was coming out that evening to call.
"A young gentleman from the city! How exciting!" I congratulated her. "But I didn't know you knew any of the Beau Brummels up there!"
"That's the curious part of it," she explained as she sat down and panted a little, for she had run across the road and up our long walk. "I don't know him—never heard of him before. But he telephoned me from the hotel this afternoon that he had heard of me and had come down to see me on business. His name is Doctor Simmons, and he said he was very anxious to see me at once and give me some professional literature."
"Some professionalwhat?" I asked, for she was talking very fast, and her enunciation at best is not like a normal school teacher's.
"Professional literature," she repeated, lingering over the words this time as if they were chocolate creams. "I told mamma maybe he is a poet. It sounded kinder like it, you know—him saying 'literature.'"
"I don't believe that poets carry aroundprofessionalliterature," I said, trying to let her down easy, for she is a sad little visionary—and somehow I have a sympathy for visionaries. But he was aman, a new man, even though he might not be a poet, soNeva's solicitude concerning him was in nowise dampened.
"Well, that's what he said—'professional literature,'" she kept on flutteringly—inconstant little minx, when only a week ago she had disturbed "public worship" for the sake of driving home in Hiram Ellis' buggy!—"So mamma said I better come on over and ask you how I ought to dress to see him; andoh, how I ought to have the parlor fixed! You go up to the city so often, of course you know all the swell ways."
"I reckon Ido," I said confidently, for I could see the chance that my hands had been itching for ever since I took the education of Neva in charge. "First, you must empty the room of candy-boxes, for if he is a prospective suitor, you see, all those boxes would frighten him away. He would think you are entirely too popular already."
"There ain't a girl in this town got half as many," she said rather wistfully, and I saw that the loss of the boxes meant bereavement to her. "Mine comes up to the top of the piano onbothsides, while Stella Hampton's don't more than fill in under the bottom of the center-table!"
"But you must remember that he is a doctor," Ireminded her soothingly, "and they are awfully queer aboutgerms. He might get it into his head that those empty boxes were regular nests for them—and they may be, for all we know."
"All right—if you say so," the poor child said sorrowfully, and I knew that her affection for me had been put to a fiery test.
"Then the McKinley picture! It ought to come down. It is dismal, somehow—it might cast a damper over his feelings."
"All right," she agreed again, much more willingly this time. "I know that Mr. Rooseveltdoeslook more cheerful, so, if you say so—"
"But Idon't," I almost shrieked. "We can put a tall vase of roses in the space so that no picture will be needed."
"Oh, that will be lovely," she exclaimed gratefully; "and I'll wear flowers in my hair."
"I believe black velvet ribbon will be prettier—just a band, you understand—no combs or fancy pins. Your hair is too pretty to be disfigured with ornaments."
Her eyes showed slow, but gratified, comprehension.
"And my dress—" she hurried on.
"A rather plain white one," I suggested fearfully, for I apprehended trouble there as with the candy-boxes. "You see, he'll not like to find you with a dress which has lace all twisted andtorturedacross the front—doctors are such humane creatures."
"I'm just dying to see what he looks like!" she exclaimed, her eyes dancing. "And I'm so much obliged to you."
"I hope you'll have a pleasant time with him," I started, when she looked at me in dismay.
"Oh, surely I'll see you again before he comes! Can't you come over a little later on, or maybe after I'm dressed—to see if I am fixed all right, and if the parlor looks swell?" Her big dark eyes held a flattering appeal.
"Why, of course! I'll be glad to get mother to run over there with me—just before time for him to come," and she gave my arm a gratified little squeeze and went away filled with charming anticipations.
As the mystic hour approached, mother and I threw crocheted things over our heads and started across the wide road which lay between the houses.
Drawing near the cottage we noticed a dim light bobbing about queerly just off the front porch, and mother clutched my arm in agony.
"Surely—surelythey're not hanging Japanese lanterns out in honor of his coming!"
"Oh, I hope not," I responded, feeling not at all certain as to the course which Neva's enthusiasm might take. But as we clicked the gate and passed on into the yard we discerned the generous outlines of Mr. Tim Sullivan rising from a rickety, three-legged chair, which he had placed directly in front of Mrs. Sullivan's nasturtium frame. This frame was but a poor skeleton affair, having been built in the yard early in the summer for the flowers to clamber up on, but the fall of the leaf was approaching, and the flowers had refused to clamber.
In one hand Mr. Sullivan held a small, smoky lamp, the flame of which was entirely a one-sided affair; and in the other he brandished a paint brush. We knew it was a paint brush because it out-smelt the lamp.
"Come in! Come right in," he invited us hospitably, and as he gallantly approached to light us on our way up the walk, we caught a whiff of his breath; and the paint brush and the lamp faded into insignificance in the smelling line.
"Why, what are you doing, Mr. Sullivan?" mother inquired as she strained her eyes toward thenasturtium frame and saw big splotches of green paint smeared about at intervals upon its wooden gauntness.
"I'm painting," he explained politely, as he held the lamp high above his head that it might cast its doubtful rays over the dark walk. "Just painting."
"But why paint to-night?" she persisted, doubtless wondering if this was being done in honor of the "city beau."
"Why, there ain't no time like the present, as I've always been told, you know, Mrs. Fielding," he further elucidated, his voice growing louder and louder as the distance between us increased, and as we gained the freshly-scoured front steps he moved back toward his field of operation and resumed his work. The wild sweeps of his brush gave, in the dim light of the unsteady lamp, the impression of some weird acrobatic performance.
We went into the house and found the feminine portion of the family in a state of conflicting emotions. Mrs. Sullivan was perfectly limp with rage over the misfortune of having Tim even mildly drunk and disorderly on the night when Neva's destiny might be hanging in the balance. Neva herself was perturbed, but radiant, and was prayingcheerfully that something might happen to check her father's artistic endeavors before the arrival of her beau. That Doctor Simmons was a suitor for her hand, impressed by her beauty in some mysterious and romantic manner, it had not entered into Neva's silly little head to doubt; and since one of her friends had seen the young gentleman at the hotel in the afternoon and had telephoned her that he was the swellest-est dressed man to enter that town since Heck was a pup, her expectations were soaring at dizzy heights.
I found that fortunately she had spent the force of her own swell longings upon the attire of her mother this time, inasmuch as I had so urgently recommended simplicity for herself. The glittering combs and bandeau were adorning Mrs. Sullivan's head, rising resplendent from divers unaccustomed puffs and braids and curls. Mrs. Sullivan's hair ordinarily wore a look of conventual severity, as did her hat, but there was never any congeniality between the two. In fact they were never on speaking terms.
"I done it to please Nevar," she confessed to me, smiling wanly at her reflection in the mirror, "but if I had a-had my way I wouldn't a-done it. I don'tlike it. If I had a tubful o' wet clo'es on my head it couldn't feel no heavier!"
We were so cordially invited to remain and view the stranger from a speechless distance that we finally consented to do so, occupying straight chairs that would not creak and betray our presence as we sat at the front window of the room opposite the parlor and breathlessly awaited his arrival.