"Oh, I'll take the humiliation for my part," I said but with no evidence of anger nor reproach. I was still stunned and benumbed. "I can stand the humiliation—but I hate a liar."
So it ended this way—that beautiful dream of mine; and I should not tell the truth if I pretended that I did not wish many times in the bitter weeks which followed to close my eyes to the cruel reality and dream again, even knowing all the while that it was a dream.
No, there was no sense of thankful relief that I had found my knight of the lion heart to be a poor-spirited, craven, selfish thing. Not then! At the time of the revelation and for many days following I gave myself up to a bitter, longing sorrow for the man whom I had created out of my own fancy and had named King Richard. I had made the image as entirely as ever Pygmalion made Galatea, and I had worshipped it. I had loved it so that if its coming to life could have been brought about through my giving up my own I should gladly have let it live. But it would not come to life, for it was nothing—it was a dream-creature. Even as such, itsimage continued with me, and I sorrowed for it with such an aching, lonely hopelessness that more times than once during the spring months of that year I felt that it was not within my nature to keep up the struggle any longer. I must give it up and send for Richard to come back.
The pale blue of the flowers which came up and blossomed in thousands along the hillsides of the "garden" back of the village, and the deep blue of the April skies were both turned to gray this spring—the cold, piercing gray of his eyes. They had not been cold for me!
And then a little later there was the "humiliation" he had mentioned. Possibly he did what he could to make this as light as it might be made, for his engagement to Major Blake's daughter was not publicly announced until several weeks after I felt sure the understanding had been reached. But he could not ask her to keep the betrothal a secret, as he had asked me, for his capital must be quickly and surely made from its brief existence.
Taking a new lease on life from this sudden and mighty happiness of hers, the poor, dying creature came home from Colorado and set about a feverish enjoyment of the brief span of time whichwas left her. There were crowded arrangements made for the wedding, which was announced for June—after the primaries were well over—and she had the satisfaction of having her full-length picture appear in all the prominent newspapers of the state, all bearing the legend that she was Mr. Richard Chalmers' fiancée. The sight of these pictures, homely as they were, was no consolation to me, for I had never been jealous of her. And now I felt an infinite pity.
I used often to think with a laugh of scorn of the man I had imagined Richard Chalmers to be, making love to the poor, ugly, emaciated thing, in hopes of gaining her father's political favor! For of course he had made love to her all along, just as he had to me, in the same beautiful language, and with the same beautiful smile—but he had not kissed her. I could fancy him telling her of his great admiration and his mighty respect, and how unworthy he was to touch the hem of her garment—when all the while he was thinking how ugly she was and what a risk there might be of his catching tuberculosis!
Poor girl! She was happy, though, for her little while, tagging around the country with her father and Richard, and watching him adoringly as hemade his pretty speeches to the enthusiastic crowds of constituents. But she played the game too quick and fast, and with such a studied disregard for consequences that it was no wonder the end came so soon. She spent the most uncertain, changeable weeks of the time which is ever an ominous one for consumptives in driving through long stretches of damp country roads, then sitting for hours in stuffy, ill-ventilated little assembly rooms, where the foul air did its deadly work for her. She contracted pneumonia and died; and Mr. Chalmers canceled all speaking dates for one week!
But she died still thinking her Richard was a lion-hearted king, so who can say that Fate was not kind to her?
That there was an aftermath to my own affair with Richard was almost inevitable, for only in books do such bubbles burst and vanish entirely, leaving nothing in their wake. But this is the true record of what happened that spring and summer, and undignified and inartistic enough these happenings ofttimes were. If Fate had wished to bring the matter to a beautiful and aesthetic close she would never let Richard and me meet again in this world, for oh, those after-meetings are bitter dregs of romance!But we met again—on the night of his defeat, a strange chance meeting it was, for he was standing at the door of his headquarters hotel, which is just across the street from theTimesbuilding, trying to make way for his mother and Evelyn, when I passed with the Claybornes. Evelyn saw me and called out a surprised greeting, so I was forced to stop for a moment, while Rufe and Cousin Eunice, never missing me, continued threading their way slowly across the street.
Richard stood very pale and weary looking, with his hat in his hand, while I spoke to Mrs. Chalmers and Evelyn; then seeing that I had been left alone he gravely suggested that I could never make my way through the crowd by myself, so he sent his mother and sister up-stairs and constituted himself my temporary knight errant. His hand, which tightly clutched my arm, as we struggled on, was icy cold; and the lines around his eyes made him look decidedly middle-aged. Clearly he had already realized his defeat, although the returns were only beginning to be flashed before the eyes of the cheering throng.
He walked with me to the elevator of theTimesbuilding, and the great mirror in the back of the car held our two images a moment as he lifted his hat and turned to leave me. The reflection held a wholesome lesson as I gazed for an instant upon the features of the handsome, blasé, middle-aged man, then glanced at myself in my short-sleeved white gown, with my rounded elbows showing youthfully. Yes, I was undeniablyyoung; and I felt, even in the midst of my sorrow for him, a little thrill of satisfaction that it was so.
It was a week or two after his defeat that Richard began a renewal of his lover-like attitude toward me, calling me on the telephone and asking permission to come, and again bombarding the express office with boxes of candy and flowers. When I gave abnormally polite refusals to these requests he would usually acquiesce with his half amused smile, which I could see just as plainly as if only a few feet lay between us, instead of many miles.
"You are a stubborn little vixen," he would say sometimes. "How long do you expect to keep this up?"
And if he had studied the matter over carefully and tried to hit on a means of curing me of myfancy for him he could never have found anything more effectual than this. Then one day in the early autumn when all the world was dreary and the state was so evidently going Republican that no doubt he had cause for his odd temper, Richard called me again and asked that a meeting might be arranged, either at home or in the city. I began giving my usual reasons for not seeing him, when he cut me short with quick impatience.
"Oh, that's all right, if you don't want to see me," he said harshly, his rich drawl entirely obliterated in the sudden anger which tinted his speech. "And I'll promise never to give you the chance again of turning me down. But, my dear Ann, you must remember there was a time when I didn't have tobegyou for every little favor I got."
"There was a time!" Ungenerous, despicable as this was, coming from Richard, I took it with a sort of calmness born of the knowledge that it was only what I deserved. For I don't believe that a woman ever acts a fool over a man but that she lives to have the unwholesome fact cast up to her while she is drinking the dregs of her folly. "There was a time," the man is always ready to remind her, ofttimeshoping to use this memory as a lever to remove the aftergrowth of indifference or positive hatred.
In this case the words caused me to feel something very nearly akin to hatred for Richard, and I quickly ran away up-stairs, where I threw myself across my bed and gave way to the storm of tears which had been brought on by the angry selfishness of his act. But tears, while they are bitter and scalding, are alsocleansing, and they acted that day as a purifying flood which washed my soul clean from all thoughts of Richard Chalmers. When, late in the afternoon of that rainy day, I arose from my bed I was weak from weeping, and unutterably saddened over this final, ugly blow which Reality had dealt the fragments of my house which was built upon the sands; but, weak and sad and world-wise, as I felt myself to be, there was a great joy singing in my heart, for I knew, for the first time, Iknewthat I was free.
The next day I wrote a letter to Jean asking her to get me several boxes of the latest style gold-edged note paper with my monogram embossed thereon, and insisted that she have the stationer hurry theorder through. "I want the very newest and most exquisite style you can find," I wrote her, "for I am about to begin a most particular correspondence and if you will take pity upon my loneliness enough to run down any time within the next few weeks I'll tell you the name of my distant correspondent. Yet, for fear you will not be able to get here before your curiosity consumes you, I'll let you into the secret enough to satisfy you that the gentleman is a 'medicine man' and he is now wandering on a foreign strand. And if you should hear that I have done such an unladylike thing as tosendfor him, you will know in your heart that it is not entirely on account of father's rheumatism and Mammy Lou's still threatening right side.
"But come, dear Jean, if you love me, for I am very lonesome, with absolutely nobody but Neva and her mother to divert my mind."
Poor little Neva! I must not wind up this chapter without some little word about her, for there is going to be only one more chapter after this, and there will be no room for Neva in that. This final word may be written next week—it may not be written until a whole year has passed, but wheneverit is it will be the last, for I know that if Mammy Lou's definition of the period is correct it will wind up the age of Eve.
But Neva! We left her a lovelorn lass grieving over the perfidies of Hiram, the fickle. We find her again a college girl, breathing academic atmosphere from the tassel of her mortar-board down to the rubber heel of her "gym" shoes. She cares for nothing but school, and the sororities therein. She knows all the places up in the city where one is most likely to come across the college boys one desires most to see; and the class of ices that take the longest time to consume while one is sitting watching these boys pass by. She sometimes does not know the name of a certain desirable young man, but she always knows the name of his high-sounding Greek letter brotherhood.
"She don't talk about nothing but 'frats' and 'spats' and things like that," her mother one time complained after a brief visit from Neva. "And she calls some of her mates by the curiousest names I ever heard. There's one she likes a good deal that she says is anew Phi Chi; and another one that she has to look to some because she's a 'old Tau!'"
"The stage has to be passed through," mother said to Mrs. Sullivan comfortingly, "for it's as certain and as harmless as chicken-pox."
But Mammy Lou takes a much more serious view of Neva's collegiate career and high-flown talk.
"Education ain't no good for girls," she often declares emphatically, "for it spoils their powers of emmanuel labor. You can just as shore count on a educated girl makin' a lazy wife as you can count on damp weather makin' a baby's hair curl an' a ol' woman's feet hurt!"
MAY DAY
"'For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.'"
I quoted this bit of classic loveliness softly as I looked out this morning very early from my bedroom window and feasted upon the scene of sweet spring beauty which was everywhere spread before my eyes. Yet the cause of the verse coming to my mind at the moment was due much more to the feeling in my heart than to the scenery all about me, although each seemed a reflection of the other.
"How many years ago to-day was it that we looked down into the old well in the lot and tried to see our future husband's face?" Jean inquired with a wistful little smile as she came over to the window and dropped her chin on my shoulder, peering out upon the fresh green landscape. One ofher arms slipped affectionately around me, while with the other hand she toyed with the fresh white curtain at the window. It was upon this hand that there gleamed the ring which Guilford had at last persuaded her to let him place there.
"More years than we are proud to own, considering that we are still spinsters," I answered lightly and a little at random, for my thoughts were wandering, though I am glad to state that they did not have such a long journey to travel now as formerly. Each of my foreign letters lately has borne a postmark a little nearer home.
"I'm not going to be a spinster long, thank you," she responded quickly, holding her left hand close to her face so that she could catch some of the myriads of tiny rainbows in her eyes. "And I don't any longer need to look down into an old well upon this magic day to catch a glimpse of my future husband's face."
"Still—let's do it again to-day!"
"All right," she agreed readily, smiling at the enthusiasm of my eyes. "I'm in for anything that will take us out into this glorious sunshine."
Throughout the course of the morning we managed to dig out from ancient trunks of debris twowhite sunbonnets which Mammy Lou graciously freshened for us, plying her "raw starch" and sound advice with equal vigor during the task. We accepted the bonnets and admonitions gratefully, and donning short skirts and low-collared blouses we prepared for a tramp through the woods before the hour for the phenomenon in the well.
We had skirted around back of the orchard fence and had found an ideal resting-place under a clump of softly green sweet-gum trees, where we might sit in the delicate shade and read the magazines we had brought with us, when there was the sharp, piercing whistle of the eleven o'clock train as it sped close by our secluded little nook and drew up pantingly a few moments afterward at the village station.
"Doesn't that whistle soundcloseon these clear, still mornings?" Jean remarked with a little start, as she looked up from her magazine and watched the column of smoke mount into the sunny, blue sky.
"Close, and decidedly cheerful, I always think," I answered, allowing my eyes also to wander after the smoke up into the dizzy heights. "You city people can't realize what the coming of the trains mean to us who are tucked away in the little country towns. Our first thought always is, 'Is there a letteron that train for me?' Or, rather, that is my first thought always. It's a pity we're dressed this way or we might walk down to the post-office and see. The whistle sounded so unusually musical this morning that there may be a very important one. The last one I had was from Liverpool—there ought to be one very soon from New York!"
"But the old well!" Jean cried in sudden alarm, for she is a sadly sentimental creature and would not have missed the little superstitious performance this morning for several letters—bearingmyname and address. "We are not going to give that up now."
"Well, we would better be moving upon the field of operation then," I suggested, closing my book and starting to my feet. "That train wanders into the village at any hour which suits it best, so there's no telling just what time of the beautiful May morning it is. Let's hurry on down to the lot so that we shall be on the spot when the first twelve o'clock whistle blows."
We hurried back in the direction of home, taking a short cut which led us through one end of the orchard and soon landed us beside the clump of ancient lilac bushes which form a kind of hedge alongthe barbed wire fence of the disused horse lot. In the center of this is the well, the uncovered frame top of which affords an excellent opportunity for this old-fashioned May-day indulgence.
We rested a bit in the shade of the tall lilac hedge, but the noon-day whistles soon sounded and we scampered over to the well and laughingly peered in. There was nothing to be seen in its gloomy depths, but the day was so beautiful and we were so absurdly lighthearted over the divine order of all things in nature that we refrained from making any sarcastic remarks on our grown-up sophistication.
"I don't see Guilford's face down there, but I'm glad we came out to look for it; for the walk has made me ravenously hungry," Jean said, as we straightened up and pushed our white bonnets back from over our eyes.
"Then let's hurry on to the house, for I am starving, too—and I know that there are delicious things for dinner. Mammy Lou made me promise to get back in time to make the salad. There are tomatoes for it and the loveliest young lettuce you ever saw, with tiny, slender onions—not a bit bigger than my little finger. I can't bear them when they grow bigger—"
"Ann, hush! Let's don't waste time talking."
We hurried up through the side yard, and as we approached the house there were signs of an unwonted stirring in the vicinity of the dining-room and kitchen. My spirits fell at the sight and I intentionally slackened my steps.
"Unexpected company to dinner," I announced dismally to Jean, as I saw mother flutter excitedly across the back porch, followed by Dilsey bearing a big bowl of strawberries to set in the refrigerator. Just then mother caught sight of us coming leisurely up the walk and she made a spasmodic motion for us to hurry.
"Go on up-stairs and dress," she said in a stagy voice when we had come within earshot. "Dressbeautifully."
"Why, what on earth—" I started to ask, when I saw the transfigured face of Mammy Lou at the kitchen door. "Some august company to dinner?"
"'Tain't dinner! It's luncheon," she replied grandly, "incourses. And the chil'ren o' Israel lookin' into Canaan and seein' the bunch o' grapes that it took two men to carry ain't saw nothin' compared with what I've saw this day."
"Good gracious! Whoishere?" I demanded, much more impressed by her calling the meal "luncheon" than by the weightiness of her Biblical allusion.
"Is there butoneman on earth I'd turn the name o' my vittles up-side-down'ards for?" she questioned meaningly, gazing upon me with a beatific glow. "—And he's the grandest that the Lord ever made and put on earth to be pestered with poll-taxes."
"Alfred!" I cried, a sudden burst of understanding and joy sweeping over me; and leaving me very weak-feeling and happy. "Alfred is coming!"
"Not coming, but already here," I heard his voice saying close behind me. His voice! It seemed a thousand years since I heard it last; and I knew in that moment that I could listen to it for a thousand years without ever once growing tired.—But as I turned and faced the big, bearded man coming through the hall doorway, the quick color flew to my face and I felt suddenly very small and insignificant. For it seemed in that instant that Alfred had grown into a giant, a great, bearded giant, over seas—and I have always had such an admiration for giants.
"Well, have I stayed away long enough?" he demanded, as he came on the porch and took my hand. Mother and Jean had fled, but Mammy Lou steadfastly held her ground. "Are you glad to see me, Ann?"
"Yes—yes," I stammered in a mighty confusion.
"How glad? How glad,darling?" His brown eyes were deep and grave.—But the afternoon wore away and the spring twilight had fallen before I answered that question.
Transcriber's Note:Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.
Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.