To-day, a strange conversation with Molly,—strange, for all at once I seemed to know the human being with whom I had lived all these years. Until now, I had thought of her only as a lovely child, something soft and gentle, a laugh that was good to hear, a smiling face, content, as you enjoy a graceful animal, a bit of sunshine and the fragrance of the violet beds. Now, to my astonishment, I perceive a woman; a directness of vision; a delicate perception of standards and a firmness of purpose.
She came in late from a skating party over at the Brinsmades’, where I had purposely not gone, and, at the first glance of her telltale countenance, I knew that something had happened. In the hall she caught my hand.
“Come upstairs with me, Davy, just a minute.”
“Up it is, young lady.”
Much intrigued and a little apprehensive, I followed her into the blue sitting room and closed the door. The next moment she was in my arms, weeping out her heart on my shoulder.
“Oh, Davy, Davy, I had to come to some one!”
“But, good heavens, what’s wrong?” I was thinking of Letty and wondering.
“I am so miserably unhappy!”
“Then talk it out with me. It’ll do you good.”
“Oh, Davy, some one wants to marry me!”
I started to burst out laughing at this and suddenly checked myself. I held her from me, her shoulders in my hands, and said, with a swift jealousy:
“You child! What right have you to be thinking of such things!”
“What things, Davy?”
“Falling in love, and marriage.”
“But I’m not in love—and that’s just the awful part of it! It’s of him I’m thinking. It’s so terrible to think that a man has fallen in love with you, that he cares as much as all that—when you know you can’t—you never will. I—I feel as though I had committed a crime!”
I took her into my arms again and I think I never loved her, my little sister, as I did at that moment. If this were American womanhood, I felt a sudden thrill of pride!
“Perhaps, it is not so serious—”
“It is, it is,” she protested, hiding her face against my shoulder. “If you had seen his face! I was so sorry for him, Davy. It’s terrible that he should come to care like that! Oh, don’t laugh at me—there’s no one else to go to but you—and do try to understand!”
“I couldn’t laugh at you, bless your honest little heart, and I think I understand,” I said, wondering a little if she knew her true feelings. “Is this the first time any man has proposed—”
“Yes, and I saw it coming, and I dreaded it so, and when I couldn’t prevent it I was so frightened. He was so terribly in earnest, and his face went so white. I—I couldn’t say a thing,—I just burst into tears and ran away. Oh, David, I feel so guilty. I can’t bear that any one should be so unhappy as that—just over me!”
“This is what life means, little sister,” I said, drawing her down beside me on the old chintz sofa. “These are the things no one can protect us from. And now, tell me, are you quite sure of your own feelings?”
She raised her eyes, her eyes clear as Bernoline’s, to me and in that moment I felt the spiritual kinship of true womanhood that lies underneath all social divisions.
“It will be a long time before I shall fall in love. I am only a girl now, Davy. I want to be a woman first, to have read and thought much. For I want to be fit to be at the head of my home and for the lives that may come to me.”
“Do you really feel that way, Molly dear?”
“Can any one feel differently about such things?”
I bent over her hand and caught it to my lips.
“That is the only right way—the natural way to think.”
“Oh, David, I do want to talk to you so much! You see, I never can, with mother: you know how it is. There’s only you, Davy. I don’t love Ted. I’m sure I never will love him, but it seems so terrible that I should lose the other—the real friendship—and yet I suppose that’s not possible—”
“Not quite fair to him.”
“No, and Ted is the only one to think about, isn’t he?”
“Ted?”
“Ted Seaver.”
“Oh, yes, the tall one, with dark hair,” I said, seeing confusedly one of the many who had passed through the house. “Why, he’s only a boy. What right had he—”
“That’s just it; but, of course, he’s not such a boy: he’s twenty-three, and he couldn’t help saying what hedid. And I did respect him for the way he did it. Only—only such things are way off—”
“I should hope so.”
“It would have to be some one—some one very much of a man—whom I could look up to—some one much stronger than I am—who has been really tested and come through.” Again she looked at me and, suddenly laying her hand over mine, said: “Some one like you, Davy.”
The look of clear faith as her face lit up somehow searched into my heart and left me humble and regretful. I looked down at her white hand against my dark one, and Jessica’s words came into my mind,
“So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”
“I’m glad you came to me, Molly,” I said, “and I value your confidence very deeply. Suppose we snuggle up before the fire and talk lots of things out!”
“Oh, if you only would!”
I touched a match to the tinder, wheeled her into position and sat down beside her. She leaned forward, her hands clasped over her knees, her look sunk in the climbing flame.
“It’s such a pity!”
“What, Molly?”
“It is such a sad thing to think, David, that it can’t just remain a friendship. I am thinking of the friend I have lost. There are many girls who are terribly excited about men—falling in love with them. I’m not that way. I only wish—because in the end it’s you who lose—isn’t it?”
“How long have you known him?”
“Ted? Almost a year.”
She looked, and saw the lingering question in my eye.
“Oh, David, you don’t understand me at all!”
“Yes, yes, I do, but sometimes—”
“If I cared for him, do you think I’d tell any one—even you?”
This brought me up sharp. I laughed, quite amazed, and not at all sure that I liked it.
“That’s a rather queer way of putting it.”
“Don’t tease me, David. You understand.”
“I suppose that means, young lady,” I said, thinking of something I had been impelled to write a few days ago, “that when the time comes, you’ll go whisking out of this house on the arm of some stranger, without even saying ‘by your leave’.”
“If you mean shall I decide for myself—of course, David!”
“And even a big brother’s advice—”
“No, David; not even you. How can any one else know? And then, think of the responsibility of deciding such a thing! If I really cared, I should believe in him, no matter what any one would tell me.”
“Molly,” I said, a bit surprised though to find myself playing the part of Wisdom, “I am not much worried about you. You will make no mistake. There’s an honest, direct way you have of facing life that I think I can trust. Only, I want you to value yourself very high, and I’m afraid sometimes that just because you are so straightforward and unselfish you may not realize what you are worth.”
“That’s very dear of you,” she said pensively. “Of course, I won’t pretend to you that I don’t—well, that I don’t sometimes look ahead and wonder. Of course, I do. And I have a very high ideal.”
“It is so easy to make mistakes. It’s when you want to love, my dear little sister, that it is easy to believe you do love. Such awful mistakes can be made.”
“Now you are thinking of Ben,” she said irrelevantly.
“No, no, I was thinking of myself,” I said hastily, forLetty was a subject I could not discuss with her. “Do you know, if I hadn’t been prevented—I would—well, I don’t want to say I would have—I might have thrown away my whole life on a mad suicidal marriage?”
“I know,” she said, nodding her head.
“You know? What do you mean?” I said, startled.
“Don’t be angry, David. I guessed. It was Jenny Barnett, wasn’t it?”
I laughed, to cover my confusion and my amazement,—a not very successful laugh.
“Yes, it was Jenny; and that’s why I say be very sure, just at first.”
“But, David, I am not like you. You have always been so impulsive, so intense.”
“I impulsive?” I cried, forgetting how the conversation had switched. And I was genuinely amazed, for frankly, it had never occurred to me to look at myself as such. Though I am not sure but what she is right, but how she learned to see me so clearly is beyond me.
“Yes, you are! I never know what you’re going to do; whereas I—I am really quite sensible and matter-of-fact. Why haven’tyoumarried, David? You ought to.”
“I thought, young lady, we were here to discuss your affairs,” I said warily.
“Please, David, let me talk to you,” she said, raising her eyes to mine. “I love you very much, more than any one else in the world. And we ought to be very close to each other, real confidants.”
“Now, what’s coming?” I thought to myself, but, putting on a brave front, I answered, “Fire away, then.”
“I feel you are unhappy. I feel it so strongly.”
“I am neither happy nor unhappy,” I said, being on my guard. “All I am thinking about now is going back and doing my duty, because it is quite immaterial, so long as the war lasts, what I plan to do.”
“I am thinking of Anne.”
“Now, we have it! Young lady, there is such a thing as imagining you see too much.”
“Don’t you think, David,” she said, not paying the slightest attention to me, “that it would be kinder, more honest, if you told her—”
“Told her what?”
“That you love some one else.”
I jumped at this, in great wrath.
“Extraordinary! Child, where did you imagine—”
“Don’t be angry, David. You needn’t tell me if you don’t want to—but I know. I’ve seen it in your face too often, these days. Only, I think it’s hard on Anne.”
I decided on another course.
“My dear Molly, Anne isn’t in the slightest doubt as to my feelings towards her. I wish I did love her, sometimes. I don’t. And if I did, I shouldn’t tell her so—just as I was going off to war.”
“Why not?”
“Because a man has no right to take a woman’s heart when it may mean an empty life for the rest of her existence.”
“But why, David? If you men are willing to give your lives, why should we women not have our part of sorrow?”
“Each as he feels: that’s my point of view,” I said. Yet, as I look at it now, I wonder why I said it, for no such compunction had arrested my impulse toward Bernoline. “However, that’s all academic and don’t get it into your romantic little head that I’m not telling you the truth about Anne. Furthermore, she understands.”
She shook her head.
“I’m inclined to shake you!” I said, vexed.
The next moment her arms closed about me.
“David, I can’t bear to see you unhappy; that’s all.”
As I look back on this conversation, I am the more amazed. Where did she get such uncanny insight into my thoughts? What had not her child’s eyes divined?—if they had ever been the eyes of a child! I suppose my irritation arose from the fact that she had come too close to my own misgivings. No, I am not quite sure that I have been honest with Anne, even when I assured myself that I was. Before I leave I shall see Anne again. To-night, I know what I shall say: but I am not sure what it will be at the time.