 Chapter 9. The Mother I am sure that I shall surprise no mother of a large family when I say that this hour is the first one I have spent alone for thirty years. I count it alone. For while I am driving back in the runabout along the six miles of leafy road between the hospital and Eastridge with mother beside me, she has sound asleep under the protection of her little hinged black sunshade still held upright. She will sleep until we are at home, and after our anxious morning at the hospital I am most grateful to the fortune sending me this lucid interval, not only for thinking over what has occurred in the last three days, but also for trying to focus clearly for myself what has happened in the last week, since Elizabeth went on the 5.40 to New York, since Charles followed Elizabeth, since Maria, under Dr. Denby's mysteriously required escort, followed Charles, since Tom followed Maria, and since Cyrus, with my dear girl, followed Tom. On the warm afternoon before Elizabeth left, as I walked past her open door with Lena and carrying an eggnog to Peggy, I could not avoid hearing down the whole length of the hall a conversation carried on in clear, absorbed tones between my sister and Alice. Did I understand you to say, said Elizabeth, in an assumption of indifference too elaborate, I think, to deceive even her niece, that this Mr. Wilde you mention is now living in New York? Oh yes, he conducts all the art classes at the craft settlement. He encouraged Lorraine's sisters in their wonderful work. I would love to go into it myself. Lorraine's sisters and her circle once entertained me at tea in their establishment when I visited Charles before his marriage in New York. They are extremely kind young women, ladies in every respect, who have a workshop called at the sign of the three-legged stool. They seem to be carpenters as nearly as I can tell. They wear fillets and bright loose clothes, and they make very rough hewn burnt wood footstools and odd setees with pieces of glass set about in them. It is all very puzzling. When Charles showed me a candlestick one of the young ladies had made and talked to me about the decoration and the line, I could see that it was very gracefully designed and nicely put together. And when he noticed that in the wish to be perfectly open-minded to his point of view, I was looking very attentively at a queer, uneven-wrought iron brooch with two little pendant-polished granite rocks. He only laughed and put his hand on my shawl a minute and brought me more tea, so that I could understand something of what Alice was mentioning as she went on. You know Lorraine says that, though not the most prominent, Lyman Wilde is the most radical and temperamental leader in the great handicraft development in this country. Even most of the persons in favor of it consider that he goes too far. She says, for instance, that he is so opposed to machines of all sorts that he thinks it would be better to abolish printing and return to script. He has started what they call a little movement of the kind now, and is training two young scriveners. Elizabeth was shaking her head reflectively as I passed the door and saying, Ah, no compromise, and always, always the love of beauty. And I heard her advising Alice never, never to be one of the foolish women and men who hurt themselves by dreaming of beauty or happiness in their narrow little lives, repeating sagely that this dream was even worse for the women than for the men, and asked whether Alice supposed to the craft settlement address wouldn't probably be in the New York phone book. Alice seemed to be spending a very gratifying afternoon. My sister Elizabeth's strongest instinct from her early youth has been the passion inspiring the famous Captain Parklberry Todd so often quoted by Alice and Billy. I do not think I ever knew a character so given to creating a sensation, or perhaps I should injustice say to what in an Adelphi play is known as situation. Never has she gratified her taste in this respect more fully than she did, as I believe quite accidentally, and on the inspiration of these words with Alice, in taking the evening train to New York with Mr. Goward. Twenty or thirty people at the station saw them starting away together, each attempting to avoid recognition, each in the pretense of avoiding the other, each with excited manners. So that, as both Peggy and Elizabeth have been born and brought up here, as during Mr. Goward's conspicuous absence in silence, during Peggy's illness, and all our trying uncertainties and hers in the last weeks, my sister had widely flung to town talk many tacit insinuations concerning the character of Mr. Goward's interest in herself, as none of the twenty or thirty people were mute beyond their kind, and as Elizabeth's nature has never inspired high neighborly confidence, before night a rumor had spread like the wind that Margaret Talbert's lover had eloped with her aunt. Billy heard the other children talking of this news and hushing themselves when he came up. Tom learned of the occurrence by telephone, and after supper told Cyrus and myself, Maria was informed of it by telephone through an old friend, who thought Maria should know what everyone was saying. Lorraine, walking to the office to meet Charles, was overtaken on the street by Mrs. Temple, greatly concerned for us and for Peggy, and learned the strange story from our sympathetic neighbor to repeat it to Charles. At ten o'clock there was only one person in the house, perhaps in Eastridge, who was ignorant of our daughter's singular fortune. That person was our dear girl herself. Because my own intelligence of the report, I had not left her alone with anybody else for a moment, and now I was standing in the hall, watching her start safely upstairs, when to our surprise the front door latch clicked suddenly. She turned on the stairs. The door opened, and we both faced Charles. From the first still glances he and I gave each other, he knew she hadn't heard. Then he said quietly that he wished to see Peggy for a moment before she went to sleep. He bade me a very confiding and responsible good night, and went out with her to the garden where they used to play constantly together when they were children. Upstairs unable to lie down till she came back, I put on a little cambrick sack and sat by the window, waiting till I should hear her foot on the stairs again. Charles is telling her, I said to Cyrus, he was walking up and down the room, dumb within patience and disgust, too pained for Peggy, too tried by his own helplessness to rest or even to sit still. In a way it has all been harder for him than for anyone else. His impulses are stronger and deeper than my dear girls and far less cool. She is very especially precious to him, and whether because she looks so like him, or because he thinks her ways like my own, her youth and her fortune have always been at once a more anxious and a more lovely concern with him than anyone else's on earth. She is somehow our future to him. While we waited here in this anxiety upstairs, down in the garden I could hear not the words, but the tones of our children as they spoke together. Charles's voice sounded first for a long time with an air of calmness and directness, and Peggy answered him at intervals of listening, answered apparently less with surprise at what he told her than in a quiet acceptance with a little throb of control, and then in accord with him. Then it was as though they were planning together. In the still village night their voices sounded very tranquil, after a little while even buoyant. Peggy laughed once or twice. Little by little a breath of relief flew over both her father's solicitude and mine. It was partly from the coolness and freshness of the outdoor air and the half unconscious sense it often brings that beyond whatever care is close beside you at the instant there is, and especially for the young, so much else in all creation. Then for me there was a deep comfort in the knowledge that in this time of need my children had each other, that they could speak so together in an intimate sympathy and were not only superficially in name but really and beautifully a brother and sister. At last as they parted at the gate Charles said in a spirited downright tone, stick to that, cling to it, make it your answer to everything. It's all you know now and all you need to know and you'll be as firm on it as on a rock. The lamp light from the street filtering through the elm leaves glimmered on Peggy's bright hair as she looked up at him. Her eyelashes were wet, but she was laughing as she said, but of course I have to cling to it, it's the truth. Good night, good night. And her step on the stairs was light and even skipping. On the next morning when I knocked at her door to find whether she would rather breakfast upstairs I saw it once she had slept. She stood before the mirror fastening her belt ribbon and looking so lovely it seemed impossible misfortune should ever touch her. Why, mother, dear, you aren't dressed for the library board meeting, isn't it this morning? Yes. She looked at me with her little, sweet, quick smile, and we sat down for a moment on her couch together, each with a sense that neither would say one word too sharply pressing. Dear mother, why not go to the board meeting? You don't need to protect me so. You can't protect me every minute. You see, of course, last night Charles told me of what everybody thinks. Her voice throbbed again. She stopped for a minute. But for weeks and weeks I had felt something like this coming toward me, and now that it's come, she went on bravely, we can only just do as we always have done and not make any difference, can we? Except that I feel I must be here since we can't know from minute to minute what may come up. You feel you can't leave me, mother, but you can. I want to see whoever comes just as usual. I'd have to at some time, you know, at any rate. And I mean to do it now, until I go away out of Eastridge. Charles is going to arrange that so very wonderfully. He has gone to New York now to see about it. He has, my dear, I said, in some surprise. Yes, and mother, about, about what's over, she whispered. Yes. Oh, just, just it couldn't have all happened in this way if, she spoke in quite a clear, soft voice, looking straight into my eyes with one of her quick turns. He were a real man, anybody I could think of as being my husband. It was just that I didn't truly know him. That was all. We held each other's hands fast for one moment of perfect understanding before we rose. Then I'll go, dear, this morning, just as you like, I said. She came into my room and fastened my cuff pins for me. Why, mother, I don't believe you and your little duchet's cuffs and your little fine gold watch chain have ever been away from the chair of the library committee at a board meeting for twenty years. Just think what a sensation you were going to make if I hadn't interfered. There, how nice you look. The weather was so inclement during my absence that I felt quite secure concerning all intrusion for her. At noon the storm rose high with a close timed thunder and lightning. The Episcopal church spire was struck. Two trees were blown over in the square, and instead of ordering Dan and the horses out in this tumult, I dined with a board member living next the library and drove home at three o'clock when the violence of the gale had abated. The house was perfectly still when I reached it. The children were at school, Cyrus at the factory, mother napping with her door closed. In her own room upstairs in the middle of the house, Peggy sat alone in a loose wrapper with her hair flying over her shoulders. An open book lay unnoticed in her lap. Her face was white and tear-stained, and her eyes looked wild and ill. As her glance fell on me, I saw her need of me, and hurried in to close the door. Oh, mother, mother, she moaned. Such a morning. It's all come back. All I fought against, all I was conquering. What does it mean? What does it mean? What has happened? Who has been here? Maria, sneering at Charles's ideas, asking me questions, petting me and pitying me and making a baby of me till I broke down at last and wanted all the things she wanted to have done and let her kiss me goodbye for her kindness and doing them. In a passion of tears she walked up and down, up and down the room, as her father does, except with that quick, nervous grace she always has and in a painful sobbing excitement. Every sense I had was for an instant's passage fused in one clear, concentrated anger against a sister who could play so ruthlessly upon my poor child's woman pulses and emotions, so disarm her of her self-control and right free spirit. Why did she come? I said at last, with the best calmness I could muster. Peggy stood still for a moment, startled by a coldness in my voice I couldn't alter. She came to find out about things for herself, then when she did find out about Charles's way of helping us, she simply hated it, and she sent me after, after the letter you had. I got it from your desk, and Maria took it to find out its real address. At that she sank again in a chair and buried her face in her hands, hardly knowing what she was saying. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do? She repeated, softly and wildly. Yesterday I could behave so well by what I knew was true about him. Then when Maria came and spoke as though I was three years old, and hadn't any understanding nor any dignity of my own, and the best thing for any girl at any rate were to cling to the man she loved as though she were his mother, and he were her dear, airing child. She began to laugh a little. The feebler he were, the more credit to her for her devotion. Then I couldn't go on by what I knew was true about him, only back, back again to all my old mistake. She was laughing and crying now with little quick gasps in a sheer hysteria which no doubt would have given her sister entire satisfaction as a manifesto of her normal womanliness. I brought her a glass of water, and trying to conceal my own distress for her as well as I could, sat down silently near her. Gradually she grew quieter until the room was so still that we could hear the raindrops from the eaves plashed down outside. Peggy pushed back her cloud of bright hair and fastened it in the nape of her neck. At last she said with conviction, Mother, Maria didn't say these things, but I know she thinks them for me, thinks that a woman's love is just all forgiveness and indulgence. By that she could, she did work on my nerves, but—and her gray eyes glanced so beautifully and so darkly with the girl's fine, straight, native, healthy spirit as she said it— I couldn't marry any man but one that I admired. I'm sure you couldn't, I said firmly, and, my dear child, I must confess I fail to understand why your sister should wish so patronizingly for you a fortune she could never have accepted for herself. How can she possibly like for you such a mockish and morbid thing as the prospect of a marriage with a man in whom neither you nor any other person feels the presence of one single absolute and manly quality? My mother, I have never heard you speak so strongly before. At that moment Lena came searching through the hall and knocking at the door of my room next Peggy's to announce Lorraine. The kind-hearted girl was with us constantly and of the greatest unobtrusive solace to Peggy in those three days after our travelers had all gone, one after the other, like the fairy-tale family at the chance word of clever Alice. It was on the fifth morning afterward as I was sitting on the piazza hemming an organdy ruffle for my big little girl, she does shoot up so fast that I heard on the gravel Charles's footstep. For some time after his arrival as he sat with his hat thrown off, talking lightly of his New York sojourn, I was so completely glad to see him and to see him looking so well and in such buoyant spirits that I could think of nothing else until he mentioned taking tea at the sign of the three-legged stool with Lorraine's sisters, with Lyman Wilde and with Aunt Elizabeth. My work dropped out of my hands. He laughed, yes, dear mother, since you never had seen him, I don't know that I can hope to convey any right conception of Wilde's truly remarkable character. He is, to begin with, the best of men. Picture if you can, a nature with a soul completely beautiful and selfless, and a nervous surface quite as packadermatous and indiscriminating as that of an ox. Wilde accepts everybody's estimate of himself. Not only the quality of his mercy, but also of his admiration, is quite unstrained, so that he sees a friend of his youth not at all as I or any humanized perception of the craft settlement would see her, but quite as she sees herself as a fascinating, gifted, capricious woman of the world, beating the wings of her thwarted love of beauty against cruel circumstance. I noticed his attitude as soon as I mentioned to him that Lorraine had by chance discovered that he and my aunt were old acquaintances. He said that he would be very much interested in seeing her again. As he happened at the moment to be looking over a packet of postals announcing his series of talks on script, he asked me her address, called his stenographer, and had it added to his mailing list. But before the postal reached her, she had called him up to tell him she had lately heard of his work and of him for the first time after all these years through Lorraine and to ask him to come to see her. As call I am sure they spent in a rich mutual misunderstanding as thoroughly satisfactory to both as anyone could wish, for as I say on my last visit in the craft's neighborhood she was taking tea with all of them and Dr. Denby. Dr. Denby, I repeated in surprise, oh, Charles, are any of them not well? No, no, I think he's been in New York, he gave a groan. An account of some delicate finesse on Maria's part, some incomprehensible plan of hers for bringing Goward back here. The worst of it is that, like all her plans, I believe it's going to be perfectly successful. What do you mean? I asked in consternation. From every natural portent I think that horrid infant in arms was, when I left New York, about to cast his handkerchief or rattle toward Peggy again. I'm morally certain that he and all his odious emotional disturbances will be presenting themselves for her consideration in Eastridge before long. And since they strike me as quite too odious for the nicest girl in the world, I hope before they reach here she'll be far away, absolutely out of reach. I hope so, too. But as I said it, for the first time there came around me like a blank rising mist, the prospect of a journey farther and a longer separation than any I had before imagined between us. I knew you'd think so. That was partly why I acted as I did, for her dear mother. He leaned forward a little toward me and took up one end of the ruffle I was stitching again to cover my excitement, and for Lorraine and for me in engaging our passage abroad. He seemed not to expect me to speak at once, but after a little quiet pause, while we both sat thinking, went on with great gentleness. You know it's about our only way of really protecting her from any annoyance here, even that of thoughts of her own she doesn't like. There will be so very wonderfully much for her to see, and I believe she'll enjoy it. One of Lorraine's younger sisters is coming to be with us, perhaps, for a while in Switzerland. In the Elliott's, Animal Sculptors, you remember them, don't you? And Arlington, studying decorative design that winter when you were in New York? There'll be a broad this summer. I believe we'll all have a very charming, carefree time walking and stretching and working, a time really so much more charming for a lovely and sensible young woman than sitting in a talking town subject to the incursions of a lover she doesn't truly like. He stopped a moment before he added sincerely, then it isn't simply for her that this way would be better, mother, but for me, for everyone. For you and for everyone? I managed to make myself ask with tranquility. Yes, why wouldn't this relieve immensely all the sufferers from my commercial career at the factory? Don't you think that's somewhat unjust, not simply to Maria's and Tom's requirements for the family standing in fortunes? He laughed a moment. But to father's need there of a right-hand businessman? That was his way of putting it. For a long time, he pursued more earnestly than I've ever heard him speak before in his life. I've been planning, mother, to go away to study and to sketch. I'm doing nothing here. Maybe what I would do away from here might not seem to you so wonderful, but it would have one dignity. Or else it were or were not, it would be my own. Perhaps it may seem strange, but in those few words and instance, when my son spoke so simply and sincerely of his own work, I felt, more than in his actual wedding with his wife, the cleaving paying of a marriage for him. At the same time, I was stricken beyond all possible speech by my rising consciousness of the injustice of his sense of failure here in his own father's house in my house. How weakly I have been lost in the thousand little anxieties and preoccupations of my every day to let myself be unwittingly engulfed in his older sister's strange, blank prejudice, to lose my own true understanding of the rights and happiness of one of the children, I can think it all unspoken and in silence, somehow most my own. It seemed as though my heartstrings tightened, everything blurred before me. I never in my life have tried so hard before to hold my soul absolutely still, to see quite clearly, as though none of this were happening to myself, what would be best for my boy's future, for Peggy's, for their whole lives. It was in the midst of these close pressing thoughts that I heard him saying, so that perhaps this would truly be the right way for everyone. Only too inevitably I knew his words were true, and now I could force myself at last to say quietly, why, yes, if that would make you happier, Charles. He rose and came up to my chair, then, so beautifully, and moved it to a shadier place, as Peggy, catching sight of him from the garden, ran up with a cry of surprise to meet him, to talk about it all. I scarcely know whether her father's consciousness of the coming separation for me, or my consciousness of the coming separation for him, made things harder or easier for both of us. Cyrus was obliged to make a business trip to Washington on the next day, and it was decided that as Peggy especially wished to be with him now before her long absence, she should accompany him in the morning. On the midnight before we were all startled from sleep by the clang of the doorbell. Little Billy, always hoping for excitement, and besides extremely sweet and doing errands, answered it. The rest of us absurdly assembled in kimonos and bathrobes at the head of the stairs, dreading, we scarcely knew what, for the members of the family not in the house. Within a few minutes Billy dashed upstairs again, considerably holding high, so that we all could see it, a special delivery letter, the very same illegible, bleared envelope which had before annoyed us so extremely. It was addressed in washed-out characters to Miss Blank Talbert. The word Peggy, very clear and black, had been lately inserted in the same handwriting, and below the street and number had been recently refreshed, apparently by the hand of Maria. As this familiar, weary-some object reappeared before us all, Peggy, with a little quiver of mirth, looking out between her long braids, cried, Call back the boy! By the time the messenger had returned, she had readdressed the envelope, unopened, to Mr. Goward. Billy took it back downstairs again, and everyone trooped off to bed, Alice and mother with positive snorts and flounces of impatience. Needless to say, Tom and Maria returned in perfect safety on Saturday. Before then, at twelve o'clock on the same morning, when Cyrus and Peggy had gone, I was sitting on the piazza making a little money-bag for her, with mother sitting rocking beside me, and complaining of everyone in peace, when Dr. Denby drove up to the horse-block, flung his weight out of the buggy, and hurried up the steps. He shook hands with us hastily and abstractedly, and asked if he might speak to me inside the house. Mrs. Talbert, he said, closing the door of the library as soon as we were inside it, I am sure you will try not to feel alarmed at something I must tell you of at once. The early morning train I came on from New York, the one that ought to get in at Eastbridge at eleven, was derailed two hours ago on a misplaced switch between Geer and Whitman. No one was killed, but many of the passengers were injured. Among the injured I took care of was Mr. Goward. His arm has been broken. He's been badly shaken up, and he's now in a state of shock at the Whitman Hospital. The boy has been asking for Peggy, and then for you. I promised him that after my work was done all the injured were taken there by special as soon as possible after the wreck. I'd ask you to drive back to see him. Will you come? Of course I went, then. And at Harry Goward's request I have gone twice since. He is very ill, too ill to talk, and though Dr. Denbigh says he will outlive a thousand stronger men, he has been rather worse this morning. When I first saw him he asked for Peggy in one gasping word, and when he learned she had gone to Washington turned even whiter than he had been before. He is nervously quite wrecked and wretched, has no confidence in Dr. Denbigh, and either Maria or I will go to the hospital every day till the boy's mother comes from California. It is a very trying situation, for his misfortune has, of course, not changed my knowledge of his nature. I dread telling Cyrus and Peggy when I meet their returning noon train after I have left mother at home of everything that has happened here. As though these difficulties were not enough, this morning just before we started to Whitman we were involved in another perplexity through the unwilling agency of Mr. Temple. He called me up to read me a bewildering telegram he had received an hour before from Elizabeth. It said, Please end Eastridge's scandal by announcing my engagement in Banner, Lily. Engagement to whom? Mr. Temple had asked by telephone of Charles, who said none of us could be responsible for any definite information in the matter unless, perhaps, Maria. Upon consultation Maria had said to Mr. Temple that in New York Mr. Goward had imparted to her that Elizabeth had told him many weeks ago that she was irrevocably betrothed to Dr. Denbigh. Mr. Temple had finally referred unsuccessfully to me for Elizabeth's address in order to ask her to send a complete announcement in the full form she wished printed. Whoa, Douglas! Well, mother, you had a nice little nap, didn't you? No, no, I won't be late. It's not more than five minutes to the station. Thanks, Lena. Yes, Billy dear, you can get in. Why, I don't know why you shouldn't drive. The train is just pulling in. Charles is there, and Maria, each standing on one side of the car steps. Now I see them. That looks like Peggy's suitcase the porter's carrying down. Yes, it is. There, there they are, coming down the steps behind him. And my dear girl, how well they look! Oh, how I hope everything will come right for them! End of Chapter 9, Recording by Tricia G. Chapter 10 of the whole family. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by David Stryker. Automobile. Painted red with yellow lines. Automac Real. The $3 kind. New stamp book. The puppy chewed my other. Golly, I forgot. I suppose I mustn't use this. But it's my birthday next month, and I want steamed things. And I thought I'd better make a list of pin on the dining room door where the family could take their pick what to give me. Lorraine gave me this blank book and told me that if I'd write down everything that I knew about Peggy and Harry Goward and all that stuff, she'd have Sally make me three pounds of crumbly cookies with currants on top, in a box, to keep in my room just to eat to myself. And she wouldn't tell Alice, so I won't be selfish not to offer any, as she won't know about it and so won't suffer. I'm going to keep them in the extra bureau drawer where Peg puts her best party dress, so I guess they'll be ate up for anybody goes there. Peggy's feeling pretty sick now to dress up for parties, but I know a thing or two that the rest don't know. Wouldn't Alice be hopping? She always thinks she's wise and everything and have a thick-headed boy person know a whacking secret that I'll be excited about would make her mad enough to burst. She thinks she can read my ingrown soul too, but I rather think I have my own interior thoughts that Miss Alice doesn't tumble to. For instance, Dr. Denbig, golly, I forgot, Lorraine said she'd cut down the cookies if things weren't told orderly the way they happened, so I've got to be getting back. First then, I've had the best time since Peggy got engaged that I'd ever had in my own home. Quite unbossed is when they sent me on Harris Farm last summer and I slept in a stable if I wanted to, and nobody asked if I'd taken a bath. That was a sensible way to live, but yet it's been unpacked and pleasant even at home lately. You see, with such a lot of fussing about Peggy and Harry Gowered, nobody knows what I did, and that to a person with taste for animals is one of the best states of living. I've gone to the table without brushing my hair, and the puppy slipped in my bed. I've kept a toad behind the wash basin for two weeks, though Lena, the maid, knew about it. She shut up and was decent because she didn't want to worry mother. A toad is such an unusual creature to live with. I've got a string in his hind leg, but yet he gets into places where he don't expect him, and it's very interesting. Lena seemed to think it wasn't nice to have him in the towels and wash stand drawer, but I didn't care. It doesn't hurt the towels, and it's cozy for the toad. I had a little snake, a stunner, but Lena squealed when she found him in my collars, so I had to take him away. He looked awfully cunning inside the collars, but Lena wouldn't stand for him, so I let it well enough alone, and tried to be contended with the toad, and puppy, and some June bugs. I've gotten boxes in my lizard next to mother. He's my best friend. I've had him six months. I'm not sure I wouldn't rather lose mother than him, because you can get a stepmother, but it's awfully difficult to replace lizard-like deogenes. I wonder if Lorraine will think I've written too much about my animals. They're more fun than Peggy anyway, as for Harry Gower, golly. The toad or lizard that couldn't be livelier than he would be a pretty sad animal. A year ago I was fishing one day away up the Whitt River, squatting under a bush on the bank when Peggy and Dr. Denby came and plumped right over my head. They didn't see me, but it wasn't up to me. They were looking the other way, so I didn't notice my fishing line either. They weren't noticing much of life as it peered to me, except their personal selves. I thought if they wouldn't disturb me, I wouldn't disturb them. At first I didn't pay attention to what they're saying, because there was a chub and a trout together after my bait. And I naturally was excited to see the trout take it, but when I'd lost both of them, I had time to listen. I wouldn't have believed Dr. Denby to bother about a girl like Peggy who can't do anything. And he's a whale, just a whale, six feet too strong as an ox. He went through West Point before he degraded himself into a doctor, and he held the record for shot-putting, and was on the football team. And even now, he's very old, and of course, can't last long. He plays the best tennis in East Ridge. He went to the Spanish War quite a while ago, but yet in modern times, he was at San Juan. You could see that he's a gym dandy, and him to be wasting time on Peggy, sickening. Even for a girl, she's poor and stuff, I don't mean, of course, that she's not all right in the moral direction, and I wouldn't let anybody else abuse her. Everybody says she's pretty, and I suppose she is, in a red-headed way. And she's awfully kind, you know, but, athletically, that's what I'm talking about. She doesn't amount to a row of pins. She can't fish or play tennis or write anything. Yet, all the same is true. I distinctly heard him say he loved her better than anything on the earth. I don't think he could've meant better than Rapscallion. He's awfully fond on that horse. Probably he forgot Rapscallion for the moment. Anyhow, Peggy was sniffling and seeing how she was going back to college. It was the Easter vacation, and how she was only a stupid girl and he would forget her. He said he'd never forget her in one minute all of his life. Which is silly. I've often forgotten really important things. Once I forgot to shop at Lorraine's for a tin of hot gingerbread, she'd had Sally make for me to entirely eat by myself, and Alice got devoured all up. Anyway, Dr. Den Bigg said that, and then Peggy sniffled some more. I heard him ask her, what is it, dear, dear, your grandmother, she said, then why wouldn't he let her be engaged to him like anybody else, and it was hard on a girl to have to beg a man to be engaged, and then he laughed a little, and they didn't either of them say anything for a while, but there were soft rustling sounds, a trot was after my bait. So I didn't listen carefully. When I noticed again, Dr. Den Bigg was saying how he was years and years older, and it was his duty to take care of her and not allow her to make a mistake that might ruin her life, and he wouldn't let her hurry and do a thing that she couldn't get out of, and a lot more. Pegg said that Forty wasn't old, and he was young enough for her, and she was certain, certain, I don't know what she was certain of, but she was horribly obstinate about it. And then Dr. Den Bigg said, if I only dared to let you, dear, if I only dared, and something about if she felt the same in two years or over a year or something, I can't remember all that truck, and then they said the same thing over a lot. And I heard a murmur call me Jack just once, and she murmured back as if it was a stunt. Jack, and then rustlings. I call him Jack all afternoon if he liked. Then after another one of those still games, Pegg said, if someone pinched her, and that seemed a queer remark, that I stood up to see what they're up to. Getting to my feet, I swung the line around, and the bait flopped on the bank, and hit Pegg's square in the mouth. I give you my word, I didn't mean to, but it was awfully funny, my. Didn't she squeal bloody murder? That's what makes a person despise, Peggy. She's no sort of sport. Another time I remember I had some worms in an envelope, and I happened to feel them in my pocket, so I pulled them out and slid it down the back of her neck, and you might have thought I'd done something awful. She yelled and wriggled and cried. She did. She actually cried, and you won't believe what she finished up by doing. She went and took a bath, a whole bath, and then, when she didn't need to, she can't see a joke at all. Now, Alice is a horrid meddler. She and Maria, yet Alice is a sport, and takes her medicine. I've seen that girl with a beetle in her hair, which I put up there, keep her teeth shut and not make a sound, only a low gurgle, until she got him and slung him out the window. Then she lambed me. I'd tell you, I respected her for it too, but she couldn't now. I'm stronger. Oh golly. Lorraine will cut the cookies if I don't tell what happened. I don't exactly know what was next, but Dr. Denbig somehow had me by the collar and gave me ink, like a big dog does a little one. See here, young limb, he said, I'm going to, and then he suddenly stopped, looked at Peggy, and then began to chuckle. And Peggy laughed and turned lobster color and put her face in her hands and just howled. Of course, I grinned too, and then I glanced up at him lovingly, and murmured, Jack, just like Peggy did. That seemed to sober him, and he considered a minute. Listen, Billy, he began slowly. We're in your power, but I'm going to trust you. I just hooted because there wasn't much else he could do, but he didn't smile, only his eyes sort of twinkled. Be calm, my son, he said, you're a gentleman, I believe, and all I need to do is to point out what you've seen and heard is not your secret. I'm sure that you realize it's unnecessary to ask you not to tell. Of course, you'll never tell one word, not one word, and he glared. That's understood, isn't it? I said, yep, sort of scared. He's splendidly big and arrogant, and he has that man-eating look, but he's a peach all the same. Are we friends, and brothers, he asked, and slid a look at Peg, yep. I said again, and I meant it, shake, said Dr. Denbig. We took a shake like two men. That was about all that happened that day, except about my fishing. That was real very interesting, but I suppose Lorraine wouldn't care for that. It was a good deal of strain on my feelings not to tell Alice, but of course I didn't. But once in a while I'd glance up at Dr. Denbig trustingly in murmur, Jack, as it would be in a fit because I always do it when the family just barely couldn't hear. As soon as Peg came home from college, we skipped to the mountains, and she went back from there to college again. I didn't have a fair show to get Rises out of him either, and in urgency of steam things like pigeons and the new puppy, I pretty nearly forgot their loves young dream. I didn't have a surmise that I was going to, to be interwoven among it like I was. I saw Anne Elizabeth going out with Dr. Denbig in his machine two or three times, but she's a regular fusser with men, and he's got a kind heart, so I wasn't wise to anything in that. The day Peg came home for Christmas, she was singing like the blue canaries down in the parlor, and I happened to pass Anne Elizabeth's door, and she was lacing up her shoes. Oh, Billy, ask Peggy if she doesn't want to go for a walk, will you? There's a lamb, she called to me. So I happened to have the intelligence from pristine sources that they went walking, and after that, Peg had a grouch on, and it was off her feet the rest of the vacation. Nobody knew why, I'd bent myself even, and it didn't occur to me that Anne Elizabeth had probably been rubbing in how well she knew Dr. Denbig, and the last day Peggy was home at the table, they were chaffing Anne Elizabeth about him. The way grown-ups do, instead of talking about facts of life and different kinds of horse feed, which is important in the winter, I heard mothers say in a sort of vachi tone to Peggy, they really seem to be fond of each other, perhaps there may be an engagement to write about Peggy. I thought to myself that mother didn't know that Dr. Denbig was prejudiced to being engaged, but I didn't say anything, it's wise not to say anything to your family beyond the necessary jargon of living. Peggy seemed to think the same, for she didn't answer, syllabus. But after dropping her glass of water into the fried potatoes, which Lena was kindly handing to her, she jumped and scooted, a few minutes later I wanted her to sew a snail on a boat, so I tried her door, it was locked. And then I knocked, and she took a awfully long time simply to open that door, and when she did, her eyes were red, she was shivering as if she was cold. Oh, Billy, Billy, she said, and then, of all things, she grabbed me and kissed me. I wriggled loose and said, sew up this snail for me, will you, huzzle. But she didn't pay attention, oh Billy, be a little good to me, she said, I'm so wretched and nobody knows but you, oh Billy, you like somebody better than me, who does, I asked, father? She half laughed, sort of a sickly laugh, no Billy, not father, he, Jack, Dr. Denbig, oh you know Billy, you heard what mother said, oh, oh, I answered to her in a contemplating slowness, oh that's so, do you mind if he gets engaged to Anne Elizabeth, do I mind, said Peggy, as if she was astonished, mind, Billy, I love him until I die, it would break my heart, oh no wouldn't I told her, because I'd sort of comfort her, that's truck, you can't break muscles just by loving, but I know how you feel, because that's the way I felt when father gave that Irish setter to the Tracy's. She went on chattering her teeth as if she was cold, so I put a table cover around her, you dear Billy, she said, but that was stuff, I wouldn't bother, I said, likely he's forgotten about you, I often forget things myself, that didn't seem to come for her, before she began to sob out loud, oh no Peg, don't cry, I observed to her, he probably likes Anne Elizabeth better than you, don't you see? I think she's prettier myself, and of course she's a lot cleverer, she tells funny stories and makes people laugh, you never do that, you're a good sort, but quiet and not much fun, don't you see? Maybe he got plain tired of you, but instead being cheered up by my explaining things, she put her head on the table and just yowled. Those are queer species, you're cruel, cruel, she sobbed out, and you bet that surprised me, me that was comforting her for all I was worth, I pat her on the back of the neck and thought hard of other soothing things I could squeeze out, then I had an idea, tell you what Peg, I said, it's too darn bad of Dr. Denbig, if he just did it for meanness when you haven't done anything to him, but maybe he got riled because he begged him, so to let you be engaged to him, of course a man doesn't want to be bothered if he wants to get engaged if he wants to, and if he doesn't want to, he doesn't, and that's all. I think probably Dr. Denbig was afraid you'd be at him again when you came home, so he hurried up and snatched an Elizabeth, Peggy lifted her face and stared at me. She was a sight, with her eyes all bunged up and her cheeks sloppy, you think he's engaged to her, do you Billy? She asked me, her voice sort of shook and I thought I'd be better to settle it for her one way or another, so I nodded and said, wouldn't be surprised, and then if you'll believe it, that girl got angry at me, Billy you're brutal, Billy you're brutal, you're like any other man thing, cold blooded and faithless, and she began choking, choking again, and I was disgusted and cleared out, I was glad when she went off to college because though she's a kind hearted girl, she's so peevish and un-talkative, it made me tired. I think people ought to be cheerful around their own homes, but the family didn't seem to see it, they're such a lot of us, and you have to blow trumpet before you gain any special notice, except me, when I don't wash my hands, yet what's the use of washing your hands when you're certain to get them dirty again in five minutes? Well, a while ago Peggy wrote she was engaged to Harry Gower, and there was great excitement in the happy home, my people are mobile in their temperatures anyway, a little thing stirs them up, I thought it was queerish, but I didn't know, but Peggy had changed her mind about loving Dr. Dan Biggan until she died, I should think that was too long myself. I was busy getting my saddle mended and a new bridle, so I didn't have time for gossip, Harry came to visit the family, and the man I inspected him over, I knew he was sissy, if you'll believe me that grown-up man can't chin himself, he sings and paints apple blossoms, but he fell three cornered over a fence, that I vaulted, he may be fascinating as Lorraine says, but he isn't worth saving, in my judgments. I said so to Dr. Dan Biggan one day when he picked me up in his machine and brought me home from school, and he was sympathetic and asked intelligent questions, at least some of them were just slow remarks about if Peggy seemed to be very happy and that sort of stuff that doesn't have any foundations, I told him particularly that I like automobiles and he thought it for a minute and said, if you were going to be playing near the Whitman station tomorrow, I'll pick you up and take you on a 20 mile spin, I'm lunching with some people near Whitman and going on to Elmville, oh pickles said I, will you really, of course I'll be there, I'll drive over and watch you express man, he's a friend of mine right after lunch, I said, and I'll wait around the station for you, so I did that and while I was waiting, I saw Elizabeth coming, I saw her first, so I hid, I was afraid if she saw me, she'd find out I was going with Dr. Dan Biggan, snatch him herself, I heard her sending the crazy telegram to Harry Goward and then I forgot all about it, distract Alice's mind off, cookies that have accumulated at Lorraine's house, Alice is a pig, she never lets me stuff in peace, so I told her about the telegram, I knew Alice would be perturbed with that, she just loves to tell things but she made me tell Peggy and there's a hole of blue promptly, nobody confided a word with me and I didn't care much but I saw them all whispering in low tones and being very busy about it and Peg looking madder than a goat and I guess that Alice had made me raise Cain, now I've got to back up and start over, golly, it's harder than you'd think just to write down things the way they happen, like I promised Lorraine, let's see, oh yes, of course, about Dr. Dan Biggan the bubble, I was in a fit for fear, dear Aunt, dear Aunt, Elizabeth would linger until the doctor came and then somehow I'd be minus one driving the machine, she didn't, she cleared out with solidity and dispatch in my aurora as a school teacher would say, came in his rolling car and I popped out and we had a quirking time, he let me drive a little, you see the machine is a, well Lorraine said, especially, I was not to describe automobiles, that seems such a stupid restrictiveness but it's a case of cookies so I'll cut that out, there really wasn't much else to tell, only that Dr. Dan Big started it right in and raked out the inmost linings of my soul about Peggy and Harry Goward, it wasn't exactly cross examination because he wasn't cross, yet he fired the questions at me like a cannon and I answered quick, you bet, Dr. Dan Big knows what he wants and he means to get it, just by accident toward the last I let out about that day in the winter when they were chaffing and Elizabeth at the table about him and how he'd taken her out in the machine and how mother had said there might be an engagement to write Peggy about, oh Dr. Dan Big, oh, oh, funny the way he went on saying oh, oh, I thought if that interested him he might like to hear about Peg throwing a fit in her room after, so I told him that and how I tried to comfort her and how unreasonable she was and what do you suppose he said, he looked at me a minute with his eyebrows way down and his mouth jammed together and he brought out you little devil, that's not the worst he said either, I guess mother wouldn't let me go without with him if she knew he used profanity, Maria wouldn't anyways, I have decided I wouldn't tell them but it's the only time I ever caught him, the other thing is this, he said to himself but out loud I think he'd forgotten me so they made her believe I liked her and better and then in a minute she said it would break her heart, bless her and to her three or other interlocutory remarks like that meaning nothing in particular and then all the sudden he brought his fist down on his knee with a bang and said damn it Elizabeth, not loud but compressed and explodingly you know I looked at him and said beg pardon Billy, your aunt is a very charming woman but I mean it I only asked her to go out with me because she talked more about Peggy than anyone else would, he went on, I thought a minute and I put two and two together pretty quick you mind about Peggy's being engaged with Harry Gower don't you I asked him for I saw right through him you look queer yes I mind he said but wouldn't you wouldn't be engaged to her yourself I propounded him and grinned and said something about more things in heaven and earth and called me Horatio I reckon he got stuck crazy a minute and then he made me tell him further what Peggy said and what I said and you laughed that time about my comforting her and though I don't see why it doesn't pay to give up important things to be kind and thoughtful in this world nobody appreciates it and you're sure to be sorry and you took time when I got upstairs after comforting Peggy my toad had jumped in the water pitcher and got about drowned he never was the same toad after and if I hadn't stopped in Peggy's room to do good it wouldn't have happened and Dr. Denbig laughed at me besides however for an old chap of 40 he's a peach how I'm not kicking a doctor Denbig then let's see it makes me tired going on writing this stuff I wish I was through but the cookies I see a vision of a mountain range of cookies with currents on them crumbly cookies up and at it again for me the next stunt I had a shy at was a letter that Harry Goward asked Alice to give Peggy and Alice gave it to me because she's up to something else that minute she didn't look at the address but you bet your sweet life I did when I heard is from Harry Goward I saw it was addressed to Peg and I stuffed in my pocket plain forgot because I was in a hurry to go fishing with said Tracy I put a chub on top of it that I wanted to keep for bait and when I pulled it out the letter the chub hadn't helped much the envelope was a little slimy I said gee Sid said what's that a letter to my sister from that jump Harry Goward said I I've got to take it to her looks pretty sad now Sid didn't like Harry Goward anymore than I did because he borrowed Sid's best racket and left it out in the rain and then just laughed so he said not sad enough give to me I'll fix it he had some molasses candy they bit he rubbed it over a little and then suddenly we heard Alice calling and he crammed the letter in his pocket candy and all and there were some other things there stuck to it we're so rattled when Alice appeared and demanded that very letter in a lordly way that I forgot if I had it or said and I went all through my clothes looking for it and then Sid found in his oh my Miss Alice turned up her nose when she saw it it did look smudgy Sid hurriedly scrubbed it with his handkerchief but even that didn't really make it clean and by that time you couldn't read the address Alice didn't ask me if I'd read it or I'd have told her there was a fuss after word in the family but I kept clear of it I wouldn't have time to get through what I have to do if I attended to their fusses so all I knew was that it had something to do with that letter all the family were taking trains like a procession two or three days I don't know why so Lorraine can't expect me to write that down there's only one other event of great signification that I know about and nobody knows that except me and Dr. Dan Bagan Peggy it was that way the doctor saw me on the street one afternoon I can't remember what day it was and stopped his machine and motioned me to get in you bet I got he shook his hands with me just the way you would with father as not if I were a contemptible puppy Billy my son I want you to do something for me he said all right said I I've got to see Peggy he went on I've got to and you looked as fierce as a circus tiger I can't sit still and not lift a finger and let this wretched business go on I won't lose her for any silly scruples I didn't know what he was driving at but I said I wouldn't either in a sympathetic manner I've got to see her he fired at me again yep I said she's at the house right now come on but that didn't suit him he explained she wouldn't look at him when the others were around and that she slid off and wormed out of his way so he couldn't get at her anyhow just like a girl wasn't it not to face the music well anyway he cooked up a plan that he wanted me to do and I promised I would he wanted me to get Peggy to go up the river to their former spooning resort only put it differently and he would be there waiting to make Peggy talk to him which he seemed to desire more than honey and honeycomb lovers are a strange animal I may be foolish but I prefer toads with them you can tie a string around the hind leg and you got them but with leather lovers saw this way one way and upside down in the next and wondering what's hurt feelings ever and if he's got tired of you and polyandering around to get interviews up rivers when you could easier sit on a Piazza and talk oh and all such it seems to me that things would go a lot simpler if everybody would cut out most of the feelings department and just eat their meals and look after their animals and play all they get time for and then go to sleep quietly fussing is such a depravity but they wouldn't do what I said not if I told them so I let it lie low and think next morning I harnessed the pony in the cart peg take a drive with me come on and peg look gratified and mother said I was a dear thoughtful child and Grandma said it would do the girl good and I was a noble lad so I got Ecomium's all around for once only and Elizabeth she looked thoughtful I rag rattle hot spur that's the pony out to the happy hunting ground by the river till I saw dr. Dan Biggs gray cat behind a bush and I rightly argued that this manly form was hitched on to it for here rose up in his might and I stopped the cart Peggy gas and said oh oh we must go home oh Billy drive on which Billy didn't do not so you'd notice it then the doctor said and is I am the Ten Commandments manner get out Peggy and held his hand and Peggy said I won't I can't and immediately did the goose Billy my son he said will you kindly deprive us of the light and the presence for one hour by the clock here's my timepiece one hour go and he gave me hot spur and a slap so he leaped dr. Dan Biggs is the most different person from Harry Goward I know well I drove around the Red Bridge and was gone an hour and 12 minutes and I thought they'd be missing me and in a fit to go home so I just raised hot spur the last mile I'm awfully sorry I'm so late I said I I got looking at some pigs so I forgot I'm sorry said I pay looked up at me as if she couldn't remember who I was and inquired wonderingly is it an hour yet and dr. Dan Biggs said great Scott boy you needn't have hurried that's lovers all over and then they hadn't finished yet you'll believe me dr. Dan Bigg went on talking as they stood up just as if I wasn't living you won't promise me he asked her and then she said oh Jack how can I I don't know what to do but I'm engaged to him that's a solid thing saw him nonsense said the doctor you don't love him you never did you never could be a woman dearest and and this wretched mess I never would have thought I loved him if I hadn't believed had lost you Peggy ruminated to herself but I must think as if she hadn't thunk for an hour how long must you think dr. fired at her don't be crossing me she said she like a baby that big capable man picked up her hand and kissed it shame on him no no dear he said as meek is a pie all only will wait only you must decide the right way and remember and that it's hard then he put her on to the cart clinging Lee I'd have chucked her and I leaned over toward him the last thing and threw my head lovingly on one side and rolled my eyes up and murmured at him goodbye Jack and started hot spur before he could hit me now thank the stars there's just one or two little items more that I've got to write one is that I heard mother tell father that they were on the front Piazza alone and I was teaching the puppy to beg right inside of him on the grass they think I'm an earless freak maybe she told him that dear Peggy was grown into such a strong splendid woman and that she'd been talking to her and she thought the child would be able to give her up her weak vacillating lover with hardly a paying because she hadn't realized that he was unworthy of her that peg had said she couldn't marry a man she didn't admire and wasn't that noble of her noble of your grandmother to give up a perfect lady like Harry Goward when she's got a real man up her sleeve I'd have made him sit up and take notice if I hadn't promised not to tell which reminds me that I ought to explain how I got dr. Denbig to let me write for Lorraine I put it to him strongly you see about the cookies and at first he said not on your life not in a thousand years and then but what's the use of writing that Lorraine is all on to all that but my pickles won't there be a circus when Alice finds out I've known things that she didn't won't Alice be hopping gee end of chapter 10 recorded by David striker chapter 11 the whole family this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the whole family by Alice Brown chapter 11 remember said Charles Edward he had run in for a minute on his way home from the office where he had been clearing out his desk for good and all he tells us remember next week we'll see us out of this land of the free and home of the talkative he meant our sailing I shall be glad to be with him in Lorraine and whatever you do peg don't talk except to mother talk to her all you want mother has the making of a woman in her if mother'd been celibate she'd have been also a peach but I don't want to talk said I don't want to talk to anybody good for you said Charles Edward now I'll run along I sat there on the Piazza watching him thinking he'd been awfully good to me and feeling less bruised somehow than I do when the rest of the family advise me except mother and then I saw him stop turn round as if he was coming back and then settle himself and plant his feet wide apart as he does when the family questions him about business but I saw somebody in light blue through the trees and I knew it was Aunt Elizabeth Alice was down in the hammock reading and eating cookies and she saw her too Alice threw the book away and got her long legs out of the hammock and ran I thought she was coming into the house to hide from on Elizabeth that's what we all do the first minute then we recover ourselves and go down to meet her but Alice dropped on her knees by my chair and threw her arms around me forgive Peggy she moaned oh forgive I saw she had on my fraternity pin I thought she meant that so I said you can wear it today but she only hugged me the tighter and ran on in a rigamarole I didn't understand she's coming and she'll get it out of Lorraine and they'll all be down on us Charles Edwards and our Elizabeth stood talking together and just then I saw her put her hand on his shoulder she's trying to come round him said Alice I began to see she was really in earnest now he's squirming oh Peggy maybe she's found it out some way and she's telling him and they'll tell you and you'll think I'm false as hell I knew she didn't mean anything by the word because whenever she says such things they're always in quotations she began to cry real tears it was Billy put it into my head said she and Lorraine put it into his Lorraine wanted him to write out exactly what he knew and he didn't know anything except about the telegram and how the letter got wuzzled and I told him I'd help him write it as it ought to be if life were a banquet and beauty were wine but I told him we must make him say in it how we got to conceal it from me and they think we got it up together so I wrote it and Billy copied it said Alice perhaps I wasn't nice to the child for I couldn't listen to her I was watching Charles Edwards and on Elizabeth and saying to myself that mother'd want me to sit still and meet on Elizabeth when she came like a good girl as she used to say to me when I was little and begged to get out of hard things Alice went on talking and gasping pigs is she he's perfectly splendid dr. Denbe's yes dear said I he's very nice I've adored him for years said Alice I could trust him with my whole future I could trust him with yours then I laughed I couldn't help it and Alice was hurt for some reason and got up and held her head high and went into the house and on Elizabeth came up the drive and that's how she found me laughing she had on a lovely light blue linen nobody wears such delicate shades as on Elizabeth I remember one day when she came in an embroidered pongee over now green father groaned and grandmother said what is it Cyrus if you got a pain yes said father the pain I always have when I see sheep dressed in lambs fashions grandmother laugh and mother said sh mother's dear this time on Elizabeth had on a great picture hat with light blue ostrich plumes was almost the shape of her lavender one that Charles Edward said made her look like a costar's bride when she bent over me and put both arms around me the plumes tickled my ear I think that's why I was so cross I wriggled away from her and said don't on Elizabeth spoke quite solemnly dear child she said you are broken indeed I began to feel again just as I had been feeling as if I weren't a show for everybody to look at I found I was shaking all over was angry with myself because of it she had drawn up a chair and held both my hands Peggy she said haven't you been to the hospital to see that poor boy I didn't have to answer because there was a whirl on the gravel and Billy on his bicycle came riding up with the mail threw himself off his wheel plunged up the steps as he always does pretending to tickle his nose with on Elizabeth's feathers as he pressed behind her and whispered to me shoot that but he had heard on Elizabeth asking if I was not going to see the poor boy and he said as if he couldn't help it huh I guess if she did she wouldn't get in his mother's walking up and down in front of the hospital when she ain't with him and she's got a hook nose a white hair down up on a roll and an eyeglass on a stick I guess there won't be any nymphs and shepherdesses get by her on Elizabeth stood and thought for a minute her eyes looked as they do when she stares through you and doesn't see you at all Alice asked Charles Edwards once if he thought she was soaring over the past when she had that look and he said bless your child no more than a gentle industrious spider she's spinning a web but in a minute mother had stepped out onto the Piazza and I felt as if she had come to my rescue it was the way she used to come when I broke a dollar toward my skirt but we didn't look at each other mother and I we didn't mean our Elizabeth should see there was anything to rescue me from on Elizabeth turned to mother and seemed to pounce upon her Ada she said has my engagement been announced not to my knowledge said mother she spoke with a great deal of dignity I understood that the name of the gentleman had been withheld withheld repeated on Elizabeth what do you mean by withheld Billy whom are those letters for in spite of ourselves mother I started letters had begun to seem rather tragic to us once a gas bill said Billy once for you on Elizabeth took the large square envelope and tore it open then she looked at mother and smiled a little and tossed her head this is from Lyman Wilde said she I thought I had never seen on Elizabeth look so young must have meant something more to mother than it did to me for she stared at her every minute very seriously I'm truly glad for you Elizabeth said she and then she turned at me daughter said she I shall need you about the salad she smiled at me and went in I knew what she meant she was giving me a chance to follow her if I needed to escape but there was hardly time I was at the door when on Elizabeth rustled after me so quickly that it sounded like a flight there on the Piazza she put her arms about me child she whispered child for lesson for lesson I drew away a little and looked at her then I thought why she is old but I hadn't understood I knew the word was German but I hadn't taken that in the elective course what is it on Elizabeth I asked I had a feeling I mustn't leave her she smiled a little a queer sad smile Peggy I want you to read this letter said she she gave it to me it was written on very thick gray paper with rough edges and there was a margin of two inches at the left the handwriting was beautiful only not very clear and when I puzzled over it for a minute she snatched it back again I'll read it to you said she well I thought it was the most beautiful letter the gentlemen's said she had always been the ideal of his life he owed everything and by everything he meant chiefly his worship of beauty to her he asked her to accept his undying devotion and to believe that however far distant and time should part them he was hers and hers only he said he looked back with an affable contempt upon the days when he had hoped to build a nest and see her beside him there now he had reached the two at Beren and he could only ask to know that she too was winging her bright way into regions where he in another life may follow and sing beside her and liquid throbbing notes to pierce the stars he ended by saying that he was not very fit the opera season had been a monumental experience this year and he was taking refuge with an English brotherhood to lead for a time a cloistered life instinct with beauty in its worship but that there as everywhere he would hers eternally how glad I was of the verbal memory I had often been so praised for I knew almost every word of that lovely letter by heart after the one reading I shall never forget it well said on Elizabeth she was looking at me and again I saw how long it must have been since she was young well what do you think of it I told the truth oh I said I think it's a beautiful letter you do said on Elizabeth does it strike you as being a love letter I couldn't answer fast enough why on Elizabeth I said he tells you so he says he loves you eternally it's beautiful you fool said on Elizabeth you pink cheek little fool you haven't opened the door yet not any door not one of them oh you happy happy fool she called through the window mother was arranging flowers there for tea Ada you must telephone the banner my engagement is not to be announced then she turned to me Peggy she said in a low voice as if mother was not to hear tomorrow you must drive with me to Whitman something choked me in my throat either fear of her or dread of what she meant to make me do but I looked into her face and answered with all the strength I had on Elizabeth I shan't go near the hospital don't you think it's decent for you to call a mrs. Goward she said she gave me a little shake and it made me angry it may be decent I said but I shan't do it very well said on Elizabeth her voice was sweet again then I must do it for you nobody asks you to see Harry himself I'll run in and have a word with him but Peggy you simply must pay your respects to mrs. Goward no no no I heard myself answering as if I were in some strange dream then I said why it would be dreadful mother wouldn't let me on Elizabeth came closer and put her hands on my shoulders she has a little fragrance about her not like flowers but old laces perhaps that have been in a long time drawer with auras and face powder and things Peggy said she never tell your mother I asked you I felt myself stiffen she was whispering and I saw she meant it oh Peggy don't tell your mother she is not not simpatic I might lose my home here my only home Peggy promised me daughter mother was calling from the dining room I slipped away from on Elizabeth's hands I promise that I you shan't lose your home daughter mother called again and I went in that night at supper nobody talked except mother and father and they did every minute as if they wanted to keep the rest of us from speaking a word it was all about the works father was describing some new designs he had accepted and telling how Charles Edwards said they would do very well for the trimmings of a hearse and mother coughed and said Charles Edwards ideals were always good and father said not where the market was concerned on Elizabeth had put on a white dress and I thought she looked sweet because she was sad and it had made her face quite pale and I was chiefly busy in thinking out of escape before anybody could talk to me it doesn't seem safe nowadays to speak a word because we don't know where it will lead us Alice too looked pale poor child and kept glancing at me in a way that made me so sorry I wanted to tell her I didn't care about her pranks and billies whatever they were and whatever she had written it was sure to be clever the teacher says Alice has a positive genius for writing and before many years she'll be in all the magazines when supper was over I ran upstairs to my room I sat down by the window in the dark and wondered when the moon would rise I felt excited as if something were going to happen and in spite of all the dreadful things that had happened to us and might keep on happening I felt as if I could jive with joy there were steps on the porch below my window and I heard father's voice that's ridiculous Elizabeth he said ridiculous if it's a good thing for other girls to go to college it's been a good thing for her I said oh Elizabeth but is it a good thing then I knew they were talking about me and I put my fingers in my ears and said the Latin prepositions I've been talked about enough they may talk but I won't hear by and by I took my fingers out and listened they had gone in and everything was still then I began to think it over was it a bad thing for me to go to college I'm different from what I was three years ago but I should have been different if I'd stayed home for one thing I'm not so shy I remember the first day I came out of classroom and still mndame walked up to me and said so you're charlie ned's sister I couldn't look at him I said staring down at my notebook and now I should stay quite calmly oh you must be mr. dame I believe you teach psychology but I stood and stared I believe I looked at my hands for a while and wished I hadn't gotten ink on my forefinger and he had to say I'm the psychology man charlie ned and I were college friends he wrote me about you but I though I didn't look at him that first time I thought he had the kindest voice that ever was except mothers and perhaps that was why I selected psychology for my specialty I was afraid I might be stupid and I knew he was kind and then came that happy time when I was getting to acquainted with everybody and mr. dame was always doing things for me I'm awfully fond of charlie ned you know he's told me you must let me take his place and mr. goward told me all those things at the dance how he had found life a bitter waste how he had been betrayed over and over by the vain and worldly how his heart was dead and nobody could bring it back to life but me he said I was his fate and his guiding star and since love was a mutual flame that meant he was my fate too but it seemed as if the beginning of all my bad luck for about that time still mundane was different and one day he stopped me in the yard when I was going to chapel miss peggy said he don't let's quarrel he held out his hand and I gave him mine quickly no said I am not quarreling I want to ask you something said he you must answer truly if I have a friend and she's doing something foolish should I tell her should I write to her brother and tell him why said I do you mean me then I understood you think I'm not doing very well in my psychology said I you think I've made the wrong choice I looked at him then I never saw him look just so he had my hand and now I took it away but he wouldn't talk about the psychology peggy said he do your people know goward they will in vacation I said he's going home with me we're engaged you know oh said he oh then it's true then let him meet charles edward at once will you tell charles edward I particularly want him to know goward his voice sounded sharp and quick and he turned away and left me but I didn't give his message to charles edward and somehow I don't know why I didn't talk about him after I came home dane never wrote me whether he looked you up said charles edward one day not very civil of him but even then I couldn't tell him mr. dane is one of the people I can never talk about as if they were like everybody else perhaps that was because he was so kind in a sort of intimate beautiful way and when I went back after vacation he had resigned and they said he had inherited some money and gone away and after he went I never understood the psychology at all mr. goward used to laugh at me for taking it only he said I could get honors and everything my verbal memory is so good but I told him and it's true that the last part of the book is very dull while I was going over all this still with that strange excited feeling of happiness I heard on elizabeth's voice from below she was calling softly Peggy Peggy are you up there I got on my feet just as quietly as I could and slipped through mother's room and down the back stairs mother was in the vegetable garden watering the transplanted lettuce I ran out to her mother I said may I go over to Lorraine's and spend the night yes lamb said mother that's a good deal for mother to say I'll run over now I told her I won't stop to take anything Lorraine will give me a nighty I ran through the vegetable garden to the back gate and out into the street there I drew a long breath I don't know what I had thought on elizabeth could do to me but I felt safe then I could laugh at it all because it seems as if I must have been sort of crazy that night I began to run as if I couldn't get there fast enough but when I got to the steps I heard Lorraine laughing and I stopped to listen to see whether there was anyone there I tell peter said she that it's his opportunity don't you remember the great magician story of the man who was always afraid he should miss his opportunity and the opportunity came and sure enough the man didn't know it and slipped by well that mustn't be peter it mustn't be any of us voice things are mighty critical though it's as if everybody the world in the flesh and the whole family has been blundering around and setting their feet down as near as they could to a flower but the flowers and trampled jet will build a fence around it my heart beat so fast that I had to put my hand over it I wondered as if I was going to have heart failure and I knew grandmother would say digitalus when I thought of that I laughed and Lorraine called out who's there she came to the long window my peggy child she said come in she had me by the hand and led me forward they got up as I stepped in and Charles Edward and still mundane then I knew why I was glad if still mundane had been here all these dreadful things would not have happened because he's a psychologist and he would have understood everybody at once and influenced them before they had time to do wrong jove said Charles Edward don't you look handsome peg goose said Lorraine as if she wanted him to be still a good neat girl is always handsome there's an epigram for you and Peggy's hair is loose in three places let me fix that for you child so we all laughed and Lorraine pinned me up in queer tender way as if she were mother dressed me for something important and we sat down and began to talk about college I'm afraid still mundane and I did much of the talking for Lorraine and Charles Edwards looked at each other and smiled a little in a fashion they have as if they understand each other and Lorraine got up to show him the bag she had bought that day for the steamer and while she was holding it out to him and asking him if it costs too much she stopped short and called out sharply who's there I laughed Lorraine has the sharpest ears I said ears said Lorraine it isn't ears I smell auras she's coming Mr. Dean will you take Peggy out of that window into the garden don't yip either of you while you're with him gunshot and don't appear till I tell you Lorraine came a voice softly whipped from the front walk it was Aunt Elizabeth she has a way of calling to announce herself in a sweet cooing tone I said to Charles Edwards once it was like a dove and she said no my child not doves but woodcock Alice giggled called out quite loudly springes to catch woodcock and he shook his head at her and said you all knowing amp isn't even Shakespeare hidden from you but now the voice didn't sound sweet to me at all because I wanted to get away we rose at the same time Mr. Dean and I and Lorraine seemed to waft us from the house on a kind little wind at the foot of the steps we stopped for fear the gravel should crunch and while we waited for Aunt Elizabeth to go in the other way I looked at Mr. Dean to see if he wanted to laugh as much as I did he did his eyes were full of fun and pleasure he gave me a little nod as if we were two children going to play a game we knew all about then I heard Aunt Elizabeth's voice inside it was low and broken what Charles Edward called her come and comfort me voice dears she said you're going abroad yes Charles Edward answered yes it looks that way now yes said Lorraine rather sharply I thought as if she meant to show him he ought to be more decisive yes we are dears said Aunt Elizabeth will you take me with you Mr. Dean started as if he meant to go back in the house I must have started to in my heart be hard there was a silence of minute two minutes three minutes perhaps then I heard Charles Edward speak in a voice I didn't know he had no on Elizabeth no not so you'd notice it Mr. Dean gave a nod as if he were relieved and we both began tiptoeing down the path in the dark but it wasn't dark anymore the moon was coming through the locust trees and I smelled the lindons by the wall oh I said it's summer isn't it I don't believe I've thought of summer once this year yes said he and there never was a summer such as this is going to be I knew he was very athletic but I don't believe I thought how much he cared for out of doors come down here I said this is Lorraine's jungle there's a seat in it we can smell the ferns Charles Edwards had been watering the garden everything was sweet thousands of voters came out such as I'd never smelled before and all the time the moon was rising after we'd sat there a while talking a little about college about my trip abroad I suddenly found I could not go on there were tears in my eyes I felt as if so good a friend ought to know how I had behaved for I must have been very weak and silly to make such a mistake he ought to hear the worst about me oh I said do you know what happened to me he made a little movement toward me with both hands then he took them back and sat quite still and said in that kind voice I know you're going abroad and when you come back you will laugh at the dolls you played with when you were a child but I cried softly though because it was just as if I were alone thinking things out and being sorry sorry for myself and ashamed until now I'd never known how ashamed I was don't cry child he was saying for god's sakes don't cry I think it came over me then as I hadn't before that all that part of my life was spoiled I'd been engaged and thought I liked somebody and now it was all over and done I don't know what I'm crying for I said at last when I could stop I suppose it's because I'm different different from all the other girls different for myself I can't ever be happy anymore he spoke very quickly is it because you liked Goward so much like him I said like Harry Goward why I there I stopped because I couldn't think of any words small enough and I think he understood for a laugh out quickly now said he I'm a psychologist you remember that don't you it used to impress you a great deal oh I said it does impress me nobody has ever seemed so wise as you nobody then it's understood that I'm a sage from the Orient I know the workings of the human mind and I tell you a profound truth that the only way to stop thinking of a thing is to stop thinking of it now you're not to think of Goward and all this puppet show again not a minute not an instant do you hear he sounded quite stern and I answered as if I'd been in class yes sir you are to think of Italy and how blue the sea is and Germany and how good the beer is and Charlie Nedd and Lorraine and what trumps they are do you hear yes sir said I and because I knew we were going to part and there would be nobody else to advise me in the same way I went on in a great hurry for fear there would not be time I can't live at home even after we come back I could never be pointed at like on Elizabeth and have people whisper and say I've had a disappointment I must make my own life I must have a profession do you think I could teach do you think I could learn to teach psychology he didn't answer for a long time and I didn't dare look at him though the moon was so bright now that I could see how white his hand was lying on his knee and the chasing of the ring on his little finger it had been his mother's engagement ring he told me once but he spoke and very gently and seriously I'm sure you could teach some things whether psychology but we can talk of that later there'll be lots of time it proves I'm going over on the same steamer with Charlie Nedd and Lorraine and you you are I cried well I never heard of anything so I couldn't find the word for it but everything stopped being puzzling on a happy and looked clear and plain yes said he it's very convenient isn't it we can talk over your future and you could even take a lesson or two in psychology but I fancy well she'll have a good deal to looking for purposes and asking what the run is people are terribly busy at sea then it occurred to me that he had never been here before and why was he here now how did you happen to come I asked I suppose I really felt as if God sent him why said he why then I left well said he to tell you the truth I was going abroad if certain things happened and I needed to make sure I didn't want to write so I ran down to see Charlie Nedd but could he tell you said I and had they happened he laughed as if it's something I needn't share no he said the things weren't going to happen but I decided to go abroad I was curious or incurious or as Lorraine says but I insisted what had Charles Edward to do with it there were a great many pauses as if I think he didn't know what was wise to say I shouldn't imagine it would always be so with psychologists they understand so well what effect every word will have well to tell the truth he answered it last in a kinderling way I wanted to make sure I was well with my favorite pupil before I left the country I couldn't quite go without it Mr. Dane I said you don't mean me yes he answered I mean you I could have danced and sung with happiness oh I said I that I must have been a better scholar than I thought I feel as though I could teach psychology this minute you could said he this minute and we both laughed and didn't know after all what we were laughing at at least I didn't but suddenly I was cold with fear why I said if you've only really decided to go tonight how do you know you can get passage on our ship because sweet lady reason said he I used Charlie Ned's telephone and found out that was a pretty named sweet lady reason we didn't talk anymore then for a long time because suddenly the moon seems so bright and the garden so sweet but all at once I heard a step on the gravel walk and knew who it was that's Charles Edward I said he's been home without Elizabeth we must go in no said he no Peggy there won't be such another night then he laughed quickly and got up yes he said there will be such nights over and over again come Peggy little psychologist we'll go in we found Lorraine and Charles Edward standing in the middle of the room holding hands and looking at each other you're a hero Lorraine was saying and a gentleman and a scholar and my own particular Peter don't admire me Charles Edwards said or you'll get me so bellicose I shall have to go challenge Lyman Wilde poor old chap I believe to my soul he's had the spirit to make off speak gently of Lyman Wilde said Lorraine I'll never forget what we owe him sometimes I burn a candle to his photograph I've even dropped a tear before it well children she turned her bright eyes on us as if she liked us very much and we too stood facing them too and it seemed all quite solemn suddenly Charles Edward put out his hand and shook Mr. Danes and they both looked very much moved as grandmother would say I hadn't known they'd liked each other so well do you know what time it is said Lorraine half past 11 by Shrewsbury's clock I'll bake the cakes and draw the ale gee whiz said Mr. Danes I'd never heard things like that it sounded like Billy and I liked it I've got to catch that midnight train for a minute it seemed as if we all stood shouting at each other Lorraine asking him to stay all night Charles Edwards giving him a cigar to smoke on the way I explaining to Lorraine that I'd sleep on the pearl or so for leaving the guest room free and Mr. Danes declaring he had a million things to do before sailing then he and Charles Edwards dashed out into the night and Alice would say and I thought it was a dream that he'd been here at all except I felt his touch on my hand and Lorraine put her arms around me and kissed me and said now you sweet child run upstairs and look at the moonlight and dream and dream and dream I don't know whether I slept that night but if I did I did not dream the next four noon I waited until 11 o'clock before I went home I wanted to be sure on Elizabeth was safely away at Whitman yet after all I did not dread her now I had been told what to do someone was telling me of that song the other day command me dear and I had been commanded to stop thinking of all those things I hated I had done it mother met me at the stop she seemed a little anxious but when she put her hand on my shoulder and really looked at me she smiled the way I love to see her smile that's a good girl she said and she added quickly as if she thought I might not like it and ought to know at once on Elizabeth saw Dr. Denbigh going by to Whitman and she asked him to take her over did she said I oh mother the old white rose is out there they are back again said mother he's leaving her at the gate well we both waited for on Elizabeth to come up the path I picked the first white rose and made mother smell it and when I had smelled it myself I began to sing under my breath come into the garden mod because I remembered last night hush child said mother quickly Elizabeth you are tired come right in on Elizabeth's lip trembled a bit I thought she was going to cry I had never known it or cry though I had seen tears in her eyes and remembered once when she was talking to Dr. Denbigh Charles Edward noticed them and laughed those are not idle tears peg he said to me they're getting in their work now I was so sorry for her that I stopped thinking of last night and put it all away it seemed cruel to be so happy on Elizabeth sat down on the step and mother brought her an eggnog it had been already for grandmother and I could see mother thought on Elizabeth needed it if she was willing to make grandmother wait Ada said on Elizabeth suddenly as she sipped it what was Dr. Denbigh's wife like why said mother I'd almost forgotten you had a wife it was so long ago she died in the first year of their marriage on Elizabeth laughed a little almost as if no one was there he began to talk about her quite suddenly this morning she said it seems peg reminds her of her he's devoted to her memory that's what he said devoted to her memory that's good said mother cheerfully as if he didn't know what to say more letters Lily any for us I could see mother was very curious of her for some reason or she never would have called her Lily for me on Elizabeth as if she were tired said for mrs. Chattoway in a package too looks like visiting cars that seems to be from her too she broke open the package why she said of all things why that's a pretty engraving said mother looking over her shoulder she must have thought they were on Elizabeth's cards why of all things and on Elizabeth began to flush pink and then scarlet she looked as pretty as a rose but a little angry I thought she put up her head rather hotly mrs. Chattoway is very eccentric she said a genius quite a genius in our own line Ada I won't come down to luncheon this has been sufficient let me have some tea in my own room at four please she get up in her letter and one of the cards fell to the floor I picked them up for and I saw on the card mrs. Ronald Chattoway magnetic healer and medium mystic divulger lost articles of specialty I don't know why but I thought like mother and on Elizabeth well of all things but the rest of that day mother and I were too busy to exchange a word about mrs. Chattoway or even on Elizabeth we plunged into my preparations for sale and talked dresses and hats and ran ribbons and things and I burned letters and one photograph I burned that without looking at it and suddenly mother got upset quickly and dropped her lap full of work my stars said she I've forgotten on Elizabeth's tea it's of no consequence dear said on Elizabeth's voice at the door I asked Katie to bring it up why said mother you're not going I held my breath on Elizabeth looks so pretty she was dressed that I never saw her before a close fitting black gown and plain white collar and a little close black hat she looked almost like some sister of charity Ada said she and Peggy I'm going to tell you something and it is my particular desire that you keep it from the whole family they would not understand I am going to ally myself with mrs. Chattoway in a connection which will lead to the widest possible influence for her and for me in mrs. Chattoway's letter today she urges me to join her she says I have enormous magnetism and and other qualifications don't you want me to tell Cyrus said mother she spoke quite faintly you can simply tell Cyrus that I have gone to mrs. Chattoway said on Elizabeth you can also tell him I shall be too occupied to return goodbye Ada goodbye Peggy remember it is the bruised herb that gives out the sweetest odor before I could stop myself I had laughed out of happiness I think for I remember how the spearmint had smelled in the garden when still mundane and I stepped on it in the dark and how bright the moon was and I knew nobody could be unhappy very long I telephoned for a carriage said on Elizabeth there it is she and mother were going down the stairs and suddenly I felt I couldn't let her go like that oh uh Lily I called stop I want to speak to you I ran after her I'm going to have a profession too I said I'm going to devote my life to it and I am just as glad as I can be and put my arms around her and kissed her on the soft pink cheek and we both cried a little and then she went away end of chapter 11