The Whole Family Part 15

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 every one." 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 door-bell. Good little Billy, always hoping for excitement, and besides extremely sweet in doing errands, answered it. The rest of us absurdly a.s.sembled 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 up-stairs again, considerately 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 -- 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, wearisome 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 down-stairs again; and every one 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 Sat.u.r.day.

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 every one in peace, when Dr. Denbigh 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 Eastridge at eleven, was derailed two hours ago on a misplaced switch between here and Whitman. No one was killed, but many of the pa.s.sengers 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 a 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 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. On 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 suit-case the porter's carrying down. Yes, it is. There--there they are, coming down the steps behind him, Cyrus and my dear girl--how well they look! Oh, how I hope everything will come right for them!

X. THE SCHOOL-BOY, By Mary Raymond s.h.i.+pman Andrews

Rabbits.

Automobile. (Painted red, with yellow lines.)

Automatic reel. (The 3-dollar 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 'steen things, and I thought I'd better make a list to 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 myself, and she wouldn't tell Alice, so I won't be selfish not to offer her 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 et up before 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 to everything, and to have a thick-headed boy-person know a whacking secret that they'd all 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. Denbigh.

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 begin back.

First then, I've had the best time since Peggy got engaged that I've ever had in my own home. Not quite as unbossed as when they sent me on the Harris farm last summer, and I slept in the stable if I wanted to, and n.o.body asked if I'd taken a bath. That was a sensible way to live, but yet it's been unpecked at and pleasant even at home lately. You see, with such a lot of fussing about Peggy and Harry Goward, n.o.body has noticed what I did, and that, to a person with a taste for animals, is one of the best states of living. I've gone to the table without brus.h.i.+ng my hair, and the puppy has slept in my bed, and I've kept a toad behind the wash-basin for two weeks, and 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 to his hind leg, but yet he gets into places where you don't expect him, and it's very interesting. Lena seemed to think it wasn't nice to have him in the towels in the wash-stand drawer, but I didn't care. It doesn't hurt the towels and it's cosey 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 well enough alone and tried to be contented with the toad and the puppy and some June-bugs I've got in boxes in the closet, and 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 step-mother, but it's awfully difficult to replace a lizard like Diogenes. I wonder if Lorraine will think I've written too much about my animals? They're more fun than Peggy anyway, and as for Harry Goward--golly! The toad or lizard that couldn't be livelier than he is would be a pretty sad animal.

A year ago I was fis.h.i.+ng one day away up the river, squatting under a bush on a bank, when Peggy and Dr. Denbigh 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 they didn't notice my fish-line either. They weren't noticing much of life as it appeared 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 were saying, because there was a chub and a trout together after my bait, and I naturally was excited to see if the trout would take it. But when I'd lost both of them I had time to listen.

I wouldn't have believed it of Dr. Denbigh, to bother about a girl like Peg, who can't do anything. And he's a whale, just a whale. He's six feet-two, and strong as an ox. He went through West Point before he degraded himself into a doctor, and he held the record there for shot-putting, and was on the foot-ball team, and even now, when he's very old and of course can't last long, he plays the best tennis in Eastridge. He went to the Spanish War--quite awhile ago that was, but yet in modern times--and he was at San Juan. You can see he's a Jim dandy--and him to be wasting time on Peggy--it's sickening! Even for a girl she's poor stuff. I don't mean, of course, that she's not all right in a 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 ride or anything.

Yet all the same it's true, I distinctly heard him say he loved her better than anything on earth. I don't think he could have meant better than Rapscallion; he's awfully fond of that horse. Probably he forgot Rapscallion for the moment. Anyhow, Peg was sniffling and saying 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. And he said he'd never forget her one minute all his life--which was silly, for I've often forgotten really important things. Once I forgot to stop at Lorraine's for a tin of hot gingerbread she'd had Sally make for me to entirely eat by myself, and Alice got it and devoured it all up, the pig! Anyway, Dr.

Denbigh said that, and then Peggy sniffled some more, and 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 trout was after my bait, so I didn't listen carefully. When I noticed again, Dr. Denbigh 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 into a thing she couldn't get out of, and a lot more. Peg 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. Denbigh said: "If I only dared let you, dear--if I only dared."

And something about if she felt the same in two years, or a year, or something--I can't remember all that truck--and they said the same thing over a lot. I heard him murmur:

"Call me Jack, just once."

And she murmured back, as if it was a stunt, "Jack"--and then rustlings.

I'd call him Jack all the afternoon if he liked.

Then, after another of those still games, Peggy said, "Ow!" as if somebody'd pinched her, and that seemed such a queer remark that I stood up to see what they were up to. Getting to my feet I swung the line around and the bait flopped up the bank and hit Peg square in the mouth--I give you my word I didn't mean to, but it was awfully funny!

My! didn't she squeal b.l.o.o.d.y 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 out one and slid it down the back of her neck, and you'd have thought I'd done something awful. She yelped and wriggled and cried--she did--she actually cried. And you wouldn't believe what she finished up by doing--she went and took a bath! A whole bath--when she didn't have 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 there, keep her teeth shut and not make a sound--only a low gurgle--until she'd got him and slung him out of the window. Then she lammed me, I tell you--I respected her for it too--but she couldn't now, I'm stronger.

Oh, golly! Lorraine will cut down the cookies if I don't tell what happened. I don't exactly know what was next, but Dr. Denbigh somehow had me by the collar and gave me a yank, like a big dog does a little one.

"See here, you young limb," he said, "I'm--I'm going to--" and then he suddenly stopped and looked at Peggy and 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 do is to point out that what you've seen and heard is not your secret. I'm sure you realize that 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 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. Denbigh, and we shook like two men.

That was about all that happened that day except about my fis.h.i.+ng. There was a very interesting--but I suppose Lorraine wouldn't care for that.