The Mettle of the Pasture Part 22

"Oh, Dent, why did you ever ask me to marry you!" thought Pansy, in a moment of soul failure.

Mrs. Meredith was sitting on the veranda and was partly concealed by a running rose. She was not expecting visitors; she had much to think of this morning, and she rose wonderingly and reluctantly as Pansy came forward: she did not know who it was, and she did not advance.

Pansy ascended the steps and paused, looking with wistful eyes at the great lady who was to be her mother, but who did not even greet her.

"Good morning, Mrs. Meredith," she said, in a shrill treble, holding herself somewhat in the att.i.tude of a wooden soldier, "I suppose I shall have to introduce myself: it is Pansy."

The surprise faded from Mrs. Meredith's face, the reserve melted.

With outstretched hands she advanced smiling.

"How do you do. Pansy," she said with motherly gentleness; "it is very kind of you to come and see me, and I am very glad to know you. Shall we go in where it is cooler?"

They entered the long hall. Near the door stood a marble bust: each wall was lined with portraits. She pa.s.sed between Dent's ancestors into the large darkened parlors.

"Sit here, won't you?" said Mrs. Meredith, and she even pushed gently forward the most luxurious chair within her reach. To Pansy it seemed large enough to hold all the children. At home she was used to chairs that were not only small, but hard. Wherever the bottom of a chair seemed to be in that household, there it was--if it was anywhere. Actuated now by this lifelong faith in literal furniture, she sat down with the utmost determination where she was bid; but the bottom offered no resistance to her descending weight and she sank. She threw out her hands and her hat tilted over her eyes. It seemed to her that she was enclosed up to her neck in what might have been a large morocco bath-tub--which came to an end at her knees. She pushed back her hat, crimson.

"That was a surprise," she said, frankly admitting the fault, "but there'll never be another such."

"I am afraid you found it warm walking, Pansy," said Mrs. Meredith, opening her fan and handing it to her.

"Oh, no, Mrs. Meredith, I never fan!" said Pansy, declining breathlessly. "I have too much use for my hands. I'd rather suffer and do something else. Besides, you know I am used to walking in the sun. I am very fond of botany, and I am out of doors for hours at a time when I can find the chance."

Mrs. Meredith was delighted at the opportunity to make easy vague comment on a harmless subject.

"What a beautiful study it must be," she said with authority.

"Must be!" exclaimed Pansy; "why, Mrs. Meredith, don't you _know_?

Don't you understand botany?"

Pansy had an idea that in Dent's home botany was as familiarly apprehended as peas and turnips in hers.

"I am afraid not," replied Mrs. Meredith, a little coolly. Her mission had been to adorn and people the earth, not to study it.

And among persons of her acquaintance it was the prime duty of each not to lay bare the others' ignorance, but to make a little knowledge appear as great as possible. It was discomfiting to have Pansy charge upon what after all was only a vacant spot in her mind. She added, as defensively intimating that the subject had another dangerous side:

"When I was a girl, young ladies at school did not learn much botany; but they paid a great deal of attention to their manners."

"Why did not they learn it after they had left school and after they had learned manners?" inquired Pansy, with ruthless enthusiasm. "It is such a mistake to stop learning everything simply because you have stopped school. Don't you think so?"

"When a girl marries, my dear, she soon has other studies to take up. She has a house and husband. The girls of my day, I am afraid, gave up their botanies for their duties: it may be different now."

"No matter how many children I may have," said Pansy, positively, "I shall never--give--up--botany! Besides, you know, Mrs.

Meredith, that we study botany only during the summer months, and I do hope--" she broke off suddenly.

Mrs. Meredith smoothed her dress nervously and sought to find her chair comfortable.

"Your mother named you Pansy," she remarked, taking a gloomy view of the present moment and of the whole future of this acquaintances.h.i.+p.

That this should be the name of a woman was to her a mistake, a crime. Her sense of fitness demanded that names should be given to infants with reference to their adult characters and eventual positions in life. She liked her own name "Caroline"; and she liked "Margaret" and all such womanly, motherly, dignified, stately appellatives. As for "Pansy," it had been the name of one of her husband's shorthorns, a premium animal at the county fairs; the silver cup was on the sideboard in the dining room now.

"Yes, Mrs. Meredith," replied Pansy, "that was the name my mother gave me. I think she must have had a great love of flowers. She named me for the best she had. I hope I shall never forget that,"

and Pansy looked at Mrs. Meredith with a face of such gravity and pride that silence lasted in the parlors for a while.

Buried in Pansy's heart was one secret, one sorrow: that her mother had been poor. Her father wore his yoke ungalled; he loved rough work, drew his religion from privations, accepted hards.h.i.+p as the chastening that insures reward. But that her mother's hands should have been folded and have returned to universal clay without ever having fondled the finer things of life--this to Pansy was remembrance to start tears on the brightest day.

"I think she named you beautifully," said Mrs. Meredith, breaking that silence, "and I am glad you told me, Pansy." She lingered with quick approval on the name.

But she turned the conversation at once to less personal channels.

The beauty of the country at this season seemed to offer her an inoffensive escape. She felt that she could handle it at least with tolerable discretion. She realized that she was not deep on the subject, but she did feel fluent.

"I suppose you take the same pride that we all do in such a beautiful country."

Sunlight instantly shone out on Pansy's face. Dent was a geologist; and since she conceived herself to be on trial before Mrs. Meredith this morning, it was of the first importance that she demonstrate her sympathy and intelligent appreciation of his field of work.

"Indeed I do feel the greatest pride in it, Mrs. Meredith," she replied. "I study it a great deal. But of course you know perfectly the whole formation of this region."

Mrs. Meredith coughed with frank discouragement.

"I do not know it," she admitted dryly. "I suppose I ought to know it, but I do not. I believe school-teachers understand these things. I am afraid I am a very ignorant woman. No one of my acquaintances is very learned. We are not used to scholars.h.i.+p."

"I know all the strata," said Pansy. "I tell the children stories of how the Mastodon once virtually lived in our stable, and that millions of years ago there were Pterodactyls under their bed."

"I think it a misfortune for a young woman to have much to say to children about Pterodactyls under their bed--is that the name?

Such things never seem to have troubled Solomon, and I believe he was reputed wise." She did not care for the old-fas.h.i.+oned reference herself, but she thought it would affect Pansy.

"The children in the public schools know things that Solomon never heard of," said Pansy, contemptuously.

"I do not doubt it in the least, my dear. I believe it was not his knowledge that made him rather celebrated, but his wisdom. But I am not up in Solomon!" she admitted hastily, retreating from the subject in new dismay.

The time had arrived for Pansy to depart; but she reclined in her morocco alcove with somewhat the stiffness of a tilted bottle and somewhat the contour. She felt extreme dissatisfaction with her visit and reluctance to terminate it.

Her idea of the difference between people in society and other people was that it hinged ornamentally upon inexhaustible and scanty knowledge. If Mrs. Meredith was a social leader, and she herself had no social standing at all, it was mainly because that lady was publicly recognized as a learned woman, and the world had not yet found out that she herself was anything but ignorant.

Being ignorant was to her mind the quintessence of being common; and as she had undertaken this morning to prove to Dent's mother that she was not common, she had only to prove that she was learned. For days she had prepared for this interview with that conception of its meaning. She had converted her mind into a kind of rapid-firing gun; she had condensed her knowledge into conversational cartridges. No sooner had she taken up a mental position before Mrs. Meredith than the parlors resounded with light, rapid detonations of information. That lady had but to release the poorest, most lifeless, little clay pigeon of a remark and Pansy shattered it in mid air and refixed suspicious eyes on the trap.

But the pigeons soon began to fly less frequently. And finally they gave out. And now she must take nearly all her cartridges home! Mrs. Meredith would think her ignorant, therefore she would think her common. If Pansy had only known what divine dulness, what ambrosial stupidity, often reclines on those Olympian heights called society!

As last she rose. Neither had mentioned Dent's name, though each had been thinking of him all the time. Not a word had been spoken to indicate the recognition of a relations.h.i.+p which one of them so desired and the other so dreaded. Pansy might merely have hurried over to ask Mrs. Meredith for the loan of an ice-cream freezer or for a setting of eggs. On the mother's part this silence was kindly meant: she did not think it right to take for granted what might never come to pa.s.s. Uppermost in her mind was the cruelty of accepting Pansy as her daughter-in-law this morning with the possibility of rejecting her afterward.

As Pansy walked reluctantly out into the hall, she stopped with a deep wish in her candid eyes.

"Oh, Mrs. Meredith, I should so much like to see the portrait of Dent's father: he has often spoken to me about It."

Mrs. Meredith led her away in silence to where the portrait hung, and the two stood looking at it side by side. She resisted a slight impulse to put her arm around the child. When they returned to the front of the house, Pansy turned:

"Do you think you will ever love me?"

The carriage was at the door. "You must not walk," said Mrs.

Meredith, "the sun is too hot now."

As Pansy stepped into the carriage, she cast a suspicious glance at the cus.h.i.+ons: Meredith upholstery was not to be trusted, and she seated herself warily.