Jewel Weed Part 23

Mrs. Percival's fingers followed the soft curve that the girl's hair made around her forehead.

"No, dear," she said slowly, "but I had something to tell you. I wanted to speak to you myself, before any one else had the chance."

"Please tell me quickly."

"So many of my dearest hopes have come to nothing!" Mrs. Percival went on, with a little bitterness that Madeline thought unlike her. "Each blow, as it falls, seems the hardest to bear. I've tried to accept whatever happens, graciously. It isn't always easy, Madeline, dear."

"Yes?" said Madeline.

"d.i.c.k--"

"Is anything the matter with d.i.c.k?" Madeline rose with a little cry.

"d.i.c.k does not think so," his mother answered. "My child, you have seen something of this little Miss Quincy?"

Madeline's eyes dropped for the tenth of a second and a heaviness took possession of her body; then she lifted her head bravely.

"Yes," she answered, "I know Miss Quincy--quite the most beautiful girl I have ever seen."

"Very beautiful," echoed Mrs. Percival. "So I too thought, the only time I ever saw her. Well, Madeline, what I have to tell you is that d.i.c.k is to marry her."

The girl saw that the older woman's hands were trembling, and she laid her own warm young palms over the cold old ones.

"I hope d.i.c.k will be very happy," she said softly. "I--I'm not a bit surprised. We ought to have seen that it was coming. And d.i.c.k loves her!"

And she laid her cheek against Mrs. Percival's, but the other pushed her away and stared into the eyes so near her own.

"And you can take it so quietly?" she asked. "Forgive me, dear, if for once I break down the barriers of reserve. I love you so much, let me be frank. Surely you know what I hoped, what I thought."

"You thought d.i.c.k and I loved each other," Madeline said bravely.

"I hoped so. Heaven knows I hoped so."

"We are too good friends for that, dear Mrs. Percival. One needs a little something unexplored and unexpected in a lover; don't you think so? d.i.c.k and I knew each other in kilts and pig-tails."

"Well, it seems I am as much of an old fool as d.i.c.k is a young one,"

Mrs. Percival said bitterly. "I'm good for nothing but to lie here and comfort myself with dreams."

"You're an old dear, and d.i.c.k is a young one," Madeline tried to laugh.

"And Miss Quincy is exquisite--charming."

"An old fool," repeated Mrs. Percival. "Now listen, sweetheart! If d.i.c.k marries this girl, I have no intention of forgetting that he is my son, and that she is his wife. I shall do all I can to help her to be worthy of him; but before that happens, I am going to have the satisfaction of speaking to just one person in the world--you--exactly what I think about it. From what Mrs. Lenox told me, after her visit in the country, and from what I saw myself, I think she is a vulgar little image overlaid with tinsel."

"Oh, don't!" Madeline cried. "You and I do not really know her, but we can trust d.i.c.k. He's too fine himself to be attracted by anything but fineness. She must have character to have made the fight she has with fate."

"Attracted by character! Pins and figs! My son is just like all the others, I am finding. He's attracted by pink flesh. And as for heart and soul--all the women that d.i.c.k has known well have been women of refinement. He takes their purity and n.o.bility for granted, as a part of womanhood. He thinks he's marrying you and me. His reason has nothing to do with it."

For the moment Madeline had no answer, and Mrs. Percival went on:

"It's foolish to care what people say about your tragedies. Oh, you needn't shake your head. This is a tragedy, Madeline. And I do care about the world. I hate to think of the whispering and gossiping because my son--my son--has fallen a victim to a cheap adventuress."

"Nonsense," Madeline broke out. "Miss Quincy isn't an outcast, just because she has had the world's cold shoulder. And people aren't so silly as to let such external things prejudice them."

"Don't mistake me, dearie. I'm not taking exception to the girl because she works. We're all--those of us that are good for much--the mothers and wives and daughters of men who work, and we share in their labor. I could admire and love a real worker, but this b.u.t.terfly creature affects me like a parasite--a woman who wants to get and not to give. It's just because I feel that she isn't a real worker that I am afraid of her."

"And that, even if it is true, may be only the result of sordid surroundings." Madeline's heart misgave her, for she had learned to respect Mrs. Percival's judgments. "She'll blossom out and add womanliness to beauty in such an atmosphere as you and d.i.c.k will give her."

"Spontaneous generation will not do everything. You must have the germ of a heart before you can develop the whole thing. Do you think you can really change a girl who has lived for twenty years in the wrong att.i.tude?"

"You are judging cruelly," Madeline cried. "Of course every one has the germs of good."

"And did it ever occur to you that the kind of love that d.i.c.k will give his wife may be too good--so far above a coa.r.s.e-grained woman that it will not touch her comprehension? A lower grade of man might bring her out better."

"It's impossible to think of so exquisite a creature being coa.r.s.e-grained," Madeline exclaimed. "I, for one, am going to believe in her, and in a year, with you and d.i.c.k and mother and Mrs. Lenox and myself all backing her, you'll be proud of her loveliness and tact. I shall be only Cinderella's ugly sister. But you must not ever quite forget me, Mrs. Percival." And Madeline laughed most cheerfully.

Mrs. Percival smiled in return. "Well, I have had my explosion. It's extraordinary what a relief it is, once in a while. I'm not often so guilty, am I, Madeline? After all, I've told you my fears rather than my convictions. The situation does not seem so bad, now that I have said even more than I think. Hereafter I shall find it easy to hold my tongue."

"And you will try to like her?" Madeline asked anxiously.

"Of course, my dear. I shall try harder than any one else. I am going in state to pay her a motherly call this very afternoon, feeling all the time like a plated volcano." Mrs. Percival leaned back with a small _moue_, then sat up again. "There's my boy's latch-key in the lock now," she said.

d.i.c.k halted at the door when he saw the two and knew that they must have been talking of him. He had something of an air of defiance thickly overlaid with innocence; but Madeline went to meet him with hands outstretched.

"d.i.c.k," she exclaimed, "I congratulate you with all my heart. She's the prettiest creature in the world."

d.i.c.k, manlike, regarded this as the highest possible tribute to his beloved and glowed in return. His defiance dropped like a sh.e.l.l and he shook Madeline's hands with enthusiasm.

"You're a trump," he said. "I shall not forget how good you have been to her; and I hope you two will always be friends."

"I should think so! I should like to see your trying to prevent us, d.i.c.k," said Madeline saucily. "And your mother is going to love her, too, when--"

"When we are married," d.i.c.k answered with silly masculine self-consciousness.

"And that is to be soon!"

"As soon as I can manage it. I can't bear to have Lena living as she does now; and there's no reason why we shouldn't cut it short."

"No reason at all. I don't wonder you feel so. Good-by, both of you."

d.i.c.k saw her to the door and Madeline walked out with her usual deliberate serenity.

She found her way home with bottled-up emotions, as a hurt child holds in the cry until he gets to the spot where mother's breast waits for the inarticulate sobs. Everything she had done and said seemed to have been the act of some far-away self, that had hardly any connection with the real Madeline. The earth danced around her and she was incapable of real thought. And yet the well-trained, automatic body that was her outer sh.e.l.l conducted itself with reason. It even stopped in the living-room to kiss her mother; it apparently skimmed a new copy of _Life_; it convoyed her slowly up stairs to her own room, where it shut and locked her door. But here her real self resumed control, as she threw herself into an easy chair by the window and stared out at the desolation of December where dead leaves went whirling in elfin eddying clouds.

For a few moments she let the solar system rock and reel around her, and watched everything she had thought stable go up in smoke. Then upon the world, swirling and pounding meaninglessly, there came an intense quiet.

She knew that the outer world was as serene as ever; but a great throbbing pain within showed her that it was only her own little atom of self that was revolutionized. Nature was not upset. There was still order for her to hold fast to. For the first time she began to a.n.a.lyze herself and her emotions.

She could not say that she had planned her future, but it had seemed so natural and inevitable that she had accepted it without planning, almost without thought. d.i.c.k and she had belonged to each other ever since they could remember. At ten they had been outspoken lovers, and ever since there had been that intimate comrades.h.i.+p that seemed to her to imply the unspoken relation, behind, above, below. All this she had taken for granted, like mother-love and her own dawning womanhood. And now d.i.c.k, the chief corner-stone of her edifice, was torn away, and the whole airy structure toppled and dissolved.

"I've been a.s.suming all this," she said to herself, "and marriage isn't a thing to take for granted. Shouldn't I have resented it if d.i.c.k had appropriated me as though I belonged to him and had lost my freedom of choice? I've been unfair to him. And now--if I should never marry--there are surely plenty of good things left in the world. But are there?"