A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill Part 19

"Ah!" said Mrs. Ivy, laying a plump white hand on Mrs. Sequin's arm, "cosmic forces brought them together! The thing we seek is seeking us.

She was young, inexperienced, adrift in the world; he was ill, lonely, and with three motherless children. She told me that through the past year, the Doctor's letters were all that sustained her."

"Of course they did! Cousin John's letters sustain everybody. Especially if you haven't heard his lectures. Of course he does repeat himself."

"As for her youth," went on Mrs. Ivy. "What if she is a mere rosebud as yet? She'll unfold; we'll help her to unfold, you and I, won't we?"

Meanwhile the bride had slipped in the side entrance and was making frantic haste in the room above to exchange a tennis costume for a new house-dress.

Connie Queerington was a.s.sisting, but Connie's a.s.sistance was generally a hindrance. She was an exceedingly voluble, blond young person, with blue eyes that enjoyed nothing more than their own reflection.

"I'll never get it hooked if you don't hold still," she was saying.

"Every time you laugh you pop it open."

"Fifteen--love, thirty--love, forty--love, game!" rehea.r.s.ed Miss Lady, practising a newly acquired serve with a vigorous stroke of her racket.

"I could play all day and all night! Do you think I'll ever get to be a good player?"

"Of course, if you just won't get so excited and hit the b.a.l.l.s before they bounce. Gerald Ivy says your overhand play is great. He's mad about you, anyhow. I'd give both my little fingers to have him look at me as he did at you to-day."

"Silly!" laughed Miss Lady. "There goes the b.u.t.ton off my slipper. Do you suppose any one will notice if I pin the strap?"

"n.o.body but Myrtella. Sit on your foot if she comes around. If you don't hurry Cousin Katherine will have nervous prostration."

"I don't see why you have to treat reception day like judgment day,"

complained Miss Lady. "Who else is down stairs?"

"Only Mrs. Ivy now. She is the one who held your hand and called you a sunbeam. Gerald's mother, you know. Hat can't abide her; says she's a p.u.s.s.y-cat. Of course Mr. Gooch will be here for supper."

"Who?"

"Mr. Gooch."

"A friend of the Doctor's?"

"No, indeed. He isn't anybody's friend. He bores us all to extinction."

"Well, what's he coming for?"

"I don't know. He always comes on Friday. He came in here once to get out of the rain, and Mother asked him to stay to tea. That was ten years ago and he has been back nearly every Friday since."

"Do you have company like this all the time?" asked Miss Lady somewhat breathlessly.

"This is nothing!" exclaimed Connie dramatically. "Before Myrtella came I never knew what it was to sleep in my own bed, and I had to eat the legs of chickens until I felt like a centipede. There! You are all right; come along. Don't forget to tell Father about the party!"

Miss Lady had been married two weeks, but she was still circling wildly in a vortex of new experiences that excited and bewildered her. Through a long, lonely winter she had fought out her problems at the little country school, relying implicitly upon Doctor Queerington's friendship and guidance. His weekly letters, couched in paragraphs of technical perfection, seemed to her oracles of wisdom and beauty. Then the amazing and unbelievable thing had happened! He, the great Doctor Queerington, her father's friend, her friend, the man whom she respected more than any one else in the world, had chosen her, a young, inexperienced girl to be his wife!

To one who was quite sure that she was through with illusions for ever, and who flattered herself that the sentimental age was safely behind her, the honor of a life-long companionship with a man like Doctor Queerington was almost overwhelming. She wanted pa.s.sionately to be of use in the world, to make her life count for something. The opportunity of being of service to the Doctor, of helping him complete the great work that absorbed him, of ministering to his physical needs, and bringing joy into his life, a.s.sumed the character of a sacred privilege.

If haunting doubts and vague unsatisfied longings possessed her at times, she attributed them to that dear but unreal glamour of romance that the Doctor had taught her must be expected to play for a while about the dawn of youth, but which fades away in the noon of maturity.

And so not being skilled in the science of self-a.n.a.lysis, she fearlessly put her hand into the Doctor's, and promised to obey with a frank sense of relief at the shifted responsibility.

The new life into which she entered proved different in every respect from what she had expected. The Doctor's time, scheduled to the minute, admitted of no interruptions, however helpful from her. In fact, he seemed to regard her as a cherished luxury which he had no time to enjoy. The children accepted her according to their respective natures, Connie as a chum, Hattie as an arch enemy, and Bertie as an idol.

Hattie was fourteen, and had solved all the problems of the universe.

She firmly upheld Aristotle and scornfully dismissed Plato from the world of philosophy. She disapproved of boys, of society, of second marriages, and she had four desperately intimate friends, all of whom were going to be auth.o.r.esses. According to her observations she was the one person in the universe, excepting her father, who adhered to the truth. Hence her mission in life was to struggle single-handed against other people's inaccuracies.

Miss Lady found refuge from Hattie's caustic comments in Bertie's immediate devotion. He had won her heart on the night of her arrival, when he had gone to sleep in her lap with a last injunction, that she "must stay with them always, until G.o.d sent for her."

Whatever ideas Miss Lady had cherished of taking charge of the domestic affairs were promptly discouraged by Myrtella, who had graciously consented to give the new mistress a month's trial, threatening that at the first interference she would abandon her to her fate.

Their first meeting was auspicious. Myrtella on returning from her afternoon out, had heard a wild commotion in the nursery and hastened up to investigate. Bertie's introduction was breathless:

"It's the new mother, 'Tella, and Chick's here, and we are playing bear, and we've broken the bed-springs, and she knows heaps and heaps of stories, and she knows Chick!"

Myrtella, who had steeled herself for mortal combat, was not prepared for a foe who sat in the middle of the nursery bed, laughing behind a tumbled shock of shining brown hair.

"Oh! this is Myrtella, isn't it?" asked the bear, shaking back her mane and smiling with engaging frankness. "Bertie says you are Chick's aunt, and Chick's an old friend of mine, isn't it funny?"

"Where'd you ever know Chick?" demanded Myrtella with instant suspicion.

"We both live on Billy-goat Hill. We always wave to each other when I pa.s.s by, don't we, Chick?"

Chick, who was partially under the bed, still in his character of intrepid hunter, acknowledged the fact with such a torrent of enthusiastic incoherence that Myrtella interrupted sternly:

"Come out here this minute. It's time for you to be going on home anyhow. First thing I know I'll be getting complained at for having you hanging around so much. And look at your hands, Bertie Queerington!

You are going to get put in the bath-tub right off, that's what you are going to get!"

"I'll bathe him," said Miss Lady eagerly.

"No," said Myrtella firmly, "there can't n.o.body but me manage him."

But in spite of the ferocity of Myrtella's aspect, there was a softened gleam in her eye that showed that the new mistress had begun by giving satisfaction.

The first few days after her arrival, Miss Lady spent in the dim parlor receiving callers. All the Doctor's relatives having survived their spasms of indignation over his marriage, united in a prompt determination to train up his young wife in the way she should go.

Advice as various as it was profuse, was showered upon her. At first she was amused; then she was inexpressibly bored; at last she was desperate.

She was not used to being indoors all day, she was not used to spending her time with elderly ladies who talked of moral obligations, and social demands, and civic consciences. The duties of her married life which had promised such interesting responsibilities, and wonderful opportunities for aiding the Doctor in his great work, seemed to be shrinking into the dull task of keeping herself and the children out of his way, preserving a tomb-like silence in the house, and entertaining an endless round of callers.

Even this would have been bearable if the Doctor could only have taken time from his soul-absorbing work to listen at the end of the day, with amused tenderness, to all her little experiences, if he had discussed with her the best way of handling the children, laughed with her over her struggles with Myrtella, and encouraged those affectionate words and caresses that were so much a part of her nature.

If he could have done this, Miss Lady would have soon found satisfaction in lavishing her affection upon him. It was her bent to be pa.s.sionately attached to those about her, and she was not one to stand still in a mental or emotional imprisonment.

But the Doctor was struggling through the most nerve-wrecking month of the year at the university. The beginning of a new term, the adjustment of cla.s.ses, the enrolment of new pupils, all made a heavy drain on his weakened const.i.tution. He was in no condition in the evenings to give out anything more, even to a young and devoted bride who was quite ready to relinquish any other pleasure to burn incense at the shrine of his learning.

The homesickness that had hung over her since the day she had turned her back on Thornwood would have enveloped her completely had it not been for Connie. Connie was but a year her junior, and was thoroughly disapproved by the family connection. She enjoyed the reputation of being frivolous and vain, and wholly lacking in reverence to her elders.

Connie's friends and amus.e.m.e.nts proved the line of least resistance along which Miss Lady raced to freedom. The tennis court served as a joyful subst.i.tute for the drab dreariness of the new home, and the free and easy companionship of Connie's friends a happy relief from the elderly feminines that invaded it.

The Doctor was still the majestic pivot, round which her thoughts swung, but the circle was growing wider and wider. The difference in their ages, which at first to her inexperience had seemed such a trifling consideration, proved more serious as time went on.

She was eager for life, keen for pleasure, plastic, susceptible. Each new experience was to her an epoch, while to the Doctor, whose habits and opinions were fixed for eternity, it was usually but a fresh interruption to his work.