The Melting of Molly Part 8

"Billy asked me to go with him on this awful whale hunt!" I sobbed out to comfort myself with the thought that somebody did care for me, regardless of just how I was further embarra.s.sing and complicating myself in the affairs of the two men I had thought I owned and was now finding out that I had to give up. I wish I had been looking at him, for I felt him start, but he said in his big friendly voice that is so much--and never enough for me.

"Well, why not you and Al come along and make it a family party, if that is what suits Bill, the boss?"

If men would just buy good, sharp, kitchen knives and cut out women's hearts in a businesslike way it would be so much kinder of them.

Why do they prefer to use dull weapons that mash the life out slowly?

Everything is at an end for me to-night and that blow did it. It was a horrible cruel thing for him to say to me! I know now that I have been in love with John Moore for longer than my honor lets me admit and that I'll never love anybody else, and that also I have offered myself to him served up in every known enticement and have had to be refused at least twice a day for a year. A widow can't say she didn't understand what she was doing, even to herself, but--My humiliation is complete and the only thing that can make me ever hold up my head is to puzzle him by--by _happily_ marrying Alfred Bennett--and quick!

Of course, he must suspect how I feel about him, for two people couldn't both be so ignorant as not to see such an enormous thing as my love for him is, and I was the blind one. But he must never, never know that I ever realized it, for he is so good that it would distress him. I must just go on in my foolish way with him until I can get away. I'll tell him I'm sorry I was so indignant to-night and say that I think it will be fine for him to take my Billy away from me with him. I must smile at the idea of having my very soul amputated, insist that it is the only thing to do, and pack up the little soul in a steamer trunk with the smile. Just smile, that is all! Life demands smiles from a woman even if she must crush their perfume from her own heart; and she generally has them ready.

Oh, Molly, Molly, is it for this you came into the world, twice to give yourself without love? What difference does it make that your arms are strong and white if they can't clasp him to the softness and fragrance of your breast? Why are your eyes blue pools of love if they are not for his questioning and what are your rose lips for if they quench not his thirst?

[Ill.u.s.tration: What are your rose lips for]

Yes, I know G.o.d is very tender with a woman and I think He understands, so if she crept very close to Him and caught at His sleeve to steady herself He would be kind to her until she could go on along her own steep way. Please, G.o.d, never let him find out, for it would hurt him to have hurt me!

LEAF EIGHT

MELTED

Some days are like the miracle flowers that open in the garden from plants you didn't expect to bloom at all. I might have been born, lived and died without having this one come into my life, and now that I have had it I don't know how to write it, except in the crimson of blood, the blue of flame, the gold of glory--and a tinge of light green would well express the part I have played. But it is all over at last and--

Ruth Chester was the unfolding of the first hour-petal and I got a glimpse of a heart of gold that I feel dumb with worship to think of.

She's G.o.d's own good woman and He made her in one of His holy hours. I wish I could have borne her, or she me, and the tenderness of her arms was a sacrament. We two women just stood aside with life's artifices and concealments and let our own hearts do the talking.

She said she had come because she felt that if she talked with me I might be better able to understand Alfred when he came and that she had seen that the judge was very determined, and she thoroughly recognized his force of character. We stopped there while I gave her the doc.u.ment to read. I suppose it was dishonorable, but I needed her protection from it. I'm glad she had the strength of mind to walk with a head high in the air to Judy's range and burn it up. Anything might have happened if she hadn't. And even now I feel that only my marriage vows will close up the case for the judge--even yet he may--But when Ruth had got done with Alfred, she had wiped Judge Wade's appreciation of him completely off my mind and destroyed it in tender words that burned us both worse than Judy's fire burned the letter. She did me an awfully good service.

"And so you see, you lovely woman you, do you not, that G.o.d has made you for him as a tribute to his greatness and it is given to you to fulfil a destiny?" She was so beautiful as she said it that I had to turn my eyes away, but I felt as I did when those awful '_let-not-man-put-asunder_'--from Mr. Carter--words were spoken over me by Mr. Raines, the Methodist minister. It made me wild, and before I knew it I had poured out the whole truth to her in a perfect cataract of words. The truth always acts on women as some hitherto untried drug, and you can never tell what the reaction is going to be.

In this case I was stricken dumb and found it hard to see.

"Oh, dear heart," she exclaimed as she reached out and drew me into her lovely gracious arms, "then the privilege is all the more wonderful for you, as you make some sacrifice to complete his life. Having suffered this, you will be all the greater woman to understand him. I accept my own sorrow at his hands willingly, as it gives me the larger sympathy for his work, though he will no longer need my personal encouragement as he has for years. In the light of his love this lesser feeling for Doctor Moore will soon pa.s.s away and the accord between you will be complete." This was more than I could stand and feeling less than a worm, I turned my face into her breast and wailed. Now who would have thought that girl could dance as she did?

By this time I was in such a solution of grief that I would soon have had to be sopped up with a sponge if Pet hadn't run in bubbling over like a lovely, white, linen-clad gla.s.s of Rhine wine and seltzer.

Happiness has a habit of not even acknowledging the presence of grief and Pet didn't seem to see our red noses, crushed draperies and generally damp atmosphere.

"Molly," she said with a deliciously young giggle, "Tom says for you to send him ten dollars to spend getting the bra.s.s band half drunk before the six o'clock train, on which your Mr. Bennett comes. He has spent five dollars paying the negroes to polish up their instruments and clean up the uniforms and it cost him twenty-five to bail the cornettist out of jail for roost robbing, and it takes a whole gallon of whisky to get any spirit into the drummer. He says tell you that as this is your shindig you ought at least to pay the piper. Hurry up, he's waiting for me, and here's the kiss he told me to put on your left ear!"

"I suppose you delivered that kiss straight from where he gave it to you, Pettie, dear," I had the spirit to say as I went over to the desk for my pocket-book.

"Why, Molly, you know me better than that!" she exclaimed from behind a perfect rose cloud of blushes.

"I know Tom better than I do you," I answered as she fled with the ten in her hand. I looked at Ruth Chester and we both laughed. It is true that a broader sympathy is one of the by-products of sorrow, and a week ago I might have resented Pet to a marked degree instead of giving her the ten dollars and a blessing.

"I'm going quick, Molly, with that laugh between us," Ruth said as she rose and took me into her arms again for just half a second, and before I could stop her, she was gone.

She met Billy toiling up the front step with a long piece of rusty iron gas-pipe, which took off an inch of paint as it b.u.mped against the edge of the porch. She bent down and kissed the back of his neck, which theft was almost more than I could stand, and apparently more than Billy was prepared to accept.

"Go way, girl," he said in his rudest manner; "don't you see I'm busy?"

I met him in the front hall just in time to prevent a hopeless scar on my hardwood floor. He was hot, perspiring and panting, but full of triumph.

"I found it, Molly, I found it!" he exclaimed as he let the heavy pipe drop almost on the bare pink toes. "You can git a hammer and pound the end sharp and bend it so no whale we ketch can git away for nothing. You and Doc kin put it in your trunk 'cause it's too long for mine, and I can carry Doc's shirts and things in mine. Git the hammer quick and I'll help you fix it!" The pain in my breast was almost more than I could bear.

"Lover," I said as I knelt down by him in the dim old hall and put my arms around him as if to shield him from some blow I couldn't help being aimed at him, "you wouldn't mind much, would you, if just this time your Molly couldn't go with you? Your father is going to take good care of you and--and maybe bring you back to me some day."

"Why, Molly," he said, flaring his astonished blue eyes at me, "'taint me to be took care of! I ain't a-going to leave you here, for maybe a bear to come out of a circus and eat you up, with me and Doc gone.

'Sides Doc ain't no good and maybe wouldn't help me hold the rope right to keep the whale from gitting away. He don't know how to do like I tell him like you do."

"Try him, lover, and maybe he will--will learn to--" I couldn't help the tears that came to stop my words.

"Now you see, Molly, how you'd cry with that kiss-spot gone," he said with an amused, manly, little tenderness in his voice that I had never heard before, and he cuddled his lips against mine in almost the only voluntary kiss he had given me since I had got him into his ridiculous little trousers under his blouses. "You can have most a hundred kisses every night if you don't say no more about not a-going and fix that whale hook for me quick," he coaxed against my cheek.

Oh, little lover, little lover, you didn't know what you were saying with your baby wisdom, and your rust-grimy, little paddie burned the sleep-place on my breast like a terrible white heat from which I was powerless to defend myself. You are mine, you are, you _are!_ You are soul of my soul and heart of my heart and spirit of my spirit and--and you ought to have been flesh of my flesh!

I don't know how I managed to answer Mrs. Johnson's call from my front gate, but I sometimes think that women have a torture-proof clause in their const.i.tutions.

She and Aunt Bettie had just come up the street from Aunt Bettie's house and the Pollard cook was following them with a large basket, in which were packed the things Aunt Bettie was contributing to the entertainment of the distinguished citizen. Mr. Johnson is Alfred's nearest kinsman in Hillsboro, and, of course, he is to be their guest while he is in town.

"He'll be feeding his eyes on Molly, so he'll not even know he's eating my Washington almond pudding with Thomas' old port in it," teased Aunt Bettie with a laugh as I went across the street with them.

"There's going to be a regular epidemic of love in Hillsboro, I do believe," she continued in her usual strain of sentimental speculation.

"I saw Mr. Graves talking to Delia Hawes in front of the store an hour ago, as I came out from looking at the blue chintz to match Pet for the west wing, and they were both so absorbed they didn't even see me. That was what might have been called a conflagration dinner you gave the other night, Molly, in more ways than one. I wish a spark had set off Benton Wade and Henrietta, too. Maybe it did, but is just taking fire slowly."

I think it would be a good thing just to let Aunt Bettie blindfold every unmarried person in this town and marry them to the first person they touch hands with. It would be fun for her and then we could have peace and apparently as much happiness as we are going to have anyway. Mrs.

Johnson seemed to be in somewhat the same state of mind as I found myself.

"Humph," she said as we went up the front steps, "I'll be glad when you are married and settled, Molly Carter, so the rest of this town can quiet down into peace once more, and I sincerely hope every woman under fifty in Hillsboro who is already married will stay in that state until she reaches that age. But I do believe if the law marched widows from grave number one to altar number two they would get into trouble and fuss along the road. But come on in, both of you, and help me get this marriage feast ready, if I must! The day is going by on greased wheels and I can't let Mr. Johnson's crotchets be neglected, Al Bennett or no Al Bennett!"

And from then on for hours and hours I was strapped to a torture wheel that turned and turned, minute after minute, as it ground spice and sugar and bridal meats and me relentlessly into a great suffering pulp.

Could I ever in all my life have hungered for food and been able to get it past the lump in my throat that grew larger with the seconds? And if Alfred's pudding tasted of the salt of dead sea-fruit this evening, it was from my surrept.i.tious tears that dripped into it.

It was late, very late before Mrs. Johnson realized it and shooed me home to get ready to go to the train along with the bra.s.s band and all the other welcomes.

I hurried all I could, but for long minutes I stood in front of my mirror and questioned myself. Could this slow, pale, dead-eyed, slim, drooping girl be the rollicking child of a Molly who had looked out of that mirror at me one short week ago? Where were the wings on her heels, the glint in her curls, the laugh on her mouth and the devil in her eyes?

Slowly at last I lifted the blue muslin, twenty-three-inch waist shroud and let it slip over my head and fall slimly around me. I had fastened the neck b.u.t.ton and was fumbling the next one into the b.u.t.tonhole when I suddenly heard laughing excited voices coming up the side street that ran just under my west window. Something told me that Alfred had come on the five-down train instead of the six-up and I fairly reeled to the window and peeped through the shutters.

They were all in a laughing group around him, with Tom as master of ceremonies, and Ruth Chester was looking up into his face with an expression I am glad I can never forget. It killed all my regrets on the score of his future.

It took two good looks to take him all in and then I must have missed some of him, for all in all, he was so large that he stretched your eyes to behold him. He's grown seven feet tall, I don't know how many pounds he weighs and I don't want anybody ever to tell me!

I had never thought enough about evolution to know whether I believed in it and woman's suffrage, but I do now! I know that millions of years ago a great, big, distinguished hippopotamus stepped out of the woods and frightened one of my foremothers so that she turned tail and fled through a thicket that almost tore her limb from limb, right into the arms of her own mate. That's what I did! I caught that blue satin belt together with one hand and ran through my garden right over a bed of savage tiger-lilies and flung myself into John Moore's office, slammed the door and backed up against it.

"He's come!" I gasped. "And I'm frightened to death, with n.o.body but you to run to. Hide me quick! He's fat and I _hate_ him!" I was that deadly cold you can get when fear runs into your very marrow and congeals the blood in your arteries. "Quick, quick!" I panted.