Men are very strange people. They are like those sums in that you think about and worry about and cry about and try to get help from other women about, and then, all of a sudden, X works itself out into good sense.
I know now that I really never got any older than the poor, foolish, eighteen-years child that Aunt Adeline married off "safe." But all that was a mild sort of to what a widow has to go through with in the matter of—of, well, I think worrying interference is about the best name to give it.
"Molly Carter," said Mrs. Johnson just day before yesterday, after the white-dress, Judge- episode that Aunt Adeline had gone to all the friends up and down the street to be consoled about, "if you haven't got sense enough to appreciate your present blissful condition, somebody ought to operate on your mind."
I was to say, "Why not my heart?" I was glad she didn't know how good that heart did feel under my blouse when the boy brought that basket of fish from Judge Wade's fishing expedition Saturday. I have firmly not to blush any more at the thought of that gorgeous man—at least outwardly.
"Don't you think it is very—very lonely to be a widow, Mrs. Johnson?" I asked timidly to see what she would say about Mr. Johnson, who is really a kind-hearted sort of man, I think. He gives me the gentlest understanding smile when he meets me in the street of late weeks.
"Lonely, lonely, Molly? You talk about the married state exactly like an old maid. Don't do it—it's foolish, and you will get the notion really fastened in your mind and let some man find out that is how you feel. Then it will be all over with you. I have only one regret; and it is that if I ever should be a widow Mr. Johnson wouldn't be here to see how quickly I turned into an old maid." Mrs. Johnson sews by the cloth with the needle, and as she talked she was mending the sleeve of Mr. Johnson's lounge coat.
"I think an old maid is just a woman who has never been in love with a man who loves her. Lots of them have been married for years," I said, just as innocently as the soft face of a pan of cream, and went on darning one of Billy's socks.
"Well, be that as it may, they are the blessed members of the women tribe," she answered, looking at me sharply. "Now I have often told Mr. Johnson——" but here we were interrupted in what might have been the of a glorious by the appearance of Aunt Bettie Pollard, and with her came a long, tall, lovely vision of a woman in the most wonderful close clingy dress and hat that you wanted to eat the minute you saw it. I hated her instantly with the most intense that made me want to lie down at her feet, and also made me feel as though I had gained all the more than twenty pounds that I have slaved off me and doubled them on again. I would have liked to lead her that minute into Dr. John's office and just to have looked at him and said one word—"Scarlet-runner!" Aunt Betty introduced her as Miss Clinton from London.
"Oh, my dear Mrs. Carter, how glad I am to meet you!" she said as she towered over me in a willowy way, and her voice was lovely and cool almost to slimness. "I am the bearer of so many gracious messages that I am anxious to deliver them safely to you. Not six weeks ago I left Alfred Bennett in Paris, and really—really his greetings to you almost amounted to a pile of luggage. He came down to Cherbourg to see me off, and almost the last thing he said to me was, 'Now, don't fail to see Mrs. Carter as soon as you get to Hillsboro; and the more you see of her the more you'll enjoy your visit to Mrs. Pollard.' Isn't he the most of men?" She asked me the question, but she had the most wonderful way of seeming to be talking to everybody at one time, so Mrs. Johnson got in the first answer.
"Delightful indeed! But Alfred Bennett is a man of sense not to marry any of the string of women who I suppose are running after him!" she said. Miss Clinton looked at her in a mild kind of wonder, but she went on Mr. Johnson's coat-sleeve with the needle without noticing the glance at all.
"Well, well, dearie, I don't know about that," said Aunt Bettie as she fanned and rocked her great, big, darling, fat self in the strong rocking-chair I always kept for her. "Alfred is not old enough to have proved himself , and from what I hear——" she paused with the big smile that she always wears when she begins to tease or match-make, and she does them both most of her time.
But at whom do you suppose she looked? Not me! Miss Clinton! That was cold tub number two for that day, and I didn't react as quickly as I might, but when I did I was in the proper glow all over. When I revived and saw the lovely pale blush on her face I felt like a cabbage-rose beside a tea-bud. I was glad Aunt Adeline came in just then so I could go in and tell Julia to bring out the tea and cakes. When I came from the kitchen I stepped into my room and took out one of Alfred's letters from the desk drawer and opened it at , and put my finger down on a line with my eyes shut. This was what it was—
"—and all these years I have walked the world, to its loveliness with the blackness that came to me when I found that you—"
I didn't read any more, but pushed it back in a hurry and went back to the company comforted in a way, but feeling a little more in sympathy with Mrs. Johnson than I had before Aunt Bettie and her guest from London had interrupted our algebraic on the man subject. You can't always be sure of the right answer to X in any proposition of life; that is, a woman can't!
And, furthermore, I didn't like that next hour much, just as a sample of life, for instance. Aunt Bettie had got her joining-together humour well started, and there, before my face, she made a present of every nice man in Hillsboro to that lovely, , strange girl who could have slipped through a bucket if she had tried hard. I had to sit there, listen to the presentations, watch her drink two delicious cups of tea full of sugar and cream, and consume without fear three of Jane's puffy cakes, while I mine in secret and set half the cup of tea out of sight behind a fern pot.
It was bad enough to hear Aunt Bettie just offer her Tom, who, if he is her own son, is my favourite cousin, but I believe the worst minute I almost ever faced was when she began on the judge, for I could see from Aunt Adeline's shoulder beyond Miss Clinton how she was enjoying that, and she added another distinguished ancestor to his pedigree every time Aunt Bettie paused for breath. I couldn't say a word about the fish and Aunt Adeline wouldn't! I almost loved Mrs. Johnson when she bit off a thread viciously and said, "Humph," as she rose to start the tea-party home.
That night I did so many exercises that at last I sank in a chair in front of my mirror and put my head down on my arms and cried the real tears you cry when nobody is looking. I felt terribly old and ugly and and—widowed. It couldn't have been , for I just love that girl. I want most to hug her very slimness, and it was more what she might think of poor dumpy me than what any man in Hillsboro, or Paris, could possibly feel on the subject, that hurt so hard. But then, looking back on it, I am afraid that jealousy sheds feathers every night so you won't know him in the morning, for something made me sit up suddenly with a spark in my eyes and reach out to the desk for my pencil and cheque-book. It took me more than an hour to reckon it all up, but I went to bed a happier, though in a poorer woman.
As I sat in the train on my way to town early the next morning I thought a good deal about poor Mr. Carter. After this I shall always appreciate and admire him for the way he made money, and his kindness in leaving it to me, since, for the first time in my life, I realised what it could buy. And I bought things!
First I went to see Madam Courtier for corsets. I had heard about her, and I knew it meant a fortune. But that didn't matter! She came in and looked at me for about five minutes without saying a word, and then she ran her hands down and down over me until I could feel the flesh just walking off of me. It was delicious!
Then she and two girls wearing fashionable frocks and fashionable hair came in and did things to a corset they laced on me that I can't even write down, for I didn't understand the process, but when I looked in that long glass I almost dropped on the floor. I wasn't tight and I wasn't stiff, and I looked—I'm too modest to write how lovely I really looked to myself. I was spellbound with delight.
Next I signed the cheque for three of those wonders with my head so in the clouds I didn't know what I was doing, but I came to with a when the prettiest girl began to get me into that black silk bag I had worn down to the West End. I must have shrunk the whole remaining pounds I had felt obliged to lose for Alfred and Ruth Clinton, from the horror I felt when I looked at myself. The girl was really sympathetic and said with a smile that was true kindness: "Shall I call a taxi for madame and have it take her to Klein's? They have wonderful gowns by Rene all ready to be fitted at short notice. Really, madame's figure is such that it commands a perfect costume now."
Men do business well, but when women enter the field they are geniuses at money extracting. I felt myself already clothed perfectly whe............