Part 23

She did not realize how unworthy of a Miller such humility was. Why shouldn’t he really like her? What was he but a boy not much older than herself, and, like herself, obscure and poor? She didn’t even realize how lovely she was, lost in her ridiculous admiration for him.

“He’s so different from me!” she thought. “He’s not ashamed of being poor. He doesn’t care one bit about clothes, and dancing, and things like that. He could hold his own anywhere. Everybody respects him and likes him. Nan thinks he’s splendid. He is splendid! He’s risen above his disadvantages, and I haven’t. I’ve let myself be so miserable about being poor that I’ve neglected everything else. He remembers that he belongs to a fine old family, and he’s worthy of it!”

She must follow this inspiring example. She must be worthy of her fine, old family. She wished the magic summer night would pass so that she might begin. She was filled with impatience and hope, half happy, half miserable.

She began to dream of the past, when the Dumalls and the Millers were in their prime, when the two houses blazed with lights in the evening and were filled with guests, when the estates were intact, when the ladies exchanged visits, riding along the roads in carriages, and all the country people uncovered as they passed. All gone now--gone forever!

“I don’t care!” she said, wiping away a tear. “I’d rather have what I have than ten times the Wilkinsons’ money!”

The result of her meditations was to make her none too gracious to the Wilkinsons the next morning. She took leave of them, firmly resolving never to set foot in their house again, because it wasn’t worthy of a Miller. She was going home to improve her mind, and never to see or think of any one less august than a Dumall for the rest of her life.

“She’s a high and mighty young woman, I must say!” observed Mr. Wilkinson, a little hurt by her patronizing farewell.

His wife and daughter were not hurt. They said in the same breath:

“Poor Benedicta!”

“Why?” he wished to know.

They didn’t explain, but the thought both of them had was that it is a lamentable piece of folly to bite off one’s nose to spite one’s face, especially in the case of such a delightful nose and such a pretty face as Benedicta’s.

V

Once inside the Miller stronghold again, Benedicta went from bad to worse. Her father confirmed and strengthened all her theories. He was inordinately interested to hear that she had met young Dumall, and he remembered any number of new things about the two families.

When they sat down to their ill cooked, meager dinner, the fact that it hadn’t been paid for was amply compensated by eating it with old silver from old china. Mr. Miller, looking at his child, had not a single pang of regret that her youth and her loveliness were shut up in that dismal ruin. He felt, instead, a surge of pride and gratitude that she was a Miller.

Young Dumall came that very evening, bringing a book for Benedicta; but he did not show the least desire for a decorous conversation on family topics with her father.

In spite of his scholarly tastes and his shy, quiet air, he was a young fellow of enterprise and resolution. He suggested taking a walk, for the inadequate reason that the moon was up. So Mr. Miller was left alone--which, after all, was the fate he had chosen for himself.

Benedicta had fixed ideas about courtships. It cannot be denied that, although she had seen this young man only twice, and had no proper foundation for such a notion, she believed that this was the beginning of a courtship. The most singular delight and confusion filled her heart. She didn’t wish to speak, or wish him to speak. Later, after they had known each other for weeks and weeks, would come the moment when he would tell her those wonderful things of which she had read; but now all she wanted in the world was to walk by his side on the long, dim road, soft with dust, with the crickets chirping in the parched grass, and the breeze, sweet with the breath of the fields and the hills, blowing against her face.

Young Dumall, apparently, had no such ideas about courtships.

“You know,” he said, “I’m poor enough--”

“Oh!” Benedicta interrupted. “What does that matter? It’s something to be proud of--in these days, when people like the Wilkinsons have so much money.”

He turned toward her, but it was too dark to read her face.

“I don’t see anything wrong with the Wilkinsons,” he said. “They’re the best friends I’ve ever had.”

Benedicta was a little nettled at this.

“Of course they’re very nice, and all that,” she answered; “but they’re not at all our sort.”

“That’s our misfortune,” declared Francis. “Mr. Wilkinson made money because he worked hard and used his wits. Our sort of people wouldn’t work, and thought it a fine thing not to have any common sense. _I’m_ not proud of being poor--and I’m not going to stay poor!”

“There are better things in life than hard work and common sense,” observed Benedicta stiffly.

“I know that,” said he; “but you can’t get or keep those better things without hard work and common sense. Valuable things have to be paid for.”

“The very best things can’t be bought,” said she.

“You can’t get them any other way,” said he.

Benedicta was growing rather angry.

“Not good blood,” she said. “Not family and traditions.”

“But, see here!” he interposed. “Haven’t you ever heard or read how the people we came from--the old Millers and the Dumalls--got what we’re so proud of now? They bought all they ever had. They often paid with their lives, and always with the hardest, most dangerous kind of service. After they’d come to this country and cleared their land, they had to defend it. All the Dumalls who amounted to anything were fighters in one way or another--not necessarily soldiers, but men who held their own. When they stopped fighting--and paying--they didn’t amount to anything any more. I don’t intend to spend my life talking about what other and better men have done before me. I’m a man myself, and I mean to do something worth doing!”

Benedicta was a traitor. She agreed with every word he said. She was so thrilled by his boyish spirit that she could have wept with pride and joy. She thought to herself that he was like a knight, that he was the bravest, finest, most wonderful creature who had ever walked the earth.

“I’m sure you will!” she cried.

He stopped short.

“Do you really think so, Benedicta?” he asked.

He called her Benedicta, and his voice--

“Yes,” she answered, very low.

“Benedicta,” he said again, “I can’t say what I want to say to you just now--not yet; but if I thought--I could do anything in the world if it was for _you_!”

It was necessarily a very long walk, with so much to be said. Benedicta came home with a hole walked through one of her best slippers; but she had heard the important things necessary for her to know. She had heard exactly why he felt that way, and at what instant he had begun to feel that way. She had given him permission to go ahead and do anything in the world for her; and he had kissed her--an awkward little kiss--when they said good night at the gate.

VI

Benedicta awoke to a rainy morning, but it was not the sort of rain that had hitherto fallen upon the earth. It was sweet, fresh, exhilarating. The sound of it drumming on the roof was as gay as martial music.

All the old wearisome things were gone out of her life, and the new ones had scarcely begun. She felt wonderfully free and spirited, like a person on a journey who has got as far as the railway station--who is definitely away from home, but still in familiar country.

She was thinking of nothing but Francis Dumall, the knight, the adventurer, the man determined to do something worth doing. She could imagine nothing in the modern world quite splendid enough for him to do. It was brave to be an aviator, but it wasn’t important enough. A statesman? Not picturesque enough. A writer? Not sufficiently active or daring.

“But he’ll have thought of something,” she reflected. “I know he has his life all planned. I wonder why I didn’t ask him about that, instead of about--other things. It’s because I’m frivolous and silly!”

Even that didn’t depress her. She was so full of hope and courage this morning that it seemed the simplest thing in the world to acquire wisdom at once. She intended to buy and read a new book this very day, so that she might talk about it to the incomparable Francis in the evening; and this not from any desire to show off, or to impress him, but simply from an honest and touching wish to follow him, to go at his pace, to prove her sympathy with his aims.

She had never bought a book in her life. It had been difficult enough--impossible, at times--to buy the barest necessities; and what they did get was usually procured on credit in mysterious ways by Mr. Miller.

Money of her own was a thing unknown to Benedicta. Nevertheless, she went in the calmest way and asked her father for a little. Mr. Miller was equally calm when he gave her all he had. Indeed, he forgot the present moment, and felt himself one of the old Millers making a lavish gift to a daughter whose hand was sought by a scion of the Dumalls.

It didn’t matter that she went rattling off in her little car along muddy roads. She couldn’t have been lovelier in a coach with footmen. The rain blew against her face and made it beautifully rosy. Her dark hair became a little loosened under her wide hat.

When she sprang out, and went into the butcher’s, he was astounded by this new aspect of the high and mighty Miss Miller. To tell the truth, he felt more respect and admiration for her happy youth than he had ever felt for her Millerness.

“Mr. Schultz,” she said eagerly, “can you tell me where there’s a book shop?”

Mr. Schultz had an educated son who bought books. He told her that for the first time in many years there was now a book shop in Elderfield, and a good one, too, just behind the post office.

“It’s--” he began, but she thanked him, and hurried off.

It was a trim, attractive little shop, with a striped awning, and in the window were displayed books as fresh and tempting as the first delectable fruits in spring. No bookworm was Benedicta, however. She pulled up the little car smartly, jumped out, and entered the shop with a brisk and resolute air.

“Have you a copy of--” she began, addressing the young man who came forward.

Then she stopped short with a gasp. It was Francis Dumall!

“Benedicta!” he cried. “This is the best thing that ever happened; I never thought of seeing you on a rainy day like this! Benedicta! How especially pretty you look!”

“But--” she faltered. “But I didn’t know--I didn’t think--you never told me you were here in a place like this!”

“Didn’t I?” he answered, with an air of triumph. “Well, take a good look at it, Benedicta! It’s my own!”

“Your--shop? _You_ have a _shop_?”

He mistook her horror for incredulous admiration.

“Fact!” he said. “Mr. Wilkinson set me up six months ago, and I’m doing even better than I expected. I tell you, Benedicta, I’m really making the people here sit up and take notice that there are such things as books in this world. A fellow told me the other day that I was doing splendid missionary work. Why, look here, Benedicta--”

And he went on, showing her things, explaining, taking up books and opening them, and never noticing her frozen silence.

A customer came in. He sold her the book she wanted, and another which she hadn’t wanted before. A Dumall waiting on customers! A shopkeeper! That was what Benedicta’s knight, her splendid adventurer, was doing--selling books and wrapping them up!

When they were alone again, he sat down on the edge of the table and took both her hands.

“You see, darling, beautiful girl, in a year’s time, even if I don’t do better than I’m doing now, I’ll have paid back Wilkinson, and I’ll be standing on my own feet. _Then_ I’ll be able--”

Benedicta tried to draw away her hands, tried to find words for the anger and bitter disappointment within her; but before she had uttered a syllable, the door opened again and a man entered.

“Dumall,” he said, politely ignoring the flushed Benedicta, “I wish you’d come over to the station with me and see that fellow from Cowan’s. He’s waiting for the up train, but he’d like to see you about that Bijou line of cards.”

Young Dumall turned to Benedicta with such a pleased expression.

“You won’t be afraid to look after the shop for a quarter of an hour, will you?” he asked earnestly. “You needn’t try to sell anything. If any one comes in, show those new books, you know--and keep them talking until I get back.”

Before she had time to refuse, he had hurried away on his errand.

VII

A Miller waiting in a shop! No! It was too much!

“I won’t do it!” Benedicta thought, angry tears in her eyes. “I’ll leave his horrible, vulgar shop! I never want to see him again! So this is what he calls something worth doing! In a year he’ll pay back Mr. Wilkinson and be standing on his own feet--”

Somehow the phrase arrested her. Standing on his own feet! Working honestly and faithfully and happily, proud of his work, confident of success, looking forward, instead of back--standing on his own feet!

Benedicta was at the door, with her hand on the latch, but she could not open it. It was as if a crowd of new ideas were holding it fast, keeping her in there. This bright, neat little place, where something was done, instead of remembered--this thing that was being built up, instead of falling into ruins--what had she ever had in her life one-half so fine? After all, wasn’t it an adventure, wasn’t it a worthy thing to do, to stand on his own feet?

The door was pushed open then, and the next instant the daughter of the Millers was confronted by a customer. Suddenly a strange new desire came over her--a desire to do something, instead of just being herself, a fierce determination to make even the smallest sort of individual effort.

In an instant, Benedicta knew all sorts of things she wasn’t aware of knowing. She understood the arrangement of the stock. She knew how to talk to this strange man. She was calm, reasonable, efficient. He wavered, and said he didn’t think he would take anything that morning; and she persuaded him! She made a sale!

She wrapped up the book and took the money for it. She kept the coins in her hand and stared at them. The shop was an entirely different place. The whole world was changed. She walked thoughtfully about, she saw improvements that could be made.

“Got it!” cried Dumall boyishly.

“Got what?” asked Benedicta, turning with a slight, preoccupied frown.

“The agency. I’m sorry I had to leave you, Benedicta. I ought to have some sort of assistant, but that’ll have to wait. Now, then, dear girl, let’s go out to lunch!”

“And leave the shop?” she inquired.

“I’ll close it for an hour. I often do, you know. No one’s likely to come in.”

“Some one did come in, just now,” said Benedicta, “and bought a book.” She handed him the money. “So you see,” she went on quite sternly, “if there’d been no one here--”

“But I have to. We’ll only be gone--”

“I’ll stay here while you have lunch.”

“But, Benedicta!” he objected. “I want to be with you. Never mind the shop!”

“Francis, I’m ashamed of you!” said she. “The shop shan’t be left alone. I--I love it!”

“Love the _shop_?” he asked. “Is that all?”

“Well, anyhow--I’d like to help you, Francis,” she murmured. “I’d be glad to come every day until--until you don’t need me any more.”

Young Dumall looked at her.

“I don’t think you know what you’re undertaking, Benedicta,” he said. “If you’re going to come until I don’t need you, it’s a life job!”

“Do run along and get your lunch!” replied Benedicta, dignified in spite of very flushed cheeks. “I--I believe a job was just what I always wanted, Francis!”

MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE

FEBRUARY, 1924 Vol. LXXXI NUMBER 1

Nickie and Pem

THE STORY OF A YOUNG WOMAN WHO DID NOT WANT TO WASTE HER LIFE

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

“Pem, you’re too darned good!” said Nickie.

“I don’t call it being good,” replied Miss Pembroke. “I call it simply being self-respecting.”

This was the sort of thing her friends found objectionable, and Nickie began to object now.

“Lord!” said she. “Don’t we work hard enough to deserve a little fun now and then? It won’t hurt your precious self-respect to speak to a man now and then, will it? I can’t--”

“Oh, that’s all nonsense!” interrupted Miss Pembroke. “I see enough of men, and I put up with enough from them. When I’m off duty, I don’t have to put up with anything, and I _won’t_!”

“Nobody wants you to. The boys who are coming this evening are awfully nice boys. If you’d just come in and speak to them--”

Miss Pembroke closed her book sharply.

“Nickie,” she said, “I’m very fond of you; but I don’t like your friends--not any of them--and I wish you’d let me alone.”

“Certainly,” replied Nickie, in a haughty and offended tone.

She turned all her attention upon the process of manicuring, but neither the haughtiness nor the silence reassured Miss Pembroke, who knew that they wouldn’t last. It was hardly worth while to open her book again, for Nickie would be sure to interrupt.

“It’s getting to be too much of a good thing,” she reflected. “I needed a good rest after that last case, but I’ll never get it while Nickie’s here. This whole thing was a mistake. I ought to have taken a room somewhere by myself, where I couldn’t be bothered.”

This was by no means the first time she had regretted her present domestic arrangements. It was all Nickie’s fault, of course. Nickie had told her what a fine thing it would be to join with three other graduate nurses in taking a flat.

“A nice little home of our own,” Nickie had said, “where we can rest when we want to, and entertain our friends, and keep all our things. The other girls are simply great. You’ll like them.”

Miss Pembroke had said that five girls were too many.

“But we’ll never all be home at the same time,” Nickie had assured her. “Lots of times you and I will have the place to ourselves.”

In the course of a year this had happened only once. When Nickie was at home, Pem was off on a case. When Pem came home, instead of finding her faithful Nickie, one of the other girls would be there, or sometimes two of them; and Pem didn’t like them. She didn’t like their “parties,” or their conversation, or their cheerful, careless style of housekeeping.

She herself was never careless, and, though she was even-tempered and polite, she wasn’t often cheerful. As a nurse, she was matchless. Doctors wanted to send her to their most troublesome and exacting patients, because not only was she quick, capable, and intelligent, but she could hold her tongue and keep her temper, and she had a cool, quiet way with her that kept her patients in good order.

But this cool, quiet way of which doctors so highly approved was not at all pleasing to her housemates. Even Nickie thought it deplorable.

“Pem,” she had said to her once, “you could be young and beautiful, if you’d only learn how!”

There was truth in that observation. Miss Pembroke had both youth and beauty, and somehow managed to disguise them, so that they often went unnoticed. People would say that she was “impressive,” or “dignified,” or something of that sort, because they never saw her off guard, as Nickie saw her now. She was a tall, slender, dark-haired girl, with an austere, fine-bred face--not the sort of face one would turn to look after in the street, but a face which patients--above all, male patients--found very, very hard to forget. Her slender hands were clasped about one knee, and her clear amber eyes were staring thoughtfully before her. She was, thought Nickie, engaged in daydreams of some mysterious and enchanting kind unknown to more ordinary girls. But in reality--

“Nickie’s getting coarse,” Miss Pembroke was reflecting.

There was no coarseness to be seen in Miss Nicholson’s rosy, jolly face, nor to be observed in her manners and conversation. Indeed, no one but Miss Pembroke had yet seen any trace of it; but Pem was by nature critical, and just at this moment she was jaded and dispirited after six weeks of a ferocious typhoid patient, who had fallen in love with her in a very trying and ill-tempered way. Moreover, she was mortally weary of Nickie’s persistence.

“I’m sick and tired of men,” she thought. “All Nickie ever thinks of is men, and going to parties, and having what she calls a good time.”

Now this was not quite doing justice to Nickie. When she was not working, she was undeniably very fond of playing; but when you consider how very short and infrequent were her play times, and how very hard and exhausting was her work; when you consider that this lively, warm-hearted young creature had to witness every sort of human agony and wretchedness; when you bear in mind the tremendous responsibilities she so faithfully accepted; her generous readiness to do more than she needed to do, her charity, her sympathy, her sturdy courage--when you think of all this, it is not difficult to forgive her for being somewhat frivolous during her little hours of freedom.

There were weeks at a time when men, parties, and having a good time gave her mighty little concern. Just now, however, her mind was entirely given to such matters; and, as Pem expected, she couldn’t help trying again to persuade her friend.

“Oh, Pem!” she said coaxingly. “Just this once! Come in and speak to the boys, and if you don’t like them--”

“No!” said Pem.

But she did, and, by doing so, she changed the course of three lives.

She had no intention of seeing Nickie’s friends. In fact, she came nearer to quarreling with Nickie than she had ever yet come, and she retired to her own room with flushed cheeks and a frown on her calm brow. She was not in the habit of losing her temper, and this unusual annoyance disturbed her. She was restless, and couldn’t settle down to read or sew.

Her neat little room seemed all at once too neat and too little, and she wanted to get out of it. It was a clear, fine night. A walk, even a solitary and aimless one, wouldn’t be bad. She had put on her hat and coat, and was just about to open her door, when--when Nickie’s party arrived.