Part 68

“Of course it sounded quite different with his quaint Scotch accent.”

“I see!” said Hughes.

He hoped it had sounded different, because, as Mrs. Dexter read it, he thought he had never heard anything so idiotic. The whole thing annoyed him. He had no objection to Mrs. Dexter’s talking about Mimi; in fact, he liked to hear her, and thought it natural and agreeable. But otherwise, apart from Mrs. Dexter, who was Mimi’s mother, he had wished to believe himself the sole true appreciator of Mimi.

It was a pity that there was nobody at hand to tell Mrs. Dexter anecdotes about Hughes’s childhood. If there had been any one--his sister, for instance--she would have learned what a pig-headed fellow he was; how, if you wanted to convince him, you must never, never argue with him; how he simply could not be driven, but must be humored. Any such person could have told her what a disastrous mistake she made in thus bringing Professor MacAndrews into the situation.

When Mimi came back with the tea, she saw at once that something had gone amiss. At first she was worried, but presently the young man’s silence and his very serious expression became annoying to her. It seemed to her important to show him that she didn’t care in the least, and in order so to do, she became more frivolous than he had ever before seen her. For the first time she treated him as she had treated those other nice boys; she laughed at him, and teased him, and dazzled him.

Hughes was no more proof against this than any of the others had been, but, unlike those others, he stubbornly resisted the enchantment. He was ready to admit that she was dazzling, but the gayer she was, the more he thought of Professor MacAndrews. He thought to himself that she must know only too well how pretty she was, and how great was her power.

“It’s a pity!” he thought, sternly. “It’s very bad for a girl to have a silly old cuckoo like that making such a fuss over her. Calling her a ‘bonnie wee thing’! Of course I won’t deny that she is, but--”

But no one should have told her so before Hughes had a chance. Certainly he wasn’t going to tell her those things all over again, and he wasn’t going to accept any bearded professor’s opinion of her, either. No; he intended to study her gravely and dispassionately, and judge for himself.

Three times he came to the flat for that purpose, and each time that he came, with his grave and dispassionate expression, the girl was more frivolous than ever. And on the third evening she was outrageous.

She said that evening that she would make him a Welsh rarebit. It appeared to him no more than his duty as a guest, or a gentleman, or something of the sort, to go into the kitchen with her, and there he watched her make a most horrible concoction, the most leathery, nightmare-provoking rarebit. And he saw that she knew nothing about cooking, in its true and serious meaning, and she wore a silly little apron, and she burned her silly little finger.

As he walked home that evening, he told himself, almost violently, that he had not kissed Mimi, and had not said a single word to her of any significance. But that gave him precious little comfort. He had wanted to, and he knew that she knew it. He remembered an unsteady little smile of hers.

“I won’t be a fool!” cried Hughes to himself. “I know she’s--well--a very nice girl. I’ll admit that I--I like her. But she’s--well--she’s not my sort. She’s--Look at the way they live! I couldn’t stand that. All those little frilly curtains and covers and doodabs, and those antique plates--with nothing real to eat on ’em. I know it’s all very dainty and so on--but it’s--it’s too damn’ fancy!”

He was honestly frightened, now. He didn’t see how he could ever escape from that atmosphere of doodabs and fanciness. That moment in the kitchen, that one glance they had exchanged, had shown him that being in love was a malady which grew worse with time.

He would inevitably ask Mimi to marry him, and if she refused him, life would be intolerable; and if she accepted him, they would have to have a home which would be filled with little lace doilies and antique plates, and his existence would be made dainty--and fancy.

Hughes had been brought up with Spartan simplicity by his very poor and very proud family in New Hampshire, and their ways were the ways he admired. He was not quite so fond of being poor, though, and had cured himself of that, but he still lived in Spartan style.

He had a furnished room, from which he had obliged the landlady to remove all those things she most admired; he ate his meals in a shining white restaurant where there were no tablecloths, and in his office he would permit no trace of luxury. He wouldn’t even have a private office; he sat out in plain view of his staff, upon a severely efficient chair, before a desk which was a model of neatness and order. That was how he liked things. And now, here he was, in love with Mimi!

What to do?

He thought of a plan.

II

There was one woman in the world whom Hughes admired without reservation, and that was his aunt, Kate Boles. He saw in her no flaw. She was a childless widow, living alone in the loneliest little cottage in the Berkshires; she had a hard life, and she gloried in it.

Not only did Aunt Kate live upon an almost impossibly small income, but she saved out of it, and when Hughes wanted to help her, she refused. She said she had a roof over her head, and enough to eat, and clothing to cover her decently, and that she wanted nothing more. He thought this admirable.

She admired him, too. It was a part of her philosophy of life to believe that men could never be so noble as women, but, for a man, she thought her nephew remarkably good. So, when he asked her, she came down from her mountains, for the first time in many years.

“Desborough Hughes!” she declared. “I shouldn’t do this for any one else on earth.”

“I appreciate it, Aunt Kate,” he agreed.

But when he explained his intention, her face grew mighty grim.

“Women!” she exclaimed. “You didn’t mention that in your letter, Desborough!”

“I know,” he said. “But--”

“All you told me,” she went on, “was that you wanted to open that house your Uncle Joseph left you out at Green Lake, and that you wanted me to keep house for you and some friends of yours for awhile. Not a word did you say about women.”

“I didn’t think it would make any difference--”

“Well, it does!” said she. “I don’t know that I’m inclined to keep house for a parcel of idle women.”

Hughes said that there were only two of them, a mother and a daughter.

“And why can’t they keep house for themselves?”

“They’re not accustomed to--to country life. They’re--”

“I see!” said Mrs. Boles. “A couple of these highfalutin’ city people. I may as well tell you, Desborough, that I don’t feel disposed to wait on them hand and foot.”

“I don’t want you to,” Hughes asserted. “It’s only--” He paused. He saw that he would be obliged to give his aunt some inkling of his plan. “It’s like this,” he said. “They’ve got used to that artificial, effete sort of life, and I thought--a week or two of a different sort of life--I thought it might--well--give them a--a new point of view.”

“Desborough!” she exclaimed. “They want to marry you. I can see that.”

“No, they don’t!” he pointed out. “I want to marry them. One of them, I mean.”

He had not wished to say that, but it couldn’t be helped. His serious face grew scarlet, and he turned away, very greatly dreading the questions and comments his aunt might utter. But, to his surprise, she said nothing at all for a long time, and presently, to his still greater surprise, she laid her bony hand on his shoulder.

“Very well, my boy!” she said.

He looked at her, but he could not read her face, and he was afraid to ask her what her words and her tone signified. They made him uneasy, and he wasn’t very happy, anyhow.

He knew that he could count upon his aunt to set a superb example of fine, old-fashioned simplicity and industry, but that, after all, was not quite what he had intended. His idea had been simply to let Mimi and her mother see what life was like--real life, without false and unnecessary adornments. He hoped that this glimpse would impress them, that was all, so that it would be easier for him to explain to Mimi later on:

“That’s what I call the right way to live. Plainly, simply--as you saw it out at Green Lake.”

And he did believe that when she actually saw this life in operation, she would admire it. Only, it was important that his Aunt Kate should not be too obviously an example.

There was nothing he could do about it now, though. He had written to his Aunt Kate, and she had come; he had arranged to open the house at Green Lake, and to spend a three weeks’ vacation there, and the house was open, and he was in it; he had invited Mrs. Dexter and Mimi for a fortnight, and they were coming this afternoon. The experiment was about to begin. He could only hope.

But this afternoon he found it difficult to do any really effective hoping. An unaccountable depression had come over him; he stood upon the veranda of this house of his, smoking a pipe, and regarding the scene before him with something very like dismay in his eyes.

He had only seen the house once before, and it seemed to him that his outlook must have been biased then by his pleasure in having inherited a house. Certainly it had looked very different, that first time. It had been midsummer, then, and he remembered standing in this same window and looking out at the lake--a glimpse of glittering water seen through the trees.

It was late September, now, and the leaves were thinner, and he could see the lake very well. Lake? It was a pond--a stagnant and sinister little pond, covered with scum, the source and the refuge of all these swarms and swarms of mosquitoes. And the house itself, which had seemed so dim and cool and restful on that summer day, was strangely altered now.

His late uncle’s furniture was good, and quite plain enough to suit any one, but it seemed to him that there wasn’t enough of it; the rooms had so bare and desolate a look. And it was damp. He had been here now for a week with his aunt, and she herself said that the dampness had “got into her bones.” He thought that was a good way of putting it; the dampness had got into his bones, too; he had never felt so cold in his life. He was positively shivering with it.

“That’s all nonsense!” he said to himself, angrily. “The mercury’s up to fifty-eight. I can’t be cold!”

He was, though--wretchedly, miserably cold. He sauntered down the hall and stood in the doorway of the kitchen, pretending that he wished to chat with his aunt, but really to be near the stove. It did him no good at all; he felt as cold as ever, and the aroma of the plain dinner--a lamb stew--which Mrs. Boles was cooking, filled him with unaccountable distaste. Such was his mood that Mrs. Boles herself had a chilling appearance; her gray hair seemed frosty; her white apron looked as if it would be icy to touch.

The cuckoo clock in the hall struck three. It was a cantankerous old clock, and when it struck three, it meant a quarter to four; time for him to be off. So off he went, out to the barn where he kept his car, in he climbed, and set off for the railway station.

And it was no use insisting that it was the jolting over bad roads which made him shake so, because the shaking kept on after he had alighted and was waiting on the platform. He was shivering violently; his teeth were chattering; his head ached; he felt horribly ill.

Still, when his guests descended from the train, he greeted them cordially; he clenched his teeth to stop their chattering; he forced his stiff lips into a smile; he talked. He drove them back to the house. And that finished him.

“Mr. Hughes! You have a chill!” cried Mrs. Dexter.

“N-n-no!” he insisted.

But nobody would pay any attention to what he said. He was driven upstairs and ordered to lie down, and Mrs. Boles covered him up with blankets and brought him hot lemonade to drink. He felt so exceedingly miserable that he submitted to all this, but when she mentioned a doctor, he rebelled.

“L-look here!” he said. “I _won’t_ have a doctor! I mean that! I’ll be all right in the morning. I’d be all right now if I had--”

He told Mrs. Boles what he fancied he needed to make him all right, but she sternly disagreed with him. She told him that this remedy he mentioned was simply “poison,” and that hot lemonade was beyond measure more beneficial. And, to be sure, the chill was already passing off, only what took its place was even worse. He now became unbearably hot, burning, and she wouldn’t let him take off a single one of that mound of blankets.

He remembered afterward that he had not been very amiable toward his aunt. He was so humiliated by this weakness, so anxious about his guests; he seemed to remember shouting at her to let him _alone_, and go downstairs and look after those people. Anyhow, she went, and the instant she was out of sight, he pushed the blankets off onto the floor, and, with a throbbing head, lay back again and closed his eyes.

He heard her come back into the room. She paused near him.

“I tell you I’m all right!” he said, without opening his eyes. “For Heaven’s sake, don’t leave those people alone! Go downstairs--”

“It’s just me,” said the smallest voice. “I thought maybe you’d like a cup of tea.”

It was Mimi, standing there with a tray. He pulled the counterpane up to his chin, and turned away his face; what he really wanted to do was to cover up his head entirely, and not to answer, so that she could neither see nor hear him. But if he did that, she wouldn’t go away, and he had to make her go away immediately. It was unendurable that she should see him like this.

“Oh, thanks!” he said, in an odiously condescending voice. “But there’s nothing much wrong with me. Half an hour’s nap, and I’ll be all right again.”

That put a quick stop to her dangerous sympathy.

“Oh!” she observed. “I thought--I’m sorry I disturbed you, Mr. Hughes!”

And out she went. She was offended; he knew that, but he had to make her go, at any cost. He could endure almost anything with fortitude, but not the thought of Mimi being sorry for him. He never allowed any one to be sorry for him.

As the door closed behind her, he turned his head. She had left the tray on a chair beside him. On it were a cup and a saucer and a plate of his uncle’s antique china which he had carefully put away. There was thin bread with butter, cut star-shaped and placed just so.

And there were two doilies. No, not doilies; those, at least, she could not find in this house; they were two little lace handkerchiefs spread out.

And he was ill, helpless, unable to combat with any vigor this insidious attack. In the gathering dusk he lay propped up on one elbow, looking at those terrifying handkerchiefs.

III

Hughes had said that he would be all right in the morning, but he was surprised to find that he really was so. It seemed incredible that one could feel as he had felt in the evening, and wake in the morning quite well. More than ever was he ashamed of himself. He couldn’t have been really ill at all.

The great thing now was to efface the disastrous impression he must have made by this weakness. He must make Mimi realize that he was not the sort of person who was ever ill, or ever laid down, or desired cups of tea. He came downstairs early, and after a few repentant words to Mrs. Boles--who had got down still earlier--he decided to take a walk.

Mimi and Mrs. Dexter would, of course, get up late, as was the habit of city people, and when he met them, he would remark casually that he had had a five-mile walk before breakfast. He went into the library, where he had left his pipe, and he had just taken it in his hand when Mimi appeared in the doorway.

“Oh! I see you’re better this morning!” she remarked, polite and nothing more.

“Yes,” Hughes replied. “It was nothing. A cold--something of the sort. But, Miss Dexter! Look here! I’m--I’m afraid I wasn’t--I didn’t--You may have thought I didn’t appreciate your great kindness--”

Miss Dexter appeared very much mollified by this tone.

“Well, you weren’t yourself,” she said, softly.

Hughes was silent for a moment. It was generous of her to think that, but it wouldn’t do.

“I’m afraid I was myself,” he admitted at last. “I mean--I am like that sometimes. I don’t want you to think that I’m--”

“I don’t,” she said softly.

He was greatly disconcerted by this. He glanced at her; she was wearing a rose-colored dress, and it made him a little dizzy. She was so extraordinarily lovely. He did not think it wise to look at her any more or to speak to her just then, so he began to fill his pipe instead.

“Mr. Hughes,” she inquired, “have you had your breakfast?”

“No,” he answered, “I was waiting for--”

“Then you mustn’t smoke,” Mimi said firmly. “It’s the worst thing in the world before breakfast. Please put that pipe down!”

He was amazed, astounded, by this tone of authority, so much so that he forgot himself and looked at her again. Ordering him about, tyrannizing over him, this outrageous young thing!

He was saved just in the nick of time by Mrs. Dexter’s entrance. But he had had his warning. He knew that he would have put down that pipe. He saw clearly that he would be absolutely under the girl’s thumb if he didn’t look out.

Anyhow, she was getting a salutary example of the plain and simple life. Breakfast from thick, sensible china, set out on a red and white checked cloth, wholesome food, but no trace of demoralizing daintiness. He wondered anxiously what she thought of it; certainly she didn’t appear at all disdainful, and certainly her appetite was not adversely affected. And when the meal was ended, she offered, and even insisted, in the most sincere and friendly manner, upon helping Mrs. Boles with the dishes. He was proud of her.

But he was very much disappointed in Mrs. Boles. She wouldn’t allow this. She said: “No, child! Indeed you won’t!” as if she were defending Mimi against persons who wished to treat her like a Cinderella in the drudge phase. And when Mimi went out of the room to fetch something, both Mrs. Boles and Mrs. Dexter looked after her with the same sort of smile.

“Well! We’re only young once!” Mrs. Boles said with a sigh.

“Yes!” Mrs. Dexter agreed, also sighing. “Our troubles come soon enough!”

They meant him. He knew it. They meant that if Mimi should marry him, she would at once cease to be young and happy. This exasperated him, yet it worried him. Was it possible that these two matrons could discern in him qualities fatal to a woman’s happiness?

Did they think him capable of any harshness toward that small, gay creature in a pink dress? Well, he wasn’t. He knew, and he alone, how he felt about her.

Still, he did not mention his plan of taking them for a fine, healthful cross-country walk that afternoon, and instead he telephoned to the village for a motor car. It came promptly at half past two, but it went back again empty. Nobody cared to go out in it, because Mrs. Boles had a chill.

IV

It was nearly eight o’clock, and Hughes was suffering acutely from hunger. He walked up and down, and up and down, the library, smoking his pipe, and raging inwardly.

“Please don’t bother!” he had urged Mrs. Dexter.

And she had said: “Oh, but it’s no bother at all! Mimi and I really enjoy getting up a dainty little dinner!”

They were in the kitchen now. He could hear the egg-beater whirring, and, at intervals, their light, agreeable voices, always so good-tempered and affectionate toward each other. They had been at it for hours; they must be exhausted. Every fifteen minutes or so he had appeared in the kitchen doorway, to suggest, to plead, almost desperately:

“Look here! I _wish_ you wouldn’t! I wish you’d come out of there! Anything will do, you know, any little simple thing--”

But they would not come out. They only laughed at him.

“I wish I could make her see how wasteful and foolish it is to give all this time and effort to a meal!” he thought. “This idea that everything must be so elaborate and ‘dainty.’ Why, good Lord! I’d rather have bread and cheese--”

Bread and cheese! He thought of a slice of homemade bread with a piece of Swiss cheese lying upon it. He had had nothing to eat since twelve o’clock. Bread and cheese! How he longed for that! And how he appreciated the plain and simple life which provided meals of no matter what sort at reasonable hours!

It came into his mind that he would go upstairs and see his Aunt Kate again. Just see her. He didn’t want to talk to her; simply, it was a comfort to know that she was there, his ally. She felt as he did; their ideals were the same. Plain, sensible people.

He went out of the library and began to mount the stairs. A miserable little jet of gas burned in the lower hall, and another one on the landing, and they both sang a sad little piping tune. The house seemed vast, this evening, a place of black shadows and chilly silence, and many closed, menacing doors.

He thought of Mrs. Dexter’s flat, with its homemade furniture and its pathetic brightness. This was, of course, a fine, solid old house, and the flat was a cheap and paltry thing. A girl would be glad, wouldn’t she, to leave such a place, to leave the noise and dust of the city, and come here?

Of course there was this unaccountable malady which had attacked first himself and now Mrs. Boles. But it had left him overnight, and she, too, would no doubt be quite recovered in the morning. An odd sort of cold, that was all it was.