A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
whose thoughts are not on earthly things. She sighed and shook her head.
“Front door bell's ringing,” called Bertie, “so's the telephone, and
Father's gone out and says you can clean his study. There's the bell
again.”
“I expect it's Mr. Gooch inviting himself to supper. I ain't goin' to
let him in. Give me that there plate to pour the candy in.”
“Look, 'Telia, what Chick traded me!”
Myrtella cast a side glance at Bertie's extended palm, and promptly
rescinded the deal.
“Ain't you ashamed of yourself, Chick Flathers! Tradin' a little
fellow's fine marbles fer them comman allies? It's cheatin', that's what
it is, it's stealin'! Ain't you ashamed?”
Chick _was_ ashamed and had the grace to show it. His contrition would
probably not have developed except through exposure, but standing before
Myrtella's accusing glance, and the surprised, hurt look in Bertie's
eyes, his hardened conscience was pricked, and his lip began to tremble.
With a fierce gesture of protection Myrtella pulled him to her:
“Don't, Chick! Don't cry! I wasn't meanin' to scold you. You ain't had
a chance like other boys. You never had no playthings, you never had
nothin'. You was a poor little abandoned child ever since you was born.
Oh! God, I'm a wicked woman! I ain't fit to live on the earth!”
This amazing outburst so stunned the two small boys, that they stood
looking at her in open-eyed astonishment. For some moments she swayed to
and fro with her apron over her head, then savagely dried her eyes, and,
bidding them follow her, stalked up the back stairs with broom and dust
pan.
Doctor Queerington's study was at the top of the house, where by means
of closing the doors and windows, and stuffing his ears with cotton, he
was able to shut out that material world to which he preferred to remain
a stranger. The room was filled from floor to ceiling with books, and it
was one of the crosses of Myrtella's life that behind the visible rows
of volumes, stood other rows, forming a sort of submerged library beyond
the reach of her cloth and duster.
In no room in the house did she feel her importance more fully than in
this inner shrine. She had calculated with mathematical precision the
exact position of each of the Doctor's desk utensils, she knew the
divinity that hedged about a manuscript, and the inviolable nature of
bookmarks.
When Bertie began fingering the inkstand, she pounced upon him.
“Don't you dare touch a thing, either one of you! When the Doctor told
me to take charge of his things, I took it. There ain't ever been a word
of complaint since I come here, and I ain't goin' to have one at this
here late date. There's the Doctor now comin' up the steps; I'll finish
up here later. Get away from there, Chick!”
But Chick had made a discovery. On the Doctor's desk, smiling out from
a porcelain frame, he had found his divinity! It was the beautiful young
lady who had once taken his part in a fight with Skeeter Sheeley over
a whip handle; it was the young lady who always smiled at him when she
rode by Billy-goat Hill; it was she who had changed his life ambition
from grand larceny to plumbing! Heedless of warning he snatched at the
picture, and as he did so it slipped from his fingers and the frame
shattered on the floor.
Doctor Queerington, at the doorway, took in the situation at a glance.
He looked quickly from Myrtella's horrified face to the cringing figure
of the strange child, then he smiled reassuringly.
“There is no serious harm done,” he said in a quiet, pleasant voice;
“the frame can be easily replaced, and as for the photograph--” he
paused and smiled again, then he drew Bertie's hand into his; “Myrtella,
I shall no longer have need of a photograph of that young lady. She has
consented to come herself and take charge of us all.”
Myrtella stood as one petrified; her massive figure with its upraised
duster was silhoueted against the light, like a statue of the goddess of
war. At last she found voice:
“To take charge?” she gasped. “Do you mean she's comin' to be Mis'
Squeerington?”
“I do.”
“Well, I give notice,” announced Myrtella with all the dignity of
offended majesty, and shoving Chick before her, she slammed the door
upon the astonished Doctor and stalked haughtily down the stairs.
CHAPTER XII
“A bride who doesn't see her duty, should be _made_ to see it,” declared
Mrs. Sequin to Mrs. Ivy in her most impressive manner. “Something is
naturally expected of the wife of John Jay Queerington. I told her
expressly that Friday was her day, I even telephoned to remind her,
and here it is four o'clock, and people beginning to come, and she off
playing tennis!”
They were waiting in the twilight of the Queerington parlor, that plain,
stiff, old maid of a parlor that had sprung completely furnished from
the brain of a decorator some two decades before and never blinked an
eyelid since. It was a room with which no one had ever taken liberties.
Hattie had once petulantly remarked that her father would as soon have
moved a tooth from his lower to his upper jaw, as to have moved an
ornament or picture from the parlor to the second floor.
Mrs. Ivy, the lady addressed, smiled tolerantly. It was one of Mrs.
Ivy's most irritating characteristics that she was always tolerant of
other people's annoyances. She was blond and plump, and wore a modified
toga and a crystallized smile.
“Ah! Mrs. Sequin,” she purred, “our little bride is a child of Nature.
Sweetness and light! We must not expect too much of her at first. My
Gerald says she's like a wild little waterfall dancing in the sun,
undammed by conventions. Gerald phrases things so perfectly.”
“Well, I've had enough of trying to manage a waterfall!” Mrs. Sequin
said grimly. “Cousin John asked me to take her in hand, and I must say
I am finding her difficult. Perfectly sweet and good natured, you
know, but she goes right on her own way. She has decided that she likes
Connie's friends better than the Doctor's, that her hair doesn't feel
right arranged the way it should be, that she isn't going to wear
dresses made by fashionable dressmakers because they are uncomfortable.
She actually told me she liked to be a few minutes out of style!”
“But isn't she right?” murmured Mrs. Ivy. “God has given her a graceful,
symmetrical body, shouldn't she clothe it in flowing robes that do not
confine or--”
“For Heaven's sake, Mrs. Ivy, don't you dare start her on dress reform!
Her one chance for social success is her beauty. She simply terrifies me
the way she says right out the first thing that comes into her mind. It
will take me months to teach her the first lesson in society, that the
most immodest thing in the world is the naked truth.”
“What I hope to rouse in the dear girl,” said Mrs. Ivy with a superior
smile, “is a sense of responsibility toward her fellowmen. I have
already proposed her name for the Anti-Tobacco League and Miss Snell,
our corresponding secretary of the Foreign Missionary Society, has
promised to meet me here at five. It is these young, ardent souls that
must take up the banner of reform when it drops from the hands of us
veterans.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Sequin, turning a handsome, bored profile to her
companion, “I shall never get over the absurdity of the marriage!”
“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 assisting, but Connie's assistance 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!” rehearsed 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 balls 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 button off my slipper. Do
you suppose any one will notice if I pin the strap?”
“Nobody 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
pussy-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 passionately 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, assumed 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-analysis, she fearlessly
put her hand into the Doctor's, and promised to obey with a frank sense