A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
of relief at the shifted responsibility.
The new life into which she entered proved different in every respect
from what she had expected. The Doctor's time, scheduled to the minute,
admitted of no interruptions, however helpful from her. In fact, he
seemed to regard her as a cherished luxury which he had no time to
enjoy. The children accepted her according to their respective natures,
Connie as a chum, Hattie as an arch enemy, and Bertie as an idol.
Hattie was fourteen, and had solved all the problems of the universe.
She firmly upheld Aristotle and scornfully dismissed Plato from the
world of philosophy. She disapproved of boys, of society, of second
marriages, and she had four desperately intimate friends, all of whom
were going to be authoresses. According to her observations she was the
one person in the universe, excepting her father, who adhered to the
truth. Hence her mission in life was to struggle single-handed against
other people's inaccuracies.
Miss Lady found refuge from Hattie's caustic comments in Bertie's
immediate devotion. He had won her heart on the night of her arrival,
when he had gone to sleep in her lap with a last injunction, that she
“must stay with them always, until God sent for her.”
Whatever ideas Miss Lady had cherished of taking charge of the domestic
affairs were promptly discouraged by Myrtella, who had graciously
consented to give the new mistress a month's trial, threatening that at
the first interference she would abandon her to her fate.
Their first meeting was auspicious. Myrtella on returning from her
afternoon out, had heard a wild commotion in the nursery and hastened up
to investigate. Bertie's introduction was breathless:
“It's the new mother, 'Tella, and Chick's here, and we are playing
bear, and we've broken the bed-springs, and she knows heaps and heaps of
stories, and she knows Chick!”
Myrtella, who had steeled herself for mortal combat, was not prepared
for a foe who sat in the middle of the nursery bed, laughing behind a
tumbled shock of shining brown hair.
“Oh! this is Myrtella, isn't it?” asked the bear, shaking back her mane
and smiling with engaging frankness. “Bertie says you are Chick's aunt,
and Chick's an old friend of mine, isn't it funny?”
“Where'd you ever know Chick?” demanded Myrtella with instant suspicion.
“We both live on Billy-goat Hill. We always wave to each other when I
pass by, don't we, Chick?”
Chick, who was partially under the bed, still in his character
of intrepid hunter, acknowledged the fact with such a torrent of
enthusiastic incoherence that Myrtella interrupted sternly:
“Come out here this minute. It's time for you to be going on home
anyhow. First thing I know I'll be getting complained at for having you
hanging around so much. And look at your hands, Bertie Queerington!
You are going to get put in the bath-tub right off, that's what you are
going to get!”
“I'll bathe him,” said Miss Lady eagerly.
“No,” said Myrtella firmly, “there can't nobody but me manage him.”
But in spite of the ferocity of Myrtella's aspect, there was a softened
gleam in her eye that showed that the new mistress had begun by giving
satisfaction.
The first few days after her arrival, Miss Lady spent in the dim parlor
receiving callers. All the Doctor's relatives having survived
their spasms of indignation over his marriage, united in a prompt
determination to train up his young wife in the way she should go.
Advice as various as it was profuse, was showered upon her. At first she
was amused; then she was inexpressibly bored; at last she was desperate.
She was not used to being indoors all day, she was not used to spending
her time with elderly ladies who talked of moral obligations, and social
demands, and civic consciences. The duties of her married life which had
promised such interesting responsibilities, and wonderful opportunities
for aiding the Doctor in his great work, seemed to be shrinking into the
dull task of keeping herself and the children out of his way, preserving
a tomb-like silence in the house, and entertaining an endless round of
callers.
Even this would have been bearable if the Doctor could only have taken
time from his soul-absorbing work to listen at the end of the day, with
amused tenderness, to all her little experiences, if he had discussed
with her the best way of handling the children, laughed with her over
her struggles with Myrtella, and encouraged those affectionate words and
caresses that were so much a part of her nature.
If he could have done this, Miss Lady would have soon found satisfaction
in lavishing her affection upon him. It was her bent to be passionately
attached to those about her, and she was not one to stand still in a
mental or emotional imprisonment.
But the Doctor was struggling through the most nerve-wrecking month of
the year at the university. The beginning of a new term, the adjustment
of classes, the enrolment of new pupils, all made a heavy drain on his
weakened constitution. He was in no condition in the evenings to give
out anything more, even to a young and devoted bride who was quite ready
to relinquish any other pleasure to burn incense at the shrine of his
learning.
The homesickness that had hung over her since the day she had turned her
back on Thornwood would have enveloped her completely had it not
been for Connie. Connie was but a year her junior, and was thoroughly
disapproved by the family connection. She enjoyed the reputation of
being frivolous and vain, and wholly lacking in reverence to her elders.
Connie's friends and amusements proved the line of least resistance
along which Miss Lady raced to freedom. The tennis court served as a
joyful substitute for the drab dreariness of the new home, and the
free and easy companionship of Connie's friends a happy relief from the
elderly feminines that invaded it.
The Doctor was still the majestic pivot, round which her thoughts swung,
but the circle was growing wider and wider. The difference in their
ages, which at first to her inexperience had seemed such a trifling
consideration, proved more serious as time went on.
She was eager for life, keen for pleasure, plastic, susceptible. Each
new experience was to her an epoch, while to the Doctor, whose habits
and opinions were fixed for eternity, it was usually but a fresh
interruption to his work.
It was not that he failed to appreciate her. The light that came into
his serious eyes whenever she was near, the unfailing courtesy and
gentleness with which he spoke to her, the absolute freedom he allowed
her, and the flattering appeal he made to her intellect, calmed whatever
doubts might have risen in her mind.
Of her own feelings she dared not stop to think. Life was all so
strange, so different from what she had expected. The flashes of doubt
and perplexity that came in the pauses between Connie's closely planned
festivities, she attributed to homesickness.
It was late when her last caller departed, and as she ran lightly up to
the Doctor's study, she realized with a little sense of disappointment
that she had not seen him since breakfast. Even now she paused at the
door, for fear she would interrupt some flight of the muse. But on
peeping in she found his big armchair drawn up to the window, and the
top of a head appearing above its back. Tiptoeing cautiously forward
she clapped her hands over his eyes and dropped a kiss on his upturned
forehead.
In an instant a strange, belligerent little gentleman had sprung to his
feet and was confronting her with features that resembled those of a
magnified and outraged bumblebee.
“I am so sorry!” stammered Miss Lady in laughing chagrin, “I--I thought
you were the Doctor!”
“Even so,” admitted the stranger rather firmly, standing with chin
lifted and nostrils dilated, “even so. You seem to have forgotten the
fact that Doctor Queerington is now a benedict!”
“Yes, but you don't understand. I am--”
“A friend of Constance' no doubt. But under the circumstances you will
permit me to say that such conduct is ill-advised. I should not mention
it were I not a friend of the family--”
“Oh! You are Mr. Gooch?”
“I am. And I have the pleasure of addressing--”
“Why, I'm Mrs. Queerington,” said Miss Lady, blushing furiously.
Mr. Gooch sank back into the chair and looked at her indignantly.
“Impossible!” he exploded. “They did not tell me--in fact I was
not prepared--May I ask you not to mention my mistake to the girls?
Constance, as you doubtless have discovered, is very silly, given to
making great capital out of nothing. We will not mention it.”
“Ah!” said the Doctor in the doorway with his arms full of books. “How
are you, my dear? How are you, Mr. Gooch? What is this conspiracy of
silence?”
“It is only against the girls,” laughed Miss Lady. “We'll take him in,
won't we, Mr. Gooch?”
The Doctor listened with tolerant amusement as Miss Lady gave a dramatic
account of the double mistake, but Mr. Gooch failed to smile.
All through supper that evening Miss Lady tried in vain to propitiate
the guest. His manner showed only too plainly that he regarded her as an
intrusion in the family which he had seen fit to adopt. It was not until
the pudding arrived that his mood mellowed. Myrtella's cooking was so
eminently to his taste that he was willing to put up with a great deal
for the privilege of enjoying it. Moreover, laughter always improved
his digestion and the young person at the head of the table was proving
amusing.
“Mr. Gooch is waiting for more coffee,” announced Hattie, interrupting
an animated account Miss Lady was giving of her first day at the country
school.
“Let her finish the story,” said the Doctor to whom food was immaterial.
He was indulging in the unusual luxury of loitering at the table after
the meal was finished, a habit seldom tolerated in the Queerington
household.
“But there isn't time,” insisted Hattie. “Connie is having a party
to-night.”
“A party?” The Doctor's brows lifted.
“Yes,” broke in Connie. “Miss Lady said she didn't think you'd mind,
and she persuaded Myrtella to let us dance in here. You won't mind the
noise, just this one night, will you, Father?”
The Doctor considered the matter gravely. After all, his reading would
be interrupted by Mr. Gooch, so he might as well assent. He seldom
objected to any plan that did not interfere with his own actions. His
absorption in the race precluded an interest in mere family matters.
“They are not pressing you into service, I hope?” he asked, glancing at
Miss Lady.
“Indeed we are!” cried Connie. “She's going to play for us to dance,
when she isn't dancing herself. Of course we want her with us.”
“You forget, Constance, that there are other claims upon her. Mr. Gooch
and I would like to have her with us in the study.”
Miss Lady looked up in pleased surprise.
“That settles it, Connie,” she said; “you girls can play for yourselves.
Come on and go to bed, Kiddie,” and with Bertie at her heels, the new
mistress of Queerington raced down the hall.
For ten years Doctor Queerington and Mr. Gooch had played pinochle every
Friday evening. The Doctor did not especially enjoy it, except as one of
those incidents that grows acceptable by long repetition. He was a born
routinist, regarding a well-regulated world as a place where everything
ran in the same grooves to eternity. One of his chief sources of
satisfaction in regard to his second marriage was that it promised not
to interfere with those established laws which regulated his day, from
the prompt breakfast at 7:15 to the long hours with his books in the
evening. In short, Doctor Queerington was a sort of well-regulated human
clock, announcing his opinions as irrevocably as the striker announces