Books: Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories
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Kathleen Norris >> Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories
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"I wanted you," she said simply. "I--I've had a letter from Anthony.
It came only an hour ago. I don't know whether to be sorry or glad.
Read it! Read it!"
She sat on a little, low stool by the fire, and Piet flattened the
many loose pages of the letter on his knee and read.
Anthony had written on the glazed, ruled single sheets of the
"Metropolitan Star Hotel"--had covered some twenty of them with his
loose, dashing hand-writing.
MY DEAR SAMMY [wrote Anthony, with admirable directness]: The boys
wanted me to sit in a little game to-night, but the truth is I have
been wanting for a long time to speak to you of a certain matter,
and to-night seems a good chance to get it off my chest. A man feels
pretty rotten writing a letter like this, but I've thought it over
for more than a month now, and I feel that no matter how badly you
and I both feel, the thing to do is not to let things go too far
before we think the thing pretty thoroughly over and make sure that
things--
"What the deuce is he getting at?" said Piet, breaking off suddenly.
"Go on!" said Sammy, bright color in her cheeks.
--make sure that things are best for the happiness of all parties
[resumed Piet]. You see, Sammy [the letter ran on], as far as I am
concerned, I never would have said a word, but I have been talking
things over with a party whose name I will tell you in a minute, and
they feel as if it would be better to write before you come on. I
mean Miss Alma Fay. You don't know her. She is Lucy Barbee's cousin.
Lucy and I had a great case years ago, and she and Tom asked me up
to their house a few weeks ago, and Alma was staying with Lucy.
Well, I took her to the Hallowe'en dance, and it was a keen dance,
the swellest we ever had at the hall. Some of us rowed the girls on
the river between the dances; we had a keen time. Well, after that I
took her riding once or twice. She rides the best of any girl I ever
saw; her father has the finest horses in East Wood--I guess he
counts for quite a lot up there, he has the biggest department store
and runs his own motor. Well, Sammy, I never would of written one
word of this to you, but when Alma came to go away we both realized
how it was. You know I have often had cases, as the boys call them,
and a girl I was engaged to in Petrie told me once she hoped some
day I'd get MINE. Well, she would be pleased if she knew that I
HAVE. I have not slept since--
"Sammy!" said Piet, suddenly stopping.
"Go on!" said she, again.
But Piet couldn't go on. He glanced at the next page, read, "Now,
Sammy, it is up to you to decide," skipped another page or two and
read, "Neither Alma nor I would ever be happy if--" glanced at a
third; then the leaves fluttered in wild confusion to the floor,
and, with something between a sob and a shout, he caught Sammy in
his arms.
"My darling," said Piet, an hour later, "if I release your right
hand for ten minutes, do you think you could write a line to Mr.
Anthony Gayley? I would like to mail it when I go home to dress."
"I was thinking I might wire--" said Sammy, dreamily.
DR. BATES AND MISS SALLY
Sometimes Ferdie's jokes were successful; sometimes they were not.
This was one of the jokes that didn't succeed; but as it led to a
chain of circumstances that proved eminently satisfactory, Ferdie's
wife praised him as highly for his share in it as if he really had
done something rather meritorious.
At the time it occurred, however, nobody praised anybody, and
feeling even ran pretty high for a time between Ferdie and Elsie,
his wife, and her sister Sally, and Dr. Bates.
Dr. Samuel Bates was a rising young surgeon, plain, quiet, and
kindly. He was spending a few busy months in California, and writing
dutifully home to friends and patients in Boston that he really
could not free his hands to return just yet. But Sally knew what
that meant; she had known business to keep people in her
neighborhood before. So she was studiously unkind to the doctor,
excusing herself to Elsie on the ground that nothing on earth would
ever make her consider a man with fuzzy red hair and low collars.
Sally was a "daughter" and a "dame"; the doctor was the son of
"Bates's Blue-Ribbon Hair Renewer"--awful facts against which the
additional fact that he was rich and she was not, counted nothing.
Sally talked all the time; the doctor was the most silent of men.
Sally was twenty-two, the doctor thirty-five. Sally loved to flirt;
the doctor never paid any attention to women. Altogether, it was the
most impossible thing ever heard of, and Elsie might just as well
stop thinking about it!
"It's a wonderful proof of what he feels," said Elsie, "to have him
so gentle when you are rude to him, and so eager to be friends when
you get over it!"
"It's a wonderful example of hair-tonic spirit!" Sally responded.
"There's a good deal behind that quiet manner," argued Elsie.
"But NOT the three generations that make a gentleman!" finished
Sally.
Sally was out calling one hot Saturday afternoon when Ferdie, as was
his habit, brought Dr. Bates home with him to the Ferdies' little
awninged and shingled summer home in Sausalito. Elsie, with an
armful of delightfully pink and white baby, led them to the cool
side porch, and ordered cool things to drink. Sally, she said, as
they sank into the deep chairs, would be home directly and join
them.
Presently, surely enough, some one ran up the front steps and came
into the wide hall, and Sally's voice called a blithe "Hello!" There
was a little rattle to show that her parasol was flung down, and
then the voice again, this time unmistakably impeded by hat-pins.
"Where's this fam-i-ly? Did the gentlemen come?"
This gave an opening for the sort of thing Ferdie thought he did
very well. He grinned at his guest, and raised a warning finger.
"Hello, Sally!" he called back. "Elsie and I are out here! Bates
couldn't come--operation last minute!"
"What--didn't come?" Sally called back after an instant's pause.
"Well, what has happened to HIM? But, thank goodness, now I can go
to the Bevis dinner to-morrow! Operation? I must say it's mannerly
to send a message the last minute like that!" She hummed a second,
and then added spitefully: "What can you expect of hair-tonic,
anyway?" The frozen group on the porch heard her start slowly
upstairs. "Well, I might be willing to marry him," added Sally,
cheerfully, as she mounted, "but it's a real relief to snatch this
glorious afternoon from the burning! Down in a second--keep me some
tea!"
Nobody moved on the porch. The doctor's face was crimson, Elsie's
kind eyes wide with horror. Sally called a final reflection from the
first landing:
"Too bad not to have him see me looking so beautiful!" she sang
frivolously. "Operation--h'm! An important operation--I don't
believe it!"
She proceeded calmly to her room, and was buttoning herself into a
trim linen gown when Elsie burst in, flushed and furious, cast the
baby dramatically upon the bed, and hysterically recounted the
effects of her recent remarks. Sally, at first making a transparent
effort to seem amused, and following it with an equally vain attempt
at being dignified, finally became very angry herself.
"When Ferdie does things like this," said Sally, heatedly, "I
declare I wonder--I was going to say I wonder he has a friend left
in the world! As you say, it's done now, but it makes me so FURIOUS!
And I don't think it shows very much savior faire on your part,
Elsie. However, we won't discuss it! Ferdie will try one joke too
many, one of these days, and then--Now, look here, Elsie," Sally
interrupted her tirade to state with deadly deliberation, "unless
that man goes home before dinner, as a man of any spirit would do,
I'm going over to Mary Bevis's, and you can make whatever apologies
you like!"
"Of course he won't go," said Elsie, with spirit. "The only thing to
do is to ignore it entirely. And of course you'll come down."
Sally had resumed her ruffled calling costume, and was now pinning
on an effective hat. Her mouth was set.
"Please!" pleaded her sister, inserting a gold bracelet tenderly
between George's little jaws, without moving her eyes from Sally.
"I will not!" said Sally. "I never want to see him again--superior,
big, calm codfish--too lofty to care what any one says about him! I
don't like a man you can walk on, anyway!" She began to pack things
in a suit-case--beribboned night-wear, slippers, powder, and small
jars. Presently, hasping these things firmly in, she went to the
door, and opened it a cautious crack.
"Where are they?" she asked.
"I don't know," said Mrs. Ferdie, dispiritedly. "I think you're very
mean!"
The bedrooms of the Ferdies' house opened in charming Southern
fashion upon open balconies, over whose slender rails one could look
straight into the hall below. Sally listened intently.
"What a horrible plan this house is built upon!" she said heartily.
"Nothing in the world is more humiliating than to have to sneak
about one's own house like a thief, afraid of being seen! Where's
the motor--at the side door? Good. I'll run it over to the Bevises'
myself, and Billy can come back with it. That is, I will if I can
manage to get to the side door. Those idiots of men are apparently
looking at Ferd's rods and tackle, right down there in the hall! I
can distinctly hear their voices! I wish Ferd had thought of
situations like this when he planned this silly balcony business!
The minute I open this door they'll look up; and I'll stay up here a
week rather than meet them!"
"They'll go out soon," said Elsie, soothingly, as she removed a
shoe-horn from contact with George's mouth.
"I knew Ferd would regret this balcony!" pursued Sally, eyes to the
crack.
"Ferdie's not regretting it!" tittered her sister.
Sally cast her a withering glance. Elsie devoted herself suddenly to
George.
"Go down and lure them into the garden," pleaded Sally, presently.
Elsie obligingly picked up her son and departed, but Sally, watching
her go, was infuriated to notice that a mild request from George's
nurse, who met them in the hall, apparently drove all thoughts of
Sally's predicament from the little mother's mind, for Elsie went
briskly toward the nursery, and an absolute silence ensued.
Sally went listlessly to the window, where her eye was immediately
caught by a long pruning ladder, leaning against the house a dozen
feet away. Alma, the little waitress, quietly mixing a mayonnaise on
the kitchen porch, was pressed into service, and five minutes later
Sally's suit-case was cautiously lowered, on the end of a Mexican
lariat, and Sally was steadying the top of the ladder against her
window-sill. Alma was convulsed with innocent mirth, but her big,
hard hands were effective in steadying the lower end of the ladder.
Sally, who was desperately afraid of ladders, packed her thin skirts
tightly about her, gave a fearful glance below, and began a nervous
descent. At every alternate rung she paused, unwound her skirts,
shut her eyes, and breathed hard.
"PLEASE don't shake it so!" she said.
"Aye dadden't!" said Alma, merrily.
The ladder slipped an inch, settling a little lower. Sally uttered a
smothered scream. She dared not move her eyes from the rung
immediately in front of them. Her face was flushed, her hair had
slipped back from her damp temples. It seemed to her as if she must
already have climbed down several times the length of the ladder. At
every step she had to kick her skirts free.
"Permit me!" said a kind voice in the world of reeling brick walks
and dwarfed gooseberry bushes below her.
Sally, with a thump at her heart, looked down to see Dr. Bates lay a
firm hand upon the rocking ladder.
Speechless, she finished the descent, reeling a little unsteadily
against the doctor's shoulder as she faced about on the walk. Her
face was crimson. To climb down a ladder, with him looking
pleasantly up from below, and then to fall into his very arms! Sally
shook out her skirts like a furious hen, and walked, with one chilly
inclination of the head for acknowledgment of his courtesy, toward
the waiting motor.
"Ferdie has promised Bill Bevis that you will spin me over in the
motor," said the doctor, a little timidly, when they reached it.
Sally eyed him stonily.
"Ferd--"
"Why, I had promised Bevis that I would look in to-day," pursued the
doctor, uncomfortably; "and when they telephoned about it, a few
minutes ago, one of the maids said that she believed that you were
going right over, and would bring me."
"I have changed my mind," said Sally. "Perhaps you will drive
yourself over?"
"I don't know anything about motors," apologized the doctor,
gravely.
"Ferd told one of the maids to say I would?" Sally said pleasantly.
"Very well. Will you get in?"
They got in, Sally driving. They swept in silence past the lawns,
and into the wide, white highway. A watering-cart had just passed,
and the air was fresh and wet. The afternoon was one of exquisite
beauty. The steamer from San Francisco was just in, and the road was
filled with other motor-cars and smart traps. Sally and the doctor
nodded and waved to a score of friends.
"I am as sorry as you are," said the doctor, awkwardly, after the
silence had grown very long.
"Don't mention it," said Sally, her face flaming again. "That's my
brother's idea of humor. I--I shall stay at the Bevises' overnight."
"I--why, I said I would do that!" said Dr. Bates, hastily. "I just
called in to the maid, when she telephoned Bevis, and said, 'Ask him
if he can put me up overnight.' You see, I've got my things."
"Well, then, I won't," said Sally. Her tone was cold, but a side
glance at his serious face melted her a little. "This is ALL
Ferdie!" she burst out angrily.
"Too bad to make it so important," said the doctor, regretfully.
"I don't see why you should stay at the Bevises'," said the girl,
fretfully. "It looks very odd--when you had come to us. I--I am
going to Glen Ellen early to-morrow, anyway. I would hate to have
the Bevises suspect--"
"Then I will go back with you," agreed the doctor, pleasantly.
Sally frowned. She opened her lips, but shut them without speaking.
She had turned the car into a wide gateway, and a moment later they
stopped at a piazza full of young people. The noisy, joyous Bevis
girls and boys swarmed rapturously about them.
After an hour of laughter and shouting, Sally and the doctor rose to
go, accompanied to the motor by all the young people.
"Ah, you just got in, doctor?" said gentle Mrs. Bevis, with a glance
at the suit-cases.
Sally flushed, but the doctor serenely let the misunderstanding go.
There was no good reason to give for the presence of two cases in
the car.
"You look quite like an elopement!" said Page Bevis with a joyous
shout.
"Put one of the cases in front, Bates, and rest your feet on it,"
suggested the older boy, Kenneth.
As he spoke, he caught up Sally's case, and gave it a mighty swing
from the tonneau to the front seat. In mid-flight, the suit-case
opened. Jars and powders, slippers and beribboned apparel scattered
in every direction. Small silver articles, undeniably feminine in
nature, lay on the grass; a spangled scarf which they had all
admired on Sally's slender shoulders had to be tenderly extricated
from the brake.
With shrieks of laughter, the Bevis family righted the case and
repacked it. Sally was frozen with anger.
"Mother SAID she knew you two would run off and get married quietly
some day!" said pretty, audacious Mary Bevis.
"Dearie!" protested her mother. "I only said--I only thought--I said
I thought--Mary, that's very naughty of you! Sally, you know how
innocently one surmises an engagement, or guesses at things!"
"Oh, mother, you're getting in deeper and deeper!" said her older
son. "Never you mind, Sally! You can elope if you want to!"
"San Rafael's the place to go, Sally," said Mary. "All the elopers
get married there. The court-house, you know. No delays about
licenses!"
"They're very naughty," said their mother, beginning to see how
unwelcome this joking was to the visitors. "Are you going straight
home, dear?"
"Straight home!" said the doctor.
"Well, speaking of San Rafael," pursued the matron, kindly--"can't
you two and Elsie and Ferd go with us all to-night, say about an
hour from now, up to Pastori's and have dinner?"
"Oh, thanks!" said Sally, trying to smile naturally. "I'm afraid not
to-night. I've got a headache, and I'm going home to turn in."
Amid cheerful good-bys, she wheeled the car, and drove it along
rapidly, pursuing thoughts of the Bevis boys hardly short of
murderous. The doctor was silent; but Sally, glancing at him, saw
his quiet smile change to an apologetic look, and hated both the
smile and the apology.
They went more slowly on the steep road from the water front to the
hillside. The level light of the sinking sun shone brilliantly on
daisies and nasturtiums at the roadside. Boats, riding at anchor,
dipped in the wash of another incoming steamer. Dr. Bates hummed;
but Sally frowned, and he was immediately hushed.
"Boy looking for you?" he said presently, as a small and dusty boy
rose from a boulder at one side of the road and shouted something
unintelligible.
"Why, I guess he is for me!" said Sally, in the first natural tone
she had used that afternoon.
But the boy, upon being interrogated, said that the telegram was for
"the doc that was visiting up to Miss Sally's house."
Dr. Bates read the little message several times, and absently
dismissed the messenger with a coin, which Sally thought
outrageously large, and a muttered worried word or two.
"Bad news?" she asked.
"In a way," he said quickly. "When's the next train for San Rafael,
Miss Sally? I've got to be there to-night--right away! Do we have to
stand here? Thank you. There's a case Field and I have been
watching; he says that there's got to be an operation at eight--"
His voice trailed off into troubled silence, and he drew out his
watch. "Eight!" he muttered. "It's on seven now!"
"Oh, and you have to operate--horrible for you!" said Sally, taking
the car skilfully toward the railroad station as she spoke. "But I
don't see how you CAN! You've missed the six-thirty train, and
there's not another until after nine. But you can wire Dr. Field
that you will be there the first thing in the morning."
The doctor paid no attention.
"The livery stable is closed, I suppose?" he asked.
"Oh, long ago!"
He ruminated frowningly. Suddenly his face cleared.
"Funny how one thinks of the right solution last!" he said in
relief. "How long would it take you to run me up there? Forty
minutes?"
"I don't see how I could," said Sally, flushing. "I can take the car
home, though, and ask Ferd to do it. But that woman's at the hotel,
isn't she? I couldn't go up there and sit outside, with every one I
knew coming out and wondering why I brought you instead of Ferd!
Elsie wouldn't like it. You must see--"
"It would take us fifteen minutes at least to go up and get Ferd,"
objected the doctor, seriously; "and he's not much better than I am
at running it, anyway!"
"Well, I'm sorry," said Sally, shortly, "but I simply couldn't do
it. Dr. Field should have given you more notice. It would look
simply absurd for me to go tearing over these country roads at
night--Elsie would go mad wondering where I was--"
They were in the village now. Troubled and stubborn, Sally stopped
the car, and looked mutinously at her companion. The doctor's rosy
face was flushed under his flaming hair, and in his very blue eyes
was a look that struck her with an almost panicky sensation of
surprise. Sally had never seen any man regard her with an expression
of distaste before, but the doctor's look was actually inimical.
"I feared that you would be the sort of woman to fail one utterly,
like this," he said quietly. "I've often wondered--I've often said
to myself, 'COULD she ever, under any circumstances, throw off that
pretty baby way of hers, and forget that this world was made just
for flirting and dressing and being admired?' By George, I see you
can't! I see you can't! Well! Now, whom can I get to take me up
there within the hour?"
He appeared to ponder. Sally sat as if stupefied.
"Don't resent what I say when I'm upset," said the doctor, absently.
"You can't help your limitations, I can't help mine. I see a young
woman--she's just lost a little boy, and she's all her husband has
left--I see her dying because we're too late. You see a few empty-
headed women saying that Sally Reade actually went driving alone,
without her dinner, for three hours, with a man she hardly knew. I
am not blaming you. You have never pretended to be anything but what
you are. I blame myself for hoping--thinking--but, by George, you'd
be an utter dead weight on a man if it was ever up to you to face an
epidemic, or run a risk, or do one-twentieth of the things that
those very ancestors of yours, that you're so proud of, used to do!"
Sally set her teeth. She leaned from the car to summon a small girl
loitering on the road.
"You're one of the White children, aren't you?" said she to the
child. "I want you to go up to Mrs. Ferdie Potter's house, and tell
Mrs. Potter that her sister won't be home for several hours, and
that I'll explain later. Now," said Sally, turning superbly to the
doctor, "pull your hat down tight. We're going FAST!"
They were three miles farther on their way before he saw that her
little chin was quivering, and great tears were running down her
small face. Time was precious, but for a few memorable moments they
stopped the car again.
Miss Sally and Dr. Bates returned to the sleepy and excited
Ferdies' at one o'clock that night. The light that never was on land
or sea glittered in Sally's wonderful eyes; the doctor was white,
shaken, and radiant. Sally flew to her sister's arms.
"We waited to see--and she came out of it--and she has a fair
fighting chance!" said Sally, joyously; and the look she gave her
doctor made Elsie's heart rise with a bound.
"Runaways," said Elsie, "come in and eat! I never knew a serious
operation to have such a cheering effect on any one before!"
"It all went so well," said Sally, contentedly, over chicken and
ginger ale. "But, Elsie! Such fun!" she burst out, her dimples
suddenly again in view. "I am disgraced forever! After we had done
everything to make the Bevis crowd think we were eloping, what did
we do but run into the whole crowd at San Anselmo! I wish you could
have seen their faces! We had said we couldn't possibly go; and we
were going too fast to stop and explain!"
"We'll explain to-morrow," said the doctor, so significantly that
Ferdie rose instantly to grasp his hand, and Elsie fell again upon
Sally as if she had never kissed her before.
"Not--not really!" gasped Elsie, turning radiantly from one to the
other.
"Oh, really!" said Sally, with her prettiest color. "He despises me,
but he will take the case, anyway! And he has done nothing but
mortify and enrage me all day, but I feel that I should miss it if
it stopped! So we are going to sacrifice our lives to each other--
isn't it edifying and beautiful of us? We'll tell you all about it
to-morrow. Jam--Sam?"
THE GAY DECEIVER
After the meat course, Mrs. Tolley and Min rather languidly removed
the main platters and, by reaching backward, piled the dinner plates
on the shining new oak sideboard. Thus room was made for the salad,
which was always mantled in tepid mayonnaise, whether it was sliced
tomatoes, or potatoes, or asparagus. After the salad there was
another partial clearance, and then every available inch of the
table was needed for peach pies and apple sauce and hot gingerbread
and raspberries, or various similar delicacies, and the coffee and
yellow cheese and soda-crackers with which the meal concluded.
By the time these appeared, on a hot summer evening, the wheezing
clock in the kitchen would have struck six,--dinner was early at
Kirkwood,--and the level rays of the sun would be pouring boldly in
at the uncurtained western windows. The dining, room was bare, and
not entirely free from flies, despite an abundance of new green
screening at the windows. Relays of new stiff oak chairs stood
against its walls, ready for the sudden need of occasional visitors.
On the walls hung framed enlarged photographs of machinery, and
factories, and scaffoldings, and the like. There was one of laborers
and bosses grouped about great generators and water-wheels in
transit, and another of a monster switchboard, with a smiling young
operator, in his apron and overalls, standing beside it.
Mrs. Tolley sat at the head of the table--a big, joyous, vigorous
widow, who had managed the Company House at Kirkwood ever since its
erection two years before, and who had been an employee of the Light
and Power Company, in one capacity or another, for some five years
before that--or ever since, as she put it, "the juice got pore
George." Mrs. Tolley loved every inch of Kirkwood; for her it was
the captured dream.
Min Tolley, sitting next to her mother, loved Kirkwood, too, because
she was going to marry Harry Garvey, who was one of the shift bosses
at the plant. Harry sat next to Min. Then came her brother Roosy,
ten years old; and then the Hopps--Mrs. Lou, and little Lou,
spattering rice and potato all over himself and his chair, and big
Lou, silently, deeply admiring them both. Then there were two empty
chairs, for the Chisholms, the resident manager and superintendent
and his sister, at the end of the table; and then Joe Vorse, the
switchboard operator, and his little wife; and then Monk White,
another shift boss; and lastly, at Mrs. Tolley's left, Paul Forster,
newly come from New York to be Mr. Chisholm's stenographer and
assistant.
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