Then I laughed. I couldn't help it. And Alice was hurt, for some reason, and got up and held her head high and went into the house. And Aunt Elizabeth came up the drive, and that is how she found me laughing. She had on a lovely light-blue linen. n.o.body wears such delicate shades as Aunt Elizabeth. I remember, one day, when she came in an embroidered pongee over Nile-green, father groaned, and grandmother said: "What is it, Cyrus? Have you got a pain?" "Yes," said father, "the pain I always have when I see sheep dressed lamb fashion." Grandmother laughed, but mother said: "Sh!" Mother's dear.

This time Aunt Elizabeth had on a great picture-hat with light-blue ostrich plumes; it was almost the shape of her lavender one that Charles Edward said made her look like a coster's bride. When she bent over me and put both arms around me the plumes tickled my ear. I think that was why I was so cross. I wriggled away from her and said: "Don't!"

Aunt Elizabeth spoke quite solemnly. "Dear child!" she said, "you are broken, indeed."

And I began to feel again just as I had been feeling, as if I were in a show for everybody to look at, and I found I was shaking all over, and was angry with myself because of it. She had drawn up a chair, and she held both my hands.

"Peggy," said she, "haven't you been to the hospital to see that poor dear boy?"

I didn't have to answer, for there was a whirl on the gravel, and Billy, on his bicycle, came riding up with the mail. He threw himself off his wheel and plunged up the steps as he always does, pretended to tickle his nose with Aunt Elizabeth's feathers as he pa.s.sed behind her, and whispered to me: "Shoot the hat!" But he had heard Aunt Elizabeth asking if I were not going to see that poor dear boy, and he said, as if he couldn't help it:

"Huh! I guess if she did she wouldn't get in. His mother's walking up and down front of the hospital when she ain't with him, and she's got a hook nose and white hair done up over a roll and an eye-gla.s.s on a stick, and I guess there won't be no nimps and shepherdesses get by HER."

Aunt Elizabeth stood and thought for a minute, and her eyes looked as they do when she stares through you and doesn't see you at all. Alice asked Charles Edward once if he thought she was sorrowing o'er the past when she had that look, and he said: "Bless you, chile, no more than a gentle industrious spider. She's spinning a web." But in a minute mother had stepped out on the piazza, and I felt as if she had come to my rescue. It was the way she used to come when I broke my doll or tore my skirt. But we didn't look at each other, mother and I. We didn't mean Aunt Elizabeth should see there was anything to rescue me from. Aunt Elizabeth turned to mother, and seemed to pounce upon her.

"Ada," said she, "has my engagement been announced?"

"Not to my knowledge," said mother. She spoke with a great deal of dignity. "I understood that the name of the gentleman had been withheld."

"Withheld!" repeated Aunt Elizabeth. "What do you mean by 'withheld'?

Billy, whom are those letters for?"

In spite of ourselves mother and I started. Letters have begun to seem rather tragic to us.

"One's the gas-bill," said Billy, "and one's for you." Aunt Elizabeth took the large, square envelope and tore it open. Then she looked at mother and smiled a little and tossed her head.

"This is from Lyman Wilde," said she.

I thought I had never seen Aunt Elizabeth look so young. It must have meant something more to mother than it did to me, for she stared at her a minute very seriously.

"I am truly glad for you, Elizabeth," she said. Then she turned to me.

"Daughter," said she, "I shall need you about the salad."

She smiled at me and went in. I knew what that meant. She was giving me a chance to follow her, if I needed to escape. But there was hardly time. I was at the door when Aunt Elizabeth rustled after so quickly that it sounded like a flight. There on the piazza she put her arms about me.

"Child!" she whispered. "Child! Verla.s.sen! Verla.s.sen!"

I drew away a little and looked at her. Then I thought: "Why, she is old!" But I hadn't understood. I knew the word was German, and I hadn't taken that in the elective course.

"What is it. Aunt Elizabeth?" I asked. I had a feeling I mustn't leave her. She smiled a little--a queer, sad smile.

"Peggy," said she, "I want you to read this letter." She gave it to me.

It was written on very thick gray paper with rough edges, and there was a margin of two inches at the left. The handwriting was beautiful, only not very clear, and when I had puzzled over it for a minute she s.n.a.t.c.hed it back again.

"I'll read it to you," said she.

Well, I thought it was a most beautiful letter. The gentleman said she had always been the ideal of his life. He owed everything--and by everything he meant chiefly his worship of beauty--to her. He asked her to accept his undying devotion, and to believe that, however far distance and time should part them, he was hers and hers only. He said he looked back with ineffable contempt upon the days when he had hoped to build a nest and see her beside him there. Now he had reached the true empyrean, and he could only ask to know that she, too, was winging her bright way into regions where he, in another life, might follow and sing beside her in liquid, throbbing notes to pierce the stars. He ended by saying that he was not very fit--the opera season had been a monumental experience this year--and he was taking refuge with an English brotherhood to lead, for a time, a cloistered life instinct with beauty and its worship, but that there as everywhere he was hers eternally. How glad I was of the verbal memory I have been so often praised for! I knew almost every word of that lovely letter by heart after the one reading. I shall never forget it.

"Well?" said Aunt Elizabeth. She was looking at me, and again I saw how long it must have been since she was young. "Well, what do you think of it?"

I told the truth. "Oh," said I, "I think it's a beautiful letter!"

"You do!" said Aunt Elizabeth. "Does it strike you as being a love-letter!"

I couldn't answer fast enough. "Why, Aunt Elizabeth," I said, "he tells you so. He says he loves you eternally. It's beautiful!"

"You fool!" said Aunt Elizabeth. "You pink-cheeked little fool! You haven't opened the door yet--not any door, not one of them--oh, you happy, happy fool!" She called through the window (mother was arranging flowers there for tea): "Ada, you must telephone the Banner. My engagement is not to be announced." Then she turned to me. "Peggy'" said she, in a low voice, as if mother was not to hear, "to-morrow you must drive with me to Whitman."

Something choked me in my throat: either fear of her or dread of what she meant to make me do. But I looked into her face and answered with all the strength I had: "Aunt Elizabeth, I sha'n't go near the hospital."

"Don't you think it's decent for you to call on Mrs. Goward?" she asked.

She gave me a little shake. It made me angry. "It may be decent," I said, "but I sha'n't do it."

"Very well," said Aunt Elizabeth. Her voice was sweet again. "Then I must do it for you. n.o.body asks you to see Harry himself. I'll run in and have a word with him--but, Peggy, you simply must pay your respects to Mrs. Goward."

"No! no! no!" I heard myself answering, as if I were in some strange dream. Then I said: "Why, it would be dreadful! Mother wouldn't let me!"

Aunt Elizabeth came closer and put her hands on my shoulders. She has a little fragrance about her, not like flowers, but old laces, perhaps, that have been a long time in a drawer with orris and face-powder and things. "Peggy," said she, "never tell your mother I asked you."

I felt myself stiffen. She was whispering, and I saw she meant it.

"Oh, Peggy! don't tell your mother. She is not--not simpatica. I might lose my home here, my only home. Peggy, promise me."

"Daughter!" mother was calling from the dining-room.

I slipped away from Aunt Elizabeth's hands. "I promise," said I. "You sha'n't lose your home."

"Daughter!" mother called again, and I went in.

That night at supper n.o.body talked except father and mother, and they did every minute, as if they wanted to keep the rest of us from speaking a word. It was all about the Works. Father was describing some new designs he had accepted, and telling how Charles Edward said they would do very well for the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of a hea.r.s.e, and mother coughed and said Charles Edward's ideas were always good, and father said not where the market was concerned. Aunt Elizabeth had put on a white dress, and I thought she looked sweet, because she was sad and had made her face quite pale; but I was chiefly busy in thinking how to escape before anybody could talk to me. It doesn't seem safe nowadays to speak a word, because we don't know where it will lead us. Alice, too, looked pale, poor child! and kept glancing at me in a way that made me so sorry. I wanted to tell her I didn't care about her pranks and Billy's, whatever they were. And whatever she had written, it was sure to be clever. The teacher says Alice has a positive genius for writing, and before many years she'll be in all the magazines. When supper was over I ran up-stairs to my room. I sat down by the window in the dark and wondered when the moon would rise. I felt excited--as if something were going to happen. And in spite of all the dreadful things that had happened to us, and might keep on happening, I felt as if I could die with joy. There were steps on the porch below my window. I heard father's voice.

"That's ridiculous, Elizabeth," he said--"ridiculous! If it's a good thing for other girls to go to college, it's been a good thing for her."

"Ah," said Aunt Elizabeth, "but is it a good thing?"

Then I knew they were talking about me, and I put my fingers in my ears and said the Latin prepositions. I have been talked about enough.

They may talk, but I won't hear. By-and-by I took my fingers out and listened. They had gone in, and everything was still. Then I began to think it over. Was it a bad thing for me to go to college? I'm different from what I was three years ago, but I should have been different if I'd stayed at home. For one thing, I'm not so shy. I remember the first day I came out of a cla.s.s-room and Stillman Dane walked up to me and said; "So you're Charlie Ned's sister!" I couldn't look at him. I stood staring down at my note-book, and now I should say, quite calmly: "Oh, you must be Mr. Dane? I believe you teach psychology." But I stood and stared. I believe I looked at my hands for a while and wished I hadn't got ink on my forefinger--and he had to say: "I'm the psychology man.

Charlie Ned and I were college friends. He wrote me about you." But though I didn't look at him that first time, I thought he had the kindest voice that ever was--except mother's--and perhaps that was why I selected psychology for my specialty. I was afraid I might be stupid, and I knew he was kind. And then came that happy time when I was getting acquainted with everybody, and Mr. Dane was always doing things for me.

"I'm awfully fond of Charlie Ned, you know," he told me. "You must let me take his place." Then Mr. Goward told me all those things at the dance, how he had found life a bitter waste, how he had been betrayed over and over by the vain and worldly, and how his heart was dead and n.o.body could bring it to life but me. He said I was his fate and his guiding-star, and since love was a mutual flame that meant he was my fate, too. But it seemed as if that were the beginning of all my bad luck, for about that time Stillman Dane was different, and one day he stopped me in the yard when I was going to chapel.

"Miss Peggy," said he, "don't let's quarrel."

He held out his hand, and I gave him mine quickly.

"No," said I, "I'm not quarrelling."

"I want to ask you something," said he. "You must answer, truly. If I have a friend and she's doing something foolish, should I tell her?