Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy (35 page)

The doctor made the coffee himself in a French machine, and we dismissed his housekeeper from our spirits. He really did do his best to be a thoughtful host and I have to report that the word “insanity” was not once mentioned. It seems that Sandy, in his moments of relaxation, is a fisherman; he and Percy began swapping stories of salmon and trout, and he finally got out his case of fishing-flies, and gallantly presented Betsy and me with a “silver doctor” and a “Jack Scott” out of which to make hat-pins. Then the conversation wandered to sport on the Scotch moors, and he told about one time when he was lost, and spent the night out in the heather. There is no doubt about it, Sandy's heart is in the highlands.

I am afraid that Betsy and I have wronged him. Though it is hard to relinquish the interesting idea, he may not, after all, have committed a crime. We are now leaning to the belief that he was crossed in love.

It's really horrid of me to make fun of poor Sandy, for, despite his stern bleakness of disposition, he's a pathetic figure of a man. Think of coming home after an anxious day's round to eat a solitary dinner in that grim dining-room!

Do you suppose it would cheer him up a little if I should send my company of artists to paint a frieze of rabbits around the wall?

With love, as usual,
SALLIE.

 

Aren't you ever coming back to New York? Please hurry! I need a new hat, and am desirous of shopping for it on Fifth Avenue, not on Water Street. Mrs. Gruby, our best milliner, does not believe in slavishly following Paris fashions; she originates her own styles. But three years ago, as a great concession to convention, she did make a tour of the New York shops, and is still creating models on the uplift of that visit.

Also, besides my own hat, I must buy 113 hats for my children, to say nothing of shoes and knickerbockers and shirts and hair-ribbons and stockings and garters. It's quite a task to keep a little family like mine decently clothed.

Did you get that bit letter I wrote you last week? You never had the grace to mention it in yours of Thursday, and it was seventeen pages long, and took me
days
to write.

Yours truly,
S. MCBRIDE.

 

P.S. Why don't you tell me some news about Gordon? Have you seen him, and did he mention me? Is he running after any of those pretty Southern girls that Washington is so full of? You know that I want to hear. Why must you be so beastly uncommunicative?

 

 

 

Tuesday, 4:27 P.M.

Your telegram came two minutes ago by telephone.

Yes, thank you, I shall be delighted to arrive at 5:49 on Thursday afternoon. And don't make any engagements for that evening, please, as I intend to sit up until midnight talking John Grier gossip with you and the president.

Friday and Saturday and Monday I shall have to devote to shopping. Oh, yes, you're right; I already possess more clothes than any jail-bird needs, but when spring comes, I
must
have new plumage. As it is, I wear an evening gown every night just to wear them out—no, not entirely that; to make myself believe that I'm still an ordinary girl despite this extraordinary life that you have pushed me into.

The Hon. Cy found me yesterday arrayed in a Nile-green crape (Jane's creation, though it looked Parisian). He was quite puzzled when he found I wasn't going to a ball. I invited him to stay and dine with me, and he accepted! We got on very affably. He expands over his dinner. Food appears to agree with him. If there's any Bernard Shaw
³²
in New York just now, I believe that I might spare a couple of hours Saturday afternoon for a matinée. G. B. S.'s dialogue would afford such a life-giving contrast to the Hon. Cy's.

There's no use writing any more; I'll wait and talk.

Addio.
SALLIE.

 

P.S. Oh dear! just as I had begun to catch glimmerings of niceness in Sandy, he broke out again and was
abominable.
We unfortunately have five cases of measles in this institution, and the man's manner suggests that Miss Snaith and I gave the measles to the children on purpose to make him trouble. There are many days when I should be willing to accept our doctor's resignation.

 

 

Wednesday.

Your brief and dignified note of yesterday is at hand. I have never known anybody whose literary style resembled so exactly his spoken word.

And you will be greatly obliged if I will drop my absurd fashion of calling you “Enemy”? I will drop my absurd fashion of calling you Enemy just as soon as you drop your absurd fashion of getting angry and abusive and insulting the moment any little thing goes wrong.

I am leaving to-morrow afternoon to spend four days in New York.

Yours truly,
S. MCBRIDE.

 

 

 

Chez
THE PENDLETONS,
NEW YORK.

I trust that this note will find you in a more affable frame of mind than when I saw you last. I emphatically repeat that it was not due to the carelessness of the superintendent of our institution that those two new cases of measles crept in, but rather to the unfortunate anatomy of our old-fashioned building, which does not permit of the proper isolation of contagious cases.

As you did not deign to visit us yesterday morning before I left, I could not offer any parting suggestions. I therefore write to ask that you cast your critical eye upon Mamie Prout. She is covered all over with little red spots which may be measles, though I am hoping not. Mamie spots very easily.

I return to prison life next Monday at six o'clock.

Yours truly,
S. MCBRIDE.

 

P.S. I trust you will pardon my mentioning it, but you are not the kind of doctor that I admire. I like them chubby and round and smiling.

 

 

THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
June 9.

You are an awful family for an impressionable young girl to visit. How can you expect me to come back and settle down contentedly to institution life after witnessing such a happy picture of domestic concord as the Pendleton household presents?

All the way back in the train, instead of occupying myself with the two novels, four magazines, and one box of chocolates that your husband thoughtfully provided, I spent the time in a mental review of the young men of my acquaintance to see if I couldn't discover one as nice as Jervis. I did! (A little nicer, I think.) From this day on he is the marked-down victim, the destined prey.

I shall hate to give up the asylum after getting so excited over it, but unless you are willing to move it to the capital, I don't see any alternative.

The train was awfully late. We sat and smoked on a siding while two accommodations and a freight dashed past. I think we must have broken something, and had to tinker up our engine. The conductor was soothing, but uncommunicative.

It was 7:30 when I descended, the only passenger, at our insignificant station in the pitch darkness and
rain,
without an umbrella, and wearing that precious new hat. No Turnfelt to meet me; not even a station hack. To be sure, I hadn't telegraphed the exact time of my arrival, but, still, I did feel rather neglected. I had sort of vaguely expected all
one hundred and thirteen
to be drawn up by the platform, scattering flowers and singing songs of welcome. Just as I was telling the station man that I would watch his telegraph instrument while he ran across to the corner saloon and telephoned for a vehicle, there came whirling around the corner two big search-lights aimed straight at me. They stopped nine inches before running me down, and I heard Sandy's voice saying:

“Weel, weel, Miss Sallie McBride! I'm thinking it's ower time you came back to tak' the bit bairns off my hands.”

That man had come three times to meet me on the off chance of the train's getting in some time. He tucked me and my new hat and bags and books and chocolates all in under his waterproof flap, and we splashed off. Really, I felt as if I was getting back home again, and quite sad at the thought of ever having to leave. Mentally, you see, I had already resigned and packed and gone. The mere idea that you are not in a place for the rest of your life gives you an awfully unstable feeling. That's why trial marriages would never work. You've got to feel you're in a thing irrevocably and forever in order to buckle down and really put your whole mind into making it a success.

It's astounding how much news can accrue in four days. Sandy just couldn't talk fast enough to tell me everything I wanted to hear. Among other items, I learned that Sadie Kate had spent two days in the infirmary, her malady being, according to the doctor's diagnosis, half a jar of gooseberry jam and Heaven knows how many doughnuts. Her work had been changed during my absence to dish-washing in the officers' pantry, and the juxtaposition of so many exotic luxuries was too much for her fragile virtue.

Also, our colored cook Sallie and our colored useful man Noah have entered upon a war of extermination. The original trouble was over a little matter of kindling, augmented by a pail of hot water that Sallie threw out of the window with, for a woman, unusual accuracy of aim. You can see what a rare character the head of an orphan-asylum must have. She has to combine the qualities of a baby nurse and a police magistrate.

The doctor had told only the half when we reached the house, and as he had not yet dined, owing to meeting me three times, I begged him to accept the hospitality of the John Grier. I would get Betsy and Mr. Witherspoon, and we would hold an executive meeting, and settle all our neglected businesses.

Sandy accepted with flattering promptness. He likes to dine outside of the family vault.

But Betsy, I found, had dashed home to greet a visiting grandparent, and Percy was playing bridge in the village. It's seldom the young thing gets out of an evening, and I'm glad for him to have a little cheerful diversion.

So it ended in the doctor's and my dining tête-à-tête on a hastily improvised dinner—it was then close upon eight, and our normal dinner hour is 6:30,—but it was such an improvised dinner as I am sure Mrs. McGurk never served him. Sallie, wishing to impress me with her invaluableness, did her absolutely Southern best. And after dinner we had coffee before the fire in my comfortable blue library, while the wind howled outside and the shutters banged.

We passed a most cordial and intimate evening. For the first time since our acquaintance I struck a new note in the man. There really is something attractive about him when you once come to know him. But the process of knowing him requires time and tact. He's no' very gleg at the uptak. I've never seen such a tantalizingly inexplicable person. All the time I'm talking to him I feel as though behind his straight line of a mouth and his half-shut eyes there were banked fires smoldering inside. Are you sure he hasn't committed a crime? He does manage to convey the delicious feeling that he has.

And I must add that Sandy's not so bad a talker when he lets himself go. He has the entire volume of Scotch literature at his tongue's end.

“Little kens the auld wife as she sits by the fire what the wind is doing on Hurly-Burly-Swire,” he observed as a specially fierce blast drove the rain against the window. That sounds pat, doesn't it? I haven't, though, the remotest idea what it means. And listen to this: between cups of coffee (he drinks far too much coffee for a sensible medical man) he casually let fall the news that his family knew the R. L. S.
³³
family personally, and used to take supper at 17 Heriot Row! I tended him assiduously for the rest of the evening in a
frame of mind.

When I started this letter, I had no intention of filling it with a description of the recently excavated charms of Robin MacRae; it's just by way of remorseful apology. He was so nice and companionable last night that I have been going about to-day feeling conscience-smitten at the thought of how mercilessly I made fun of him to you and Jervis. I really didn't mean quite all of the impolite things that I said. About once a month the man is sweet and tractable and engaging.

Punch has just been paying a social call, and during the course of it, he lost three little toadlings an inch long. Sadie Kate recovered one of them from under the bookcase, but the other two hopped away; and I'm so afraid they've taken sanctuary in my bed! I do wish that mice and snakes and toads and angleworms were not so portable. You never know what is going on in a perfectly respectable-looking child's pocket.

I had a beautiful visit in Casa Pendleton. Don't forget your promise to return it soon.