Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy (43 page)

Meanwhile Master John is in a happily chastened frame of mind and body. And I rather suspect that Sandy's moralizing had the more force because it was preceded by my pancake-turner! But one thing I know—Suzanne Estelle is terrified whenever I step into her kitchen. I casually picked up the potato-masher this morning while I was commenting upon last night's over-salty soup, and she ran to cover behind the woodshed door.

To-morrow at nine I set out on my travels, after preparing the way with five telegrams. And, oh! you can't imagine how I'm looking forward to being a gay, care-free young thing again—to canoeing on the lake and tramping in the woods and dancing at the club-house. I was in a state of delirium all night long at the prospect. Really, I hadn't realized how mortally tired I had become of all this asylum scenery.

“What you need,” said Sandy to me, “is to get away for a little and sow some wild oats.”

That diagnosis was positively clairvoyant. I can't think of anything in the world I'd rather do than sow a few wild oats. I'll come back with fresh energy, ready to welcome you and a busy summer.

As ever,
SALLIE.

P.S. Jimmie and Gordon are both going to be up there. How I wish you could join us! A husband is very discommoding.

 

 

CAMP MCBRIDE,
July 29.

This is to tell you that the mountains are higher than usual, the woods greener, and the lake bluer.

People seem late about coming up this year; the Harrimans' camp is the only other one at our end of the lake that is open. The club-house is very scantily supplied with dancing-men, but we have as house guest an obliging young politician who likes to dance, so I am not discommoded by the general scarcity.

The affairs of the nation and the rearing of orphans are alike delegated to the background while we paddle among the lily-pads of this delectable lake. I look forward with reluctance to 7:56 next Monday morning, when I turn my back on the mountains. The awful thing about a vacation is that the moment it begins your happiness is already clouded by its approaching end.

I hear a voice on the veranda asking if Sallie is to be found within or without.

S.

 

 

 

August 3.

Back at the John Grier, reshouldering the burdens of the coming generation. What should meet my eyes upon entering these grounds but John Cobden, of pancake-turner memory, wearing a badge upon his sleeve. I turned it to me and read “S. P. C. A.”
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in letters of gold! The doctor, during my absence, has formed a local branch of the Cruelty to Animals, and made Johnnie its president.

I hear that yesterday he stopped the workmen on the foundation for the new farm cottage and scolded them severely for whipping their horses up the incline! None of all this strikes any one but me as funny.

There's a lot of news, but with you due in four days, why bother to write? Just one delicious bit I am saving for the end. So hold your breath. You are going to receive a thrill on page 4. You should hear Sadie Kate squeal! Jane is cutting her hair. Instead of wearing it in two tight braids like this, our little colleen will in the future look like this:

“Them pigtails got on my nerves,” says Jane.

You can see how much more stylish and becoming the present coiffure is. I think somebody will be wanting to adopt her. Only Sadie Kate is such an independent, manly little creature; she is eminently fitted by nature to shift for herself. I must save adopting parents for the helpless ones.

You should see our new clothes! I can't wait for this assemblage of rosebuds to burst upon you. And you should have seen those blue ginghamed eyes brighten when the new frocks were actually given out—three for each girl, all different colors, and all perfectly private personal property, with the owner's indelible name inside the collar. Mrs. Lippett's lazy system of having each child draw from the wash a promiscuous dress each week, was an insult to feminine nature.

Sadie Kate is squealing like a baby pig. I must go to see if Jane has by mistake clipped off an ear.

Jane hasn't. Sadie's excellent ears are still intact. She is just squealing on principle; the way one does in a dentist's chair, under the belief that it is going to hurt the next instant.

I really can't think of anything else to write except my news,—so here it is,—and I hope you'll like it.

I am engaged to be married.

My love to you both.
S. MCB.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE JOHN GRIER HOME,
November 15.

Betsy and I are just back from a
giro
in our new motor-car. It undoubtedly does add to the pleasure of institution life. The car of its own accord turned up Long Ridge Road, and stopped before the gates of Shadywell. The chains were up, and the shutters battened down, and the place looked closed and gloomy and rain-soaked. It wore a sort of fall of the House of Usher
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air, and didn't in the least resemble the cheerful house that used to greet me hospitably of an afternoon.

I hate to have our nice summer ended. It seems as though a section of my life was shut away behind me, and the unknown future was pressing awfully close. Positively, I'd like to postpone that wedding another six months, but I'm afraid poor Gordon would make too dreadful a fuss. Don't think I'm getting wobbly, for I'm not. It's just that somehow I need more time to think about it, and March is getting nearer every day. I know absolutely that I'm doing the most sensible thing. Everybody, man or woman, is the better for being nicely and appropriately and cheerfully married; but oh dear! oh dear! I do hate upheavals, and this is going to be such a world-without-end upheaval! Sometimes when the day's work is over, and I'm tired, I haven't the spirit to rise and meet it.

And now especially since you've bought Shadywell, and are going to be here every summer, I resent having to leave. Next year, when I'm far away, I'll be consumed with homesickness, thinking of all the busy, happy times at the John Grier, with you and Betsy and Percy and our grumbly Scotchman working away cheerfully without me. How can anything ever make up to a mother for the loss of 107 children?

I trust that Judy, Junior, stood the journey into town without upsetting her usual poise. I am sending her a bit giftie, made partly by myself and chiefly by Jane. But two rows, I must inform you, were done by the doctor. One only gradually plumbs the depths of Sandy's nature. After a ten-months' acquaintance with the man, I discover that he knows how to knit, an accomplishment he picked up in his boyhood from an old shepherd on the Scotch moors.

He dropped in three days ago and stayed for tea, really in almost his old friendly mood. But he has since stiffened up again to the same man of granite we knew all summer. I've given up trying to make him out. I suppose, however, that any one might be expected to be a bit down with a wife in an insane asylum. I wish he'd talk about it once. It's awful having such a shadow hovering in the background of your thoughts and never coming out into plain sight.

I know that this letter doesn't contain a word of the kind of news that you like to hear. But it's that beastly twilight hour of a damp November day, and I'm in a beastly uncheerful mood. I'm awfully afraid that I am developing into a temperamental person, and Heaven knows Gordon can supply all the temperament that one family needs! I don't know where we'll land if I don't preserve my sensibly stolid, cheerful nature.

Have you really decided to go South with Jervis? I appreciate your feeling (to a slight extent) about not wanting to be separated from a husband; but it does seem sort of hazardous to me to move so young a daughter to the tropics.

The children are playing blindman's-buff in the lower corridor. I think I'll have a romp with them, and try to be in a more affable mood before resuming my pen.

A bientôt!
SALLIE.

 

P.S. These November nights are pretty cold, and we are getting ready to move the camps indoors. Our Indians are very pampered young savages at present, with a double supply of blankets and hot-water bottles. I shall hate to see the camps go; they have done a lot for us. Our lads will be as tough as Canadian trappers when they come in.

 

 

November 20.

Your motherly solicitude is sweet, but I didn't mean what I said. Of course it's perfectly safe to convey Judy, Junior, to the temperately tropical lands that are washed by the Caribbean. She'll thrive as long as you don't set her absolutely on top of the equator. And your bungalow, shaded by palms and fanned by sea-breezes, with an ice-machine in the back yard and an English doctor across the bay, sounds made for the rearing of babies.

My objections were all due to the selfish fact that I and the John Grier are going to be lonely without you this winter. I really think it's entrancing to have a husband who engages in such picturesque pursuits as financing tropical railroads and developing asphalt lakes and rubber groves and mahogany forests. I wish that Gordon would take to life in those picturesque countries; I'd be more thrilled by the romantic possibilities of the future. Washington seems awfully commonplace compared with Honduras and Nicaragua and the islands of the Caribbean.

I'll be down to wave good-by.

Addio!
SALLIE.

 

 

 

November 24.

Judy has gone back to town, and is sailing next week for Jamaica, where she is to make her headquarters while Jervis cruises about adjacent waters on these entertaining new ventures of his. Couldn't you engage in traffic in the South Seas? I think I'd feel pleasanter about leaving my asylum if you had something romantic and adventurous to offer instead. And think how beautiful you'd be in those white linen clothes! I really believe I might be able to stay in love with a man quite permanently if he always dressed in white.

You can't imagine how I miss Judy. Her absence leaves a dreadful hole in my afternoons. Can't you run up for a week-end soon? I think the sight of you would be very cheering, and I'm feeling awfully down of late. You know, my dear Gordon, I like you much better when you're right here before my eyes than when I merely think about you from a distance. I believe you must have a sort of hypnotic influence. Occasionally, after you've been away a long time, your spell wears a little thin; but when I see you, it all comes back. You've been away now a long, long time; so, please come fast and bewitch me over again!

S.

December 2.

Do you remember in college, when you and I used to plan our favorite futures, how we were forever turning our faces southward? And now to think it has really come true, and you are there, coasting around those tropical isles! Did you ever have such a thrill in the whole of your life, barring one or two connected with Jervis, as when you came up on deck in the early dawn and found yourself riding at anchor in the harbor of Kingston, with the water so blue and the palms so green and the beach so white?

I remember when I first woke in that harbor; I felt like a heroine of grand opera surrounded by untruly beautiful painted scenery. Nothing in my four trips to Europe ever thrilled me like the queer sights and tastes and smells of those three warm weeks seven years ago. And ever since, I've panted to get back. When I stop to think about it, I can hardly bring myself to swallow our unexciting meals; I wish to be dining on curries and tamales and mangos. Isn't it funny? You'd think I must have a dash of Creole or Spanish or some warm blood in me somewhere, but I'm nothing on earth but a chilly mixture of English and Irish and Scotch. Perhaps that is why I hear the South calling. “The palm dreams of the pine, and the pine of the palm.”
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