Authors: Grace Livingston Hill
She conquered her tears presently, but continued to stare out of the window and could see the reflection of the young man who had happened to be looking that way when her tears fell. He had a kindly expression, and firm lips. Where had she seen him before and why did his face remind her of something unpleasant? He did not keep looking at her curiously as some men might have done. She thanked him in her heart for that.
She did not know that he had stood within the shadow of the great willow-tree across the corner from her father’s house, waiting for this car, when she stole furtively to the back door and ran down the street; nor did she know that he had recognized her at once as the pretty dancer of the evening before and wondered, for she did not look as if she belonged to a dejected, lonely home like that. The manner of her retreat from the house, if she had but known it, had been peculiar enough to arouse anyone’s curiosity, and, when there were added to this her weary looks and the tears, he certainly had items enough to make the situation interesting.
Cameron Stewart had been out to Morningside to call on an old friend of his mother’s before taking his train and he had been standing at that corner when the young men arrived and had seen the man get off the up car and go into the house none too steadily. Was that the burden the girl carried? And if so, what relation did she sustain to him and to the two younger men in working clothes who had entered the house just as the girl left it? Could she by any chance be a daughter? Professor Bowen had spoken only of a rich uncle.
He tried to forget the girl across the aisle, and to tell himself that she was nothing but a stranger to him, that he had no business to be prying even with his thoughts into her affairs; but, try as he would, the sweet face and the fresh content of the girl he had seen the evening before kept coming to him, in sharp contrast with the weary young face leaning against the window now with closed eyes and a tired droop to the lips. Curious that he could feel such interest in her now when he had despised her so thoroughly last night. But this was an entirely different view of her. In spite of his best efforts he was interested and worried about that girl to such a degree that he forgot to get off his car at the station and had to hurry away with a last wistful glance in her direction and walk back three blocks. He had half a mind to stay on the car and see where she went, but chided himself severely for the thought. It was almost time for his train, and what business had he to run after an unknown girl just because he felt sorry for her?
When Elsie reached her aunt’s house, she found the family quite worked up about her absence. They had delayed dinner for her, and had telephoned to every possible place they could think of to find out where she was. There was company to dinner, and no time for explanations. One of Bettina’s friends had brought a college friend to see the girls, and the young men had been delighted to accept the eager invitation to stay to dinner. Elsie hurried upstairs to make a hasty toilet, both sorry and glad for the company. She felt too weary and absorbed to arouse herself to talk small nothings now, but at least she would not have to go into details of explanation as she might have had to do if only the family were there.
“Where on earth have you been, child?” said her aunt, hurrying in as Elsie came down. “I’ve been worried sick about you. You missed the symphony concert, and you wanted to hear it so much.”
I’ve been out to Morningside, Aunt Esther,” she said, trying to speak brightly. “I’m sorry about the concert, but I just couldn’t come back any sooner. I found some things that had to be done.”
“At Morningside all day!” exclaimed her aunt in dismay. “But really, Elsie, you shouldn’t do that, you know. It is utterly uncalled for. There is a servant paid to look after things out there, and you have your own life to live. It was too bad for you to miss the concert.”
Elsie was glad the others came about her and she had to be introduced to the young men. She did not feel like combating her aunt just now, and somehow that good woman’s point of view seemed utterly out of focus with the girl’s present mood. For the first time since she had come to live with her aunt such remarks about her father’s home grated upon her. That talk about her living her own life sounded utterly selfish and cruel.
Did
she have her own life to live in that sense? Some long-forgotten words rushed to her memory; where had she heard them? “For none of us liveth to himself.” Was it true? What did it mean? Hadn’t she been living to herself? Wasn’t that what Aunt Esther was trying to have her do? Out of kindness and love for her, of course; but still didn’t it amount to the same thing? Aunt Esther of course hated Elsie’s father because he had married her younger sister, and according to Aunt Esther, had broken her heart. She also hated the boys because they were boys, and might be expected to follow in the footsteps of their father. She had taken Elsie away from it all. That was what Elsie had often heard her tell the other aunts and cousins and, until tonight, had always felt a deep gratitude to Aunt Esther for having taken her. Each visit to her old home had confirmed her in that gratitude. But now for the first time she began to see another side to such remarks. She began to wonder whether perhaps Aunt Esther had really done the very best thing for her that she could have done.
There was not much time for these thoughts. Another young man, a friend of Katharine’s arrived; and almost at once they sat down to dinner. The stranger was assigned to Elsie and she found her hands entirely full to keep up with his merry repartee. She was obliged to summon all her powers to the task, and once, when Katharine was telling some story that engaged the attention of the entire table, she leaned back wearily in her chair with relief; but her aunt noticed her, and spoke as soon as there was opportunity.
“Elsie, you are looking pale and tired. You shouldn’t have tired yourself all out going over your old things. It really isn’t worthwhile. It would have been much better for you to have just given the name of that book you wanted to the book-store, and asked them to get you a copy, than for you to travel away out there and wear yourself to a frazzle.”
With a bright spot of color on each check Elsie rallied again, trying to laugh and hide the tendency to burst into tears that seemed to be returning. It was harder than anything she had done all day to sit there and make small talk, and be wondering all the while whether her father and brothers ate the dinner before it was cold, whether they found the coffee-pot in time, whether the gravy had been salted enough, and whether they had cared at all. Would they go upstairs before they ate supper, and discover the changes she had made there? If they did, the supper would surely be cold before they ate it; and that would be such a pity.
It was wonderful how that house out at Morningside had taken a hold upon her thoughts, and how many times she had to bring her mind back with a jerk to the conversation she was trying to carry on.
The evening had been terribly long. They had insisted upon her playing for them; then she had to accompany Bettina when she sang; and then they all sang. It seemed as though the hours stretched out endlessly. But at last it was over; her aunt had kissed her good-night; and somehow she got through all the chatter with her cousins, listening halfheartedly to “And he said,” and “He was awfully pleased,” and “Don’t you think he’s handsome, Elsie,” and so on, until they finally confessed to being sleepy and left her to herself.
She crept into bed thankfully; yet, even as she turned back the coverings of her comfortable bed she felt a pang when she remembered those awful beds she had encountered that morning; and, when she put her head down on the pillow and shut her eyes, she had to wonder again what her brothers and father had said. Were they pleased or angry at having the house changed? Did they like the supper? Did they suspect who had done it? A kind of shame burned in her cheeks in the dark, as she reflected that they would have no reason whatever from her own actions during the past five years even to think of herself in connection with it.
Then, as she turned over and expected to float off to sleep on the wings of her great weariness, there came a vision of her own old room, a dusty dreary vision; an empty room, but a shrine for her! Somehow it seemed to be stretching out its weird, dusty hands to her over the miles of city that separated them, and to be calling to her to come and make it live again and be a center for that desolate home. A home without a woman! What a place it was! It was almost worse than a home without a man, and Elsie had always thought that would be most stupid and dull. But a home without a woman was no home at all; she had seen that today. It was a shell with the spirit gone. And there was no woman but herself to take that place, bring that home to life again, and make it what it ought to be for those three men.
True, in a few years, perhaps soon, one of the boys might marry and bring home a wife; but it was utterly unlikely that any woman would want to be brought home to a place like that. She would more than likely insist that she have a new home of her own; and she would be entirely justified in it. She would have no obligation to make that home live again. Only the daughter of the house had the obligation upon her to do that. Why had that obligation never appeared to her before? Why had she been content to live here in peace and luxury and forget these who were her own blood? Why did she see things differently now? Nothing was changed from what it had been this morning when she left the house. She had known that things out there were dreary. She had been perfectly happy then to let them be so and live her own life; what had made the difference? Why couldn’t she get back that calm, philosophical way of looking at life, feeling that, as Aunt Esther had said, she had her own life to live?
She had no desire to have her eyes opened in this way. She would have liked to close them again and go back to comfortable living. She pulled the bedclothes over her head, and tried to shut out the sight of the dining-room window with that sudden light, and the three dark figures standing about as at a sacrament, just before the trolley car took her away from it all. She got up and bathed her head with cologne, took a drink of water, and tried to compose herself to sleep again; but all the while the thoughts were racing through her mind, the questions pouring in upon her heart that had never asked themselves of her before. Questions of right and wrong. Deep, solemn questions, as if she were being arraigned before a throne of justice. And underneath, like an eager, other soul that saw beyond selfishness, was running a wonder as to how they had taken her surprise, and what would happen next.
She dreaded her aunt’s questioning in the morning, which she knew was sure to come. She dreaded the sneers and jokes of her cousins when they had time to take in that she had actually stayed away from the symphony concert to clear up a house and make pies. She dreaded most of all to face her real self on the morrow when she should be rested and know what verdict her soul had rendered to itself for all that she had done and had left undone for the past five years.
And so at last she slept.
E
lsie kept her own counsel most of the week. She avoided discussions with her aunt concerning Morningside, and she managed to turn the conversations away from the symphony concert whenever an approach to it threatened, so that her cousins asked no more unpleasant questions.
But when a friend telephoned Friday evening and asked her to go to the university play Saturday afternoon, she declined on the plea that she had another engagement; and Bettina, overhearing, grew unmercifully curious, and began begging her to go to a famous moving-picture play with them Saturday afternoon. She evaded Bettina successfully, but Saturday morning Halsey Kennedy drove up in his big motorcar, and invited all three girls to go on an all-day trip with himself and a friend. Of course Elsie’s negative brought a torrent of exclamations and coaxings upon her, and Katharine and Bettina finally went off in a huff with the deeply disappointed young men.
It was a little hard for Elsie, standing in the door watching them depart, to know that she might have had the front seat and the exclusive attention of Halsey Kennedy for the day if she had gone. The task she had set herself looked like a dismal one as she turned away from the brightness of the morning and went upstairs to prepare for it.
She soon came down, however, in a street suit with a large neat bundle in her arms, and hurried away to the trolley car, thankful that her aunt had already gone to an early committee meeting of the Civic Section of the Woman’s Club, and therefore would not protest.
She did not take a book along this time. There were things to think over and decide in her aunt’s house.
She was the same girl, sitting in the trolley car taking the same trip she had taken the week before; and yet there was about her an air of purposeful strength that had not been there before. This girl now was not merely a creature of beauty enjoying life. She looked as though her eyes had been opened and her ears had heard the call to duty. There was a set about her pretty lips that did not speak of self-indulgence and a gleam in her pleasant eyes that made one feel that here was a girl who would accomplish something in life.
She left the trolley car before she reached her father’s house. She desired to approach from the side street and examine things. The fact that she had heard nothing from her father during the week made her reasonably sure that he had not guessed that it was she who had made the mysterious visit last week. Still, she wished to remain unknown for a little while longer; so she walked around by the way of the store, left an order, and came back to the house by way of the side street, approaching the back door whence she had fled in the dusk of the evening.
All was quiet about the house. The back door was closed and locked. A furtive glance at the windows revealed no sign of anyone in the house. She went up to the front door. Some one had picked up the papers and straightened the old chairs. One chair, the most dilapidated of all, had disappeared. Perhaps her example had incited a desire to keep things looking better. The leaves had been raked up about the door, and things outside did not look quite so forlorn, although there was plenty yet to be done. The lower step was weaker and more wobbly than ever.