Josephine Dodge Daskam

“ He was at her side instantly.
“Take my arm—and pardon me!” he said with an irresistible grace. “It is only my fear for your comfort, you know, Miss Gould. I cannot bear that you should be at the mercy of every drunken fellow that wishes to impose on you!”
As she crossed the hall that separated her territory from his, her fine, full figure erect, her dark head high in the air, a whimsical regret came over him that they were not younger and more foolish.
“I should certainly marry her to reform her,” he said to the birch log that spluttered on his inimitable colonial fire-dogs. ”

“ I have been very much disturbed by their conduct. I will see you after supper,” and with a gesture that told him to remain, she left the room, her head high as she caught Annabel’s voice from outside. She turned in the door, however, and the stern curves of her mouth melted with a smile so sweet, a promise so gracious and so tender, that when her eyes, frank and direct as a boy’s, left his, he looked long at the closed door, wondering at the quickening of his pulses. ”

“ Half-way down the whitewashed steps he paused, viewing the remarkable scene below him with interest and amazement. The cemented floor was literally covered with neatly chopped kindling-wood, which rose as in a tide under the efforts of a large red-faced man who, with the regularity of a machine, stooped, grasped a billet in either hand, shook them in the face of Miss Gould, who cowered upon a soap-box at his side, and flung them on the floor. From the woodhouse near the cellar muffled shouts were heard through a storm of blows on the door. ”

“ Am I to provide myself with an occupation, perhaps, for the sake of Tom Waters’s principles? Or am I—”
“Yes. That is just it. You know what I have always felt, Mr. Welles, about it. But I never seemed to be able to make you see. Now, as I say, things have come to a point. You must do something.”
“But this is absurd, Miss Gould! I am not a child, and surely nobody can dream of holding you in any way responsible—”
“I hold myself responsible,” she replied simply, “and I have never approved of it—never!” ”

“ For in all her well-ordered forty years Miss Gould had never seen so indolent, so capricious, so irresponsible a person. That a man of easy means, fine education, sufficient health, and gray hair should have nothing better to do than collect willow-ware and fire-irons, read the magazines, play the piano, and stroll about in the sun seemed to her nothing less than horrible. ”

“ I am about to make you an offer of marriage; indeed, I am serious, Miss Gould!
“I don’t see that it’s ridiculous at all. I see every practical reason in favor of it. In the first place, if they are gossiping—oh, yes, Thompson told me, and I wonder that they hadn’t before: these villages are dreadful places—I couldn’t very well stay, you see; and then where should I put all my things? In the second place, I have so much stuff, and there’s no house fit for it but—but ours; and if we were married I could have just twice as much room for it—and I’m getting far too much for my side. ”

“ Waters’s ideals are so high—and—shall we say—so elusive?” proceeded the director smoothly. “It is so difficult—so well-nigh impossible—to satisfy him. One devotes one’s energies—I may say one slaves night and day—to win some slight mark of approval; and just as one is about to reap the well-earned reward—a smile, a word of appreciation—all is forfeited! It is hard indeed! Would you suggest the rearrangement of the Rooms under Mr. Waters’s direction? Thompson is at his service—”
“Oh, Mr. Welles!” ”

“ Her lodger checked a rising smile, and leaned solicitously toward her, regarding her firm, fine-featured face with flattering attention.
“Are you growing stronger? Can I bring you anything?” he inquired.
Miss Gould’s color rose, half with anger at her weakness of body, half with a vexed consciousness of his amusement.
“Thank you, no,” she returned coldly, “I am ashamed to have been so weak-minded. I must go now and tell Henry to pile the wood again in the east corner. There will probably come another tramp very soon—they are very prevalent this month, I hear.” ”

“ Annabel blushed, cast down her eyes, lifted them, showed her dimples, and replied in the words, if not in the accents, of Thompson: “Yes, sir!”
“It’s really going to be an education in itself, don’t you think so?” he continued. “It’s amazing how the people like it—it’s really quite gratifying. Perhaps it may be my mission to abolish the chromo and the tidy from off the face of New England! We have had crowds here—just to look at the pictures.”
“I don’t doubt it!” replied Miss Gould briefly. ”

“ Waters was a laundress, and the summer boarders, together with Mr. Welles, who alone went far toward establishing the fortunes of the family, had combined to place the head of the house in his present condition of elegant leisure.
“I wonder at you, Tom Waters, after all the interest we’ve taken in you! Are you not horribly ashamed to depend on your wife in this lazy way?” Miss Gould demanded of the once member of the Reformed Drunkards’ League. “How many times have I explained to you that nothing—absolutely nothing—is so disgraceful as a man who will not work? ”

“ I think Tom Waters must be tremendously impressed—”
“That’s the trouble; he is,” said Miss Gould simply.
“Trouble? trouble? Is his impression unfavorable? Heavens, how unfortunate!” exclaimed the director airily. “Surely, my application— Does the room fail to meet his approval, or—”
“Yes, it does,” she interrupted. “He says it’s no place for a man to be in; and he says the pictures are—are—well, he says they are improper!” glancing at the Venus.
“Ah!” responded the director with a suspicious sweetness. “He does not care for the nude, then?”
She sighed deeply. “Oh, Mr. Welles!” ”

“ After a cautious introduction of the subject by asking his advice as to the minimum of hours in the week one could conscientiously allow a doubtful member of the Weekly Culture Club to spend upon Browning, she endeavored to get his idea of that poet. Her famous theory as to her ability to place any one satisfactorily in the scale of culture according to his degree of appreciation of “Rabbi ben Ezra” was unfortunately known to her lodger before she could with any verisimilitude produce the book, and he was wary of committing himself. ”

“ I thought of such a good plan, and one that would be the best possible answer to Tom—”
“Oh, good heavens!” murmured her lodger, but she went on quickly: “You know I was going to open the soupkitchen in October. Well, I’ve just thought, Why not get the Rooms all ready, and the reading-room moved over there, and have lemonade and sandwiches and sarsaparilla, and Kitty Waters to begin to serve right away, as she’s beginning to run the streets again, and Annabel Riley with her? Then the Civic Club can have its headquarters there, and people will begin to be used to it before cold weather.” ”

“ But his quiet persistence, together with his evident cynicism as to the results of these professional tours, accomplished, as usual, his end; and the wondering village might observe on hot June mornings its benefactress, languidly accompanied by a slender man in white flannels, balancing a large white green-lined umbrella, picking his way daintily along the dusty paths, with a covered basket dangling from one hand and a gray-green volume distending one white pocket. ”

“ An’ them ol’ straight chairs—no upholsterin’ on ’em, an’ some o’ them wicker kind that bends any way, with pillers in ‘em. An’ cups and sassers, with a tea-pot ’n’ kittle; an’ he makes tea himself an’ drinks it—I swear it’s so. An’ a guitar, an’, Lord, the pictures! You can’t see no wall for ’em!
“‘It’s a mighty lucky thing, havin’ this room, Thompson,’ says he to that hired man, ‘the things was spillin’ over. We’ll make it a bower o’ beauty, Thompson,’ says he. ‘Yes, sir,’ says the man. That’s all he ever says, you might say. ”

“ Waters’s unavailing if never-ending excuses. He laughed softly to himself, and touched the strings of the guitar that she had struck. “I shall save the worthy Thomas much,” he murmured to himself, “and of course I do it to reform her—I cannot pull down the village and die with the Philistines!”
She went up the long main street, Mr. Waters at her side and Annabel Riley behind her. Her lodger watched her out of sight, and prepared to lock up the Rooms. ”

“ She urged with the vivid earnestness of twenty years.
“My dear lady,” he brought out finally, “you are like Greek architecture or Eastlake furniture or—or ‘God Save the Queen’—perfectly absolute! And I am so hideously relative— But, after all, why should a sense of humor be an essential? ”

“ Welles,” she said, bending upon him that direct and placid regard that rendered evasion difficult and paltering impossible, “things have come to a point”; and she narrated the scene of the morning.
“It is indeed a problem,” observed her lodger gravely, “but what is one to do? ”

“ An’ that ol’ black secr’tary he got fr’m Lord knows where, an’ brakes growin’ in colored pots standin’ right up there, an’ statyers o’ men an’ women—no heads onto ’em, some ain’t got; it’s all one to him—he’d buy any ol’ thing so’s ’twas broke, you might say. ”