Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

“ Martha Gould was a tall, ascetic-looking woman, with great eyes sunken in deep hollows. She had a curious way of puckering her mouth, and at the same time wrinkling her forehead between the two leaflike curves of her gray hair. Her sister-in-law, Sarah Gould, who had been in her day a very pretty girl, much like Catherine, but had never married, knitted and eyed her niece. She had been engaged to be married in her late youth, but her lover had died. Since then she had occupied herself with the small interests of life.
“Aren't you coming into the parlor, John?” Catherine asked again. ”

“ What do I care if I never get married? Most of the married women I know would say they wished they were out of it, if they told the truth. It's a lot of care and responsibility. A girl can have a much better time.”
“Yes, but a woman can't keep herself a girl always,” said Catherine's mother, and an odd expression came over her face — an expression of reminiscent tenderness and softness, and also a shade of embarrassment. ”

“ She was quite sure that John would have kept his own counsel, that he would not even have told his family of his broken engagement: that he would leave them to find it out for themselves. She was sure that her mother and aunt would have said nothing. She knew that they could not do so without a covert reflection upon herself, since, after all, she had not told where she had been, and although they did not doubt her, others might do so. Even popularity does not shield from the delight of a scandal, and Exbridge was a dull little village. ”

“ Catherine laughed again as she lit her candle, and the soft light flared over her beautiful face. “Men are asked,” she replied, “but it is like man supposes and God disposes. It is Saturday afternoon, and there is no reason why men can't come if they want to; but the question is, Will they want to? I suppose John Greason would have come if he hadn't insulted me with suspecting that I could not be out for an hour after dark without being in some awful mischief, if that is what you mean. ”

“ John suspected me of going somewhere or doing something I should not. He questioned me like a slave-owner. If he does so before I am married, what will he do after?”
“Oh my, Catherine!” the aunt cried, in horror.
But Catherine's mother supported her, after a fashion. “I know what you mean,” said she. “I never saw a grown-up man do such a silly, childish thing as to throw that candy on the floor that way. There's another piece under that rocking-chair. He has got an awful temper, and one you can't reckon with in a grown man. ”

“ There is one thing — if I don't have to marry John, I shall be rid of his family, and I must confess that I always did wonder how I would get on with my in-laws.”
“John is the best of them,” acceded Sarah Gould, tearfully, taking another bit of well-sweetened cereal. “I always said it wouldn't be the easiest thing in the world to get on with his folks.”
“And I should have simply been obliged to combine with the whole lot Thanksgivings and Christmases and wedding anniversaries,” said Catherine. “There's no loss without a considerable gain. Small gain does not seem the thing in this case. ”

“ Everything was white and pure and glittering, full of symbolism of the ineffable holiness and passionless of that which is outside the heat of human life. She realized dimly that if she were to say no to her lover, that in spite of her radiant beauty, which was of a kind to endure, in spite of her triumphant philosophy of obtaining whatever she could from the minor joys of existence, and not allowing her body or soul to become lean through deprivation of the larger ones, she would, in reality, live her life and die her death, as it were, in that cold glitter outside her window. ”

“ It was the last of March, one evening, when the heretofore mild winter had suddenly turned back fiercely upon its tracks, and the cold was bitter in a white moonlit night, when John came to see her. The “Exbridge Improvement Club” had met at the Gould house that afternoon, and Catherine had the best parlor decorated with carnations, and the lamps were still lighted. A hot-air furnace had been put in that winter, so all the rooms were warm. Catherine, her mother, and aunt were sitting in the parlor talking over the club meeting, when the doorbell rang. ”

“ Then John looked slowly from one to another, and his face was ashy pale. “It is a lie,” said he, hoarsely.
“Then you didn't jilt her for that?” asked his sister, undaunted.
“I didn't jilt her at all. It is a damned lie!” said John, with almost a shout.
“Well, a man cannot expect to go with a girl as long as you went with Catherine Gould, and have her get all ready to be married except her wedding-dress. I know she had her underclothes ready, for she told Lottie so over a year ago —”
“She showed them to me,” interposed Lottie, with a squeaky little voice. ”

“ Women began to say that Catherine would live and die unmarried in spite of her good looks and prosperous circumstances, and they opined that she felt slighted, for all her high bearing, and all the more so when John Greason bought the beautiful hill lot on the west side of the brook which divided the village as with a silver ribbon, and began building a house which to simple village tastes was fairly palatial. ”

“ Ames. “I shouldn't wonder if that was the trouble — if they quarrelled over something.”
“It never seemed to me that Catherine's aunt Sarah was very close-mouthed,” observed Lottie.
“Well, Catherine and her mother are, and they'll see to it that she is. Poor Sarah Gould never dares speak unless those two women say she may,” returned Mrs. Greason. “Well, your father was a good, upright man, although of course he had his little faults like all of us, and I can see them right over in your brother; but, after all, it is better to be a stone jar than a sieve.”
“Not with your own folks,” said Lottie. ”

“ Everybody wondered why she did not become engaged to some one else. As for John, he was said never to look at a girl. This fact probably hurt Catherine a little in spite of her popularity. There were those who made insinuations that her temper had been the cause of the trouble. However, men did not seem to fear it. When a lawyer from New York came to Exbridge on business concerning the settling of an old estate, and remained two summer months at the village inn, and paid much attention to Catherine, people assumed that surely she would win him, or consent to be won. ”

“ She knew, although people liked her, they could no more resist talking about her, if they had the chance, than they could resist gazing at a sky-rocket on a July night. Pyrotechnics of any kind were simply irresistible to human beings deprived of the natural food of excitement. ”

“ Mrs. Ames echoed her in a similar voice. “Yes, father was close-mouthed just like John,” said she.
“I'm sorry about it,” her mother remarked, although as she spoke she took another spoonful of scalloped oysters. “Catherine Gould is a handsome girl, and she has money, and she will have more. All that consoles me is, I always have wondered how we should get along with her. Unless I miss my guess, she has got an awful temper.” ”

“ If he was a child, you could spank him, but as long as he's a man —”
“I don't call him a man,” interposed Catherine.
The aunt continued, “As long as he's a man,” said she, “all a woman can do is to sit still and do nothing.”
“I am not going to sit still and do nothing,” Catherine said. She straightened herself and puckered up her red dress skirt into a bag for the candy and broken box, then went towards the door. ”

“ They had imagined every marriageable girl in the village as being his prospective wife, but as he never went out evenings they themselves were forced into the conclusion that he might have met somebody in the mountains. ”

“ I know until grandmother died you had a hard struggle to get along and make both ends meet, because she didn't like your marrying father, and wouldn't help you, and father never was much of a success as a doctor ”

“ She thought of a new red silk gown which she was to wear that afternoon. She could see herself in it, and the men, if men there were, were crowding around her, and women too, for that matter. Women liked Catherine. She had an easy good nature, which kept them from jealousy of her beauty. She thought that John Greason's mother and his sister Lottie and his married sister, Mrs. ”