Olive Higgins Prouty

“ It's something awful to me, to see a grown person cry. It's like an old wreck at sea, and I just couldn't kiss her. Everybody so horrible and silent and dismal, was worse somehow than death, and just for a moment I stood kind of helpless in the middle of the room. Then the door into the library opened and I saw my dear tired, patient Alec, and suddenly his arms were around me tight, holding me close—close to him and I heard him murmur, "Good Bobbie, good, brave Bobbie," and oh, if I can hate people awfully, I can love them too. ”

“ At the little dances given here in Hilton occasionally, I'm not a wall-flower, possibly because I'm Edith Vars' sister-in-law, but I'm never "rushed." I can't be very brilliant in conversation at a dance when I'm anxiously watching for some kind, charitable soul to deliver my partner from the fear of two numbers in succession with me. And I have a sneaking conviction that I don't dance very well. You see all Ruth's set "Boston" to a waltz and two-step, and I don't know how. When a man is good enough to ask me to dance it seems too bad to make him exercise until he perspires. ”

“ The girl, as sure as I was alive, was no other than Sarah Platt—Sarah Platt, whom I had longed to know at boarding-school; Sarah Platt who had always scorned the very sight of Lucy Vars; Sarah Platt whom finally I had almost spat upon as contemptible and mean. A half an hour ago, Oliver had tried to hide me, and now I tried to hide myself. I slunk behind a telegraph-pole. Sarah swept by like a gilded chariot; I heard her voice; I smelled the odor of her violets. "She'll always be glorious and happy," I thought savagely. "She'll always have a good time. She'll marry that young man. ”

“ There was a pink one like it which I gave to Madge. Her eyes sparkled as they fell upon it. "Save it till Oliver comes," I said, and I, who had scoffed in my heart at Ruth's and Edith's conversation which took place in that same guest-room of mine eight months before, repeated their very words, as if they had left them printed on the walls. "You mustn't be the kind to grow careless before your husband. A man likes a woman to be dainty whether he is married to her or not. A man likes to be proud of his wife," I repeated parrot-like. ”

“ Maynard is really a better friend of mine than Juliet Adams, to whom I write twice every week, and for whom I make a stunning Christmas present every year. He has surely done more to fill my heart with gratitude and everlasting appreciation. It flashed upon me, one day, that I had never done a thing in my life, without pay, for Dr. Maynard. I began thinking and thinking what a girl of nineteen could do anyhow, for a man of thirty-five, who lives all alone and has all the money he wants. ”

“ The youth has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his life—a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to give—and his soul awakes. ”

“ Girls as well as men were full of the spirit of mad merry-making. Everybody was having a glorious time—everybody but me. I hated the hilarious laughter. I don't mean to imply that any one became intoxicated, I don't think they did exactly, but just the same the whole affair seemed to me like a debauch going on in my father's house beneath his very eyes. I stole up to the landing about eleven o'clock when the music was still shrieking, Ruth's cheeks burning with excitement, Oliver laughing so loudly that I could hear him above the music, and switched off the lights above Father's picture. ”

“ Ruth is an extraordinary girl. She doesn't seem a bit like a Vars. We're such a conventional and just-what-you-would-expect kind of family. Ruth contrives somehow to shroud herself in a veil of mystery and create an impression everywhere she goes. I guess she's the most discussed girl in all Hilton. She affects heliotrope shades in her clothes, combining several tones in one gown, and wears large, round, floppy hats. She always manages to select big stagy chairs to sit in, that set her off as if she were a portrait. ”

“ Oh, Bob is awfully individual; but he'll never be rich. He's a teacher, in the first place; and in the second, he hasn't a father with a fortune. When I realised that Ruth loved Bob Jennings, I was worried about those demands of that temperament of hers—the soft-footed, unobtrusive servants, the exquisite china, the fine lace, the dinners perfectly served, all those expensive things that Bob couldn't supply in a lifetime. If only Bob had had Breck's fortune, or Breck had had Bob's poetic soul, everything would have been all right ”

“ Maynard came. I had not realised that he had been out of town. I had been so stunned by Alec's announcement that I had not missed him. He had been down to Baltimore for three days attending some sort of a medical conference and I had not known that he had been outside of Hilton.
Dr. Maynard and I were as good friends as ever now. Three whole months had passed since that Christmas Day when he discovered my sofa-pillow on his desk, and I had come to the conclusion that he had been merely surprised into his queer behaviour that day. He had never shown a scrap of the same emotion since. ”

“ I was perched on the step-ladder at the particular moment the telephone bell rang, hanging the last muslin curtain in the room we called Ruth's. Miss Kavenaugh was puttering with the cretonne overhangings, pulling and patting them as tenderly as if they had been dainty dresses hung up on forms.
It was Ruth on the telephone calling me from town.
"I'm in here shopping," she said. "Can you possibly come in and have lunch? Do, if you can. I want to see you." ”

“ Oliver was alone. I shall always remember how he looked on that spring evening as he swung along, overcoat open and flapping in the wind, head held high and brow smooth and cloudless. His step was as sure and firm as when he joined us all after he had received his diploma on his graduation day at college. My heart went out to him—poor Oliver always getting into trouble, gifted and talented in a way (he can sing like an angel) awfully good-looking and lovable (he has friends everywhere) , poor Oliver—what would become of him? ”

“ I look for it among the new young men that come to call on Ruth, but I can't find it. Yet if I ever do marry, the man must be born by this time, I suppose. Sometimes, especially when I listen to music, I wonder where he is, in just what city, what house, what room he is sitting at that particular moment. I smile to think how unconscious he is of me, who some day will fill his life completely, and how surprised he'd be if he knew that I was loving him even now.
I wonder what he's doing this very minute—three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. Perhaps he's playing golf in a Norfolk Scotch tweed ”

“ Ruth who prided herself on her coolness and her circumspection, Ruth who boasted that fate had foreordained a brilliant marriage, lost her head over a young college instructor who taught English composition to freshmen and sophomores, at a salary something less than three thousand a year. It simply proves that the eternal feminine will crop out, however much it has been choked and blighted, just like a dry bulb that's been kept in a damp dark cellar all winter. ”

“ I wouldn't tease for a rubber-tired runabout, for new wallpaper, nor for that brass bed for my room.
I don't know where you are, nor where my mother is, but somehow up here in this cupola on a starry night, when I sit on the window-seat, lie flat back with my head out of the open window, and look up into that great dome of a sky, I feel as if you two may be together somewhere, perhaps seeing me.
But I don't know. There are times when I'm dreadfully doubtful; there are times that I don't believe anything. I think I may be an atheist! ”

“ I'd die for Alec. I don't believe there ever has been a brother and sister more congenial than Alec and I. I know just how to please him, and he knows better than any one in this world how to manage me. There isn't a prouder girl alive than I, when Alec confides his business affairs to me. I do not understand them very well. Companies and Coöperations, Preferred and Common Stock, Bonds and Bank-notes are all a perfect jumble in my mind. But I've learned long ago, that nothing will shut a man up more quickly than a comment on a girl's part that shows him how ignorant she is. ”

“ I am going to skip the details of my wedding—the broiling condition of the thermometer, the sweltering bridesmaids, the crowds, the push, the funny grown-up feeling in my heart when Alec and Tom kissed me good-bye so gently, the joy when the train finally gave a snort and a jerk, and I knew that Edith in her pearls and satin couldn't possibly follow. ”

“ As I drew my curtain and looked out into the dark night I thought of Juliet Adams, sleeping peacefully like a child, and I realised how little she knew of sorrow. When the big clock in the hall struck twelve I was kneeling before my bureau, stacking my underclothes in neat little piles ready for my trunk. How little I knew that what I then thought my pretty ninety-eight-cent nightgowns, long-sleeved and high-necked, would about die of shame for their plainness, before the beautiful lace and French hand-embroidered lingerie represented at midnight spreads at school. ”

“ At the touch of it the sobs seemed suddenly to rise up in my throat, pressing after each other as if they were anxious to get out into the air, and I rose quickly, pushed Alec's arm away and left the room. They mustn't see—oh, no, they mustn't see me cry! I meant to go to my bedroom and have it out by myself, but instead I rushed to the kitchen and buried my face for a minute in the roller-towel. Then before I let myself give way, I drew the dipper full of cold water and swallowed those sobs back, forcing them with the strength of Samson. ”

“ If she had anything of importance on her mind she certainly exhibited no outward agitation. She was dressed in a scant, tailor-made white serge suit, and had on a big, floppy, soft, fur-felt hat, which no other woman I know would have attempted to wear. It was lavender in shade and the brim drooped as if it had lost all its stiffening. Around the crushed crown was tied a piece of hemp rope. I never saw a hat like it in any shop. Ruth is always discovering odd, outlandish "shapes" in the millinery line and trimming them up with things no one ever thought of putting on a hat before. ”

“ Even the people in my life have changed so radically that I hardly recognise them as the ones that I once worked and cared for. Ruth has grown into a charming young lady; the twins have graduated from college and are earning their own way—Malcolm in New York and Oliver in a lumber camp out West; Tom is middle-aged; Elise, whom I visited last winter, is becoming a little stout and her hair is sprinkled through with grey; Alec has buried his personality in Edith; nothing is as it was. Even Hilton is different. ”

“ As I sit here this soft spring day and listen for the noon-whistle on Father's factory to blow, I shall not wait for the sight of Dixie and the phaeton coming up the hill, for Alec will be alone and I hate to be reminded of too many places left empty by Father. Father had so many favourite chairs. In every room in the house it seems as if he had his special place. [79] And his roll-top desk closed and locked, his various pairs of shoes and slippers which he used to keep underneath all put away, makes the dear spot look as if it were for rent. I hate the neat orderly air of the sitting-room. ”

“ Had it been Ruth whom I had seen with my own eyes smoking a cigarette in my living-room? Had it been my own little sister? Had she done it before? Did she do it often? If I had been anxious to save Ruth from Breck before my horrible discovery, now I was determined. She shouldn't share such a life as his. She shouldn't! She shouldn't! ”

“ One can get used to anything, I believe. I accepted Edith as a person ought to accept any circumstance that can't be avoided. What if her ambitions do seem to me unworthy? What if she has [171] crowded me out of my little niche? What if the customs and the things I liked are desecrated before my very eyes? All this will not cripple me, as a chance railroad accident might. I'm not enduring physical torture. I can still see, and hear, and use my two unhampered feet for long sweet walks in the country. What if, indeed, Edith has robbed me of Alec, and Ruth too? ”

“ It was a big consolation when I learned that the emptiest-headed women often make the best card players, simply because no superfluous ideas are at work in their brains to interrupt the train of concentrated card thought.
I'm not much more successful in conversation than I am in bridge. I seem to be always on the outside of women's intimacies somehow. Edith's set know one another so confidentially—keep tabs on the gowns, the hats, the jewellery, the number of servants each one has, and guess at one another's incomes. ”

“ Miss Kavenaugh, the dollar-and-a-half-a-day university seamstress, had come to help me with my muslin curtains. Miss Kavenaugh is a very much-sought-after lady, and when I am able to secure her for a day, I give up everything else, sit down and sew with her. She plans, cuts and bastes, and I run the chain-stitch machine like mad. We had been working since eight A. M. in my darling new bedroom that looks out on my row of late dahlias. I could hardly keep my eyes on the machine-needle because of the distracting flame of several maple-trees against some dark green cedars across the lake. ”