Читать книгу Miss Bishop - Bess Streeter Aldrich - Страница 10

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There was now a freshly painted sign over the door of an office next to the new Bank of Oak River which said “Peters, Peters and Thompson.” And the strange and wholly informal meeting of Ella and the firm’s new young partner had taken upon itself a bright and shining halo of romance. And life had begun to hold new experiences.

Inherently honest, Ella grew cunning and sly with her own self that month,—would not admit that she was dressing for the new young lawyer,—that she was attending every gathering of college and town in the hope of seeing his big broad shoulders and ready smile. She grew sensitive to his entrance into a room, knew through some peculiar psychic information without turning her head that he had arrived. Gradually she grew to feel that he was looking for her, too.

So immediately mutual was this attraction that by the holiday time he was her exclusive escort to all the social events of the community. In January people were teasing her. Even her students could bring the tell-tale color to her cheeks by an innocently uttered innuendo. Chester Peters seemed to have breathed a bit of the highly charged atmosphere also, for he was more attentive to Irene than he had ever been,—and Irene was glowing these days, her sallow face lighted by the first real hope of the culmination of her long liking for Chester. Chester Peters and Irene Van Ness—Delbert Thompson and Ella Bishop—it was a common sight to see the four tramping laughingly in single-file through paths shoveled in the deep snow or riding in Judge Peters’ two-seated sleigh with the jet-colored high-stepping horses that matched the Judge’s black side-whiskers. Sam did not figure in the gayety—went quietly to the grocery store where he kept the books in his flowing Spencerian hand, and handled the eggs that the farmers’ wives brought in for trade. There seemed no great change in Sam’s courteous attitude toward Ella,—except that his eyes now were not only wistful, but tragic. Sensing his shy longing for her, Ella sometimes felt a hearty impatience toward him. Why should the loveliest thing that had ever come into her life have a shadow cast upon it by the moon-calf attitude of Sam Peters?

By February, Ella was formally engaged to Delbert Thompson. It was one of those things she could scarcely believe true. It seemed all too sudden—too beautiful a thing to come to definite words so soon. Just a few months before and she had never seen him, save in her own girlish dreams. She had loved the courting, the imagining the possibility of what might come, the holding to her heart the delicate unfolding flower of romance. And now this February evening Delbert had her in his arms, was lavishing warm kisses on her cool lips, and she was saying, “Delbert—it’s too soon. It has all happened too quickly.”

At that he was throwing back his head and laughing his boyish ready laugh. “It’s not too soon, Ella—nothing’s too soon. We’ll be married right away this spring.”

“Oh, not this spring, Delbert. I should teach one more year ... to get ready ... and save money ... and maybe know you better,” she added, a bit shyly.

“You’re a cool little piece, aren’t you, Ella?” He held her off and asked anxiously for the dozenth time, “You do love me, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, yes, Delbert. I do love you ... so much. But ... wait a little ... I must be so sure ... it’s such a big thing ... to understand just what this love is.”

“It’s this.” Delbert laughed and crushed her to him until she nearly cried out in the strength of the embrace.

But Ella knew better—Ella Bishop knew her love was something more than that—something more deeply beautiful,—something infinitely more delicate.

So in a whirlwind of courtship it was settled. Ella was to resign and they were to be married in June as soon as school was out.

When Irene Van Ness heard it, she cried a little. It did not seem quite understandable to her,—she had gone with Chet Peters ever since their High School days. The whole town knew she was Chet’s girl,—no one else paid any attention to her. But he had never once mentioned marriage. She bought goods for two whole new outfits and took them to Mrs. Finch, the best dressmaker in town.

All spring Ella lived in the rarefied atmosphere of her romance. But instead of detracting from her work, it merely accentuated her fidelity to it. Every class brought her nearer to the end of her teaching and so she told herself she must give her best to that teaching while she could. This roseate happiness which was hers bubbled over into thoughtfulness for others, a warm kindness toward her students, an energy which sought to make the most of every opportunity to be helpful.

“I am teaching under the assumption that every young person in my classes has to learn from me all the English grammar he will ever know,” she explained laughingly to Delbert. “By pretending that what I can’t teach them now in the few remaining months they will never know, I hustle and make the most of my time.”

“You’re a bundle of energy,” Delbert would say proudly, “so different from most of the girls with their kittenish ways and their silly little talk.”

“I thought men were supposed to like that kittenish kind,” Ella would suggest a bit jealously,—for the very feminine reason of getting him to disagree.

“Oh, they may be all right to flirt around with,—but for a wife, who wants a coquette?”

Delbert was to move into the Bishop home. It was a feature of the marriage which gave him some chagrin.

“It doesn’t seem quite the thing to do, Ella. It ought not be that way,” he would sometimes protest.

But Ella, practical as always, would laugh his humiliation away. “We bought the house after Father died and it’s all paid for. I’m an only child ... Mother has to live with us anyway—no matter where we would go. So what difference does it make?”

The last of March she spent her spring vacation doing the work of two women, for her salary, not any too large, had by necessity to stretch over many things. So, up on a sturdy stepladder, she papered the bedrooms with dainty flowered wallpaper. She washed and ironed the curtains, scrubbed and painted and cleaned.

“If it would only stay so until June.” She surveyed her handiwork with the guilty acknowledgment that her mother was not much of a housekeeper. “I wish I could afford a hired girl just to stand guard and keep it nice.”

April came in, soft and gentle, with the martins coming and the pussywillows over on the campus creek bursting into gray fuzziness—with time flying on such golden wings that Ella must even begin to think of her dresses now. Dresses in the eighties being, as they were, massive architectural works of pleats, flounces, panels, panniers, bustles and trains, she intended to have but two—a white silk one for the ceremony and a navy blue silk. “But no plaid,” she grimaced.

“Do you think I should be so extravagant as to have a white silk one made, though, Mother?” She always went through the routine of asking her mother’s advice although she knew the decision would have to be her own.

But almost to her amazement, her mother said definitely: “Yes ... oh, yes. I had ... the pale blue one, you know. Your father thought ... He said I was so pretty ... It’s just one time.... When you’re old ... you live it all over.”

Each of these days was filled with happy tasks. Students must be helped tirelessly over the rough places, the house kept in order, her mother assisted, some plain sewing done at home, all her plans for the little June wedding perfected. Sometimes Ella stopped a moment to analyze herself. “What is there about me that is so different from other girls?” she would think. “When I stop to think about it, no one ever does anything for me. I always see to everything myself. Wouldn’t it be nice sometimes to have some one else,—Mother, for instance,—take some responsibility? Even Delbert ...” She felt a momentary disloyalty at the unspoken thought—“Oh, well,” she laughed it off. “I’m just one of those people who get about and do things myself, I guess.”

On the third of April, she started home at five o’clock. The campus grass, now in its sixth spring, was beginning to look almost like a lawn, the old prairie coarseness of the first two or three years having given place after continuous mowing and the sowing of blue-grass and clover to a fairly pleasing green sloping sward. The hard maples and the elms, planted in their curving horse-shoe formation up toward the building, were actually beginning to seem like real trees, although the barrel-staves around their bases for protection from wild rabbits still detracted not a little from their looks.

As she went down the long wooden sidewalk, she could see Chris in the distance burning leaves. Wild geese flew north, robins dipped low in front of her, sap on the sunny side of a soft maple was dripping clammily on the ground. All the signs of springtime had come,—her springtime. There was so much to do,—so many places to go, Irene was having a party in a few days, she and Delbert were driving to Maynard soon where he had business for the Judge,—he had said it would be a regular honeymoon trip with Judge Peters’ team and shining new buggy. She was going to look at material for the white dress and compare it with the silk she could get here. Life was so full,—so joyous. How could there be unhappiness in the world?

“There just isn’t any,” she said to herself with a gay little laugh.

But there was unhappiness in the world. She found it out the moment she entered the house, and saw her mother sitting idly, a letter in her lap, tears on her cheeks.

“Mother, darling,” she was at her side and down on her knees in a moment, “what’s wrong?”

“My only brother is gone, Ella.” And the tears overflowed again. “My Eddie—my little brother. One more sorrow for me, Ella.” Then she added as casually as though it were not of great import, “And his daughter,—his little Amy ... she wants to come ... here with us, you know, Ella ... and live awhile.”

With a cold feeling that life had played her a trick at the very time she wanted life to be most gracious to her, Ella picked up the letter.

It was true. Cousin Amy Saunders, eighteen now, wanted to come out from Ohio and stay with her Aunt and Cousin Ella.

I’ve nowhere to go, and I don’t know what to do. Could you let me come a little while, just until I can get over my sorrow for dear Papa? And, Auntie, I haven’t a cent. I don’t want to be a trouble to any one but ...

Ella finished in a daze of mind, conscious that she was deeply annoyed at that which seemed like an intrusion just now. Silently she put the little pink note back in its little pink envelope, and almost without volition raised it to her nose. A faint odor clung to it. For a moment she forgot the import of the message in the whimsical desire to place that elusive fragrance, so strangely familiar. Something in the woods. May-apples—that was it—mandrakes—the cloying fragrance of the waxy-white blossoms of the May-apple.