CHAPTER III
NIP AND TUCK
When I reached home late that afternoon I was in that state ofspring-time restlessness which clamors for immediate activity--whenthe home-keeping instinct tries to make you believe that you'll becontent if you spend a little money for garden seeds--but a recklessdemon of extravagance notifies you that nothing short of salarysacrificed for railroad fare is going to avail.
Grandfather and Uncle Lancelot, of course, came in with theirgratuitous advice, the one suggesting nasturtium beds with geraniumsalong the borders--the other slyly whispering that a boat trip fromSavannah to Boston was no more than I deserved.
Then, reaching home in this frame of mind, I was confronted with twovery perplexing and unusual conditions. _Mignon_ was being played withgreat violence in the front parlor--and all over the house was thescent of burnt yarn.
"What's up?" I demanded of mother, as she met me at the door--dressedin blue. "Everything seems mysterious and topsyturvy to-day! I believeif I were to go out to the cemetery I'd find the tombstones noddingand whispering to one another."
"Come in here!" she begged in a Santa Claus voice.
I went into the parlor, then gave a little shriek.
"Mother!"
I have neglected to state, earlier in the narrative, that the onedesire of my heart which doesn't begin with H was a player-piano! Itwas there in the parlor, at that moment, shining, and singing itswordless song about the citron-flower land.
"It's the very one we've been _watching_ through the windows up-town,"she said in a delighted whisper.
"But did you get it as a prize?" I inquired, walking into the duskyroom and shaking hands with my betrothed, who rose from the instrumentand made way for me to take possession. "How came it here?"
"I had it sent out--on--on approval," she elucidated. That is, herwords took the form of an explanation, but her voice was as appealingas a Salvation Army dinner-bell, just before Christmas.
"On approval? But why, please?"
"Because I want you to get used to having the things you want,darling!"
Then, to keep from laughing--or crying--I ran toward the door.
"What _is_ that burning?" I asked, sniffing suspiciously.
It was a vaguely familiar scent--scorching dress-goods--and suggestiveof the awful feeling which comes to you when you've stood too close tothe fire in your best coat-suit--or the comfortable sensation on acold night, when you're preparing to wrap up your feet in a red-hotflannel petticoat.
"What is it? Tell the truth, mother!"
But she wouldn't.
"It's your brown tweed skirt, Grace," Guilford finally explained, asmy eyes begged the secret of them both. They frequently had secretsfrom me.
"My brown tweed skirt?"
"It was as baggy at the knees as if you'd done nothing all winter but_pray_ in it!" mother whimpered in a frightened voice. "I've--I'veburned it up!"
For a moment I was silent.
"But what shall I tramp in?" I finally asked severely. "What can Iwalk out the Waverley Pike in?"
Then mother took fresh courage.
"You're not going to walk!" she answered triumphantly. "You're goingto ride--in your very--own--electric--coupe! Here's the catalogue."
She scrambled about for a book on a table near at hand--and I began tosee daylight.
"Oh, a player-piano, and an electric coupe--all in one day! I see! Myfairy godmother--who was old Aunt Patricia, and she looked exactlylike one--has turned the pumpkin into a gold coach! You two plottershave been putting your heads together to have me get rich quick andgracefully!"
"We understand that this stroke of fortune is going to make a greatchange in your life, Grace," Guilford said gravely. He was alwaysgrave--and old. The only way you could tell his demeanor from that ofa septuagenarian was that he didn't drag his feet as he walked.
"'Stroke of fortune?'" I repeated.
"The Coburn--" mother began.
"Colt--" he re-enforced, then they both hesitated, and looked at memeaningly.
I gave a hysterical laugh.
"You and mother have counted your Coburn-Colts before they werehatched!" I exclaimed wickedly, sitting down and looking over themusic rolls. I did want that player-piano tremendously--although I hadabout as much use for an electric coupe, under my present conditionsin life, as I had for a perambulator.
"Grace, you're--indelicate!" mother said, her voice trembling."Guilford's a man!"
"A man's a man--especially a Kentuckian!" I answered. "You're notshocked at my mention of colts and--and things, are you, Guilford?"
My betrothed sat down and lifted from the bridge of his nose thatbadge of civilization--a pair of rimless glasses. He polished themwith a dazzling handkerchief, then replaced the handkerchief into thepocket of the most faultless coat ever seen. He smoothed his alreadywell-disciplined hair, and brushed away a speck of dust from the toeof his shoe. From head to foot he fairly bristled with signs of civicimprovement.
"I am shocked at your reception of your mother's kind thoughtfulness,"he said.
He waited a little while before saying it, for hesitation was his wayof showing disapproval. Yet you must not get the impression from thisthat Guilford was a bad sort! Why, no woman could ride in an elevatorwith him for half a minute without realizing that he was theflower-of-chivalry sort of man! He always had a little way of standingback from a woman, as if she were too sacred to be approached, and inher presence he had a habit of holding his hat clasped firmly againstthe buttons of his coat. You can forgive a good deal in a man if hekeeps his hat off all the time he's talking to you!
"'Shocked?'" I repeated.
"Your mother always plans for your happiness, Grace."
"Of course! Don't you suppose I know that?" I immediately asked in aninjured tone. It is always safe to assume an injured air when you'rearguing with a man, for it gives him quite as much pleasure to comfortyou as it does to hurt you.
"I didn't--mean anything!" he hastened to assure me.
"Guilford merely jumped at the chance of your freeing yourself of thisnewspaper slavery," mother interceded. "You know what a humiliation itis to him--just as it is to me and to every member of the--Christiefamily."
My betrothed nodded so violently in acquiescence that his glasses flewoff in space.
"You know that I am a Kentuckian in my way of regarding women, Grace,"he plead. "I can't bear to see them step down from the pedestal thatnature ordained for them!"
I turned and looked him over--from the crown of his intenselyaristocratic fair head to the tip of his aristocratic slim foot.
"A Kentuckian?"
"Certainly!"
"A Kentuckian?" I repeated reminiscently. "Why, Guilford Blake, youought to be olive-skinned--and black-eyed--and your shoes ought toturn up at the toes--and your head ought to be covered by a redfez--and you ought to sit smoking through a water-bottle of anevening, in front of your--your--"
"Grace!" stormed mother, rising suddenly to her feet. "I will not haveyou say such things!"
"What things?" I asked, drawing back in hurt surprise.
"H-harems!" she uttered in a blushing whisper, but Guilford caught theword and squared his shoulders importantly.
"But, I say, Grace," he interrupted, his face showing that mixture ofanger and pleased vanity which a man always shows when you tell himthat he's a dangerous tyrant, or a bold Don Juan--or both. "You don'tthink I'm a Turk--do you?"
"I do."
He sighed wistfully.
"If I were," he said, shaking his head, "I'd have caught you--and_veiled_ you--long before this."
I looked at him intently.
"You mean--"
"That I shouldn't have let you delay our marriage this way! Why shouldyou, pray, when my financial affairs have changed so in the lastyear?"
I rose from my place beside the new piano, breaking gently into hisplea.
"It isn't that!" I attempted to explain, but my voice failed drearily."You ought to know that--finances
hadn't anything to do with it. Ihaven't kept from marrying you all these years because we were both sopoor--then, last year when you inherited your money--I didn't keepfrom marrying you because you were so rich!"
"Then, what is it?" he asked gravely, and mother looked on as eagerlyfor my answer as he did. This is one advantage about a life-longbetrothal. It gets to be a family institution. Or is that adisadvantage?
"I--don't know," I confessed, settling back weakly.
"I don't think you do!" mother observed with considerable dryness.
"Well, this business of your getting to be a famous compiler ofliterature may help you get your bearings," Guilford kept on, after anawkward little pause. "You have always said that you wished toexercise your own wings a little before we married, and I have givenin to you--although I don't know that it's right to humor a woman inthese days and times. Really, I don't know that it is."
"Oh, you don't?"
"No--I don't. But we're not discussing that now, Grace! What I'mtrying to get at is that this offer means a good deal to you. Ofcourse, it is only the beginning of your career--for these fellowswill think up other things for you to do--and it will give you a wayof earning money that won't take you up a flight of dirty officestairs every day. Understand, I mean for just a short while--as longas you insist upon earning your own living."
"And the honor!" mother added. "You could have your pictures in goodmagazines!"
I stifled a yawn, for, to tell the truth, the conflict had made menervous and weary.
"At all events, I must decide!" I exclaimed, starting again to myfeet. "Somehow, the office atmosphere isn't exactly conducive to deepthought--and I've had so little time since morning to get away bymyself and thresh matters out."
Mother looked at me incredulously.
"Will you please tell me just what you mean, Grace?" she asked.
"I mean that I must get away--I've imagined that I ought to take someserious thought, weigh the matter well, so to speak--before I write tothe Coburn-Colt Publishing Company. In other words, I have to decide."
"Decide?" mother repeated, her face filled with piteous amazement."_Decide?_"
"Decide?" Guilford said, taking up the strain complainingly.
"If you'll excuse me!" I answered, starting toward the door, thenturning with an effort at nonchalance, for their sakes, to wave them alittle adieu. "Suppose you keep on playing 'Knowest thou the landwhere the citron-flower blooms,' Guilford--for I am filled with_wanderlust_ right now, and this music will help out Uncle Lancelot'spresentation of the matter considerably!"
"What?"
"I'm going to listen to the voices," I explained. "All day longgrandfather and Uncle Lancelot have been busy making the fur fly in myconscience!"
Mother darted across the room and caught my hand.
"You don't mean to say that you have scruples--_scruples_--GraceChristie?"
She couldn't have hated smallpox worse--in me.
"Honest Injun, I don't know!" I admitted. "Of course, it does seemabsurd to ponder over what a family row might be raised in theSeventh Circle of Nirvana by the publication of these oldlove-letters, but--"
"James Mackenzie Christie died in 1849," she declared vehemently."Absurd! It is _insane_!"
"That's what the Uncle Lancelot part of my intelligence keeps tellingme," I laughed. "But--good heavens! you just ought to hear thegrandfather argument."
"What does he--what does that silly _Salem_ conscience of yours sayagainst the publication of the letters?" she asked grudgingly.
I sat down again.
"Shall I tell you?" I began good-naturedly, for I saw that mother wasat the melting point--melting into tears, however, not assent."Whenever I want to do anything I'm not exactly _sure_ of, these twoprovoking old gentlemen come into the room--the council-chamber of myheart--and begin their post-mortem warfare. Grandfather iswhite-bearded and serene, while Uncle Lancelot looks exactly as anItalian tenor _ought_ to look--and never does."
"And you look exactly like him," mother snapped viciously. "Nothingabout you resembles your grandfather except your brow and eyes."
"I know that," I answered resignedly. "Hasn't some one said that theupper part of my face is as lofty as a Byronic thought--and the loweras devilish as a Byronic _deed_?"
Neither of them smiled, but Guilford stirred a little.
"Go on with your argument, Grace," he urged patiently. He was alwayspatient.
"I'm going!" I answered. "All day grandfather has been telling me whatI already know--that the Coburn-Colt Company doesn't want thoseletters of James Christie's because they are literary, or beautiful,or historical, but simply and solely because they are _bad_! They'llmake a good-seller because they're the thing the public demands rightnow. Lady Frances Webb was a _married_ woman!"
"Nonsense," mother interrupted, with a blush. "The public doesn'tdemand bad things! There is merely a craze for intimate, biographicalmatter--told in the first person."
"I know," I admitted humbly. "This is what distinguishes a human froman inhuman document."
"The craze demands a simple straightforward narrative--" Guilfordbegan, then hesitated.
"In literature this is the period of the great '_I Am_,'" I broke in."People want the secrets of a writer's soul, rather than the tricks ofhis vocabulary, I know."
"Well, good lord--you wouldn't be giving the twentieth century anymore of these people's souls than they themselves gave to the earlynineteenth," he argued scornfully. "She put his portrait into everybook she ever wrote--and he annexed her face in the figure of everysaint--and sinner--he painted!"
"Well, that was because they couldn't _see_ any other faces," Idefended.
"Bosh!"
"But Lady Frances Webb was a good woman," mother insisted weakly."She had pre-Victorian ideas! She sent her lover across seas, becauseshe felt that she must! Why, the publication of these letters would do_good_, not harm."
"They would shame the present-day idea of 'affinity' right," saidGuilford.
I nodded my head, for this was the same theory that Uncle Lancelot hadbeen whispering in my ears since the postman blew his whistle thatmorning. And yet--
"Maybe you two--don't exactly understand the import of those lettersas I do," I suggested, sorry and ashamed before the gaze of theirpractical eyes. "But to me they mean so much! I have always _loved_James Christie and--his Unattainable. I can feel for them, and--"
"And you mean to say that you are going to give way to an absurd fancynow--a ridiculous, far-fetched, namby-pamby, quixotic fancy?" motherasked, in a tone of horror.
"I--I'm--afraid so!" I stammered.
"And miss this chance--for all the things you want most? The verythings you're toiling day and night to get?"
"And put off the prospect of our marriage?" Guilford demanded. "I hadhoped that this business transaction would satisfy the unaccountabledesire you seem to have for independence--that after you had circledabout a little in the realm of emancipated women and their strainednotions of what constitutes freedom, you'd see the absurdity of it alland--come to me."
"I am awfully sorry, Guilford," I answered, dropping my eyes, for Iknew that "freedom," "independence" and "emancipation" had nothing onearth to do with my delayed marriage--and I knew that I was doingwrong not to say so. "I am _awfully_ sorry to disappoint you."
"Then you have decided finally?" mother asked in a suspicious voice.
"I believe I have," I answered. "Oh, please don't look at me thatway--and please don't cry! I can't help it!"
"It is preposterous," Guilford said shortly.
"But you don't--understand!" I cried, turning to him pleadingly. "Youdon't know what it is to feel as I feel about those lovers--thosepeople who had no happiness in this world--and are haunted andtormented by curiosity in their very graves!--don't you suppose I wantto do the thing you and mother want me to do? Of course, I do! I wantthis--this new piano--and another brown tweed skirt that doesn't bagat the knees--and I want--so many things!"
"Then why in
the name of----" he began.
"Because I _won't_!" I told him flatly. "Call it conscience--fancy, orwhat you will!--I have those two people in my power--their secrets areright here in my hands! And I'm not going to _give them away_!"
"Grace, you a-maze me!" mother sobbed.
But Guilford rose tranquilly and reached for his hat.
"Any woman who has a conscience like that ought to cauterize it--witha curling-iron--and get rid of it," he observed dryly.
Amazing Grace, Who Proves That Virtue Has Its Silver Lining Page 3