I put on my very prettiest pink organdie dress and did my hair the new way, which is very becoming to me. When you are going to have an important interview with a man it is always well to look your very best. I put on my big hat with the wreath of pink roses that Aunt Tommy had brought me from New York and took my spandy ruffled parasol.
“With your shield or upon it, Jill,” said Jacky when I started. (This is another classical allusion.)
I went straight up the hill and down the road to the manse where Dick lived with his old housekeeper, Mrs. Dodge. She came to the door when I knocked and I said, very politely, “Can I see the Reverend Stephen Richmond, if you please?”
Mrs. Dodge went upstairs and came right back saying would I please go up to the study. Up I went, my heart in my mouth, I can tell you, and there was Dick among his books, looking so pale and sorrowful and interesting, for all the world like Lord Algernon Francis in the splendid serial in the paper cook took. There was a Madonna on his desk that looked just like Aunt Tommy.
“Good evening, Miss Elizabeth,” said Dick, just as if I were grown up, you know. “Won’t you sit down? Try that green velvet chair. I am sure it was created for a pink dress and unfortunately neither Mrs. Dodge nor I possess one. How are all your people?”
“We are all pretty well; thank you,” I said, “except Aunt Tommy. She—” I was going to say, “She cries every night after she goes to bed,” but I remembered just in time that if I were in Aunt Tommy’s place I wouldn’t want a man to know I cried about him even if I did. So I said instead “ — she has got a cold.”
“Ah, indeed, I am sorry to hear it,” said Dick, politely but coldly, as if it were part of his duty as a minister to be sorry for anybody who had a cold, but as if, apart from that, it was not a concern of his if Aunt Tommy had galloping consumption.
“And Jack and I are terribly harrowed up in our minds,” I went on. “That is what I’ve come up to see you about.”
“Well, tell me all about it,” said Dick.
“I’m afraid to,” I said. “I know you’ll be cross even if you are a minister. It’s about what Jack told you about that man in New York and Aunt Tommy.”
Dick turned as red as fire.
“I’d rather not discuss your Aunt Bertha’s affairs,” he said stiffly.
“You must hear this,” I cried, feeling thankful that Jacky hadn’t come after all, for he’d never have got any further ahead after that snub. “It’s all a mistake. There is a man in New York and he just worships Aunt Tommy and she just adores him. But he’s seventy years old and he’s her Uncle Matthew who brought her up ever since her father died and you’ve heard her talking about him a hundred times. That’s all, cross my heart solemn and true.”
You never saw anything like Dick’s face when I stopped. It looked just like a sunrise. But he said slowly, “Why did Jacky tell me such a — tell me it in such a way?”
“We wanted to make you jealous,” I said. “I put Jacky up to it.”
“I didn’t think it was in either of you to do such a thing,” said Dick reproachfully.
“Oh, Dick,” I cried — fancy my calling him Dick right to his face! Jacky will never believe I really did it. He says I would never have dared. But it wasn’t daring at all, it was just forgetting. “Oh, Dick, we didn’t mean any harm. We thought you weren’t getting on fast enough and we wanted to stir you up like they do in books. We thought if we made you jealous it would work all right. We didn’t mean any harm. Oh, please forgive us!”
I was just ready to cry. But that dear Dick leaned over the table and patted my hand.
“There, there, it’s all right. I understand and of course I forgive you. Don’t cry, sweetheart.”
The way Dick said “sweetheart” was perfectly lovely. I envied Aunt Tommy, and I wanted to keep on crying so that he would go on comforting me.
“And you’ll come back to see Aunt Tommy again?” I said.
Dick’s face clouded over; he got up and walked around the room several times before he said a word. Then he came and sat down beside me and explained it all to me, just as if I were grown up.
“Sweetheart, we’ll talk this all out. You see, it is this way. Your Aunt Bertha is the sweetest woman in the world. But I’m only a poor minister and I have no right to ask her to share my life of hard work and self-denial. And even if I dared I know she wouldn’t do it. She doesn’t care anything for me except as a friend. I never meant to tell her I cared for her but I couldn’t help going to Owlwood, even though I knew it was a weakness on my part. So now that I’m out of the habit of going I think it would be wisest to stay out. It hurts dreadfully, but it would hurt worse after a while. Don’t you agree with me, Miss Elizabeth?”
I thought hard and fast. If I were in Aunt Tommy’s place I mightn’t want a man to know I cried about him, but I was quite sure I’d rather have him know than have him stay away because he didn’t know. So I spoke right up.
“No, I don’t, Mr. Richmond; Aunt Tommy does care — you just ask her. She cries every blessed night because you never come to Owlwood.”
“Oh, Elizabeth!” said Dick.
He got up and stalked about the room again.
“You’ll come back?” I said.
“Yes,” he answered.
I drew a long breath. It was such a responsibility off my mind.
“Then you’d better come down with me right off,” I said, “for Pinky Carewe had her out driving last night and I want a stop put to that as soon as possible. Even if he is rich he’s a perfect pig.”
Dick got his hat and came. We walked up the road in lovely creamy yellow twilight and I was, oh, so happy.
“Isn’t it just like a novel?” I said.
“I am afraid, Elizabeth,” said Dick preachily, “that you read too many novels, and not the right kind, either. Some of these days I am going to ask you to promise me that you will read no more books except those your mother and I pick out for you.”
You don’t know how squelched I felt. And I knew I would have to promise, too, for Dick can make me do anything he likes.
When we got to Owlwood I left Dick in the parlour and flew up to Aunt Tommy’s room. I found her all scrunched up on her bed in the dark with her face in the pillows.
“Aunt Tommy, Dick is down in the parlour and he wants to see you,” I said.
Didn’t Aunt Tommy fly up, though!
“Oh, Jill — but I’m not fit to be seen — tell him I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
I knew Aunt Tommy wanted to fix her hair and dab rose-water on her eyes, so I trotted meekly down and told Dick. Then I flew out to Jacky and dragged him around to the glass door. It was all hung over with vines and a wee bit ajar so that we could see and hear everything that went on.
Jacky said it was only sneaks that listened — but he didn’t say it until next day. At the time he listened just as hard as I did. I didn’t care if it was mean. I just had to listen. I was perfectly wild to hear how a man would propose and how a girl would accept and it was too good a chance to lose.
Presently in sweeps Aunt Tommy, in an elegant dress, not a hair out of place. She looked perfectly sweet, only her nose was a little red. Dick looked at her for just a moment, then he stepped forward and took her right into his arms.
Aunt Tommy drew back her head for just a second as if she were going to crush him in the dust, and then she just all kind of crumpled up and her face went down on his shoulder.
“Oh — Bertha — I — love — you — I — love you,” he said, just like that, all quick and jerky.
“You — you have taken a queer way of showing it,” said Aunt Tommy, all muffled.
“I — I — was led to believe that there was another man — whom you cared for — and I thought you were only trifling with me. So I sulked like a jealous fool. Bertha, darling, you do love me a little, don’t you?”
Aunt Tommy lifted her head and stuck up her mouth and he kissed her. And there it was, all over, and they were engaged as quick
as that, mind you. He didn’t even go down on his knees. There was nothing romantic about it and I was never so disgusted in my life. When I grow up and anybody proposes to me he will have to be a good deal more flowery and eloquent than that, I can tell you, if he wants me to listen to him.
I left Jacky peeking still and I went to bed. After a long time Aunt Tommy came up to my room and sat down on my bed in the moonlight.
“You dear blessed Elizabeth!” she said.
“It’s all right then, is it?” I asked.
“Yes, it is all right, thanks to you, dearie. We are to be married in October and somebody must be my little flower girl.”
“I think Dick will make a splendid husband,” I said. “But Aunt Tommy, you mustn’t be too hard on Jacky. He only wanted to help things along, and it was I who put him up it in the first place.”
“You have atoned by going and confessing,” said Aunt Tommy with a hug, “Jacky had no business to put that off on you. I’ll forgive him, of course, but I’ll punish him by not letting him know that I will for a little while. Then I’ll ask him to be a page at my wedding.”
Well, the wedding came off last week. It was a perfectly gorgeous affair. Aunt Tommy’s dress was a dream — and so was mine, all pink silk and chiffon and carnations. Jacky made a magnificent page too, in a suit of white velvet. The wedding cake was four stories high, and Dick looked perfectly handsome. He kissed me too, right after he kissed Aunt Tommy.
So everything turned out all right, and I believe Dick would never have dared to speak up if we hadn’t helped things along. But Jacky and I have decided that we will never meddle in an affair of the kind again. It is too hard on the nerves.
A Millionaire’s Proposal
Thrush Hill, Oct. 5, 18 — .
It is all settled at last, and in another week I shall have left Thrush Hill. I am a little bit sorry and a great bit glad. I am going to Montreal to spend the winter with Alicia.
Alicia — it used to be plain Alice when she lived at Thrush Hill and made her own dresses and trimmed her own hats — is my half-sister. She is eight years older than I am. We are both orphans, and Aunt Elizabeth brought us up here at Thrush Hill, the most delightful old country place in the world, half smothered in big willows and poplars, every one of which I have climbed in the early tomboy days of gingham pinafores and sun-bonnets.
When Alicia was eighteen she married Roger Gresham, a man of forty. The world said that she married him for his money. I dare say she did. Alicia was tired of poverty.
I don’t blame her. Very likely I shall do the same thing one of these days, if I get the chance — for I too am tired of poverty.
When Alicia went to Montreal she wanted to take me with her, but I wanted to be outdoors, romping in the hay or running wild in the woods with Jack.
Jack Willoughby — Dr. John H. Willoughby, it reads on his office door — was the son of our nearest neighbour. We were chums always, and when he went away to college I was heartbroken.
The vacations were the only joy of my life then.
I don’t know just when I began to notice a change in Jack, but when he came home two years ago, a full-fledged M.D. — a great, tall, broad-shouldered fellow, with the sweetest moustache, and lovely thick black hair, just made for poking one’s fingers through — I realized it to the full. Jack was grown up. The dear old days of bird-nesting and nutting and coasting and fishing and general delightful goings-on were over forever.
I was sorry at first. I wanted “Jack.” “Dr. Willoughby” seemed too distinguished and far away.
I suppose he found a change in me, too. I had put on long skirts and wore my hair up. I had also found out that I had a complexion, and that sunburn was not becoming. I honestly thought I looked pretty, but Jack surveyed me with decided disapprobation.
“What have you done to yourself? You don’t look like the same girl. I’d never know you in that rig-out, with all those flippery-trippery curls all over your head. Why don’t you comb your hair straight back, and let it hang in a braided tail, like you used to?”
This didn’t suit me at all. When I expect a compliment and get something quite different I always get snippy. So I said, with what I intended to be crushing dignity, “that I supposed I wasn’t the same girl; I had grown up, and if he didn’t like my curls he needn’t look at them. For my part, I thought them infinitely preferable to that horrid, conceited-looking moustache he had grown.”
“I’ll shave it off if it doesn’t suit you,” said Jack amiably.
Jack is always so provokingly good-humoured. When you’ve taken pains and put yourself out — even to the extent of fibbing about a moustache — to exasperate a person, there is nothing more annoying than to have him keep perfectly angelic.
But after a while Jack and I adjusted ourselves to the change in each other and became very good friends again. It was quite a different friendship from the old, but it was very pleasant. Yes, it was; I will admit that much.
I was provoked at Jack’s determination to settle down for life in Valleyfield, a horrible, humdrum, little country village.
“You’ll never make your fortune there, Jack,” I said spitefully. “You’ll just be a poor, struggling country doctor all your life, and you’ll be grey at forty.”
“I don’t expect to make a fortune, Kitty,” said Jack quietly. “Do you think that is the one desirable thing? I shall never be a rich man. But riches are not the only thing that makes life pleasant.”
“Well, I think they have a good deal to do with it, anyhow,” I retorted. “It’s all very well to pretend to despise wealth, but it’s generally a case of sour grapes. I will own up honestly that I’d love to be rich.”
It always seems to make Jack blue and grumpy when I talk like that. I suppose that is one reason why he never asked me to settle down in life as a country doctor’s wife. Another was, no doubt, that I always nipped his sentimental sproutings religiously in the bud.
Three weeks ago Alicia wrote to me, asking me to spend the winter with her. Her letters always make me just gasp with longing for the life they describe.
Jack’s face, when I told him about it, was so woebegone that I felt a stab of remorse, even in the heyday of my delight.
“Do you really mean it, Kitty? Are you going away to leave me?”
“You won’t miss me much,” I said flippantly — I had a creepy, crawly presentiment that a scene of some kind was threatening—”and I’m awfully tired of Thrush Hill and country life, Jack. I suppose it is horribly ungrateful of me to say so, but it is the truth.”
“I shall miss you,” he said soberly.
Somehow he had my hands in his. How did he ever get them? I was sure I had them safely tucked out of harm’s way behind me. “You know, Kitty, that I love you. I am a poor man — perhaps I may never be anything else — and this may seem to you very presumptuous. But I cannot let you go like this. Will you be my wife, dear?”
Wasn’t it horribly straightforward and direct? So like Jack! I tried to pull my hands away, but he held them fast. There was nothing to do but answer him. That “no” I had determined to say must be said, but, oh! how woefully it did stick in my throat!
And I honestly believe that by the time I got it out it would have been transformed into a “yes,” in spite of me, had it not been for a certain paragraph in Alicia’s letter which came providentially to my mind:
Not to flatter you, Katherine, you are a beauty, my dear — if your photo is to be trusted. If you have not discovered that fact before — how should you, indeed, in a place like Thrush Hill? — you soon will in Montreal. With your face and figure you will make a sensation.
There is to be a nephew of the Sinclairs here this winter. He is an American, immensely wealthy, and will be the catch of the season. A word to the wise, etc. Don’t get into any foolish entanglement down there. I have heard some gossip of you and our old playfellow, Jack Willoughby. I hope it is nothing but gossip. You can do better than that, Katherine.
T
hat settled Jack’s fate, if there ever had been any doubt.
“Don’t talk like that, Jack,” I said hurriedly. “It is all nonsense. I think a great deal of you as a friend and — and — all that, you know. But I can never marry you.”
“Are you sure, Kitty?” said Jack earnestly. “Don’t you care for me at all?”
It was horrid of Jack to ask that question!
“No,” I said miserably, “not — not in that way, Jack. Oh, don’t ever say anything like this to me again.”
He let go of my hands then, white to the lips.
“Oh, don’t look like that, Jack,” I entreated.
“I can’t help it,” he said in a low voice. “But I won’t bother you again, dear. It was foolish of me to expect — to hope for anything of the sort. You are a thousand times too good for me, I know.”
“Oh, indeed I’m not, Jack,” I protested. “If you knew how horrid I am, really, you’d be glad and thankful for your escape. Oh, Jack, I wish people never grew up.”
Jack smiled sadly.
“Don’t feel badly over this, Kitty. It isn’t your fault. Good night, dear.”
He turned my face up and kissed me squarely on the mouth. He had never kissed me since the summer before he went away to college. Somehow it didn’t seem a bit the same as it used to; it was — nicer now.
After he went away I came upstairs and had a good, comfortable howl. Then I buried the whole affair decently. I am not going to think of it any more.
I shall always have the highest esteem for Jack, and I hope he will soon find some nice girl who will make him happy. Mary Carter would jump at him, I know. To be sure, she is as homely as she can be and live. But, then, Jack is always telling me how little he cares for beauty, so I have no doubt she will suit him admirably.
As for myself — well, I am ambitious. I don’t suppose my ambition is a very lofty one, but such as it is I mean to hunt it down. Come. Let me put it down in black and white, once for all, and see how it looks:
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 684