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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/23369-0.txt b/23369-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e3cca19 --- /dev/null +++ b/23369-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1040 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mrs. Dud's Sister + +Author: Josephine Daskam + +Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23369] +Last Updated: March 8, 2018 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. DUD'S SISTER *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + + +MRS. DUD'S SISTER + +By Josephine Daskam + +Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons + + +They were having tea on the terrace. As Varian strolled up to the group +he wished that Hunter could see the picture they made--Hunter, who +had not been in America for thirty years, and who had been so honestly +surprised when Varian had spoken of Mrs. Dud's pretty maids--she always +had pretty ones, even to the cook's third assistant. + +“Maids? Maids? It used to be 'help,'” he had protested. “You don't mean +to say they have waitresses in Binghamville now?” + +Varian had despaired of giving him any idea. + +“Come over and see Mrs. Dud,” he had urged, “and do her portrait. We've +moved on since you left us, you know. She's a wonder--she really is. +When you remember how she used to carry her father's dinner to the store +Saturday afternoons--” + +“And now I suppose she sports real Mechlin on her cap,” assented Hunter, +anxious to show how perfectly he caught the situation. + +Varian had roared helplessly. “Cap? Cap!” he had moaned finally. “Oh, my +sainted granny! Cap! My poor fellow, your view of Binghamville must be +like the old maps of Africa in the green geography, that said 'desert' +and 'interior' and 'savage tribes' from time to time. I should like +awfully to see Mrs. Dud in a cap.” + +Hunter had looked puzzled. + +“But, dear me! she might very well wear one, I should think,” he had +murmured defensively. “I don't wish to be invidious, but surely +Lizzie must be--let's see; 'eighty, 'ninety--why, she must be between +forty-five and fifty now.” + +Varian had waved his hand dramatically. “Nobody considers Mrs. Dud and +time in the same breath. If you could see her in her golf rig! Or on +a horse! She even sheds a lustre on the rest of us. I forget my +rheumatism!” + +But Hunter, retreating behind his determination to avoid a second +seasickness--it might have been sincere; nobody ever knew--had stayed +in Florence, and Varian had been obliged to come without him to the +house-party. + +On a straw cushion, a cup in her strong white hand, a bunch of adoring +young girls at her feet, sat Mrs. Dud. Rosy and firm-cheeked, crisp +in stiff white duck, deliriously contrasted with her fluffy +Parisian parasol, she scorned the softening ruffles of her presumable +contemporaries; her delicately squared chin, for the most part held +high, showed a straight white collar under a throat only a little fuller +than the girlish ones all around her. + +Old Dudley himself strolled about the group, gossiping here and there +with some pretty woman, sending the grave servants from one to another +with some particularly desirable sandwich, “rubbing it in,” as he said +to the men who had failed to touch his score on the links, tantalizingly +uncertain as to which one of the young women he would invite to lead +the cotillon with him at the club dance that week: none of the young men +could take his place at that, as they themselves enviously admitted. + +What a well-matched couple it was! What a lot they got out of life! +Varian walked quietly by the group, to enjoy better the pretty, modish +picture they made. Their quick chatter, their bursts of laughter, the +sweet faint odor of the tea, the gay dresses and light flannels, with +the quiet, sombrely attired servants to add tone, all gave him, fresh +from Hunter's quick sense of the effective, an appreciation that gained +force from his separateness; he walked farther away to get a different +point of view. + +He was out of any path now, and suddenly, hardly beyond reach of +their voices, he found himself in a part of the grounds he had never +approached before. A thick high hedge shut in a kind of court at the +side and back of the great house, and a solid wooden door, carefully +matched to its green, left open by accident, showed a picture so out +of line with the succession of vivid scenes that dazzled the visitor at +Wilton Bluffs that he stopped involuntarily. The rectangle was +carpeted with the characteristic emerald turf of the place, divided by +intersecting red brick paths into four regular squares. In the farther +corner of each of these a trim green clothes-tree was planted, all +abloom with snowy fringed napkins that shone dazzling white against the +hedge. One of the squares was a neat little kitchen-garden; parsley was +there in plenty, and other vaguely familiar green things, curly-leaved +and spear-pointed. A warm gust of wind brought mint to his nostrils. A +second plot held a small crab-apple tree covered with pink and orange +globes. A great tortoise-shell cat with two kittens ornamented the +third, and in the middle of the fourth, beside a small wooden table, a +woman sat with her back toward the intruder. On the table were one or +two tin boxes and a yellow earthen dish; in her left hand, raised to +the shoulder-level, was a tall thin bottle, from which an amber fluid +dripped in an almost imperceptibly thin stream; her right arm stirred +vigorously. She was a middle-aged woman with lightly grayed hair--a kind +of premonitory powdering. Over her full skirt of lavender-striped cotton +stuff fell a broad, competent white apron. Except for the thudding of +the spoon against the bowl, and a faint, homely echo of clashing china +and tin, mingled with occasionally raised voices and laughter from some +farther kitchen region, all was utterly, placidly still. + +Varian stood chained to the open gate. Something in the calm sun-bathed +picture tugged strongly at his heart. He thought suddenly of his mother +and his Aunt Delia--he had been very fond of Aunt Delia. And what +cookies she used to make! Molasses cookies, brown, moist, and crumbly, +they had sweetened his boyhood. + +What was it, that delighted sense of congruity that filled him, every +passing second, with keener familiarity, so strangely tinged with sorrow +and regret? Ah, he had it! He bit his lip as it came clear to him. His +little namesake nephew, dead at eight years old, and dear as only a +dearly loved child can be, had delighted greatly in the Kate Greenaway +pictures that came in “painting-books,” with colored prints on alternate +pages and corresponding outlines on the others. Dozens of those books +the boy had cleverly filled in with his little japanned paint-box and +mussy, quill-handled brushes; and the scene before him, the rich tints +of the hedge, the symmetrical little tree brilliant with hundreds of +tiny globes, the big white apron, the lazy yellow cats, and everywhere +the prim rectangular lines so amusingly conventional to accentuate the +likeness, almost choked him with the suddenness of the recognition. They +must have colored that very picture a dozen times, Tommy and he. + +Half unconsciously he rested his arms on the top of the gate and drifted +into revery. He forgot that he was at Wilton Bluffs, one of the greatest +of the country palaces, and lived for a while in a mingled vision of his +boyhood on the old farm and in the land of the Greenaway painting-books. + +Suddenly a door opened into the green. + +A housemaid advanced to the table, bearing in both red hands a long tray +covered with a napkin. On the napkin lay, heaped in rich confusion, a +great pile of spicy, smoking brown cookies. + +“They're just out o' the oven,” she began, but Varian could contain +himself no longer. He could not be deceived: he would have known those +cookies in the Desert of Sahara. He crossed the little plot in three +long steps, and faced the astonished maid. + +“I beg your pardon,” he said firmly, “but it is very necessary that I +should have one of those cookies! I hope you can spare one?” + +She giggled convulsively. + +“I--I guess you can, sir,” she murmured, laying down the tray and +retreating toward the house door. + +Varian faced the older woman, and, with hat still in hand, instinctively +bowed lower; for this was no housekeeper--he was sure of that. Even as +she met his eyes a great flood of pink rushed to her smooth forehead, +and she dropped her lids as she bowed slightly. He reflected +irrelevantly that he had never seen Mrs. Dudley blush in his life. + +“You are very welcome to all you wish, I am sure,” she said graciously. +“I--I didn't know any one liked them but me. I always have them made for +me--I taught her the rule. I always call them”--she laughed nervously, +and it dawned on him that this woman was really shy and “talking against +time,” as they said--“I always call them 'Aunt Delia's cookies.' They--” + +“Aunt Delia's cookies!” he interrupted. “What Aunt Delia?” + +“Aunt Delia Parmentre,” she returned, a little surprised, evidently, +at this stranger, who, with a straw sailor-hat in one hand and a warm +molasses cooky in the other, stared so intently at her. “She wasn't +really my aunt, of course--” + +“But she was mine!” he burst out, “and these are her cookies, and no +mistake. Who are you?” + +Again she flushed, but more lightly. + +“I am Miss Redding,” she said with a gentle dignity, “Mrs. Wilton's +sister.” + +He stared at her vaguely. + +“Mrs. Wilton--oh! you're her sister? I didn't know--” He stopped +abruptly. As his confusion grew, her own faded away. + +“You didn't know she had one?” she asked, almost mischievously. + +“I didn't know you were here,” he recovered himself. “You've never been +with Mrs. Dud before, have you?” + +“No, not here when there was company,” she said. + +He hardly noticed the words; his mind was groping among past histories. + +“Her sister--her sister,” he muttered. “Why, then,” with an illuminating +smile, “I used to go to school with you! I'm Tom Varian!” + +She smiled and held out her hand. + +“I'm very glad to see you,” she said cordially. “Won't you--” She looked +about for a chair, but he dropped on the grass at her feet. + +“You've changed since we met last,” he remarked, biting into his cooky. +She looked at his bronzed face and thick silvered hair and nodded +thoughtfully. + +“I was six years old then,” she said; “and you were one of the 'big +boys'--you were fourteen.” + +“That's a long while,” he suggested laughingly. + +“It is thirty-six years,” she replied simply. + +He winced. His associates were not accustomed to be so scrupulously +accurate. It seemed indecently long ago. And yet there was a certain +charm, now one faced it, a quaint halo of interest. + +“You used to hand me water in a tin dipper,” he said. + +She nodded. “Yes, that was for a reward, when I was good,” she said +seriously. “I could hand the water to the big boys. I was very proud of +it. You drank a great deal.” + +He chuckled. “I was born thirsty,” he acknowledged. “By George, how +it comes back! I can see it now, that school-house! Funny little red +thing--remember how it looked? Big shelf around the sides for a desk, +and another under that for the books? Bench all round the room to sit +on, and we just whopped our legs over and faced round to recite? And +carved--Lord! I don't believe there was an inch of the wood, all told, +that was clear! I nearly cut my thumb off there, one day.” + +“One of the big girls fainted away,” she added, “and they laid her on +the floor and told me to bring a dipper of water; but my hand shook so I +spilled it all over my apron, and she came to before we got more. I was +very timid.” + +He began on another cooky. + +“Did you have two pigtails? And striped stockings?” he inquired, his +eyes fixed reminiscently on the hedge. + +She nodded softly. + +“And played some game with stones? I can't just remember--” + +“It was houses,” she reminded him. “We little girls used to make little +houses--just marked out with stones in squares on the ground; and if you +boys felt like it, you'd bring us big flat stones to eat our dinner on.” + +“Ah, yes!” It all came back to him. “And then you'd race off to get +flag-root or something, and--” + +“And gobble our dinner as we ran. It was fun, all the same,” she added. + +“But what a mite you were, to be in school!” he said wonderingly. “What +under heaven did you study?” + +“I don't remember at all,” she confessed. “But I suppose I spelled. Do +you remember the spelling-matches? And how you big ones wanted to 'leave +off head'?” + +He chuckled. “I should say I did! And sometimes the greatest idiot would +'leave off head' because there wasn't any more time. It was maddening!” + +He munched in silence for a while, and she did not dream of +interrupting. + +“In the winter, though--George! but it was cold! We used to positively +swim through the drifts. I tell you, there aren't any such snows now! +How did you get there?” + +“I only went in the summer,” she said; “and I used to come in all +stained with the berries I ate along the way. It was dreadful”--she +grew stern, as if addressing the little girl in striped stockings and +pigtails--“the way I ate berries! I used to eat the bushes clean on the +way to school!” + +She had got over her first shyness, and had gained time to realize her +big apron, which she hastily untied. He caught the motion and protested. + +“No, no! Keep it on! I haven't seen a woman--a lady--in an apron for +years! Please keep it on! And do go on with the--the mess in the dish!” + +“The mess”--she bent her brows reprovingly--“it's mayonnaise sauce. But +I don't think--” + +He jumped up to put the bowl in her lap. A sudden twinge in his knee +wrung an involuntary groan from him. He walked a little stiffly toward +her. + +“You have rheumatism! And you sat all the time on that damp grass!” she +cried reproachfully. “I thought at first it was the craziest thing to +do, but I didn't dare say so.” + +He ignored the charge but smiled at the confession. + +“And now you're not afraid?” + +She blushed again. It was very becoming. + +“It seems--it seems foolish to act like strangers when it's been +so long--we remember so well--” She sighed a little. He studied her +face--so like her sister's and so utterly different. The same gray eyes, +but calm and drooped; the same clear white skin, but a fuller, yes, a +more matronly face, a riper, sweeter, more restful curve. The soft dark +shadows that accentuated Mrs. Dudley's eyes were lacking; a group of +tiny wrinkles at the corners gave her instead a pleasant, humorous +regard that her sister's literal directness missed utterly. + +Nervous under his scrutiny, she rose hastily, and before he could +prevent her she had brought him a roomy arm-chair from the house. + +“At our age there's no use in running risks,” she said simply, “you +ought not to sit on the grass; leave that for the young folks.” + +Again he winced, but dropped with relief into the chair. + +“Oh, one must keep up with the procession, you know!” he said lightly. + +She made no reply; and as she lifted the bottle and began to beat the +yellow mass again, it occurred to him that the remark was exceptionally +silly. + +“Does it have to go in slowly like that--the whole bottleful?” he +inquired lazily. + +She nodded. “Or it curdles,” she explained. “The cook sprained his wrist +yesterday. He never allows anybody to make the mayonnaise--he can't +trust them--and I was glad to do it for him. He says mine is as good as +his. Did you ever see him?” + +“Well, no,” Varian returned. “But he doesn't need to be seen to be +appreciated.” + +A strange suspicion crept over him. + +“Do you often--Do you do much--How is it that you--” He could not say it +properly. Was it possible that Mrs. Dud---- It was unworthy of her! + +She caught his meaning, and her cool gray eyes met his with their +uncompromising directness. He seemed convicted of unnecessary shuffling. + +“Oh, Lizzie asked me not to do anything,” she said quietly. “She +wanted me to enjoy myself with her friends. But I'm not used to so much +society, and I don't want to be any hinderance. I'm not so young as I +used to be. I'd have liked the gayety well enough when I was a girl, but +I guess it tires me a little now. There seems to be so much going on +all the time. Lizzie says she's resting, but it wouldn't rest me. Do you +find it so?” + +He recalled his yesterday's programme: driving a pulling team all +the morning; carrying Mrs. Dud's heavy bag over the links all the +afternoon--she preferred her friends to caddies; prompting for the +dramatics rehearsal, with a poor light, all the evening, while the +actors gossiped and squabbled and flirted contentedly. + +“It is not always restful,” he admitted. + +“It makes my head ache,” she remarked placidly. “I like to see the girls +enjoy themselves. I'm glad they're happy--some of those visiting Lizzie +are so pretty!--but I'm glad I haven't got to run about so much. I'm +very fond of driving myself, if I have a good quiet horse that won't +shy and doesn't go fast, and Lizzie has one for me--a white one that's +gentle--and I drive about in the phaëton a great deal. The doctor +that came that night--were you here?--when Mrs. Page fainted and they +couldn't bring her to (it seems she was in the habit of taking some +medicine to make her sleep, and it weakened her heart) asked me if I +wouldn't like to take out some patients of his, and so I called for a +very nice lady--a Mrs. Williams; you probably don't know her?--and after +that a young girl with spinal trouble, and--and several others. They +seemed to enjoy it, and I'm sure I did. Once I took a young girl that's +staying here--she had a bad headache. She was a sweet girl, and I liked +her. She said the drive helped her a great deal. It's astonishing”--her +eyes met his wonderingly--“how much trouble you can have, with all the +money you want! I--I was sorry for her,” she added, half to herself. + +Before he thought he leaned forward, took her hand with the silver +tablespoon in it, and kissed it gently. He admired her as he would +admire some charming soft pastel hung in a cool white room. + +“How sweet and good you are!” he said warmly; and then, to cover her +deep embarrassment and his own sudden emotion, he continued quickly, +“Are you very busy in the morning, always?” + +“There are different things,” she murmured, still looking at her spoon. +“I have letters to write--I keep up with a good many old friends in +Binghamville and Albany, where I lived with my married niece ten years, +till they moved West. I loved her children; I half brought them up. One +died; I can't seem to get over it--” Her eyes filled, and she made no +effort to cover two tears that slipped over. + +Varian took her hand again. “I know about that--I know!” he said softly. + +“Then there are my flowers; I do so enjoy the beds and the greenhouses +here,” she went on more cheerfully. “The gardeners are very kind to +me--I think they like to have me come in. Mr. McFadden gives me a good +many slips and cuttings. I love flowers dearly. Then I read a good deal, +and there is always some little thing to do for the young girls here. +They--the ones I know--come in for a moment while I mend something, or +pin their things in the back, and it's surprising how much there is to +do! They fly about so they can't stop to take care of their things. They +talk to me while I set them straight, and it's very interesting. I tell +Lizzie I go out a great deal, just hearing about their adventures, when +she drops in to see me. She never forgets me; she brings somebody to my +sitting-room every day or so that she thinks I'd enjoy meeting--and I +always do. She never makes a mistake.” + +“Oh, she's wonderful,” Varian agreed easily. “There's nobody like Mrs. +Dud, of course.” + +She stopped her work a moment and looked curiously at him. + +“What do you mean by that?” she asked. “You all say it--in just that +way; but I don't think I quite see what you mean. Why is she wonderful? +Because she looks so young?” + +“That, in the first place,” Varian returned, with a smile, “but not only +that.” + +“Of course that is very strange,” she mused. “Now Lizzie is three years +older than I. You would never think it, would you?” + +“No,” he agreed, still smiling; “but then, Mrs. Dud looks younger than +everybody. It is her specialty. I think what we mean,” he continued, +“is her amazing capacity; she does so much, so ridiculously much, and +so much better than other people. We try to keep up with things--your +sister is a little bit ahead. She seems to have always been doing the +very latest thing, you see. And all her responsibilities, her various +affairs--it makes one's head swim! The women have set themselves +a tremendous field to cover nowadays, and when one succeeds so +admirably--” He paused. + +She shook her head thoughtfully. + +“But everything is done for her!” she protested. “Why, I have never +yet seen all the servants in this house! And you know there is a +housekeeper? Lizzie sees her a little while in the morning, that's all. +And she never sews a stitch--there's a seamstress here all the time, +you know, and that has nothing to do with the clothes that come home +in boxes. And little Dudley has his tutor, and his old nurse that looks +after his clothes. What is it that she does to make it so wonderful?” + +He only smiled at her perplexity, and she added confidentially: + +“Lizzie wanted me to go to her dressmaker, but I didn't like the idea of +a man, to begin with, and then I knew Miss Simms would feel so hurt. She +lives in Albany, and she's made my dresses for so long that I thought, +though she may not be so stylish, I'd better keep up with her; wouldn't +you?” + +A perfectly unreasonable tenderness surged through his heart. How sweet +she was! + +“If she made that dress, I certainly should!” he declared. + +She smoothed the crisp lavender folds deprecatingly. + +“Oh, this is only a cotton dress,” she said. “But she made my gray silk, +too, and Lizzie herself said it fitted beautifully.” + +She took up the bottle again: it was nearly empty. + +“Now my mother,” she began, “_she_ was wonderful, if you like. Do you +know what my mother used to do? We lived on the farm, you know, like +yours, and most of the work of that farm mother did. She did the +cooking--for all the hired hands, too; she made the butter, and took +care of the hens; she made the candles and the soap; she made the +carpets and all our clothes--my brothers', too; and she put up preserves +and jellies and cordials, and did the most beautiful embroidery; I +have some of mother's embroidered collars, and I can't do anything like +them.” + +“It was tremendous,” he said. “My Aunt Delia did that, too.” + +“We were old-fashioned, even for then,” she said. “Everybody didn't do +so much, of course, as we did. Lizzie says we were just on the edge of +the new age. It certainly is different. And of course I wouldn't go back +to it for anything. After we came back from boarding-school it was all +changed. We moved, then, nearer the town. But, do you know, my mother +went to singing-school, and Lizzie was looking that up in a book, the +other day, to see what they did--she wanted it for a party!” + +He laughed. “That _is_ delicious!” he said. + +“See what I found to-day!” she added, drawing a small object from +her pocket. “I hunted it up to show Miss Porter tonight. She was so +interested when I told her about it.” + +She showed him, with a tender amusement, a little slender white silk +mitten. Around the wrist was embroidered in dark blue a legend in Old +English script. He puzzled it out: _A Whig or no Husband!_ + +“That was mother's,” she said, “the girls wore them then. She was quite +a belle, mother was! And when people ask me how Lizzie does so much, I +say that she inherits it. But at her age mother was broken down and +old. She had to be. There were nine of us, and here there's only little +Dudley, and it was so long before he came.” + +They sat quietly. The setting sun flamed through the crab-apples and +burnished the fur of the tortoise-shell cat. The mint smelled strong. +The sweet, mellow summer evening was reflected in her handsome face, +with its delicate lines, that only added a restful charm to forehead and +cheek. He had no need to talk; it was very, very pleasant sitting there. + +A maid came out to get the mayonnaise, and the spell was broken. He took +out his watch. + +“Just time to dress,” he sighed. “Will you be here again? We must talk +old times once more.” + +She smiled and seemed to assent, but her eyes were not on him; she was +still in a revery. He walked softly away. She seemed hardly to notice +him, and his last backward glance found the quiet of the picture +unbroken; again it was a page from the Greenaway book. + +He reached the terrace; laughter and applause from the piazza caught his +ear. Fresh from the atmosphere he had left, he stared in amazement at +the scene before him. + +Swift figures were scudding from one to another of the four great elms +that marked out a natural rectangle on the smooth side lawn. + +“Puss! puss! Here, puss!” a high voice called, and a tall slender girl +in a swish of lace and pink draperies rushed across one side of the +square. A portly trousered figure essayed to gain the tree she had left, +but a romping girl in white caught him easily, while Mrs. Dud, the tail +of her gown thrown over her arm, skimmed triumphantly across to her +partner's tree. + +“One more, one more, colonel. You can't give up, now you're caught! One +more before we go in!” called the pink girl. + +“Here's Mr. Varian. Come and help us out--the colonel's beaten!” added +Mrs. Dud. + +“Here, puss! here, puss!” With excited little shrieks and laughs they +dashed by, the colonel making ineffectual grabs at their elusive skirts. +Varian shook his head good-naturedly. + +“Too late, too late!” he called back, and taking pity on the puffing, +purple colonel, he bore him off. + +“Thank God! I'm just about winded! I'd have dropped in my tracks,” + complained the rescued man, breathing hard as they rounded the +shrubbery. In the corner two figures, half seen in the dark, leaned +toward each other an imperceptible moment. The colonel laughed +contentedly. + +“When I see that sort of thing, I think we've made a mistake--eh, +Varian?” he said, half serious. “It's a poor job, getting old alone. +Live at the club, visit here and there, make yourself agreeable to +get asked again, nobody to care if you're sick, always play the other +fellow's game--little monotonous after a while, eh?” + +Varian nodded. “Right enough,” he said. + +“Different ending to their route!” suggested the colonel, jerking his +elbow back toward the two in the shrubbery. + +“That's it!” The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through +his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him. + +He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind +the hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more than +once he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a dormant fancy +for gardening, and walked with his new-old friend contentedly among the +deserted garden paths. He studied her hair especially, wondering why it +was that the little tender flecks of white attracted him so. At dinner +he secretly tried to rouse in himself the same desire to stroke the +gleaming silver fleece, high-dressed, puffed, and ornamented with jet, +of the woman opposite him, whose hair, somewhat prematurely turned +snowy, had won her a great vogue among her friends. But he never +succeeded. She was absolutely too effective. She turned the simplest +gathering to a fancy-dress ball, he decided. + +He had supposed that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance +that charmed him particularly--the feeling of an almost double +existence; but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of +course omniscient, restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a +pretty sincerity for his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating +charmingly that she realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly +dropped. He gasped, shook himself, colored a little, and met her eye. + +“I'm afraid I'm not so kind as you think,” he said, a little awkwardly. +“I've been an old fool, I see. Do you think--is that the way _she_ looks +at it?” + +“Mary?” said Mrs. Dud, wonderingly. “Yes, I suppose so. Why?” + +The naïve egotism of the answer only threw a softer light on the picture +that had grown to fill his thoughts. He smiled inscrutably. + +“Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her,” he said. “I am +glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do +so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?” + +“What on earth do you mean?” asked his hostess, in unassumed +stupefaction. + +“I mean, do you think she would marry me?” Varian brought out plumply. +“Is there--was there ever anybody else?” + +For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more +than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to +the plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was +gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him. + +“I think, my friend, she would be a fool not to marry you,” she answered +him, clear-eyed; “and there was never,” her tone was too sweet, he +thought, to carry but one meaning--pleasure for him, “there was never +anybody else!” + +Varian walked straight to the garden. She was training a fiery wall +of nasturtiums with firm white fingers. It occurred to him that he was +ready to give up the tally-ho, and the Berkshires, and the scramble +of pretty girls for the place beside him, to sit quietly and watch her +among her flowers. + +“I'm getting old--old!” he said to himself, but he said it with a smile. + +For he knew that no boy's heart ever beat more swiftly, no boy's tongue +ever sought more excitedly to find the right words. But when he faced +her a little doubt chilled him: she was so calm and complete, in +her sunny, busy, balanced life, that he feared to disturb that sweet +placidity. With an undercurrent of fear, a sudden realization that he +had no more the blessed egotism of youth to drive him on, he walked +beside her, outwardly content, at heart a little solitary. At some light +question he turned and faced her. + +“You could not have all the greenhouses, but there could be plenty of +flowers,” he said pleadingly. + +“Flowers? Where?” she asked. + +“Wherever we lived,” he answered. “And oh, Mary, I think we could be +happy together! Don't say no!” as she shrank a little. “Don't, Mary, for +heaven's sake! I care too much--I care terribly. I am too old a man to +care so much and--lose.... There, there, my dear girl, never mind. I +can bear it, of course. Only I didn't know I'd planned it all out so, +and--But never mind. I was going to have a bay-window full of--” + +He turned away from her for a moment. But her hand was on his arm. + +“We can plan it out together,” she said. + +He knew how she would blush; he had even dared to think how directly her +clear gray eyes would meet his--her sky-ness was never hesitation--but +he had not dreamed how soft her hair could be. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mrs. Dud's Sister + +Author: Josephine Daskam + +Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23369] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. DUD'S SISTER *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + + +MRS. DUD'S SISTER + +By Josephine Daskam + +Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons + + +They were having tea on the terrace. As Varian strolled up to the group +he wished that Hunter could see the picture they made--Hunter, who +had not been in America for thirty years, and who had been so honestly +surprised when Varian had spoken of Mrs. Dud's pretty maids--she always +had pretty ones, even to the cook's third assistant. + +"Maids? Maids? It used to be 'help,'" he had protested. "You don't mean +to say they have waitresses in Binghamville now?" + +Varian had despaired of giving him any idea. + +"Come over and see Mrs. Dud," he had urged, "and do her portrait. We've +moved on since you left us, you know. She's a wonder--she really is. +When you remember how she used to carry her father's dinner to the store +Saturday afternoons--" + +"And now I suppose she sports real Mechlin on her cap," assented Hunter, +anxious to show how perfectly he caught the situation. + +Varian had roared helplessly. "Cap? Cap!" he had moaned finally. "Oh, my +sainted granny! Cap! My poor fellow, your view of Binghamville must be +like the old maps of Africa in the green geography, that said 'desert' +and 'interior' and 'savage tribes' from time to time. I should like +awfully to see Mrs. Dud in a cap." + +Hunter had looked puzzled. + +"But, dear me! she might very well wear one, I should think," he had +murmured defensively. "I don't wish to be invidious, but surely +Lizzie must be--let's see; 'eighty, 'ninety--why, she must be between +forty-five and fifty now." + +Varian had waved his hand dramatically. "Nobody considers Mrs. Dud and +time in the same breath. If you could see her in her golf rig! Or on +a horse! She even sheds a lustre on the rest of us. I forget my +rheumatism!" + +But Hunter, retreating behind his determination to avoid a second +seasickness--it might have been sincere; nobody ever knew--had stayed +in Florence, and Varian had been obliged to come without him to the +house-party. + +On a straw cushion, a cup in her strong white hand, a bunch of adoring +young girls at her feet, sat Mrs. Dud. Rosy and firm-cheeked, crisp +in stiff white duck, deliriously contrasted with her fluffy +Parisian parasol, she scorned the softening ruffles of her presumable +contemporaries; her delicately squared chin, for the most part held +high, showed a straight white collar under a throat only a little fuller +than the girlish ones all around her. + +Old Dudley himself strolled about the group, gossiping here and there +with some pretty woman, sending the grave servants from one to another +with some particularly desirable sandwich, "rubbing it in," as he said +to the men who had failed to touch his score on the links, tantalizingly +uncertain as to which one of the young women he would invite to lead +the cotillon with him at the club dance that week: none of the young men +could take his place at that, as they themselves enviously admitted. + +What a well-matched couple it was! What a lot they got out of life! +Varian walked quietly by the group, to enjoy better the pretty, modish +picture they made. Their quick chatter, their bursts of laughter, the +sweet faint odor of the tea, the gay dresses and light flannels, with +the quiet, sombrely attired servants to add tone, all gave him, fresh +from Hunter's quick sense of the effective, an appreciation that gained +force from his separateness; he walked farther away to get a different +point of view. + +He was out of any path now, and suddenly, hardly beyond reach of +their voices, he found himself in a part of the grounds he had never +approached before. A thick high hedge shut in a kind of court at the +side and back of the great house, and a solid wooden door, carefully +matched to its green, left open by accident, showed a picture so out +of line with the succession of vivid scenes that dazzled the visitor at +Wilton Bluffs that he stopped involuntarily. The rectangle was +carpeted with the characteristic emerald turf of the place, divided by +intersecting red brick paths into four regular squares. In the farther +corner of each of these a trim green clothes-tree was planted, all +abloom with snowy fringed napkins that shone dazzling white against the +hedge. One of the squares was a neat little kitchen-garden; parsley was +there in plenty, and other vaguely familiar green things, curly-leaved +and spear-pointed. A warm gust of wind brought mint to his nostrils. A +second plot held a small crab-apple tree covered with pink and orange +globes. A great tortoise-shell cat with two kittens ornamented the +third, and in the middle of the fourth, beside a small wooden table, a +woman sat with her back toward the intruder. On the table were one or +two tin boxes and a yellow earthen dish; in her left hand, raised to +the shoulder-level, was a tall thin bottle, from which an amber fluid +dripped in an almost imperceptibly thin stream; her right arm stirred +vigorously. She was a middle-aged woman with lightly grayed hair--a kind +of premonitory powdering. Over her full skirt of lavender-striped cotton +stuff fell a broad, competent white apron. Except for the thudding of +the spoon against the bowl, and a faint, homely echo of clashing china +and tin, mingled with occasionally raised voices and laughter from some +farther kitchen region, all was utterly, placidly still. + +Varian stood chained to the open gate. Something in the calm sun-bathed +picture tugged strongly at his heart. He thought suddenly of his mother +and his Aunt Delia--he had been very fond of Aunt Delia. And what +cookies she used to make! Molasses cookies, brown, moist, and crumbly, +they had sweetened his boyhood. + +What was it, that delighted sense of congruity that filled him, every +passing second, with keener familiarity, so strangely tinged with sorrow +and regret? Ah, he had it! He bit his lip as it came clear to him. His +little namesake nephew, dead at eight years old, and dear as only a +dearly loved child can be, had delighted greatly in the Kate Greenaway +pictures that came in "painting-books," with colored prints on alternate +pages and corresponding outlines on the others. Dozens of those books +the boy had cleverly filled in with his little japanned paint-box and +mussy, quill-handled brushes; and the scene before him, the rich tints +of the hedge, the symmetrical little tree brilliant with hundreds of +tiny globes, the big white apron, the lazy yellow cats, and everywhere +the prim rectangular lines so amusingly conventional to accentuate the +likeness, almost choked him with the suddenness of the recognition. They +must have colored that very picture a dozen times, Tommy and he. + +Half unconsciously he rested his arms on the top of the gate and drifted +into revery. He forgot that he was at Wilton Bluffs, one of the greatest +of the country palaces, and lived for a while in a mingled vision of his +boyhood on the old farm and in the land of the Greenaway painting-books. + +Suddenly a door opened into the green. + +A housemaid advanced to the table, bearing in both red hands a long tray +covered with a napkin. On the napkin lay, heaped in rich confusion, a +great pile of spicy, smoking brown cookies. + +"They're just out o' the oven," she began, but Varian could contain +himself no longer. He could not be deceived: he would have known those +cookies in the Desert of Sahara. He crossed the little plot in three +long steps, and faced the astonished maid. + +"I beg your pardon," he said firmly, "but it is very necessary that I +should have one of those cookies! I hope you can spare one?" + +She giggled convulsively. + +"I--I guess you can, sir," she murmured, laying down the tray and +retreating toward the house door. + +Varian faced the older woman, and, with hat still in hand, instinctively +bowed lower; for this was no housekeeper--he was sure of that. Even as +she met his eyes a great flood of pink rushed to her smooth forehead, +and she dropped her lids as she bowed slightly. He reflected +irrelevantly that he had never seen Mrs. Dudley blush in his life. + +"You are very welcome to all you wish, I am sure," she said graciously. +"I--I didn't know any one liked them but me. I always have them made for +me--I taught her the rule. I always call them"--she laughed nervously, +and it dawned on him that this woman was really shy and "talking against +time," as they said--"I always call them 'Aunt Delia's cookies.' They--" + +"Aunt Delia's cookies!" he interrupted. "What Aunt Delia?" + +"Aunt Delia Parmentre," she returned, a little surprised, evidently, +at this stranger, who, with a straw sailor-hat in one hand and a warm +molasses cooky in the other, stared so intently at her. "She wasn't +really my aunt, of course--" + +"But she was mine!" he burst out, "and these are her cookies, and no +mistake. Who are you?" + +Again she flushed, but more lightly. + +"I am Miss Redding," she said with a gentle dignity, "Mrs. Wilton's +sister." + +He stared at her vaguely. + +"Mrs. Wilton--oh! you're her sister? I didn't know--" He stopped +abruptly. As his confusion grew, her own faded away. + +"You didn't know she had one?" she asked, almost mischievously. + +"I didn't know you were here," he recovered himself. "You've never been +with Mrs. Dud before, have you?" + +"No, not here when there was company," she said. + +He hardly noticed the words; his mind was groping among past histories. + +"Her sister--her sister," he muttered. "Why, then," with an illuminating +smile, "I used to go to school with you! I'm Tom Varian!" + +She smiled and held out her hand. + +"I'm very glad to see you," she said cordially. "Won't you--" She looked +about for a chair, but he dropped on the grass at her feet. + +"You've changed since we met last," he remarked, biting into his cooky. +She looked at his bronzed face and thick silvered hair and nodded +thoughtfully. + +"I was six years old then," she said; "and you were one of the 'big +boys'--you were fourteen." + +"That's a long while," he suggested laughingly. + +"It is thirty-six years," she replied simply. + +He winced. His associates were not accustomed to be so scrupulously +accurate. It seemed indecently long ago. And yet there was a certain +charm, now one faced it, a quaint halo of interest. + +"You used to hand me water in a tin dipper," he said. + +She nodded. "Yes, that was for a reward, when I was good," she said +seriously. "I could hand the water to the big boys. I was very proud of +it. You drank a great deal." + +He chuckled. "I was born thirsty," he acknowledged. "By George, how +it comes back! I can see it now, that school-house! Funny little red +thing--remember how it looked? Big shelf around the sides for a desk, +and another under that for the books? Bench all round the room to sit +on, and we just whopped our legs over and faced round to recite? And +carved--Lord! I don't believe there was an inch of the wood, all told, +that was clear! I nearly cut my thumb off there, one day." + +"One of the big girls fainted away," she added, "and they laid her on +the floor and told me to bring a dipper of water; but my hand shook so I +spilled it all over my apron, and she came to before we got more. I was +very timid." + +He began on another cooky. + +"Did you have two pigtails? And striped stockings?" he inquired, his +eyes fixed reminiscently on the hedge. + +She nodded softly. + +"And played some game with stones? I can't just remember--" + +"It was houses," she reminded him. "We little girls used to make little +houses--just marked out with stones in squares on the ground; and if you +boys felt like it, you'd bring us big flat stones to eat our dinner on." + +"Ah, yes!" It all came back to him. "And then you'd race off to get +flag-root or something, and--" + +"And gobble our dinner as we ran. It was fun, all the same," she added. + +"But what a mite you were, to be in school!" he said wonderingly. "What +under heaven did you study?" + +"I don't remember at all," she confessed. "But I suppose I spelled. Do +you remember the spelling-matches? And how you big ones wanted to 'leave +off head'?" + +He chuckled. "I should say I did! And sometimes the greatest idiot would +'leave off head' because there wasn't any more time. It was maddening!" + +He munched in silence for a while, and she did not dream of +interrupting. + +"In the winter, though--George! but it was cold! We used to positively +swim through the drifts. I tell you, there aren't any such snows now! +How did you get there?" + +"I only went in the summer," she said; "and I used to come in all +stained with the berries I ate along the way. It was dreadful"--she +grew stern, as if addressing the little girl in striped stockings and +pigtails--"the way I ate berries! I used to eat the bushes clean on the +way to school!" + +She had got over her first shyness, and had gained time to realize her +big apron, which she hastily untied. He caught the motion and protested. + +"No, no! Keep it on! I haven't seen a woman--a lady--in an apron for +years! Please keep it on! And do go on with the--the mess in the dish!" + +"The mess"--she bent her brows reprovingly--"it's mayonnaise sauce. But +I don't think--" + +He jumped up to put the bowl in her lap. A sudden twinge in his knee +wrung an involuntary groan from him. He walked a little stiffly toward +her. + +"You have rheumatism! And you sat all the time on that damp grass!" she +cried reproachfully. "I thought at first it was the craziest thing to +do, but I didn't dare say so." + +He ignored the charge but smiled at the confession. + +"And now you're not afraid?" + +She blushed again. It was very becoming. + +"It seems--it seems foolish to act like strangers when it's been +so long--we remember so well--" She sighed a little. He studied her +face--so like her sister's and so utterly different. The same gray eyes, +but calm and drooped; the same clear white skin, but a fuller, yes, a +more matronly face, a riper, sweeter, more restful curve. The soft dark +shadows that accentuated Mrs. Dudley's eyes were lacking; a group of +tiny wrinkles at the corners gave her instead a pleasant, humorous +regard that her sister's literal directness missed utterly. + +Nervous under his scrutiny, she rose hastily, and before he could +prevent her she had brought him a roomy arm-chair from the house. + +"At our age there's no use in running risks," she said simply, "you +ought not to sit on the grass; leave that for the young folks." + +Again he winced, but dropped with relief into the chair. + +"Oh, one must keep up with the procession, you know!" he said lightly. + +She made no reply; and as she lifted the bottle and began to beat the +yellow mass again, it occurred to him that the remark was exceptionally +silly. + +"Does it have to go in slowly like that--the whole bottleful?" he +inquired lazily. + +She nodded. "Or it curdles," she explained. "The cook sprained his wrist +yesterday. He never allows anybody to make the mayonnaise--he can't +trust them--and I was glad to do it for him. He says mine is as good as +his. Did you ever see him?" + +"Well, no," Varian returned. "But he doesn't need to be seen to be +appreciated." + +A strange suspicion crept over him. + +"Do you often--Do you do much--How is it that you--" He could not say it +properly. Was it possible that Mrs. Dud---- It was unworthy of her! + +She caught his meaning, and her cool gray eyes met his with their +uncompromising directness. He seemed convicted of unnecessary shuffling. + +"Oh, Lizzie asked me not to do anything," she said quietly. "She +wanted me to enjoy myself with her friends. But I'm not used to so much +society, and I don't want to be any hinderance. I'm not so young as I +used to be. I'd have liked the gayety well enough when I was a girl, but +I guess it tires me a little now. There seems to be so much going on +all the time. Lizzie says she's resting, but it wouldn't rest me. Do you +find it so?" + +He recalled his yesterday's programme: driving a pulling team all +the morning; carrying Mrs. Dud's heavy bag over the links all the +afternoon--she preferred her friends to caddies; prompting for the +dramatics rehearsal, with a poor light, all the evening, while the +actors gossiped and squabbled and flirted contentedly. + +"It is not always restful," he admitted. + +"It makes my head ache," she remarked placidly. "I like to see the girls +enjoy themselves. I'm glad they're happy--some of those visiting Lizzie +are so pretty!--but I'm glad I haven't got to run about so much. I'm +very fond of driving myself, if I have a good quiet horse that won't +shy and doesn't go fast, and Lizzie has one for me--a white one that's +gentle--and I drive about in the phaton a great deal. The doctor +that came that night--were you here?--when Mrs. Page fainted and they +couldn't bring her to (it seems she was in the habit of taking some +medicine to make her sleep, and it weakened her heart) asked me if I +wouldn't like to take out some patients of his, and so I called for a +very nice lady--a Mrs. Williams; you probably don't know her?--and after +that a young girl with spinal trouble, and--and several others. They +seemed to enjoy it, and I'm sure I did. Once I took a young girl that's +staying here--she had a bad headache. She was a sweet girl, and I liked +her. She said the drive helped her a great deal. It's astonishing"--her +eyes met his wonderingly--"how much trouble you can have, with all the +money you want! I--I was sorry for her," she added, half to herself. + +Before he thought he leaned forward, took her hand with the silver +tablespoon in it, and kissed it gently. He admired her as he would +admire some charming soft pastel hung in a cool white room. + +"How sweet and good you are!" he said warmly; and then, to cover her +deep embarrassment and his own sudden emotion, he continued quickly, +"Are you very busy in the morning, always?" + +"There are different things," she murmured, still looking at her spoon. +"I have letters to write--I keep up with a good many old friends in +Binghamville and Albany, where I lived with my married niece ten years, +till they moved West. I loved her children; I half brought them up. One +died; I can't seem to get over it--" Her eyes filled, and she made no +effort to cover two tears that slipped over. + +Varian took her hand again. "I know about that--I know!" he said softly. + +"Then there are my flowers; I do so enjoy the beds and the greenhouses +here," she went on more cheerfully. "The gardeners are very kind to +me--I think they like to have me come in. Mr. McFadden gives me a good +many slips and cuttings. I love flowers dearly. Then I read a good deal, +and there is always some little thing to do for the young girls here. +They--the ones I know--come in for a moment while I mend something, or +pin their things in the back, and it's surprising how much there is to +do! They fly about so they can't stop to take care of their things. They +talk to me while I set them straight, and it's very interesting. I tell +Lizzie I go out a great deal, just hearing about their adventures, when +she drops in to see me. She never forgets me; she brings somebody to my +sitting-room every day or so that she thinks I'd enjoy meeting--and I +always do. She never makes a mistake." + +"Oh, she's wonderful," Varian agreed easily. "There's nobody like Mrs. +Dud, of course." + +She stopped her work a moment and looked curiously at him. + +"What do you mean by that?" she asked. "You all say it--in just that +way; but I don't think I quite see what you mean. Why is she wonderful? +Because she looks so young?" + +"That, in the first place," Varian returned, with a smile, "but not only +that." + +"Of course that is very strange," she mused. "Now Lizzie is three years +older than I. You would never think it, would you?" + +"No," he agreed, still smiling; "but then, Mrs. Dud looks younger than +everybody. It is her specialty. I think what we mean," he continued, +"is her amazing capacity; she does so much, so ridiculously much, and +so much better than other people. We try to keep up with things--your +sister is a little bit ahead. She seems to have always been doing the +very latest thing, you see. And all her responsibilities, her various +affairs--it makes one's head swim! The women have set themselves +a tremendous field to cover nowadays, and when one succeeds so +admirably--" He paused. + +She shook her head thoughtfully. + +"But everything is done for her!" she protested. "Why, I have never +yet seen all the servants in this house! And you know there is a +housekeeper? Lizzie sees her a little while in the morning, that's all. +And she never sews a stitch--there's a seamstress here all the time, +you know, and that has nothing to do with the clothes that come home +in boxes. And little Dudley has his tutor, and his old nurse that looks +after his clothes. What is it that she does to make it so wonderful?" + +He only smiled at her perplexity, and she added confidentially: + +"Lizzie wanted me to go to her dressmaker, but I didn't like the idea of +a man, to begin with, and then I knew Miss Simms would feel so hurt. She +lives in Albany, and she's made my dresses for so long that I thought, +though she may not be so stylish, I'd better keep up with her; wouldn't +you?" + +A perfectly unreasonable tenderness surged through his heart. How sweet +she was! + +"If she made that dress, I certainly should!" he declared. + +She smoothed the crisp lavender folds deprecatingly. + +"Oh, this is only a cotton dress," she said. "But she made my gray silk, +too, and Lizzie herself said it fitted beautifully." + +She took up the bottle again: it was nearly empty. + +"Now my mother," she began, "_she_ was wonderful, if you like. Do you +know what my mother used to do? We lived on the farm, you know, like +yours, and most of the work of that farm mother did. She did the +cooking--for all the hired hands, too; she made the butter, and took +care of the hens; she made the candles and the soap; she made the +carpets and all our clothes--my brothers', too; and she put up preserves +and jellies and cordials, and did the most beautiful embroidery; I +have some of mother's embroidered collars, and I can't do anything like +them." + +"It was tremendous," he said. "My Aunt Delia did that, too." + +"We were old-fashioned, even for then," she said. "Everybody didn't do +so much, of course, as we did. Lizzie says we were just on the edge of +the new age. It certainly is different. And of course I wouldn't go back +to it for anything. After we came back from boarding-school it was all +changed. We moved, then, nearer the town. But, do you know, my mother +went to singing-school, and Lizzie was looking that up in a book, the +other day, to see what they did--she wanted it for a party!" + +He laughed. "That _is_ delicious!" he said. + +"See what I found to-day!" she added, drawing a small object from +her pocket. "I hunted it up to show Miss Porter tonight. She was so +interested when I told her about it." + +She showed him, with a tender amusement, a little slender white silk +mitten. Around the wrist was embroidered in dark blue a legend in Old +English script. He puzzled it out: _A Whig or no Husband!_ + +"That was mother's," she said, "the girls wore them then. She was quite +a belle, mother was! And when people ask me how Lizzie does so much, I +say that she inherits it. But at her age mother was broken down and +old. She had to be. There were nine of us, and here there's only little +Dudley, and it was so long before he came." + +They sat quietly. The setting sun flamed through the crab-apples and +burnished the fur of the tortoise-shell cat. The mint smelled strong. +The sweet, mellow summer evening was reflected in her handsome face, +with its delicate lines, that only added a restful charm to forehead and +cheek. He had no need to talk; it was very, very pleasant sitting there. + +A maid came out to get the mayonnaise, and the spell was broken. He took +out his watch. + +"Just time to dress," he sighed. "Will you be here again? We must talk +old times once more." + +She smiled and seemed to assent, but her eyes were not on him; she was +still in a revery. He walked softly away. She seemed hardly to notice +him, and his last backward glance found the quiet of the picture +unbroken; again it was a page from the Greenaway book. + +He reached the terrace; laughter and applause from the piazza caught his +ear. Fresh from the atmosphere he had left, he stared in amazement at +the scene before him. + +Swift figures were scudding from one to another of the four great elms +that marked out a natural rectangle on the smooth side lawn. + +"Puss! puss! Here, puss!" a high voice called, and a tall slender girl +in a swish of lace and pink draperies rushed across one side of the +square. A portly trousered figure essayed to gain the tree she had left, +but a romping girl in white caught him easily, while Mrs. Dud, the tail +of her gown thrown over her arm, skimmed triumphantly across to her +partner's tree. + +"One more, one more, colonel. You can't give up, now you're caught! One +more before we go in!" called the pink girl. + +"Here's Mr. Varian. Come and help us out--the colonel's beaten!" added +Mrs. Dud. + +"Here, puss! here, puss!" With excited little shrieks and laughs they +dashed by, the colonel making ineffectual grabs at their elusive skirts. +Varian shook his head good-naturedly. + +"Too late, too late!" he called back, and taking pity on the puffing, +purple colonel, he bore him off. + +"Thank God! I'm just about winded! I'd have dropped in my tracks," +complained the rescued man, breathing hard as they rounded the +shrubbery. In the corner two figures, half seen in the dark, leaned +toward each other an imperceptible moment. The colonel laughed +contentedly. + +"When I see that sort of thing, I think we've made a mistake--eh, +Varian?" he said, half serious. "It's a poor job, getting old alone. +Live at the club, visit here and there, make yourself agreeable to +get asked again, nobody to care if you're sick, always play the other +fellow's game--little monotonous after a while, eh?" + +Varian nodded. "Right enough," he said. + +"Different ending to their route!" suggested the colonel, jerking his +elbow back toward the two in the shrubbery. + +"That's it!" The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through +his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him. + +He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind +the hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more than +once he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a dormant fancy +for gardening, and walked with his new-old friend contentedly among the +deserted garden paths. He studied her hair especially, wondering why it +was that the little tender flecks of white attracted him so. At dinner +he secretly tried to rouse in himself the same desire to stroke the +gleaming silver fleece, high-dressed, puffed, and ornamented with jet, +of the woman opposite him, whose hair, somewhat prematurely turned +snowy, had won her a great vogue among her friends. But he never +succeeded. She was absolutely too effective. She turned the simplest +gathering to a fancy-dress ball, he decided. + +He had supposed that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance +that charmed him particularly--the feeling of an almost double +existence; but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of +course omniscient, restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a +pretty sincerity for his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating +charmingly that she realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly +dropped. He gasped, shook himself, colored a little, and met her eye. + +"I'm afraid I'm not so kind as you think," he said, a little awkwardly. +"I've been an old fool, I see. Do you think--is that the way _she_ looks +at it?" + +"Mary?" said Mrs. Dud, wonderingly. "Yes, I suppose so. Why?" + +The nave egotism of the answer only threw a softer light on the picture +that had grown to fill his thoughts. He smiled inscrutably. + +"Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her," he said. "I am +glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do +so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?" + +"What on earth do you mean?" asked his hostess, in unassumed +stupefaction. + +"I mean, do you think she would marry me?" Varian brought out plumply. +"Is there--was there ever anybody else?" + +For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more +than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to +the plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was +gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him. + +"I think, my friend, she would be a fool not to marry you," she answered +him, clear-eyed; "and there was never," her tone was too sweet, he +thought, to carry but one meaning--pleasure for him, "there was never +anybody else!" + +Varian walked straight to the garden. She was training a fiery wall +of nasturtiums with firm white fingers. It occurred to him that he was +ready to give up the tally-ho, and the Berkshires, and the scramble +of pretty girls for the place beside him, to sit quietly and watch her +among her flowers. + +"I'm getting old--old!" he said to himself, but he said it with a smile. + +For he knew that no boy's heart ever beat more swiftly, no boy's tongue +ever sought more excitedly to find the right words. But when he faced +her a little doubt chilled him: she was so calm and complete, in +her sunny, busy, balanced life, that he feared to disturb that sweet +placidity. With an undercurrent of fear, a sudden realization that he +had no more the blessed egotism of youth to drive him on, he walked +beside her, outwardly content, at heart a little solitary. At some light +question he turned and faced her. + +"You could not have all the greenhouses, but there could be plenty of +flowers," he said pleadingly. + +"Flowers? Where?" she asked. + +"Wherever we lived," he answered. "And oh, Mary, I think we could be +happy together! Don't say no!" as she shrank a little. "Don't, Mary, for +heaven's sake! I care too much--I care terribly. I am too old a man to +care so much and--lose.... There, there, my dear girl, never mind. I +can bear it, of course. Only I didn't know I'd planned it all out so, +and--But never mind. I was going to have a bay-window full of--" + +He turned away from her for a moment. But her hand was on his arm. + +"We can plan it out together," she said. + +He knew how she would blush; he had even dared to think how directly her +clear gray eyes would meet his--her sky-ness was never hesitation--but +he had not dreamed how soft her hair could be. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mrs. Dud's Sister + +Author: Josephine Daskam + +Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23369] +Last Updated: March 8, 2018 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. DUD'S SISTER *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + <div style="height: 8em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h1> + MRS. DUD'S SISTER + </h1> + <h2> + By Josephine Daskam <br /> <br /> Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's + Sons + </h2> + <p> + <br /><br /> <br /> + </p> + <p> + They were having tea on the terrace. As Varian strolled up to the group he + wished that Hunter could see the picture they made—Hunter, who had + not been in America for thirty years, and who had been so honestly + surprised when Varian had spoken of Mrs. Dud's pretty maids—she + always had pretty ones, even to the cook's third assistant. + </p> + <p> + “Maids? Maids? It used to be 'help,'” he had protested. “You don't mean to + say they have waitresses in Binghamville now?” + </p> + <p> + Varian had despaired of giving him any idea. + </p> + <p> + “Come over and see Mrs. Dud,” he had urged, “and do her portrait. We've + moved on since you left us, you know. She's a wonder—she really is. + When you remember how she used to carry her father's dinner to the store + Saturday afternoons—” + </p> + <p> + “And now I suppose she sports real Mechlin on her cap,” assented Hunter, + anxious to show how perfectly he caught the situation. + </p> + <p> + Varian had roared helplessly. “Cap? Cap!” he had moaned finally. “Oh, my + sainted granny! Cap! My poor fellow, your view of Binghamville must be + like the old maps of Africa in the green geography, that said 'desert' and + 'interior' and 'savage tribes' from time to time. I should like awfully to + see Mrs. Dud in a cap.” + </p> + <p> + Hunter had looked puzzled. + </p> + <p> + “But, dear me! she might very well wear one, I should think,” he had + murmured defensively. “I don't wish to be invidious, but surely Lizzie + must be—let's see; 'eighty, 'ninety—why, she must be between + forty-five and fifty now.” + </p> + <p> + Varian had waved his hand dramatically. “Nobody considers Mrs. Dud and + time in the same breath. If you could see her in her golf rig! Or on a + horse! She even sheds a lustre on the rest of us. I forget my rheumatism!” + </p> + <p> + But Hunter, retreating behind his determination to avoid a second + seasickness—it might have been sincere; nobody ever knew—had + stayed in Florence, and Varian had been obliged to come without him to the + house-party. + </p> + <p> + On a straw cushion, a cup in her strong white hand, a bunch of adoring + young girls at her feet, sat Mrs. Dud. Rosy and firm-cheeked, crisp in + stiff white duck, deliriously contrasted with her fluffy Parisian parasol, + she scorned the softening ruffles of her presumable contemporaries; her + delicately squared chin, for the most part held high, showed a straight + white collar under a throat only a little fuller than the girlish ones all + around her. + </p> + <p> + Old Dudley himself strolled about the group, gossiping here and there with + some pretty woman, sending the grave servants from one to another with + some particularly desirable sandwich, “rubbing it in,” as he said to the + men who had failed to touch his score on the links, tantalizingly + uncertain as to which one of the young women he would invite to lead the + cotillon with him at the club dance that week: none of the young men could + take his place at that, as they themselves enviously admitted. + </p> + <p> + What a well-matched couple it was! What a lot they got out of life! Varian + walked quietly by the group, to enjoy better the pretty, modish picture + they made. Their quick chatter, their bursts of laughter, the sweet faint + odor of the tea, the gay dresses and light flannels, with the quiet, + sombrely attired servants to add tone, all gave him, fresh from Hunter's + quick sense of the effective, an appreciation that gained force from his + separateness; he walked farther away to get a different point of view. + </p> + <p> + He was out of any path now, and suddenly, hardly beyond reach of their + voices, he found himself in a part of the grounds he had never approached + before. A thick high hedge shut in a kind of court at the side and back of + the great house, and a solid wooden door, carefully matched to its green, + left open by accident, showed a picture so out of line with the succession + of vivid scenes that dazzled the visitor at Wilton Bluffs that he stopped + involuntarily. The rectangle was carpeted with the characteristic emerald + turf of the place, divided by intersecting red brick paths into four + regular squares. In the farther corner of each of these a trim green + clothes-tree was planted, all abloom with snowy fringed napkins that shone + dazzling white against the hedge. One of the squares was a neat little + kitchen-garden; parsley was there in plenty, and other vaguely familiar + green things, curly-leaved and spear-pointed. A warm gust of wind brought + mint to his nostrils. A second plot held a small crab-apple tree covered + with pink and orange globes. A great tortoise-shell cat with two kittens + ornamented the third, and in the middle of the fourth, beside a small + wooden table, a woman sat with her back toward the intruder. On the table + were one or two tin boxes and a yellow earthen dish; in her left hand, + raised to the shoulder-level, was a tall thin bottle, from which an amber + fluid dripped in an almost imperceptibly thin stream; her right arm + stirred vigorously. She was a middle-aged woman with lightly grayed hair—a + kind of premonitory powdering. Over her full skirt of lavender-striped + cotton stuff fell a broad, competent white apron. Except for the thudding + of the spoon against the bowl, and a faint, homely echo of clashing china + and tin, mingled with occasionally raised voices and laughter from some + farther kitchen region, all was utterly, placidly still. + </p> + <p> + Varian stood chained to the open gate. Something in the calm sun-bathed + picture tugged strongly at his heart. He thought suddenly of his mother + and his Aunt Delia—he had been very fond of Aunt Delia. And what + cookies she used to make! Molasses cookies, brown, moist, and crumbly, + they had sweetened his boyhood. + </p> + <p> + What was it, that delighted sense of congruity that filled him, every + passing second, with keener familiarity, so strangely tinged with sorrow + and regret? Ah, he had it! He bit his lip as it came clear to him. His + little namesake nephew, dead at eight years old, and dear as only a dearly + loved child can be, had delighted greatly in the Kate Greenaway pictures + that came in “painting-books,” with colored prints on alternate pages and + corresponding outlines on the others. Dozens of those books the boy had + cleverly filled in with his little japanned paint-box and mussy, + quill-handled brushes; and the scene before him, the rich tints of the + hedge, the symmetrical little tree brilliant with hundreds of tiny globes, + the big white apron, the lazy yellow cats, and everywhere the prim + rectangular lines so amusingly conventional to accentuate the likeness, + almost choked him with the suddenness of the recognition. They must have + colored that very picture a dozen times, Tommy and he. + </p> + <p> + Half unconsciously he rested his arms on the top of the gate and drifted + into revery. He forgot that he was at Wilton Bluffs, one of the greatest + of the country palaces, and lived for a while in a mingled vision of his + boyhood on the old farm and in the land of the Greenaway painting-books. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly a door opened into the green. + </p> + <p> + A housemaid advanced to the table, bearing in both red hands a long tray + covered with a napkin. On the napkin lay, heaped in rich confusion, a + great pile of spicy, smoking brown cookies. + </p> + <p> + “They're just out o' the oven,” she began, but Varian could contain + himself no longer. He could not be deceived: he would have known those + cookies in the Desert of Sahara. He crossed the little plot in three long + steps, and faced the astonished maid. + </p> + <p> + “I beg your pardon,” he said firmly, “but it is very necessary that I + should have one of those cookies! I hope you can spare one?” + </p> + <p> + She giggled convulsively. + </p> + <p> + “I—I guess you can, sir,” she murmured, laying down the tray and + retreating toward the house door. + </p> + <p> + Varian faced the older woman, and, with hat still in hand, instinctively + bowed lower; for this was no housekeeper—he was sure of that. Even + as she met his eyes a great flood of pink rushed to her smooth forehead, + and she dropped her lids as she bowed slightly. He reflected irrelevantly + that he had never seen Mrs. Dudley blush in his life. + </p> + <p> + “You are very welcome to all you wish, I am sure,” she said graciously. “I—I + didn't know any one liked them but me. I always have them made for me—I + taught her the rule. I always call them”—she laughed nervously, and + it dawned on him that this woman was really shy and “talking against + time,” as they said—“I always call them 'Aunt Delia's cookies.' They—” + </p> + <p> + “Aunt Delia's cookies!” he interrupted. “What Aunt Delia?” + </p> + <p> + “Aunt Delia Parmentre,” she returned, a little surprised, evidently, at + this stranger, who, with a straw sailor-hat in one hand and a warm + molasses cooky in the other, stared so intently at her. “She wasn't really + my aunt, of course—” + </p> + <p> + “But she was mine!” he burst out, “and these are her cookies, and no + mistake. Who are you?” + </p> + <p> + Again she flushed, but more lightly. + </p> + <p> + “I am Miss Redding,” she said with a gentle dignity, “Mrs. Wilton's + sister.” + </p> + <p> + He stared at her vaguely. + </p> + <p> + “Mrs. Wilton—oh! you're her sister? I didn't know—” He stopped + abruptly. As his confusion grew, her own faded away. + </p> + <p> + “You didn't know she had one?” she asked, almost mischievously. + </p> + <p> + “I didn't know you were here,” he recovered himself. “You've never been + with Mrs. Dud before, have you?” + </p> + <p> + “No, not here when there was company,” she said. + </p> + <p> + He hardly noticed the words; his mind was groping among past histories. + </p> + <p> + “Her sister—her sister,” he muttered. “Why, then,” with an + illuminating smile, “I used to go to school with you! I'm Tom Varian!” + </p> + <p> + She smiled and held out her hand. + </p> + <p> + “I'm very glad to see you,” she said cordially. “Won't you—” She + looked about for a chair, but he dropped on the grass at her feet. + </p> + <p> + “You've changed since we met last,” he remarked, biting into his cooky. + She looked at his bronzed face and thick silvered hair and nodded + thoughtfully. + </p> + <p> + “I was six years old then,” she said; “and you were one of the 'big boys'—you + were fourteen.” + </p> + <p> + “That's a long while,” he suggested laughingly. + </p> + <p> + “It is thirty-six years,” she replied simply. + </p> + <p> + He winced. His associates were not accustomed to be so scrupulously + accurate. It seemed indecently long ago. And yet there was a certain + charm, now one faced it, a quaint halo of interest. + </p> + <p> + “You used to hand me water in a tin dipper,” he said. + </p> + <p> + She nodded. “Yes, that was for a reward, when I was good,” she said + seriously. “I could hand the water to the big boys. I was very proud of + it. You drank a great deal.” + </p> + <p> + He chuckled. “I was born thirsty,” he acknowledged. “By George, how it + comes back! I can see it now, that school-house! Funny little red thing—remember + how it looked? Big shelf around the sides for a desk, and another under + that for the books? Bench all round the room to sit on, and we just + whopped our legs over and faced round to recite? And carved—Lord! I + don't believe there was an inch of the wood, all told, that was clear! I + nearly cut my thumb off there, one day.” + </p> + <p> + “One of the big girls fainted away,” she added, “and they laid her on the + floor and told me to bring a dipper of water; but my hand shook so I + spilled it all over my apron, and she came to before we got more. I was + very timid.” + </p> + <p> + He began on another cooky. + </p> + <p> + “Did you have two pigtails? And striped stockings?” he inquired, his eyes + fixed reminiscently on the hedge. + </p> + <p> + She nodded softly. + </p> + <p> + “And played some game with stones? I can't just remember—” + </p> + <p> + “It was houses,” she reminded him. “We little girls used to make little + houses—just marked out with stones in squares on the ground; and if + you boys felt like it, you'd bring us big flat stones to eat our dinner + on.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, yes!” It all came back to him. “And then you'd race off to get + flag-root or something, and—” + </p> + <p> + “And gobble our dinner as we ran. It was fun, all the same,” she added. + </p> + <p> + “But what a mite you were, to be in school!” he said wonderingly. “What + under heaven did you study?” + </p> + <p> + “I don't remember at all,” she confessed. “But I suppose I spelled. Do you + remember the spelling-matches? And how you big ones wanted to 'leave off + head'?” + </p> + <p> + He chuckled. “I should say I did! And sometimes the greatest idiot would + 'leave off head' because there wasn't any more time. It was maddening!” + </p> + <p> + He munched in silence for a while, and she did not dream of interrupting. + </p> + <p> + “In the winter, though—George! but it was cold! We used to + positively swim through the drifts. I tell you, there aren't any such + snows now! How did you get there?” + </p> + <p> + “I only went in the summer,” she said; “and I used to come in all stained + with the berries I ate along the way. It was dreadful”—she grew + stern, as if addressing the little girl in striped stockings and pigtails—“the + way I ate berries! I used to eat the bushes clean on the way to school!” + </p> + <p> + She had got over her first shyness, and had gained time to realize her big + apron, which she hastily untied. He caught the motion and protested. + </p> + <p> + “No, no! Keep it on! I haven't seen a woman—a lady—in an apron + for years! Please keep it on! And do go on with the—the mess in the + dish!” + </p> + <p> + “The mess”—she bent her brows reprovingly—“it's mayonnaise + sauce. But I don't think—” + </p> + <p> + He jumped up to put the bowl in her lap. A sudden twinge in his knee wrung + an involuntary groan from him. He walked a little stiffly toward her. + </p> + <p> + “You have rheumatism! And you sat all the time on that damp grass!” she + cried reproachfully. “I thought at first it was the craziest thing to do, + but I didn't dare say so.” + </p> + <p> + He ignored the charge but smiled at the confession. + </p> + <p> + “And now you're not afraid?” + </p> + <p> + She blushed again. It was very becoming. + </p> + <p> + “It seems—it seems foolish to act like strangers when it's been so + long—we remember so well—” She sighed a little. He studied her + face—so like her sister's and so utterly different. The same gray + eyes, but calm and drooped; the same clear white skin, but a fuller, yes, + a more matronly face, a riper, sweeter, more restful curve. The soft dark + shadows that accentuated Mrs. Dudley's eyes were lacking; a group of tiny + wrinkles at the corners gave her instead a pleasant, humorous regard that + her sister's literal directness missed utterly. + </p> + <p> + Nervous under his scrutiny, she rose hastily, and before he could prevent + her she had brought him a roomy arm-chair from the house. + </p> + <p> + “At our age there's no use in running risks,” she said simply, “you ought + not to sit on the grass; leave that for the young folks.” + </p> + <p> + Again he winced, but dropped with relief into the chair. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, one must keep up with the procession, you know!” he said lightly. + </p> + <p> + She made no reply; and as she lifted the bottle and began to beat the + yellow mass again, it occurred to him that the remark was exceptionally + silly. + </p> + <p> + “Does it have to go in slowly like that—the whole bottleful?” he + inquired lazily. + </p> + <p> + She nodded. “Or it curdles,” she explained. “The cook sprained his wrist + yesterday. He never allows anybody to make the mayonnaise—he can't + trust them—and I was glad to do it for him. He says mine is as good + as his. Did you ever see him?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, no,” Varian returned. “But he doesn't need to be seen to be + appreciated.” + </p> + <p> + A strange suspicion crept over him. + </p> + <p> + “Do you often—Do you do much—How is it that you—” He + could not say it properly. Was it possible that Mrs. Dud—— It + was unworthy of her! + </p> + <p> + She caught his meaning, and her cool gray eyes met his with their + uncompromising directness. He seemed convicted of unnecessary shuffling. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, Lizzie asked me not to do anything,” she said quietly. “She wanted me + to enjoy myself with her friends. But I'm not used to so much society, and + I don't want to be any hinderance. I'm not so young as I used to be. I'd + have liked the gayety well enough when I was a girl, but I guess it tires + me a little now. There seems to be so much going on all the time. Lizzie + says she's resting, but it wouldn't rest me. Do you find it so?” + </p> + <p> + He recalled his yesterday's programme: driving a pulling team all the + morning; carrying Mrs. Dud's heavy bag over the links all the afternoon—she + preferred her friends to caddies; prompting for the dramatics rehearsal, + with a poor light, all the evening, while the actors gossiped and + squabbled and flirted contentedly. + </p> + <p> + “It is not always restful,” he admitted. + </p> + <p> + “It makes my head ache,” she remarked placidly. “I like to see the girls + enjoy themselves. I'm glad they're happy—some of those visiting + Lizzie are so pretty!—but I'm glad I haven't got to run about so + much. I'm very fond of driving myself, if I have a good quiet horse that + won't shy and doesn't go fast, and Lizzie has one for me—a white one + that's gentle—and I drive about in the phaëton a great deal. The + doctor that came that night—were you here?—when Mrs. Page + fainted and they couldn't bring her to (it seems she was in the habit of + taking some medicine to make her sleep, and it weakened her heart) asked + me if I wouldn't like to take out some patients of his, and so I called + for a very nice lady—a Mrs. Williams; you probably don't know her?—and + after that a young girl with spinal trouble, and—and several others. + They seemed to enjoy it, and I'm sure I did. Once I took a young girl + that's staying here—she had a bad headache. She was a sweet girl, + and I liked her. She said the drive helped her a great deal. It's + astonishing”—her eyes met his wonderingly—“how much trouble + you can have, with all the money you want! I—I was sorry for her,” + she added, half to herself. + </p> + <p> + Before he thought he leaned forward, took her hand with the silver + tablespoon in it, and kissed it gently. He admired her as he would admire + some charming soft pastel hung in a cool white room. + </p> + <p> + “How sweet and good you are!” he said warmly; and then, to cover her deep + embarrassment and his own sudden emotion, he continued quickly, “Are you + very busy in the morning, always?” + </p> + <p> + “There are different things,” she murmured, still looking at her spoon. “I + have letters to write—I keep up with a good many old friends in + Binghamville and Albany, where I lived with my married niece ten years, + till they moved West. I loved her children; I half brought them up. One + died; I can't seem to get over it—” Her eyes filled, and she made no + effort to cover two tears that slipped over. + </p> + <p> + Varian took her hand again. “I know about that—I know!” he said + softly. + </p> + <p> + “Then there are my flowers; I do so enjoy the beds and the greenhouses + here,” she went on more cheerfully. “The gardeners are very kind to me—I + think they like to have me come in. Mr. McFadden gives me a good many + slips and cuttings. I love flowers dearly. Then I read a good deal, and + there is always some little thing to do for the young girls here. They—the + ones I know—come in for a moment while I mend something, or pin + their things in the back, and it's surprising how much there is to do! + They fly about so they can't stop to take care of their things. They talk + to me while I set them straight, and it's very interesting. I tell Lizzie + I go out a great deal, just hearing about their adventures, when she drops + in to see me. She never forgets me; she brings somebody to my sitting-room + every day or so that she thinks I'd enjoy meeting—and I always do. + She never makes a mistake.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, she's wonderful,” Varian agreed easily. “There's nobody like Mrs. + Dud, of course.” + </p> + <p> + She stopped her work a moment and looked curiously at him. + </p> + <p> + “What do you mean by that?” she asked. “You all say it—in just that + way; but I don't think I quite see what you mean. Why is she wonderful? + Because she looks so young?” + </p> + <p> + “That, in the first place,” Varian returned, with a smile, “but not only + that.” + </p> + <p> + “Of course that is very strange,” she mused. “Now Lizzie is three years + older than I. You would never think it, would you?” + </p> + <p> + “No,” he agreed, still smiling; “but then, Mrs. Dud looks younger than + everybody. It is her specialty. I think what we mean,” he continued, “is + her amazing capacity; she does so much, so ridiculously much, and so much + better than other people. We try to keep up with things—your sister + is a little bit ahead. She seems to have always been doing the very latest + thing, you see. And all her responsibilities, her various affairs—it + makes one's head swim! The women have set themselves a tremendous field to + cover nowadays, and when one succeeds so admirably—” He paused. + </p> + <p> + She shook her head thoughtfully. + </p> + <p> + “But everything is done for her!” she protested. “Why, I have never yet + seen all the servants in this house! And you know there is a housekeeper? + Lizzie sees her a little while in the morning, that's all. And she never + sews a stitch—there's a seamstress here all the time, you know, and + that has nothing to do with the clothes that come home in boxes. And + little Dudley has his tutor, and his old nurse that looks after his + clothes. What is it that she does to make it so wonderful?” + </p> + <p> + He only smiled at her perplexity, and she added confidentially: + </p> + <p> + “Lizzie wanted me to go to her dressmaker, but I didn't like the idea of a + man, to begin with, and then I knew Miss Simms would feel so hurt. She + lives in Albany, and she's made my dresses for so long that I thought, + though she may not be so stylish, I'd better keep up with her; wouldn't + you?” + </p> + <p> + A perfectly unreasonable tenderness surged through his heart. How sweet + she was! + </p> + <p> + “If she made that dress, I certainly should!” he declared. + </p> + <p> + She smoothed the crisp lavender folds deprecatingly. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, this is only a cotton dress,” she said. “But she made my gray silk, + too, and Lizzie herself said it fitted beautifully.” + </p> + <p> + She took up the bottle again: it was nearly empty. + </p> + <p> + “Now my mother,” she began, “<i>she</i> was wonderful, if you like. Do you + know what my mother used to do? We lived on the farm, you know, like + yours, and most of the work of that farm mother did. She did the cooking—for + all the hired hands, too; she made the butter, and took care of the hens; + she made the candles and the soap; she made the carpets and all our + clothes—my brothers', too; and she put up preserves and jellies and + cordials, and did the most beautiful embroidery; I have some of mother's + embroidered collars, and I can't do anything like them.” + </p> + <p> + “It was tremendous,” he said. “My Aunt Delia did that, too.” + </p> + <p> + “We were old-fashioned, even for then,” she said. “Everybody didn't do so + much, of course, as we did. Lizzie says we were just on the edge of the + new age. It certainly is different. And of course I wouldn't go back to it + for anything. After we came back from boarding-school it was all changed. + We moved, then, nearer the town. But, do you know, my mother went to + singing-school, and Lizzie was looking that up in a book, the other day, + to see what they did—she wanted it for a party!” + </p> + <p> + He laughed. “That <i>is</i> delicious!” he said. + </p> + <p> + “See what I found to-day!” she added, drawing a small object from her + pocket. “I hunted it up to show Miss Porter tonight. She was so interested + when I told her about it.” + </p> + <p> + She showed him, with a tender amusement, a little slender white silk + mitten. Around the wrist was embroidered in dark blue a legend in Old + English script. He puzzled it out: <i>A Whig or no Husband!</i> + </p> + <p> + “That was mother's,” she said, “the girls wore them then. She was quite a + belle, mother was! And when people ask me how Lizzie does so much, I say + that she inherits it. But at her age mother was broken down and old. She + had to be. There were nine of us, and here there's only little Dudley, and + it was so long before he came.” + </p> + <p> + They sat quietly. The setting sun flamed through the crab-apples and + burnished the fur of the tortoise-shell cat. The mint smelled strong. The + sweet, mellow summer evening was reflected in her handsome face, with its + delicate lines, that only added a restful charm to forehead and cheek. He + had no need to talk; it was very, very pleasant sitting there. + </p> + <p> + A maid came out to get the mayonnaise, and the spell was broken. He took + out his watch. + </p> + <p> + “Just time to dress,” he sighed. “Will you be here again? We must talk old + times once more.” + </p> + <p> + She smiled and seemed to assent, but her eyes were not on him; she was + still in a revery. He walked softly away. She seemed hardly to notice him, + and his last backward glance found the quiet of the picture unbroken; + again it was a page from the Greenaway book. + </p> + <p> + He reached the terrace; laughter and applause from the piazza caught his + ear. Fresh from the atmosphere he had left, he stared in amazement at the + scene before him. + </p> + <p> + Swift figures were scudding from one to another of the four great elms + that marked out a natural rectangle on the smooth side lawn. + </p> + <p> + “Puss! puss! Here, puss!” a high voice called, and a tall slender girl in + a swish of lace and pink draperies rushed across one side of the square. A + portly trousered figure essayed to gain the tree she had left, but a + romping girl in white caught him easily, while Mrs. Dud, the tail of her + gown thrown over her arm, skimmed triumphantly across to her partner's + tree. + </p> + <p> + “One more, one more, colonel. You can't give up, now you're caught! One + more before we go in!” called the pink girl. + </p> + <p> + “Here's Mr. Varian. Come and help us out—the colonel's beaten!” + added Mrs. Dud. + </p> + <p> + “Here, puss! here, puss!” With excited little shrieks and laughs they + dashed by, the colonel making ineffectual grabs at their elusive skirts. + Varian shook his head good-naturedly. + </p> + <p> + “Too late, too late!” he called back, and taking pity on the puffing, + purple colonel, he bore him off. + </p> + <p> + “Thank God! I'm just about winded! I'd have dropped in my tracks,” + complained the rescued man, breathing hard as they rounded the shrubbery. + In the corner two figures, half seen in the dark, leaned toward each other + an imperceptible moment. The colonel laughed contentedly. + </p> + <p> + “When I see that sort of thing, I think we've made a mistake—eh, + Varian?” he said, half serious. “It's a poor job, getting old alone. Live + at the club, visit here and there, make yourself agreeable to get asked + again, nobody to care if you're sick, always play the other fellow's game—little + monotonous after a while, eh?” + </p> + <p> + Varian nodded. “Right enough,” he said. + </p> + <p> + “Different ending to their route!” suggested the colonel, jerking his + elbow back toward the two in the shrubbery. + </p> + <p> + “That's it!” The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through + his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him. + </p> + <p> + He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind the + hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more than once + he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a dormant fancy for + gardening, and walked with his new-old friend contentedly among the + deserted garden paths. He studied her hair especially, wondering why it + was that the little tender flecks of white attracted him so. At dinner he + secretly tried to rouse in himself the same desire to stroke the gleaming + silver fleece, high-dressed, puffed, and ornamented with jet, of the woman + opposite him, whose hair, somewhat prematurely turned snowy, had won her a + great vogue among her friends. But he never succeeded. She was absolutely + too effective. She turned the simplest gathering to a fancy-dress ball, he + decided. + </p> + <p> + He had supposed that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance that + charmed him particularly—the feeling of an almost double existence; + but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of course omniscient, + restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a pretty sincerity for + his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating charmingly that she + realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly dropped. He gasped, shook + himself, colored a little, and met her eye. + </p> + <p> + “I'm afraid I'm not so kind as you think,” he said, a little awkwardly. + “I've been an old fool, I see. Do you think—is that the way <i>she</i> + looks at it?” + </p> + <p> + “Mary?” said Mrs. Dud, wonderingly. “Yes, I suppose so. Why?” + </p> + <p> + The naïve egotism of the answer only threw a softer light on the picture + that had grown to fill his thoughts. He smiled inscrutably. + </p> + <p> + “Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her,” he said. “I am + glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do + so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?” + </p> + <p> + “What on earth do you mean?” asked his hostess, in unassumed stupefaction. + </p> + <p> + “I mean, do you think she would marry me?” Varian brought out plumply. “Is + there—was there ever anybody else?” + </p> + <p> + For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more + than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to + the plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was + gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him. + </p> + <p> + “I think, my friend, she would be a fool not to marry you,” she answered + him, clear-eyed; “and there was never,” her tone was too sweet, he + thought, to carry but one meaning—pleasure for him, “there was never + anybody else!” + </p> + <p> + Varian walked straight to the garden. She was training a fiery wall of + nasturtiums with firm white fingers. It occurred to him that he was ready + to give up the tally-ho, and the Berkshires, and the scramble of pretty + girls for the place beside him, to sit quietly and watch her among her + flowers. + </p> + <p> + “I'm getting old—old!” he said to himself, but he said it with a + smile. + </p> + <p> + For he knew that no boy's heart ever beat more swiftly, no boy's tongue + ever sought more excitedly to find the right words. But when he faced her + a little doubt chilled him: she was so calm and complete, in her sunny, + busy, balanced life, that he feared to disturb that sweet placidity. With + an undercurrent of fear, a sudden realization that he had no more the + blessed egotism of youth to drive him on, he walked beside her, outwardly + content, at heart a little solitary. At some light question he turned and + faced her. + </p> + <p> + “You could not have all the greenhouses, but there could be plenty of + flowers,” he said pleadingly. + </p> + <p> + “Flowers? Where?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + “Wherever we lived,” he answered. “And oh, Mary, I think we could be happy + together! Don't say no!” as she shrank a little. “Don't, Mary, for + heaven's sake! I care too much—I care terribly. I am too old a man + to care so much and—lose.... There, there, my dear girl, never mind. + I can bear it, of course. Only I didn't know I'd planned it all out so, + and—But never mind. I was going to have a bay-window full of—” + </p> + <p> + He turned away from her for a moment. But her hand was on his arm. + </p> + <p> + “We can plan it out together,” she said. + </p> + <p> + He knew how she would blush; he had even dared to think how directly her + clear gray eyes would meet his—her sky-ness was never hesitation—but + he had not dreamed how soft her hair could be. + </p> + <div style="height: 6em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mrs. Dud's Sister + +Author: Josephine Daskam + +Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23369] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. DUD'S SISTER *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + + +MRS. DUD'S SISTER + +By Josephine Daskam + +Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons + + +They were having tea on the terrace. As Varian strolled up to the group +he wished that Hunter could see the picture they made--Hunter, who +had not been in America for thirty years, and who had been so honestly +surprised when Varian had spoken of Mrs. Dud's pretty maids--she always +had pretty ones, even to the cook's third assistant. + +"Maids? Maids? It used to be 'help,'" he had protested. "You don't mean +to say they have waitresses in Binghamville now?" + +Varian had despaired of giving him any idea. + +"Come over and see Mrs. Dud," he had urged, "and do her portrait. We've +moved on since you left us, you know. She's a wonder--she really is. +When you remember how she used to carry her father's dinner to the store +Saturday afternoons--" + +"And now I suppose she sports real Mechlin on her cap," assented Hunter, +anxious to show how perfectly he caught the situation. + +Varian had roared helplessly. "Cap? Cap!" he had moaned finally. "Oh, my +sainted granny! Cap! My poor fellow, your view of Binghamville must be +like the old maps of Africa in the green geography, that said 'desert' +and 'interior' and 'savage tribes' from time to time. I should like +awfully to see Mrs. Dud in a cap." + +Hunter had looked puzzled. + +"But, dear me! she might very well wear one, I should think," he had +murmured defensively. "I don't wish to be invidious, but surely +Lizzie must be--let's see; 'eighty, 'ninety--why, she must be between +forty-five and fifty now." + +Varian had waved his hand dramatically. "Nobody considers Mrs. Dud and +time in the same breath. If you could see her in her golf rig! Or on +a horse! She even sheds a lustre on the rest of us. I forget my +rheumatism!" + +But Hunter, retreating behind his determination to avoid a second +seasickness--it might have been sincere; nobody ever knew--had stayed +in Florence, and Varian had been obliged to come without him to the +house-party. + +On a straw cushion, a cup in her strong white hand, a bunch of adoring +young girls at her feet, sat Mrs. Dud. Rosy and firm-cheeked, crisp +in stiff white duck, deliriously contrasted with her fluffy +Parisian parasol, she scorned the softening ruffles of her presumable +contemporaries; her delicately squared chin, for the most part held +high, showed a straight white collar under a throat only a little fuller +than the girlish ones all around her. + +Old Dudley himself strolled about the group, gossiping here and there +with some pretty woman, sending the grave servants from one to another +with some particularly desirable sandwich, "rubbing it in," as he said +to the men who had failed to touch his score on the links, tantalizingly +uncertain as to which one of the young women he would invite to lead +the cotillon with him at the club dance that week: none of the young men +could take his place at that, as they themselves enviously admitted. + +What a well-matched couple it was! What a lot they got out of life! +Varian walked quietly by the group, to enjoy better the pretty, modish +picture they made. Their quick chatter, their bursts of laughter, the +sweet faint odor of the tea, the gay dresses and light flannels, with +the quiet, sombrely attired servants to add tone, all gave him, fresh +from Hunter's quick sense of the effective, an appreciation that gained +force from his separateness; he walked farther away to get a different +point of view. + +He was out of any path now, and suddenly, hardly beyond reach of +their voices, he found himself in a part of the grounds he had never +approached before. A thick high hedge shut in a kind of court at the +side and back of the great house, and a solid wooden door, carefully +matched to its green, left open by accident, showed a picture so out +of line with the succession of vivid scenes that dazzled the visitor at +Wilton Bluffs that he stopped involuntarily. The rectangle was +carpeted with the characteristic emerald turf of the place, divided by +intersecting red brick paths into four regular squares. In the farther +corner of each of these a trim green clothes-tree was planted, all +abloom with snowy fringed napkins that shone dazzling white against the +hedge. One of the squares was a neat little kitchen-garden; parsley was +there in plenty, and other vaguely familiar green things, curly-leaved +and spear-pointed. A warm gust of wind brought mint to his nostrils. A +second plot held a small crab-apple tree covered with pink and orange +globes. A great tortoise-shell cat with two kittens ornamented the +third, and in the middle of the fourth, beside a small wooden table, a +woman sat with her back toward the intruder. On the table were one or +two tin boxes and a yellow earthen dish; in her left hand, raised to +the shoulder-level, was a tall thin bottle, from which an amber fluid +dripped in an almost imperceptibly thin stream; her right arm stirred +vigorously. She was a middle-aged woman with lightly grayed hair--a kind +of premonitory powdering. Over her full skirt of lavender-striped cotton +stuff fell a broad, competent white apron. Except for the thudding of +the spoon against the bowl, and a faint, homely echo of clashing china +and tin, mingled with occasionally raised voices and laughter from some +farther kitchen region, all was utterly, placidly still. + +Varian stood chained to the open gate. Something in the calm sun-bathed +picture tugged strongly at his heart. He thought suddenly of his mother +and his Aunt Delia--he had been very fond of Aunt Delia. And what +cookies she used to make! Molasses cookies, brown, moist, and crumbly, +they had sweetened his boyhood. + +What was it, that delighted sense of congruity that filled him, every +passing second, with keener familiarity, so strangely tinged with sorrow +and regret? Ah, he had it! He bit his lip as it came clear to him. His +little namesake nephew, dead at eight years old, and dear as only a +dearly loved child can be, had delighted greatly in the Kate Greenaway +pictures that came in "painting-books," with colored prints on alternate +pages and corresponding outlines on the others. Dozens of those books +the boy had cleverly filled in with his little japanned paint-box and +mussy, quill-handled brushes; and the scene before him, the rich tints +of the hedge, the symmetrical little tree brilliant with hundreds of +tiny globes, the big white apron, the lazy yellow cats, and everywhere +the prim rectangular lines so amusingly conventional to accentuate the +likeness, almost choked him with the suddenness of the recognition. They +must have colored that very picture a dozen times, Tommy and he. + +Half unconsciously he rested his arms on the top of the gate and drifted +into revery. He forgot that he was at Wilton Bluffs, one of the greatest +of the country palaces, and lived for a while in a mingled vision of his +boyhood on the old farm and in the land of the Greenaway painting-books. + +Suddenly a door opened into the green. + +A housemaid advanced to the table, bearing in both red hands a long tray +covered with a napkin. On the napkin lay, heaped in rich confusion, a +great pile of spicy, smoking brown cookies. + +"They're just out o' the oven," she began, but Varian could contain +himself no longer. He could not be deceived: he would have known those +cookies in the Desert of Sahara. He crossed the little plot in three +long steps, and faced the astonished maid. + +"I beg your pardon," he said firmly, "but it is very necessary that I +should have one of those cookies! I hope you can spare one?" + +She giggled convulsively. + +"I--I guess you can, sir," she murmured, laying down the tray and +retreating toward the house door. + +Varian faced the older woman, and, with hat still in hand, instinctively +bowed lower; for this was no housekeeper--he was sure of that. Even as +she met his eyes a great flood of pink rushed to her smooth forehead, +and she dropped her lids as she bowed slightly. He reflected +irrelevantly that he had never seen Mrs. Dudley blush in his life. + +"You are very welcome to all you wish, I am sure," she said graciously. +"I--I didn't know any one liked them but me. I always have them made for +me--I taught her the rule. I always call them"--she laughed nervously, +and it dawned on him that this woman was really shy and "talking against +time," as they said--"I always call them 'Aunt Delia's cookies.' They--" + +"Aunt Delia's cookies!" he interrupted. "What Aunt Delia?" + +"Aunt Delia Parmentre," she returned, a little surprised, evidently, +at this stranger, who, with a straw sailor-hat in one hand and a warm +molasses cooky in the other, stared so intently at her. "She wasn't +really my aunt, of course--" + +"But she was mine!" he burst out, "and these are her cookies, and no +mistake. Who are you?" + +Again she flushed, but more lightly. + +"I am Miss Redding," she said with a gentle dignity, "Mrs. Wilton's +sister." + +He stared at her vaguely. + +"Mrs. Wilton--oh! you're her sister? I didn't know--" He stopped +abruptly. As his confusion grew, her own faded away. + +"You didn't know she had one?" she asked, almost mischievously. + +"I didn't know you were here," he recovered himself. "You've never been +with Mrs. Dud before, have you?" + +"No, not here when there was company," she said. + +He hardly noticed the words; his mind was groping among past histories. + +"Her sister--her sister," he muttered. "Why, then," with an illuminating +smile, "I used to go to school with you! I'm Tom Varian!" + +She smiled and held out her hand. + +"I'm very glad to see you," she said cordially. "Won't you--" She looked +about for a chair, but he dropped on the grass at her feet. + +"You've changed since we met last," he remarked, biting into his cooky. +She looked at his bronzed face and thick silvered hair and nodded +thoughtfully. + +"I was six years old then," she said; "and you were one of the 'big +boys'--you were fourteen." + +"That's a long while," he suggested laughingly. + +"It is thirty-six years," she replied simply. + +He winced. His associates were not accustomed to be so scrupulously +accurate. It seemed indecently long ago. And yet there was a certain +charm, now one faced it, a quaint halo of interest. + +"You used to hand me water in a tin dipper," he said. + +She nodded. "Yes, that was for a reward, when I was good," she said +seriously. "I could hand the water to the big boys. I was very proud of +it. You drank a great deal." + +He chuckled. "I was born thirsty," he acknowledged. "By George, how +it comes back! I can see it now, that school-house! Funny little red +thing--remember how it looked? Big shelf around the sides for a desk, +and another under that for the books? Bench all round the room to sit +on, and we just whopped our legs over and faced round to recite? And +carved--Lord! I don't believe there was an inch of the wood, all told, +that was clear! I nearly cut my thumb off there, one day." + +"One of the big girls fainted away," she added, "and they laid her on +the floor and told me to bring a dipper of water; but my hand shook so I +spilled it all over my apron, and she came to before we got more. I was +very timid." + +He began on another cooky. + +"Did you have two pigtails? And striped stockings?" he inquired, his +eyes fixed reminiscently on the hedge. + +She nodded softly. + +"And played some game with stones? I can't just remember--" + +"It was houses," she reminded him. "We little girls used to make little +houses--just marked out with stones in squares on the ground; and if you +boys felt like it, you'd bring us big flat stones to eat our dinner on." + +"Ah, yes!" It all came back to him. "And then you'd race off to get +flag-root or something, and--" + +"And gobble our dinner as we ran. It was fun, all the same," she added. + +"But what a mite you were, to be in school!" he said wonderingly. "What +under heaven did you study?" + +"I don't remember at all," she confessed. "But I suppose I spelled. Do +you remember the spelling-matches? And how you big ones wanted to 'leave +off head'?" + +He chuckled. "I should say I did! And sometimes the greatest idiot would +'leave off head' because there wasn't any more time. It was maddening!" + +He munched in silence for a while, and she did not dream of +interrupting. + +"In the winter, though--George! but it was cold! We used to positively +swim through the drifts. I tell you, there aren't any such snows now! +How did you get there?" + +"I only went in the summer," she said; "and I used to come in all +stained with the berries I ate along the way. It was dreadful"--she +grew stern, as if addressing the little girl in striped stockings and +pigtails--"the way I ate berries! I used to eat the bushes clean on the +way to school!" + +She had got over her first shyness, and had gained time to realize her +big apron, which she hastily untied. He caught the motion and protested. + +"No, no! Keep it on! I haven't seen a woman--a lady--in an apron for +years! Please keep it on! And do go on with the--the mess in the dish!" + +"The mess"--she bent her brows reprovingly--"it's mayonnaise sauce. But +I don't think--" + +He jumped up to put the bowl in her lap. A sudden twinge in his knee +wrung an involuntary groan from him. He walked a little stiffly toward +her. + +"You have rheumatism! And you sat all the time on that damp grass!" she +cried reproachfully. "I thought at first it was the craziest thing to +do, but I didn't dare say so." + +He ignored the charge but smiled at the confession. + +"And now you're not afraid?" + +She blushed again. It was very becoming. + +"It seems--it seems foolish to act like strangers when it's been +so long--we remember so well--" She sighed a little. He studied her +face--so like her sister's and so utterly different. The same gray eyes, +but calm and drooped; the same clear white skin, but a fuller, yes, a +more matronly face, a riper, sweeter, more restful curve. The soft dark +shadows that accentuated Mrs. Dudley's eyes were lacking; a group of +tiny wrinkles at the corners gave her instead a pleasant, humorous +regard that her sister's literal directness missed utterly. + +Nervous under his scrutiny, she rose hastily, and before he could +prevent her she had brought him a roomy arm-chair from the house. + +"At our age there's no use in running risks," she said simply, "you +ought not to sit on the grass; leave that for the young folks." + +Again he winced, but dropped with relief into the chair. + +"Oh, one must keep up with the procession, you know!" he said lightly. + +She made no reply; and as she lifted the bottle and began to beat the +yellow mass again, it occurred to him that the remark was exceptionally +silly. + +"Does it have to go in slowly like that--the whole bottleful?" he +inquired lazily. + +She nodded. "Or it curdles," she explained. "The cook sprained his wrist +yesterday. He never allows anybody to make the mayonnaise--he can't +trust them--and I was glad to do it for him. He says mine is as good as +his. Did you ever see him?" + +"Well, no," Varian returned. "But he doesn't need to be seen to be +appreciated." + +A strange suspicion crept over him. + +"Do you often--Do you do much--How is it that you--" He could not say it +properly. Was it possible that Mrs. Dud---- It was unworthy of her! + +She caught his meaning, and her cool gray eyes met his with their +uncompromising directness. He seemed convicted of unnecessary shuffling. + +"Oh, Lizzie asked me not to do anything," she said quietly. "She +wanted me to enjoy myself with her friends. But I'm not used to so much +society, and I don't want to be any hinderance. I'm not so young as I +used to be. I'd have liked the gayety well enough when I was a girl, but +I guess it tires me a little now. There seems to be so much going on +all the time. Lizzie says she's resting, but it wouldn't rest me. Do you +find it so?" + +He recalled his yesterday's programme: driving a pulling team all +the morning; carrying Mrs. Dud's heavy bag over the links all the +afternoon--she preferred her friends to caddies; prompting for the +dramatics rehearsal, with a poor light, all the evening, while the +actors gossiped and squabbled and flirted contentedly. + +"It is not always restful," he admitted. + +"It makes my head ache," she remarked placidly. "I like to see the girls +enjoy themselves. I'm glad they're happy--some of those visiting Lizzie +are so pretty!--but I'm glad I haven't got to run about so much. I'm +very fond of driving myself, if I have a good quiet horse that won't +shy and doesn't go fast, and Lizzie has one for me--a white one that's +gentle--and I drive about in the phaeton a great deal. The doctor +that came that night--were you here?--when Mrs. Page fainted and they +couldn't bring her to (it seems she was in the habit of taking some +medicine to make her sleep, and it weakened her heart) asked me if I +wouldn't like to take out some patients of his, and so I called for a +very nice lady--a Mrs. Williams; you probably don't know her?--and after +that a young girl with spinal trouble, and--and several others. They +seemed to enjoy it, and I'm sure I did. Once I took a young girl that's +staying here--she had a bad headache. She was a sweet girl, and I liked +her. She said the drive helped her a great deal. It's astonishing"--her +eyes met his wonderingly--"how much trouble you can have, with all the +money you want! I--I was sorry for her," she added, half to herself. + +Before he thought he leaned forward, took her hand with the silver +tablespoon in it, and kissed it gently. He admired her as he would +admire some charming soft pastel hung in a cool white room. + +"How sweet and good you are!" he said warmly; and then, to cover her +deep embarrassment and his own sudden emotion, he continued quickly, +"Are you very busy in the morning, always?" + +"There are different things," she murmured, still looking at her spoon. +"I have letters to write--I keep up with a good many old friends in +Binghamville and Albany, where I lived with my married niece ten years, +till they moved West. I loved her children; I half brought them up. One +died; I can't seem to get over it--" Her eyes filled, and she made no +effort to cover two tears that slipped over. + +Varian took her hand again. "I know about that--I know!" he said softly. + +"Then there are my flowers; I do so enjoy the beds and the greenhouses +here," she went on more cheerfully. "The gardeners are very kind to +me--I think they like to have me come in. Mr. McFadden gives me a good +many slips and cuttings. I love flowers dearly. Then I read a good deal, +and there is always some little thing to do for the young girls here. +They--the ones I know--come in for a moment while I mend something, or +pin their things in the back, and it's surprising how much there is to +do! They fly about so they can't stop to take care of their things. They +talk to me while I set them straight, and it's very interesting. I tell +Lizzie I go out a great deal, just hearing about their adventures, when +she drops in to see me. She never forgets me; she brings somebody to my +sitting-room every day or so that she thinks I'd enjoy meeting--and I +always do. She never makes a mistake." + +"Oh, she's wonderful," Varian agreed easily. "There's nobody like Mrs. +Dud, of course." + +She stopped her work a moment and looked curiously at him. + +"What do you mean by that?" she asked. "You all say it--in just that +way; but I don't think I quite see what you mean. Why is she wonderful? +Because she looks so young?" + +"That, in the first place," Varian returned, with a smile, "but not only +that." + +"Of course that is very strange," she mused. "Now Lizzie is three years +older than I. You would never think it, would you?" + +"No," he agreed, still smiling; "but then, Mrs. Dud looks younger than +everybody. It is her specialty. I think what we mean," he continued, +"is her amazing capacity; she does so much, so ridiculously much, and +so much better than other people. We try to keep up with things--your +sister is a little bit ahead. She seems to have always been doing the +very latest thing, you see. And all her responsibilities, her various +affairs--it makes one's head swim! The women have set themselves +a tremendous field to cover nowadays, and when one succeeds so +admirably--" He paused. + +She shook her head thoughtfully. + +"But everything is done for her!" she protested. "Why, I have never +yet seen all the servants in this house! And you know there is a +housekeeper? Lizzie sees her a little while in the morning, that's all. +And she never sews a stitch--there's a seamstress here all the time, +you know, and that has nothing to do with the clothes that come home +in boxes. And little Dudley has his tutor, and his old nurse that looks +after his clothes. What is it that she does to make it so wonderful?" + +He only smiled at her perplexity, and she added confidentially: + +"Lizzie wanted me to go to her dressmaker, but I didn't like the idea of +a man, to begin with, and then I knew Miss Simms would feel so hurt. She +lives in Albany, and she's made my dresses for so long that I thought, +though she may not be so stylish, I'd better keep up with her; wouldn't +you?" + +A perfectly unreasonable tenderness surged through his heart. How sweet +she was! + +"If she made that dress, I certainly should!" he declared. + +She smoothed the crisp lavender folds deprecatingly. + +"Oh, this is only a cotton dress," she said. "But she made my gray silk, +too, and Lizzie herself said it fitted beautifully." + +She took up the bottle again: it was nearly empty. + +"Now my mother," she began, "_she_ was wonderful, if you like. Do you +know what my mother used to do? We lived on the farm, you know, like +yours, and most of the work of that farm mother did. She did the +cooking--for all the hired hands, too; she made the butter, and took +care of the hens; she made the candles and the soap; she made the +carpets and all our clothes--my brothers', too; and she put up preserves +and jellies and cordials, and did the most beautiful embroidery; I +have some of mother's embroidered collars, and I can't do anything like +them." + +"It was tremendous," he said. "My Aunt Delia did that, too." + +"We were old-fashioned, even for then," she said. "Everybody didn't do +so much, of course, as we did. Lizzie says we were just on the edge of +the new age. It certainly is different. And of course I wouldn't go back +to it for anything. After we came back from boarding-school it was all +changed. We moved, then, nearer the town. But, do you know, my mother +went to singing-school, and Lizzie was looking that up in a book, the +other day, to see what they did--she wanted it for a party!" + +He laughed. "That _is_ delicious!" he said. + +"See what I found to-day!" she added, drawing a small object from +her pocket. "I hunted it up to show Miss Porter tonight. She was so +interested when I told her about it." + +She showed him, with a tender amusement, a little slender white silk +mitten. Around the wrist was embroidered in dark blue a legend in Old +English script. He puzzled it out: _A Whig or no Husband!_ + +"That was mother's," she said, "the girls wore them then. She was quite +a belle, mother was! And when people ask me how Lizzie does so much, I +say that she inherits it. But at her age mother was broken down and +old. She had to be. There were nine of us, and here there's only little +Dudley, and it was so long before he came." + +They sat quietly. The setting sun flamed through the crab-apples and +burnished the fur of the tortoise-shell cat. The mint smelled strong. +The sweet, mellow summer evening was reflected in her handsome face, +with its delicate lines, that only added a restful charm to forehead and +cheek. He had no need to talk; it was very, very pleasant sitting there. + +A maid came out to get the mayonnaise, and the spell was broken. He took +out his watch. + +"Just time to dress," he sighed. "Will you be here again? We must talk +old times once more." + +She smiled and seemed to assent, but her eyes were not on him; she was +still in a revery. He walked softly away. She seemed hardly to notice +him, and his last backward glance found the quiet of the picture +unbroken; again it was a page from the Greenaway book. + +He reached the terrace; laughter and applause from the piazza caught his +ear. Fresh from the atmosphere he had left, he stared in amazement at +the scene before him. + +Swift figures were scudding from one to another of the four great elms +that marked out a natural rectangle on the smooth side lawn. + +"Puss! puss! Here, puss!" a high voice called, and a tall slender girl +in a swish of lace and pink draperies rushed across one side of the +square. A portly trousered figure essayed to gain the tree she had left, +but a romping girl in white caught him easily, while Mrs. Dud, the tail +of her gown thrown over her arm, skimmed triumphantly across to her +partner's tree. + +"One more, one more, colonel. You can't give up, now you're caught! One +more before we go in!" called the pink girl. + +"Here's Mr. Varian. Come and help us out--the colonel's beaten!" added +Mrs. Dud. + +"Here, puss! here, puss!" With excited little shrieks and laughs they +dashed by, the colonel making ineffectual grabs at their elusive skirts. +Varian shook his head good-naturedly. + +"Too late, too late!" he called back, and taking pity on the puffing, +purple colonel, he bore him off. + +"Thank God! I'm just about winded! I'd have dropped in my tracks," +complained the rescued man, breathing hard as they rounded the +shrubbery. In the corner two figures, half seen in the dark, leaned +toward each other an imperceptible moment. The colonel laughed +contentedly. + +"When I see that sort of thing, I think we've made a mistake--eh, +Varian?" he said, half serious. "It's a poor job, getting old alone. +Live at the club, visit here and there, make yourself agreeable to +get asked again, nobody to care if you're sick, always play the other +fellow's game--little monotonous after a while, eh?" + +Varian nodded. "Right enough," he said. + +"Different ending to their route!" suggested the colonel, jerking his +elbow back toward the two in the shrubbery. + +"That's it!" The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through +his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him. + +He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind +the hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more than +once he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a dormant fancy +for gardening, and walked with his new-old friend contentedly among the +deserted garden paths. He studied her hair especially, wondering why it +was that the little tender flecks of white attracted him so. At dinner +he secretly tried to rouse in himself the same desire to stroke the +gleaming silver fleece, high-dressed, puffed, and ornamented with jet, +of the woman opposite him, whose hair, somewhat prematurely turned +snowy, had won her a great vogue among her friends. But he never +succeeded. She was absolutely too effective. She turned the simplest +gathering to a fancy-dress ball, he decided. + +He had supposed that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance +that charmed him particularly--the feeling of an almost double +existence; but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of +course omniscient, restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a +pretty sincerity for his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating +charmingly that she realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly +dropped. He gasped, shook himself, colored a little, and met her eye. + +"I'm afraid I'm not so kind as you think," he said, a little awkwardly. +"I've been an old fool, I see. Do you think--is that the way _she_ looks +at it?" + +"Mary?" said Mrs. Dud, wonderingly. "Yes, I suppose so. Why?" + +The naive egotism of the answer only threw a softer light on the picture +that had grown to fill his thoughts. He smiled inscrutably. + +"Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her," he said. "I am +glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do +so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?" + +"What on earth do you mean?" asked his hostess, in unassumed +stupefaction. + +"I mean, do you think she would marry me?" Varian brought out plumply. +"Is there--was there ever anybody else?" + +For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more +than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to +the plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was +gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him. + +"I think, my friend, she would be a fool not to marry you," she answered +him, clear-eyed; "and there was never," her tone was too sweet, he +thought, to carry but one meaning--pleasure for him, "there was never +anybody else!" + +Varian walked straight to the garden. She was training a fiery wall +of nasturtiums with firm white fingers. It occurred to him that he was +ready to give up the tally-ho, and the Berkshires, and the scramble +of pretty girls for the place beside him, to sit quietly and watch her +among her flowers. + +"I'm getting old--old!" he said to himself, but he said it with a smile. + +For he knew that no boy's heart ever beat more swiftly, no boy's tongue +ever sought more excitedly to find the right words. But when he faced +her a little doubt chilled him: she was so calm and complete, in +her sunny, busy, balanced life, that he feared to disturb that sweet +placidity. With an undercurrent of fear, a sudden realization that he +had no more the blessed egotism of youth to drive him on, he walked +beside her, outwardly content, at heart a little solitary. At some light +question he turned and faced her. + +"You could not have all the greenhouses, but there could be plenty of +flowers," he said pleadingly. + +"Flowers? Where?" she asked. + +"Wherever we lived," he answered. "And oh, Mary, I think we could be +happy together! Don't say no!" as she shrank a little. "Don't, Mary, for +heaven's sake! I care too much--I care terribly. I am too old a man to +care so much and--lose.... There, there, my dear girl, never mind. I +can bear it, of course. Only I didn't know I'd planned it all out so, +and--But never mind. I was going to have a bay-window full of--" + +He turned away from her for a moment. But her hand was on his arm. + +"We can plan it out together," she said. + +He knew how she would blush; he had even dared to think how directly her +clear gray eyes would meet his--her sky-ness was never hesitation--but +he had not dreamed how soft her hair could be. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mrs. Dud's Sister + +Author: Josephine Daskam + +Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23369] +Last Updated: March 8, 2018 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. DUD'S SISTER *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + <div style="height: 8em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h1> + MRS. DUD'S SISTER + </h1> + <h2> + By Josephine Daskam <br /> <br /> Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's + Sons + </h2> + <p> + <br /><br /> <br /> + </p> + <p> + They were having tea on the terrace. As Varian strolled up to the group he + wished that Hunter could see the picture they made—Hunter, who had + not been in America for thirty years, and who had been so honestly + surprised when Varian had spoken of Mrs. Dud's pretty maids—she + always had pretty ones, even to the cook's third assistant. + </p> + <p> + “Maids? Maids? It used to be 'help,'” he had protested. “You don't mean to + say they have waitresses in Binghamville now?” + </p> + <p> + Varian had despaired of giving him any idea. + </p> + <p> + “Come over and see Mrs. Dud,” he had urged, “and do her portrait. We've + moved on since you left us, you know. She's a wonder—she really is. + When you remember how she used to carry her father's dinner to the store + Saturday afternoons—” + </p> + <p> + “And now I suppose she sports real Mechlin on her cap,” assented Hunter, + anxious to show how perfectly he caught the situation. + </p> + <p> + Varian had roared helplessly. “Cap? Cap!” he had moaned finally. “Oh, my + sainted granny! Cap! My poor fellow, your view of Binghamville must be + like the old maps of Africa in the green geography, that said 'desert' and + 'interior' and 'savage tribes' from time to time. I should like awfully to + see Mrs. Dud in a cap.” + </p> + <p> + Hunter had looked puzzled. + </p> + <p> + “But, dear me! she might very well wear one, I should think,” he had + murmured defensively. “I don't wish to be invidious, but surely Lizzie + must be—let's see; 'eighty, 'ninety—why, she must be between + forty-five and fifty now.” + </p> + <p> + Varian had waved his hand dramatically. “Nobody considers Mrs. Dud and + time in the same breath. If you could see her in her golf rig! Or on a + horse! She even sheds a lustre on the rest of us. I forget my rheumatism!” + </p> + <p> + But Hunter, retreating behind his determination to avoid a second + seasickness—it might have been sincere; nobody ever knew—had + stayed in Florence, and Varian had been obliged to come without him to the + house-party. + </p> + <p> + On a straw cushion, a cup in her strong white hand, a bunch of adoring + young girls at her feet, sat Mrs. Dud. Rosy and firm-cheeked, crisp in + stiff white duck, deliriously contrasted with her fluffy Parisian parasol, + she scorned the softening ruffles of her presumable contemporaries; her + delicately squared chin, for the most part held high, showed a straight + white collar under a throat only a little fuller than the girlish ones all + around her. + </p> + <p> + Old Dudley himself strolled about the group, gossiping here and there with + some pretty woman, sending the grave servants from one to another with + some particularly desirable sandwich, “rubbing it in,” as he said to the + men who had failed to touch his score on the links, tantalizingly + uncertain as to which one of the young women he would invite to lead the + cotillon with him at the club dance that week: none of the young men could + take his place at that, as they themselves enviously admitted. + </p> + <p> + What a well-matched couple it was! What a lot they got out of life! Varian + walked quietly by the group, to enjoy better the pretty, modish picture + they made. Their quick chatter, their bursts of laughter, the sweet faint + odor of the tea, the gay dresses and light flannels, with the quiet, + sombrely attired servants to add tone, all gave him, fresh from Hunter's + quick sense of the effective, an appreciation that gained force from his + separateness; he walked farther away to get a different point of view. + </p> + <p> + He was out of any path now, and suddenly, hardly beyond reach of their + voices, he found himself in a part of the grounds he had never approached + before. A thick high hedge shut in a kind of court at the side and back of + the great house, and a solid wooden door, carefully matched to its green, + left open by accident, showed a picture so out of line with the succession + of vivid scenes that dazzled the visitor at Wilton Bluffs that he stopped + involuntarily. The rectangle was carpeted with the characteristic emerald + turf of the place, divided by intersecting red brick paths into four + regular squares. In the farther corner of each of these a trim green + clothes-tree was planted, all abloom with snowy fringed napkins that shone + dazzling white against the hedge. One of the squares was a neat little + kitchen-garden; parsley was there in plenty, and other vaguely familiar + green things, curly-leaved and spear-pointed. A warm gust of wind brought + mint to his nostrils. A second plot held a small crab-apple tree covered + with pink and orange globes. A great tortoise-shell cat with two kittens + ornamented the third, and in the middle of the fourth, beside a small + wooden table, a woman sat with her back toward the intruder. On the table + were one or two tin boxes and a yellow earthen dish; in her left hand, + raised to the shoulder-level, was a tall thin bottle, from which an amber + fluid dripped in an almost imperceptibly thin stream; her right arm + stirred vigorously. She was a middle-aged woman with lightly grayed hair—a + kind of premonitory powdering. Over her full skirt of lavender-striped + cotton stuff fell a broad, competent white apron. Except for the thudding + of the spoon against the bowl, and a faint, homely echo of clashing china + and tin, mingled with occasionally raised voices and laughter from some + farther kitchen region, all was utterly, placidly still. + </p> + <p> + Varian stood chained to the open gate. Something in the calm sun-bathed + picture tugged strongly at his heart. He thought suddenly of his mother + and his Aunt Delia—he had been very fond of Aunt Delia. And what + cookies she used to make! Molasses cookies, brown, moist, and crumbly, + they had sweetened his boyhood. + </p> + <p> + What was it, that delighted sense of congruity that filled him, every + passing second, with keener familiarity, so strangely tinged with sorrow + and regret? Ah, he had it! He bit his lip as it came clear to him. His + little namesake nephew, dead at eight years old, and dear as only a dearly + loved child can be, had delighted greatly in the Kate Greenaway pictures + that came in “painting-books,” with colored prints on alternate pages and + corresponding outlines on the others. Dozens of those books the boy had + cleverly filled in with his little japanned paint-box and mussy, + quill-handled brushes; and the scene before him, the rich tints of the + hedge, the symmetrical little tree brilliant with hundreds of tiny globes, + the big white apron, the lazy yellow cats, and everywhere the prim + rectangular lines so amusingly conventional to accentuate the likeness, + almost choked him with the suddenness of the recognition. They must have + colored that very picture a dozen times, Tommy and he. + </p> + <p> + Half unconsciously he rested his arms on the top of the gate and drifted + into revery. He forgot that he was at Wilton Bluffs, one of the greatest + of the country palaces, and lived for a while in a mingled vision of his + boyhood on the old farm and in the land of the Greenaway painting-books. + </p> + <p> + Suddenly a door opened into the green. + </p> + <p> + A housemaid advanced to the table, bearing in both red hands a long tray + covered with a napkin. On the napkin lay, heaped in rich confusion, a + great pile of spicy, smoking brown cookies. + </p> + <p> + “They're just out o' the oven,” she began, but Varian could contain + himself no longer. He could not be deceived: he would have known those + cookies in the Desert of Sahara. He crossed the little plot in three long + steps, and faced the astonished maid. + </p> + <p> + “I beg your pardon,” he said firmly, “but it is very necessary that I + should have one of those cookies! I hope you can spare one?” + </p> + <p> + She giggled convulsively. + </p> + <p> + “I—I guess you can, sir,” she murmured, laying down the tray and + retreating toward the house door. + </p> + <p> + Varian faced the older woman, and, with hat still in hand, instinctively + bowed lower; for this was no housekeeper—he was sure of that. Even + as she met his eyes a great flood of pink rushed to her smooth forehead, + and she dropped her lids as she bowed slightly. He reflected irrelevantly + that he had never seen Mrs. Dudley blush in his life. + </p> + <p> + “You are very welcome to all you wish, I am sure,” she said graciously. “I—I + didn't know any one liked them but me. I always have them made for me—I + taught her the rule. I always call them”—she laughed nervously, and + it dawned on him that this woman was really shy and “talking against + time,” as they said—“I always call them 'Aunt Delia's cookies.' They—” + </p> + <p> + “Aunt Delia's cookies!” he interrupted. “What Aunt Delia?” + </p> + <p> + “Aunt Delia Parmentre,” she returned, a little surprised, evidently, at + this stranger, who, with a straw sailor-hat in one hand and a warm + molasses cooky in the other, stared so intently at her. “She wasn't really + my aunt, of course—” + </p> + <p> + “But she was mine!” he burst out, “and these are her cookies, and no + mistake. Who are you?” + </p> + <p> + Again she flushed, but more lightly. + </p> + <p> + “I am Miss Redding,” she said with a gentle dignity, “Mrs. Wilton's + sister.” + </p> + <p> + He stared at her vaguely. + </p> + <p> + “Mrs. Wilton—oh! you're her sister? I didn't know—” He stopped + abruptly. As his confusion grew, her own faded away. + </p> + <p> + “You didn't know she had one?” she asked, almost mischievously. + </p> + <p> + “I didn't know you were here,” he recovered himself. “You've never been + with Mrs. Dud before, have you?” + </p> + <p> + “No, not here when there was company,” she said. + </p> + <p> + He hardly noticed the words; his mind was groping among past histories. + </p> + <p> + “Her sister—her sister,” he muttered. “Why, then,” with an + illuminating smile, “I used to go to school with you! I'm Tom Varian!” + </p> + <p> + She smiled and held out her hand. + </p> + <p> + “I'm very glad to see you,” she said cordially. “Won't you—” She + looked about for a chair, but he dropped on the grass at her feet. + </p> + <p> + “You've changed since we met last,” he remarked, biting into his cooky. + She looked at his bronzed face and thick silvered hair and nodded + thoughtfully. + </p> + <p> + “I was six years old then,” she said; “and you were one of the 'big boys'—you + were fourteen.” + </p> + <p> + “That's a long while,” he suggested laughingly. + </p> + <p> + “It is thirty-six years,” she replied simply. + </p> + <p> + He winced. His associates were not accustomed to be so scrupulously + accurate. It seemed indecently long ago. And yet there was a certain + charm, now one faced it, a quaint halo of interest. + </p> + <p> + “You used to hand me water in a tin dipper,” he said. + </p> + <p> + She nodded. “Yes, that was for a reward, when I was good,” she said + seriously. “I could hand the water to the big boys. I was very proud of + it. You drank a great deal.” + </p> + <p> + He chuckled. “I was born thirsty,” he acknowledged. “By George, how it + comes back! I can see it now, that school-house! Funny little red thing—remember + how it looked? Big shelf around the sides for a desk, and another under + that for the books? Bench all round the room to sit on, and we just + whopped our legs over and faced round to recite? And carved—Lord! I + don't believe there was an inch of the wood, all told, that was clear! I + nearly cut my thumb off there, one day.” + </p> + <p> + “One of the big girls fainted away,” she added, “and they laid her on the + floor and told me to bring a dipper of water; but my hand shook so I + spilled it all over my apron, and she came to before we got more. I was + very timid.” + </p> + <p> + He began on another cooky. + </p> + <p> + “Did you have two pigtails? And striped stockings?” he inquired, his eyes + fixed reminiscently on the hedge. + </p> + <p> + She nodded softly. + </p> + <p> + “And played some game with stones? I can't just remember—” + </p> + <p> + “It was houses,” she reminded him. “We little girls used to make little + houses—just marked out with stones in squares on the ground; and if + you boys felt like it, you'd bring us big flat stones to eat our dinner + on.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, yes!” It all came back to him. “And then you'd race off to get + flag-root or something, and—” + </p> + <p> + “And gobble our dinner as we ran. It was fun, all the same,” she added. + </p> + <p> + “But what a mite you were, to be in school!” he said wonderingly. “What + under heaven did you study?” + </p> + <p> + “I don't remember at all,” she confessed. “But I suppose I spelled. Do you + remember the spelling-matches? And how you big ones wanted to 'leave off + head'?” + </p> + <p> + He chuckled. “I should say I did! And sometimes the greatest idiot would + 'leave off head' because there wasn't any more time. It was maddening!” + </p> + <p> + He munched in silence for a while, and she did not dream of interrupting. + </p> + <p> + “In the winter, though—George! but it was cold! We used to + positively swim through the drifts. I tell you, there aren't any such + snows now! How did you get there?” + </p> + <p> + “I only went in the summer,” she said; “and I used to come in all stained + with the berries I ate along the way. It was dreadful”—she grew + stern, as if addressing the little girl in striped stockings and pigtails—“the + way I ate berries! I used to eat the bushes clean on the way to school!” + </p> + <p> + She had got over her first shyness, and had gained time to realize her big + apron, which she hastily untied. He caught the motion and protested. + </p> + <p> + “No, no! Keep it on! I haven't seen a woman—a lady—in an apron + for years! Please keep it on! And do go on with the—the mess in the + dish!” + </p> + <p> + “The mess”—she bent her brows reprovingly—“it's mayonnaise + sauce. But I don't think—” + </p> + <p> + He jumped up to put the bowl in her lap. A sudden twinge in his knee wrung + an involuntary groan from him. He walked a little stiffly toward her. + </p> + <p> + “You have rheumatism! And you sat all the time on that damp grass!” she + cried reproachfully. “I thought at first it was the craziest thing to do, + but I didn't dare say so.” + </p> + <p> + He ignored the charge but smiled at the confession. + </p> + <p> + “And now you're not afraid?” + </p> + <p> + She blushed again. It was very becoming. + </p> + <p> + “It seems—it seems foolish to act like strangers when it's been so + long—we remember so well—” She sighed a little. He studied her + face—so like her sister's and so utterly different. The same gray + eyes, but calm and drooped; the same clear white skin, but a fuller, yes, + a more matronly face, a riper, sweeter, more restful curve. The soft dark + shadows that accentuated Mrs. Dudley's eyes were lacking; a group of tiny + wrinkles at the corners gave her instead a pleasant, humorous regard that + her sister's literal directness missed utterly. + </p> + <p> + Nervous under his scrutiny, she rose hastily, and before he could prevent + her she had brought him a roomy arm-chair from the house. + </p> + <p> + “At our age there's no use in running risks,” she said simply, “you ought + not to sit on the grass; leave that for the young folks.” + </p> + <p> + Again he winced, but dropped with relief into the chair. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, one must keep up with the procession, you know!” he said lightly. + </p> + <p> + She made no reply; and as she lifted the bottle and began to beat the + yellow mass again, it occurred to him that the remark was exceptionally + silly. + </p> + <p> + “Does it have to go in slowly like that—the whole bottleful?” he + inquired lazily. + </p> + <p> + She nodded. “Or it curdles,” she explained. “The cook sprained his wrist + yesterday. He never allows anybody to make the mayonnaise—he can't + trust them—and I was glad to do it for him. He says mine is as good + as his. Did you ever see him?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, no,” Varian returned. “But he doesn't need to be seen to be + appreciated.” + </p> + <p> + A strange suspicion crept over him. + </p> + <p> + “Do you often—Do you do much—How is it that you—” He + could not say it properly. Was it possible that Mrs. Dud—— It + was unworthy of her! + </p> + <p> + She caught his meaning, and her cool gray eyes met his with their + uncompromising directness. He seemed convicted of unnecessary shuffling. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, Lizzie asked me not to do anything,” she said quietly. “She wanted me + to enjoy myself with her friends. But I'm not used to so much society, and + I don't want to be any hinderance. I'm not so young as I used to be. I'd + have liked the gayety well enough when I was a girl, but I guess it tires + me a little now. There seems to be so much going on all the time. Lizzie + says she's resting, but it wouldn't rest me. Do you find it so?” + </p> + <p> + He recalled his yesterday's programme: driving a pulling team all the + morning; carrying Mrs. Dud's heavy bag over the links all the afternoon—she + preferred her friends to caddies; prompting for the dramatics rehearsal, + with a poor light, all the evening, while the actors gossiped and + squabbled and flirted contentedly. + </p> + <p> + “It is not always restful,” he admitted. + </p> + <p> + “It makes my head ache,” she remarked placidly. “I like to see the girls + enjoy themselves. I'm glad they're happy—some of those visiting + Lizzie are so pretty!—but I'm glad I haven't got to run about so + much. I'm very fond of driving myself, if I have a good quiet horse that + won't shy and doesn't go fast, and Lizzie has one for me—a white one + that's gentle—and I drive about in the phaëton a great deal. The + doctor that came that night—were you here?—when Mrs. Page + fainted and they couldn't bring her to (it seems she was in the habit of + taking some medicine to make her sleep, and it weakened her heart) asked + me if I wouldn't like to take out some patients of his, and so I called + for a very nice lady—a Mrs. Williams; you probably don't know her?—and + after that a young girl with spinal trouble, and—and several others. + They seemed to enjoy it, and I'm sure I did. Once I took a young girl + that's staying here—she had a bad headache. She was a sweet girl, + and I liked her. She said the drive helped her a great deal. It's + astonishing”—her eyes met his wonderingly—“how much trouble + you can have, with all the money you want! I—I was sorry for her,” + she added, half to herself. + </p> + <p> + Before he thought he leaned forward, took her hand with the silver + tablespoon in it, and kissed it gently. He admired her as he would admire + some charming soft pastel hung in a cool white room. + </p> + <p> + “How sweet and good you are!” he said warmly; and then, to cover her deep + embarrassment and his own sudden emotion, he continued quickly, “Are you + very busy in the morning, always?” + </p> + <p> + “There are different things,” she murmured, still looking at her spoon. “I + have letters to write—I keep up with a good many old friends in + Binghamville and Albany, where I lived with my married niece ten years, + till they moved West. I loved her children; I half brought them up. One + died; I can't seem to get over it—” Her eyes filled, and she made no + effort to cover two tears that slipped over. + </p> + <p> + Varian took her hand again. “I know about that—I know!” he said + softly. + </p> + <p> + “Then there are my flowers; I do so enjoy the beds and the greenhouses + here,” she went on more cheerfully. “The gardeners are very kind to me—I + think they like to have me come in. Mr. McFadden gives me a good many + slips and cuttings. I love flowers dearly. Then I read a good deal, and + there is always some little thing to do for the young girls here. They—the + ones I know—come in for a moment while I mend something, or pin + their things in the back, and it's surprising how much there is to do! + They fly about so they can't stop to take care of their things. They talk + to me while I set them straight, and it's very interesting. I tell Lizzie + I go out a great deal, just hearing about their adventures, when she drops + in to see me. She never forgets me; she brings somebody to my sitting-room + every day or so that she thinks I'd enjoy meeting—and I always do. + She never makes a mistake.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, she's wonderful,” Varian agreed easily. “There's nobody like Mrs. + Dud, of course.” + </p> + <p> + She stopped her work a moment and looked curiously at him. + </p> + <p> + “What do you mean by that?” she asked. “You all say it—in just that + way; but I don't think I quite see what you mean. Why is she wonderful? + Because she looks so young?” + </p> + <p> + “That, in the first place,” Varian returned, with a smile, “but not only + that.” + </p> + <p> + “Of course that is very strange,” she mused. “Now Lizzie is three years + older than I. You would never think it, would you?” + </p> + <p> + “No,” he agreed, still smiling; “but then, Mrs. Dud looks younger than + everybody. It is her specialty. I think what we mean,” he continued, “is + her amazing capacity; she does so much, so ridiculously much, and so much + better than other people. We try to keep up with things—your sister + is a little bit ahead. She seems to have always been doing the very latest + thing, you see. And all her responsibilities, her various affairs—it + makes one's head swim! The women have set themselves a tremendous field to + cover nowadays, and when one succeeds so admirably—” He paused. + </p> + <p> + She shook her head thoughtfully. + </p> + <p> + “But everything is done for her!” she protested. “Why, I have never yet + seen all the servants in this house! And you know there is a housekeeper? + Lizzie sees her a little while in the morning, that's all. And she never + sews a stitch—there's a seamstress here all the time, you know, and + that has nothing to do with the clothes that come home in boxes. And + little Dudley has his tutor, and his old nurse that looks after his + clothes. What is it that she does to make it so wonderful?” + </p> + <p> + He only smiled at her perplexity, and she added confidentially: + </p> + <p> + “Lizzie wanted me to go to her dressmaker, but I didn't like the idea of a + man, to begin with, and then I knew Miss Simms would feel so hurt. She + lives in Albany, and she's made my dresses for so long that I thought, + though she may not be so stylish, I'd better keep up with her; wouldn't + you?” + </p> + <p> + A perfectly unreasonable tenderness surged through his heart. How sweet + she was! + </p> + <p> + “If she made that dress, I certainly should!” he declared. + </p> + <p> + She smoothed the crisp lavender folds deprecatingly. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, this is only a cotton dress,” she said. “But she made my gray silk, + too, and Lizzie herself said it fitted beautifully.” + </p> + <p> + She took up the bottle again: it was nearly empty. + </p> + <p> + “Now my mother,” she began, “<i>she</i> was wonderful, if you like. Do you + know what my mother used to do? We lived on the farm, you know, like + yours, and most of the work of that farm mother did. She did the cooking—for + all the hired hands, too; she made the butter, and took care of the hens; + she made the candles and the soap; she made the carpets and all our + clothes—my brothers', too; and she put up preserves and jellies and + cordials, and did the most beautiful embroidery; I have some of mother's + embroidered collars, and I can't do anything like them.” + </p> + <p> + “It was tremendous,” he said. “My Aunt Delia did that, too.” + </p> + <p> + “We were old-fashioned, even for then,” she said. “Everybody didn't do so + much, of course, as we did. Lizzie says we were just on the edge of the + new age. It certainly is different. And of course I wouldn't go back to it + for anything. After we came back from boarding-school it was all changed. + We moved, then, nearer the town. But, do you know, my mother went to + singing-school, and Lizzie was looking that up in a book, the other day, + to see what they did—she wanted it for a party!” + </p> + <p> + He laughed. “That <i>is</i> delicious!” he said. + </p> + <p> + “See what I found to-day!” she added, drawing a small object from her + pocket. “I hunted it up to show Miss Porter tonight. She was so interested + when I told her about it.” + </p> + <p> + She showed him, with a tender amusement, a little slender white silk + mitten. Around the wrist was embroidered in dark blue a legend in Old + English script. He puzzled it out: <i>A Whig or no Husband!</i> + </p> + <p> + “That was mother's,” she said, “the girls wore them then. She was quite a + belle, mother was! And when people ask me how Lizzie does so much, I say + that she inherits it. But at her age mother was broken down and old. She + had to be. There were nine of us, and here there's only little Dudley, and + it was so long before he came.” + </p> + <p> + They sat quietly. The setting sun flamed through the crab-apples and + burnished the fur of the tortoise-shell cat. The mint smelled strong. The + sweet, mellow summer evening was reflected in her handsome face, with its + delicate lines, that only added a restful charm to forehead and cheek. He + had no need to talk; it was very, very pleasant sitting there. + </p> + <p> + A maid came out to get the mayonnaise, and the spell was broken. He took + out his watch. + </p> + <p> + “Just time to dress,” he sighed. “Will you be here again? We must talk old + times once more.” + </p> + <p> + She smiled and seemed to assent, but her eyes were not on him; she was + still in a revery. He walked softly away. She seemed hardly to notice him, + and his last backward glance found the quiet of the picture unbroken; + again it was a page from the Greenaway book. + </p> + <p> + He reached the terrace; laughter and applause from the piazza caught his + ear. Fresh from the atmosphere he had left, he stared in amazement at the + scene before him. + </p> + <p> + Swift figures were scudding from one to another of the four great elms + that marked out a natural rectangle on the smooth side lawn. + </p> + <p> + “Puss! puss! Here, puss!” a high voice called, and a tall slender girl in + a swish of lace and pink draperies rushed across one side of the square. A + portly trousered figure essayed to gain the tree she had left, but a + romping girl in white caught him easily, while Mrs. Dud, the tail of her + gown thrown over her arm, skimmed triumphantly across to her partner's + tree. + </p> + <p> + “One more, one more, colonel. You can't give up, now you're caught! One + more before we go in!” called the pink girl. + </p> + <p> + “Here's Mr. Varian. Come and help us out—the colonel's beaten!” + added Mrs. Dud. + </p> + <p> + “Here, puss! here, puss!” With excited little shrieks and laughs they + dashed by, the colonel making ineffectual grabs at their elusive skirts. + Varian shook his head good-naturedly. + </p> + <p> + “Too late, too late!” he called back, and taking pity on the puffing, + purple colonel, he bore him off. + </p> + <p> + “Thank God! I'm just about winded! I'd have dropped in my tracks,” + complained the rescued man, breathing hard as they rounded the shrubbery. + In the corner two figures, half seen in the dark, leaned toward each other + an imperceptible moment. The colonel laughed contentedly. + </p> + <p> + “When I see that sort of thing, I think we've made a mistake—eh, + Varian?” he said, half serious. “It's a poor job, getting old alone. Live + at the club, visit here and there, make yourself agreeable to get asked + again, nobody to care if you're sick, always play the other fellow's game—little + monotonous after a while, eh?” + </p> + <p> + Varian nodded. “Right enough,” he said. + </p> + <p> + “Different ending to their route!” suggested the colonel, jerking his + elbow back toward the two in the shrubbery. + </p> + <p> + “That's it!” The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through + his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him. + </p> + <p> + He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind the + hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more than once + he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a dormant fancy for + gardening, and walked with his new-old friend contentedly among the + deserted garden paths. He studied her hair especially, wondering why it + was that the little tender flecks of white attracted him so. At dinner he + secretly tried to rouse in himself the same desire to stroke the gleaming + silver fleece, high-dressed, puffed, and ornamented with jet, of the woman + opposite him, whose hair, somewhat prematurely turned snowy, had won her a + great vogue among her friends. But he never succeeded. She was absolutely + too effective. She turned the simplest gathering to a fancy-dress ball, he + decided. + </p> + <p> + He had supposed that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance that + charmed him particularly—the feeling of an almost double existence; + but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of course omniscient, + restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a pretty sincerity for + his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating charmingly that she + realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly dropped. He gasped, shook + himself, colored a little, and met her eye. + </p> + <p> + “I'm afraid I'm not so kind as you think,” he said, a little awkwardly. + “I've been an old fool, I see. Do you think—is that the way <i>she</i> + looks at it?” + </p> + <p> + “Mary?” said Mrs. Dud, wonderingly. “Yes, I suppose so. Why?” + </p> + <p> + The naïve egotism of the answer only threw a softer light on the picture + that had grown to fill his thoughts. He smiled inscrutably. + </p> + <p> + “Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her,” he said. “I am + glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do + so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?” + </p> + <p> + “What on earth do you mean?” asked his hostess, in unassumed stupefaction. + </p> + <p> + “I mean, do you think she would marry me?” Varian brought out plumply. “Is + there—was there ever anybody else?” + </p> + <p> + For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more + than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to + the plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was + gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him. + </p> + <p> + “I think, my friend, she would be a fool not to marry you,” she answered + him, clear-eyed; “and there was never,” her tone was too sweet, he + thought, to carry but one meaning—pleasure for him, “there was never + anybody else!” + </p> + <p> + Varian walked straight to the garden. She was training a fiery wall of + nasturtiums with firm white fingers. It occurred to him that he was ready + to give up the tally-ho, and the Berkshires, and the scramble of pretty + girls for the place beside him, to sit quietly and watch her among her + flowers. + </p> + <p> + “I'm getting old—old!” he said to himself, but he said it with a + smile. + </p> + <p> + For he knew that no boy's heart ever beat more swiftly, no boy's tongue + ever sought more excitedly to find the right words. But when he faced her + a little doubt chilled him: she was so calm and complete, in her sunny, + busy, balanced life, that he feared to disturb that sweet placidity. With + an undercurrent of fear, a sudden realization that he had no more the + blessed egotism of youth to drive him on, he walked beside her, outwardly + content, at heart a little solitary. At some light question he turned and + faced her. + </p> + <p> + “You could not have all the greenhouses, but there could be plenty of + flowers,” he said pleadingly. + </p> + <p> + “Flowers? Where?” she asked. + </p> + <p> + “Wherever we lived,” he answered. “And oh, Mary, I think we could be happy + together! Don't say no!” as she shrank a little. “Don't, Mary, for + heaven's sake! I care too much—I care terribly. I am too old a man + to care so much and—lose.... There, there, my dear girl, never mind. + I can bear it, of course. Only I didn't know I'd planned it all out so, + and—But never mind. I was going to have a bay-window full of—” + </p> + <p> + He turned away from her for a moment. But her hand was on his arm. + </p> + <p> + “We can plan it out together,” she said. + </p> + <p> + He knew how she would blush; he had even dared to think how directly her + clear gray eyes would meet his—her sky-ness was never hesitation—but + he had not dreamed how soft her hair could be. + </p> + <div style="height: 6em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. 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