Bobbie, General Manager/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
FOUR months later. Twelve o'clock at night. Wrapped up in my eiderdown bath-robe. Sitting at my desk.
It is midnight. I cannot sleep. I have been lying wide awake, listening to a strong April wind, howling around the corner of the house, for two hours! I've repeated the twenty-third Psalm over and over again. I've imagined a flock of sheep going over a stile (though I never saw it done) for ten minutes solid. I've swallowed two Veronal tablets. It's useless. I surrender. I don't want to get up. I shall have an awful headache to-morrow, besides heavy lead weights behind my eyes; and to-morrow—to-morrow of all days—I want to be fresh and bright and as beautiful as nature can make me. Moreover, I'd rather not write. But I can't read. There has never been a book printed that could hold my thoughts to-night. My mind goes back to the events of the day like steel to a magnet. I've tried solitaire, and ended by pushing the silly cards on the floor. You see something has happened—something big and actual and real!
I have seen Dr. Maynard!
I have met him face to face, talked with him, laughed with him, walked with him from Charles Street to the sunken garden, sat with him by the fountain. I am beside myself with excitement. I had better tell how it all happened. If I get it out of my system I may be able to snatch a little sleep, and I must sleep. I have an important engagement to-morrow at three.
It occurred at four o'clock this afternoon. I had bought a bunch of primroses from a man on the street five minutes before. I was on my way home from a shopping tour, and with my pretty early-spring flowers tucked in at my waist, and my hands full of packages, I turned up Charles Street as unconcerned as you please. At the corner I bowed to our minister's wife, and the remains of the smile were still on my face, I suppose, when I saw Dr. Maynard. I didn't know that he was on this side of the ocean, and when I observed him coming down the steps of the postoffice—vigorous and strong and buoyant—I stood still in my tracks, and the remains of the smile turned into something startled and afraid. Dr. Maynard approached me all aglow, stretched out his hand and took mine in a warm, firm grasp. A thrill went through me like a knife. He was as natural as day, beautifully tanned, smiling, big, broad-shouldered as ever, and yet different—oh, awfully different.
"Hello, Bobbie," he said in his hearty old voice, and I looked back at him, perfectly white—I could feel that I was—and speechless. "Don't be a goose. It's just Dr. Maynard," I tried to reason with myself.
"Am I speaking to Miss Lucy Vars?" I heard asked of me. "Miss Lucy Chenery Vars, of 240 Main Street, Hilton, Mass.?"
I nodded, and somewhere down there in the chaos in my chest, I found my poor little voice. "Is it you?" I asked shakily.
"Well, I'm not quite sure. Nothing looks very natural around here. I'm beginning to think I'm somebody else."
"Well, I am surprised!" I exploded. "I certainly am surprised! Why, I never was so surprised!" I stopped a minute. Dr. Maynard was smiling right down into my eyes. "I never was so surprised in all my life!" I repeated, as if I hadn't another idea in my head.
He leaned down just here and picked up a half-dozen bundles, more or less, that I had dropped when we shook hands.
"I better help you carry some of these home, hadn't I?" he suggested.
"Oh, yes, do," I replied eagerly, and somehow we managed to walk back to the house together.
I don't know through what streets we went, past what houses. I can scarcely recall of what we talked. "He's come home! He's come home! He's come home!" kept ringing in my ears over and over again, like jubilant chimes. "Dr. Maynard has come home!" And whenever I looked up and saw him smiling down at me—so naturally, so beautifully—it seemed as if I should have to make a pirouette or two, right there on the sidewalk. Every time he laughed I wanted to shout; every time he remarked upon a new building or a new house, and especially when he exclaimed, "Good heavens! What have we here?" at the sight of one of the taxicabs, I wanted to turn a handspring. When he first came in view of 240 Main Street and stood stock-still in his tracks, and gasped, "Where's the cupola, and the French roof, and the iron fountain, and the barn, and the apple orchard?" I wanted to throw my arms around him for joy. I must have felt like a dog at the sight of his beloved master whom he hasn't seen for months. It was so intoxicating to have Dr. Maynard beside me again that it seemed as if I must express my joy by jumping up on him, and half knocking him down. Which, of course, I didn't do. My voice broke a dozen times, my underlip trembled, my cheeks burned with excitement, but otherwise I walked along as sedately as if it were an everyday occurrence to run across a man I believed was hopelessly buried in a laboratory in Europe.
It was in the sunken garden that the most important part of our conversation took place. You remember, don't you, that in my letters to Dr. Maynard I had always been enthusiastic over the improvements Edith has made on old 240. So now it was with apparent pride that I led my old friend down the granolithic steps into the one-time apple orchard. I showed him the cement-lined pool in the centre, the Italian garden-seat, the rare shrubbery now bound up in yellow straw, with something like delight. I was so full of exultation at the mere sight of dear, kind, understanding Dr. Maynard that I could have rejoiced about anything. When I exclaimed, "And there's a squash-court connected with the garage, and a tennis-court as smooth as glass beside the stable; and where the old potato-patch used to be, there's a pergola!" my eyes fairly sparkled. "That sun-dial over there," I boasted, "was designed especially for Edith; and oh, there's the dearest, slimmest little stream of water that spouts out of the centre of the pool, in the summer. You ought to see it!" I was all enthusiasm. Edith wouldn't have recognised me. Ruth would have thought I had lost my reason. Even Dr. Maynard looked at me curiously.
"It certainly is all very fine, I've no doubt," he remarked.
"Yes, isn't it?" I exclaimed.
"But I must confess," he went on. "I never objected to the old apple orchard. Just about where the pool is now, there used to grow the best old Baldwins I ever tasted."
"Oh, my," I scoffed, "you ought to see the bouncing big Oregon apples Edith buys by the crate."
Dr. Maynard shook his head and smiled. Then he came over and sat down beside me on the Italian seat.
"Well, well," he sighed, "I suppose old Rip must get used to the changes that have taken place since he's been asleep—squash-courts and pergolas, great sweeping estates with granolithic drives and sunken gardens; new hotels; new postoffices; instead of the roomy, old-fashioned livery-stable hacks, taxicabs; instead of good old snappy New England Baldwins, apples imported from Oregon; and instead of a girl in a red Tam-o-Shanter and her father's old weather-beaten ulster, sitting behind the wheel of a little one-lunger automobile, running it, in all sorts of weather, like a young breeze—instead of that girl," said Dr. Maynard, looking me up and down closely, "a very correct and up-to-date young lady in kid gloves and a veil, a smart black and white checked suit, a very fashionable hat (I should call it), with a bunch of primroses, to cap it all, pinned jauntily at her waist."
I blushed with triumph.
"I've just about come to the conclusion," added Dr. Maynard in a kind of wistful voice, "that I don't know San Francisco at all now."
"Well," I laughed waveringly, "I do hope you'll find it a little more civilised than it was before.
"I never thought it was uncivilised," said Dr. Maynard quietly; "I rather enjoyed it just as it was, to tell the truth. I shall be sorry to find many changes in it because I shall have to become acquainted with it all over again and my time is so short."
"Short?" I exclaimed. I don't know why I had drawn the sudden conclusion that Dr. Maynard had come back to stay. His very next words put an end to my little half-hour of jubilance like the announcement of a death.
"Yes," he said; "I'm sailing back to Germany in two weeks. I was appointed an executor of a distant relative's will, and it seemed necessary to come to New York and attend to it. Of course I couldn't be so near—San Francisco, without coming to see how it prospered after the earthquake. I'm glad to find you so happy, Bobbie. You've richly earned all this," he glanced around the display that surrounded us, "both you and Al, and it's really fine that the change in your circumstances came about, when you, Lucy, were still a young girl, and just ready to appreciate and enjoy good times, and pretty surroundings, and new young people. Sometimes the apparent catastrophes work out for our best happiness. You are happy, aren't you, Bobbie?"
"Oh, yes—perfectly happy," I flashed indignantly.
"I thought so. Your enthusiasm brims over in your letters. Well, well," twitted Dr. Maynard, "who ever would have thought Al's little sister, whom I used to call 'wild-cat,' would turn into a society girl—a mighty popular one too, if I'm any judge. Parties and engagements all the time, I suppose. Now I'm just curious enough to wonder," went on Dr. Maynard teasingly, while my feelings, hurt and enraged, were working up to one of their habitual explosions, "which one of all those admirers I hear mentioned in your letters sent you your pretty primroses this morning."
"No one sent them," I blurted out. "If you must know, I bought them myself five minutes before I saw you. Those men in my letters were Ruth's friends, not mine."
Dr. Maynard glanced at me sharply.
"Oh," I went on fiercely, "I'm glad to know if you think that I'm happy. It shows how well you understand me. Happy! I'm perfectly miserable, if you want to know the truth. I hate and loathe and despise all this display you say I've so richly earned. I hate parties, and splurge, and sunken gardens, and pergolas, and I haven't a single solitary admirer in the world. I thought you knew me, but I see you don't. I thought if you ever came back you'd understand, but you don't—not one little single bit. I thought you—you—"
I stopped abruptly. There's no use trying to hide tears that run shamelessly down your cheeks. It was absolutely necessary for me to ask for my bag which Dr. Maynard held, and produce a handkerchief. He didn't say anything as I mopped my eyes. I thought perhaps he was too shocked to speak. He didn't offer me a single word of comfort—just sat and waited. I didn't look at him; and still with my face turned away I said, subdued, apologetically, "I don't see what is the matter with me lately. You mustn't mind my being so silly. I'm always getting 'weepy' for no reason at all." I opened my bag, tucked away my handkerchief, as a sign that the storm was over, and stood up. "I hope you won't think that I usually act this way with—with all those admirers of mine," I added, smiling.
Dr. Maynard ignored my attempt at humour.
"Lucy," he said quietly, but in a voice and manner that made me start and catch my breath, "my real reason for coming to America wasn't the will. It was you." He stopped and I looked hard into the centre of the dry pool. "I mistrusted some of your letters lately, though I confess not at first—not until last fall. You've been overdoing your enthusiasm this winter, Bobbie. So I decided to come over and find out for myself if you had been trying to deceive me. The will offered a good excuse, so here I am. And you have been deceiving me—for two whole years. Why, Bobbie," he said very softly, "what shall I do to you?"
I glanced up and saw the old piercing tenderness in his eyes.
"Don't be kind to me," I warned hastily; "not now—not for anything. Please, or I shall cry again."
I heard Dr. Maynard laugh the tenderest, gentlest kind of laugh, and in a second both his arms were around me. Yes, both Dr. Maynard's arms were close around me! I didn't cry. I just stayed there quiet and still and safe; and I've been there in imagination about every moment since.
When he finally let me go he said simply, but in a queer trembling voice, "Will you go to drive with me to-morrow afternoon at three, way off into the country, away from pergolas and cement pools, and people?"
I nodded, unable to speak.
"All right. I'll be here. Good night," he said gently, and turned abruptly and left me there alone in the garden.
I watched him hurry up the garden-steps and out of the gateway. He turned once and waved his hand to the pitiful little wind-blown creature he left behind in the bleak unbeautiful garden. I felt as if he had torn me from my moorings and that I must toss and drift in strange unknown seas until to-morrow at three.
I managed to gather my bundles together somehow, and come up here to the house. My cheeks were flaming when I opened the door. I left my packages in a chair in the hall and hurried up here to my room as quickly as I could. Once here I locked my door tight and threw off my things. "Oh, don't be silly; don't be absurd," I said, and buried my face in the dark of my arms on my desk. "It's just Dr. Maynard," I went on later, "and you know how you felt two years ago. Oh, be reasonable. Be calm." But all the time that I was talking sense to myself, I was feeling strong arms about my shoulders, and a kind of sinking, fainting, going-out feeling that people must experience when they lose consciousness, would steal over me so that I couldn't think.
Finally to put an end to my nonsense I opened a secret compartment and took out Robert Dwinnell's picture. He would cure me of my delusion; he would keep me true to my ideals. I gazed at Robert Dwinnell for a solid sixty seconds, then deliberately, straight across the forehead, down the nose, through the very smile that once had thrilled me, I tore that poor picture into a thousand bits, and dumped the remains into the waste-basket. It was a dreadful act. I felt like a murderess. I don't know what made me do it, but Robert Dwinnell had lost his charm. Dr. Maynard, glowing with health, his eyes fierce with a tenderness that actually hurt, made my poor old idol look flat and insipid.
Some time later—ten minutes perhaps—an hour—I don't know—a maid knocked and asked if I were coming down to dinner. I got up and followed her mechanically, and for the life of me I don't know whether there was roast-beef or lamb.
Now I am again locked in my room, and my soul is actually on fire. It is as dark as death outdoors. Every one in the house is asleep. But I am sitting here gazing at a little faded picture of an automobile which I finally discovered in an old souvenir-book of mine. That little speck there is Dr. Maynard and I am going to see him to-day at three!