The Apple-Tree Girl/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
Looking at Charlotte's Three Great Sums from one point of view, you will probably agree that they had a stupendous quality in them. She was plain, and yet she had made up her mind that every body who knew her should like her.
She lived in a practically deserted village, eight miles away from the nearest town or station, and yet she had resolved to be famous.
And finally she was poor, her only income being the twenty-five dollars a month which she received for teaching the school at Marlin Mills—and yet she had determined to marry one of the handsomest and richest young men in the whole United States—whoever and wherever he might be!
But for all the stupendous nature of the Three Great Sums which she had set herself, they also had in them that magnificient quality of simplicity—stupendous simplicity, if you like—which might be said to be the spirit of America. Indeed, in an allegorical way of speaking I like to think that Charlotte's story is a story of the spirit of American womanhood, daring in its ideals, regarding no ambition too high to be realized, and building up, step by step, a beacon light which yet may illumine the world.
For two years after organizing her Marlin Mills Golf Association (with its total membership of one!) Charlotte practiced, and worked, and studied with a single end in view. She sent for all the golf books she could find, subscribed to a golf magazine, memorized the records, studied the diagrams of the leading links, discovered there was a golf course near New London, became a non-resident member (which required the help of Judge Darbie and Mr. Chapman), went down there on Saturday mornings as often as she could afford it, made the club professional like her by that reasonable, rational method of liking him first, and secured his advice on the many points where she felt herself weak.
"My conscience!" he exclaimed one morning, after he had watched her play a particularly difficult shot. "Where did ye learn that now, I wonder?"
But if he had seen her at home, driving the ball around the old Marlin farm, he wouldn't have wondered. Or if he had seen her playing golf along the country lanes and over the fields on her way to school and back, attended by her Seven Faithful Caddies, he wouldn't have wondered either! Such hazards she had to play! Such shots she had to make! Stone walls had to be considered, ruts, swamps, patches of poison ivy, brush fields, Miss Hawley's geese and Bates' bull—oh, something like practice—and practical practice—and merry practice, too—with Billy Bates shouting "Jim'ny Christmas!" every time she made a good drive, and exclaiming "Plop!" every time the ball rolled into the hole.
Some days the grass would be wet and Charlotte would say to herself, even as you or I might have done: "I'll take a rest to-day. No use getting my feet wet." But then the thought would come to her: "Suppose the grass is wet on the day of the championship!" And a few minutes later you would have found her out in the orchard, driving the ball around among the trees and getting up such an appetite for breakfast!
Or some days she wouldn't be feeling up to the mark, and then she would say to herself, even as you or I might have done: "I guess I'll take a rest to-day. No use making myself sick." And then would come the answering thought: "But suppose you feel this way on the day of the championship? You've got to be ready for anything!" Then out she'd go and "fight it off" till her cheeks glowed with that satisfaction which comes from work well done, and her eyes were bright with the victory of the spirit which never says "Oh, I can't!"
After the first burst of wonder, her golf was taken as a matter of course in the village. Nay, more: it was openly defended. "A girl of that age has to have suthin' to put her mind on," said old Dame Johnson one afternoon, nodding her head with the wisdom of her seventy-five years. "And me, I'd ruther see her traipsin' around after that little white ball than running around after some wuthless young fellow who'd marry her out of hand and move her away afore you could say 'Jack Robinson!’"
"She don't have to run after the young fellows," said the coquettish Miss Hawley, holding out her ear trumpet. "The young fellows are running after her."
"Pooh! You mean that young spark from Penfield?"
"Yes, him. I see him around in his car again this afternoon."
"Don't you worry about him. I see Charlotte talking to him the other day—and the stiff way she was holding her back! I tell you right now, he might as well stay home and save his gaso-leen."
In this spirited manner the village gossiped about young Doctor Kennedy, and if the old dame could have seen him at that moment her opinion of his chances would have gone down lower yet. Charlotte had been practicing difficult shots in the old gravel pit when Neil's car stopped.
"Hello, Charlotte!" he cheerfully cried.
She gave him a glance which seemed to say "What? You here again?" And turning back to her practice she remarked in the cold tone of formality: "How do you do, Neil?"
"Just happened to be passing," he said. "And, of course, I couldn't help stopping."
Festooned around the edge of the pit were the Seven Faithful Ones, their fourteen eyes gravely watching, their fourteen ears gravely listening. Charlotte went on trying her difficult shots, and a naughty, yes, a wicked thought gradually took shape in her mind, as wicked thoughts have taken shape since time immemorial.
"I practiced how to make people like me," she thought, "because that was my First Sum. And I'm practising this because of my Second Sum. But there's one thing I've never practiced yet"
She checked her thoughts and blushed tremendously, those fourteen eyes regarding her gravely from the edge of the pit. "I don't care," she thought, flying to her own defense; "he's got no right to come around bothering me like this."
And though, even then, she wouldn't put her thought into words, if you could have looked deep down into her mind, and have lifted the veil of modesty which you would have found there, you would have come to one of those secret places which all of us keep hidden in the depths of our consciousness—and in that secret place of Charlotte's mind you would have found this unphrased thought burning ever so brightly, ever so impishly: "I'm going to pretend he's a millionaire—and practice on him!"
"Don't you want to take the children home in your car?"
Fourteen bright eyes turned upon the young physician, and the fire of hope flared high in seven young hearts.
"I'd rather take you home," he bluntly replied.
Charlotte tried that difficult shot again. "You can come back for me," she said.
Whereupon he beckoned the Faithful Seven with enthusiasm, and with enthusiasm they tumbled down into the pit and charged upon the car. How they stowed themselves in that single-seated runabout can better be imagined than described. All you could see were seven excited children, and the doctor's head, and a suggestion of wheels. And when the Little Rattler started off, instead of its customary clashing and gnashing of gears, its rackety clatter of fenders and hood, all you could hear were the Seven Faithful Ones who were having the first car ride of their young lives and were finding it filled with the most exquisite emotions.
Compared to this loud departure, it didn't seem like the same Little Rattler which came back twenty minutes later and quietly waited, its door open, for Charlotte to take her place.
"Where shall we go?" asked Neil.
"I thought you were going to take me home," said Charlotte, looking at him with her deeply expressive eyes.
"Oh, I can always take you home. But where shall we go first?"
Charlotte considered for a moment, and then her weakness for sunsets prevailed. "Suppose we take this road to the top of the hill," she said. "There's a beautiful view from there."
As though it heard her, the Little Rattler at once roared forward and began to storm up the hill.
"You know, it won't always be like this," said Neil. "A doctor has to go slow the first year, but it won't be long now before I'll be making a good living. Say! Did you ever see my pill box?"
Written down, it looks like a prosaic question, but you would have been surprised at the sentiment which the young physician managed to crowd into it.
"N-no," said Charlotte.
"I'll show it to you as soon as we get to the top."
Saying so, he stole a glance at her, and at the same time (covertly studying him) she happened to be stealing a glance at him. The next moment Charlotte was staring straight ahead; but the young physican wasn't!
"You know, I don't expect to be a country doctor all my life," he continued. "Some day I'm going to New York and take a post-graduate course in surgery, and keep working and studying till I get to be one of the best-known surgeons in the country. You'd be surprised how much those fellows make out of a single operation. Why some of 'em won't look at anything less than a thousand dollars!"
They had reached the top of the hill, and, as it wasn't yet time for the sunset, Charlotte looked at the pill box with its ingenious rows of vials and multicolored pellets.
"Isn't it wonderful! " she said, glancing at him with her deeply expressive eyes.
She looked back at the vials and noticed that his hand trembled as it moved over them, and his voice trembled, too, as hands and voices have trembled since time immemorial when young men have felt their time is growing short.
In the west the sun had fallen below the horizon and the magic glow of the sunset fell on the valley below, which waited, hushed and expectant, for the greater glory of color to come. As Neil went on talking, it seemed to Charlotte that her heart had never been so full, that she had never been so near to understanding the Greatest Sum of All—that Sum which starts in the sunset and which never, never ends.
It was Neil's voice which broke the spell: "And when I'm getting, say, twenty-five a week, sure, you can quit this school-teaching and we'll get married, and rent that house of Doctor Baldwin's, furnished"
"Oh!" gasped Charlotte. "No, no, Neil! Stop! You mustn't!"
"Why not?" he gently demanded, trying to find her hand.
In the panic which fell upon her, Charlotte's thoughts rallied around her favorite formula: "I've got to be smart!" Instinctively feeling that flight was the only way to safety, she jumped out of the car and pulled her golf clubs after her. "Oh, Neil, I can't!" she said. "You don't understand! I—I'll take a short cut through the fields and you'll be home all the sooner. Good-bye."
She was over the wall before he realized what she was doing and had disappeared among the birches. Then, too late, he followed after and found himself lost in the brush.
"Oh, Charlotte!" he cried.
But no voice answered. He heard a noise among the leaves, and, hurrying toward it, he found it was a flock of quail which had been settling for the night.
"Oh, Charlotte!" he cried again.
But no voice answered him. Sadly, lonesomely, then, he returned to the Little Rattler and, when he glanced at it from over the wall, he saw that it had taken upon itself a strange, blurred appearance, as though he were looking at it through a pane of rain-swept glass.