II
There was one woman in the world whom Hughes admired without reservation, and that was his aunt, Kate Boles. He saw in her no flaw. She was a childless widow, living alone in the loneliest little cottage in the Berkshires; she had a hard life, and she gloried in it.
Not only did Aunt Kate live upon an almost impossibly small income, but she saved out of it, and when Hughes wanted to help her, she refused. She said she had a roof over her head, and enough to eat, and clothing to cover her decently, and that[Pg 402] she wanted nothing more. He thought this admirable.
She admired him, too. It was a part of her philosophy of life to believe that men could never be so noble as women, but, for a man, she thought her nephew remarkably good. So, when he asked her, she came down from her mountains, for the first time in many years.
“Desborough Hughes!” she declared. “I shouldn’t do this for any one else on earth.”
“I appreciate it, Aunt Kate,” he agreed.
But when he explained his intention, her face grew mighty grim.
“Women!” she exclaimed. “You didn’t mention that in your letter, Desborough!”
“I know,” he said. “But—”
“All you told me,” she went on, “was that you wanted to open that house your Uncle Joseph left you out at Green Lake, and that you wanted me to keep house for you and some friends of yours for awhile. Not a word did you say about women.”
“I didn’t think it would make any difference—”
“Well, it does!” said she. “I don’t know that I’m inclined to keep house for a parcel of idle women.”
Hughes said that there were only two of them, a mother and a daughter.
“And why can’t they keep house for themselves?”
“They’re not accustomed to—to country life. They’re—”
“I see!” said Mrs. Boles. “A couple of these highfalutin’ city people. I may as well tell you, Desborough, that I don’t feel disposed to wait on them hand and foot.”
“I don’t want you to,” Hughes asserted. “It’s only—” He paused. He saw that he would be obliged to give his aunt some inkling of his plan. “It’s like this,” he said. “They’ve got used to that artificial, effete sort of life, and I thought—a week or two of a different sort of life—I thought it might—well—give them a—a new point of view.”
“Desborough!” she exclaimed. “They want to marry you. I can see that.”
“No, they don’t!” he pointed out. “I want to marry them. One of them, I mean.”
He had not wished to say that, but it couldn’t be helped. His serious face grew scarlet, and he turned away, very greatly dreading the questions and comments his aunt might utter. But, to his surprise, she said nothing at all for a long time, and presently, to his still greater surprise, she laid her bony hand on his shoulder.
“Very well, my boy!” she said.
He looked at her, but he could not read her face, and he was afraid to ask her what her words and her tone signified. They made him uneasy, and he wasn’t very happy, anyhow.
He knew that he could count upon his aunt to set a superb example of fine, old-fashioned simplicity and industry, but that, after all, was not quite what he had intended. His idea had been simply to let Mimi and her mother see what life was like—real life, without false and unnecessary adornments. He hoped that this glimpse would impress them, that was all, so that it would be easier for him to explain to Mimi later on:
“That’s what I call the right way to live. Plainly, simply—as you saw it out at Green Lake.”
And he did believe that when she actually saw this life in operation, she would admire it. Only, it was important that his Aunt Kate should not be too obviously an example.
There was nothing he could do about it now, though. He had written to his Aunt Kate, and she had come; he had arranged to open the house at Green Lake, and to spend a three weeks’ vacation there, and the house was open, and he was in it; he had invited Mrs. Dexter and Mimi for a fortnight, and they were coming this afternoon. The experiment was about to begin. He could only hope.
But this afternoon he found it difficult to do any really effective hoping. An unaccountable depression had come over him; he stood upon the veranda of this house of his, smoking a pipe, and regarding the scene before him with something very like dismay in his eyes.
He had only seen the house once before, and it seemed to him that his outlook must have been biased then by his pleasure in having inherited a house. Certainly it had looked very different, that first time. It had been midsummer, then, and he remembered standing in this same window and looking out at the lake—a glimpse of glittering water seen through the trees.
It was late September, now, and the leaves were thinner, and he could see the lake very well. Lake? It was a pond—a stagnant and sinister little pond, covered[Pg 403] with scum, the source and the refuge of all these swarms and swarms of mosquitoes. And the house itself, which had seemed so dim and cool and restful on that summer day, was strangely altered now.
His late uncle’s furniture was good, and quite plain enough to suit any one, but it seemed to him that there wasn’t enough of it; the rooms had so bare and desolate a look. And it was damp. He had been here now for a week with his aunt, and she herself said that the dampness had “got into her bones.” He thought that was a good way of putting it; the dampness had got into his bones, too; he had never felt so cold in his life. He was positively shivering with it.
“That’s all nonsense!” he said to himself, angrily. “The mercury’s up to fifty-eight. I can’t be cold!”
He was, though—wretchedly, miserably cold. He sauntered down the hall and stood in the doorway of the kitchen, pretending that he wished to chat with his aunt, but really to be near the stove. It did him no good at all; he felt as cold as ever, and the aroma of the plain dinner—a lamb stew—which Mrs. Boles was cooking, filled him with unaccountable distaste. Such was his mood that Mrs. Boles herself had a chilling appearance; her gray hair seemed frosty; her white apron looked as if it would be icy to touch.
The cuckoo clock in the hall struck three. It was a cantankerous old clock, and when it struck three, it meant a quarter to four; time for him to be off. So off he went, out to the barn where he kept his car, in he climbed, and set off for the railway station.
And it was no use insisting that it was the jolting over bad roads which made him shake so, because the shaking kept on after he had alighted and was waiting on the platform. He was shivering violently; his teeth were chattering; his head ached; he felt horribly ill.
Still, when his guests descended from the train, he greeted them cordially; he clenched his teeth to stop their chattering; he forced his stiff lips into a smile; he talked. He drove them back to the house. And that finished him.
“Mr. Hughes! You have a chill!” cried Mrs. Dexter.
“N-n-no!” he insisted.
But nobody would pay any attention to what he said. He was driven upstairs and ordered to lie down, and Mrs. Boles covered him up with blankets and brought him hot lemonade to drink. He felt so exceedingly miserable that he submitted to all this, but when she mentioned a doctor, he rebelled.
“L-look here!” he said. “I won’t have a doctor! I mean that! I’ll be all right in the morning. I’d be all right now if I had—”
He told Mrs. Boles what he fancied he needed to make him all right, but she sternly disagreed with him. She told him that this remedy he mentioned was simply “poison,” and that hot lemonade was beyond measure more beneficial. And, to be sure, the chill was already passing off, only what took its place was even worse. He now became unbearably hot, burning, and she wouldn’t let him take off a single one of that mound of blankets.
He remembered afterward that he had not been very amiable toward his aunt. He was so humiliated by this weakness, so anxious about his guests; he seemed to remember shouting at her to let him alone, and go downstairs and look after those people. Anyhow, she went, and the instant she was out of sight, he pushed the blankets off onto the floor, and, with a throbbing head, lay back again and closed his eyes.
He heard her come back into the room. She paused near him.
“I tell you I’m all right!” he said, without opening his eyes. “For Heaven’s sake, don’t leave those people alone! Go downstairs—”
“It’s just me,” said the smallest voice. “I thought maybe you’d like a cup of tea.”
It was Mimi, standing there with a tray. He pulled the counterpane up to his chin, and turned away his face; what he really wanted to do was to cover up his head entirely, and not to answer, so that she could neither see nor hear him. But if he did that, she wouldn’t go away, and he had to make her go away immediately. It was unendurable that she should see him like this.
“Oh, thanks!” he said, in an odiously condescending voice. “But there’s nothing much wrong with me. Half an hour’s nap, and I’ll be all right again.”
That put a quick stop to her dangerous sympathy.
“Oh!” she observed. “I thought—I’m sorry I disturbed you, Mr. Hughes!”
And out she went. She was offended;[Pg 404] he knew that, but he had to make her go, at any cost. He could endure almost anything with fortitude, but not the thought of Mimi being sorry for him. He never allowed any one to be sorry for him.
As the door closed behind her, he turned his head. She had left the tray on a chair beside him. On it were a cup and a saucer and a plate of his uncle’s antique china which he had carefully put away. There was thin bread with butter, cut star-shaped and placed just so.
And there were two doilies. No, not doilies; those, at least, she could not find in this house; they were two little lace handkerchiefs spread out.
And he was ill, helpless, unable to combat with any vigor this insidious attack. In the gathering dusk he lay propped up on one elbow, looking at those terrifying handkerchiefs.