V
“Ethel!” cried a voice.
It was the voice of the one person who would understand and help and solace her—a voice she could never hear again in this world, strong, tender, and clear.
“Oh, mother!” she cried.
“Ethel!”
It came again, and not the voice of a spirit, but real, and close at hand.
“It’s some one in that taxi,” whispered Ladislaw. “Better not answer.”
“But it’s grandmother!” said Ethel, astounded.
She flew to the old lady like a stone from a catapult.
“Grandmother, what are you doing here?” she demanded, wild with delight and relief.
“Nothing!” replied the old lady serenely. “Present your friend to me.”
“I—” began Ethel.
Ladislaw was already there, hat in hand.[Pg 128]
“Mr. Metz, grandmother,” she said.
“Ah! Mr. Metz!” the old lady repeated, looking thoughtfully at him. Her calm old eyes seemed terrible to him. “Are you leaving?” she asked.
He hesitated for a moment. Then he remembered that Ethel had never seemed to regard her grandmother as especially important. She was old, and poor, and obscure; what harm could she do?
“Yes,” he said. “Ethel and I are going to be married. She’s already sent a telegram to her aunt in the city, to tell her.”
“You are a rash young man,” said the old lady, in a tone almost friendly.
“Rash?” he repeated, with a faint frown.
“Very!” said she. “It is a surprise to me, because I see that you are not American. Americans marry that way—for love; but with the people of Europe, it is often different. They think of how they shall live. They wish a dot—a dowry—something more than love. It is very beautiful, this; because the poor little Ethel will never have anything.”
Metz was too much taken aback to be discreet.
“But she will!” he said. “Her aunt will—”
“Her aunt has only the income of an estate. She leaves nothing to Ethel; and certainly she gives nothing to Ethel when she is the wife of Mr. Metz.”
“But I thought—” he began.
Suddenly the frail little old creature blazed into magnificent wrath.
“Be off!” she cried, raising her hand in a threatening gesture. “Away with you, miserable, beggarly fortune hunter! Wolf! Bestia! Be off!”
He started back. She leaned out of the window, her voice wonderfully strong and vigorous for her years. As he retreated, even above the roar of the incoming train, he heard her only too plainly, and was aware that other people heard her, too.
“Beggarly fortune hunter! Wolf! Bestia! Away with you!”
He was glad to climb on board.
The taxi went hastening back along the dark, still roads, and the old lady held the sobbing Ethel tight in her arms.
“But what is there to cry about?” she asked, in tears herself. “Foolish little one! You shall stay with me, my little bird, until you are ready to fly away. There was something put by for you to have—later. You shall have it now, for the singing lessons. Why do you cry, then? You shall sing, I tell you!”
Ethel was silent for a time.
“Grandmother!” she said. “The first time you called me—it sounded—I thought it was—mother!”
The old lady’s arm tightened about her.
“It is the same voice,” she said.[Pg 129]
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
DECEMBER, 1923
Vol. LXXX NUMBER 3
Benedicta
AND HOW SHE DISCOVERED JUST WHAT IT WAS THAT SHE HAD ALWAYS WANTED
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
WHEN the charming prince at last cut his way through the enchanted forest, and set foot in that silent palace, the sleeping beauty was delighted to be waked with a kiss. It is not difficult, however, to imagine some beauties who would prefer to be left in dismal, cobwebby peace—beauties who had grown so used to sleep that waking would be a pain and a shock. It is pitiful to think of the poor young prince in a case like that—except that princes are almost always fortunate in the end, and probably know that they will be.
The real sleeping beauty, you will perhaps remember, had a spell put on her at her christening by a disgruntled fairy. If ever she touched a distaff, she would prick herself and die. Another and a better fairy interfered, and arranged that, instead of death, an enchanted sleep should overtake the princess; and so it happened. In vain the royal parents prohibited distaffs. Curses are very, very hard to avoid, and the poor, lovely girl did find a distaff, and did prick her finger, and did fall asleep, and so did every other living creature in the palace with her, to stand or sit or lie just where they were for I don’t remember how many years.
Benedicta had nothing to do with fairies, and she wouldn’t have known a distaff if she had seen one; nevertheless, at the time when this story begins, she had been going about for years in a sort of enchanted slumber. She didn’t know that it was a slumber. She called it dignity, and pride, and so on, and clung most tenaciously to her twilight existence.
She was a tall, disdainful creature, very pretty, if you had the courage to look at her; but the people of Elderfield were so well used to her that they had no particular wish to look at her. She was simply Miss Benedicta Miller, from the old Miller place, and the Millers had ceased to be interesting long before she was born.
They had been rich, but now they were poor. They were very tiresome about it, too, keeping up a moldy, lamentable sort of state in their dilapidated house, turning up their noses at every one new and friendly, and being frightfully sensitive toward all the “old” people who offered them any courtesy.
There were only two of them left now—Benedicta and her father. Mr. Miller had grown so sensitive and squeamish and absurd that he was practically invisible, and was very nearly forgotten. The more he saw that he was forgotten, the more hurt and resentful he became, and the less would he come out into the world.
Some one had to come out, however. They couldn’t be Robinson Crusoes on a farm where nothing grew any more. They had to buy what they wanted, and, to do so, Benedicta had to go to the village.
This she did two or three times a week in a little car, beautifully polished and cared for, as she cared for everything. She would come rattling down Main Street, and no amount of jouncing could make her look anything but dignified, just as no hat, however old and unbecoming, could destroy the beauty of her proud little head and fine features. She would enter a shop and give a pitiful little order; and because she remembered what a wonderful family the Millers had once been, and because she was so miserable at their present eclipse, and so ashamed of herself for being miserable, she would be quite cold and curt.
Then home she would go, to her father, who always asked her what was the news. She knew what sort of news he wanted to[Pg 131] hear—that some one had inquired about him, or sent a message; but no one did that any more.
They would sit down to a meager little lunch cooked by the cheapest servant obtainable. Though Benedicta herself could have cooked one ten times better, it would have choked them. Even the heartbreaking bills that came had to be presented to Mr. Miller on a silver tray.
Benedicta admired her father beyond measure, and agreed with him that the only self-respecting thing for them was to hide their shameful poverty from the rest of the world; but he was fifty, and she was only twenty-three, so that sometimes she was not able to find quite the same satisfaction in solitary pride that he did. She kept up the tradition splendidly, but she didn’t always relish it.
For instance, when that Wilkinson girl had come to see her, uninvited and unencouraged, she had found it difficult to be courteously disagreeable every instant. She had to be constantly reminding herself that the Wilkinsons were impossible people who had been retail grocers when the Millers were in their prime. She had also had to remind herself that this jolly, friendly girl was not, could not be, really friendly, but had doubtless come to spy upon their poverty and to laugh about it afterward.
When, from the window, she had watched her visitor drive off in a smart little roadster, tears came to Benedicta’s eyes—not tears of envy, but of genuine regret that the pride of the Millers forbade her to like Miss Wilkinson. Her life seemed duller and mustier than ever.