MATT MILLIKEN'S IMPROVEMENTS
The teacher of the Riverboro district school sat behind her desk, correcting compositions. The twenty-eight pupils, varying in age from four to fifteen, had departed, and Undine Berry had opened the windows wide in order that the last trace of them should be dispersed. Each separate pupil was a clean, healthy, country girl or boy, but collectively they exhaled an odor of muddy shoes and rubbers, lead and slate pencils, concealed doughnuts or cookies, peppermint lozenges, boxes of angleworms for bait, and other necessary accompaniments to the acquisition of knowledge.
There was room for occasional discouragement on the part of a district school-teacher in a small Maine village. Out of Undine's twenty-eight there were nine to be taught their "letters." There was a group struggling in arithmetic from fractions to percentage; there were toilers in the labyrinths of grammar, but Undine's task to-day was more than usually exasperating, for the superintendent had put a new plan in operation with a view of obtaining better results in the way of compositions.
"If the children understand fully what they read, Miss Berry, they will be better able to write freely, when the occasion comes. For next week's compositions, Miss Berry, instead of calling upon them for creative work, give them fifteen minutes without previous notice, and ask them to write from memory any verses they have read or recited this term. You will then discover the influence of certain poems upon their imagination and be able to tell how correctly they can recall them for you."
The acid test had been applied that day, and the disheveled results were on the desk in front of the teacher, whose glance was directed to the few lines contributed by a certain freckle-faced Tommy Mixter, who was perhaps the sharpest and most active thorn in Miss Berry's tender flesh. Tommy's half-hour of agonized effort had produced this brief and inspired result:
Lines to a Frinjed Water Foul
I tear her teetered end side down!
Dear Teacher.
This is all I can remember of it though I liked the peace when Jim Thompson resited it. TOMMY.
Undine Berry had no sense of humor, or this gem would have given her sufficient joy to last through the afternoon; she was only irritated that such dullness could exist in any human being. Had not the stirring lines of "Old Ironsides" been recited on three successive Fridays? Had not Jim Thompson roared, "Aye! tear her tattered ensign down!" with appropriate gestures and been loudly applauded? Had she not explained what an ensign was, and that "Ay" was pronounced like "I" and "Aye" like "A"?
The teacher glanced out of the window now and then, noting in the distance a little cottage covered with vines and a somewhat-too-stout young man working in a flower garden. Some of the fragrant products of his growing were in a tumbler on her desk at the present moment, having been plucked by his own hand, tied neatly with twine, protected by a portion of the Lewiston Journal, and sent by the hand of the aforesaid Tommy, whose outward mien was respectful, but who declared in secret conclave that Matt Milliken was "stuck on teacher."
Undine herself was distinctly aware of this fact, but she was so discreet, so impartial, in her treatment of Riverboro's masculine eligibles—above all, so uncertain of her own attitude in this particular matter—that the coupling of her name with that of Matt Milliken had never been heard, even by the school committee.
"To be Mrs. Matthew Milliken is one thing," thought Undine as she moved her chair out of sight of the young gardener, who was doing more gazing than weeding, "but what would they say at home in Greenford if I married a farmer in a one-horse village? I wonder if he'd be able to keep a hired girl for me. If I had to cook three meals a day and wash dishes the rest of the time, I might as well teach school, though goodness knows that's a dog's life!—I'd like to put these compositions in the stove and set a match to them! Even after they are corrected, I've got to study three pages of geometry to keep ahead of Jim Thompson. The good scholars are a sight more trouble than the stupid ones, after all."
She could bear her work no longer, and opening the desk to fling in the offending papers, she closed it with a bang, shook the dust of toil from her white dress, put on her broad-brimmed hat and white silk gloves, took a green parasol from the closet, locked the school door behind her thankfully, and strolled away on her homeward walk to Mrs. Wilkins's boarding-house.
She had to pass the Millikens' cottage. There was no other way to go; the most determined gossip would allow that. And everybody knew that Matthew had always worked in the flower garden just before supper-time. She supposed he had other duties, but at all events, between nine and four he was always in his garden, on his front steps, sitting in his open barn door, or washing the top buggy which to her was one of his greatest attractions.
As she drew nearer now, she could see him wipe his forehead, pull down his vest, and brush the dirt from his hands. Then he came toward the gate and leaned over it with a pink cabbage rose in his hand.
"How'll that do to put in your belt?" he asked genially. "Looks to me as if it had growed a-purpose for that partic'ler spot." There was open, almost violent admiration in his eyes.
"Thank you, Mr. Milliken, it's lovely; and I must thank you, too, for the sweet peas you sent me by Tommy this morning. They look so nice on my desk. I've had rather a hard day."
"I bet you have!" Matt responded fervently. "Landsakes! I'd rather lay bricks for a livin' than ram book-learnin' into that set o' kids. I'd learn 'em with a switch if I was the teacher!"
"Oh! I don't need any switch to keep order," said Undine sweetly. "I'm supposed to be rather good at discipline."
"I bet you be! Some o' the teachers suits the parents, and others suits the children. You 'pear to have 'em both under control. The little ones like to look at you same as they would a picture-book, an' the big boys would lay right down an' let you tread on 'em."
"I'm glad if it seems that way." This was said with touching modesty. "Of course I couldn't manage those great, strong boys by force."
"You bet you couldn't! We had a husky young college feller teachin' here last year, and the boys fit him the whole time—lockin' him out o' the schoolhouse, hidin' his hat, havin' coughin' spells in study hour, stuffin' the stove pipe with hay, and the land knows what! He's given up teachin' now an' is trainin' for nurse in a lunatic asylum. Says he knows what he's up against and likes the work better."
"I shouldn't care to have anything to do with crazy folks," remarked Undine sententiously.
Matt laughed, showing his handsome teeth. "You may have to, first thing you know, for everybody round here is crazy about you, though they ain't gone to asylums yet!"
Undine could do no less than smile and blush at such a neat compliment. "It's a real nice place, Riverboro; the people are so pleasant."
"You like it, do you?" asked Matt with obvious eagerness.
Undine cooled suddenly. "Oh, yes! But I'm real quick at making myself at home wherever I am. I have to be, to get any variety out of life. Of course I can't afford to teach in such a small place as this very long."
Matt's face suddenly clouded. "I didn't think of that," he said, taking off his hat. "It is a small place for such as you, and I suppose Greenford is a real gay town—sociables, dances, and all that sort of thing?"
"Yes, Greenford is considered very lively, and there's a great deal of wealth there—the cotton mills, you know. Then I often go to Portland and Brunswick."
Mrs. Milliken suddenly appeared at the screen door. "Good-afternoon, Miss Berry. I'm baking a little something for supper and can't leave my oven. The kitchen's so hot I won't ask you inside, but if you an' Matthew'll set down under the big ellum, I'll bring you both out a try-cake in a minute."
"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Milliken, but I'm afraid I ought to be going. I'll be late to supper, as it is."
"You just set right down," called Mrs. Milliken, "an' I'll show you a one-egg cake that'll deceive you into thinkin' it's made with four, if it's et hot. Then Matt'll walk down as fur as the store with you and bring me back a can of baking-powder."
"He might as well see all there is to see in her, and know all there is to know, which is mighty little, or I miss my guess!" said the old lady to herself as she took a straw out of the broom to try the cake. "Mebbe then he'll get her out of his system; though them pink and white paper-doll girls do have a way of keepin' holt of men-folks."
Ten minutes later Matthew and Undine were walking down the hill while Mrs. Milliken watched them from behind the parlor curtains.
Undine Berry was a beauty, there was no denying that! Her hair was spun gold, breaking into bewitching little waves and curls round her temples, her ears, and the nape of her neck. Her skin was perfect, her hands and feet small, her figure lovely. A person (female) intent upon finding flaws would have said her features were rather immature and meaningless and that her eyes, though of heaven's own blue in color, were a little cold and calculating, but Matthew Milliken saw no flaws. He thought of her as something so exquisite that he would have liked to put her under a glass case on his parlor melodeon. If only he could get far enough in friendship to fathom her likes and dislikes, her desires, her ambitions, so that he might guess whether there was any chance for a clumsy creature like himself to win her love! But he scarcely knew how to set about such a task. Every time he advanced, she seemed to retreat a little to fastnesses of thought where he was not at home.
"Some folks don't seem to hold up their heads before the public nor care how their buildings look," Undine commented severely, as they passed a poor little house, forlorn, unpainted, lacking clapboards and shingles.
"Well, a man has got to have a little money saved up, have good health, and work night and day to keep up his farm nowadays," said Matthew. "If my father hadn't left me an awful good piece of land, forty acres of it, with fifteen in woodland, as well as something to go on with till I was big enough to take hold for myself, I don't know how I'd 'a' come out—and my place isn't rightly kep' up, either; I know it. I intend to begin improvin' it this summer. I've got a man comin' to work through hayin' time, I'll get skilled help inside, and you'll see a reg'lar palace when you come back, Undine—There!"—and he checked himself and grew red in the face, as he added: "Your front name slipped out before I thought. I suppose you wouldn't let me call you 'Undine,' would you, Miss Berry?"
"Well, I don't think it would sound quite proper, Mr. Milliken—at any rate, in public. You see, people might talk, and other young men would be asking the same privilege. I always think it makes a girl appear sort of common, corresponding with gentlemen, giving away her photographs, and being called by her first name on a few weeks' acquaintance."
"Would you feel the same about calling me 'Matthew,' if there wasn't anybody 'round?" he stammered.
"To tell the truth, I don't feel as if we'd been friends long enough for me to call you 'Matthew'—yet—Mr. Milliken. I am so unlike other girls. Sometimes I wish I wasn't. I am so reserved, so unsuited to the life I'm living. Mother says she must have guessed what I was going to be like when she named me Undine."
They were leaning over the bridge-rail now, looking into the foamy rapids of the Saco, as thousands of other young couples had leaned and looked in all the years since the river began to run.
"Most everybody round here is named out of the Bible," said Matthew. "Look at our neighborhood. There's Mark Hobson, Luke Dunn, John Briggs, and me to represent the apostles; there's a Samuel, a Josiah, a David, an Elijah, and a Jeremiah, an' by George! there's a Sarah, a Naomi, an' a Rachel! I looked through the Old Testament last evening to find your name, but I couldn't!"
"Oh, no!" said Undine, in a tone conveying her idea that the Bible was a rather second-class source for names. "I was called Undine out of a fairy story that everybody was reading when mother was a girl. Undine was not a real woman, she was a water-sprite, and a knight named Lord Huldbrand found her standing in a brook in the forest and fell in love with her. She had been found on the river bank and brought up by a fisherman and his wife. She loved the knight and married him, and after a long time she turned from a water-sprite into a woman, for love had given her a soul!"
Here the narrator's blue eyes tried to convey mysterious things to the bridge-rail, over which they were thoughtfully bent. "It is a beautiful story. I'll lend it to you if you like."
"I ain't much of a reader, but I want that book as quick as I can get it. Can I come over to-morrow? I can't hardly take it in at first hearin', but I want to understand everything you do, and think, and feel, Undine. I want—"
There would have been an offer of marriage on the bridge at that moment, had not Jim Thompson approached swiftly and hung over the rail beside them in friendly fashion, confident—being young and artless—of a hearty welcome.
Undine was distinctly grateful for the interruption, for she was not in the least ready to say yes or no to the question of all questions, so she bade Matthew good-night with a smile that almost overthrew his reason, and hastened home to supper.
Meantime Matthew, forgetting the baking-powder, hurried back to his mother, went to the pasture for the cows, milked them, set the milk in the dairy, and then stalking into the kitchen where Mrs. Milliken was scalding the pails and pans, called out,
"Say! Where's the dictionary, mother?"
"On the top shelf of the china closet in the dining-room, where it was when your father died. I guess nobody ever has took it down since."
Matthew found the book, brought it back to a chair under the light, and began to turn the pages. "Gosh!" he ejaculated. "I guess I ain't looked in it sence I left school."
"What word is it you want, Matthew?"
"Water-sprite. Will it be under 'water' or 'sprite,' do you think?"
"Well, you know how to spell and define water fast enough. Why don't you look under 's' for sprite?"
"How do you spell it? I can't find it. Mebbe the dictionary's too old."
"It's Webster, Matthew. Webster don't age, at least any to hurt. I suppose it's s-p-r-i-g-h-t, ain't it, like light and sight and might and fight?"
"Don't seem to be here," said Matthew. "What is a water-sprite, mother, anyhow?"
"I don't know, my son, but I should surmise it's a kind of bug that breeds in the water."
"Well, you guess wrong, for Undine Berry's mother named her out of a fairy story, and Undine was a water-sprite and no bug! Here it is, now. It ain't spelled like 'fight,' it is 's-p-r-i-t-e,' and it means a 'spirit.'"
"Why didn't they call it so, then?" asked Mrs. Milliken. "Everybody knows 'spirit' an' nobody ever heard o' 'sprite'!"
"Well, we've learned something new, anyway, mother. I tell you a dictionary is a great book, and I'm going to keep it on the parlor table from now on."
"Not on the marble-top, Matt, for the table is dreadful weak in the legs. You don't seem to get time to do chores in the house this summer. The tall clock don't strike right, the west window in the parlor won't open good, and there's a pane o' glass broken."
"I've been too busy with the garden and my barn work, and I ain't felt so lively as common," apologized Matt, "but I'm goin' to turn over a new leaf and start right in improvin' this place. We've got money in the bank and plenty of timber big enough to sell, with a lot o' young growth comin' on besides, and there ain't any reason why we shouldn't put on a little mite o' style. I'd like some fresh paint inside and out, new-fashioned wall-paper, and water brought into the kitchen from the well—that much for a start, and more as I get goin' and can see how I can improve."
"I think that's a good plan, Matthew," said his mother, who was knitting quietly in her rocker. "And while the house is all upside down and workmen in it, why couldn't I go and make Lorenzo and Lulu a little visit in Vermont? Could you spare me all right?"
"Sure I could! Maria Snow would come in and clear me up once a week and cook me a batch of victuals, and I could go to Mrs. Wilkins's and get a meal now and then; she's taking transients. I've got Bill Benson comin' Monday to help with milkin' and hayin', you know, but he can board himself. I'll sleep in the shed-chamber while you're gone, so the workmen can have a free hand. Jiminy, mother, we'll give a jamboree after harvestin'! I declare I'm all het up over the idea of our improvements."
"Well, I only hope they'll turn out to be improvements," his mother answered serenely. "Anyhow you're a young man and likely to live in the house the rest of your life. You'd ought to have it to suit you, Matthew, and make it nice for a wife and children in comin' years."
Matthew blushed to the roots of his hair, and as he took his candle and started for the back stairs, he turned and said, like a shy schoolboy: "I was kind o' thinkin' o' them myself, mother, that's the truth. Though," he added with a laugh, "I don't know exactly who they be, nor what they'll look like."
Mrs. Milliken locked the shed door, turned out the lamp, then lighted her own candle preparatory to going to her little bedroom opening out of the kitchen.
"I guess the man that wrote, 'They also serve who only stand and wait,' knew something about mothers!" she said to herself.
Matthew, young, strong, big-hearted, simple-minded, was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. His waking hours were filled with certain confusions and perplexities, but these vanished in sleep, and his dreams were rose-colored, for he was utterly in love, and with an angel.
Tommy Mixter, aged twelve, at this moment the life and soul of a clump of small boys on the loafers' bench at the Riverboro end of the bridge, knew Undine Berry better than Matthew Milliken did, but Tommy was too young to be smitten by feminine beauty, and he was a keen judge of character. His ears had been snapped by Miss Berry's thumb and finger more than once, and he particularly disliked the way her lips were set when she called him up to ferrule him in the face of the whole school.
"For nothin' at all, neither," he was wont to say. "O' course she ain't got strength enough to hurt a skeeter, an' her dress is so tight she don't dass put on any steam for fear she'll bust it, but she'd lam you good if she knew how! Matt Milliken will be toein' the mark himself by fall, an' I won't have to lug any more o' his flowers to the next teacher, that's one good thing!"
Undine prepared herself for bed that night with a trifle more care than usual, punctuating each move in the operation by long studies of her charming self in the looking-glass, which was of poor quality and never did her entire justice. Her hair was the first subject of admiration, as she brushed the golden mop and held it up to glow in the full light of her kerosene lamp.
"It might land me 'most anywheres, my hair," she thought, "even in the moving pictures. They say a star can get along without any talent if she has the right kind of hair and wears her clothes well. I never had a chance to try on handsome dresses, but I guess my shape is as good as any of the stars I've seen. And my face wouldn't need any smoothing out nor touching up, for it's worrying that makes wrinkles, and I never was a worrier. Let other folks do the worrying, is my motto."
Undine, as she looked admiringly at her hair and skin and figure with the aid of a hand mirror, never once discovered that her nose was just the least little bit inclined to be flat. Her lips were red, but the line of her mouth had no lovable, generous curves. Her eyes were so blue that they rivaled sapphires, but they never suffused with tears, nor danced with merry sparkles of fun, nor looked deep, deep into other eyes, revealing all sorts of true, tender, unspeakable things. No, her eyes were a magnificent color and would last her to a good old age, but she would never see visions with them.
Nevertheless there was something in Matthew Milliken's personality that threatened the heretofore dominating influence of life, as it was lived in moving pictures. His youthful strength and manly presence stirred her heart just a trifle, and also his obvious passion for her had its effect.
There had been a moment that afternoon when she, who was ordinarily so self-centered, could not help noticing how the dog nestled his nose softly into Matt's hand; how the cat kept creeping round his legs, hunching its back and rubbing its ears till it got the stroke under the chin that it was wishing for; how the Jerseys came up to the bars to greet him. She had once seen him at milking time and noted how still the cows stood in the stalls, giving their milk tranquilly at the touch of his steady, kind hands. Yes, he would be good to live with, but he didn't dress well and looked worse on Sundays than he did in his working clothes. She liked the things he said, and the way he looked at her and complimented her, but there were sad lapses in his grammar. And how would he appear in company, if she succeeded in dragging him away from this one-horse village and establishing him where her beauty would have a larger audience?
She didn't know; she could not be sure. Why was it that a really "stylish" man from a large city never came across her path? If one ever did arrive, she felt sure that her heart, which had never in its life beat faster than normal, might carry her to a swift, sure decision. Meantime she was twenty and would soon be "walking down the western slopes of life," Mrs. Wilkins's metaphor for unmarried ladies over five and twenty.
"Sometimes I fear I shan't be able to stave Matt off till the end of the term," thought Undine. "That's what I'd rather do, for I'm certain to spend part of my vacation in Portland, where I always meet good society, and one can never tell what will happen. I don't want to see too much of him for fear I'll get to liking him and won't be able to settle matters for my best good. I wonder if his mother supposes I don't see through her and her 'try-cakes'? She hates me like poison, that woman does, because she knows I wouldn't fetch and carry for Matt the way she does!"
These reflections concluded, Undine went to bed and slept peacefully.
June was a trying month that year. The weather was unusually warm, and an outbreak of measles among the children interfered with Undine's preparations for the last day of school. She had several drives and moonlight walks with Matthew Milliken, and she had nearly succeeded in keeping him within bounds.
As she had perfect command of herself, and as he was simply dumb with love—shy, too, and full of fears at putting his fate to the touch too soon—he had not been able to speak his heart out and ask her "punctilió"—a favorite word of his mother's—if she would marry him in the autumn. He had awakened every morning determined to do it, and he had gone to bed every night without having succeeded. He assured himself that he had made some little headway on certain occasions that he recalled with burning cheeks in the solitude of his own room. He had held her hand for several minutes once when they were sitting under the pines on the river bank, but his enjoyment had been sadly incomplete, because he had been terror-stricken every second for fear she would take it away. He had been obliged to make the move himself finally because of the arrival of a large picnic party, the members of which he still regarded with fierce animosity.
Then—oh, never-to-be-forgotten moment of supreme bliss!—with a courage born of despair he had kissed her on Mrs. Wilkins's steps after Wednesday evening prayer-meeting. If she had not returned the caress as fully as he could have wished, at least she had not withdrawn herself in anger. It was at that moment that, made more daring by the remembrance that she was leaving the village for her vacation, he pleaded:
"Undine, haven't I waited long enough for an answer? I can't expect you to love me as I love you, but just give me a word to live on till you come back!"
"I don't hardly know what to say," she murmured, reaching up to see if she had lost her pearl earring. "I like you better than anybody I've ever seen, but I wish you'd let me think it over these next two months. I'm not sure I'm fitted to be a farmer's wife. I've never done any housework, you know, Matthew."
Oh! how fragile, how plaintive, how in need of all a man's strength she looked in the moonlight!
"Why, Undine, do you s'pose I'd let you spoil your pretty hands with rough work? I'll always be there to stand between you and the hard parts, and you shall have a hired girl to wait on you every minute of the day. Besides, you don't know the improvements I'm going to make in my premises. The house is going to beat anything there is in Riverboro or Edgewood. While I'm gettin' ready for you, Undine, won't you be gettin' ready for me?"
"You domineering man, you!" she whispered, playing with the lapels of his coat, "teasing me into saying 'yes' against my will! I suppose you must go ahead with your improvements and let me see them when I come back. I am sure it'll be all right!"
"Seal your promise with a kiss?" Matthew whispered, and it is difficult to see how Undine could have evaded the direct issue, even had she wished, had not Mrs. Wilkins, opening a window, called out,
"The door-key is under the rug, Undine."
Whereupon Matthew, who was concealed by the thick foliage of the maples, opened the gate softly and sped homeward on the wings of love. She had said to go ahead, that it would be all right. That settled it.
He had looked forward to another and a fonder parting when he should take Undine to the station on Friday, but on Thursday, when he went rapturously to Biddeford to engage paperers, painters, and plumbers, the school committee voted to give up the closing exercises on account of illness in the school, and Undine promptly took the train for Greenford, leaving a note for Matthew to the effect that she had been called home suddenly, as her stepfather wanted her to go to Albany with him on a business trip.
This was in the nature of a blow, but only a slight one, after all, a disappointment that in no wise affected their relations or their tacit compact with each other; so Matthew plunged into a series of fourteen-hour days of work on his improvements. No man, no three men, could keep up with him. He was omnipresent and untiring, and the labor progressed so rapidly that the village could not restrain its curiosity, all the gentlemen of leisure passing their time in the vicinity of the Milliken house, ready to furnish suggestions or to act as brakes upon inadvisable changes.
Meantime no letters passed between the lovers save one note from Undine written in high spirits on the train to Albany. Matt had intended to go to Greenford every second Sunday during the summer, to report progress and keep the slightly unsteady flame of her affection from going out. The Albany visit put a stop to that, of course, and he felt a little helpless as the weeks ran by. He had not the pen of a ready writer, and Undine had once said playfully that she was a bad correspondent and didn't intend to touch either pen or pencil in vacation. Finally Matt spent two hours of strenuous work with the dictionary and wrote to his beloved in Greenford with directions to forward the missive if she were not there. It was a letter that would have melted a heart of stone, though viewed as a composition she would have marked it C4.
Then he plunged into the improvements again. His mother wrote approval of the samples of wall-paper he had sent her, and thanked him for selecting the little gray trellis pattern with pink roses on it for her own bedroom, advising him not to work too hard, for Maria Snow had written he was looking pale.
"I hope he'll look paler still," thought the crafty old lady, "for that'll mean he can't get that water-sprite to marry him, and he'll take sick and want me to come home to nurse him!"
He showed no signs of "taking sick" however, and it seemed, in his frenzy for improvements, that the Evil One had selected him as a victim. The color of the new paint on the house did not please a single inhabitant of the village, and what was even more regrettable, it did not suit Matthew himself. It was far too green, and the bright yellow blinds suggested by the artist who was doing the work, were felt by all to be a public insult. The fence, too, had to be of the same colors, either separate or mixed, as there was plenty of paint for the purpose, and the scenery in the vicinity, on a bright day in late August, sank into insignificance as compared with the Milliken premises when finished. The misguided youth had screened in the little piazza with wire netting and put a high-power electric bulb in the ceiling.
"He ain't intendin' to do no courtin' there, that's one thing certain," said Maria Snow. "I guess he's goin' to read the Portland papers out loud to Undine summer evenin's. He's planned light enough to see the small print in the telephone directory."
He took out the beautiful Colonial front door with the fanlight over it, always greatly admired by summer visitors, and installed one of stained pine with a large square of glass in it adorned with inside curtains of Nottingham lace tied back with yellow ribbons. That was Maria Snow's idea.
"It looks dressy," she said, "and if you're goin' to keep up with the procession, you've got to keep up, that's all; though I do think, Matthew, you might have left your grandfather's stone steps, if only for the sake of the old toad that's lived under 'em for fifty years to my certain knowledge."
The stone steps were worn and chipped, however, and had settled down on one side, while the path to the front door was not the kind suitable for high-heeled slippered feet, so steps and walk were changed to cement, smooth, dry, and hideously inappropriate to the little farmhouse.
"There's folks say you're goin' to be married, Matt, with all these improvements," said Bill one day.
"Well, mebbe I be," Matt said laconically, "and mebbe mother and me are goin' to take boarders. The neighbors can take their choice."
Then came a day when the workmen picked up their tools and left, and Maria Snow swept and scrubbed and cleaned up after them, and Matt went out in the barn and filled his pipe and tilted his chair back and took an hour to think for the first time in two months. For days he had tried the new kitchen pump every few hours, for Bill had declared it would never work right, since the well was ten feet lower than the sink, and it stood to reason that water wouldn't run uphill. This exercise was varied by the experimental turning on and off of sixteen electric lights in barn and house, including the parlor chandelier, which always had a hypnotic effect on him when he sat on the haircloth sofa and gazed fixedly at it for some moments.
"I kind o' miss mother's lamp with the glass danglers and the piece o' red flannin' in the kerosene," he thought, "but Undine'll light up something splendid in this room, so't everybody'll see how han'some she is!"
And then he would go out to the barn again, for there was really nothing to do but wait. On the second of September he could stand the strain no longer. He must see her even if he had to go to Albany, where he had never been invited, and which seemed to him the Antipodes. Matt was simple, there's no denying it. He trusted anybody he loved. She had said go ahead with the improvements and it would be all right. She had let him kiss her and hold her hand. He was so incorrigibly high-minded and so unversed in worldly wisdom that these facts simply clinched any arguments that seemed to point in another direction. The Committee expected her to open the school on the next Monday, and this was a Thursday. He knew he could not telephone to Greenford without its being noised about in both villages, so he took his horse and drove to Wareham to pay some bills, make some purchases, and telephone from a drug store where he wasn't known. He got the post-master at Greenford, who said the Berrys had returned the night before, bringing company with them, but they didn't answer the telephone, and he thought they must be gone off somewhere in their new motor.
This news put Matthew in a panic. Undine would be bringing her people over to Riverboro to see him, and he was away from home. He was a merciful driver, but the horse had to make eleven miles in forty minutes. Nearing his house, which was visible a long distance away, he saw no sign of activity, no motor in evidence. The barn was closed; Bill was not sitting on the piazza as usual. He remembered then that he had sent Bill home for a few days. He drove up to the hitching post, tied the horse, and went up the cement walk so as to get used to it. As he neared the steps, he saw an envelope stuck under the new stained door. There had never been one there before in all his twenty-three years of life, never!
He knew it had been put there by Undine, and he knew what was in it. His was not an alert mind, and up to this moment he had not harbored a single suspicion of the girl's treachery. He looked long and hard at the envelope; then he unhitched the horse, watered and fed him, put him in the stall, and closed the barn. He went into the house through the piazza and the side entrance, turning the key in the lock behind him, took off his hat, traveled through the kitchen and sitting-room to the front hall, drew the letter from under the front door, pulled down the green shades in the front windows, and sat down to read his doom. He didn't need to be told what was in the letter. He merely wanted to know how Undine put the case; how she apologized for breaking a man's heart, hurting his pride, and crushing his spirit. He tore open the envelope, and this was what he read:
AT THE SCHOOLHOUSE, RIVERBORO
Sept. 2nd, 19—
DEAR MR. MILLIKEN:
I came back to tell the School Committee that I am not going to teach for them any more. I am sorry you happened to be away in Wareham, for after the superintendent, I wanted you to be the first to know that I am engaged to be married to Mr. Arthur Henderson, a bank clerk in Albany, whom father and I met while staying at the Dupont Hotel there. I didn't write you about it before because talking is so much more satisfactory, and I kind of hated to write anyway, for fear you would blame me for holding out hopes I could not satisfy. I really tried to like you well enough to marry you and live in Riverboro ["Like!" groaned poor Matt], but a country place is not to my taste, and somehow I could not make up my mind, perhaps because I was never taken off my feet till I met with Mr. Henderson. It was love at first sight on both sides in the hotel dining-room.
I hope you did not consider I had really promised anything, for you must have seen I was never crazy about you the way a girl ought to be when she is meaning to settle down and marry a man. Please do not hold any hard thoughts, for I am not the one for you, nor you the one for me. True love has developed me a great deal and I see things more clearly than I did last summer.
I asked Bill—don't know his other name—to take me over the house, as I thought you would wish me to see the improvements. It is not quite so quaint and home-like as it used to be, but much more convenient. Screening the piazza is a great help in keeping out mosquitoes, but yours is a trifle small, and Bill thinks the wire netting makes it look like a hen-coop. Perhaps it does, but I believe you'll get a great deal of comfort from it.
I am kind of sorry you bricked up the sitting-room fireplace and put in a Franklin stove, for the open fire used to look so cozy last April, do you remember? The wallpapers are very handsome, and how your mother will enjoy the new stove and the pump in the kitchen sink! As for the electric lights, I can fancy how any one will appreciate them who has filled lamps and cleaned chimneys all her life.
I am mentioning every little thing to show you how carefully I looked about, for I want you to feel my interest in it all, even though I am not going to live there, as we thought possibly at one time I might. I have told Arthur that you were the best friend I had in Riverboro, and I should have become homesick and bored to death if it had not been for your kind little attentions. I have said no more about you to him, as, like all true lovers, he is inclined to be just a little jealous! With remembrances to your mother, and with the compliments of the season, I am your sincere friend and well-wisher,
UNDINE BERRY.
P.S. If you should ever pass through Albany, we would like to have you drop in at the Dupont Hotel, where Arthur has taken a suite. The wedding is to-morrow morning in Greenford, and we leave Maine the same afternoon.
U. B.
Matthew tore the letter in bits and, putting it in the kitchen stove, set fire to the fragments. Then he drew down all the shades so that passers-by in the morning would think he had gone away for the day. He did not go upstairs as usual, but went into his mother's room, impelled by some blind, unconscious instinct of needing sympathy. He opened her closet door and put his hand gently on the faded gingham dresses and wrappers she had left behind her. Then, turning down her neat white counter-pane as he had seen her do a hundred times, he flung himself, still dressed, on her bed and, turning to her pillow for comfort, said with a choking voice and a deep-drawn breath,
"Thank God, there's always mothers to fall back on!"
It was such a little room, with one window and all his mother's humble but precious keepsakes on the bureau and dresser, that it soothed him, as he lay there alone until he had struggled with his first sorrow and overcome it. After all, he was but a boy of twenty-three, and he took trouble hard, like a child.
Yes, naturally the affair was a seven days' wonder in Riverboro, but nobody ever knew the rights of it. They thought Matt had been a trifle reckless about his improvements, but then he was of marriageable age and could afford them, though he seemed to be terribly gloomy about them now they were all finished.
They also thought he might be a little mite huffy about Undine Berry's taking up with an Albany man after "going" with him all summer, but that was nothing but guess-work and soon passed out of mind.
The side of the affair that Matthew turned toward his mother can best be told by his own letter to her, which was the longest one he had ever written in his life. He posted it on Saturday night at Wareham, but started for Vermont twenty-four hours later to bring her home.
"You keep house for me, Maria," he said with a forlorn attempt at gayety. "Mind you keep the improvements swept and dusted, and if the motor folks get too fresh, write a sign and hang it on the gate. Make it read: 'We intended this house to be green. If it looks too bright to suit you, drive by fast!'"
RIVERBORO, Sept. 10th, 19—
To MRS. CYRUS MILLIKEN,
Warsaw, Vermont
DEAR MOTHER:
I guess you suspicioned how it was with Undine and me when you offered to go and spend the summer with Lorenzo and his wife in Vermont, and I didn't say nothing to keep you home. It wa'n't that I didn't like to have you round, for I always did, and you know it, but the way I figured it out was, I was going to make so many improvements on the premises that you wouldn't hardly have a rest for the sole of your foot and you would be all fussed up till I got everything to rights.
Well, now, mother, I've got to tell you, nothing has turned out the same as I thought it would. Undine gave me to understand that she liked me first rate, and she knew well enough that I was fascinated with her from the minute I set eyes on her. I could see she thought the house and barn was kind of run down and common-looking, and I figured it out that if I made improvements enough in the premises and got everything fixed up fashionable, she'd marry me when the fall term of school was over. She was young and handsome and had more education than me, and she not being used to housework, I figured it out that I'd make things as easy and pleasant for her as I could, and try to keep up with the band more than you or I was used to.
Well, mother, I was fooled all round, and I guess I ain't the first man, neither. My improvements wouldn't 'a' had any weight with her, though I'd sweated all summer over 'em, even working 4th of July and right through dog-days without hardly sitting down to a square meal or stopping to change my shirt. She'd made up her mind to ship me even before she seen the cement walk and the electric lights and the lace curtain in the front door, which has attracted more attention than a circus ever sence it was put in.
When we said good-bye, she told me to go ahead and it would be all right. I took it as a sacred promise, and oh, mother, it mortifies me to confess how clean gone I was on that girl! The way it turned out was this: I got so upset and worried by not hearing from her by the last of August that I couldn't stand it any longer. If she'd stayed to home in Greenford, I could have drove over every week or two and kept her up to her word, or else, though I was blind as a bat, I might have seen through her; but when I wrote you all the news in July you remember I said, "Undine Berry has gone on a visit to Albany with her father." Well, she stayed in Albany, and she didn't correspond with me but one note and one post-card which I answered to general delivery, having no address. I didn't write her all the grand things I was doing, because her being a school-teacher, I figured it out that she'd catch me up on some mistake in spelling and turn me down cold. Well, mother, she done that anyway all right!
I had gone to Wareham to pay bills and telephone to Greenford where nobody could hear me asking questions about Undine. The school committee was expecting her every train, but she hadn't written to them for weeks. Well, mother, I was gone four hours, and when I come home my heart sunk right down, for the house looked strange to me. I knew something had happened to the premises and to me, and sure enough it was so. I hitched the horse and went up the cement walk, because Undine said once a gentleman should use the front door, and I've done it all summer for practice. I always felt like a fool when I went in that way, and now I've locked it on the inside.
Well, I hadn't taken three steps before I saw a letter poked under the door, and I knew it was all up between me and Undine. I hadn't been looking for it either; it just come to me in a flash. I burned up the letter, but sometime I'll tell you what was in it, though no other living soul shall ever hear it, but my heart kind of curled right up inside of me and ached like it was a tooth.
She didn't give me the mitten in a lady-like way. She wrote a mean, cruel letter, mother; the kind that helped me some, after the first blow. She's married to an Albany bank clerk, and they are living in something she calls a "suite," at a hotel where a lady never has to go into the kitchen. She even had the gall to get Bill Benson to show her all over the house, and by Jiminy, she didn't like the improvements any better than she did me! I wish I hadn't burned the letter now, for I kind o' think I could have laughed over it—in a couple o' years.
This is an awful long letter, but I'm giving up all day Sunday to it and probably shall never write another. I want you to know everything, and I guess I couldn't never tell it by word of mouth, I'd be so ashamed.
I ain't going to pretend I ain't downcasted, for I be! I'd fixed my mind on being snowed in with Undine all winter and setting in front of the new Franklin stove with our feet up on the fender and the electric lights turned on everywheres, for it don't cost no more to burn ten than one, as you pay by the year. I had sold all the cows but one, thinking Undine wouldn't want me to stay in the barn too much; parted with the hog, too, for Undine said they always smell. Perhaps the hog does, but the ham don't, and I'll buy another if you think best.
I think I'd ought to say that mebbe you won't take kindly to some of the improvements yourself, and I don't want to have 'em break on you sudden, which accounts for this letter. You'll like having water brought indoors, and a pump in the kitchen sink, for it will save you lots of steps. You'll be glad of the electrics, because you won't have to fill lamps and clean chimblies every morning. But the color of the house needs getting used to. I wanted it gay and bright for Undine, and by Jiminy, I got it!
You see, I bought the paint wholesale, and when one side of the house was done, folks could see it from Wareham, and I wanted to keep it a house and not turn it into a landmark, so I tried to tone it down. Well, mother, I bought thirty-seven dollars' worth of stuff to tone that paint down, and there warn't no tone-down to it, so as I'd spent so much on it, I figured it out that I'd better give up and let time fade it out. After all, women-folks live more inside of a house than outside, and you're always busy in the back part and don't hear the motors stop when they pass by, and the people in them make remarks.
I cut down one of the ellums by the gate just after you left. I don't know whether you'll miss it, but it blocked the view of the schoolhouse and I couldn't see Undine moving about or working at the blackboard. I wish I had it back, for I don't want no closer view of the teacher they've hired now than I can get from a good ways off.
I've put the dictionary away on the upper shelf of the china closet where father left it. I won't say I've given up all idea of marrying sometime or other, but the girl's got to have a Bible name next time. No more water-sprites for Matt Milliken!
Now, mother, without you like Vermont better'n you do Maine, and Lorenzo and Lulu better'n you do me, take the next train for home. When I get round to it, I shall know you're worth more'n a dozen Undines, though I won't deny I feel awful blue, and never expected to be turned down cold like I have been by Undine Berry, but I was misled by her looks, and that's the gospel truth. I ain't afraid you'll turn me down, mother, without Lorenzo and Lulu want you to winter with 'em awful bad, but I hope they won't, for the neighbors are bound to talk, and I need you more'n I like to write in a letter. It looks kind of foolish, set down in plain black and white.
You can have all the improvements I made, and welcome; and I guess the greatest improvement of the whole caboodle will be the improvement my mother will be on Undine Berry!
Your affec. son
MATTHEW MILLIKEN
THE END