DAYS OF CONVALESCENCE
They were very pleasant to Ethelyn, for with Aunt Barbara anticipating every want, and talking of Chicopee; she could not be very weary. It was pleasant, too, having Richard home again, and Ethie was very soft and kind and amiable toward him; but she did not tell him of the letter she had commenced, or hint at the confession he longed to hear. It would have been comparatively easy to write it, but with him there where she could look into his face and watch the dark expression which was sure to come into his eyes, it was hard to tell him that Frank Van Buren had held the first place in her affections, if indeed he did not hold it now. She was not certain yet, though she hoped and tried to believe that Frank was nothing more than cousin now. He surely ought not to be, with Nettie calling him her husband, while she too was a wife. But so subtle was the poison which that unfortunate attachment had infused into her veins that she could not tell whether her nature was cleared of it or not, and so, though she asked forgiveness for having so literally kept her vow, and said that she did commence a letter to him, she kept back the most important part of all. It was better to wait, she thought, until she could truly say, "I loved Frank Van Buren once, but now I love you far better than ever I did him."
Had she guessed how much Richard knew, and how the knowledge was rankling in his bosom, she might have done differently. But she took the course she thought the best, and the perfect understanding Richard had so ardently hoped for was not then arrived at. For a time, however, there seemed to be perfect peace between them, and could Richard have forgotten Frank Van Buren's words or even those of Ethie herself when her fever was on, he would have been supremely happy. But to forget was impossible, and he often found himself wondering how much of Frank's assertion was true, and if Ethelyn would ever be as open and honest with him as he had tried to be with her. She did not get well very fast, and the color came slowly back into her lips and cheeks. She was far happier than she had been before since she first came to Olney. She could not say that she loved her husband as a true wife ought to love a man like Richard Markham, but she found a pleasure in his society which she had never experienced before, while Aunt Barbara's presence was a constant source of joy. That good woman had prolonged her stay far beyond what she had thought it possible when she left Chicopee. She could not tear herself away, when Ethie pleaded so earnestly for her to remain a little longer, and so, wholly impervious to the hints which Mrs. Markham occasionally threw out, that her services were no longer needed as nurse to Ethelyn, she stayed on week after week, seeing far more than she seemed to see, and making up her mind pretty accurately with regard to the prospect of Ethie's happiness, if she remained an inmate of her husband's family.
Aunt Barbara and Mrs. Markham did not harmonize at all. At first, when Ethie was so sick, everything had been merged in the one absorbing thought of her danger, and even the knowledge accidentally obtained that Richard had paid Miss Bigelow's fare out there and would pay it back, had failed to produce more than a passing pang in the bosom of the close, calculating, economical Mrs. Markham; but when the danger was past, it kept recurring again and again, with very unpleasant distinctness, that Aunt Barbara was an expense they could well do without. Nobody could quarrel with Aunt Barbara--she was so mild, and gentle, and peaceable--and Mrs. Markham did not quarrel with her, but she thought about her all the time, and fretted over her, and remembered the letter she had written about her ways and her being good to Ethie, and wondered what she was there for, and why she did not go home, and asked her what time they generally cleaned house in Chicopee, and if she dared trust her cleaning with Betty. Aunt Barbara was a great annoyance, and she complained to Eunice and Mrs. Jones, and Melinda, who had returned from Washington, that she was spoiling Ethelyn, babying her so, and making her think herself so much weaker than she was.
"Mercy knew," she said, that in her day, when she was young and having children, she did not hug the bed forever. She had something else to do, and was up and around in a fortnight at the most. Her table wasn't loaded down with oranges and figs, and the things they called banannys, which fairly made her sick at her stomach. Nobody was carryin' her up glasses of milk-punch, and lemonade, and cups of tea, at all hours of the day. She was glad of anything, and got well the faster for it. Needn't tell her!--it would do Ethelyn good to stir around and take the air, instead of staying cooped up in her room, complaining that it is hot and close there in the bedroom. "It's airy enough out doors," and with a most aggrieved look on her face, Mrs. Markham put into the oven the pan of soda biscuit she had been making, and then proceeded to lay the cloth for tea.
Eunice had been home for a day or two with a felon on her thumb, and thus a greater proportion of the work had fallen upon Mrs. Markham, which to some degree accounted for her ill-humor. Mrs. Jones and Melinda were spending the afternoon with her, but the latter was up in Ethie's room. Melinda had always a good many ideas of her own, and she had brought with her several new ones from Washington and New York, where she had stayed for four weeks at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. But Melinda, though greatly improved in appearance, was not one whit spoiled. In manner, and the fit of her dress, she was more like Ethelyn and Mrs. Judge Miller, of Camden, than she once had been, and at first James was a little afraid of her, she puffed her hair so high, and wore her gowns so long, while his mother, looking at the stylish hat and fashionable sack which she brought back from Gotham, said her head was turned, and she was altogether too fine for Olney. But when, on the next rainy Sunday, she rode to church in her father's lumber wagon, holding the blue cotton umbrella over her last year's straw and waterproof--and when arrived at the church she suffered James to help her to alight, jumping over the muddy wheel, and then going straight to her accustomed seat in the choir, which had missed her strong voice so much--the son changed his mind, and said she was the same as ever; while after the day when she found Mrs. Markham making soap out behind the corn-house, and good-humoredly offered to watch it and stir it while that lady went into the house to see to the corn pudding, which Eunice was sure to spoil if left to her own ingenuity, the mother, too, changed her mind, and wished Richard had been so lucky as to have fixed his choice on Melinda. But James was far from wishing a thing which would so seriously have interfered with his hopes and wishes. He was very glad that Richard's preference had fallen where it did, and his cheery whistle was heard almost constantly, and after Tim Jones told, in his blunt way, how "Melind was tryin' to train him, and make him more like them dandies at the big tavern in New York," he, too, began to amend, and taking Richard for his pattern, imitated him, until he found that simple, loving Andy, in his anxiety to please Ethelyn, had seized upon more points of etiquette than Richard ever knew existed, and then he copied Andy, having this in his favor: that whatever he did himself was done with a certain grace inherent in his nature, whereas Andy's attempts were awkward in the extreme.
Melinda saw the visible improvement in James, and imputing it rather to Ethelyn's influence than her own, was thus saved from any embarrassment she might have experienced had she known to a certainty how large a share of James Markham's thoughts and affections she possessed. She was frequently at the farmhouse; but had not made what her mother called a visit until the afternoon when Mrs. Markham gave her opinion so freely of Aunt Barbara's petting and its effect on Ethelyn.
From the first introduction Aunt Barbara had liked the practical, straightforward Melinda, in whom she found a powerful ally whenever any new idea was suggested with regard to Ethelyn. To her Aunt Barbara had confided her belief that it was not well for Ethelyn to stay there any longer--that she and Richard both would be better by themselves; an opinion which Melinda heartily indorsed, and straightway set herself at work to form some plan whereby Aunt Barbara's idea might be carried out.
Melinda was not a meddlesome girl, but she did like to help manage other people's business, doing it so well, and evincing so little selfishness in her consideration for others, that when once she had taken charge of a person's affairs she was pretty sure to have the privilege again. When Richard ran for justice of the peace, and she was a little girl, she had refused to speak to three other little girls who flaunted the colors of the opposition candidate; and when he was nominated first for Judge and then as member for the district, she had worked for him quite as zealously as Tim himself, and through her more than one vote, which otherwise might have been lost, was cast in his favor. As she had worked for him, so she now worked for Ethelyn, approaching Richard very adroitly and managing so skillfully that when at last, on the occasion of her visit to his mother's, Aunt Barbara asked him, in her presence and Ethelyn's, if he had never thought it would be well both for himself and wife to live somewhere else than there at home, he never dreamed that he was echoing the very ideas Melinda had instilled into his mind by promptly replying that "he had recently thought seriously of a change," and then asked Ethie where she would like to live--in Olney or in Camden.
"Not Olney--no, not Olney!" Ethelyn gasped, thinking how near that was to her mother-in-law, and shrinking from the espionage to which she would surely be subjected.
Her preference was Davenport, but to this Richard would not listen. Indeed, he began to feel sorry that he had admitted a willingness to change at all, for the old home was very dear to him, and he thought he would never leave it. But he stood committed now, and Melinda followed him up so dexterously, that in less than half an hour it was arranged that early in June Ethelyn should have a home in Camden--either a house of her own, or a suite of rooms at the Stafford House, just which she preferred. She chose the latter, and, womanlike, began at once in fancy to furnish and arrange the handsome apartments which looked out upon Camden Park, and which Melinda said were at present unoccupied. Melinda knew, for only two days before she had been to Camden with her brother Tim and dined at the Stafford House, and heard her neighbor on her right inquire of his vis-à-vis how long since General Martin left the second floor of the new wing, and who occupied it now. This was a mere happen so, but Melinda was one of those to whom the right thing was always happening, the desired information always coming; and if she did contrive to ascertain the price charged for the rooms, it was only because she understood that one of the Markham peculiarities was being a little close, and wished to be armed at every point.
Richard had no idea that Melinda was managing him, or that anyone was managing him. He thought himself that Camden might be a pleasant place to live; as an ex-Judge and M.C. he could get business anywhere; and though he preferred Olney, inasmuch as it was home, he would, if Ethelyn liked, try Camden for a while. It is true the price of the rooms, which Melinda casually named, was enormous, but, then, Ethelyn's health and happiness were above any moneyed consideration; and so, while Mrs. Markham below made and molded the soda biscuit, and talked about dreading the hot weather if "Ethelyn was going to be weakly," Aunt Barbara, and Melinda, and Richard settled a matter which made her eyes open wide with astonishment when, after the exit of the Joneses and the doing up of her work, it was revealed to her. Of course, she charged it all to Aunt Barbara, wishing that good woman as many miles away as intervened between Olney and Chicopee. Had the young people been going to keep house, she would have been more reconciled, for in that case much of what they consumed would have been the product of the farm; but to board, to take rooms at the Stafford House where Ethelyn would have nothing in the world to do but to dress and gossip, was abominable. Then when she heard of the price she opposed the plan with so much energy that, but for Aunt Barbara and Melinda Jones, Richard might have succumbed; but the majority ruled, and Ethelyn's eyes grew brighter, and her thin cheeks rounder, with the sure hope of leaving a place where she had been so unhappy. She should miss Melinda Jones; and though she would be near Mrs. Miller, and Marcia Fenton, and Ella Backus, they could not be to her all Melinda had been, while Andy--Ethelyn felt the lumps rising in her throat whenever she thought of him and the burst of tears with which he had heard that she was going away.
"I can't help thinkin' it's for the wuss," he said, wiping his smooth face with the cuff of his coat-sleeve. "Something will happen as the result of your goin' there. I feel it in my bones."
Were Andy's words prophetic? Would something happen, if they went to Camden, which would not have happened had they remained in Olney? Ethelyn did not ask herself the question. She was too supremely happy, and if she thought at all, it was of how she could best accelerate her departure from the lonely farmhouse.
When Mrs. Markham found that they were really going, that nothing she could say would be of any avail, she gave up the contest, and, mother-like, set herself at work planning for their comfort, or rather for Richard's comfort. It was for him that the best and newest featherbed, weighing thirty pounds and a half to a feather, was aired and sunned three days upon the kitchen roof, the good woman little dreaming that if the thirty-pounder was used at all, it would do duty under the hair mattress Ethelyn meant to have. They were to furnish their own rooms, and whatever expense Mrs. Markham could save her boy she meant to do. There was the carpet in their chamber--they could have that; for after they were gone it was not likely the room would be used, and the old rag one would answer. They could have the curtains, too, if they liked, with the table and the chairs. Left to himself and his mother's guidance, Richard would undoubtedly have taken to Camden such a promiscuous outfit as would have made even a truckman smile; but there were three women leagued against him, and so draft after draft was drawn from his funds in the Camden bank until the rooms were furnished; and one bright morning in early June, a week after Aunt Barbara started for Chicopee, Ethie bid her husband's family good-by, and turning her back upon Olney, turned also the first leaf of her life's history in the West.