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.