Harriet and the Piper

by Kathleen Thompson Norris

The floodgates were loosed, and Linda laughed and cried, while she enjoyed her breakfast with the appetite of a normal woman released from cruel strain, whose whole brood lies safely sleeping under her roof. Nammy's light illness, Pip's wet feet, Linda's unwillingness to believe that it was anything but a cold, every hour of the four awful days of danger, she reviewed them all. And oh, the goodness of people, the solicitude of nurse and doctor, the generosity of God!

"Fred has been a miracle," said Linda, with her third cup of coffee, "this will cost him five hundred dollars, but Harriet, I'll never forget the way his voice rang out yesterday, 'I don't want you to think of anything but giving me back my boy!' And Harriet, only ten days ago--it seems ten years--I felt so terribly, I ACTED so terribly, about that old house that I've been wanting so long! They sold it at auction, and the Paysons got it for forty-three hundred, and I was perfectly sick that Fred wouldn't bid! But now," said Linda, reverently, putting her arm about Josephine, who came yawning into the kitchen, in her blue wrapper, "now, if the Father spares me my girls and boys, and their daddy, I shall never ask anything happier than this! Pip's better, Jo," she said to the child, who was kissing her dreamily, over and over, "they put a tube in his throat last night, and saved him for us! And now Mother must get a bath, and change, and perhaps some sleep, and then go back and stay with him when he wakes up!" It was the afternoon of the next day when Harriet could first speak of her own affairs. Pip, recuperating with the amazing speed of childhood, was asleep, the other children walking, the nurse gone. She could lay the whole matter before Linda, who listened, over her mending, nodded, pursed her lips, or raised her eyebrows.

If Linda might ever have been worldly minded, she had had her lesson now, and the viewpoint she gave Harriet was the lofty one of a woman who has faced a supreme sacrifice without shrinking and with unwavering faith.

"You did right, dear," she assured her sister. "You could not stay there, under the circumstances. Whatever their code is, yours is different, yours has not been vitiated by luxury and idleness. As for Mr. Carter's talk of marriage, that, of course, is simply an insult!"

"No, I don't think it was that," Harriet said, feeling herself revolt inwardly at this plain speaking. She listened to Linda; she knew Linda was right, but she fought an almost overwhelming impulse to say rudely, "Oh, shut up, you don't know what you're talking about."

"I don't see what else it could be," Linda pursued, serenely. "A married man--you would be no better than his--well, it's not a nice word--but his mistress!"

"Not at all," Harriet said, trying hard to hide the irritation that rose rebellious within her, "he is legally free, or will be soon, and so am I!"

"I am speaking of God's law, not man's," Linda said, gently but awfully, and Harriet was silent. "Fred says that such men regard these matters far too lightly," Linda finished. Fred's name, thus introduced, always had the effect of angering Harriet. She was suffering cruelly, in these days, and moral reflections held small consolation for her. She was homesick with an aching, gnawing homesickness that arose with her in the morning, and went to bed with her at night; under everything she said and did was the longing for Crownlands, for just one more word or look from Richard Carter.

She had shared the family exaltation over Pip's recovery, and had thought more than once in that fearful night of his illness that even poverty, gray hairs, and the agony of parenthood, shared with the man she loved, would have been ecstasy to her. But in the slow days and weeks that followed, her spirit became exhausted with the struggle that never ended within her. Her bridges were burned behind her; it was all over. Whatever her emotions had been in leaving Crownlands, the Carters' feelings had been quite obvious and simple. Old Madame Carter had wished her well; Ward had written from college that he thought it was "rotten," and that she had been a corker to get Dad to raise his allowance for him; Nina had felt her own wings the stronger for the change; and Richard had interrupted his little speech of regret twice to answer the telephone, and had given her a check that placed, it seemed to Harriet, the obligation permanently with her. The utter desolation of spirit with which she had left them was evidently unshared; the only word she had had from that old life had been from Mary Putnam, and even this cordial note jarred Harriet with its frank revelation of the change in her position. Mary wrote:

I telephoned Mr. Carter for your address, and he reports them all well. I wanted to tell you that I am giving you a tremendous reputation with Kane Bassett, who wants someone to be with his little girls. You know their mother died, and the grandmother lives in England. It would be a beautiful thing for you if I could manage it. The Putnams are all full of happy plans for a month at Nassau, as usual running away from January in New York.