“I guess Dan ain’t different from all men—made to eat supper no matter how much singin’ or cookin’ goes to gettin’ the vittles on the table,” was Ali Baba’s emphatic summary of the situation.
Lorraine did call on Thurley and bring a daintily wrapped blue tissue paper parcel containing one of her embroidered “sets” for the washstand of any conventional, country spare room. Lorraine had remained with the older generation in her standards of house furnishings and necessities.
The blue tissue paper matched her blue batiste frock with its crisp ruffles and the ribbon on her hat. Lorraine had made the dress and trimmed the hat, and it gave the impression of good taste and praiseworthy industry. There was nothing Lorraine could or would not attempt to do, once convinced it was her duty. She had the angelic sweetness of really unselfish natures and the accompanying stubbornness of which martyrs are made. She was a trifle weak, perhaps, during a crisis, and certainly lacked Thurley’s aggression and power of argument. But Lorraine could sustain a situation—long after Thurley was forced, by temperament, to abandon it! Not even her estimable father dreamed that on the day Lorraine’s mother died, the child soul of her had closed and grownups scratched on it in vain. It was her duty, she was convinced, not to mourn openly.
It had been her father’s duty to have Lorraine brought up, and a maiden aunt’s duty to forego the luxury of her severe but unhampered existence to see that Lorraine was properly raised. And it was Lorraine’s duty to repay the bringing up and to take the place of the minister’s wife and be the minister’s daughter at the same time, to entertain deacons and visiting circuit riders and ladies’ aid societies alike, to clean the best room for the missionaries and cook for them and pray for the conversion of the heathen all in the same day, to be not too prominent as the minister’s daughter and yet to take the necessary lead in all things even unto making a house to house canvass to solicit her father’s back salary or enough knives and forks to serve the entire congregation at the baked bean supper!
Likewise, it was her duty not to think how pretty she was—that frail, elusive sort of beauty which does not impress the first time one meets it but which, after one has become familiar with it, fairly coaxes its way into the heart to remain. (No one having merely “glimpsed” Thurley would have ever forgotten her!) Because Lorraine had innocent, dove-colored eyes and the fairest of fair hair and tilted features with dimples placed irregularly about, she was misjudged as to her abilities. No one would have dreamed that the girl painstakingly wrote the burden of her father’s letters and helped to soften his harshest of sermons, particularly those on predestination and heresy, and then turned into the kitchen to do the work of stout-elbowed women! Nor did that comprise all of her duty. To her fell those prosaic, uninteresting tasks such as taking old shoes to be mended in order to avoid buying new, or re-lining her father’s threadbare coats or rummaging endless drawers to find a recipe for walnut catsup to satisfy some bromidic but important sister of the church.
It was her duty not to love Dan too hard and become a sentimental goose, she told herself as night after night she wrestled with her conscience, trying not to hate Thurley Precore as such small, dainty creatures, to every one’s surprise, can hate. Of course Dan would marry Thurley or else marry no one; he would build the lovely home for her and buy her endless pretty clothes, for every one knew Thurley could not even darn stockings skilfully—she admitted it with one of her boyish laughs! He would also buy her a new automobile and a concert grand piano; and she would be his loved and trusted wife, mother of his children, and when Lorraine would come to this part of her reverie, the dimples would become quivering dents of emotion and the orthodox prayers her father fancied were being said would vanish completely. Of course, she would comfort herself, Thurley would never make Dan happy—she sang too well! Even this was salt in the wound, for was not Thurley paid soloist at her father’s church and was not Lorraine obliged to sit Sunday after Sunday in the first pew and listen to Thurley’s wonderful voice sing glorious anthems while behind Lorraine was Dan Birge, present only because he could take Thurley home?... And Lorraine had to say to him, because it was more of her duty, “Good morning, Dan; wasn’t the solo wonderful? I think Thurley’s voice is better all the time. Good morning, Thurley dear, we’ve just been saying what a marvel you are—good-by. Oh, good morning, Mrs. Turner, I want to thank you for the invitation for the quilting party—yes, I’d love to come—oh, thank you—” and so on, her heart thumping uncontrollably fast.
After greeting the congregation, she must go into the parsonage and cook dinner and try to eat as she listened to her father’s small talk; she must wash the dishes and return to the church to teach the Bible class in the three o’clock Sabbath school—while all the time she knew Dan and Thurley were whirling about the lovely hilly country, stopping at some shady, brook-embraced glen to eat their luncheon and make love! And again, a cold tea at six and Lorraine must once more play scullery maid and then go into the evening service and know Dan was behind her waiting impatiently until Thurley’s duties were ended and they might go back to Betsey Pilrig’s porch or parlor and with mellow moonlight as witness—spoon! That was the truth—spoon! Lorraine’s flat little chest would heave excitedly and she would drop her eyes and force herself to count the dots in her frock—the third summer for it—to steady herself until she could glance up at Thurley in the choir loft and realize that she was the gladdest, loveliest thing in two worlds, a wild rose by all the poets’ dictionaries!
So when she climbed the hill to Betsey Pilrig’s house and Betsey went to call Thurley, Lorraine sank into the parlor chair and gave vent to a faint groan. If it were any other girl save Thurley, she could endure it more easily, but Thurley was so careless of his love, she so undervalued it! She heard Thurley humming a gay song and running down the stairs.
“You nice creature!” Thurley said carelessly, kissing her and trying to remove her hat at the same time. “Do take it off, ’Raine, it’s such a climb up here. There, now I can see your eyes!” Thurley did not realize how unkind was this last. “Sit there—it’s a comfy chair—well, I know what you’ve come to say,” she blushed properly, “but if Dan could see me I know he’d be quite shocked, I look anything but a prospective young matron—’fess up, ’Raine!”
Lorraine shook her head. “Dan wouldn’t care how you looked as long as you would marry him,” she began bravely. “You know that.” It was harder than she had steeled herself to expect. Thurley was so careless of her great joy, she seemed a strange creature not belonging to any well-ordered town as she sat gracefully on the arm of a sofa, her dark hair braided about her head and the rumpled pink linen frock emphasizing the color of her cheeks.