CHAPTER VII
NANCE PACKS HER TRUNK
Molly, coming in hurriedly from her labors at the French War Relief rooms where she had been engaged in making surgical dressings until her back ached so that she had more sympathy for the poor wounded than ever, if possible, found young Dr. McLean cooling his heels and drying his coat by her library fire.
“Andy! I am so glad to see you!” she cried, grasping both of his hands. “When did you come? Did you know Nance Oldham is with me?”
“Yes, I have seen her,” grimly.
“Oh, then you know of her trouble?”
“Trouble! I shouldn’t call it that. She evidently does not consider it in that light.”
“Andy McLean, how can you say such a thing?”
“Well, I formed my opinions from the evidence of my own eyes. In fact, she told me with her own lips that she was contented; if not in so many words, at least she gave me that impression.”
“Resigned, of course! That is Nance’s way, but she is very sad and lonesome for all that.”
“Lonesome! Ye Gods, how many does she want?”
“Excuse me, Andy, but you are talking like a goose,” declared Molly, irritated in spite of herself.
“Thank you, madam,” he said, bowing low. “Your guest has just called me a fool and now you call me a goose. I bid you good-by.”
“Good-by, indeed! Andy McLean, sit down here and let me send for your father. I believe my soul you are in a fever or something.” Molly pushed him down in a chair near the fire. “Why, Andy, your coat is damp! Where have you been?”
She drew a chair by him and seated herself, looking anxiously into his flushed face. Andy laughed in a hard tone.
“Perhaps you are right, but don’t send for Father. I got my coat wet in a perfectly sane way, but perhaps you had better find out about that from Mrs. Fl – Nance – I mean.”
Andy balked at that name of Mrs. Flint and then, besides, Nance had called him a fool when he had hinted at the doctor’s being the happy man. At this juncture little Mildred came running into the library.
“Mumsy! Mumsy! Is you heard ’bout me an’ the blue boat?”
“No, darling! But what makes your curls so wet?”
“That was that baddest blue boat. It wouldn’t stay still ’til I got in – it jes’ moved and moved – an’ the little wooden street, it moved an’ moved an’ I went kerblim! kersplash!”
“In the lake! Oh, Mildred! I know you didn’t mind Aunt Nance. Are you cold? Did Aunt Nance get wet? Where is Dodo?”
“You ’fuses me with so many ain’t’s an’ do’s and didn’t’s.”
“You tell me all about it,” said the doting mother, trying to compose herself as she gathered the first-born in her arms.
“Well, you see, me’n’ Aunt Nance we went a-walkin’ an’ we tooked Dodo along an’ my dolly, an’ Aunt Nance she says that one use she ain’t got no husband is ’cause don’t no husband want her, an’ I done tol’ her that if Katy kin shrink her up some that Dodo kin be her husband. You see, Mumsy, I been a-feelin’ sorry for Aunt Nance ever since that time I mos’ went to sleep in her lap an’ she talked about a beau lover what got to fightin’ with her an’ she hit him back. She wetted my ear all up with her tears. I jes’ done thunk somethin’!” the child exclaimed, getting out of her mother’s lap and peering curiously into Andy’s face. “Is you the Andy what talked so crule to my Aunt Nance? ’Cause if you is, I’m sorry you done pulled me out’n the lake.”
“Mildred! Mildred!” admonished Molly, but in her heart of hearts she knew that what the enfant terrible was saying to the young doctor was no doubt of a very salutary nature. He needed a good talking to and he was getting it.
“I am the one,” said Andy meekly.
“Well, when Dodo grows up to be big enough he is goin’ to – to – cut you up in little pieces. He’s growin’ up fast an’ bein’ a husband is makin’ him cut his teeth early – ”
“Molly Brown!” interrupted Andy McLean eagerly. “Is Nance not married?”
“Married! The idea, Andy! Of course not!”
“Yes, she is! She’s married to Dodo Green. I married ’em this morning,” declared Mildred defiantly.
“Oh, oh! I see it all now!” laughed Molly hysterically. “You were talking about her mythical marriage while I was speaking of her mother’s death.”
“Her mother dead? I had not heard a word of it. Strange that so important a woman as Mrs. Oldham should have died without my seeing it mentioned in the paper.”
“But Mrs. Oldham dropped out of public life two years ago, when her husband died, in fact. Nance had hardly rested from the long siege of nursing her father before she began on her mother.”
Andy bowed his sandy-haired head in his hands and groaned:
“Fool! Fool! Every kind of fool and goose you and Nance choose to call me, – fool and knave! Bad-tempered brute! Jealous idiot! Oh, Molly, please call Nance.”
When Nance had hurled her “fool” at Andy’s sandy head, she flew up-stairs, determined never to speak to him again. She longed for a few quiet moments in her own room, but Mildred must be rubbed down and dressed before she could seek retirement. She was sure he would leave the house immediately. His coat was wet and no doubt his vest and shirt, too, after having carried the dripping child such a distance. Of course he would not want to call on the Greens while she was in the house. The girl bitterly regretted having timed her visit so unfortunately. The Greens and McLeans were very intimate, and would perforce see each other often. She hated to be a wet blanket – a skeleton at the feast. She determined to pack her trunk and go on a promised visit to an old college friend then living in New York. Molly would object, she knew, but it was surely best for all of them that she should take herself off for a few weeks.
Nance was always an orderly person and packing a trunk with her was a very simple matter. She began in her usual systematic way and had already folded her dresses neatly in the trays and was emptying the bureau drawers when Molly’s voice was heard calling her from the lower hall.
“Nance! Oh, Nance!”
She sounded quite excited. No doubt she had just been informed of Mildred’s accident and wanted to hear the details of it.
“Coming!” called Nance, hurrying down the steps. “Oh, Molly, what do you think of me for taking out the children and almost drowning Mildred? And while that was going on, little Dodo came within an ace of tumbling out of the carriage on his precious sleepy head! You will never trust them with me again.”
“Nonsense! Mildred is old enough not to try to get in boats alone, and as for Dodo, Aunt Mary always said: ‘Whin chilluns grows up ’thout ever gittin’ a tumble, they is sho’ to be idjits.’”
“Well, then, my real duty was to let him tumble,” laughed Nance. “What do you want with me, honey? I am very busy.”
“Not too busy to come in and talk with me a little while,” insisted the wily Molly, putting her arm around her friend’s waist and leading her to the library door.
“I do want to talk to you a moment,” agreed Nance. “Molly, I am going away for a few weeks.” They had reached the door, which was ajar, and Andy, ensconced in the sleepy-hollow chair dear to the professor’s bones, could plainly hear the conversation.
“Going away! You are going to do no such thing.”
“I must. There is no use in asking me why – you know why – It is too hard for me and there is no use in pretending it is not.”
“But, Nance – ”
“I have begun to pack and I will go to-morrow.”
Instead of the hospitable protestations characteristic of Molly, that young housewife said not a word, but giving her friend a little push towards the fireplace, she grabbed up Mildred and rushed from the room, closing the door after her.
CHAPTER VIII
A DAMP COAT
Andy undoubled himself with alacrity and sprang from the sleepy-hollow chair. His stern face was softened and filled with a boyish eagerness.
“Oh, Nance! Can’t you forgive me?”
“Excuse me, Dr. McLean, I did not know you were still here,” and Nance turned to leave the room.
Andy with long strides reached the door first and with his back against it held out beseeching hands.
“Yes, I’m here and am going to stay here – ”
“Well, I am not! Please let me pass.” Nance was filled with a righteous indignation against Molly at having played this trick on her.
“But, my dear, I must tell you what a fool I have been – ”
“That is not necessary. I know.”
Andy laughed. Nance had a laconic way of putting things that always tickled his humor.
“Now you sound like yourself, honey, but oh, please act like yourself! The real Nance Oldham could not be so cruel as to go off without letting me explain – I have no excuse – there could be none for my blind rage and jealousy – none unless loving you too hard could be called one. Will you listen to me?”
“I shall have to unless I stop up my ears, since you stop up the doorway.” Nance was very pale and trembling. Two years of suffering could not be done away with in a moment and the girl had surely suffered.
“Couldn’t we sit down and let me tell you?”
“We could!”
Andy eagerly directed Nance to the sofa, but she sedately seated herself in a small isolated sewing rocker. Andy accepted the amendment and placed his chair as near to hers as the frigid atmosphere around her permitted.
“Before I explain I must apologize. I would have done it the very day after that awful row we had, the very moment after it, if I had not thought you hated me.”
“And now?”
“And now I am going to apologize and explain, whether you hate me or not. I could do it lots better if you would let me hold your hand while I am doing it,” but Nance drew Molly’s knitting from a bag hung on the back of the chair and declared her hands were otherwise occupied. Molly had reached the purling end of a sleeveless sweater and no doubt would be glad of Nance’s expert assistance.
“Nance, there never has been any other woman in my life but you, you and my mother. You know perfectly well from the time I met you, when I was at Exmoor College and you were here at Wellington, that you were the only girl in the world for me. I had a kind of notion in my fool brain that I was going to be the only man in the world for you. When we were engaged I thought I was, but when I realized that Dr. Flint was paying you such devoted attention, at your home constantly – ”
“My father’s physician!”
“Yes, I know, – but, honey, you see you were way up there in Vermont and I was down in New York and I was hungry for you all the time, and when your father died I thought you would pick right up and come to me – I knew nothing of your mother’s determination to stay with you – nothing of her illness – nothing but that you were staying in the same town with Flint and I must go back to New York. You did not tell me.”
“Well, hardly, after the way you raged and tore! I felt if you could rage that way we had better separate.”
“But, my dear, I’ll never rage that way again – I’ve learned my lesson. Can’t you forgive me?” Nance was silent.
“I love you just as much as I always did, – more, in fact. When little Mildred Green told me you had let her fall in the water because you were so busy with your husband, I wanted to die that minute. Of course I thought it was Flint. How could I know the child was playing a game with you? Nance, do you hate me as much as you did that terrible day two years ago?”
“Yes!” Nance’s answer was very low but Andy heard it.
“Well, then, there is no use in saying any more,” he sprang to his feet, his face grey with misery.
“I didn’t hate you then at all – nor do I now.”
“Oh, Nance, don’t tease me! Can you forgive me?” and poor Andy sank on his knees and bowed his head on her knees.
Nance’s arms were around him in a moment. She hugged his sandy head to her bosom with one hand and patted his back with the other while he gave a great sob.
“Andy McLean, you are still wringing wet. Get up from here this minute and take off that coat and let me dry it! And your shirt is damp, too! My, what a boy! Here, sit right close to the fire and dry that wet sleeve.”
Andy meekly submitted in a daze. Nance’s motherly attitude and sudden melting were too much for him. The coat was hung by the fire to dry while the young doctor stood helplessly by in his shirt sleeves.
“And now, Andy, I’m going to apologize to you and ask you to forgive me,” declared Nance, stoutly trying to go on with her knitting.
But Andy firmly took it from her and possessed himself of those busy hands.
“I was worse than you – when you said those hard things to me they hurt like fury – you didn’t know how they did hurt, but I did, and I should not have done the same thing to you. I said worse things to you than you did to me, – at least I tried to.”
“You did pretty well,” said Andy whimsically, pressing one of the imprisoned hands to his lips.
“Dr. Flint did want to marry me; I guess he still does, but – but – ”
“But what, lassie?” Sometimes Andy dropped into his parents’ vernacular.
“I am not going to tell a man in his shirt sleeves why I didn’t marry Dr. Flint,” said Nance firmly. “It is too unpicturesque.”
“Then I’ll put on my coat.”
“No, you won’t! I wouldn’t tell a man in a wet coat, either.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t like to lay my brown head on a damp shoulder. Why don’t you do as I told you and dry that shirt sleeve? Hold it close to the fire, sir!”
“I won’t do it unless you tell me why you didn’t marry Dr. Flint.”
“Well, then, to keep you from catching your death of cold, I will tell you, but remember I have saved your life. It was – it was because – because he didn’t have sandy hair and a bad temper,” and Nance was enfolded in the despised shirt sleeves and found a very nice dry spot on which to lay her brown head.
The sun had set and twilight was upon them. The front door opened to admit the master of the house, but Molly was in ambush ready to catch him to keep him out of the library. Kizzie had started in to mend the fire but Molly stopped her.
“Never mind the fire, Kizzie. It is all right for such a warm evening. Give us tea in the den.”
“Why all of this mystery?” asked Edwin Green as he followed his wife back to the den, going on tiptoe as she demanded.
“Andy and Nance are in there.”
“Andy McLean! Fine! I want to see him. Won’t he be here to tea? I’ll go in and speak to him.”
“You’ll do no such thing! Edwin Green, you may be – in fact, are, a grand lecturer on English, but you have no practical sense. Don’t you know you might break in just at the wrong moment and Andy may get off to France without their making it up?”
“Making up what? Who making up: the Allies and the central powers?”
“Oh, Edwin, you know I mean Nance and Andy!”
“What are they making up? If it is a row, let’s go help them.”
“Not a soul shall go in that room until they come out, unless it is over my dead body.”
“Well, well! I’d rather stay in this room with your live body than go in there over your dead one,” and the professor pulled his wife down on the sofa by him, “especially if you will give me some tea,” as Kizzie came in grinning with the tea tray.
“They’s co’tin’ a-goin’ on in yander, boss. The fiah is low an’ the lights ain’t lit, but Miss Molly she guard that do’ like a cat do a mouse hole. Cose Miss Nance ain’t got no maw to futher things up for her but Miss Molly is all ready to fly off an’ git the preacher, seems like.”
“I can’t remember that things were made easy for me this way when I was addressing my wife,” complained Edwin as he stirred his tea with his arm around his wife, a combination that could not have been made had his arm not been long and Molly still slender.
“Ungrateful man! Why, Judy and Kent took the bus from Fontainebleau to Barbizon when they were simply dying to walk, just to give you a chance. Have you forgotten?”
“I haven’t forgotten the walk – I never will – and if they really rode on my account, I’ll pass on the favor to other lovers and stay out of my library until the cows come home; that is, if you will stay with me.”
Molly told him then of the whole affair and how Mildred had righted matters, telling Andy just exactly the right thing to bring him to his senses.
“I am almost sure they have made up and are engaged again,” sighed Molly ecstatically. A romance was dear to her soul and being happily married herself, she felt like furthering the love affairs of all her friends.
“They are either engaged or dead,” laughed Edwin. “Such silence emanating from the library must bode extreme calamity or extreme bliss. If it continues much longer I think it is my duty as a householder to break in the door and offer congratulations or call the coroner, as the case demands.”
“It is getting late. Maybe I had better go in and ask Andy to stay to dinner.”
Molly, who had a deep-rooted objection to noise and usually talked in a low tone, now spoke in a loud voice as she bumped her way along the hall, pushing chairs and rattling the hat rack and calling out shrilly to the amused husband following her. Strange to say, she could not remember on which side of the door the knob was, although she had lived several years in that house. She fumblingly hunted it and finally opened the door with a great rattle.
Nance was seated sedately knitting and Andy was holding his coat close to the dying flames. The room was almost dark.
“Kizzie should have lighted the lamp and attended to the fire,” Molly said briskly. Oh, Molly, how could you be so untruthful, blaming things on poor Kizzie, too? (Molly’s conscience did hurt her for dragging Kizzie in and she gave the girl a long coveted blue hat that she had meant to keep for second best, feeling that it might act as a salve on her own tender, truth-loving soul. Kizzie, quite ignorant of the cause for this generosity, gratefully accepted the hat and asked no questions.)
“Yes, it gets dark before one realizes,” said Nance demurely.
“Ahem!” from the professor.
“Oh, Andy, your coat is still wet! Mildred told me you wrapped it around her. I’ll get you Edwin’s smoking jacket and have your coat dried. You must stay to dinner with us. I can ’phone your mother not to expect you at home.”
Andy did not need much persuading, but accepted the invitation with alacrity. Molly called up Mrs. McLean to ask for the loan of her son for dinner.
“Yes!” exclaimed that wise lady at the other end of the wire. “I have been expecting a telephone call for the last half hour. You may keep him but I shall wait up to see him when he gets home. I am sur-r-e he’ll have something to tell me. From my back window I saw Nance with the perambulator full of babies on her way to the lake and I sent Andy off for a walk, first putting a flea in his ear by suggesting that the lake was getting shallower and shallower. He has always been that inquisitive that I was sur-r-e he would make for that spot to find out why. I knew that all those poor-r young folks had to do was to meet. Keep him, Molly – and God bless you!”
There was a little choking sound at the other end that Molly understood very well. She hung up the receiver “with a smile on her lip but a tear in her eye.” It is all very well for a mother to be unselfish and want her son to marry and to be happy, but there is a tug of war going on in her heart all the time.
“I know how I will feel when Dodo gets engaged,” Molly said to Edwin when she told him of what Mrs. McLean had said; but that young father went off into such shouts of laughter, Molly had a feeling that mere man could never understand a mother’s heart.
CHAPTER IX
PLANS
“I have no idea of going through dinner without letting you and old Ed know all about us!” said Andy as he took his place at Molly’s hospitable board.
“What about you?” asked Molly, who was growing deceitful, her husband feared.
“About Nance and me! I can’t keep it any longer,” declared the happy young doctor. Nance kept her eyes on her plate but her mouth was twitching with amusement.
“What about you and Nance?” solemnly asked the professor.
“Why, we’re engaged!”
“No! Not really?” and Edwin grinned.
“Oh, Andy! I’m so glad!” and Molly reached a hand out to her two friends, who were perforce placed across the table from each other since there were only four for dinner.
Nance got up and kissed her hostess. “Oh, Molly, you are too lovely! Don’t you know that I know that Andy and I have not fooled you one moment? Don’t I see brandy peaches on the side table all ready for dessert, and don’t you know that I know that those precious articles are only brought out on highdays and holidays? Isn’t that fruit cake I smell, that you know perfectly well you made and put away for next Christmas so it would be ripe and get better and better?”
“Well, I had to express my feelings somehow, and how did I know that you and Andy were going to tell your secret this very evening? I knew I mustn’t say a thing until you two said something, and if I could not say anything, I could at least feed you.”
“All I can say, Andy, is that if your experience in choosing a girl from that class of 19 – is as fortunate as mine, you will be a pretty happy man, and by Jove, I believe you are running me a mighty close second,” and to the astonishment of his wife, as Edwin Green was certainly a far from demonstrative man, he actually jumped from his seat and embraced Nance. Then Andy felt that he must kiss Molly, and Kizzie coming in at this juncture almost dropped the dish she was carrying.
“Sich a-carryin’s on I never seed. I’m a-thinking you folks had better sort yo’selves,” and the girl went off chortling.
“Now tell me your plans!” demanded Molly when they settled down to dinner. Strange to say, they had got rather mixed up in the promiscuous embracing that had been going on, and Edwin and Andy had changed places. Edwin found himself seated at Molly’s side while Andy had greatly disarranged the table by plumping himself down by his Nance.
“We are to be married immediately,” announced Andy stoutly.
Nance gasped. The fact was they had been so busy explaining the past and living in the present while the fire had died so low in the library, that the future had not been touched upon.
“Of course I may start for France at any time now, but before I go I mean to get me a war bride. It will be pretty bad leaving her, but then the war can’t last forever, and I have decided it is my duty to go help, and I fancy it still is. When Uncle Sam steps in, maybe he can finish up things in a hurry. Then I can get back to Nance.”
“Get back to me, indeed! If you think you are going without me, Andy McLean, you are vastly mistaken. If it is your duty to go help, it is my duty, too. Oh, I know I am no trained nurse, but I can do lots of other things. Dr. Flint says I am better than most trained nurses – ”
Nance stopped short. She should not have mentioned Dr. Flint. Only suppose it had hurt Andy’s feelings! Not a bit of it!
“Bully for Flint!” cried the accepted lover. “Oh, Nance, would you go with me?”
“I can scrub and cook and take care of babies.”
“I don’t know about that,” teased Andy.
“But you will always be near and pull them out of the water when I let them fall in,” suggested Nance. “Won’t you?”
“That I will! Just as near as I can get!” and Andy hitched his chair a little closer, thereby disarranging the table even more than he had done before. But although Molly was a very careful housekeeper and most particular about the looks of her table, she cared not one whit, but beamed on Andy as though he were the pink of propriety instead of a naughty boy.
What a change a little lovering had made in the appearance of both Nance and Andy! The girl’s clear skin was flushed and her eyes sparkling. The corners of her mouth had no trace of downward tendency now. The years of sadness and confinement spent in nursing her father and mother were forgotten. Nance had come into her own – her woman’s heritage: to be beloved, to be guarded and cherished; at the same time to know that she was to be the companion, the helpmeet. As for Andy, – he beamed with joy. His face had lost the stern lines that had so distressed his mother. He looked again like the boy he was, not like the tired, disappointed man she had known of late.
Nance had no romantic notions of what life in France meant in that early spring of 1917. She knew that there was no room for drones and unproductive consumers in that war-worn country. She knew that in marrying Andy and going with his unit she was to face work, privations, danger, even death; but with her eyes open she was determined to see it through.
“I would enlist in the United States army,” Andy said to his host after dinner, as they lounged in the den and puffed away at their comforting pipes, “but I feel that I can be of more good right now in France where they are crying out for surgeons.”
“It can’t be many days now before war is declared,” sighed Edwin. “By jiminy! I hate myself for not being able to get in the game.”
“Too bad, old man! A fellow with a wife and two children has to think of them.”
“Of course! I wouldn’t let Molly know how I feel about it for any thing. I am not so young as I was, but I am stronger now than I was as a youth. As for my eyes – they are good enough eyes in glasses and my bald head would be no drawback.” Edwin always would call his sparsely covered top “bald,” but Molly, by diligent care, had made two blades of grass grow where only one had grown before, and with a microscope one could see the beginnings of a fuzzy crop of hair, at least so the fond wife insisted.
“I bet she would say go, if it were put to her,” said Andy.
“I’ll not do it, though! It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Well, if it is put up to her, I bet on Molly Brown!”