Chapter VII
Reading edition
"Gone! You don't mean that your mother and Mr. Guinness have gone to leave you for a month!" Mr. Muller was quite vehement with annoyance and surprise.
"At least a month," said Catharine calmly. "Mrs. Guinness always goes with my father on his summer journey for books, and this year she has—well, things to buy for me."
It was the wedding-dress she meant, he knew. He leaned eagerly in at the window, where he stood hoping for a blush. But none came. "Purl two and knit one," said Kitty to her crochet.
"I certainly do not consider it safe or proper for you to be left alone," he blustered mildly after a while.
"There is Jane," glancing back at the black figure waddling from the kitchen to the pump.
"Jane! I shall send Maria up to stay with you, Catharine."
"You are very kind! It is so pleasant to be cared for!" with a little gush of politeness and enthusiasm. "But dear Maria finds the house damp. I will not be selfish. You must allow me to be alone."
He looked at her furtively. Was there, after all, an obstinate, unbendable back-bone under the soft feathers of this his nestling dove? He was discomfited at every turn this evening. He had hoped that Kitty would notice that his little imperial had been retrimmed; and he had bought a set of sleeve-buttons, antique coins, at a ruinous price, in hopes they would please her. She looked at neither the one nor the other. Yet she had a keen eye for dress—too keen an eye indeed. Only last night she had spent an hour anxiously cutting old Peter's hair and beard, and Mr. Muller could not but remember that he was a handsome young fellow, and do what she would with Peter, he was old and beaked like a parrot. "Besides, he is only her stepfather," he reasoned, "and I am to be her husband: she loves me."
Did she love him? The question always brought a pain under his plump chest and neat waistcoat which he could not explain; he thrust it hastily away. But he loitered about the room, thinking how sweet it would be if this childish creature would praise or find fault with buttons or whiskers in her childish way. Kitty, however, crocheted on calmly, and saw neither. The sun was near its setting. The clover-fields stretched out dry and brown in its warm light, to where the melancholy shadows gathered about the wooded creeks.
Mr. Muller looked wistfully out of the window, and then at her. "Suppose you come and walk with me?" he said presently.
Kitty glanced out, and settled herself more comfortably in her rocking-chair. "It is very pleasant here," smiling.
He thought he would go home: in fact, he did not know what else to do. The room was very quiet, they were quite alone. The evening light fell on Catharine; her hands had fallen on her lap; she was thinking so intently of her Mystery that she had forgotten he was there. How white her bent neck was, with the rings of brown hair lying on it! There was a deeper pink than usual on her face, too, as though her thoughts were pleasant. He came closer, bent over her chair, touched her hair with one chubby finger, and started back red and breathless.
"Did you speak?" said Kitty, looking up.
"I'm going home. I only wanted to say good bye."
"So soon? Good-bye. I shall see you to-morrow, I suppose?" taking up her work.
"Yes, Kitty—"
"Well?"
"I have never bidden you good-bye except by shaking hands. Could I kiss you? I have thought about that every day since you promised to marry me."
The pleasant rose-tinge was gone now: even the soft lips, which were dangerously close, were colorless: "You can kiss me if you want to. I suppose it's right."
The little man drew back gravely. "Never mind; it's no matter. I had made up my mind never to ask for it until you seemed to be able to give me real wifely love."
She started up. "I can do no more than I have done," vehemently. "And I'm tired of hearing of myself as a wife. I'd as soon consider myself as a grandmother."
Mr. Muller waited a moment, too shocked and indignant to speak: then he took up his hat and went to the door. "Good-night, my child," he said kindly, "To-morrow you will be your better self."
Kitty knew nothing of better selves: she only felt keenly that two months ago such rudeness would have been impossible to her. Why was she growing vulgar and weak?
The air stirred the leaves of the old Walnuts outside: the black-coated, dapper figure had not yet passed from under them. He was so gentle and pious and good! Should she run after him? She dropped instead into her chair and cried comfortably till a noise in the shop stopped her, and looking through the dusky books she saw a man waiting. She got up and went in hastily, looking keenly at his face to find how long he had been there, and how much he had seen. It wore, however, an inscrutable gravity.
Most of Peter's old customers sold to themselves during his absence, but this was a stranger. He stood looking curiously at the heaped books and the worn sheepskin-covered chair, until she was close to him: then he looked curiously at her.
"I have had some correspondence with Mr. Guinness about a copy of Quadd's Scientific Catalogues."
"Mr. Guinness is not at home, but he left the book," said Kitty, alertly climbing the steps. Bringing the book, she recognized him as Doctor McCall, who had once before been at the shop when her father was gone. He was a young man, largely built, with a frank, attentive face, red hair and beard, and cordial voice. It was Kitty's nature to meet anybody halfway who carried summer weather about him. "My father hoped you would not come for the book until his return," she said civilly. "Your letters made him wish to see you. You were familiar, he told me, with some old pamphlets of which few customers know anything."
"Probably. I could not come at any other time," curtly, engrossed in turning over the pages of his book. Presently he said, "I will look over the stock if you will allow me. But I need not detain you," glancing at her work in the inner room. Kitty felt herself politely dismissed. Nor, although Doctor McCall stayed for half an hour examining Peter's favorite volumes as he sat on his high office-stool and leaned on his desk, did he once turn his eyes on the dimpling face making a picturesque vignette in the frame of the open window. When he had finished he came to the door. "I will call for the books I have chosen in an hour;" and then bowed distantly and was gone.
He had scarcely closed the gate when the back door creaked, and Miss Muller came in smiling, magnetic from head to foot, as her disciples in Berrytown were used to allege.
"And what is our little dove afraid of in her nest?" pinching Kitty's cheek as though she had been a dove very lately fledged indeed. She had always in fact the feeling when with Kitty that through her she suffered to live and patted on the back the whole ignoble, effete race of domestic women. Catharine caught sight of her satchel, which portended a visit of several days.
"Pray give me your hat and stay with me for tea," she said sweetly.
Miss Muller saw through her stratagem and laughed: "Now, that is just the kind of finesse in which such women delight!" she thought good-humoredly, going into the shop to lay off her hat and cape. The next moment she returned. Her face was bloodless. The muscles of the chin twitched.
"Who has been here?" she cried, sitting down and rubbing her hands violently on her wrists. "Oh, Catharine, who has been here?"
Now Kitty, a hearty eater with a slow brain, and nerves laid quite out of reach under the thick healthy flesh, knew nothing of the hysterical clairvoyant moods and trances familiar to so many lean, bilious American women. She ran for camphor, carbonate of soda and arnica, bathed Miss Muller's head, bent over her, fussing, terrified, anxious.
"Is it a pain? Is it in your stomach? Did you eat anything that disagreed with you?" she cried.
"Eat! I believe in my soul you think of nothing but eating!" trying resolutely to still the trembling of her limbs and chattering of her teeth. "I was only conscious of a presence when I entered that room. Some one who long ago passed out of my life, stood by me again." The tears ran weakly over her white cheeks.
"Somebody in the shop!" Kitty went to it on tiptoe, quaking at the thought of burglars. "There's nobody in the shop. Not even the cat," turning back reassured. "How did you feel the Presence, Maria? See it, or hear it, or smell it?"
"There are other senses than those, you know," pacing slowly up and down the room with the action of the leading lady in a melodrama; but her pain or vision, whatever it was, had been real enough. The cold drops stood on her forehead, her lips quivered, the brown eyes turned from side to side asking for help. "When he is near shall I not know it?" she said with dry lips.
Kitty stole up to her and touched her hand. "I'm so glad if you are in love!" she whispered. "I thought you would think it foolish to care for love or—or babies. I used to care for them both a great deal."
"Pshaw! Now listen to me, child," her step growing steadier. "Oh dear! Haven't you any belladonna? Or coffea? That would set me right at once. As for a husband and children, they are obstructions to a woman—nothing more. If my head was clear I could make you understand. I am a free soul. I have my work to do. Marriage is an accident: so is child-bearing. In nine cases out of ten they hinder a woman's work. But when I meet a kindred soul, higher, purer than mine, I give allegiance to it. My feeling becomes a part of my actual life; it is a spiritual action: it hears and sees by spiritual senses. And then—Ah, there is something terrible in being alone—alone! She called this out loudly, wringing her hands. Kitty gave a queer smile. It was incredible to her that a woman could thus dissect herself for the benefit of another.
"But she's talking for her own benefit," watching her shrewdly. "If there's any acting about it, she's playing Ophelia and Hamlet and the audience all at once.—Was it Doctor McCall you fancied was in the shop?" she asked quietly.
Miss Muller turned, a natural blush dyeing her face and neck: "He has been here then?—Oh, there! there he is!" as the young man came in at the gate. She passed her hands over her front hair nervously, shook down her lace sleeves and went out to meet him. Kitty saw his start of surprise. He stooped, for she was a little woman, and held out both his hands.
"Yes, John, it is I!" she said with a half sob.
"Are you really so glad to see me again, Maria?" She caught his arm for her sole answer, and walked on, nestling close to his side.
"It may be spiritual affinity, but it looks very like love," thought Kitty. It was a different love from any she had known. They turned and walked through the gate down into the shadow of the wooded creeks, the broad strong figure leaning over the weaker one. Kitty fancied the passion in his eyes, the words he would speak. She thought how she had noticed at first sight that there was unusual strength and tenderness in the man's face.
"There will be no talk there of new dresses or reformatory schools, I'm sure of that," she said, preparing to go to bed. She felt somehow wronged and slighted to-night, and wished for old Peter's knee to rest on. She had no friend like old Peter, and never would have.
Rebecca Harding Davis.