32 Forced decision
Mamma rose from her sick-bed with only one thought, fixed and clear. We must go back! But where to get the money for our fares was a humiliating problem. For a time we pinned our hope on the tragic possibility that Stanley’s insurance would save us all. The company repudiated the claim. The last payment on the premium had reached them too late. My cousin, to whom the money was sent, had forgotten to mail it in time. A lapse of three days!
Papa swallowed his pride and appealed to my aunt and my half-brother, a struggling young musician with cares enough, and his name to make. While this correspondence went forward, our few bits of furniture, everything, except our clothes and bedding had to be sold.
I had the melancholy satisfaction of persuading Betty’s mother to buy our fairly new carpet and some decent tea-cups. I knew how badly Betty wanted to ‘pretty up’ the parlour, a cold-looking room where comfortless chairs were lost in a sea of sanded floor. All the house was cheerless as an empty barn, yet there must have been a time when the wide hall and high-ceilinged chambers breathed of happiness and comfort. So much had I guessed when I paid my respects to Mrs. Wilmot, lying in with another infant, none too willingly, judging from the mood she was in.
‘Declare there’s no end to misery,’ she greeted me, freeing one hand from the infant she was guiding to her breast, to indicate a rocker near by. ‘It kills you to have them and it kills you to feed them. Declare, it’s misery all around!’
The lobster-pink infant was only two days old, and the frail anaemic mother was suffering stubborn after-pains. With each new baby, they got worse and worse. If this kept on, it would get so that the after-pain met the pain of labour. Nothing but misery, that’s what marriage was, yet look at Betty, honin for a man!
Whilst thus enlightened, I had time to observe that the bed in which she fretted was of polished rosewood. So too, the bureau, which, together with the rocker, completed the furnishings of the room. Enough to make me see the house in better days; to make me wonder if the querulous woman with her small, impatient face and inadequate hands, was not designed for softer living.
As a matter of fact, the lady neither toiled nor spun. The house might be empty, her progeny arrayed in a single cotton garment, and nothing in the larder save a fletch of bacon, hominy, and rice. A negress came to cook the evening meal. Mrs. Wilmot rocked in the shade, grumbling at the everlasting babies, and calling desultory orders to poor Betty, who was as soft and ineffectual as herself.
Yes, Betty was thrilled to have the carpet and the cups. To the best of our combined ability, we enheartened the room, washed the windows, gathered greens, lit a fire in the grate, and celebrated her triumph and my coming departure. Gordon Bannister was the supporting spirit of the occasion, as he had been my sole comfort in the terrible days just passed. Something I had taken for granted, without much thought. Adolescent blindness, due for a rude awakening!
There came a day when the skeleton of our poverty was dragged into the daylight—bone by bone, as it were, tossed upon the dining-room table. A pitiful heap of greenbacks that no amount of faith could strengthen to our need. Not nearly enough for all of us, said papa. Of course, he had been counting on me, which was doubtless foolish of him, if I had elected to marry Mr. Bannister. The young man had asked his permission very decently, and above board, etc.
You could have heard my heart across the street! I was scared out of my wits. Frightened to death to hear papa disposing of my precious future in such terms as these. For the moment I didn’t think of Bannister at all. Neither he, nor any one else had figured in my secret programme. And papa, who should have understood the bent of my mind, calmly and even a little eagerly suggested that I had elected to get married!
Anger that was nine-tenths pain succeeded my astonishment. How could my own parents wish me such a humdrum fate! Why did they stare at me with grave patience, as though expecting me to justify their mean opinion! What did they want me to say? That I was too dumb to realize that a man was in love with me? That the crazy idea gave me a hollow feeling under the breastbone, but not a single flutter of the heart? Oh, what was the use of saying anything, thought I, bolting from the scene, and setting off on an agitated ramble. In the quiet of the wood I began to think of Bannister—to feel horribly ashamed of myself to have been so selfish and unseeing. The innumerable kindnesses I had accepted rose up to accuse me, and all the agreeable characteristics of the young man himself ticked off in my mind. I could have wished myself wings, and a hole in the moon. All of which added up to the remarkable wisdom that, if I must marry somebody, it might as well be Bannister!
Mamma promptly nipped the noble resolution in the bud. If I had only shown some sense, and not run off like a rabbit, I should have heard her laying down the law for all of us. Naturally, she had been waiting to hear what I had to say for myself, if anything. But never for a moment had she dreamed of leaving me behind to make a fool of myself, like—like, well, so many people did who couldn’t distinguish between fact and fancy.
So mamma, at least, had not been content to sell me into bondage to save a railway ticket. That was something gained. The young man himself was still to be reckoned with, and not so lightly, it transpired. A bee in the bonnet was nothing compared to the hornet that that erstwhile mortal had under his hat. We finally compromised on a promise, to be redeemed or cancelled next summer, when, presumably, my youthful mind was to have come to its full senses.
Off, then, on the long back trail, with Bannister keeping us sombre company to Meridian. Thereafter, it was one interminable nightmare of weariness, dust, squalling children, overlaid with the sickening reek of orange peel, ham sandwiches, and rancid clothes.
