CHAPTER IX
"I'm glad we parted friends," thought Charlotte, settling back in her seat, "and I'm glad it's all over. It was like that story of the boy who was caught in the rapids while playing in the water; but, thank goodness! I was able to get back to the shore in time." She relaxed and let her eyes rest on the smoothly flowing scenery outside.
"I wonder how 'Aunt Hepzibah is," she murmured to herself. "And Dame Johnson, and Miss Hawley, and the children. And I wonder if Margaret's getting on any better with her husband. And—and—and I wonder how Neil is. I'll drop in and see Aunt Grace before starting for home. She always knows the news. And perhaps I'll see Neil around somewhere, too."
The train reached Penfield at a quarter past four; and as Charlotte walked up the street to her aunt's house, it gave her a pleasant sense of content to see the people whom she knew so well.
"I wonder what they'll say about the championship," she thought. "Here comes Mr. Evans. I wonder if he'll want to stop."
But Mr. Evans, the ice man, passed right on with a friendly "Hello Charlotte."
"And here comes Deacon Kingsley, as busy as ever," she thought. "Surely he'll say something."
But all the busy deacon had to say was a busy "How do you do, Charlotte?"
She began to think it over. "I suppose it's because they take me as a matter of course," she said to herself, "just the same as I take them. For all I know, Mr. Evans may be the best fox hunter in Windham County, and Deacon Kingsley, the champion checker player. But they're both so busy with the real sums of life that they haven't time to bother with the little ones, and don't take them seriously. And there I believed I was coming home famous!" she thought, and added: "Why, I don't believe they've even heard about it."
But Aunt Grace had heard about it. "How well you're looking!" she said. "No wonder I hardly knew your picture in the paper when Margaret showed it to me."
So then, of course, they began to talk about Charlotte's pretty cousin.
"Poor Margaret!" sighed Aunt Grace. "She's not very happy, I'm afraid. Willis was such a good husband at first. But the last year Margaret's been left alone in that big house for weeks at a time. She talks about coming home this winter, but I declare I don't know what to do."
"How's Doctor Kennedy getting along?" asked Charlotte (oh, ever so carelessly!) when she had asked about everybody else.
For the first time Aunt Grace showed signs of enthusiasm. "He's certainly a clever doctor," she said, "and knows just how to handle my neuralgia. Last May he cured Fred Waller of his jaundice; and you know Mrs. Latham, who was bed-ridden so long?—well, he had her up and out again in no time; and since then he's had nearly all the practice he can handle. Last month he rented Doctor Baldwin's old house, furnished, but he's still taking his meals at Mrs. Potter's."
With heightened color Charlotte started up the street toward Mr. Briggs' livery stable and, thinking of the things which her aunt had told her, she looked curiously at the big house on top of the hill where her pretty cousin lived.
"Poor Margaret!" she thought. "Willis has probably found her out. And when a man is attracted to a girl because of her looks, after a while he's just as apt to be attracted by another girl because of her looks. Perhaps Margaret has found that out." She looked at the big house with growing sympathy. "I guess if the truth were known," she thought, "most of these beautiful heroines end that way. Everybody spoils them up to a certain point, and then the poor girls have to suffer for it. They can have their looks. I'm glad I'm smart, instead"—she continued up the street toward Mr. Briggs' livery stable—"if I am smart," she thoughtfully added.
Following this reflection she looked over to where Doctor Baldwin's old house stood, back on its maple-shaded lawn.
"I'm glad Neil's getting on so well," she thought. Her mind went back to that afternoon when she had run away from him. "I thought I was doing something smart, then," she ruefully laughed to herself. "Poor Neil! Treating him like that just because he wasn't a millionaire!"
She walked very slowly, as though she was in no hurry to view Mr. Briggs' enormous mustache, and once, when a car came rushing up the hill behind her, she quickly turned to see who it was. But, though the car made a noise like the Little Rattler, it wasn't the doctor.
"I wonder what his office hours are," she thought. "I wonder if they're printed on his sign."
She crossed the street and walked back down the hill, as though she had remembered an errand at Kingsley's store.
"‘Office hours—Five to six,’" she read on the sign. "Its nearly five now, so I may see him somewhere."
At Kingsley's she bought a spool of thread and started up the street again, as through she had remembered another errand, this time at Dearnley & Clark's. Two cars passed her, Charlotte turning to look at each, but neither was the Little Rattler. "He may be delayed on a case," she thought, and going in to Dearnley & Clark's she bought a yeast cake.
A number of customers were in the store, and when Charlotte finally came out the Little Rattler was standing in front of the doctor's house, and she caught sight of Neil disappearing through the office door.
"I guess I'd better go home," she thought, her heart sinking. "If I had met him on the street I wouldn't have minded. But to go after him in his office, after what I did that afternoon—oh, I never, never could! I'll have to wait for another chance."
Walking with resolution she went to Briggs' Livery Stable, and came out a few minutes later in the red-wheeled buggy, Mr. Briggs seated by her side, driving with dignity behind his enormous mustache.
"What a great, silly thing you are," Charlotte told herself, "running away from Neil like this! Perhaps you'll never see him again—till some bold thing has gone and married him!"
"I don't care," thought Charlotte.
"Yes, you do!" she almost passionately told herself. "Else why have you been thinking about him so much lately?"
"Well, I don't care," she thought. "A girl has her pride."
"And how about his?" she asked herself. "Don't you suppose he had any pride, or any feelings, either, that afternoon when you ran away and left him there because you thought he wasn't good enough? Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!" she sadly continued as the buggy crossed the railroad tracks. "You, who used to think yourself so smart, and set yourself such sums!"
"Yes, and I am smart."
"Well, then! Well, then!" she impatiently cried to herself, and the next moment she spoke aloud to Mr. Briggs, saying: "Stop a minute, please! I forgot something at Doctor Kennedy's. We'll have to go back."
Neil had a number of patients in his reception room when Charlotte walked in, and a number of others came in while she was waiting there. At last her turn arrived, and in she went, a demure, old-fashioned figure, but her heart beating "Boom … Boom … Boom …" like a little bass drum.
"Why, what a stranger!" said Neil, after the first stare of surprise.
They shook hands in a manner that wasn't far from being formal, and he congratulated her on winning the championship. Charlotte was seated in the patient's chair, tongue-tied, nervous, wondering why on earth she had ever come, her heart no longer booming but feeling heavy, out of all proportion to its size. Nor did it help her when Neil stopped talking and waited for her to speak.
"I—I had a letter from Aunt Hepzibah the other day," began Charlotte. "She wasn't feeling very well. I—I was wondering whether you'd come over to Marlin Mills and see her."
"Why, certainly," said the young physician, glancing at his engagement card. "Any hurry?"
"Well," hesitated Charlotte. "I was going back myself this afternoon. And I thought, perhaps"
"I see," he nodded. "We'll run right over as soon as I'm through here. Say, in half an hour—will that do? All right; I'll be ready."
Half an hour later she bravely returned to the doctor's. Neil must have seen her from the window.
"Do you mind waiting another ten minutes, Charlotte?" he asked, coming to the door. "I've got a patient in the office and another one coming." He led her into the front room and placed a chair near the window. "Here's a magazine," he said; "I shan't be long."
But Charlotte didn't care about reading. As soon as Neil had gone, she looked around the room as though it interested her more than any fiction could have done. It was a large room with medallion wall paper, and the furniture belonged to that period in which Doctor Baldwin had spent his young manhood—when the ladies billowed in crinolines, and the gentlemen supported silk hats, and the little girls wore those plaited pantalettes and rolled their hoops with such decorum.
Telling herself that she wished to look at the pictures, she started on a breathless little tour of investigation.
"What a state everything's in!" she thought. "I don't believe the furniture has been rubbed for years." She patted the carpet with her foot and an eager little whirl of dust came hurrying out to see who was tapping. "Poor Neil!" thought Charlotte. "It's a shame—the way he's being neglected! Working hard all day and then coming home to a place like this! If I could only find a duster"
But that, of course, would never do, and Charlotte was returning to her chair by the window when she happened to look through an open door into the next room. It was a library with a marble fireplace, and a pair of andirons which were probably old when Washington was a boy. But after one look Charlotte had no eyes for the marble fireplace, nor the old andirons, nor the book-cases which lined the walls. Her glance was held, as though mesmerized, by a silver frame on the desk—a frame which held a picture of herself standing side by side with Lady Salisbury!
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" she gasped. "So he still cares, or he wouldn't have done that! But why does he act so distant and dignified?"
It didn't take her long to find a plausible answer.
"Yes," she thought, "it must be his pride. It's because I ran away that afternoon; and, of course, he doesn't know—that I've changed. I shall have to show him, somehow, that I'm sorry I ran away—if I can—without being bold."
She was still thinking it over when Neil's last patient went.
"Perhaps if I give him an awfully sweet smile when he comes in," she thought—"like this."
But "awfully sweet smiles" had never been in Charlotte's line, and when she practiced one her face felt so funny that she straightened it at once and frowned to herself with her expressive eyebrows, as though to restore the balance.
Neil came in at the same moment to say he was ready.
"He'll think my frown was meant for him," thought Charlotte, her heart sinking again. "Oh dear, how can I let him know?"
They started in silence, except for the noise which the Little Rattler made, and presently, leaving the town behind, they turned west for Marlin Mills.
"I can't say anything," thought Charlotte, "because he might not take it right, and then I'd feel humiliated all the rest of my life. Perhaps—if I sat a little closer"
So she sat a little closer, which required more downright courage on Charlotte's part than the whole game which she had played with Lady Salisbury.
But nothing happened. The Little Rattler roared away as unconcernedly as ever, and Neil kept his eyes fixed on the ruts and turns ahead.
"Perhaps—if I sat a little closer yet!" thought poor Charlotte. So she screwed her courage tighter and sat a little closer yet, but the only thing which happened—alas!—was that Neil moved farther away, as though to give her room.
"Crowded?" he shouted above the rattle of the car, his eyes still fixed on the ruts and turns.
"N-no," said Charlotte in a faint voice. "I'm all right."
As imperceptibly as possible she returned to her end of the seat and sat there, feeling like a rose probably feels when a foot has stepped on it.
They reached the place where the three abandoned houses stood next to the tumble-down church—that church with its roof fallen in and its steeple awry. The sight of it always affected Charlotte, but this time it fairly depressed her, standing there like an omen, a premonition of what her own future might be.
"We'll be there in a few minutes now," she thought; "and if he goes away this time"
Her mind began to work in desperate haste.
"I can't propose to him," she thought, a queer little pain in her breast; "and I can't lay my head on his shoulder and—and start crying! Yet I do believe he cares, or why would he have that picture on his desk?"
"Ask him!" she whispered to herself.
"I don't like to," she thought.
"Ask him!" she sternly repeated to herself. "You pride yourself on being smart, don't you? Well, then—ask him!"
She drew a full breath—such a full breath that you might have expected her to burst out in loud exclamation. "Neil!" she whispered.
The Little Rattler drowned it.
"Neil!" she said in a louder voice.
But still the Little Rattler drowned it.
"Neil!" she shouted and, to make sure, she touched his arm as well.
The young physician immediately slowed the car, but although the Little Rattler somewhat abated its noise he was obliged to shout to make himself heard. "Did you speak?" he shouted.
"Yes!" shouted back Charlotte. "When I was waiting for you I saw my picture on your library desk. Why have you got it there?"
At that he suddenly stopped the engine and such a silence fell that all the world seemed to have hushed itself to listen. For as long as it might have taken you to count ten Neil looked at her, and what he saw in her eyes I cannot tell you, but when he spoke his voice trembled as Charlotte had once heard it tremble before.
"You want to know?" he asked.
"Yes," nodded Charlotte, not trusting herself to speak.
"Because I think—and have always thought—that you're the greatest little girl in the world. Of course, I know I've got no chance now, but"
Still Charlotte said nothing, but she raised those expressive eyebrows of hers as though to say: "You've got no chance? … Why, Neil, who told you that?"
The next moment one of his arms had slipped around her waist (which seemed to yield itself to the pressure, quite in the immemorial manner), and his other hand pressed gently against her cheek so that she couldn't turn her head away.
"Charlotte," he said. "Listen: If I were to tell you I love you, would you run away again?"
"Not this time," she whispered, finding her voice at last.
They kissed, their glances melting together, and in that moment Charlotte knew that the mission of The Apple Tree Girl was ended, that Little Miss Moses had reached the Promised Land.