CHAPTER XXXIV
THE Ridgefield town-hall was an ugly building. Its narrow dimension faced the street, and the front door, cut in the middle a good twelve feet above the sidewalk, was approached by two curving flights of steps, meeting at the top, and forming a half-circle. Over these steps there traveled daily now, morning and afternoon, and evening too sometimes, the feet of at least half of the women of Ridgefield.
It was half-past five in the afternoon now, and for the past hour the steps had recorded only departures. In Ridgefield supper was at six o'clock, and in very few of the kitchens were there servants to prepare the evening meal.
There was only one woman left in the town-hall assembly-room at this hour. She looked very small in the big empty space, standing alone behind the long white oil-cloth-covered table, extending in front of the platform. Piles of compresses, dressings, and rolls of bandages surrounded her. She was inspecting them evidently, reaching forward now, drawing a pile of them toward her, next leaning close above it a moment, her body straightening itself afterward, her arm flashing to left or right as she accepted or discarded.
This woman was always the last one to leave the assembly-hall at night before the janitor appeared with broom, long-handled brushes, dustpan and huge scrap-basket. She was always the first one to appear at the hall in the morning. Some one had to prepare the room for the workers, who, children sent off to school, breakfast dishes washed, beds made, and to-day's sweeping crammed in with to-morrow's baking, began to troop in about ten o'clock.
There had been seventeen men drafted from Ridgefield in the first call. There had been over twice that number who had volunteered. The fifty-three Ridgefield boys with the colors had been like hot burning coals beneath a melting-pot to their home-town. There had been a welding together of sympathies in Ridgefield such as had not been known there since '62. The son of Mr. Horween, who sat at a mahogany desk in the luxurious general manager's office of the Ridgefield Wire Company, was a tentmate of the son of Hans Bergstrom, who ran a lathe in the same concern; and Mrs. Horween and Mrs. Bergstrom sat many a morning side by side in the Ridgefield town-hall, folding gauze, rolling bandages, and comparing knitting stitches. The local orators in their speeches referred to the Ridgefield men in their country's service as "Our boys." How it made one thrill—fight to keep the tears back—"Our boys!" Rich or poor, native or foreign-born, conscript or volunteer, private or officer, commissioned or non-commissioned, each and every one of them—ours—to hope for, to pray for, to work for, to be proud of; the life of each mother's son of them of equal value, the sympathy for each son's mother of them left behind to wait and watch of equal tenderness and depth.
The same women, who but a few months before had sat in their own front-rooms, in their own rocking-chairs, embroidering their own center-pieces, glancing slyly out from behind their curtains now and then, at occasional passing neighbors, and making little cattish criticisms of them, found themselves instead spending hours under the same roof with those neighbors, working with them on the same set of pajamas, the same pair of slippers, the same comfort-bag, and, (miraculous result of the Kaiser's ambitions) actually sharing such intimacies as what they ate for breakfast, how much flour, sugar or butter they used a week, and exchanging recipes for wheatless biscuits, butter-less cake, and meat substitutes.
Even Augusta Morgan went to sew one morning a week in the town-hall. She sat apart a little haughtily at first. But as time went on she unbent gradually. There was more ability among the Ridgefield women than you'd imagine, she told Eunice after her third morning in the town-hall. That slack-appearing Mrs. Smith was really quite nice when you got to know her, and that girl whom Silas Brown had up and married ten years ago wasn't half as scatter-brained as she looked. For the few women whose sons or brothers, husbands—or perhaps lovers—were actually wearing the olive-drab, Augusta Morgan felt a sympathy so keen that she was afraid it would be noticed. The memory of her soldier-boy, so long gone now, made her throat ache when she regarded these other women hoping as she had once hoped, trying to be brave and of good cheer, as she had once tried to be brave and of good cheer.
Upon this particular midsummer afternoon the young lady left alone in the town-hall, after placing the stacks of bandages and piles of dressing in various labeled boxes, opened a small door under the platform and slipped them out of sight. She then approached a flat-topped desk, facing the door, and sitting down before it began writing in a large book—records of some sort. She wrote with a fountain-pen, that made a pleasant purring sound as it traveled smoothly over the page.
The pen's purring was interrupted ten minutes later. Somebody had pushed open one of the big doors.
The young lady glanced up, without any great curiosity. But at sight of the figure she saw standing on the threshold before her a faint color mounted to her face.
"Cousin Pattie!" she exclaimed.
"Hello, Reba," the large fleshy woman upon the threshold replied with a broad pleased smile.
Reba got up, walked across the hall, extended her hands, both of them.
Cousin Pattie grasped them, and kissed Reba.
"Why, Cousin Pattie," Reba exclaimed again. "Where—I thought Do sit down. Why, I'm so surprised!"
There were chairs near at hand. Cousin Pattie sat down in the nearest one, in front of one of the work-tables. Reba sat down opposite her.
"Where did you drop from, Cousin Pattie?"
"From up the hill. Been waiting for you for an hour and a half, up at the house. They told me I'd most likely find you here."
"But we thought you were in Europe. We heard you went to England after your San Domingo trip. We had no idea"
"Nobody has any idea about Cousin Pattie, child," the older woman interrupted, chuckling. "Haven't you learned that yet? Can't keep her bottled up in Europe, if she takes a notion not to be bottled, submarine or no submarine warfare. My! Reba," she broke off, abruptly, "you've grown good-looking! Typhoid must agree with you." She reached a fat hand across the table and laid it intimately on Reba's arm. "Tell me, child; how are you?"
"Oh, I'm well," said Reba.
"Running the whole shebang up here, so Hattie Miles down in Union tells me."
"They had to have somebody do it," Reba belittled, "and I had to have something to do, so"
"Did you? Didn't feel that way last time I was here, if I recollect. Folded hands was your duty then. Seems to me that scarab of mine has worked pretty well on you, Reba, from all I hear."
"Why, I'm back again, just where you left me, Cousin Pattie."
"Same place, perhaps. That proves nothing. I know, and you do, too, that once a chicken breaks his shell, however hard he finds the picking, he can't ever go back and be a satisfied yellow yolk again. And I'll wager you don't want to be either, Reba. You may have gotten a broken wing and a broken heart too, for all I know. But what of that? 'Tisn't fatal, like growing stale inside a shell. I guess you'd rather hobble around with no wings than go back into the dark, prenatal state I found you in four years ago. There's a look about you to-day, Reba, that makes me feel pretty sure you've uttered your first cry all right. You're married, they say," Cousin Pattie broke off, reaching across the table again and tapping the gold ring on Reba's left hand, lying in front of her, as she leaned forward, supported by her elbows.
"Yes, I'm married, Cousin Pattie."
"Hattie Miles told me. Seafaring man. What's he like, Reba? Tell me. They were awfully close-mouthed about him up at the house, just now. You know what Augusta is—I couldn't get any satisfaction."
"They don't know much about Nathan up at the house," Reba answered. "I don't know very much about him myself. My marriage," she added, "was sort of a leap in the dark."
"Oh! I see—leap in the dark, was it? Sudden affair! And you haven't struck bottom yet, eh?"
"Not the bottom of my marriage. But I've struck some bottoms," said Reba.
Cousin Pattie let the words sink in a moment. Then, "Well—what if you have?" she snapped back. "Pick yourself up and go along! 'In spite of'—'in spite of'—you know."
Reba shook her head.
"I don't know that I think much of that motto of yours, Cousin Pattie."
"That so?" surprised, the challenged woman queried.
"Not to pass around to everybody. It's dangerous. It's so likely to back-fire."
Cousin Pattie surveyed her with deepening interest. A new Reba indeed who conversed in similes, and looked enigmatical!
"What did my motto do to you, Reba?"
"It wasn't your fault, Cousin Pattie," Reba replied. "You gave me the instructions how to use it. I ignored them, that was the trouble. You told me that just so an ambition was self-respecting and didn't hurt anybody else, it was all right to go after it, and to go after it hard. I kept before me the last part of your advice, but forgot the first. And the first is the important part. But you aren't to blame if I got hurt. It was nobody's fault but my own!"
"So you did get hurt!"
"Oh, a little," Reba shrugged.
"And you're staying here till the hurt goes? Is that it?"
"No, that isn't it," Reba denied. "I'm staying here simply till Nathan, my husband, you know, comes back from the South Seas where his business takes him. There is no hurt," she added, "in an arm or a leg after it's amputated. The part of me that was hurt has been cut out."
Cousin Pattie stared at Reba. "You've grown deep, Reba," she remarked.
"Yes," Reba smiled faintly, "the pool has grown deep, Cousin Pattie."
"Been dredged?"
"Yes," again Reba agreed, "big, dripping clawfuls of stuff taken right out of the heart of it."
"So I can't see the bottom of it any more, I declare!" Cousin Pattie sighed. "Old notions, old prejudices, old time-worn rules of right and wrong dumped out, I suppose, on the bank. Discarded."
But Reba shook her head at that. "No, Cousin Pattie," she said soberly, "some of the old notions and prejudices and time-worn rules were too deep for the dredge to reach, thank heaven."
"Why 'thank heaven'?" inquired Cousin Pattie suspiciously. "There's a ring to your talk I don't fathom. I've got to start along to my train in five or ten minutes. So talk fast, Reba. Come, tell me, what horrible thing is it you've escaped that makes you so thankful to heaven for your New England rock-bottom? This mysterious husband of yours, child?"
"Oh, no. Not Nathan," Reba assured her. "I should hope I wasn't trying to escape the man I married of my own free will."
"Oh!" the intuitive Cousin Pattie exclaimed. There was an emphasis in the girl's speech that substantiated the rumor about her, which she had heard at Hattie Miles'. "Look here," she asked bluntly in a lower tone. "Is it another man who's messed up your affairs for you, Reba?"
Reba replied steadily, "No, it isn't; but it might have been, if it wasn't for the things which the dredge couldn't reach. Cousin Pattie," she went on, "I want you to know one thing. You ought to, so when you advise other girls. I want you to know that it was the traditions of this little corner of the world, the ideals that seemed to you so choking, so suffocating, that saved me. You made them look ridiculous. And they're not—always."
"Good for you, Reba!" Cousin Pattie applauded. "Good for you! That's the way to talk. I always did say, 'give me a woman who's tested her traditions—ideals, beliefs—whatever you want to call 'em—refused to take 'em for granted, as they were passed down to her, but poured water into them herself to see if they'd hold it!' Convictions, Reba, born of experience are grand things—and you've got 'em! My gracious, you've got 'em, Reba!"
"Oh, no, I haven't. I haven't many convictions. On most things I'm still groping, fumbling, waiting—waiting"
"Naturally," interrupted Cousin Pattie, impatiently. "What do you expect? Rome wasn't built in a day, child. Souls don't get their buildings all up, and streets all laid out spick and span in a moment. What makes me rejoice is, you've got a soul, Reba. My lands, last time I was here, I couldn't see one even in embryo. Well," she switched off, "when do you expect this husband of yours to be showing up anyhow?"
"I don't know. I can't tell. It takes a long while for our letters to reach each other."
"Mixed up in the war some way, is he?"
"Oh, no. I doubt if Nathan is even an American citizen. He lives at sea, you know."
"You going to live at sea too? Little land creature like you?"
"If he wants me to. I'm going to do anything he wants me to do."
A half-hour later Cousin Pattie was steaming noisily toward Union. Reba walked back from the station to the town-hall. She must finish her records before locking up and going home. She stopped in a drugstore first, however, and telephoned to Aunt Augusta not to keep supper waiting for her. It was when she was coming out of the drugstore that she met her father.
"Oh, there you are," he said. "I'm hunting for you. Registered package for you from San Francisco. Thought it might be something valuable, so I've got it in my pocket here."
"A package?" Reba questioned.
"Yes, from a jeweler."
He passed it to Reba. Its paper covering was sealed with splotches of red sealing-wax.
Alone five minutes later in the big empty town-hall, Reba broke the red seals. Inside a velvet-lined, gilt-embossed leather case, she came upon the little diamond and platinum symbol of her freedom. She didn't understand its significance at first, of course—not until she had read the note that was wrapped around the leather box. Afterward she sat for long minutes staring into space.
It was release Nathan offered her, she supposed—the release she had been so anxious for a year ago, had wanted so much that she had been ready to ask for it, plead for it, demand it, if necessary. But now, she didn't want release! She didn't want things made easy, smoothed out for her, who had erred so gravely. To be relieved of her marriage vows robbed her of her only opportunity for atonement.
A quixotic ambition had possessed Reba, as she got up weak and spent from her fever. The determination to accept without murmur the consequences of her acts, to endure unflinchingly deserved penalties, had uplifted and exalted her. She was New England born and reared, and she had found consolation in the hope that in doing her duty, and doing it well, she might find peace of mind again. Besides, she had told them at home that her husband was coming back to her some day. She had told Louise Bartholomew and Katherine Park too, in the first letters she had written them, that Nathan was coming, when his boat came. Why, he must—he simply must come now! She would send him a message. She would make him come!
The "Ellen T. Robinson" had probably just arrived in San Francisco. Upon re-reading Nathan's note, Reba concluded that he had not yet offered his services officially to his country. It would be in the navy, of course, that he, a sailor, would enlist. It occurred to her that if she didn't write immediately some great monster of the ocean might carry Nathan out of her reach completely. She mustn't lose even a day! Already it might be too late. Every moment was precious. She glanced at the clock.
The eight-thirty train connected with the western mail-train. Twenty-four whole hours would be saved if she could get a letter onto that. It was eight-fifteen now. She reached for a piece of paper.
Dear Nathan:
Your package has just come. You didn't understand that letter of mine. You didn't understand it at all. I don't want to be free of my marriage promises. I don't want to mean less to you. I want to mean more. Truly I do. Please come and give me a chance to mean more. You can enlist afterward. I won't stop you, but come first, please.
She read it through. It wasn't insistent enough—not half. It might not bring him, and if it didn't—if it didn't she could never wipe her slate clean.
She glanced up again at the clock, then bent impulsively.
"P.S.: Please come. Please come. Please come," she wrote three times over, as a child with a limited vocabulary makes rows of stars and circles.