Part 38 (1/2)

THE END

_Extract from the Journal of Miss Susan Standish, Oldburyport, December 1._

It is good to be at home again. I said it over to myself many a time yesterday, as I was helping Mary to take the covers off the family portraits, and sitting in front of the old andirons with the firelight dancing in their great bra.s.s b.a.l.l.s. I felt it when I sat down at my mahogany table and laid my fingers on the ebony handle of the old silver coffee-pot. Things come to have a distinct individuality, almost a personality, and we unconsciously impute to them a response to our feeling for them. It seemed to me that the old claw-foot sofa was as glad to get me back as the cat herself, and the door swung wide with a squeak of welcome. My desk too stood open with friendly invitation, and on it lay a couple of letters. The first was from Ben Bradford. It was so long since I had heard from the boy that I opened his letter first. I wrote him last month, sending him some news and more good advice. I counselled him to stop thinking about Winifred Anstice or any other girl, and throw himself into his studies, to make a record which should do credit to the Bradford name. He replies that the advice is excellent; only one drawback,--it cannot be done. He has tried throwing himself into his studies, but they closed over him without a trace. Talk about records,--he will be glad enough if he gets through his examinations without a dead flunk. As for not thinking about Winifred, he says I have not helped him to the desired end by what I wrote about Mr. Flint and his attentions. Of course, Ben says, he could not expect that Winifred would wait for him. In these days no man could hope to marry until he was white-headed like that Flint; but as for himself he never did or should see any woman whom he could love except Winifred Anstice.

To try to throw off his depression and discouragement, he had gone around last evening to call on f.a.n.n.y Winthrop, who was studying at Radcliffe this year and staying on Mount Vernon Street. She sent her love to her ”dear Miss Standish,” and if I had any message to send in return he would be happy to carry it, as he and she were to act in ”The Loan of a Lover,” and he was likely to see a good deal of her in the course of the next week or two.

This letter has relieved my mind greatly. It is evident that Ben's heart is built like a modern s.h.i.+p, in compartments, so that though one bulkhead suffers wreck, the vessel may still come safe to a matrimonial haven.

f.a.n.n.y Winthrop is a plain little girl with a round face and the traditional student spectacles; but a merry pair of dimples twinkling with a fund of cheery humor, and then--a Winthrop! That will please his mother, I am sure. But I am no matchmaker. I never think of such things unless they are forced upon me, as they have been lately.

The other letter on my desk was from Philip Brady. I had missed his call that last evening in New York. He writes, as if it were a surprising piece of information, that he is going to marry Nora Costello, provided she can gain the consent of her superior officers, and he delegates to me the pleasant duty of breaking the news to his family circle. ”This,” he says, ”will be easy for you who have known Nora, and who were the first to discover her charm and the solid merit which goes so much deeper than charm.”

Here is a pretty state of things!

What am I to do? I can see Cousin John's face when he hears the words ”Salvation Army.” He has always scoffed and scolded and sworn at the mere mention of the business, and his opinions are very ”sot,” as the Oldbury farmers say. He is, in fact, the only obstinate member of our family; but I will let him know that he cannot talk down Susan Standish. I mean to go right over to his house after dinner and have it out with him. I shall tell him that Nora Costello is a daughter-in-law to be proud of (as she is), and that I dare say, if he wishes it, she will leave the Salvation Army (which she never will); that, at any rate, he must send for the girl to come on to visit him; that if he does not, _I_ shall; and that I heartily approve the match.

I call myself a truthful woman, and the proof of it is that when I do start out to tell a lie, it is a good honest one, not a deft little evasion such as runs trippingly from the tongue of practised deceivers.

I suppose the news of Philip's engagement will be spread all over town before night. I feel now as though I should not object to a little of that indifference to the affairs of one's neighbors which I found so depressing when I was in New York. Not that I am any less loyal to Oldburyport; if anything, I have grown more loyal than ever.

I love the deep snow and the trees bare as they are, and the square down the road a piece, and the post-office, and the trolley cars. Our cars go fast, but not too fast,--just fast enough, and they have no dead man's curve. Folks in Oldburyport die a natural death. They are not killed by the cable or run over by bicycles, or, what is quite as bad, hurried and worried to death by the rush of life, as people are in New York. I declare I felt as if I had lived an age in the month I was there; but then, why shouldn't I, with so much happening and such exciting and distressing things too! It seems as if everything went crooked. Now, if my advice had been taken in the beginning--but n.o.body ever will take advice except in Oldburyport.