Ariel Custer (18 page)

W
hen Emily Dillon had walked that portulaca-bordered path through the white pillared gateway and down the pleasant street of her home village, her heart had been light and happy, and there had been a smile on her face that was good to see. She nodded cheerily to the milkman and the iceman with that little rosebud smile she always wore, and tripped away into the summer like a happy robin. The milkman and iceman had both taken off their caps respectfully as they always did and looked after her with a warm feeling of friendship. Somehow she always made them feel as if they were gentlemen when they passed her.

She chatted with the butcher for a minute or two while she waited for her car, and he remarked as he went back to his customer in the shop: “That’s one good little woman, that is!”

The errand to the Bolton bank consumed small time, and she glanced at the additional sum in her bank book with satisfaction. It wasn’t a large account, but there was a reason why she wanted it to be as big as possible just now, and the sum thus added brought the account up to round numbers.

Pausing as she stepped out of the bank, she happened to glance across the way to the little ice-cream parlor and yielded to a childish desire for a plate of the delicious homemade ice cream that was always served there. Foolish and sinful, Harriet would have called it, at that hour in the morning! But when one was free as air, and felt like eating ice cream, why should one not do it? Besides, it was hot, and ice cream would be cooling. So she tripped across the street and ordered a dish of vanilla ice cream and a piece of chocolate layer cake; and while she ate she thought of Rebecca Ford and wished she could be there eating ice cream along with her. Why had she never planned to take Rebecca for an outing somewhere? It could have been done in the city well enough without Harriet ever finding out. Having once made a break, she wondered why she had never done it many more times. Well, she would send something to Rebecca, anyway.

When she had finished eating, she bought a coconut cake and some macaroons and had them done up to be called for. Then she tripped over to the drugstore and telephoned to Rebecca Ford’s daughter-in-law in Mercer to know when they were going after their mother. The woman said Tom was going that afternoon and could drive around by the way of Bolton as well as not and get the packages. Emily knew by the eager way in which she said, “Cakes? Oh,
that’s
nice!” that they would not be forgotten and a large portion of them would not be eaten by Rebecca. But then, life was like that. You couldn’t help it. She sighed as she went out to the corner where the Short Line passed and wished she had thought to do something like that the last day Rebecca was at the house. She could easily have slipped her something after Harriet went away.

There was a strange conductor on the car she boarded, so she rode all the way to the city instead of changing to another line a little beyond Glenside as she had intended, which proves how easily conductors can be mistaken about things they think they are sure of, and when she reached the city it was quarter to twelve. She looked at the clock on the city hall tower and compared it with her quaint old-fashioned watch a trifle nervously. She had a great many things to do before night and must not waste a minute. She was glad she had stopped for the ice cream, for now she wouldn’t need any lunch, and it took so much longer to get waited on in the city than out at Bolton.

She went at once to the nearest big department store and bought a small folding map of the United States, one that contained all the principal cities plainly marked. She retired to a quiet corner of the waiting room and spread it out on her lap before a window with her back turned to everyone else, and there she diligently perused it for twenty minutes, coming at last with her finger to a little black dot that pleased her, for a light broke out in her face.

“That’s it!” she whispered softly to herself, with a furtive look around her. “I was sure it was that.”

Folding her map in its creases carefully and stuffing it into her handbag, she flitted from her corner with definite purpose in her face and hurried across the street to another bank where she also had an account of which Harriet had no knowledge. She had found it convenient to make this arrangement on account of her small charities here and there that she did not care to discuss with her housemate. Here she drew a goodly check to her own order and asked to have her safety-deposit box brought, as she wished to get something out of it. She was shown into the little waiting room and the box put before her. She carefully put away her money, some in her bag for immediate use, some in a tiny buttoned pocket in the bosom of her dress, and unlocking her safety-deposit box took out of it a lot of Liberty Bonds that she knew were negotiable at any time. These she wrapped in a handkerchief and pinned securely into her blouse. Then she locked her box, carried it to the attendant, and went out upon the street.

There came a breathless feeling as she stood again on the sidewalk with the hurrying city life all around her. She had just taken a great and decisive step. It was not too late to step back and undo it. She felt almost bewildered, but very happy, and strangely light again as she had done the day before when she ran away and went wading in the creek. She felt as if she wanted to do something terribly frivolous, and the first thing that stared her in the face was a hairdresser’s sign.

Emily Dillon had always wanted to have her hair shampooed and dressed in a professional way, but it was a wish that had never before dared come to the surface. In her father’s time she would never have done such a thing. He would have ridiculed her to the end of her days and ragged her about the foolish waste of money. And then along came Harriet, and she would have been worse. Harriet held that a woman who had her hair washed by someone else was a lazy hussy and that was all there was about it. Emily never felt that it was worthwhile to give Harriet any additional themes for remarks. So she had patiently scrubbed her own soft hair in the washbowl through the years. But now, a sudden impulse seized her. Why should she not do as she pleased? She was free. No one to hinder—no one to know! She looked breathlessly around to be sure no Glenside shoppers were coming in either direction, and then she hopped across the street with her birdlike motion and disappeared into the stairway that led to the hairdressing parlors.

“I should like my hair washed and done up some new way,” she announced serenely in a sweet voice that one would never take for the first time in a place like this. “Have you time for me?”

“If you’ll take it right now,” said the girl with the henna permanent wave, looking at the clock speculatively, just as if it were an everyday affair for Emily Dillon.

Emily slipped into the curtained booth indicated and took off her hat with a wildly beating heart. Her hand was trembling so that she could hardly get hold of her jet hatpin, but she was smiling as she sat down in front of the big mirror, and she felt that she was off, just as she had the first time Nate Barrett put her on his big bobsled and took her down the hill.

An hour later a new Emily Dillon came down the steps to the street. Her hair was waved attractively and made a soft frame for her face. Her eyes had lost their tired look. She had rested with them shut while her hair was being done and thought out a great many lovely plans. Things had been vague in her mind before, but now they became quite definite. When she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she was getting into the elevator, it almost took her breath away, and her new self with her hair done like other people seemed to give her confidence.

Her first move was to go to the railroad station and consult the information desk. She came away in half an hour with a timetable, a ticket, and a sleeper reservation all neatly sealed in a railroad envelope and tucked away in her handbag; for Emily Dillon was about to run away!

But first, she felt she must have a new hat.

The old black toque did not fit at all with her hair that way. It had been with difficulty that she forced it on at all. So she made her way to a milliner’s and emerged a little while later with a love of a gray hat wreathed about with gray ostrich feathers. She scarcely dared look at herself in the store windows as she passed. She knew that was no hat for her father’s daughter to buy, no hat for a sensible, mature Dillon to wear. Harriet would have disapproved it with a fervor that almost made her shrink and falter and turn back, for Harriet always said that ostrich feathers were extravagant because they were “so very,
very
perishable!”

But to Emily they filled a long desire, and it thrilled her unspeakably with a soft little joy as she walked along and felt the feathers floating with her. When she caught a glimpse of herself in a passing mirror, she caught her breath with wonder. She had never supposed she could look like that. She was not vain, only surprised and pleased. If it had been another woman she was looking at, she would have said: “Why, she’s almost
pretty
!” But Emily never would harbor such a thought about herself. She just felt pleased and comfortable.

Down to the women’s coat-and-suit department she hurried, for a hat like that merited a different dress. She bought a coat and skirt of soft dark-blue taffeta that wouldn’t crush. It had little huddled pools of fine braiding here and there, and some floating braided panels on the skirt that gave her more than ever the look of a bird with its wings held tidily close.

The hem had to be taken up and a little change made in the coat, so while she waited for her second fitting she went and bought two sheer white blouses, delicate with embroidery and fine lace, and a dark-blue georgette blouse, trimly tailored with piping of gray charmeuse.

It was while she was adjusting this blouse in the dressing room after the second fitting, and the saleslady had gone to have her old dress wrapped, that Emily realized her shoes were not up to the rest of her toilette. Her heart beat high until a little wild rose bloomed in each cheek. Was there anything out of the way in a woman of her years wearing
gray suede shoes
if she chose? Yes, and
silk stockings
to match? Other women of good repute did it, and why shouldn’t she wear beautiful things on this one trip of her life? She had saved and stayed in the background all her life. Not that she cared to come to the front now even, but she did want just once to see how it would seem to be dressed in some of the pretty things that were floating so freely around the world. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Gray shoes cost no more than black, at least than some black ones, and anyway, she had money enough to indulge a desire for beauty now and then.

“They’re very comfortable, too, and durable,” said the salesman as he finished fitting them on a few minutes later, and Emily, almost on the verge of tears, trembled out a bit of a smile and said: “Well, I’ll take them.”

At ten minutes to six she stepped forth from the door of the big department store, gray as to hat, shoes, gloves, and veil, in her trim new suit and bearing in her hand a pretty new traveling bag of handsome leather, fitted with brushes and other toilet articles. It was filled with a dainty selection of fine undergarments, a featherweight silk raincoat, and a soft little one-piece frock of silky, cobwebby gray that looked like the underside of a gray dove’s wing when it unfurled, and had a round neck and frilly lace in the sleeves. She was almost afraid to think about it as she stepped off in her dark-gray suede oxfords and wondered if anybody from Glenside would know her if they met her. She hurried out of sight into a side street to an inviting tearoom, where she took refuge in a high-backed seat by a pink-shaded candlelighted table and ordered chicken à la king, fruit salad, and cherry pie à la mode. She hadn’t an idea what any of them were, written down in that way, for she was not a frequenter of restaurants, but she felt that something was due her new self tonight, and she was too excited to do anything in the old well-tried way. She ate her supper joyously and gradually calmed down enough to think over her purchases. They had not been so very expensive. The suit was out of a sale, the gray frock a little French model put down because there were no more—a “sample,” they called it. The raincoat was a great bargain, cheaper than the usual plain black ones, and the shoes were the last of the summer sale, a wonderful thing for the money, on account of her having such a small foot and being able to wear an odd size. There had been nothing in the whole lot that she did not have to have unless perhaps she ought to have been willing to wear her old black suit. But she looked down at the neatly wrapped bundle beside her new bag with a degree of triumph. That was one thing she would not do; she would not wear that black suit on her expedition. When she came to think it over, the only crime she had committed against her traditional conscience had been to buy giddy colors, and after all gray and dark blue were not so
very cheerful.
Harriet wore dark blue, and flowered things even, and Harriet was two years her senior. Why should she be condemned to black? But when she came to think of it, black, black, black had been her garb for the last twenty years. Black for her mother, her aunt, her grandmother, and then for her father. And because of the hateful way in which the cousins had treated her father, she had worn the black with only the change of a white blouse now and then all these four long years. And it was time and right she should have a change.

She finished her supper and picked up her things, fitting on the new gloves with a pleasant thrill, and decided to get rid of that black dress. She had bought a new dark-blue silk umbrella with a silver handle, and with that and her new bag she had plenty to carry without the package. She came out into the street again and walked along wondering what she could do with it. She didn’t exactly like to send it to Rebecca Ford. That would perhaps cause comment and excite questions. There must be some poor body that would be glad of it. Then she looked up and saw coming down the street slowly with a weary gait a sorrel horse and an old wagon with the charmed legend S
ALVATION
A
RMY
in faded letters on its side. The wagon was full of old chairs and piles of newspapers, and Emily stepped quickly to the curb and signaled the driver, a scraggly old man, who drew up his horse abruptly and looked at her.