Re-Creations (37 page)

“Well, I guess you mighty well better get ready to,” said Harry knowingly. “It looks mighty like to me that Max intends us to spare her pretty soon all right, all right.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” sighed Louise. “But then, that’s nice. It isn’t like somebody you don’t know and love already. She’ll always be ours, and he’ll be ours, too. Won’t it be nice? Don’t you hope it’s so, Harry?”

And Cornelia’s cheeks grew pinker in the kitchen as she remembered words and looks that had passed that evening and turned to her task with a happy smile on her lips.

Chapter 31

I
t was just one year from the day when she had taken that first journey from west to east and met the pretty college girl on her tearful way home to her soul’s trying that Mrs. Maxwell came back from her sojourn in California. The business that had taken her there had prolonged itself, and then unexpectedly the sick sister had telegraphed that she was coming out to spend the winter and wanted her to remain. And because the sister had seemed to be in very great need of her, she had remained.

But now the sister was gaining rapidly, was fully about to be left in the care of a nurse and the many friends with whom she was surrounded, and Mrs. Maxwell had been summoned home for a great event.

As the train halted at the college station and a bevy of girls came chattering round, bidding some comrade good-bye, she thought of the day one year ago when she had been so interested in one girl and wondered whether her instincts concerning her had been true. She was going home to attend that girl’s wedding now! That girl so soon to be married to her dear and only son, and since that one brief afternoon together she had never seen that little girl again.

Oh, there had been letters, of course, earnest, loving, welcoming letters on the part of the mother; glad letters expressing joy at her son’s choice and picturing the future in glowing colors; shy, sweet, almost apologetic letters on the part of the girl, as if she had presumed in accepting a love so great as that of this son. And the mother had been glad, joyously glad, for was she not the first girl she had ever laid eyes upon whose face looked as if she were sweet, strong, and wise enough for her beloved son’s wife?

But now as she neared the place, and the meeting again was close at hand, her heart began to misgive her. What if she had made a mistake? What if this girl was not all those things that she had thought at that first sight? What if Arthur, too, had been deceived, and the girl would turn out to be frivolous, superficial, unlovely in her daily life, unfine in soul and thought? For was she, the mother, not responsible in a large way for this union of the two? Had she not fairly thrown her son into the way of knowing the girl and furthered their first acquaintance in her letters in little subtle ways that she hardly realized at the time but that had come from the longing of her soul to have a daughter just like what she imagined this girl must be?

All the long miles she tortured her soul with these thoughts, and then would come the memory of the sweet, sad, girlish face she had watched a year ago, the strength, the character in the lovely profile of firm little chin and well-set head, the idealism in the clear eyes, and her heart would grow more sure. Then she would pray that all might be well and again take out her son’s last letter and read it over, especially the last few paragraphs:

You will love her, mother of mine, for she is just your ideal. I used to wonder how you were ever going to stand it when I did fall in love, to find out the girl was not what you had dreamed I should marry. For I honestly thought there were no such girls as you had brought me up to look for. When I went to college and found what modern girls were, I used to pity you sometimes when you found out, too. But Cornelia is all and more than you would want. She goes the whole limit of your desire, I believe, for she is notably a Christian. I speak it very reverently, Mother, because I have found few that are, at least, that are recognizable as such; and generally those have managed to make the fact unpleasant by the belligerent way in which they flaunt it and because of their utter crudeness in every other way. Perhaps that isn’t fair, either. I have met a few who seemed genuine and good, but they were mortally shy and never seemed to dare open their mouths. But this girl of mine is rare and fine. She can talk, and she can work, and she can live. She can be bright and cheerful, and she can suffer and strive; but she is a regular girl, and yet she is a Christian. You should hear her lead a Christian Endeavor meeting, striking right home to where everybody lives, and acts, and makes mistakes, and is sorry or forgetful as the case may be. You should hear her pray, leading everybody to the feet of Christ to be forgiven and learn.

Yes, Mother, dear, she has led me there, too; and you have your great wish. I have given myself to your Christ and hers. I feel that He is my Christ now, and I am going to try to live and work for His cause all the rest of my life. For, to tell the truth, Mother, the Christ you lived and the Christ she lived was better than the best thing on earth, and I had to give in. I was a fool that I didn’t do it long ago, for I knew in my heart it was all true as you taught me, even though I did get a lot of nonsense against it when I was in college; but when I saw a young girl with all of life before her giving herself to Christian living this way, it finished me.

So I guess you won’t feel badly about the way things turned out. And anyway you must remember you introduced us and sort of wished her on me with those ferns; so you mustn’t complain. But I hope you’ll love her as much as you do me, and we are just waiting for you to get back for the ceremony, Mother, dear; so don’t let anything hinder you by the way, and haste the day! It cannot come too soon.

She had telegraphed in answer to that letter that she would start at once. The day had been set for the wedding and all arrangement made. Then a slight illness of her sister that looked more serious than it really was had delayed her again; and here she was traveling posthaste Philadelphiaward on the very day of the wedding, keeping everybody on the alert, lest she would not get there in time and the ceremony would have to be delayed. All these twelve months had passed, and yet she had not seen the reconstructed little house on the hill.

As she drew nearer the city, and the sun went down in the western sky, her heart began to quiver with excitement, mature, calm mother, even though she was. But she had been a long time away against her will from her only son, and her afternoon with Cornelia had been very brief. Somehow she could not make it seem real that she was really going to Arthur’s wedding that night and not going to have an opportunity to meet again the girl he was to marry until she was his wife—and never to have met her people until it was over, a final, a finished fact. She sighed a little wearily and looked toward the evening bars of sunset red and gold, with a wish, as mothers do when hard pressed, that it were all over and she going home at last to rest and a feeling that her time was out.

Then right in the midst of it the brakeman touched her on the shoulder and handed her a telegram, with that unerring instinct for identity that such officials seem to have inborn.

With trembling fingers and a vague presentiment she tore it open and read:

Cornelia and I will meet you at West Philadelphia with a car and take you to her home. Have arranged to have your trunk brought up immediately from Broad Street, so you will have plenty of time to dress. Take it easy, little mother; we love you.

Arthur.

Such a telegram! She sat back relieved, steadied her trembling lips, and smiled. Smiled and read it over again. What a boy to make his bride come to the station to meet her two hours before the ceremony! What a girl to be willing to come!

Suddenly the tears came rushing to her eyes, glad tears mingled with smiles, and she felt enveloped in the love of her children. Her boy and her girl! Think of it! She would have a daughter! And she was a part of them; she was to be in the close home part of the ceremony, the beforehand and the sweet excitement. They were waiting for her and wanting her, and she wasn’t just a necessary part of it all because she was the groom’s mother; she was to stay his mother and be mother to the girl; and she would perhaps be a sister to the girl’s mother, who was also to be her boy’s mother. Now for the first time the bitterness was taken out of that thought about Arthur’s having another mother, and she was able to see how the two mothers could love him together—if the other one should prove to be the right kind of mother. And it now began to seem as if she must be to have brought up a girl like Cornelia.

At that very moment in the little house on the hill, four chattering college-girl bridesmaids were bunched together on Cornelia’s bed, supposed to be resting before they dressed, while Cornelia, happy-eyed and calm, sat among them for a few minutes’ reunion.

“Isn’t it awfully strange that you should be the first of the bunch to get married?” burst forth Natalie, the most engaged and engaging of the group. “I thought I was to be the very first myself right after I graduated, and here we’ve had to put if off three times because Tom lost his position. And Pearl broke her engagement, and Ruth’s gone into business, and Jane is up to her eyes in music. It seems strange to have things so different from what we planned, doesn’t it? My, how we pitied you, Cornie, that day you had to leave. It seems an awful shame you had to go home then, when such a little time would have given you all that fun to remember. I don’t see why such things have to happen anyway. I think it was just horrid you never graduated. I don’t see why somebody couldn’t have come in here and taken care of things till you got through. It meant so very much to you. You missed so much, you know, that you can never, never make up.”

Cornelia from her improvised couch by the window smiled dreamily.

“Yes, but that was the day I met my new mother,” she said, almost as if she had forgotten their existence and were speaking to herself. “And she introduced me to Arthur. Probably I would never have seen either of them if I hadn’t come home just that day.”

A galaxy of eyes turned upon her, searching for romance, and studied her sweet face greedily.

“Don’t pity her anymore girls,” cried Natalie. “She’s dead in love with him and hasn’t missed us nor our commencement one little minute. She walked straight into the land of romance that day when she left us and hasn’t thought of us since. I wonder she ever remembered to invite us to the wedding. But I’m not surprised either. If he’s half as stunning as his picture, he must be a treasure. I’m dying to meet him! What kind of a prune is his mother? I think she must be horrid to demand your presence at the station to meet her two hours before the ceremony. I must say I’d make a fuss at that.”

“Oh,” said Cornelia, a haughty color coming into her cheeks. “You don’t understand. She didn’t demand! She doesn’t even know. Arthur and I are surprising her. Arthur just sent a telegram to the train for her to get off at the West Philadelphia station. She expected to go on to Broad Street. Oh! She is the dearest mother; wait till you see her.”

A tap at the door interrupted her, and Louise entered shyly. “Nellie, dear, I hate to interrupt you, but that man, that Mr. Ragan, has come, and he’s so anxious to see you just a minute Mother said I better tell you so you could send him down a message. It’s something about the curtains for his house. I think he wants birds on them, or else he doesn’t, I don’t know which. He’s so afraid you’ve already ordered the material, and he wants it the way you said first, she says.”

“That’s all right, darling. I think I’ll just run down and see him a minute; he’s so anxious about his little house, and it will reassure him if I explain about it. Tell him to wait just a minute till I slip on my dress.”

A chorus of protests arose from the bed.

“For mercy’s sake, Cornie, you’re suddenly not going down to see a man on business now! What on earth? Did you really get to be an interior decorator, after all? You don’t
mean
it! I thought you were just kidding when you wrote about it. What do you mean? They’re only poor people. Well, what do you care? You’re surely not going on with such things after you’re married?”

Cornelia, flinging the masses of her hair into a lovely coil and fastening the snaps of her little blue organdie, smiled again dreamily. “Arthur likes it,” she said. “He wants me to go on. You see we both regard it not exactly altogether as a business but as something that is going to help uplift the world. I’ve done two really big houses, and they’ve been successful; and I have had good opportunities opening, so that I could really get into a paying business if I chose, I think. But I don’t choose. Oh, I may do a fine house now and then if I get the chance, just to keep my hand in, for I enjoy putting rich and beautiful things together in the right way, but what I want is to help poor people do little cheap houses and make them look pretty and comfortable and really artistic. So many don’t have pretty homes who would really like them if they only knew how! Now, this man I’m going down to now is just a poor laborer, but he had been saving up his money to make a nice home for his girl, and he heard about me and came to me to help him. I’ve been having the best fun picking out his things for him. I won’t get a great fee out of it; indeed, I hate to take anything, only he wouldn’t like that, but it’s been great! Arthur and I have been together out to see the little cottage twice and arranged the new chairs for him; and I even made up the beds and showed him how to set the table for their first meal. They are to be married next week, and he’s so worried, lest the stuff I ordered for curtains won’t get here in time to finish his dining room. But Mother is going to finish them, and Harry and Carey will put them up, and I want to tell him so he will not worry.” With a bright smile Cornelia left them and flew downstairs to her customer.

“Goodness, girls! Did you ever see such a change in anyone? I can’t make her out, can you?” cried Jane, sitting up on the foot of the bed and looking after her.