The Melting of Molly Chapter 4

Chapter 4 - SCATTERED JAM
Sleep is one of the most delightful and undervalued amusements known to the human race. I have never had enough yet and every second of time that I'm not busy with something interesting I curl up on the bed and go dream hunting—only I sleep too hard to do much catching. But this torture book found that out on me and stopped it the very first thing on page three. The command is to sleep as little as possible to keep the nerves in a good condition,—"eight hours at the most and seven would be better." What earthly good would a seven-hour nap do me? I want ten hours to sleep and twelve if I get a good tired start. To see me stagger out of my perfectly nice bed at six o'clock every morning now would wring the sternest heart with compassion and admiration at my faithfulness—to whom?

Yes, it was the day after poor Mr. Carter's funeral that Aunt Adeline moved up here into my house and settled herself in the big south room across the hall from mine. Her furniture weighs a ton each piece, and Aunt Adeline is not light herself in disposition. The next morning when I went in to breakfast she sat in the "vacant chair" in a way that made me see that she was obviously trying to fill the vacancy. I am sorry she worried herself about that. Anyway, it made me take a resolve. After breakfast I went into the kitchen to speak to Judy.

"Judy," I said, looking past her head, "my health is not very good and you can bring my breakfast to me in bed after this." Poor Mr. Carter always wanted breakfast on the stroke of seven, and me at the same time, though he rarely got me. Judy has two dead husbands and she likes a ginger-colored barber down-town. Also her mother is our washerwoman and influenced by Aunt Adeline. Judy understands everything I say to her. After I had closed the door I heard a laugh that sounded like a war-whoop, and I smiled to myself. But that was before my martyrdom to this book had begun. I get up now!

But the day after I came from the city I lay in bed just as long as I wanted to and ignored the thought of the exercises and deep breathing and the icy unsympathetic tub. I couldn't even take very much interest in the lonely egg on the lonely slice of dry toast. I was thinking about things.

Hillsboro is a very peculiar little speck on the universe; even more peculiar than being like a hen. It is one of the oldest towns in Tennessee and the moss on it is so thick that it can't be scratched off except in spots. But it has a lot of racehorse and distillery money in it and when it gets poked up by anything unusual it takes a gulp of its own alcoholic atmosphere and runs away on its own track at a two-five gait, shedding moss as it goes. It hasn't had a real joy-race for a long time and I felt that it needed it. I rolled over and laughed into my pillow.

The subject of the conduct of widows is a serious one. Of all the things old Tradition is most set about it is that, and what was decided to be the proper thing a million years ago this town still dictates shall be done, and spends a good deal of its time seeing its directions carried out. For a year after the funeral they forget about the poor bereaved and when they do remember her they speak to and of her in the same tones of voice they used at the obsequies. Then sooner or later some neighbor is sure to see some man walk home from church with her or hear some old bachelor's voice on her front porch. Mr. Cain took Mrs. Caruther's little Jessie up in his buggy and helped her out at her mother's gate just before last Christmas, and if the poor widow hadn't acted quick the town would have noticed them to death before he proposed to her. They were married the day after New Year's and she lost lots of good friends because she didn't give them more time to talk about it.

I don't intend to run any risk of losing my friends that way and I want them to have all the good time they can get out of it. I'm going to serve out mint-juleps of excitement until the dear old place is running as it did when it was a two-year-old. Why get mad when people are interested in you? It's a compliment after all and just gives them more to think about. I remembered the two trunks across the hall and hugged my knees up under by chin with pleasure at the thought of the town-talk they contained.

Then just as I had got the first plan well-going and was deciding whether to wear the mauve meteor or the white chiffon with the rosebud embroidery as a first julep for my friends, a sweetness came in through my window that took my breath away and I lay still with my hand over my heart and listened. It was Billy singing right under my window, and I've never heard him do it before in all his five years. It was the dearest old-fashioned tune ever written and Billy sang the words as distinctly as if he had been a boy chorister doing a difficult recitative. My heart beat so it shook the lace on my breast like a breeze from heaven as he took the high note and then let it go on the last few words.

"If you love me, Molly, darling,

Let your answer be a kiss!"

A confused recollection of having heard the words and tune sung by my mother when I was at the rocking age myself brought the tears to my eyes as I flew to the window and parted the curtains. If you heard a little boy-angel singing at your casement wouldn't you expect a cherubim face upturned with heaven-lights all over it? Billy's face was upturned as he heard me draw the shade, but it was streaked like a wild Indian's with decorations of brown mud and he held a long slimy fish-worm on the end of a stick while he wiped his other grimy hand down the front of his linen blouse.

I lifted him into my arms.

"Say, Molly, look at the snake I brunged you!" he exclaimed as he came close under the sill, which is not high from the ground. "If you put your face down to the mud and sing something to 'em they'll come outen they holes. A doodle-bug comed, too, but I couldn't ketch 'em both. Lift me up and I can put him in the water-glass on your table." He held up one muddy paddie to me and promptly I lifted him up into my arms. From the embrace in which he and the worm and I indulged my lace and dimity came out much the worse.

"That was a lovely song you sang about 'Molly, darling', Billy," I said. "Where did you hear it?"

"That's a good bug-song, Molly, and I bet I can git a lizard with it, too, if I sing it right low." He began to squirm out of my arms toward the table and the glass.

"Who taught it to you, sugar-sweet?" I persisted as I poured water in on the squirming worm under his direction.

"Nobody taught it to me. Doc sings it to me when Tilly, nurse, nor you ain't there to put me to bed. He don't know no good songs like Roll, Jordan, Roll, or Hot Times or Twinkle. I go to sleep quick 'cause he makes me feel tired with his slow tune what's only good for bugs. Git a hair-pin for me to poke him with, Molly, quick!"

I found the hair-pin and I don't know why my hand trembled as I handed it to Billy. As soon as he got it he climbed out the window, glass, bug and all, and I saw him and the red setter go down the garden walk together in pursuit of the desired lizard, I suppose. I closed the blinds and drew the curtains again and flung myself on my pillow. Something warm and sweet seemed to be sweeping over me in great waves and I felt young and close up to some sort of big world-good. It was delicious and I don't know how long I would have stayed there just feeling it if Judy hadn't brought in my letter.

He had written from London, and it was many pages of wonderful things all flavored with me. He told me about Miss Chester and what good friends they were, and how much he hoped she would be in Hillsboro when he got here. He said that a great many of her dainty ways reminded him of his "own slip of a girl", especially the turn of her head like a "flower on its stem." At that I got right out of bed like a jack jumping out of a box and looked at myself in the mirror.

There is one exercise here on page twenty that I hate worst of all. You screw up your face tight until you look like a Christmas mask to get your neck muscles taut and then wobble your head around like a new-born baby until it swims. I did that one twenty extra times and all the others in proportion to make up for those two hours in bed. Hereafter I'll get up at the time directed on page three, or maybe earlier. It frightens me to think that I've got only a few weeks more to turn from a cabbage-rose into a lily. I won't let myself even think "luscious peach" and "string-bean." If I do, I get warm and happy all over and let up on myself. I try when I get hungry to think of myself in that blue muslin dress.

I haven't been really willing before to write down in this torture volume that I took that garment to the city with me and what Madam Rene did to it—made it over into the loveliest thing I ever saw, only I wouldn't let her alter the size one single inch. I'm honorable as all women are at peculiar times. I think she understood, but she seemed not to, and worked a miracle on it with ribbon and lace. I've put it away on the top shelf of a closet, for it is torment to look at it.

You can just take any old recipe for a party and mix up a début for a girl, but it takes more time to concoct one for a widow, especially if it is for yourself. I spent all the rest of the day doing almost nothing and thinking until I felt lightheaded. Finally I had just about given up any idea of a blaze and had decided to leak out in general society as quietly as my clothes would let me, when a real conflagration was lighted inside me.

If Tom Pollard wasn't my own first cousin I would have loved him desperately, even if I am a week older than he. He was about the only oasis in my marriage mirage, though I don't think anybody would think of calling him at all green. He never stopped coming to see me occasionally, and Mr. Carter liked him. He was the first man to notice the white ruche I sewed in the neck of my old black taffeta four or five months ago and he let me see that he noticed it out of the corner of his eyes even right there in church, under Aunt Adeline's very elbow. He makes love unconsciously and he flirts with his own mother. As soon as I've made this widowhood hurdle—well, I'm going to spend a lot of time buying tobacco with him in his Hup runabout, which sounds as if it was named for himself.

And when that conflagration was lighted in me about my début, Tom did it. I was sitting peaceably on my own front steps, dressed in the summer-before-last that Judy washes and irons every day while I'm deciding how to hand out the first sip of my trousseau to the neighbors, when Tom, in a dangerous blue-striped shirt, with a tie that melted into it in tone, blew over my hedge and landed at my side. He kissed the lace ruffle on my sleeve while I reproved him severely and settled down to enjoy him. But I didn't have such an awfully good time as I generally do with him. He was too full of another woman, and even a first cousin can be an exasperation in that condition.

"Now, Mrs. Molly, truly did you ever see such a peach as she is?" he demanded after I had expressed more than a dozen delighted opinions of Miss Chester. His use of the word "peach" riled me and before I stopped to think, I said: "She reminds me more of a string-bean."

"Now, Molly, don't be mean just because old Wade has got her out driving behind the grays after kissing your hand under the lilacs yesterday, which, praise be, nobody saw but little me! I'm not sore, why should you be? Aren't you happy with me?"

I withered him with a look, or rather tried to wither him, for Tom is no Mimosa bud.

"The way that girl has started in to wake up this little old town reminds me of the feeling you get under your belt seven minutes after you've sipped an absinthe frappé for the first time—you are liable for a good jag and don't know it," he continued enthusiastically. "Let's don't let the folks know that they are off until I get everybody in a full swing of buzz over my queen." I had never seen Tom so enthusiastic over a girl before and I didn't like it. But I decided not to let him know that, but to get to work putting out the Chester blaze in him and starting one on my own account.

"That's just what I'm thinking about, Tom," I said with a smile that was as sweet as I could make it, "and as she came with messages to me from one of my best old friends I think I ought to do something to make her have a good time. I was just planning a gorgeous dinner-party I want to have for her when you came so suddenly. Do you think we could arrange it for Tuesday evening?"

"Lord love us, Molly, don't knock the town down like that! Let 'em have more than a week to get used to this white rag of a dress you've been waving in their faces for the last few days. Go slow!"

"I've been going so slow for so many years that I've turned around and I'm going fast backward," I said with a blush that I couldn't help.

"Help! Let my kinship protect me!" exclaimed Tom in alarm, and he pretended to move an inch away from me.

"Yes," I said slowly and as I looked out of the corner of my eyes from under the lashes that Tom himself had once told me were "too long and black to be tidy," I saw that he was in a condition to get the full shock. "If anybody wakes up this town it will be I," I said as I flung down the gauntlet with a high head.

"Here, Molly, here are the keys of my office, and the spark-plug to the Hup; you can cut off a lock of my hair, and if Judy has got a cake I'll eat it out of your hands. Shall it be California or Nova Scotia? And I prefer my bride served in light gray tweed." Tom really is adorable and I let him snuggle up just one cousinly second, then we both laughed and began to plan what Tom was horrible enough to call the resurrection razoo. But I kept that delicious rose-embroidered treasure all to myself. I wanted him to meet it entirely unprepared.

I was glad we had both got over our excitement and were sitting decorously at several inches' distance apart when the judge drew the grays up to the gate and we both went down to the sidewalk to ask him and the lovely long lady to come in. They couldn't; but we stood and talked to them long enough for Mrs. Johnson to get a good look at us from across the street and I was afraid I would find Aunt Adeline in a faint when I went into the house.

Miss Chester was delightfully gracious about the dinner—I almost called it the début dinner—and the expression on the judge's face when he accepted! I was glad she was sitting sidewise to him and couldn't see. Some women like to make other women unhappy, but I think it is best for you to keep them blissfully unconscious until you get what you want. Anyway, I like that girl all over and I can't see that her neck is so absolutely impossibly flowery. However, I think she might have been a little more considerate about discussing Alfred's London triumph over the Italian mission. As a punishment I let Tom put his arm around my waist as we stood watching them drive off and then was sorry for the left gray horse that shied and came in for a crack of the judge's irritated whip.

Then I refused to let Tom come inside the gate and he went down the street whistling, only when he got to the purple lilac he turned and kissed his hand to me. That, Mrs. Johnson just couldn't stand and she came across the street immediately and called me back to the gate.

"You are tempting Providence, Molly Carter," she exclaimed decidedly. "Don't you know Tom Pollard is nothing but a fly-up-the-creek? As a husband he'd chew the rope and run away like a puppy the first time your back was turned. Besides being your cousin, he's younger than you. What do you mean?"

"He's just a week younger, Mrs. Johnson, and I wouldn't tie him for worlds, even if I married him," I said meekly. Somehow I like Mrs. Johnson enough to be meek with her and it always brings her to a higher point of excitement.

"Tie, nonsense; marrying is roping in with ball and chain, to my mind. And a week between a man and a woman in their cradles gets to be fifteen years between them and their graves. I'm going to make you the subject of a silent prayer at the next missionary meeting, and I must go home now to see that Sally cooks up a few of Mr. Johnson's crotchets for supper." And she began to hurry away.

"I don't believe you'll be able to make it a 'silent' session about me, Mrs. Johnson," I called after her, and she laughed back from her own front gate. Marriage is the only worm in the bud of Mrs. Johnson's life, and her laugh has a snap to it even if it is not very sugary sweet.

When I told Judy about the dinner-party [93] and asked her to get the yellow barber to come help her and her nephew wait on the table she grinned such a wide grin that I was afraid of being swallowed. She understood that Aunt Adeline wouldn't be interested in it until I had time to tell her all about it. Anyway, she will be going over to Springfield on a pilgrimage to see Mr. Henderson's sister next week. She doesn't know it yet; but I do.

After that I spent all the rest of the evening in planning my dinner-party and I had a most royal good time. I always have had lots of company, but mostly the spend-the-day kind with relatives, or more relatives to supper. That's what most entertaining in Hillsboro is like, but, as I say, once in a while the old slow pacer wakes up.

I'll never forget my first real dinner-party, as the flower girl for Caroline Evans' wedding, when she married the Chicago millionaire, from which Hillsboro has never yet recovered. I was sixteen, felt dreadfully naked without a tucker in my dress, and saw Alfred for the first time in evening clothes—his first. I can hardly stand thinking about how he looked even now. I haven't been to very many dinner-parties in my life, but from this time on I mean to indulge in them often. Candle-light, pretty women's shoulders, black coat sleeves, cut glass and flowers are good ingredients for a joy-drink, and why not?

But when I got to planning about the gorgeous food I wanted to give them all, I got into what I feel came near being a serious trouble. It was writing down the recipe for the nesselrode pudding they make in my family that undid me. Suddenly hunger rose up from nowhere and gripped me by the throat, gnawed me all over like a bone, then shook me until I was limp and unresisting. I must have astralized myself down to the pantry, for when I became conscious I found myself in company with a loaf of bread, a plate of butter and a huge jar of jam.

I sat down by the long table by the window and slowly prepared to enjoy myself. I cut off four slices and buttered them to an equal thickness and then more slowly put a long silver spoon into the jam. I even paused to admire in Judy's mirror over the table the effect of the cascade of lace that fell across my arm and lost itself in the blue shimmer of old Rene's masterpiece of a negligée, then deep down I buried the spoon in the purple sweetness. I had just lifted it high in the air when out of the lilac-scented dark of the garden came a laugh.

"Why Molly, Molly, Molly!"

"Why, Molly, Molly, Molly!" drawled that miserable man-doctor as he came and leaned on the sill right close to my elbow. The spoon crashed on the table and I turned and crashed into words.

"You are cruel, cruel, John Moore, and I hate you worse than I ever did before, if that is possible. I'm hungry, hungry to death, and now you've spoiled it all! Go away before I wet this nice crisp bread and jam with tears into a mush I'll have to eat with a spoon. You don't know what it is to want something sweet so bad you are willing to steal it—from yourself!" I fairly blazed my eyes down into his and moved as far away from him as the table would let me.

"Don't I, Molly?" he asked softly, after looking straight in my eyes for a long minute that made me drop my head until the blue bow I had tied on the end of my long plait almost got into the scattered jam. Even at such a moment as that I felt how glad old Rene would have been to have given such a nice man as the doctor a treat like that blue silk chef-d'[oe]uvre of hers. I was glad myself.

"Don't I, Peaches?" he asked again in a still softer voice. Again I had that sensation of being against something warm and great and good like your own mother's breast and I don't know how I controlled it enough not to—to—

"Well, have some jam then," I managed to say with a little laugh as I turned away and picked up the silver spoon.

"Thank you, I will, all of it and the bread and butter, too," he answered, in that detestable friendly tone of voice as he drew himself up and sat in the window. "Hustle, Peaches, if you are going to feed me, for I'm ravenous. It took Sam Benson's wife the longest time to have the shortest baby I ever experienced and I haven't had any supper. You have; so I don't mind taking it all away from you."

"Supper," I sniffed as I spread the jam on those lovely, lovely slices of bread and thick butter that I had fixed for my own self. "That apple-toast combination tires me so now that I forget it if I can." As I handed him the first slice of drippy lusciousness I turned my head away. He thought it was from the expression of that jam, but it was from his eyes.

"Slice up the whole loaf, Peaches, and let's get on a jam jag! Come with me just this once and forget—forget—" He didn't finish his sentence and I'm glad. We neither of us said anything more as I fed him that whole loaf. I found that the bite I took off of each piece I had ready for him when he finished with the one he had in hand satisfied me as nothing I had ever eaten in all my life before had done, while at the same time my nibbles soothed his conscience about robbing me.

His teeth are big and strong and white and his jaws work like machinery. He is the strongest man I ever saw, and his gauntness is all muscle. What is that glow a woman gets from feeding a hungry man whom she likes with her own hands; and why should I want to be certain that he kissed the lace on my sleeve as it brushed his face when I reached across him to catch an inquisitive rose that I saw peeping in the window at us?