Some of Us Are Married/The Purveyor of the Funds

by Mary Stewart Cutting

 

Some of Us Are Married

 

THE PURVEYOR OF THE FUNDS

IT SEEMS too bad that I can't go to Aunt Kit's funeral—the very last member of the old family!" From the paper he was reading, Ben Bromley looked up yearningly at his wife, who sat by the window in a short-sleeved, pink gingham frock, shelling peas with expert fingers. It was ten a.m. on a warm Sunday; nobody was going to church, but the two small boys and little Alice were at Sunday school; the sixteen-year-old Top was upstairs employed exhaustively in the sacred rite of cleaning his gun. There was a sense of peace and space and leisure.

Early as it was, the voice of Rill's young man could be heard down below on the front piazza; the rhythmical dragging of his big heavy-soled shoes along the boards showed that he was sprawled, as usual, in the hammock, while Rill sat near it in the little green rocking chair, gazing at him, happily. It was the corner of the piazza where Mr. Bromley and his wife had been in the habit of sitting; but it was, of course, all right that things had changed. Everything was all right; but that first glow of excitement and sympathy, mingled with the bewilderment and shock of Rill's engagement, had faded during the year into a half-irritated, even if affectionate, tolerance of the situation. Lately, however, this had been mixed with that sense of the looming prospect of the wedding of which Mr. Bromley had been hearing incessantly. Young Holman—they never abbreviated names in the Wotherspoon family—had been suddenly offered a position in the West, and it was natural that the young couple should want to be married and go out there together; but the subject was mixed with a corroding sense of inadequacy, at the present time, to the father.

Mr. Bromley's business, at first hit hard by the war abroad, had begun to show signs unexpectedly of being bettered by it; he manufactured a "side" article that was needed—he had borrowed every cent he could honestly carry, with the fair prospect of making good within the next six months; in the meantime, as he had warned his wife, they must cut everything as close as possible; he could barely get out enough for the daily needs—it simply wasn't there. How, then, was he to "come across" for a wedding, that wedding which he was never allowed to forget? He simply had no money for it.

In some miraculous way, indeed, during the past few weeks Rill had done wonders with the few dollars he had wrung out for her, running into the room after dinner, tall and smiling, with her yellow hair and sea-blue eyes, to show something lacy and ribboned, with one arm flung around Daddy's neck. Whenever his wife moved, she dropped something she was making for Rill. The conversation wafted incessantly into yards of lace, and how much of this it took and how much of that. Ben Bromley took an anxious glance this moment at his shoes… While Rill's little splendours, augmented by a couple of checks from thoughtful aunts, momentarily increased, the rest of the family showed an almost embarrassing seediness. He turned for relief to the subject of the funeral—it seemed a cool, pleasant refuge where nobody talked of clothing.

"I do wish I could go, Jess!" His thin, pleasant face with its dark eyes took on a hungry expression.

"Well, why don't you, dear?" she answered absently, shaking the shelled peas together in the bowl as she inspected them. "Though it seems an awfully long distance, of course; and just now, with all the expense!"

"That's it!" Mr. Bromley's brow puckered. "At any ordinary time I wouldn't have to think twice about it; I'd just go. Aunt Kit! She was pretty old, eighty-two; why, I remember her as long as I remember anything. She always gave me molasses cookies from the time when I was a little shaver and Father took me to see her. Nobody's cookies were as good as hers. She was always helping somebody—that terrible year after Father died—I don't know what we'd have done if it hadn't been for Aunt Kit; I used to go over to see her and be filled up, and when I got my first place—and lost that money.… She did the kind of things you can't forget. And even in these last years when she couldn't move from her chair, she was always jolly.… She's been the link that kept the family together, though we'd all of us moved away but Marthe, and they two lived alone in the old house.

"She had her quirks, of course.… But she thought the world of having one of us come to see her. She was as proud as they're made when Coppy Barnes stopped off on his way home from the regiment in China to say 'How do you do?' first. The last trip I took down in the country I was only twenty miles away, and never got over to see her—I just could not take the time. She heard of it, too! I felt pretty bad about it. I wrote and explained, and she had Marthe write me an awfully nice letter. It just seems to me that I have to go to Aunt Kit's funeral!"

Mrs. Bromley gave a weighing glance at her husband. He had a peculiar reverence for his own family impossible to impart to even the most sympathetic wife.

"Well, I don't know—— Of course, dear, if she had left you anything; but it seems——"

"That's all the more reason why I want to go. Henry wrote me that the only name mentioned in the will was Marthe's, and that's as it should be. She gets the house and everything—no such great amount, anyway. Aunt Kit sent us each a piece of the old furniture three years ago—I think more of that chair Grandfather carved than anything. I do wish I could go to that funeral! I feel somehow as if she'd know if I didn't."

His wife looked at him with an instant's fond admiration before her brow wrinkled.

"I'm afraid I'll have to speak to you about the wedding, dear. The date is only three weeks off—I don't know what we're going to do about it. Rill, of course, wants her girl friends, and even with only the relatives on both sides—the Wotherspoons have so many; old Mr. Wotherspoon was one of eleven children, you know—and just the most intimate friends and neighbours, it counts up to one hundred and nine!"

Mrs. Bromley paused, with haunted eyes. "When there are five and six in a family you can see how it brings it up before you know it, Ben; and you have to give them something to eat. Even if you cook all the chickens and make the salad yourself, it costs, and that's only the beginning. I wouldn't have started in for it if I'd realized what it would mean. It seems if you ask one person you have to ask everybody else, or someone's feelings will be hurt. We thought it would all be so simple. Nothing takes much, you see; but everything takes something."

"Why in thunder do they want to be married now anyway? Why couldn't they wait until next year, when everything could be fixed up all right?"

"Ben! Don't be so silly. You know perfectly well that Rill wants to go out there with Holman. She says she is quite willing just to slip into town and get married in a corner somewhere rather than worry you—it's impossible to get married privately here in a place where you've lived so long; but it does seem a pity when it's Rill—our own little, good, eldest daughter—when she has a home, and it's the one time in a girl's life——"

"Yes, yes! Of course."

"It's awfully sweet of Holman to want Top for best man—he can borrow a coat, he thinks; but the two younger boys will have to be fitted out from head to foot; and Joe tore his best trousers on a nail last week. Alice has to have stockings and ribbons. Rill hasn't her suit yet, and I haven't a rag for myself. You can't appear in a dress that's been made five years if you're the mother of the bride—not that I care about myself at all! And you've got to have new shoes, Ben, whether there's a wedding or not!"

"That reminds me," said Mr. Bromley, parrot wise. His face had set, as in stone, into the wearied, yet patient lines of the Purveyor of the Funds, the real magician of modern life, continually, before the confiding gaze of a wife, conjuring from a box seen to be empty.

He abstracted a wallet from his coat pocket, and, opening it, produced a very small flat sheaf of bills, counting them out before handing them to her.

"Make it go as far as you can for what's needed at present," he admonished her. "I don't know when I can bring you any more. I could hardly take this as it is; I felt like a thief."

"Oh, Ben! I hate so to take it when——"

"Oh, never mind! We'll come out all right; if you've got to have it, you've got to, and that is all there is about it. But make it go just as far as you can."

He stopped short in his walk around the room and leaned with one arm on the chiffonier, his face raised toward the leafy sky that filled the window as the words broke yearningly from him:

"I wish—I wish I could have gone to Aunt Kit's funeral! It would do me more good than anything in the world. I feel that I'll never forgive myself for not going!"

"Oh, my goodness!" said his wife, staring. He hadn't been like himself lately; she divined in him some ail that she couldn't cure. She looked at him now with anxiety, amusement, and a certain loving exasperation rolled into one. This inopportune insistence on the funeral when you usually couldn't drag him to one! Men were so set about the things they wanted—it seemed as strange to her as it does to most wives, when a man passionately desires to do something "on his own." But she went up to him now and put her arm tenderly around him, while with the other hand she strove to force a couple of the bills into his tightly clenched fist.

"Oh, my goodness, if you're as crazy as that about your old funeral! Take this back again, and go. Ben! You've got to—— No, I won't do as you say! You listen to me. If you think I'm going to stand your moaning about not having gone, for the next ten years, you're very much mistaken. Ben! Open your hand.… Stop acting so silly!"

She had the sudden carrying power of a whirling tornado. "Stop, I say! I hate it when you make yourself look like a clown.… No, I don't care whether Rill has a wedding or not. I don't care what anybody else has; we'll manage! But you've got to go to that funeral! If you throw those bills again on the floor I'll tear them up into little pieces and burn them. Ben—Ben! Dear!"

There was a moment's silence in which he didn't make himself look like a clown.

"I'll pack your bag for you after dinner," she said happily.

 

It was half-past ten when he left the house to run into New York for the midnight sleeper on the Pennsylvania. Rill emerged, rosy and star-eyed, from the darkness of the piazza corner and the now doubly occupied hammock, folio wed by the lover to the lighted hallway to say good-bye to the traveller, Rill, as usual, clinging tightly around her father's neck—she was nearly as tall as he was—with her soft yellow hair all over his face, and young Holman Wotherspoon shaking hands with a clean, firm grip, in spite of his slender and boyish aspect. Yes, he was a nice fellow, even if he did belong to that Wotherspoon crowd. It gave the elder man a sense of irritation to see the two disappearing back to the hammock—before he was fairly off—to stay, of course, until Jess called them in.

It was with a feeling of having mercifully escaped into the open that he took his place in the sleeper. As he lay there, swaying with the chug-chug of the train, that stricturing cord wound around him seemed to relax; both business and domestic perplexities showed signs of fading away. He had lately got into one of the pockets of life where he could see nothing but his own affairs—nothing in the world really mattered now but getting results from the business—he couldn't afford to think of anything else until he "pulled out." It annoyed him that he couldn't give way to his usual kind consideration for others—but he couldn't; he had had to send two clerks packing the day before. But he was going back to the sight of the hills, the breath of the pines, the old simple associations that were peculiarly his own, back of this present existence shared with others; it would be good to see "the folks" although, of course, there couldn't be many of them there.

He found himself smiling once or twice behind his curtains; it was more as if he were going on one of his jolly visits to Aunt Kit instead of to her funeral. She had developed more and more, with the troublous years, a cheeriness and optimism that amounted to genius. In the intervals of a pain that cursed her cruelly at times, she was always ready from her wheeled chair to tell or hear some new thing; her: "Lands! I'd die if I didn't find something to laugh at," was a familiar sound; she said, with a cheerful conviction that carried conviction to others, that the Lord helped her a lot.

She equipped her phonograph not only with baritone solos and religious quartets, but also with the latest vaudeville songs and ragtime; and after forty years of dominoes, anagrams, and picture puzzles, at the age of seventy-six learned from the young doctor across the street to play pinochle, and thenceforthward defeated everyone who could be lured to a game with her. Her fresh-coloured, plump, finely wrinkled face, with the snow-white hair above it and her gray-blue eyes under their delicate arched brows, came so vividly before Ben Bromley that it didn't seem possible that he shouldn't hear the warm greeting of her tremulous old voice. He could fancy himself coming away with the usual package of her peerless molasses cookies and that rejuvenated feeling with which one always left.… And he needed the feeling. He yearned to be reinforced in some way. Back of all that sense of being tightly clamped into the interests of a business world, where domestic issues didn't count, was this infernal, inopportune matter of the wedding, which he couldn't lose.

He knew perfectly well that his loving wife would sacrifice herself without question for him, if need were; but he also knew perfectly well that if he couldn't provide the simple plenishings and the simple wedding for their darling daughter she would always feel, even though she loyally denied it to herself, that he had been found lacking. He should have been prepared when the time came to give his loving child her honourable due; as a matter of fact, he had never thought of it. He might rage inwardly at all this unnecessary fuss—Rill was as sweet as they were made; she would, as her mother had said, go and get married in a corner if it made it easier for him. What really touched him on the raw was that he couldn't provide for his darling girl as he wished. He would have loved to be the hearty, generous father, loading her with benefits. It seemed at the moment a subtly additional grievance that it should be the conventional Wotherspoon family into which she was marrying.

The darkly green, deeply wooded hills were already walling in the train when he got up the next morning. As he stepped into the lurching dining car for break- fast, he gave a start of surprise—at a table facing him sat a lanky, cadaverous, but prosperous-looking individual, with a prominent green jade scarf pin, black eyes, a long upper lip, and an iron-gray beard and hair—no other than a cordially detested cousin named Boardman Skank.

"Hello, Boardman!" said Ben agreeably, to a muttered greeting from the other. "Well, this is luck for me! How are you? I never expected to see you here. I'll take this seat opposite and let you pay for my breakfast. I'm a little short myself. Here, waiter, take my order with this gentleman's and bring the check for both to him."

"You think you're funny," said Mr. Skank, with a whitening around his thin nostrils.

"No, Boardman, I don't think I'm funny, I know I am. I feel just like amusing you," said Ben genially. "How's the hoss trade? I understand you're still extracting shekels from the unwary, manfully giving up the honest joy of the poor man. Going to Aunt Kit's funeral?"

"Well, I intended to take it in when I left Danbury last evening to catch this train," said the other. "I got a letter Saturday from Hen Brown about the funeral; but I stuck it in my pocket and didn't read the rest of it till this morning. He says the only name mentioned in the will was Marthe's. Of course that's what Marthe has been playing for all these years."

"She deserves all she'll get," said Ben staunchly. "Besides, Aunt Kit didn't have so much, anyway. Waiter, you can bring me a couple of your best cigars."

"Well, it wouldn't have hurt her to remember some of the rest of us," said Mr. Skank, sourly, with a further whitening around his nostrils in his uneasy glance at his cousin. "Aunt Kit was as queer as Dick's hatband, anyway. I've a mind to stop off at this next town—I've got a chance for a deal in horse-flesh with a man that's aboard the train."

"Oh, come on with me," said Ben affectionately. "Don't leave me! I'm counting on you to take me over in a taxi from the station. I feel it's providential, my meeting you in this way."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Mr. Skank disgustedly, gulping down his breakfast morosely to Ben's airy converse.

Half an hour later, Ben, with true joy, saw him get off at the next stop with his horsy friend.

In a couple of hours more he was himself alighting at the little station with its immense platforms for freight, afterward slowly making his way back toward the outskirts of the older portion of the town—the funeral was not until afternoon—where the houses in the quiet, narrow street backed up against hills, and a little stream ran under the wooden footbridge. There was a clear-washed blue sky; the sun was bright, but the pines above were steeped, as usual, in their own solemn darkness. He went thoughtfully up the ancient box-bordered path to the low-stepped doorway with the fanlight overhead and a vivid pink hollyhock at one side, beside which the crape on the doorbell showed incongruously. Yes, Aunt Kit, sure enough, was dead. But the door stood ajar; from within came a buzz of voices. The front room was of course given up to the state occupancy of the dead; but as he stepped cautiously onto the black and white oilcloth squares of the hall, a face instantly peeped around the corner—the small, delicate face of Marthe, with her slightly grayish hair and blue eyes like Aunt Kit's.

"Who's that? For the land sakes, if it isn't Benjie Bromley! Well, if that isn't good; I never supposed you'd come all the way from New York. Walk right in back here, Benjie."

"Benjie!" The old nickname made him smile; but he hastily composed his features to a decorous solemnity, a process, however, made unnecessary by the cheerfulness of the mourning party of perhaps a dozen people who filled the small rag-carpeted room, sitting in various positions of ease between the red-covered table and the brown-papered walls hung with the oval-framed photographs of the family, while the sun shone through the pink hollyhocks peeping in at the white-curtained windows. Only Aunt Kit's wheeled chair was empty.

The next moment he was shaking hands and being greeted warmly by each one of the group; the two high-nosed Spanner "girls," nearing sixty, but who didn't look it, dressed expensively in the height of the fashion; portly Uncle El and little deaf Aunt Petra; the smiling but always speechless Hen Brown, almost a relation by the friendship of years; young James and Francis Hartley, small and eager-eyed; Lucy Ward and her lame husband, Jepson, and—could it be?—plump and pretty as at her wedding years ago, with wide-open blue eyes, little tendrils of fair hair on her broad, low forehead, her white teeth shining from her generous mouth, no other than his special girl cousin, Belle Bromley before she was Belle Higgins.

"Well, this is good!" he murmured, before Marthe's voice broke in.

"If you'll sit down, Benjie—the funeral isn't till two o'clock, we're to have lunch before and it's quite a little time off yet—I was just telling about it all as you came in. Aunt Kit passed away so peacefully we hardly sensed that she was gone.… But she'd been preparing for a long time, she knew the end was near. Before she died she gave to all the people around here who had worked for her, and the poor families in the Hollow that she always looked out for; the Reverend, he says he never had a truer helper than she. She talked about you all every day; she'd have been that tickled to see so many from a distance! I thought maybe Joe would come—but it's a pretty long way from Boston; and Min Spencer, I had a letter from her saying she was just starting for San Francisco. But Aunt Kit told me to tell you that it would be perfectly ridiculous for any one to be mourning for her, or talk low and appropriate, when she was so mortal glad to go! And she wanted everybody who came to her funeral just to forget it, and act human, the same as they did any time—just as they would if she were here. She said there didn't seem anything strange to her about dying, she'd lived so much with the good Lord these last years—of course I know Aunt Kit was queer!—that He just seemed like one of the folks, and you know how much she thought of them! And she expected to be enjoying herself this minute more'n she'd ever done. She wanted you should hear the phonograph before luncheon—she thought the world of that phonograph!

"She planned the luncheon: chicken potpie and hot biscuit and the best peach and strawberry preserves and plenty of cream for the coffee—she cared so much for you all——" Marthe's voice trembled slightly, but she steadied it before she went on. "She made me put that little picture of her at sixteen—right sweet, isn't it?—on the table there, for that was the way she allowed she looked now. I've got to leave you and see to things in the kitchen with Mrs. Quinn; but I'll set the phonograph going first. You men smoke if you want to, for goodness' sake; she'd like it all the better."

The strains of "Anchored" in a deep baritone voice were filling the room as Mr. Bromley went over and took the chair by Belle, to meet her "Hello, Benny Ben!" as of old.

"Well, how are you, Belle? I say, this seems good. You look as young as when I saw you last—let me see, that was at Uncle Ben's funeral."

"I'm not, though! I've got a boy of nineteen, and a girl of seventeen."

"Yes, I know."

"It's a shame that we none of us ever see each other any more unless somebody's dead. Aunt Kit kept us all together! I've heard of you and your family through her and Marthe; I understand your daughter is to be married soon."

"Yes, she is," said Mr. Bromley, with a pang.

"I'd love to see Jess again and all your children. I hear that you're a very successful business man, Benjie; we're all proud of you."

Mr. Bromley cleared his throat. "Well, the war put us back, of course—it's been a trying time, this last year; but we're going to pull out fine after a while." His voice dropped. "How are you fixed?"

Her voice changed to match his; to the eyes that watched her tenderly her pretty face changed a little, too, the lines in it became marked; through its look of youth showed the imprint of time and care.

"Well, I've been teaching dancing for the past ten years you know, ever since Edward died. Rena, my girl, is helping me now; she takes my classes when I'm away. I was bound to get off to Aunt Kit's funeral—she always did one good, you know; I can't help feeling as if she were here just the same! I came on from Camden yesterday and stayed all night. But the fact is, Benjie, I'm just a little bothered about Ted, my boy, these days."

"What's the trouble?"

"It's hard bringing up a boy without his father—Ted's as good as he can be, and he is a fine-looking boy, too, if I do say it, but—he's restless."

"He isn't going to college?"

The mother shook her curly head; she set her lips in a way that Ben remembered.

"No. Maybe you'll think I'm hard, but I thought it all out. I've seen a lot of that—mothers or sisters working themselves to the bone to earn enough money to send a boy through college; and I've never seen one case it may exist, but I've never seen it—in which doing that paid. It seems to take something out of a boy, some grit that he ought to have. He usually marries before he has anything to live on, and naturally keeps on expecting Mother or Sister to help him out as usual, just when she expects to be taken care of herself. It seemed to me I hadn't any right to sap Ted's will power in that way; I'm not sure yet how much he has. He's clerking in one of the shops at home just now—he gets only four a week, it isn't really what he's meant for; but he'll have to find something. Sometimes I wonder if, after all, I've made a mistake."

"I think you've been dead right," said Ben emphatically. "You're a trump, Belle." He took her plump hand in his.

"Oh, if you only knew how glad I am to hear you say that! I feel so inadequate. Do you remember when you used to carry me across the brook to school? It seems so good to talk to you, Benjie; you see there isn't any man of my own people to give me advice. But I mustn't keep you to myself any longer now. The Spanner girls want to speak to you, and Uncle El; he and Aunt Petra came down from the farm early this morning."

"I'll see you later," said Ben confidentially.

There was a little flutter in the manner of Cal and Til as he approached; both of their faces beamed under their large, thin-brimmed, fashionable hats.

"Well, to think that we have to come all the way out here to Aunt Kit's funeral to meet you, Ben, when we live only ten miles away at home! I don't believe we've seen you since Father's funeral."

"It's a shame, isn't it," said Ben heartily.

"Of course we know your time is very valuable—such a prominent man as you have become. How's Jessie and Rill? So Rill is to be married—she is so pretty. Cal and I ran across them both a couple of weeks ago, shopping. I suppose they told you. We want to know what Rill would like for a wedding present. I have some old silver candlesticks plated on copper that were her great-grandmother's—I thought she might like them."

"She'll be crazy over them," said Ben soberly. "You're too good."

"And Til, here, wants to give her table linen—that always comes in handy. We're going to get to the wedding, no matter what happens—that is, of course, if you mean to ask us."

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Ben hastily, with a craven sinking of the heart. He nerved himself for explanation. "But it will—er—er—it will be very quiet; we don't believe in having much fuss."

"That's so much better taste," said Cal approvingly. "I call all those big, gorgeous displays vulgar."

"Well, Uncle El, you old skate, is that you? How are you?" said Ben, turning away. "The girls and I have finished our little talk. Draw your chair back here." He flung his arm affectionately over the shoulder of the older man, as the two moved out of the circle.

Uncle El tipped his chair back as far as it would go. "Well, it did me good, looking at you just now, talking to Cal and Til. Success hasn't hardened you a bit, Ben, as it does most of your New York financiers, you've got that same kind face you always had. We've been hearing through Jim Balker what a business you're doing, and I tell you we're mighty proud of you."

"How's Jepson getting along?" Ben's eyes had roved over to the dejected figure of Lucy's husband, patiently supplying disks for the phonograph with a startlingly varied selection.

"Why, he—— Just wait a moment, the undertaker's beckoning out in the hall—— Here, Ben, he wants a couple of vases for some flowers——. Where was I? Oh, Jepson. Well, he hasn't been able to keep his job for a good while."

"On account of his lameness?"

"No, that doesn't trouble him any." Uncle El looked around with care before forming the words soundlessly with his lips:

"Takes—too—much," and then nodded in confirmation several times. "Yes, that's what's the matter with him. He says he is in real estate now, and you know what that means; he's aiming to get a big commission when he sells the old Tait mansion, twenty-two rooms, standing empty for eight years. Huh! Aunt Kit provided some for poor Lucy before she died. Lucy never had any sand, though. There are no bequests; Marthe gets all that's left, but it isn't so much, after all. I think Aunt Kit hoped Hen Brown would get a move on and ask her to marry him now. Marine's been in love with him for twenty years."

"Why hasn't he asked her before?"

Uncle El again looked around, and again soundlessly formed the answer with his lips:

"Slow." He nodded once more, before going on aloud: "She'd be a little mo-not-onous to me, but Hen isn't wildly exciting. Seems kinder good, all meeting like this and talking each other over, doesn't it?"

"Yes," said Ben, laughing. "You're a great one, Uncle El."

"Well, if you can't slam your own folks, who can you slam?" returned Uncle El agreeably. He moved his portly figure a little nearer.

"Your Aunt Petra and I were just saying, when we heard your girl was to be married next month—we remember her that time she was down at the farm, when she was five, with those long light curls, pretty as a picture—we were saying that we'd get all the rest of the folks together—Sister Anne, and her girls, and Mary Wilson and the professor—they couldn't come to-day and just make up a party and go to the wedding. I'm sick of only meeting at funerals; it's not more than three hours' journey from us. That is, of course, if you are not ashamed of your country cousins."

"Country nothing!" said Ben wanderingly. "We'll be honoured." He looked around in sudden desperation. "Hello, Hen, can't you find a chair? My, that coffee smells good! Here comes Marthe now."

"Everything will be ready in a minute," said Marthe. She dropped down wearily in a seat by Ben, her thin face taking on a tinge of colour as she patted his hand.

"Aunt Kit would have been pleased as Punch that you came, Benjie. She thought a lot of you. She used to say that she was terribly fond of men, the same as all old women are; they have to live with their own kind so much.… The little Italian child has been at the door with a big bunch of wild flowers. Aunt Kit gave her a five-dollar gold piece last week, tied up in pink tissue paper; it just tickled her to give little sums like that sometimes, instead of always having it dragged out of her!" She raised her voice. "Has any one seen anything of Boardman Skank?"

"Why, I have," said Ben, laughing. He narrated the incident of the train. "I don't think he'll get here."

"Well, I hope he won't," said Marthe feelingly. "Aunt said she was pretty sure he wouldn't come all that way—farther off even than you, Benjie—if he wouldn't gain anything by it; but sometimes she was afraid he might, to spite her, he was so mean and contrary. He did her some low tricks, 'way back, and when she sent him one of the old pieces of furniture three years ago he mailed her a bill for the expressage; she said even the thought of him messed her mind all up, and she didn't want him in the house, whether she was alive or dead. Aunt Kit was as good as they're made, but she had her quirks. If you want to go in now, Benjie, and take a look at her before I close the coffin, as she wanted me to——" Marthe's voice trembled a little once more. "Everyone else has been in."

"Yes, I'd been wanting to," he said soberly.

He slipped away into the stillness of the front room. He was glad to be alone for a few minutes by Aunt Kit, with all the world, it seemed, shut out. The sight of the ever-loving old face, with a sort of peaceful royalty in it, now brought back to him disconnected, strangely sweet impressions of his father and mother; of the little brother who had died; of the way the sky had looked to him when he was a little boy; the words of a childish prayer came unbidden to his lips. With the love for those who were gone a deep friendliness seemed to stir in his heart for the ones who were left.… When he went back to the gathered company, Marthe disappeared in her turn and came back after a brief absence, red-eyed. But she announced: "There's Mrs. Quinn. Lunch is ready. Come right in and seat yourselves. I'll set the phonograph going with 'Old Black Joe' and leave the door open.… She wanted you should enjoy it. Hen, go and shoo that hearse away till it's time for it. It would have given Aunt Kit a fit to have it standing outside while we were eating."

It was a pleasant, not to say a jolly meal; every sentence seemed to begin with "Do you recollect?"—in stories that Aunt Kit had loved; everyone was gratefully ravenous for the chicken potpie and the hot biscuits that Aunt Kit herself seemed to have provided for them.

Ben was opposite Belle, pale, and smiling over at him from time to time; but in private converse with James and Francis leaning over on one side of him he offered to try and get a customer for those high-priced eggs in a certain down-town club he knew of. Poor weak Jepson, on the other side, hungrily drinking in the words of the great man, was bidden to look him up and lunch with him the next week when Jepson was in town. Lucy's tearful look of gratitude repaid him, though she followed it up with the paralyzing proclamation that she would have to fix up a hat to go to the wedding. If it were not for these allusions, making him look awkward and feel cold all over! There was a pleasant warming quality in this cousinly companionship—there is nothing that restores one's sense of power more than being able to help others. But the meal was over soon. The front room, as Marthe announced, was filling up with people.

"The clergyman is just arriving, so we'd better go in. The coffin's closed, as I said, but she wished her kin to be right around her. And I may as well tell you, she didn't want any peaceful hymns sung; she said she had enough of sitting peacefully in a chair for thirty years, and she wanted something with get-up-and-go to it, so we're to have 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' instead, and 'Awake My Soul, Stretch Every Nerve.' I hope you'll all sing."

As long as Ben could remember he had known that front room with its long mahogany sofa, the big, brown rep armchairs, and the large steel engravings. The sunlight played over the bunch of tiger lilies and ox-eye daisies, that the Italian girl had brought, on the stand near the window. The clergyman's voice was clear and full and cheerful, and the hymns, started by Marthe's sweet, thin voice, were taken up with a will by others. It seemed to set them all spiritedly marching to some unseen high goal.

And afterward they tramped off together, two by two behind the hearse, to the little familiar burial plot of the white church on the hill behind the house, with its old headstones and crosses, the dark pines above them, and the blue above that. And even then Aunt Kit didn't seem to be dead; her strong and loving spirit seemed so alive among them.

Ben walked back when it was all over, with Belle beside him, the wind blowing her pretty hair.

"And I'll tell you what, … I've been thinking—you send your boy up to me next month and I'll see if I can't get a better place for him in town; a real opening that'll teach him something."

"Oh, Ben, it's like you! But you're too good, you——"

"I don't see why I shouldn't do my share; there's nobody has more right, outside my own family, than you, Belle; you were always like my little sister. But don't say another word; I'll write you. You see, I'm ashamed to say that things—and people—get sort of crowded out the way I live, when one is trying to work up a business; but you must remember that I'm there just the same. I wish you were going back now in the train with me."

"I wish so, too; but I promised to stay all night with Marthe and the Spanner girls to look over some of the things."

"Yes, I know; everyone seems to be leaving at a different time. As I have the farthest to go I must skip as soon as I get my valise, and take the trolley over to the Junction to catch the express; if I waited till night I wouldn't arrive till ten o'clock to-morrow and that's too late. I tell you, I'm mighty glad I came, Belle. It's meant a lot to me. And I feel just as if Aunt Kit knew it."

"I'm sure she does," said Belle. She hesitated, and then went on impulsively: "I'm going to see you and Jess, anyway, at your little Rill's wedding, no matter what happens, Ben, dear. Why should we wait for another funeral? As Uncle El says, the family will rally round you this time! My Rena wouldn't miss it for anything. Why are you looking around, have you lost something?"

"Oh, no," said Ben, recovering himself. That infernal wedding came up to stagger him at every turn. He had a moment's impulse to explain; but it wasn't any use. "That's fine," he said awkwardly. "It'll be a shame to go away without some of Aunt Kit's molasses cookies, won't it?"

But when they went into the house even that last touch wasn't lacking. Marthe was bending over an immense blue bowl of them on the sideboard.

"Aunt Kit wanted you should each have some of her cookies to take back with you, the same as usual," she explained. Marthe looked tired, there was a red spot on each of her cheeks. "Hen, hand me that paper and a string, will you? Here's your package, Benjie, put 'em in your valise and don't eat 'em till you're on the train. It's a mercy Boardman Skank didn't show up, Aunt Kit would have turned in her grave!"

In the bustle of farewells that followed, Ben found a chance for a word to the always smiling and speechless Hen. "Why don't you ask Marthe to marry you? She's a mighty fine woman."

Hen turned slow and inquiring eyes on the questioner; his rosy face paled.

"Do you think she'd have me?"

"Find out," said Ben, and went through the gate, laughing, as he waved his hand back at the group on the porch, all waving to him in farewell.

 

It was a couple of hours more after the ride in the hurtling, bounding trolley, and another long wait at the grimy, coal-dusted station with its shunting engines, its intersecting tracks, and its vapid-eyed, shabbily clad waiting crowd, before the belated train came along. He had time to live over the day just spent, to feel to the full the glow of relationship, the pleasure of being sought by everyone, and of being of service. Yes, going to see Aunt Kit hadn't failed of its reviving power—it wasn't for nothing she had brought the family together once more.

But by the time he was settled for the night in the sleeper he began to feel the old fatigue and worry settling over him.

After all, he was going back to yards of lace, and that burden which, though momentarily lifted, was the same; nay, was the greater by the mistaken whole-hearted rallying around him of his kin. How on earth was he to write and tell them, without wounding them sorely, that they were not to come—that there was to be no wedding feast? People never believed you when you said you couldn't afford certain things.

It seemed extraordinary to him now, that he had even taken the money to come to this funeral. Some vague hope of unforeseen relief—he didn't know what, that he seemed to have been cherishing unconsciously—had vanished. Well, the only honest thing to do was to face the music. A sturdier feeling rose in him with the effort. After all, there was nothing so terrible in giving up what you couldn't afford; it was that sneaking effort to do it at all costs that really shamed you, the keeping up to a false ideal. The household must take its cue from him now, there was no other way. Rill, bless her, would be happy in any case. Jess would know how he felt about it, he could see her heroically seconding him, as ever. They would just have to slip into town quietly, without any fuss, just themselves, and—oh, heavens, all the Wotherspoon family! Why, oh, why, wasn't it possible to cut loose from people at such a time? What was it in a wedding that was so inextricably entangling and bedevilling? Well, the Wotherspoons were sensible people, after all; you made bogies in your mind of things, and when you met them fairly they turned out to be nothing at all. And good old Uncle El, and the rest, who were making the warm-hearted effort to do him honour by rallying to him and his on this supposedly festive occasion, they would just have to be told with all expressions of regret—even though he winced anew at the thought of that concrete ill, undying snubbed family feeling—that there was, to be no smallest festive occasion for them.

There was a relief in coming to a flat decision. He felt himself a man again. Long after midnight, lying hungrily awake with a brain burningly alive, he took out the little bundle of cookies to eat one, turning the packet over in his hand first and looking at it. It was like Aunt Kit to treat them all still—as if they were children. As he opened the package he saw that next the cookies was a letter from Marthe; he knew her sloping handwriting well. He turned on the light in his berth and read:

 

Dear Benjie: Aunt Kit wanted the one who came from the farthest away to her funeral to have a little gift for a surprise put in with his cookies, to show that she appreciated his coming. She couldn't give to all; I know she would have been glad you were the one to get it. She had it put to my credit before she died, with the money for the funeral expenses, so there wouldn't be any fuss or delay. I was to say that it went with her love, and she hoped it would come in real handy, and that she would feel that you could have a good time with some of it. Your loving cousin, Marthe.

 

Ben Bromley sat up straight, staring with dilated eyes. Inside was a check for a thousand dollars. "Good Lord!" he said, not irreverently.

 

"I'd like to send fifty to Belle."

Mr. Bromley had telegraphed, with the dawn, to his wife to meet him in town for breakfast. Sitting there on either side of the little table spread with coffee and bacon and rolls, with the breeze blowing through the open window, they felt that this unaccustomed morning repast had almost a bridal flavour about it. Jess had on a white suit and a flowered hat; the colour in her face had been charmingly corning and going during this vivid recital, and the consequent portioning out of the astounding legacy—so much for the "good time," so much to be put away.

"And I'd love to send it to Belle," she responded quickly. Both, in a moment's glance as they looked at each other, saw the figure of their little Rill, robed and veiled in white and followed by her maidens, descending the green-twined stairway among the loving, familiar company of well-wishers. Father's credit had been redeemed miraculously—he was little-Johnny-on-the-spot for his child, after all.

"It means a lot to me to have the folks come on," he said soberly, "to be the one to bring the family together this time. Get Rill all she needs, and be sure and don't stint yourself, dear, out of the amount; but make it just a plain, old-fashioned wedding, Jess," he warned her. "There's all the more reason now for going carefully with what we have. My, I'll be glad when all this is over and we can go back to ordinary living again! Give everyone plenty to eat, that's the main thing; but make the rest just as simple as you can; that is, if a wedding ever can be simple!"

"Indeed I will, dear," she assured him eagerly. "I have been thinking—there are lots of things we don't really need, Alice's sash for instance; she can get along quite well enough with a new hair ribbon."

Ben grinned involuntarily. Jess, whose imagination soared untrammelled as to purchase if there were no funds, always became paringly economical when the money was in hand.

"Ah, get Alice her sash!" he pleaded. There was an unconscious reinforcement in the swift thought that the seven-year-old Alice couldn't have a wedding for at least twelve years.

He put his hand fondly over his wife's as it lay on the table, when the waiter's back was turned; his long, thin face took on an expression of tenderness as he met her pretty eyes, he had been indescribably touched by her ready acquiescence in giving to Belle—but that was just Jess every time.

"I'll never forget that if it hadn't been for you I'd have stayed at home, after all," he said. "Even if it hadn't been for the blessed trick she played on us—and of course it might have been Joe, from Boston, or Min, or Boardman Skank (horrible thought!) who got this money—I'll tell you one thing: I'd always be mighty glad I went to Aunt Kit's funeral!"