The Apple-Tree Girl/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
When Perry Graham returned to consciousness after being hit by Charlotte's golf ball, the first thing he saw was a pair of deeply tender eyes looking straight into his. The next thing he discovered was the less romantic fact that he was lying flat on the grass with Mr. Ogilvie slapping his palms.
"What—what's the matter?" he weakly asked.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" gasped Charlotte, because for one horrible moment she really believed she had killed him. Then realizing that her gladness must seem out of place to the prostrate Mr. Graham, she hurriedly corrected herself, saying: "I'm so sorry!"
"What—what was it?" he further inquired.
"I hit you on the head with a ball," said Charlotte in a voice not far from tears.
"Oh, yes, I remember now." He tried to rise, but Mr. Ogilvie had to help him.
"We must get him out o' the sun," said Mr. Ogilvie solicitously. "We must try to get him to yon tree by the side of the brook."
They went, a slowly moving procession, Mr. Graham in the middle, Charlotte on one side of him and Mr. Ogilvie on the other. Behind them followed the caddies, solemnly staring and forming one of the strangest equations in Charlotte's Third Great Sum.
"I'm so sorry!" she said again. A lump was rising on the side of Mr. Graham's head and looking at this Charlotte choked a little.
"It's all right, said Perry. "You couldn't help it, you know."
An awful feeling of guilt swept over Charlotte. And partly because she felt so blameworthy, and partly because it was the natural thing for her to do, she dipped her handkerchief in the brook and began to bathe the bump on the side of Perry's head.
"That's better," he said in a stronger voice, and looking at her more attentively he added: "You're Miss Marlin, aren't you?"
"Yes," said Charlotte, her voice growing weaker as his grew stronger.
"The girl who beat Lady Salisbury last week?"
"Y-yes."
"Great work!" he exclaimed. "By Jove, I'm proud you knocked me out."
He held out his hand, smiling already as he thought of himself telling the story to his friends, and little dreaming what coals of fire he was heaping on poor Charlotte's head. Indeed, if it hadn't been for the listening group around them she would have confessed to him then and there. They started back to the clubhouse, and then for the first time Charlotte began to look attentively at him.
He was a tall young man with commanding features, and although his eyes looked tired he had a somewhat peremptory manner.
"I guess it's because he's so rich," thought Charlotte. "And to think that I nearly killed him!" For the third time she felt the impulse to confess what she had done; and for the third time she repressed it. "They'd only stand around and stare and listen," she thought. "I can do it just as well some other time."
But although she saw him the next day—and the next but one—and the next after that, somehow Charlotte could never quite bring herself to the point of telling him what she had done. Meantime, whenever he saw her, Perry Graham became more and more interested in her, first because she was Charlotte, and second because she was a celebrity, and third, without a doubt in the world, because she was a new experience to him and acted like a tonic to his system.
Because, when all is said and done, it would be unfair to Charlotte if you received the idea that she was nothing except a scheming little thing who went around seeking whom she might devour. Outside of her doing of the Three Famous Sums, she was an unusually sweet and wholesome little body, with deeply tender eyes, expressive eyebrows and a bashful manner, but, oh, so eager to live, so sincerely in love with life! It was those qualities of naïveté and enthusiasm and sincerity which drew Perry Graham's thoughts more and more often to the girl who had learned her first profound lesson of life from the story of Micah's apple tree.
The girls he had known before had been brought up in familiarity with practically everything he could offer them; but it was all so new to Charlotte, and the interest she felt showed in her cheeks and her eyes—a heartborn glow and sparkle which did him good to see.
"If he hadn't been 'courted to death,' as Mr. Ogilvie says," murmured Charlotte rather breathlessly one night, "I do believe I'd have a chance. But I must never let him dream that I care for him the least little bit, or he'll think I'm just like all the others."
So, half consciously and half instinctively, whenever Perry showed his growing liking for her, she drew back; and the more she drew back, the more he pressed forward in his pursuit of a new experience; and the more he pressed forward, the longer Charlotte lay awake when the rest of the household were asleep, thinking things over in her sage, old-fashioned way.
"I wish he didn't have that tired look in his eyes when he thinks nobody is noticing him," she thought one night. "I suppose it's because he's so awfully rich; he's always had everything he wants and he soon gets tired of things. And perhaps if—if he had me, he'd soon get tired of me too. …"
She drew a deep sigh. "Neil wasn't that way," she thought. "I'd never have to worry about Neil."
"It's all so different down here," she continued. "Down here all the sums seem to be in money and things like that, but up home—! Now, take Perry. If he wants to enjoy himself he's got to be dressed just so, and he's got to have his car and somebody to amuse him, and he's got to have a lot of money in his pocket, and then go somewhere and spend it. If he had nothing except one old suit of clothes and was dropped suddenly in a strange country somewhere without any money, and was told to enjoy himself, he wouldn't have the least idea of how to go about it. Without money he's nothing."
She drew another deep sigh. "Neil isn't that way," she thought. "Money isn't everything to Neil."
"If I could only help Perry in some way," she went on, "I wouldn't feel like this. Because what's a wife for, if she can't help her husband? Now Mr. and Mrs. Phair weren't rich when they married, and so she was able to help him. That's one reason, I guess, why they feel so proud of each other now. But Perry—what could I do for Perry? Nothing! I'd just feel that I was tagging on behind."
She sighed again at that. "Neil isn't that way," she thought. "I'd never feel that I was tagging on to Neil."
"Oh, well," she concluded, "maybe I'm like the fox and the grapes. For one thing, Perry hasn't asked me, and just for that perhaps I think his grapes are sour."
Her mind went back to the time when Neil had asked her and she had run away; and then she began thinking of Aunt Hepzibah, and Micah's tree, and Dame Johnson, and Miss Hawley and the Faithful Seven. And before she knew it she had such a homesick feeling come over her that she cried a little, as homesick girls have cried since time immemorial.
"I might have known there was something," she thought next morning.
A letter had come from Aunt Hepzibah, and Aunt Hepzibah hadn't been feeling well for the last few days; "nothing much the matter," she wrote, "but I'm dreadful low-spirited—one of my spells, I guess."
"I'm afraid I shall have to go home to-morrow," announced Charlotte, looking up from reading her letter.
Mrs. Phair tried to dissuade her, and so did Perry when he called in the evening.
But Charlotte wasn't old-fashioned for nothing. "I feel I ought to go," she said.
At that, Mrs. Phair gave her husband one of her significant glances, and they went out on the veranda, leaving Perry and Charlotte together.
"Did you notice him, Joe?" whispered Mrs. Phair, outside.
"Notice who?" whispered back Mr. Phair, with a fine disregard for grammar.
"Perry Graham, of course! At first I hated to think of Charlotte's going; but now I can see it's the very best thing she could do. It's going to bring Perry to the point."
"You think so?"
"Joe, I know it! And the best thing that could happen to him, too. Of course everybody thinks he ought to marry a girl with a lot of money. But that's all nonsense, when he's got so much of his own. Besides, it isn't as if Charlotte was nobody. Not after the way she beat Lady Salisbury! And she's a good little thing, and a straight little thing, and wouldn't waste a dollar of Perry's money to the longest day she lived. I can tell he's been thinking about it, too. Trust a woman to know such things! Now, Joe, you mark my words: If those two aren't married before Thanksgiving I miss my guess!"
Perry stayed late that night, and before he left he had promised to take Charlotte to the station next day in time to catch the two o'clock train.
"We'll start about noon," he said, "so you'll have time to come home and have lunch with me. I'll ask my Cousin Fanny to telephone you first thing in the morning. She's a cousin of my mother's," he explained, "and has been keeping house for me the last two years."
Mrs. Phair grew very arch after his departure.
"Do you like him, Charlotte?" she suddenly asked next morning.
"Oh, I don't know." Charlotte was putting her hat on while Perry waited in his car outside. "Why?"
"Because he's very fond of you."
"What makes you think so?" asked Charlotte, blushing for all that.
"Why, you dear little goose, anybody can see it. If he wasn't, do you think he'd be taking you home to lunch?"
Charlotte said nothing; but after she had bade the Phairs good-bye, which wasn't done in a minute or in any perfunctory manner, she went out to the waiting car, still blushing, her heart still warm to Mr. and Mrs. Phair, her eyes luminous with youth and love and success.
"You do look sweet this morning," said Perry as he threw in the starting lever. It was the first time he had paid her a direct compliment, and she pretended not to notice it.
"Isn't it a lovely day? " she said instead.
It was, indeed, a beautiful day, with the sky never so blue and the trees never so green, and the road winding in and out among scenes so picturesque that it reminded Charlotte of a gallery hung with immortal masterpieces.
She felt so full of happiness at the wonderful day and her wonderful summer that she grew radiant, as though her spark of life had spread into a visible glow. Looking at her Perry suddenly nodded to himself. The next moment he had reached over and taken one of her hands.
Charlotte dropped from the clouds to the earth, and drew her hand away.
"Don't!" she said.
"Why not?"
"I don't like it."
She sat as far away from him as she could, her joy in the day overcast by those sage, old-fashioned thoughts which had come to her the other night. By her side, both his hands on the wheel again, Perry seemed to be thinking of something very hard indeed.
"And now," thought Charlotte, "if he's like I think he is, he'll want to do it all the more. Oh, dear! I shall have to tell him—I shall have to tell him how I knocked him down that day on purpose."
But the more she tried to tell him, the harder it seemed; and a few minutes later, when Perry came out of his silence with the air of a man who has made a great resolution, she weakly decided to let well enough alone.
"How chatty he is, all at once!" she couldn't help thinking.
A little later when he began to sing the chorus of an old song, she was almost too surprised to join in. She did join in, though, and after they had sung all the old songs they knew, Perry laughed aloud and screeched his horn at nothing. "I do feel good this morning," he said.
She didn't have the heart to tell him then.
They rolled upon the ferry, and the boat began to cross the Thames. Under this new excitement Charlotte found enchantment was returning to the day.
"I told them to have lunch ready at one," he said, looking at his watch. "We'll be just in time." And seeing that Charlotte was admiring the scene on the river, he added: "This is nothing to the view from the house. You wait."
She didn't have long to wait.
The Graham house is one of the show places of Pequot Avenue even as Pequot Avenue is one of the show places of Connecticut; and when the car rolled in at the gate, a feeling that was close to awe stole over Charlotte. She looked out over the harbor with its yachts anchored in the blue water; she looked at the grounds around the house, gay with flowers and restful with trees and lawns; she looked at the house itself—a magnificent piece of architecture in gray stone and red tiles. A gardener was raking leaves. Another was trimming a flower bed. A butler opened the door.
"Make yourself at home," said Perry, frowning as he looked around. "This is the library. I'll be back soon."
But instead of going into the library she walked along the hall to look at the painting which hung over the fireplace.
"How beautiful everything is!" she thought. "It's like a picture in a magazine, though I never saw a picture one-half as pretty as this."
She stopped to look at a bronze statuette at the bottom of the stairs, and while she stood there she heard Perry's voice coming from above.
"I told you one o'clock," he was saying in an angry voice.
A faint murmur answered him.
"Well, you thought wrong, and not the first time, either," he retorted. A curious screeching sound interrupted him. "Oh, for heaven's sake!" he cried. "Choke that parrot!"
Downstairs, Charlotte stiffened with indignation. "The idea!" she thought. "Talking to his mother's cousin like that! I'd like to hear him talk that way to me!"
When, a few minutes later, Perry strolled out with her to show her the flowers, she had made up her mind exactly what to do, and was casting around in her mind for the opening phrase. "I'll soon stop all this!" she told herself.
Perry had led her to a rose arbor at the back of the house, and was breaking off large clusters of Dorothy Perkinses with the prodigal actions of a nervous young man who had something on his mind and didn't know quite how to begin it.
"Say, Charlotte," he said at last, "I think a lot of you; do you know it?"
"You shouldn't," she hurriedly answered.
"Shouldn't I? Why not?"
"Because I'm going home this afternoon—for good."
"For good?" he asked, looking puzzled at her emphasis. "What for?"
Those midnight fears came crowding forward for expression; but midnight fears are not to be lightly related when the sun is shining and a disputatious young man is waiting, frowning, to contradict every word you say.
"What for?" he repeated.
"Oh, I don't know."
"But I want to know!"
"Well, for one thing," said Charlotte, "I'm happier up there and more useful. Down here, it's like a vacation all the time and, though I don't pretend to know an awful lot, I'm sure that life ought to mean more than that. Then again, down here—it's all—all make-believe—somehow—but up there everything is so real" She stopped, lamely enough, knowing she could never give him the other reasons. How could she tell him, for instance, that she, a little country school-ma'am, didn't feel safe in trusting her happiness to one of the handsomest and richest young men in the whole United States? Or how could she tell him about Neil? Or about such things as Little Miss Moses and her pilgrimage to the Promised Land?
"You mean to say this isn't real?" asked Perry, sweeping his arm around to the house and grounds.
Charlotte buried her face in the roses he had given her and shook her head.
"And that's why you don't want it," he asked incredulously—"because it isn't real?"
For the moment she almost felt her heart stop beating, so close was she to the realization of her Third Great Sum. "But if I won this," she thought, "I believe I'd lose everything else—and—and—well, it isn't worth it; that's all!"
So, heeding at last the voice of Conscience, she told him how she had knocked him down with the golf ball, and gave him so much food for thought that he was still digesting it in mingled surprise and admiration when he took Charlotte to the station and walked up and down the platform with her while they waited for the train.
"You're a great little girl; do you know it?" he asked.
Charlotte buried her face in the roses again, but said nothing.
"One thing I can't understand, though, is why you did it. Was it just for fun?"
"N-no," she said. "It—it was a sum."
"A sum?" he asked in astonishment. "What do you mean—a sum?
She thought it over while they walked to the end of the platform, and partly perhaps because it had relieved her to tell him about the golf ball, she told him also of her Three Great Sums—told him as quickly as she could, especially toward the end when the train came puffing into the station.
"Great Scott!" he muttered when she had ended.
They hurried to the waiting train together.
"Good-bye," she said, shyly holding out her hand.
They shook hands; and the last Charlotte saw of him he was standing on the platform staring thoughtfully after the departing train.