Chapter XV: Waiting for the Answer

As Dora reached this conclusion there came a well-known knock upon the door, and unfastening the bolt she admitted Johnnie, who had been up many times that day, but had not before been permitted to enter.

“O Auntie,” he cried, “you are better and I’m glad. I didn’t mean what I said about swearing, and drinking, and smoking, and I was so mad at myself that I teased Ben and Burt on purpose till they got hoppin’, and then I lay still while both little Arabs pitched into me. My! didn’t their feet fly like drumsticks as they kicked and struck, and pulled my hair; but when Ben got the big carving-fork, I concluded I’d been punished enough, and so deserted the field! But, Auntie, I do wish you could love father. He has looked so sorry to-day, kind of white about the mouth, and his hand trembled this noon when he carved the turkey. Won’t you, Auntie? I’ve prayed ten times this afternoon that you might, and I begin to have faith that you will. Dr. West, who used to talk to me so good last summer when I was in his Sunday-school class, said we must have faith that God would hear us.”

Dora drew a long, sad sigh, as she wished she too had been taught of Dr. West to pray differently from what she knew she did. Smoothing back John’s soft, dark hair, she said:

“Johnnie, girls cannot make a love in a minute, and this came so suddenly upon me, I must have time to think,—six weeks or two months, and then I will decide. Will you tell your father this for me? Tell him I’m sorry to make him feel badly,—that I like him and always shall, even if I am not his wife—that I know how good, how generous she is,—that he will wait until I know my own mind better, and then if I cannot be his, he must not mind it.”

“I’ll tell him,” Johnnie said, while Dora continued:

“And Johnnie, perhaps it had better be understood that nothing is to be said about it in the mean time,—nothing to me by your father.”

“Yes, I know, I see. I’ll fix it,” Johnnie answered. “I’ll go to father now,” and stooping down, he kissed his aunt tenderly, then suddenly asked, as he looked into her eyes, “You don’t mind my kissing you, do you? That don’t make you sick?”

“No, oh no!” she answered, and Johnnie departed on his strange errand.

Squire Russell sat in his office or reading-room, pretending to look over his evening paper, but his thoughts were really upstairs with Dora, whom he had not seen that day, and whose illness troubled him greatly, for he rightly associated it with his proposal of the previous night. Squire Russell loved Dora with a great, warm, sheltering love, which would shield her from all harm, and unselfishly yield to her everything, but he had not the nice, quick perception of Dr. West, and had he been younger he could never have satisfied the wants of her higher nature as could the rival whose existence he did not suspect. But he loved her very much. He must have her. He could not live without her, he thought, and womanish man that he was, a tear was gathering in his eyes when Johnnie entered the room abruptly, and locking the door, came and stood beside him.

“What do you wish, my boy?” the Squire said kindly, for he was never impatient with his children.

Johnnie hesitated, beginning to feel that his father’s love-affair was a delicate matter for him to meddle with.

“Confound it,” he began at last, “I may as well spit it out, and then let you knock me down, or lick me, or anything you like. Father, I heard what you said to Auntie last night, and what she said to you, and after you was gone I took the floor and beat you all to smash. I said she must be my mother,—she should be my mother, and all that, and set you up, I tell you, till you’d hardly know yourself from my description. To-night I’ve seen her again,—have just come from her room to tell you something she bade me tell.”

Squire Russell had turned very white at first, feeling indignant at his son for presuming to interfere, but this feeling had disappeared now, and he listened eagerly while Johnnie continued:

“She says its sudden; that she can’t make a love in a minute; that she must have six weeks or two months to decide, and then she will tell you sure, and, father, you’ll wait; I know you will, and,—and,—well, I guess I’d hold my tongue,—that is, I wouldn’t keep teasing her, nor say a word; just let her go her own gait, and above all I wouldn’t act lovin’ like, for fear she’d up and vomit. She don’t mind me kissing her, because I’ve no beard, I don’t shave, nor carry a cane. I’m a boy, and you are a whiskered old chap. I guess that’s the difference between us. Father, you’ll wait?”

Squire Russell could not forbear a smile at his son’s novel reasoning, but he was not angry, and it made his child seem nearer, now that both shared the same secret, and were interested in the same cause. Yes, he would wait two, three, or four months if Dora liked, and meantime things should continue as usual in the household.

“And afterward, father?” Johnnie asked. “How about that? If auntie says no, she’ll mean it, and you won’t raise a rumpus, will you? You’ll grin and bear it like a man?”

Yes, the Squire would do all his son required, and before Dora retired for the night, a bit of paper was pushed under her door, on which was written:

“The governor is O. K. He’ll wait and so will I; and if you must say no, he won’t raise hob, but _I_ will. I tell you now I’ll raise the very roof! Don’t say no, Auntie, don’t!

“Yours Very Respectfully and Regretfully,
“JOHN H. RUSSELL.”

It was rather embarrassing next morning at the breakfast-table, but Johnnie threw himself into the gap, talking loudly and rapidly to his father of the war meeting to be held that night, wishing he was a man, so he could enlist, and predicting, as did many a foolish one at that period, the spring of ’61, that the immense force of 75,000, called for by the President, would subjugate the South at once.

The Squire talked very little, and never once glanced at Dora, who in her heart blessed both Jessie and Johnnie, the latter for engaging his father’s attention and the former for talking so constantly to herself and Bell.

Dora was very white and nervous, but this was imputed to her illness of the previous day, and so neither Bell nor Jessie dreamed of what had passed between her and their host, or how her heart was aching with the terrible fear of what might be in store for her.

It had been arranged that the Misses Verner should remain at Beechwood for a long time, and as Bell thought four weeks came under that definition she began to talk of returning home as early as the first of June; but with a look of terror which startled both the girls, Dora begged of them to stay.

“Don’t leave me alone!” she cried, clasping Bell’s hand pleadingly. “I shall die if you do! Oh, stay,—you would if you knew—”

She did not say what, and Bell gazed at her wonderingly, but decided at last to stay a few weeks longer. Nothing could please Jessie better, for she did not particularly like Morrisville, and she did like Beechwood very much. She liked the lake view, the hills, and the people, and she liked the six noisy, frolicsome children, with their good-humored sire, who treated her much as he would have treated a playful, teasing child not his own, but a guest. Many were the gambols she had with Ben and Burt, and little Daisy, who loved her almost as much as they loved Dora, while upon the matter-of-fact Squire she played off many a saucy trick, keeping him constantly on the alert with plots and conspiracies, and so making the time seem comparatively short, while he waited for Dora’s decision. But to Dora there was nothing which brought comfort or diverted her for a moment from the agonizing suspense which grew more and more dreadful as the days went swiftly by, bringing no answer to the letter sent to Dr. West.

“Is it anything in particular you are expecting?” Johnnie asked one day, when she turned so white and shivered, as he returned from the post-office, with letters for all except herself.

“Yes,—no! Oh, I don’t know what I expect,” she answered, and leaning her head on Johnnie’s shoulder, she wept silently, while the boy tried to comfort her, and became from that moment almost as anxious that she should have a letter as she seemed herself.

Regularly each day at mail-time he was at the office, and if there chanced to be a letter for Dora, as there sometimes was, running to her eagerly, but saying always to himself as the weary, disappointed look remained the same:

“The right one has not come.”

No, the right one had not come, and now it was more than seven weeks since the night when Dr. West had been written to.

Bell and Jessie were really going home at last, and their trunks stood in the hall ready for the early morning train. Dora had exhausted every argument for a longer stay, but Bell felt that they must go.

“They would come again in the autumn, perhaps, or Dora should visit them. She would need rest by that time, sure,” Bell said, and Dora shuddered as she thought how she might never know rest or happiness again, save as she found them in the discharge of what she was beginning to believe was her imperative duty.

“Letters! letters!” shouted Johnnie, running up the walk, his hand full of documents, one of which he was closely inspecting. Spelling out the place where it was mailed, he exclaimed, as he entered the room, “That’s from the doctor, for it says ‘San Francisco.’”

Instantly both Jessie and Dora started forward to claim it, the hot blood dyeing the cheeks of the latter, but subsiding instantly, and leaving only a livid hue as Jessie took the letter, saying:

“It is for me.”

Sinking back in her chair, Dora pressed her hands tightly together, as Jessie broke the seal and read, partly to herself and partly aloud, that message from Dr. West.

“Is still in San Francisco, at the hotel, which is crowded with guests, and will compare very favorably with the best houses in New York City. Begins to think of coming home in the autumn. Mother’s health improved. Was pleased to get my letter,” and so on.

This was the substance of what Jessie read, until she reached a point where she stopped suddenly, and seemed to be considering; then turning to Johnnie, she asked him to do for her some trifling service, which would take him from the room. When he was gone, she said to Dora:

“Maybe you’ll scold, but it cannot now be helped. In my letter to Dr. West, I said, or hinted, at what everybody is talking about,—that is, you know, about your marrying Squire Russell, and this is the doctor’s reply: ‘What you wrote of Miss Freeman took me by surprise, but it will be a grand thing for the Squire. Tell her that if she decides to mother those six children, she has my best wishes for her happiness. You say you had picked her out for me. She would probably tell you differently, as she has seemed to dislike rather than like me, and according to your own story, bites her words off crisp and short when I am mentioned.’”

“O Jessie, how could you? What made you tell him that? It was cruel of you, when I do like him,” Dora cried, her face for an instant crimsoning with passion and then growing deathly white as she felt her destiny crushing down upon her without a hope of escape.

“Because you do,” Jessie retorted, anxious to defend herself. “You are just as spiteful as can be when I tease you about him, and I don’t care!”

Jessie was vexed at herself for having told Dr. West what she had, and vexed at Dora for resenting it; but she never dreamed of the terrible pain throbbing in Dora’s heart, as with a mighty effort she forced back the piteous, despairing cry rising to her lips, and brought there a smile instead, saying pleasantly:

“Well, never mind it now. It does not matter; only Dr. West has been so kind to us in sickness that I ought to like him, and do. Does he say what time he will be home?”

Jessie was thoroughly deceived, and after ascertaining that he merely spoke of coming in the autumn, went to her room, as there were a few things she must yet do for her morrow’s journey.