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The Happiest Time

by Mary Stewart Cutting, 1902

"Well—not this morning, I think, petty."

"You said you would."

"Yes, I know I did, but I have a slight cold. I don't think it would be best for me, really, petty. I've been working pretty hard this week." Mr. Belmore carefully deposited a pile of newspapers beside his armchair upon the floor of the little library, removing and opening the top layer for perusal as he spoke, his eyes already glued to the headlines. "A quiet day will do me lots of good. I'll tell you what it is—I'll promise to go with you next Sunday if you say so."

"You always promise you'll go next Sunday." Mrs. Belmore, a brown-haired, clear-eyed young woman in a blue and white spotted morning gown, looked doubtfully, yet with manifest yielding, at her husband. Mr. Belmore presented the radiantly clean and peaceful aspect of the man who has risen at nine o'clock instead of the customary seven, and bathed and dressed in the sweet unhurried calm that belongs only to the first day of the week, poking dilatorily among chiffonier drawers, discovering hitherto forgotten garments in his closet, and leisurely fumbling over a change of shirt-studs before coming down to consume the breakfast kept waiting for him.

"Of course I know it's your only day at home—" Mrs. Belmore reverted to her occupation of deftly setting the chairs in their rightful places, and straightening the books on the tables. "I suppose I ought to insist on your going—when you promised—but still—" She gave a sigh of relinquishment. "I suppose you do need the rest," she added. "We can have a nice afternoon together, anyway. You can finish reading that story aloud, and we'll go out and take a good look at the garden. I think the beans were planted too close under the pear tree last year—that was the reason they didn't come up right. Edith Barnes and Alan Wilson are coming out from town after dinner for the rest of the day, but that won't make any difference to us."

"What?"

"Now, Herbert, how could I help asking them? You know the boarding-house she and her mother live in. Edith never gets a chance to see him alone. They're saving up now to get married—they've been engaged a year—so he can't spend any more money for theatres and things, and they just have to walk and walk the streets, unless they go visiting, and they've been almost everywhere, Edith says. She wrote and asked me to have them for this Sunday; he's been away for a whole week somewhere up in the State. I think it's pathetic." In the warmth of explanation Mrs. Belmore had unwittingly removed the pile of newspapers from the floor to an ottoman at the further end of the room. "Edith says she knows it's the happiest time of their lives, and she does want to get some of the benefit of it, poor girl."

"What do they want to be engaged for, anyway?"

"Herbert! How ridiculous! You are the most unreasonable man at times for a sensible one that I ever laid my eyes on. Why did we want to be engaged?"

"That was different." Mr. Belmore's tone conveyed a permanent satisfaction with his own case. "If every woman were like you, petty—I never could stand Edith, she's one of your clever girls; there's something about her that always sets my teeth on edge. As for Wilson—oh, Wilson's just a usual kind of a fool, like myself. Hello, where are my newspapers—and what in thunder makes it so cold? You don't mean to say you've got the window open?"

Mrs. Belmore had a habit of airing the rooms in the morning, which her husband approved of theoretically, and combated intensely in practice. After the window was banged shut she could hear him rattling at the furnace below to turn on an extra flow of heat before settling down once more in comfort. Although the April sun was bright, there was still a chill in the air.

She looked in upon him, gowned and bonneted for church, sweet and placid of mien, followed by two little girls, brave in their Sunday best, all big hats and ribboned hair and little starchy ruffles showing below their brown coats. Mrs. Belmore stooped over her husband's chair to kiss him good-by.

"You won't have to talk to Edith and Alan at all," she said, as if continuing the conversation from where they had left off. "All we have to do is to let them have the parlor or the library. They'll entertain each other."

"Oh, don't you bother about that. Now go ahead or you'll be late; and don't forget to say your prayers for me, too. That's right, always go to church with your mother, girlies."

"I wish you were going, too." Mrs. Belmore looked at her husband lingeringly.

"I wish I were, petty," said Mr. Belmore with a prompt mendacity so evidently inspired by affection that his wife condoned it at once.

She thought of him more than once during the service with generous satisfaction in his comfortable morning. She wished she had thought it right to remain at home, too, as she did sometimes, but there were the children to be considered. But she and Herbert would have the afternoon together, and take part of it to see about planting the garden, a plot of twenty feet square in the rear of the suburban villa.

The Sunday visit to the garden was almost a sacrament. They might look at it on other days, but it was only on Sunday, beginning with the early spring, that husband and wife strolled around the little patch together, first planning where to start the summer crop of vegetables and afterward watching the green things poking their spikes up through the mould, and growing, growing. He did the planting and working in the long light evenings after he came home, while she held the papers of seeds for him; but it was only on Sunday that he could really watch the green things grow, and learn to know each separate leaf intimately, and count the blossoms on the beans and the cucumbers. From the pure pleasure of the first radish through all the various wiltings and shrivelings incident to amateur gardening in summer deluge and drought, to the triumphant survival of tomato plants and cucumber vines, running riot over everything in the fall of the year, the little garden played its old part as paradise to these two, who became more fully one in the watching of the miracle of growth. When they gathered the pears from the little tree in the corner of the plot, before the frost, and picked the few little green tomatoes that remained on the dwindling stems, it was like garnering a store of peaceful happiness. Every stage of the garden was a romance. Mrs. Belmore could go to church without her husband, but to have him survey the garden without her would have been the touch beyond.

It must be horrid, anyway, she thought, to have to go every morning into town in those smoky cars and crowded ferryboats; just to run into town twice a week tired her out. Now he would have finished his paper—now little Dorothy would have come in, red cheeked from her walk, to kiss daddy before her nap—now he must be pottering around among his possessions and looking out for her. She knew so well how he would look when he came to the door to meet her. The sudden sight of either one to the other always shed a reflected light, like the glow of the sun. It was with a feeling of wonder that she marked its disappearance, after a brief gleam, as he not only opened the door, but came out on the piazza to greet her, and closed it behind him.

"They're in there—Edith and Alan." He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "I thought they weren't coming until after dinner."

"Why, they weren't."

"Well, they're in the parlor, just the same. Came out over an hour ago. Great Scott, I wished I'd gone with you. I'm worn out."

"You don't mean to say you've stayed with them all the time!" Mrs. Belmore looked scandalized.

"I should say I had; I couldn't lose 'em. Whichever room I went to they followed; at least she did and he came after. I went from pillar to post, I give you my word, petty, but Edith had me by the neck; she never let go her grip for an instant. They won't speak to each other, you see; only to me. I haven't had a chance to even finish the paper. I've had the deuce of a time! I don't know what you are going to do about it."

"Never mind; it will be all right now," said Mrs. Belmore reassuringly. She pushed past him into the parlor, where sat a tall, straight girl with straight, light brows, a long straight nose, and a straight mouth with a droop at the corners. In the room beyond, a thickset, dark young man with glasses and a nervous expression was looking at pictures. It did not require a Solomon to discover at a glance how the land lay.

If Mrs. Belmore had counted easily on her powers of conciliation she was disappointed this time. After the dinner, whereat the conversation was dragged laboriously round four sides of a square, except when the two little girls made some slight diversion, and the several futile attempts when the meal was over to leave the lovers alone together, Mrs. Belmore resigned herself, perforce, to the loss of her cherished afternoon.

"It's no use; we'll have to give up the reading," she said to her husband rapidly, in one of her comings and goings. "Perhaps later, dear. But it's really dreadful; here we've been talking of religion and beet-root sugar and smallpox, when any one can see that her heart is breaking."

"I think he is getting the worst of it," said Mr. Belmore impartially.

"Oh, it won't hurt him."

"Well, you've given them plenty of opportunities to make up."

"Yes; but he doesn't know how."

She added in a louder tone, "You take Mr. Wilson up to your den for a while, Herbert; Ethel and I are going to have a cosey little time with the children; aren't we, dear?"

"Have a cigar?" said Mr. Belmore as the two men seated themselves comfortably in a couple of wooden armchairs in the sunny little apartment hung with a miscellaneous collection of guns, swords, and rods, the drawing of a bloated trout, and a dusty pair of antlers.

"Thank you; I'm not smoking now," said Mr. Wilson with a hungry look at the open box on the table beside him.

"Oh!" said his host genially, "so you're at that stage of the game. Well, I've been there myself. You have my sympathy. But this won't last, you know."

"Does your wife like smoking?"

"Loves it," said Mr. Belmore, sinking the fact of his official limit to four cigars a day. "That is, of course, she thinks it's a dirty habit, and unhealthy, and all that sort of thing, you know; but it doesn't make any difference to her—not a pin's worth; Cheer up, old fellow; you'll get to this place, too."

"Looks like it," said the other bitterly. "Here I haven't seen her for a week—I came two hundred miles on purpose yesterday, and now she won't even look at me. I don't know what's the matter—haven't the least idea—and I can't get her to tell me. I have to be off to-morrow at seven o'clock, too—I call it pretty hard lines."

"Let me see," said Mr. Belmore judicially, knitting his brows as if burrowing into the past as he smoked. "Perhaps I can help you out. What have you been writing to her? Telling her all about what you've been doing, and just sending your love at the end? They don't like that, you know."

Mr. Wilson shook his head. "No; upon my soul, I've done nothing but tell her how I—how I was looking forward to—oh, hang it, Belmore, the letters have been all right, I know that."

"H'm," said Mr. Belmore, "there's got to be something back of it, you know. Seen any girls since you've been gone?"

Mr. Wilson hastened to shake his head more emphatically than before. "Not one," he asseverated with the relief of complete innocence. "Didn't even meet a soul I knew, except Brower—you remember Dick Brower? I went into a jeweler's to get my glasses mended and found him buying a souvenir spoon for his fiancee."

"O—o—h!" said Mr. Belmore intelligently, "and did you buy a present for Edith?"

"No, I didn't. She made me promise not to buy anything more for her; she thinks I'm spending too much money, and that I ought to economize."

"And did you tell her about Brower?"

"Why, of course I did—as we were coming out this morning."

Mr. Wilson stared blankly at his friend.

"Chump!" said Mr. Belmore. He bit off the end of a new cigar and threw it away. "Wilson, my poor fellow, you're so besotted in ignorance that I don't know how to let the light in on you. A man is a fool by the side of his fiancee, anyhow."

"I don't know what you mean," said the bewildered Wilson stiffly. "I don't know what I'm to do."

"No, of course you don't—but Edith does—you can just trust her for that. A girl always knows what a man ought to do—she can give him cards and spades and beat him every time."

"Then why doesn't she tell me what she wants? I asked her to, particularly."

"Oh, no! She'll tell you everything the opposite—that is, half the time. She'll put every obstacle possible in your way, to see if you're man enough to walk over 'em; that's what she wants to find out; if you're man enough to have your own way in spite of her; and, of course, if you aren't, you're an awful disappointment."

"Are you sure?" said Mr. Wilson deeply, after an awestruck pause. "Half the time, you say. But how am I to find out when she means—I give you my word, Belmore, that I thought—I suppose I could have brought her a small present, anyway, in spite of what she said; a souvenir spoon—but she hates souvenir spoons."

"You'll have to cipher it out for yourself, old man," said Mr. Belmore. "I don't set out to interpret any woman's moods. I only give you cold, bare facts. But if I were you," he added impartially, "I'd go down after a while and try and get her alone, you know, and say something. You can, if you try." A swish of skirts outside of the open door made Mr. Wilson jump forward as Mrs. Belmore came in sight with her friend. The latter had her arm around the older woman, and her form drooped toward her as they passed the two men. The eyes of the girl were red, and her lips had a patient quiver. Mr. Wilson gave an exclamation and sprang forward as she disappeared in the further room.

It was some hours later that the husband and wife met unexpectedly upon the stairs with a glad surprise.

"You don't mean to say it's you—alone!" he whispered.

"Wait—is she coming up?" They clutched each other spasmodically as they listened to the sound of a deflecting footstep. There was a breathless moment, and then the chords of a funeral march boomed forth upon the air. The loud pedal was doing its best to supplement those long and strenuous fingers.

The listeners breathed a sigh of relief.

"He's gone to the station for a time table," whispered the husband with a delighted grin; "though I can stand him all right. We had a nice walk with the little girls, after he got tired of playing hide and seek. I wished you were with us. You must be about used up. How are you getting along with her?"

"Oh, pretty well." She let herself be drawn down on the hall window seat at the top of the landing. "You see, Edith really feels dreadfully, poor girl,"

"What about?"

"Herbert, she isn't really sure that she loves him."

"Isn't sure! After they've been engaged for a year!"

"That's just it. She says if they had been married out of hand, in the first flush of the novelty, she wouldn't have had time, perhaps, to have any doubts. But it's the seeing him all the time that's made her think."

"Made her think what?"

"Whether she loves him or not; whether they are really suited. I remember that I used to feel that way about you, dear. Oh, you know, Herbert, it's a very serious thing for a girl. She says she knows her whole life is at stake; she thinks about it all the time."

"How about his?"

"Well, that's what I said," admitted Mrs. Belmore. "She says that she feels that he is so rational and self-poised that she makes little difference in his life either way—it has come to her all at once. She says his looking at everything in a matter-of-fact way just chills her; she longs for a whole-souled enthusiasm that can sweep everything before it. She feels that if they are married she will have to keep up the ideal for both of them, and she doesn't know whether she can."

"No, she can't," said Mr. Belmore.

"She says she could if she loved him enough," pursued Mrs. Belmore. "It's the if that kills her. She says that when she wakes up in the morning she feels as if she'd die if she didn't see him before night, and when she does see him it's all a dreadful disappointment to her; she can't talk to him at all, she feels perfectly hard and stony; then, the moment he's gone, she's crazy to have him back again. She cries herself thin over it."

"She's pretty bony, anyway," said Mr. Belmore impartially.

"Even his appearance changes to her. She says sometimes he looks like a Greek god, so that she could go down on her knees to him, and at other times—— Once she happened to catch a glimpse of him in a horrid red sweater, polishing his shoes, and she said she didn't get over it for weeks; he looked positively ordinary—like some of the men you see in the trolley cars."

"Oh, good gracious!" protested Mr. Belmore feebly. "Oh, good gracious, petty! This is too much."

"Hush—don't laugh so loud—be quiet," said his wife anxiously.

"If Wilson ever looks like a Greek god to her, she's all right, she loves him—you can tell her so for me. Wilson! Here are we sitting up here like a pair of lovers, and they—Hello!"

The hall door opened and shut, the piano lid closed simultaneously with a bang, and there was a swirl of skirts again toward the staircase that scattered the guilty pair on the landing. The hostess heaved a patient sigh.

"They shall speak," said Mrs. Belmore when another hour had gone with the situation still unchanged. Her gentle voice had a note of determination. "I can't understand why he doesn't make her. She is literally crying her eyes out, because the whole day has been lost. Why didn't you send him into the parlor for a book, as I told you to, when I came up to take care of Dorothy?"

"He wouldn't go—he said he wasn't doing the kindergarten act any more. Hang it, I don't blame him. A man objects to being made a fool of before people, and he's tired of it. Here he goes off again to-morrow for two weeks, and she with no more heart than—"

"Where is he now?" asked Mrs. Belmore.

"Upstairs in my room, smoking."

"Smoking! I thought he'd promised her solemnly not to smoke."

"Yes, he did; but he says he doesn't care a—red apple; he's going to have some comfort out of the day. I've left him with a box of cigars; good ones, too. He's having the time of his life."

"O—o—h!" said Mrs. Belmore, with the rapt expression of one who sees beyond the veil. When she spoke it was with impressive slowness. "When you hear me come downstairs with Edith and go in the parlor, you wait a moment and then bring him down—with his cigar—into the library. Do you understand?"

"No," said Mr. Belmore.

"Oh, Herbert! If she sees him smoking—! There's no time to lose, for I have to get tea to-night. When I call you, leave him and come at once, do you hear? Don't stop a minute—just come, before they get a chance to follow."

"You bet I'll come," said Mr. Belmore, "like a bird to its—I will, really, petty."

That he nearly knocked her down by his wildly tragic rush when she called from the back hall, "Herbert, please come at once! I can't turn off the water," was a mere detail—they clung to each other in silent laughter, behind the enshrouding portieres, not daring to move. The footfall of the deserted Edith was heard advancing from the front room to the library, and her clear and solemn voice, as of one actuated only by the lofty dictates of duty, penetrated distinctly to the listeners.

"Alan Wilson, is it possible that you are smoking? Have you broken your promised word?"

"Well, they're at it at last," said Mr. Belmore, relapsing into a chair in the kitchen with a sigh of relief, and drawing a folded newspaper from his pocket. "I wouldn't be in his shoes for a farm."

"Oh, it will be all right now," said Mrs. Belmore serenely. She added with some irrelevancy, "I've left the children to undress each other; they've been so good. It's been such a different day, though, from what we had planned."

"It's too bad that you have to get the tea."

"Oh, I don't mind that a bit."

She had tucked up the silken skirt of her gown and was deftly measuring out coffee—after the swift, preliminary shaking of the fire with which every woman takes possession of a kitchen—pouring the water into the coffee-pot from the steaming kettle, and then vibrating between the kitchen closet and the butler's pantry with the quick, capable movements of one who knows her ground thoroughly. "Really, it isn't any trouble. Margaret leaves half of the things ready, you know. If you'll just lift down that dish of salad for me—and the cold chicken is beside it. I hate to ask you to get up, but—Thank you. How good the coffee smells! I know you always like the coffee I make."

"You bet I do," said Mr. Belmore with fervor. "Say, petty, you don't think you could come out now and take a look at the garden? I'm almost sure the peas are beginning to show."

"No; I'm afraid there isn't time. We'll have to give it up for this Sunday." She paused for a great effort. "If you'd like to go by yourself, dear—"

"Wouldn't you mind?"

She paused again, looking at him with her clear-eyed seriousness.

"I don't think I mind now, but I might—afterward."

If he had hesitated, it was for a hardly appreciable second. "And I don't want to go," he protested stoutly, "it wouldn't be the same thing at all without you."

"Everything is ready now," said his wife. "Though I do hate to disturb Edith and Alan. I'll just run up and hear the children say their prayers before I put those things on the table. If you would just take a look at the furnace"—it was the sentence Mr. Belmore had been dreading—"and then you can come up and kiss the children good-night."

Mr. Belmore, on his way up from stoking, caught a glimpse projected from the parlor mirror through an aperture in the doorway which the portieres had left uncovered. The reflection was of a girl, with tear-stained face and closed eyes, her head upon a young man's shoulder, while his lips were touchingly pressed to her hair. The picture might have been called "After the Storm," the wreckage was so plainly apparent. As Mr. Belmore turned after ascending the flight of stairs he came full in sight of another picture, spread out to view in the room at the end of the hall. He stood unseen in the shadow regarding it.

His wife sat in a low chair near one of the two white beds; little Dorothy's crib was in their room beyond. The three children were perched on the foot of the nearest bed, white-gowned, with rosy faces and neatly brushed hair. While he looked, the youngest child gave a birdlike flutter and jump, and lighted on the floor, falling on her knees, with her bowed head in the mother's lap, her hands upraised. As she finished the murmured prayer, helped by the tender mother voice, she rose and stood to one side, in infantine seriousness, while the next one spread her white, plumes for the same flight, waiting afterward in reverent line with the first as the third hovered down.

It was plain to see from the mother's face that she had striven to put all earthly thoughts aside in the performance of this sacred office of ministering to innocence; her eyes must be holy when her children's looked up at her on their way to God.

This was the little inner chapel, the Sanctuary of Home, where she was priestess by Divine right. It would have been an indifferent man, indeed, who had not fallen upon his knees in spirit, in company with this little household of faith, in mute recognition of the love and peace and order that crowned his days.

He kissed the laughing children as they clung to him, before she turned down the light. When she came out of the room he was waiting for her. He put his arm around her as he said, with the darling tenderness that made her life:

"Come along, old sweetness. We've got to go down and stir up those lunatics again. Call that 'the happiest time of your life!' We know better than that, don't we, petty? I'll tell you what it is: I'll go to church with you next Sunday, if you say so!"