Ladies-In-Waiting

“That means company coming, and I hope it’s true,” she said to herself, as she looked absent-mindedly in the old-fashioned looking glass, with its picture of Washington crossing the Delaware.

Her thoughts were evidently wandering, for she took her petticoat from a hook in the closet and pulling it over her head found, when she searched for the buttons in the waistband, that she had it on wrong-side out.

“I don’t care!” she exclaimed, giving the unoffending garment an angry twitch, “but it does seem as if I was possessed! I can’t keep my mind on my clothes long enough to get them on straight! I turned my petticoat yesterday, in spite of knowing it brings bad luck, but to-day I just won’t take the chance.”

The pink calico morning dress went on without adventure. Then she carefully emptied the water from the wash-bowl into the jar, wiped it neatly and hung the towel to dry; straightened the photograph of her deceased father in its black-walnut frame; shook the feather bed and tightened a sagging cord under the cornhusk mattress; took the candlestick from the light-stand by her bedside and tripped down the attic stairs two at a time.

Huldah was seventeen, which is a good thing; she was bewitchingly pretty, which is a better thing; and she was in love, which is probably the best thing of all, making due allowance, of course, for the occasions in which it is the worst possible thing that can happen to anybody.

Mrs. Rumford was in the kitchen frying doughnuts for breakfast. She was a comfortable figure as she stood over the brimming “spider” with her three-pronged fork poised in the air. She turned the yellow rings in the hissing fat until they were nut-brown, then dropped them for a moment into a bowl of powdered sugar, from which they issued the most delicious conspirators against the human stomach that can be found in the catalogue of New England cookery.

The table was neatly laid near the screen door that opened from the kitchen into the apple-orchard. A pan of buttermilk biscuits was sitting on the back of the stove, and half a custard pie, left from the previous night’s supper, held the position of honor in front of Mrs. Rumford’s seat. If the pie had been cereal, the doughnuts omelette, and the saleratus biscuits leavened bread, the plot and the course of this tale might have been different; but that is neither here nor there.

“Did you hear the Brahma rooster crowing on the doorstep, mother?” asked Huldah.

“No; but I ain’t surprised, for I can’t seem to keep my dish-cloth in my hand this morning; if I’ve dropped it once I’ve dropped it a dozen times: there’s company coming, sure.”

“That rooster was crowin’ on the fence last time I seen him, and he’s up there ag’in now,” said little Jimmy Rumford, with the most offensive skepticism.

“What if he is?” asked his sister sharply. “That means fair weather, and don’t interfere with the sign of company coming; it makes it all the more certain.”

“I bet he ain’t crowin’ about Pitt Packard,” retorted Jimmy, with a large joy illuminating his sunburnt face. “Pitt ain’t comin’ home from Moderation this week; he’s gone to work on the covered bridge up there.”

Huldah’s face fell.

“I’d ought to have known better than to turn my white skirt yesterday,” she sighed. “I never knew it to fail bringing bad luck. I vow I’ll never do it again.”

“That’s one o’ the signs I haven’t got so much confidence in,” said Mrs. Rumford, skimming the cream from a pan of milk into the churn and putting the skimmed milk on the table. “It don’t come true with me more ’n three times out o’ five, but there’s others that never fails. You jest hold on, Huldy; the dish-cloth and the rooster knows as much ’bout what’s goin’ to happen as your white petticoat does.”

“Jest about as much,” interpolated Jimmy, with his utterance somewhat choked by hot doughnut.

Huldah sat down at the table and made a pretense of eating something, but her heart was heavy within her.

“What are you churning for on Friday, mother?” she asked.

“Why, I told you I am looking for strangers. It ain’t Pitt Packard only that I expect. Yesterday mornin’ I swept a black mark on the floor; in the afternoon I found two o’ the settin’-room chairs standin’ back to back, and my right hand kep’ itchin’ all day, so’t I knew I was goin’ to shake hands with somebody.”

“You told me ’t was the left hand,” said Jimmy.

“I never told you no such thing, Jimmy Rumford. Eat your breakfast, and don’t contradict your mother, or I’ll send you to bed quick ’s you finish eatin’. Don’t you tell me what I said nor what I didn’t say, for I won’t have it. Do you hear me?”

“You did!” responded Jimmy obstinately, preparing to dodge under the table in case of sudden necessity. “You said your left hand itched, and it meant money comin’, and you hoped Rube Hobson was goin’ to pay you for the turkey he bought a year ago last Thanksgivin’-time, so there!”

“So I did,” said the widow reflectively. “Come to think of it, so I did; it must ’a’ been a Wednesday my right hand kep’ itchin’ so.”

“And comp’ny didn’t come a Wednesday neither,” persevered Jimmy.

“Jimmy Rumford, if you don’t behave yourself and speak when you’re spoken to, and not before, you’ll git a trouncin’ that you’ll remember consid’able of a spell afterwards.”

“I’m ready for it!” replied the youngster, darting into the shed and peeping back into the kitchen with a malignant smile. “I dreamt o’ Baldwin apples last night.

‘Dream fruit out o’ season,
That’s anger without reason.’

I knew when I got up you’d get mad with me the first thing this morning, and I’m all prepared—when you ketch me!”

Both women gave a sigh of relief when the boy’s flying figure disappeared around the corner of the barn. He was morally certain to be in mischief wherever he was, but if he was out of sight there was one point gained at least.

“Why do you care so dreadfully whether Pitt comes or not?” asked Mrs. Rumford, now that quiet was restored, “If he don’t come to-day, then he’ll come a Sunday; and if he don’t come this Sunday, then he’ll come the next one, so what’s the odds? You and him didn’t have a fallin’ out last time he was home, did you?”

“Yes, if you must know it, we did.”

“Haven’t you got any common sense, Huldy? Sakes alive! I thought when I married Daniel Rumford, if I could stand his temper it was nobody’s business but my own. I didn’t foresee that he had so much he could keep plenty for his own use, and then have a lot left to hand down to his children, so ’t I should have to live in the house with it to the day of my death! Seems to me if I was a girl and lived in a village where men-folks is as scarce as they be here, I’d be turrible careful to keep holt of a beau after I’d got him. What in the name o’ goodness did you quarrel about?”

Huldah got up from the table and carried her plate and cup to the sink. She looked out of the window to conceal her embarrassment, and busied herself with preparations for the dish-washing, so that she could talk with greater freedom.

“We’ve had words before this, plenty of times, but they didn’t amount to anything. Pitt’s good, and he’s handsome, and he’s smart; but he’s awful dictatorial and fault-finding, and I just ain’t goin’ to eat too much humble-pie before I’m married, for fear I won’t have anything else to eat afterwards, and it ain’t very fattening for a steady diet. And if there ever was a hateful old woman in the world it’s his stepmother. I’ve heard of her saying mean things about our family every once in a while, but I wouldn’t tell you for fear you’d flare up and say Pitt couldn’t come to see me. She’s tried to set him against me ever since we began to keep company together. She’s never quite managed to do it, but she’s succeeded well enough to keep me in continual trouble.”

“What’s she got to say?” inquired Mrs. Rumford hotly. “She never had a silk dress in the world, till Eben Packard married her, and everybody knows her father was a horse-doctor and mine was a reg’lar one!”

“She didn’t say anything about fathers, but she did tell Almira Berry that no member of the church in good standing could believe in signs as you did and have hope of salvation. She said I was a chip off the old block, and had been raised like a heathen. It seems when I was over there on Sunday I refused to stand up and have my height measured against the wall, and I told ’em if you measured heights on Sunday you’d like as not die before the year was out. I didn’t know then she had such a prejudice against signs, but since that time I’ve dragged ’em in every chance I got, just to spite her.”

“More fool you!” said her mother, beginning to move the dasher of the churn up and down with a steady motion. “You might have waited until she was your mother-in-law before you began to spite her. The first thing you know you won’t get any mother-in-law.”

“That’s the only thing that would console me for losing Pitt!” exclaimed Huldah. “If I can’t marry him I don’t have to live with her, that’s one comfort! The last thing she did was to tell Aunt Hitty Tarbox she’d as lief have Pitt bring one of the original Salem witches into the house as one of the Daniel Rumford tribe.”

“The land sakes!” ejaculated the widow, giving a desperate and impassioned plunge to the churn-dasher. “Now I know why I dreamt of snakes and muddy water the night before she come here to the Ladies’ Aid Club. Well, she’s seventy, and she can’t live forever; she can’t take Eben Packard’s money into the next world with her, either, and I guess if she could ’t would melt as soon as it got there.”

Huldah persevered with her confession, dropping an occasional tear in the dishwater.

“Last time Pitt came here he said he should have three or four days’ vacation the 12th of August, and he thought we’d better get married then, if ’t was agreeable to me. I was kind of shy, and the almanac was hanging alongside of the table, so I took it up and looked to see what day of the week the 12th fell on. ‘Oh, Pitt,’ I said, ‘we can’t be married on Friday; it’s dreadful unlucky.’ He began to scold then, and said I didn’t care anything about him if I wouldn’t marry him when it was most convenient; and I said I would if ’t was any day but Friday; and he said that was all moonshine, and nobody but foolish old women believed in such nonsense; and I said there wasn’t a girl in town that would marry him on a Friday; and he said there was; and I asked him to come right out and tell who he meant; and he said he didn’t mean anybody in particular; and I said he did; and he said, well, Jennie Perkins would, on Friday or Sunday or wash-day or any other day; and I said if I was a man I vow I wouldn’t take a girl that was so anxious as all that; and he said he’d rather take one that was a little too anxious than one that wasn’t anxious enough; and so we had it, back and forth, till I got so mad I couldn’t see the almanac. Then, just to show him I had more good reasons than one, I said, ‘Besides, if we should be married on a Friday we’d have to go away on a Saturday, and ten to one ’t would rain on our wedding-trip.’

“‘Why would it rain Saturday more than any other day?’ said he; and then I mistrusted I was getting into fresh trouble, but I was too mad to back out, and said I, ‘They say it rains more Saturdays in the year than any other day’; and he got red in the face and said, ‘Where’d you get that silly notion?’ Then I said it wasn’t any silly notion, it was Gospel truth, and anybody that took notice of anything knew it was so; and he said he never heard of it in his life; and I said there was considerable many things that he’d never heard of that he’d be all the better for knowing; and he said he was like Josh Billings, he’d rather know a few things well than know so many things that wa’n’t so.”

“You might have told him how we compared notes about rainy days at the Aid Club,” said her mother. “You remember Hannah Sophia Palmer hadn’t noticed it, but the minute you mentioned it she remembered how, when she was a child, she was always worryin’ for fear she couldn’t wear her new hat a Sunday, and it must have been because it was threatening weather a Saturday, and she was afraid it would keep up for Sunday. And the widow Buzzell said she always picked up her apples for pie-baking on Friday, it was so apt to be dull or wet on a Saturday.”

“I told him all of that,” continued Huldah, “and how old Mrs. Bascom said they had a literary society over to Edgewood that used to meet twice a month on Saturday afternoons, and it rained or snowed so often they had to change their meetings to a Wednesday.

“Then the first thing I knew Pitt stood up so straight he looked more than ten feet tall, and says he, ‘If you don’t marry me a Friday, Huldah Rumford, you don’t marry me at all. You’re nothing but a mass of superstition, and if you’re so scared for fear it will rain on your wedding-bonnet a Saturday, you can stay home under cover the rest of your life, for all I care. I’ll wash the top buggy, put the umbrella under the seat, and take Jennie Perkins; she won’t be afraid of a wetting so long as she gets it in good company.’

“‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘she won’t, especially if the company’s a man, for she’ll be so dumfounded at getting one of ’em to sit beside her she won’t notice if it rains pitchforks, and so far as I’m concerned she’s welcome to my leavings.’ Then he went out and slammed the kitchen door after him, but not so quick that I didn’t get a good slam on the sitting-room door first.”

“He’ll come back,” churned Mrs. Rumford philosophically. “Jennie Perkins has got a pug nose, and a good-sized mole on one side of it. A mole on the nose is a sure sign of bad luck in love-affairs, particularly if it’s well to one side. He’ll come back.”

But, as a matter of fact, the days went by, the maple-trees turned red, and Pitt Packard did not come back to the Rumford farm. His comings and his goings were all known to Huldah. She knew that he took Jennie Perkins to the Sunday-School picnic, and escorted her home from evening meetings. She knew that old Mrs. Packard had given her a garnet pin, a glass handkerchief-box, and a wreath of hair flowers made from the intertwined tresses of the Packards and the Doolittles. If these symptoms could by any possibility be misinterpreted, there were various other details of an alarmingly corroborative character, culminating in the marriage of Pitt to Jennie on a certain Friday evening at eight o’clock. He not only married her on a Friday, but he drove her to Portland on a Saturday morning; and the Fates, who are never above taking a little extra trouble when they are dealing out misery, decreed that it should be one of the freshest, brightest, most golden mornings of the early autumn.

Pitt thought Portland preferable to Biddeford or Saco as a place to pass the brief honeymoon, if for no other reason than because the road thither lay past the Rumford house. But the Rumfords’ blinds were tightly closed on the eventful Saturday, and an unnecessarily large placard hung ostentatiously on the front gate, announcing to passers-by that the family had gone to Old Orchard Beach, and would be home at sundown. This was a bitter blow to the bridegroom, for he had put down the back of the buggy with the intention of kissing the bride within full view of the Rumford windows. When he found it was of no use, he abandoned the idea, as the operation never afforded him any especial pleasure. He asked Mrs. Pitt if she preferred to go to the beach for her trip, but she decidedly favored the gayeties of a metropolis.

The excitement of passing the Rumford house having faded, Jennie’s nose became so oppressive to Pitt that he finally changed places with her, explaining that he generally drove on the left side. He was more tranquil then, for her left profile was more pleasing, though for the life of him he could not help remembering Huldah’s sweet outlines, the dimple in her chin, her kissable mouth, her delicate ear. Why, oh, why, had she inherited her father’s temper and her mother’s gift of prophecy, to say nothing of her grandfather’s obstinacy and her grandmother’s nimble tongue! All at once it dawned upon him that he might have jilted Huldah without marrying Jennie. It would, it is true, have been only a half revenge; but his appetite for revenge was so dulled by satisfaction he thought he could have been perfectly comfortable with half the quantity, even if Huldah were not quite so uncomfortable as he wished her to be. He dismissed these base and disloyal sentiments, however, as bravely as he could, and kissed Jennie twice, in a little stretch of wood road that fell in opportunely with his mood of silent penitence.