“Lucy McGraw and John Holt were married on Saturday evening in the parlor of the family home.”
The Kinta Years
MAMA ALWAYS SAID that Papa just swept her off her feet. “Like that,” she used to say, making a swift motion with her hand. “He just wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Mary and I had visions of Papa, young Lochinvar come out of the West, sweeping Mama off her feet, literally scooping her up and running away with her. It wasn’t at all difficult to think of Papa as a dashing young cavalier. He was still a tall, slender, very winsome man. We thought he must have been almost beautiful, when he was younger and had more hair.
But Aunt Sallie spent the summer with us once. “Nonsense,” she said. “It wasn’t that way at all. Lucy set her cap for Mr. John the minute she laid eyes on him. And she went to a right smart trouble to get him, too.”
Mr. John was the new principal of the school. He was fresh from the university, had a smart new cutaway buggy and a fast young mare, the sweetest tenor voice anyone in the town had ever heard, and his way with a fiddle was little short of wonderful. He was twenty-five years old, and he wasn’t married.
There wasn’t a girl in town who didn’t sigh when he drove smartly past her house and wish, hopefully, she might be the lucky one he invited to drive out with him. What a feather in a girl’s cap that would be, to drive out with the new school principal! Each one wanted to be the first. How envious it would make all the others.
Lucy was the only one who didn’t sigh, who didn’t admit she would be thrilled speechless to be asked. She was seventeen, and she was gay, high-spirited, proud and lovely. She had light brown hair that sparkled with little red glints in the sun, skin so white it was milky, and light, merry blue eyes. She wore her hair up, of course, and her five petticoats properly swept the ground. But she could still lift her petticoats and beat any of her brothers in a foot race when she wanted to. “I think he’s stuck-up,” she said, tossing her head. “He’s just a showoff, with his stiff white collars, and his new buggy and his fast horse. He just wants everyone to notice him. I wouldn’t accept, even if he asked me.”
“You wouldn’t?” said Laura, her best girl friend.
“Indeed, I wouldn’t. I should simply decline the honor.”
“Well, I wouldn’t,” Laura said firmly. “I’d jump at the chance!”
“You would!” Lucy said scornfully. “He doesn’t impress me at all.”
Both girls were silent then. It was a beautiful, mild day in late September and they were sitting on the back porch of Lucy’s house, stringing the last of the garden beans. “I wonder,” said Lucy, then, “if he’s going to the picnic.”
“Everyone else is wondering the same thing. And who he’ll take, if he goes,” Laura said.
Lucy felt a little ripple of excitement. That meant he hadn’t asked anyone yet. Laura would know, if anyone did. She had three older sisters and between them they knew everything that happened almost as soon as it happened. Laura would be the very first to know when he asked someone.
The picnic on the last Sunday in September was an annual affair with the young people of the town. It was a kind of last goodbye to the long, happy, lazy summer, which they had spent boating on the river, going on long, moonlit hayrides, gathering on front verandahs with guitars to sing, going picnicking in the hills. It was always held at Cold Springs, a lovely place on top of the one mountain that poked itself up higher than the surrounding hills. They never went there on their other picnics. Cold Springs was always saved for the last Sunday in September.
“Who are you going with?” Laura asked.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Lucy told her.
Laura sighed. It must be wonderful, she thought, to be able to pick and choose the way Lucy could. She had to depend on her faithful swain, Charlie. But Lucy always had her choice of the boys. But, then, Lucy was the prettiest girl in town. It was only natural the boys should swarm after her like bees in clover. “I may,” Lucy said then, “not go with anyone. I may just go with the girls.”
Laura gasped. There were always a few girls who didn’t get asked by any of the boys, who went together in the hay wagon and clung together on the picnic. No one who could have an escort at all would ever have gone with the girls. “You wouldn’t!” she said.
Lucy flung up her head. “I’m tired of all those silly boys. I think it might be fun not to be stuck with one of them all day.”
Laura shuddered. Charlie bored her sometimes, but she’d rather be bored than appear without an escort. It practically stamped you as a wallflower. “I don’t,” she said honestly. “What will everybody think?”
“I don’t care what they think,” Lucy answered. “I’m just of half a mind to do it!”
She didn’t tell Laura that she had met Mr. John at the post office one evening last week, that he had bowed courteously, spoken to her, engaged her in conversation. “You’re keeping well, I hope, Miss Lucy,” he had said.
“Very well, thank you, Mr. John,” she had replied, twirling the handle of her parasol.
He had spoken then of the weather. “Very mild, for late September, don’t you think? Or is it always this warm here in the fall?”
“Oh, it’s usually fairly warm until October. We count on the warm weather lasting until after the picnic.” She thought she had inserted that very cleverly.
“The picnic . . . yes. Bill Herndon told me about the picnic.”
“You’re going, I suppose?” she had asked, very casually.
“I hope to, yes.”
“It’s usually quite an enjoyable affair,” she had said primly.
“I understand it is.” He had said a very bold thing, then. He had laughed and said, “I’ll have to find a young lady for the occasion. Could you suggest one, Miss Lucy?” And he had looked at her meaningfully.
“I shouldn’t dream of doing such a thing, Mr. John,” she had answered, and then, as bold as he, she had said, “but you shouldn’t have any difficulty.” It was as good as telling him that if he asked, she would accept. But, disappointingly, he had changed the subject then, said something about the mail being very late and he didn’t think he’d better wait any longer, and he had bade her good day. He meant to call, though, she was certain.
As the week of the picnic came and the days wore on the phone rang often enough, but it was always one of the boys. “May I escort you on the picnic, Lucy?”
Pleasantly, she declined each invitation. She was positive Mr. John would call. Lucy McVay was going to be the first young woman to drive out with him. But as the days passed and Mr. John didn’t call, as the other boys became committed to taking other girls, she began to be a little nervous and fidgety. She had turned down six invitations. Surely he would call today!
But Saturday came and he hadn’t called, and along toward the middle of the morning Laura burst into the kitchen. Lucy was ironing a voluminous petticoat. “You’ll never guess,” Laura panted, collapsing into a chair, “who Mr. John is taking on the picnic!”
Lucy’s heart sank. “Who?”
“He’s taking Lizzie Walters!”
Lucy’s iron was poised over the bottom ruffle of the petticoat. She looked at Laura unbelievingly. “Lizzie Walters! I don’t believe it!”
“Well, he is. Lizzie is so excited she’s lost her spectacles.”
“That I can believe. She’s always losing them.”
Lizzie Walters was fully twenty years old, a tall, skinny girl, very plain, awkward, mousey, who peered nearsightedly through steel-rimmed spectacles. Everyone liked her, but no one ever asked her for a date. She always tagged along with the other unasked girls.
Bitterly, Lucy draped the petticoat over the back of a chair and put the iron on the stove. It was the last straw. She had turned down six invitations to give Mr. John his chance, and he had ignored her for Lizzie Walters! She had never intended to be stuck with the crowd of girls, but now she had no alternative except not to go at all. She thought about developing a sudden illness. No . . . Laura would have spread the news that she had done it deliberately. Her face was saved to that extent, at least.
But it would be an unbearable day, watching the boys and girls paired off, taking pictures of each other, having fun, she, for the first time in her life unescorted, stuck with the crowd of plain, unasked girls. It made her squirm to think of it. Her pride came to the rescue. Well, nobody would know it if she didn’t have fun!
Just the same it was dreary, crawling into the hay wagon with the rest of the girls while the buggies, holding the paired couples, lined up, ready to race to be the first on the long, straight road out of town. Mr. John and Lizzie seemed to be in high spirits, Lizzie holding on to her flat sailor hat, laughing, Mr. John fresh, as usual, in a high white collar, his whip poised over the little mare. Lucy watched them start off, saw Mr. John’s buggy wheel perilously near the others, pass them and take the lead, dashing off in a cloud of dust. He did have a very fast horse there, she had to admit, and her envy rose bitterly inside her. She would have given anything she possessed to be sitting there beside him. Then her chin came up. She was going to have fun today, she reminded herself.
She settled down in the hay and deliberately set herself to be her gayest, happiest, lightest-hearted self. She succeeded so well that she kept all the girls laughing the whole way, and they piled out at the Springs, gathering around her, still laughing. Without a glance at the others, she said, loud enough for all to hear, “Let’s leave the sissies here to fix the lunch. Let’s go explore the cave.”
It was always the unescorted girls who fixed the lunch, but with Lucy leading them they daringly left it, followed giggling and laughing where she led. Laura watched them disappear over the side of the cliff. She wondered about all that fun and laughter.
The boys and girls wandered about, in pairs, holding hands, posing to have their pictures taken, clambering over the jutting rocks, the girls squealing and having to be helped, drinking from the icy spring, gathering the scarlet sumach branches, until finally they grew hungry. “Do we build a fire?” Mr. John asked then. He had been an impeccably gallant escort to the beaming Lizzie.
“Oh, yes. We always build a fire to make coffee.”
The boys gathered wood, the girls delicately unable to carry more than twig at a time, but valiantly insisting upon helping. When the picnic cloths were spread and the food laid out, someone said, “We’d better call the girls now, hadn’t we? Wonder where they’ve got to. I haven’t heard them for a long time, come to think of it.”
“Oh, if they’re in the cave you couldn’t hear them from here,” someone else answered.
Mr. John had wandered over to the edge of the cliff. “How do you get down to the cave from here?” he asked.
“There’s a crevice in the rock, there, and a little path.”
They began to shout for the girls, and at first there was no answer, then several of them came scrambling up the path. “Come quick,” they called. “Lucy’s got her foot hung in that crack at the back of the cave. We can’t get her loose!”
The boys headed for the path, Mr. John in the lead, the girls trailing behind. At the edge of the cliff one of the boys turned. “You girls stay here. We don’t want anyone else hurt.”
Obediently, the girls stopped. They chattered excitedly, wondering how it had happened. “Maybe a rock rolled under her foot,” one said.
“Or maybe she fell,” another offered.
Laura stood, listening and thinking. If Lucy McVay was stuck in that crack it was a seven-days’ wonder. She knew that whole cave like the palm of her hand. Laura thought she was beginning to see what Lucy was up to. She was certain of it when Mr. John appeared at the top of the path, carrying Lucy, the rest of the boys following, single file.
Laura spread a blanket and Mr. John laid Lucy gently on it. “She fainted,” he explained, “when I had to free her foot. She must have been suffering greatly.” Lucy’s long skirts trailed gracefully, covering entirely her feet and ankles.
The girls fluttered about, their starched skirts rustling as they moved. The young men built up the fire hurriedly. Mr. John stayed by Lucy’s side, chafing her wrists. Lucy lay with her eyes closed, pathetically limp and exhausted. Laura watched her. Lucy McVay had never fainted in her life. It was her boast that nothing could make her faint. And Lucy had the most beautiful long eyelashes of any girl in the crowd. She would know exactly how lovely and fragile she looked, her face palely white, her lashes curling on her cheek.
Mr. John stripped off his coat and made a pillow for her head. Lucy sighed when he lifted her head, then gasped as if in pain. “She’s coming to,” Mr. John said. “Quick, get a cup of water, someone.” One of the boys dashed off for it. Mr. John continued to rub Lucy’s wrists.
Slowly she opened her lovely blue eyes, looked directly up into Mr. John’s face, then looked around her as if bewildered. “Where am I?” she asked, in a small, feeble voice.
“Don’t try to talk, Miss Lucy,” Mr. John told her. “You’re safe now. You stepped into that crack at the back of the cave and turned your ankle.” He leaned back as if to rise. “One of you girls will have to examine her ankle.” It was unthinkable, of course, that a man should see a lady’s ankle, much less examine it.
Laura stepped forward. “I’ll look at it.”
Mr. John moved back and spoke to the others. “Don’t crowd around her. She needs the air.” Obediently they made way.
Laura knelt beside Lucy and bent over her. “Who do you think you’re fooling, Lucy McVay?” she whispered.
Lucy opened one eye. “The whole dratted bunch, I hope,” she hissed. “And if you give me away, Laura Spencer, I’ll never speak to you again!”
Laura sniffed. “I ought to.” But she knew she wouldn’t. The habit of loyalty to Lucy was very strong in her. She turned the skirt back a little from Lucy’s ankles. As she expected there wasn’t a thing wrong with either one. But Lucy moaned realistically when Laura probed and pressed on the left one. Laura turned the skirt back down, stood up. “We’ll have to take her home quickly. Her ankle may be broken.”
No one doubted it; no one questioned it. Promptly and decisively Mr. John took charge. “Two of you fellows make a pack-saddle and carry her down the mountain. I’ll run on ahead and make a bed for her in my buggy.”
No one disputed his authority. He had proven he had the fastest horse.
Lucy was carried down the mountain, gently, and deposited just as gently in Mr. John’s buggy. He stepped in beside her. “I’ll have you home in no time, Miss Lucy,” he promised. Then he remembered Lizzie. “Oh,” he said, turning, “Miss Lizzie . . .”
“Don’t give me a thought, Mr. John,” Lizzie said gallantly. “I’ll come on in the wagon with the rest of the girls.”
“And that,” Aunt Sallie said, “was the way your mother really managed to get your father.”
“I don’t think she was very kind to Lizzie,” Mary said, her seven-year-old eyes sad over Lizzie’s fate.
“Well, dear,” Aunt Sallie said, comfortably, “there’s an old saying that all is fair in love and war.”
“And she really didn’t hurt her ankle at all?” I asked.
“Not at all. It wasn’t the least bit hurt. But she had to pretend it was. She walked around on crutches for a month. Mr. John, of course,” she added dryly, “called every day to ask about her, brought her flowers and candy, took her driving in his buggy, was very solicitous.”
“And then they got married,” Mary said.
“Well, not for another year. But your mother had him where she wanted him from then on.”
Papa came around the corner of the house. “What have you been telling my girls, Sallie? I heard the last of it. Who had whom where she wanted him?”
“Lucy had you where she wanted you, Mr. John,” Aunt Sallie said, laughing.
“Oh,” Papa said airily, “that!” He dropped down onto the top step and gathered Mary and me between his knees. He nuzzled his chin on Mary’s hair. “I knew all the time she hadn’t hurt her ankle that day.”
Mama had evidently been eavesdropping. She slammed the kitchen door behind her as she came out onto the porch. “You knew it all the time?” she asked, incredulously.
“Of course,” Papa said. “Your skirt didn’t quite cover your ankle when I first got to you. There wasn’t a thing wrong with it, and I knew it. You stepped down very gently into that crack, and your foot came free without any difficulty. You could have walked out of that cave just as easily as I did.”
“Well, of all things!” Mama said. “You didn’t let on!”
“Oh, no. I didn’t want to spoil it for you. And besides,” he added, looking slyly at her out of the corner of his eyes, “I felt pretty flattered you’d gone to so much trouble to get my attention.”
“How did you know,” Mama snapped at him, “it wasn’t for one of the other boys?”
“Well, you’d turned all them down. I couldn’t figure you’d go to so much trouble for someone you’d turned down. It had to be for my special benefit.”
“Humph,” Mama sniffed. Then she turned on Papa. “You mean to tell me you pretended for one solid month to believe my ankle was really hurt? Took me driving? Brought me flowers and candy, and all that? You just pretended?”
“Well, you were pretending, weren’t you?”
“Of all the mean things, Mr. John!” Mama said indignantly. “You didn’t care at all.”
Papa laid his hand on her knee. “Oh, yes, I did. I cared terribly. You were the prettiest girl I ever saw, and the most popular one. I fell in love with you the first time I saw you, but I didn’t think an old bachelor would have a chance with you. I would have given my right arm to take you to that picnic, but I was scared to ask you.”
“So you took Lizzie Walters!”
“Well, if I couldn’t take you, it didn’t matter whom I took,” Papa said gently.
“I still think,” Mary said, looking mournfully at Mama, “you were mean to Lizzie.”
“We were,” Papa agreed solemnly. “We were very mean to her.”
“Well,” Mama said tartly, “you needn’t grieve for Lizzie, Mary. She married the richest man in town the next year. All I got for my pains was a poor schoolteacher.”
But I noticed that when she leaned forward to brush an ant off Papa’s collar her hand lingered a little longer than it needed to. I didn’t think Mama would have traded her poor schoolteacher for the richest man in town. I thought she was very glad to make Lizzie welcome of him.
Thinking about it, though, it did seem to me that if anyone’ had been swept off his feet, it had been Papa. Mama, I decided, had just forgotten how it was.