Flower of the Dusk | Page 5

she breathed. "He must never know!"

II
Miss Mattie
Miss Mattie was getting supper, sustained by the comforting thought
that her task was utterly beneath her and had been forced upon her by
the mysterious workings of an untoward Fate. She was not really
"Miss," since she had been married and widowed, and a grown son was
waiting impatiently in the sitting-room for his evening meal, but her
neighbours, nearly all of whom had known her before her marriage,
still called her "Miss Mattie."
[Sidenote: "Old Maids"]
The arbitrary social distinctions, made regardless of personality, are
often cruelly ironical. Many a man, incapable by nature of life-long
devotion to one woman, becomes a husband in half an hour, duly
sanctioned by Church and State. A woman who remains unmarried,
because, with fine courage, she will have her true mate or none, is
called "an old maid." She may have the heart of a wife and the soul of a
mother, but she cannot escape her sinister label. The real "old maids"
are of both sexes, and many are married, but alas! seldom to each other.

[Sidenote: A Grievance]
In his introspective moments, Roger Austin sometimes wondered why
marriage, maternity, and bereavement should have left no trace upon
his mother. The uttermost depths of life had been hers for the sounding,
but Miss Mattie had refused to drop her plummet overboard and had
spent the years in prolonged study of her own particular boat.
She came in, with the irritating air of a martyr, and clucked sharply
with her false teeth when she saw that her son was reading.
"I don't know what I've done," she remarked, "that I should have to live
all the time with people who keep their noses in books. Your pa was
forever readin' and you're marked with it. I could set here and set here
and set here, and he took no more notice of me than if I was a piece of
furniture. When he died, the brethren and sistern used to come to
condole with me and say how I must miss him. There wasn't nothin' to
miss, 'cause the books and his chair was left. I've a good mind to burn
'em all up."
"I won't read if you don't want me to, Mother," answered Roger, laying
his book aside regretfully.
"I dunno but what I'd rather you would than to want to and not," she
retorted, somewhat obscurely. "What I'm a-sayin' is that it's in the
blood and you can't help it. If I'd known it was your pa's intention to
give himself up so exclusive to readin', I'd never have married him,
that's all I've got to say. There's no sense in it. Lemme see what you're
at now."
She took the open book, that lay face downward upon the table, and
read aloud, awkwardly:
"Leave to the diamond its ages to grow, nor expect to accelerate the
births of the eternal. Friendship demands a religious treatment. We talk
of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected."
[Sidenote: Peculiar Way of Putting Things]

"Now," she demanded, in a shrill voice, "what does that mean?"
"I don't think I could explain it to you, Mother."
"That's just the point. Your pa couldn't never explain nothin', neither.
You're readin' and readin' and readin' and you never know what you're
readin' about. Diamonds growin' and births bein' hurried up, and friends
bein' religious and voted for at township elections. Who's runnin' for
friend this year on the Republican ticket?" she inquired, caustically.
Roger managed to force a laugh. "You have your own peculiar way of
putting things, Mother. Is supper ready? I'm as hungry as a bear."
"I suppose you are. When it ain't readin', it's eatin'. Work all day to get
a meal that don't last more'n fifteen minutes, and then see readin' goin'
on till long past bedtime, and oil goin' up every six months. Which'll
you have--fresh apple sauce, or canned raspberries?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Then I'll get the apple sauce, because the canned raspberries can lay
over as long as they're kept cool."
[Sidenote: Miss Mattie's Personal Appearance]
Miss Mattie shuffled back into the kitchen. During the Winter she wore
black knitted slippers attached to woollen inner soles which had no
heels. She was well past the half-century mark, but her face had few
lines in it and her grey eyes were sharp and penetrating. Her smooth,
pale brown hair, which did not show the grey in it, was parted precisely
in the middle. Every morning she brushed it violently with a stiff brush
dipped into cold water, and twisted the ends into a tight knot at the
back of her head. In militant moments, this knot seemed to rise and the
protruding ends of the wire hairpins to bristle