Cloudy Jewel: The Courtening.
His voice was low and pleading; and Leslie, lying breathless above, not deigning to try to listen, yet painfully aware of the change of tones, was in tortures. Then Julia Cloud’s pained, gentle tones, firmly replying, and more entreaty, with brief, simple answers. Most unexpectedly, before an hour passed Leslie heard the front door open and the professor go out and pass slowly down the walk. Her heart was in her throat, beating painfully. What had happened? A quick intuition presented a possible solution. Cloudy would not leave them while they were in college, and had bid him wait, or perhaps turned him down altogether! How dear of her! And yet with quick revulsion of spirit she began to pity the poor, lonely man who could not have Cloudy when he loved her.
It's very... romantic. And interesting, because the Angel of the House is married; that's the old Victorian standard, because it gave women who couldn't find jobs or provide for themselves an idea of something to do all day. Since Julia is too old to bear children, and she's raising children of the family. They may already be mostly raised, but all GLH sees is a giant 'WORK IN PROGRESS' sign. So she has a household already. And, conveniently, she doesn't have to worry about who leads the household. She does, because there is no man of the house. The Angel reigns supreme. But back to the action.
A moment later Julia Cloud came softly up the stairs and tiptoed into her own room, and, horror of horrors! Leslie could hear her catch her breath like soft sobbing! Did Cloudy care, then, and had she turned down a man she loved in order to stick to them and keep her promise to their guardian?
Aha! It's a conflict! It's not a whole lot of a conflict, but it's something for the characters to worry over regardless and it should hold us for the rest of the chapter at least.
Julia Cloud drew the girl down beside her on the bed, and nestled her lovingly and close.
“It’s nothing, dear. It’s only that I had to hurt a good man. It always makes me sorry to have to hurt any one.”
Which makes it sound like she turned down his suit by going at him with a staple-gun. But this is a little unclear. Perhaps Julia might cry after witnessing someone else's heartbreak, but we've known this guy for a chapter as a guy who got turned down as a boarder and then visited a lot. We don't know how emotional the conversation was. We know that the other guest/pesky constant arrival was put in his place, but we don't know how. This guy's rejection seems oddly similar. But if her tearing up afterwards might seem a little silly, the children's reaction:
“Well, it’s plain she cares,” whispered Allison sadly, gravely, turning his face away from the light. “I say, Les, we ought to do something. We ought to tell her it’s all right for her to go ahead.”
“I can’t, Allison; I’d break down and cry, I know I would. I tried up there just now, but the words wouldn’t come.”
“Well, then, let’s write her a letter! And we’ll both sign it.”
“All right. You write it,” choked Leslie. “I’ll sign it.”
Seems downright farcical. Especially what she does after she delivers it:
Laying it in her hand, Leslie hurried into her own room, shut her door softly, and hid in the closet so that Julia Cloud would not hear her sob.
Fluctuates to age five and hides in the closet. Julia reads her mail, calls them back, and talks to them. Which somehow twists back around to interesting again.
“Children, listen!” said Julia Cloud, suddenly putting a quieting hand on each young hand in her lap. “I’ll tell you something I never told to a living soul.”
There was that in her voice that thrilled them into silence. It was as if she suddenly opened the door of her soul and let them look in on her real self as only God saw her. Their fingers tightened in sympathy as she went on.
“A long time ago--a great many years ago--perhaps you would laugh and think me foolish if you knew how many---”
“Oh, no, Cloudy, never!” said Leslie softly; and Allison growled a dissenting note.
“Well--there was some one whom I loved--who died. That is all; only--I never could love anybody that way again. Marriage without a love like that is a desecration.”
Grace is having her delicious, delicious angel food cake and eating it too. The proper feminine role is to head up a busy, harmonious, warm, love-and-gingerbread household, and yet never overtly lead the family. Outside the family, it was still a 20s-era workplace and the man was going to bring home a better wage. Since a good match was still heavily an economic matter, a bit of sacrificial resignation was often involved. Grace kicks that idea in the rump and sends it flying out of Casa Cloud.
“No one ever knew, dear. He was very young. We were both scarcely more than children. I was only fourteen---”
“O Cloudy! How beautiful! And you have kept it all these years! Won’t you--tell us just a little about it? I think it is wonderful; don’t you, Allison?”
“Yes, wonderful!” said Allison in that deep, full tone of his that revealed a man’s soul growing in the boy’s heart.
Julia's great romance occurred when she was four years younger than Leslie, who was hiding in a closet last page. Just a chapter ago one of Allison's cohorts was looking as Leslie as a man reverentially looks at a woman. Now Allison possesses only the greenest sprout of budding manhood. What does it take to get a consistent characterization around here?
P.S. She was not actually in love at 14.
“There is very little to tell, dear. He was a neighbor’s son. We went to school together, and sometimes took walks on Saturdays. He rode me on his sled, and helped me fasten on my skates, and carried my books; and we played together when we had time to play. Then his people moved away out West; and he kissed me good-by, and told me he was coming back for me some day. That was all there was to it except a few little letters.
Grace actually does know how to tell a love story. I am not sure what she is trying to put on here, with that.
Then they stopped, and one day his grandmother wrote that he had been drowned saving the life of a little child. Can you understand why I want to wait and be ready for him over there where he is gone? I keep feeling God will let him come for me when my life down here is over.”
And that sounds flat-out terrifying. It's also confusing to think what daily beliefs will seem, in a few generations, like owing yourself to God because your parents baptized you as an infant, or God letting the adolescent crush who carried your books home take you to heaven.
There was a long silence during which the young hands gripped hers closely, and the young thoughts grew strangely wise with insight into human life and all its joys and sorrows. They were thinking out in detail just what their aunt had missed, the sweet things that every woman hopes for, and thinks about alone with God; of love, strong care, little children, and a home. She had missed it all; and yet she had its image in her heart, and had been true to her first thought of it all the years. Now, when it was offered her again, she would not give up the old love for a new, would not take what was left of life. She would wait till the morning broke and her boy met her on the other shore.
We've spent all this book until now rejoicing that Julia actually hasn't missed any of that. How is that dude offering her little children? Remember when I said earlier that Julia's rejection of the dude was actually quite romantic? It's just a continuation of her first romance, which is what a fourteen-year-old thinks being in love is. But having established that there's nothing this guy can give her, we talk about the possibility of her losing it:
“That is dear,” said Julia Cloud; “but”--a resignation in her voice--“some day you will marry, and then you will not need me any more and I shall find something to do somewhere.”
Two fierce young things rose up in arms at once.
“Put that right out of your head, Cloudy Jewel!” cried Leslie. “You shan’t say it again! If I thought any man could be mean enough not to feel as I do about you, I would never marry him; so there! I would never marry anybody!”
“My wife will love you as much as I do!” said Allison with conviction. “I shall never love anybody that doesn’t. You’ll see!”
And if either husband or wife is neutral, Julia will just make those cookies. I'm almost afraid that mentioning them will make them pop up again, but the mind-control cookies have been inert for most of the book and we should be safe now.
Professor Armitage came no more to the little pink-and-white house; but Julia Cloud was happy with her children, and they were content together.
And there's another guy sent packing by magical words we never hear. There are other words Grace wants us to hear instead.
“I don’t see how you get time for that Christian Endeavor Society of yours, Cloud,” said one of the professors to Allison. “I hear you’re the moving spirit in it; yet you never fall down on your class work. How do you manage it? I’d like to put some of my other students onto your ways of planning.”
“Well, there’s all of Sunday, you know, professor,” answered Allison promptly. “I don’t give so very much more time, except a half-hour here and there to a committee meeting, or now and then a social on Friday night, when I’d otherwise be fooling, anyway. My sister and I cut out the dances, and put these social parties in their place.”
“But don’t you have to study on Sundays?”
“Never do!” was the quick reply. “Made it a rule when I started in here at this college, and haven’t broken it once, not even for examinations. I find I’m fresher for my work Monday morning when I make the Sabbath real.”
Did the Christian Endeavor pay her by the mention? It's like they live in several advertisements.
“Well, that certainly is interesting,” he said. “I’ll have to try it. Though I don’t see how I’d quite manage it. I usually have to spend the whole Sunday correcting papers.”
“Save ’em up till early Monday morning, and come over to our Christian Endeavor meeting. See if it isn’t worth while, and then see how much more you can do Monday morning at five o’clock, when you’re really rested, than you could all day Sunday hacking at the same old job you’ve had all the week. I’ll look for you next Sunday night. So-long!”
It's fun! It's easy! It will change your life!
Julia Cloud stood at the window of her rose-and-gray room one Sabbath evening after such an afternoon, watching the four children walk out into the sunset to their Christian Endeavor meeting, and smiled with a tender light in her eyes. She had come to call them her four children in her heart now, for they all seemed to love and need her alike; and for many a month, though they seemed not yet openly aware of it, they had been growing more and more all in all to one another; and she was glad.
If Howard Letchworth needs her as much as the closet-hiding, unpredictably aged Leslie, they are not a good match.
Howard Letchworth.
Having reminded us of the unfortunately named Howard Letchworth, Grace will spend a day in his company. Since he works for his living, he's been out on business, taking the train to go arrange his summer job. Now he's on his way back.
The train was crowded, for it was just at closing time and every one was in a rush to get home. Engrossed in his paper, he noticed none of them until someone dropped, or rather sprawled, in the seat beside him, taking far more room than was really necessary, and making a lot of fuss pulling up his trousers and getting his patent leather feet adjusted to suit him around a very handsome sole-leather suitcase which he crowded unceremoniously over to Howard’s side of the floor.
See? See that? That wasn't bad characterization at all, just a steady impression of the way a fellow-traveller who you are not even fully aware of still manages to make a pest of himself. Sublety is about to be jettisoned from the speeding windows, so let's admire that for a moment.
Done.
The intruder next addressed himself to the arrangement of a rich and striking necktie, and seemed to have no compunctions about annoying his neighbor during the process. Howard glanced up in surprise as a more strenuous knock than before jarred his paper out of focus. He saw a young fellow of about his own age with a face that would have been strikingly handsome if it had not also been bold and conceited. He had large dark eyes set off by long curling black lashes, black hair that crinkled close to his head in satiny sleek sheen, well-chiselled features, all save a loose-hung, insolent lip that gave the impression of great self-indulgence and selfishness. He was dressed with a careful regard to the fashion and with evidently no regard whatever for cost. He bore the mark at once of wealth and snobbishness. Howard, in spite of his newly-acquired desire to look upon all men as brothers, found himself disliking him with a vehemence that was out of all proportion to the occasion.
What in Sam hill is a loose-hung lip? The only thing that comes to mind is a horse. Is he drooling?
“Don’t they have any pahlah cars on this road?”
The question was addressed to him in a calm, insolent tone as if he were a paid servitor of the road. He looked up amusedly and eyed the stranger pitingly:
“Not so as you’d notice it,” he remarked crushingly as he turned back to his paper. “People on this road too busy to use ’em.”
Amusedly! Pityingly! Crushingly! Christian Endeavor! What is a parlor-car?
“Live far out?” he asked, turning his big, bold eyes on his seatmate and calmly examining him from the toe of a well-worn shoe to the crown of a dusty old hat that Howard was trying to make last till the end of the season. When he had finished the survey his eyes travelled complacently back to his own immaculate attire, and his well-polished shoes fresh from the hands of the city station bootblack. With a well-manicured thumb and finger he flecked an imaginary bit of dust from the knee of his trousers.
Howard should have just told him the parlor-car was behind the caboose.
“Ah, indeed!” Another survey brief and significant this time. “I don’t suppose you know any people at the college.” It was scarcely a question, more like a statement of a deplorable fact. Howard was suddenly amused.
“Oh, a few,” he said briefly. (He was just finishing his senior year rather brilliantly and his professors were more than proud of him.)
Stop getting defensive! You were just being amused! And now Grace has to pack in this stuff because she didn't tell us this before, plus gave the impression Howard Letchworth was coming back to school after the summer.
“You ought to see their dump out in Cally. It’s some mansion, believe me! There wasn’t anything else in that part of the State to compare with it for miles around. And cahs! They had cahs to burn! The old man was just lousy with gold, you know; struck a rich mine years ago. His wife had a pile, too. Her father was all kinds of a millionaire and left every bit to her; and Al and his sister’ll get everything. Seen anything of her? She ought to be a winner pretty soon. She was a peach when she was little. She’s some speedy kid! We used to play together, you know, and our folks sorta fixed it up we were just made for each other and all that sorta thing, you know--but I don’t know--I’m not going to be bound by any such nonsense, of course, unless I like. One doesn’t want one’s wife to be such an awfully good shot, fer instance, you know---!”
A great anger surged up in Howard’s soul, and his jaw set with a fierce line that those who knew him well had learned to understand meant self-control under deep provocation. He would have liked nothing better than to surprise the insolent young snob with a well-directed blow in his pretty face that would have sent him sprawling in the aisle. His hands fairly twitched to give him the lesson that he needed, but he only replied with a slight inscrutable smile in one corner of his mouth:
What is worth replying to this dude?
“It might be inconvenient for some people.” There an aloofness in his tone that did not encourage further remarks, but the young stranger was evidently not thin-skinned, or else he loved to hear himself babbling.
Should've punched him in the face. That, or bought Leslie another gun. The conversation goes on. This guy knows Allison and Leslie, plans on staying with them for a bit, and is not aware of their changes in dance policy. He is also not going away.
“If it suits me, I may come heah next yeah. Got fired from three institutions out West for larking, and father thought I better go East awhile. Any fun doing out this way?”
How are people getting fired from college? Anyway, they talk on for a bit, and we learn that straight-A Howard is also captain of the basketball team and forward of the football team, or maybe the other way around, which must be very difficult since one day of his week is tied up in a day in which he can do nothing. Finally, Howard lets him have it, not by punching him but by Christian Endeavor:
“Son, you’ve got another guess coming to you about Allison Cloud. You’ll have the surprise of your young life when you see him, I imagine. Why, he’s been an A student ever since he came to this college, and he has the highest average this last semester of any man in his class. As for bluff, he’s as clear as crystal, and a prince of a fellow; and if you’re looking for a spot where you can bluff your way through college you better seek elsewhere. Bluff doesn’t go down in our college. We have student government, and I happen to be chairman of the student exec. just now. You better change your tactics if you expect to remain here. Excuse me, I see a friend up at the front of the car!”
Which is more painful. Then he sits up front glooming to himself about Leslie and how she is rich. This guy's name:
Clive Terrance
What
Clive Terrance
Okay.
It had not occurred to him that they were any better off than he might be some day if he worked hard. They never talked about their circumstances. Of course, now he came to think about it, there were fine mahogany pieces of furniture in the little house and wonderful rugs and things, but they all fitted in so harmoniously with their surroundings that it never occurred to him that they might have cost a mint of money. They never cried out their price to those who saw them,
Except the furniture in Julia's bedroom! Where, admittedly, he has never been.
It was not that he could not be in their class, that he could not keep pace with Allison Cloud and come and go in his company as freely as he had done; it was that he loved the bright-haired Leslie, the sweet-faced, eager, earnest, wonderful girl. She held his future happiness in her little rosy hand, and if she really were a rich girl he couldn’t of course tell her now that he loved her, because he was a poor man.
So off he goes to gloom under moonlit trees. Then he snaps out of it and goes to visit the Clouds.
Could it be Leslie? Ah! He must not--yet how wonderful it was going to be to look at her this first time after really knowing his own heart in plain language. Could he keep the joy of her out of his eyes, and the wonder of her from his voice? Then the door opened and there stood Cherry in negligée of flaring rosy cotton crêpe embroidered with gorgeous peacocks, and her pigtails in eclipse behind an arrangement of cheap lace and pink ribbons.
HI CHERRY! I'm surprised she's allowed to open the door in her nightie, since if I remember right she's two years older than Julia at the time of her great romance. The presence of cheap lace marks her as a person of lower class. But I don't think that Grace is making a snotty remark about her hair, so we'll just be happy to see Cherry again. Grace wallops us with dialect and so we follow Howard Letchworth around town some more. He thinks perhaps he must have misjudged Clive, solely on the basis of Clive having money and being a possible socially acceptable match for Leslie. And he comes up with a brilliant strategy!
What he did about it was to stay away from Cloudy Villa for almost a week, and when Leslie at last, after repeated efforts to get hold of him by telephone, called him up to say there was an important committee meeting at the church which he ought to attend, he excused his long absence by telling how busy he had been. Of course he had been busy, but Leslie knew that he had always been busy, and yet had found time to come in often. She was inclined to be hurt and just the least bit stand-offish. Of course if he didn’t want to come he needn’t! And she took Clive Terrence driving in the car and showed him all the wonders of the surrounding neighborhood with much more cordiality than she really felt. It was her way of bearing her hurt.
Pre-dump her and throw her to Clive Terrence on the rebound. Leslie does try to figure out what's happening by asking her brother:
“Oh, he’s up to his eyes in work,” responded Allison. “He’s likely busy as a one-armed paper-hanger with fleas! He’s a senior, you know. Wait till next year and you’ll see me in the same boat!” and he hurried away whistling.
And so Howard Letchworth vs. Clive Terrence begins.