Miss Billy's Decision
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor H. Porter
Chapter 23: The Cause and Bertram
February came The operetta, for which Billy was working so hard, was to be given the twentieth. The Art Exhibition, for which Bertram was preparing his four pictures, was to open the sixteenth, with a private view for specially invited friends the evening before.
On the eleventh day of February Mrs. Greggory and her daughter arrived at Hillside for a ten-days’ visit. Not until after a great deal of pleading and argument, however, had Billy been able to bring this about.
“But, my dears, both of you,” Billy had at last said to them; “just listen. We shall have numberless rehearsals during those last ten days before the thing comes off. They will be at all hours, and of all lengths. You, Miss Greggory, will have to be on hand for them all, of course, and will have to stay all night several times, probably. You, Mrs. Greggory, ought not to be alone down here. There is no sensible, valid reason why you should not both come out to the house for those ten days; and I shall feel seriously hurt and offended if you do not consent to do it.”
“But—my pupils,” Alice Greggory had demurred.
“You can go in town from my home at any time to give your lessons, and a little shifting about and arranging for those ten days will enable you to set the hours conveniently one after another, I am sure, so you can attend to several on one trip. Meanwhile your mother will be having a lovely time teaching Aunt Hannah how to knit a new shawl; so you won’t have to be worrying about her.”
After all, it had been the great good and pleasure which the visit would bring to Mrs. Greggory that had been the final straw to tip the scales. On the eleventh of February, therefore, in the company of the once scorned “Peggy and Mary Jane,” Alice Greggory and her mother had arrived at Hillside.
Ever since the first meeting of Alice Greggory and Arkwright, Billy had been sorely troubled by the conduct of the two young people. She had, as she mournfully told herself, been able to make nothing of it. The two were civility itself to each other, but very plainly they were not at ease in each other’s company; and Billy, much to her surprise, had to admit that Arkwright did not appear to appreciate the “circumstances” now that he had them. The pair called each other, ceremoniously, “Mr. Arkwright,” and “Miss Greggory”—but then, that, of course, did not “signify,” Billy declared to herself.
“I suppose you don’t ever call him ‘Mary Jane,’” she said to the girl, a little mischievously, one day.
“‘Mary Jane’? Mr. Arkwright? No, I don’t,” rejoined Miss Greggory, with an odd smile. Then, after a moment, she added: “I believe his brothers and sisters used to, however.”
“Yes, I know,” laughed Billy. “We thought he was a real Mary Jane, once.” And she told the story of his arrival. “So you see,” she finished, when Alice Greggory had done laughing over the tale, “he always will be ‘Mary Jane’ to us. By the way, what is his name?”
Miss Greggory looked up in surprise.
“Why, it’s—” She stopped short, her eyes questioning. “Why, hasn’t he ever told you?” she queried.
Billy lifted her chin.
“No. He told us to guess it, and we have guessed everything we can think of, even up to ‘Methuselah John’; but he says we haven’t hit it yet.”
“‘Methuselah John,’ indeed!” laughed the other, merrily.
“Well, I’m sure that’s a nice, solid name,” defended Billy, her chin still at a challenging tilt. “If it isn’t ‘Methuselah John,’ what is it, then?”
But Alice Greggory shook her head. She, too, it seemed, could be firm, on occasion. And though she smiled brightly, all she would say, was:
“If he hasn’t told you, I sha’n’t. You’ll have to go to him.”
“Oh, well, I can still call him ‘Mary Jane,’” retorted Billy, with airy disdain.
All this, however, so far as Billy could see, was not in the least helping along the cause that had become so dear to her—the reuniting of a pair of lovers. It occurred to her then, one day, that perhaps, after all, they were not lovers, and did not wish to be reunited. At this disquieting thought Billy decided, suddenly, to go almost to headquarters. She would speak to Mrs. Greggory if ever the opportunity offered. Great was her joy, therefore, when, a day or two after the Greggorys arrived at the house, Mrs. Greggory’s chance reference to Arkwright and her daughter gave Billy the opportunity she sought.
“They used to know each other long ago, Mr. Arkwright tells me,” Billy began warily.
“Yes.”
The quietly polite monosyllable was not very encouraging, to be sure; but Billy, secure in her conviction that her cause was a righteous one, refused to be daunted.
“I think it was so romantic—their running across each other like this, Mrs. Greggory,” she murmured. “And there was a romance, wasn’t there? I have just felt in my bones that there was—a romance!”
Billy held her breath. It was what she had meant to say, but now that she had said it, the words seemed very fearsome indeed—to say to Mrs. Greggory. Then Billy remembered her Cause, and took heart—Billy was spelling it now with a capital C.
For a long minute Mrs. Greggory did not answer—for so long a minute that Billy’s breath dropped into a fluttering sigh, and her Cause became suddenly “IMPERTINENCE” spelled in black capitals. Then Mrs. Greggory spoke slowly, a little sadly.
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