An Old Quarrel

I

MRS. MASSEY, a stout, kindly woman of sixty, full of energy for her age, and red-faced and healthy except for an occasional pain in her left leg which she watched very carefully, had come from Chicago to see her son who was a doctor. The doctor’s family made a great fuss over her, and she felt in such good humor that she said suddenly one night: ‘I declare, I’ll go and see Mary Woolens. I wonder what’s happened to her? Find out where she lives for me.’

She had grown up with Mary Woolens. Thirty years ago they had quarreled, she had married and gone West, and they had not seen each other since.

So the next afternoon Mrs. Massey was back in her old neighborhood on the avenue at the corner of Christopher Street, staring around longingly for some familiar sight that might recall an incident in her childhood. Looking carefully to the right and left, she had darted forward across the street with a determined look on her face, for traffic now made her nervous, and had arrived on the other side breathless with relief.

She walked slowly along the street, taking one deep breath after another, and leaning forward to lift some of the weight off her feet. Her face was screwed up as she peered at the numbers on the houses, and as she stopped to put on her glasses she was smiling eagerly like a woman who nurses a secret.

If she had closed her eyes and stood there, she could have remembered vividly almost every word of her quarrel with Mary Woolens. Mary had been a foolish, rather homely girl who found herself in love with a deceitful man who kept on promising to marry her while he borrowed her money. Then Mary had borrowed a hundred dollars from her, and it turned out that she had given it to the fellow, who had gone away, and of course Mary was not able to pay the money back. There had been so much bitterness. She had wanted to have the man arrested. For a while Mary and she seemed to hate each other, then their friendship was over.

Now, walking along the street, Mrs. Massey was full of shame to think there had been a quarrel about money. It seemed now that they both had been mean and spiteful, and she could n’t bear to think Mary might not know that she had forgiven her long ago. ‘This must be the place here,’ she said, looking up at a brownstone house. For a moment she felt awkward and still a bit ashamed, then she went up the steps, feeling like a self-possessed, well-dressed woman in good circumstances.

It was a clean-looking house with a little sign advertising small apartments and a few rooms for rent. As Mrs. Massey rang the bell in the hall, she peered up the stairs, waiting, and then she saw a woman in a plain dark blue dress and with astonishingly white hair coming toward her. This woman, who had a pair of earnest blue eyes and a mild, peaceful expression, asked politely, ‘Were you wanting to see somebody?’

‘I was wanting to see Miss Woolens,’ Mrs. Massey said. Then she said, ‘Goodness, you’re Mary. Mary, don’t you really know me?’

‘I can’t quite see you in that light. If you’d turn your head to the side. There now, well. Elsie Wiggins! It can’t be Elsie Wiggins. I mean Elsie Massey.’

The little white-haired woman was so startled that her hands, held up to her lips, began to shake. Then she was so pleased she could not move. ‘I never thought of such a thing in my life,’ she said. She was very flustered, so she cried out suddenly, ’Oh, I’m so glad to see you; come in, please come in, Elsie,’ and she went hurrying along the hall to a room at the back of the house, while Mrs. Massey, following more slowly, smiled to herself with deep enjoyment.

And even when they were sitting in the big carpeted room with the old-fashioned couch and armchairs, she knew that Mary was still looking at her as though she were a splendid creature from a strange world. Mrs. Massey smiled with indulgent good humor. But Mary had no composure at all. ‘I just don’t know what to say to you, Elsie. I’m so delighted to see you.’ Then, darting up like a small bird, she said, ‘I’ll put on the kettle and we’ll have a cup of tea.’

II

While she waited, Mrs. Massey felt a twinge of uneasiness, wondering how she would mention that she had long ago forgiven Mary, for she was sure that was what was making the poor woman so flustered, even though, so far, she was pretending there had never been bitterness between them. With a pot of tea on a tray, and beaming with childish warmth, Mary returned, saying, ‘I was just trying to count up the years since we last saw each other.’

’It must be thirty years. Fancy that,’ Mrs. Massey said.

‘But I’ve heard about you, Elsie. I once met a woman who had lived in Chicago, and she told me that you had a son who was a doctor, and I read about some wonderful operation he performed in one of the hospitals here. It was in all the papers. You must be awfully proud, Elsie. Who does he look like?’

‘They always said he looked like his father.’

‘Maybe so. But of course I always think of him as Elsie’s boy.’

‘Has your health been good, Mary?’

‘I’ve nothing to complain about. I don’t look strong, do I? But outside of a pain in my head that the doctor says might be caused by an old tooth, I’m in good health. You look fine, though.’

‘ Well, I am, and I’m not. I ’ve a pain in the leg, and sometimes a swelling here, just at the ankle, that may be from my heart. Never mind. Have the years been good to you, Mary? What’s happened?’

‘Why, nothing. Nothing at all, I suppose,’ Mary said, looking around the room as though puzzled. As she smiled, she looked sweet and frail. ‘I look after the house here. I learned to save my money,’ she said. All of a sudden she added, ‘Tell me all about your son, the doctor,’ and she leaned forward, as though seeking a confirmation of many things she might have dreamed. ‘I ought to pour the tea now,’ she said, ‘but you go right on talking. I’ll hear everything you say.’

Mrs. Massey began to talk quietly with a subdued pride about her son, and sometimes she looked up at Mary, who was pouring the tea with a thin trembling hand. The flush of excitement was still on Mary’s face. Her chest looked almost hollow. She was a woman who, of course, had worked hard for years, every day wearing clothes that looked the same, seeing that her house was cleaned in the morning, going to the same stores every afternoon, and getting much pleasure out of a bit of lively gossip with a neighbor on the street.

‘I need more hot water,’ she said now, and hurried to the kitchen with short steps, and then, when she returned, she stood there with a cup in her hand, lost in her thoughts. ‘ Goodness,’ she said. ‘There are so many things to say I don’t know what I’m doing.’

Mrs. Massey continued to talk with gentle tolerance, remembering that her own life had been rich and fruitful, and having pity for Mary, who had remained alone. But when a bit of sunlight from the window shone on Mary’s white head and thin face as she sat there with a teacup in her hand, her face held so much sweetness and gentleness that Mrs. Massey was puzzled, for Mary had been a rather homely girl.

‘It upset me terribly to stand on the corner and feel so strange,’ Mrs. Massey was saying.

’Elsie, heavens above! I did n’t ask about Will, your husband.’

‘Will? Why, Will’s been dead five years, Mary.’

’Dead. Think of that. I hardly knew him. It seems like yesterday.’

‘We were married twenty-five years.’

‘You used to love him very much, did n’t you, Elsie? I remember that. He was a good-living man, was n’t he?’

‘He was a good man,’ Mrs. Massey said vaguely, and they both sat there, silent now, having their own thoughts.

III

Mary Woolens, the small whiteheaded one, was leaning forward eagerly, but Mrs. Massey, stout and redfaced, sighed, thinking of the long, steady years of married life; and though there had been children and some bright moments and some hopes fulfilled, she was strangely discontented now, troubled by a longing for something she could not see or understand.

Perhaps it was Mary’s eagerness that was stirring her, but she aroused herself by thinking, ‘Has she forgotten I once told her I hated her? Won’t she mention it at all?’ And since she had been the one who had held the old grievance, she felt resentful, for the old mean quarrel had bothered her a long time, had filled her with shame so that she had been eager to forgive Mary; and now Mary seemed to have forgotten it.

She looked full into Mary’s face, and then could n’t help wondering what was making her smile so happily. ‘What are you thinking of, Mary?’ she asked.

‘Do you remember how we grew up around here, and were little bits of kids together?’

‘I sort of half remember.’

‘Do you remember when we were such little things, we used to sit together on the steps and you used to tell me all kinds of fairy stories, making them up. I ’ll bet you can’t remember.’

‘I do remember,’ Mrs. Massey said, leaning forward eagerly. ‘There was another girl used to sit with us sometimes. Bertha, Bertha — oh dear, now, what was it?’

‘Bertha Madison. We wore big hair ribbons. I can remember some of the fairy stories now. The night I read about your son being the fine surgeon and performing that wonderful operation, I lay awake in bed thinking about you, and I remembered the stories. It used to seem so wonderful that you could make up such fine stories as you went along, and it seemed just right, when I thought about it, that your boy should be doing the things he was. I remember there was one story you kept carrying on, and like a whole lot of bright patches it was.’

‘I remember,’ Mrs. Massey said, holding on to her animation.

Mary looked up suddenly. Her face was flushed, her blue eyes were brilliant. She was looking up with a kind of desperate eagerness. With a rapt interest and mysterious delight, Mrs. Massey was leaning forward, her heavy face holding a little smile that kept her lips parted. They were both filled with delight, leaning close to each other, almost breathing together, while they were silent. Then, without any warning, Mary began to cry, shaking her head hopelessly from side to side, and dabbing at her eyes with a small handkerchief.

‘Mary dear, Mary! What is the matter? Why are you crying?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mary said.

‘You should n’t go on like that, then,’ Mrs. Massey said, fretfully. But she, too, felt her eyes moistening. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, Mary,’ she said, rocking from side to side, ‘oh dear, oh dear.’ She tried bravely to smile, but it no longer seemed important that they had once quarreled bitterly, or that her life had been full and Mary’s quite barren — just that once they had been young together. A great deal of time had passed, and now they were both old.