From the Relief Society Magazine, March 1939 –

How Poor a Thing

By Mabel Harmer

Celia Hunter sat on the veranda of her lovely, white home drinking in the sheer beauty of a perfect May morning. The row of lilacs along the south side of the lawn were giant clusters of purple and beyond was the pink and white of an apple orchard in full bloom. The green lawn stretched away in front of her until it was met by the trim picket fence.

She glanced up the road now to see David Marshall’s two little boys trudging along on their way to school, little Jerry’s cap just barely showing above the top of the fence. As they reached the gate she waved as usual, but instead of waving back and going on, they opened the gate and came up the walk. Celia went down to meet them.

“Hello, boys,” she greeted them. “How are you this morning?”

“We’re fine,” answered seven-year-old Bud, spokesman by reason of his one year seniority. “We thought that maybe you would give us some of your lilacs to take to the teacher.”

“Why, of course. I’ll be glad for someone else to have some of them. There must be hundreds on these bushes. We’ll pick a big bouquet for each of you.”

“Your flowers are prettier than anyone else’s,” Bud commented, as Celia began breaking off branches, “and your house is prettier, and I guess you’re prettier.”

“Thank you, young man.” Celia was amazed to feel the color creeping into her cheeks because of a child’s compliment. “And that was a very pretty speech. Do you think we have enough flowers now?”

“I guess so. Anyway, we can stop by tomorrow and get some more,” Bud answered complacently.

“Of course you can,” Celia agreed with a smile, as she released the branch and turned around. and then noticing for the first time a rather large tear just below the knee of Jerry’s trousers, she said, “Dear me, did you get that from my lilac bushes?”

“Naw,” Jerry replied, quite unconcerned, “I teared it yesterday.”

“But why didn’t Betty mend it for you?”

“Betty’s gone home. She doesn’t work for us any more. There’s a new girl coming tomorrow, and maybe she’ll mend it.” it was plain to see that one tear in his trousers more or less meant little or nothing in Jerry’s young life.

“Shall I do it for you?” Celia suggested. “if we hurry we’ll just have time before you have to get to school.”

“Well – I guess so,” Jerry conceded, after a moment’s hesitation.

“All right. Come up on the porch while I run in for needle and thread, and we’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

She returned to find the boys seated on the top step arranging the lilacs into two bouquets. “I can’t do a very good job on these while you have them on, but we’ll mend them in some fashion.”

A few minutes later the boys were once more on their way to school while Celia sat staring after them with yearning eyes. Poor little motherless tykes, she thought. Sometimes the ‘help” on the place took very good care of them, and there were other times when they were almost neglected. David did the best he could, but his own work was about all he could handle without doing more than was barely necessary for the boys. Viola’s long illness, dating back to soon after Jerry’s birth, had been very costly, as everyone knew, and since her death, two years ago, David had never seemed able to get quite “caught up.”

It was queer the way things had turned out after all these years. She and David had grown up together on the neighboring places of their parents, had hunted the first flowers of the spring and the last colored leaves of autumn together. They had become engaged while they were still in high school. Then there had been that fateful evening soon after graduation when they had quarreled over something so trifling that she could scarcely remember afterwards what it had all been about. In her pique she had gone to the annual school picnic with a visiting boy from the city while David had taken Viola, blond and tiny with a doll-like face. the next day David and Viola had run away and married.

No one but Celia knew what a blow it had been, but she held her head high and kept her heartache and disappointment to herself. But she had never been able to bring herself to marry anyone else. she had given all of her love to David.

What his feelings had been after his hasty marriage no one had any way of knowing, of course. After the birth of the second little boy, Viola had taken ill, and they had scarcely ever been seen at the village gatherings.

Her musings were interrupted by Hilda, the Swedish girl who assisted with the housework. “Do I make chocolate or nut cake for the party tonight, Miss Celia?” she asked, appearing in the doorway with a dish-towel flung over her arm.

“Oh, I –” she was tempted, as often of late, to say that she wouldn’t go. She was too old now to feel entirely at home with the unmarried crowd, and it was no great fun to dance with the husbands of her old school friends. but it wouldn’t do to settle placidly down to old maidenhood and complete retirement, so she said almost brightly, “We’ll have a chocolate cake, Hilda, but I’ll come in and make it myself when I’ve had three more whiffs of this delicious morning.”

In other days Celia would have been very gay as she dressed for the party. She had a lovely new rose-colored crepe dress that matched the color in her cheeks and made a perfect foil for her dark hair. But new dresses, even gay ones that recaptured some of her lost youth, didn’t make such a lot of difference now. She wondered, as did many others, why she stayed on in the little country town. In the city she could perhaps be a “bachelor girl” with a career or at least an exciting job of some kind. And she ended, as she had done a hundred times before, by assuring herself that it was because of the home. it had belonged to her father and mother, and they had spent a lifetime making it into the gracious, lovely thing that it was. She couldn’t bring herself to turn it over to strangers.

Jed and Marcia Patten from across the road called for her at dusk, and they drove a short distance to the social. “you take a whirl with Celia,” Marcia said to her husband as they stepped inside the hall. I promised to help in the kitchen for a while.”

“You bet I will,” Jed responded enthusiastically, as Celia handed her cake to Marcia.

They had circled the hall twice when Celia’s quick glance caught David sitting at one side. It was the first time she had seen him at a social gathering of any kind in years, and her first feeling of surprise was followed by one of sympathy for his careworn appearance. Poor David, she thought. He must indeed have been having a hard time. But on second thought, it was no worry of hers. He had chosen his own path, and if it had turned out to be a thorny one, he had only himself to blame. she caught his gaze intent upon her and was careful to keep her head turned in the other direction.

The evening was almost half over before he came to where she stood.

“Oh, hello, David,” she greeted him in cool, even tones, as if they had never been on friendlier terms than that of the merest speaking acquaintance. “it’s nice to see you.”

“Thank you,” he answered, and then after a brief hesitation, “may I – will you dance with me?”

“Of course, I’d be glad to.” Pleasant enough words, except that the tones were much more polite than friendly, and the smile was far too brittle.

David’s arm around her once more! David’s eyes were looking into hers with just a dash of that willfulness that she had learned to love so long ago, and that had been the cause of their undoing. But Celia’s face reflected none of the tumult that went on within her heart, for more important than any of this was her pride – her pride that had been hurt so badly when David left her for another girl. so she kept smiling politely and carried on a meaningless conversation about people and things that mattered less than nothing.

David left soon afterward, without waiting for the late supper, and Celia would liked to have gone too, for somehow or other the party had lost all its flavor and seemed utterly stupid.

The following Sunday was Mother’s Day, and as Hilda had been given the entire day off to spend at home, Celia stayed home from church to take care of the housework. She finished in a short time and spent the rest of the morning picking flowers and putting them into every vase in the house. It was one sure way of bringing sunshine into rooms that were too dull and quiet. But one could not pick flowers indefinitely, so without bothering to prepare any lunch, since she was all alone, she sat down in the living room with a magazine.

She was glad when the doorbell rang. Interruptions of any kind were a diversion, but she was surprised to see that her callers were Bud and Jerry, for they had never before ventured within her gate except when she was visible on the outside of the house.

“Come in, boys,” she said, smiling down at them. “I suppose you’re just on your way home from Sunday School.”

“Yes’m,” Bud answered. “We brought you something.”

“Something for me? how lovely. What is it?”

“These.” Bud held forth a large, square, white envelope, and Jerry promptly followed suit.

Celia opened the first one and drew forth a Mother’s Day card. on the cover was a picture of a flower-bedecked garden gate. she turned to the inside and started to read the verse, but the title “Mother Dear” was all she could see through the tears that were fast dimming her eyes.

“They gave them to us at Sunday School to give to our mother, but we didn’t have a mother at home to take them to, so we thought we would bring them to you,” Bud explained. Then a bit fearful because Celia had made no response, he questioned, “Don’t you like them?”

Celia dropped to her knees and gathered both boys in her arms. ‘of course I do,” she cried. ‘I love them, and I love you.”

A few minutes later the boys were on their way again, each with an orange in one hand and a piece of cake in the other, while Celia stood in the doorway looking after them with tears starting afresh now that there were no puzzled eyes watching her.

When the bell rang again half an hour later, she went back to the door to find David standing there.

“Come in,” she said, in some agitation lest there still be tell-tale traces of tears on her cheeks.

“The boys just came home,” he said, “and they told me. I’m sorry if they bothered you. they meant well, you know.”

“Of course they did,” Celia replied quickly. “It was sweet of them.” There was a dangerous break in her voice. Oh, dear, if she could only keep those tears back this time.

“Celia,” David’s voice was husky, too, now, “I’ve been an awful fool. I’ve been too proud to come near you because you have so much and I so little. Your home is so beautiful, while I –”

“Why, David,” Celia interrupted, “it is you who have much. What is my home compared to your boys?”

David’s face filled with a new light and hope. “Then you might be willing to – Oh, Celia, I love you so much.”

“And I you, David,” she answered softly, as his arms went around her. “I, too, have been nurturing my pride, and what a poor thing pride really is!”

“Too poor a thing to crowd out love,” he said, as his lips touched her dark hair.