Lita had developed a technic by which she slept through the rising gong and for the next twenty-five minutes, allowing herself thus exactly five minutes to get up, dress and reach the dining room. But the morning after her friend's operation she woke with the gong, and five minutes later was on her way to the infirmary, first tying her tie and then smoothing down her hair as she went.
As she ran up the stairs of the infirmary, a voice—whose owner must have recognized the almost inaudible patter of her feet—called to her from the small dining room of the cottage. She put her face, flushed with running, round the jamb of the door and saw Doctor Dacer seated at breakfast. The nurse was toasting bread on anelectric toaster, and he was spreading a piece, just finished, with a thick crimson jam. "Damson," Lita said to herself.
He looked at her.
"Youth's a great thing," he said.
"So the old are always saying," Lita answered. "But there's a catch in it; they get back at you for being young."
"Does that mean you think I'm old?" Dacer asked patiently; and the nurse with the white hair exclaimed to herself "Goodness!" as if to her they both seemed about the same age.
Lita cocked her head on one side.
"Well," she said, "you are too old to be my equal—I mean contemporary. I mean contemporary," she added as they both laughed. Dacer, with a more complete answer, gave her the piece of toast he had been preparing. It was delicious—cool and smooth and sweet on top, and hot and buttery below. Lita consumed it in silence, and then with a deep sigh as she sucked a drop of jam from her forefinger, she said, "How noble that was! Sometimes I'm afraid I'm greedy."
"Of course you are," said Dacer, as if greed were a splendid quality. "Sit down and have some coffee.... Have you been introduced to Miss Waverley? She hates men."
"Goodness!" said Miss Waverley, glancing over her shoulder, as if it were mildly amusing that a man should think he knew anything about how she felt.
"Or is it only doctors?" Dacer went on.
"Men patients are worse," said Miss Waverley.
"Don't go away," said Dacer to Lita. "You are always going away."
"I came to see Aurelia."
"I know, but it's customary to discuss the case first with the surgeon—in some detail too. Sit down."
But she would not do that; her first duty was to her friend. She knew Aurelia would want to know that the photographs and the letter were safe. She stayed by her bedside until it was time to leap downstairs and run across the campus to the dining room, her appetite merely edged by the toast and jam.
Monday was a busy day for Lita. Immediately after luncheon her committee met and went over the reports of the monitors for the week; and then there was basket ball for two hours, and then study. The tennis courts were near the athletic field, and as Lita played with the first team she could hear a deep voice booming out the score as Doctor Dacer and Miss Jones played set after set. Miss Jones had been tennis champion of her college the year before. Lita sent out a young scout to bring her word how the games were going, and learned that Dacer was winning. He must be pretty good, then—Jonesy was no slouch. She would have taunted him in the evening, when she went to say good night to Aurelia, if he had let himself be beaten by Jonesy.
Every Monday evening Miss Fraser, the English teacher, read aloud to the senior members of her class. Miss Fraser was something of a problem, because she was so much more a lover of literature than a teacher. She inspired the girls with a fine enthusiasm for the best; but in the process she often incited them to read gems of thelanguage which their parents considered unsuited to their youth. Shakspere she read quite recklessly, sometimes forgetting to use the expurgated edition. When Miss Barton suggested pleasantly that perhaps Antony and Cleopatra was not quite the most appropriate of the plays, Miss Fraser answered, "Don't they read worse in the newspapers in bad prose?"
At present she was conservatively engaged in reading Much Ado About Nothing. No one could object to that, she said. She made it seem witty and contemporary.
Lita slipped over to the infirmary between supper and the reading to bid Aurelia good night. Dacer wasn't there. She stayed, talking a few minutes with Aurelia, who was well enough to hear about the tramp and the bedroom slippers and a little school gossip. Lita asked casually where the doctor was, but no one seemed to know.
When a little later she entered Miss Fraser's study she found to her surprise that he was there, settled in a corner. Miss Fraser explained that Doctor Dacer was the son of an old friend of hers; he had been kind enough to say that it would be a pleasure to him to stay and hear the reading. She need not have felt under the necessity of apologizing to the six or seven members of her class. They felt no objection to his presence.
Lita was knitting a golf sweater for her father. She could do it at school, but not at home, for her mother was so discouraging about it. She had already objected to its color, shape and pattern; had felt sure that Lita's father wouldn't appreciate the sentiment, and wouldn't wear anything that did not come from a good shop. Probablyafter all Lita's trouble he'd give it to his manservant. But Lita did not think he would.
The nice thing about knitting is that it leaves the eyes disengaged—at least to an expert, and Lita was expert. She resolved that she would not look at Dacer; and did not for the first half hour or so, for she had a comfortable knowledge that he was looking at her. Then, just once, their eyes met. It was while Miss Fraser was reading these lines:
But nature never fram'd a woman's heartOf prouder stuff than that of Beatrice:Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,Misprising what they look on; and her witValues itself so highly, that to herAll matter else seems weak.She cannot love——
But nature never fram'd a woman's heartOf prouder stuff than that of Beatrice:Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,Misprising what they look on; and her witValues itself so highly, that to herAll matter else seems weak.She cannot love——
But nature never fram'd a woman's heartOf prouder stuff than that of Beatrice:Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,Misprising what they look on; and her witValues itself so highly, that to herAll matter else seems weak.She cannot love——
But nature never fram'd a woman's heart
Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice:
Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,
Misprising what they look on; and her wit
Values itself so highly, that to her
All matter else seems weak.
She cannot love——
Holding her glance, he seemed to nod his head as if to say that was a perfect description of her. Could he mean that? Did he mean that? She averted her eyes hastily, and when she looked back again he had folded his arms and was staring off over everybody's head, very blank and magnificent, unaware of the existence of little schoolgirls. Had she offended him?
She decided that the next morning at the infirmary, while she was eating his toast and jam, she would ask him a pointed question about the character of Beatrice. She gave a good deal of time to framing the question—wasted time, for when she reached the infirmary she found he had gone—had taken a late train to New Yorkthe night before. Lita remembered he had looked at his watch once or twice toward the end of the reading.
"Yes," said the nurse cheerfully, "we're doing so well we don't need him." It was the second nurse. Miss Waverley had gone with the doctor.
Lita's frightened eyes sought Aurelia's, who framed the words: "Back Thursday."
She framed them as if two—almost three days were nothing. Lita, who knew no more of the Einstein theory than the name, discovered that time was relative; that Tuesday morning took what in old times she would have considered several weeks in passing; and that each study period—in the words of William James—lay down like a cow on the doorstep and refused to get up and go on. The truth was that time had never been time to Lita; it had been action. Now it was emptiness, something to be filled; and yet she couldn't fill it; it was a bottomless abyss. Worse still, she couldn't concentrate. She went to the blackboard to do an original—a simple thing she would have tossed off in a minute in old times—and couldn't think how to begin; she, the best geometer in the class. This was serious, and it was queer. Lita couldn't, as she said to Aurelia, get the hang of it. Time being her problem—this sudden unexpected accumulation of time on her hands—she might have been expected to spend it doing the practical, obvious things that had to be done. Not at all. She was incapable of exertion. She could not study; and even the letter to her father, saying the Italian trip was impossible, was never written.
She had a letter from him Wednesday morning in which he assumed that she had not been able to bring her mother to any conclusion. He said he would call her up when she came to town on Friday. Perhaps she would dine with him on Saturday, and do a play. Ordinarily this would have seemed an agreeable prospect; but now, since it was farther away than Thursday, it had no real existence.
Late Wednesday afternoon her unalterable decision not to discuss Doctor Dacer with anyone broke down, and she told Aurelia the whole story. It took an hour—their meeting, everything that he had said, done and looked, and all that she had felt. She paid a great price, however, for this enjoyment—and she did enjoy it—for afterward the whole experience became more a narrative and less a vital memory.
Thursday morning was the worst of all. Thursday morning was simply unbearable, until about noon, when she heard the whistle of the first possible New York train. After that things went very well until about five, when she had a moment to run over to see Aurelia and heard that the doctor had not come—had decided not to come until the next day, Friday.
As far as she was concerned, he might as well not have come at all. All her joy in the anticipated meeting was dead; but this might possibly have reawakened, except that on Friday she did not have a minute until the three-o'clock train, which she was taking to New York. Of course, she could develop a cold or some mysterious ailment which would keep her at school over Sunday, evenin the infirmary; but deceit was not attractive to her; though, as she would have said herself, she was not narrow-minded about it.
The girls of Elbridge Hall were not supposed to make the trip to New York by themselves; but sometimes a prudent senior—and who is prudent if not the chairman of the self-government committee?—might be put on the train at Elbridge by a teacher and sent off alone, on the telephoned promise of a parent to meet her on her arrival at the Grand Central.
When, under the chaperonage of Jonesy, Lita stepped out of the school flivver at the station she saw that Doctor Dacer was there before her. He must have come up in a morning train, seen his patient and walked to the station. Wild possibilities rose at once in the girl's mind. Could he have known from Aurelia? Could he have arranged— No, for he took no interest in her arrival; hardly glanced in her direction. He was smoking, and when the train came he got into the smoking car without so much as glancing back to see where Jonesy was bestowing Lita.
The train, which was a slow one, was empty. Lita settled herself by a window and opened her geometry. She said to herself:
"I simply will not sit and watch the door. If he means to come he'll come, and my watching won't change things one way or the other."
She set her little jaw and turned to Monday's lesson: "To prove that similar triangles are to each other as the squares of the medians drawn to their homologous sides." The words conveyed absolutely nothing to her. She read them three times. It wasn't that she couldn't dothe problem—she couldn't even think about it. She drew two similar triangles. They seemed to sit side by side like a cat and a kitten. She gave them whiskers and tails. Then, annoyed with herself, she produced a ruler and constructed a neat figure. She tried reading the theorem again, this time in a conversational tone, as if it were the beginning of a story: "Similar triangles are to each other—"
The door opened, letting in the roar of the train and a disagreeable smell of coal smoke.
"I will not look up," thought Lita; "I will not! I will not!" And raising her eyes she saw that Dacer was there. She smiled not so much in greeting as from pure joy.
He hadn't wasted much time. He took her books and bag from the seat beside her and put them on the rack. Then he sat down and said, "Isn't it dangerous to let such little girls travel by themselves?"
She found speech difficult between her heart's beating too fast and her breath's coming too slow, but she did manage to say, "What does Effie do?"
"Just what you do—she expects me to be on hand to look out for her."
"I didn't expect you."
"No? Can it be you are not such a clever girl as teacher always thought?"
"I thought you were spending the night at Elbridge."
"So did I when I arrived, but my plans changed. I found that it would be better for me to take the three-o'clock to town and go back on Sunday afternoon, by the—what is the train that we take back on Sunday?"
It was almost too serious for jests, and Lita said in a voice that just didn't tremble that she took the 4:08.
Life is not often just right, not only in the present, but promising in forty-eight hours to be just as good or better. Lita spent two wonderful hours. First they talked about Aurelia—her courage, her loneliness, her parents, divorce in general—and then Lita found herself telling him the whole story of her own position in regard to her parents. Even to Aurelia, with whom she talked so frankly, she had never told the whole story—her own deep emotional reactions. She found to her surprise that it was easier to tell a story of an intimate nature to this stranger of an opposite sex than to her lifelong friend. He understood so perfectly. He did not blame them; if he had she would have felt called on to defend them; and he did not blame her; if he had she would have been forced into attacking them. He just listened, and seemed to think it was a normal and deeply interesting bit of life.
He interrupted her once to say, "But you must remember that they are people as well as parents."
It seemed to her an inspired utterance. She did not always remember that. She offered the excuse: "Yes, but I don't mind their being divorced. Only why do they hate each other so?"
"How do you know they hate each other?"
Lita thought this was a queer thing to say after all that she had told him—almost stupid. She explained again: They were always abusing each other; nothing the other did was right; neither could bear her to speak well of—
"They sound to me," said Dacer, "as if they were still fond of each other." Then, as Lita just stared at him, hewent on: "Didn't you know that? The only people it's any fun to quarrel with are the people you love."
"Oh, no."
"Well, I'm glad you haven't found it out as yet, but it's true."
"I never quarrel," said Lita.
"You will some day. I expect to quarrel a lot with my wife."
"I shall never quarrel with my husband."
"No? Well, perhaps I'm wrong then."
She was angry at herself for glancing up so quickly to see what he could possibly mean by that except—he was looking at her gravely.
"Look here!" he said. "That's a mistake about Italy. You don't want to go to Italy next summer."
She was aware of two contradictory impressions during the entire journey—one that this was the most extraordinary and dramatic event, and that no heroine in fiction had ever such an adventure; and the other that it was absolutely inevitable, and that she was now for the first time a normal member of the human species.
Nothing in the whole experience thrilled her more than the calm, almost martial way in which he said as they were getting off the train at the Grand Central, "Now we'll get a taxi."
She was obliged to explain to him that they couldn't; her mother would be at the gate waiting for her—she always was.
Only this time she wasn't.
Meeting trains in the Grand Central, though it has not the phrenetic difficulty of meeting trains in thePennsylvania Station, where you must watch two crowded stairways and a disgorging elevator in three different directions, is not made too easy. To meet a train in the Grand Central you must be in two widely separated spots at the same time.
Mrs. Hazlitt, approaching the bulletin board through devious subterranean routes, was caught in a stampede of those hurrying to meet a belated Boston express; and when at last she wormed her way to the front she saw that the impressive official with the glasses well down on his nose and the extraordinary ability for making neat figures had written down Track 12 for Lita's train. She turned liked a hunted animal; and at the moment when Lita and Dacer were emerging from the gate Mrs. Hazlitt was running from a point far to the west of Vanderbilt Avenue to a track almost at Lexington. It was five o'clock, and many heavier and more determined people were running for their trains, so that she had a good many collisions and apologies before she reached the gate where her daughter ought to have been.
The last passenger, carrying a bunch of flowers and a cardboard box tied up with two different kinds of string, was just staggering through on oddly shaped flat feet. Everyone else had disappeared. Mrs. Hazlitt questioned the gateman. Had he seen a small young lady all alone who seemed to be looking for someone? The gateman said that he could not say he had, but would not care to say he had not. He possessed to perfection the railroad man's art of not telling a passenger anything he doesn't have to tell. His manner irritated Mrs. Hazlitt.
"I suppose you know," she said, "that you have horrible arrangements for meeting trains."
"If some of us had our way we wouldn't have any arrangements at all," answered the gateman.
This shocked Mrs. Hazlitt; it seemed so autocratic. She opened her eyes to their widest and felt she must argue the matter out with him.
"Do you mean," she asked, "that you would not let people meet trains?"
"I would not," said the gateman calmly, and having locked his gate he went his way.
This had taken a few minutes, and by the time Mrs. Hazlitt had gone back to the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance and found her car and driven home, Lita was already in the library—alone.
One of the disadvantages experienced by people who express themselves quickly is that while they are explaining how everything happened the silent people of the world are making up their minds how much they will tell. Mrs. Hazlitt was talking as she entered the room.
"I'm so sorry, my dear," she was saying. "Don't let's ever tell Miss Barton. I wasn't really late—at least I would not have been if I had not had to run miles and miles, knocking down commuters as I went. And do you know what a gateman said to me, Lita, when I found I had missed you? That people oughtn't to meet trains. I could have killed him. I don't suppose you were frightened though. I suppose you took a taxi?"
"Yes," said Lita.
She had had every intention of telling her mothereverything—well, certainly that she had met Doctor Dacer on the train and that he had been kind enough to see her home; but the words did not come instantly, and as she paused, her mother rushed on to something else—clothes, and what Lita wanted to see if they went to the theater the next day. The moment for telling slipped away from her in the most unexpected way; it was getting farther and farther; in fact it was nothing but a speck on the horizon.
They had an amusing dinner together. One of the pleasantest features in her parents' divorce was that Mrs. Hazlitt felt not the least restraint about discussing the Hazlitt family.
"My dear," she would say, with her eyes dancing, "don't tell me you never heard about why your Uncle Elbert was driven out of Portland."
Lita enjoyed these anecdotes extremely. Sometimes they contained illuminating phrases: "Of course, your father and I preferred to be alone." "Naturally I knew just how Jim—your father—felt about it, but—"
When her mother was like this Lita was content that her father and the whole world should remain outsiders. Her mother was a sufficient companion.
When they were back in the library after dinner her father telephoned to her. It was about Italy. She took up the receiver with a sinking heart. Now she wished she had written to him. Her mother was holding the paper as if she were reading it, but Lita knew that she couldn't help hearing the faltering sentences she was murmuring into the mouthpiece:
"Yes, Pat, I spoke to her, and I'm afraid we can't.I mean that, under the circumstances—" She heard the paper rustling to the floor, and her mother standing beside her whispered to her: "Don't be so timid; don't say you're afraid."
Then both parents were talking to her at once, one over the wire and one in her ear. Now, it is possible to listen while you talk yourself, but it is not possible to listen to two people at once.
Her father was saying: "Of course, if you don't want to go say so, but if you do, and will put the matter as I suggested—"
And her mother was whispering sibilantly, "You're giving the idea you wish to go—so unjust to me. Say straight out you won't leave me."
It was one of those minutes that epitomized her life, and her nerves were distinctly on edge as she hung up the receiver, to find that her mother was only waiting for this, to go over the whole matter more at length.
"There are times, my dear," she was saying, "when it is really necessary to speak out, even at the risk of hurting a person's feelings. I do hope you are not one of those weak natures who can never tell a disagreeable truth. It will save your father future suffering if you can make him understand once and for all he cannot come in between us—not because I forbid it, but because you won't have it."
The evening never regained its gayety.
The next morning—Saturday—was devoted entirely to clothes, and Lita now discovered a curious fact. She found she knew exactly how Dacer liked her to dress. In their few interviews they had never mentioned clothes,and yet she did not buy a hat or reject a model without a sure conviction that she was following his taste. Heretofore her main interest in the subject had been a desire to knock her schoolmates in the eye.
She thought of an epigram: "Women dress for all women—and one man."
The morning saw a triumph of her diplomacy too. She and her mother were going to the theater together that afternoon. Coming down in the train, she had learned that Dacer was taking Effie and some of her friends to the matinée to see Eugene Valentine's new play, The Winged Victory. It had not been easy to steer Mrs. Hazlitt toward this popular success; she was displeased with anything that fell short of the Comédie Française. Lita was obliged to stoop to tactics suggested by Aurelia. She intimated very gently that when her father took her to the play he never cared what it was so long as she was amused, and so she wouldn't bore her mother with the Valentine play: she'd wait until she and Pat were going on a spree—that very evening, perhaps—
Mrs. Hazlitt came to terms at once and sent for the tickets.
They came in a little late. The play had already begun, but Lita's first glance was not at the stage. Yes, he was there—three nice little girls in a row in the front of the box, and he in the back—but not alone. A woman was whispering in his ear. Who was she? His fiancée? His wife? Had he said anything which actually precluded the idea of his being married? "I expect to quarrel a great deal with my wife." That did not say morethan that he had not quarreled with her so far. These two were certainly not quarreling. She sat in great agony; not of spirit only, for gradually a distinct physical ache developed in her left side. She tried to glue her eyes to the stage, and did not hear a word, except an occasional murmur from her mother: "What a silly play!"
The lights went up at the end of the act. Lita saw that the woman was rather fat and not at all young—thirty at least—and yet she knew that these sophisticated older women— There was something sleek and sumptuous about this one, all in black velvet and diamonds and fur. A slight respite came to her when Dacer went out to smoke a cigarette. Did this indicate indifference or merely intimacy? The white-skinned woman moved to the front of the box and began making herself agreeable to the children, particularly to the girl Lita had picked out as Effie—a regular sister-in-law-to-be manner. She had looked forward to the theater as a good time to tell her mother all about it, with a casual "Oh, do you see that man over there—" She was suffering too much to permit it. She became aware that her mother felt something tense and portentous in the air; and she said suddenly, with a sound instinct for red herrings, that she thought Valentine the handsomest creature that she had ever seen. Her mother's reaction to this took up most of the entr'acte.
Doctor Dacer never saw them at all. Mrs. Hazlitt was an adept at getting out of a theater and finding her car before anyone else. She and Lita were on their way uptown before the little girls in the box had sorted outtheir coats and hats. A good many people, mostly men, came in to tea; and when they had gone it was time for Lita to dress to go and dine with her father. Dine! She felt she would never be able to eat again—a very curious feeling.
When Mrs. Hazlitt went to her room Margaret was as usual waiting to help her dress, but it was not usual for Margaret to wear such a long face. She had entered the family as Lita's nurse, but was now Mrs. Hazlitt's maid and the pivot on which all domestic machinery revolved.
As she unhooked Mrs. Hazlitt's dress her solemn voice came from the middle of Mrs. Hazlitt's back: "I think you ought to know, mum, that when I was brushing that heavy coat of Miss Lita's this afternoon I found something in the pocket."
"Goodness, Margaret! What?"
Margaret fumbled under her apron and produced a folded, typewritten sheet a little grimy about the edges. Mrs. Hazlitt seized it and read:
Dear Eugene Valentine:May I not tell you what an inspiration your art is to me in my daily life? I think I have every photograph of you that was ever published, and one I bought at a fair with your signature. Only this is not my favorite. I like best the one as a miner from The Emerald Light. It is so strong and virile. Oh, Mr. Valentine, you cannot guess how happy it would make me if you would autograph one of these for me! I am not at present living in New York, but I am often there for week-ends, and could easily bring one of these pictures to the theater after a matinée, if that would be easiest for you.I shall not attempt to tell you what your art means tome, and how you make other men seem, and I fear they always will seem like they was pigmies beside you.I take the great liberty of inclosing my own picture in case it would interest you to see what a great admirer of yours looks like.
Dear Eugene Valentine:May I not tell you what an inspiration your art is to me in my daily life? I think I have every photograph of you that was ever published, and one I bought at a fair with your signature. Only this is not my favorite. I like best the one as a miner from The Emerald Light. It is so strong and virile. Oh, Mr. Valentine, you cannot guess how happy it would make me if you would autograph one of these for me! I am not at present living in New York, but I am often there for week-ends, and could easily bring one of these pictures to the theater after a matinée, if that would be easiest for you.
I shall not attempt to tell you what your art means tome, and how you make other men seem, and I fear they always will seem like they was pigmies beside you.
I take the great liberty of inclosing my own picture in case it would interest you to see what a great admirer of yours looks like.
Being merely a rough draft, it was unsigned.
Of all the possibilities that crossed Mrs. Hazlitt's mind on reading this document, the possibility that her daughter had not written it was not one. Several suspicious circumstances at once popped into her head—Lita's insistence on going to Valentine's play; her admiration of him; her tentative suggestion about marriage; her alternate high spirits and abstraction.
"And who was he?" Margaret went on. "That young fellar brought her home yesterday?"
"A man brought her home yesterday?"
"Yes—the two of them in a taxi."
"What did he look like?"
"I couldn't see him very good; but I heard him say 'Until Sunday' as he got back into the taxi; and when I opened the door for Miss Lita you could see she was smiling all over her face, but not letting it out."
Ah, how well, in other days, Mrs. Hazlitt had known that beatific state!
She walked to her door and called, "Lita! Lita!"
Probably if one read the memoirs of Napoleon, the dispatches of Wellington and the commentaries of Cæsar one would find a place where the author asserts that the best general is he who takes quickest advantage of chance. Lita, entering her mother's room with her head bent over a fastening of her dress, was wondering whatmade some fasteners cling like leeches and others droop apart like limp handshakes. For the first few minutes she had no idea what her mother was talking about. She was prepared to feel guilty—she was guilty, but she had written no letter.
"Writing a letter like that—a vulgar letter—and making me take you to his play—and coming home with him, when I was actually waiting at the gate for you. Perhaps you were not even on that train at all—so terribly deceitful—as if I were your enemy instead of your mother. I felt there was something queer about you at the play! An actor! I wish you knew something about actors in private life. And Valentine of all people! A man—"
Mrs. Hazlitt paused. She knew nothing about Valentine's private life; but she thought it was pretty safe to make that pause as if it were all too awful to discuss.
"Your father must be told of this. It will shock him very much."
That was the phrase that gave Lita her great idea. Not since she was four years old had she heard the words "your father" spoken in that tone. Perhaps after all, it was not necessary to die in order to reconcile your parents; perhaps it was enough to let them think you were undesirably in love. She had a moment to consider this notion while her mother, in a short frilled petticoat, with her blond hair about her shoulders, was running on about what Mr. Hazlitt would say to this man.
Lita said at a venture, "Mr. Valentine doesn't even know my name. He won't have any idea what father is talking about."
"Indeed?" cried Mrs. Hazlitt. "Your father is not aman who talks without contriving to make himself understood. And as to Valentine's not knowing your name, you'll find he knows it—and the amount of your fortune, too, probably. Little schoolgirls have very little interest for older men, I can tell you, unless— And such a letter too. 'Like they was pigmies.' If you must be vulgar, at least try to be grammatical."
"Shall you see my father when he comes for me?"
"Of course I shall not see him; but I shall take care that he knows the facts." At the same time, Lita could not help noticing that Mrs. Hazlitt refused to wear the garment Margaret had left out for her, and put on, with apparent unconsciousness, a new French tea gown in mauve and silver. "He will tell you better than I can what sort of a man this Valentine is."
"But, mother, is father's judgment of men to be depended on? You said about his lawyers that he had the faculty of collecting about him the most inefficient—"
"I never said any such thing—or rather, it was entirely different. How can you speak like that of your father? But it's my own fault, treating you as if you were a companion instead of a silly child."
This was war. Lita withdrew into herself. Parents, she reflected, did not really quite play the game; they couldn't belittle a fellow parent one day, and the next, when they needed to use force, rush away into the wings and dress him up as an ogre. After all the things her mother had said about her father, how could she expect him to inspire fear? And yet Lita knew that she was a little afraid.
Then Freebody the butler came up to say that Mr.Hazlitt was waiting in his car for Miss Hazlitt. Freebody had been with the Hazlitts before their divorce, and when the split came had preferred to remain with Mrs. Hazlitt, although he had been offered inducements by the other side. In her bitterness of spirit she had felt it a triumph that Freebody had chosen her household. She had particularly valued his reason for staying with her. He had said he did not care to work for stage people. This was wonderful to quote. It let people know that her husband's second wife had been an actress, and moreover a kind of actress that Freebody did not care to work for; and it could be told so good-temperedly, as if it were a joke on Freebody. She had always felt grateful to him.
Now she sealed the incriminating note in another envelope and gave it to Freebody.
"Give this to Mr. Hazlitt," she said, "and tell him it was found in the pocket of Miss Lita's coat"; and she added, when he had gone down again, "You can explain the rest yourself."
"No, mother," said Lita; "if you want any explaining done you must do it yourself."
Mrs. Hazlitt was still protesting against this suggestion when Freebody came back and said that Mr. Hazlitt was in the drawing-room, and would be very much obliged to Mrs. Hazlitt if she could arrange to see him for just five minutes. There was a pause; Mrs. Hazlitt and Lita looked at each other; and Freebody, just as much interested as anyone, looked at no one. Then Mrs. Hazlitt said they would both go down.
And so for the first time since she was five years oldLita stood in the room with both her parents—her mother trembling so that the silk lining of her tea gown rustled with a soft, continuous whispering like the wind in dead leaves, and her father, white and impressive, with his crush hat under one arm and the open letter held at arm's length so that he could read it without his glasses. Something hurt and twisted came to rest in Lita by the mere fact that the three of them were together.
Her father spoke first, and his voice was not quite natural, as he said, "It was kind of you to come down, Alita. I know it is exceedingly painful to you—"
"I've done a good many painful things in my life for Lita."
"I know, I know," he answered gently; "and this not the least. But this letter—I don't exactly understand it."
"Have you read it?"
"Not entirely."
"Well, read it—read it," said Mrs. Hazlitt, as if he ought to see that he couldn't understand anything until he had read it; but every time he began to read it she began to explain all the hideousness of Lita's conduct; and when he looked up to listen to her she said, with a sort of weary patience, "Won't you please read the letter? Then we can discuss it."
At last he said quietly, "Alita, I cannot read it while you talk to me."
She did not answer. She moved her neck back like an offended swan, and glanced at Lita as much as to say, "You see the sort of man he is?" She did, however, remain silent until he had finished, and looking had said,"But this isn't even good grammar—'Like they was pigmies.' Don't they teach her grammar at this school?"
Alita Hazlitt was one of those people who, when blame is going about, assume it is intended for them and consider the accusation most unjust.
"Well, really," she said now, "it wasn't my wish that she should go to boarding school. It has turned out exactly as I prophesied it would. Common girls have taught her to run after actors, and inefficient teachers have failed—"
"I don't remember your prophesying that, Alita."
"You mean to say I did not?"
"I mean to say I have no recollection of it. I do remember that you said it would make it easier for me to kidnap her. I shall never forget that."
"You cannot deny that I was opposed to school. I only yielded to your wishes—such a mistake."
"You have not many of that kind to reproach yourself with."
Lita, who had felt a profound filial emotion at seeing her parents together, was now distressingly conscious that they had never seemed less her parents than at this moment. They seemed in fact rather dreadful people—childish, unjust, lacking in essential self-control. The last remnant of her childhood seemed to perish with this scene, and she became hard, matured and to a certain degree orphaned.
"What I am trying to say," Mr. Hazlitt went on, "is that we can hardly attribute this unfortunate episode entirely to the influence of the school. I mean that ifthere had not been some inherent silliness in the child herself—"
This was too good a point for Mrs. Hazlitt to let slip.
"It was not from me," she said, "that Lita inherited a tendency to run after people of the stage."
"We need not discuss inherited tendencies, I think."
Mrs. Hazlitt laughed.
"Ah, that is so like you! We may criticize the child or the school or my bringing up, but the instant we begin to talk about your shortcomings it is discovered that we are going too far."
"Alita," he said, "I came here in the most coöperative spirit—"
"And do you make it a favor that you should be willing to try to save your child?"
That was unjust of her mother, Lita thought. Her father was trying to be nice. It was her mother who kept making the interview bitter, and yet in essentials her mother had behaved so much better. Why did she suffer so much in the atmosphere of their anger? Why did she wish so passionately that they should treat each other at least fairly? She couldn't understand.
"You have not met me in a coöperative spirit," her father was saying, "and I see no point in my staying. Good night."
"And you're going—just like that—without doing anything at all?"
"Of course, I shall write to Miss Barton—and if you are not able to take Lita back to school tomorrow I'll go myself."
Lita noticed that though an instant before her motherhad reproached him with indifference, she treated his last suggestion as if it were impertinent.
"I think I shall be able to take my daughter safely to school," she said. "But you must see this man; that I cannot do."
"I shall do nothing so ridiculous," said Mr. Hazlitt. "Valentine! Why, a man like that gets a basketful a day of letters from idiotic women of all ages! He's bored to death by them."
"I have yet to find a man who is bored by the adoration of idiotic women," said Mrs. Hazlitt, and there was no mistake in anybody's mind as to what she meant by that.
A discussion on the relative idiocy of the sexes broke out with extraordinary violence. Lita's conduct was utterly forgotten. She might have slipped out of the room without being noticed, except that her father was standing between her and the door. She tried to remember Dacer's saying that quarreling meant love, and found to her surprise that that idea was almost as shocking. Could it be that she did not want her parents to have any emotions at all?
When her father had gone, her mother burst into tears.
"I am so sorry," she said, "that you should have seen him like that—at his very worst."
Lita had just been thinking how much the better of the two he had appeared. She felt as hard as a stone. She had no wish to be continually appraising her parents; they left her no choice. Her childish acceptance of them had been destroyed, and at the moment her friendly emotiontowards them as companions and human beings had not yet flowered. Instead of wanting to tell her mother about Dacer, she wanted to tell Dacer about her mother.
She saw that her whole scheme about Valentine had been ridiculous—a complete failure. She ought to clear that up at once, but she did not feel up to explaining it; an explanation with her mother involved so much. Mrs. Hazlitt would give those she loved anything in the world—except her attention. It was necessary to hold her attention with one hand and feed her your confidence with the other. Lita was too exhausted to attempt it that evening. She would do it the next day, of course.
The next morning—Sunday—Mrs. Hazlitt awoke with a severe headache. Though she insisted on Lita's remaining in sight—for fear that she would rush to the arms of Valentine—it was made clear that no friendly intercourse between parent and child was possible. Lita felt herself to be the direct cause of the agony of mind which had led to the headache.
After luncheon, looking like carved marble, Mrs. Hazlitt got up and announced her intention of escorting Lita back to school. The girl saw that her mother was not well enough to make the double journey, and suggested that it would be better for her father to go with her. Mrs. Hazlitt treated this proposal with the coldest scorn.
"I think we will not trouble your father further," she said.
At times like this she used a flat, remote voice; as dead, Lita thought, as a corpse talking on a disconnectedtelephone. In old times it had nearly broken her heart when her mother spoke to her in that tone. Today it had lost its power.
They drove to the station in silence, every jar of the car sending a tremor through Mrs. Hazlitt's eyelids. In the train, she put Lita's knitting bag behind her head and shut her eyes. Lita, sitting in silence beside, felt so wooden—inside and out—that, she said to herself, not even the appearance of Doctor Dacer would make any difference to her. But when, before they were out of the tunnel, he did pass through the car—not stopping, just raising his hat—she found it did affect her.
Her mother opened her eyes.
"Who's that man?" she said in an almost human tone.
"I think he's one of the surgeons who is taking care of Aurelia," Lita answered, and instantly regretted the "I think." It was positively deceitful, where she had intended to be merely noncommittal. But all the relations of her life seemed to have gone wrong.
She had not done any of her work for the next day; not the original in geometry or the sonnet she should have learned by heart; in fact she had not opened a book. She couldn't concentrate her mind now on mathematics or poetry, but she might do some of the collateral reading for Greek History. She slipped the book out of its strap and opened it.
"Of Lycurgus the lawgiver, we have nothing to relate that is certain and uncontroverted—" Lita thought: that's at least a candid way to begin a biography. The door opened, letting in the roar of the train and the smell of coal smoke, and Lita's nerves remembered it, as if onlyonce before in her life had she ever known a car door open, and looked up—to see the conductor. She dropped her eyes and went on: "For there are different accounts of his birth, his death—" The door again; this time a passenger in search of a seat. She made a vow to herself to read three pages without looking up—and did. "Endeavoring to part some persons who were concerned in a fray, he received a wound by a kitchen knife, of which he died, and left the kingdom—"
She was aware that something in blue serge was stationary beside her. She looked slowly up. Yes, there he was.
She introduced him to her mother. The seat in front of them was now free, and Dacer, turning it over, sat down. Mrs. Hazlitt was not sorry to show that her coldness concerned her daughter only. She was very willing to talk agreeably to a stranger. The conversation was carried on between them as if Lita were too young to be expected to take part. She was not sorry, and went on glancing at a sentence here and there: "He set sail, therefore, and landed in Crete—" "—in which the priestess called him beloved of the gods, and rather a god than a man."
At this she really could not help looking at Dacer, and finding his eyes on her, she said, "I saw you at the theater yesterday."
He was interested.
"I didn't see you."
"Oh, yes, we were there," said Mrs. Hazlitt languidly. "Such a poor play! And as for Valentine—these popular actors in America—"
"He was thought very handsome and dashing, in our box," said Dacer.
And then Lita was surprised to hear her own voice saying, "Was that lady your wife?"
He stared at her for a second as if he had not heard, or could not understand what he seemed to have heard, and then answered quietly, "No, I don't care for them by the cubic foot."
Never had such a perfect reply been made, Lita thought. It reconstructed their relation and the whole world, and yet it took place so gently that her mother had hardly noticed that they had spoken to each other. Life was simply immense, she said to herself; she had been quite wrong about it before.
Then presently Dacer drew from Mrs. Hazlitt the admission that she had a wretched headache—hadn't slept—had had a disagreeable day—so foolish, but she was affected by scenes—
"Everybody is, you know," said Dacer.
She should not have come on such an expedition. The idea of her driving four miles out to the school in a jiggling car—and right back again—was absurd. He spoke almost sternly. He had a time-table in his pocket; a train left for New York five minutes after their train arrived at Elbridge; Mrs. Hazlitt must take that back, go straight to bed; he would give her a powder. Of course he would see Miss Hazlitt safely to the school—yes, even into Miss Barton's presence. He wrote his prescription. Lita saw that her mother was going to obey.
As they got out at the station they saw the New York train already waiting. Dacer put Mrs. Hazlitt on it;and Lita, watching them, saw Mrs. Hazlitt turn at the steps and give him some special injunction. Well, she probably would not confide to him so soon the scandal of the letter to Valentine; and if she did, it would be easy to explain. Dacer's face was untroubled as he returned to her.
"She's all in," he said.
A sharp self-reproach clutched at Lita's heart, the capacity for emotion having unexpectedly returned to her.
"Did it really do her harm to come out here?"
"It really is better for her to go straight home," he answered, as if admitting other motives had entered into his advice.
They got into the school flivver, which was waiting for them. Rain had just stopped and the back curtains were down. It was dark.
As they wheeled away from the station lights Lita heard him saying, "Didn't you know I wasn't married?" She did not immediately answer. Her hand was taken. "Didn't you know?" he said again.
A strange thing was happening to Lita. She formed the resolution of withdrawing her hand; she sent the impulse out from her brain, but it seemed only to reach her elbow; her hand, limp and willing, continued to remain in his.
They spoke hardly at all. The near presence of Matthew, the driver, a well-known school gossip, made speech undesirable. Besides, it wasn't necessary. Lita was perfectly content with silence as long as that large, solid hand enveloped hers.
As they turned in at the school gate he said, "You'll come over to see Aurelia this evening, I suppose."
She knew it wouldn't be possible, and was obliged to say so. And he was going back to town by a morning train. There was a pause.
As they got out he said, "Do you ever get up very early—as early as six?"
"I could always make a beginning," said Lita.
And then, true to his promise, he turned the chairman of the self-government committee over to the keeping of Miss Barton herself.
One excellent way of waking early is not to sleep at all. Lita hardly slept and was out of bed in time to watch the slow but fortunately inevitable spreading of the dawn. The new day was evidently going to be one of those days in late March when, though the earth has no suggestion of spring, the sky and the air are as vernal as May. Lita could see a light in the upper story of the infirmary. Dacer's perhaps.
It was not yet six when she stole downstairs and across the green. She had a good reason for being anxious about Aurelia—the stitches had been taken out of the wound the night before. That's what she would say if anyone asked her. But no one was awake, except far away in the school kitchen. The door of the infirmary was locked, but as she pressed noiselessly against it a figure faced her on the other side of the glass—Dacer. He opened the door and came out. It shut behind him, and as the night latch was still on, they were locked out. So they sat down on the narrow steps of the cottage, each with a pillar to lean against, and for the first time lookedlong and steadily at each other, as people who have met by deliberate acknowledged plan.
"Do you like the early morning?" he asked.
"I never did before," she answered.
He smiled at her.
"Do you realize," he said, "that in this lifelong friendship of ours that is the first decent thing you have ever said to me?"
Why, it was true! To Lita it had been so clear that she was more interested than he was; more eager; but it was true, she had given him none of those poignant, unforgettable sentences which he had left with her, to go over in his absence. She smiled, too—very slowly.
"Perhaps it won't be the last," she said.
At half past seven Dacer went in, and a few minutes later Lita arrived at Room 11 to inquire after her friend. When it was time to go, she shook hands with Doctor Dacer in the presence of Aurelia, Aurelia's mother, who had just arrived, and the trained nurse.
It was the last possible meeting before the Easter holidays.
Immediately after breakfast Lita had geometry, and then a study period. During this she received a message that Miss Barton wished to speak to her. Such a message was not necessarily alarming; as chairman of the self-government committee she was consulted on many school problems. It was known that Miss Barton relied more on her judgment than on that of thesenior president. Still, with a poor classroom record for the past week, and that unlicensed hour and a half on the infirmary steps, Lita did feel a trifle nervous; not that she could care very much about such minor matters. And then there was Matthew and the flivver——
The head mistress was sitting at her desk in her study, with its latticed windows and the etchings of English cathedrals on the walls. Her head was slightly on one side, which meant, according to school lore, that she was going to be particularly airy. She was.
"Oh, well, come, my dear Lita," she said. "This is really going rather far—a bit thick, as our little English friend would say."
"But what is it, Miss Barton?" Lita breathed, with all the pearly innocence of young guilt.
"Oh, dear, dear!" said Miss Barton. "So we have nothing on our conscience!"
"I have a great many things," said Lita quietly. She knew just how to talk to her chief—if that would do any good.
"One asks oneself whether girls are worth educating at all if this is the way the more intelligent ones expend their time and energy." And Miss Barton handed Lita the crumpled but familiar letter to Valentine. "I've had a sharp note from your father this morning, and I must say I don't blame him—really I don't. The grammar would be a sufficient humiliation to any school, even if the letter were addressed to your grandmother. And I may tell you that five different photographs of Mr. Valentine have been discovered hidden about your room—most ingeniously, it is true, but quite against our rules. Really,it's a question whether the school can keep on if this sort of thing is general."
Lita listened in what appeared to be the most respectful silence. Her relief was intense. Also she was trying to remember what Miss Barton said word for word so as to repeat it to Aurelia, to whom, after all, it justly belonged. Aurelia did a wonderful imitation of the head mistress, and could make use of every phrase; she was always on the lookout for material.
Lita was dismissed with a warning that she was to be kept in bounds until the holidays, and all her mail, outgoing and incoming, would be watched. This was rather serious, as Dacer had distinctly intimated that he intended to write. Still, a way could probably be found— She would speak to Aurelia about it.
She did not see Aurelia until the late afternoon. Dacer, as she expected, had gone; but he had left a message for her, Aurelia said—a very particular message.
With what extraordinary rapidity does the human imagination function! Between the time Aurelia announced the fact that a message existed and the giving of the message, Lita had time to envisage half a dozen possibilities, from the announcement of his immediate return to an offer of marriage.
The message was this: "He said to tell you that he had no idea you were so fond of the stage, or he would have behaved very differently. Do you understand what that means?—for I don't."
It meant, of course, that Miss Barton had told him about Valentine; had possibly even shown him the letter. It was just the sort of thing that she might do.Lita could almost hear her describing the comic complications of a head mistress' life: "This note, for instance, discovered in the pocket of one of my best girls; not even English; that hurts us most."
Why did Aurelia do such silly things—write such silly letters? Then, her sense of justice reasserting itself, she admitted it was not her friend's fault that the authorship of the letter had been mistaken. She was conscious of a physical nausea at the idea that Dacer was going about in the belief that she, Lita Hazlitt, had written thus to another man.
In the first few minutes she sketched an explanatory letter to him, and then remembered that her mail—in and out—was watched. That wouldn't do. In fact, there was nothing to do but to wait for two interminable weeks to pass and bring the Friday of the Easter holiday. Once in the same town with him, she could make him listen to her. There was nothing agreeable in life except the recollection of a large hand on hers, and even that memory was beginning to take on mortality.
She had not even the attentions of her parents to console her—not that forty thousand parents would have made up to her for the estrangement of Dacer. Her mother wrote conscientiously, but coldly. If she had seen her mother Lita would have told her everything, but the next Sunday was Mr. Hazlitt's official visiting day.
He came, but he came in a somewhat disciplinary mood. He gave Lita a long talk on how men felt when women forced attentions upon them. Lita did not daretake the risk of telling him; she had so little control over him that he might possibly tell the whole story to Miss Barton and involve Aurelia. At the same time she did not want him to find it out for himself by a futile visit to Valentine. Before he left she asked him point-blank if he contemplated such a step.
"Of course not," he answered.
And at almost that exact moment Freebody was ushering Valentine into Mrs. Hazlitt's library. For Mrs. Hazlitt was not a woman to let the grass grow under her feet, where her maternal obligations were concerned. The more she thought the matter over the more obvious it became that one or the other of Lita's parents must see Valentine and let him know that, however silly and forthputting the child had been, she was not without conventional protection. Of course, this was her father's duty; but since men as fathers were complete failures, all the disagreeable tasks of parenthood devolved inevitably on mothers. After Dacer had put her on the train the Sunday before, she had gone home and taken the powder he gave her and slept through a long night; and when she waked the next morning she had seen her duty clearly—to interview Valentine herself. It was a duty which implied a reproof to her former husband.
She looked for Valentine's name in the telephone book, but of course he was not there. Then she called up the theater where he was acting, and they refused to give her his address, but said a letter directed to the theater would reach him. Mrs. Hazlitt was in no mood to brook the mail's delays, and telegraphed him that it was necessary that she should see him for a few minutes at any time orplace convenient to him, and signed her name with a comfortable conviction that all New York knew just who Alita Hazlitt was.
Now Valentine, like most people busy with a successful career, was utterly uninterested in conventional social life; he hardly ever opened his mail, rarely answered telegrams; and if, by mistake, he did make a social engagement, he always told his secretary to call the people up and break it. In the ordinary course of events Mrs. Hazlitt's telegram would have been opened in his dressing room, and would have lain about for a day or two until Valentine thought of saying to someone who might know, "Who is this woman—Alita Hazlitt?" And then it would have dropped on the floor, and would eventually have been swept up and put in the theater ash can.
But, as it happened, Valentine had always cherished a wish to play the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet before he was too old to wear a round-necked doublet; and a charitable institution, of which Mrs. Hazlitt was a most negligent trustee, had made a suggestion that Valentine should help them out in a benefit they were about to give. So Valentine, remembering her name on the letterhead of the institution, jumped at the conclusion that she had been selected to clinch the arrangement.
And so not more than three or four days went by before he answered her telegram by calling her up on the telephone, and it was arranged that he was to come and see her on Sunday at five.
She felt nervous as the time approached. She kept saying to herself that she had no idea how to deal with people like this. So awkward for a woman alone; but she wasalone—utterly alone. She had become rather tearful by the time Valentine was announced. She waited a moment to compose herself and became even more unnerved in the process.
When she went down she found him standing by one of the bookcases, reading. She saw with a distinct pang that he was a handsomer man off the stage than on, with his fine hawklike profile and irrepressibly thick, furrowed light hair. He slid a book back into place as she entered, with the soft gesture of a book lover.
"I see you have a first edition of Trivia," he said. "I envy you."
Mrs. Hazlitt, who had thought up a greeting which was now rendered utterly impossible, was obliged to make a quick mental bound. She had never opened her edition of Gay, which she had inherited from her grandfather, and had never suspected it of being a first.
She said, "Oh, do you go in for first editions?"
"Not any more," answered Valentine. "I've become more interested in autographs and association books. I have a wonderful letter of Gay's from—from—oh, you know, where he was staying when he wrote the Beggar's Opera—that duke's place—well, it will come to me."
But it never did come to him—not, at least, until he went home and looked it up—because, glancing at his hostess, he saw in those anxious, dark-fringed eyes that she wasn't a bit interested in his Gay letter; and so, with that tact that all artists possess if they will only use it, he said gently, "But it wasn't about autographs that you wanted to see me, was it? It's about your benefit."
"The benefit?"
"No? Well, what is it then?"
"Oh, I hoped you would understand without my being obliged to dot all thei's."
She said this with a great deal of meaning. Leaning forward on her elbow, in her mauve and silver tea gown, behind her silver tea tray, she looked very charming. Valentine thought that he had never known a woman who combined such perfection of appointments with such simplicity of manner. He had a strong instinct for the best in any art. It struck him that for a certain sort of thing this was the best.
She went on: "Perhaps you will think I should not have sent for you; but what could I do? I am so alone. My husband and I, as you perhaps know, are divorced."
Valentine achieved just the right sort of murmur at this, indicating that he personally could not regret the fact, but found it of intense interest.
Mrs. Hazlitt hurried on: "I feel I must apologize for my silly child—so vulgar and absurd, though I suppose girls must think they're in love—not that I mean it's absurd to think—I mean in your case it's natural enough—your last play—so romantic, dear Mr. Valentine—only, would you mind telling me just how it was you brought my daughter home a week ago Friday?"
Valentine emerged from this like a dog from the surf, successive waves had passed over him without his having had any idea what it meant.
"I don't think I have the pleasure of knowing your daughter," he said.
"Ah, not by name!"
She was ready for him there. She rose, and taking asilver-framed photograph from the table she thrust it into his hands.
He studied it and said politely, "What a charming little face! How like you, if I may say so!"
"Don't you recognize it? Hasn't she sent it to you? Hasn't she written you letters?"
"Possibly," said Valentine, and he added apologetically, "You know, I can't read all my letters. The telegrams I do try to manage, although—"
Mrs. Hazlitt could not pretend to be interested in how Valentine managed his telegrams.
"You mean you didn't bring Lita home last Friday—a week ago?" she said, and her eyes began to get large.
Valentine leaned back and looked at the ceiling, stamped one foot slightly on the floor and crossed the other leg over it. This seemed to help him think, for almost immediately he said:
"We were putting in our new villain"; and when he saw that Mrs. Hazlitt did not grasp the information, he added, "We were rehearsing all that afternoon."
Of course, she told him the whole story, and heard in return many interesting and surprising incidents of a popular actor's life. He was extremely interesting and sympathetic; so different from what she had expected—delightful. She felt she had made a real friend. In fact, she had promised to have tea with him at his apartment the following Thursday. She was so glad he had not said Friday. Lita would be back for her holidays on Friday, and somehow it would be hard to explain after all she had said against actors; though, of course, Lita herself would be called on to explain how she had allowed—and who wasthe man who had brought her home? Thursday would be safe, though; and she did want to meet this new Spanish actress Doria for whom the party was given. Valentine had assumed that Mrs. Hazlitt spoke Spanish, and when she insisted that she did not he was perfectly tactful. His own, he said, was getting rusty; but Doria was all right in French. He said he would come for her himself on Thursday. She thought that very kind.
She had a flurried, excited feeling when he had gone that she was entering upon a new phase of life. She had had a delightful afternoon. But the mystery of Lita's conduct was deeper than ever. Who was the man? Had there been a man at all? She sat down to write to her child, demanding to know the truth; but was interrupted by the entrance of Freebody with a long, narrow box which looked as if it might contain a boa constrictor, but did actually contain a dozen long-stemmed roses, with Valentine's card.
Mrs. Hazlitt tore up her letter. After all, it would be better to wait until Friday, and when Lita returned they could have a long, clear explanation.
But, as things turned out, Lita came back on Thursday. A little girl in one of the younger classes contrived to catch a light case of measles, and the school was hurried home a day ahead of time. It was generally mentioned that the child deserved a tablet in the common room; and she did actually receive a laurel wreath tied with red, white and blue ribbon, and bearing the inscription, "Dulce et decora estto get measles for the good of your schoolmates."
The New York girls came back unheralded, for theschool did not have time to telephone every parent. Miss Jones went about in a bus dropping the girls at their places of residence.
Lita, for the first time in her life, hoped that her mother would not be in. She wanted to be free to telephone Doctor Dacer without comment. She knew her mother would disapprove of her telephoning. She had had other glimpses of the last generation's method of dealing with romantic complications. They had strange old conventions about letting the advances come from the masculine side, or at least of maneuvering so that they appeared to. Subtle, they called it. Lita thought it rather sneaky.
She learned from Freebody at the door that her mother was dressing and was to be out to tea, but was to be home to dinner. Lita walked straight to the library, and having looked up Dacer's number called the office. The office nurse answered. Yes, the doctor was in. Who wished to speak to him? Miss Hazlitt? Just a minute. There was a long silence. What would she do if he refused to speak to her? Go there?
"Oh, Doctor Dacer, I wanted to tell you that Miss Barton told you something that wasn't true, though she thought it was. You know what I mean.... I want to see you, please. I wish you would.... Now; the sooner the better.... Yes; good-by."
She hung up the receiver with a hand not absolutely steady. He was coming at once. She took off her hat and dropped it on the sofa and stood still in the middle of the floor. If only her mother would keep on dressing for half an hour or so! It couldn't take him very long to get from his office in Sixty-third Street near Park—Now he was putting on his hat, now he was in the street, now he was coming nearer and nearer every minute—