When Cornish actually proposed to bring some music to the Deacons', Ina turned toward Dwight Herbert all the facets of her responsibility. And Ina's sense of responsibility toward Di was enormous, oppressive, primitive, amounting, in fact, toward this daughter of Dwight Herbert's late wife, to an ability to compress the offices of stepmotherhood into the functions of the lecture platform. Ina was a fountain of admonition. Her idea of a daughter, step or not, was that of a manufactured product, strictly, which you constantly pinched and moulded. She thought that a moral preceptor had the right to secrete precepts. Di got them all. But of course the crest of Ina's responsibility was to marry Di. This verb should be transitive only when lovers are speaking of each other, or the minister or magistrate is speaking of lovers. It should never be transitive when predicated of parents or any other third party. But it is. Ina was quite agitated by its transitiveness as she took to her husband her incredible responsibility.
"You know, Herbert," said Ina, "if this Mr. Cornish comes hereverymuch, what we may expect."
"What may we expect?" demanded Dwight Herbert, crisply.
Ina always played his games, answered what he expected her to answer, pretended to be intuitive when she was not so, said "I know" when she didn't know at all. Dwight Herbert, on the other hand, did not even play her games when he knew perfectly what she meant, but pretended not to understand, made her repeat, made her explain. It was as if Inahadto please him for, say, a living; but as for that dentist, he had to please nobody. In the conversations of Dwight and Ina you saw the historical home forming in clots in the fluid wash of the community.
"He'll fall in love with Di," said Ina.
"And what of that? Little daughter will have many a man fall in love with her,Ishould say."
"Yes, but, Dwight, what do you think of him?"
"What do I think of him? My dear Ina, I have other things to think of."
"But we don't know anything about him, Dwight—a stranger so."
"On the other hand," said Dwight with dignity, "I know a good deal about him."
With a great air of having done the fatherly and found out about this stranger before bringing him into the home, Dwight now related a number of stray circumstances dropped by Cornish in their chance talks.
"He has a little inheritance coming to him—shortly," Dwight wound up.
"An inheritance—really? How much, Dwight?"
"Now isn't that like a woman. Isn't it?"
"Ithoughthe was from a good family," said Ina.
"My mercenary little pussy!"
"Well," she said with a sigh, "I shouldn't be surprised if Di did really accept him. A young girl is awfully flattered when a good-looking older man pays her attention. Haven't you noticed that?"
Dwight informed her, with an air of immense abstraction, that he left all such matters to her. Being married to Dwight was like a perpetual rehearsal, with Dwight's self-importance for audience.
A few evenings later, Cornish brought up the music. There was something overpowering in this brown-haired chap against the background of his negligible little shop, his whole capital in his few pianos. For he looked hopefully ahead, woke with plans, regarded the children in the street as if, conceivably, children might come within the confines of his life as he imagined it. A preposterous little man. And a preposterous store, empty, echoing, bare of wall, the three pianos near the front, the remainder of the floor stretching away like the corridors of the lost. He was going to get a dark curtain, he explained, and furnish the back part of the store as his own room. What dignity in phrasing, but how mean that little room would look—cot bed, washbowl and pitcher, and little mirror—almost certainly a mirror with a wavy surface, almost certainly that.
"And then, you know," he always added, "I'm reading law."
The Plows had been asked in that evening. Bobby was there. They were, Dwight Herbert said, going to have a sing.
Di was to play. And Di was now embarked on the most difficult feat of her emotional life, the feat of remaining to Bobby Larkin the lure, the beloved lure, the while to Cornish she instinctively played the rôle of womanly little girl.
"Up by the festive lamp, everybody!" Dwight Herbert cried.
As they gathered about the upright piano, that startled, Dwightish instrument, standing in its attitude of unrest, Lulu came in with another lamp.
"Do you need this?" she asked.
They did not need it, there was, in fact, no place to set it, and this Lulu must have known. But Dwight found a place. He swept Ninian's photograph from the marble shelf of the mirror, and when Lulu had placed the lamp there, Dwight thrust the photograph into her hands.
"You take care of that," he said, with a droop of lid discernible only to those who—presumably—loved him. His old attitude toward Lulu had shown a terrible sharpening in these ten days since her return.
She stood uncertainly, in the thin black and white gown which Ninian had bought for her, and held Ninian's photograph and looked helplessly about. She was moving toward the door when Cornish called:
"See here! Aren'tyougoing to sing?"
"What?" Dwight used the falsetto. "Lulu sing?Lulu?"
She stood awkwardly. She had a piteous recrudescence of her old agony at being spoken to in the presence of others. But Di had opened the "Album of Old Favourites," which Cornish had elected to bring, and now she struck the opening chords of "Bonny Eloise." Lulu stood still, looking rather piteously at Cornish. Dwight offered his arm, absurdly crooked. The Plows and Ina and Di began to sing. Lulu moved forward, and stood a little away from them, and sang, too. She was still holding Ninian's picture. Dwight did not sing. He lifted his shoulders and his eyebrows and watched Lulu.
When they had finished, "Lulu the mocking bird!" Dwight cried. He said "ba-ird."
"Fine!" cried Cornish. "Why, Miss Lulu, you have a good voice!"
"Miss Lulu Bett, the mocking ba-ird!" Dwight insisted.
Lulu was excited, and in some accession of faint power. She turned to him now, quietly, and with a look of appraisal.
"Lulu the dove," she then surprisingly said, "to put up with you."
It was her first bit of conscious repartee to her brother-in-law.
Cornish was bending over Di.
"What next do you say?" he asked.
She lifted her eyes, met his own, held them. "There's such a lovely, lovely sacred song here," she suggested, and looked down.
"You like sacred music?"
She turned to him her pure profile, her eyelids fluttering up, and said: "I love it."
"That's it. So do I. Nothing like a nice sacred piece," Cornish declared.
Bobby Larkin, at the end of the piano, looked directly into Di's face.
"Givemeragtime," he said now, with the effect of bursting out of somewhere. "Don't you like ragtime?" he put it to her directly.
Di's eyes danced into his, they sparkled for him, her smile was a smile for him alone, all their store of common memories was in their look.
"Let's try 'My Rock, My Refuge,'" Cornish suggested. "That's got up real attractive."
Di's profile again, and her pleased voice saying that this was the very one she had been hoping to hear him sing.
They gathered for "My Rock, My Refuge."
"Oh," cried Ina, at the conclusion of this number, "I'm having such a perfectly beautiful time. Isn't everybody?" everybody's hostess put it.
"Lulu is," said Dwight, and added softly to Lulu: "She don't have to hear herself sing."
It was incredible. He was like a bad boy with a frog. About that photograph of Ninian he found a dozen ways to torture her, called attention to it, showed it to Cornish, set it on the piano facing them all. Everybody must have understood—excepting the Plows. These two gentle souls sang placidly through the Album of Old Favourites, and at the melodies smiled happily upon each other with an air from another world. Always it was as if the Plows walked some fair, inter-penetrating plane, from which they looked out as do other things not quite of earth, say, flowers and fire and music.
Strolling home that night, the Plows were overtaken by some one who ran badly, and as if she were unaccustomed to running.
"Mis' Plow, Mis' Plow!" this one called, and Lulu stood beside them.
"Say!" she said. "Do you know of any job that I could get me? I mean that I'd know how to do? A job for money.... I mean a job...."
She burst into passionate crying. They drew her home with them.
Lying awake sometime after midnight, Lulu heard the telephone ring. She heard Dwight's concerned "Is that so?" And his cheerful "Be right there."
Grandma Gates was sick, she heard him tell Ina. In a few moments he ran down the stairs. Next day they told how Dwight had sat for hours that night, holding Grandma Gates so that her back would rest easily and she could fight for her faint breath. The kind fellow had only about two hours of sleep the whole night long.
Next day there came a message from that woman who had brought up Dwight—"made him what he was," he often complacently accused her. It was a note on a postal card—she had often written a few lines on a postal card to say that she had sent the maple sugar, or could Ina get her some samples. Now she wrote a few lines on a postal card to say that she was going to die with cancer. Could Dwight and Ina come to her while she was still able to visit? If he was not too busy....
Nobody saw the pity and the terror of that postal card. They stuck it up by the kitchen clock to read over from time to time, and before they left, Dwight lifted the griddle of the cooking-stove and burned the postal card.
And before they left Lulu said: "Dwight—you can't tell how long you'll be gone?"
"Of course not. How should I tell?"
"No. And that letter might come while you're away."
"Conceivably. Letters do come while a man's away!"
"Dwight—I thought if you wouldn't mind if I opened it—"
"Opened it?"
"Yes. You see, it'll be about me mostly—"
"I should have said that it'll be about my brother mostly."
"But you know what I mean. You wouldn't mind if I did open it?"
"But you say you know what'll be in it."
"So I did know—till you—I've got to see that letter, Dwight."
"And so you shall. But not till I show it to you. My dear Lulu, you know how I hate having my mail interfered with."
She might have said: "Small souls always make a point of that." She said nothing. She watched them set off, and kept her mind on Ina's thousand injunctions.
"Don't let Di see much of Bobby Larkin. And, Lulu—if it occurs to her to have Mr. Cornish come up to sing, of course you ask him. You might ask him to supper. And don't let mother overdo. And, Lulu, now do watch Monona's handkerchief—the child will never take a clean one if I'm not here to tell her...."
She breathed injunctions to the very step of the 'bus.
In the 'bus Dwight leaned forward:
"See that you play post-office squarely, Lulu!" he called, and threw back his head and lifted his eyebrows.
In the train he turned tragic eyes to his wife.
"Ina," he said. "It'sma. And she's going to die. It can't be...."
Ina said: "But you're going to help her, Dwight, just being there with her."
It was true that the mere presence of the man would bring a kind of fresh life to that worn frame. Tact and wisdom and love would speak through him and minister.
Toward the end of their week's absence the letter from Ninian came.
Lulu took it from the post-office when she went for the mail that evening, dressed in her dark red gown. There was no other letter, and she carried that one letter in her hand all through the streets. She passed those who were surmising what her story might be, who were telling one another what they had heard. But she knew hardly more than they. She passed Cornish in the doorway of his little music shop, and spoke with him; and there was the letter. It was so that Dwight's foster mother's postal card might have looked on its way to be mailed.
Cornish stepped down and overtook her.
"Oh, Miss Lulu. I've got a new song or two—"
She said abstractedly: "Do. Any night. To-morrow night—could you—" It was as if Lulu were too preoccupied to remember to be ill at ease.
Cornish flushed with pleasure, said that he could indeed.
"Come for supper," Lulu said.
Oh, could he? Wouldn't that be.... Well, say! Such was his acceptance.
He came for supper. And Di was not at home. She had gone off in the country with Jenny and Bobby, and they merely did not return.
Mrs. Bett and Lulu and Cornish and Monona supped alone. All were at ease, now that they were alone. Especially Mrs. Bett was at ease. It became one of her young nights, her alive and lucid nights. She wasthere. She sat in Dwight's chair and Lulu sat in Ina's chair. Lulu had picked flowers for the table—a task coveted by her but usually performed by Ina. Lulu had now picked Sweet William and had filled a vase of silver gilt taken from the parlour. Also, Lulu had made ice-cream.
"I don't see what Di can be thinking of," Lulu said. "It seems like asking you under false—" She was afraid of "pretences" and ended without it.
Cornish savoured his steaming beef pie, with sage. "Oh, well!" he said contentedly.
"Kind of a relief,Ithink, to have her gone," said Mrs. Bett, from the fulness of something or other.
"Mother!" Lulu said, twisting her smile.
"Why, my land, I love her," Mrs. Bett explained, "but she wiggles and chitters."
Cornish never made the slightest effort, at any time, to keep a straight face. The honest fellow now laughed loudly.
"Well!" Lulu thought. "He can't be soverymuch in love." And again she thought: "He doesn't know anything about the letter. He thinks Ninian got tired of me." Deep in her heart there abode her certainty that this was not so.
By some etiquette of consent, Mrs. Bett cleared the table and Lulu and Cornish went into the parlour. There lay the letter on the drop-leaf side-table, among the shells. Lulu had carried it there, where she need not see it at her work. The letter looked no more than the advertisement of dental office furniture beneath it. Monona stood indifferently fingering both.
"Monona," Lulu said sharply, "leave them be!"
Cornish was displaying his music. "Got up quite attractive," he said—it was his formula of praise for his music.
"But we can't try it over," Lulu said, "if Di doesn't come."
"Well, say," said Cornish shyly, "you know I left that Album of Old Favourites here. Some of them we know by heart."
Lulu looked. "I'll tell you something," she said, "there's some of these I can play with one hand—by ear. Maybe—"
"Why sure!" said Cornish.
Lulu sat at the piano. She had on the wool chally, long sacred to the nights when she must combine her servant's estate with the quality of being Ina's sister. She wore her coral beads and her cameo cross. In her absence she had caught the trick of dressing her hair so that it looked even more abundant—but she had not dared to try it so until to-night, when Dwight was gone. Her long wrist was curved high, her thin hand pressed and fingered awkwardly, and at her mistakes her head dipped and strove to make all right. Her foot continuously touched the loud pedal—the blurred sound seemed to accomplish more. So she played "How Can I Leave Thee," and they managed to sing it. So she played "Long, Long Ago," and "Little Nell of Narragansett Bay." Beyond open doors, Mrs. Bett listened, sang, it may be, with them; for when the singers ceased, her voice might be heard still humming a loud closing bar.
"Well!" Cornish cried to Lulu; and then, in the formal village phrase: "You're quite a musician."
"Oh, no!" Lulu disclaimed it. She looked up, flushed, smiling. "I've never done this in front of anybody," she owned. "I don't know what Dwight and Ina'd say...." She drooped.
They rested, and, miraculously, the air of the place had stirred and quickened, as if the crippled, halting melody had some power of its own, and poured this forth, even thus trampled.
"I guess you could do 'most anything you set your hand to," said Cornish.
"Oh, no," Lulu said again.
"Sing and play and cook—"
"But I can't earn anything. I'd like to earn something." But this she had not meant to say. She stopped, rather frightened.
"You would! Why, you have it fine here, I thought."
"Oh, fine, yes. Dwight gives me what I have. And I do their work."
"I see," said Cornish. "I never thought of that," he added. She caught his speculative look—he had heard a tale or two concerning her return, as who in Warbleton had not heard?
"You're wondering why I didn't stay with him!" Lulu said recklessly. This was no less than wrung from her, but its utterance occasioned in her an unspeakable relief.
"Oh, no," Cornish disclaimed, and coloured and rocked.
"Yes, you are," she swept on. "The whole town's wondering. Well, I'd like 'em to know, but Dwight won't let me tell."
Cornish frowned, trying to understand.
"'Won't let you!'" he repeated. "I should say that was your own affair."
"No. Not when Dwight gives me all I have."
"Oh, that—" said Cornish. "That's not right."
"No. But there it is. It puts me—you see what it does to me. They think—they all think my—husband left me."
It was curious to hear her bring out that word—tentatively, deprecatingly, like some one daring a foreign phrase without warrant.
Cornish said feebly: "Oh, well...."
Before she willed it, she was telling him:
"He didn't. He didn't leave me," she cried with passion. "He had another wife." Incredibly it was as if she were defending both him and herself.
"Lord sakes!" said Cornish.
She poured it out, in her passion to tell some one, to share her news of her state where there would be neither hardness nor censure.
"We were in Savannah, Georgia," she said. "We were going to leave for Oregon—going to go through California. We were in the hotel, and he was going out to get the tickets. He started to go. Then he came back. I was sitting the same as there. He opened the door again—the same as here. I saw he looked different—and he said quick: 'There's something you'd ought to know before we go.' And of course I said, 'What?' And he said it right out—how he was married eighteen years ago and in two years she ran away and she must be dead but he wasn't sure. He hadn't the proofs. So of course I came home. But it wasn't him left me."
"No, no. Of course he didn't," Cornish said earnestly. "But Lord sakes—" he said again. He rose to walk about, found it impracticable and sat down.
"That's what Dwight don't want me to tell—he thinks it isn't true. He thinks—he didn't have any other wife. He thinks he wanted—" Lulu looked up at him.
"You see," she said, "Dwight thinks he didn't want me."
"But why don't you make your—husband—I mean, why doesn't he write to Mr. Deacon here, and tell him the truth—" Cornish burst out.
Under this implied belief, she relaxed and into her face came its rare sweetness.
"He has written," she said. "The letter's there."
He followed her look, scowled at the two letters.
"What'd he say?"
"Dwight don't like me to touch his mail. I'll have to wait till he comes back."
"Lord sakes!" said Cornish.
This time he did rise and walk about. He wanted to say something, wanted it with passion. He paused beside Lulu and stammered: "You—you—you're too nice a girl to get a deal like this. Darned if you aren't."
To her own complete surprise Lulu's eyes filled with tears, and she could not speak. She was by no means above self-sympathy.
"And there ain't," said Cornish sorrowfully, "there ain't a thing I can do."
And yet he was doing much. He was gentle, he was listening, and on his face a frown of concern. His face continually surprised her, it was so fine and alive and near, by comparison with Ninian's loose-lipped, ruddy, impersonal look and Dwight's thin, high-boned hardness. All the time Cornish gave her something, instead of drawing upon her. Above all, he was there, and she could talk to him.
"It's—it's funny," Lulu said. "I'd be awful glad if I justcouldknow for sure that the other woman was alive—if I couldn't know she's dead."
This surprising admission Cornish seemed to understand.
"Sure you would," he said briefly.
"Cora Waters," Lulu said. "Cora Waters, of San Diego, California. And she never heard of me."
"No," Cornish admitted. They stared at each other as across some abyss.
In the doorway Mrs. Bett appeared.
"I scraped up everything," she remarked, "and left the dishes set."
"That's right, mamma," Lulu said. "Come and sit down."
Mrs. Bett entered with a leisurely air of doing the thing next expected of her.
"I don't hear any more playin' and singin'," she remarked. "It sounded real nice."
"We—we sung all I knew how to play, I guess, mamma."
"I use' to play on the melodeon," Mrs. Bett volunteered, and spread and examined her right hand.
"Well!" said Cornish.
She now told them about her log-house in a New England clearing, when she was a bride. All her store of drama and life came from her. She rehearsed it with far eyes. She laughed at old delights, drooped at old fears. She told about her little daughter who had died at sixteen—a tragedy such as once would have been renewed in a vital ballad. At the end she yawned frankly as if, in some terrible sophistication, she had been telling the story of some one else.
"Give us one more piece," she said.
"Can we?" Cornish asked.
"I can play 'I Think When I Read That Sweet Story of Old,'" Lulu said.
"That's the ticket!" cried Cornish.
They sang it, to Lulu's right hand.
"That's the one you picked out when you was a little girl, Lulie," cried, Mrs. Bett.
Lulu had played it now as she must have played it then.
Half after nine and Di had not returned. But nobody thought of Di. Cornish rose to go.
"What's them?" Mrs. Bett demanded.
"Dwight's letters, mamma. You mustn't touch them!" Lulu's voice was sharp.
"Say!" Cornish, at the door, dropped his voice. "If there was anything I could do at any time, you'd let me know, wouldn't you?"
That past tense, those subjunctives, unconsciously called upon her to feel no intrusion.
"Oh, thank you," she said. "You don't know how good it is to feel—"
"Of course it is," said Cornish heartily.
They stood for a moment on the porch. The night was one of low clamour from the grass, tiny voices, insisting.
"Of course," said Lulu, "of course you won't—you wouldn't—"
"Say anything?" he divined. "Not for dollars. Not," he repeated, "for dollars."
"But I knew you wouldn't," she told him.
He took her hand. "Good-night," he said. "I've had an awful nice time singing and listening to you talk—well, of course—I mean," he cried, "the supper was just fine. And so was the music."
"Oh, no," she said.
Mrs. Bett came into the hall.
"Lulie," she said, "I guess you didn't notice—this one's from Ninian."
"Mother—"
"I opened it—why, of course I did. It's from Ninian."
Mrs. Bett held out the opened envelope, the unfolded letter, and a yellowed newspaper clipping.
"See," said the old woman, "says, 'Corie Waters, music hall singer—married last night to Ninian Deacon—' Say, Lulie, that must be her...."
Lulu threw out her hands.
"There!" she cried triumphantly. "Hewasmarried to her, just like he said!"
The Plows were at breakfast next morning when Lulu came in casually at the side-door. Yes, she said, she had had breakfast. She merely wanted to see them about something. Then she said nothing, but sat looking with a troubled frown at Jenny. Jenny's hair was about her neck, like the hair of a little girl, a south window poured light upon her, the fruit and honey upon the table seemed her only possible food.
"You look troubled, Lulu," Mrs. Plow said. "Is it about getting work?"
"No," said Lulu, "no. I've been places to ask—quite a lot of places. I guess the bakery is going to let me make cake."
"I knew it would come to you," Mrs. Plow said, and Lulu thought that this was a strange way to speak, when she herself had gone after the cakes. But she kept on looking about the room. It was so bright and quiet. As she came in, Mr. Plow had been reading from a book. Dwight never read from a book at table.
"I wish----" said Lulu, as she looked at them. But she did not know what she wished. Certainly it was for no moral excellence, for she perceived none.
"What is it, Lulu?" Mr. Plow asked, and he was bright and quiet too, Lulu thought.
"Well," said Lulu, "it's not much. But I wanted Jenny to tell me about last night."
"Last night?"
"Yes. Would you----" Hesitation was her only way of apology. "Where did you go?" She turned to Jenny.
Jenny looked up in her clear and ardent fashion: "We went across the river and carried supper and then we came home."
"What time did you get home?"
"Oh, it was still light. Long before eight, it was."
Lulu hesitated and flushed, asked how long Di and Bobby had stayed there at Jenny's; whereupon she heard that Di had to be home early on account of Mr. Cornish, so that she and Bobby had not stayed at all. To which Lulu said an "of course," but first she stared at Jenny and so impaired the strength of her assent. Almost at once she rose to go.
"Nothing else?" said Mrs. Plow, catching that look of hers.
Lulu wanted to say: "My husbandwasmarried before, just as he said he was." But she said nothing more, and went home. There she put it to Di, and with her terrible bluntness reviewed to Di the testimony.
"You were not with Jenny after eight o'clock. Where were you?" Lulu spoke formally and her rehearsals were evident.
Di said: "When mamma comes home, I'll tell her."
With this Lulu had no idea how to deal, and merely looked at her helplessly. Mrs. Bett, who was lacing her shoes, now said casually:
"No need to wait till then. Her and Bobby were out in the side yard sitting in the hammock till all hours."
Di had no answer save her furious flush, and Mrs. Bett went on:
"Didn't I tell you? I knew it before the company left, but I didn't say a word. Thinks I, 'She's wiggles and chitters.' So I left her stay where she was."
"But, mother!" Lulu cried. "You didn't even tell me after he'd gone."
"I forgot it," Mrs. Bett said, "finding Ninian's letter and all—" She talked of Ninian's letter.
Di was bright and alert and firm of flesh and erect before Lulu's softness and laxness.
"I don't know what your mother'll say," said Lulu, "and I don't know what people'll think."
"They won't think Bobby and I are tired of each other, anyway," said Di, and left the room.
Through the day Lulu tried to think what she must do. About Di she was anxious and felt without power. She thought of the indignation of Dwight and Ina that Di had not been more scrupulously guarded. She thought of Di's girlish folly, her irritating independence—"and there," Lulu thought, "just the other day I was teaching her to sew." Her mind dwelt too on Dwight's furious anger at the opening of Ninian's letter. But when all this had spent itself, what was she herself to do? She must leave his house before he ordered her to do so, when she told him that she had confided in Cornish, as tell she must. But what was she todo? The bakery cake-making would not give her a roof.
Stepping about the kitchen in her blue cotton gown, her hair tight and flat as seemed proper when one was not dressed, she thought about these things. And it was strange: Lulu bore no physical appearance of one in distress or any anxiety. Her head was erect, her movements were strong and swift, her eyes were interested. She was no drooping Lulu with dragging step. She was more intent, she was somehow more operative than she had ever been.
Mrs. Bett was working contentedly beside her, and now and then humming an air of that music of the night before. The sun surged through the kitchen door and east window, a returned oriole swung and fluted on the elm above the gable. Wagons clattered by over the rattling wooden block pavement.
"Ain't it nice with nobody home?" Mrs. Bett remarked at intervals, like the burden of a comic song.
"Hush, mother," Lulu said, troubled, her ethical refinements conflicting with her honesty.
"Speak the truth and shame the devil," Mrs. Bett contended.
When dinner was ready at noon, Di did not appear. A little earlier Lulu had heard her moving about her room, and she served her in expectation that she would join them.
"Di must be having the 'tantrim' this time," she thought, and for a time said nothing. But at length she did say: "Why doesn't Di come? I'd better put her plate in the oven."
Rising to do so, she was arrested by her mother. Mrs. Bett was eating a baked potato, holding her fork close to the tines, and presenting a profile of passionate absorption.
"Why, Di went off," she said.
"Went off!"
"Down the walk. Down the sidewalk."
"She must have gone to Jenny's," said Lulu. "I wish she wouldn't do that without telling me."
Monona laughed out and shook her straight hair. "She'll catch it!" she cried in sisterly enjoyment.
It was when Lulu had come back from the kitchen and was seated at the table that Mrs. Bett observed:
"I didn't think Inie'd want her to take her nice new satchel."
"Her satchel?"
"Yes. Inie wouldn't take it north herself, but Di had it."
"Mother," said Lulu, "when Di went away just now, was she carrying a satchel?"
"Didn't I just tell you?" Mrs. Bett demanded, aggrieved. "I said I didn't think Inie—"
"Mother! Which way did she go?"
Monona pointed with her spoon. "She went that way," she said. "I seen her."
Lulu looked at the clock. For Monona had pointed toward the railway station. The twelve-thirty train, which every one took to the city for shopping, would be just about leaving.
"Monona," said Lulu, "don't you go out of the yard while I'm gone. Mother, you keep her—"
Lulu ran from the house and up the street. She was in her blue cotton dress, her old shoes, she was hatless and without money. When she was still two or three blocks from the station, she heard the twelve-thirty "pulling out."
She ran badly, her ankles in their low, loose shoes continually turning, her arms held taut at her sides. So she came down the platform, and to the ticket window. The contained ticket man, wonted to lost trains and perturbed faces, yet actually ceased counting when he saw her:
"Lenny! Did Di Deacon take that train?"
"Sure she did," said Lenny.
"And Bobby Larkin?" Lulu cared nothing for appearances now.
"He went in on the Local," said Lenny, and his eyes widened.
"Where?"
"See." Lenny thought it through. "Millton," he said. "Yes, sure. Millton. Both of 'em."
"How long till another train?"
"Well, sir," said the ticket man, "you're in luck, if you was goin' too. Seventeen was late this morning—she'll be along, jerk of a lamb's tail."
"Then," said Lulu, "you got to give me a ticket to Millton, without me paying till after—and you got to lend me two dollars."
"Sure thing," said Lenny, with a manner of laying the entire railway system at her feet.
"Seventeen" would rather not have stopped at Warbleton, but Lenny's signal was law on the time card, and the magnificent yellow express slowed down for Lulu. Hatless and in her blue cotton gown, she climbed aboard.
Then her old inefficiency seized upon her. What was she going to do? Millton! She had been there but once, years ago—how could she ever find anybody? Why had she not stayed in Warbleton and asked the sheriff or somebody—no, not the sheriff. Cornish, perhaps. Oh, and Dwight and Ina were going to be angry now! And Di—little Di. As Lulu thought of her she began to cry. She said to herself that she had taught Di to sew.
In sight of Millton, Lulu was seized with trembling and physical nausea. She had never been alone in any unfamiliar town. She put her hands to her hair and for the first time realized her rolled-up sleeves. She was pulling down these sleeves when the conductor came through the train.
"Could you tell me," she said timidly, "the name of the principal hotel in Millton?"
Ninian had asked this as they neared Savannah, Georgia.
The conductor looked curiously at her.
"Why, the Hess House," he said. "Wasn't you expecting anybody to meet you?" he asked, kindly.
"No," said Lulu, "but I'm going to find my folks—" Her voice trailed away.
"Beats all," thought the conductor, using his utility formula for the universe.
In Millton Lulu's inquiry for the Hess House produced no consternation. Nobody paid any attention to her. She was almost certainly taken to be a new servant there.
"You stop feeling so!" she said to herself angrily at the lobby entrance. "Ain't you been to that big hotel in Savannah, Georgia?"
The Hess House, Millton, had a tradition of its own to maintain, it seemed, and they sent her to the rear basement door. She obeyed meekly, but she lost a good deal of time before she found herself at the end of the office desk. It was still longer before any one attended her.
"Please, sir!" she burst out. "See if Di Deacon has put her name on your book."
Her appeal was tremendous, compelling. The young clerk listened to her, showed her where to look in the register. When only strange names and strange writing presented themselves there, he said:
"Tried the parlour?"
And directed her kindly and with his thumb, and in the other hand a pen divorced from his ear for the express purpose.
In crossing the lobby in the hotel at Savannah, Georgia, Lulu's most pressing problem had been to know where to look. But now the idlers in the Hess House lobby did not exist. In time she found the door of the intensely rose-coloured reception room. There, in a fat, rose-coloured chair, beside a cataract of lace curtain, sat Di, alone.
Lulu entered. She had no idea what to say. When Di looked up, started up, frowned, Lulu felt as if she herself were the culprit. She said the first thing that occurred to her:
"I don't believe mamma'll like your taking her nice satchel."
"Well!" said Di, exactly as if she had been at home. And superadded: "My goodness!" And then cried rudely: "What are you here for?"
"For you," said Lulu. "You—you—you'd ought not to be here, Di."
"What's that to you?" Di cried.
"Why, Di, you're just a little girl----"
Lulu saw that this was all wrong, and stopped miserably. How was she to go on? "Di," she said, "if you and Bobby want to get married, why not let us get you up a nice wedding at home?" And she saw that this sounded as if she were talking about a tea-party.
"Who said we wanted to be married?"
"Well, he's here."
"Who said he's here?"
"Isn't he?"
Di sprang up. "Aunt Lulu," she said, "you're a funny person to be tellingmewhat to do."
Lulu said, flushing: "I love you just the same as if I was married happy, in a home."
"Well, you aren't!" cried Di cruelly, "and I'm going to do just as I think best."
Lulu thought this over, her look grave and sad. She tried to find something to say. "What do people say to people," she wondered, "when it's like this?"
"Getting married is for your whole life," was all that came to her.
"Yours wasn't," Di flashed at her.
Lulu's colour deepened, but there seemed to be no resentment in her. She must deal with this right—that was what her manner seemed to say. And how should she deal?
"Di," she cried, "come back with me—and wait till mamma and papa get home."
"That's likely. They say I'm not to be married till I'm twenty-one."
"Well, but how young that is!"
"It is to you."
"Di! This is wrong—itiswrong."
"There's nothing wrong about getting married—if you stay married."
"Well, then it can't be wrong to let them know."
"It isn't. But they'd treat me wrong. They'd make me stay at home. And I won't stay at home—I won't stay there. They act as if I was ten years old."
Abruptly in Lulu's face there came a light of understanding.
"Why, Di," she said, "do you feel that way too?"
Di missed this. She went on:
"I'm grown up. I feel just as grown up as they do. And I'm not allowed to do a thing I feel. I want to be away—I will be away!"
"I know about that part," Lulu said.
She now looked at Di with attention. Was it possible that Di was suffering in the air of that home as she herself suffered? She had not thought of that. There Di had seemed so young, so dependent, so—asquirm. Here, by herself, waiting for Bobby, in the Hess House at Millton, she was curiously adult. Would she be adult if she were let alone?
"You don't know what it's like," Di cried, "to be hushed up and laughed at and paid no attention to, everything you say."
"Don't I?" said Lulu. "Don't I?"
She was breathing quickly and looking at Di. Ifthiswas why Di was leaving home....
"But, Di," she cried, "do you love Bobby Larkin?"
By this Di was embarrassed. "I've got to marry somebody," she said, "and it might as well be him."
"But is it him?"
"Yes, it is," said Di. "But," she added, "I know I could love almost anybody real nice that was nice to me." And this she said, not in her own right, but either she had picked it up somewhere and adopted it, or else the terrible modernity and honesty of her day somehow spoke through her, for its own. But to Lulu it was as if something familiar turned its face to be recognised.
"Di!" she cried.
"It's true. You ought to know that." She waited for a moment. "You did it," she added. "Mamma said so."
At this onslaught Lulu was stupefied. For she began to perceive its truth.
"I know what I want to do, I guess," Di muttered, as if to try to cover what she had said.
Up to that moment, Lulu had been feeling intensely that she understood Di, but that Di did not know this. Now Lulu felt that she and Di actually shared some unsuspected sisterhood. It was not only that they were both badgered by Dwight. It was more than that. They were two women. And she must make Di know that she understood her.
"Di," Lulu said, breathing hard, "what you just said is true, I guess. Don't you think I don't know. And now I'm going to tell you—"
She might have poured it all out, claimed her kinship with Di by virtue of that which had happened in Savannah, Georgia. But Di said:
"Here come some ladies. And goodness, look at the way you look!"
Lulu glanced down. "I know," she said, "but I guess you'll have to put up with me."
The two women entered, looked about with the complaisance of those who examine a hotel property, find criticism incumbent, and have no errand. These two women had outdressed their occasion. In their presence Di kept silence, turned away her head, gave them to know that she had nothing to do with this blue cotton person beside her. When they had gone on, "What do you mean by my having to put up with you?" Di asked sharply.
"I mean I'm going to stay with you."
Di laughed scornfully—she was again the rebellious child. "I guess Bobby'll have something to say about that," she said insolently.
"They left you in my charge."
"But I'm not a baby—the idea, Aunt Lulu!"
"I'm going to stay right with you," said Lulu. She wondered what she should do if Di suddenly marched away from her, through that bright lobby and into the street. She thought miserably that she must follow. And then her whole concern for the ethics of Di's course was lost in her agonised memory of her terrible, broken shoes.
Di did not march away. She turned her back squarely upon Lulu, and looked out of the window. For her life Lulu could think of nothing more to say. She was now feeling miserably on the defensive.
They were sitting in silence when Bobby Larkin came into the room.
Four Bobby Larkins there were, in immediate succession.
The Bobby who had just come down the street was distinctly perturbed, came hurrying, now and then turned to the left when he met folk, glanced sidewise here and there, was altogether anxious and ill at ease.
The Bobby who came through the hotel was a Bobby who had on an importance assumed for the crisis of threading the lobby—a Bobby who wished it to be understood that here he was, a man among men, in the Hess House at Millton.
The Bobby who entered the little rose room was the Bobby who was no less than overwhelmed with the stupendous character of the adventure upon which he found himself.
The Bobby who incredibly came face to face with Lulu was the real Bobby into whose eyes leaped instant, unmistakable relief.
Di flew to meet him. She assumed all the pretty agitations of her rôle, ignored Lulu.
"Bobby! Is it all right?"
Bobby looked over her head.
"Miss Lulu," he said fatuously. "If it ain't Miss Lulu."
He looked from her to Di, and did not take in Di's resigned shrug.
"Bobby," said Di, "she's come to stop us getting married, but she can't. I've told her so."
"She don't have to stop us," quoth Bobby gloomily, "we're stopped."
"What do you mean?" Di laid one hand flatly along her cheek, instinctive in her melodrama.
Bobby drew down his brows, set his hand on his leg, elbow out.
"We're minors," said he.
"Well, gracious, you didn't have to tell them that."
"No. They knewIwas."
"But, Silly! Why didn't you tell them you're not?"
"But I am."
Di stared. "For pity sakes," she said, "don't you know how to do anything?"
"What would you have me do?" he inquired indignantly, with his head held very stiff, and with a boyish, admirable lift of chin.
"Why, tell them we're both twenty-one. We look it. We know we're responsible—that's all they care for. Well, you are a funny...."
"You wanted me to lie?" he said.
"Oh, don't make out you never told a fib."
"Well, but this—" he stared at her.
"I never heard of such a thing," Di cried accusingly.
"Anyhow," he said, "there's nothing to do now. The cat's out. I've told our ages. We've got to have our folks in on it."
"Is that all you can think of?" she demanded.
"What else?"
"Why, come on to Bainbridge or Holt, and tell them we're of age, and be married there."
"Di," said Bobby, "why, that'd be a rotten go."
Di said, oh very well, if he didn't want to marry her. He replied stonily that of course he wanted to marry her. Di stuck out her little hand. She was at a disadvantage. She could use no arts, with Lulu sitting there, looking on. "Well, then, come on to Bainbridge," Di cried, and rose.
Lulu was thinking: "What shall I say? I don't know what to say. I don't know what I can say." Now she also rose, and laughed awkwardly. "I've told Di," she said to Bobby, "that wherever you two go, I'm going too. Di's folks left her in my care, you know. So you'll have to take me along, I guess." She spoke in a manner of distinct apology.
At this Bobby had no idea what to reply. He looked down miserably at the carpet. His whole manner was a mute testimony to his participation in the eternal query: How did I get into it?
"Bobby," said Di, "are you going to let her lead you home?"
This of course nettled him, but not in the manner on which Di had counted. He said loudly:
"I'm not going to Bainbridge or Holt or any town and lie, to get you or any other girl."
Di's head lifted, tossed, turned from him. "You're about as much like a man in a story," she said, "as—as papa is."
The two idly inspecting women again entered the rose room, this time to stay. They inspected Lulu too. And Lulu rose and stood between the lovers.
"Hadn't we all better get the four-thirty to Warbleton?" she said, and swallowed.
"Oh, if Bobby wants to back out—" said Di.
"I don't want to back out," Bobby contended furiously, "b-b-but I won't—"
"Come on, Aunt Lulu," said Di grandly.
Bobby led the way through the lobby, Di followed, and Lulu brought up the rear. She walked awkwardly, eyes down, her hands stiffly held. Heads turned to look at her. They passed into the street.
"You two go ahead," said Lulu, "so they won't think—"
They did so, and she followed, and did not know where to look, and thought of her broken shoes.
At the station, Bobby put them on the train and stepped back. He had, he said, something to see to there in Millton. Di did not look at him. And Lulu's good-bye spoke her genuine regret for all.
"Aunt Lulu," said Di, "you needn't think I'm going to sit with you. You look as if you were crazy. I'll sit back here."
"All right, Di," said Lulu humbly.