She seemed to have brought away with her some secret of the coat—a touch of its mystery and charm.
Richard watched her as she went about the house, occupied with little things. He fancied there was a look in her face that came and went shadowily—as if the curtains before a hidden place were swept aside by an unseen wind.... And before he could look again—it was gone.
Her face in repose was very common-place, he knew; it had grown a little full and there was a humorous, almost conceited, little upward twist to the mouth, that he found annoying.... And then suddenly, when she was off guard, the look had fled and he was gazing at the strange face.
He found himself growing troubled, driven by a force he did not quite comprehend—a disbelief in the solid earth and the turning of the seasons.... He had sown grass-seed in the new lot; the wall was finished and vines had been planted at its base. But the lot had to his eyes an unsubstantial look. He had an almost superstitious feeling that it had been bought with a price.
He had gone back for the Chinese coat the Monday morning after they were there. He was waiting at the door when the store opened and he hurried directly to the first floor, too impatient to wait for the elevator to make its trip.
The woman saw him coming. She stopped her work and waited.... He fancied her look was a little startled.
He told her he would take the coat. He would pay part on it and have the rest charged—he would take it with him.
Little by little he grasped the fact that the coat was gone.
“But we were here late! There was no one else.... You had nochanceto sell it!” He could have believed she was lying to him.
But her face was open—and there was unmistakable regret in her voice. “I would have reserved it for you with pleasure over Sunday, or longer—if you had told me.... I thought your wife did not care for it.”
“She—she may have thought the price was a little steep,” he admitted. “But I wanted her to have it—I intended she should have it.”
“I am sorry. A woman came—not two minutes after you left—I still had the coat on my arm. She must have been in the elevator that came up as you went down.... And the minute she saw the coat she stopped. She seemed to know she wanted it.
“I tried it on her right there where we stood, and she bought it and paid for it and took it away.... I don’t think she meant to buy a coat when she came up. She was looking for something else, I think, and happened to see the coat and took a fancy to it and bought it. I’m sorry you did not tell me to save it.... It was much more becoming to your wife. It really seemed made for your wife.” Her voice was full of interest and a gentle kindness.
There were no customers in the store; he felt as if he and the woman were alone in a vast place. She was not a mere clerk. She seemed linked with the coat and its destiny, and with their lives.
He thanked her and went away. And the next day he went again to see if they could get him a duplicate of the coat—if he left an order.
She looked at him tolerantly. “A coat like that,” her glance seemed to say, “is to be taken when you have the chance—and not be coming back for duplicate orders!”
“There was not a chance in a thousand,” she told him.
“I’ll take your order, of course, and I’ll tell Mr. Stewart. But they don’t make those coats by the dozen; and, besides, it is very, very old—hundreds of years, perhaps.”
“I know!” He groaned a little.
He seemed to see all the mysterious color of the coat and the shimmer of its folds—and the look in Eleanor’s face. “I hope you can get something like it for us,” he said inanely.
He had not gone back to inquire again.
They had his address; they were to send him word if they found anything. Mr. Stewart was to make a trip to the East very soon. She would send him word.
It was left at that. They would send him word.... He planned, in the back of his mind, to buy the coat for Eleanor but not to give it to her—not just yet. He would buy it, he thought, and put it away; and when William Archer arrived, he would bring it out and throw it about her shoulders. He liked to fancy her in it and to think how it would help her disappointment about Annabel.... She could enjoy it to the full. She would not be afraid of injuring Annabel or her morals—when William Archer was there.
But no word came and the months slipped by.
THEN, one evening, Richard More came home from the office and found a new look in his house. He knew it, even before he caught a glimpse of a nurse’s white cap hurrying through the lower hall and before the doctor met him at the foot of the stair.
“I am just going,” said the doctor.
“Going—?” Richard caught himself. “Has it come?”
The doctor smiled at him—at the ignorance and youthful credulity of it.
“I shall be back in an hour or two. Everything is going splendidly. Your wife has courage!” And he was gone.
“Courage—Eleanor? Of course she had courage! She was made of it. What did the doctor know about Eleanor’s courage?” He hurried up the stairs... the fleeting sense of life in his quick steps.
She turned to him with the little upward twist of her lip. “It’s all right, Dickie!”
There was no mystery, no courage—only Eleanor’s competent look as if there were dusting to be done, and men-folks were better out of the way.... And yet, behind it, he had a sense that she withdrew to some high place, to a remote, inaccessible cliff, and looked down on him with wide eyes.
He wandered miserably about the house; a part of the night he slept, and part of it he spent at the telephone, sending orders for the doctor and nurse, and answering the door-bell when the response came.... All through the early hours he longed fiercely for the arrival of William Archer. Then, as the night went on, he lost interest in William Archer and his coming, and would have welcomed Annabel.... And he cast aside even the thought of Annabel. He longed only for an end to the misery.... And when at last the doctor said in businesslike tones, “A fine girl, Mr. More!” he only blinked at him, and his tousled hair took on a more rebellious twist.
“A fine girl! What of it!... What had girls to do with this?”
“A fine girl” did not connect herself, in any vague way, with Annabel or with life.... Probably a new girl for the kitchen....! Well, they needed a girl! They needed a dozen girls!
He wandered out miserably—and the doctor followed him with a quick look and something in a glass.
“Here, drink this!”
And Richard drank it—and looked at him stupidly. Something was happening inside his brain—things were growing more settled and luminous. A smile wreathed his face.
“It’s a girl, is it?” he cried jubilantly.
The doctor nodded.
Richard More clapped him on the shoulder.
“Good work!” he said.
The doctor removed the shoulder gently. He turned toward Eleanor’s room.
“You can stay outside,” he said as he disappeared. “We shall not need you for a while.”
And Richard sat down in his parlor on the small sofa and took his tousled head in his hands and held it fast. He may have dozed a little.
When he got up and straggled to the kitchen, he found a strange woman making a fire in the range.
She had finished polishing off the top of the range and held a black cloth in her hand. The hand was very black, he noticed.
He nodded to her and went past her to the door and opened it. The world looked very fresh. The earth and the grass on either side the path were very dark and moist—as if they had been dipped in some curious fluid, and the sky had a kind of luminous quality—swelling with fulness and a freshness of light.
Richard More looked up at it and drew in a deep breath—and with the intake he understood, for the first time, that all men see the earth new-washed one morning in their lives. He had a sense of kinship with the earth and with every one living on the earth.
When he turned back to the kitchen, the woman was putting the black cloth under the sink.
“It’s a girl!” he said. He tried in vain to keep the morning out of his voice.
“Glory be to God!” said the woman. She turned promptly and straightened her back and beamed on him.
He held out his hand to her and grasped the blackened one. He did not suspect how many young fathers had shaken hands with cooks.
His experience was unique. He looked about the kitchen with satisfaction.
Ellen Murphy brought some broth and put it on the gas-range.
He watched her with kindling eyes.
He had been familiar with his kitchen before. But it had not looked to him just as it looked now.... That broth she was heating was forhis wife... to keep her alive. He looked at a row of saucepans with intelligent gaze.
Ellen Murphy tested the broth and went from the room, carrying it with careful hand.
He watched her disappear and looked about the homelike room.... She was going to feed Eleanor. Just outside the door was the ice-box, where he had blundered in the night, breaking up the ice, crushing it for the doctor—they had told him to hurry—hurry!... Ages ago it seemed. And now Eleanor was to have her broth. She was being fed.... Those stew-pans over there were for her. Somehow out of this kitchen, she was to be fed, his baby was being fed—they were all being fed!
He thrust his hands into his pockets and strolled down the back path to the chicken-yard. He peered through the wire at the strutting fowls. His hair was tousled, there were red rims about his eyes—and he had never felt so alive.
The chicken-yard was close to the back fence; on the other side of the fence were chicken-yards that belonged to the houses at the rear.
They were very common people in the houses at the rear. And the houses themselves, facing on the parallel street, were unsightly and small. Richard had taken pains to have no relations with the houses in the rear. He had an instinctive sense that it might lead to complications.
A man was at work in the yard across the fence, digging a post-hole. Richard’s eye fell on him. He came nearer to the fence and leaned on it and looked over. The man looked up.
Richard nodded. “Fine morning!” he called.
The man nodded a reply, and shifted his pipe in his teeth and thrust his shovel into the ground. His back was very broad, Richard noticed. There was something mighty in the swing of the great shoulders as they flung up the earth out of the hole.
Richard watched a minute in silence. The man paused and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He spit casually on his palms and took up the shovel.
Richard’s voice halted him and he put down the shovel and came over to the fence. Richard smiled a little awkwardly.
“I didn’t mean to stop your work. I was wondering what you were going to put there.” He indicated the hole.
The man’s face was broad, and a little stupid. It stared at Richard. Then it looked at the hole.
“It’s a new run I’m making for the hens. The old one’s dusty.”
“I see!... You’ve got a fine lot of birds!” Richard waved a hand.
“Pretty good!” The man eyed them with slow pride. “Got nine eggs yesterday,” he said.
“It’s a great morning!” responded Richard.
The man’s gaze lifted itself to the clear, fresh-washed sky, and came back and rested on the oak-tree across the lot. “You’vegot a pretty place—nice tree over there!”
Richard wheeled and faced it. “I bought that tree last spring—needed more room—for the children—to play.” He spoke with offhand fatherhood.
“You got children?” said the man. His voice was astonished and a little pleased.
“One,” said Richard. “A little girl.”
The man nodded pleasantly. “I never saw her playing round,” he said simply.
“No—well... She was born this morning!” Richard laughed out.
The man smiled at him a slow, deep smile.... And all his face changed in the light.
“Say, that’s great!” he exclaimed.
“You’re a man now!” he added after a minute. The rough face grew quiet and strong. And Richard had a sense of something human that stirred in him. This man digging a post-hole had known!
They stood a minute in silence, looking about them at the morning and the free space of sky and watching the sun that had come over the roofs of the shabby houses.
It shone full in Richard’s eyes. He turned abruptly.
“I must go in for breakfast.”
The man spat absently on the ground and went back to his shovelling.
In the chicken-yard the hens scuttled about, picking up chaff and bits of grain out of the dust. Over in the corner of Richard More’s yard stood the great oak-tree spreading its branches wide; and in the lot at the rear the stolid, unkempt man lifted his shovel and thrust it into the ground and threw out a handful of earth....
As Richard went up the path, he glanced at the house—The blinds of the upper window to the east were being drawn carefully together.... She was lying there in the shaded room. She would be sleeping now.... And suddenly he saw her in the blue coat, as if she lay wrapped in its folds—in her slumber. He had a sense of loss—that he had not given it to her.... Perhaps he should never be able to give it to her now.
He glanced at the oak-tree, standing majestic in the lot across the lawn with its great gnarled roots protruding from the ground. And as he went up the path he had a sudden blind sense, almost of anger, at the oak-tree and its strength.
The thing that surprised Richard most was the ease and efficiency with which Eleanor handled Annabel—she seemed to know by instinct things that Richard could not understand—and that he could not understand how she came by.
If she reached out her hands to take Annabel, her fingers seemed, of themselves, to curve into the places where they would fit into the spineless bundle and give it support. If Richard tried to take up the bundle, his fingers fell away like the legs of the brittle crab and the bundle collapsed, incalculable and helpless.
“How do you do it?” he would say. And he would right Annabel and try to still her protests.
And Eleanor would only smile gently, and send him on some masculine errand while she soothed Annabel’s feelings in the proper way.
Richard had once watched a cat with her kittens and he had a vivid sense of the kinship of method—so had kittens always been brought into the world and tended; so they would always be—likewise babies.
It was not something that could be read in a book or taught in a school.... Eleanor grew very beautiful these days. The little upward twist left her mouth; and if it grew almost too knowing in its sense of the boundless and accumulated wisdom of ages as regards babies—that, Richard decided, was Annabel’s fault.... Really, to know how to manage a little handful like Annabel might make any one proud.
For one thing, Annabel knew exactly what she wanted.... And she usually got it. She was often disciplined on the way to it, and thwarted—but in the end she got what she wanted.
As Richard More watched Annabel’s progress through life, he thought more than once of the regal gesture with which Annabel’s mother had thrown back the Chinese coat and cast it aside for Annabel’s sake....
And now he saw Annabel! Life was often very puzzling. But Richard More had not time to spend working it out. He was too prosperous to puzzle. Whatever he put his hand to seemed to flourish. Men came to have faith in his ventures, and to watch for his investments as pointers to success. His business increased and his family increased.... William Archer came in due season, and then Claude, and then Martin, and Christine, and that was the end.
The children grew up healthy and normal, except Claude. There seemed some obscure trouble with the boy, and before he was six years old it had declared itself. Within a year, in spite of expensive doctors and care, he died. That had been their first and their only real sorrow.
It was when they came back to the house from the funeral that he told Eleanor of his second attempt to get the coat for her.... They were alone in the house. The children had been sent away during the child’s illness and had not come back.
He fancied Eleanor drooped a little as they came into the house; and his mind went out for something to comfort her.... It encountered the Chinese coat.
So, as they sat together in the house that seemed so curiously desolate and different from their usual life together, he told her of the morning he went back to Stewart’s and of his disappointment, and of how he had never quite given up hope that some day Stewart would send for him and tell him to come and get the coat.
She listened with wide, set eyes—almost like a child to a fairy-tale.
“That was very dear of you, Richard!” she said. And she smiled to him, almost as she smiled to the children, and he felt the quick tears in his eyes.
And then suddenly she had thrown herself in his arms.
“Oh, Dick, I am so lonely!” she cried.
And that was the way she came back to him.
After that, although she still guided the children and her hand was on the helm in all decisions, it was to Richard she turned for assurance.
She had come apparently to uncharted waters, and she did not try to make soundings.
And Richard More was as puzzled by her reliance on him as he had been by her wisdom with babies and with life.
It did not occur to him that in her reliance, too, there might be a kind of wisdom—not to be expounded by logic, perhaps—but deep as life.... For himself, he knew that he had not wisdom to advise any one. He simply did what he could—and when his advice prospered, he was as naively and proudly surprised as any one.
THE children were brought up in the oak-tree. Richard made a cradle-box at the end of one of the low boughs that almost swept the ground and there was always one baby in the box on the bough and one on the ground among the roots—a new one that had just come down from the bough.
And then, presently, one of those on the ground—with the help of Eleanor and a chair—climbed to the first branches close to the trunk.... Then another one climbed, and another, till they were all swarming in the great oak—no longer close to the trunk, but far out on the branches among the leaves, swinging and lilting in the wind.
The boys played they were sailors climbing the masts that swayed giddily beneath them; they sat on cross-beams and gazed out to sea; or they were on the scaffolding of tall buildings, hammering great steel beams into place as the sky-scrapers rose in the air; or they were the advance force of an army—scouting aeroplanes, swooping toward a besieged town.
Between the branches of the great tree and the wind that swayed them or drove shrilly against them, the boys adventured on life. But Annabel made of the tree an outdoor home as like the one across the lawn as the leaves and branches and a great trunk shooting up through the centre would permit. The tree-trunk was the chimney, of course, and she had roaring fires in every room, up stairs and down, and cooking and sweeping and dusting, with lively flourishes and much running up and down stairs. She was a little lonely at times, because the boys—who did not really care for the game—would suddenly desert her for excursions in the aeroplanes, or to shoot arrows from the house-top. She was liable to find herself, at any moment, with her house swept and dusted, and no one to live in it with her. Only down from the top among the leaves and the swaying limbs would come wild growls and quick whispers—intent and breathless calls to action.... Then Annabel would leave her dust-cloths and her pots and pans, and creep stealthily up, up, up—till the topmost branch was reached, and the wind blew in her face, and her little pigtails stood straight out with delight and she was filled with the glow of life. For days she would play the game in the top of the tree. And then, some morning, she would find herself back among her treasures—her sticks and bits of moss and leaves, close to the trunk of the tree, going up and down stairs in happy content; and her imagination would grow deep and intent. Her face, pressed against the bark, seemed no longer to need the swing of the dangerous branches and the surging of the wind to rouse it. She would sit close to the trunk of the tree on a solid limb, and play the great game almost without stirring—a deep silent game that stirred her to the very core.... The boys were willing to play house with her and sometimes to sweep and dust a little along the branches, and visit back and forth, upstairs and down. But as for sitting on a limb, intent and still, gazing at what went on beneath the line of sight!... They left her sitting there alone, gazing at nothing, and fled to the top of the tree and yelled with shrill vacant calls of delight and relief.
But when the youngest baby, who proved happily to be a girl, when the time for climbing came—when this youngest baby had been pulled and boosted by Annabel up into the tree beside her, and when two of them could sit happily side by side, looking at each other in silence, then there seemed a fairer division of forces.
Gradually the boys, when they ventured far out on dangerous limbs, would feel a silent tug pulling them back to the heart of things.
And underneath the tree where the children played, Eleanor sat with her sewing or reading or with the youngest baby on her lap, and sang to it or played with it till it was time for it to sleep in its cradle-box in the tree....
And Richard coming home at night, or at noon on half-holidays, would find his family there, and he would climb with the boys, or sit with Eleanor under the tree, or play with the youngest baby. Or he would stroll with his pipe back and forth across the lawn, puffing it and listening to the voices that came from the tree, or watch his wife, with the sunlight and the shadow-leaves falling on her work.
Sometimes he took them all for excursions into the country—at first in street-cars, crowding and piling in; and then in the old surrey that was big enough to carry them all; and at last in the touring-car that swept up the miles.
There was no pause in his prosperity; though the tax of the growing family made it a little difficult sometimes to adjust business and family demands.... And then suddenly the money began to come in and pile up faster than he could use it. He was counted one of the solid men of the region; and the family life expanded on all sides. The problem now was not whether the business could afford it, but whether the children’s characters could afford it.
Richard and Eleanor sought for expensive schools that would force a child to live simply and fare hard and think keen and straight; and when no such schools were to be found, Richard took William Archer out of the expensive school that was making a nonentity of him, and put him into the business and drove him hard.
And Annabel was brought home on the plea that her mother needed her.
She was not quite strong that year, it seemed.
So Annabel took charge of the house—and of Eleanor and Richard, and of every one in sight.
THAT Annabel knew her own mind, there was no question; and that Annabel also knew her mother’s mind, there was no question in Annabel’s mind.... She was not perhaps altogether responsible for this feeling about her mother. It would have taken a more astute person than Annabel to discover that all that went on underneath Eleanor More’s quiet look was not open for the world to read.
Annabel loved her mother and trusted her; and to the best of her ability she took care of her—though she knew, with a kind of fierce pity, that her mother could never be of her own generation, and that she could not know the real nature of the plans and visions that swept before that generation.
“I am a suffragist!” she announced one day in swift assertion.
And Eleanor More looked up with a quiet smile. “I am one, too,” she replied.
Annabel stared at her a minute. “I didn’t know you were—a suffragist!”
Then she looked at her with slow suspicion.
“You know what a suffragist is, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Eleanor went on with her sewing.
“Oh—I Well.... am going to march—in the procession!” She was watching her mother’s face.
“When is the procession?” There was a little upward twist to Eleanor’s lip that might have been amusement at her position, or dismay. “When did you say the procession is?”
“Next week—Monday.... You going to march?”
“Yes.” Eleanor threaded her needle and drew in the end and twisted it into a skilful knot. “Yes—I think I shall march.” It was quite casual, and she inspected her work.
“Well—!” Annabel turned it in her mind. “You’d better get a short skirt—if you are going to march. You haven’t a thing that clears the mud!”
“Very well.”
So Annabel had out her mother’s wardrobe and turned and planned, and had a woman in to shorten a skirt for her. And all the days before the parade, she watched her solicitously, and waited on her—as if she were an invalid.
“I can’t bear to have you march in that old parade!” she exclaimed almost viciously.
“I don’t mind it.”
“I don’t suppose you do.... But I mind it for you!” She rumpled her hair, with a quick gesture, like a boy’s. “I’ve no idea what they’ll do. They may throw sticks at you, or—eggs!”
“Well, if it doesn’t hurt you, it won’t hurt me,” said Eleanor placidly.
Annabel stared at her. Then she smiled. She shook her head.
“It isn’t the same thing,” she declared. “You little know—how much it isn’t the same thing!”
And, after all, the parade was not so terrible. They assembled quietly, and with importance, at the city hall and marched through the principal streets, and had speeches; and Eleanor and Annabel marched side by side.
And Annabel was so busy guarding her mother from unpleasant experiences, and looking after her comfort, and providing places for her to sit down when the procession stopped a minute, that she quite forgot to have experiences of her own or to be thrilled or frightened at her temerity, or any of the exciting things that her imagination had cast beforehand.
“I call it a rather tame performance!” she declared at dinner that night, after it was over, “—a rather tame performance!”
And Richard, who had stood on the sidewalk and watched his wife and daughter march past, with a little amused smile, nodded assent.
“You made a mistake taking your mother, perhaps?” he suggested mildly.
Annabel cast a quick glance at her mother’s unperturbed face, and her look lightened.
“Mother’s a sport!” she declared. “I didn’t take her! She took herself!” She was silent a minute.... Then—slowly: “I’m not so sure I shouldn’t have backed out the last minute, you know—if mother hadn’t been so set on going!” She looked at her meditatively. “You can’t tell what mother will do!” she declared. “She does the queerest things—queer forher, I mean!”
The next week Annabel became flitting in her movements. She began to take an interest in her clothes, and evolved dainty, distracting gowns that made her piquant face almost beautiful. And she multiplied new ways of doing her hair—a new way for each new hat—till William Archer declared she might as well be a week-end visitor.
“Don’t you like it?” she demanded. She turned her head for inspection. She had come down to luncheon in a new hat that defied description.
William Archer surveyed it. “Well—it’s different! I can’t say it’s my idea of a suffragist hat!”
“I’m not a suffragist,” said Annabel calmly.
“How long since?” asked William Archer.
“Oh—quite a while.”
Eleanor was looking on with a little, amused smile.
“Turncoat!” said William Archer.
“I don’t care.... I’d rather be a turncoat than a—frump!”
“You don’t have to be——!”
“They are—most of them—!” said Annabel viciously.
“Why, Annabel—!” It was Eleanor’s voice. “Some of the nicest women are suffragists. I saw some very fine ones in the parade.”
Annabel turned indignant eyes on her.
“I sawonethere! And I hope never to see her again!” She said it severely, and the family laughed out.
She nodded her head sagely under its tilting hat that came down well over one eye, and gave her a young and military look—as if she were winning her spurs.
“You may laugh!” she declared. “It’s no place for mother!”
“All right for you, I suppose?” suggested her father teasingly.
“I told you I’d got over it,” she said firmly.
“Like the measles!” said William Archer.
She regarded him thoughtfully. “Something like that—you don’t have it, and you feel well—perfectly well—and then you talk with some one, or have tea or something, and you get all excited and uncomfortable——”
“And break out—” said William Archer.
“Yes—and see your mother walking in the middle of the street—ploughing along!” Her indignant glance was on Eleanor’s calm face. “I felt just ashamed!” she declared.
“I thought mother walked rather well!” said Richard.
“Yes—Iwas quite proud of mother!” said William Archer.
“Well—I hope it’s the last time you’ll have a chance to ’be proud of mother’—that way!... I never dreamed she would do it!—What made you?” she asked. She turned an accusing look on her.
“Why—I think I—caught it, perhaps,” said Eleanor. “Isn’t your hat just a little far forward, dear?”
Annabel jumped up and went to the glass and adjusted the hat with conscientious touch. “It looks so simple!” she murmured. “But it really takesbrains!—There—how is that?” She turned for approval, with serious, intent look.
“Just like a French cadet!” said William Archer. He had finished luncheon, and was standing in the doorway looking back.
She made a little mouth at him, and when he had gone she came and stood by her father’s chair. He looked up.
“Where are you off to?” he asked.
“There’s the matinee party first; and then Helen’s tea—it’s her day—and then Harold is going to take me for a spin, if we get out in time.... Good-by, dear things! I’ll see you at dinner.”
She bent and kissed them, and all the elusive perfume and shining color and the little flitting ends of ribbon fluttered with her from the room.
Richard More smiled across at his wife. “EnterHamlet!” he said.
“Yes—It’s all decided!” she added softly.
He put down his cup.
“When?”
“Ages ago—in heaven, I suppose.” She smiled a little wistfully.
He looked relieved. “Oh—thatkind of deciding!”
They were alone at dinner. Annabel came in late and joined them, and there were only the three of them in the big room. It was very restful—with the shaded light from the candles; and there was a veiled happiness in the girl’s smile—a little wistful look that flitted through it when it rested on her mother’s face.
Richard More watched in silence.
“Did you have a good time?” he asked abruptly.
“Fine!” She crumbled her bread absently.
“What make of car is he running now?”
“What make—Oh—!” She looked up. “I didn’t notice.”
She was scanning her mother’s face—as if she had not quite seen her before.
“I saw the prettiest thing to-day, mother—pretty for you!” She leaned forward, still gazing at her. “It would just suit you!”
“Yes?” Eleanor’s eyes met the look behind the words. “What was it?”
“A queer sort of garment—not a kimono exactly, and not a coat—just a garment.” She threw open her arms with a whimsical gesture.
Her mother’s look grew veiled. “Where was it?—where did you see it?”
“At Helen’s tea. Mrs. Martin had it.... She helped pour and she had it on when she came in. She threw it off in the hall—a kind of regal thing, you know!” She made another gesture and laughed. “And I thought in a flash ofyou!”
Richard More was looking at his wife—her glance met his.
“I am too old to wear a thing like that,” she said tranquilly.
The girl shook her head. “It wasn’t old, and it wasn’t young.... It was just like you!” She said it softly, half to herself under her breath, and she nodded to her father with a little shy pleasure in the words. “I kept thinking all the time we were driving—how beautiful you would look in it.”
“What color was it?” asked Richard More.
“A sort of blue shade—very deep and rich—and gold things running all over it—a perfectly stunning thing!”
“So you think your mother would look well in something like that?” he said gravely.
His face was turned to his wife.
“I should like to see her in it,” said the girl wistfully. “I never thought before how beautiful mother is! She’s always been—just mother!... I think she’s growing pretty,” she added reflectively. She was gazing at her with puzzled eyes.
“Go on—tell about the coat!” said Eleanor.
“Why—that’s all! I only saw it as she threw it off—and when we came out, it lay there across a chair and Harold said, ’What a stunning thing!’ and I said, ’Yes—for mother!’.rdquo; She laughed and Eleanor smiled faintly.
“And then what did he say?”
The girl hesitated a minute.
“Youaregrowing pretty, you know!” she replied irrelevantly. “And you’re almost the only woman I know that has wrinkles—nice ones!”
“Silly child!” said Eleanor. But her face flushed a little.
Annabel nodded. “I’ve been puzzling about it—about faces—lots of those suffrage women—I didn’t know what it was—I couldn’t make out! But that’s it—they haven’t any wrinkles!” She said it triumphantly.
“Theydokeep young,” said Richard More thoughtfully.
She turned on him almost fiercely. “It isn’t young! It’s—massage! I’ve got so I just seem to hate that look—all puffed out and smooth and softish like putty. It’s a kind of chromo-face,” she said indignantly—“a just-as-good face, you know!”
Her father laughed out.
She nodded savagely. “That’s the way I feel, and I didn’t know—till to-day.” Her voice grew gentle.
“When I get old I’m going to have wrinkles—like mother!”
“There’s one on your nose, now—where you’re turning it up,” said Richard.
“I don’t care.... Now mother’s wrinkles”—she leaned forward and touched one lightly with her finger—“mother’s wrinkles are—beautiful!”
“You flatter me!” said Eleanor, with a little serene smile mocking the light in her face.
“There—! That’s it! Do you see?” She motioned to her father. “That little line that makes fun of you!—I’m going to have one just like that!” She leaned back and looked at the wrinkle with artistic approval.
Suddenly she jumped up and came and put her arms around her mother’s neck.
“Do you think I would let any one massage that wrinkle off your face—you dear old thing, you!” She bent and kissed the wrinkle.
And Eleanor put up a hand to the smooth cheek, close against her own—with the little flush coming and going in it.
“What did Harold say?” she asked.