Dinner on Sunday, the most elaborate feast of the week for the Madisons, was always set for one o’clock in the afternoon, and sometimes began before two, but not to-day: the escorts of both daughters remained, and a change of costume by Cora occasioned a long postponement. Justice demands the admission that her reappearance in a glamour of lilac was reward for the delay; nothing more ravishing was ever seen, she was warrantably informed by the quicker of the two guests, in a moment’s whispered tete-a-tete across the banisters as she descended. Another wait followed while she prettily arranged upon the table some dozens of asters from a small garden-bed, tilled, planted, and tended by Laura. Meanwhile, Mrs. Madison constantly turned the other cheek to the cook. Laura assisted in the pacification; Hedrick froze the ice-cream to an impenetrable solidity; and the nominal head of the family sat upon the front porch with the two young men, and wiped his wrists and rambled politically till they were summoned to the dining-room.
Cora did the talking for the table. She was in high spirits; no trace remained of a haggard night: there was a bloom upon her—she was radiant. Her gayety may have had some inspiration in her daring, for round her throat she wore a miraculously slender chain of gold and enamel, with a pendant of minute pale sapphires scrolled about a rather large and very white diamond. Laura started when she saw it, and involuntarily threw a glance almost of terror at Richard Lindley. But that melancholy and absent-minded gentleman observed neither the glance nor the jewel. He saw Cora’s eyes, when they were vouchsafed to his vision, and when they were not he apparently saw nothing at all.
With the general exodus from the table, Cora asked Laura to come to the piano and play, a request which brought a snort from Hedrick, who was taken off his guard. Catching Laura’s eye, he applied a handkerchief with renewed presence of mind, affecting to have sneezed, and stared searchingly over it at Corliss. He perceived that the man remained unmoved, evidently already informed that it was Laura who was the musician. Cora must be going it pretty fast this time: such was the form of her brother’s deduction.
When Laura opened the piano, Richard had taken a seat beside Cora, and Corliss stood leaning in the doorway. The player lost herself in a wandering medley, echoes from “Boheme” and “Pagliacci”; then drifted into improvisation and played her heart into it magnificently—a heart released to happiness. The still air of the room filled with wonderful, golden sound: a song like the song of a mother flying from earth to a child in the stars, a torrential tenderness, unpent and glorying in freedom. The flooding, triumphant chords rose, crashed—stopped with a shattering abruptness. Laura’s hands fell to her sides, then were raised to her glowing face and concealed it for a moment. She shivered; a quick, deep sigh heaved her breast; and she came back to herself like a prisoner leaving a window at the warden’s voice.
She turned. Cora and Corliss had left the room. Richard was sitting beside a vacant chair, staring helplessly at the open door.
If he had been vaguely conscious of Laura’s playing, which is possible, certainly he was unaware that it had ceased.
“The others have gone out to the porch,” she said composedly, and rose. “Shan’t we join them?”
“What?” he returned, blankly. “I beg your pardon——”
“Let’s go out on the porch with the others.”
“No, I——” He got to his feet confusedly. “I was thinking—— I believe I’d best be going home.”
“Not `best,’ I think,” she said. “Not even better!”
“I don’t see,” he said, his perplexity only increased.
“Mr. Corliss would,” she retorted quickly. “Come on: we’ll go and sit with them.” And she compelled his obedience by preceding him with such a confident assumption that he would follow that he did.
The fugitive pair were not upon the porch, however; they were discovered in the shade of a tree behind the house, seated upon a rug, and occupied in a conversation which would not have disturbed a sick-room. The pursuers came upon them, boldly sat beside them; and Laura began to talk with unwonted fluency to Corliss, but within five minutes found herself alone with Richard Lindley upon the rug. Cora had promised to show Mr. Corliss an “old print” in the library—so Cora said.
Lindley gave the remaining lady a desolate and faintly reproachful look. He was kind, but he was a man; and Laura saw that this last abandonment was being attributed in part to her.
She reddened, and, being not an angel, observed with crispness: “Certainly. You’re quite right: it’s my fault!”
“What did you say?” he asked vacantly.
She looked at him rather fixedly; his own gaze had returned to the angle of the house beyond which the other couple had just disappeared. “I said,” she answered, slowly, “I thought it wouldn’t rain this, afternoon.”
His wistful eyes absently swept the serene sky which had been cloudless for several days. “No, I suppose not,” he murmured.
“Richard,” she said with a little sharpness, “will you please listen to me for a moment?”
“Oh—what?” He was like a diver coming up out of deep water. “What did you say?” He laughed apologetically. “Wasn’t I listening? I beg your pardon. What is it, Laura?”
“Why do you let Mr. Corliss take Cora away from you like that?” she asked gravely.
“He doesn’t,” the young man returned with a rueful shake of the head. “Don’t you see? It’s Cora that goes.”
“Why do you let her, then?”
He sighed. “I don’t seem to be able to keep up with Cora, especially when she’s punishing me. I couldn’t do something she asked me to, last night——”
“Invest with Mr. Corliss?” asked Laura quickly.
“Yes. It seemed to trouble her that I couldn’t. She’s convinced it’s a good thing: she thinks it would make a great fortune for us——”
“`Us’?” repeated Laura gently. “You mean for you and her? When you’re——”
“When we’re married. Yes,” he said thoughtfully, “that’s the way she stated it. She wanted me to put in all I have——”
“Don’t do it!” said Laura decidedly.
He glanced at her with sharp inquiry. “Do you mean you would distrust Mr. Corliss?”
“I wasn’t thinking of that: I don’t know whether I’d trust him or not—I think I wouldn’t; there’s something veiled about him, and I don’t believe he is an easy man to know. What I meant was that I don’t believe it would really be a good thing for you with Cora.”
“It would please her, of course—thinking I deferred so much to her judgment.”
“Don’t do it!” she said again, impulsively.
“I don’t see how I can,” he returned sorrowfully.
“It’s my work for all the years since I got out of college, and if I lost it I’d have to begin all over again. It would mean postponing everything. Cora isn’t a girl you can ask to share a little salary, and if it were a question of years, perhaps— perhaps Cora might not feel she could wait for me, you see.”
He made this explanation with plaintive and boyish sincerity, hesitatingly, and as if pleading a cause. And Laura, after a long look at him, turned away, and in her eyes were actual tears of compassion for the incredible simpleton.
“I see,” she said. “Perhaps she might not.”
“Of course,” he went on, “she’s fond of having nice things, and she thinks this is a great chance for us to be millionaires; and then, too, I think she may feel that it would please Mr. Corliss and help to save him from disappointment. She seems to have taken a great fancy to him.”
Laura glanced at him, but did not speak.
“Heisattractive,” continued Richard feebly. “I think he has a great deal of what people call `magnetism’: he’s the kind of man who somehow makes you want to do what he wants you to. He seems a manly, straightforward sort, too—so far as one can tell—and when he came to me with his scheme I was strongly inclined to go into it. But it is too big a gamble, and I can’t, though I was sorry to disappoint him myself. He was perfectly cheerful about it and so pleasant it made me feel small. I don’t wonder at all that Cora likes him so much. Besides, he seems to understand her.”
Laura looked very grave. “I think he does,” she said slowly.
“And then he’s `different,’” said Richard. “He’s more a `man of the world’ than most of us here: she never saw anything just like him before, and she’s seenusall her life. She likes change, of course. That’s natural,” he said gently. “Poor Vilas says she wants a man to be different every day, and if he isn’t, then she wants a different man every day.”
“You’ve rather taken Ray Vilas under your wing, haven’t you?” asked Laura.
“Oh, no,” he answered deprecatingly. “I only try to keep him with me so he’ll stay away from downtown as much as possible.”
“Does he talk much of Cora?”
“All the time. There’s no stopping him. I suppose he can’t help it, because he thinks of nothing else.”
“Isn’t that rather—rather queer for you?”
“`Queer’?” he repeated.
“No, I suppose not!” She laughed impatiently. “And probably you don’t think it’s `queer’ of you to sit here helplessly, and let another man take your place——”
“But I don’t `let’ him, Laura,” he protested.
“No, he just does it!”
“Well,” he smiled, “you must admit my efforts to supplant him haven’t——”
“It won’t take any effort now,” she said, rising quickly. Valentine Corliss came into their view upon the sidewalk in front, taking his departure. Seeing that they observed him, he lifted his hat to Laura and nodded a cordial good-day to Lindley. Then he went on.
Just before he reached the corner of the lot, he encountered upon the pavement a citizen of elderly and plain appearance, strolling with a grandchild. The two men met and passed, each upon his opposite way, without pausing and without salutation, and neither Richard nor Laura, whose eyes were upon the meeting, perceived that they had taken cognizance of each other. But one had asked a question and the other had answered.
Mr. Pryor spoke in a low monotone, with a rapidity as singular as the restrained but perceptible emphasis he put upon one word of his question.
“I got you in the park,” he said; and it is to be deduced that “got” was argot. “You’re notdoinganything here, are you?”
“No!” answered Corliss with condensed venom, his back already to the other. He fanned himself with his hat as he went on. Mr. Pryor strolled up the street with imperturbable benevolence.
“Your coast is cleared,” said Laura, “since you wouldn’t clear it yourself.”
“Wish me luck,” said Richard as he left her.
She nodded brightly.
Before he disappeared, he looked back to her again (which profoundly surprised her) and smiled rather disconsolately, shaking his head as in prophecy of no very encouraging reception indoors. The manner of this glance recalled to Laura what his mother had once said of him. “Richard is one of those sweet, helpless men that some women adore and others despise. They fall in love with the ones that despise them.”
An ostentatious cough made her face about, being obviously designed to that effect; and she beheld her brother in the act of walking slowly across the yard with his back to her. He halted upon the border of her small garden of asters, regarded it anxiously, then spread his handkerchief upon the ground, knelt upon it, and with thoughtful care uprooted a few weeds which were beginning to sprout, and also such vagrant blades of grass as encroached upon the floral territory. He had the air of a virtuous man performing a good action which would never become known. Plainly, he thought himself in solitude and all unobserved.
It was a touching picture, pious and humble. Done into coloured glass, the kneeling boy and the asters—submerged in ardent sunshine—would have appropriately enriched a cathedral: Boyhood of Saint Florus the Gardener.
Laura heartlessly turned her back, and, affecting an interest in her sleeve, very soon experienced the sensation of being stared at with some poignancy from behind. Unchanged in attitude, she unravelled an imaginary thread, whereupon the cough reached her again, shrill and loud, its insistence not lacking in pathos.
She approached him, driftingly. No sign that he was aware came from the busied boy, though he coughed again, hollowly now—a proof that he was an artist. “All right, Hedrick,” she said kindly. “I heard you the first time.”
He looked up with utter incomprehension. “I’m afraid I’ve caught cold,” he said, simply. “I got a good many weeds out before breakfast, and the ground was damp.”
Hedrick was of the New School: everything direct, real, no striving for effect, no pressure on the stroke. He did his work: you could take it or leave it.
“You mustn’t strain so, dear,” returned his sister, shaking her head. “It won’t last if you do. You see this is only the first day.”
Struck to the heart by so brutal a misconception, he put all his wrongs into one look, rose in manly dignity, picked up his handkerchief, and left her.
Her eyes followed him, not without remorse: it was an exit which would have moved the bass-violist of a theatre orchestra. Sighing, she went to her own room by way of the kitchen and the back-stairs, and, having locked her door, brought the padlocked book from its hiding-place.
“I think I should not have played as I did, an hour ago,” she wrote. “It stirs me too greatly and I am afraid it makes me inclined to self-pity afterward, and I must never let myself feelthat! If I once begin to feel sorry for myself. . . . But Iwillnot! No. You are here in the world. You exist. Youare! That is the great thing to know and it must be enough for me. It is. I played to You. I playedjust loveto you—all the yearning tenderness—all the supreme kindness I want to give you. Isn’t love really just glorified kindness? No, there is something more. . . . I feel it, though I do not know how to say it. But it was in my playing—I played it and played it. Suddenly I felt that in my playing I had shouted it from the housetops, that I had told the secret to all the world andeverybodyknew. I stopped, and for a moment it seemed to me that I was dying of shame. But no one understood. No one had even listened. . . . Sometimes it seems to me that I am like Cora, that I am very deeply her sister in some things. My heart goes all to You—my revelation of it, my release of it, my outlet of it is all here in these pages (except when I play as I did to-day and as I shall not play again) and perhaps the writing keeps me quiet. Cora scatters her own releasings: she is looking for the You she may never find; and perhaps the penalty for scattering is never finding. Sometimes I think the seeking has reacted and that now she seeks only what will make her feel. I hope she has not found it: I am afraid of this new man—not only for your sake, dear. I felt repelled by his glance at me the first time I saw him. I did not like it—I cannot say just why, unless that it seemed too intimate. I am afraid of him for her, which is a queer sort of feeling because she has alw——”
Laura’s writing stopped there, for that day, interrupted by a hurried rapping upon the door and her mother’s voice calling her with stress and urgency.
The opening of the door revealed Mrs. Madison in a state of anxious perturbation, and admitted the sound of loud weeping and agitated voices from below.
“Please go down,” implored the mother. “You can do more with her than I can. She and your father have been having a terrible scene since Richard went home.”
Laura hurried down to the library.
“Oh,comein, Laura!” cried her sister, as Laura appeared in the doorway. “Don’tstandthere! Come in if you want to take part in a grand old family row!” With a furious and tear-stained face, she was confronting her father who stood before her in a resolute attitude and a profuse perspiration. “Shut the door!” shouted Cora violently, adding, as Laura obeyed, “Do you want that little Pest in here? Probably he’s eavesdropping anyway. But what difference does it make? I don’t care. Let him hear! Let anybody hear that wants to! They can hear how I’m tortured if they like. I didn’t close my eyes last night, and now I’m being tortured. Papa!” She stamped her foot. “Are you going to take back that insult to me?”
“`Insult’?” repeated her father, in angry astonishment.
“Pshaw,” said Laura, laughing soothingly and coming to her. “You know that’s nonsense, Cora. Kind old papa couldn’t do that if he tried. Dear, you know he never insulted anybody in his——”
“Don’t touch me!” screamed Cora, repulsing her. “Listen, if you’ve got to, but let me alone. He did too! He did! Heknowswhat he said!”
“I do not!”
“He does! He does!” cried Cora. “He said that I was—I was too much `interested’ in Mr. Corliss.”
“Is that an `insult’?” the father demanded sharply.
“It was the way he said it,” Cora protested, sobbing. “He meant something he didn’tsay. He did! He did! Hemeantto insult me!”
“I did nothing of the kind,” shouted the old man.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I said I couldn’t understand your getting so excited about the fellow’s affairs and that you seemed to take a mighty sudden interest in him.”
“Well, what if Ido?” she screamed. “Haven’t I a right to be interested in what I choose? I’ve got to be interested insomething, haven’t I?Youdon’t make life very interesting, do you? Do you think it’s interesting to spend the summer in this horrible old house with the paper falling off the walls and our rotten old furniture that I work my hands off trying to make look decent and can’t, and every other girl I know at the seashore with motor-cars and motor-boats, or getting a trip abroad and buying her clothes in Paris? What doyouoffer to interest me?”
The unfortunate man hung his head. “I don’t see what all that has to do with it——”
She seemed to leap at him. “Youdon’t? Youdon’t?”
“No, I don’t. And I don’t see why you’re so crazy to please young Corliss about this business unless you’re infatuated with him. I had an idea—and I was pleased with it, too, because Richard’s a steady fellow—that you were just about engaged to Richard Lindley, and——”
“Engaged!” she cried, repeating the word with bitter contempt. “Engaged! You don’t suppose I’ll marry him unless I want to, do you? I will if it suits me. I won’t if it suits me not to; understand that! I don’t consider myself engaged to anybody, and you needn’t either. What on earth has that got to do with your keeping Richard Lindley from doing what Mr. Corliss wants him to?”
“I’m not keeping him from anything. He didn’t say——”
“He did!” stormed Cora. “He said he would if you went into it. He told me this afternoon, an hour ago.”
“Now wait,” said Madison. “I talked this over with Richard two days ago——”
Cora stamped her foot again in frantic exasperation. “I’m talking about this afternoon!”
“Two days ago,” he repeated doggedly; “and we came to the same conclusion: it won’t do. He said he couldn’t go into it unless he went over there to Italy—and saw for himself just what he was putting his money into, and Corliss had told him that it couldn’t be done; that there wasn’t time, and showed him a cablegram from his Italian partner saying the secret had leaked out and that they’d have to form the company in Naples and sell the stock over there if it couldn’t be done here within the next week. Corliss said he had to ask for an immediate answer, and so Richard told him no, yesterday.”
“Oh, my God!” groaned Cora. “What has that got to do withyourgoing into it? You’re not going to risk any money! I don’t ask you tospendanything, do I? You haven’t got it if I did. All Mr. Corliss wants is your name. Can’t you give eventhat? What importance is it?”
“Well, if it isn’t important, what difference does it make whether I give it or not?”
She flung up her arms as in despairing appeal for patience. “Itisimportant to him! Richard will do it if you will be secretary of the company: he promised me. Mr. Corliss told me your name was worth everything here: that men said downtown you could have been rich long ago if you hadn’t been so square. Richard trusts you; he says you’re the most trusted man in town——”
“That’s why I can’t do it,” he interrupted.
“No!” Her vehemence increased suddenly to its utmost. “No! Don’t you say that, because it’s a lie. That isn’t the reason you won’t do it. You won’t do it because you think it would pleaseme! You’re afraid it might make mehappy! Happy—happy—happy!” She beat her breast and cast herself headlong upon the sofa, sobbing wildly. “Don’t come near me!” she screamed at Laura, and sprang to her feet again, dishevelled and frantic. “Oh, Christ in heaven! is there such a thing as happiness in this beast of a world? I want to leave it. I want to go away: I wantsoto die: Why can’t I? Why can’t I! Why can’t I! Oh, God, whycan’tI die? Why can’t——”
Her passion culminated in a shriek: she gasped, was convulsed from head to foot for a dreadful moment, tore at the bosom of her dress with rigid bent fingers, swayed; then collapsed all at once. Laura caught her, and got her upon the sofa. In the hall, Mrs. Madison could be heard running and screaming to Hedrick to go for the doctor. Next instant, she burst into the room with brandy and camphor.
“I could only find these; the ammonia bottle’s empty,” she panted; and the miserable father started hatless, for the drug-store, a faint, choked wail from the stricken girl sounding in his ears: “It’s—it’s my heart, mamma.”
It was four blocks to the nearest pharmacy; he made what haste he could in the great heat, but to himself he seemed double his usual weight; and the more he tried to hurry, the less speed appeared obtainable from his heavy legs. When he reached the place at last, he found it crowded with noisy customers about the “soda-fount”; and the clerks were stonily slow: they seemed to know that they were “already in eternity.” He got very short of breath on the way home; he ceased to perspire and became unnaturally dry; the air was aflame and the sun shot fire upon his bare head. His feet inclined to strange disobediences: he walked the last block waveringly. A solemn Hedrick met him at the door.
“They’ve got her to bed,” announced the boy. “The doctor’s up there.”
“Take this ammonia up,” said Madison huskily, and sat down upon a lower step of the stairway with a jolt, closing his eyes.
“You sick, too?” asked Hedrick.
“No. Run along with that ammonia.”
It seemed to Madison a long time that he sat there alone, and he felt very dizzy. Once he tried to rise, but had to give it up and remain sitting with his eyes shut. At last he heard Cora’s door open and close; and his wife and the doctor came slowly down the stairs, Mrs. Madison talking in the anxious yet relieved voice of one who leaves a sick-room wherein the physician pronounces progress encouraging.
“And you’resureher heart trouble isn’t organic?” she asked.
“Her heart is all right,” her companion assured her. “There’s nothing serious; the trouble is nervous. I think you’ll find she’ll be better after a good sleep. Just keep her quiet. Hadn’t she been in a state of considerable excitement?”
“Ye-es—she——”
“Ah! A little upset on account of opposition to a plan she’d formed, perhaps?”
“Well—partly,” assented the mother.
“I see,” he returned, adding with some dryness: “I thought it just possible.”
Madison got to his feet, and stepped down from the stairs for them to pass him. He leaned heavily against the wall.
“You think she’s going to be all right, Sloane?” he asked with an effort.
“No cause to worry,” returned the physician. “You can let her stay in bed to-day if she wants to but——” He broke off, looking keenly at Madison’s face, which was the colour of poppies. “Hello! what’s up withyou?”
“I’m all—right.”
“Oh, you are?” retorted Sloane with sarcasm. “Sit down,” he commanded. “Sit right where you are—on the stairs, here,” and, having enforced the order, took a stethoscope from his pocket. “Get him a glass of water,” he said to Hedrick, who was at his elbow.
“Doctor!” exclaimed Mrs. Madison. “Heisn’t going to be sick, is he? You don’t think he’s sicknow?”
“I shouldn’t call him very well,” answered the physician rather grimly, placing his stethoscope upon Madison’s breast. “Get his room ready for him.” She gave him a piteous look, struck with fear; then obeyed a gesture and ran flutteringly up the stairs.
“I’m all right now,” panted Madison, drinking the water Hedrick brought him.
“You’re not so darned all right,” said Sloane coolly, as he pocketed his stethoscope. “Come, let me help you up. We’re going to get you to bed.”
There was an effort at protest, but the physician had his way, and the two ascended the stairs slowly, Sloane’s arm round his new patient. At Cora’s door, the latter paused.
“What’s the matter?”
“I want,” said Madison thickly—“I want—to speak to Cora.”
“We’ll pass that up just now,” returned the other brusquely, and led him on. Madison was almost helpless: he murmured in a husky, uncertain voice, and suffered himself to be put to bed. There, the doctor “worked” with him; cold “applications” were ordered; Laura was summoned from the other sick-bed; Hedrick sent flying with prescriptions, then to telephone for a nurse. The two women attempted questions at intervals, but Sloane replied with orders, and kept them busy.
“Do you—think I’m a—-a pretty sick man, Sloane?” asked Madison after a long silence, speaking with difficulty.
“Oh, you’re sick, all right,” the doctor conceded.
“I—I want to speak to Jennie.”
His wife rushed to the bed, and knelt beside it.
“Don’t you go to confessing your sins,” said Doctor Sloane crossly. “You’re coming out of the woods all right, and you’ll be sorry if you tell her too, much. I’ll begin a little flirtation with you, Miss Laura, if you please.” And he motioned to her to follow him into the hall.
“Your fatherispretty sick,” he told her, “and he may be sicker before we get him into shape again. But you needn’t be worried right now; I think he’s not in immediate danger.” He turned at the sound of Mrs. Madison’s step, behind him, and repeated to her what he had just said to Laura. “I hope your husband didn’t give himself away enough to be punished when we get him on his feet again,” he concluded cheerfully.
She shook her head, tried to smile through tears, and, crossing the hall, entered Cora’s room. She came back after a moment, and, rejoining the other two at her husband’s bedside, found the sick man in a stertorous sleep. Presently the nurse arrived, and upon the physician’s pointed intimation that there were “too many people around,” Laura went to Cora’s room. She halted on the threshold in surprise. Cora was dressing.
“Mamma says the doctor says he’s all right,” said Cora lightly, “and I’m feeling so much better myself I thought I’d put on something loose and go downstairs. I think there’s more air down there.”
“Papa isn’t all right, dear,” said Laura, staring perplexedly at Cora’s idea of “something loose,” an equipment inclusive of something particularly close. “The doctor says he is very sick.”
“I don’t believe it,” returned Cora promptly. “Old Sloane never did know anything. Besides, mamma told me he said papa isn’t in any danger.”
“No `immediate’ danger,” corrected Laura. “And besides, Doctor Sloane said you were to stay in bed until to-morrow.”
“I can’t help that.” Cora went on with her lacing impatiently. “I’m not going to lie and stifle in this heat when I feel perfectly well again—not for an old idiot like Sloane! He didn’t even have sense enough to give me any medicine.” She laughed. “Lucky thing he didn’t: I’d have thrown it out of the window. Kick that slipper to me, will you, dear?”
Laura knelt and put the slipper on her sister’s foot. “Cora, dear,” she said, “you’re just going to put on a negligee and go down and sit in the library, aren’t you?”
“Laura!” The tone was more than impatient. “I wish I could be let alone for five whole minutes some time in my life! Don’t you think I’ve stood enough for one day? I can’t bear to be questioned, questioned, questioned! What do you do it for? Don’t you see I can’t stand anything more? If you can’t let me alone I do wish you’d keep out of my room.”
Laura rose and went out; but as she left the door, Cora called after her with a rueful laugh: “Laura, I know I’m a little devil!”
Half an hour later, Laura, suffering because she had made no reply to this peace-offering, and wishing to atone, sought Cora downstairs and found no one. She decided that Cora must still be in her own room; she would go to her there. But as she passed the open front door, she saw Cora upon the sidewalk in front of the house. She wore a new and elaborate motoring costume, charmingly becoming, and was in the act of mounting to a seat beside Valentine Corliss in a long, powerful-looking, white “roadster” automobile. The engine burst into staccato thunder, sobered down; the wheels began to move both Cora and Corliss were laughing and there was an air of triumph about them—Cora’s veil streamed and fluttered: and in a flash they were gone.
Laura stared at the suddenly vacated space where they had been. At a thought she started. Then she rushed upstairs to her mother, who was sitting in the hall near her husband’s door.
“Mamma,” whispered Laura, flinging herself upon her knees beside her, “when papa wanted to speak to you, was it a message to Cora?”
“Yes, dear. He told me to tell her he was sorry he’d made her sick, and that if he got well he’d try to do what she asked him to.”
Laura nodded cheerfully. “And hewillget well, darling mother,” she said, as she rose. “I’ll come back in a minute and sit with you.”
Her return was not so quick as she promised, for she lay a long time weeping upon her pillow, whispering over and over:
“Oh, poor, poor papa! Oh, poor, poor Richard!”
Within a week Mr. Madison’s illness was a settled institution in the household; the presence of the nurse lost novelty, even to Hedrick, and became a part of life; the day was measured by the three regular visits of the doctor. To the younger members of the family it seemed already that their father had always been sick, and that he always would be; indeed, to Cora and Hedrick he had become only a weak and querulous voice beyond a closed door. Doctor Sloane was serious but reassuring, his daily announcement being that his patient was in “no immediate danger.”
Mrs. Madison did not share her children’s sanguine adaptability; and, of the three, Cora was the greatest solace to the mother’s troubled heart, though Mrs. Madison never recognized this without a sense of injustice to Laura, for Laura now was housewife and housekeeper—that is, she did all the work except the cooking, and on “wash-day” she did that. But Cora’s help was to the very spirit itself, for she was sprightly in these hours of trial: with indomitable gayety she cheered her mother, inspiring in her a firmer confidence, and, most stimulating of all, Cora steadfastly refused to consider her father’s condition as serious, or its outcome as doubtful.
Old Sloane exaggerated, she said; and she made fun of his gravity, his clothes and his walk, which she mimicked till she drew a reluctant and protesting laugh from even her mother. Mrs. Madison was sure she “couldn’t get through” this experience save for Cora, who was indeed the light of the threatened house.
Strange perversities of this world: Cora’s gayety was almost unbearable to her brother. Not because he thought it either unfeeling or out of place under the circumstances (an aspect he failed to consider), but because years of warfare had so frequently made him connect cheerfulness on her part with some unworthily won triumph over himself that habit prevailed, and he could not be a witness of her high spirits without a strong sense of injury. Additionally, he was subject to a deeply implanted suspicion of any appearance of unusual happiness in her as having source, if not in his own defeat, then in something vaguely “soft” and wholly distasteful. She grated upon him; he chafed, and his sufferings reached the surface. Finally, in a reckless moment, one evening at dinner, he broke out with a shout and hurled a newly devised couplet concerning luv-a-ly slush at his, sister’s head. The nurse was present: Cora left the table; and Hedrick later received a serious warning from Laura. She suggested that it might become expedient to place him in Cora’s power.
“Cora knows perfectly well that something peculiar happened to you,” she advised him. “And she knows that I know what it was; and she says it isn’t very sisterly of me not to tell her. Now, Hedrick, there was no secret about it; you didn’tconfideyour—your trouble to me, and it would be perfectly honourable of me to tell it. I wont{sic} unless you make me, but if you can’t be polite and keep peace with Cora—at least while papa is sick I think it may be necessary. I believe,” she finished with imperfect gravity, “that it—it would keep things quieter.”
The thoughts of a boy may be long, long thoughts, but he cannot persistently remember to fear a threatened catastrophe. Youth is too quickly intimate with peril. Hedrick had become familiar with his own, had grown so accustomed to it he was in danger of forgetting it altogether; therefore it was out of perspective. The episode of Lolita had begun to appear as a thing of the distant and clouded past: time is so long at thirteen. Added to this, his late immaculate deportment had been, as Laura suggested, a severe strain; the machinery of his nature was out of adjustment and demanded a violent reaction before it could get to running again at average speed. Also, it is evident that his destruction had been planned on high, for he was mad enough to answer flippantly:
“Tell her! Go on and tell her—Igive you leaf!thatwasn’t anything anyway—just helped you get a little idiot girl home. What is there to that? I never saw her before; never saw her again; didn’t have half as much to do with her as you did yourself. She was a lot moreyourfriend than mine; I didn’t even know her. I guess you’ll have to get something better on me than that, before you try to bossthisranch, Laura Madison!”
That night, in bed, he wondered if he had not been perhaps a trifle rash; but the day was bright when he awoke, and no apprehension shadowed his morning face as he appeared at the breakfast table. On the contrary, a great weight had lifted from him; clearly his defiance had been the proper thing; he had shown Laura that her power over him was but imaginary. Hypnotized by his own words to her, he believed them; and his previous terrors became gossamer; nay, they were now merely laughable. His own remorse and shame were wholly blotted from memory, and he could not understand why in the world he had been so afraid, nor why he had felt it so necessary to placate Laura. She looked very meek this morning.Thatshowed! The strong hand was the right policy in dealing with women. He was tempted to insane daring: the rash, unfortunate child waltzed on the lip of the crater.
“Told Cora yet?” he asked, with scornful laughter.
“Told me what?” Cora looked quickly up from her plate.
“Oh, nothing about this Corliss,” he returned scathingly. “Don’t get excited.”
“Hedrick!” remonstrated his mother, out of habit.
“She never thinks of anything else these days,” he retorted. “Rides with him every evening in his pe-rin-sley hired machine, doesn’t she?”
“Really, you should be more careful about the way you handle a spoon, Hedrick,” said Cora languidly, and with at least a foundation of fact. “It is not the proper implement for decorating the cheeks. We all need nourishment, but it issodifficult when one sees a deposit of breakfast-food in the ear of one’s vis-a-vis.”
Hedrick too impulsively felt of his ears and was but the worse stung to find them immaculate and the latter half of the indictment unjustified.
“Spoon!” he cried. “I wouldn’t talk about spoons if I were you, Cora-lee! After what I saw in the library the other night, believeme, you’re the one of this family that better be careful how you `handle a spoon’!”
Cora had a moment of panic. She let the cup she was lifting drop noisily upon its saucer, and gazed whitely at the boy, her mouth opening wide.
“Oh, no!” he went on, with a dreadful laugh. “I didn’t hear you asking this Corliss to kiss you! Oh, no!”
At this, though her mother and Laura both started, a faint, odd relief showed itself in Cora’s expression. She recovered herself.
“You little liar!” she flashed, and, with a single quick look at her mother, as of one too proud to appeal, left the room.
“Hedrick, Hedrick, Hedrick!” wailed Mrs. Madison. “And she told me you drove her from the table last night too, right before Miss Peirce!” Miss Peirce was the nurse, fortunately at this moment in the sick-room.
“Ididhear her ask him that,” he insisted, sullenly. “Don’t you believe it?”
“Certainly not!”
Burning with outrage, he also left his meal unfinished and departed in high dignity. He passed through the kitchen, however, on his way out of the house; but, finding an unusual politeness to the cook nothing except its own reward, went on his way with a bitter perception of the emptiness of the world and other places.
“Your father managed to talk more last night,” said Mrs. Madison pathetically to Laura. “He made me understand that he was fretting about how little we’d been able to give our children; so few advantages; it’s always troubled him terribly. But sometimes I wonder if we’ve done right: we’ve neither of us ever exercised any discipline. We just couldn’t bear to. You see, not having any money, or the things money could buy, to give, I think we’ve instinctively tried to make up for it by indulgence in other ways, and perhaps it’s been a bad thing. Not,” she added hastily, “not that you aren’t all three the best children any mother and father ever had!Hesaid so. He said the only trouble was that our children were too good for us.” She shook her head remorsefully throughout Laura’s natural reply to this; was silent a while; then, as she rose, she said timidly, not looking at her daughter: “Of course Hedrick didn’t mean to tell an outright lie. They were just talking, and perhaps he—perhaps he heard something that made him think what hedid. People are so often mistaken in what they hear, even when they’re talking right to each other, and——”
“Isn’t it more likely,” said Laura, gravely, “that Cora was telling some story or incident, and that Hedrick overheard that part of it, and thought she was speaking directly to Mr. Corliss?”
“Of course!” cried the mother with instant and buoyant relief; and when the three ladies convened, a little later, Cora (unquestioned) not only confirmed this explanation, but repeated in detail the story she had related to Mr. Corliss. Laura had been quick.
Hedrick passed a variegated morning among comrades. He obtained prestige as having a father like-to-die, but another boy turned up who had learned to chew tobacco. Then Hedrick was pronounced inferior to others in turning “cartwheels,” but succeeded in a wrestling match for an apple, which he needed. Later, he was chased empty-handed from the rear of an ice-wagon, but greatly admired for his retorts to the vociferous chaser: the other boys rightly considered that what he said to the ice-man was much more horrible than what the ice-man said to him. The ice-man had a fair vocabulary, but it lacked pliancy; seemed stiff and fastidious compared with the flexible Saxon in which Hedrick sketched a family tree lacking, perhaps, some plausibility as having produced even an ice-man, but curiously interesting zoologically.
He came home at noon with the flush of this victory new upon his brow. He felt equal to anything, and upon Cora’s appearing at lunch with a blithe, bright air and a new arrangement of her hair, he opened a fresh campaign with ill-omened bravado.
“Ear-muffs in style for September, are they?” he inquired in allusion to a symmetrical and becoming undulation upon each side of her head. “Too bad Ray Vilas can’t come any more; he’d like those, I know he would.”
Cora, who was talking jauntily to her mother, went on without heeding. She affected her enunciation at times with a slight lisp; spoke preciously and over-exquisitely, purposely mincing the letter R, at the same time assuming a manner of artificial distinction and conscious elegance which never failed to produce in her brother the last stage of exasperation. She did this now. Charming woman, that dear Mrs. Villard, she prattled. “I met her downtown this morning. Dear mamma, you should but have seen her delight when she sawme. She was but just returned from Bar Harbor——”
“`Baw-hawbaw’!” Poor Hedrick was successfully infuriated immediately. “What in thunder is `Baw-hawbaw’? Mrs. Villawd! Baw-hawbaw! Oh, maw!”
“She had no idea she should findmein town, she said,” Cora ran on, happily. “She came back early on account of the children having to be sent to school. She has such adorable children—beautiful, dimpled babes——”
“—And her dear son, Egerton Villard, he’s grown to be such a comely lad, and he has the most charming courtly manners: he helped his mother out of her carriage with all the air of a man of the world, and bowed to me as to a duchess. I think he might be a great influence for good if the dear Villards would but sometimes let him associate a little with our unfortunate Hedrick. Egerton Villard is reallydistingue; he has a beautiful head; and if he could be induced but to let Hedrick follow him about but a little——”
“I’ll beat his beautiful head off for him if he but butts in on me but a little!” Hedrick promised earnestly. “Idiot!”
Cora turned toward him innocently. “What did you say, Hedrick?”
“I said `Idiot’!”
“You mean Egerton Villard?”
“Both of you!”
“You think I’m an idiot, Hedrick?” Her tone was calm, merely inquisitive.
“Yes, I do!”
“Oh, no,” she said pleasantly. “Don’t you think if I werereallyan idiot I’d be even fonder of you than I am?”
It took his breath. In a panic he sat waiting he knew not what; but Cora blandly resumed her interrupted remarks to her mother, beginning a description of Mrs. Villard’s dress; Laura was talking unconcernedly to Miss Peirce; no one appeared to be aware that anything unusual had been said. His breath came back, and, summoning his presence of mind, he found himself able to consider his position with some degree of assurance. Perhaps, after all, Cora’s retort had been merely a coincidence. He went over and over it in his mind, making a pretence, meanwhile, to be busy with his plate. “If I werereallyan idiot.” . . . It was the “really” that troubled him. But for that one word, he could have decided that her remark was a coincidence; but “really” was ominous; had a sinister ring. “If I werereallyan idiot!” Suddenly the pleasant clouds that had obscured his memory of the fatal evening were swept away as by a monstrous Hand: it all came back to him with sickening clearness. So is it always with the sinner with his sin and its threatened discovery. Again, in his miserable mind, he sat beside Lolita on the fence, with the moon shining through her hair; and he knew—for he had often read it—that a man could be punished his whole life through for a single moment’s weakness. A man might become rich, great, honoured, and have a large family, but his one soft sin would follow him, hunt him out and pull him down at last. “Reallyan idiot!” Did that relentless Comanche, Cora, know this Thing? He shuddered. Then he fell back upon his faith in Providence. Itcouldnot be that she knew! Ah, no! Heaven would not let the world be so bad as that! And yet it did sometimes become negligent—he remembered the case of a baby-girl cousin who fell into the bath-tub and was drowned. Providence had allowed that: What assurance had he that it would not go a step farther?
“Why, Hedrick,” said Cora, turning toward him cheerfully, “you’re not really eating anything; you’re only pretending to.” His heart sank with apprehension. Was it coming? “You really must eat,” she went on. “School begins so soon, you must be strong, you know. How we shall miss you here at home during your hours of work!”
With that, the burden fell from his shoulders, his increasing terrors took wing. If Laura had told his ghastly secret to Cora, the latter would not have had recourse to such weak satire as this. Cora was not the kind of person to try a popgun on an enemy when she had a thirteen-inch gun at her disposal; so he reasoned; and in the gush of his relief and happiness, responded:
“You’re a little too cocky lately, Cora-lee: I wish you weremydaughter—just about five minutes!”
Cora looked upon him fondly. “What would you do to me,” she inquired with a terrible sweetness—“darling little boy?”
Hedrick’s head swam. The blow was square in the face; it jarred every bone; the world seemed to topple. His mother, rising from her chair, choked slightly, and hurried to join the nurse, who was already on her way upstairs. Cora sent an affectionate laugh across the table to her stunned antagonist.
“You wouldn’t beat me, would you, dear?” she murmured. “I’m almost sure you wouldn’t; not if I asked you to kiss me somemore.”
All doubt was gone, the last hope fled! The worst had arrived. A vision of the awful future flamed across his staggered mind. The doors to the arena were flung open: the wild beasts howled for hunger of him; the spectators waited.
Cora began lightly to sing: