VIII
Itwas an hour later when Miranda, looking very dark and showing the whites of her eyes to an alarming extent, opened the front door for Mrs. Carter, Emily and Leigh.
“Mist’ Carter says, please, ma’am, yo’ come inter de libr’ry,” said the colored servitress in a sympathetic undertone.
Mrs. Carter cast an apprehensive look at her daughter.
“I guess you two had better go up-stairs,” she whispered.
Emily nodded, and started for the staircase, but Mr. Carter shouted from the library:
“I hear you-all out there—come in here!”
They went. Leigh, having forgotten to put down Fanchon’s extra wraps, brought up the rear, his flushed face just appearing above a mass of chiffon, lace and fur.
Mr. Carter, striding up and down the room alone, caught sight of his youngest son first.
“Put down those things!” he shouted. “You look like a dromedary.”
Leigh obeyed, but he straightened himself andstood, sullenly, his eyes on the ground. His father took no further notice of him.
“I’d like to know if any of you knew what that girl was going to do to-night?” he demanded fiercely.
Mrs. Carter sank weakly into the nearest chair.
“No, we didn’t! Wasn’t it awful? I was so mortified. The Baptist minister went out just after you, Johnson, and the rector was as red as could be. I’m sure I don’t know what he thought!”
“Thought! Where is she?”
“William came for her, and took her out to supper at the inn,” said Emily in a weak voice.
Like Leigh she stood back, unsympathetic, but she was a little frightened, too.
“Humph! Took her out to supper, eh?” Mr. Carter thundered. “I reckon he thought he’d better! I gave him a piece of my mind.”
“Oh, papa! He was as white as a sheet.” William’s mother pressed her handkerchief against her shaking lips. “He didn’t know, of course. He wasn’t to blame, dear—you shouldn’t have done it!”
“Wasn’t to blame?” Mr. Carter blazed with wrath. “Didn’t he marry that ballet-dancer? Didn’t he bring a French ballet-dancer home here and foist her on a decent, respectable family? Hewasn’t to blame, you say? By Jove, I wish he was small enough to thrash!”
He was still walking up and down. As he swung around, Leigh faced him.
“She’s a lovely creature!” the boy cried passionately. “That dance was beautiful—everybody thought so!”
“Oh, Leigh!” gasped his mother. “Dr. Fanshawe was ashamed to look at it!”
“Old idiot!” cried Leigh. “You’re all making her unhappy—any one can see it. Nothing but criticism from morning until night—I call it cruel!”
Mr. Carter stared at him a moment in amazed incredulity. Then he jeered.
“Hear, hear!” he cried. “Wisdom from the mouths of babes and sucklings! Do you want to marry a ballet-dancer, too, sir?”
But his son’s blood was up.
“I call it a burning shame!” he cried. “She’s come here, a foreigner, and she wants to love us, and you’re talking brutally about her. She’s exquisite, she was to-night, she——”
“Go to bed!” shouted Mr. Carter. “Shut up and go to bed!”
Mrs. Carter rose hastily and gave Leigh a little shove.
“Go!” she whispered. “There, there—don’t aggravate papa.”
Leigh, shaking with anger, yielded ground reluctantly.
“She’s an angel!” he shouted at the door. “I won’t have her abused!”
“Did you marry her!” Mr. Carter asked with fine sarcasm. “Maybe I’ve made a mistake; I thought it was William.”
Leigh almost choked with indignation.
“He isn’t here—I won’t have her talked about.”
“Go to bed!” thundered Mr. Carter, taking a step forward.
“I——” Leigh began to sputter again, but his mother thrust him out and shut the door.
“Do speak lower, Johnson,” she sobbed. “I know Miranda listens.”
“I don’t care a hang whether Miranda listens or not,” said Mr. Carter. “That boy’s an ass—talk about his being a genius!”
“Oh, papa, he’s only eighteen,” said Mrs. Carter deprecatingly, “and she’s made up to him from the very first.”
“He’s an ass!” repeated Mr. Carter. “And I guess the whole town knows I’ve got a ballet-dancer——”
He stopped; his eye had suddenly lighted on Emily. She was huddled in a frightened attitudebehind her mother’s chair, and the light was strong on her face. Her father stared.
“What’s the matter with that child’s eyes?” he demanded suddenly. “They look like burnt holes in a blanket!”
Mrs. Carter, following his look, suddenly noticed her daughter’s eyelashes and nose. In an illuminating flash she remembered that first night in Emily’s room.
“Oh, Emmy!” she gasped. “You’ve painted your eyelashes!”
Emily clung to the back of her chair.
“I had to, mama. They’re horrid and white.”
“Good Lord, that minx is teaching my daughter to paint her face! Mama, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Can’t you watch your own children?” bellowed Mr. Carter, beside himself.
“Emmy, I’m ashamed!” Poor Mrs. Carter sat gasping, her mouth open. “I never dreamed—what’s that on your nose?”
Emily seized her handkerchief and began to rub the offending feature.
“It’s nothing, mama—just a little liquid powder.”
“You march up-stairs and wash your face!” said her father. “Hear me? Don’t let me catch you painting up like that—singing doll!”
Emily began to cry.
“It’s—it’s nothing, papa. Everybody does it. The girls think I look so nice.”
“Wash your face!” shouted her father. “March up and wash your face!”
“I don’t want to!” sobbed Emily. “The girls say my eyes look twice as——”
Mr. Carter seized her by the shoulder and turned her toward the door.
“Want me to wash your face?” he asked her grimly. “No? I thought not. Well, then, you march!”
Emily, sobbing loudly, marched. They could hear her stumbling up-stairs, crying as she went.
“Oh, papa, you were awful!” Mrs. Carter wiped her own eyes. “The poor child!”
“Do you suppose that I’m going to let my daughter paint her face?” Mr. Carter fairly bellowed. “I reckon I’ve got enough in a daughter-in-law! I’ll see to Emmy myself, if you can’t!”
“Johnson, you know I didn’t notice.”
Mr. Carter emitted another roar, and finally threw himself into a chair and thrust his feet out.
“What did that fool William do?”
“You mean to-night?” Mrs. Carter dried her eyes. “He just met us at the door. He was so white he scared me, and he took Fanchon off in a taxi—in that scandalous dress! Said he’d give her a supper out to-night. I’m afraid you’ve doneit this time, Johnson. What did you do to the poor boy?”
“Poor donkey! I told him what I thought of that woman—called by my name, too—a woman dressing like one of those yellow East Indian dancing-girls—that’s what I told him.”
“Johnson!”
“I did! What do you s’pose the congregation thought? By George, it made me hot all over. Did you see her legs?”
“You mean her stockings? They were a little startling. I told her so before we started.”
“Startling? My word.”
Mr. Carter relapsed into a terrible silence. Mrs. Carter sat helplessly looking at him. She was thinking of that dance, that terrible, amazing, dazzling dance. What a pretty creature, too! That was it; she had turned William’s head; and Leigh’s and Emily’s, too. Those painted eyelashes! For a moment Mrs. Carter half laughed.
“It’s funny—I can’t help it, Johnson,” she said, feebly apologetic, as she met his irate eyes. “I was thinking of Emmy trying to paint her lashes.”
“I’m glad you think it’s funny,” he retorted hoarsely. “Don’t see the joke myself. I’ve got too much daughter-in-law, that’s my trouble!”
“Hush! There’s some one now—they’ve come!”Mrs. Carter tiptoed to the door and listened, coming back, relieved. “No, it’s only Dan.”
“I wish William had Dan’s sense!”
“I wish Dan would marry a nice home girl. It would make things better,” sighed Mrs. Carter.
“Daniel marry?” Mr. Carter raised his voice again to a roar of discontent and hopelessness. “Who d’you think Dan could marry? What kind of a girl d’you think would pick a cripple?”
“Hush!”
Mrs. Carter, very pale, rose and shut the door; but she was too late. Daniel, suspecting the trouble in the library, had started for his own room. The stairs were just outside the library door, however, and he could not help hearing every word his father said. In fact, Mr. Carter’s irate voice rang out like a trumpet. “What kind of a girl d’you think would pick a cripple?”
Daniel, clinging to the banisters, ascended more wearily than usual. The stairs turned at the landing, and he was out of sight when his mother shut the door. He never used a cane in the house now. He was well enough to get along with a heavy limp, and he made no noise as he crossed the upper hall and went into his own room. Once there, he locked his door, and, crossing to the window, stood staring out with absorbed and thoughtful eyes.
The night was perfect. A young moon had set,and there seemed to be, instead, a myriad of stars. He could discern, too, even in the darkness, the darker profile of the hills, and, nearer at hand, the clustering beauty of foliage, pierced here and there with the lights of near-by houses, which shone in the darkness, without any discernible outlines behind them, like fallen stars. The air was fragrant and soft, with the sweetness of flowering grapes, familiar and homelike, amid all that blended early blossoming.
He could hear soft, blurred sounds, too—the hum of insect life, the piping of frogs, the murmur of the brook that flowed not a hundred yards away. He stood motionless, thinking, and glad of the cool night air on his hot cheeks and brow. He felt as if some one had dealt him a physical blow, and his bruised flesh was still quivering under it.
“What kind of a girl d’you think would pick a cripple?”
Daniel shut his lips sharply over his clenched teeth. It wasn’t a new idea; it wasn’t even a suggestion. He had known it all along, he told himself, and yet the bare words were brutal. They seemed to brand him like hot iron, to shrivel into his shrinking flesh and leave the mark there.
“Cripple!” He remembered, in a flash, his well days—the days when he was like other boys, before the fall which lamed him. He remembered hisown young scorn of the weakling and the maimed, the repugnance that the physically strong often feel toward the physically disabled. Yet there was nothing disfiguring in his trouble. He was lame, but he was not twisted; he only halted in his walk. But, none the less, he was a cripple.
“What kind of a girl d’you think would pick a cripple?”
Daniel stared steadily out into the night, as if the starry darkness held the answer. One by one he saw the lights go out in the houses near at hand. Farther off, lights still shone in the town but darkness grew and grew. Then, far off, he detected a moving thing, saw a leap of flame and sparks as the smoke belched from the funnel of the engine. He could trace it coming nearer and nearer, and then he heard the clamor of its bell at the crossing, strangely distinct at night.
He turned slowly away, lit the lamp on his table, and, going to his desk, took out the picture of Virginia that he had stolen from the mantel down-stairs after Fanchon’s attack upon it. He brought it to the table, and, setting it down beside him, began to write. From time to time, as he wrote, he glanced up at the young face in the frame, and felt an exquisite sense of companionship. He was not alone; the picture kept him company. The pallor of his face, too, gradually changed, and aslight color rose in his cheeks. He took off his coat and lit his pipe. Well into the small hours he worked steadily on a case for Judge Jessup.
He was aware of doors shutting below, aware that sounds gradually ceased and sleep drenched the household, but he worked on with the passionate zeal that only an ambitious man can feel—a man who has no other end in life but to forget himself in the fury of his toil. Yet, all the while, the young face of Virginia bore him mute company, and sometimes it seemed to smile upon him.
At daybreak, the fury of his thirst for work slaked, he lifted a haggard face to the light, glanced at the picture, and stretching his arms across the table laid his head upon them with a groan. He fell asleep there from sheer exhaustion and was sleeping when the sun rose.