A NOON DINNER
Bennington did not know what to make of his invitation. At one moment
he told himself it must mean that Mary loved him, and that she wished
him to meet her parents on that account. At the next he tormented
himself with the conviction that she thus merely avoided the issue.
Between these moods he alternated, without being able to abide in
either. He forgot all about Old Mizzou.
Promptly at noon the following day he turned up the little right-hand
trail for the first time.
The Lawton house he found, first of all, to be scrupulously neat. It
stood on a knoll, as do most gulch cabins, in order that occasional
freshets might pass below, and the knoll looked as though it had been
clipped with a pair of scissors. Not a crooked little juniper bush was
allowed to intrude its plebeian sprawl among the dignified pines and
the gracefully infrequent bushes. In front of the cabin itself was a
"rockery" of pink quartz, on which were piled elk antlers. The building
was L-shaped, of two low stories, had a veranda with a railing, and
possessed various ornamental wood edgings, all of which were painted.
The whole affair was mathematically squared and correspondingly neat.
Some boxes and pots of flowers adorned the window ledges.
Bennington's knock was answered by an elderly woman, who introduced
herself at once as Mrs. Lawton. She commenced a voluble and slightly
embarrassed explanation of how "she" would be down in a moment or so,
at the same time leading the way into the parlour. While this
explanation was going forward, Bennington had a good chance to examine
his hostess and her surroundings.
Mrs. Lawton was of the fat but energetic variety. She fairly shone with
cleanliness and with an insistent determination to keep busy. You could
see that all the time her tongue was uttering polite platitudes
concerning the weather, her mind was hovering like a dragon fly over
this or that flower of domestic economy. She was one of the women who
carry their housekeeping to a perfection uncomfortable both to herself
and everybody else, and then delude themselves into the martyrlike
belief that she is doing it all entirely for others. As a consequence,
she exhibited much of the time an aggrieved air that comported but
ludicrously with her tendency to bustle. And it must be confessed that
in other ways Mrs. Lawton was ludicrous. Her dumpy little form was
dressed in the loudest of prints, the figures of which turned her into
a huge flower bed of brilliant cabbage-like blooms. Over this chaos of
colours peered her round little face with its snapping eyes. She
discoursed in sentences which began coherently, but frayed out soon
into nothingness under the stress of inner thought. "I don't see where
that husban' of mine is. I reckon you'll think we're just awful rude,
Mr. de Laney, and that gal, an' Maude. I declare it's jest enough to
try any one's patience, it surely is. You've no idea, Mr. de Laney,
what with the hens settin', and this mis'able dry spell that sends th'
dust all over everything and every one 'way behin' hand on
everythin'----" Her eye was becoming vacant as she wondered about
certain biscuits.
"I'm sure it must be," agreed Bennington uncomfortably.
"What was I a-sayin'? You must excuse me, Mr. de Laney, but you, being
a man, can have no idea of the life us poor women folks lead, slavin'
our very lives away to keep things runnin', and then no thanks fer it
a'ter all. I'd just like t' see Bill Lawton try it _fer jest one week_.
He'd be a ravin' lunatic, an' thet I tell him often. This country's
jest awful, too. I tell him he must get out sometimes, and I 'spect he
will, when he's made his pile, poor man, an' then we'll have a chanst
to go back East again. When we lived East, Mr. de Laney, we had a
house--not like this little shack; a good house with nigh on to a dozen
rooms, and I had a gal to help me and some chanst to buy things once in
a while, but now that Bill Lawton's moved West, what's goin' to become
o' me I don't know. I'm nigh wore out with it all."
"Then you lived East once?" asked Bennington.
"Law, yes! We lived in Illinoy once, and th' Lord only knows I wisht we
lived there yet, though the farmin' was a sight of work and no pay
sometimes." The inner doubts as to the biscuits proved too much for
her. "Heaven knows, you ain't t' git much to eat," she cried, jumping
up, "but you ain't goin' to git anythin' a tall if I don't run right
off and tend to them biscuit."
She bustled out. Bennington had time then to notice the decorations of
the "parlour." They offered to the eye a strange mixture of the East
and West--reminiscences of the old home in "Illinoy" and trophies of
the new camping-out on the frontier. From the ceiling hung a heavy lamp
with prismatic danglers, surrounded by a globe on which were depicted
stags in the act of leaping six-barred gates. By way of complement to
this gorgeous centrepiece, the paper on the walls showed, in infinitely
recurring duplicate, a huntress in green habit and big hat carrying on
a desperate flirtation with a young man in the habiliments of the
fifteenth century, while across the background a huddle of dogs pursued
a mammoth deer. Mathematically beneath the lamp stood a table covered
with a red-figured spread. On the table was a glass bell, underneath
which were wax flowers and a poorly-stuffed robin. In one angle of the
room austerely huddled a three-cornered "whatnot" of four shelves. Two
china pugs and a statuette of a simpering pair of children under a
massive umbrella adorned this article of furniture. On the wall ticked
an old-fashioned square wooden clock. The floor was concealed by a rag
carpet. So much for the East. The West contributed brilliant green
copper ore, flaky white tin ore, glittering white quartz ore, shining
pyrites, and one or two businesslike specimens of oxygenated quartz,
all of which occupied points of exhibit on the "whatnot." Over the
carpet were spread a deer skin, and a rug made from the hide of a
timber wolf. Bennington found all this interesting but depressing. He
was glad when Mrs. Lawton returned and took up her voluble discourse.
In the midst of a dissertation on the relation of corn meal to eggs
the door opened, and Mr. Lawton sidled in.
"Oh, here y' are at last!" observed his spouse scornfully, and rattled
on. Lawton nodded awkwardly, and perched himself on the edge of a
chair. He had assumed an ill-fitting suit of store clothes, in which he
unaccustomedly writhed, and evidently, to judge from the sleekness of
his hair, had recently plunged his head in a pail of water. He said
nothing, but whenever Mrs. Lawton was not looking he winked elaborately
and solemnly at Bennington as though to imply that circumstances alone
prevented any more open show of cordiality. At last, catching the young
man's eye at a more than usually propitious moment, he went through the
pantomime of opening a bottle, then furtively arose and disappeared.
Mrs. Lawton, remembering her cakes, ran out. Bennington was left alone
again. He had not spoken six words.
The door slowly opened, and another member of the family sidled in.
Bennington owned a helpless feeling that this was a sort of show, and
that these various actors in it were parading their entrances and
their exits before him. Or that he himself were the object of
inspection on whom the others were satisfying their own curiosity.
The newcomer was a child, a little girl about eight or ten years old.
Bennington liked children as a usual thing. No one on earth could have
become possessed in this one's favour. She was a creature of regular
but mean features, extreme gravity, and evidently of an inquiring
disposition. On seeing her for the first time, one sophisticated would
have expected a deluge of questions. Bennington did. But she merely
stood and stared without winking.
"Hullo, little girl!" Bennington greeted her uneasily.
The creature only stared the harder.
"My doll's name is Garnet M-a-ay," she observed suddenly, with a
long-drawn nasal accent.
After this interesting bit of information another silence fell.
"What is your name, little girl?" Bennington asked desperately at
last.
"Maude," remarked the phenomenon briefly.
This statement she delivered in that whining tone which the extremely
self-conscious infant imagines to indicate playful childishness. She
approached.
"D' you want t' see my picters?" she whimpered confidingly.
Bennington expressed his delight.
For seven geological ages did he gaze upon cheap and horrible woodcuts
of gentlemen in fashionable raiment trying to lean against
conspicuously inadequate rustic gates; equally fashionable ladies, with
flat chests, and rat's nest hair; and animals whose attitudes denoted
playful sportiveness of disposition. Each of these pictures was
explained in minute detail. Bennington's distress became apathy. Mrs.
Lawton returned from the cakes presently, yet her voice seemed to break
in on the duration of centuries.
"Now, Maude!" she exclaimed, with a proper maternal pride, "you mustn't
be botherin' the gentleman." She paused to receive the expected
disclaimer. It was made, albeit a little weakly. "Maude is very good
with her Book," she explained. "Miss Brown, that's the school teacher
that comes over from Hill Town summers, she says Maude reads a sight
better than lots as is two or three years older. Now how old would you
think she was, Mr. de Laney?"
Mr. de Laney tried to appraise, while the object hung her head
self-consciously and twisted her feet. He had no idea of children's
ages.
"About eleven," he guessed, with an air of wisdom.
"Jest eight an' a half!" cried the dame, folding her hands
triumphantly. She let her fond maternal gaze rest on the prodigy.
Suddenly she darted forward with extraordinary agility for one so well
endowed with flesh, and seized her offspring in relentless grasp.
"I do declare, Maude Eliza!" she exclaimed in horror-stricken tones,
"you ain't washed your ears! You come with me!"
They disappeared in a blue mist of wails.
As though this were his cue, the crafty features of Lawton appeared
cautiously in the doorway, bestowed a furtive and searching inspection
on the room, and finally winked solemnly at its only occupant. A hand
was inserted. The forefinger beckoned. Bennington arose wearily and
went out.
Lawton led the way to a little oat shed standing at some distance from
the house. Behind this he paused. From beneath his coat he drew a round
bottle and two glass tumblers.
"No joke skippin' th' ole lady," he chuckled in an undertone. He poured
out a liberal portion for himself, and passed the bottle along.
Bennington was unwilling to hurt the old fellow's feelings after he had
taken so much trouble on his account, but he was equally unwilling to
drink the whisky. So he threw it away when Lawton was not looking.
They walked leisurely toward the house, Lawton explaining various
improvements in a loud tone of voice, intended more to lull his wife's
suspicions than to edify the young man. The lady looked on them
sternly, and announced dinner. At the table Bennington found Mary
already seated.
The Easterner was placed next to Mrs. Lawton. At his other hand was
Maude Eliza. Mary sat opposite. Throughout the meal she said little,
and only looked up from her plate when Bennington's attention was
called another way.
Her mere presence, however, seemed to open to the young man a different
point of view. He found Mrs. Lawton's lengthy dissertations amusing; he
considered Mr. Lawton in the light of a unique character, and Maude
Eliza, while as disagreeable as ever, came in for various excuses and
explanations on her own behalf in the young man's mind. He became more
responsive. He told a number of very good stories, at which the others
laughed. He detailed some experiences of his own at places in the world
far remote, selected, it must be confessed, with some slight reference
to their dazzling effect on the company. Without actually "showing
off," he managed to get the effect of it. The result of his efforts was
to harmonize to some extent these diverse elements. Mrs. Lawton became
more coherent, Mr. Lawton more communicative; Maude Eliza stopped
whining--occasionally and temporarily. Bennington had rarely been in
such high spirits. He was surprised himself, but then was not that day
of moment to him, and would he not have been a strange sort of
individual to have seen in the world aught but brightness?
But Mary responded not at all. Rather, as Bennington arose, she fell,
until at last she hardly even moved in her place.
"Chirk up, chirk up!" cried Mrs. Lawton gaily, for her. "I know some
one who ought to be happy, anyhow." She glanced meaningly from one to
the other and laughed heartily.
Bennington felt a momentary disgust at her tactlessness, but covered it
with some laughing sally of his own. The meal broke up in great good
humour. Mrs. Lawton and Maude Eliza remained to clear away the dishes.
Mr. Lawton remarked that he must get back to work, and shook hands in
farewell most elaborately. Bennington laughingly promised them all that
he would surely come again. Then he escaped, and followed Mary up the
hill, surmising truly enough that she had gone on toward the Rock. He
thought he caught a glimpse of her through the elders. He hastened his
footsteps. At this he stumbled slightly. From his pocket fell a letter
he had received that morning. He picked it up and looked at it idly.
It was from his mother and covered a number of closely-written pages.
As he was about to thrust it back into his pocket a single sentence
caught his eye. It read: "Sally Ogletree gave a supper last week, which
was a very pretty affair."
He stopped short on the trail, and the world seemed to go black around
him. He almost fell. Then resumed his way, but step now was hesitating
and slow, and he walked with his eyes bent thoughtfully on the ground.