Poor Maggie paid for her good nature. On Sunday morning she was so
decidedly worse that William King, to the disgust of his Martha, was
summoned from his breakfast-table.
"Women who can't look after a simple sore throat without bothering
their doctors are pretty inefficient creatures," she said coldly.
William thought of women who were so efficient that they did not
hesitate to advise their doctors; but he only agreed with proper
seriousness to Martha's declaration that it was too bad, for he would
be late for church--"unless you hurry, William!" she called after him.
Perhaps he hurried when he was with Maggie, but certainly he displayed
no haste when giving his directions to Mrs. Richie, nor even later when
just as he was about to drive off, Mr. Pryor hailed him from the garden.
"How's your patient, doctor?"
"Pretty sick. She didn't obey your sister's orders and keep in bed
yesterday. So, of course, she's worse to-day."
Mr. Pryor leaned a comfortable elbow on the green gate. "That's a nice
prospect! What am I going to have to eat?" he said, good-humoredly.
Yet behind the good humor there was annoyance. It came into William
King's mind that this fellow would not spare his sister his irritation,
and with a sudden impulse of concern for her, he said, "Well now, look
here, why don't you and Mrs. Richie come in this evening and take tea
with us? I don't know what you'll get, but come and take pot-luck."
"Thank you," Lloyd Pryor said, "but--"
"Oh, come now," interrupted the doctor, gathering up his reins; "you
good people are not neighborly enough. We'll expect you both at six."
"You are very kind, but I think--" But William would not listen. He was
in great spirits. "It will be pot-luck, and my wife will be
delighted--" then, his voice dragged--"I hope you'll come," he said
uncertainly.
Mr. Pryor began to protest, but ended with a laugh. "Well, we'll come!
Thank you very much."
"That's good," the doctor said a little less cordially, indeed, as he
drove away he looked distinctly less cordial, and once he sighed....
Now, how should he put it? "Oh, Martha, by the way, Mr. Pryor and his
sister will drop in to tea to-night. I suggested it, and--" No, that
would not do.... "Martha, it occurred to me it would be neighborly--"
No. "Confound it," William King muttered to himself, "what did I do it
for, anyhow? 'Martha, my dear, I know you like to do a kindness, so I
asked Mrs. Richie and her brother'"--that was better. "But I hate a
circumbendibus!" William said, irritably, to himself. Then he drew a
long breath, and set his lips as a man may who is about to face the
domestic cannon's mouth.
After he had driven on, screwing up his courage, it appeared that Mr.
Pryor also had a cannon to face. Helena Richie came out into the
garden, and found him sitting on a bench built round a great silver
poplar. Her face was worried. "I ought not to have made poor Maggie get
up yesterday," she said, "but I was so distressed not to have a good
dinner for you."
"Well, at least you need have no anxieties about supper; we've had an
invitation."
"An invitation! From Dr. King? Well, that's very nice in him. But, of
course--"
"I told him we would come"
"You told him we would come!"
"I couldn't help it, Nelly. People who invite you face to face are
perfect nuisances. But, really, it's no great matter--for once, And I
knew it would be a convenience for you. Besides, I wanted a good
supper."
"Well, we must make some excuse."
"There isn't any excuse to make," he explained, good-naturedly: "I
tried to find one and couldn't. We've got to go."
"_I_ sha'n't go."
He looked at her from under his heavy eyelids; then blew two smoke
wreaths slowly. "You're a queer creature."
She turned on him hotly. "Queer? Because I won't go out to supper with
you? I'd be queer if I did! I'm entirely satisfied with myself, Lloyd;
I consider that I have a perfect right to be happy in my own way. You
know I don't care a copper for what you call 'morality'! it's nothing
but cowardly conventionality. But I won't go out to supper with you."
"Please don't let us have a tirade," he said "I thought it would be
more convenient for you. That's always the way with your sex, Helena,
you do a thing to help them out, and they burst into tears."
"I haven't burst into tears," she said sullenly, "but I won't go."
"Come, now! don't be a goose. I wouldn't make a practice of accepting
their invitations; but for once, what does it matter?"
"Can't you understand?" she said passionately; "_they are kind to me!_"
She turned quickly and ran into the garden, leaving him to call after
her: "Well, you've got to go to-night, because I've accepted."
"I won't go to-night!" she flung back, her voice breaking.
Lloyd Pryor shook his head. "And she wonders I don't come oftener," he
said to himself.
So the sleepy Sunday morning passed. Mr. Pryor roamed about the garden,
looking furtively over his shoulder now and then--but Helena had
disappeared. "Sulking in her room, I suppose," he thought.
He had come at some inconvenience, to spend Sunday and talk over this
project of the child, "for I'd like to see her happier," he told
himself; and now, instead of sitting down, sensibly, to discuss things,
she flared out over this invitation to supper. Her intensity fatigued
him. "I must be getting old," he ruminated, "and Helena will always be
the age she was ten years ago. Ten? It's thirteen! How time flies; she
was twenty. How interested I was in Frederick's health in those days!"
He stretched himself out on the bench under the poplar, and lit another
cigar. "If _I'm_ willing to go, why is she so exercised? Women are all
alike--except Alice." He smiled as he thought of his girl, and
instantly the hardness in his face lifted, as a cloud shadow lifts and
leaves sunshine behind it. Then some obscure sense of fitness made him
pull himself together, and put his mind on affairs that had nothing in
common with Helena; affairs in which he could include his girl without
offending his taste.
After a while he got up and wandered about between the borders, where
the clean, bitter scent of daffodils mingled with the box. Once he
stood still, looking down over the orchard on the hill-side below him,
at the bright sheen of the river edged with leafless maples; on its
farther side were the meadows, and then the hills, smoky in their warm
haze. Over all was the pale April sky with skeins of gray cloud in the
west. He wondered what Alice was doing at this moment, and looked at
his watch. She must be just coming back from church. When he was at
home Mr. Pryor went to church himself, and watched her saying her
little prayers. This assumption of the Pryor-Barr liabilities would be
a serious check to the fortune he was building up for her; he set his
jaw angrily at the thought, but of course it couldn't be helped.
Furthermore, Alice took great pride in the almost quixotic sense of
honor that had prompted the step; a pride which gave him a secret
satisfaction, quite fatuous and childlike and entirely out of keeping
with certain other characteristics, also secret.
There was a gleam of humor in his eyes, as he said to himself that he
hoped Alice would not ask him how he had spent his Sunday morning.
Alice had such a feeling about truth, that he did not like to tell her
even little lies, little ones that she could not possibly find out. It
was the sentiment of fibbing to his girl that offended him, not the
fib; for Mr. Lloyd Pryor had no doubt that, in certain matters, Truth
must be governed by the law of benefit.
Thinking of his daughter, and smiling to himself, he lounged aimlessly
about the garden; then it occurred to him to go into the stable and
look at Helena's pony. After that he strolled over to the
carriage-house where were stored a number of cases containing stuffed
creatures--birds and chipmunks and small furry things. Some larger
animals were slung up under the beams of the loft to get them out of
the way; there was a bear in one corner, and a great crocodile, and a
shark; possessions of the previous owner of the Stuffed Animal House,
stored here by her executor, pending the final settlement of the estate.
Lloyd Pryor stood at the doorway looking in. Through a grimed and
cobwebbed window at the farther end of the room the light filtered down
among the still figures; there was the smell of dead fur and feathers,
and of some acrid preservative. One box had been broken in moving it
from the house, and a beaver had slipped from his carefully bitten
branch, and lay on the dusty boards, a burst of cotton pushing through
the splitting belly-seam. Lloyd Pryor thrust it into its case with his
stick, and started as he did so. Something moved, back in the dusk.
"It's I, Lloyd," Helena Richie said.
"You? My dear Nelly! Why are you sitting in this gloomy place?"
She smiled faintly, but her face was weary with tears. "Oh, I
just--came in here," she said vaguely.
She had said to herself when, angry and wounded, she left him in the
garden, that if she went back to the house he would find her. So she
had come here to the dust and silence of the carriage-house, and
sitting down on one of the cases had hidden her face in her hands.
Little by little anger ebbed. Just misery remained. But still she sat
there, looking absently at these dead creatures about her, or at a thin
line of sunshine falling through a heart-shaped opening in a shutter,
and moving noiselessly across the floor. A mote dipped into this stream
of light, zigzagged through it, then sank into the darkness. She
followed it with dull eyes, thinking, if she thought at all, that she
wished she did not have to sit opposite Lloyd at dinner. But, of
course, she would have to, the servants would think it strange if she
did not come to table with him. Suddenly the finger of sunshine
vanished, and all the motes were gone. Raising her head with a long
sigh she saw him in the doorway, his tall figure black against the
smiling spring landscape outside. Her heart came up into her throat
with a rush of delight. He was looking for her! Ah, this was the way it
had been in those first days, when he could not bear to let her out of
his sight!
He put his arm around her with careless friendliness and helped her to
her feet. "What a place this will be for your boy to play. He can be
cast away on a desert island and surrounded by wild animals every day
in the week." His voice was so kind that her anger of two hours ago
seemed impossible--a mistake, a misunderstanding! She tried in a
bewildered way to get back to it in her own mind, but he was so matter
of fact about the stuffed animals and the little boy and the desert
island, that she could only say vaguely, "Yes, it would be nice, but of
course I'm not going to take him."
"Well now, that's just what I want to talk to you about," he said,
watching her through his long, curling eyelashes. "That's why I came
down to Old Chester--"
"Oh, is it?"
He checked an impatient exclamation, and then went on: "When I got your
letter about this boy, I was really delighted.--Let's go out into the
sunshine; the smell of this place is very disagreeable.--I think you
would find the child company; I really hope you will take him." His
voice was sincere and she softened.
"It's kind of you, Lloyd, to urge it. But no, it won't do."
"My dear, of course it will do. You'll give him a good home, and--"
"No, no, I can't; you know I can't."
"My dear Nelly! What possible harm could you do the child?"
She drew away from him sharply. "_I_ do him any harm! I! Oh--you
wouldn't have said such a thing, once!" She pressed the back of her
hand against her lips, and Lloyd Pryor studiously looked in another
direction.
"What have I said? That you wouldn't do him any harm? Is there anything
unkind in that? Look here, Nell, you really mustn't be so unreasonable.
There is nothing a man hates so much as a fool. I am merely urging
something for your pleasure. He would be company for you; I thought him
quite an attractive youngster."
"And you wouldn't have me so much on your mind? You wouldn't feel you
had to come and see me so often!"
"Well, if you want to put it that way," he said coldly. "I'm a very
busy man. I can't get off whenever I feel like it."
"And you can't leave your beloved Alice."
He shot a blue gleam at her from under his heavy eyelids. "No; I can't."
She quivered. But he went on quietly: "I know you're lonely, Helena,
and as I can't come and see you quite so often as I used to, I want you
to take this little fellow, simply to amuse you."
She walked beside him silently. When they reached the bench under the
poplar, she sat looking into the April distance without speaking. She
was saying to herself, miserably, that she didn't want the child; she
didn't want to lessen any sense of obligation that brought him to
her;--and yet, she did not want him to come from a sense of obligation!
"You would get great fun out of him, Nelly," he insisted.
And looking up, she saw the kindness of his face and yielded. "Well,
perhaps I will; that is, if Dr. Lavendar will let me have him. I'm
afraid of Dr. Lavendar somehow."
"Good!" he said heartily; "that's a real weight off my mind." Her lip
curled again, but she said nothing. Lloyd Pryor yawned; then he asked
her whether she meant to buy the house.
"I don't know; sometimes I think there is less seclusion in the country
than there is in town." She drew down a twig, and began to pull at the
buds with aimless fingers. "I might like to come to Philadelphia and
live near you, you know," she said. The sudden malice in her eyes was
answered by the shock in his; his voice was disturbed when he spoke,
though his words were commonplace:
"It's a pleasant enough house."
Then he looked at his watch, opening the case under the shelter of his
hand--but she saw the photograph in the lid.
"Is that a good picture of Alice?" she said with an effort.
"Yes," he answered, hastily snapping the lid shut. "Helena, what are we
going to have for dinner?"
"Oh, nothing very much, I'm afraid," she told him ruefully. Then
rising, she held out her hand. "Come! We mustn't quarrel again. I don't
know why we always squabble!"
"I'm sure I don't want to," he said. "Nelly, you are prettier every
time I see you." He put a finger into one of the loose curls in the
nape of her neck, and she looked up at him, her lip trembling.
"And do you love me?"
"Of course I do!" he declared, slipping his arm around her waist. And
they walked thus between the box borders, back to the house.