NOT long ago there was found everywhere in the Midland country a kind of
wood then most characteristic of it but now almost disappeared, a
vanishment not inexpressive of nature’s way of striking chords; for the
wood is no longer so like the Midlands as it was. But in the days when
Ornaby Addition struggled in embryo, hickory still grew in profusion,
and that tough and seasoned old sample of it, Mr. Shelby, withstood at
his office desk the hottest summer in several years. He permitted
himself the alleviation of a palm-leaf fan, and when his open carriage
came for him at a little before six o’clock, every afternoon, he had the
elderly negro coachman drive him out to the end of the cedar-block
pavement of Amberson Boulevard before going home; but on the day that
began the hottest hot spell of the summer he forebore to indulge himself
with this excursion, albeit he forebore somewhat peevishly.
“We got to go straight home this evening, Jim,” he said, and added,
“Plague take it!”
“Yes, suh,” the coachman assented. “She lay it down she want me ca’y you
home quick as I kin git you. I tell ’er bettuh not be _too_ quick or I’m
goin’ have me two nice dead trottin’ hosses. Hoss die same as a man, day
like this, an’ it ain’t cool off airy bit sense noon. Look to me like
gittin’ hottuh, ’stid o’ simmerin’ down some, way ought to!” He widened
one fat brown cheek in a slight distortion, producing a sound not vocal,
but correctly interpreted by the horses as the call for an advance.
Then, as they obediently set off at a trot, he chuckled; for although he
complained of the heat he really liked it; and was not ill-equipped for
it in shapeless linen, a straw hat, and slippers. “Tell me be’n five six
whi’ men drop down dade right out in a middle the sidewalk to-day,” he
said. “Way it keepin’ up, they be mo’ of ’em befo’ mawnin’. Look at them
hosses bustin’ out an’ lathun theyse’f a’ready, an’ I ain’t trot ’em a
full square yit!”
“You needn’t push ’em on my account,” Mr. Shelby said, “_I_’m not in any
hurry.”
“No, suh,” the coloured man agreed, smiling over some private thought of
his own. “I guess you ain’t! But she said, hot or no hot, git you home
early’s I could fix it.” And then he laughed outright.
“Plague take it!” Mr. Shelby said again; for what amused the coachman
made the master all the more peevish. Unquestionably, he was a deeply
annoyed old gentleman, in spite of the fact that he was the coolest
looking human being up and down the full length of National Avenue, into
which thoroughfare the carriage had turned.
The long avenue might well have been mistaken for a colony of invalids
and listless convalescents. Damp and languid citizens, their coats over
bared forearms, made their painful way homeward from downtown, mopping
fiery brows and throats; other coatless citizens, arrived at home,
reclined melting in wicker rocking-chairs upon their verandas or lawns,
likewise mopping as they melted; while beside them their wives and
daughters, in flimsiest white, sat fanning plaintively. Here and there
the stout father of a family stood near his front fence and played a
weak and tepid stream from the garden hose over his lawn, or sprinkled
the street, while his children, too hot to be importunate, begged
lifelessly to relieve him of the task. The leaves of the massed foliage
that made the street a green tunnel hung flaccidly gilding in the sun;
and the sun abated not at all as it approached its setting. The air
drooped upon the people with a weight too heavy to let them move
readily, yet for breathing there seemed to be no air; and it had no
motion, so that the transparent bits of paper, where the popcorn man or
the hokey-pokey man had passed, lay in the street and on the sidewalks
as still as so much lead.
“Seem like ev’thing wilted down flat,” Mr. Shelby’s fat coachman
remarked as they turned into the driveway at home. “Me, I reckon if
you’s to take little slim string o’ cobweb up on the roof an’ push ’er
off, she’d fall ri’ down on the groun’ same as a flatiron. Look
fountain, Mist’ Shelby!” He laughed happily, and waved his whip toward
the bronze swan. “That duck, let alone he ain’t got stren’f ’nough to
spout, he ain’t but jes’ hodly able to goggle his th’oat little bit.”
The swan was indeed put to it to eject a faint spray, for all over the
town the people were making such demands on the water, already low with
the dry season, that the depleted river whence it came threatened to
disappear unless the drought were broken. However, neither drought nor
heat had to do with Mr. Shelby’s peevishness, which visibly increased
when the carriage turned into his driveway;—what made him frown so
bitterly was the sight of his daughter, charmingly dressed in fabrics of
gossamer weight, her shapely hands gloved in spite of the weather, and
her hazel eyes bright under a hat of ivory lace. She was sitting upon a
wicker bench on the big veranda, but when the lathered bay horses
trotted through the driveway gate, she jumped up and hurried to meet her
father as he stepped out upon a stone horseblock near the veranda steps.
“Papa!” she cried, “you must hurry; we’re terribly late! I wouldn’t have
waited for you, but I was afraid you wouldn’t go unless I took you.”
“I wouldn’t,” he said grimly. “You bet your sweet life I wouldn’t!”
“_Won’t_ you hurry?” she urged.
“What for? Ain’t I dressed up enough? All I’m goin’ to do is wash my
hands.”
“Then do,” she cried, as he moved to go indoors. “_Please_ hurry!”
“Never you mind,” he returned crossly. “I don’t usually take more’n half
a jiffy to just wash my hands, thank you!” And as he disappeared he was
heard to mutter, not without vehemence: “Plague take it!”
A few moments later he reappeared, not visibly altered except that his
irritated expression had become one of revolt. “Look a-here!” he said.
“I don’t see as _I_’m called upon to promenade over there and join in
with all this high jinks and goin’s-on!”
“Papa——”
“I don’t mind an old-fashioned party,” he went on. “I used to go to
plenty of ’em in my time, but when all they got for you to do is listen
to half the women in town tryin’ to out-holler each other, why, you bet
your bottom dollar I’m through!”
“But, papa——”
“No, sir-ree!” he protested loudly. “You can well as not go on over
there without me. Why, just look at the crowd they got in there
already.”
He waved his hand to the neighbouring domain on the south, where the
crowd he bitterly mentioned was not in sight, but was indicated by
external manifestations. Open family carriages, surreys, runabouts,
phaetons, and “station wagons” filled the Oliphants’ driveway, and, for
a hundred yards or more, were drawn up to the curb on each side of the
avenue. Coloured drivers sat at leisure, gossiping from one vehicle to
another, or shouting over jokes about the hot weather. The horses
drooped, or, with heads tossing at intervals, protested against their
check-reins—and one of them, detained in position by a strap fastened
to a portable iron weight, alternately backed and advanced with such
persistence that he now and then produced enough commotion to bring
profane bellows of reproof from the drivers, after which he would
subside momentarily, then misbehave again.
One of the coachmen decided to settle the matter, and, sliding to the
ground from the hot leather front cushion of a “two-horse surrey”, went
to chide the nervous animal. “Look a-me, hoss!” the man shouted
fiercely. “You gone spoil ev’ybody’s pleasure. Whyn’t you behave youse’f
an’ listen to music?” He pointed eloquently to the Oliphants’ open
windows, whence came the sound of violins, a harp and a flute. “You git
a chance listen nice music when you stan’ all day in you’ stall, hoss?
An’ look at all them dressed-up white folks goin’ junketin’. What they
goin’ think about you, you keep on ackin’ a fool?” Here, to clarify his
meaning to the disturber, he gestured toward some young people—girls in
pretty summer flimsies and young men in white flannels—who were going
in through the iron gateway. “You think anybody goin’ respect you,
cuttin’ up that fool way? You look out, hoss, you look out! You back
into my surrey ag’in I’m goin’ take an’ smack you so’s you won’t fergit
it long’s you live!”
Mr. Shelby, becoming more obdurate on his veranda, found this
altercation helpful to his argument. “Why, just listen! That crowd’s
makin’ so much noise I’d lose my hearin’ if I went in there. I won’t do
it!”
“But, papa,” his daughter pleaded, “it isn’t the people in the house who
are making the noise; it’s that darkey yelling at a horse. You’ve _got_
to come.”
“Why have I?”
“Because you’re their next-door _neighbour_. Because it’s a time when
_all_ their friends should go.”
“Why is it?” he asked stubbornly. “What they want to make all this fuss
over her for, anyway? I guess, from what I hear, her folks didn’t make
any fuss over _them_ in New York. Just barely let ’em come to the
weddin’ and never even asked ’em to a single meal! I should think the
Oliphant family’d have too much pride to go and get up a big doin’s like
this over a girl when her family treated them like that!”
“_Please_ come,” Martha begged. “All that matters to Dan’s father and
mother is that he _is_ married and they want their old friends to meet
the bride and say a word of welcome to her.”
“Well, _I_ don’t want to say any welcome to her. Dan Oliphant hadn’t got
any more business to get married right now than a muskrat; he’s as poor
as one! I don’t want to go over there and take on like I approve of any
such a foolishness.”
“You’re only making excuses,” Martha said, frowning, and she took his
arm firmly, propelling him toward the veranda steps. “You know how
they’d all feel if their oldest neighbour didn’t go. You _are_ going,
papa.”
“I won’t!” he protested fiercely; then unexpectedly giving way to what
at least appeared to be superior physical force, he descended the steps.
“Plague take it!” he said, and walked on beside his daughter without
further resistance.
At the Oliphants’ open front doors they seemed to step into the breath
of a furnace stoked with flowers. Moreover, this hot and fragrant breath
was laden with clamour, the conglomerate voices of two hundred people
exhausting themselves to be heard in spite of one another and in spite
of the music.
“Gee-mun-_nently_!” Mr. Shelby groaned, as this turmoil buffeted his
ears. “Why, this is worse’n a chicken farm when they’re killin’ for
market! I’m goin’ straight home!” And he made a serious attempt to
depart through the portal they had just entered, but Martha had taken
his arm too firmly for him to succeed without creating scandal.
A head taller than her father, she was both powerful and determined; and
his resistance could be but momentary. She said “_Papa_!” indignantly
under her breath; he succumbed, indistinctly muttering obsolete
profanity; and they went into a drawing-room that was the very pit of
the clamour and the flowery heat, in spite of generous floor space and
high ceilings. The big room was so crowded with hot, well-dressed people
that Martha had difficulty in passing between the vociferous groups,
especially as many sought to detain her with greetings, and women
clutched her, demanding in confidential shouts: “What do you _think_ of
her?”
But she pressed on, keeping a sure hold upon her outraged father, until
they reached the other end of the room; for there, in a trellised floral
bower, with all the flowers wilted in the heat, Dan Oliphant stood with
his bride and his father and mother.
The reception party appeared to be little less wilted than the flowers;
Mr. Oliphant and Dan, in their thick frock coats, suffering more than
the two ladies; but all four smiled with a brave fixity, as they had
been smiling for more than an hour; and the three Oliphants were still
able to speak with a cordiality that even this ordeal had been unable to
exhaust.
The bride might have been taken for a somewhat bewildered automaton,
greatly needing a rewinding of its mechanism. In white satin, with
pearls in her black hair, she was waxy pale under the rouge it was her
habit to use, and she only murmured indistinguishably as Mr. Oliphant
presented his guests to her. The faint smile she wore upon her lips she
did indeed appear to wear, and to have worn so long that it was almost
worn-out;—no one could doubt that she longed for the time when she
could permit herself to get rid of it. As a matter of fact, she granted
herself that privilege when Mr. Oliphant presented Miss Shelby to her;
for the smile faded to an indiscernible tracing as Lena found the
statuesque amplitude of Martha towering over her. The small bride looked
almost apprehensive.
“I hope—I do hope you’ll be able to like me,” Martha said, a little
nervously. “I live next door, and I hope—I do hope you’ll be able to.”
Then, as Lena said nothing, Martha gave Mr. Shelby’s arm a tug, unseen,
and brought him unwillingly to face the bride. “This is my father. He’s
a new neighbour for you, too.”
The old gentleman made a slight, hostile duck with his head. “Pleased to
meet ye, ma’am,” he said severely.
At that the bride seemed to be astonished. “What?” she said.
“I bid you good afternoon, ma’am,” he returned, ducked his head again,
and passed on as rapidly as he could.
Martha whispered hurriedly to Dan: “She _is_ beautiful!” and would have
followed her father, but Dan detained her.
“Martha, will you help us to get her to like it here?” he said. “You see
she’s such an utter stranger and everything’s bound to seem sort of
different at first. I’ve been hoping you’d let her be your best friend,
because you—you’d——”
“If she’ll let me, Dan,” Martha said, her voice faltering as she
continued, “You know that I’d always—I’d always _want_ to——” She
stopped, glancing back at Lena, whose own glances seemed to be noting
with some interest the heartiness with which Dan still grasped the hand
of this next-door Juno. “I know she’s lovely!” Martha said; and she
moved away to overtake her father, who had every intention of leaving
the house at once, but found himself again balked by his daughter’s
taking his arm.
“What _you_ so upset over?” he asked crossly. “What’s the matter your
face?”
“Nothing, papa. Why?”
“Looks as though you’re takin’ cold. It’s the heat, maybe. Let’s go.”
“Not yet, papa.”
“Look a-here!” he said, “I’m not goin’ to promenade out in that
dining-room and ruin my stomach on lemonade and doodaddle refreshments.
It’s suppertime right now, and I want to go home!”
“Hush!” she bade him. “It wouldn’t be polite to rush right out. Just
stay a minute or two longer; then you can go.”
“But what’s the _use_? I don’t want to hang around here with all the fat
women in town perspiring against my clo’es. I hate the whole possytucky
of ’em!”
“_Sh_, papa!”
“I don’t care,” he went on with husky vehemence. “Nothin’ to do here
except stare at the bride, and she’s so little it don’t take much time
to see _her_; she’s just about half your size—you made her seem like a
wax doll beside you, and the way she looked at you, I guess she thought
so, too. Anyway, she does look like a wax doll. Looks worse’n _that_,
too!”
“No, no!”
“Yes, she does,” he insisted. “She’s got paint on her. Her face is all
over paint.”
“It isn’t paint. It’s only rouge.”
“What’s the difference? It ain’t decent. She paints. She’s got red paint
on her cheeks and black paint on her eye-winkers. Looks to me like Dan
Oliphant’s gone and married a New York fast woman.”
“Hush!” Martha commanded him sharply. “People will hear you!”
“I can’t hardly hear myself!” he retorted. “Never got in such a
gibblety-gabble in my born days. I tell you she paints! Her
mother-in-law ought to take her out to a washstand and clean her up like
a respectable woman. The Oliphant family ought to know what people’ll
take her for, if they let her go around all painted up like that. If she
was _my_ daughter-in-law——”
But here Martha’s protest was so vehement as to check him. “Everybody
_will_ hear you! Be quiet! Look there!”
She caught her breath, staring wide-eyed; and, turning to see what had
so decisively fixed her attention, he realized that the clamorous place
had become almost silent. Old Mrs. Savage, leaning upon her grandson
Harlan’s arm, had entered the room and was on her way to the bride.
The guests made a passage for her, crowding back upon themselves until
there was an aisle through which she and Harlan slowly passed. She was
in fine gray silk and lace; and her hair, covered only in part by the
lace cap, was still browner than it was white. But she could no longer
hold herself upright as of yore; a cruel stoop had got into the
indomitable back at last, and she was visibly tremulous all over. The
emaciation, too, of such great age had come upon her; the last few
months had begun the final shrivelling of everything except the self,
but in her eyes that ageless self almost flamed;—it had a kind of
majesty, for its will alone and no other force could have made the spent
body walk. Thus, among these people who had known her all their lives,
there was an awe of her, so that they had hushed themselves, silently
making room for her to pass; and she was so frail, so nearly gone from
life, that to many of them it seemed almost as if a woman already dead
walked among them. They perceived that she could never again do what she
was doing to-day, nor could any fail to comprehend in her look her own
gaunt recognition that this was the last time she would thus be seen.
Slowly, with Harlan helping her, she went through the room, came to
Lena, and stood before her, looking at her and making little sighing
murmurs that told of the effort it cost her still to live and move.
Then, in a voice not cracked or quavering, though broken a little, she
said: “I thought so! But you’re welcome.”
Lena looked frightened, but Dan laughed and kissed his grandmother’s
cheek, talking cheerfully. “Well, this _is_ an honour, grandma! We
hardly hoped you’d come out in all this heat. We certainly appreciate
it, grandma, and we’ll never forget you thought enough of us to do it.
It’s just the best thing could happen to us in the world!”
His free and easy full voice released the guests from the sympathetic
hush put upon them by the apparition; they turned to one another again
and the interrupted chatter was loudly resumed; but Mrs. Savage extended
her right arm and with her gloved hand abruptly touched the bride’s
cheek.
Startled, Lena uttered a faint outcry, protesting. “What—why, what do
you mean?”
Mrs. Savage was looking fiercely at the tremulous fingertips of the
white glove that had touched the rouged cheek.
“_She’s painted!_”
Dan laughed and patted the old lady’s shoulder. “You’d better go and get
some iced coffee, grandma,” he said, and turned to his mother. “Couldn’t
we all go and get something cold now with grandma? I don’t believe there
are any more people coming and Lena’s pretty tired, I’m afraid.”
“I am,” Lena said. “I really am.” She came close to him, pleading in a
faint voice: “For heaven’s sake let me go up to my room and lie down. I
can’t stand any more!”
“Why, Lena——”
“Please let me go, Dan.”
“Why—but——” he began. “Couldn’t you stick out just a little longer?
If we go to the dining-room with grandma I think it might please her.
Besides, if the bride disappeared at her own reception I’m afraid they
might think——”
“_Please_, Dan!”
“Well—but, dear——”
But Lena waited for no more argument; she made a gesture of most
poignant appeal, slipped by him and went quickly out through a door that
led into a rear hallway. Dan’s impulse was to follow her, but he decided
that his first duty led him in another direction, and joined his
grandmother who was on her way to the dining-room. When he had helped
Harlan to bring the old lady iced coffee and such accompaniments as she
would consent to nibble, it was time to return to the drawing-room to
say farewell to the guests; for, according to a prevalent custom, they
could not depart without assuring him that they had enjoyed themselves.
He explained to them that the heat had been too much for Lena, received
their messages of sympathy for her and their renewed congratulations for
himself, and finally, when they were all gone, ran anxiously upstairs to
her. He found her lying face downward upon her bed in her bridal gown,
an attitude less of exhaustion than of agitation, though it spoke of
both. Both were manifest, too, in the disorder of her curled black hair
and in the way one of her delicate arms was stretched upward across the
pillow with a damp handkerchief half clenched in the childlike fingers.
“Why, Lena——”
“You’d better let me alone!”
“But what is the matter?”
“Nothing!”
He touched the small hand on the pillow solicitously. “I’m afraid I let
you get tired, dear.”
“‘Tired!’” she echoed, withdrawing her hand instantly. “‘_Tired!_’” And
with that she abruptly sat upright upon the bed, showing him a face
misshapen with emotion. What added to the disastrous effect upon her
young husband was that her movement completed the disorder of her hair
so that some heavy strands of it hung down, with the string of pearls,
still enmeshed, dangling unheeded against her cheek. The picture she
thus presented was almost unnerving to Dan, who had never seen a woman
so greatly discomposed. His mother had wept heartbrokenly when her
father died; but she had kept her face covered; and he had no
recollection of ever seeing her with her hair in disorder.
“Why, Lena!” he cried. “What on earth——”
“Nothing!” she said, and laughed painfully, satirizing the word.
“Nothing! Nothing at all!”
“But, dear——”
“Never mind!” She shivered, then sighed profoundly, and stared at him
with curiosity, as if she were examining something unfamiliar. “So this
is what it’s going to be like, is it?” she asked.
“What?”
“I mean this _place!_ These _people!_ This—this _climate!_”
But here Dan was touched upon his native pride. “Climate? Why, this is
the best climate in the world, Lena! There isn’t any climate to compare
with it! And as for this little warm spell just now, why, you see we do
need _some_ hot weather.”
“Like _this_?”
“Why, certainly! You see this is the greatest corn belt in the country,
dear. If it wasn’t for a stretch or two of good corn-growin’ weather
like this every summer, the farmers wouldn’t get half a crop, and
there’d be a big drop in prosperity.”
“And you’d _rather_ have it hot like this, then?” Lena asked, seeming to
find him increasingly strange. “You want the farmers to grow their corn,
no matter what happens to your wife?”
“But, my goodness!” he cried, in his perplexity. “_I_ don’t run the
weather, Lena! It don’t make any difference how I might want it, the
weather just _is_ the way it is. Besides, we don’t mind it so much.”
“Don’t you?” She laughed briefly, and shook her head as though
marvelling at the plight in which she found herself, wondering how she
had come to it. “No, I suppose you were born and brought up to such
weather. I suppose that’s why you didn’t tell me about it before I came
here. You probably didn’t realize what this deathly suffocating air
might do to the nerves of a human being who’s always lived near the sea.
And for your mother to make me stand hours in that oven, trying to talk
to all those awful _people_——”
“Lena!” Dan was as profoundly astonished as he was distressed. “Why,
those are the best people in town; they’re our old family friends, and I
don’t know where in the world you’d expect to find better. What fault
could you find with ’em, dear? They were all so cordial and pleasant,
and so anxious to be friends with you, I thought you’d enjoy——”
“Oh, yes!” she cried. “‘Enjoy!’ Oh, yes!”
“What’s the matter with ’em? Weren’t their clothes——”
“Their clothes!” she echoed desperately. “What do I care about their
clothes!”
“Then what——”
“Oh, don’t!” she moaned. “Don’t ask me what’s wrong with such people!”
“But I do ask you, Lena.”
“Don’t! My life wouldn’t be long enough to tell you.”
“Well, I declare!” the dismayed young husband exclaimed, and sat down
beside her on the bed.
But she leaned away from him as he would have put his arm about her.
“Please don’t try petting me,” she said. “You’ll never be able to make
me stand such people. I couldn’t! It isn’t _in_ me to!”
“This is just a little spell you’ve got, Lena; it won’t last. In a few
days you’ll begin to feel mighty different, and then when you get to
knowing mother a little better, and some of the younger people, like
Martha Shelby——”
“Who’s Martha Shelby?”
“You met her and her father this afternoon,” Dan explained. “Harlan and
I grew up with her, and she’s one of the finest girls in the world.
She’s always just the same—cheerful, you know, and dependable, no
matter what happens. You’ll get mighty fond of her, Lena. Everybody
always does.”
“Was she that great hulking thing with the dried-up little old father
that said, ‘Pleased to meet ye, ma’am?’”
Dan laughed uneasily. “Why, Martha isn’t ‘hulking.’ She’s a mighty
fine-lookin’ girl! She’s tall, but she isn’t as tall as I am, and
she’s——”
“She _is_ that big girl, then,” Lena said with conviction. “I _hope_ you
don’t intend to ask me to see anything of _her_!”
“But, Lena——”
“She’s an _awful_ person!”
“But you’ve just barely met her,” he cried, his distress and perplexity
increasing. “You don’t know——”
“She was perfectly awful,” Lena insisted sharply. “Do you _have_ to let
her call you ‘Dan?’”
“Why, good gracious, everybody in town calls me ‘Dan,’ and Martha lives
next door.”
“I don’t see why you need to be intimate with people merely because they
live next door,” Lena said coldly. “I suppose, though, in this heavenly
climate you feel because a girl lives next door to you it’s necessary to
let her hold your hand quite a little!”
“But she didn’t hold my hand.”
“Didn’t she? It seemed to me I noticed——”
“No, no, no!” he exclaimed. “I only wanted to stop her a minute to say I
hoped she’d help make you like it here and be as good a friend to you as
she’s always been to me.”
“I see. That’s why you held her hand.”
“But I didn’t——”
“Of course not!” Lena interrupted. “Not more than five minutes or so!
And _she’s_ the one you especially want me to be friends with! I never
saw a more awful person.”
“But what’s ‘awful’ about her?”
Lena shook her head, as if in despair of him for not comprehending
Martha’s awfulness. “She’s just awful,” she said, implying that if he
didn’t perceive for himself why Martha was awful he hadn’t a mind
capable of being enlightened. “I suppose you expect me to be intimate
with her father, too?”
Dan laughed desperately. “I wouldn’t be apt to ask you to be
particularly intimate with anybody his age, Lena.”
“I hope not,” she said, and became rigid, looking at him with a cold
hostility that was new to his experience and almost appalled him. “I was
afraid you might intend to ask me to be intimate with your grandmother.”
Dan seemed to crumple; he groaned, grew red, apologized unhappily: “Oh,
Lord! I was _afraid_ that’d upset you, but I kind of hoped you’d forget
it.”
“‘Forget it?’ When she did it before everybody! Pawing me—croaking at
me——”
“Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “I was afraid it bothered you.”
“‘_Bothered_’ me! Is that your word for it?”
“Nobody else noticed it, Lena,” he went on. “Nobody except just our
family——”
“Oh, yes!” she said. “The next-door person you admire so much was one of
those that took it all in. She was in at the death—_my_ death, thank
you!”
“Lena, you don’t understand at all. Nobody thinks anything about
anything grandma does. You see she’s a good deal what people call a
‘privileged character.’”
“‘Privileged?’ Yes! I should say she takes privileges perhaps!”
“Oh, dear me!” he sighed. “Lena, you just mustn’t mind it. You see, she
belongs to two generations back, and besides I suppose most people here
wouldn’t know just what to make of your puttin’ artificial colour on
your face. For that matter, your own mother and sister used to be
against it, even in New York, and probably people would take notice of
it here a little more than they would there. I kind of hoped myself,
when you got here——”
“How kind of you!” she said. “Possibly some day you’ll understand a
little of what I’ve had to go through since you brought me to this
place. Yesterday, when we got here, I thought I just couldn’t _live_ in
such heat. You’re used to it; you don’t know what it is to a person
who’d never even imagined it. And in spite of the fact that I was
absolutely prostrate with it, your mother informs me that she’s invited
people to come and shake my hand and arm off for two hours in an oven.
Then, because I’m so deathly pale that I look ghastly, I use a little
rouge and am publicly insulted for it; after which my husband reproves
me for trying to look a little less like a dead person.”
Dan was miserable with remorse. “No, no, no! _I_ don’t mind your puttin’
it on, Lena. I didn’t mean to reprove you; I only——”
“You only meant to say your grandmother’s insult was justified.”
“But it _wasn’t_ an insult, Lena. After you get to know grandma
better——”
“After I _what_?” Lena interrupted.
“You’ll understand her better after you get to know her.”
“After I _what_?” Lena said again.
“I said——”
“Listen!” she interrupted fiercely. “You must understand this. On
absolutely no account must you expect me ever to go into that frightful
old woman’s house, or to see her, or to speak to her, or to allow her to
speak to me. Never!”
“Oh, Lord!” Dan groaned; then rose, rubbed his damp forehead, crossed
the room with a troubled and lagging step, and, upon the sound of a
bell-toned gong below, turned again to his bride. “There’s supper.
Mother said we’d just have a light supper this evening instead of
dinner. Could you——”
“Could I what?”
“Could you wash your face and fix your hair up a little?” he said
hopefully, yet with a warranted nervousness. “It’ll do you good to
freshen up and eat a little. Except the family there’ll be nobody there
except—except——”
“Except whom?” she demanded.
“Well—except Martha,” he faltered. “Mother asked her yesterday because
she thought you’d—well, I mean except Martha and—and grandma.”
Lena again threw herself face downward upon the bed; and when he tried
to comfort her she struck at him feebly without lifting her head.