Laura, at this writing, looked piquantly unfamiliar to her
brother: her eyes were moist and bright; her cheeks were flushed
and as she bent low, intently close to the book, a loosened wavy
strand of her dark hair almost touched the page. Hedrick had never
before seen her wearing an expression so "becoming" as the eager
and tremulous warmth of this; though sometimes, at the piano, she
would play in a reverie which wrought such glamour about her that
even a brother was obliged to consider her rather handsome. She
looked more than handsome now, so strangely lovely, in fact, that
his eyes watered painfully with the protracted struggle to read a
little of the writing in her book before she discovered him.
He gave it up at last, and lounged forward blinking, with the air
of finding it sweet to do nothing.
"Whatch' writin'?" he asked in simple carelessness.
At the first sound of his movement she closed the book in a flash;
then, with a startled, protective gesture, extended her arms over
it, covering it.
"What is it, Hedrick?" she asked, breathlessly.
"What's the padlock for?"
"Nothing," she panted. "What is it you want?"
"You writin' poetry?"
Laura's eyes dilated; she looked dangerous.
"Oh, I don't care about your old book," said Hedrick, with an
amused nonchalance Talleyrand might have admired. "There's
callers, and you have to come down."
"Who sent you?"
"A man I've often noticed around the house," he replied
blightingly. "You may have seen him--I think his name's Madison.
His wife and he both sent for you."
One of Laura's hands instinctively began to arrange her hair, but
the other remained upon the book. "Who is it calling?"
"Richard Lindley and that Wade Trumble."
Laura rose, standing between her brother and the table. "Tell
mother I will come down."
Hedrick moved a little nearer, whereupon, observing his eye, she
put her right hand behind her upon the book. She was not deceived,
and boys are not only superb strategic actors sometimes, but
calamitously quick. Appearing to be unaware of her careful
defence, he leaned against the wall and crossed his feet in an
original and interesting manner.
"Of course _you_ understand," he said cosily. "Cora wants to keep
this Corliss in a corner of the porch where she can coo at him; so
you and mother'll have to raise a ballyhoo for Dick Lindley and
that Wade Trumble. It'd been funny if Dick hadn't noticed anybody
was there and kissed her. What on earth does he want to stay
engaged to her for, anyway?"
"You don't know that she is engaged to Mr. Lindley, Hedrick."
"Get out!" he hooted. "What's the use talking like that to me? A
blind mackerel could see she's let poor old Lindley think he's
High Man with her these last few months; but he'll have to hit the
pike now, I reckon, 'cause this Corliss is altogether too
pe-rin-sley for Dick's class. Lee roy est mort. Vive lee roy!"
"Hedrick, won't you please run along? I want to change my dress."
"What for? There was company for dinner and you didn't change
then."
Laura's flushed cheeks flushed deeper, and in her confusion she
answered too quickly. "I only have one evening gown. I--of course
I can't wear it every night."
"Well, then," he returned triumphantly, "what do you want to put
it on now for?"
"_Please_ run along, Hedrick," she pleaded.
"You didn't for this Corliss," he persisted sharply. "You know
Dick Lindley couldn't see anybody but Cora to save his life, and I
don't suppose there's a girl on earth fool enough to dress up for
that Wade Trum----"
"Hedrick!" Laura's voice rang with a warning which he remembered
to have heard upon a few previous occasions when she had easily
proved herself physically stronger than he. "Go and tell mother
I'm coming," she said.
He began to whistle "Beulah Land" as he went, but, with the swift
closing of the door behind him, abandoned that pathetically
optimistic hymn prematurely, after the third bar.
Twenty minutes later, when Laura came out and went downstairs, a
fine straight figure in her black evening gown, the Sieur de
Marsac--that hard-bitten Huguenot, whose middle-aged shabbiness
was but the outward and deceptive seeming of the longest head and
the best sword in France--emerged cautiously from the passageway
and stood listening until her footsteps were heard descending the
front stairs. Nevertheless, the most painstaking search of her
room, a search as systematic as it was feverish, failed to reveal
where she had hidden the book.
He returned wearily to the porch.
A prophet has always been supposed to take some pleasure, perhaps
morbid, in seeing his predictions fulfilled; and it may have been
a consolation to the gloomy heart of Hedrick, sorely injured by
Laura's offensive care of her treasure, to find the grouping upon
the porch as he had foretold: Cora and Mr. Corliss sitting a
little aloof from the others, far enough to permit their holding
an indistinct and murmurous conversation of their own. Their
sequestration, even by so short a distance, gave them an
appearance of intimacy which probably accounted for the rather
absent greeting bestowed by Mr. Lindley upon the son of the house,
who met him with some favour.
This Richard Lindley was a thin, friendly looking young man with a
pleasing, old-fashioned face which suggested that if he were
minded to be portrayed it should be by the daguerreotype, and that
a high, black stock would have been more suitable to him than his
businesslike, modern neck-gear. He had fine eyes, which seemed
habitually concerned with faraway things, though when he looked at
Cora they sparkled; however, it cannot be said that the sparkling
continued at its brightest when his glance wandered (as it not
infrequently did this evening) from her lovely head to the rose in
Mr. Corliss's white coat.
Hedrick, resuming a position upon the top step between the two
groups, found the conversation of the larger annoying because it
prevented him from hearing that of the smaller. It was carried on
for the greater part by his mother and Mr. Trumble; Laura sat
silent between these two; and Lindley's mood was obviously
contemplative. Mr. Wade Trumble, twenty-six, small, earnest, and
already beginning to lose his hair, was talkative enough.
He was one of those people who are so continuously aggressive that
they are negligible. "What's the matter here? Nobody pays any
attention to me. I'M important!" He might have had that legend
engraved on his card, it spoke from everything else that was his:
face, voice, gesture--even from his clothes, for they also
clamoured for attention without receiving it. Worn by another man,
their extravagance of shape and shade might have advertised a
self-sacrificing effort for the picturesque; but upon Mr. Trumble
they paradoxically confirmed an impression that he was well off
and close. Certainly this was the impression confirmed in the mind
of the shrewdest and most experienced observer on that veranda.
The accomplished Valentine Corliss was quite able to share Cora's
detachment satisfactorily, and be very actively aware of other
things at the same time. For instance: Richard Lindley's
preoccupation had neither escaped him nor remained unconnected in
his mind with that gentleman's somewhat attentive notice of the
present position of a certain rose.
Mr. Trumble took up Mrs. Madison's placid weather talk as if it
had been a flaunting challenge; he made it a matter of conscience
and for argument; for he was a doughty champion, it appeared, when
nothings were in question, one of those stern men who will have
accuracy in the banal, insisting upon portent in talk meant to be
slid over as mere courteous sound.
"I don't know about that, now," he said with severe emphasis. "I
don't know about that at all. I can't say I agree with you. In
fact, I do not agree with you: it was hotter in the early part of
July, year before last, than it has been at any time this summer.
Several degrees hotter--several degrees."
"I fear I must beg to differ with you," he said, catching the poor
lady again, a moment later. "I beg to differ decidedly. Other
places get a great deal more heat. Look at Egypt."
"Permit me to disagree," he interrupted her at once, when she
pathetically squirmed to another subject. "There's more than one
side to this matter. You are looking at this matter from a totally
wrong angle. . . . Let me inform you that statistics. . . ." Mrs.
Madison's gentle voice was no more than just audible in the short
intervals he permitted; a blind listener would have thought Mr.
Trumble at the telephone. Hedrick was thankful when his mother
finally gave up altogether the display of her ignorance,
inaccuracy, and general misinformation, and Trumble talked alone.
That must have been the young man's object; certainly he had
struggled for it; and so it must have pleased him. He talked on
and on and on; he passed from one topic to another with no pause;
swinging over the gaps with a "Now you take," or, "And that
reminds me," filling many a vacancy with "So-and-so and
so-and-so," and other stencils, while casting about for material
to continue. Everything was italicized, the significant and the
trivial, to the same monotone of emphasis. Death and shoe-laces
were all the same to him.
Anything was all the same to him so long as he talked.
Hedrick's irritation was gradually dispelled; and, becoming used
to the sound, he found it lulling; relaxed his attitude and
drowsed; Mr. Lindley was obviously lost in a reverie; Mrs.
Madison, her hand shading her eyes, went over her market-list for
the morrow and otherwise set her house in order; Laura alone sat
straight in her chair; and her face was toward the vocalist, but
as she was in deep shadow her expression could not be guessed.
However, one person in that group must have listened with genuine
pleasure--else why did he talk?
It was the returned native whose departure at last rang the
curtain on the monologue. The end of the long sheltered seclusion
of Cora and her companion was a whispered word. He spoke it first:
"To-morrow?"
"To-morrow."
Cora gave a keen, quick, indrawn sigh--not of sorrow--and sank
back in her chair, as he touched her hand in farewell and rose to
go. She remained where she was, motionless and silent in the dark,
while he crossed to Mrs. Madison, and prefaced a leave-taking
unusually formal for these precincts with his mannered bow. He
shook hands with Richard Lindley, asking genially:
"Do you still live where you did--just below here?"
"Yes."
"When I passed by there this afternoon," said Corliss, "it
recalled a stupendous conflict we had, once upon a time; but I
couldn't remember the cause."
"I remember the cause," said Mr. Lindley, but, stopping rather
short, omitted to state it. "At all events, it was settled."
"Yes," said the other quietly. "You whipped me."
"Did I so?" Corliss laughed gayly. "We mustn't let it happen
again!"
Mr. Trumble joined the parting guest, making simultaneous adieus
with unmistakable elation. Mr. Trumble's dreadful entertainment
had made it a happy evening for him.
As they went down the steps together, the top of his head just
above the level of his companion's shoulder, he lifted to Corliss
a searching gaze like an actor's hopeful scrutiny of a new
acquaintance; and before they reached the street his bark rang
eagerly on the stilly night: "Now _there_ is a point on which I
beg to differ with you. . . ."
Mrs. Madison gave Lindley her hand. "I think I'll go in.
Good-night, Richard. Come, Hedrick!"
Hedrick rose, groaning, and batted his eyes painfully as he faced
the hall light. "What'd you and this Corliss fight about?" he
asked, sleepily.
"Nothing," said Lindley.
"You said you remembered."
"Oh, I remember a lot of useless things."
"Well, what was it? I want to know what you fought about."
"Come, Hedrick," repeated his mother, setting a gently urgent hand
on his shoulder.
"I won't," said the boy impatiently, shaking her off and growing
suddenly very wideawake and determined. "I won't move a step till
he tells me what they fought about. Not a step!"
"Well--it was about a `show.' We were only boys, you know--younger
than you, perhaps."
"A circus?"
"A boy-circus he and my brother got up in our yard. I wasn't in
it."
"Well, what did you fight about?"
"I thought Val Corliss wasn't quite fair to my brother. That's
all."
"No, it isn't! How wasn't he fair?"
"They sold tickets to the other boys; and I thought my brother
didn't get his share."
"This Corliss kept it all?"
"Oh, something like that," said Lindley, laughing.
"Probably I was in the wrong."
"And he licked you?"
"All over the place!"
"I wish I'd seen it," said Hedrick, not unsympathetically, but as
a sportsman. And he consented to be led away.
Laura had been standing at the top of the steps looking down the
street, where Corliss and his brisk companion had emerged
momentarily from deep shadows under the trees into the
illumination of a swinging arc-lamp at the corner. They
disappeared; and she turned, and, smiling, gave the delaying guest
her hand in good-night.
His expression, which was somewhat troubled, changed to one of
surprise as her face came into the light, for it was transfigured.
Deeply flushed, her eyes luminous, she wore that shining look
Hedrick had seen as she wrote in her secret book.
"Why, Laura!" said Lindley, wondering.
She said good-night again, and went in slowly. As she reached the
foot of the stairs, she heard him moving a chair upon the porch,
and Cora speaking sharply:
"Please don't sit close to me!" There was a sudden shrillness in
the voice of honey, and the six words were run so rapidly together
they seemed to form but one. After a moment Cora added, with a
deprecatory ripple of laughter not quite free from the same
shrillness:
"You see, Richard, it's so--it's so hot, to-night."