Half an hour later, when Lindley had gone, Cora closed the front
doors in a manner which drew an immediate cry of agony from the
room where her father was trying to sleep. She stood on tiptoe to
turn out the gas-light in the hall; but for a time the key
resisted the insufficient pressure of her finger-tips: the little
orange flame, with its black-green crescent over the armature, so
maliciously like the "eye" of a peacock feather, limned the
exquisite planes of the upturned face; modelled them with soft and
regular shadows; painted a sullen loveliness. The key turned a
little, but not enough; and she whispered to herself a
monosyllable not usually attributed to the vocabulary of a damsel
of rank. Next moment, her expression flashed in a brilliant
change, like that of a pouting child suddenly remembering that
tomorrow is Christmas. The key surrendered instantly, and she ran
gayly up the familiar stairs in the darkness.
The transom of Laura's door shone brightly; but the knob, turning
uselessly in Cora's hand, proved the door itself not so
hospitable. There was a brief rustling within the room; the bolt
snapped, and Laura opened the door.
"Why, Laura," said Cora, observing her sister with transient
curiosity, "you haven't undressed. What have you been doing?
Something's the matter with you. I know what it is," she added,
laughing, as she seated herself on the edge of the old
black-walnut bed. "You're in love with Wade Trumble!"
"He's a strong man," observed Laura. "A remarkable throat."
"Horrible little person!" said Cora, forgetting what she owed the
unfortunate Mr. Trumble for the vocal wall which had so
effectively sheltered her earlier in the evening. "He's like one
of those booming June-bugs, batting against the walls, falling
into lamp-chimneys-----"
"He doesn't get very near the light he wants," said Laura.
"Me? Yes, he would like to, the rat! But he's consoled when he can
get any one to listen to his awful chatter. He makes up to himself
among women for the way he gets sat on at the club. But he has his
use: he shows off the other men so, by contrast. Oh, Laura!" She
lifted both hands to her cheeks, which were beautiful with a quick
suffusion of high colour. "Isn't he gorgeous!"
"Yes," said Laura gently, "I've always thought so."
"Now what's the use of that?" asked Cora peevishly, "with _me_? I
didn't mean Richard Lindley. You _know_ what I mean."
"Yes--of course--I do," Laura said.
Cora gave her a long look in which a childlike pleading mingled
with a faint, strange trouble; then this glance wandered moodily
from the face of her sister to her own slippers, which she
elevated to meet her descending line of vision.
"And you know I can't help it," she said, shifting quickly to the
role of accuser. "So what's the use of behaving like the Pest?"
She let her feet drop to the floor again, and her voice trembled a
little as she went on: "Laura, you don't know what I had to endure
from him to-night. I really don't think I can stand it to live in
the same house any longer with that frightful little devil. He's
been throwing Ray Vilas's name at me until--oh, it was ghastly
to-night! And then--then----" Her tremulousness increased. "I
haven't said anything about it all day, but I _met_ him on the
street downtown, this morning----"
"You met Vilas?" Laura looked startled. "Did he speak to you?"
"`Speak to me!'" Cora's exclamation shook with a half-laugh of
hysteria. "He made an awful _scene_! He came out of the Richfield
Hotel barroom on Main Street just as I was going into the
jeweller's next door, and he stopped and bowed like a monkey,
square in front of me, and--and he took off his hat and set it on
the pavement at my feet and told me to kick it into the gutter!
Everybody stopped and stared; and I couldn't get by him. And he
said--he said I'd kicked his heart into the gutter and he didn't
want it to catch cold without a hat! And wouldn't I please be so
kind as to kick----" She choked with angry mortification. "It was
horrible! People were stopping and laughing, and a rowdy began to
make fun of Ray, and pushed him, and they got into a scuffle, and
I ran into the jeweller's and almost fainted."
"He is insane!" said Laura, aghast.
"He's nothing of the kind; he's just a brute. He does it to make
people say I'm the cause of his drinking; and everybody in this
gossipy old town _does_ say it--just because I got bored to death
with his everlasting do-you-love-me-to-day-as-well-as-yesterday
style of torment, and couldn't help liking Richard better. Yes,
every old cat in town says I ruined him, and that's what he wants
them to say. It's so unmanly! I wish he'd die! Yes, I _do_ wish he
would! Why doesn't he kill himself?"
"Ah, don't say that," protested Laura.
"Why not? He's threatened to enough. And I'm afraid to go out of
the house because I can't tell when I'll meet him or what he'll
do. I was almost sick in that jeweller's shop, this morning, and
so upset I came away without getting my pendant. There's _another_
thing I've got to go through, I suppose!" She pounded the yielding
pillow desperately. "Oh, oh, oh! Life isn't worth living--it seems
to me sometimes as if everybody in the world spent his time trying
to think up ways to make it harder for me! I couldn't have worn
the pendant, though, even if I'd got it," she went on, becoming
thoughtful. "It's Richard's silly old engagement ring, you know,"
she explained, lightly. "I had it made up into a pendant, and
heaven knows how I'm going to get Richard to see it the right way.
He was so unreasonable tonight."
"Was he cross about Mr. Corliss monopolizing you?"
"Oh, you know how he is," said Cora. "He didn't speak of it
exactly. But after you'd gone, he asked me----" She stopped with a
little gulp, an expression of keen distaste about her mouth.
"Oh, he wants me to wear my ring," she continued, with sudden
rapidity: "and how the dickens _can_ I when I can't even tell him
it's been made into a pendant! He wants to speak to father; he
wants to _announce_ it. He's sold out his business for what he
thinks is a good deal of money, and he wants me to marry him next
month and take some miserable little trip, I don't know where, for
a few weeks, before he invests what he's made in another business.
Oh!" she cried. "It's a _horrible_ thing to ask a girl to do: to
settle down--just housekeeping, housekeeping, housekeeping
forever in this stupid, stupid town! It's so unfair! Men are just
possessive; they think it's loving you to want to possess you
themselves. A beautiful `love'! It's so mean! Men!" She sprang up
and threw out both arms in a vehement gesture of revolt. "Damn
'em, I wish they'd let me _alone_!"
Laura's eyes had lost their quiet; they showed a glint of tears,
and she was breathing quickly. In this crisis of emotion the two
girls went to each other silently; Cora turned, and Laura began to
unfasten Cora's dress in the back.
"Poor Richard!" said Laura presently, putting into her mouth a
tiny pearl button which had detached itself at her touch. "This
was his first evening in the overflow. No wonder he was troubled!"
"Pooh!" said Cora. "As if you and mamma weren't good enough for
him to talk to! He's spoiled. He's so used to being called `the
most popular man in town' and knowing that every girl on Corliss
Street wanted to marry him----" She broke off, and exclaimed
sharply: "I wish they would!"
"Cora!"
"Oh, I suppose you mean that's the reason _I_ went in for him?"
"No, no," explained Laura hurriedly. "I only meant, stand still."
"Well, it was!" And Cora's abrupt laugh had the glad, free ring
fancy attaches to the merry confidences of a buccaneer in trusted
company.
Laura knelt to continue unfastening the dress; and when it was
finished she extended three of the tiny buttons in her hand.
"They're always loose on a new dress," she said. "I'll sew them
all on tight, to-morrow."
Cora smiled lovingly. "You good old thing," she said. "You looked
pretty to-night."
"That's nice!" Laura laughed, as she dropped the buttons into a
little drawer of her bureau. It was an ugly, cheap, old bureau,
its veneer loosened and peeling, the mirror small and flawed--a
piece of furniture in keeping with the room, which was small,
plain and hot, its only ornamental adjunct being a silver-framed
photograph of Mrs. Madison, with Cora, as a child of seven or
eight, upon her lap.
"You really do look ever so pretty," asserted Cora.
"I wonder if I look as well as I did the last time I heard I was
pretty," said the other. "That was at the Assembly in March.
Coming down the stairs, I heard a man from out of town say, `That
black-haired Miss Madison is a pretty girl.' And some one with him
said, `Yes; you'll think so until you meet her sister!'"
"You are an old dear!" Cora enfolded her delightedly; then,
drawing back, exclaimed: "You _know_ he's gorgeous!" And with a
feverish little ripple of laughter, caught her dress together in
the back and sped through the hall to her own room.
This was a very different affair from Laura's, much cooler and
larger; occupying half the width of the house; and a rather
expensive struggle had made it pretty and even luxurious. The
window curtains and the wall-paper were fresh, and of a quiet
blue; there was a large divan of the same colour; a light desk,
prettily equipped, occupied a corner; and between two gilt
gas-brackets, whose patent burners were shielded by fringed silk
shades, stood a cheval-glass six feet high. The door of a very
large clothes-pantry stood open, showing a fine company of
dresses, suspended from forms in an orderly manner; near by, a
rosewood cabinet exhibited a delicate collection of shoes and
slippers upon its four shelves. A dressing-table, charmingly
littered with everything, took the place of a bureau; and upon it,
in a massive silver frame, was a large photograph of Mr. Richard
Lindley. The frame was handsome, but somewhat battered: it had
seen service. However, the photograph was quite new.
There were photographs everywhere--photographs framed and
unframed; photographs large and photographs small, the fresh and
the faded; tintypes, kodaks, "full lengths," "cabinets,"
groups--every kind of photograph; and among them were several of
Cora herself, one of her mother, one of Laura, and two others of
girls. All the rest were sterner. Two or three were seamed across
with cracks, hastily recalled sentences to destruction; and here
and there remained tokens of a draughtsman's over-generous
struggle to confer upon some of the smooth-shaven faces additional
manliness in the shape of sweeping moustaches, long beards,
goatees, mutton-chops, and, in the case of one gentleman of a
blond, delicate and tenor-like beauty, neck-whiskers;--decorations
in many instances so deeply and damply pencilled that subsequent
attempts at erasure had failed of great success. Certainly,
Hedrick had his own way of relieving dull times.
Cora turned up the lights at the sides of the cheval-glass, looked
at herself earnestly, then absently, and began to loosen her hair.
Her lifted hands hesitated; she re-arranged the slight
displacement of her hair already effected; set two chairs before
the mirror, seated herself in one; pulled up her dress, where it
was slipping from her shoulder, rested an arm upon the back of the
other chair as, earlier in the evening, she had rested it upon the
iron railing of the porch, and, leaning forward, assumed as
exactly as possible the attitude in which she had sat so long
beside Valentine Corliss. She leaned very slowly closer and yet
closer to the mirror; a rich colour spread over her; her eyes,
gazing into themselves, became dreamy, inexpressibly wistful,
cloudily sweet; her breath was tumultuous. "`Even as you and I'?"
she whispered.
Then, in the final moment of this after-the-fact rehearsal, as her
face almost touched the glass, she forgot how and what she had
looked to Corliss; she forgot him; she forgot him utterly: she
leaped to her feet and kissed the mirrored lips with a sort of
passion.
"You _darling_!" she cried. Cora's christening had been
unimaginative, for the name means only, "maiden." She should
have been called Narcissa.
The rhapsody was over instantly, leaving an emotional vacuum like
a silence at the dentist's. Cora yawned, and resumed the loosening
of her hair.
When she had put on her nightgown, she went from one window to
another, closing the shutters against the coming of the morning
light to wake her. As she reached the last window, a sudden high
wind rushed among the trees outside; a white flare leaped at her
face, startling her; there was a boom and rattle as of the
brasses, cymbals, and kettle-drums of some fatal orchestra; and
almost at once it began to rain.
And with that, from the distance came a voice, singing; and at the
first sound of it, though it was far away and almost
indistinguishable, Cora started more violently than at the
lightning; she sprang to the mirror lights, put them out; threw
herself upon the bed, and huddled there in the darkness.
The wind passed; the heart of the storm was miles away; this was
only its fringe; but the rain pattered sharply upon the thick
foliage outside her windows; and the singing voice came slowly up
the street.
It was a strange voice: high-pitched and hoarse--and not quite
human, so utter was the animal abandon of it.
"I love a lassie, a bonnie, bonnie lassie," it wailed and piped,
coming nearer; and the gay little air--wrought to a grotesque of
itself by this wild, high voice in the rain--might have been a
banshee's love-song.
"I love a lassie, a bonnie, bonnie lassie.
She's as pure as the lily in the dell----"
The voice grew louder; came in front of the house; came into the
yard; came and sang just under Cora's window. There it fell silent
a moment; then was lifted in a long peal of imbecile laughter, and
sang again:
"Then slowly, slowly rase she up
And slowly she came nigh him,
And when she drew the curtain by--
`Young man I think you're dyin'.'"
Cora's door opened and closed softly, and Laura, barefooted, stole
to the bed and put an arm about the shaking form of her sister.
"The drunken beast!" sobbed Cora. "It's to disgrace me! That's
what he wants. He'd like nothing better than headlines in the
papers: `Ray Vilas arrested at the Madison residence'!" She choked
with anger and mortification. "The neighbours----"
"They're nearly all away," whispered Laura. "You needn't fear----"
"Hark!"
The voice stopped singing, and began to mumble incoherently; then
it rose again in a lamentable outcry:
"Oh, God of the fallen, be Thou merciful to me! Be Thou
merciful--merciful--_merciful_" . . .
"MERCIFUL, MERCIFUL, MERCIFUL!" it shrieked, over and over, with
increasing loudness, and to such nerve-racking effect that Cora,
gasping, beat the bedclothes frantically with her hands at each
iteration.
The transom over the door became luminous; some one had lighted
the gas in the upper hall. Both girls jumped from the bed, ran to
the door, and opened it. Their mother, wearing a red wrapper, was
standing at the head of the stairs, which Mr. Madison, in his
night-shirt and slippers, was slowly and heavily descending.
Before he reached the front door, the voice outside ceased its
dreadful plaint with the abrupt anti-climax of a phonograph
stopped in the middle of a record. There was the sound of a
struggle and wrestling, a turmoil in the wet shrubberies, branches
cracking.
"Let me go, da----" cried the voice, drowned again at half a word,
as by a powerful hand upon a screaming mouth.
The old man opened the front door, stepped out, closing it behind
him; and the three women looked at each other wanly during a
hushed interval like that in a sleeping-car at night when the
train stops. Presently he came in again, and started up the
stairs, heavily and slowly, as he had gone down.
"Richard Lindley stopped him," he said, sighing with the ascent,
and not looking up. "He heard him as he came along the street, and
dressed as quick as he could, and ran up and got him. Richard's
taken him away."
He went to his own room, panting, mopping his damp gray hair with
his fat wrist, and looking at no one.
Cora began to cry again. It was an hour before any of this family
had recovered sufficient poise to realize, with the shuddering
gratitude of adventurers spared from the abyss, that, under
Providence, Hedrick had not wakened!