Within a week Mr. Madison's illness was a settled institution in
the household; the presence of the nurse lost novelty, even to
Hedrick, and became a part of life; the day was measured by the
three regular visits of the doctor. To the younger members of the
family it seemed already that their father had always been sick,
and that he always would be; indeed, to Cora and Hedrick he had
become only a weak and querulous voice beyond a closed door.
Doctor Sloane was serious but reassuring, his daily announcement
being that his patient was in "no immediate danger."
Mrs. Madison did not share her children's sanguine adaptability;
and, of the three, Cora was the greatest solace to the mother's
troubled heart, though Mrs. Madison never recognized this without
a sense of injustice to Laura, for Laura now was housewife and
housekeeper--that is, she did all the work except the cooking, and
on "wash-day" she did that. But Cora's help was to the very spirit
itself, for she was sprightly in these hours of trial: with
indomitable gayety she cheered her mother, inspiring in her a
firmer confidence, and, most stimulating of all, Cora steadfastly
refused to consider her father's condition as serious, or its
outcome as doubtful.
Old Sloane exaggerated, she said; and she made fun of his gravity,
his clothes and his walk, which she mimicked till she drew a
reluctant and protesting laugh from even her mother. Mrs. Madison
was sure she "couldn't get through" this experience save for Cora,
who was indeed the light of the threatened house.
Strange perversities of this world: Cora's gayety was almost
unbearable to her brother. Not because he thought it either
unfeeling or out of place under the circumstances (an aspect he
failed to consider), but because years of warfare had so
frequently made him connect cheerfulness on her part with some
unworthily won triumph over himself that habit prevailed, and he
could not be a witness of her high spirits without a strong sense
of injury. Additionally, he was subject to a deeply implanted
suspicion of any appearance of unusual happiness in her as having
source, if not in his own defeat, then in something vaguely "soft"
and wholly distasteful. She grated upon him; he chafed, and his
sufferings reached the surface. Finally, in a reckless moment, one
evening at dinner, he broke out with a shout and hurled a newly
devised couplet concerning luv-a-ly slush at his, sister's head.
The nurse was present: Cora left the table; and Hedrick later
received a serious warning from Laura. She suggested that it might
become expedient to place him in Cora's power.
"Cora knows perfectly well that something peculiar happened to
you," she advised him. "And she knows that I know what it was; and
she says it isn't very sisterly of me not to tell her. Now,
Hedrick, there was no secret about it; you didn't _confide_
your--your trouble to me, and it would be perfectly honourable of
me to tell it. I wont{sic} unless you make me, but if you can't be
polite and keep peace with Cora--at least while papa is sick I
think it may be necessary. I believe," she finished with imperfect
gravity, "that it--it would keep things quieter."
The thoughts of a boy may be long, long thoughts, but he cannot
persistently remember to fear a threatened catastrophe. Youth is
too quickly intimate with peril. Hedrick had become familiar with
his own, had grown so accustomed to it he was in danger of
forgetting it altogether; therefore it was out of perspective. The
episode of Lolita had begun to appear as a thing of the distant
and clouded past: time is so long at thirteen. Added to this, his
late immaculate deportment had been, as Laura suggested, a severe
strain; the machinery of his nature was out of adjustment and
demanded a violent reaction before it could get to running again
at average speed. Also, it is evident that his destruction had
been planned on high, for he was mad enough to answer flippantly:
"Tell her! Go on and tell her--_I_ give you leaf! _that_ wasn't
anything anyway--just helped you get a little idiot girl home.
What is there to that? I never saw her before; never saw her
again; didn't have half as much to do with her as you did
yourself. She was a lot more _your_ friend than mine; I didn't
even know her. I guess you'll have to get something better on me
than that, before you try to boss _this_ ranch, Laura Madison!"
That night, in bed, he wondered if he had not been perhaps a
trifle rash; but the day was bright when he awoke, and no
apprehension shadowed his morning face as he appeared at the
breakfast table. On the contrary, a great weight had lifted from
him; clearly his defiance had been the proper thing; he had shown
Laura that her power over him was but imaginary. Hypnotized by his
own words to her, he believed them; and his previous terrors
became gossamer; nay, they were now merely laughable. His own
remorse and shame were wholly blotted from memory, and he could
not understand why in the world he had been so afraid, nor why he
had felt it so necessary to placate Laura. She looked very meek
this morning. _That_ showed! The strong hand was the right policy
in dealing with women. He was tempted to insane daring: the rash,
unfortunate child waltzed on the lip of the crater.
"Told Cora yet?" he asked, with scornful laughter.
"Told me what?" Cora looked quickly up from her plate.
"Oh, nothing about this Corliss," he returned scathingly. "Don't
get excited."
"Hedrick!" remonstrated his mother, out of habit.
"She never thinks of anything else these days," he retorted.
"Rides with him every evening in his pe-rin-sley hired machine,
doesn't she?"
"Really, you should be more careful about the way you handle a
spoon, Hedrick," said Cora languidly, and with at least a
foundation of fact. "It is not the proper implement for decorating
the cheeks. We all need nourishment, but it is _so_ difficult
when one sees a deposit of breakfast-food in the ear of one's
vis-a-vis."
Hedrick too impulsively felt of his ears and was but the worse
stung to find them immaculate and the latter half of the
indictment unjustified.
"Spoon!" he cried. "I wouldn't talk about spoons if I were you,
Cora-lee! After what I saw in the library the other night, believe
_me_, you're the one of this family that better be careful how you
`handle a spoon'!"
Cora had a moment of panic. She let the cup she was lifting drop
noisily upon its saucer, and gazed whitely at the boy, her mouth
opening wide.
"Oh, no!" he went on, with a dreadful laugh. "I didn't hear you
asking this Corliss to kiss you! Oh, no!"
At this, though her mother and Laura both started, a faint, odd
relief showed itself in Cora's expression. She recovered herself.
"You little liar!" she flashed, and, with a single quick look at
her mother, as of one too proud to appeal, left the room.
"Hedrick, Hedrick, Hedrick!" wailed Mrs. Madison. "And she told me
you drove her from the table last night too, right before Miss
Peirce!" Miss Peirce was the nurse, fortunately at this moment in
the sick-room.
"I _did_ hear her ask him that," he insisted, sullenly. "Don't you
believe it?"
"Certainly not!"
Burning with outrage, he also left his meal unfinished and
departed in high dignity. He passed through the kitchen, however,
on his way out of the house; but, finding an unusual politeness to
the cook nothing except its own reward, went on his way with a
bitter perception of the emptiness of the world and other places.
"Your father managed to talk more last night," said Mrs. Madison
pathetically to Laura. "He made me understand that he was fretting
about how little we'd been able to give our children; so few
advantages; it's always troubled him terribly. But sometimes I
wonder if we've done right: we've neither of us ever exercised any
discipline. We just couldn't bear to. You see, not having any
money, or the things money could buy, to give, I think we've
instinctively tried to make up for it by indulgence in other ways,
and perhaps it's been a bad thing. Not," she added hastily, "not
that you aren't all three the best children any mother and father
ever had! _He_ said so. He said the only trouble was that our
children were too good for us." She shook her head remorsefully
throughout Laura's natural reply to this; was silent a while;
then, as she rose, she said timidly, not looking at her daughter:
"Of course Hedrick didn't mean to tell an outright lie. They were
just talking, and perhaps he--perhaps he heard something that made
him think what he _did_. People are so often mistaken in what they
hear, even when they're talking right to each other, and----"
"Isn't it more likely," said Laura, gravely, "that Cora was
telling some story or incident, and that Hedrick overheard that
part of it, and thought she was speaking directly to Mr. Corliss?"
"Of course!" cried the mother with instant and buoyant relief; and
when the three ladies convened, a little later, Cora
(unquestioned) not only confirmed this explanation, but repeated
in detail the story she had related to Mr. Corliss. Laura had been
quick.
Hedrick passed a variegated morning among comrades. He obtained
prestige as having a father like-to-die, but another boy turned up
who had learned to chew tobacco. Then Hedrick was pronounced
inferior to others in turning "cartwheels," but succeeded in a
wrestling match for an apple, which he needed. Later, he was
chased empty-handed from the rear of an ice-wagon, but greatly
admired for his retorts to the vociferous chaser: the other boys
rightly considered that what he said to the ice-man was much more
horrible than what the ice-man said to him. The ice-man had a fair
vocabulary, but it lacked pliancy; seemed stiff and fastidious
compared with the flexible Saxon in which Hedrick sketched a
family tree lacking, perhaps, some plausibility as having produced
even an ice-man, but curiously interesting zoologically.
He came home at noon with the flush of this victory new upon his
brow. He felt equal to anything, and upon Cora's appearing at
lunch with a blithe, bright air and a new arrangement of her hair,
he opened a fresh campaign with ill-omened bravado.
"Ear-muffs in style for September, are they?" he inquired in
allusion to a symmetrical and becoming undulation upon each side
of her head. "Too bad Ray Vilas can't come any more; he'd like
those, I know he would."
Cora, who was talking jauntily to her mother, went on without
heeding. She affected her enunciation at times with a slight lisp;
spoke preciously and over-exquisitely, purposely mincing the
letter R, at the same time assuming a manner of artificial
distinction and conscious elegance which never failed to produce
in her brother the last stage of exasperation. She did this now.
Charming woman, that dear Mrs. Villard, she prattled. "I met her
downtown this morning. Dear mamma, you should but have seen her
delight when she saw _me_. She was but just returned from Bar
Harbor----"
"`Baw-hawbaw'!" Poor Hedrick was successfully infuriated
immediately. "What in thunder is `Baw-hawbaw'? Mrs. Villawd!
Baw-hawbaw! Oh, maw!"
"She had no idea she should find _me_ in town, she said," Cora ran
on, happily. "She came back early on account of the children
having to be sent to school. She has such adorable
children--beautiful, dimpled babes----"
"SLUSH! SLUSH! LUV-A-LY SLUSH!"
"--And her dear son, Egerton Villard, he's grown to be such a
comely lad, and he has the most charming courtly manners: he
helped his mother out of her carriage with all the air of a man of
the world, and bowed to me as to a duchess. I think he might be a
great influence for good if the dear Villards would but sometimes
let him associate a little with our unfortunate Hedrick. Egerton
Villard is really _distingue_; he has a beautiful head; and if he
could be induced but to let Hedrick follow him about but a
little----"
"I'll beat his beautiful head off for him if he but butts in on me
but a little!" Hedrick promised earnestly. "Idiot!"