And Pearl, avoiding his hard, demanding eyes, slipped quietly out of
the room just as Antonia returned with the matches.
Pearl had not been in her room more than five minutes when a knock came
at the door, instantly followed by the entrance of Antonia. The first
impression was that the child was in physical pain. Her whole face was
trembling, her hand was clasped over her mouth, and the instant the
door was shut behind her she burst out crying.
Mr. Williams had said she was dirty!
Pearl, full of pity and feeling horribly guilty, denouncing Williams in
her heart as a heavy-handed idiot, could not but marvel over the power
of romantic love. Everyone, even the adored Durland, had been saying
for years that Antonia was dirty, and eliciting nothing from her but
pitying smiles; and now this agony of shame and remorse was occasioned
by the same words from a total stranger.
Suffering like this, Pearl knew, could be allayed only by action. She
invented action. Antonia should appear for church the next morning,
clean, faultless, perfect in every detail. Antonia shook her head
dumbly--she had nothing--it was Saturday and all her white dresses were
in the wash--her light-blue crêpe de chine had raspberry-ice stains on
it--and she had hidden it away; her green linen was covered with motor
oil. Mrs. Conway's maid had long ago refused to take any responsibility
for Antonia's wardrobe, and Pearl could not blame her.
But the value of the plan was its difficulty. Antonia's agony would
not have been soothed by anything easy, and this was not easy. It took
all afternoon and most of the evening. Under some crab nets a pair of
gray suède slippers were found, which Pearl cleaned with gasoline and
a little powder; stuffed into the crown of a riding hat to make it
smaller was a pair of fine gray silk stockings; her best black hat,
worn only once, had fallen into the water and was a ruin; but retrimmed
with a pink rose from an evening dress of Pearl's, it looked better
than before. At last a crumpled pink linen dress was discovered wrapped
about some precious phonograph records. Pearl borrowed the maid's
electric iron and went to work at this. She was so tired when she had
finished that she omitted, for the first time, her daily letter to
Anthony.
Dressing Antonia the next morning was an excitement. The child's
spirits had revived so that she could look at the situation with her
customary detachment.
"I'm like that thing in the Bible," she said. "I've put away childish
things."
"It will be great fun, you'll find, being as nice-looking as you can
be," said Pearl.
Antonia nodded.
"But the other was fun too," she said.
Everything turned out exactly as Pearl had intended. Dolly did not
come down to breakfast, and Williams did. So, by a miracle, did
Mrs. Conway. Antonia's entrance created a sensation--her carefully
curled hair, her spotless linen, her long slim legs in their gray silk
stockings. Not only Williams but even Durland administered honeyed
words of praise. Mrs. Conway approved of her child, but allowed no
credit to Miss Exeter.
"It's so silly to worry about those things," she said. "I always knew
that she would eventually begin to take care of her appearance. I shall
write Anthony that feminine vanity has asserted itself just as I knew
it would."
Mrs. Conway and Pearl and Durland and Antonia went to church,
accompanied, as Pearl knew they would be accompanied, by Williams. He
said it was entirely on account of Antonia--was a privilege to go to
church with a little girl who looked as pretty as she did. Although
he spoke in an irritating tone, as if you could make fun of a child
without a child suspecting it, Pearl saw that Antonia was flattered at
receiving any of his priceless attention.
In the few weeks of Pearl's stay she had become attached to the little
wooden church on the dunes. She always sat so that she could look out
through the door of the south transept, the upper half of which was
usually open, and see the ocean; when it was rough it seemed to roll
out a deeper accompaniment than the organ's to:
_Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,_
_For those in peril on the sea._
There was a tradition that this was always sung.
Sometimes an impatient dog would stand on its hind legs and look in,
seeking a praying master; and once a wolfhound had bounded over the
half door of one transept and, not finding his owner, had bounded out
at the other.
During the sermon Pearl, it must be confessed, was engaged in composing
her daily report to Anthony. At last she had accomplished the great
achievement--at last she could tell him the thing he most wanted to
hear. She made up her mind that she would begin: "All through church
I looked at Antonia's pretty little profile under a black hat trimmed
with pink roses----" Life presented itself to her in the form of her
letters to Wood, thus offsetting the sense of loneliness that Mrs.
Conway's mocking aloofness caused her. She was still composing when,
after church was over, they walked--Mrs. Conway and Williams ahead and
Pearl with Durland on one side and Antonia on the other--the few yards
that separated the church from the public beach. Antonia's appearance
was much noticed.
Pearl heard an elderly gentleman murmur to Mrs. Conway, "Your little
daughter is lovely--lovely. Is beauty contagious?" And he gave a
glance at Pearl, who was looking perfectly unconscious but caught Mrs.
Conway's bitter reply: "Thank you; I see you feel she was never exposed
to it before."
For the first time in her life Antonia was the center of a group
of boys--many of them in their first long trousers; all with stiff
turned-down collars, white against the sunburn and freckles of their
summer complexions. They were telling her, with the perfect candor of
youth, that she might have been the recipient of their attentions long
before this if she had been dressed as she was dressed today.
"How could I go round the links with a girl without shoes?" one
conservative had wailed, revealing a hidden struggle. And Bill Temple,
Caroline's elder brother, a year older than Durland, and likely to
be junior tennis champion, had said loudly in passing, "Gee, the kid
certainly looks great in that get-up!" If he had composed "Helen, thy
beauty is to me----" all in her honor he could not have given her a
fuller joy.
Pearl was so happy that she allowed her generous nature to lead her
into making an acknowledgment to Williams. She had just heard him agree
to motor to New York after dinner that evening--his stay was a question
of only a few hours now, and on the crowded beach----
She looked up at him and said, waves of gratitude and friendliness
rolling toward him like a perfume, "We owe all this to you."
He answered without the least change of expression and in a tone that
did not carry an inch beyond Pearl's left ear, "Have you any idea what
you do to men?--drive them mad----"
She did not answer at all, but stepped back and allowed other people to
come between them; and presently, knowing that the Conway car would be
crowded, she invited the willing Durland to walk home with her along
the beach.
There were a good many outsiders at luncheon, and though Williams
followed her closely into the dining room she slipped into a chair
between the two children, and all through the meal was aware of
Williams' steady, rather sulky stare from across the table.
After luncheon was over she disappeared. She had the afternoon to
herself, for Antonia was going out with her mother. Pearl took a
parasol and went and sat on the beach, concealed by the jutting of a
dune. She took a book with her, but hardly read. She sat there for an
hour, and about four, knowing that Dolly and Williams had arranged
to play golf and that she would now have the house to herself, she
went back, thinking about the Sunday papers. Almost the only hardship
she felt in her position was that her rights to the newspapers were
not properly respected--the butler, who was a baseball enthusiast,
regularly removing the papers to the pantry as soon as Mrs. Conway had
read the headlines.
The sitting room was deserted and the newspapers strewn about the
table--a condition which should have suggested to Pearl that the room
had been too recently occupied for the servants to have had time to
come in and put it to rights. But she didn't think of that. She took up
the first sheet that came to hand and saw a long illustrated article
about the turquoise mines of Mexico, into which she plunged with a
thrill of interest. She was standing with both arms outstretched, her
gold-colored head a little bent.
Suddenly she felt two hard, masculine arms go round her, a kiss on the
back of her neck, another on her reluctantly turned cheek. It happened
in a second. As she struggled ungracefully, angrily, she saw over
Williams' shoulder the figure of Durland rising from the hammock on the
piazza.
If Wood had received that batch of Sunday letters at the mine he would
have torn open Pearl's first--as likely to promise the most amusement.
But he got them at his hotel in Mexico City, and conscious of great
leisure--for he was staying there a week or so on his way home while
he dickered over taxes with a governmental department--he adopted a
different method. He ranged them before him inversely in the order of
interest. They came--first Durland's. He wondered what Durland wanted,
for his nephew was never moved to the momentous effort of writing
except under the stress of great financial necessity; second, Edna's;
third, that of Miss Wellington, who did not write often; and last
Pearl's thick typewritten budget.
_Dear Uncle Anthony_: I know mother is writing her point of view
about this, and I want you to know the truth. I was there and
mother was not. Miss Exeter could not have helped what happened.
If it was any of our faults it was Dolly's--not only for having
that kind of a thug to stay but for being as usual an hour late in
getting off, so that Miss Exeter thought they had gone. You can
imagine how I felt in seeing a great beast like Williams coming
up behind her and grabbing her like that. I let him know what I
thought, but I would like to have pasted him one on the jaw. I
wish you had been here. Mother is all wrong--a dreadful injustice
is being done a very wonderful woman. She is patient, but I don't
suppose she will stand much more. I wouldn't if I were her.
Your affectionate nephew,
DURLAND CONWAY