NO ONE LAUGHS LAST
Trude read Issy's letter aloud, not noticing in her high pitch of
anxiety that Dugald Allan had lingered.
"--I am going to tell something now concerning which I have given no
hint in my former letters. It's something that means so much to me that
I have not dared write about it until it was decided. And now it is
decided. Professor Deering has asked me to stay on with him as his
secretary. And I have accepted. The salary will not be so very big
though it will seem big to me and I am happy among books and bookish
people and working right here in the college will give me opportunities
I never had before.
"But Trude dear, I feel like a deserter! To think that I who used to
preach the loudest of our duty to Dad's memory and the tradition of his
genius should be the first to break from it! I believe now that Sidney,
that morning she had her little flare-up and we promised her the Egg,
broke down restraints that have been holding us all. Certainly, ever
since then, rebellious thoughts have been growing in me. I have come to
see our lives differently and to believe that we've been silly. We
thought we had to go on living the same kind of lives we led when Dad
was with us, that we had to submerge our own personalities to his
because his was so great. Maybe the League frightened us into thinking
that; they bought us or thought they did. But Trude, they _couldn't_!
They can buy the house and the atmosphere and Dad's coat and chair and
pens and all that but they can't buy Dad's children! Dad wouldn't want
it that way. Why, we are his greatest creation and our lives are his
gift to us and he would want us to make something fine of those
gifts--something that would be our own. Sidney said that she wanted to
be something besides Joseph Romley's daughter and that was simply her
real self crying for escape. I hope the dear child has found it in a
happy summer and has had her fill of the adventure she craved.
"Happy as I am I cannot bear thinking of leaving you with the
responsibilities of Vick and Sidney and the League, except that you
have always carried the responsibility anyway. But it seems too much
for even shoulders like yours. So I've been making schemes. Vick will
be sure to marry soon, bless her pretty face, and then with my salary
and the royalties we can send Sidney away to school and you can plan
something for yourself just as I have done. It's a wonderful feeling,
Trude, I am just beginning to live! I don't mind a bit now thinking of
being an old maid--"
Trude folded the letter, suddenly conscious of her listeners. Sidney
caught at it as though to make certain it had actually been written by
her sister Isolde.
"Think of it. Trude! A hope-to-die secretary with a salary! I do
believe it's old Issy who's going to laugh last."
"What do you mean Sidney?" asked Trude; but she did not wait for Sidney
to answer. Her thoughts were elsewhere. "I believe _Issy_ has torn a
veil from us all. We _were_ silly. We held to the ties of Dad as a poet
and were losing the sweet real ones of him as a father. Of course he'd
want us--the father part of him--to live our own lives, make of them
what we can--"
"_Would he?_" cried Dugald Allan from his corner. And at the sound of
his voice Trude started, her face flushing crimson. "Then, Trude
Romley, will you please withdraw that answer you gave me out on the
breakwall? It can't hold good now."
"Oh, _hush_! Don't! Not here--now--"
Sidney, alert to some deeper meaning, took up his question.
"What answer?" she demanded.
Mr. Dugald threw his arm about her shoulder. "Sid, I asked your sister
to marry me. You see I found out that you needed a big brother, someone
with a stern eye and a hard heart and I rather want the job. And that's
the only way I can think of. And she says she cannot, that she must
keep the little household together in return for what the League has
done and cook and sew and sweep and keep accounts. I think there was a
lot more--"
Sidney threw out an imploring hand to her sister.
"Oh, Trude, _please_! I _do_ need a big brother. And Mr. Dugald's
grand! And rich. Pola said so. And _dear_. And it'd be such fun having
him in the family! I'll go away to school and Vick can work and we can
give the old house over to the League. Issy _said_ they couldn't buy
us! And--why, there are just loads of women trying to get Mr. Dugald--"
"Sidney Romley, _stop_!" Trude stamped her foot in confused
exasperation. She refused to meet Dugald's yearning eyes.
"No League can mortgage your heart or your happiness!" he pleaded
softly. "It belongs to you--to give--"
"I object to being courted in this--public--manner," Trude broke in,
her hands flying to her face. But Dugald Allan caught the surrender in
her eyes. He seized her hand.
"All right. We'll go out in the garden. Excuse us, Sid. When I come
back I think I'll be your big brother."
Sidney's eyes followed them longingly until they disappeared behind a
hedge of hollyhocks. She wanted to laugh and to cry all at once she was
so strangely happy; her girl heart stirred with a vicarious thrill to
the look she had seen in Trude's face. Well, Trude would laugh last!
Dear old Trude. Trude a bride when everyone had thought that she would
never marry, just because she had no beaus like Vick or languishing
poets like Issy.
Sidney stood still in the center of the dusk gray room. She did not
know what she wanted to do next--or even think of. She would like to
plan the wedding at once with herself as a beautiful bridesmaid in
shimmery white and Mart and Pola and Lavender and Aunt Achsa there to
see, and she would like just to think of Mrs. Milliken's face when she
heard about everything and--
Suddenly her eyes fell upon Vick's forgotten letter. What had Vick
written? No ordinary letter could come on this momentous day! Perhaps
Vick had written that she had eloped--she had read that sometimes even
nice girls did that, girls oppressed by things like the League. She
opened the letter without any hesitation and carried it to the door
that she might read it by the fading light.
It was not neatly margined like Issy's; the big letters raced slantwise
across the page. Nor was it wordy, rather straight to the point.
"Dear old girls everybody: You'll die. Godmother Jocelyn's a good sort,
in spite of her lace and her lap-dog. She's going to take me around the
world! She says that as long as we're this far we might as well go all
the way. It isn't the cherry blossoms and the rickshaws and the
southern moons alone that thrill me--we're going with the peppiest
family from Chicago--some people we met on the train. A father, a
mother, a girl my age--_AND_--a very nice brother! _Nicest yet!_ But am
I a pig? Yes. To leave my sisters there under Mrs. Milliken's thumb!
But you'll forgive me, won't you? Do you remember how we used to play
going to China?_ And I'm going!_"
Sidney drew a long breath. She wished she were not alone. She wanted to
shout or something. "Well!" she cried softly. "_No_ one laughs loudest!
I guess--the whole family of Romley--laughs _together_ long--and--loud!"
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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