_Miss Ada Tenafee rejoices to have her protégée receive two callers in
one afternoon, and Miss Nancy Carey sees Luke Manders again._
IT was with a sense of sanctuary, of what children call “King’s X,”
that Glen gained the backyard of her home, Luke striding beside her,
and found the black woman gathering up the towels which had been
bleaching on the grass.
“Hi, dar, Miss Glen, honey, yo’ procative right in de house!” Phemie
greeted her with a husky shout. “Yo’ all got comp’ny! Miss Ada, she
lookin’ fo’ you ebery minnit!”
Company? Little company came to the dull house of the doctor’s
choosing. Some connection of her companion’s, no doubt.... At the steps
of the rear porch Glen stood still and faced him.
“Luke, I’m so sorry! Sorry and--ashamed! I don’t know what to say to
you.”
“There’s only one thing to say to me,” he said, doggedly, his face
dark. “That you’ll marry me, as you’ve always meant to! As you promised
your father! What’s come over you, to make you----”
“Oh, Luke, I don’t know, myself!” the girl broke in, desperately. “I’m
so proud of you, and so devoted to you, and Dad----”
He took imperious hold of her again without a backward glance at the
negress, pottering about the mean little backyard. “It’s no use talking
and explaining!” he said roughly. “For five years I’ve waited, and----”
With a scared glance at the house and another at Phemie, still stooping
over her towels which flapped teasingly in the wind, Glen pulled
herself free. “Oh, then you can--you _will_--wait a little longer,
Luke! Why”--she caught at a straw of defense--“you’re always telling me
to wait about the mill, and the children, and all the hands, and making
me be patient! Now I’m begging you to wait--to be patient with me, just
a little while, Luke!”
“How long?”
“Why--why--how can I tell, how long, exactly? Until I--until-- You
see, Luke, I can’t explain, but I’m not ready! Dad wanted me to wait,
and----”
“Till you were nineteen or twenty, he said. Well, you’re nineteen.”
“I know. Oh, I know how silly and--and disloyal I seem, but if you’ll
just _trust_ me!”
He caught her slim young shoulders again in an iron grip. “Anybody
else? Look at me. Look at me, I say! Is there anybody else?”
She met his furious eyes with the sad candor of her own. “No one, Luke.
You know that.” The black woman, her bright calico apron heaped high
with the towels, passed them and went into the kitchen and she paused
until the door had closed behind her. “I--I admire you, and look up to
you, and glory in what you’ve done----”
“But you don’t love me?” He was accusing, bitter.
She felt guilty and forlorn and forsaken, and the tears came into her
eyes. “Oh, Luke, I love what you _are_, and what you’re going to do and
to be-- And I will marry you! I will! I want to, and Dad wanted me to,
but if you’ll wait----”
“If it’s the Tenafee woman--” he began, between set teeth.
“Miss Ada? No, Luke, no! She has never said a word--we’ve never talked
of you! It’s my own fault--my own wicked, ungrateful fault, but I’ll
try, oh, I’ll _try_ to----”
“Glen, dear! Oh, Glen!” fluted Miss Ada Tenafee’s gentle voice. She
opened the door and looked out, her bright face clouding over at sight
of Luke Manders. “Glen, honey, you have callers. Good afternoon, Luke!”
He stared at her rudely, consideringly, without answering.
“Oh, who is it, Miss Ada? Callers? For _me_? I was just coming in, and
Luke is coming, too. Yes, Luke, _please_--” she laid her hand on his
arm as he turned away. She could not let him go like that. “Come in, if
only for a minute.”
Looking at Miss Ada, reading her quite visible hope that he would
refuse, he turned and followed Glen into the house, the teacher
fluttering after.
“It’s Nancy Carey, Glen, honey, and another old friend of yours!
They’ve been here half an hour, and I gave them tea, and I was so
anxious for fear you might be delayed at the mill----”
Nancy Carey, lovely and languid in the doctor’s shabby armchair, held
up a pale hand. “Hello, Glen! Here’s somebody who was crazy to see
you!” She indicated the other girl who jumped to her feet and came
laughing to meet the mistress of the house.
“Well, look what spring has brought you!” Her voice was high and sharp,
and her whole look was of sharpness--her very bright eyes with their
darkened lashes, and brows plucked to a tiny black line, the almost
mauve of her cheeks and her violent cerise mouth. “Know who I am?”
Glen shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t remember--” she began
uncomfortably.
“Don’t remember the brat from the Bella Vista who was the solitary
guest at your valentine party? _I’m_ Janice Jennings. Greetings and
hail! At the Bella Vista again, with my grandmother.”
“Oh....” Glen was a little dazed. She presented Luke to the two girls,
hastily, fearful lest he should stride out in the blackness of his mood
and have still further reason for resentment toward her.
Nancy Carey looked up at Luke Manders with her liquid hazel gaze and
her soft little mouth smiling widely. “I’ve met you before,” she said
calmly.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh, yes, I have ... right here, just after Glen’s father died!” She
waited in soft expectancy for his corroboration, and when it did not
come she expelled a quick sigh. “Well, I’ve met you now, anyway.”
Miss Ada was perturbed. The affair had started so beautifully--_two_
callers for Glen at once, and one of them a _Carey_--and now the young
savage had to walk into the scene, like--as her own dear father would
have said--a bull in a china shop. If he must be there and some one
must talk to him, let it be the Northern girl: Miss Ada interposed
herself swiftly between Nancy and the intruder and talked brightly to
her kinswoman.
Nancy got slowly out of the old armchair. “It’s late,” she said
vaguely. “You coming, Janice?”
“No, I’ll stay with Glen a while. Thanks for bringing me, old thing!
See you to-morrow!” Miss Jennings waved a careless hand.
“Glen, my _dear_!” Miss Ada was almost sharp about it. “Nancy’s
_going_!”
“Oh,” said Glen awkwardly. “I’m sorry....” She simply could not pull
her mind out of its deep morass of bewilderment and unhappiness for
these small amenities.
Miss Ada, to cover her lapses, made a great point of seeing Nancy out,
and Luke followed silently.
“Luke,” Glen called after him insistently, “you’ll come back to-night?”
“Not to-night,” he answered briefly, waiting an instant in brooding
silence for Nancy Carey and Miss Ada to pass through the gate.
“Which way are you going?” Nancy looked up at him, adding with gentle
emphasis, “_I’m_ going up!”
“Down,” said the mountaineer curtly.
She stared after him as he strode down the hill, her soft under lip
thrust out, and again she gave the quick little sigh.
“Nancy, honey, you are mighty sweet and kind,” Miss Ada was adoring.
“You always want to put _everybody_ at their ease. I’ll just walk a
little piece with you,” she added, and again, as on the day of Dr.
Darrow’s funeral, she tripped delicately by the side of her young
connection, and again, incredibly, the young connection turned the
talk, which Miss Ada would have chosen to be about Tenafees, to the
mountaineer.
“Is Luke Manders still in the mill, Cousin Ada?”
“Why, yes; yes, he is still employed there. But you haven’t told me
about dear Mary-Lou Tenafee! She’s managing that great plantation all
soul alone? My, but she is a remarkable girl, Nancy, my dear! We may
well be proud of her. So young, so lovely, widowed so early, yet----”
But Nancy Carey was pursuing her own line with soft ruthlessness.
“Then, I suppose he’s doing very well, or he wouldn’t have stayed so
long?”
“He--yes, I--I understand that he has advanced. He is, I believe, a
good worker. People like that have great physical endurance, you know,
and----”
To complete the flash-back of three years, Mr. ’Gene Carey’s daughter
made almost the identical remark that she made then, and there was
wistfulness in her voice, and soft wonder. “Cousin Ada, I do think he’s
the handsomest thing I ever saw in real life....”
Glen, meanwhile, tried to fling off her unhappy preoccupation and
listen to her caller.
“So you’ve lost both your father and your mother?” She was brusque
about it, but her bright little eyes were kind.
“Yes.” She couldn’t be expansive about it, but she forced herself to be
civil. “And your grandmother is still living?”
Miss Jennings laughed. “I’ll say she is! Say, the Grim Reaper is a bum
shot, isn’t he? Grammer’s about a thousand and two, and gets crabbeder
every minute. Your people were youngish, and good scouts, as I
remember. You liked them both, didn’t you?” Glen’s murmur did not stop
her. “Well, I liked _my_ Dad; I was crazy about him.” Her bright little
eyes became noticeably brighter. “I never could see my mother very far.
And of course he died, three years after they were divorced, and she
married the most sickening, cake-eating, old lounge lizard. Well, so it
goes, doesn’t it? Hating the step-papa is the one subject on earth that
Grammer and I agree on.”
She was moving restlessly about the room, and her roving gaze came
to rest on the Persian rug. “Nice,” she commented briefly. “My Dad
collected ’em: I’ve got miles of ’em in cold storage. Well, tell me
about yourself! What do you do at the mill?”
Glen hesitated. “I don’t know what to call my position, exactly.
I’m Luke’s assistant, really; I help him in any way he needs me. He
has been bookkeeper and helped the superintendent, and now the old
superintendent is leaving and Luke will have his place.”
“Luke? Oh, yes--the sheik who was just here!”
Glen stared.
“Sheik,” repeated Miss Jennings, mirthfully. “Maiden’s Dream. Very easy
to look at, I’ll say. Seems to pack a grouch, though. Well, I see The
Hill has kept it up.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I mean, the little snobs are still high-hatting you, just as they did
years ago. Nancy Carey admitted freely that she never saw you, but she
added handsomely that you were a _very_ nice girl. They can’t see you
with a telescope, can they?”
“I don’t need them, and I don’t want them,” said Glen, briefly.
“_’Atta_ girl!” The Northerner approved. “Tell ’em to go jump on
themselves. Nancy’s harmless, though: no real meanness in her. She’s a
dumb-bell. Well, then, who _are_ your little playmates?”
Glen considered. “Miss Ada--who lives with me--and Luke Manders----”
It was Miss Jennings’s turn to stare. “No kids?”
“Oh, yes, of course--the children at the mill! On Sundays, I take them
for picnics, and I teach them----”
“You don’t get me. I mean--girls of your own age--fellows. Don’t you
ever step out?”
Glen shook her head. “I work all day, you see, and at night I read and
study.”
“Gee ... it sounds devilish,” her guest grinned. Miss Ada had come
back into the room, a little breathless and flushed from her brief
promenade. “Well”--Miss Jennings consulted a diamond and platinum wrist
watch--“Grammer’ll be dragging the lake, if any! On my way!”
Glen surprised herself greatly, and delighted Miss Ada, by asking her
to stay for supper. It was partly because the creature was patently
friendly, but chiefly because it offered a respite before she must
begin to think. There loomed before her a great mountain of doubt
and distress and remorse to be tunneled through, and she shrank from
beginning her toil. “I wish you would stay,” she heard herself urging.
“Thanks a lot, but I can’t ditch The White Man’s Burden! Her national
anthem is ‘I need thee every hour’ and especially at meal times; can’t
digest her food unless she has me there to crab at. But listen,--why
don’t you come and have dinner with us at the Bella Vista?” Then, as
Glen did not reply--“I don’t blame you for not getting a kick out of
it--music’s rotten and the food’s nothing to write home about. And
every third guest playing hookey from the Pyramids. Say, when the
doctors sent Grammer down here they said--‘Wonderful climate! Nobody
ever dies there!’ Well, it isn’t _quite_ true; they die, but they don’t
bury ’em; they park ’em at the Bella Vista. But if you can’t stick the
B. V. D.--(that stands for the damn’ Bella Vista) why, there’s that
Southern Home Cooking joint----”
“It isn’t that,” Glen interposed. “It isn’t that I don’t like the Bella
Vista. I have never been there. It’s just----”
Miss Jennings emitted a shrill little yelp of astonishment. “Never
been there? Brought up here, and never been inside the town’s one and
only Class G hotel? Page Cinderella! Well, that settles it. Go put on
the soup and fish, sweet child of nature, and I’ll lead you forth into
the wicked world. But I suppose,” she regarded her with good-humored
shrewdness, “you haven’t any soup and fish?”
Miss Ada Tenafee, who thought Miss Jennings was now proposing that they
have the first two courses there, stated apologetically that they were
merely having cold lamb and a salad that evening, and that she did wish
dear Glen would accept Miss Jennings very kind invitation.
“Right-o,” approved the guest. “You shush her along! Listen--I won’t
dress, if you’d rather. I’ll go as is.”
Glen still hesitated. It was an unheard of thing ... but it would take
up more time; it would interpose a screen of novelty between her and
her unhappy cogitations. “I have no evening dress--” she began.
“That’s all right; come in your unspoiled girlish beauty! I told you I
wouldn’t change.”
“There’s your little buff crêpe de chine, honey!” Miss Ada suggested
eagerly. “And my amber beads!”
“’_Atta_ girl!” Miss Jennings approved of her cordially. “Well, I’ll
beat it now, and you come over as soon as you’re ready. Make it
snappy!” She paused at the door. “Say, you won’t run out on me? You
won’t ditch me?”
The woman answered for her, excitedly. “She will come, Miss Jennings! I
pledge you my word! She will be there!”
Miss Ada was overjoyed. She shepherded Glen upstairs and waited
nervously through the period of bathing and brushing, and then slipped
the slim yellow dress over her head. “At last you are wearing it!” she
exulted. It was rather of a tender subject between them, the little
yellow-buff crêpe de chine. Miss Ada, by the exercise of much innocent
guile, had contrived an invitation for Glen to attend the New Year’s
reception at her Cousin Amos Tenafee’s, and then, knowing that the
child had not sufficiently gala raiment, went to the smart little shop
in the Bella Vista and dipped recklessly into her shallow bank account.
But Glen would not go. She was stirred and touched and grateful, but
she couldn’t go to the pleasures and palaces of The Hill--The Hill
which had broken her mother’s heart, her soft-eyed, soft-chinned
mother; The Hill which her father had damned with his dying breath.
Miss Ada, passionately desiring a fuller and richer life for her
charge, came at last to see that it must come from without, not from
the sacred inner circle, and she relinquished all hope of ever hearing
her dear Cousin Amos, high priest and head of the clan, say--“And this
is our young friend, Miss Glen Darrow, the protégée of our dear Cousin
Ada.” Her remodeled desire, thereafter, took the form of distinguished
strangers who would see at once the beauty and worth of her child, and
she prayed for it nightly, with simple fervor. Miss Ada’s god was,
after all, a tribal god: when she said--‘_Our Father, which art in
heaven_,’ she had in mind a composite likeness of her own dear father
and Cousin Amos, somewhat magnified and glorified, but with the same
essential standards and sympathies, and it was necessary, therefore, to
pray very earnestly and persuasively to have the child of an obscure
(and truculent) Chicago physician receive any special favors.
Janice Jennings might seem, at first glance--a glance staggered by her
beaded lashes and her mauve cheeks and her cerise mouth--an unlikely
instrument of Providence, but Miss Ada was well aware that fathers, on
earth and in heaven, moved in mysterious ways their wonders to perform,
and she saw Glen off for the Bella Vista with misty eyes and a pounding
heart.