The next morning Wilbur found the Penniman household in turmoil. The
spirit of an outraged Judge Penniman pervaded it darkly, and his wife
wept as she flurried noisily about the kitchen. Neither of them would
regard him until he enforced their notice. The judge, indignantly
fanning himself in the wicker porch chair, put him off with vague black
mutters about Winona. The girl had gone from bad to worse. But his
skirts were clean. The mother was the one to blame. He'd talked all he
could.
Then Wilbur, in the disordered kitchen, put himself squarely in the way
of the teary mother. He commanded details. The distraught woman, hair
tumbling from beneath a cap set rakishly to one side, vigorously stirred
yellow dough in an earthen mixing dish.
"Stop this nonsense!" he gruffly ordered.
Mrs. Penniman abandoned the long spoon and made a pitiful effort to dry
her eyes with an insufficient apron.
"Winona!" she sobbed. "Telegram--coming home tomorrow--nothing cooked
up--trying to make chocolate cake--"
"Why take it so hard? You knew the blow had to fall some time."
Mrs. Penniman broke down again.
"It's not a joke!" she sobbed. Then with terrific
effort--"Mar--married!"
"Winona Penniman married?"
The stricken mother opened swimming eyes at him, nodding hopelessly.
"Why, the little son of a gun!" said Wilbur, admiringly. "I didn't think
she'd be so reckless!"
"I'm so glad!" whimpered the mother.
She seized the spoon and the bowl. Judge Penniman hovered at the open
door of the kitchen.
"I told her what would happen!" he stormed. "She'll listen to me next
time! Always the way in this house!"
Mrs. Penniman relapsed.
"We don't know the party. Don't know him from Adam. She don't even sign
her right name."
Wilbur left the house of mourning and went out to the barn, where all
that day he worked at the Can, fretting it at last into a decent
activity.
Dave Cowan that night became gay and tasteless on hearing the news. He
did what he could to fan the judge's resentment. He said it was
probably, knowing Winona's ways, that she had wed a dissolute French
nobleman, impoverished of all but his title. He hoped for the best, but
he had always known that the girl was a light-minded baggage. He
wondered how she could ever justify her course to Matthew Arnold if the
need rose. He said the old house would now be turned into a saloon, or
salong, as the French call it. He wished to be told if the right to be
addressed as Madame la Marquise could compensate the child for those
things of simple but enduring worth she had cast aside. He somewhat
cheered Mrs. Penniman, but left the judge puffing with scorn.
* * * * *
Wilbur Cowan met the noon train next day. The Can rattled far too much
for its size, but it went. Then from the train issued Winona, bedecked
in alien gauds and fur-belows, her keen little face radiant under a
Paris trifle of brown velvet, her small feet active--under a skirt whose
scant length would once have appalled her--in brown suede pumps and
stockings notoriously of silken texture. Her quick eyes darting along
the platform to where Wilbur stood, she rushed to embrace him.
"Where's the other one?" he demanded.
Astoundingly she tripped back to the still emptying car and led forward
none other than Edward--Spike--Brennon. He was in the uniform of a
private and his eyes were hidden by dark glasses. Wilbur fell upon him.
Spike's left arm went up expertly to guard his face from the rush, but
came down when he recognized his assailant. Wilbur turned again to
Winona.
"But where's he?" he asked. "Where's the main squeeze?"
Winona looked proudly at Spike Brennon.
"I'm him," said Spike.
"He's him," said Winona, and laid an arm protectingly across his
shoulder.
"You wild little son of a gun!" He stared incredulously at the bride,
then kissed her. "You should say 'he's he,' not 'he's him,'" he told
her.
"Lay off that stuff!" ordered Winona.
"You come on home to trouble," directed Wilbur. He guided Spike to the
car.
"It's like one of these dreams," said Spike above the rattle of the Can.
"How a pretty thing like her could look twice at me!"
Winona held up a gloved hand to engage the driver's eye. Then she
winked.
"Say," said Spike, "this is some car! When I get into one now'days I
like to hear it go. I been in some lately you could hardly tell you
moved."
The front of the house was vacant when the Can laboured to the gate,
though the curtain of a second-floor front might have been seen to move.
Winona led her husband up the gravelled walk.
"It's lovely," she told him, "this home of mine and yours. Here you go
between borders all in bloom, phlox and peonies, and there are pansies
and some early dahlias, and there's a yellow rosebush out."
"It smells beautiful," said Spike. He sniffed the air on each side.
"Sit here," said Winona, nor in the flush of the moment was she
conscious of the enormity of what she did. She put Spike into a chair
that had for a score of years been sacred to the person of her invalid
father. Then she turned to greet her mother. Mrs. Penniman, arrayed in
fancy dress-making, was still damp-eyed but joyous.
"Your son, mother," said Winona. "Don't try to get up, Spike."
Mrs. Penniman bent over to kiss him. Spike's left went up accurately.
"He's so nervous," explained Winona, "ever since that French general
sneaked up and kissed him on both cheeks when he pinned that medal on
him."
"Mercy!" exclaimed Mrs. Penniman.
"For distinguished service beyond the line of duty," added the young
wife, casually.
"I was so happy when I got your wire," sputtered her mother. "Of course,
I was flustered just at first--so sudden and all."
"In the Army we do things suddenly," said Winona.
Heavy steps sounded within, and the judge paused at the open door. He
was arrayed as for the Sabbath, a portentous figure in frock coat and
gray trousers. A heavy scent of moth balls had preceded him.
"What's that new one I get?" asked Spike, sniffing curiously.
Winona pecked at her father's marbled cheeks, then led him to the chair.
"Father, this is my husband."
"How do you do, sir?" began the judge, heavily.
Spike's left forearm shielded his face, while his right hand went to
meet the judge's.
"It's all right, Spike. No one else is going to kiss you."
"Spike?" queried the judge, uncertainly.
"It's a sort of nickname for him," explained Winona.
She drew her mother through the doorway and they became murmurous in the
parlour beyond.
"This here is a peach of a chair," said Spike.
The judge started painfully. Until this moment he had not detected the
outrage.
"Wouldn't you prefer this nice hammock?" he politely urged.
"No, thanks," replied Spike, firmly. "This chair kind of fits my frame."
Wilbur Cowan, standing farther along the porch, winked at Spike before
he remembered.
"Say, ain't you French?" demanded the judge with a sudden qualm.
He had taken no stock in that fool talk of Dave Cowan's about a French
nobleman; still, you never could tell. He had thought it as well to be
dressed for it should he be required to meet even impoverished nobility.
"Hell, no!" said Spike. "Irish!" He moved uneasily in the chair. "Excuse
me," he added.
"Oh!" said the judge, regretting the superior comfort of his linen suit.
He eyed the chair with covetous glance. "Well, I hope everything's all
for the best," he said, doubtfully.
"How beautiful it smells!" said Spike, sniffing away from the moth balls
toward the rosebush. "Everything's beautiful, and this peach of a chair
and all. What gets me--how a beautiful girl like she is could ever take
a second look at me."
The judge regarded him sharply, with a new attention to the hidden eyes.
"Say, are you blind?" he asked.
"Blind as a bat! Can't see my hand before my face."
The horrified judge stalked to the door.
"You hear that?" he called in, but only the parrot heeded him.
"Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle!" it screeched.
Winona and her mother came to the door. They had been absent for a brief
cry.
"What she could ever see in me," Spike was repeating--"a pretty girl
like that!"
"Pretty girl, pretty girl, pretty girl! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" screamed
the parrot.
Its concluding laugh was evil with irony. Winona sped to the cage,
regarding her old pet with dismay. She glanced back at Spike.
"Smart birdie, all right, all right," called Spike. "He knows her."
"Pretty girl, pretty girl!" Again came the derisive guffaw.
Never had Polly's sarcasm been so biting. Winona turned a murderous
glance from it and looked uneasily back at her man.
"Dinner's on," called Mrs. Penniman.
"I'm having one of my bad days," groaned the judge. "Don't feel as if I
could eat a mouthful."
But he was merely insuring that he could be the first to leave the table
plausibly. He intended that the apparent misunderstanding about the
wicker chair should have been but a thing of the moment, quickly past
and forgotten.
"Why, what's the trouble with you, Father?" asked Winona in the tone of
one actually seeking information.
The judge shot her a hurt look. It was no way to address an invalid of
his standing.
"Chow, Spike," said Wilbur, and would have guided him, but Winona was
lightly before him.
Dave Cowan followed them from the little house.
"Present me to His Highness," said he, after kneeling to kiss the hand
of Winona.
* * * * *
The mid-afternoon hours beheld Spike Brennon again strangely occupying
the wicker porch chair. He even wielded the judge's very own palm-leaf
fan as he sat silent, sniffing at intervals toward the yellow rose. Once
he was seen to be moving his hand, with outspread fingers, before his
face.
Winona had maneuvered her father from the chair, nor had she the grace
to veil her subterfuge after she lured him to the back of the house. She
merely again had wished to know what, in plain terms, his ailment was;
what, for that matter, had been the trouble with him for twenty years.
The judge fell speechless with dismay.
"You eat well and you sleep well, and you're well nourished" went on the
daughter, remorseless all at once.
"Little you know," began the judge at last.
"But I shall know, Father. Remember, I've learned things. I'm going to
take you in hand. I may even have to be severe with you but all for your
own good."
She spoke with icy conviction. There was a new, cold gleam in her prying
eyes. The judge suffered genuinely.
"I should think you had learned things!" he protested, miserably. "For
one thing, miss, that skirt ain't a respectable garment."
Winona slid one foot toward him.
"Pooh! Don't be silly!" Never before had Winona poohed her father.
"Cigarette fiend, too," accused the judge.
"My husband got me to stop."
"Strong drink," added the judge.
"Pooh!" again breathed Winona. "A little nip of something when you're
done up."
"You talking that way!" admonished the twice-poohed parent. "You that
was always so----"
"I'm not it any longer." She did a dance step toward the front door, but
called back to him: "Spike's set his heart on that chair. You'll have to
find something else for yourself."
"'Twon't always be so," retorted the judge, stung beyond reason at the
careless finality of her last words. "You wait--wait till the revolution
sweeps you high and mighty people out of your places! Wait till the
workers take over their rights--you wait!"
But Winona had not waited. She had gone to confer on Wilbur Cowan a few
precious drops of that which had caused her father to put upon her the
stigma of alcoholic intemperance.
"It's real genuine dandelion wine," she told him. "One of the nurses
got it for me when we left the boat in Boston. Her own mother made it,
and she gave me the recipe, and it isn't a bit of trouble. I'm going
after dandelions to-morrow, Spike and I. Of course we'll have to be
secret about it."
In the sacred precincts of the Penniman parlour Wilbur Cowan raised the
wineglass to his lips and tasted doubtingly. After a second considering
sip he announced--"They can't arrest you for that."
Winona looked a little relieved, but more than a little disappointed.
"I thought it had a kick," she mourned.
"Here's to you and him, anyway! Didn't I always tell you he was one good
little man?"
"He's all of that," said Winona, and tossed off her own glass of what
she sincerely hoped was not a permitted beverage.
"You've come on," said Wilbur.
"I haven't started," said Winona.
* * * * *
Later that afternoon Winona sat in her own room in close consultation
with Juliana Whipple. Miss Whipple, driving her own car as no other
Whipple could have driven it, had hastened to felicitate the bride.
Tall, gaunt, a little stooped now, her weathered face aglow, she had
ascended the steps to greet the couple. Spike's tenancy of the chair had
been made doubly secure by Winona on the step at his feet.
Juliana embraced Winona and took one of Spike's knotted hands to press
warmly between both her own. Then Winona had dragged her to privacy, and
their talk had now come to a point.
"It's that--that parrot!" exploded Winona, desperately. "I never used to
notice, but you know--that senseless gabble, 'pretty girl, pretty girl,'
and then the thing laughs like a fiend. It would be all right if he
wouldn't laugh. You might think he meant it. And poor Spike is so
sensitive; he gets things you wouldn't think he'd get. That awful bird
might set him to thinking. Now he believes I'm pretty. In spite of
everything I've said to him, he believes it. Well, I'm not going to have
that bird putting any other notion into his mind, not if I have to--"
She broke off, but murder was in her tone.
"I see," said Miss Whipple. "You're right, of course--only you are
pretty, Winona. I never used to think--think about it, I mean, but
you've changed. You needn't be afraid of any parrot."
Winona patted the hand of Miss Whipple, an able hand suggesting that of
Spike in its texture and solidity.
"That's ever so nice of you, but I know all about myself. Spike's eyes
are gone, but that bird is going, too."
"Why not let me take the poor old thing?" said Juliana. "It can say
'pretty girl' to me and laugh its head off if it wants." She hung a
moment on this, searching Winona's face with clear eyes. "I have no
blind husband," she finished.
"You're a dear," said Winona.
"I'm so glad for you," said Juliana.
"I must guard him in so many ways," confided Winona. "He's happy
now--he's forgotten for the moment. But sometimes it comes back on him
terribly--what he is, you know. I've seen him over there lose
control--want to kill himself. He says he can't help such times. It will
seem to him that someone has shut him in a dark room and he must break
down its walls--break out into the light. He would try to break the
walls down--like a caged beast. It wasn't pretty. And I'm his eyes and
all his life, and no old bird is ever going to set him thinking I'm not
perfectly beautiful. That's the plain truth. I may lie about it myself
to him pretty soon. I might as well. He only thinks I'm being flirty
when I deny it. Oh, I know I've changed! Sometimes it seems to me now as
if I used to be--well, almost prudish."
"My dear, he knows better than you do, much better, how beautiful you
are. But you're right about the bird. I'll take him gladly." She
reflected a moment. "There's a fine place for the cage in my room--on my
hope chest."
"You dear!" said Winona. "Of course I couldn't have killed it."
Downstairs ten minutes later Winona, the light of filial devotion in her
eyes, was explaining to her father that she was giving the parrot away
because she had noticed that it annoyed him.
The judge beamed gratitude.
"Why, it's right thoughtful of you, Winona. It does annoy me, kind of.
That miserable Dave Cowan's taught it some new rigmarole--no meaning to
it, but bothersome when you want to be quiet."
Even in the days of her white innocence Winona Penniman had not been
above doing a thing for one reason while advancing another less
personal. She had always been a strange girl.
Juliana took leave of Spike.
"You have a lovely wife," she told him. "It isn't going to be too hard
for you, this life."
"Watch us!" said Winona. "I'll make his life more beautiful than I am."
Her hand fluttered to his shoulder.
"Oh, me? I'll be all right," said Spike.
"And thank you for this wonderful bird," said Juliana.
She lifted the cage from its table and went slowly toward the gate. The
parrot divined that dirty work was afoot, but it had led a peaceful life
and its repertoire comprised no call of alarm.
"Pretty girl, pretty girl, pretty girl!" it shrieked. Then followed its
harshest laugh of scorn.
Juliana did not quicken her pace to the car; she finished the little
journey in all dignity, and placed her burden in the tonneau.
"Pretty girl, pretty girl!" screamed the dismayed bird. The laugh was
long and eloquent of derision.
Dave Cowan reached the Penniman gate, pausing a moment to watch the car
leave. Juliana shot him one swift glance while the parrot laughed.
"Who was that live-looking old girl?" he demanded as he came up the
steps. "Oh!" he said when Winona told him.
He glanced sympathetically after the car. A block away it had slowed to
turn a corner. The parrot's ironic laughter came back to them.
"Yes, I remember her," said Dave, musingly. He was glad to recall that
he had once shown the woman a little attention.