It was as if Birdaline and Josie had slipped a knife under Deborah's
left slipped a knife under Deborah's left shoulder-blade and pushed it
into her heart. She felt a mortal wound. She clung to the piano and
remembered something she had overheard Birdaline say in exactly that
tone far back in that primeval epoch when Debby had been sixteen-as
sweetless a sixteen as a girl ever endured.
Deborah had not been pretty then, or ever before, or since. But she had
been a girl, and had expected to have lovers to select a husband from.
Yet lovers were denied to Deborah. The boys had been fond of her and
nice to her. For Deborah was a good fellow; she was never jealous or
exacting. She was jolly, understood a joke, laughed a lot, and danced
well enough. She never whined or threatened if a fellow neglected her
or forgot to call for his dance or pay a party-call-or anything. She
accepted attentions as compliments, not as taxes. Consequently she
collected fewer than she might have had. The boys respected her so
much, too, that none of them insulted her with flirtatiousness. But how
her hungry heart had longed to be insulted! How she had yearned to
fight her way out from a strong man's audacious arms and to writhe away
from his daring lips!
On that memorable night Josie had given a party and Deborah had gone. No
fellow had taken her; but, then, Josie lived just across the street from
the Larrabees, and Debby could run right over unnoticed and run home
alone safely afterward. Debby was safe anywhere where it was not too
dark to see her. Her face was her chaperon.
Asaph Shillaber took Birdaline to Josie's party that night, and he
danced three times with Debby. Each time-as she knew and pretended not
to know-he had come to her because of a mix-up in the program or because
she was the only girl left without a partner. But a dance was a dance,
and Asaph was awful light on his feet, for all he was so big.
After she had danced the third time with him he led her hastily to a
chair against the stairway, deposited her like an umbrella, and left
her. She did not mind his desertion, but sat panting with the
breathlessness of the dance and with the joy of having been in Asaph's
arms. Then she heard low voices on the stairway, voices back of her,
just above her head. She knew them perfectly.
Asaph was quarreling with Birdaline. Birdaline was attacking Asaph
because he had danced three times with Josie.
"But she's the hostess!" Asaph had retorted, and Birdaline snapped back:
"Then why don't she dance with some of the other fellas, then?
Everybody's noticing how you honey-pie round her."
"Well, I danced with Deb Larrabee three times, too," Asaph pleaded.
"Why don't you fuss about that?"
Deborah perked an anxious ear to hear how Birdaline would accept this
rivalry, and Birdaline's answer fell into her ear like poison:
"Deb Larrabee! Humph! You can dance with that old thing till the cows
come home, and I won't mind. But you can't take me to a party and dance
three times with Josie Barlow. You can't, and that's all. So there!"
Asaph had a fierce way with women. He talked back to them as if they
were men. And now he rounded on Birdaline: "I'll take who I please, and
I'll dance with who I please after I get there, and if you don't like it
you can lump it!"
Deborah did not linger to hear the result of the war that was sure to be
waged. There was no strength for curiosity in her hurt soul. She
wanted to crawl off into a cellar and cower in the rubbish like a sick
cat. Birdaline's opinion of her was a ferocious condemnation for any
woman-thing to hear. It was her epitaph. It damned her, past, present,
and future. She sneaked home without telling anybody good-by.
She had the next dance booked with Phineas Duddy, but she felt that he
would not remember her if he did not see her. And since on the next day
nobody-not even Phineas-ever mentioned her flight, she knew that she had
not been missed.
She cried and cried and cried. She told her mother that she had a bad
cold, to excuse her eyes that would not stop streaming. She cried
herself out, as mourners do; then gradually accepted life, as mourners
do.
That was long ago, and now, after all these years-years that had proved
the truth of Birdaline's estimate of her; years in which Birdaline had
married Asaph out of Josie's arms, and Josie had married Phineas out of
Birdaline's private graveyard, and both of them had borne children and
endured their consequences-even now Deborah must hear again the same
relentless verdict as before. Time had not improved her or brought her
luck or lover, husband or child.
She had thought that she had grown used to herself and her charmless
lot, but the wound began to bleed afresh. She had the same impulse to
take flight-to play the cat in the cellar-again. But her escape was
checked by a little excitement.
Close upon the heels of Birdaline's unconscious affront to Deborah,
Birdaline herself received an unconscious affront.
Asaph, desiring to be hospitable and to pay beauty its due, came forward
at the end of the song to where little Pamela stood, receiving
Carthage's homage with all the gracious condescension of Peoria. And
Asaph roared out in the easy hearing of both his own wife and of
Pamela's mother:
"Well, Miss Pamela, you sang grand. I got no ear for music, but you suit
me right down to the ground. And you're so dog-on pretty! I wouldn't
care if you sang like all-get-out. You look like your mother did when
she was your age. You might not think it to look at your ma now, but in
her day she was one of the best lookers in this whole town; same color
eyes as you-and hair-and, oh, a regular heart-breaker."
Asaph's memory of Birdaline's eyes and hair was wrong, as a man's
usually is. His praise was a two-edged sword of tactlessness.
He slashed Birdaline by forgetting her color and by implying that she
retained no traces of her beauty, and he gashed Josie because he implied
a livelier memory of Birdaline's early graces than a husband has any
right to cherish.
Asaph had counted on doing a very gracious thing. When he had finished
his little oration he glanced at Birdaline for recompense and received a
glare of anger; he turned away to Josie and received from her eyes a
buffet of wrath. He felt that he had made a fool of himself again, and
his ready temper was up at once. He crossed glares with his wife, and
everybody in eye-shot instantly felt a duel begun. It was not going to
be so dull an evening, after all. Even Debby lingered to see what the
result of the Shillaber conflict would be. She was also checked by the
evidences that refreshments were about to be served. Chicken-salad and
ice-cream were not frequent enough in her life to be overlooked.
Disparagement and derision were her every-day porridge. Ice-cream was a
party. So she lingered.
The Shillabers' hired girl, in a clean apron and a complete armor of
blushes, appeared at the dining-room door and beckoned. Josie summoned
her more than willing children to pass the plates. She nodded to Asaph
to come and roll the ice-cream freezer into place and scrape off the
salty ice. Then she waylaid him in the kitchen, and their wrangle
reached the speedily overcrowded dining-room in little tantalizing
slices as the swinging door opened to admit or emit one of the children.
But it always swung shut at once. It was like an exciting serial with
most of the instalments omitted.