APRIL

The Deacons were at supper. In the middle of the table was a small,

appealing tulip plant, looking as anything would look whose sun was a

gas jet. This gas jet was high above the table and flared, with a sound.

"Better turn down the gas jest a little," Mr. Deacon said, and stretched

up to do so. He made this joke almost every night. He seldom spoke as a

man speaks who has something to say, but as a man who makes something to

say.

"Well, what have we on the festive board to-night?" he questioned,

eyeing it. "Festive" was his favourite adjective. "Beautiful," too. In

October he might be heard asking: "Where's my beautiful fall coat?"

"We have creamed salmon," replied Mrs. Deacon gently. "On toast," she

added, with a scrupulous regard for the whole truth. Why she should say

this so gently no one can tell. She says everything gently. Her "Could

you leave me another bottle of milk this morning?" would wring a

milkman's heart.

"Well, now, let us see," said Mr. Deacon, and attacked the principal

dish benignly. "_Let_ us see," he added, as he served.

"I don't want any," said Monona.

The child Monona was seated upon a book and a cushion, so that her

little triangle of nose rose adultly above her plate. Her remark

produced precisely the effect for which she had passionately hoped.

"_What's_ this?" cried Mr. Deacon. "_No_ salmon?"

"No," said Monona, inflected up, chin pertly pointed. She felt her

power, discarded her "sir."

"Oh now, Pet!" from Mrs. Deacon, on three notes. "You liked it before."

"I don't want any," said Monona, in precisely her original tone.

"Just a little? A very little?" Mr. Deacon persuaded, spoon dripping;

The child Monona made her lips thin and straight and shook her head

until her straight hair flapped in her eyes on either side. Mr. Deacon's

eyes anxiously consulted his wife's eyes. What is this? Their progeny

will not eat? What can be supplied?

"Some bread and milk!" cried Mrs. Deacon brightly, exploding on "bread."

One wondered how she thought of it.

"No," said Monona, inflection up, chin the same. She was affecting

indifference to this scene, in which her soul delighted. She twisted

her head, bit her lips unconcernedly, and turned her eyes to the remote.

There emerged from the fringe of things, where she perpetually hovered,

Mrs. Deacon's older sister, Lulu Bett, who was "making her home with

us." And that was precisely the case. _They_ were not making her a

home, goodness knows. Lulu was the family beast of burden.

"Can't I make her a little milk toast?" she asked Mrs. Deacon.

Mrs. Deacon hesitated, not with compunction at accepting Lulu's offer,

not diplomatically to lure Monona. But she hesitated habitually, by

nature, as another is by nature vivacious or brunette.

"Yes!" shouted the child Monona.

The tension relaxed. Mrs. Deacon assented. Lulu went to the kitchen. Mr.

Deacon served on. Something of this scene was enacted every day. For

Monona the drama never lost its zest. It never occurred to the others to

let her sit without eating, once, as a cure-all. The Deacons were

devoted parents and the child Monona was delicate. She had a white,

grave face, white hair, white eyebrows, white lashes. She was sullen,

anaemic. They let her wear rings. She "toed in." The poor child was the

late birth of a late marriage and the principal joy which she had

provided them thus far was the pleased reflection that they had produced

her at all.

"Where's your mother, Ina?" Mr. Deacon inquired. "Isn't she coming to

her supper?"

"Tantrim," said Mrs. Deacon, softly.

"Oh, ho," said he, and said no more.

The temper of Mrs. Bett, who also lived with them, had days of high

vibration when she absented herself from the table as a kind of

self-indulgence, and no one could persuade her to food. "Tantrims," they

called these occasions.

"Baked potatoes," said Mr. Deacon. "That's good--that's good. The baked

potato contains more nourishment than potatoes prepared in any other

way. The nourishment is next to the skin. Roasting retains it."

"That's what I always think," said his wife pleasantly.

For fifteen years they had agreed about this.

They ate, in the indecent silence of first savouring food. A delicate

crunching of crust, an odour of baked-potato shells, the slip and touch

of the silver.

"Num, num, nummy-num!" sang the child Monona loudly, and was hushed by

both parents in simultaneous exclamation which rivalled this lyric

outburst. They were alone at table. Di, daughter of a wife early lost to

Mr. Deacon, was not there. Di was hardly ever there. She was at that

age. That age, in Warbleton.

A clock struck the half hour.

"It's curious," Mr. Deacon observed, "how that clock loses. It must be

fully quarter to." He consulted his watch. "It is quarter to!" he

exclaimed with satisfaction. "I'm pretty good at guessing time."

"I've noticed that!" cried his Ina.

"Last night, it was only twenty-three to, when the half hour struck," he

reminded her.

"Twenty-one, I thought." She was tentative, regarded him with arched

eyebrows, mastication suspended.

This point was never to be settled. The colloquy was interrupted by the

child Monona, whining for her toast. And the doorbell rang.

"Dear me!" said Mr. Deacon. "What can anybody be thinking of to call

just at meal-time?"

He trod the hall, flung open the street door. Mrs. Deacon listened.

Lulu, coming in with the toast, was warned to silence by an uplifted

finger. She deposited the toast, tiptoed to her chair. A withered baked

potato and cold creamed salmon were on her plate. The child Monona ate

with shocking appreciation. Nothing could be made of the voices in the

hall. But Mrs. Bett's door was heard softly to unlatch. She, too, was

listening.

A ripple of excitement was caused in the dining-room when Mr. Deacon was

divined to usher some one to the parlour. Mr. Deacon would speak with

this visitor in a few moments, and now returned to his table. It was

notable how slight a thing would give him a sense of self-importance.

Now he felt himself a man of affairs, could not even have a quiet supper

with his family without the outside world demanding him. He waved his

hand to indicate it was nothing which they would know anything about,

resumed his seat, served himself to a second spoon of salmon and

remarked, "More roast duck, anybody?" in a loud voice and with a slow

wink at his wife. That lady at first looked blank, as she always did in

the presence of any humour couched with the least indirection, and then

drew back her chin and caught her lower lip in her gold-filled teeth.

This was her conjugal rebuking.

Swedenborg always uses "conjugial." And really this sounds more married.

It should be used with reference to the Deacons. No one was ever more

married than they--at least than Mr. Deacon. He made little conjugal

jokes in the presence of Lulu who, now completely unnerved by the habit,

suspected them where they did not exist, feared lurking _entendre_ in

the most innocent comments, and became more tense every hour of her

life.

And now the eye of the master of the house fell for the first time upon

the yellow tulip in the centre of his table.

"Well, _well_!" he said. "What's this?"

Ina Deacon produced, fleetly, an unlooked-for dimple.

"Have you been buying flowers?" the master inquired.

"Ask Lulu," said Mrs. Deacon.

He turned his attention full upon Lulu.

"Suitors?" he inquired, and his lips left their places to form a sort of

ruff about the word.

Lulu flushed, and her eyes and their very brows appealed.

"It was a quarter," she said. "There'll be five flowers."

"You _bought_ it?"

"Yes. There'll be five--that's a nickel apiece."

His tone was as methodical as if he had been talking about the bread.

"Yet we give you a home on the supposition that you have no money to

spend, even for the necessities."

His voice, without resonance, cleft air, thought, spirit, and even

flesh.

Mrs. Deacon, indeterminately feeling her guilt in having let loose the

dogs of her husband upon Lulu, interposed: "Well, but, Herbert--Lulu

isn't strong enough to work. What's the use...."

She dwindled. For years the fiction had been sustained that Lulu, the

family beast of burden, was not strong enough to work anywhere else.

"The justice business--" said Dwight Herbert Deacon--he was a justice of

the peace--"and the dental profession--" he was also a dentist--"do not

warrant the purchase of spring flowers in my home."

"Well, but, Herbert--" It was his wife again.

"No more," he cried briefly, with a slight bend of his head. "Lulu

meant no harm," he added, and smiled at Lulu.

There was a moment's silence into which Monona injected a loud "Num,

num, num-my-num," as if she were the burden of an Elizabethan lyric. She

seemed to close the incident. But the burden was cut off untimely. There

was, her father reminded her portentously, company in the parlour.

"When the bell rang, I was so afraid something had happened to Di," said

Ina sighing.

"Let's see," said Di's father. "Where is little daughter to-night?"

He must have known that she was at Jenny Plow's at a tea party, for at

noon they had talked of nothing else; but this was his way. And Ina

played his game, always. She informed him, dutifully.

"Oh, _ho_," said he, absently. How could he be expected to keep his mind

on these domestic trifles.

"We told you that this noon," said Lulu.

He frowned, disregarded her. Lulu had no delicacy.

"How much is salmon the can now?" he inquired abruptly--this was one of

his forms of speech, the can, the pound, the cord.

His partner supplied this information with admirable promptness. Large

size, small size, present price, former price--she had them all.

"Dear me," said Mr. Deacon. "That is very nearly salmoney, isn't it?"

"Herbert!" his Ina admonished, in gentle, gentle reproach. Mr. Deacon

punned, organically. In talk he often fell silent and then asked some

question, schemed to permit his vice to flourish. Mrs. Deacon's return

was always automatic: "_Her_bert!"

"Whose Bert?" he said to this. "I thought I was your Bert."

She shook her little head. "You are a case," she told him. He beamed

upon her. It was his intention to be a case.

Lulu ventured in upon this pleasantry, and cleared her throat. She was

not hoarse, but she was always clearing her throat.

"The butter is about all gone," she observed. "Shall I wait for the

butter-woman or get some creamery?"

Mr. Deacon now felt his little jocularities lost before a wall of the

matter of fact. He was not pleased. He saw himself as the light of his

home, bringer of brightness, lightener of dull hours. It was a pretty

rôle. He insisted upon it. To maintain it intact, it was necessary to

turn upon their sister with concentrated irritation.

"Kindly settle these matters without bringing them to my attention at

meal-time," he said icily.

Lulu flushed and was silent. She was an olive woman, once handsome, now

with flat, bluish shadows under her wistful eyes. And if only she would

look at her brother Herbert and say something. But she looked in her

plate.

"I want some honey," shouted the child, Monona.

"There isn't any, Pet," said Lulu.

"I want some," said Monona, eyeing her stonily. But she found that her

hair-ribbon could be pulled forward to meet her lips, and she embarked

on the biting of an end. Lulu departed for some sauce and cake. It was

apple sauce. Mr. Deacon remarked that the apples were almost as good as

if he had stolen them. He was giving the impression that he was an

irrepressible fellow. He was eating very slowly. It added pleasantly to

his sense of importance to feel that some one, there in the parlour, was

waiting his motion.

At length they rose. Monona flung herself upon her father. He put her

aside firmly, every inch the father. No, no. Father was occupied now.

Mrs. Deacon coaxed her away. Monona encircled her mother's waist, lifted

her own feet from the floor and hung upon her. "She's such an active

child," Lulu ventured brightly.

"Not unduly active, I think," her brother-in-law observed.

He turned upon Lulu his bright smile, lifted his eyebrows, dropped his

lids, stood for a moment contemplating the yellow tulip, and so left the

room.

Lulu cleared the table. Mrs. Deacon essayed to wind the clock. Well now.

Did Herbert say it was twenty-three to-night when it struck the half

hour and twenty-one last night, or twenty-one to-night and last night

twenty-three? She talked of it as they cleared the table, but Lulu did

not talk.

"Can't you remember?" Mrs. Deacon said at last. "I should think you

might be useful."

Lulu was lifting the yellow tulip to set it on the sill. She changed her

mind. She took the plant to the wood-shed and tumbled it with force upon

the chip-pile.

The dining-room table was laid for breakfast. The two women brought

their work and sat there. The child Monona hung miserably about,

watching the clock. Right or wrong, she was put to bed by it. She had

eight minutes more--seven--six--five--

Lulu laid down her sewing and left the room. She went to the wood-shed,

groped about in the dark, found the stalk of the one tulip flower in its

heap on the chip-pile. The tulip she fastened in her gown on her flat

chest.

Outside were to be seen the early stars. It is said that if our sun were

as near to Arcturus as we are near to our sun, the great Arcturus would

burn our sun to nothingness.

* * * * *

In the Deacons' parlour sat Bobby Larkin, eighteen. He was in pain all

over. He was come on an errand which civilisation has contrived to make

an ordeal.

Before him on the table stood a photograph of Diana Deacon, also

eighteen. He hated her with passion. At school she mocked him, aped

him, whispered about him, tortured him. For two years he had hated her.

Nights he fell asleep planning to build a great house and engage her as

its servant.

Yet, as he waited, he could not keep his eyes from this photograph. It

was Di at her curliest, at her fluffiest, Di conscious of her bracelet,

Di smiling. Bobby gazed, his basic aversion to her hard-pressed by a

most reluctant pleasure. He hoped that he would not see her, and he

listened for her voice.

Mr. Deacon descended upon him with an air carried from his supper hour,

bland, dispensing. Well! Let us have it. "What did you wish to see me

about?"--with a use of the past tense as connoting something of

indirection and hence of delicacy--a nicety customary, yet unconscious.

Bobby had arrived in his best clothes and with an air of such formality

that Mr. Deacon had instinctively suspected him of wanting to join the

church, and, to treat the time with due solemnity, had put him in the

parlour until he could attend at leisure.

Confronted thus by Di's father, the speech which Bobby had planned

deserted him.

"I thought if you would give me a job," he said defencelessly.

"So that's it!" Mr. Deacon, who always awaited but a touch to be either

irritable or facetious, inclined now to be facetious. "Filling teeth?"

he would know. "Marrying folks, then?" Assistant justice or assistant

dentist--which?

Bobby blushed. No, no, but in that big building of Mr. Deacon's where

his office was, wasn't there something ... It faded from him, sounded

ridiculous. Of course there was nothing. He saw it now.

There was nothing. Mr. Deacon confirmed him. But Mr. Deacon had an idea.

Hold on, he said--hold on. The grass. Would Bobby consider taking charge

of the grass? Though Mr. Deacon was of the type which cuts its own

grass and glories in its vigour and its energy, yet in the time after

that which he called "dental hours" Mr. Deacon wished to work in his

garden. His grass, growing in late April rains, would need attention

early next month ... he owned two lots--"of course property _is_ a

burden." If Bobby would care to keep the grass down and raked ... Bobby

would care, accepted this business opportunity, figures and all, thanked

Mr. Deacon with earnestness. Bobby's aversion to Di, it seemed, should

not stand in the way of his advancement.

"Then that is checked off," said Mr. Deacon heartily.

Bobby wavered toward the door, emerged on the porch, and ran almost upon

Di returning from her tea-party at Jenny Plow's.

"Oh, Bobby! You came to see me?"

She was as fluffy, as curly, as smiling as her picture. She was carrying

pink, gauzy favours and a spear of flowers. Undeniably in her voice

there was pleasure. Her glance was startled but already complacent. She

paused on the steps, a lovely figure.

But one would say that nothing but the truth dwelt in Bobby.

"Oh, hullo," said he. "No. I came to see your father."

He marched by her. His hair stuck up at the back. His coat was hunched

about his shoulders. His insufficient nose, abundant, loose-lipped mouth

and brown eyes were completely expressionless. He marched by her without

a glance.

She flushed with vexation. Mr. Deacon, as one would expect, laughed

loudly, took the situation in his elephantine grasp and pawed at it.

"Mamma! Mamma! What do you s'pose? Di thought she had a beau----"

"Oh, papa!" said Di. "Why, I just hate Bobby Larkin and the whole

_school_ knows it."

Mr. Deacon returned to the dining-room, humming in his throat. He

entered upon a pretty scene.

His Ina was darning. Four minutes of grace remaining to the child

Monona, she was spinning on one toe with some Bacchanalian idea of

making the most of the present. Di dominated, her ruffles, her blue

hose, her bracelet, her ring.

"Oh, and mamma," she said, "the sweetest party and the dearest supper

and the darlingest decorations and the gorgeousest----"

"Grammar, grammar," spoke Dwight Herbert Deacon. He was not sure what he

meant, but the good fellow felt some violence done somewhere or other.

"Well," said Di positively, "they _were_. Papa, see my favour."

She showed him a sugar dove, and he clucked at it.

Ina glanced at them fondly, her face assuming its loveliest light. She

was often ridiculous, but always she was the happy wife and mother, and

her rôle reduced her individual absurdities at least to its own.

The door to the bedroom now opened and Mrs. Bett appeared.

"Well, mother!" cried Herbert, the "well" curving like an arm, the

"mother" descending like a brisk slap. "Hungry _now?_"

Mrs. Bett was hungry now. She had emerged intending to pass through the

room without speaking and find food in the pantry. By obscure processes

her son-in-law's tone inhibited all this.

"No," she said. "I'm not hungry."

Now that she was there, she seemed uncertain what to do. She looked from

one to another a bit hopelessly, somehow foiled in her dignity. She

brushed at her skirt, the veins of her long, wrinkled hands catching an

intenser blue from the dark cloth. She put her hair behind her ears.

"We put a potato in the oven for you," said Ina. She had never learned

quite how to treat these periodic refusals of her mother to eat, but

she never had ceased to resent them.

"No, thank you," said Mrs. Bett. Evidently she rather enjoyed the

situation, creating for herself a spot-light much in the manner of

Monona.

"Mother," said Lulu, "let me make you some toast and tea."

Mrs. Bett turned her gentle, bloodless face toward her daughter, and her

eyes warmed.

"After a little, maybe," she said. "I think I'll run over to see Grandma

Gates now," she added, and went toward the door.

"Tell her," cried Dwight, "tell her she's my best girl."

Grandma Gates was a rheumatic cripple who lived next door, and whenever

the Deacons or Mrs. Bett were angry or hurt or wished to escape the

house for some reason, they stalked over to Grandma Gates--in lieu of,

say, slamming a door. These visits radiated an almost daily friendliness

which lifted and tempered the old invalid's lot and life.

Di flashed out at the door again, on some trivial permission.

"A good many of mamma's stitches in that dress to keep clean," Ina

called after.

"Early, darling, early!" her father reminded her. A faint regurgitation

of his was somehow invested with the paternal.

"What's this?" cried Dwight Herbert Deacon abruptly.

On the clock shelf lay a letter.

"Oh, Dwight!" Ina was all compunction. "It came this morning. I forgot."

"I forgot it too! And I laid it up there." Lulu was eager for her share

of the blame.

"Isn't it understood that my mail can't wait like this?"

Dwight's sense of importance was now being fed in gulps.

"I know. I'm awfully sorry," Lulu said, "but you hardly ever get a

letter----"

This might have made things worse, but it provided Dwight with a

greater importance.

"Of course, pressing matter goes to my office," he admitted it. "Still,

my mail should have more careful----"

He read, frowning. He replaced the letter, and they hung upon his

motions as he tapped the envelope and regarded them.

"Now!" said he. "What do you think I have to tell you?"

"Something nice," Ina was sure.

"Something surprising," Dwight said portentously.

"But, Dwight--is it _nice?_" from his Ina.

"That depends. I like it. So'll Lulu." He leered at her. "It's company."

"Oh, Dwight," said Ina. "Who?"

"From Oregon," he said, toying with his suspense.

"Your brother!" cried Ina. "Is he coming?"

"Yes. Ninian's coming, so he says."

"Ninian!" cried Ina again. She was excited, round-eyed, her moist lips

parted. Dwight's brother Ninian. How long was it? Nineteen years. South

America, Central America, Mexico, Panama "and all." When was he coming

and what was he coming for?

"To see me," said Dwight. "To meet you. Some day next week. He don't

know what a charmer Lulu is, or he'd come quicker."

Lulu flushed terribly. Not from the implication. But from the knowledge

that she was not a charmer.

The clock struck. The child Monona uttered a cutting shriek. Herbert's

eyes flew not only to the child but to his wife. What was this, was

their progeny hurt?

"Bedtime," his wife elucidated, and added: "Lulu, will you take her to

bed? I'm pretty tired."

Lulu rose and took Monona by the hand, the child hanging back and

shaking her straight hair in an unconvincing negative.

As they crossed the room, Dwight Herbert Deacon, strolling about and

snapping his fingers, halted and cried out sharply:

"Lulu. One moment!"

He approached her. A finger was extended, his lips were parted, on his

forehead was a frown.

"You _picked_ the flower on the plant?" he asked incredulously.

Lulu made no reply. But the child Monona felt herself lifted and borne

to the stairway and the door was shut with violence. On the dark

stairway Lulu's arms closed about her in an embrace which left her

breathless and squeaking. And yet Lulu was not really fond of the child

Monona, either. This was a discharge of emotion akin, say, to slamming

the door.