"And a year before that the first one died--and two years they were
married," he computed. "I never met that one. Then it's close to twenty
years since Bert and I have seen each other."
"How awful," Lulu said, and flushed again.
"Why?"
"To be that long away from your folks."
Suddenly she found herself facing this honestly, as if the immensity of
her present experience were clarifying her understanding: Would it be so
awful to be away from Bert and Monona and Di--yes, and Ina, for twenty
years?
"You think that?" he laughed. "A man don't know what he's like till he's
roamed around on his own." He liked the sound of it. "Roamed around on
his own," he repeated, and laughed again. "Course a woman don't know
that."
"Why don't she?" asked Lulu. She balanced a pie on her hand and carved
the crust. She was stupefied to hear her own question. "Why don't she?"
"Maybe she does. Do you?"
"Yes," said Lulu.
"Good enough!" He applauded noiselessly, with fat hands. His diamond
ring sparkled, his even white teeth flashed. "I've had twenty years of
galloping about," he informed her, unable, after all, to transfer his
interests from himself to her.
"Where?" she asked, although she knew.
"South America. Central America. Mexico. Panama." He searched his
memory. "Colombo," he superadded.
"My!" said Lulu. She had probably never in her life had the least desire
to see any of these places. She did not want to see them now. But she
wanted passionately to meet her companion's mind.
"It's the life," he informed her.
"Must be," Lulu breathed. "I----" she tried, and gave it up.
"Where you been mostly?" he asked at last.
By this unprecedented interest in her doings she was thrown into a
passion of excitement.
"Here," she said. "I've always been here. Fifteen years with Ina. Before
that we lived in the country."
He listened sympathetically now, his head well on one side. He watched
her veined hands pinch at the pies. "Poor old girl," he was thinking.
"Is it Miss Lulu Bett?" he abruptly inquired. "Or Mrs.?"
Lulu flushed in anguish.
"Miss," she said low, as one who confesses the extremity of failure.
Then from unplumbed depths another Lulu abruptly spoke up. "From
choice," she said.
He shouted with laughter.
"You bet! Oh, you bet!" he cried. "Never doubted it." He made his palms
taut and drummed on the table. "Say!" he said.
Lulu glowed, quickened, smiled. Her face was another face.
"Which kind of a Mr. are you?" she heard herself ask, and his shoutings
redoubled. Well! Who would have thought it of her?
"Never give myself away," he assured her. "Say, by George, I never
thought of that before! There's no telling whether a man's married or
not, by his name!"
"It don't matter," said Lulu.
"Why not?"
"Not so many people want to know."
Again he laughed. This laughter was intoxicating to Lulu. No one ever
laughed at what she said save Herbert, who laughed at _her_. "Go it, old
girl!" Ninian was thinking, but this did not appear.
The child Monona now arrived, banging the front gate and hurling herself
round the house on the board walk, catching the toe of one foot in the
heel of the other and blundering forward, head down, her short, straight
hair flapping over her face. She landed flat-footed on the porch. She
began to speak, using a ridiculous perversion of words, scarcely
articulate, then in vogue in her group. And,
"Whose dog?" she shrieked.
Ninian looked over his shoulder, held out his hand, finished something
that he was saying to Lulu. Monona came to him readily enough, staring,
loose-lipped.
"I'll bet I'm your uncle," said Ninian.
Relationship being her highest known form of romance, Monona was
thrilled by this intelligence.
"Give us a kiss," said Ninian, finding in the plural some vague
mitigation for some vague offence.
Monona, looking silly, complied. And her uncle said my stars, such a
great big tall girl--they would have to put a board on her head.
"What's that?" inquired Monona. She had spied his great diamond ring.
"This," said her uncle, "was brought to me by Santa Claus, who keeps a
jewellery shop in heaven."
The precision and speed of his improvisation revealed him. He had twenty
other diamonds like this one. He kept them for those Sundays when the
sun comes up in the west. Of course--often! Some day he was going to
melt a diamond and eat it. Then you sparkled all over in the dark, ever
after. Another diamond he was going to plant. They say----He did it all
gravely, absorbedly. About it he was as conscienceless as a savage. This
was no fancy spun to pleasure a child. This was like lying, for its own
sake.
He went on talking with Lulu, and now again he was the tease, the
braggart, the unbridled, unmodified male.
Monona stood in the circle of his arm. The little being was attentive,
softened, subdued. Some pretty, faint light visited her. In her
listening look, she showed herself a charming child.
"It strikes me," said Ninian to Lulu, "that you're going to do something
mighty interesting before you die."
It was the clear conversational impulse, born of the need to keep
something going, but Lulu was all faith.
She closed the oven door on her pies and stood brushing flour from her
fingers. He was looking away from her, and she looked at him. He was
completely like his picture. She felt as if she were looking at his
picture and she was abashed and turned away.
"Well, I hope so," she said, which had certainly never been true, for
her old formless dreams were no intention--nothing but a mush of
discontent. "I hope I can do something that's nice before I quit," she
said. Nor was this hope now independently true, but only this surprising
longing to appear interesting in his eyes. To dance before him. "What
would the folks think of me, going on so?" she suddenly said. Her mild
sense of disloyalty was delicious. So was his understanding glance.
"You're the stuff," he remarked absently.
She laughed happily.
The door opened. Ina appeared.
"Well!" said Ina. It was her remotest tone. She took this man to be a
pedlar, beheld her child in his clasp, made a quick, forward step, chin
lifted. She had time for a very javelin of a look at Lulu.
"Hello!" said Ninian. He had the one formula. "I believe I'm your
husband's brother. Ain't this Ina?"
It had not crossed the mind of Lulu to present him.
Beautiful it was to see Ina relax, soften, warm, transform, humanise. It
gave one hope for the whole species.
"Ninian!" she cried. She lent a faint impression of the double _e_ to
the initial vowel. She slurred the rest, until the _y_ sound squinted
in. Not Neenyun, but nearly Neenyun.
He kissed her.
"Since Dwight isn't here!" she cried, and shook her finger at him. Ina's
conception of hostess-ship was definite: A volley of questions--was his
train on time? He had found the house all right? Of course! Any one
could direct him, she should hope. And he hadn't seen Dwight? She must
telephone him. But then she arrested herself with a sharp, curved fling
of her starched skirts. No! They would surprise him at tea--she stood
taut, lips compressed. Oh, the Plows were coming to tea. How
unfortunate, she thought. How fortunate, she said.
The child Monona made her knees and elbows stiff and danced up and down.
She must, she must participate.
"Aunt Lulu made three pies!" she screamed, and shook her straight hair.
"Gracious sakes," said Ninian. "I brought her a pup, and if I didn't
forget to give it to her."
They adjourned to the porch--Ninian, Ina, Monona. The puppy was
presented, and yawned. The party kept on about "the place." Ina
delightedly exhibited the tomatoes, the two apple trees, the new shed,
the bird bath. Ninian said the un-spellable "m--m," rising inflection,
and the "I see," prolonging the verb as was expected of him. Ina said
that they meant to build a summer-house, only, dear me, when you have a
family--but there, he didn't know anything about that. Ina was using her
eyes, she was arch, she was coquettish, she was flirtatious, and she
believed herself to be merely matronly, sisterly, womanly ...
She screamed. Dwight was at the gate. Now the meeting, exclamation,
banality, guffaw ... good will.
And Lulu, peeping through the blind.
When "tea" had been experienced that evening, it was found that a light
rain was falling and the Deacons and their guests, the Plows, were
constrained to remain in the parlour. The Plows were gentle, faintly
lustrous folk, sketched into life rather lightly, as if they were, say,
looking in from some other level.
"The only thing," said Dwight Herbert, "that reconciles me to rain is
that I'm let off croquet." He rolled his r's, a favourite device of his
to induce humour. He called it "croquette." He had never been more
irrepressible. The advent of his brother was partly accountable, the
need to show himself a fine family man and host in a prosperous little
home--simple and pathetic desire.
"Tell you what we'll do!" said Dwight. "Nin and I'll reminisce a
little."
"Do!" cried Mr. Plow. This gentle fellow was always excited by life, so
faintly excited by him, and enjoyed its presentation in any real form.
Ninian had unerringly selected a dwarf rocker, and he was overflowing it
and rocking.
"Take this chair, do!" Ina begged. "A big chair for a big man." She
spoke as if he were about the age of Monona.
Ninian refused, insisted on his refusal. A few years more, and human
relationships would have spread sanity even to Ina's estate and she
would have told him why he should exchange chairs. As it was she
forbore, and kept glancing anxiously at the over-burdened little beast
beneath him.
The child Monona entered the room. She had been driven down by Di and
Jenny Plow, who had vanished upstairs and, through the ventilator, might
be heard in a lift and fall of giggling. Monona had also been driven
from the kitchen where Lulu was, for some reason, hurrying through the
dishes. Monona now ran to Mrs. Bett, stood beside her and stared about
resentfully. Mrs. Bett was in best black and ruches, and she seized upon
Monona and patted her, as her own form of social expression; and Monona
wriggled like a puppy, as hers.
"Quiet, pettie," said Ina, eyebrows up. She caught her lower lip in her
teeth.
"Well, sir," said Dwight, "you wouldn't think it to look at us, but
mother had her hands pretty full, bringing us up."
Into Dwight's face came another look. It was always so, when he spoke of
this foster-mother who had taken these two boys and seen them through
the graded schools. This woman Dwight adored, and when he spoke of her
he became his inner self.
"We must run up-state and see her while you're here, Nin," he said.
To this Ninian gave a casual assent, lacking his brother's really tender
ardour.
"Little," Dwight pursued, "little did she think I'd settle down into a
nice, quiet, married dentist and magistrate in my town. And Nin
into--say, Nin, what are you, anyway?"
They laughed.
"That's the question," said Ninian.
They laughed.
"Maybe," Ina ventured, "maybe Ninian will tell us something about his
travels. He is quite a traveller, you know," she said to the Plows. "A
regular Gulliver."
They laughed respectfully.
"How we should love it, Mr. Deacon," Mrs. Plow said. "You know we've
never seen _very_ much."
Goaded on, Ninian launched upon his foreign countries as he had seen
them: Population, exports, imports, soil, irrigation, business. For the
populations Ninian had no respect. Crops could not touch ours. Soil
mighty poor pickings. And the business--say! Those fellows don't
know--and, say, the hotels! Don't say foreign hotel to Ninian.
He regarded all the alien earth as barbarian, and he stoned it. He was
equipped for absolutely no intensive observation. His contacts were
negligible. Mrs. Plow was more excited by the Deacons' party than Ninian
had been wrought upon by all his voyaging.
"Tell you," said Dwight. "When we ran away that time and went to the
state fair, little did we think--" He told about running away to the
state fair. "I thought," he wound up, irrelevantly, "Ina and I might get
over to the other side this year, but I guess not. I guess not."
The words give no conception of their effect, spoken thus. For there in
Warbleton these words are not commonplace. In Warbleton, Europe is never
so casually spoken. "Take a trip abroad" is the phrase, or "Go to
Europe" at the very least, and both with empressement. Dwight had
somewhere noted and deliberately picked up that "other side" effect, and
his Ina knew this, and was proud. Her covert glance about pensively
covered her soft triumph.
Mrs. Bett, her arm still circling the child Monona, now made her first
observation.
"Pity not to have went while the going was good," she said, and said no
more.
Nobody knew quite what she meant, and everybody hoped for the best. But
Ina frowned. Mamma did these things occasionally when there was
company, and she dared. She never sauced Dwight in private.