"No," said Lulu, and flushed. "Thank you," she added, formally.
Mrs. Bett's voice shrilled from within the house, startlingly
close--just beyond the blind, in fact:
"Go on, Lulie. It'll do you good. You mind me and go on."
"Well," said Ninian, "that's what I say. You hustle for your hat and you
come along."
For the first time this course presented itself to Lulu as a
possibility. She stared up at Ninian.
"You can slip on my linen duster, over," Ina said graciously.
"Your new one?" Dwight incredulously wished to know.
"Oh, no!" Ina laughed at the idea. "The old one."
They were having to wait for Di in any case--they always had to wait for
Di--and at last, hardly believing in her own motions, Lulu was running
to make ready. Mrs. Bett hurried to help her, but she took down the
wrong things and they were both irritated. Lulu reappeared in the linen
duster and a wide hat. There had been no time to "tighten up" her hair;
she was flushed at the adventure; she had never looked so well.
They started. Lulu, falling in with Monona, heard for the first time in
her life, the step of the pursuing male, choosing to walk beside her and
the little girl. Oh, would Ina like that? And what did Lulu care what
Ina liked? Monona, making a silly, semi-articulate observation, was
enchanted to have Lulu burst into laughter and squeeze her hand.
Di contributed her bright presence, and Bobby Larkin appeared from
nowhere, running, with a gigantic bag of fruit.
"Bullylujah!" he shouted, and Lulu could have shouted with him.
She sought for some utterance. She wanted to talk with Ninian.
"I do hope we've brought sandwiches enough," was all that she could get
to say.
They chose a spot, that is to say Dwight Herbert chose a spot, across
the river and up the shore where there was at that season a strip of
warm beach. Dwight Herbert declared himself the builder of incomparable
fires, and made a bad smudge. Ninian, who was a camper neither by birth
nor by adoption, kept offering brightly to help, could think of nothing
to do, and presently, bethinking himself of skipping stones, went and
tried to skip them on the flowing river. Ina cut her hand opening the
condensed milk and was obliged to sit under a tree and nurse the wound.
Monona spilled all the salt and sought diligently to recover it. So Lulu
did all the work. As for Di and Bobby, they had taken the pail and gone
for water, discouraging Monona from accompanying them, discouraging her
to the point of tears. But the two were gone for so long that on their
return Dwight was hungry and cross and majestic.
"Those who disregard the comfort of other people," he enunciated, "can
not expect consideration for themselves in the future."
He did not say on what ethical tenet this dictum was based, but he
delivered it with extreme authority. Ina caught her lower lip with her
teeth, dipped her head, and looked at Di. And Monona laughed like a
little demon.
As soon as Lulu had all in readiness, and cold corned beef and salad had
begun their orderly progression, Dwight became the immemorial dweller in
green fastnesses. He began:
"This is ideal. I tell you, people don't half know life if they don't
get out and eat in the open. It's better than any tonic at a dollar the
bottle. Nature's tonic--eh? Free as the air. Look at that sky. See that
water. Could anything be more pleasant?"
He smiled at his wife. This man's face was glowing with simple pleasure.
He loved the out-of-doors with a love which could not explain itself.
But he now lost a definite climax when his wife's comment was heard to
be:
"Monona! Now it's all over both ruffles. And mamma does try so hard...."
After supper some boys arrived with a boat which they beached, and
Dwight, with enthusiasm, gave the boys ten cents for a half hour's use
of that boat and invited to the waters his wife, his brother and his
younger daughter. Ina was timid----not because she was afraid but because
she was congenitally timid--with her this was not a belief or an
emotion, it was a disease.
"Dwight darling, are you sure there's no danger?"
Why, none. None in the world. Whoever heard of drowning in a river.
"But you're not so very used----"
Oh, wasn't he? Who was it that had lived in a boat throughout youth if
not he?
Ninian refused out-of-hand, lighted a cigar, and sat on a log in a
permanent fashion. Ina's plump figure was fitted in the stern, the
child Monona affixed, and the boat put off, bow well out of water. On
this pleasure ride the face of the wife was as the face of the damned.
It was true that she revered her husband's opinions above those of all
other men. In politics, in science, in religion, in dentistry she looked
up to his dicta as to revelation. And was he not a magistrate? But let
him take oars in hand, or shake lines or a whip above the back of any
horse, and this woman would trust any other woman's husband by
preference. It was a phenomenon.
Lulu was making the work last, so that she should be out of everybody's
way. When the boat put off without Ninian, she felt a kind of terror and
wished that he had gone. He had sat down near her, and she pretended not
to see. At last Lulu understood that Ninian was deliberately choosing to
remain with her. The languor of his bulk after the evening meal made no
explanation for Lulu. She asked for no explanation. He had stayed.
And they were alone. For Di, on a pretext of examining the flocks and
herds, was leading Bobby away to the pastures, a little at a time.
The sun, now fallen, had left an even, waxen sky. Leaves and ferns
appeared drenched with the light just withdrawn. The hush, the warmth,
the colour, were charged with some influence. The air of the time
communicated itself to Lulu as intense and quiet happiness. She had not
yet felt quiet with Ninian. For the first time her blind excitement in
his presence ceased, and she felt curiously accustomed to him. To him
the air of the time imparted itself in a deepening of his facile
sympathy.
"Do you know something?" he began. "I think you have it pretty hard
around here."
"I?" Lulu was genuinely astonished.
"Yes, sir. Do you have to work like this all the time? I guess you
won't mind my asking."
"Well, I ought to work. I have a home with them. Mother too."
"Yes, but glory. You ought to have some kind of a life of your own. You
want it, too. You told me you did--that first day."
She was silent. Again he was investing her with a longing which she had
never really had, until he had planted that longing. She had wanted she
knew not what. Now she accepted the dim, the romantic interest of this
rôle.
"I guess you don't see how it seems," he said, "to me, coming along--a
stranger so. I don't like it."
He frowned, regarded the river, flicked away ashes, his diamond
obediently shining. Lulu's look, her head drooping, had the liquid air
of the look of a young girl. For the first time in her life she was
feeling her helplessness. It intoxicated her.
"They're very good to me," she said.
He turned. "Do you know why you think that? Because you've never had
anybody really good to you. That's why."
"But they treat me good."
"They make a slave of you. Regular slave." He puffed, frowning. "Damned
shame, _I_ call it," he said.