JULY

When, on a warm evening a fortnight later, Lulu descended the stairs

dressed for her incredible trip to the city, she wore the white waist

which she had often thought they would "use" for her if she died. And

really, the waist looked as if it had been planned for the purpose, and

its wide, upstanding plaited lace at throat and wrist made her neck look

thinner, her forearm sharp and veined. Her hair she had "crimped" and

parted in the middle, puffed high--it was so that hair had been worn in

Lulu's girlhood.

"_Well_!" said Ina, when she saw this coiffure, and frankly examined it,

head well back, tongue meditatively teasing at her lower lip.

For travel Lulu was again wearing Ina's linen duster--the old one.

Ninian appeared, in a sack coat--and his diamond. His distinctly convex

face, its thick, rosy flesh, thick mouth and cleft chin gave Lulu once

more that bold sense of looking--not at him, for then she was shy and

averted her eyes--but at his photograph at which she could gaze as much

as she would. She looked up at him openly, fell in step beside him. Was

he not taking her to the city? Ina and Dwight themselves were going

because she, Lulu, had brought about this party.

"Act as good as you look, Lulie," Mrs. Bett called after them. She gave

no instructions to Ina who was married and able to shine in her conduct,

it seemed.

Dwight was cross. On the way to the station he might have been heard to

take it up again, whatever it was, and his Ina unmistakably said: "Well,

now don't keep it going all the way there"; and turned back to the

others with some elaborate comment about the dust, thus cutting off her

so-called lord from his legitimate retort. A mean advantage.

The city was two hours' distant, and they were to spend the night. On

the train, in the double seat, Ninian beside her among the bags, Lulu

sat in the simple consciousness that the people all knew that she too

had been chosen. A man and a woman were opposite, with their little boy

between them. Lulu felt this woman's superiority of experience over her

own, and smiled at her from a world of fellowship. But the woman lifted

her eyebrows and stared and turned away, with slow and insolent winking.

Ninian had a boyish pride in his knowledge of places to eat in many

cities--as if he were leading certain of the tribe to a deer-run in a

strange wood. Ninian took his party to a downtown café, then popular

among business and newspaper men. The place was below the sidewalk, was

reached by a dozen marble steps, and the odour of its griddle-cakes took

the air of the street. Ninian made a great show of selecting a table,

changed once, called the waiter "my man" and rubbed soft hands on "What

do you say? Shall it be lobster?" He ordered the dinner, instructing the

waiter with painstaking gruffness.

"Not that they can touch _your_ cooking here, Miss Lulu," he said,

settling himself to wait, and crumbling a crust.

Dwight, expanding a bit in the aura of the food, observed that Lulu was

a regular chef, that was what Lulu was. He still would not look at his

wife, who now remarked:

"Sheff, Dwightie. Not cheff."

This was a mean advantage, which he pretended not to hear--another mean

advantage.

"Ina," said Lulu, "your hat's just a little mite--no, over the other

way."

"Was there anything to prevent your speaking of that before?" Ina

inquired acidly.

"I started to and then somebody always said something," said Lulu

humbly.

Nothing could so much as cloud Lulu's hour. She was proof against any

shadow.

"Say, but you look tremendous to-night," Dwight observed to her.

Understanding perfectly that this was said to tease his wife, Lulu yet

flushed with pleasure. She saw two women watching, and she thought:

"They're feeling sorry for Ina--nobody talking to her." She laughed at

everything that the men said. She passionately wanted to talk herself.

"How many folks keep going past," she said, many times.

At length, having noted the details of all the clothes in range, Ina's

isolation palled upon her and she set herself to take Ninian's

attention. She therefore talked with him about himself.

"Curious you've never married, Nin," she said.

"Don't say it like that," he begged. "I might yet."

Ina laughed enjoyably. "Yes, you might!" she met this.

"She wants everybody to get married, but she wishes I hadn't," Dwight

threw in with exceeding rancour.

They developed this theme exhaustively, Dwight usually speaking in the

third person and always with his shoulder turned a bit from his wife. It

was inconceivable, the gusto with which they proceeded. Ina had assumed

for the purpose an air distrait, casual, attentive to the scene about

them. But gradually her cheeks began to burn.

"She'll cry," Lulu thought in alarm, and said at random: "Ina, that hat

is so pretty--ever so much prettier than the old one." But Ina said

frostily that she never saw anything the matter with the old one.

"Let us talk," said Ninian low, to Lulu. "Then they'll simmer down."

He went on, in an undertone, about nothing in particular. Lulu hardly

heard what he said, it was so pleasant to have him talking to her in

this confidential fashion; and she was pleasantly aware that his manner

was open to misinterpretation.

In the nick of time, the lobster was served.

* * * * *

Dinner and the play--the show, as Ninian called it. This show was "Peter

Pan," chosen by Ninian because the seats cost the most of those at any

theatre. It was almost indecent to see how Dwight Herbert, the immortal

soul, had warmed and melted at these contacts. By the time that all was

over, and they were at the hotel for supper, such was his pleasurable

excitation that he was once more playful, teasing, once more the

irrepressible. But now his Ina was to be won back, made it evident that

she was not one lightly to overlook, and a fine firmness sat upon the

little doubling chin.

They discussed the play. Not one of them had understood the story. The

dog-kennel part--wasn't that the queerest thing? Nothing to do with the

rest of the play.

"I was for the pirates. The one with the hook--he was my style," said

Dwight.

"Well, there it is again," Ina cried. "They didn't belong to the real

play, either."

"Oh, well," Ninian said, "they have to put in parts, I suppose, to catch

everybody. Instead of a song and dance, they do that."

"And I didn't understand," said Ina, "why they all clapped when the

principal character ran down front and said something to the audience

that time. But they all did."

Ninian thought this might have been out of compliment. Ina wished that

Monona might have seen, confessed that the last part was so pretty that

she herself would not look; and into Ina's eyes came their loveliest

light.

Lulu sat there, hearing the talk about the play. "Why couldn't I have

said that?" she thought as the others spoke. All that they said seemed

to her apropos, but she could think of nothing to add. The evening had

been to her a light from heaven--how could she find anything to say? She

sat in a daze of happiness, her mind hardly operative, her look moving

from one to another. At last Ninian looked at her.

"Sure you liked it, Miss Lulu?"

"Oh, yes! I think they all took their parts real well."

It was not enough. She looked at them appealingly, knowing that she had

not said enough.

"You could hear everything they said," she added. "It was--" she

dwindled to silence.

Dwight Herbert savoured his rarebit with a great show of long wrinkled

dimples.

"Excellent sauces they make here--excellent," he said, with the frown of

an epicure. "A tiny wee bit more Athabasca," he added, and they all

laughed and told him that Athabasca was a lake, of course. Of course he

meant tobasco, Ina said. Their entertainment and their talk was of this

sort, for an hour.

"Well, now," said Dwight Herbert when it was finished, "somebody dance

on the table."

"Dwightie!"

"Got to amuse ourselves somehow. Come, liven up. They'll begin to read

the funeral service over us."

"Why not say the wedding service?" asked Ninian.

In the mention of wedlock there was always something stimulating to

Dwight, something of overwhelming humour. He shouted a derisive

endorsement of this proposal.

"I shouldn't object," said Ninian. "Should you, Miss Lulu?"

Lulu now burned the slow red of her torture. They were all looking at

her. She made an anguished effort to defend herself.

"I don't know it," she said, "so I can't say it."

Ninian leaned toward her.

"I, Ninian, take thee, Lulu, to be my wedded wife," he pronounced.

"That's the way it goes!"

"Lulu daren't say it!" cried Dwight. He laughed so loudly that those at

the near tables turned. And, from the fastness of her wifehood and

motherhood, Ina laughed. Really, it was ridiculous to think of Lulu that

way....

Ninian laughed too. "Course she don't dare say it," he challenged.

From within Lulu, that strange Lulu, that other Lulu who sometimes

fought her battles, suddenly spoke out:

"I, Lulu, take thee, Ninian, to be my wedded husband."

"You will?" Ninian cried.

"I will," she said, laughing tremulously, to prove that she too could

join in, could be as merry as the rest.

"And I will. There, by Jove, now have we entertained you, or haven't

we?" Ninian laughed and pounded his soft fist on the table.

"Oh, say, honestly!" Ina was shocked. "I don't think you ought to--holy

things----what's the _matter_, Dwightie?"

Dwight Herbert Deacon's eyes were staring and his face was scarlet.

"Say, by George," he said, "a civil wedding is binding in this state."

"A civil wedding? Oh, well--" Ninian dismissed it.

"But I," said Dwight, "happen to be a magistrate."

They looked at one another foolishly. Dwight sprang up with the

indeterminate idea of inquiring something of some one, circled about and

returned. Ina had taken his chair and sat clasping Lulu's hand. Ninian

continued to laugh.

"I never saw one done so offhand," said Dwight. "But what you've said is

all you have to say according to law. And there don't have to be

witnesses ... say!" he said, and sat down again.

Above that shroud-like plaited lace, the veins of Lulu's throat showed

dark as she swallowed, cleared her throat, swallowed again.

"Don't you let Dwight scare you," she besought Ninian.

"Scare me!" cried Ninian. "Why, I think it's a good job done, if you ask

me."

Lulu's eyes flew to his face. As he laughed, he was looking at her, and

now he nodded and shut and opened his eyes several times very fast.

Their points of light flickered. With a pang of wonder which pierced her

and left her shaken, Lulu looked. His eyes continued to meet her own. It

was exactly like looking at his photograph.

Dwight had recovered his authentic air.

"Oh, well," he said, "we can inquire at our leisure. If it is necessary,

I should say we can have it set aside quietly up here in the city--no

one'll be the wiser."

"Set aside nothing!" said Ninian. "I'd like to see it stand."

"Are you serious, Nin?"

"Sure I'm serious."

Ina jerked gently at her sister's arm.

"Lulu! You hear him? What you going to say to that?"

Lulu shook her head. "He isn't in earnest," she said.

"I am in earnest--hope to die," Ninian declared. He was on two legs of

his chair and was slightly tilting, so that the effect of his

earnestness was impaired. But he was obviously in earnest.

They were looking at Lulu again. And now she looked at Ninian, and there

was something terrible in that look which tried to ask him, alone, about

this thing.

Dwight exploded. "There was a fellow I know there in the theatre," he

cried. "I'll get him on the line. He could tell me if there's any way--"

and was off.

Ina inexplicably began touching away tears. "Oh," she said, "what will

mamma say?"

Lulu hardly heard her. Mrs. Bett was incalculably distant.

"You sure?" Lulu said low to Ninian.

For the first time, something in her exceeding isolation really touched

him.

"Say," he said, "you come on with me. We'll have it done over again

somewhere, if you say so."

"Oh," said Lulu, "if I thought--"

He leaned and patted her hand.

"Good girl," he said.

They sat silent, Ninian padding on the cloth with the flat of his plump

hands.

Dwight returned. "It's a go all right," he said. He sat down, laughed

weakly, rubbed at his face. "You two are tied as tight as the church

could tie you."

"Good enough," said Ninian. "Eh, Lulu?"

"It's--it's all right, I guess," Lulu said.

"Well, I'll be dished," said Dwight.

"Sister!" said Ina.

Ninian meditated, his lips set tight and high. It is impossible to trace

the processes of this man. Perhaps they were all compact of the

devil-may-care attitude engendered in any persistent traveller. Perhaps

the incomparable cookery of Lulu played its part.

"I was going to make a trip south this month," he said, "on my way home

from here. Suppose we get married again by somebody or other, and start

right off. You'd like that, wouldn't you--going South?"

"Yes," said Lulu only.

"It's July," said Ina, with her sense of fitness, but no one heard.

It was arranged that their trunks should follow them--Ina would see to

that, though she was scandalised that they were not first to return to

Warbleton for the blessing of Mrs. Bett.

"Mamma won't mind," said Lulu. "Mamma can't stand a fuss any more."

They left the table. The men and women still sitting at the other tables

saw nothing unusual about these four, indifferently dressed,

indifferently conditioned. The hotel orchestra, playing ragtime in

deafening concord, made Lulu's wedding march.

* * * * *

It was still early next day--a hot Sunday--when Ina and Dwight reached

home. Mrs. Bett was standing on the porch.

"Where's Lulie?" asked Mrs. Bett.

They told.

Mrs. Bett took it in, a bit at a time. Her pale eyes searched their

faces, she shook her head, heard it again, grasped it. Her first

question was:

"Who's going to do your work?"

Ina had thought of that, and this was manifest.

"Oh," she said, "you and I'll have to manage."

Mrs. Bett meditated, frowning.

"I left the bacon for her to cook for your breakfasts," she said. "I

can't cook bacon fit to eat. Neither can you."

"We've had our breakfasts," Ina escaped from this dilemma.

"Had it up in the city, on expense?"

"Well, we didn't have much."

In Mrs. Bett's eyes tears gathered, but they were not for Lulu.

"I should think," she said, "I should think Lulie might have had a

little more gratitude to her than this."

On their way to church Ina and Dwight encountered Di, who had left the

house some time earlier, stepping sedately to church in company with

Bobby Larkin. Di was in white, and her face was the face of an angel, so

young, so questioning, so utterly devoid of her sophistication.

"That child," said Ina, "_must_ not see so much of that Larkin boy.

She's just a little, little girl."

"Of course she mustn't," said Dwight sharply, "and if _I_ was her

mother--"

"Oh stop that!" said Ina, sotto voce, at the church steps.

To every one with whom they spoke in the aisle after church, Ina

announced their news: Had they heard? Lulu married Dwight's brother

Ninian in the city yesterday. Oh, sudden, yes! And ro_man_tic ... spoken

with that upward inflection to which Ina was a prey.

V