"Oh," cried Ina, at the conclusion of this number, "I'm having such a
perfectly beautiful time. Isn't everybody?" everybody's hostess put it.
"Lulu is," said Dwight, and added softly to Lulu: "She don't have to
hear herself sing."
It was incredible. He was like a bad boy with a frog. About that
photograph of Ninian he found a dozen ways to torture her, called
attention to it, showed it to Cornish, set it on the piano facing them
all. Everybody must have understood--excepting the Plows. These two
gentle souls sang placidly through the Album of Old Favourites, and at
the melodies smiled happily upon each other with an air from another
world. Always it was as if the Plows walked some fair, inter-penetrating
plane, from which they looked out as do other things not quite of
earth, say, flowers and fire and music.
Strolling home that night, the Plows were overtaken by some one who ran
badly, and as if she were unaccustomed to running.
"Mis' Plow, Mis' Plow!" this one called, and Lulu stood beside them.
"Say!" she said. "Do you know of any job that I could get me? I mean
that I'd know how to do? A job for money.... I mean a job...."
She burst into passionate crying. They drew her home with them.
* * * * *
Lying awake sometime after midnight, Lulu heard the telephone ring. She
heard Dwight's concerned "Is that so?" And his cheerful "Be right
there."
Grandma Gates was sick, she heard him tell Ina. In a few moments he ran
down the stairs. Next day they told how Dwight had sat for hours that
night, holding Grandma Gates so that her back would rest easily and she
could fight for her faint breath. The kind fellow had only about two
hours of sleep the whole night long.
Next day there came a message from that woman who had brought up
Dwight--"made him what he was," he often complacently accused her. It
was a note on a postal card--she had often written a few lines on a
postal card to say that she had sent the maple sugar, or could Ina get
her some samples. Now she wrote a few lines on a postal card to say that
she was going to die with cancer. Could Dwight and Ina come to her while
she was still able to visit? If he was not too busy....
Nobody saw the pity and the terror of that postal card. They stuck it up
by the kitchen clock to read over from time to time, and before they
left, Dwight lifted the griddle of the cooking-stove and burned the
postal card.
And before they left Lulu said: "Dwight--you can't tell how long you'll
be gone?"
"Of course not. How should I tell?"
"No. And that letter might come while you're away."
"Conceivably. Letters do come while a man's away!"
"Dwight--I thought if you wouldn't mind if I opened it--"
"Opened it?"
"Yes. You see, it'll be about me mostly--"
"I should have said that it'll be about my brother mostly."
"But you know what I mean. You wouldn't mind if I did open it?"
"But you say you know what'll be in it."
"So I did know--till you--I've got to see that letter, Dwight."
"And so you shall. But not till I show it to you. My dear Lulu, you know
how I hate having my mail interfered with."
She might have said: "Small souls always make a point of that." She said
nothing. She watched them set off, and kept her mind on Ina's thousand
injunctions.
"Don't let Di see much of Bobby Larkin. And, Lulu--if it occurs to her
to have Mr. Cornish come up to sing, of course you ask him. You might
ask him to supper. And don't let mother overdo. And, Lulu, now do watch
Monona's handkerchief--the child will never take a clean one if I'm not
here to tell her...."
She breathed injunctions to the very step of the 'bus.
In the 'bus Dwight leaned forward:
"See that you play post-office squarely, Lulu!" he called, and threw
back his head and lifted his eyebrows.
In the train he turned tragic eyes to his wife.
"Ina," he said. "It's _ma_. And she's going to die. It can't be...."
Ina said: "But you're going to help her, Dwight, just being there with
her."
It was true that the mere presence of the man would bring a kind of
fresh life to that worn frame. Tact and wisdom and love would speak
through him and minister.
Toward the end of their week's absence the letter from Ninian came.
Lulu took it from the post-office when she went for the mail that
evening, dressed in her dark red gown. There was no other letter, and
she carried that one letter in her hand all through the streets. She
passed those who were surmising what her story might be, who were
telling one another what they had heard. But she knew hardly more than
they. She passed Cornish in the doorway of his little music shop, and
spoke with him; and there was the letter. It was so that Dwight's foster
mother's postal card might have looked on its way to be mailed.
Cornish stepped down and overtook her.
"Oh, Miss Lulu. I've got a new song or two--"
She said abstractedly: "Do. Any night. To-morrow night--could you--" It
was as if Lulu were too preoccupied to remember to be ill at ease.
Cornish flushed with pleasure, said that he could indeed.
"Come for supper," Lulu said.
Oh, could he? Wouldn't that be.... Well, say! Such was his acceptance.
He came for supper. And Di was not at home. She had gone off in the
country with Jenny and Bobby, and they merely did not return.
Mrs. Bett and Lulu and Cornish and Monona supped alone. All were at
ease, now that they were alone. Especially Mrs. Bett was at ease. It
became one of her young nights, her alive and lucid nights. She was
_there_. She sat in Dwight's chair and Lulu sat in Ina's chair. Lulu had
picked flowers for the table--a task coveted by her but usually
performed by Ina. Lulu had now picked Sweet William and had filled a
vase of silver gilt taken from the parlour. Also, Lulu had made
ice-cream.
"I don't see what Di can be thinking of," Lulu said. "It seems like
asking you under false--" She was afraid of "pretences" and ended
without it.
Cornish savoured his steaming beef pie, with sage. "Oh, well!" he said
contentedly.
"Kind of a relief, _I_ think, to have her gone," said Mrs. Bett, from
the fulness of something or other.
"Mother!" Lulu said, twisting her smile.
"Why, my land, I love her," Mrs. Bett explained, "but she wiggles and
chitters."
Cornish never made the slightest effort, at any time, to keep a straight
face. The honest fellow now laughed loudly.
"Well!" Lulu thought. "He can't be so _very_ much in love." And again
she thought: "He doesn't know anything about the letter. He thinks
Ninian got tired of me." Deep in her heart there abode her certainty
that this was not so.
By some etiquette of consent, Mrs. Bett cleared the table and Lulu and
Cornish went into the parlour. There lay the letter on the drop-leaf
side-table, among the shells. Lulu had carried it there, where she need
not see it at her work. The letter looked no more than the advertisement
of dental office furniture beneath it. Monona stood indifferently
fingering both.
"Monona," Lulu said sharply, "leave them be!"
Cornish was displaying his music. "Got up quite attractive," he said--it
was his formula of praise for his music.
"But we can't try it over," Lulu said, "if Di doesn't come."
"Well, say," said Cornish shyly, "you know I left that Album of Old
Favourites here. Some of them we know by heart."
Lulu looked. "I'll tell you something," she said, "there's some of these
I can play with one hand--by ear. Maybe--"
"Why sure!" said Cornish.
Lulu sat at the piano. She had on the wool chally, long sacred to the
nights when she must combine her servant's estate with the quality of
being Ina's sister. She wore her coral beads and her cameo cross. In
her absence she had caught the trick of dressing her hair so that it
looked even more abundant--but she had not dared to try it so until
to-night, when Dwight was gone. Her long wrist was curved high, her thin
hand pressed and fingered awkwardly, and at her mistakes her head dipped
and strove to make all right. Her foot continuously touched the loud
pedal--the blurred sound seemed to accomplish more. So she played "How
Can I Leave Thee," and they managed to sing it. So she played "Long,
Long Ago," and "Little Nell of Narragansett Bay." Beyond open doors,
Mrs. Bett listened, sang, it may be, with them; for when the singers
ceased, her voice might be heard still humming a loud closing bar.
"Well!" Cornish cried to Lulu; and then, in the formal village phrase:
"You're quite a musician."
"Oh, no!" Lulu disclaimed it. She looked up, flushed, smiling. "I've
never done this in front of anybody," she owned. "I don't know what
Dwight and Ina'd say...." She drooped.
They rested, and, miraculously, the air of the place had stirred and
quickened, as if the crippled, halting melody had some power of its own,
and poured this forth, even thus trampled.
"I guess you could do 'most anything you set your hand to," said
Cornish.
"Oh, no," Lulu said again.
"Sing and play and cook--"
"But I can't earn anything. I'd like to earn something." But this she
had not meant to say. She stopped, rather frightened.
"You would! Why, you have it fine here, I thought."
"Oh, fine, yes. Dwight gives me what I have. And I do their work."
"I see," said Cornish. "I never thought of that," he added. She caught
his speculative look--he had heard a tale or two concerning her return,
as who in Warbleton had not heard?
"You're wondering why I didn't stay with him!" Lulu said recklessly.
This was no less than wrung from her, but its utterance occasioned in
her an unspeakable relief.
"Oh, no," Cornish disclaimed, and coloured and rocked.
"Yes, you are," she swept on. "The whole town's wondering. Well, I'd
like 'em to know, but Dwight won't let me tell."
Cornish frowned, trying to understand.
"'Won't let you!'" he repeated. "I should say that was your own affair."
"No. Not when Dwight gives me all I have."
"Oh, that--" said Cornish. "That's not right."
"No. But there it is. It puts me--you see what it does to me. They
think--they all think my--husband left me."
It was curious to hear her bring out that word--tentatively,
deprecatingly, like some one daring a foreign phrase without warrant.