Lulu was thinking: "Di has a hard enough time as it is." Aloud she said:
"I told Mr. Cornish, but he won't tell."
"I'll see to that," Dwight graciously offered.
"Goodness," Ina said, "so he knows. Well, that settles----" She said no
more.
"You'll be happy to think you've done this for us, Lulu," said Dwight.
"I s'pose so," said Lulu.
Ina, pink from her little gust of sobbing, went to her, kissed her, her
trim tan tailor suit against Lulu's blue cotton.
"My sweet, self-sacrificing sister," she murmured.
"Oh stop that!" Lulu said.
Dwight took her hand, lying limply in his. "I can now," he said,
"overlook the matter of the letter."
Lulu drew back. She put her hair behind her ears, swallowed, and cried
out.
"Don't you go around pitying me! I'll have you know I'm glad the whole
thing happened!"
* * * * *
Cornish had ordered six new copies of a popular song. He knew that it
was popular because it was called so in a Chicago paper. When the six
copies arrived with a danseuse on the covers he read the "words," looked
wistfully at the symbols which shut him out, and felt well pleased.
"Got up quite attractive," he thought, and fastened the six copies in
the window of his music store.
It was not yet nine o'clock of a vivid morning. Cornish had his floor
and sidewalk sprinkled, his red and blue plush piano spreads dusted.
He sat at a folding table well back in the store, and opened a law book.
For half an hour he read. Then he found himself looking off the page,
stabbed by a reflection which always stabbed him anew: Was he really
getting anywhere with his law? And where did he really hope to get? Of
late when he awoke at night this question had stood by the cot, waiting.
The cot had appeared there in the back of the music-store, behind a dark
sateen curtain with too few rings on the wire. How little else was in
there, nobody knew. But those passing in the late evening saw the blur
of his kerosene lamp behind that curtain and were smitten by a realistic
illusion of personal loneliness.
It was behind that curtain that these unreasoning questions usually
attacked him, when his giant, wavering shadow had died upon the wall and
the faint smell of the extinguished lamp went with him to his bed; or
when he waked before any sign of dawn. In the mornings all was cheerful
and wonted--the question had not before attacked him among his red and
blue plush spreads, his golden oak and ebony cases, of a sunshiny
morning.
A step at his door set him flying. He wanted passionately to sell a
piano.
"Well!" he cried, when he saw his visitor.
It was Lulu, in her dark red suit and her tilted hat.
"Well!" she also said, and seemed to have no idea of saying anything
else. Her excitement was so obscure that he did not discern it.
"You're out early," said he, participating in the village chorus of this
bright challenge at this hour.
"Oh, no," said Lulu.
He looked out the window, pretending to be caught by something passing,
leaned to see it the better.
"Oh, how'd you get along last night?" he asked, and wondered why he had
not thought to say it before.
"All right, thank you," said Lulu.
"Was he--about the letter, you know?"
"Yes," she said, "but that didn't matter. You'll be sure," she added,
"not to say anything about what was in the letter?"
"Why, not till you tell me I can," said Cornish, "but won't everybody
know now?"
"No," Lulu said.
At this he had no more to say, and feeling his speculation in his eyes,
dropped them to a piano scarf from which he began flicking invisible
specks.
"I came to tell you good-bye," Lulu said.
"_Good-bye!_"
"Yes. I'm going off--for a while. My satchel's in the bakery--I had my
breakfast in the bakery."
"Say!" Cornish cried warmly, "then everything _wasn't_ all right last
night?"
"As right as it can ever be with me," she told him. "Oh, yes. Dwight
forgave me."
"Forgave you!"
She smiled, and trembled.
"Look here," said Cornish, "you come here and sit down and tell me about
this."
He led her to the folding table, as the only social spot in that vast
area of his, seated her in the one chair, and for himself brought up a
piano stool. But after all she told him nothing. She merely took the
comfort of his kindly indignation.
"It came out all right," she said only. "But I won't stay there any
more. I can't do that."
"Then what are you going to do?"
"In Millton yesterday," she said, "I saw an advertisement in the
hotel--they wanted a chambermaid."
"Oh, Miss Bett!" he cried. At that name she flushed. "Why," said
Cornish, "you must have been coming from Millton yesterday when I saw
you. I noticed Miss Di had her bag--" He stopped, stared.
"You brought her back!" he deduced everything.
"Oh!" said Lulu. "Oh, no--I mean--"
"I heard about the eloping again this morning," he said. "That's just
what you did--you brought her back."
"You mustn't tell that! You won't? You won't!"
"No. 'Course not." He mulled it. "You tell me this: Do they know? I mean
about your going after her?"
"No."
"You never told!"
"They don't know she went."
"That's a funny thing," he blurted out, "for you not to tell her
folks--I mean, right off. Before last night...."
"You don't know them. Dwight'd never let up on that--he'd _joke_ her
about it after a while."
"But it seems--"
"Ina'd talk about disgracing _her_. They wouldn't know what to do.
There's no sense in telling them. They aren't a mother and father," Lulu
said.
Cornish was not accustomed to deal with so much reality. But Lulu's
reality he could grasp.
"You're a trump anyhow," he affirmed.
"Oh, no," said Lulu modestly.
Yes, she was. He insisted upon it.
"By George," he exclaimed, "you don't find very many _married_ women
with as good sense as you've got."
At this, just as he was agonising because he had seemed to refer to the
truth that she was, after all, not married, at this Lulu laughed in some
amusement, and said nothing.
"You've been a jewel in their home all right," said Cornish. "I bet
they'll miss you if you do go."
"They'll miss my cooking," Lulu said without bitterness.
"They'll miss more than that, I know. I've often watched you there--"
"You have?" It was not so much pleasure as passionate gratitude which
lighted her eyes.
"You made the whole place," said Cornish.
"You don't mean just the cooking?"
"No, no. I mean--well, that first night when you played croquet. I felt
at home when you came out."
That look of hers, rarely seen, which was no less than a look of
loveliness, came now to Lulu's face. After a pause she said: "I never
had but one compliment before that wasn't for my cooking." She seemed to
feel that she must confess to that one. "He told me I done my hair up
nice." She added conscientiously: "That was after I took notice how the
ladies in Savannah, Georgia, done up theirs."
"Well, well," said Cornish only.
"Well," said Lulu, "I must be going now. I wanted to say good-bye to
you--and there's one or two other places...."
"I hate to have you go," said Cornish, and tried to add something. "I
hate to have you go," was all that he could find to add.
Lulu rose. "Oh, well," was all that she could find.
They shook hands, Lulu laughing a little. Cornish followed her to the
door. He had begun on "Look here, I wish ..." when Lulu said
"good-bye," and paused, wishing intensely to know what he would have
said. But all that he said was: "Good-bye. I wish you weren't going."
"So do I," said Lulu, and went, still laughing.
Cornish saw her red dress vanish from his door, flash by his window, her
head averted. And there settled upon him a depression out of all
proportion to the slow depression of his days. This was more--it
assailed him, absorbed him.
He stood staring out the window. Some one passed with a greeting of
which he was conscious too late to return. He wandered back down the
store and his pianos looked back at him like strangers. Down there was
the green curtain which screened his home life. He suddenly hated that
green curtain. He hated this whole place. For the first time it
occurred to him that he hated Warbleton.
He came back to his table, and sat down before his lawbook. But he sat,
chin on chest, regarding it. No ... no escape that way....
A step at the door and he sprang up. It was Lulu, coming toward him, her
face unsmiling but somehow quite lighted. In her hand was a letter.
"See," she said. "At the office was this...."
She thrust in his hand the single sheet. He read:
" ... Just wanted you to know you're actually rid of me. I've heard from
her, in Brazil. She ran out of money and thought of me, and her lawyer
wrote to me.... I've never been any good--Dwight would tell you that if
his pride would let him tell the truth once in a while. But there ain't
anything in my life makes me feel as bad as this.... I s'pose you
couldn't understand and I don't myself.... Only the sixteen years
keeping still made me think she was gone sure ... but you were so
downright good, that's what was the worst ... do you see what I want to
say ..."
Cornish read it all and looked at Lulu. She was grave and in her eyes
there was a look of dignity such as he had never seen them wear.
Incredible dignity.
"He didn't lie to get rid of me--and she was alive, just as he thought
she might be," she said.
"I'm glad," said Cornish.
"Yes," said Lulu. "He isn't quite so bad as Dwight tried to make him
out."
It was not of this that Cornish had been thinking.
"Now you're free," he said.
"Oh, that ..." said Lulu.
She replaced her letter in its envelope.
"Now I'm really going," she said. "Good-bye for sure this time...."
Her words trailed away. Cornish had laid his hand on her arm.
"Don't say good-bye," he said.
"It's late," she said, "I--"
"Don't you go," said Cornish.
She looked at him mutely.
"Do you think you could possibly stay here with me?"
"Oh!" said Lulu, like no word.
He went on, not looking at her. "I haven't got anything. I guess maybe
you've heard something about a little something I'm supposed to inherit.
Well, it's only five hundred dollars."
His look searched her face, but she hardly heard what he was saying.
"That little Warden house--it don't cost much--you'd be surprised. Rent,
I mean. I can get it now. I went and looked at it the other day, but
then I didn't think--" he caught himself on that. "It don't cost near
as much as this store. We could furnish up the parlour with pianos--"
He was startled by that "we," and began again:
"That is, if you could ever think of such a thing as marrying me."
"But," said Lulu. "You _know_! Why, don't the disgrace--"
"What disgrace?" asked Cornish.
"Oh," she said, "you--you----"
"There's only this about that," said he. "Of course, if you loved him
very much, then I'd ought not to be talking this way to you. But I
didn't think--"
"You didn't think what?"
"That you did care so very much--about him. I don't know why."
She said: "I wanted somebody of my own. That's the reason I done what I
done. I know that now."
"I figured that way," said Cornish.
They dismissed it. But now he brought to bear something which he saw
that she should know.
"Look here," he said, "I'd ought to tell you. I'm--I'm awful lonesome
myself. This is no place to live. And I guess living so is one reason
why I want to get married. I want some kind of a home."
He said it as a confession. She accepted it as a reason.
"Of course," she said.
"I ain't never lived what you might say private," said Cornish.
"I've lived too private," Lulu said.
"Then there's another thing." This was harder to tell her. "I--I don't
believe I'm ever going to be able to do a thing with law."
"I don't see," said Lulu, "how anybody does."
"I'm not much good in a business way," he owned, with a faint laugh.
"Sometimes I think," he drew down his brows, "that I may never be able
to make any money."