_The Painted Room_
_By_
_Margaret Wilson_
_Author of_ "THE KENWORTHYS"
_and_
"THE ABLE MCLAUGHLINS"
_Harper & Brothers, Publishers
New York and London
1926_
_THE PAINTED ROOM_
Copyright, 1926, by
Harper & Brothers
Printed in the U. S. A.
_THE PAINTED ROOM_
_Chapter One_
Little Martha Kenworthy, to use her own careless expression, was "in
bad with her dad," as usual. But she was not a girl to be disturbed
by a trifle of that sort. She had been home only a few days from her
college in the east for her second summer holiday, and had been
followed too closely by official comments on her term's work. The
only explanation she saw fit to give to her father on that subject
was to the effect that he should forget it. Her mother had taken him
aside and said privately, firmly, and coaxingly:
"Now, Bob, I'm not going to have that child's life made miserable by
somebody else's brilliance. It isn't Martha's fault that she hasn't
phenomenal brains. I'm not going to have her scolded for being like
me."
"Miserable! Huh! There's a fat chance of her being miserable. It
would be a mighty good thing if some one could make her miserable a
few minutes. That's what I'm trying to get at! She's got enough
brains, if she wasn't too lazy to use them. She'll be fired next
term if she isn't careful, and then where'll you be? I'm going to
make her quit this eternal fooling around."
"Bronson's spoiled you, Bob. That's all the matter with you. You're
always wishing Martha would dazzle people, sort of make them sit up
and blink, the way he used to. It's all right for a boy to be so
terribly clever, but it would be awkward for a woman. It would make
her conspicuous, Bob."
"Well, I wouldn't care so much, Emily, if I could even get a rise out
of her about it. I light into her, and you know what she says!
'Yes, daddy! Yes, daddy!' like a little angel. And she hasn't the
least idea of doing anything about it. If she'd get good and mad
about it once, we could get some place. She just goes on like a
little mule!"
"No one but you ever calls her a mule, Bob," Emily cajoled him.
"Other people seem to lead her about easy enough."
"Yes! Toward a dance, they do. But how about a trigonometry?"
"You ought to have married a Phi Beta Kappa, Bob, with a golden key.
You never asked to see my school reports when you married me; that's
where you made your mistake. She's her mother's own child, you know."
"I never saw a kid less like her mother in my life! I never saw
anybody like her. I know I only got through exams. by the skin of my
teeth, but I did work now and then."
"Martha works hard enough when anything interests her. You ought to
see people look at her room, Bob. Grace, Mrs. Phillips, said to me
day before yesterday, 'Goodness, Emily, you've got a clever daughter.
How old is Martha? I thought she was only nineteen.' She doesn't
think she's stupid, Bob. You just wait. Martha'll make you proud of
her yet!"
"Oh, I'm waiting, all right. I've always been waiting. You might
hurry her along a bit, old girl!"
So Bob had waited all that day, without seizing more than two or
three fleeting opportunities to "roast" her about that report, and he
was still waiting the next noon in a rather abused mood for some of
those signs of promise that his wife was always talking about. He
was thinking about it as he walked up to dinner, when he suddenly
shuddered to recognize his car, that he ought to have been riding
home in, disguised by loads of flowers, overflowing with bobbed
heads, young arms and joys and shriekings, turned violently--to
escape crashing into a milk truck--up over the curb into a neighbor's
lawn, just missing an altogether unyielding elm.
Martha was clever enough at least to avoid her father until dinner
was on the table. Emily, helping the crippled old maid-of-all-work
in the dining room, heard them at it as they came in toward the table.
"I say you were coming around that corner at forty miles an hour!"
Then suddenly stopping: "What's this, Emily! No company for dinner?
Where's all the gang? My g-o-oodness! this is a treat! I told you,
Martha----!"
Bob spoke with the abruptness of a man who sells hundreds of cars a
year, and repairs thousands while their drivers wait. And Martha,
when she bothered to reply to him, spoke like a siren from some
island of lotus eaters. Her sentences, instead of ending crisply,
trailed away rather, and were lost in indifference. Emily scarcely
knew what to make of her, at times, nowadays. She had always been a
quiet child. On the occasions of high delight in her childhood,
which made other children laugh and shout and dance about with glee,
little Martha had always stood still, her hands clasped together, and
shone all over, with her gray eyes, her little pursed-up mouth, her
whole little soft face. The shouting, squealing, roaring sort of
little rejoicers are lovely, too, Emily had often thought. But this
distinctive rising into shining quietness which was so
characteristically Martha, had been a rare and fascinating kind of
infant charm. And now, in the blossom of her maidenhood, Martha
seemed instinctively to have chosen quietness, and passivity for her
weapon of defense and conquest. When she flirted, and when she
quarreled with her father, her voice was like the falling of "tired
eyelids on tired eyes." Emily had said to Bob, perplexed by Martha's
unconciliatory behavior to one whom Emily would have called in her
youth an admirer, "Johnnie just wants to grab Martha and give her a
shaking when she looks at him like that." And Bob replied,
indignantly: "You bet your bottom dollar he does! That's why she
does it!"
And now Martha, consuming a chop with haste, displeased with her
father's outburst, lifted her eyes slowly toward him and looked at
him casually for a moment, and then, letting her eyelashes fall,
devoted herself to the chop, as she might have given a moment's
careless attention to an English sparrow perched on the window sill
of the house across the road. And she drawled, unperturbed to the
last degree:
"I think you're mistaken, dad. I don't believe I was driving that
fast. And, anyway, I stopped in time. A miss is as good as a mile,
I suppose."
"Not with my car, it isn't. Not by a damned sight! You'd think it
was a Lizzie the way you treat it. A mile is better than a miss with
you, and don't you forget it! If this happens again, I won't let you
drive the car all summer!"
"I said I was sorry, didn't I? I said I wouldn't do it again. You
never saw me do a thing like that before, did you?"
"No, I didn't, young lady. You didn't imagine I was anywhere about,
or I wouldn't have seen you this time, either! I give you credit for
that much sense, at least!"
"How sweet of you, daddy!"
"Can't you see what you did?" Bob demanded, excited by her
indifference. "Can't you see that if----"
"You talk as if I'd plowed up all Parker's lawn. By the way, why
don't you get that bridge on Whinney's road fixed, father? Have we
got to go that dusty detour all summer every time we want a game of
golf, when we're only here three months?"
"Do you hear that, Emily? I try to put a little sense into her head,
and she begins blaming me because that road isn't mended. Do you
think the roads in this county are made for you kids? 'You haven't
had that car a year,' Perkins says to me yesterday, 'and it looks
like a bootleggers' express.' 'Bootleggers nothing! It's the
women,' I said. 'They may be frail, but fenders crumble under them.'
I remember I said to you----"
"Mother, why don't you speak up? You aren't functioning. After all,
we worked all morning getting _you_ those flowers, and this is all
the thanks we get for it. I tell you, mommie, there are absolute
_tubs_ of delphiniums in Carson's cellar. Heavenly blues! They'll
look cooler than anything to-night. This afternoon we're----"
"How could you expect to see anything with all that stuff piled in
front of you?"
"Stuff! He calls them 'stuff.' They're all named varieties," she
said, "with pedigrees behind them."
"Emily, I tell you the car looked like a florist's moving. That
young fool of a Johnnie Benton riding clear home on the running board
with his arms full of----"
"I wouldn't let him inside, mother." Martha spoke virtuously. "I
knew you didn't want them all crushed."
"And if he hadn't seen that truck, and hollered and jumped----"
"Well, anyway, he saved the flowers, I'll say that for him. It's
more than I expected him to do, if he did get a fall."
"And he didn't even have a shirt on, Emily. His coat flew open as he
fell----"
"Oh, Bob, surely he must have had a shirt on! What did he have on,
Martha?"
"I'm sorry I don't know, mother. I didn't understand father wanted
me to examine all the fellows' B.V.D.'s. He'd been playing tennis,
and he just grabbed some sweater when we hollered to him to come
along. Next time I pick up a man, I'll say to him, 'If you haven't
got a nice proper undershirt on, you can't go riding in my father's
car.'"
Bob snorted.
"Who said anything about undershirts? A nice thing for a girl like
you to be talking about!"
"You mean he didn't have an undershirt on? He wasn't certainly stark
naked, mother." Martha suddenly had become prim.
"All I say is, he wasn't dressed right to go riding with girls. You
listen to what I'm saying, Martha! If you had gone bang into the
truck, not a bone in your body----"
And what happened then to interrupt him, Bob said happened every time
he tried to "settle" Martha. A hooting and a tooting of horns, and
laughing and whistles, from the street intervened. Martha jumped up.
"There they are," she said to her mother. "Send the car up by three,
dad. I suppose you can trust the old bus to me if mother is along.
It isn't a Rolls-Royce, after all." She stood gobbling down the
dessert. With her fork she pushed together the last crumbs on her
plate, and lifting it, she turned her smooth bobbed head halfway
towards her father, and practically winking one gray eye towards her
mother, she remarked, demurely, with an indifference that made the
words absurd:
"My God! That was some cherry pie!"
Bob watched her depart, wilting, and turned to his wife.
"There you are, Emily!" he protested. It was as if he said, "Look
how your child acts." She was, in fact, still Emily's child, as she
had always been. Bob accepted responsibility now for her no more
than ever. "She talks as if I was a Long Island millionaire. As if
she couldn't waste her precious time saving a mere Packard from a
smash-up. How many times have I told her not to pile more than eight
people into the car? And thirteen of them piled out. One after
another. Sitting on one another's laps. Just sitting on one
another. A fat chance of the boys using their own cars when they can
get a girl to hold on their knees. And when I bawled her out, she
said there were only two in the front seat! If Johnnie hadn't
happened to see that truck----!" Bob shrugged. "And all she says,
in the end, is, 'Send up the old bus. My God! What a pie!'"
"Well, Bob, I've told you that she's reached years of discretion----"
"Discretion! That's a good one!"
"She chooses to use your expressions. I'm not going to say anything.
I spanked her often enough for it when she was a baby. Anyway, she
only does it to annoy you. She never uses it with me."
"God alone knows what she uses when she's with that gang!"
"Oh, well, they're having a good time, Bob. She won't be home many
more summers."
"Why won't she? Where's she going?"
"I don't know--exactly. I mean--she'll be getting married. She'll
be taking up some work."
And Emily, sitting there enjoying her juicy sweet cherries
thoroughly, found some pleasure in the situation. At least, it had
its elements of satisfaction in it, even though the growing--what
should she call it?--misunderstanding between Martha and Bob made her
sigh, often. For twenty years she had been annoyed, inwardly and
ineffectively, by Bob's choice of expletives. And this chit of a
child, by her occasional use of them that made her father shudder,
kept him free from them for weeks together. If in her childhood he
had ignored her, at least undervalued her, he was getting well paid
for it just at present.
"Just as if I hadn't said a word to her! 'Send up the car at three,'
she says, just like that, as if it was _her_ car. You'd think the
only reason a father existed was to keep a car in repair for her."
"Well, that is one reason for them existing. Besides, she did say
she was sorry. She said it two or three times. She promised not to
do it again. I'm never afraid when she's driving, Bob. She never
seems to me to lose her head."
"Oh no. Of course not. She's mighty careful to keep you on her
side. She wouldn't----"
"On her side, old silly," Emily said, soothingly. "You talk as if
there was some quarrel between you two. You know very well that if
there was I'd never let her know I was, for a second. She's worked
like a Trojan for to-night. I didn't see how I could possibly get
over to Elgin this afternoon. And she offered to drive me over."
"Never you mind about _that_! She'll not miss anything. She'll go
shopping while you call, if she can find anything worth buying. Or
else she's made a date to meet somebody. I bet three minutes after
she leaves you there, she'll have some young idiot making eyes at her
in that car. I'll bet you a dollar she's 'phoned some of them she's
coming over."
"Well, suppose she has, Bob. What do you expect of a girl? Do you
want her to sit in the car with her eyes shut till I'm ready to come
home? Why shouldn't she call up her friends?"
"Oh, I know it, Emily. But it's the principle of the thing. They're
such a lazy bunch. They never do a thing but spend money and dance.
That's what Fielding was saying to me."
Emily giggled perversely--effectively.
"Oh, well; have it your own way. They're all angels, if you say they
are. I never interfere with them. Give them enough rope and they'll
all hang themselves."
"Have some more pie," Emily urged. "A little more pie won't hurt
you. I've got to begin canning cherries to-morrow."
"Oh, can the canning! What do you want to stew in the kitchen for,
weather like this?"
When Emily left the table she went quickly to the kitchen. Strange
how the maid's conscience could prick the mistress! Old Maggie now
was crippled and Emily had promised to take the ironed clothes
yesterday from the clothes horse and put them away. She had
forgotten, almost cruelly forgotten, for to have something done on
Thursday that should have been done on Wednesday was pain to Maggie.
To that pathetic sensitiveness her years of faithful service had
brought her. No woman in town but Emily would have endured the
crankiness of the old thing, the neighbors said. But Emily from
infancy had been used to her tyranny, and to her any servant was
better than none at all. She apologized for having forgotten. And
Maggie, hobbling around, demanded that she look at Martha's best
"chimmey." The woman had scorched it, burned it, and doubled her
fault carefully in so Emily wouldn't see it. And Emily looked at it,
and grumbled a little, sympathizingly, and then spoiled the effect of
her good deed by saying the garment was almost worn out, anyway.
Whereat Maggie snorted. Did that excuse the careless, lazy, sneaky
woman for folding it in so deceitfully? Certainly not, Emily hurried
to assure her, trying to sound efficient and superior, and knowing as
she went through the living room with an armful of mending that she
had seemed as usual but a broken reed to the old thing who needed
something strong, now, to lean on.
Bob saw her task, and said, of course:
"Why don't you make Martha do that for you?"
"You know she's gone to work on the committee, getting things ready
for to-night. She's busy."
"Busy! Huh!" remarked Bob.
Emily had intended to get a lot of work done before Martha came back
for her. Those bathroom sash curtains really must be changed. But a
neighbor "ran in" for a minute. She wanted to talk about her
grandchild, and Emily forgot her hurry. And then she thought she
would take some of those lovely columbines to her friend's mother in
Elgin. And so she went out and cut some, and wasn't at all ready to
go when Martha came for her, calling up to her to hurry if she wanted
to get back by five. But Emily seized her and made her wait.
"Martha, sit down a minute. Listen to me. You're a bad child. You
ought to be spanked. I wish----"
"Oh, I know it, mother," Martha answered, sincerely. "I'm the limit.
Can you imagine me talking that way to anyone else? But dad does get
my goat, some way. What does he want to keep on after me for, after
I've told him I'm sorry? He's just got into the habit of
ya-ya-ya-ing at me, and he'll just have to get out of it. I'm not
going to have it. Did you see him writhe, mother, when I mygodded
him?" And Martha chuckled.
"We've had enough of that now, Martha! You can stop that just now.
You know I don't think you're the one to correct your father!"
"But if I don't, who will? You're no good at it. You're too
good-natured with him, you old precious lamb. He knows you don't
like his godding. Does he stop? I know he doesn't like mine. Do I
stop? We've got to be logical."
Emily smiled witheringly.
"Your logic is always so unexpected. Do behave yourself. You might
at least ask him to send up the car, instead of ordering him to. He
doesn't keep it for your benefit, you know."
"Oh, I don't know about that. If he keeps it just for himself, he's
a selfish pig. If he keeps it partly for ours, why should we
hesitate to acknowledge it? You're always defending him."
"Defending him from whom? He doesn't need any defense that I know
of. He hasn't got any enemies."
"Well, maybe I shouldn't have said defense. That's not the word,
maybe. But you'll have to acknowledge that he needs a good deal
of--ahem--explanation, mother. You see for yourself he stops
swearing like a sailor when I take him in hand. Everybody says 'My
God.' But when he uses it you'd think he was a drunken sailor.
Mother, come along. There's all that decoration to do when we get
back. You can't trust them to do anything unless somebody's there to
boss them. Get your hat."
They went out of the door together, and down the front walk to where
the car waited in thick shade. The famous barberry hedge that
divides the Kenworthy front lawn from the street dozes faintly in
June, waking really only in October. But the lindens whose branches
almost met across the narrow street were in the murmurous climax of
leaf and blossom that day. Emily climbed into the car. Martha
jumped in, slipped into the driving seat, and banged the door after
her. Now Emily, when necessity compelled her to manipulate Bob's
car, approached it humbly and coaxed it into action, praying it would
get around the next corner safely. But Martha just seized it, and
slapped it into obedience, and imperiously commanded it hither and
thither hastily. Emily never saw her take charge of it without a
sort of impulse of awe. The car, like everything else expensive,
seemed to become the girl. She moved her hands on the large steering
wheel with that surprising composure which Emily had admired from her
babyhood. She always drove bareheaded. The breeze scarcely
disturbed her hair, which was cut and combed almost as it had been
ten years ago, when Jim Kenworthy used to sit and stroke it
thoughtfully. There was never a day when Martha was at home that
Emily didn't notice how distinguished the absolute straightness and
fineness of that black hair seemed among shingled and marcelled
heads. Bob didn't like bobbed hair, but he didn't make such an
absolute fool of himself on the subject as some men did. Emily
herself liked to think that there had never been any "putting up" of
hair for her daughter. There had never been a day when a box of
hairpins definitely divided her maturity from her childhood. There
had never been any letting down of skirts for Martha. Her frocks,
still cut simply, hung from her shoulders to--well, why should a man
go fussing on indefinitely about the length of his daughter's skirts,
after they had been determined! Of course, if Martha had had fat
legs, and shaky hips, like some girls whose names might be mentioned,
Emily might not have admired the prevailing styles so sincerely. But
Martha was built slenderly enough, gracefully enough, to justify
them, Emily thought, looking at her sitting there like a little
child, in that pink gingham frock, uncorseted, unrestrained, all
delicately and subtly blooming with color.
And Emily, though she enjoyed her daughter in perfect whiffs of
satisfaction, looked at her not without uneasiness. For she knew,
when she sat looking at that child, that she was seeing bodily before
her eyes nineteen years of her life; and not the quantity of it only,
but the very quality, the very flavor of it. Everything she had done
she had done for that child; all that she had left undone she had
left undone for her. Even Jim, the brother of her husband, whom she
had loved, she had given up, she had kept distant from, for this
child's sake. Often since he had died, six years ago, she had
regretted that renunciation. She had thought bitterly at times that
if she had gone to him, divorced or not divorced, child or no child,
he might--who knew?--be living still. But generally, when she
thought of it all, when Martha was with her, she had been glad of her
decision. Martha was surely reward enough for any sacrifice a woman
could make.
Because Martha was happy. That was the whole point. If her mother
had divorced her father, or deserted him, surely there must have been
something like a shadow, a sort of dimness, over the child's
consciousness. But now how gay she was, how perfectly gay and
light-hearted. For Emily, who had been an unhappy lonely young girl,
that was enough. She fervently now loved the months when the whole
house rose up to the zest of youth, when the rugs were rolled up and
the victrola going, when the refrigerator was raided nightly, when
the clothes lines were always adorned with swimming suits, the
bathroom overflowing with girls, the railings even of the veranda
lined with lads, cigarettes gleaming in the darkness of the
garden--why ask whether feminine or masculine cigarettes--when there
was no sleep till the last lingering car departing had made the night
strident. Bob grumbled incessantly about Martha's company. But must
not an only child, most of all, have friends about? "You'd think the
house was run for that girl," Bob complained. And Emily answered to
herself, for she was a wise one: "If this house of mine is run eight
months of the year for you, why shouldn't it be run four months of
the year for her?" But she said only: "Too bad! It's just a shame."
For physically, she got tired of it herself. Thank Heaven the rush
which had been accumulating for weeks would be over this evening! It
was an added misfortune that the old friend visiting in Elgin had
'phoned that Emily must come to see her this very afternoon, or miss
her altogether. So here she and Martha, in the midst of the
preparations, were slipping across counties together, as if distance
was nothing. And truly to Martha Kenworthy it was nothing worth
raising an eyelash excitedly about. They slipped silently by
cornfields, with straight little lines of green checking away
geometrically for level miles. They slipped by alfalfa-green fields,
clover-green fields, oat-green fields, wheat-green fields,
farmhouses, high loads of balancing hay, milk trucks. The sun was
hot. The air was clear. The sky was blue. And on the horizon
magnificently distant, beyond those subtle sloping fields, rose
towering white and blooming higher, in puff upon puff and fold upon
fold, huge white culminating clouds of dreams. Emily, lulled almost
to unconsciousness, saw a black one rising ominously among them.
* * * * * * * * *
"Look at that!" she murmured, breaking a fragrant silence.
Martha looked.
"We should worry!" she replied. She was right, of course. Nothing
less than an earthquake could spoil the climax of the women's triumph
now.
The growth of their conception, the building of their dream into
concrete foundations and that perfect dancing floor, was a thing that
every woman who had had a hand in it was wondering over this week,
and Emily had more reason than most of them to wonder. For she was
by nature less a committee woman than any of them. She had to think
out every step of her participation in it, to believe she was really
part of it. She always forgot even her most important motives, and
puzzled afterwards over all the reasons for her actions which at the
time had seemed obvious. In her early married life she had been too
poor and too busy to consider the women's club. Besides, it had been
bullied then by the aunt whose house Emily had escaped from by
marriage. And after the aunt died, and Emily moved again into the
good house her grandfather and aunt had been rebuilding for some
seventy years, she had not wanted to take her place in the circle
which might, she suspected, be discussing the gossip about her
husband's speculation with some money her aunt had intrusted to him.
And she had had a baby then, soon after she had come back to the
house, a poor little starving son who kept her and Bob bending over
him night and day for nearly two years. And then Jim had come to
them, bringing his tragic son. And her old girlish love for him had
risen like a flood, like a flood that never burst its dam, but pushed
and pounded there against it--till Jim died.
Life had collapsed then. Just collapsed. It had no content at all.
She had come to realize that most of the years of her married life
had been given their value by her love of her first lover, her
husband's brother. From the day he took his departure from town
until the next time he came to see his mother, she had lived in
anticipation of the days when he would be about the house, "jollying"
in his charming way, his frail and doting mother, and playing about
with Martha, and every minute, under his discreet and brotherly
words, loving her, the girl he had so incredibly missed marrying.
There had been for her then that certainty, and besides that, some
place in the depth of her mind a vague, foolish, romantic,
unacknowledged hope of some time, some place, loving him altogether.
She had to believe that that little hope had been the mainspring of
her life. For, after his death, without it, she couldn't go on, she
had thought desperately. Life had stopped.
And just then that woman, Mrs. Benton, who had lived in the next
block for years, suddenly strode into Emily's consciousness, in the
same way that a few years before she had landed with a running jump
in the defenseless mind of the community. Mrs. Benton had had an
only daughter who had been drowned. She had brooded over the fact
for a while, and then risen and said she was going to have every
child in that inland town taught to swim. As a memorial to that
daughter she would make the town a swimming beach. She had bought a
wooded stretch of the river bank. She had dammed the river. She had
made a great dark bottomless swimming place for the strong lads, and
little clear wading pools for the toddlers. She had made sunny
diving places and shady diving places and steep gravel banks and
grassy inclines, and dressing rooms of varieties. And all summer she
stationed guards there and instructors, and got Johnnie Weismuller to
come down to her yearly water festivals, to do his stunts and
encourage the winners of all the water races. It was impossible to
imagine a swimming beach more skillfully managed. The Rotarians had
to acknowledge that the beach was the town's best booster. Who could
deny that farmers came now to trade in that town, with their Fords
and their Cadillacs packed full of eager bathing suits who had been
kept in order the whole week by the promise of a swim on Saturday?
After that, she had gone on to improve the city and ruin the temper
of the taxpayers. She had built and she had paved and she had
investigated, she had reformed and she had tested laws, and she had
hoisted taxes. Men said horrid things about Mrs. Benton. They said,
"she was out to raise municipal hell," and that she was "just too
damned efficient to live." And when a small boy, a mere little
unconsidered Hicks child, quarreling with his playmate, cried, "You
needn't think you can go Bentoning around my back yard," they took up
the verb derisively and put it into all the male mouths of the
county, where it lives to this day.
No sooner had the beach become a success beyond any expectation, than
Mrs. Benton had addressed the women's club. "Our children," she
said, "swim now from June to October _de luxe_; and from October to
June they dance--how? Behind the Greek's candyshop, where those
obscene pictures were found, in the old hall that has no ventilation,
or the old opera house controlled by bootleggers. Why should the
women not build a winter gathering-place for their children equal to
the summer center?" The women had said, "We will." "I wish I could
afford to do it all myself," she said. And the plan they made
knocked the breath out of their menfolk. Why, demanded husbands,
couldn't they listen to common sense and build an ordinary hall?
They didn't want a cheap hall. Why couldn't they build it in the
town park? It was too low there, and hot and crowded. Why must it
be built on the hill across the river from the beach, to which no
paved road led, and no bridge was convenient? They some way liked
that hill. Why not pave a road and build a bridge and make a great
new municipal parking place, which had to be done sooner or later?
The city council refused to have any such white elephant forced upon
them. White elephant, indeed, the women echoed, Mrs. Benton leading
them. A mere kitten for the baby to play with.
If the council wouldn't accept it, very well. The women's club would
build it to suit itself, would manage it, and endow it. And through
four years of opposition and complications they had worked steadily
on, straight to the dedication of the hall which now, full of the
morning delphiniums, waited for its evening christening. And Emily
was very tired.
For Mrs. Benton was clever enough to realize her own weaknesses, and
in launching the dancing-center plan she had felt the need of some
one to pour oil on the waters she troubled. And there was Emily
Kenworthy, just at hand, who was, as Johnnie Benton said, a "natural
born oil-can," an easy-going woman who got along with anyone, even
that cranky old servant that bossed her around. So Mrs. Benton had
pounced upon Emily. And Emily had submitted, with misgivings,
welcoming any relief from the vacancy of life she had suffered since
Jim's death. The strife of it all was nothing to Emily. She had
never found stimulus in overcoming opposition. She had no respect
for committees, no interest in rules of order. Blue prints made her
yawn, and the very idea of signing her name to a contract oppressed
her. From the first she had seen the project merely as a toy for
Martha, a patch of sunlight in her daughter's background. It had
been only her interest in Martha and all those children about her
that had kept Emily working away these five years, while one woman
after another had resigned in fury.
Emily had been so unhappy as a child that her mind enjoyed playing
with the idea of a beautiful gathering-place all lighted and shining
by a multitude of happy boys and girls. She had always liked the
children who played about with Martha. And since that summer during
the war, when Jim's son, that dear, befuddled, tragic Bronson, had
carried the burden of his unnecessary sorrow all those weeks
unsuspected beneath her very eyes, she had never passed a half-grown
lad on the street without a second wondering look at him. How could
a town be stupid, she often wondered, having in it a world esoteric,
unexplored, unimagined for the most part by adults, very jungles of
young terror hiding adolescent beds of precious ore. "How do you
come to know all the children in town?" women asked Emily more than
once. "They can't _all_ come to see Martha." But if you're
interested, you do get to know them some way. They run errands, they
deliver groceries, they come about selling tickets to high-school
plays, they spray the apple trees in the spring, they borrow
books--they just some way hang about. At least that was Emily's
explanation.
The whole community she had come to think of as a nursery for Martha
and her kind. Her grandfather, to be sure, had laid out the main
street of the town, and Bob had adorned one corner of it recently
with a huge yawning garage, but the real importance to Emily of those
streets was the fact that Martha and her friends strolled along them
towards their sundaes. Her grandfather had planted the trees about
the house. But Emily had come to esteem them because they had
afforded high swings for little girls. Emily had first seen Jim
Kenworthy under the willow that leaned out over the river where her
back yard meets the water. Bob had proposed to her in that very
spot. But now that tree was precious because Martha's boat was
generally anchored there. And when Bob talked of sawing off that
lower limb, to build a new garage, she had risen in arms because
Martha had as a child spent hours in that broad seat it made. She
had never been allowed herself to climb trees, but Martha had spent
whole mornings there, and soon, in not many years, well--who could
tell, maybe Martha's own boys and girls would be hiding their
treasures in those lovely soft hollow places within reach of young
hands. She couldn't just say to Bob that she was saving that very
low limb for her grandchildren, could she? And she never exactly
said to Mrs. Benton that she was working for the community hall
because she didn't want Martha to dance only out there in the country
club aloof from the life of the town. Emily had been taught to
consider the Western town a place scarcely worthy of her Eastern
breeding. She wasn't going to have any such nonsense as that with
Martha. She'd send her East to school, but she was to feel herself
altogether Western. And it was high time she did, too, since she was
the fourth generation to live in the West.
However, whatever the motives, whatever the difficulties, the work
had been accomplished. Day by day, all the spring putting in whole
mornings over the finishing of it, they had labored away, and they
would be infinitely relieved when it was over to-morrow. Emily was
weary with it all. The car rolled along, smoothly, as usual, when
Martha took it over the bad roads, and, musing sleepily, she thought
of all the women had done, and wondered pleasantly why this old
friend she was going to see had decided so suddenly to return to her
home that Emily must come to see her a few minutes that very
afternoon. She was almost asleep when she heard Martha's voice, a
rather stern tone of it:
"Mother!"
"Well?"
"I don't often criticize you, do I now?"
"Not very often. I suppose you're a rather tolerant daughter, as
daughters go. What have I done now?" Emily yawned.
"I was just thinking about things. Both dad and Uncle Jim lived in
this town when you were a girl, didn't they?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Why didn't you marry Uncle Jim, then?"
Emily sat up.
"Why, Martha Kenworthy! What put such an idea into your head?"
"_Dad_ puts it there, of course. It's been there for years, off and
on. I didn't tell you what was in my head, when I was a kid."
"Oh, you didn't, didn't you?" The idea of her saying that!
"No, I didn't dare. I----"
"Martha!" Emily expostulated.
"Well, I didn't. I've often wondered about it. I told Maggie once I
liked Uncle Jim most, and she said bad little girls who said things
like that died in their sleep. It seems to me--of course I was just
a little kid then--some way, I had sort of an affinity for Uncle Jim.
Funny you never had. I wonder sometimes---- Do you suppose if he
was living now I would still be so crazy about him?"
"Yes. Why not?"
"Oh, well, you know, mother, you do feel different about your
forbears when you're grown up. Dad didn't used to seem--so--odious
when I was a kid."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Martha," Emily answered,
carelessly. She would not seem to take this seriously.
"I don't see why. Maybe Uncle Jim would have bored me just as much.
Of course you always _taught_ me to love dad when I was little. I
simply had to, you might say. You used to say he never had any time
to play with me. But when you come to think of it, he had loads more
time than ever Uncle Jim did. He was only here sometimes, when he
came to see grandma. But some way, when I look back at it, it seems
as if he played with me for years, almost."
"Well, of course he did play with you whenever he came. He said it
was a rest for him. He was always tired. He enjoyed fooling about
with you."
"I know it. Do you remember the day he rolled up his trousers and
took me wading on his shoulder? There could have been hardly any
water in the river then, before it was dammed, but I thought I would
have drowned if I went near it. And he played he was sinking, and
ran round and round splashing, and told me I had saved his life. I
didn't know whether I really had or not. Gee! mother!" Martha
chuckled reminiscently. "I'll bet I would just love him if he was
living."
"I'm sure you would."
"I asked you, in the first place, why you didn't marry him instead of
father. You would have if you'd consulted me about it, all right. I
bet I wasn't more than eight when I began to think about that. He
wouldn't have been always jawing me every time I came in sight."
Emily was wide awake now.
"Why, child, I don't know, exactly. He was older than I was--a
little bit. What you remember of him--all his ways of playing with
you--wouldn't necessarily make a girl prefer him. You don't ever
think what sort of fathers these lads would make for children, do
you? These boys that play about with you."
Martha looked at her mother in indignation.
"Well, I should say I _do_! I'm going to have a first-class father
for _my_ children!" This was what Emily delighted in, Martha's frank
way of discussing things unembarrassed with her. There was never a
grown woman she could have said a thing like that to when she was a
girl! "If anybody asks me to marry him," Martha continued---"I don't
mean like Johnnie and these boys--I mean in earnest----"
"Do these boys ask you to marry them?"
"Oh, you know, mother. They'd ask anybody just to try it. Johnnie's
got to practice on someone----
"But suppose someone should accept him--now--I mean----"
"Oh, well, the risk would be all her own," Martha said, serenely.
"If anybody asked me seriously, I'd say to him: 'Let me hear you sing
backwards. Let me see you go upstairs rabbit and come down
alligator.' And if he couldn't play games nicely, like Uncle Jim,
I'd say there's nothing doing."
Emily laughed at the absurdity of the child.
"I'm glad to hear it," she said railingly. And then she added:
"You'll wait a long time before you come across one like him. There
isn't one in a million."
Martha turned and looked at her mother with deliberate curiosity.
"I should have thought you would just love him, mother!"
"I did. We all did. He had such lovely ways."
"You'd never imagine dad belonged to the same family."
"Anybody could see they did. They're very much alike. Martha, you
don't do your father justice. You wait till you get into trouble and
you'll see whether he's a good friend or not."
"Yes. Well, maybe I won't get into trouble. There's no certainty.
I know now very well what he'd do. He'd do anything he could for me
because I'm your little pet."
"You're a ridiculous child, Martha."
"I know that. You say that whenever you don't want to acknowledge
I've hit the nail on the head."
"I said plainly your dad is of another temperament."
"I'll say he is!"
"Isn't life too funny?" thought Emily. "Jim's boy has spoiled Bob
for Martha, and Jim makes Bob seem uninteresting to Martha. Things
go too much in circles in the family," she thought to herself. And
Emily sat there, not listening closely to Martha's chatter. She was
thinking about her startling question. _Could_ Martha really have
wondered about that when she was eight? What was the use of
imagining one saw into a child's mind! Had the child ever seen
things on the face of her uncle or her mother that had made her
wonder things she didn't yet dare to ask about? After all, Martha
had been twelve when Jim died. An hour before Emily would have
laughed at such an idea. And after all, suppose the child _did_
understand! If she did, she understood nothing dishonorable--nothing
a girl nowadays might not meditate upon.
For girls nowadays--well, Bob the other night came into the dining
room declaring violently he couldn't sit on the veranda with them.
That Ellis girl had been saying--and Johnnie was there, and that
beach guard he runs about with--she had said right in front of those
men that she had to dramatize some part of the Bible next fall term,
and she had chosen the fall of Jericho because of the harlot in it.
And Martha had said, "Goodness! You can find a story with more than
one harlot in it. Can't she, Johnnie?" And Johnnie had had the
decency to say he didn't know. He hadn't been to Sunday school for a
long time. Emily had been sure Martha had done it simply to shock
Bob. She defended the girls. "I don't care what you say, Bob. It's
a lot better than the way I was brought up. It's just a good thing
that they talk so frankly with me about such things." And yet--once
in a while--she had misgivings--not so much about Martha, of
course--who was a good child--but about Eve, for instance, and other
girls.
_Chapter Two_
"You go right over to the hall," Emily had said to Martha as they
arrived home after five, "and I'll do your shoulder straps for you."
She had gone upstairs, and presently hurried, in a comfortable mature
way, to Martha's room. She opened the door, and almost blinked, for
the uncompromising afternoon sun made even yet a startling welter of
the purples and greens and creamy yellows before her. And then she
said: "Oh! You here, Eve?" For in that whirl of gaudiness an
auburn-haired, hawk-nosed, thin-faced girl sat in flesh-colored
B.V.D.'s, on a black stool, with a dishpan half full of pitted
cherries on the floor beside her, and in her lap a green bowl half
full of moist seeds.
"I got tired of hanging around over there. I wasn't doing anything.
They're just fooling around for somebody to come and make them get to
work." It was no concession to Emily's sense of propriety that made
her hitch a fallen shoulder strap into decorum. Eve could have
pitted cherries in Martha's sitting room stark naked with serenity.
She had gone into shrieks of laughter the other day when Emily had
described the careful way in which she in her girlhood, in her own
room, with no man in the house, had put her arms into her wrapper in
her bed, and had the essential garment all ready to pull about her as
soon as she had put her first foot on the floor.
Emily said to her now, "You needn't have done those cherries, Eve."
"Oh, well, I thought I'd better be doing something to make myself
popular. Everybody else is working--or pretending to." Eve grinned
ingratiatingly. "Somebody called up, too, just now. That friend of
Martha's. That Wilton, I think his name is."
"Oh! Is HE here?"
"Yes. Came out for to-night. Don't you like him?"
"Yes. I like him. He's a nice boy. Clever, too."
"That's what Martha said." Eve seemed always incredulous about
masculine brilliancy.
"Well, he's always got scholarships. He's earned his way, really,
through college."
"Hum!" commented Eve. College honors were nothing to her.
"His father is the best barber in town, too," Emily continued.
Eve turned and looked at her quickly.
"The best what?"
"Barber. You know that shop all plate glass and shining enamel that
makes all the rest of the street look dirty? That's his shop.
That's where we go for shampoos."
Eve had been looking at Emily curiously, and the little grin had
grown into a spreading smile.
"You're the limit, Mrs. Kenworthy!" she said, admiringly. Then she
saw Emily's purpose in coming, and got up. She stretched up an arm,
spread her dripping fingers gingerly apart, and brushed back her hair
with the inside of her elbow. "I'll do those straps. I've almost
finished. Wait a minute." And she started, apparently, towards the
bathroom.
"Eve! Wait! I'll put your kimona on for you!"
"Oh! I'm sorry I forgot!"
"It's almost supper time. Bob may be home any time now."
And Emily wrapped about her shoulders a wisp of georgette. And when
the girl took a step forward with all the sunlight shining through
her, and Emily saw through the sheer thing long pink legs, she
suddenly realized why Bob had said indignantly that he would as soon
meet her naked in the hall as in that thing.
She laughed and said, "Eve, you really ought to have a thicker
dressing gown!"
"I have got one," Eve assured her. "I had to get one. Dad wouldn't
go on the Pullman with me till he saw I had one. I hate a lot of
cotton flannels."
"Crêpe de Chine would do."
"I know it. But it's sort of dowdy--crêpe de Chine. Put Martha's on
me. I'll bring my own Victorian down to-morrow."
Very quick to take a suggestion, properly made, Eve was. A
gratifying girl to befriend, if a puzzling one. When Bob had
grumbled that he didn't see any use sending a girl to college who
didn't know enough to wear clothes, Emily had replied:
"Oh, that girl is as good as gold, Bob. They all wear thin things in
the halls, Martha says." Emily liked her. To be sure, the ease with
which she had taken up her permanent abode at the Kenworthys' was
somewhat--nonplusing. Emily had asked her, when Martha first brought
her home, where she had been brought up. And she had said: "Oh, I
never was brought up at all. I'm just the little prairie flower,
growing wilder every hour. Just hauled about from aunt to
boarding-school--between the devil and the deep sea all my tender
days." Though she had said it so frankly, so seriously, Emily had
thought it scarcely sufficient. But Martha had hooted at Emily's
quizzings. "It's too funny the way you act, mother, as if maybe she
wasn't fit to associate with your precious child. At school I'm
simply nothing. I'm the least worm in the apple. But Eve's
everything. The profs just eat out of her hands. She's chairman of
the student council--you know--the gang that makes us all behave.
She edits the magazine, and she'll be president of her class next
year, as like as not. At school everybody wants to get a stand in
with Eve. She'd never looked at me if her dad hadn't moved to this
town. And now you don't know whether I better make her acquaintance
or not!"
"You know I didn't mean that, child. I simply asked who she was and
where she had lived. That's only natural. I think she's a dear."
And Emily had been reassured because it was her theory that women
never again have such a capacity for judging one another rightly, and
choosing friends wisely, as they have in college. No girl, she
thought, looking at Eve's thin, rather over-bred face, fools a
campusful of her companions. Bob said her father was always well
spoken of. No one knew him very well. He had bought a great
elevator in town some time ago, one of several he had in the state,
and recently had bought a large old house and settled his family in
it. That had consisted of his old bedridden mother and her
nurse--until Eve's vacation had begun. Martha had gone at once to
see her there, and, coming back, had said to Emily: "It's a funny
sort of house, mother. It's furnished all right, and everything.
But it looks like an orphan asylum." She had asked Eve to come and
stay the night, and Eve had accepted gladly. Her grandmother, she
told Emily, had been "out of her head, mildly" for months. Her
nurses weren't very easy to get along with. "Dad had a hard enough
time getting any he can trust grandma to," she had said, very
sensibly. "He's away so much. These two are awfully good to her.
I'll say that for them. They're sisters. So why should I come home
for three months and ball everything up? I just keep still as a
mouse and let them have their own way. Grandma never knows me. I
never go into the room."
Well, that was a nice sort of place for a young girl to spend her
holiday, Emily had thought. "Stay with us," she had suggested. And
she hadn't had to suggest it twice. Bob grumbled every day about
this steady boarder, but that didn't excite Emily unduly. She liked
Eve better and better. How sweet of her now, to think of doing those
cherries! She was always doing little things that Martha would never
have thought of.
In fact, Emily had almost to acknowledge to herself that Eve had
certain traits that Martha might well have had. Bob, of course,
talked about them openly. Eve had a proper attitude towards her
father, for one thing. She had said, quite naturally, that her dad
was a lamb, a perfect duck, and a good old sport. And the fourth
evening she had been at Emily's, the four of them, with another girl,
Johnnie Benton, and another lad of the town, had been sitting on the
veranda, waiting for the third lad to come in his car, so that the
six of them could drive over to the lake to dance. They had heard
some one come in, and called to him to come out, thinking it was the
dilatory sixth. And Eve's father had come out to them.
Bob couldn't get over that scene. Eve had sprung up and hugged him
and kissed him and patted him. Emily, seeing even that greeting,
would have been sure that Eve's rather shocking sophistication was
only a pose. For she had started at once to get her things together
to go home with him. And when Johnnie Benton had protested she had
turned to him indignantly. "I like your nerve!" she had cried to
him. "Do you suppose I'm going to a dance with you when I haven't
seen my dad for six weeks?" And she wouldn't go. They couldn't
persuade her. Bob, sitting there, had seen her father relishing the
situation. The man obviously overflowed with pride in his "Evelyn."
"Now, can you beat that?" Bob had demanded of Emily afterwards. "Can
you imagine Martha cutting a dance for me? Maybe Eve'll do her some
good. Can you beat that?"
Emily couldn't possibly imagine Martha preferring her father to a
dance, or to very much else. But she wouldn't acknowledge it.
"Oh, well, Bob, that's another matter. It was sweet, the way she did
it. But Eve hadn't seen him for weeks. And then, she hasn't got a
mother. She's had to depend on him always. It's much more normal, I
must say, for a girl to prefer a dance to her parents. You can't
deny that."
"I know it. But it's the principle of the thing." And he had liked
Eve, till he had met her coming from the bathroom in what he called,
"an obscene Mother Hubbard."
And now, getting ready for supper, Emily wished she knew why Eve had,
once, mentioned father-in-law in connection with Wilton. Bob would
have laughed at her, if he had known, for she thought every man in
town was in love with Martha, he said. A fat chance she had of
getting near her as hard-headed a man as Wilton. He had too much
sense to fall for any such kid as Martha, Bob had assured her. But
how could she help thinking about it when Wilton's father had told
her that he absolutely refused to leave his hospital work to come
home for any dance? He was interned already, by what he called a
streak of luck, but Emily knew it was rather his ability. And now he
was coming out to see Martha--and his father was a barber. How could
a mother help thinking about her child's matrimonial possibilities, a
lovely girl of that age? "When I was her age," thought Emily, "I
fell in love with Jim." And it was because she had been thinking of
the possibility, any time now, of Martha's marriage, that she had
tolerated the painted room.
One thing Emily Kenworthy was sure of. She had almost gritted her
teeth in the intensity of her resolutions on this subject for years,
whenever she had had to think over the surprising course of her own
life. She had married really to get out of this very house, made
intolerable to her by the tyranny of her aunt. But her daughter
wouldn't ever marry to get away from her. She would never marry for
freedom! Not while Emily Kenworthy knew what she was doing! Emily
had few strong convictions, but that one was unalterable.
Emily loved every meal when Martha was home. That evening at supper
she sat cherishing her enjoyment. Afterwards it was so amusing to be
running in and out of the painted room, where Eve and Martha were
dressing. No sooner had they gone up to dress, ready for the
evening, than Martha called to her from the bathroom, above the noise
of water steaming into the tub:
"Mother!"
When Emily went to her, there she stood, twinkling importantly.
"Got a secret to tell you, mother. Wilton said I might tell you.
You're not to tell a soul, yet. Not dad!"
Emily's heart gave a protesting leap. She didn't manage to speak
indifferently.
"Tell me what it is!" she commanded.
"He's engaged, mother. He came out to break the news to his dad.
She's a nurse. That's good, isn't it? And he's crazy as a loon
about her. He said I could tell you. He's been rushing that girl
all summer, and his dad thinks he's working himself to death!"
Martha smiled cynically.
What a relief! What a fine young man that Wilton was! Emily wished
him every happiness she could think of. Martha didn't care a rap
about him. Of course not! Trust Martha to choose exactly the right
man! "Wasn't I just silly to worry about it?" Emily thought.
The pleasure of this assurance was added to the excitement of their
preparations. Martha looked too sweet in that simple little
flesh-colored frock. Emily kissed her impulsively. Eve looked
lovely, too, but one didn't just kiss Eve on the impulse, even if she
did take one's part stanchly against tender derision. Martha had
been making her mother turn round and round to display her new gown.
"If you know the trouble I had getting her to get it, Eve!" Martha
had murmured. "It took me all the spring vacation to persuade her.
I never saw a human being cling to old rags the way that woman does."
And they surveyed her. She was as large, almost, as the two of them,
of flowing line and generous bosom, gray-eyed, with soft brown hair.
But her color, Martha said falsely, was ghastly. "You're tired out,
mother. Now stand still. I bought this specially for you this
afternoon. Mine don't suit you. Now don't be such a snob, mother.
Stop rubbing it off! A little rouge isn't going to corrupt your
morals. You'll come home as pure as you went! Mother! Oh, you're
hopeless! When I try so hard to make you look presentable!" Wasn't
that delicious, when one understood it? And wouldn't Bob have been
annoyed to hear the child's impertinence? "Eve, look at her!" Martha
begged, tragically. But Eve said: "Let her alone. You'd paint a
lily, Martha. You'd marcel Thomas Hardy himself, if you got a
chance. You look just sweet now, Mrs. Kenworthy!" And they turned
their attention again to their own long-considered faces.
Martha certainly managed her adorning skillfully. No crude blotches
of color for her. She knew what subtly became her. Her mother
hadn't thought she used rouge until a few days before, when she came
upon her in the act. "Why, Martha Kenworthy!" she had protested,
"where did you get that stuff?" And Martha, turning to Eve, had
imitated her very tone fondly. "Where did I get that stuff? Isn't
she priceless, Eve? Isn't she a sort of an old treasure? I got it,
to be precise, in a drug store in Madison Avenue. Not far from the
station." And since then more than once she had turned her faintly
tinted cheeks naughtily up for her mother's inspection. "Am I pure,
mammie? Or am I painted?" she would ask. The doubt was scarcely as
objectionable as the question. Pure wasn't a word girls ought to be
throwing about just carelessly, it seemed to Emily. But both the
girls failed to see her point. "What's the matter with 'pure,'
mother? Do you like 'virgin' better?" They were just naughty,
trying to shock her. And she would do better to keep her Victorian
scruples, as they called them, to herself.
Or if she didn't want to keep them to herself, wrapped in paper and
stored away on some upper shelf, let her discard them altogether.
That was what the dancing, balloon-entangled mass of youth seemed to
say to the Emily and Mrs. Benton who looked down upon it that evening
from the platform. But Cora Benton, that lordly and distinguished
daughter of the American Revolution, by her very presence retorted,
as it were, "Yes! Lay aside Victorian scruples and New England
tradition. Have I not Georgian scruples and Illinois decorum
sufficient unto the day?" The city band, in brand-new maroon
uniforms, was playing worse than ever, but they played--that was the
point, for they had said they would never play if wireless music was
to be chiefly used. The mayor and the councilors looked down on the
dancers--those gentlemen who had refused to accept this hall as a
gift--determined not to admit what their eyes saw, but unable to
refrain. The Presbyterian minister and the Catholic priest, who
planned to bless it by their presence but momentarily, still tarried,
wondering. The representatives of the farm bureau and the granges
were trying to estimate the number of people on the floor. All the
reluctant admirers, all the gossipers, the obstructionists, the
knockers, might stand on that platform, and look down over that
rhythmic mass, right away to the farther side, where the dancers were
swinging out on to the wide verandas to the starlight, and back again
into the pink-shaded electric light--they might all gaze continually,
eager to find some impropriety, anxious to see, as they had foretold,
some daring lad come dripping in, in bathing suit from the adjacent
swimming-place--but in it all, nothing, nothing could they find to
shudder over.
For Mrs. Benton had reinforced herself, as it were, by the American
Legion. He stood there with his hands in his pockets, bull-necked,
yellow-haired, low-foreheaded, somebody's Dutch hired man. He had
redeemed the Legion from the hands of the disreputable and he rallied
about it the decent element of the community, re-established it
financially--after its treasurers had absconded--made its dances
popular again, and started to build it a permanent home. Mrs. Benton
had wanted her hall to have the added prestige of being a sort of
memorial to the county's soldiers. She had laid her plan before him,
and when he had considered it and announced publicly that he had "no
use for guys that was always knocking the dames," she thought she had
persuaded him, although, really, a pretty farmer's daughter had put
into the Legion's mind thoughts of settling down and renting a farm
of his own. So he was weary of his public work. Why should he
devote his evenings to running around trying to collect money when
the dames were willing to leave him free to sit close to the farmer's
daughter? He backed Mrs. Benton to the limit of his great ability.
He had allowed no one, of late, to "dance vulgar" at his dances. And
now he stood on the platform with Mrs. Benton, who knew that if he
gave an order for the mayor himself to leave the floor, the whole
crowd would applaud him. He was the community hero. But Mrs. Benton
had no delusions about him. "A young Lincoln" the sentimental called
him. But she remarked, grimly, "Easy enough to begin where Lincoln
did, in Illinois. The trick is to finish where he finished."
The invited and distinguished guests began departing. The oldest
G.A.R. had hobbled away, and the representatives of the Chamber of
Commerce had left the platform in a body, giving Mrs. Benton
magnanimous congratulations which she had received but impatiently
for the dancing crowd kept still increasing, and the committee in
charge of the refreshments had summoned her to a conference. They
said cars were parked one against the other right down to Main
Street, and were still arriving by dozens. All the ice cream in the
town had been eaten, and a dozen freezers were on their way from the
nearest source of relief. And as they spoke, all the women breathed
their success in deeply, wallowing in their sense of victory. They
consulted, and they gloated. They stood looking down over the work
of their hands, eying one another significantly. They said to one
another, "I told you so!" They added, "But I never told you so
much!" Mrs. Benton and Emily were standing together when Johnnie
made his way to the platform. Presently Emily was standing between
mother and son.
She had been standing between mother and son intermittently for years.
People who said that Mrs. Benton was queenly belittled her. She was
kingly. She was nearly six feet tall--Johnnie was an inch or two
taller. She had the neck and head of a Roman Emperor--imperial,
magnificent. She was wearing that night a smart black net frock,
girded about and corseted as regally as usual. She had artificial
pearls about her thick neck. She wore, moreover, a crown. It was
largely that coronation of great black braids round her head that
made the bobbed-hair femininity near her seem to be bowing their
insignificant heads, their thin and modish shoulders before her like
groveling subjects. She had a habit of pulling one of those braids
up to a sort of point exactly above the middle of her forehead,
because it became her--that is--it suggested more vividly a crown.
Seen from behind, the mother and the son were not unlike. Johnnie
had the same beautifully shaped head--and no line of his was hidden
beneath the billows of hair--beautifully set on broad, thin
shoulders. Seen from the side, he had the advantage of her. He had
a good chin. If Mrs. Benton's chin had matched her crowned forehead,
democracy probably would not have tolerated her. Fortunately, it
fell away and folded into her neck--somewhat fatly. But a clever
observer, studying mother and son from the front, might have guessed
the sorrow of the mother. There was a gentleness, a sort of ease,
about the son's mouth, though a woman who had "inside information"
later called it the sweetest mouth in the world. She said, in fact,
that it was so sweet that his false teeth looked beautiful even in a
glass of water. He was certainly not effeminate. How could a lad
born of two male parents manage to be girlish! He lacked what is
called "push" perhaps. The engine of his life had not been started.
Hers was never turned off. One could see it pounding impatiently
away as she stood there. Her eyes, as they looked, lorded it over
the scene; when they roved about, they reigned. They were even now
seizing upon the scene to command it. Johnnie looked at it and
grinned, hoping to see another pretty girl come dancing into his ken.
He was shockingly content with the world as he found it. Nature had
given him dancing feet, and "the dames" had made a perfect floor for
him. The tailor made him pockets and the banker gave him check
books. His mother had been sore with him ever since he got home from
college. And now he had squared himself with her by getting such a
crowd to come to the opening of the hall. He reminded her and Emily
that he deserved credit for the multitude as he stood with them, a
manicured sum of frustration to maternal ambition.
"You mustn't ask me to do anything for you if you don't want it well
done," he said to them.
For Johnnie had posted announcements of this great opening dance on
the telephone poles of six counties, rising early and coming home
from his work late practically every day for two weeks. This unusual
industry was prompted by the most noble filial reason possible. He
wanted to please his mother. And he had good reason for wanting to
please her. Emily realized that keenly, for not more than half an
hour ago she had thought she heard some wag in the crowd around the
hall whistling one of those absurd tunes. She wasn't sure it was one
of those tunes of Johnnie's "opera." All tunes sound so much alike,
nowadays. But she feared it, uneasily, right in the midst of their
triumph. For this Johnnie Benton had inadvertently brought half
their club committee, as well as his mother, into humming derision.
He had held up their past to jazzy scorn. Doggedly he insisted that
it was an accident. He had never intended writing a comic opera for
his college class. It had just happened. It never entered his head
that if he wrote up one of his mother's activities, away down East,
the news of it would ever get back home. He acknowledged to Emily he
had known that the editor of the town daily "had it in" for the club
women; that he had been biding his time ever since they had bought
the vacant lots next to his dwelling for a parking place for the cars
of the dancers who came to their hall. The committee had openly
regretted the necessity of doing anything to spoil the peace of his
home. But as towns grow, apparently some provision for cars must be
made. They had not wanted to antagonize the press. But they had
been forced to. They had regretted it at the time, but they had
regretted it more two weeks ago. For then, one day--Martha had just
got home from college and Johnnie Benton was to arrive the following
morning--the town had been startled at the horrid, leering headlines: