"Well! Well! Maybe she is." Mrs. Benton was condoning already her
tone of reproof.
But Emily had at first sight thought it appropriate, because--well,
what in the world WAS Martha doing? Emily had fairly started with
annoyance when she saw her. To her first glance it was disgusting.
And then, as she looked, chagrined, perplexed,--well--it wasn't
disgusting. Really, perhaps, the position in which Martha and her
partner were obviously worming their way about was not one which,
after long deliberations on the subject, the committee had thought
best to forbid on the floor. It was that man--his face--the way he
was bending down, being tall, to look at her. It was, most of all,
Emily realized in a flash, angrily, the way Martha was holding her
sweet little face, entranced, up to him. What in the world were
those two talking about?
"Who is that man?" Emily asked Johnnie. She was too annoyed to
observe how keenly Johnnie was watching the sight.
"I don't know. Never saw him before."
"There's nothing we can take exception to in THAT!" Mrs. Benton
seemed almost to regret the fact.
Johnnie looked at her indignantly and ineffectively.
Emily resented the suggestion sharply. The very idea that anyone
might take exception to her daughter, that the committee might
disapprove of her child's attitude, hurt her deeply. For Martha
Kenworthy was distinctly a nice girl. Everybody had always known
that she was a very superior, quiet, well-behaved, dear child.
Mothers consulted her mother about their naughty children. And now
Cora Benton--but just the same, it did look as if Martha in that
little flesh-colored frock, was almost cuddling up
against--that--somebody--whom Emily at first shocked sight heartily
disliked.
"Go and tell her I want to see her." Emily spoke to Johnnie and
regretted it. Mrs. Benton let no one know when she corrected her
son. But Emily Kenworthy's intention of reproving her daughter was
revealed to the world.
"I wouldn't say anything to her. Look, there's a couple--lots of
them are dancing that way. It does leave something to be desired,"
Cora Benton counseled.
"I hadn't thought of saying anything about that to her," Emily said,
carelessly. She was surprised at the sharpness of her resentment.
After all, hadn't she often told even Cora Benton how to manage her
child!
It seemed a long time before Johnnie came back, more or less
dutifully. She suspected him of having had several dances in the
meantime.
"I can't find her," he reported. "It's like a needle in a haystack.
The river is as crowded as the floor. Pete McGill says this is the
largest crowd that was ever in this town. He says there are five
hundred more cars than there were on Armistice Day. I'll keep my eye
open for her. They're not allowing any more cars across the bridge.
Would I do--for what you wanted her for?"
"It doesn't matter," said Emily. "It wasn't anything, really, thank
you."
But it was something, when presently she saw Martha again, dancing
that same way, with that same man, listening with her face tilted up
to him exactly as before. It made Emily think of the time Martha had
sat absorbed before some story that Jim Kenworthy wove fantastically
for her. That man--he must be an old friend. Emily racked her
memory. Some girl's older brother, would it be, or some household
where Martha had stayed? She tried to fit him in, and as she watched
the two, she saw Martha suddenly sort of double down with amusement,
shrugging her shoulders, chuckling, while the man, encouraged, peered
more boldly into her face.
"I'll put an end to that!" Emily said. And she hurried down and
sought out a place from which she might catch Martha's eye. It was
difficult to catch an eye so intent upon its interest. She waited
persistently till she had got her attention, and signified to her
that she wanted to speak to her at once.
Martha came to her presently--alone--on to the platform, flushed,
shining, unashamed.
"Oh, mother!" she ejaculated. She sighed with unspeakable
satisfaction. "What a night! Could you have believed it!"
But Emily said, "Martha, who was that awful man you were dancing
with?"
Her tone surprised Martha.
"Oh," she said, "that was Sandy. You know Sandy Powers. I had to
dance with him. He was in my high school----"
"I don't mean _him_! I know Sandy! I mean that dark person you had
this last dance with!"
Martha gave a giggle of amusement.
"Don't you know who _that_ was?" she demanded. She seemed to think
it a great joke. "Why, mother, that's Eve's brother-in-law!"
"I didn't know her brother-in-law was here. When did he come?"
"He just came to-day. I thought, of course, she would have
introduced him. Oh, mother, he's an interesting man. He's been
everywhere. I'll bring him over to you."
"I don't like him!"
Emily ruffled was so rare a sight that Martha seemed to enjoy it.
"Well, you will when you've seen him. You don't know him," she
assured her mother, critically, and adjusted a little lock of hair.
"Is his wife here?"
"I don't know. I don't suppose so."
"Well," grumbled Emily, "don't be dancing with him all evening.
Where's Johnnie?"
"I haven't danced with him all evening! We've had two dances."
Martha was really surprised.
Emily felt she had been foolish. "Oh, all right," she said, lightly.
"I thought I didn't know----"
Martha studied her.
"I promised him another. Oh, he dances divinely! You're tired out,
mother. Have you been working every minute? Why don't you go home?"
"No. I'm staying till the end to-night. I'm not going home." She
might have added, "I'm not going to leave you."
But the evening had wilted for her. The hours dragged on. Bob came
to her at one. Even Bob was full of congratulations. "You ought to
be satisfied, old girl," he said. "I heard Wilkinson say that you
ought to have credit for the whole thing. He said really if it
hadn't been for you----"
"Where's Martha? Have you seen her?"
"I saw her a while ago, up at the house. She had a new Johnnie in
tow."
"Who? A large dark man?"
And Bob, struck with an idea, said, "Well, if he's Eve's
brother-in-law, he must be a married man."
"He certainly must!"
Bob turned and looked at her.
"He wasn't acting particularly married."
"What do you mean?"
"Where's his wife?"
"I don't know. I don't even know whether she's here or not. I told
Martha not to dance with him again!"
"She's minding as she usually does!" Bob commented.
"Why didn't you stay at the house?"
"They didn't seem to want me. Let's go home, Emily. Cut out the
rest of it."
"No. I'm staying to-night until the end. We all are."
They were home again, finally, towards morning, sinking down deeply
into the living-room cushions, spreading themselves out, breathing
out great sighs of contentment. Emily, on the sofa, was adjusting
hairpins in the coils of her brown hair. Eve sat beside her, resting
in the position she had fallen into, her legs stretched out, her
skirts up to her knees, her thin arms extended limply, with dark
little frail-looking shadows beneath her eyes. Martha had paused to
adjust her color before the hall mirror, and then seated herself,
fresh as a morning flower, erect in an easy chair, her hands crossed
in her lap, her shoulders tilted slightly, light from the hall on the
smoothness of her black hair, dreaming, slight, detached. When her
father, who had insisted on going to the kitchen to make lemonade,
called out to Emily to know where the sugar had been put, Martha,
realizing, as it were, the group, joined them without excitement.
"Sit still, Eve. Don't go and get it for him. It's sitting just
where it has sat ever since I was born, and he can't help seeing it.
Well, anyway, you ought to be content, mother. It's really your
hall, and everyone knows it. Where'd Mrs. Benton been, everybody
wants to know, if it hadn't been for you? Johnnie's just like her.
He makes me tired. He went about saying he'd got all that crowd
there by his old posters. I told him it would have been a lot nicer
party if he hadn't got so many to come."
Bob came in just then, Martha's prophecy having been fulfilled about
the sugar. He heard Eve's remark: "I think the Legion was by far the
most interesting man there. I offered to dance with him. He takes
himself seriously, of course."
Bob was feeling facetious.
"You needn't set your heart on that man, Eve. What he wants is a
wife that'll do the midnight milking. Yes, midnight! Didn't you
even know the farmers around here milk four times a day? To get more
milk, of course. Twice at twelve, and twice at six. That's the kind
he is. And say, Martha, can't you get a single man to lead around?
Eve's sister will be pulling your hair the next thing you know."
Emily spoke up hastily.
"Was your sister there, Eve? I didn't see her. Where do they live?"
"No. She isn't well. They're like the rest of us. They don't live
any place." She spoke reluctantly, and then, as if she felt that
something more was expected of her, she added: "They have been abroad
awhile. In Paris, mostly."
But Martha took up Bob's challenge. "He's so distinguished," she
drawled. "Doesn't he dance divinely, Eve?"
"I don't know," Eve replied, shortly. "I don't dance with him." And
then she added, abruptly, "Look here, Martha, you needn't dance with
him to please me!"
"Don't worry about that. I dance with him to please myself. You
ought to hear him talk, mother. He's got the loveliest foreign
accent, hasn't he?"
"Hasn't he! And he was brought up in Indiana!" Eve murmured.
"He's been everywhere. I'm going abroad myself next summer. He knew
Tchekhoff. He was telling me about him."
Eve sat up. Her eyes narrowed shrewdly. "That's a new one to me,"
she commented. "I don't believe it." The silence became awkward.
She broke it abruptly. "He's a four-flusher, Martha. Take it from
me. From the ground up. If he ever saw a Russian in Paris, he'd
have known Tolstoy himself, and been bosom friend with Dostoieffsky.
He's a journalist, to put it mildly."
It was painful, this way Eve had of saying nasty things about her
relations, as if it were a noble duty. She had spoken so doggedly
that her face was flushed an unbecoming dark red. Martha grew
pinker. The silence grew longer. Emily said, carelessly, rising:
"What pests these in-laws are! Let's go to bed. You've ripped your
hem, Martha. Did you know it? You're both to sleep till noon."
"Don't you worry about that!" Bob jeered.
But Eve replied: "I've got to be home for lunch. Dad's going to be
home."
If Emily didn't sleep at once, it wasn't because from the painted
room came those stifled whispers and gigglings which so often annoyed
Bob after dances. The girls seemed to have gone to sleep at once.
But Emily kept thinking about Martha, and Mrs. Benton's sharp voice.
The man, of course, would be leaving town at once. What would a
journalist from Paris, a friend of Tchekhoff find to amuse him in a
little Illinois city? And supposing he chose to stay all the summer,
Martha could be trusted. She had such common sense. And such good
taste, always. "It's just silly of me to worry about Martha," Emily
thought, not once only but many times, till she was thoroughly tired
of her foolish, wide-awake mind. "Thank goodness it's over!" she
said to herself again and again. "Thank goodness that chapter's
ended!"
A long interesting chapter had indeed ended that evening, more
suddenly than Emily realized.
_Chapter Three_
The next day at first seemed like any other morning of the year, for
Emily didn't get up as early as she had intended. There still was
heavy dew lying on the thick greenness of the lawn when she sat down
on the veranda to finish pitting the cherries. Afterwards she
pattered about in the kitchen, tending the ruby mixture in the kettle
till her cheeks were rosy red. And then she had filled the Mason
jars, and screwed on the lids, and tested their inverted security,
one by one, and put them in rows on the shelf to cool, interrupted
from time to time by friends at the 'phone who must count over one by
one the evening's triumphs. She was busy thinking that she really
must take those fresh sash curtains up to the bathroom--it was
scandalous, the condition of those hanging there--when the boy
brought the raspberries she had ordered--far the best ones she had
seen all the season. The girls, she thought, would love them for
their breakfast. She prepared two saucerfuls, and got the pitcher of
cream ready on the tray, and went up towards their room. Of course
that was the way, Bob said, she spoiled Martha, always waiting on
her, carrying something delicious up to her in the middle of the
morning, when the girl ought to have been up and doing all the
housework herself. Bob couldn't understand what a child Martha was,
how unfit yet for responsibility. Wait till she had a house of her
own. Just think of that painted room of hers, for instance. That
showed what the child could do when she wanted to.
Emily opened the painted door quietly. On a day bed at one end of
the room Eve was lying on her back reading, in sea-green figured silk
pajamas which must have cost a good deal, one knee crossed over the
other. Books were piled on the floor beside her, nearly as high as
her low pillow.
She turned her head, and caught sight of the tray, and gave a shriek
of delight. She called to Martha, who lay asleep on her bed-like
device at the other end of the room, curled up like a child, not even
a sheet over her. And Martha, sitting up in flesh-colored voile
pajamas on the edge of the bed, stretching, yawning, pink and sweet,
began:
"Oh, you rare lamb, mother! Isn't she a gem, Eve? No wonder dad
says she spoils me! Where did you get them?" Eve had put a low
table at Martha's side, and seated herself on the other side of it.
But Emily maturely sought out the chair that was kept in the room as
a concession to her dislike of floor cushions. She sat watching them
gobble daintily, chattering away. Martha, who had made herself
comfortable against a pile of cushions, her knees drawn up, and the
saucer balancing on them, began wiggling her toes. She hadn't
outgrown that infant habit yet, Emily enjoyed noticing. How she had
watched this child's awakening with an impulse of delight every day,
almost from her first week, till this morning, when she woke even yet
delicately rosy and vividly red-lipped. Poor old Bob never got any
fun out of it. Martha had disturbed him by waking too early, for
years, and now she annoyed him by sleeping too late. But Emily
wouldn't stop to sigh long over that, not these few summer mornings
when she could enjoy it, now that the child was grown, and away
months together. And just then Martha almost unconsciously bestirred
herself and with the saucer in one hand and the spoon in the other,
almost without ceasing to feed herself, went and pulled down a blind
to shut the glare of the sunshine away from that rug of hers that
tended to look too violently cerise. The girl, it seemed, couldn't
sit up in bed eating berries for breakfast without thinking how the
room might look if she should change it just a little.
It sobered Emily to see the ancestry driving her defenseless daughter
hither and thither like a slave. Would it not be ironical, now, if
this girl "turned out" like that aunt whom Emily's childhood had so
futilely resented! It seemed to Emily that never in her young days
had that house been free a week from the sound of hammers or the
smell of paint. She had wondered, sometimes, in her maturity,
whether she turned instinctively away from the thought of "improving"
her house because she had so continually in her childhood revolted
against her aunt, or whether it was simply laziness that made her
tolerate any closet shelf, however inconvenient, rather than bestir
herself to alter it. Since she had inherited the house, it had had
peace. She had merely kept it in repair, and tolerated the electric
devices with which Bob filled it. But now, looking at Martha, she
saw again all her aunt's zeal for change overflowing again.
She had not suspected the child of any such constructive inclinations
until one day of the last Christmas vacation. They had been talking
carelessly together, when suddenly she had heard:
"Do you know what I'm going to do the first thing, mammie, as soon as
I get my money?"
That was a question naturally never far from Emily's mind then,
because in fifteen months Martha would be twenty, and, according to
the terms of her great-aunt's will, she would then receive the first
monthly installment of an income of nearly four thousand dollars.
Emily had hated that will when she first heard its terms, because it
had been drawn up, she understood, so as to keep the least control of
the money away from Bob Kenworthy. Exactly what grounds her aunt had
had for these suspicions, Emily never knew. She could have
discovered only by asking her husband, and it was the very essence of
her character that she would not ask him. The very vagueness of that
suspicion had been a wound that years of Bob's respectability and
kindness had healed. He had not complained about the will at
first--Emily had wondered why he had not. Did he not dare? But now
that the child had grown up, without much regard for him, he thought
it outrageous that that old woman should have made her independent of
him. Emily herself, who loved ease with all her heart, who was no
manager, in the local sense of the term, had tried faithfully to
prepare her daughter to use her money wisely--if not wisely, exactly,
at least not too foolishly at first. So when Martha brought up the
subject, her mother had asked her once, curiously:
"What will be the first thing you do with it?"
"I'll chuck all that junk out of my bedroom and do it all over."
Emily had been shocked, but she had to smile presently; for wasn't
that the very thing she had done first herself, when she had returned
to the house after her aunt's death? To be sure, she had later
brought down from the attic the old pieces she had especially hated
in her childhood. But she remembered with what joy she had stored
them away, how she had taken off shutters, and thrown away faded
carpets, and gloried in rugs. But Martha's was rather unreasonable,
for her bedroom Emily had furnished only six years ago, and most
daintily. She had given Martha some of the best things in the house;
a dear little chest of drawers that had been before in the spare
room, and two little old tables, and gone to great pains to get a bed
to suit them. And Martha now had called it "junk"!
"What sort of furniture would you get?"
"Oh mother--it doesn't matter." Martha was apologetic. "You
wouldn't let me, anyway."
"How do you know I wouldn't?" Emily had retorted. "I don't know that
I'm so tyrannical!"
"I never said you were any such thing. But you know, mother, you'd
just sort of persuade me to get what you liked."
"Why Martha! Maybe I would let you get what you wanted!"
Martha went on with the subject hesitatingly. She spoke wistfully,
but without hope.
"I'd throw all that junk out and paint it all over. I'd do the floor
a nice dull bluey purple--
"A purple floor?"
"Yes. And the woodwork I'd do all creamy yellow, like good fresh
butter, or a sort of sea green."
"But, Martha, that floor's _oak_!"
"Oak takes paint."
"Mine doesn't."
"But I'm just saying what I _would_ do if it was mine. I knew you
wouldn't let me. I'd get a little pine chest made, to paint just
like my little old one. Oh, wouldn't I love to do it, though! The
girls have such lovely rooms, mother. You ought to see Grace
Richmond's. It's all vermilion and blue. But she's an orphan, of
course." Martha sighed.
"Oh, Martha!" Emily had exclaimed, "what a lot you have to look
forward to! You'll be an orphan some day, and you can paint the
whole house purple!"
"Now, mammie, that's just plain nasty of you. You egged me on to say
what I would do, and now you make fun of me!" But Martha, mollified,
had gone on to tell of the staggering sights she had seen in other
girls' homes, reeling colors, threatening emerald ceilings, and
cubistic ornamentations.
And Emily had pondered the matter, Martha's sigh rankling. "Her room
is all vermilion and blue. But she's an orphan, of course." Did her
child, in spite of her mother's long determination to the contrary,
feel hampered, thwarted of joy by parental preferences? Was she
getting eager to get out of the home, away some place to freedom, as
her mother had run once? After all, that floor wasn't so very
valuable, and the paper needed renewing. Martha wouldn't be at home
months together now, to get tired of her gaudiness. It wouldn't cost
such a lot, and no one would have to see it. The door into the outer
hall could be kept shut.
A day or two later she had said:
"Do you know what I'm going to give you for your birthday?"
Martha guessed extravagantly:
"A car, mammie? A little runabout to take back to school?"
"Not much! I'm going to let you do your bedroom over to suit
yourself."
And Martha had looked blank for a moment, and then murmured:
"Oh no! It wouldn't do, mother. We couldn't. We'd--mother--we'd
_quarrel_, as sure as you live. I'd get started, and I'd want my own
way, and you wouldn't approve."
"But I say I _will_ approve. After all, it's _your_ room. _I_ don't
have to live in it. You can have it blue and vermilion, if you want
to!"
And Martha had sat there for a moment without saying a word, her eyes
beginning to twinkle, her dimples all chuckling, just shining and
beaming, all her pleasure intensified by her quietness. Then she had
hugged Emily after that and had run up to her room straight away.
And up and down she ran, hunting for scissors, for yardsticks,
measuring, planning, 'phoning to carpenters, twinkling, utterly
happy. It had been Emily's sense of her utter happiness that had
enabled her to stifle her impulses to interfere.
Once things had got rather serious. The child wouldn't have a bed in
the room. She wanted to turn it into a sitting room. And when Emily
had pointed out that she didn't need a sitting room, Martha had
hugged her and, warningly, "I told you we'd quarrel, mother!" Emily
had given way, and Martha had gone on, working like a beaver. She
had dyed, and she had shopped in Chicago; she had "jollied" painters
whole mornings, and gone back to school in the end, leaving her
mother sewing balls of silken high-brow carpet rags. Her very
letters had been full of instructions about the room. And during her
spring vacation the whole house seemed to be an orgy of renewal, so
that Martha hadn't been far wrong when she said that her mother only
endured her nowadays through gritted teeth. She had said it from her
"studio" in the attic, where she was painting tables, for there alone
could she be found that holiday. She had planned so well that in
that fortnight she had almost completed her purposes, and she had
hated leaving it to go back to college. And to that room she had
flown home again, not eager, as she generally was, to go away for the
summer. Not once had she mentioned the Rockies or Canada, or even
Europe. And her heart was so absorbed in it that now, on awakening
to raspberries and cream, she had to go and adjust that blind and
study the way the light fell on the cerise--practically--rug.
And Emily looked around, and smiled cautiously. It had been the
girl's idea to make the room "amusing." That was the adjective she
had continually used of her plan. And certainly she had succeeded in
inciting mirth at least in the elders who beheld it. To be sure,
with the blind down, the darkly gleaming floor wasn't so bad after
one had got used to it. The sand-colored walls were matched by
woodwork with little green lines on it. And the rosy silken oval
rugs and those black day beds--hateful objects, which kept the edges
of the bedding always on the floor, piled by day with cushions like
shrieking parrots--all this was almost laughable. She had told
Martha firmly the beds ought to be side by side between the windows.
But Martha ignored the suggestion. The bookshelves had absurd little
cupboards at each end, which Martha opened to show her friends, and
an electric stove on a little tray which you stood, so, on this
little shelf which pulled out, so. She had gathered a primitive sort
of crockery bowls from New York, which were called "just too quaint,"
and the coffee things from the Chicago Ghetto. Emily had almost
protested against this miniature kitchen. Martha never would be
making fudge up there, she was sure. But then she had got to
thinking of Martha's outgrown playhouse under the willow. "I used to
let her have dishes and everything out there," she remembered. And
she had not only stifled her objections; she had come heartily to
admire this adolescent playhouse.
For there, opening off this room, was the amazing dressing room
Martha had made from that large closet where formerly clothes had
hung drably. People in the town used to say that, for the sake of
having daylight in that closet and preserving the symmetry of the
outside of the house, Emily's aunt had torn out and built over that
wall seven times. Now Emily had to take visitors up to see that
closet, many and insistent visitors, for all Martha's chums were
bringing their mothers enviously to show them "Martha's apartment."
When she heard their exclamations, she would look at her daughter
with that feeling which she experienced when the child, blowing her
horn, adjusting her brakes, watching the traffic "cop," drove that
panting great headstrong car so calmly, without hurrying one eyelash,
through the tangle of vehicles of any city that might lie in her
path. For Martha quietly had taken that long narrow closet and lined
it on both mirrored sides with hanging wardrobes, and a great total
and variety of cunningly planned shelves, shallow and deep drawers,
great and small, pulling out on patent rollers; she had packed away a
beautifully lighted dressing table, with a stool that pushed back
into its own "ducky nook." She had painted all the drawers a dull
gold on the inside, and a creamy yellow on the outside, and made them
gold knobs and handles. The purple floor and the glow of the rug,
less violent than those of the larger room, left her visitors quite
mad with envy and surprise.
"It's just Martha all over!" one girl sighed, and Emily had pondered
that. Was Martha then to be a lover of perfect places to stow away
things? There had been plenty of drawers and closets in the house
before, Emily had said to herself. And when she had seen the child's
delight in that huge big topmost drawer, she had let her have a great
pile of old soft pieced quilts to pack away in it, just as she had
given her old hats years before for the games in the willow
playhouse. Was that dressing closet "just Martha all over"? Was the
child going to be an architect, as she had carelessly suggested once,
or an "interior decorator," possibly? Perhaps she was yet going to
be brilliant, and do many things as successfully as she had done
this, so that Bob would yet be proud of her. Or perhaps she was
going to be a furious housewife, delighting in a family of children.
And Emily grew serious thinking of that. She had every reason to
distrust too great interest in housekeeping. She would see that
Martha never loved furniture more than children's ease of mind, never
put order of a room before its usefulness. She did hope Martha
wouldn't carry these things to excess, as her heredity might urge her
to. Here the child hadn't got all the rugs for this room home from
the woman who was making them, and she had already begun to talk
about enlarging the garage. It disfigured the whole house, as it
was, she had told her father. If she might be allowed to double the
size of it, making room for two cars----