"You can't say anything. You're here again."
"_I_ was invited. _I_ was 'phoned for."
"But I'm leaving soon, and that's more than you're likely to do."
"I'm expecting to be kicked out any minute," he replied, looking at
Emily. "Nobody appreciates me here. Is this any good?" he asked,
carelessly fingering a book.
"What is it?"
He read the name out. Emily stood listening. It was the book that
had shocked her so entirely years ago--the book about which she and
Jim Kenworthy had quarreled so destructively.
"Haven't you read that?"
"No. I've heard of it."
"How intellectual of you! They make you read it, in most schools,
that is, if you're interested in technique. You'd call it a thousand
miles of sand. I haven't got any Robert Chambers," Eve went on,
looking over possibilities. "You might try Michael Arlen, there.
His style would be lost on you, but the subject would appeal to your
heart. There's the Kreutzer Sonata. Have you read _Crime and
Punishment_?"
"Can't stand Russian stuff."
"Does seem difficult, after the _Saturday Evening Post_," Eve
remarked. Skirts may have clung to Johnnie, but Eve wasn't one of
them. She had commented, on hearing of his masterpiece, that its
music was hackneyed, the verse was rot and the theme disgusting.
Martha had retorted that the theme, rather, was rot. Johnnie and Eve
quarreled on till Eve departed.
"You're going to stay for lunch, Johnnie?" Emily asked.
"I won't if you don't want me to."
"How truly magnanimous!" Emily murmured. "No. You stay and talk to
the girls, but don't stay for lunch. You know your mother wants
you." Emily wondered then, and she wondered later, why Martha had
wanted Johnnie to stay. Did she want him to hear what the Wright
girls' mother was sure to say about the dressing room? Did Martha
care really what Johnnie thought--Johnnie, who was always asking her
to marry him?
And what _did_ he think, as he stood lazily leaning against the door
into the dressing room, watching the women examine the drawers? Mrs.
Wright had brought with her a friend who was planning a new house, a
prosperous-looking person, and who listened thoughtfully to Martha's
answers to her questions. This person was impressed. She kept
looking at Martha when they were seated at length in the painted room.
"How much of this did you do yourself?" she asked. "Hadn't you seen
something like it somewhere?"
Martha was sitting on a cushion at Emily's feet.
"Oh yes. I'd seen one in New York. And I just told the old Dane,
the carpenter, how many drawers I wanted, and how big, and he did it
all himself. I couldn't measure them, or anything like that. He had
them all ready to put in when I got home. I'd like to do over all
the closets in the house." She looked at her mother, against whom
she was leaning.
The guests looked at Emily. She had to say something.
"But if all the closets in this house had so many drawers, we
wouldn't have enough to put into them."
"I know it. Isn't that funny?" Martha turned to the other. "People
are so silly. The closets are so big there's nothing to fill them
with. Same way with our basement. It's a horror!" Martha spoke
with such conviction that her hearers laughed. "Well, it is," she
insisted to Emily. "There's a wood room and a coal room, and drying
room, and storeroom with nothing but the hose and two old barrels in
it. I could put all those things into one room nicely, and have
three great big rooms. They could be billiard rooms, or play rooms,
or nice workshops. If I had a lot of children in this house I could
give them all two rooms apiece."
Emily included Johnnie in her glance. He had his eyes fixed hard on
Martha--who avoided them innocently but persistently.
And that thoughtful and prosperous-looking stranger said:
"Wouldn't you like to drive over and look at my plans? Our basement
is going to cost an awful lot."
Martha twinkled at the invitation.
"Oh, I just love to look at plans!" she said. "I just love to think
about people's houses. I was thinking, if ever I'm a reformer, do
you know what I'm going to reform? Everybody's closets!"
Wasn't she lovely, sitting there innocently, Emily thought. No
wonder they admired her, all of them.
"You come and reform all my closets," the stranger said. But Mrs.
Wright said: "Don't look at mine till I've had a chance to go over
them. You've made me a lot of trouble, Martha. The girls won't give
me a minute's peace now till I let them start doing their rooms over."
When Emily, having dismissed the visitors, turned from the hall into
her living room, the sight of these familiar things almost shocked
her. They stirred her, at least, to question the very room she had
for years taken for granted. The glamour of that room upstairs
seemed to make the rest of the house faded, some way. The living
room she had always sat down in with satisfaction. Now it
looked--timid--meager--insipid--unexpectant. Its walls and its
woodwork were almost the color of its neutral light pongee curtains.
Those were good rugs on the oak floor. They were rich, and they were
mellow. Emily had bought them recklessly with a large share of the
first installment of her inheritance, when she had moved back to the
house when Martha was a small girl, and she had never regretted her
fling. The davenport and the two chairs that went with it, those
most comfortable monstrosities, had been done once in blue corduroy.
Well, it was still corduroy. That was about all that could be said
for it. But its blue dullness some way had seemed to match the rugs.
That was a good table. No one bought a table like that in any town
in Illinois. Nor was there a desk like that, which plainly had been
cherished for some generations. And how infinitely superior were the
pictures on the wall to most of the pictures on the walls of that
town. Emily's grandfather, once the Governor of the sprawling infant
state of Illinois, had brought that engraving of Mt. Vernon
sentimentality to the wilderness because he remembered his mother
holding her successive babies up to see the dogs and horses that
surrounded the father of his country, who stood in a declamatory
attitude on the very brink of the Potomac, with his women folk and
youthful intimates hovering pictorially about him.
Emily used to compare that picture, chuckling, to the picture of
Boston which one of her neighbors had made for herself, upon her
return from a memorable visit there. Mrs. Jennings was chairman of
the art committee and a busy woman, and hadn't time to "do" many
pictures, she said. So she just put everything she wanted to
remember into one. And Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and the
Common, Longfellow's house and Faneuil Hall, jostled one another in a
staggered and staggering row all across the foreground. And there
was Mrs. Johnson's parlor. Every time Emily went into it she used to
say: "Well, my aunt might have been worse. She didn't paint at
least, thank God!" She had left no bilious works of her brush behind
her, and she deserved credit for it, considering the fashion of her
day. She had left a cherished large framed photograph of the door of
St. Mark's. Emily could recall exactly the tone in which she used to
say "The portal of St. Mark's," for she had always added "by the
sea," which mystified the child. The geography said plainly that all
Venice was by the sea. Besides Italy and Mt. Vernon, there were what
Emily considered two perfectly lovely large "studies" of Martha's
head. A cousin who played with photography had done them when the
child was seven years old. She was the cousin who had gathered the
child into her arms, on one occasion and cried, "Oh, twinkle,
twinkle, little star!" Martha hated them, and pleaded for their
banishment, but Emily would not listen to her, not for a minute.
There sat a photo of Jim on the desk, and one of his mother, and an
early one of his father. And there was, of course, that first seal
of a D.A.R. invulnerability, a framed sampler. Altogether, Emily had
always been secure that her living room was not just a common
small-town room.
But after Martha's--well, what was wrong with it, she sat wondering
that morning, a bit ruefully. Some way it was tamed and tolerating.
Those high-handed colors upstairs dared the world, and demanded.
These young things went raging, commanding, soaring into life. "Not
like me," she thought, vaguely. "I just hesitated--and
submitted--and got along, some way. How puny I was, and--sort of
helpless. That book--I shrank from it as if it had been some great
thing. But Eve snubs it. She ignores it. They fly, these
children--they just fly. But I rode just a bicycle. And this room
wabbles along on a bicycle. I must speed it up. I must--get these
things done over--or else I ought to get some new pictures, or
something. I better ask Martha, perhaps, to freshen it up a little."
Certainly that stranger had asked Martha's advice. The memory of her
respectful tone was wine to Emily. She had to speak to Bob about it.
She couldn't just let him go on thinking that Martha "amounted" to
nothing.
"I could see that they thought it was wonderful for a girl of her age
to have planned it all," she told him. "That woman asked Martha
definitely to come and see the plans for her house!"
But he said: "The dickens she did! The kid's got her head swelled
enough now, without anybody asking her advice. The dame must be hard
up if she's got to come to Martha for advice!"
The girls played golf that afternoon. Emily's mind, when it had
intervals of leisure, dwelt upon the question of new
furniture--somewhat reluctantly. After all, maybe it would be better
to suffer the old faded colors than to flee to others that you know
not of. Such a lot of trouble, going to the city to select things,
and then, maybe, when you get them home, they don't fit in, as you
had intended them to. And she even realized her reluctance. "That's
the point about being young. Martha would just jump into the
shopping fray. She would dive right in, without hesitation." These
meditations kept Emily from giving "that man" even a thought, until
almost supper time. Then, as she passed into the hall, Marion
Wright, giving her arms a sturdy swing, almost struck her, and drew
back, apologizing.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't see you! I was just practicing that
drive. I didn't want to forget it, such a classy one! Richard Quin
was just teaching us, you know, Mrs. Kenworthy."
"Who's Richard Quin?" Emily asked.
"Oh, that's Eve's brother-in-law. Marion likes him. Don't you,
Marion?" Martha asked.
"Well, I can't say I'm crazy about him. But still, he can play. I'm
not particular who coaches me. I do prefer them not so fat."
"Fat!" murmured Martha. "He isn't fat. He's just a large man. He's
well built."
"Of course they're more fun married," Marion went on, trying to shock
Emily. And then she asked, suddenly curious, "Do you like him, Mrs.
Kenworthy?"
"Do I like him? Goodness, no! He's greasy looking."
Martha said with dignity: "Mother doesn't know him. She never said a
word to him in her life. He's not greasy at all, if you see him
close. He shaves twice a day."
"How do you know he does?" Emily demanded.
"He's not reticent, anyway," Marion said laughing.
"He just happened to mention it."
"Did you see his wife?" Emily asked them both.
"Eve told you she wasn't well. She wasn't there."
Martha looked at her mother, perplexed. Emily looked at her daughter
uneasily. It was annoying of Martha to defend that man! If Emily
had known he was to be on the links, she wouldn't have let Martha go
to play. But now, of course the wisest would be just to let the
matter drop. Martha was always so trustworthy. Certainly her good
taste could be trusted.
Yet for some reason, when Johnnie Benton came that evening to take
the three adorned girls to the dance, Emily was more impressed by him
than ever. She felt so safe when Martha was under his care. She
watched them drive away, and then went out to potter about as usual
in the garden, just at dark. A neighbor came bringing her, in a
strawberry box, a few rare seedling pansies, and together they made a
little place protected from the heat in which they might be nursed.
And then they went and sat down inside the screened veranda to escape
the mosquitoes.
They were still talking there when Bob came. But he took his
magazine and sat down a few chairs away, and they talked on as if no
one was within hearing of their voices. And indeed no one was, for
Bob habitually absented himself in the print before his eyes. He was
unconscious of everything around him. Energetic, insistent demands
and clamors could get only a muttered "Uh-uh!" from him. He really
didn't know when the neighbor left, although he had sort of muttered
at her.
So Emily sat still and alone in the darkness, and glad of the
quietness. She thought over one by one the dozen men--Martha called
them men, though they scarcely deserved the name--who would be
dancing with the girls at the club. Emily knew every one of them;
some of them she had known for years. She knew the families of most
of them. Every time she thought of Martha's partner of the evening
before, they seemed more acceptable to her. They were--decent. They
were--secure. They had no foreign accent, and they had not pretended
to know Tchekhoff. People gossiped about them, but Emily believed
their relationships with bootleggers were merest flirtations. Their
scrapes were ridiculous--like Johnnie's opera---but they were not
vicious--often. Bob called them "nail-polishers," and "shiny
Johnnies," and thought pessimistically about their chances of success
in this competitive life. But Emily, musing away, liked them all
that night.
Bob threw down his magazine, after a while, and returned to Emily's
presence. He got up and lit a cigar, and went into the house. Emily
heard him there talking to some one by 'phone about insurance. He
came out and sat down on the railing in front of her.
"Let's go to bed," he said.
She looked at him. There he sat, a heavy, rather sluggish man with a
growth of black beard which he conspicuously did not shave twice a
day. His hair was not as thick as it had been ten years ago, but not
less unruly, and his digestion was decidedly poorer. He was working
hard, and making money, and usually tired. He was still more
even-tempered than most men. From the time Martha went away to
school till she came home for holiday he scarcely spoke an irritable
word.
"I thought I'd wait till the girls come home."
"You're dead tired."
"I know it, but they'll be here soon. It's nearly twelve now."
"Let's go out and get them."
"All right. Let's."
They had done that more than once. Bob was always ready for a drive
even over that road which they must take along the river. Two miles
of that sinuous and uncertain byway had been the cause, like the rest
of the country club, of a great wave of hard feeling in the
community. Were the taxpayers going to keep it up for a few rich
"sporty" families? asked the indignant, so successfully that now the
handful of members had either to repair it themselves or endure its
flooded ruts. The country club had not been well managed. Mrs.
Benton had washed her hands of it in the beginning, prophesying its
downfall. The founders had not counted the cost. The less wealthy
couldn't stand the assessments and had dropped out. Those who
remained had to pay more. And it was all a muddle and a burden and a
quarrel--a perfect example of how Mrs. Benton did not manage things.
Emily was one of those who still kept membership. She seldom used
the place, but she wanted Martha to have a place to play golf. The
more Martha danced there, the less she would disturb her father by
dancing at home. And really, it was a very nice crowd of young
people who gathered there. By night, as Bob and Emily drove in, it
looked gay and lovely, lit all up, among the trees, with the dancers
gliding about. By day, of course, its appearance justified the scorn
which neighboring towns poured upon it. However, those towns, since
last night's event, would be less boastful.
Bob stopped the car and they sat looking in. Now Martha had had on a
little dress faintly pink at the neck and deeply carmine at the hem,
so that, if she had been there, Emily would have seen her in a moment.
"Where _is_ the kid?" Bob grumbled. Emily looked about under the
trees, and saw Johnnie Benton leave the couple with whom he was
smoking and come over to them. Bob repeated his question
immediately. And Johnnie said, indifferently, looking in towards the
lighted floor:
"Isn't she there? I guess she's out having a petting party somewhere
with that dago necker."
Emily was thoroughly annoyed by the boy's impertinence. The idea of
his daring to say a thing to her of Martha.
"Who d'you mean?" Bob demanded.
"You know, that bearded guy she's falling for."
"Eve's brother-in-law?"
"Yes."
"Is she with that----" Emily nudged Bob violently.
"She generally is!" So Johnnie wasn't so indifferent, after all, to
the fact as he had wanted them to believe. And then the music
stopped, and the girls came nocking out to the drive like
butterflies. Marion Wright called upon Johnnie to witness that there
was just one more dance, and then they would all go home, and Martha,
she said, had already gone, walking home.
Emily asked in reply, unconcernedly, if they were having a good time,
and told them not to hurry, and said, "No, they wouldn't wait for an
ice--the night was so hot they had thought they would drive out to
cool off." But here the ice was--and she ate it hurriedly, fearing
what Bob might say about Martha before them, nudging him mentally, as
it were, into silence.
No sooner was the car turned towards home than Bob broke out:
"Well, I'll be damned! I won't have this, Emily."
"Funny we didn't see them, if they're walking home."
"I thought she had _some_ sense. What's he doing out here? Did you
know he was coming?"
"No. I never thought of it. Of course the family belongs."
"The nerve of him! Does anyone else come uninvited?"
"Oh, Bob, we must be careful! Did you hear what Johnnie said?"
"I'll settle that girl to-night. She isn't going to be running
around at midnight with any married man."
"Now, Bob, we mustn't be hasty. You must think this over. We don't
want to--seem to take this--too seriously. He'll be leaving, likely,
in a day or two."
"How do you know he will?"
"I _suppose_ he will. Didn't Eve say so?"
"I didn't hear her. And it's the principle of the thing. She thinks
it's smart to be flirting with a married man."
"Oh, I don't think she does, Bob. He's so different--from these boys
here." And then suddenly she begged: "Look, Bob! Oh, let me do the
talking to her!" For walking slowly along, side by side, were the
two of them, little rosy Martha and the man that seemed always
bending over her. So near they were that Bob stopped the car with a
jerk.
"We'll give you a lift," he said, unceremoniously. "Get in!"
Martha introduced her companion. Bob gave the shortest possible sign
of being aware of his existence. He was opening the car door.
"Get in!" he said to his daughter.
"It's a glorious night for walking," Mr. Quin remarked, standing
still.
"It's too late. Get in!" Bob again spoke directly to Martha.
She turned to her escort. "It is rather muddy here. Let's ride a
little." And she got serenely in, and bade him follow her. The car
started.
Emily turned around in her seat.
"You staying long in town, Mr. Quin? I meant to call. But Eve said
your wife isn't well."
"Oh--I'm not sure yet. It's all so interesting to me. A Western
town like this. It's quite surprised me." Hadn't Eve said the man
was brought up in Indiana? His tone annoyed Emily so that she turned
abruptly about in her seat. Martha leaned forward to her.
"He thinks it's the most ripping dance hall he ever saw, of the kind,
mother." Ripping, was it? Such a distinguished word, so unlike this
West, Emily was saying to herself. Where was Bob going? Why didn't
he take them directly home? He had turned, and in a minute, before
they knew it almost, they had stopped in front of Eve's home.
"We'll drop you here," said Bob.
The stranger looked at Martha.