A cloud passed over her young face.
“It’s not a very pleasant neighborhood,” said Jane. “I hate it. But Father doesn’t think it’s possible to make a change at present.”
“Well, he has no right to force you to live where you don’t want to,” said the young man’s hard, calculating voice, suddenly breaking on her astonished senses. “In this age of the world, a girl as old as you has a right to choose her own life. Why don’t you come in town and take one of those exclusive little apartments that are being put up now? They are the last word in all that’s comfortable and smart. I’d like nothing better than to help you choose the right one. Then I could see a lot of you this winter and no one to bother us. Families are rather superfluous in this age of the world, don’t you think?”
Jane had been listening in growing amazement and indignation. Something cold and disappointing seemed to clutch at her heart.
“Mine are not,” she said coldly. “And my father never has forced me to live anywhere. He does not have to. I choose to live wherever life has placed him. I love my family.”
“Oh, of course, if you feel that way,” said the young man indifferently, “I’m sure it’s very commendable of course. But I thought you said you hated it. I was only suggesting a very delightful arrangement, speaking one word for you and two for myself, you know. I thought we could play around together a good deal this winter if you had a nice smart little establishment of your own.”
“That is not my idea of a home,” said Jane, rising suddenly to her feet. “I never said I hated my home, only the place where it had to be, but that is a trifle compared to losing it. Come, if we are to play those nine holes of golf this afternoon, isn’t it time we were starting?”
“You know,” said the young man rising and detaining her with a clasp of his hand on her arm, “I’m including you in my yacht trip next month.”
As Jane remembered those words on her way down the mountain to the little valley station, her eyes took on a gleam of triumph and her lips had a set of pride. He had asked her, at least. She had that to remember, and she could have had more if she would. Her head went up and her shoulders set squarely, as her thoughts brought back the conversation that followed.
“Thank you,” she had said with still an edge of coldness in her voice she was glad to remember, “but I’m a businesswoman. I cannot get away at that time of year.”
“A—businesswoman!” he said in astonishment, looking her over again as if he must have made a mistake. “But—I understood— aren’t you Carol Reeves’s cousin?”
Jane laughed. “No, I’m only a school friend, and quite on my own. Does that make a difference?”
Perhaps she ought not to have said that last, she reflected, her cheeks burning a little at the thought of the look, the appraising look of almost reproach he had given her. But he had rallied at once and answered her cheerfully: “Not at all! It really makes it all the more interesting. And all the more reason why you should have that little apartment of your own I spoke of. Most young businesswomen are doing that today.”
“Well,” said Jane, summoning a little laugh, “then they are not in my class. My mother wouldn’t consider that respectable, and— neither would I. Shall we take this shorter trail? It is later than I thought.”
Through the rest of the afternoon, Jane had been strangely aloof. She was glad to remember that she had kept the conversation from dangerous topics and filled the time with cheerful banter. She could not help knowing, as she told over the hours of the afternoon, that she had lost nothing in his estimation by her indifference. Well, that helped out her pride. But now that she was really off, was she glad or sorry? Was she going to get off at the valley station and go back into the party again, or was she going to carry out her purpose and disappear into her own world again?
As the station drew nearer and her thoughts more vividly brought back the events of yesterday, she felt again that her reasons for going were justified. She felt once more the indignation she had felt at first when Lauderdale had suggested that her dear, hardworking father was ill-treating her, imposing upon her. The idea was revolting. It seemed almost as if she had been disloyal to her home and parents to have been in the company of a man who would utter such a suggestion. The more she thought about it, the more indignant she felt.
Was there also some bitterness because he had, by his own words, spoiled her ideal of him? She had thought him fine, had pictured him being lovely and generous to everyone, had envisioned his perfect understanding of all tender relations in life, and now she suddenly saw him as a selfish man who was thinking of his own interests, with a petted upper lip, a sensuous lower lip, and a calculating eye.
Oh, she did not put all this into words in her troubled thoughts, but the lips and the calculating eye hovered in the background and helped out the bitterness in her heart. They were there for some future reckoning that she knew must come. Had she perhaps been in danger of putting this man higher in her own thoughts than he had any right to be? Was that what hurt? The beauty of his personality as she had seen it at time flashed across her mind and stabbed her. Was this the way her beautiful vacation was to end?
The valley station came in sight and the train halted. Jane shrank back into her seat. There were people on the platform, three men and a very pretty girl, standing by a shining limousine. She vaguely remembered seeing the girl and one of the men at the hotel one day, but she did not know who they were, could not remember their names. She watched them furtively, half-fearing someone would recognize her and question her going. She swung her chair around to face toward the window as one of the younger men of the party bade the others good-bye, kissed the pretty girl, and got on board the train just as it lurched on its way again.
The man came into the same car and took the chair across the aisle from her, but Jane did not look up. Her eyes were looking out the window, unseeing, watching the landscape. Presently she let her eyelids close and, resting her head back, shut herself into her own thoughts.
She did not know that the delicacy of her young profile was etched in cameo relief against the dark green of the chair, nor that the golden light on the curl of her eyelashes and on the russet hair that escaped from the close little green hat she wore were good to look upon. Nor was she conscious that the chair across the aisle still had its back to its window and was facing toward her and that the person who occupied it, though he held a New York paper up before him as if he were reading, was in reality holding it just below the line of his vision and was not reading a word.
Jane was thinking back, bit by bit over her vacation and over what she had done, and wondering why she had cut herself off and was going home like this. For there were other things, too, besides Llewellyn Lauderdale that troubled her.
Chapter 2
On Flora Street it was ninety-eight in the shade, and Betty Lou was trying to keep the flies off a neighbor’s baby, whom, in consideration of a quarter, she had agreed to care for that afternoon. Betty Lou was ten and was already a businesswoman. While the baby slept she was reading over for the seventeenth time a worn copy of Little Women.
A soft sound inside the screen door made Betty Lou close her book softly, lay down the rasping palm leaf fan she had been wafting over the sleeping baby, and start up. She tiptoed to the door and opened the screen quietly, peering into the dimness of the living room. Seeing an empty couch, she hastened back through the dining room into the small kitchen beyond.
“Mother! You promised you’d take a nap!” she reproached.
“I did, dear! Truly I did. I feel quite refreshed. I must have slept a long time!”
“You didn’t sleep ten minutes, Mumsie. I looked at the clock. Please, Mother! You look so white, Jane will say I didn’t take care of you! You know the doctor said you must lie still till the cool of evening.”
“Well, I’ll come back in a few minutes, I must just get the dinner started. You know Father will not want to eat. I thought I’d fix a little cup custard and get
it real cold on the ice. That might tempt him. He loves custard! I won’t be but a minute, dearie. There! I hear your baby stirring! Run back quick! He ought not to wake up so soon, he’ll be on your hands all the afternoon.”
Betty Lou darted cautiously back to the porch and began wafting the palm leaf, and after a few minutes the baby relaxed from his fretful stirring and settled into sleep again. Betty Lou adjusted the dejected mosquito netting that the baby’s mother had furnished to keep off the flies, and settled back into her book again, but her mind was not on the story. She turned anxious eyes toward the interior of the house and listened for the sounds of egg beater and opening oven. Presently she stole back into the kitchen.
“Mother, aren’t you going to lie down again?” she pleaded. “You’ve got the custard in the oven. I can watch it. Baby is really asleep now.”
“Yes, just in a few minutes, dear,” said the mother, trying to speak brightly, “I just want to butter this bread. Tom likes bread pudding, you know, and it will help to fill up. We haven’t much for dinner tonight, just that stew, and Tom is always so hungry. You might make a little bit of sauce. There’s enough butter. You could take it out on the porch and do it quietly.”
“Well, couldn’t I make the bread pudding? I know how.”
“It’s almost made, dear. I’m all right. You get the butter and sugar and fix the hard sauce. There! There goes the telephone! You answer it, quick! The bell will waken the baby!”
Betty Lou went to the telephone in the dining room, and her mother, filled with sudden premonition, followed to the doorway, eggbeater still in hand.
“Hello!” said Betty Lou shyly.
A rasping voice came over the wire. Betty Lou looked up at her mother with frightened eyes.
“No,” she said in almost a whisper. “No, he isn’t here!”
“What?” rasped the voice, audible even in the kitchen. “Have you lost yer voice? Speak up. Can’t ya take a message?”
“Who is it?” asked Betty Lou’s mother anxiously.
“It’s a girl!” said Betty Lou with an awed voice, putting her hand carefully over the mouthpiece and speaking in a whisper.
“A girl!” said her mother, instant alarm in her eyes. “What does she want?”
“She wants Tom.”
“Here, let me have the telephone!”
Mrs. Arleth dropped the egg beater on the pantry shelf and came forward with determination in her tired face.
“Hello, you dumb egg, what’s the matter with ya?” came the rasping voice in her ear. “Who is this anyway?”
“This is Thomas Arleth’s mother,” said Mrs. Arleth, with dignity.
There was a pause and then came the voice again, not in the least awed.
“Oh! All righty! Well, c’n you give Tom a message? We’re having a dance ta-night, see? And we want Tom ta come and bring his tin lizzie ta my house by quarter ta eight, see? We’re staring at eight o’clock sharp cause we’re going out ta Crown Point ta that roadhouse, and we got our tables all engaged, and they’re kinda fussy about yer being on time, see? Tell Tom ta get a hustle on and not keep us waiting, see?”
“I see!” said Tom’s mother severely, and she hung up the receiver.
She looked around at Betty Lou with a new kind of anguish in her eyes before which the little girl could only stand dismayed.
“Oh, what is the matter, Mother?” cried Betty Lou, her eyes wide with an unnamed fear. “Is that the girl with the painted mouth?”
“I don’t know,” said Tom’s mother in a colorless voice. “I’m afraid so, Betty Lou.”
“Well, why didn’t you tell her to get out? To get right out and not bother my brother any more?” A white little-girl-rage filled Betty Lou’s big blue eyes and trembled on her delicately chiseled lips. Her gold, frizzy, curly hair stood out about her dainty head like a halo shimmering in the afternoon sunlight that came in through the front door behind her, and she looked like a little avenging angel. “Why didn’t you, Mother?” she reiterated.
“Oh!” said the mother, tottering to the chair and putting down the telephone on the table, then burying her face in her hands. “Oh, my boy! What can he see in a girl like that?”
“I should think Father would tell Tom he can’t have a girl like that!” said the little sister indignantly. “I’ll tell him when he comes home how bad he is acting, going with a girl like that! Jane would if she were here, I know she would.”
“No, Betty Lou,” said her mother, lifting her head forlornly, “you mustn’t undertake to talk to Tom about it. You’re only a little girl, and you might do more harm than good. Tom wouldn’t like it.”
“Well, Tom is making you cry!” said Betty Lou, beginning to shed tears herself. “Tom ought to know how bad he is making you feel. Won’t you tell him then, Mother?”
“Oh, I don’t know yet, dear,” said the mother, lifting her face and wiping away the tears with the corner of her apron. “I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve got to think about it.”
“Well, I wish Jane was home!” said Betty Lou. “I’m sorry now I told her to stay as long as she could.”
“No, Jane needs her vacation. She works hard. She’s a good girl.”
“Of course she is,” said Betty Lou, “but you’re a good mother, too, and you need a vacation or something. I just wish I was as old as Jane for a few minutes. I’d do some things. I’d tell some people what they are doing.”
“Be careful, little daughter,” warned the mother with a sigh, “don’t you remember that saying about ‘fools’ that ‘rush in where angels fear to tread’? When you get a little older, you’ll learn that you can’t always tell people plain facts about what they are doing. They won’t stand for it. Tom thinks he is almost a man, little daughter, and he resents interference.”
“Wouldn’t you interfere if you saw him stepping on a broken bridge, Mother?” asked the little girl.
“Oh, I suppose so,” sighed the mother with a desperate note in her voice, “but there might be some kinds of interference that would only send him quicker over into the water.”
Betty Lou considered this a moment gravely, then she said earnestly, “Well, anyway, we can pray, can’t we? I’m going to pray.”
“Yes, dear, we can pray,” said the mother, and bending she kissed the sweet white forehead and earnest eyes of the child.
Betty Lou stood still for a moment where her mother had left her, realizing the soft tremble of her mother’s lips; the weak, cold touch of her flesh wet with perspiration against her own vital young face; the tear she had left on Betty Lou’s cheek; sensing that her mother was going far beyond her strength and that this new trouble about Tom that had come to their knowledge only since Jane went on her vacation was being one too many for the burden bearer of the family.
Betty Lou blinked her eyes and looked about the room wildly as if in search of something comforting. There lay the little pink organdy on the table with the needle stuck athwart the hem, that her mother was lengthening for her because she had shot up so this summer that it simply wouldn’t do another time with her bony knees showing. There lay Father’s worn woolen underwear on the couch with a basket of still more worn woolens on the floor beside it from which Mother was cutting patches to make the best ones last another winter. Cutting and sewing hot woolen patches this hot day with the thermometer ninety-eight at the shadiest end of the porch! Mother was always having to do things like that. Mother was out there now making salads, the kind Tom liked. Tom, with a girl like that! Mother ought to lie down!
But her sorrowful meditations were interrupted just then by an outcry from the young tyrant in the baby buggy, and Betty Lou went with swift steps to the rescue. A fly had stolen into an undefended corner of the netting and was sporting over the baby’s nose and toes. Betty Lou shooed him out, straightened the little soiled garments, mopped off the drops of perspiration from the fat cheeks and forehead, fanned gently with the big palm leaf, and at last the baby slept again. Betty Lou settled down uneas
ily on the edge of her chair, her eyes off down the street, her thoughts off on a mountain where her sister Jane was enjoying her vacation. How much difference Jane made when she wasn’t there! Somehow Jane always seemed to know how to straighten everything out. What ages it was since Jane went away! It couldn’t be possible it was only three weeks ago. And another whole week before she came back! Oh, if Tom would only come home, maybe he could make Mother lie down. But then if he came wouldn’t they have to tell him about the girl calling? What would they do if Mother got really sick? Where could Tom be anyway? This was his vacation, too. Perhaps he had met the girl out somewhere. Oh dear! There was the telephone again, and the baby was stirring!
With an anxious wafting of the fan two or three times toward the restive cherub, she slipped toward the door again, but Mother had reached the telephone and was already talking. Would that be that girl again? Betty Lou hesitated, listening, her fan stretched to keep a breeze going over the baby. She heard her mother say in a sharp startled voice, “Who? Where? What hospital?” Then there came a soft confused sound something like a moan and a dull thud followed by the bumping of the receiver as it fell!
She dropped the palm leaf and flew inside the door. Her mother had fallen to the floor with her head and shoulders half-supported by the foot of the couch, the telephone lolling from her nerveless fingers and the receiver rolling about on the floor aimlessly.
“Mother! Mother!” cried the little girl in anguish. “Oh, Mother! What is the matter?”
She dropped down beside the unconscious mother and reached for her hands, which seemed so damp and cold they chilled her. In the dim light of the room she could not see her mother’s face till she brought her own close to it, and then she saw that the eyes were closed. With a convulsive sob she cried out again and put her lips against those that had never before failed to response to her caresses, but there was no response now, and the lips were chilly. On this hot, hot day her face was like ice, wet and cold as ice.