Carey’s delight in it all was especially noticeable. He hovered around, getting new points of view and changing the arrangement of a chair or a table, whistling wildly and gleefully, a new Carey to them all. For the whole evening he did not offer to go out, just hung around, talking, singing snatches of popular songs, breaking into a clumsy two-finger “rag” on the piano now and then, and finally ending up with a good sing with Cornelia at the piano. It was curious, but it was a fact that this was the first time Cornelia had had time since her homecoming to sit down and play for them, and it seemed like a revelation to all. They had not realized how well she could play, for she had been studying music part of the time in college. Also no one had realized how well Carey could sing. Perhaps he had never had half a chance with a good accompaniment before. At any rate, it was very plain that he liked it and would sing as long as anyone would play for him.
And the father liked it, too. Oh, how he liked it! He took off his glasses, put his head back on the new cretonne cushion, closed his eyes, and just enjoyed it. Now and then he would open his eyes and watch the flicker of the fire in the new fireplace, look from the one to the other of his children, sigh, and say, “I wish your mother were here now,” and again, “We must write Mother about all this. How she will enjoy it!”
Then right into the midst of this domestic scene there entered callers.
Carey was singing when the knock came and did not hear them, or else he would most surely have disappeared. It was a way Carey had. But the knock came twice before Louise heard it and slipped to the door, letting in the strangers, who stood listening at the door, motioning to her to wait until the song was finished.
Then Mr. Copley saw them and arose to come forward. Carey, feeling some commotion, turned, and the song stopped like a shot, a frown of defiance beginning to grow between his brows.
The strangers were a man and a woman and a young girl a little older than Louise and younger than Cornelia, and one could see at a glance that they were cultured, refined people, though they were quietly, simply dressed. Carey, in his gray flannel shirt open at the neck and the old trousers in which he had assisted in the last rites of putting the room in perfect order, looked down at himself in dismay and backed suddenly around the end of the piano as far out of sight as possible, meeting the intruders with a glare of disapproval. Cornelia was the last to stop playing and look around, but by that time the lady had spoken.
“Oh, please don’t stop! We want to hear the rest of the song. What a beautiful tenor voice!”
Cornelia arose to her duties as hostess and came forward, but the man by this time was introducing himself.
“I hope we haven’t intruded, brother.” He grasped Mr. Copley’s welcoming hand. “I’m just the minister at the little church around your corner here, and we thought we’d like to get acquainted with our new neighbors. My name is Kendall, and this is my wife and my daughter Grace. I brought the whole family along because I understood you had some daughters.”
“You’re very welcome,” said Mr.Copley with dignity that marked him a gentleman everywhere. “This is my daughter Cornelia; this is Louise, and Harry; and”—with an almost frightened glance toward the end of the piano, lest he might already have vanished—“this is my son Carey.”
There was something almost proud in the way he spoke Carey’s name, and Cornelia had a sudden revelation of what Carey, the eldest son, must mean to his father in spite of all his sharpness to the boy. Of course Carey must have been a big disappointment the last few months.
Carey, thus cornered, instead of bolting, as his family half expected of him, came forward with an unexpected grace of manner and acknowledged the introduction, his eyes resting interestedly on the face of Grace Kendall.
“I’m not very presentable,” he said. “But, as I can’t seem to get out without being seen, I guess you’ll have to make the best of me.”
Grace Kendall’s eyes were merry and pleasant.
“Please don’t mind us,” she said. “You look very nice. You look as if you had been playing tennis.”
“Nothing so interesting as that,” said Carey. “Just plain work. We’re still tinkering around this house, getting settled, you know.”
“There’s always such a lot to do when you move, isn’t there? But what a lovely spot you’ve made of it!” She turned and looked about her. “Why, I shouldn’t know it was the same house. What a lot you have done to it! This room looks so big! How did you get the space? You’ve changed the partitions, haven’t you? I used to come here to visit a little lame boy, and it was such a tiny little front room; and now this is spacious! And that wonderful fireplace! Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Yes,” put in Mr. Copley, as the whole group seemed absorbed in gazing around them at the lovely room. “My son did that. He built it all himself.”
Carey looked up in surprise, with a flush of pleasure at his father’s tone of pride, and then his eyes came back to the girl’s face all sparkling with eager admiration.
“You don’t mean you did it yourself? How perfectly wonderful! That darling mantel! And the way the chimney curves up to the ceiling! It has charming lines! Oh, Father, can’t you coax him to come over and build one for us?”
“Sure! I’ll build you one!” said Carey graciously, as though he kept stone fireplaces in his vest pocket. “Start tomorrow if you can get the stone.”
“Oh, great! Just hear that, Father! We’re going to have a fireplace! Now, don’t you let him off. Did you design it, Mr. Copley?”
Carey lifted embarrassed eyes to his elder sister’s face and met her look of loving pride and flushed happily.
“Why, no, I guess my sister Nell’s to blame for that. She suggested it first and worked it out mostly,” he said.
“Indeed, you did it all yourself, Carey,” said Cornelia. “I only wanted it, and Carey did the rest.”
“Yes, Gracie, that’s where you’re lacking,” said the minister laughingly. “You haven’t any brother to carry out your every wish. Only a busy old father, who doesn’t know how.”
“My father’s all right!” said the daughter loyally. And Carey, with a swift, appraising glance, decided that he certainly looked it and that for a minister it certainly was surprising. He had a faint passing wonder what this man’s church might be like. Then they settled down in groups to talk: Carey beside the minister’s daughter, Cornelia beside the minister’s wife, and Mr. Copley with the minister, while Harry and Louise sat down together in the window seat to watch them all.
“Doesn’t Carey look handsome?” whispered the little girl, with her eyes on her elder brother. “My, but I guess he’s mad he didn’t put on his other shirt.”
“I should say! Serves him right,” said Harry caustically, yet with a light of pride in his eyes. “Say, she’s some bird, isn’t she? Better’n that little chicken we saw him have out last Saturday!”
“Oh, Harry! You mustn’t call any girl a chicken. You know what Mother would say.”
“Well, she was a chicken, wasn’t she?”
“I think I’d rather call her a—a fool!” said Louise expressively.
“Call her what you like, only don’t call her at all!” said the boy. “Say, doesn’t our sister look great though?”
So they sat quietly whispering, picking up bits of the conversation and thinking their wise young thoughts.
Mr. Copley’s face looked rested and happy.
“My! I wish my wife were at home,” he said wistfully. “You know she’s been very sick, and she’s away getting a rest. But we hope she’ll soon be back with us before many months now. How she would enjoy it to have you run in like this! She’s a great church woman, and she felt it, coming away from the church we have always attended over on the other side of town—”
Then the talk drifted to the little church around the corner and to its various organizations and activities.
“Father’ll be after you for the choir,” confided the daughter to Carey. “A good tenor is a great find.?
??
“No chance!” said Carey, looking pleased in spite of himself. “I can’t sing.”
Then they all began to clamor for Carey to sing. And right in the midst of it there was another knock at the door, and in walked the carpenter and his wife.
Carey began to frown, of course, for, although he liked the carpenter, he felt that he was of another social class from the delicate young girl who sat by his side. But when he saw her rise and greet the carpenter’s wife as cordially as if she were some fine lady, his frown began to disappear again. This certainly was a peach of a girl, and no mistake. In fact, the whole family was all right. The minister was a prince. Just look at the way he took that carpenter by the hand and made him feel at home.
The carpenter, however, didn’t seem to be troubled by embarrassment. He entered right into the conversation comfortably and began to praise Cornelia Copley and her ability as an interior decorator; and before any one knew how it happened the company had started to see the dining room and kitchen.
Nobody realized it, but they were all talking and laughing as if they had known one another for years, and everybody was having a happy time. When they came back to the living room, they insisted that Carey should sing and Cornelia should play for them. Harry and Louise whispered together for a moment then slipped silently back to the kitchen while the music was going on and returned in a few minutes with a tall pitcher of lemonade and a plate of Cornelia’s delicious gingerbread. Carey went for plates and acted the host beautifully. It all passed off delightfully, even with the presence of the carpenter, who proved to be a good mixer in spite of his lack of grammar.
Before they went away, the minister had asked the brother and sister to join the choir and come to the Sunday school and young people’s society and all the various other functions of the church, and had given a special urgent invitation to the whole family, including the callers, to come to a church reception to be held the coming week. Carey acted as if church receptions and young people’s prayer meetings were the joy of his life and agreed in everything that was suggested, declaring, when the door closed behind them, that that girl was “some peach.” And the household retired to their various pillows with happy dreams of a circumspect future in which Carey walked the happy way of a wise young man and had friends that one was not ashamed of. And then the very next afternoon, being Saturday, everything was wrecked in one quick happening, and a cloud of gloom fell over the little household.
For it happened that Cornelia and Louise had taken an afternoon off, having arisen quite early and accomplished an incredible amount of Saturday baking and mending and ironing and the like, and had gone down to the stores to choose a much-needed pair of shoes for Louise. The shoes were purchased, also ten cents’ worth of chocolates, and they were about to finish the joyful occasion by a visit to a movie when suddenly, walking up Chestnut Street, they came face-to-face with Carey and a girl! Carey, who was supposed to be off that whole afternoon hunting for a job! And such a girl!
The most noticeable thing about the girl was the whiteness of her nose and the rosiness of a certain outlined portion of her cheeks. As she drew nearer, one also noticed her cap-like arrangement of hair that was obviously stained henna and bobbed quite furiously under a dashing hat of jade-green feathers. Her feet were fat, with fat overhanging flesh-colored silken ankles, quite transparent as to the silk, and were strapped in with many little buckles to a very sharp toe and a tall little stilt of a heel. Her skirt was like one leg of a pantaloon, so tight it was, and very short, so that the fat, silken ankles became most prominent; and her dainty gait reminded one of a Bach fugue. She wore an objectionable and conspicuous tunic, much beaded with short sleeves and very low neck, for the street.
A scrubby little fur flung across the back of her neck completed her outfit, unless one counted the string of big white beads that hung around her neck to her waist and the many rings that adorned her otherwise bare hands. She was chewing gum, rhythmically and industriously, and giggling up into Carey’s face with a silly, sickening grin that made the heart of Cornelia turn sick with disgust.
As she drew nearer, a pair of delicately penciled stationary eyebrows, higher than nature usually places them, emphasized the whole effect; and the startling red of the girl’s lips seemed to fascinate the gaze they were coming nearer. They were almost near enough to touch each other, and Carey—Carey was looking down at the girl—he had drawn her arm within his own, and he had not seen his sister.
Suddenly, without any warning, Cornelia felt the angry tears starting to her eyes, and with a quick movement she drew Louise to a milliner’s window they were passing and stood, trembling in every nerve, while Carey and the girl passed by.
Chapter 13
Louise had given her sister one swift, comprehending look and stood quietly enough looking into the window, but her real glance was sideways, watching Carey and the girl.
“That’s the one! That’s the chicken, Nellie!” she whispered. “Now, isn’t she a chicken? Don’t you think Harry is right? Turn around and watch her. They’ve gone ahead so far they’ll never see us now. Look! Just see her waddle! See her toddle! Aren’t those shoes the limit? And her fat legs inching along like that! I think she’s disgusting! How can my brother not be ashamed to be seen with her? And down here on Chestnut Street, too, where he might meet anybody! Think if that Grace Kendall should come along and see him! She’d never speak to him again. Oh, Nellie, isn’t she dreadful?”
“Hush, dear! Somebody will hear you. Yes, she’s pretty awful.”
“But, Nellie, can’t we do something about it? Can’t Carey be ordered not to go with a thing like that anymore? Why, even the girls in my school are talking about them. They call her my brother’s girl ! Nellie, aren’t you going to do anything about it? Aren’t you going to tell Father and have it stopped?”
“Hush, darling! Yes, I’m going to do something—but I don’t know what yet. I don’t know what there is to do.”
She tried to smile with her lips in a tremble, and looking down, she saw that tears were rolling down the little sister’s cheeks.
“Darling! Don’t do that!” she cried, roused out of her own distress. “Here, take my handkerchief and brighten up a little. You mustn’t cry here. People will think something dreadful has happened to you.”
“They can’t think any worse than it is,” murmured Louise, snubbing off a sob with the proffered handkerchief. “To have my nice, handsome big brother be a big fool like that! Oh, I’d like to kill that girl! I would! I’d like to choke her!”
“Louie! Stop! This is awful!” cried Cornelia, horrified. “You mustn’t talk that way about anybody, no matter how much of a fool she is. Perhaps there’s another side to it. Perhaps Carey is just as much to blame. Perhaps the girl doesn’t know any better. Maybe she has no mother to teach her. Maybe Carey is sorry for her.”
“He—didn’t look sorry; he looked glad!” murmured the little girl, trying to bring her emotions into control. “And anyhow I can’t help hating her. Even if she hasn’t got a mother. She doesn’t need to dip her face in a flour barrel like that and make eyes at my brother.”
“Listen Louie.” Cornelia’s voice was very quiet, and she felt a sudden strength come to her from the need to help the little girl. “Dear, it won’t do any good to hate her; it will only do you harm and mix us up so we can’t think straight. Besides, it’s wicked to hate anybody. Suppose you stop being so excited and let us put some good common sense into his thing. There must be a way to work it out. If it’s wrong for Carey to go with her, there will be a way somehow to make him see it. Until Carey sees it himself, there isn’t a bit of use in our tying to stop his going with her. He probably has got to the place where rouge and powder are attractive to him, or else perhaps there is more to the girl than just the outside. At any rate, we’ve got to find out what it is about her that attracts our brother. And, Louie, do you know I’ve a notion that there’s nobody but God can help us in this thing? Mother used to say th
at, you know, when any big trouble came. And several times lately when I’ve been worried about things, I’ve said, ‘Oh God, help me,’ and things have seemed to straighten out right away. Suppose you and I try that tonight.”
Louise looked up through her tears and smiled.
“You’re an awfully dear sister, Nellie. I’m glad you came home.” And she squeezed her sister’s hand tenderly.
“Thank you, lovey. I’m glad I came, too, and you’re rather dear yourself, you know, Lou. I think we’ll come through somehow. Now, shall we go into this movie?”
“I don’t believe I feel much like it, do you, Nellie?” said the little girl hesitatingly and studying a picture on the billboard outside the theater. “Look! That’s one of those pictures with cabaret stuff in it that Daddy doesn’t like us to see. I don’t want to go in. Those girls in that picture make me think of her.”
“I’ll tell you what. Let’s go home and get a good dinner for Carey and the rest, and perhaps we can think of a way to keep him home tonight and have a good time.”
So home they went and got the dinner and waited half an hour after the usual time, but no Carey appeared that night until long after the midnight hour had struck. When at last he came tiptoeing up the creaking stairs, trying not to arouse anybody in the house, his two sisters lay hand in hand listening and both praying, “Oh God, show us how to keep Carey away from that girl and make him a good man.”
Carey slept late on Sunday morning and came down cross, declining utterly to go to church. Cornelia and Louise went off alone sorrowfully. Carey had lounged off in the direction of the drugstore, and the father had a headache and decided to nurse it up, lest it keep him away from work on the morrow. Harry volunteered to stay home and get dinner.
The sermon was about prayer, very simple and interesting. Cornelia did not remember having listened to many sermons in her life. Somehow this one seemed unique and struck right home to her need and experience. The preacher said that many people prayed and did not receive because they had failed to meet the conditions of answered prayer. Even Louise sat up and listened with earnest eyes and flushed cheeks. Here was something she felt would help the Copley family if they could only get hold of the secret of it. Mother prayed, and Mother had great faith in prayer, but none of the rest of them had ever specialized along those lines. Unless perhaps Father did, quiet Father, with all his burdens and disappointments.