Chapter II: Part 2

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:

SCHOLASTIC HONORS OF OUR TOWNSMAN

And beneath it, in smaller letters:

VERSE ON FAMILIAR TOPICS

Each verse was commented upon, with a sort of mock literary criticism.

The needs of the poor
For garden manure.

That was bad enough.

The lack of barn litter
Makes poverty bitter.

That was worse.

Let her give us fertilizer
If she wants us not to prize her.

That was intolerable, almost.

Our need of land dressing
Is truly distressing.

That was absolutely and unpardonably intolerable.

For Miss Sisson, poor old thing, who had moved in the committee that perhaps the more elegant term of "land dressing" might be substituted for "manure," which seemed coarse, had made herself ridiculous at the time in the club. And now, when she was mourning her sister, she was made ridiculous publicly. Well, Johnnie Benton had a great deal to answer for! All the women said that.

For it had happened some years after Mrs. Benton had bought one whole freight car full of peony plants at reduced prices and had sold them off cheap to the women of her county. She had been driving through the western suburbs of Chicago, and had noticed certain sterile spots that during the war had been used as allotment gardens. It was pitiful to her to see those poor hard-working foreigners were still trying to grow a few vegetables on sandy rubbish heaps. It made her consider what a lot of manure was piled up in the barnyards around her town. She laid the matter before the garden committee of the club at once. If every farmer's wife who had bought a peony would give one sackful of manure, the committee would see that it was distributed among the needy allotments of Cook County. The county adviser had opposed the scheme bitterly. The Farm Bureau had condemned it. Every ounce of manure was needed at home, the county bulletin said. But Mrs. Benton asked how farmers working on their distant forties were going to know how many sacks of manure their wives gave away. Did they ever count them, wasteful managers that they were? She would let the women know when the truck would call for it.

But this generous plan had been balked by Johnnie and his kind. They said it had been all right enough to get the loan of the family cars when they were freshmen in high school, and to go driving about distributing peonies. But they drew the line at manure. Mrs. Benton said to Emily that she had told Johnnie he was a selfish boy, and that he had said: "Well, maybe I'm selfish. But I'm certainly fragrant." Emily had never believed Johnnie capable of that retort. She thought his mother had made it up for the story. But now--well--she was beginning to think maybe he had made it.

Johnnie had arrived home from college two days after the headline appeared, and his mother had been ready to receive him. She said he had to apologize to the whole club publicly. He refused. And Emily was trying to arbitrate between them. "Honestly, Mrs. Kenworthy," he said, "it never entered my mind that you'd ever hear of it in this town. Mother ought to believe me when I say I wouldn't have done it for anything if I'd known that man French was ever going to get hold of it. I was in bad with the dean, sitting there in his office waiting to get hauled over the coals about my work, as usual, and I couldn't help hearing what he was saying. He was raving. He told the class committee that if they couldn't get something better than the drivel they had submitted, the annual play was off. I was feeling low when he got through with me, believe me. And I knew what I'd get at this end if I came home flunking again. And that night when I was lying in bed it all came to me at once, and I got right up and wrote it down." Johnnie spoke now without awe of his inspiration. "There was the chorus of high-brow old maids singing about the need of the poor for garden manure. It isn't my fault they rhyme, is it, now? I might have said that, Mrs. Kenworthy, but you know I never would have poked fun publicly at old Miss Sisson. I'd never have put in about land dressing. Would I, now?" And Emily, considering the shyness of the poor elegant old thing, believed that Johnnie would have had more mercy. "And then," he went on, "I had that chorus of farmers, regular stage hayseeds, with long gray beards and pitchforks, resisting them. And the Bolshevists singing." Johnnie hummed:

"'Tis the lack of horse litter
Makes poverty bitter.

"It just all does rhyme. And I had a hero like me, refusing to drive a truck, and eloping with a farmer's daughter in a manure spreader. And every farmer in the chorus was leading a calf or a pig with him as he danced. I told them not to have those kids as animals. And when the audience began to applaud, one of the little fiends rose up on his hind legs and began to dance. And then they all did, of course. The people nearly went into spasms, they laughed so. Oh, boy! It was a hot show! I was popular for a while. The skirts just clung to me at the dance afterwards. And everybody was wondering what else might be in me. And I was going to strike mother for a new car the minute I got home. Now, oh, Lordie, what a life I lead!"

And Emily, standing as usual, between mother and son, had maintained to Mrs. Benton that Johnnie might have been deplorably thoughtless, but he certainly hadn't been deliberately malicious. How could he suppose that that man French could get hold of it? It was simply brutal, as Emily realized, for that horrid person to entitle his derision "Scholastic Honors." It was rubbing salt into the deep wound of Cora Benton's soul. For Johnnie most conspicuously lacked not only scholastic honors, but even mediocre class attainments of common town children. He had been pulled and shoved along from one grade to another by the skin of his teeth. He had always been the most careless boy in every class. Mrs. Benton was right when she said it was because of his health. When he was nine he had had infantile paralysis, and, recovering, had been sent South. Mrs. Benton, a passionate mother, had thrown down her Red Cross work and taken him to a Southern town in which a cousin of hers was living. And that choice had changed, she averred, the course of the boy's life.

For the White Sox had been wintering there. And the weary little boy, too uninterested in life to turn his thin hand over, was carried out into the sun and coaxed into watching them. Some of them noticed the pale child and spoke to him. Presently Johnnie was no longer a pitiful invalid; he had become an active humble little mortal peeping up at the great gods who strode about this Parnassus upon which he had been thrown. Like an eager disciple he watched their ways. He knew what blessed street cars they took and at what hours. He knew the hallowed spot they had their hair cut. Lying in his bed at night, he could identify their manager's car by the sound. In his dreams he was steadying his arm to send a terrible curve. His nightmares were missed bases. Books and reading were forbidden him. But at the end of that year he knew the names and the positions of practically all the players in the League.

It took a woman like his mother to get him into the schoolhouse the next year. But even she could not induce his mind to consider text-books. By the time he was sixteen he was in a class with thirteen-year-old boys, and he looked small and delicate among them. And then he began growing. His heart was weak. He got pneumonia. The doctor said he would never be well unless he was taken out of school again and let "run wild." The year Bronson came to his Aunt Emily, Mrs. Benton spent part of the winter in New Mexico and moved from there because she couldn't endure the sight of her son playing ball with lazy Mexicans whom he had inspired to the game. She went to a vineyard in California, and there she had to see him rally enough young Japs for his nine. She left him that summer on a ranch in Arizona, safe from a baseball atmosphere, she supposed. He found a camp of Boy Scouts by riding not too many score of miles, and played with them till he came back in the autumn, less inclined to sit at a desk than ever before, and much stronger physically. And if people said truly that only Mrs. Benton's incorrigible determination had kept that boy alive to grow into a strong man, they might also have said the same force finally got him into college. And all he had ever done there, as she remarked bitterly to Emily, who condoned his accidental operatic career, was to short-stop for the second nine, and make his mother ridiculous in that disgusting "opera."

And now, Johnnie, having put in a good word for himself, having diplomatically repeated every complimentary remark he had heard all the evening about the extraordinary superiority of the floor, intended going back to his play. Mrs. Benton kept him standing there, however. Emily wondered if she had determined to have the whole town see mother and son chatting pleasantly together. For the whole town, like Emily Kenworthy, often wondered, too curiously, exactly what the relationship between the two was. Mrs. Benton kept her own counsel like the proverbially close-lipped male. People could only imagine what she thought of Johnnie's dancing every evening at the country club from which she had withdrawn in rage. The elders were known to have welcomed her withdrawal like a gift from heaven. The young fry, it was commonly said, couldn't have a single dance without Johnnie, who danced "divinely." (Martha Kenworthy had said once, holding a long-legged columbine swaying in her hand, that it looked exactly like Johnnie Benton.) He was hail-fellow-well-met to most of his mother's sworn enemies. Emily sometimes thought I that must require determination almost equal to his mother's. He just simply was a "nice boy," the town said. He had a good disposition, and Bob Kenworthy was not the only one who, saying that, added, "And the Lord knows he needed it!"

"Whoever could have believed it?" Emily was saying. "Where have they all come from?" they were thinking together. You could count the faces you knew. The youth of the town had been pushed aside by the youth of the whole state, apparently. In a way, the very success was failure, for the committee had enlarged their plans time after time to provide against this indecent modern crowding. And now people were simply wriggling about like fishing worms thick in a can. Suddenly:

"EMILY!" exclaimed Cora Benton. "WHAT'S MARTHA DOING?" Sharply she had spoken, commandingly.

"Martha?" exclaimed Emily, shocked. "Where? I don't see her." She had scarcely seen her all evening.

"Over there. Look!" She pointed with her eye to the farther side of the crowd, where it was overflowing to the veranda.

Johnnie said--he spoke shortly, "She's dancing!"

"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.