In a Little Town Part 35

"It's the first time we've danced together in a long time, eh?"

Her lower lip began to quiver and swell quite independently and she sighed:

"Not much like the dances we used to dance. Oh dear!"

She dropped into a chair and stared, not at her husband, but at the bridegroom of long ago he had shriveled from. She remembered those honeymoon mornings when they had awakened like eager children and laughed and romped and been glad of the new day. The mornings had been precious then, for it was a tragedy to let him go to his shop, as it was a festival to watch from the porch in the evening till he came round the corner and waved to her.

She looked from him to herself, to what she could see of herself--it was not all, but more than enough. She saw her heavy red hands and the coa.r.s.e gown over her awkward knees, and the dismal slovenliness of her att.i.tude. She felt that he was remembering the slim, wild, sweet girl he had married. And she was ashamed before his eyes, because she had let the years prey upon her and had lazily permitted beauty to escape from her--from her body, her face, her motions, her thoughts.

She felt that for all her prating of duty she had committed a great wickedness lifelong. She wondered if this were not "the unpardonable sin," whose exact ident.i.ty n.o.body had seemed to decide--to grow strangers with beauty and to forget grace.

II

Whatever her husband may have been thinking, he had the presence of mind to hide his eyes in the water he had poured from the pitcher. He scooped it up now in double handfuls. He made a great splutter and soused his face in the bowl, and scrubbed the back of his neck and behind his ears and his bald spot, and slapped his eminent collar-bones with his wet hand. And then he was bathed.

Serina pulled on her stockings, and hated them and the coa.r.s.er feet they covered. She opened the wardrobe door as a screen, less from modesty for herself than from sudden disgust of her old corset and her all too sober lingerie. She resolved that she would hereafter deck herself with more of that coquetry which had abruptly returned to her mind as a wife's most solemn duty.

Then she remembered that they were poorer than they ever had been. Now they could not even run into debt again; for who would give them further credit, since their previous bills had been canceled by nothing more satisfactory than the grim "Received payment" of the bankruptcy court?

It was too late for her to reform. Her song was sung. And as for buying frills and fallals, there were two daughters to provide for and a son who was growing into the stratum of foppery. With a sigh of dismissal she flung on her old wrapper, whose comfortableness she suddenly despised, and made her escape, murmuring, "I'll call the childern."

She pounded on the boy's door, and Horace eventually answered with his regular program of uncouth noises, like some one protesting against being strangled to death. These were followed by moans of woe, and then by far-off-sounding promises of "Oh, aw ri', I'm git'nup."

Serina moved on to her youngest daughter's door. She had tapped but once when it was opened by "the best girl that ever lived," according to her father; and according to her mother, "a treasure; never gave me a bit of trouble--plain, of course, but so willing!"

Ollie was fully dressed and so was her room, except for the bed, the covers of which were thrown back like a wave breaking over the footboard. In fact, after Ollie had kissed her mother she informed her that the kitchen fire was made, the wash-boiler on, and the breakfast going.

"You are a treasure!" Serina sighed.

She pa.s.sed on to the door of Prue. Prue was the second daughter. Rosie, the eldest, had married Tom Milford and moved away. She was having troubles of her own, and children with a regularity that led Serina to dislike Tom Milford more than ever.

Serina knocked several times at Prue's door without response. Then she went in as she always had to. Prue was still asleep, and her yesterday's clothes seemed to be asleep, too, in all sorts of att.i.tudes and all sorts of places. The only regularity about the room was the fact that every single thing was out of place. The dressing-table held a little chaos, including one stocking. The other stocking was on the floor. One silken garter glowed in the southeast corner and one in the northwest.

One shoe reclined in the southwest corner and the other gaped in the northeast. But they were pretty shoes.

Her frock was in a heap, but it suggested a heap of flowers.

Hair-ribbons and ribboned things and a crumpled sash bedecked the carpet. But the prettiest thing of all was the head half fallen from the pillow and half smothered in the tangled skeins of hair. One arm was bent back over her brow to shut out the sunlight and the other arm dangled to the floor. There was something adorable about the round chin nestling in the soft throat. Her chin seemed to frown with a lovable sullenness. There was a mysterious grace in the very sprawl vaguely outlined by the long wrinkles and ridges of the blankets.

Serina shook her head over Prue in a loving despair. She was the bad boy of the family, impatient, exacting, hot-tempered, stormy, luxurious, yet never monotonous.

"You can always put your hand on Ollie," Serina would say; "but you never know where Prue is from one minute to the next."

Consequently Ollie was not interesting and Prue was.

They were all afraid of Prue and afraid for her. They all toadied to her and she kept them excited--alarmed, perhaps; angry, oh yes; but never bored.

And there were rewards in her service, too, for she could be as stormy with affection as with mutiny. Sometimes she would attack Serina with such gusts of grat.i.tude or admiration that her mother would cry for help. She would squeeze her father's ribs till he gasped for breath.

When she was pleased she would dance about the house like a whirling maenad with ululations of ecstasy. These crises were sharp, but they left a sweet taste in the memory.

So Prue had the best clothes and did the least work. Prue was sent off to boarding-school in Chicago, though she had never been able to keep up with her cla.s.ses in Carthage; while Ollie--who took first prizes till even the goody-goody boys hated her--stayed at home. She had dreamed of being a teacher in the High, but she never mentioned it, and she studied bookkeeping and stenography in the business college so that she could help her father.

Prue had not been home long and had come home with bad grace. When her father had found it impossible to borrow more money even to pay his clerks, to say nothing of boarding-school bills, he had to write the truth to Prue. He told her to come again to Carthage.

She did not come back at once and she refused to explain why. As a matter of fact, she had desperately endeavored to find a permanent job in Chicago. It was easy for so attractive a girl to get jobs, but it was hard for so domineering a soul to keep one. She was regretfully bounced out of three department stores in six days for "sa.s.sing" the customers and the aisle-manager.

She even tried the theater. She was readily accepted by a stage-manager, but when he found that he could not teach her the usual figures or persuade her to keep in step or line with the rest he regretfully let her go.

It was the regularity of it that stumped Prue. She could dance like a ballerina by herself, but she could not count "one-two-three-four" twice in succession. The second time it was "o-o-one-t'threeee-f'r" and next it would be "onety-thry-fo-o-our."

Prue hung about Chicago, getting herself into sc.r.a.pes by her charm and fighting her way out of them by her ferocious pride. Finally she went hungry and came home. When she learned the extent of her father's financial collapse she delivered tirades against the people of Carthage and she sang him up as a genius. And then she sought escape from the depression at home by seeking what gaiety Carthage afforded. She made no effort to master the typewriter and she declined to sell dry-goods.

Serina stood and studied the sleeping girl, that strange wild thing she had borne and had tried in vain to control. She thought how odd it was that in the mystic transmission of her life she had given all the useful virtues to Ollie and none of them to Prue. She wondered what she had been thinking of to make such a mess of motherhood. And what could she do to correct the oversight? Ollie did not need restraint, and Prue would not endure it. She stood aloof, afraid to waken the girl to the miseries of existence in a household where every day was blue Monday now.

Ollie had not waited to be called. Ollie had risen betimes and done all the work that could be done, and stood ready to do whatever she could.

Prue was still aloll on a bed of ease. Even to waken her was to waken a March wind. The moment she was up she would have everybody running errands for her. She would be lavish in complaint and parsimonious of help. And yet she was a dear! She did enjoy her morning sleep so well.

It would be a pity to disturb her. The rescuing thought came to Serina that Prue loved to take a long hot bath on Monday mornings, because on wash-day there was always a plenty of hot water in the bathroom. On other mornings the hot-water faucet suffered from a distressing cough and nothing more.

So she tiptoed out and closed the door softly.

III

At breakfast Ollie waited on the table after compelling Serina to sit down and eat. There was little to tempt the appet.i.te and no appet.i.te to be tempted.

Papa was in the doldrums. He had always complained before of having to gulp his breakfast and hurry to the shop. And now he complained because there was no hurry; indeed, there was no shop. He must set out at his time of years, after his life of independent warfare, to ask for enlistment as a private in some other man's company--in a town where vacancies rarely occurred and where William Pepperall would not be welcome.

The whole town was mad at him. He had owed everybody, and then suddenly he owed n.o.body. By the presto-change-o of bankruptcy his debts had been pa.s.sed from the hat of unpaid bills to the hat of worthless accounts.

Serina was as dismal as any wife is when she is faced with the prospect of having her man hanging about the house all day. A wife in a man's office hours is a nuisance, but a man at home in household office hours is a pest. This was the newest but not the least of Serina's woes.

Horace was even glummer than ever, as soggy as his own oatmeal. At best he was one of those breakfast bruins. Now he was a bear that has been hit on the nose. He, too, must seek a job. School had seemed confining before, but now that he must go to work, school seemed like one long recess.

Even Ollie was depressed. Hers was the misery of an active person denied activity. She had prepared herself as an aid in her father's business, and now he had no business. In this alkali desert of inanition Prue's vivacious temper would have been welcome.

"Where's Prue?" said papa for the fifth time.

Serina was about to say that she was still asleep when Prue made her presence known. Everybody was apprised that the water had been turned on in the bathroom; it resounded throughout the house. It seemed to fall about one's head.

Prue was filling the tub for her Monday morning siesta. She was humming a strange tune over the cascade like another Minnehaha. And from the behavior of the dining-room chandelier and the plates on the sideboard she was evidently dancing.

"What's that toon she's dancing to?" papa asked, after a while.

"I don't know," said Serina.

"I never heard it," said Ollie.

"Ah," growled Horace, "it's the Argentine tango."

"The tango!" gasped papa. "Isn't that the new dance I've been reading about, that's making a sensation in New York?"