"Miss Lulu Bett, the mocking ba-ird!" Dwight insisted.
Lulu was excited, and in some accession of faint power. She turned to him now, quietly, and with a look of appraisal.
"Lulu the dove," she then surprisingly said, "to put up with you."
It was her first bit of conscious repartee to her brother-in-law.
Cornish was bending over Di.
"What next do you say?" he asked.
She lifted her eyes, met his own, held them. "There"s such a lovely, lovely sacred song here," she suggested, and looked down.
"You like sacred music?"
She turned to him her pure profile, her eyelids fluttering up, and said: "I love it."
"That"s it. So do I. Nothing like a nice sacred piece," Cornish declared.
Bobby Larkin, at the end of the piano, looked directly into Di"s face.
"Give _me_ ragtime," he said now, with the effect of bursting out of somewhere. "Don"t you like ragtime?" he put it to her directly.
Di"s eyes danced into his, they sparkled for him, her smile was a smile for him alone, all their store of common memories was in their look.
"Let"s try "My Rock, My Refuge,"" Cornish suggested. "That"s got up real attractive."
Di"s profile again, and her pleased voice saying that this was the very one she had been hoping to hear him sing.
They gathered for "My Rock, My Refuge."
"Oh," cried Ina, at the conclusion of this number, "I"m having such a perfectly beautiful time. Isn"t everybody?" everybody"s hostess put it.
"Lulu is," said Dwight, and added softly to Lulu: "She don"t have to hear herself sing."
It was incredible. He was like a bad boy with a frog. About that photograph of Ninian he found a dozen ways to torture her, called attention to it, showed it to Cornish, set it on the piano facing them all. Everybody must have understood--excepting the Plows. These two gentle souls sang placidly through the Alb.u.m of Old Favourites, and at the melodies smiled happily upon each other with an air from another world. Always it was as if the Plows walked some fair, inter-penetrating plane, from which they looked out as do other things not quite of earth, say, flowers and fire and music.
Strolling home that night, the Plows were overtaken by some one who ran badly, and as if she were unaccustomed to running.
"Mis" Plow, Mis" Plow!" this one called, and Lulu stood beside them.
"Say!" she said. "Do you know of any job that I could get me? I mean that I"d know how to do? A job for money.... I mean a job...."
She burst into pa.s.sionate crying. They drew her home with them.
Lying awake sometime after midnight, Lulu heard the telephone ring. She heard Dwight"s concerned "Is that so?" And his cheerful "Be right there."
Grandma Gates was sick, she heard him tell Ina. In a few moments he ran down the stairs. Next day they told how Dwight had sat for hours that night, holding Grandma Gates so that her back would rest easily and she could fight for her faint breath. The kind fellow had only about two hours of sleep the whole night long.
Next day there came a message from that woman who had brought up Dwight--"made him what he was," he often complacently accused her. It was a note on a postal card--she had often written a few lines on a postal card to say that she had sent the maple sugar, or could Ina get her some samples. Now she wrote a few lines on a postal card to say that she was going to die with cancer. Could Dwight and Ina come to her while she was still able to visit? If he was not too busy....
n.o.body saw the pity and the terror of that postal card. They stuck it up by the kitchen clock to read over from time to time, and before they left, Dwight lifted the griddle of the cooking-stove and burned the postal card.
And before they left Lulu said: "Dwight--you can"t tell how long you"ll be gone?"
"Of course not. How should I tell?"
"No. And that letter might come while you"re away."
"Conceivably. Letters do come while a man"s away!"
"Dwight--I thought if you wouldn"t mind if I opened it--"
"Opened it?"
"Yes. You see, it"ll be about me mostly--"
"I should have said that it"ll be about my brother mostly."
"But you know what I mean. You wouldn"t mind if I did open it?"
"But you say you know what"ll be in it."
"So I did know--till you--I"ve got to see that letter, Dwight."
"And so you shall. But not till I show it to you. My dear Lulu, you know how I hate having my mail interfered with."
She might have said: "Small souls always make a point of that." She said nothing. She watched them set off, and kept her mind on Ina"s thousand injunctions.
"Don"t let Di see much of Bobby Larkin. And, Lulu--if it occurs to her to have Mr. Cornish come up to sing, of course you ask him. You might ask him to supper. And don"t let mother overdo. And, Lulu, now do watch Monona"s handkerchief--the child will never take a clean one if I"m not here to tell her...."
She breathed injunctions to the very step of the "bus.
In the "bus Dwight leaned forward:
"See that you play post-office squarely, Lulu!" he called, and threw back his head and lifted his eyebrows.
In the train he turned tragic eyes to his wife.
"Ina," he said. "It"s _ma_. And she"s going to die. It can"t be...."
Ina said: "But you"re going to help her, Dwight, just being there with her."
It was true that the mere presence of the man would bring a kind of fresh life to that worn frame. Tact and wisdom and love would speak through him and minister.
Toward the end of their week"s absence the letter from Ninian came.