"Oh, Miss Bett!" he cried. At that name she flushed. "Why," said Cornish, "you must have been coming from Millton yesterday when I saw you. I noticed Miss Di had her bag--" He stopped, stared.
"You brought her back!" he deduced everything.
"Oh!" said Lulu. "Oh, no--I mean--"
"I heard about the eloping again this morning," he said. "That"s just what you did--you brought her back."
"You mustn"t tell that! You won"t? You won"t!"
"No. "Course not." He mulled it. "You tell me this: Do they know? I mean about your going after her?"
"No."
"You never told!"
"They don"t know she went."
"That"s a funny thing," he blurted out, "for you not to tell her folks--I mean, right off. Before last night...."
"You don"t know them. Dwight"d never let up on that--he"d _joke_ her about it after a while."
"But it seems--"
"Ina"d talk about disgracing _her_. They wouldn"t know what to do.
There"s no sense in telling them. They aren"t a mother and father," Lulu said.
Cornish was not accustomed to deal with so much reality. But Lulu"s reality he could grasp.
"You"re a trump anyhow," he affirmed.
"Oh, no," said Lulu modestly.
Yes, she was. He insisted upon it.
"By George," he exclaimed, "you don"t find very many _married_ women with as good sense as you"ve got."
At this, just as he was agonising because he had seemed to refer to the truth that she was, after all, not married, at this Lulu laughed in some amus.e.m.e.nt, and said nothing.
"You"ve been a jewel in their home all right," said Cornish. "I bet they"ll miss you if you do go."
"They"ll miss my cooking," Lulu said without bitterness.
"They"ll miss more than that, I know. I"ve often watched you there--"
"You have?" It was not so much pleasure as pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude which lighted her eyes.
"You made the whole place," said Cornish.
"You don"t mean just the cooking?"
"No, no. I mean--well, that first night when you played croquet. I felt at home when you came out."
That look of hers, rarely seen, which was no less than a look of loveliness, came now to Lulu"s face. After a pause she said: "I never had but one compliment before that wasn"t for my cooking." She seemed to feel that she must confess to that one. "He told me I done my hair up nice." She added conscientiously: "That was after I took notice how the ladies in Savannah, Georgia, done up theirs."
"Well, well," said Cornish only.
"Well," said Lulu, "I must be going now. I wanted to say good-bye to you--and there"s one or two other places...."
"I hate to have you go," said Cornish, and tried to add something. "I hate to have you go," was all that he could find to add.
Lulu rose. "Oh, well," was all that she could find.
They shook hands, Lulu laughing a little. Cornish followed her to the door. He had begun on "Look here, I wish ..." when Lulu said "good-bye," and paused, wishing intensely to know what he would have said. But all that he said was: "Good-bye. I wish you weren"t going."
"So do I," said Lulu, and went, still laughing.
Cornish saw her red dress vanish from his door, flash by his window, her head averted. And there settled upon him a depression out of all proportion to the slow depression of his days. This was more--it a.s.sailed him, absorbed him.
He stood staring out the window. Some one pa.s.sed with a greeting of which he was conscious too late to return. He wandered back down the store and his pianos looked back at him like strangers. Down there was the green curtain which screened his home life. He suddenly hated that green curtain. He hated this whole place. For the first time it occurred to him that he hated Warbleton.
He came back to his table, and sat down before his lawbook. But he sat, chin on chest, regarding it. No ... no escape that way....
A step at the door and he sprang up. It was Lulu, coming toward him, her face unsmiling but somehow quite lighted. In her hand was a letter.
"See," she said. "At the office was this...."
She thrust in his hand the single sheet. He read:
" ... Just wanted you to know you"re actually rid of me. I"ve heard from her, in Brazil. She ran out of money and thought of me, and her lawyer wrote to me.... I"ve never been any good--Dwight would tell you that if his pride would let him tell the truth once in a while. But there ain"t anything in my life makes me feel as bad as this.... I s"pose you couldn"t understand and I don"t myself.... Only the sixteen years keeping still made me think she was gone sure ... but you were so downright good, that"s what was the worst ... do you see what I want to say ..."
Cornish read it all and looked at Lulu. She was grave and in her eyes there was a look of dignity such as he had never seen them wear.
Incredible dignity.
"He didn"t lie to get rid of me--and she was alive, just as he thought she might be," she said.
"I"m glad," said Cornish.
"Yes," said Lulu. "He isn"t quite so bad as Dwight tried to make him out."
It was not of this that Cornish had been thinking.
"Now you"re free," he said.
"Oh, that ..." said Lulu.
She replaced her letter in its envelope.