Miss Lulu Bett.
by Zona Gale.
I
APRIL
The Deacons were at supper. In the middle of the table was a small, appealing tulip plant, looking as anything would look whose sun was a gas jet. This gas jet was high above the table and flared, with a sound.
"Better turn down the gas jest a little," Mr. Deacon said, and stretched up to do so. He made this joke almost every night. He seldom spoke as a man speaks who has something to say, but as a man who makes something to say.
"Well, what have we on the festive board to-night?" he questioned, eyeing it. "Festive" was his favourite adjective. "Beautiful," too. In October he might be heard asking: "Where"s my beautiful fall coat?"
"We have creamed salmon," replied Mrs. Deacon gently. "On toast," she added, with a scrupulous regard for the whole truth. Why she should say this so gently no one can tell. She says everything gently. Her "Could you leave me another bottle of milk this morning?" would wring a milkman"s heart.
"Well, now, let us see," said Mr. Deacon, and attacked the princ.i.p.al dish benignly. "_Let_ us see," he added, as he served.
"I don"t want any," said Monona.
The child Monona was seated upon a book and a cushion, so that her little triangle of nose rose adultly above her plate. Her remark produced precisely the effect for which she had pa.s.sionately hoped.
"_What"s_ this?" cried Mr. Deacon. "_No_ salmon?"
"No," said Monona, inflected up, chin pertly pointed. She felt her power, discarded her "sir."
"Oh now, Pet!" from Mrs. Deacon, on three notes. "You liked it before."
"I don"t want any," said Monona, in precisely her original tone.
"Just a little? A very little?" Mr. Deacon persuaded, spoon dripping;
The child Monona made her lips thin and straight and shook her head until her straight hair flapped in her eyes on either side. Mr. Deacon"s eyes anxiously consulted his wife"s eyes. What is this? Their progeny will not eat? What can be supplied?
"Some bread and milk!" cried Mrs. Deacon brightly, exploding on "bread."
One wondered how she thought of it.
"No," said Monona, inflection up, chin the same. She was affecting indifference to, this scene, in which her soul delighted. She twisted her head, bit her lips unconcernedly, and turned her eyes to the remote.
There emerged from the fringe of things, where she perpetually hovered, Mrs. Deacon"s older sister, Lulu Bett, who was "making her home with us." And that was precisely the case. _They_ were not making her a home, goodness knows. Lulu was the family beast of burden.
"Can"t I make her a little milk toast?" she asked Mrs. Deacon.
Mrs. Deacon hesitated, not with compunction at accepting Lulu"s offer, not diplomatically to lure Monona. But she hesitated habitually, by nature, as another is by nature vivacious or brunette.
"Yes!" shouted the child Monona.
The tension relaxed. Mrs. Deacon a.s.sented. Lulu went to the kitchen. Mr.
Deacon served on. Something of this scene was enacted every day. For Monona the drama never lost its zest. It never occurred to the others to let her sit without eating, once, as a cure-all. The Deacons were devoted parents and the child Monona was delicate. She had a white, grave face, white hair, white eyebrows, white lashes. She was sullen, anaemic. They let her wear rings. She "toed in." The poor child was the late birth of a late marriage and the princ.i.p.al joy which she had provided them thus far was the pleased reflection that they had produced her at all.
"Where"s your mother, Ina?" Mr. Deacon inquired. "Isn"t she coming to her supper?"
"Tantrim," said Mrs. Deacon, softly.
"Oh, ho," said he, and said no more.
The temper of Mrs. Bett, who also lived with them, had days of high vibration when she absented herself from the table as a kind of self-indulgence, and no one could persuade her to food. "Tantrims," they called these occasions.
"Baked potatoes," said Mr. Deacon. "That"s good--that"s good. The baked potato contains more nourishment than potatoes prepared in any other way. The nourishment is next to the skin. Roasting retains it."
"That"s what I always think," said his wife pleasantly.
For fifteen years they had agreed about this.
They ate, in the indecent silence of first savouring food. A delicate crunching of crust, an odour of baked-potato sh.e.l.ls, the slip and touch of the silver.
"Num, num, nummy-num!" sang the child Monona loudly, and was hushed by both parents in simultaneous exclamation which rivalled this lyric outburst. They were alone at table. Di, daughter of a wife early lost to Mr. Deacon, was not there. Di was hardly ever there. She was at that age. That age, in Warbleton.
A clock struck the half hour.
"It"s curious," Mr. Deacon observed, "how that clock loses. It must be fully quarter to." He consulted his watch. "It is quarter to!" he exclaimed with satisfaction. "I"m pretty good at guessing time."
"I"ve noticed that!" cried his Ina.
"Last night, it was only twenty-three to, when the half hour struck," he reminded her.
"Twenty-one, I thought." She was tentative, regarded him with arched eyebrows, mastication suspended.
This point was never to be settled. The colloquy was interrupted by the child Monona, whining for her toast. And the doorbell rang.
"Dear me!" said Mr. Deacon. "What can anybody be thinking of to call just at meal-time?"
He trod the hall, flung open the street door. Mrs. Deacon listened.
Lulu, coming in with the toast, was warned to silence by an uplifted finger. She deposited the toast, tiptoed to her chair. A withered baked potato and cold creamed salmon were on her plate. The child Monona ate with shocking appreciation. Nothing could be made of the voices in the hall. But Mrs. Bett"s door was heard softly to unlatch. She, too, was listening.
A ripple of excitement was caused in the dining-room when Mr. Deacon was divined to usher some one to the parlour. Mr. Deacon would speak with this visitor in a few moments, and now returned to his table. It was notable how slight a thing would give him a sense of self-importance.
Now he felt himself a man of affairs, could not even have a quiet supper with his family without the outside world demanding him. He waved his hand to indicate it was nothing which they would know anything about, resumed his seat, served himself to a second spoon of salmon and remarked, "More roast duck, anybody?" in a loud voice and with a slow wink at his wife. That lady at first looked blank, as she always did in the presence of any humour couched with the least indirection, and then drew back her chin and caught her lower lip in her gold-filled teeth.
This was her conjugal rebuking.
Swedenborg always uses "conjugial." And really this sounds more married.
It should be used with reference to the Deacons. No one was ever more married than they--at least than Mr. Deacon. He made little conjugal jokes in the presence of Lulu who, now completely unnerved by the habit, suspected them where they did not exist, feared lurking _entendre_ in the most innocent comments, and became more tense every hour of her life.
And now the eye of the master of the house fell for the first time upon the yellow tulip in the centre of his table.
"Well, _well_!" he said. "What"s this?"
Ina Deacon produced, fleetly, an unlooked-for dimple.
"Have you been buying flowers?" the master inquired.