"Good enough!" He applauded noiselessly, with fat hands. His diamond ring sparkled, his even white teeth flashed. "I"ve had twenty years of galloping about," he informed her, unable, after all, to transfer his interests from himself to her.
"Where?" she asked, although she knew.
"South America. Central America. Mexico. Panama." He searched his memory. "Colombo," he superadded.
"My!" said Lulu. She had probably never in her life had the least desire to see any of these places. She did not want to see them now. But she wanted pa.s.sionately to meet her companion"s mind.
"It"s the life," he informed her.
"Must be," Lulu breathed. "I----" she tried, and gave it up.
"Where you been mostly?" he asked at last.
By this unprecedented interest in her doings she was thrown into a pa.s.sion of excitement.
"Here," she said. "I"ve always been here. Fifteen years with Ina. Before that we lived in the country."
He listened sympathetically now, his head well on one side. He watched her veined hands pinch at the pies. "Poor old girl," he was thinking.
"Is it Miss Lulu Bett?" he abruptly inquired. "Or Mrs.?"
Lulu flushed in anguish.
"Miss," she said low, as one who confesses the extremity of failure.
Then from unplumbed depths another Lulu abruptly spoke up. "From choice," she said.
He shouted with laughter.
"You bet! Oh, you bet!" he cried. "Never doubted it." He made his palms taut and drummed on the table. "Say!" he said.
Lulu glowed, quickened, smiled. Her face was another face.
"Which kind of a Mr. are you?" she heard herself ask, and his shoutings redoubled. Well! Who would have thought it of her?
"Never give myself away," he a.s.sured her. "Say, by George, I never thought of that before! There"s no telling whether a man"s married or not, by his name!"
"It don"t matter," said Lulu.
"Why not?"
"Not so many people want to know."
Again he laughed. This laughter was intoxicating to Lulu. No one ever laughed at what she said save Herbert, who laughed at _her_. "Go it, old girl!" Ninian was thinking, but this did not appear.
The child Monona now arrived, banging the front gate and hurling herself round the house on the board walk, catching the toe of one foot in the heel of the other and blundering forward, head down, her short, straight hair flapping over her face. She landed flat-footed on the porch. She began to speak, using a ridiculous perversion of words, scarcely articulate, then in vogue in her group. And,
"Whose dog?" she shrieked.
Ninian looked over his shoulder, held out his hand, finished something that he was saying to Lulu. Monona came to him readily enough, staring, loose-lipped.
"I"ll bet I"m your uncle," said Ninian.
Relationship being her highest known form of romance, Monona was thrilled by this intelligence.
"Give us a kiss," said Ninian, finding in the plural some vague mitigation for some vague offence.
Monona, looking silly, complied. And her uncle said my stars, such a great big tall girl--they would have to put a board on her head.
"What"s that?" inquired Monona. She had spied his great diamond ring.
"This," said her uncle, "was brought to me by Santa Claus, who keeps a jewellery shop in heaven."
The precision and speed of his improvisation revealed him. He had twenty other diamonds like this one. He kept them for those Sundays when the sun comes up in the west. Of course--often! Some day he was going to melt a diamond and eat it. Then you sparkled all over in the dark, ever after. Another diamond he was going to plant. They say----He did it all gravely, absorbedly. About it he was as conscienceless as a savage. This was no fancy spun to pleasure a child. This was like lying, for its own sake.
He went on talking with Lulu, and now again he was the tease, the braggart, the unbridled, unmodified male.
Monona stood in the circle of his arm. The little being was attentive, softened, subdued. Some pretty, faint light visited her. In her listening look, she showed herself a charming child.
"It strikes me," said Ninian to Lulu, "that you"re going to do something mighty interesting before you die."
It was the clear conversational impulse, born of the need to keep something going, but Lulu was all faith.
She closed the oven door on her pies and stood brushing flour from her fingers. He was looking away from her, and she looked at him. He was completely like his picture. She felt as if she were looking at his picture and she was abashed and turned away.
"Well, I hope so," she said, which had certainly never been true, for her old formless dreams were no intention--nothing but a mush of discontent. "I hope I can do something that"s nice before I quit," she said. Nor was this hope now independently true, but only this surprising longing to appear interesting in his eyes. To dance before him. "What would the folks think of me, going on so?" she suddenly said. Her mild sense of disloyalty was delicious. So was his understanding glance.
"You"re the stuff," he remarked absently.
She laughed happily.
The door opened. Ina appeared.
"Well!" said Ina. It was her remotest tone. She took this man to be a pedlar, beheld her child in his clasp, made a quick, forward step, chin lifted. She had time for a very javelin of a look at Lulu.
"h.e.l.lo!" said Ninian. He had the one formula. "I believe I"m your husband"s brother. Ain"t this Ina?"
It had not crossed the mind of Lulu to present him.
Beautiful it was to see Ina relax, soften, warm, transform, humanise. It gave one hope for the whole species.
"Ninian!" she cried. She lent a faint impression of the double _e_ to the initial vowel. She slurred the rest, until the _y_ sound squinted in. Not Neenyun, but nearly Neenyun.
He kissed her.
"Since Dwight isn"t here!" she cried, and shook her finger at him. Ina"s conception of hostess-ship was definite: A volley of questions--was his train on time? He had found the house all right? Of course! Any one could direct him, she should hope. And he hadn"t seen Dwight? She must telephone him. But then she arrested herself with a sharp, curved fling of her starched skirts. No! They would surprise him at tea--she stood taut, lips compressed. Oh, the Plows were coming to tea. How unfortunate, she thought. How fortunate, she said.
The child Monona made her knees and elbows stiff and danced up and down.
She must, she must partic.i.p.ate.