She took off her jacket and sat more at ease in her blouse, of some soft, flimsy silk. She was already at home in my place, had slipped quietly into it, as she did into everything. She told me her business was going well, and she had saved a little money.
"This summer I"m going to build the house for mother I"ve talked about so long. I won"t be able to pay up on it at first, but I want her to have it before she is too old to enjoy it. Next summer I"ll take her down new furniture and carpets, so she"ll have something to look forward to all winter."
I watched Lena sitting there so smooth and sunny and well-cared-for, and thought of how she used to run barefoot over the prairie until after the snow began to fly, and how Crazy Mary chased her round and round the cornfields. It seemed to me wonderful that she should have got on so well in the world. Certainly she had no one but herself to thank for it.
"You must feel proud of yourself, Lena," I said heartily. "Look at me; I"ve never earned a dollar, and I don"t know that I"ll ever be able to."
"Tony says you"re going to be richer than Mr. Harling some day. She"s always bragging about you, you know."
"Tell me, how is is Tony?" Tony?"
"She"s fine. She works for Mrs. Gardener at the hotel now. She"s housekeeper. Mrs. Gardener"s health isn"t what it was, and she can"t see after everything like she used to. She has great confidence in Tony. Tony"s made it up with the Harlings, too. Little Nina is so fond of her that Mrs. Harling kind of overlooked things."
"Is she still going with Larry Donovan?"
"Oh, that"s on, worse than ever! I guess they"re engaged. Tony talks about him like he was president of the railroad. Everybody laughs about it, because she was never a girl to be soft. She won"t hear a word against him. She"s so sort of innocent."
I said I didn"t like Larry, and never would.
Lena"s face dimpled. "Some of us could tell her things, but it wouldn"t do any good. She"d always believe him. That"s Antonia"s failing, you know; if she once likes people, she won"t hear anything against them."
"I think I"d better go home and look after Antonia," I said.
"I think you had." Lena looked up at me in frank amus.e.m.e.nt. "It"s a good thing the Harlings are friendly with her again. Larry"s afraid of them. They ship so much grain, they have influence with the railroad people. What are you studying?" She leaned her elbows on the table and drew my book toward her. I caught a faint odour of violet sachet. "So that"s Latin, is it? It looks hard. You do go to the theatre sometimes, though, for I"ve seen you there. Don"t you just love a good play, Jim? I can"t stay at home in the evening if there"s one in town. I"d be willing to work like a slave, it seems to me, to live in a place where there are theatres."
"Let"s go to a show together sometime. You are going to let me come to see you, aren"t you?"
"Would you like to? I"d be ever so pleased. I"m never busy after six o"clock, and I let my sewing girls go at half-past five. I board, to save time, but sometimes I cook a chop for myself, and I"d be glad to cook one for you. Well"-she began to put on her white gloves-"it"s been awful good to see you, Jim."
"You needn"t hurry, need you? You"ve hardly told me anything yet."
"We can talk when you come to see me. I expect you don"t often have lady visitors. The old woman downstairs didn"t want to let me come up very much. I told her I was from your home town, and had promised your grandmother to come and see you. How surprised Mrs. Burden would be!" Lena laughed softly as she rose.
When I caught up my hat, she shook her head. "No, I don"t want you to go with me. I"m to meet some Swedes at the drugstore. You wouldn"t care for them. I wanted to see your room so I could write Tony all about it, but I must tell her how I left you right here with your books. She"s always so afraid someone will run off with you!" Lena slipped her silk sleeves into the jacket I held for her, smoothed it over her person, and b.u.t.toned it slowly. I walked with her to the door. "Come and see me sometimes when you"re lonesome. But maybe you have all the friends you want. Have you?" She turned her soft cheek to me. "Have you?" she whispered teasingly in my ear. In a moment I watched her fade down the dusky stairway.
When I turned back to my room the place seemed much pleasanter than before. Lena had left something warm and friendly in the lamplight. How I loved to hear her laugh again! It was so soft and unexcited and appreciative-gave a favourable interpretation to everything. When I closed my eyes I could hear them all laughing-the Danish laundry girls and the three Bohemian Marys. Lena had brought them all back to me. It came over me, as it had never done before, the relation between girls like those and the poetry of Virgil. If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry. I understood that clearly, for the first time. This revelation seemed to me inestimably precious. I clung to it as if it might suddenly vanish.
As I sat down to my book at last, my old dream about Lena coming across the harvest-field in her short skirt seemed to me like the memory of an actual experience. It floated before me on the page like a picture, and underneath it stood the mournful line: "Optima dies ... prima fugit." "Optima dies ... prima fugit."
III
IN LINCOLN THE BEST part of the theatrical season came late, when the good companies stopped off there for one-night stands, after their long runs in New York and Chicago. That spring Lena went with me to see Joseph Jefferson in "Rip Van Winkle,"23 and to a war play called "Shenandoah." and to a war play called "Shenandoah."r She was inflexible about paying for her own seat; said she was in business now, and she wouldn"t have a schoolboy spending his money on her. I liked to watch a play with Lena; everything was wonderful to her, and everything was true. It was like going to revival meetings with someone who was always being converted. She handed her feelings over to the actors with a kind of fatalistic resignation. Accessories of costume and scene meant much more to her than to me. She sat entranced through "Robin Hood" and hung upon the lips of the contralto who sang, "Oh, Promise Me!" She was inflexible about paying for her own seat; said she was in business now, and she wouldn"t have a schoolboy spending his money on her. I liked to watch a play with Lena; everything was wonderful to her, and everything was true. It was like going to revival meetings with someone who was always being converted. She handed her feelings over to the actors with a kind of fatalistic resignation. Accessories of costume and scene meant much more to her than to me. She sat entranced through "Robin Hood" and hung upon the lips of the contralto who sang, "Oh, Promise Me!"
Toward the end of April, the billboards, which I watched anxiously in those days, bloomed out one morning with gleaming white posters on which two names were impressively printed in blue Gothic letters: the name of an actress of whom I had often heard, and the name "Camille."24 I called at the Raleigh Block for Lena on Sat.u.r.day evening, and we walked down to the theatre. The weather was warm and sultry and put us both in a holiday humour. We arrived early, because Lena liked to watch the people come in. There was a note on the programme, saying that the "incidental music" would be from the opera "Traviata,"s which was made from the same story as the play. We had neither of us read the play, and we did not know what it was about-though I seemed to remember having heard it was a piece in which great actresses shone. "The Count of Monte Cristo," which was made from the same story as the play. We had neither of us read the play, and we did not know what it was about-though I seemed to remember having heard it was a piece in which great actresses shone. "The Count of Monte Cristo,"25 which I had seen James O"Neill play that winter, was by the only Alexandre Dumas I knew. This play, I saw, was by his son, and I expected a family resemblance. A couple of jack-rabbits, run in off the prairie, could not have been more innocent of what awaited them than were Lena and I. which I had seen James O"Neill play that winter, was by the only Alexandre Dumas I knew. This play, I saw, was by his son, and I expected a family resemblance. A couple of jack-rabbits, run in off the prairie, could not have been more innocent of what awaited them than were Lena and I.
Our excitement began with the rise of the curtain, when the moody Varville, seated before the fire, interrogated Nanine. Decidedly, there was a new tang about this dialogue. I had never heard in the theatre lines that were alive, that presupposed and took for granted, like those which pa.s.sed between Varville and Marguerite in the brief encounter before her friends entered. This introduced the most brilliant, worldly, the most enchantingly gay scene I had ever looked upon. I had never seen champagne bottles opened on the stage before-indeed, I had never seen them opened anywhere. The memory of that supper makes me hungry now; the sight of it then, when I had only a students" boarding-house dinner behind me, was delicate torment. I seem to remember gilded chairs and tables (arranged hurriedly by footmen in white gloves and stockings), linen of dazzling whiteness, glittering gla.s.s, silver dishes, a great bowl of fruit, and the reddest of roses. The room was invaded by beautiful women and dashing young men, laughing and talking together. The men were dressed more or less after the period in which the play was written; the women were not. I saw no inconsistency. Their talk seemed to open to one the brilliant world in which they lived; every sentence made one older and wiser, every pleasantry enlarged one"s horizon. One could experienceexcess and satiety without the inconvenience of learning what to do with one"s hands in a drawing-room! When the characters all spoke at once and I missed some of the phrases they flashed at each other, I was in misery. I strained my ears and eyes to catch every exclamation. Decidedly, there was a new tang about this dialogue. I had never heard in the theatre lines that were alive, that presupposed and took for granted, like those which pa.s.sed between Varville and Marguerite in the brief encounter before her friends entered. This introduced the most brilliant, worldly, the most enchantingly gay scene I had ever looked upon. I had never seen champagne bottles opened on the stage before-indeed, I had never seen them opened anywhere. The memory of that supper makes me hungry now; the sight of it then, when I had only a students" boarding-house dinner behind me, was delicate torment. I seem to remember gilded chairs and tables (arranged hurriedly by footmen in white gloves and stockings), linen of dazzling whiteness, glittering gla.s.s, silver dishes, a great bowl of fruit, and the reddest of roses. The room was invaded by beautiful women and dashing young men, laughing and talking together. The men were dressed more or less after the period in which the play was written; the women were not. I saw no inconsistency. Their talk seemed to open to one the brilliant world in which they lived; every sentence made one older and wiser, every pleasantry enlarged one"s horizon. One could experienceexcess and satiety without the inconvenience of learning what to do with one"s hands in a drawing-room! When the characters all spoke at once and I missed some of the phrases they flashed at each other, I was in misery. I strained my ears and eyes to catch every exclamation.
The actress who played Marguerite was even then old-fashioned, though historic. She had been a member of Daly"s famous New York company, and afterward a "star" under his direction.26 She was a woman who could not be taught, it is said, though she had a crude natural force which carried with people whose feelings were accessible and whose taste was not squeamish. She was already old, with a ravaged countenance and a physique curiously hard and stiff. She moved with difficulty-I think she was lame-I seem to remember some story about a malady of the spine. Her Armand was disproportionately young and slight, a handsome youth, perplexed in the extreme. But what did it matter? I believed devoutly in her power to fascinate him, in her dazzling loveliness. I believed her young, ardent, reckless, disillusioned, under sentence, feverish, avid of pleasure. I wanted to cross the footlights and help the slim-waisted Armand in the frilled shirt to convince her that there was still loyalty and devotion in the world. Her sudden illness, when the gaiety was at its height, her pallor, the handkerchief she crushed against her lips, the cough she smothered under the laughter while Gaston kept playing the piano lightly-it all wrung my heart. But not so much as her cynicism in the long dialogue with her lover which followed. How far was I from questioning her unbelief! While the charmingly sincere young man pleaded with her-accompanied by the orchestra in the old "Traviata" duet, She was a woman who could not be taught, it is said, though she had a crude natural force which carried with people whose feelings were accessible and whose taste was not squeamish. She was already old, with a ravaged countenance and a physique curiously hard and stiff. She moved with difficulty-I think she was lame-I seem to remember some story about a malady of the spine. Her Armand was disproportionately young and slight, a handsome youth, perplexed in the extreme. But what did it matter? I believed devoutly in her power to fascinate him, in her dazzling loveliness. I believed her young, ardent, reckless, disillusioned, under sentence, feverish, avid of pleasure. I wanted to cross the footlights and help the slim-waisted Armand in the frilled shirt to convince her that there was still loyalty and devotion in the world. Her sudden illness, when the gaiety was at its height, her pallor, the handkerchief she crushed against her lips, the cough she smothered under the laughter while Gaston kept playing the piano lightly-it all wrung my heart. But not so much as her cynicism in the long dialogue with her lover which followed. How far was I from questioning her unbelief! While the charmingly sincere young man pleaded with her-accompanied by the orchestra in the old "Traviata" duet, "misterioso, misterios" altero!" "misterioso, misterios" altero!"27- she maintained her bitter scepticism, and the curtain fell on her dancing recklessly with the others, after Armand had been sent away with his flower. she maintained her bitter scepticism, and the curtain fell on her dancing recklessly with the others, after Armand had been sent away with his flower.
Between the acts we had no time to forget. The orchestra kept sawing away at the "Traviata" music, so joyous and sad, so thin and far-away, so clap-trap and yet so heart-breaking. After the second act I left Lena in tearful contemplation of the ceiling, and went out into the lobby to smoke. As I walked about there I congratulated myself that I had not brought some Lincoln girl who would talk during the waits about the junior dances, or whether the cadets would camp at Plattsmouth. Lena was at least a woman, and I was a man.
Through the scene between Marguerite and the elder Duval, Lena wept unceasingly, and I sat helpless to prevent the closing of that chapter of idyllic love, dreading the return of the young man whose ineffable happiness was only to be the measure of his fall.
I suppose no woman could have been further in person, voice, and temperament from Dumas" appealing heroine than the veteran actress who first acquainted me with her. Her conception of the character was as heavy and uncompromising as her diction; she bore hard on the idea and on the consonants. At all times she was highly tragic, devoured by remorse. Lightness of stress or behaviour was far from her. Her voice was heavy and deep: "Ar-r-r-mond!" she would begin, as if she were summoning him to the bar of Judgment. But the lines were enough. She had only to utter them. They created the character in spite of her.
The heartless world which Marguerite re-entered with Varville had never been so glittering and reckless as on the night when it gathered in Olympe"s salon for the fourth act. There were chandeliers hung from the ceiling, I remember, many servants in livery, gaming-tables where the men played with piles of gold, and a staircase down which the guests made their entrance. After all the others had gathered round the card-tables and young Duval had been warned by Prudence, Marguerite descended the staircase with Varville; such a cloak, such a fan, such jewels-and her face! One knew at a glance how it was with her. When Armand, with the terrible words, "Look, all of you, I owe this woman nothing!" flung the gold and bank-notes at the half-swooning Marguerite, Lena cowered beside me and covered her face with her hands.
The curtain rose on the bedroom scene. By this time there wasn"t a nerve in me that hadn"t been twisted. Nanine alone could have made me cry. I loved Nanine tenderly; and Gaston, how one clung to that good fellow! The New Year"s presents were not too much; nothing could be too much now. I wept unrestrainedly. Even the handkerchief in my breast-pocket, worn for elegance and not at all for use, was wet through by the time that moribund woman sank for the last time into the arms of her lover.
When we reached the door of the theatre, the streets were shining with rain. I had prudently brought along Mrs. Harling"s useful Commencement present, and I took Lena home under its shelter. After leaving her, I walked slowly out into the country part of the town where I lived. The lilacs were all blooming in the yards, and the smell of them after the rain, of the new leaves and the blossoms together, blew into my face with a sort of bitter sweetness. I tramped through the puddles and under the showery trees, mourning for Marguerite Gauthier as if she had died only yesterday, sighing with the spirit of 1840, which had sighed so much, and which had reached me only that night, across long years and several languages, through the person of an infirm old actress. The idea is one that no circ.u.mstances can frustrate. Wherever and whenever that piece is put on, it is April.
IV
HOW WELL I REMEMBER the stiff little parlour where I used to wait for Lena: the hard horsehair furniture, bought at some auction sale, the long mirror, the fashion-plates on the wall. If I sat down even for a moment, I was sure to find threads and bits of coloured silk clinging to my clothes after I went away. Lena"s success puzzled me. She was so easygoing; had none of the push and self-a.s.sertiveness that get people ahead in business. She had come to Lincoln, a country girl, with no introductions except to some cousins of Mrs. Thomas who lived there, and she was already making clothes for the women of "the young married set." Evidently she had great natural apt.i.tude for her work. She knew, as she said, "what people looked well in." She never tired of poring over fashion-books. Sometimes in the evening I would find her alone in her work-room, draping folds of satin on a wire figure, with a quite blissful expression of countenance. I couldn"t help thinking that the years when Lena literally hadn"t enough clothes to cover herself might have something to do with her untiring interest in dressing the human figure. Her clients said that Lena "had style," and overlooked her habitual inaccuracies. She never, I discovered, finished anything by the time she had promised, and she frequently spent more money on materials than her customer had authorized. Once, when I arrived at six o"clock, Lena was ushering out a fidgety mother and her awkward, overgrown daughter. The woman detained Lena at the door to say apologetically: "You"ll try to keep it under fifty for me, won"t you, Miss Lingard? You see, she"s really too young to come to an expensive dressmaker, but I knew you could do more with her than anybody else."
"Oh, that will be all right, Mrs. Herron. I think we"ll manage to get a good effect," Lena replied blandly.
I thought her manner with her customers very good, and wondered where she had learned such self-possession.
Sometimes after my morning cla.s.ses were over, I used to encounter Lena downtown, in her velvet suit and a little black hat, with a veil tied smoothly over her face, looking as fresh as the spring morning. Maybe she would be carrying home a bunch of jonquils or a hyacinth plant. When we pa.s.sed a candy store her footsteps would hesitate and linger. "Don"t let me go in," she would murmur. "Get me by if you can." She was very fond of sweets, and was afraid of growing too plump.
We had delightful Sunday breakfasts together at Lena"s. At the back of her long work-room was a bay-window, large enough to hold a box-couch and a reading-table. We breakfasted in this recess, after drawing the curtains that shut out the long room, with cutting-tables and wire women and sheet-draped garments on the walls. The sunlight poured in, making everything on the table shine and glitter and the flame of the alcohol lamp disappear altogether. Lena"s curly black water-spaniel, Prince, breakfasted with us. He sat beside her on the couch and behaved very well until the Polish violin-teacher across the hall began to practise, when Prince would growl and sniff the air with disgust. Lena"s landlord, old Colonel Raleigh, had given her the dog, and at first she was not at all pleased. She had spent too much of her life taking care of animals to have much sentiment about them. But Prince was a knowing little beast, and she grew fond of him. After breakfast I made him do his lessons; play dead dog, shake hands, stand up like a soldier. We used to put my cadet cap on his head-I had to take military drill at the university-and give him a yard-measure to hold with his front leg. His gravity made us laugh immoderately.
Lena"s talk always amused me. Antonia had never talked like the people about her. Even after she learned to speak English readily, there was always something impulsive and foreign in her speech. But Lena had picked up all the conventional expressions she heard at Mrs. Thomas"s dressmaking shop. Those formal phrases, the very flower of small-town proprieties, and the flat commonplaces, nearly all hypocritical in their origin, became very funny, very engaging, when they were uttered in Lena"s soft voice, with her caressing intonation and arch naivete. Nothing could be more diverting than to hear Lena, who was almost as candid as Nature, call a leg a "limb" or a house a "home."
We used to linger a long while over our coffee in that sunny corner. Lena was never so pretty as in the morning; she wakened fresh with the world every day, and her eyes had a deeper colour then, like the blue flowers that are never so blue as when they first open. I could sit idle all through a Sunday morning and look at her. Ole Benson"s behaviour was now no mystery to me.
"There was never any harm in Ole," she said once. "People needn"t have troubled themselves. He just liked to come over and sit on the draw-side and forget about his bad luck. I liked to have him. Any company"s welcome when you"re off with cattle all the time."
"But wasn"t he always glum?" I asked. "People said he never talked at all."
"Sure he talked, in Norwegian. He"d been a sailor on an English boat and had seen lots of queer places. He had wonderful tattoos. We used to sit and look at them for hours; there wasn"t much to look at out there. He was like a picture book. He had a ship and a strawberry girl on one arm, and on the other a girl standing before a little house, with a fence and gate and all, waiting for her sweetheart. Farther up his arm, her sailor had come back and was kissing her. "The Sailor"s Return," he called it."
I admitted it was no wonder Ole liked to look at a pretty girl once in a while, with such a fright at home.
"You know," Lena said confidentially, "he married Mary because he thought she was strong-minded and would keep him straight. He never could keep straight on sh.o.r.e. The last time he landed in Liverpool he"d been out on a two years" voyage. He was paid off one morning, and by the next he hadn"t a cent left, and his watch and compa.s.s were gone. He"d got with some women, and they"d taken everything. He worked his way to this country on a little pa.s.senger boat. Mary was a stewardess, and she tried to convert him on the way over. He thought she was just the one to keep him steady. Poor Ole! He used to bring me candy from town, hidden in his feed-bag. He couldn"t refuse anything to a girl. He"d have given away his tattoos long ago, if he could. He"s one of the people I"m sorriest for."
If I happened to spend an evening with Lena and stayed late, the Polish violin-teacher across the hall used to come out and watch me descend the stairs, muttering so threateningly that it would have been easy to fall into a quarrel with him. Lena had told him once that she liked to hear him practise, so he always left his door open, and watched who came and went.
There was a coolness between the Pole and Lena"s landlord on her account. Old Colonel Raleigh had come to Lincoln from Kentucky and invested an inherited fortune in real estate, at the time of inflated prices. Now he sat day after day in his office in the Raleigh Block, trying to discover where his money had gone and how he could get some of it back. He was a widower, and found very little congenial companionship in this casual Western city. Lena"s good looks and gentle manners appealed to him. He said her voice reminded him of Southern voices, and he found as many opportunities of hearing it as possible. He painted and papered her rooms for her that spring, and put in a porcelain bathtub in place of the tin one that had satisfied the former tenant. While these repairs were being made, the old gentleman often dropped in to consult Lena"s preferences. She told me with amus.e.m.e.nt how Ordinsky, the Pole, had presented himself at her door one evening, and said that if the landlord was annoying her by his attentions, he would promptly put a stop to it.
"I don"t exactly know what to do about him," she said, shaking her head, "he"s so sort of wild all the time. I wouldn"t like to have him say anything rough to that nice old man. The colonel is long-winded, but then I expect he"s lonesome. I don"t think he cares much for Ordinsky, either. He said once that if I had any complaints to make of my neighbours, I mustn"t hesitate."
One Sat.u.r.day evening when I was having supper with Lena, we heard a knock at her parlour door, and there stood the Pole, coat-less, in a dress shirt and collar. Prince dropped on his paws and began to growl like a mastiff, while the visitor apologized, saying that he could not possibly come in thus attired, but he begged Lena to lend him some safety pins.
"Oh, you"ll have to come in, Mr. Ordinsky, and let me see what"s the matter." She closed the door behind him. "Jim, won"t you make Prince behave?"
I rapped Prince on the nose, while Ordinsky explained that he had not had his dress clothes on for a long time, and to-night, when he was going to play for a concert, his waistcoat had split down the back. He thought he could pin it together until he got it to a tailor.
Lena took him by the elbow and turned him round. She laughed when she saw the long gap in the satin. "You could never pin that, Mr. Ordinsky. You"ve kept it folded too long, and the goods is all gone along the crease. Take it off. I can put a new piece of lining-silk in there for you in ten minutes." She disappeared into her work-room with the vest, leaving me to confront the Pole, who stood against the door like a wooden figure. He folded his arms and glared at me with his excitable, slanting brown eyes. His head was the shape of a chocolate drop, and was covered with dry, straw-coloured hair that fuzzed up about his pointed crown. He had never done more than mutter at me as I pa.s.sed him, and I was surprised when he now addressed me.
"Miss Lingard," he said haughtily, "is a young woman for whom I have the utmost, the utmost respect."
"So have I," I said coldly.
He paid no heed to my remark, but began to do rapid finger-exercises on his shirt-sleeves, as he stood with tightly folded arms.
"Kindness of heart," he went on, staring at the ceiling, "sentiment, are not understood in a place like this. The n.o.blest qualities are ridiculed. Grinning college boys, ignorant and conceited, what do they know of delicacy!"
I controlled my features and tried to speak seriously.
"If you mean me, Mr. Ordinsky, I have known Miss Lingard a long time, and I think I appreciate her kindness. We come from the same town, and we grew up together."
His gaze travelled slowly down from the ceiling and rested on me. "Am I to understand that you have this young woman"s interests at heart? That you do not wish to compromise her?"
"That"s a word we don"t use much here, Mr. Ordinsky. A girl who makes her own living can ask a college boy to supper without being talked about. We take some things for granted."
"Then I have misjudged you, and I ask your pardon"-he bowed gravely. "Miss Lingard," he went on, "is an absolutely trustful heart. She has not learned the hard lessons of life. As for you and me, n.o.blesse oblige"- n.o.blesse oblige"- he watched me narrowly. he watched me narrowly.
Lena returned with the vest. "Come in and let us look at you as you go out, Mr. Ordinsky. I"ve never seen you in your dress suit," she said as she opened the door for him.
A few moments later he reappeared with his violin-case-a heavy m.u.f.fler about his neck and thick woollen gloves on his bony hands. Lena spoke encouragingly to him, and he went off with such an important professional air that we fell to laughing as soon as we had shut the door. "Poor fellow," Lena said indulgently, "he takes everything so hard."
After that Ordinsky was friendly to me, and behaved as if there were some deep understanding between us. He wrote a furious article, attacking the musical taste of the town, and asked me to do him a great service by taking it to the editor of the morning paper. If the editor refused to print it, I was to tell him that he would be answerable to Ordinsky "in person." He declared that he would never retract one word, and that he was quite prepared to lose all his pupils. In spite of the fact that n.o.body ever mentioned his article to him after it appeared-full of typographical errors which he thought intentional-he got a certain satisfaction from believing that the citizens of Lincoln had meekly accepted the epithet "coa.r.s.e barbarians." "You see how it is," he said to me, "where there is no chivalry, there is no amour-propre." amour-propre." When I met him on his rounds now, I thought he carried his head more disdainfully than ever, and strode up the steps of front porches and rang door-bells with more a.s.surance. He told Lena he would never forget how I had stood by him when he was "under fire." When I met him on his rounds now, I thought he carried his head more disdainfully than ever, and strode up the steps of front porches and rang door-bells with more a.s.surance. He told Lena he would never forget how I had stood by him when he was "under fire."
All this time, of course, I was drifting. Lena had broken up my serious mood. I wasn"t interested in my cla.s.ses. I played with Lena and Prince, I played with the Pole, I went buggy-riding with the old colonel, who had taken a fancy to me and used to talk to me about Lena and the "great beauties" he had known in his youth. We were all three in love with Lena.
Before the first of June, Gaston Cleric was offered an instructor-ship at Harvard College, and accepted it. He suggested that I should follow him in the fall, and complete my course at Harvard. He had found out about Lena-not from me-and he talked to me seriously.
"You won"t do anything here now. You should either quit school and go to work, or change your college and begin again in earnest. You won"t recover yourself while you are playing about with this handsome Norwegian. Yes, I"ve seen her with you at the theatre. She"s very pretty, and perfectly irresponsible, I should judge."
Cleric wrote my grandfather that he would like to take me East with him. To my astonishment, grandfather replied that I might go if I wished. I was both glad and sorry on the day when the letter came. I stayed in my room all evening and thought things over. I even tried to persuade myself that I was standing in Lena"s way-it is so necessary to be a little n.o.ble!-and that if she had not me to play with, she would probably marry and secure her future.
The next evening I went to call on Lena. I found her propped up on the couch in her bay-window, with her foot in a big slipper. An awkward little Russian girl whom she had taken into her work-room had dropped a flat-iron on Lena"s toe. On the table beside her there was a basket of early summer flowers which the Pole had left after he heard of the accident. He always managed to know what went on in Lena"s apartment.
Lena was telling me some amusing piece of gossip about one of her clients, when I interrupted her and picked up the flower basket.
"This old chap will be proposing to you some day, Lena."
"Oh, he has-often!" she murmured.
"What! After you"ve refused him?"
"He doesn"t mind that. It seems to cheer him to mention the subject. Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they"re in love with somebody."
"The colonel would marry you in a minute. I hope you won"t marry some old fellow; not even a rich one."
Lena shifted her pillows and looked up at me in surprise.
"Why, I"m not going to marry anybody. Didn"t you know that?"
"Nonsense, Lena. That"s what girls say, but you know better. Every handsome girl like you marries, of course."
She shook her head. "Not me."
"But why not? What makes you say that?" I persisted.
Lena laughed.
"Well, it"s mainly because I don"t want a husband. Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what"s sensible and what"s foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to n.o.body."
"But you"ll be lonesome. You"ll get tired of this sort of life, and you"ll want a family."
"Not me. I like to be lonesome. When I went to work for Mrs. Thomas I was nineteen years old, and I had never slept a night in my life when there weren"t three in the bed. I never had a minute to myself except when I was off with the cattle."
Usually, when Lena referred to her life in the country at all, she dismissed it with a single remark, humorous or mildly cynical. But to-night her mind seemed to dwell on those early years. She told me she couldn"t remember a time when she was so little that she wasn"t lugging a heavy baby about, helping to wash for babies, trying to keep their little chapped hands and faces clean. She remembered home as a place where there were always too many children, a cross man and work piling up around a sick woman.
"It wasn"t mother"s fault. She would have made us comfortable if she could. But that was no life for a girl! After I began to herd and milk, I could never get the smell of the cattle off me. The few underclothes I had I kept in a cracker-box. On Sat.u.r.day nights, after everybody was in bed, then I could take a bath if I wasn"t too tired. I could make two trips to the windmill to carry water, and heat it in the wash-boiler on the stove. While the water was heating, I could bring in a washtub out of the cave, and take my bath in the kitchen. Then I could put on a clean night-gown and get into bed with two others, who likely hadn"t had a bath unless I"d given it to them. You can"t tell me anything about family life. I"ve had plenty to last me."
"But it"s not all like that," I objected.
"Near enough. It"s all being under somebody"s thumb. What"s on your mind, Jim? Are you afraid I"ll want you to marry me some day?"
Then I told her I was going away.
"What makes you want to go away, Jim? Haven"t I been nice to you?"
"You"ve been just awfully good to me, Lena," I blurted. "I don"t think about much else. I never shall think about much else while I"m with you. I"ll never settle down and grind if I stay here. You know that."
I dropped down beside her and sat looking at the floor. I seemed to have forgotten all my reasonable explanations.
Lena drew close to me, and the little hesitation in her voice that had hurt me was not there when she spoke again.
"I oughtn"t to have begun it, ought I?" she murmured. "I ought-n" t to have gone to see you that first time. But I did want to. I guess I"ve always been a little foolish about you. I don"t know what first put it into my head, unless it was Antonia, always telling me I mustn"t be up to any of my nonsense with you. I let you alone for a long while, though, didn"t I?"
She was a sweet creature to those she loved, that Lena Lingard!
At last she sent me away with her soft, slow, renunciatory kiss.
"You aren"t sorry I came to see you that time?" she whispered. "It seemed so natural. I used to think I"d like to be your first sweetheart. You were such a funny kid!"