"Is that you, George?" f.a.n.n.y asked abruptly.
"Is that me what?"
"Whistling "On Yonder Rock Reclining"?"
"It"s I," said Isabel.
"Oh," f.a.n.n.y said dryly.
"Does it disturb you?"
"Not at all. I had an idea George was depressed about something, and merely wondered if he could be making such a cheerful sound." And f.a.n.n.y resumed her creaking.
"Is she right, George?" his mother asked quickly, leaning forward in her chair to peer at him through the dusk. "You didn"t eat a very hearty dinner, but I thought it was probably because of the warm weather. Are you troubled about anything?"
"No!" he said angrily.
"That"s good. I thought we had such a nice day, didn"t you?"
"I suppose so," he muttered, and, satisfied, she leaned back in her chair; but "Fra Diavolo" was not revived. After a time she rose, went to the steps, and stood for several minutes looking across the street. Then her laughter was faintly heard.
"Are you laughing about something?" f.a.n.n.y inquired.
"Pardon?" Isabel did not turn, but continued her observation of what had interested her upon the opposite side of the street.
"I asked: Were you laughing at something?"
"Yes, I was!" And she laughed again. "It"s that funny, fat old Mrs.
Johnson. She has a habit of sitting at her bedroom window with a pair of opera-gla.s.ses."
"Really!"
"Really. You can see the window through the place that was left when we had the dead walnut tree cut down. She looks up and down the street, but mostly at father"s and over here. Sometimes she forgets to put out the light in her room, and there she is, spying away for all the world to see!"
However, f.a.n.n.y made no effort to observe this spectacle, but continued her creaking. "I"ve always thought her a very good woman," she said primly.
"So she is," Isabel agreed. "She"s a good, friendly old thing, a little too intimate in her manner, sometimes, and if her poor old opera-gla.s.ses afford her the quiet happiness of knowing what sort of young man our new cook is walking out with, I"m the last to begrudge it to her! Don"t you want to come and look at her, George?"
"What? I beg your pardon. I hadn"t noticed what you were talking about."
"It"s nothing," she laughed. "Only a funny old lady--and she"s gone now.
I"m going, too--at least, I"m going indoors to read. It"s cooler in the house, but the heat"s really not bad anywhere, since nightfall. Summer"s dying. How quickly it goes, once it begins to die."
When she had gone into the house, f.a.n.n.y stopped rocking, and, leaning forward, drew her black gauze wrap about her shoulders and shivered.
"Isn"t it queer," she said drearily, "how your mother can use such words?"
"What words are you talking about?" George asked.
"Words like "die" and "dying." I don"t see how she can bear to use them so soon after your poor father--" She shivered again.
"It"s almost a year," George said absently, and he added: "It seems to me you"re using them yourself."
"I? Never!"
"Yes, you did."
"When?"
"Just this minute."
"Oh!" said f.a.n.n.y. "You mean when I repeated what she said? That"s hardly the same thing, George."
He was not enough interested to argue the point. "I don"t think you"ll convince anybody that mother"s unfeeling," he said indifferently.
"I"m not trying to convince anybody. I mean merely that in my opinion--well, perhaps it may be just as wise for me to keep my opinions to myself."
She paused expectantly, but her possible antic.i.p.ation that George would urge her to discard wisdom and reveal her opinion was not fulfilled. His back was toward her, and he occupied himself with opinions of his own about other matters. f.a.n.n.y may have felt some disappointment as she rose to withdraw.
However, at the last moment she halted with her hand upon the latch of the screen door.
"There"s one thing I hope," she said. "I hope at least she won"t leave off her full mourning on the very anniversary of Wilbur"s death!"
The light door clanged behind her, and the sound annoyed her nephew. He had no idea why she thus used inoffensive wood and wire to dramatize her departure from the veranda, the impression remaining with him being that she was critical of his mother upon some point of funeral millinery.
Throughout the desultory conversation he had been profoundly concerned with his own disturbing affairs, and now was preoccupied with a dialogue taking place (in his mind) between himself and Miss Lucy Morgan. As he beheld the vision, Lucy had just thrown herself at his feet. "George, you must forgive me!" she cried. "Papa was utterly wrong! I have told him so, and the truth is that I have come to rather dislike him as you do, and as you always have, in your heart of hearts. George, I understand you: thy people shall be my people and thy G.o.ds my G.o.ds.
George, won"t you take me back?"
"Lucy, are you sure you understand me?" And in the darkness George"s bodily lips moved in unison with those which uttered the words in his imaginary rendering of this scene. An eavesdropper, concealed behind the column, could have heard the whispered word "sure," the emphasis put upon it in the vision was so poignant. "You say you understand me, but are you sure?"
Weeping, her head bowed almost to her waist, the ethereal Lucy made reply: "Oh, so sure! I will never listen to father"s opinions again. I do not even care if I never see him again!"
"Then I pardon you," he said gently.
This softened mood lasted for several moments--until he realized that it had been brought about by processes strikingly lacking in substance.
Abruptly he swung his feet down from the copestone to the floor of the veranda. "Pardon nothing!" No meek Lucy had thrown herself in remorse at his feet; and now he pictured her as she probably really was at this moment: sitting on the white steps of her own front porch in the moonlight, with red-headed Fred Kinney and silly Charlie Johnson and four or five others--all of them laughing, most likely, and some idiot playing the guitar!
George spoke aloud: "Riffraff!"
And because of an impish but all too natural reaction of the mind, he could see Lucy with much greater distinctness in this vision than in his former pleasing one. For a moment she was miraculously real before him, every line and colour of her. He saw the moonlight shimmering in the chiffon of her skirts brightest on her crossed knee and the tip of her slipper; saw the blue curve of the characteristic shadow behind her, as she leaned back against the white step; saw the watery twinkling of sequins in the gauze wrap over her white shoulders as she moved, and the faint, symmetrical lights in her black hair--and not one alluring, exasperating twentieth-of-an-inch of her laughing profile was spared him as she seemed to turn to the infernal Kinney--
"Riffraff!" And George began furiously to pace the stone floor.
"Riffraff!" By this hard term--a favourite with him since childhood"s scornful hour--he meant to indicate, not Lucy, but the young gentlemen who, in his vision, surrounded her. "Riffraff!" he said again, aloud, and again:
"Riffraff!"
At that moment, as it happened, Lucy was playing chess with her father; and her heart, though not remorseful, was as heavy as George could have wished. But she did not let Eugene see that she was troubled, and he was pleased when he won three games of her. Usually she beat him.