In a Little Town Part 44

"Let's ask her," said William, and they walked in at the door.

XVIII

Early one morning about six months from the first dismal Monday morning after William Pepperall's last bankruptcy, Serina wakened to find that William was already up. She had been oversleeping with that luxury which a woman can experience only in an expensive and frilly nightie combined with hemst.i.tched linen sheets. She opened her heavy and slumber-contented eyes to behold her husband in a suit of partly-silk pajamas. He was making strange motions with his feet. "What on earth you doing there?" she yawned, and William grinned.

"Yestiddy afternoon the judge was showin' me a new step in this Max Hicks dance. It's right cute. Goes like this."

Mamma Pepperall watched him cavort a moment, then sniffed contemptuously, and rolled out like a fireman summoned.

"Not a bit like it! It goes like this."

A few minutes later the door opened and Ollie put her head in.

"For Heaven's sake be quiet! You'll wake Prue, and she's all wore out; and she's only got an hour more before they have to get up and take the train for Des Moines."

The old rascals promised to be good, but as soon as she had gone they wrangled in whispers and danced on tiptoes. Suddenly Prue put her head in at the door and gasped:

"What in Heaven's name are you and poppa up to? Do you want to wake Orton?"

Papa had to explain:

"I got a new step, Prue. Goes like this. Come on, momma."

Serina shyly took her place in his arms; but they had taken only a few strides when Prue hissed:

"Sh-h! Don't do it! Stop it!"

"Why?"

"In the first place it's out of date. And in the second place it's not respectable."

Then the hard-working locust, having rebuked the frivolous ants, went back to bed.

"A" AS IN "FATHER"

I

For two years life at Harvard was one long siesta to Orson Carver, 2d.

And then he fell off the window-seat. Orson Carver, 1st, ordered him to wake up and get to work at once. Orson announced to his friends that he was leaving college to pay an extensive visit to "Carthage" and it sounded magnificent until he added, "in the Middle West."

A struggling young railroad had succ.u.mbed to hard times out there, and Orson senior had been appointed receiver. It was the Carthage, Thebes & Rome Railroad, connecting three towns whose names were larger than their populations.

Since Orson had seemed unable to decide what career to choose, if any, his father decided for him--decided that he should take up railroading and begin at the beginning, which was the office at Carthage. And Orson went West to "grow up young man with the country."

Carthage bore not the faintest resemblance to the moving-picture life of the West; he didn't see a single person on horseback. Yet his mother thought of him as one who had vanished into the Mojave desert. She wrote to warn him not to drink the alkali water.

Young Orson, regarding the villagers with patient disdain, was amazed to find that they were patronizing him with amus.e.m.e.nt. They spoke of his adored Boston as an old-fogy place with "no git-up-and-git."

Orson's mother was somewhat comforted when he wrote her that the young women of Carthage were noisy rowdies dressed like frumps. She was a trifle alarmed when she read in his next letter that some of them were not half bad-looking, surprisingly well groomed for so far West, and fairly attractive till they opened their mouths. Then, he said, they tw.a.n.ged the banjo at every vowel and went over the letter "r" as if it were a b.u.mp in the road. He had no desire for blinders, but he said that he would derive comfort from a pair of ear-m.u.f.fs. By and by he was writing her not to be worried about losing him, for there was safety in numbers, and Carthage was so crowded with such graces that he could never single out one siren among so many. The word "siren" forced his mother to conclude that even their voices had ceased to annoy him. She expected him to bring home an Indian squaw or a cowgirl bride on any train.

And so Orson Carver was by delicate degrees engulfed in the life of Carthage. He was never a.s.similated. He kept his own "dialect," as they called it.

The girl that Orson especially attended in Carthage was Tudie Litton, as pretty a creature as he could imagine or desire. For manifest reasons he affected an interest in her brother Arthur. And Arthur, with a characteristic brotherly feeling, tried to keep his sister in her place.

He not only told her that she was "not such a much," but he also said to Orson:

"You think my sister is some girl, but wait till you see Em Terriberry.

She makes Tudie look like something the pup found outside. Just you wait till you see Em. She's been to boarding-school and made some swell friends there, and they've taken her to Europe with 'em. Just you wait."

"I'll wait," said Orson, and proceeded to do so.

But Em remained out of town so long that he had begun to believe her a myth, when one day the word pa.s.sed down the line that she was coming home at last.

That night Tudie murmured a hope that Orson would not be so infatuated with the new-comer as to cast old "friends" aside. She underlined the word "friends" with a long, slow sigh like a heavy pen-stroke, and not without reason, for the word by itself was mild in view of the fact that the "friends" were seated in a motionless hammock in a moon-sheltered porch corner and holding on to each other as if a comet had struck the earth and they were in grave danger of being flung off the planet.

Orson a.s.sured Tudie: "No woman exists who could come between us!" And a woman must have been supernaturally thin to achieve the feat at that moment.

But even Tudie, in her jealous dread, had no word to say against the imminent Em. Everybody spoke so well of her that Orson had a mingled expectation of seeing an Aphrodite and a Sister of Charity rolled into one.

Now Carthage was by no means one of those petty towns where nearly everybody goes to the station to meet nearly every train. But nearly everybody went down to see Em arrive. Foremost among the throng was Arthur Litton. Before Em left town he and she had been engaged "on approval." While she was away he kept in practice by taking Liddy Sovey to parties and prayer-meetings and picnics. Now that Em was on the way home Arthur let Liddy drop with a thud and groomed himself once more to wear the livery of Em's fiance.

When the crowd met the train it was recognized that Arthur was next in importance to Em's father and mother. n.o.body dreamed of pushing up ahead of him. On the outskirts of the melee stood Orson Carver. He gave railroad business as the pretext for his visit to the station, and he hovered in the offing.

As the train from the East slid in, voices cried, "h.e.l.lo, Em!" "Woo-oo!"

"Oh, Em!" "Oh, you Emma!" and other Carthage equivalents for "_Ave!_"

and "all hail!"

Orson saw that a girl standing on the Pullman platform waved a handkerchief and smiled joyously in response. This must be Em. When the train stopped with a pneumatic wail she descended the steps like a young queen coming down from a dais.

She was gowned to the minute; she carried herself with metropolitan poise; her very hilarity had the city touch. Orson longed to dash forward and throw his coat under her feet, to s.n.a.t.c.h away the porter's hand-step and put his heart there in its place. But he could not do these things unintroduced. He hung back and watched her hug her mother and father in a brief wrestling-match while Arthur stood by in simpering homage.

When she reached out her hand to Arthur he wrung it and clung to it with the dignity of proprietorship and a smirk that seemed to say: "I own this beautiful object, and I could kiss her if I wanted to. And she would like it. But I am too well bred to do such a thing in the presence of so many people."

Orson was not close enough to hear what he actually said. The glow in his eyes, however, was enough. Then Em visibly spoke. When her lips moved Arthur stared at her aghast; seemed to ask her to repeat what she said. She evidently did. Now Arthur looked askance as if her words shocked him.

Her father and mother, too, exchanged glances of dismay and chagrin. The throng of friends pressing forward in noisy salutation was silenced as if a great hand were clapped over every murmurous mouth.

Orson wondered what terrible thing the girl could have spoken. There was nothing coa.r.s.e in her manner. Delicacy and grace seemed to mark her. And whatever it was she said she smiled luminously when she said it.

The look in her eyes was incompatible with profanity, mild soever. Yet her language must have been appalling, for her father and mother blushed and seemed to be ashamed of bringing her into the world, sorry that she had come home. The ovation froze away into a confused babble.

What could the girl have said?