National Avenue, Booth Tarkington [8 ebook reader .txt] 📗

a tug, unseen, and brought him unwillingly to face the bride. “This is my father. He’s a new neighbour for you, too.”

The old gentleman made a slight, hostile duck with his head. “Pleased to meet ye, ma’am,” he said severely.

At that the bride seemed to be astonished. “What?” she said.

“I bid you good afternoon, ma’am,” he returned, ducked his head again, and passed on as rapidly as he could.

Martha whispered hurriedly to Dan: “She is beautiful!” and would have followed her father, but Dan detained her.

“Martha, will you help us to get her to like it here?” he said. “You see she’s such an utter stranger and everything’s bound to seem sort of different at first. I’ve been hoping you’d let her be your best friend, because you⁠—you’d⁠—”

“If she’ll let me, Dan,” Martha said, her voice faltering as she continued, “You know that I’d always⁠—I’d always want to⁠—” She stopped, glancing back at Lena, whose own glances seemed to be noting with some interest the heartiness with which Dan still grasped the hand of this next-door Juno. “I know she’s lovely!” Martha said; and she moved away to overtake her father, who had every intention of leaving the house at once, but found himself again balked by his daughter’s taking his arm.

“What you so upset over?” he asked crossly. “What’s the matter your face?”

“Nothing, papa. Why?”

“Looks as though you’re takin’ cold. It’s the heat, maybe. Let’s go.”

“Not yet, papa.”

“Look a-here!” he said, “I’m not goin’ to promenade out in that dining-room and ruin my stomach on lemonade and doodaddle refreshments. It’s suppertime right now, and I want to go home!”

“Hush!” she bade him. “It wouldn’t be polite to rush right out. Just stay a minute or two longer; then you can go.”

“But what’s the use? I don’t want to hang around here with all the fat women in town perspiring against my clo’es. I hate the whole possytucky of ’em!”

“Sh, papa!”

“I don’t care,” he went on with husky vehemence. “Nothin’ to do here except stare at the bride, and she’s so little it don’t take much time to see her; she’s just about half your size⁠—you made her seem like a wax doll beside you, and the way she looked at you, I guess she thought so, too. Anyway, she does look like a wax doll. Looks worse’n that, too!”

“No, no!”

“Yes, she does,” he insisted. “She’s got paint on her. Her face is all over paint.”

“It isn’t paint. It’s only rouge.”

“What’s the difference? It ain’t decent. She paints. She’s got red paint on her cheeks and black paint on her eye-winkers. Looks to me like Dan Oliphant’s gone and married a New York fast woman.”

“Hush!” Martha commanded him sharply. “People will hear you!”

“I can’t hardly hear myself!” he retorted. “Never got in such a gibblety-gabble in my born days. I tell you she paints! Her mother-in-law ought to take her out to a washstand and clean her up like a respectable woman. The Oliphant family ought to know what people’ll take her for, if they let her go around all painted up like that. If she was my daughter-in-law⁠—”

But here Martha’s protest was so vehement as to check him. “Everybody will hear you! Be quiet! Look there!”

She caught her breath, staring wide-eyed; and, turning to see what had so decisively fixed her attention, he realized that the clamorous place had become almost silent. Old Mrs. Savage, leaning upon her grandson Harlan’s arm, had entered the room and was on her way to the bride.

The guests made a passage for her, crowding back upon themselves until there was an aisle through which she and Harlan slowly passed. She was in fine gray silk and lace; and her hair, covered only in part by the lace cap, was still browner than it was white. But she could no longer hold herself upright as of yore; a cruel stoop had got into the indomitable back at last, and she was visibly tremulous all over. The emaciation, too, of such great age had come upon her; the last few months had begun the final shrivelling of everything except the self, but in her eyes that ageless self almost flamed;⁠—it had a kind of majesty, for its will alone and no other force could have made the spent body walk. Thus, among these people who had known her all their lives, there was an awe of her, so that they had hushed themselves, silently making room for her to pass; and she was so frail, so nearly gone from life, that to many of them it seemed almost as if a woman already dead walked among them. They perceived that she could never again do what she was doing today, nor could any fail to comprehend in her look her own gaunt recognition that this was the last time she would thus be seen.

Slowly, with Harlan helping her, she went through the room, came to Lena, and stood before her, looking at her and making little sighing murmurs that told of the effort it cost her still to live and move. Then, in a voice not cracked or quavering, though broken a little, she said: “I thought so! But you’re welcome.”

Lena looked frightened, but Dan laughed and kissed his grandmother’s cheek, talking cheerfully. “Well, this is an honour, grandma! We hardly hoped you’d come out in all this heat. We certainly appreciate it, grandma, and we’ll never forget you thought enough of us to do it. It’s just the best thing could happen to us in the world!”

His free and easy full voice released the guests from the sympathetic hush put upon them by the apparition; they turned to one another again and the interrupted chatter was loudly resumed; but Mrs. Savage extended her right arm and with her gloved hand abruptly touched the bride’s cheek.

Startled, Lena uttered a faint outcry, protesting. “What⁠—why, what do you mean?”

Mrs. Savage was looking fiercely at the tremulous fingertips of the white glove that had touched the rouged cheek.

“She’s painted!”

Dan laughed and