Within a week Mr. Madison’s
illness was a settled institution in the household;
the presence of the nurse lost novelty, even to Hedrick,
and became a part of life; the day was measured by
the three regular visits of the doctor. To the
younger members of the family it seemed already that
their father had always been sick, and that he always
would be; indeed, to Cora and Hedrick he had become
only a weak and querulous voice beyond a closed door.
Doctor Sloane was serious but reassuring, his daily
announcement being that his patient was in “no
immediate danger.”
Mrs. Madison did not share her children’s
sanguine adaptability; and, of the three, Cora was
the greatest solace to the mother’s troubled
heart, though Mrs. Madison never recognized this without
a sense of injustice to Laura, for Laura now was housewife
and housekeeper that is, she did all the
work except the cooking, and on “wash-day”
she did that. But Cora’s help was to the
very spirit itself, for she was sprightly in these
hours of trial: with indomitable gayety she cheered
her mother, inspiring in her a firmer confidence,
and, most stimulating of all, Cora steadfastly refused
to consider her father’s condition as serious,
or its outcome as doubtful.
Old Sloane exaggerated, she said;
and she made fun of his gravity, his clothes and his
walk, which she mimicked till she drew a reluctant
and protesting laugh from even her mother. Mrs.
Madison was sure she “couldn’t get through”
this experience save for Cora, who was indeed the
light of the threatened house.
Strange perversities of this world:
Cora’s gayety was almost unbearable to her brother.
Not because he thought it either unfeeling or out
of place under the circumstances (an aspect he failed
to consider), but because years of warfare had so
frequently made him connect cheerfulness on her part
with some unworthily won triumph over himself that
habit prevailed, and he could not be a witness of
her high spirits without a strong sense of injury.
Additionally, he was subject to a deeply implanted
suspicion of any appearance of unusual happiness in
her as having source, if not in his own defeat, then
in something vaguely “soft” and wholly
distasteful. She grated upon him; he chafed, and
his sufferings reached the surface. Finally,
in a reckless moment, one evening at dinner, he broke
out with a shout and hurled a newly devised couplet
concerning luv-a-ly slush at his, sister’s head.
The nurse was present: Cora left the table; and
Hedrick later received a serious warning from Laura.
She suggested that it might become expedient to place
him in Cora’s power.
“Cora knows perfectly well that
something peculiar happened to you,” she advised
him. “And she knows that I know what it
was; and she says it isn’t very sisterly of
me not to tell her. Now, Hedrick, there was no
secret about it; you didn’t confide your your
trouble to me, and it would be perfectly honourable
of me to tell it. I wont{sic} unless you make
me, but if you can’t be polite and keep peace
with Cora at least while papa is sick I
think it may be necessary. I believe,” she
finished with imperfect gravity, “that it it
would keep things quieter.”
The thoughts of a boy may be long,
long thoughts, but he cannot persistently remember
to fear a threatened catastrophe. Youth is too
quickly intimate with peril. Hedrick had become
familiar with his own, had grown so accustomed to
it he was in danger of forgetting it altogether; therefore
it was out of perspective. The episode of Lolita
had begun to appear as a thing of the distant and
clouded past: time is so long at thirteen.
Added to this, his late immaculate deportment had
been, as Laura suggested, a severe strain; the machinery
of his nature was out of adjustment and demanded a
violent reaction before it could get to running again
at average speed. Also, it is evident that his
destruction had been planned on high, for he was mad
enough to answer flippantly:
“Tell her! Go on and tell
her I give you leaf! that
wasn’t anything anyway just helped
you get a little idiot girl home. What is there
to that? I never saw her before; never saw her
again; didn’t have half as much to do with her
as you did yourself. She was a lot more your
friend than mine; I didn’t even know her.
I guess you’ll have to get something better on
me than that, before you try to boss this ranch,
Laura Madison!”
That night, in bed, he wondered if
he had not been perhaps a trifle rash; but the day
was bright when he awoke, and no apprehension shadowed
his morning face as he appeared at the breakfast table.
On the contrary, a great weight had lifted from him;
clearly his defiance had been the proper thing; he
had shown Laura that her power over him was but imaginary.
Hypnotized by his own words to her, he believed them;
and his previous terrors became gossamer; nay, they
were now merely laughable. His own remorse and
shame were wholly blotted from memory, and he could
not understand why in the world he had been so afraid,
nor why he had felt it so necessary to placate Laura.
She looked very meek this morning. That showed!
The strong hand was the right policy in dealing with
women. He was tempted to insane daring: the
rash, unfortunate child waltzed on the lip of the
crater.
“Told Cora yet?” he asked, with scornful
laughter.
“Told me what?” Cora looked quickly up
from her plate.
“Oh, nothing about this Corliss,”
he returned scathingly. “Don’t get
excited.”
“Hedrick!” remonstrated his mother, out
of habit.
“She never thinks of anything
else these days,” he retorted. “Rides
with him every evening in his pe-rin-sley hired
machine, doesn’t she?”
“Really, you should be more
careful about the way you handle a spoon, Hedrick,”
said Cora languidly, and with at least a foundation
of fact. “It is not the proper implement
for decorating the cheeks. We all need nourishment,
but it is so difficult when one sees a deposit
of breakfast-food in the ear of one’s vis-a-vis.”
Hedrick too impulsively felt of his
ears and was but the worse stung to find them immaculate
and the latter half of the indictment unjustified.
“Spoon!” he cried.
“I wouldn’t talk about spoons if I were
you, Cora-lee! After what I saw in the library
the other night, believe me, you’re the
one of this family that better be careful how you
`handle a spoon’!”
Cora had a moment of panic. She
let the cup she was lifting drop noisily upon its
saucer, and gazed whitely at the boy, her mouth opening
wide.
“Oh, no!” he went on,
with a dreadful laugh. “I didn’t hear
you asking this Corliss to kiss you! Oh, no!”
At this, though her mother and Laura
both started, a faint, odd relief showed itself in
Cora’s expression. She recovered herself.
“You little liar!” she
flashed, and, with a single quick look at her mother,
as of one too proud to appeal, left the room.
“Hedrick, Hedrick, Hedrick!”
wailed Mrs. Madison. “And she told me you
drove her from the table last night too, right before
Miss Peirce!” Miss Peirce was the nurse, fortunately
at this moment in the sick-room.
“I did hear her ask him
that,” he insisted, sullenly. “Don’t
you believe it?”
“Certainly not!”
Burning with outrage, he also left
his meal unfinished and departed in high dignity.
He passed through the kitchen, however, on his way
out of the house; but, finding an unusual politeness
to the cook nothing except its own reward, went on
his way with a bitter perception of the emptiness
of the world and other places.
“Your father managed to talk
more last night,” said Mrs. Madison pathetically
to Laura. “He made me understand that he
was fretting about how little we’d been able
to give our children; so few advantages; it’s
always troubled him terribly. But sometimes I
wonder if we’ve done right: we’ve
neither of us ever exercised any discipline.
We just couldn’t bear to. You see, not having
any money, or the things money could buy, to give,
I think we’ve instinctively tried to make up
for it by indulgence in other ways, and perhaps it’s
been a bad thing. Not,” she added hastily,
“not that you aren’t all three the best
children any mother and father ever had! He
said so. He said the only trouble was that our
children were too good for us.” She shook
her head remorsefully throughout Laura’s natural
reply to this; was silent a while; then, as she rose,
she said timidly, not looking at her daughter:
“Of course Hedrick didn’t mean to tell
an outright lie. They were just talking, and
perhaps he perhaps he heard something that
made him think what he did. People are
so often mistaken in what they hear, even when they’re
talking right to each other, and ”
“Isn’t it more likely,”
said Laura, gravely, “that Cora was telling
some story or incident, and that Hedrick overheard
that part of it, and thought she was speaking directly
to Mr. Corliss?”
“Of course!” cried the
mother with instant and buoyant relief; and when the
three ladies convened, a little later, Cora (unquestioned)
not only confirmed this explanation, but repeated
in detail the story she had related to Mr. Corliss.
Laura had been quick.
Hedrick passed a variegated morning
among comrades. He obtained prestige as having
a father like-to-die, but another boy turned up who
had learned to chew tobacco. Then Hedrick was
pronounced inferior to others in turning “cartwheels,”
but succeeded in a wrestling match for an apple, which
he needed. Later, he was chased empty-handed
from the rear of an ice-wagon, but greatly admired
for his retorts to the vociferous chaser: the
other boys rightly considered that what he said to
the ice-man was much more horrible than what the ice-man
said to him. The ice-man had a fair vocabulary,
but it lacked pliancy; seemed stiff and fastidious
compared with the flexible Saxon in which Hedrick sketched
a family tree lacking, perhaps, some plausibility
as having produced even an ice-man, but curiously
interesting zoologically.
He came home at noon with the flush
of this victory new upon his brow. He felt equal
to anything, and upon Cora’s appearing at lunch
with a blithe, bright air and a new arrangement of
her hair, he opened a fresh campaign with ill-omened
bravado.
“Ear-muffs in style for September,
are they?” he inquired in allusion to a symmetrical
and becoming undulation upon each side of her head.
“Too bad Ray Vilas can’t come any more;
he’d like those, I know he would.”
Cora, who was talking jauntily to
her mother, went on without heeding. She affected
her enunciation at times with a slight lisp; spoke
preciously and over-exquisitely, purposely mincing
the letter R, at the same time assuming a manner of
artificial distinction and conscious elegance which
never failed to produce in her brother the last stage
of exasperation. She did this now. Charming
woman, that dear Mrs. Villard, she prattled. “I
met her downtown this morning. Dear mamma, you
should but have seen her delight when she saw me.
She was but just returned from Bar Harbor ”
“`Baw-hawbaw’!”
Poor Hedrick was successfully infuriated immediately.
“What in thunder is `Baw-hawbaw’?
Mrs. Villawd! Baw-hawbaw! Oh, maw!”
“She had no idea she should
find me in town, she said,” Cora ran
on, happily. “She came back early on account
of the children having to be sent to school.
She has such adorable children beautiful,
dimpled babes ”
“SLUSH! SLUSH! LUV-A-LY SLUSH!”
“ And her dear son,
Egerton Villard, he’s grown to be such a comely
lad, and he has the most charming courtly manners:
he helped his mother out of her carriage with all
the air of a man of the world, and bowed to me as
to a duchess. I think he might be a great influence
for good if the dear Villards would but sometimes
let him associate a little with our unfortunate Hedrick.
Egerton Villard is really distingue; he has
a beautiful head; and if he could be induced but to
let Hedrick follow him about but a little ”
“I’ll beat his beautiful
head off for him if he but butts in on me but a little!”
Hedrick promised earnestly. “Idiot!”
Cora turned toward him innocently.
“What did you say, Hedrick?”
“I said `Idiot’!”
“You mean Egerton Villard?”
“Both of you!”
“You think I’m an idiot,
Hedrick?” Her tone was calm, merely inquisitive.
“Yes, I do!”
“Oh, no,” she said pleasantly.
“Don’t you think if I were really
an idiot I’d be even fonder of you than I am?”
It took his breath. In a panic
he sat waiting he knew not what; but Cora blandly
resumed her interrupted remarks to her mother, beginning
a description of Mrs. Villard’s dress; Laura
was talking unconcernedly to Miss Peirce; no one appeared
to be aware that anything unusual had been said.
His breath came back, and, summoning his presence
of mind, he found himself able to consider his position
with some degree of assurance. Perhaps, after
all, Cora’s retort had been merely a coincidence.
He went over and over it in his mind, making a pretence,
meanwhile, to be busy with his plate. “If
I were really an idiot.” . . . It
was the “really” that troubled
him. But for that one word, he could have decided
that her remark was a coincidence; but “really”
was ominous; had a sinister ring. “If I
were really an idiot!” Suddenly the pleasant
clouds that had obscured his memory of the fatal evening
were swept away as by a monstrous Hand: it all
came back to him with sickening clearness. So
is it always with the sinner with his sin and its
threatened discovery. Again, in his miserable
mind, he sat beside Lolita on the fence, with the
moon shining through her hair; and he knew for
he had often read it that a man could be
punished his whole life through for a single moment’s
weakness. A man might become rich, great, honoured,
and have a large family, but his one soft sin would
follow him, hunt him out and pull him down at last.
“Really an idiot!” Did that relentless
Comanche, Cora, know this Thing? He shuddered.
Then he fell back upon his faith in Providence.
It could not be that she knew! Ah, no!
Heaven would not let the world be so bad as that!
And yet it did sometimes become negligent he
remembered the case of a baby-girl cousin who fell
into the bath-tub and was drowned. Providence
had allowed that: What assurance had he that
it would not go a step farther?
“Why, Hedrick,” said Cora,
turning toward him cheerfully, “you’re
not really eating anything; you’re only pretending
to.” His heart sank with apprehension.
Was it coming? “You really must eat,”
she went on. “School begins so soon, you
must be strong, you know. How we shall miss you
here at home during your hours of work!”
With that, the burden fell from his
shoulders, his increasing terrors took wing.
If Laura had told his ghastly secret to Cora, the
latter would not have had recourse to such weak satire
as this. Cora was not the kind of person to try
a popgun on an enemy when she had a thirteen-inch
gun at her disposal; so he reasoned; and in the gush
of his relief and happiness, responded:
“You’re a little too cocky
lately, Cora-lee: I wish you were my daughter just
about five minutes!”
Cora looked upon him fondly.
“What would you do to me,” she inquired
with a terrible sweetness “darling
little boy?”
Hedrick’s head swam. The
blow was square in the face; it jarred every bone;
the world seemed to topple. His mother, rising
from her chair, choked slightly, and hurried to join
the nurse, who was already on her way upstairs.
Cora sent an affectionate laugh across the table to
her stunned antagonist.
“You wouldn’t beat me,
would you, dear?” she murmured. “I’m
almost sure you wouldn’t; not if I asked you
to kiss me some more.”
All doubt was gone, the last hope
fled! The worst had arrived. A vision of
the awful future flamed across his staggered mind.
The doors to the arena were flung open: the wild
beasts howled for hunger of him; the spectators waited.
Cora began lightly to sing:
. . . “Dear,
Would thou wert near
To hear me tell how fair thou
art!
Since thou art gone I mourn
all alone,
Oh, my Lolita ”
She broke off to explain: “It’s
one of those passionate little Spanish serenades,
Hedrick. I’ll sing it for your boy-friends
next time they come to play in the yard. I think
they’d like it. When they know why you
like it so much, I’m sure they will. Of
course you do like it you roguish
little lover!” A spasm rewarded this demoniacal
phrase. “Darling little boy, the serenade
goes on like this:
Oh, my Lolita, come to my
heart:
Oh, come beloved, love let
me press thee,
While I caress thee
In one long kiss, Lolita!
Lolita come! Let me ”
Hedrick sprang to his feet with a
yell of agony. “Laura Madison, you tattle-tale,”
he bellowed, “I’ll never forgive you as
long as I live! I’ll get even with you
if it takes a thousand years!”
With that, and pausing merely to kick
a rung out of a chair which happened to be in his
way, he rushed from the room.
His sisters had risen to go, and Cora
flung her arms round Laura in ecstacy. “You
mean old viper!” she cried. “You could
have told me days ago! It’s almost too
good to be true: it’s the first time in
my whole life I’ve felt safe from the Pest for
a moment!”
Laura shook her head. “My
conscience troubles me; it did seem as if I ought
to tell you and mamma thought so, too; and
I gave him warning, but now that I have done it, it
seems rather mean and ”
“No!” exclaimed Cora.
“You just gave me a chance to protect myself
for once, thank heaven!” And she picked up her
skirts and danced her way into the front hall.
“I’m afraid,” said
Laura, following, “I shouldn’t have done
it.”
“Oh, Laura,” cried the
younger girl, “I am having the best time, these
days! This just caps it.” She lowered
her voice, but her eyes grew even brighter. “I
think I’ve shown a certain gentleman a few things
he didn’t understand!”
“Who, dear?”
“Val,” returned Cora lightly;
“Valentine Corliss. I think he knows a
little more about women than he did when he first came
here.”
“You’ve had a difference
with him?” asked Laura with eager hopefulness.
“You’ve broken with him?”
“Oh, Lord, no! Nothing
like that.” Cora leaned to her confidentially.
“He told me, once, he’d be at the feet
of any woman that could help put through an affair
like his oil scheme, and I decided I’d just
show him what I could do. He’d talk about
it to me; then he’d laugh at me. That very
Sunday when I got papa to go in ”
“But he didn’t,”
said Laura helplessly. “He only said he’d
try to when he gets well.”
“It’s all the same and
it’ll be a great thing for him, too,” said
Cora, gayly. “Well, that very afternoon
before Val left, he practically told me I was no good.
Of course he didn’t use just those words that
isn’t his way but he laughed at me.
And haven’t I shown him! I sent Richard
a note that very night saying papa had consented to
be secretary of the company, and Richard had said
he’d go in if papa did that, and he couldn’t
break his word ”
“I know,” said Laura, sighing. “I
know.”
“Laura” Cora
spoke with sudden gravity “did you
ever know anybody like me? I’m almost getting
superstitious about it, because it seems to me I always
get just what I set out to get. I believe I could
have anything in the world if I tried for it.”
“I hope so, if you tried for
something good for you,” said Laura sadly.
“Cora, dear, you will you will be
a little easy on Hedrick, won’t you?”
Cora leaned against the newel and
laughed till she was exhausted.