Part 16

Mr. Rolfo Williams, whose hardware establishment occupies a corner, was the first of the business men to see her. He was engaged within a cool alcove of cutlery when he caught a glimpse of her through a window; but in spite of his weight he managed to get near the wide-spread front doors of his store in time to see her framed by the doorway as a passing silhouette of blue against the sunshine of the Square. His clerk, a young married man, was only a little ahead of him in reaching the sidewalk.

“My goodness, George!” Mr. Williams murmured. “Who _is_ that?”

“Couldn’t be from a bit more’n half a mile this side o’ New York!” said George, marvelling. “Look at the clo’es!”

“No, George,” his employer corrected him gently. “To me it’s more the figger.”

The lady was but thirty or forty feet away, and though she did not catch their words, the murmur of the two voices attracted her attention. Not pausing in her light stride forward, she looked back over her shoulder, and her remarkable eyes twinkled with recognition. She smiled charmingly, then nodded twice—first, unmistakably to Mr. Williams, and then, with equal distinctness, to George.

These dumfounded men, staring in almost an agony of blankness, were unable to return the salutation immediately. The attractive back of her head was once more turned to them by the time they recovered sufficiently to bow, but both of them did bow, in spite of that, being ultimately conscientious no matter how taken aback. Even so, they were no more flustered than was old Mr. Newton Truscom (Clothier, Hatter, and Gents’ Furnisher), just emerging from his place of business next door; for Mr. Truscom was likewise sunnily greeted.

“My goodness!” Mr. Williams gasped. “I never saw her from Adam!”

Mr. Truscom, walking backward, joined the hardware men. “Seems like fine-lookin’ girls liable to take considerable of a fancy to us three fellers,” he said; “whether they know us or not!”

“Shame on you, Newt!” George returned. “Didn’t you see her give me the eye? Of course, after that, she wanted to be polite to you and Mr. Williams. Thought him and you were prob’ly my pappy and gran’daddy!”

“Look!” said Mr. Truscom. “She’s goin’ in Milo Carter’s drug-store. Sody-water, I shouldn’t wonder!”

“It just this minute occurred to me how a nectar and pineapple was what I needed,” said George. “Mr. Williams, I’ll be back at the store in a few min—”

“No, George,” his employer interrupted. “I don’t mind your lollin’ around on the sidewalk till she comes out again, because that’s about what I’m liable to do myself, but if you don’t contain yourself from no nectar and pineapple, I’m goin’ to tell your little bride about it—and you know what Birdie will say!”

“Rolfo, did you notice them _shoes_?” Mr. Truscom asked, with sudden intensity. “If Baker and Smith had the enterprise to introduce a pattern like that in our community——”

“No, Newt, I didn’t take so much notice of her shoes. To me,” said Mr. Williams dreamily, “to me it was more the whole figger, as it were.”

The three continued to stare at the pleasing glass front of Milo Carter’s drug-store; and presently they were joined by two other men of business who had perceived from their own doorways that something unusual was afoot; while that portion of Main Street lying beyond Milo Carter’s also showed signs of being up with the times. Emerging from this section, P. Borodino Thompson and Calvin Burns, partners in Insurance, Real Estate, Mortgages and Loans, appeared before the drug-store, hovered a moment in a non-committal manner that was really brazen, then walked straight into the store and bought a two-cent stamp for the firm.

Half an hour later, Mortimer Fole was as busy as he could be. That is to say, Mortimer woke from his first slumber in a chair in front of the National House, heard the news, manœuvred until he obtained a view of its origin, and then drifted about the Square exchanging comment with other shirt-sleeved gossips. (Mortimer was usually unemployed; but there was a Mexican War pension in the family.)

“Heard about it?” he inquired, dropping into E. J. Fuller’s (E. J. Fuller & Co., Furniture, Carpets and Wall-Paper).

“Yes, Mortimore,” E. J. Fuller replied. “Anybody know anything?”

“Some of ’em claim they do,” said Mortimer. “Couple fellers _I_ heard says she must belong with some new picture theatre they claim an out-o’-town firm’s goin’ to git goin’ here, compete with the Vertabena. Howk, he says thinks not; claims it’s a lady he heard was comin’ to settle here from Wilkes-Barry, Pennsylvania, and give embroidery lessons and card-playin’. Cousin of the Ferrises and Wheelers, so Howk claims. I says, ‘She is, is she?’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘that’s the way _I_ look at it.’ ‘Oh, you do, do you?’ I says. ‘Then what about her speakin’ to everybody?’ I ast him, right to his face; and you’d ought to seen him! Him and all of ’em are wrong.”

“How do you know, Mortimore?” asked Mr. Fuller. “What makes you think so?”

“Listen here, Ed,” said Mortimer. “What’d she do when she went into Charlie Murdock’s and bought a paper o’ pins? You heard about that, yet?”

“No.”

“She went in there,” said Mr. Fole, “and spoke right _to_ Charlie. ‘How are you, Mister Murdock?’ she says. Charlie like to fell over backwards! And then, when he got the pins wrapped up and handed ’em to her she says, ‘How’s your wife, Mr. Murdock?’ Well, sir, _Charlie_ says his wife was just about the last woman in the world he had in his mind right then!”

“Where’s she supposed to be now?” Mr. Fuller inquired, not referring to Mrs. Murdock. “Over at the hotel?”

“Nope,” Mortimer replied. “She ain’t puttin’ up there. Right now she’s went upstairs in the Garfield Block to Lu Allen’s office. Haven’t heard what Lu’s got to say or whether she’s come out. You git to see her yet?”

“No, sir,” Mr. Fuller returned, rather indifferently. “What’s she look like, Mortimore?”

“Well, sir, I can give you a right good notion about that,” said Mortimer. “I expect I’m perty much the only man in town that could, too. You remember the time me and you went over to Athens City and took in the Athens City lodge’s excursion to Chicago? Well, remember somebody got us to go to a matinée show without any much cuttin’ up or singin’ in it, but we got so we liked it anyhow—and went back there again same night?”

“Yes, sir. Maude Adams.”

“Well, sir, it ain’t her, but that’s who she kind o’ put me in mind of. Carryin’ a blue parasol, too.”

Mr. Fuller at once set down the roll of wall-paper he was measuring, and came out from behind his counter.

“Where goin’, Ed?” Mortimer inquired, stretching himself elaborately, though somewhat surprised at Mr. Fuller’s abrupt action—for Mortimer was indeed capable of stretching himself in a moment of astonishment.

“What?”

“Where goin’?”

Mr. Fuller, making for the open, was annoyed by the question. “Out!” he replied.

“I got nothin’ much to do right now,” said the sociable Mortimer. “I’ll go with you. Where’d you say you was goin’, Ed?”

“Business!” Mr. Fuller replied crossly.

“That suits _me_, Ed. I kind o’ want to see Lu Allen, myself!”

Thereupon they set forth across the Square, taking a path that ran through the courthouse yard; but when they came out from behind the old, red brick building and obtained a fair view of the Garfield Block, they paused. She of the blue parasol was disappearing into the warm obscurity of Pawpaw Street; and beside her sauntered Mr. Lucius Brutus Allen, Attorney at Law, his stoutish figure and celebrated pongee coat as unmistakable from the rear as from anywhere. In the deep, congenial shade of the maple trees her parasol was unnecessary, and Lucius dangled it from his hand, or poked its ferule idly at bugs in shrubberies trembling against the picket fences that lined the way.

At any distance it could be seen that his air was attentive and gallant—perhaps more than that, for there was even a tenderness expressed in the oblique position of his shoulders, which seemed to incline toward his companion. Mr. Rolfo Williams, to describe this mood of Lucius Allen’s, made free use of the word “sag.” Mr. Williams stood upon the corner with his wife, that amiable matron, and P. Borodino Thompson, all three staring unaffectedly. “That’s Lu Allen’s lady-walk,” said Rolfo, as E. J. Fuller and Mortimer joined them. “He always kind o’ sags when he goes out walkin’ with the girls. Sags toe-_ward_ ’em. I’ll say this much: I never see him sag deeper than what he is right now. Looks to me like he’s just about fixin’ to lean on her!”

“Don’t you worry!” his wife said testily. “Lucy’d slap him in a minute! She always was that kind of a girl.”

“‘Lucy!’” Mortimer echoed. “Lucy who?”

“Lucy Cope.”

“What on earth are you talkin’ about, Miz Williams? That ain’t Lucy Cope!”

Mrs. Williams laughed. “Just why ain’t it?” she asked satirically. “I expect some o’ the men in this town better go get the eye-doctor to take a look at ’em! Especially”—she gave her husband a compassionate glance—“especially the fat, old ones! Mrs. Cal Burns come past my house ’while ago; says, ‘Miz Williams, I expect you better go on up-town look after your husband,’ she says. ‘I been huntin’ fer mine,’ she says, ‘but I couldn’t locate him, because he knows better than to let me to,’ she says, ‘after what P. Borodino Thompson’s just been tellin’ me about him! Lucy Cope Ricketts is back in town,’ she says, ‘and none the men reckanized her yet,’ she says, ‘and you better go on up to the Square and take a look for yourself how they’re behavin’! _I_ hear,’ she says, ‘_I_ hear hasn’t anybody been able to get waited on at any store-counter in town so far this morning, except Lucy herself.’”

“Well, sir,” Mr. Williams declared. “I couldn’t hardly of believed it, but it certainly is her.” He shook his head solemnly at Mrs. Williams, and, gently detaching her palm-leaf fan from her hand, used it for his own benefit, as he continued: “Boys, what I’m always tellin’ ma here is that there ain’t nothin’ on earth like bein’ a widow to bring out the figger!”

“You hush up!” she said, but was constrained to laugh and add, “I guess you’d be after _me_ all right if I was a widow!”

“No, Carrie,” he said, “I wouldn’t be after nobody if you was a widow.”

“I mean if I was anybody else’s,” Mrs. Williams explained. “Look how George says you been actin’ all morning about this one!”

Mr. Fuller intervened in search of information. He was not a native, and had been a citizen of Marlow a little less than four years. “Did you say this lady was one of the Ricketts family, Mrs. Williams?” he inquired.

“No. She married a Ricketts. She’s a Cope; she’s all there is left of the Copes.”

“Did I understand you to say she was a widow?”

“I didn’t say she was one,” Mrs. Williams replied. “She is one now, though. Her and Tom Ricketts got married ten years ago and went to live in California. He’s been dead quite some time—three-four years maybe—and she’s come back to live in the Copes’ ole house, because it belongs to her, I expect. Everybody knew she was comin’ some time this spring—everybody’d heard all about it—but none you _men_ paid any attention to it. I’ll have to let you off, Mr. Fuller. You’re a widower and ain’t lived here long, and you needn’t take what I’m sayin’ to yourself. But the rest of all you rag-tag and bob-tail aren’t goin’ to hear the last o’ this for some time! Mr. Fuller, if you want to know why they never took any interest up to this morning in Lucy Cope Ricketts’ goin’ to come back and live here again, it’s because all they ever remembered her she was kind of a peakid girl; sort of thin, and never seemed to have much complexion to speak of. You wouldn’t think it to look at her now, but that’s the way she was up to when she got married and went away. Now she’s back here, and a _widow_, not a one of ’em reckanized her till Mrs. Cal Burns come up-town and told ’em—and look how they been actin’!”

“It all goes to show what I say,” said Rolfo. “She always did have kind of a sweet-lookin’ face, but I claim that there’s nothin’ in the world like being a happy widow to bring out the complexion and the——”

“Listen to you!” his wife interrupted. “How you do keep out o’ jail so long _I_ certainly don’t know!” She turned to the others. “That man’s a born bigamist,” she declared. “And at that I don’t expect he’s so much worse’n the rest of you!”

“You ought to leave me out along with E. J. Fuller, Mrs. Williams,” Mr. Thompson protested. “I’ve never even been married at all.”

But this only served to provoke Rolfo’s fat chuckle, and the barbed comment: “It _is_ a heap cheaper at mealtimes, Bore!”

“How’s it happen Lu Allen’s so thick with Mrs. Ricketts?” E. J. Fuller inquired. “How’s it come that he——”

“He’s her lawyer,” Mrs. Williams informed him, “and he was executor of the Cope will, and all. Besides that, he used to be awful attentive to her, and nobody was hardly certain which she was goin’ to take, Lu Allen or Tom Ricketts, right up to a year or two before she got married. Looks like Lu was goin’ to get a second chance, and money throwed in!”

“Well, Lu’s a talker, but he’ll have to talk some now!” P. Borodino Thompson announced thoughtfully. “I used to know her, too, but I never expected she was going to turn out like this!”

“You and I been gettin’ to be pretty fair friends, Bore,” said Mr. Fuller, genially, as the group broke up. “Think you could kind of slide me in along with you when you go up there to call?”

“No, sir!” Mr. Thompson replied emphatically. “Red-headed Lu Allen isn’t much of a rival, but he’s enough for me. If _you_ think of starting in, first thing I do I’m going to tell her you’re an embezzler. I’m going home now to get out my cutaway suit and white vest, and you can tell ’em all to keep out of my road! I’m going calling this evening, right after supper!”

“Never mind!” Fuller warned him. “I’ll get up there _some_ way!”

Meanwhile, in the sun-checkered shadow of a honeysuckle vine that climbed a green trellis beside an old doorway, Mr. Lucius Brutus Allen was taking leave of his lovely friend.

“Will you come this evening, Lucius, and help me decide on some remodeling for the house?” she asked; and probably no more matter-of-fact question ever inspired a rhapsody in the bosom of a man of thirty-five.

“No, thanks,” said Mr. Allen. “I never could decide which I thought your voice was like, Lucy: a harp or a violin. It’s somewhere between, I suspect; but there are pictures in it, too. Doesn’t make any difference what you _say_, whenever you speak a person can’t help thinking of wild roses shaking the dew off of ’em in the breezes that blow along about sunrise. You might be repeating the multiplication table or talking about hiring a cook, but the sound of your voice would make pictures like that, just the same. I had to hear it again to find out how I’ve been missing it. I must have been missing it every single day of these ten years whether I knew it or not. It almost makes me sorry you’ve come back, because if you hadn’t I’d never have found out how I must have been suffering.”

Mrs. Ricketts looked at him steadily from within the half-shadow of the rim of her pretty hat. “When will you come and help me with the plans?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Allen returned absently; and he added with immediate enthusiasm: “I never in my life saw any girl whose hair made such a lovely shape to her head as yours, Lucy! It’s just where you want a girl’s hair to be, and it’s not any place you don’t want it to be. It’s the one thing in the world without any fault _at all_—the only thing the Lord made just perfect—except your nose and maybe the Parthenon when it was new.”

That brought a laugh from her, and Lucius, who was pink naturally and pinker with the warm day, grew rosy as he listened to Lucy’s laughter. “By George!” he said. “To hear you laugh again!”

“You always did make me laugh, Lucius.”

“Especially if I had anything the matter with me,” he said. “If I had a headache or toothache I’d always come around to get you to laugh. Sometimes if the pain was pretty bad, it wouldn’t go away till you laughed two or three times!”

She laughed the more; then she sighed. “Over ten years, almost eleven—and you saying things like this to every girl and woman you met, all the time!”

“Well,” Mr. Allen said thoughtfully, “nobody takes much notice what a chunky kind of man with a reddish head and getting a little bald says. It’s quite a privilege.”

She laughed again, and sighed again. “Do you remember how we used to sit out here in the evenings under the trees, Lucius? One of the things I’ve often thought about since then was how when _you_ were here, papa and mamma would bring their chairs and join us, and you’d talk about the moon, and astronomy, and the Hundred Years War, and——”

“Yes!” Lucius interrupted ruefully. “And then some other young fellow would turn up—some slim, dark-haired Orlando—and you’d go off walking with him while I stayed with the old folks. I’d be talking astronomy with them, but you and Orlando were strolling under the stars—and didn’t care what they were made of!”

“No,” she said. “I mean what I’ve thought about was that papa and mamma never joined us unless _you_ were here. It took me a long while to understand that, Lucius; but finally I did.” She paused, musing a moment; then she asked: “Do the girls and boys still sit out on front steps and porches, or under the trees in the yard in the evenings the way we used to? Do you remember how we’d always see old Doctor Worley jogging by in his surrey exactly as the courthouse bell rang nine, every night; his wife on the back seat and the old doctor on the front one, coming home from their evening drive? There are so many things I remember like that, and they all seem lovely now—and I believe they must be why I’ve come back here to live—though I didn’t think much about them at the time. Do the girls and boys still sit out in the yards in the evening, Lucius?”

Lucius dangled the ferule of the long-handled blue parasol over the glowing head of a dandelion in the grass. “Not so much,” he answered. “And old Doc Worley and his wife don’t drive in their surrey in the summer evenings any more. They’re both out in the cemetery now, and the surrey’s somewhere in the air we breathe, because it was burnt on a trash-heap the other day, though I’ve seemed to see it driving home in the dusk a hundred times since it fell to pieces. Nowadays hardly any, even of the old folks, ride in surreys. These ten years have changed the world, Lucy. Money and gasoline. Even Marlow’s got into the world; and in the evenings they go out snorting and sirening and blowing-out and smoking blue oil all over creation. Bore Thompson’s about the only man in town that’s still got any use for a hitching-post. He drives an old white horse to a phaeton, and by to-morrow afternoon at the latest you’ll find that old horse and phaeton tied to the ring in the hand of that little old cast-iron stripe-shirted nigger-boy in front of your gate yonder.”

Mrs. Ricketts glanced frowningly at the obsolete decoration he mentioned; then she smiled. “That’s one of the things I want you to advise me about,” she said. “I don’t know how much of the place to alter and how much to leave as it is. And _why_ will I find Mr. Thompson’s horse tied to our poor old cast-iron darky boy?”

“He’s seen you, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, but he looked startled when I spoke to him. Besides, he used to see me when I was a girl, and he was one of the beaux of the town, and he never came then.”

“He will now,” said Lucius.

“Oh, surely not!” she protested, a little dismayed.

“He couldn’t help it if he tried, poor thing!”

At that she affected to drop him a curtsey, but nevertheless appeared not over-pleased. “You seem to be able to help it, Lucius,” she said; and the colour in his cheeks deepened a little as she went on: “Of course you don’t know that the way you declined to come this evening is one of the things that make life seem such a curious and mixed-up thing to me. After I—when I’d gone away from here to live, you were what I always remembered when I thought of Marlow, Lucius. And I remembered things you’d said to me that I hadn’t thought of at all when you were saying them. It was so strange! I’ve got to knowing you better and better all the long, long time I’ve been away from you—and I could always remember you more clearly than anybody else. It seems queer and almost a little wicked to say it, but I could remember you even more clearly than I could papa and mamma—and, oh! how I’ve looked forward to seeing you again and to having you talk to me about _everything_! Why won’t you come this evening? Aren’t you really glad I’m home again?”

“That’s the trouble!” he said; and seemed to feel that he had offered a satisfactory explanation.

“What in the world do you mean?” she cried.

“I gather,” he said slowly, “from what you’ve said, that you think more about me when I’m not around where you have to look at me! Besides——”

“Besides what?” she insisted, as he moved toward the gate.

“I’m afraid!” said Lucius; and his voice was husky and honest. “I’m afraid,” he repeated seriously, as he closed the gate behind him. “I’m afraid to meet Maud and Bill.”

She uttered half of a word of protest, not more than that; and it went unheard. Frowning, she compressed her lips, and in troubled silence stood watching his departure. Then, all at once, the frown vanished from her forehead, the perplexity from her eyes; and she pressed an insignificant handkerchief to a charming mouth overtaken by sudden laughter. But she made no sound or gesture that would check Lucius Brutus Allen or rouse him to the realization of what he was doing.

The sturdy gentleman was marching up Pawpaw Street toward the Square, unconscious that he had forgotten to return the long-handled blue parasol to its owner—and that he was now jauntily carrying it over his right shoulder after the manner of a musket. Above the fence, the blue parasol and the head of Lucius bobbed rhythmically with his gait, and Mrs. Ricketts, still with her handkerchief to her lips, watched that steady bobbing until intervening shrubberies closed the exhibition. Then, as she opened the door of the old frame house, she spoke half-aloud:

“Nobody—not one—never _any_where!” she said; and she meant that Lucius was unparalleled.

* * * * *

When Mr. Allen debouched upon Main Street from Pawpaw, he encountered Mortimer Fole, who addressed him with grave interest:

“Takin’ it to git mended, I suppose, Lu?”

“Get what mended?” asked Lucius, pausing.

“Her parasol,” Mr. Fole responded. “If you’ll show me where it’s out of order, I expect I could get it fixed up about as well as anybody. Frank Smith that works over at E. J. Fuller’s store, he’s considerable of a tinker, and I reckon he’d do it fer nothin’ if it was me ast him to. I’d be willin’ to carry it up to her house for you, too. I go by there anyhow, on my way home.”

“No, Mortimore, thank you.” Lucius brought the parasol down from his shoulder and stood regarding it seriously. “No; it isn’t out of order. I—I just brought it with me. What’s the news?”