Part 13

Lily had to give it up, at least for that night, but she made up her mind to call Ada on the telephone early in the morning and reproach her for keeping people awake by suddenly becoming mysterious. Of course, though, the explanation would be simple, and the mystery would turn out to be nothing of any importance. Ada never knew any exciting secrets and probably hadn’t intended to be mysterious at all. Having come to this conclusion, Lily let her thoughts go where they wanted to go, though they were not so much thoughts as pictures and dreamy echoes of sounds—pictures of dark and tender eyes bent devotedly upon hers, dreamy echoes of a mellow voice murmuring fond things to the lilting accompaniment of far-away dance music. So, finally, she slept, and slept smiling.

A coloured maid tapped at her door in the morning, and, being bidden to enter, came in and brought to Lily’s bedside a note addressed in Ada’s hand.

“Must been lef’ here in the night-time, Miss Lily, or else awful early this morn’. It was stickin’ under the front door when I went to bring in the newspaper.”

Lily read the note.

It was the only thing we could do, Lily, to keep my people from guessing what was really going on. We didn’t mean to let it go on so long, but we had to wait until we could save up enough to start with. Of course, I know everybody will say I’m hopelessly mad and reckless, and my family will be terribly upset. I _told_ you I wished I were like you. If it were you, you could get away with a thing like this and after a day or so nobody would think anything about it, but I know how awful and different it will seem to everybody because _I’m_ the one that does it!

I’m glad you told me it didn’t really mean anything serious to you—I was sure it wouldn’t. I hope you won’t feel I ought to have given you my confidence, and I _would_ have given it if it hadn’t been such a serious matter. Besides, the real truth is, Lily, our whole friendship seemed to be centred on your affairs and you, never on me or mine. You were so interested in the confidences you made to me, you never even seemed to think I had any to make of my own and you never invited any. Please don’t take this for criticism—and _please_ wish me happiness!

Lily dressed hurriedly; Ada had indeed mystified and disturbed her now; and she was eager to get to the telephone downstairs and find out what in the world this strange communication portended. But as she passed the dining-room door on her way to the little telephone table in the hall, her mother called to her. Mr. and Mrs. Dodge were at breakfast.

“Not now, Mamma. I’ll come in a moment. I want to telephone to Ada first.”

“Lily,” her father said, urgently, “I wouldn’t.”

His tone arrested her, and she paused near the doorway.

“You wouldn’t telephone to Ada?” she asked, nervously. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“Ada’s not there,” he said, gravely. “Come here, Lily.”

She came in slowly, looking at him with an appealing apprehension; and his own look, in return, was compassionate. He held a morning paper in his hand, and moved as if to offer it to her, then withheld it. “Wait,” he said. “Your mother and I both think her family have behaved foolishly. If they’d shown a little more discretion—but she’s the sort of girl nobody’d have dreamed would be up to this sort of thing, and I suppose they must have been terribly upset. Of course, they might have known the papers would get it, though, when they began calling up the police to look for her and stop the——”

“Police!” Lily gasped. “Papa! What are you _talking_ about?”

“Ada Corey,” he said. “She never came home from the dance last night. She’s run away with that crazy young Price Gleason. They eloped from the Country Club, and the paper says they were married at a village squire’s office about an hour afterward.”

With that, not looking at her, but at his plate, he offered her the newspaper. Lily did not take it. She stared at it, wholly incredulous; then she reddened with sudden high colour, and, remembering Ada’s queer look of last night, needed not even the confirmation of the queerer letter just read to understand that the thing was true.

She said nothing, but after a moment went to her chair at the table, and, although he did not look at her, Mr. Dodge had a relieved impression that she was about to sit down and eat her breakfast in a customary manner. Then his wife rose suddenly and moved as if to go to her.

“Let me _alone_!” Lily gasped. She ran out of the door and up to her own room.

She felt that she could not live. No one _could_ live, she thought, and bear such agony. The dimensions of her anger, too great to be contained, were what agonized her.

“To think of their daring to make me a mere blind!” she cried out to her mother, when Mrs. Dodge followed her. “To think they _dared_! It’s the treachery of it—the _insolence_ of it! I can’t _live_ and be made a mere blind! I _can’t_, Mamma!”

XXI MRS. CROMWELL’S NIECE

IN THE meantime, touching these mothers and daughters, there was a figure not thus far appeared among them, yet destined to be for a while their principal topic and interest. She was, indeed, at this time, a lonely figure, a niece of Mrs. Cromwell’s but not well known to her and living a day’s rail journey to the westward. On the November day of Lily Dodge’s agony this niece of Mrs. Cromwell’s was as agonized as Lily.

Each thought herself the unhappiest soul in the world, and yet, with greater wisdom, each might have known that no girl can ever think herself the unhappiest but that, at the same time, other girls—somewhere—will be thinking the same thing and suffering as sadly. The lonely niece’s tragedy was as dark as Lily’s, but came about in a different way.

The group of girls who had happened to meet at the corner of Maple Street and Central Avenue that morning was like the groups their mothers had sometimes formed, years before, on the same corner. This is to say, it was not unlike any other group of young but marriageable maidens pausing together by chance at a corner in the “best residence section” of a town of forty or fifty thousand inhabitants, anywhere in the land.

Three of these seven girls were on their way homeward from ‘downtown’; three were strolling in the opposite direction; and the seventh, seeing the two parties meet and begin their chatter with loud outcries, had come hurrying from a quiet old house near by to join them. The six made a great commotion. Their laughter whooped on the whirling autumn wind that flapped their skirts about them; their gesturing hands fluttered like the last leaves of the agitated shade trees above them; their simultaneous struggles for a hearing, shattering the peace of the comfortable neighbourhood, were not incomparable to the disorderly uproar of a box of fireworks prematurely exploding on the third of July.

The seventh girl, who had come across the lawn of the quiet old house on the corner to join them, also shouted, begging to be told the cause of so much vociferation.

“What’s happened? What on earth’s the matter?” she cried, going from one to another of the clamorous damsels and trying to make herself heard. “What is it? What’s going on? What’s it all _about_?”

One or two took cognizance of her with a nod and a hasty greeting, “Hello, Elsie,” but found no more time for her; and the rest paid no attention whatever to her or to her eager inquiries. They were too busy shouting, “But listen, my dear!” or “I never in all my _life_!” or “My dear, you never _saw_ anything like it!” though the smallest of them, a pretty brunette with the most piercing voice of all, did at last begin an explanatory response to the repeated entreaties of this Elsie. “Paul Reamer said——” But, as if realizing the waste of so much energy upon a person unconcerned in the matter, she immediately turned to the others, shrieking, “_Listen!_ For Heaven’s sake, _listen_! He said he’d be along before we got halfway _home_! He said——”

Then even the small brunette’s remarkable voice was merged in the conglomerate disturbance, and Elsie was no wiser than before. She continued to go from one girl to another, shouting, “What _about_ Paul Reamer? What’s he _done_? What _about_ him?” But for all the response she got she might have been both invisible and inaudible.

The uproar the six girls were making had no coherence; it accomplished nothing; it was merely a happy noise; and yet it seemed to be about something that concerned the six and was understood by them—something that had nothing to do with the seventh girl and could not be understood by her. The six were not hostile to her; they were merely unaware of her, or, at least, in their excitement, too dimly aware of her to pay any heed to her.

So, presently, she gave over her efforts and stood silent, a little apart from the shouting group and smiling; but her smiling was only an expression of hers, not a true token of feeling within. She wished to go on making her share of the noise; but a persistently disregarded questioner must always become at last a mere onlooker. Thus, Elsie found herself excluded from the merriment she had come to join; and she felt obliged to maintain a lively and knowing look upon her face, so that passers-by might not think her an outsider, for she did not know how to go away with any grace or comfort. Excluded, she could only stand near the congenial, vociferous six and try to look included—a strain upon her facial expression. The strain became painful as she still lingered and the merry group grew merrier; but what pained her more was her regret that she had rushed out so hopefully to meet an exclusion she should have known enough to expect.

She might have known enough to expect it because this was an old familiar experience of hers, an experience so much worse than customary that it was invariable. And another familiar old experience, or phase of this one, was repeated as she stood there, smiling and somewhat glassily beaming, trying to look knowing and included.

From down the street there came swiftly into nearer view an open touring car, driven by a slender young gentleman of a darkly handsome yet sprightly aspect; and upon this the six clamoured far beyond all clamours they had made before. The debonair motorist steered his machine to the curb, close to them, jumped out, was surrounded by the vociferators, and added his own cheerful shoutings to theirs.

What they all meant to convey was for the most part as unknown to Elsie Hemingway as if they gabbled Arabic, though the name “Paul” was prevalent over the tumult, amidst which the owner of it was seized by his coat lapels, his shoulders, even by his chin, and entreated to “listen!” Finally, however, some sort of coherent communication seemed to be established among them, and the young man emerged from the group, though the small girl with the piercing voice still clung to one of his coat pockets. “Call up Fred!” she screamed. “Tell him we won’t wait one instant!”

He detached himself. “Elsie, can I use your telephone?” he asked, but evidently regarded the question as unimportant, for he was already upon his way and did not pause.

“Oh, _do_!” she cried, enthusiastically, glad to seem a part of the mystery at last, and she turned to go with him. “Do you want to call up Fred Patterson to bring his car? Are you getting up a party, Paul? What’s the——”

He had rushed ahead of her and was at the open front door of the house. “Where do you keep it?” he called back to her.

“Wait! It’s in the back hall. Wait till I show you,” she cried; but he ran into the house, found the telephone, and was busy with it before she reached him.

“Did you get Fred’s number?” she asked, eagerly.

He was smiling and his eyes were bright with anticipations that seemed to concern not Elsie but the instrument before him. He did not look at her or seem even to hear her, but moved the nickeled prong up and down impatiently.

“Can’t you get him?” Elsie inquired, and she laughed loudly. Her air was that of a person secretly engaged with another upon a jocular enterprise bound to afford great entertainment. “Old Fred _is_ the slowest old poke, isn’t he? Suppose _I_ try, Paul.”

Young Mr. Reamer’s eyes wandered to her and lost their lustre, becoming dead with absent-mindedness immediately. He said nothing.

“Let me try to get that funny old Fred,” Elsie urged in the same eager voice; and she stretched forth a hand for the instrument.

Upon this he moved his shoulder in her way, turning from her, and at the same time a small voice crackled in the telephone. Mr. Reamer’s brightness of expression returned instantly. “You bet it’s me!” he said. “And if you don’t hurry up here in that old tin boat of yours, you’re going to get killed! The whole gang’s out here on the curbstone, simply raving, right in front of Elsie Hemingway’s.”

“I believe it _is_ Fred!” Elsie exclaimed. “I believe you’ve got him after all. Does he say——”

“You better hurry!” the young man said to the mouthpiece as he dropped the receiver into its hook. Then, as he turned toward the door, he seemed to become conscious, though vaguely, that he was not alone. “Much ’bliged, Elsie,” he said. “Goo’bye!”

“Wait. Wait just a minute, Paul.”

“What for?”

“Fred isn’t on his way yet, I don’t suppose,” she said, timidly. “Let’s—let’s wait in Papa’s library till he comes. There are some pretty interesting books in there I’d like to show you. Papa’s great on bindings and old editions. Wouldn’t you like to see some of ’em?”

“Well, another day maybe,” he answered, obviously surprised. “You see Mamie Ford and all the girls are out there, and I——”

“Wait,” she begged, for he was in motion to depart. “Aren’t you ever coming to see me again, Paul?”

“What?” He appeared to have no comprehension of her meaning.

“Aren’t you ever coming to see me again?” She laughed lightly, yet there was a tremor in her voice. “I don’t believe you’ve been in our house for over two years, Paul.”

“Oh, yes, I have,” he returned. “I must have been here a whole lot in that much time. G’bye, Elsie; the girls are——”

But again she contrived to detain him. “Wait. When will you come to see me again, Paul?”

“Oh, almost any time.”

“But when? What day?”

This urgency, though gentle, bothered him, and he wished he hadn’t thought of using Elsie’s telephone. He was a youth much sought, as he had reason to be pleasantly aware, and life offered him many more interesting vistas than the prospect of an afternoon or an evening or a substantial part of either, to be spent tête-à-tête with Elsie Hemingway. Pressed to give a definite reason why such a prospect dismayed him, he might have been puzzled. Elsie wasn’t exactly a bore; she wasn’t bad-looking, and nobody disliked her. Probably he would have fallen back upon an explanation that would have been satisfactory enough to most of the young people with whom he and Elsie had “grown up.” Elsie was “just Elsie Hemingway,” he would have said, implying an otherwise unexplainable something inherent in Elsie herself, and nothing derogatory to the Hemingway family.

“_When_ will you come, Paul?”

“Why—why, right soon, Elsie. Honestly I will. I’ll try to, that is. Honestly I’ll——”

“Paul, it’s true you haven’t been here in over two years.” Elsie’s voice trembled a little more perceptibly. “The last time you were here was when you came to Mother’s funeral. You had to come then, because you had to bring your mother.”

“Oh, no,” he said, a little shocked at this strange reference. “I was gl—— I mean I wanted to come. I’ll come again, too, some day, before long. I must run, Elsie. The girls——”

“You won’t say when?” She spoke gravely, looking at him steadily, and there was more in her eyes than he saw, for he was not interested in finding what was there, or in anything except in his escape to the gaiety outdoors.

He laughed reassuringly. “Oh, sometime before very long. I’ll honestly try to get ’round. Honestly, I will, Elsie. Listen!”

There were shriekings of his name from the street and lawn. “G’bye! I’m coming!” he shouted, and dashed out of the house to meet the vehement demand for him. He was asked at the top of several voices “what on earth” he’d been doing all that time; but no one even jocularly suggested Elsie as a cause of his delay.

When he had gone, she went to the front door and closed it, keeping herself out of sight; then she stood looking through the lace curtain that covered the glass set into the upper half of the door. The amiable youth she had called “old Fred,” accompanied by a male comrade, was just arriving in a low car wherein they reclined almost at full length rather than sat. The small but piercing Miss Ford leaped to join them, and the other girls, screaming, each trying to make her laughter dominant, piled themselves into Paul Reamer’s car. Both machines trembled into motion at once, and swept away, carrying a great noise with them up the echoing street.

Elsie stood for a little while looking heavily out at nothing; then she went slowly up the old, carpeted stairway to her own room, where she did a singular thing. She took a hand mirror from her dressing-table, looked searchingly into the glass for several long and solemn minutes, then dropped down upon her bed and wept. She might have been a beauty discovering the first gray hair.

It was strange that she should look into a mirror and then weep because, if the glass was honest with her, its revelation should have been in every detail encouraging. The reflection showed lamenting gray eyes, but long-lashed and vividly lustrous; it showed a good white brow and a neat nose and a shapely mouth and chin. No one could have asked a mirror to be coloured a pleasanter tan brown than where it reflected Elsie’s rippling hair; and as for the rest of her, she was neither angular nor awkward, neither stout nor misshapen in any way, but the contrary. Yet this was not the first time she had done that strange thing;—she had come too often silently to her room, looked into her mirror, and then fallen to long weeping.

XXII WALLFLOWER

THE FIRST time she had done it she was only twelve; but even then her reason for it was the same. At the end of a children’s party she realized that she had been miserable, and that she was never anything except miserable at parties. She always looked forward to them; always thought for days about what she would wear; always set forth in a tremor of excitement; and then, when she was there, and the party in full swing, she spent the time being wretched and trying to look happy, so that no one would guess what she felt. She had always the same experience: in the games the children played, if two leaders chose “sides,” she was the last to be chosen, except when she was ignored and left out altogether, which sometimes happened. When they danced she usually had no partners except upon the urgency of mothers or hostesses;—the boys rushed to all the other girls and came lagging to Elsie only in duty or in desperation. So at last, being twelve, she realized what had been happening to her—and came home to look secretly into her mirror and then to weep.

As she grew older, and her group with her, nothing changed; she was a wallflower. The other girls were all busy with important little appointments—“dates” they called them—Elsie had none. With the liveliest eagerness the others talked patteringly about things that were meaningless to her; and when she tried to talk that way, too, she failed shamefully. She tried to laugh with them, and as loudly as they did, when she had no idea what they were laughing about; and for a long time she failed to understand that usually they were laughing about nothing. On summer evenings the boys and girls clustered on other verandas, not hers; and, sitting alone, she would hear the distant frolicking and drifts of song. At dances for her sixteen and seventeen-year-old contemporaries, everything was as it had been when she was twelve. Even when her mother, guessing a little of the truth, tried to help her, and, in spite of failing health, worked hard at “entertaining” for Elsie, the entertaining failed of its object;—Elsie was not made “popular.”

“_Why_ not?” she had passionately asked herself a thousand times. “_Why_ do they despise me so?”

Yet she knew that they did not even despise her. At times they did despise one of their group, usually a girl; for it seems to be almost a necessity, in an intimate circle of young people, that from time to time there shall be a member whom the rest may privately denounce, and in gatherings vent their wit upon more or less openly.

During the greater part of her seventeenth year the dashing Mamie Ford had been in this unfortunate position without any obvious cause. The others were constantly busy “talking” about her, finding new faults or absurdities in her; snubbing her and playing derisive practical jokes upon her—for it is true that youth is cruel; self-interest takes up so much room. Elsie envied her, for at least Mamie was in the thick of things; and the centre of the stew. That was better than being a mere left-outer, Elsie thought; and Mamie fought, too, and had her own small faction, whereas a left-outer has nothing to fight except the vacancy in which she dwells—a dreary battling. Mamie’s unpopularity passed, for no better reason than it had arrived;—she was now, at nineteen, the very queen of the roost, and Elsie, wondering why, could only conclude that it was because Mamie made so much noise.

Elsie had long ago perceived that, of the girls she knew, those who made the loudest and most frequent noises signifying excitement and hilarity were the ones about whom the boys and, consequently, the other girls, most busily grouped themselves. Naturally, the simple males went where vivacious sound and gesture promised merriment; and of course, too, a crowd naturally gathers where something seems to be happening. So far as Elsie could see, the whole art of general social intercourse seemed to rest on an ability to make something appear to be happening where nothing really was happening.

What had always most perplexed her was that the proper method of doing this seemed to be the simplest thing in the world, and was, nevertheless, in her own hands an invariable failure. She had watched Mamie Ford at dances and at dinners where Mamie was the life of the party, and she observed that in addition to shouting over every nothing and laughing ecstatically without the necessity of being inspired by any detectable humour, Mamie always offered every possible evidence—flushed face, sparkling eyes, and unending gesticulations—that she was having a genuinely uproarious “good time” herself. Elsie had tried it; she had tried it until her face ached; but she remained only an echo outside the walls. Nobody paid any attention to her.

Therefore she had no resource but to infer what she had inferred to-day, when the merry impromptu party whirled away without a thought of including her, and when Paul Reamer had so carelessly evaded her urgency—her shameless urgency, as she thought, weeping upon her coverlet. This inference of hers could be only that she had some mysterious ugliness, some strange stupidity, and it was this she sought in her mirror, as she had sought it before. It evaded her as it always did; but she knew it must be there.

“What is _wrong_ about me?” she murmured, tasting upon her lips the bitter salt of that inquiry. “They couldn’t always treat me like this unless there’s _something_ wrong about me.”