Jewel Weed Part 28

"Buy all the clothes I want," cried Lena with such a deliciously whimsical twist of her little lips that d.i.c.k laughed at her irresistible wit. That was coming to be one of Lena's most fetching little ways, to say what she meant as though it were the last thing in the world that could be expected of her. It was piquant.

It was no time of year to dally in true lovers' fas.h.i.+on under pine trees in some remote solitude, so d.i.c.k took her to cities and theaters and big shops and got his fun out of watching her revel with open purse. Their honeymoon was more full of occupation and less of rapture and sweet isolated intimacy than d.i.c.k could have wished, but it was much to watch the color come and go on her cheek in her moments of excitement, to fulfil every capricious whim of her who had been starved in her feminine hunger of caprice, to punctuate the rush of life by celestial moments when she rested a tired but bewildering head against his shoulder and listened silently with drooping lids to all he had to say, to feel that he could answer the admiring glances of other men with the triumphant knowledge, "All this loveliness is mine--only mine." Lena was so happy, so outrageously happy,--and so shyly affectionate, what could the young husband do but take with content the gifts the G.o.ds provided; and d.i.c.k was lavish and easily cajoled. The simple trousseau helped out by Miss Elton suddenly swelled to new and magnificent proportions. Lena blossomed and glowed; she tricked herself out in the finery that he provided and paraded before him and the gla.s.s until they both laughed with delight. d.i.c.k felt that he was playing with a new and sublimated doll, it was all so amusing, so inconsequential, and such fun. Although he wondered a little where it would be appropriate to wear the enormous pink hat with drooping plumes which perched on the showily fluffy head now facing him, he quite appreciated the effect.

"Oh, of course you think I'm stunning," Lena pouted. "But the question is, what will other people think?"

"Other people aren't the question at all," retorted d.i.c.k. "Who cares what they think so long as you and I know that you are the very loveliest woman on this whole wide earth--this good old earth."

When they came home, Lena exulted again in the luxurious rooms that d.i.c.k had fitted up for her in fas.h.i.+on more modern than the somber dignity of the rest of the house. Here was another new sensation--a household without bickerings. The elder Mrs. Percival, having accepted the situation, was no n.i.g.g.ard in her spirit of courtesy, but very gracious as was her wont, and Lena was astonished to find that she and her new mother-in-law ran their respective lines without collisions. The half-invalid older woman breakfasted in her own room and occupied herself with quiet readings and sewings and drivings, but when she did appear on the family horizon, it was always as a beneficent presence.

Lena purred in the presence of comfort; but when you see a kitten serenely snoozing before the fire, it does not do to leap to the conclusion that this kitten would not know what was expected of her on the back fence at midnight.

If storm and stress should ever come, d.i.c.k had himself helped her to feel that beauty would fill the measure, wherever it fell short; that however she might sin, beauty was her sufficient apology.

Mrs. Quincy, established in a little flat with a middle-aged submissive slavey, was as nearly reconciled to fate as her nature would allow. Her rooms were pleasantly furnished, but Lena's mother was full of the genius of discord, and almost automatically she so rearranged her surroundings that each particular article made strife with its neighbor.

Harmony and Mrs. Quincy could not live in the same house. When Lena paid her duty visits (and she was irritated at the frequency with which d.i.c.k's and Madame Percival's expectations seemed to exact them) she had not only to listen in nauseated impatience to Mrs. Quincy's minute questions and comments on people and things, but she had also to feel her rapidly-developing tastes offended by her mother's domestic order.

"Miss Elton's real kind. She's been here twice since you was here. And she brought flowers."

"Mother! And did you have a newspaper on top of that pretty little table?"

"Land sakes! And if I didn't I should have to watch Sarah every minute to see she didn't put something hot on it or scratch the mahogany top. I can't afford to have everything I've got spoiled. No knowin' when I'll git anything more--dependent as I am on other people."

"I'll bring you a pretty table-cover then."

"I'd like a red one. But I didn't suppose you'd think of gittin' one."

"Oh, mother, red wouldn't look well in this room."

"Now, I just think a bit of real bright red would hearten it up. If you don't git red, you needn't git any, Lena Quincy, for I won't use it. Are you goin' now? Seems to me you got precious little time for your old mother since you put on all your fine lady airs."

And Lena? Have you ever watched a cecropia moth when it crawls out of its dull gray prison of chrysalis? It is a moist, frail, tottering creature with tiny wings folded against its quivering body, but as the spring suns.h.i.+ne brings to play its magic and infuses its "subtle heats,"

there come s.h.i.+vers of growth. Great waves seem to pulsate from the body into the wings, and with each wave goes color and strength. In quick throbs they come at last until they look like a continuous current, and before your eyes is a glorious bird-like creature, with damask wings outspread, and flecked with peac.o.c.k spots, hiding the slender body within. It feels its strength, spreads and preens itself, and is away to the forest to meet its fate.

Such was Lena in the first months of her marriage. The world's warmth welcomed her, partly in curiosity, and partly because she was in truth Richard Percival's wife, and the protegee of Mrs. Lenox, who took every pains to s.h.i.+eld her and help her. The ways of that little sphere that calls itself society she found it not difficult to acquire, when to beauty she added the paraphernalia of luxury. A little trick of holding oneself, a turn of speech, a familiarity with a certain set of people and their doings, and the thing is accomplished. Was there ever yet an American girl, whose supreme characteristic is adaptability, who could not learn it in a few months, if she set her mind to it?

As she experienced the true pleasure of being inside, which is the knowledge that there are outsiders raging to make entrance, she spread her wings, did Madame Cecropia, and the only wonder was that she was ever packed away in the dull gray chrysalis. And now every one forgot that ugly thing, when Lena changed her sky but not her heart.

d.i.c.k and she lived in a whirl; and if he would have liked, after strenuous days spent in spreading political feelers, to have found at home quiet evenings and old slippers, he was rapidly learning that the position of husband to a young beauty is no sinecure. And he admired and loved her too much to fling even a rose leaf of opposition in her path.

The very hards.h.i.+p of her past made him tender to every whim of the present. d.i.c.k's chivalry was deep-grained, as it is in men who have lived among pure and simple women. In everything that wore petticoats he saw something of his mother, fragile, n.o.ble, ambitious for those she loved and forgetful of self. When Lena began to show him things that he could not admire, he laid the blame of them, not to her, but to the world that had played the brute to her. And if he tried to change her it was with apology in his heart for daring to criticize. But as Lena came to take for granted the ease and comfort of her new life, she more and more laid aside the pose with which she had at first edified her lord, and spoke her real mind. She had fully acquired the manner and the garments of a lady. She could not see that more was needed.

One gray wintry day, as they walked homeward together from a midday musicale, they pa.s.sed a grimy little girl who whimpered as she clutched her small person.

"What's the matter, girlie?" asked d.i.c.k, and as he stopped his wife, too, halted perforce.

"My pett.i.toat's comin' down," sobbed the child.

"Is that all?" said d.i.c.k. "I wouldn't cry about such a little thing.

I'll soon fix it for you." And he stooped.

"d.i.c.k," said Lena imperatively, "there's a carriage coming!"

"Let it come!" said d.i.c.k. "Sorry I haven't a safety-pin, girlie, but I guess this one will do till you get home." That impulsive interest in all varieties of human nature was so natural to him that he took for granted that it was a part of our common nature.

He looked up with a smile to see Lena's face crimson with wrath and shame. Her expression sobered him.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

"It was Mrs. Lenox who drove by," she urged. "And she looked so amused."

"I don't wonder. I'm amused myself," he replied gaily.

"A nice thing for a gentleman to be seen doing," Lena went on, with a voice growing shrill like her mother's. "To play nursemaid to a dirty little street brat!" She had said things like this to him before, but always with that little smile and naughty-child air. Now, for the first time she forgot the smile, and this small omission made an astonis.h.i.+ng difference in the impression.

"I don't know what else a gentleman should do," answered d.i.c.k; "or a lady, either. Mrs. Lenox would have done as much for any baby, her own or another."

"Much she would!" said Lena sharply. "I've been at her house. She has rafts of nurses to do all the waiting on her children. I guess she doesn't let them trouble her any more than she can help. If she's unlucky enough to have the squally little things, she keeps away from them."

Even as she spoke, Lena realized that her acid voice was a mistake, but she said to herself that she was tired of acting, and it did not make any difference what d.i.c.k thought now. She was his wife.

"Perhaps you don't know the whole, Lena," d.i.c.k answered. "I happen to have seen Mrs. Lenox when she was devoting herself to a sick baby, and Madeline has told me of the kind of personal care she gives."

"The more fool she, when she can get some one else to do it for her,"

said Lena, with feminine change of front.

"Is that the way you feel about children?" asked d.i.c.k soberly.

"I suppose they are necessary evils," said Lena with a smart laugh. "But I'd rather they'd be necessary to other women than to me."

"Well, perhaps that's a natural feeling, when we're young and like to be irresponsible; but I fancy, dear, that things look pretty different as we get along and are willing to pay the price for our happinesses--to pay for love with service and self-sacrifice. As for me, I pray that you and I may not some day be childless old folks."

Lena glanced at him sidewise as they walked, and his somber face showed her that her mistake went deeper than she had suspected.

"I'm sorry I was cross," she said with pretty contrition, but her prettiness and contrition did not have their usual exhilarating effect on d.i.c.k. Lena even turned and laid her hand softly on his arm. Still he did not look at her.

"I wasn't hurt by your crossness, dear," he said gently.

Among those to open hospitable doors to the bride and groom was Mr.

Early. His house adjoined theirs, and only a hedge separated the two gardens, old-fas.h.i.+oned, with comfortable seats under wide trees on the Percival place, elaborately Italian on Mr. Early's domain, but s.p.a.cious both, for St. Etienne had the advantage of doing most of its growth after rapid transit was invented, and had therefore never cribbed and cabined its population into solid blocks of brick and mortar, but had given everybody elbow-room, so that its residence district looked much like the suburbs of older cities.

So d.i.c.k and Lena went to dine with Mr. Early, and the bride had the thrilling delight of sitting between her world-famous host and an equally ill.u.s.trious scholar, who had his head with him, extra size, and was plainly bored to death by his own erudition. It was a large dinner, and Lena was alert to study every one, both what he did and how he did it; but chiefly, from her vantage point at the right hand of her host; did she watch Miss Madeline Elton, who sat near the middle of the table on the other side, where Lena could study her face over a sea of violets. Lena was puzzled. Madeline seemed less reposeful and more charming than she remembered. For an instant she wondered if her own beauty, now tricked out by jewels, was not cheap beside Miss Elton's undecorated loveliness. She noted that the men around the table looked often in Madeline's direction. Even Mr. Early occasionally let his attention wander from his suave courtesy toward herself, and Lena resented this. She deeply admired Mr. Early. His was the big and blatant success which she could easily comprehend, and she exulted at the idea of sitting at the post of honor beside a man distinguished over the length and breadth of the land. Once, even her own husband, Richard Percival, leaned forward and gazed at Madeline as she spoke across the table, and there was a look in his face that Lena treasured in her cabinet of unforgiven things. She flushed with anger. Her hatred of Miss Elton was as old as her acquaintance with her husband, and its growth had been parallel.

Then her eyes met the glowing glance of a dark face under a turban of soft white silk, and she turned hastily away.

"I see you are looking at my ceiling, Mrs. Percival," said Mr. Early.

"It is a reproduction of the beautiful fan-tracery in the Henry VII chapel at Westminster. Doubtless you recognize it. But, alas, it is impossible to attain the spiritual beauty of the original until age has laid its sanctifying hand on the carving. This has had but a year of life for each century that the chapel tracery can boast. And, of course, I admit that the effect must be modified by the surroundings. A dining-room can never have the atmosphere of a church, can it, my dear Mrs. Percival? Though I a.s.sure you, I have tried to be consistent in all the decorations and the furniture of this room."

"It's very beautiful," said Lena. "And who is the large gentleman with the long white mustaches?"