IV
Nina was surprised by her sister’s censorious attitude.
“But they do try to be neighborly!” she protested.
“I don’t care!” said Rose, with unwonted heat. “I don’t like them, and I don’t want anything to do with them. They’re a family of—savages!”
“Oh, Rose! When that poor little Margie brings us flowers from her own garden every day!”
“Yes, because that Bill told her to!” thought Rose. But aloud she said: “Brings them! She pretty nearly throws them at us.”
“That’s just her way.”
“Well, I don’t like her way, and I don’t want her flowers, and I don’t like any of those Morgans, or anything they do. I never imagined such an ill-tempered, quarrelsome family.”
“I know,” said Nina, seriously. “And I think it’s pitiful.”
“Pitiful! To snarl and snap at one another—”
“Yes,” said Nina. “Because there’s something so splendid about them, in spite of all that—something so honest and fine.”
“Fine!” cried Rose, with a snort.
“You must have noticed. They’re rough and unmannerly, but they’re never vulgar. And they speak well. I think they’ve come down in the world, Rose.”
“They certainly have!” Rose agreed. “Down to the bottom. Nina, you’re sentimental about your Morgans. You’ve seen how they live. A coarse, ugly life, without one gracious touch. They eat in the kitchen, on a table covered with oilcloth.”
“Yes, and it’s a spotless kitchen, and everything about them is wholesome.”
“It’s no use,” Rose objected. “I don’t like them, and I won’t like them. Now, you sit here on the veranda and read. I’m going to buy the Sunday dinner.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Nina, but she was glad Rose would not let her. It was a long walk, and she felt tired, very tired and languid. She did not want Rose to know how tired she was, or how worried.
It seemed that their financial affairs were not definitely settled, as they had believed. Mr. Doyle, the lawyer, kept writing to her letters she could not quite understand, anxious, almost desperate letters, accusing himself of “criminal folly”; begging her forgiveness, and making all sorts of promises. He wrote always to her, never to Rose, and she was glad of that, for she did not want Rose to know.
But she was so tired. She tried valiantly to do her share, to be a good comrade to her beloved sister; but she was not strong, either in body or in spirit; she was a gentle soul; she could endure, but she could not fight. She wanted only to live in peace and good will, harmless and lovely as a flower.
It was a Saturday afternoon; Gilbert had come home early in his little car, and he and Margie had at once begun to quarrel fiercely.
“Bill told you to take me to the village in the car, if I wanted!” she declared.
“Do you good to walk!” said her brother.
“I won’t walk!”
“All right! Then stay home!”
Presently the back door slammed, in the Morgan fashion, and Nina hoped he was going away. It hurt her to hear these two[Pg 391] young creatures quarrel so; she always wished that she had some magic word to stop them, to bring quiet to their stormy spirits. She was waiting for the sound of his engine starting up, when, to her surprise, she saw him standing on the path before her.
“Mrs. De Haaven,” he said, “can you spare me a few minutes?”
“With pleasure!” she answered, as if this amazing request were quite a matter of course. “Come up on the veranda, won’t you?”
He did come up, and when she asked him, sat down opposite her. He was silent for a few moments, and Nina studied him with frank and kindly curiosity. For the first time she saw what a remarkably handsome boy he was, a little haggard, a little too thin, perhaps, but tall and sinewy, and notably distinguished.
Yes, that was the word; he was distinguished looking, with his thin, rather arrogant face, his slender, well-kept hands, his neat dark suit. He was not surly to-day, and not shy or awkward; he looked at her candidly as he spoke.
“I hope you won’t mind,” he said. “But I knew you could tell me. If you’d give me your advice. I’ve got an invitation—but perhaps I’d better show it to you.”
He took a letter out of his pocket and handed it to her. It read:
My dear Boy:
Why not run down for this week-end? Don’t bother to let me know—just come if you can. I often think of you, and it seems to me perfectly terrible that you should be living like that. And quite unnecessary. I want you to meet some of your own sort.
Yours—most sincerely,
Lucille Winter.
Lucille Winter! And writing in this vein to this boy! Nina held the letter in her hand for a long time, unable to say anything to cloak her thought.
“You see,” said Gilbert, “I couldn’t go until to-day, on account of my job. And I’d have to come back to-morrow night. D’you think that would be all right?”
“No!” thought Nina. “Nothing could be less right. It’s—a horrible thing. You’re only a child. And Lucille—You don’t know Lucille, but I do.”
“You see,” he went on. “Mrs. Winter is my father’s cousin. You wouldn’t suspect it, but my father’s family were—decent people.”
“Oh!” Nina breathed.
“I don’t mean that mother’s family wasn’t—all right,” he said. “My mother—” He stopped. “My mother was a saint,” he announced. An odd change came over his face; all the arrogance vanished, leaving it weary and sorrowful. “And my father wasn’t,” he added.
Another silence ensued.
“So Bill’s got this idea of a simple life,” he said, with something like a sneer. “He won’t let us see any of father’s people. Wouldn’t let me go to college. He made me take this job—in the National Electric—when I was only seventeen. In a year I’ll be twenty-one, and then Bill can go to blazes. In the meantime—not much I can do. He controls the finances. He’s away now, though. And I’m to Mrs. Winter’s.”
“Oh, I don’t blame you!” thought Nina. “What a dreadful thing—to take a boy like this and put him to work at seventeen, and make him live in such a way! And if Lucille is his father’s cousin—She knows really good people—It really would help him—”
And because she was, in spite of her worldly experiences, so innocent and good at heart, so ready to think well of every one, and so anxious to help this unhappy boy, she did give him her advice. She told him what clothes to take, what to tip the servants, and so on.
“Please don’t tell Margie where I’ve gone,” he said. “I’ll be back to-morrow night for dinner. And she’ll be all right—with you next door.” He arose. “Thank you!” he said. “You’ve been—very kind to me.”
She had meant to be. She hoped, she believed, that she had done well in helping him to elude the tyrant Bill.