"Well—" Then it was that Belle came creeping back into the room, sniffling. Charley looked up at her calm-eyed. "Mother, I'd like to have you understand this, too. I've been thinking about it quite a lot. I don't want you to imagine I'm just popping off, suddenly."
"Off!" Belle snatched at the word.
Charley nodded. "You see I've got to have colour and motion and life. And beauty. You don't find them at Shields'. But before Jesse—went—I knew I could hit it off beautifully down there and that he'd furnish me with enough of the other thing. One of us had to buckle down, and I was the one. I wanted to be. We were both going to be married and free at the same time. The little house in Hubbard Woods was there to come to, every day or once a week. It was going to be every day for me. But a man like Jesse can't write—couldn't write—his kind of stuff without feeling free to come and go. So there I was going to be. And I'd have my job, and some babies in between.... Well, there's nothing in it for me now. Plodding away. It's ridiculous. What for! Oh, it's interesting enough. It's all right if.... I want a change. Dancing! Krisiloff's going out with his company. He's got forty-two solid weeks booked. I'm going with them. He's going to let me do the Gypsy Beggar dance alone." She pushed her plate away, got up from the table. "It'll be good to dance again." She raised her arms high above her head. "'Can I show you something in blouses, madam?' Ugh!"
Mrs. Payson, when she heard of it, was aroused to a point that alarmed them all. "A grandchild of mine—Isaac Thrift's great-granddaughter—dancing around the country on the stage! What did I tell you, Belle! Haven't I always told you! But no, she had to take dancing lessons. Esthetic dancing. Esthetic! I'd like to know what's esthetic about a lot of dirty Russians slapping about in their bare feet. I won't have it. I won't have it. Colour, huh? Life and beauty! I'd show her colour if I were you. A spanking—that's what she needs. That'd show her a little life and colour. She shan't go. Hear me!"
When Charley refused to discuss it with her grandmother Mrs. Payson forbade her the house. The excitement had given her tremendous energy. She stamped about the house and down the street, scorning the electric.
Charley joined the Krisiloffs in August. Her letters home omitted many details that would have justified Mrs. Payson in the stand she had taken. But Charley was only slightly disgusted and often amused at the manners and morals of the Krisiloffs. She hated the stuffy hotels and the uninviting food but loved exploring the towns. Audiences in medium-sized Middle West towns were rather startled by the fury and fire which she flung into the Gypsy Beggar dance. Her costume of satin breeches and chiffon shirt was an ingenious imitation of a street beggar's picturesque rags and tatters. As she finished her dance, and flung herself on her knees, holding out her tambourine for alms, the audiences would stare at her uncomfortably, shifting in their seats, so haggard and piteous and feverish was her appeal. But always there was a crash of applause, sharp and spontaneous. She had some unpleasant moments with other women of the company who were jealous of the favour with which her dance was received.
When the rest of the company was sleeping, or eating, or cooking messes over furtive alcohol stoves in hotel bedrooms, Charley was prowling about book-shops, or walking in the town's outskirts, or getting a quiet private enjoyment out of its main street. She missed Lottie. She often wanted to write her many of the things that the other members of the family would not have understood. In the life and colour and beauty she had craved she had found, as well, much drudgery, and sordidness and hardship. But she loved the dancing. The shifting from town to town, from theatre to theatre, numbed her pain. She caught herself looking at beauty through Jesse Dick's eyes. In her Cincinnati letter to Lottie she dismissed dancing in ten words and devoted three pages to a description of the Nürnberg quality of the turreted buildings on the hill overlooking the river, from the park. The money she earned, aside from that which she needed for her own actual wants, she sent regularly to the Red Cross. Before she had left, "I suppose I could be cutting sandwiches," she had said, "and dancing with the kids passing through Chicago; or driving an emergency car. I'd rather not. There are fifty girls to every job of that kind."
Contrary to Aunt Charlotte's prediction, Jeannette's Nebraska sailor had not become Jeannette's Nebraska husband until after the armistice. She was married at Christmas and left for the West with him. The wedding was held in the Prairie Avenue house. It turned out to be rather a grim affair, in spite of Jeannette's high spirits and her Bohemian relatives and the post-war reaction and the very good supper provided by Mrs. Payson. For Belle and Henry thought of Charley; and Mrs. Payson thought of Lottie; and Aunt Charlotte thought of both, and of the girl of sixty years ago. And Jeannette said bluntly: "You look as if it was a funeral instead of a wedding." She herself was a little terrified at the thought of this great unknown prairie land to which she was going, with her smart fur coat and her tricotine dress and her silk stockings and gray kid shoes. As well she might be.
After it was over, an unnatural quiet settled down upon the house. The two old women told each other that it was a blessed relief after the flurry and fuss of the wedding, but looked at each other rather fearfully during the long evenings and awaited Lottie's return with such passionate eagerness as neither would have admitted to the other. They expected her to pop in, somehow, the day after the armistice.
"Well, Lottie'll be home now," Mrs. Payson would say, "most any day." She took to watching for the postman, as she used to watch at the parlour window for Lottie on the rare occasions when she was late. When he failed to appear at what she considered the proper time she would fume and fuss. Then, at his ring, she would whisk into the front vestibule with surprising agility and, poking her head out of the door, berate him.