Miss Lulu Bett | Page 6

and the door was shut with violence. On the dark
stairway Lulu's arms closed about her in an embrace which left her
breathless and squeaking. And yet Lulu was not really fond of the child
Monona, either. This was a discharge of emotion akin, say, to
slamming the door.

II

MAY
Lulu was dusting the parlour. The parlour was rarely used, but every
morning it was dusted. By Lulu.
She dusted the black walnut centre table which was of Ina's choosing,
and looked like Ina, shining, complacent, abundantly curved. The
leather rocker, too, looked like Ina, brown, plumply upholstered,
tipping back a bit. Really, the davenport looked like Ina, for its chintz
pattern seemed to bear a design of lifted eyebrows and arch,
reproachful eyes.
Lulu dusted the upright piano, and that was like Dwight--in a perpetual
attitude of rearing back, with paws out, playful, but capable, too, of
roaring a ready bass.
And the black fireplace--there was Mrs. Bett to the life. Colourless,
fireless, and with a dust of ashes.
In the midst of all was Lulu herself reflected in the narrow pier glass,
bodiless-looking in her blue gingham gown, but somehow alive.
Natural.
This pier glass Lulu approached with expectation, not because of
herself but because of the photograph on its low marble shelf. A large
photograph on a little shelf-easel. A photograph of a man with evident
eyes, evident lips, evident cheeks--and each of the six were rounded
and convex. You could construct the rest of him. Down there under the
glass you could imagine him extending, rounded and convex, with
plump hands and curly thumbs and snug clothes. It was Ninian Deacon,
Dwight's brother.
Every day since his coming had been announced Lulu, dusting the
parlour, had seen the photograph looking at her with its eyes somehow
new. Or were her own eyes new? She dusted this photograph with a
difference, lifted, dusted, set it back, less as a process than as an
experience. As she dusted the mirror and saw his trim semblance over
against her own bodiless reflection, she hurried away. But the eyes of

the picture followed her, and she liked it.
She dusted the south window-sill and saw Bobby Larkin come round
the house and go to the wood-shed for the lawn mower. She heard the
smooth blur of the cutter. Not six times had Bobby traversed the lawn
when Lulu saw Di emerge from the house. Di had been caring for her
canary and she carried her bird-bath and went to the well, and Lulu
divined that Di had deliberately disregarded the handy kitchen taps.
Lulu dusted the south window and watched, and in her watching was
no quality of spying or of criticism. Nor did she watch wistfully. Rather,
she looked out on something in which she had never shared, could not
by any chance imagine herself sharing.
The south windows were open. Airs of May bore the soft talking.
"Oh, Bobby, will you pump while I hold this?" And again: "Now wait
till I rinse." And again: "You needn't be so glum"--the village salutation
signifying kindly attention.
Bobby now first spoke: "Who's glum?" he countered gloomily.
The iron of those days when she had laughed at him was deep within
him, and this she now divined, and said absently:
"I used to think you were pretty nice. But I don't like you any more."
"Yes, you used to!" Bobby repeated derisively. "Is that why you made
fun of me all the time?"
At this Di coloured and tapped her foot on the well-curb. He seemed to
have her now, and enjoyed his triumph. But Di looked up at him shyly
and looked down. "I had to," she admitted. "They were all teasing me
about you."
"They were?" This was a new thought to him. Teasing her about him,
were they? He straightened. "Huh!" he said, in magnificent evasion.
"I had to make them stop, so I teased you. I--I never wanted to." Again

the upward look.
"Well!" Bobby stared at her. "I never thought it was anything like that."
"Of course you didn't." She tossed back her bright hair, met his eyes
full. "And you never came where I could tell you. I wanted to tell you."
She ran into the house.
Lulu lowered her eyes. It was as if she had witnessed the exercise of
some secret gift, had seen a cocoon open or an egg hatch. She was
thinking:
"How easy she done it. Got him right over. But how did she do that?"
Dusting the Dwight-like piano, Lulu looked over-shoulder, with a
manner of speculation, at the photograph of Ninian.
Bobby mowed and pondered. The magnificent conceit of the male in
his understanding of the female character was sufficiently developed to
cause him to welcome the improvisation which