Miss Lulu Bett | Page 7

he had just heard.
Perhaps that was the way it had been. Of course that was the way it had
been. What a fool he had been not to understand. He cast his eyes
repeatedly toward the house. He managed to make the job last over so
that he could return in the afternoon. He was not conscious of planning
this, but it was in some manner contrived for him by forces of his own
with which he seemed to be coöperating without his conscious will.
Continually he glanced toward the house.
These glances Lulu saw. She was a woman of thirty-four and Di and
Bobby were eighteen, but Lulu felt for them no adult indulgence. She
felt that sweetness of attention which we bestow upon May robins. She
felt more.
She cut a fresh cake, filled a plate, called to Di, saying: "Take some out
to that Bobby Larkin, why don't you?"
It was Lulu's way of participating. It was her vicarious thrill.

After supper Dwight and Ina took their books and departed to the
Chautauqua Circle. To these meetings Lulu never went. The reason
seemed to be that she never went anywhere.
When they were gone Lulu felt an instant liberation. She turned
aimlessly to the garden and dug round things with her finger. And she
thought about the brightness of that Chautauqua scene to which Ina and
Dwight had gone. Lulu thought about such gatherings in somewhat the
way that a futurist receives the subjects of his art--forms not vague, but
heightened to intolerable definiteness, acute colour, and always
motion--motion as an integral part of the desirable. But a factor of all
was that Lulu herself was the participant, not the onlooker. The
perfection of her dream was not impaired by any longing. She had her
dream as a saint her sense of heaven.
"Lulie!" her mother called. "You come out of that damp."
She obeyed, as she had obeyed that voice all her life. But she took one
last look down the dim street. She had not known it, but superimposed
on her Chautauqua thoughts had been her faint hope that it would be
to-night, while she was in the garden alone, that Ninian Deacon would
arrive. And she had on her wool chally, her coral beads, her cameo
pin....
She went into the lighted dining-room. Monona was in bed. Di was not
there. Mrs. Bett was in Dwight Herbert's leather chair and she lolled at
her ease. It was strange to see this woman, usually so erect and tense,
now actually lolling, as if lolling were the positive, the vital, and her
ordinary rigidity a negation of her. In some corresponding orgy of
leisure and liberation, Lulu sat down with no needle.
"Inie ought to make over her delaine," Mrs. Bett comfortably began.
They talked of this, devised a mode, recalled other delaines. "Dear,
dear," said Mrs. Bett, "I had on a delaine when I met your father." She
described it. Both women talked freely, with animation. They were
individuals and alive. To the two pallid beings accessory to the
Deacons' presence, Mrs. Bett and her daughter Lulu now bore no
relationship. They emerged, had opinions, contradicted, their eyes were

bright.
Toward nine o'clock Mrs. Bett announced that she thought she should
have a lunch. This was debauchery. She brought in bread-and-butter,
and a dish of cold canned peas. She was committing all the excesses
that she knew--offering opinions, laughing, eating. It was to be seen
that this woman had an immense store of vitality, perpetually
submerged.
When she had eaten she grew sleepy--rather cross at the last and
inclined to hold up her sister's excellencies to Lulu; and, at Lulu's
defence, lifted an ancient weapon.
"What's the use of finding fault with Inie? Where'd you been if she
hadn't married?"
Lulu said nothing.
"What say?" Mrs. Bett demanded shrilly. She was enjoying it.
Lulu said no more. After a long time:
"You always was jealous of Inie," said Mrs. Bett, and went to her bed.
As soon as her mother's door had closed, Lulu took the lamp from its
bracket, stretching up her long body and her long arms until her skirt
lifted to show her really slim and pretty feet. Lulu's feet gave news of
some other Lulu, but slightly incarnate. Perhaps, so far, incarnate only
in her feet and her long hair.
She took the lamp to the parlour and stood before the photograph of
Ninian Deacon, and looked her fill. She did not admire the photograph,
but she wanted to look at it. The house was still, there was no
possibility of interruption. The occasion became sensation, which she
made no effort to quench. She held a rendezvous with she knew not
what.
In the early hours of the next afternoon with the