XI

Mamma planned to be surprised in the garden, but as the time for Mr. Lacey’s arrival drew near, she grew shy and stayed with the girls on the porch. She wouldn’t let them out of her sight. She felt dreadfully nervous.

She was wearing her white flounced, bustled dress with the little black bows all over it, and her black fringed sash. Black ribbons were tied around her wrists, and an onyx cross on a black velvet ribbon tobogganed on her bosom. She had tucked a crimson rose in her great bird’s nest of braids⁠—would he think that was flighty? But just as she began to take it out, his carriage wheels were heard on the drive, and she had only time to fling one arm about Victor, one about Lily, who were showing signs of running away, before Martha brought him out on the porch.

A new Mr. Lacey, surely! This Mr. Lacey is too spotless, too creaseless, too twinklingly tidy, ever to have been used before. He has never run, ridden on smoky trains, gone to bed, burnt his mouth, fallen down, or shed tears. He has just been created, he and his silver-grey suit, his shoes as polished as black glass, his linen so white that it makes you blink, the cluster of dark geranium in his buttonhole. Or else he has just been done over from tip to toe, with a new wig and whiskers of glossy nut-brown silk, and a fresh coat of pink paint for his face, and of sky-blue paint for his eyes.

No, his eyes are not sky-blue paint, but the real sky itself, and those are real stars shining in them.

“My prediction is that in a hundred years we will all be going about in balloons,” said Mr. Lacey.

“Oh, dear!” said Mamma. “Nothing would induce me!”

That was the end of that. What could they talk about now?

Literature! That was always a nice topic. But one had to be careful with young ladies present. Hawthorne was all right if one stuck to “The Marble Faun,” but there was always “The Scarlet Letter” lurking in the background. He tried George Eliot, who had just written a novel called “Middlemarch.”

“We’ve read ‘Mill on the Floss,’ ” said May. Mamma didn’t know about Mr. Lewes, but the girls did, and that got them through the dull parts.

“Quite an authoress, quite an authoress!” Mr. Lacey decided kindly.

“I hardly like to let the girls read her,” said Mamma. “It sounds so fast⁠—a lady calling herself George! Pass the biscuits, please, Martha.”

The conversation fainted again, and again Mr. Lacey leapt forward with restoratives. President Grant and Mr. Home, the Spiritualist, helped him out; and, at the mention of Dr. Livingstone and Mr. Stanley, the Congo rolled through their minds, with variations, for none of them had very clear ideas about it. But Mr. Lacey had to do the work, for Mamma was nervous and the children silent.

He tried lighter topics, and described the ladies of fashion he had seen at Saratoga last month, with hair dressed so high, with the bonnets perched on top such explosions of feathers and flowers, that it seemed as if the gentlemen escorting them should have walked on stilts. “The height of fashion!” cried Mr. Lacey, expecting laughter. For once his lady failed him, murmuring, “Do have some more salad,” but he didn’t mind. Above all things he admired sensibility in Lovely Woman.

“Eat your nice sweetbread, darling,” Mamma urged Victor tenderly, smiling at him. She wanted, oh, she wanted to show them all how much she loved them. The warmth and fragrance of her love poured out over her little boy.

“Victor caught a big fish this morning, for our lunch.”

“Caught a big fish, did he? This big, eh?” Mr. Lacey measured off improbable lengths of air. “What, not that big, young Sir Piscator? Well, I suppose the bigger fish got away⁠—I thought so, I thought so! You’re a true fisherman!” He slapped his napkined knee, and his laughter pealed out. Even Mamma had to laugh a little in spite of Victor’s gloomy face. Mr. Lacey was so droll.

Panic-stricken, she would have stayed with the children all evening. But Mr. Lacey was firm. He wanted to be shown the roses. With Brownie at their heels, they strolled across the grass, and the hemlock hedge that separated the lawn from the garden hid them.

The girls didn’t want to be waiting there on the river porch when Mamma and Mr. Lacey came up from the garden. They took their round straw mats and sat on the grass under the trees in front of the house. The western sky was a sheet of pure gold, and against it the weeping willow by the servants’ cabins across the road was a dark fountain⁠—a fountain springing and falling, springing and falling forever. Somebody from one of the cabins began to play the banjo, languidly, for it was still so hot. The notes spattered out, seemed drops from that fountain pouring up against the golden sky that faded as they watched it, and then grew dark. The music stopped, everything was quiet but the insects that sounded as if they were mechanical insects being wound up for tomorrow.

There was a crunch of steps on the drive⁠—of course, Mamma and Mr. Lacey thought the girls would be on the porch, they were all hiding from each other⁠—and the gentleman’s voice said cheerfully:

“I wonder how it will feel to be Paterfamilias to three lively young ladies and a young hopeful!”

Lily’s nervous giggle escaped before she could cram her hands against her mouth, and the voice sank to a murmur, the steps withdrew. Presently they heard his carriage roll away; and Mamma was standing in the lighted doorway calling: “Children! I want you!”

No need to tell them what had happened, her face was so beautiful and radiant. She was like a great white water-lily that opens softly to show a golden heart, a great white cloud, gold in the sun. Floating, floating, far away from earth. Even the hard knot of pain in Maggie’s breast melted as she hugged Mamma.

“Where’s my Victor?”

“I put him to bed, Mamma. He wasn’t feeling very well.”

“Poor little man! I’ll see if he’s asleep. Girls⁠—”

“Yes, Mamma.”

“Darlings, I do love you so much!”

Victor was awake, a huddle of misery. His head was wet, he was sure he was going to be sick again. Half waking, half sleeping dreams filled the room. Mr. Lacey’s body in its silver-grey suit⁠—but the head was the head of the catfish he caught for Mamma⁠—the dark grey of wet slate, with long fleshy feelers like drooping mustaches⁠—a face as terrifying, as evil, as the Chinese devils in the Foreign Mission book at Mr. Page’s. And from the face came the purring sound that had come from the catfish lying in the bottom of the boat⁠—the frightening purring that had gone on until Jake hit it over the head.

Now the catfish face was laughing at him, the silver-grey sides of Mr. Lacey’s suit were shaking. And over the bed, past the windows, head-down from the ceiling, floated Mamma and the girls, laughing at him, too⁠—

They melted away, he could see his clothes over a chair, the faint glimmer of the looking-glass in the light from the hall. It glimmered like water⁠—water gently rocking the boat in which he sat fishing. Suddenly the red bob in the circle of bright water wobbled and went under⁠—a bite! And there, jerking and leaping at the end of his line, was a tiny Mr. Lacey, grey suit, brown sidewhiskers, geranium buttonhole, streaming wet and jerking on the hook as if he were dancing the Highland fling. Funny little Mr. Lacey! But, lying kicking in the bottom of the boat, he began to grow, to swell, blotting out the river, blotting out the sky; and screaming with laughter he began rocking the boat from side to side⁠—further⁠—further⁠—until the water came pouring in⁠—

Victor wrenched himself back into full consciousness, calling “Mamma!” But no use to call for Mamma⁠—she was in the garden with Mr. Lacey, and Lily and May said she was going to get married and be with him always. The waking dreams crept back, knitted together with the heat, the sound of the night insects, the sheet all screwed up into humps and ridges, his stomach that felt so sick no matter how hard he hugged his knees against it, his hot head that swelled up and floated off like a balloon.

And then Mamma really came. She put down her candle, and the moths began to fly around it crazily. Her shadow and Victor’s streamed up the side of the wall, tremulous and huge. She knelt by the bed and put her arms around his body that stiffened under her touch.

“Oh, you naughty boy, you ought to be sound asleep!” But she was glad he wasn’t, really. Bright tears went slipping down over the brightness of her smile.

“Victor, dearest little boy, I have some news for you, something that’s going to make Mamma and all of us so happy. Look, Mamma’s crying, but it’s only because she’s so happy⁠—isn’t that silly? You’re going to have a new Papa⁠—won’t that be lovely, darling? A dear new Papa to love us all and take care of us⁠—Mr. Lacey⁠—”

Victor was as rigid as iron. His face, his large ears, his thin little neck turned scarlet. His whole body was scarlet under his nightshirt. And suddenly like a cork flying out of a bottle a loud “No!” burst from him, and another and another. She couldn’t soothe him, she couldn’t stop him. Scarlet, furious, he went on crying “No! No! No! No!” as if his cries were torn out of him by terror and despair.

“Hush, darling, hush! He wants to take us all across the ocean in a great big ship, as big as this house⁠—won’t that be fun? Perhaps we’ll see a whale! Think of that! And Mamma will love Victor a thousand thousand times as much as ever⁠—”

She tightened her arms about him, she tried to draw his head down on her breast, rocking back and forth with broken murmurs of “sh-sh, sh-sh.” But nothing would stop those tearing cries.

And at last she promised. He was safe. He lay in the big chair by the window, exhausted, giving now and then a long shuddering sob⁠—but safe, safe! Mamma had promised.

She washed his hot face with cool water and cologne, she took off his hot, rumpled nightie and put on a fresh one. Sitting there while she made his bed with fresh cool sheets he heard a cock crow far away, and saw a faint streak of light along the river.

In bed again⁠—so cool, so still⁠—no sound but a June-bug bumbling against the ceiling. Funny old June-bug! He tried to lift a hand to make sure that Mamma was still there, but his arms, his legs, all his body had turned into yards and yards of silk the color of the river in the moonlight, flowing in such soft folds and billows in his cool fresh bed. He felt something wet fall on his face, and just managed a faint “Mamma!” before the cool silver depths closed over him.

Next morning Mamma was all washed white, like a flower that has been rained on and rained on and rained on. Only her poor eyes and nose were pink, as if her pretty pink cheeks had run in the wash and streaked and stained all the wrong places. All morning she sat at Papa’s desk between the dining-room windows, writing and tearing up, writing and tearing up, and at last Albert was sent off with a note, and with Brownie, but not the gloxinias, which hadn’t done very well. Mamma put Mr. Lacey’s letter and one velvety dark gloxinia bell into her Bible, and for a long time she cried whenever she looked at them. She never saw Mr. Lacey again.