Part 45 (2/2)
”I think I'll leave the Corson family right out of it, Stewart. I'm a loyal daughter of this state. I'm home again and I've waked up. Humor me in a little conceit, won't you? Let me make believe that I'm the state and listen to me while I tell you what a big, brave, unselfish--”
They were inside the door and he put his arm about her and led her toward the big screen and broke in on her little speech that she was making tremulously, apprehensively, with a sob in her voice, trying to hide her deeper emotions under her mock-dramatics.
”Hush, dear! I don't want to hear any state talk to me! I want to hear only Lana Corson talk. I didn't understand her last night! Now, bless her honest, true heart, I do understand her.”
Speech, long repressed, was rus.h.i.+ng from his mouth. Then he struggled with words; his excitement choked him. He looked down at her through his tears.
”The bit poem, la.s.sie! You remember it. The poem you recited, and when I sent you the big basket o' posies! All the time since yesterday it has been running in my head. I sat alone in the State House last night and all I could remember was, 'But I will marry my own first love!' I tried to say it out like a man, believing that G.o.d has meant you for me. But I couldn't think I'd be forgiven!”
Lana took his hand between her palms and stopped him at the edge of the screen. She quoted, meeting his adoring eyes with full understanding:
”And I think, in the lives of most women and men, There's a moment when all would go smooth and even--”
She drew him gently with her when she stepped backward.
She had heard the Senator's voice in the corridor; he was escorting Governor North.
On the panels of the screen were embroidered some particularly grotesque j.a.panese countenances. Those pictured personages seemed to be making up faces at the dignitaries who pa.s.sed the open door.
”But I must go to your father, sweetheart,” Stewart insisted. ”I'd best do it this morning and have it all over with.”
This declaration as to duty and deference was not made while Senator Corson was pa.s.sing the door; nor was it made with anything like the prompt.i.tude the Senator might have expected in a matter which was so vitally concerned with a father's interests. In fact it was a long, long time before Stewart had anything to say on that subject. If Senator Corson had been listening again on the other side of the screen, he, no doubt, would have been mightily offended by a delay which seemed to make the father an afterthought in the whole business.
If he had been eavesdropping he would not have heard much, anyway, of an informing nature. He would have heard two voices, tenderly low and incoherent, interrupting eagerly, breaking in on each other to explain and protest and plead. If Stewart's protracted neglect of the interests of a father would have availed to rouse resentment, Lana's reply to Stewart's rueful declaration more surely would have exasperated the Senator; she emphatically commanded Stewart to say not one word on the subject to her father.
”Why, Stewart Morrison, for twenty-four hours you have been taking away my breath by doing the unexpected! You have been grand. Now are you going to spoil everything by dropping right back into the conventional, every-day way of doing things? You shall not! You shall not spoil my new wors.h.i.+p of a hero!”
”Well, I won't seem much like a hero if I act as though I'm afraid of your father!”
She raised her voice in amazed query. ”For mercy's sake, haven't you been proving that you're not afraid of him?” Once more, jubilantly, teasingly, wrought upon by the revived spirit of the intimacy of the old days, she a.s.sumed a playful pose with him, but this time her sincerity of soul was behind the situation. ”Don't you realize, sir, that the calendar of the Hon. Jodrey Wadsworth Corson, on this day and date, is crowded with strictly new business? He is due at the State House very soon. Do you think he can afford to be bothered with unfinished business?”
He wors.h.i.+ped her with silence and a smile.
”Yes, Mister Mayor of Marion, unfinished business--yours and mine! Our business of the old days. But the honorable Senator is perfectly well aware that the business aforesaid is on the calendar. He had been supposing that we had forgotten it. I see a big question in your eyes, Stewart dear! Well, now that you're a party to the action and interested in the matter to be presented, I'll say that after Senator Corson had done his talking to me last evening, or very early this morning, to be more exact, I called on my family grit of which he's so proud and I did a little talking to Senator Corson. And he knows that the business is unfinished--he knows it will be brought duly to his attention--and he'll be in a better frame of mind after his present petulance has worn off.”
”Petulance!” Morrison was rather skeptical.
”Exactly! He's just as much of a big child as most men are when another big child tries to take away a plaything. Oh, he was furious, Stewart! But let me tell you something for your comfort. He dwelt most savagely on the fact that you had grabbed in single-handed and beaten a Governor and a United States Senator at their own game! Wonderful, isn't it--admission like that? He has always patronized you as a countryman who knew how to make good cloth and who didn't amount to anything else in the world. Why, in a few days he'll be admitting that he admires you and respects you!”
She paused. After a few moments she went on, her tones low and thrilling.
”I've been trying to explain myself to you, Stewart. You know, now, that I have always loved you. I have told you so in a way that leaves no doubts in a man such as you are. You have forgiven me for being simply human and silly before I woke up to understand you. And you don't misunderstand me any more, do you?” she pleaded, wistfully. ”Last night I saw--your big _self_!”
”Lana, it was a wonderful night--more wonderful than I realized till now!”
After a time they became aware of a stir below-stairs and they came out from behind the screen where the j.a.panese faces grinned knowingly.
”Please obey me, Stewart; you must! It's really my trial of you to see if you're obedient when I know it's for your own good. Go down and wait for me.” She left him in the corridor and ran away.
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