Part 13 (1/2)

A quick glance up the street showed Elaine still stooping over the tulip bed, her stiff little skirts sticking out straight behind her.

The grotesqueness was somehow rea.s.suring. Margaret smiled, half at the absurd little figure, half at her own absurdly tragic fancy.

On the other porch Frank was taking his leave--a process of some duration. First he stood on the lower steps talking at length with Jean who stood on the top step. Then he raised his cap and started away, only to remember something before he reached the corner and to run back across the lawn. There he stood talking while Jean sat on the porch railing, suggesting a faint Romeo and Juliet effect. The next time, Jean called him back. They met halfway down the cement walk and conversed earnestly and lengthily.

With an exquisite sympathy Margaret watched these maneuvers from under discreet eyelids. She was glad for them both, with a clear-souled, generous joy. And yet she felt a sensitive pleasure that walked on the edge of pain. In the young man especially she took a quick delight--in his supple length of limb, the spread of his shoulders, his close-cropped black hair, his new clothes, the way he thrust his hands deep in his trousers' pockets while he swung on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, the attentive bend of his head toward Jean; she reveled in all his elastic, masculine youth which she knew for the garb of a straight, strong, kindly, honorable soul. But out of the revel grew a trouble, as if some strange spirit prisoned in her own struggled to tear itself free, to fling itself, wailing, in the dust.

”Egotism!” said Margaret to herself, curling her lip, sewing very fast.

The fluttering spirit lay tombed and still.

When Frank was finally gone, Jean sauntered across the street to Margaret's porch. She perched on the rail and pulled at the leafless vine-stems beside her, talking idly and desultorily of things she was not interested in.

She was an attractive girl, more wholesome than beautiful. Her bronze-brown hair coiled stylishly about her head, gleamed in the late sun. There were some tiny freckles across her nose. She wore a pale blue summer-dress with short sleeves out of which her young arms emerged, fresh and tender from their winter seclusion.

The two maidens circled warily about the topic they were both longing to talk of. Margaret noted in Jean a new aloofness. Every time she threw Frank's name temptingly into the open Jean purposely let it lie.

At last, with a little gasp of laughter, looking straight before her, Jean exclaimed: ”I guess I'm sort of scared!”

”What I like about Frank,” said Margaret, ”is that he's so true and reliable. He's a fellow you can trust!”

”Yes,” a.s.sented Jean. ”Don't you think he looks--nice in that new suit?”

”Splendid! Frank's a handsome boy.”

”Isn't he?” sighed Jean.

”He'll always be constant to anyone he cares for. And, I think--he does care for someone.”

”What makes _you_ think so?” demanded Jean, her blue eyes suddenly intent on Margaret.

”What makes you think so?” Margaret parried.

Jean sat up instantly very straight and stiff.

”Who said I thought anything?”

”Oh, no, no!” Margaret disclaimed hastily. ”I didn't mean that. I meant anyone would think so!”

Jean lapsed into a placated limpness, resting her lithe young figure in its summer blue against the dingy house-wall.

”Isn't it funny,” she mused, ”how you can resolve you won't think, and keep yourself from thinking, and really not think, because you've made up your mind you wouldn't--and all the time you _know_!”

Margaret was searching in her mind for some tenderest phrase of warning when Jean antic.i.p.ated her.

”Well, it's a good thing I don't care!--I thought at first I didn't like his hair that way, but I do now--better than the other way. He was telling about college.”

”He finishes this year, doesn't he?”

”Yes. He's going in with his father next year--unless he makes up his mind to go to Yale. But he doesn't think he will. His father wants him here; and he's about decided that's best.”

”Marg'ret,” called a thin, querulous, broken voice from within the house; ”ain't it time you was gettin' supper?”