Part 8 (1/2)
And when she had gone Mrs. Vertrees drew a long breath, as if a burden were off her mind, and, smiling, began to undress in a gentle reverie.
CHAPTER VIII
Edith, glancing casually into the ”ready-made” library, stopped abruptly, seeing Bibbs there alone. He was standing before the pearl-framed and golden-lettered poem, musingly inspecting it. He read it:
FUGITIVE
I will forget the things that sting: The las.h.i.+ng look, the barbed word.
I know the very hands that fling The stones at me had never stirred To anger but for their own scars.
They've suffered so, that's why they strike.
I'll keep my heart among the stars Where none shall hunt it out. Oh, like These wounded ones I must not be, For, wounded, I might strike in turn!
So, none shall hurt me. Far and free Where my heart flies no one shall learn.
”Bibbs!” Edith's voice was angry, and her color deepened suddenly as she came into the room, preceded by a scent of violets much more powerful than that warranted by the actual bunch of them upon the lapel of her coat.
Bibbs did not turn his head, but wagged it solemnly, seeming depressed by the poem. ”Pretty young, isn't it?” he said. ”There must have been something about your looks that got the prize, Edith; I can't believe the poem did it.”
She glanced hurriedly over her shoulder and spoke sharply, but in a low voice: ”I don't think it's very nice of you to bring it up at all, Bibbs. I'd like a chance to forget the whole silly business. I didn't want them to frame it, and I wish to goodness papa'd quit talking about it; but here, that night, after the dinner, didn't he go and read it aloud to the whole crowd of 'em! And then they all wanted to know what other poems I'd written and why I didn't keep it up and write some more, and if I didn't, why didn't I, and why this and why that, till I thought I'd die of shame!”
”You could tell 'em you had writer's cramp,” Bibbs suggested.
”I couldn't tell 'em anything! I just choke with mortification every time anybody speaks of the thing.”
Bibbs looked grieved. ”The poem isn't THAT bad, Edith. You see, you were only seventeen when you wrote it.”
”Oh, hush up!” she snapped. ”I wish it had burnt my fingers the first time I touched it. Then I might have had sense enough to leave it where it was. I had no business to take it, and I've been ashamed--”
”No, no,” he said, comfortingly. ”It was the very most flattering thing ever happen to me. It was almost my last flight before I went to the machine-shop, and it's pleasant to think somebody liked it enough to--”
”But I DON'T like it!” she exclaimed. ”I don't even understand it--and papa made so much fuss over its getting the prize, I just hate it! The truth is I never dreamed it'd get the prize.”
”Maybe they expected father to endow the school,” Bibbs murmured.
”Well, I had to have something to turn in, and I couldn't write a LINE!
I hate poetry, anyhow; and Bobby Lamhorn's always teasing me about how I 'keep my heart among the stars.' He makes it seem such a mushy kind of thing, the way he says it. I hate it!”
”You'll have to live it down, Edith. Perhaps abroad and under another name you might find--”
”Oh, hush up! I'll hire some one to steal it and burn it the first chance I get.” She turned away petulantly, moving to the door. ”I'd like to think I could hope to hear the last of it before I die!”
”Edith!” he called, as she went into the hall.
”What's the matter?”
”I want to ask you: Do I really look better, or have you just got used to me?”
”What on earth do you mean?” she said, coming back as far as the threshold.
”When I first came you couldn't look at me,” Bibbs explained, in his impersonal way. ”But I've noticed you look at me lately. I wondered if I'd--”