VII + 

Late on the night of Kingsley Dodd’s visit Arthur returned from his trip, and the next morning he had only time for a hasty greeting to his family before leaving to keep an early appointment with the out-of-town client who engaged his services at the moment. An hour after his departure Lucy appeared in the hall with her hat on and her gloves and sunshade in her hand. + 

“Where are you going, Lucy?” Nannie demanded. + 

“I’m going to Papa’s office,” replied Lucy as she passed out the door. + 

When Lucy reached her father’s place of business she found Mr. Merwent alone. As his daughter entered he was reading a letter. He put it into a drawer in his desk and turned the lock. + 

“Well, Lucy?” He leaned back in his chair and smiled his slow smile as he spoke. + 

She gazed around on the dingy furniture, the old books, the discolored steel engravings, the dusty floor, and other signals of her father’s rundown law practice. Her heart almost failed her, but the memory of the preceding day rushed back upon her. + 

“Papa,” she began, “I want to earn my own living.” + 

Her father scrutinized her face kindly. + 

“I don’t blame you, speaking in general,” he observed, “but why have you so suddenly decided it?” + 

“Mamma and Grandmamma are trying to marry me to Kingsley Dodd in spite of myself, and Mamma thinks I am ungrateful because I object. I don’t think I ought to be dependent on anyone any longer.” + 

“You seem to have all the self-respect in the family, Lucy,” Mr. Merwent commented, “but what can you do?” + 

“I can learn book binding,” she responded without hesitation. “The pay for fine tooled hand binding is good. Mamie Willis, who used to be in my class at high school, has been to Chicago Art School to learn it. I think I should like to go there. I want to go right away.” + 

“Let me think, Daughter,” he said meditatively. “I have a friend I should like to consult about it. It is very possible that it may be the best thing. We’ll talk it over again tomorrow. Come down here about this time and we’ll decide.” + 

Lucy kissed her father, amazed at his complaisance. + 

“I wonder who the friend he spoke of is,” she said to herself as she went back to the house. “Papa’ll probably have to borrow money of him to send me away.” + 

The following day Mrs. Merwent preserved an air of gentle sadness and grief, replying softly to her daughter’s remarks but avoiding any reference to what had happened. When Lucy went out a little before the hour appointed for the conference at the office, Nannie did not ask her errand, but returned the girl’s kiss and volunteered a statement that she would not be gone long, with a look of patient melancholy. + 

“Well, it is all arranged,” were Arthur’s first words, as he greeted Lucy. “You are to go to Chicago where I have planned for you to stay with the relative of a friend. We agree⁠—that is, I agree that you couldn’t do better than go to the Art School, as it is a recognized institution and the courses are reliable.” + 

“Oh, Papa, thank you so much!” + 

“The thanks are due to someone else, Lucy, and I hope some day you can thank the friend who has made it possible.” + 

“Who is it, Papa? Is it someone I know?” + 

Mr. Merwent looked at her a moment before replying. + 

“It’s a woman friend, Lucy, Mrs. Ellen Low.” + 

He continued to regard his daughter. Lucy’s face turned pink. + 

“I didn’t know you knew her, Papa,” she said. + 

Mr. Merwent, though he did not take his eyes from the young girl’s, seemed, in his turn, somewhat embarrassed. + 

“Yes, I’ve known her quite a while. When her husband died I was retained with Mr. Blair to settle up the estate,” he answered. + 

“Oh!” Lucy relapsed into thoughtful silence. + 

She knew Mrs. Low by sight and in spite of herself rather liked the pleasant homely face with its strongly marked features, though she had, almost against her will, absorbed some of the prejudiced tone in which she had heard her mother and grandmother make occasional references to the woman. + 

Mrs. Low was the widow of a handsome man, who had been very fond of the ladies, and she had not lived happily with him. She appeared, in a whimsical way, to hold men in little awe. The unpopularity of her outspoken manner, which voiced a point of view that Russellville found unbecoming in a lady, had sent her to seek a more congenial atmosphere with relatives in Chicago. However, she continued to spend several months of each year in her native town. + 

“I expect you have accepted the family’s hostility to Mrs. Low, Lucy,” Arthur went on after a minute. + 

“I’ve hardly ever heard Mamma speak of her,” Lucy returned, her glance drooping before the bitter, slightly amused expression that crept into her father’s face. + 

“Mrs. Low is too big a woman for her environment. She’s got too much self-respect to be understood by the people in this place. It’s because she’s too bighearted to be prudent, she’s let herself be unpleasantly criticised!” Mr. Merwent’s manner was warm. + 

Lucy, surprised at her father’s outburst, stared at him in silence, her lips slightly parted. He rose from his chair and walked over to the open window. He stood there for a moment with his back turned, and when he finally reseated himself he appeared as self-contained and emotionless as usual. + 

“Are⁠—are the people you want me to stay with Mrs. Low’s friends?” Lucy paused, once more embarrassed by her father’s calm scrutiny. + 

“Her cousin, Miss Storms,” he explained. “She is very well known in Chicago and could do a lot for you, we think.” This time he used the plural pronoun without hesitation. “You haven’t told your mother anything about this yet?” + 

“No, Papa, I’m afraid Mamma won’t like it.” + 

“So am I, Daughter. We’ll have to talk it over with her tonight.” + 

Lucy looked troubled. + 

“I’m afraid she won’t consent.” + 

“Yes, she will. You go on back now, and we’ll see after supper.” + 

Lucy was very thoughtful as she walked home. She had been much astonished to learn that Mrs. Low and her father were acquainted. + 

“Lucy is going to Chicago to school,” Mr. Merwent announced that night without preamble, toward the end of the evening meal. + 

Nannie looked up from her plate with a startled expression. + 

“What in the world are you talking about, Arthur?” + 

“About Lucy going away to school, as my words implied,” returned Mr. Merwent. + 

“But who said Lucy was going away?” insisted Nannie. + 

“I did,” responded her husband shortly. + 

“Lucy, what is all this about?” asked Nannie, appealing to her daughter. + 

“It’s about Lucy going away to school. Do you think you can manage to understand or shall I repeat it a few more times?” interrupted Arthur almost menacingly. + 

Nannie studied the face of her long silent husband and read in it something that experience taught her to be the signal of an occasion when tears, arguments, and tantrums would avail nothing. She rose suddenly and left the table and not long after they heard the front door close as she went out. + 

“A council of war,” remarked Arthur with a wry smile. + 

Lucy shut herself in her room and cried. + 

About nine o’clock Nannie returned from the “big house” as the Sheldon home was called, where she had received neither comfort nor suggestion. + 

“Don’t ask me to take over the management of your husband too, Nannie!” Mrs. Lockhart had exclaimed with asperity. “Any effort to help you is wasted because you make no attempt to cooperate.” And Nannie had left in tears. + 

When it became apparent that both Arthur and her daughter must be taken at their word, curiosity got the better of the secret resolve Nannie had made to show no interest in the matter of Lucy’s future. + 

“Of course it’s none of my business, Lucy, but I should think you and your father would at least tell me where you are going to stay when you get to Chicago. You don’t know a soul there and you’ve never been away from home in your life.” + 

“I told you I was going to stay with Miss Storms,” replied Lucy, repeating information she had previously offered, to which Nannie, being in a temper at the time, had refused to listen. “She is the friend of somebody Papa knows,” Lucy hesitated and flushed, “and he wrote and asked her if she’d take me.” + 

“I don’t know what your father is thinking about to let you go off like this to people he knows nothing of. She may be as common as dirt for all we know. I’d like to find out who the mutual friend is. I notice he don’t mention his name,” Nannie finished with a sneering intonation. + 

Lucy, her cheeks still scarlet, glanced away but said nothing. + 

During the days in which Lucy was preparing for departure Nannie relapsed into tearful silence and repelled her daughter’s advances and demonstrations until the girl, still not much more than a child in experience, was almost ill and about to relinquish her plan. + 

At this point a note came from Mrs. Lockhart which spurred Nannie to more decisive speech. + 

“I want to tell you something,” she announced, calling Lucy to her. “You had better think carefully before you leave home for if you go you can’t come back here! It will be final.” + 

“But, Mamma, Papa⁠—” Lucy began. + 

“This is my final decision,” interrupted Nannie in a manner almost ludicrously like Mrs. Lockhart’s. + 

“Very well, Mamma,” replied Lucy, hardly able to keep back the tears, and choking with a sense of injustice. + 

Arthur came in at this juncture. + 

“What’s this, Anna?” he inquired peremptorily. + 

Nannie was silent and avoided his gaze. He turned to Lucy who told him what had taken place. + 

“My child shall come to my home as often and as long as she pleases,” he declared. “Lucy, come upstairs. I want to talk with you.” + 

The father and daughter left the room together. + 

Aunt Martha had been called in to help with the arrangements for Lucy’s departure. Nannie heard the old negress’s voice, then the voices of Arthur and Lucy, and the sound of a trunk being moved. Shut in her own room she was conscious of the feet that hurried past her door and the general bustle of packing for a journey. When there was no one about she stepped into the hall and listened. She convinced herself that Lucy would not really take this step but that the appearance of unusual preparation was arranged to deceive and punish her. + 

After a time, the father and daughter went out, Lucy locking her door. Aunt Martha went home at the same time. Nannie, from a window, watched them until they were out of sight and, notwithstanding her determination to discredit all evidences of Lucy’s decision, began to feel very forlorn. + 

She prepared herself some luncheon, eating as heartily as usual, but she was convinced that she was heartbroken. She was indeed bothered by the uncertainty and, most of all, by the fact that her daughter and husband were together. + 

Late in the afternoon Lucy and her father returned with a number of packages. + 

“Where did he get the money to buy all those things? I wonder what they are?” Nannie said to herself. + 

She could hear the murmur of their voices in Lucy’s room as they opened the packages and arranged the contents of the trunk and valises. When Lucy descended to the kitchen to prepare supper Nannie tiptoed to the open door of the bedroom and peered in at the still scattered belongings of her daughter. She saw a pair of new shoes and an unfamiliar hat which were a concrete affirmation of all that she had tried to deny. + 

“Lucy leaves in the morning on the nine fifteen,” volunteered Arthur when the three were seated at their evening meal. + 

Nannie was speechless. She gave him one scathing look and fled to her room. + 

Lucy followed her and knocked but Nannie would not open the door. She could be heard sobbing. What disturbed the girl was that the supper she carried up on a tray and left outside her mother’s door was not eaten. At bed time Nannie had not appeared. Lucy kissed her father good night, but when she lay down she could not sleep. + 

When Arthur and Lucy were eating breakfast the next morning an expressman came for the trunk. Nannie had not yet descended to the dining room and still refused to open her door though Lucy had been to her several times and asked for admittance. When Mrs. Merwent saw the baggage carried away, however, her tragic resolution was broken, and, after hesitating at the head of the stairs, she composed her face to what seemed an appropriate expression of her state of mind and went down. + 

It was a beautiful late summer morning. The lawn was visible through the half open front door. The grass was parched, and the vines on the porch were beginning to turn yellow. There was a tinge of autumn crispness in the air, but the sunshine that flooded the hall was golden. + 

Lucy came out of the dining room and laid her gloves, coat, and a little hand bag on the hat stand. She had on the new hat, which was very becoming, and wore a new blue serge frock. She was excited by the unusual prospect of a journey and looked exceptionally pretty. + 

“Lucy!” Nannie began in an ominous voice. The girl, a little startled, turned to face her mother. + 

Mrs. Merwent wore a soiled lace negligee. Her hair hung down her back, loose and uncombed. Her habitual precautions to ward off wrinkles and retain her good looks had been neglected. She seemed much older than on the previous day when Lucy had seen her carefully dressed, rouged and with well ordered hair. + 

“You wicked, selfish, cruel girl!” continued Nannie in high pitched strident tones. “You mean, hard hearted, wretched beast!” She suddenly advanced toward Lucy who retreated in frightened astonishment. + 

Arthur appeared in the hall doorway. + 

“That is enough!” he said sternly. + 

Nannie suddenly lost all self control. + 

“Get out of my house!” she screamed. “You stinking⁠—!” and a stream of awful invectives that seemed from a brothel poured from her lips. She picked up Lucy’s belongings from the hat stand and threw them against the front door where they fell on the threshold. + 

“Anna!” Arthur spoke calmly, but he only succeeded in evoking another paroxysm of screams and vile words directed at himself. + 

“Put your things on, Lucy,” he said, and in a moment the two fairly fled into the street, leaving Nannie in a state of hysteria bordering on madness. + 

“I can’t go on this way, Papa!” exclaimed Lucy, looking back at the house after they had walked half a block. + 

“All right. Do as you wish,” he responded without emotion. + 

“Yes, it’s better that I should go,” she decided as if to herself, and they did not speak again until they reached the station. + 

As they stood waiting for the train Lucy studied Arthur’s set face furtively. + 

“I don’t want my going to make more trouble between you and Mamma,” she ventured at last, timidly. + 

Arthur’s eyes sought hers slowly. + 

“Don’t worry,” he replied heavily in his deep voice. “What you saw today is only a fair sample of what I’ve enjoyed for years. In the beginning I used to hold a quarter of an hour’s argument to get two minutes’ peace. Then I quit that and she tried to punish me with long periods of curdled gloom. Finally I took to staying away from the house in self defense. Long before you grew up things were as bad as they could be, so don’t blame yourself, Daughter. You have had nothing to do with it.” + 

Lucy was surprised by this unprecedentedly long speech. + 

“Don’t you think that maybe when I’m gone you and Mamma⁠—” she did not know how to proceed. + 

“I wouldn’t ask her for a drink of water if I were dying,” Arthur answered. Lucy had never heard such suppressed hatred and vehemence in his tone. “There’s the train,” he added in his ordinary manner, and they moved toward the platform. + 

“Here are your tickets, and here is your money,” explained Arthur as they entered the Pullman. “Miss Storms will meet you. She will wear a bunch of white carnations. Here is a white carnation for you to wear. Miss Storms knows all about your plans.” He removed a flower that was in his button hole and Lucy fastened it on her jacket. They kissed. The train began to move. + 

“Goodbye, Daughter. Write often. I will try to get up there to see you soon,” he called. + 

The journey began. + 

It was late at night and rain was falling when Lucy arrived in Chicago. Leaving the train she was bewildered by the people, noises, and bustle about her. As she stood looking around the thronged platform misted by the radiance of many lights, a very tall woman, dressed in a grey linen tailored suit with a grey hat, and holding some white carnations in her hand, came up and spoke. + 

“I think you are Lucy.” + 

“Are you Miss Storms?” + 

“I am. Where are your baggage checks, dear?” + 

Lucy handed over her single check and pointed out her smaller baggage which Miss Storms entrusted to a leather coated chauffeur. In a few minutes Lucy found herself in a luxurious limousine gliding through the crowded streets of the city. + 

A few evenings later, at a small dinner to which Miss Storms had invited some young people of her acquaintance, Lucy found herself between a red haired girl and a fresh faced young man, both from the Art School. + 

“Lucy, this is Nora Stimpson,” began Miss Storms, and Lucy bowed to the red haired girl. “Your right hand partner is John Winter,” continued Miss Storms. + 

Lucy, following Miss Storms’ direction, looked into the smiling blue eyes of John. He rose and reached out his hand to take hers. + 

Lucy’s romance had begun. + 