XXV
John and Lucy met the following morning without speaking. Nannie, who had been treating her face with alternate applications of hot water and ice, came down late as usual. She found Lucy in a white linen dress and wide black hat, ready for the street, while Dimmie, who had not been dispatched to kindergarten, wore one of the duck suits with hand embroidered collars that were generally reserved for late afternoons and Sundays.
“Why, where are you going, Lucy?” was Nannie’s immediate question. “Why hasn’t Dimmie gone to kindergarten?”
“I’m going down town,” Lucy replied distantly, ignoring her mother’s query in regard to the child.
“I was going down town, too, with Miss Powell,” Mrs. Merwent stated genially. “If you’ll wait till I can get ready, we can go that far together.”
“I haven’t time,” returned Lucy. “Come, Dimmie.” And she went out.
When Lucy and Dimmie reached home it was late. They found John and Nannie in the dining room. Nannie was apparently in the best of spirits.
“We’ve been out, too,” she announced, her voice raised to a higher pitch than usual and her eyes unnaturally bright, “and we had the nicest time. Didn’t we, John?”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed John, giving Lucy a resentful look.
“I ran across John going over to Layard’s, or whatever you call them, and took him for a half holiday. He works too hard down at that old office anyway.” Mrs. Merwent showed great animation.
Lucy went upstairs to remove her hat, leaving Dimmie in the dining room.
“Where did you and Mamma go, Jimmie?” Nannie asked, as soon as Lucy was out of hearing.
“We went to Miss Stormses, and see all the things I’ve got!” He showed several packages.
“Who did you see? Who gave them to you?” Mrs. Merwent inquired.
“Oh, we saw Miss Storms, and she give me this necktie, and my new grandpapa, he said he’d buy me a watch and chain. He said I could wear it all the time, and it ain’t going to be a play one neither. It’ll go just like a grown-up one.”
“Who else did you see?” persisted his interrogator.
“Oh, my new grandmamma, too. While I was there she didn’t give me nothing but cakes, but she kissed me a lot, and there’s something in one of my bundles she put there, she told me. She says I’m like my grandpapa. And do you know—” Dimmie stopped open mouthed, in the midst of his expansive confidences, and stared at his grandmother who had begun to sob violently, with her handkerchief to her eyes.
“Come away from there, Dimmie,” commanded John.
The child obeyed, approaching his father with a wondering gaze.
“Now you’ve made poor Nannie cry,” John looked at Dimmie sternly.
The child’s eyes filled and his lips began to quiver.
“I—I—d—didn’t m—make her c—cry!” Dimmie wailed, his face full of woe. “I d—didn’t hurt her!”
“Yes, you did hurt her,” John insisted firmly.
Dimmie dissolved into a rain of tears.
“It isn’t his fault, John—poor child,” interrupted Nannie gently through her own tears. Then to Dimmie, “Come here, darling. Come to Nannie.”
Dimmie held back suspiciously.
“Go to Nannie,” ordered John severely.
“Wait, John.” Mrs. Merwent had wiped her eyes and was smiling at Dimmie. There was an unusual tensity in her manner. “Come on, Jimmie. See! I’ve brought you something, too,” and she lifted a small square parcel from the table and held it out to him.
Dimmie approached her chair.
“See. It’s a box of chocolates your papa bought for Nannie, and I’m going to give it to you.”
Dimmie held out his hand.
“Wait a minute,” she demurred.
“What do you say, Dimmie?” demanded John.
“Thank you,” Dimmie whispered, securing the prize.
Mrs. Merwent put her arms around the child.
“So you love Nannie, Jimmie?” she whispered back.
He did not reply to this, but stood in rapt uncertainty contemplating the box of chocolates he held.
“Come on. Let me untie it for you. Here, sit in my lap.” She lifted him up. “There! Aren’t they nice? You can eat one if you want to.”
Dimmie placed a chocolate in his mouth.
“Now, do you love Nannie?” she whispered again.
“Yes,” said Dimmie.
“Do you love me better than the people you saw today?” This, too, was spoken in a whisper.
“Better than granpapa?” he inquired.
“Yes.”
“And Miss Storms?”
“Yes, and the other woman.”
“My new grandmamma?”
“She’s not your grandmamma.”
Dimmie replied stoutly:
“Grandpapa said she was.”
“Well, she isn’t. Nannie is your truly grandmamma. That woman only wants to be your grandmamma. Your papa’s mamma that you’ve never seen is your other grandmamma. This other woman at Miss Storms’ isn’t any relation to you. A little boy can’t have three grandmammas, can he?”
Dimmie considered this problem gravely.
“Stella Hamilton’s only got two,” he admitted.
“Yes. One is Mrs. Hamilton’s mother, and the other is Dr. Hamilton’s mother. I’m your mamma’s mother, and your papa has a mother. So this woman at Miss Storms’ isn’t your grandmamma at all.”
“All right. I don’t love her any more,” Dimmie decided bravely. “She didn’t give me nothin’ but cookies anyway.”
“And you love Nannie, don’t you?” Her words were inaudible to John.
“Yes,” he responded, leaning against her with his face close to hers.
“As well as you do Papa and Mamma?”
“As much as Papa, but Mamma is nicer,” he answered accurately.
“Don’t you love Nannie as much as you do Mamma? I’ll cry then. See all your chocolates! You’ve only eaten one.”
Dimmie took another chocolate.
“Yes, I love you as well as Mamma,” he confided under his breath.
Nannie kissed him.
“Now go and play,” she suggested, pushing him gently away from her, “and don’t get chocolates on your clean suit,” she added warningly.
Dimmie went in search of his mother. In a few moments he returned to the dining room.
“Mamma says she don’t want no dinner,” he announced. “She’s got a headache.”
“Let’s not wait any longer,” urged John.
“You can serve dinner, Katy,” Mrs. Merwent bade the servant.
“Yes, Miss Nannie. It won’t be a minute,” declared Katy, going out of the room and coming back with the soup tureen which she placed on the table.
John and Nannie seated themselves, and Dimmie climbed into his chair.
“Go upstairs and see if Mrs. Winter doesn’t want a little something to eat, or at least a cup of tea, Katy,” directed Nannie.
“No, Miss Nannie. She say she caint eat nothin’ ’t’all,” Katy reported when she reappeared.
“I’m afraid Lucy has another of her nervous spells,” Nannie remarked to John. “Those people at Miss Storms’ have been filling her head with all kinds of stuff and she probably thinks she is very badly used.”
“Nervous spells! A fit of dumps, you mean,” replied John.
“She’s cryin’,” Dimmie explained impassively between large mouthfuls of potato.
“I’ll swear life has gotten to be almost unbearable in this house,” continued John, frowning. “Not a day passes without some kind of a stunt. It’s either funereal gloom or hysterics. It’s enough to drive a man dippy.”
“I know, dear.” Mrs. Merwent smiled sympathetically.
“And such a thing as consideration for me never enters her head. But this deliberate disregarding of my wishes is going to be the last. She and I are going to have an understanding once for all.” John’s expression was relentless.
“Now, John, dear,” remonstrated Nannie gently, “you must be patient. I know it’s hard, but you know how abnormal Lucy is now. And I’m afraid it’s growing on her.”
Lucy was coming down the stairs.
When she reached the dining room John and Mrs. Merwent, who had heard her approach, both rose as though by a previous agreement.
“Lucy,” John began in a tone that was gravely didactic, “notwithstanding the fact that your mother has pled with you not to go near those people again, to say nothing of your husband’s wishes in the matter, you have been to Miss Storms’ to see them and taken my child with you.”
Lucy looked from John to her mother. Nannie’s eyelids were red but her eyes were hard and glittered brightly. Lucy’s own face was pale and she bit her lip to control its involuntary inclination to tremble. John returned her startled glance with a gaze that might have greeted a stranger.
“He is my child, too, John, and his grandfather wished to see him before he left,” she said in a suppressed voice.
“Didn’t I tell you not to go again?” he asked accusingly, taking no notice of her statement. His voice was unsteady and his face flushed.
“You have no right to order me to do or not to do anything, John.”
John’s flush grew deeper and duller. Dimmie had slid from his chair and run out to play.
“I won’t have it!” John broke out violently, seizing a chair and setting it down on the floor with a bump.
Lucy regarded him steadfastly.
“I think it’s time you thought very seriously about what you are doing, Lucy,” advised Nannie loftily.
Lucy continued to face them and spoke with self control, although the twitching of her lip was apparent. Her eyes seemed to grow wider and deeper without altering their expression.
“I think it is time you two also thought very seriously about what you are doing,” she began slowly. “It seems never to have occurred to either of you that there is anybody else to consider except my mother. But I will tell you,” here Lucy raised her voice a little, “that I will not endure this kind of treatment from you two, for always. I have struggled and hoped that you, John, at least, might come to your senses and see what all this is leading to, but—”
“I won’t hear you vilify your mother any longer,” John interrupted harshly. “I’m not a baby being led around by the nose, and she’s not an adventuress plotting to ruin you. If there is anything about your present situation you don’t like, you can blame yourself for it. You have sneered at her and belittled her ever since she came, and the minute you get a chance you go and tag around after your father and the woman he deserted Nannie for, and you and Miss Storms try to wean my child away from his own father and grandmother to please them. You have taken your stand with them and against us, and if you think we are going to sit by tamely and submit to it you are mightily mistaken.”
John’s manner had grown more and more violent during this speech. He lifted the chair he held and struck it on the floor to emphasize each phrase, and his face was distorted with passion.
“You must admit, Lucy, that this quarrel is of your own making and not our fault,” put in Nannie again.
Lucy ignored her.
“John, please try to think what you are saying. Oh, John, please think of me. Think of Dimmie. Don’t make things impossible for us all.” Lucy was pleading and her voice shook. She clasped and unclasped her hands nervously.
“Impossible!” repeated John bitterly. “Things are already impossible. And you’ve made them impossible.” He was almost shouting. “I tell you I won’t have you ignoring my wishes and making a fool of me in my own house.”
Lucy’s eyes kindled.
“And I tell you I won’t have you shouting at me, John Winter. And I won’t have you treating me as though I were a servant to be dictated to. If you have no decent pride, I have. Dimmie is not far away, and Katy is in the kitchen.”
“Lucy, Lucy—” interrupted Nannie.
Lucy turned on her with vicious suddenness.
“And you will please attend to your own business, Mother. If it includes running John’s affairs, that is no reason for its including my life. When I want your advice and interference in my relations with my husband I’ll ask you for them.”
Mrs. Merwent stopped short with open mouth.
“Why, Lucy—” she gasped.
“Don’t speak to me,” commanded Lucy, her eyes glowing.
Nannie crept closer to John and took hold of his arm.
“It seems to me you ought to remember the servant yourself, Lucy,” she protested feebly.
“You shall not treat your mother this way!” John had raised his voice until it could be heard all over the house.
“No?” Lucy inquired in a curious tone.
“No, you shall not,” he repeated.
“No?” she asked again in the same peculiar manner.
“Lucy, Lucy, what is the matter with you?” cried Nannie hastily. “You act so strangely!”
“Do I?” asked Lucy, still in a voice so unlike her usual self.
“Lucy! You frighten me! Don’t look like that!” insisted Nannie nervously. “How can you look as if you hated me? Is all your love for me gone out of your heart?”
Lucy began to laugh hysterically. As John and her mother appeared more and more astounded, she laughed louder and louder.
“Lucy! Stop that!” ordered John sharply. “I don’t know you. I never saw you act like this. What’s the matter with you?” He shook her arm as he spoke.
She only laughed the more wildly.
“Lucy!” John’s voice was uncertain now. “Lucy! Stop, I say. What on earth has gotten into you? Why, you act as if you were crazy.”
“Do I?” she reiterated with the same weird intonation.
She laughed again, her voice growing shriller and shriller with each breath.
Katy’s frightened face peered through a crack in the kitchen doorway, but no one observed it. John’s grip on Lucy’s arm tightened.
“Stop that laughing,” he repeated, but, as he shook her, this time more roughly, there was fear in his tone and glance.
Lucy ceased laughing and looked at him.
“Oh, John!” she exclaimed. “What is it, John? What have I done?” Then she hid her face in her hands and sobbed.
He loosened his hold on her.
Nannie gave a sigh of relief.
“Lucy, you should control yourself and not give way like that,” she admonished.
Lucy uncovered her face and gazed at John. The tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“Come now, Lucy,” he went on more quietly, “don’t act this way any longer. Anyone would think, to see and hear you, that you had been terribly abused.”
“You have hurt me so. Oh, John, how you have hurt me.” Lucy’s tears continued to flow, but she did not sob.
“You have hurt us, too, Lucy,” said Nannie.
“I depended on you to understand, John,” Lucy pursued, without noticing her mother, “and you were the first to fail me. Others have been better to me than you have—been more true—”
“Lucy!” Mrs. Merwent interrupted sharply, “I should think you could do better than to bring Mr. Sprague in at a time like this!”
“Yes,” echoed John, flushing again. “If he has been more sympathetic than your husband, you might at least keep from throwing it up to me.”
“I wasn’t even thinking—” Lucy began in a dull voice. Then, suddenly, her eyes glittered angrily. “You two evil minded beings!” she almost screamed. “Do and say what you like, I despise you!”
“Lucy, I warn you—” articulated Mrs. Merwent.
“Don’t speak to me! I’m ashamed that you are my mother.”
Nannie cowered at the whip-like words. John moved toward Lucy once more, but she retreated before him defensively.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me! Oh, how I hate myself that I ever thought you worthy to be the father of my child! Why did you ever seek me in the first place? Why did you? Why did you? Oh—oh—why did you?”
“John,” said Nannie, as Lucy paused for breath, “I think we’d better—”
“Yes, leave me!” Lucy broke in shrilly. “Leave me! Go away! I can’t look at you! Get away from me!” She was waving her hands at them excitedly. “Go! Go away! Oh, you—go—go now! Go at once! Go!” Her words ended in a shriek.
All at once she drew her breath in painfully and, before John could catch her, fell forward in a heap by the table. She lay there still and white.
Nannie knelt beside her calling her name and chafing her hands. Dimmie had run in and was crying at the top of his lungs. Katy stood in the kitchen doorway with mouth and eyes wide open.
“For heaven’s sake, be still!” John snapped at the child. “Come on, Katy. Let’s get Mrs. Winter on to the sofa. She’s been taken sick.”
“Yes, sah,” gasped Katy. “Suttenly, sah.” And they lifted Lucy from the floor.
“Keep still,” John commanded again, shaking Dimmie violently.
The child obeyed, still whimpering.
“Get me a wet towel to bathe her forehead, Katy,” directed John. The negress did as she was told.
“Go upstairs and get some smelling salts, Nannie,” he ordered Mrs. Merwent, and when she returned with the bottle, he added, “Let her smell of them, and sit by her till I get back. I’m going to bring Dr. Hamilton. It’ll be quicker than telephoning.” Almost before finishing his speech he had his hat on and was gone.
“Poor Lucy! Poor girl!” Mrs. Merwent ejaculated time after time, as Lucy lay with closed eyes. “I told John he was too hasty. Oh, my poor child!” And she continued to pat the pillows, rub Lucy’s hands and forehead, and apply the smelling salts with nervous and jerky movements.
Scarcely five minutes had elapsed when John reentered followed by Dr. Hamilton, who dropped his hat on the table, swung his medicine case beside it, pushed Mrs. Merwent gently out of his way, and seated himself by the sofa without a word.
John, Nannie, and Katy stood watching him anxiously while he felt Lucy’s pulse, observed her breathing, and lifted her eyelids, staring carefully at her pupils. Then he deftly prepared a hypodermic and injected its contents beneath the skin of her arm.
“Mrs. Winter has had a bad nervous shock,” he informed the group about him at length. As he talked he was still watching Lucy intently. “Her heart is none too strong. However I think that strychnine will pick her up in a minute.”
Soon Lucy’s eyelids fluttered, and then opened.
“Where am I? What is the matter?” she asked, staring about her wildly, and attempting to raise herself on her elbow.
“You were taken ill, Mrs. Winter,” replied Dr. Hamilton in a reassuring manner, gently forcing her back on the pillow. “You just lie quiet for a few minutes and you will be all right.”
Lucy obeyed and closed her eyes once more. When she opened them again her face had regained a little of its color.
“Come on, Mr. Winter,” suggested the doctor. “We’ll carry her upstairs now so she can be put to bed. That’s the place for her.”
“Can’t I walk?” Lucy asked in faint protest.
“No. We had better carry you.”
Lucy made no further objection. When she was in her room, Dr. Hamilton turned from her and spoke to Nannie who followed close behind.
“You had best get her undressed and quiet at once, Mrs. Merwent,” he said, “and when that’s done, leave her, and on no account disturb her.”
To John in the hall at the moment of departure he added, “Keep her perfectly quiet. On no pretext allow her to become excited, and if anything you don’t understand comes up, call me at once. I’ll look in again in the morning.”
Nannie arranged a lounge in Lucy’s room and slept near her, getting up a dozen times to ask, “Do you want anything, dear?”
Lucy, generally awakened by these queries, always answered, “No, thank you.”
After midnight, however, Mrs. Merwent slept soundly, and Lucy attended to her own needs.