XI
John and Nannie entered the dining room together. Jim followed with Lucy and Dimmie.
“Did Nannie give you those flowers, Uncle Jim?” Dimmie asked as they went through the hall. He reached for the boutonniere which Jim was wearing.
“Yes. Do you want some?” Jim answered, taking the sprig of blossoms from his button hole and halting to decorate Dimmie’s blouse with it.
In the dining room there was a little confusion as John pulled out a chair for Nannie and she seated herself with a rustle. She began to serve the soup. Jim observed Lucy stealthily.
When the plates were distributed Nannie noticed Dimmie’s adornment.
“Why, you’ve lost your flowers, Mr. Sprague!” she exclaimed, without looking at Jim.
“I gave them to Dimmie,” he answered quickly.
“Oh,” said Nannie.
John regarded Jim with an expression of surprise but lowered his eyes as Jim met his gaze.
“I don’t believe Mr. Sprague likes flowers, does he, Lucy?” inquired Mrs. Merwent sweetly.
“Of course he does, Mamma,” Lucy declared patiently. There was a brief silence.
“Now we’ll have one of the good old evenings!” cried John, rubbing his hands. “By the way, you two are too formal, Nannie. Why don’t you call each other by your names?”
“Mr. Sprague doesn’t approve of getting acquainted too rapidly,” retorted Nannie.
“I see by the paper that some rich guy has loaned a lot of Corots to the Field Museum. That ought to interest you, John,” remarked Jim, changing the subject.
“Do you know, I was thinking of Corot today,” responded John enthusiastically. “His art is a fairy art. He gives you the poetry of Nature without being irritatingly subjective.”
“I just love Corot,” put in Mrs. Merwent ecstatically.
“Don’t you!” pursued John eagerly. “I tell you, Nannie, that lots of greatly admired things make me sick, jammed full of Christian sentiment, or reminding one of literary illustrations. Why can’t artists stick to their purpose! What was that you said the other evening, Jim, about Botticelli’s Spring—that it was both pagan and subtle, wasn’t it?”
“Forgotten,” said Jim, who was helping Dimmie to potatoes.
“That was it.” Lucy smiled approvingly. “Won’t you have another croquette, Mamma?”
“I believe I will, thank you,” assented Mrs. Merwent, even as she spoke accepting the helping. “There! There! That’s more than plenty, Lucy. You’ll have Mr. Sprague thinking I’m a gourmand.”
“Good stuff, Lucy,” declared Jim, taking a second croquette himself. “Wouldn’t blame your mother if she were.”
“But really, Mr. Sprague, as a rule—”
She was interrupted by John.
“Jim, why on earth can’t you call Nannie by her name! One would think she was a perfect stranger.”
“She is, nearly,” said Lucy, smiling again.
“Well, we’re all starting over now,” returned John in a tone of mild reprimand, “and she won’t be in the future, so let’s not be so formal.”
An uncomfortable pause followed.
“You’ve dropped your flower, John.” As Nannie spoke at last, she picked up the boutonniere from the table and replaced it in the lapel of his coat. “What was that you were saying about art?”
“Oh! Well you know, Nannie, I was just going to say that I don’t have any more use for these new movements in art than for the moralizing and story telling things of the last century. These cubist and futuristic cranks forget the same thing the others do. That is that the artist’s purpose is to create beauty. Why can’t they give us the beauty they see and let us judge of it, instead of trying to tell us something about it we aren’t interested in. Now take Inness, for instance—”
“I just love him! Aren’t his things fine!” Nannie chimed in.
John rumpled his hair.
“Yes, an Inness,” he repeated. “Doesn’t it give you enough? Can’t you look at it and hear the wind in the trees? It isn’t only atmosphere, it’s the beauty of nature in its simplicity, and that’s what we want in art—simplicity.” He looked around the table.
“You’ve thought a lot about such things,” exclaimed Mrs. Merwent admiringly.
“It isn’t so much an intellectual conception as a feeling for the true thing that counts in art, Nannie,” replied John.
“That’s what I mean,” she explained.
“Your dinner’ll get cold, dear,” interrupted Lucy.
John began to eat again and silence reigned for some moments.
Lucy turned to Jim.
“The croquettes aren’t all gone yet. Have another?” she invited.
“No, thanks.”
“I’ll take one, Lucy, if you don’t mind,” interposed Nannie. Lucy passed the dish hastily.
“Why of course, Mamma.”
Silence descended again on the group.
“We seem to be a quiet family,” Mrs. Merwent observed after a few moments.
John looked up from his plate.
“What’s the matter with you, Jim? And you too, Lucy?” he inquired, glancing from one of them to the other. “It seems as though a funeral had struck the place. Neither of you have a word to say tonight.”
“Seems to me I’m talking as much as usual,” said Jim defensively, laughing a little. “The trouble is that you’ve quit talking. We always listen to you.”
“Rot!” retorted John. “You haven’t said half a dozen words.”
“I thought you all discussed the most abstruse things,” put in Nannie.
“We do,” avowed John. “I can’t understand what’s come over them.”
“Do talk about something profound, Mr. Sprague. I love to listen even if I can’t join in the discussion,” she urged.
“You’re really mistaken, Mrs. Merwent. I talk very little,” Jim protested. “John’s joking.”
“I suppose it depends on the company you’re in,” she parried.
“I talked a lot to you before dinner.” Jim turned his eyes on her.
Nannie avoided his gaze.
“My friend Professor Walsh, who is head of the school at home, has a better opinion of me than some other people,” she declared after a pause, ignoring Jim’s remark and speaking to the table at large.
“What nonsense, Mamma!” Lucy interrupted gently. “Whoever made any comparison!”
“Comparisons can be made by inference,” Mrs. Merwent insisted with dignity. “Professor Walsh knows all kinds of erudite things and he never considers it any condescension to talk to poor little me!” she finished.
“Neither do we! What’s got into you, Nannie?” John exclaimed, slightly irritated, but laughing.
“I know you don’t, John.” Nannie smiled at him.
Lucy rose.
“Help me bring in the dessert, Jim,” she invited.
“Lucy does need a servant,” Nannie declared when she and John were alone together.
After dinner the men remained in their places to smoke as was their custom, and a little later they all drew their chairs back and the conversation became more animated as John related at length some of his experiences at the art school. Then Lucy began to clear the table.
Jim glanced once or twice at Mrs. Merwent who was listening to John and asking questions about various girls mentioned by him in the course of his narrative.
“Let me help you with the dishes, Lucy,” Jim lowered his voice slightly.
“Why of course, Jim. I thought you had forgotten your job,” Lucy agreed, at the same time regarding her mother, who seemed much amused by something John had just said and entirely oblivious to her daughter.
Jim removed his coat and he and Lucy carried the dishes to the kitchen, Dimmie assisting with invaluable efforts and advice.
While the dish washing was in progress Mrs. Merwent appeared in the kitchen doorway, and surveyed the scene of activity: Jim, coatless and aproned, Lucy with her sleeves rolled up, and Dimmie in general administrative charge.
“Why, Lucy, I didn’t know you were washing the dishes! Do let me help!” Nannie begged rather weakly.
Lucy replied pleasantly.
“No, thank you, Mamma. We’ll be through in a minute.”
Nannie went back to the dining room.
“They don’t seem to need us out there,” she informed John. “Do tell me some more about that Miss Stimpson at the Art School—the one with the red hair. I think she’s so interesting.”
Soon Lucy and Jim returned to the dining room. Dimmie was hanging to his mother’s skirt and rubbing his eyes. She looked down at the child.
“I think I know a little boy who wants to go to sleepy town.” She smiled at him and took his hand. “Kiss Papa and Uncle Jim,” she continued, leading him up to John.
“And Nannie! Would you forget poor Nannie?” complained Mrs. Merwent, presenting her cheek which Dimmie dutifully kissed.
“Good night, Dimmie,” Jim called after the child.
“You’re quite domestic, Mr. Sprague,” Nannie commented after Lucy and Dimmie had gone upstairs.
“Lucy turns old Jim into a regular hired girl when he’s here.” John grinned at his friend.
Jim was lighting his pipe and did not show that he had heard Nannie’s remark. When he spoke it was to John.
Dimmie fell asleep in the midst of the first bedtime story, and Lucy soon left him. When she came into the dining room her mother was moving about as though searching for something.
“What is it, Mamma?” inquired Lucy.
“Why a piece of sheet music I put here on the bookcase doesn’t seem to be here. Jimmie must have moved it.”
“Let me help you find it,” offered John, jumping to his feet.
“Perhaps it’s on the piano where you were practicing this afternoon,” suggested Lucy.
Mrs. Merwent disappeared into the living room, followed by John, and a moment later the strains of Massenet’s “Ouvrez tes Yeux” floated in to the dining room.
“Sit down, Jim,” Lucy bade Sprague, who was standing with his hands in his coat pockets.
He seated himself a little distance from her.
“Well, Jim, Mamma and I are not much alike, are we?” Lucy remarked, smiling with a tired expression.
“Wait till I pinch myself,” Jim answered.
There was a brief pause.
“We’ll just have to do the best we can with things,” Lucy said, rising and averting her face as she spoke. She walked over to the mantel and arranged some flowers in a vase.
“I’m outclassed,” Jim admitted.
“Maybe it’s not for always.” She spoke consolingly, looking at the floor and continuing to smile determinedly. “When people see things clearly there’s always a way, so let’s not get panicky.”
“The trouble is we don’t all see through things.” Jim shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably.
The music ceased abruptly but almost immediately began again and Nannie sang, “Vous Dansez, Marquise.”
“Give John a little time, Jim. He’ll see more than the rest of us before long,” Lucy went on, as though defending her husband from an unspoken accusation.
Jim smoked fiercely.
“I hope so,” he said at last, “but, as a rule, meeting a problem on the installment plan is pretty poor spiritual economy.”
“Lucy,” he resumed after a pause, “your mother and I had a talk before dinner.”
“I thought so.”
“Well, unless I’m greatly mistaken—” Jim hesitated.
The music had stopped.
“Lucy, why don’t you and Jim come in and listen?” John stood in the doorway.
Mrs. Merwent’s laugh tinkled from the other room.
“John, you dear silly boy!” she called. “You should allow people to enjoy themselves in their own way.”
“I was just going back to town,” announced Jim, standing up. Lucy stared at him with a surprised expression.
At this juncture Nannie appeared in the doorway behind John. Both entered the dining room.
“Why what do you mean, Jim?” John inquired.
“I’ve got to get to the office early tomorrow.”
“I thought Mr. Sprague always spent the night,” remarked Nannie. “Lucy showed me his room.”
“He does,” declared John, and turned to Jim. “You’ll have plenty of time in the morning. We’ll take the six forty.”
“I must look over the specifications for those houses, and they’re in my room.”
“Well, if you must, you must,” John agreed, “but why didn’t you say so before?”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Merwent,” Jim said, ignoring John’s question. “Good night, Lucy.” They shook hands.
“I’ll go to the station with you,” John offered.
“No,” declined Jim. “No need. I’ve just time to catch the nine five. Good night.” He went into the hall and seized his hat from the rack.
“Good night,” called John. “See you in the morning.”
Dimmie, awakened by the noise in the hall, cried out, “Mamma!”
Lucy went to him.
An hour later she heard John and her mother tiptoeing up the stairs, trying to avoid disturbing her.
John had breakfast early the succeeding morning as he wished to reach the office simultaneously with Jim. When Mrs. Merwent came downstairs it was already close to the lunch hour and she asked to have her breakfast in the kitchen so that she might talk to Lucy who was at work there.
“Your friend, Mr. Sprague, doesn’t like me,” Mrs. Merwent began as she buttered her toast contemplatively.
“Why, Mamma, I don’t see what makes you say that.” Lucy measured some flour.
“Do you mean you didn’t notice what he said after dinner about parents being in secret competition with their children?”
“Yes, I heard that, but he was speaking generally. He was probably not thinking about you at all.”
“No, he doesn’t consider me intellectual enough to be worth thinking about. Professor Walsh is a great deal better educated than Mr. Sprague, so I guess I can console myself with the fact that he does find me worth talking to.”
Lucy referred again to her recipe book.
“Really, Mamma, you have no reason to feel this way. I’m sure Jim was as attentive to you as you let him be.”
“Well, it was mere politeness. He wasn’t at all interested in anything I said.”
“I’m sure I don’t know how you know. He listened to everything you said to him. Of course he doesn’t know any of the people you talked about, and he isn’t good at small talk, and besides you talked almost entirely to John, but I thought he was very nice.”
“Very patronizing, you mean, Lucy. I can see very plainly that he has a low opinion of women—except you, of course. He seemed anxious enough to talk to you.”
“Mamma, I wish you wouldn’t speak that way.”
“Speak what way?”
Lucy paused in her task and gazed steadily at her mother.
“You know perfectly well, Mamma. The reason he talked to me was that you wished it, and besides I ask you not to talk about Jim in that tone.”
“Well, anyone could see that he was crazy to be with you,” Nannie began angrily.
“Mamma!” Lucy was indignant.
Her mother’s eyes filled with tears.
“Why, Lucy, I don’t see how you can twist my words so. I didn’t mean there was anything between you.”
Lucy gasped.
“Who said you did?” she ejaculated, articulating with difficulty. “I only meant that you were unjust to Jim.”
Mrs. Merwent continued to regard her daughter reproachfully.
“You don’t know him, Mamma. He’s the very best kind of a man,” Lucy went on more gently.
“Yes! I suppose I am incapable of appreciating him. Well, you seem to at any rate,” Nannie taunted.
Lucy paused ominously.
“Well, Mamma, if you don’t like him, I can’t help it,” she resumed at last in an odd strained voice. “He’s our friend, but I’m not responsible for him or his opinions. You’ll just have to like him or dislike him for yourself.”
“I never said I disliked him,” retorted Nannie. “I said he disliked me. Anyone would think to hear you talk that he was—”
“Suppose we don’t discuss it any longer, Mamma,” Lucy interrupted shortly.
“Oh, very well. If I had known you couldn’t bear to have the slightest hint of criticism of him I’d have kept still.”
Lucy said no more.