D. Brown did his best by Dimi. Every time Dimi wrote one of his dearnoraish letters D. Brown gave vent to a poem, and the more dearnora the letters the more ardent the poems. In one month he finished twenty.
When Nora wrote, “Oh, Dimi, you’re such a real man—so genuine—and red-blooded! There’s nothing mawkish or sentimental about you,” D. Brown had a fit and wrote three poems in one day.
When she wrote. “I heard the great Xman today conduct a special summer concert for the Red Cross, but I suppose you are more interested in the Giants-White Sox squabble,” Dimi, who had spent money for standing room once to hear the great Xman and was in the habit of giving away his pass for the Giants, only smiled. But D. Brown in righteous wrath wrote his check for his next year’s subscription to the New Symphony, which he had been considering forgoing.
And when in another letter Nora said: “I saw a splendid exhibit of batiks today, but you probably think they’re something to eat, so I won’t bore you. Who do you think will win the big fight?” Dimi replied that he thought the champion would. D. Brown spent the whole day Sunday messing over a batik, which Van later made into a smock. He worked hard to expiate the crimes of Dimi. He even tried to win him over.
“She won’t think any less of you because you’re not a boob. You’re acting like an ass. Try her out.”
So Dimi wrote casually in his next letter: “Don’t you wish sometimes I were different—not such a lowbrow—more sentimental—more imaginative?”
And Nora answered: “No, I do not. If you were one whit different from what you are now I’d love you just that much less. Besides, I adore lowbrows—and sentimental, imaginative men make me feverish.”
“You see?” gloated Dimi.
And D. Brown had to use up his energies in chasing up a publisher who would consider including a small volume of delicate love lyrics in his fall catalogue—lyrics which were appearing in certain high-grade publications. But not content with this sort of atonement, D. Brown continued his efforts toward conversion.
“You’re deceiving the girl you love,” he pointed out, attacking Dimi in his weak spot. “She has a right to know the kind of man she is marrying.”
“Of course I’ll tell her—later—when she’s more used to me and it won’t be such a shock.”
“Fraud! It will be more of a shock. And, besides, you have no right to marry her under false pretenses.”
Dimi was hit.
“Don’t you think,” he wrote to Nora, “I ought to try to learn about some of the things that interest you—poetry—art—music? Won’t it bore you to have to sit opposite a man all your life who can talk nothing but advertising? If you’ll just encourage me a little, Nora, I’ll go ahead and tackle it. I could really do a lot in the next few weeks.”
“Don’t you dare,” replied Nora. “I hate men who have a smattering of art and music. And if you knew how I loathe men who spout poetry! I like men that talk about advertising—plain Dimi Browns—like you are now.”
What could Dimi do? And, besides, it made him feel so happy!
* * * *
They had a double wedding in August. Van and Barry spent their honeymoon in the little stucco house in Locust Hills. The future might hold few enough of stucco houses for them. Dimi took Nora to a little two-by-four island owned by his friend Chandler, who offered them the use of his bungalow and servants while he was in Canada.
What a place it was for a honeymoon! And what a honeymoon for the place! Perfect—cloudless—ideal—until on the morning of the eighth day D. Brown appeared and looked Dimi sternly in the eye and Dimi knew that he was cornered.
“I’ll have to tell her,” he sighed. “It’s a lie I’m living, and no good can come of building a house on lies. Nora loves me, God bless her, and I love her, and this foolish little farce isn’t worthy of our love.”
He found her on the porch.
“Watcha reading, Mrs. Brown?”
“Oh, nothing much, Mr. Brown,” she replied, attempting to hide the magazine beneath her smock.
“‘American Lyric,’” he read, taking it from her.
She reached for it with quite unnecessary ardor. He held it away from her.
“‘To Nora,’” he read—“‘by D. Brown.’ Who’s he?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. She seemed strangely excited.
“Maybe,” suggested Dimi ungrammatically, “it’s me.”
Nora laughed a trifle artificially.
“Do you think you’re the only D. Brown in the world? And even if you were I’d never accuse you of writing that.”
“Why, is it rotten?”
“I should say not! It’s the most beautiful—”
She checked herself suddenly and laughed with elaborate carelessness. “Some woman wrote it, I’m certain.”
“Nora, what would you say if I told you I wrote it?”
“You!” How she laughed!
“Yes—me. Suppose I told you I’d been leading a double life—”
“I’d leave you.”
“Joking aside, Nora, suppose there were two mes.”
“Well, if there are, you see that I don’t catch the other Brown hanging round. I won’t have strange men spoiling my honeymoon.”
“But, Nora, you might like the other Brown—better than me.”
“I hate him!” she cried in sudden inexplicable wrath. “I tell you, I hate him!” Then collecting herself with an effort: “Come on,” she called, “let’s go for a swim.” That night Dimi confronted D. Brown miserably. “You heard what she said, didn’t you?”
“Bah! Talk! Women say a lot of things. Take her in your arms—masterfully—and tell her the truth. Tell her you did it for love. She’ll only adore you the more for it. Women are that way.”
It sounded reasonable. Dimi went downstairs and took his wife in his arms. He was so nervous he was even a little rough. She relaxed happily in his arms and twined her own about his neck.
“Oh, Dimi,” she murmured chokily, “you’re so wonderful! Promise me, dear, you don’t ever let anything come between us—promise!”
“I promise,” he answered weakly, dizzily. And D. Brown, hopeless, disappeared round a corner.
“This,” said Nora the next day, “is my diary,” and showed him a little violet-leather-covered book, her face as sweetly pink as the cluster of pink clover she wore in her blouse. “I never thought I’d show it to a living soul. But somehow I wanted you to see it. It’s so wonderful not to have any secrets from you. In case there is the tiniest nook in me where you are not at home, I want you to have the right to explore.” Lord love her! Her diary! Moses receiving the tablets on the Mount did not honor them with a deeper thrill of loving veneration than Dimi this mark of love and confidence from the most wonderful girl in the world. This more than mark of love—this key which would give him the opportunity to unlock his own heart and let her read the stupid secret he had locked there.
“‘He’s my ideal,’” he read, “‘in every way. Oh, I’m the luckiest girl in the world! He’s absolutely perfect. Sometimes I’m afraid it’s too good to be true and that some day he’ll develop some unknown, unforeseen trait that will spoil everything.’” In pencil she had scribbled underneath: “As if you could, darlingest. You who are as clear as crystal throughout.” Dimi shuddered.
“That is the wonderful part of it all,” appeared in another place. “I seem to have known him before—all my life in fact. I feel as if everything he did or would do were part of a beautiful book I had read somewhere long ago. And if it were not so—if there were to be a false note anywhere the whole thing would come crashing down.”
And again: “That is so precious to me—to be able to anticipate his thoughts—to expect the glow before it comes into his eyes—to read his inmost heart—to know there are no corners where I may not peer—no doors behind which I may not expl
ore.”
He definitely and decisively broke with D. Brown. Then one afternoon they walked out over the rocks and in a little strip of sandy beach they settled themselves to watch the sea. Dimi with a stick he had picked up was drawing aimless crosses in the damp sand. Nora, one arm thrown up over her head, her pink linen dress disarranged at the throat, fell asleep.
How beautiful she was, with the dark shadow of her impossible lashes on her soft tanned cheek. His stick began to form the aimless lines into lashes and about them a face—Nora’s face. He did not need to look at her. He knew every line and curve of her face—her neck—her shoulders. The sand was not a flexible enough medium for her face. He patted it out and began to draw in her figure instead—her figure as she had stood that morning brushing the living mass of her lovely dark hair, the loose folds of her gown sweeping from her upraised arms.
Suddenly her voice sounded in his ears and the blood congealed along his spine and the stick clung stubbornly to his paralyzed fingers.
“Why, Dimi, what are you doing? Why, Dimi, aren’t you clever! Dear, that’s wonderful! I never knew you could draw.” And then suddenly: “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
He swallowed once, twice, and then the whole miserable story rushed out, the dry-throated words tumbling over one another’s heels in their eagerness at last to be uttered.
“Nora, I’ve lied to you. I’ve lived a lie ever since—ever since the night I took you to Heathstone. I’m not masterful. I’m not dominant. I just pretended to be, because I thought it was the only way to win you. And oh, I had to have you! There never was any other girl in the world for me! I meant to let you know—always—but always the fear of losing you kept me mute. I’m not masterful. I’d make the most beautiful doormat in the world if you’d only walk on me. I’m all the things you hate. I was fed on grand opera before I could hold a knife and fork. I draw… I used to make sketches for Van’s customers. I even write poetry. I have a book of love lyrics that are going to be brought out in the fall. I’m D. Brown of the American Lyric. I tried to tell you the other day that I was leading a double life, but you said you hated the other Brown. I don’t want to live if you hate me, but I’m glad it’s out. I couldn’t have gone on pretending much longer.”
For what seemed an interminable length of time he sat there afraid to break the frozen silence for fear that what would follow might be even worse. Then she moved and he braced himself. But instead of speaking she dropped the little purple book into his lap.
“There,” she said in a strange voice, getting to her feet.
“Nora—” he began, his eyes full of misery.
“Read it,” she said, “please.”
His eyes followed her to the bungalow, but she did not turn again. He opened at the last written page and read:
“I wonder if it can be possible. It seems like a nightmare—horribly clear and yet so impossible! Today—suddenly—it came to me that I have—and always will have—thoughts—emotions—feelings that I may never share with him. I was reading a poem called To Nora and I had the most uncanny feeling that the unknown writer was calling me—and that against my will I was answering him. I felt as though some part of me were somnambulating—answering the call of a known but unknown voice—following the beck of an unseen hand—and the rest of me watching was helpless to hold it back. I was frightened—sick.
“And the worst of it is, I may not tell Dimi. He could never understand. And if he did it would make him miserable. I gave him some flippant answers. I lied even and said it must be a woman who had written it—but I know better. At the time I felt oppressed. And since then it has been making me miserable. Oh, I love him! I do! I do! Every bit of me. I will tear out this other side of me if it can cast even the shadow of a shadow across our love. He is perfect. To feel the touch of his fingers is worth all the poems—all the emotions—all the aspirations in the world. I love him. And he is my man. And I will not even dream of shadows. And yet—”
He found her in the room. He simply held out his arms and she flew into them and drew a long shuddering sigh against his shoulder. The miracle was so great they dared not lessen it by speech. But that night they stepped out somewhat from the unearthly glamour of the dream.
“I hope, Mr. Brown,” said Nora, “it’s a lesson to you never to keep anything from your wife.”
“It is that, Mrs. Brown. It’s a lesson not to keep anything from your wife any longer than you can get away with it. If I hadn’t deceived you a little in the beginning I wouldn’t have had any wife to keep things away from.”
“Where do you get that stuff?” demanded Nora, lapsing into what was to her a shocking idiom. “I made up my mind to marry you the first time I saw you. Since I am I and since you are you, nothing on earth could have kept us apart. Don’t you see that?”
“I see,” said Dimi.
But it was the cowardly subterfuge of the man who is too happy for argument and not the sincere admission of the man who is honestly convinced.
IF YOU WANT A THING—
Mrs. Bleyden was, above all things, fair-minded. Even when she was most utterly fagged with the drudgery of being the wife of the poorest farmer about Spruce Centres; even when Cora, who was a difficult child, tried her to the utmost, she always tried, because Cora was the middle child, to be a little more than fair to her.
So when the strange automobile came to grief in front of the Bleyden farm and the man gave little Abel a quarter for running for the doctor, and Nella Rose, who was fourteen, a whole dollar for the gentle way in which she ministered to his frightened wife, and nothing at all to Cora, Mrs. Bleyden felt called upon to use her tact. True, Cora, sitting truculently on the gate, nursing her doll, Hester, had refused to help. But, then, she was only twelve.
“Nella Rose,” said the mother later, “don’t you think you want to share your dollar with Cora?”
“No!” exploded Nella Rose, a small, delicate girl, with much of her mother’s inherent kindliness and patience beneath youth’s uncompromising directness. “She wouldn’t share with me, if she had it.”
Mrs. Bleyden knew it. But:
“Nella Rose!” she protested.
“Don’t want her old money,” flung in Cora, and marched away, hugging Hester.
Of course, in the end, Mrs. Bleyden had her way with Nella Rose. She always did. It was arranged that the children should pool their money for a visit to the circus, due at Spruce Centres the following Thursday. Though Cora sulked and would not admit she was pleased, there was an unusual air of good feeling over the farm for the next week.
Until the day of the circus. Then Nella Rose, seeking under the newspaper in the bottom drawer of the old, wavy-mirrored bureau, could not find her dollar. Bedlam broke loose. Cora was at school, and Mrs. Bleyden helped Nella Rose search, and kept her from saying what was in her mind—in both their minds. There had been no strangers in the house. But the dollar was not to be found.
When the two younger children came home from school there was a scene. Nella Rose wept. Abel wept. Cora sulked—sulked with Hester held tightly to her breast. Mrs. Bleyden was determined to find that dollar. She searched the children, especially Cora, though her reason cried against it. Her child would not steal, and no child would willingly forego the circus. What would Cora want with a dollar she could never spend without discovery? Still, something stronger than her reason made her search. Her fingers pried everywhere. At last, she gave up in despair, leavened by a tremendous relief. It would have been terrible to have found it.
Seeing Cora betake herself to a corner with an unreadable light in her eyes and whisper fiercely to Hester, she thought, with a pang of misgiving, that she did not seem able always to understand the child. There must be some hidden spring which she was at fault in not having reached—which nobody reached but Hester.
Hester was a dilapidated doll that the kind-hearted and wealthy Mrs. Mittelfinger had sent
over to the Bleydens, together with an oil-cloth bag full of clothes, when her own little girl had gone where she would need neither. Hester’s battered head contained all Cora’s confidences. On that particular day, it contained, also, a rumpled dollar bill, and what Cora was whispering into her ear as she fiercely patted down the newly pasted corner of her wig, was:
“If I want a thing, I can have it, can’t I? Wait till I’m rich, and then they’ll see! Anyway, I showed them!”
There was a day, four years later, when she showed them again. This time, it was Abe Bleyden, her father, whom she had determined to show. It was about the farm work. Nella Rose being delicate, the burden of the outdoor work always fell to Cora, who hated it. But she was big and strong, and they were too poor to support an idle hand. Even her mother did not intercede for her, although distressed by Cora’s complaints of unfairness. Cora never complained to Abe Bleyden. Nobody would. He was a man like a lemon that has lain overlong—hard, uninviting, with a tough, shriveled, unyielding surface, and, to those who ventured to pierce the skin, sour and unprofitable inside.
He looked at his daughter as she stood there facing him, his menacing eyes black with a look his children had learned to dread. But her steady gray eyes, with the clear, black-rimmed pupils, continued to meet his from under heavily marked, straight black eyebrows singularly like his own. It was a show-down. Abe Bleyden had nothing to show.
He laughed sourly.
“Very well,” he flung at her, “if ye don’ like sowin’, ye kin quit,” and, turning on his heel, he went out.
“I’ll show you,” she muttered.
Mrs. Bleyden and Nella Rose, washing up the dinner dishes, could scarcely believe their eyes when she reappeared from her room with her plaid skirt and felt hat on, the old cracked oilcloth bag on her arm. She walked with her deliberate, firm tread right through the kitchen.
“’Bye,” she called coolly, and let the door slam.
The Viola Brothers Shore Mystery Page 19