The Flirt

by Booth Tarkington

  “Take this ammonia up,” said Madison huskily, and sat down upon a lower step of the stairway with a jolt, closing his eyes.

  “You sick, too?” asked Hedrick.

  “No. Run along with that ammonia.”

  It seemed to Madison a long time that he sat there alone, and he felt very dizzy. Once he tried to rise, but had to give it up and remain sitting with his eyes shut. At last he heard Cora’s door open and close; and his wife and the doctor came slowly down the stairs, Mrs. Madison talking in the anxious yet relieved voice of one who leaves a sick-room wherein the physician pronounces progress encouraging.

  “And you’re SURE her heart trouble isn’t organic?” she asked.

  Her heart is all right,” her companion assured her. “There’s nothing serious; the trouble is nervous. I think you’ll find she’ll be better after a good sleep. Just keep her quiet. Hadn’t she been in a state of considerable excitement?”

  “Ye-es—she–-“

  “Ah! A little upset on account of opposition to a plan she’d formed, perhaps?”

  “Well—partly,” assented the mother.

  “I see,” he returned, adding with some dryness: “I thought it just possible.”

  Madison got to his feet, and stepped down from the stairs for them to pass him. He leaned heavily against the wall.

  “You think she’s going to be all right, Sloane? he asked with an effort.

  “No cause to worry,” returned the physician. “You can let her stay in bed to-day if she wants to but–-” He broke off, looking keenly at Madison’s face, which was the colour of poppies. “Hello! what’s up with YOU?”

  “I’m all—right.”

  “Oh, you are?” retorted Sloane with sarcasm. “Sit down,” he commanded. “Sit right where you are—on the stairs, here,” and, having enforced the order, took a stethoscope from his pocket. “Get him a glass of water,” he said to Hedrick, who was at his elbow.

  “Doctor!” exclaimed Mrs. Madison. “HE isn’t going to be sick, is he? You don’t think he’s sick NOW?”

  “I shouldn’t call him very well,” answered the physician rather grimly, placing his stethoscope upon Madison’s breast. “Get his room ready for him.” She gave him a piteous look, struck with fear; then obeyed a gesture and ran flutteringly up the stairs.

  “I’m all right now,” panted Madison, drinking the water Hedrick brought him.

  “You’re not so darned all right,” said Sloane coolly, as he pocketed his stethoscope. “Come, let me help you up. We’re going to get you to bed.”

  There was an effort at protest, but the physician had his way, and the two ascended the stairs slowly, Sloane’s arm round his new patient. At Cora’s door, the latter paused.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I want,” said Madison thickly—“I want—to speak to Cora.”

  “We’ll pass that up just now,” returned the other brusquely, and led him on. Madison was almost helpless: he murmured in a husky, uncertain voice, and suffered himself to be put to bed. There, the doctor “worked” with him; cold “applications” were ordered; Laura was summoned from the other sick-bed; Hedrick sent flying with prescriptions, then to telephone for a nurse. The two women attempted questions at intervals, but Sloane replied with orders, and kept them busy.

  “Do you—think I’m a–a pretty sick man, Sloane?” asked Madison after a long silence, speaking with difficulty.

  “Oh, you’re sick, all right,” the doctor conceded.

  “I—I want to speak to Jennie.”

  His wife rushed to the bed, and knelt beside it.

  “Don’t you go to confessing your sins,” said Doctor Sloane crossly. “You’re coming out of the woods all right, and you’ll be sorry if you tell her too, much. I’ll begin a little flirtation with you, Miss Laura, if you please.” And he motioned to her to follow him into the hall.

  “Your father IS pretty sick, he told her, “and he may be sicker before we get him into shape again. But you needn’t be worried right now; I think he’s not in immediate danger.” He turned at the sound of Mrs. Madison’s step, behind him, and repeated to her what he had just said to Laura. “I hope your husband didn’t give himself away enough to be punished when we get him on his feet again,” he concluded cheerfully.

  She shook her head, tried to smile through tears, and, crossing the hall, entered Cora’s room. She came back after a moment, and, rejoining the other two at her husband’s bedside, found the sick man in a stertorous sleep. Presently the nurse arrived, and upon the physician’s pointed intimation that there were “too many people around,” Laura went to Cora’s room. She halted on the threshold in surprise. Cora was dressing.

  “Mamma says the doctor says he’s all right,” said Cora lightly, “and I’m feeling so much better myself I thought I’d put on something loose and go downstairs. I think there’s more air down there.”

  “Papa isn’t all right, dear,” said Laura, staring perplexedly at Cora’s idea of “something loose,” an equipment inclusive of something particularly close. “The doctor says he is very sick.”

  “I don’t believe it,” returned Cora promptly. “Old Sloane never did know anything. Besides, mamma told me he said papa isn’t in any danger.”

  “No `immediate’ danger,” corrected Laura. “And besides, Doctor Sloane said you were to stay in bed until tomorrow.”

  “I can’t help that.” Cora went on with her lacing impatiently. “I’m not going to lie and stifle in this heat when I feel perfectly well again—not for an old idiot like Sloane! He didn’t even have sense enough to give me any medicine.” She laughed. “Lucky thing he didn’t: I’d have thrown it out of the window. Kick that slipper to me, will you, dear?”

  Laura knelt and put the slipper on her sister’s foot. “Cora, dear,” she said, “you’re just going to put on a negligee and go down and sit in the library, aren’t you?”

  “Laura!” The tone was more than impatient. “I wish I could be let alone for five whole minutes some time in my life! Don’t you think I’ve stood enough for one day? I can’t bear to be questioned, questioned, questioned! What do you do it for? Don’t you see I can’t stand anything more? If you can’t let me alone I do wish you’d keep out of my room.

  Laura rose and went out; but as she left the door, Cora called after her with a rueful laugh: “Laura, I know I’m a little devil!”

  Half an hour later, Laura, suffering because she had made no reply to this peace-offering, and wishing to atone, sought Cora downstairs and found no one. She decided that Cora must still be in her own room; she would go to her there. But as she passed the open front door, she saw Cora upon the sidewalk in front of the house. She wore a new and elaborate motoring costume, charmingly becoming, and was in the act of mounting to a seat beside Valentine Corliss in a long, powerful-looking, white “roadster” automobile. The engine burst into staccato thunder, sobered down; the wheels began to move both Cora and Corliss were laughing and there was an air of triumph about them—Cora’s veil streamed and fluttered: and in a flash they were gone.

  Laura stared at the suddenly vacated space where they had been. At a thought she started. Then she rushed upstairs to her mother, who was sitting in the hall near her husband’s door.

  “Mamma,” whispered Laura, flinging herself upon her knees beside her, “when papa wanted to speak to you, was it a message to Cora?”

  “Yes, dear. He told me to tell her he was sorry he’d made her sick, and that if he got well he’d try to do what she asked him to.”

  Laura nodded cheerfully. “And he WILL get well, darling mother,” she said, as she rose. “I’ll come back in a minute and sit with you.”

  Her return was not so quick as she promised, for she lay a long time weeping upon her pillow, whispering over and over:

  “Oh, poor, poor papa! Oh, poor, poor Richard!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Within a week Mr. Madison’s illness was a settled institution in the household; the presence of
the nurse lost novelty, even to Hedrick, and became a part of life; the day was measured by the three regular visits of the doctor. To the younger members of the family it seemed already that their father had always been sick, and that he always would be; indeed, to Cora and Hedrick he had become only a weak and querulous voice beyond a closed door. Doctor Sloane was serious but reassuring, his daily announcement being that his patient was in “no immediate danger.”

  Mrs. Madison did not share her children’s sanguine adaptability; and, of the three, Cora was the greatest solace to the mother’s troubled heart, though Mrs. Madison never recognized this without a sense of injustice to Laura, for Laura now was housewife and housekeeper—that is, she did all the work except the cooking, and on “wash-day” she did that. But Cora’s help was to the very spirit itself, for she was sprightly in these hours of trial: with indomitable gayety she cheered her mother, inspiring in her a firmer confidence, and, most stimulating of all, Cora steadfastly refused to consider her father’s condition as serious, or its outcome as doubtful.

  Old Sloane exaggerated, she said; and she made fun of his gravity, his clothes and his walk, which she mimicked till she drew a reluctant and protesting laugh from even her mother. Mrs. Madison was sure she “couldn’t get through” this experience save for Cora, who was indeed the light of the threatened house.

  Strange perversities of this world: Cora’s gayety was almost unbearable to her brother. Not because he thought it either unfeeling or out of place under the circumstances (an aspect he failed to consider), but because years of warfare had so frequently made him connect cheerfulness on her part with some unworthily won triumph over himself that habit prevailed, and he could not be a witness of her high spirits without a strong sense of injury. Additionally, he was subject to a deeply implanted suspicion of any appearance of unusual happiness in her as having source, if not in his own defeat, then in something vaguely “soft” and wholly distasteful. She grated upon him; he chafed, and his sufferings reached the surface. Finally, in a reckless moment, one evening at dinner, he broke out with a shout and hurled a newly devised couplet concerning luv-a-ly slush at his, sister’s head. The nurse was present: Cora left the table; and Hedrick later received a serious warning from Laura. She suggested that it might become expedient to place him in Cora’s power.

  “Cora knows perfectly well that something peculiar happened to you,” she advised him. “And she knows that I know what it was; and she says it isn’t very sisterly of me not to tell her. Now, Hedrick, there was no secret about it; you didn’t CONFIDE your—your trouble to me, and it would be perfectly honourable of me to tell it. I wont{sic} unless you make me, but if you can’t be polite and keep peace with Cora—at least while papa is sick I think it may be necessary. I believe,” she finished with imperfect gravity, “that it—it would keep things quieter.”

  The thoughts of a boy may be long, long thoughts, but he cannot persistently remember to fear a threatened catastrophe. Youth is too quickly intimate with peril. Hedrick had become familiar with his own, had grown so accustomed to it he was in danger of forgetting it altogether; therefore it was out of perspective. The episode of Lolita had begun to appear as a thing of the distant and clouded past: time is so long at thirteen. Added to this, his late immaculate deportment had been, as Laura suggested, a severe strain; the machinery of his nature was out of adjustment and demanded a violent reaction before it could get to running again at average speed. Also, it is evident that his destruction had been planned on high, for he was mad enough to answer flippantly:

  “Tell her! Go on and tell her—_I_ give you leaf! THAT wasn’t anything anyway—just helped you get a little idiot girl home. What is there to that? I never saw her before; never saw her again; didn’t have half as much to do with her as you did yourself. She was a lot more YOUR friend than mine; I didn’t even know her. I guess you’ll have to get something better on me than that, before you try to boss THIS ranch, Laura Madison!”

  That night, in bed, he wondered if he had not been perhaps a trifle rash; but the day was bright when he awoke, and no apprehension shadowed his morning face as he appeared at the breakfast table. On the contrary, a great weight had lifted from him; clearly his defiance had been the proper thing; he had shown Laura that her power over him was but imaginary. Hypnotized by his own words to her, he believed them; and his previous terrors became gossamer; nay, they were now merely laughable. His own remorse and shame were wholly blotted from memory, and he could not understand why in the world he had been so afraid, nor why he had felt it so necessary to placate Laura. She looked very meek this morning. THAT showed! The strong hand was the right policy in dealing with women. He was tempted to insane daring: the rash, unfortunate child waltzed on the lip of the crater.

  “Told Cora yet?” he asked, with scornful laughter.

  “Told me what?” Cora looked quickly up from her plate.

  “Oh, nothing about this Corliss,” he returned scathingly. “Don’t get excited.”

  “Hedrick!” remonstrated his mother, out of habit.

  “She never thinks of anything else these days, he retorted. “Rides with him every evening in his pe-rin-sley hired machine, doesn’t she?’

  “Really, you should be more careful about the way you handle a spoon, Hedrick,” said Cora languidly, and with at least a foundation of fact. “It is not the proper implement for decorating the cheeks. We all need nourishment, but it is SO difficult when one sees a deposit of breakfast-food in the ear of one’s vis-a-vis.”

  Hedrick too impulsively felt of his ears and was but the worse stung to find them immaculate and the latter half of the indictment unjustified.

  “Spoon!” he cried. “I wouldn’t talk about spoons if I were you, Cora-lee! After what I saw in the library the other night, believe ME, you’re the one of this family that better be careful how you `handle a spoon’!”

  Cora had a moment of panic. She let the cup she was lifting drop noisily upon its saucer, and gazed whitely at the boy, her mouth opening wide.

  “Oh, no!” he went on, with a dreadful laugh. “I didn’t hear you asking this Corliss to kiss you! Oh, no!”

  At this, though her mother and Laura both started, a faint, odd relief showed itself in Cora’s expression. She recovered herself.

  “You little liar!” she flashed, and, with a single quick look at her mother, as of one too proud to appeal, left the room.

  “Hedrick, Hedrick, Hedrick!” wailed Mrs. Madison. “And she told me you drove her from the table last night too, right before Miss Peirce!” Miss Peirce was the nurse, fortunately at this moment in the sick-room.

  “I DID hear her ask him that,” he insisted, sullenly. “Don’t you believe it?”

  “Certainly not!”

  Burning with outrage, he also left his meal unfinished and departed in high dignity. He passed through the kitchen, however, on his way out of the house; but, finding an unusual politeness to the cook nothing except its own reward, went on his way with a bitter perception of the emptiness of the world and other places.

  “Your father managed to talk more last night,” said Mrs. Madison pathetically to Laura. “He made me understand that he was fretting about how little we’d been able to give our children; so few advantages; it’s always troubled him terribly. But sometimes I wonder if we’ve done right: we’ve neither of us ever exercised any discipline. We just couldn’t bear to. You see, not having any money, or the things money could buy, to give, I think we’ve instinctively tried to make up for it by indulgence in other ways, and perhaps it’s been a bad thing. Not,” she added hastily, “not that you aren’t all three the best children any mother and father ever had! HE said so. He said the only trouble was that our children were too good for us.” She shook her head remorsefully throughout Laura’s natural reply to this; was silent a while; then, as she rose, she said timidly, not looking at her daughter: “Of course Hedrick didn’t mean to tell an outright lie. They were just talking, and perhaps he—perhaps he heard s
omething that made him think what he DID. People are so often mistaken in what they hear, even when they’re talking right to each other, and–-“

  “Isn’t it more likely,” said Laura, gravely, “that Cora was telling some story or incident, and that Hedrick overheard that part of it, and thought she was speaking directly to Mr. Corliss?”

  “Of course!” cried the mother with instant and buoyant relief; and when the three ladies convened, a little later, Cora (unquestioned) not only confirmed this explanation, but repeated in detail the story she had related to Mr. Corliss. Laura had been quick.

  Hedrick passed a variegated morning among comrades. He obtained prestige as having a father like-to-die, but another boy turned up who had learned to chew tobacco. Then Hedrick was pronounced inferior to others in turning “cartwheels,” but succeeded in a wrestling match for an apple, which he needed. Later, he was chased empty-handed from the rear of an ice-wagon, but greatly admired for his retorts to the vociferous chaser: the other boys rightly considered that what he said to the ice-man was much more horrible than what the ice-man said to him. The ice-man had a fair vocabulary, but it lacked pliancy; seemed stiff and fastidious compared with the flexible Saxon in which Hedrick sketched a family tree lacking, perhaps, some plausibility as having produced even an ice-man, but curiously interesting zoologically.

  He came home at noon with the flush of this victory new upon his brow. He felt equal to anything, and upon Cora’s appearing at lunch with a blithe, bright air and a new arrangement of her hair, he opened a fresh campaign with ill-omened bravado.

  “Ear-muffs in style for September, are they? he inquired in allusion to a symmetrical and becoming undulation upon each side of her head. “Too bad Ray Vilas can’t come any more; he’d like those, I know he would.”

  Cora, who was talking jauntily to her mother, went on without heeding. She affected her enunciation at times with a slight lisp; spoke preciously and over-exquisitely, purposely mincing the letter R, at the same time assuming a manner of artificial distinction and conscious elegance which never failed to produce in her brother the last stage of exasperation. She did this now. Charming woman, that dear Mrs. Villard, she prattled. “I met her downtown this morning. Dear mamma, you should but have seen her delight when she saw ME. She was but just returned from Bar Harbor–-“