A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Star Dust

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Then Mrs. Becker, full of small, eager ways, insisted upon tucking her
daughter into bed, patting the light coverlet well up under her chin and
opening the windows.

"Good night, baby," she said, giving the covers a final pat. "Sleep
tight and don't get up for breakfast. I want to bring it up to you."

But, contrary to the blandishment, Lilly lay awake, open-eyed, for quite
a round hour after her mother's voice, broken into occasionally by the
patient but sleepy tones of her father, had died down.

From her window she could see quite a patch of sky, finely powdered with
stars, the Dipper pricked out boldly.

For some reason, regarding it, a layer of tears formed on her eyes and
dried over her hot stare.




CHAPTER X

On the 6th of the following July, Lilly Becker and Albert Penny were
married.

The day dawned one of those imperturbable blues that hang over that
latitude of the country like a hot wet blanket steaming down. The corn
belt shriveled of thirst. The automobile had not yet bitten so deeply
into the country roads, but even a light horse and buggy traveled in a
whirligig of its own dust. St. Louis lay stark as if riveted there by
the Cyclopean eye of the sun. For twenty-four hours the weather vanes of
the great Middle West stood stock-still while July came in like a lion.
The city slept in strange, improvised beds drawn up beside windows or
made up on floors, and awoke enervated and damp at the back of the neck.

Throughout the Becker household, however, the morning moved with a whir,
the newly installed telephone lifting its shrill scream, delivery wagons
at the door, the horses panting under wet sponges and awning hats,
Georgia wide-eyed at the concurrence of events.

For the half-dozenth time that morning Mrs. Becker suffered a little
collapse, dropping down to the kitchen chair or hall bench, fanning
herself with the end of her apron.

"I'm dead! Another day like this will finish me. Georgia, have you
polished the door bell? Those delivery boys finger it up so. I'm
wringing wet with _prespiration_. If only there is a breeze in the
church to-night. Georgia, if that is Mr. Albert on the telephone, tell
him Miss Lilly isn't going to leave her room until noon. No, wait. I
want to speak to him myself. Hello, Albert? Well, bridegroom, good
morning!... What's left of me is fine.... I'm making her stay in her
room. Poor child, she's all nerves. Don't be late. I hate last-minute
weddings. Did you see the item in the morning _Globe_?... Yes, the name
is spelled wrong, Pen-nie, but there's quite a few lines. 'In lieu of a
honeymoon,' it goes on to say, 'the young couple will go to housekeeping
at once in their new home, 5199 Page Avenue, directly across from the
parents of the bride.' I'm sending over now to have all the windows
opened so it won't be stuffy for you to-night. Wait until you see the
presents, Albert, that came this morning. A check for five hundred
dollars all the way from her uncle Buck in Alaska. That makes six
hundred in checks. Three beautiful clocks, a dozen berry spoons from my
euchre club, and an invitation in poetry for her to become a member of
the Junior Matron Friday Club. If I wasn't so rushed I think I--I could
just sit down and have a good cry. Albert, be careful of those silk
sleeve garters I sent you for your wedding shirt, don't adjust them too
tight; and you know how you catch cold. Don't perspire and go in a
draught. And--and Albert, I see I have to remind you of little things
the way I do Ben. You men with your heads so chock full of business!"
(Very _sotto voce_.) "Send Lilly flowers this afternoon.
Lilies-of-the-valley and white rosebuds. Remley's on your corner is a
good place. Tell them your mother-in-law is a good customer and they'll
give you a little discount.... Yes, she's upset, poor child. I was the
same way. My mother almost had to shove me into the carriage. Well,
Albert, call up again about noon. She'll be up by then. Good-by--son."

A pox of perspiration was out over her face, sparkling forth again after
each mopping. A box arrived from a jeweler's and one from a department
store. They were a pie knife and a table crumber in the form of a
miniature carpet sweeper. The usual futilities with which such occasions
can be cluttered and which have shaped the destinies of immemorial women
into a tyranny of petty things.

Then Mrs. Becker hurried upstairs, her white wrapper floating after.

In the bathroom her husband leaned to a mirror, his jaw line thrust to
the cleave of a razor.

"I really envy you, Ben. Not even your daughter's wedding day can
disturb you. For a cent I could cry my eyes out. It's only excitement
keeps me going. I--could--c-c-cry."

"Now, now, little woman."

She sat down on a hall chair, regarding him through the open bathroom
door.

"Has she said anything to you, Ben, since yesterday? It's made me so
upset."

"Now, now, little woman, you must make allowances for a young girl's
nervousness."

"I know, Ben, but it worries me so. It's not natural for her to have
crying spells like that one yesterday."

"Nonsense! I'm not so sure you weren't a red-eyed bride."

"My nervousness wasn't anything like hers. She'll make herself sick."

"You mean you will."

"Have you heard her moving about her room yet?"

"No."

"Shall I knock?"

"No, Carrie; now let the child alone this morning."

"I never knew her to stay in bed so long. It's after eleven, and the
hair dresser coming at twelve. It will seem funny, won't it, Ben,
her--little room empty to-night."

"Now, now, no waterworks. What if she was moving away to another city
instead of just settling down across the street? You worked this thing
your way, and even now you don't feel satisfied."

"I do feel satisfied, Ben, but I want her to be, too."

"Now, little woman, mark my word, Lilly may feel that she is doing this
thing in more or less of a spirit of sacrifice to our pleasure, but
inside of a week she'll be as busy and happy a little housekeeper as
her mother."

"Is that her calling?"

"Yes. Go to her, Carrie."

Out in the little upper square of hallway Lilly appeared suddenly; her
hair still down in the beautiful way she let it toss about her in sleep,
and her body boldly outlined in a Japanese kimono she held tightly
about her.

"Mamma, will you and papa please come to my room? I want to talk to
you."

"Your father is shaving, Lilly. Can't you talk to us out here? How is
our girl on her wedding day? Frightened? You're me all over again. Ask
your father if I wasn't as pale as you are." She kissed her daughter on
lips that were cold, brushing back the shower of hair from her
shoulders. "You ought to see the presents, Lilly, that just--"

"Mamma--papa--you must listen."

"Yes, Lilly."

"Please, won't you let me off? Please!"

Her father regarded her from behind the white mud of lather, his eyes
darkening up.

"Now, now, sweetheart," he said, using one of his rarest words of
endearment, "this won't do at all."

"But I can't, papa. I just can't. I know it's terrible, this last
minute, but--but--I tell you--I can't."

"My God, Ben!"

"Can't what, Lilly?"

"Can't! I never had such a funny--a terrible feeling. I can't explain
it, only let me off. Please! It's not too late. Lots of girls have done
it--found out at the last minute they couldn't--"

"My God! What are we to do, Ben? Ben!"

"Carrie, if only you will hold your horses I'll handle this." He mopped
off his face hurriedly, sliding into a dressing gown.

"Come now, Lilly, into the front room. Sit down."

She moved after him with the rather groping look of the blind.

"Now what is this nonsense, Lilly, you've been hinting these last few
days?"

"I've made a mistake, papa. I should have said so weeks--ago--from the
start. It isn't Albert's fault. It isn't anybody's fault. I've had it
all along, this queer feeling all through the engagement and parties,
but I kept hoping for your sakes I'd get over it--hoping--in vain--"

"Why, of course, Lilly, you'll get over it! It's natural for a young
girl to feel--"

"No! No! My feeling won't lift! If only I had said nothing the night
he--proposed. But mamma was waiting up. She--she pressed me so. It was
so hard the way you put it. I know he's a fine fellow. I know, papa,
he's thrown big orders in your way. But I can't help being what I am.
Please, papa, let me off! Please!"

An actual shrinkage of face seemed to have taken place in Mrs. Becker.

"What'll we do? What'll we do, Ben?" she kept repeating, rocking herself
back and forth in what seemed to border on dementia.

"You see, papa, it's only to be a small wedding. We could so easily call
things off. I'll take all the blame--"

"No! No! No!"

"Mamma dear, I'm as sorry--about it as you are, but--"

"No! No! She's ruining our lives, Ben--disgracing--"

"Lilly, are you sure that you are telling us everything?"

"I swear it, papa. I know I'm inarticulate, I don't seem able to explain
the terrible state I've been in for days--"

"It's nervousness, Lilly."

"I tell you, no! I can't make you understand. But I'm not cut out, papa,
for what I'm going to settle down to. I'm something else than what you
think I am. I guess I--I am a sort of botanical sport, papa, off our
family tree. I know what you're going to say, and maybe you're right. I
may have more ideas than I have talent, but let me go my way. Let me be
what I am."

"Lilly, Lilly, let us take this thing step by step, quietly. Surely,
daughter, you appreciate the enormity of the situation!"

"I do. I do."

"Now to go back to the beginning. Did you consent to this engagement of
your own free will?"

"I did and I didn't."

"You didn't?"

"Oh, I know you let me decide for myself, but don't you think I felt the
undercurrent of your attitudes? All the other girls settling down, as
you put it. You and Albert such good friends, and then Albert himself
so--so what he should be."

"Now you are talking. If your mother and I hadn't felt that Albert was
the fine and upright man for their little girl to marry, do you think
they would have--"

"I know! There we go around in the circle again. Everything is perfect.
The little house, Albert's promotion to first assistant. Everything
perfect, but me. I don't want it. I don't love him. You hear me! There
is something in me he hasn't touched. Respect him? Yes, but respect is
only a poor relation to love and comes in for the left-over and the
cast-off emotions."

"Her head is full of the novels she reads!"

"You can't keep me from thinking like a woman. Feeling like one. Is it
shameful to want to love? Is it wrong to desire in the man you are to
marry that fundamental passion that makes the world go around? I'm not
supposed to know any thing about the thing I'm plunging into until after
I've plunged! I'm afraid, papa. Save me!"

"Ben, I could swear who is at the bottom of this indecent talk of hers.
I found his picture cut out of the school magazine and pasted in her
diary. She's a changed child since that Lindsley came to the High School
the year before she graduated."

"Mamma! Mamma!" fairly exploded to her feet by the potency of her sense
of outrage. "Oh, you--you--"

"I know I'm right."

"Why, I haven't even seen him since I graduated! I've never talked ten
words to the man in my life! Oh--oh--how can you?"

"Just the same, he's been your ruination. Since you got him into your
head not one of the boys you met has been good enough. I knew you had
him in mind the day you told me you wished Albert was a little more
bookish and musical. I know why you wanted him to subscribe to the
Symphony. The spats you made him buy. Poor boy! and his ankles aren't
cut for them. Love! Your father and I weren't so much in love, let me
tell you. Only I knew my parents wanted it and that was enough. I wish
to God I'd never lived to see this day--"

"Carrie!"

"I do. Noon of my daughter's wedding day, and she can't make up her mind
whether she'll be married or not. O God! it's funny--love, now at the
last minute--oh--oh--" A geyser of hysteria shot up, raining down in a
glassy kind of laugh. "Oh--oh, it's funny!--love--"

"Carrie, you're hysterical. Here, smell this ammonia."

"The little house--my heart's blood in it. A doll's house, ready for her
to walk into. Membership in the Junior Matrons--trousseau--oh, it's
funny--funny--"

"For God's sake, papa, try to calm her!"

"Funny--funny--funny."

With a wave of sobs that broke over her, she went down, then, literally
to her knees, her back heaving and shuddering.

"Her wedding day--O God--funny--"

"Mamma! Mamma! It's all right, dear. Don't--holler like that. I just got
upset, that's all. Frightened like--like any other girl would. I'm all
right now, mamma. I'm sorry."

"We want to see you happy, baby. It's for your good."

"Of course you do. I know it. I'm all right now, mamma."

"We're your best friends, Lilly. We would go through fire for you."

"Of course, mamma. I--I was nervous, that's all."

"There's no finer boy breathes than Albert."

"You're right."

"He's sending you lilies-of-the-valley, baby. He's ordered himself some
white-flannel tennis pants, too--the kind you admired. He got his report
from the life-insurance people and he's a grand risk, Lilly. In as fine
a condition to marry as a man could be. Baby, tell me--tell papa--aren't
you happy?"

"I am--I--oh, I am, dear! Why, here is Elsa ready to dress my hair!
Mamma--dear--I'm all right now. Fine."

* * * * *

At eight o'clock that evening, in the Garrison Avenue Rock Church,
little Evelyn Kemble, in the bushiest of white skirts and to the
accompaniment of organ music rolling over her, placed a white-satin
cushion before the smilax-banked altar.

Kneeling on it, and to the antiphonal beat of the Reverend Stickney's
voice, Lilly Becker and Albert Penny became as one.




CHAPTER XI

By a strange conspiracy of middle-class morality, which clothes the
white nude of life in suggestive factory-made garments, and by her own
sheer sappiness, which vitalized her, but with the sexlessness of a
young tree, Lilly, with all her rather puerile innocence left her,
walked into her marriage like a blind Nydia, hands out and groping
sensitively.

The same, in a measure, was true of Albert, who came into his immaculate
inheritance, himself immaculate, but with a nervous system well
insulated by a great cautiousness of life.

He was highly subject to head colds and occasional attacks of dyspepsia,
due to his inability to abstain from certain foods. He was, therefore,
sensitive to draughts and would not eat hot bread. He carried an
umbrella absolutely upon all occasions and a celluloid toothpick in his
waistcoat pocket.

Then, too, he gargled. To chronicle the heroic emotions that motivate
men is a fine task. Love and hate and all the chemistry of their
mingling that go to form the plasma of human experience. It is a lesser,
even an ignominious one to narrate Lilly's kind of anguish during this
matinal performance of her husband. She suffered a tight-throated sort
of anguish that could have been no keener had it been of larger
provocation. Her toes and her fingers would curl and a quick ripple of
flesh rush over her.

Mornings, when he departed, his kiss, which smelled of mouth wash, would
remain coldly against her lips with the peculiar burn of camphor ice.
All her sensibilities seemed suddenly to fester.

On a week day of the third week of her marriage, in her little canary
cage of a yellow bedroom dominated with the monstrous brass bedstead of
the period and a swell-front dresser elaborate in Honiton and flat
silver, she endured, with her head crushed into the chair back, those
noisome ablutions from across the hallway. She was wearing, these first
mornings, a rose-colored negligée, foamy with lace and still violet
scented from the trousseau chest, and especially designed to pink this
early hour.

It lay light to a skin that, strangely enough, did not covet its sensual
touch. She craved back to the starchy blue-gingham morning dresses. It
was as if she sat among the ruins of those crispy potential yesterdays,
all her to-morrows ruthlessly and terribly solved.

Something swift and eager had died within her. She was herself gone
flabby. A wife, with a sudden and, to her, horrid new consciousness that
had twisted every ligament of life.

Her husband's collar so intimately there on the dresser top. His shirt,
awaiting studs, spread out on the bed--their bed. His suspenders
straddling the chair back. The ordering of the evening beefsteak lurking
back in her consciousness. He liked sirloin, stabbing it vertically (he
had a way of holding his fork upright between first and third fingers)
when he carved, and cutting it skillfully away from the T bone. After
the first week, he liked the bone, too, gnawing it, not mussily, but
with his broad white teeth predatory and his temples working. She was a
veritable bundle of these petty accumulated concepts, harrowed to
their quick.

She knew that presently he would enter the room in his trousers and
undershirt, which he did upon the very minute, the little purple circle,
like a stamp mark on the rind of a bacon, showing just beneath his
Adam's apple, the shag of his yellow hair wetly curly from dousing, like
a spaniel's.

"Certainly fine water pressure we have in the bathroom, Lilly. I am
going to bring home some tubing from the store and attach a spray."

She looked out of the window over the languid little patch of front
lawn, more gray than green from the scourge of heat. Insect life hung
midair like a curtain of buzzings. Directly opposite the dusty, unmade
street, she could see her parents' home standing unprotected except for
one sapling maple, the sun already pressing against the drawn shades.
There was a slight breeze through this morning that turned the sapling
leaves and even lifted the little twist of tendril at the nape of
Lilly's neck.

It was just that spot, while tugging at his collar, that Albert Penny
stooped to kiss.

"Little wife," he said.

"Ugh!" she felt.

"Poor little wife, it was ninety-four and a half at six-thirty-eight
this morning."

His capacity for accuracy could madden her.

He computed life in the minutiae of fractions, reckoning in terms of the
halfpenny, the half minute, the half degree.

She sat now, laying pleats in the pink negligée where it flowed over her
knees, a half smile forced out on her lips.

"Well, Albert," she said, wanting to keep her voice lifted, "I guess
we're in it, aren't we? Up to our necks."

"In what?"

"Marriage."

Leaning to the mirror for the adjustment of his collar button, he
paused, regarding her reflection.

"Well now, what an idea! Of course we're in it, and the wonder to me is
how we ever stayed out so long."

She reached up to yawn, her long white arms stretched above her head.

"Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!" she said in what might have been the key of
anything.

"Poor little girl!" he said. "I wish I could make it cooler for you."

"It isn't that."

"What then is bothering your little head?"

"I--oh, I don't know. I guess it's just the reaction after the
excitement of the wedding."

He came back to kiss the same tendril at the nape of her neck.

"I'm glad it's over, too. Feels mighty good to settle down."

"'Settle down.' Somehow I hate that expression."

"All right, then, Mrs. Penny, we'll settle up. Speaking of settling up,
I guess the missus wants her Monday-morning allowance, doesn't she?"

"I--guess--so."

He placed three already counted out five-dollar bills on the dresser,
weighting them down with a silver-back mirror.

"See if you can't make it last this week, Lilly. You watch Mother Becker
market and you'll come out all right."

"Oh, I can't pick around raw meat the way mamma does. It makes me sick."

"Housekeeping may seem a little strange at first, but I'm not afraid my
little wife is going to let any of them get ahead of her."

"Whoever wants it, can have that honor."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What's the program for to-day, Lilly?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"I'm going to send Joe out from the store to-day with some washers for
the kitchen faucets and some poultry netting for a chicken yard. I'll
potter around this evening and build one behind the woodshed. Chickens
give a place a right homey touch."

"And send out a man from Knatt's to fix the piano. They delivered it
with a middle C that sticks."

"Yes, and I'll send a can of Killbug out with the wire. I noticed a
cockroach run over the ice box last night. You must watch that a little,
even in a new house."

"Ugh!"

"I hope I'm not getting a cold. I feel kind of that way. Mother Becker
fixed me up fine with that wet cloth around my neck last time. I'll try
it to-night."

"Come," she said, "breakfast is ready."

They descended to the little oak dining room, quite a glitter of new cut
glass on the sideboard and the round table white and immaculately
spread. There was a little maidservant, Lena Obendorfer, the
fifteen-year-old daughter of the Kemble washerwoman, shy and red rims
about her eyes from secret tears of homesickness.

"Why, Lena, the breakfast table looks lovely; and don't forget, dearie,
Mr. Penny takes three eggs in the morning, and he doesn't like his
rolls heated."

The child, her poor flat face pock-marked, fluttered into service.

Lilly regarded her husband through his meal, elbows on table, cheek in
her palm. He ate the three two-minute eggs with gusto, alternating with
deep draughts of coffee, and crisp little ribbons of bacon made into a
sandwich between his rolls.

"This is certainly delicious bacon."

"Mamma sent a whole one over yesterday."

"I like it lean. Always buy it with plenty of dark streaks through it.
Don't you like it lean?"

Silence.

"Can't you eat, Lilly? That's a shame."

"Too hot."

"Poor girlie!"

"Lena, bring Mr. Penny some more bacon."

"Certainly delicious. I like it lean."

She watched his temples quiver to the motion of his jaws, her
unspeakable depression tightening up her tonsils and the very pit of her
scared and empty.

"Albert--"

"Um-hum!"

"I--What if you should find that I--I'm not--not--"

"What?"

"Not right--here. Not the--wife for you."

He leaned over to pinch her cheek, waggling it softly and masticating
well before he spoke.

"If my little wife suited me any better they would have to chain me
down. Ah, it's great! I tell you, Lilly, a man makes the mistake of his
life not to do it earlier. If I had it to do over again I'd marry at
twenty. Solid comfort. Something to work for. I feel five years closer
to the general managership than I did six months ago. Certainly fine
bacon. Best I ever ate."

"Albert--let us not permit our marriage to drag us down into the kind
of rut we see all about us. Take Flora and Vincent. Married five months
and she never so much as wears corsets when she takes him to the street
car, mornings. And he used to be such a clever dresser, and look at him
now. All baggy. Let's not get baggy, Albert."

"I agree with you there. A man owes it to himself and his business to
appear well pressed. It's a slogan of mine. Clothes may not make the
man, but neatness often goes a long way toward making the opportunity.
Don't you worry about me becoming baggy, Lilly. I'm going to send one of
those folding ironing boards up from the store this day."

"I don't mean only that. You mustn't be so literal about everything. I
mean let's not become baggy-minded. Take Flora again. Flora was her
class poetess and I don't believe she has a literary thought or a book
in her head now except her account book. Let us improve ourselves,
Albert. Read evenings and subscribe to the Symphony and the Rubinstein
Evening Choral."

"Speaking of Rubinstein, Lilly, I'm going to take out a thousand
dollars' burglary insurance with Eckstein. One cannot be too careful."

She pushed back from the table. "We're invited over to the Duncans'
to-night for supper. They've one of the new self-playing pianos."

He felt in his waistcoat pocket for the toothpick.

"I'll go if you want it, Lilly, but guess where I'd rather eat my
supper."

"Where?"

"Right here. And fry the sirloin the way Mother Becker does it, Lilly,
sprinkle a few onions on it. If I were you I wouldn't let Lena
tackle it."

"This is the third night for beefsteak."

"Fine. You'll learn this about your hubby, he--"

"Don't use that word, Albert. I hate it."

"What?"

"Hubby."

"All right then, husband. Bless her heart, she likes to hear the real
thing. Well then, your husband is a beefsteak fellow. Let the others
have all the ruffly dishes they want. Good strong beefsteak is my pace."

She let him lift her face for a kiss.

"I'll be home six-forty-six to the dot. That's what I've figured out it
takes me if I leave the office at six-five."

He kissed her again, pressing her head backward against the cove of his
arm, pinching her cheeks together so that her mouth puckered.

"Won't kiss my little wife on the lips this morning. I'm getting a head
cold. Good-by, Mrs. Penny. Um-m-m! like to say it."

"Good-by."

"Mother Becker coming over to-day?"

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