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Show The lrii,iB'abIs Uraele Lansy ...,.. fiv "HEL HUESTON CUAPTER I Aunt Olympia, the Senator's wife (Mrs. Alencon Delaporte Slopshire, properly but rarely pronounced Slupshur) went to Iowa for the funeral fu-neral Even in their sorrow, the three girls tragically orphaned in the double bereavement took plaintive plain-tive pleasure in that. It was no more than she should have done, being be-ing their mother's own and only sister. sis-ter. Still, she was a senator's wife, and young as they were and little as they had seen of her, the girls had learned that senators' wives, even more than officeholders themselves, them-selves, make unlimited use of the safe alibi of "bills pending." This was an important session, too, it being be-ing election year. Aunt Olympia flew out from Washington. Wash-ington. This added definite importance impor-tance to her coming. Although Aunt Olympia was a senator's wife, not by any imaginative flight could political po-litical significance be attached to her attendance at the funeral. The Senator had no constituents to be placated there. Iowa was not his state. Brother Rasmusson, a deacon in the church that had been their father's, fa-ther's, drove over to meet her at the airport in Iowa City. Their own car would never run again. It lay in the garage of Bill Blakely one of their members a twisted and charred mass of metal from the collision col-lision with a drunken driver at the corner of North Square and Main. On prayer meeting night it had happened. The three girls, Helen, twenty-one, Adele, nineteen, and Limpy named for Aunt Olympia three years younger, felt tearful sorrow, sor-row, even shame, that they had not gone to prayer meeting with their parents on that fateful night When they went to prayer meeting if even one of them went their father always stopped at Karl's Kandy Kitchen for an ice cream sundae on the way home. "Reward of merit," he called it. "Baksheesh" the girls said it was, having gleefully adopted the word from the lecture of a returned re-turned missionary trying to raise funds for the further evangelization of heathen Near Easterners. On that terrible Wednesday night, if even one of them had gone, the half-hour spent over the sundaes at the Kandy Kitchen would have delayed de-layed their parents' arrival at the oorner of North Square and Main and there would have been no collision col-lision with the big car careening madly along the icy streets, with "poor Bob" Saunders drunk at the wheel. But that night only their father and mother had gone and now they lay together in a double casket in the Allan Funeral Parlor, awaiting await-ing burial on the morrow. Both had been instantly killed in the crash. "Poor Bob" had been tossed through the door and flung across thirty feet of ice and snow, and had incurred only a broken wrist and a bruised brow. The girls, watching from the window win-dow of the parsonage, saw Deacon Rasmusson drive carefully up to their curb, bringing Aunt Olympia from the airport. ' They did not, as in normal times, run happily down the steps to greet her but waited decorously inside the door while the Deacon assisted her up the icy, ash-strewn ash-strewn steps. Aunt Olympia, who had turned violently red and sniffy at the sight of the sheaf of wheat and frozen lilies on the front door, broke into open sobs in the presence of the three girls. They looked pale and young and frightened in their slim black gowns. Adele, both in mourning mourn-ing and out, was the beauty of the family, but Helen's quiet dignity and maternal gentleness were appealing appeal-ing and the quivering eagerness of Limpy's youth, half brave, half terrified, ter-rified, carried her straight to Aunt Olympia's heaving bosom. Aunt Olympia had a series of emotional emo-tional expressions, with which the girls later became amusedly familiar famil-iar and to which in time they accorded ac-corded the dignity of statistical numbers. The first of these the one that swept over her at sight of the wheat and lilies on the parsonage parson-age door manifested itself in a sudden sud-den quiver of what would have been a double chin had it not been for the vigorous hundred strokes waged upon it three times a day by the indefatigable in-defatigable Olympia. This trembling of the under-chin was followed by a deep flush that descended swiftly from the roots of her hair out of sight below the neckline of her dress, accompanied by a hissing suction of the lips, which she finally brought under control by catching the left corner of her mouth between be-tween very strong white teeth. On rare occasions of absolutely uncontrollable uncon-trollable emotion, as now, this expression ex-pression spent itself in explosive sobs. Aunt Olympia never surrendered long to emotion. One after another she drew the girls to her in a passionate pas-sionate embrace and began divesting divest-ing herself of her furs with a bustling bus-tling show of energy. Aunt Olympia couldn't take her eyes off Limpy. Limpy had fairly taken her breath away. Aunt Olympia Olym-pia hadn't a very clear idea of what she had expected Limpy to be; sometimes she had thought of her as the child being spanked for her , mischief; and then, remembering the years, had reminded herself that I Limpy was a young lady about like Helen, perhaps. And here she found that Limpy was neither the one nor the other, but poised expectantly between be-tween the two, with eyes turned alternately al-ternately one way and the other. "How old are you, Limpy?" she demanded suddenly. "Oh about seventeen," said Limpy. "Sixteen, by the family Bible," corrected Adele. "Seventeen, minus a small fraction," frac-tion," insisted Limpy. "Sixteen plus, and not a very big plus either," argued Adele. "Oh, well, sixteen plus is 17 minus, mi-nus, according to the mathematics I flunked last year. I prefer minuses." mi-nuses." Callers came to the door almost constantly. The women kissed the girls all round. One raised tentative tenta-tive lips to Aunt Olympia but was deterred by a sudden tightening of the full, flushed face. "Funny thing," she remarked later in her resounding whisper, "how kissing seems to go neck and neck with bereavements. In my opinion, a kiss is not a bit more sympathetic than a hearty handshake hand-shake -and not half as hygienic." Dr. Ainslie, "Brother Ainslie," the girls called him, the district superintendent super-intendent of their Conference, came, too. And as if by prearranged agreement, the neighbors trooped in from all over the house, from kitchen kitch-en and dining room and from up- "How about the future?" ' stairs where they were interestedly unpacking Aunt Olympia's bag and tidying up drawers and closets with that fond license bereavement so blessedly accords. Dr. Ainslie shook hands with everyone, ev-eryone, murmuring words of sympathy sym-pathy couched in Biblical phraseology phraseol-ogy as far as possible, and then said, "Shall we pray?" All dropped to their knees beside their chairs. They had gone through many bereavements and knew what was expected of them. Helen glanced rather uneasily toward Aunt Olympia and was relieved to see her kneeling with the rest, though not without some trouble in her smart gray skirt which had not been fitted for prayer. Dr. Ainslie went into a detailed exposition of the tragic event and dwelt at ardent length on the rare virtues of the deceased parents and the pathetic' estate of the three sweet girls until he had them all in tears. Aunt Olympia cried, too; she couldn't help it But when he reached the final and prolonged amen, she rose as hastily as she could in her tight skirt and left the room without a word. "Please excuse me I'll go with Auntie," said Helen, wiping her eyes. She foDowed Aunt Olympia silently silent-ly up the stairs. The upper hallway, wide and old-fashioned, spotlessly clean kindly neighbors had even freshly laundered the hall curtains showed four doors, three standing invitingly open, one closed. Aunt Olympia took one look at the closed door and turned quickly away, dabbing dab-bing furiously at her eyes. "You are to have my room, Aunt Olympia, at the end of the hall," Helen said gently. "I moved in here with Adele . . . That's Limpy's room; it's so tiny there's hardly room even for one." There was no need for her to say they could not not yet hear to put anybody, not even Aunt Olympia, m that room behind the closed door. "Their room," it had been, their father's and mother's. "Mother's room," they had always called it, though shared by both. On the day of the funeral Aunt Olympia was strangely quiet Her voice, when she did speak, was soft, almost tremulous. Her oddly keen, pale blue eyes were gentle. Though she watched everything that went on about her, she made no comment. com-ment. She objected to nothing. She broadcast no scathing whispers. For the most part, she watched the girls, all of them together and each of them separately, Limpy in particular. particu-lar. She noticed their mannerisms, their movements; not even the intonation in-tonation of their voices escaped her. She scrutinized their clothes and the cordial and sisterly understanding between them and did not overlook the very apparent affection shown them by everyone who came to their door, whether on errand of business or sympathy. The church was packed for the funeral. It was their father's own church, the biggest church in town, and both the minister and his wife had been warmly loved. The suddenness, sud-denness, the tragic shockingness of the manner of their passing, the double bereavement, even the double dou-ble casket and the double interment first in the history of the town attracted the morbid interest even of strangers. The district superintendent superin-tendent conducted the service. They would have had the Bishop, but he was away with his secretary, making mak-ing a tour of the Holy Land, gathering gath-ering material for a report on the state of the Armenians. Their own church choir sang. Even in their sadness, the girls, in somber black, felt satisfaction that Aunt Olympia, the Senator's wife, was with them, she also in respectable but more expensive black. As they passed down the aisle they could hear among the stifled sobs of their friends, among the tender murmurs, "those poor dear children" . . . "sweet girls" . . . "the darlings," other words that gave them a sad pleasure: "the Senator's wife" . . . "their aunt" . . . "flew out from Washington." Wash-ington." ' Aunt Olympia displayed a proper, customary sorrow during the services, serv-ices, frequently patting her eyes under un-der her veil with a very fina, perfumed per-fumed handkerchief. When Limpy shivered suddenly and was seized with a spasm of nervous trembling. Aunt Olympia put her arm around her and stroked the slim, black-clad knee with tender sympathy until the tremor had passed. The parsonage was in quiet readiness readi-ness for their sad ' return. Sister Alhard and Mrs. Cox, family friends, had remained away from the funeral in order to attend to those final domestic rites. The extra ex-tra chairs, borrowed from neighboring neighbor-ing houses for the influx of visitors, had been returned to their owners. Pieces of furniture had been restored re-stored to their original position in the room. A cheerful fire had been set blazing in the grate and a bowl of roses brightened the low table in the living room. Food had been prepared, pre-pared, and the table laid for their evening meal. When they had finished their dinner din-ner and sat, distraught and ill at ease, the four of them, before the fire Helen had freshly stirred to life. Aunt Olympia said with some abruptness: "How about the future? Have you got any ideas made any plans worked anything out in your minds about what you want to do from this on?" Only a slight quiver of the curving under-chin betrayed her passionate interest in their answer. "There's only one thing we can do," said Helen bravely. "The insurance in-surance will carry us nicely until the girls have finished schooL Fa- I ther wouldn't let me teach this year, though I finished college last year-and year-and have my state license, because he thought I should get a good rest after my operation for appendicitis. appendici-tis. But I get a good deal of substitute sub-stitute work here in town and next year I'll take a school of my own and settle down to business. Adele will finish college, of course. Limpy will finish high school next month " "Whoever heard of finishing school in the middle of the winter?" said Aunt Olympia. "A poor way to run a school, in my opinion." "Don't blame the school," said Adele, smiling. "Rather blame young seventeen-year-old minuses, who simply will not study math and flunk it consistently, year after year." "Don't you think it is very incongruous. incon-gruous. Auntie," said Limpy, in her own defense, "that the highest in I. Q.'s should be the lowest in geometry geom-etry and algebra? You can't help thinking there's something wrong either ei-ther with the school or the teacher." "There just couldn't be anything wrong with the pupil," said Adele. "Well, naturally not! Look at my I. Q.!" "Anyhow, Limpy finishes high school next month," said Helen. "Then, college. That was the way we had planned, and we'll just carry car-ry on. Maybe we can get a small house somewhere or a floor of housekeeping rooms and use our own furniture. Even if I take a school away from here next year, Adele and Limpy can go right ahead and I will come home week ends . . . We'll have to give up the parsonage par-sonage right away, of course." Aunt Olympia drew a full breath and opened her lips. But for once in her life, someone spoke ahead of her. It was Adele. "Helen," she said, "I don't want to go on through college. I don't want to teach school. And we ought not to use up that insurance money as we go along. We ought to keep it for for emergencies. Last week, it never occurred to any of us that sudden and terrible things could happen to us, upset our plans. Now, we know they can happen. .We must save as much of that money as we can for just such unexpected crises. cri-ses. I want to take a business course, Helen. I always did want to. It won't cost much either,-and won't take long. I'd so much rather go into business than teach school." Aunt Olympia started to speak and then, wisely, thought better of it. This was the girls' business, not hers. She closed her lips so tightly that only a pale blue line remained of their fullness. "I don't want to go to college, either," said Limpy suddenly. "You know Father always admitted he was going to have trouble with me. You can see I couldn't very well teach school when I can't even graduate grad-uate on time. I want to take my share of the insurance money and go to a big city and take some kind of an exciting course in something and " "What kind of an exciting course?" asked Aunt Olympia, who had hung on Limpy's every word. "I don't know exactly," admitted Limpy. "But the more exciting the better. Stage setting, or dress designing, de-signing, or acting, or play writing" writ-ing" "Have you any talent for any of those things?" demanded Aunt Olympia. "I don't think so," said Limpy honestly. "But everyone says they are very exciting and I may discover dis-cover some latent talent not yet suspected, even by me". Anyhow, I won't go to college and I won't teach school and " "You won't get a share of the insurance in-surance till you're eighteen, Limpy," Lim-py," Helen said uneasily. "Brother Wilton will have charge of that, you know." "Well, if he won't give me the money for an exciting course in something, I'll take a business course," persisted Limpy." "You .must go to college, Limpy," said Helen. "And Adele must finish and then decide what she wants. She will be older then and will know better what she really wants." (TO BE CONTINUED) |
