Stella Dallas (1923, Houghton Mifflin)/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
1
Laurel found her mother propped up in bed.
"Well, of all things! Where have you been?" she exclaimed as Laurel came into the room.
"Didn't any one tell you?"
"Not till just about half an hour ago; then that Mrs. Grosvenor sent a bellboy up with a note, saying not to worry, you had lost something and had gone back to the island with her boy to hunt for it. What did you lose, Laurel?"
"My watch."
"Your watch! Why, don't you remember you said this morning you wouldn't wear it because it might get wet? There it is on the bureau!"
"Why, that is so."
"Gracious! What's the matter with you?"
"I must be losing my memory, I guess," smiled Laurel wanly.
She crossed the room and slipped the watch onto her wrist.
"Had a good time to-day?" Stella inquired.
"Wonderful."
"You must tell me about it. Every word! I'm crazy to hear."
"I will. How have you been, mother?"
"Where have I been, you better ask."
"Well, where have you been?"
"Downstairs!" she announced with a triumphant nod of her head.
"Downstairs!"
"It's a wonder you didn't see me. I saw you. The doctor was here this morning, and said it would do me good to get up and around as soon as possible now. At first I thought I better not till to-morrow morning. Then I said to myself it would be fun to surprise you. So I dressed about four o'clock, and sat around on the veranda for a while. I felt just fine, and when I saw all your party coming down the lake in the canoes, I walked down to the pier to meet you. I saw you when you went off with that young man, heaven knew where. I supposed you would be right back. I waited for over an hour in that little summer-house at the end of the pier. I thought it would be so nice to meet him like that, offhand, and I was looking rather well."
Laurel, occupied before the mirror—pulling off the lavender sweater over her head, removing the soft felt tam-o'-shanter that matched it, giving her hair gentle little presses and pokes—inquired casually, "Did you stay downstairs to dinner?"
"No, I didn't. Though I felt all right. But I thought this way—it would be nicer to meet all your friends when you were around to introduce me. I'll go down to breakfast with you to-morrow morning. I feel just great."
"Then you didn't meet anybody?"
"Not yet."
"Mother," said Laurel, turning toward her from the mirror, "I'm going downstairs just a moment if you're all right. I won't be long."
"Mercy! Don't think about me. Stay as long as you want, and have a good time. Gracious, you deserve it. I'm as contented as a clam, so long as you are happy, Lollie. But you can't go like that, in that wrinkled waist and your hair all mussy."
"Oh, it doesn't matter."
Laurel did not take the elevator downstairs. She walked. The elevator would leave her the whole length of the foyer away from the hotel office. The stairs came down just behind it. Laurel felt fairly sure that none of "the crowd" would be near the office at this time in the evening. She was right. Nobody was near the office. The clerk was alone.
"We're leaving to-morrow," she told him.
"Leaving! I thought your mother—"
"My mother is much better, and something has happened that makes it necessary for us to go home immediately."
"Why, but—"
"Oh, I know we've engaged the room for the season. You'll have to charge us for it, if that is the way you do. We've got to go, anyway." There was something very convincing about Laurel. "We're going on the early train," she said.
"Oh, but the early train isn't necessary. The train that connects with the Boston Pullman at the Junction, sixty miles below here, doesn't leave until evening."
That didn't matter to Laurel. If she and her mother preferred leaving on the early train, they could do so, couldn't they, and pick up the Pullman, when it came through the Junction at night?
"Why, of course—but it would be very foolish—nobody ever does it."
"We're going to," Laurel announced.
2
"Mother," she remarked ten minutes later, "you must lie there in bed and watch me pack the trunks."
"Pack the trunks!"
"We're leaving this place to-morrow morning, at half-past seven."
"What are you talking about?"
"We're leaving. We're going."
"What do you mean?"
"What I say. I've just been downstairs and told the clerk."
"Have you lost your mind, Laurel?"
A faint smile drifted across Laurel's features, softened for a moment her firmly set jaw and chin.
"Oh, I'm sorry, mother! I'm ever so sorry."
"What's happened? What's the meaning of this?"
"Oh, I just don't like it here any more," shrugged Laurel. "I just can't stand it here any more."
Stella's eyes narrowed. She nodded her head, slowly up and down. "Humph! Sounds mighty like a quarrel with your young man to me."
"Oh, don't say 'my young man,' mother."
"There you go! Just like your father again! Criticizing my language every other minute! Well, then, Richard Grosvenor. Sounds mighty like a quarrel with Richard Grosvenor, to me."
"Mother," said Laurel, "I never want to see Richard Grosvenor again as long as I live!"
"I knew it! I knew it! Come, Laurel, don't be a little goose. Mercy, I never saw such a pepperbox! You can't fly out of a hotel like this, on a moment's notice, just because of a little lover's quarrel. Heavens alive! You come to bed and sleep on it. You'll feel entirely different in the morning. So will he. Gracious! I know how those things work. Quarrels make the heart grow fonder. There's a saying something like that. You come to bed, Laurel."
"Not till the packing is finished," said Laurel.
She turned her back upon Stella, crossed the room to the bureau, pulled out a lower drawer, and removed a pile of underclothes.
"You don't mean to say you're going to pack up and clear out of the only place we ever even had a 'look-in' at?"
"Yes, mother."
"Where do you think we're going to at this late date?"
"Why, back to the apartment."
"Back to the apartment in July!"
"Yes, mother."
"Do you mean to say, Laurel, you're thinking of putting me in a train in the condition I'm in?"
"I stopped and asked the doctor. He said it wouldn't hurt you to travel, he thought."
"And what about the expense of this room?"
"The clerk said we wouldn't have to pay for it. But even if we did, it wouldn't make any difference. Oh, mother, don't talk. Don't argue. We're going, anyway."
Laurel was emptying all the bureau drawers now. Stella, from the bed, stared at her speechless, as helpless, as powerless as if she were the child. She recognized that look in Laurel's eyes.
"I've brought you up all wrong," she sighed.
Laurel made no reply to that. Swiftly, effectively, she sorted and piled. Swiftly, effectively began filling the trunks.
"Laurel, you're doing a crazy thing," Stella broke out afresh, "and for the life of me, I don't know how to stop you."
"Don't let's go all over it again."
"You're throwing away the best chance you've ever had. Listen to me. Most of these people here come from Philadelphia. I had it all worked out in my mind that if we got the right sort of a start with them this summer, here, we might take an apartment down around Philadelphia somewheres next fall. Then you'd have some of the right kind of friends to play around with, and when the time comes for you to come out, why—"
"Where's the tissue-paper, mother? I think I'll do the dresses next."
Five minutes later Stella became tearful. Laurel brought her a handkerchief.
"I should think," she wailed, after she had vigorously blown her nose and mopped her eyes, "you'd want me to have a little of the good times you've been enjoying these three weeks while I've been cooped up here in bed. I like nice people, and things going on myself. You know I do. But just the minute I am able to get out of bed and take in a little of the gayety and excitement, you let a silly quarrel with a young fellow you never saw three weeks ago cheat me of it all."
"Where are the trees for your satin slippers? Do you know?" called Laurel from the closet.
3
Laurel and her mother spent all the next day, from ten in the morning, until eight at night in the waiting-room at the Junction. The waiting-room at the Junction was hot and dusty. It swarmed with flies, attracted by discarded lunch-boxes and paper bags. It smelled of cinders and hot steel. There were settees built around the edge of the waiting-room. They were painted mop-colored gray, divided by iron arms into spaces, so that no one could lie down upon them. Laurel arranged the suitcases as best she could, for her mother's feet, and rolled up a traveling-coat into a pillow for her head. All day Laurel hovered solicitously about her mother, offering her frequent drinks of water, which she brought in a paper cup; trying to tempt her with crackers and cheese and sweet chocolate, which she procured from a general store, half a mile up the road; asking her from time to time how she felt; showing concern, anxiety, but not the slightest sign of yielding or regret. Stella, resigned now, and stoically submissive, sat silent and unresponsive all day long. At measured intervals she sighed deeply, eloquently.
At eight o'clock in the evening a Pullman car was backed up to the Junction and side-tracked there for an hour or so to await several incoming trains from various points of the compass. Laurel and her mother crawled in between the sheets of a lower berth in the Pullman car a little after nine.
Laurel was on the inside of the berth. Stella's obdurate back was turned toward her. As Laurel stretched her long slim body down beside her mother, she slipped her hand under her mother's arm—around her waist, as she always did when she went to sleep—though she hadn't last night.
"Mother," she whispered, "aren't you going to forgive me pretty soon?"
Stella pressed the precious hand, drew it closely around her.
"Of course I am, you crazy kid," she whispered back. "I don't care what you do, just so I've got you to do it. Gosh, I can't stay mad with you any longer!"
Laurel's arm tightened. That was all right then. Oh, if only Richard—if only he—her arm loosened, grew limp. Laurel fell to sleep almost immediately. So did Stella. They both had been asleep for an hour or more when the hotel train whistled into the Junction at about half-past ten.
4
Laurel was drifting off into unconsciousness for the second time when she became aware of her name being spoken, just outside the heavy curtain of the berth. She had been dimly aware of voices conversing in low tones for five or ten minutes before the sound of her own name prodded her wide awake. The section opposite had not been made up when she and her mother went to bed. Probably, Laurel concluded, some of the people who had come down on the evening train were sitting there and chatting.
"Yes, that very pretty dark girl, who was so popular with the younger set—lovely eyes. Laurel Dallas. Such an odd name."
"But how is it possible? She seemed so very refined, so distinctly nice in every way."
"Well, I asked the clerk. He told me—"
"You mean the woman in the striped dress?"
"Certainly, certainly. She is that lovely child's mother."
"What a handicap to the poor girl."
"I should say so. All those people she's been playing around with had no idea what her mother was like, I suppose. She's been ill ever since she came. I wish I could have stayed a few days longer and seen just what would have happened when that woman appeared on the scene."
"What's the woman's story?"
"I don't know. I never heard of her before. Dallas is her name, from Boston."
"Poor girl. It's like having a ball and chain around her ankle to be obliged to drag a woman like that after her wherever she goes."
"Yes, but those things happen. Once I knew of a young man—charming—such aristocratic manners, and he came from the commonest family—vulgar people. Of course, being a man, he could escape his family, but a girl—a young girl like that"—the train began to move—"perfectly helpless—branded"—it moved faster—"a shame. Such a pity—Richard Grosvenor—" It moved still faster. The voices were drowned in the rumble of flying steel.
5
Oh, had her mother heard? Was her mother awake? No, Laurel thought not. Her breathing was heavy and slightly audible. The hand that had grasped hers so tightly a little while ago was limp and lifeless now. Her whole body was limp and lifeless. It moved slightly with the motion of the train, as unresisting as the curtains.
6
Oh, had Lollie heard? Was she awake? No, Stella thought not. Her soft breathing was as regular as the swinging of a pendulum. The arm that encircled her waist was as consciousless as a sleeping baby's.
7
So that was the story! Oh, what a fool she had been! A handicap to Laurel! And not because of unfair stories, of whispered scandals (these women didn't know who she was, didn't even know she wasn't living with her husband), but just because of herself. Was she so awful—so God-awful, then?
Stella had been listening to the voices for ten minutes before Laurel had become aware of them. She had heard herself described in detail, in cruel detail. She didn't suppose anybody knew that she "touched" her hair a little now and then. Why, even Lollie didn't know it. Up to two years ago it hadn't been necessary, but she did so hate the soft-boiled-egg look when yellow hair begins to turn white. Other women kept themselves young and attractive without being criticized. She had tried not to become a perfect sight for Laurel's sake, to keep in the running, as far as appearances went, so the child need never be ashamed of her, as she had been of her mother and the mouse-colored wrappers. But she had failed. Why, it was the same story right over again. Laurel was ashamed of her mother, too. It was as plain as the nose on your face. That was the reason Laurel was leaving the hotel. She would die rather than confess it, of course. That was the way Laurel was—as considerate, as gentle, as delicate with her common, ordinary, vulgar mother (weren't those some of the words the voices had used?) as with the charming Mrs. Grosvenor or the flawless Mrs. Morrison.
Well, what was to be done about it? Now that Stella knew the truth, knew that just her own personality, just her own five senses and the old hulk of a shell they lived in, was like an iron ball tied to Laurel's ankle (pleasant to learn that about yourself in the middle of the night, when you so wanted to be wings for your child), well—now that she had learned it, what was the next number on the programme? Laurel being a girl, the voices had said, couldn't escape, couldn't break the chain to the ball. Well, then (Stella's fingers very gently closed over Laurel's. She still slept—and she really did sleep now)—well, then— It would be pretty awful without her, wouldn't it? Dear little Lollie!— Let's see, let's see. No. No other way.
8
A narrow ribbon of sunlight was shining into the berth through a crack by the tightly pulled window-shade by Laurel's feet when she stirred and woke. Stella was waiting for her, had been waiting all night.
"Well, honey!" she said lightly. "Had a good night?"
Their eyes met.
"Splendid. Have you?"
"Great. Feel lots better."
"No, she didn't hear," thought Laurel.
"No, she didn't hear," thought Stella.