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Esther, from upstairs, saw them go out together, Angela's arm about Pen's waist, Penelope's arm about Angela's shoulders. With angry eyes and aching heart she watched them go through the garden, and guessed whither they were bound; and a sense of loneliness, of being shut out, stole over her. Cousin Charlotte had gone to Gorley and taken Poppy with her, so she was quite alone.
Then Penelope's heart sank within her, and for a long time she was speechless; her eyes filled with tears, and she could find no utterance. At last, however, she said, "Why did my son leave me? What business had he to go sailing off in ships that make long voyages over the ocean like sea-horses? Does he want to die without leaving any one behind him to keep up his name?"
They lay and smoked and cooled, and Gerda, a cigarette stuck in one side of her mouth, a buttercup in the other, mumbled "Penelope's baby's come, by the way. A girl. Another surplus woman." Neville's brows lazily went up. "Penelope Jessop? What's she doing with a baby? I didn't know she'd got married." "Oh, she hasn't, of course.... Didn't I tell you about Penelope?
It would be Penelope's web. Our education is too aesthetical. Unless a cultivated taste be overpowered by personal vanity, it is very difficult to complete any composition. I can most truly say that I have never done anything, speaking or writing, of which I could say, on the review, mihi plaudo. We have a great difference of opinion in the members of the Digest Commission.
Penelope crossed the room and, laying her hands on the girl's shoulders, twisted her round so that she faced her. "Nan, it's sheer madness! You've got this wonderful talent a real gift of the gods and you do nothing with it!" Nan laughed uncertainly and bent her bead so that all Penelope could see was a cloud of dusky hair. "I can't," she said. "Why not?" Penelope's voice was urgent.
It was almost late when at last she went to bed, her task had taken her so long, and the clock actually struck ten as she crept into Esther's room and left two of her little notes on the dressing-table, after depositing the other two in Penelope's and Angela's room. Poppy, being the heroine of the day, was naturally the first to wake the next morning.
They could now be heard approaching with that sad, slow, solemn rhythm that subdued beat, beat, beat, of horses' feet which has fallen on all our bruised hearts as an awful part of the funeral march. She ran out of the room and downstairs, drawing her skirt away from Miss Penelope's frightened grasp, and passing William Pressley, as if his restraining words had been no more than the gusty wind.
Far away at last from the garish horrors of dress, formal dinners, visits, and drives, the inevitable and demoralizing gossip and scandal; far away from hotel piazzas, with their tedious accompaniments of corpulent dowagers, exclusive or inquisitive, slowly dying from too much food and too little exercise; ennuied spinsters; gushing buds; athletic collegians, cigarettes in mouths and hands in pockets; languid, drawling dudes; old bachelors, fluttering around the fair human flower like September butterflies; fancy work, fancy work, like Penelope's web, never finished; pug dogs of the aged and asthmatic variety.
"It's right," said Lapham stoutly; "but I guess she ain't willing; I wish she was. But there don't seem to be any way out of the thing, anywhere. It's a perfect snarl. But I don't want you should be anyways ha'sh with Pen." Mrs. Lapham answered nothing; but when she met Penelope she gave the girl's wan face a sharp look, and began to whimper on her neck. Penelope's tears were all spent.
I tried to show him Penelope's danger, as it had been revealed to us that very night in Talcott's drunken talk. His reply was a laugh. He had so idealized Penelope that it was inconceivable that she should fall a victim to the attentions of such a vapid creature. He had not seen, as I had, Talcott sober and correct in deportment.
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