The Flirt. Booth Tarkington
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helpful item in his education.
“I wonder if he wants to sell the house,” said Mrs. Madison.
“I wish he would. Anything that would make father get out of it!” Cora exclaimed. “I hope Mr. Corliss will burn it if he doesn’t sell it.”
“He might want to live here himself.”
“He!” Cora emitted a derisive outcry.
Her mother gave her a quick, odd look, in which there was a real alarm. “What is he like, Cora?”
“Awfully foreign and distinguished!”
This brought Hedrick to confront her with a leap as of some wild animal under a lash. He landed close to her; his face awful.
“Princely, I should call him,” said Cora, her enthusiasm undaunted. “Distinctly princely!”
“Princely,” moaned Hedrick. “Pe-rin-sley!”
“Hedrick!” Mrs. Madison reproved him automatically. “In what way is he `foreign,’ Cora?”
“Oh, every way.” Cora let her glance rest dreamily upon the goaded boy. “He has a splendid head set upon a magnificent torso——”
“Torso!” Hedrick whispered hoarsely.
“Tall, a glorious figure—like a young guardsman’s.” Madness was gathering in her brother’s eyes; and observing it with quiet pleasure, she added: “One sees immediately he has the grand manner, the bel air.”
Hedrick exploded. “`Bel air’!” he screamed, and began to jump up and down, tossing his arms frantically, and gasping with emotion. “Oh, bel air! Oh, blah! `Henry Esmond!’ Been readin’ `Henry Esmond!’ Oh, you be-yoo-tiful Cora-Beatrix-a-lee! Magganifisent torso! Gullo-rious figgi-your! Bel air! Oh, slush! Oh, luv-a-ly slush!” He cast himself convulsively upon the floor, full length. “Luv-a-ly, luv-a-ly slush!”
“He is thirty, I should say,” continued Cora, thoughtfully. “Yes—about thirty. A strong, keen face, rather tanned. He’s between fair and dark——”
Hedrick raised himself to the attitude of the “Dying Gaul.” “And with `hair slightly silvered at the temples!’ Ain’t his hair slightly silvered at the temples?” he cried imploringly. “Oh, sister, in pity’s name let his hair be slightly silvered at the temples? Only three grains of corn, your Grace; my children are starving!”
He collapsed again, laid his face upon his extended arms, and writhed.
“He has rather wonderful eyes,” said Cora. “They seem to look right through you.”
“Slush, slush, luv-a-ly slush,” came in muffled tones from the floor.
“And he wears his clothes so well—so differently! You feel at once that he’s not a person, but a personage.”
Hedrick sat up, his eyes closed, his features contorted as with agony, and chanted, impromptu:
“Slush, slush, luv-a-ly, slush!
Le’ss all go a-swimmin’ in a dollar’s worth o’ mush.
Slush in the morning, slush at night,
If I don’t get my slush I’m bound to get tight!”
“Hedrick!” said his mother.
“Altogether I should say that Mr. Valentine Corliss looks as if he lived up to his name,” Cora went on tranquilly. “Valentine Corliss of Corliss Street—I think I rather like the sound of that name.” She let her beautiful voice linger upon it, caressingly. “Valentine Corliss.”
Hedrick opened his eyes, allowed his countenance to resume its ordinary proportions, and spoke another name slowly and with honeyed thoughtfulness:
“Ray Vilas.”
This was the shot that told. Cora sprang down from the table with an exclamation.
Hedrick, subduing elation, added gently, in a mournful whisper:
“Poor old Dick Lindley!”
His efforts to sting his sister were completely successful at last: Cora was visibly agitated, and appealed hotly to her mother. “Am I to bear this kind of thing all my life? Aren’t you ever going to punish his insolence?”
“Hedrick, Hedrick!” said Mrs. Madison sadly.
Cora turned to the girl by the window with a pathetic gesture. “Laura——” she said, and hesitated.
Laura Madison looked up into her sister’s troubled eyes.
“I feel so morbid,” said Cora, flushing a little and glancing away. “I wish——” She stopped.
The silent Laura set aside her work, rose and went out of the room. Her cheeks, too, had reddened faintly, a circumstance sharply noted by the terrible boy. He sat where he was, asprawl, propped by his arms behind him, watching with acute concentration the injured departure of Cora, following her sister. At the door, Cora, without pausing, threw him a look over her shoulder: a full-eyed shot of frankest hatred.
A few moments later, magnificent chords sounded through the house. The piano was old, but tuned to the middle of the note, and the keys were swept by a master hand. The wires were not hammered; they were touched knowingly as by the player’s own fingers, and so they sang—and from out among the chords there stole an errant melody. This was not “piano-playing” and not a pianist’s triumphant nimbleness—it was music. Art is the language of a heart that knows how to speak, and a heart that knew how was speaking here. What it told was something immeasurably wistful, something that might have welled up in the breast of a young girl standing at twilight in an April orchard. It was the inexpressible made into sound, an improvisation by a master player.
“You hear what she’s up to?” said Hedrick, turning his head at last. But his mother had departed.
He again extended himself flat upon the floor, face downward, this time as a necessary preliminary to rising after a manner of his own invention. Mysteriously he became higher in the middle, his body slowly forming first a round and then a pointed arch, with forehead, knees, and elbows touching the floor. A brilliantly executed manoeuvre closed his Gothic period, set him upright and upon his feet; then, without ostentation, he proceeded to the kitchen, where he found his mother polishing a sugar-bowl.
He challenged her with a damnatory gesture in the direction of the music. “You hear what Cora’s up to?”
Mrs. Madison’s expression was disturbed; she gave her son a look almost of appeal, and said, gently:
“I believe there’s nothing precisely criminal in her getting Laura to play for her. Laura’s playing always soothes her when she feels out of sorts—and—you weren’t very considerate of her, Hedrick. You upset her.”
“Mentioning Ray Vilas, you mean?” he demanded.
“You weren’t kind.”
“She deserves it. Look at her! You know why she’s got Laura at the piano now.”
“It’s—it’s because you worried her,” his mother faltered evasively. “Besides, it is very hot, and Cora isn’t as strong as she looks. She said she felt morbid and——”
“Morbid? Blah!” interrupted the direct boy. “She’s started after this Corliss man just like she did for Vilas. If I was Dick Lindley I wouldn’t stand for Cora’s——”
“Hedrick!” His mother checked his outburst pleadingly. “Cora has so much harder time than the other girls; they’re all so much better off. They seem to get everything they want, just by asking: nice clothes and jewellery—and automobiles. That seems to make a great difference nowadays; they all seem to have automobiles. We’re so dreadfully poor,