# Ernest and the Latch Key Question

Extracted from The American Magazine, 1909, pp. 315–324. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted. A “Phoebe and Ernest” story.
ERNEST AND THE LATCH KEY QUESTION
BY INEZ HAYNES IRWIN AUTHOR OF “PUPPY LOVE,” “PHOEBE AND HER OTHER SELF,” ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. F. SCHABELITZ
WHEN rumor proclaimed that the Chandler estate—the show-place of Maywood and for many years vacant—was let for the summer, joy reigned in the Martin family.
For various reasons it looked as if they would have to spend the summer at home, and new neighbors, especially if they proved interesting, could much alleviate that situation.
Mr. Martin was glad because the opening of the Chandler place would undoubtedly have a quickening effect on their end of the street. He had been conscious of a vague homesick feeling as, one after another, the houses in the vicinity closed up.
Mrs. Martin was glad because she felt that the new family might prove a sop to “the children.” Secretly, Mrs. Martin was delighted that they were going to spend their summer at home. The rest of the family loved the sea and so, invariably, to the seashore they went. Nobody had ever suspected that Mrs. Martin hated the ocean, that she longed with a yearning that was a positive ache for summer greenness and calm. Ordinarily, too, they left Maywood just as the azaleas and rhododendrons were in bloom. Her lilacs and roses wasted their sweetness on the little mucker-boys who so wantonly pilfered and destroyed them. This year—planting, weeding, pruning—Mrs. Martin was enjoying the “grounds” as she had not had a chance to enjoy them in years.
Phoebe was glad because she remembered the big dance-hall at the top of the Chandler house. On the first star of every evening and on uncountable loads of hay, she wished that the new family might include a daughter of her own age.
Ernest was glad because he remembered the well-appointed billiard-room, leading off the dance-hall. He hoped, with a hope so fierce that it amounted almost to exorcism, that the new family might include a son of his own age.
And both the children agreed to be satisfied if the heir of the house were either male or female, provided it played tennis.
As a matter of fact, Mr. and Mrs. Ventry proved to be childless.
Mrs. Martin called promptly with Phoebe.
“What do you think of her, mother?” Phoebe asked as soon as the door closed behind them.
Phoebe always asked her mother's opinion of everybody. And it was the only opinion that, having demanded, she did not immediately forestall by her own vivid, eager, dogmatic commentary. Mrs. Martin often wondered why her opinion was thus honored. A mild maternal asteism explained the phenomenon on the principle that, in order to bring out all the dazzling contrariety of her own viewpoint, Phoebe required the stimulus of an exact antithesis of opinion.
“I think she's very pleasant,” Mrs. Martin said with an effort. “She's a typical New Yorker though.”
As if released by a spring, Phoebe's enthusiasm poured out. “Did you ever see hair done so beautifully in your life?” she exclaimed. “I love that wide look her puffs gave her head here.” Phoebe's hands went just above her temples. “I'd give anything if my hair was black. Oh, mother, I do wish you'd let me wear puffs. Lots of girls do. Did you notice that one wide gold bracelet on her arm—wasn't that the darlingest thing! And hasn't she a corking figure? Just the kind to look grand in those skinny dresses. Wasn't she just lovely and cordial?”
Mrs. Martin hesitated as Phoebe, breathlessly brought to a full stop, gave her a chance to speak. But, as if in obedience to some inner, self-criticising prod, she seemed to assent to all her daughter had said with “And she's got the most beautiful eyes I ever saw in my life.”
“How old should you say she was, mother?”
“Well!” Mrs. Martin's tone seemed to hold the dregs of recent meditation on this subject. “She's one of those women who seem younger than they really are. She looks about twenty-seven. I guess she's thirty.”
“Thirty!” Phobe's voice whirred with horror. “Oh, mother, how can you? She can't be a day over twenty-three. Thirty!” There could be no doubt as to the year that, in Phoebe's opinion, marked the beginning of feminine desuetude.
“What do you think of her, Ern?” Phoebe asked after their call had been returned.
In the unease inevitable to masculinity when compelled to give a snap judgment on womenkind, Ernest grunted and shuffled. “I hate to see a woman wear earrings,” he said at last.
“Oh Ern!” Phoebe exclaimed. Her accent indicated that of the many things he could have said, he had hit upon the one least sapient. “Those earrings are simply swell. They make her look so quaint. Have you noticed those long gold ones she wears, mother—I mean the old-fashioned ones with the black enamel and pearls.”
“I guess I have,” Mrs. Martin replied with unexpected interest. “I think they're beautiful. I have a brooch that just matches them upstairs in my jewelry box. Your Aunt Mary left it to me. She always treasured that pin and I think a sight of it. I used to wear it all the time, but I haven't put it on for years now—somehow it looks so old-fashioned.”
“Well, just think, mother!” the onrush of Phoebe's informative impulse brushed Aunt Mary's heirlooms entirely out of the conversation. “Mrs. Ventry told me that she picked up those earrings in a pawn-shop in New York. Isn't that the strangest thing with all the money she's got! Why I wouldn't any more wear anything that came out of a pawnshop—I should expect it to be just loaded with germs. But Ern,” Phoebe returned undaunted to the attack on insensate masculinity—“don't you think she's pretty?” And to his growl of denial, she added, disgustedly. “It's just like pulling teeth, Ern Martin, to get you to say that a woman's good-looking.”
As a matter of fact, Ernest secretly thought Mrs. Ventry a “pіppіn.” But somehow—Ernest did not quite understand it himself—there seemed something emasculate about admitting good looks in a female.
But if Mrs. Martin and Ernest were a little measured in their praise of the new neighbor, both Phoebe and Mr. Martin were decidedly enthusiastic.
Mr. Martin spoke in terms of highest admiration of a lady who, on all occasions, treated him to a delicate, light raillery—a lure at which, to his wife's astonishment, he leaped with a gallant verbal agility.
And Phoebe—having penetrated beyond the glamour of their neighbor's shell to greater glories of mind and heart—fairly spattered adjectives at the mention of her name. “Beautiful,” “charming,” “stunning,” “picturesque,” “grand,” they flowed in adulatory profusion. Whenever Mrs. Ventry was near, she sat literally at her feet—a slim living picture of continual adoration.
In regard to Mr. Ventry, the Martin family held but one opinion—all, that is, except Ernest, who had never been known to dislike anything male in his life. Phoebe voiced it with her usual frankness after the first encounter. “I loathe him,” she pronounced crisply.
Mr. Ventry was much older than Mrs. Ventry. He had a huge, flabby body and the face of a cruel Punchinello. All expression seemed to be held down by a net-work of faintly-etched lines. His eyes were as changeless as green pebbles and they looked out over swelling blue puffs under lids that were mere lashless folds of flesh. Phoebe's most impassioned criticism of Mr. Ventry was that those eyes never seemed to see Mrs. Ventry when they rested on her.
As time went on, Mrs. Martin found herself liking Mrs. Ventry more and more. There lingered—she admitted it only to herself—a half-intuitive residuum of disapproval. For instance, once as she came unexpectedly to the Ventry house in the twilight, a pair of cigarettes cut twin arcs of fire from rail to lawn. Yet, when she arrived on the piazza, only Mr. and Mrs. Ventry arose to greet her. But it was not easy to resist Mrs. Ventry's very perceptible fancy for herself. The new neighbor subjected her to a running fire of pretty attentions. Mrs. Ventry was always sending Mrs. Martin new slips from the garden, flowers, fruits, even occasional portions of the delicious Ventry desserts, always lending her books, patterns for dress and lace-making. Mrs. Ventry was always coming over in the morning—an extraordinary vision for Maywood in her trailing negligees of lace and Chinese embroidery, her light, flapping, untrimmed garden hat tied with long green ribbons under her chin, her flexible garden gloves, her inevitable earrings—to compare notes on the progress of various horticultural weaklings. To be made so much of socially was a new experience for Mrs. Martin.
Then, certainly, the Ventrys were giving the children social opportunities that more than made up for the lost summer in Marblehead. Especially was this true in Ernest's case. And Ernest's case was causing his mother considerable perturbation these days.
Illustration: Whenever Mrs. Ventry was near, she sat literally at her feet—a slim living picture of continual adoration
For Ernest Martin was rapidly growing handsome. Always he had been well-built. And at no time had he gone through that weedy period in which boys, as much as girls, resemble willow wands. Now he stood six feet and over. In his case, growth seemed a shearing down of heavy masses of flesh rather than the opposite process of a filling out to shapely bulk. At sixteen, Ernest looked twenty. His black hair ruffled in the wind, thick and velvety as the breast-plumage of a bird. His face still retained its cherubic outlines, for experience had done nothing to sharpen his features. His clear blue eyes still looked out on the world with the incurious, untroubled gaze of childhood.
Mrs. Martin was beginning to realize what it means to be the mother of so comely a lad. Girls who had never before called on Phoebe now put the Martin place in a flutter of ruffles and ribbons. Girls who never had cared for tennis now invested the mangy Martin court with an inexplicable popularity. Girls who formerly never passed their way seemed to rise from the ground as Ernest curved out of the driveway in the runabout. Mrs. Martin, herself, was subjected to much furtive wooing from nubile Maywood.
To Mrs. Martin's despair, this process had not made a scratch on Ernest's extraordinary social diffidence. But, perhaps, constant association with Mrs. Ventry's friends might accomplish the impossible. For Mrs. Ventry was what Mrs. Martin called “a woman of the world.” Her coming had made a great difference in Maywood.
In the first place, under her direction, the Chandler place had bloomed as it had not in years. The lawns, which had degenerated into overgrown patches of daisies and timothy-grass, turned to crescents, geometrically precise, of green velvet. Flower-pots made spots of color, bunches of shrubbery, expanses of shade. The-long, elm-bordered drive looked like a monster whetstone. The tennis-courts were kept cut to a trimness that was the marvel of the Martin children. The dance-hall and the billiard-room glittered with the last cry in fittings and adornments. Moreover, the household was run on what seemed to Maywood the most luxurious principles, especially as it was understood that the Ventrys were economizing. Mrs. Ventry thought nothing of inviting half a dozen extra to dinner. And as for incidental entertaining——
“I never saw so many eats, drinks and smokes in my life,” said Ernest who, as yet, neither drank nor smoked.
Naturally the Ventry household became in these circumstances, the meeting-place for the jeunesse dorée of Maywood. Mr. Ventry went early to business and came home late at night. He seemed the most devoted of business men. So, at least, Mr. Martin seemed to admit by the consenting silence with which, invariably, he greeted this theory. But Mr. Ventry was not missed. Mrs. Ventry was always importing smart guests from New York and Boston. With them mingled “Тug” Warburton—until his family went to Marblehead—the Warren boys, a pair of young brokers who looked down upon Maywood society from ice-laden heights of social superiority, Tom Deane the Maywood cut-up, Fred Partland, Maywood's local celebrity, recently returned from the Latin Quarter and—and—AND Billy Thurston, the current Harvard Varsity pitcher, into whose presence Ernest would have crawled on his hands and knees. Over this little masculine court, Mrs. Ventry reigned undisputed queen with Phoebe, Molly Tate, Florence Marsh and the Gould twins for permanent ladies-in-waiting.
Ernest seemed actually to live on the Ventry place. But so far the only effect of his new association had been to make him rebel against having to come in so early at night. He clamored hourly for a latch-key.
“I had to come home the other night just as Billy Thurston started to tell how Hinkey used to box the tackle,” he said once. Even Mrs. Martin could see that Ernest was voicing the greatest wrong of his boyhood. But “Home every night at ten and no latch-key until you're out of school,” was her unyielding decision.
To Mrs. Martin's surprise, Mr. Martin seemed to take a very lenient view of this matter. “I'm glad Ernest's meeting some Harvard men,” he said again and again. Once only he offered an objection. “How about this billiard and pool business, mother?” he asked.
“Well, I look at it this way,” Mrs. Martin answered instantly. Her tone revealed that she had already worked the problem out to its last detail. This usually happened before it presented itself as a problem to Mr. Martin. “Ernie's bound to play billiards sooner or later. You did and Tug does.” Mrs. Martin was of course blissfully unaware that Ernest had held the junior pool championship of Maywood for six months. “Now, I'd much rather have him over to Mrs. Ventry's playing with his sister than down at Sliney's with that gang of loafers there.”
In the midst of this activity, Mrs. Ventry herself lived the idlest of lives. She puttered a little about her garden in the morning, but most of the afternoon she spent in the hammock reading the books and magazines that seemed to come with every mail. A light burned in her bedroom until after midnight. She had, however, what was from Phoebe's and Ernest's point of view an inexplicable mania—a passion for old things.
Maywood was far enough away from Boston to merge, after a few miles, with genuine country. Mrs. Ventry got in the habit of exploring these districts, following the trail of colonial mahogany, china and pewter. The Ventrys had dispensed with their chauffeur and, as Mrs. Ventry did not like to go too far alone in the big car, she invariably invited Ernest to accompany her. Ernest, rushing through the house like a whirlwind, gathering a coat here, a cap there, goggles yonder, would call, “Say, mother, I won't be home to lunch to-day. Mrs. Ventry wants me to take her to Shayneford. That'll be a ninety-mile run going and coming.”
Mrs. Martin never put any obstacles to these expeditions. But she always asked questions when Ernest returned.
“Is Mrs. Ventry an interesting talker Ernie?” was one form. GillmorWhat do you find to say to interest a woman like Mrs. Ventry?” was another. “I hope you don't talk too much, Ernie, so's to wear Mrs. Ventry out. I shouldn't think she'd be much interested in the talk of a boy like you,” was a third.
“She isn't, I guess,” Ernest would reply. “Anyway, I'm not interested in hers or any woman's chin when I've got an automobile that will go fifty miles an hour. Gee, don't I hate to wait round while she gasses with those antique-furniture guys! You, Mrs. Edward D. Martin, don't you ever get the bug to buy any of that bum-looking, cracked crockery. Any pie left, mother?”
What Ernest forgot to add was that, often, Mrs. Ventry sat for hours oblivious of him, silent, brooding, her hand over her eyes.
But even as the constant dropping of Mrs. Ventry's kindness had worn away Mrs. Martin's distrust, a parallel series had washed down most of Ernest's prejudice. Still no female is perfect and Mrs. Ventry had her faults. If Ernest could have formulated his impressions, his main objection to Mrs. Ventry would have been—well, somehow, she was not like Phoebe or Molly Tate, comfortable females to have about, whose presence you were just as likely to forget as to remember. “If Mrs. Ventry is in the room with you,” Ernest would have said, “by George, you know it!” And it was not, he might have added that, like the more irritating of her sex, she asked foolish questions, dropped things and required constant attention. It was more that—well, she had a mischievous habit of fixing a fellow with a pair of eyes that were as different as possible from any eyes Ernest knew. Phoebe for instance. When Phoebe's gaze met yours, it was soft and innocently speculative. But the deep, blue lakes that were the avenues of Mrs. Ventry's vision seemed to run over with a prickly sparkle. And when she fixed that sparkle on him—“oh, Lord!” Ernest would have inaptly concluded. But Ernest was eternally grateful to Mrs. Ventry because, having discovered how easily she could embarrass him, she never looked at him now when she talked with him. Ernest would have ended his list of objections with the statement that Mrs. Ventry “”jollied” a fellow. And if there was anything Ernest dreaded it was a woman who “jollied” you. Ernest had concluded that verbal fireworks were an integral part of female psychology. He, himself, could never think of a “come back.” Indeed, Ernest would, he thought, have been justified in calling Mrs. Ventry's manner towards the other fellows flirtatious—only that of course, after marriage people just naturally do not flirt, any more than heavy objects cast earthwards leap into the air.
But allowing for these serious flaws—and Ernest had decided philosophically that you have to make allowances for a female—there was much about Mrs. Ventry to endear her to a lad of sixteen. She could play tennis almost as well as Phoebe, and billiards a good deal better. She was fond of golf. You could not run a car too fast for her. And what she did not know about a machine was not considered of enough importance to put in any of the motor magazines that Ernest devoured monthly. Perhaps it is enough to say that, so far as automobiles were concerned, Ernest had found a kindred soul. Indeed, at the end of a month, Ernest actually condescended to approve Mrs. Ventry without qualifications. Perhaps his opinion was a little mixed with his enjoyment of her hospitalities.
Early in July, Mrs. Ventry went away for a week. The sudden cessation of their tiny social merry-go-round nearly threw the Martin children into a quicksand of ennui. Ernest found himself actually glad when a business errand of his father's delayed him in Boston beyond dinner-time. For the first time in his life he ate alone in a restaurant. He was strolling up Tremont Street, in the effort to kill time before the eight o'clock train, when his name came to him suddenly out of the crowd. Turning, he found himself face to face with Mr. Ventry.
“That's right,” that gentleman exclaimed, playfully hooking Ernest with his stick. “Don't cut an old friend like that. Let me introduce you to er—my sister, Miss Tracey, Mr. Martin, Miss Tracey. Er—er—Miss Tracey is Mrs. Ventry's sister, you know. Miss Tracey's just run over suddenly on business from New York. We've been trying the whole afternoon to get Mrs. Ventry on the 'phone.”
Miss Tracey was a very pretty girl—Ernest simply had to admit that. She was little, slender, flower-faced and big-eyed. Ernest actually noticed her clothes. More startling than any combination of colors, the entire absence, in her close-fitting gown, of any ornamentation revealed the boy-like modelings of her supple figure. That sense of oral inhibition which always attacked Ernest when he talked with the female of his species fell on him like a blanket. He glued his eyes to Mr. Ventry, although in view of Miss Tracey's vivacity, it was like trying to keep your eyes off an electric fountain on a dark night.
Ernest had never seen Mr. Ventry in a mood like this. He was affable, companionable, even jolly. He talked boisterously, asked a great many questions, answered them himself, laughed often and at nothing in particular. He slapped Ernest on the shoulder and called him “old chap.” Ernest had a sudden proud feeling of being a man among men.
“Now Ernest, Miss Tracey and I are going to the Pop Concert and you've got to come along with us. Got to—see? Don't try to say 'no' because we can't even hear such a foolish noise as that.”
After admitting that he must surely leave by the ten train, Ernest went along willingly, eagerly. Ernest had never attended a Pop Concert and this, it appeared, was Harvard Night. The experience of dashing through Boston in a taxi-cab was in itself memorable. And what followed—the crowded hall, the pretty table-groups, drinking and applauding, the mob of students standing to sing and cheer themselves hoarse—it all took its place among Ernest's most cherished first experiences. In fact, he had to reinforce his determination to leave by recalling how his mother would worry if he stayed. And, in addition, there was Mr. Ventry's regret, his disgust, his despair to contend with. In the end, Ernest had metaphorically to tear himself away from Miss Tracey's cooed pleadings and, literally, from Mr. Ventry's detaining clutch. He found himself in the South Station ten minutes ahead of time.
As he walked back and forth waiting for his train to be made up, he heard his name called for the second time that evening. Now, it was Mrs. Ventry.
“Oh Ernest,” she said, “I'm so glad to see you!”
Even to Ernest's unsensitive perception, it was evident that something had happened. Mrs. Ventry's whole appearance proclaimed emotional fire. Her cheeks blazed and her eyes burned.
“Come into the waiting-room a moment, Ernest,” she said immediately, “І have something to tell you.” But before she reached that haven, before Ernest could speak, in fact, “The whole thing's up,” she burst out, I've just left my husband!”
For a moment Ernest did not understand. He opened his mouth to say, “Why, you couldn't have done that. I've just left him myself,” when she followed it by a statement even more astonishing.
“I called him up this afternoon from Manchester and told him I was going to leave him. I told him I should never see him again as long as I lived. I've stood a great deal—you know how he neglects me. But lately—I've been thinking of it for months but to-day, I made up my mind.”
Ernest's head rocked. His thoughts whirled. Mr. Ventry had told him that he had tried all the afternoon to get Mrs. Ventry on the wire. And yet Mrs. Ventry had just said— Suddenly—it was like the sudden burst of an electric light—Ernest had a moment of mental illumination.
Mr. Ventry was trying to keep his wife and her sister apart.
Mrs. Ventry was still talking. “I'm going to New York on the midnight to stay at the Hotel Hamblen. Promise me, Ernest, that you will never tell anybody that you met me here to-night. I wouldn't have anybody in Maywood know this for the world.” Her hand touched Ernest's arm. “You do promise?”
Afterward, even the unanalytic Ernest remembered how lightly he promised.
“I don't know what I'm going to do to kill time until then,” she went on absently.
But Ernest was still thinking over this tangled situation from his own inside view. Suddenly, following that wonderful illumination came an idea quite as wonderful—a plan. Could he put it through? He would put it through.
“Mrs. Ventry,” he said soberly, “will you come to the Pop Concert with me?” For the first time in their acquaintance, he looked without flushing straight into her eyes.
Mrs. Ventry stared at him a moment. For an instant, her face shadowed. “Et tu, Ernest,” she said; then she laughed that rippling laugh which Phoebe so much admired. “I'd love to go. What a ripping idea, Ernest!”
But Ernest's only reflection was that now he must lose the ten train. He rushed Mrs. Ventry to the Elevated.
Illustration: “I met Mrs. Ventry in the station and I've brought her here to see her sister,” he said
The noise of the train discouraged conversation. Ernest was glad. He was turning over many things in his mind. It occurred to him that, after all, he had attempted rather a big feat in social engineering. At Symphony Hall, he spent the last two dollars of his allowance for admission to the floor. The strains of the closing march had begun. Mrs. Ventry followed in his broad-shouldered wake, as he made straight for Mr. Ventry's table. That gentleman still sat, now a cross between Silenus and Punchinello, hunched attentively in the direction of his pretty companion. He looked up.
“What the—how'd you get here?” Mr. Ventry snarled. In a flash, Ernest perceived that Mr. Ventry's jovial mood had gone stale. He did not falter, however. He stepped aside. “I met Mrs. Ventry in the station and I've brought her here to see her sister,” he said.
Ernest saw Mr. Ventry's jaw drop, saw Miss Tracey arise as if at the onslaught of some trepidant emotion. He brushed past Mrs. Ventry and left the hall.
At the station he found to his horror that a change to the summer schedule had allowed him to lose the eleven train by three minutes.
The milk train deposited Ernest at Maywood a little after four the next morning. Since he had no money to go to a hotel, he had spent the night walking the streets and lounging about the station.
He moved with almost his usual energy. But his face was white and many lines, not of fatigue, snarled his forehead. He walked with the utmost quiet up the concrete path to the house. He did not even try the front door. He walked around to the back of the house and made some noiseless if futile investigations there. Finally, he removed his shoes, climbed over the shed, made the laborious passage of the sloping roof and crawled through the bath-room window, and this he accomplished in a curious, half-hearted way as if he dreaded to enter. And when, just inside, the ghost-shape of a woman confronted him, he did not even start.
Mrs. Martin wore her long purple kimono. Her hair was done for the night. But it was evident that she had not slept.
“Ernest,” she said quietly, “what kept you so late?”
“I stayed until the ten train, mother. Then I missed the eleven. I came out on the milk train.”
Illustration: He removed his shoes, climbed over the shed, and made the laborious passage of the sloping roof and crawled through the bath-room window
“Were you alone?”
“No.”
“Where have you been?”
“Mother,” Ernest said desperately after a long pause in which he seemed to go round and round the circle that, always with the same conclusion, his mind had traveled so many times that evening, “I've been out.”
Mrs. Martin did not speak. She did not stir. She continued to look at Ernest and he continued to look at her. After an interval, she walked past her son down the hall. Her door shut softly. Ernest went into his room, but he did not close his door. For a long time, he sat and leaned his head against the back of his chair, waiting. Finally, he went to bed.
“What time did Ernest get home?” Mr. Martin asked the next morning.
“He lost both trains,” Mrs. Martin said easily. “Just think he had to come home on the milk train. Now, Edward, I don't want that you should scold him or say one word to him. I've scolded him enough. You leave him in my hands.”
“All right, mother.” The relief with which Mr. Martin slipped parental discipline on to his wife's shoulders was audible in his long sigh.
Phoebe came to the dinner-table that night, bursting with information. “I went over to the Ventrys this afternoon, mother, to find out when Mrs. Ventry was coming home and what do you think? George says that she isn't expected back this summer. She's left Manchester and is staying at the Hotel Hamblen in New York. They're packing up all her clothes. Isn't it the strangest thing you ever heard—and she never said one word about it to anybody. What do you suppose has happened?”
Nobody supposed anything. But, “I shall miss Mrs. Ventry very much,” Mrs. Martin said.
For two or three days the atmosphere of the Martin house was strange. Mrs. Martin spoke little—she seemed absorbed in unvoiced, mental problems. Mr. Martin discovered her several times wandering aimlessly about the house late at night.
“Is anything the matter with you, Bertha?” he asked once. “You're not finding this summer at home too much for you? Just say the word and we'll go down to the seashore to-morrow.”
Mrs. Martin's tired eyes went to the lawn. “I wouldn't leave this place for a farm down east,” she said, a note of passionate determination in her voice. “I love it. It's home.”
With this, Mr. Martin had to be content. If he had been a more careful observer, he would have noted that, although his wife spoke to Ernest when it was necessary, she never otherwise addressed him; that in no case did she look at him.
Ernest, during these days, was a model of good behavior. He dropped the feud that he was waging with the Irish queen of the kitchen just as victory loomed in sight. His work was accomplished promptly to the minute. He went out of his way to find things to do. He even resumed certain household responsibilities that he had outgrown with his childhood.
“Say, what's the matter with you, Ern?” Phoebe asked. “You're getting so easy to live with that you must be coming down sick.”
Illustration: Ernest's eyes always followed his moth- er's figure, followed it with the help- less, imploring look of a sick puppy
If Phoebe had been a little less self-centered—to do Phoebe justice, it should be mentioned that she was getting ready to visit the Warburtons in Marblehead—she would have observed that Ernest's eyes always followed his mother's figure, followed it with the helpless, imploring look of a sick puppy.
At the end of the third day, Ernest suddenly borrowed two dollars of Phebe. He went to the telephone of the Maywood House, called New York, the Hotel Hamblen, Mrs. E. B. Ventry. Then he waited.
After a long time, a cool voice said, “Who is this?”
“Ernest Martin,” he answered. “Is this you, Mrs. Ventry?”
“Yes,” the voice answered. “What is it, Ernest?”
“I want to know if you will let me tell my mother about the other night,” Ernest said, straight to the point. “You see I missed the eleven train and didn't get home until after four. I never staid out so late before, and when she asked me where I'd been, I couldn't tell her because I'd promised you that I wouldn't tell anybody. I guess she's most sick worrying about it. She thinks—well, I don't know what she thinks. Of course, I'll keep my promise if you ask me. But it would be a great favor if you'll let me tell her.”
For an instant the wire fairly vibrated with silence. Then the voice came very soft. “Ernest, how old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
Ernest could almost feel the choke of surprise that this statement elicited. “Oh, you're younger than Phoebe then,” Mrs. Ventry said. “I thought you were nineteen or twenty—you're so big.”
Ernest passed, unnoting, over the delicious flattery of this. “Can I tell her?” he persisted.
The voice responded immediately. “You go right home, Ernest,” it advised, “and tell your mother everything. Take my advice and always tell her everything. Your mother is the sweetest thing in Maywood. She was the only one who made life endurable for me there. I'm never coming back, and I want you to tell her that for me. Will you?”
But Ernest did not even wait to answer this question. He forgot to thank Mrs. Ventry. He bounded out of the telephone-box. A porter came racing after him to collect the toll. That duty accomplished, Ernest tore home, raced up the stairs, burst into his mother's living-room.
Mrs. Martin looked up as he entered. Her faint, impersonal gaze just grazed him before it fell again on her work. She did not speak.
“Mother,” Ernest panted, “І can tell you all about the other night now.”
Mrs. Martin's work fell out of her hands. She riveted her eyes to her son's face and she did not take them away until the last word of his lumbering explanation hobbled out. Even then she did not speak. It almost seemed she could not. But she looked as if new life had been breathed into her.
“I'll never lose the train again, mother,” Ernest concluded futilely.
But Mrs. Martin had not emerged from her three days of Golgotha without profit.
“Ernie,” she said, “you're getting to be such a big boy now—just think of it, you're most seventeen—that I'm not going to make you come in at ten every night any more. I'm going to give you a latch-key and you can decide yourself where to come in.”
“Yes m'm,” Ernest answered with the docility which, as a little boy, he had always presented to maternal mandate. In his joy at release from the load on his heart, he was quite impervious to this additional easement.
“But I hope, Ernie,” Mrs. Martin's eyes seemed to implore dumbly for something that she did not express, “that you will always get in as early as you can. For I'm afraid, dear, that as long as I live, I shall never get over worrying about you when you're out late.”
“Yes m'm,” Ernest said again.
It may here be mentioned that, although Ernest received his first latch-key in the course of a week, he did not have occasion to use it for over a year.
When Mr. Martin came home that night, he was astonished to find his wife sparkling with the spirits of her very girlhood. She joked all though dinner. Ernest, too, laughed and larked.
“I guess the lids off again all right,” Phoebe remarked scornfully to her brother.
Although the night was hot, Mrs. Martin insisted on a game of bridge. She played with Ernest, and Phoebe with her father. Mrs. Martin held such hands that Phoebe, in disgust, accused her brother of passing his trumps under the table. Mrs. Martin engineered successfully so daring a series of finesses that Mr. Martin accused her of looking into his hand. As Ernest elegantly expressed it, they “licked the tar” out of their opponents.
Half-way up the stairs to bed that night, Mrs. Martin, to Mr. Martin's surprise, suddenly sat down on the steps and burst out laughing. “What in the world's got into you, Bertha?” he asked.
“Oh, just the moonlight, I guess,” Mrs. Martin answered. But in that answer Mrs. Martin was practising the evasion which, for the purposes of household discipline, she had reduced both to a science and an art. What in reality she thought was, “I'd given a hat to see those three faces when Ernie brought them together.”
The next day Phoebe observed her mother in the process of stamping and directing a small box, jewelers' size.
“What's that, mother?” she asked, exercising, unabashed, the curiosity which had assisted so signally in developing her stock of general information.
“It's Aunt Mary's gold brooch—the one I told you about with the jet and pearls. I'm sending it to Mrs. Ventry. She was so kind to me when she was in Maywood and I never did a thing for her. It matches those earrings of hers, you know.”
   The next story in this series, entitled “Phoebe and the Household Gods,” will appear in an early number
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1970, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 54 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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