# Smith's Magazine/Volume 21/Issue 4/The wings of Lias

from Smith's magazine, July 1915, pp. 641-652. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted
Illustration: “How do you do, Martha?” Miss Annie responded reprovingly.
The Wings of Lias
By Ben Ames Williams
ILLUSTRATED BY CLARENCE ROWE
A chain has its weakest link, and a walled city its most vulnerable gate. The Pettigrews might have been likened to the links of a chain, for cleaving each to each, or to a walled city for exclusiveness, and their weakest link and most vulnerable gate was Lias. The Pettigrews were God's chosen; Lias was a black rascal. His hold upon their hearts went back to war time, when he had taken upon his own cheek a saber cut meant for Rodney Pettigrew.
After the war, Rodney came North with his sisters, Annie and Martha, and hewed for himself a place of honor among his one-time foemen. Lias, as a matter of course, came along. When Rodney married a New England girl, Lias became her abject and devoted slave; and when she died that a baby boy might live, Lias transferred his devoirs to this boy. Rodney Pettigrew's yearning feet turned at last along the path his girl wife had taken, and there were left only Lias, Miss Annie, Miss Martha, the Beacon Street mansion, and the boy—Frederick Orr Pettigrew, of noble name and goodly lineage.
That saber cut on Lias' cheek was twisting his mouth into a wistful smirk as he busied himself about the dim old living room where Miss Annie always served tea. Lias was hankering in regrettable fashion for the wine when it was red. He was a wiry old negro, his bald and shiny poll rising from a circle of patchy gray wool like a hazelnut from its pod. He was thin to emaciation, and the cords of his neck stood out like guy ropes for his head. His hands were so bony they rattled. His knees pressed together for company, but his feet were enemies, and fanned out to either side like props to a leaning wall. Lias' feet bothered him. He always cut a slit in new shoes to give his big toe elbowroom. His black alpaca coat swung back in the breeze of his passage, and the vest that was his pride and joy filled the dusky old room with an unholy glow.
“Huh-eee-golly!” he sighed, halting by the window to peer up and down the street. “Reck'n Miss Annie'll be down any minute, now.”
Lias was bolstering his resolution to tell Miss Annie of his hankering, and he was so intent that he did not hear her soft step in the doorway.
“Do you see Mr. Frederick, Lias?” she asked, in a clear, soft voice.
Lias whirled so quickly his neck creaked.
“No'm,” he gasped. “No'm, I cain't see him.” He ricketed across to hold her chair as the gentle little lady sat down, then stood back to gather courage.
Miss Annie was an exquisite picture, set in the dark wing chair as an old engraving is set in its massive frame. She glowed like a rose. Her silver hair would have been curly, had she permitted; and she ruled it more by conscience than by conviction. It was drawn back as rigorously as a teacher disciplines rebellious pupils, yet here and there, like mischievous children, truant strands strayed into something very like ringlets; and Miss Annie, like a soft-hearted schoolmistress, quieted her conscience and ignored these truants. Her cheeks were smooth and pink, and only the closest scrutiny could discover the dry dust of age upon their freshness. She noted Lias' uneasiness with a wistful anxiety, and knew what was coming long before he blurted:
“Miss Annie, does y'-all need me these heah nex' three-fo' days?”
It was a formula, the invariable preface to one of Lias' aberrations. Long ago they had learned it were useless to forbid him these excursions. Miss Annie always gave him a little money, and Lias would depart with a hungry eye, to return in two days or a week, tired, penitent, and humbly apologetic for the manifold weaknesses of the flesh. Miss Annie replied now:
“Why, no, Lias. I believe we can let you go. Do you not wish a little—spending money?”
“Yas'm. Please'm!” Lias was utterly abased.
Miss Annie had only time to nod, as Miss Martha blustered in. She tossed Lias her gloves, called: “Hello, Annie, dear!” and through a mouthful of hatpins ordered: “A cocktail, Lias!”
“How do you do, Martha?” Miss Annie responded reprovingly. She had never accustomed herself to Martha's cocktail; and, for the matter of that, neither had Martha. The cocktails, however, were a duty, a declaration of independence and equality with any man living, sir. Had Martha suspected that Lias tempered their terrors to her tender throat by a generous admixture of water, she would have raged. Miss Martha was older than Miss Annie, but looked younger. She was large where Annie was tiny, robust where Annie was delicate, jovial where Annie was diffident. Her hair was untouched by the frost of years, and worn smooth and unadorned. She believed in physical culture, and looked it; believed in suffrage, and looked that, too. Toward Annie she was affectionate, toward Lias domineering, toward her Nephew Frederick openly scornful and secretly adoring.
Miss Annie's tea hour waited on Frederick's coming. That young man, just out of law school and into a respectable office, made it a practice to appear every afternoon. So when Martha went to the window to recover from her cocktail, Miss Annie asked, as she had asked of Lias:
“Is Frederick in sight, Martha?”
“Not yet,” snapped Miss Martha brusquely, swinging back toward her sister. “I've no use for a tea-drinking man, anyway.”
“Frederick is a very manly boy,” Miss Annie asserted.
“Boy! Pish! One of these days your boy will be bringing a girl here to see you. Won't you ever realize that Fred's a man, Annie?”
Miss Annie blushed to her eyes.
“Martha, I do hope you won't suggest any such thing to him. He is really very young.”
Lias, lurking in the background, came under Martha's regard, and promptly lost countenance and melted out of the door. Martha sniffed with understanding.
“Lias going on another of his sprees, is he?”
Miss Annie protested: “Don't, Martha. He'll hear. I wouldn't hurt him for the world. I think he is going to visit some of his friends for a few days. It is very lonely for him here, you know.”
“He's a scamp!” snapped Martha. “A drunken old scamp! Hurt his feelings, indeed! I'd like to box his——”
A rush of feet in the hallway interrupted her, and they heard the voice of Attorney Frederick Orr Pettigrew:
“Lias, you old rack o' bones, how are you?”
“Po'ly, thank Gawd!” cackled Lias. “Jes' po'ly!”
Frederick appeared in the doorway, a wholesome-looking young man, with freckles and blond hair that was always rebelling against too rigorous grooming.
“How do you do, Aunt Annie?” he said deferentially, and stooped to kiss the little old lady's hand.
Martha chided him: “Fred, you'll turn Annie's head.”
Annie fidgeted at Martha's foolishness, and the young man laughed, and pinioned Martha's elbow and imprinted a smacking kiss on her cheek.
“How about you, then?” he taunted. His manners toward the two were as different as they themselves.
“I'll warrant there's some girl you wouldn't want to have see you carrying on with us old folks,” Martha retorted. Fred laughed, a little too earnestly, and she pounced upon him: “Fred, you young Lothario! Annie, look at him! Didn't I say so?”
Miss Annie protested with dignity: “Martha, you are very wrong to speak so. Fred is too young to think of such matters.”
“Too young? Fiddlesticks! He's twenty-six. Come, Fred, tell us about her.”
The young man was a symphony in old rose. “No, Aunt Martha, you're all wrong,” he vowed. “I can't think of love for a long time yet.”
Miss Annie winced, for the little lady, for all her shy gentleness, was wise enough to guess from Fred's tone—from the affection with which his tongue caressed that magic word “love”—that he was doing the very thing he now disclaimed—thinking about love a very great deal, indeed. She winced, did Miss Annie, but because she was of the fiber of heroes, she forced a cheerful tone to ask: “Won't you tell us about her, Fred?”
Fred looked at her in surprise. “But, Aunt Annie, I haven't said there was any one.”
“Don't wait to be teased, Fred,” blurted Martha, herself accepting a cup of the despised tea. “Tell us.”
Fred stirred his cup with great diligence.
“Well,” he painfully admitted, “there really is an awfully nice girl that I've met.” Miss Annie crushed a handkerchief to her lips. “I never saw her till about two weeks ago. She's the cleverest, most level-headed person in the world. You remember the Prague case? Mr. Bendicott was defending Mrs. Prague, and I was helping him. The girl came to court.”
Miss Annie stifled a remark. She had an unalterable opinion of ladies who fed their curiosity in those dreadful clinics of the human soul—the courts.
“I didn't know who she was,” said Fred. “But I noticed how her face lighted with sympathy for Mrs. Prague, now and then. I didn't mean to watch her too closely, but she was such a wonderful thing—shone so in that court, like a gem among pebbles—that I couldn't take my eyes away. There is a little curved white scar at the corner of her mouth that makes her seem always smiling. She never saw me watching her, though. I was sure of that.”
“That wasn't like you, Fred—to stare,” reproached Miss Annie.
“Nonsense! Of course, he would stare at a pretty girl. All men do,” insisted Miss Martha.
“I know, Aunt Annie,” Fred agreed. “But she couldn't have been offended, even if she had seen. She was just such a beautiful thing to watch. She was in court every day, just watching and listening.”
Miss Martha shot a meaning glance at her sister.
“You don't read the papers, Aunt Annie,” Fred resumed, as if defending himself against an unspoken charge, “or you would have seen some stories about the trial—human-interest stories signed 'Eleanor Hoyt.' They were full of understanding of Mrs. Prague, full of appeal. Mr. Bendicott said to me one night: 'If I could talk as Eleanor Hoyt can write, we would win this case.' But I never connected 'Eleanor Hoyt' with this splendid girl in the courtroom.”
“Of course you did not!” Miss Annie agreed. “A newspaper writer would hardly be the sort you would—admire, Fred.”
The young man flushed painfully, and Miss Martha's keen eyes saw and were a shade less friendly. After all, the Pettigrews were the Pettigrews. Fred bravely took up the tale:
“The day for the arguments came. This girl was in court. I found myself watching her as she listened to Mr. Bendicott, and while the jury was out. They were out only twenty minutes. And then, when they marched back in and the foreman said, 'Not guilty'—well!”
His face lighted, and, in spite of themselves, the countenances of the two ladies colored faintly in sympathy.
“After the verdict,” he concluded, “everybody was congratulating Mr. Bendicott. This girl did, with the others. She came up to him in the bar inclosure and shook his hand. I didn't hear what she said. But, in turning away, she came face to face with me. And, somehow—it seemed perfectly natural, really—she said: 'I'm so glad you won!' And I was so dazed I just wrung her hand, and she was gone.”
Illustration: He clung to her hand in a desperate fear that she would somehow vanish from before him.
After a moment, Miss Martha demanded: “But, Fred, is that all? Who was the girl?”
Fred hesitated. “Well,” he reluctantly responded, “you'll not like it. I asked Mr. Bendicott.” He raised his head to look squarely at Miss Annie. “Mr. Bendicott said: 'Why, that's “Eleanor Hoyt.”'”
No remarks seemed to occur to the two proud ladies who loved this boy.
“Of course,” Fred desperately added, “that is only her writing name.”
As if snatching at a straw, Miss Annie asked: “What is her real name, Fred? Who is she?”
And then poor Fred confessed the ultimate. “I—don't—know!” he groaned.
The Fred who presently departed from the mansion of the Pettigrews walked with lagging steps, and his heart was heavy. Until now, he had not fully realized how that clear and friendly face had filled his thoughts. Lifelong loyalty and deference to the two ladies who had been all in all to him battled with the girl's image within him. The sedate houses that line Beacon Street seemed to frown upon the rebellious young man, and he glanced up at them as a guilty boy looks to see whether his teacher is watching. It was a relief when the public gardens opened out ahead.
You who have never walked in the gardens when spring is new, drop the unimportant matters of your lives forthwith, and voyage, if need be, from the ends of the world for the experience. The gardens in spring are youth, gay and flower-bedecked. On this day, the tulips were in glory, nodding like sleepy damsels on their slender stems; while about their roots, as a ground of shy beauty for their gorgeous hues, violets and pansies and such wee flowers were clustered. The grass was putting on the verdant hue of spring; and over the trees was spread a marvelous lacy pattern—each twig limned by the most delicate tracery of living green.
Fred's proper way lay up the hill and over and down to the hive of the city, but something lured him aside, and he turned along the winding garden paths. An old man on a bench, like a tortoise on a sunny rock, lifted a curious head at his passing. Gardeners were seeding beneath the trees, and two children, prattling in an alien tongue whose silvery syllables wove witchery into the wonder and beauty of the late afternoon, were busy in the path with some matter of pebbles end a crooked stick.
At the bridge above the swan boats, Fred stopped to look back the way he had come. The sun had just dropped below the buildings toward the river, and its last magic rays, leaping aloft, caught a huge mountain of cloud, and by some wondrous alchemy transmuted chill mist to purest, virgin gold. When he turned and moved on along the bridge, the glory of the departing day danced in fire before his eyes; and it was through this glow and color, as in an aureole, that he saw the girl who had filled his soul with sorrow and delight.
She was watching a boatload of children on the little pond below, and had not seen him. Her lips were faintly parted in a smile, and the little scar showed pure white against her cheek. The sun had warmed that cheek till it glowed beneath the black shadow of her hair. Her figure bent in gracious curves as she leaned upon the balustrade; and her lips were ripe cherries, fair bursting with stored sweetness and delight. Even as he paused, she left the rail and turned, so facing him. And their eyes met, and she smiled and gripped his hand as a comrade might, unaffectedly glad that he had found her, and she him.
“Why—how—how do you do?” poor, dizzy Fred managed to say, and he clung to her hand in a desperate fear that she would somehow vanish from before him. “How do you do, Miss Hoyt?”
“Not 'Miss Hoyt,'” she corrected. “That's just by way of a pseudonym. Agnes O'Rourke is my real name.”
Agnes O'Rourke! Poor Miss Annie!
Fred had known that the girl would have the faintest, most delicious, blarneying, lingering twist to her tongue. He hoped desperately that she would speak again, and when she turned away to look down at the water, tried to prompt her.
“Isn't this a great day, Miss O'Rourke?”
“You've noticed it, then?” she drawled, flashing him one glimpse of laughing eyes that took all the sting from her words.
But Fred did not hear, did not even know what it was he had said to her. He was still blinded, like a man who comes from dark to light, by the nearness and the sweetness of her. Dusk was already dimming the beauty all about. He rested an elbow on the rail, and they stood side by side and silent for a space; and in the silence passed through all the preliminaries of acquaintance, and were friends without another word.
“I say, Miss Hoyt,” he offered, after a time. “I suppose you know—what great stories you wrote about Mrs. Prague?”
She turned seriously to face him. “Tell me,” she urged naïvely. “There's nothing I like better than being praised.”
Under her eyes, he stammered:
“Why—why—they were great, that's all. You seemed to know just how the woman felt, and everything!”
She looked away, and he breathed again.
“I did know, I suppose. Women do. I've always rubbed against people a good deal—as cash girl and stenographer, and now reporter. You get to know people that way.”
“I wish you could know my people,” he said wistfully.
And it was so obviously a genuine wish that the girl replied:
“Tell me about them, please.”
Fred told her, a little about himself and much about his father; then much more about the two aunts. The girl felt a little warm pulse in her throat, liking him and thinking him very boyish and delightful. As a matter of fact, he was twenty-six, and she but twenty-two—but good women are old enough at ten to “mother” any number of grown men. Fred told her about Miss Annie, and she, exclaimed with delight at the picture he drew; and he looked at her with a quick, unembarrassed smile of sympathy. His first confusion had melted in the sun of her comradeship. He even told her about Lias and the saber cut, and how Lias must so often be off for deplorable pleasures, and she chuckled and murmured:
“Poor old man—I know just how he feels. All his deviltry bottled up in that quiet, splendid house—of course, it boils over once in a while.”
They strolled away through the gardens, and dusk had altogether fallen as they came to a bench set upon a little sloping bank above the water.
“Can't we sit here,” he asked, “for a while?”
She looked up at him, and in the semidark her eyes glowed and shone, and then seemed to want to turn away and hide from his as she moved beside him to the seat. He stood for a moment looking off across the water through the gardens. Fred's blood was swift and young, and ran an unfaltering course. Standing there with his back to her, silently he purged his heart of all his treasured sins, and silently pledged himself to unnamed things. Then, straightening like a man who purposes high deeds, he turned back to her.
She was very lovely in the dusk—a little, little girl looking up at him. As he stood above her, the faint, warm fragrance of her clouded up around him in the still night.
Trembling, he found his tongue to say: “Miss Hoyt”—for he loved the name by which she had come to him—“I've just—got to tell you In court—all those days—watching you—your dear, sweet eyes—thinking about you—seeing you—and then, when you shook hands with me——”
He halted, miserable. He wasn't getting anywhere. The girl had not moved save to lift her head a little and look off through the gardens.
“I've just got to tell you,” said Fred. “I couldn't, don't you see—— From that day you first came I remember the little pin at your throat was loose, and I wanted to tell you——” Her fingers moved swiftly to her throat. “And I used to watch you—and you were always so exquisite—and I used to dream of what you would be like—and you're everything I dreamed—and lots more—lots!”
Still she was so bafflingly silent. It bothered him.
“Eleanor,” he whispered, “all there is to it—I'm—I love you—that's all.” The words were almost lost, his voice had fallen so low. He caught his breath and her hand. “L-love you, just love you—do you hear?”
Even now, this provoking young lady kept her eyes upon the lake.
He pleaded: “Dear—doesn't this mean anything to you? Don't you feel anything when I talk this way?”
He would have gone on, but she turned her eyes at last to his, and before their beauty and tenderness the words died in a great lump in his throat.
“Yes, Mr. Pettigrew,” she said softly—slowly. “Yes—it does mean—a great deal—to have you talk so—to me. But you see—I don't know what to do—in a case like this. You see, when you—tell me things—it makes my arms feel—oh, so queer and achy—hungry—honey!”
And the young lady barely got out that last tiny little word.
It was a long time before there was any conversation worth recording. Bliss barred Fred's worrisome thoughts. The lazy evening drew along, strollers traversed the path behind them, murmuring voices were all about. With hands just touching in electric contact, they sat and dreamed and whispered. It was the girl who ventured:
“I hope your aunts will like me, dear. They will—won't they?” It was a soft appeal.
Fred, jerked from Elysium by the rude hook of memory, was almost startled into a groan. He would have lied, but this was no time for even so gentle a deception.
“Honey,” he admitted, “we're going to have a hard time with them.”
He was her ally now, against Pettigrews living and dead. She looked up at him in hurt surprise.
“Trouble?” she repeated.
And this time Fred did groan.
“They're prejudiced against you because you—work.”
“You've talked to them about me, then?”
“Talked to them? Why, dearest—my heart has been singing a you-song since the first minute I saw you! I had to talk to them.”
Much more of this, then pensively from her:
“Of course, O'Rourke isn't a particularly pretty name. But all the O'Rourkes I ever knew were mighty nice people.”
Frantically he protested his appreciation of this fact.
“And you know they can't keep me from loving you—and marrying you.” She stiffened indefinably, and he begged: “You won't let them spoil everything for us, will you?”
She did not answer for a moment. Then:
“Fred, you can't afford to disappoint them or hurt them. My claim on you is really only a brand-new thing. So, Fred, dear, we'll just wait. I couldn't ever marry you unless they wanted it—unless they almost asked me to. I couldn't ask them, you know.” She smiled a little. “Because, Fred, I'm not a bit ashamed of being an O'Rourke.”
The usual tea hour next day was less peaceful than customary. Miss Annie was unhappy; for Lias had departed the night before, a brand-new five-dollar bill in his pocket, literally licking his chops, and her heart was sad for his big, erring splay feet. Fred made tentative advances, shifted his sails to this wind and that, but found no breach in the wall of opposition. He told them how he had met the girl in the gardens, and had told her—what there was to tell. He admitted that her name was O'Rourke. A slight shudder passed over Miss Annie's form at this, and even Martha seemed to think it the last word.
“It's a good, hard-working name,” she admitted. “But to marry Fred Pettigrew—I guess not!”
“We all had the same ancestors once,” Fred asserted. “And she's as proud as you. She'll never marry me unless you make advances.”
“Then you are perfectly safe, Fred, my boy,” Martha assured him. “Though I wouldn't expect such feeling in a girl who would allow herself to be courted in the public gardens.”
Frederick departed at length, thoroughly cast down. Three hours later, the telephone summoned him to return in haste. Lias was hurt, had been brought home. Fred taxied to the house and rushed up the stairs. Lias was the best-loved member of the family, and Fred knew that the two ladies would be at his bedside.
Sure enough, Miss Martha met him at the door. Her eyes were swollen with tears, but she was smiling.
“He's all right,” she cried. “He broke his leg, but Doctor Evans says he will get over it.”
Lias looked pitifully shrunken, his rickety old body outlined under the covers. Miss Annie was stroking one of the huge, rattly black hands, and soothing the old man. Lias grinned weakly at Fred.
“Heah I is, Marster Fred,” he said. “Put' nigh good as new.”
Fred patted the shiny black poll and gulped. “Course you are, Lias. I'm darned sorry. Does it hurt?”
“Naw, suh,” Lias asseverated.
Miss Annie explained: “A man hit him with an automobile.”
“He ought to be arrested!” Martha declared. “Why couldn't he watch where he was going?”
Miss Annie believed in the forgiveness of sins.
“At least, Martha, he had the grace to bring Lias home to us. That was something.”
“Huh,” said Lias, unforgiving. “He'd never done dat, hadn't a-been for her.” But they didn't hear him.
Fred asked: “Who was the man?”
“He drove up here and asked if Lias belonged here,” Miss Martha explained. “He carried him upstairs and then went for the doctor. I think he left his card downstairs.”
“Hit wuz the lady done it,” Lias persisted.
“Oh, was there a lady with him, Lias?” Miss Annie asked. “There was none in the automobile.”
“Yas'm,” Lias vowed. “She got out to the cornder. Yas'm, hit wuz her told him whur to come.”
Some little chamber in Fred's heart began to beat with swift prescience. He bent over the bed.
“Tell it from the beginning, Lias.”
“Well, suh,” said Lias obediently, “I wuz jes' meanderin' crost Treemont Street, not sayin' nothin' to nobody, an' nobody wa'n't sayin' nothin' to me. Mebbe I didn't jes' watch whur I wuz steppin'. I wuz a little tired.” He glanced shamefacedly at Miss Annie, and she patted his hand. Lias was comforted and continued: “I wuz walkin' along, an'—blam! Nex' thing I knowed, I didn' know nothin'. I wuz down in de street, 'spectin' any minute 'u'd be the nex'. P'liceman standin' oveh me. I wuz skeered.”
Fred was watching the two ladies, a wild hope rioting within him.
“The man in de automobile come back,” Lias continued. “The p'liceman tuk his name. Man wanted to know whur I lived—said he'd drive me home. I wouldn't tell 'em. Didn' want no p'liceman knowin' about you-all havin' a no-count nigger lak me.”
“Bless your heart, Lias!” Miss Martha began to cry again.
Illustration: Martha turned on the young man. “Fred,” she snapped, “was it her?”
“They wuz a crowd around by now. I heerd the p'liceman say: 'I've rung fer an ambulance. His leg's broke.' That skeered me wusser. Them ambulancers don't do you no good. I heerd some one say: 'Why, hit's Lias!'”
“'Tias'?” Miss Annie echoed. “Was it Miss Hopkins?” Miss Hopkins was Miss Annie's accomplice in many a cup of tea.
“No'm,” Lias insisted. “'Twan't Miss Hopkins. Dis wuz a young lady—right young an' right purty. She say to de p'liceman: 'I know dis man. He's Lias. I'll tek him home. We'll tek care of him.'
“De p'liceman axed her whur I lived. She wudden tell. She say she'd tek me home if de auto man 'u'd drive us. De p'liceman axed de auto man: 'Will you tek him home?' Man say: 'Yas, indeed.' P'liceman seemed to figger. I wuz skeered he'd keep me fer de ambulancers. I knowed dis lady wouldn't hurt me. I c'd see she wuz folks, jes' lak anybody. I sez: 'She'll tek me home.' So dey put me in de man's automobile, an' she tol' him whur to drive, an' we come a-scootin'. She got out at de cornder. Dat's all dey wuz to it.”
“Who could it have been, Annie?” Miss Martha wondered.
“Any of our friends would have come to the house,” her sister replied. “But certainly she was a lady, whoever she was.”
“Think of poor, scared Lias in a hospital!” Martha murmured.
“Yas'm—I'd 'a' died in a horspital,” Lias averred. “Yas'm, dis lady wuz folks. She sure wuz a good fr'en' to Lias.”
“She is a good friend of ours, too, Lias, whoever she is,” Miss Annie assured him.
And it was true—there was no surer road to the Pettigrew heart than to befriend the old darky. A chain has its weakest link, and a walled city its most vulnerable gate. The Pettigrews' weakest link and most vulnerable gate was Lias. Fred, supremely happy now, and sure in his new hope, saw the hearts of the two warm more and more to this stranger friend of the old negro's.
“I do wish,” Miss Annie remarked, in genuine distress, “I do wish this young lady had come with Lias, so that we might have thanked her.”
“She wuz folks, all right,” Lias said again. It was his highest encomium.
Miss Martha was whimpering with sheer relief that Lias was well, and that the world would clear again.
“I could I-I-love her, whoever she—is,” she sobbed.
And then Fred struck: “Lias, what did this lady look like?”
Lias picked his words.
“Why, she wuz jes' so-so fer size,” he declared. “Jes' so-so—an' purty as a pitcher. Black fair, an' big black eyes, an' red cheeks.”
“Was she nicely dressed?” Miss Annie asked.
“Yas'm—no fandangoes—jes' dressed up nice an' smooth lookin'.”
There was a little pause. The aunts were trying to place this description among their acquaintances. Then Fred asked innocently:
“Lias, did this lady—have a little scar on her face?”
Miss Martha caught the import of his word—shot a glance at Fred, and then at Lias.
“Yassuh,” Lias declared readily. “Yassuh. She had a little curly white scar by her mouth—so hit gave her a sort o' smiley look, all de time.”
Martha turned on the young man.
“Fred,” she snapped, “was it her?”
“Was it who?” Miss Annie wanted to know, still puzzled.
“Annie, don't you remember?” Miss Martha blurted, turning impatiently on her sister. “Fred told us his Miss O'Rourke had such a scar.”
Miss Annie, her lips parted in surprise, turned to Fred.
“Yes, Aunt Annie,” Fred said, a plea in his voice, “it must have been Miss O'Rourke. I told her about Lias. And she knew you wouldn't want him anywhere but here. She must have happened to be there when he was struck.”
“She's a lady, if her name is O'Rourke,” declared Aunt Martha, and began to dry her tears and rearrange her hair in businesslike fashion. Miss Annie was still bewildered. Her world was shaking.
“Yas'm, she's folks,” murmured Lias sleepily.
Martha's face was glowing with a high resolve.
“Annie,” she said, “I'm going to get this girl and put my arms around her and bring her here, so we can tell her we're ashamed of ourselves.” She was already starting for the door. “Where is she, Fred?”
“Probably at the Star office, Aunt Martha,” Fred answered. “Shan't I go for her?”
But he didn't mean the offer, and Miss Martha ignored it.
“But, Martha,” Aunt Annie weakly protested, “is it just the thing—for you to go to her—to-night?” The Pettigrews were faltering.
“Annie Pettigrew,” Martha replied grimly, “we owe that girl an apology, and she's to have it—and to have Fred, too, if she wants him. Though I don't see why she should.” Fred grinned happily. “I'm going to get her and bring her here, and if you don't tell her and show her you're ashamed of yourself, I'll be ashamed of you.”
She was gone on the word. Miss Annie falteringly followed her down the stairs, and would have protested again. But the memory of her beloved Lias, and of this girl's understanding of his plight and swift service in his time of need, checked the protest, and she said instead:
“You are right, Martha. I'm a stubborn old lady. Tell her—I am waiting to welcome her.”
Which was surely a great deal from a Pettigrew to an O'Rourke.
Upstairs in Lias' room, Fred was hugging his happiness.
“Lias,” he laughed, “'you don't look like the pictures of Dan Cupid—little naked kid with wings.”
“Huh,” grunted Lias, almost asleep. “Dat automobile putty nigh put some wings on Lias, sure enough.” And then, as he floated away on a billow of drowsiness, a last murmur: “Yas'm, she's sure folks.”
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 1953, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 71 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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