"I found a rose walking up the street, Lucy," he bellowed up the stairs,
"and I brought it home for the dinner table."
Lucy came down, flushed from her final effort over the trunks, but
gently hospitable.
"It's fish night, Elizabeth," she said. "You know Minnie's a Catholic,
so we always have fish on Friday. I hope you eat it." She put her hand
on Elizabeth's arm and gently patted it, and thus was Elizabeth taken
into the old brick house as one of its own.
Elizabeth was finding this period of her tacit engagement rather
puzzling. Her people puzzled her. Even Dick did, at times. And nobody
seemed anxious to make plans for the future, or even to discuss the
wedding. She was a little hurt about that, remembering the excitement
over Nina's.
But what chiefly bewildered her was the seeming necessity for secrecy.
Even Nina had not been told, nor Jim. She did not resent that, although
it bewildered her. Her own inclination was to shout it from the
house-tops. Her father had simply said: "I've told your mother, honey,
and we'd better let it go at that, for a while. There's no hurry. And I
don't want to lose you yet."
But there were other things. Dick himself varied. He was always gentle
and very tender, but there were times when he seemed to hold himself
away from her, would seem aloof and remote, but all the time watching
her almost fiercely. But after that, as though he had tried an
experiment in separation and failed with it, he would catch her to him
savagely and hold her there. She tried, very meekly, to meet his mood;
was submissive to his passion and acquiescent to those intervals when
he withdrew himself and sat or stood near her, not touching her but
watching her intently.
She thought men in love were very queer and quite incomprehensible.
Because he varied in other ways, too. He was boyish and gay sometimes,
and again silent and almost brooding. She thought at those times that
perhaps he was tired, what with David's work and his own, and sometimes
she wondered if he were still worrying about that silly story. But once
or twice, after he had gone, she went upstairs and looked carefully into
her mirror. Perhaps she had not looked her best that day. Girl-like, she
set great value on looks in love. She wanted frightfully to be beautiful
to him. She wished she could look like Beverly Carlysle, for instance.
Two days before David and Lucy's departure he had brought her her
engagement ring, a square-cut diamond set in platinum. He kissed it
first and then her finger, and slipped it into place. It became a rite,
done as he did it, and she had a sense of something done that could
never be undone. When she looked up at him he was very pale.