Rocking ponderously in the dark on Gant’s veranda, the old woman would say:
“You are get-ting a good boy, Hel-en.”
She would wag her powerful head from side to side, pugnaciously emphatic.
“Though I do say it myself, you are get-ting one good boy, Hel-en.
A bet-ter boy than Hugh doesent live.”
“Oh, I don’t know!” said Helen, annoyed.
“I don’t think it’s such a bad bargain for him either, you know.
I think pretty well of myself, too.”
And she would laugh, huskily, heartily, trying in laughter to conceal her resentment, but visibly, to every eye but Mrs. Barton’s, angered.
A moment later, on some pretext, she would be back into the house, where, with a face contorted by her rising hysteria, to Luke, Eugene, or any sympathetic audience, she would burst out:
“You heard that, didn’t you? You heard that?
You see what I’ve got to put up with, don’t you?
Do you see?
Do you blame me for not wanting that damned old woman around?
Do you?
You see how she wants to run things, don’t you?
Do you see how she rubs it into me whenever she gets a chance?
She can’t bear to give him up.
Of course not!
He’s her meal-ticket.
They’ve bled him white.
Why, even now, if it came to a question of choosing between us —” her face worked strongly.
She could not continue.
In a moment she quieted herself, and said decisively: “I suppose you know now why we’re going to live away from them.
You see, don’t you?
Do you blame me?”
“No’m,” said Eugene, obedient after pumping.
“It’s a d-d-damn shame!” said Luke loyally.
At this moment Mrs. Barton, kindly but authoritative, called from the veranda:
“Hel-en!
Where are you, Hel-en?”
“O gotohell.
Gotohell!” said Helen, in a comic undertone.
“Yes?
What is it?” she called out sharply.
You see, don’t you?
She was married at Dixieland, because she was having a big wedding.
She knew a great many people.
As her wedding-day approached, her suppressed hysteria mounted.
Her sense of decorum grew militant: she attacked Eliza bitterly for keeping certain dubious people in the house.
“Mama, in heaven’s name!
What do you mean by allowing such goings-on right in the face of Hugh and his people?
What do you suppose they think of it?
Have you no respect for my feelings?
Good heavens, are you going to have the house full of chippies on the night of my wedding?”
Her voice was high and cracked.
She almost wept.
“Why, child!” said Eliza, with troubled face.
“What do you mean?
I’ve never noticed anything.”