THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS
VOLUME X
TO
FRANCES ROSE BENET
Dear mother of my mother's child, to you
The tribute brings not praise from me alone,
Still clings some grace of hers to what I do,
And the gift comes in her name, as my own.
Cherry Strickland came in the door of the Strickland house, and shut itbehind her, and stood so, with her hands behind her on the knob, andher slender body leaning forward, and her breath rising and falling ondeep, ecstatic breaths. It was May in California, she was justeighteen, and for twenty-one minutes she had been engaged to be married.
She hardly knew why, after that last farewell to Martin, she had run soswiftly up the path, and why she had flashed into the house, and closedthe door with such noiseless haste. There was nothing to run for! Butit was as if she feared that the joy within her might escape into themoonlight night that was so perfumed with lilacs and the scent of wetwoods. In this new happiness of hers a fear was already mingled, asweet fear, truly, and a delicious fear, but she had never fearedanything before in her life. She was afraid now that it was all toowonderful to be true, that she would awaken in the morning to find itonly a dream, that she would somehow fall short of Martin'sideal--somehow fail him--somehow turn all this magic of moonshine andkisses into ashes and heartbreak.
She was a miser with her treasure, already; she wanted to fly with it,and to hide it away, and to test its reality in secret, alone. She hadcome running in from the wonderland down by the gate, just for this,just to prove to herself that it would not vanish in thecommonplaceness of the shabby hall, would not disappear before theeveryday contact of everyday things.
There was moonlight here, too, falling in clear squares on the stairwaylanding, white and mysterious and bewitching, but on the other side ofthe hall was wholesome, cheerful lamplight creeping in a warm streakunder the sitting-room door.
Dad was in the sitting room, with the girls. The doctor's house wasfull of girls. Anne, his niece, was twenty-four; Alix, Cherry's sister,three years younger--how staid and unmarried and undesired they seemedto-night to panting and glowing and glorified eighteen! Anne, withAlix's erratic help, kept house for her uncle, and was supposed to keepa sharp eye on Cherry, too. But she hadn't been sharp enough to keepMartin Lloyd from asking her to marry him, exulted Cherry, as she stoodbreathless and laughing in the dark hallway.
Cherry had never had any other home than this shabby brown bungalow,and she knew every inch of the hall, even without light to see it. Sheknew the faded rugs, and the study door that swallowed up her fatherevery day, and the table where Alix had put a great bowl of buttercups,and the glass-paned door at the back through which the doctor's girlshad looked out at many a frosty morning, and red sunset, andsun-steeped summer afternoon. But even the old hall had seemedtransformed to-night, lighted with a beauty quite new, scented with animmortal sweetness.
Hong came out of the dining room; the varnished buttercups twinkled ina sudden flood of light. He had come to put a folded tablecloth intothe old wardrobe that did for a sideboard, under the stairs. Cherry,descending to earth, smiled at him, and crossed the hall to thesitting-room door.
An older woman might have gone upstairs, to dream alone of her new joy,but Cherry thought that it would be "fun" to join the family, and "actas if nothing had happened!" She was only a chil