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.The town had not before seen the like of John Marble.He looked as if he had just alighted from the chariot of the sun.He was tall and fair, and he could make no awkward move or utter no stumbling phrase.The girls lost all consciousness of the local young men, for they were nowhere as against John Marble.He was older than they—he had crossed thirty—and he must have been rich, for he had the best room at the Wade Hampton Inn and he drove a low, narrow car with a foreign name, a thing of grace and power.More, there was about him the magic of the transitory.There were the local young men, day after day, year in, year out.But John Marble had come on some real-estate dealings for his firm, some matters of properties outside the town limits, and when his business was done, he would go back to the great, glittering city where he lived.Time pressed; excitement heightened.Through his business John Marble met important men of the town, the fathers of daughters, and there was eager entertaining for the brilliant stranger.The girls put on the fluffiest white, and tucked bunches of pink roses in their pale-blue sashes; their curls shone and swung like bells.In the twilight they sang little songs for John Marble, and one of them had a guitar.The local young men, whose evenings hung like wet seaweed around their necks, could only go in glum groups to the bowling alley or the moving-picture theater.Though the parties in John Marble’s honor slackened, for he explained that because of the demands of his business he must regret invitations, still the girls impatiently refused appointments to the local young men, and stayed at home alone on the chance of a telephone call from John Marble.They beguiled the time of waiting by sketching his profile on the telephone pad.Sometimes they threw away their training and telephoned him, even as late as ten o’clock at night.When he answered, he was softly courteous, charmingly distressed that his work kept him from being with them.Then, more and more frequently, there was no answer to their calls.The switchboard operator at the inn merely reported that Mr.Marble was out.Somehow, the difficulties in the way of coming nearer to John Marble seemed to stimulate the girls.They tossed their fragrant curls and let their laughter soar, and when they passed the Wade Hampton Inn, they less walked than sashayed.Their elders said that never in their memories had the young girls been so pretty and so spirited as they were that spring.And with the whole townful of bright blossoms bended for his plucking, John Marble chose Lolita Ewing.It was a courtship curiously without detail.John Marble would appear at the Ewing house in the evening, with no preliminary telephoning, and he and Lolita would sit on the porch while Mrs.Ewing went out among her friends.When she returned, she shut the gate behind her with a clang, and as she started up the brick path she uttered a loud, arch “A-hem,” as if to warn the young people of her coming, so that they might wrench themselves one from the other.But there was never a squeal of the porch swing, never a creak of a floor board—those noises that tell tales of scurryings to new positions.The only sound was of John Marble’s voice, flowing easily along; and when Mrs.Ewing came up on the porch, John Marble would be lying in the swing and Lolita would be sitting in a wicker chair some five feet away from him, with her hands in her lap, and, of course, not a peep out of her.Mrs.Ewing’s conscience would smite her at the knowledge of John Marble’s one-sided evening, and so she would sit down and toss the ball of conversation in the air and keep it there with reports of the plot of the moving picture she had seen or the hands of the bridge game in which she had taken part.When she, even she, came to a pause, John Marble would rise and explain that the next day was to be a hard one for him and so he must go.Mrs.Ewing would stand at the porch steps and as he went down the path would call after him roguish instructions that he was not to do anything that she would not do.When she and Lolita came in from the dark porch to the lighted hall, Mrs.Ewing would look at her daughter in an entirely new way.Her eyes narrowed, her lips pressed together, and her mouth turned down at the corners.In silence she surveyed the girl, and still in silence not broken by even a good night, she would mount to her bedroom, and the sound of her closing door would fill the house.The pattern of the evenings changed.John Marble no longer came to sit on the porch.He arrived in his beautiful car and took Lolita driving through the gentle dark.Mrs.Ewing’s thoughts followed them.They would drive out in the country, they would turn off the road to a smooth dell with thick trees to keep it secret from passersby, and there the car would stop.And what would happen then? Did they—Would they—But Mrs.Ewing’s thoughts could go no farther.There would come before her a picture of Lolita, and so the thoughts would be finished by her laughter.All the days, now, she continued to regard the girl under lowered lids, and the downturn of her mouth became a habit with her, though not among her prettier ones.She seldom spoke to Lolita directly, but she still made jokes.When a wider audience was wanting, she called upon Mardy.“Hi, Mardy!” she would cry.“Come on in here, will you? Come in and look at her, sitting there like a queen.Little Miss High-and-Mighty, now she thinks she’s caught her a beau!”There was no announcement of engagement.It was not necessary, for the town sizzled with the news of John Marble and Lolita Ewing.There were two schools of thought as to the match: one blessed Heaven that Lolita had gained a man and the other mourned the callousness of a girl who could go away and leave her mother alone.But miracles were scarce in the annals of the town, and the first school had the more adherents.There was no time for engagement rites.John Marble’s business was concluded, and he must go back.There were scarcely hours enough to make ready for the wedding.It was a big wedding.John Marble first suggested, then stated, that his own plan would be for Lolita and him to go off alone, be married, and then start at once for New York; but Mrs.Ewing paid him no heed.“No, sir,” she said.“Nobody’s going to do me out of a great big lovely wedding!” And so nobody did.Lolita in her bridal attire answered her mother’s description of looking like nothing at all.The shiny white fabric of her gown was hostile to her colorless skin, and there was no way to pin the veil becomingly on her hair.But Mrs.Ewing more than made up for her.All in pink ruffles caught up with clusters of false forget-me-nots, Mrs.Ewing was at once bold sunlight and new moonlight, she was budding boughs and opening petals and little, willful breezes.She tripped through the throngs in the smilax-garlanded house, and everywhere was heard her laughter.She patted the bridegroom on arm and cheek, and cried out, to guest after guest, that for two cents she would marry him herself.When the time came to throw rice after the departing couple, she was positively devil-may-care.Indeed, so extravagant was her pitching that one hard-packed handful of the sharp little grains hit the bride squarely in the face.But when the car was driven off, she stood still looking after it, and there came from her downturned mouth a laugh not at all like her usual trill.“Well,” she said, “we’ll see.” Then she was Mrs.Ewing again, running and chirping and urging more punch on her guests.Lolita wrote to her mother every week without fail, telling of her apartment and the buying and placing of furniture and the always new adventure of shopping; each letter concluded with the information that John hoped Mrs.Ewing was well and sent her his love
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