Especially she enjoyed her tyranny over Troupe, as the large family dog was named. It pleased her to see him grovel before her when she scolded him. She often played a game that she called “circus.” She would tie the dog with a rope that had a loop which she could slip over a stake driven into the ground, and with a buggy whip she would make him run round and round. He would look back at her with pleading eyes, his tail clamped to his body, but she did not pity him. When he was completely exhausted he would lie down, his tongue lolling and the saliva dripping from his mottled black gums. After she untied him he would run about, crazy with joy, barking and licking at her hands and ankles. She paid no attention to these demonstrations.
Nannie was called stingy, as she seldom divided her sweetmeats or other good things with her playmates, and would not allow them to touch her toys. But occasionally, when glory could be gotten out of giving, she would bestow some old or broken plaything, always demanding profuse expressions of gratitude, however, from the recipient.
No attempt was made to teach Nannie any useful occupation, and, as she cared neither for stories nor for books, the task of amusing her became no sinecure.
As she grew older she loved to go shopping with her mother in the little town. They always went in the family carriage and Mrs. Lockhart, who considered that she could insult salespeople with impunity, invariably asked for the best in a haughty voice and inquired the price after she had decided on the article.
Nannie’s desire to attract notice increased with the years. She was fond of having her picture taken in fancy dress in imitation of various popular actresses. One, in which she was represented as Iphigenia, was most flattering and was displayed for some months in the windows of the establishment of the local photographer.
She begged a riding horse from her father, and she liked to be seen in elegant riding habits, and at parties in sumptuous gowns too old for her. She adopted a pertness and flippancy of speech that was described as “smart” and assumed a domineering manner toward the servants which was, it is true, less marked as regarded the “house boy” who was a handsome young mulatto.
She also picked out for condescending notice an admiring girl friend at the private school which they both attended and made a chum of her. This girl, Roberta White, was far from pretty, and could be patronized, but was not unintelligent, and possessed considerable personality. Unfortunately Nannie’s first boy admirer soon transferred his callow devotion to “Bob White,” as Nannie had dubbed Roberta. There was a curious scene in which Bob White was forever disowned, and Nannie ever after, in referring to it, spoke of Roberta’s “ingratitude.”
Nannie was eighteen years old when she left school. It was a disastrous year for her father. He had inherited money which he invested and spent with equal display and absence of judgment, but he awoke one day to find that creditors were impervious both to the dignity of the Lockhart name and the impressiveness of the ancestral mansion. Mrs. Lockhart was an efficient person, however, and brought to bear upon the situation many of the practical qualities in which her husband was lacking. The same could not be said of Nannie, who had absorbed from those around her what seemed a tacit recognition of divine right as regarded the members of her family. If she had been subject to her father alone it is probable that only the jolt of an absolute downfall would have aroused her to an appreciation of financial values, but fortunately Mrs. Lockhart exercised her authority as decisively as was her custom and gave Nannie to understand that, for the time being at least, she might enjoy few dresses and fewer parties.
Not to be cut out of the gaieties in which the once envious Bob White was participating, Nannie astonished no one more than her mother by displaying considerable taste and talent in the improvization of very effective frocks with the simplest means. Nannie was not a good seamstress. The hastily devised costumes were never neatly made and were often in actual danger of falling apart, but a ribbon here or a flower there was applied with a discrimination that Russellville was not too provincial to recognize as “chic.”
Though such haphazard dressmaking was her only contribution to the household economy, it had a value that was more than apparent, and Mrs. Lockhart recognized it. She had determined that Nannie should find salvation for the family by attracting a husband whose pretensions to that distinction should rest on a solid financial basis.
It seemed almost a divine intervention to insure the Lockharts’ future when Arthur Merwent, a young lawyer from the north, came to the home town.
Young Merwent rented an office and bought some furniture. He purchased steel engravings of famous jurists to decorate his walls, unpacked his law books, and had a sign painted and hung over his door.
Mrs. Lockhart knew, by hearsay at least, that Merwent held expectations of inheriting some money, and, as the young man was attractive and a stranger, it was soon arranged that Arthur should live at the Lockhart home. He insisted on paying for his board and, after some perfunctory objections which embarrassed Nannie and Mr. Lockhart but did not disturb the mother, this was agreed to.
Arthur was agreeable but uncommunicative. His reserve pleased Nannie’s father, who was pompous of manner and weak of purpose, but invariably inclined to be enthusiastic about a new acquaintance.
“That young man can keep his mouth shut. He’ll rise,” Mr. Lockhart often said.
From the beginning Nannie assumed a light and jesting attitude toward Arthur. She was saucy and capricious,
