REGULAR WORK.
REGULAR WORK.
When they were once home, both of them were too much excited and quite too tired to think of a second round trip, even to catch the theatres. Glad enough were they to shut the paint-shop. Bertha held the lantern while Max rubbed down the horses and put them up for the night. Then she disappeared in the harness-room, re-appeared in her own character in a time incredibly short, and ran into the house at once to see how the baby was.
Baby! Dear little chit, she had not moved a hand since her mother left her. So, with a light heart, Bertha joined her husband in the kitchen.
They counted up the money, and subtracted what Bertha had started with. Happily for them, the Cosmopolitan had not then introduced the bell-punch, nor did it ever, so far as I know, introduce the bother of tickets. Max and Bertha followed in all regards the customs of the Cosmopolitan. The freight down town had been very large, the freight up had been light; but they were seven dollars and fifty-five cents richer than they were three hours before.
"How much money it looks like!" said Bertha. "Even with that old man's five-dollar bill, it makes so big a pile. I never saw two dollars in nickels before."
"I hope you may see a great many before you are done, my sweet," said Max cheerily.
"But is it fairly ours? Are you troubled about that?"
"I am sure we have worked for it," said Max, laughing. "I know I never worked so hard in my life, and I do not believe you ever did."
"No: if that were all."
"And is it not all? The car is bought with your money. The horses and their hay were bought with mine."
"But the rails," persisted Bertha, a little unfairly, as she had planned the whole.
"The rails," said Max coolly, "belong to the public. They are a part of the pavement of the street, as has been determined again and again. If I chose to have a coach built to run in the track, nobody could hinder me. This is my hackney-coach, and you and I are friends of the people."
So Bertha's conscience was appeased, and they went happily to bed.
The next morning Max came home in great glee. He had seen Mr. Federshall, his old foreman, who always was cordial and sympathetic. He had told Mr. Federshall where he lived; that he had an old stable on the premises, and that, for a little, he was keeping a pair of horses there; that he had no other regular employment. And Mr. Federshall, of his own accord, had asked him to keep his covered buggy. "I have had to sell my horses long ago," he said, laughing. And Max was to store the buggy, and take his pay in the use of it for nothing.
So they might go to ride that living morning with the span, take the baby, and have no end of a "good time."
A lovely day, and a lovely ride they had of it. The baby chirruped, and was delighted, and pretended to know cows when they were pointed out to her, as if, in fact, the poor wretch knew a cow from a smoke-stack. All the same, they enjoyed their new toy—and freedom.
With this bright omen "regular work" began. But they soon found that as "regular work" meant two round trips every evening, they must not often take the horses out in the morning. As Max pointed out to Bertha, they had better hire a horse for three dollars and a half than lose one round trip. So, in the long run, they only treated themselves to a drive on a birthday or other anniversary.
A good deal of the work was a mere dragging grind, as is true of most work. Bertha declared that it came by streaks. Some nights the passengers were all crazy: women would stop the car when they did not want to get out; people would come rushing down side-streets to come on board, who found they wanted to be put out as soon as they had entered; a sweet-faced little woman would discover, after she was well in, that she was going into town when she should be going out; another would make a great row, and declare she had paid a fare, and afterward find that she had it in her glove. And all these things would happen on the same night. On another night everything would be serene, and the people as regular as if they were checker-men or other puppets. They would sit where they ought, stand where they should, enter at the right place, leave where they meant to; and Bertha would have as little need to bother herself about them as about that dear little baby who was sleeping at home so sweetly.
The night which she now looks back upon with most terror, perhaps, was the night when a director of the Cosmopolitan came on board. She was frightened almost beyond words when the tidy old gentleman nodded and smiled with a patronizing air. Did he mean to insult her? She just turned to the passenger opposite, and then, with her utmost courage, she turned to him, and said firmly, "Fare sir."
"Fare? Why, my man, I am a director. I am Mr. Siebenhold."
The passengers all grinned, as if to say not to know Mr. Siebenhold was to argue one's self unknown. Bertha had to collect all her powers. What would the stiffest martinet do in her place? She gulped down her terror.
"I can't help that, sir. If you are a director, you have a director's pass, I suppose?"
Magnificent instinct of a woman! For Bertha had never heard of a director's pass nor contemplated the exigency.
"Pass?" said the great man. "Well, yes—pass? I suppose I have." And from the depths of an inside pocket a gigantic pocket-book appeared. From its depths, with just the least unnecessary display of greenbacks, a printed envelope appeared. From its depths a pink ticket, large and clean, appeared. "How will that do, my man?"
For all Bertha could see, the pass might have been in Sanskrit. Her eyes, indeed, were beginning to brim over. But she walked to the light, looked at the pass, said "All right" as she gave it back, and took out her own note-book to enter the free passenger.
"You've not been long on the line?" said the old gentleman fussily.
"Not very long, sir."
"Well, my lad"—more fussily—"you have done perfectly right—perfectly. I hope all the conductors are as careful. I shall name you to Mr. Beal. What is your number?"
Bertha pointed to her jaunty cap, and said "537" at the same moment. The old gentleman took down the number, and did not forget his promise.
The next day he talked to the superintendent an hour, to that worthy's great disgust. When Mr. Siebenhold left the office at last, the superintendent said to the cashier, "The old fool wanted 'to recommend No. 537.' I did not tell him that we only have three hundred and thirty men."
So Bertha passed her worst trial, as she thought it then. But a harder test was in store.
YOUR UNCLE.
YOUR UNCLE.
The baby was growing to be no baby. She was big enough to run about the floor, and if they had a boiled chicken for dinner, the little girl sucked and even gnawed at the bones. The autumn had gone, and Bertha had a long winter ulster to do her cold work in, and Max a longer and a heavier one for his. Still, neither of them flinched. Max did not like his work as well as he liked covering piano-forte hammers, but he liked it better than nothing. And Bertha liked to be out of debt, and to see Max happy. So never did she ask him to drop a trip, and never did he ask her.
It was a light trip one evening, for the weather was disagreeable, and unless the theatre filled them up, it would be a very poor evening's work. As they went out of town nearly empty, Bertha came rushing out upon the front platform to Max, and said to him, in terror, "Your uncle and aunt are on board!"
"What?"
"Your Uncle Stephen, from New Britain, and your aunt, and they have two of your old-fashioned German carpet-bags, two baskets and a bird-cage. They are coming to make us a visit. He asked me very carefully to leave them at the corner of Sprigg Court."
"Make us a visit!" cried Max, aghast. "How can we run the car?"
"I don't know that," said Bertha. "I should like to know first how they are to get into the house."
"That, indeed," said Max; and, after a pause, "You must manage it somehow."
That is what men always say to their wives when the puzzle is beyond their own solution. And Bertha managed it. Fortunately for her, the night was dark. The old uncle and aunt were quite out of their latitude, and they didn't know their longitude. They were a good deal dazed by the unusual experience of travel. They were very obedient when Bertha stopped the car a full square before she came to her own house, and said,—
"You had better get out here. I will take your baskets and the cage." This she did, and deposited all three of the bipeds on the sidewalk. She bade them "Good evening" even, and, when the old gentleman had at last put his somewhat cumbrous question, "Could you kindly tell us on which corner Mr. Max Keesler lives?" the car was gone in the darkness.
Short work that night as Bertha doffed her ulster and assumed her home costume. For Max, he only tethered the horses, and then ran into the house, lighted it, and waited. Bertha joined him, however, before his uncle appeared. And leaving her in her own parlor, the guilty Max put on his hat, walked down the avenue, and met his dazed relatives, so that he could help them and the canary-bird and the baskets to his own door.
"Come, Bertha, come!" he cried. "Here is Uncle Stephen and my aunt!"
"Where did you drop from, dear aunt?" And the dear old lady explained how they had rung at the wrong door, how long the servant was in coming, and then how badly the servant understood their English.
"But how came you there at all?" persisted Bertha.
"Oh, the conductor left us at the wrong street."
"At the wrong street!" cried Bertha. "These conductors are so careless! But this man must have done it on purpose. What looking man was he?"
"My dear child," said her aunt, speaking in German, "you must not blame him; he was very young and very kind; perhaps he was a new man, and did not know. He was very kind, and carried the bird himself to the sidewalk."
After this, mischievous Mistress Bertha did not dare say a word.
But there was no second trip that evening.
Nor the next evening. Nor the next. Nor the next. Nor for many evenings more.
Max and Bertha took Uncle Stephen and their aunt to the little German play of the Turnverein; they took them to the German opera, which, by good luck, came to town, but they did not go in Max's car. Max took his aunt to ride one day, and another day he took Uncle Stephen, but not in his own car. The horses were eating their heads off, as he confessed to Bertha, but not a wisp of hay nor a grain of oats could he or she earn for them. One is glad to have his aunt and uncle come and see him. But how shall the pot boil if aunt and uncle cut off the channel through which the water flows to the pot, nay, block the wheels of the dray which brings the coal to the fire?
At last one fatal day Uncle Stephen, as he smoked his pipe, came out, as he was fond of doing, to the paint-shop to see Max rub down his horses. Nay, the old man walked out into the garden, threw out the lightedTabakwhich he loved so well, threw off his coat, and with a wisp of straw rubbed down one horse himself.
"I show you how," he said. "The poor brute—you do not half groom him." This in German.
"Ah me!" Max replied. "We must groom them well. The proverb says, 'When the horse is to be sold, his skin must shine.'"
"Must he be sold, then, my boy?"
"Ah me! yes, he must be sold. He eats off his head. As the proverb says, 'If the man is hungry, the beast goes to the fair.'"
"Mein Gott!" said the old man, not irreverently; "it is indeed hard times."
"Hard times," said Max, "or I would not sell my bays. But the proverb says, 'It is better to go afoot fat than to be starved and ride.'"
"And what do these people pay you for storing this car here, my son?"
"Pay me? They pay not a pfennig. But the proverb says, 'Better fill your house with cats than leave it empty.'"
"Mein Gott! they should pay some rent," said the old man. "I see by the rail they use it sometimes."
And Max said nothing.
The next day the old man returned to the charge.
"My son Max," he said, "do this company keep their car here, and pay nothing?"
"They pay nothing," said Max. "The proverb says, 'The rich miller did not know that the mill-boy was hungry.'"
"My son Max, let us take out the car at night, and let us drive down town and back, and we will get some rent from them."
Guilty Max! He started as if he were shot.
"Max, my son, do you drive the horses, and I will be the boy behind—what you call conductor."
Guilty Max! His face was fire. He bent down and concealed himself behind the horse he was rubbing.
"What do you say, my son? Shall I not make as good conductor as my little Bertha?"
Then guilty Max knew that his uncle knew all. But indeed the old man had not suspected at the first. Only there had seemed to him something natural, which he could not understand, in the face of the handsome young conductor. But, as chance had ordered,—good luck, bad luck, let the reader say,—early the next morning, as he smoked his pipe before breakfast, he had walked into the paint-shop. Then he had stepped into the car. On the floor of the car he had found his wife's handkerchief, the loss of which she had deplored, and evident traces of birdseed from the cage. The old man was slow, but he was sure; and a few days of rapt meditation on these observations had brought him out on a result not far from true.
"My son," he said, after Max had made confession, "if the business is all right, as you say, why do we not follow it in the daytime?"
Max said that he did not like to expose Bertha to observation in the daytime.
"But, my son, why do you not expose me to observation in the daytime? If it is all right, I will go down town with you. I will go now."
Then Max said that, though it was all right according to the higher law, the local law had not yet been interpreted on this subject, and he was afraid the police would stop them.
"Ah, well, I understand," said the old man. "Let them stop us; let us have one grand lawsuit, and let us settle it forever."
Then Max explained, further, that he had no money for a lawsuit, and that before the suit was settled he should be penniless.
"Ah, well," said Uncle Stephen, "and I—who have money enough—I never yet spent a kreutzer at law, and, God willing, I never will. But, my son, let me tell you. What we do, let us do in the light. At night let us play, let us go to the theatre, let us dance, let us sing. If this business is good business, let us do it by daylight. Come with me. Let us see your bureau man—what you call him—Obermeister, surintendant. Come!" And he hauled guilty Max with him in a rival's car to the down-town office of Mr. Beal, the superintendent.
And then the End came.
THE END.
THE END.
Max and his uncle entered the office, and were ushered into Mr. Beal's private room.
"Be seated, gentlemen—one moment;" and in a moment the tired man of affairs turned, with that uninterested bow, as if he knew they had nothing of any import to say.
But when Max, man fashion, held up his head and entered squarely on his story, Mr. Beal colored and was all attention. A minute more, and Mr. Beal rose and closed the door, that he might be sure they were not heard. Indeed, he listened eagerly, and yet as if he did not wish Max to be proved in the wrong.
"In short," said Max, at the end, "if what I have done is wrong, I have come to say that I do not want any fight with the company, and I should be glad to make amends."
Strange to say, the man of affairs hardly seemed to heed him. Mr. Beal was already in a brown study.
"Oh, yes, certainly. I am sure I am much obliged. I beg your pardon. Have you said all you wished to say?"
"Nothing more," said Max, half offended.
"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Beal again.
"I came to beg yours," said Max, just rising to the drollery of the position.
"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Beal once more, "but—I have been afraid—of this thing ever since I was on the line. You say you do not want to fight with the company. Quite right, young man, quite right! The company is friends with all the world, and wants no fighting."
But after this pacific beginning Mr. Beal went on to say that he was well aware, and that the directors were aware, that any man had a right to use their rails if he did not interfere with the public convenience. He did not say, but Max was quick enough to see, that the fact that he and Bertha had used the rails for so long a time, and the company never knew it, was itself evidence that the public had suffered no inconvenience.
In an instant Max saw, and his uncle saw, that Mr. Beal was much more anxious to keep this fact from the public than he was to apprehend any offenders, if offenders they had been.
"Mr. Keesler, the press would make no end of fun of us if this thing was known."
This after a pause.
"Suppose, Mr. Keesler, you turn your stock over to us, at a fair valuation, and I give you the first berth I have as a driver? I am afraid I cannot engage your conductor."
This with a sick smile. Max was amazed. He came to be scolded. It seemed he was expected to offer terms.
"Frankly, Mr. Keesler, we had rather not have much public discussion as to the rights of individuals to put their cars on our rails. You seem to be tired of the business. What do you say?"
Max made a very short answer.
The truth was, he was sick to death of the business. In very little time he had named his price for the car, and as soon as it was named, Mr. Beal agreed.
"But how shall I take possession?" said Mr. Beal. "If I send one of my men for it, the story will be in the Herald within three days."
"Trust me for that," said Max. "Till you have your car you need not send your check."
The Cosmopolitan cars do not run after midnight. At one the next morning Max drew out the fatal truck upon the avenue, down to the top of the steep grade at De Kalb Street, braked up, and then took off his horses. Then, with the exquisite relief with which a soldier after his enlistment leaves his barracks, Max loosened the brake, jumped from the platform, and saw the car run from him into the night.
The first morning driver on the Cosmopolitan, in the gray of the morning, met an empty car on the long causeway at Pitt's Dock. He coupled it to his own car, reported it, and was told to take it to the new Herkimer stables.
And Max?
And Bertha?
Uncle Stephen and the good frau found life in Sprigg Court too comfortable to want to move. Little Elaine was such a pet, and dear Bertha was so much like her mother!
It ended when they took the rest of the house upstairs, and Uncle Stephen made Max his man of business in that curious commerce of his with Natal and the Mozambique Channel.
Still Max's conscience sometimes disturbs him. In one of such moods he comes to me to confess and receive counsel. Absolution I do not give.
And it is thus, gentle reader, that it happens that I tell his story to you.
1Readers not quite at home in Mrs. Tighe or Apuleius may be glad to revive their memories of the ancient Psyche by this note from the Cyclopedia. The prettiest rendering of that story is in William Morris's "Earthly Paradise"; but the reader will ask himself seriously whether it be anything but an allegory to cover the moral in the matter-of-fact tale before him.
Psyche, whose two elder sisters were of moderate beauty, was so lovely that she was taken for Venus herself, and men dared only to adore her as a goddess, not to love her. This excited the jealousy of Venus, who, to revenge herself, ordered Cupid to inspire her with love for some contemptible wretch. But Cupid fell in love with her himself. Meanwhile her father, desiring to see his daughter married, consulted the oracle of Apollo, which commanded that Psyche should be conveyed, with funeral rites, to the summit of a mountain, and there left, for she was destined to be the bride of a destructive monster, in the form of a dragon, feared by gods and men. With sorrow was the oracle obeyed, and Psyche was left alone on the desert rock, when suddenly Zephyr hovers around her, gently raises and transports her to a beautiful palace of the God of Love, who visits her every night, unseen and unknown, leaving her at the approach of day. Perfect happiness would have been the lot of Psyche, if, obedient to the warning of her lover, she had never been curious to know him better. But by the artifices of her jealous sisters, whom she had admitted to visit her, contrary to the commands of Cupid, she was persuaded that she held a monster in her arms, and curiosity triumphed. As he slept, she entered with a lamp to examine him, and discovered the most beautiful of the gods. In her joy and astonishment she let a drop of the heated oil fall upon his shoulders. Cupid awoke, and, having reproached the astonished Psyche for her suspicions, fled. She wandered everywhere in search of her beloved, but she had lost him. Venus kept her near her person, treated her as a slave, and imposed on her the severest and most trying tasks. Psyche would have sunk under the burdens had not Cupid, who still tenderly loved her, secretly assisted her in her labors.
When Psyche was finally reunited to Cupid in Olympus, her envious sisters threw themselves from a precipice.
No, I do not know by what accident it was that Edward Ross came to spend a week in August at the Columbia Hotel, at Hermon Springs.
No, and I do not know by what accident it was that all the Verneys were there. The home of the Verneys is at Painted Post, as I suppose you know. But this year the Verneys took a holiday for a month at the Columbia Hotel, and while they were away from home the ceilings were whitened, the house was painted inside and out, and new railings were added to the outside steps at the side door.
What I do know is that it was at the Columbia Hotel that Edward Ross first saw Psyche, who was the youngest daughter of the Verney household. All the world of the Columbia Hotel had gone across to the Solferino House, which was the other side of the way. There was a hop at the Solferino House, and the general public had gone to the hop. Ross had arrived late, the only passenger by that little one-horse railway from Hudson. He came into the great drawing-room, and thought he was alone. But he was not alone. Psyche, youngest of the Verney girls, was at the piano, not playing, but looking over some music which the Jeffrey girls had left there.
If you had asked the gossips of the hotel why Psyche did not go to the hop where all her older sisters had gone, you would have been told that she was but the half-sister of the other Verneys; that since her mother died, these three older sisters had held a hard rein on poor Psyche; that some one of them had laid down the law that there were so many of them they must not all go together to any frolic. In the interpretation of this law, Psyche always stayed at home if the party were pleasant, and one or two of the older sisters stayed if it were likely to be stupid. This is what the gossips of the hotel would have said, and this is what I believe.
Anyway, it happened that on this particular evening Edward Ross threw himself at length on a long sofa in the drawing-room, not knowing that any one was there; and little Psyche, not knowing that he had come in, crooned over the Jeffreys' music, and at last picked out something from Mercadante which she had never seen before, and which did not seem to her very difficult, and, after she had read the whole page down, tried it, and tried it again, in her resolute, wide-awake, very satisfactory way.
The third time she tried she was quite well pleased with her own success, and this time, as she came down to the last staff, upon that first page, Edward Ross's hand appeared on the top of the page, ready to turn it over. Psyche neither screamed nor flinched. She nodded simply: she was under the inspiration of the music now, and she played well. She played the whole piece through. Then he thanked her, and she thanked him. She played a good deal for him that evening. He brought down his William Morris and showed it to her, and read to her some of the best things in it. And so they spent two hours together very nicely, and by the time the madding crowd came back from the Solferino House, Psyche was not in the least sorry that she had not gone to the hop, and Edward Ross was very glad she had not gone.
There is a lovely little burn or brook which runs through a shady ravine behind the Columbia House, I forget what they call it. It might be called the Lovers' Brook or the Maiden's Home or the Fairy's Bath, or anything that verdant seventeen thought sweet enough. Age cannot wither nor custom stale its infinite variety. Edward Ross found no difficulty in making up a party of the young people at the hotel to go on a picnic up this brook the next day. By some device he made Agnes Verney think she would stay at home to flirt with an old West Indian, who was far too gouty to go even to the first fall. This left the pretty Psyche free to go. And she went, in the charming adornment of the unadorned simplicity of her pretty mountain walking-dress. And there were quite as many gentlemen as there were ladies, to help at all the hard fords and to lift them at all the steep climbings. So Priscilla Verney had her cavalier, and Polly Verney, whom the young men called "Bloody Mary," had her Philip, and the Garner girls were taken care of, and the Spragues and the Dunstables. For every girl, there was a young man; and if at most of the separating places Edward Ross and my pretty Psyche were together, it was not that they did not their full duty by society; for they did.
And a very pleasant day it was. That day Jabez Sprague asked Ann Garner to marry him, and she refused him point-blank: that made it a very pleasant day to her. That day Tunstall Dunstable asked Martha Jeffrey to marry him, and she said she would: that made it a very pleasant day to her. They all came home at five or six in the afternoon, very bright and jolly most of them, and those who were not bright and jolly pretended they were. Edward Ross had not asked Psyche to marry him, but I believe they had enjoyed the day as much as any one.
He had found out that this simple, shy, pretty little thing, who was snubbed in the household, who was left in the cold in their arrangements, and seemed to have no friends, had, all the same, a sweet, happy, contented temper; that she had her own notions and enthusiasms about books and men and duties; that she could not be made to say that yellow was white, or even that crimson was scarlet; that she never said she understood a thing but could not express herself, or that she knew a thing unless she did know it. He found a woman of principle under the form and method and semblance of a child.
And she had found out a man as fond of ferns as she was, who knew every fern in this glen, and every fern like it in the Himalayas; a man as fond of music as she was, who could not play as well as she could, and yet he had heard Chopin play, had seen "The Huguenots" in Paris, and had dined with Lang and Bennett and the Abbé Liszt himself. This man loved her heroes, though he had travelled in a stage-coach with Wendell Phillips, and had helped Mr. Sumner look up the authorities for one of his speeches. This man could quote twenty lines of Tennyson to her one, he had met Christina Rossetti at a party; and yet he really deferred to Psyche's own recollection of a stanza of Mrs. Browning's which he had quoted wrong. Psyche was not used to men who dared show their enthusiasm, who dared confess their ignorance, who dared speak as if it were a matter of course to trust God's love, and who owned they had other objects in life than making money. Psyche and Edward Ross returned to the hotel after a very happy day.
The next day Edward Ross brought out the largest and best apparatus for water-color work that Psyche or any of the girls had ever seen. And before long it proved that, though one "had no talent for drawing," and another "could not sketch from nature," and another "could not do landscape," and another "hated trees," that on the broad piazza of the Columbia House five or six of them, Psyche included, could spend a very pleasant morning, under his directions, reproducing, after a fashion, on various blocks and in various books, the outlines of the blue Hoosac Mountains and of the valleys between. And my pretty Psyche went far beyond any of the rest, because she did as she was bid; she had no conceit about her own ways; she waited till her teacher could attend to her; she did not want to attract the attention of all the gentlemen on the piazza; and she was not gabbling all the time she was working. So that day they had a very happy day.
It is not within the space assigned to this story to tell how pleasantly the rainy morning passed when Edward Ross read the "Earthly Paradise" aloud to them, nor to describe the excursion which he organized to Williams College Commencement, nor the party which he made to see the Shakers, nor the evening concert of vocal and instrumental music which he arranged, and for which he had such funny bills printed at Pittsfield. No; these and the other triumphs of that week, long remembered, shall be unrecorded.
Of its history, this is all that shall be told: that on Saturday Edward Ross told Psyche that he loved her more than he loved his own life. She told him that she loved him more than she loved hers. And so it was that, in the exquisite joy of the new discovery of what life is and what it is for, Edward Ross accompanied the Verneys on their way home to Painted Post on Monday. There he asked for and there he gained the consent of Psyche's father for their speedy marriage.
On Tuesday he had to go home to Boston, for his holiday was over. It was a bitter parting, as you may imagine, between him and his Psyche, who had never been separated for more than ten hours at a time till now. For the last farewell Psyche took him on her favorite walk at Painted Post. It is only less beautiful than the "Vestal's Glade," or whatever we determined to call that burnie at Hermon.
"Dear Psyche," said he to her, "your life is mine henceforth, and mine is yours. God knows I have but one wish and one prayer henceforth, and those are to make you happy. It is because I wish that you may be happy that I ask one thing now. Do you think you can grant it? It is a very great thing to ask."
"Can I?" said the proud girl. "Why, darling, you do not know me yet." She had never called him "darling" till an hour before.
"You must not promise till you know," said Edward Ross.
"I can promise and I will promise now. There is nothing you think right to ask which I shall not think it right to do."
"Dearest, I do think this is right; I know it is right. It is because I know it, because we shall be ten thousand times happier, and because I shall be ten thousand times better for it, that I ask it. I would not dream of it but for your sake—" And he paused.
"Why do you stop, my dear Edward? I have promised. What shall I do?"
"Dearest, you are to do nothing. Simply, you are not to ask what my daily duty is, and you are not to ask me to introduce you to my friends. It separates me less from my sunbeam than most men's cares. Without knowing it, you can help me in a thousand ways in it. But to know what it is will only bring care on you and grief on me. Can we not live, as you trust me and as I love you, without my worrying you with these petty cares?"
"Is that all?" said Psyche, with her pretty laugh. "Why, darling, if it were to sweep the street-crossing,—as in that funny story you told us,—I would sweep too. If it were to keep a gambling-table, you would not have asked me to marry you. It is something honorable, that I know, because you are my own Edward. Why need I know anything more?"
And he kissed her, and she kissed him; and they went home to his little lunch; and then the express swept by, with Jim Fisk in uniform, as it happened, in a palace-car. And so Edward Ross went to Boston and made ready for his wedding.
And a perfect wedding it was. I doubt if Painted Post remembers a prettier wedding or a prettier bride. And in that same express train Mr. E. Ross and his pretty bride swept off to New York, and so to Boston; and there he took her to the first sight of her pretty home.
How pretty it was! It was in Roxbury, so it was half country; and there was a pretty garden, with a little greenhouse such as Psyche had always longed for. Nay, there was even a fern-house, with just the ferns she loved, and with those other Himalaya ferns which he had talked of on that lovely first day of all. And there was a perfect grand piano, of a tone so sweet, and only one piece of music on the open rack, and that was the Mercadante of the first evening. And when they went upstairs, Psyche's own dressing-room was papered with the same paper which her pretty room had at her old home, and the carpet on the floor was the same, and every dear picture of her girlhood's collections was duplicated; and just where the cage of her pretty bullfinch, Tom, had hung, there hung just such a cage. Why, it was her cage, and her Tom was in it!
For Psyche and Edward had spent a night and a day in New York, that she might see Mr. Stewart's pictures and Mr. Johnson's; but Edward's office-boy, who had been left at Painted Post especially that he might bring the bullfinch, had taken a later train, indeed, but had come through without stopping.
And when they went into Edward's little den, it had but two pictures: one was Psyche's portrait, and the other was that miserable little first picture of the Hoosac Hills.
And then such a happy life began for these young people! No, Psyche did not find housekeeping hard. She had been the Cinderella at Mr. Verney's house too long for that. Now that she was the mistress of servants, she knew how to be kind to them and to enter into their lives. As Mrs. Wells says, "she tried the Golden Rule" with them. She loved them, and they loved her. And Edward was always devising ways to systematize the housekeeping and make it easier. Every morning he worked in his study for two hours, and she "stepped round" for an hour, and then lay on the lounge for an hour, reading by herself. Then he and she had two golden hours together. They made themselves boy and girl again. Two days in the week they painted with the water-colors; and Psyche really passed her master, for her eye for color was, oh! much better than his. Two days they worked at their music together—worked, not played. Two days they read together, he to her or she to him. And after lunch he always took his nap; and then, if it were cool enough, the horses came round, and he took Psyche off on one of the beautiful drives of Brookline or Milton or Newton or distant Needham; and she learned the road so well and learned to drive so well that she would take him as often as he took her. And at five they were at home, and at six Psyche's charming little dinner was served, always so perfectly; and then at eight o'clock he always kissed her, and said, "Good-by, sweet; now I must go out a little while. Do not think of sitting up for me." And then Psyche wrote her letters home or read a while; and at ten she went to bed, and fell asleep, wondering how she could have lived before she was so happy.
And in the morning her husband was always asleep at her side. He slept so heavily that she would try to get up and dress without his knowing it. But he always did know. And because he could dress quicker than she, he would put on his heavy Persian dressing-robe, after he had plunged his head into cold water, and while she "did her hair" he would read her "Amadis of Gaul," or the "Arabian Nights," or "Ogier the Dane," or the "Tales of the Round Table," till he saw she was within five minutes of being done. Then he would put down the book—yes, though Oriana were screaming in the arms of a giant—and he would run and dress himself, and they would run a race to see which should first reach the piazza and give to the other the first morning-glory.
And then would come another happy day, like and yet unlike to yesterday.
No one called, you see. But I do not think Psyche cared for that. She always hated to make calls, nor did she want much to receive them. Both she and Edward were alone fully half their lives, though sometimes he would call her into the study to work with him, and often he would come to her to work with her. He would ask her if she was lonely, and he planned visits from his sisters, who were very nice girls, and his mother, who was perfectly lovely, and after a while, from some of the Western girls whom Psyche had known at the Ingham University. But never, by any accident, did any visitor come who made any allusion to his daily business. He never spoke of it to Psyche, and she, dear child, thought of it much less than you would think. She had promised not to ask, and she had sense to learn that the best way not to ask was not to care. Yes, Versatilla, dear,—and a girl of principle who determines not to care will not care. She knows how to will and to do.
I do not know whether Psyche the more enjoyed the opera or the pictures which she and Edward saw together. There seemed to her to be no nice private house in Boston where dear Edward did not seem welcome when he sent in his card, and asked if he and Mrs. Ross might see the pictures. Psyche often said that she owned more Corots and Calames, more Daubignys and Merles and Millets and Bonnats than any lady in the land, and that she kept them in more galleries. At the opera they often found pleasant people whom Edward knew sitting next to them, and they always chided him that he was such a stranger; and he always introduced Psyche to them as his wife as proudly as a king; and with many of these people she talked pleasantly, and some of them she met and bowed to at church or as they were driving. But none of them ever called upon her, nor did she call upon them. One day she said to Edward that she believed he knew more people than anybody else in the world. And he said, with a sad sigh, "I am afraid I do"; and she saw that it worried him, and so the dear child said no more.
In all this happy time Psyche had had no visit from her own sisters. Perhaps that was one reason why it was so happy. But it happened, after a happy life of a year and more, that a darling baby boy came to Psyche to make her wonder how she could have thought her life before was life at all. And the birth of the boy and his wonderful gifts were duly reported in the letters to Painted Post, and then there came quite a hard letter from Priscilla, putting in form the complaint that neither of the sisters had ever been asked to make Psyche a visit since they were married.
Psyche showed the letter to Edward on the moment, and he laughed.
"I have only wondered it did not come before."
Psyche tried to laugh too, but she came very near crying. "I have not wanted them to come before, and I don't want them to come now."
"Then they shall not come," said Edward, laughing again, and taking her on his knee.
"But I do want them to come, partly. I wish they had come and had gone, and that it was all over. It does not seem quite nice that my own sisters should not visit me."
"Well, my darling, as to that, they are not your own sisters; and even if Mrs. Grundy does not think it is quite nice, I do not know why you and I should care. Still, if you want to have them and have it over, let them come.'Olim meminisse juvabit.'That means, 'You will be glad to remember it.'"
Psyche said she knew that; and she pulled his whiskers for him because he pretended to think she did not; and he kissed her, and she kissed him. And so the next day, after Psyche had written ten different letters and had torn them up, she concocted the following, which, as it met Edward's approval, was despatched to Painted Post by the mail of the same evening:—
"ROXBURY, May 10, 18—.
"ROXBURY, May 10, 18—.
"MYDEARPRISCILLA,—Indeed you must not think that Edward has prevented me from asking you to make a visit here. If it gives you any pleasure to come and see me and my housekeeping, you know very well how much pleasure it will give to me. You know we live very quietly, and are not in the least gay; so I think you must all come together and entertain each other. But little Geoffrey will entertain you, and you will think he is the dearest little fellow that ever lived.
"Come as soon as you can, for we are all going to the sea-shore on the 25th, and if you do not come soon it will be a very short visit."
And then the letter went on about Ann Garner's engagement, and the new styles for prints, and so on.
So the invitation was well over.