It was Saturday night—the married “drummer’s” homesick night. Mr. Martin Prescott, walking into the long, narrow hotel bedroom, felt more than ever the wearing familiarity of the scene that met his eye. There were the same dull carpet, the Michigan pine furniture, the drab striped wallpaper, the windows shaded only by little slatted inside shutters, to which he was used in third-rate towns. There was even the same indefinable chill, dusty smell that was associated with evenings of figuring over sales on the coverless table, under the weak, single-armed gas burner that jutted out from the wall at the side of the bureau. Yet, cheerless as it was, he preferred its seclusion just now to the more convivial bar-room, where the liquor and the jokes and the conversation of “the boys” had all the same jading flavour, and he felt unequal to bracing his spirit sufficiently to receiving the Saturday confidences of the garrulous or the weary. Reticent both by habit and principle as to his intimate affairs, he was no stranger to his kind, and in the top strata ofhis mind were embedded many curious evidences of other men’s lives.
But to-night he had a matter on his mind that companied him whether he would or no, and he was sore at having to stay over in this little town, from which there was egress once only in twenty-four hours. He had waited for a customer who did not arrive in the place until too late for him to get out of it, and had hereby missed the letter from his wife which was waiting for him some hundred miles further westward. Prescott did not, in a way, dislike travelling as a business; his wife always comforted herself with the thought that there were other modes of earning a living more inherently disagreeable to him, yet there were days and nights of a paucity which he was glad she could not picture. Saturday night away from home in this kind of a town, without a letter—when the last one had been disquieting—reached the limit of endurance. He felt that he had travelled long enough.
He made his preparations for the evening with the wontedness of custom. He locked the door, turned up the gas, and worked over the screw in the lukewarm radiator. Then he drew the cane-bottomed rocking-chair underneath the gas burner, and placed a couple of magazines on the bureau besidehim, his lean, bearded face reflected in the shadowy mirror above it. He opened his valise and took from it a folding leather photograph case containing the picture of a woman and three children. Prescott gazed at it hard for a few moments before standing it up beside the magazines. He was trying to find an answer to the question he was debating: if he could manage in some way to supplement by three hundred dollars more the income of a new position offered him, he might be able to accept it and stay at home for ever.
He lit his pipe and, putting his heavily booted feet on a chair, began to cut the leaves of a magazine with his pocket-knife. He had meant to get his slippers out of the bag and make himself comfortable, but somehow, after looking at the photographs, he had forgotten about himself. He had written his daily letter to his wife before the last-going train, and he would not begin a fresh sheet now—no matter what he wrote, she would divine his mood. You have to be very careful what you write in a letter that is read some days after, lest you cloud the sunshine for another when it has brightened again for you.
“What is it?”
He sprang up as a knock came to thedoor, after first hastily sweeping the photograph case into the valise. He hoped devoutly that it was not a visitor; there was no one in this town whose presence would not be an intrusion to-night. But he gave a glad start of surprise as his eyes fell on the man standing with the bell-boy in the hall.
“Brenner! Well, thisisgood! I never dreamed of seeingyouhere.”
“I don’t wonder,” said the stranger, a pleasant, fresh-faced, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a light mustache. “It’s ages since I set eyes on you; I changed my route, and then, two years ago, I married. We only moved here last spring. Jim Halliday told me this afternoon that you were in town. What a soak he is! But don’t let’s waste time here; I want you to come right around and spend the evening at our house; I want you to meet my wife.”
“I’ll be delighted,” said Prescott with alacrity. He locked the bedroom door and the two walked out together, conversing briskly as they went. He and the younger Brenner had been chance companions on several notable trips in former years, drawn together in spite of dissimilarities in taste and education by a certain clear and simple cleanness of mind which unerringly divines its kin. The air had seemed raw and chill earlier, but goodfellowship had put its warmth into the winter world with Brenner’s presence.
“So you’re married,” said Prescott presently. “I remember that I heard of it. I’ve wondered at not meeting you anywhere; I didn’t know you’d given up the road.”
“Well, yes, I’ve quit,” said Brenner. “My wife didn’t like me to be away so much, used to get scared nights, and there’s a sight of things to see to when you have a house—the coal, you know, and the plumbing getting out of order, and then after the boy came—oh, yes, I’ve quit it all right. Seems sort of tied down in a way after you’ve been your own boss, but I’m not sorry—I’m pretty well fixed, I guess. Travelling’s all very well for a single man, but it gets to be an awful pull after you’re married. You miss a lot.”
“I’ve been travelling for sixteen years,” said Prescott soberly; “two years before I married—at twenty-four—and fourteen since.”
“That so? It’s a pretty long time.”
“Yes, it is. I’ve been wanting to give it up.” He hesitated, and then continued with rare expansiveness: “The fact is, there’s a position open for me at home now, but I can’t quite see my way clear to taking it. The salary’s nominally all right, but there’s my living to be taken into account, and other things. I figure out that it would mean aboutthree hundred dollars a year less than we have now—and I don’t see how we could live on that. You see, the trouble is it’s away out of the line I’m in now—yet theremaybe a future in it.”
He went into explanatory detail, led on by Brenner’s questioning interest.
“Couldn’t you make it up in any way by outside commissions?”
Prescott nodded. “Ah, that’s what I’m trying to get at. You’re a wise man to have made the break early, Brenner. Every year I’ve meant to.” Prescott spoke with a bitter patience. “I’ve never thought of my being on the road as anything but temporary, and here I’m at it still. The longer you wait, the harder it gets to change; you don’t know how to take the risk. I haven’t told my wife yet about this offer, for I don’t want to disappoint her. I hoped to have had a letter from her to-night—the last one was rather disquieting—but I’m behind my schedule.”
“Well, I know what that is,” said Brenner heartily. “I had a letter from Mame once after we were first married—she’d cried all over the paper in big blots; she thought she’d die before morning. Well, my train was snowed up in a South Dakota blizzard and I never got another letter for a week.Holy smoke!I never want to go through thatkind of a racket again. Then, when Ididhear, I found she’d been to a party the next evening as chipper as you please—belle of the ball. I tell you there’s too much seesaw about that sort of thing for a limited nature like mine; but I suppose I’d have got used to teetering on it same as the rest of you, only she made up her mind I was to quit—and quit I did. Mame runsme! I guess she’ll try and run you too; she tries to run most any one that comes to hand. This is my shebang.”
He stopped before a small cottage whose slender piazza was ornamentally fenced in with heavy wooden scroll work, and, opening the front door, ushered the guest into the narrow hall. “Hello, Mame! Here’s Prescott. Prescott—he’s one of ‘the boys,’ you know.”
“We’re so glad to have you here,” said Mrs. Brenner, a stout young woman in a light blue flannel shirt-waist; she had prettily untidy hair, large gentle brown eyes, and small, very soft hands. She brushed the light strands of hair out of the way with a pretty gesture of one hand, while she extended the other to Prescott. He felt an instant sensation of comfort, increased when he found himself finally settled in an armchair in a room that reflected the mistress of it in a sortof warm, attractive disorderliness. A work-basket, with the sewing half out of it, occupied a footstool; the table, lighted by a lamp with a pictorial shade, was piled high with magazines and papers; a banjo sprawled on the sofa amid the tumbled pillows, and a child’s pink worsted sock and a china cat lay in front of the bright little kerosene stove in the middle of the floor.
Mrs. Brenner followed his gaze towards the infant’s belongings and blushed as she laughed.
“Harve won’t let me pick them up! Isn’t it silly of him?”
“I believe she puts them there herself, because she thinks I like it,” said Brenner serenely. “Oh, she’s up to tricks! She sent me for you to-night. Do you remember the evening I spent at your house five years ago? The night I had the cold, and your wife put the mustard plaster on me?”
“Why so she did,” said Prescott delightedly. “I’d forgotten you’d seen my wife and the children. Let me see—there were only two of them—Margaret’s four years old.”
“It was the hottest mustard plaster I ever felt,” said Brenner reminiscently. “I went to sleep with it on. When I woke up—I guess I was sort of dazed—I thought the house was on fire, and started to run down-stairs,but Mrs. Prescott caught on in some way, and sent you to head me off. Hottest mustard plaster Ieverfelt. Well, your wife was mighty good to me. Not so very rugged-looking though herself, as I remember.”
“Oh, she’s very strong,” said Prescott, with defensive hauteur; “very. She’s never ill.” He turned the conversation towards the Brenner ménage. “And how old is your child?”
But he found himself, later, confiding in Mrs. Brenner, after the cozy little supper in the rag-carpeted dining-room, where she had set out hot mince pie and cheese and cookies, and Brenner had made the coffee. Prescott, who owned the impaired digestion of the travelling man, had long passed the stage of taking whiskey to supplement all deficiencies, arriving at the final attitude of the invariable soft boiled eggs for breakfast and rare roast beef for dinner, but to-night he had recklessly refused to take sickly thought for the morrow. Mame’s pie was good.
Brenner was sitting now cross-legged on the sofa, strumming obliviously on the banjo, while Prescott, his arms on the dining-table, leaned towards Mrs. Brenner’s sympathy. Something in this warm home atmosphere was too much for him.
“She—I—there’re some things you can’ttalk about, Mrs. Brenner. Now, the other night my wife had to get up at two o’clock in the morning and go out over the snow to the doctor’s; Martin, that’s my boy, was taken sick. Little Emma wouldn’t let her mother go alone—she’s only nine. My wife wrote me that it didn’t scare her a bit, but it does seem sort of pitiful—doesn’t it?—to think of their doing it. It’s never happened before, but the neighbours we used to have moved away.”
“Oh, you mind it more than she would,” said Mrs. Brenner encouragingly. Her soft eyes made a temporary home for him.
“Things seem to tell on her more than they used, though she tries hard not to let me see it. She’s always worrying about me, in this kind of weather, for fear I’ll come down with something alone in a hotel. But my wife”—Prescott paused a moment awkwardly—“my wife’s awfullygood; I’m not that way myself, Mrs. Brenner, but I don’t think I would care for a woman that wasn’t religious. She thinks everything ismeant. And it helps her a lot.”
“Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Brenner. She added after a little silence: “Was your boy very ill?”
“Ill? No; he was all right the next day. But she caught cold; she doesn’t think enoughof herself; she’s that kind, you know. It’s clear foolishness! Last time I was home I found that when the girl left—we had one for six years and have been changing hoodlums every fifteen minutes since she married—well, when the last one left I found she’d been carrying up the coal for the fires because the boy got tired, and she was afraid it would hurt him. Husky little beggar, I’d tire him all right! He’s just getting to the age when he’s too much for his mother—nothing wrong about him, but he worries her. He slings his books at the brakemen when he goes in to school on the train and gets complained of—and he smokes cigarettes around the corner and the neighbours come and tell her, and it breaks her all up.”
“He needs a man,” said Mrs. Brenner.
“Yes. But you see I’m home so seldom she can’t bear to have me down on the children the only time I’m with them. You see, a man doesn’t think much whether he likes to travel or not—it’s just something that’s got to be done, if you’re in the business—but it’s hard on a woman. Some women seem to get used to it, though.”
“Ah,” murmured Mrs. Brenner, “when we married I said to my husband: ‘When I get over caring for you, then I’ll get over minding your leaving me—and not before.’”
“Why, that’s what my wife says!” said Prescott. He laughed, with a rising colour, and shook his head. “You women—you’re all alike. You don’t know what lots of good it’s done me to be here and talk to you to-night; it’s most as good as being home—not quite, though.”
“Can’t you stop travelling?” said Mrs. Brenner, going with penetrative instinct to the thought she felt. She added, after a pause: “Are you sure you can’t?”
He looked at her uncertainly. “How did you know that? No, I’m not sure I can’t—but I’m not sure I can. And I’m not so young as I was.”
“Think of it.” Her hand gave his a warm clasp; through her eyes he saw his wife. “Thinkof it.”
“God knows I do,” said Prescott huskily. His hand wrenched hers in its farewell, before he put on the overcoat Brenner brought him from the back hall.
All the way back to the hotel he was thinking over things. It all depended on that few hundred dollars extra, so absolutely necessary that, without it, he could not provide a shelter for his family. More than a living he no longer planned for. He looked at the future with the eye of the man who, whatever his abilities, has come to learn that, either fromearly training, or environment, or the iron bands of need, more than a careful living can never be his. He could have enjoyed riches as well and more than many another man, but they were so out of all calculation that what they could buy no longer aroused in him any particular interest. He would never even be able to indulge in that pathetically ludicrous dream of the business man of retiring to a green and placid land and raising catalogue produce from theory. He would be able to save little, after educating his children, but the money to pay the insurance that would keep his wife from penury when he died. For all his days he must work in harness, and take no holiday but that which Death gives to the great rank and file.
Yet, in spite of these limitations, for all that he tacitly renounced, he had good measure. He had the freedom of spirit which belongs to him who, given a competence, envies not any man his wealth or his opportunity. He had gained a capacity for getting great and far-reaching happiness from the exquisite little joys of life. If he had a little of the inner sadness that comes of foregoing the ambitions natural to a man, it was not the sadness of defeat, but rather the thoughtful weighing of the loss as the least—all things considered—that he could have had. In the silent timesof those long journeyings by day and night over the earth, the pricelessness of the common blessing of a home had sunk deeper and deeper into his soul. And the spring of all this was in the love he and his wife had for each other, a love that was too much of a vital power to be consciously dwelt upon; it was rather an enlarging and enriching of the whole nature because they two were one in the possession of a country which it is given to but few of the married to see even afar off. Below all trouble lay ever a secret joy; whither he went, she companied him. In all the years of separation, they were less apart than many whose hands meet daily; there could be no real separation between them even after death.
But now—but now—she was getting tired. Her small face with its pure outlines, the sweet, nervous mouth and the loving eyes came before him—her low controlled voice, her quick motions, her rapid adjustment of all domestic problems that his brief stay at home might be bright and restful, the children at their best, the meals most home-like, and she herself dressed prettily, with the work so ordered that she might not lose a minute of his society. If callers came on one of those precious afternoons, she rebelled as if at a calamity. She had always been so brave,so helpful, but she was not so strong as she had been, and the boy was too much for her. If he could but see his way a little clearer! He had the cautiousness of methods new to him that comes of the inexperience of manhood, far more frustrating than the inexperience of the boy.
Brenner came around the next day just before train time.
“Mame sent me,” he explained. “She’s been talking to me ever since you left. She’s got a brother in New York who’s in the line you’re looking up, and she has an idea you can fix up something with him in connection with the position you were telling me of. If you can carry some of his business with you I don’t see but it would help you out mighty well. He’s a good man—and he’ll do anything for Mame, if hecando it. She’s written him a letter, and here’s one for you.”
“I’m much obliged, I’m sure,” said Prescott politely. He did not speak with enthusiasm; he had a rooted distaste for a woman’s intervention in business matters, and by daylight his evening confidences rather annoyed him. Still——
“A telegram for you, sir,” said a boy, coming up.
Prescott took it and opened it mechanically.He stood for a moment with his eyes glued to the paper, and when he looked up Brenner cried in horror:
“Not yourwife, man!”
“No,” said Prescott thickly. “It’s little Margaret.” He consulted the paper. “She’s not dead—yet. She’s been run over. She may not be so badly hurt as they fear. My God! I can’t get there for two days!”
“Thank heaven the east-bound train’s on time,” said Brenner devoutly, and went home to be cheered by his Mame.
“Papa is to carry little Margaret up-stairs—think of it!—dear papa to carry her—such a treat! His arms are so much stronger than mamma’s.” It was a week since the day of the telegram.
“Mamma jiggles,” said the child roguishly, looking backward from the shelter of her father’s arms to the slender figure toiling up laboriously with shawls and pillows. “Mamma carries Marget all slippy.”
“Poor mamma,” said the father; “she has to do everything when I’m not here.” He pressed his lips to the soft baby cheek of the little girl who was getting well, but his thought was with the mother. “Now what on earth are you lugging all those things up for, Annie? Didn’t I tell you tocall Martin to take them? You know you’re all worn out.”
“He’s reading, and I thought I wouldn’t disturb him.”
“Where’s that magazine I had?Thereyou go again! Whydon’tyou let the children wait on you?”
“I knewjustwhere it was,” said the wife with eager excuse.
“Well, it’s their business to know where things are,” said Prescott severely; “they don’t help you half enough. When I go away to-morrow——”
The joy in his wife’s face went out as the light is snuffed out in a candle.
That evening, as they sat alone together in the cozy library after the children were in bed, she broke into the conversation with a tone that showed the effort. “I haven’t asked you yet what time you want breakfast to-morrow morning. I hope you don’t have to take the six-fifty, it’s so very dark and early, and you never really eat anything, no matter what I get for you.”
Prescott looked at the pure outline of her cheek and brow, and the stricken cheerfulness of her eyes. He hardly seemed to hear her words for a minute, and then answered absently:
“No; I’m not going so early to-morrow.Hark, is that somebody coming up our steps?”
“Oh, Ihopeit’s no one to call! It would be dreadful when it’s our last evening together. No, thank goodness! It’s next door.”
“When I’ve been home five whole days that you didn’t count on, you oughtn’t to stand out for such a little thing as the last evening. It was well I could come—wasn’t it? When I got that telegram——”
He broke off with a shudder, and their hands clasped. Their minds traversed the past week with its terror and anxiety, and its later joy—the great happiness which comes from no new phase, but from the blessed continuance of the unnoticed daily good.
“You have been in town so much of the time,” she murmured half-jealously.
“Yes, I know. It was necessary.”
“You haven’t told me yet what time you want your breakfast.”
“Oh, any old time. I don’t think I’ll go in the morning.”
“Why didn’t you say so before?” She looked at him reproachfully. “Then I would have hired Maria for the day. Now I’ll have to spend a lot of time in the kitchen when I’ll want to be with you.”
“How would you behave if I were to stay home all the time?”
“How would I behave?” She gleamed at him with sudden sweet tremulous humour through the mistiness of her eyes. “I’d never come near you. I’d make calls and belong to all the societies in the place and not get back until after dinner-time. I’d go next door in the evening and leave you home reading. I’d behave the way other women do whose husbands come home every night. I expect I’d get tired of seeing you around. Don’t you believe it?” The gaiety in her tone flickered and went out, as if she were very, very tired. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I know you’ve been considering that offer—youdidn’t tell me of it—and you’ve refused it. I’ve been watching you. And I don’t see how I’m going to let you go this time.”
“Annie!”
“Oh, forgive, forgive me! I’ll be brave again, I will indeed. But I’ve been through so much lately that just now—it gets so hard—so hard”—her voice was almost inaudible—“harder and harder. I’ve been praying—andpraying.”
“Annie, dear, you’re all wrong. I’m not going to-morrow or Tuesday either. Can’t you guess?”
She lifted her head from his shoulder and pushed him from her. “How queer you act! What do youmean?”
He tried to bend a jovial gaze upon her.
“I’m not going to travel any more, Annie, ever. You were all wrong; I’ve taken the offer. I went to see Mrs. Brenner’s brother in town. I tell you that little woman in Wisconsin did you a mighty good turn! And I’ve taken the chances. I’ve figured it all out.” He tried to gather her to him, but she drew back. “Why, Annie, aren’t you glad? What makes you shake so?”
“You are going to staynow?”
“Yes, always. I’m going to look after my children and my—sweet—wife. WhyAnnie! Oh, you poor,poorgirl, has it been as bad asthat?”
He tried once more to draw her to him, but she eluded his grasp and was gone. He heard her light footfall above and then there was only silence.
He sat there by the table for a few minutes with a book before him, as he smoked, but he did not read. Once he went to the door and called “Annie!” softly, that little Margaret might not be wakened, and yet again, “Annie! Come down; I want to read to you,” but there was no response.
He lingered a moment hesitatingly, andthen went up the stairs himself, his feet pausing half-reluctantly on the steps. Thrice he halted, and then went on again into the room where she was a kneeling figure by the bed, her arms spread out upon it, and her hair falling over her shoulders. She raised her head momentarily with a backward glance of rapt joy at him before burying it again in the coverlet, and as his footfalls stopped on the threshold she held out one arm appealingly as if to encircle him beside her.
“No—no!” he said painfully. “No, Annie! I—I can’t—it wouldn’t be right. Annie, you don’t wantme, dear; you don’t want——No!”
Her white hand still mutely pleaded. Even at the very gate of heaven she could not be satisfied without him. He drew nearer, and a little nearer. Then, somehow, he had stumbled down awkwardly into the warm enclosure of her arm, and hid his face within her bosom.
“Mrs. Ranney is going away to-morrow with the children to visit her mother; did you hear that? It will be a nice change for her, she’s alone so much, with Mr. Ranney nearly every evening at the Rowing Club or at that old hotel. Goodness knows how late he’ll stay out after she’s gone! I shouldn’t think she’d like itat all.”
The four women who were neighbours on the Ridge were coming back from a meeting of the Vittoria Colonna Club, picking their way in gala attire over the puddles left by a shower, with the aid of the two parallel see-sawing boards that made the suburban sidewalk. Mrs. Stone, who had spoken, was tall and large-featured; she wore a startlingly wide, high-plumed hat that seemed to have no connection with her head, rearing into strange shapes with the wind that blew from the sea.
“Perhaps she’s glad to have him out of the house,” suggested the fair, prettily garbed little Mrs. Spicer, who talked very fast. “Not that he’s dissipated at all, I don’t mean that,but I think he’s one of those horrid domineering men you’d hate to have around. I don’t believe he ever gives her a cent of money—heis always so well-dressed, but she hasn’t had a new thing since she came here a year ago. I’d like to see Ernest Spicer treat me that way!”
“Mrs. Ranney says she likes him to take a walk after dinner; that he’s used to it,” interpolated the handsome, brown-eyed Mrs. Laurence, with a characteristic lift of her white chin. “He often asks her to go with him.”
“Oh, yes, so she says!” Mrs. Stone made a clutch for her hat. “Of course sheactssatisfied; you can’t tell anything by that. She’s a dear little woman, but I don’t believe there’s much to her; he’s a great deal above her as far as brains go, that’s evident. Keep over this side, Mrs. Spicer, that maple is just dripping. But there’s very little warmth or cordiality in Mrs. Ranney as far as I can see; she doesn’t respond as you’d think she would. I ran over the other day when she happened to be out and Ann let me see her preserve-closet. When I spoke to her the next day about the number of jars she had, she almost made me feel as if I had been intrusive. Some people have that unvarying manner, always pleasant but nothingmore. It wears onme, I know, and I shouldn’t wonder if it did on Mr. Ranney; I think he feels a lack in her.”
“Oh, it’s such a great subject!” said little Mrs. Spicer with earnest volubility, “it’s such a great subject, that of being attractive to one’s husband. Miss Liftus spoke so feelingly about it the other day at the Club, she says that women are so engrossed in their own affairs that they neglect to adapt themselves to the husband’s life; she thinks intelligent coöperation in business matters should be the key-note. It’s a lovely idea; I know a woman who is in her husband’s office, and they enjoy it so much, but”—Mrs. Spicer paused wistfully—“it’s very hard to help a man when he’s in stocks, like Ernest Spicer; Ican notseem to remember quite what it is when he’s on a margin; I’ve had it explained to me so many times I am ashamed to ask him any more; I seem to understand it just for a minute, and then it goes. I don’t know what’s the reason, but Ernest never wants to talk about business with me.”
“Don’t you think husbands are very different?” asked Mrs. Budd with a slow distinctness, as if she were reading from a primer; her large, unwavering blue eyes pinned your butterfly attention fast in spite of involuntary writhings. “I know my husbandand Mr. Ranney are very different, they like such different things for breakfast. I am very particular about Mr. Budd’s meals, and he depends so much on his breakfast. He always begins on——”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” interrupted Mrs. Stone impatiently, she knew Mr. Budd’sménuby heart. “You can adapt and adapt and they’ll never know it, but they do know when they’re comfortable. Nobody can say that Mr. Stone isn’t comfortable in his own house. When I see a man like Mr. Ranney leaving his home every evening you may be sure there’s a screw loose somewhere. That little woman is making a great mistake, but it’s the kind of thing you’d find it difficult to speak about.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t speak about it for the world!” cried Mrs. Laurence in horror. “As Mrs. Budd says very truly, people are so different.” Yet she found herself wondering afterwards. She was sure that the Ranneys were fond of each other in a way, though she wouldn’t have cared for the way. On what hinge hung Mr. Ranney’s neglect of his wife? A lack in her, as Mrs. Stone had said, selfishness on his part—coldness on hers? Mrs. Laurence herself didn’t need to discuss her attraction for Mr. Laurence—in their case it was something inherent, not anaccident of adjustment; it interpenetrated every condition of life. She had put a blue bow in her hair when she dressed, because she had a theory that a woman should look her nicest for her husband, but as a matter of fact she knew that Will thought her beautiful in anything she wore.
Mrs. Ranney always looked nice, there could be no two opinions on that. She was a slight, very young woman, with a heart-shaped, childish face, that wore an expression of gentle, matronly dignity, repelling to familiarity. She had serious, flower-blue eyes, and quantities of waving, chestnut-brown hair coiled back so tightly from a broad, low forehead that you hardly realized at first that when it was let down it formed a beautiful, shimmering cloak around her that nearly touched the floor. Her whole personality was intensely feminine. In any demand of the day her simple gowns became her, yet were never too fine for the work her busy fingers found to do, for Mrs. Ranney was a housewife and a sewer of garments; she even helped vegetables as well as flowers to grow with a quiet inborn capability that showed in whatever she undertook. She was known to be tender-hearted; the suffering of others seemed to hurt her very flesh. When that little bruiser, Herbert Ranney,fell and bumped his head, Mrs. Ranney would fly white and breathless from the house, and clasp him to her breast in a wild effort to fight off this thing that was attacking her child. She couldn’tstandit that a child should suffer.
Yet she had, at unexpected moments, a roguish sense of humour that set her serious blue eyes dancing mischievously; when she got laughing, as had happened, half inaudibly, so that she was helpless to stop herself, she was as provocatively charming as a lovely child. Her husband had been once heard to state that he had never expected to marry, having lived until the age of thirty-six contentedly a bachelor, but that when he met “that rascal there,” she bowled him over on the spot. It certainly was a fact that, though she was so hard to get acquainted with, every man admired Mrs. Ranney.
Women, as a rule, did not care much for Mr. Ranney, perhaps, because he used towards them a gallant deference so evidently given them as a sex that it piqued by ignoring any personal claim to his attention. In appearance he was large and heavily built, smooth-shaven, with fine intellectual features, and hair and brows of blue black; his square chin was almost aggressively assertive. Aman of semi-nautical tastes, he had at times almost a quarter-deck manner alike to barking dogs, poaching cows and trivial or unauthorized approach from his fellows. With the men who were his friends he was reputed to be a charming companion, witty, genial, and whole-hearted; the wives took the fact on hearsay, with some suspicion. Mrs. Laurence felt a distinct sense of resentment as, sitting on her piazza after dinner she saw him coming up the steps, natty and immaculate in his blue flannels, pipe in hand—he was actually going to leave his wife alone on the eve of her departure. He doffed the peaked, gold-banded cap of his boating club.
“Good-evening, Mrs. Laurence. Is Laurence anywhere around?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, he’s never far off when I’m here,” returned Mrs. Laurence incautiously, with what she felt was almost too much meaning for politeness; she saw Mr. Ranney’s left eyebrow go up a little with quizzical effect; it made her feel hot. “Your wife leaves to-morrow, I believe. How is she to-night after all her packing?”
“Mrs. Ranney is quite well, I think,” said Mr. Ranney in a tone that in spite of its apparent politeness placed a wedge between himself and his personal affairs, though Mrs. Laurence still persevered.
“You will miss her dreadfully after she goes.”
“Oh, Minda will look after me,” said Mr. Ranney coolly. Minda was a capable old coloured woman who worked for the neighbourhood. “Hello, Laurence!” His voice changed to one of good fellowship. “Want to walk down with me and take a look at Harker’s boat?”
“No, I think I’d better not,” said Mr. Laurence lingeringly, his long figure coming into view in the semi-darkness of the summer evening. He really did not care to go, “the boys” bored him; an uncut magazine, with his wife for audience had been pleasantly ahead of him after the work of the day; yet such is the power of attraction from man to man, so much greater than that from woman to woman, that he almost felt as if he wanted to be Ranney’s companion if Ranney wanted him. It was the Call of the Wild. Past experience warned him clear of those mistakenly jocular words, “my wife won’t let me”—he put his hand caressingly on the back of her chair as he said: “I don’t think I’ll leave Anna this evening, we’re finishing a serial together.”
“Oh, very well,” responded Mr. Ranney. He put on his cap as he went down the steps again, lit his pipe, and walked off with thatair of jaunty and masterful freedom that in its way was an offense to the marital traditions of the street; it subtly discredited his wife, it seemed to undermine the generous, dual obligations of a home. And to-night——
“Pig!” said Mrs. Laurence, with an indignation that hurled the adjective after him like a stone. “If you didn’t consider me any more than that, Will—— Wait a moment.” She ran impulsively over to the next house, quickly forestalling the invitation she saw on Mrs. Ranney’s lips, as the latter came to the door in her white gown, a book in her hand.
“No, I thank you, I can’t come in—Mr. Laurence is waiting for me at home. How tired you look!Won’tyou come over and sit with us a while? We’d love so much to have you—and I’ll make some lemonade. We feel that we won’t see anything of you for so long.”
“Oh, thank you!” said Mrs. Ranney. She looked surprised. “You’re very kind, but I think I’ll stay here and rest, if you don’t mind; I thought I’d just read a little before I went to bed; you see I have everything packed, and we don’t go until after lunch to-morrow.” She seemed to cast around for something more to say. “I read a good deal in the evenings when Mr. Ranney is out; I haven’t any time during the day.”
“It takes a great deal of time to keep up with the magazines,” sympathized Mrs. Laurence.
“I don’t know much about the magazines—Mr. Ranney doesn’t care for them. I’ve been reading the Bible through this year, I always intended to when I had a chance,” said Mrs. Ranney simply. “I found it very interesting. Mr. Ranney thinks a good deal of Homer, too; I’ve just finished the ‘Odyssey.’Won’tyou come in?”
“No, no, I can’t,” returned Mrs. Laurence hastily. “Is that the ‘Iliad’ you have there?”
“No,” said Mrs. Ranney. Her eyes gleamed dancingly with sudden mischief; she leaned forward with roguish defiance. “I’ll tell you what this is—it’s the ‘Thompson Street Poker Club!’” She relapsed into one of her lovely, helpless fits of half-inaudible laughter in which Mrs. Laurence joined perforce, and the two women held on to each other for mutual support, in feminine fashion.
Mrs. Ranney went away the next day at one o’clock, trim and pretty in her blue travelling suit; the women who flocked to bid her good-bye were profuse in offers of caring for Mr. Ranney, but she only thanked them with gentle unresponsiveness, and said that Minda would look after him quite well.
It was strange what a difference her departure seemed to make at once in the aspect of the little house; a shadow had fallen over it, a visible grayness of desolation touched it, mistlike; the embowering vines drooped like the adjuncts of a cemetery; there was a curious deadness about the very hang of the curtains, one could see from without, and the half-lowered shades. The very fact of the front doors being closed set the seal of strangeness upon it. A spirit, so vitally sweet, so informing that even inanimate objects reflected it, had departed and left only the cold and empty shell behind, not alone to the intimate heart, but to even the casual observer.
“Really, I hate to look over there,” confided Mrs. Spicer to Mrs. Stone. “Minda came into our kitchen a while ago, she said she could hardly stay in the place, she felt just as if Mrs. Ranney and the children were dead. I’m sorry she felt that way. I had the most peculiar feeling myself when I saw her go. Forebodings are so—— Well, of course, you don’t believe in them, but you don’t like them. I’ve just taken some of my nerve tonic. I can hardly blame Mr. Ranney if he stays out till all hours now.”
The watching neighbourhood could hardly believe it when eight o’clock struck—half-pasteight—and no Mr. Ranney walked jauntily down the street, immaculately attired, with his gold-banded yachting cap on the side of his head. He was known to have come home to his dinner, and afterwards the smoke of his pipe had risen from the verandah. Laurence, urged thereto by his wife, lounged finally up to the door-step to find Ranney sitting there in a disreputable pongee coat, with an old, gray felt basin on his head, smoking, with his shoulders hunched forward and his eyes fixed sombrely before him. He only nodded at Laurence’s greeting, and made room on the steps beside him.
“There’s a chair up there, if you want it.”
“No, this does well enough,” said Laurence. “How is the election going on?”
“The election?” Mr. Ranney’s eyes sought for a connecting clue. “Oh, yes, of course, the Club election. I don’t know how it’s getting on, I don’t care a hang how it goes. Did you see the weather report to-night, Laurence? They say there’s a storm brewing up the coast, where my wife’s gone. Those steamers are nothing but rotten old tubs; it’s only a question when they’ll go to Davy Jones if a storm hits them. ThePeerlessfoundered three years back, you remember. When I think of that girl and her two babies out there to-night in that oldPatriot, with nothing but a plank between them and the bottom—I tell you I’ll be glad to get a wire to-morrow night and know they’re all right. I’ve gone all to pieces thinking of it; lost my nerve completely.”
“Couldn’t they have gone by rail?” asked Mr. Laurence practically.
“Oh, yes, they could, but—they’d have to stop off on the way, and then—— Well, Iwantedher to, but she thought it took too much money.”
“But if you insisted on her taking it?”
“Insisted on her taking it! Why, man alive, she has it all, that’s the trouble; I hand all the funds over to that rascal, else we’d never have a penny. Oh, there’s always plenty for me when I want it, but she won’t spend it on herself. I can’t make her. But I’ll get even with her some day, you see if I don’t. I’ll plunge her into extravagance. What’s that shutter slamming for? I tell you I don’t like the way the wind is rising. When I think of that girl and her two babies——”
“Why don’t you come over on our piazza and sit awhile?” suggested the visitor; to keep rolling over and over on a wheel of marital sympathy embarrassed him.
“No, I thank you, I rather think I’ll turn in early,” said Ranney, rising as the otherhad done. Mr. Laurence hurried home to his wife, childishly eager to startle her with his piece of news. Ranney was going to bed at nine-of-the-clock.
“Well, I’m glad he’s missed her for one evening,” she retorted viciously. “It won’t last, though.”
But the next night when she happened to stroll over to the dividing fence in the half gloom, she discerned a figure sitting on the steps. He rose and came slowly forward, as she spoke, removing the old felt basin from his head perfunctorily.
“It looks very lonely over here without Mrs. Ranney and the children,” she said.
“Yes, it does,” answered Mr. Ranney. He knocked his pipe ruminatively on the top rail. “I didn’t realize before what a helpless being a man is without his wife; I never can remember where she keeps the clean towels.”
“I suppose she felt that she needed the change,” suggested Mrs. Laurence, a little stiffly.
“Oh, I persuaded her to go. She didn’t want to leave me, but a girl has to see her family sometimes; it’s only right.” He took a long breath. “It’s onlyright. When the letter came I said she ought to go, I said: ‘Jean,Ican get along; your place this summeris with your father and mother.’ She’s only been home once since I took her away—her family don’t like it very much. I had a hard time to get the scamp—regular stern-chase; but a man thinks a good bit more of a girl when he has to work to get her.”
“Yes, indeed,” responded Mrs. Laurence, though she didn’t think so at all—she adored the dear knowledge that she and Will had loved within five minutes by the watch. And to marry a woman and never care like this until she was gone! The thought gave her a shiver, as she confided later to her own husband, with her hand in his. Suppose Mr. Ranney’s appreciation of his little lonely wife had come too late?
Hereafter, night after night, the wondering Ridge beheld the deserted husband, disreputably attired, sitting upon his piazza steps or pacing up and down the narrow walk, keeping guard like a faithful dog who has been left to watch. Every evening, some man, urged thereto by his wife, strolled over to keep him company, though the rambling conversation always harked back to Mrs. Ranney through every masculine theme. The street grew to feel a distinct proprietorship that gave a sense of daily responsibility, and it grew even stronger, when, as time went on, he became gradually taciturn andmoody, with a manner that said plainly that he preferred his own company to that of any friends, however well-meaning.
“Well, I’m glad Mrs. Ranney is coming home next week,” said Mrs. Spicer feelingly, as she and Mrs. Laurence stopped on a street corner in the village for a heart-to-heart talk. “I don’t know what would become of that poor man if she stayed away much longer. How much we will have to tell her!”
“Minda says he hardly eats a thing,” said Mrs. Laurence.
“He ate a little of the pudding I sent over last night. His devotion is really beautiful, but I don’t quite like his state of mind, it makes me anxious, and his appearance is so——” Mrs. Spicer paused uncomfortably. “I wish he’d shave! Ernest Spicer says he hates to be seen in the street with him.”
“Well, she’ll be home soon,” said Mrs. Laurence.
That was a fearsome night indeed, and one long to be remembered, the night before Mrs. Ranney was expected home. A wild September gale sent the deluge of rain aslant through the darkness, swirling it over lawns and among the trees into a river-torrent that carried all before it. It was a shrieking gale that tore up the houses with maniac fingers, wresting off shutters and chimney tops, draggingdown trees in its giant fury, howling and whining between the shrieks like a forest of spectral wolves rushing ever faster and faster upon their prey. The rain beat in through window-casing and foundation, front doors flew open wide at the hand of the tempest. The steeple of the church came crashing down; the orphan asylum was unroofed; the affrighted fancy soared into realms of terror with the far-clanging sound of the fire-bell, caught and lost again amid the clamour of the storm.
No one slept on the Ridge that night; mothers sat by the bedside of their little children, fathers patrolled the house to see that timbers held, and the fire was kept low. There was not a household near the Ranneys’ in which some member had not said awesomely to another:
“And she is out on the ocean!” Imagination pictured the husband (as indeed Minda described him afterwards), walking up and down, up and down, up and down, with savage, miserable eyes, all night long, desperately fighting with agonized thoughts.
But, with the first sullen rays of the morning light he was gone. The tempest had abated into a fog-filled, engulfing rain, that washed all the landscape into a dirty yellow. The street on the Ridge was flooded from endto end, so that a canoe might paddle down it; but the women who lived on the same side of the way ventured with rain-coats and overshoes into each others’ houses to compare notes of the night, and to commune tearfully on the news of the morning papers. It was rumoured that thePatriothad foundered with all on board. “That girl with her two babies”—suppose she could never know. All that day men and women stood in line by the offices of the Nor-Coast Steamship Company, waiting, waiting, waiting for the word that meant life, or the losing of it. The “extras” with scare-lines about thePatriotwith letters a foot long, were thrust before the eyes, or called in the ears of that waiting throng that thinned and fluctuated and filled up again. The extras even reached the Ridge. But at five o’clock Mr. Laurence brought home word that thePatriot’spassengers had been transferred from the sinking steamer to the ship of another line, and were expected in by seven.
It was something after ten when the travellers arrived in one of the station cabs. The dwellers in the different houses had been excitedly on the lookout ever since dinner, congregating in Mrs. Laurence’s drawing-room, the women overflowing with excited sentiment, and the men, excited too, discussingthe different aspects of the disaster. Minda had been overwhelmed with offers of help, and numberless dishes sent over to her for the refreshment of the wayfarers—jellies, creamed chicken, biscuit and layer cake, and many instructions given.
“Be sure and have the coffee just ready to put on,” Mrs. Stone had directed, in the very kitchen itself. “Mr. Ranney will feel the need of it as well as Mrs. Ranney after all the strain he has been through; and be sure and keep the two kettles boiling. I have sent for my rubber water-bags, as well as Mrs. Spicer’s, so that in case of chill or collapse we may have enough. One cannot tell what the effect of all that terrible exposure may have been. People have had their arms and legs frozen off in a shipwreck,” said Mrs. Stone, with a slight confusion as to the time of year.
The house was alight and welcoming as the carriage, its lamps leering mistily through the fog, lurched to a halt in the splashing flood by the curb; half a dozen hands were reached out to carry the sleeping children, and the luggage, and help the travellers.
“Why, how kind of you all to be here!” said Mrs. Ranney’s sweet, low voice, in gentle surprise. She looked younger than one remembered as they all crowded into the little drawing-room; though her beautiful hairwas slightly dishevelled under her hat, and her face was pale, her brow was as serene as ever.
“Oh, we’resoglad to have you back again,” cried Mrs. Spicer, with hysterical inflection, embracing the newcomer. “I don’t know what Mr. Ranney would havedoneif you’d stayed away another day!”
“Oh, no trouble aboutme,” disclaimed Mr. Ranney loftily. He deposited a bundle of shawls in the centre of the room as he spoke and took them up again restlessly. “Where do you want these put, Jean?—I told Mrs. Ranney that I could have got along without her just as well as not for another two weeks, but she wanted to get home.”
“Yes, I thought I’d better,” assented Mrs. Ranney.
“You’ve been through somuch,” said Mrs. Laurence pitifully. Her hand and Mrs. Ranney’s gripped, unseen. “To be in that storm on that sinking ship, with those two babies—I can’t begin to tell you how we’ve felt about it; how anxious——” her voice broke.
“Now, now, now, a little blow like that amounts to nothing,” said Mr. Ranney, with irritating contemptuousness. He had the offensive quarter-deck manner. “The passengers were transferred from one steamer to another simply for convenience in transportation.There was not the slightest danger at any time; nothing in theworldto be excited about!”
“No indeed,” corroborated Mrs. Ranney. She followed the group of women who hovered towards the kitchen a moment later, her large, flower-blue eyes bent earnestly upon them. “What is it you were just saying, Mrs. Spicer? No, I don’t think you’d better undress the children. I’ll just let them sleep as they are, after slipping off their shoes; they’re so tired. Mr. Ranney and Minda will carry them up-stairs. Please, Mrs. Stone, don’t get any coffee for us—it’s just askind—I appreciate all the trouble you’ve taken, but we had dinner at the Astor House before we came out; we couldn’t eat a thing now. And would you mind not saying anything more about the voyage? My husband doesn’t like to talk about it. I think a good night’s rest is what we all need.”
“Well, it’s evident they’ve no more use forus,” said Mrs. Stone with a sigh of acquiescence as the sympathizers stood once more without the portals; the position was felt to be symbolic, yet after the first bewildered drop from exaltation there was only a faint offense left. Mrs. Stone voiced the general sentiment as she continued:
“There’s one thing certain, Mr. Ranneywill never forget these last six weeks; I don’t care how hetalks, he can’t keep his eyes off her face. He has found out what his wife is, at last.”
So deep was this feeling of certainty, that almost an electric, shuddering wave of horror passed over the Ridge the next evening when Mr. Ranney, natty and immaculate, his gold-banded yachting cap on the side of his head, pipe in hand, swung jauntily out of his front gate into the broad, white moonlight that lay along the street. Only Mrs. Laurence, from the contradictory evidence of her own deep love, had a sudden, sweet, half-smile-and-tearful divination, that he hadn’t had the heart for freedom before, with his wife away. Her dear presence now was so pervasive that the whole town seemed like home to him because she was in it.
“Did you order the coal for the furnace yesterday?”
“No, by George! I forgot it.” Mr. Laurence half paused, his tall figure arrested in the act of putting on his overcoat in the front hall, to which his wife had followed him, napkin in hand, from the breakfast table.
“Oh,Will! and I told you the day before, so that you’d have plenty of time.” Mrs. Laurence’s brows expressed tragic disappointment, her tone, if affectionate, was despairing. “I never saw any one like you, you never remember a thing I ask you to, any more. You don’t seem to have a mind for anything but that old law business. You’llhaveto order the coal this morning.”
“But, Nan”—Mr. Laurence, with his overcoat on and hat in hand, bent his fine, thin face over his watch. “I don’t see how I can, possibly; I’ve an appointment in town, and I must go around by Herkimer Street on my way to the station to see if Lalor’s got the papers he promised me.”
“I thought you were going there to-night.” Mrs. Laurence held the door-knob fast.
“I am, but I want the papers first. Couldn’t you send one of the maids to order the coal?”
“Yes, I could, but I won’t,” said his wife. Her dark eyes flashed, her tone had the conscious defiance of the loved woman, who can trade on her charm enough to be belligerent if she feels like it. “It’s got to the place where I see to every single article we eat or wear or use in this housebutthe coal! And I just won’t order that. I told you about it three days ago and wemusthave it this morning, with all this snow on the ground, whether it makes you late for your appointment or not.”
“Then let me go now,” said Mr. Laurence tersely, putting aside the arms with which she sought to encircle him as he swooped hastily over to kiss her on his way out. The open door let in a rush of cold air, as almost visibly keen and sparkling as a scimitar, that clove the lungs for a moment, before it was closed behind him, and his wife went back to the breakfast table where her ten-year-old son awaited her to glean the information about his history lesson which he should have looked up for himself the daybefore. It was, perhaps, the trouble with Mrs. Laurence that her brightness and her intelligence served to help only by taking the whole burden of a thing upon herself; it might be indeed the reason why Mr. Laurence’s official duties in the household had dwindled down to the ordering of coal, and the minor courtesy of getting a glass of water for her himself before she went to bed; it might be because she had never been able to see him do anything without doing it too. In the days when he had ostensibly locked up for the night she always followed around after him to see that the windows and doors were really bolted, so that gradually he left it all to her; if he poked the fire she snatched up the poker from where he had laid it to do the work over again. If he were sitting down she carried her own chair near the lamp rather than draw his attention to her need. Yet, sometimes, she had begun to have a little hurt feeling that he let her do so much. As to this matter of the coal—she could have sent Teresa to Harner’s, of course—it was before that revelling era of house-to-house telephoning on the Ridge—yet even at the thought she stiffened a little. There are certain unnoticed beams and girders that hold up an edifice; if one of these is out of plumb the whole building sags.
If Will really refused to order the coal he couldn’t be quite her Will any more.
Mr. Laurence, leaving the house, had debated momently in which of two opposite directions he should proceed, then he turned up Herkimer Street; to get the papers from Lalor was part of that “business” which, to a man, comes first. The air did not mellow after that initial plunge into it, it became almost unbearably keen not only in the blue shadows that lay along the freezing snow, but even where the sunshine set it glittering. Half of the walks were shovelled to make a narrow, icy pathway, but where there were unoccupied lots the drifts lay white and high, broken only by the deep leg-prints of commuters. As he strode swiftly on men shot from several houses; a very fat man, a tall one, a short one, their black figures sprinting madly in line across the white expanse towards the sound of a train slowing into the station.
Mr. Laurence’s brows contracted unconsciously—he ought to be on that train himself. If it were not for getting that paper from Lalor—the case was an important one, a good deal of Mr. Laurence’s future depended on it; he had taken it up rather against the advice of his closest friends, they thought it would be impossible to win it, buthe had that little inner conviction, that intangible sense of mastery that often spells success. It gave him a nervous power that on occasion seemed to have no end, but just because it was a matter of highly strung nerves a tiny obstruction jarred them out of use; the tension was gone beyond immediate recall—it might take hours or days even to get the instrument back to that pitch—it might never get there. It was sometimes almost in the nature of self-preservation when he shut himself off from the minor pressure, the minor affairs. In this present instance, as he strode along his mind was bent on Lalor, whose former subordinate connection with the incriminated corporation seemed to have been forgotten by every one but himself. Lalor was a shifty, uncertain genius, not to be depended on, yet from whom some central facts would have to be wrested; the trouble was to keep hold of him; he required constant bolstering up.
“Why, Mrs. Lalor!”
Laurence stopped short as he nearly collided with a very slight woman, blown at him at the turn of the corner by a sweeping gale that devastated the sunshine. “Here, turn around for a moment until that blast is over.”
He steadied her where she stood pantingand breathless, looking down at the top of her light-bluechiffonhat, which had rather a pale and chilly early-morning effect in connection with a tight-fitting tan jacket. In lieu of furs she wore a white, pink-flowered silk scarf tied around her throat, the long fringed ends depending below her waist. Her figure was that of a young girl, but when she raised her small, long-chinned face you saw that she was considerably older; there were innumerable fine wrinkles around her pretty eyes—which had a soft haze over them, as if she had cried a great deal—and her abundant fair hair seemed a shade or two lighter than any nature could have intended it. She had an indescribable effect of artificiality counteracted rather appealingly by something bright and courageous in her gaze. Opinion halted about Mrs. Lalor, who, as a Southern woman was not only alien in habit to the Northern community to which she had lately come, but was also looked upon debatingly by the small society of Southerners in the place, usually hospitably ready to welcome any one from home.
It was unquestionable that she came of a good family, which counted for very much, but it was rumoured that she had married against the family wishes. No one knew anything of Mr. Lalor—who, in appearance,was a tall, handsome man with a drooping, reddish-brown mustache—except that he was unpleasingly dissipated and always in difficulties; it seemed to discredit his wife in some way that she lived with him. She had, besides a little flirting, attractive manner to men, a sort of an echo of past belleship, which might have been all right if she had a nice husband, but was felt to be a little stepping over the line when she hadn’t. A few women averred that there was something in her that they really liked, of whom tender-hearted little Mrs. Ramsey was one, and her neighbour, Mrs. Laurence another. The latter was by nature both generous and romantic, and with an unselfish, intelligent insight into lives that were different from her own.
There was a trustfulness in Mrs. Lalor’s attitude now which appealed to Laurence. He let go his hold of her as the wind subsided, to say:
“What are you out so early for this bitter morning? I’m just on my way to your house. Is Lalor in?”
“If you were going for those papers”—Mrs. Lalor began tugging at the breast of her jacket for a visible package—“My husband meant to bring them around last night, but he’s in bed—with a cold.” Every one knew what Mr. Lalor’s “colds” implied. “I thoughtyou might need them to-day; I was so afraid I wouldn’t catch you in time.” She drew a sharp breath that showed how she had been hurrying.
“It was awfully good of you,” said Mr. Laurence warmly, as they turned down another street together. “Lalor will be well enough to be seen this evening, I hope?”
“Yes, I’m sure he will,” said Mrs. Lalor, in a tone that guaranteed it. “But I want to ask you, Mr. Laurence”—her face became suddenly fixed and expressionless—“in seeing that you get the evidence you want, my husband will not be—prominentin any way?”
“His name need not appear at all,” said Laurence promptly. His arm hovered spasmodically near her as she went slipping and lurching alternately beside him—“Takecare! You’d better not walk any farther.”
“Oh, I have to go as far as Harner’s to order a ton of furnace coal.”
“I’ll stop and order it for you, if that’s all,” said Mr. Laurence. His eyes, lightly comprehensive, took note of the clock in the church tower. “I’ve got a good five minutes before my train. You go straight home, Mrs. Lalor.”
He looked down protectingly to meet her upward gaze, which was relieved and coquettishand yet, somehow, a little sad, as she answered:
“Well, if you will——! I never do anything for myself if there’s a gentleman to do it for me.”
He raised his hat before starting on, and when he looked back she waved her hand to him. The large advancing figure of Mrs. Stone—on her way home from wresting the early chop from the butcher—amply furred and heavily goloshed, her beaver hat as well as her face swathed in a thick, brown veil, threw into high relief the tawdry lightness of Mrs. Lalor’s attire.
He recollected that if he ever objected to a thin jacket on his wife she invariably professed to be “warm underneath.” Mrs. Lalor might also be warm underneath, but he had a masculine preference for having peoplelookwarm in winter-time.
Poor little woman! He shook his head as he thought of Lalor, with a quick compression of his lips. Then a long whistle from up the track sent him tearing ahead in the teeth of the wind, to thrust his head at last inside of Harner’s office and call out:
“Send a ton of furnace coal to Mrs. Lalor, 36 Herkimer Street, and be quick about it,” before settling down into that swift run back that carried him swinging up by the guardrail onto the slippery steps of the last car, and out into that region where women and household matters are not.
The first thing Mrs. Laurence said when she came in at lunch time, after a morning spent abroad, was:
“How freezing cold this house is! Hasn’t the coal come yet, Teresa?”
“No, ma’am.”
“How provoking!” Mrs. Laurence stopped short in disgust. “I never saw such a place; it’s as much as your life’s worth to get anything delivered when you want it. Is that Timothy I hear in the cellar now?” Timothy was the furnace man of the Ridge. “Tell him not to let the fire go entirely out; we’ll have to manage it some way. If he comes back between two and three the coal will certainly be here then.”
But two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock passed, and no coal wagon backed up to the sidewalk in front, of the Laurences, though a succession of them passed funereally through the white street,en routefor more fortunate householders. At a quarter after four she gave a joyful exclamation—one had stopped, at last, opposite her door; but the joy was short-lived—the wagon honked further along, tentatively, until it stopped at Mrs. Spicer’s half-way down the block.
In a minute more Mrs. Laurence could see the dark legs of alternate men outlined against the drifts, as they carried buckets of the precious fuel to the opening in the cellar at the side of the Spicer villa. Something seemed to shatter through her—an iconoclastic blast, that she had been striving to shut out. Could Will have possibly forgotten between the house and the station? But no, that could not be!