"That's all, my friend," said Josh. He returned to his wife's side. She was all confusion and doubt again. Here they were back in civilization, and her man of the woods was straightway running amuck. What should she do? What COULD she do? WHAT had she got herself into by marrying?
But he was speaking. "My dear," he was saying in his sharp, insistent voice, that at once aroused and enfeebled the nerves, "I must talk fast, as the train comes in fifteen or twenty minutes—the train for Chicago—for Minneapolis—for Wayne—for home—OUR home."
She started up from the seat, pale, quivering, her hands clinched against her bosom.
"For home," he repeated, fixing her with his resolute, green-blue eyes. "Please, sit down."
She sank to the seat. "Do you mean—" she began, but her faltering voice could not go on.
"I've resigned from office," said he, swift and calm. "I've told the President I'll not take the Attorney-Generalship. I've telegraphed your people at Lenox that we're not coming. And I'm going home to run for Governor. My telegrams assure me the nomination, and, with the hold I've got on the people, that means election, sure pop. I make my first speech day after to-morrow afternoon—with you on the platform beside me."
"You are mistaken," she said in a cold, hard voice. "You—"
"Now don't speak till you've thought, and don't think till I finish. As you yourself said, Washington's no place for us—at present. Anyhow, the way to get there right is to be sent there from the people—by the people. You are the wife of a public man, but you've had no training."
"I—" she began.
"Hear me first," he said, between entreaty and command. "You think I'm the one that's got it all to learn. Think again. The little tiddledywinks business that I've got to learn—all the value there is in the mass of balderdash about manners and dress—I can learn it in a few lessons. You can teach it to me in no time. But what you've got to learn—how to be a wife, how to live on a modest income, how to take care of me, and help me in my career, how to be a woman instead of, largely, a dressmaker's or a dancing-master's expression for lady-likeness—to learn all that is going to take time. And we must begin at once; for, as I told you, the house is afire."
She opened her lips to speak.
"No—not yet," said he. "One thing more. You've been thinking things about me. Well, do you imagine this busy brain of mine hasn't been thinking a few things about you? Why, Margaret, you need me even more than I need you, though I need you more than I'd dare try to tell you. You need just such a man as me to give you direction and purpose—REAL backbone. Primping and preening in carriages and parlors—THAT isn't life. It's the frosting on the cake. Now, you and I, we're going to have the cake itself. Maybe with, maybe without the frosting. BUT NOT THE FROSTING WITHOUT THE CAKE, MARGARET!"
"So!" she exclaimed, drawing a long breath when he had ended. "So! THIS is why you chose that five o'clock train and sent Selina back. You thought to—"
He laughed as if echoing delight from her; he patted her enthusiastically on the knee. "You've guessed it! Go up head! I didn't want you to have time to say and do foolish things."
She bit her lip till the blood came. Ringing in her ears and defying her efforts to silence them were those words of his about the cake and the frosting—"the cake, maybe with, maybe without frosting; BUT NOT THE FROSTING WITHOUT THE CAKE!" She started to speak; but it was no interruption from him that checked her, for he sat silent, looking at her with all his fiery strength of soul in his magnetic eyes. Again she started to speak; and a third time; and each time checked herself. This impossible man, this creator of impossible situations! She did not know how to begin, or how to go on after she should have begun. She felt that even if she had known what to say she would probably lack the courage to say it—that final-test courage which only the trained in self-reliance have. The door opened. A station attendant came in out of the frosty night and shouted:
"Chicago Express! Express for—Buffalo! Chicago! Minneapolis! St. Paul!—the Northwest!—the Far West! All—a—BOARD!"
Craig seized the handbags. "Come on, my dear!" he cried, getting into rapid motion.
She sat still.
He was at the door. "Come on," he said.
She looked appealingly, helplessly round that empty, lonely, strange station, its lights dim, its suggestions all inhospitable. "He has me at his mercy," she said to herself, between anger and despair. "How can I refuse to go without becoming the laughing-stock of the whole world?"
"Come on—Rita!" he cried. The voice was aggressive, but his face was deathly pale and the look out of his eyes was the call of a great loneliness. And she saw it and felt it. She braced herself against it; but a sob surged up in her throat—the answer of her heart to his heart's cry of loneliness and love.
"Chicago Express!" came in the train-caller's warning roar from behind her, as if the room were crowded instead of tenanted by those two only. "All aboard!... Hurry up, lady, or you'll get left!"
Get left!... Left!—the explosion of that hoarse, ominous voice seemed to blow Mrs. Joshua Craig from the seat, to sweep her out through the door her husband was holding open, and into the train for their home.
THE END