Mr. William Snow was at present in that preparatory stage of existence
known locally as going to Stevens; in other words, he was a daily
attendant at the institute of that name, situate on the heights of
Hoboken, in the State of New Jersey, and was destined to become one of
that army of young electricians who, in point of numbers, threaten to
over-run the earth. He wended his way to the college by train each
morning as far as the terminus, from thence taking the convenient
trolley. His arms were always full of books, from which he studied
fitfully as he journeyed.
Mr. Snow was slim and tall, being, in fact, as his mother and sisters
admiringly noted, six feet one, with long legs, narrow shoulders, and a
small round face of such an open, infantile character that his mother
often averred that it had changed in nothing since his babyhood, and
that a frilled cap framing his chubby visage would produce the same
effect as at that early stage. His name seemed to typify the purity of
his nature, as seen through this countenance so fair and fresh, so
blue-eyed and guileless, accentuated by the curls of light hair upon his
round white forehead. Mrs. Snow was wont to discourse upon her Williams
ingenuousness and his freedom from the usual faults of youth in a way
that sometimes taxed the gravity of the listener, for, in point of fact,
Billy was a young scapegrace whose existence ever since he was in short
clothes had been devoted to mischief and levity as much as the limits of
circumstance would allow. No one could tell how he had suffered from his
mothers exalted belief in him. She had forbidden him to play with
naughty boys whose mischievous pranks he had himself instigated; she had
accompanied him to school to point with tense indignation at the
injuries he had received from stones thrown by playmates at whom he had
had the first convincing shy; she had complained untiringly to parents
by letter, by his sisters, and by interview, of indignities offered to
the clothing and the person of her unoffending son. If Billy hadnt been
the whole-souled and genial boy that he was, he would have been made an
outlaw and an object of derision among his kind, but it was an
understood thing that, far from being responsible for his mothers
attitude, he writhed under it with an extorted obedience. A certain
loyalty to his parent, and also the tongue-tied position of youth toward
authority, made it impossible for him fully to state to her how far
below her estimate of him he really was; he bore it, instead, with the
meekness of an only son whose mother was a widow.
The fact that he was a born lover and had been intermittently
experiencing the tender passion since the age of seven, she regarded
only as an additional proof of his gentle disposition. She would have
liked him to be always in the society of girls instead of those rude
boys.
With added years Billys outward demeanor had changed in his daily
journey toward education. He no longer had scrimmages in the train with
school-fellows, in which books of tuition served as weapons of warfare;
he no longer harried the brakeman or climbed outside on the ferry-boat,
or was chided for outrageous noisiness by long-suffering commuters. But
the happy expression of his countenance was usually such a fixture that
its marked absence attracted the attention of his fellow-passengers one
day in the latter part of January. His face was gloomy and averted; he
would not talk. To cheerful questions as to what had disagreed with him,
or whether he was up against it again at Stevens, his replies were
unexpectedly brief, and evinced his desire to be let entirely alone. The
change had, in truth, come over him since entering the car, and was
caused by the sight of two figures in a seat ahead of him.
The figures were those of a man and a girl, and their conversation had a
peculiar air of absorption which seemed to make them alone together in
the crowd. Billy could see only the backs of this couple, save when one
turned a little sideways to the other, and the round curve of a cheek
and a fluff of fair hair became visible, or the bend of an aquiline nose
and a dark mustachethe nose and the mustache turned sideways much
oftener than the fairer profile. Once or twice Billy caught sight of a
pink throat and ear; on such occasions the girl bent her head and
fingered nervously at a music-roll she held upright in her hand, and
Billy swore under his breath.
When the train had rolled into the station, he went with the other
passengers as far as the door of the ferry-house to seeyes, they were
going over the same ferry together, he still bending toward her as they
walked, she with a charming, shy hesitancy in her manner, as of one
unaccustomed to her position. Bill said bitterly, The gall of him! and
walked away to the humiliating trolley which showed that he was still
going to Stevens. If he had been out of bondage, he would have been
quick to follow and take his place on the other side of the girl, and
show to all men that she was not making one of an intimate duet.
It was after this that his mother noticed that on certain days his
accustomed spirits flagged. Her keen ear detected that he no longer
whistled cheerily all the time he was dressing, but only when he heard
her foot upon the stairs; and although he still chaffed his admiring
sisters at dinner, there was a bitter and realistic strain in the
jesting that made them all sure that Willie could not feel well. He
found fault with his food, also a thing unprecedented. His mother
brought him pills which he refused to take, towering above hershe was
a little womantense and aloof. When she taxed him with having
something on his mind, he admitted it at once, in a tone that bade her
go no further.
It is nothing to do with myself, he conceded, with the spirit of a man
looking at her from his baby-blue eyes. The woman in her bowed to it as
she went down-stairs, with pride in him rampant in her heart, to deliver
her report to the two sisters waiting below.
The Snow family had been settled in the town from its beginning as a
suburb, some thirty years back; Mr. Snow having diedafter losing money
largely on his real-estate investments theretwelve years later, when
Billy was an infant, leaving many unproductive tracts of land with large
taxes appertaining to them. The Snows knew everybody in the place, rich
and poor, and were consequently regarded somewhat in the light of a
directory; the woman by the day, the cheap dressmaker, and the handy man
or boy could always be achieved by applying to them, for they had an
invariable acquaintance with respectable persons temporarily forced into
filling these positions. They themselves, while adding to their own
finances in various ways, neither concealed nor obtruded the fact; their
affairs could interest no one but themselves. They lived in a very small
old-fashioned white frame house with a narrow entrance-hall nearly level
with the street; and the little low-ceiled parlor and sitting-room, with
their narrow doorways and slightly uneven floors, were crowded with
large mahogany and walnut furniture and bedecked with the birthday and
Christmas gifts of the family for the last thirty years, from the
cherry-stone basket once carved by Father to the ornamental hanging
calendar of the past season. In the autumn the ladies potted plants with
such accumulative energy that the rooms became more and more a jungle of
damp pots and tubs, topped by overflowing showers and spikes and flat
blobs of green. Only the family knew exactly where to sit without
encroaching perilously on these; Billys friends always dropped first
into a certain chair and rocked into a dangling mass of Wandering Jew on
the marble-topped table behind.
The Snows had the recognized position in society of being Asked to
Everything. When they went to entertainments, it was in the dark, quiet
garments of every-day life, or the one often remodeled state robe
belonging to each, irrespective of what other people wore. Their
circumstances and their birth were too well known to need pretense.
Ada, the second daughter, taught in a school. She was twenty-seven, tall
like her brother, and with a fair, babyish face like his. It seems to be
the rule in the pages of fiction, even at the present day, to depict
unmarried women of this age as both feeling and looking no longer
youngas a matter of fact, a girl of twenty-seven is rarely
distinguishable from one of twenty-three, and is often more attractive.
Ada Snow had been, besides, one of those immature young persons who grow
up late, and become graceful and natural in society only after long
custom; at twenty, shy and awkward, she had usually been mistaken for
sixteen. She was her brothers favorite, secretly aiding and abetting
him in many evasions of the maternal law; she tied his cravats for him
now, and got up little suppers for him, and he posed as her elder, in
view of his height and large experience.
The other sister, Bertha, was a delicate and much older woman,
dark-haired, lined and sallow, given to intermittent nerve-prostrations
and neuralgia, yet keeping a certain sanity and strength of mind hidden
beneath an accumulation of small interests. She seldom went out, but sat
by a window in the sitting-room all day, screened by the steaming
plants, embroidering on linen, and keeping tally of the persons who went
up and down the street, the number of oranges bought out of a cart, and
the frequency of the meetings of two servants over a boundary
fenceincidents of note in themselves without further connection. She
seemed almost inconceivably petty in conversation and idea, but if one
were strong enough to speak only to the truth that was in her, she could
answer. She was honest and she was loyal; she knew a friend. She had
worked hard for her mother in her early youththat little mother who
now looked almost younger than she, as she came into the room from her
interview with William, and sat down by her daughter to say, in a tone
of the mother who believes no secret is hid from her: William wont
tell me whats the matter, but I know its something to do with that
girl at the Alexanders. Willie is growing up so fast!
Oh, yes, if you mean Miss Linden, said Miss Bertha, in comfortable
corroboration. Thats been going on for some weeks.
Yes, I know; but he acts differently this time. Perhaps shes snubbed
him in some way.
No, he was there the other night, and he is to take her skating
Saturday. I saw the note open on his bureau. Maybe, after all, its just
being in love that upsets him.
Yes, I really think thats all.
Miss Bertha put her work down on her lap, and smoothed it out with
slender, nervous fingers, before rolling it up in a thin white cloth.
The daylight was beginning to go.
Hes got a rose she gave him,never mind how I know,and he keeps it
wrapped up in tissueshe pronounced it tisherpaper in his
waistcoat pocket. He leaves it in there sometimes when he changes his
clothes. And Ada saysyou know that picture in the magazine that we all
said looked so like Miss Linden? Hes got it in a little frame. Ada says
that it tumbles out from underneath his pillow once in a while when
shes taking the covers off; I suppose the child puts it there at night
and forgets it in the morning. Ada just slips it half-way back again
when she makes up the bed, as if shed overlooked it. He never says
anything, and of course she doesnt, either.
I hope the girl will not take his attentions seriously, said the
mother, alarmed. She had known all this before, but it was a fashion of
the family to talk over and over what they already knew. I _hope_ she
will not take him seriously.
Mother! Theyre both so young. Ada, who had been leaning forward with
her face in her hands and her chin upturned at a statuesque angle, spoke
for the first time.
Oh, thats very well! Mrs. Snow tossed her head as one with
experience. He is, of course, nothing but a mere boy at nineteen, but a
girl of twenty is years older. When a girl is twenty, she goes in
society with women of _any_ age. I was married myself at eighteennot
that I should wish either of my daughters to do so.
Well, you can feel safe about that, mother, interpolated Ada.
William is very attractive, dear boy, and I could not blame any girl
for being somewhat captivated by him; I should be sorry if Miss Linden
allowed her affections to be engaged. She may not know that his career
is mapped out before him. William will not be in a position to marry
before he is thirty-six. William is
The people are coming from the train, interposed Miss Bertha, waving
back one thin hand to stop her mothers discoursewhich she could have
repeated backwardand scanning the hurrying file in the dusk across the
street.
Now you can tell how long the days are getting. Ada, come here. Mrs.
Leverich has on her new fursthe ones her husband gave her. Dont they
make her look stout? There are the Brentons, I think thats a bag of
coffee hes carrying. He has a long, narrow package, too, with square
endsperhaps _shes_ been buying corsets; if not, it must be a bottle
of whisky. And therewho is that? Oh, I thought it was Mr. Alexander in
a new coat; of course its too early for himthey say hes been making
money hand over hand lately. And here comeswhy its George Sutton!
Ada, Ada, bow! hes looking. He sees us wavingah!
There was a pause, in which an interested flush appeared on the cheeks
of both sisters.
The mother murmured apprehensively, They say _he_ is devoted to Miss
Linden, but neither answered. Ada had benefited, like the other girls,
by his attentions, she had been given candy and flowers and made one in
his theater-parties, but it was the secret conviction of all three women
that all his general attentions were simply a cloak for his real
devotion to Ada. The others were just a circleshe was the particular
one; and Heaven only knows how many girls in this circle shared the same
conviction. His smile and nod now seemed to speak of an intimacy that
blotted out all his preference for Miss Linden.
You had better pull down the shade now, said Mrs. Snow, after a few
minutes. Its time to light the lamp.
No, wait a momenttheres another train in. Miss Berthas eyes
pierced the gloom. The Carpenter boys, those new people in the Farley
house, and thats all. No, theres somebody way behindI declare, its
Miss Linden! Shes ever so much more stylish-looking than she was at
first. I wonder she didnt come on the train ahead. Who can that be with
her? Why there was a pause. I suppose he must have just happened to
get off with her at the station, said Miss Bertha in an altered voice.
Oh, yes; Im sure thats it, said Ada.