THE JOLLY SEND-OFF
The Mrs. Haney who came to Alice Heath's dinner at the Antlers was in
outward seeming an entirely different person from the constrained young
wife who stepped into Lee Congdon's home that night of her first dinner.
She was gowned now in that severe good taste which betokens a
high-priced "ladies' tailor" combined with very judicious criticism. Her
critic she had found in Miss Franklin, a young lady from the university
who had passed easily and naturally from teaching history and etiquette
up to the higher function of advising as to the cut and color of gowns.
Bertha's black velvet was this time a close-clasping sheath which
revealed her slender figure, and delicately and modestly disclosed the
growing grace of her bosom. She wore, too, some jewels of diamond and
turquoise--not showy (her mentor had taken great pains to warn her of
all that). And she was not merely irreproachable, she was radiant, as
she slowly entered with the Captain, who, having submitted like a martyr
to evening dress, was uneasy as a colt in harness, and more than usually
uncertain of step.
Ben's eyes expanded with surprise and his heart warmed with pride as he
greeted her. "You are beautiful!" he exclaimed to her, and the tone of
his exclamation as well as the words exalted her. Her brain filled with
a mist of gold. She hardly felt the floor beneath her feet. To be called
beautiful--and by him--had been outside the circle of her most daring
hope, and the repetition of this word in her mind was like the clash of
musical bells--entrancing her. Mechanically she took her place at his
right hand, silently, and with a far-away look, listening to the merry
clamor of the table. She hardly knew what she ate or what any one
said--except when Ben spoke to her. But she was aware of the Captain
down at Alice's right, and wondered vaguely how he was getting on with
his napkin and his fork.
The first words that really roused her and stopped the musing smile on
her lips were spoken by Ben in a lower voice--half-laughing, but tender
also. "You mustn't stay away too long. I'll feel as if I weren't earning
my salary while you're gone."
"I wish you were going too," she said. She had thought this many times,
but had not permitted herself to utter it. "Why can't you--and
Alice--come with us?"
"I can't afford it, for one thing. The Captain spoke of it, but it's out
of the question."
"He'll pay you wages just the same."
"I wouldn't want pay. No, it isn't that; but Alice isn't able to go, and
I can't think of going without her."
This was a good reason, and Bertha, looking towards Alice, saw in her
face the pain which masks itself in color and movement. The dinner-table
was exquisite and the company gay, and Bertha felt herself a part of the
great world of dignity and beauty, where eating is made to seem a
graceful art, and wine is only a bit of color and not a lure. She
vaguely comprehended that this little party was of a tone and quality of
the best the world over--that it was of a part and interfused with the
dining customs of London and Paris and New York. "It will be _au fait_,"
Miss Franklin had said, sententiously, "for Alice Heath _knows_."
Mrs. Crego, who sat nearly opposite, stared at the girl in stupefaction.
"She makes me feel dowdy," she had confessed to Lee in the
dressing-room. "Why didn't you warn me to come in my best? Who has been
coaching her? Alice Heath, I suppose." She now wondered as sharply over
the girl's manner; for Bertha, carried out of herself by Ben's word of
praise, felt no desire to drink or to eat, and her reticence and the
delicacy of her appetite conferred a distinction which concealed her
lack of small talk, and protected her from the criticism to which
exuberance of manner ordinarily exposed her.
She was deeply impressed, too, with Ben's management of the waiters, and
with the ease and skill with which he supported Alice in carrying
forward the courses. It was a revelation of training which instructed
her absurdly, for her mind was quick to link and compare. It leaped so
swiftly and so subtilely along connecting lines of thought that a hint
alone sufficed to set in motion a hundred latent memories and inherited
aptitudes. Her father had been a man of native refinement, and she
possessed unstirred deeps of character, as Alice now well understood.
And from her end of the table she glanced often at the sweetly smiling
girl-wife whose beauty abashed Haney. At last she said to him: "Your
wife is very lovely to-night, Captain."
He hesitated a moment; then replied, slowly: "She is. She's as fine as
anny queen!" Then after another pause, added: "And the more shame to me,
being what I am! She's a good girl, miss, true as steel. Never a word of
complaint or a frown. She bears with me like an angel."
"You're doing a great deal for her."
His face lightened. "So she says. I mean to do more. I mean to show her
the world. That's the only comfort I have; my money is giving her nice
clothes and a home as good as anny, and to-night I feel 'tis giving her
friends."
"But she is worth while, even without the money."
"True," he quickly said. "But I take comfort in the consideration that
had I not carried her away she'd be in Sibley Junction this night."
"Sibley Junction! Can this radiant young creature sitting there at the
head of my table be the clerk of the Golden Eagle Hotel?" thought Alice.
"Money is magical! No wonder we all work for it--and worship it!"
The dinner was both early and short, in order that Bertha and the
Captain might take the train at ten o'clock. And as they were to have
the drawing-room in the sleeping-car (Ben's suggestion), they went
directly to the coach in their party clothes. And so it happened that
this little woman, who had never occupied a berth in a Pullman, entered
her compartment in the robes of a princess.
Alice had suggested a maid, but Bertha would not hear to that; but she
was willing that their coachman should go along to help the Captain. Ben
had interposed here, and said: "You need some one used to travelling. I
know a colored fellow who is out of service just now, and would like to
come to you. He's a good, reliable man, and a fine nurse." So she had
engaged him. He was on the platform as they drove up--a slight, quiet
man, of gentle speech and indeterminable age, who took charge of the
Captain at once, as if he had been his servant for years.
Alice said good-bye at the carriage door, but Ben went with them into
the coach. And in the excitement of getting to the train and into the
car Bertha had been able to forget the sick feeling about her heart. But
now, as he turned and said, "It's nearly time to start," and held out
his hand in parting, a desolation, a loneliness, a helpless hunger swept
over her, the like of which had never anguished her before.
"I wish you were going too!" she faltered, her speech broken and full of
sad cadences.
He, too, was tense with emotion as he answered: "I wish I were, but I
can't--I must not!" Then, with the gesture of a brother, he bent and
kissed her and turned away, blind to everything else but his pain, and,
so stumbling and shaken, vanished from her sight.
For a moment she remained standing in the aisle, the touch of his lips
still clinging to her cheek, surprised, full of bewildered defence;
then, as reckless of on-lookers as he had been, she rushed to the window
in swift attempt to catch a final glimpse of him. But in vain; he had
hurried away without looking back, her look of wonder and surprise still
dazzling him with its significance. A kiss with him, as with her, had
never been a thing lightly given or received, and this caress, so simple
to others, sprang from an impulse that was elemental. That he had both
shocked and angered her he fully believed; but the arch of her brows,
the wistful curve of her lips, and the pretty, almost childish, push of
her hands against his breast were still so appealingly vivid that he
entered the carriage and took his seat beside Alice with a kind of
rebellious joy hot in his blood.
However, as his passion ebbed his uneasiness deepened, and he went to
his room that night with a feeling that his connection with the Haneys,
so profitable and so pleasant, was in danger of being irremediably
broken off. "She will be justified in refusing ever to see me again," he
groaned. And in this spirit of self-condemnation and loneliness he took
up his work next day.
Bertha's self-revelation was slower. She was so young and so innately
honest and good that no sense of guilt attached to the pleasure she felt
in the sudden revelation that this splendid young man loved her--a
pleasure which grew as the first shock of the parting, the pain, and the
surprise wore away. "He likes me! He said I was beautiful! He kissed
me!" These were the rounds in the ladder of her ascent, and she was
carried high, only to fall into despair. For was she not leaving him and
all the pleasant people she had come so recently to know--hurrying away
into darkness with a crippled man, old before his time, out into a world
of which she knew little--for which, at this moment, she cared nothing?
She went back, a few moments later, with this sorrow written on her
face, to find Lucius, the colored man, deftly preparing the Captain for
bed. The old borderer looked up with a smile, in which shame and sadness
mingled. "Well, Bertie, I didn't think I'd come to this--me, that could
once sit in me saddle and pick a dollar out o' the dust. But so it is."
"I'll take care of you!" she cried, in swift contrition. Turning almost
fiercely to the valet, she said: "You can go, I'll 'tend to him!"
The Captain stopped her gently. "No, darlin', Ben's right; I'm too
clumsy and heavy for you. I need just such a handy man. Now, now! Let
be!... Go ahead, Lucius, strip off these monkey-fixens, and dom the man
that gets me into them again."
Efficient as she was, the girl could not but admit that Lucius was
better able to serve her husband than herself. He was both deft and
strong; and though the swaying of the car troubled his master, he
steadied him and guided him and stowed him away as featly as if it were
the fiftieth instead of the first time; then, with a few words of
explanation to the wife, he quietly withdrew, and shut the door with a
final touch of considerate care which was new to her.
She would have been less troubled by him had he been a black man, but he
was not. He seemed more like a Spaniard, and his grizzled mustache,
yellowish skin, and big dreamy black eyes lent him a curious
distinction, and the thought that he was to take her place as crutch and
cane to the Captain gave her a sense of uselessness which she had not,
up to this moment, confessed.
His suggestions, combined to the minute instructions of Miss Franklin,
enabled her to get to her bunk in fair order, but no sleep came to her
for hours. She longed for her mother more childishly than at any time
since her marriage. She reproached herself for not bringing Miss
Franklin. "Why did I come at all?" she wailed, in final accusation.
There had been a time when the thought of this trip--of Chicago, New
York, and Washington--was big in her mind, but it was so no longer.
These great cities were but names--empty sounds compared to the
realities she was leaving: her splendid house, her horses and dogs--and
her daily joy in Ben Fordyce. She did not put these visits in their
highest place, not even when remembering his parting kiss, but she dwelt
upon the inspiriting morning drives, the talks in the mellow-tinted,
sunshine-lighted office. She recalled the lunches they took together and
the occasional wild gallops up the cañon--these she treasured as the
golden realities, for the loss of which she was even now heart-sick.
One thought alone steadied her--gave her a kind of resignation: the
Captain wanted to find his sisters, to revisit the scenes of his youth,
and it was her duty to go with him. And in this somewhat dreary comfort
she fell asleep at last.
She was awakened next morning by a pleasant voice saying: "The first
call for breakfast has been made, Mrs. Haney." And she looked up to find
Lucius peering in at the door with serious, kindly eyes. He added,
formally: "If I can assist you in any way call me, and please let me
know when you are ready to have me come in."
His speech was so precise and his manner so perfect that Bertha was
puzzled and a little embarrassed by them. It seemed abnormal to have a
hired servant so polished, so thoughtful. She dressed hurriedly, while
the Captain yawned and talked between his yawning. "That yellow chap is
sure handy. I wish I'd had him before; 'twould have saved you a power o'
work and worry. Did ye sleep last night?"
"Not very well. I hope you did. You can't complain of the bunk."
"'Tis luxurious--'tis so! But there's nothing like the west side of
Colorado Avenue, after all, or a bed of pine boughs beside a roaring
mountain stream. 'Twas a fine little supper Ben gave us last night."
The level lands awed and depressed the mountain girl. They seemed to
type the flat and desolate spiritual world into which she was entering,
and the ride seemed interminable, carrying her every hour farther from
the scenes and sounds to which her love clung. She was bitterly
homesick, and nothing seemed to promise comfort. She gazed with
lack-lustre eyes on the towns and rivers along the way, and she entered
the great inland metropolis by the lake with dread and a deepening sense
of her inexperience and youth.
On the neighboring track stood the return sleepers headed for the hills,
and she acknowledged a wild desire to take her place among the jocund
folk who stood on the observation-platform exchanging good-byes with
friends. Thunderous, smothering, and vast the city seemed as they drove
through it on their way to the hotel, and upon reaching her room she
flung herself down on her bed and sobbed in a frenzy of homesickness.
Haney, who had never before perceived a tear on her face, was startled,
and stood in puzzled pain looking down at her, while the tactful Lucius
went about the unpacking of the trunks, confident that the shower would
soon be over.
"What's the ail of it?" asked the Captain. "Tell me, darlin'. Are ye
sick?"
She shook her head from side to side, like a suffering and weary child,
and made no further answer.