MRS. JOSHUA CRAIG
"We change at Albany," said he when they were on the train, after a last
hour of mad scramble, due in part to her tardiness, in the main to the
atmosphere of hysteric hustle and bustle he created as a precaution.
"At Albany!" she exclaimed. "Why, when do we get there?"
"At midnight."
"At midnight!" It was the last drop in the cup of gall, she thought.
"Why, we'd get to Lenox, or to some place where we'd have to change
again, long before morning! Josh, you must be out of your senses. It's a
perfect outrage!"
"Best I could do," said he, laughing uproariously and patting her on the
back. "Cheer up. You can sleep on my shoulder until we get to Albany."
"We will go on to New York," said she stiffly, "and leave from there in
the morning."
"Can't do it," said he. "Must change at Albany. You ought to learn to
control your temper over these little inconveniences of life. I've
brought a volume of Emerson's essays along and I'll read to you if you
don't want to sleep."
"I hate to be read aloud to. Joshua, let's go on to New York. Such a
night of horror as you've planned will wear me out."
"I tell you it's impossible. I've done the best thing in the
circumstances. You'll see."
Suddenly she sprang up, looked wildly round. "Where's Selina?" she
gasped.
"Coming to-morrow or next day," replied he. "I sent her to the camp for
some things I forgot."
She sank back and said no more. Again she was tempted to revolt against
such imbecile tyranny; and again, as she debated the situation, the
wisdom, the necessity of submitting became apparent. How would it sound
to have to explain to her grandmother that she had left him because he
took an inconvenient train? "I'd like to see him try this sort of thing
if we'd been married six months instead of six weeks," she muttered.
She refused to talk with him, answered him in cold monosyllables. And
after dinner, when he produced the volume of Emerson and began to read
aloud, she curtly asked him to be quiet. "I wish to sleep!" snapped she.
"Do, dear," urged he. And he put his arm around her.
"That's very uncomfortable," said she, trying to draw away.
He drew her back, held her--and she knew she must either submit or make
a scene. There was small attraction to scene-making with such a master
of disgraceful and humiliating scenes as he. "He wouldn't care a rap,"
she muttered. "He simply revels in scenes, knowing he's sure to win out
at them as a mongrel in a fight with a"--even in that trying moment her
sense of humor did not leave her--"with a lapdog."
She found herself comfortable and amazingly content, leaning against his
shoulder; and presently she went to sleep, he holding the book in his
free hand and reading calmly. The next thing she knew he was shaking her
gently. "Albany," he said. "We've got to change here."
She rose sleepily and followed him from the car, adjusting her hat as
she went. She had thought she would be wretched; instead, she felt fine
as the sharp, night air roused her nerves and freshened her skin. He led
the way into the empty waiting-room; the porter piled the bags on the
bench; she seated herself. "I must send a telegram," said he, and he
went over to the window marked "Telegraph Office." It was closed. He
knocked and rattled, and finally pounded on the glass with his umbrella
handle.
Her nerves went all to pieces. "Can't you see," she called impatiently,
"that there's no one there?"
"There will be some one!" he shouted in reply, and fell to pounding so
vigorously that she thought the glass would surely break. But it did
not; after a while the window flew up and an angry face just escaped a
blow from the vibrating umbrella handle. A violent altercation followed,
the operator raging, but Craig more uproarious than he and having the
further advantage of a more extensive and more picturesque vocabulary.
Finally the operator said: "I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself.
Don't you see there's a lady present?"
"It's my wife," said Craig. "Now take this message and get it off at
once. You should thank me for not having you dismissed."
The operator read the message. His face changed and he said in a surlily
apologetic manner: "I'll send it off right away, Mr. Craig. Anything
else?"
"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