SUCCESS
"I declare you're real pretty to-night, honey," remarked Miss Polly from
the floor, where she knelt pinning up the hem of a black serge skirt she
was making for Gabriella. "Some days you're downright plain, and then
you flame out just like a lamp. Nobody would ever think to look at you
that you'd be thirty-seven years old to-morrow." For it was the evening
before Gabriella's birthday, and she was at the end of her thirty-sixth
year.
"I feel young," she answered brightly, "and I feel happy. The children
are well, and I've had all the success I could ask. Some day I'm going
to own Madame's business, Miss Polly."
"I reckon she's gettin' mighty old, ain't she?"
"She gave up the work years ago, and I believe she'd be glad to sell out
to me to-morrow if I had the money.
"I wish you had. It would be nice for you to be at the head, now
wouldn't it?" rejoined Miss Polly, speaking with difficulty through a
mouthful of pins.
"Yes, I wish I had, but I've thought and thought, and I don't see how I
could borrow enough. I've sometimes thought of asking Judge Crowborough
to invest some money in the business. It would be investing, the returns
are so good."
"He'd do it in a minute, I expect. He always set a lot of store by you,
didn't he?"
"He used to, but somehow I hate to ask favours."
"You were always a heap too proud. Don't you remember how you'd never
eat the other children's cake when you were a child unless you had some
of your own to offer 'em?"
Gabriella laughed. "No, I don't remember, but it sounds like me. I was
horrid."
"There was always a hard streak somewhere down in you, and you don't
mind my sayin' that you ain't gettin' any softer, Gabriella. There are
times now when your mouth gets a set look like your Aunt Becky
Bollingbroke's. You don't recollect her, I 'spose, but she never
married."
"Well, I married," Gabriella flippantly reminded her; "so it can't be
that."
Though the hard work of the last ten years had left its visible mark
upon her, and she looked a little older, a little tired, a little worn,
experience had added a rare spiritual beauty to her face, and she was
far handsomer than she had been at twenty. The rich sprinkling of silver
in the heavy waves of hair over her ears framed the firm pale oval of
her face with a poetic and mysterious darkness, and gave depth and
softness to her brilliant eyes. For the struggle, which had stolen her
first freshness and left faintly perceptible lines in her expressive
face, had not robbed her of the eyes and the heart of a girl.
"I don't count George, somehow," retorted Miss Polly. "That wan't like
marryin' a real man, you know, and, when all's said and done, a lone
woman gets mighty hard and dried up."
"But I can't marry when there's nobody to marry me," laughed Gabriella.
"I haven't seen a man for seven years except in the street or
occasionally in the shop. Men have either passed me by without seeing me
or they have wanted to sell me something."
At the sound of the children's voices she slipped out of the serge
skirt, and began hurriedly fastening the old black silk gown she wore at
dinner. Through all the years of toil and self-denial she had preserved
a certain formality of living, a gracious ease of manner, which she kept
for the evenings with her children. Cares were thrust away then, to be
taken up again as soon as Fanny and Archibald were in bed, and no matter
how hard the day had been, she was always cheerful, always gay and
light-hearted for the dinner hour by the fireside. Not often had she
been too poor to buy a handful of flowers for the table, and never once,
except during her illness, had she come home too tired to change to the
black silk gown, which she had turned and made from bishop sleeves to
small ones, and from "dropped" shoulders to high ones, for the last six
or seven years. The damask on the table was darned and mended, but it
was always spotlessly fresh. In winter the fire was made up brightly in
the evenings; in summer the room was deliciously scented with rose
geranium and heliotrope from the box in the window. For ten years she
had not had a holiday; she had worked harder than a man, harder than any
servant, for she had worked from dawn until midnight; but into her hard
life she had instilled a quality of soul which had enabled her to endure
the strain without breaking. "No life is so hard that you can't make it
easier by the way you take it," she had said to herself in the
beginning; and remembering always that courage is one of the eternal
virtues, she had disciplined her mind as well as her body to firmness
and elasticity of fibre. "Nobody, except myself, is ever going to make
me happy," she would repeat over and over again when the day was
wearying and the work heavy. "I want to be happy. I have a right to be
happy, but it depends on myself."
This indestructible belief in her "right to happiness" supported her
through the hardest hours of her life, and diffused an invigorating
atmosphere not only in her home, but even in her long working hours at
Dinard's. The children grew and strengthened in its bracing air; Miss
Polly quickly responded to it; the women in the workroom breathed it in
as if it were the secret of health, and even Madame showed occasional
signs that she was not entirely impervious to its vital and joyous
influence. It was not always easy for Gabriella to keep the light in her
eyes and the faith in her heart. There were days when both seemed to
fail her, when, with aching body and depressed mind, she felt that she
could not look beyond the immediate suffering minute, when she told
herself despairingly that she had lost everything in losing her courage.
But bad days passed as irrevocably as good ones; and left her, when they
were over, with her strong soul unshaken, and her philosophy of
happiness still undestroyed. Like other human beings, she found that her
moods were largely controlled by her physical health.
"Oh, mother dear, I went down to meet you, and I missed you by just five
minutes," said Fanny, kissing her cheek. "I wanted you to go with me to
look at the house in London Terrace. Miss Polly and I are crazy about
it."
"I know," said Gabriella tenderly, while she feasted her eyes on her
daughter.
The old apartment house in which they had spent the last ten years would
be torn down in the summer, and Fanny and Miss Folly had devoted the
past week to an exhaustive hunt for a home.
"Then you'll look at it to-morrow, won't you, mother?" urged Fanny. "We
can get the upper rooms and they are larger than these. There is a
little yard in front, with an elm tree and a rose-bush, and plenty of
space for flowers."
"I can't recall the house exactly," said Gabriella thoughtfully. "It
must be in a row, isn't it? I have a vague recollection of some old
houses, with fronts of stuccoed pilasters, and rather nice yards. But
West Twenty-third Street is too far away, dear. I don't like the
neighbourhood. Wouldn't you rather be in Park Avenue?" Her ignorance of
New York, though she had lived there seventeen years, amazed Fanny, who
was a true child of the city.
"Carlie Herndon lives in that row, mother"--Carlie Herndon, the daughter
of a distinguished and unpopular novelist, was Fanny's best friend for
the moment--"and I could always go out with her in the evening."
"It isn't the location I should have liked, Fanny," said Gabriella,
weakly yielding, as she always yielded to her daughter; "but if you
really fancy the house, I'll try to look at it on my way home to-morrow.
One has to be very careful about the plumbing in these old houses. I
insist upon good plumbing. After that, you may have what you want."
"Oh, it has brand new bathrooms, Mrs. Mallon told me so, and she's
lived there until a year ago. And if you had only seen the new
apartments we looked at, mother, nothing on the East Side that would
have held us under twenty-five hundred a year, and even at that the
bedrooms were no bigger than closets, and you'd have to have electric
light all day in the bathroom. We searched everywhere, didn't we, Miss
Polly?"
"West Twenty-third Street is mighty far out of the way, honey," observed
Miss Polly cautiously.
"Oh, but I'd have Carlie, and she's my best friend," persisted Fanny,
with caressing obstinacy.
"Well, we'll see, precious," said Gabriella, while she assured herself
that if Fanny cost her every penny she had, at least the child was worth
what she spent on her. To a superficial observer, Fanny would probably
have appeared merely an attractive girl, of Jane's willowy type, with
something of Jane's trite prettiness of feature; but to Gabriella, who
suffered from a maternal obliquity of vision, she seemed both brilliant
and beautiful. Of course she was selfish, but this selfishness, as long
as it was clothed in her youth and loveliness, was as inoffensive as the
playfulness of a kitten. Her face was round and shallow, with exquisite
colouring which veiled the flatness and lack of character in her
features. Above her azure eyes her hair, which was not plentiful, but
fine and soft, and as yellow as ripe corn, broke in a shining mist over
her forehead. All her life, by being what she was, she had got, without
effort, everything that she wanted. She had got dolls when she wanted
dolls; she had got Miss Ludwell's expensive school when she wanted an
expensive private school; she would get the house in West Twenty-third
Street to-morrow, and when she began to want love, she would get it as
easily and as undeservedly as she got everything else. She was very
expensive, but, like the flowers on the table and the spotless damask
and the lace in Gabriella's sleeves, she was one of her mother's
luxuries to be paid for by additional hours of work and thought.
"Wasn't Archibald with you?" inquired Gabriella, while she pushed the
chairs into place and tidied the room.
"He stopped at the library. There's his ring now. I'll open the door."
She ran out, and Gabriella, with the tablecloth in her hand, stood
waiting for Archibald to enter. In her eager expectancy, in the wistful
brightness of her eyes, in the tender quivering of her lips, she was
like a girl who is awaiting a lover. Every evening, after her day's
work, she greeted her son with the same passionate tenderness. Never had
it lessened, never, even when she was most discouraged, had she failed
to summon her strength and her sweetness for this beatific end to the
day. For Archibald was more than a son to her. As he grew older their
characters became more perfectly adjusted, and the rare bond of a deep
mental sympathy held them together. Fanny loved her as a spoiled child
loves the dispenser of its happiness; but in Archibald's devotion there
was something of the worship of a man for an ideal.
Flushed and hungry, the boy came in, and after kissing her hurriedly,
ran off to wash his face and hands before dinner. When he came back the
table was laid, with a bunch of lilacs in a cut glass vase over the
darned spot in the tablecloth, and Miss Polly was bringing in the
old-fashioned soup tureen, which had belonged to Gabriella's maternal
grandmother.
"If you don't sit right straight down everything will be cold," said
Miss Polly severely, for this was her customary manner of announcing
dinner. Every night for ten years she had threatened them with a cold
dinner while she served them a hot one.
With a child on either side of her, Gabriella sat down, and ladled the
soup out of the old china tureen. It was her consecrated hour--the
single hour of her toiling day that she dedicated to personal happiness;
and because it was her hour, her life had gradually centred about it as
if it were the divine point of her universe--the pivot upon which her
whole world revolved. Nothing harsh, nothing sordid, nothing sad, ever
touched the sacred precincts of her twilight hour with her children.
"I can beat any boy at school running, mother," said Archibald, watching
his plate of soup hungrily as it travelled toward him. "If my eyes won't
let me be captain of a football team, I'm going to become the champion
runner in America. I bet I can, if I try."
"I shouldn't wonder, dear. It's good for you, too. I never saw you look
better."
He was a tall, thin boy, with a muscular figure, and thick brown hair,
which was always rumpled. Through his ugly spectacles his eyes showed
large, dark, and as beautifully soft as a girl's. His mind was
remarkably keen and active, and there was in his carriage something of
Gabriella's capable and commanding air, as if, like her, he embodied
those qualities which compel acknowledgment. Though she had never
admitted it even to herself, he was her favourite child.
When dinner was over she had the children to herself--to the gracious,
unhurried self she gave them--until ten o'clock. Then their books were
put away, and after she had kissed them good-night, and tucked the
covers about them, she came back to the living-room, and sat down to her
sewing with Miss Polly. The ease and cheerfulness dropped from her at
the approach of midnight, and while the two women bent over their
needles they talked of their anxieties, and planned innumerable and
intricate ways of economy.
"Fanny's school costs so much, and, of course, she must have clothes.
All the other girls dress so expensively."
"You spend three times as much on her as you do on Archibald."
"I know," her voice melted to the mother note, "but Archibald is
different. He is a man, and he will make his way in the world. Then,
too, his expenses will be trebled next year when he goes off to school,
and after that, of course, will come college. I don't believe anything
or anybody can keep Archibald back," she went on proudly. "Do you know
he talks already of going to work in a shipping office in order to help
me?"
"It's a pity about his eyes."
"There's nothing wrong except near-sightedness, but he'll have to wear
glasses all his life."
For a minute Miss Polly stitched almost furiously, while her small
weatherbeaten face, with its grotesque features, was visited by an
illumination that softened and ennobled its ugliness. From living
entirely in the lives of others, she had attained the spiritual serenity
and detachment of a saint as well as the saint's immunity from the
intenser personal forms of suffering. Long habit had accustomed her to
think of herself only in connection with somebody's need of her, and
beyond this she hardly appeared as an individual existence even in her
own secret reflections. As far as it is possible to achieve absolute
unselfishness in a world planned upon egoistic principles Miss Polly had
achieved it; and the result was that she was almost perfectly happy.
"Fanny seems right set on goin' down to Twenty-third Street, don't she?"
she inquired, after an interval of musing.
"It's all because Carlie lives in the row, and by next year, after we've
had all the trouble of moving, she'll find another bosom friend and want
to go to Park Avenue."
"It's a real comfortable sort of house, more like Richmond than New
York, and I reckon we could get flowers to grow there just about as well
as they did in Hill Street."
"I don't like having those O'Haras on the lower floor. If they are loud
and common, it might be very disagreeable."
"There ain't but one, a man, and he's hardly ever there, the caretaker's
wife told me. She said he was almost always in the West, and anyway his
lease is up next year, and he thinks he'll give up his rooms. She says
he has made piles of money in mines somewhere out West, and he only
keeps those rooms because they used to belong to a man who picked him
out of the street when he was a little boy selling newspapers. That
caretaker's wife seems to be a mighty kind-hearted creature, but she
talks as if she was never goin' to stop."
"I think I could afford to take an apartment in Park Avenue," returned
Gabriella, dismissing the name of O'Hara; "but, of course, I want to
save as much as I can in order to invest in the business. If it wasn't
for that, I could stop scraping and pinching. I can't bear, though, to
think of leaving nothing for the children when I die."
"Go away from here, honey. The idea of your talkin' about dyin'! You
look healthier than you ever did in your life, only you're gettin' that
set look again about your mouth."
"I wonder if I'm growing hard," said Gabriella, stopping to glance in
the mirror. "I suppose that's the problem of life for the working
woman--not to grow hard." In some ways, she realized, Miss Polly was
right. She was a handsome woman, as Madame occasionally informed her;
but she was no longer shrinking, she was no longer alluringly feminine.
To dress smartly for Dinard's was a part of her work, and she had grown
quite indifferent to having men turn and stare after her in the street
or when she entered a restaurant. But the men who stared never spoke to
her as they did to Fanny when she was alone. They regarded her
admiringly, but she aroused neither disrespect nor the protective
instinct in their minds. Only when she smiled her face grew as young as
her eyes, and with the powdering of silver on her hair, gave her a look
of radiance and charm; but at other times, when she was grave or
preoccupied with the management of Dinard's, the "set look" that Miss
Polly dreaded hardened her mouth.
"I wish you could go easier now for a while," resumed the little
seamstress, after a pause which she had filled with vague speculations
about Gabriella's sentimental prospects. "I just hate like anything to
see you wearing yourself out. Of course I'd like you to own part of the
business, and I can't help thinkin' that the judge could get you the
money as easy as not. It ain't as if you couldn't pay him the interest
regular, is it?" she pursued with the financial helplessness of a woman
who has never thought in terms of figures. "You couldn't be doin' any
better, could you? There ain't anybody can run the business as well as
you do, I don't care who 'tis."
"I sometimes think," returned Gabriella deliberately, while she draped a
lace bertha on a white silk frock she was making for Fanny, "that I will
try to borrow the money."
"It couldn't hurt, could it?"
"No, I don't suppose it could hurt."
Her eyes were on the lace, which she was adjusting over the shoulder,
and Miss Polly followed her gaze with a look which was not entirely
approving.
"There ain't a bit of sense in your wearin' yourself out over that
child," said the seamstress presently, with so sharp an accent that
Gabriella glanced up quickly from her work. "It was just the way Mrs.
Spencer started Florrie, and it ain't right."
"Florrie!" exclaimed Gabriella, startled, and she added slowly, "I
wonder what has become of her? I haven't thought of her for years."
"It was a mean trick she played you, Gabriella. I'd never have believed
it of Florrie if I hadn't been there to see it with my own eyes."
"Yes, it was mean," assented Gabriella, but there was no anger in her
voice. She had left the past so far behind her that its disappointments
and its cruelties had become as dim and shadowy to her imagination as
if they had been phantoms of the mind instead of actual events through
which she had lived.
"Well, I'm glad she didn't spoil your life for you, honey."
"No, she didn't spoil my life. Don't I look happy? And Madame told me
to-day that my figure was distinguished. Now, when a woman's life is
spoiled her figure and her complexion are the first things to show it."
"Of course you ain't gettin' slouchy, I don't mean anything like that.
But I hate to see you workin' your fingers to the bone and bringin'
lines around your eyes when you ought to be taken care of. I don't hold
with women workin' unless they're obliged to."
"But I'm obliged to. How on earth could I take care of the children if I
didn't work?"
For a minute there was an austere silence while Miss Polly reflected
grimly that Gabriella Mary--she thought of her as "Gabriella Mary" in
moments of disapprobation"--was gettin' almost as set as her ma."
"You could marry," she said flatly at last, stopping to press down the
hem she had turned with the blunted nail of her thumb. "Of course your
ma would be dead against it, but there ain't any reason in the world why
you shouldn't go back home and marry Arthur Peyton, as you ought to have
done seventeen years ago."
Though Gabriella laughed in reply, there was no merriment in the sound,
and a look of sadness crept into the eyes she turned away from the sharp
gaze of the little seamstress.
"You've forgotten that I haven't seen him for seventeen years," she
answered.
"That don't make any difference in his sort, and you know it. He ain't
ever married anybody else, and he ain't goin' to. The faithfulness that
ought to be spread over the whole sex gets stored up in a few, and he's
one of 'em."
"He has never written to me. No, he must have got over it," responded
Gabriella, with an impassioned emphasis, "and, besides, even if he
cared, I don't want to marry again. My children are enough for me."
"It won't look that way next year when both the children are away at
school, and when they once break away from your apron strings they're
the sort that will go the way they want to and look out for their own
happiness. You won't have much of Archibald while he's at school and
college, and Fanny will marry befo' she's twenty just as sure as you
live. Why, she's already got her head full of beaux. Have you noticed
that picture of an actor she keeps on her bureau?"
"Yes" admitted Gabriella anxiously, "I've noticed it, but when I asked
her about it, she only laughed."
After this the conversation dropped, and the two women put away their
work for the might; but hours later, while Miss Polly lay in her hard
little bed wondering if it would be possible to "fix" things between
Gabriella and Arthur, the stern heroine of her romance wept a few tender
tears on her pillow.
In the morning, with the tears still ready to spring at a touch,
Gabriella read a letter from her mother, which he had found, beside the
baker's rolls, at the door.
_Richmond, Thursday_.
DEAR CHILD:
As the others are all out to-night, and I have finished the mat I
was crocheting, I thought I would send you a letter to reach you
on your birthday instead of the telegram from the family. I am so
thankful to hear that you keep well and happy and that Fanny has
quite recovered from her cold. It was thoughtful of you to send the
check, and I shall find it very useful, though Jane refuses to let
me pay any board since Charley has inherited such a large income
from his brother Tom. I sent you all the papers about the dreadful
accident on the River road in which poor Tom and his wife were
killed, but you haven't heard yet that Tom left his new house in
Monument Avenue--they had only just moved into it--and almost all
of his property to Charley. Of course, this will make a great
difference in our manner of living; but just now none of us can
think of anything except poor Tom and Gertrude, to whom we were all
so deeply attached. No amount of money could in any way soften the
blow of their loss, and the accident has given me such a horror of
automobiles, though both Charley and Jane tell me this is very
foolish.
To turn to more cheerful subjects, I can't begin to tell you how
much the last photograph of Fanny has been admired. She is such a
lovely girl, almost as pretty, we think, as Jane used to be when
she first grew up, and I'm sure there could be no higher praise
than that. You pleased me by saying that Archibald is like his
grandfather, even if he isn't so handsome, and that he has a strong
character. Good looks aren't nearly so important in a man as they
are in a woman, and, you know, I don't think that men are as
handsome to-day as they used to be when I was a girl. They have
lost something--I can't make out just what it is.
Charley and Jane are at the Prohibition meeting. It is the first
time they have gone anywhere since the accident, but we all felt
that Tom and Gertrude would have wanted them to go for the sake of
the cause. I don't suppose you, would recognize Charley now if you
were to meet him. He is entirely changed, and I believe our new
minister is the reason for it, though Jane likes to think that her
influence reclaimed him. But, you remember, neither you nor I ever
thought that Jane went about reforming Charley in the right way;
and even now, though I wouldn't hurt dear Jane's feelings for
anything in the world, I am afraid she nags Charley and the
children too much. Of course, she means it for the best. No one
could look at the dear child without realizing what a beautiful
character she is.
But the change in Charley is really remarkable, and he won't allow
a drop of alcohol to come into the house--not even as medicine. I
can't help feeling sorry for poor old Uncle Meriweather, who
despises grape juice and misses his mint julep when he comes to
dine on Sunday; but Charley forbids Jane to make him a julep; and I
suppose he is right since he says it is a matter of principle. Even
Jane, however, thinks dear Charley is going a little too far when
he refuses to let me have the sherry and egg the doctor ordered.
However, I tell Jane that, since Charley feels so strongly about my
taking it, she must not try to persuade him against his
convictions. Dr. Darrow doesn't know that I stopped the sherry when
Charley found out I was buying it. Perhaps the plain eggs will do
me quite as much good. Anyhow, I wouldn't let my health stand in
the way of Charley's salvation.
Margaret has gone out to a concert, and you would never guess who
came to take her. I said to her when she was starting, "Well, I'm
going to sit straight down and write your Aunt Gabriella that
you've gone out with her old sweetheart." But doesn't it make you
realize how time flies when you think of Arthur Peyton's paying
attention to Jane's daughter? Of course, it isn't anything
serious--everybody knows that he has never recovered from his
feeling for you--but last winter he took Margaret to two germans
and to any number of plays. I believe Jane would be really pleased
if he were to take a fancy to Margaret, but I don't think there is
the faintest chance of it, for his Cousin Lizzie told me last
winter that she couldn't mention your name in his presence. She
says his faithfulness is perfectly beautiful, and she ought to know
for she has lived with him ever since his mother's death. Of
course, he has never accomplished very much in his profession.
Chancy says all the men downtown look upon him as a failure; but,
then, he is such a perfect gentleman, and, as I tell Charley and
Jane, one can't have everything. How different your life would have
been, my dear daughter, if you had listened to the prayers of your
mother, and married a gentle Christian character like Arthur
Peyton.
But I mustn't let my thoughts run away with me. Of course, even if
your heart had not been broken, it would be impossible for you to
think of another man as long as your husband is living. No pure
woman could do that, and when people tell me about divorced women
who remarry, I always maintain that they are not what my mother and
I would call "pure women." I would rather think of you nursing your
broken heart forever in solitude than that you should put such a
blot upon your character and the name of the Carrs. Of course, you
were right to divorce George after he forsook you for Florrie--even
his mother tells everybody that you were right--but the thought of
a second marriage would, I know, be intolerable to your refined and
sensitive nature. After all, he is still your husband in the sight
of God, and I said this to Miss Lizzie Peyton when we were talking
of Arthur.
It is almost eleven o'clock, and I must stop and undress. Kiss the
dear children, and remember me kindly to Miss Polly.
Your loving MOTHER.
As she refolded the letter Gabriella stood for an instant with her
dreaming gaze on the delicate Italian handwriting on the envelope.
"It's amazing how wide the gulf is between the generations," she
thought, not without humour. "I believe mother thinks of George oftener
than I do, and I'd marry Arthur to-morrow if he wanted me to--except for
the children."
Then, as Archibald rushed into the room, she caught him in her arms, and
held him hungrily to her bosom.
"My darling, you want to keep your mother, don't you?"
"I jolly well do. What's the trouble, mother? I believe it's all that
sitting up over Fanny's old dresses. Why don't you make something pretty
for yourself?"
"She has to have things, and you love me just as well without them,
don't you?"
"But I want you to have them, too. I like you to look pretty, and you
are pretty."
"Then I can look pretty in plain clothes, can't I?"
"I tell you what I am going to do," he hesitated a minute, knitting his
heavy brows over his spectacles, which looked so odd on a boy. "Next
summer when school is over I'm going to work and make some money so you
can have a velvet dress in the autumn--a black velvet dress with lace on
it--lots of lace--and a hat with feathers."
"You foolish boy!" laughed Gabriella. "Do you think for an instant I'd
let you?" Her voice was gay, but when he had broken away from her clasp,
and was racing along the hail for his school books, she turned aside to
wipe the tears from her eyes.
"It's wrong, but I love, him more than I love Fanny," she said. "I love
him more than all the rest of the world.".
An hour later, sitting beside an Italian labourer in an elevated train,
she tried hard to keep her mind on the day's work and on the morning
paper, which she held open before her--for in adopting a business life
she had adopted instinctively a man's businesslike habits. A subtle
distinction divided her from the over-dressed shopgirls around her as
completely as her sex separated her from the portly masculine
breadwinner in the opposite seat. Her tailored suit of black serge, with
its immaculate white collar and cuffs, had an air of charming
simplicity, and the cameolike outline of her features against the
luminous background of the window-pane was the aristocratic racial
outline of the Carrs. In the whirlpool of modern business she still
preserved the finer attributes which Nature had bred in her race. The
bitter sweetness of the mother's inheritance, grafted on the hardy stock
of the Carr character, had flavoured without weakening the daughter's
spirit, and, though few of the men in the train glanced in the direction
of Gabriella, the few who noticed her in her corner surmised by
intuition that she possessed not only the manner, but the heart of a
lady. She was not particularly handsome, not particularly young, and her
charm was scarcely the kind to flash like a lantern before the eye of
the beholder. To the portly breadwinner she was probably a nice-looking
American business woman, nothing more; to the Italian labourer she was,
doubtless, a lady with a pleasant face, who would be polite if you asked
her a question; and to the other passengers she must have appeared
merely a woman reading her newspaper on her way down to work. Her primal
qualities of force, restraint, and capability were the last things these
superficial observers would have thought of; and yet it was by these
qualities that she must succeed or fail in her struggle for life.
When she reached Dinard's she found Miss Smith, the only woman in
Madame's employ who was ever punctual, ill-humouredly poking the spring
hats out of the cases. Miss Smith, who excelled in the cardinal virtues,
manifested at times a few of those minor frailties by which the cardinal
virtues are not infrequently attended. Her one pronounced fault was a
bad temper, and on this particular morning that fault was conspicuous.
As she carried the hats from the cases to the window, which she was
decorating with the festive millinery of the spring, she looked as if
she were resisting an impulse to throw Madame's choicest confections at
the jovial figure of the traffic policeman. Gabriella, who was used to
what she called the "peculiarities" of the forewoman, said "good
morning" with her bright amiability, and hurried back to the dim regions
where she changed from her street suit to the picturesque French gown
which she wore in the showroom. When she came out again Miss Smith had
finished ornamenting the white pegs in the window, and was vigorously
upbraiding a messenger boy who had delivered a parcel at the wrong door.
"You are always so prompt," remarked Gabriella cheerfully, as she
arranged the hats in the front room. Her rule of business conduct was
simple, and consisted chiefly of the precept that whatever happened she
must keep her temper. Never once, never even in Madame's most trying
moments, had she permitted herself to appear angry, and her strict
adherence to this resolution had established her in an enviable position
of authority. Obeying unconsciously some inherited strain of prudence
in her nature, she had sacrificed her temper on the solid altar of
business expediency.
"Somebody has to be on time, I guess," replied Miss Smith snappishly.
"I'd like to know who would be here if I wasn't?"
She was a thin, soured, ugly little woman, with an extraordinary
capacity for work, and an excess of nervous vitality bordering on
hysteria. Gabriella, who knew something of her story, was aware of the
self-sacrificing goodness of her private life, and secure in her own
unclouded cheerfulness, could afford to smile tolerantly at the waspish
sting.
"It's a pity we can't get more system here," she observed, for Miss
Smith, she knew, was no tale-bearer. "The waste of time and misdirected
energy are appalling. The business would be worth three times as much to
anybody who could give her whole attention to it, but, as Madame is
forever telling us, her health keeps her from really overlooking
things."
"I wonder why she doesn't sell out?" asked Miss Smith, suddenly
good-humoured and interested. "There's a lot in it for the right person,
and it isn't in nature that she can hold on much longer. If I could find
the money, I'd buy it and cut down expenses until I made a big profit.
It would be easy enough." Then she added, while she slammed the
ivory-tinted door of a case: "I wish you could run the house, Mrs. Carr.
You are so pleasant to work with. Nothing ever seems to depress you."
"It would be nice, wouldn't it?" responded Gabriella promptly, and as
she said the words, she decided that she would try to borrow the money
from Judge Crowborough. For three months she had been struggling to
bring herself to the point of asking his help--or at least his
advice--and now, in a flash, without argument or discussion, she had
settled the question. "It's a simple business proposition--a promising
investment," she thought. "I'll ask him to get the money for me at a
fair interest--to get me enough anyhow to give me control of the
business. The worst he can do is to refuse," she concluded, with a kind
of forlorn optimism; "at least he can't kill me."
Making a hurried excuse, she went back to the telephone, and calling up
the judge, asked for an appointment in his office at five o'clock. From
his surprised response she inferred his curiosity, and from his hearty
acquiescence, she gathered that his surprise was not an unpleasant one.
"At five o'clock, then. It is so good of you. There is a little matter
of business. Yes, I know how kind you are, and of course your advice is
invaluable. I can't think of anybody else on earth I can ask. Oh, thank
you. Yes, at five o'clock. I shan't be late and I promise to keep you
but a minute. Good-bye. What? Oh, yes, I'll come straight from
Dinard's."
His voice, eager and friendly over the telephone, had given her
confidence, and when she went back to the showroom, where the saleswomen
were assembling, she was already planning the interview.
At eleven o'clock Madame, who never arrived earlier, was seen descending
from a hansom, and a few minutes later she waddled, wheezing, asthmatic,
and infirm of joints, through the ivory and gold doorway. Like some
fantastically garlanded Oriental goddess of death, her rouged and
powdered face nodded grotesquely beneath the flowery wreath on her hat.
The indestructible youth of her spirit, struggling valiantly against the
inert weight of the flesh, had squeezed her enormous figure into the
curveless stays of the period, and had painted into some ghastly
semblance of health the wrinkled skin of her cheeks. For underneath the
decaying mockery of Madame's body, the indomitable soul of Madame still
fought the everlasting battle of mind against matter, of the immaterial
against the material elements.
"There was no use my trying to get here any sooner," she began in an
apologetic tone when she was face to face with Gabriella behind the red
velvet curtains of her private office. "My asthma was so bad all night,
I had to doze sitting up, and I didn't get any sound sleep until
daybreak. If I don't begin to mend before long I'll have to give up,
that's all there is to it. There ain't any use my trying to hold on much
longer. I'm too sick to think about fighting, and sometimes I don't care
what becomes of the business. I want to go to some high place in Europe
where I can get my breath, and I'm going to stay there, I don't care
what happens. There ain't any use my trying to hold on," she repeated
disconsolately.
Gabriella's opportunity had come, and she grasped it with the quickness
of judgment which had enabled her to achieve her moderate success.
"I believe I could carry on this business," she said, and her quiet
assurance impressed Madame's turbulent temper. With a brief return of
her mental alertness, the old woman studied her carefully.
"I don't want any responsibility. I want to be rid of the whole thing,"
she said after a pause.
Gabriella nodded comprehendingly. "I believe I could carry it on
successfully," she repeated. "Your customers like me. I think I
understand how the business ought to be run. I have been here ten years,
and I feel perfectly confident that I could make it successful."
"I've had offers--good offers," observed Madame warily, for she was
incapable of liberating herself at the age of seventy-two from the
lifelong suspicion that some one was taking advantage of her, that
something was being got from her for nothing, "and, of course, I was
only joking about having to stop work," she added, "I am retiring from
choice, not from necessity."
"I understand," agreed Gabriella quietly.
"But I should like you to have the name," pursued Madame "A little money
would be necessary, of course--perhaps you might buy a half
interest--that would be simple. You could make a big success of it with
your social position and your wealthy acquaintances. Surely you can find
some one who is ready to make such a splendid investment?"
"Perhaps," admitted Gabriella, as quietly as before. Unlike Madame, who,
being an incurable idealist, had won her victories not by accepting but
by evading facts, Gabriella was frankly skeptical about the practical
value of either her social position or her wealthy acquaintances.
Neither possession impressed her at the moment as marketable, except in
the vivid imagination of Madame, and her social position, at least, was
constructed of a very thin and unsubstantial fabric. Guided by the
prudent streak in her character, she rested her hope not upon
incorporeal possessions, but upon the solid bodies of her patrons that
must be clothed. Her imposing acquaintances would avail her scarcely
more, she suspected, than would the noble ghost of that ancestor who was
a general in the Revolution. What she relied on was the certainty that
she knew her work, and that Madame's customers from the greatest to the
least, from Mrs. Pletheridge to poor Miss Peterson, who bought only one
good gown a year, admitted the thoroughness of her knowledge. She had
got on by learning all that there was to learn about the details of the
work, and she stood now, secure and unassailable, on the foundation of
her achievement. In ten years she had fulfilled her resolution--she had
made herself indispensable. By patience, by hard work, by self-control,
by ceaseless thought, and by innumerable sacrifices, she had made
herself indispensable; and the result was that, as Madame weakened, she
had grown steadily stronger. Without her Dinard's would have dropped
long ago to the position of a second-rate house, and she was aware that
Madame understood this quite as clearly as she did. For whatever
Madame's executive ability may have been in the past, it had dwindled
now to the capricious endeavours of a chronic invalid--of an aging
invalid, notwithstanding her desperate struggle for youth. Half as much
energy as Madame had spent resisting Nature might have won for her a
sanctified memory had it been directed toward the practice of piety, or
a tablet of imperishable granite had it been devoted to as tireless a
pursuit of art or science. To her battle against age she had brought the
ambition of a conqueror and the devotion of a martyr; and at the last,
even to-day, there was a superb defiance in her refusal to acknowledge
defeat, in her demand that her surrender should be regarded as a
capitulation.
"In a day or two I hope to be able to discuss my plan with you," said
Gabriella, and she could not keep the softness of pity out of her voice.
So this was what life came to, after all? For an instant she felt the
overwhelming discouragement which is the portion of those who approach
life not through vision, but through outward events, who seek a solution
not in the deeper consciousness of the spirit, but in the changing
surface of experience. Then, even before her glance had left Madame's
golden head, her natural optimism regained control of her mind, and she
told herself stoutly that if this was Madame's present, then it followed
logically that Madame must have had a past, and that past must have been
an agreeable one. It was inconceivable that she should defy the laws of
God for the sake of a prolongation of tragedy.
"It is a splendid investment," croaked the old woman in the midst of
Gabriella's painful reflections. "The house was never more flourishing."
The ruling principle which decreed that Gabriella should keep her temper
had disciplined her not less thoroughly in the habit of holding her
tongue. The house was in a flourishing condition; but she remembered how
fragile and thinly rooted had been its showy prosperity, when she had
entered it; and had she cared to confound Madame utterly, she might have
reminded her of that unwritten history of the past ten years in which
the secret episode of Mrs. Pletheridge occurred. For Gabriella was not
inclined to underrate her own efficiency, and her confidence was
supported by the knowledge that if she left Dinard's the most
fashionable of Madame's clientele would follow her.
"You'll never have such another opportunity--not if you live to be a
hundred. At your age I should have jumped at the idea," persisted
Madame.
"So should I," responded Gabriella merrily, "if I were sure of landing
on my feet."
"You'll always land on your feet--you're that sort. You've got push, and
it's push that counts most in business. A woman may have all the brains
in the world, but without push she might as well give up the struggle.
That was what brought me up in spite of four husbands and six children,"
pursued Madame, while she took out a small flask from one of the drawers
of her desk and measured out, as she remarked in parenthesis, "a little
stimulant." "Yes, I had a great success in my line, and if I could only
have kept clear of men, I might have saved a fortune to retire on in my
old age. But I had a natural taste for men, and they were the ruin of
me. As soon as I lost one husband and managed to get on a bit, another
would come, and I couldn't resist him. I never could resist marriage;
that was the undoing of me as a woman of business."
"Four husbands, and yet you were remarkably successful," observed
Gabriella, because it was the only thing with a cheerful sound she could
think of to utter, and an intermittent cheerful sound was all that
Madame required from a listener when she was under the enlivening
influence of brandy.
"But think what I might have done with my talent if I had remained a
widow, as you have done. It was my misfortune to attract men whether I
wanted to or not," wheezed Madame, wiping her eyes; "some women are like
that."
"So I have heard," murmured Gabriella, seeing that Madame paused for the
note of encouragement.
"I don't suppose that has been your trouble, for there's a
stand-offishness about you that puts men at a distance, and they don't
like to be put at a distance. Then, though your figure is very fine for
showing off models, it isn't exactly the kind that men lean to. If you'd
fatten up it might be different, but that would spoil you for the
clothes, and that, after all, is more important. It's strange, isn't
it?" she croaked, with an alcoholic chuckle, "how partial men are to
full figures even after they have gone out of fashion?"
And with this wonder still ringing in her ears, Gabriella turned away,
to attend a customer, who demanded, in cool defiance of man and nature,
to be transformed into a straight silhouette.
Gabriella had not seen Judge Crowborough for several years, and her
first impression, when she entered his office at five o'clock, was one
of surprise at his ugliness. Though he had changed but little since
their first meeting at Mrs. Fowler's dinner, the years had softened her
memory of his appearance, and she had skilfully persuaded herself that
one should not judge a man by a repelling exterior, which, after all,
might cover a great deal of goodness. After George's flight and
Archibald Fowler's death he had been very kind to her. "I don't know
what I should have done without him at that time," she thought now, as
she stood with his big, soft hand clasping hers and his admiring fishy
eyes on her face. "No, it is impossible to judge by appearances, and all
men think well of him, all men respect him," she concluded, feeling
suddenly reassured.
"It's been a long time--it must be nearly' three years--since I saw
you," he remarked, with flattering geniality, "and you look younger than
ever."
"Hard work keeps me young, then. I work very hard." Her charming smile
flashed like an edge of light on her lips, and lent glow and fervor to
her pale face beneath the silver-brightened cloud of her hair. She read
his admiration in the bold gaze he fastened upon her, and though she was
without coquetry, she was conscious that her vanity was agreeably
soothed.
"What is it? Dressmaking?" He was obviously interested.
"Yes--dresses and hats. Hats are rather my specialty. I manage things
now almost entirely at Dinard's. Have you ever heard of the house?"
He nodded. "I remember. That's where you went after Archibald died,
wasn't it?" His memory amazed her. What a mind for trifles he had! What
a wonderful man he was for his years!
"Yes, I've been there ever since. I've done well as things go, but, of
course, it has been hard. It has been a hard life."
"And you never came to me. I wanted to help you. I'd have done anything
I could to make it easier for you, but you were so proud. You'd have got
on twice as well if you had given up your pride."
The telephone rang, and while he answered it, she watched his broad,
slouching back, his swelling paunch overflowing now above the stays he
wore to reduce it, the coarsened flesh of his neck, bulging above the
edge of his collar, and the shining, baldness on the top of his head,
which gave an appearance of commanding intellect to his empurpled
forehead. How hideous he was, how revolting, and yet what a power! A
face like his on a woman would have condemned her to isolation and
misery, but, so far as one could judge, it had scarcely interfered with
his happiness. His mental force had risen superior to his face, to his
paunch, to his whole repulsive appearance. Greater than Madame because
of his sex, he had achieved a triumph over the corporeal mass of his
body which she, fortified and abetted by a hundred cosmetics and
manipulations, could never attain. Where Madame relied on futile
artificial aids in her battle against decay, he hurled the tremendous
power of his personality, and ugliness became at once as insignificant
as immorality in his life. "One can't judge him by the standards of
other men," thought Gabriella, using a remembered phrase of
Fifty-seventh Street.
Judge Crowborough was still talking earnestly into the telephone, and
she gathered vaguely that his earnestness related to a donation he had
promised his church. "Raise two hundred thousand, and I'll double it,"
he said abruptly, and hung up the receiver. "We want a new
organ--something really fine, you know," he observed casually as he
turned back to Gabriella. "We are moving--everything is moving up, and
the church has to keep step with the age. You can't keep progress out of
religion any more than you can out of business--not that I'm in favour
of modernism or any of that stuff--but we've got to keep moving." He
spoke with conviction, and there was no doubt that he sincerely believed
himself to be an important factor in the religious movement of his
country. Then his tone changed to one of intimate friendliness and he
asked: "Have you heard any music this winter? If I'd only known about
you, I'd have sent you tickets to the opera."
"The children go sometimes," she answered. That he should imagine her
buying opera tickets for herself, with the children needing every penny
she made, seemed to her ridiculous; but rich men were always like that,
she reflected a little scornfully.
"If I'd only remembered about you," he murmured, and turning heavily in
his chair, he added authoritatively: "Now tell me about it. Tell me the
whole thing straight through. I am going to help you."
She told him rapidly, and while she talked a sense of perfect peace and
security enveloped her. It was so long since she had been able to ask
advice of a man; it was so long since anybody bigger and stronger than
she had undertaken to adjust her perplexities. The past returned to her
as a dream, and she felt again that absolute reliance on the masculine
ability to control events, to ease burdens, to remove difficulties,
which had visited her in her childhood when Cousin Jimmy appeared in the
front parlour in Hill Street. "It's wonderful how men manage things,"
she thought. "It's wonderful being a man. Everything is so simple for
men."
"Well, don't worry a minute longer. It's all as easy as--as possible,"
observed the great man serenely when she had finished. "From what you
tell me it looks as if it were a pretty good investment to begin with,
and there are plenty of people around looking for ways to invest money.
I'm looking for ways myself, when it comes to that," he proclaimed, with
a paternal smile as he sank back on the luxurious leather cushions of
his chair.
"You are so good," she responded gratefully, "so good"; and she was
speaking sincerely.
With his casual gaze, which seemed to turn inward, fixed on the ceiling
above her head, he invited her confidence by a few perfectly chosen
expressions of comprehension and sympathy. The acuteness and activity
of his mental processes delighted her while he questioned her. After the
slovenly methods of Madame, after the loose reasoning and the muddled
thinking of all the women she met in the course of her work, there was a
positive pleasure in following the exactness and inflexibility of his
logic. His reasoning was orderly, neat, elastic, without loose ends or
tangled skeins to unravel, and she felt again, while she listened to
him, the confidence which had come to her as soon as she entered his
office. He was efficiency incarnate, and from her childhood up she had
respected efficiency. In an hour, in less time than it had taken her to
tell her story, he had lifted the weight from her shoulders, had
mastered the details of Madame's intricate problems, and had outlined
the terms by which Gabriella could accept the old woman's offer without
placing herself under financial obligations. Her pride, he had discerned
at a glance, shrank from obligation, and he was as alert to save her
pride as he was to make a good bargain with Madame.
"It's a good thing. It's good business. Don't think I'm losing for a
minute," he said as she rose to go, and she felt that some secret
delicacy, the last feeling she would have attributed to him, was
prompting his words.
"I can't tell you what a relief it is to talk to you," she said, holding
out her hand while she hesitated between the desk and the door. "I can't
even begin to tell you how grateful I am. I haven't had any one to
advise me since I left Richmond, and it is such a comfort"
"Well, I'll give you the best advice in my power. I'll give you the very
best," he replied as frankly as if he were discussing his gift to the
church. "What's more, I'll think it over a bit while I'm at the Hot
Springs, and talk to you about it when I come back. I suppose I can
always get you on the telephone, can't I?"
His manner was still casual and business-like, and it did not change by
so much as a shade when he moved a step nearer and put his arm about her
waist. If he had taken down his hat or lighted a cigar, he would
probably have performed either action with the same air of automatic
efficiency; and she realized, in the very instant of her amazement, that
his manner was merely an authoritative expression of his power. What
astonished her most in the incident, after all, was not the judge's
share in it, but the vividness and coolness of her own mental
impressions. She was not frightened, she was not even disturbed, she was
merely disgusted. Never before had she understood so clearly the
immeasurable distance that divided the Gabriella of seventeen years ago
from the Gabriella who released herself calmly from the appalling clasp
of the casual and business-like old man. To the Gabriella who had loved
George such an episode would have appeared as an inconceivable horror.
Now, with her worldly wisdom and her bitter knowledge of love, she found
herself regarding the situation with sardonic humour. The stupendous,
the incredible vanity of man!--she reflected disdainfully. Was there
ever a man too ugly, too repulsive, or too old to delude himself with
the belief that he might still become the object of passion?
"Now you've spoiled it," she said shortly, but without embarrassment.
"Now you've spoiled it." She put the case to him plainly, the Gabriella
who would have blushed and trembled and wept seventeen years ago.
"But I meant nothing," he said, genuinely disturbed. "I assure you I am
truly sorry if I have offended you. It was nothing--a mere matter of--"
the word "habit," she knew, hovered on his lips, though he did not utter
it, and broke off inconclusively.
So there had not been even the excuse of emotion about it. He had
embraced her as instinctively, as methodically, as he might have
switched on the electric light over his desk. Here again she was brought
to a stop before an overwhelming realization of the fundamental
differences between man and woman. To think of woman behaving like that
merely because it had become a matter of habit!
"I always liked you, you know," he said abruptly, with a sincere
emphasis.
"Well, there are different ways of liking," she rejoined coldly, "and I
happen not to care for this way."
"If you don't like it, I'll never do it again," he promised, almost
humbly. "I'll be a good friend to you, honestly I will. I'll treat you
as if you were--you were--"
"A gentleman," finished Gabriella, and smiled in spite of herself. After
all, what was the use of resenting the facts of life? What was the use
of reproaching the mud that spattered over one's clothes?
"Well, that's a bargain. I'll treat you as a gentleman." There was a
fine quality about the man; she could not deny it.
"I'll forgive you then and forget it." It was the tolerant Gabriella who
spoke--the Gabriella of disillusioning experience and a clear vision of
life--not the impassioned idealist of the 'nineties. When all was said,
you had to take men and things as you found them. That was philosophy,
and that was also "good business." It was foolish to apply romantic
theories to the positive actuality.
"Well, you _are_ a gentleman," exclaimed the judge, with facetiousness.
"That's why I always liked you, I suppose. You're straight and you're
honest and there's no nonsense about you."
If he had only known! She thought of the romantic girl of the 'nineties,
of her buoyant optimism, her childlike ignorance, her violent
certainties, and of her triumphant, "I can manage my life!" If he had
only known how she had "muddled things" at the beginning, would he have
said that she had "no nonsense about her?"
In the subway, a little later, clinging to a dirty strap, with a
blackened mechanic in the seat before her, a box of tools at her feet,
and a garlic-scented charwoman jolting against her shoulder, she was
overcome by a sudden cloud of despondency. Her courage, her hopefulness,
her philosophy, seemed to melt like frost in her thoughts, leaving
behind only a sodden sense of loss, of emptiness, of defeat. "I've had a
mean life," she said to herself resentfully. "I've had a mean life. What
has ever happened to me that was worth while? What have I ever had
except hard work and disappointment? I am thirty-seven years old. My
youth is going, and I have nothing to show for it but ten years of
dressmaking. The best of my life is over, and when I look back on it, it
is only a blank." It was as if the interview with the great man she had
just left had completed the desolating retrospect of a lifetime. Was
there nothing but disenchantment ahead of her? Was life merely the
dropping of illusion after illusion, the falling of petals at the first
touch from a flower that is beginning to fade? "Yes, nothing has ever
happened to me that was worth while," she repeated, forgetting her
children for the moment. Then, because the heavy air stifled her, she
left the car and turned into West Twenty-third Street where the lights
were coming out softly in the spring twilight. Though it was too late to
go over the house Fanny wanted, it occurred to her that she might look
at the outside of it before she took the Harlem elevated train at one of
the West Side stations. The walk would do her good and perhaps blow away
the disquieting recollections of her encounter with Judge Crowborough.
Not until her mood changed, she determined, would she go back to the
children.
At the corner she bought a bunch of lilacs because a man held them out
to her temptingly when she approached, and as she buried her face in the
blossoms, she said resolutely: "No, I haven't had a mean life. It can't
be mean unless I think it so, and I won't--I won't. After all, it isn't
the kind of life you have, but the way you think about it that matters."
The air was deliciously mild; streaks of pale gold lingered above the
grim outlines of the buildings; and the wild, sweet spirit of spring
fluttered like an imprisoned creature in the gray streets of the city.
It was May again, and the pipes of Pan were fluting the ancient songs in
the ancient racial fields of the memory. There was a spring softness in
the fleecy white of the clouds, in the flowing gold of the sunset, in
the languorous kiss of the breeze, in the gentle rippling waves of the
dust on the pavement. For years she had been so tranquil, and now
suddenly, at the flitting touch of the spirit of spring, she knew that
youth was slipping, slipping, and that with youth, went romance,
enchantment, adventure. It was slipping from her, and she had never
really held it. She had had only the second-rate; she had missed the
best always--the best of life, the best of love, the best of endeavour
and achievement. She had missed the finer reality. From somewhere, from
the past or the present, from the dream or the actuality, her young
illusions and her young longings rushed over her, driven by the
fragrance of the lilacs, which was stinging her blood into revolt. Only
an instant the revolt lasted, but in that instant of vision nothing
mattered in life except romance, enchantment, adventure.
"Yes, I've missed life," she thought, and the regret was still in her
mind when one of those miracles which in our ignorance we call accidents
occurred. Out of the lilac-scented twilight, out of the wild, sweet
spirit of spring, a voice said in her ear, "Alice, you waited!"
Turning quickly, she had a vivid impression of height, breadth, bigness,
of roughened dark red hair, of gray eyes so clean that they looked 'as
if they had been washed by the sea. Then the voice spoke again: "I beg
your pardon. It was a mistake." And the next instant she was alone in
the street.