right here--if we only knew it. I had an example this afternoon. I was
walking through the village, when an old woman called to me, and asked
if I were the doctor from the old Grange. I said I was, and she begged
me to come in and see her daughter-in-law. She was very ill, and the
local doctor is gone. I found a young, very pretty girl, with a tiny
baby, in as bad a state of hysteria as I ever saw. But that is not the
story. That I heard by degrees. It seems the father-in-law, a veteran
of 1870, now old, and nearly helpless, is of good family, but married,
in his middle age, a woman of the country. They had one son who was
sent away to school, and became a civil engineer. He married, about
two years ago, this pretty girl whom I saw. She is Spanish. He met her
somewhere in Southern Spain, and it was a desperate love match. The
first child was born about six weeks before the war broke out. Of
course the young husband was in the first class mobilized. The young
wife is not French. She doesn't care at all who governs France, so
that her man were left her in peace. I imagine that the old father
suspected this. He had never been happy that his one son married a
foreigner. The instant the young wife realized that her man was
expected to put love of France before love of her, she began to make
every effort to induce him to go out of the country. To make a long
story short, the son went to his mother, whom he adored, made a clean
breast of the situation, and proposed that, to satisfy his wife, he
should start with her for the Spanish frontier, finding means to have
her brother meet them there and take her home to her own people. He
promised to make no effort to cross the frontier himself, and gave his
word of honor to be with his regiment in time. He knew it would not be
easy to do, and, in case of accident, he wished his mother to be able
to explain to the old veteran. But the lad had counted without the
spirit that is dominant in every French woman to-day. The mother
listened. She controlled herself. She did not protest. But that night,
when the young couple were about to leave the house, carrying the
sleeping baby, they found the old man, pistol in hand, with his back
against the door. The words were few. The veteran stated that his son
could only pass over his dead body--that if he insisted, he would
shoot him before he would allow him to pass: that neither wife nor
child should leave France. It was in vain that the wife, on her knees,
pleaded that she was not French--that the war did not concern
her--that her husband was dearer to her than honor--and so forth. The
old man declared that in marrying his son she became French, though
she was a disgrace to the name, that her son was a born Frenchman;
that she might go, and welcome, but that she would go without the
child, and, of course, that ended the argument. The next morning the
baby was christened, but the tale had leaked out. I suppose the
Spanish wife had not kept her ideas absolutely to herself--and the son
joined his regiment. The Spanish wife is still here, but, needless to
say, she is not at all loved by her husband's family, who watch her
like lynxes for fear she will abduct the child, and she has developed
as neat a case of hysterical mania of persecution as I ever
encountered. So you see that even in this quiet place there are
tragedies behind the walls. But I seem to be telling a story out of my
turn!"
"And a forbidden war story, at that," said the Youngster. "So to
change the air--whose turn is it?"
The Journalist puffed out his chest. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said,
as he rose to his feet, and struck, the traditional attitude of a
monologist, "I regret to inform you that you will be obliged to have a
taste of my histrionic powers. I've got to act out part of this
story--couldn't seem to tell it in any other form."
* * * * *
"Dora!"
A slender young woman turned at the word, so sharply spoken over her
shoulder, and visibly paled.
She was strikingly attractive, in her modish tailor frock, and her
short tight jacket of Persian lamb, with its high, collar of grey fur
turned up to her ears.
Her singularly fair skin, her red hair, her brown eyes, with dark
lashes, and narrowly pencilled eyebrows that were almost black, gave
her a remarkable look, and at first sight suggested that Nature had
not done it all. But a closer observation convinced one that the
strange combination of such hair and such eyebrows was only one of
those freaks by which Nature now and then warns the knowing to beware
even of marvellous beauty. In this case it stamped a woman as one
who--by several signs--might be identified by the initiated as one of
those, who, without reason or logic, spring now and again from most
unpromising soil!
She had walked the entire length of the station from the wide doors on
the street side to the swing doors at the opposite end which gave
entrance to the tracks.
As she passed, no man had failed to turn and look after her, as, with
her well hung skirts just clearing the wet pavement, she stepped
daintily over the flagging, and so lightly that neither boots nor
skirt were the worse for it. One sees women in Paris who know that
art, but it is rare in an American.
She must have been long accustomed to attracting masculine eyes, and
no wonder, for when she stepped into the place she seemed to give a
color to the atmosphere, and everything and everybody went grey and
commonplace beside her.
It was a terrible night in November.
The snow was falling rapidly outside, and the wind blew as it can blow
only on the New England coast.
It was the sort of night that makes one forced to be out look forward
lovingly to home, and think pityingly of the unfortunate, while those
within doors involuntarily thank God for comfort, and hug at whatever
remnant of happiness living has left them.
The railway station was crowded.
The storm had come up suddenly at the close of a fair day. It was the
hour, too, at which tradespeople, clerks, and laborers were returning
home to the suburbs, and at which the steamboat express for New York
was being made up--although it was not an encouraging night for the
latter trip.
The pretty young woman with the red hair had looked through the door
near the tracks, and glanced to the right, where the New York express
should be. The gate was still closed. She was much too early! For a
second she hesitated. She glanced about quickly, and the look was not
without apprehension. It was evident that she did not see the man who
was following her, and who seemed to have been waiting for her near
the outer door. He did not speak, nor attract her attention in any
way. The crowd served him in that!
After a moment's hesitation, she turned toward the ladies' waiting
room, and just as she was about to enter, the man behind addressed
her--and the word was said so low that no one near heard it--though,
by the start she gave, it might have been a pistol shot.
"Dora!"
She stood perfectly still. The color died out of her face; but only
for an instant. She looked alarmed, then perplexed, and then she
smiled. She was evidently a young woman of resources.
The man was a stalwart handsome fellow of his class--though it was
almost impossible to guess what that was save that it was not that
which the world labels by exterior signs "gentleman." He might easily
have been some sort of a mechanic. He was certainly neither a clerk
nor the follower of any of the unskilled professions. He was surely
countrybred, for there was a largeness in his expression as well as
his bearing that spoke distinctly of broad vistas and exercise. He was
tall and broad-shouldered. He stood well on his feet, hampered as
little by his six feet of height and fourteen stone weight as he was
by the size of his hands. One would have easily backed him to ride
well and shoot straight, though he probably never saw the inside of
what is called a "drawing-room."
There was the fire of a mighty emotion in his deep-set eyes. There
were signs of a tremendous animal force in his square chin and thick
neck, but it was balanced well by his broad brow and wide-set eyes. He
seemed at this moment to hold himself in check with a rigid
stubbornness that answered for his New England origin, and Puritan
ancestry! Indeed, at the moment he addressed the woman, but for his
eyes, he might have seemed as indifferent as any of the stone figures
that upheld the iron girders of the roof above him!
Still smiling archly she moved forward into the waiting room and,
passing through the dense crowd that hung about the door, crossed the
room to an open space.
Without a word the man followed.
The room was dimly lighted. The crowd that surged about them, coming
and going, and sometimes pressing close on every side, seemed not to
note them. And, if they had, they would have seen nothing more
remarkable than an extremely pretty young woman conversing quietly
with a big fellow in a reefer and long boots--a rig he carried well.
"Dora!" he said again, and then had to pause to steady his voice.
Dora wet her red lips with the pointed tip of her tiny tongue;
swallowed nervously once or twice, before she spoke. She was now
facing him, and still smiling.
He kept his eyes fixed on her face. He did not respond to the smile.
His eyes were tragic. He seemed to be seeking something in her face as
if he feared her mere words would not help him.
"Why, Zeke," she said at last, when she realized that he could not get
beyond her name, "I thought you had gone home an hour ago! Why didn't
you take the 5.15 train?"
"I changed my mind! To tell you the truth, I heard that you were in
town this afternoon. I have been watching for you--for some time."
"Well, all I can say is--you are foolish. Where's the good for you
fretting yourself so? I can take care of myself."
"I can't get used to you being about in the city streets alone."
"How absurd!"
"I have been absurd a great many times of late--in your eyes. Our
ideas don't seem to agree any more."
"No, Zeke, they don't!"
"Why speak to me in that tone, Dora? Don't do it!"
He looked over her head, as if to be sure of his hold on himself. He
was ghastly white about his smooth-shaven, thick lips. Both hands were
thrust deep into his reefer pockets.
"What's come to you, Zeke?" she asked nervously. His was not exactly
the face one would see unmoved!
He answered her without looking at her. It was evident he did not dare
just yet. "Nothing much, I reckon. I've been a bit down all day. I
really don't know why, myself. I've had a queer presentiment, as if
something were going to happen. As if something terrible were coming
to me."
"Well, I'm sorry. You've no occasion to feel like that, I'm sure."
"All right, if you say so. What train shall we take?"
He stretched out one hand to take the small bag she carried.
She shrank back instinctively, and withdrew the bag. He must have felt
rather than seen the movement, it was so slight.
His hand fell to his side.
Still, he persisted.
"I'm dead done up, Dora. I need my dinner, come on!"
"Then you'd better take the 6.00 train. You've just time," she said
hurriedly.
"All right. Come on!"
He laid his hand on her shoulder with a gesture that was entreating.
It was the first time he had touched her. A frightened look came into
her eyes. He did not see it, for he was still avoiding her face. It
was as if he were afraid of reading something there he did not wish to
know.
Her red lips had taken on a petulant expression--that of one who hated
to be "stirred up." In a childish voice--which only thinly veiled an
obstinate determination--she pouted: "I'm not going--yet."
The words were said almost under her breath, as if she were fearful of
their effect on him, yet was determined to carry her point.
But the man only sighed deeply as he replied: "I thought your dancing
lessons were over. I hoped I was no longer to spend my evenings alone.
Alone! Looking round at the things that are yours, and among which I
feel so out of place, except when you are there to make me forget.
God! What damnable evenings I've spent there--feeling as if you were
slipping further and further out of my life--as if you were gone, and
I had only the clothes you had worn, an odor about me somewhere to
convince me that I had not dreamed you! Sometimes that faint,
indistinct, evasive scent of you in the room has almost driven me out
of my head. I wonder I haven't killed you before now--to be sure of
you! I'm afraid of Hell, I suppose, or I should have."
The woman did not look at all alarmed. Indeed there was a light in her
amber eyes that spoke of a kind of gratification in stirring this
young giant like that--this huge fellow that could so easily crush
her--but did not! She knew better why than he did--but she said
nothing.
With his eyes still fixed on space--after a pause--he went on: "I was
fool enough to believe that that was all over, at last, that you had
danced to your heart's content, and that we were to begin the old
life--the life before that nonsense--over again. You were like my old
Dora all day yesterday! The Dora I loved and courted and married back
there in the woods. But I might have known it wasn't finished by the
ache I had here," and he struck himself a blow over the heart with his
clenched fist, "when I waked this morning, and by the weight I've
carried here all day." And he drew a deep breath like one in pain.
The woman looked about as if apprehensive that even his passionate
undertone might have attracted attention, but only a man by the
radiator seemed to have noticed, and he had the air of being not quite
sober enough to understand.
There was a long pause.
The woman glanced nervously at the clock.
The man was again staring over her head.
It was quarter to six. Her precious minutes were flying. She must be
rid of him!
"See here, Zeke, dear," she said, in desperation, speaking very
rapidly under her breath--no fear but he would hear--"the truth is,
that I'm not a bit better satisfied with our sordid kind of life than
I was a year ago, when we first discussed it. I'm awfully sorry! You
know that. But I can't change--and there is the whole truth! It's not
your fault in one way--and yet in one way it is. God knows you have
done everything you could, and more some ways than you ought. But,
unluckily for you, gratifying me was not the way to mend the situation
for yourself. It is cruel--but it is the truth! If a man wants to keep
a woman of my disposition attached to him, he'd do far better to beat
her than over-educate her, and teach her all the beauties of freedom.
He should keep her ignorant, rather than cultivate her imagination,
and open up the wonders of the world to her. It's rough on chaps like
you, that with all your cleverness you've no instinct to set you right
on a point like this--but it is lucky for women like me--at times! You
were determined to force all this out of me, so you may as well hear
the whole brutal truth. I'm sick of our stupid ways of life--I have
been sick of it for a long time. I've passed all power to pretend any
longer. I have learned that there is a great and beautiful world
within the reach of women who are clever enough and brave enough to
grasp at an opportunity, without looking forward or back. I want to
walk boldly to this. I'm not afraid of the stepping-stones! This is
really all your fault. When you married me, five years ago, I was only
sixteen, and very much in love with you. Now, why didn't you make me
do the housework and drudge as all the other women on the farms about
yours did? I'd have done it then, and willingly, even to the washing
and scrubbing. I had been working in a cotton mill. I didn't know
anything better than to drudge. I thought that was a woman's lot. It
didn't even seem terrible to me. But no--you set yourself to amuse me.
You brought me way up to town on a wedding journey. For the first time
in my life I saw there idle women in the world, who wore soft clothes
and were always dressed up. You bought me finery. I was clever and
imitative. I pined for all the excitement and beauty of city life when
we were back on the farm, in the life you loved. I cried for it, as a
child cries for the moon. I never dreamed of getting it. And you
surprised me by selling the farm, and coming nearer the town to live.
Just because I had an ear for music, and could pick out tunes on the
old melodeon, I must have a piano and take lessons. Just because my
music teacher happened to be French and I showed an aptitude for
studying, that must be gratified. Can you really blame me if I want to
see more of the wide world that opened up to me? Did you really think
French novels and music were likely to make a woman of my lively
imagination content with her lot as wife of a mechanic--however
clever?"
The man looked down at her as if stunned. Arguments of that sort were
a bit above the reasoning of the simple masculine animal, who seemed
to belong to that race which comprehends little of the complex
emotions, and looks on love as the one inevitable passion of life, and
on marriage as its logical result and everlasting conclusion.
It was probable at this moment that he completed his alphabet in the
great lesson of life--and spelled out painfully the awful truth, that
not all the royal service of worship and love in a man's heart can
hold a woman.
There was something akin to a sob in his throat as he replied: "You
were so young--so pretty! I could not bear to think that you should
soil your hands for me! I wanted to make up to you for all the
hardships and sorrows of your childhood. I dreamed of being mother and
father as well as husband to you. I thought it would make you happy to
owe everything to me--as happy as it made me to give. I would
willingly have carried you every step of your life, rather than you
should have tired your feet. Is that a sin in a woman's eyes?"
A whimsical smile broke over the woman's face. It quivered on her red
lips for just a breath, as if conscious how ill-timed it was. "I
really like to tire my feet," she murmured, and she pointed the toe of
her tiny boot, as if poised to dance, and looked down on it with
evident admiration.
The man caught his breath sharply.
"It's that damned dancing that has upset you, Dora!"
"Sh! Don't swear! I do like dancing! I have always told you so. It was
you who first admired it. It was you who let me learn."
"You were my wife! I thought that meant everything to you that it
meant to me. I loved your beauty because it was yours; your pleasures
because they gave you pleasure. All my ideas of right and wrong in
marriage which I learned in my father's honest house bent to your
desires and happiness."
She looked nervously at the clock. Ten minutes to six.
"Dora--for God's sake look at me! Dora--you're not leaving me?"
It was an almost inarticulate cry, as of a man who had foreseen his
doom, and only protested from some unconquerable instinct to struggle!
She patted his clenched hand gently.
It was plainly evident that she hated the sight of suffering, and
hated more not having her own way, and was possessed by a refined kind
of cowardice.
"Don't make a row, there's a dear boy! It is like this: I am going
over to New York, just for a few weeks. I would have told you
yesterday, only I hated spoiling a nice day. It was a nice day?--with
a scene. You'll find a nice long letter at home--it's a sweet one,
too--telling you all about it. Don't take it too hard! I am going to
earn fifty dollars a week--just fancy that--and don't blame me too
much!"
He didn't seem to hear! He hung his head--the veins in his forehead
swelled--there were actually tears in his eyes--and the mighty effort
he made to restrain a sob was terrible--and six feet of American
manhood, as fine a specimen of the animal as the soil can show,
animated by a spirit which represented well the dignity of toil and
self-respect, stood bowed down with ungovernable grief and shame
before a merely ornamental bit of femininity.
Fate had simply perpetrated another of her ghastly pleasantries!
The woman was perplexed--naturally! But it was evidently the sight of
her work, and not the work, itself, that pained her.
"Don't cut up so rough, Zeke, please don't," she went on. "I'm very
fond of you--you know that--but I detest the odor of the shop, and it
is so easy for us both to escape it."
He shrank as if she had struck him.
Instinctively he must have remembered the cotton mill from which he
took her. A man rarely understands a woman's faculty for
forgetting--that is to say, no man of his class does.
"Doesn't it seem a bit selfish of you," she went on, "to object to my
earning nearly three times what you can--and so easily--and prettily?"
"I wanted you to be happy with what I could give you."
"Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not. No use to fib about it! It is too late.
Your notions are so queer."
"I suppose it is queer to love one woman--and to love her so that
laboring for her is happiness! I suppose you do find me a queer chap,
because I am not willing that my wife--flesh of my flesh--should
flaunt herself, half dressed, to excite the admiration of other
men--all for fifty dollars a week!"
"See here, Zeke, you are making too much of this! If it is the
separation you can't stand--why come, too! I'll soon enough be getting
my hundred a week, and more. That is enough for both of us. You can be
with me, if that is what you mind!"
"If that is what I mind? You know better than that! Am I such a cur
that you think, if there were no other reason, I'd pose before the
world as the husband of a woman who owes nothing to him--as if I
were--"
She interrupted him sharply.
"What odds does it make--tell me that--which of us earns the money? To
have it is the only important thing!"
The man straightened up--and squared his broad shoulders. A strange
change came over him.
He laid his heavy hand on her shoulder, and, for the first time, he
spoke with a disregard for self-control, although he did not raise his
voice.
"Look at me, Dora, and be sure I mean what I say. Leave me to-day, and
don't you ever come back to me. It may kill me to live without you.
Well, better that than--than the other! I married you to live with
you--not merely to have you! I've been a faithful husband to you! I
shall remain that while I live. I never denied you anything I could
get for you! But this I will not put up with! I thought you loved
me--even if you were sometimes vain, and now and then cruel. If you're
ill--if you disappoint yourself, I'll be ready to take care of you--as
I promised. But don't never dare to come back to me otherwise! Unless
you're in want and homeless, unless you can't live, but by the labor
of my hands, I'll never sleep under the same roof with you again.
Never!"
"What nonsense, Zeke! Of course I'll come back! You won't turn me
away! I only want to see a little of the world, to get a few of the
things you can't give me--no blame to you, either!"
He did not seem to hear her.
Almost as if speaking to himself, he went on: "I've feared for some
time you didn't love me. I didn't want to believe it. I was a coward.
I shut my eyes. I took what you gave me--I daren't think of
this--which has come to me! I dared not! God punishes idolatry! He has
punished mine. Be sure you're not making a mistake, Dora! There may be
other men will admire you, my girl--will any of them love you as I do?
There's never a minute I'm not conscious of you, sleeping or waking.
Think again, Dora, before you leave me!"
"I can't, Zeke. I've signed a contract. I couldn't reconsider if I
wanted to. It's just seven minutes to train time. Kiss me--there's a
dear lad--and don't row me any more!"
She raised herself on tip toes and approached her red lips to his
face--lips of an intense color to go with the marked pallor of the
rest of the face, and which surely were never offered to him in vain
before--but he was beyond their seduction at last.
"You've decided?" he said.
"Of course!"
"All right! Good-bye, then! You promised to cleave to me through thick
and thin 'till death did us part.' I'll have no halfway business," and
he turned on his heel, and without looking back he pushed his way
through the crowd, which chatted and fussed and never even noted the
passing of a broken heart.
The pretty creature watched him out of sight.
There was a humorous pout on her lips. But she seemed so sure of her
man! He would come back, of course--when she called him--if she ever
did! Probably she liked him better at that moment than she had liked
him in two years. He had opposed her. He had defied her power over
him. He had once more become a man to conquer--if she ever had time!
But just now there was something more important. That train! It was
three minutes to the schedule time.
As he disappeared into the crowd she drew a breath of relief, and
hurried out of the waiting room and pushed her way to the platform,
along which she hurried to the parlor car, where she seated herself
comfortably, as if no man with a broken life had been set down that
day against her record.
To be sure, she could not quite rid herself of thoughts of his face,
but the recollection rather flattered her, and did not in the least
prevent her noticing the looks of admiration with which two men on the
opposite side of the car were regarding her.
Once or twice she glanced out of the window, apparently alternately
expecting and dreading to see her stalwart husband come sprinting down
the platform for the kiss he had refused.
He didn't come!
She was relieved as the train started--yet she hated to feel he could
really let her go like that!
She never guessed at the depth of suffering she had brought him. How
could she appreciate what she could never feel? She never dreamed that
as the train pulled out into the storm he stood at the end of the
station, and watched it slowly round the curve under the bridge and
pass out of sight. No one was near to see him turn aside, and rest his
arms against the brick wall, to bury his face in them, and sob like a
child, utterly oblivious of the storm that beat upon him.
* * * * *
And he sat down.
"Come on," yelled the Youngster, "where's the claque?" And he began to
applaud furiously.
"Oh, if there is a claque, the rest of us don't need to exert
ourselves," said the Lawyer, indolently.
"But I say," asked the Youngster, after the Journalist had made his
best bow. "I AM disappointed. Was that all?"
"My goodness," commented the Doctor, as he lighted a fresh cigar.
"Isn't that enough?"
"Not for _me_," replied the Youngster. "I want to know about her
_début_. Was she a success?"
"Of course," answered the Journalist. "That sort always is."
"And I want to know," insisted the Youngster, "what became of him?"
"Why," ejaculated the Sculptor, "of course he cut his big brown
throat!"
"Not a bit of it," said the Critic. "He probably went up to New York,
and hung round the stage door."
"Until she called in the police, and had him arrested as a common
nuisance," added the Lawyer.
"I'll bet my microscope he didn't," laughed the Doctor.