most inopportune moments. I went to see her again and again--my first
impression deepened, and in two weeks I had asked her to marry me. I
can safely say, we knew nothing of each other’s character. After
marriage, matters went well enough for a while.” Hosmer here arose,
and walked the length of the room.
“Mrs. Lafirme,” he said, “can’t you understand that it must be a
painful thing for a man to disparage one woman to another: the woman
who has been his wife to the woman he loves? Spare me the rest.”
“Please have no reservations with me; I shall not misjudge you in any
case,” an inexplicable something was moving her to know what remained
to be told.
“It wasn’t long before she attempted to draw me into what she called
society,” Hosmer continued. “I am little versed in defining shades of
distinction between classes, but I had seen from the beginning that
Fanny’s associates were not of the best social rank by any means. I
had vaguely expected her to turn from them, I suppose, when she
married. Naturally, I resisted anything so distasteful as being
dragged through rounds of amusement that had no sort of attraction
whatever for me. Besides, my business connections were extending, and
they claimed the greater part of my time and thoughts.
“A year after our marriage our boy was born.” Here Hosmer ceased
speaking for a while, seemingly under pressure of a crowding of
painful memories.
“The child whose picture you have at the office?” asked Thérèse.
“Yes,” and he resumed with plain effort: “It seemed for a while that
the baby would give its mother what distraction she sought so
persistently away from home; but its influence did not last and she
soon grew as restless as before. Finally there was nothing that united
us except the child. I can’t really say that we were united through
him, but our love for the boy was the one feeling that we had in
common. When he was three years old, he died. Melicent had come to
live with us after leaving school. She was a high-spirited girl full
of conceits as she is now, and in her exaggerated way became filled
with horror of what she called the mésalliance I had made. After a
month she went away to live with friends. I didn’t oppose her. I saw
little of my wife, being often away from home; but as feebly observant
as I was, I had now and again marked a peculiarity of manner about her
that vaguely troubled me. She seemed to avoid me and we grew more and
more divided.
“One day I returned home rather early. Melicent was with me. We found
Fanny in the dining-room lying on the sofa. As we entered, she looked
at us wildly and in striving to get up grasped aimlessly at the back
of a chair. I felt on a sudden as if there were some awful calamity
threatening my existence. I suppose, I looked helplessly at Melicent,
managing to ask her what was the matter with my wife. Melicent’s black
eyes were flashing indignation. ‘Can’t you see she’s been drinking.
God help you,’ she said. Mrs. Lafirme, you know now the reason which
drove me away from home and kept me away. I never permitted my wife to
want for the comforts of life during my absence; but she sued for
divorce some years ago and it was granted, with alimony which I
doubled. You know the miserable story now. Pardon me for dragging it
to such a length. I don’t see why I should have told it after all.”
Thérèse had remained perfectly silent; rigid at times, listening to
Hosmer often with closed eyes.
He waited for her to speak, but she said nothing for a while till
finally: “Your--your wife is still quite young--do her parents live
with her?”
“Oh no, she has none. I suppose she lives alone.”
“And those habits; you don’t know if she continues them?”
“I dare say she does. I know nothing of her, except that she receipts
for the amount paid her each month.”
The look of painful thought deepened on Thérèse’s face but her
questions having been answered, she again became silent.
Hosmer’s eyes were imploring her for a look, but she would not answer
them.
“Haven’t you a word to say to me?” he entreated.
“No, I have nothing to say, except what would give you pain.”
“I can bear anything from you,” he replied, at a loss to guess her
meaning.
“The kindest thing I can say, Mr. Hosmer, is, that I hope you have
acted blindly. I hate to believe that the man I care for, would
deliberately act the part of a cruel egotist.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I have learned one thing through your story, which appears very plain
to me,” she replied. “You married a woman of weak character. You
furnished her with every means to increase that weakness, and shut her
out absolutely from your life and yourself from hers. You left her
then as practically without moral support as you have certainly done
now, in deserting her. It was the act of a coward.” Thérèse spoke the
last words with intensity.
“Do you think that a man owes nothing to himself?” Hosmer asked, in
resistance to her accusation.
“Yes. A man owes to his manhood, to face the consequences of his own
actions.”
Hosmer had remained seated. He did not even with glance follow Thérèse
who had arisen and was moving restlessly about the room. He had so
long seen himself as a martyr; his mind had become so habituated to
the picture, that he could not of a sudden look at a different one,
believing that it could be the true one. Nor was he eager to accept a
view of the situation that would place him in his own eyes in a
contemptible light. He tried to think that Thérèse must be wrong; but
even admitting a doubt of her being right, her words carried an
element of truth that he was not able to shut out from his conscience.
He felt her to be a woman with moral perceptions keener than his own
and his love, which in the past twenty-four hours had grown to
overwhelm him, moved him now to a blind submission.
“What would you have me do, Mrs. Lafirme?”
“I would have you do what is right,” she said eagerly, approaching
him.
“O, don’t present me any questions of right and wrong; can’t you see
that I’m blind?” he said, self accusingly. “What ever I do, must be
because you want it; because I love you.”
She was standing beside him and he took her hand.
“To do a thing out of love for you, would be the only comfort and
strength left me.”
“Don’t say that,” she entreated. “Love isn’t everything in life; there
is something higher.”
“God in heaven, there shouldn’t be!” he exclaimed, passionately
pressing her hand to his forehead, his cheek, his lips.
“Oh, don’t make it harder for me,” Thérèse said softly, attempting to
withdraw her hand.
It was her first sign of weakness, and he seized on it for his
advantage. He arose quickly--unhesitatingly--and took her in his arms.
For a moment that was very brief, there was danger that the task of
renunciation would not only be made harder, but impossible, for both;
for it was in utter blindness to everything but love for each other,
that their lips met.
The great plantation bell was clanging out the hour of noon; the hour
for sweet and restful enjoyment; but to Hosmer, the sound was like the
voice of a derisive demon, mocking his anguish of spirit, as he
mounted his horse, and rode back to the mill.
VIII
Treats of Melicent.
Melicent knew that there were exchanges of confidence going on between
her brother and Mrs. Lafirme, from which she was excluded. She had
noted certain lengthy conferences held in remote corners of the
verandas. The two had deliberately withdrawn one moonlight evening to
pace to and fro the length of gravel walk that stretched from door
front to lane; and Melicent had fancied that they rather lingered when
under the deep shadow of the two great live-oaks that overarched the
gate. But that of course was fancy; a young girl’s weakness to think
the world must go as she would want it to.
She was quite sure of having heard Mrs. Lafirme say “I will help you.”
Could it be that David had fallen into financial straights and wanted
assistance from Thérèse? No, that was improbable and furthermore,
distasteful, so Melicent would not burden herself with the suspicion.
It was far more agreeable to believe that affairs were shaping
themselves according to her wishes regarding her brother and her
friend. Yet her mystification was in no wise made clearer, when David
left them to go to St. Louis.
Melicent was not ready or willing to leave with him. She had not had
her “visit out” as she informed him, when he proposed it to her. To
remain in the cottage during his absence was out of the question, so
she removed herself and all her pretty belongings over to the house,
taking possession of one of the many spare rooms. The act of removal
furnished her much entertainment of a mild sort, into which, however,
she successfully infused something of her own intensity by making the
occasion one to bring a large detachment of the plantation force into
her capricious service.
Melicent was going out, and she stood before her mirror to make sure
that she looked properly. She was black from head to foot. From the
great ostrich plume that nodded over her wide-brimmed hat, to the
pointed toe of the patent leather boot that peeped from under her
gown--a filmy gauzy thing setting loosely to her slender shapely
figure. She laughed at the somberness of her reflection, which she at
once set about relieving with a great bunch of geraniums--big and
scarlet and long-stemmed, that she thrust slantwise through her belt.
Melicent, always charming, was very pretty when she laughed. She
thought so herself and laughed a second time into the depths of her
dark handsome eyes. One corner of the large mouth turned saucily
upward, and the lips holding their own crimson and all that the cheeks
were lacking, parted only a little over the gleaming whiteness of her
teeth. As she looked at herself critically, she thought that a few
more pounds of flesh would have well become her. It had been only the
other day that her slimness was altogether to her liking; but at
present she was in love with plumpness as typified in Mrs. Lafirme.
However, on the whole, she was not ill pleased with her appearance,
and gathering up her gloves and parasol, she quitted the room.
It was “broad day,” one of the requirements which Grégoire had named
as essential for taking Melicent to visit old McFarlane’s grave. But
the sun was not “shining mighty bright,” the second condition, and
whose absence they were willing enough to overlook, seeing that the
month was September.
They had climbed quite to the top of the hill, and stood on the very
brink of the deep toilsome railroad cut all fringed with matted grass
and young pines, that had but lately sprung there. Up and down the
track, as far as they could see on either side the steel rails
glittered on into gradual dimness. There were patches of the field
before them, white with bursting cotton which scores of negroes, men,
women and children were dexterously picking and thrusting into great
bags that hung from their shoulders and dragged beside them on the
ground; no machine having yet been found to surpass the sufficiency of
five human fingers for wrenching the cotton from its tenacious hold.
Elsewhere, there were squads “pulling fodder” from the dry corn
stalks; hot and distasteful work enough. In the nearest field, where
the cotton was young and green, with no show of ripening, the overseer
rode slowly between the rows, sprinkling plentifully the dry powder of
paris green from two muslin bags attached to the ends of a short pole
that lay before him across the saddle.
Grégoire’s presence would be needed later in the day, when the cotton
was hauled to gin to be weighed; when the mules were brought to
stable, to see them properly fed and cared for, and the gearing all
put in place. In the meanwhile he was deliciously idle with Melicent.
They retreated into the woods, soon losing sight of everything but the
trees that surrounded them and the underbrush, that was scant and
scattered over the turf which the height of the trees permitted to
grow green and luxuriant.
There, on the far slope of the hill they found McFarlane’s grave,
which they knew to be such only by the battered and weather-worn cross
of wood, that lurched disreputably to one side--there being no hand in
all the world that cared enough to make it straight--and from which
all lettering had long since been washed away. This cross was all that
marked the abiding place of that mist-like form, so often seen at dark
to stalk down the hill with threatening stride, or of moonlight nights
to cross the lake in a pirogue, whose substance though visible was
nought; with sound of dipping oars that made no ripple on the lake’s
smooth surface. On stormy nights, some more gifted with spiritual
insight than their neighbors, and with hearing better sharpened to
delicate intonations of the supernatural, had not only seen the mist
figure mounted and flying across the hills, but had heard the panting
of the blood-hounds, as the invisible pack swept by in hot pursuit of
the slave so long ago at rest.
But it was “broad day,” and here was nothing sinister to cause
Melicent the least little thrill of awe. No owl, no bat, no ill-omened
creature hovering near; only a mocking bird high up in the branches of
a tall pine tree, gushing forth his shrill staccatoes as blithely as
though he sang paeans to a translated soul in paradise.
“Poor old McFarlane,” said Melicent, “I’ll pay a little tribute to his
memory; I dare say his spirit has listened to nothing but abuse of
himself there in the other world, since it left his body here on the
hill;” and she took one of the long-stemmed blood-red flowers and laid
it beside the toppling cross.
“I reckon he’s in a place w’ere flowers don’t git much waterin’, if
they got any there.”
“Shame to talk so cruelly; I don’t believe in such places.”
“You don’t believe in hell?” he asked in blank surprise.
“Certainly not. I’m a Unitarian.”
“Well, that’s new to me,” was his only comment.
“Do you believe in spirits, Grégoire? I don’t--in day time.”
“Neva mine ’bout spirits,” he answered, taking her arm and leading her
off, “let’s git away f’om yere.”
They soon found a smooth and gentle slope where Melicent sat herself
comfortably down, her back against the broad support of a tree trunk,
and Grégoire lay prone upon the ground with--his head in Melicent’s
lap.
When Melicent first met Grégoire, his peculiarities of speech, so
unfamiliar to her, seemed to remove him at once from the possibility
of her consideration. She was not then awake to certain fine
psychological differences distinguishing man from man; precluding the
possibility of naming and classifying him in the moral as one might in
the animal kingdom. But short-comings of language, which finally
seemed not to detract from a definite inheritance of good breeding,
touched his personality as a physical deformation might, adding to it
certainly no charm, yet from its pathological aspect not without a
species of fascination, for a certain order of misregulated mind.
She bore with him, and then she liked him. Finally, whilst indulging
in a little introspection; making a diagnosis of various symptoms,
indicative by no means of a deep-seated malady, she decided that she
was in love with Grégoire. But the admission embraced the
understanding with herself, that nothing could come of it. She
accepted it as a phase of that relentless fate which in pessimistic
moments she was inclined to believe pursued her.
It could not be thought of, that she should marry a man whose
eccentricity of speech would certainly not adapt itself to the
requirements of polite society.
He had kissed her one day. Whatever there was about the kiss--possibly
an over exuberance--it was not to her liking, and she forbade that he
ever repeat it, under pain of losing her affection. Indeed, on the few
occasions when Melicent had been engaged, kissing had been excluded as
superfluous to the relationship, except in the case of the young
lieutenant out at Fort Leavenworth who read Tennyson to her, as an
angel might be supposed to read, and who in moments of rapturous
self-forgetfulness, was permitted to kiss her under the ear: a
proceeding not positively distasteful to Melicent, except in so much
as it tickled her.
Grégoire’s hair was soft, not so dark as her own, and possessed an
inclination to curl about her slender fingers.
“Grégoire,” she said, “you told me once that the Santien boys were a
hard lot; what did you mean by that?”
“Oh no,” he answered, laughing good-humoredly up into her eyes, “you
did’n year me right. W’at I said was that we had a hard name in the
country. I don’ see w’y eitha, excep’ we all’ays done putty much like
we wanted. But my! a man can live like a saint yere at Place-du-Bois,
they ain’t no temptations o’ no kine.”
“There’s little merit in your right doing, if you have no temptations
to withstand,” delivering the time worn aphorism with the air and tone
of a pretty sage, giving utterance to an inspired truth.
Melicent felt that she did not fully know Grégoire; that he had always
been more or less under restraint with her, and she was troubled by
something other than curiosity to get at the truth concerning him. One
day when she was arranging a vase of flowers at a table on the back
porch, Aunt Belindy, who was scouring knives at the same table, had
followed Grégoire with her glance, when he walked away after
exchanging a few words with Melicent.
“God! but dats a diffunt man sence you come heah.”
“Different?” questioned the girl eagerly, and casting a quick sideward
look at Aunt Belindy.
“Lord yas honey, ’f you warn’t heah dat same Mista Grégor ’d be in
Centaville ev’y Sunday, a raisin’ Cain. Humph--I knows ’im.”
Melicent would not permit herself to ask more, but picked up her vase
of flowers and walked with it into the house; her comprehension of
Grégoire in no wise advanced by the newly acquired knowledge that he
was liable to “raise Cain” during her absence--a proceeding which she
could not too hastily condemn, considering her imperfect apprehension
of what it might imply.
Meanwhile she would not allow her doubts to interfere with the
kindness which she lavished on him, seeing that he loved her to
desperation. Was he not at this very moment looking up into her eyes,
and talking of his misery and her cruelty? turning his face downward
in her lap--as she knew to cry--for had she not already seen him lie
on the ground in an agony of tears, when she had told him he should
never kiss her again?
And so they lingered in the woods, these two curious lovers, till the
shadows grew so deep about old McFarlane’s grave that they passed it
by with hurried step and averted glance.
IX
Face to Face.
After a day of close and intense September heat, it had rained during
the night. And now the morning had followed chill and crisp, yet with
possibilities of a genial sunshine breaking through the mist that had
risen at dawn from the great sluggish river and spread itself through
the mazes of the city.
The change was one to send invigorating thrills through the blood, and
to quicken the step; to make one like the push and jostle of the
multitude that thronged the streets; to make one in love with
intoxicating life, and impatient with the grudging dispensation that
had given to mankind no wings wherewith to fly.
But with no reacting warmth in his heart, the change had only made
Hosmer shiver and draw his coat closer about his chest, as he pushed
his way through the hurrying crowd.
The St. Louis Exposition was in progress with all its many allurements
that had been heralded for months through the journals of the State.
Hence, the unusual press of people on the streets this bright
September morning. Home people, whose air of ownership to the
surroundings classified them at once, moving unobservantly about their
affairs. Women and children from the near and rich country towns, in
for the Exposition and their fall shopping; wearing gowns of ultra
fashionable tendencies; leaving in their toilets nothing to
expediency; taking no chances of so much as a ribbon or a loop set in
disaccordance with the book.
There were whole families from across the bridge, hurrying towards the
Exposition. Fathers and mothers, babies and grandmothers, with baskets
of lunch and bundles of provisional necessities, in for the day.
Nothing would escape their observation nor elude their criticism, from
the creations in color lining the walls of the art gallery, to the
most intricate mechanism of inventive genius in the basement. All
would pass inspection, with drawing of comparison between the present,
the past year and the “year before,” likely in a nasal drawl with the
R’s brought sharply out, leaving no doubt as to their utterance.
The newly married couple walking serenely through the crowd, young,
smiling, up-country, hand-in-hand; well pleased with themselves, with
their new attire and newer jewelry, would likely have answered
Hosmer’s “beg pardon” with amiability if he had knocked them down. But
he had only thrust them rather violently to one side in his eagerness
to board the cable car that was dashing by, with no seeming
willingness to stay its mad flight. He still possessed the agility in
his unpracticed limbs to swing himself on the grip, where he took a
front seat, well buttoned up as to top-coat, and glad of the bodily
rest that his half hour’s ride would bring him.
The locality in which he descended presented some noticeable changes
since he had last been there. Formerly, it had been rather a quiet
street, with a leisurely horse car depositing its passengers two
blocks away to the north from it; awaking somewhat of afternoons when
hordes of children held possession. But now the cable had come to
disturb its long repose, adding in the office, nothing to its
attractiveness.
There was the drug store still at the corner, with the same
proprietor, tilted back in his chair as of old, and as of old reading
his newspaper with only the change which a newly acquired pair of
spectacles gave to his appearance. The “drug store boy” had unfolded
into manhood, plainly indicated by the mustache that in adding
adornment and dignity to his person, had lifted him above the menial
office of window washing. A task relegated to a mustacheless urchin
with a leaning towards the surreptitious abstraction of caramels and
chewing gum in the intervals of such manual engagements as did not
require the co-operation of a strategic mind.
Where formerly had been the vacant lot “across the street,” the Sunday
afternoon elysium of the youthful base ball fiend from Biddle Street,
now stood a row of brand new pressed-brick “flats.” Marvelous must
have been the architectural ingenuity which had contrived to unite so
many dwellings into so small a space. Before each spread a length of
closely clipped grass plot, and every miniature front door wore its
fantastic window furnishing; each set of decorations having seemingly
fired the next with efforts of surpassing elaboration.
The house at which Hosmer rang--a plain two-storied red brick,
standing close to the street--was very old-fashioned in face of its
modern opposite neighbors, and the recently metamorphosed dwelling
next door, that with added porches and appendages to tax man’s faculty
of conjecture, was no longer recognizable for what it had been. Even
the bell which he pulled was old-fashioned and its tingle might be
heard throughout the house long after the servant had opened the door,
if she were only reasonably alert to the summons. Its reverberations
were but dying away when Hosmer asked if Mrs. Larimore were in. Mrs.
Larimore was in; an admission which seemed to hold in reserve a
defiant “And what if she is, sir.”
Hosmer was relieved to find the little parlor into which he was
ushered, with its adjoining dining-room, much changed. The carpets
which he and Fanny had gone out together to buy during the early days
of their housekeeping, were replaced by rugs that lay upon the bare,
well polished floors. The wall paper was different; so were the
hangings. The furniture had been newly re-covered. Only the small
household gods were as of old: things--trifles--that had never much
occupied or impressed him, and that now, amid their altered
surroundings stirred no sentiment in him of either pleased or sad
remembrance.
It had not been his wish to take his wife unawares, and he had
previously written her of his intended coming, yet without giving her
a clue for the reason of it.
There was an element of the bull-dog in Hosmer. Having made up his
mind, he indulged in no regrets, in no nursing of if’s and and’s, but
stood like a brave soldier to his post, not a post of danger,
true--but one well supplied with discomfiting possibilities.
And what had Homeyer said of it? He had railed of course as usual, at
the submission of a human destiny to the exacting and ignorant rule of
what he termed moral conventionalities. He had startled and angered
Hosmer with his denunciation of Thérèse’s sophistical guidance.
Rather--he proposed--let Hosmer and Thérèse marry, and if Fanny were
to be redeemed--though he pooh-poohed the notion as untenable with
certain views of what he called the rights to existence: the existence
of wrongs--sorrows--diseases--death--let them all go to make up the
conglomerate whole--and let the individual man hold on to his
personality. But if she must be redeemed--granting this point to their
littleness, let the redemption come by different ways than those of
sacrifice: let it be an outcome from the capability of their united
happiness.
Hosmer did not listen to his friend Homeyer. Love was his god now, and
Thérèse was Love’s prophet.
So he was sitting in this little parlor waiting for Fanny to come.
She came after an interval that had been given over to the indulgence
of a little feminine nervousness. Through the open doors Hosmer could
hear her coming down the back stairs; could hear that she halted
mid-way. Then she passed through the dining-room, and he arose and
went to meet her, holding out his hand, which she was not at once
ready to accept, being flustered and unprepared for his manner in
whichever way it might direct itself.
They sat opposite each other and remained for a while silent; he with
astonishment at sight of the “merry blue eyes” faded and sunken into
deep, dark round sockets; at the net-work of little lines all traced
about the mouth and eyes, and spreading over the once rounded cheeks
that were now hollow and evidently pale or sallow, beneath a layer of
rouge that had been laid on with an unsparing hand. Yet was she still
pretty, or pleasing, especially to a strong nature that would find an
appeal in the pathetic weakness of her face. There was no guessing at
what her figure might be, it was disguised under a very fashionable
dress, and a worsted shawl covered her shoulders, which occasionally
quivered as with an inward chill. She spoke first, twisting the end of
this shawl.
“What did you come for, David? why did you come now?” with peevish
resistance to the disturbance of his coming.
“I know I have come without warrant,” he said, answering her
implication. “I have been led to see--no matter how--that I made
mistakes in the past, and what I want to do now is to right them, if
you will let me.”
This was very unexpected to her, and it startled her, but neither with
pleasure nor pain; only with an uneasiness which showed itself in her
face.
“Have you been ill?” he asked suddenly as the details of change in her
appearance commenced to unfold themselves to him.
“Oh no, not since last winter, when I had pneumonia so bad. They
thought I was going to die. Dr. Franklin said I would ’a died if Belle
Worthington hadn’t ’a took such good care of me. But I don’t see what
you mean coming now. It’ll be the same thing over again: I don’t see
what’s the use, David.”
“We won’t talk about the use, Fanny. I want to take care of you for
the rest of your life--or mine--as I promised to do ten years ago; and
I want you to let me do it.”
“It would be the same thing over again,” she reiterated, helplessly.
“It will not be the same,” he answered positively. “I will not be the
same, and that will make all the difference needful.”
“I don’t see what you want to do it for, David. Why we’d haf to get
married over again and all that, wouldn’t we?”
“Certainly,” he answered with a faint smile. “I’m living in the South
now, in Louisiana, managing a sawmill down there.”
“Oh, I don’t like the South. I went down to Memphis, let’s see, it was
last spring, with Belle and Lou Dawson, after I’d been sick; and I
don’t see how a person can live down there.”
“You would like the place where I’m living. It’s a fine large
plantation, and the lady who owns it would be the best of friends to
you. She knew why I was coming, and told me to say she would help to
make your life a happy one if she could.”
“It’s her told you to come,” she replied in quick resentment. “I don’t
see what business it is of hers.”
Fanny Larimore’s strength of determination was not one to hold against
Hosmer’s will set to a purpose, during the hour or more that they
talked, he proposing, she finally acquiescing. And when he left her,
it was with a gathering peace in her heart to feel that his nearness
was something that would belong to her again; but differently as he
assured her. And she believed him, knowing that he would stand to his
promise.
Her life was sometimes very blank in the intervals of street
perambulations and matinées and reading of morbid literature. That
elation which she had felt over her marriage with Hosmer ten years
before, had soon died away, together with her weak love for him, when
she began to dread him and defy him. But now that he said he was ready
to take care of her and be good to her, she felt great comfort in her
knowledge of his honesty.
X
Fanny’s Friends.
It was on the day following Hosmer’s visit, that Mrs. Lorenzo
Worthington, familiarly known to her friends as Belle Worthington, was
occupied in constructing a careful and extremely elaborate street
toilet before her dressing bureau which stood near the front window of
one of the “flats” opposite Mrs. Larimore’s. The Nottingham curtain
screened her effectually from the view of passers-by without hindering
her frequent observance of what transpired in the street.
The lower portion of this lady’s figure was draped, or better,
seemingly supported, by an abundance of stiffly starched white
petticoats that rustled audibly at her slightest movement. Her neck
was bare, as were the well shaped arms that for the past five minutes
had been poised in mid-air, in the arrangement of a front of
exquisitely soft blonde curls, which she had taken from her “top
drawer” and was adjusting, with the aid of a multitude of tiny
invisible hair-pins, to her own very smoothly brushed hair. Yellow
hair it was, with a suspicious darkness about the roots, and a
streakiness about the back, that to an observant eye would have more
than hinted that art had assisted nature in coloring Mrs.
Worthington’s locks.
Dressed, and evidently waiting with forced patience for the
termination of these overhead maneuvers of her friend, sat Lou,--Mrs.
Jack Dawson,--a woman whom most people called handsome. If she were
handsome, no one could have told why, for her beauty was a thing which
could not be defined. She was tall and thin, with hair, eyes, and
complexion of a brownish neutral tint, and bore in face and figure, a
stamp of defiance which probably accounted for a certain eccentricity
in eschewing hair dyes and cosmetics. Her face was full of little
irregularities; a hardly perceptible cast in one eye; the nose drawn a
bit to one side, and the mouth twitched decidedly to the other when
she talked or laughed. It was this misproportion which gave a piquancy
to her expression and which in charming people, no doubt made them
believe her handsome.
Mrs. Worthington’s coiffure being completed, she regaled herself with
a deliberate and comprehensive glance into the street, and the outcome
of her observation was the sudden exclamation.
“Well I’ll be switched! come here quick Lou. If there ain’t Fanny
Larimore getting on the car with Dave Hosmer!”
Mrs. Dawson approached the window, but without haste; and in no wise
sharing her friend’s excitement, gave utterance to her calm opinion.
“They’ve made it up, I’ll bet you what you want.”
Surprise seemed for the moment to have deprived Mrs. Worthington of
further ability to proceed with her toilet, for she had fallen into a
chair as limply as her starched condition would permit, her face full
of speculation.
“See here, Belle Worthington, if we’ve got to be at the ’Lympic at two
o’clock, you’d better be getting a move on yourself.”
“Yes, I know; but I declare, you might knock me down with a feather.”
A highly overwrought figure of speech on the part of Mrs. Worthington,
seeing that the feather which would have prostrated her must have met
a resistance of some one hundred and seventy-five pounds of solid
avoirdupois.
“After all she said about him, too!” seeking to draw her friend into
some participation in her own dumbfoundedness.
“Well, you ought to know Fanny Larimore’s a fool, don’t you?”
“Well, but I just can’t get over it; that’s all there is about it.”
And Mrs. Worthington went about completing the adornment of her person
in a state of voiceless stupefaction.
In full garb, she presented the figure of a splendid woman; trim and
tight in a black silk gown of expensive quality, heavy with jets which
hung and shone, and jangled from every available point of her person.
Not a thread of her yellow hair was misplaced. She shone with
cleanliness, and her broad expressionless face and meaningless blue
eyes were set to a good-humored readiness for laughter, which would be
wholesome if not musical. She exhaled a fragrance of patchouly or
jockey-club, or something odorous and “strong” that clung to every
article of her apparel, even to the yellow kid gloves which she would
now be forced to put on during her ride in the car. Mrs. Dawson,
attired with equal richness and style, showed more of individuality in
her toilet.
As they quitted the house she observed to her friend:
“I wish you’d let up on that smell; it’s enough to sicken a body.”
“I know you don’t like it, Lou,” was Mrs. Worthington’s apologetic and
half disconcerted reply, “and I was careful as could be. Give you my
word, I didn’t think you could notice it.”
“Notice it? Gee!” responded Mrs. Dawson.
These were two ladies of elegant leisure, the conditions of whose
lives, and the amiability of whose husbands, had enabled them to
develop into finished and professional time-killers.
Their intimacy with each other, as also their close acquaintance with
Fanny Larimore, dated from a couple of years after that lady’s
marriage, when they had met as occupants of the same big up-town
boarding house. The intercourse had never since been permitted to die
out. Once, when the two former ladies were on a visit to Mrs.
Larimore, seeing the flats in course of construction, they were at
once assailed with the desire to abandon their hitherto nomadic life,
and settle to the responsibilities of housekeeping; a scheme which
they carried into effect as soon as the houses became habitable.
There was a Mr. Lorenzo Worthington; a gentleman employed for many
years past in the custom house. Whether he had been overlooked, which
his small unobtrusive, narrow-chested person made possible--or whether
his many-sided usefulness had rendered him in a manner indispensable
to his employers, does not appear; but he had remained at his post
during the various changes of administration that had gone by since
his first appointment.
During intervals of his work--intervals often occurring of afternoon
hours, when he had been given night work--he was fond of sitting at
the sunny kitchen window, with his long thin nose, and shortsighted
eyes plunged between the pages of one of his precious books: a small
hoard of which he had collected at some cost and more self-denial.
One of the grievances of his life was the necessity under which he
found himself of protecting his treasure from the Philistine abuse and
contempt of his wife. When they moved into the flat, Mrs. Worthington,
during her husband’s absence, had ranged them all, systematically
enough, on the top shelf of the kitchen closet to “get them out of the
way.” But at this he had protested, and taken a positive stand, to
which his wife had so far yielded as to permit that they be placed on
the top shelf of the bedroom closet; averring that to have them laying
around was a thing that she would not do, for they spoilt the looks of
any room.
He had not foreseen the possibility of their usefulness being a
temptation to his wife in so handy a receptacle.
Seeking once a volume of Ruskin’s Miscellanies, he discovered that it
had been employed to support the dismantled leg of a dressing bureau.
On another occasion, a volume of Schopenhauer, which he had been at
much difficulty and expense to procure, Emerson’s Essays, and two
other volumes much prized, he found had served that lady as weights to
hold down a piece of dry goods which she had sponged and spread to dry
on an available section of roof top.
He was glad enough to transport them all back to the safer refuge of
the kitchen closet, and pay the hired girl a secret stipend to guard
them.
Mr. Worthington regarded women as being of peculiar and unsuitable
conformation to the various conditions of life amid which they are
placed; with strong moral proclivities, for the most part subservient
to a weak and inadequate mentality.
It was not his office to remodel them; his rôle was simply to endure
with patience the vagaries of an order of human beings, who after all,
offered an interesting study to a man of speculative habit, apart from
their usefulness as propagators of the species.
As regards this last qualification, Mrs. Worthington had done less
than her fair share, having but one child, a daughter of twelve, whose
training and education had been assumed by an aunt of her father’s, a
nun of some standing in the Sacred Heart Convent.
Quite a different type of man was Jack Dawson, Lou’s husband. Short,
round, young, blonde, good looking and bald--as what St. Louis man
past thirty is not? he rejoiced in the agreeable calling of a
traveling salesman.
On the occasions when he was at home; once in two weeks--sometimes
seldomer--never oftener--the small flat was turned inside out and
upside down. He filled it with noise and merriment. If a theater party
were not on hand, it was a spin out to Forest park behind a fast team,
closing with a wine supper at a road-side restaurant. Or a card party
would be hastily gathered to which such neighbors as were congenial
were bid in hot haste; deficiencies being supplied from his large
circle of acquaintances who happened not to be on the road, and who at
the eleventh hour were rung up by telephone. On such occasions Jack’s
voice would be heard loud in anecdote, introduced in some such wise as
“When I was in Houston, Texas, the other day,” or “Tell you what it
is, sir, those fellers over in Albuquerque are up to a thing or two.”
One of his standing witticisms was to inquire in a stage whisper of
Belle or Lou--whether the little gal over the way had taken the pledge
yet.
This gentleman and his wife were on the most amiable of terms
together, barring the small grievance that he sometimes lost money at
poker. But as losing was exceptional with him, and as he did not make
it a matter of conscience to keep her at all times posted as to the
fluctuations of his luck, this grievance had small occasion to show
itself.
What he thought of his wife, might best be told in his own language:
that Lou was up to the mark and game every time; feminine
characteristics which he apparently held in high esteem.
The two ladies in question had almost reached the terminus of their
ride, when Mrs. Worthington remarked incidentally to her friend, “It
was nothing in the God’s world but pure sass brought those two fellers
to see you last night, Lou.”
Mrs. Dawson bit her lip and the cast in her eye became more
accentuated, as it was apt to do when she was ruffled.
“I notice you didn’t treat ’em any too cool yourself,” she retorted.
“Oh, they weren’t my company, or I’d a give ’em a piece of my mind
pretty quick. You know they’re married, and they know you’re married,
and they hadn’t a bit o’ business there.”
“They’re perfect gentlemen, and I don’t see what business ’tis of
yours, anyway.”
“Oh that’s a horse of another color,” replied Mrs. Worthington,
bridling and relapsing into injured silence for the period of ten
seconds, when she resumed, “I hope they ain’t going to poke themselves
at the matinée.”
“Likely they will ’s long as they gave us the tickets.”
One of the gentlemen was at the matinée: Mr. Bert Rodney, but he
certainly had not “poked” himself there. He never did any thing vulgar
or in bad taste. He had only “dropped in!” Exquisite in dress and
manner, a swell of the upper circles, versed as was no one better in
the code of gentlemanly etiquette--he was for the moment awaiting
disconsolately the return of his wife and daughter from Narragansett.
He took a vacant seat behind the two ladies, and bending forward began
to talk to them in his low and fascinating drawl.
Mrs. Worthington, who often failed to accomplish her fierce designs,
was as gracious towards him as if she had harbored no desire to give
him a piece of her mind; but she was resolute in her refusal to make
one of a proposed supper party.
A quiet sideward look from Mrs. Dawson, told Mr. Rodney as plainly as
words, that in the event of his _partie-carrée_ failing him, he might
count upon her for a _tête-à-tête_.
XI
The Self-Assumed Burden.
The wedding was over. Hosmer and Fanny had been married in the small
library of their Unitarian minister whom they had found intent upon
the shaping of his Sunday sermon.
Out of deference, he had been briefly told the outward circumstances
of the case, which he knew already; for these two had been formerly
members of his congregation, and gossip had not been reluctant in
telling their story. Hosmer, of course, had drifted away from his
knowledge, and in late years, he had seen little of Fanny, who when
moved to attend church at all usually went to the Redemptorist’s Rock
Church with her friend Belle Worthington. This lady was a good
Catholic to the necessary extent of hearing a mass on Sundays,
abstaining from meat on Fridays and Ember days, and making her
“Easters.” Which concessions were not without their attendant
discomforts, counterbalanced, however, by the soothing assurance which
they gave her of keeping on the safe side.
The minister had been much impressed with the significance of this
re-marriage which he was called upon to perform, and had offered some
few and well chosen expressions of salutary advice as to its future
guidance. The sexton and housekeeper had been called in as witnesses.
Then Hosmer had taken Fanny back home in a cab as she requested,
because of her eyes that were red and swollen.
Inside the little hall-way he took her in his arms and kissed her,
calling her “my child.” He could not have told why, except that it
expressed the responsibility he accepted of bearing all things that a
father must bear from the child to whom he has given life.
“I should like to go out for an hour, Fanny; but if you would rather
not, I shall stay.”
“No, David, I want to be alone,” she said, turning into the little
parlor, with eyes big and heavy from weariness and inward clashing
emotions.
Along the length of Lindell avenue from Grand avenue west to Forest
park, reaches for two miles on either side of the wide and well kept
gravel drive a smooth stone walk, bordered its full extent with a
double row of trees which were young and still uncertain, when Hosmer
walked between them.
Had it been Sunday, he would have found himself making one of a
fashionable throng of promenaders; it being at that time a fad with
society people to walk to Forest park and back of a Sunday afternoon.
Driving was then considered a respectable diversion only on the six
work days of the week.
But it was not Sunday and this inviting promenade was almost deserted.
An occasional laborer would walk clumsily by; apathetic; swinging his
tin bucket and bearing some implement of toil with the yellow clay yet
clinging to it. Or it might be a brace of strong-minded girls walking
with long and springing stride, which was then fashionable; looking
not to the right nor left; indulging in no exchange of friendly and
girlish chatter, but grimly intent upon the purpose of their walk.
A steady line of vehicles was pushing on towards the park at the
moderate speed which the law required. On both sides the wide
boulevard tasteful dwellings, many completed, but most of them in
course of construction, were in constant view. Hosmer noted every
thing, but absently; and yet he was not pre-occupied with thought. He
felt himself to be hurrying away from something that was fast
overtaking him, and his faculties for the moment were centered in the
mere act of motion. It is said that motion is pleasurable to man. No
doubt, in connection with a healthy body and free mind, movement
brings to the normal human being a certain degree of enjoyment. But
where the healthful conditions are only physical, rapid motion changes
from a source of pleasure to one of mere expediency.
So long as Hosmer could walk he kept a certain pressing consciousness
at bay. He would have liked to run if he had dared. Since he had
entered the park there were constant trains of cars speeding somewhere
overhead; he could hear them at near intervals clashing over the stone
bridge. And there was not a train which passed that he did not long to
be at the front of it to measure and let out its speed. What a mad
flight he would have given it, to make men hold their breath with
terror! How he would have driven it till its end was death and
chaos!--so much the better.
There suddenly formed in Hosmer’s mind a sentence--sharp and distinct.
We are all conscious of such quick mental visions whether of words or
pictures, coming sometimes from a hidden and untraceable source,
making us quiver with awe at this mysterious power of mind manifesting
itself with the vividness of visible matter.
“It was the act of a coward.”
Those were the words which checked him, and forbade him to go farther:
which compelled him to turn about and face the reality of his
convictions.
It is no unusual sight, that of a man lying full length in the soft
tender grass of some retired spot of Forest park--with his face hidden
in his folded arms. To the few who may see him, if they speculate at
all about him he sleeps or he rests his body after a day’s fatigue.
“Am I never to be the brave man?” thought Hosmer, “always the coward,
flying even from my own thoughts?”
How hard to him was this unaccustomed task of dealing with moral
difficulties, which all through his life before, however lightly they
had come, he had shirked and avoided! He realized now, that there was
to be no more of that. If he did not wish his life to end in
disgraceful shipwreck, he must take command and direction of it upon
himself.
He had felt himself capable of stolid endurance since love had
declared itself his guide and helper. But now--only to-day--something
beside had crept into his heart. Not something to be endured, but a
thing to be strangled and thrust away. It was the demon of hate; so
new, so awful, so loathsome, he doubted that he could look it in the
face and live.
Here was the problem of his new existence.
The woman who had formerly made his life colorless and empty he had
quietly turned his back upon, carrying with him a pity that was not
untender. But the woman who had unwittingly robbed him of all
possibility of earthly happiness--he hated her. The woman who for the
remainder of a life-time was to be in all the world the nearest thing
to him, he hated her. He hated this woman of whom he must be careful,
to whom he must be tender, and loyal and generous. And to give no sign
or word but of kindness; to do no action that was not considerate, was
the task which destiny had thrust upon his honor.
He did not ask himself if it were possible of accomplishment. He had
flung hesitancy away, to make room for the all-powerful “Must be.”
He walked slowly back to his home. There was no need to run now;
nothing pursued him. Should he quicken his pace or drag himself ever
so slowly, it could henceforth make no difference. The burden from
which he had fled was now banded upon him and not to be loosed, unless
he fling himself with it into forgetfulness.
XII
Severing Old Ties.
Returning from the matinée, Belle and her friend Lou Dawson, before
entering their house, crossed over to Fanny’s. Mrs. Worthington tried
the door and finding it fastened, rang the bell, then commenced to
beat a tattoo upon the pane with her knuckles; an ingenuous manner
which she had of announcing her identity. Fanny opened to them
herself, and the three walked into the parlor.
“I haven’t seen you for a coon’s age, Fanny,” commenced Belle, “where
on earth have you been keeping yourself?”
“You saw me yesterday breakfast time, when you came to borrow the
wrapper pattern,” returned Fanny, in serious resentment to her
friend’s exaggeration.
“And much good the old wrapper pattern did me: a mile too small every
way, no matter how much I let out the seams. But see here--”
“Belle’s the biggest idiot about her size: there’s no convincing her
she’s not a sylph.”
“_Thank_ you, Mrs. Dawson.”
“Well, it’s a fact. Didn’t you think Furgeson’s scales were all wrong
the other day because you weighed a hundred and eighty pounds?”
“O that’s the day I had that heavy rep on.”
“Heavy nothing. We were coming over last night, Fanny, but we had
company,” continued Mrs. Dawson.
“Who d’you have?” asked Fanny mechanically and glad of the respite.
“Bert Rodney and Mr. Grant. They’re so anxious to meet you. I’d ’a
sent over for you, but Belle--”
“See here, Fanny, what the mischief was Dave Hosmer doing here to-day,
and going down town with you and all that sort o’ thing?”
Fanny flushed uneasily. “Have you seen the evening paper?” she asked.
“How d’you want us to see the paper? we just come from the matinée.”
“David came yesterday,” Fanny said working nervously at the window
shade. “He’d wrote me a note the postman brought right after you left
with the pattern. When you saw us getting on the car, we were going
down to Dr. Martin’s, and we’ve got married again.”
Mrs. Dawson uttered a long, low whistle by way of comment. Mrs.
Worthington gave vent to her usual “Well I’ll be switched,” which she
was capable of making expressive of every shade of astonishment, from
the lightest to the most pronounced; at the same time unfastening the
bridle of her bonnet which plainly hindered her free respiration after
such a shock.
“Say that Fanny isn’t sly, after that, Belle.”
“Sly? My God, she’s a fool! If ever a woman had a snap! and to go to
work and let a man get around her like that.”
Mrs. Worthington seemed powerless to express herself in anything but
disconnected exclamations.
“What are you going to do, Fanny?” asked Lou, who having aired all the
astonishment which she cared to show, in her whistle, was collected
enough to want her natural curiosity satisfied.
“David’s living down South. I guess we’ll go down there pretty soon.
Soon’s he can get things fixed up here.”
“Where--down South?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Somewheres in Louisiana.”
“It’s to be hoped in New Orleans,” spoke Belle didactically, “that’s
the only decent place in Louisiana where a person could live.”
“No, ’tain’t in New Orleans. He’s got a saw mill somewheres down
there.”
“Heavens and earth! a saw mill?” shrieked Belle. Lou was looking
calmly resigned to the startling news.
“Oh, I ain’t going to live in a saw mill. I wisht you’d all let me
alone, any way,” she returned pettishly. “There’s a lady keeps a
plantation, and that’s where he lives.”
“Well of all the rigmaroles! a lady, and a saw mill and a plantation.
It’s my opinion that man could make you believe black’s white, Fanny
Larimore.”
As Hosmer approached his house, he felt mechanically in his pocket for
his latch key; so small a trick having come back to him with the old
habit of misery. Of course he found no key. His ring startled Fanny,
who at once sprang from her seat to open the door for him; but having
taken a few steps, she hesitated and irresolutely re-seated herself.
It was only his second ring that the servant unamiably condescended to
answer.
“So you’re going to take Fanny away from us, Mr. Hosmer,” said Belle,
when he had greeted them and seated himself beside Mrs. Dawson on the
small sofa that stood between the door and window. Fanny sat at the
adjoining window, and Mrs. Worthington in the center of the room;
which was indeed so small a room that any one of them might have
reached out and almost touched the hand of the others.
“Yes, Fanny has agreed to go South with me,” he answered briefly.
“You’re looking well, Mrs. Worthington.”
“Oh, Law yes, I’m never sick. As I tell Mr. Worthington, he’ll never
get rid of me, unless he hires somebody to murder me. But I tell you
what, you came pretty near not having any Fanny to take away with you.
She was the sickest woman! Did you tell him about it, Fanny? Come to
think of it, I guess the climate down there’ll be the very thing to
bring her round.”
Mrs. Dawson without offering apology interrupted her friend to inquire
of Hosmer if his life in the South were not of the most interesting,
and begging that he detail them something of it; with a look to
indicate that she felt the deepest concern in anything that touched
him.
A masculine presence had always the effect of rousing Mrs. Dawson into
an animation which was like the glow of a slumbering ember, when a
strong pressure of air is brought to bear upon it.
Hosmer had always considered her an amiable woman, with rather
delicate perceptions; frivolous, but without the vulgarisms of Mrs.
Worthington, and consequently a less objectionable friend for Fanny.
He answered, looking down into her eyes, which were full of
attentiveness.
“My life in the South is not one that you would think interesting. I
live in the country where there are no distractions such as you ladies
call amusements--and I work pretty hard. But it’s the sort of life
that one grows attached to and finds himself longing for again if he
have occasion to change it.”
“Yes, it must be very satisfying,” she answered; for the moment
perfectly sincere.
“Oh very!” exclaimed Mrs. Worthington, with a loud and aggressive
laugh. “It would just suit you to a T, Lou, but how it’s going to
satisfy Fanny! Well, I’ve got nothing to say about it, thanks be; it
don’t concern me.”
“If Fanny finds that she doesn’t like it after a fair trial, she has
the privilege of saying so, and we shall come back again,” he said
looking at his wife whose elevation of eyebrow, and droop of mouth
gave her the expression of martyred resignation, which St. Lawrence
might have worn, when invited to make himself comfortable on the
gridiron--so had Mrs. Worthington’s words impressed her with the force
of their prophetic meaning.
Mrs. Dawson politely hoped that Hosmer would not leave before Jack
came home; it would distress Jack beyond everything to return and find
that he had missed an old friend whom he thought so much of.
Hosmer could not say precisely when they would leave. He was in
present negotiation with a person who wanted to rent the house,
furnished; and just as soon as he could arrange a few business
details, and Fanny could gather such belongings as she wished to take
with her they would go.
“You seem mighty struck on Dave Hosmer, all of a sudden,” remarked
Mrs. Worthington to her friend, as the two crossed over the street. “A
feller without any more feelings than a stick; it’s what I always said
about him.”
“Oh, I always did like Hosmer,” replied Mrs. Dawson. “But I thought he
had more sense than to tie himself to that little gump again, after
he’d had the luck to get rid of her.”
A few days later Jack came home. His return was made palpable to the
entire neighborhood; for no cab ever announced itself with quite the
dash and clatter and bang of door that Jack’s cabs did.
The driver had staggered behind him under the weight of the huge
yellow valise, and had been liberally paid for the service.
Immediately the windows were thrown wide open, and the lace curtains
drawn aside until no smallest vestige of them remained visible from
the street. A condition of things which Mrs. Worthington upstairs
bitterly resented, and naturally, spoiling as it necessarily did, the
general _coup d’œil_ of the flat to passers-by. But Mrs. Dawson had
won her husband’s esteem by just such acts as this one of amiable
permission to ventilate the house according to methods of his own and
essentially masculine; regardless of dust that might be flying, or sun
that might be shining with disastrous results to the parlor carpet.
Clouds of tobacco smoke were seen to issue from the open windows.
Those neighbors whose openings commanded a view of the Dawson’s
alley-gate might have noted the hired girl starting for the grocery
with unusual animation of step, and returning with her basket well
stocked with beer and soda bottles--a provision made against a need
for “dutch-cocktails,” likely to assail Jack during his hours of
domesticity.
In the evening the same hired girl, breathless from the multiplicity
of errands which she had accomplished during the day, appeared at the
Hosmers with a message that Mrs. Dawson wanted them to “come over.”
They were preparing to leave on the morrow, but concluded that they
could spare a few moments in which to bid adieu to their friends.
Jack met them at the very threshold, with warm and hearty
hand-shaking, and loud protest when he learned that they had not come
to spend the evening and that they were going away next day.
“Great Scott! you’re not leaving to-morrow? And I ain’t going to have
a chance to get even with Mrs. Hosmer on that last deal? By Jove, she
knows how to do it,” he said, addressing Hosmer and holding Fanny
familiarly by the elbow. “Drew to the middle, sir, and hang me, if she
didn’t fill. Takes a woman to do that sort o’ thing; and me a laying
for her with three aces. Hello there, girls! here’s Hosmer and Fanny,”
in response to which summons his wife and Mrs. Worthington issued from
the depths of the dining-room, where they had been engaged in
preparing certain refreshments for the expected guests.
“See here, Lou, we’ll have to fix it up some way to go and see them
off to-morrow. If you’d manage to lay over till Thursday I could join
you as far as Little Rock. But no, that’s a fact,” he added
reflectively, “I’ve got to be in Cincinnati on Thursday.”
They had all entered the parlor, and Mrs. Worthington suggested that
Hosmer go up and make a visit to her husband, whom he would find up
there “poring over those everlasting books.”
“I don’t know what’s got into Mr. Worthington lately,” she said, “he’s
getting that religious. If it ain’t the Bible he’s poring over, well
it’s something or other just as bad.”
The brightly burning light guided Hosmer to the kitchen, where he
found Lorenzo Worthington seated beside his student lamp at the table,
which was covered with a neat red cloth. On the gas-stove was spread a
similar cloth and the floor was covered with a shining oil-cloth.
Mr. Worthington was startled, having already forgotten that his wife
had told him of Hosmer’s return to St. Louis.
“Why, Mr. Hosmer, is this you? come, come into the parlor, this is no
place,” shaking Hosmer’s hand and motioning towards the parlor.
“No, it’s very nice and cozy here, and I have only a moment to stay,”
said Hosmer, seating himself beside the table on which the other had
laid his book, with his spectacles between the pages to mark his
place. Mr. Worthington then did a little hemming and hawing
preparatory to saying something fitting the occasion; not wishing to
be hasty in offering the old established form of congratulation, in a
case whose peculiarity afforded him no precedential guide. Hosmer came
to his relief by observing quite naturally that he and his wife had
come over to say good-bye, before leaving for the South, adding “no
doubt Mrs. Worthington has told you.”
“Yes, yes, and I’m sure we’re very sorry to lose you; that is, Mrs.
Larimore--I should say Mrs. Hosmer. Isabella will certainly regret her
departure, I see them always together, you know.”
“You cling to your old habit, I see, Mr. Worthington,” said Hosmer,
indicating his meaning by a motion of the hand towards the book on the
table.
“Yes, to a certain extent. Always within the forced limits, you
understand. At this moment I am much interested in tracing the history
of various religions which are known to us; those which have died out,
as well as existing religions. It is curious, indeed, to note the
circumstances of their birth, their progress and inevitable death;
seeming to follow the course of nations in such respect. And the
similitude which stamps them all, is also a feature worthy of study.
You would perhaps be surprised, sir, to discover the points of
resemblance which indicate in them a common origin. To observe the
slight differences, indeed technical differences, distinguishing the
Islam from the Hebrew, or both from the Christian religion. The creeds
are obviously ramifications from the one deep-rooted trunk which we
call religion. Have you ever thought of this, Mr. Hosmer?”
“No, I admit that I’ve not gone into it. Homeyer would have me think
that all religions are but mythological creations invented to satisfy
a species of sentimentality--a morbid craving in man for the unknown
and undemonstrable.”
“That is where he is wrong; where I must be permitted to differ from
him. As you would find, my dear sir, by following carefully the
history of mankind, that the religious sentiment is implanted, a true
and legitimate attribute of the human soul--with peremptory right to
its existence. Whatever may be faulty in the creeds--that makes no
difference, the foundation is there and not to be dislodged. Homeyer,
as I understand him from your former not infrequent references, is an
Iconoclast, who would tear down and leave devastation behind him;
building up nothing. He would deprive a clinging humanity of the
supports about which she twines herself, and leave her helpless and
sprawling upon the earth.”
“No, no, he believes in a natural adjustment,” interrupted Hosmer. “In
an innate reserve force of accommodation. What we commonly call laws
in nature, he styles accidents--in society, only arbitrary methods of
expediency, which, when they outlive their usefulness to an advancing
and exacting civilization, should be set aside. He is a little
impatient to always wait for the inevitable natural adjustment.”
“Ah, my dear Mr. Hosmer, the world is certainly to-day not prepared to
stand the lopping off and wrenching away of old traditions. She must
take her stand against such enemies of the conventional. Take religion
away from the life of man--”
“Well, I knew it--I was just as sure as preaching,” burst out Mrs.
Worthington, as she threw open the door and confronted the two
men--resplendent in “baby blue” and much steel ornamentation. “As I
tell Mr. Worthington, he ought to turn Christian Brother or something
and be done with it.”
“No, no, my dear; Mr. Hosmer and I have merely been interchanging a
few disjointed ideas.”
“I’ll be bound they were disjointed. I guess Fanny wants you, Mr.
Hosmer. If you listen to Mr. Worthington he’ll keep you here till
daylight with his ideas.”
Hosmer followed Mrs. Worthington down-stairs and into Mrs. Dawson’s.
As he entered the parlor he heard Fanny laughing gaily, and saw that
she stood near the sideboard in the dining-room, just clicking her
glass of punch to Jack Dawson’s, who was making a gay speech on the
occasion of her new marriage.
They did not leave when they had intended. Need the misery of that one
day be told?
But on the evening of the following day, Fanny peered with pale,
haggard face from the closed window of the Pullman car as it moved
slowly out of Union depôt, to see Lou and Jack Dawson smiling and
waving good-bye, Belle wiping her eyes and Mr. Worthington looking
blankly along the line of windows, unable to see them without his
spectacles, which he had left between the pages of his Schopenhauer on
the kitchen table at home.