cool eyes o' his that look's if they'd never blink 'f a cannon went off
under his very nose--waited till Billings got good and done, 'n' then
said with that high 'n' mighty air of his, f'r all the world's if he was
speakin' to some poor, half-witted Swede: 'Two hundred dollars doesn't
mean as much to me as you think, Mr. Billings.' Then he stopped a
minute, 'n' went on in a little diff'rent tone, 'You needn't concern
yourself any further about me and my troubles'--'n' that had very much
the sound of 'I'll make kindling-wood of you if you do!' Then he looks
at his watch. 'I've given you all the time I can spare,' says he; and
with that he swings around 'n' begins looking over some papers on his
desk. Billings reddened up a little--coughed 'n' wriggled around in his
chair, 'n' tried to get up courage to say somethin' more--but he simply
didn't _darst_. He went off finally lookin' sort o' cheap. Mist'
Allison never give him another glance, no more'n 's if he was that dog
o' yours."
The postmaster was silent for a minute or two. Then he turned to Jim.
"I'm not particularly sorry to see Billings get left," he said. "Still,
it might be just as well for Mr. Allison if he'd have kept on the right
side of Billings from the start. There's no use talking, he's got an
awfully uppish way with him, that boy."
Jim nodded an emphatic assent. Along with other smaller grievances there
still rankled in his mind the memory of how, when Allison had first come
as station agent to the little town, a year ago now, he had one day
asked Jim if he did not suppose that the nice-looking girl who had
passed their house with Jim the Sunday before could be induced to come
and work for them. Allison had asked the question in all innocence, not
dreaming that this unshaven young man in blue seersucker shirt and
greasy trousers considered himself in every way Allison's equal, and was
as much affronted by this suggestion as Allison would have been by one
of the same sort. Jim could not forgive him for it--any admiration he
felt for Allison was invariably tempered by resentful remembrance.
"It's about time he woke up to the fact that he doesn't have a father
worth two millions behind him these days," Barbour went on.
"Extravagant! Lord, he never stops to ask what a thing costs before
getting it, as long as he has money in his pockets. Went into the
book-store the other afternoon to get some magazines--carried off about
everything Henry had in the place. Three dollars and fifteen cents his
bill was. Never thinks, when he's buying anything in the way of shirts
or ties, of getting less than half a dozen at a time--s'pose he hasn't
found out you can buy them any other way. And his laundry bills--guess
he about runs the laundry. And just yesterday he was telling me in the
most off-hand way that he would pay five dollars a week to a hired girl.
Five dollars a week! I could hardly believe my ears. But I guess he's
gone back on that." The postmaster smiled sourly.
The young man of whom they were talking was almost at the top of the
hill by this time. So far he had met few people; and those whom he had
met had not forced any formal recognition from him. But as he passed
Mrs. Jennings, she called out a greeting that could not be ignored.
Gertrude had stopped once to talk to her and to admire her collection of
shells; and since then every noon and night he found her waiting here by
her gate to speak to him; and she invariably asked the same question
about his wife, always in the same tone, always with the same
inflection. The meeting with her had become one of the frightfully
unvarying things of his day. As he walked on now, he saw stretching
before him an interminable vista of days, weeks, years--one deadly
sameness of hard work, long hours, scanty pay, poor living, growing
debts--and inextricably mixed up with it all, this dreary, gaunt black
figure, waiting always for him at the top of the hill.... He had not
realized what it meant to him, the success of his invention--how much he
was depending on it. He felt now as he might if, moving blindly through
a dark passage, hoping any minute to see a glimmer of light ahead, an
outlet into the open air, he had run full into a locked door--a door to
which he had no key.
The thought of going home to his wife brought no comfort with it. They
had long ago ceased to be honest with each other, Gertrude and he; their
attempts to make the best of a sorry situation had in the end become a
barrier which held them apart. Gertrude would not admit that she was
ever tired, or lonesome, or discouraged; would find no fault with their
poor little house, their scanty means, her unaccustomed duties. She
never spoke of the past any more, nor of the future, lest in that there
might be an implied criticism of the present; she was resolutely,
unvaryingly, aggressively contented. But this contentment was too
constant, too uniform, like false color on a woman's cheek. He sometimes
wished she would throw pretense to the winds--would put her head on his
shoulder, and sob and cry, and confess that she wished she were dead--or
that she would upbraid him, reproach him, call him some of the hard
names he called himself. But she was insistently cheerful; and there was
nothing for him to do, in the face of this, but play an awkward second
to her, ignore his aching back, his sore hands, his throbbing head, and
keep a resolute silence as to all that happened to vex and humiliate and
perplex and hurt him. It was not always easy; to-day he was conscious
that he was walking more and more slowly as he drew near the house.
How poor and forlorn it looked in this glare of light! During these last
weeks his thoughts had turned often to that stately house where he had
lived for nineteen years--its green, close-clipped lawn glistening under
a perpetual play of water, its great beds of white and green and
cardinal foliage plants, its shut-in porches, its awnings, its flowering
shrubs, its vines, its heavy iron fence. He looked with bitter
attentiveness at the dingy frame cottage he was approaching, noticing
each homely detail--the dish-towels spread on the bushes in the back
yard, the mop hanging by the door, the kerosene can under the step, the
lean hen scuttling away under the currant bushes, the vegetable garden
lying parched and dry along the fence. There was a small artificial
mound of stones at one side of the house, with a somewhat scanty growth
of portulaca springing from its top. The last occupant of the house was
responsible for that adornment. Allison wondered how they had happened
to leave it there so long. That mound of stones--all his hopes might
have been buried under it and he could not have hated it more. It stood,
somehow, for all that chafed and irritated him here--the moral, mental,
and physical stuntedness of the people--their petty ambitions, petty
jealousies, petty quarrels, petty virtues.
Allison was seized with a sudden vague fear as he saw on the kitchen
window-sill, just where he had left it at seven this morning, the
package which Gertrude had promised to take to Mr. Fulton as soon as she
had finished the breakfast dishes. He noticed almost at the same instant
that the kitchen door was open; countless flies were sailing in and out;
and there on the cellar door, in the blazing sunlight, was the morning's
milk, thick and sour by this time. He quickened his steps--made his way
hurriedly through the kitchen and dining-room, noticing, as he went,
various signs of disorder. The kitchen fire was out--the floor unswept;
the coffee he had knocked over when he had built the fire this morning
lay where it had fallen: the room was full of its pungent odor. On the
dining-room table were the remnants of breakfast, the oatmeal dry and
stiff, the butter melted down to a thin oil. In the front room he found
Gertrude, bending a flushed face over something she was writing. She
gave a start of fright as he came in--then got very red.
"I sat down to write a little of that play I was telling you about last
night"--she was picking up her papers with frantic haste as she
spoke--"and I had no idea it was getting so late." She cast an appalled
glance around the room, and hurried out to begin clearing off the table,
making a great clatter with the dishes in her excitement and haste.
[Illustration: "THIS DREARY, GAUNT BLACK FIGURE, WAITING ALWAYS FOR HIM
AT THE TOP OF THE HILL"]
Allison stood for a minute looking after her wearily. Her manner hurt
him. More than once, in days gone by, he had told her fondly that when
she married him she should do nothing but what she liked to do--if she
chose, she might work on her little dialogues and fairy stories from
morning till night. The air of frightened apology which she wore--this
servile haste--pained and irritated him. He threw himself into a chair
and began mechanically to look over the mail which the postmaster had
handed him. A week ago he had written to an Eastern firm asking for a
catalogue of the refrigerators they made. Here it was--bulky,
imposing, abounding in alluring pictures of tile-lined refrigerators
filled with game, fish, fruit, wine. He found he could buy their
smallest and most inexpensive refrigerator, "built especially to supply
a demand for low-priced goods,"--so the advertisement ran--for
forty-five dollars. He dropped the book, and turned to his other letter.
It was from a great retail dry-goods house, and was in answer to a
request he had made for samples of dotted swiss--he had thought he would
like to get Gertrude a dress such as she had worn when he first knew
her. The samples were sent, and along with them a letter expressing
pleasure at being able to serve him, and a desire further to accommodate
him whenever possible; its extreme deference and respect was like a
calculated sarcasm. He pushed it away from him and leaned back in his
chair, looking about the room with a curious stare, as a convict, who
has just heard that his sentence is for life, might gaze at the walls of
his cell. It was a low-ceiled room, with an uneven floor, cheap
woodwork, painted in an unsuccessful imitation of natural wood, and
walls hung with faded paper of an indeterminate pattern and even more
indeterminate color. To-day it was in greater confusion than usual, with
white dust thick on table and chair, a window-shade askew, the
music-rack disarranged, and a plate of grape-skins which Allison had
left last night on the piano still standing there. But it was not the
disorder which irritated Allison most, nor the signs of poverty, but the
fact that the poverty was so _genteel_, so self-respecting, so
determined to make the best of things and present a brave front to the
world. The kerosene lamp had a shade of red, crinkled tissue-paper--the
cheap net curtains were arranged with the utmost elaboration--a rug was
artfully laid down in such a way as almost to cover the square of zinc
on which the stove stood in the winter time, and all of Gertrude's
photographs were placed with a view to concealing various defects and
deficiencies. His loathing for all this was intensified by a memory of
vast rooms stretching out one after the other, hushed and cool, with
gracious shadows lending their mystery and romance to everything. With
sudden restlessness he rose, and walked over to the window; but the
smell of dust and dry, dead vegetation smothered him. Gertrude had raked
the long, sparse brown grass all in one direction; it had a grotesque
look of having been combed.
He seized his hat, and went to get Mr. Fulton's package from the
window-sill. He had barely turned toward the gate, however, when his
wife hurried out, remonstrating, apologizing, with an urgent hand on
his arm. "It is important that Mr. Fulton should get these papers
to-day," he said stiffly. It did not really matter whether Mr. Fulton
got the roll of agricultural papers to-day, to-morrow, or next week; but
Allison felt the necessity for doing something, it did not much matter
what, to crush down his growing despair; and this was the only thing
which suggested itself. Gertrude was persistent, however, in her
entreaties that he come back; it was frightfully hot, and he already
looked tired; she would take the papers to Mr. Fulton right after
luncheon. He yielded at last, from sheer languidness, and came silently
into the house. Gertrude's moist face, her loud, anxious voice, her
warm, clinging hand, were exceedingly disagreeable to him--so much so
that finally the desire to escape them became more importunate than any
other.
He was again standing by the window, gazing out, when his wife came into
the dining-room to set the table. He did not turn--gave no sign of
seeing her.
"What are you thinking about, Philip?" she asked presently, with an
effort to make her question sound casual.
"I am not thinking--at least I am trying not to," Allison answered, in a
somewhat strained, unnatural voice. Why would she not leave him alone?
Could she not see that he did not wish to talk?
"What was the last thing that you were thinking about before you
stopped?" Gertrude spoke with painstaking gaiety.
Would she always keep up this dissimulation? Allison asked himself. For
his part, he was done with it!
"I was thinking that this place was fit for a dog-kennel--and for
nothing else!" he said. All the bitterness that was eating out his heart
was in the low words.
"It does look pretty bad to-day," Gertrude acquiesced, after an
appreciable interval of time.
"_To-day!_" Allison gave a hard, contemptuous little laugh. "As though
it ever looked any other way!"
Gertrude did not reply.... When Allison noticed her silence, and turned
to look at her, he saw that there was a peculiar light in her eyes, a
red flush over all her face; after a moment's dazed wonder, he realized
that she had misunderstood him--had misunderstood him utterly. His
thoughts had been on the sagging floors, the cheap furniture, the marred
wall-paper, the miserable ugliness and poverty of the house, and
everything in it; but she had seen in his remark only scorn for her
housekeeping, irritation at the room's untidiness. She was very angry.
As Allison realized this, a sudden fierce satisfaction possessed him.
Now at last she would speak out, without pretence, without reserve! He
should hear the truth at last.
[Illustration: "HE HEARD HER MOVING ABOUT, GETTING HIS LUNCHEON"]
But the wrathful look died out of her eyes. She began arranging the
knives and forks, looking suddenly old, and steady, and sober.
"I'm not much of a housekeeper," she said, quietly.
"No, you're not." Allison made his tone as ugly as possible--and waited.
Surely she would turn upon him now, overwhelm him with bitter words!
She made no answer of any kind, however, but turned and hurried into the
kitchen, striking her arm clumsily against one side of the door as she
passed through, as though she had not seen very well. He heard her
moving rapidly about, getting his luncheon. She brought it in with her
head in the air and her lips compressed. The coffee was muddy, the steak
burned, the creamed potatoes scorched--she had been having bad luck.
Allison ate every scrap of what she brought him. He did not dare look at
her--did not dare ask her to forgive him. What right had he to do that?
He lingered on the steps some time before starting for the station,
fussing with his cuff, pulling his hat into shape, breaking off from the
tree at the corner of the house the branch Gertrude had complained was
in her way. His wife usually followed him to the door to tell him
good-by; but to-day she was sweeping the dining-room vigorously, singing
the while a very gay and cheerful tune. It was one to which they had
often danced together in the old days; at the same moment at which he
realized it, the song stopped, as though Gertrude had been silenced by
the same memory that had come to him. He whistled tentatively; but she
did not answer, though she was near enough to hear, as he knew from the
sound of her broom.
Allison went about his work that afternoon with a droop to his head, and
a dullness about his dark eyes, which Jim noticed with vague discomfort,
and which made him wish heartily that he had not confided to the
postmaster the story of Billings and the brake. He had quarreled with
Gertrude--everything else seemed insignificant to Allison beside that.
He had quarreled with Gertrude--Gertrude, who had been so brave, so
uncomplaining, so patient, so forbearing--had gone away from her with
the shadow of a misunderstanding between them. He kept repeating to
himself everything he had said and everything she had said, recalling
every tone and gesture. He wondered how he could have felt such a
shrinking dislike as she stood with her hand--her poor little scarred
hand!--on his arm, begging him to come back, to let her take the papers
to Mr. Fulton. How sweet she had been--how sweet! And he!
He started for home a little earlier than usual--Jim urged him to go,
with a certain rough friendliness, saying that he could look out for
things at the station. On his way home Allison went to the post-office,
hoping to get a letter for Gertrude from her mother or sister, and he
told the postmaster very humbly and simply why he had not felt like
talking this noon, and of the fact that he could not really afford to
pay five dollars a week for a maid. It was very strange, but after he
had begun, it was not at all hard to go on. He wondered vaguely how he
could have thought the postmaster a meddlesome, malicious, vulgar young
man; he seemed very sensible and friendly and respectful to-night.
Mrs. Jennings stood at the top of the hill, gaunt and black as usual;
somehow Allison did not feel the usual resentment. He stopped to speak
to her with unwonted warmth; and when, encouraged by his manner, she
began to talk about Gertrude, and what a pretty girl, and what a smart
girl, and what a sweet girl she was, he felt a sudden kindness for the
old lady, and accepted almost demonstratively the bunch of magenta and
orange vinnias she gave him to take to his wife.
As Allison went into the house, he noticed signs of a vigorous cleaning.
The back steps had been scrubbed--were still wet; the kitchen floor was
as white as the rough, dark boards could be made; the dining-room table
was set with their finest table-cloth and prettiest dishes, and was gay
with yellow flowers; fresh white curtains, breathing out sweetness, hung
at the windows. A note was pinned to the corner of the table.
"If you should get home before I do," it ran, "this is to tell you that
I have gone to Mr. Fulton's with those papers I promised to take right
after luncheon--I forgot all about them till just now. I'll be back in
three-quarters of an hour sure; it's half-past five now. Supper's all
ready now but making the coffee. Be sure and wait."
He smoothed the hurried scrawl out tenderly, feeling as if something
hard and cold in his left side had melted with a sudden gush of warmth.
Back in three-quarters of an hour! He laughed aloud at the sanguineness
of it. Why, it took _him_ forty minutes to go to Mr. Fulton's and back!
And the idea of telling him to be sure and wait! The little goose! Did
she think he would take himself off in a temper at not finding her, as
he had once months ago? He went out to the kitchen to put his flowers
in water, and to finish slicing an egg over the top of the bowl of salad
there--Gertrude had evidently just begun to do it when the package
outside the window caught her eye. He put on some water for the coffee,
and brought in an armful of wood; then he strolled to the gate to wait
for his wife. The neighbor's two-year-old baby came staggering down the
walk in front of the house. Allison caught up the child in his arms, and
lifted it to the top of the gate-post, beside him. This was the little
girl for whom Gertrude had been making a dress the other day; she had
looked very shocked--Gertrude--when he had asked her if she proposed to
make clothes for all the dirty little brats in the neighborhood, and had
told him with some dignity that Dolly was a very pretty baby, and was
kept as clean as could be expected. Dolly _was_ a pretty baby. He
tightened the arm that was about her a little, and began to talk clumsy
baby-talk to her; her mother looked on with a pleased smile from her
front door. The sun was setting, and a strange bright peace was on
everything.
Suddenly Allison's eyes were caught by an unaccustomed sight--a crowd of
people, men, women, and children, advancing down the road, slowly,
steadily, and silently--very silently. He surveyed them curiously,
ignorantly. Suddenly a man spoke to the one next him--Allison saw the
dip of his head--and almost at the same instant a child--a
twelve-year-old girl--put up her hands to shade her eyes, staring
intently at Allison, and then with a loud shriek ran wildly, blindly, in
the other direction. And then Allison knew that this silent company
meant disaster to him.
They dragged him away before he caught more than a glimpse of what they
had in their midst--the limp, white-faced thing in the silly pink dress
he had liked. She had started home by the short way, they told him--the
short way over the old bridge--the bridge that every one knew was not
safe. And how it happened no one could say--perhaps she had stumbled and
caught hold of the rotten railing, and it had given under her hand; at
any rate they had found her in the dry river-bottom, thirty feet below.
He looked at them very calmly as they finished. "She is dead," he said
quietly, "there is no need to tell me that." And then, suddenly, without
a cry or any warning, he toppled over against the man nearest him.
But she was not dead. He came out of his delirium and fever three weeks
later to find her limping around the room, looking a little pale and
tired, but very pretty in some sort of ruffled white dress, with her
hair done up in the puffs and rolls he had always liked. People had been
very good, she told him when he was strong enough to listen and
understand. The doctor had said that he could eat eggs before he could
eat anything else--so everybody had been sending fresh eggs. Mary said
she was going to buy an incubator and start to raising chickens--they
couldn't eat half the eggs that were sent in, even if they ate nothing
but custard. Mary was the pretty girl that they had seen walking with
Mr. Brown one Sunday, and had thought would be a nice person to have
around. She was going to stay with them all winter; Gertrude was going
to teach her German and music, and she was going to teach Gertrude how
to cook. She was doing all the work just now, she and the neighbors.
Mrs. Ferry came in every morning to scrub the kitchen and black the
stove. They said Gertrude must keep her hands nice--Philip had seemed
more worried about her hands than about anything else, all the time he
was sick. Did he see how soft and white they were? She had been washing
them in buttermilk--the doctor's wife had suggested that--and putting
some sort of cream on them that Mr. Gilson, the young man who clerked in
the drug store, had sent up by Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown had been so kind--it
had been he who had sat up with Philip when his fever was at its
worst--he had chopped all the ice that they had used from first to last.
He was out in the back yard now, fixing--but there, that was to be a
surprise.
Allison lay very still, smoothing his wife's hand, and looking out
through the open door at the dry grass of the yard, browner, dustier
than ever, and at the portulaca waving on top of the pyramid of stones.
He could hear Jim's whistle as he moved about the yard; some one at the
back door was talking to Mary in a hushed, eager undertone; over on her
porch Dolly was singing happily, sinking her voice to a mere murmur now
and then at a low remonstrance from within the house. It all made a sort
of accompaniment to Gertrude's happy talk.
Suddenly she stopped, and leaned her cheek against his, with a little
sigh. "Isn't it a nice world, dear?" she whispered.
He turned so that he could look into her eyes, and said, with a little
tremble in his voice:
"It's a beautiful world!"
[Illustration: "HE CAME TOWARD HER WITH THE PITCHER"]
THE WAYFARERS
BY
MARY STEWART CUTTING
AUTHOR OF "LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP," "LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED
LIFE," ETC.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS
XIX