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MORE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE

MARY STEWART CUTTING

New York

McClure, Phillips & Co.

Mcmvi

McClure, Phillips & Co.

Published March, 1906

Contents

PAGE

A Little Surprise 1

At the Sign of the Rubber Plant 29

The Terminal 53

The Hinge 77

A Symphony in Coal 101

The Triumph of Father 135

The Portion of the Youngest 155

Polly Townsend’s Rebellion 185

The Mother of Emily 207

Madonna of the Toys: A Christmas Story 227

The Name of the Firm 243

A Little Surprise

Anita Gibbons has been waiting outside at the station on the bench

nearest the field since twenty minutes of six, and it was now nearly

seven as she rose to go. The bright pleasure with which she had started

out was fled: he had not come. The sun, wind, and reform of the spring

afternoon, in combination with a becoming new suit and hat, had produced

their annual effect of inspiring her to surprise her husband by meeting

him on his return from town, that they might walk home bridally together

in the sweet evening daylight. She had been hitherto undeterred by

remembrance of the historic fact that Mr. Gibbons was never known to come

on time when thus pleasurably expected; but memory was beginning to chill

her now, as well as the wind on her back. She had done all this before!

Yet what business unknown this morning; could have kept him? It was

neither the first nor the last of the month, always mysterious days

of threatened detention. He had not passed her by unnoticed, for she

had risen as each train came in to scan the men who dropped on to the

platform and hurried off, some of them looking back to raise their hats

to the pretty woman on the platform.

She hurried now as she walked across the field, feeling guiltily amid her

disappointment that dinner would be waiting, and that she had left no

word of her whereabouts with the maid, having in fact slipped out of the

house unseen, to escape the clamouring notice of her only child, who was

near his early bed-time.

“Good-evening, Mrs. Gibbons. Coming back from town so late?”

She looked up to see a friend approaching on the foot-path.

“Oh, good-evening, Mr. Ferris! No, I’ve only come from the station; I’ve

been looking for my husband.”

He stopped half-way past her.

“Why, he came out in the five-fifteen with me! He slipped off when it

slowed up, and jumped down the embankment; he said he was in a hurry to

get home. Too bad if you’ve missed him.”

“Yes, it is,” said Mrs. Gibbons, hastily, breaking almost into a run.

Arnold, she knew, hated to find her out of the house.

As she went up the steps now, the door opened before she reached it, and

an excited voice exclaimed: “Ah, ma’am, it’s yourself at last! It’s the

neighbourhood we do be having searched for you!”

“What do you mean, Katy?” Mrs. Gibbons, who had stood arrested on the

threshold, pushed her way in. “Where is Mr. Gibbons?”

“He’s gone.”

“_Gone!_”

“Yes, ma’am, gone back to the city. ’Twas like this: he bid me say that

he had to be meeting friends—I disremember the name—on the other side, at

the ferry, or he could have telephoned ’em, ma’am. ’Twas a grand dinner

they had planned for to-night, unexpected like.”

“Was the name”—Mrs. Gibbons paused that she might have courage to grasp

her loss—“Was the name Atterbury?”

“It was, ma’am.”

Her beloved Atterburys! They were to sail for Rio at the end of the week.

This was a dinner and a theatre party planned before and postponed. They

_could_ not have it without her.

“Mr. Gibbons must have known I’d be home in a minute!”

“Sure, he waited for you, ma’am, till he had to run to the station below

to catch the express; but he bid me tell you to be sure and take the

seven o’clock train in, and he’d keep the party waiting at the ferry for

you.”

Mrs. Gibbons glanced at the clock. It was after seven now! But there was

a seven-twenty-five train which reached town almost as soon, and Arnold

would surely wait for that, even if the others had gone on to Martin’s,

where they would dine. The Atterburys always went to Martin’s. She was

accustomed to try and bend fate to her uses with an uncalculating ardour

that focussed itself entirely on the impulse of the moment. To the

suburbanite a little dinner in town is the height of pleasure, the one

perfect feast! And with the Atterburys! She really could not miss it.

“I don’t care for anything to eat. Don’t let the fire out,” she dictated

rapidly. “See that Harold doesn’t get uncovered, and _don’t_ bolt the

front door. We’ll be home before twelve, but you needn’t sit up for us.

Just lie on the lounge in the nursery.” She did not remind forgetful Katy

to put the milk tickets in the pail set outside the back door, and only

remembered it as she was half-way to the station.

The train was due in town at eight-five, but it was late here, and

the extra ten minutes seemed a thousand “prickly seconds.” The spring

twilight was coming to a close, and when she stepped into the car in

which the lamps gleamed dully over the plush seats, it was like stepping

into the long tunnel of the night. Only a few men from further up the

road sprawled and dozed wearily on their way. She was unaccustomed to

going out thus alone, and for an instant a panic-struck thought of

failure seized her, but she lost it in the action of her hurrying brain,

which constantly pictured the delightful meeting with her expectant

husband and the waiting party. By the inalienable law of travel, which

ordains that delay in one mode of locomotion means delay in every

other, the ferry-boat could not “hit her slip,” but wobbled up and down

crosswise in the current, bumping against the piles at either end, with

much ringing of the pilot’s bell, and losing of minutes—and minutes—and

minutes. But at last Mrs. Gibbons made her way into the big, lighted

waiting-room, the haven of her hopes. It took no more than one glance

to reveal that there was neither group nor husband waiting for her. The

place was entirely empty, save for a few Italian emigrants, and the clock

pointed to twenty minutes of nine.

So vividly had Mrs. Gibbons pictured her own state of mind as that of her

husband—a habit of which fell experience could not break her—that even in

the shock of not finding him she felt instantly that some provision had

been made for this contingency. She could go straight over and join the

party at Martin’s, but he might have left some word for her. The man at

the news stand might know. She hovered uncertainly around the pictorial

exhibit, trying to screw up a suddenly-waning courage, and then found

voice to say engagingly:

“I’m looking for my husband.”

“What did you say, lady?” The man stopped in his work of sorting papers.

“I’m looking for my husband. He’s been waiting for me here for a long

time—with a party—but he’s gone now. I thought perhaps he had left some

message here with you.”

“What kind of looking man was he?” asked the news clerk. He leaned

forward companionably.

“He—he’s tall, and clean shaven, with a light overcoat, and blue

eyes—and——” She groped around for some distinguishing characteristic to

elicit a gleam of response—“a square chin—with a dimple in it.” She felt

her own fatuousness. “You—you’d know him if you saw him.”

The clerk turned to a boy who had appeared behind the counter.

“Did you see a man with a light overcoat, and”—a spasm passed over

his face—“and a dimple in his chin? Did he leave any message here?”

Mrs. Gibbons felt hotly that he was laughing at her, although he looked

impassive.

“Naw,” said the boy, “he didn’t leave no message with me.” He added on

reflection, “I ain’t seen no one hanging ’round but a chunky feller with

a black _mus_tache.”

“He hasn’t seen any one but a stout man with a black mustache,” reported

the clerk officially, while two pairs of eyes stared at her in a

disconcerting manner.

“Good-evening, Mrs. Gibbons; is there anything we can do for you?”

“Oh, Mrs. Worthington—and Mr. Worthington!” Mrs. Gibbons looked as one

who sees a familiar face in the desert. “You don’t _know_ how glad I am

to meet you! I’m looking for my husband.”

“Indeed!” said Mrs. Worthington, with a faint chill of surprise. She

was a slight woman, elegantly gowned, with a thin expressionless face.

Her husband was like unto her, with the overcoat of opulence. They were

new neighbours of Mrs. Gibbons, who kept themselves politely aloof from

suburban social life, spending most of their time in town, where they

seemed to have a large connection. They were perhaps the last persons to

whom Mrs. Gibbons would have turned in a dilemma, but she found comfort

in their curious attention as she explained the situation, to conclude by

saying:

“Of course, I’ll go right over now to Martin’s. If they waited for me

here until after eight, they would be hardly more than started at dinner.

All I want to know is what car I ought to take.”

Mrs. Worthington’s eyelids flickered a response to her husband.

“Pray allow us to escort you there,” said Mr. Worthington. “It is really

quite on our way.”

“Oh, you’re _very_ kind,” said Mrs. Gibbons, following her leaders

gratefully, after a moment or two of demur. She had naturally the feeling

that when a man took the thing in hand it would be all right.

“I didn’t know it was so dark at night when you were out alone by

yourself, until I came off the ferry-boat,” she confided.

Mrs. Worthington’s eyelids flickered assent. She sat in the trolley car

in a sort of isolated though subdued richness of attire, her heavy silken

skirts folded over decorously to escape contaminating touch, her embossed

cloak and large boa held elegantly in place with her white-gloved hand.

She seemed to demand a coach and four. The light spring suit which Mrs.

Gibbons had thought so fetching in the afternoon looked cheap and thin

in comparison. She did not know of the blue intenseness of her eyes and

the rich flush on her young cheek which made each man who entered the car

turn to look at her.

When Mr. Worthington bent over from the suspending strap to ask, “You are

quite sure your husband is at Martin’s?” she answered with her bright,

upward glance, “Oh, yes, quite sure!” He would be at a little round

table, with John and Agnes Atterbury, in the red-carpeted room, looking

out for her, and how glad they would be to see her!

She dashed up the steps ahead of the Worthingtons, and a waiter came

deferentially forward. Why should her heart suddenly fail her when she

stood looking in upon the lighted scene?

“I’m looking for my husband,” said Mrs. Gibbons. She dashed from one

doorway to another, peering in. “No, he isn’t here—perhaps in the other

room—I don’t see him here either. It’s very strange, _very_!”

“What is it Madame desires?” The head waiter was following her rushing

movements.

“I’m looking for my husband”—in full torrent of explanation her tone had

grown louder. “He came here a little while ago.” She paused, suddenly

aware of a whisper sibilating around.

“She’s looking for her husband.” Several people stopped eating. The head

waiter regarded her suspiciously.

“Was Monsieur alone?”

“No, oh, no!” said Mrs. Gibbons with eager candour. “No, indeed! There

was a lady——”

“Aa—h!” said the head waiter. “Monsieur was with another lady!” An

embarrassing murmur of interest made itself felt. He fixed her with

a placating eye, as he added, hurriedly, “But Monsieur, as Madame

perceives, is not here. He exists not. If the carriage of Madame”—he

stopped happily—“But behold now the friends of Madame!”

The wild blaze of happiness died down almost as suddenly as it had risen

in Mrs. Gibbons’ breast, as she turned to see the Worthingtons advancing

decorously once more to her rescue. Her bright hopes were buried in ashes.

“Oh, I don’t know what to do,” she breathed. “He isn’t here after all—_he

isn’t here_!”

“Will you not go on with us to the opera?” asked Mrs. Worthington. “We

would be very glad to have you. We did not care to get in for the first

act.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that—you’re so very kind—but I couldn’t really. I

must get home at once. Mr. Gibbons will go home early. I want to go home.”

“We will then, of course, return with you,” said Mr. Worthington,

resignedly.

“Oh, please, _please_ don’t! It isn’t at all necessary. I _couldn’t_ have

you do it. I know the way now, and—please don’t!”

“Mr. Worthington will not allow you to go home alone,” said his

wife, with polite weariness of the subject. “The next train does not

leave until ten o’clock. Of course, if you really wish so much to

return—although Mr. Gibbons is not at all likely to get back before we

would—do not hesitate out of consideration for us or _our_ convenience.

But I think you would enjoy the opera.”

Mrs. Gibbons stood unhappily irresolute. How could she drag these people

home with her, much as she now longed to get there? If they would _only_

let her go alone! After all, if Arnold were off having a good time, why

shouldn’t she be gay and have a good time, too?

“Well, if you really want to take me—and it won’t be very late——” She

was conscious of her ungraciousness. “Oh, I’ll enjoy it immensely!”

“We will leave whenever you say so,” said Mr. Worthington, with his

invariable deference.

So unused was Mrs. Gibbons to going out with any one but her husband that

Mr. Worthington’s arm felt startlingly thin and queer and unnatural when

her hand rested on it as he helped her across the street. Everything

was unnatural. Her acceptance, she found, necessitated his standing in

the rear of the house, while she occupied his seat. Mrs. Worthington

relinquished her entirely to the promised enjoyment. The music was indeed

beautiful, but she still kept hold of the ever-tightening thread of

suspense and longing; Arnold might be gay without her, but she couldn’t

be gay without him. To think of all she was missing choked her! Mr.

Worthington came forward between the acts to ask perfunctorily if Mrs.

Gibbons wished to leave, but his wife showed no signs of moving.

It was with the first joy of the evening that she saw the curtain

descend, and felt that she could tear at full speed for the elevated road

and her own dear ferry and her own dear home. She must get there before

Arnold, or he would be wild with anxiety; her desire to meet him in town

was nothing to her desire now to head him off at home. But she reckoned

without her host, literally. Her entertainers had been met by friends

as they passed slowly down amid the crush in the aisle, and after the

voluble greetings she was panic-struck by hearing one of the strangers

say:

“You’ll come to supper with us now? Just around the corner!”

“Oh, yes!” Mrs. Worthington was almost animated. “If we have time,” she

added, turning to her husband.

“Why, we can’t get the twelve o’clock, if we stay, but we will have

plenty of time for the twelve-thirty, if Mrs. Gibbons doesn’t object,”

said Mr. Worthington.

“We have a friend with us,” said Mrs. Worthington, in languid

explanation. “Mrs. Gibbons, Mrs. Freshet, Mr. Freshet.”

“We will, of course, be pleased to have your friend take supper with us,”

said Mrs. Freshet.

How could Mrs. Gibbons object? Her eyes pleaded, but her lips were

perforce silent; and, comfortably settled in the restaurant, the others

talked about matters of common interest, while she sat on the edge of

her chair by the gleaming little table, and fumbled at her oysters with

her fork, watching the hands of the clock at the end of the room. The

Freshets were even more ornately dressed than the Worthingtons, with a

floridity of manner that somehow overstepped a certain delicate line.

Once Mrs. Freshet smiled at the guest over her white satin and sables to

ask:

“Is this the friend of whose beautiful home I have heard so much?”

“I—I think not,” said Mrs. Gibbons, with a stricken glimpse of the

interior of her little dwelling. “I only met the Worthingtons by accident

to-night,” she added, impulsively, with a longing for sympathy. “I was

looking for my husband.”

“How singular!” said Mrs. Freshet, with a blank stare, and turned at

once to continue a conversation on bargains with Mrs. Worthington,

while Mrs. Gibbons, trying to make sprightly remarks in response to Mr.

Freshet and Mr. Worthington, agonizingly watched the clock. Ten minutes

of twelve—five minutes of twelve—she could not have stood it a second

longer, when Mr. Worthington rose to hurry them off.

The rushing of the elevated train could not keep up with Mrs. Gibbons’

hastening spirit; but somehow, inexplicably, after a while even the

rushing stopped—the train halted—went forward a little—and halted again,

between stations.

“Oh, _what_ is the matter?” said Mrs. Gibbons, as Mr. Worthington

returned with several men from investigation.

“Oh, nothing to speak of; there’s a fire ahead somewhere, and we’re

blocked for a few minutes. Mrs. Gibbons—_Madam_! Pray keep your seat, you

can _not_ get out!”

“They do say as there’s a family yet in the burning house,” suggested a

sympathizing listener.

“Naw, they got thim out, but there’s two firemen hurted,” said another.

“What is it, Amelia!” Mr. Worthington turned his attention hastily from

Mrs. Gibbons to his wife. “Do you feel faint?”

“A little,” murmured Mrs. Worthington, reproachfully.

Mrs. Gibbons had a sickened feeling. She could have felt faint too, if

her husband had been along to sit down by her solicitously, and tell her

to lean on him. She would have _liked_ to feel faint. But instead, she

was forced, in common decency, to be solicitous too for Mrs. Worthington,

although she had begun to hate her. Mr. Worthington looked nervously

at his watch until the train started again, and when they got out to

walk to the ferry, he hurried his wife along at a pace with which Mrs.

Gibbons tried in vain to keep up over the uneven, dirty, dimly lighted

pavements in those winding streets near the river. Arnold never let her

walk so fast that way; she owned an ankle that had once been sprained,

and sometimes now turned under her disastrously. But hurry as she might,

they hurried faster, under the impulse of the new fear which made itself

felt to her without the need of words. She caught up to the couple, and

clutched them as they stood suddenly motionless, inside the ferry-house,

facing her.

“What do you _stop_ for? Why don’t you go _on_?” she demanded fiercely,

although she knew too well what the dread answer must be. The supreme

stroke of suburban fate had befallen them. They had missed the last train

out!

Only the initiated know what this really means. To be cut off inexorably

from home, and the children, and the fires, and the incompetent servants

or the anxious watchers—it is something subtly feared in every evening

journey into town, but only once in a life-time perhaps is it experienced.

“We had better go to a hotel,” said Mrs. Worthington, with agitation. “We

will _have_ to go to a hotel, Foster.”

“Perhaps we can get out home some way,” he answered, with the instinct

of the man who considers two hours in his own bed worth ten in any other.

Mrs. Gibbons cast the reserve of decency to the winds. They had made

her miss this train! Her husband waiting for her—the sleeping Harold

uncovered—the milk tickets to be put in the pail to-morrow—“I don’t care

what _you_ do; _I_ can’t stay in town to-night. I _won’t_ stay in town,

Mr. Worthington! I’ll have to get home to-night if I _swim_ for it!”

“No need to do that,” said a man rapidly coming out with a pipe-smoking

group from the ferry-house. “We’re going out on the twelve-forty-five

boat on the other road, a couple blocks below here, and take the trolley

out. It’s Mrs. Gibbons, isn’t it? I don’t believe you recognize me. I saw

your husband an hour or so ago at Weber and Fields.”

“Oh, _thank_ you!” said Mrs. Gibbons. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank

you, thank you!” She stumbled after the group over the cobblestones

outside of the long wharves, still insanely warbling her gratitude,

her protectors sullenly stalking after her. They crushed and wedged

themselves into the midst of an unsavoury and strenuous populace on the

boat that pushed out slowly into the fog of the river, but that did not

matter—they were saved, they were off! They were surely bound for that

other side on which lay all that made life worth living. Then there was

another mad rush for the trolley car that went their way. Fighting,

struggling, pressing, the three snot into seats, exhausted, and whizzed

off into the dark night. Mr. Worthington, after a few minutes, went sound

asleep, lurching as the car lurched, his wife, poor woman, pale enough

as she sat with face averted from Mrs. Gibbons, her lips pressed tightly

together, one hand holding mechanically to her raiment, and the other

within her husband’s arm. Men sat with their heads on their sweet-hearts’

shoulders, in true early morning trolley-car fashion, and every inch

of standing room was packed too thick for the eye to penetrate with a

singing, drunken, cat-calling, indecent crowd, the last scum of a great

city. It was an offense to delicacy to be there. The lights flared wildly

up and then went out at intervals. When they went out, Mrs. Gibbons felt

a cold terror. She had always been afraid of drunken men, and she was so

used to the protection of love! How sorry Arnold would be when she told

him about it all, how tender he would be of her!

Oh, she had never realized before how utterly married she was, how long

she had ceased to remember the independence of her girlhood, for what a

short distance her little struts and flights were planned! So helpless,

so forlorn, so terribly outside of life was she without him, without

that individual care which was as much a part of existence as her own

ability to raise her food to her mouth, or move one foot before another!

She thought of a woman she knew who had lost her husband, and who had

said, “I did not know it could be like this.” He had “given his body to

the storm” many a time and oft for her dear sake; yet even for her a day

might sometime come—like this—when—— Her soft cheek was cold and wet, and

even through her thought of him she was also trying to get home and put

those milk tickets in the pail so that the child would not be bereft in

the morning. One must always remember a little child’s needs.

“Ye’re frightenin’ the lady, ye big bloke.”

“I ain’t frightenin’ of her, ye——”

She shrank painfully at the notice thrust upon her. For hours, and hours,

and hours they were jigging off over the dark salt meadows.

Crash, lurch, jam—everything came to a sudden stop. The conductor called,

“All out here for the car ahead.”

The sleeping ones awoke. In the scuffle and rush forward Mrs. Gibbons

became separated from her friends. The new car was already jammed when

she reached it, with fighting in the doorway. With one foot raised to

step up she was thrust to one side by a man who leapt from it, followed

by several others dashing back across the tracks and down a side street,

amid cries of “Catch him! Get the pocketbook! Catch the thief!”

There was a face—could it be her husband’s? She turned wildly to peer

after it into the blankness outside of the car lights. The next instant

the bell had rung, and the car, with the crowd on the platform all

looking one way, was vanishing swiftly down the roadway, while Mrs.

Gibbons, unnoticed, stood alone upon the rails. She made a futile step

after it, and then stopped, appalled. She was left behind.

Opposite was the long, cavernous opening of a car-house, filled with

the stalled cars. Near her was a saloon, ending what seemed a scattered

row of small, mean houses and shops, closed and dark. Ahead there was

a stretch of empty lots, with a faint, stationary glimmer of light

down the road. But the saloon, though by no means brilliant, was the

lightest place. There was no sound from within. After some hesitation,

Mrs. Gibbons wandered up on the low platform that topped the two steps,

watched by a couple of men from the car-house. Her heart was in her mouth

as one of them came forward; but he only glanced at her and went in the

saloon, to come out again with a wooden chair.

“Better set,” he remarked, laconically, and disappeared across the

street. A moment later there were other footsteps from the saloon, and

looking up, she saw a policeman wiping his mouth.

“Got left by the car?” he said.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Gibbons, raising her blue and guileless eyes to his. “I

didn’t know it was going so soon. I was looking for my husband.”

The policeman’s face changed from solicitude to the cheerful acceptance

of a familiar situation.

“Give ye the slip, did he? A lady like you, too! Sure he’s the bad lot,

and not wort’ your lookin’ for. Now don’t be frettin’ yourself, the Queen

couldn’t be safer. I’m wid you till the car comes. ’Tis an hour away.”

“It’s very good of you,” said Mrs. Gibbons, gratefully.

Of all the chances and changes of this wild Walpurgis night, there

could be nothing stranger than this, that she, Nita Gibbons, should be

sitting alone amid the dark marshes, in front of a Jersey “gin-mill,”

at half-past two o’clock in the morning. It was so entirely past all

imagining that frenzy had left her. She would probably never get

home again, but she had ceased to struggle against fate. She sat

there instead, passive, her slight figure bent against the cold night

wind, and her hair half falling down under her battered hat, looking

dreamily at the late twinkling stars in the black sky, and the gloomy

car-house opposite, and at the policeman who walked up and down

through the shadows. He swayed a little unsteadily, but he represented

the guardianship of the law. Once he came close to her and asked

encouragingly, “Would ye like a doggy?”

“What kind?” said Mrs. Gibbons, with a hazy fear of too large a

protective animal.

He pointed over his shoulder towards the stationary light down the road.

“The kind they do be havin’ in the Owl Wagon, down there—frankfooties or

doggies, ’tis the same. I could get ye wan, wid a roll; they’re cleaned

out in the s’loon here.”

“Thank you, I’d rather not eat,” said Mrs. Gibbons in haste, and then

started nervously as the noise of footsteps running broke upon the ear.

The three men who had followed the thief came in sight from the direction

in which they had fled from the car. One called out, “Good-night, I’m

going to hoof it home!”

And another voice also called, “Glad you got your pocketbook back

again—ought to have got the fellow, too.”

The third said nothing, as he came towards the platform. Mrs. Gibbons

turned her head away. The next instant a voice of amazement said,

“_Nita!_ You here!” and, looking up, she saw her husband.

“Oh, Arnold, Arnold!” She stopped short in view of his face. “Oh, Arnold,

I don’t wonder you’re surprised to see me, dear, but I’ve been looking

for you!”

“Looking for _me_! Nita! _Nita!_ NITA!”

The astonishment in his voice held something ominous in it. She clung to

his arm with both hands, as she rose with him, and hardly realized, in

her excited explaining and explaining, that she was being borne off down

the road without waiting for the car, at a tremendous pace, and still

spasmodically explaining to a portentous silence. When he spoke at last

it was in a tone that sounded dangerous:

“So the Worthingtons went off and _left_ you?”

“No, no, they were _in_ the car, they——”

“I’ll—I’ll _see_ Worthington to-morrow!” He paused for control, and Mrs.

Gibbons had a swift vision of Mr. Worthington’s head rolling off into a

basket. “I never heard such a lot of crazy stuff—I never _heard_ of such

a thing—I _never_ heard of such a thing! It all comes of your being out

of the house when I came home. What on earth you want to go wild-goose

chasing for at the very time you know I’m coming home——”

“But, Arnold, I _didn’t_ go wild-goose chasing. I went to the station to

surprise you.”

His anger grew.

“To surprise me! Then let me know next time you want to surprise me. I’ve

had enough surprise to last me all the rest of my life.”

He broke off with a shudder as if the thought were too much for him.

“Well, you just missed it, not being with us to-night. You’ll never have

such another chance, never. The Atterburys won’t be back for five years.”

“And did you enjoy it without _me_!”

“Enjoy it! Of course I enjoyed it. I’d have been a fool not to. I had a

glorious time, the best dinner I ever ate, and Atterbury?—What on earth

you wanted to spoil it all for I can’t see. _Take_ care!”—his arm went

around her closely. “You’ll turn your ankle.” His touch was ineffably

gentle and sure, in spite of the masterful rage of his tone.

“Oh, Arnold, I’ve been so unhappy all the evening. I——”

He went on, remorseless. “I’m glad you were. I hope you _were_ unhappy.

It will teach you never to do such a thing again. When you didn’t meet

us at the ferry, I was confounded. I couldn’t think _what_ had happened

to you. If everything hadn’t been ordered ahead, tickets and all, I’d

have come straight home, but I couldn’t leave the Atterburys in the lurch

when _you_ had, though I hated to go without you. It just spoiled the

whole thing. I’ve been worrying ever since that infernal hold-up in the

elevated, thinking of you at home alone, and then I find you gallivanting

around at the junction at three o’clock in the morning, after coming out

in that outrageous car. If I’d known you were there——! Well, you were

just crazy to do such a thing”—he set his teeth—“it makes me _wild_ to

think of it. You don’t know _what_ might have happened. I’ll be afraid to

go off and leave you home alone. I don’t know what you’ll do. You ought

to be looked after like a child. You oughtn’t to be left a _minute_.

What’s the matter?”

He slowed up the pace that was rapidly nearing them to home. His storming

voice deepened reluctantly into a distressful tenderness.

“What’s the matter? You mustn’t cry in the street, Nita! You mustn’t,

dear.”

“Oh, I’ve had such a horrid, horrid, horrid time!” The tears were

blinding her so that she leaned unseeing on the enfolding arm that

guided her. “I don’t mind your scolding me. I’m not crying for _that_.

I don’t mind anything you say. I don’t mind even your not having kissed

me. Nothing makes any difference to me as long as it’s you. I’m crying

because I’m so glad it’s you, and I can hear your voice again. When I

was trying to find you it seemed as if it would never end; it seemed—it

seemed——” She raised her wet eyes to his.

He took a swift look up and down the empty, lifeless street, laid out

straight and stiff in the cold, faint glimmer of the dawn, and then his

lips sought hers in deep, deep acknowledgment of the joy, and of the

sorrow, to which all love is born—one of those moments stolen in its

beautifulness from the life to come.

But his voice was tense again, as he set her down within her own doorway,

and he looked at her with stern eyes of jealous care, from which she hid

the woman’s smile of love at dear love’s unreason.

“You’re nearly _dead_! Don’t you stir out of this house to-morrow until I

come home—do you hear? _Never_ surprise me again!”

At the Sign of the Rubber Plant

“I wonder _what_ he meant!”

Mrs. Thatcher had risen from the breakfast table from which her husband

had departed some time since, after throwing out a mysterious hint about

some event in store for her. She had better look out for—what? He had

gone before she could question him further.

She went to the front window now, gazing down the street after Bobby, her

only child, on his way to the kindergarten. She was a very tall young

woman, yet lost none of her femininity by her height; it seemed rather

to emphasize it in a willowy droop that always suggested an appealing

dependence, in connection with the upward glance of her dark eyes. Her

hair was dark, like her eyes, and very thick; her lips were red and

curved; her cheeks were usually pale, but there was a faint glow on them

now. Nevin had made a terse but complimentary remark about her appearance

in that blue cambric morning dress, which she had received with as much

innocent surprise as if she had not planned for it. He had also said that

he pitied that poor fellow next door whose wife was homely enough to

take away his appetite.

Mr. Thatcher’s attitude towards his wife was the subject both of

good-natured comment and raillery among her neighbours. His least action

towards her was charged, though unobtrusively, with that subtle and

intimate attention which one only expects from a lover. He even had a

way of helping her up and down the steps that was “different” to the

married eye. Patently unintellectual as Mildred Thatcher was, she yet

indisputably retained her charm for the man who _was_ intellectual. She

had, in fact, that sweet will to be beloved which instinctively foreruns

occasion, and makes a place for it in all the little daily matters of

life.

“I wonder what he meant! I feel exactly as if somebody would come out

from town to-day—it’s such a lovely morning.” She spoke half aloud as

she looked down the street through the green feathery foliage of the

elms, just out in their spring dress. The sun shone caressingly through

them upon the crocuses peeping out in the front grass-plot, and the air,

delicately cool, was charged with perfume. There were all the usual

adjuncts of spring in the suburbs. A department store wagon was already

delivering parcels at a house further down, and several women, fresh

and neatly gloved, were alertly stepping trainward to get an early start

for the day’s shopping, impelled thither by that soft breeze which woos

womankind to the pursuit of clothes. All down the block the palms and

rubber plants were being sunned on piazza steps, the former, for the most

part, conspicuously brown and withered, but the latter still chunkily

green after a winter of furnace heat and dust and gas.

To feel the spring air and not want to spend money was impossible even to

Mildred Thatcher, but even if she could have purchased the rug so badly

needed for the little drawing-room she would not leave home to-day. She

was sure some one would be out from town. She turned now to the maid and

gave her orders for luncheon.

“You can make the cold meat into croquettes, Kitty, and we’ll have

pop-overs. And I’d like you to wash out the violet centerpiece.”

“Very well, ma’am.”

The hint of a pending pleasure had set its seal on the day. It might be

Madge Stanfield who would come, or the Laviers, or her Cousin Lou. She

set things to rights, and dusted and arranged daintily, and put fresh

violets in the glass vases, and by and by, late in the morning, when all

was done, went out on the piazza to listen for the train, while deciding

whether or no to send her dwindling palms to the florist. She scrutinized

the rubber plant anxiously for some sign of growth. The rubber plant

was, in a way, a proof of the demoralizing extremes of Mildred’s nature.

For a season she had railed intemperately at rubber plants and their

possessors, and then, after moving from a flat to the suburbs, had

incontinently gone forth one morning on the spur of the moment and bought

one. It somehow didn’t seem as if they were really householders without

that green and visible emblem of a much-enduring domesticity. Mrs.

Thatcher cherished an idea that her rubber plant would grow with tropical

luxuriance, but as yet it had only remained stolidly green.

“Good-morning!”

It was a neighbour, who, deflecting from the pavement, came up, with a

paper bag in one hand, to lean familiarly against the post at the foot of

the low steps.

“Your plants need water,” she continued, casting an officially critical

eye upon them.

“They were watered this morning,” said Mrs. Thatcher.

“It should be done at the same time every day,” said the neighbour,

obliviously. “Dear me, it’s getting warm, isn’t it? _You_ look fresh and

cool enough. I had to go to the village at the last moment for rolls for

lunch. I’m dreadfully tired. Spring weather does make your feet hurt so,

doesn’t it? Well—good-bye!”

Mrs. Thatcher still stood looking down the street—a train had come

in while they were talking. Yes, there was some one coming—a lady in

brown—it must be Madge. No, it was only Mrs. Brereton.

“Back from the city already?” she called, as the figure approached.

“Yes. I only went in to match a sample. Dear me! how warm it is! This

weather makes your feet hurt dreadfully. I wanted to stay in town and do

something about furnishing the new house, but it takes so long to look

at rugs, and I’ve a dressmaker waiting for me at home this moment.” She

stopped an instant, leaning against the post, as the other had done.

“How dry your plants look! they need water! Mercy! is that Meyer’s wagon

stopping before my house? Well, good-bye!”

“Good-bye,” said Mrs. Thatcher, coolly. Not only was Meyer’s wagon

standing before Mrs. Brereton’s, but several other wagons from department

stores were stopping further up the street, sending forth boys laden up

to the chin with fat, brown parcels and long, narrow, brown parcels. Mrs.

Thatcher turned around to see yet another friend, who, without her hat,

had come out of the house adjoining, and now dropped down beside her on

the steps.

“Isn’t it heavenly! I saw you out here and couldn’t resist coming over

for a minute. I’ve been sewing so hard on the children’s spring clothes,

I’ve hardly had a glimpse of you for a week.—Your plants need water,

don’t they?”

“No, they don’t,” said Mrs. Thatcher, with unspeakable exasperation. She

controlled herself with an effort as she rose. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got

to go in the house. I’m rather expecting company.”

“The express wagon seems to be coming here,” said the friend detainingly.

“Why, so it is!” cried Mrs. Thatcher, her irritation subsiding

before this new interest. The unexpected advent of the express wagon

always suggested pleasing and mysterious possibilities to her, until

recollection brought to mind the usual case of mineral water, or the

box from the tailor’s with her husband’s discarded clothing. This time,

however, it was a box of another kind, oblong and wooden. The man who

deposited it in the little square hall evidently found it heavy. This,

then, was what Nevin had meant.

What could it be? Mrs. Thatcher stubbed her finger with the

screw-driver, and hit her own nail lustily with the hammer, in her

efforts to open the box. When she finally succeeded, and caught sight of

the contents, she pushed it from her with a sharp exclamation of disgust.

Inside were two rows of large, morocco-bound volumes. The gilt lettering

on the back showed that they were “Selections from the Literature of All

Nations, with Lives of the Authors.”

“Of all things!” said Mrs. Thatcher in a tone of deep disappointment.

“What on _earth_ does he want to keep on getting these subscription

things for? And he _knows_ we need the money for the rug. He’ll never

read these—he’ll never even look at them. I cannot understand it! He

never _sees_ a book without wanting to buy it—he says he just likes to

_have_ books. Well, _he’ll_ have to find a place to put these, for I

can’t.”

“Shall I take the books out of the box, ma’am?” asked Kitty, coming into

the hall.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied Mrs. Thatcher wearily. “Yes, I suppose

you’ll have to; we can’t leave the box here.” She looked over at the tiny

drawing-room, with its little spindle-legged mahogany tea-table, the low

well-filled bookcase, the rattan sofa with its bright pillows, and the

small upright piano, and then at the solid pile of information at her

feet. There were thirty volumes—for she had counted them—thirty volumes

pressed down and running over with the Literature of All Nations.

“I suppose you’ll have to pile them up in the corner over there. I’m sure

_I_ don’t know what to do with them.”

“And shall I put the lunch on now, ma’am?”

“Is it time? Oh, yes; Bobby is coming in. Yes, put it on.”

Croquettes and pop-overs and the violet centerpiece for this arrival

by express, indeed! She felt unaccountably defrauded—a sensation that

lingered with her throughout the whole afternoon, and tinged her with

melancholy, even when she responded to the playful overtures or the needs

of Bobby, who kept continually running in from the back yard to have his

ball mended, or a string tied to something. He struggled away from her

when she wanted to kiss him, and he smelled indescribably of earth. He

was of the sex which grew up to have strange ways and alien tastes—he

even had them now. Mrs. Thatcher had not wanted a boy, although she loved

this one devotedly. She longed inexpressibly sometimes for a dear little

gentle, clinging girl, who could be frivolously dressed in soft, white,

ruffly things, and have her sweet hair curled.

Mildred Thatcher could never help a mysteriously hurt feeling when her

Nevin spent his money for books, or indeed for anything apart from her,

of his own volition; there were always so many things needed perennially

by “the house,” not to speak of her own wardrobe. Her feminine mind

was incapacitated by nature from seeing anything from a man’s point of

view—it was from the sheer force of her love alone that she leapt the

chasm between them. It was from the heart, not the mind, that she divined

what she did of him, as the blind see through feeling finger-tips. And

even when she could not perceive how he wanted his own way—nay, when

she had protested against it with intensity—after she had once proved

herself in the right, she was apt to be overtaken by a sweet, fiercely

unreasoning desire that he should have everything he wanted, just because

he wanted it, and because he would love her better if he did, and she

would grovel, and cringe, and eat her words unblushingly, in her efforts

to drive him back into his own path. If she used all her energy now to

making him send that wealth of literature back where it came from, she

would probably labour still harder the next day to make him get it again.

There was an aloofness in her greeting, when he came home a little

earlier than usual, which he was unusually quick to detect. His eyes were

agreeably expectant, with none of the deprecation in them which she had

looked for. Mr. Thatcher himself was one of Mildred’s inconsistencies.

She had sworn that she would never marry any but a very tall man, yet her

Nevin, stalwart and broad-shouldered as he was, did not top the highest

roll of her dark hair.

“What’s the matter?” His hand lingered on her shoulder. “Don’t you feel

well?”

“Oh, yes—pretty well.”

“Did you get the package I sent by express?”

“Yes; what to do with all those volumes I do not know. It is so

inconsiderate of you when——”

“Oh, I didn’t mean the books—and I stopped at the carpenter’s; he is

going to make shelves for them. But I meant the other package.”

“There wasn’t any other package.”

“Yes, there was”—his arm was still half around her. “I sent you—why

here’s the expressman now. Hi! This is the place; yes, bring it here.”

He came back again to his wife. “There was a little debt paid me

yesterday. After I got the books, I thought I’d buy a present for you.”

He pressed her shoulder gently.

“Oh!”

“Something you’ve been wanting a long time, something you’ll like. It’s

the large rug for the parlour.”

“The rug—Nevin, you _didn’t_ get a rug without _me_?”

“You’ll find it’s all right when you see it. Stand off a moment”—he was

disposing of the knotted cords with sharp clicks of his penknife. “I’ll

spread it out for you. There—what do you think of that?”

“What did you pay for it?” asked Mrs. Thatcher in an odd voice.

“Not much, considering what it’s worth,” said her husband, still

exuberant. “It’s genuine something or other, I forget what. I got it at a

bargain at a place down-town where they are selling off. It took my eye

the moment I saw it. What’s the matter, Mildred? Don’t you like it?”

“Why, it’s very nice,” said Mrs. Thatcher, trying to keep rein on her

feelings. “Only _of course_, those reds and yellows don’t go with

anything that we have; it would look perfectly dreadful with the old rose

wallpaper.”

“Why, I don’t see that it would.”

Mr. Thatcher was still lovingly regarding the article in question,

stretched out in the hall. “They put all kinds of colours together

nowadays. Here, let me set it out where it belongs, and see if you don’t

think it looks all right.”

He switched a chair or two out of the way, moved back the tea-table,

and stretched the rug down on the open space on the floor. He stood off

admiringly. “Now, don’t you think that’s fine? Why don’t you speak?”

“Oh, Nevin, it’s _too_ dreadful! Can’t you see? It’s a disgrace, a

perfect disgrace. I wouldn’t have any one I cared for come into the house

with that thing on the floor; I don’t know _what_ they’d think of me.”

Her voice had gone beyond control, and rose more and more hysterical.

“Oh, how _could_ you be mean enough to go and buy a rug without

me—something I’d set my _heart_ on. A rug, of all _things_, that you

have to live with always! And I had been looking forward so to choosing

it with you! Why didn’t you tell me about it? It’s so terrible, it’s so

_common_——”

“‘Common!’ Now you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mr. Thatcher’s

confidence in the pleasing powers of his purchase died hard. “It’s

genuine—I forget just what, but it _is_ genuine. I thought you’d know.”

“I _do_ know—it’s one of the cheapest kinds there are. Nevin, I can’t

have it in here, you _must_ understand that. Why, I couldn’t eat my meals

if I had to look in and see it. Can’t you take it back and change it?”

“Change it!”

Mildred had known, even as she spoke, that the suggestion was

unforgivable. She could go to town merrily, day after day, exchanging

goods, but her husband would have felt like a sneak thief if he had taken

anything back to “change it.”

“No, I can _not_!” His anger was at last aroused, and thoroughly. “If

you don’t like the thing you can chuck it out into the street, for all I

care. I tried to give you a pleasure, and this is what I get for it. I’ll

never buy you another thing as long as I live!”

It was on the tip of Mrs. Thatcher’s tongue to say, “I hope you won’t,”

but this time something restrained her. There were but few times that she

had seen her husband as angry as this, and never at her, though there

might have been more provocative occasions. He had bought many things

before which she had not liked, without any real friction between husband

and wife—it was one of “his” ways which they had often laughed over.

But each day’s path is different from that of yesterday—what has been a

convenient stone to rest on before becomes unexpectedly a stumbling-block

in the way. Mr. Thatcher’s wrath, indeed, gathered its greatest force

from the underlying knowledge that he might have done differently.

The subject was dropped at dinner, but Mrs. Thatcher could not forbear

beginning on it again afterwards. Nevin _must_ see how dreadful it was to

have that rug, if it was properly put to him. But he stopped her after

the first tearful expostulations.

“Never say ‘rug’ to me again,” he commanded briefly. “You’ve said too

much already.” He read a magazine all the evening, and after a while she

went up-stairs and lay down on the edge of Bobby’s little bed, beside her

sleeping child, and wept.

It was unbelievable, unbearable, that he could buy that horrible thing

without her! And there was no other place in the tiny house to put it.

When she looked at it in the morning it was worse even than she had

dreamed—it put her teeth on edge. The home didn’t seem like _hers_! She

averted her face from it patiently at breakfast, and her mouth drooped

pathetically, but Nevin only read his paper and kissed her unseeingly

when he left. When he was gone, she and Kitty rolled the rug up into a

corner. If any one came they could think she was cleaning house.