had good measure. He had the freedom of spirit which belongs to him who,
given a competence, envies not any man his wealth or his opportunity.
He had gained a capacity for getting great and far-reaching happiness
from the exquisite little joys of life. If he had a little of the inner
sadness that comes of foregoing the ambitions natural to a man, it was
not the sadness of defeat, but rather the thoughtful weighing of the
loss as the least—all things considered—that he could have had. In the
silent times of those long journeyings by day and night over the earth,
the pricelessness of the common blessing of a home had sunk deeper and
deeper into his soul. And the spring of all this was in the love he and
his wife had for each other, a love that was too much of a vital power to
be consciously dwelt upon; it was rather an enlarging and enriching of
the whole nature because they two were one in the possession of a country
which it is given to but few of the married to see even afar off. Below
all trouble lay ever a secret joy; whither he went, she companied him. In
all the years of separation, they were less apart than many whose hands
meet daily; there could be no real separation between them even after
death.
But now—but now—she was getting tired. Her small face with its pure
outlines, the sweet, nervous mouth and the loving eyes came before
him—her low controlled voice, her quick motions, her rapid adjustment
of all domestic problems that his brief stay at home might be bright
and restful, the children at their best, the meals most home-like, and
she herself dressed prettily, with the work so ordered that she might
not lose a minute of his society. If callers came on one of those
precious afternoons, she rebelled as if at a calamity. She had always
been so brave, so helpful, but she was not so strong as she had been,
and the boy was too much for her. If he could but see his way a little
clearer! He had the cautiousness of methods new to him that comes of the
inexperience of manhood, far more frustrating than the inexperience of
the boy.
Brenner came around the next day just before train time.
“Mame sent me,” he explained. “She’s been talking to me ever since you
left. She’s got a brother in New York who’s in the line you’re looking
up, and she has an idea you can fix up something with him in connection
with the position you were telling me of. If you can carry some of his
business with you I don’t see but it would help you out mighty well.
He’s a good man—and he’ll do anything for Mame, if he _can_ do it. She’s
written him a letter, and here’s one for you.”
“I’m much obliged, I’m sure,” said Prescott politely. He did not speak
with enthusiasm; he had a rooted distaste for a woman’s intervention in
business matters, and by daylight his evening confidences rather annoyed
him. Still——
“A telegram for you, sir,” said a boy, coming up.
Prescott took it and opened it mechanically. He stood for a moment with
his eyes glued to the paper, and when he looked up Brenner cried in
horror:
“Not your _wife_, man!”
“No,” said Prescott thickly. “It’s little Margaret.” He consulted the
paper. “She’s not dead—yet. She’s been run over. She may not be so badly
hurt as they fear. My God! I can’t get there for two days!”
“Thank heaven the east-bound train’s on time,” said Brenner devoutly, and
went home to be cheered by his Mame.
* * * * *
“Papa is to carry little Margaret up-stairs—think of it!—dear papa to
carry her—such a treat! His arms are so much stronger than mamma’s.” It
was a week since the day of the telegram.
“Mamma jiggles,” said the child roguishly, looking backward from the
shelter of her father’s arms to the slender figure toiling up laboriously
with shawls and pillows. “Mamma carries Marget all slippy.”
“Poor mamma,” said the father; “she has to do everything when I’m not
here.” He pressed his lips to the soft baby cheek of the little girl who
was getting well, but his thought was with the mother. “Now what on earth
are you lugging all those things up for, Annie? Didn’t I tell you to
call Martin to take them? You know you’re all worn out.”
“He’s reading, and I thought I wouldn’t disturb him.”
“Where’s that magazine I had? _There_ you go again! Why _don’t_ you let
the children wait on you?”
“I knew _just_ where it was,” said the wife with eager excuse.
“Well, it’s their business to know where things are,” said Prescott
severely; “they don’t help you half enough. When I go away to-morrow——”
The joy in his wife’s face went out as the light is snuffed out in a
candle.
That evening, as they sat alone together in the cozy library after the
children were in bed, she broke into the conversation with a tone that
showed the effort. “I haven’t asked you yet what time you want breakfast
to-morrow morning. I hope you don’t have to take the six-fifty, it’s so
very dark and early, and you never really eat anything, no matter what I
get for you.”
Prescott looked at the pure outline of her cheek and brow, and the
stricken cheerfulness of her eyes. He hardly seemed to hear her words for
a minute, and then answered absently:
“No; I’m not going so early to-morrow. Hark, is that somebody coming up
our steps?”
“Oh, I _hope_ it’s no one to call! It would be dreadful when it’s our
last evening together. No, thank goodness! It’s next door.”
“When I’ve been home five whole days that you didn’t count on, you
oughtn’t to stand out for such a little thing as the last evening. It was
well I could come—wasn’t it? When I got that telegram——”
He broke off with a shudder, and their hands clasped. Their minds
traversed the past week with its terror and anxiety, and its later
joy—the great happiness which comes from no new phase, but from the
blessed continuance of the unnoticed daily good.
“You have been in town so much of the time,” she murmured half-jealously.
“Yes, I know. It was necessary.”
“You haven’t told me yet what time you want your breakfast.”
“Oh, any old time. I don’t think I’ll go in the morning.”
“Why didn’t you say so before?” She looked at him reproachfully. “Then I
would have hired Maria for the day. Now I’ll have to spend a lot of time
in the kitchen when I’ll want to be with you.”
“How would you behave if I were to stay home all the time?”
“How would I behave?” She gleamed at him with sudden sweet tremulous
humour through the mistiness of her eyes. “I’d never come near you. I’d
make calls and belong to all the societies in the place and not get
back until after dinner-time. I’d go next door in the evening and leave
you home reading. I’d behave the way other women do whose husbands come
home every night. I expect I’d get tired of seeing you around. Don’t you
believe it?” The gaiety in her tone flickered and went out, as if she
were very, very tired. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I know you’ve
been considering that offer—_you_ didn’t tell me of it—and you’ve refused
it. I’ve been watching you. And I don’t see how I’m going to let you go
this time.”
“Annie!”
“Oh, forgive, forgive me! I’ll be brave again, I will indeed. But I’ve
been through so much lately that just now—it gets so hard—so hard”—her
voice was almost inaudible—“harder and harder. I’ve been praying—and
_praying_.”
“Annie, dear, you’re all wrong. I’m not going to-morrow or Tuesday
either. Can’t you guess?”
She lifted her head from his shoulder and pushed him from her. “How queer
you act! What do you _mean_?”
He tried to bend a jovial gaze upon her.
“I’m not going to travel any more, Annie, ever. You were all wrong; I’ve
taken the offer. I went to see Mrs. Brenner’s brother in town. I tell you
that little woman in Wisconsin did you a mighty good turn! And I’ve taken
the chances. I’ve figured it all out.” He tried to gather her to him, but
she drew back. “Why, Annie, aren’t you glad? What makes you shake so?”
“You are going to stay _now_?”
“Yes, always. I’m going to look after my children and my—sweet—wife. Why
_Annie_! Oh, you poor, _poor_ girl, has it been as bad as _that_?”
He tried once more to draw her to him, but she eluded his grasp and was
gone. He heard her light footfall above and then there was only silence.
He sat there by the table for a few minutes with a book before him, as he
smoked, but he did not read. Once he went to the door and called “Annie!”
softly, that little Margaret might not be wakened, and yet again, “Annie!
Come down; I want to read to you,” but there was no response.
He lingered a moment hesitatingly, and then went up the stairs himself,
his feet pausing half-reluctantly on the steps. Thrice he halted, and
then went on again into the room where she was a kneeling figure by
the bed, her arms spread out upon it, and her hair falling over her
shoulders. She raised her head momentarily with a backward glance of rapt
joy at him before burying it again in the coverlet, and as his footfalls
stopped on the threshold she held out one arm appealingly as if to
encircle him beside her.
“No—no!” he said painfully. “No, Annie! I—I can’t—it wouldn’t be right.
Annie, you don’t want _me_, dear; you don’t want—— _No!_”
Her white hand still mutely pleaded. Even at the very gate of heaven she
could not be satisfied without him. He drew nearer, and a little nearer.
Then, somehow, he had stumbled down awkwardly into the warm enclosure of
her arm, and hid his face within her bosom.
The Hinge
The Hinge
“Mrs. Ranney is going away to-morrow with the children to visit her
mother; did you hear that? It will be a nice change for her, she’s alone
so much, with Mr. Ranney nearly every evening at the Rowing Club or at
that old hotel. Goodness knows how late he’ll stay out after she’s gone!
I shouldn’t think she’d like it _at all_.”
The four women who were neighbours on the Ridge were coming back from a
meeting of the Vittoria Colonna Club, picking their way in gala attire
over the puddles left by a shower, with the aid of the two parallel
see-sawing boards that made the suburban sidewalk. Mrs. Stone, who
had spoken, was tall and large-featured; she wore a startlingly wide,
high-plumed hat that seemed to have no connection with her head, rearing
into strange shapes with the wind that blew from the sea.
“Perhaps she’s glad to have him out of the house,” suggested the fair,
prettily garbed little Mrs. Spicer, who talked very fast. “Not that he’s
dissipated at all, I don’t mean that, but I think he’s one of those
horrid domineering men you’d hate to have around. I don’t believe he ever
gives her a cent of money—_he_ is always so well-dressed, but she hasn’t
had a new thing since she came here a year ago. I’d like to see Ernest
Spicer treat me that way!”
“Mrs. Ranney says she likes him to take a walk after dinner; that he’s
used to it,” interpolated the handsome, brown-eyed Mrs. Laurence, with a
characteristic lift of her white chin. “He often asks her to go with him.”
“Oh, yes, so she says!” Mrs. Stone made a clutch for her hat. “Of course
she _acts_ satisfied; you can’t tell anything by that. She’s a dear
little woman, but I don’t believe there’s much to her; he’s a great deal
above her as far as brains go, that’s evident. Keep over this side, Mrs.
Spicer, that maple is just dripping. But there’s very little warmth or
cordiality in Mrs. Ranney as far as I can see; she doesn’t respond as
you’d think she would. I ran over the other day when she happened to be
out and Ann let me see her preserve-closet. When I spoke to her the next
day about the number of jars she had, she almost made me feel as if I had
been intrusive. Some people have that unvarying manner, always pleasant
but nothing more. It wears on _me_, I know, and I shouldn’t wonder if it
did on Mr. Ranney; I think he feels a lack in her.”
“Oh, it’s such a great subject!” said little Mrs. Spicer with earnest
volubility, “it’s such a great subject, that of being attractive to one’s
husband. Miss Liftus spoke so feelingly about it the other day at the
Club, she says that women are so engrossed in their own affairs that they
neglect to adapt themselves to the husband’s life; she thinks intelligent
coöperation in business matters should be the key-note. It’s a lovely
idea; I know a woman who is in her husband’s office, and they enjoy it
so much, but”—Mrs. Spicer paused wistfully—“it’s very hard to help a man
when he’s in stocks, like Ernest Spicer; I _can not_ seem to remember
quite what it is when he’s on a margin; I’ve had it explained to me so
many times I am ashamed to ask him any more; I seem to understand it
just for a minute, and then it goes. I don’t know what’s the reason, but
Ernest never wants to talk about business with me.”
“Don’t you think husbands are very different?” asked Mrs. Budd with a
slow distinctness, as if she were reading from a primer; her large,
unwavering blue eyes pinned your butterfly attention fast in spite of
involuntary writhings. “I know my husband and Mr. Ranney are very
different, they like such different things for breakfast. I am very
particular about Mr. Budd’s meals, and he depends so much on his
breakfast. He always begins on——”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” interrupted Mrs. Stone impatiently, she
knew Mr. Budd’s _ménu_ by heart. “You can adapt and adapt and they’ll
never know it, but they do know when they’re comfortable. Nobody can say
that Mr. Stone isn’t comfortable in his own house. When I see a man like
Mr. Ranney leaving his home every evening you may be sure there’s a screw
loose somewhere. That little woman is making a great mistake, but it’s
the kind of thing you’d find it difficult to speak about.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t speak about it for the world!” cried Mrs. Laurence in
horror. “As Mrs. Budd says very truly, people are so different.” Yet
she found herself wondering afterwards. She was sure that the Ranneys
were fond of each other in a way, though she wouldn’t have cared for
the way. On what hinge hung Mr. Ranney’s neglect of his wife? A lack in
her, as Mrs. Stone had said, selfishness on his part—coldness on hers?
Mrs. Laurence herself didn’t need to discuss her attraction for Mr.
Laurence—in their case it was something inherent, not an accident of
adjustment; it interpenetrated every condition of life. She had put a
blue bow in her hair when she dressed, because she had a theory that a
woman should look her nicest for her husband, but as a matter of fact she
knew that Will thought her beautiful in anything she wore.
Mrs. Ranney always looked nice, there could be no two opinions on that.
She was a slight, very young woman, with a heart-shaped, childish face,
that wore an expression of gentle, matronly dignity, repelling to
familiarity. She had serious, flower-blue eyes, and quantities of waving,
chestnut-brown hair coiled back so tightly from a broad, low forehead
that you hardly realized at first that when it was let down it formed a
beautiful, shimmering cloak around her that nearly touched the floor.
Her whole personality was intensely feminine. In any demand of the day
her simple gowns became her, yet were never too fine for the work her
busy fingers found to do, for Mrs. Ranney was a housewife and a sewer of
garments; she even helped vegetables as well as flowers to grow with a
quiet inborn capability that showed in whatever she undertook. She was
known to be tender-hearted; the suffering of others seemed to hurt her
very flesh. When that little bruiser, Herbert Ranney, fell and bumped
his head, Mrs. Ranney would fly white and breathless from the house, and
clasp him to her breast in a wild effort to fight off this thing that was
attacking her child. She couldn’t _stand_ it that a child should suffer.
Yet she had, at unexpected moments, a roguish sense of humour that set
her serious blue eyes dancing mischievously; when she got laughing, as
had happened, half inaudibly, so that she was helpless to stop herself,
she was as provocatively charming as a lovely child. Her husband had been
once heard to state that he had never expected to marry, having lived
until the age of thirty-six contentedly a bachelor, but that when he met
“that rascal there,” she bowled him over on the spot. It certainly was
a fact that, though she was so hard to get acquainted with, every man
admired Mrs. Ranney.
Women, as a rule, did not care much for Mr. Ranney, perhaps, because
he used towards them a gallant deference so evidently given them as a
sex that it piqued by ignoring any personal claim to his attention. In
appearance he was large and heavily built, smooth-shaven, with fine
intellectual features, and hair and brows of blue black; his square chin
was almost aggressively assertive. A man of semi-nautical tastes, he had
at times almost a quarter-deck manner alike to barking dogs, poaching
cows and trivial or unauthorized approach from his fellows. With the men
who were his friends he was reputed to be a charming companion, witty,
genial, and whole-hearted; the wives took the fact on hearsay, with some
suspicion. Mrs. Laurence felt a distinct sense of resentment as, sitting
on her piazza after dinner she saw him coming up the steps, natty and
immaculate in his blue flannels, pipe in hand—he was actually going to
leave his wife alone on the eve of her departure. He doffed the peaked,
gold-banded cap of his boating club.
“Good-evening, Mrs. Laurence. Is Laurence anywhere around?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, he’s never far off when I’m here,” returned Mrs.
Laurence incautiously, with what she felt was almost too much meaning
for politeness; she saw Mr. Ranney’s left eyebrow go up a little with
quizzical effect; it made her feel hot. “Your wife leaves to-morrow, I
believe. How is she to-night after all her packing?”
“Mrs. Ranney is quite well, I think,” said Mr. Ranney in a tone that in
spite of its apparent politeness placed a wedge between himself and his
personal affairs, though Mrs. Laurence still persevered.
“You will miss her dreadfully after she goes.”
“Oh, Minda will look after me,” said Mr. Ranney coolly. Minda was a
capable old coloured woman who worked for the neighbourhood. “Hello,
Laurence!” His voice changed to one of good fellowship. “Want to walk
down with me and take a look at Harker’s boat?”
“No, I think I’d better not,” said Mr. Laurence lingeringly, his long
figure coming into view in the semi-darkness of the summer evening. He
really did not care to go, “the boys” bored him; an uncut magazine, with
his wife for audience had been pleasantly ahead of him after the work of
the day; yet such is the power of attraction from man to man, so much
greater than that from woman to woman, that he almost felt as if he
wanted to be Ranney’s companion if Ranney wanted him. It was the Call of
the Wild. Past experience warned him clear of those mistakenly jocular
words, “my wife won’t let me”—he put his hand caressingly on the back of
her chair as he said: “I don’t think I’ll leave Anna this evening, we’re
finishing a serial together.”
“Oh, very well,” responded Mr. Ranney. He put on his cap as he went down
the steps again, lit his pipe, and walked off with that air of jaunty
and masterful freedom that in its way was an offense to the marital
traditions of the street; it subtly discredited his wife, it seemed to
undermine the generous, dual obligations of a home. And to-night——
“_Pig!_” said Mrs. Laurence, with an indignation that hurled the
adjective after him like a stone. “If you didn’t consider me any more
than that, Will—— Wait a moment.” She ran impulsively over to the next
house, quickly forestalling the invitation she saw on Mrs. Ranney’s lips,
as the latter came to the door in her white gown, a book in her hand.
“No, I thank you, I can’t come in—Mr. Laurence is waiting for me at home.
How tired you look! _Won’t_ you come over and sit with us a while? We’d
love so much to have you—and I’ll make some lemonade. We feel that we
won’t see anything of you for so long.”
“Oh, thank you!” said Mrs. Ranney. She looked surprised. “You’re very
kind, but I think I’ll stay here and rest, if you don’t mind; I thought
I’d just read a little before I went to bed; you see I have everything
packed, and we don’t go until after lunch to-morrow.” She seemed to cast
around for something more to say. “I read a good deal in the evenings
when Mr. Ranney is out; I haven’t any time during the day.”
“It takes a great deal of time to keep up with the magazines,”
sympathized Mrs. Laurence.
“I don’t know much about the magazines—Mr. Ranney doesn’t care for them.
I’ve been reading the Bible through this year, I always intended to when
I had a chance,” said Mrs. Ranney simply. “I found it very interesting.
Mr. Ranney thinks a good deal of Homer, too; I’ve just finished the
‘Odyssey.’ _Won’t_ you come in?”
“No, no, I can’t,” returned Mrs. Laurence hastily. “Is that the ‘Iliad’
you have there?”
“No,” said Mrs. Ranney. Her eyes gleamed dancingly with sudden mischief;
she leaned forward with roguish defiance. “I’ll tell you what this
is—it’s the ‘Thompson Street Poker Club!’” She relapsed into one of her
lovely, helpless fits of half-inaudible laughter in which Mrs. Laurence
joined perforce, and the two women held on to each other for mutual
support, in feminine fashion.
Mrs. Ranney went away the next day at one o’clock, trim and pretty in
her blue travelling suit; the women who flocked to bid her good-bye were
profuse in offers of caring for Mr. Ranney, but she only thanked them
with gentle unresponsiveness, and said that Minda would look after him
quite well.
It was strange what a difference her departure seemed to make at once in
the aspect of the little house; a shadow had fallen over it, a visible
grayness of desolation touched it, mistlike; the embowering vines
drooped like the adjuncts of a cemetery; there was a curious deadness
about the very hang of the curtains, one could see from without, and the
half-lowered shades. The very fact of the front doors being closed set
the seal of strangeness upon it. A spirit, so vitally sweet, so informing
that even inanimate objects reflected it, had departed and left only the
cold and empty shell behind, not alone to the intimate heart, but to even
the casual observer.
“Really, I hate to look over there,” confided Mrs. Spicer to Mrs. Stone.
“Minda came into our kitchen a while ago, she said she could hardly stay
in the place, she felt just as if Mrs. Ranney and the children were dead.
I’m sorry she felt that way. I had the most peculiar feeling myself when
I saw her go. Forebodings are so—— Well, of course, you don’t believe in
them, but you don’t like them. I’ve just taken some of my nerve tonic. I
can hardly blame Mr. Ranney if he stays out till all hours now.”
The watching neighbourhood could hardly believe it when eight o’clock
struck—half-past eight—and no Mr. Ranney walked jauntily down the
street, immaculately attired, with his gold-banded yachting cap on the
side of his head. He was known to have come home to his dinner, and
afterwards the smoke of his pipe had risen from the verandah. Laurence,
urged thereto by his wife, lounged finally up to the door-step to find
Ranney sitting there in a disreputable pongee coat, with an old, gray
felt basin on his head, smoking, with his shoulders hunched forward
and his eyes fixed sombrely before him. He only nodded at Laurence’s
greeting, and made room on the steps beside him.
“There’s a chair up there, if you want it.”
“No, this does well enough,” said Laurence. “How is the election going
on?”
“The election?” Mr. Ranney’s eyes sought for a connecting clue. “Oh,
yes, of course, the Club election. I don’t know how it’s getting on, I
don’t care a hang how it goes. Did you see the weather report to-night,
Laurence? They say there’s a storm brewing up the coast, where my
wife’s gone. Those steamers are nothing but rotten old tubs; it’s only
a question when they’ll go to Davy Jones if a storm hits them. The
_Peerless_ foundered three years back, you remember. When I think of that
girl and her two babies out there to-night in that old _Patriot_, with
nothing but a plank between them and the bottom—I tell you I’ll be glad
to get a wire to-morrow night and know they’re all right. I’ve gone all
to pieces thinking of it; lost my nerve completely.”
“Couldn’t they have gone by rail?” asked Mr. Laurence practically.
“Oh, yes, they could, but—they’d have to stop off on the way, and then——
Well, I _wanted_ her to, but she thought it took too much money.”
“But if you insisted on her taking it?”
“Insisted on her taking it! Why, man alive, she has it all, that’s the
trouble; I hand all the funds over to that rascal, else we’d never have
a penny. Oh, there’s always plenty for me when I want it, but she won’t
spend it on herself. I can’t make her. But I’ll get even with her some
day, you see if I don’t. I’ll plunge her into extravagance. What’s that
shutter slamming for? I tell you I don’t like the way the wind is rising.
When I think of that girl and her two babies——”