visitor; to keep rolling over and over on a wheel of marital sympathy
embarrassed him.
“No, I thank you, I rather think I’ll turn in early,” said Ranney, rising
as the other had done. Mr. Laurence hurried home to his wife, childishly
eager to startle her with his piece of news. Ranney was going to bed at
nine-of-the-clock.
“Well, I’m glad he’s missed her for one evening,” she retorted viciously.
“It won’t last, though.”
But the next night when she happened to stroll over to the dividing fence
in the half gloom, she discerned a figure sitting on the steps. He rose
and came slowly forward, as she spoke, removing the old felt basin from
his head perfunctorily.
“It looks very lonely over here without Mrs. Ranney and the children,”
she said.
“Yes, it does,” answered Mr. Ranney. He knocked his pipe ruminatively on
the top rail. “I didn’t realize before what a helpless being a man is
without his wife; I never can remember where she keeps the clean towels.”
“I suppose she felt that she needed the change,” suggested Mrs. Laurence,
a little stiffly.
“Oh, I persuaded her to go. She didn’t want to leave me, but a girl has
to see her family sometimes; it’s only right.” He took a long breath.
“It’s only _right_. When the letter came I said she ought to go, I said:
‘Jean, _I_ can get along; your place this summer is with your father
and mother.’ She’s only been home once since I took her away—her family
don’t like it very much. I had a hard time to get the scamp—regular
stern-chase; but a man thinks a good bit more of a girl when he has to
work to get her.”
“Yes, indeed,” responded Mrs. Laurence, though she didn’t think so at
all—she adored the dear knowledge that she and Will had loved within five
minutes by the watch. And to marry a woman and never care like this until
she was gone! The thought gave her a shiver, as she confided later to her
own husband, with her hand in his. Suppose Mr. Ranney’s appreciation of
his little lonely wife had come too late?
Hereafter, night after night, the wondering Ridge beheld the deserted
husband, disreputably attired, sitting upon his piazza steps or pacing
up and down the narrow walk, keeping guard like a faithful dog who has
been left to watch. Every evening, some man, urged thereto by his wife,
strolled over to keep him company, though the rambling conversation
always harked back to Mrs. Ranney through every masculine theme. The
street grew to feel a distinct proprietorship that gave a sense of daily
responsibility, and it grew even stronger, when, as time went on, he
became gradually taciturn and moody, with a manner that said plainly
that he preferred his own company to that of any friends, however
well-meaning.
“Well, I’m glad Mrs. Ranney is coming home next week,” said Mrs. Spicer
feelingly, as she and Mrs. Laurence stopped on a street corner in the
village for a heart-to-heart talk. “I don’t know what would become of
that poor man if she stayed away much longer. How much we will have to
tell her!”
“Minda says he hardly eats a thing,” said Mrs. Laurence.
“He ate a little of the pudding I sent over last night. His devotion is
really beautiful, but I don’t quite like his state of mind, it makes me
anxious, and his appearance is so——” Mrs. Spicer paused uncomfortably.
“I wish he’d shave! Ernest Spicer says he hates to be seen in the street
with him.”
“Well, she’ll be home soon,” said Mrs. Laurence.
That was a fearsome night indeed, and one long to be remembered, the
night before Mrs. Ranney was expected home. A wild September gale sent
the deluge of rain aslant through the darkness, swirling it over lawns
and among the trees into a river-torrent that carried all before it.
It was a shrieking gale that tore up the houses with maniac fingers,
wresting off shutters and chimney tops, dragging down trees in its giant
fury, howling and whining between the shrieks like a forest of spectral
wolves rushing ever faster and faster upon their prey. The rain beat in
through window-casing and foundation, front doors flew open wide at the
hand of the tempest. The steeple of the church came crashing down; the
orphan asylum was unroofed; the affrighted fancy soared into realms of
terror with the far-clanging sound of the fire-bell, caught and lost
again amid the clamour of the storm.
No one slept on the Ridge that night; mothers sat by the bedside of their
little children, fathers patrolled the house to see that timbers held,
and the fire was kept low. There was not a household near the Ranneys’ in
which some member had not said awesomely to another:
“And she is out on the ocean!” Imagination pictured the husband (as
indeed Minda described him afterwards), walking up and down, up and down,
up and down, with savage, miserable eyes, all night long, desperately
fighting with agonized thoughts.
But, with the first sullen rays of the morning light he was gone. The
tempest had abated into a fog-filled, engulfing rain, that washed all
the landscape into a dirty yellow. The street on the Ridge was flooded
from end to end, so that a canoe might paddle down it; but the women
who lived on the same side of the way ventured with rain-coats and
overshoes into each others’ houses to compare notes of the night, and
to commune tearfully on the news of the morning papers. It was rumoured
that the _Patriot_ had foundered with all on board. “That girl with her
two babies”—suppose she could never know. All that day men and women
stood in line by the offices of the Nor-Coast Steamship Company, waiting,
waiting, waiting for the word that meant life, or the losing of it. The
“extras” with scare-lines about the _Patriot_ with letters a foot long,
were thrust before the eyes, or called in the ears of that waiting throng
that thinned and fluctuated and filled up again. The extras even reached
the Ridge. But at five o’clock Mr. Laurence brought home word that the
_Patriot’s_ passengers had been transferred from the sinking steamer to
the ship of another line, and were expected in by seven.
It was something after ten when the travellers arrived in one of the
station cabs. The dwellers in the different houses had been excitedly
on the lookout ever since dinner, congregating in Mrs. Laurence’s
drawing-room, the women overflowing with excited sentiment, and the men,
excited too, discussing the different aspects of the disaster. Minda had
been overwhelmed with offers of help, and numberless dishes sent over
to her for the refreshment of the wayfarers—jellies, creamed chicken,
biscuit and layer cake, and many instructions given.
“Be sure and have the coffee just ready to put on,” Mrs. Stone had
directed, in the very kitchen itself. “Mr. Ranney will feel the need
of it as well as Mrs. Ranney after all the strain he has been through;
and be sure and keep the two kettles boiling. I have sent for my rubber
water-bags, as well as Mrs. Spicer’s, so that in case of chill or
collapse we may have enough. One cannot tell what the effect of all that
terrible exposure may have been. People have had their arms and legs
frozen off in a shipwreck,” said Mrs. Stone, with a slight confusion as
to the time of year.
The house was alight and welcoming as the carriage, its lamps leering
mistily through the fog, lurched to a halt in the splashing flood by the
curb; half a dozen hands were reached out to carry the sleeping children,
and the luggage, and help the travellers.
“Why, how kind of you all to be here!” said Mrs. Ranney’s sweet, low
voice, in gentle surprise. She looked younger than one remembered as they
all crowded into the little drawing-room; though her beautiful hair was
slightly dishevelled under her hat, and her face was pale, her brow was
as serene as ever.
“Oh, we’re _so_ glad to have you back again,” cried Mrs. Spicer, with
hysterical inflection, embracing the newcomer. “I don’t know what Mr.
Ranney would have _done_ if you’d stayed away another day!”
“Oh, no trouble about _me_,” disclaimed Mr. Ranney loftily. He deposited
a bundle of shawls in the centre of the room as he spoke and took them up
again restlessly. “Where do you want these put, Jean?—I told Mrs. Ranney
that I could have got along without her just as well as not for another
two weeks, but she wanted to get home.”
“Yes, I thought I’d better,” assented Mrs. Ranney.
“You’ve been through so _much_,” said Mrs. Laurence pitifully. Her hand
and Mrs. Ranney’s gripped, unseen. “To be in that storm on that sinking
ship, with those two babies—I can’t begin to tell you how we’ve felt
about it; how anxious——” her voice broke.
“Now, now, now, a little blow like that amounts to nothing,” said
Mr. Ranney, with irritating contemptuousness. He had the offensive
quarter-deck manner. “The passengers were transferred from one steamer
to another simply for convenience in transportation. There was not the
slightest danger at any time; nothing in the _world_ to be excited about!”
“No indeed,” corroborated Mrs. Ranney. She followed the group of women
who hovered towards the kitchen a moment later, her large, flower-blue
eyes bent earnestly upon them. “What is it you were just saying, Mrs.
Spicer? No, I don’t think you’d better undress the children. I’ll just
let them sleep as they are, after slipping off their shoes; they’re so
tired. Mr. Ranney and Minda will carry them up-stairs. Please, Mrs.
Stone, don’t get any coffee for us—it’s just as _kind_—I appreciate all
the trouble you’ve taken, but we had dinner at the Astor House before
we came out; we couldn’t eat a thing now. And would you mind not saying
anything more about the voyage? My husband doesn’t like to talk about it.
I think a good night’s rest is what we all need.”
“Well, it’s evident they’ve no more use for _us_,” said Mrs. Stone with
a sigh of acquiescence as the sympathizers stood once more without the
portals; the position was felt to be symbolic, yet after the first
bewildered drop from exaltation there was only a faint offense left. Mrs.
Stone voiced the general sentiment as she continued:
“There’s one thing certain, Mr. Ranney will never forget these last six
weeks; I don’t care how he _talks_, he can’t keep his eyes off her face.
He has found out what his wife is, at last.”
So deep was this feeling of certainty, that almost an electric,
shuddering wave of horror passed over the Ridge the next evening when Mr.
Ranney, natty and immaculate, his gold-banded yachting cap on the side
of his head, pipe in hand, swung jauntily out of his front gate into the
broad, white moonlight that lay along the street. Only Mrs. Laurence,
from the contradictory evidence of her own deep love, had a sudden,
sweet, half-smile-and-tearful divination, that he hadn’t had the heart
for freedom before, with his wife away. Her dear presence now was so
pervasive that the whole town seemed like home to him because she was in
it.
A Symphony in Coal
A Symphony in Coal
“Did you order the coal for the furnace yesterday?”
“No, by George! I forgot it.” Mr. Laurence half paused, his tall figure
arrested in the act of putting on his overcoat in the front hall, to
which his wife had followed him, napkin in hand, from the breakfast table.
“Oh, _Will_! and I told you the day before, so that you’d have plenty of
time.” Mrs. Laurence’s brows expressed tragic disappointment, her tone,
if affectionate, was despairing. “I never saw any one like you, you never
remember a thing I ask you to, any more. You don’t seem to have a mind
for anything but that old law business. You’ll _have_ to order the coal
this morning.”
“But, Nan”—Mr. Laurence, with his overcoat on and hat in hand, bent his
fine, thin face over his watch. “I don’t see how I can, possibly; I’ve an
appointment in town, and I must go around by Herkimer Street on my way to
the station to see if Lalor’s got the papers he promised me.”
“I thought you were going there to-night.” Mrs. Laurence held the
door-knob fast.
“I am, but I want the papers first. Couldn’t you send one of the maids to
order the coal?”
“Yes, I could, but I won’t,” said his wife. Her dark eyes flashed, her
tone had the conscious defiance of the loved woman, who can trade on her
charm enough to be belligerent if she feels like it. “It’s got to the
place where I see to every single article we eat or wear or use in this
house _but_ the coal! And I just won’t order that. I told you about it
three days ago and we _must_ have it this morning, with all this snow on
the ground, whether it makes you late for your appointment or not.”
“Then let me go now,” said Mr. Laurence tersely, putting aside the arms
with which she sought to encircle him as he swooped hastily over to kiss
her on his way out. The open door let in a rush of cold air, as almost
visibly keen and sparkling as a scimitar, that clove the lungs for a
moment, before it was closed behind him, and his wife went back to the
breakfast table where her ten-year-old son awaited her to glean the
information about his history lesson which he should have looked up for
himself the day before. It was, perhaps, the trouble with Mrs. Laurence
that her brightness and her intelligence served to help only by taking
the whole burden of a thing upon herself; it might be indeed the reason
why Mr. Laurence’s official duties in the household had dwindled down
to the ordering of coal, and the minor courtesy of getting a glass of
water for her himself before she went to bed; it might be because she
had never been able to see him do anything without doing it too. In the
days when he had ostensibly locked up for the night she always followed
around after him to see that the windows and doors were really bolted, so
that gradually he left it all to her; if he poked the fire she snatched
up the poker from where he had laid it to do the work over again. If he
were sitting down she carried her own chair near the lamp rather than
draw his attention to her need. Yet, sometimes, she had begun to have
a little hurt feeling that he let her do so much. As to this matter of
the coal—she could have sent Teresa to Harner’s, of course—it was before
that revelling era of house-to-house telephoning on the Ridge—yet even
at the thought she stiffened a little. There are certain unnoticed beams
and girders that hold up an edifice; if one of these is out of plumb the
whole building sags.
If Will really refused to order the coal he couldn’t be quite her Will
any more.
Mr. Laurence, leaving the house, had debated momently in which of two
opposite directions he should proceed, then he turned up Herkimer Street;
to get the papers from Lalor was part of that “business” which, to a man,
comes first. The air did not mellow after that initial plunge into it,
it became almost unbearably keen not only in the blue shadows that lay
along the freezing snow, but even where the sunshine set it glittering.
Half of the walks were shovelled to make a narrow, icy pathway, but where
there were unoccupied lots the drifts lay white and high, broken only by
the deep leg-prints of commuters. As he strode swiftly on men shot from
several houses; a very fat man, a tall one, a short one, their black
figures sprinting madly in line across the white expanse towards the
sound of a train slowing into the station.
Mr. Laurence’s brows contracted unconsciously—he ought to be on that
train himself. If it were not for getting that paper from Lalor—the case
was an important one, a good deal of Mr. Laurence’s future depended on
it; he had taken it up rather against the advice of his closest friends,
they thought it would be impossible to win it, but he had that little
inner conviction, that intangible sense of mastery that often spells
success. It gave him a nervous power that on occasion seemed to have
no end, but just because it was a matter of highly strung nerves a
tiny obstruction jarred them out of use; the tension was gone beyond
immediate recall—it might take hours or days even to get the instrument
back to that pitch—it might never get there. It was sometimes almost in
the nature of self-preservation when he shut himself off from the minor
pressure, the minor affairs. In this present instance, as he strode along
his mind was bent on Lalor, whose former subordinate connection with the
incriminated corporation seemed to have been forgotten by every one but
himself. Lalor was a shifty, uncertain genius, not to be depended on, yet
from whom some central facts would have to be wrested; the trouble was to
keep hold of him; he required constant bolstering up.
“Why, Mrs. Lalor!”
Laurence stopped short as he nearly collided with a very slight woman,
blown at him at the turn of the corner by a sweeping gale that devastated
the sunshine. “Here, turn around for a moment until that blast is over.”
He steadied her where she stood panting and breathless, looking down
at the top of her light-blue _chiffon_ hat, which had rather a pale
and chilly early-morning effect in connection with a tight-fitting tan
jacket. In lieu of furs she wore a white, pink-flowered silk scarf tied
around her throat, the long fringed ends depending below her waist.
Her figure was that of a young girl, but when she raised her small,
long-chinned face you saw that she was considerably older; there were
innumerable fine wrinkles around her pretty eyes—which had a soft haze
over them, as if she had cried a great deal—and her abundant fair hair
seemed a shade or two lighter than any nature could have intended it.
She had an indescribable effect of artificiality counteracted rather
appealingly by something bright and courageous in her gaze. Opinion
halted about Mrs. Lalor, who, as a Southern woman was not only alien in
habit to the Northern community to which she had lately come, but was
also looked upon debatingly by the small society of Southerners in the
place, usually hospitably ready to welcome any one from home.
It was unquestionable that she came of a good family, which counted for
very much, but it was rumoured that she had married against the family
wishes. No one knew anything of Mr. Lalor—who, in appearance, was a
tall, handsome man with a drooping, reddish-brown mustache—except that
he was unpleasingly dissipated and always in difficulties; it seemed to
discredit his wife in some way that she lived with him. She had, besides
a little flirting, attractive manner to men, a sort of an echo of past
belleship, which might have been all right if she had a nice husband, but
was felt to be a little stepping over the line when she hadn’t. A few
women averred that there was something in her that they really liked, of
whom tender-hearted little Mrs. Ramsey was one, and her neighbour, Mrs.
Laurence another. The latter was by nature both generous and romantic,
and with an unselfish, intelligent insight into lives that were different
from her own.
There was a trustfulness in Mrs. Lalor’s attitude now which appealed to
Laurence. He let go his hold of her as the wind subsided, to say:
“What are you out so early for this bitter morning? I’m just on my way to
your house. Is Lalor in?”
“If you were going for those papers”—Mrs. Lalor began tugging at the
breast of her jacket for a visible package—“My husband meant to bring
them around last night, but he’s in bed—with a cold.” Every one knew what
Mr. Lalor’s “colds” implied. “I thought you might need them to-day; I
was so afraid I wouldn’t catch you in time.” She drew a sharp breath that
showed how she had been hurrying.
“It was awfully good of you,” said Mr. Laurence warmly, as they turned
down another street together. “Lalor will be well enough to be seen this
evening, I hope?”
“Yes, I’m sure he will,” said Mrs. Lalor, in a tone that guaranteed it.
“But I want to ask you, Mr. Laurence”—her face became suddenly fixed and
expressionless—“in seeing that you get the evidence you want, my husband
will not be—_prominent_ in any way?”
“His name need not appear at all,” said Laurence promptly. His arm
hovered spasmodically near her as she went slipping and lurching
alternately beside him—“_Take_ care! You’d better not walk any farther.”
“Oh, I have to go as far as Harner’s to order a ton of furnace coal.”
“I’ll stop and order it for you, if that’s all,” said Mr. Laurence. His
eyes, lightly comprehensive, took note of the clock in the church tower.
“I’ve got a good five minutes before my train. You go straight home, Mrs.
Lalor.”
He looked down protectingly to meet her upward gaze, which was relieved
and coquettish and yet, somehow, a little sad, as she answered:
“Well, if you will——! I never do anything for myself if there’s a
gentleman to do it for me.”
He raised his hat before starting on, and when he looked back she waved
her hand to him. The large advancing figure of Mrs. Stone—on her way home
from wresting the early chop from the butcher—amply furred and heavily
goloshed, her beaver hat as well as her face swathed in a thick, brown
veil, threw into high relief the tawdry lightness of Mrs. Lalor’s attire.
He recollected that if he ever objected to a thin jacket on his wife
she invariably professed to be “warm underneath.” Mrs. Lalor might also
be warm underneath, but he had a masculine preference for having people
_look_ warm in winter-time.
Poor little woman! He shook his head as he thought of Lalor, with a quick
compression of his lips. Then a long whistle from up the track sent him
tearing ahead in the teeth of the wind, to thrust his head at last inside
of Harner’s office and call out:
“Send a ton of furnace coal to Mrs. Lalor, 36 Herkimer Street, and be
quick about it,” before settling down into that swift run back that
carried him swinging up by the guard rail onto the slippery steps of the
last car, and out into that region where women and household matters are
not.
The first thing Mrs. Laurence said when she came in at lunch time, after
a morning spent abroad, was:
“How freezing cold this house is! Hasn’t the coal come yet, Teresa?”
“No, ma’am.”
“How provoking!” Mrs. Laurence stopped short in disgust. “I never saw
such a place; it’s as much as your life’s worth to get anything delivered
when you want it. Is that Timothy I hear in the cellar now?” Timothy was
the furnace man of the Ridge. “Tell him not to let the fire go entirely
out; we’ll have to manage it some way. If he comes back between two and
three the coal will certainly be here then.”
But two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock passed, and no coal wagon
backed up to the sidewalk in front, of the Laurences, though a succession
of them passed funereally through the white street, _en route_ for
more fortunate householders. At a quarter after four she gave a joyful
exclamation—one had stopped, at last, opposite her door; but the joy was
short-lived—the wagon honked further along, tentatively, until it stopped
at Mrs. Spicer’s half-way down the block.
In a minute more Mrs. Laurence could see the dark legs of alternate men
outlined against the drifts, as they carried buckets of the precious fuel
to the opening in the cellar at the side of the Spicer villa. Something
seemed to shatter through her—an iconoclastic blast, that she had been
striving to shut out. Could Will have possibly forgotten between the
house and the station? But no, that could not be!
She dressed hastily, in the later stages of her toilet vibrating between
the silver-decked dressing-table, and the window, from behind the
curtains of which she took recurrent peeps. At her last look she ran
hastily down the stairs and opened the front door for Mrs. Stone, who was
temporarily garbed in a polo cap and her husband’s spring overcoat, into
the pockets of which she had thrust her hands.
“I saw you coming along! It’s too cold to be kept waiting on anybody’s
door-step. Walk right in, tea will be ready in a moment.”
“I thought I’d be sure to find you in now,” said Mrs. Stone comfortably,
shedding her masculine apparel in the hall on her way to the drawing-room
where she established herself with the ease of custom in a Turkish
chair by the gas logs. The Ridge was apt to assemble informally at Mrs.
Laurence’s for five o’clock tea; it was known that she really had it
whether there was any one there or not; there was always something
pleasantly cosy about the little function.
Mrs. Stone watched her hostess lazily as she drew the low, china-laden
table nearer the fire, and lighted the lamp under the brass kettle just
brought in, her dark, graceful head bent over to watch it, and her hands
showing very white against the dull red of her gown.