silence as she took the steaming cup of fragrant tea offered her, and
helped herself to a tiny hot buttered scone, from a blue Canton dish.
“They are getting in coal at the Budds’ this morning, and now they’re at
it at the Spicers’—the noise nearly sets me crazy, the houses are so near
together. O Mrs. Spicer, I didn’t hear you come in!”
Mrs. Stone looked up with a start to see another visitor walking,
unannounced, into the room, a little woman in a long fur wrap with a lace
scarf thrown over her head. “I was just saying—perhaps you heard me—what
a noise your coal makes when it’s being put in.”
“Oh, don’t speak of it!” said Mrs. Spicer. She seemed to greet
her hostess, shed her outer garments, perch herself on a little,
straight-backed sofa, and take her cup of tea at one and the same
moment with a swiftness of movement accelerated in her further speech,
which tumbled forth like a small cataract. “Don’t speak of it, no one
knows what I went through last summer, when you were at the seashore and
_your_ coal was laid in. I couldn’t sit on the piazza _at all_, and the
thermometer was in the nineties. At the end of the third day I nearly had
nervous prostration. Ernest Spicer was really worried about me. _I_ never
find it any economy to lay in a stock of coal; you use it up so much
faster; it seems as if you were paying out for enough to last you until
you died, and then, just at the time you didn’t count on taking the money
for it you have to buy more. If we laid in a _mine_ full in July we’d
have to order coal in February.”
“Well, I wish I were laying it in now,” interposed Mrs. Laurence deftly,
with a sigh. “Mr. Laurence ordered some this morning, and it hasn’t come
yet. I would have sent a message to Harner’s, but I have been expecting
the coal wagon every moment.”
“I saw your husband speaking to Mrs. Lalor as I came back from the
butcher’s,” said Mrs. Stone. She paused significantly. “Isn’t she the
most noticeable thing you ever saw! She never seems to have any morning
clothes.”
“I don’t believe she has any money for new ones,” suggested Mrs. Laurence
gently.
“No, I don’t suppose she _has_, but even then—— Of course, I’m sorry for
her, we all are; every one knows what Mr. Lalor is, but do you know, the
other day when I attempted to allude to all that she must have to bear up
under—I felt so sympathetic towards her, after what the Bents told us—she
stiffened up at once; she acted as if she hadn’t the slightest idea of
what I was driving at. Now _that’s_ absurd. To hear Mrs. Lalor talk about
‘Bennie’ you’d think he was the king-pin, as Mr. Stone expresses it.”
“Oh, but I think that’s really fine of her,” said Mrs. Laurence, with
proselyting zeal. “There’s a courage, a devotion about her that always
appeals to me; you can’t help seeing that she’s had such a hard time. I’m
sure if you knew her better you’d like her.”
“She may be devoted to her husband,” said Mrs. Spicer very fast, “but if
you’d see her going in on the train—Ernest Spicer says he always avoids
her when he _can_; he does hate to be made conspicuous. I don’t care
whether she comes of a good family or not; _I_ think she’s common.”
Mrs. Laurence shook her head wisely. “I’m sure that you’re mistaken, not
that I’m so well acquainted with her myself, but still——”
She took occasion later on to detain Mrs. Stone whisperingly a moment by
the front door as both visitors were making their exit.
“I thought I wouldn’t say it before _her_—but why don’t you and Mr. Stone
make a call at the Lalors to-night? Will has a little business with Mr.
Lalor, and I’ll go with him. _Do_ come.”
“Well, I’ll see,” temporized Mrs. Stone with a softening inflection.
Mrs. Stone was, as her hostess well knew, the kind of a person who, after
disapproving publicly of a neighbour, privately sends her pickles. She
hastened down the steps now to join her friend, her large, mannish figure
in the overcoat and cap wobbling ludicrously on the narrow, slippery
length of drift-bordered sidewalk under the gas-lamps that were already
lighted.
The wind had gone down, but so had the mercury; the air was “bitter
chill.” As Mrs. Laurence turned back into her hall the atmosphere there
seemed only a few degrees warmer. Gas logs made but slight impression on
the general temperature of a house in this weather; the hand that she
held over the register received but the faintest, scarce-warm breath
upon it. Mrs. Laurence still looked for a belated rattling coal-wagon,
but the hour seemed long until her husband’s return; her heart bounded
romantically at the sound of his footsteps now, just as it had done when
she was a girl. His face was ruefully smiling as he said after the kiss
of greeting:
“You don’t know what you’ve missed—all my fault, too! I bought you a
two-dollar bunch of violets—— _Now wait_ till I get through—and left them
in the train.”
“Oh, _Will_!” His wife’s brows drooped tragically. “That’s so like you!
You’re getting too absent-minded to live. My lovely violets!” she mourned
tenderly.
“Isn’t the house very cold to-night?”
“Well, I should _think_ it might be! It’s freezing.” Mrs. Laurence’s
accumulated wrath poured forth. “There hasn’t been a sign of the coal
you ordered this morning, and I’ve been waiting for it all day. It’s a
perfect outrage, and I want you to tell Harner so, Will. You _did_ order
it, didn’t you?”
“Why, ye——” An extraordinary expression stole over Mr. Laurence’s thin
face, it was as if his consciousness had been suddenly arrested in
mid-air. Well as his wife knew his expressions and what they covered,
this surprisingly baffled her. He drummed with his finger-tips on the
edge of the dressing-table before relaxing enough to say guardedly, after
a moment:
“By George! I don’t believe I did. I knew there was _something_—I’m
awfully sorry, Anna, indeed I am.”
“_You didn’t order it!_—Will, please don’t drum on things that way, you
know it drives me wild. Well, if you can’t remember one thing I ask you
to do—if you can’t keep a single promise that you make me—— It isn’t the
_coal_ I care about—though my feet have been like stones all day—but
it’s the fact that I can’t depend on you for _anything_. _Please_ don’t
whistle. You can attend to business matters well enough, but when it
comes to the comfort of your wife and child——” an unforeseen sob broke
across the words. “Of course, it’s been warm enough in your steam-heated
office to-day. I’m glad it has been, I wouldn’t have had you cold for
anything.” In spite of her tears she was following after him as he
searched in his chiffonier drawer for a clean collar. “You’ve done it all
so many times! You carried that important letter to Hetty in your pocket
for six weeks before you told me.”
“Yes, and if you’re going on like this every time I tell you anything,
I’ll stop it,” said Mr. Laurence doggedly. “You don’t give me any credit
for owning up, Nan. You wouldn’t know half the time when I make mistakes,
if I didn’t tell you.”
“I don’t see what else you could have said when I asked you if you had
ordered the coal.”
“I could have lied about it, I suppose,” said Mr. Laurence impatiently.
“O Will!” she gasped with horror. Her white chin went up, her dark eyes
looked at him full of agitation. She put her hands on his shoulders and
shook him ineffectively. “You wouldn’t—you _couldn’t_ do that! You always
tell me the truth, don’t you—all of it?”
“Usually,” assented her husband. He had finished settling his tie and now
put his arms around her. “But if it’s going to make you any happier if I
_don’t_——”
“No, no, no! You know I never could mean that—never! I could forgive you
anything as long as you told me the truth.”
She clung to him as they went down to dinner together, and she forbore
to allude to the state of the atmosphere, except by shivering once or
twice—the gas logs sent forth a chill, blue flare. There was an odd
return to that arrested, baffling expression on Mr. Laurence’s face,
however, when his wife announced her intention of going around to the
Lalors’ with him afterwards.
“Don’t you think it is too cold for you to go out to-night?” he asked,
and she answered with a playful gleam of the sarcasm she couldn’t keep
from using. “No, I think it’s too cold for me to stay in.”
It was a matter for ejaculating surprise on arriving at the Lalors’
to find the unexpected Spicers instead of the Stones, who, however,
appeared in a few minutes. Mr. Spicer had a slender, correct elegance of
aspect, while Mr. Stone was large, grayish, and rather portly. Beside the
Spicers, a Mrs. Frere and her son, a dumb, immature youth, were already
in possession of the field. Mrs. Frere’s position as a church worker
carried her into connection with people whom she might not otherwise
have met; the chief effect that she produced on every one now was an
ardent desire that she should go. She sat in utter silence with folded
hands, but her dumbness differed from that of her son in a patently avid
appreciation of everything that was said or done.
Mrs. Lalor, in a low-throated, faded light green gown covered with
beautiful old lace, was loud in expression of her surprise and delight at
this haphazard gathering. Mr. Lalor, tall, handsome and with wandering
dissipated eyes and the same droop alike to his reddish mustache and to
his figure, came forward also with hospitable welcome, while his wife
volubly ordered not only him but the other men in behalf of her guests:
“Bennie, get that armchair out of the corner for Mrs. Laurence; be
careful the top doesn’t fall off of it—we break all our things moving
so often! Mr. Stone, won’t you put that footstool under Mrs. Spicer’s
feet, I’m sure she’s not comfortable. Mr. Spicer, if you’ll kindly move
the table near me to make more room—Bennie, run up-stairs and get the
little feather hand-screen for Mrs. Stone—I know that lamp’s shining in
your eyes.” She pronounced it “Shinin’ in yo’ eyes,” with a caressing,
indolent inflection to her soft voice. “It’s not the least trouble for
him, Mrs. Stone—Bennie always waits on me.”
There was a seductive air of luxury about Mrs. Lalor in spite of the fact
that the cheap, shabby upholstered chairs and sofa were profusely covered
with cheaper “drapings” on such portions as were most subject to wear,
and that the mantelpiece, also draped, was simply decorated with a single
pink-mouthed grinning conch shell—yet the latter was indeed under an old,
old painting of a low-browed woman whose white throat and rounded cheek
gleamed out from rich brown shadows—a woman who, even thus dimly seen,
seemed to match the lace on Mrs. Lalor’s gown.
“I only came because I thought you’d like me to,” whispered Mrs. Spicer
to Mrs. Laurence in a pause of the later conversation. Mrs. Stone gave an
affectionate little squeeze to her neighbour’s hand. “I thought Ernest
would object, but he seemed quite willing. I wish that Mrs. Frere wasn’t
here, you have to be so careful what you say before her.”
“We won’t stay very long,” murmured Mrs. Laurence assentingly. Mr. Lalor
and her husband had apologetically disappeared behind closed doors to
transact their business together, the latter with that last look at her
over the heads of the others that meant their own special farewell. Mrs.
Lalor had insisted on supplying every one with hot lemonade, on account
of the coldness of the weather, calling the three men back and forth in
her services and holding a little couet with them afterwards as she sat
reclined in a rocking-chair.
“I reckon Mr. Eddie was right bored with only me to talk to before
you all came in,” she announced with a smile directed at young Mr.
Frere. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you gentlemen here. I enjoy
gentlemen’s society so much. Of course, I’ve always had it till I came
up No’th, and I miss it so much. I wish you could have seen our po’ch
at home in the old times on a Sunday evenin’, with my sister Mollie’s
friends, and Emma Lily’s, and mine, all lined up waiting for us to come
down.”
“Indeed!” said Mrs. Stone.
“I told Bennie when I married him I never could settle down to just
one.” Mrs. Lalor paused lightly. “I was engaged to six before that.
But he always said—‘George’ my name is George—‘I want you should enjoy
gentleman’s society just the same as you always did.’ I was engaged first
when I was fourteen.”
“Oh, _Southern_ engagements!” said Mrs. Laurence indulgently, with a
gesture that disclaimed their seriousness of intent to Mrs. Stone’s
startled gaze. There seemed to be an unforeseen electrical quality in
the air; she had felt it even when she first came in, but every lightest
speech was oddly charged with it, you couldn’t tell what was coming.
Instead of vindicating her confidence in Mrs. Lalor, the latter seemed
bent on a self destruction that might drag any one else down with her.
She went on now happily.
“Of course, though I always cared most for Bennie—he was such a beautiful
waltzer. Sometimes even now, after breakfast, if I’m a little blue, he
says, ‘Come, George, let’s have a waltz,’ and he just spins me around
the room while he whistles the tune. I don’t think there’s anything like
dancing for keeping up the spirits. I don’t know what I’d do without
Bennie up No’th here, he’s so thoughtful of me!”
“How extraordinary!” breathed little Mrs. Spicer to Mrs. Stone, athwart
the rapt gaze of the silent Mrs. Frere. It was evident that neither Mr.
Stone nor Mr. Spicer felt appalled, both men seemed to be impalpably
walled off from the jurisdiction of their wives, as they sat smiling
with interested indulgence at their hostess, with young Mr. Frere,
open-mouthed, behind them.
In spite of the semi-artificiality of her aspect, Mrs. Lalor had an
undoubted charm; her face looked younger and less drawn by lamplight,
and her pretty, tear-soft eyes had their coquettish gleam in them, her
careless attitude was full of lazy grace. She thrust out a slippered foot
with its hanging length of ribbon, and gave an appealing glance at the
man nearest her.
“I know you want to tie my shoe for me, Mr. Stone—no, Mr. Spicer, I
didn’t say you.”
She laughed gleefully as they both jumped for position, Mr. Stone’s large
bulk going down heavily on one knee with exaggerated gallantry.
“Let me fan you while he’s doing it,” cried Mr. Spicer eagerly, seizing
the required implement from the table.
“You’d better fan Mrs. Stone, she looks so warm,” suggested Mrs. Lalor.
“The house is so heated, it makes one’s face burn after the cold air.
Wouldn’t you like a little powder to cool it?” She jumped up hospitably,
leaving Mr. Stone still upon the floor. “It isn’t the slightest trouble
to get it, I always keep it in this little cupboard, with a puff and a
handglass—and some rouge,” she explained in a confidential tone. “Not
that I care for rouge myself, Bennie doesn’t like it, but some people
always use it for the evenin’.”
Mrs. Stone gasped.
“Thank you, I need nothing of the kind,” she said hastily. She, the
mother of four, a member of the Guild and the Vittoria Colonna Club to
be spoken to in connection with _rouge_! Even Mrs. Laurence’s white chin
went up—this did seem “common.”
“And I really think we’ll have to be going,” added Mrs. Stone with
decision, rising as she spoke, a signal imitated by Mrs. Spicer, though
Mrs. Frere sat fast.
“Oh, do wait for us,” pleaded Mrs. Laurence eagerly. “Here is my husband
now. You’re ready to go now, aren’t you, Will?”
“Yes, as soon as I wrap up those documents,” he assented, with an
unconscious exhilaration of tone that caught her ear. He disappeared into
the opposite room once more. Mr. Lalor had just walked out of it, and
down the length of the bare hall, with echoing steps.
“Oh, you _must_ stay and have some more hot lemonade,” Mrs. Lalor begged
warmly, and stopped suddenly short; a faint colour came into her cheek;
it was as if she listened, not to the chorus, “No, not to-night——” “Thank
you just the same——” “We really must go——” but to something impalpable,
unguessed.
“Excuse me for just one moment,” she said and vanished swiftly into the
narrow passage, leaving behind her a surprised, disapproving silence—even
Mrs. Frere stood up; there was a queer, unexpected sensation that
something was happening. Mrs. Laurence went out nervously to get her
cloak. In that oblique glimpse down the hall to the dining-room she
saw—or didn’t she really see anything?—a man’s arm stretched wildly
out as if to reach something—a woman’s hand grasping it—the wavering
shadow as of a struggle—and the faintest sound as of a key turning
as it might be in a sideboard lock. Something must be happening——!
Though only, indeed, one unimportant scene of a tragedy such as these
happy, protected women had no knowledge of, that long, exquisitely
heart-racking, unmentionable strain of living that companies the
degradation of one who is loved.
“Did your coal come to-day, Mrs. Laurence?” asked Mrs. Stone in a chill,
unnatural voice. They were all getting on their wraps now.
“No, it didn’t,” answered Mrs. Laurence. Justice compelled her to add,
with an effort: “It wasn’t Harner’s fault, after all. Will forgot to
order it on his way to the station; he felt so badly about it, but he’s
had so much business on his mind lately that I really think I mustn’t ask
him to do anything more.”
“You’re more lenient than my wife would have been,” said Mr. Stone
jovially. “I’d have gotten it in the neck.”
“You’d have deserved it,” agreed Mr. Spicer.
“I feel dreadfully because you’re all going so soon,” said Mrs. Lalor
appearing once more, clinging with both little hands to the arm of her
husband, who, sullen and dejected, towered above her. She looked wan
and thin, as if some ageing mist had settled over her, but the wrinkles
that had deepened around her pretty eyes did not keep them from being
indomitably flirtatious as she glanced back to the man who had followed
them in.
“Mr. Laurence and I haven’t had a chance to tell any secrets _at
all_!—What did you say, Mrs. Spicer? Yes, the house _is_ warm, thanks to
Mr. Laurence,” she assented gayly. “He insisted on orderin’ my coal for
me this mornin’.”
There was a dead silence. To her dying day Mrs. Laurence could see that
whole scene definitely before her—the embarrassed attitudes of the men;
the arrested, guilty expression on her husband’s face that all might
read; Mrs. Frere’s greedy joy; the compassionate gaze of Mrs. Stone
and Mrs. Spicer after their swift flash of comprehension.—Yet after
that one paralyzing moment she rose staunchly superior to the petty,
yet excruciating entanglement of the situation. She stepped forward
and kissed Mrs. Lalor good-bye in the face of her little world, with a
hand-pressure that emphasized the words:
“I’m so glad Mr. Laurence could be of service to you,” before she made
her exit with him. Yet there were those who felt that they were not
deceived and the eyes of Mr. Stone and Mr. Spicer met as the door closed
behind the husband and wife—and it was a glance that confided a sinister
and mutual thankfulness of escape.
The two in question walked swiftly away in silence on the starlit,
drift-bordered path; the wind had gone down but it was infinitely
cold. They went, part of the time, in single file, but she ignored his
tentative pressure on her arm; there seemed to be an icy chasm between
them. The distance to the house was short, and it was not until they
were inside it that she broke forth hotly, as if they had been talking
together all the way, her crimson cheeks and blazing eyes facing his
tall, reluctant figure as she threw off her wraps.
“It wasn’t as if I could _ever_ say anything to those people to explain!
Oh, it’s so perfectly horrid, so _maddening_, so utterly ridiculous on
the face of it!—They’ll think I’m jealous of her—they’ll be sorry for me.
_Sorry!_ As if I could possibly be jealous of _her_. They’ll think you
keep everything from me, and that they know more about you than I do. How
could you have put me in such a position when just a word——” She made a
little sound that was half a moan. “Why you didn’t have the decency to
tell me before we went there I _can’t_ see.” Her voice rose higher. “Yes
I can—you were afraid; afraid of your wife! It does seem pretty bad to
have you remember to do things for other people, when you can’t remember
them for me, but that isn’t the point I mind most, it’s not the real
thing—what I _can’t_ stand is you not having the courage to own up, to
tell me the truth. Why don’t you say something?”
“Because you’re saying it all.”
“O Will!” She gazed at him hopelessly as he stood in front of her, her
hand laid detainingly on his arm. He looked very high-bred, very much a
gentleman, with that air of aloof _hauteur_; there were circles under his
dark eyes, and his lips had a compression that she well knew. If there
was anything that Mr. Laurence hated temperamentally it was a shrewish
woman; the ice of the winter’s night couldn’t freeze harder than he when
she stormed, even though he allowed that she had righteous reason for
her wrath. He spoke now, in answer to her appeal, with stiff, prideful
humility:
“You know very well that I’m extremely sorry about the whole matter. As
for ordering that coal for Mrs. Lalor, I meant to have told you about it
when we got back, you know I never can keep anything from you; I don’t
_want_ to. I forgot it when I first came home—and then you took me by
surprise, someway. And now don’t you think we’ve perhaps had enough of
this? _I’m_ tired.”
“No, no; don’t go yet!” Mrs. Laurence’s hand pinioned him fast. She
had known all along that she would forgive him when she had spoken her
mind—what else can one do but forgive when one loves? Oh, that was but a
little part of it—the forgiveness! The real need all the time was that he
should be reinstated on the pedestal from which his own act had driven
him. He must be, not the Will whom she forgave, but the Will whom she
adored. Her certainty dropped from her; she began reasonably, to grow
more and more tremulously beseeching.
“Will, _please_ listen! I can’t bear it when you look at me as if you
didn’t like me. Of course, I knew all the time that you were sorry—I knew
you meant to tell me the truth! _Of course_, you can’t always think of
it at the moment when I take you by surprise and fly at you and scold
you—nobody could! I don’t wonder that you hate to tell me things, when I
make it so hard for you. I ought to be a hundred times nicer than I am.
When I saw _her_ husband standing there to-night you looked so fine and
beautiful and good—and _truthful_”—a sob, not tears, but just a sob broke
athwart the words—“I thank God every day on my _knees_ that I’m married
to you!”
Her arms dropped from their hold, but his were around her now, pressing
her closer, and still closer; the eyes he bent upon the upturned face
were smiling, yet a little moist, too—his tender voice had in it every
admission that she longed for as he whispered:
“Oh, Nan—foolish, foolish Nan! Such a _sweet_ woman——!”
The Triumph of Father
The Triumph of Father
“Well, what do you want me to do to-day, Min? Speak up quick.” Mr.
Harlow, in his holiday morning costume, consisting of a pair of old and
baggy trousers, an outing shirt and an utterly incongruous coat, with
bulging pockets, stood by the piazza steps, a disreputable grey felt hat
held in one hand.
“It’s nearly ten o’clock, and I must go down-town and get some nails
before the stores close for the day. I had expected to send one of the
boys, but Betty tells me that Herbert has gone to play in the golf
tournament, and Jack is off to the ball game. If there’s anything round
the house you want mended, now’s your time to tell me.”
“We want a screw for the wringer—or perhaps it’s a nut,” said Mrs.
Harlow, hazily, her eyes fixed on her husband. “The top is off the
piano-stool again, and there is the arm of the red chair,—you’ll find it
in the closet under the stairs,—and one of the faucets in the kitchen
sink will keep running. Oh, yes, and there’s a caster broken off the
refrigerator, too; we have to prop it up with a block of wood, but it’s
so crooked that the water from it goes all over the cellar floor. Please
don’t forget it, will you? But, David, you are not going down to the
village looking like that? It’s really disgraceful! If any one should see
you! It won’t take you a minute to go up-stairs and change your coat and
put on another necktie.”