lived three days after his mother came. The day before his death he was
alone for a short time with the sheriff, and asked him to be good to
his mother. “Ruth will be good to her too,” he said; “but last night I
dreamed Mame was chasing mother, and it scared me. You won’t let her get
at mother, will you?”
“Of course I won’t,” said the sheriff; “we’re watching your mother every
minnit; and if that woman comes here, Raker has orders to clap her in
jail. And I will always look out for your ma, Ned, and she never shall
know.”
“That’s good,” said Ned, in his feeble voice. “I’ll tell you something:
I always wanted to be good, but I was always bad; but I believe I would
have been decent if I’d lived, because I’d have kept close to you. You’ll
be good to ma—and to Ruth?”
The sheriff thought that he had drifted away and did not hear the answer,
but in a few moments he opened his eyes and said, brightly, “Thank you,
Amos.” It was the first time that he had used the other man’s Christian
name.
“Yes, Ned,” said the sheriff.
Next morning at daybreak he died. His mother was with him. Just before he
went to sleep his mind wandered a little. He fancied that he was a little
boy, and that he was sick, and wanted to say his prayers to his mother.
“But I’m so sick I can’t get out of bed,” said he. “God won’t mind my
saying them in bed, will He?” Then he folded his hands, and reverently
repeated the childish rhyme, and so fell into a peaceful sleep, which
deepened into peace. In this wise, perhaps, were answered many prayers.
Amos made all the arrangements the next day. He said that they were going
home from Fairport on the day following, but he managed to conclude
all the necessary legal formalities in time to take the evening train.
Once on the train, and his companions in their sections, he drew a long
breath.
“It may not have been Mame that I saw,” he said, taking out his
cigar-case on the way to the smoking-room; “it was merely a glimpse—she
in a buggy, me on foot; and it may be she wouldn’t do a thing or think
the game worth blackmail; but I don’t propose to run any chances in this
deal. Hullo—excuse me, miss!”
The last words were uttered aloud to Ruth Graves, who had touched him on
the arm. He had a distinct admiration for this young woman, founded on
the grounds that she cried very quietly, that she never was underfoot,
and that she was so unobtrusively kind to Mrs. Smith.
“Anything I can do?” he began, with genuine willingness.
She motioned him to take a seat. “Mrs. Smith is safe in her section,” she
said; “it isn’t that. I wanted to speak to you. Mr. Wickliff, Ned told me
how it was. He said he couldn’t die lying to everybody, and he wanted me
to know how good you were. I am perfectly safe, Mr. Wickliff,” as a look
of annoyance puckered the sheriff’s brow. “He told me there was a woman
who might some time try to make money out of his mother if she could find
her, and I was to watch. Mr. Wickliff, was she rather tall and slim, with
a fine figure?”
“Yes—dark-complected rather, and has a thin face and a largish nose.”
“And one of her eyes is a little droopy, and she has a gold filling in
her front tooth? Mr. Wickliff, that woman got on this train.”
“She did, did she?” said the sheriff, showing no surprise. “Well, my dear
young lady, I’m very much obliged to you. I will attend to the matter.
Mrs. Smith sha’n’t be disturbed.”
“Thank you,” said the young woman; “that’s all. Good-night!”
“You might know that girl had had a business education,” the sheriff
mused—“says what she’s got to say, and moves on. Poor Ned! poor Ned!”
Ruth went to her section, but she did not undress. She sat behind the
curtains, peering through the opening at Mrs. Smith’s section opposite,
or at the lower berth next hers, which was occupied by the sheriff. The
curtains were drawn there also, and presently she saw him disappear by
sections into their shelter. Then his shoes were pushed partially into
the aisle. Empty shoes. She waited; it could not be that he was really
going to sleep. But the minutes crept by; a half-hour passed; no sign of
life behind his curtains. An hour passed. At the farther end of the car
curtains parted, and a young woman slipped out of her berth. She was
dark and not handsome, but an elegant shape and a modish gown made her
attractive-looking. One of her eyelids drooped a little.
[Illustration: “SHE PAUSED BEFORE MRS. SMITH’S SECTION”]
She walked down the aisle and paused before Mrs. Smith’s section, Ruth
holding her breath. She looked at the big shoes on the floor, her lip
curling. Then she took the curtains of Mrs. Smith’s section in both hands
and put her head in.
“I must stop her!” thought Ruth. But she did not spring out. The sheriff,
fully dressed, was beside the woman, and an arm of iron deliberately
turned her round.
“The game’s up, Mamie,” said Wickliff.
She made no noise, only looked at him.
“What are you going to do?” said she, with perfect composure.
“Arrest you if you make a racket, talk to you if you don’t. Go into that
seat.” He indicated a seat in the rear, and she took it without a word.
He sat near the aisle; she was by the window.
“I suppose you mean to sit here all night,” she remarked, scornfully.
“Not at all,” said he; “just to the next place. Then you’ll get out.”
“Oh, will I?”
“You will. Either you will get out and go about your business, or you
will get out and be taken to jail.”
“We’re smart. What for?”
“For inciting prisoners to escape.”
“Ned’s dead,” with a sneer.
“Yes, he’s dead, and”—he watched her narrowly, although he seemed
absorbed in buttoning his coat—“they say he haunts his old cell, as if
he’d lost something. Maybe it’s the letter you folded up small enough to
go in the seam of a coat. I’ve got that.” He saw that she was watching
him in turn, and that she was nervous. “Ned’s dead, poor fellow, true
enough; but—the girl at Barber & Glasson’s ain’t dead.”
She began to fumble with her gloves, peeling them off and rolling them
into balls. He thought to himself that the chances were that she was
superstitious.
“Look here,” he said, sharply, “have an end of this nonsense; you get off
at the next place, and never bother that old lady again, or—I will have
you arrested, and you can try for yourself whether Ned’s cell is haunted.”
For a brief space they eyed each other, she in an access of impotent
rage, he stolid as the carving of the seat. The car shivered; the great
wheels moved more slowly. “Decide,” said he; not imperatively—dryly,
without emotion of any sort. He kept his mild eyes on her.
“It wasn’t his mother I meant to tell; it was that girl—that _nice_ girl
he wanted to marry—”
“You make me tired,” said the sheriff. “Are you going, or am I to make a
scene and take you? I don’t care much.”
She slipped her hand behind her into her pocket.
The sheriff laughed, and grasped one wrist.
“_I_ don’t want to talk to the country fools,” she snapped.
“This way,” said the sheriff, guiding her. The train had stopped. She
laughed as he politely handed her off the platform; the next moment the
wheels were turning again and she was gone. He never saw her again.
The porter came out to stand by his side in the vestibule, watching the
lights of the station race away and the darkling winter fields fly past.
The sheriff was well known to him; he nodded an eager acquiescence to the
officer’s request: “If those ladies in 8 and 9 ask you any questions,
just tell them it was a crazy woman getting the wrong section, and I took
care of her.”
Within the car a desolate mother wept the long night through, yet thanked
God amid her tears for her son’s last good days, and did not dream of the
blacker sorrow that had menaced her and had been hurled aside.
THE CABINET ORGAN
THE CABINET ORGAN
It was a June day. Not one of those perfervid June days that simulate
the heat of July, and try to show the corn what June can do, but one of
Shakespeare’s lovely and temperate days, just warm enough to unfurl the
rose petals of the Armstrong rose-trees and ripen the grass flowers in
the Beaumonts’ unmowed yard.
The Beaumonts lived in the north end of town, at the terminus of the
street-car line. They did not live in the suburbs because they liked
space and country air, nor in order to have flowers and a kitchen-garden
of their own, like the Armstrongs opposite, but because the rent was
lower. The Beaumonts were very poor and very proud. The Armstrongs were
neither poor nor proud. Joel Armstrong, the head of the family, owned the
comfortable house, with its piazzas and bay-windows, the small stable
and the big yard. There was a yard enclosed in poultry-netting, and a
pasture for the cow, and the elderly family horse that had picked up so
amazingly under the influence of good living and kindness that no one
would suspect how cheaply the car company had sold him.
Armstrong was the foreman of a machine-shop. Every morning at half-past
six Pauline Beaumont, who rose early, used to see him board the
street-car in his foreman’s clothes, which differs from working-men’s
clothes, though only in a way visible to the practised observer. He
always was smoking a short pipe, and he usually was smiling. Mrs.
Armstrong was a comely woman, who had a great reputation in the
neighborhood as a cook and a nurse. In the family were three boys—if one
can call the oldest a boy, who was a young carpenter, just this very day
setting up for master-builder. The second boy was fifteen, and in the
high-school, and the youngest was ten. There were no daughters; but for
helper Mrs. Armstrong had a stout young Swede, who was occasionally seen
by the Beaumonts hiding broken pieces of glass or china in a convenient
ravine. The Beaumont house was much smaller than the Armstrongs’, nor was
it in such admirable repair and paint; but then, as Henriette Beaumont
was used to say, “_They_ had not a carpenter in the family.”
It will be seen that the Beaumonts held themselves very high above the
Armstrongs. They could not forget that twenty-five years ago their father
had been Lieutenant-Governor, and they had been accounted rich people in
the little Western city. Father and fortune had been lost long since.
They were poor, obscure, working hard for a livelihood; but they still
kept their pride, which only increased as their visible consequence
diminished. Nevertheless, Pauline often looked wistfully across at the
Armstrongs’ little feasts and fun, and always walked home on their side
of the street. Pauline was the youngest and least proud of the Beaumonts.
To-day, as usual, she came down the street, past the neat low fence of
the Armstrongs; but instead of passing, merely glancing in at the lawn
and the house, she stopped; she leaned her shabby elbows on the gate,
where she could easily see the dining-room and sniff the savory odors
floating from the kitchen. “Oh, doesn’t it smell good?” she murmured.
“Chickens fried, and new potatoes, and a strawberry shortcake. They have
such a nice garden.” She caught her breath in a mirthless laugh. “How
absurd I am! I feel like staying here and smelling the whole supper!
Yesterday they had waffles, and the day before beefsteak—such lovely,
hearty things!”
She was a tall girl, too thin for her height, with a pretty carriage and
a delicate irregular face, too colorless and tired for beauty, but not
for charm. Her skin was fine and clear, and her brown hair very soft.
Her gray eyes were alight with interest as she watched the finishing
touches given the table, which was spread with a glossy white cloth, and
had a bowl of June roses in the centre. Mrs. Armstrong, in a new dimity
gown and white apron, was placing a great platter of golden sponge-cake
on the board. She looked up and saw Pauline. The girl could invent no
better excuse for her scrutiny (which had such an air of prying) than to
drop her head as if in faintness—an excuse, indeed, suggested by her own
feelings. In a minute Mrs. Armstrong had stepped through the bay-window
and was on the other side of the fence, listening with vivid sympathy to
Pauline’s shamefaced murmur: “Excuse me, but I feel so ill!”
“It’s a rush of blood to the head,” cried Mrs. Armstrong, all the
instincts of a nurse aroused. “Come right in; you mustn’t think of going
home. Land! you’ll like as not faint before I can get over to you. Hold
on to the fence if you feel things swimming!”
[Illustration: “SHE LEANED HER SHABBY ELBOWS ON THE GATE”]
Pauline, in her confusion, grew red and redder, while, despite
inarticulate protestations, she was propelled into the house and on to a
large lounge.
“Lay your head back,” commanded the nurse, appearing with an
ammonia-bottle in one hand and a fan in the other.
“It’s nothing—nothing at all,” gasped Pauline, between shame and the
fumes of ammonia. “The day was a little warm, and I walked home, and I
was so busy I ate no lunch”—as if that were a change from her habits—“and
all at once I felt faint. But I’m all right now.”
“Well, I don’t _wonder_ you’re faint,” cried Mrs. Armstrong; “you
oughtn’t to do that way. Now you just got to lie still—— Oh, that’s only
Ikey. Ikey, you get a glass of wine for this lady; it’s Miss Beaumont.”
The tall young man in the gray suit and the blue flannel shirt blushed a
little under his sunburn as he bowed. “Pleased to meet you, miss,” said
he, promptly, before he disappeared.
“This is a great day for us,” continued the mother, releasing the
ammonia from duty, and beginning to fan vigorously. “Ike has set up as
master-builder—only two men, and he does most of the work; but he’s got
a house all to himself, and the chance of some bigger ones. We’re having
a little celebration. You must excuse the paper on the lounge; I put it
down when we unpacked the organ.”
“Oh, did the organ come?” said the son.
“It surely did, and we’ve played on it already.”
“Why, did you get the music? Was it in the box, too?”
“Oh, we ’ain’t played _tunes_; we just have been trying it—like to see
how it goes. It’s got an awful sweet sound.”
“And you ought to hear me play a tune on it, ma.”
“You! For the land’s sake!”
“Yes, me—that never did play a tune in my life. Anybody can play on
that organ.” He turned politely to Pauline, as to include her in the
conversation. “You see, Miss Beaumont, we’re a musical family that can’t
sing. We can’t, as they say, carry a tune to save our immortal souls.
The trouble isn’t with the voice; it’s with our ears. We can hear well
enough, too, but we haven’t an ear for music. I took lessons once, trying
to learn to sing, but the teacher finally braced up to tell me that he
hadn’t the conscience to take my money. ‘What’s the matter?’ says I.
‘You’ve lots of voice,’ says he, ‘but you haven’t a mite of ear.’ ‘Can’t
anybody teach me to sing?’ says I. ‘Not unless they hypnotize you, like
Trilby,’ says he. So I gave it up. But next I thought I would learn to
play; for if there’s one thing ma and the boys and I all love, it’s
music. And just then, as luck would have it, this teacher wanted to sell
his cabinet organ, which is in perfect shape and a fine instrument. And I
was craving to buy it, but I knew it was ridiculous, when none of us can
play. But I kept thinking. Finally it came to me. I had seen those zither
things with numbers on them; why couldn’t he paint numbers on the keys of
the organ just that way, and make music to correspond? And that’s just
the way we’ve done. You’re very musical. I—I’ve often listened to your
playing. What do you think of it?” He looked at her wistfully.
“I think it very ingenious—very,” said Pauline. She had risen now, and
she thanked Mrs. Armstrong, and said she must go home. In truth, she was
in a panic at the thought of what she had done. Henriette never would
understand. Her heart beat guiltily all the way home.
There were three Beaumonts—Henriette, Mysilla, and Pauline. Henriette
and Mysilla were twins, who had dressed alike from childhood’s hour,
although Mysilla was very plain, a colorless blonde, of small stature
and painfully thin, while Henriette was tall, with a stately figure and
a handsome dark face that would have looked well on a Roman coin. Yet
Henriette was a woman of good taste, and she spent many a night trying
to decide on a gown which would suit equally well Mysie’s fair head and
her glossy black one. Both the black and the brown head were gray now,
but they still wore frocks and hats alike. Henriette held that it was the
hall-mark of a good family to clothe twins alike, and Henriette did not
have her Roman features for nothing. Mysilla had always adored and obeyed
Henriette. She gloried in Henriette’s haughty beauty and grace, and she
was as proud of both now that Henriette was a shabby elderly woman, who
had to wear dyed gowns and darned gloves, as in the days when she was
the belle of the Iowa capital, and poor Jim Perley fought a duel with
Captain Sayre over a misplaced dance on her ball-card. Henriette promised
to marry Jim after the duel, but Jim died of pneumonia that very week.
For Jim’s sake, John Perley, his brother, was good to the girls. Pauline
was a baby when her father died. She never remembered the days of pomp,
only the lean days of adversity. John Perley obtained a clerkship for
her in a music-store. Henriette gave music lessons. She was a brilliant
musician, but she criticised her pupils precisely as she would have done
any other equally stupid performers, and her pupils’ parents did not
always love the truth. Mysilla took in plain sewing, as the phrase goes.
She sometimes (since John Perley had given them a sewing-machine) made as
much as four dollars a week. They invariably paid their rent in advance,
and when they had not money to buy enough to eat they went hungry. They
never cared to know their neighbors, and Pauline cringed as she imaged
Henriette’s sarcasms had she seen her sister drinking the Armstrongs’
California port. Henriette had stood in the hall corner and waved Pauline
fiercely and silently away while the unconscious Mrs. Armstrong thumped
at the broken bell outside, and at last departed, remarking, “Well, they
must be gone, or _dead_!”
Therefore rather timidly Pauline opened the door of the little room
that was both parlor and dining-room. Any one could see that the room
belonged to people who loved music. The old-fashioned grand-piano was
under protection of busts of Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner; and Mysie’s
violin stood in the corner, near a bookcase full of musical biographies.
An air of exquisite neatness was like an aroma of lavender in the room,
and with it was fused a prim good taste, such as might properly belong
to gentlewomen who had learned the household arts when the rule of three
was sacred, and every large ornament must be attended by a smaller one
on either side. And an observer of a gentle mind, furthermore, might
have found a kind of pathos in the shabbiness of it all; for everything
fine was worn and faded, and everything new was coarse. The portrait of
the Lieutenant-Governor faced the door. For company it had on either
side small engravings of Webster and Clay. Beneath it was placed the
tea-table, ready spread. The cloth was of good quality, but thin with
long service. On the table a large plate of bread held the place of
importance, with two small plates on either corner, the one containing a
tiny slice of suspiciously yellow butter, and the other a cone of solid
jelly. Such jelly they sell at the groceries out of firkins. A glass
jug of tea stood by a plated ice-water jug of a pattern highly esteemed
before the war. Henriette was stirring a small lump of ice about the
sides of the tea-jug. She greeted Pauline pleasantly.
“Iced tea?” said Pauline. “I thought we were to have hot tea and sausages
and toast. I gave Mysie twenty-five cents for them this morning.” She
did not say that it was the money for more than one day’s luncheon.
“Yes, Mysie said something about it,” said Henriette, “but it didn’t seem
worth while to burn up so much wood merely to heat the water for tea; and
toast uses up so much butter.”
“But I gave Mysie a dollar to buy a little oil-stove that we could use
in summer; and there was the sausage; I don’t mean to find fault, sister
Etty, but I’m ravenously hungry.”
“Of course, child,” Henriette agreed, benignly; “you are _always_ hungry.
But I think you’ll agree I was lucky not to have bought that stove and
those sausages this morning. Who do you think is coming to this town next
week? Theodore Thomas, with his own orchestra! And just as I was going
into that store to buy your stove—though I didn’t feel at all sure it
wouldn’t explode and burn the house down—John Perley came up and gave
me a ticket, an orchestra seat; and I said at once, ‘The girls must go
too’; but I hadn’t but twenty-five cents, and no more coming in for a
week. Then it occurred to me like a flash, there was this money you had
given me; and, Paula, I made such a bargain! The man at Farrell’s, where
they are selling the tickets, will get us three seats, not very far
back in the gallery, for my orchestra seat and the money, and we shall
have enough money left to take us home in the street cars. Now do you
understand?” concluded Henriette, triumphantly.
“Yes, sister Etty; it will be splendid,” responded Pauline, but with less
enthusiasm than Henriette had expected.
“Aren’t you glad?” she demanded.
“Oh yes, I’m glad; but I’m so dead tired I can hardly talk,” said
Pauline, as she left the room. She felt every stair as she climbed it;
but her face cleared at the sight of Mysie coming through the hall.
“It’s a lovely surprise, Mysie, isn’t it?” she cried, cheerfully. She
always called Mysie by her Christian name, without prefix. Henriette,
although of the same age, was so much more important a person that she
would have felt the unadorned name a liberty. But nobody was afraid of
Mysie. Pauline wound one of her long arms about her waist and kissed her.
Mysie gave a little gasp of mingled pleasure and relief, and the burden
of her thoughts slipped off in the words, “I knew you ’lotted on that
oil-stove, Paula, but Etty said you would want me to go—”
“I wouldn’t go without you,” Pauline burst in, vehemently, “and I’d live
on bread and jelly for a week to give you that pleasure.”
“There was the sausage, too; I did feel bad about that; you ought to have
good hot meals after working all day.”
“No more than you, Mysie.”
“I’m not on my feet all day. And I did think of taking some of that
seventy-five cents we have saved for the curtains, but I didn’t like to
spend any without consulting you.”
“It’s your own money, Mysie; but anyhow I suppose we need the curtains.
Go on down; Henriette’s calling. I’ll be down directly.” But after she
heard her sister’s uncertain footstep on the stair she stood frowning out
of the window at the Armstrong house. “It’s hideous to think it,” she
murmured, “but I don’t care—we have so much music and so little sausage!
I wish I had the money for my ticket to the concert to spend on meat!”
Then, remorsefully, she went down-stairs, and after supper she played all
the evening on the piano; but the airs that she chose were in a simple
strain—minstrel songs of a generation ago, like “Nelly was a lady” and
“Hard times come again no more,” from a battered old book of her mother’s.
“Wouldn’t you like to try a few Moody and Sankeys?” Henriette jeered
after a while. “Foster seems to me only one degree less maudlin and
commonplace. He makes me think of tuberoses!” Pauline laughed and went to
the window. The white porcupine of electric light at the corner threw out
long spikes of radiance athwart the narrow sidewalk, and a man’s shadow
dipped into the lighted space. The man was leaning his arms on the fence.
“Foolish fellow!” Pauline laughed softly to herself. That night, shortly
after she had dropped asleep, she was awakened out of a dream of staying
to supper with the Armstrongs, and beholding the board loaded with
broiled chickens and plum-pudding, by a clutch on her shoulder. “It was
_quite_ accidental,” she pleaded; “it really was, sister Etty!” For her
dream seemed to project itself into real life, and there was Henriette, a
stern figure in flowing white, bending over her.
“Wake up!” she cried. “Listen! There’s something awful happening at the
Armstrongs’.”
Pauline sat up in bed as suddenly as a jack-in-the-box. Then she gave
a little gasp of laughter. “They are all right,” said she; “they are
playing on their organ. That’s the way they play.”