eyes followed his hand putting the letter back into his pocket. That she
should have actually had the letter in her hand, and had to give it
back! But no quick-witted pretext had occurred to help her. Rose would
think her stupid--utterly lacking in expedients.
She left the summer-house, unfurling her umbrella, and Farringdon
followed instantly, his failure apparently forgotten.
They passed the tennis-court on their way to the house, and--
“Do you play?” he asked.
“A little.” Her intonation mocked the formula.
“Might we, then, this afternoon--”
She gave him a side glance. “If you don't mind losing,” she suggested.
“But I play to win,” he modestly met it, and again they laughed.
Rose Eversley looked with curiosity at her sister when she entered the
dining-room for luncheon, followed by Farringdon, but Edith's face was
non-committal. She was bright and vivacious, and made herself very
pleasant to Farringdon, who sat by her. After luncheon they went to the
tennis-court together.
“A delightful young man,” Mrs. St. Cleve commented, putting up her
lorgnette as she stood at the window with Rose, watching their
disappearing figures, “but so far as money is concerned, a hopeless
detrimental. Don't let your pretty sister get interested in him. He
hasn't a cent except what he makes--he's an architect.”
“Edith is to be depended upon,” Rose said, enigmatically. She was five
years older than her sister, and had drawn the inference of her own
plainness, comparatively, ever since Edith had put on long dresses.
“Have you written to Christopher?” she asked, that night, invading
Edith's room with her hair-brushes.
“No, I haven't,” Edith said, thoughtfully. “I tried just now. It
seems--I don't know how, exactly, but I just _can't_ write it over
again! If I had the letter I wrote this morning, I suppose I would send
it; but to write it all over again--it's too horrible!”
“'Horrible'!” Rose repeated. “Very few people would think it that! He's
rich, thoroughly good, and devoted to you.”
“You put the least last,” Edith said, slowly, “and you're right. I'm not
sure Christopher is so devoted to me, after all. He may only fancy that
I like him, and from his high estate--”
“Nonsense!” Rose said, warmly. “He isn't, as you know, that sort of a
man. I've known him for years--” She paused.
Edith said nothing; she brushed her hair with careful slowness.
“He is so sincere--so straight-forward,” Rose went on, in an impersonal
tone; “and as papa has had so much ill luck and our circumstances have
changed--they _are_ changed, you know, though we are still able to keep
up a certain appearance--he has been unchanged. You ought to consider--”
“You consider Christopher's interests altogether,” Edith said. “I've
some, too.”
“Oh no! You needn't think of them with Christopher,” Rose said,
seriously. “That's just it! He would so completely look after _yours!_
It's _his_, in this regard, that need consideration.”
“Well--I'll consider Christopher's interests,” Edith said, quietly.
She remembered perfectly the letter she had written--which was in an
ugly young man's pocket! It had been:
“DEAR CHRISTOPHER,--Do you think you really want me? If you are very
sure, I am willing. I don't care for anybody else, so perhaps I can
learn to care for you.
“The only thing is, you will spoil me, and they've done that at home
already! and Rose says I need a strong hand! So in your interests--” and
then it had blown away!
When Rose, after some desultory talk, went back to her room, Edith wrote
another letter:
“DEAR CHRISTOPHER,--I know you have made a mistake. I don't care for
you--to marry you--a bit, but I like you, oh, a quantity! We have always
been such friends, and we always will be, won't we? but not _that_ way.
“Some day you will be very happy with some one else who will suit you
better. Then you will know how right I am.
“With kindest wishes,
“EDITH EVERSLEY.”
She took this letter down the next morning to put in the bag, but the
postman had come and gone. As she stood in the hall holding the letter,
Farringdon came up.
“Good morning,” he said. “You've missed the postman? I will be very
happy to post it for you on my way to church.”
“Thank you. But if it's on the way to church, I'm going myself, so I
needn't trouble you.”
Farringdon merely bowed, without saying anything banal about the absence
of trouble. She was demurely conscious beneath his courtesy of the
effort he was making to see her handwriting, and she wondered if he
thought her refusal rude and a confirmation of his suspicion, or simply
casual.
Whatever he thought, it did not prevent the steps as she came out a few
hours later in the freshness of white muslin, with her umbrella,
prayer-book, and an unobtrusive white envelope in her hands.
They were going together down then drive--under his umbrella--before she
quite grasped the situation.
“We seem to be the only ones,” she hazarded.
“We are,” he nodded.
“Mrs. Manstey has a headache,” Edith said, “but the others--”
“The sun is too hot!”--he smiled.
“But you--I shouldn't have thought--” She paused, a little embarrassed.
“Yes?” he helped her. “That I was one of those who go to church, you
mean?”
“Oh no!” she protested; but it was what she had meant.
“You are right,” he said, without heeding the protest, and his ugly but
compellingly attractive face was turned to hers. “I'm not in the least a
scoffer, though; pray believe that. It's just that I--” he hesitated. “Do
you remember a little verse:
'Although I enter not,
Yet round about the spot
Sometimes I hover,
And at the sacred gate
With longing eyes I wait,
Expectant of her.'”
Her face flushed. “But,” she reverted, with naïveté, “you said you were
going to church--”
“But because I knew you were one of the women who would be sure to go!”
he said, positively.
She rebelled. “I don't look devotional at all!”
“But your eyes do,” he declared. “They're suggestive of cathedrals and
beautiful dimness, and a voice going up and up, like the 'Lark' song of
Schubert's, don't you know!”
“No, I _don't!_” she said, wilfully; but she was conscious of his eyes
on her face, and angry that her cheeks flushed.
They both were silent for a little, and when they left Mrs. Manstey's
grounds for the uneven country road, that became shortly, by courtesy,
the village street, they had a view of the little church with its tiny
tower.
“The post-office,” Farringdon explained, “is at the other end of the
street. Service is beginning, I dare say. Shall we wait until it is
over, or post the letter now?”
“No; after service,” she agreed, and inopportunely the letter slipped
from her hand and fell, with the address down, on the grass. She stooped
hurriedly, but he was before her, and picking it up, returned it
scrupulously, with the right side down, as it had fallen. She slipped it
quickly, almost guiltily, into her prayer-book.
The church was small, the congregation smaller, and the clergyman a
little weary of the empty benches. But the two faces in the Manstey pew
were so bright, so vivid with the vigor of youth, that his jaded mind
freshened to meet the interest of new hearers.
But neither Edith nor Farringdon listened attentively to the sermon, for
their minds were busy with other things. He was thinking of the girl
beside him, whose hymnal he was sharing, and whose voice, very sweet and
clear, if of no great compass, blended with his own fine tenor. Her
thoughts could not stray far from the letter and--from other things!
The benediction sent them from the cool dimness into the sunlight, and
she looked down the street toward the post-office.
“It's quite at the other end of the street,” Farringdon said, opening
his umbrella and tentatively discouraging the effort. “By the way, your
letter won't leave, I remember, until the seven-o'clock train. The
Brathwaites are leaving by that train; you can send your letter down
then.”
She found herself accepting this proposition, for the blaze of the sun
on the length of the dusty street was deterring. They walked back almost
in silence the way they had come; but with his hand on Mrs. Manstey's
gate and the house less than two hundred yards away, Farringdon paused.
“You have been writing to 'Christopher,'” he said, quietly. “I don't
want you to send the letter.” He was quite pale, but she did not notice
it or the tensity of his face; his audacity made her for the moment
dumb.
“You don't want me to--!” She positively gasped. “I never heard of
such--”
“Impertinence,” he supplied, gravely. “It looks that way, I know, but it
isn't. I can't stand on conventions--I've too much at stake. I don't
mean to lose _you_--as you lost your letter!”
She thought she was furious. “You knew it was my letter!” she accused.
They had paused just within the gate, in the shade of a great
mulberry-tree that stood sentinel.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Not at first--but I guessed it. My name,” he
added, “is Christopher, too.”
He took a crumpled sheet, that had been smoothed and folded carefully,
from his pocket. “Do you remember what you wrote?” he asked, in a low
voice.
Her face was crimson.
“It blew to me. Such things don't happen every day.” He had taken off
his hat, and, bareheaded, he bent and looked questioningly into her
eyes. “My name is Christopher,” he repeated. “I can't--it isn't
possible--that I can let another Christopher have that letter.”
Her eyes fell before his.
“I”--he paused--“I play tennis very well, you said. I play to win! What
I give to the interest of a game--”
“Is nothing to what you give to the interests of Christopher!”
As she mockingly spoke, Farringdon caught a glimpse of one or two people
strolling down from the house. “That letter,” he hastily said,--“you
can't take it from me! Do you remember that wind? It blew _you_ to _me!_
Dearest, _darling_, don't be angry. You _can't_ take yourself away.”
A little smile touched her lips--mutinous, but tremulous, too, and
something in her look made his heart beat fast.
“I didn't--The last letter wasn't like the first,” she said,
incoherently, but it seemed he understood.
“I knew you were _you_ as soon as I saw you,” he said, idiotically.
“And,” she murmured, as they walked perforce to meet the people coming
toward them down the drive, “after all, you _were_ Christopher!”
THE WRONG DOOR
BY FRANCIS WILLING WHARTON
The stairs were long and dark; they seemed to stretch an interminable
length, and she was too tired to notice the soft carpet and wonder why
Mrs. Wilson had departed from her iron-clad rules and for once
considered the comfort of her lodgers. The rail of the banisters lay
cold but supporting under the pressure of her weary hand, and, at her
own door at last, she fitted the key in the lock. Something was wrong;
it would not turn; she drew it out and tried the handle. The door
opened, and entering, she stood rooted to the spot.
Had her poor little room doubled its size and trebled its furniture? Her
imagination, always active, for one wild moment suggested that old
Grandaunt Crosbie from over the seas had remembered her poor relatives
and worked the miracle; she always had Grandaunt Crosbie as a possible
trump in the hand of fate. And then the dull reality shattered her
foolish castle--she was in the wrong room. All this comfort had a
legitimate possessor, whose Aunt Crosbie did her proper part in life.
She walked mechanically to a window and looked down; yes, there was the
bleak yard she usually found below her, four houses off; she had come
into the wrong door, and now to retrace her useless steps.
She paused a moment, and slowly revolving, made bitter inventory of the
charming interior. Soft, bright stuffs at the windows, on the chairs;
pictures; books; flowers even; a big bunch of holly on the mantelpiece.
A sitting-room--no obnoxious bed behind an inadequate screen, no horrid
white china pitcher in full view! What woman owned all this? She stared
about for characteristic traces. No sewing! Pipes! It belonged to a man.
She must go. She moved toward the door, and dropped her eyes on the
little hard-coal fire in the grate; it tempted her, and, with a sort of
defiance, she moved over to it and warmed her chilled fingers. A piano,
too, and not to teach children on! To play upon, to enjoy! When was her
time to come? Every dog has his day! Where was hers? Here some man was
surrounded with comforts and pleasures, and she slaved all day at her
teaching, and came home at night tired, cold, to a miserable little
half-furnished room--alone.
Resting her arms on the mantelpiece, she dropped her face a moment on
them and rebelled, kicking hard against the pricks; and sunk in that
profitless occupation, heard vaguely the sound of rapid steps and
suddenly realized what they might mean.
She straightened her young form and stared, fascinated, at the door.
Good heavens! What should she do? What should she say? If she appeared
confused, she would be thought a thief; she must have some excuse: she
had come--to--find a lady--was waiting! She sank into a little chair and
tried not to tremble visibly to the most unobservant eye, and the door
opened, shut, and the owner of the room stood before her.
“How do you do?” said Amory, and coming forward, he shook hands warmly.
“Please forgive me for being late, but I could not get away a moment
before. Where” he looked about the room--“where is Mrs. White?”
The girl had risen nervously, and stood with her fingers clasped,
looking at him; she answered, stammering, “She--I--she--couldn't come.”
“Couldn't come?” repeated the young man. “I'm awfully sorry. Do sit
down.”
She still stood, holding to the back of her chair. “She said she would
come if she could, and I was to--but I had better go.”
Amory laughed. “Not a bit of it. Now I've got you, I sha'n't let you go.
It was very brave of you to come alone. You know brothers-in-law are
presumptuous sometimes.” He smiled down into the soft, shy, dark eyes
raised to his, and looked at his watch. “You must have waited a
half-hour; I said four o'clock. I'm so sorry.”
Her eyes dropped. “I was late, too,” she answered, and felt a horrible
weight lifted from her. (They surely could not be coming; she could go
in a moment; he would never know until she was beyond his reach. But she
reckoned without her host.)
“Draw up to the fire,” he began, and wheeled up a big armchair, and
gently made her sit in it. “Put your feet on the fender and let's have a
long talk. You know I sha'n't see you before the wedding, and I'd like
to know something of my brother's wife. Tom said I must see you once
before you and he got off to Paris, and I may not be able to get West
for the wedding; so this is the one chance I shall have.” He drew his
chair near, and looked down at her with friendly, pleasant eyes.
She must say something. She rested her head on the high back of her
chair, and felt a sensation of bewildered happiness. It was dangerous;
she must get away in a moment; but for a moment she might surely enjoy
this extraordinary situation that fortune had thrust upon her--the
charm of the room, the warmth, and something more wonderful
still--companionship. She looked at him; she must say something.
“You think you can't come to the wedding?” she said, and blushed.
Amory shook his head. “I'm afraid not, though of course I shall try.
Now”--he stared gravely at her--“now tell me how you came to know Tom
and why you like him. I wonder if it is for my reasons or ones of your
own.”
He was surprised by the deep blush which answered his words. What a
wonderful wild-rose color on her rather pale cheek!
“Don't you think it very warm in here?” said the girl.
Amory got up, and going to the window, opened it a little; then,
stopping at his desk, picked up a note and brought it to the fire.
“Why, here is a note from Mrs. White,” he said. “Why didn't you tell
me?”
She had risen, and laid her hand an instant on his arm. “Don't open
it--yet,” she said. Her desperation lent her invention; just in this one
way he must not find her out. She gave him a look, half arch, half
pleading. “I'll explain later,” she said.
Amory felt a stir of most unnecessary emotion; he understood Tom.
“Of course,” he said, dropping it on the mantelpiece,--“just as you
like. Now let's go back to Tom. You see,”--he sat down, and tipping his
chair a little, gave her a rather curious smile,--“Tom and I have been
enigmas to each other always, deeply attached and hopelessly
incomprehensible, and I had my own ideas of what Tom would
marry--and--you are not it;--not in the least!” He leant forward and
brought his puzzled gaze to bear upon her.
She settled deeply into her chair, half to get farther away from those
searching gray eyes, half because she was taking terrible risks, and she
might as well enjoy it; the chair was so comfortable, and the fire so
cheerful, and Amory--it occurred to her with a sort of exhilaration what
it would be to please him. She had pleased other people, why not him?
Her lids drooped; she looked down at her shabby gloves.
“What did you expect?” she said.
He leant back and laughed. “What did I expect? Well, frankly, a silly
little blond thing, all curls and furbelows!”
She raised those heavy lids of hers and gazed straight at him. “Was that
Tom's description?” she asked, and raised her eyebrows. They were
delicately pencilled, and Amory watched her and noted them.
“No,” he answered; “he didn't describe you, but I thought that was his
taste. Now, you are neither silly nor little; no blonde; you have no
curls and no furbelows. In fact”--he smiled with something delightfully
intimate in his eyes--“in fact, you are much more the kind of girl _I_
should like to marry.”
It gave her an absurd little thrill. She sat up, rebellious. “If _I_
would have liked you,” she returned.
Amory laughed and put his hands in his pockets. “Of course,” he said;
“but you would, you know!”
“Why?” she demanded, opening her eyes very wide; and again he inwardly
complimented her on her eyebrows, and above them her hair grew in a
charming line on her forehead. The little points are all pretty, he
thought, and it is the details that count in the long run. How much one
could grow to dislike blurry eyebrows and ugly ears, even if a woman had
rosy cheeks and golden hair!
“Why? Because I should bully you into it. I'm an obstinate kind of
creature, and get things by hanging on. Women give in if you worry them
long enough. But tell me more about Tom,” he went on. “Did he dance and
shoot his way into your heart? I wish I'd been there to see! You take a
very bad tintype, by the way. Tom sent me that.” He got up, and taking a
picture from the mantelpiece, tossed it into her lap, and leaning over
the back of her chair, looked down on it. “Have you a sentiment about
it?” he added, smiling. “It does look like Tom.”
She held it and gravely studied it. She colored, and, still looking at
the picture, felt her way suddenly open. “Yes, it does look like him,”
she said, and putting it down, leant forward and looked into the fire.
“Do you want to know why I accepted Tom?” she added, slowly. She was
fully launched on a career of deception now, and felt a desperate
exultation.
Amory stared at her and nodded.
She kept her eyes on the fire. “I wanted--a home.”
Amory sat motionless, then spoke. “Why--why, weren't you happy with your
aunt and uncle?”
She shook her head. “No; and Tom was good and kind and very--”
Amory got up and shook himself. “Oh, but that's an awful mistake,” he
said.
“I know,” said the girl, and turning, looked at him a moment. “Well,
I've come to tell you that I have--” She hesitated.
Amory slid down into the chair beside her. “Changed your mind?”
“Yes.”
“That note of your aunt's?”
“Yes”
He sat back and folded his arms. “I see,” he said, and there followed a
long silence.
The girl began buttoning and unbuttoning her glove. She must go; she was
frightened, elated, amused. She did not want to go, but go she must.
Would he ever forgive her?
“Don't--don't hate me!” she said.
Amory awoke from his stunned meditation. “My dear young lady, of course
not,” he began; “only, Tom will be terribly broken up. It's the only
thing to do now, I suppose, but why did you do the other?”
She looked at him. As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, she thought.
“I was unhappy and foolish.” She hesitated. “But you needn't be troubled
about Tom. He--” Again she hesitated.
“Not troubled about old Tom!” expostulated Amory.
“Wait.” She put up her hand. “He made a mistake, too; he doesn't care so
very much, and he has already flirted--”
Amory laid his hand on her chair. “Tom!”
“Yes,” she repeated; “he really is rather a flirt, and--”
“Tom!”
She nodded. “Yes; really, it did hurt me a little, only--”
“Tom!”
She faced him. “Yes, Tom. What do you think Tom is--blind and deaf and
dumb? Any man worth his salt can flirt.”
Amory stared at her. “Oh, he can, can he?”
She nodded. “He was very good and kind, but I saw that he was changing;
and then he met a little fair-haired, blue-eyed--”
Amory interposed. “I told you.”
She gave him a curious smile. “Yes, a silly little blond thing, just
that.”
But his satisfaction in his perspicacity was short-lived; he walked up
and down the room in his perplexity. “I can't get over it,” he murmured.
“I thought it a mad love-match, all done in a few weeks; and to have it
turn out like this! You--”
“Mercenary,” she interjected, with a sad little smile.
He looked at her. “Yes; and Tom--”
“Fickle,” she ended again.
“Yes, and Tom fickle. Why, it shakes the foundations!”
The girl felt a sudden wave of shame and weariness. She must go. She
hadn't been fair, but it had been so sudden, so difficult. She looked at
him, and getting up, wondered if she would ever see him again.
“I must go,” she said. “I came--” She hesitated, and a sudden desire to
have him know her as herself swept over her. It needed only another lie
or two in the beginning, and then some truth would come through to
sustain her. She went on: “I came because I wanted to know what you were
like; Tom had talked so much of you, and I wanted some one to understand
and perhaps explain; and now I must go and leave your warm, delightful
room for the comfortless place I live in. Don't think too hardly of me.”
Amory shook his head. “You don't leave me until you have had your tea.”
He rang the bell. “But what do you mean by a comfortless home? Does Mrs.
White neglect you?”
She looked at the fire. “I don't live with her--now; I live alone; I
work for my living.”
Amory got up as the maid brought in the tea-tray, and setting it beside
them, he poured out her tea; as he handed her the cup, he brought his
brows together sternly, as though making out her very mysterious words.
“You work for your living?” he repeated. “I thought you lived with Mrs.
White, and that they were well off.”
“I did, but now I've come back to my real life, which I would have left
had I married Tom.”
He nodded. “I see. I had heard awfully little about it all; I was away,
and then it was so quickly done.”
“I know,” she went on, hurriedly; “but let me tell you, and you will
understand me better later--that is, if you want to understand me.”
“Most certainly I do.” Amory sustained the strange sad gaze of her
charming, heavy-lidded eyes in a sort of maze. Her mat skin looked
white, now that her blushes were gone, and her delicate, irregular
features a little pinched. He drank his tea and watched her while she
talked.
“I teach music,” she began; “to do it I left my relations in the country
and came to this horrible great city. I have one dreary, cold room, as
unlike this as two rooms can be. I have tried to make it seem like a
home, but when I saw this I knew how I had failed.”
“Poor little girl!” said Amory.
“I have the ordinary feelings of a girl,” she went on, “and yet I see
before me the long stretch of a dreary life. I love music; I hear none
but the strumming of children. I like pictures, books, people; I see
none. I like to laugh, to talk; there is no one to laugh with, to talk
to. I am very--unhappy.” The last words were spoken very low, but the
misery in them touched Amory deeply.
“Poor little girl!” he said again, and gently laid his hand on the arm
of her chair. “But how can Tom know this and let you go? You are
mistaken in Tom, I am sure, and--”
The girl straightened her slender figure and rose. “Oh no! it is all
right. He doesn't love me, your Tom; and so the world goes--I must go,
too. I--”
“Don't go,” said Amory. “Let me--” She shook her head. “You have no more
to do; you have comforted and warmed and fed a hungry wanderer, and she
must make haste home. Thank you for everything; thank you.”