THE UNIMPORTANT FIFTH WHEEL
Better stay with the Morgans! Who was I to be bandied about in such
fashion? Couldn't have me! I wasn't a seamstress who went out by the
day. House packed with company! Well--what of that? Hadn't I more right
there? Wasn't I Alec's own sister? Wasn't I born under the very roof to
which I was now asked not to come? Weren't all my things there--my bed,
my bureau, my little old white enameled desk I used when I was a child?
Where was I to go, I'd like to ask? Couldn't have me! Very well, then, I
wouldn't go!
I called up my brother Malcolm's office in New York. Perhaps he would be
kind enough to engage a room in a hospital somewhere, or at least find a
bed in a public ward. "Sorry, Miss Vars," came the answer finally to me
over the long distance wire, "but Mr. Vars has gone up to Hilton,
Massachusetts, for the week-end. Not returning until Monday."
I sat dumbly gazing into the receiver. Where could I go? Lucy, I was
sure, would squeeze me in somewhere if I applied to her--she always
can--but a letter received from Lucy two days before had contained a
glowing description of some celebrated doctor of science and his wife,
who were to be her guests during this very week. She has but one guest
room. I couldn't turn around and go back to Wisconsin. I couldn't go to
Oliver, now married to Madge. They live in a tiny apartment outside
Boston. There is nothing for me to sleep on except a lumpy couch in the
living-room. Besides there is a baby, and to carry germs into any
household with a baby in it is nothing less than criminal.
Never before had I felt so ignominious as when, half an hour later, I
meekly passed my telegram to Mrs. Morgan and asked if it would be
terribly inconvenient if I did stay after all.
"Not at all. Of course not," she replied coldly. "I shall not turn you
out into the street, my dear. But you stated your wish to go so
decidedly that I have telephoned Henrietta's friends in Orange to come
over to take your place. We had not told you that tickets for the
theater tonight and matinée tomorrow had already been bought. The
friends are coming this evening. So I shall be obliged to ask you to
move your things into the sewing-room."
I moved them. A mean little room it was on the north side of the
house. Piles of clothes to be mended, laundry to be put away, a mop
and a carpet sweeper greeted me as I went in. The floor was untidy
with scraps of cloth pushed into a corner behind the sewing machine.
The mantel was decorated with spools of thread, cards of hooks and
eyes, and a pin-cushion with threaded needles stuck in it. The bed
was uncomfortable. I crawled into it, and lay very still. My heart
was filled with bitterness. My eyes rested on the skeleton of a
dressmaker's form. A man's shirt ripped up the back hung over a
chair. I staid for three days in that room! Mrs. Morgan's family
physician called the first night, and announced to Mrs. Morgan that
probably I was coming down with a slight attack of tonsilitis. I
thought at least it was diphtheria or double pneumonia. There were
pains in my back. When I tried to look at the dressmaker's skeleton
it jiggled uncomfortably before my eyes.
I didn't see the new guests once. Even Henrietta was allowed to speak
to me only from across the hall.
"Tonsilitis _is_ catching, you know, my dear," Mrs. Morgan sweetly
purred from heights above me, "and I'd never forgive myself if the
other two girls caught anything here. I've forbidden Henrietta to see
you. She's so susceptible to germs." I felt I was an unholy creature,
teeming with microbes.
The room was warm; they fed me; they cared for me; but I begged the
doctor for an early deliverance on Monday morning. I longed for home. I
cried for it a little. Edith couldn't have known that I was ill; she
would have opened her arms wide if she had guessed--of course she would.
I ought to have gone in the beginning. I poured out my story into that
old doctor's understanding ears, and he opened the way for me finally.
He let me escape. Very weak and wobbly I took an early train on Monday
morning for Hilton. At the same time I sent the following telegram to my
sister-in-law: "Arrive Hilton 6:15 tonight. Have been ill. Still some
fever, but doctor finally consents to let me come."
Six fearful hours later I found myself, weak-kneed and trembling, on the
old home station platform. I was on the verge of tears. I looked up and
down for Edith's anxious face, or for Alec's--they would be disturbed
when they heard I had a fever, they might be alarmed--but I couldn't
find them. The motor was not at the curb either. I stepped into a
telephone-booth and called the house. Edith answered herself. I
recognized her quick staccato "Hello."
I replied, "Hello, that you, Edith?"
"Yes. Who is this?" she called.
"Ruth," I answered feebly.
"Ruth! Where in the world are you?" she answered.
"Oh, I'm all right. I'm down here at the station. Just arrived. I'm
perfectly all right," I assured her.
"Well, well," she exclaimed. "That's fine. Awfully glad you're back! I
do wish I could send the limousine down for you, Ruth. But I just can't.
We're going out to dinner--to the Mortimers, and we've just _got_ to
have it. I'm awfully sorry, but do you mind taking the car, or a
carriage? I'm right in the midst of dressing. I've got to hurry like
mad. It's almost half-past six now. Jump into a taxi, and we can have a
nice little chat before I have to go. Got lots to tell you. It's fine
you're back. Good-by. Don't mind if I hurry now, do you?"
I arrived at the house ten minutes later in a hired taxicab. I rang the
bell, and after a long wait a maid I had never seen before let me in.
Edith resplendent in a brand new bright green satin gown was just coming
down the stairs. She had on all her diamonds.
"Hello, Toots," she said. "Did you get homesick, dearie? Welcome. Wish I
could kiss you, Honey, but I can't. I've just finished my lips. Why
didn't you telegraph, Rascal? It's a shame not to have you met."
"I did," I began.
"Oh, well, our telephone has been out of order all day. It makes me
tired the way they persist in telephoning telegrams. We do get the
worst service! I had no idea you were coming. Why, I sent off a
perfect bunch of mail to you this very morning. You weren't peeved,
were you, Toots, about my telegram, I mean? I was right in the midst
of the most important house-party I've ever had. As it was I had too
many girls, and at the last minute had to telegraph Malcolm to come
and help me out. And he did, the lamb! The house-party was a
screaming success. I'm going to have a regular series of them all
summer. How do you like my gown? Eighty-five, my dear, marked down
from a hundred and fifty."
"Stunning," I replied, mingled emotions in my heart.
"There!" exclaimed Edith abruptly. "There's your telegram now. Did you
ever? Getting here at this hour!"
A telegraph boy was coming up the steps. I was fortunately near the
door, and I opened it before he rang, received my needless message
myself, and tore open the envelope.
"You're right," I said. "It is my telegram. It just said I was coming.
That's all. It didn't matter much. Guess I'll go up to my room now, if
you don't mind."
"Do, dear. Do," said Edith, "and I'll come along too. I want to show
you something, anyhow. I've picked up the stunningest high-boy you
ever saw in your life. A real old one, worth two hundred and fifty,
but I got it for a hundred. I've put it right outside your room, and
very carefully--oh, _most_ carefully--with my own hands, Honey, I just
laid your things in it. I simply couldn't have the bureau drawers in
that room filled up, you know, with all the house-parties I'm having,
and you not here half the time. I knew _you_ wouldn't mind, and the
high-boy is so stunning!" We had gone upstairs and were approaching it
now. "I put all your underclothes in those long shallow drawers; and
your ribbons and gloves and things in these deep, low ones. And then
up here in the top I've laid carefully all the truck you had stowed
away in that little old white enameled desk of yours. The desk I put
up in the store-room. It wasn't decent for guests. I've bought a new
one to take its place. I do hope you'll like it. It's a spinet desk,
and stunning. Oh, dear--there it is now ten minutes of seven, and I've
simply got to go. I promised to pick up Alec at the Club on the way. I
don't believe I've told you I've had your room redecorated. I wish I
could wait and see if you're pleased. But I can't--simply can't! You
understand, don't you, dear? But make yourself comfy."
She kissed me then very lightly on the cheek, and turned and tripped
away downstairs. When I caught the purr of the vanishing limousine as
it sped away down the winding drive, I opened the door of my room. It
was very pretty, very elegant, as perfectly appointed as any hotel
room I had ever gazed upon, but mine no more. This one little sacred
precinct had been entered in my absence and robbed of every vestige of
me. Instead of my single four-poster were two mahogany sleigh beds,
spread with expensively embroidered linen. Instead of my magazine cut
of Robert Louis Stevenson pinned beside the east window was a signed
etching. Instead of my own familiar desk welcoming me with bulging
packets of old letters, waiting for some rainy morning to be read and
sentimentally destroyed, appeared the spinet desk, furnished with
brand new blotters, chaste pens, and a fresh book of two-cent stamps.
All but my mere flesh and bones had been conveniently stuffed into a
two-hundred and fifty dollar high-boy!
I could have burst into tears if I had dared to fling myself down upon
the embroidered spreads. And then suddenly from below I heard the
scramble of four little feet on the hardwood floor, the eager, anxious
pant of a wheezy little dog hurrying up the stairs. It was Dandy--my
Boston terrier. Somehow, down behind the kitchen stove he had sensed
me, and his little dog heart was bursting with welcome. Only Dandy had
really missed me, sitting long, patient hours at a time at the
living-room window, watching for me to come up the drive; and finally
starting out on mysterious night searches of his own, as he always
does when days pass and I do not return. I heard the thud of his soft
body as he slipped and fell, in his haste, on the slippery hall floor.
And then a moment later he was upon me--paws and tongue and half-human
little yelps and cries pouring out their eloquence.
I held the wriggling, ecstatic little body close to me, and wondered
what it would be like if some human being was as glad to see me as
Dandy.