The New Argonauts
Mrs. van Geist came flustering out to the carriage.
"You and Briggs may get out here, Jarvis. There, that's for you, and
that's for Briggs--and thank you both very much!"
"Child, child! what does it mean?"
"Mr. Bines is my husband, Muetterchen, and we're leaving for the West in
the morning."
The excitement did not abate for ten minutes or so. "And do say
something cheerful, dear," pleaded Avice, at parting.
"You mad child--I was always afraid you might do something like this;
but I _will_ say I'm not altogether _sure_ you've acted foolishly."
"Thank you, you dear old Muetterchen! and you'll come to see us--you
shall see how happy I can be with this--this boy--this Lochinvar,
Junior--I'm sure Mrs. Lochinvar always lived happily ever after."
Mrs. Van Geist kissed them both.
"Back to Thirty-seventh Street, driver."
"I shall want you at seven-thirty sharp, to-morrow morning," he said,
as they alighted. "Will you be here, sure?"
"Sure, boss!"
"You'll make another one of those if you're on time."
The driver faced the bill toward the nearest street-light and scanned
it. Then he placed it tenderly in the lining of his hat, and said,
fervently:
"I'll _be_ here, gent!"
"My trunks," Avice reminded him.
"And, driver, send an express wagon at seven sharp. Do you understand,
now?"
"Sure, gent, I'll have it here at seven, and be here at seven-thirty."
They went in.
"You've sent Briggs off, and I've all that packing and unpacking to
do."
"You have a husband who is handy at those things."
They went up to her room where two trunks yawned open.
Under her directions and with her help he took out the light summer
things and replaced them with heavier gowns, stout shoes, golf-capes,
and caps.
"We'll be up on the Bitter Root ranch this summer, and you'll need
heavy things," he had told her.
Sometimes he packed clumsily, and she was obliged to do his work over.
In these intervals he studied with interest the big old room and her
quaint old sampler worked in coloured worsteds that had faded to greys
and dull browns: _"La Nuit Porte Conseil."_
"Grandma Loekermann did it at the convent, ages ago," she told him.
"What a cautious young thing she must have been!"
She leaned against his shoulder.
"But she eloped with her true love, young Annekje Van Schoule; left the
home in Hickory Street one night, and went far away, away up beyond One
Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, somewhere, and then wrote them about
it."
"And left the sampler?"
"She had her husband--she didn't need any old sampler after that--_Le
mariage porte conseil, aussi, monsieur._ And now, you've married your
wife with her wedding-ring, that came from Holland years and years
ago."
It was after midnight when they began to pack. When they finished it
was nearly four.
She had laid out a dark dress for the journey, but he insisted that she
put it in a suit-case, and wear the one she had on.
"I shouldn't know you in any other--and it's the colour of your eyes. I
want that colour all over the place."
"But we shall be travelling."
"In our own car. That car has been described in the public prints as a
'suite of palatial apartments with all modern conveniences.'"
"I forgot."
"We shall be going West like the old '49-ers, seeking adventure and
gold."
"Did they go in their private cars?"
"Some of them went in rolling six-horse Concords, and some walked, and
some of them pushed their baggage across in little hand-carts, but they
had fun at it--and we shall have to work as hard when we get there."
"Dear me! And I'm so tired already. I feel quite done up."
She threw herself on the wide divan, and he fixed pillows under her
head.
"You boy! I'm glad it's all over. Let's rest a moment."
He leaned back by her, and drew her head on to his arm.
"I'm glad, too. It's the hardest day's work I ever did. Are you
comfortable? Rest."
"It's so good," she murmured, nestling on his shoulder.
"Uncle Peter took his honeymoon in a big wagon drawn by a mule team,
two hundred miles over the 'Placerville and Red Dog Trail--over the
mountains from California to Nevada. But he says he never had so happy
a time."
"He's an old dear! I'll kiss him--how is it you say--'good and plenty.'
Did our Uncle Peter elope, too?"
He chuckled.
"Not exactly. It was more like abduction complicated with assault and
battery. Uncle Peter is pretty direct in his methods. The young lady's
family thought she could do better with a bloated capitalist who owned
three-eighths of a saw-mill. But Uncle Peter and she thought she
couldn't. So Uncle Peter had to lick her father and two brothers before
he could get her away. He would have licked the purse-proud rival, too,
but the rival ran into the saw-mill he owned the three-eighths of, and
barricaded the whole eight-eighths--the-five-eighths that didn't belong
to him at all, you understand--and then he threatened through a chink
to shoot somebody if Uncle Peter didn't go off about his business. So
Uncle Peter went, not wanting any unnecessary trouble. I've always
suspected he was a pretty ready scrapper in those days, but the poor
old fellow's getting a bit childish now, with all this trouble about
losing the money, and the hard time he had in the snow last winter. By
the way, I forgot to ask, and it's almost too late now, but do you like
cats?"
"I adore them--aren't kittens the _dearest?"_
"Well--you're healthy--and your nose doesn't really fall below the
specifications, though it doesn't promise that you're any _too_
sensible,--but if you can make up for it by your infatuation for cats,
perhaps it will be all right. Of course I couldn't keep you, you know,
if you weren't very fond of cats, because Uncle Peter'd raise a row--"
She was quite still, and he noted from the change in her soft breathing
that she slept. With his free hand he carefully shook out a folded
steamer rug and drew it over her.
For an hour he watched her, feeling the arm on which she lay growing
numb. He reviewed the day and the crowded night. He _could_ do
something after all. Among other things, now, he would drop a little
note to Higbee and add the news of his marriage as a postscript. She
was actually his wife. How quickly it had come. His heart was full of a
great love for her, but he could not quite repress the pride in his
achievement--and Shepler had not been sure until he was poor!
He lost consciousness himself for a little while.
When he awoke the cold light of the morning was stealing in. He was
painfully cramped, and chilled from the open window. From outside came
the loud chattering of sparrows, and far away he could hear wagons as
they rattled across a street of Belgian blocks from asphalt to asphalt.
The light had been late in coming, and he could see a sullen grey sky,
full of darker clouds.
Above the chiffonier he could see the ancient sampler.
_"La Nuit Porte Conseil."_ It was true.
In the cold, pitiless light of the morning a sudden sickness of
doubting seized him. She would awake and reproach him bitterly for
coercing her. She had been right, the night before,--it was madness.
They had talked afterward so feverishly, as if to forget their
situation. Now she would face it coldly after the sleep.
_"La Nuit Porte Conseil."_ Had he not been a fool? And he loved her so.
He would have her anyway--no matter what she said, now.
She stirred, and her wide-open eyes were staring up at him--staring
with hurt, troubled wonder. The amazement in them grew--she could not
understand.
He stopped breathing. His embrace of her relaxed.
And then he saw remembrance--recognition--welcome--and there blazed
into her eyes such a look of whole love as makes men thrill to all
good; such a look as makes them know they are men, and dare all great
deeds to show it. Like a sunrise, it flooded her face with dear,
wondrous beauties,--and still she looked, silent, motionless,--in an
ecstasy of pure realisation. Then her arms closed about his neck with a
swift little rushing, and he--still half-doubting, still curious--felt
himself strained to her. Still more closely she clung, putting out with
her intensity all his misgiving.
She sought his lips with her own--eager, pressing.
"Kiss me--kiss me--kiss me! Oh, it's all true--all true! My best-loved
dream has come all true! I have rested so in your arms. I never knew
rest before. I can't remember when I haven't awakened to doubt, and
worry, and heart-sickness. And now it's peace--dear, dear, dearest
dear, for ever and ever and ever."
They sat up.
"Now we shall go--get me away quickly."
It was nearly seven. Outside the sky was still all gloom.
In the rush of her reassurance he had forgotten his arm. It hung limp
from his shoulder.
"It was cramped."
"And you didn't move it?"
They beat it and kneaded it gaily together, until the fingers were full
of the rushing blood and able again to close warmly over her own little
hand.
"Now go, and let me get ready. I won't be long."
He went below to the library, and in the dim grey light picked up a
book, "The Delights of Delicate Eating." He tried another, "101
Sandwiches." The next was "Famous Epicures of the 17th Century." On the
floor was her diary. He placed it on the table. He heard her call him
from the stairs:
"Bring me up that ring from the table, please!"
He went up and handed it to her through the narrowly opened door.
As he went down the stairs he heard the bell ring somewhere below, and
went to the door.
"Baggage!"
The two trunks were down and out. "They're to go on this car, attached
to the Chicago Express." He wrote the directions on one of his cards
and paid the man.
At seven-thirty the bell rang again. The cabman was there.
"Seven-thirty, gent!"
"Avice!"
"I'm coming. And there are two bags I wish you'd get from my room." He
let her pass him and went up for them.
She went into the library and, taking up the diary, tore out a sheet,
marked heavily upon it with a pencil around the passage she had read
the evening before, and sealed it in an envelope. She addressed it to
her father, and laid it, with a paper-weight on it, upon "The Delights
of Delicate Eating," where he would be sure to find it.
The book itself she placed on the wood laid ready in the grate to
light, touched a match to the crumpled paper underneath and put up the
blower. She stood waiting to see that the fire would burn.
Over the mantel from its yellow canvas looked above her head the
humourously benignant eyes of old Annekje Van Schoule, who had once
removed from Maspeth Kill on Long Island to New Haarlem on the Island
of Manhattan, and carried there, against her father's will, the
yellow-haired girl he had loved. His face now seemed to be pretending
unconsciousness of the rashly acted scenes he had witnessed--lest, if
he betrayed his consciousness, he should be forced, in spite of
himself, to disclose his approval--a thing not fitting for an elderly,
dignified Dutch burgher to do.
"Avice!"
"Coming!"
She took up a little package she had brought with her and went out to
meet him.
"There's one errand to do," she said, as they entered the carriage,
"but it's on our way. Have him go up Madison Avenue and deliver this."
She showed him the package addressed: "Mr. Rulon Shepler, Personal."
"And this," she said, giving him an unsealed note. "Read it, please!"
He read:
"DEAR RULON SHEPLER:--I am sure you know women too well to have thought
I loved you as a wife should love her husband. And I know your bigness
too well to believe you will feel harshly toward me for deciding that I
could not marry you. I could of course consistently attribute my change
to consideration for you. I should have been very little comfort to
you. If I should tell you just the course I had mapped out for
myself--just what latitude I proposed to claim--I am certain you would
agree with me that I have done you an inestimable favour.
"Yet I have not changed because I do not love you, but because I do
love some one else with all my heart; so that I claim no credit except
for an entirely consistent selfishness. But do try to believe, at the
same time, that my own selfishness has been a kindness to you. I send
you a package with this hasty letter, and beg you to believe that I
shall remain--and am now for the first time--
"Sincerely yours,
"AVICE MILBREY BINES.
"P.S. I should have preferred to wait and acquaint you with my change
of intention before marrying, but my husband's plans were made and he
would not let me delay."
He sealed the envelope, placed it securely under the cord that bound
the package, and their driver delivered it to the man who opened
Shepler's door. As their train emerged from the cut at Spuyten Duyvil
and sped to the north along the Hudson, the sun blazed forth.
"There, boy,--I knew the sun must shine to-day."
They had finished their breakfast. One-half of the pink roses were on
the table, and one from the other half was in her hair.
"I ordered the sun turned on at just this point," replied her husband,
with a large air. "I wanted you to see the last of that town under a
cloud, so you might not be homesick so soon."
"You don't know me. You don't know what a good wife I shall be."
"It takes nerve to reach up for a strange support and then kick your
environment out from under you--as Doctor von Herzlich would have said
if he'd happened to think of it."
"But you shall see how I'll help you with your work; I was capable of
it all the time."
"But I had to make you. I had to pick you up just as I did that first
time, and again down in the mine--and you were frightened because you
knew this time I wouldn't let you go."
"Only half-afraid you wouldn't--the other half I was afraid you would.
They got all mixed up--I don't know which was worse."
"Well, I admit I foozled my approach on that copper stock--but I won
you--really my winnings in Wall Street are pretty dazzling after all,
for a man who didn't know the ropes;--there's a mirror directly back of
you, Mrs. Bines, if you wish to look at them--with a pink rose over
that kissy place just at their temple."
She turned and looked, pretending to be quite unimpressed.
"I always was capable of it, I tell you,--boy!"
"What hurt me worst that night, it showed you could love _some_
one--you did have a heart--but you couldn't love me."
She did not seem to hear at first, nor to comprehend when she went back
over his words. Then she stared at him in sudden amazement.
He saw his blunder and looked foolish.
"I see--thank you for saying what you did last night--and you didn't
mind--you came to me anyway, in spite of _that_."
She arose, and would have gone around the table to him, but he met her
with open arms.
"Oh, you boy! you do love me,--you do!"
"I must buy you one of those nice, shiny black ear-trumpets at the
first stop. You can't have been hearing at all well.... See,
sweetheart,--out across the river. That's where our big West is, over
that way--isn't it fresh and green and beautiful?--and how fast you're
going to it--you and your husband. I believe it's going to be a good
game... for us both... my love..."
THE END.