Without even waiting for an answer from her husband regarding his
opinion or wishes in the matter, Edna hastened her preparations for
quitting her home on Esplanade Street and moving into the little house
around the block. A feverish anxiety attended her every action in that
direction. There was no moment of deliberation, no interval of repose
between the thought and its fulfillment. Early upon the morning
following those hours passed in Arobin’s society, Edna set about
securing her new abode and hurrying her arrangements for occupying it.
Within the precincts of her home she felt like one who has entered and
lingered within the portals of some forbidden temple in which a
thousand muffled voices bade her begone.
Whatever was her own in the house, everything which she had acquired
aside from her husband’s bounty, she caused to be transported to the
other house, supplying simple and meager deficiencies from her own
resources.
Arobin found her with rolled sleeves, working in company with the
house-maid when he looked in during the afternoon. She was splendid and
robust, and had never appeared handsomer than in the old blue gown,
with a red silk handkerchief knotted at random around her head to
protect her hair from the dust. She was mounted upon a high stepladder,
unhooking a picture from the wall when he entered. He had found the
front door open, and had followed his ring by walking in
unceremoniously.
“Come down!” he said. “Do you want to kill yourself?” She greeted him
with affected carelessness, and appeared absorbed in her occupation.
If he had expected to find her languishing, reproachful, or indulging
in sentimental tears, he must have been greatly surprised.
He was no doubt prepared for any emergency, ready for any one of the
foregoing attitudes, just as he bent himself easily and naturally to
the situation which confronted him.
“Please come down,” he insisted, holding the ladder and looking up at
her.
“No,” she answered; “Ellen is afraid to mount the ladder. Joe is
working over at the ‘pigeon house’—that’s the name Ellen gives it,
because it’s so small and looks like a pigeon house—and some one has to
do this.”
Arobin pulled off his coat, and expressed himself ready and willing to
tempt fate in her place. Ellen brought him one of her dust-caps, and
went into contortions of mirth, which she found it impossible to
control, when she saw him put it on before the mirror as grotesquely as
he could. Edna herself could not refrain from smiling when she fastened
it at his request. So it was he who in turn mounted the ladder,
unhooking pictures and curtains, and dislodging ornaments as Edna
directed. When he had finished he took off his dust-cap and went out to
wash his hands.
Edna was sitting on the tabouret, idly brushing the tips of a feather
duster along the carpet when he came in again.
“Is there anything more you will let me do?” he asked.
“That is all,” she answered. “Ellen can manage the rest.” She kept the
young woman occupied in the drawing-room, unwilling to be left alone
with Arobin.
“What about the dinner?” he asked; “the grand event, the _coup
d’état?_”
“It will be day after to-morrow. Why do you call it the ‘_coup
d’état?_’ Oh! it will be very fine; all my best of everything—crystal,
silver and gold, Sèvres, flowers, music, and champagne to swim in. I’ll
let Léonce pay the bills. I wonder what he’ll say when he sees the
bills.”
“And you ask me why I call it a _coup d’état?_” Arobin had put on his
coat, and he stood before her and asked if his cravat was plumb. She
told him it was, looking no higher than the tip of his collar.
“When do you go to the ‘pigeon house?’—with all due acknowledgment to
Ellen.”
“Day after to-morrow, after the dinner. I shall sleep there.”
“Ellen, will you very kindly get me a glass of water?” asked Arobin.
“The dust in the curtains, if you will pardon me for hinting such a
thing, has parched my throat to a crisp.”
“While Ellen gets the water,” said Edna, rising, “I will say good-by
and let you go. I must get rid of this grime, and I have a million
things to do and think of.”
“When shall I see you?” asked Arobin, seeking to detain her, the maid
having left the room.
“At the dinner, of course. You are invited.”
“Not before?—not to-night or to-morrow morning or to-morrow noon or
night? or the day after morning or noon? Can’t you see yourself,
without my telling you, what an eternity it is?”
He had followed her into the hall and to the foot of the stairway,
looking up at her as she mounted with her face half turned to him.
“Not an instant sooner,” she said. But she laughed and looked at him
with eyes that at once gave him courage to wait and made it torture to
wait.