When Margaret Edes had returned home after the Zenith Club, she
devoted an hour to rest. She had ample time for that before dressing
for a dinner which she and her husband were to give in New York that
evening. The dinner was set for rather a late hour in order to enable
Margaret to secure this rest before the train-time. She lay on a
couch before the fire, in her room which was done in white and gold.
Her hair was perfectly arranged, for she had scarcely moved her head
during the club meeting, and had adjusted and removed her hat with
the utmost caution. Now she kept her shining head perfectly still
upon a rather hard pillow. She did not relax her head, but she did
relax her body, and the result, as she was aware, would be
beautifying.
Still as her head remained, she allowed no lines of disturbance to
appear upon her face, and for that matter, no lines of joy. Secretly
she did not approve of smiles, more than she approved of tears. Both
of them, she knew, tended to leave traces, and other people,
especially other women, did not discriminate between the traces of
tears and smiles. Therefore, lying with her slim graceful body
stretched out at full length upon her couch, Margaret Edes' face was
as absolutely devoid of expression as a human face could well be, and
this although she was thinking rather strenuously. She had not been
pleased with the impression which Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder had made upon
the Zenith Club, because Mrs. Slade, and not she, had been
instrumental in securing her valuable services. Mrs. Edes had a
Napoleonic ambition which was tragic and pathetic, because it could
command only a narrow scope for its really unusual force. If Mrs.
Edes had only been possessed of the opportunity to subjugate Europe,
nothing except another Waterloo could have stopped her onward march.
But she had absolutely nothing to subjugate except poor little
Fairbridge. She was a woman of power which was wasted. She was
absurdly tragic, but none the less tragic. Power spent upon petty
ends is one of the greatest disasters of the world. It wrecks not
only the spender, but its object. Mrs. Edes was horribly and
unworthily unhappy, reflecting upon Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder and Mrs.
Slade. She cared very much because Mrs. Slade and not she had brought
about this success of the Zenith Club, with Mrs. Snyder as
high-light. It was a shame to her, but she could not help it, because
one living within narrow horizons must have limited aims.
If only her husband had enough money to enable her to live in New
York after the manner which would have suited her, she felt capable
of being a leading power in that great and dreadful city. Probably
she was right. The woman was in reality possessed of abnormal nerve
force. Had Wilbur Edes owned millions, and she been armed with the
power which they can convey, she might have worked miracles in her
subtle feminine fashion. She would always have worked subtly, and
never believed her feminine self. She understood its worth too well.
She would have conquered like a cat, because she understood her
weapons, her velvet charm, her purr, and her claws. She would not
have attempted a growling and bulky leap into success. She would have
slid and insinuated and made her gliding progress almost
imperceptible, but none the less remorseless.
But she was fated to live in Fairbridge. What else could she do?
Wilbur Edes was successful in his profession, but he was not an
accumulator, and neither was she. His income was large during some
years, but it was spent during those years for things which seemed
absolutely indispensable to both husband and wife. For instance,
to-night Wilbur would spend an extravagant sum upon this dinner,
which he was to give at an extravagant hotel to some people whom Mrs.
Edes had met last summer, and who, if not actually in the great swim,
were in the outer froth of it, and she had vague imaginings of future
gain through them. Wilbur had carried his dress suit in that morning.
He was to take a room in the hotel and change, and meet her at the
New York side of the ferry. As she thought of the ferry it was all
Mrs. Edes could do to keep her smooth brow from a frown. Somehow the
ferry always humiliated her; the necessity of going up or down that
common, democratic gang plank, clinging to the tail of her fine gown,
and seating herself in a row with people who glanced askance at her
evening wrap and her general magnificence.
Poor Mrs. Edes was so small and slight that holding up magnificence
and treading the deck with her high-heeled shoes was physically
fatiguing. Had she been of a large, powerful physique, had her body
matched her mind, she might not have felt a sense of angry
humiliation. As it was, she realised that for her, _her_, to be
obliged to cross the ferry was an insult at the hands of Providence.
But the tunnel was no better, perhaps worse,--that plunged into
depths below the waters, like one in a public bath. Anything so
exquisite, so dainty, so subtly fine and powerful as herself, should
not have been condemned to this. She should have been able to give
her dinners in her own magnificent New York mansion. As it was, there
was nothing for her except to dress and accept the inevitable.
It was as bad as if Napoleon the Great had been forced to ride to
battle on a trolley car, instead of being booted and spurred and
astride a charger, which lifted one fore-leg in a fling of scorn. Of
course Wilbur would meet her, and they would take a taxicab, but even
a taxicab seemed rather humiliating to her. It should have been her
own private motor car. And she would be obliged to descend the stairs
at the station ungracefully, one hand clutching nervously at the tail
of her gorgeous gown, the other at her evening cloak. It was
absolutely impossible for so slight a woman to descend stairs with
dignity and grace, holding up an evening cloak and a long gown.
However, there would be compensations later. She thought, with
decided pleasure, of the private dining-room, and the carefully
planned and horribly expensive decorations, which would be eminently
calculated to form a suitable background for herself. The flowers and
candle-shades were to be yellow, and she was to wear her yellow
chiffon gown, with touches of gold embroidery, a gold comb set with
topazes in her yellow hair, and on her breast a large, gleaming stone
which was a yellow diamond of very considerable value. Wilbur had
carried in his suit case her yellow satin slippers, her gold-beaded
fan, and the queer little wrap of leopard skin which she herself had
fashioned from a rug which her husband had given her. She had much
skill in fashioning articles for her own adornment as a cat has in
burnishing his fur, and would at any time have sacrificed the
curtains or furniture covers, had they met her needs.
She would not be obliged--crowning disgrace--to carry a bag. All she
would need would be her little case for tickets, and her change
purse, and her evening cloak had pockets. The evening cloak lay
beside the yellow chiffon gown, carefully disposed on the bed, which
had a lace counterpane over yellow satin. The cloak was of a creamy
cloth lined with mink, a sumptuous affair, and she had a tiny mink
toque with one yellow rose as head covering.
She glanced approvingly at the rich attire spread upon the bed, and
then thought again of the dreadful ferry, and her undignified hop
across the dirty station to the boat. She longed for the days of
sedan chairs, for anything rather than this. She was an exquisite
lady caught in the toils of modern cheap progress toward all her
pleasures and profits. She did not belong in a democratic country at
all unless she had millions. She was out of place, as much out of
place as a splendid Angora in an alley. Fairbridge to her instincts
was as an alley; yet since it was her alley, she had to make the best
of it. Had she not made the best of it, exalted it, magnified it, she
would have gone mad. Wherefore the triumph of Mrs. Slade in
presenting Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder seemed to her like an affair of
moment. For lack of something greater to hate and rival, she hated
and rivalled Mrs. Slade. For lack of something big over which to
reign, she wished to reign over Fairbridge and the Zenith Club. Mrs.
Slade's perfectly-matched drawing-room took on the semblance of a
throne-room, in which she had seen herself usurped.
Then she thought of the young clergyman, even as he was thinking of
her. She knew perfectly well how he had been trapped, but she failed
to see the slightest humour in it. She had no sense of humour. She
saw only the additional triumph of Mrs. Slade in securing this rather
remarkable man at the Zenith Club, something which she herself had
never been able to do. Von Rosen's face came before her. She
considered it a handsome face, but no man's face could disturb her.
She held her virtue with as nervous a clutch as she held up her fine
gown. To soil either would be injudicious, impolitic, and she never
desired the injudicious and impolitic.
"He is a handsome man," she said to herself, "an aristocratic-looking
man." Then the telephone bell close beside her divan rang, and she
took up the receiver carefully, not moving her head, sat up, and put
her delicate lips to the speaking tube.
"Hello," said a voice, and she recognised it as Von Rosen's although
it had an agitated, nervous ring which was foreign to it.
"What is it?" she said in reply, and the voice responded with
volubility, "A girl, a young Syrian girl, is at my home. She is in a
swoon or something. We cannot revive her. Is the doctor at home? Tell
him to hurry over, please. I am Mr. von Rosen. Tell him to hurry. She
may be dead."
"You have made a mistake, Mr. von Rosen," said Mrs. Edes' thin voice,
as thin and silvery as a reed. "You are speaking to Mrs. Wilbur Edes.
My telephone number is 5R. You doubtless want Doctor Sturtevant. His
number is 51M."
"Oh, pardon," cried the voice over the telephone. "Sorry to have
disturbed you, Mrs. Edes, I mistook--"
The voice trailed into nothingness. There was a sharp ring. Mrs. Edes
hung up her receiver. She thought slowly that it was a strange
circumstance that Mr. von Rosen should have a fainting or dead young
Syrian girl in his house. Then she rose from the divan, holding her
head very stiffly, and began to dress. She had just enough time to
dress leisurely and catch the train. She called on one of the two
maids to assist her and was quite equipped, even to the little mink
toque, fastened very carefully on her shining head, when there was a
soft push at the door, and her twin daughters, Maida and Adelaide,
entered. They were eight years old, but looked younger. They were
almost exactly alike as to small, pretty features and pale blond
colouring. Maida scowled a little, and Adelaide did not, and people
distinguished them by that when in doubt.
They stood and stared at their mother with a curious expression on
their sharp, delicate little faces. It was not exactly admiration, it
was not wonder, nor envy, nor affection, yet tinctured by all.
Mrs. Edes looked at them. "Maida," said she, "do not wear that blue
hair-ribbon again. It is soiled. Have you had your dinners?"
"Yes, mamma," responded first one, then the other, Maida with the
frown being slightly in the lead.
"Then you had better go to bed," said Mrs. Edes, and the two little
girls stood carefully aside to allow her to pass.
"Good night, children," said Mrs. Edes without turning her
mink-crowned head. The little girls watched the last yellow swirl of
their mother's skirts, disappearing around the stair-landing, then
Adelaide spoke.
"I mean to wear red, myself, when I'm grown up," said she.
"Ho, just because Jim Carr likes red," retorted Maida. "As for me, I
mean to have a gown just like hers, only a little deeper shade of
yellow."
Adelaide laughed, an unpleasantly snarling little laugh. "Ho," said
she, "just because Val Thomas likes yellow."
Then the coloured maid, Emma, who was cross because Mrs. Edes'
evening out had deprived her of her own, and had been ruthlessly
hanging her mistress's gown which she had worn to the club in a wad
on a closet hook, disregarding its perfumed hanger, turned upon them.
"Heah, ye chillun," said she, "your ma sid for you to go to baid."
Each little girl had her white bed with a canopy of pink silk in a
charming room. There were garlands of rosebuds on the wallpaper and
the furniture was covered with rosebud chintz.
While their mother was indignantly sailing across the North River,
her daughters lay awake, building air-castles about themselves and
their boy-lovers, which fevered their imaginations, and aged them
horribly in a spiritual sense.
"Amy White's mother plays dominoes with her every evening," Maida
remarked. Her voice sounded incredibly old, full of faint
derisiveness and satire, but absolutely non-complaining.
"Amy White's mother would look awfully funny in a gown like Mamma's,"
said Adelaide.
"I suppose that is why she plays dominoes with Amy," said Maida in
her old voice.
"Oh, don't talk any more, Maida, I want to go to sleep," said
Adelaide pettishly, but she was not in the least sleepy. She wished
to return to the air-castle in which she had been having sweet
converse with Jim Carr. This air-castle was the abode of innocence,
but it was not yet time for its building at all. It was such a little
childish creature who lay curled up under the coverlid strewn with
rosebuds that the gates of any air-castle of life and love, and
knowledge, however innocent and ignorant, should have been barred
against her, perhaps with dominoes.
However, she entered in, her soft cheeks burning, and her pulse
tingling, and saw the strange light through its fairy windows, and
her sister also entered her air-castle, and all the time their mother
was sailing across the North River toward the pier where her husband
waited. She kept one gloved hand upon the fold of her gown, ready to
clutch it effectually clear of the dirty deck when the pier was
reached. When she was in the taxicab with Wilbur, she thought again
of Von Rosen. "Dominie von Rosen made a mistake," said she, "and
called up the wrong number. He wanted Doctor Sturtevant, and he got
me." Then she repeated the message. "What do you suppose he was
doing with a fainting Syrian girl in his house?" she ended.
A chuckle shook the dark bulk in its fur lined coat at her side. "The
question is why the Syrian girl chose Von Rosen's house to faint in,"
said he lightly.
"Oh, don't be funny, Wilbur," said Margaret. "Have you seen the
dining-room? How does it look?"
"I thought it beautiful, and I am sure you will like it," said Wilbur
Edes in the chastened tone which he commonly used toward his wife. He
had learned long ago that facetiousness displeased her, and he lived
only to please her, aside from his interest in his profession. Poor
Wilbur Edes thought his wife very wonderful, and watched with delight
the hats doffed when she entered the hotel lift like a little
beruffled yellow canary. He wished those men could see her later,
when the canary resemblance had altogether ceased, when she would
look tall and slender and lithe in her clinging yellow gown with the
great yellow stone gleaming in her corsage.
For some reason Margaret Edes held her husband's admiration with a
more certain tenure because she could not be graceful when weighed
down with finery. The charm of her return to grace was a never-ending
surprise. Wilbur Edes loved his wife more comfortably than he loved
his children. He loved them a little uneasily. They were unknown
elements to him, and he sometimes wished that he had more time at
home, to get them firmly fixed in his comprehension. Without the
slightest condemnation of his wife, he had never regarded her as a
woman in whom the maternal was a distinguishing feature. He saw with
approbation the charming externals with which she surrounded their
offspring. It was a gratification to him to be quite sure that
Maida's hair ribbon would always be fresh and tied perkily, and that
Adelaide would be full of dainty little gestures copied from her
mother, but he had some doubts as to whether his wonderful Margaret
might not be too perfect in herself, and too engrossed with the
duties pertaining to perfection to be quite the proper manager of
imperfection and immaturity represented by childhood.
"How did you leave the children!" he inquired when they were in their
bedroom at the hotel, and he was fitting the yellow satin slippers to
his wife's slender silk shod feet.
"The children were as well as usual. I told Emma to put them to bed.
Do you think the orchids in the dining-room are the right shade,
Wilbur?"
"I am quite sure. I am glad that you told Emma to put them to bed."
"I always do. Mrs. George B. Slade is most unpleasantly puffed up."
"Why?"
"Oh, because she got Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder to speak to the club."
"Did she do her stunt well?"
"Well enough. Mrs. Slade was so pleased, it was really offensive."
Wilbur Edes had an inspiration. "The Fay-Wymans," said he (the
Fay-Wymans were the principal guests of their dinner party), "know a
lot of theatrical people. I will see if I can't get them to induce
somebody, say Lydia Greenway, to run out some day; I suppose it would
have to be later on, just after the season, and do a stunt at the
club."
"Oh, that would be simply charming," cried Margaret, "and I would
rather have it in the spring, because everything looks so much
prettier. But don't you think it will be impossible, Wilbur?"
"Not with money as an inducement." Wilbur had the pleasant
consciousness of an unusually large fee which was sure to be his own
before that future club meeting, and he could see no better
employment for it than to enable his adored wife to outshine Mrs.
George B. Slade. When in New York engaged in his profession, Wilbur
Edes was entirely free from the vortex of Fairbridge, but his wife,
with its terrible eddies still agitating her garments, could suck him
therein, even in the great city. He was very susceptible to her
influence.
Margaret Edes beamed at her husband as he rose. "That will make
Marion Slade furious," she said. She extended her feet. "Pretty
slippers, aren't they, Wilbur?"
"Charming, my dear."
Margaret was so pleased that she tried to do something very amiable.
"That was funny, I mean what you said about the Syrian girl at the
Dominie's," she volunteered, and laughed, without making a crease in
her fair little face. She was really adorable, far more than pretty,
leaning back with one slender, yellow-draped leg crossed over the
other, revealing the glittering slippers and one silken ankle.
"It does sound somewhat queer, a Syrian girl fainting in the
Dominie's house," said Wilbur. "She could not have found a house
where her sex, of any nationality, are in less repute."
"Then you don't think that Alice Mendon--?" There was a faint note
of jealousy in Margaret's voice, although she herself had not the
slightest interest in Dominie von Rosen or any man, except her
husband; and in him only because he was her husband. As the husband
of her wonderful self, he acquired a certain claim to respect, even
affection, such as she had to bestow.
"I don't think Alice Mendon would take up with the Dominie, if he
would with her," responded Wilbur Edes hastily. Margaret did not
understand his way of speaking, but just then she looked at herself
in an opposite mirror, and pulled down one side of her blond
pompadour a bit, which softened her face, and added to its
allurement. The truth was Wilbur Edes, before he met Margaret, had
proposed to Alice Mendon. Alice had never told, and he had not,
consequently Margaret did not know. Had she known it would have made
no difference, since she could not imagine any man preferring Alice
to herself. All her jealousy was based upon the facts of her superior
height, and ability to carry herself well, where she knew herself
under many circumstances about as graceful as an Angora cat walking
upon her hind legs. She was absolutely sure of her husband. The
episode with Alice had occurred before he had ever even seen Herself.
She smiled radiantly upon him as she arose. She was conscious of no
affection for her husband, but she was conscious of a desire to show
appreciation, and to display radiance for his delectation.
"It is charming of you to think of getting Lydia Greenway to read,
you dear old man," said she. Wilbur beamed.
"Well, of course, I can not be sure, that is not absolutely sure, but
if it is to be done, I will manage it," said he.
It was at this very time, for radically different notes sound at the
same time in the harmony or discord of life, that Von Rosen's
housekeeper, Jane Riggs, stood before him with that crackling white
apron swept over her face.
"What is it?" asked Von Rosen, and he realised that his lips were
stiff, and his voice sounded strange.
A strange harsh sob came from behind the apron. "She was all bent to
one side with that heavy suit case, as heavy as lead, for I hefted
it," said Jane Riggs, "and she couldn't have been more than fifteen.
Them outlandish girls get married awful young."
"What is it?"
"And there was poor Jack lickin' her hands, and him a dog everybody
is so scared of, and she a sinkin' down in a heap on my kitchen
floor."
"What is it?"
"She has passed away," answered Jane Riggs, "and--the baby is a boy,
and no bigger than the cat, not near as big as the cat when I come to
look at him, and I put some of my old flannels and my shimmy on him,
and Doctor Sturtevant has got him in my darning basket, all lined
with newspapers, the New York _Sun_, and the _Times_ and hot water
bottles, and it's all happened in the best chamber, and I call it
pretty goings on."
Jane Riggs gave vent to discordant sobs. Her apron crackled. Von
Rosen took hold of her shoulders. "Go straight back up there," he
ordered.
"Why couldn't she have gone in and fainted away somewhere where there
was more women than one," said Jane Riggs. "Doctor Sturtevant, he
sent me down for more newspapers."
"Take these, and go back at once," said Von Rosen, and he gathered up
the night papers in a crumpled heap and thrust them upon the woman.
"He said you had better telephone for Mrs. Bestwick," said Jane. Mrs.
Bestwick was the resident nurse of Fairbridge. Von Rosen sprang to
the telephone, but he could get no response whatever from the Central
office, probably on account of the ice-coated wires.
He sat down disconsolately, and the cat leapt upon his knees, but he
pushed him away impatiently, to be surveyed in consequence by those
topaz eyes with a regal effect of injury, and astonishment. Von Rosen
listened. He wondered if he heard, or imagined that he heard, a
plaintive little wail. The dog snuggled close to him, and he felt a
warm tongue lap. Von Rosen patted the dog's head. Here was sympathy.
The cat's leap into his lap had been purely selfish. Von Rosen
listened. He got up, and tried to telephone again, but got no
response from Central. He hung up the receiver emphatically and sat
down again. The dog again came close, and he patted the humble loving
head. Von Rosen listened again, and again could not be sure whether
he actually heard or imagined that he heard, the feeblest, most
helpless cry ever lifted up from this earth, that of a miserable new
born baby with its uncertain future reaching before it and all the
sins of its ancestors upon its devoted head.
When at last the door opened and Doctor Sturtevant entered, he was
certain. That poor little atom of humanity upstairs was lifting up
its voice of feeble rage and woe because of its entrance into
existence. Sturtevant had an oddly apologetic look. "I assure you I
am sorry, my dear fellow--" he began.
"Is the poor little beggar going to live?" asked Von Rosen.
"Well, yes, I think so, judging from the present outlook," replied
the doctor still apologetically.
"I could not get Mrs. Bestwick," said Von Rosen anxiously. "I think
the telephone is out of commission, on account of the ice."
"Never mind that. Your housekeeper is a jewel, and I will get Mrs.
Bestwick on my way home. I say, Von Rosen--"
Von Rosen looked at him inquiringly.
"Oh, well, never mind; I really must be off now," said the doctor
hurriedly. "I will get Mrs. Bestwick here as soon as possible. I
think--the child will have to be kept here for a short time anyway,
considering the weather, and everything."
"Why, of course," said Von Rosen.
After the doctor had gone, he went out in the kitchen. He had had no
dinner. Jane Riggs, who had very acute hearing, came to the head of
the stairs, and spoke in a muffled tone, muffled as Von Rosen knew
because of the presence of death and life in the house. "The roast is
in the oven, Mr. von Rosen," said she, "I certainly hope it isn't too
dry, and the soup is in the kettle, and the vegetables are all ready
to dish up. Everything is ready except the coffee."
"You know I can make that," called Von Rosen in alarm. "Don't think
of coming down."
Von Rosen could make very good coffee. It was an accomplishment of
his college days. He made some now. He felt the need of it. Then he
handily served the very excellent dinner, and sat down at his
solitary dining table. As he ate his soup, he glanced across the
table, and a blush like that of a girl overspread his dark face. He
had a vision of a high chair, and a child installed therein with the
customary bib and spoon. It was a singular circumstance, but
everything in life moves in sequences, and that poor Syrian child
upstairs, in her dire extremity, was furnishing a sequence in the
young man's life, before she went out of it. Her stimulation of his
sympathy and imagination was to change the whole course of his
existence.
Meanwhile, Doctor Sturtevant was having a rather strenuous argument
with his wife, who for once stood against him. She had her
not-to-be-silenced personal note. She had a horror of the alien and
unusual. All her life she had walked her chalk-line, and anything
outside savoured of the mysterious, and terrible. She was
Anglo-Saxon. She was what her ancestresses had been for generations.
The strain was unchanged, and had become so tense and narrow that it
was almost fathomless. Mrs. Sturtevant, good and benevolent on her
chalk-line, was involuntarily a bigot. She looked at Chinese laundry
men, poor little yellow figures, shuffling about with bags of soiled
linen, with thrills of recoil. She would not have acknowledged it to
herself, for she came of a race which favoured abolition, but nothing
could have induced her to have a coloured girl in her kitchen. Her
imaginations and prejudices were stained as white as her skin. There
was a lone man living on the outskirts of Fairbridge, in a little
shack built by himself in the woods, who was said to have Indian
blood in his veins, and Mrs. Sturtevant never saw him without that
awful thrill of recoil. When the little Orientals, men or women,
swayed sidewise and bent with their cheap suitcases filled with
Eastern handiwork, came to the door, she did not draw a long breath
until she had watched them out of sight down the street. It made no
difference to her that they might be Christians, that they might have
suffered persecution in their own land and sought our doorless
entrances of hospitality; she still realised her own aloofness from
them, or rather theirs from her. They had entered existence entirely
outside her chalk-line. She and they walked on parallels which to all
eternity could never meet.
It therefore came to pass that, although she had in the secret depths
of her being bemoaned her childlessness, and had been conscious of
yearnings and longings which were agonies, when Doctor Sturtevant,
after the poor young unknown mother had been laid away in the
Fairbridge cemetery, proposed that they should adopt the bereft
little one, she rebelled.
"If he were a white baby, I wouldn't object that I know of," said
she, "but I can't have this kind. I can't make up my mind to it,
Edward."
"But, Maria, the child is white. He may not be European, but he is
white. That is, while of course he has a dark complexion and dark
eyes and hair, he is as white, in a way, as any child in Fairbridge,
and he will be a beautiful boy. Moreover, we have every reason to
believe that he was born in wedlock. There was a ring on a poor
string of a ribbon on the mother's neck, and there was a fragment of
a letter which Von Rosen managed to make out. He thinks that the poor
child was married to another child of her own race. The boy is all
right and he will be a fine little fellow."
"It is of no use," said Maria Sturtevant. "I can't make up my mind to
adopt a baby, that belonged to that kind of people. I simply can not,
Edward."
Sturtevant gave up the matter for the time being. The baby remained
at Von Rosen's under the care of Mrs. Bestwick, and Jane Riggs, but
when it was a month old, the doctor persuaded his wife to go over and
see it. Maria Sturtevant gazed at the tiny scrap of humanity curled
up in Jane Riggs' darning basket, the old-young face creased as
softly as a rosebud, with none of its beauty, but with a compelling
charm. She watched the weak motion of the infinitesimal legs and arms
beneath the soft smother of wrappings, and her heart pained her with
longing, but she remained firm.
"It is no use, Edward," she said, when they had returned to Von
Rosen's study. "I can't make up my mind to adopt a baby coming from
such queer people." Then she was confronted by a stare of blank
astonishment from Von Rosen, and also from Jane Riggs.
Jane Riggs spoke with open hostility. "I don't know that anybody has
asked anybody to adopt our baby," said she.
Von Rosen laughed, but he also blushed. He spoke rather stammeringly.
"Well, Sturtevant," said he, "the fact is, Jane and I have talked it
over, and she thinks she can manage, and he seems a bright little
chap, and--I have about made up my mind to keep him myself."
"He is going to be baptised as soon as he is big enough to be taken
out of my darning basket," said Jane Riggs with defiance, but Mrs.
Sturtevant regarded her with relief.
"I dare say he will be a real comfort to you," she said, "even if he
does come from such queer stock." Her husband looked at Von Rosen
and whistled under his breath.
"People will talk," he said aside.
"Let them," returned Von Rosen. He was experiencing a strange new joy
of possession, which no possibility of ridicule could daunt. However,
his joy was of short duration. The baby was a little over three
months old, and had been promoted to a crib, and a perambulator, had
been the unconscious recipient of many gifts from the women of Von
Rosen's parish, and of many calls from admiring little girls. Jane
had scented the danger. She came home from marketing one morning,
quite pale, and could hardly speak when she entered Von Rosen's
study.
"There's an outlandish young man around here," said she, "and you had
better keep that baby close."
Von Rosen laughed. "Those people are always about," he said. "You
have no reason to be nervous, Jane. There is hardly a chance he has
anything to do with the baby, and in any case, he would not be likely
to burden himself with the care of it."
"Don't you be too sure," said Jane stoutly, "a baby like that!"
Jane, much against her wishes, was obliged to go out that afternoon,
and Von Rosen was left alone with the baby with the exception of a
little nurse girl who had taken the place of Mrs. Bestwick. Then it
was that the Syrian man, he was no more than a boy, came. Von Rosen
did not at first suspect. The Syrian spoke very good English, and he
was a Christian. So he told Von Rosen. Then he also told him that the
dead girl had been his wife, and produced letters signed with the
name which those in her possession had borne. Von Rosen was
convinced. There was something about the boy with his haughty, almost
sullen, oriental manner which bore the stamp of truth. However, when
he demanded only the suit-case which his dead wife had brought when
she came to the house, Von Rosen was relieved. He produced it at
once, and his wonder and disgust mounted to fever heat, when that
Eastern boy proceeded to take out carefully the gauds of feminine
handiwork which it contained, and press them upon Von Rosen at
exorbitant prices. Von Rosen was more incensed than he often
permitted himself to be. He ordered the boy from the house, and he
departed with strong oaths, and veiled and intricate threats after
the manner of his subtle race, and when Jane Riggs came home, Von
Rosen told her.
"I firmly believe the young rascal was that poor girl's husband, and
the boy's father," he said.
"Didn't he ask to have the baby?"
"Never mentioned such a thing. All he wanted was the article of value
which the poor girl left here."
Jane Riggs also looked relieved. "Outlandish people are queer," she
said.
But the next morning she rushed into Von Rosen's room when he had
barely finished dressing, sobbing aloud like a child, her face
rigidly convulsed with grief, and her hands waving frantically with
no effort to conceal it.