THE CHINESE COAT
By Jennette Lee
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons
1920
TO
GERALD STANLEY LEE
“I take my way along the island’s edge”
CONTENTS
THE CHINESE COAT
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
THE CHINESE COAT
I
Eleanor MORE walked away from the coat. She looked back at it across
the glass case of fichus and ribbon bows, and went on down the aisle of
show-cases to the coats and suits at the end. Stewart’s was having a
sale of coats and suits, and Eleanor More was there—not because she
could afford to buy anything, even at a sale, but because she was a
woman.
She had been passing the store and seen the crowd pressing in through
the wide doors... She had hesitated a minute and gone in.
It was nearly six o’clock now, and the crowd had thinned. Here and
there a wandering figure could be seen, half ready for flight, pausing
to peck at some bargain crumb; and helpers with long gray covers were
appearing and shrouding the glass cases and counters for the night. The
light in the shop began to seem gray and a little ghostly; out of it the
gold and blue colors of the Chinese coat gleamed freshly, like a bit of
Oriental flame caught in this dull sale of Western goods and held fast.
Eleanor More glanced at the coat again—down through the gray-shrouded
counters. Then she turned swiftly and went back. It stood by itself on
its dummy figure at the end of the glass cases; in the fading light from
a window above, the fantastic gold shadows of the dragons chased each
other and played hazily across it.
She halted before it, and half reached out her hand to it.
A woman with a large bust and paper cuffs on her sleeves came drifting
toward her. “Anything I can show you, madam?”
Eleanor More looked up. “I was looking at this coat.” Her hand moved
vaguely to the dragons.
The woman’s eyes followed the gesture. “It’s a great bargain!”
She put out her hand to it.
“Would you like to slip it on?”
Eleanor More drew back. “Oh—I wasn’t thinking of buying. I was
looking. I just happened—to see it——”
The woman’s hands were busy with the neck of the coat. She slipped it
deftly from the lay figure and held it up. “No harm in trying,” she
said.
Eleanor More looked at it and drew away—and came back. She held out
her hands with a little laughing gesture.
“No—I cannot afford—” She put her hands into the blue sleeves
with the quaint trailing ends and drew it up about her.
The woman gave a little pat to the shoulders and smiled, pointing to a
long mirror at the right.
Eleanor More moved to the mirror; she stood looking at herself.
Behind her stretched the gray counters—shrouded in for the night’s
rest. Only a figure here and there was visible in the distance. Her eyes
caught the empty spaces behind her.
“It is late!” she said hastily. “I am keeping you!” She looked
over her shoulder at the woman who seemed, in the gray light, receding
dimly.
But she came forward with a smile. “There is no hurry.” She touched
the coat and adjusted it.
“It suits you perfectly!”
Eleanor More glanced again into the long mirror. The blue and gold
covered her from head to foot; and above it, her face looked out at her,
a little mistily, and smiled to her.
She shook her head and the mirrored lady shook her head—slowly. Then
they both smiled radiantly and the gold dragons crumpled their tails as
the coat was flung swiftly back.
“I don’t know why I put it on! I think it bewitched me! Here—take
it! Thank you very much.” She spoke—half under her breath, and the
woman took the coat in her hands. She stood smoothing the folds.
“It is a great bargain—marked down for to-day.” She touched the
tag with casual finger, and Eleanor’s eyes followed the motion.
“I know—It’s absurdly cheap—and very beautiful! But I simply
cannot afford it! Thank you for showing it to me—so late!” She
moved, a little blindly, toward the stairs. The elevator had ceased to
run.
When she was gone the woman stood with the coat in her hand irresolute.
A helper coming by with an armful of gray covers cast a flitting glance
at it.
“Want a top?”
But she shook her head. “I will put it in the box for to-night.”
The helper went on down the aisle. The woman drew a box from beneath
the counter and folded the dragons with careful hand, and smoothed their
tails and placed the coat in its box. Through a bit of tissue-paper
across the top of the blue and gold it gleamed and shimmered softly, and
the woman brushed light finger-tips across it as she pressed the paper
down and tucked it in and set the box aside.
Then she went down the room, and disappeared among the shadows of
counters and cases, and the shop was left alone. Darkness slipped in
from outside, and pushed the grayness before it. It clothed the dummy
figure in black, and descended on the box of dragons, blotting it out.
It covered the whole room.
In the darkness beneath the counter lay the Chinese coat, with its bit
of tissue-paper lying across the glory of blue and gold, safely tucked
away.
Only the vast oblongs of windows remained to show faintly, against the
street outside, where the light came in.
II
THAT night she dreamed of the coat. She saw its soft folds descending on
her out of the sky, and she held up her hands to it and caught it to
her and wrapped it about her and ran in the wind, singing. And all the
dragons came alive and pranced beside her—and she threw off the coat
and ran with the dragons, unclothed. And the freedom of it was like
life—flooding down on her out of the sky; and then the dragons moved
from her—they were receding into the distance, their great heads held
high; and she ran, stumbling, after them, alone and naked—and suddenly
she was in a crowded street and the people were looking at her, and
shame drew about her as a vast garment; she shrank back into it, trying
to hide—but there was no cover for her—and she woke with a dry,
choking sob.
She got carefully out of bed and tiptoed from the room, closing the
door behind her. In the next room, she could see the daylight straggling
through the curtains. She threw up the shades and watched it come. A
flush of light was in the sky over the mean little houses at the rear;
even the houses themselves, not yet touched by the light, had a fresh,
waiting look; and in the chicken-yards the hens ran about busily,
pecking at something, or nothing. In one of the vacant lots a man was
hoeing. His bent back had a look of strength. As she watched him, he
stopped his work a moment and looked up at the sky. Then he went on
hoeing, with slow strokes.
The rooms were filled with light when she came from her bath; and she
threw open the windows, and went about getting breakfast with quick
steps.
She put the plates on the table and paused and went to the door and
opened it. The little porch outside, half-shaded with vines, was
streaked with sunshine along the floor. She stepped out on to it,
holding out her hand, as if to test the warmth.
She drew a table from the wall and brought a cloth for it and laid the
table for breakfast on the porch.
Presently she looked up. A man in the doorway was surveying her with a
smile.
She came across to him and lifted her face.
He bent to kiss it. “Up early, weren’t you!”
“I couldn’t sleep—Do you like it—out here?” She waved her
hand.
“Fine!” He surveyed the table. “Couldn’t be beat! Shall I bring
things out?”
“I was afraid you might not like it.” She poured his coffee.
“Father never liked it—eating out-of-doors—at home.”
“This is home,” said the man. He was sipping his coffee and looking
contentedly at the vine-shadows on the floor.
“My other home, I mean.”
“You never had any other home.”
“Well—what I called home—till I knew better!” She laughed the
words at him, and he nodded gravely.
“Father used to wear his hat—some days his muffler—if we tried to
eat out-of-doors. So we gave it up. I am glad you like it!”
She fell silent, watching the shadows; and he watched her face. She was
quiet a long time.
The man finished his breakfast—he looked at her.
“What are you thinking of?” he asked.
She started. “Oh—I—Nothing very much.” She flashed a little look
at him and got up from the table.
“Better tell me,” he suggested.
“It wasn’t anything—not anything that will ever be—anything.”
She began to gather up dishes.
“Made you look pretty happy,” he said.
“Did it?” she laughed out. She stood a moment, looking thoughtfully
at the vine-shadows on the cloth.... “It was a coat I saw at
Stewart’s, yesterday—a perfectly absurd coat—for me!”
“No coat could be absurd for you—not if you wanted it!”
“Yes—I wanted it—I suppose.” She looked again at the white cloth
and waited. “I think it bewitched me.... It was a Chinese coat, you
see!”
He looked at her blankly. “A Chinese coat—for you!”
She nodded. “I told you it was absurd!”
“Well—” He regarded it thoughtfully. “If you want it... But what
could you do with—a Chinese coat?”
“That’s what I don’t know.” She was very meek. “I just seemed
to think—I wanted it.”
“You couldn’t wear it to church?”
“No-o—” She hesitated. “I could wear it to the opera—if we
should go.”
He laughed out. “And to the circus!” He came around and touched her
hair where the light fell on it. “How much did it cost—this Chinese
thingumabob?”
“Fifty dollars—” It came out slowly—and he whistled softly
between his teeth.
“For the opera!” he said.
She threw out her hands. “Of course I didn’t mean it! But you asked
me—what I was thinking about——”
“Of course I did!” He was prompt. “And I’ll see what we
have—to spare.”
He moved toward the door. “Sure you couldn’t use it for anything
else”—he looked back over his shoulder—“except the opera?”
“Well—I could make a kimono of it.” She glanced at him
half-pleadingly—then she laughed out. “I don’t want the old thing!
I don’t know why I told you!”
III
If she thought of the coat through the day, there was no sign of it in
her face. She went about her work with busy, preoccupied look. She
did the dishes, and dusted and made beds and went to market; and after
luncheon, which she had by herself on the porch, she lay down, a little
while, watching the streaks of light that came through the blind-slats
and fell across the matting, and almost reached to the bed... and when
she saw them again, they were lying along the pillow close to her—and
it was five o’clock.
She sprang up with a little exclamation and hurried to the kitchen.
But, after all, Richard was late, and everything was ready when he came.
He cast a happy look about the room,
“Nice home!” he said.
She smiled and set the dinner on the table.
“You were late.”
“Well, rather! It’s been a great day—” He looked at her
thoughtfully across the table, and took up the carving-knife and tested
it gently on his thumb. “Martin came in—about the lot, next door!”
She glanced quickly at him. “What did he say?”
“Said he’s ready—to sell.”
They were both silent.
Presently she gave a little sigh. “Well, of course we can’t—But
it’s too bad!”
He looked at her, smiling. “That’s the queer thing! It’s just
possible——”
“What do you mean?”
“Well—I’d been looking things over—about your Chinese coat, you
know——”
“Oh-h!” Her glance held his.
He nodded. “I’d made up my mind to get it for you—if it took our
last
“But I told you—”
He held up a hand. “And I’d just figured out how I could do
it—when Martin came in and offered the lot for three hundred—fifty
dollars down.”
Her eyes were on his face.
“Of course, yesterday, or day before, I should have said—we
couldn’t do it.... But there was the money—in my hand,
practically.”
“Did you give it to him?” She leaned forward, a little breathless.
He looked at her. “Do you think I did?”
“Why—I—don’t know.”
He got up and came over to her and bent down. “It is your Chinese
coat!” he said. “You didn’t suppose I was going to mortgage your
possessions—without letting you know!”
“You mean I can have it—the coat!” She had clasped her hands—she
was gazing at something far beyond him—far beyond the room, it seemed.
He watched her face a minute. “You sure can have your coat—if you
want it!” he said softly.
She drew a long breath and the light ran back into her face, flooding
it.
“Oh—!” She threw out her hands. “I don’t want it!—I just
wanted to be sure I could want it—if I wanted to!”
“I know.” He looked down at her with quiet understanding.
“So it is the lot?” he said.
“Of course it is the lot! Go and eat your dinner, silly boy!”
IV
They were not likely to forget the night they decided to buy the lot
next door. It seemed the beginning of married life together. To be sure,
they had been married nearly a year and they had bought and furnished
the house; they had even bought a strip of land on the other side of the
house that had come into the market soon after they were married—while
they still had a little money to spare.
But in all their purchases before, there had been an element that
marked them off by themselves. This new purchase was something
different—something entered into from choice, and with a free heart.
They called it the Chinese lot.
It was Eleanor who named it and told
Richard laughingly. But even to herself it was not a common, every-day
name. It seemed a kind of dream-place, in a faint, happy light, with
Chinese dragons chasing across it.
Within twenty-four hours after their decision, the deed for the lot was
in Richard’s pocket; and twenty-four hours later the fence between was
torn down, and builders were at work on a wall that took in the new lot
and made the whole place one.
Eleanor More watched the men with shining eyes. When her work was done
she took her sewing-basket and went into the sunshine across the yard,
and stepped over the boundary into the new lot. Just beyond the boundary
was a great oak-tree, with wide branches and great roots bulging out
of the ground. As she sat down under the tree, she noted the roots; the
happy thought crossed her mind of children playing there—each great
root a playhouse—with little dishes and mud pies.... Her eyes followed
the dream, as she unfolded her work and sat sewing, with the light
flecking down on her and on the root playhouses and green grass.
Richard More found her there when he came home from work. He went across
to see how much had been finished on the wall. Then he came back and
stood and watched her swift needle and the light on her hair.
She looked up.
“Nice place!” he said approvingly.
“Yes—I like the roots!” She patted one of them beside her.
He looked at it vaguely.
“Fine!” he said.
She smiled, but she did not explain.
“Why didn’t you ever sit here before?” he demanded, looking about
him.
The needle paused. “Why—?... We never owned it before!”
“You didn’t have to own it—to sit on it.”
“Oh, yes I did! Owning it is half the sitting on it!”
He threw himself on the ground beside her and looked up into the
oak-tree, throwing back his head.
Her puzzled eyes regarded him.
“I should never think of coming out here to sit—if we didn’t own
it—you know that.”
“Hah! Just like a woman!”
She pricked the needle through the muslin in her hand.
“There was the fence,” she said.
“Climb over!” He had taken a pipe from his pocket.
She reached out her hand. “Not before dinner!” decisively.
“You’ll spoil your appetite!” She captured the pipe.
“Oh, very well!” He leaned against the tree and watched her.
She was folding her sewing neatly. “I should never have climbed
over!” She pinned the work together in a compact roll and nodded to
him.
“You could have gone round—” he said with a teasing note.
“You know what I mean, Dick! I shouldn’t have wanted to sit under a
tree that did not belong to us—and that belonged to the Martins or to
the Suttons, or to anybody—and not in our own yard—nobody would!”
“Funny idea!” said Dick slowly. “Same tree, same place, just
Ours!”
She smiled at him. “Help me up! It’s time for dinner.”
He strolled across the grass beside her to the house, and helped set the
table while she was in the kitchen.
He did not smoke his pipe. She had laid it on a high shelf over the
mantel as she came in. She had to climb on a chair to reach the mantel.
Dick could have reached it with one lift of his hand. But he only eyed
it, half-humorously, as he set out doilies and finger-bowls and counted
spoons, and called out to the kitchen to know how many forks were
needed.
Not for worlds would he have taken down the pipe—not for a single
whiff. He had a kind of savage pleasure in it—watching it up
there—with its old familiar brown bowl turned to the wall.... Time had
been when that pipe was his only friend.... He did not own a house and
lot then—and an oak-tree....
He peeped out of the window at the tree, serene in the evening light....
Suddenly he saw a Chinese Coat—blue and gold, she had said it was; and
the happiness in his face deepened. He whistled softly between his
teeth as he arranged forks and spoons.... “Our forks and spoons!” he
said—and laughed out.
She came to the door. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing—my dear—nothing!” and she returned to the kitchen.
Richard More had not married until he was thirty-five. Eleanor was
twenty-six. It had not been easy to win her. She had her tutoring to
do.... He took her away from her home town—into his kitchen. But he
knew she was happy—far happier than she had been in her little world
that looked up to her.... As for himself, he felt as if he moved in
a new world—a great world that stretched through leagues—to the
moon—or the sun.... The pipe-dreams of old days seemed like hen-coop
dreams in the spaces in Eleanor’s mind. Each day he began exploration
anew; and each day, in the little circle of her being, he seemed to
sweep out into the world—great cosmic paths, and tracks of stars and
shining spaces....
She came from the kitchen, smoothing down the sleeves of her gown and
casting a last look at the table.
“Too many forks!” she said.
She removed one from each plate, and put it back in its place—neatly
in its compartment in the drawer of the shining sideboard.
V
A MONTH later he hurried home one day from work. It was Saturday noon,
and a half-holiday for him.
She was finishing her luncheon. The light in the half-darkened
dining-room seemed to him mysterious and cool as he came in from the
street outside.
She looked up in surprise. “You are home early!”
He glanced at her plate. “Through luncheon?”
“Almost—Do you want something?”
“No. I’ve had mine—Let’s go off somewhere!”
In ten minutes she was ready and they left the house. He tucked the key
in his vest pocket and they hurried across the lawn to catch an outgoing
car.
As he passed the oak-tree he glanced at it with a knowing smile. He
might almost have been said to wag his head at it. And he patted the
pocket where the key lay.... Close beside the key were five round golden
disks—little yellow disks that might at any minute turn into great
gold dragons.
They left the car at a fork in the road and were in the open country;
they climbed a high hill, and a hill behind the high hill, and came out
at last upon a bluff overlooking miles of country.
She took off her hat and sat down with a happy sigh, lifting her face to
the breeze that came across the hill.
“Isn’t it good!”
He nodded, without speaking. His eyes were on the mountains in the
distance. His heart was talking to five gold coins that lay just over it
and caused it to beat in a jolly happy rhythm.
He put out a hand and touched hers.
“Something nice has happened today!” he said.
She turned her eyes to him.
“I think this is pretty nice!” Her hand swept all the reach of space
about them.
“Guess,” he said teasingly.
“Something we want?”
“Of course. More than anything in the world,” he said after a
minute.
She turned her eyes on him gravely. She looked at him a full minute.
“How do you know that?” she said softly.
“I know.” He moved nearer to her, and they watched the light
change and sweep in great shadows across the fields below. “You want
it—more than anything in the world,” he said, speaking slowly. “I
knew you did—when I took it for the lot.”
She patted the hand that lay beside her own.
“I did not want it—not so very much,” she said. “Anyway, I
wanted the lot more.... And, besides, I’ve been so busy getting ready
for Annabel——”
“Getting ready for William Archer,” he corrected gravely.
“Getting ready for Annabel—” she pursued, “that I have not had
time to think about things—just things for myself.”
“This is not just for yourself—it is for me, too.”
She turned a startled, half-questioning look at him.
He nodded gayly, watching her face. “Did you think I didn’t want
that Chinese coat?”
“Oh, did you?” Her face had flushed like a child’s. “I thought I
was—just silly about it!”
“So you were. That’s why I wanted it for you.... But, of course, it
was sensible to get the lot.”
“Of course!” Her assent was wholehearted and happy.
“So now we’re going to get the coat, too—to-day. I had some money
come in”—he patted his pocket—“and there’s enough.”
“It may be gone—!” she said quickly.
“Don’t think so. I sent over word. They’ve got a Chinese coat.”
“Oh, I hope it is the same one—!” She breathed a happy sigh.
“We ought to go right away!” She started up.
“Time enough.” He spoke lazily. “I told them to hold it—till
five o’clock.” He took out his watch. “Two hours. Plenty of
time.”
She sank back. Presently she looked at him.
“I never guessed how much I wanted it! I did not know!”--after a little
pause--"I think I did not let myself know."
Then they talked for a while about Annabel--whose name was William
Archer, he pointed out to her.... And they laid plans that ran far ahead
into the future--almost till Annabel was an old lady and lonely--only
she would have married by that time--and there would be other
Annabels.... It seemed to stretch away infinitely.
It was all wonderful--and mysterious. She turned and buried her face in
the moss for a long time and was very quiet.
And overhead a great bird passed by. Richard watched the circling
flight.
She patted her hair and began to pin on her hat.
He watched her, smiling gravely.
“Now we will go and buy the coat,” he said—“that wonderful
Chinese coat—blue and gold, I think you said, my dear—with the great
gold dragons on it!”
VI
As they drew near the store he became aware that she was deeply excited;
there was a little flush in her face, and she walked with quickened
step. He laid his hand on her arm protectingly. But she did not slow her
pace.
“Plenty of time,” he said softly in her ear.
She only gave him a sidelong glance and hurried on.
“It may not be the one!” she murmured as they entered the store.
“Then we’ll hunt till we find one like it!” he replied valiantly.
Through the elevator grills she recognized the woman who had waited on
her before, and she went swiftly toward her.
“We have come to see the coat,” she said simply.
The woman looked at her, almost in pity, it seemed.
“There’s another party interested in the coat—You mean the Chinese
coat, I suppose?”
Eleanor’s face was blank. There was a little catch in her throat.
The woman reached down a hand beneath the counter. “We promised to
hold it—” She glanced at the clock, and drew out a box.
“The other party said he was pretty sure to take it.”
Through the tissue-paper a maze of blue and gold showed dimly.
She lifted the paper, throwing it back.
“I guess I’m the other party,” said Richard More. He stooped
forward, smiling a little.
“Of course you are!” said Eleanor with a breath of relief. “Of
course you are—the ’other party’.”
She turned to the woman. “It was my husband wanted to see it,” she
said almost proudly.
The woman consulted a slip of paper. “Name of ’More’.” she
asked.
Richard nodded. “Let’s have a look at it.”
The woman lifted the garment from the box and flung it wide on the
counter before them; and all the color in it glowed softly and the
colors that lay on the counter about it glared and seemed hard.
“Pretty thing!” said Richard More. He pulled his mustache a little
nervously.
The woman lifted the coat and shook it out.
“Let madam try it on,” she suggested.
She came from behind the counter and placed it on Eleanor’s shoulders,
smoothing the folds.
“It’s not a usual garment—Not every one could wear a garment like
that.” She moved back a little, gazing with half-closed eyes.
“It suits madam perfectly!”
The husband surveyed it. “Turn around,” he commanded.
Eleanor turned and moved from him down the cleared space to the mirror.
And he was conscious of something remote in her movements. She seemed to
withdraw, to hold herself removed, wrapped in the blue and gold folds of
the coat.
He moved after her and she turned and faced him.
“It’s all right!” he said approvingly.
He half put out his hand to touch an end of blue sleeve that trailed
away to a tasselled cord.... Then he withdrew his hand. “It’s all
right!” he repeated vaguely.
The clerk came forward and lifted the tassel and let it fall in place;
her fingers sprayed over the garment in an easy, official way.
“How much is it?” asked Richard More.
She consulted the tag hanging on a bit of gold cord in front. She
dropped it.
“Ninety-five dollars,” she said indifferently.
She stooped to arrange a fold of the coat.
Eleanor More turned a little. She seemed to gaze down with wide,
reproachful eyes at the woman’s bent form.
Her husband’s tone was crisp. “We understood the price was—less
than that,” he said.
The woman straightened herself and looked at him. “That was last
month—for the sale. It was marked down.”
“And now it’s marked up, is it?” he asked a little cynically.
She assented and touched the coat gently with her fingers, stroking it.
“It is a coat Mr. Stewart bought himself,” she said—“in China.
He found it when he was buying goods—and liked it. But we’ve had it
in stock some time, and he told me to mark it down for the sale. After
that, when no one bought it”—she seemed to look at Eleanor almost
with reproachful eyes—“then he told me to put back the original
price.... It’s more than worth it, of course.”
“Of course,” said Richard absently. He was wondering how much
Eleanor really wanted the coat.
She had not spoken from the moment it was laid on her shoulders. She
seemed to have withdrawn into it—to have become an inaccessible part
of its mystery and charm.
“I had not expected—to pay more than fifty dollars,” said Richard
More slowly. “I happen to have that amount with me——-”
The woman waited on the suggestion.... She looked at the two people
before her.
“I’ll speak to Mr. Stewart—if he hasn’t gone. It’s not like
regular stock. I don’t know whether he would sell it for less——”
She moved away from them down the store and they stood, with all the
dummy figures standing around, and waited for her.
Richard More did not speak. He longed to ask his wife whether she wanted
it as much as that—as much as ninety-five dollars. But he could not
shape the words that would say it. He almost wondered whether she would
understand—if he asked her.
She stood with her hands hanging idle and her eyes looking down. She was
like a prehistoric creature—an Oriental Madonna of ageless form and
beauty.... Almost, he fancied, there were tears in the lidded eyes....
He started and turned brusquely.
The clerk was coming back. He looked at her keenly as she came toward
them.
She shook her head. “Ninety-five dollars,” she said. “But you can
have a charge, of course.”
His hand moved to his pocket and his eyes were on his wife’s face.
She turned, with a shiver of the long silken lines, and she threw back
the coat with a laugh.
“How absurd, Richard I—We can’t pay all that money—for a
whim!”
His hand stayed itself from the pocket. “Don’t you want it?” he
asked doubt-ingly.
“Of course not!” She shook the coat from her and stepped out.
The woman caught it with a quick gesture as it fell.
His hand waited, fingering the coins in his pocket. “I think we could
manage it——”
“Oh—! I don’t want it!” She ignored the woman. She moved swiftly
past her and was half-way to the elevator. He sprang after her, with a
backward glance of apology at the woman, who stood with the coat on her
arm, gazing after them.
In the elevator Eleanor shivered a little, and he squeezed her arm in
his in the darkness.
“It’s all right!” he said soothingly, beneath his breath.
She nodded and pressed a little against him.
When they stepped into the light he glanced at her face. It had almost a
tragic look.
“Better go back and get it,” he said peremptorily. “Hang the
price!”
But she shook her head.
Half-way to the door, he touched her arm. “Let’s get it!” he said
coax-ingly.
“I don’t want it!” She turned a gaze on him—half-tragic,
half-humorous.... “Do you know why I would not get it?” she
demanded.
“I don’t know anything!” he declared, jostling through the crowd
to keep pace with her. “I’m incapable of knowing—anything!”
She smiled—a little wistful smile—up at him. “I wouldn’t get
it.... Can you hear me?”
“Yes. I can hear you.” He bent his head to her, and they moved as a
unit through the crowd. “I can hear you. Go ahead!”
“I thought suddenly”—she gasped a little—“how awful it would
be if Annabel should ever want to have clothes—things to wear—as
badly as I wanted that coat—and all those dear little beasts winding
around on it!... It wasn’t a coat!” Her lips were close to his ear,
a little smile seemed to run from them to him, and he laughed out.
“It wasn’t a coat!” she said fiercely. “It was a blue and gold
temptation—with dragons! I wouldn’t have it—at any price!”
“Not for fifty dollars?” he asked—and he bent a keen look at her
unconscious face in the crowd.
“Not if they would give it to me!” she said with swift decision.
“I want Annabel to be mild in her nature!”
Richard More followed her. Privately he fancied that Annabel would be a
person who would know her own mind. If she wanted a blue and gold coat,
she would have it, he thought; and if she didn’t want a blue and gold
coat, she wouldn’t have it, he thought.... And William Archer—?
Well—blue and gold were not exactly colors to be desired in the case
of William Archer. In any case Annabel and William Archer must look out
for themselves.
He was going back to-morrow, or the first chance he could, and buy that
Chinese coat for his wife. He wanted it for her.... As they made their
way out of the store, he saw it again, wrapped about her, and he saw
the down-bent face with its look of mystery, rising above the shimmering
folds.
VII
She seemed to have brought away with her some secret of the coat—a
touch of its mystery and charm.
Richard watched her as she went about the house, occupied with little
things. He fancied there was a look in her face that came and went
shadowily—as if the curtains before a hidden place were swept aside by
an unseen wind.... And before he could look again—it was gone.
Her face in repose was very common-place, he knew; it had grown a little
full and there was a humorous, almost conceited, little upward twist to
the mouth, that he found annoying.... And then suddenly, when she was
off guard, the look had fled and he was gazing at the strange face.
He found himself growing troubled, driven by a force he did not quite
comprehend—a disbelief in the solid earth and the turning of the
seasons.... He had sown grass-seed in the new lot; the wall was finished
and vines had been planted at its base. But the lot had to his eyes an
unsubstantial look. He had an almost superstitious feeling that it had
been bought with a price.
He had gone back for the Chinese coat the Monday morning after they were
there. He was waiting at the door when the store opened and he hurried
directly to the first floor, too impatient to wait for the elevator to
make its trip.
The woman saw him coming. She stopped her work and waited.... He fancied
her look was a little startled.
He told her he would take the coat. He would pay part on it and have the
rest charged—he would take it with him.
Little by little he grasped the fact that the coat was gone.
“But we were here late! There was no one else.... You had no chance to
sell it!” He could have believed she was lying to him.
But her face was open—and there was unmistakable regret in her voice.
“I would have reserved it for you with pleasure over Sunday, or
longer—if you had told me.... I thought your wife did not care for
it.”
“She—she may have thought the price was a little steep,” he
admitted. “But I wanted her to have it—I intended she should have
it.”
“I am sorry. A woman came—not two minutes after you left—I still
had the coat on my arm. She must have been in the elevator that came up
as you went down.... And the minute she saw the coat she stopped. She
seemed to know she wanted it.
“I tried it on her right there where we stood, and she bought it and
paid for it and took it away.... I don’t think she meant to buy a
coat when she came up. She was looking for something else, I think, and
happened to see the coat and took a fancy to it and bought it. I’m
sorry you did not tell me to save it.... It was much more becoming to
your wife. It really seemed made for your wife.” Her voice was full of
interest and a gentle kindness.
There were no customers in the store; he felt as if he and the woman
were alone in a vast place. She was not a mere clerk. She seemed linked
with the coat and its destiny, and with their lives.
He thanked her and went away. And the next day he went again to see if
they could get him a duplicate of the coat—if he left an order.
She looked at him tolerantly. “A coat like that,” her glance seemed
to say, “is to be taken when you have the chance—and not be coming
back for duplicate orders!”
“There was not a chance in a thousand,” she told him.
“I’ll take your order, of course, and I’ll tell Mr. Stewart. But
they don’t make those coats by the dozen; and, besides, it is very,
very old—hundreds of years, perhaps.”
“I know!” He groaned a little.
He seemed to see all the mysterious color of the coat and the shimmer
of its folds—and the look in Eleanor’s face. “I hope you can get
something like it for us,” he said inanely.
He had not gone back to inquire again.
They had his address; they were to send him word if they found anything.
Mr. Stewart was to make a trip to the East very soon. She would send him
word.
It was left at that. They would send him word.... He planned, in the
back of his mind, to buy the coat for Eleanor but not to give it to
her—not just yet. He would buy it, he thought, and put it away; and
when William Archer arrived, he would bring it out and throw it about
her shoulders. He liked to fancy her in it and to think how it would
help her disappointment about Annabel.... She could enjoy it to the
full. She would not be afraid of injuring Annabel or her morals—when
William Archer was there.
But no word came and the months slipped by.
VIII
THEN, one evening, Richard More came home from the office and found a
new look in his house. He knew it, even before he caught a glimpse of
a nurse’s white cap hurrying through the lower hall and before the
doctor met him at the foot of the stair.
“I am just going,” said the doctor.
“Going—?” Richard caught himself. “Has it come?”
The doctor smiled at him—at the ignorance and youthful credulity of
it.
“I shall be back in an hour or two. Everything is going splendidly.
Your wife has courage!” And he was gone.
“Courage—Eleanor? Of course she had courage! She was made of it.
What did the doctor know about Eleanor’s courage?” He hurried up the
stairs... the fleeting sense of life in his quick steps.
She turned to him with the little upward twist of her lip. “It’s all
right, Dickie!”
There was no mystery, no courage—only Eleanor’s competent look as
if there were dusting to be done, and men-folks were better out of the
way.... And yet, behind it, he had a sense that she withdrew to some
high place, to a remote, inaccessible cliff, and looked down on him with
wide eyes.
He wandered miserably about the house; a part of the night he slept, and
part of it he spent at the telephone, sending orders for the doctor
and nurse, and answering the door-bell when the response came.... All
through the early hours he longed fiercely for the arrival of William
Archer. Then, as the night went on, he lost interest in William Archer
and his coming, and would have welcomed Annabel.... And he cast aside
even the thought of Annabel. He longed only for an end to the misery....
And when at last the doctor said in businesslike tones, “A fine girl,
Mr. More!” he only blinked at him, and his tousled hair took on a more
rebellious twist.
“A fine girl! What of it!... What had girls to do with this?”
“A fine girl” did not connect herself, in any vague way, with
Annabel or with life.... Probably a new girl for the kitchen....! Well,
they needed a girl! They needed a dozen girls!
He wandered out miserably—and the doctor followed him with a quick
look and something in a glass.
“Here, drink this!”
And Richard drank it—and looked at him stupidly. Something was
happening inside his brain—things were growing more settled and
luminous. A smile wreathed his face.
“It’s a girl, is it?” he cried jubilantly.
The doctor nodded.
Richard More clapped him on the shoulder.
“Good work!” he said.
The doctor removed the shoulder gently. He turned toward Eleanor’s
room.
“You can stay outside,” he said as he disappeared. “We shall not
need you for a while.”
And Richard sat down in his parlor on the small sofa and took his
tousled head in his hands and held it fast. He may have dozed a little.
When he got up and straggled to the kitchen, he found a strange woman
making a fire in the range.
She had finished polishing off the top of the range and held a black
cloth in her hand. The hand was very black, he noticed.
He nodded to her and went past her to the door and opened it. The world
looked very fresh. The earth and the grass on either side the path were
very dark and moist—as if they had been dipped in some curious fluid,
and the sky had a kind of luminous quality—swelling with fulness and a
freshness of light.
Richard More looked up at it and drew in a deep breath—and with the
intake he understood, for the first time, that all men see the earth
new-washed one morning in their lives. He had a sense of kinship with
the earth and with every one living on the earth.
When he turned back to the kitchen, the woman was putting the black
cloth under the sink.
“It’s a girl!” he said. He tried in vain to keep the morning out
of his voice.
“Glory be to God!” said the woman. She turned promptly and
straightened her back and beamed on him.
He held out his hand to her and grasped the blackened one. He did not
suspect how many young fathers had shaken hands with cooks.
His experience was unique. He looked about the kitchen with
satisfaction.
Ellen Murphy brought some broth and put it on the gas-range.
He watched her with kindling eyes.
He had been familiar with his kitchen before. But it had not looked to
him just as it looked now.... That broth she was heating was for
his wife... to keep her alive. He looked at a row of saucepans with
intelligent gaze.
Ellen Murphy tested the broth and went from the room, carrying it with
careful hand.
He watched her disappear and looked about the homelike room.... She was
going to feed Eleanor. Just outside the door was the ice-box, where he
had blundered in the night, breaking up the ice, crushing it for the
doctor—they had told him to hurry—hurry!... Ages ago it seemed. And
now Eleanor was to have her broth. She was being fed.... Those stew-pans
over there were for her. Somehow out of this kitchen, she was to be fed,
his baby was being fed—they were all being fed!
IX
He thrust his hands into his pockets and strolled down the back path to
the chicken-yard. He peered through the wire at the strutting fowls. His
hair was tousled, there were red rims about his eyes—and he had never
felt so alive.
The chicken-yard was close to the back fence; on the other side of the
fence were chicken-yards that belonged to the houses at the rear.
They were very common people in the houses at the rear. And the houses
themselves, facing on the parallel street, were unsightly and small.
Richard had taken pains to have no relations with the houses in the
rear. He had an instinctive sense that it might lead to complications.
A man was at work in the yard across the fence, digging a post-hole.
Richard’s eye fell on him. He came nearer to the fence and leaned on
it and looked over. The man looked up.
Richard nodded. “Fine morning!” he called.
The man nodded a reply, and shifted his pipe in his teeth and thrust his
shovel into the ground. His back was very broad, Richard noticed. There
was something mighty in the swing of the great shoulders as they flung
up the earth out of the hole.
Richard watched a minute in silence. The man paused and wiped his
forehead with the back of his hand. He spit casually on his palms and
took up the shovel.
Richard’s voice halted him and he put down the shovel and came over to
the fence. Richard smiled a little awkwardly.
“I didn’t mean to stop your work. I was wondering what you were
going to put there.” He indicated the hole.
The man’s face was broad, and a little stupid. It stared at Richard.
Then it looked at the hole.
“It’s a new run I’m making for the hens. The old one’s dusty.”
“I see!... You’ve got a fine lot of birds!” Richard waved a hand.
“Pretty good!” The man eyed them with slow pride. “Got nine eggs
yesterday,” he said.
“It’s a great morning!” responded Richard.
The man’s gaze lifted itself to the clear, fresh-washed sky, and came
back and rested on the oak-tree across the lot. “You’ve got a pretty
place—nice tree over there!”
Richard wheeled and faced it. “I bought that tree last spring—needed
more room—for the children—to play.” He spoke with offhand
fatherhood.
“You got children?” said the man. His voice was astonished and a
little pleased.
“One,” said Richard. “A little girl.”
The man nodded pleasantly. “I never saw her playing round,” he said
simply.
“No—well... She was born this morning!” Richard laughed out.
The man smiled at him a slow, deep smile.... And all his face changed in
the light.
“Say, that’s great!” he exclaimed.
“You’re a man now!” he added after a minute. The rough face
grew quiet and strong. And Richard had a sense of something human that
stirred in him. This man digging a post-hole had known!
They stood a minute in silence, looking about them at the morning and
the free space of sky and watching the sun that had come over the roofs
of the shabby houses.
It shone full in Richard’s eyes. He turned abruptly.
“I must go in for breakfast.”
The man spat absently on the ground and went back to his shovelling.
In the chicken-yard the hens scuttled about, picking up chaff and bits
of grain out of the dust. Over in the corner of Richard More’s yard
stood the great oak-tree spreading its branches wide; and in the lot at
the rear the stolid, unkempt man lifted his shovel and thrust it into
the ground and threw out a handful of earth....
As Richard went up the path, he glanced at the house—The blinds of the
upper window to the east were being drawn carefully together.... She
was lying there in the shaded room. She would be sleeping now.... And
suddenly he saw her in the blue coat, as if she lay wrapped in its
folds—in her slumber. He had a sense of loss—that he had not given
it to her.... Perhaps he should never be able to give it to her now.
He glanced at the oak-tree, standing majestic in the lot across the lawn
with its great gnarled roots protruding from the ground. And as he
went up the path he had a sudden blind sense, almost of anger, at the
oak-tree and its strength.
X
The thing that surprised Richard most was the ease and efficiency with
which Eleanor handled Annabel—she seemed to know by instinct things
that Richard could not understand—and that he could not understand how
she came by.
If she reached out her hands to take Annabel, her fingers seemed, of
themselves, to curve into the places where they would fit into the
spineless bundle and give it support. If Richard tried to take up the
bundle, his fingers fell away like the legs of the brittle crab and the
bundle collapsed, incalculable and helpless.
“How do you do it?” he would say. And he would right Annabel and try
to still her protests.
And Eleanor would only smile gently, and send him on some masculine
errand while she soothed Annabel’s feelings in the proper way.
Richard had once watched a cat with her kittens and he had a vivid sense
of the kinship of method—so had kittens always been brought into the
world and tended; so they would always be—likewise babies.
It was not something that could be read in a book or taught in a
school.... Eleanor grew very beautiful these days. The little upward
twist left her mouth; and if it grew almost too knowing in its sense of
the boundless and accumulated wisdom of ages as regards babies—that,
Richard decided, was Annabel’s fault.... Really, to know how to manage
a little handful like Annabel might make any one proud.
For one thing, Annabel knew exactly what she wanted.... And she usually
got it. She was often disciplined on the way to it, and thwarted—but
in the end she got what she wanted.
As Richard More watched Annabel’s progress through life, he thought
more than once of the regal gesture with which Annabel’s mother had
thrown back the Chinese coat and cast it aside for Annabel’s sake....
And now he saw Annabel! Life was often very puzzling. But Richard More
had not time to spend working it out. He was too prosperous to puzzle.
Whatever he put his hand to seemed to flourish. Men came to have
faith in his ventures, and to watch for his investments as pointers to
success. His business increased and his family increased.... William
Archer came in due season, and then Claude, and then Martin, and
Christine, and that was the end.
The children grew up healthy and normal, except Claude. There seemed
some obscure trouble with the boy, and before he was six years old it
had declared itself. Within a year, in spite of expensive doctors and
care, he died. That had been their first and their only real sorrow.
It was when they came back to the house from the funeral that he told
Eleanor of his second attempt to get the coat for her.... They were
alone in the house. The children had been sent away during the child’s
illness and had not come back.
He fancied Eleanor drooped a little as they came into the house; and
his mind went out for something to comfort her.... It encountered the
Chinese coat.
So, as they sat together in the house that seemed so curiously desolate
and different from their usual life together, he told her of the morning
he went back to Stewart’s and of his disappointment, and of how he had
never quite given up hope that some day Stewart would send for him and
tell him to come and get the coat.
She listened with wide, set eyes—almost like a child to a fairy-tale.
“That was very dear of you, Richard!” she said. And she smiled to
him, almost as she smiled to the children, and he felt the quick tears
in his eyes.
And then suddenly she had thrown herself in his arms.
“Oh, Dick, I am so lonely!” she cried.
And that was the way she came back to him.
After that, although she still guided the children and her hand was on
the helm in all decisions, it was to Richard she turned for assurance.
She had come apparently to uncharted waters, and she did not try to make
soundings.
And Richard More was as puzzled by her reliance on him as he had been by
her wisdom with babies and with life.
It did not occur to him that in her reliance, too, there might be a kind
of wisdom—not to be expounded by logic, perhaps—but deep as life....
For himself, he knew that he had not wisdom to advise any one. He simply
did what he could—and when his advice prospered, he was as naively and
proudly surprised as any one.
XI
THE children were brought up in the oak-tree. Richard made a cradle-box
at the end of one of the low boughs that almost swept the ground and
there was always one baby in the box on the bough and one on the ground
among the roots—a new one that had just come down from the bough.
And then, presently, one of those on the ground—with the help of
Eleanor and a chair—climbed to the first branches close to the
trunk.... Then another one climbed, and another, till they were all
swarming in the great oak—no longer close to the trunk, but far out on
the branches among the leaves, swinging and lilting in the wind.
The boys played they were sailors climbing the masts that swayed giddily
beneath them; they sat on cross-beams and gazed out to sea; or they were
on the scaffolding of tall buildings, hammering great steel beams into
place as the sky-scrapers rose in the air; or they were the advance
force of an army—scouting aeroplanes, swooping toward a besieged town.