Part 14

“Hurry and dress,” I suggested, soothingly; “there are two gentlemen to see you downstairs.”

Aunt Elizabeth shook her head. She asserted with evident sincerity that she didn't wish to see any gentlemen; she didn't care to see any gentlemen under any circumstances; she never meant to have anything to do with gentlemen again. She said something about becoming a deaconess in the Episcopal Church; she spoke of the attractions in the life of a trained nurse; mentioned settlement work; and asked me what I thought of Elizabeth Frye, Dorothea Dix, and Clara Barton.

“This is one advantage that Catholics have over us,” she observed, dreamily: “one could go into a nunnery; then one would be quite sure there would be no men to let loose the consequences of their natures and conduct upon a woman's whole existence.”

“These two downstairs have waited a good while,” I returned, carelessly. “One of them is a married man and is used to it. But the other is not.”

“Very well,” said Aunt Elizabeth, with what (it occurred to me) was a smile of forced dejection. “To please you, Maria, I will go down.”

If Aunt Elizabeth's dejection were assumed, mine was not. I have been in the lowest possible spirits since my unlucky discovery. Anything and everything had occurred to me except that she and that boy could quarrel. I had fancied him shadowing Mrs. Chataway for the slightest sign of his charmer. I don't know that I should have been surprised to see him curled up, like a dog, asleep on the door-steps. At the present moment I have no more means of finding the wetched lad than I had in Eastridge; not so much, for doubtless Peggy has his prehistoric addresses. I am very unhappy. I have not had the heart left in me to admire Dr. Denbigh, who has filled his role brilliantly all the afternoon. In half an hour he and Aunt Elizabeth had philandered as deep as a six months' flirtation; and I must say that they have kept at it with an art amounting almost to sincerity. Aunt Elizabeth did not once mention settlement work, and put no inquiries to Dr. Denbigh about Elizabeth Frye, Dorothea Dix, or Clara Barton.

I think he took her to the Metropolitan Museum; I know he invited her to the theatre; and there is some sort of an appointment for to-morrow morning, I forget what. But my marked success at this end of the stage only adds poignancy to my sense of defeat at the other.

I am very homesick. I wish I could see Tom. I do hope Tom found my message about Dr. Denbigh.

Twenty-four hours later.--The breeze of yesterday has spun into a whirlwind to-day. I am half stunned by the possibilities of human existence. One lives the simple life at Eastridge; and New York strikes me on the head like some heavy thing blown down. If these are the results of the very little love-affair of one very little girl--what must the great emotion, the real experience, the vigorous crisis, bring?

At “The Sphinx,” as is well known, no male being is admitted on any pretence. I believe the porter (for heavy trunks) is the only exception. The bell-boys are bell-girls. The clerk is a matron, and the proprietress a widow in half-mourning.

At nine o'clock this morning I was peremptorily summoned out of the breakfast-room and ordered to the desk. Two frowning faces received me. With cold politeness I was reminded of the leading clause in the constitution of that house.

“Positively,” observed the clerk, “no gentlemen callers are permitted at this hotel, and, madam, there are two on the door-steps who insist upon an interview with you; they have been there half an hour. One of them refuses to recognize the rule of the house. He insists upon an immediate suspension of it. I regret to tell you that he went so far as to mention that he would have a conversation with you if it took a search-warrant to get it.”

“He says,” interrupted the proprietress in half-mourning, “that he is your husband.”

She spoke quite distinctly, and as these dreadful words re-echoed through the lobby, I saw that two ladies had come out from the reception-room and were drinking the scene down. One of these was the fat lady with the three chins; the other was the poodle girl. She held him, at that unpleasant moment, by a lavender ribbon leash. It seems she gets a permit for him everywhere.

And he is the wrong sex, I am sure, to obtain any privileges at “The Sphinx.”

The mosaic of that beautiful lobby did not open and swallow me down as I tottered across it to the vestibule. A strapping door-girl guarded the entrance. Grouped upon the long flight of marble steps two men impatiently awaited me. The one with the twitching mustache was Dr. Denbigh. But he, oh, he with the lightning in his eyes, he was my husband, Thomas Price.

“Maria,” he began, with ominous composure, “if you have any explanations to offer of these extraordinary circumstances--” Then the torrent burst forth. Every expletive familiar to the wives of good North-American husbands broke from Tom's unleashed lips. “I didn't hear of it till afternoon. I took the midnight express. Billy told Matilda he saw you get aboard the 7.20 train It's all over Eastridge. We have been married thirteen years, Maria, and I have always had occasion to trust your judgment and good sense till now.”

“That is precisely what I told her,” ventured Dr. Denbigh.

“As for you, sir!” Tom Price turned, towering. “It is fortunate for YOU that I find my wife in this darned shebang.--Any female policeman behind that door-girl? Doctor? Why, Doctor! Say, DOCTOR! Dr. Denbigh! What in thunder are you laughing at?”

The doctor's sense of humor (a quality for which I must admit my dear husband is not so distinguished as he is for some more important traits) had got the better of him. He put his hands in his pockets, threw back his handsome head, and then and there, in that sacred feminine vestibule, he laughed as no woman could laugh if she tried.

In the teeth of the door-girl, the clerk, and the proprietress, in the face of the chin lady and the poodle girl, I ran straight to Tom and put my arms around his neck. At first I was afraid he was going to push me off, but he thought better of it. Then I cried out upon him as a woman will when she has had a good scare. “Oh, Tom! Tom! Tom! You dear old precious Tom! I told you all about it. I wrote you a note about Dr. Denbigh and--and everything. You don't mean to say you never found it?”

“Where the deuce did you leave it?” demanded Thomas Price.

“Why, I stuck it on your pin-cushion! I pinned it there. I pinned it down with two safety-pins. I was very particular to.”

“PIN-CUSHION!” exploded Tom. “A message--an important message--to a MAN--on a PIN-cushion!”

Then, with that admirable self-possession which has been the secret of Tom Price's success in life, he immediately recovered himself. “Next time, Maria,” he observed, with pitying gentleness, “pin it on the hen-coop. Or, paste it on the haymow with the mucilage-brush. Or, fasten it to the watering-trough in the square--anywhere I might run across it.--Doctor! I beg your pardon, old fellow.--Now madam, if you are allowed by law to get out of this blasted house I can't get into, I will pay your bill, Maria, and take you to a respectable hotel. What's that one we used to go to when we ran down to see Irving? I can't think---Oh yes--'The Holy Family.'”

“Don't be blasphemous, Price, whatever else you are!” admonished the doctor. He was choking with laughter.

“Perhaps it was 'The Whole Family,' Tom?” I suggested, meekly.

“Come to think of it,” admitted Tom, “it must have been 'The Happy Family.' Get your things on, Mysie, and we'll get out of this inhuman place.”

I held my head as high as I could when I came back through the lobby, with a stout chambermaid carrying my suit-case. The clerk sniffed audibly; the proprietress met me with a granite eye; the lady with the three chins muttered something which I am convinced it would not have added to my personal happiness to hear; but I thought the girl with the lavender poodle watched me a little wistfully as I whirled away upon my husband's big forgiving arm.

The doctor, who had really laughed until he cried, followed, wiping his merry eyes. These glistened when on the sidewalk directly opposite the hotel entrance we met Elizabeth Talbert, who had arranged, but in the agitation of the morning I had entirely forgotten it, to come to see me at that very hour.

So we fell into line, the doctor and Aunt Elizabeth, my husband and I, on our way to take the cars for “The Happy Family,” when suddenly Tom clapped his hands to his pockets and announced that he had forgotten--he must send a telegram. Coming away in such a hurry, he must telegraph to the Works. Tom is an incurable telegrapher (I have long cherished the conviction that he is the main support of the Western Union Telegraph Company), and we all followed him to the nearest office where he could get a wire.

Some one was before him at the window, a person holding a hesitant pencil above a yellow blank. I believe I am not without self-possession myself, partly natural, and partly acquired by living so long with Tom; but it took all I ever had not to utter a womanish cry when the young man turned his face and I saw that it was Harry Goward.

The boy's glance swept us all in. When it reached Aunt Elizabeth and Dr. Denbigh he paled, whether with relief or regret I had my doubts at that moment, and I have them still. An emotion of some species possessed him so that he could not for the moment speak. Aunt Elizabeth was the first to recover herself.

“Ah?” she cooed. “What a happy accident! Mr. Goward, allow me to present you to my friend Dr. Denbigh.”

The doctor bowed with a portentous gravity. It was almost the equal of Harry's own.

After this satisfactory incident everybody fell back instinctively and gave the command of the expedition to me. The boy anxiously yielded his place at the telegraph window to Tom; in fact, I took the pains to notice that Harry's telegram was not sent, or was deferred to a more convenient season. I invited him to run over to “The Happy Family” with us, and we all fell into rank again on the sidewalk, the boy not without embarrassment. Of this I made it my first duty to relieve him. We chatted of the weather and the theatre and hotels. When we had walked a short distance, we met Charles Edward dawdling along over to “The Sphinx” (however reluctantly) to call upon his precious elder sister. So we paired off naturally: Aunt Elizabeth and the doctor in front, Goward and I behind them, and Tom and Charles Edward bringing up the rear.

My heart dropped when I saw what a family party air we had. I felt it to my finger-tips, and I could see that the lad writhed under it. His expression changed from misery to mutiny. I should not have been surprised if he had made one plunge into the roaring current of Broadway and sunk from sight forever. The thing that troubled me most was the poor taste of it: as if the whole family had congregated in the metropolis to capture that unhappy boy. For the first time I began to feel some sympathy for him.

“Mr. Goward,” I said, abruptly, in a voice too low even for Aunt Elizabeth to hear, “nobody wishes to make you uncomfortable. We are not here for any such purpose. I have something in my pocket to show you; that is all. It will interest you, I am sure. As soon as we get to the hotel, if you don't mind, I will tell you about it--or, in fact, will give it to you. Count the rest out. They are not in the secret.”

“I feel like a convict arrested by plainclothes men,” complained Harry, glancing before and behind.

“You won't,” I said, “when you have talked to me five minutes.”

“Sha'n't I?” he asked, dully. He said nothing more, and we pursued our way to the hotel in silence. Elizabeth Talbert and Dr. Denbigh talked enough to make up for us.

Aunt Elizabeth made herself so charming, so acutely charming, that I heard the boy draw one quick, sharp breath. But his eyes followed her more sullenly than tenderly, and when she clung to the doctor's arm upon a muddy crossing the young man turned to me with a sad, whimsical smile.

“It doesn't seem to make much difference--does it, Mrs. Price? She treats us all alike.”

There is the prettiest little writing-room in “The Happy Family,” all blue and mahogany and quiet. This place was deserted, and thither I betook myself with Harry Goward, and there he began as soon as we were alone:

“Well, what is it, Mrs. Price?”

“Nothing but this,” I said, gently enough. “I have taken it upon myself to solve a mystery that has caused a good deal of confusion in our family.”

Without warning I took the muddy letter from my pocket, and slid it under his eyes upon the big blue blotter.

“I don't wish to be intrusive or strenuous,” I pleaded, “none of us wishes to be that. Nobody is here to call you to account, Mr. Goward, but you see this letter. It was received at our house in the condition in which you find it. Would you be so kind as to supply the missing address? That is all I want of you.”

The boy's complexion ran through the palette, and subsided from a dull Indian-red to a sickly Nile-green. “Hasn't she ever read it?” he demanded.

“Nobody has ever read it,” I said. “Naturally--since it is not addressed. This letter went fishing with Billy.”

The young man took the letter and examined it in trembling silence.

Perhaps if Fate ever broke him on her wheel it was at that moment. His destiny was still in his own hands, and so was the letter. Unaddressed, it was his personal property. He could retain it if he chose, and the family mystery would darken into deeper gloom than ever. I felt my comfortable, commonplace heart beat rapidly.

Our silence had passed the point of discomfort, and was fast reaching that of anguish, when the boy lifted his head manfully, dipped one of “The Happy Family's” new pens into a stately ink-bottle, and rapidly filled in the missing address upon the unfortunate letter. He handed it to me without a word. My eyes blurred when I read:

“Personal. Miss Peggy Talbert, Eastridge. (Kindness of Miss Alice Talbert.)”

“What shall I do with it?” I asked, controlling my agitation.

“Deliver it to her, if you please, as quickly as possible. I thought of everything else. I never thought of this.”

“Never thought of--”

“That she might not have got it.”

“Now then, Mr. Goward,” I ventured, still speaking very gently, “do you mind telling me what you took that 5.40 train for?”

“Why, because I didn't get an answer from the letter!” exclaimed Harry, raising his voice for the first time. “A man doesn't write a letter such as that more than once in a lifetime. It was a very important letter. I told her everything. I explained everything. I felt I ought to have a hearing. If she wanted to throw me over (I don't deny she had the right to) I would rather she had taken some other way than--than to ignore such a letter. I waited for an answer to that letter until quarter-past five. I just caught the 5.40 train and went to my aunt's house, the one--you know my uncle died the other day--I have been there ever since. By-the-way, Mrs. Price, if anything else comes up, and if you have any messages for me, I shall be greatly obliged if you will take my address.”

He handed me his card with an up-town street and number, and I snapped it into the inner pocket of my wallet.

“Do you think,” demanded Harry Goward, outright, “that she will ever forgive me, REALLY forgive me?”

“That is for you to find out,” I answered, smiling comfortably; for I could not possibly have Harry think that any of us--even an unpopular elder sister--could be there to fling Peggy at the young man's head. “That is between you and Peggy.”

“When shall you get home with that letter?” demanded Harry.

“Ask my husband. At a guess, I should say tomorrow.”

“Perhaps I had better wait until she has read the letter,” mused the boy. “Don't you think so, Mrs. Price?”

“I don't think anything about it. I will not take any responsibility about it. I have got the letter officially addressed, and there my errand ends.”

“You see, I want to do the best thing,” urged Harry Goward. “And so much has happened since I wrote that letter--and when you come to think that she has never read it--”

“I will mail it to her,” I said, suddenly. “I will enclose it with a line and get it off by special delivery this noon.”

“It might not reach her,” suggested Harry, pessimistically. “Everything seems to go wrong in this affair.”

“Would you prefer to send it yourself?” I asked.

Harry Goward shook his head.

“I would rather wait till she has read it. I feel, under the circumstances, that I owe that to her.”

Now, at that critical moment, a wide figure darkened the entrance of the writing-room, and, plumping down solidly at another table, spread out a fat, ring-laden hand and began to write a laborious letter. It was the lady with the three chins. But the girl with the poodle did not put in an appearance. I learned afterward that the dog rule of “The Happy Family” admitted of no permits.

Harry Goward and I parted abruptly but pleasantly, and he earnestly requested the privilege of being permitted to call upon me to-morrow morning.

I mailed the letter to Peggy by special delivery, and just now I asked Tom if he didn't think it was wise.

“I can tell you better, my dear, day after tomorrow,” he replied. And that was all I could get out of him.

“The Happy Family.”--It is day after tomorrow, and Tom and I are going to take the noon train home. Our purpose, or at least my purpose, to this effect has been confirmed, if not created, by the following circumstances:

Yesterday, a few hours after I had parted from Harry Goward in the blue writing-room of “The Happy Family,” Tom received from father a telegram which ran like this:

“Off for Washington--that Gooch business. Shall take Peggy. Child needs change. Will stop over from Colonial Express and lunch Happy Family. Explicitly request no outsider present. Can't have appearance of false position. Shall take her directly out of New York, after luncheon. Cyrus Talbert.”

Torn between filial duty and sisterly affection, I sat twirling this telegram between my troubled fingers. Tom had dashed it there and blown off somewhere, leaving me, as he usually does, to make my own decisions. Should I tell Harry? Should I not tell Harry? Was it my right? Was it not his due? I vibrated between these inexorable questions, but, like the pendulum I was, I struck no answer anywhere. I had half made up my mind to let matters take their own course. If Goward should happen to call on me when Peggy, flying through New York beneath her father's stalwart wing, alighted for the instant at “The Happy Family”--was I to blame? Could _I_ be held responsible? It struck me that I could not. On the other hand, father could not be more determined than I that Peggy should not be put into the apparent position of pursuing an irresolute, however repentant, lover.... I was still debating the question as conscientiously and philosophically as I knew how, when the bell-boy brought me a note despatched by a district messenger, and therefore constitutionally delayed upon the way.

The letter was from my little sister's fiance, and briefly said:

“My dear Mrs. Price,--I cannot tell you how I thank you for your sisterly sympathy and womanly good sense. You have cleared away a lot of fog out of my mind. I don't feel that I can wait an unnecessary hour before I see Peggy. I should like to be with her as soon as the letter is. If you will allow me to postpone my appointment with yourself, I shall start for Eastridge by the first train I can catch to-day.

“Gratefully yours,

“Henry T. Goward.”

IX. THE MOTHER, by Edith Wyatt

I am sure that I shall surprise no mother of a large family when I say that this hour is the first one I have spent alone for thirty years. I count it, alone. For while I am driving back in the runabout along the six miles of leafy road between the hospital and Eastridge with mother beside me, she is sound asleep under the protection of her little hinged black sunshade, still held upright. She will sleep until we are at home; and, after our anxious morning at the hospital, I am most grateful to the fortune sending me this lucid interval, not only for thinking over what has occurred in the last three days, but also for trying to focus clearly for myself what has happened in the last week, since Elizabeth went on the 5.40 to New York; since Charles followed Elizabeth; since Maria, under Dr. Denbigh's mysteriously required escort, followed Charles; since Tom followed Maria; and since Cyrus, with my dear girl, followed Tom.

On the warm afternoon before Elizabeth left, as I walked past her open door, with Lena, and carrying an egg-nog to Peggy, I could not avoid hearing down the whole length of the hall a conversation carried on in clear, absorbed tones, between my sister and Alice.

“Did I understand you to say,” said Elizabeth, in an assumption of indifference too elaborate, I think, to deceive even her niece, “that this Mr. Wilde you mention is now living in New York?”

“Oh yes. He conducts all the art-classes at the Crafts Settlement. He encouraged Lorraine's sisters in their wonderful work. I would love to go into it myself.”

Lorraine's sisters and her circle once entertained me at tea in their establishment when I visited Charles before his marriage, in New York. They are extremely kind young women, ladies in every respect, who have a workshop called “At the Sign of the Three-legged Stool.” They seem to be carpenters, as nearly as I can tell. They wear fillets and bright, loose clothes; and they make very rough-hewn burnt-wood footstools and odd settees with pieces of glass set about in them. It is all very puzzling. When Charles showed me a candlestick one of the young ladies had made, and talked to me about the decoration and the line, I could see that it was very gracefully designed and nicely put together. But when he noticed that in the wish to be perfectly open-minded to his point of view I was looking very attentively at a queer, uneven wrought-iron brooch with two little pendant polished granite rocks, he only laughed and put his hand on my shawl a minute and brought me more tea.