Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories Part 12

Yet Miss Benton had not expected that cruel indifference when she announced her engagement to the keen old man. For she was fond of him and grateful.

"When do you think of marrying?" had been his single comment. She guessed the unexpressed complement to that thought, "You can stay here until that time. Then good-by."

She found in herself an admirable spirit, and her love added devotion and faith in the future, her lover's future. So she tided over the months of her engagement, when her uncle's displeasure settled down like a fog over the pleasant house. Edwards would run down frequently, but Oliphant managed to keep out of his way. It was none of his affair, and he let them see plainly this aspect of it. Her spirit rose. She could do as other women did, get on without candy and roses, and it hurt her to feel that she had expected money from her uncle. She could show him that they were above that.

So they were married and went to live in a little flat in Harlem, very modest, to fit their income. Oliphant had bade her good-by with the courtesy due to a tiresome Sunday visitor. "Oh, you're off, are you?"

his indifferent tones had said. "Well, good-by; I hope you will have a good time." And that was all. Even the colored cook had said more; the servants in general looked deplorable. Wealth goes so well with a pretty, bright young woman!

Thus it all rested in the way they would accept the bed they had made.

Success would be ample justification. Their friends watched to see how well they would solve the problem they had so jauntily set themselves.

Edwards was by no means a _faineant_--his record at the Columbia Law School promised better than that, and he had found a place in a large office that might answer for the stepping-stone. As yet he had not individualized himself; he was simply charming, especially in correct summer costume, luxuriating in indolent conversation. He had the well-bred, fine-featured air of so many of the graduates from our Eastern colleges. The suspicion of effeminacy which he suggested might be unjust, but he certainly had not experienced what Oliphant would call "life." He had enough interest in music to dissipate in it.

Marriage was an excellent settler, though, on a possible income of twelve hundred!

The two years had not the expected aspiring march, however; ten-dollar cases, even, had not been plenty in Edwards's path, and he suspected that he was not highly valued in his office. He had been compelled to tutor a boy the second year, and the hot summers made him listless. In short, he felt that he had missed his particular round in the ladder.

He should have studied music, or tried for the newspapers as a musical critic. Sunday afternoons he would loll over the piano, picturing the other life--that life which is always so alluring! His wife followed him heroically into all his moods with that pitiful absorption such women give to the men they love. She believed in him tremendously, if not as a lawyer, as a man and an artist. Somehow she hadn't been an inspiration, and for that she humbly blamed herself. How was it accomplished, this inspiration? A loving wife inspired the ordinary man. Why not an artist?

They got into the habit of planning their life all differently--so that it might not be limited and futile. _If_ they had a few thousand dollars! That was a bad sign, and she knew it, and struggled against it. _If_ she could only do something to keep the pot boiling while he worked at his music for fame and success! But she could reduce expenses; so the one servant went, and the house-bills grew tinier and tinier. However, they didn't "make connections," and--something was wrong--she wondered what.

As the second summer came in they used to stroll out of their stuffy street of an evening, up St. Nicholas Avenue, to the Park, or to the Riverside Drive. There they would sit speechless, she in a faded blue serge skirt with a crisp, washed-out shirtwaist, and an old sailor hat--dark and pretty, in spite of her troubled face; he in a ready-made black serge suit, yet very much the gentleman--pale and listless. Their eyes would seek out any steamer in the river below, or anything else that reminded them of other conditions. He would hum a bit from an opera. They needed no words; their faces were evident, though mute, indications of the tragedy. Then they would return at bed-time into the sultry streets, where from the open windows of the flats came the hammered music of the city. Such discordant efforts for harmony! Her heart would fill over him, yearning like a mother to cherish him in all the pleasant ways of life, but impotent, impotent!

She never suggested greater effort. Conditions were hard, she said over and over; if there were only a little money to give him a start in another direction. She admired his pride in never referring to old Oliphant. Her uncle was often in her mind, but she felt that even if she could bring herself to pet.i.tion him, her husband would indignantly refuse to consider the matter.

Still, she thought about it, and especially this summer, for she knew he was then at Quogue. Moreover, she expected her first child. That worried her daily; she saw how hopeless another complication would make their fate. She cried over it at night when the room was too hot to sleep. And then she reproached herself; G.o.d would punish her for not wanting her baby.

One day she had gone down town to get some materials for the preparations she must make. She liked to shop, for sometimes she met old friends; this time in a large shop she happened upon a woman she had known at Quogue, the efficient wife of a successful minister in Brooklyn. This Mrs. Leicester invited her to lunch at the cafe at the top of the building, and she had yielded, after a little urging, with real relief. They sat down at a table near the window--it was so high up there was not much noise--and the streets suddenly seemed interesting to Mrs. Edwards. The quiet table, the pleasant lunch, and the energetic Mrs. Leicester were all refreshing.

"And how is your husband?" Mrs. Leicester inquired, keenly. As a minister's wife she was compelled to interest herself in sentimental complications that inwardly bored her. It was a part of her professional duties. She had taken in this situation at once--she had seen that kind of thing before; it made her impatient. But she liked the pretty little woman before her, and was sorry she hadn't managed better.

"Pretty well," Mrs. Edwards replied, consciously. "The heat drags one down so!"

Mrs. Leicester sent another quick glance across the table. "You haven't been to Quogue much of late, have you? You know how poorly your uncle is."

"No! _You_ must know that Uncle James doesn't see us."

"Well," Mrs. Leicester went on, hastily, "he's been quite ill and feeble, and they say he's growing queer. He never goes away now, and sees n.o.body. Most of the servants have gone. I don't believe he will last long."

Then her worldliness struggled with her conventional position, and she relapsed into innuendo. "He ought to have someone look after him, to see him die decently, for he can't live beyond the autumn, and the only person who can get in is that fat, greasy Dr. Shapless, who is after his money for the Methodist missions. He goes down every week. I wonder where Mr. Oliphant's son can be?"

Mrs. Edwards took in every word avidly while she ate. But she let the conversation drift off to Quogue, their acquaintances, and the difficulty of shopping in the summer. "Well, I must be going to get the train," exclaimed Mrs. Leicester at last. With a sigh the young wife rose, looked regretfully down at the remains of their liberal luncheon, and then walked silently to the elevator. They didn't mention Oliphant again, but there was something understood between them. Mrs. Leicester hailed a cab; just as she gathered her parcels to make a dive, she seemed illuminated with an idea. "Why don't you come down some Sunday--visit us? Mr. Leicester would be delighted."

Mrs. Edwards was taken unawares, but her instincts came to her rescue.

"Why, we don't go anywhere; it's awfully kind, and I should be delighted; I am afraid Mr. Edwards can't."

"Well," sighed Mrs. Leicester, smiling back, unappeased, "come if you can; come alone." The cab drove off, and the young wife felt her cheeks burn.

The Edwardses had never talked over Oliphant or his money explicitly.

They shrank from it; it would be a confession of defeat. There was something abhorrently vulgar in thus lowering the pitch of their life.

They had come pretty near it often this last summer. But each feared what the other might think. Edwards especially was nervous about the impression it might make on his wife, if he should discuss the matter.

Mrs. Leicester's talk, however, had opened possibilities for the imagination. So little of Uncle James's money, she mused, would make them ideally happy--would put her husband on the road to fame. She had almost made up her mind on a course of action, and she debated the propriety of undertaking the affair without her husband's knowledge.

She knew that his pride would revolt from her plan. She could pocket her own pride, but she was tender of his conscience, of his comfort, of his sensibilities. It would be best to act at once by herself--perhaps she would fail, anyway--and to shield him from the disagreeable and useless knowledge and complicity. She couldn't resist throwing out some feelers, however, at supper that night. He had come in tired and soiled after a day's tramp collecting bills that wouldn't collect this droughty season. She had fussed over him and coaxed a smile out, and now they were at their simple tea.

She recounted the day's events as indifferently as possible, but her face trembled as she described the luncheon, the talk, the news of her uncle, and at last Mrs. Leicester's invitation. Edwards had started at the first mention of Quogue.

"It's been in his mind," she thought, half-relieved, and his nervous movements of a.s.sumed indifference made it easier for her to go on.

"It was kind of her, wasn't it?" she ended.

"Yes," Edwards replied, impressively. "Of course you declined."

"Oh, yes; but she seemed to expect us all the same." Edwards frowned, but he kept an expectant silence. So she remarked, tentatively:

"It would be so pleasant to see dear old Quogue again." Her hypocrisy made her flush. Edwards rose abruptly from the table and wandered about the room. At length he said, in measured tones, his face averted from her:

"_Of course_, under the circ.u.mstances, we cannot visit Quogue while your uncle lives--unless he should send for us." Thus he had put himself plainly on record. His wife suddenly saw the folly and meanness of her little plans.

It was hardly a disappointment; her mind felt suddenly relieved from an unpleasant responsibility. She went to her husband, who was nervously playing at the piano, and kissed him, almost reverently. It had been a temptation from which he had saved her. They talked that evening a good deal, planning what they would do if they could get over to Europe for a year, calculating how cheaply they could go. It was an old subject.

Sometimes it kept off the blues; sometimes it indicated how blue they were. Mrs. Edwards forgot the disturbance of the day until she was lying wide awake in her hot bed. Then the old longings came in once more; she saw the commonplace present growing each month more dreary; her husband drudging away, with his hopes sinking. Suddenly he spoke:

"What made Mrs. Leicester ask us, do you suppose?" So he was thinking of it again.

"I don't know!" she replied, vaguely. Soon his voice came again:

"You understand, Nell, that I distinctly disapprove of our making any effort _that way_." She didn't think that her husband was a hypocrite.

She did not generalize when she felt deeply. But she knew that her husband didn't want the responsibility of making any effort. Somehow she felt that he would be glad if she should make the effort and take the responsibility on her own shoulders.

Why had he lugged it into plain light again if he hadn't expected her to do something? How could she accomplish it without making it unpleasant for him? Before daylight she had it planned, and she turned once and kissed her husband, protectingly.

That August morning, as she walked up the dusty road, fringed with blossoming golden-rod, toward the little cottage of the Leicesters, she was content, in spite of her tumultuous mind. It was all so heavenly quiet! the thin, drooping elms, with their pendent vines, like the waterfalls of a maiden lady; the dusty snarls of blackberry bushes; the midsummer contented repose of the air, and that distantly murmuring sea--it was all as she remembered it in her childhood. A gap of disturbed years closed up, and peace once more! The old man slowly dying up beyond in that deserted, gambrel-roofed house would Forget and forgive.

Mrs. Leicester received her effusively, anxious now not to meddle dangerously in what promised to be a ticklish business. Mrs. Edwards must stay as long as she would. The Sundays were especially lonely, for Mr. Leicester did not think she should bear the heat of the city so soon, and left her alone when he returned to Brooklyn for his Sunday sermon. Of course, stay as long as Mr. Edwards could spare her--a month; if possible.

At the mention of Mr. Edwards the young wife had a twinge of remorse for the manner in which she had evaded him--her first deceit for his sake. She had talked vaguely about visiting a friend at Moriches, and her husband had fallen in with the idea. New York was like a finely divided furnace, radiating heat from every tube-like street. So she was to go for a week or ten days. Perhaps the matter would arrange itself before that time was up; if not, she would write him what she had done.

But ten days seemed so long that she put uncomfortable thoughts out of her head.

Mrs. Leicester showed her to her room, a pretty little box, into which the woodbine peeped and nodded, and where from one window she could get a glimpse of the green marshes, with the sea beyond. After chatting awhile, her hostess went out, protesting that her guest must be too tired to come down. Mrs. Edwards gladly accepted the excuse, ate the luncheon the maid brought, in two bites, and then prepared to sally forth.

She knew the path between the lush meadow-gra.s.s so well! Soon she was at the entrance to the "Oliphant place." It was more run down than two years ago; the lower rooms were shut up tight in ma.s.sive green blinds that reached to the warped boards of the veranda. It looked old, neglected, sad, and weary; and she felt almost justified in her mission. She could bring comfort and light to the dying man.

In a few minutes she was smothering the hysterical enthusiasm of her old friend, Dinah. It was as she had expected: Oliphant had grown more suspicious and difficult for the last two years, and had refused to see a doctor, or, in fact, anyone but the Rev. Dr. Shapless and a country lawyer whom he used when absolutely necessary. He hadn't left his room for a month; Dinah had carried him the little he had seen fit to eat.

She was evidently relieved to see her old mistress once more at hand.

She asked no questions, and Mrs. Edwards knew that she would obey her absolutely.