The Hollow of Her Hand Part 11

Newsboys, hoa.r.s.e-voiced and pipe-voiced, mingled with the crowd, and shrieked their extras under the very noses of the always-aloof Wrandalls, who up to this day had turned them up at the sight of a vulgar extra, but who now looked down them with a trembling of the nostrils that left no room for doubt as to their present state of mind.

Up to the very portals these a.s.siduous peddlers yelped for pennies and gave in exchange the latest headlines. "All about Mr. Challis Wran'all's fun'ral!" "Horrible extry!" Ding-donging the thing in the very ears of the dead man himself!

Motor after motor, carriage after carriage, rolled up to the curb and emptied its sober-faced, self-conscious occupants in front of the door with the great black bow; with each arrival the crowd surged forward, and names were muttered in undertones, pa.s.sing from lip to lip until every one in the street knew that Mr. So-and-So, Mrs. This-or-That, the What-do-you-call-ems and others of the city's most exclusive but most garishly advertised society leaders had entered the house of mourning. It was a great show for the plebeian spectators. Much better than Miss So-and-So's wedding, said one woman who had attended the aforesaid ceremony as a unit in the well-dressed mob that almost wrecked the carriages in the desire to see the terrified bride. Better than a circus, said a man who held his little daughter above the heads of the crowd so that she might see the fine lady in a wild-beast fur. Swellest funeral New York ever had, remarked another, excepting one 'way back when he was a kid.

At the corner below stood two patrol wagons, also waiting.

Inside the house sat the carefully selected guests, hushed and stiff and gratified. (Not because they were attending a funeral, but because the occasion served to separate them from the chaff: they were the elect.) It would be going too far to intimate that they were proud of themselves, but it is not stretching it very much to say that they counted noses with considerable satisfaction and were glad that they had not been left out. The real, high-water mark in New York society was established at this memorable function.

It was quite plain to every one that Mrs. Wrandall,--THE Mrs.

Wrandall,--had made out the list of guests to be invited to the funeral of her son. It was a blue-stocking affair. You couldn't imagine anything more so. Afterwards, the two hundred who were there looked with utmost pity and not a little scorn on the other two hundred who failed to get in, notwithstanding there was ample room in the s.p.a.cious house for all of them. There wasn't a questionable guest in the house, unless one were to question the right of the dead man's widow to be there--and, after all, she was upstairs with the family. Even so, she was a Wrandall--remotely, of course, but recognisable.

Yes, they counted noses, so to say. As one after the other arrived and was ushered into the huge drawing-room, he or she was accorded a congratulatory look from those already a.s.sembled, a tribute returned with equal amiability. Each one noted who else was there, and each one said to himself that at last they really had something all to themselves. It was truly a pleasure, a relief, to be able to do something without being pushed about by people who didn't belong but thought they did. They sat back,--stiffly, of course,--and in utter stillness confessed that there could be such a thing as the survival of the fittest. Yes, there wasn't a nose there that couldn't be counted with perfect serenity. It was a notable occasion.

Mrs. Wrandall, the elder, had made out the list. She did not consult her daughter-in-law in the matter. It is true that Sara forestalled her in a way by sending word, through Leslie, that she would be pleased if Mrs. Wrandall would issue invitations to as many of Challis's friends as she deemed advisable. As for herself, she had no wish in the matter; she would be satisfied with whatever arrangements the family cared to make.

It is not to be supposed, from the foregoing, that Mrs. Wrandall, the elder, was not stricken to the heart by the lamentable death of her idol. He WAS her idol. He was her first-born, he was her love-born. He came to her in the days when she loved her husband without much thought of respecting him. She was beginning to regard him as something more than a lover when Leslie came, so it was different. When their daughter Vivian was born, she was plainly annoyed but wholly respectful. Mr. Wrandall was no longer the lover; he was her lord and master. The head of the house of Wrandall was a person to be looked up to, to be respected and admired by her, for he was a very great man, but he was dear to her only because he was the father of Challis, the first-born.

In the order of her nature, Challis therefore was her most dearly beloved, Vivian the least desired and last in her affections as well as in sequence.

Strangely enough, the three of them perfected a curiously significant record of conjugal endowments. Challis had always been the wild, wayward, unrestrained one, and by far the most lovable; Leslie, almost as good looking but with scarcely a noticeable trace of the charm that made his brother attractive; Vivian, handsome, selfish and as cheerless as the wind that blows across the icebergs in the north. Challis had been born with a widely enveloping heart and an elastic conscience; Leslie with a brain and a soul and not much of a heart, as things go; Vivian with a soul alone, which belonged to G.o.d, after all, and not to her. Of course she had a heart, but it was only for the purpose of pumping blood to remote extremities, and had nothing whatever to do with anything so unutterably extraneous as love, charity or self-sacrifice.

As for Mr. Redmond Wrandall he was a very proper and dignified gentleman, and old for his years.

Secretly, Vivian was his favourite. Moreover, possessing the usual contrariness of man, and having been at one time or other, a hot-blooded lover, he professed--also in secret--a certain admiration for the beautiful, warm-hearted wife of his eldest son. He looked upon her from a man's point of view. He couldn't help that. Not once, but many times, had he said to himself that perhaps Challis was lucky to have got her instead of one of the girls his mother had chosen for him out of the minute elect.

It may be seen, or rather surmised, that if the house of Wrandall had not been so admirably centred under its own vine and fig tree, it might have become divided against itself without much of an effort.

Mrs. Redmond Wrandall was the vine and fig tree.

And now they had brought her dearly beloved son home to her, murdered and--disgraced. If it had been either of the others, she could have said: "G.o.d's will be done." Instead, she cried out that G.o.d had turned against her.

Leslie had had the bad taste--or perhaps it was misfortune--to blurt out an agonised "I told you so" at a time when the family was sitting numb and hushed under the blight of the first horrid blow. He did not mean to be unfeeling. It was the truth bursting from his unhappy lips.

"I knew Chal would come to this--I knew it," he had said. His arm was about the quivering shoulders of his mother as he said it.

She looked up, a sob breaking in her throat. For a long time she looked into the face of her second son.

"How can you--how dare you say such a thing as that?" she cried, aghast.

He coloured, and drew her closer to him.

"I--I didn't mean it," he faltered.

"You have always taken sides against him," began his mother.

"Please, mother," he cried miserably.

"You say this to me NOW," she went on. "You who are left to take his place in my affection.--Why, Leslie, I--I--"

Vivian interposed. "Les is upset, mamma darling. You know he loved Challis as deeply as any of us loved him."

Afterwards the girl said to Leslie when they were quite alone: "She will never forgive you for that, Les. It was a beastly thing to say."

He bit his lip, which trembled. "She's never cared for me as she cared for Chal. I'm sorry if I've made it worse."

"See here, Leslie, was Chal so--so--"

"Yes. I meant what I said a while ago. It was sure to happen to him one time or another. Sara's had a lot to put up with."

"Sara! If she had been the right sort of a wife, this never would have happened."

"After all is said and done, Vivie, Sara's in a position to rub it in on us if she's of a mind to do so. She won't do it, of course, but--I wonder if she isn't gloating, just the same."

"Haven't we treated her as one of us?" demanded she, dabbing her handkerchief in her eyes. "Since the wedding, I mean. Haven't we been kind to her?"

"Oh, I think she understands us perfectly," said her brother.

"I wonder what she will do now?" mused Vivian, in that speech casting her sister-in-law out of her narrow little world as one would throw aside a burnt-out match.

"She will profit by experience," said he, with some pleasure in a superior wisdom.

In Mrs. Wrandall's sitting-room at the top of the broad stairway, sat the family,--that is to say, the IMMEDIATE family,--a solemn-faced footman in front of the door that stood fully ajar so that the occupants might hear the words of the minister as they ascended, sonorous and precise, from the hall below. A minister was he who knew the b.u.t.tered side of his bread. His discourse was to be a beautiful one. He stood at the front of the stairs and faced the a.s.sembled listeners in the hall, the drawing-room and the entresol, but his infinitely touching words went up one flight and lodged.

Sara Wrandall sat a little to the left of and behind Mrs. Redmond Wrandall, about whom were grouped the three remaining Wrandalls, father, son and daughter, closely drawn together. Well to the fore were Wrandall uncles and cousins and aunts, and one or two carefully chosen blood-relations to the mistress of the house, whose hand had long been set against kinsmen of less exalted promise.

The room was dark. A forgotten French clock ticked madly and tinkled its quarter-hours with surpa.s.sing sprightliness. Time went on regardless. One of the Wrandall uncles, obeying a look from his wife, tiptoed across the room and tried to find a way to subdue the jingling disturber. But it chimed in his face, and he put his black kid glove over his lips. The floor creaked horribly as he went back to his chair.

Beside Sara Wrandall, on the small pink divan, sat a stranger in this sombre company: a young woman in black, whose pale face was uncovered, and whose lashes were lifted so rarely that one could not know of the deep, real pain that lay behind them, in her Irish blue eyes.

She had arrived at the house an hour or two before the time set for the ceremony, in company with the widow. True to her resolution, the widow of Challis Wrandall had remained away from the home of his people until the last hour. She had been consulted, to be sure, in regard to the final arrangements, but the meetings had taken place in her own apartment, many blocks distant from the house in lower Fifth Avenue. The afternoon before she had received Redmond Wrandall and Leslie, his son. She had not sent for them. They came perfunctorily and not through any sense of obligation. These two at least knew that sympathy was not what she wanted, but peace.

Twice during the two trying days, Leslie had come to see her. Vivian telephoned.

On the occasion of his first visit, Leslie had met the guest in the house. The second time he called, he made it a point to ask Sara all about her.

It was he who gently closed the door after the two women when, on the morning of the funeral, they entered the dark, flower-laden room in which stood the casket containing the body of his brother.

He left them alone together in that room for half an hour or more, and it was he who went forward to meet them when they came forth.

Sara leaned on his arm as she ascended the stairs to the room where the others were waiting. The ashen-faced girl followed, her eyes lowered, her gloved hands clenched.

Mrs. Wrandall, the elder, kissed Sara and drew her down beside her on the couch. To her own surprise, as well as that of the others, Sara broke down and wept bitterly. After all, she was sorry for Challis's mother. It was the human instinct; she could not hold out against it. And the older woman put away the ancient grudge she held against this mortal enemy and dissolved into tears of real compa.s.sion.

A little later she whispered brokenly in Sara's ear: "My dear, my dear, this has brought us together. I hope you will learn to love me."

Sara caught her breath, but uttered no word. She looked into her mother-in-law's eyes, and smiled through her tears. The Wrandalls, looking on in amaze, saw the smile reflected in the face of the older woman. Then it was that Vivian crossed quickly and put her arms about the shoulders of her sister-in-law. The white flag on both sides.

Hetty Castleton stood alone and wavering, just inside the door. No stranger situation could be imagined than the one in which this unfortunate girl found herself at the present moment. She was virtually in the hands of those who would destroy her; she was in the house of those who most deeply were affected by her act on that fatal night. Among them all she stood, facing them, listening to the moans and sobs, and yet her limbs did not give way beneath her....

Some one gently touched her arm. It was Leslie. She shrank back, a fearful look in her eyes. In the semi-darkness he failed to note the expression.

"Won't you sit here?" he asked, indicating the little pink divan against the wall. "Forgive me for letting you stand so long."