The Spenders Part 61

The two trunks were down and out. "They're to go on this car, attached to the Chicago Express." He wrote the directions on one of his cards and paid the man.

At seven-thirty the bell rang again. The cabman was there.

"Seven-thirty, gent!"

"Avice!"

"I'm coming. And there are two bags I wish you'd get from my room." He let her pa.s.s him and went up for them.

She went into the library and, taking up the diary, tore out a sheet, marked heavily upon it with a pencil around the pa.s.sage she had read the evening before, and sealed it in an envelope. She addressed it to her father, and laid it, with a paper-weight on it, upon "The Delights of Delicate Eating," where he would be sure to find it.

The book itself she placed on the wood laid ready in the grate to light, touched a match to the crumpled paper underneath and put up the blower. She stood waiting to see that the fire would burn.

Over the mantel from its yellow canvas looked above her head the humourously benignant eyes of old Annekje Van Schoule, who had once removed from Maspeth Kill on Long Island to New Haarlem on the Island of Manhattan, and carried there, against her father's will, the yellow-haired girl he had loved. His face now seemed to be pretending unconsciousness of the rashly acted scenes he had witnessed--lest, if he betrayed his consciousness, he should be forced, in spite of himself, to disclose his approval--a thing not fitting for an elderly, dignified Dutch burgher to do.

"Avice!"

"Coming!"

She took up a little package she had brought with her and went out to meet him.

"There's one errand to do," she said, as they entered the carriage, "but it's on our way. Have him go up Madison Avenue and deliver this."

She showed him the package addressed: "Mr. Rulon Shepler, Personal."

"And this," she said, giving him an unsealed note. "Read it, please!"

He read:

"DEAR RULON SHEPLER:--I am sure you know women too well to have thought I loved you as a wife should love her husband. And I know your bigness too well to believe you will feel harshly toward me for deciding that I could not marry you. I could of course consistently attribute my change to consideration for you. I should have been very little comfort to you. If I should tell you just the course I had mapped out for myself--just what lat.i.tude I proposed to claim--I am certain you would agree with me that I have done you an inestimable favour.

"Yet I have not changed because I do not love you, but because I do love some one else with all my heart; so that I claim no credit except for an entirely consistent selfishness. But do try to believe, at the same time, that my own selfishness has been a kindness to you. I send you a package with this hasty letter, and beg you to believe that I shall remain--and am now for the first time--

"Sincerely yours,

"AVICE MILBREY BINES.

"P.S. I should have preferred to wait and acquaint you with my change of intention before marrying, but my husband's plans were made and he would not let me delay."

He sealed the envelope, placed it securely under the cord that bound the package, and their driver delivered it to the man who opened Shepler's door. As their train emerged from the cut at Spuyten Duyvil and sped to the north along the Hudson, the sun blazed forth.

"There, boy,--I knew the sun must shine to-day."

They had finished their breakfast. One-half of the pink roses were on the table, and one from the other half was in her hair.

"I ordered the sun turned on at just this point," replied her husband, with a large air. "I wanted you to see the last of that town under a cloud, so you might not be homesick so soon."

"You don't know me. You don't know what a good wife I shall be."

"It takes nerve to reach up for a strange support and then kick your environment out from under you--as Doctor von Herzlich would have said if he'd happened to think of it."

"But you shall see how I'll help you with your work; I was capable of it all the time."

"But I had to make you. I had to pick you up just as I did that first time, and again down in the mine--and you were frightened because you knew this time I wouldn't let you go."

"Only half-afraid you wouldn't--the other half I was afraid you would.

They got all mixed up--I don't know which was worse."

"Well, I admit I foozled my approach on that copper stock--but I won you--really my winnings in Wall Street are pretty dazzling after all, for a man who didn't know the ropes;--there's a mirror directly back of you, Mrs. Bines, if you wish to look at them--with a pink rose over that kissy place just at their temple."

She turned and looked, pretending to be quite unimpressed.

"I always was capable of it, I tell you,--boy!"

"What hurt me worst that night, it showed you could love _some_ one--you did have a heart--but you couldn't love me."

She did not seem to hear at first, nor to comprehend when she went back over his words. Then she stared at him in sudden amazement.

He saw his blunder and looked foolish.

"I see--thank you for saying what you did last night--and you didn't mind--you came to me anyway, in spite of _that_."

She arose, and would have gone around the table to him, but he met her with open arms.

"Oh, you boy! you do love me,--you do!"

"I must buy you one of those nice, shiny black ear-trumpets at the first stop. You can't have been hearing at all well.... See, sweetheart,--out across the river. That's where our big West is, over that way--isn't it fresh and green and beautiful?--and how fast you're going to it--you and your husband. I believe it's going to be a good game... for us both... my love..."

THE END.