The Whole Family Part 12

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 const.i.tution 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 s.e.x, 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 circ.u.mstances--" 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 embarra.s.sment. 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, "n.o.body 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. n.o.body 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.

"n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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: