With Edge Tools Part 20

"Poor Dr. Maccanfrae," said Florence. "He is the dearest, kindest, best intentioned man in the world. Think of the good he does among the poor."

"O, I know all about that, but that's no reason why he should lecture me like a child about going to bed early and taking exercise."

"Perhaps he believes more in such medicine than in drugs. Don't you think yourself that it is some such _regime_ that you need?"

"Don't you begin to lecture me, too," said Marion, with a sigh. "Life is hard enough without your making it worse."

"I shall not lecture you, I promise, but," she continued, taking Marion's hands and pulling her up from the lounge, "as your nurse, I must see that you have a change. Come, tell me what are the plans for to-day."

"Why, there's the luncheon at Mrs. Ryder's."

"Good, and what else?"

"Why, we dine at the Beemers' to-night."

"And to-morrow?"

"We go to the races on Walter Sedger's drag, and dine at the Washington Park Club."

"Is your husband going?"

"Of course."

"How does he leave his business?"

"I make him."

"Very well, then this morning before luncheon we take a walk as far as Lincoln Park."

"I can't walk that far, Florence."

"You are going to walk that far," said Florence, authoritatively. "I am your nurse, and I insist upon it."

"But I shall be ill all day."

"Never mind, you will get over it this afternoon when we read some Thackeray, and to-morrow morning you and I will do the marketing."

"You are crazy, Florence, I do believe."

"I never was more sane in my life. Come, I am in earnest. You would have me here, you know, and I shall make myself so disagreeable that you will be thankful when I am gone."

"O, Florence, how can you be so rough?" said Marion, as Florence dragged her toward the door.

"There, now," said Florence, after they had pa.s.sed into the hall, "go and put on your hat. I brought mine with me."

"Just think of the heat, Florence," said Marion as she disappeared up the stairs.

In a few minutes Marion returned looking brighter already, Florence thought, and the two women were soon strolling along the lake sh.o.r.e talking over the countless trivialities women find to talk about, and at tea-time, after a day of Florence's nursing, Marion was forced to admit that she had pa.s.sed an unusually cheerful day. Roswell Sanderson came in just as they were finishing tea, and after taking a seat and declining a cup of the beverage, he said in a careless manner: "By the way, Marion, an old friend of yours came into the bank just before I left."

"Who?" asked Marion.

"That New Yorker, Duncan Grahame."

Marion felt a sudden sinking in her heart and was conscious that the color was fading from her cheeks, but she took a large swallow of tea and tried to look unconcerned. Florence watched Roswell's face closely and saw the same expression come into his eyes which she had noticed that afternoon at the Renaissance Club tea.

"When did he come?" asked Marion, after a moment.

"This morning on the 'Limited'. He has been in England all winter. You will see him to-morrow, as he told me Sedger had asked him on his coach."

"What fate has brought him back again?" thought Marion.

Roswell Sanderson was silent for a moment, then he came toward his wife.

Taking a seat beside her, he asked tenderly if she remembered what day it was; then he took a package from his pocket which he dropped into her lap.

"Why, it's the anniversary of our wedding. I had quite forgotten it."

Florence had left the room a moment before, so that they were alone.

Marion untied the parcel in her lap, and found that it was a case containing a string of pearls. She looked up into her husband's face and kissed him, and a feeling of shame came into her heart. She saw a love in his eyes which she could not return, and she prayed that he might find the means to make her love him. This thought was in her heart only for a moment, then she was playing with the pearls, and wondering again why Duncan had come back into her life.

CHAPTER XIII.

DERBY DAY.

A small crowd was collected in front of the Hotel Mazarin, and its proportions were gradually being swelled by pa.s.sing Sat.u.r.day loungers.

Walter Sedger's drag, drawn up in front of the hotel to receive his party for the races, was the attraction which drew together this inquisitive throng, and in spite of the expression of superior indifference a.s.sumed by most of the men and boys composing the crowd, it was easy to see that the red-wheeled coach, with its smart team of browns, was an object of more than pa.s.sing interest. A park policeman was exchanging a word or two in a knowing manner with the stolid Briton in boots and breeches at the leaders' heads, and near him a slouch-hatted veteran, wearing a Grand Army badge, was talking condescendingly with an ice-man. A large cake of ice, which had been carried thus far on its way to the hotel bar, was slowly melting in the sun, and little streams of water flowed from it and trickled into the gutter; but the veteran and the ice-man still gazed at the shining panels of the drag, and eyed the "cattle" with the air of connoisseurs, while a butcher's boy with his white ap.r.o.n and basket of meat, and a German carpenter with his kit of tools, stood there stolidly, intent upon remaining until the show was over. A diminutive Italian boot-black, still attired in the rags of his native Naples, had crowded to the curb and was standing in front of two Norwegian sailors; just behind them was a party of Bohemian laborers, and a peddler from sunny Sicily touched elbows with a mortar-covered mason from Erin's sh.o.r.es, while some cadaverous clerks from the State Street shops, radiant in the ready-made attire of a.s.sumed gentility, were there, helping to swell this crowd of perhaps a hundred loungers. They were all citizen of the great Republic, and though few could speak intelligently the language of their adopted home, probably most of them, in their hearts, resented the appearance on the Chicago streets of this English coach as something unAmerican, for which "them doods" on the Avenue were responsible.

The hands of the hotel clock indicated that the hour was nearing two.

The thin-faced veteran in the slouch hat plunged his hands deeper into his trousers' pockets, and, turning his head to a critical angle, said patronizingly to the ice-man: "Them's the things they calls 'tally-ho's.'" The ice-man rolled his shirt-sleeves a little higher above his elbows, folded his brawny arms and replied, in the accent of the Teuton, "I d.i.n.k dot vas it."

"Them swells likes to show off mighty well. Wonder what that machine cost," answered the veteran. But before the ice-man could reply, a messenger boy at his side shouted out, "Golly! there goes another of them 'busses," and the attention of the crowd was attracted toward the street, where Jack Elliot's coach, with its team of roans, was pa.s.sing along the Avenue, bearing a party to the races.

"I wish that chap in the white pants'd toot his horn," said the messenger boy; but Jack Elliot was a coaching man who did not believe in arousing the neighborhood with useless music, so the wish was not gratified.

While the attention of the crowd was thus diverted, Sedger and his friends emerged from the hotel. The party was composed of Marion and her husband, Florence Moreland, Harold Wainwright, a Mrs. Smith from Cincinnati, and Walter Sedger. They had been lunching in the restaurant of the hotel, and on reaching the sidewalk they at first found some difficulty in pushing their way toward the coach; but on seeing them the smart park policeman on duty officiously pushed the crowd back and made a way for them.

"I can't wait for Grahame any longer," Sedger was saying to Mrs.

Sanderson. "He couldn't lunch with us, and I told him to be here at half-past one. It's a quarter to two, and we shall miss the first race."

"Don't wait for him, then," said Marion, thinking this was the only thing to be said, but feeling an inward disappointment at the thought that Duncan might not see her in her white crepon gown, with its gold corselet and braided tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, just sent her by Mrs. Mason of Burlington Street, London, W. She knew it was becoming, and she also liked her Virot hat, but she didn't think it wise to put Sedger in an ill-humor by asking him to wait, so she walked silently to where a groom was holding a ladder against the box-seat. Meanwhile Sedger pa.s.sed round to his off side wheeler and picked up his reins. a.s.sorting them in correct road fashion he mounted to his seat, wrapped a light driving ap.r.o.n about his legs, picked up his whip, caught the lash in a double thong, and waited while his party took their places. Marion mounted to the box seat and the rest took the longer seat behind. Just as Sedger was about to start his team, Marion, who had been constantly looking in the direction in which Duncan should appear, saw him hastening around the corner of Jackson Street. "There is Mr. Grahame," she called out, and while Duncan was hurrying along the street, Roswell Sanderson suggested that he and Wainwright had better change to the back seat, so as to give Duncan an opportunity of seeing something of the city.

Duncan came up almost breathless from his rapid walking, and after exchanging a hurried greeting with the party, mounted to the seat beside Florence left vacant by Harold Wainwright. "Let 'em go," Sedger called to the grooms. The lead bars rattled, the leaders pranced as the grooms jumped from their heads, the wheelers sprang into their collars, and the coach rolled off down the Avenue.

It was a bright June day, and all Chicago seemed to be in the long, tree-lined boulevard which stretched away to the south. Hundreds of vehicles of every description known to the coach-builder's craft were rolling over the hard macadam pavement, bearing people to the races, and in this motley array were to be found all sorts and conditions of men and carriages. Buggies and express wagons, stanhopes and butcher carts, mail-phaetons and road-carts, char-a-bancs and extension tops, victorias and "hacks," coaches and omnibuses, aristocracy and democracy scattered the same dust and rolled toward the same goal. Only the road to Epsom can present a scene more varied than this; only the Champs elysees excels the n.o.ble avenue down which Walter Sedger tooled his team of browns.

"It is a pleasure to live on such a day, with four such horses to drive behind, isn't it, Mr. Grahame?" asked Florence, as the coach rolled past the Auditorium, and the team settled down to their work.