Читать книгу Mr. Wayt's Wife's Sister - Marion Harland - Страница 3

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One breezy May day, such a little while ago that it is hardly safe to name the year, a New Jersey ferry “car-boat” was so far behind her time that the 12.30 train for Fairhill left without waiting for her.

Ignorant, or incredulous of the untoward happening, the passengers rushed for and through the station to find egress discouraged by the impassive official whose stentorian tones were roaring through the building the name and stopping places of the next train. Among the foremost in the pell-mell run was a hazel-eyed young man with a gripsack in his hand, and the olive bronze of a sea voyage upon a very good-looking face. He was always persuaded that he could have eluded the great-voiced doorkeeper and boarded the last platform of the moving cars, had he not run afoul of a wheeled chair midway between the seats and inconveniently set radiators in the waiting room, and narrowly escaped a “header.” He did not actually fall; neither did he overset the vehicle. Avoiding both calamities by vaulting the dashboard and front wheels, he yet dropped his hat and valise in different directions, and brought up at an obtuse angle by catching at one of the marble-topped radiators. The first use he made of his hat, which was picked up by a smiling bystander, was to lift it to a woman who was propelling what he had mistaken for a baby’s perambulator.

“I beg your pardon, I am sure!” he said, in manly fashion. “I hope the”—he was about to say “baby,” but changed the phraseology just in time—“that nobody was hurt!”

A glimpse of the occupant of the chair had showed him a wan face too old for a child’s, too small for that of a grown person. Before the woman addressed could reply, elfish accents, husky and precise, said, “Not at all—thank you!” and there was a cackle of shrill, feeble laughter.

The young fellow had lost the train that should have returned him in forty minutes to the family he had not seen in six months; he was just off shipboard, and felt the need of a bath and toilet upon steady ground, with plenty of elbow room. He had come near having a bad fall, and had not missed making a ludicrous spectacle of himself for the entertainment of a gaping crowd. But he laughed in a jolly, gentlemanly way, and again raising his hat passed on without a second glance at the mute personage who had pushed the wagon directly across his track.

Like the rest of the disappointed wayfarers he walked quite up to the outlet of the station, and peered anxiously through at the empty rails, still vibrating from the wheels of the vanishing train, yet he neither frowned nor swore. He did not even ask: “When does the next train go to Fairhill?” The time-table in his pocket and that upon the wall, set at “2 P. M.,” told him all and more than he wanted to know. The excitement and suspense over, his inner man became importunate. He had had an early breakfast on the City of Rome, and was far hungrier now than then. Doubling upon his tracks, he repaired to the restaurant in the same building with the vast waiting room and offices. The place was clean, and full of odors that, for a wonder, were fresh and savory, instead of hanging on the air and clinging to the walls like a viewless “In Memoriam” of an innumerable caravan of dead-and-gone feasts. The menu was promising to an unsated appetite, and having given his order to a waiter the even-tempered customer sat back in his chair and surveyed the scene with the air of one whose mind was, as the hymnist aptly puts it, “at leisure from itself.”

This lack of self-consciousness underlay much that made March Gilchrist popular in his set. He was a clever artist, and wrought hard and well at his profession, although he had a rich father. His position in society was assured, his physique fine, and education excellent—advantages fully appreciated by most of the men, and all the women he knew. If he recognized their value he was an adroit dissembler. Simple and frank in manner, he met his world with outstretched hand. When the hand was not taken he laughed in good-humored astonishment, went about his business, and forgot the churl. His schoolmates used to say that it did not pay to quarrel with him; his parents, that he and his sister May should exchange names. That his amiability was not the result of a phlegmatic temperament was apparent in the quick brightness of the eyes that roved about the dining room, leaving out nothing—from the lunch counter in the adjoining room, set with long ranks of salvers with globular glass covers that gave the array the expression of a chemist’s laboratory, to the whirligig fans that revolved just below the ceiling with the dual mission of cooling the atmosphere and chasing away flies. Our returned traveler seemed to find these harbingers of summer weather and summer pests amusing. He was watching them when a voice behind him accosted a hurrying waiter.

“There is a young girl over there who cannot walk. Will you lift her out of her chair and bring her in? It is just at the door, and she is very light.”

“Busy now, miss! Better ask somebody else!” pushing past.

The baffled applicant stood in the middle of the floor, irresolute, seeming the more solitary and helpless because young and a woman. Thus much, and not that she was comely and a lady, March saw before he sprang to his feet and faced her respectfully.

“I beg pardon! but can I be of use? It will give me pleasure if you will allow me.” Catching sight in the doorway of the one in whose behalf she had spoken, an arch smile—respectful still—lighted up his honest countenance. “If you will let me make amends for my awkwardness of a while ago!”

He was a society man, and might have been aware how unconventional was the offer. He palliated the solecism, in describing the incident at home, by saying that he saw in every elderly woman his mother, in a young one, his only sister.

“Thank you! if you will be so kind”—accepting the proposal as simply as it had been made. “I could bring her in myself, but she does not like to have me do it here.”

“I should think not, indeed! One of the best uses to which a man’s muscles can be put is to help the weak,” rejoined March heartily.

A gleam crossed the unchildish visage of the cripple when he stooped to lift her. She recognized him, but offered no verbal remark then, or when he deposited the light burden in the chair set for her by a waiter more humane, or less driven than his testy comrade.

“You are very good, and we are much obliged to you,” the guardian said, with a little bow of acknowledgment which he took as dismissal also, withdrawing to his own place.

“Set the table for seven, please,” he heard her continue to the waiter, businesslike and quiet, “and reserve another seat at that table”—designating one remote from the larger—“for a gentleman who will come in by and by. There is a man, too, for whom I wish to order luncheon at the counter in that room. He can get a good meal and be comfortable there, I suppose?”

“A traveling party of nine!” thought March, apparently intent upon the depths of his soup tureen. “With this girl as courier. Yet she mentioned two men!”

The family filed in while he speculated. Twin boys of twelve or thirteen, dressed exactly alike in gray jackets and knickerbockers, except that the red-haired one wore a blue necktie and the brown-haired a scarlet; a pretty, blue-eyed girl of eight, and a toddler of two, led by a sweet-faced mother, with fair hair and faintly tinted complexion, of the china shepherdess school. The “courier,” assisted by the waiter, seated them all without bustle, before addressing an individual who had followed at a respectful distance and now hung aloof, chewing the brim of a brand-new straw hat.

“Homer!” said the young lady gently and distinctly, as she might direct a child, “you will get your dinner in the next room. Come!”

By shifting his position slightly, March could see her point the man to a stool and give orders for his refreshment. He was undersized, lean, and sandy haired, small of feature and loutish in carriage. His eyes had red rims, and blinked incessantly, as if excessively weak or purblind. When he began operations upon coffee and sandwiches, he gobbled voraciously, gnawing off mouthfuls like a greedy dog. His clothes were so distressingly ready-made, and accentuated his uncouthness so unmercifully, as to leave no doubt that the wearing of coat and vest was a novelty and an equivocal boon.

“An odd fish!” commented March mentally. “Why should a civilized family haul him after them like a badly made kite tail? And they are not vulgarians, either!”

His eyes strayed discreetly back to the table set for seven. The mistress of ceremonies sat at the head, and was studying the printed menu. It lay flat on the cloth that the crippled girl at her right might read it with her. Their heads were close together, and the gravity upon the countenance of the elder was reflected by the shrewd elfin face. Presently they began to whisper, the bare, thin finger of the younger of the two tracing the lines to the extreme right of the carte. It was plainly a question of comparative expense, March perceived with a pang of his kind heart. For he had been a boy himself, and the children were hungry.

“Hurry up—won’t you, Hetty,” called the redheaded twin impatiently. “Give us the first thing you come to so long as it isn’t corned beef, pork and beans, or rice pudding. I’m starved!”

“Me, too!” echoed his fellow.

“You needn’t make mincemeat of your English on that account!” piped the crippled sister tartly. “It is no little matter to order just the right things for such a host. Mamma, you must have a cup of tea, I suppose?”

The young lady interposed, writing while she talked:

“Of course! And all of us will be the better for some good, hot soup. This is luncheon, not dinner, recollect. We only need something to stay our appetites until six o’clock,” she added, putting the paper in the waiter’s hand.

She did not look like one who did things for effect, yet there was meaning in her manner of saying it. If she was obliged to cut her coat according to her cloth, she would just now make the scantiness of the pattern seem a matter of choice and carry out the seaming gallantly.

“How much further have we to go?” queried eight-year-old, somewhat ruefully.

Six o’clock was to her apprehension a long time ahead.

“We are within half an hour of home. We might have been there by now, but we thought it better to wait over a train to rest and get rid of the dust we brought off the cars.”

“And to let him get shaved and barbered and prinked up generally!” shrilled the cripple malevolently.

“Hester!” The mother’s voice was heard for the first time.

“Well, mamma?”

“That is not respectful, my love. You are tired, I am afraid.”

The shrewd face jerked fretfully, and the lips were opened for a retort, checked by a gloved hand laid upon the forward child’s. There was only a murmur, accompanied by a pettish shrug.

March was ashamed of the impulse that made him steal a look at the tray bearing the result of the whispered consultation. Three tureens, each containing two generous portions of excellent English gravy soup with barley in it, a pot of tea, bread and milk for the baby and plenty of bread and butter were duly deposited upon the board.

“I’ll take the rest of your order now,” said the waiter, civilly suggestive.

“This is all. Thank you!” in a matter-of-course tone that was not resentfully positive.

The “courier” understood herself, and having taken ground, how to hold it. This was luncheon. March caught himself speculating as to the dinner bill of fare.

The spokeswoman may have been two-and-twenty. She was slightly above the middle height of healthy womanhood, had gray, serious eyes, with brown shadows in them when the lids drooped; well-formed lips that curled roguishly at the corners in smiling; a straight nose with mobile nostrils, and a firm chin. There was character in plenty in the face. Such free air and sunshine as falls into most girls’ lives might have made it beautiful. The pose of her head, the habitual gravity of eyes and mouth, the very carriage of the shoulders and her gait testified to the untimely sense of responsibility borne by this one. She was slight and straight; her gown of fawn-colored cloth fitted well, and a toque of the same material with no trimming, except a knot of velvet ribbon, was becoming; yet March, who designed his sister’s costumes, was quite certain that gown and hat were homemade and the product of the wearer’s skill. Both women were unmistakably gentle in breeding, and the children’s chatter, although sometimes pert, was not rude or boisterous.

A man entered by the side door while the chatter was stilling under the supreme attraction of the savory luncheon, and, after a word to a waiter, took the chair which had been tilted, face downward, against the far table at the “courier’s” order. He was tall, and had an aquiline, intellectual cast of countenance. His hands—the artist had an appreciative eye for hands and fingers—were a student’s; his linen was irreproachable; his chin and cheeks were blue-shaven, and his black hair was cut straight across at the back, just clearing the collar of his coat, instead of being shingled.

“A clergyman!” deduced Gilchrist, from the latter peculiarity. “That—not the white choker—is the trade-mark of the profession. Did barber or preacher establish the fashion?”

After inspection of the menu, the newcomer ordered a repast which was sumptuous when compared with the frugal one course of the seven seated at the table in the middle of the room. He took no notice of them nor they of him. His mien was studiously abstracted. While waiting for his food he drew a small blotting pad from his pocket and wrote upon it with a stylographic pen, his profile keener as his work went on. In pausing to collect thoughts or choose words the inclination of his eyes was upward. After his entrance profound silence settled upon the central table. Not even the baby prattled. This singular taciturnity took on significance to the alert wits of the unsuspected observer when he saw a swift interchange of looks between the cripple and her left-hand neighbor, attended by a grimace of such bitter disdain directed by the junior of the pair at the student as fairly startled the artist.

The unconscious object of the shaft put up paper and pen, and addressed himself with deliberate dignity, upon the arrival of his raw oysters, to the lower task of filling the material part of him. He was discussing a juicy square of porterhouse steak, as March bowed respectfully on his way out to the girl at the head of the board, a smile in his pleasant eyes being especially intended for the dwarfed cripple beside her.

Homer had bolted the last fragment of a huge segment of custard pie, washed down the crust with a second jorum of coffee, and sat, satiate and sheepish, upon the tall stool, awaiting orders.

“The most extraordinary combinery, taken in all its parts, it was ever my luck to behold,” declared March Gilchrist at his father’s dinner table that evening. “Intensely American throughout, though. I wish I knew whether or not the man who appropriated the reserved seat was a usurper. If he were, that spirited little economist of a courier was quite capable of dispossessing him, or, at least, of calling the waiter to account for neglect of duty. And what relation did blind Homer bear to the party?”

“Dear old March!” said his sister affectionately. “Story weaving in the old fashion! How natural it sounds! What jolly times you and I have had over our amateur romances and make believes! Which reminds me of a remarkable sermon preached Sunday before last by our new pastor. (I told you we had one, didn’t I?) The text was: ‘Six waterpots of stone, containing two or three firkins apiece!’”

“Absurd!”

“True; but listen! The text was only a hook from which he hung an eloquent discourse upon the power of faith to make wine—‘old and mellow and flavorous,’ he called it—out of what to grosser souls seems insipid water. It was a plea for the pleasures of imagination—alias faith—and elevated our favorite amusement into a fine art, and the fine art into religion. I came home feeling like a spiritual chameleon, fully convinced that rarefied air is the rightful sustenance of an immortal being. According to our Mr. Wayt, what you haven’t got is the only thing you ought to be sure of. Life is a sort of ‘Now you see it and now you don’t see it’ business throughout. Only, when you don’t see it you are richer and happier than when you do. Did you ever think to hear me babble metaphysics? Now, where are those portfolios?”

“Make believe that you have overhauled them, and be blest,” retorted her brother. “There’s a chance to practice your metaphysical cant—with a new, deep meaning in it, too, which you will detect when you inspect my daubs. I did some fairish things in Norway, however, which may prove that your rule has an exception.”

The Gilchrists freely acknowledged themselves to be what the son and daughter styled “a mutual admiration square.” March’s portfolios were not the only engrossing subject that drew them together in the library, where coffee and cigars were served.

May and her father turned over sketches and examined finished pictures at the table, passing them afterward to the mother, who was a fixture in her easy-chair by reason of a head, covered with crisp chestnut curls, lying upon her lap. May was her companion and co-laborer, dutiful and beloved, despite the impetuosity of mood and temper which seemed inharmonious with the calmer nature of the matron. The mother’s idol was the long-limbed fellow who, stretched upon the tiger-skin rug, one arm cast about her waist, submitted to her mute fondling with grace as cheerful as that with which she endured the scent of the cigar she would not let him resign when he threw himself into his accustomed place. She was a good wife, but she never pretended to like the odor of the judge’s best weed. March’s cigars, she confessed, were “really delightful.” Perhaps she recognized in his affluent, joyous nature something hers lacked and had craved all her life; the golden side of the iron shield. Assuredly, her children drew the ideality in which they reveled from the father.

The tall, dignified woman who queened it in the best circles of Fairhill society, and was the chiefest pillar in the parish which had just called Mr. Wayt to become its spiritual head, was the embodiment of what is known as hard sense. Mind and character were laid out and down in straight lines. Right was right; duty was duty, and not to be shirked. Wrong was wrong, and the shading off of sin into foible was of the devil. She believed in a personal devil, comprehended the doctrines of the Trinity, of election and reprobation, and the resurrection of the physical body. Twice each Sabbath, once during the week, she repaired to the courts of the Lord with joys unknown to worldly souls. The ministry she held in the old-fashioned veneration we have cast behind us with many worse and a few better things. Others might and did criticise the men who wore white neckties upon weekdays and had their hair cut straight behind. The hands of the presbytery had been laid in ordination upon them. That was a sacred shield to her. In spirit she approached the awful circle of the church with bared feet and bent brow. Within it was her home. To her church her toils were literally given. For it her prayers continually ascended.

She had looked grave during May’s flippant abstract of the new preacher’s discourse anent the six stone waterpots. Her family might suspect that she could not easily assimilate spiritual bread so unlike that broken to his flock by a good man who had been gathered to his fathers six months before, after a pastorate of thirty years in Fairhill. Nobody could elicit a hint to this effect from her lips. Mr. Wayt was the choice of a respectable majority of church and parish. The presbytery had accepted his credentials and solemnly installed him in his new place. Henceforward he was her pastor, and as such above the touch of censure. He had been the guest of the Gilchrists for a week prior to the removal of his family to the flourishing suburban town, and received such entertainment for body and spirit as strengthened his belief in the Divine authority of the call he had answered.

He left Fairhill four days before March landed in New York, to meet his wife and children in Syracuse and escort them to their new abiding place. During these days the mothers and daughters of the household of faith had worked diligently to prepare the parsonage for the reception of the travelers, Mrs. Gilchrist being the guiding spirit. And while she drew the shining silk of her boy’s curls through fingers that looked strong, yet touched tenderly, the Rev. Percy Wayt, A. M. and M. A., with feet directed by gratitude and heart swollen with pastoral affection, was nearing the domicile of his best “member.”

A long French window upon the piazza framed the tableau he halted to survey, his foot upon the upper step of the broad flight leading from the lawn. It was a noble room, planned by March and built with his proud father’s money. Breast-high shelves filled with choice books lined the wall; above them were a few fine pictures. Oriental rugs were strewed upon the polished floor; lounging and upright chairs stood about in social attitudes. The light of the shaded reading lamp shone silvery upon Judge Gilchrist’s head and heightened the brightness of May’s face. March’s happy gaze, upturned to meet his mother’s look of full content, might have meant as much in a cottage as here, but they seemed to the spectator accessories of the luxurious well-being which stamped the environment.

He sighed deeply—perhaps at the contrast the scene offered to the half furnished abode he had just left—perhaps under the weight of memories aroused by the family group. He was as capable of appreciating beauty and enjoying ease as were those who took these as an installment of the debt the world owed them. The will of the holy man who preaches the great gain of godliness when wedded to contentment, ought to be one with that of the Judge of all the earth. Sometimes it is. Sometimes——

“Ah, Mr. Wayt!” Judge Gilchrist’s proverbially gracious manner was never more urbane than as he offered a welcoming hand to his wife’s spiritual director. “You find us in the full flood of rejoicing over our returned prodigal,” he continued, when the visitor had saluted the ladies. “Let me introduce my son.”

Mr. Wayt was “honored and happy at being allowed to participate in the reunion,” yet apologetic for his “intrusion upon that with which strangers should not intermeddle.”

While saying it he squeezed March’s hand in a grasp more nervous than firm, and looked admiringly into the sunny eyes.

“Your mother’s son will forgive the interruption when he learns why I am here,” he went on, tightening and relaxing his hold at alternate periods. “I brought my wife and babies home to-day. I use the word advisedly. I left a desolate, empty house. Merely walls, ceilings, doors, windows, and floors. A shell without sentiment. A chrysalis without the germ of life. This was on last Monday morning.”

By now the brief sentences had come to imply depth of emotion with which March was unable to sympathize, and he felt convicted of inhumanity that this was so.

“I advised Mrs. Wayt of what she would find. Hers is a brave spirit encased in a fragile frame, and she was not daunted. You, madam,” letting go the son’s hand and facing the mother, “know, and we can never forget what we found when, weary and faint and travel-stained, we alighted this afternoon at the parsonage gate.”

With all her native aplomb and half-century of world knowledge Mrs. Gilchrist blushed, much to the covert amusement of husband and son. If the judge had manner Mr. Wayt had deportment, and with it fluency. His weighty words pressed her hard for breath.

“Please don’t speak of it!” she hastened to implore. “We did very little—and I no more than others.”

“Allow me!” Gesture and tone were rhetorical. “You—or others under your command—laid carpets and set our humble plenishing in order. There is not much of it, but such as it is, it has followed our varied fortunes so long that it is endeared by association. You arranged it to the best advantage. You stocked larders and made up beds, and kindled the fire upon the household altar, typified by the kitchen range, and spread a toothsome feast for our refreshment. You and your sister angels. If this be not true, then benevolent pixies have been at work, for, although we found the premises swept and garnished, not a creature was to be seen. Generosity and tact had met together; beneficence and modesty had kissed each other. I assure you, Mr. Gilchrist”—wheeling back in good order upon March—“that in seventeen years of the vicissitudes of a pastoral life that has had its high lights and depressing shades, such delicacy of kindness is without a parallel.”

“Let me express my sympathy in the shape of a cigar,” said March, taking one from the table. “I brought over a lot, which my father, who is a connoisseur in tobacco, pronounces fit to smoke. Should you agree with him, I shall esteem it a compliment if you will let me send a box to the parsonage to-morrow.”

Mr. Wayt’s was an opaque and not a healthy complexion. It was mottled now with a curious, dull glow; the muscles of his mouth twitched. He waved aside the offering with more energy than courtesy.

“You are good, sir—very good! But I never smoke! My nervous system is idiosyncratic. Common prudence inhibits the use on my part of all narcotics and stimulants, if principle did not. To be frank”—inclusively to all present—“I am what is known as ‘a temperance crank.’ You may think the less of me for the confession; in point of fact, I lost one charge in direct consequence of my peculiar views upon this subject; but if I speak at all, I must be candid. Believe me nevertheless, Mr. Gilchrist, your grateful debtor for the proffered gift. If you will now and then let a kindly thought of me mingle with the smoke of your burnt offering, the favor will be still greater.”

“May I trouble you to say to Mrs. Wayt that the cook you asked me to engage for her cannot come until next Monday morning?” said the practical hostess. Mr. Wayt’s sonorous periods always impelled her to monosyllabic commonplaces. “Perhaps she cannot wait so long?”

“I take the responsibility of promising for her, madam, that she will. Apart from the fact that her desire to secure a servant recommended by yourself would reconcile her to a still longer delay, her household, as at present composed, has in itself the elements of independence. We have a faithful, if eccentric, servitor, who has an abnormal passion for work in all its varieties. He is gardener, house servant, cook, groom, mason and builder, as need requires. He mends his own clothes, cobbles his shoes—and I am not without a suspicion of his proficiency as a laundryman.”

He rendered the catalogue with relish for the humor of the situation. The exigencies of parsonage life which had developed the talents of his trusty retainer seemed to have no pathos for the master.

“Where did you find this treasure? And is he a Unique?” asked May laughingly.

“I believe the credit of raking the protoplasmic germ out of the slums of Chicago, where we were then sojourning, belongs to my wife’s sister, Miss Alling. The atmosphere of our home has warmed into growth latent possibilities, I fancy. It was a white day for poor Tony when the gutter-wash landed him at our door. Even now he has physical weaknesses and mental deficiencies that make him a striking object-lesson as to the terrible truths of heredity.”

“How many children have you, Mr. Wayt?” questioned March, with irrelevance verging upon abruptness.

“George W. Cable’s number—five. You may recall the witty puzzle he set for a Massachusetts Sunday School. ‘I have five children,’ he said, ‘and half of them are girls. What is the half of five?’ ‘Two and a half,’ came from the perplexed listeners. It transpired, eventually, that the other half were girls also.”

He was an entertaining man, or would have been had he been colloquial instead of hortatory. Yet what he said was telling rather from the degree of importance he evidently attached to it than from the worth of the matter. In a smaller speaker, his style would have been airy. Standing, as he did, six feet in his slippers, he was always nearly—occasionally, quite—imposing. Men of his profession seldom converse well. The habit of hebdomadal speech-making runs over and saturates the six working days. Pastoral visitation is undoubtedly measurably responsible for the trick of talking as for duty’s sake, and to a roomful. The essential need of the public speaker is audience, and to this, actual or visionary, he is prone to address himself. Mr. Wayt could not bid an acquaintance “Good-morning,” in a chance encounter upon boat or car, without embracing every passenger within the scope of his orotund tones, in the salutation. A poseur during his waking hours, he probably continued to cater to the ubiquitous audience in his dreams.

“Come out for a turn on the piazza, May!” proposed March, after the guest had taken his leave.

The night was filled with divine calm. The Gilchrist house surmounted a knoll from which the beautiful town rolled away on all sides. In the distance a glistening line showed where the bay divided Jersey meadows from the ramparts of the Highlands. The turf of the lawn was ringed and crossed by beds of hyacinths and tulips. The buds of the great horse-chestnut trees were big with promise; the finer tracery of the elms against the moonlit sky showed tufts of tender foliage. Faint, delicious breaths of sweetness met brother and sister at the upper end of their walk, telling that the fruit trees were ablow.

“East or West, Hame is Best!”

quoted March, taking in a mighty draught of satisfaction. “Not that I brought you out here to listen to stale Scotch rhymes. Don’t annoy the precious mother by letting her into the secret, May, but Mr. Wayt is the man I saw in the restaurant to-day, and I believe that was his family!”