Ainslee's magazine, Volume 16, No. 3, October, 1905

CHAPTER V

When Slocum was scarcely a village Edward McAllister, after his retirement from the Supreme Court, purchased sufficient land in the State to establish a model farm. Here his children, Paul and Agnes, were born, and before they had time to know they were Americans McAllister accepted a foreign embassy and lived with his family abroad until his death. His daughter, Agnes, had married in Rome, and after a few years of wandering and continental life, with her husband, Mr. John Bellamy, and her brother, Mr. Paul McAllister, she returned to Slocum.

They had come back in order that Mrs. Bellamy should see just how much she could stand of American life and manners; in order that their children might have enough of their native soil on their hands as they played, and enough of its education in their heads, to entitle them to the self-sufficiency of American citizens.

Little Bellamy was immured in Groton, hard at the American part of it, and Mrs. Bellamy sat this morning in a charming room furnished in Colonial style: continental taste and the accessories that make living a luxury and pleasure combined to make her a charming environment. Mrs. Bellamy was teaching her little daughter the gentle art of making a long rope of useless wool by means of a spool and a row of pins.

The mother’s head bent close to the little girl’s was as golden as the child’s. Her hands, with their flashing rings, played in and out among the pins with a skill nothing short of miraculous in the eyes of the little girl, who took up the spool between her own tiny fingers, the worsted twisted hard around her thumb.

By the table, in a luxurious leather chair, the other occupant of the room was almost lost to sight. His presence was, however, indicated by the film of cigarette smoke that rose curlingly around his head. The yellow cover of a French novel was just visible above the table.

“Paul,” his sister asked him, “how do you like America?”

“America?” he repeated, and, although he said no more, she knew by his quizzical drawl what he meant.

“Well, Slocum, then, and the old place?”

“Immensely!”

“Absurd,” she laughed. “You have only been here a week, and except for ridiculously caddying a couple of times for John at the Golf Club, you have not been out of the house.”

“In which case, how could I fail to like it?” he said, with mock politeness. “You’ve kept me company! You don’t seem to be tempted to explore the old scenes any more than I do! Perhaps, like me, you’re afraid of the shock. You know how luxurious I am. If it were not for the extremely swell gentleman and lady servants, I should feel very much at ease.” He had not put down his book; he still smoked and appeared to be reading what he said from it. “I was most amused the other day as I stood on the piazza; did John tell you? I saw going around the road two very attractive-looking girls – they recalled the Gibson pictures as much as anything else. They wore, of course, short skirts and those bodices that you see everywhere. They had a bicycle, each of them, and they were walking along, their arms around each other’s waists. I said to John: ‘By Jove, what a stunning pair of girls! I should like to know them.’ And he said: ‘They are living in the same house with you, my dear fellow —they are my cook and my laundress.’”

Mrs. Bellamy laughed appreciatively. “Tell me, Paul, how does America strike you?”

McAllister reluctantly laid his book down, crossed his legs and prepared to answer.

“I’ve been out more often than you think. I took a turtle view of the town; I mean I sauntered up and down it and out of it, and it gave me as complete a sensation as I have had in twenty-four years. A better sensation, ma chère, and I am not likely to have another.”

Mrs. Bellamy listened, as she always did when her brother gave himself the trouble to speak more than one sentence at a time to any woman with whom he was not in love.

“It is all new-born, honorable, progressive and decent. Everybody seems to have a certain disdain for me. I believe it is because, if you will permit me to say so, I dress so well.”

His sister laughed.

“Not that they do not dress well! They do – astoundingly well; but they all dress alike, and you cannot tell, as in the case of your own servant, a lady from her cook, or a butcher boy on a holiday from the millionaire’s son, if he happens to come through town on foot or in a motor. Let’s agree, then, that I do look different. ‘The drug-store man’ – that’s what you call him, isn’t it? – looked at me as if he hated me and my clothes when he gave me some calisaya. He thought I was a foreigner; they don’t like foreigners. If anything could put me on the same footing with my country people, this town street did, as far as it was able. By the time I got to the grocery I had forgotten that I had not seen America for thirty years, and that I was so different. Nothing remained but that country school feeling, that boy feeling. If you ask what I mean: There was a barrel of apples outside of the grocer’s door. I wanted to sneak one! I would have given fifty dollars for a glass of cider – for anything, in short, to keep up the game. I went in and asked him if he had such a thing as ‘sarsaparilla.’ He had it, and, in spite of my ‘difference,’ he pulled his cork and I drank the whole glass of that stuff. Pah! don’t ask me about it! It was all right, I don’t doubt; but when I left the corner and started up the hill, that wonderful sentimental feeling had entirely left me! There was only a wretched nausea – a complete sense of how far away I had gone from the simplicity of the whole thing, and I don’t say that I congratulated myself. Now, will you let me read, Agnes?”

But Mrs. Bellamy had turned to a servant who entered with a card – with two cards. “‘Mr. and Mrs. Warrener,’” she read aloud. “Oh, dear me, have you let them in?”

It appeared there was only a lady: “Mrs. George Warrener.”

“Heavens! I suppose that a lot of these people will call, and I must be more or less civil. Show Mrs. Warrener in – there is time to escape for you, Paul, by way of the dining room.”

CHAPTER VI

The brightness of the room, the effect produced by the brilliant color of the decorations, and the atmosphere of livableness and charm did not dazzle the guest who entered – because she simply could not see! Her excitement was such that it caused a sort of blindness to fall on her, although she had never thought herself bashful or shy.

A lady, younger than herself, rose and welcomed her in a soft, quick voice, with a difference so marked in speech to any Mrs. Warrener had ever heard that she thought it was a foreign accent.

“How do you do? This is very good of you; won’t you sit here? We feel very much like strangers, coming back to Slocum after so many years. Fanny, darling, take your spools and wool and go to nurse. There – first say: ‘How do you do?’ to Mrs. Warrener.”

Gertrude had a vision of a small creature with a head like a chrysanthemum flower and the wide, round eyes of a child. The little hand that met her glove with frank politeness gave her a pretty greeting. Mrs. Warrener was obliged to break the hard tension of nervous fright that clutched her throat, and to speak to her hostess, who, in a chair near her, represented a world of civilization and education so unlike her own that a bird of paradise and a barnyard hen might have had more points in common.

She breathed out: “I used to know Mrs. McAllister; she used to go to my husband’s uncle’s church.” There was no elder lady present, and Mrs. Warrener looked for one.

“Oh, yes,” her hostess answered. “I am very sorry my mother is not here. She is at Cannes; she never comes north before spring. It is nearly twelve years since she’s been in America.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Warrener was forced to speak. “I guess it was just at the time of my wedding. That was eight years ago. I remember they said she was going to Europe then. She came to my wedding; she was at the church.”

Mrs. Bellamy, who keenly, although with perfect politeness, was studying the village lady before her, wondered very much for what reason her mother had attended the Warrener wedding.

“Slocum must seem small after Rome,” Mrs. Warrener ventured into the conversation with more ease.

Her hostess laughed. “Slocum! Why, I haven’t seen it yet, do you know! I came at night – we drove up from the train in a storm. But” – she raised her eyes to the other part of the room – “my brother can tell you how it seems; he has lots of ideas about it! My brother, Mr. McAllister – Mrs. Warrener.”

Paul McAllister had returned, to his sister’s great surprise.

“Mrs. Warrener thinks Slocum must seem ‘small’ after Rome.” She did not italicize the repetition which she carefully made, sure that it would appeal to her brother’s humor as it was.

* * * * *

Mrs. Warrener gracefully, if unnecessarily, rose to the presentation, and found her hand in that of the gentleman of the long black overcoat, who bowed, meeting her eyes with a smile very like one of recognition and friendliness.

“Slocum is not small to me. I was born and brought up here. The place one comes from always seems the most important in the world. Of course it may strike me as small before I get through with it, but I have not found it so yet.”

Entirely unable to cope with the conversation, ordinary as it was, carried on by the quick, soft voices in enunciation so new to her that the language seemed scarcely English – Mrs. Warrener looked at the speaker with less embarrassment because he put her at her ease. Dark, brilliant and distinguished, he did not, nevertheless, awe her as did Mrs. Bellamy’s beauty and pose. McAllister took a chair and sat down directly in front of the guest.

“I have seen Mrs. Warrener already – at golf. You were there yesterday? Didn’t you give me my ball?”

“Yes, I just walked up for a little exercise. It’s nice playing there in the afternoon now, since the snow has gone.”

“I don’t play, myself,” McAllister said, “but, as you say, it’s a nice walk.”

Mrs. Bellamy, after a word or two, leaned back in her chair with relief, and left to her brother the amenities, watching him and the guest.

After Mrs. Warrener had gone – and McAllister had seen her to the door and returned with his indolent step – as he stopped to light a fresh cigarette, his sister said:

“Well, had you any recollection about a village beauty such as your boyhood and sarsaparilla memories? And did Mrs. Warrener recall it – and is the result the same?”

McAllister turned his handsome, careless face to his sister.

“You think her a stupid little provincial, don’t you, Agnes?”

“I? Why, I asked you your opinion.”

“You don’t deny that you think that.”

“Her boots are frightful, and her hat was appalling.”

“Oh, come,” laughed her brother; “be fair!”

Mrs. McAllister gathered up her work – a piece of tapestry.

“You are unable,” she said, with some asperity, “to see any landscape without a woman in it, even for five days.”

“It’s a great compliment that you pay your sex. Let my weakness pass. Won’t you confess that this little village nobody has more good looks than we have seen in Rome for two winters?”

“Beauty —Paul!”

McAllister shrugged: “Decidedly. A face like a Greuze, perfect eyebrows – so perfect as to be almost suspicious; that inimitable droop of the eyes and the corners of the mouth – at once childlike and mature; and her coloring!”

“You are always finding the most impossible women, and telling me how paintable they are. Do you want to paint this little bore?”

“Somebody has painted her, and to perfection,” he said, with authority. “I will show you her likeness in the Louvre when we get back.”

He had thrust his hands in his pockets and begun to stroll up and down the room. As she watched him a shade crossed his sister’s face. The worsted ball Fanny had let fall her mother picked up and turned over in her hands.

“As you sat and talked to the poor little woman I watched you; she was fascinated by you – no, really! Her entire expression altered! She has never seen anyone like you before.” (“That’s what the drug-store man thought,” murmured McAllister.) “And I hope she won’t take to frequenting the Golf Club and other local festive places where she can see you.”

“Thanks, Agnes.”

McAllister laughed, and, taking from her hands the red worsted ball, idly unwound it.

“Don’t be foolish! If we are here for any purpose under heaven, let’s amuse ourselves and some of these people, too! I don’t intend to shut myself up like Noah in the ark, with only the passengers I took on board at Rome. Let’s have Mrs. Warrener to lunch; she’s a nice little creature; she’s immured in this hole, and she’s probably bored to death.”

“If she is immured,” murmured Mrs. Bellamy, “don’t let’s bring her out.”

McAllister had almost unwound the ball as he talked, and what was left of it rolled down under the table.

Here Bellamy came in, and McAllister took his indolent self away. “What have you been doing?” Mr. Bellamy asked his wife. She gathered up the worsted and said, impatiently: “I’ve been talking to my idle and destructive brother.”

CHAPTER VII

It was six by the time Mrs. Warrener reached her own door. The aspect of Grand Street had changed. In the early twilight of the November afternoon the wooden houses bordering her street stood out clear-cut and fearlessly ugly. All the Felter children were playing in the yard, their piercing screams over their games of pleasure welcomed her ears. The little things, with red tam-o’-shanters on their heads, tore about hither and thither, calling in loud, penetrating voices.

Fanny Bellamy had said, “How do you do, Mrs. Wawenner,” in a voice like an angel bird’s. As Gertrude went up her steps she saw the Slocum Daily on the mat. Usually she seized upon the paper eagerly, but to-night she did not even lift it from the stoop.

In answer to the bell, the maid-of-all-work, Eliza, ran to the door. It was washday, and she exuded soapsuds. In her uncombed and dusty hair, little flakes of soapsuds still clung; she wore a gingham apron, with which she wiped her steaming face as she let her mistress in. For the first time Mrs. Warrener saw Eliza with eyes from which the scales of custom had fallen, and the cordial smile extended by one maid’s mistress who is conscious that she is just so little better because she has as much to spend a week as the maid has a month, did not this evening light the lady’s face.

“Eliza, never go to the door again without a white apron.”

The woman stared blankly, and her silent astonishment further aggravated the mistress.

“And fix your hair,” she said, severely, “and keep the kitchen door shut.”

Dinner smells which for years unremarked had greeted Mrs. Warrener’s nostrils, odors of kitchen and soapsuds, sickened her to-night; but before she could turn to go upstairs her attention was forcibly called to account by Eliza, who, with arms akimbo, cried to her:

“If you ain’t satisfied with me, Mrs. Warrener, you can get another girl. I ain’t no common, ordinary servant to be spoke to like that.”

Mrs. Warrener turned about at the lower stair. “What are you, then?” she asked, sharply.

The woman drew a breath of rage. “What am I?” she shrieked. “Why, I’m help, that’s what I am! And I’ve got better clothes than you have upstairs.”

“You can go and put them on,” her mistress said, “and get another place.”

Too excited to realize what the predicament of being without a servant meant in a suburban town, Gertrude did nothing to propitiate, and Eliza left.

From the opposite windows the neighbors watched the departure with astonishment and much interest, for Eliza had been with the Warreners eight years. Her red face shone under her feathered hat at the hack window, and her eyes, when flaming passion was subdued, were full of tears.

As Gertrude, indifferently, and without a word of good-by, paid her her money, Eliza sniffled: “I’d of liked to say good-by to Mr. Warrener —he’s a gentleman.”

When he came in finally to a dinner kept hot on the stove for him, and served by his wife, she informed him:

“I’ve sent Eliza away.” He was stupefied, and could not believe his ears.

“Good gracious! What for?”

“She was impertinent.”

Too amazed to speak, he ate his soup in silence; saying at length, sympathetically: “You’ll have to go up to town to-morrow and get somebody.”

“I guess I will.”

“I’m sorry for you, Gerty. It will be work for you, and it’s no easy job to get servants for the country, especially general houseworkers.”

“That’s just it,” she agreed, meditatively. But the idea of going to town was an excitement to her for the first time, and she had a scheme already in her mind. If she could find them she would get a cook and laundress and an upstairs girl. She would economize somehow or other, and she guessed George wouldn’t mind.

CHAPTER VIII

The stagnant pool of Slocum was very considerably stirred by New York during the days when Mrs. Warrener was obliged to go in and out to look for her servants. For she had decided that Eliza should be replaced by two maids, one of whom should be dressed in apron and caps such as those worn by the trim person of whom she had caught a glimpse as she waited in Mrs. Bellamy’s drawing room.

When her husband came home one night, Gertrude was waiting for him in the window. She had had a hard day. Timid and abashed before the new and autocratic ladies for whom she felt no room in the house was good enough, she had vacillated on the verge of temper and tears. One of her characteristics was the complete control of her features and a passive exterior which hitherto no excitements had disturbed.

“George” – she drew her husband into the parlor – “I’ve got two girls.” She put her hand on the lapel of the overcoat he had as yet not taken off.

“Two girls!” he echoed.

She was flushed and pretty – very pretty. He vaguely thought she was dressed up more than usual.

“I’m tired out!” she exclaimed. “Those intelligence offices are enough to wear you to death. I got two because – the work here is too much for any one girl.”

George looked around the microscopic room, and mentally saw, as well, the microscopic second floor.

“Eliza got through all right.”

Mrs. Warrener exclaimed: “Don’t talk to me of Eliza. She wasn’t fit to be seen.”

With the hope that the two servants together might not cost as much as one, he asked:

“What’s their wages?”

She hesitated.

“Why, I’d rather make it up some way – on a dress or a hat. They’re high. One twenty and the other twenty-five a month.”

“Gee whizz!” Warrener staggered back. “Why,” he gasped, “you’re crazy, Gert!”

Her hand fell back from the lapel of his coat. Tears of vexation and fatigue sprang to her eyes.

“Hush! She’s there, in the dining room – she’ll hear you. I’m not crazy, I’m sick of living like a tenement house.”

The master was prevented from saying anything further by the entrance of a pert-faced girl in cap and apron, who said briskly:

“Dinner’s served.”

Standing there in Eliza’s place between the cheap portières, she represented a convulsion in the clerk’s household. He had never been thus invited to a meal in his own house before. He got off his coat and followed his wife in to dinner.

The little, cozy room possessed for the first time an element of unrest. In eight years it had not altered so much as this. At first Gertrude, with a washerwoman, did her own work; then Eliza came blithely and good-humoredly on the scene. She had grown to be like a friend. Warrener liked her. In her oven, which she had at length triumphantly overcome, she baked him certain favorite little breads much to his taste. She ironed his collars and shirts “just right.” He could say to her:

“Look here, Eliza, just run down to Pearce’s and get me a couple of cigars.” He could never order this bustling individual in cap and gown in this manner. “A tenement!” The word touched his contented pride in his little household; already the golden sunlight was beginning to slip from the wall. Change and progression were following the tired man close on his heels to his very door.

A fortnight went by after her call at the house on the hill before the event reverently hoped for by George Warrener’s wife transpired.

Mrs. Bellamy in her French automobile drove up Grand Street and called on Mrs. Warrener.

Gertrude was out, and when she came home and found the bit of pasteboard lying on the hatstand and realized that Mrs. Bellamy had been – and had gone! – a feeling of desolation swept over her such as might attack a lonely occupant of a desert island on rushing to his island’s edge to see a ship slip over the horizon.

The disappointed woman could think of nothing to follow this occurrence, no future after it. She felt deserted and very miserable.

The waitress who answered the bell her mistress rang appeared now to be superfluous – the extravagance this splurge represented occurred to Gertrude for the first time. What was the good of the servants after Mrs. Bellamy had been and gone! Since Mrs. Bellamy would never come again, Eliza might just as well be there with her blowzy hair, her blue apron and her kind, smiling face. Gertrude felt a homesickness for her as excitement died out of her limited sky.

Katy’s manner was less flaunting and insolent than usual. Mrs. Bellamy in her handsome clothes and the automobile had impressed her.

“When did the lady come?”

“About half an hour ago.”

“Was there anyone else?”

Mrs. Warrener would not let herself think just who there might have been.

“There was only a little girl in the motor car.”

“She didn’t leave any message?”

“No, ma’am.”

Well, it was all over, and she might as well make the best of it. She had got on all right enough before the Bellamys came; she guessed she could live without them, anyhow. She would keep the girls till George’s summer vacation, and then they could get another place. That this provision would leave them stranded in a bad season did not disturb her.

She “just couldn’t” go upstairs to indolently sit down and contemplate at once the stupid days to be! There were George’s socks to mend, but she turned about where she stood, gratefully remembering that there was also the meeting of a card club of which she was a member. It would at least keep her doing something, and she went out again and started toward Mrs. Turnbull’s.

Her feet were clad in shoes then in vogue, with thick, projecting soles and stubby ends. As her foot was ridiculously small, it looked less like a man’s – which masculinity it seems this heavy gear is intended to simulate – than like a sturdy little boy’s. Her short-length skirt showed a slender ankle in coarse black stockings, the skirt itself falling smoothly on her rounded hips; her coat lay smoothly across a flat back and shoulders, the small, supple waist was held in by a leather belt. Her collar, neither stiff enough nor high enough to be “smart,” was low enough to leave visible the back of her neck and the close growth of her hair. Men have been known more than once to follow a woman for the charm of the nape of her neck; that soft, pretty turn, the lovely part of the form where the head with more or less beauty – according to type – joins the shoulder and body.

Before Mrs. Warrener was within two blocks of her destination, she heard some one walking fast behind her, and not unnaturally turned to see who followed her with a step so decided in the lonely street.

It was Mr. McAllister.

The unexpectedness of this appearance on the afternoon when she had given up the idea of coming in contact with his like and circle again – the fact of meeting him in the open street, where there was no one but himself to critically observe her manner – gave her a shock of pleasure. She stammered: “How do you do?” and held out her hand to him with the gaucherie of a child.

“What a dreadfully fast walker you are!” McAllister was out of breath. “And it’s not the first time I’ve noticed it. You don’t know how I ran down the hill behind you that night at the Golf Club.”

He had never spoken to such a painful blush before, as surprise and flattered pleasure deepened in the woman’s cheeks.

“It’s a splendid speed,” he approved, “and it’s given you a most glorious color.”

As he walked along by her side she managed to say:

“Your sister called to day, and I was out.”

“That’s too bad!” he exclaimed heartily. “She will be so sorry. She wanted to take you out in the automobile – I lent it for the purpose. Where are you going, and at such a pace – may I know?”

“I’m going to a card party at Mrs. Turnbull’s – it’s right here.”

Her companion showed plainly his disappointment. “I thought you were out for a good walk, and that perhaps I might join you.”

More sorry than he, and thoroughly regretting having told her stupid errand, she slowed her pace.

“Can’t I come in with you – and play as well?”

She smiled nervously. “Oh, no, there are only ladies in the club.”

“Only!” he repeated. “What better could one want? But I should prefer it in the singular. Can’t you seriously take me in under your protection and introduce me? What do you play? Bridge? I can play bridge. It would amuse me hugely.” He saw that she did not understand his use of the word and changed it. “Entertain me – do, please.”

Mrs. Warrener had not much imagination, but she could imagine the faces of Mrs. Turnbull and her fellow club members at the sight of Mr. McAllister and herself together under any circumstances. He looked so tall – so laughing and at ease – his attitude as if he had known her all his life bewildered her; her embarrassment was not yet relieved, although her pleasure was growing.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t, Mr. McAllister.”

“Do you like cards?” he demanded, with abrupt change of topic.

“Not much; I don’t play well.”

“I hate them, personally,” he admitted. “Why, then, do you go?”

As she made him wait for an answer he urged: “It’s a crime to sacrifice this afternoon in a hot, stuffy room before a lot of painted pasteboards. I don’t believe they expect you – do they?”

“Well, I don’t believe they do. I don’t often go. I just pay fines all the time.”

“Pay one this once, won’t you? Is this the house? Why, it’s a box, nothing more. Don’t go and be shut up in it!”

Gertrude thought with a pang that Mrs. Turnbull’s was twice as large as her own house – she had envied her.

“Don’t you want to show me one of the walks around here? There must be lots of nice tramps. It will do you good.”

She had never been spoken to in her life like this before. Strange as it may seem, it is, nevertheless, true that she had never exchanged half a dozen words with any man but her husband in her life – that is, any man save the tradespeople, whom she always talked to as long as she could. She had once acknowledged to herself: “I guess I like men better than women – I’d rather talk to the grocer than to any of the stupid Slocum women. It’s common of me, but it’s true.”

McAllister’s voice was like a cradle – she seemed to rock in it.

“He’s perfectly elegant,” she said to herself; “so handsome and polite.”

She would have suffocated at the Turnbulls’; the same atmosphere that had latterly pervaded all of her own surroundings began to surround the unoffending little house whose porch and front gate were reached.

She nerved herself to look up at Mr. McAllister, and with some assurance met his smiling eyes.

“I’ll go along a little further; there’s a pretty walk over along the old Lackawanna Station.”