Read Ebook: More Stories of Married Life by Cutting Mary Stewart

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Ebook has 777 lines and 51884 words, and 16 pages

"I'm looking for my husband"--in full torrent of explanation her tone had grown louder. "He came here a little while ago." She paused, suddenly aware of a whisper sibilating around.

"She's looking for her husband." Several people stopped eating. The head waiter regarded her suspiciously.

"Was Monsieur alone?"

"Aa--h!" said the head waiter. "Monsieur was with another lady!" An embarrassing murmur of interest made itself felt. He fixed her with a placating eye, as he added, hurriedly, "But Monsieur, as Madame perceives, is not here. He exists not. If the carriage of Madame"--he stopped happily--"But behold now the friends of Madame!"

The wild blaze of happiness died down almost as suddenly as it had risen in Mrs. Gibbons' breast, as she turned to see the Worthingtons advancing decorously once more to her rescue. Her bright hopes were buried in ashes.

"Will you not go on with us to the opera?" asked Mrs. Worthington. "We would be very glad to have you. We did not care to get in for the first act."

"Oh, no, I couldn't do that--you're so very kind--but I couldn't really. I must get home at once. Mr. Gibbons will go home early. I want to go home."

"We will then, of course, return with you," said Mr. Worthington, resignedly.

"We will leave whenever you say so," said Mr. Worthington, with his invariable deference.

So unused was Mrs. Gibbons to going out with any one but her husband that Mr. Worthington's arm felt startlingly thin and queer and unnatural when her hand rested on it as he helped her across the street. Everything was unnatural. Her acceptance, she found, necessitated his standing in the rear of the house, while she occupied his seat. Mrs. Worthington relinquished her entirely to the promised enjoyment. The music was indeed beautiful, but she still kept hold of the ever-tightening thread of suspense and longing; Arnold might be gay without her, but she couldn't be gay without him. To think of all she was missing choked her! Mr. Worthington came forward between the acts to ask perfunctorily if Mrs. Gibbons wished to leave, but his wife showed no signs of moving.

It was with the first joy of the evening that she saw the curtain descend, and felt that she could tear at full speed for the elevated road and her own dear ferry and her own dear home. She must get there before Arnold, or he would be wild with anxiety; her desire to meet him in town was nothing to her desire now to head him off at home. But she reckoned without her host, literally. Her entertainers had been met by friends as they passed slowly down amid the crush in the aisle, and after the voluble greetings she was panic-struck by hearing one of the strangers say:

"You'll come to supper with us now? Just around the corner!"

"Oh, yes!" Mrs. Worthington was almost animated. "If we have time," she added, turning to her husband.

"Why, we can't get the twelve o'clock, if we stay, but we will have plenty of time for the twelve-thirty, if Mrs. Gibbons doesn't object," said Mr. Worthington.

"We have a friend with us," said Mrs. Worthington, in languid explanation. "Mrs. Gibbons, Mrs. Freshet, Mr. Freshet."

"We will, of course, be pleased to have your friend take supper with us," said Mrs. Freshet.

How could Mrs. Gibbons object? Her eyes pleaded, but her lips were perforce silent; and, comfortably settled in the restaurant, the others talked about matters of common interest, while she sat on the edge of her chair by the gleaming little table, and fumbled at her oysters with her fork, watching the hands of the clock at the end of the room. The Freshets were even more ornately dressed than the Worthingtons, with a floridity of manner that somehow overstepped a certain delicate line.

Once Mrs. Freshet smiled at the guest over her white satin and sables to ask:

"Is this the friend of whose beautiful home I have heard so much?"

"I--I think not," said Mrs. Gibbons, with a stricken glimpse of the interior of her little dwelling. "I only met the Worthingtons by accident to-night," she added, impulsively, with a longing for sympathy. "I was looking for my husband."

"How singular!" said Mrs. Freshet, with a blank stare, and turned at once to continue a conversation on bargains with Mrs. Worthington, while Mrs. Gibbons, trying to make sprightly remarks in response to Mr. Freshet and Mr. Worthington, agonizingly watched the clock. Ten minutes of twelve--five minutes of twelve--she could not have stood it a second longer, when Mr. Worthington rose to hurry them off.

The rushing of the elevated train could not keep up with Mrs. Gibbons' hastening spirit; but somehow, inexplicably, after a while even the rushing stopped--the train halted--went forward a little--and halted again, between stations.

"They do say as there's a family yet in the burning house," suggested a sympathizing listener.

"Naw, they got thim out, but there's two firemen hurted," said another.

"What is it, Amelia!" Mr. Worthington turned his attention hastily from Mrs. Gibbons to his wife. "Do you feel faint?"

"A little," murmured Mrs. Worthington, reproachfully.

Only the initiated know what this really means. To be cut off inexorably from home, and the children, and the fires, and the incompetent servants or the anxious watchers--it is something subtly feared in every evening journey into town, but only once in a life-time perhaps is it experienced.

"Perhaps we can get out home some way," he answered, with the instinct of the man who considers two hours in his own bed worth ten in any other.

"No need to do that," said a man rapidly coming out with a pipe-smoking group from the ferry-house. "We're going out on the twelve-forty-five boat on the other road, a couple blocks below here, and take the trolley out. It's Mrs. Gibbons, isn't it? I don't believe you recognize me. I saw your husband an hour or so ago at Weber and Fields."

"Ye're frightenin' the lady, ye big bloke."

She shrank painfully at the notice thrust upon her. For hours, and hours, and hours they were jigging off over the dark salt meadows.

Crash, lurch, jam--everything came to a sudden stop. The conductor called, "All out here for the car ahead."

The sleeping ones awoke. In the scuffle and rush forward Mrs. Gibbons became separated from her friends. The new car was already jammed when she reached it, with fighting in the doorway. With one foot raised to step up she was thrust to one side by a man who leapt from it, followed by several others dashing back across the tracks and down a side street, amid cries of "Catch him! Get the pocketbook! Catch the thief!"

There was a face--could it be her husband's? She turned wildly to peer after it into the blankness outside of the car lights. The next instant the bell had rung, and the car, with the crowd on the platform all looking one way, was vanishing swiftly down the roadway, while Mrs. Gibbons, unnoticed, stood alone upon the rails. She made a futile step after it, and then stopped, appalled. She was left behind.

Opposite was the long, cavernous opening of a car-house, filled with the stalled cars. Near her was a saloon, ending what seemed a scattered row of small, mean houses and shops, closed and dark. Ahead there was a stretch of empty lots, with a faint, stationary glimmer of light down the road. But the saloon, though by no means brilliant, was the lightest place. There was no sound from within. After some hesitation, Mrs. Gibbons wandered up on the low platform that topped the two steps, watched by a couple of men from the car-house. Her heart was in her mouth as one of them came forward; but he only glanced at her and went in the saloon, to come out again with a wooden chair.

"Better set," he remarked, laconically, and disappeared across the street. A moment later there were other footsteps from the saloon, and looking up, she saw a policeman wiping his mouth.

"Got left by the car?" he said.

"Yes," said Mrs. Gibbons, raising her blue and guileless eyes to his. "I didn't know it was going so soon. I was looking for my husband."

The policeman's face changed from solicitude to the cheerful acceptance of a familiar situation.

"Give ye the slip, did he? A lady like you, too! Sure he's the bad lot, and not wort' your lookin' for. Now don't be frettin' yourself, the Queen couldn't be safer. I'm wid you till the car comes. 'Tis an hour away."

"It's very good of you," said Mrs. Gibbons, gratefully.

Of all the chances and changes of this wild Walpurgis night, there could be nothing stranger than this, that she, Nita Gibbons, should be sitting alone amid the dark marshes, in front of a Jersey "gin-mill," at half-past two o'clock in the morning. It was so entirely past all imagining that frenzy had left her. She would probably never get home again, but she had ceased to struggle against fate. She sat there instead, passive, her slight figure bent against the cold night wind, and her hair half falling down under her battered hat, looking dreamily at the late twinkling stars in the black sky, and the gloomy car-house opposite, and at the policeman who walked up and down through the shadows. He swayed a little unsteadily, but he represented the guardianship of the law. Once he came close to her and asked encouragingly, "Would ye like a doggy?"

"What kind?" said Mrs. Gibbons, with a hazy fear of too large a protective animal.

He pointed over his shoulder towards the stationary light down the road. "The kind they do be havin' in the Owl Wagon, down there--frankfooties or doggies, 'tis the same. I could get ye wan, wid a roll; they're cleaned out in the s'loon here."

"Thank you, I'd rather not eat," said Mrs. Gibbons in haste, and then started nervously as the noise of footsteps running broke upon the ear. The three men who had followed the thief came in sight from the direction in which they had fled from the car. One called out, "Good-night, I'm going to hoof it home!"

And another voice also called, "Glad you got your pocketbook back again--ought to have got the fellow, too."

"Oh, Arnold, Arnold!" She stopped short in view of his face. "Oh, Arnold, I don't wonder you're surprised to see me, dear, but I've been looking for you!"

The astonishment in his voice held something ominous in it. She clung to his arm with both hands, as she rose with him, and hardly realized, in her excited explaining and explaining, that she was being borne off down the road without waiting for the car, at a tremendous pace, and still spasmodically explaining to a portentous silence. When he spoke at last it was in a tone that sounded dangerous:

His anger grew.

"To surprise me! Then let me know next time you want to surprise me. I've had enough surprise to last me all the rest of my life."

He broke off with a shudder as if the thought were too much for him.

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