At Fault (7 page)

"God! but dats a diffunt man sence you come heah."

"Different?" questioned the girl eagerly, and casting a quick sideward
look at Aunt Belindy.

"Lord yas honey, 'f you warn't heah dat same Mista Grégor 'd be in
Centaville ev'y Sunday, a raisin' Cain. Humph—I knows 'im."

Melicent would not permit herself to ask more, but picked up her vase
of flowers and walked with it into the house; her comprehension of
Grégoire in no wise advanced by the newly acquired knowledge that he
was liable to "raise Cain" during her absence—a proceeding which she
could not too hastily condemn, considering her imperfect apprehension
of what it might imply.

Meanwhile she would not allow her doubts to interfere with the
kindness which she lavished on him, seeing that he loved her to
desperation. Was he not at this very moment looking up into her eyes,
and talking of his misery and her cruelty? turning his face downward
in her lap—as she knew to cry—for had she not already seen him lie
on the ground in an agony of tears, when she had told him he should
never kiss her again?

And so they lingered in the woods, these two curious lovers, till the
shadows grew so deep about old McFarlane's grave that they passed it
by with hurried step and averted glance.

After a day of close and intense September heat, it had rained during
the night. And now the morning had followed chill and crisp, yet with
possibilities of a genial sunshine breaking through the mist that had
risen at dawn from the great sluggish river and spread itself through
the mazes of the city.

The change was one to send invigorating thrills through the blood, and
to quicken the step; to make one like the push and jostle of the
multitude that thronged the streets; to make one in love with
intoxicating life, and impatient with the grudging dispensation that
had given to mankind no wings wherewith to fly.

But with no reacting warmth in his heart, the change had only made
Hosmer shiver and draw his coat closer about his chest, as he pushed
his way through the hurrying crowd.

The St. Louis Exposition was in progress with all its many allurements
that had been heralded for months through the journals of the State.

Hence, the unusual press of people on the streets this bright
September morning. Home people, whose air of ownership to the
surroundings classified them at once, moving unobservantly about their
affairs. Women and children from the near and rich country towns, in
for the Exposition and their fall shopping; wearing gowns of ultra
fashionable tendencies; leaving in their toilets nothing to
expediency; taking no chances of so much as a ribbon or a loop set in
disaccordance with the book.

There were whole families from across the bridge, hurrying towards the
Exposition. Fathers and mothers, babies and grandmothers, with baskets
of lunch and bundles of provisional necessities, in for the day.

Nothing would escape their observation nor elude their criticism, from
the creations in color lining the walls of the art gallery, to the
most intricate mechanism of inventive genius in the basement. All
would pass inspection, with drawing of comparison between the present,
the past year and the "year before," likely in a nasal drawl with the
R's brought sharply out, leaving no doubt as to their utterance.

The newly married couple walking serenely through the crowd, young,
smiling, up-country, hand-in-hand; well pleased with themselves, with
their new attire and newer jewelry, would likely have answered
Hosmer's "beg pardon" with amiability if he had knocked them down. But
he had only thrust them rather violently to one side in his eagerness
to board the cable car that was dashing by, with no seeming
willingness to stay its mad flight. He still possessed the agility in
his unpracticed limbs to swing himself on the grip, where he took a
front seat, well buttoned up as to top-coat, and glad of the bodily
rest that his half hour's ride would bring him.

The locality in which he descended presented some noticeable changes
since he had last been there. Formerly, it had been rather a quiet
street, with a leisurely horse car depositing its passengers two
blocks away to the north from it; awaking somewhat of afternoons when
hordes of children held possession. But now the cable had come to
disturb its long repose, adding in the office, nothing to its
attractiveness.

There was the drug store still at the corner, with the same
proprietor, tilted back in his chair as of old, and as of old reading
his newspaper with only the change which a newly acquired pair of
spectacles gave to his appearance. The "drug store boy" had unfolded
into manhood, plainly indicated by the mustache that in adding
adornment and dignity to his person, had lifted him above the menial
office of window washing. A task relegated to a mustacheless urchin
with a leaning towards the surreptitious abstraction of caramels and
chewing gum in the intervals of such manual engagements as did not
require the co-operation of a strategic mind.

Where formerly had been the vacant lot "across the street," the Sunday
afternoon elysium of the youthful base ball fiend from Biddle Street,
now stood a row of brand new pressed-brick "flats." Marvelous must
have been the architectural ingenuity which had contrived to unite so
many dwellings into so small a space. Before each spread a length of
closely clipped grass plot, and every miniature front door wore its
fantastic window furnishing; each set of decorations having seemingly
fired the next with efforts of surpassing elaboration.

The house at which Hosmer rang—a plain two-storied red brick,
standing close to the street—was very old-fashioned in face of its
modern opposite neighbors, and the recently metamorphosed dwelling
next door, that with added porches and appendages to tax man's faculty
of conjecture, was no longer recognizable for what it had been. Even
the bell which he pulled was old-fashioned and its tingle might be
heard throughout the house long after the servant had opened the door,
if she were only reasonably alert to the summons. Its reverberations
were but dying away when Hosmer asked if Mrs. Larimore were in. Mrs.
Larimore was in; an admission which seemed to hold in reserve a
defiant "And what if she is, sir."

Hosmer was relieved to find the little parlor into which he was
ushered, with its adjoining dining-room, much changed. The carpets
which he and Fanny had gone out together to buy during the early days
of their housekeeping, were replaced by rugs that lay upon the bare,
well polished floors. The wall paper was different; so were the
hangings. The furniture had been newly re-covered. Only the small
household gods were as of old: things—trifles—that had never much
occupied or impressed him, and that now, amid their altered
surroundings stirred no sentiment in him of either pleased or sad
remembrance.

It had not been his wish to take his wife unawares, and he had
previously written her of his intended coming, yet without giving her
a clue for the reason of it.

There was an element of the bull-dog in Hosmer. Having made up his
mind, he indulged in no regrets, in no nursing of if's and and's, but
stood like a brave soldier to his post, not a post of danger,
true—but one well supplied with discomfiting possibilities.

And what had Homeyer said of it? He had railed of course as usual, at
the submission of a human destiny to the exacting and ignorant rule of
what he termed moral conventionalities. He had startled and angered
Hosmer with his denunciation of Thérèse's sophistical guidance.
Rather—he proposed—let Hosmer and Thérèse marry, and if Fanny were
to be redeemed—though he pooh-poohed the notion as untenable with
certain views of what he called the rights to existence: the existence
of wrongs—sorrows—diseases—death—let them all go to make up the
conglomerate whole—and let the individual man hold on to his
personality. But if she must be redeemed—granting this point to their
littleness, let the redemption come by different ways than those of
sacrifice: let it be an outcome from the capability of their united
happiness.

Hosmer did not listen to his friend Homeyer. Love was his god now, and
Thérèse was Love's prophet.

So he was sitting in this little parlor waiting for Fanny to come.

She came after an interval that had been given over to the indulgence
of a little feminine nervousness. Through the open doors Hosmer could
hear her coming down the back stairs; could hear that she halted
mid-way. Then she passed through the dining-room, and he arose and
went to meet her, holding out his hand, which she was not at once
ready to accept, being flustered and unprepared for his manner in
whichever way it might direct itself.

They sat opposite each other and remained for a while silent; he with
astonishment at sight of the "merry blue eyes" faded and sunken into
deep, dark round sockets; at the net-work of little lines all traced
about the mouth and eyes, and spreading over the once rounded cheeks
that were now hollow and evidently pale or sallow, beneath a layer of
rouge that had been laid on with an unsparing hand. Yet was she still
pretty, or pleasing, especially to a strong nature that would find an
appeal in the pathetic weakness of her face. There was no guessing at
what her figure might be, it was disguised under a very fashionable
dress, and a worsted shawl covered her shoulders, which occasionally
quivered as with an inward chill. She spoke first, twisting the end of
this shawl.

"What did you come for, David? why did you come now?" with peevish
resistance to the disturbance of his coming.

"I know I have come without warrant," he said, answering her
implication. "I have been led to see—no matter how—that I made
mistakes in the past, and what I want to do now is to right them, if
you will let me."

This was very unexpected to her, and it startled her, but neither with
pleasure nor pain; only with an uneasiness which showed itself in her
face.

"Have you been ill?" he asked suddenly as the details of change in her
appearance commenced to unfold themselves to him.

"Oh no, not since last winter, when I had pneumonia so bad. They
thought I was going to die. Dr. Franklin said I would 'a died if Belle
Worthington hadn't 'a took such good care of me. But I don't see what
you mean coming now. It'll be the same thing over again: I don't see
what's the use, David."

"We won't talk about the use, Fanny. I want to take care of you for
the rest of your life—or mine—as I promised to do ten years ago; and
I want you to let me do it."

"It would be the same thing over again," she reiterated, helplessly.

"It will not be the same," he answered positively. "I will not be the
same, and that will make all the difference needful."

"I don't see what you want to do it for, David. Why we'd haf to get
married over again and all that, wouldn't we?"

"Certainly," he answered with a faint smile. "I'm living in the South
now, in Louisiana, managing a sawmill down there."

"Oh, I don't like the South. I went down to Memphis, let's see, it was
last spring, with Belle and Lou Dawson, after I'd been sick; and I
don't see how a person can live down there."

"You would like the place where I'm living. It's a fine large
plantation, and the lady who owns it would be the best of friends to
you. She knew why I was coming, and told me to say she would help to
make your life a happy one if she could."

"It's her told you to come," she replied in quick resentment. "I don't
see what business it is of hers."

Fanny Larimore's strength of determination was not one to hold against
Hosmer's will set to a purpose, during the hour or more that they
talked, he proposing, she finally acquiescing. And when he left her,
it was with a gathering peace in her heart to feel that his nearness
was something that would belong to her again; but differently as he
assured her. And she believed him, knowing that he would stand to his
promise.

Her life was sometimes very blank in the intervals of street
perambulations and matinées and reading of morbid literature. That
elation which she had felt over her marriage with Hosmer ten years
before, had soon died away, together with her weak love for him, when
she began to dread him and defy him. But now that he said he was ready
to take care of her and be good to her, she felt great comfort in her
knowledge of his honesty.

It was on the day following Hosmer's visit, that Mrs. Lorenzo
Worthington, familiarly known to her friends as Belle Worthington, was
occupied in constructing a careful and extremely elaborate street
toilet before her dressing bureau which stood near the front window of
one of the "flats" opposite Mrs. Larimore's. The Nottingham curtain
screened her effectually from the view of passers-by without hindering
her frequent observance of what transpired in the street.

The lower portion of this lady's figure was draped, or better,
seemingly supported, by an abundance of stiffly starched white
petticoats that rustled audibly at her slightest movement. Her neck
was bare, as were the well shaped arms that for the past five minutes
had been poised in mid-air, in the arrangement of a front of
exquisitely soft blonde curls, which she had taken from her "top
drawer" and was adjusting, with the aid of a multitude of tiny
invisible hair-pins, to her own very smoothly brushed hair. Yellow
hair it was, with a suspicious darkness about the roots, and a
streakiness about the back, that to an observant eye would have more
than hinted that art had assisted nature in coloring Mrs.
Worthington's locks.

Dressed, and evidently waiting with forced patience for the
termination of these overhead maneuvers of her friend, sat Lou,—Mrs.
Jack Dawson,—a woman whom most people called handsome. If she were
handsome, no one could have told why, for her beauty was a thing which
could not be defined. She was tall and thin, with hair, eyes, and
complexion of a brownish neutral tint, and bore in face and figure, a
stamp of defiance which probably accounted for a certain eccentricity
in eschewing hair dyes and cosmetics. Her face was full of little
irregularities; a hardly perceptible cast in one eye; the nose drawn a
bit to one side, and the mouth twitched decidedly to the other when
she talked or laughed. It was this misproportion which gave a piquancy
to her expression and which in charming people, no doubt made them
believe her handsome.