At Fault (8 page)

Mrs. Worthington's coiffure being completed, she regaled herself with
a deliberate and comprehensive glance into the street, and the outcome
of her observation was the sudden exclamation.

"Well I'll be switched! come here quick Lou. If there ain't Fanny
Larimore getting on the car with Dave Hosmer!"

Mrs. Dawson approached the window, but without haste; and in no wise
sharing her friend's excitement, gave utterance to her calm opinion.

"They've made it up, I'll bet you what you want."

Surprise seemed for the moment to have deprived Mrs. Worthington of
further ability to proceed with her toilet, for she had fallen into a
chair as limply as her starched condition would permit, her face full
of speculation.

"See here, Belle Worthington, if we've got to be at the 'Lympic at two
o'clock, you'd better be getting a move on yourself."

"Yes, I know; but I declare, you might knock me down with a feather."

A highly overwrought figure of speech on the part of Mrs. Worthington,
seeing that the feather which would have prostrated her must have met
a resistance of some one hundred and seventy-five pounds of solid
avoirdupois.

"After all she said about him, too!" seeking to draw her friend into
some participation in her own dumbfoundedness.

"Well, you ought to know Fanny Larimore's a fool, don't you?"

"Well, but I just can't get over it; that's all there is about it."
And Mrs. Worthington went about completing the adornment of her person
in a state of voiceless stupefaction.

In full garb, she presented the figure of a splendid woman; trim and
tight in a black silk gown of expensive quality, heavy with jets which
hung and shone, and jangled from every available point of her person.
Not a thread of her yellow hair was misplaced. She shone with
cleanliness, and her broad expressionless face and meaningless blue
eyes were set to a good-humored readiness for laughter, which would be
wholesome if not musical. She exhaled a fragrance of patchouly or
jockey-club, or something odorous and "strong" that clung to every
article of her apparel, even to the yellow kid gloves which she would
now be forced to put on during her ride in the car. Mrs. Dawson,
attired with equal richness and style, showed more of individuality in
her toilet.

As they quitted the house she observed to her friend:

"I wish you'd let up on that smell; it's enough to sicken a body."

"I know you don't like it, Lou," was Mrs. Worthington's apologetic and
half disconcerted reply, "and I was careful as could be. Give you my
word, I didn't think you could notice it."

"Notice it? Gee!" responded Mrs. Dawson.

These were two ladies of elegant leisure, the conditions of whose
lives, and the amiability of whose husbands, had enabled them to
develop into finished and professional time-killers.

Their intimacy with each other, as also their close acquaintance with
Fanny Larimore, dated from a couple of years after that lady's
marriage, when they had met as occupants of the same big up-town
boarding house. The intercourse had never since been permitted to die
out. Once, when the two former ladies were on a visit to Mrs.
Larimore, seeing the flats in course of construction, they were at
once assailed with the desire to abandon their hitherto nomadic life,
and settle to the responsibilities of housekeeping; a scheme which
they carried into effect as soon as the houses became habitable.

There was a Mr. Lorenzo Worthington; a gentleman employed for many
years past in the custom house. Whether he had been overlooked, which
his small unobtrusive, narrow-chested person made possible—or whether
his many-sided usefulness had rendered him in a manner indispensable
to his employers, does not appear; but he had remained at his post
during the various changes of administration that had gone by since
his first appointment.

During intervals of his work—intervals often occurring of afternoon
hours, when he had been given night work—he was fond of sitting at
the sunny kitchen window, with his long thin nose, and shortsighted
eyes plunged between the pages of one of his precious books: a small
hoard of which he had collected at some cost and more self-denial.

One of the grievances of his life was the necessity under which he
found himself of protecting his treasure from the Philistine abuse and
contempt of his wife. When they moved into the flat, Mrs. Worthington,
during her husband's absence, had ranged them all, systematically
enough, on the top shelf of the kitchen closet to "get them out of the
way." But at this he had protested, and taken a positive stand, to
which his wife had so far yielded as to permit that they be placed on
the top shelf of the bedroom closet; averring that to have them laying
around was a thing that she would not do, for they spoilt the looks of
any room.

He had not foreseen the possibility of their usefulness being a
temptation to his wife in so handy a receptacle.

Seeking once a volume of Ruskin's Miscellanies, he discovered that it
had been employed to support the dismantled leg of a dressing bureau.
On another occasion, a volume of Schopenhauer, which he had been at
much difficulty and expense to procure, Emerson's Essays, and two
other volumes much prized, he found had served that lady as weights to
hold down a piece of dry goods which she had sponged and spread to dry
on an available section of roof top.

He was glad enough to transport them all back to the safer refuge of
the kitchen closet, and pay the hired girl a secret stipend to guard
them.

Mr. Worthington regarded women as being of peculiar and unsuitable
conformation to the various conditions of life amid which they are
placed; with strong moral proclivities, for the most part subservient
to a weak and inadequate mentality.

It was not his office to remodel them; his rôle was simply to endure
with patience the vagaries of an order of human beings, who after all,
offered an interesting study to a man of speculative habit, apart from
their usefulness as propagators of the species.

As regards this last qualification, Mrs. Worthington had done less
than her fair share, having but one child, a daughter of twelve, whose
training and education had been assumed by an aunt of her father's, a
nun of some standing in the Sacred Heart Convent.

Quite a different type of man was Jack Dawson, Lou's husband. Short,
round, young, blonde, good looking and bald—as what St. Louis man
past thirty is not? he rejoiced in the agreeable calling of a
traveling salesman.

On the occasions when he was at home; once in two weeks—sometimes
seldomer—never oftener—the small flat was turned inside out and
upside down. He filled it with noise and merriment. If a theater party
were not on hand, it was a spin out to Forest park behind a fast team,
closing with a wine supper at a road-side restaurant. Or a card party
would be hastily gathered to which such neighbors as were congenial
were bid in hot haste; deficiencies being supplied from his large
circle of acquaintances who happened not to be on the road, and who at
the eleventh hour were rung up by telephone. On such occasions Jack's
voice would be heard loud in anecdote, introduced in some such wise as
"When I was in Houston, Texas, the other day," or "Tell you what it
is, sir, those fellers over in Albuquerque are up to a thing or two."

One of his standing witticisms was to inquire in a stage whisper of
Belle or Lou—whether the little gal over the way had taken the pledge
yet.

This gentleman and his wife were on the most amiable of terms
together, barring the small grievance that he sometimes lost money at
poker. But as losing was exceptional with him, and as he did not make
it a matter of conscience to keep her at all times posted as to the
fluctuations of his luck, this grievance had small occasion to show
itself.

What he thought of his wife, might best be told in his own language:
that Lou was up to the mark and game every time; feminine
characteristics which he apparently held in high esteem.

The two ladies in question had almost reached the terminus of their
ride, when Mrs. Worthington remarked incidentally to her friend, "It
was nothing in the God's world but pure sass brought those two fellers
to see you last night, Lou."

Mrs. Dawson bit her lip and the cast in her eye became more
accentuated, as it was apt to do when she was ruffled.

"I notice you didn't treat 'em any too cool yourself," she retorted.

"Oh, they weren't my company, or I'd a give 'em a piece of my mind
pretty quick. You know they're married, and they know you're married,
and they hadn't a bit o' business there."

"They're perfect gentlemen, and I don't see what business 'tis of
yours, anyway."

"Oh that's a horse of another color," replied Mrs. Worthington,
bridling and relapsing into injured silence for the period of ten
seconds, when she resumed, "I hope they ain't going to poke themselves
at the matinée."

"Likely they will 's long as they gave us the tickets."

One of the gentlemen was at the matinée: Mr. Bert Rodney, but he
certainly had not "poked" himself there. He never did any thing vulgar
or in bad taste. He had only "dropped in!" Exquisite in dress and
manner, a swell of the upper circles, versed as was no one better in
the code of gentlemanly etiquette—he was for the moment awaiting
disconsolately the return of his wife and daughter from Narragansett.

He took a vacant seat behind the two ladies, and bending forward began
to talk to them in his low and fascinating drawl.

Mrs. Worthington, who often failed to accomplish her fierce designs,
was as gracious towards him as if she had harbored no desire to give
him a piece of her mind; but she was resolute in her refusal to make
one of a proposed supper party.

A quiet sideward look from Mrs. Dawson, told Mr. Rodney as plainly as
words, that in the event of his
partie-carrée
failing him, he might
count upon her for a
tête-à-tête
.

The wedding was over. Hosmer and Fanny had been married in the small
library of their Unitarian minister whom they had found intent upon
the shaping of his Sunday sermon.

Out of deference, he had been briefly told the outward circumstances
of the case, which he knew already; for these two had been formerly
members of his congregation, and gossip had not been reluctant in
telling their story. Hosmer, of course, had drifted away from his
knowledge, and in late years, he had seen little of Fanny, who when
moved to attend church at all usually went to the Redemptorist's Rock
Church with her friend Belle Worthington. This lady was a good
Catholic to the necessary extent of hearing a mass on Sundays,
abstaining from meat on Fridays and Ember days, and making her
"Easters." Which concessions were not without their attendant
discomforts, counterbalanced, however, by the soothing assurance which
they gave her of keeping on the safe side.

The minister had been much impressed with the significance of this
re-marriage which he was called upon to perform, and had offered some
few and well chosen expressions of salutary advice as to its future
guidance. The sexton and housekeeper had been called in as witnesses.
Then Hosmer had taken Fanny back home in a cab as she requested,
because of her eyes that were red and swollen.

Inside the little hall-way he took her in his arms and kissed her,
calling her "my child." He could not have told why, except that it
expressed the responsibility he accepted of bearing all things that a
father must bear from the child to whom he has given life.

"I should like to go out for an hour, Fanny; but if you would rather
not, I shall stay."

"No, David, I want to be alone," she said, turning into the little
parlor, with eyes big and heavy from weariness and inward clashing
emotions.

Along the length of Lindell avenue from Grand avenue west to Forest
park, reaches for two miles on either side of the wide and well kept
gravel drive a smooth stone walk, bordered its full extent with a
double row of trees which were young and still uncertain, when Hosmer
walked between them.

Had it been Sunday, he would have found himself making one of a
fashionable throng of promenaders; it being at that time a fad with
society people to walk to Forest park and back of a Sunday afternoon.
Driving was then considered a respectable diversion only on the six
work days of the week.

But it was not Sunday and this inviting promenade was almost deserted.
An occasional laborer would walk clumsily by; apathetic; swinging his
tin bucket and bearing some implement of toil with the yellow clay yet
clinging to it. Or it might be a brace of strong-minded girls walking
with long and springing stride, which was then fashionable; looking
not to the right nor left; indulging in no exchange of friendly and
girlish chatter, but grimly intent upon the purpose of their walk.

A steady line of vehicles was pushing on towards the park at the
moderate speed which the law required. On both sides the wide
boulevard tasteful dwellings, many completed, but most of them in
course of construction, were in constant view. Hosmer noted every
thing, but absently; and yet he was not pre-occupied with thought. He
felt himself to be hurrying away from something that was fast
overtaking him, and his faculties for the moment were centered in the
mere act of motion. It is said that motion is pleasurable to man. No
doubt, in connection with a healthy body and free mind, movement
brings to the normal human being a certain degree of enjoyment. But
where the healthful conditions are only physical, rapid motion changes
from a source of pleasure to one of mere expediency.

So long as Hosmer could walk he kept a certain pressing consciousness
at bay. He would have liked to run if he had dared. Since he had
entered the park there were constant trains of cars speeding somewhere
overhead; he could hear them at near intervals clashing over the stone
bridge. And there was not a train which passed that he did not long to
be at the front of it to measure and let out its speed. What a mad
flight he would have given it, to make men hold their breath with
terror! How he would have driven it till its end was death and
chaos!—so much the better.