At Fault (9 page)

There suddenly formed in Hosmer's mind a sentence—sharp and distinct.
We are all conscious of such quick mental visions whether of words or
pictures, coming sometimes from a hidden and untraceable source,
making us quiver with awe at this mysterious power of mind manifesting
itself with the vividness of visible matter.

"It was the act of a coward."

Those were the words which checked him, and forbade him to go farther:
which compelled him to turn about and face the reality of his
convictions.

It is no unusual sight, that of a man lying full length in the soft
tender grass of some retired spot of Forest park—with his face hidden
in his folded arms. To the few who may see him, if they speculate at
all about him he sleeps or he rests his body after a day's fatigue.
"Am I never to be the brave man?" thought Hosmer, "always the coward,
flying even from my own thoughts?"

How hard to him was this unaccustomed task of dealing with moral
difficulties, which all through his life before, however lightly they
had come, he had shirked and avoided! He realized now, that there was
to be no more of that. If he did not wish his life to end in
disgraceful shipwreck, he must take command and direction of it upon
himself.

He had felt himself capable of stolid endurance since love had
declared itself his guide and helper. But now—only to-day—something
beside had crept into his heart. Not something to be endured, but a
thing to be strangled and thrust away. It was the demon of hate; so
new, so awful, so loathsome, he doubted that he could look it in the
face and live.

Here was the problem of his new existence.

The woman who had formerly made his life colorless and empty he had
quietly turned his back upon, carrying with him a pity that was not
untender. But the woman who had unwittingly robbed him of all
possibility of earthly happiness—he hated her. The woman who for the
remainder of a life-time was to be in all the world the nearest thing
to him, he hated her. He hated this woman of whom he must be careful,
to whom he must be tender, and loyal and generous. And to give no sign
or word but of kindness; to do no action that was not considerate, was
the task which destiny had thrust upon his honor.

He did not ask himself if it were possible of accomplishment. He had
flung hesitancy away, to make room for the all-powerful "Must be."

He walked slowly back to his home. There was no need to run now;
nothing pursued him. Should he quicken his pace or drag himself ever
so slowly, it could henceforth make no difference. The burden from
which he had fled was now banded upon him and not to be loosed, unless
he fling himself with it into forgetfulness.

Returning from the matinée, Belle and her friend Lou Dawson, before
entering their house, crossed over to Fanny's. Mrs. Worthington tried
the door and finding it fastened, rang the bell, then commenced to
beat a tattoo upon the pane with her knuckles; an ingenuous manner
which she had of announcing her identity. Fanny opened to them
herself, and the three walked into the parlor.

"I haven't seen you for a coon's age, Fanny," commenced Belle, "where
on earth have you been keeping yourself?"

"You saw me yesterday breakfast time, when you came to borrow the
wrapper pattern," returned Fanny, in serious resentment to her
friend's exaggeration.

"And much good the old wrapper pattern did me: a mile too small every
way, no matter how much I let out the seams. But see here—"

"Belle's the biggest idiot about her size: there's no convincing her
she's not a sylph."

"
Thank
you, Mrs. Dawson."

"Well, it's a fact. Didn't you think Furgeson's scales were all wrong
the other day because you weighed a hundred and eighty pounds?"

"O that's the day I had that heavy rep on."

"Heavy nothing. We were coming over last night, Fanny, but we had
company," continued Mrs. Dawson.

"Who d'you have?" asked Fanny mechanically and glad of the respite.

"Bert Rodney and Mr. Grant. They're so anxious to meet you. I'd 'a
sent over for you, but Belle—"

"See here, Fanny, what the mischief was Dave Hosmer doing here to-day,
and going down town with you and all that sort o' thing?"

Fanny flushed uneasily. "Have you seen the evening paper?" she asked.

"How d'you want us to see the paper? we just come from the matinée."

"David came yesterday," Fanny said working nervously at the window
shade. "He'd wrote me a note the postman brought right after you left
with the pattern. When you saw us getting on the car, we were going
down to Dr. Martin's, and we've got married again."

Mrs. Dawson uttered a long, low whistle by way of comment. Mrs.
Worthington gave vent to her usual "Well I'll be switched," which she
was capable of making expressive of every shade of astonishment, from
the lightest to the most pronounced; at the same time unfastening the
bridle of her bonnet which plainly hindered her free respiration after
such a shock.

"Say that Fanny isn't sly, after that, Belle."

"Sly? My God, she's a fool! If ever a woman had a snap! and to go to
work and let a man get around her like that."

Mrs. Worthington seemed powerless to express herself in anything but
disconnected exclamations.

"What are you going to do, Fanny?" asked Lou, who having aired all the
astonishment which she cared to show, in her whistle, was collected
enough to want her natural curiosity satisfied.

"David's living down South. I guess we'll go down there pretty soon.
Soon's he can get things fixed up here."

"Where—down South?"

"Oh, I don't know. Somewheres in Louisiana."

"It's to be hoped in New Orleans," spoke Belle didactically, "that's
the only decent place in Louisiana where a person could live."

"No, 'tain't in New Orleans. He's got a saw mill somewheres down
there."

"Heavens and earth! a saw mill?" shrieked Belle. Lou was looking
calmly resigned to the startling news.

"Oh, I ain't going to live in a saw mill. I wisht you'd all let me
alone, any way," she returned pettishly. "There's a lady keeps a
plantation, and that's where he lives."

"Well of all the rigmaroles! a lady, and a saw mill and a plantation.
It's my opinion that man could make you believe black's white, Fanny
Larimore."

As Hosmer approached his house, he felt mechanically in his pocket for
his latch key; so small a trick having come back to him with the old
habit of misery. Of course he found no key. His ring startled Fanny,
who at once sprang from her scat to open the door for him; but having
taken a few steps, she hesitated and irresolutely re-seated herself.
It was only his second ring that the servant unamiably condescended to
answer.

"So you're going to take Fanny away from us, Mr. Hosmer," said Belle,
when he had greeted them and seated himself beside Mrs. Dawson on the
small sofa that stood between the door and window. Fanny sat at the
adjoining window, and Mrs. Worthington in the center of the room;
which was indeed so small a room that any one of them might have
reached out and almost touched the hand of the others.

"Yes, Fanny has agreed to go South with me," he answered briefly.
"You're looking well, Mrs. Worthington."

"Oh, Law yes, I'm never sick. As I tell Mr. Worthington, he'll never
get rid of me, unless he hires somebody to murder me. But I tell you
what, you came pretty near not having any Fanny to take away with you.
She was the sickest woman! Did you tell him about it, Fanny? Come to
think of it, I guess the climate down there'll be the very thing to
bring her round."

Mrs. Dawson without offering apology interrupted her friend to inquire
of Hosmer if his life in the South were not of the most interesting,
and begging that he detail them something of it; with a look to
indicate that she felt the deepest concern in anything that touched
him.

A masculine presence had always the effect of rousing Mrs. Dawson into
an animation which was like the glow of a slumbering ember, when a
strong pressure of air is brought to bear upon it.

Hosmer had always considered her an amiable woman, with rather
delicate perceptions; frivolous, but without the vulgarisms of Mrs.
Worthington, and consequently a less objectionable friend for Fanny.
He answered, looking down into her eyes, which were full of
attentiveness.

"My life in the South is not one that you would think interesting. I
live in the country where there are no distractions such as you ladies
call amusements—and I work pretty hard. But it's the sort of life
that one grows attached to and finds himself longing for again if he
have occasion to change it."

"Yes, it must be very satisfying," she answered; for the moment
perfectly sincere.

"Oh very!" exclaimed Mrs. Worthington, with a loud and aggressive
laugh. "It would just suit you to a T, Lou, but how it's going to
satisfy Fanny! Well, I've got nothing to say about it, thanks be; it
don't concern me."

"If Fanny finds that she doesn't like it after a fair trial, she has
the privilege of saying so, and we shall come back again," he said
looking at his wife whose elevation of eyebrow, and droop of mouth
gave her the expression of martyred resignation, which St. Lawrence
might have worn, when invited to make himself comfortable on the
gridiron—so had Mrs. Worthington's words impressed her with the force
of their prophetic meaning.

Mrs. Dawson politely hoped that Hosmer would not leave before Jack
came home; it would distress Jack beyond everything to return and find
that he had missed an old friend whom he thought so much of.

Hosmer could not say precisely when they would leave. He was in
present negotiation with a person who wanted to rent the house,
furnished; and just as soon as he could arrange a few business
details, and Fanny could gather such belongings as she wished to take
with her they would go.

"You seem mighty struck on Dave Hosmer, all of a sudden," remarked
Mrs. Worthington to her friend, as the two crossed over the street. "A
feller without any more feelings than a stick; it's what I always said
about him."

"Oh, I always did like Hosmer," replied Mrs. Dawson. "But I thought he
had more sense than to tie himself to that little gump again, after
he'd had the luck to get rid of her."

A few days later Jack came home. His return was made palpable to the
entire neighborhood; for no cab ever announced itself with quite the
dash and clatter and bang of door that Jack's cabs did.

The driver had staggered behind him under the weight of the huge
yellow valise, and had been liberally paid for the service.

Immediately the windows were thrown wide open, and the lace curtains
drawn aside until no smallest vestige of them remained visible from
the street. A condition of things which Mrs. Worthington upstairs
bitterly resented, and naturally, spoiling as it necessarily did, the
general
coup d'oeil
of the flat to passers-by. But Mrs. Dawson had
won her husband's esteem by just such acts as this one of amiable
permission to ventilate the house according to methods of his own and
essentially masculine; regardless of dust that might be flying, or sun
that might be shining with disastrous results to the parlor carpet.

Clouds of tobacco smoke were seen to issue from the open windows.
Those neighbors whose openings commanded a view of the Dawson's
alley-gate might have noted the hired girl starting for the grocery
with unusual animation of step, and returning with her basket well
stocked with beer and soda bottles—a provision made against a need
for "dutch-cocktails," likely to assail Jack during his hours of
domesticity.

In the evening the same hired girl, breathless from the multiplicity
of errands which she had accomplished during the day, appeared at the
Hosmers with a message that Mrs. Dawson wanted them to "come over."

They were preparing to leave on the morrow, but concluded that they
could spare a few moments in which to bid adieu to their friends.

Jack met them at the very threshold, with warm and hearty
hand-shaking, and loud protest when he learned that they had not come
to spend the evening and that they were going away next day.

"Great Scott! you're not leaving to-morrow? And I ain't going to have
a chance to get even with Mrs. Hosmer on that last deal? By Jove, she
knows how to do it," he said, addressing Hosmer and holding Fanny
familiarly by the elbow. "Drew to the middle, sir, and hang me, if she
didn't fill. Takes a woman to do that sort o' thing; and me a laying
for her with three aces. Hello there, girls! here's Hosmer and Fanny,"
in response to which summons his wife and Mrs. Worthington issued from
the depths of the dining-room, where they had been engaged in
preparing certain refreshments for the expected guests.

"See here, Lou, we'll have to fix it up some way to go and see them
off to-morrow. If you'd manage to lay over till Thursday I could join
you as far as Little Rock. But no, that's a fact," he added
reflectively, "I've got to be in Cincinnati on Thursday."

They had all entered the parlor, and Mrs. Worthington suggested that
Hosmer go up and make a visit to her husband, whom he would find up
there "poring over those everlasting books."

"I don't know what's got into Mr. Worthington lately," she said, "he's
getting that religious. If it ain't the Bible he's poring over, well
it's something or other just as bad."

The brightly burning light guided Hosmer to the kitchen, where he
found Lorenzo Worthington seated beside his student lamp at the table,
which was covered with a neat red cloth. On the gas-stove was spread a
similar cloth and the floor was covered with a shining oil-cloth.

Mr. Worthington was startled, having already forgotten that his wife
had told him of Hosmer's return to St. Louis.