At Fault (21 page)

"It's laid away, Miss, the same in the cedar chest as the day it came
home from her hands and no more fit, that I'd be a shame meself and no
claims to a dress-maker. And there's many a lady that she never would
have seen a cent, let alone making herself pay for the spiling of it."

"Well, well, Johannah, never mind. Get it out, we'll see what can be
done with it. I've had some painful news, and I shall wear mourning
for a long, long time."

"Oh, Miss, it's not Mr. David! nor yet one of those sweet relations in
Utica? leastways not I hope that beautiful Miss Gertrude, with such
hair as I never see for the goldness of it and not dyed, except me
cousin that's a nun, that her mother actually cried when it was cut
off?"

"No, Johannah; only a very dear friend."

There were a few social engagements to be cancelled; and regrets to be
sent out, which she attended to immediately. Then she turned again to
look long into the fire. That crime for which she had scorned him, was
wiped out now by expiation. For a long time—how long she could not
yet determine—she would wrap herself in garb of mourning and move
about in sorrowing—giving evasive answer to the curious who
questioned her. Now might she live again through those summer months
with Grégoire—those golden afternoons in the pine woods—whose aroma
even now came back to her. She might look again into his loving brown
eyes; feel beneath her touch the softness of his curls. She recalled a
day when he had said, "Neva to see you—my God!" and how he had
trembled. She recalled—strangely enough and for the first time—that
one kiss, and a little tremor brought the hot color to her cheek.

Was she in love with Grégoire now that he was dead? Perhaps. At all
events, for the next month, Melicent would not be bored.

Who of us has not known the presence of Misery? Perhaps as those
fortunate ones whom he has but touched as he passed them by. It may be
that we see but a promise of him as we look into the prophetic faces
of children; into the eyes of those we love, and the awfulness of
life's possibilities presses into our souls. Do we fly him? hearing
him gain upon us panting close at our heels, till we turn from the
desperation of uncertainty to grapple with him? In close scuffle we
may vanquish him. Fleeing, we may elude him. But what if he creep into
the sanctuary of our lives, with his subtle omnipresence, that we do
not see in all its horror till we are disarmed; thrusting the burden
of his companionship upon us to the end! However we turn he is there.
However we shrink he is there. However we come or go, or sleep or wake
he is before us. Till the keen sense grows dull with apathy at looking
on him, and he becomes like the familiar presence of sin.

Into such callousness had Hosmer fallen. He had ceased to bruise his
soul in restless endeavor of resistance. When the awful presence bore
too closely upon him, he would close his eyes and brave himself to
endurance. Yet Fate might have dealt him worse things.

But a man's misery is after all his own, to make of it what he will or
what he can. And shall we be fools, wanting to lighten it with our
platitudes?

My friend, your trouble I know weighs. That you should be driven by
earthly needs to drag the pinioned spirit of your days through rut and
mire. But think of the millions who are doing the like. Or is it your
boy, that part of your own self and that other dearer self, who is
walking in evil ways? Why, I know a man whose son was hanged the other
day; hanged on the gibbet; think of it. If you be quivering while the
surgeon cuts away that right arm, remember the poor devil in the
hospital yesterday who had both his sawed off.

Oh, have done, with your mutilated men and your sons on gibbets! What
are they to me? My hurt is greater than all, because it is my own. If
it be only that day after day I must look with warm entreaty into eyes
that are cold. Let it be but that peculiar trick of feature which I
have come to hate, seen each morning across the breakfast table. That
recurrent pin-prick: it hurts. The blow that lays the heart in twain:
it kills. Let be mine which will; it is the one that counts.

If Misery kill a man, that ends it. But Misery seldom deals so
summarily with his victims. And while they are spared to earth, we
find them usually sustaining life after the accepted fashion.

Hosmer was seated at table, having finished his breakfast. He had also
finished glancing over the contents of a small memorandum book, which
he replaced in his pocket. He then looked at his wife sitting opposite
him, but turned rather hastily to gaze with a certain entreaty into
the big kind eyes of the great shaggy dog who stood—the shameless
beggar—at his side.

"I knew there was something wrong," he said abruptly, with his eyes
still fixed on the dog, and his fingers thrust into the animal's
matted wool, "Where's the mail this morning?"

"I don't know if that stupid boy's gone for it or not. I told him. You
can't depend on any one in a place like this."

Fanny had scarcely touched the breakfast before her, and now pushed
aside her cup still half filled with coffee.

"Why, how's that? Sampson seems to do the right thing."

"Yes, Sampson; but he ain't here. That boy of Minervy's been doing his
work all morning."

Minervy's boy was even now making his appearance, carrying a good
sized bundle of papers and letters, with which he walked boldly up to
Hosmer, plainly impressed with the importance of this new rôle.

"Well, colonel; so you've taken Sampson's place?" Hosmer observed,
receiving the mail from the boy's little black paws.

"My name's Major, suh. Maje; dats my name. I ain't tuck Sampson's
place: no, suh."

"Oh, he's having a day off—" Hosmer went on, smiling quizzingly at
the dapper little darkey, and handing him a red apple from the dish of
fruit standing in the center of the table. Maje received it with a
very unmilitary bob of acknowledgment.

"He yonda home 'cross de riva, suh. He ben too late fu' kotch de
flat's mornin' An' he holla an' holla. He know dey warn't gwine cross
dat flat 'gin jis' fu' Sampson."

Hosmer had commenced to open his letters. Fanny with her elbows on the
table, asked the boy—with a certain uneasiness in her voice—"Ain't
he coming at all to-day? Don't he know all the work he's got to do?
His mother ought to make him."

"Don't reckon. Dat away Sampson: he git mad he stay mad," with which
assurance Maje vanished through the rear door, towards the region of
the kitchen, to seek more substantial condiments than the apple which
he still clutched firmly.

One of the letters was for Fanny, which her husband handed her. When
he had finished reading his own, he seemed disposed to linger, for he
took from the fruit dish the mate to the red apple he had given Maje,
and commenced to peel it with his clasp knife.

"What has our friend Belle Worthington to say for herself?" he
inquired good humoredly. "How does she get on with those Creoles down
there?"

"You know as well as I do, Belle Worthington ain't going to mix with
Creoles. She can't talk French if she wanted to. She says Muddy-Graw
don't begin to compare with the Veiled Prophets. It's just what I
thought—with their 'Muddy-Graw,' " Fanny added, contemptuously.

"Coming from such high authority, we'll consider that verdict a final
clincher," Hosmer laughed a little provokingly.

Fanny was looking again through the several sheets of Belle
Worthington's letter. "She says if I'll agree to go back with her,
she'll pass this way again."

"Well, why don't you? A little change wouldn't hurt."

" 'Tain't because I want to stay here, Lord knows. A God-forsaken
place like this. I guess you'd be glad enough," she added, with voice
shaking a little at her own boldness.

He closed his knife, placed it in his pocket, and looked at his wife,
completely puzzled.

The power of speech had come to her, for she went on, in an unnatural
tone, however, and fumbling nervously with the dishes before her. "I'm
fool enough about some things, but I ain't quite such a fool as that."

"What are you talking about, Fanny?"

"That woman wouldn't ask anything better than for me to go to St.
Louis."

Hosmer was utterly amazed. He leaned his arms on the table, clasping
his hands together and looked at his wife.

"That woman? Belle Worthington? What
do
you mean, any way?"

"I don't mean Belle Worthington," she said excitedly, with two deep
red spots in her cheeks. "I'm talking about Mrs. Laferm."

He thrust his hand into his pockets and leaned back in his chair. No
amazement now, but very pale, and with terrible concentration of
glance.

"Well, then, don't talk about Mrs. Lafirme," he said very slowly, not
taking his eyes from her face.

"I will talk about her, too. She ain't worth talking about," she
blurted incoherently. "It's time for somebody to talk about a woman
passing herself off for a saint, and trying to take other women's
husbands—"

"Shut up!" cried Hosmer maddened with sudden fury, and rising
violently from his chair.

"I won't shut up," Fanny cried excitedly back at him; rising also.
"And what's more I won't stay here and have you making love under my
very eyes to a woman that's no better than she ought to be."

She meant to say more, but Hosmer grasped her arm with such a grasp,
that had it been her throat she would never have spoken more. The
other hand went to his pocket, with fingers clutching the clasp knife
there.

"By heaven—I'll—kill you!" every word weighted with murder, panted
close in her terrified face. What she would have uttered died upon her
pale lips, when her frightened eyes beheld the usually calm face of
her husband distorted by a passion of which she had not dreamed.

"David," she faltered, "let go my arm."

Her voice broke the spell that held him, and brought him again to his
senses. His fingers slowly relaxed their tense hold. A sigh that was
something between a moan and a gasp came with his deliverance and
shook him. All the horror now was in his own face as he seized his hat
and hurried speechless away.

Fanny remained for a little while dazed. Hers was not the fine nature
that would stay cruelly stunned after such a scene. Her immediate
terror being past, the strongest resultant emotion was one of
self-satisfaction at having spoken out her mind.

But there was a stronger feeling yet, moving and possessing her;
crowding out every other. A pressing want that only Sampson's coming
would relieve, and which bade fair to drive her to any extremity if it
were not appeased.

Hosmer passed the day with a great pain at his heart. His hasty and
violent passion of the morning had added another weight for his spirit
to drag about, and which he could not cast off. No feeling of
resentment remained with him; only wonder at his wife's misshapen
knowledge and keen self-rebuke of his own momentary forgetfulness.
Even knowing Fanny as he did, he could not rid himself of the haunting
dread of having wounded her nature cruelly. He felt much as a man who
in a moment of anger inflicts an irreparable hurt upon some small,
weak, irresponsible creature, and must bear regret for his madness.
The only reparation that lay within his power—true, one that seemed
inadequate—was an open and manly apology and confession of wrong. He
would feel better when it was made. He would perhaps find relief in
discovering that the wound he had inflicted was not so deep—so
dangerous as he feared.

With such end in view he came home early in the afternoon. His wife
was not there. The house was deserted. Even the servants had
disappeared. It took but a moment for him to search the various rooms
and find them one after the other, unoccupied. He went out on the
porch and looked around. The raw air chilled him. The wind was blowing
violently, bringing dashes of rain along with it from massed clouds
that hung leaden between sky and earth. Could she have gone over to
the house? It was unlikely, for he knew her to have avoided Mrs.
Lafirme of late, with a persistence that had puzzled him to seek its
cause, which had only fully revealed itself in the morning Yet, where
else could she be? An undefined terror was laying hold of him. His
sensitive nature, in exaggerating its own heartlessness, was blindly
overestimating the delicacy of hers. To what may he not have driven
her? What hitherto untouched chord may he not have started into
painful quivering? Was it for him to gauge the endurance of a woman's
spirit? Fanny was not now the wife whom he hated; his own act of the
morning had changed her into the human being, the weak creature whom
he had wronged.

In quitting the house she must have gone unprepared for the inclement
weather, for there hung her heavy wrap in its accustomed place, with
her umbrella beside it. He seized both and buttoning his own great
coat about him, hurried away and over to Mrs. Lafirme's. He found that
lady in the sitting-room.

"Isn't Fanny here?" he asked abruptly, with no word of greeting.

"No," she answered looking up at him, and seeing the evident
uneasiness in his face. "Isn't she at home? Is anything wrong?"

"Oh, everything is wrong," he returned desperately, "But the immediate
wrong is that she has disappeared—I must find her."

Thérèse arose at once and called to Betsy who was occupied on the
front veranda.

"Yas, um," the girl answered to her mistress' enquiry. "I seed ma'am
Hosma goin' to'ads de riva good hour 'go. She mus' crost w'en Nathan
tuck dat load ova. I yain't seed 'er comin' back yit."

Hosmer left the house hastily, hardly reassured by Betsy's
information. Thérèse's glance—speculating and uneasy—followed his
hurrying figure till it disappeared from sight.