In hat and coat and furs she stood a moment, her fingers on the electric switch, her eyes very bright and wide. The memories of ten years, fifteen years, twenty years crowded up around her and filled the little room. Some of them were golden and some of them were black; a few had power to frighten her, even now. So she turned out the light, stood for just another moment there in the darkness, then stepped out into the hall, closed the door softly behind her, and stood face to face with the lettering on the gla.s.s panel of the door--the lettering that spelled the name, "MRS. MCCHESNEY."
T. A. Buck watched her in silence. She reached up with one wavering forefinger and touched each of the twelve letters, one after the other.
Then she spread her hand wide, blotting out the second word. And when she turned away, one saw--she being Emma McChesney, and a woman, and very tired and rather sentimental, and a bit hysterical and altogether happy--that, though she was smiling, her eyes were wet.
In her ten years on the road, visiting town after town, catching trains, jolting about in rumbling hotel "buses or musty-smelling small-town hacks, living in hotels, good, bad, and indifferent, Emma McChesney had come upon hundreds of rice-strewn, ribbon-bedecked bridal couples. She had leaned from her window at many a railway station to see the barbaric and cruel old custom of bride-and-bridegroom baiting.
She had smiled very tenderly--and rather sadly, and hopefully, too--upon the boy and girl who rushed breathless into the car in a flurry of white streamers, flowers, old shoes, laughter, cheers, last messages. Now, as in a dream, she found herself actually of these. Of rice, old shoes, and badinage there had been none, it is true. She stood quietly by while Buck attended to their trunks, just as she had seen it done by hundreds of helpless little cotton-wool women who had never checked a trunk in their lives--she, who had spent ten years of her life wrestling with trunks and baggagemen and porters. Once there was some trifling mistake--Buck"s fault. Emma, with her experience of the road, saw his error. She could have set him right with a word. It was on the tip of her tongue. By sheer force of will she withheld that word, fought back the almost overwhelming inclination to take things in hand, set them right. It was just an incident, almost trifling in itself. But its import was tremendous, for her conduct, that moment, shaped the happiness of their future life together.
Emma had said that there would be no rude awakenings for them, no startling shocks.
"There isn"t a thing we don"t know about each other," she had said.
"We each know the other"s weaknesses and strength. I hate the way you gnaw your mustache when you"re troubled, and I think the fuss you make when the waiter pours your coffee without first having given you sugar and cream is the most absurd thing I"ve ever seen. But, then, I know how it annoys you to see me sitting with one slipper dangling from my toe, when I"m particularly comfortable and snug. You know how I like my eggs, and you think it"s immoral. I suppose we"re really set in our ways. It"s going to be interesting to watch each other shift."
"Just the same," Buck said, "I didn"t dream there was any woman living who could actually make a Pullman drawing-room look homelike."
"Any woman who has spent a fourth of her life in hotels and trains learns that trick. She has to. If she happens to be the sort that likes books and flowers and sewing, she carries some of each with her.
And one book, one rose, and one piece of unfinished embroidery would make an oasis in the Sahara Desert look homelike."
It was on the westbound train that they encountered Sam--Sam of the rolling eye, the genial grin, the deft hand. Sam was known to every hardened traveler as the porter de luxe of the road. Sam was a diplomat, a financier, and a rascal. He never forgot a face. He never forgave a meager tip. The pa.s.sengers who traveled with him were at once his guests and his victims.
Therefore his, "Good evenin", Mis" McChesney, ma"am. Good even"!
Well, it suh"t"nly has been a long time sense Ah had the pleasuh of yoh presence as pa.s.sengah, ma"am. Ah sure am----"
The slim, elegant figure of T. A. Buck appeared in the doorway. Sam"s rolling eye became a thing on ball bearings. His teeth flashed startlingly white in the broadest of grins. He took Buck"s hat, ran a finger under its inner band, and shook it very gently.
"What"s the idea?" inquired Buck genially. "Are you a combination porter and prestidigitator?"
Sam chuckled his infectious negro chuckle.
"Well, no, sah! Ah wouldn" go"s fah as t" say that, sah. But Ah hab been known to shake rice out of a gen"lman"s ordinary, ever"-day, black derby hat."
"Get out!" laughed T. A. Buck, as Sam ducked.
"You may as well get used to it," smiled Emma, "because I"m known to every train-conductor, porter, hotel-clerk, chamber-maid, and bell-boy between here and the Great Lakes."
It was Sam who proved himself hero of the honeymoon, for he saved T. A.
Buck from continuing his journey to Chicago brideless. Fifteen minutes earlier, Buck had gone to the buffet-car for a smoke. At Cleveland, Emma, looking out of the car window, saw a familiar figure pacing up and down the station platform. It was that dapper and important little Irishman, O"Malley, buyer for Gage & Fosd.i.c.k, the greatest mail-order house in the world--O"Malley, whose letter T. A. Buck had answered; O"Malley, whose order meant thousands. He was on his way to New York, of course.
In that moment Mrs. T. A. Buck faded into the background and Emma McChesney rose up in her place. She s.n.a.t.c.hed hat and coat and furs, put them on as she went down the long aisle, swung down the car steps, and flew down the platform to the unconscious O"Malley. He was smoking, all unconscious. The Fates had delivered him into her expert hands. She knew those kindly sisters of old, and she was the last to refuse their largesse.
"Mr. O"Malley!"
He wheeled.
"Mrs. McChesney!" He had just a charming trace of a brogue. His enemies said he a.s.sumed it. "Well, who was I thinkin" of but you a minute ago. What----"
"I"m on my way to Chicago. Saw you from the car window. You"re on the New York train? I thought so. Tell me, you"re surely seeing our man, aren"t you?"
O"Malley"s smiling face clouded. He was a temperamental Irishman--Ted O"Malley--with ideas on the deference due him and his great house.
"I"ll tell you the truth, Mrs. McChesney. I had a letter from your Mr.
Buck. It wasn"t much of a letter to a man like me, representing a house like Gage & Fosd.i.c.k. It said both heads of the firm would be out of town, and would I see the manager. Me--see the manager! Well, thinks I, if that"s how important they think my order, then they"ll not get it--that"s all. I"ve never yet----"
"Dear Mr. O"Malley, please don"t be offended. As a McChesney to an O"Malley, I want to tell you that I"ve just been married."
"Married! G.o.d bless me--to----"
"To T. A. Buck, of course. He"s on that train. He----"
She turned toward the train. And as she turned it began to move, ever so gently. At the same moment there sped toward her, with unbelievable swiftness, the figure of Sam the porter, his eyes all whites. By one arm he grasped her, and half carried, half jerked her to the steps of the moving train, swung her up to the steps like a bundle of rags, caught the rail by a miracle, and stood, grinning and triumphant, gazing down at the panting O"Malley, who was running alongside the train.
"Back in a week. Will you wait for us in New York?" called Emma, her breath coming fast. She was trembling, too, and laughing.
"Will I wait!" called back the puffing O"Malley, every bit of the Irish in him beaming from his eyes. "I"ll be there when you get back as sure as your name"s McBuck."
From his pocket he took a round, silver Western dollar and, still running, tossed it to the toothy Sam. That peerless porter caught it, twirled it, kissed it, bowed, and grinned afresh as the train glided out of the shed.
Emma, flushed, smiling, flew up the aisle.
Buck, listening to her laughing, triumphant account of her hairbreadth, harum-scarum adventure, frowned before he smiled.
"Emma, how could you do it! At least, why didn"t you send back for me first?"
Emma smiled a little tremulously.
"Don"t be angry. You see, dear boy, I"ve only been your wife for a week. But I"ve been Featherloom petticoats for over fifteen years.
It"s a habit."
Just how strong and fixed a habit, she proved to herself a little more than a week later. It was the morning of their first breakfast in the new apartment. You would have thought, to see them over their coffee and eggs and rolls, that they had been breakfasting together thus for years--Annie was so at home in her new kitchen; the deft little maid, in her crisp white, fitted so perfectly into the picture. Perhaps the thing that T. A. Buck said, once the maid left them alone, might have given an outsider the cue.
"You remind me of a sweetpea, Emma. One of those crisp, erect, golden-white, fresh, fragrant sweetpeas. I think it is the slenderest, sweetest, neatest, trimmest flower in the world, so delicately set on its stem, and yet so straight, so independent."
"T. A., you say such dear things to me!"
No; they had not been breakfasting together for years.
"I"m glad you"re not one of those women that wears a frowsy, lacy, ribbony, what-do-you-call-"em-boudoir-cap--down to breakfast. They always make me think of uncombed hair. That"s just one reason why I"m glad."
"And I"m glad," said Emma, looking at his clear eyes and steady hand and firm skin, "for a number of reasons. One of them is that you"re not the sort of man who"s a grouch at breakfast."
When he had hat and coat and stick in hand, and had kissed her good-by and reached the door and opened it, he came back again, as is the way of bridegrooms. But at last the door closed behind him.
Emma sat there a moment, listening to his quick, light step down the corridor, to the opening of the lift door, to its metallic closing.
She sat there, in the sunshiny dining-room, in her fresh, white morning gown. She picked up her newspaper, opened it; scanned it, put it down.
For years, now, she had read her newspaper in little gulps on the way downtown in crowded subway or street-car. She could not accustom herself to this leisurely scanning of the pages. She rose, went to the window, came back to the table, stood there a moment, her eyes fixed on something far away.
The swinging door between dining-room and butler"s pantry opened.
Annie, in her neat blue-and-white stripes, stood before her.