Anita Gibbons has been waiting outside at the station on the bench nearest the field since twenty minutes of six, and it was now nearly seven as she rose to go. The bright pleasure with which she had started out was fled: he had not come. The sun, wind, and reform of the spring afternoon, in combination with a becoming new suit and hat, had produced their annual effect of inspiring her to surprise her husband by meeting him on his return from town, that they might walk home bridally together in the sweet evening daylight. She had been hitherto undeterred by remembrance of the historic fact that Mr. Gibbons was never known to come on time when thus pleasurably expected; but memory was beginning to chill her now, as well as the wind on her back. She had done all this before!
Yet what business unknown this morning; could have kept him? It was neither the first nor the last of the month, always mysterious days of threatened detention. He had not passed her by unnoticed, for she had risen as each train came in to scan the men who dropped on to the platform and hurried off, some of them looking back to raise their hats to the pretty woman on the platform.
She hurried now as she walked across the field, feeling guiltily amid her disappointment that dinner would be waiting, and that she had left no word of her whereabouts with the maid, having in fact slipped out of the house unseen, to escape the clamouring notice of her only child, who was near his early bed-time.
“Good-evening, Mrs. Gibbons. Coming back from town so late?”
She looked up to see a friend approaching on the foot-path.
“Oh, good-evening, Mr. Ferris! No, I’ve only come from the station; I’ve been looking for my husband.”
He stopped half-way past her.
“Why, he came out in the five-fifteen with me! He slipped off when it slowed up, and jumped down the embankment; he said he was in a hurry to get home. Too bad if you’ve missed him.”
“Yes, it is,” said Mrs. Gibbons, hastily, breaking almost into a run. Arnold, she knew, hated to find her out of the house.
As she went up the steps now, the door opened before she reached it, and an excited voice exclaimed: “Ah, ma’am, it’s yourself at last! It’s the neighbourhood we do be having searched for you!”
“What do you mean, Katy?” Mrs. Gibbons, who had stood arrested on the threshold, pushed her way in. “Where is Mr. Gibbons?”
“He’s gone.”
“Gone!”
“Yes, ma’am, gone back to the city. ’Twas like this: he bid me say that he had to be meeting friends—I disremember the name—on the other side, at the ferry, or he could have telephoned ’em, ma’am. ’Twas a grand dinner they had planned for to-night, unexpected like.”
“Was the name”—Mrs. Gibbons paused that she might have courage to grasp her loss—“Was the name Atterbury?”
“It was, ma’am.”
Her beloved Atterburys! They were to sail for Rio at the end of the week. This was a dinner and a theatre party planned before and postponed. They could not have it without her.
“Mr. Gibbons must have known I’d be home in a minute!”
“Sure, he waited for you, ma’am, till he had to run to the station below to catch the express; but he bid me tell you to be sure and take the seven o’clock train in, and he’d keep the party waiting at the ferry for you.”
Mrs. Gibbons glanced at the clock. It was after seven now! But there was a seven-twenty-five train which reached town almost as soon, and Arnold would surely wait for that, even if the others had gone on to Martin’s, where they would dine. The Atterburys always went to Martin’s. She was accustomed to try and bend fate to her uses with an uncalculating ardour that focussed itself entirely on the impulse of the moment. To the suburbanite a little dinner in town is the height of pleasure, the one perfect feast! And with the Atterburys! She really could not miss it.
“I don’t care for anything to eat. Don’t let the fire out,” she dictated rapidly. “See that Harold doesn’t get uncovered, and don’t bolt the front door. We’ll be home before twelve, but you needn’t sit up for us. Just lie on the lounge in the nursery.” She did not remind forgetful Katy to put the milk tickets in the pail set outside the back door, and only remembered it as she was half-way to the station.
The train was due in town at eight-five, but it was late here, and the extra ten minutes seemed a thousand “prickly seconds.” The spring twilight was coming to a close, and when she stepped into the car in which the lamps gleamed dully over the plush seats, it was like stepping into the long tunnel of the night. Only a few men from further up the road sprawled and dozed wearily on their way. She was unaccustomed to going out thus alone, and for an instant a panic-struck thought of failure seized her, but she lost it in the action of her hurrying brain, which constantly pictured the delightful meeting with her expectant husband and the waiting party. By the inalienable law of travel, which ordains that delay in one mode of locomotion means delay in every other, the ferry-boat could not “hit her slip,” but wobbled up and down crosswise in the current, bumping against the piles at either end, with much ringing of the pilot’s bell, and losing of minutes—and minutes—and minutes. But at last Mrs. Gibbons made her way into the big, lighted waiting-room, the haven of her hopes. It took no more than one glance to reveal that there was neither group nor husband waiting for her. The place was entirely empty, save for a few Italian emigrants, and the clock pointed to twenty minutes of nine.
So vividly had Mrs. Gibbons pictured her own state of mind as that of her husband—a habit of which fell experience could not break her—that even in the shock of not finding him she felt instantly that some provision had been made for this contingency. She could go straight over and join the party at Martin’s, but he might have left some word for her. The man at the news stand might know. She hovered uncertainly around the pictorial exhibit, trying to screw up a suddenly-waning courage, and then found voice to say engagingly:
“I’m looking for my husband.”
“What did you say, lady?” The man stopped in his work of sorting papers.
“I’m looking for my husband. He’s been waiting for me here for a long time—with a party—but he’s gone now. I thought perhaps he had left some message here with you.”
“What kind of looking man was he?” asked the news clerk. He leaned forward companionably.
“He—he’s tall, and clean shaven, with a light overcoat, and blue eyes—and——” She groped around for some distinguishing characteristic to elicit a gleam of response—“a square chin—with a dimple in it.” She felt her own fatuousness. “You—you’d know him if you saw him.”
The clerk turned to a boy who had appeared behind the counter.
“Did you see a man with a light overcoat, and”—a spasm passed over his face—“and a dimple in his chin? Did he leave any message here?” Mrs. Gibbons felt hotly that he was laughing at her, although he looked impassive.
“Naw,” said the boy, “he didn’t leave no message with me.” He added on reflection, “I ain’t seen no one hanging ’round but a chunky feller with a black mustache.”
“He hasn’t seen any one but a stout man with a black mustache,” reported the clerk officially, while two pairs of eyes stared at her in a disconcerting manner.
“Good-evening, Mrs. Gibbons; is there anything we can do for you?”
“Oh, Mrs. Worthington—and Mr. Worthington!” Mrs. Gibbons looked as one who sees a familiar face in the desert. “You don’t know how glad I am to meet you! I’m looking for my husband.”
“Indeed!” said Mrs. Worthington, with a faint chill of surprise. She was a slight woman, elegantly gowned, with a thin expressionless face. Her husband was like unto her, with the overcoat of opulence. They were new neighbours of Mrs. Gibbons, who kept themselves politely aloof from suburban social life, spending most of their time in town, where they seemed to have a large connection. They were perhaps the last persons to whom Mrs. Gibbons would have turned in a dilemma, but she found comfort in their curious attention as she explained the situation, to conclude by saying:
“Of course, I’ll go right over now to Martin’s. If they waited for me here until after eight, they would be hardly more than started at dinner. All I want to know is what car I ought to take.”
Mrs. Worthington’s eyelids flickered a response to her husband.
“Pray allow us to escort you there,” said Mr. Worthington. “It is really quite on our way.”
“Oh, you’re very kind,” said Mrs. Gibbons, following her leaders gratefully, after a moment or two of demur. She had naturally the feeling that when a man took the thing in hand it would be all right.
“I didn’t know it was so dark at night when you were out alone by yourself, until I came off the ferry-boat,” she confided.
Mrs. Worthington’s eyelids flickered assent. She sat in the trolley car in a sort of isolated though subdued richness of attire, her heavy silken skirts folded over decorously to escape contaminating touch, her embossed cloak and large boa held elegantly in place with her white-gloved hand. She seemed to demand a coach and four. The light spring suit which Mrs. Gibbons had thought so fetching in the afternoon looked cheap and thin in comparison. She did not know of the blue intenseness of her eyes and the rich flush on her young cheek which made each man who entered the car turn to look at her.
When Mr. Worthington bent over from the suspending strap to ask, “You are quite sure your husband is at Martin’s?” she answered with her bright, upward glance, “Oh, yes, quite sure!” He would be at a little round table, with John and Agnes Atterbury, in the red-carpeted room, looking out for her, and how glad they would be to see her!
She dashed up the steps ahead of the Worthingtons, and a waiter came deferentially forward. Why should her heart suddenly fail her when she stood looking in upon the lighted scene?
“I’m looking for my husband,” said Mrs. Gibbons. She dashed from one doorway to another, peering in. “No, he isn’t here—perhaps in the other room—I don’t see him here either. It’s very strange, very!”
“What is it Madame desires?” The head waiter was following her rushing movements.
“I’m looking for my husband”—in full torrent of explanation her tone had grown louder. “He came here a little while ago.” She paused, suddenly aware of a whisper sibilating around.
“She’s looking for her husband.” Several people stopped eating. The head waiter regarded her suspiciously.
“Was Monsieur alone?”
“No, oh, no!” said Mrs. Gibbons with eager candour. “No, indeed! There was a lady——”
“Aa—h!” said the head waiter. “Monsieur was with another lady!” An embarrassing murmur of interest made itself felt. He fixed her with a placating eye, as he added, hurriedly, “But Monsieur, as Madame perceives, is not here. He exists not. If the carriage of Madame”—he stopped happily—“But behold now the friends of Madame!”
The wild blaze of happiness died down almost as suddenly as it had risen in Mrs. Gibbons’ breast, as she turned to see the Worthingtons advancing decorously once more to her rescue. Her bright hopes were buried in ashes.
“Oh, I don’t know what to do,” she breathed. “He isn’t here after all—he isn’t here!”
“Will you not go on with us to the opera?” asked Mrs. Worthington. “We would be very glad to have you. We did not care to get in for the first act.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that—you’re so very kind—but I couldn’t really. I must get home at once. Mr. Gibbons will go home early. I want to go home.”
“We will then, of course, return with you,” said Mr. Worthington, resignedly.
“Oh, please, please don’t! It isn’t at all necessary. I couldn’t have you do it. I know the way now, and—please don’t!”
“Mr. Worthington will not allow you to go home alone,” said his wife, with polite weariness of the subject. “The next train does not leave until ten o’clock. Of course, if you really wish so much to return—although Mr. Gibbons is not at all likely to get back before we would—do not hesitate out of consideration for us or our convenience. But I think you would enjoy the opera.”
Mrs. Gibbons stood unhappily irresolute. How could she drag these people home with her, much as she now longed to get there? If they would only let her go alone! After all, if Arnold were off having a good time, why shouldn’t she be gay and have a good time, too?
“Well, if you really want to take me—and it won’t be very late——” She was conscious of her ungraciousness. “Oh, I’ll enjoy it immensely!”
“We will leave whenever you say so,” said Mr. Worthington, with his invariable deference.
So unused was Mrs. Gibbons to going out with any one but her husband that Mr. Worthington’s arm felt startlingly thin and queer and unnatural when her hand rested on it as he helped her across the street. Everything was unnatural. Her acceptance, she found, necessitated his standing in the rear of the house, while she occupied his seat. Mrs. Worthington relinquished her entirely to the promised enjoyment. The music was indeed beautiful, but she still kept hold of the ever-tightening thread of suspense and longing; Arnold might be gay without her, but she couldn’t be gay without him. To think of all she was missing choked her! Mr. Worthington came forward between the acts to ask perfunctorily if Mrs. Gibbons wished to leave, but his wife showed no signs of moving.
It was with the first joy of the evening that she saw the curtain descend, and felt that she could tear at full speed for the elevated road and her own dear ferry and her own dear home. She must get there before Arnold, or he would be wild with anxiety; her desire to meet him in town was nothing to her desire now to head him off at home. But she reckoned without her host, literally. Her entertainers had been met by friends as they passed slowly down amid the crush in the aisle, and after the voluble greetings she was panic-struck by hearing one of the strangers say:
“You’ll come to supper with us now? Just around the corner!”
“Oh, yes!” Mrs. Worthington was almost animated. “If we have time,” she added, turning to her husband.
“Why, we can’t get the twelve o’clock, if we stay, but we will have plenty of time for the twelve-thirty, if Mrs. Gibbons doesn’t object,” said Mr. Worthington.
“We have a friend with us,” said Mrs. Worthington, in languid explanation. “Mrs. Gibbons, Mrs. Freshet, Mr. Freshet.”
“We will, of course, be pleased to have your friend take supper with us,” said Mrs. Freshet.
How could Mrs. Gibbons object? Her eyes pleaded, but her lips were perforce silent; and, comfortably settled in the restaurant, the others talked about matters of common interest, while she sat on the edge of her chair by the gleaming little table, and fumbled at her oysters with her fork, watching the hands of the clock at the end of the room. The Freshets were even more ornately dressed than the Worthingtons, with a floridity of manner that somehow overstepped a certain delicate line.
Once Mrs. Freshet smiled at the guest over her white satin and sables to ask:
“Is this the friend of whose beautiful home I have heard so much?”
“I—I think not,” said Mrs. Gibbons, with a stricken glimpse of the interior of her little dwelling. “I only met the Worthingtons by accident to-night,” she added, impulsively, with a longing for sympathy. “I was looking for my husband.”
“How singular!” said Mrs. Freshet, with a blank stare, and turned at once to continue a conversation on bargains with Mrs. Worthington, while Mrs. Gibbons, trying to make sprightly remarks in response to Mr. Freshet and Mr. Worthington, agonizingly watched the clock. Ten minutes of twelve—five minutes of twelve—she could not have stood it a second longer, when Mr. Worthington rose to hurry them off.
The rushing of the elevated train could not keep up with Mrs. Gibbons’ hastening spirit; but somehow, inexplicably, after a while even the rushing stopped—the train halted—went forward a little—and halted again, between stations.
“Oh, what is the matter?” said Mrs. Gibbons, as Mr. Worthington returned with several men from investigation.
“Oh, nothing to speak of; there’s a fire ahead somewhere, and we’re blocked for a few minutes. Mrs. Gibbons—Madam! Pray keep your seat, you can not get out!”
“They do say as there’s a family yet in the burning house,” suggested a sympathizing listener.
“Naw, they got thim out, but there’s two firemen hurted,” said another.
“What is it, Amelia!” Mr. Worthington turned his attention hastily from Mrs. Gibbons to his wife. “Do you feel faint?”
“A little,” murmured Mrs. Worthington, reproachfully.
Mrs. Gibbons had a sickened feeling. She could have felt faint too, if her husband had been along to sit down by her solicitously, and tell her to lean on him. She would have liked to feel faint. But instead, she was forced, in common decency, to be solicitous too for Mrs. Worthington, although she had begun to hate her. Mr. Worthington looked nervously at his watch until the train started again, and when they got out to walk to the ferry, he hurried his wife along at a pace with which Mrs. Gibbons tried in vain to keep up over the uneven, dirty, dimly lighted pavements in those winding streets near the river. Arnold never let her walk so fast that way; she owned an ankle that had once been sprained, and sometimes now turned under her disastrously. But hurry as she might, they hurried faster, under the impulse of the new fear which made itself felt to her without the need of words. She caught up to the couple, and clutched them as they stood suddenly motionless, inside the ferry-house, facing her.
“What do you stop for? Why don’t you go on?” she demanded fiercely, although she knew too well what the dread answer must be. The supreme stroke of suburban fate had befallen them. They had missed the last train out!
Only the initiated know what this really means. To be cut off inexorably from home, and the children, and the fires, and the incompetent servants or the anxious watchers—it is something subtly feared in every evening journey into town, but only once in a life-time perhaps is it experienced.
“We had better go to a hotel,” said Mrs. Worthington, with agitation. “We will have to go to a hotel, Foster.”
“Perhaps we can get out home some way,” he answered, with the instinct of the man who considers two hours in his own bed worth ten in any other.
Mrs. Gibbons cast the reserve of decency to the winds. They had made her miss this train! Her husband waiting for her—the sleeping Harold uncovered—the milk tickets to be put in the pail to-morrow—“I don’t care what you do; I can’t stay in town to-night. I won’t stay in town, Mr. Worthington! I’ll have to get home to-night if I swim for it!”
“No need to do that,” said a man rapidly coming out with a pipe-smoking group from the ferry-house. “We’re going out on the twelve-forty-five boat on the other road, a couple blocks below here, and take the trolley out. It’s Mrs. Gibbons, isn’t it? I don’t believe you recognize me. I saw your husband an hour or so ago at Weber and Fields.”
“Oh, thank you!” said Mrs. Gibbons. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!” She stumbled after the group over the cobblestones outside of the long wharves, still insanely warbling her gratitude, her protectors sullenly stalking after her. They crushed and wedged themselves into the midst of an unsavoury and strenuous populace on the boat that pushed out slowly into the fog of the river, but that did not matter—they were saved, they were off! They were surely bound for that other side on which lay all that made life worth living. Then there was another mad rush for the trolley car that went their way. Fighting, struggling, pressing, the three snot into seats, exhausted, and whizzed off into the dark night. Mr. Worthington, after a few minutes, went sound asleep, lurching as the car lurched, his wife, poor woman, pale enough as she sat with face averted from Mrs. Gibbons, her lips pressed tightly together, one hand holding mechanically to her raiment, and the other within her husband’s arm. Men sat with their heads on their sweet-hearts’ shoulders, in true early morning trolley-car fashion, and every inch of standing room was packed too thick for the eye to penetrate with a singing, drunken, cat-calling, indecent crowd, the last scum of a great city. It was an offense to delicacy to be there. The lights flared wildly up and then went out at intervals. When they went out, Mrs. Gibbons felt a cold terror. She had always been afraid of drunken men, and she was so used to the protection of love! How sorry Arnold would be when she told him about it all, how tender he would be of her!
Oh, she had never realized before how utterly married she was, how long she had ceased to remember the independence of her girlhood, for what a short distance her little struts and flights were planned! So helpless, so forlorn, so terribly outside of life was she without him, without that individual care which was as much a part of existence as her own ability to raise her food to her mouth, or move one foot before another! She thought of a woman she knew who had lost her husband, and who had said, “I did not know it could be like this.” He had “given his body to the storm” many a time and oft for her dear sake; yet even for her a day might sometime come—like this—when—— Her soft cheek was cold and wet, and even through her thought of him she was also trying to get home and put those milk tickets in the pail so that the child would not be bereft in the morning. One must always remember a little child’s needs.
“Ye’re frightenin’ the lady, ye big bloke.”
“I ain’t frightenin’ of her, ye——”
She shrank painfully at the notice thrust upon her. For hours, and hours, and hours they were jigging off over the dark salt meadows.
Crash, lurch, jam—everything came to a sudden stop. The conductor called, “All out here for the car ahead.”
The sleeping ones awoke. In the scuffle and rush forward Mrs. Gibbons became separated from her friends. The new car was already jammed when she reached it, with fighting in the doorway. With one foot raised to step up she was thrust to one side by a man who leapt from it, followed by several others dashing back across the tracks and down a side street, amid cries of “Catch him! Get the pocketbook! Catch the thief!”
There was a face—could it be her husband’s? She turned wildly to peer after it into the blankness outside of the car lights. The next instant the bell had rung, and the car, with the crowd on the platform all looking one way, was vanishing swiftly down the roadway, while Mrs. Gibbons, unnoticed, stood alone upon the rails. She made a futile step after it, and then stopped, appalled. She was left behind.
Opposite was the long, cavernous opening of a car-house, filled with the stalled cars. Near her was a saloon, ending what seemed a scattered row of small, mean houses and shops, closed and dark. Ahead there was a stretch of empty lots, with a faint, stationary glimmer of light down the road. But the saloon, though by no means brilliant, was the lightest place. There was no sound from within. After some hesitation, Mrs. Gibbons wandered up on the low platform that topped the two steps, watched by a couple of men from the car-house. Her heart was in her mouth as one of them came forward; but he only glanced at her and went in the saloon, to come out again with a wooden chair.
“Better set,” he remarked, laconically, and disappeared across the street. A moment later there were other footsteps from the saloon, and looking up, she saw a policeman wiping his mouth.
“Got left by the car?” he said.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Gibbons, raising her blue and guileless eyes to his. “I didn’t know it was going so soon. I was looking for my husband.”
The policeman’s face changed from solicitude to the cheerful acceptance of a familiar situation.
“Give ye the slip, did he? A lady like you, too! Sure he’s the bad lot, and not wort’ your lookin’ for. Now don’t be frettin’ yourself, the Queen couldn’t be safer. I’m wid you till the car comes. ’Tis an hour away.”
“It’s very good of you,” said Mrs. Gibbons, gratefully.
Of all the chances and changes of this wild Walpurgis night, there could be nothing stranger than this, that she, Nita Gibbons, should be sitting alone amid the dark marshes, in front of a Jersey “gin-mill,” at half-past two o’clock in the morning. It was so entirely past all imagining that frenzy had left her. She would probably never get home again, but she had ceased to struggle against fate. She sat there instead, passive, her slight figure bent against the cold night wind, and her hair half falling down under her battered hat, looking dreamily at the late twinkling stars in the black sky, and the gloomy car-house opposite, and at the policeman who walked up and down through the shadows. He swayed a little unsteadily, but he represented the guardianship of the law. Once he came close to her and asked encouragingly, “Would ye like a doggy?”
“What kind?” said Mrs. Gibbons, with a hazy fear of too large a protective animal.
He pointed over his shoulder towards the stationary light down the road. “The kind they do be havin’ in the Owl Wagon, down there—frankfooties or doggies, ’tis the same. I could get ye wan, wid a roll; they’re cleaned out in the s’loon here.”
“Thank you, I’d rather not eat,” said Mrs. Gibbons in haste, and then started nervously as the noise of footsteps running broke upon the ear. The three men who had followed the thief came in sight from the direction in which they had fled from the car. One called out, “Good-night, I’m going to hoof it home!”
And another voice also called, “Glad you got your pocketbook back again—ought to have got the fellow, too.”
The third said nothing, as he came towards the platform. Mrs. Gibbons turned her head away. The next instant a voice of amazement said, “Nita! You here!” and, looking up, she saw her husband.
“Oh, Arnold, Arnold!” She stopped short in view of his face. “Oh, Arnold, I don’t wonder you’re surprised to see me, dear, but I’ve been looking for you!”
“Looking for me! Nita! Nita! Nita!”
The astonishment in his voice held something ominous in it. She clung to his arm with both hands, as she rose with him, and hardly realized, in her excited explaining and explaining, that she was being borne off down the road without waiting for the car, at a tremendous pace, and still spasmodically explaining to a portentous silence. When he spoke at last it was in a tone that sounded dangerous:
“So the Worthingtons went off and left you?”
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