Addie's Husband; or, Through clouds to sunshine
you know I have no account at Madame Armine's--you know I haven't!"
"Stuff!"
"Our hands are always outstretched--always; we give nothing and take
everything. How can you bear it--how?"
"Oh, Addie, I have no patience with you! You talk of your husband as if
he were a stranger, a complete outsider--as if we had no interest in
him or he in us; it is a shame! I protest I understand him better than
you. I saw at once that it was a pleasure to him to give me a dress;
and I foresee too that it will give him pleasure to see me fashionably
and becomingly got up on the 16th. I'm determined not to balk him. I
think your feeling in the matter is both unnatural and absurd--absurd
in the extreme!"
Miss Lefroy has her way, and that same afternoon is fingering gauzes,
satins, and laces at Madame Armine's. Her sister, seeing that it would
be of no use venturing on delicate ground again, with a feeling of
impotence to wrestle against her will in particular, and the tide of
events in general, gives in with a weary sigh.
* * * * *
On the night of the 16th Armstrong is standing under the drawing-room
chandelier, anxiously working his large bony hands into a pair of
evening gloves of treacherous texture and about half a size too small
for him, when his womenfolk rustle in, fully equipped for conquest.
"Do you like me, Tom?"
He looks down at his wife standing before him in the bridal finery
which she refused to wear at the altar, her fair white shoulders
shining through folds of delicate lace, a necklet of pearls--his
wedding-gift--encircling her pretty throat, a bunch of pale pink roses
loosely hanging from her rough brown hair.
"How fair, how bright, how young you look, my love, my love!" he
thinks, with a sort of hungry pain; while her gray eyes meet his
with the strange expression they always wear now, half wistful, half
defiant, and a little scared as well--an expression which he sometimes
feels, with a pang of impotent remorse, that no act, or word, or wish
of his can ever chase thence again, even if he labored as manfully as
he is now doing to the end of his days.
"Do I like you," he repeats softly--"like you, Addie!" Then,
with a quick return to his usual self-possessed, matter-of-fact
manner--"Certainly, my dear; your dress is very nice indeed."
"Rapturous commendation!" she answers, with a light vexed laugh.
"Now, Addie, clear away; it is my turn, please. What have you to say to
me, Mr. Armstrong?"
"You?" he cries, staggering back, and shading his eyes as if overcome
by the vision. "Who are you, pray--the Queen of Sheba?--Cleopatra?"
"Miss Pauline Lefroy, at your service, exemplifying the old proverb of
'Fine feathers make fine birds.' Now, honestly, what do you think of my
feathers, Tom?"
Pauline steps forward, giving her train a brisk twitch, and poses under
the chandelier, her lithe stately figure draped in clouds of silky
gauze, her masses of dusky hair piled high on her head, interwoven with
chains of pearls, her lovely gypsy face sparkling with the glow of
excitement and anticipated pleasure.
"'Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of Night
As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear,'"
quotes Armstrong dramatically. "Will that homage to your plumage do
fair sister-in-law?"
"Yes, it sounds like Shakespeare or Milton. Shakespeare, is it? 'Her
beauty hangs upon the cheek of Night like a--' What?"
"'Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear.'"
"It is a fine idea, strongly put--better than being told flatly that I
was nice, like a bit of well-fried beefsteak. And so you think I shall
do?"
"By Jove, yes," thinks he, in startled admiration. "I rather think you
will, Miss Polly! What a splendid specimen of womanhood you are, to be
sure! Strange I never seemed to take in the power of your comeliness
until to-night!"
He glances at the two sisters standing side by side--at the girl,
lastly, who, in a ragged cotton dress, without even the ornament of
ladylike neatness, without one word or smile of attractive intent,
chained his senses in one luckless moment and robbed him of his peace
forever. He shakes his head; it is of no use going over the old story
again; the mischief is done, and there is an end of it.
"She is not beautiful, my little Addie, she is but a pallid
spring-blossom beside the tropical coloring of her sister," he thinks
bitterly. "Few men, I suppose, would waste a glance on her when they
could feed on the other's beauty; and yet she is all I want--all. My
life would be full if I had her. Oh, the irony of fate to think that
what is by law my own, my very own, what no man covets, I can not
grasp--to think that she, the delight of my eyes, the one love of my
life, must live under the same roof with me, and yet be as far apart as
if the poles sundered us! And we are drifting further day by day; we
can not even be friends. I have more in common now with her sisters,
even with her cub of a brother, than with her. A wall of constraint
is rising hourly between us. We can not talk together five minutes
without falling into an uncomfortable silence, or tripping over matter
we had agreed to bury. I wonder how it will all end! By Jove, I should
like to have a peep at our position, say, this day ten years! Please
Providence, the boys will have struck out lines for themselves ere
then, and some fellows will have induced the girls to quit my fireside
too, if--if I see fit to make it worth their while. Miss Pauline, with
five or six thousand pounds, would be a prize many men would like to
secure. Lottie too would have a chance under the same conditions; there
would be only Addie and I left to drift into autumn together. By Jove,
I should like to know how it will end! Hang it, my glove is gone at
last!" he exclaims aloud, in dismay.
"I thought as much, Tom. I hope you have another pair, because the most
skillful needle-and-thread in the world wouldn't bridge that chasm. Oh,
I see you have another pair! Now, will you concentrate your powerful
intellect on my train for a minute? I'm going to walk slowly from the
piano to the window, and I want you to tell me it you can detect the
faintest outline of steel or wire, the merest suggestion of string or
tape anywhere."
"No, Pauline, on my honor as a British merchant!" he answers solemnly.
"I can detect not one trace of the inward mechanism of your dress. It
is veiled to me in darkest art. You are inflated in a manner wonderful
and fearful to behold."
"I believe you! That is what I call the perfection of a fan-tail;
Armine is the only dress-maker in Kelvick who can work them like that,"
remarks Pauline complacently. "I flatter myself there won't be another
train surpassing mine in the room. And fancy, Tom--Addie wanted me to
appear in a home-made muslin or grenadine, with a blue silk sash and
blue ribbons in my hair, like a school-girl going out to a suburban
tea-party! Wasn't I right to resist? Haven't I your entire approbation?"
"Certainly, I think the most extreme measure would justify the end you
have achieved, Miss Lefroy," he answers, laughing.
"Well, one end you have certainly achieved, my dear sister," says Addie
ruefully. "You have certainly crushed my poor dress, put me out of the
field altogether, which is rather hard lines, considering I'm a--a
bride and all that. Nobody will look at me when you are near."
"Then I must keep well out of your way, dear," she answers sweetly.
"Ah, here comes the carriage at last! Where's my fan, bouquet,
handkerchief? Oh, dear, if I should get myself crushed or squeezed
before I arrive! Tom, I engage the front of the brougham; you and
Addie must sit together at the back. It's wrong to separate those whom
Heaven has joined together, you know."
"Pauline," cries Addie sharply, "I wish you would not make those
flippant remarks; they're extremely unbecoming!"
Pauline raises her saucy eyes to her brother-in-law's disturbed face,
and asks innocently--
"Am I flippant, Tom? Have I said anything wrong? Tell me--do you want
the back all to yourself?"
"I want neither the back nor the front, my dear," he answers placidly.
"I'd rather not be brought into close contact with the mysteries of
your dress. I'm going to enjoy my cigar on the box-seat."
"Are you? I dare say you'll like it better than being squashed between
us," assents Pauline lightly.
"You are going to do nothing of the kind," interposes Addie, with
flaming face. "I will not allow it. Going to sit outside for a seven
miles' drive on a snowy night in January, just to save a few wretched
flowers from being crushed! Pauline, I'm ashamed of you!"
"My dear Addie, don't get so hot about it, it was my own suggestion,
not your sister's. I do not mind the weather in the least. It's not
a bad kind of night for the season of the year, and I have a famous
overcoat lined with fur, and my cigar."
They are all three standing in the porch. Addie suddenly walks back
into the hall, and begins undoing her wraps; they follow her in quickly.
"What are you doing? What is the matter?"
"I am not going to the ball, Pauline; I should not like to crush your
flounces, dear," she answers, with sparkling eyes.
Pauline crimsons.
"Addie, how--how spiteful you are!" she cries, angrily. "You know I did
not want your husband to sit on the box-seat; he suggested it himself.
There is plenty of room for us all inside. Oh, come along, Addie; don't
be so nasty and spiteful!"
But she is not to be propitiated; she shakes off her sister's
protesting hands, and moves away upstairs.
"I am not nasty or spiteful, Pauline; but I do not feel inclined for
this ball. I feel a headache coming on. Mr. Armstrong will take you
there without me."
Pauline remains motionless, and casts an appealing look at her
brother-in-law.
"Tom, go after her--see what you can do. I should only make matters
worse."
After a second's hesitation, he follows Addie up the stairs, and lays
his hand gently on her shoulder.
"Addie, come back; I won't go to the ball without you. Come back!"
"What nonsense! You can go very well without me. I do not care for it,
I tell you."
She speaks sharply and sullenly enough; but a few hot tears trickle
down her cheeks as she turns away her face from his scrutiny.
Before he knows what he is about, he takes her handkerchief, and wipes
them away softly, whispering, beseechingly--
"I will do what you like, sit where you like. Come, my own dear little
girl--come!"
She puts her hand on his arm.
"You will sit inside with us?"
"Of course, if you wish it. I would not have proposed the box-seat if I
had known you would not like it, Addie. I never thought of the weather.
Why, I have slept out of doors in Canadian backwoods in three times as
severe weather as this, and I'm alive to tell the tale--ah, scores of
times!"
The drive is an uncomfortable one for all three, though Pauline,
anxious to remove the impression of the scene, rattles "nineteen to the
dozen." Her sister speaks not a word, and Armstrong is too wrapped up
in somber, anxious thought to respond.
Clearly as one would read an open book, he can now read the page of his
little wife's troubled life--can read the meaning of flushing cheek,
quivering lip, tearful eye--can see the passion of revolt that stirs
her sensitive being--can feel how her pride, her delicacy is daily,
hourly, outraged by the condition of their lives--and his heart yearns
over her.
"If," he thinks, with an impotent sigh, "I had chosen the other sister,
it would have been different; her coarser, more selfish nature would
have adapted itself to the circumstances without a pang. She would
have accepted without murmur or protest the best I had to give, would