The Other Girls - Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney (free novels to read TXT) 📗

time, and how she had thought so fast.

"I must not scream. I must not move toward him. I must make him come this way."

In the two steps up--"He might not follow; he would not understand. He _must_: I must _make_ him come!" And then she flung herself down, as if she had fallen.

Once down, her strength went from her as she lay; she turned really faint and helpless.

It was all over. He was beside her.

"What is the matter, Ray? Are you ill? Are you hurt?" he said, quickly, stooping down to lift her up. She sat up, then, on the stair. She could not stand.

A man's step came rapidly through the lower hall, ringing upon the solid floor, and sounding through the unfurnished house.

"Sunderline! Thank heaven, sir, you're safe! Do you know how near you were to backing out of that confounded window? I saw you from the outside. In the name of goodness, have that place boarded up again! It shouldn't be left for five minutes."

"Was _that_ it?" asked Frank, still bending over Ray, while Mr. Newrich said all this as he hurried up the stairs.

"I didn't fall, I tumbled down on purpose! It was the only thing I could think of," said Ray, nervously smiling; justifying herself, instinctively, from the betrayal of a feeling that makes girls faint away in novels. "I felt weak afterward. Anybody would."

"That's a fact," said Mr. Newrich, stopping at the landing, and glancing out through the aperture. "I shall never think of it, without shivering. You were as good as gone: a hair's breadth more would have done it. God bless my soul! If my place had had such a christening as that!"

The whiteness came over Ray Ingraham's face again She was just rising to her feet, with her hand upon the rail.

"Sit still," said Frank. "Let me go and bring you some water."

"She'll feel better to be by herself a minute or two, I dare say," said Mr. Newrich, following Frank as he went down. He had the tact to think of this, but not to go without saying it.

"A quick-witted young woman," he remarked, as they passed out of her hearing. "And sensible enough to keep her wits ahead of her feelings. If she had come _at_ you, as half the women in the world would have done, you'd be a dead man this minute. Your sister, Sunderline?"

"No, sir--only a friend."

"Ah! _onlier_ than a sister, may be? Well!"

Sunderline replied nothing, beyond a look.

"I beg your pardon. It's none of my business."

"It's none of my business, so far as I know," said Frank. "If it were, there would be no pardon to beg."

"You're a fine fellow; and she's a fine girl. I suppose I may say that. I tell you what; if you _had_ come to grief, at the very end of this job you've done so well for me, I believe I should have put the place under the hammer. I couldn't have begun with such a piece of Friday luck as that!"

There were long pauses between the talk, as Ray and Frank drove back together into the city.

"Ray!" Frank said at last, suddenly, just as they came opposite to the row of little brown big-hatted houses, where they had talked about the bonny bowls,--"My life is either worth more or less to me, after this. You are the only woman in the world I could like to owe it to. Will you take what I owe? Will you be the _onliest_ woman in the world to me?"

Oddly enough, that word of Mr. Newrich's, that had half affronted him, came up to his lips involuntarily and unexpectedly, now. Words are apt to come up so--in a sort of spite of us--that have made an impression, even when it has been that of simple misuse.

Ray did not answer. She felt it quite impossible to speak.

Frank waited--three minutes perhaps. Then he said,

"Tell me, Ray. If it is to be no, let me know it."

"If it had been no. I could have said it sooner," Ray answered, softly.

* * * * *

"May I come back?" he asked, when he helped her down at the door in Pilgrim Street, and held her hand fast for a minute.

"O yes; come back and see mother," Ray replied, her face all beautiful with smile and color.

Mother knew all the story, that minute, as well as when it was told her afterward. She saw her child's face, and that holding of the hand, from her upper window, where a half blind had fallen to. Mothers do not miss the home-comings from such drives as that.

* * * * *

"There's one thing, Frank,"--said Ray. She was standing with him, three hours afterward, at the low step of the entrance, he above her on the sidewalk, looking down upon her upturned face. The happy tea and family evening were over; that first family evening, when one comes acknowledged in, who has been almost one of the family before; and they were saying the first beautiful good-by, which has the beginning of all joining and belonging in it. "There is one thing, Frank. I'm under contract for the present; for quite a while. I'm going into the bread business, after all. I've promised Miss Grapp to take her bakery, and manage it for her, for a year or so."

"Who--is--Miss Grapp?" exclaimed Frank, pausing between the words in his astonishment.

Ray laughed. "Haven't I told you? I thought everybody knew. It's too long a story for the door-step. When you come again"--

"That'll be to-morrow."

"I'll tell you all about it."

"You'll have to manage the bakery and me too, somehow, before--a 'year or so'! How long do you suppose I expect to wait?"

"Dear me! how long _have_ you waited?" returned Ray, demurely.

She only meant the three hours since they had been engaged; but it is a funny fact about the nature and prerogative of a man, that he may take years in which to come to the point of asking--years in which perhaps a woman's life is waiting, with a wear and an uncertainty in it; but the point of _having_ must be moved up then, to suit his sudden impatience of full purpose.

A woman shrinks from this hurry; she wants a little of the blessed time of sure anticipation, after she knows that they belong to one another; a time to dream and plan beautiful things together in; to let herself think, safely and rightly, all the thoughts she has had to keep down until now. It is the difference of attitude in the asking and answering relations; a man's thoughts have been free enough all along; he has dreamt his dream out, and stands claiming the fulfillment.

Dot had her hair all down that night, and her nightgown on, and was sitting on the bed, with her feet curled up, while Ray stood in skirts and dressing-sack, before the glass, her braids half unfastened, stock-still, looking in at herself, or through her own image, with a most intent oblivion of what she pretended to be there for.

"Well, Ray! Have you forgotten the way to the other side of your head, or are you enchanted for a hundred years? I shall want the glass to-morrow morning."

Ray roused up from her abstraction.

"I was thinking," she said.

"Yes'm. I suppose you'll be always thinking now. You had just outgrown that trick, a little. It was the affliction of my childhood; and now it's got to begin again. 'Don't talk, Dot; I'm thinking.' Good-by."

There was half a whimper in Dorothy's last word.

"Dot! You silly little thing!"

And Rachel came over to the bedside, and put her arms round Dorothy, all crumpled as she was into a little round white ball.

"I was thinking about Marion Kent."


CHAPTER XVI.

RECOMPENSE.

That night, Marion Kent was fifty miles off, in the great, mixed-up, manufacturing town of Loweburg.

She had three platform dresses now,--the earnings of some half-dozen "evenings." The sea-green silk would not do forever, in place after place; they would call her the mermaid. She must have a quiet, elegant black one, and one the color of her hair, like that she had seen the pretty actress, Alice Craike, so bewitching in. She could deepen it with chestnut trimmings, all toning up together to one rich, bright harmony. Her hair was "_blond cendre_,"--not the red-golden of Alice Craike's; but the same subtle rule of art was available; "_cafe-au-lait_" was her shade; and the darker velvet just deepened and emphasized the effect.

She was putting this dress on to-night, with some brown and golden leaves in the high, massed braids of her hair. She certainly knew how to make a picture of herself; she was just made to make a picture of.

The hotel waitress who had brought up her tea on a tray, had gone down with a report that Miss Kent was "stunning;" and two or three housemaids and a number of little boys were vibrating and loitering about the hall and doorway below, watching for her to come down to her carriage. It was just as good, so far as these things went, as if she had been Mrs. Kemble, or Christine Nilsson, or anybody.

And Marion, poor child, had really got no farther than "these things," yet. She reached, for herself, to just what she had been able to appreciate in others. She had taken in the housemaid and small-boy view of famousness, and she was having her shallow little day of living it. She had not found out, yet, how short a time that would last. "Verily," it was said for us all long ago, "ye shall have each your reward," such as ye look and labor for.

One great boy was waiting for her, _ex officio_, and without disguise,--the President of the Lyceum Club, before which she was to read to-night.

He sat serenely in the reception-room, ready to hand her to her carriage, and accompany her to the hall.

The little boys observed him with exasperation. The housemaids dropped their lower jaws with wonder, when she swept down the staircase; her _cafe-au-lait_ silk rolling and glittering behind her, as if the breakfast for all Loweburg were pouring down the Phoenix Hotel stairs.

The President of the People's Lyceum Club heard the rustle of elegance, and met her at the stair-foot with bowing head and bended arm.

That was a beautiful, triumphant moment, in which she crossed the space between the staircase and the door, and went down over the sidewalk to the hack. What would you have? There could not have been more of it, in her mind, though all Loweburg were standing by. She was Miss Kent, going out to give her Reading. What more could Fanny Kemble do?

Around the hall doors, when they arrived, other great boys were gathered. She was passed in quickly, to the left, through some passages and committee rooms, to the other end of the building, whence she would enter, in full