Bunner Sisters, by Edith Wharton

Part 2 out of 2

"Well, I don't know as it would be natural for him to want to
go out there without me," Evelina simpered. "But it's all so
sudden I don't know what to think. He only got the letter this
morning. DO I look queer, Ann Eliza?" Her eye was roving
for the mirror.

"No, you don't," said Ann Eliza almost harshly.

"Well, it's a mercy," Evelina pursued with a tinge of
disappointment. "It's a regular miracle I didn't faint right out
there in the Square. Herman's so thoughtless--he just put the
letter into my hand without a word. It's from a big firm out
there--the Tiff'ny of St. Louis, he says it is--offering him a
place in their clock-department. Seems they heart of him through
a German friend of his that's settled out there. It's a splendid
opening, and if he gives satisfaction they'll raise him at the end
of the year."

She paused, flushed with the importance of the situation,
which seemed to lift her once for all above the dull level of her
former life.

"Then you'll have to go?" came at last from Ann Eliza.

Evelina stared. "You wouldn't have me interfere with his
prospects, would you?"

"No--no. I on'y meant--has it got to be so soon?"

"Right away, I tell you--next week. Ain't it awful?" blushed
the bride.

Well, this was what happened to mothers. They bore it, Ann
Eliza mused; so why not she? Ah, but they had their own chance
first; she had had no chance at all. And now this life which she
had made her own was going from her forever; had gone, already, in
the inner and deeper sense, and was soon to vanish in even its
outward nearness, its surface-communion of voice and eye. At that
moment even the thought of Evelina's happiness refused her its
consolatory ray; or its light, if she saw it, was too remote to
warm her. The thirst for a personal and inalienable tie, for pangs
and problems of her own, was parching Ann Eliza's soul: it seemed
to her that she could never again gather strength to look her
loneliness in the face.

The trivial obligations of the moment came to her aid. Nursed
in idleness her grief would have mastered her; but the needs of the
shop and the back room, and the preparations for Evelina's
marriage, kept the tyrant under.

Miss Mellins, true to her anticipations, had been called on to
aid in the making of the wedding dress, and she and Ann Eliza were
bending one evening over the breadths of pearl-grey cashmere which
in spite of the dress-maker's prophetic vision of gored satin, had
been judged most suitable, when Evelina came into the room alone.

Ann Eliza had already had occasion to notice that it was a bad
sign when Mr. Ramy left his affianced at the door. It generally
meant that Evelina had something disturbing to communicate, and Ann
Eliza's first glance told her that this time the news was grave.

Miss Mellins, who sat with her back to the door and her head
bent over her sewing, started as Evelina came around to the
opposite side of the table.

"Mercy, Miss Evelina! I declare I thought you was a ghost,
the way you crep' in. I had a customer once up in Forty-ninth
Street--a lovely young woman with a thirty-six bust and a waist you
could ha' put into her wedding ring--and her husband, he crep' up
behind her that way jest for a joke, and frightened her
into a fit, and when she come to she was a raving maniac, and had
to be taken to Bloomingdale with two doctors and a nurse to hold
her in the carriage, and a lovely baby on'y six weeks old--and
there she is to this day, poor creature."

"I didn't mean to startle you," said Evelina.

She sat down on the nearest chair, and as the lamp-light fell
on her face Ann Eliza saw that she had been crying.

"You do look dead-beat," Miss Mellins resumed, after a pause
of soul-probing scrutiny. "I guess Mr. Ramy lugs you round that
Square too often. You'll walk your legs off if you ain't careful.
Men don't never consider--they're all alike. Why, I had a cousin
once that was engaged to a book-agent--"

"Maybe we'd better put away the work for to-night, Miss
Mellins," Ann Eliza interposed. "I guess what Evelina wants is a
good night's rest."

"That's so," assented the dress-maker. "Have you got the back
breadths run together, Miss Bunner? Here's the sleeves. I'll pin
'em together." She drew a cluster of pins from her mouth, in which
she seemed to secrete them as squirrels stow away nuts. "There,"
she said, rolling up her work, "you go right away to bed, Miss
Evelina, and we'll set up a little later to-morrow night. I guess
you're a mite nervous, ain't you? I know when my turn comes I'll
be scared to death."

With this arch forecast she withdrew, and Ann Eliza, returning
to the back room, found Evelina still listlessly seated by the
table. True to her new policy of silence, the elder sister set
about folding up the bridal dress; but suddenly Evelina said in a
harsh unnatural voice: "There ain't any use in going on with that."

The folds slipped from Ann Eliza's hands.

"Evelina Bunner--what you mean?"

"Jest what I say. It's put off."

"Put off--what's put off?"

"Our getting married. He can't take me to St. Louis. He
ain't got money enough." She brought the words out in the
monotonous tone of a child reciting a lesson.

Ann Eliza picked up another breadth of cashmere and began to
smooth it out. "I don't understand," she said at length.

"Well, it's plain enough. The journey's fearfully expensive,
and we've got to have something left to start with when we get out
there. We've counted up, and he ain't got the money to do it--
that's all."

"But I thought he was going right into a splendid place."

"So he is; but the salary's pretty low the first year, and
board's very high in St. Louis. He's jest got another letter from
his German friend, and he's been figuring it out, and he's afraid
to chance it. He'll have to go alone."

"But there's your money--have you forgotten that? The hundred
dollars in the bank."

Evelina made an impatient movement. "Of course I ain't
forgotten it. On'y it ain't enough. It would all have to go into
buying furniture, and if he was took sick and lost his place again
we wouldn't have a cent left. He says he's got to lay by another
hundred dollars before he'll be willing to take me out there."

For a while Ann Eliza pondered this surprising statement; then
she ventured: "Seems to me he might have thought of it before."

In an instant Evelina was aflame. "I guess he knows what's
right as well as you or me. I'd sooner die than be a burden to
him."

Ann Eliza made no answer. The clutch of an unformulated doubt
had checked the words on her lips. She had meant, on the day of
her sister's marriage, to give Evelina the other half of their
common savings; but something warned her not to say so now.

The sisters undressed without farther words. After they had
gone to bed, and the light had been put out, the sound of Evelina's
weeping came to Ann Eliza in the darkness, but she lay motionless
on her own side of the bed, out of contact with her sister's shaken
body. Never had she felt so coldly remote from Evelina.

The hours of the night moved slowly, ticked off with wearisome
insistence by the clock which had played so prominent a part in
their lives. Evelina's sobs still stirred the bed at gradually
lengthening intervals, till at length Ann Eliza thought she slept.
But with the dawn the eyes of the sisters met, and Ann Eliza's
courage failed her as she looked in Evelina's face.

She sat up in bed and put out a pleading hand.

"Don't cry so, dearie. Don't."

"Oh, I can't bear it, I can't bear it," Evelina moaned.

Ann Eliza stroked her quivering shoulder. "Don't, don't," she
repeated. "If you take the other hundred, won't that be enough?
I always meant to give it to you. On'y I didn't want to tell you
till your wedding day."

IX

Evelina's marriage took place on the appointed day. It was
celebrated in the evening, in the chantry of the church which the
sisters attended, and after it was over the few guests who had been
present repaired to the Bunner Sisters' basement, where a wedding
supper awaited them. Ann Eliza, aided by Miss Mellins and Mrs.
Hawkins, and consciously supported by the sentimental interest of
the whole street, had expended her utmost energy on the decoration
of the shop and the back room. On the table a vase of white
chrysanthemums stood between a dish of oranges and bananas and an
iced wedding-cake wreathed with orange-blossoms of the bride's own
making. Autumn leaves studded with paper roses festooned the what-
not and the chromo of the Rock of Ages, and a wreath of yellow
immortelles was twined about the clock which Evelina revered as the
mysterious agent of her happiness.

At the table sat Miss Mellins, profusely spangled and bangled,
her head sewing-girl, a pale young thing who had helped with
Evelina's outfit, Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins, with Johnny, their eldest
boy, and Mrs. Hochmuller and her daughter.

Mrs. Hochmuller's large blonde personality seemed to pervade
the room to the effacement of the less amply-proportioned guests.
It was rendered more impressive by a dress of crimson poplin that
stood out from her in organ-like folds; and Linda, whom Ann Eliza
had remembered as an uncouth child with a sly look about the eyes,
surprised her by a sudden blossoming into feminine grace such as
sometimes follows on a gawky girlhood. The Hochmullers, in fact,
struck the dominant note in the entertainment. Beside them
Evelina, unusually pale in her grey cashmere and white bonnet,
looked like a faintly washed sketch beside a brilliant chromo; and
Mr. Ramy, doomed to the traditional insignificance of the
bridegroom's part, made no attempt to rise above his situation.
Even Miss Mellins sparkled and jingled in vain in the shadow of
Mrs. Hochmuller's crimson bulk; and Ann Eliza, with a sense of
vague foreboding, saw that the wedding feast centred about the two
guests she had most wished to exclude from it. What was said or
done while they all sat about the table she never afterward
recalled: the long hours remained in her memory as a whirl of high
colours and loud voices, from which the pale presence of Evelina
now and then emerged like a drowned face on a sunset-dabbled sea.

The next morning Mr. Ramy and his wife started for St. Louis,
and Ann Eliza was left alone. Outwardly the first strain of
parting was tempered by the arrival of Miss Mellins, Mrs. Hawkins
and Johnny, who dropped in to help in the ungarlanding and tidying
up of the back room. Ann Eliza was duly grateful for their
kindness, but the "talking over" on which they had evidently
counted was Dead Sea fruit on her lips; and just beyond the
familiar warmth of their presences she saw the form of Solitude at
her door.

Ann Eliza was but a small person to harbour so great a guest,
and a trembling sense of insufficiency possessed her. She had no
high musings to offer to the new companion of her hearth. Every
one of her thoughts had hitherto turned to Evelina and shaped
itself in homely easy words; of the mighty speech of silence she
knew not the earliest syllable.

Everything in the back room and the shop, on the second day
after Evelina's going, seemed to have grown coldly unfamiliar. The
whole aspect of the place had changed with the changed conditions
of Ann Eliza's life. The first customer who opened the shop-door
startled her like a ghost; and all night she lay tossing on her
side of the bed, sinking now and then into an uncertain doze from
which she would suddenly wake to reach out her hand for Evelina.
In the new silence surrounding her the walls and furniture found
voice, frightening her at dusk and midnight with strange sighs
and stealthy whispers. Ghostly hands shook the window shutters or
rattled at the outer latch, and once she grew cold at the sound of
a step like Evelina's stealing through the dark shop to die out on
the threshold. In time, of course, she found an explanation for
these noises, telling herself that the bedstead was warping, that
Miss Mellins trod heavily overhead, or that the thunder of passing
beer-waggons shook the door-latch; but the hours leading up to
these conclusions were full of the floating terrors that harden
into fixed foreboding. Worst of all were the solitary meals, when
she absently continued to set aside the largest slice of pie for
Evelina, and to let the tea grow cold while she waited for her
sister to help herself to the first cup. Miss Mellins, coming in
on one of these sad repasts, suggested the acquisition of a cat;
but Ann Eliza shook her head. She had never been used to animals,
and she felt the vague shrinking of the pious from creatures
divided from her by the abyss of soullessness.

At length, after ten empty days, Evelina's first letter came.

"My dear Sister," she wrote, in her pinched Spencerian hand,
"it seems strange to be in this great City so far from home alone
with him I have chosen for life, but marriage has its solemn duties
which those who are not can never hope to understand, and happier
perhaps for this reason, life for them has only simple tasks and
pleasures, but those who must take thought for others must be
prepared to do their duty in whatever station it has pleased the
Almighty to call them. Not that I have cause to complain, my dear
Husband is all love and devotion, but being absent all day at his
business how can I help but feel lonesome at times, as the poet
says it is hard for they that love to live apart, and I often
wonder, my dear Sister, how you are getting along alone in the
store, may you never experience the feelings of solitude I have
underwent since I came here. We are boarding now, but soon expect
to find rooms and change our place of Residence, then I shall have
all the care of a household to bear, but such is the fate of those
who join their Lot with others, they cannot hope to escape from the
burdens of Life, nor would I ask it, I would not live alway but
while I live would always pray for strength to do my duty. This
city is not near as large or handsome as New York, but had my lot
been cast in a Wilderness I hope I should not repine, such never
was my nature, and they who exchange their independence for the
sweet name of Wife must be prepared to find all is not gold that
glitters, nor I would not expect like you to drift down the stream
of Life unfettered and serene as a Summer cloud, such is not my
fate, but come what may will always find in me a resigned and
prayerful Spirit, and hoping this finds you as well as it leaves
me, I remain, my dear Sister,

"Yours truly,

"EVELINA B. RAMY."

Ann Eliza had always secretly admired the oratorical and
impersonal tone of Evelina's letters; but the few she had
previously read, having been addressed to school-mates or distant
relatives, had appeared in the light of literary compositions
rather than as records of personal experience. Now she could not
but wish that Evelina had laid aside her swelling periods for a
style more suited to the chronicling of homely incidents. She read
the letter again and again, seeking for a clue to what her sister
was really doing and thinking; but after each reading she emerged
impressed but unenlightened from the labyrinth of Evelina's
eloquence.

During the early winter she received two or three more letters
of the same kind, each enclosing in its loose husk of rhetoric a
smaller kernel of fact. By dint of patient interlinear study, Ann
Eliza gathered from them that Evelina and her husband, after
various costly experiments in boarding, had been reduced to a
tenement-house flat; that living in St. Louis was more expensive
than they had supposed, and that Mr. Ramy was kept out late at
night (why, at a jeweller's, Ann Eliza wondered?) and found his
position less satisfactory than he had been led to expect. Toward
February the letters fell off; and finally they ceased to come.

At first Ann Eliza wrote, shyly but persistently, entreating
for more frequent news; then, as one appeal after another was
swallowed up in the mystery of Evelina's protracted
silence, vague fears began to assail the elder sister. Perhaps
Evelina was ill, and with no one to nurse her but a man who could
not even make himself a cup of tea! Ann Eliza recalled the layer
of dust in Mr. Ramy's shop, and pictures of domestic disorder
mingled with the more poignant vision of her sister's illness. But
surely if Evelina were ill Mr. Ramy would have written. He wrote
a small neat hand, and epistolary communication was not an
insuperable embarrassment to him. The too probable alternative was
that both the unhappy pair had been prostrated by some disease
which left them powerless to summon her--for summon her they surely
would, Ann Eliza with unconscious cynicism reflected, if she or her
small economies could be of use to them! The more she strained her
eyes into the mystery, the darker it grew; and her lack of
initiative, her inability to imagine what steps might be taken to
trace the lost in distant places, left her benumbed and helpless.

At last there floated up from some depth of troubled memory
the name of the firm of St. Louis jewellers by whom Mr. Ramy was
employed. After much hesitation, and considerable effort, she
addressed to them a timid request for news of her brother-in-law;
and sooner than she could have hoped the answer reached her.

"DEAR MADAM,

"In reply to yours of the 29th ult. we beg to state the party
you refer to was discharged from our employ a month ago. We are
sorry we are unable to furnish you wish his address.

"Yours Respectfully,

"LUDWIG AND HAMMERBUSCH."

Ann Eliza read and re-read the curt statement in a stupor of
distress. She had lost her last trace of Evelina. All that night
she lay awake, revolving the stupendous project of going to St.
Louis in search of her sister; but though she pieced together her
few financial possibilities with the ingenuity of a brain used to
fitting odd scraps into patch-work quilts, she woke to the cold
daylight fact that she could not raise the money for her fare. Her
wedding gift to Evelina had left her without any resources beyond
her daily earnings, and these had steadily dwindled as the winter
passed. She had long since renounced her weekly visit to the
butcher, and had reduced her other expenses to the narrowest
measure; but the most systematic frugality had not enabled her to
put by any money. In spite of her dogged efforts to maintain the
prosperity of the little shop, her sister's absence had already
told on its business. Now that Ann Eliza had to carry the bundles
to the dyer's herself, the customers who called in her absence,
finding the shop locked, too often went elsewhere. Moreover, after
several stern but unavailing efforts, she had had to give up the
trimming of bonnets, which in Evelina's hands had been the most
lucrative as well as the most interesting part of the business.
This change, to the passing female eye, robbed the shop window of
its chief attraction; and when painful experience had convinced the
regular customers of the Bunner Sisters of Ann Eliza's lack of
millinery skill they began to lose faith in her ability to curl a
feather or even "freshen up" a bunch of flowers. The time came
when Ann Eliza had almost made up her mind to speak to the lady
with puffed sleeves, who had always looked at her so kindly, and
had once ordered a hat of Evelina. Perhaps the lady with puffed
sleeves would be able to get her a little plain sewing to do; or
she might recommend the shop to friends. Ann Eliza, with this
possibility in view, rummaged out of a drawer the fly-blown
remainder of the business cards which the sisters had ordered in
the first flush of their commercial adventure; but when the lady
with puffed sleeves finally appeared she was in deep mourning, and
wore so sad a look that Ann Eliza dared not speak. She came in to
buy some spools of black thread and silk, and in the doorway she
turned back to say: "I am going away to-morrow for a long time. I
hope you will have a pleasant winter." And the door shut on her.

One day not long after this it occurred to Ann Eliza to go to
Hoboken in quest of Mrs. Hochmuller. Much as she shrank from
pouring her distress into that particular ear, her anxiety had
carried her beyond such reluctance; but when she began to
think the matter over she was faced by a new difficulty. On the
occasion of her only visit to Mrs. Hochmuller, she and Evelina had
suffered themselves to be led there by Mr. Ramy; and Ann Eliza now
perceived that she did not even know the name of the laundress's
suburb, much less that of the street in which she lived. But she
must have news of Evelina, and no obstacle was great enough to
thwart her.

Though she longed to turn to some one for advice she disliked
to expose her situation to Miss Mellins's searching eye, and at
first she could think of no other confidant. Then she remembered
Mrs. Hawkins, or rather her husband, who, though Ann Eliza had
always thought him a dull uneducated man, was probably gifted with
the mysterious masculine faculty of finding out people's addresses.
It went hard with Ann Eliza to trust her secret even to the mild
ear of Mrs. Hawkins, but at least she was spared the cross-
examination to which the dress-maker would have subjected her. The
accumulating pressure of domestic cares had so crushed in Mrs.
Hawkins any curiosity concerning the affairs of others that she
received her visitor's confidence with an almost masculine
indifference, while she rocked her teething baby on one arm and
with the other tried to check the acrobatic impulses of the next in
age.

"My, my," she simply said as Ann Eliza ended. "Keep still
now, Arthur: Miss Bunner don't want you to jump up and down on her
foot to-day. And what are you gaping at, Johnny? Run right off
and play," she added, turning sternly to her eldest, who, because
he was the least naughty, usually bore the brunt of her wrath
against the others.

"Well, perhaps Mr. Hawkins can help you," Mrs. Hawkins
continued meditatively, while the children, after scattering at her
bidding, returned to their previous pursuits like flies settling
down on the spot from which an exasperated hand has swept them.
"I'll send him right round the minute he comes in, and you can tell
him the whole story. I wouldn't wonder but what he can find that
Mrs. Hochmuller's address in the d'rectory. I know they've got one
where he works."

"I'd be real thankful if he could," Ann Eliza murmured, rising
from her seat with the factitious sense of lightness that comes
from imparting a long-hidden dread.

X

Mr. Hawkins proved himself worthy of his wife's faith in his
capacity. He learned from Ann Eliza as much as she could tell him
about Mrs. Hochmuller and returned the next evening with a scrap of
paper bearing her address, beneath which Johnny (the family scribe)
had written in a large round hand the names of the streets that led
there from the ferry.

Ann Eliza lay awake all that night, repeating over and over
again the directions Mr. Hawkins had given her. He was a kind man,
and she knew he would willingly have gone with her to Hoboken;
indeed she read in his timid eye the half-formed intention of
offering to accompany her--but on such an errand she preferred to
go alone.

The next Sunday, accordingly, she set out early, and without
much trouble found her way to the ferry. Nearly a year had passed
since her previous visit to Mrs. Hochmuller, and a chilly April
breeze smote her face as she stepped on the boat. Most of the
passengers were huddled together in the cabin, and Ann Eliza shrank
into its obscurest corner, shivering under the thin black mantle
which had seemed so hot in July. She began to feel a little
bewildered as she stepped ashore, but a paternal policeman put her
into the right car, and as in a dream she found herself retracing
the way to Mrs. Hochmuller's door. She had told the conductor the
name of the street at which she wished to get out, and presently
she stood in the biting wind at the corner near the beer-saloon,
where the sun had once beat down on her so fiercely. At length an
empty car appeared, its yellow flank emblazoned with the name of
Mrs. Hochmuller's suburb, and Ann Eliza was presently jolting past
the narrow brick houses islanded between vacant lots like giant
piles in a desolate lagoon. When the car reached the end of its
journey she got out and stood for some time trying to remember
which turn Mr. Ramy had taken. She had just made up her mind to
ask the car-driver when he shook the reins on the backs of his lean
horses, and the car, still empty, jogged away toward Hoboken.

Ann Eliza, left alone by the roadside, began to move
cautiously forward, looking about for a small red house with a
gable overhung by an elm-tree; but everything about her seemed
unfamiliar and forbidding. One or two surly looking men slouched
past with inquisitive glances, and she could not make up her mind
to stop and speak to them.

At length a tow-headed boy came out of a swinging door
suggestive of illicit conviviality, and to him Ann Eliza ventured
to confide her difficulty. The offer of five cents fired him with
an instant willingness to lead her to Mrs. Hochmuller, and he was
soon trotting past the stone-cutter's yard with Ann Eliza in his wake.

Another turn in the road brought them to the little red house,
and having rewarded her guide Ann Eliza unlatched the gate and
walked up to the door. Her heart was beating violently, and she
had to lean against the door-post to compose her twitching lips:
she had not known till that moment how much it was going to hurt
her to speak of Evelina to Mrs. Hochmuller. As her agitation
subsided she began to notice how much the appearance of the house
had changed. It was not only that winter had stripped the elm, and
blackened the flower-borders: the house itself had a debased and
deserted air. The window-panes were cracked and dirty, and one or
two shutters swung dismally on loosened hinges.

She rang several times before the door was opened. At length
an Irish woman with a shawl over her head and a baby in her arms
appeared on the threshold, and glancing past her into the narrow
passage Ann Eliza saw that Mrs. Hochmuller's neat abode had
deteriorated as much within as without.

At the mention of the name the woman stared. "Mrs. who, did
ye say?"

"Mrs. Hochmuller. This is surely her house?"

"No, it ain't neither," said the woman turning away.

"Oh, but wait, please," Ann Eliza entreated. "I can't be
mistaken. I mean the Mrs. Hochmuller who takes in washing. I came
out to see her last June."

"Oh, the Dutch washerwoman is it--her that used to live here?
She's been gone two months and more. It's Mike McNulty lives here
now. Whisht!" to the baby, who had squared his mouth for a howl.

Ann Eliza's knees grew weak. "Mrs. Hochmuller gone? But
where has she gone? She must be somewhere round here. Can't you
tell me?"

"Sure an' I can't," said the woman. "She wint away before
iver we come."

"Dalia Geoghegan, will ye bring the choild in out av the
cowld?" cried an irate voice from within.

"Please wait--oh, please wait," Ann Eliza insisted. "You see
I must find Mrs. Hochmuller."

"Why don't ye go and look for her thin?" the woman returned,
slamming the door in her face.

She stood motionless on the door-step, dazed by the immensity
of her disappointment, till a burst of loud voices inside the house
drove her down the path and out of the gate.

Even then she could not grasp what had happened, and pausing
in the road she looked back at the house, half hoping that Mrs.
Hochmuller's once detested face might appear at one of the grimy
windows.

She was roused by an icy wind that seemed to spring up
suddenly from the desolate scene, piercing her thin dress like
gauze; and turning away she began to retrace her steps. She
thought of enquiring for Mrs. Hochmuller at some of the
neighbouring houses, but their look was so unfriendly that she
walked on without making up her mind at which door to ring. When
she reached the horse-car terminus a car was just moving off toward
Hoboken, and for nearly an hour she had to wait on the corner in
the bitter wind. Her hands and feet were stiff with cold when the
car at length loomed into sight again, and she thought of stopping
somewhere on the way to the ferry for a cup of tea; but before the
region of lunch-rooms was reached she had grown so sick and dizzy
that the thought of food was repulsive. At length she found
herself on the ferry-boat, in the soothing stuffiness of the
crowded cabin; then came another interval of shivering on a
street-corner, another long jolting journey in a "cross-town" car that
smelt of damp straw and tobacco; and lastly, in the cold spring dusk,
she unlocked her door and groped her way through the shop to her
fireless bedroom.

The next morning Mrs. Hawkins, dropping in to hear the result
of the trip, found Ann Eliza sitting behind the counter wrapped in
an old shawl.

"Why, Miss Bunner, you're sick! You must have fever--your
face is just as red!"

"It's nothing. I guess I caught cold yesterday on the ferry-
boat," Ann Eliza acknowledged.

"And it's jest like a vault in here!" Mrs. Hawkins rebuked
her. "Let me feel your hand--it's burning. Now, Miss Bunner,
you've got to go right to bed this very minute."

"Oh, but I can't, Mrs. Hawkins." Ann Eliza attempted a wan
smile. "You forget there ain't nobody but me to tend the store."

"I guess you won't tend it long neither, if you ain't
careful," Mrs. Hawkins grimly rejoined. Beneath her placid
exterior she cherished a morbid passion for disease and death, and
the sight of Ann Eliza's suffering had roused her from her habitual
indifference. "There ain't so many folks comes to the store
anyhow," she went on with unconscious cruelty, "and I'll go right
up and see if Miss Mellins can't spare one of her girls."

Ann Eliza, too weary to resist, allowed Mrs. Hawkins to put
her to bed and make a cup of tea over the stove, while Miss
Mellins, always good-naturedly responsive to any appeal for help,
sent down the weak-eyed little girl to deal with hypothetical
customers.

Ann Eliza, having so far abdicated her independence, sank into
sudden apathy. As far as she could remember, it was the first time
in her life that she had been taken care of instead of taking care,
and there was a momentary relief in the surrender. She swallowed
the tea like an obedient child, allowed a poultice to be applied to
her aching chest and uttered no protest when a fire was kindled in
the rarely used grate; but as Mrs. Hawkins bent over to "settle"
her pillows she raised herself on her elbow to whisper: "Oh, Mrs.
Hawkins, Mrs. Hochmuller warn't there." The tears rolled down her
cheeks.

"She warn't there? Has she moved?"

"Over two months ago--and they don't know where she's gone.
Oh what'll I do, Mrs. Hawkins?"

"There, there, Miss Bunner. You lay still and don't fret.
I'll ask Mr. Hawkins soon as ever he comes home."

Ann Eliza murmured her gratitude, and Mrs. Hawkins, bending
down, kissed her on the forehead. "Don't you fret," she repeated,
in the voice with which she soothed her children.

For over a week Ann Eliza lay in bed, faithfully nursed by her
two neighbours, while the weak-eyed child, and the pale sewing girl
who had helped to finish Evelina's wedding dress, took turns in
minding the shop. Every morning, when her friends appeared, Ann
Eliza lifted her head to ask: "Is there a letter?" and at their
gentle negative sank back in silence. Mrs. Hawkins, for several
days, spoke no more of her promise to consult her husband as to the
best way of tracing Mrs. Hochmuller; and dread of fresh
disappointment kept Ann Eliza from bringing up the subject.

But the following Sunday evening, as she sat for the first
time bolstered up in her rocking-chair near the stove, while Miss
Mellins studied the Police Gazette beneath the lamp, there
came a knock on the shop-door and Mr. Hawkins entered.

Ann Eliza's first glance at his plain friendly face showed her
he had news to give, but though she no longer attempted to hide her
anxiety from Miss Mellins, her lips trembled too much to let her
speak.

"Good evening, Miss Bunner," said Mr. Hawkins in his dragging
voice. "I've been over to Hoboken all day looking round for Mrs.
Hochmuller."

"Oh, Mr. Hawkins--you HAVE?"

"I made a thorough search, but I'm sorry to say it was no use.
She's left Hoboken--moved clear away, and nobody seems to know
where."

"It was real good of you, Mr. Hawkins." Ann Eliza's voice
struggled up in a faint whisper through the submerging tide of her
disappointment.

Mr. Hawkins, in his embarrassed sense of being the bringer of
bad news, stood before her uncertainly; then he turned to go. "No
trouble at all," he paused to assure her from the doorway.

She wanted to speak again, to detain him, to ask him
to advise her; but the words caught in her throat and she lay back
silent.

The next day she got up early, and dressed and bonneted
herself with twitching fingers. She waited till the weak-eyed
child appeared, and having laid on her minute instructions as to
the care of the shop, she slipped out into the street. It had
occurred to her in one of the weary watches of the previous night
that she might go to Tiffany's and make enquiries about Ramy's
past. Possibly in that way she might obtain some information that
would suggest a new way of reaching Evelina. She was guiltily
aware that Mrs. Hawkins and Miss Mellins would be angry with her
for venturing out of doors, but she knew she should never feel any
better till she had news of Evelina.

The morning air was sharp, and as she turned to face the wind
she felt so weak and unsteady that she wondered if she should ever
get as far as Union Square; but by walking very slowly, and
standing still now and then when she could do so without being
noticed, she found herself at last before the jeweller's great
glass doors.

It was still so early that there were no purchasers in the
shop, and she felt herself the centre of innumerable unemployed
eyes as she moved forward between long lines of show-cases
glittering with diamonds and silver.

She was glancing about in the hope of finding the clock-
department without having to approach one of the impressive
gentlemen who paced the empty aisles, when she attracted the
attention of one of the most impressive of the number.

The formidable benevolence with which he enquired what he
could do for her made her almost despair of explaining herself; but
she finally disentangled from a flurry of wrong beginnings the
request to be shown to the clock-department.

The gentleman considered her thoughtfully. "May I ask what
style of clock you are looking for? Would it be for a wedding-
present, or--?"

The irony of the allusion filled Ann Eliza's veins with sudden
strength. "I don't want to buy a clock at all. I want to see the
head of the department."

"Mr. Loomis?" His stare still weighed her--then he seemed to
brush aside the problem she presented as beneath his notice. "Oh,
certainly. Take the elevator to the second floor. Next aisle to
the left." He waved her down the endless perspective of show-
cases.

Ann Eliza followed the line of his lordly gesture, and a swift
ascent brought her to a great hall full of the buzzing and booming
of thousands of clocks. Whichever way she looked, clocks stretched
away from her in glittering interminable vistas: clocks of all
sizes and voices, from the bell-throated giant of the hallway to
the chirping dressing-table toy; tall clocks of mahogany and brass
with cathedral chimes; clocks of bronze, glass, porcelain, of every
possible size, voice and configuration; and between their serried
ranks, along the polished floor of the aisles, moved the languid
forms of other gentlemanly floor-walkers, waiting for their duties
to begin.

One of them soon approached, and Ann Eliza repeated her
request. He received it affably.

"Mr. Loomis? Go right down to the office at the other end."
He pointed to a kind of box of ground glass and highly polished
panelling.

As she thanked him he turned to one of his companions and said
something in which she caught the name of Mr. Loomis, and which was
received with an appreciative chuckle. She suspected herself of
being the object of the pleasantry, and straightened her thin
shoulders under her mantle.

The door of the office stood open, and within sat a gray-
bearded man at a desk. He looked up kindly, and again she asked
for Mr. Loomis.

"I'm Mr. Loomis. What can I do for you?"

He was much less portentous than the others, though she
guessed him to be above them in authority; and encouraged by his
tone she seated herself on the edge of the chair he waved her to.

"I hope you'll excuse my troubling you, sir. I came to ask if
you could tell me anything about Mr. Herman Ramy. He was employed
here in the clock-department two or three years ago."

Mr. Loomis showed no recognition of the name.

"Ramy? When was he discharged?"

"I don't har'ly know. He was very sick, and when he
got well his place had been filled. He married my sister last
October and they went to St. Louis, I ain't had any news of them
for over two months, and she's my only sister, and I'm most crazy
worrying about her."

"I see." Mr. Loomis reflected. "In what capacity was Ramy
employed here?" he asked after a moment.

"He--he told us that he was one of the heads of the clock-
department," Ann Eliza stammered, overswept by a sudden doubt.

"That was probably a slight exaggeration. But I can tell you
about him by referring to our books. The name again?"

"Ramy--Herman Ramy."

There ensued a long silence, broken only by the flutter of
leaves as Mr. Loomis turned over his ledgers. Presently he looked
up, keeping his finger between the pages.

"Here it is--Herman Ramy. He was one of our ordinary workmen,
and left us three years and a half ago last June."

"On account of sickness?" Ann Eliza faltered.

Mr. Loomis appeared to hesitate; then he said: "I see no
mention of sickness." Ann Eliza felt his compassionate eyes on her
again. "Perhaps I'd better tell you the truth. He was discharged
for drug-taking. A capable workman, but we couldn't keep him
straight. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but it seems fairer,
since you say you're anxious about your sister."

The polished sides of the office vanished from Ann Eliza's
sight, and the cackle of the innumerable clocks came to her like
the yell of waves in a storm. She tried to speak but could not;
tried to get to her feet, but the floor was gone.

"I'm very sorry," Mr. Loomis repeated, closing the ledger. "I
remember the man perfectly now. He used to disappear every now and
then, and turn up again in a state that made him useless for days."

As she listened, Ann Eliza recalled the day when she had come
on Mr. Ramy sitting in abject dejection behind his counter. She
saw again the blurred unrecognizing eyes he had raised to her, the
layer of dust over everything in the shop, and the green bronze
clock in the window representing a Newfoundland dog with his paw on
a book. She stood up slowly.

"Thank you. I'm sorry to have troubled you."

"It was no trouble. You say Ramy married your sister last
October?"

"Yes, sir; and they went to St. Louis right afterward. I
don't know how to find her. I thought maybe somebody here might
know about him."

"Well, possibly some of the workmen might. Leave me your name
and I'll send you word if I get on his track."

He handed her a pencil, and she wrote down her address; then
she walked away blindly between the clocks.

XI

Mr. Loomis, true to his word, wrote a few days later that he
had enquired in vain in the work-shop for any news of Ramy; and as
she folded this letter and laid it between the leaves of her Bible,
Ann Eliza felt that her last hope was gone. Miss Mellins, of
course, had long since suggested the mediation of the police, and
cited from her favourite literature convincing instances of the
supernatural ability of the Pinkerton detective; but Mr. Hawkins,
when called in council, dashed this project by remarking that
detectives cost something like twenty dollars a day; and a vague
fear of the law, some half-formed vision of Evelina in the clutch
of a blue-coated "officer," kept Ann Eliza from invoking the aid of
the police.

After the arrival of Mr. Loomis's note the weeks followed each
other uneventfully. Ann Eliza's cough clung to her till late in
the spring, the reflection in her looking-glass grew more bent and
meagre, and her forehead sloped back farther toward the twist of
hair that was fastened above her parting by a comb of black India-
rubber.

Toward spring a lady who was expecting a baby took up her
abode at the Mendoza Family Hotel, and through the friendly
intervention of Miss Mellins the making of some of the baby-clothes
was entrusted to Ann Eliza. This eased her of anxiety for the
immediate future; but she had to rouse herself to feel any sense of
relief. Her personal welfare was what least concerned her.
Sometimes she thought of giving up the shop altogether; and
only the fear that, if she changed her address, Evelina might not
be able to find her, kept her from carrying out this plan.

Since she had lost her last hope of tracing her sister, all
the activities of her lonely imagination had been concentrated on
the possibility of Evelina's coming back to her. The discovery of
Ramy's secret filled her with dreadful fears. In the solitude of
the shop and the back room she was tortured by vague pictures of
Evelina's sufferings. What horrors might not be hidden beneath her
silence? Ann Eliza's great dread was that Miss Mellins should worm
out of her what she had learned from Mr. Loomis. She was sure Miss
Mellins must have abominable things to tell about drug-fiends--
things she did not have the strength to hear. "Drug-fiend"--the
very word was Satanic; she could hear Miss Mellins roll it on her
tongue. But Ann Eliza's own imagination, left to itself, had begun
to people the long hours with evil visions. Sometimes, in the
night, she thought she heard herself called: the voice was her
sister's, but faint with a nameless terror. Her most peaceful
moments were those in which she managed to convince herself that
Evelina was dead. She thought of her then, mournfully but more
calmly, as thrust away under the neglected mound of some unknown
cemetery, where no headstone marked her name, no mourner with
flowers for another grave paused in pity to lay a blossom on hers.
But this vision did not often give Ann Eliza its negative relief;
and always, beneath its hazy lines, lurked the dark conviction that
Evelina was alive, in misery and longing for her.

So the summer wore on. Ann Eliza was conscious that Mrs.
Hawkins and Miss Mellins were watching her with affectionate
anxiety, but the knowledge brought no comfort. She no longer cared
what they felt or thought about her. Her grief lay far beyond
touch of human healing, and after a while she became aware that
they knew they could not help her. They still came in as often as
their busy lives permitted, but their visits grew shorter, and Mrs.
Hawkins always brought Arthur or the baby, so that there should be
something to talk about, and some one whom she could scold.

The autumn came, and the winter. Business had fallen off
again, and but few purchasers came to the little shop in the
basement. In January Ann Eliza pawned her mother's cashmere scarf,
her mosaic brooch, and the rosewood what-not on which the clock had
always stood; she would have sold the bedstead too, but for the
persistent vision of Evelina returning weak and weary, and not
knowing where to lay her head.

The winter passed in its turn, and March reappeared with its
galaxies of yellow jonquils at the windy street corners, reminding
Ann Eliza of the spring day when Evelina had come home with a bunch
of jonquils in her hand. In spite of the flowers which lent such
a premature brightness to the streets the month was fierce and
stormy, and Ann Eliza could get no warmth into her bones.
Nevertheless, she was insensibly beginning to take up the healing
routine of life. Little by little she had grown used to being
alone, she had begun to take a languid interest in the one or two
new purchasers the season had brought, and though the thought of
Evelina was as poignant as ever, it was less persistently in the
foreground of her mind.

Late one afternoon she was sitting behind the counter, wrapped
in her shawl, and wondering how soon she might draw down the blinds
and retreat into the comparative cosiness of the back room. She
was not thinking of anything in particular, except perhaps in a
hazy way of the lady with the puffed sleeves, who after her long
eclipse had reappeared the day before in sleeves of a new cut, and
bought some tape and needles. The lady still wore mourning, but
she was evidently lightening it, and Ann Eliza saw in this the hope
of future orders. The lady had left the shop about an hour before,
walking away with her graceful step toward Fifth Avenue. She had
wished Ann Eliza good day in her usual affable way, and Ann Eliza
thought how odd it was that they should have been acquainted so
long, and yet that she should not know the lady's name. From this
consideration her mind wandered to the cut of the lady's new
sleeves, and she was vexed with herself for not having noted it
more carefully. She felt Miss Mellins might have liked to know
about it. Ann Eliza's powers of observation had never been
as keen as Evelina's, when the latter was not too self-absorbed to
exert them. As Miss Mellins always said, Evelina could "take
patterns with her eyes": she could have cut that new sleeve out of
a folded newspaper in a trice! Musing on these things, Ann Eliza
wished the lady would come back and give her another look at the
sleeve. It was not unlikely that she might pass that way, for she
certainly lived in or about the Square. Suddenly Ann Eliza
remarked a small neat handkerchief on the counter: it must have
dropped from the lady's purse, and she would probably come back to
get it. Ann Eliza, pleased at the idea, sat on behind the counter
and watched the darkening street. She always lit the gas as late
as possible, keeping the box of matches at her elbow, so that if
any one came she could apply a quick flame to the gas-jet. At
length through the deepening dusk she distinguished a slim dark
figure coming down the steps to the shop. With a little warmth of
pleasure about her heart she reached up to light the gas. "I do
believe I'll ask her name this time," she thought. She raised the
flame to its full height, and saw her sister standing in the door.

There she was at last, the poor pale shade of Evelina, her
thin face blanched of its faint pink, the stiff ripples gone from
her hair, and a mantle shabbier than Ann Eliza's drawn about her
narrow shoulders. The glare of the gas beat full on her as she
stood and looked at Ann Eliza.

"Sister--oh, Evelina! I knowed you'd come!"

Ann Eliza had caught her close with a long moan of triumph.
Vague words poured from her as she laid her cheek against
Evelina's--trivial inarticulate endearments caught from Mrs.
Hawkins's long discourses to her baby.

For a while Evelina let herself be passively held; then she
drew back from her sister's clasp and looked about the shop. "I'm
dead tired. Ain't there any fire?" she asked.

"Of course there is!" Ann Eliza, holding her hand fast, drew
her into the back room. She did not want to ask any questions yet:
she simply wanted to feel the emptiness of the room brimmed full
again by the one presence that was warmth and light to her.

She knelt down before the grate, scraped some bits of coal and
kindling from the bottom of the coal-scuttle, and drew one of the
rocking-chairs up to the weak flame. "There--that'll blaze up in
a minute," she said. She pressed Evelina down on the faded
cushions of the rocking-chair, and, kneeling beside her, began to
rub her hands.

"You're stone-cold, ain't you? Just sit still and warm
yourself while I run and get the kettle. I've got something you
always used to fancy for supper." She laid her hand on Evelina's
shoulder. "Don't talk--oh, don't talk yet!" she implored. She
wanted to keep that one frail second of happiness between herself
and what she knew must come.

Evelina, without a word, bent over the fire, stretching her
thin hands to the blaze and watching Ann Eliza fill the kettle and
set the supper table. Her gaze had the dreamy fixity of a half-
awakened child's.

Ann Eliza, with a smile of triumph, brought a slice of custard
pie from the cupboard and put it by her sister's plate.

"You do like that, don't you? Miss Mellins sent it down to me
this morning. She had her aunt from Brooklyn to dinner. Ain't it
funny it just so happened?"

"I ain't hungry," said Evelina, rising to approach the table.

She sat down in her usual place, looked about her with the
same wondering stare, and then, as of old, poured herself out the
first cup of tea.

"Where's the what-not gone to?" she suddenly asked.

Ann Eliza set down the teapot and rose to get a spoon from the
cupboard. With her back to the room she said: "The what-not? Why,
you see, dearie, living here all alone by myself it only made one
more thing to dust; so I sold it."

Evelina's eyes were still travelling about the familiar room.
Though it was against all the traditions of the Bunner family to
sell any household possession, she showed no surprise at her
sister's answer.

"And the clock? The clock's gone too."

"Oh, I gave that away--I gave it to Mrs. Hawkins. She's kep'
awake so nights with that last baby."

"I wish you'd never bought it," said Evelina harshly.

Ann Eliza's heart grew faint with fear. Without answering,
she crossed over to her sister's seat and poured her out a second
cup of tea. Then another thought struck her, and she went back to
the cupboard and took out the cordial. In Evelina's absence
considerable draughts had been drawn from it by invalid neighbours;
but a glassful of the precious liquid still remained.

"Here, drink this right off--it'll warm you up quicker than
anything," Ann Eliza said.

Evelina obeyed, and a slight spark of colour came into her
cheeks. She turned to the custard pie and began to eat with a
silent voracity distressing to watch. She did not even look to see
what was left for Ann Eliza.

"I ain't hungry," she said at last as she laid down her fork.
"I'm only so dead tired--that's the trouble."

"then you'd better get right into bed. Here's my old plaid
dressing-gown--you remember it, don't you?" Ann Eliza laughed,
recalling Evelina's ironies on the subject of the antiquated
garment. With trembling fingers she began to undo her sister's
cloak. The dress beneath it told a tale of poverty that Ann Eliza
dared not pause to note. She drew it gently off, and as it slipped
from Evelina's shoulders it revealed a tiny black bag hanging on a
ribbon about her neck. Evelina lifted her hand as though to screen
the bag from Ann Eliza; and the elder sister, seeing the gesture,
continued her task with lowered eyes. She undressed Evelina as
quickly as she could, and wrapping her in the plaid dressing-gown
put her to bed, and spread her own shawl and her sister's cloak
above the blanket.

"Where's the old red comfortable?" Evelina asked, as she sank
down on the pillow.

"The comfortable? Oh, it was so hot and heavy I never used it
after you went--so I sold that too. I never could sleep under much
clothes."

She became aware that her sister was looking at her more
attentively.

"I guess you've been in trouble too," Evelina said.

"Me? In trouble? What do you mean, Evelina?"

"You've had to pawn the things, I suppose," Evelina continued
in a weary unmoved tone. "Well, I've been through worse than that.
I've been to hell and back."

"Oh, Evelina--don't say it, sister!" Ann Eliza implored,
shrinking from the unholy word. She knelt down and began to rub
her sister's feet beneath the bedclothes.

"I've been to hell and back--if I AM back," Evelina
repeated. She lifted her head from the pillow and began to talk
with a sudden feverish volubility. "It began right away, less than
a month after we were married. I've been in hell all that time,
Ann Eliza." She fixed her eyes with passionate intentness on Ann
Eliza's face. "He took opium. I didn't find it out till long
afterward--at first, when he acted so strange, I thought he drank.
But it was worse, much worse than drinking."

"Oh, sister, don't say it--don't say it yet! It's so sweet
just to have you here with me again."

"I must say it," Evelina insisted, her flushed face burning
with a kind of bitter cruelty. "You don't know what life's like--
you don't know anything about it--setting here safe all the while
in this peaceful place."

"Oh, Evelina--why didn't you write and send for me if it was
like that?"

"That's why I couldn't write. Didn't you guess I was
ashamed?"

"How could you be? Ashamed to write to Ann Eliza?"

Evelina raised herself on her thin elbow, while Ann Eliza,
bending over, drew a corner of the shawl about her shoulder.

"Do lay down again. You'll catch your death."

"My death? That don't frighten me! You don't know what I've
been through." And sitting upright in the old mahogany bed, with
flushed cheeks and chattering teeth, and Ann Eliza's trembling arm
clasping the shawl about her neck, Evelina poured out her story.
It was a tale of misery and humiliation so remote from the elder
sister's innocent experiences that much of it was hardly
intelligible to her. Evelina's dreadful familiarity with it all,
her fluency about things which Ann Eliza half-guessed and quickly
shuddered back from, seemed even more alien and terrible than
the actual tale she told. It was one thing--and heaven knew
it was bad enough!--to learn that one's sister's husband was a
drug-fiend; it was another, and much worse thing, to learn from
that sister's pallid lips what vileness lay behind the word.

Evelina, unconscious of any distress but her own, sat upright,
shivering in Ann Eliza's hold, while she piled up, detail by
detail, her dreary narrative.

"The minute we got out there, and he found the job wasn't as
good as he expected, he changed. At first I thought he was sick--I
used to try to keep him home and nurse him. Then I saw it was
something different. He used to go off for hours at a time, and
when he came back his eyes kinder had a fog over them. Sometimes
he didn't har'ly know me, and when he did he seemed to hate me.
Once he hit me here." She touched her breast. "Do you remember,
Ann Eliza, that time he didn't come to see us for a week--the time
after we all went to Central Park together--and you and I thought
he must be sick?"

Ann Eliza nodded.

"Well, that was the trouble--he'd been at it then. But
nothing like as bad. After we'd been out there about a month he
disappeared for a whole week. They took him back at the store, and
gave him another chance; but the second time they discharged him,
and he drifted round for ever so long before he could get another
job. We spent all our money and had to move to a cheaper place.
Then he got something to do, but they hardly paid him anything, and
he didn't stay there long. When he found out about the baby--"

"The baby?" Ann Eliza faltered.

"It's dead--it only lived a day. When he found out about it,
he got mad, and said he hadn't any money to pay doctors' bills, and
I'd better write to you to help us. He had an idea you had money
hidden away that I didn't know about." She turned to her sister
with remorseful eyes. "It was him that made me get that hundred
dollars out of you."

"Hush, hush. I always meant it for you anyhow."

"Yes, but I wouldn't have taken it if he hadn't been at me the
whole time. He used to make me do just what he wanted. Well, when
I said I wouldn't write to you for more money he said I'd better
try and earn some myself. That was when he struck me. . . . Oh,
you don't know what I'm talking about yet! . . . I tried to get
work at a milliner's, but I was so sick I couldn't stay. I was
sick all the time. I wisht I'd ha' died, Ann Eliza."

"No, no, Evelina."

"Yes, I do. It kept getting worse and worse. We pawned the
furniture, and they turned us out because we couldn't pay the rent;
and so then we went to board with Mrs. Hochmuller."

Ann Eliza pressed her closer to dissemble her own tremor.
"Mrs. Hochmuller?"

"Didn't you know she was out there? She moved out a month
after we did. She wasn't bad to me, and I think she tried to keep
him straight--but Linda--"

"Linda--?"

"Well, when I kep' getting worse, and he was always off, for
days at a time, the doctor had me sent to a hospital."

"A hospital? Sister--sister!"

"It was better than being with him; and the doctors were real
kind to me. After the baby was born I was very sick and had to
stay there a good while. And one day when I was laying there Mrs.
Hochmuller came in as white as a sheet, and told me him and Linda
had gone off together and taken all her money. That's the last I
ever saw of him." She broke off with a laugh and began to cough
again.

Ann Eliza tried to persuade her to lie down and sleep, but the
rest of her story had to be told before she could be soothed into
consent. After the news of Ramy's flight she had had brain fever,
and had been sent to another hospital where she stayed a long
time--how long she couldn't remember. Dates and days meant nothing
to her in the shapeless ruin of her life. When she left the
hospital she found that Mrs. Hochmuller had gone too. She was
penniless, and had no one to turn to. A lady visitor at the
hospital was kind, and found her a place where she did housework;
but she was so weak they couldn't keep her. Then she got a job as
waitress in a down-town lunch-room, but one day she fainted while
she was handing a dish, and that evening when they paid her
they told her she needn't come again.

"After that I begged in the streets"--(Ann Eliza's grasp again
grew tight)--"and one afternoon last week, when the matinees was
coming out, I met a man with a pleasant face, something like Mr.
Hawkins, and he stopped and asked me what the trouble was. I told
him if he'd give me five dollars I'd have money enough to buy a
ticket back to New York, and he took a good look at me and said,
well, if that was what I wanted he'd go straight to the station
with me and give me the five dollars there. So he did--and he
bought the ticket, and put me in the cars."

Evelina sank back, her face a sallow wedge in the white cleft
of the pillow. Ann Eliza leaned over her, and for a long time they
held each other without speaking.

They were still clasped in this dumb embrace when there was a
step in the shop and Ann Eliza, starting up, saw Miss Mellins in
the doorway.

"My sakes, Miss Bunner! What in the land are you doing? Miss
Evelina--Mrs. Ramy--it ain't you?"

Miss Mellins's eyes, bursting from their sockets, sprang from
Evelina's pallid face to the disordered supper table and the heap
of worn clothes on the floor; then they turned back to Ann Eliza,
who had placed herself on the defensive between her sister and the
dress-maker.

"My sister Evelina has come back--come back on a visit. she
was taken sick in the cars on the way home--I guess she caught
cold--so I made her go right to bed as soon as ever she got here."

Ann Eliza was surprised at the strength and steadiness of her
voice. Fortified by its sound she went on, her eyes on Miss
Mellins's baffled countenance: "Mr. Ramy has gone west on a trip--a
trip connected with his business; and Evelina is going to stay with
me till he comes back."

XII

What measure of belief her explanation of Evelina's return
obtained in the small circle of her friends Ann Eliza did not pause
to enquire. Though she could not remember ever having told a lie
before, she adhered with rigid tenacity to the consequences of her
first lapse from truth, and fortified her original statement with
additional details whenever a questioner sought to take her
unawares.

But other and more serious burdens lay on her startled
conscience. For the first time in her life she dimly faced the
awful problem of the inutility of self-sacrifice. Hitherto she had
never thought of questioning the inherited principles which had
guided her life. Self-effacement for the good of others had always
seemed to her both natural and necessary; but then she had taken it
for granted that it implied the securing of that good. Now she
perceived that to refuse the gifts of life does not ensure their
transmission to those for whom they have been surrendered; and her
familiar heaven was unpeopled. She felt she could no longer trust
in the goodness of God, and there was only a black abyss above the
roof of Bunner Sisters.

But there was little time to brood upon such problems. The
care of Evelina filled Ann Eliza's days and nights. The hastily
summoned doctor had pronounced her to be suffering from pneumonia,
and under his care the first stress of the disease was relieved.
But her recovery was only partial, and long after the doctor's
visits had ceased she continued to lie in bed, too weak to move,
and seemingly indifferent to everything about her.

At length one evening, about six weeks after her return, she
said to her sister: "I don't feel's if I'd ever get up again."

Ann Eliza turned from the kettle she was placing on the stove.
She was startled by the echo the words woke in her own breast.

"Don't you talk like that, Evelina! I guess you're on'y tired
out--and disheartened."

"Yes, I'm disheartened," Evelina murmured.

A few months earlier Ann Eliza would have met the confession
with a word of pious admonition; now she accepted it in silence.

"Maybe you'll brighten up when your cough gets better," she
suggested.

"Yes--or my cough'll get better when I brighten up," Evelina
retorted with a touch of her old tartness.

"Does your cough keep on hurting you jest as much?"

"I don't see's there's much difference."

"Well, I guess I'll get the doctor to come round again," Ann
Eliza said, trying for the matter-of-course tone in which one might
speak of sending for the plumber or the gas-fitter.

"It ain't any use sending for the doctor--and who's going to
pay him?"

"I am," answered the elder sister. "Here's your tea, and a
mite of toast. Don't that tempt you?"

Already, in the watches of the night, Ann Eliza had been
tormented by that same question--who was to pay the doctor?--and a
few days before she had temporarily silenced it by borrowing twenty
dollars of Miss Mellins. The transaction had cost her one of the
bitterest struggles of her life. She had never borrowed a penny of
any one before, and the possibility of having to do so had always
been classed in her mind among those shameful extremities to which
Providence does not let decent people come. But nowadays she no
longer believed in the personal supervision of Providence; and had
she been compelled to steal the money instead of borrowing it, she
would have felt that her conscience was the only tribunal before
which she had to answer. Nevertheless, the actual humiliation of
having to ask for the money was no less bitter; and she could
hardly hope that Miss Mellins would view the case with the same
detachment as herself. Miss Mellins was very kind; but she not
unnaturally felt that her kindness should be rewarded by according
her the right to ask questions; and bit by bit Ann Eliza saw
Evelina's miserable secret slipping into the dress-maker's
possession.

When the doctor came she left him alone with Evelina, busying
herself in the shop that she might have an opportunity of seeing
him alone on his way out. To steady herself she began to sort a
trayful of buttons, and when the doctor appeared she was reciting
under her breath: "Twenty-four horn, two and a half cards fancy
pearl . . ." She saw at once that his look was grave.

He sat down on the chair beside the counter, and her mind
travelled miles before he spoke.

"Miss Bunner, the best thing you can do is to let me get a bed
for your sister at St. Luke's."

"The hospital?"

"Come now, you're above that sort of prejudice, aren't you?"
The doctor spoke in the tone of one who coaxes a spoiled child. "I
know how devoted you are--but Mrs. Ramy can be much better cared
for there than here. You really haven't time to look after her and
attend to your business as well. There'll be no expense, you
understand--"

Ann Eliza made no answer. "You think my sister's going to be
sick a good while, then?" she asked.

"Well, yes--possibly."

"You think she's very sick?"

"Well, yes. She's very sick."

His face had grown still graver; he sat there as though he had
never known what it was to hurry.

Ann Eliza continued to separate the pearl and horn buttons.
Suddenly she lifted her eyes and looked at him. "Is she going to
die?"

The doctor laid a kindly hand on hers. "We never say that,
Miss Bunner. Human skill works wonders--and at the hospital Mrs.
Ramy would have every chance."

"What is it? What's she dying of?"

The doctor hesitated, seeking to substitute a popular phrase
for the scientific terminology which rose to his lips.

"I want to know," Ann Eliza persisted.

"Yes, of course; I understand. Well, your sister has had a
hard time lately, and there is a complication of causes, resulting
in consumption--rapid consumption. At the hospital--"

"I'll keep her here," said Ann Eliza quietly.

After the doctor had gone she went on for some time sorting
the buttons; then she slipped the tray into its place on a shelf
behind the counter and went into the back room. She found Evelina
propped upright against the pillows, a flush of agitation on her
cheeks. Ann Eliza pulled up the shawl which had slipped from her
sister's shoulders.

"How long you've been! What's he been saying?"

"Oh, he went long ago--he on'y stopped to give me a
prescription. I was sorting out that tray of buttons. Miss
Mellins's girl got them all mixed up."

She felt Evelina's eyes upon her.

"He must have said something: what was it?"

"Why, he said you'd have to be careful--and stay in bed--and
take this new medicine he's given you."

"Did he say I was going to get well?"

"Why, Evelina!"

"What's the use, Ann Eliza? You can't deceive me. I've just
been up to look at myself in the glass; and I saw plenty of 'em in
the hospital that looked like me. They didn't get well, and I
ain't going to." Her head dropped back. "It don't much matter--
I'm about tired. On'y there's one thing--Ann Eliza--"

The elder sister drew near to the bed.

"There's one thing I ain't told you. I didn't want to tell
you yet because I was afraid you might be sorry--but if he says I'm
going to die I've got to say it." She stopped to cough, and to Ann
Eliza it now seemed as though every cough struck a minute from the
hours remaining to her.

"Don't talk now--you're tired."

"I'll be tireder to-morrow, I guess. And I want you should
know. Sit down close to me--there."

Ann Eliza sat down in silence, stroking her shrunken hand.

"I'm a Roman Catholic, Ann Eliza."

"Evelina--oh, Evelina Bunner! A Roman Catholic--YOU?
Oh, Evelina, did HE make you?"

Evelina shook her head. "I guess he didn't have no religion;
he never spoke of it. But you see Mrs. Hochmuller was a Catholic,
and so when I was sick she got the doctor to send me to a Roman
Catholic hospital, and the sisters was so good to me there--and the
priest used to come and talk to me; and the things he said kep' me
from going crazy. He seemed to make everything easier."

"Oh, sister, how could you?" Ann Eliza wailed. She knew
little of the Catholic religion except that "Papists" believed in
it--in itself a sufficient indictment. Her spiritual rebellion had
not freed her from the formal part of her religious belief, and
apostasy had always seemed to her one of the sins from which the
pure in mind avert their thoughts.

"And then when the baby was born," Evelina continued, "he
christened it right away, so it could go to heaven; and after that,
you see, I had to be a Catholic."

"I don't see--"

"Don't I have to be where the baby is? I couldn't ever ha'
gone there if I hadn't been made a Catholic. Don't you understand
that?"

Ann Eliza sat speechless, drawing her hand away. Once more
she found herself shut out of Evelina's heart, an exile from her
closest affections.

"I've got to go where the baby is," Evelina feverishly
insisted.

Ann Eliza could think of nothing to say; she could only feel
that Evelina was dying, and dying as a stranger in her arms. Ramy
and the day-old baby had parted her forever from her sister.

Evelina began again. "If I get worse I want you to send for
a priest. Miss Mellins'll know where to send--she's got an aunt
that's a Catholic. Promise me faithful you will."

"I promise," said Ann Eliza.

After that they spoke no more of the matter; but Ann Eliza now
understood that the little black bag about her sister's neck, which
she had innocently taken for a memento of Ramy, was some kind of
sacrilegious amulet, and her fingers shrank from its contact when
she bathed and dressed Evelina. It seemed to her the diabolical
instrument of their estrangement.

XIII

Spring had really come at last. There were leaves on the
ailanthus-tree that Evelina could see from her bed, gentle clouds
floated over it in the blue, and now and then the cry of a flower-
seller sounded from the street.

One day there was a shy knock on the back-room door, and
Johnny Hawkins came in with two yellow jonquils in his fist. He
was getting bigger and squarer, and his round freckled face was
growing into a smaller copy of his father's. He walked up to
Evelina and held out the flowers.

"They blew off the cart and the fellow said I could keep 'em.
But you can have 'em," he announced.

Ann Eliza rose from her seat at the sewing-machine and tried
to take the flowers from him.

"They ain't for you; they're for her," he sturdily objected;
and Evelina held out her hand for the jonquils.

After Johnny had gone she lay and looked at them without
speaking. Ann Eliza, who had gone back to the machine, bent her
head over the seam she was stitching; the click, click, click of
the machine sounded in her ear like the tick of Ramy's clock, and
it seemed to her that life had gone backward, and that Evelina,
radiant and foolish, had just come into the room with the yellow
flowers in her hand.

When at last she ventured to look up, she saw that her
sister's head had drooped against the pillow, and that she was
sleeping quietly. Her relaxed hand still held the jonquils, but it
was evident that they had awakened no memories; she had dozed off
almost as soon as Johnny had given them to her. The discovery gave
Ann Eliza a startled sense of the ruins that must be piled upon her
past. "I don't believe I could have forgotten that day, though,"
she said to herself. But she was glad that Evelina had forgotten.

Evelina's disease moved on along the usual course, now lifting
her on a brief wave of elation, now sinking her to new depths of
weakness. There was little to be done, and the doctor came only at
lengthening intervals. On his way out he always repeated his first
friendly suggestion about sending Evelina to the hospital; and Ann
Eliza always answered: "I guess we can manage."

The hours passed for her with the fierce rapidity that great
joy or anguish lends them. She went through the days with a
sternly smiling precision, but she hardly knew what was happening,
and when night-fall released her from the shop, and she could carry
her work to Evelina's bedside, the same sense of unreality
accompanied her, and she still seemed to be accomplishing a task
whose object had escaped her memory.

Once, when Evelina felt better, she expressed a desire to make
some artificial flowers, and Ann Eliza, deluded by this awakening
interest, got out the faded bundles of stems and petals and the
little tools and spools of wire. But after a few minutes the work
dropped from Evelina's hands and she said: "I'll wait until to-
morrow."

She never again spoke of the flower-making, but one day, after
watching Ann Eliza's laboured attempt to trim a spring hat for Mrs.
Hawkins, she demanded impatiently that the hat should be brought to
her, and in a trice had galvanized the lifeless bow and given the
brim the twist it needed.

These were rare gleams; and more frequent were the days of
speechless lassitude, when she lay for hours silently staring at
the window, shaken only by the hard incessant cough that sounded to
Ann Eliza like the hammering of nails into a coffin.

At length one morning Ann Eliza, starting up from the mattress
at the foot of the bed, hastily called Miss Mellins down, and ran
through the smoky dawn for the doctor. He came back with her and
did what he could to give Evelina momentary relief; then he went
away, promising to look in again before night. Miss Mellins, her
head still covered with curl-papers, disappeared in his wake, and
when the sisters were alone Evelina beckoned to Ann Eliza.

"You promised," she whispered, grasping her sister's arm; and
Ann Eliza understood. She had not yet dared to tell Miss Mellins
of Evelina's change of faith; it had seemed even more difficult
than borrowing the money; but now it had to be done. She ran
upstairs after the dress-maker and detained her on the landing.

"Miss Mellins, can you tell me where to send for a priest--a
Roman Catholic priest?"

"A priest, Miss Bunner?"

"Yes. My sister became a Roman Catholic while she was away.
They were kind to her in her sickness--and now she wants a priest."
Ann Eliza faced Miss Mellins with unflinching eyes.

"My aunt Dugan'll know. I'll run right round to her the
minute I get my papers off," the dress-maker promised; and Ann
Eliza thanked her.

An hour or two later the priest appeared. Ann Eliza, who was
watching, saw him coming down the steps to the shop-door and went
to meet him. His expression was kind, but she shrank from
his peculiar dress, and from his pale face with its bluish chin and
enigmatic smile. Ann Eliza remained in the shop. Miss Mellins's
girl had mixed the buttons again and she set herself to sort them.
The priest stayed a long time with Evelina. When he again carried
his enigmatic smile past the counter, and Ann Eliza rejoined her
sister, Evelina was smiling with something of the same mystery; but
she did not tell her secret.

After that it seemed to Ann Eliza that the shop and the back
room no longer belonged to her. It was as though she were there on
sufferance, indulgently tolerated by the unseen power which hovered
over Evelina even in the absence of its minister. The priest came
almost daily; and at last a day arrived when he was called to
administer some rite of which Ann Eliza but dimly grasped the
sacramental meaning. All she knew was that it meant that Evelina
was going, and going, under this alien guidance, even farther from
her than to the dark places of death.

When the priest came, with something covered in his hands, she
crept into the shop, closing the door of the back room to leave him
alone with Evelina.

It was a warm afternoon in May, and the crooked ailanthus-tree
rooted in a fissure of the opposite pavement was a fountain of
tender green. Women in light dresses passed with the languid step
of spring; and presently there came a man with a hand-cart full of
pansy and geranium plants who stopped outside the window,
signalling to Ann Eliza to buy.

An hour went by before the door of the back room opened and
the priest reappeared with that mysterious covered something in his
hands. Ann Eliza had risen, drawing back as he passed. He had
doubtless divined her antipathy, for he had hitherto only bowed in
going in and out; but to day he paused and looked at her
compassionately.

"I have left your sister in a very beautiful state of mind,"
he said in a low voice like a woman's. "She is full of spiritual
consolation."

Ann Eliza was silent, and he bowed and went out. She hastened
back to Evelina's bed, and knelt down beside it. Evelina's eyes
were very large and bright; she turned them on Ann Eliza with a
look of inner illumination.

"I shall see the baby," she said; then her eyelids fell and
she dozed.

The doctor came again at nightfall, administering some last
palliatives; and after he had gone Ann Eliza, refusing to have her
vigil shared by Miss Mellins or Mrs. Hawkins, sat down to keep
watch alone.

It was a very quiet night. Evelina never spoke or opened her
eyes, but in the still hour before dawn Ann Eliza saw that the
restless hand outside the bed-clothes had stopped its twitching.
She stooped over and felt no breath on her sister's lips.

The funeral took place three days later. Evelina was buried
in Calvary Cemetery, the priest assuming the whole care of the
necessary arrangements, while Ann Eliza, a passive spectator,
beheld with stony indifference this last negation of her past.

A week afterward she stood in her bonnet and mantle in the
doorway of the little shop. Its whole aspect had changed. Counter
and shelves were bare, the window was stripped of its familiar
miscellany of artificial flowers, note-paper, wire hat-frames, and
limp garments from the dyer's; and against the glass pane of the
doorway hung a sign: "This store to let."

Ann Eliza turned her eyes from the sign as she went out and
locked the door behind her. Evelina's funeral had been very
expensive, and Ann Eliza, having sold her stock-in-trade and the
few articles of furniture that remained to her, was leaving the
shop for the last time. She had not been able to buy any mourning,
but Miss Mellins had sewed some crape on her old black mantle and
bonnet, and having no gloves she slipped her bare hands under the
folds of the mantle.

It was a beautiful morning, and the air was full of a warm
sunshine that had coaxed open nearly every window in the street,
and summoned to the window-sills the sickly plants nurtured indoors
in winter. Ann Eliza's way lay westward, toward Broadway; but at
the corner she paused and looked back down the familiar length of
the street. Her eyes rested a moment on the blotched "Bunner
Sisters" above the empty window of the shop; then they travelled on
to the overflowing foliage of the Square, above which was
the church tower with the dial that had marked the hours for the
sisters before Ann Eliza had bought the nickel clock. She looked
at it all as though it had been the scene of some unknown life, of
which the vague report had reached her: she felt for herself the
only remote pity that busy people accord to the misfortunes which
come to them by hearsay.

She walked to Broadway and down to the office of the house-
agent to whom she had entrusted the sub-letting of the shop. She
left the key with one of his clerks, who took it from her as if it
had been any one of a thousand others, and remarked that the
weather looked as if spring was really coming; then she turned and
began to move up the great thoroughfare, which was just beginning
to wake to its multitudinous activities.

She walked less rapidly now, studying each shop window as she
passed, but not with the desultory eye of enjoyment: the watchful
fixity of her gaze overlooked everything but the object of its
quest. At length she stopped before a small window wedged between
two mammoth buildings, and displaying, behind its shining plate-
glass festooned with muslin, a varied assortment of sofa-cushions,
tea-cloths, pen-wipers, painted calendars and other specimens of
feminine industry. In a corner of the window she had read, on a
slip of paper pasted against the pane: "Wanted, a Saleslady," and
after studying the display of fancy articles beneath it, she gave
her mantle a twitch, straightened her shoulders and went in.

Behind a counter crowded with pin-cushions, watch-holders and
other needlework trifles, a plump young woman with smooth hair sat
sewing bows of ribbon on a scrap basket. The little shop was about
the size of the one on which Ann Eliza had just closed the door;
and it looked as fresh and gay and thriving as she and Evelina had
once dreamed of making Bunner Sisters. The friendly air of the
place made her pluck up courage to speak.

"Saleslady? Yes, we do want one. Have you any one to
recommend?" the young woman asked, not unkindly.

Ann Eliza hesitated, disconcerted by the unexpected question;
and the other, cocking her head on one side to study the effect of
the bow she had just sewed on the basket, continued: "We can't
afford more than thirty dollars a month, but the work is light.
She would be expected to do a little fancy sewing between times.
We want a bright girl: stylish, and pleasant manners. You know
what I mean. Not over thirty, anyhow; and nice-looking. Will you
write down the name?"

Ann Eliza looked at her confusedly. She opened her lips to
explain, and then, without speaking, turned toward the crisply-
curtained door.

"Ain't you going to leave the AD-dress?" the young woman
called out after her. Ann Eliza went out into the thronged
street. The great city, under the fair spring sky, seemed to throb
with the stir of innumerable beginnings. She walked on, looking
for another shop window with a sign in it.

THE END.

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