More Stories of Married Life

Anita Gibbons has been waiting outside at the station on the bench nearest the field since twenty minutes of six, and it was now nearly seven as she rose to go. The bright pleasure with which she had started out was fled: he had not come. The sun, wind, and reform of the spring afternoon, in combination with a becoming new suit and hat, had produced their annual effect of inspiring her to surprise her husband by meeting him on his return from town, that they might walk home bridally together in the sweet evening daylight. She had been hitherto undeterred by remembrance of the historic fact that Mr. Gibbons was never known to come on time when thus pleasurably expected; but memory was beginning to chill her now, as well as the wind on her back. She had done all this before!

Yet what business unknown this morning; could have kept him? It was neither the first nor the last of the month, always mysterious days of threatened detention. He had not passed her by unnoticed, for she had risen as each train came in to scan the men who dropped on to the platform and hurried off, some of them looking back to raise their hats to the pretty woman on the platform.

She hurried now as she walked across the field, feeling guiltily amid her disappointment that dinner would be waiting, and that she had left no word of her whereabouts with the maid, having in fact slipped out of the house unseen, to escape the clamouring notice of her only child, who was near his early bed-time.

“Good-evening, Mrs. Gibbons. Coming back from town so late?”

She looked up to see a friend approaching on the foot-path.

“Oh, good-evening, Mr. Ferris! No, I’ve only come from the station; I’ve been looking for my husband.”

He stopped half-way past her.

“Why, he came out in the five-fifteen with me! He slipped off when it slowed up, and jumped down the embankment; he said he was in a hurry to get home. Too bad if you’ve missed him.”

“Yes, it is,” said Mrs. Gibbons, hastily, breaking almost into a run. Arnold, she knew, hated to find her out of the house.

As she went up the steps now, the door opened before she reached it, and an excited voice exclaimed: “Ah, ma’am, it’s yourself at last! It’s the neighbourhood we do be having searched for you!”

“What do you mean, Katy?” Mrs. Gibbons, who had stood arrested on the threshold, pushed her way in. “Where is Mr. Gibbons?”

“He’s gone.”

“_Gone!_”

“Yes, ma’am, gone back to the city. ’Twas like this: he bid me say that he had to be meeting friends—I disremember the name—on the other side, at the ferry, or he could have telephoned ’em, ma’am. ’Twas a grand dinner they had planned for to-night, unexpected like.”

“Was the name”—Mrs. Gibbons paused that she might have courage to grasp her loss—“Was the name Atterbury?”

“It was, ma’am.”

Her beloved Atterburys! They were to sail for Rio at the end of the week. This was a dinner and a theatre party planned before and postponed. They could not have it without her.

“Mr. Gibbons must have known I’d be home in a minute!”

“Sure, he waited for you, ma’am, till he had to run to the station below to catch the express; but he bid me tell you to be sure and take the seven o’clock train in, and he’d keep the party waiting at the ferry for you.”

Mrs. Gibbons glanced at the clock. It was after seven now! But there was a seven-twenty-five train which reached town almost as soon, and Arnold would surely wait for that, even if the others had gone on to Martin’s, where they would dine. The Atterburys always went to Martin’s. She was accustomed to try and bend fate to her uses with an uncalculating ardour that focussed itself entirely on the impulse of the moment. To the suburbanite a little dinner in town is the height of pleasure, the one perfect feast! And with the Atterburys! She really could not miss it.

“I don’t care for anything to eat. Don’t let the fire out,” she dictated rapidly. “See that Harold doesn’t get uncovered, and don’t bolt the front door. We’ll be home before twelve, but you needn’t sit up for us. Just lie on the lounge in the nursery.” She did not remind forgetful Katy to put the milk tickets in the pail set outside the back door, and only remembered it as she was half-way to the station.

The train was due in town at eight-five, but it was late here, and the extra ten minutes seemed a thousand “prickly seconds.” The spring twilight was coming to a close, and when she stepped into the car in which the lamps gleamed dully over the plush seats, it was like stepping into the long tunnel of the night. Only a few men from further up the road sprawled and dozed wearily on their way. She was unaccustomed to going out thus alone, and for an instant a panic-struck thought of failure seized her, but she lost it in the action of her hurrying brain, which constantly pictured the delightful meeting with her expectant husband and the waiting party. By the inalienable law of travel, which ordains that delay in one mode of locomotion means delay in every other, the ferry-boat could not “hit her slip,” but wobbled up and down crosswise in the current, bumping against the piles at either end, with much ringing of the pilot’s bell, and losing of minutes—and minutes—and minutes. But at last Mrs. Gibbons made her way into the big, lighted waiting-room, the haven of her hopes. It took no more than one glance to reveal that there was neither group nor husband waiting for her. The place was entirely empty, save for a few Italian emigrants, and the clock pointed to twenty minutes of nine.

So vividly had Mrs. Gibbons pictured her own state of mind as that of her husband—a habit of which fell experience could not break her—that even in the shock of not finding him she felt instantly that some provision had been made for this contingency. She could go straight over and join the party at Martin’s, but he might have left some word for her. The man at the news stand might know. She hovered uncertainly around the pictorial exhibit, trying to screw up a suddenly-waning courage, and then found voice to say engagingly:

“I’m looking for my husband.”

“What did you say, lady?” The man stopped in his work of sorting papers.

“I’m looking for my husband. He’s been waiting for me here for a long time—with a party—but he’s gone now. I thought perhaps he had left some message here with you.”

“What kind of looking man was he?” asked the news clerk. He leaned forward companionably.

“He—he’s tall, and clean shaven, with a light overcoat, and blue eyes—and——” She groped around for some distinguishing characteristic to elicit a gleam of response—“a square chin—with a dimple in it.” She felt her own fatuousness. “You—you’d know him if you saw him.”

The clerk turned to a boy who had appeared behind the counter.

“Did you see a man with a light overcoat, and”—a spasm passed over his face—“and a dimple in his chin? Did he leave any message here?” Mrs. Gibbons felt hotly that he was laughing at her, although he looked impassive.

“Naw,” said the boy, “he didn’t leave no message with me.” He added on reflection, “I ain’t seen no one hanging ’round but a chunky feller with a black _mus_tache.”

“He hasn’t seen any one but a stout man with a black mustache,” reported the clerk officially, while two pairs of eyes stared at her in a disconcerting manner.

“Good-evening, Mrs. Gibbons; is there anything we can do for you?”

“Oh, Mrs. Worthington—and Mr. Worthington!” Mrs. Gibbons looked as one who sees a familiar face in the desert. “You don’t know how glad I am to meet you! I’m looking for my husband.”

“Indeed!” said Mrs. Worthington, with a faint chill of surprise. She was a slight woman, elegantly gowned, with a thin expressionless face. Her husband was like unto her, with the overcoat of opulence. They were new neighbours of Mrs. Gibbons, who kept themselves politely aloof from suburban social life, spending most of their time in town, where they seemed to have a large connection. They were perhaps the last persons to whom Mrs. Gibbons would have turned in a dilemma, but she found comfort in their curious attention as she explained the situation, to conclude by saying:

“Of course, I’ll go right over now to Martin’s. If they waited for me here until after eight, they would be hardly more than started at dinner. All I want to know is what car I ought to take.”

Mrs. Worthington’s eyelids flickered a response to her husband.

“Pray allow us to escort you there,” said Mr. Worthington. “It is really quite on our way.”

“Oh, you’re very kind,” said Mrs. Gibbons, following her leaders gratefully, after a moment or two of demur. She had naturally the feeling that when a man took the thing in hand it would be all right.

“I didn’t know it was so dark at night when you were out alone by yourself, until I came off the ferry-boat,” she confided.