The Bunner Sisters

by Edith Wharton

  Ann Eliza was in no mood for such interpretations of life; but, knowing that Miss Mellins had been invited for the sole purpose of keeping her company she continued to cling to the dress-maker’s side, letting Mr. Ramy lead the way with Evelina. Miss Mellins, stimulated by the excitement of the occasion, grew more and more discursive, and her ceaseless talk, and the kaleidoscopic whirl of the crowd, were unspeakably bewildering to Ann Eliza. Her feet, accustomed to the slippered ease of the shop, ached with the unfamiliar effort of walking, and her ears with the din of the dress-maker’s anecdotes; but every nerve in her was aware of Evelina’s enjoyment, and she was determined that no weariness of hers should curtail it. Yet even her heroism shrank from the significant glances which Miss Mellins presently began to cast at the couple in front of them: Ann Eliza could bear to connive at Evelina’s bliss, but not to acknowledge it to others.

  At length Evelina’s feet also failed her, and she turned to suggest that they ought to be going home. Her flushed face had grown pale with fatigue, but her eyes were radiant.

  The return lived in Ann Eliza’s memory with the persistence of an evil dream. The horse-cars were packed with the returning throng, and they had to let a dozen go by before they could push their way into one that was already crowded. Ann Eliza had never before felt so tired. Even Miss Mellins’s flow of narrative ran dry, and they sat silent, wedged between a negro woman and a pock-marked man with a bandaged head, while the car rumbled slowly down a squalid avenue to their corner. Evelina and Mr. Ramy sat together in the forward part of the car, and Ann Eliza could catch only an occasional glimpse of the forget-me-not bonnet and the clockmaker’s shiny coat-collar; but when the little party got out at their corner the crowd swept them together again, and they walked back in the effortless silence of tired children to the Bunner sisters’ basement. As Miss Mellins and Mr. Ramy turned to go their various ways Evelina mustered a last display of smiles; but Ann Eliza crossed the threshold in silence, feeling the stillness of the little shop reach out to her like consoling arms.

  That night she could not sleep; but as she lay cold and rigid at her sister’s side, she suddenly felt the pressure of Evelina’s arms, and heard her whisper: “Oh, Ann Eliza, warn’t it heavenly?”

  VI

  For four days after their Sunday in the Park the Bunner sisters had no news of Mr. Ramy. At first neither one betrayed her disappointment and anxiety to the other; but on the fifth morning Evelina, always the first to yield to her feelings, said, as she turned from her untasted tea: “I thought you’d oughter take that money out by now, Ann Eliza.”

  Ann Eliza understood and reddened. The winter had been a fairly prosperous one for the sisters, and their slowly accumulated savings had now reached the handsome sum of two hundred dollars; but the satisfaction they might have felt in this unwonted opulence had been clouded by a suggestion of Miss Mellins’s that there were dark rumours concerning the savings bank in which their funds were deposited. They knew Miss Mellins was given to vain alarms; but her words, by the sheer force of repetition, had so shaken Ann Eliza’s peace that after long hours of midnight counsel the sisters had decided to advise with Mr. Ramy; and on Ann Eliza, as the head of the house, this duty had devolved. Mr. Ramy, when consulted, had not only confirmed the dress-maker’s report, but had offered to find some safe investment which should give the sisters a higher rate of interest than the suspected savings bank; and Ann Eliza knew that Evelina alluded to the suggested transfer.

  “Why, yes, to be sure,” she agreed. “Mr. Ramy said if he was us he wouldn’t want to leave his money there any longer’n he could help.”

  “It was over a week ago he said it,” Evelina reminded her.

  “I know; but he told me to wait till he’d found out for sure about that other investment; and we ain’t seen him since then.”

  Ann Eliza’s words released their secret fear. “I wonder what’s happened to him,” Evelina said. “You don’t suppose he could be sick?”

  “I was wondering too,” Ann Eliza rejoined; and the sisters looked down at their plates.

  “I should think you’d oughter do something about that money pretty soon,” Evelina began again.

  “Well, I know I’d oughter. What would you do if you was me?”

  “If I was YOU,” said her sister, with perceptible emphasis and a rising blush, “I’d go right round and see if Mr. Ramy was sick. YOU could.”

  The words pierced Ann Eliza like a blade. “Yes, that’s so,” she said.

  “It would only seem friendly, if he really IS sick. If I was you I’d go to-day,” Evelina continued; and after dinner Ann Eliza went.

  On the way she had to leave a parcel at the dyer’s, and having performed that errand she turned toward Mr. Ramy’s shop. Never before had she felt so old, so hopeless and humble. She knew she was bound on a love-errand of Evelina’s, and the knowledge seemed to dry the last drop of young blood in her veins. It took from her, too, all her faded virginal shyness; and with a brisk composure she turned the handle of the clockmaker’s door.

  But as she entered her heart began to tremble, for she saw Mr. Ramy, his face hidden in his hands, sitting behind the counter in an attitude of strange dejection. At the click of the latch he looked up slowly, fixing a lustreless stare on Ann Eliza. For a moment she thought he did not know her.

  “Oh, you’re sick!” she exclaimed; and the sound of her voice seemed to recall his wandering senses.

  “Why, if it ain’t Miss Bunner!” he said, in a low thick tone; but he made no attempt to move, and she noticed that his face was the colour of yellow ashes.

  “You ARE sick,” she persisted, emboldened by his evident need of help. “Mr. Ramy, it was real unfriendly of you not to let us know.”

  He continued to look at her with dull eyes. “I ain’t been sick,” he said. “Leastways not very: only one of my old turns.” He spoke in a slow laboured way, as if he had difficulty in getting his words together.

  “Rheumatism?” she ventured, seeing how unwillingly he seemed to move.

  “Well—somethin’ like, maybe. I couldn’t hardly put a name to it.”

  “If it WAS anything like rheumatism, my grandmother used to make a tea—” Ann Eliza began: she had forgotten, in the warmth of the moment, that she had only come as Evelina’s messenger.

  At the mention of tea an expression of uncontrollable repugnance passed over Mr. Ramy’s face. “Oh, I guess I’m getting on all right. I’ve just got a headache to-day.”

  Ann Eliza’s courage dropped at the note of refusal in his voice.

  “I’m sorry,” she said gently. “My sister and me’d have been glad to do anything we could for you.”

  “Thank you kindly,” said Mr. Ramy wearily; then, as she turned to the door, he added with an effort: “Maybe I’ll step round to-morrow.”

  “We’ll be real glad,” Ann Eliza repeated. Her eyes were fixed on a dusty bronze clock in the window. She was unaware of looking at it at the time, but long afterward she remembered that it represented a Newfoundland dog with his paw on an open book.

  When she reached home there was a purchaser in the shop, turning over hooks and eyes under Evelina’s absent-minded supervision. Ann Eliza passed hastily into the back room, but in an instant she heard her sister at her side.

  “Quick! I told her I was goin’ to look for some smaller hooks—how is he?” Evelina gasped.

  “He ain’t been very well,” said Ann Eliza slowly, her eyes on Evelina’s eager face; “but he says he’ll be sure to be round to-morrow night.”

  “He will? Are you telling me the truth?”

  “Why, Evelina Bunner!”

  “Oh, I don’t care!” cried the younger recklessly, rushing back into the shop.

  Ann Eliza stood burning with the shame of Evelina’s self-exposure. She was shocked that, even to her, Evelina should lay bare the nakedness of her emotion; and she tried to turn her thoughts from it as though its recollection made her a sharer in her sister’s debasement.


  The next evening, Mr. Ramy reappeared, still somewhat sallow and red-lidded, but otherwise his usual self. Ann Eliza consulted him about the investment he had recommended, and after it had been settled that he should attend to the matter for her he took up the illustrated volume of Longfellow—for, as the sisters had learned, his culture soared beyond the newspapers—and read aloud, with a fine confusion of consonants, the poem on “Maidenhood.” Evelina lowered her lids while he read. It was a very beautiful evening, and Ann Eliza thought afterward how different life might have been with a companion who read poetry like Mr. Ramy.

  VII

  During the ensuing weeks Mr. Ramy, though his visits were as frequent as ever, did not seem to regain his usual spirits. He complained frequently of headache, but rejected Ann Eliza’s tentatively proffered remedies, and seemed to shrink from any prolonged investigation of his symptoms. July had come, with a sudden ardour of heat, and one evening, as the three sat together by the open window in the back room, Evelina said: “I dunno what I wouldn’t give, a night like this, for a breath of real country air.”

  “So would I,” said Mr. Ramy, knocking the ashes from his pipe. “I’d like to be setting in an arbour dis very minute.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely?”

  “I always think it’s real cool here—we’d be heaps hotter up where Miss Mellins is,” said Ann Eliza.

  “Oh, I daresay—but we’d be heaps cooler somewhere else,” her sister snapped: she was not infrequently exasperated by Ann Eliza’s furtive attempts to mollify Providence.

  A few days later Mr. Ramy appeared with a suggestion which enchanted Evelina. He had gone the day before to see his friend, Mrs. Hochmuller, who lived in the outskirts of Hoboken, and Mrs. Hochmuller had proposed that on the following Sunday he should bring the Bunner sisters to spend the day with her.

  “She’s got a real garden, you know,” Mr. Ramy explained, “wid trees and a real summer-house to set in; and hens and chickens too. And it’s an elegant sail over on de ferry-boat.”

  The proposal drew no response from Ann Eliza. She was still oppressed by the recollection of her interminable Sunday in the Park; but, obedient to Evelina’s imperious glance, she finally faltered out an acceptance.

  The Sunday was a very hot one, and once on the ferry-boat Ann Eliza revived at the touch of the salt breeze, and the spectacle of the crowded waters; but when they reached the other shore, and stepped out on the dirty wharf, she began to ache with anticipated weariness. They got into a street-car, and were jolted from one mean street to another, till at length Mr. Ramy pulled the conductor’s sleeve and they got out again; then they stood in the blazing sun, near the door of a crowded beer-saloon, waiting for another car to come; and that carried them out to a thinly settled district, past vacant lots and narrow brick houses standing in unsupported solitude, till they finally reached an almost rural region of scattered cottages and low wooden buildings that looked like village “stores.” Here the car finally stopped of its own accord, and they walked along a rutty road, past a stone-cutter’s yard with a high fence tapestried with theatrical advertisements, to a little red house with green blinds and a garden paling. Really, Mr. Ramy had not deceived them. Clumps of dielytra and day-lilies bloomed behind the paling, and a crooked elm hung romantically over the gable of the house.

  At the gate Mrs. Hochmuller, a broad woman in brick-brown merino, met them with nods and smiles, while her daughter Linda, a flaxen-haired girl with mottled red cheeks and a sidelong stare, hovered inquisitively behind her. Mrs. Hochmuller, leading the way into the house, conducted the Bunner sisters the way to her bedroom. Here they were invited to spread out on a mountainous white featherbed the cashmere mantles under which the solemnity of the occasion had compelled them to swelter, and when they had given their black silks the necessary twitch of readjustment, and Evelina had fluffed out her hair before a looking-glass framed in pink-shell work, their hostess led them to a stuffy parlour smelling of gingerbread. After another ceremonial pause, broken by polite enquiries and shy ejaculations, they were shown into the kitchen, where the table was already spread with strange-looking spice-cakes and stewed fruits, and where they presently found themselves seated between Mrs. Hochmuller and Mr. Ramy, while the staring Linda bumped back and forth from the stove with steaming dishes.

  To Ann Eliza the dinner seemed endless, and the rich fare strangely unappetizing. She was abashed by the easy intimacy of her hostess’s voice and eye. With Mr. Ramy Mrs. Hochmuller was almost flippantly familiar, and it was only when Ann Eliza pictured her generous form bent above his sick-bed that she could forgive her for tersely addressing him as “Ramy.” During one of the pauses of the meal Mrs. Hochmuller laid her knife and fork against the edges of her plate, and, fixing her eyes on the clockmaker’s face, said accusingly: “You hat one of dem turns again, Ramy.”

  “I dunno as I had,” he returned evasively.

  Evelina glanced from one to the other. “Mr. Ramy HAS been sick,” she said at length, as though to show that she also was in a position to speak with authority. “He’s complained very frequently of headaches.”

  “Ho!—I know him,” said Mrs. Hochmuller with a laugh, her eyes still on the clockmaker. “Ain’t you ashamed of yourself, Ramy?”

  Mr. Ramy, who was looking at his plate, said suddenly one word which the sisters could not understand; it sounded to Ann Eliza like “Shwike.”

  Mrs. Hochmuller laughed again. “My, my,” she said, “wouldn’t you think he’d be ashamed to go and be sick and never dell me, me that nursed him troo dat awful fever?”

  “Yes, I SHOULD,” said Evelina, with a spirited glance at Ramy; but he was looking at the sausages that Linda had just put on the table.

  When dinner was over Mrs. Hochmuller invited her guests to step out of the kitchen-door, and they found themselves in a green enclosure, half garden, half orchard. Grey hens followed by golden broods clucked under the twisted apple-boughs, a cat dozed on the edge of an old well, and from tree to tree ran the network of clothes-line that denoted Mrs. Hochmuller’s calling. Beyond the apple trees stood a yellow summer-house festooned with scarlet runners; and below it, on the farther side of a rough fence, the land dipped down, holding a bit of woodland in its hollow. It was all strangely sweet and still on that hot Sunday afternoon, and as she moved across the grass under the apple-boughs Ann Eliza thought of quiet afternoons in church, and of the hymns her mother had sung to her when she was a baby.

  Evelina was more restless. She wandered from the well to the summer-house and back, she tossed crumbs to the chickens and disturbed the cat with arch caresses; and at last she expressed a desire to go down into the wood.

  “I guess you got to go round by the road, then,” said Mrs. Hochmuller. “My Linda she goes troo a hole in de fence, but I guess you’d tear your dress if you was to dry.”

  “I’ll help you,” said Mr. Ramy; and guided by Linda the pair walked along the fence till they reached a narrow gap in its boards. Through this they disappeared, watched curiously in their descent by the grinning Linda, while Mrs. Hochmuller and Ann Eliza were left alone in the summer-house.

  Mrs. Hochmuller looked at her guest with a confidential smile. “I guess dey’ll be gone quite a while,” she remarked, jerking her double chin toward the gap in the fence. “Folks like dat don’t never remember about de dime.” And she drew out her knitting.

  Ann Eliza could think of nothing to say.

  “Your sister she thinks a great lot of him, don’t she?” her hostess continued.

  Ann Eliza’s cheeks grew hot. “Ain’t you a teeny bit lonesome away out here sometimes?” she asked. “I should think you’d be scared nights, all alone with your daughter.”

  “Oh, no, I ain’t,” said Mrs. Hochmuller. “You see I take in washing—dat’s my business—and it’s a lot cheaper doing it out here dan in de city: where’d I get a drying-ground like dis in Hobucken? And den it’s safer for Linda too; it geeps her outer de streets.”

  “Oh,”
said Ann Eliza, shrinking. She began to feel a distinct aversion for her hostess, and her eyes turned with involuntary annoyance to the square-backed form of Linda, still inquisitively suspended on the fence. It seemed to Ann Eliza that Evelina and her companion would never return from the wood; but they came at length, Mr. Ramy’s brow pearled with perspiration, Evelina pink and conscious, a drooping bunch of ferns in her hand; and it was clear that, to her at least, the moments had been winged.

  “D’you suppose they’ll revive?” she asked, holding up the ferns; but Ann Eliza, rising at her approach, said stiffly: “We’d better be getting home, Evelina.”

  “Mercy me! Ain’t you going to take your coffee first?” Mrs. Hochmuller protested; and Ann Eliza found to her dismay that another long gastronomic ceremony must intervene before politeness permitted them to leave. At length, however, they found themselves again on the ferry-boat. Water and sky were grey, with a dividing gleam of sunset that sent sleek opal waves in the boat’s wake. The wind had a cool tarry breath, as though it had travelled over miles of shipping, and the hiss of the water about the paddles was as delicious as though it had been splashed into their tired faces.

  Ann Eliza sat apart, looking away from the others. She had made up her mind that Mr. Ramy had proposed to Evelina in the wood, and she was silently preparing herself to receive her sister’s confidence that evening.

  But Evelina was apparently in no mood for confidences. When they reached home she put her faded ferns in water, and after supper, when she had laid aside her silk dress and the forget-me-not bonnet, she remained silently seated in her rocking-chair near the open window. It was long since Ann Eliza had seen her in so uncommunicative a mood.

  The following Saturday Ann Eliza was sitting alone in the shop when the door opened and Mr. Ramy entered. He had never before called at that hour, and she wondered a little anxiously what had brought him.

  “Has anything happened?” she asked, pushing aside the basketful of buttons she had been sorting.