by Willa Cather
afraid.
Niel aroused the sleepy central and put in the call. "She asks
whom you wish to speak to?"
"Frank Ellinger. Say Judge Pommeroy's office wishes to speak to
him."
Niel began soothing Mrs. Beasley at the other end. "No, not the
management, Mrs. Beasley, one of the guests. Frank Ellinger," he
spelled the name. "Yes. Judge Pommeroy's office wants to talk to
him. I'll be right here. As soon as you can, please."
He put down the instrument. "I'd rather, you know, publish
anything in the town paper than telephone it through Mrs. Beasley."
Mrs. Forrester paid no heed to him, did not look at him, sat
staring at the wall. "I can't see why you didn't call me up and
ask me to bring a horse over for you, if you felt you must get to a
long distance telephone tonight."
"Yes; I didn't think of it. I only knew I had to get over here,
and I was afraid something might stop me." She was watching the
telephone as if it were alive. Her eyes were shrunk to hard
points. Her brows, drawn together in an acute angle, kept
twitching in the frown which held them,--the singular frown of one
overcome by alcohol or fatigue, who is holding on to consciousness
by the strength of a single purpose. Her blue lips, the black
shadows under her eyes, made her look as if some poison were at
work in her body.
They waited and waited. Niel understood that she did not wish him
to talk. Her mind was struggling with something, with every blink
of her lashes she seemed to face it anew. Presently she rose as if
she could bear the suspense no longer and went over to the window,
leaned against it.
"Did you leave Captain Forrester alone?" Niel asked suddenly.
"Yes. Nothing will happen over there. Nothing ever DOES happen!"
she answered wildly, wringing her hands.
The telephone buzzed. Mrs. Forrester darted toward the desk, but
Niel lifted the instrument in his left hand and barred her way with
his right. "Try to be calm, Mrs. Forrester. When I get Ellinger I
will let you talk to him,--and central will hear every word you
say, remember."
After some exchanges with the Colorado office, he pointed her to
the chair. "Sit down and I'll give it to you. He is on the wire."
He did not dare to leave her alone, though it was awkward enough to
be a listener. He walked to the window and stood with his back to
the desk where she was sitting.
"Is that you, Frank? This is Marian. I won't keep you a moment.
You were asleep? So early? That's not like you. You've reformed
already, haven't you? That's what marriage does, they say. No, I
wasn't altogether surprised. You might have taken me into your
confidence, though. Haven't I deserved it?"
A long, listening pause. Niel stared stupidly at the dark window.
He had steeled his nerves for wild reproaches. The voice he heard
behind him was her most charming; playful, affectionate, intimate,
with a thrill of pleasant excitement that warmed its slight
formality and burned through the common-place words like the colour
in an opal. He simply held his breath while she fluttered on:
"Where shall you go for your honeymoon? Oh, I'm very sorry! So
soon . . . You must take good care of her. Give her my love. . . .
I should think California, at this time of the year, might be
right . . ."
It went on like this for some minutes. The voice, it seemed to
Niel, was that of a woman, young, beautiful, happy,--warm and at
her ease, sitting in her own drawing-room and talking on a stormy
night to a dear friend far away.
"Oh, unusually well, for me. Stop and see for yourself. You will
be going to Omaha on business next week, before California. Oh,
yes, you will! Stop off between trains. You know how welcome you
are, always."
A long pause. An exclamation from Mrs. Forrester made Niel turn
sharply round. Now it was coming! Her voice was darkening with
every word. "I think I understand you. You are not speaking from
your own room? What, from the office booth? Oh, then I understand
you very well indeed!" Niel looked about in alarm. It was time to
stop her, but how? The voice went on.
"Play safe! When have you ever played anything else? You know,
Frank, the truth is that you're a coward; a great, hulking coward.
Do you hear me? I want you to hear! . . . You've got a safe thing
at last, I should think; safe and pasty! How much stock did you
get with it? A big block, I hope! Now let me tell you the truth:
I don't want you to come here! I never want to see you again while
I live, and I forbid you to come and look at me when I'm dead. I
don't want your hateful eyes to look at my dead face. Do you hear
me? Why don't you answer me? Don't dare to hang up the receiver,
you coward! Oh, you big . . . Frank, Frank, say something! Oh,
he's shut me off, I can't hear him!"
She flung the receiver down, dropped her head on the desk, and
broke into heavy, groaning sobs. Niel stood over her and waited
with composure. For once he had been quick enough; he had saved
her. The moment that quivering passion of hatred and wrong leaped
into her voice, he had taken the big shears left by the tinner and
cut the insulated wire behind the desk. Her reproaches had got no
farther than this room.
When the sobs ceased he touched her shoulder. He shook her, but
there was no response. She was asleep, sunk in a heavy stupor.
Her hands and face were so cold that he thought there could not be
a drop of warm blood left in her body. He carried her into his
room, cut off her drenched clothing, wrapped her in his bathrobe
and put her into his own bed. She was absolutely unconscious. He
blew out the light, locked her in, and left the building, going as
fast as he could to Judge Pommeroy's cottage. He roused his uncle
and briefly explained the situation.
"Can you dress and go down to the office for the rest of the night,
Uncle Judge? Some one must be with her. And I'll get over to the
Captain at once; he certainly oughtn't to be left alone. If she
could get across the bridge, I guess I can. By the way, she began
talking wild, and I cut the telephone wire behind your desk. So
keep an eye on it. It might make trouble on a stormy night like
this. I'll get a livery hack and take Mrs. Forrester home in the
morning, before the town is awake."
When daylight began to break Niel went into Captain Forrester's
room and told him that his wife had been sent for in the night to
answer a long distance telephone call, and that now he was going to
bring her home.
The Captain lay propped up on three big pillows. Since his face
had grown fat and relaxed, its ruggedness had changed to an almost
Asiatic smoothness. He looked like a wise old Chinese mandarin as
he lay listening to the young man's fantastic story with perfect
composure, merely blinking and saying, "Thank you, Niel, thank
you."
As Niel went through the sleeping town on his way to the livery
barn, he saw the short, plump figure of Mrs. Beasley, like a boiled
pudding sewed up in a blue kimono, waddling through the feathery
asparagus bed behind the telephone office. She had already been
next door to tell her neighbour Molly Tucker, the seamstress, the
story of her exciting night.
FIVE
Soon afterward, when Captain Forrester had another stroke, Mrs.
Beasley and Molly Tucker and their friends were perfectly agreed
that it was a judgment upon his wife. No judgment could have been
crueller. Under the care of him, now that he was helpless, Mrs.
Forrester quite went to pieces.
Even after their misfortunes had begun to come upon them, she had
maintained her old reserve. She had asked nothing and accepted
nothing. Her demeanour toward the townspeople was always the same;
easy, cordial, and impersonal. Her own friends had moved away long
ago,--all except Judge Pommeroy and Dr. Dennison. When any of the
housewives from the town came to call, she met them in the parlour,
chatted with them in the smiling, careless manner they could never
break through, and they got no further. They still felt they must
put on their best dress and carry a card-case when they went to the
Forresters'.
But now that the Captain was helpless, everything changed. She
could hold off the curious no longer. The townswomen brought soups
and custards for the invalid. When they came to sit out the night
with him, she turned the house over to them. She was worn out; so
exhausted that she was dull to what went on about her. The Mrs.
Beasleys and Molly Tuckers had their chance at last. They went in
and out of Mrs. Forrester's kitchen as familiarly as they did out
of one another's. They rummaged through the linen closet to find
more sheets, pried about in the attic and cellar. They went over
the house like ants, the house where they had never before got past
the parlour; and they found they had been fooled all these years.
There was nothing remarkable about the place at all! The kitchen
was inconvenient, the sink was smelly. The carpets were worn, the
curtains faded, the clumsy, old-fashioned furniture they wouldn't
have had for a gift, and the upstairs bed-rooms were full of dust
and cobwebs.
Judge Pommeroy remarked to his nephew that he had never seen these
women look so wide-awake, so important and pleased with themselves,
as now when he encountered them bustling about the Forrester place.
The Captain's illness had the effect of a social revival, like a
new club or a church society. The creatures grew bolder and
bolder,--and Mrs. Forrester, apparently, had no power of resistance.
She drudged in the kitchen, slept, half-dressed, in one of the
chambers upstairs, kept herself going on black coffee and brandy.
All the bars were down. She had ceased to care about anything.
As the women came and went through the lane, Niel sometimes
overheard snatches of their conversation.
"Why didn't she sell some of that silver? All those platters and
covered dishes stuck away with the tarnish of years on them!"
"I wouldn't mind having some of her linen. There's a chest full of
double damask upstairs, every tablecloth long enough to make two.
Did you ever see anything like the wine glasses! I'll bet there's
not as many in both saloons put together. If she has a sale after
he's gone, I'll buy a dozen champagne glasses; they're nice to
serve sherbet in."
"There are nine dozen glasses," said Molly Tucker, "counting them
for beer and whiskey. If there is a sale, I've a mind to bid in a
couple of them green ones, with long stems, for mantel ornaments.
But she'll never sell 'em all, unless she can get the saloons to
take 'em."
Ed Elliott's mother laughed. "She'll never sell 'em, as long as
she's got anything to put in 'em."
"The cellar will go dry, some day."
"I guess there's always plenty that will get it for such as her. I
never go there now that I don't smell it on her. I went over late
the other night, and she was on her knees, washing up the kitchen
floor. Her eyes were glassy. She kept washing the place around
the ice-box over and over, till it made me nervous. I said, 'Mrs.
Forrester, I think you've washed that place several times
already.'"
"Was she confused?"
"Not a particle! She laughed and said she was often absent-
minded."
Mrs. Elliott's companions laughed, too, and agreed that absent-
minded was a good expression.
Niel repeated this conversation to his uncle. "Uncle," he
declared, "I don't see how I can go back to Boston and leave the
Forresters. I'd like to chuck school for a year, and see them
through. I want to go over there and clear those gossips out.
Could you stay at the hotel for a few weeks, and let me have Black
Tom? With him to help me, I'd send every one of those women
trotting down the lane."
It was arranged quietly, and at once. Tom was put in the kitchen,
and Niel himself took charge of the nursing. He met the women with
firmness: they were very kind, but now nothing was needed. The
Doctor had said the house must be absolutely quiet and that the
invalid must see no one.
Once the house was tranquil, Mrs. Forrester went to bed and slept
for the better part of a week. The Captain himself improved. On
his good days he could be put into a wheel-chair and rolled out
into his garden to enjoy the September sunlight and the last of his
briar roses.
"Thank you, Niel, thank you, Tom," he often said when they lifted
him into his chair. "I value this quiet very highly." If a day
came when they thought he ought not to go out, he was sad and
disappointed.
"Better get him out, no matter what," said Mrs. Forrester. "He
likes to look at his place. That, and his cigar, are the only
pleasures he has left."
When she was rested and in command of herself again, she took her
place in the kitchen, and Black Tom went back to the Judge.
At night, when he was alone, when Mrs. Forrester had gone to bed
and the Captain was resting quietly, Niel found a kind of solemn
happiness in his vigils. It had been hard to give up that year;
most of his classmates were younger than he. It had cost him
something, but now that he had taken the step, he was glad. As he
put in the night hours, sitting first in one chair and then in
another, reading, smoking, getting a lunch to keep himself awake,
he had the satisfaction of those who keep faith. He liked being
alone with the old things that had seemed so beautiful to him in
his childhood. These were still the most comfortable chairs in the
world, and he would never like any pictures so well as "William
Tell's Chapel" and "The House of the Tragic Poet." No card-table
was so good for solitaire as this old one with a stone top, mosaic
in the pattern of a chess-board, which one
of the Captain's friends
had brought him from Naples. No other house could take the place
of this one in his life.
He had time to think of many things; of himself and of his old
friends here. He had noticed that often when Mrs. Forrester was
about her work, the Captain would call to her, "Maidy, Maidy," and
she would reply, "Yes, Mr. Forrester," from wherever she happened
to be, but without coming to him,--as if she knew that when he
called to her in that tone he was not asking for anything. He
wanted to know if she were near, perhaps; or, perhaps, he merely
liked to call her name and to hear her answer. The longer Niel was
with Captain Forrester in those peaceful closing days of his life,
the more he felt that the Captain knew his wife better even than
she knew herself; and that, knowing her, he,--to use one of his own
expressions,--valued her.
SIX
Captain Forrester's death, which occurred early in December, was
"telegraphic news," the only State news that the discouraged town
of Sweet Water had furnished for a long while. Flowers and
telegrams came from east and west, but it happened that none of the
Captain's closest friends could come to his funeral. Mr. Dalzell
was in California, the president of the Burlington railroad was
travelling in Europe. The others were far away or in uncertain
health. Doctor Dennison and Judge Pommeroy were the only two of
his intimates among the pallbearers.
On the morning of the funeral, when the Captain was already in his
coffin, and the undertaker was in the parlour setting up chairs,
Niel heard a knocking at the kitchen door. There he found Adolph
Blum, carrying a large white box.
"Niel," he said, "will you please give these to Mrs. Forrester, and
tell her they are from Rhein and me, for the Captain?"
Adolph was in his old working clothes, the only clothes he had,
probably, with a knitted comforter about his neck. Niel knew he
wouldn't come to the funeral, so he said:
"Won't you come in and see him, 'Dolph? He looks just like
himself."
Adolph hesitated, but he caught sight of the undertaker's man,
through the parlour bay-window, and said, "No, thank you, Niel,"
thrust his red hands into his jacket pockets, and walked away.
Niel took the flowers out of the box, a great armful of yellow
roses, which must have cost the price of many a dead rabbit. He
carried them upstairs, where Mrs. Forrester was lying down.
"These are from the Blum boys," he said. "Adolph just brought them
to the kitchen door."
Mrs. Forrester looked at them, then turned away her head on the
pillow, her lips trembling. It was the only time that day he saw
her pale composure break.
The funeral was large. Old settlers and farmer folk came from all
over the county to follow the pioneer's body to the grave. As Niel
and his uncle were driving back from the cemetery with Mrs.
Forrester, she spoke for the first time since they had left the
house. "Judge Pommeroy," she said quietly, "I think I will have
Mr. Forrester's sun-dial taken over and put above his grave. I can
have an inscription cut on the base. It seems more appropriate for
him than any stone we could buy. And I will plant some of his own
rose-bushes beside it."
When they got back to the house it was four o'clock, and she
insisted upon making tea for them. "I would like it myself, and it
is better to be doing something. Wait for me in the parlour. And,
Niel, move the things back as we always have them."
The grey day was darkening, and as the three sat having their tea
in the bay-window, swift squalls of snow were falling over the wide
meadows between the hill and the town, and the creaking of the big
cottonwoods about the house seemed to say that winter had come.
SEVEN
One morning in April Niel was alone in the law office. His uncle
