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 dressmaker’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 lamplight 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 tonight, Miss Mellins,” Ann Eliza interposed. “I guess what Evelina wants is a good night’s rest.”
“That’s so,” assented the dressmaker. “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 tomorrow 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
