Some people might enjoy such surroundings. As for her! – and she drew up her skirts ever so carefully and daintily, as though she feared contamination to her petticoats from the touch of the rich rug upon which she stood.
Georgie’s blue eyes were filled with astonishment as they followed the woman’s gestures. Her face showed aversion and perplexity.
‘Please let this interview come to an end at once,’ spoke the girl. She would not deign to ask an explanation of the mysterious allusions to ill-gotten wealth. But mademoiselle had not yet said all that she had come there to say.
‘If it was only me to say so,’ she went on, still looking at the likeness, ‘but, cher maître! Go, yourself, Mees McEndairs, and stand for a while on the street and ask the people passing by how your dear papa has made his money, and see what they will say.’
Then shifting her glance to the photograph of Meredith Holt, she stood in an attitude of amused contemplation, with a smile of commiseration playing about her lips.
‘Mr Meredith Holt!’ she pronounced with quiet, supressed emphasis – ‘ah! c’est un propre, celui là! You know him very well, no doubt, Mees McEndairs. You would not care to have my opinion of Mr Meredith Holt. It would make no difference to you, Mees McEndairs, to know that he is not fit to be the husband of a self-respecting barmaid. Oh! you know a good deal, my dear young lady. You can preach sermons in merveille!’
When Georgie was finally alone, there came to her, through all her disgust and indignation, an indefinable uneasiness. There was no misunderstanding the intention of the woman’s utterances in regard to the girl’s fiancé and her father. A sudden, wild, defiant desire came to her to test the suggestion which Mademoiselle Salambre had let fall.
Yes, she would go stand there on the corner and ask the passers-by how Horace McEnders made his money. She could not yet collect her thoughts for calm reflection; and the house stifled her. It was fully time for her to join her committee of four, but she would meddle no further with morals till her own were adjusted, she thought. Then she quitted the house, very pale, even to her lips that were tightly set.
Georgie stationed herself on the opposite side of the street, on the corner, and waited there as though she had appointed to meet some one.
The first to approach her was a kind-looking old gentleman, very much muffled for the pleasant spring day. Georgie did not hesitate an instant to accost him:
‘I beg pardon, sir. Will you kindly tell me whose house that is?’ pointing to her own domicile across the way.
‘That is Mr Horace McEnders’ residence, Madame,’ replied the old gentleman, lifting his hat politely.
‘Could you tell me how he made the money with which to build so magnificent a home?’
‘You should not ask indiscreet questions, my dear young lady,’ answered the mystified old gentleman, as he bowed and walked away.
The girl let one or two persons pass her. Then she stopped a plumber, who was going cheerily along with his bag of tools on his shoulder.
‘I beg pardon,’ began Georgie again; ‘but may I ask whose residence that is across the street?’
‘Yes’um. That’s the McEnderses.’
‘Thank you; and can you tell me how Mr McEnders made such an immense fortune?’
‘Oh, that ain’t my business; but they say he made the biggest pile of it in the Whisky Ring.’
So the truth would come to her somehow! These were the people from whom to seek it – who had not learned to veil their thoughts and opinions in polite subterfuge.
When a careless little newsboy came strolling along, she stopped him with the apparent intention of buying a paper from him.
‘Do you know whose house that is?’ she asked him, handing him a piece of money and nodding over the way.
‘W’y, dats ole MicAndrus’ house.’
‘I wonder where he got the money to build such a fine house.’
‘He stole it; dats w’ere he got it. Thank you,’ pocketing the change which Georgie declined to take, and he whistled a popular air as he disappeared around the corner.
Georgie had heard enough. Her heart was beating violently now, and her cheeks were flaming. So everybody knew it; even to the street gamins! The men and women who visited her and broke bread at her father’s table, knew it. Her co-workers, who strove with her in Christian endeavour, knew. The very servants who waited upon her doubtless knew this, and had their jests about it.
She shrank within herself as she climbed the stairway to her room.
Upon the table there she found a box of exquisite white spring blossoms that a messenger had brought from Meredith Holt, during her absence. Without an instant’s hesitation, Georgie cast the spotless things into the wide, sooty fireplace. Then she sank into a chair and wept bitterly.
The Story of an Hour
Knowing that Mrs Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of ‘killed.’ He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralysed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair.
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