The purchase of Evelina's clock had been a more importantevent in the life of Ann Eliza Bunner than her younger sister coulddivine. In the first place, there had been the demoralizingsatisfaction of finding herself in possession of a sum of moneywhich she need not put into the common fund, but could spend as shechose, without consulting Evelina, and then the excitement of herstealthy trips abroad, undertaken on the rare occasions when shecould trump up a pretext for leaving the shop; since, as a rule, itwas Evelina who took the bundles to the dyer's, and delivered thepurchases of those among their customers who were too genteel to beseen carrying home a bonnet or a bundle of pinking--so that, had itnot been for the excuse of having to see Mrs. Hawkins's teethingbaby, Ann Eliza would hardly have known what motive to allege fordeserting her usual seat behind the counter.
The infrequency of her walks made them the chief events of herlife. The mere act of going out from the monastic quiet of theshop into the tumult of the streets filled her with a subduedexcitement which grew too intense for pleasure as she was swallowedby the engulfing roar of Broadway or Third Avenue, and began to dotimid battle with their incessant cross-currents of humanity.
After a glance or two into the great show-windows she usuallyallowed herself to be swept back into the shelter of a side-street,and finally regained her own roof in a state of breathlessbewilderment and fatigue; but gradually, as her nerves were soothedby the familiar quiet of the little shop, and the click ofEvelina's pinking-machine, certain sights and sounds would detachthemselves from the torrent along which she had been swept, and shewould devote the rest of the day to a mental reconstruction of thedifferent episodes of her walk, till finally it took shape in herthought as a consecutive and highly-coloured experience, fromwhich, for weeks afterwards, she would detach some fragmentaryrecollection in the course of her long dialogues with her sister.
But when, to the unwonted excitement of going out, was addedthe intenser interest of looking for a present for Evelina,Ann Eliza's agitation, sharpened by concealment, actually preyedupon her rest; and it was not till the present had been given, andshe had unbosomed herself of the experiences connected with itspurchase, that she could look back with anything like composure tothat stirring moment of her life. From that day forward, however,she began to take a certain tranquil pleasure in thinking of Mr.
Ramy's small shop, not unlike her own in its countrified obscurity,though the layer of dust which covered its counter and shelves madethe comparison only superficially acceptable. Still, she did notjudge the state of the shop severely, for Mr. Ramy had told herthat he was alone in the world, and lone men, she was aware, didnot know how to deal with dust. It gave her a good deal ofoccupation to wonder why he had never married, or if, on the otherhand, he were a widower, and had lost all his dear little children;and she scarcely knew which alternative seemed to make him the moreinteresting. In either case, his life was assuredly a sad one; andshe passed many hours in speculating on the manner in which heprobably spent his evenings. She knew he lived at the back of hisshop, for she had caught, on entering, a glimpse of a dingy roomwith a tumbled bed; and the pervading smell of cold fry suggestedthat he probably did his own cooking. She wondered if he did notoften make his tea with water that had not boiled, and askedherself, almost jealously, who looked after the shop while he wentto market. Then it occurred to her as likely that he bought hisprovisions at the same market as Evelina; and she was fascinated bythe thought that he and her sister might constantly be meeting intotal unconsciousness of the link between them. Whenever shereached this stage in her reflexions she lifted a furtive glance tothe clock, whose loud staccato tick was becoming a part of herinmost being.
The seed sown by these long hours of meditation germinated atlast in the secret wish to go to market some morning in Evelina'sstead. As this purpose rose to the surface of Ann Eliza's thoughtsshe shrank back shyly from its contemplation. A plan so steeped induplicity had never before taken shape in her crystalline soul.
How was it possible for her to consider such a step? And, besides,(she did not possess sufficient logic to mark the downward trend ofthis "besides"), what excuse could she make that would not exciteher sister's curiosity? From this second query it was an easydescent to the third: how soon could she manage to go?
It was Evelina herself, who furnished the necessary pretext byawaking with a sore throat on the day when she usually went tomarket. It was a Saturday, and as they always had their bit ofsteak on Sunday the expedition could not be postponed, and itseemed natural that Ann Eliza, as she tied an old stocking aroundEvelina's throat, should announce her intention of stepping roundto the butcher's.
"Oh, Ann Eliza, they'll cheat you so," her sister wailed.
Ann Eliza brushed aside the imputation with a smile, and a fewminutes later, having set the room to rights, and cast a lastglance at the shop, she was tying on her bonnet with fumblinghaste.
The morning was damp and cold, with a sky full of sulky cloudsthat would not make room for the sun, but as yet dropped only anoccasional snow-flake. In the early light the street looked itsmeanest and most neglected; but to Ann Eliza, never greatlytroubled by any untidiness for which she was not responsible, itseemed to wear a singularly friendly aspect.
A few minutes' walk brought her to the market where Evelinamade her purchases, and where, if he had any sense of topographicalfitness, Mr. Ramy must also deal.
Ann Eliza, making her way through the outskirts of potato-barrels and flabby fish, found no one in the shop but the gory-aproned butcher who stood in the background cutting chops.
As she approached him across the tesselation of fish-scales,blood and saw-dust, he laid aside his cleaver and notunsympathetically asked: "Sister sick?""Oh, not very--jest a cold," she answered, as guiltily as ifEvelina's illness had been feigned. "We want a steak as usual,please--and my sister said you was to be sure to give me jest asgood a cut as if it was her," she added with child-like candour.
"Oh, that's all right." The butcher picked up his weapon witha grin. "Your sister knows a cut as well as any of us," heremarked.
In another moment, Ann Eliza reflected, the steak would be cutand wrapped up, and no choice left her but to turn her disappointedsteps toward home. She was too shy to try to delay the butcher bysuch conversational arts as she possessed, but the approach of adeaf old lady in an antiquated bonnet and mantle gave her heropportunity.
"Wait on her first, please," Ann Eliza whispered. "I ain't inany hurry."The butcher advanced to his new customer, and Ann Eliza,palpitating in the back of the shop, saw that the old lady'shesitations between liver and pork chops were likely to beindefinitely prolonged. They were still unresolved when she wasinterrupted by the entrance of a blowsy Irish girl with a basket onher arm. The newcomer caused a momentary diversion, and when shehad departed the old lady, who was evidently as intolerant ofinterruption as a professional story-teller, insisted on returningto the beginning of her complicated order, and weighing anew, withan anxious appeal to the butcher's arbitration, the relativeadvantages of pork and liver. But even her hesitations, and theintrusion on them of two or three other customers, were of noavail, for Mr. Ramy was not among those who entered the shop; andat last Ann Eliza, ashamed of staying longer, reluctantly claimedher steak, and walked home through the thickening snow.
Even to her simple judgment the vanity of her hopes was plain,and in the clear light that disappointment turns upon our actionsshe wondered how she could have been foolish enough to supposethat, even if Mr. Ramy DID go to that particular market, hewould hit on the same day and hour as herself.
There followed a colourless week unmarked by farther incident.
The old stocking cured Evelina's throat, and Mrs. Hawkins droppedin once or twice to talk of her baby's teeth; some new orders forpinking were received, and Evelina sold a bonnet to the lady withpuffed sleeves. The lady with puffed sleeves--a resident of "theSquare," whose name they had never learned, because she alwayscarried her own parcels home--was the most distinguished andinteresting figure on their horizon. She was youngish, she waselegant (as the title they had given her implied), and she had asweet sad smile about which they had woven many histories; but eventhe news of her return to town--it was her first apparition thatyear--failed to arouse Ann Eliza's interest. All the small dailyhappenings which had once sufficed to fill the hours now appearedto her in their deadly insignificance; and for the first time inher long years of drudgery she rebelled at the dullness of herlife. With Evelina such fits of discontent were habitual andopenly proclaimed, and Ann Eliza still excused them as one of theprerogatives of youth. Besides, Evelina had not been intended byProvidence to pine in such a narrow life: in the original plan ofthings, she had been meant to marry and have a baby, to wear silkon Sundays, and take a leading part in a Church circle. Hithertoopportunity had played her false; and for all her superioraspirations and carefully crimped hair she had remained as obscureand unsought as Ann Eliza. But the elder sister, who had longsince accepted her own fate, had never accepted Evelina's. Once apleasant young man who taught in Sunday-school had paid the youngerMiss Bunner a few shy visits. That was years since, and he hadspeedily vanished from their view. Whether he had carried with himany of Evelina's illusions, Ann Eliza had never discovered; but hisattentions had clad her sister in a halo of exquisitepossibilities.
Ann Eliza, in those days, had never dreamed of allowingherself the luxury of self-pity: it seemed as much a personal rightof Evelina's as her elaborately crinkled hair. But now she beganto transfer to herself a portion of the sympathy she had so longbestowed on Evelina. She had at last recognized her right to setup some lost opportunities of her own; and once that dangerousprecedent established, they began to crowd upon her memory.
It was at this stage of Ann Eliza's transformation thatEvelina, looking up one evening from her work, said suddenly: "My!
She's stopped."Ann Eliza, raising her eyes from a brown merino seam, followedher sister's glance across the room. It was a Monday, and theyalways wound the clock on Sundays.
"Are you sure you wound her yesterday, Evelina?""Jest as sure as I live. She must be broke. I'll go andsee."Evelina laid down the hat she was trimming, and took the clockfrom its shelf.
"There--I knew it! She's wound jest as TIGHT--what yousuppose's happened to her, Ann Eliza?""I dunno, I'm sure," said the elder sister, wiping herspectacles before proceeding to a close examination of the clock.
With anxiously bent heads the two women shook and turned it,as though they were trying to revive a living thing; but itremained unresponsive to their touch, and at length Evelina laid itdown with a sigh.
"Seems like somethin' DEAD, don't it, Ann Eliza? Howstill the room is!""Yes, ain't it?""Well, I'll put her back where she belongs," Evelinacontinued, in the tone of one about to perform the last offices forthe departed. "And I guess," she added, "you'll have to step roundto Mr. Ramy's to-morrow, and see if he can fix her."Ann Eliza's face burned. "I--yes, I guess I'll have to," shestammered, stooping to pick up a spool of cotton which had rolledto the floor. A sudden heart-throb stretched the seams of her flatalpaca bosom, and a pulse leapt to life in each of her temples.
That night, long after Evelina slept, Ann Eliza lay awake inthe unfamiliar silence, more acutely conscious of the nearness ofthe crippled clock than when it had volubly told out the minutes.
The next morning she woke from a troubled dream of having carriedit to Mr. Ramy's, and found that he and his shop had vanished; andall through the day's occupations the memory of this dreamoppressed her.
It had been agreed that Ann Eliza should take the clock to berepaired as soon as they had dined; but while they were still attable a weak-eyed little girl in a black apron stabbed withinnumerable pins burst in on them with the cry: "Oh, Miss Bunner,for mercy's sake! Miss Mellins has been took again."Miss Mellins was the dress-maker upstairs, and the weak-eyedchild one of her youthful apprentices.
Ann Eliza started from her seat. "I'll come at once. Quick,Evelina, the cordial!"By this euphemistic name the sisters designated a bottle ofcherry brandy, the last of a dozen inherited from theirgrandmother, which they kept locked in their cupboard against suchemergencies. A moment later, cordial in hand, Ann Eliza washurrying upstairs behind the weak-eyed child.
Miss Mellins' "turn" was sufficiently serious to detain AnnEliza for nearly two hours, and dusk had fallen when she took upthe depleted bottle of cordial and descended again to the shop. Itwas empty, as usual, and Evelina sat at her pinking-machine in theback room. Ann Eliza was still agitated by her efforts to restorethe dress-maker, but in spite of her preoccupation she was struck,as soon as she entered, by the loud tick of the clock, which stillstood on the shelf where she had left it.
"Why, she's going!" she gasped, before Evelina could questionher about Miss Mellins. "Did she start up again by herself?""Oh, no; but I couldn't stand not knowing what time it was,I've got so accustomed to having her round; and just after you wentupstairs Mrs. Hawkins dropped in, so I asked her to tend the storefor a minute, and I clapped on my things and ran right round to Mr.
Ramy's. It turned out there wasn't anything the matter with her--nothin' on'y a speck of dust in the works--and he fixed her for mein a minute and I brought her right back. Ain't it lovely to hearher going again? But tell me about Miss Mellins, quick!"For a moment Ann Eliza found no words. Not till she learnedthat she had missed her chance did she understand how many hopeshad hung upon it. Even now she did not know why she had wanted somuch to see the clock-maker again.
"I s'pose it's because nothing's ever happened to me," shethought, with a twinge of envy for the fate which gaveEvelina every opportunity that came their way. "She had theSunday-school teacher too," Ann Eliza murmured to herself; but shewas well-trained in the arts of renunciation, and after a scarcelyperceptible pause she plunged into a detailed description of thedress-maker's "turn."Evelina, when her curiosity was roused, was an insatiablequestioner, and it was supper-time before she had come to the endof her enquiries about Miss Mellins; but when the two sisters hadseated themselves at their evening meal Ann Eliza at last found achance to say: "So she on'y had a speck of dust in her."Evelina understood at once that the reference was not to MissMellins. "Yes--at least he thinks so," she answered, helpingherself as a matter of course to the first cup of tea.
"On'y to think!" murmured Ann Eliza.
"But he isn't SURE," Evelina continued, absentlypushing the teapot toward her sister. "It may be something wrongwith the--I forget what he called it. Anyhow, he said he'd callround and see, day after to-morrow, after supper.""Who said?" gasped Ann Eliza.
"Why, Mr. Ramy, of course. I think he's real nice, Ann Eliza.
And I don't believe he's forty; but he DOES look sick. Iguess he's pretty lonesome, all by himself in that store. He asmuch as told me so, and somehow"--Evelina paused and bridled--"Ikinder thought that maybe his saying he'd call round about theclock was on'y just an excuse. He said it just as I was going outof the store. What you think, Ann Eliza?""Oh, I don't har'ly know." To save herself, Ann Eliza couldproduce nothing warmer.
"Well, I don't pretend to be smarter than other folks," saidEvelina, putting a conscious hand to her hair, "but I guess Mr.
Herman Ramy wouldn't be sorry to pass an evening here, 'stead ofspending it all alone in that poky little place of his."Her self-consciousness irritated Ann Eliza.
"I guess he's got plenty of friends of his own," she said,almost harshly.
"No, he ain't, either. He's got hardly any.""Did he tell you that too?" Even to her own ears there was afaint sneer in the interrogation.
"Yes, he did," said Evelina, dropping her lids with a smile.
"He seemed to be just crazy to talk to somebody--somebodyagreeable, I mean. I think the man's unhappy, Ann Eliza.""So do I," broke from the elder sister.
"He seems such an educated man, too. He was reading the paperwhen I went in. Ain't it sad to think of his being reduced to thatlittle store, after being years at Tiff'ny's, and one of the headmen in their clock-department?""He told you all that?""Why, yes. I think he'd a' told me everything ever happenedto him if I'd had the time to stay and listen. I tell you he'sdead lonely, Ann Eliza.""Yes," said Ann Eliza.