CHAPTER III. A SUDDEN COUNTERMARCH

Roger Stanisfield was plodding wearily along the avenue. He was not aware what an exquisite summer evening it was. He carried his own troubled atmosphere with him.

Slowly going up the broad flight of steps leading to his house, he drew out his latch-key. As he unlocked the door, a bevy of girls came trooping through the hall—some of his wife’s friends. His face cleared as he took off his hat and stood aside for them to pass.

For a minute the air was gay with merry parting, then the girls were gone, and he went slowly up to his room.

“Mrs. Stanisfield is in the dining-room, sir,” said a servant, addressing him a few minutes later, as he stood in the hall with an air of great abstraction. “Dinner has just been served.”

“Oh, Roger,” said his wife, as he entered the[35] room where she sat at the table, “I didn’t know you’d come! You told me not to wait for you. I shall be glad when you take up your old habit of coming home in the middle of the afternoon.”

“I am very busy now,” he muttered, as he took his place.

“Does your head ache?” inquired Margaretta, when several courses had been passed through in silence on his part.

“Yes, it is splitting.”

Young Mrs. Stanisfield bent her fair head over her plate, and discreetly made only an occasional remark until the pudding was removed, and the table-maid had withdrawn from the room. Then she surreptitiously examined her husband’s face.

He was thoughtfully surveying the fruit on the table.

“Margaretta,” he said, boyishly, “I don’t care much for puddings and pastry.”

“Neither do I,” she said, demurely.

“I was wondering,” he said, hesitatingly, “whether we couldn’t do without puddings for awhile and just have nuts and raisins, or fruit—What are you laughing at?”

“At your new r?le of housekeeper. You usually don’t seem to know what is on the table.”

[36]

“I have a good appetite.”

“Yes, but you don’t criticize. You just eat what is set before you. I am sure it has escaped your masculine observation that for several weeks past we have had only one dish in the pastry course.”

“Well, what of it?”

“Why, we always used to have two or three—pudding, pie, and jelly or creams. Now we never have pudding and pie at the same time.”

“What is that for?” he asked.

“Oh, for something,” she said, quietly. “Now tell me what has gone wrong with you.”

“Nothing has gone wrong with me,” he said, irritably.

“With your business then.”

He did not reply, and, rising, she said, “This sitting at table is tiresome when one eats nothing. Let us go to the drawing-room and have coffee.”

“I don’t want coffee,” he said, sauntering after her.

“Neither do I,” she replied. “Shall we go out in the garden? It was delightfully cool there before dinner.”

“What a crowd of women you had here,” he said, a little peevishly, as he followed her.

“Hadn’t I?” and she smiled. “They had all[37] been at a garden-party at the Everests, and as I wasn’t there they came to find out the reason.”

“You don’t mean to say you missed a social function?” said her husband, sarcastically.

“Yes, dear boy, I did, and I have before, and I am going to again.”

Mr. Stanisfield laughed shortly. “You sound like your sister Berty.”

“Well, I should love to be like her. She is a dear little sister.”

“But not as dear as her sister.”

“Thank you,” said Margaretta, prettily, turning and curtseying to him, as he followed her along the garden paths. “Now, here we are among the roses. Just drag out those two chairs from the arbour, or will you get into the hammock?”

“I’ll take the hammock,” he said, wearily. “I feel as if I were falling to pieces.”

“Let me arrange some cushions under your head so—this cool breeze will soon drive the business fog from your brain.”

“No, it won’t—the fog is too heavy.”

“What kind of a fog is it?” asked Margaretta, cautiously.

Her husband sat up in the hammock, and stared at her with feverish eyes. “Margaretta, I think[38] we had better give up this house and take a smaller one.”

“I knew it,” said Margaretta, triumphantly. “I knew you were worried about your affairs!”

“Then you won’t feel so surprised,” he said, “when I tell you that we can’t stand this pace. We’ve had some heavy losses down at the iron works lately—mind you don’t say anything about it.”

“Indeed I won’t,” she replied, proudly.

“Father and I finished going over the books to-day with Mackintosh. We’ve got to put on the brakes. I—I hate to tell you,” and he averted his face. “You are so young.”

Margaretta did not reply to him, and, eager to see her face, he presently turned his own.

The sun had set, but she was radiant in a kind of afterglow.

“Margaretta, you don’t understand,” he faltered. “It will be a tremendous struggle for you to give up luxuries to which you have been accustomed, but we’ve either got to come down to bare poles here, or move to a smaller house.”

“What a misfortune!” she said.

His face fell.

“For you to have a headache about this matter,”[39] she went on, gleefully. “I don’t call it a small one, for it isn’t, but if you knew everything!”

“I know enough to make me feel like a cheat,” he blurted, wriggling about in the hammock. “I took you from a good home. I never wanted you to feel an anxiety, and now the first thing I’ve got to put you down to rigid economy. You see, father and I have to spend a certain amount on the business, or we’d be out of it in the war of competition, and we’ve both decided that expenses must be curtailed in our homes rather than in the iron works.”

“That shows you are good business men,” said Margaretta, promptly. “You are as good business men as husbands.”

“Margaretta,” said her husband, “you puzzle me. I expected a scene, and upon my word you look happy over it—but you don’t realize it, poor child!”

Margaretta smiled silently at him for a few seconds, then she said, roguishly, “I am going to give you a little surprise. You didn’t see me snatch this sheet of paper from my new cabinet when we left the house?”

“No, I did not.”

“Oh, what a nice little paper! What a precious[40] little paper!” said Margaretta, gaily, clasping it. “Can you see what is written on it, Roger? No, you can’t very well in this light.”

“Yes, I can,” said the young man, with a weary, amused smile. “Give it to me.”

She drew her seat closer to the hammock, and both bent their heads over the paper.

“Animus saved by Mrs. Roger Stanisfield during the month of July,” read Roger, stumblingly—“to be poured on my head, I suppose.”

“No, no, not animus—amounts.”

“Oh, I see, you want to comfort me by showing what an economist you are. I dare say you have saved five whole dollars through the month. What is the first item? Saved on new dress, one hundred dollars. Good gracious—how much did the dress cost?”

“I didn’t get it,” she replied, with immense satisfaction. “I needed one, or thought I did, and Madame Bouvard, that French dressmaker from New York, who came here last year, said she would make me one for one hundred dollars. Now some time ago, just after dear Grandma lost her money, she gave me a great shock.”

“Grandma did?” asked her husband, in surprise.

“No, she didn’t, she made me give it to myself.[41] That is Grandma’s way, you know. She doesn’t preach. Well, after this electric shock I was horrified to find out that I was a frivolous, extravagant person. I began to think hard, then I got this little piece of paper—and, oh, Roger, won’t you get me a regular business book, and make red lines down the sides, and show me how to keep proper accounts?”

“I will, but what about the dress?”

“I had ordered it, but I went to Madame Bouvard. I said, frankly, ‘I can’t pay as much as a hundred dollars for a gown.’

“‘You shall have it for eighty,’ she said.

“I said, ‘Please let me off altogether. I want to save a little on my outfit this summer, but I promise to come to you the first time I want a gown.’

“As soon as I said it I bit my lip. ‘Oh, Madame Bouvard,’ I said, ‘you are the most satisfactory dressmaker I have ever had, but I don’t know whether I can afford to come to you again.’

“She is just a plain little woman, but when she saw how badly I felt, her face lighted up like an angel’s. ‘Madame,’ she said, ‘do not take your custom from me. You have been the best lady I have worked for in Riverport. Why, my girls say[42] when your fair head passes the glass door of the workroom that it casts a ray of sunshine in upon them’—just think of that, Roger,—a ray of sunshine. I was quite pleased.”