XX
EMILY sat at her window, across which the rain slanted dismally into the street below. Jerome lay in bed sleeping still, though it was now nearly noon. He slept hard after his labors on the subcommittee, and she had sent the nurse with the baby to patrol the long hallway, in order that the child might not awaken his father, and she had gone about herself noiselessly, to the same end. She had tried to read, but could not. She had fancied a long letter to Dade Emerson, describing her Washington trip, but the enthusiasm she had imagined for this letter, the first in a long while in which she had anything to relate that would compare with the letters Dade was able to write, colored as they were with the picturesqueness of Old World travel, could not that morning ring true.
She had thought the day before, when they were in such gala mood, that the old lover-like intimacy was growing upon them again, and she had told herself that a winter thus together in Washington would once more intertwine their lives into one harmonious and beautiful fabric; that all their dreams would come true. She had carefully scanned all the senators and public men she had seen, intent upon knowing them, at least by sight, and she had resolved, too, that she would study the details of public questions more deeply that she might be of real help to her husband, as he grew in statecraft.
But—she had felt her heart turn cold and dead within her as she recognized, in her curiously intricate train of morbid thought that these very resolves proved the existence of conditions she had refused to acknowledge, and now she sat before the window, her little chin on her hand, looking vacantly out. Over the way a Catholic church, built of stone, held one of its oaken doors ajar. She saw a woman, evidently a poor woman, for she wore a shawl over her head, enter the church. Somehow the sight added to her despondency.
She was roused by a knock on the door. A bell-boy stood there with a tray. She took the cards, and read the names of Joseph Hale, and Freeman H. Pusey. Hale had written his name upon the blank card supplied by the hotel; Pusey’s was a sample of his own job work and proclaimed him as editor and proprietor of the Grand Prairie Citizen, Daily and Weekly. She thrilled a little at the thought that she was in the presence of the reality of a delegation of constituents calling upon their congressman; and then a great flood of homesickness rolled over her, a homesickness that was the more acute because these men were not known to her, and could only suggest home, not realize it for her here so far away from that home.
She told the boy to show the gentlemen to the parlor, and to say that Mr. Garwood would be down presently.
When she awakened her husband, as she thought the importance of the visit justified her in doing, he roused and writhed his big arms over his curly head.
“Who are they?” he yawned.
She read the names.
“Oh, let ’em wait,” he said, then he rolled heavily over, stretched, and went to sleep again. She went down to the parlor herself to meet the two men.
“I’m Mrs. Garwood,” she said, “and I’m glad to see any one from home. Mr. Garwood was detained very late last night by an important committee meeting and is still sleeping. Can you come back later, or will you wait? I do not like to rouse him just now—he is quite worn out,” she added, selecting for them the alternative she preferred. They adopted her selection and said they could come back in the afternoon.
“We can go out and see the town a little,” said Hale. “We’ve never been in Washington before, ma’am. Great place, ain’t it? Do you think we could see the president? I’d like to see how he looks in his place. I helped put him there.”
Hale spoke with the glow of personal pride, and with the sense of personal ownership the American feels in the ruler he has helped to raise to power, and is just as ready to pull down if he doesn’t do all things to suit him.
Pusey and Hale were back again before Garwood had finished the coffee and roll which he had ordered sent to his room.
“Sit down, boys,” he said, speaking with his mouth full of the roll, “I’ll be at your service presently. What have you been doing to kill the time? Seeing the sights?”
“Well, we went up to look at the president,” said Hale, for Pusey was looking out of the window with his usual lack of interest, until a belated fly crawled torpidly over the cold pane, and then he tapped at it with his little stick.
“See him?” asked Garwood.
“No, couldn’t get near him. Guess he’s got the swelled head, hain’t he?”
Garwood laughed.
“Oh, well, you know he’s busy. Possibly he was at a cabinet meeting. Let’s see, is this Friday? I’ll fix it for you though. I’ll take you over to see him before you go back. When’d you get in?”
“Just got here this morning,” said Hale. “I come to talk over with you that little matter about—” He looked all around the room as if spies were concealed somewhere, “about the post-office at Pekin—you know.”
“Oh, yes!” said Garwood, with unusual cheerfulness for a congressman when a post-office is mentioned, “I’ll take care of that, Joe.”
Garwood got up, with a wrench of pain.
“God,” he exclaimed, “I feel old this morning.”
“Ain’t you well?” asked Hale, solicitously.
“Oh, just a touch of rheumatism, I reckon—head aches, too, like the devil. Wait till I kiss the baby good by and I’ll be with you.”
He went into the adjoining room.
“Fond of his family, ain’t he?” said Hale, approvingly.
“I believe I’ve heard as much intimated,” answered Pusey.
Garwood returned with his overcoat and hat and gloves, and they went out. He spent the day with them, tramping about through the rain, and at night took them to the theater, one of the sacrifices a congressman must make when his constituents come to Washington.
When he returned to the hotel at midnight, and went up to his rooms, he found his wife sitting before a fire she had had laid in the grate. She was dressed and her little traveling-bag stood on the marble-top center table, with her hat and veil and rolled-up gloves beside it.
“Why!” he said, in surprise, “what’s the matter?”
She turned and lifted to him a face that was stained with tears. Then she rose, holding out her arms towards him.
“Oh, Jerome!” she said. “I’m—going home!”
“Why—Em—dearie! What’s the matter! Tell me, what’s the matter?” He had gone close to her and taken her in his arms, and he made his question the demand of a man who does not like to deal with tears:
“What’s the matter, I say, tell me!”
A tone of terror had got into his voice.
“Look!” She drew a telegram from the bosom of her dress, and held it toward him. When he took it, she hid her face on his breast and shook with great sobs.
He took the telegram with his free hand, flirted it open and read:
“Your father ill. You had better come home at once.
Dr. G. S. Larkin.”
“Doctor G. S. Larkin!” Garwood said, repeating the signature, “that’s like him, to sign it Doctor.”
“Oh, but Jerome,” his wife cried, “that’s of no importance—how he signs it—now.” And she wept afresh, as if he had added an affront to her misery.
“Well, there, dear, don’t cry. It’s all right. Must you go, think?” He released her and she sank into the chair again.
“Oh, yes,” she moaned, drooping toward the fire, “I must go at once. Oh, you were so long in coming! I needed you so, and wanted you so! I ought to have gone on that train to-night.” She shook her head slowly from side to side. “Poor, lonely old man!”
The words half enraged Garwood, but he kept silent. He did not know what else to do—only to wait.
“Where’s baby?” he asked presently.
“He’s sleeping,” she said, “in there.” She waved her hand wearily toward the door. “He’s all ready—we’re all all ready. When can we go?”
“Well, you can’t leave now until to-morrow,” he said, trying to be tender with her. “Hadn’t you better get to bed and get some rest?”
“Oh—no—no,” she moaned. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“But, dear, you’ll need your strength, you must try; think of baby.”
“Poor little fellow!” she said, as though he had been deserted. She clasped her knee in her hands and rocked back and forth. Garwood was silent, looking at her helplessly.
She grew calmer after awhile, and said:
“My poor little visit was doomed from the first; I knew it, Jerome.”
“Oh, now, don’t look at it that way,” said Garwood, in a big round voice. “You’ll soon be back, father’ll be better; he’s all right. You can bring him back with you, and we’ll have a good time here all together.”
She shook her head hopelessly.
“You go telegraph, Jerome; tell them when I’m coming.”
Garwood was glad to escape to the office and the bar.