"Well," she exclaimed, settling back on the cushions, "this is better! I don't know what Barker was thinking of! He's very stupid at times!"
The carriage joined the procession of other equipages of its kind. They had left the street at the end of which could be seen the court-house and the jail. The jail was blazing now with light, its iron bars showing black across its illumined windows. And beyond the jail, as if kept at bay by it, a huddle of low buildings stretched crazily along Mosher's Lane, a squalid street that preserved in irony the name of one of the city's earliest, richest and most respectable citizens, long since deceased. The Lane twinkled with the bright lights of saloons, the dim lights of pawnshops, the red lights of brothels--the slums, dark, foul, full of disease and want and crime. Along the streets passed and repassed shadowy, fugitive forms, negroes, Jews, men, and women, and children, ragged, unkempt, pinched by cold and hunger. But above all this, above the turmoil of Franklin Street and the reeking life of the slums behind it, above the brilliantly lighted jail, stood the court-house, gray in the dusk, its four corners shouldering out the sky, its low dome calmly poised above the town.
X
"And how is your dear mother?" Miss Masters turned to Eades and wrought her wry face into a smile. Her black eyes, which she seemed able to make sparkle at will, were fixed on him; her black-gloved hands were crossed primly in her lap, as she sat erect on the stiff chair Elizabeth Ward had given her.
"She's pretty well, thanks," said Eades. He had always disliked Miss Masters, but he disliked her more than ever this Sunday afternoon in April when he found her at the Wards'. It was a very inauspicious beginning of his spring vacation, to which, after his hard work of the winter term, he had looked forward with sentiments as tender as the spring itself, just beginning to show in the sprightly green that dotted the maple trees along Claybourne Avenue.
"And your sister?"
"She is very well, too."
"Dear me!" the ugly little woman ran on, speaking with the affectation she had cultivated for years enough to make it natural at last to her. "It has been so long since I've seen either of them! I told mama to-day that I didn't go to see even my old friends any more. Of course," she added, lowering her already low tone to a level of hushed deprecation, "we never go to see any of the new-comers; and lately there are so many, one hardly knows the old town. Still, I feel that we of the old families understand each other and are sufficient unto ourselves, as it were, even if we allow years to elapse without seeing each other--don't you, dear?" She turned briskly toward Elizabeth.
Eades had hoped to find Elizabeth alone, and he felt it to be peculiarly annoying that Miss Masters, whose exclusiveness kept her from visiting even her friends of the older families, should have chosen for her exception this particular Sunday afternoon out of all the other Sunday afternoons at her command. He had found it impossible to talk with Elizabeth in the way he had expected to talk to her, and he was so out of sorts that he could not talk to Miss Masters, though that maiden aristocrat of advancing years, strangely stimulated by his presence, seemed efficient enough to do all the talking herself.
Elizabeth was trying to find a position that would give her comfort, without denoting any lapse from the dignity of posture due a family that had been known in that city for nearly fifty years. But repose was impossible to her that afternoon, and she nervously kept her hands in motion, now grasping the back of her chair, now knitting them in her lap, now raising one to her brow; once she was on the point of clasping her knee, but this impulse frightened her so that she quickly pressed her belt down, drew a deep breath, resolutely sat erect, crossed her hands unnaturally in her lap, and smiled courageously at her visitors. Eades noted how firm her hands were, and how white; they were indicative of strength and character. She held her head a little to one side, keeping up her pale smile of interest for Miss Masters, and Eades thought that he should always think of her as she sat thus, in her soft blue dress, her eyes winking rapidly, her dark hair parting of its own accord.