He dared not disagree with his wife—a short, thick-set little woman, several years his senior, addicted to side-combs, opinions of her own, and an extravagant way of boasting to others of her South Carolinian ancestry, and carefully avoiding any mention of her husband’s from central Connecticut.
Now it happened that that dear little old spinster, Miss Ann Moulton, who lived with her invalid sister on the second floor, was the first to really know Sue.
These two unmarried sisters had lived together since they were girls. They had a little property, just enough to provide for the modest apartment they were living in, and were anywhere from fifty to sixty years old. You could not possibly tell their exact age by looking at them, and, of course, they would not have told you had you asked them. They were both small, very much alike—little, gray, dried-up women. Both very refined, very gentle in their manners, gentle of voice, too. Miss Ann was the stronger of the two. She was the manager. Upon her frail, little person fell all the responsibility, their only relative being a brother who lived West, and who managed what little property they had. She had no one else to look after her affairs, and he was a lazy brother at that.
As for Miss Jane, the sister, she had always been an invalid. Her frail hands were strangely transparent when held to the light, her voice weak, her step uncertain, and her hair, like Miss Ann’s, nearly silver-white. On the street you could hardly tell the two sisters apart. They were so much alike, and dressed alike, which they had always done since they were children, and yet they were not twins. There was a difference, however; Miss Jane’s cheeks were sunken, and there were dark circles under her patient, gray eyes. She never let any one know she was an invalid; neither did Miss Ann mention it. It had all happened so many years ago, but it was as clear in Jane Moulton’s memory as if it had happened yesterday: Her gasping for breath, her failing strength as she fought on in the grip of an ebb-tide. His sharp cry to her to keep her head, then his strong arm about her—blackness—then the beach, and he whom she loved, who had given his life for hers, lying drowned upon it.
A small daguerreotype of him hung above her bed; one taken when he was eighteen, the year they were engaged.
The Misses Moulton’s apartment was furnished in a various and curious collection of quaint little round tables with spindle legs, a Franklin stove burning wood, some old family portraits in oval gilt frames, and high-post bedsteads for each of the bedrooms, the sunny one being Miss Jane’s. There were big easy chairs covered with chintz in the sitting-room, and an assortment of different kinds of china, suggesting relics of several family collections; none of them matched—three teacups and saucers of one set, and four of another, some in gold and lustre. They had but one servant—Mary—an American, who came from up New York State, a motherly woman of fifty, fat, serious, and good-natured.
Sue had been giving a singing lesson as far up-town as East 46th Street, to the daughter of a wealthy alderman, who owned a brownstone, high-stooped house, grafted intact from the last political election. This house was a block above the railroad bridge on Lexington Avenue, and there being no cars running to-day, owing to a strike on the Third Avenue horse-car line, Sue had been obliged this wretched January day, with the streets swimming in slush under a fine, drizzling rain, to reach her destination on foot. After her lesson she had crossed the bridge spanning the Grand Central tracks, and found her way back to Waverly Place by way of Madison Avenue.
Stairs have a habit of forcing acquaintanceships, and making friends, a way of introducing strangers, who otherwise would not dare speak to each other, of bringing neighbors face to face, and providing them with a firm foothold until they knew each other better. Where Joe Grimsby had failed on the stairs, Miss Ann Moulton succeeded. Miss Ann had put on her bonnet to do an errand, closed the door of her sitting-room, and stood in the dim light of the landing, buttoning a new pair of lisle-thread gloves she had purchased the day before at the big Stewart store, just as Sue, wet and tired from her lesson up-town, came up the stairs, her cloak and hat glistening with rain. As she neared the Moultons’ landing, she caught sight of the little old maid nervously struggling over the top button of her left-hand glove.