The Bird in the Box

by Mary M. Mears

The money received from her father was sufficient to supply Rachel's needs and even permitted the preparation of a simple wardrobe. Under Emily's supervision she planned and cut out and sewed feverishly for days together. Then abruptly she would abandon her needle. She bought books and endeavoured to teach herself French. She was never idle.

"You are overdoing," Simon remonstrated. "You will make yourself ill with these things."

She shook her head. Activity was good for her.

With the success of his suit, Simon had recovered poise. His manner was dignified and somewhat stiff. He spoke slowly and in a well-modulated voice. To the world he was as he had been formerly; but Rachel read deeper.

She knew that he desired to be gallant, even witty. And this effort to be all that she wished him to be touched her profoundly. Constantly he was bringing gifts. Offering them to her, he would watch her face to see if he had selected wisely. She perfectly understood this desire to offer something that would afford pleasure. Had she not experienced the same impulse? though she had not been able to gratify it. When she met Emil St. Ives in the cemetery at Old Harbour—how long ago it seemed now—instead of gifts she had been able to give him only an earnest, unswerving attention. This listening on the part of a girl to his long, often technical explanations, had he valued it, as she valued Simon's presents? But these reflections were checked by a prompt warning from within. Danger lay that way. Memory would prove a scourge if indulged and she did not want to feel.

Notwithstanding the approaching realization of what he had desired so long, Simon Hart still had moments when he suffered. The Street of Masts had always been an obnoxious quarter in his eyes, though for a short period, the fact that Rachel dwelt in it had somewhat modified its objectionable features. But that was before their engagement. Now the entire section stirred in him a positive repugnance. That she, his future wife, should elect to remain in a sordid setting when she might have been surrounded by every luxury, filled him with a dull sense of anger and chagrin. But he was unequal to the task of remonstrating. Whenever he thought of speaking strongly to her on the matter, timidity overcame him. Knowing what her feeling was for him, he shrank from the appearance of urging any claim. Julia Burgdorf by her attitude increased his discomfort.

Ever since Rachel's refusal to return to her house when she had expected her, Julia, with the childish pique of a woman accustomed to having every whim gratified, had washed her hands of her. Whenever she saw Simon she bantered him on the subject of his prolonged engagement.

"Is the happy day fixed yet?" she would cry, with eye and shoulder play. "No? Is it possible! The headstrong young person hesitates to renounce her freedom? Even the prospect of escaping life in an attic does not influence her? Extraordinary!"

Whenever he went to see Rachel, Simon was beset by the dread that he might meet one of his business acquaintances. What if by chance it became known that he intended to marry a young woman who lived on the lower East side? Things like that easily leaked out. Finally his sensitiveness increased to the point where he shrank even from the frank gaze of the children in the street, a gaze which singled him out because of his clothes, his gait, his strangeness to their world. More than all else he feared the curiosity of members of his own household. The maid who had admitted Rachel and her grandfather when they called at the house had left his service. When Rachel came there as his bride nothing of her history would be known to the servants. None the less he felt that Theresa Walker, his housekeeper, eyed him shrewdly. Not only this, he was convinced that she had communicated her suspicions to Peter, the coachman. Otherwise, why should Peter, who was old and stupid, wear such a significant look because he, Simon, failed to use the horses, as formerly, for a short time every evening?

However, though he suffered for the reasons just related, he was, on the whole, very tranquil. Nor was his engagement his only cause for satisfaction. He was about to bring out his book on gems. It was a voluminous work, weighty, carefully prepared, extensively illustrated. He awaited its appearance with eagerness. When the first copy arrived from the publisher he took it the same evening to Rachel.