While he stood chaffing her at the car door, she clasped his hand tightly and begged him to see her soon. As the car started a newsboy hailed Wayne familiarly from the street and Fanny saw her brother’s broad shoulders bent over the lad and his elbow crooked as he felt for a coin. How true it was that everyone liked Wayne! His generosity was boundless; the very recklessness and extravagance of his derelictions endeared him to many. As the Club door closed upon him the newsboy dashed off with an exultant shout on the wings of new fortune.
CHAPTER XVI
THE TRIP TO BOSTON
MRS. CRAIGHILL bore the scrutiny of her new fellow-citizens with dignity, and by the first of December she had ceased to be a curiosity. She had met everyone of importance; even Mrs. Wingfield had been obliged to bow to her at a reception. Those who persisted in their determination to ignore her advent were too few to count. It had been hinted that she would prove loud; that she was dull; that she would make her husband’s money fly—“such women” always did; but no one worth considering was willing at the end of two months to say that she was properly to be classed among “such women.” Her severest critics were those who, habituated to the contemplation of Roger Craighill’s presence in a front pew at church, feared that by marrying one of “such women”—they being young adventuresses headed brazenly for the divorce court—their idol might suffer the pains and penalties of scandal and alimony. Even the most conservative now admitted that if Mrs. Craighill’s motives in marrying her elderly husband had not been the noblest, she was carrying herself well. Members of her own set, who had been among the original doubters, had waited for the complete disclosure of Mrs. Craighill’s wardrobe before committing themselves, but the taste and sobriety of her raiment disarmed criticism; she was not loud. In another of the circles within the Circle it was questioned whether the newcomer was fitted intellectually to be Roger Craighill’s wife, but Fanny Blair vouched for the worthiness of her stepmother’s interests. “Addie reads everything,” declared Mrs. Blair sweepingly, whereupon Mrs. Craighill was promptly nominated for membership in the Woman’s Club. Many were saying that her conduct, in circumstances the most difficult, had been admirable and the frequency with which, in these first weeks, Fanny Blair had gone about with her, advertised the completeness of the new wife’s acceptance in the family. It was even whispered that Wayne had reformed, and this startling announcement, where it found credence, was attributed to his stepmother’s influence.
Roger Craighill and his wife were dining alone at home the evening before the day of their departure for Boston. He had long made a point of dressing for dinner and she wore a gown he had not seen before and whose perfection he praised.
“Your taste is exquisite, Addie. I like you in light things; they seem to be a part of you—to express you. You are the most graceful and charming woman in the world.”
Her face brightened. They had been dining out a great deal and it was a pleasure to have this evening at their own table. She felt again the dignity of her position as Roger Craighill’s wife. She had been hurt deeply by his exclusion of her on the night he had written his address; but she thought now how handsome he was, how well he carried his years, and it was no mean thing to have been chosen by such a man to share his home and fame. She had found it all too easy to take refuge in Wayne’s ready comradeship; the stolen references to their earlier acquaintance that she had suffered him to make had shown her how dangerous it was to trust to his consolations. Wayne must be kept at a distance; she would take care that he did not see her again alone.
In this fresh access of loyalty to her husband she excused and justified his conduct in shutting himself in to prepare his address; very likely it was the way of busy men who thus give their leisure to public service. She must sacrifice her own pleasure just as he did and bring herself into sympathy with these labours of his. There was flattery in his frequent monologues on public matters and public men; she was perforce the listener, but he was older and in her ignorance it was an agreeable relief not to be expected to contribute more than an inquiry, thrown in to lead him on. She resolved to keep a scrap-book of the offerings of the clipping bureau to which he subscribed, that a complete history might be made of his public services. At Boston she expected to hear him speak for the first time; she had seen the programme of the conferences and several men of national prominence were to make addresses.
She poured the coffee and sent the maid away, to prolong the mood of this hour. The quiet service, the substantial appointments of the room, the realization that she bore the honoured name of the man who faced her contributed to her happiness. It was pleasant to be Mrs. Craighill; she was enjoying her position in the thousand ways possible to her nature—the stir of the clerks in the shops when she appeared, the whispered interest her presence occasioned anywhere. She was, indeed, Mrs. Craighill and everyone was anxious to serve her. To be sought first by those persons who are forever seeking victims to act as patronesses; to be asked to head subscription lists; the deference shown her—these things she enjoyed with a pardonable zest and she would not jeopardize her right to them.
“As you haven’t seen Boston in late years,” Colonel Craighill was saying, “you will find much to interest you while we are there for the municipal conferences. Though I haven’t the slightest ancestral claim on New England I feel a certain kinship with her people. If we were not so firmly planted here I should like to move to Boston to spend my last years there. Contact with some of her fine, public-spirited citizens would be an inspiration. Some of my best friends are Bostonians, friends I have made through my connection with public work. People ask me—and they will be asking you from time to time—why I spend so much time on these movements for the public welfare; but they have been a great resource to me. I have been well repaid for all I have done. I have had my perplexities and worries, a modern business man is ground in a hard mill; but I am conscious of having done my little toward bettering our political and social conditions, and nothing in my life makes me happier than that thought. Do you know,” and he smiled depreciatingly, “I heard from one or two quarters that Harvard was going to confer a degree on me next year for my work in behalf of civic reform; it was only an intimation, but one of my friends, whom I have learned to know well at our annual conferences, is a prominent alumnus, and he has remarked several times that they’d have to make a Harvard man of me somehow.”
“I think it is so remarkable,” said Mrs. Craighill, “that you never went to college. You seem like a college man.”