Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/432



RS. ENNIS was writing as usual on the bulging old atlas laid in her lap, the traveling-inkstand at her elbow on the low window-sill. She was entirely absorbed and curiously exhilarated as she rapidly filled, numbered, and tossed aside sheet after sheet of the thinnest note-paper.

All the thought, sentiment, and passion of her being found their outlet in her letters to her absent husband. More than all else, the pathos of her starved, unnatural existence was shown by the pages she wrote of homely details that strove to make real their marriage, to keep it from becoming to them both a sort of dream—an almost fierce determination to hold him close to her daily life, hers and the children's.

It was almost three years since she and her boy had stood on the beach at Fort Monroe, up near the soldiers' cemetery, and watched the ship "all hands up anchor," swing round, and head for the Capes. Sometimes she had heard every two weeks, sometimes the silence was unbroken for three dreary months, during a long cruise to some remote island of the Southern Archipelago. Then again, while in dock at Mare Island, the letters came daily. The repairs once finished, he was again blotted from her life for weeks, and a cablegram in the papers, a mere line to say the "Mohican" had arrived at Valparaiso or Callao, with the added brief "all well," was what she lived on till the long sea letter, often a month old, came to gladden her heart once more.

She was answering a letter that had come that morning unexpectedly, brought north by a tramp steamer.

As she began to re-read it the third time in search of fresh stimulus, she suddenly started and raised her flushed face. A woman's voice was singing, as it approached along the narrow hotel corridor, a series of soft trills ending in a chromatic run that had the effect of a low, sweet laugh. There was a pause, and then a sharp tattoo on the door-panel, and the voice sang to its accompaniment:

Mrs. Ennis pounced upon the foreign-stamped envelope lying at her feet, piled helter-skelter into her lap the many loose sheets about her, and, throwing over all her long sewing-apron, cried:

"Come in, Alice!"

The door was thrown wide, a voice announced pompously, "Miss Blithe," and a tall, beautiful girl swept in with a burlesque grand air and courtesy. Then she exclaimed naturally, laughing and running to Mrs. Ennis:

"I'm so insanely happy to-day, please don't mind anything I do. Are you happy, too, to-day?" She looked attentively at Mrs. Ennis, who nodded her head, returning the girl's sharp scrutiny. Then they both looked hastily away. Mrs. Ennis caught up a little jacket, holding it away from her lest Alice should detect the rustle of the hidden letter, and both women talked at random about the best way to darn an obtuse-angled rent.

"Mrs. Ennis," began Miss Blithe with a rising inflection. Then she took a deep breath, and began again with a falling inflection:

"Mrs. Ennis," again a pause, and then she said rapidly:

"We ought to hear by the same mail, oughtn't we, now that Archie has been transferred to your husband's ship?" Mrs. Ennis looked up quickly. The girl's head was on one side, critically admiring the polish of her pretty finger-nails, her hand extended. Mrs. Ennis went on with her sewing.

"As a rule, yes; but you must learn, Alice, to make allowances at this distance. A mail might go off very suddenly, and Mr. Endicott might not hear the call; be on some special duty, asleep after a watch, or ashore. You must remember the possibilities."

"Yes? How about Dr. Ennis in all this? Doesn't any of it hold good in your case?" Alice asked with dancing eyes. Mrs. Ennis laughed nervously. Presently Miss Blithe wandered to the window that looked out toward the college, across the tree-tops.

"Oh, Mrs. Ennis! There goes Preston again, on the end of the longest kind