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Nothing was to be heard but the storm, without, and now and then the opening and shutting of some door within. Another half-hour. Then the door of the seamstress's room opened, and her brother came out. How pale he was paler and graver than his sister ever remembered seeing him before. "Well," she said, rising, "how is your patient?" "Better," he briefly answered, "very much better."
The audience that hung with delight upon one of his addresses to the jury, at the close of a long and exciting trial, in which the wit and eloquence and poetry seemed to be the inspiration of the moment, electric sparks which the mind's own rapid motion generated, thought as little of the patient industry with which all had been elaborated as they who admire an exquisite ball-dress, that seems a part of the lovely form which it adorns, think of the pale weaver's loom and the poor seamstress's needle.
He had missed his train, and with it his honorable confession to Mr. Carstairs; missed Higginson; last and worst of all it seemed to him now that this was all that mattered in the least he had missed Miss Carstairs. In sooth, the world was all awry. But at the gate, a thought came to him, radiant as a heavenly messenger. Miss Carstairs was at her seamstress's on the Remsen road.
"He was to call for me at quarter past seven and take me home. I was at the seamstress's, perhaps quarter of a mile up the road. I waited and waited and then Oh what was that, do you know?" "Only this old floor cracking. Don't flatter it by noticing. How odd to find, meeting in this way, that we are both searching for the same man. Isn't it?"
Tears rolled down the seamstress's cheeks; she could not answer. Her little son's thin voice rose instead: "Baby's dead. We buried him in the ground. I saw it. Mr. Creed came in the cab with me." White flecks appeared suddenly at the corners of Hughs' lips. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and once more, giraffe-like, the little family marched on....
Here, without the slightest splendor of achievement or adventure, seemed to be the most incredible piece of real life we had ever seen. Why, I asked myself, was this woman so short even of German friends as to be condemned to a seamstress's penury?
There was a girl standing in the doorway a small, dark girl, with " A peal like chimes cut him short. "Dear Jenny Thurston! Our seamstress's little girl. She is spending the day with my mother, while I've been spending most of the day with her mother! Turn about! But I wish you'd tell me," she said, "who it is that could have spoken of me to you. How interesting that we have a friend in common!"
Cecilia was on the point of saying: 'That will do, please; I want to hear no more. But her curiosity and queer subtle fear forced her instead to repeat: "I don't understand. Do you mean he insinuates that Mr. Hilary has anything to do with with this girl, or what?" And she thought: 'I'll stop that, at any rate. The seamstress's face was distorted by her efforts to control her voice.
"Don't lag, Stanley!" At the reiteration of those words Hughs spoke. "Let the boy alone! You'll be nagging at the baby next!" Hoarse and grating, like sounds issuing from a damp vault, was this first speech. The seamstress's eyes brimmed over. "I won't get the chance," she stammered out. "He's gone!" Hughs' teeth gleamed like those of a dog at bay. "Who's taken him? You let me know the name."
That would explain the whole thing." Sitting damply on the dark stairway, he told of J. Pinkney Hare's evidently impromptu experiences in the public square, which had undoubtedly knocked from his mind all memory of his engagement at the seamstress's; and of the sudden recollection of it, which, there could be no question, was what had sent him and his new friend bursting out of the house and tearing for dear life up the road.
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