The Red Book Magazine/Volume 5/Number 2/The Cradle

by Anne Warner

 

The Cradle

BY ANNE WARNER

He was sitting at one of the tiny tables in the Ritz, just because he had been “over” long enough to have acquired the tea-habit, and to be beset with a thirst that only tea would satisfy as soon as “feef o'clock” came to time each day. Sometimes he fulfilled his craving in the Bois, or at the Palais, or in one of the many private salons where he was persona grata, but when he was near he liked the Ritz—because—because—oh, because the Ritz is the Ritz and has an atmosphere apart and individual.

The afternoon was fine and the tables were all full; a constant succession of visitors moved in and out, and a constant (in another sense of the word) succession of other visitors sat and watched them. It amused the man already mentioned to watch these watchers—the ones whose enjoyment consisted in contemplating the enjoyment of others,—the little groups who choked down their tea between absorbed on-looking,—the people who came there not to satisfy any need except that of their curiosity.

There were many such in the room and his eyes roamed meditatively over them all until—having completed the circuit and encompassed the whole crowd—they came back to the starting point and saw that the starting point had altered during their tour. The two regally blonde French women who had been there a minute ago were gone, and in their stead sat a diminutive creature with an elderly lady—the one in gray, the other in black.

The tiny one was daintily tiny, fairy-like in the extreme. She was exquisitely gowned and her attire was so perfect in its simplicity and so devoid of any species of ornament that an American or English woman would never have given her a second glance, while a Continental would have suspected and lorgnetted an empress incognita. She had on a gray hat with little soft gray silk roses tucked beneath its brim, a gray jacket with gray lace (gray lace costs, let me tell you) imbedded in its yoke and cuffs, a princesse gown of tucks so finely laid as to hair-line the cloth, gray bottines, and a bit of gray silk stocking showed where her foot advanced beneath the table.

The man across the way could not but admire, and continue to admire. She was talking with her companion—a conversation devoid of animation, but evidently pleasant and interesting. Only once did she turn her head at all;—and then a flash of remembrance shot full in his face—!

It was the little girl who married Dick Bentley the autumn before he died,—the little girl who came from San Francisco all alone to marry him when the doctors said that he could not go to her!

Six years ago—that was!

He was getting up and dragging his chair across towards her. He did not seem to remember the usages of society in that minute—he remembered only the wonderful sweetness and courage that the wee little thing had shown at that long-ago wedding, when she had taken the vow to be a widow at once with the vow to be a wife.

“You remember me?—Davis, you know! I was at your—at Dick's—” he stopped short, but her hand was put forth and her eyes (gray, too) were smiling.

“Yes, of course. How pleasant to see you here.”

There was something unutterably quiet yet sincere in her voice. He sat down.

“You are staying in Paris?” he said.

“For a few days, yes; we leave to-morrow night, however.”

“And I, to-morrow noon.”

“The Riviera?—the Channel-train?” she asked.

“The Channel-train.”

“Ah!” there was no fluttering interest in her manner—only a sweet cordiality. She did not look at him, but at her tea cup. He was full of desire to know of her, nevertheless.

“You are traveling?”

“I think I may call it that. We stay a few weeks in one place and then in another.”

“Always?”

“I have no home. I was an orphan, you know. I can't remember either my father or my mother; and there came no child to me.” Suddenly, there in the midst of the five-o'clock Ritz, her face went down in her hands; across her bowed head the elderly lady threw a meaning glance at Davis, who was fearfully shocked at the sudden emotion betrayed by one so full of self-control.

But the next instant she was smiling through a mist (also gray) and saying—

“Oh, we like to roam about, madame and I. And we amuse ourselves as we go, n'est-ce pas, madame?”

The elderly lady smiled. Affection and deep sympathy both were manifested in her face.

“And so you go to-morrow,” the girl went on—a little uncertainly; “if it was not that we go, too, I should ask you to call; but as it is—” she made a significant gesture.

“But I wish that I could come,” said the man hurriedly; “I do wish I could come. Can't I come to-morrow morning—just for a few minutes?” His tone was very earnest and pleading.

“But I am going shopping to-morrow morning,” she said, “and it is something that I cannot put off.”

“But I can go, too,” he declared eagerly. “Haven't you seen how the men here go shopping with the women? Let me go with you to-morrow.”

She looked at him and he saw a strange sort of conflict in her face, and then she blushed. Anything more heart-storming than that blush was never seen before. “Oh, let me go with you!” he all but begged. It seemed to him that he had never in all his life wanted permission to do anything so much as he wanted hers to accompany her on that “tour de commission.”

She played with her teaspoon a long minute and then she said, “Very well, come then. I am at the Hotel de Bade, and I will be ready at half-after nine.”

 

He was exact to the minute on the following morning and she was, too. She came down directly his card went up, and again her gown was gray and as simple as befitted early morning.

“This is really very nice of you,” she said as they went out to the cab, “but I'm afraid you'll be bored—men at home do not interest themselves in these expeditions generally.”

She smiled.

“What are we going to buy—if I may ask?” he said, as the cab rolled away.

“We are going to buy a cradle,” she said.

“A cradle!”

“Yes, a cradle. I have a little friend here in Paris whom the world has made poor, but whom Heaven is making rich-and I have promised her a cradle. You see the world has made me rich and Heaven has left me poor, so the best pleasure life gives me is when I can balance the load a little for someone else.” Her great eyes turned towards him and something rose oddly in his throat, so that he could not possibly speak to her.

“I take a great deal of pleasure helping people,” she said, “and madame is lovely about helping me to help them. Places where I cannot go, she goes, so we can know every person and know just what they need. I have a bed in ever so many hospitals and a long list of dear sick or unhappy people in almost every place we stay. It keeps me from thinking of my own life—it teaches me that sorrow is not mine alone.”

She paused for a minute and then went on in a brighter tone, “But the cradle is not exactly charity. You see, they ran away—Sophie and her lieutenant—and were married, and the parents declare they will not forgive them—but, of course, they will. They have a cunning apartment and a bonne and tout cela, only poor Sophie feels it is almost scandalous that she cannot have real lace on every little thing she is making, and so I have promised that the cradle at least shall be suitable for one whose grandpapas are a baron and a general.”

He found himself still unable to articulate.

“You won't mind?” she went on, a shadow of anxiety darkening her voice; “you know you said yesterday that men went shopping often. I've seen them every day, and I think it is very sweet to see. At Madame Jeanne's yesterday I saw a very great man indeed, choosing his wife's hats, and I admired him all the more for it. I like the way they both work together here; the little time that Dick was spared me we never went one single place apart; we used to laugh when he bought cigars with me and I hair-pins with him.”

The cab was crossing the Pont Neuf and beginning its struggle for existence in the Quartier Latin.

“I assure you,” he said, “so far from minding, I feel deeply honored. I—I'm very glad I took tea at the Ritz yesterday.”

She gave him a glance so devoid of anything but gratitude that an echo of the swallowed choke came back—and just then the cab stopped.

They alighted.

It was a big and brilliant store and the windows were full of cradles containing happy waxen babies.

They went in.

Instantly a clerk was before them—smiling, bowing, deeply concerned for their welfare.

“A cradle, a 'completely furnished' cradle.”

Ah, on the second floor—all—everything would be found there. Monsieur would see, madame would view—a moment till the lift descends! Voila! take care of the crack in entering!—Cradles furnishing—second floor!

The elevator took them up and as they quitted it he had to notice the lovely heightened interest in her face. She looked up and down the vista of little beds and said softly, “Just to think that a baby will come to claim every one of them—”

But another clerk was before them another of those perfect beings whom all the shopping public of the wide world may well envy Paris—and a very few other cities.

“A cradle! at about what price?—this way, I beg.” They went around to the other side and there stood twenty in a row—all different—each exquisite—some in enamel, some in carved wood, some in gilt or in silver, some made of great silken ropes interwoven, some made of twisted bamboo.

He could only watch her face as she moved up and down the line, touching them with her gloved finger-tips—the touch as tender as the expression on her face.

The clerk was not voluble,—he was silent, he saw the sale was made beforehand. He answered questions and sometimes he looked at Davis. Davis hardly knew what to do with the look; he felt it would be thieving to accept, and yet it was too overwhelmingly delightful to refuse.

She stopped at last before one that outshone all the rest. Two great storks carved in dark wood held, hung between them, a basket of woven silver.

“Do you think it is too much?” she asked Davis, with an irresistible appeal in her tone and eyes.

The clerk did not even trouble to raise his eyes—he thought he knew—(and he did).

“No, no indeed!' came the answer.

She flashed one look of radiant joy over the two men and the cradle.

“And now the furnishings,” she said, breathlessly.

As they moved away she slipped her porte-monnaie into her companion's hand. “You can pay it all,” she whispered. He nodded.

They sat down before a great table upon which were displayed samples of blankets, coverlets, wee tucked pillow-slips, lace-edged spreads and so forth.

“You're not bored?” she said to him—her eyes and cheeks and lips still overspread with the wonderful tender charm—“you're sure?”

“Bored!” he ejaculated. And then he was silent and watched her.

The clerk brought out great rolls of carefully corded-up treasures, and she bent above them and reveled in them and chose from among them.

“Do you think I am foolish?” she asked him just once, when a little down quilt with a wreath of hand-embroidered roses was under consideration.

“I think you are an angel!” he answered.

She laughed a little soft laugh and took the quilt.

Finally it was all over. She gave the address: “Mme. Léon de Gourville, 11 bis. Passage de la Visitation,” and he drew out his purse.

“Oh, that is the wrong purse,” she reminded him quickly.

“Sh—later,” he said with authority. They brought him the change from his two thousand-franc notes, and then the clerk ushered them back to the elevator and wished them au revoir.

 

When they reached the door below it was raining; the cabman had raised the hood, and stood ready to tuck them in behind its apron.

“I have been very happy,” she said, when they were moving again; “it was kind of you to be so patient.”

“But I was happy, too,” he declared.

“What a strange thing a woman is,” she went on; “we are no better than children after all. Do you know my pleasure this morning was hundred-folded by the knowledge that that clerk—that man that I shall never see again—thought I was buying for myself. To know that he thought I was one of those heaven-blessed women that really do exist!—to think that he was quite sure of it—oh!” her face suddenly went down in her hands again just as it had the afternoon before at the Ritz. “God help me!” she sobbed—and then was instantaneously brave again.

“But we must settle our accounts,” she said, putting down emotion with finance—the latter being death to sentiment of any sort the world over; “how much was it all?”

He battled fiercely with that horrible lump that had risen again at the sight of her face in her hands.

“It was nothing,” he said.

“Nothing!”

“Listen!” he put his hand hard on hers to gain emphasis. “Listen!—it's been a a wonderful morning for me, too. I'm rich, too—let me do some good,—I pray you by—by all that is holy—let me give the cradle; I ask you with—with my soul.”

She was still for a minute. Then she looked at him.

“Are you really rich?” she asked.

“Very,” he said, tersely.

She was silent for another minute; then, “I shall tell Sophie,” she said, simply. “I can give her something else myself.”

They came to the hotel a little later.

“And you leave to-night for Dresden?” he asked, as he accompanied her within.

“Yes, and you go to Calais?” she replied.

They touched hands.

“Good-bye,” she said, gently.

“Good-bye.”

 

He reached his hotel in good time to make the Gare du Nord and the Channel-train, but he did neither. He went to his room and—throwing himself across a large easy-chair—thought.

And thought.

He was a man and yet he forgot to lunch. He never forgot before, or after, but he forgot it that day.

He sat still thinking until nearly four o'clock, and then he sprang up and rang furiously.

“L'Indicateur,” he said to the boy who came; “'here,” he tossed him a coin, “ask in the office if I can get a compartment on to-night's German express—the one that goes to Dresden. Tell them to send to telegraph—it's—it's vital.”