Mr. Ramy, after a decent interval, returned to the shop; and AnnEliza, when they met, was unable to detect whether the emotionswhich seethed under her black alpaca found an echo in his bosom.
Outwardly he made no sign. He lit his pipe as placidly as ever andseemed to relapse without effort into the unruffled intimacy ofold. Yet to Ann Eliza's initiated eye a change became graduallyperceptible. She saw that he was beginning to look at her sisteras he had looked at her on that momentous afternoon: she evendiscerned a secret significance in the turn of his talk withEvelina. Once he asked her abruptly if she should like to travel,and Ann Eliza saw that the flush on Evelina's cheek was reflectedfrom the same fire which had scorched her own.
So they drifted on through the sultry weeks of July. At thatseason the business of the little shop almost ceased, and oneSaturday morning Mr. Ramy proposed that the sisters should lock upearly and go with him for a sail down the bay in one of the ConeyIsland boats.
Ann Eliza saw the light in Evelina's eye and her resolve wasinstantly taken.
"I guess I won't go, thank you kindly; but I'm sure my sisterwill be happy to."She was pained by the perfunctory phrase with which Evelinaurged her to accompany them; and still more by Mr. Ramy's silence.
"No, I guess I won't go," she repeated, rather in answer toherself than to them. "It's dreadfully hot and I've got a kinderheadache.""Oh, well, I wouldn't then," said her sister hurriedly.
"You'd better jest set here quietly and rest."*** A summary of Part I of "Bunner Sisters" appears on page 4of the advertising pages.
"Yes, I'll rest," Ann Eliza assented.
At two o'clock Mr. Ramy returned, and a moment later he andEvelina left the shop. Evelina had made herself another new bonnetfor the occasion, a bonnet, Ann Eliza thought, almost too youthfulin shape and colour. It was the first time it had ever occurred toher to criticize Evelina's taste, and she was frightened at theinsidious change in her attitude toward her sister.
When Ann Eliza, in later days, looked back on that afternoonshe felt that there had been something prophetic in the quality ofits solitude; it seemed to distill the triple essence of lonelinessin which all her after-life was to be lived. No purchasers came;not a hand fell on the door-latch; and the tick of the clock in theback room ironically emphasized the passing of the empty hours.
Evelina returned late and alone. Ann Eliza felt the comingcrisis in the sound of her footstep, which wavered along as if notknowing on what it trod. The elder sister's affection had sopassionately projected itself into her junior's fate that at suchmoments she seemed to be living two lives, her own and Evelina's;and her private longings shrank into silence at the sight of theother's hungry bliss. But it was evident that Evelina, neveracutely alive to the emotional atmosphere about her, had no ideathat her secret was suspected; and with an assumption of unconcernthat would have made Ann Eliza smile if the pang had been lesspiercing, the younger sister prepared to confess herself.
"What are you so busy about?" she said impatiently, as AnnEliza, beneath the gas-jet, fumbled for the matches. "Ain't youeven got time to ask me if I'd had a pleasant day?"Ann Eliza turned with a quiet smile. "I guess I don't haveto. Seems to me it's pretty plain you have.""Well, I don't know. I don't know HOW I feel--it's all so queer. I almost think I'd like to scream.""I guess you're tired.""No, I ain't. It's not that. But it all happened sosuddenly, and the boat was so crowded I thought everybody'd hearwhat he was saying.--Ann Eliza," she broke out, "why on earth don'tyou ask me what I'm talking about?"Ann Eliza, with a last effort of heroism, feigned a fondincomprehension.
"What ARE you?""Why, I'm engaged to be married--so there! Now it's out! Andit happened right on the boat; only to think of it! Of course Iwasn't exactly surprised--I've known right along he was going tosooner or later--on'y somehow I didn't think of its happening to-day. I thought he'd never get up his courage. He said he was so'fraid I'd say no--that's what kep' him so long from asking me.
Well, I ain't said yes YET--leastways I told him I'd have tothink it over; but I guess he knows. Oh, Ann Eliza, I'm so happy!"She hid the blinding brightness of her face.
Ann Eliza, just then, would only let herself feel that she wasglad. She drew down Evelina's hands and kissed her, and they heldeach other. When Evelina regained her voice she had a tale to tellwhich carried their vigil far into the night. Not a syllable, nota glance or gesture of Ramy's, was the elder sister spared; andwith unconscious irony she found herself comparing the details ofhis proposal to her with those which Evelina was imparting withmerciless prolixity.
The next few days were taken up with the embarrassedadjustment of their new relation to Mr. Ramy and to each other.
Ann Eliza's ardour carried her to new heights of self-effacement,and she invented late duties in the shop in order to leave Evelinaand her suitor longer alone in the back room. Later on, when shetried to remember the details of those first days, few came back toher: she knew only that she got up each morning with the sense ofhaving to push the leaden hours up the same long steep of pain.
Mr. Ramy came daily now. Every evening he and his betrothedwent out for a stroll around the Square, and when Evelina came inher cheeks were always pink. "He's kissed her under that tree atthe corner, away from the lamp-post," Ann Eliza said to herself,with sudden insight into unconjectured things. On Sundays theyusually went for the whole afternoon to the Central Park, and AnnEliza, from her seat in the mortal hush of the back room, followedstep by step their long slow beatific walk.
There had been, as yet, no allusion to their marriage, exceptthat Evelina had once told her sister that Mr. Ramy wished them toinvite Mrs. Hochmuller and Linda to the wedding. The mention ofthe laundress raised a half-forgotten fear in Ann Eliza, and shesaid in a tone of tentative appeal: "I guess if I was you Iwouldn't want to be very great friends with Mrs. Hochmuller."Evelina glanced at her compassionately. "I guess if you wasme you'd want to do everything you could to please the man youloved. It's lucky," she added with glacial irony, "that I'm nottoo grand for Herman's friends.""Oh," Ann Eliza protested, "that ain't what I mean--and youknow it ain't. Only somehow the day we saw her I didn't think sheseemed like the kinder person you'd want for a friend.""I guess a married woman's the best judge of such matters,"Evelina replied, as though she already walked in the light of herfuture state.
Ann Eliza, after that, kept her own counsel. She saw thatEvelina wanted her sympathy as little as her admonitions, and thatalready she counted for nothing in her sister's scheme of life. ToAnn Eliza's idolatrous acceptance of the cruelties of fate thisexclusion seemed both natural and just; but it caused her the mostlively pain. She could not divest her love for Evelina of itspassionate motherliness; no breath of reason could lower it to thecool temperature of sisterly affection.
She was then passing, as she thought, through the novitiate ofher pain; preparing, in a hundred experimental ways, for thesolitude awaiting her when Evelina left. It was true that it wouldbe a tempered loneliness. They would not be far apart. Evelinawould "run in" daily from the clock-maker's; they would doubtlesstake supper with her on Sundays. But already Ann Eliza guessedwith what growing perfunctoriness her sister would fulfillthese obligations; she even foresaw the day when, to get news ofEvelina, she should have to lock the shop at nightfall and goherself to Mr. Ramy's door. But on that contingency she would notdwell. "They can come to me when they want to--they'll always findme here," she simply said to herself.
One evening Evelina came in flushed and agitated from herstroll around the Square. Ann Eliza saw at once that something hadhappened; but the new habit of reticence checked her question.
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