Best Short Stories - [51]

too late to get into the church. She began to sob, and said:

‘“Oh, oh, he is gone, he is gone, and I didn’t see him before he died!”

‘“Yes!” I said, “he is gone, he is gone, he is gone — oh, will this suffering never cease!”

‘“You loved him, then! Oh, you too loved him!”

‘“Loved him! Loved who?”

‘“Why, my poor George! my poor nephew!”

‘“Oh — him! Yes — oh, yes, yes. Certainly — certainly. Punch — punch — oh, this misery will kill me!”

‘“Bless you! bless you, sir, for these sweet words! I, too, suffer in this dear loss. Were you present during his last moments?”

‘“Yes. I — whose last moments?”

‘“His. The dear departed’s.”

‘“Yes! Oh, yes — yes — yes! I suppose so, I think so, I don’t know! Oh, certainly — I was there I was there!”

‘“Oh, what a privilege! what a precious privilege! And his last words — oh, tell me, tell me his last words! What did he say?”

‘“He said — he said — oh, my head, my head, my head! He said — he said — he never said anything but Punch, punch, punch in the presence of the passenjare! Oh, leave me, madam! In the name of all that is generous, leave me to my madness, my misery, my despair! — a buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent fare — endu — rance can no fur — ther go! — PUNCH in the presence of the passenjare!”

My friend’s hopeless eyes rested upon mine a pregnant minute, and then he said impressively:

‘Mark, you do not say anything. You do not offer me any hope. But, ah me, it is just as well — it is just as well. You could not do me any good. The time has long gone by when words could comfort me. Something tells me that my tongue is doomed to wag forever to the jigger of that remorseless jingle. There — there it is coming on me again: a blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a — ’

Thus murmuring faint and fainter, my friend sank into a peaceful trance and forgot his sufferings in a blessed respite.

How did I finally save him from an asylum? I took him to a neighboring university and made him discharge the burden of his persecuting rhymes into the eager ears of the poor, unthinking students. How is it with them, now? The result is too sad to tell. Why did I write this article? It was for a worthy, even a noble, purpose. It was to warn you, reader, if you should come across those merciless rhymes, to avoid them — avoid them as you would a pestilence.

Edith Wharton The Other Two

I

Waythorn, on the drawing-room hearth, waited for his wife to come down to dinner.

It was their first night under his own roof, and he was surprised at his thrill of boyish agitation. He was not so old, to be sure — his glass gave him little more than the five-and-thirty years to which his wife confessed — but he had fancied himself already in the temperate zone; yet here he was listening for her step with a tender sense of all it symbolized, with some old trail of verse about the garlanded nuptial door-posts floating through his enjoyment of the pleasant room and the good dinner just beyond it.

They had been hastily recalled from their honeymoon by the illness of Lily Haskett, the child of Mrs. Waythorn’s first marriage. The little girl, at Waythorn’s desire, had been transferred to his house on the day of her mother’s wedding, and the doctor, on their arrival, broke the news that she was ill with typhoid, but declared that all the symptoms were favorable. Lily could show twelve years of unblemished health, and the case promised to be a light one. The nurse spoke as reassuringly, and after a moment of alarm Mrs. Waythorn had adjusted herself to the situation. She was very fond of Lily — her affection for the child had perhaps been her decisive charm in Waythorn’s eyes — but she had the perfectly balanced nerves which her little girl had inherited, and no woman ever wasted less tissue in unproductive worry. Waythorn was therefore quite prepared to see her come in presently, a little late because of a last look at Lily, but as serene and well-appointed as if her good-night kiss had been laid on the brow of health. Her composure was restful to him; it acted as ballast to his somewhat unstable sensibilities. As he pictured her bending over the child’s bed he thought how soothing her presence must be in illness: her very step would prognosticate recovery.

His own life had been a gray one, from temperament rather than circumstance, and he had been drawn to her by the unperturbed gayety which kept her fresh and elastic at an age when most women’s activities are growing either slack or febrile. He knew what was said about her; for, popular as she was, there had always been a faint undercurrent of detraction. When she had appeared in New York, nine or ten years earlier, as the pretty Mrs. Haskett whom Gus Varick had unearthed somewhere — was it in Pittsburgh[82] or Utica?[83] — society, while promptly accepting her, had reserved the right to cast a doubt on its own discrimination. Inquiry, however, established her undoubted connection with a socially reigning family, and explained her recent divorce as the natural result of a runaway match at seventeen; and as nothing was known of Mr. Haskett it was easy to believe the worst of him.