Men, Women, and Ghosts | Page 8

were alone after dinner. "I don't want your husband to feel that he must run away from you to entertain me."
"My husband's ideas of hospitality are generous," said Mrs. Sharpe. "I have always found him as ready to make it pleasant here for my company as for his own."
She made this little speech with dignity. Did both women know it for the farce it was? To do Miss Dallas justice,--I am not sure. She was not a bad-hearted woman. She was a handsome woman. She had come to Lime to enjoy herself. Those September days and nights were fair there by the dreamy sea. On the whole I am inclined to think that she did not know exactly what she was about.
"My perfumery never lasts," said Harrie, once, stooping to pick up Pauline's fine handkerchief, to which a faint scent like unseen heliotrope clung; it clung to everything of Pauline's; you would never see a heliotrope without thinking of her, as Dr. Sharpe had often said. "Myron used to like good cologne, but I can't afford to buy it, so I make it myself, and use it Sundays, and it's all blown away by the time I get to church. Myron says he is glad of it, for it is more like Mrs. Allen's Hair Restorer than anything else. What do you use, Pauline?"
"Sachet powder of course," said Miss Dallas, smiling.
That evening Harrie stole away by herself to the village apothecary's. Myron should not know for what she went. If it were the breath of a heliotrope, thought foolish Harrie, which made it so pleasant for people to be near Pauline, that was a matter easily remedied. But sachet powder, you should know, is a dollar an ounce, and Harrie must needs content herself with "the American," which could be had for fifty cents; and so, of course, after she had spent her money, and made her little silk bags, and put them away into her bureau drawers, Myron never told her, for all her pains, that she reminded him of a heliotrope with the dew on it. One day a pink silk bag fell out from under her dress, where she had tucked it.
"What's all this nonsense, Harrie?" said her husband, in a sharp tone.
At another time, the Doctor and Pauline were driving upon the beach at sunset, when, turning a sudden corner, Miss Dallas cried out, in real delight,--
"See! That beautiful creature! Who can it be?"
And there was Harrie, out on a rock in the opal surf,--a little scarlet mermaid, combing her hair with her thin fingers, from which the water almost washed the wedding ring. It was--who knew how long, since the pretty bathing-suit had been taken down from the garret nails? What sudden yearning for the wash of waves, and the spring of girlhood, and the consciousness that one is fair to see, had overtaken her? She watched through her hair and her fingers for the love in her husband's eyes.
But he waded out to her, ill-pleased.
"Harrie, this is very imprudent,--very! I don't see what could have possessed you!"
Myron Sharpe loved his wife. Of course he did. He began, about this time, to state the fact to himself several times a day. Had she not been all the world to him when he wooed and won her in her rosy, ripening days? Was she not all the world to him now that a bit of searness had crept upon her, in a married life of eight hard-working years?
That she had grown a little sear, he felt somewhat keenly of late. She had a dreary, draggled look at breakfast, after the children had cried at night,--and the nights when Mrs. Sharpe's children did not cry were like angels' visits. It was perhaps the more noticeable, because Miss Dallas had a peculiar color and coolness and sparkle in the morning, like that of opening flowers. She had not been up till midnight with a sick baby.
Harrie was apt to be too busy in the kitchen to run and meet him when he came home at dusk. Or, if she came, it was with her sleeves rolled up and an apron on. Miss Dallas sat at the window; the lace curtain waved about her; she nodded and smiled as he walked up the path. In the evening Harrie talked of Rocko, or the price of butter; she did not venture beyond, poor thing! since her experience with Tennessee.
Miss Dallas quoted Browning, and discussed Goethe, and talked Parepa; and they had no lights, and the September moon shone in. Sometimes Mrs. Sharpe had mending to do, and, as she could not sew on her husband's buttons satisfactorily by moonlight, would slip into the dining-room with kerosene and mosquitoes for company. The Doctor may have noticed, or he may not, how