of a sheet-iron stove. This stove, having been second-hand upon its arrival, was now wearing three patches through the ill-fitted rivets of which smoke and gas filtered, obscuring the wall map of North America that was at least three states behind the times.
The season and bad weather of course had some effect upon her point of view, for given June, open doors and windows, and a glimpse of the Moosatuck to draw the eye from the faded map, the most pressing of grievances would have vanished.
Somehow Miranda had never realized until now what an exasperating month February was; formerly she had used the evenings for her spring sewing and was really glad of the forced cessation of the small events that made Hattertown’s social life, but now the ice crust upon the hill slope above calf pastures made walking impossible between the house and the station siding, so that two or three and in one week five evenings went by and only the greeting of lantern signals passed between Jim Bradley and Miranda.
The next afternoon on her return from school, Miranda found a letter in the box, directed in a round, bold, and unfamiliar hand; moreover, it was for her. Therefore, as it was a man’s writing it must be from Jim. Instead of opening it as she walked along, half a dozen children struggling on before or at her side, she dropped it in her pocket and then smiled to find, a few minutes later, when she reached her gate and needed a hand to open it with (the other carrying books) that it had remained inside the pocket caressing the square of paper.
Widow Banks was then “accommodating” at the house of the new ticket agent and telegraph operator, who had pneumonia, as his wife was obliged to fill his place. The Banks’ house was empty save for the cat who purred before the stove, there was no necessity for seeking privacy; yet Miranda went through the kitchen and shut herself into the little storm porch before she opened the envelope, and held the sheet close to the single diamond pane in the outer door that she might read.
“Respected Friend—” the words ran, “This has been the deuce of a month with ice and tie-ups. I need to see you Special to-morrow night. If the run is close so I can’t get up, I’ll fix to have Sweezy’s boy go fetch you to the depot with a team, so come down sure.
“Yours with Compliments,
“Jim Bradley.”
What did the Special mean? Was her hero going to leave the Milk Freight for a better job? That meant a passenger or possibly a through train, and neither of these would pause on the side track at Hattertown. Or—well, there was no use in guessing; “to-morrow night” was exactly twenty-eight hours away and that was all there was to it. So Randy put wood on the fire, skimmed a saucer of cream which she gave to the cat as if in some way propitiating a powerful domestic idol, lit the lamp, though it was broad daylight, and began the preparation of curling the feathers in her best hat by holding them in the steam of the tea-kettle, and then realized that as the morrow was Saturday, she would have plenty of time for both housework and preparation.
The last Saturday morning of February did not really dawn, for the discouraged light merely struggled with a snowstorm so dense that the rays only penetrated by refraction. A little before noon the fall ceased, but the sky would not relax, and scowled dark and sullen as if with the pain of its recent effort, the snow lay heavy on hill and lowland, covering land and water alike; and, lodging on the ice, completely obliterated the boundary of the usually assertive Moosatuck.
A few crows, cawing dismally, straggled toward what had been down stream from their cedar roosts, but all other sounds were muffled. It was almost noon before the village, headed by the first selectman with two yokes of oxen and as many ploughs, dug itself out; and a great snow-plough bound north cleared the rails for the morning mail train, now hours late. Meanwhile Mr. Sweezy, the host of the “Depot Hotel,” the wit of the reconstructed Hattertown, did a thriving trade with many usually abstemious citizens exhausted by the wielding of snow shovels, in beverages that did not bear the label “soft drinks,” and the ticket agent’s wife in the little booth struggled with and made more incoherent the reports that came over the snow-laden wires.
In spite of the storm and the desirability of daylight, there were four souls under the magnetic influence, as it were, of those bands of steel rails, that wished it were night. Two that they might meet once more, and two in order that a distance might reach between them that it seemed likely would end in a more complete separation.
Neither couple had ever seen or heard of the other, and yet the strands were fast weaving to draw them together and make it impossible to blot either from the other’s memory.
The first couple were man and maid, the second, man and wife.
Jim Bradley—working his way slowly on the morning trip from New York in dire apprehension that the return trip would be hopelessly delayed as far as the interval at Hattertown within visiting hours was concerned—and Miranda Banks, who looked from her watch-tower of the kitchen window over the snow waves that had enveloped all below, through which the various hay-ricks and chimney stacks emerged and seemed to drift like bits of wreckage in an Arctic sea. As she gazed she brought New England thrift to bear, and decided that hat and feathers would be an unseemly head covering on such a night, even if the meeting should be possible, and straightway put it by and began the freshening of an old hood with scraps of ribbon.
The second couple, John Hasleton and Helen, his wife, stood looking at each other across a table in the richly furnished library of one of the best modern houses of the city that was the Sky Line Railroad’s eastern terminal.
Everything about the room indicated a soothing combination of good taste augmented by money; the soft but not too profuse draperies and rugs, black oak shelves holding books of enticing title and suitably clothed, unique specimens of bronze and porcelain on table and shelf, prints upon the walls that through skill of dry point and gravers’ tools reflected the faces of the past—poet, king, warrior, gallant, and court beauty, all given an added touch of reality and animation by the glowing colours the hearth fire flashed upon them. But on the two faces that gazed across the table lay an expression of animal hatred—no, not animal, for that is direct and primitive, while human hatred is so compounded that one unimportant ingredient is often the yeast that ferments the whole inert bulk.
The man was openly furious, both in speech and mien; the woman held herself verbally within that purely technical and outward quality of self-control that is so exasperating to the opposite side, who feels that something is at stake besides success or defeat in argument.
This couple, of the relative ages of twenty-seven and thirty odd, had been married five years, spent largely in travel and social pleasures, satisfying their various tastes by acquisitions, and passing brief winters in the city house given by an indulgent father to his only daughter on her marriage.
Until this time, no great responsibility had fallen on either to say you must or must not do this or that. But now circumstances called the husband to give his time to various interests in New York, necessitating a permanent removal.
“You forget that I have not refused to leave my home and assured social position here, and if I am willing to begin again elsewhere, you have no right to forbid this visit that will not only make everything plain, but amuse me greatly as well.” The words were reasonable, but the voice was hard, and the pointed white fingers, heavy with rings that seemed to touch the table top lightly, but in reality supported the swaying figure, were tense and cold.
“Social position be damned! I’ve had enough of it these three years and over, but if not a soul should ever again speak to you in the street, I’ll not have it said that you have spent a single night in Tom Barney’s house, much less passed two weeks there and been thrown into the arms of the crowd they travel with!”
“Don’t be coarse. Mr. and Mrs. Barney’s house,” corrected the woman’s voice; “and when I know that you spent innumerable week-ends before our marriage at one or more of their country places and that he proposed your name for the difficult Cosmopolitan Club and engineered your election. I wish to make this visit, I have accepted the invitation, and I am going.”
“I repeat, I will not allow my wife to sleep under the Barneys’ roof. If, with your sharp insight, you cannot