“Me—me?” she gasped.
“I guess so,” said her suitor placidly. “You suit me right down to the ground, Miss Bunner. Dat’s the truth.”
A woman passing along the street paused to look at the shop-window, and Ann Eliza half hoped she would come in; but after a desultory inspection she went on.
“Maybe you don’t fancy me?” Mr. Ramy suggested, discountenanced by Ann Eliza’s silence.
A word of assent was on her tongue, but her lips refused it. She must find some other way of telling him.
“I don’t say that.”
“Well, I always kinder thought we was suited to one another,” Mr. Ramy continued, eased of his momentary doubt. “I always liked de quiet style—no fuss and airs, and not afraid of work.” He spoke as though dispassionately cataloguing her charms.
Ann Eliza felt that she must make an end. “But, Mr. Ramy, you don’t understand. I’ve never thought of marrying.”
Mr. Ramy looked at her in surprise. “Why not?”
“Well, I don’t know, har’ly.” She moistened her twitching lips. “The fact is, I ain’t as active as I look. Maybe I couldn’t stand the care. I ain’t as spry as Evelina—nor as young,” she added, with a last great effort.
“But you do most of de work here, anyways,” said her suitor doubtfully.
“Oh, well, that’s because Evelina’s busy outside; and where there’s only two women the work don’t amount to much. Besides, I’m the oldest; I have to look after things,” she hastened on, half pained that her simple ruse should so readily deceive him.
“Well, I guess you’re active enough for me,” he persisted. His calm determination began to frighten her; she trembled lest her own should be less staunch.
“No, no,” she repeated, feeling the tears on her lashes. “I couldn’t, Mr. Ramy, I couldn’t marry. I’m so surprised. I always thought it was Evelina—always. And so did everybody else. She’s so bright and pretty—it seemed so natural.”
“Well, you was all mistaken,” said Mr. Ramy obstinately.
“I’m so sorry.”
He rose, pushing back his chair.
“You’d better think it over,” he said, in the large tone of a man who feels he may safely wait.
“Oh, no, no. It ain’t any sorter use, Mr. Ramy. I don’t never mean to marry. I get tired so easily—I’d be afraid of the work. And I have such awful headaches.” She paused, racking her brain for more convincing infirmities.
“Headaches, do you?” said Mr. Ramy, turning back.
“My, yes, awful ones, that I have to give right up to. Evelina has to do everything when I have one of them headaches. She has to bring me my tea in the mornings.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear it,” said Mr. Ramy.
“Thank you kindly all the same,” Ann Eliza murmured. “And please don’t—don’t—” She stopped suddenly, looking at him through her tears.
“Oh, that’s all right,” he answered. “Don’t you fret, Miss Gunner. Folks have got to suit themselves.” She thought his tone had grown more resigned since she had spoken of her headaches.
For some moments he stood looking at her with a hesitating eye, as though uncertain how to end their conversation; and at length she found courage to say (in the words of a novel she had once read): “I don’t want this should make any difference between us.”
“Oh, my, no,” said Mr. Ramy, absently picking up his hat.
“You’ll come in just the same?” she continued, nerving herself to the effort. “We’d miss you awfully if you didn’t. Evelina, she—” She paused, torn between her desire to turn his thoughts to Evelina, and the dread of prematurely disclosing her sister’s secret.
“Don’t Miss Evelina have no headaches?” Mr. Ramy suddenly asked.
“My, no, never—well, not to speak of, anyway. She ain’t had one for ages, and when Evelina IS sick she won’t never give in to it,” Ann Eliza declared, making some hurried adjustments with her conscience.
“I wouldn’t have thought that,” said Mr. Ramy.
“I guess you don’t know us as well as you thought you did.”
“Well, no, that’s so; maybe I don’t. I’ll wish you good day, Miss Bunner”; and Mr. Ramy moved toward the door.
“Good day, Mr. Ramy,” Ann Eliza answered.
She felt unutterably thankful to be alone. She knew the crucial moment of her life had passed, and she was glad that she had not fallen below her own ideals. It had been a wonderful experience; and in spite of the tears on her cheeks she was not sorry to have known it. Two facts, however, took the edge from its perfection: that it had happened in the shop, and that she had not had on her black silk.
She passed the next hour in a state of dreamy ecstasy. Something had entered into her life of which no subsequent empoverishment could rob it: she glowed with the same rich sense of possessorship that once, as a little girl, she had felt when her mother had given her a gold locket and she had sat up in bed in the dark to draw it from its hiding-place beneath her night-gown.
At length a dread of Evelina’s return began to mingle with these musings. How could she meet her younger sister’s eye without betraying what had happened? She felt as though a visible glory lay on her, and she was glad that dusk had fallen when Evelina entered. But her fears were superfluous. Evelina, always self-absorbed, had of late lost all interest in the simple happenings of the shop, and Ann Eliza, with mingled mortification and relief, perceived that she was in no danger of being cross-questioned as to the events of the afternoon. She was glad of this; yet there was a touch of humiliation in finding that the portentous secret in her bosom did not visibly shine forth. It struck her as dull, and even slightly absurd, of Evelina not to know at last that they were equals.
PART II
VIII
Mr. Ramy, after a decent interval, returned to the shop; and Ann Eliza, when they met, was unable to detect whether the emotions which seethed under her black alpaca found an echo in his bosom. Outwardly he made no sign. He lit his pipe as placidly as ever and seemed to relapse without effort into the unruffled intimacy of old. Yet to Ann Eliza’s initiated eye a change became gradually perceptible. She saw that he was beginning to look at her sister as he had looked at her on that momentous afternoon: she even discerned a secret significance in the turn of his talk with Evelina. Once he asked her abruptly if she should like to travel, and Ann Eliza saw that the flush on Evelina’s cheek was reflected from the same fire which had scorched her own.
So they drifted on through the sultry weeks of July. At that season the business of the little shop almost ceased, and one Saturday morning Mr. Ramy proposed that the sisters should lock up early and go with him for a sail down the bay in one of the Coney Island boats.
Ann Eliza saw the light in Evelina’s eye and her resolve was instantly taken.
“I guess I won’t go, thank you kindly; but I’m sure my sister will be happy to.”
She was pained by the perfunctory phrase with which Evelina urged her to accompany them; and still more