Free At Fault by Kate Chopin Page A

themselves
at the matinée."
    "Likely they will 's long as they gave us the tickets."
    One of the gentlemen was at the matinée: Mr. Bert Rodney, but he
certainly had not "poked" himself there. He never did any thing vulgar
or in bad taste. He had only "dropped in!" Exquisite in dress and
manner, a swell of the upper circles, versed as was no one better in
the code of gentlemanly etiquette—he was for the moment awaiting
disconsolately the return of his wife and daughter from Narragansett.
    He took a vacant seat behind the two ladies, and bending forward began
to talk to them in his low and fascinating drawl.
    Mrs. Worthington, who often failed to accomplish her fierce designs,
was as gracious towards him as if she had harbored no desire to give
him a piece of her mind; but she was resolute in her refusal to make
one of a proposed supper party.
    A quiet sideward look from Mrs. Dawson, told Mr. Rodney as plainly as
words, that in the event of his
partie-carrée
failing him, he might
count upon her for a
tête-à-tête
.

XI - The Self-Assumed Burden
*
    The wedding was over. Hosmer and Fanny had been married in the small
library of their Unitarian minister whom they had found intent upon
the shaping of his Sunday sermon.
    Out of deference, he had been briefly told the outward circumstances
of the case, which he knew already; for these two had been formerly
members of his congregation, and gossip had not been reluctant in
telling their story. Hosmer, of course, had drifted away from his
knowledge, and in late years, he had seen little of Fanny, who when
moved to attend church at all usually went to the Redemptorist's Rock
Church with her friend Belle Worthington. This lady was a good
Catholic to the necessary extent of hearing a mass on Sundays,
abstaining from meat on Fridays and Ember days, and making her
"Easters." Which concessions were not without their attendant
discomforts, counterbalanced, however, by the soothing assurance which
they gave her of keeping on the safe side.
    The minister had been much impressed with the significance of this
re-marriage which he was called upon to perform, and had offered some
few and well chosen expressions of salutary advice as to its future
guidance. The sexton and housekeeper had been called in as witnesses.
Then Hosmer had taken Fanny back home in a cab as she requested,
because of her eyes that were red and swollen.
    Inside the little hall-way he took her in his arms and kissed her,
calling her "my child." He could not have told why, except that it
expressed the responsibility he accepted of bearing all things that a
father must bear from the child to whom he has given life.
    "I should like to go out for an hour, Fanny; but if you would rather
not, I shall stay."
    "No, David, I want to be alone," she said, turning into the little
parlor, with eyes big and heavy from weariness and inward clashing
emotions.
    Along the length of Lindell avenue from Grand avenue west to Forest
park, reaches for two miles on either side of the wide and well kept
gravel drive a smooth stone walk, bordered its full extent with a
double row of trees which were young and still uncertain, when Hosmer
walked between them.
    Had it been Sunday, he would have found himself making one of a
fashionable throng of promenaders; it being at that time a fad with
society people to walk to Forest park and back of a Sunday afternoon.
Driving was then considered a respectable diversion only on the six
work days of the week.
    But it was not Sunday and this inviting promenade was almost deserted.
An occasional laborer would walk clumsily by; apathetic; swinging his
tin bucket and bearing some implement of toil with the yellow clay yet
clinging to it. Or it might be a brace of strong-minded girls walking
with long and springing stride, which was then fashionable; looking
not to the right nor left; indulging in no exchange of friendly and
girlish chatter, but grimly intent upon the purpose of their walk.
    A steady line of