THE PASSING OF
HOPE ABBOTT
THE PASSING OF HOPE ABBOTT.
MISS HERRICK looked at the card rather critically. She was fastidious, and its appearance did not please her. She turned it over doubtfully, and read again the name engraved on its rather worn surface—Miss Hope Abbott. There was no address.
"I don't know the woman," she said reflectively. "I can't even remember having heard the name before. Thank her for her sympathy, Thomas, and say I regret that I am not yet quite well enough to receive calls."
The bell-boy departed with the message, and Miss Herrick turned to the trained nurse who was still with her, but whose mission now was to amuse the patient and save her from her friends. "I suppose you would n't have allowed me to see her in any case, you tyrant," she said affectionately; "but it does n't matter, for I can't imagine who she is or what she wants. Perhaps she has come on business."
That Miss Abbott had not come on business was shown by the return of Thomas, bearing an enormous bouquet of sweet old-fashioned roses and a large white package tied with gold-colored thread.
"She sent you these things, Miss Herrick," he said, as he put them on the table beside the convalescent's chair. "I told her you said you did n't know her," he added expansively, "and she said she knew you did n't know her, but that she knew you. She said she came to your office in the 'Searchlight' building once, and that you were very kind to her, and she sent you these with her love, and hoped that you would soon be back at your desk again."
Miss Herrick looked at him helplessly. She had worked hard over Thomas during her three years of residence at the Hotel Edward, but his methods still left much to be desired. Her heart sank as she pictured the well-meaning stranger carrying away the memory of what must have seemed an ungracious reception. She threw herself back in her chair, and surveyed the roses with a strange mixture of feelings, in which regret predominated. It was certainly very kind and sweet of this unknown woman to take an interest in her and to send her these lovely roses. Their perfume, laden with suggestions of country gardens, filled the room. The nurse had put them into water, and was opening the package which had accompanied them. It contained five smaller parcels, each carefully wrapped, and bearing the name of a well-known Broadway merchant. She untied these, in her quiet, capable way, and her patient looked on with the interest which small things excite during convalescence.
The first package contained an elegant little cardcase with silver trimmings. In the second there was a silver stamp-box. The third held a pair of manicure scissors with gold handles. From the fourth box the amused nurse drew a little black silk purse with silver mountings, and an investigation of the contents of the last package disclosed an ordinary crochet needle.
Nurse and patient smiled at each other irrepressibly,but Miss Herrick was no less touched than amused by this odd collection of gifts.
"It looks precisely," she said, "as if some well-meaning young farmer had gone to the county fair and had there selected these things as beautiful and appropriate offerings for his Hebe. They 're just about what he would buy, I think, although he might have overlooked the crochet needle. What was the dear, queer woman thinking about? And who and what is she? And how shall I learn her address? I can't keep all these things. They must have cost a great deal of money—much more, perhaps, than she could afford to pay."
As she spoke she opened the cardcase and discovered a small card in one of the pockets. It bore the simple legend of its mate,—Miss Hope Abbott,—but on the reverse side there were a few lines pencilled in a fine, angular hand.
"To Miss Ruth Herrick," they read, "from one who has always respected and admired her and her work, and who has followed her illness with affectionate sympathy." And then, further down, there was a line which had evidently been added hastily, as an after-thought—"I did not mean to be cross that day."
"Did not mean to be cross that day!" repeated Ruth Herrick, slowly. "What day?" She knit her straight brows in the effort to recall some memory of an office visit from some one who was cross—from some one who was named Miss Hope Abbott. "I shall have a relapse in exactly five minutes," she announced finally, "unless I solve this mystery."
But she did not solve it. To all appearances Miss Hope Abbott had vanished absolutely. In vain Miss Herrick sought information from her newspaper friends. In vain did she herself, after her return to her work on "The Searchlight," devote much of her time and skill to attempts to discover the identity of her mysterious caller. The newspaper woman who had never "let go" when she had gathered up the threads of a big "story," was forced to admit to herself that she was wholly at sea in this case.
She did, indeed, secure a clew from Tim, the office-boy, a lordly youth whose business it was to usher callers courteously into the presence of the man they had not come to see. Tim remembered Miss Abbott as a woman who had called at the editorial rooms of "The Searchlight " with original poems, which she had confidingly left in his keeping. He described her as a tall, gaunt woman of middle age, very plainly dressed, and with exceedingly pleasant manners. So favorably, indeed, did Miss Abbott impress Tim that instead of immediately losing her original poems, as was his custom, he had kept them to return to her when she came again, as she had left no address. These poems he brought to Miss Herrick's desk, and she recognized at once the angular writing she had seen on the card. The manuscripts were yellow and dust-covered. Apparently Miss Abbott had no intention of reclaiming them. Miss Herrick looked over the original poems. They were crude efforts, hopeless from the editor's point of view. She sighed as she returned them to the boy, and realized that this clew led her no nearer to the present whereabouts of the writer.
She did not immediately forget her unknown friend. If she had been inclined to do so the little scissors on her dressing-case and the stamp-box on her desk would have served as daily reminders. She still made so many inquiries among her friends that "Ruth Herrick's Miss Abbott" was jokingly referred to in newspaper circles as a journalistic "Mrs. Harris." "It is n't mere curiosity that moves me," Miss Herrick explained to the smiling ones; "I'd like to find her, for perhaps I might be able to do something for her. I don't believe she has too much money, not withstanding her reckless way of making gifts."
As the months went on, the whirl of metropolitan news-getting swept into the back ground the memory of her strange caller. It was almost a year after her visit that Miss Herrick, sitting at her desk one stormy winter day, stopped her work long enough to glance at the copy of the evening paper which a boy had just placed at her elbow. Her eye fell on the "scare-head" of a sensational story on the first page. It set forth in heavy type the fact that a woman had just starved to death in a lonely little cottage, in a small town in New Jersey. She had been an educated woman,—a teacher. She had lived alone, and was apparently friendless; she had been missed for a few days, and yesterday neighbors had broken into the house and had found—
Miss Herrick shivered, and turned her eyes toward the falling snow outside. The storm had raged for days; it was bitterly cold. She had taken a cab to go uptown the previous night, because she dreaded the short walk across wind-swept City Hall Park. It seemed almost incredible that in this year of grace a gentlewoman had been permitted to perish of cold and hunger within sight and sound of her own kind. The newspaper woman glanced at the page again, and suddenly a name seemed to rise from it and strike her like a blow.
She turned, to find Tim standing at her elbow—Tim, looking slightly awed, but full of importance. "That's the woman, Miss Herrick," he said, nodding toward the newspaper that lay before her. "I came to tell you as soon as I saw it; I took some of her poems to the city editor, and he is going to print them in the next edition."
The "original poems" came out in the next edition, with additional facts about the victim of cold and starvation in the Jersey hills. She seemed to have had no acquaintances in the village. The little children knew her, and many of them had home-made playthings which she had given them. Their parents had noticed the tall, gaunt figure passing through the village streets, and several of them recalled the smile that was the woman's one beauty. They had not called on her—neither they nor she seemed to have thought of that. And they had not missed her during the week preceding her death, for it had been so cold that few of the women or children had ventured out. But at last some one had noticed that there was no light in the small, isolated house, and investigation showed that there had been none for a week, nor had there been food or fire. And so they found her.
Miss Herrick read no more; her vivid imagination filled in the picture. She saw the woman who had followed her illness "with affectionate sympathy" awaiting her own fate with a grim pride which not even death could conquer. She thought of the days and nights of physical and mental agony before the end came. She pictured to herself that last night, when darkness fell and the storm deepened, and was defied by light and warmth and comfort in all the homes but one. She could see that one.
The door of her office banged cheerfully as the editor of the "Searchlight's" woman's page came in, pulling the collar of her jacket up around her throat.
"Come out to dinner, Ruthie," she called gayly. "I have to work to-night, and I need the cheering influence of your society while I eat."
Then, seeing the girl's face, she stopped suddenly, and her own expression changed.
"Why, what's the matter, dear?" she asked, putting her hand affectionately on her friend's shoulder.
Miss Herrick laid her cheek against it, and closed her eyes with a little sob.
"I should not be a cheerful dinner companion to-night, Helen," she said. "I have just found Miss Hope Abbott."