Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton

At length Evelina’s feet also failed her, and she turned to suggest that they ought to be going home. Her flushed face had grown pale with fatigue, but her eyes were radiant.

The return lived in Ann Eliza’s memory with the persistence of an evil dream. The horse-cars were packed with the returning throng, and they had to let a dozen go by before they could push their way into one that was already crowded. Ann Eliza had never before felt so tired. Even Miss Mellins’s flow of narrative ran dry, and they sat silent, wedged between a negro woman and a pock- marked man with a bandaged head, while the car rumbled slowly down a squalid avenue to their corner. Evelina and Mr. Ramy sat together in the forward part of the car, and Ann Eliza could catch only an occasional glimpse of the forget-me-not bonnet and the clock-maker’s shiny coat-collar; but when the little party got out at their corner the crowd swept them together again, and they walked back in the effortless silence of tired children to the Bunner sisters’ basement. As Miss Mellins and Mr. Ramy turned to go their various ways Evelina mustered a last display of smiles; but Ann Eliza crossed the threshold in silence, feeling the stillness of the little shop reach out to her like consoling arms.

That night she could not sleep; but as she lay cold and rigid at her sister’s side, she suddenly felt the pressure of Evelina’s arms, and heard her whisper: “Oh, Ann Eliza, warn’t it heavenly?”

Chapter VI

For four days after their Sunday in the Park the Bunner sisters had no news of Mr. Ramy. At first neither one betrayed her disappointment and anxiety to the other; but on the fifth morning Evelina, always the first to yield to her feelings, said, as she turned from her untasted tea: “I thought you’d oughter take that money out by now, Ann Eliza.”

Ann Eliza understood and reddened. The winter had been a fairly prosperous one for the sisters, and their slowly accumulated savings had now reached the handsome sum of two hundred dollars; but the satisfaction they might have felt in this unwonted opulence had been clouded by a suggestion of Miss Mellins’s that there were dark rumours concerning the savings bank in which their funds were deposited. They knew Miss Mellins was given to vain alarms; but her words, by the sheer force of repetition, had so shaken Ann Eliza’s peace that after long hours of midnight counsel the sisters had decided to advise with Mr. Ramy; and on Ann Eliza, as the head of the house, this duty had devolved. Mr. Ramy, when consulted, had not only confirmed the dress-maker’s report, but had offered to find some safe investment which should give the sisters a higher rate of interest than the suspected savings bank; and Ann Eliza knew that Evelina alluded to the suggested transfer.

“Why, yes, to be sure,” she agreed. “Mr. Ramy said if he was us he wouldn’t want to leave his money there any longer’n he could help.”

“It was over a week ago he said it,” Evelina reminded her.

“I know; but he told me to wait till he’d found out for sure about that other investment; and we ain’t seen him since then.”

Ann Eliza’s words released their secret fear. “I wonder what’s happened to him,” Evelina said. “You don’t suppose he could be sick?”

“I was wondering too,” Ann Eliza rejoined; and the sisters looked down at their plates.

“I should think you’d oughter do something about that money pretty soon,” Evelina began again.

“Well, I know I’d oughter. What would you do if you was me?”

“If I was YOU,” said her sister, with perceptible emphasis and a rising blush, “I’d go right round and see if Mr. Ramy was sick. YOU could.”

The words pierced Ann Eliza like a blade. “Yes, that’s so,” she said.

“It would only seem friendly, if he really IS sick. If I was you I’d go to-day,” Evelina continued; and after dinner Ann Eliza went.

On the way she had to leave a parcel at the dyer’s, and having performed that errand she turned toward Mr. Ramy’s shop. Never before had she felt so old, so hopeless and humble. She knew she was bound on a love-errand of Evelina’s, and the knowledge seemed to dry the last drop of young blood in her veins. It took from her, too, all her faded virginal shyness; and with a brisk composure she turned the handle of the clock-maker’s door.

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