A Scarlet Poppy and Other Stories

BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD

NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1894

HARPER’S AMERICAN STORY-TELLERS.

16mo, Cloth, Ornamental.

THE WATER GHOST, AND OTHERS. By JOHN KENDRICK BANGS. Illustrated. $1 25.

NOWADAYS, AND OTHER STORIES. By GEORGE A. HIBBARD. Illustrated by the Author. $1 25.

THE STORY OF A STORY, AND OTHER STORIES. By BRANDER MATTHEWS. Illustrated. $1 25.

THE PRIVATE LIFE. Three Stories. By HENRY JAMES. $1 00.

THE WHEEL OF TIME. Three Stories. By HENRY JAMES. $1 00.

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

The above works are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publisher, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price.

CONTENTS

PAGE

A SCARLET POPPY 1

BEST-LAID SCHEMES 29

AN IDEAL 87

MRS. CLAXTON’S SKELETON 107

THE TRAGIC STORY OF BINNS 175

THE COMPOSITE WIFE 215

MR. VAN NORE’S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW 263

A SCARLET POPPY

“It was only a quarter of a dollar, Mark.”

“Only a quarter of a dollar! It isn’t that quarter I complain of; it is its multiplication. Four of them make a dollar. How often have I told you, Helena, that the little foxes--”

“Oh, so often that I’d like to be in at the death of them all, and hang up the last brush on the wall!”

“Very likely. That’s quite in character. I fancy there’d be no wall to hang it on by that time, though. That’s all,” pushing back his coffee-cup.

“How perfectly absurd you are, Mark! Because I buy a scarlet paper poppy with a black curled paper heart, eight inches in diameter, to hang outside a lamp-shade, and pay twenty-five cents for it, you are brought to the verge of bankruptcy and I am to be reduced to beggary!”

“It isn’t the poppy at all. It’s--”

“It seems to me that I might commit that extravagance every day if I wished and not ruin you. Three hundred and sixty-five quarters--ninety-one dollars a year. How poor you must be if ninety-one dollars a year can put you into insolvency! But I don’t wish. I--”

“It isn’t the poppy at all”--his face growing purple.

“Oh no, it isn’t the poppy; it’s the twenty-five cents. It isn’t this poppy; it’s the next one,” clasping her pretty hands behind her head, as she leaned back in an insolence of attitude.

“It isn’t the poppy at all; it’s the principle,” cried the exasperated Mr. Dunmore at last, raising his voice so that it could be heard over his wife’s treble, and over the screaming of the wild March gale outside.

“Oh, of course,” said his wife then, “if you choose to talk to me in that tone, it’s the end of argument. I can’t roar, and the strong lungs have it. But it’s very ungentlemanly and unhandsome. It’s quite as mean as grudging me the original twenty-five cents for a decoration to my lamp-shade.”

“Helena, I can’t allow you to go on in this way.”

“You can’t allow me! As if I were going to ask you to allow me! I should suppose it was time you entered sufficiently into the spirit of the age, Mark, to know that wives nowadays are not slaves. They are not allowed or disallowed. And they can spend twenty-five cents without asking; especially if it’s their own,” added Mrs. Dunmore, with sharp emphasis, her great blue eyes sparkling in a way that great blue eyes can on occasion. “Go, lie down, Sauveur!” as the big St. Bernard, aware that something was wrong, came and laid his nose on her arm.

“Very well, then, Helena,” said Mr. Dunmore, with great severity; “since you drive me to it--when it is your own.”

“Really?” said the young woman, with a severity quite as cold as his own. “How long since my own income ceased to be mine? I don’t think my poor father when he left me my little property ever had an idea that any one was going to deny its being my own. ‘Free from marital control,’ he said,” cried Mrs. Dunmore, triumphantly. “‘Free from marital control,’” she repeated, with force. “Does that mean that you, or that I, have the spending of it?”

“You, assuredly, Helena,” said Mr. Dunmore, with more calmness. “How many times this year have you had the spending of it already?”

“I must say, Mr. Dunmore, I fail to understand you.”

“I will enlighten you. When you made your Christmas presents on a scale entirely incommensurate with our means, and I remonstrated, you said you were going to pay for them all yourself out of your January dividends. But when your January dividends came in, the bill for your new cloak came also and took the whole sum.”

“Most men pay for their wives’ cloaks themselves,” said Mrs. Dunmore, with some bitterness.

“Not when their wives order four-hundred-dollar cloaks, and they can only afford one-hundred-dollar ones without running into debt.”

“You have brought me up here into this frigid zone of a climate, Mr. Dunmore, and I certainly expected before I came to be clothed sufficiently to meet the rigor of the weather.”

“You are,” said her husband. “And you were before you spent the whole of your January dividends to pay for a seal-skin cloak. However, that’s neither here nor there. It became necessary then, after the system of genteel beggary in our civilization, to make Laura Kerna a wedding present.”

“We didn’t have any wedding presents ourselves, I suppose!” said the wife, witheringly.

“And I thought one of the twelve ladles that were given to us would do.”

“The idea! So perfectly disgraceful! Some men haven’t any sentiment,” addressing the universe.

“And you insisted on nothing less than a gold-mounted vinaigrette.”

“Dear knows she’ll need it, if all husbands are alike.”

“And you would pay for it out of your January dividends,” said her husband, not noticing her interpolations. “But close upon that came my birthday, and you wished me to make myself a present of a new watch; and when I said it was impossible, you said you would pay for it out of your dividend.”

“If I ever heard of such unparalleled meanness!”

“A little later, when we were getting a fresh carpet for the drawing-room, and I thought Brussels would do, and you declared for Wilton, you assured me that you were to pay for that out of your dividend.”

“Well, if I couldn’t carpet my own house, I wouldn’t twit my wife for doing it.”

“You said the same about the India rug you ordered home without consultation, at two hundred and fifty dollars. It is a beauty, of course; I admit your taste; it is soft as velvet, and colored with sunbeams. But I knew if I paid for that I must go without paying for something else; and you said you would pay for it yourself with your dividend.”

“Pshaw!”

“You must remember that you wanted some moonstones, when they came into fashion; for luck, you said; and about the same time a tall piano-lamp; and, not long after, a big Limoges vase; and in spite of my reluctance--”

“Reluctance!”

“You got them all, and charged them to your dividend again.”

“But, Mark--”

“Pardon me! The next thing that arose was the necessity of educating that young lad in art; and as I didn’t have that money to spare, you drew the money from the house-keeping fund, and said you would replace it from your dividend. Then you started to go down to the city and attend the Friday afternoon concerts, for which your ticket cost thirty-five dollars, and that of a companion thirty-five more; and when you were snowed in on the train, in just such a storm as this, if there ever was such a storm before, and obliged to have a doctor, and a set of bills--ever so little ashamed, perhaps, that your folly had brought about such unlooked-for expense--you said you could settle all that with your dividend. How many times do you think you have used up your dividend money already? Do you think, this March morning, there is twenty-five dollars or twenty-five cents of it left? And don’t you know that my one wish in life is to keep out of debt, that if I am called off suddenly there may be something to take care of you with?--you who spend recklessly many times your own income every year, and would mine if you could get at it! I shall make a will the next time I go to town, Helena,” said Mr. Dunmore solemnly, “in which I shall put every dollar of my property in trust; for you are not fit to be charged with a bank-note. Money melts out of your hands like morning dew, and you may be the most beautiful and winning woman in the world, but in money matters you are a child. You never go into a shop without telling the dealer how cheap his goods are, and asking him if he can’t take a little more.”

“I won’t listen to another word you say,” cried Mrs. Helena, springing to her feet. “I knew you were so careful as to be canny. I never knew a person with Scotch blood in him that wasn’t. So proud of your Scotch blood as you are! But I didn’t suppose you looked askance at your own wife’s doctor’s bills. I’ll pay them myself out of my very next dividend, that I will! I never imagined you wanted me to stay stived up in a prison-house, going without pleasure or society. If it costs you so much more than you can afford to keep me, I can go to my aunt Potter’s. And I will go, this very day.”

A scarlet poppy, and other stories