Quin
Copyright© 2025 by Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Chapter 20
Quin stood under the big car-shed at the Union Depot, and for the sixth time in ten minutes consulted the watch that was the pride of his life. He had been waiting for half an hour, not because the train was late, but because he proposed to be on the spot if by any happy chance it should arrive ahead of schedule time. The week before he had received a picture post-card on whose narrow margin were scrawled the meager lines:
So glad Cass is up again. Rose says you’ve been a brick. Home on Sept. 2. Hope to see you soon. E. M. B.
It was the only communication he had had from Eleanor since they sat on the stile in the starlight at Valley Mead three months before. To be sure, in her infrequent letters to Rose she had always added, “Give my love to Quinby Graham,” and once she said: “Tell him I’ve been meaning to write to him all summer.” Notwithstanding the fact that Quin had waited in vain for that letter for twelve consecutive weeks, that he had passed through every phase of indignation, jealousy, and consuming fear that can assail a young and undisciplined lover, he nevertheless watched for the incoming train with a rapture undimmed by disturbing reflections. The mere fact that every moment the distance was lessening between him and Eleanor, that within the hour he should see her, hear her, feel the clasp of her hand, was sufficient to send his spirits soaring into sunny spaces of confidence far above the clouds of doubt.
“Hello, Quinby; what are you doing here?” asked a voice behind him; and turning he saw the long, oval face and lady-like figure of Mr. Chester.
“Same thing you are,” said Quin, grinning sympathetically. “Only if I was in your shoes I’d be walking the tracks to meet the train.”
Mr. Chester shook his head and smiled primly.
“When you have waited twenty years for a young lady, twenty minutes more or less do not matter.”
“They would to me!” Quin declared emphatically. “When is the wedding to be?”
“On the fourteenth. And that reminds me”—Mr. Chester ran his arm confidentially through Quin’s and tried to catch step. “I want to ask a favor of you.”
A favor to Quin meant anything from twenty-five cents to twenty-five dollars, and the fact that Mr. Chester should come to him flattered and embarrassed him at the same time.
“What’s mine is yours,” he said magnanimously.
“No, you don’t understand,” said Mr. Chester. “You see, not being a club man or a society man, I have in a way dropped out of things. I have comparatively few friends, and unfortunately they are not in a set personally known to Madam Bartlett. Miss Enid and I thought that it might solve the difficulty, and avoid complications, if you would agree to serve as my best man.”
“Why, I’d be willing to serve as the preacher to see you and Miss Enid get married,” said Quin heartily. Then his thoughts flew after his departed Tuxedo and the gorgeous wing-toed pumps. “What’ll I have to wear?”
“It is to be a noon affair,” reassured Mr. Chester. “Simple morning coat, you know, and light-gray tie.”
Quin’s ideas concerning a morning coat were extremely vague, and the possibility of his procuring one vaguer still; but the occasion was too portentous to admit of hesitation. He and Mr. Chester continued their walk to the far end of the shed, and then stood looking down at the coal cars being loaded from the yards.
“White gloves, I suppose?” observed Quin.
“Pearl gray, with very narrow stitching. I think that’s better taste, don’t you?”
“Sure,” agreed Quin. “Flower in the buttonhole, or anything like that?”
While this all-important detail was being decided, a clanging bell and the hiss of an engine announced the incoming train. Before the two waiting cavaliers could reach the gate, Eleanor Bartlett came through, laden with wraps and umbrellas.
“I like the way you meet us,” she called out. “For mercy sake, help me.” And she deposited her burden in Quin’s outstretched arms. Then, as Mr. Chester strode past them with flying coat-tails in quest of Miss Enid, she burst out laughing.
“Say, you are looking great,” said Quin, with devouring eyes, as he surveyed her over the top of his impedimenta.
“It’s more than you are.” She scanned his face in dismay. “Have you been sick?”
“No, indeed. Never felt better.”
“I know—it was nursing Cass that did it. Rose wrote me all about it. If you don’t look better right away, I shall make you go straight to bed and I’ll come feed you chicken soup.”
“My fever’s rising this minute!” cried Quin, “I believe I’ve got a chill. Send for the ambulance!”
“Not till after the wedding. I’ll have you know I am to be Aunt Enid’s bridesmaid.”
“You’ve got nothing on me,” said Quin, “I’m the best man!”
This struck them both as being so excruciatingly funny that they did not see the approaching cavalcade, with Madam walking slowly at its head, until Quin heard his name called.
“Oh, dear,” said Eleanor, “there they come. And I’ve got a thousand questions to ask you and a million things to tell you.”
“Come here, young man, and see me walk!” was Madam’s greeting. “Do I look like a cripple? Leg off at the knee, crutches for life? Bah! We fooled them, didn’t we?”
Quin made a tremendous fuss over the old lady. He also threw the aunties into pleased confusion by pretending that he was going to kiss them, and occasioned no end of laughter and good-natured banter by his incessant teasing of Mr. Chester. He was in that state of effervescence that demanded an immediate outlet.
Madam found him so amusing that she promptly detailed him as her special escort.
“Eleanor can look after the baggage,” she said, “and Isobel can look after Eleanor. The turtle-doves can take a taxi.” And she closed her strong old fingers around Quin’s wrist and pulled him forward.
He shot an appealing glance over his shoulder at Eleanor, who shook her head in exasperation; then he obediently conducted Madam to her carriage and scrambled in beside her.
“Now,” she said, when he had got a cushion at her back and a stool under her foot, “tell me: where’s Ranny—drunk as usual?”
“No, siree!” said Quin proudly. “Sober as usual. He hasn’t touched a drop since you went away.”
She looked at him incredulously.
“Are you lying?”
“I am not.”
Her hard, suspicious old face began to twitch and her eyelids reddened.
“This is your doing,” she said gruffly. “You’ve put more backbone into him than all the doctors together.”
“That’s not all I’ve done,” said Quin. “What are you going to say when I tell you I’ve sold him a farm?”
“A farm? You’ve got no farm; and he had no money to buy it, if you had.”
“That’s all right. He has had a farm for three months. You ought to see him—up at six o’clock every morning looking after things, and so keen about getting back to it in the evening that he never thinks about going to the club or staying in town.”
“What’s all this nonsense you are talking?”
“It’s not nonsense. He’s bought a little place out near Anchordale. They are living there.”
“And they did this without consulting me!” Madam’s eyes blazed. “Why, he is no more capable of running a farm than a ten-year-old child! I have fought it for years. He knew perfectly well if he told me I’d stop it instantly. He will appeal to me to help out within six months, you’ll see! I sha’n’t do it! I’ll show my children if they can do without me that I can go without them.”
She was working herself into a fine rage. The aigrette on her bonnet quivered, and the black velvet band about her neck was getting so tight that it looked as if it couldn’t stand the strain much longer.
“Why didn’t he write me?” she stormed. “Am I too old and decrepit to be consulted any more? Is he going to follow Enid’s high-handed way of deciding things without the slightest reference to my wishes?”
“I expect he is,” said Quin cheerfully. “You see, you can’t stiffen a fellow’s backbone, as you call it, for one thing and not another. When he found out he could stop drinking, he decided he could do other things as well. He’s started a chicken farm.”
Madam groaned: “Of course. I never knew a fool that sooner or later didn’t gravitate to chickens. He will get an incubator next.”
“He has two already. He and Mrs. Ranny are studying out the whole business scientifically.”
“And I suppose they’ve got a rabbit hutch, and a monkey, and some white mice?”
“Not quite. But they’ve got a nice place. Want to go out with me next Saturday and see ‘em?”
“I do not. I’m not interested in menageries. I never expect to cross the threshold.”
Quin pulled up the cape that had slipped from her shoulder, and adjusted it carefully.
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